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U.S. military sets out to help quake victims;
American troops join multinational effort pouring aid into stricken region
 
JAKARTA, Indonesia - A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier battle group is heading from Hong Kong to the shores of Sumatra. The first of many Air Force C-130 cargo planes has landed in Indonesia with a load of blankets, plastic sheeting and medicines.
As the death toll from southern Asia's deadly earthquake and tsunami waves soared Thursday, Washington put long-standing concerns over politics and human rights violations in Indonesia aside and mobilized its military for what promises to be a complex relief mission. 
The Bush administration regards Indonesia - the world's most populous Muslim nation - as its key Southeast Asian ally in the war on international terrorism and the disaster is offering an opportunity to demonstrate the humanitarian capabilities of the U.S. military.
But officials said saving lives is more important than scoring political points.
"Considering the pressing need, whatever we do couldn't be fast enough," said Charles Silver, spokesman at the U.S. Embassy. "We have not had trouble getting our people in."
Silver said the first U.S. cargo plane, a C-130 flying out of Kadena, Japan, touched down in the Sumatran city of Medan on Thursday with a load of relief supplies and body bags for the estimated 80,000 dead in this country alone.
The plane also brought an advance team of about a dozen troops who will assess the situation and determine the logistics needed for the U.S. relief operation.
Complicating the problems caused by the devastation, the Sumatran province of Aceh, nearest the epicenter of Sunday's mammoth earthquake, has long been restricted to foreigners because of a decades-old separatist insurgency.
Guerrillas have been fighting since 1976 for an independent homeland in Aceh, where many of the 4.3 million people live in poverty despite the province's wealth in natural resources. At least 13,000 people have been killed, and both the insurgents and government have been accused of human rights abuses.
But the sheer scale of the disaster has prompted Indonesia's government to open its borders, and the Americans are part of a giant overseas military force pouring into the region.
"We have to welcome the U.S. response," said Rizal Sukma, a political analyst at Indonesia's Center for Strategy and International Studies. "At this time we need the military, because the mission is beyond civilian capabilities."
Along with the airport at Medan, a Thai navy air base used by U.S. B-52 bombers during the Vietnam War is turning into a hub for the U.S. military-led relief effort, which will also include humanitarian operations for Sri Lanka and India.
Lt. Col. Scott Elder in Thailand said up to 1,000 U.S. military personnel would likely arrive there in the next week.
U.S. planes already have delivered 1,400 body bags to southern islands in Thailand, where Interior Minister Bhokin Balakula said more than 3,500 bodies had been recovered. 
In Sri Lanka, the island nation off the southern tip of India, 26 medical specialists from the Army, Marines, Air Force and Navy arrived Thursday to help with efforts to prevent outbreaks of disease in crowded refugee centers.
Among the other contributors:
* Australian and New Zealand military cargo planes have flown supplies and water purification plants into Indonesia.
* Pakistani naval sailors diverted their ship to rescue survivors on outlying islands in the Maldives, and only poor weather on Wednesday thwarted them from sending a helicopter to hunt for more survivors and deliver aid.
* Singapore is sending eight helicopters, a Navy ship and more than 500 military personnel.


 The Left and the Tsunami

 Leave it to the American left to find a villain of the tsunami disaster - not Mother Nature but President Bush.  on Wednesday trotted out the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, to pronounce that Mr. Bush was, as the Post conveyed it, "missing an opportunity to demonstrate American benevolence."  editorialized yesterday that American aid offers were "stingy" and "miserly." Rep. Joseph Crowley, a Democrat of Queens, declared that the Bush administration is "asleep at the wheel." Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan who runs an anti-Bush Web site, wrote, "If Bush were a statesman, he would have flown to Jakarta and announced his solidarity with the Muslims of Indonesia." 
Is there no bad thing that can happen on earth for which Mr. Bush is not to blame? Had the president raced immediately to the scene of the disaster, these same voices would no doubt be condemning him for grandstanding and interfering with the relief effort, for exploiting a humanitarian disaster, or for taking a unilateralist approach instead of working with coalitions and international organizations. This is contemporary American leftist illogic distilled to pure hypocrisy: When America tries to depose a dictator like Saddam Hussein who put tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites in mass graves and who was trying to acquire weapons that would allow him to kill tens of thousands of Israelis or Americans, the left complains that America is trying to be a global policeman and needs to learn humility. But when a naturally generated tsunami hits Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, killing hundreds of thousands, it is somehow assumed that the American government must take the lead in the disaster relief efforts.
As David Shribman, the Pulitzer Prizewinner whose column appears weekly in , writes in the adjacent columns, a key difference between Republicans and Democrats these days is that Republicans prefer market solutions and personal responsibility, while Democrats prefer government stewardship and public responsibility. Individual Americans, private charities and businesses are generously rising to the challenge of tsunami relief; with more than $3.5 million raised atAmazon.com, a $35 million gift from Pfizer, $10 million from Coca-Cola, and $3 million each from Merck, Citigroup, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to Forbes. One could praise this extraordinary outpouring and pitch in. Sadly, the paragons of the American left would prefer to bash Mr. Bush than to celebrate American generosity.


 A CRISIS IN MUSLIM LANDS
 
The tsunamis that swept out from the epicenter of the historic earthquake near Indonesia did not make distinctions regarding the race, ethnicity or religion of their victims. Because the waves hit tourist areas, residents of dozens of countries outside the region were killed. But the greatest loss of lives so far, and the greatest potential threat of more losses in coming weeks, has been seen in countries where the dominant religions are Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. 
While there is a tendency to associate Islam with the Middle East, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world is Indonesia. And Indonesia has suffered horribly. The images that are beginning to emerge from the city of Banda Aceh, near the epicenter of the earthquake that caused the tsunamis, are horrifying. And Indonesian officials now estimate that, when all the victims are found, as many as 50,000 people will have died in that country alone.
As the details of this disaster become more clear, the devastation of another predominantly Muslim country is only now being revealed.
The tsunamis whipped up by the largest earthquake the world has seen in 40 years reached all the way to the eastern coast of Africa. Now, according to the United Nations World Food Program, as many as 50,000 Somalis need immediate relief aid. Many are without shelter or food and clean water. U.N. aides who reached one of the towns on the Somali coast, Hafun, describe a scene of "total desolation."
"The 4,500 inhabitants seem to have lost all their possessions," reports the World Food Program office. "Most of the houses in town have been destroyed. Personal belongings lay scattered around town. Boats are beached in the middle of town. Even money is strewn on the ground."
Many public and private aid groups are rushing assistance to the region and to other devastated areas.
But today we want to highlight the work of Islamic Relief USA. One of the most respected aid organizations in the United States, Islamic Relief USA has been awarded with a 4-star rating by Charity Navigator, the largest charity evaluator in the country. Through its contacts with Islamic Relief Worldwide, it is well positioned to deliver aid in devastated regions with large Muslim populations.
Already, an assessment team from Islamic Relief's Indonesia office has arrived in the region where the earthquake damage is most severe and is helping to coordinate relief efforts. The organization's partners in India have arrived in the hard-hit region of Chennai and are performing a needs assessment. The group's representative in Sri Lanka has put out the call for medical supplies, tents and sanitation facilities. And Islamic Relief, which already has charitable projects in place in Somalia, can be counted on to be in the forefront of efforts to provide emergency aid and long-term assistance there.
Islamic Relief USA has set up a Southeast Asia Earthquake Emergency fund. To donate, send a contribution to the group at PO Box 6098, Burbank, CA 91510. It is also possible to donate by phone with a call to 888-479-4968 or by going online to www.irw.org/asiaquake.


 It's About Aid, And an Image

As Asia suffers through a 9/11 of its own  a natural calamity instead of a man-made one, but at least 25 times more deadly -- President Bush's response in coming weeks may well determine his success in repairing relations strained by three years of relentless American focus on terrorism.
 It took 72 hours after the tsunamis washed away countless villages and tens of thousands of lives before Mr. Bush appeared in public to declare that the United States had the rudiments of a plan for addressing ''loss and grief to the world that is beyond our comprehension.'' His aides said it took that long to understand the magnitude of the tragedy and to plan a recovery effort that must stretch from remote villages of Indonesia to the eastern coast of Africa. 
  But the aid effort that has now begun presents Mr. Bush with an opportunity to battle, with action rather than just words, the perception that took root in his first four years in office that he is all about America first. 
 ''It's a tragedy but it is also an opportunity to demonstrate that terrorism doesn't drive out everything else,'' said Morton Abramowitz, who served as American ambassador to Thailand a quarter century ago and went on to become one of the founders of the International Crisis Group, which helps prepare governments to respond to unexpected shocks. ''It's a chance for him to show what kind of country we are.''
 Mr. Bush and his aides have long argued that the administration's reputation around the world is undeserved. 
 Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, said on Wednesday that American funds for disaster relief alone were $2.4 billion last year, 40 percent of the worldwide contributions for this purpose. ''We are by far the largest donor,'' he said. ''No one even comes close to us.''
 That argument underlay the president's testy response when asked, at his ranch, about the comments of Jan Egeland, the United Nations relief coordinator, who charged on Monday that rich Western nations had been ''stingy'' in doling out foreign aid before the tsunami. 
 ''I felt like the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed,'' Mr. Bush replied, ticking off the magnitude of increases in American aid.
 But perceptions set in a first term have a way of becoming the political canvas of the second. And America's response to this tragedy, some administration officials acknowledged, is crucial in places like Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, where the earthquake and tsunami first hit and where Islamic fundamentalism, never a political force during the cold war, is seeking to make inroads.
 Any missteps by the United States in the country's politically volatile environment, noted a senior American official who is frequently in Southeast Asia, ''will be exploited by the Islamic extremists to bolster their own case.'' 
 In this case, early reports indicate that even in a holiday week, the bureaucracy swung into gear fairly quickly. 
 To some degree, the war of perceptions has to do with whether the Asian nations believe Mr. Bush focuses on the tsunami tragedy with the same kind of energy he put in to making sure that other nations signed on to his counterterrorism agenda after Sept. 11. Just weeks after those attacks, Mr. Bush traveled to Shanghai for the annual summit of Asian leaders and made clear he would judge allies on the basis of how well they joined the fight. Among the first visitors to the Oval Office after the attack was Megawati Sukarnoputri, then Indonesia's president. She pledged to join the hunt for Al Qaeda operatives on her territory, and largely made good on the promise. 
 On Wednesday morning Mr. Bush, operating from a trailer just across the road from his ranch that has been converted into a secure communications center, called the leaders of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India to pledge his support. 
 ''I assured those leaders this is only the beginning of our help,'' he said of the $35 million that the administration has pledged so far. 
 Mr. Bush's aides are aware that the depth of America's compassion will be compared to what other nations are spending, what Washington spends on lesser disasters at home, and what is now being spent in Iraq.
 Spain has publicly committed about $68 million. Australia has pledged $27 million. American officials say those comparisons can be misleading because the United States is providing airlift and other services in an aid coalition with Japan, India and Australia.
 Then there are the domestic comparisons. Congress has approved roughly $13 billion for aid related to the hurricanes that hit the country in the late summer. Most of that is going to Florida, where Mr. Bush loaded fresh water and dry goods into the trunks of cars. 
 Of course, that was home turf, and an election campaign was under way, and even Mr. Bush's critics do not expect spending on that scale for the far greater disaster in South Asia. 
 And there are already signs that Democrats want to link the response to this disaster to spending in Iraq. ''I just about went through the roof when I heard them bragging about $35 million,'' Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and a persistent critic of how the American rebuilding operation has gone in Iraq. ''We spend $35 million before breakfast in Iraq.'' 
 Speaking by telephone from his home in Vermont, Mr. Leahy, who is the ranking Democrat on the foreign operations subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, urged that a portion of the largely unspent $18 billion for Iraq reconstruction be re-directed for Asian relief efforts.                     




GROUPS TAKING COLLECTIONS FOR TSUNAMI RELIEF

 
Governments, faith communities and relief organizations are dispatching aid to the quake-ravaged nations of Southern Asia and making global appeals for monetary donations.
On Wednesday, President Bush said the United States would work closely with Japan, India and Australia to coordinate efforts and pledged an initial $35 million in assistance with more to come. The Pentagon has also sent transport planes to Indonesia with tents, blankets, food and water bags. The Navy is dispatching seven water-producing ships -- five from Guam and two from Diego Garcia -- that can turn out up to 90,000 gallons of fresh water a day. A hospital ship from Guam is also on its way. The world's charities are also responding. People can donate to all the campaigns via their Web sites. 
American Red Cross
www.redcross.org; (202) 303-5279
British Red Cross
www.redcross.org.uk
A British Red Cross plane will carry logistical equipment today to join its team already in Sri Lanka, where the International Committee for the Red Cross has been delivering supplies and helping with evacuations.
AmeriCares
www.americares.org; (202) 658-9500
An AmeriCares airlift has left Amsterdam and will arrive in Sri Lanka today, bringing 30,000 pounds of medical supplies. The plane is carrying disaster-relief supplies including antibiotics, analgesics, basic first-aid supplies and enough water-treatment sachets to purify 4 million liters of water.
Cafod, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development
www.cafod.org.uk
Cafod is working with partners across Asia to provide shelter, food aid and medical assistance, and assessing what further relief is needed.
CARE
www.care.org; (404) 681-2552
CARE International teams in Andhra Pradesh are setting up a base of operations in Chennai and delivering water-purification materials and oral-rehydration salts to stave off the worst effects of water-borne diseases. In Indonesia, the group is prepared to step in with emergency assistance for Sumatra's Aceh state and capital city of Banda Aceh, which were virtually on top of the earthquake's epicenter.
Catholic Relief Services
www.catholicrelief.org; (410) 625-2220 or (800) 736-3467
Archbishop Michael Sheehan asked the Archdiocese of Santa Fe's 93 parishes to take up a special collection at Sunday Masses. The donations will be forwarded to Catholic Relief Services for disbursement.
Christian Aid
www.christianaid.org.uk
Christian Aid has already contributed $480,000 to the relief effort.
Christian Children's Fund
www.christianchildrensfund.org; (804) 756-6800
Church World Service
www.churchworldservice.org; (800) 297-1516; (574) 264-3102
The international humanitarian agency's Indonesia office is deploying an emergency-assistance team to aid in recovery efforts in Aceh, Indonesia. The Pakistan/Afghanistan office might also assist with sending of an assessment team to Sri Lanka.
Concern
www.concern.net
Concern is working with local partners to meet the needs of families in the devastated coastal villages of Tamil Nadu, the worst affected state in India.
Doctors Without Borders
www.doctorswithoutborders-usa.org/donate/; (888) 392-0392
The French group is sending aid workers to the region, focusing on medical care for survivors and displaced people. On Wednesday, the group started bringing medical aid to people in Aceh, Indonesia. A team of eight people, including three nurses and two doctors, arrived in Banda Aceh on Tuesday and set up a clinic in a camp for displaced people.
International Rescue Committee
www.theirc.org
Islamic Aid Emergency Relief Fund
www.islamicaid.org.uk
Islamic Relief
www.islamic-relief.com
Islamic Relief is appealing for medical supplies, tents and sanitation facilities.
Medair
www.medair.org
Medair is providing emergency support to agencies with a long-term presence in Sri Lanka, and its medical experts are assessing the likelihood of malaria and diarrhea.
Mercy Corps
www.mercycorps.org; (503) 796-6800
Muslim Aid
www.muslimaid.org
Muslim Aid has already donated $192,000 toward the purchase of food, clothing and medicine in the region.
Muslim Hands
www.muslimhands.org
Muslim Hands is collecting money and sending volunteers to help in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Oxfam
www.oxfamamerica.org; (617) 482-1211
In the United Kingdom, Oxfam (www.oxfam.org.uk) has already raised $1.2 million.
The organization dispatched its first plane from the UK on Wednesday, carrying 27 tons of equipment including water tanks, pumps, pipes and sanitation kits. It will fly to Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Salvation Army World Service
www.sawso.org; (703) 684-5528
The UK Salvation Army has local teams working in a number of affected areas and was sending a team from its international headquarters Wednesday evening
Save the Children
www.savethechildren.org; (203) 221-4000
The UK branch of Save the Children has already flown a plane out to Sri Lanka carrying plastic sheeting for temporary shelter, tents to run children's services from and essentials such as clothing and cooking utensils.
Tearfund
www.tearfund.org
Tearfund and its partners in Sri Lanka and India are helping devastated fishing communities and coastal villages get back on their feet.
United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF
www.unicef.org
United Nations World Food Program
www.wfp.org
World Vision
www.worldvision.org.uk
World Vision is running programs in India, Thailand, Sir Lanka and Indonesia, giving blankets, medicine, cooking utensils, hot food and shelter to survivors.



 Arab, Iran Press Blame U.S. for World Calamities
 
The year 2003 saw conspiracy theories from the Middle East surrounding most major events, ranging from the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia to the capture of Saddam Hussein. This year saw a continuation of this trend. The following is the fifth and final article in a series about conspiracy theories from the Middle East in 2004.
Previous articles in the summer and fall documented the practice of blaming America and Zionists for worldwide calamities, Egyptian conspiracies about September 11, and accusations about activities of Americans and Jews in Iraq. The following is a list of the top 10 conspiracies published in the Arab and Iranian press during the last months of 2004. 
10) American and Zionist Control of Al Jazeera: Muslim critics of Al Jazeera frequently charge that it is run by America and Israel. In the Tehran Times on December 2, Hassan Hanizadeh wrote that "rumors arose suggesting that the network was established by U.S. and Israeli agents in order to present a bad image of Islam to the world...The actions of the network gradually revealed the fact that Al Jazeera officials, on the orders of Zionist agents, are trying to...tarnish the image of Islam."
9) Zionists Spreading Diseases Among Arabs: Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV broadcast a program in November about "Zionist attempts to transmit dangerous diseases like AIDS through exports to Arab countries." Iran's Mehr News Agency ran a story titled "Israel Exporting Carcinogenic Foodstuff to Arab States" on November 24, writing, "The trend has led to an increase in leukemia and liver and stomach cancer in the Arab countries which have imported Israeli foodstuff."
8) Iran Accuses Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of Working for Jordan: The Iranian Mehr News Agency alleged on December 26 that "Jordan sent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Iraq to carry out destabilization activities," and that Prime Minister Allawi is controlled by Jordanian officials. The report also accused Jordan of planning to resettle 5 million Palestinian Arabs in Iraq.
7) Jews Were Behind the September 1-3 Chechen Beslan School Attack: Dozens of religious, political, and press personalities in the Middle East have blamed the Beslan attack on Jews and Israelis. Ali Abdullah, a conservative Bahraini religious scholar, claimed on September 5 that Israelis were behind the attack, as part of an effort to "tarnish the image of Muslims."
6) Israel Stealing Body Parts of Palestinian Arab Children: Iran's Sahar 1 TV is currently airing a weekly series that premiered on December 13 called "Zahra's Blue Eyes." The show includes graphic scenes of Palestinian Arab chil dren whose eyes have been surgically removed and stolen by Israel.
5) Jews Tamper with the Koran: The Kuwaiti English language daily Arab Times published an article on September 21 titled "New Education Plan 'Enforced;' Jews tamper with Holy Quran." The article reported on the dean of the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies of Kuwait University, Mohammad Abdul Razak Al-Tabtabaei, who had "warned citizens and residents of some versions which have been manipulated by Jews." Mr. al-Tabtabaei explained, "For long Jews have been plotting against Muslims using various means...They have been damaging the Holy book by the changing and deleting verses with the aim of hiding the truth."
4) America To Invade Pakistan and Annihilate Muslims: Maqdoom Mohiuddin favorably reviewed a book in the Saudi Gazette on October 19, which advances the theory that "there have been rumors about a possible invasion of Pakistan...The U.S. has started implementing its program...The book also reveals that the other possible targets of the U.S. will be Sudan, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey." Mr. Mohiuddin claims that President Bush's true goal is the "total annihilation of the Muslims."
3) America/Jews Behind the October 7 Taba Attacks in Egypt: Adli Barsum of the Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhuriya is one of dozens of Arab columnists who propagated conspiracy theories about the Taba attacks. He asked in Al-Gumhuriya on October 12: "Who planned the bombings in Taba?...Is it the Mossad?...Is it the CIA?" The London Arabic-language daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported that a headline in Egypt's weekly Al-Mustaqbal Al-Jadid, the official organ of the National Party's Policies Committee under the leadership of Gamal Mubarak, read "Proof of Mossad Involvement in the Explosions in Taba."
2) Israel Killed Yasser Arafat: Writing in the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram, Ghada Karmi claimed on November 11, "A close confidant of Ariel Sharon has stated that the latter had 'eliminated' Yasser Arafat 'through his cooks.'" On November 11, Khaled al-Batesh, leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, told United Press International that "during Sharon's last visit to Washington, he told U.S. President George W. Bush, 'We will help God to get rid of him.'"
1) American Soldiers Stealing Organs from Iraqis: In the Saudi daily Al-Watan on December 22, an article by Fakhriya Ahmad alleges that, based on secret European military reports, American personnel in Iraq are stealing human organs: "The reports confirm the finding of tens of thousands of mutilated cadavers missing parts...These teams offer $40 for every usable kidney and $25 for an eye." The report also appeared in the Syrian daily Teshreen and in Iran's Jomhour-ye Islami. As 2004 comes to an end, Arab and Iranian conspiracy theories were again rampant. This follows an ongoing trend, which will be covered in this column in 2005.





  
 Aid Grows Amid Remarks About President's Absence
 
The Bush administration more than doubled its financial commitment yesterday to provide relief to nations suffering from the Indian Ocean tsunami, amid complaints that the vacationing President Bush has been insensitive to a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions. 
As the death toll surpassed  50,000 with no sign of abating, the U.S. Agency for International Development added $20 million to an earlier pledge of $15 million to provide relief, and the Pentagon dispatched an aircraft carrier and other military assets to the region. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in morning television appearances, chafed at a top U.N. aid official's comment on Monday that wealthy countries were being stingy with aid. "The United States is not stingy," Powell said on CNN.  
 Although U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday withdrew his earlier comment, domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise. Skeptics said the initial aid sums -- as well as Bush's decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy -- showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia.  
After a day of repeated inquiries from reporters about his public absence, Bush late yesterday afternoon announced plans to hold a National Security Council meeting by teleconference to discuss several issues, including the tsunami, followed by a short public statement.  
Bush's deepened public involvement puts him more in line with other world figures. In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder cut short his vacation and returned to work in Berlin because of the Indian Ocean crisis, which began with a gigantic underwater earthquake. In Britain, the predominant U.S.  voice speaking about the disaster was not Bush but former  president Bill Clinton, who in an interview with the BBC said the suffering was like something in a "horror movie," and urged a coordinated international response. 
Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was confident he could monitor events effectively without returning to Washington or making  public statements in Crawford, where he spent part of the day clearing brush and bicycling. Explaining the about-face, a White House official said: "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' " 
Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head for the cameras to hold forth on tragedies with his trademark empathy. "Actions speak louder than words," a top Bush aide said, describing the president's view of his appropriate role. 
Some foreign policy specialists said Bush's actions and words both communicated a lack of urgency about an event that will loom as large in the collective memories of several countries as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks do in the United States. "When that many human beings die -- at the hands of terrorists or nature -- you've got to show that this matters to you, that you care," said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.  
There was an international outpouring of support after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and even some administration officials familiar with relief efforts said they were surprised that Bush had not appeared personally to comment on the tsunami tragedy. "It's kind of freaky," a senior career official said. 
The president of Bread for the World, a leading advocacy group lobbying for more U.S. assistance to suffering people abroad, did not criticize the Bush administration, but did urge the United States to play a central role in the relief effort. "This is a disaster of biblical proportions and one that calls for a global response, with the United States playing a key role,"  David Beckmann said. 
Some of those lost in the carnage were Americans. The State Department, which is in the early stages of estimating both relief needs and the U.S.  death toll, has received more than 4,000 inquiries about relatives not yet accounted for, although many may be  calls searching for the same people, U.S. officials said. 
U.S. officials denied that the overnight aid increase was a response to the U.N. complaint Monday that some countries were "stingy" with aid. Usually only about 10 percent of the final aid tally is given in the initial response to a natural disaster, with the bulk of aid provided after an assessment of long-term needs, according to the State Department.  
"We know the needs will be greater. This was a disaster of almost unimaginable dimension, and it's going to require massive support for some time,"  State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said.  
Gelb said what appears to be a grudging increase in effort sends the wrong message, at a time when  dollar totals matter less than a clear statement about U.S. intentions. Noting that the disaster occurred at a time when large numbers of people  in many nations -- especially Muslim ones such as Indonesia -- object to U.S. policies in Iraq, he said Bush was missing an opportunity to demonstrate American benevolence. 
 "People do watch and see what we do," he said. "Here's an opportunity to remind people of the good we do, and he [Bush] can do it without changing his policy on Iraq or terrorism." 
"My initial reaction is that it does not seem to be very aggressive," said Morton Abramowitz, a former ambassador to Thailand who has been active in humanitarian relief efforts, of the administration's response to the tsunami. 
Besides USAID assistance, the Pentagon dispatched the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln from Hong Kong to the region, and  three Navy P-3 Orion surveillance planes and six Air Force C-130 cargo planes with humanitarian goods are being sent to Thailand.  
 A regional support center will be established at a military base in Utapao, Thailand, as a staging area for relief flights and for emergency and medical personnel providing assistance throughout the region, the Pentagon  announced yesterday. The U.S. Pacific Command will deploy personnel mainly from the III Marine Expeditionary Force to set up the command, control and communication structure. 
Retired Gen.  Wesley K. Clark, who as the military's top European commander helped supervise NATO's efforts to respond to a 1999 earthquake in Turkey, said the United States has unique military capabilities in reconnaissance and logistics management that can be useful in the current crisis. He urged Bush to take a higher profile.  "Natural disasters happen," Clark said. "One of the things people look for is a strong response that illustrates America's humanitarian values." 
Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who is frequently outspoken in favor of U.S. humanitarian ventures, said he believes the initial U.S. response has been appropriate, even without a public role for Bush. "I think the world knows we're a very generous people," he said. 
 Still, the United Nations' Egeland complained on Monday that each  of the richest nations gives less than 1 percent of its gross national product for  foreign assistance, and many give  0.1 percent. "It is beyond me why we are so stingy, really," he told reporters.  
Among the world's two dozen wealthiest countries, the United States often is among the lowest in donors per capita for official development assistance worldwide, even though the totals are larger. According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development of 30 wealthy nations, the United States gives the least -- at  0.14 percent of its gross national product, compared with  Norway, which gives the most at 0.92 percent. 
Staff writer Jim VandeHei in Crawford, Tex., and political researcher Brian Faler in Washington contributed to this report. 


 GLOBAL WAVE OF AID NEEDED;
BIG DOSE OF AMERICAN GENEROSITY COULD HELP COUNTER NEGATIVE IMAGE ABROAD

 
The year is ending with calamity for a large swath of the world.
The tsunamis propelled by an immense earthquake off Indonesia have ravaged the coasts of 10 nations, leaving unparalleled destruction and death in its wake.
It is a harsh reminder that hidden forces of nature can strike indiscriminately and without warning. They don't stop at national boundaries, and they don't choose victims by religion, language or social status. Poor fishermen in Sri Lanka and wealthy English tourists sunning in Thailand were swept away in an instant. 
Just as this wall of water radiated across an ocean, individuals and governments of the world must unite in responding quickly, with all the help they can muster, to save the lives of survivors and help them rebuild.
More hardships ahead
The worst may be yet to come. Tainted water supplies can spawn epidemics as deadly as the wave. Millions of people, from Sumatra to Somalia 3,000 miles away, are hungry, dispossessed and despairing.
Initial pledges of aid are encouraging. Japan, Korea, Australia, the European Union and China are sending teams and support. Secretary of State Colin Powell initially promised $5 million, with $10 million more from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
A big dose of American generosity could help counter the suspicion with which the Bush administration is viewed by so many in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, and large parts of Asia.
Private donations to independent agencies like Oxfam, Red Cross and Save the Children will also be critical, for these groups are expert in moving quickly and efficiently in response to disaster.
The 9.0 earthquake off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra was the most powerful in the world in 40 years. Yet thousands of lives might have been saved, had this part of the world had an alert system like the one the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operates off Hawaii and Alaska. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was established after a huge quake in Alaska in 1964 sent a tsunami that destroyed properties down the California coast.
No warning system
If there had been wave sensors in the Indian Ocean, communities might have gotten anywhere from a few moments to an hour's notice to flee the shorelines. But underdeveloped nations like Sri Lanka and Malaysia don't have the money to install the systems.
Like the mobilization of aid after this disaster, early warning systems should be a global effort. They should be available to all nations at the mercy of tectonic crashes and the misery they unloose.
SOME GROUPS COLLECTING DONATIONS
American Red Cross Santa Clara Valley chapter: www.santaclaravalley.redcross.org or (408) 577-1000.
The Dharmapala Institute, a Sri Lankan Buddhist temple: 409 S. Temple Drive, Milpitas, Calif. 95035; (408) 934-3985.
American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin: www.aapiusa.org/aapi.nsf or (630) 530-2277.
BAPS Care International: www.bapscare.org.
Association for India's Development: www.aidindia.org or (888) 825-5224.
India Development and Relief Fund: www.idrf.org.
Bay Area Tamil Manram: www.bayareatamilmanram.org.
Help Victims in Sri Lanka: www.uslankan.com/helpvictims/index.htm.
The local chapter of the Network of Indian Professionals will host a fundraiser at 8 p.m. Jan. 21, the Atrium, 101 California St., San Francisco. More information: Milan Mantri, milan4@gmail.com.
Source: Mercury News research




 At Indonesian Embassy, Tears And Roses; 
A Long-Planned Celebration Turns Into a Day to Grieve

 
"Where's your red rose?" someone asks Isweni Bakri -- or Nini, as her colleagues at the Embassy of Indonesia call her. She's a mother of two. Where's her red rose? 
She answers with a cry. 
Earlier yesterday, in the embassy's presidential room, more than 100 guests gathered for Hari Ibu, the Indonesian equivalent of Mother's Day. Bakri was there among them, a solemn face in a room full of solemn faces. This celebration of Hari Ibu was planned months ago. But how does a mother celebrate in a time of such urgent loss?  
Inside the room, Bakri recalls, each mother was honored with a single, cellophane-wrapped red rose -- "the symbol of love," she says. 
Outside that room, where she sits now at her desk, the phones ring constantly. The e-mails keep coming, including from some of the 1,700 Indonesians in the Washington area. "What's going on?" people want to know. "How can we help?" 
There is shock, there is grief, there is uncertainty. That much is true. But here in the embassy of the country that was the epicenter of the massive tsunami that struck on Sunday, little else is clear. Riaz Saehu, who works in the public relations office of the embassy, can answer the questions with only this: "Nothing is sure at the moment." 
One minute, more than 3,000 people are believed to be dead or missing in the province of Aceh on the island of Sumatra, where the initial earthquake occurred. The next, the total has reached 5,000. But they are more than numbers, 3,000 or 5,000. They are the faces of his people, and Saehu, in a whispery baritone, seems confused, lost, grasping for words at the thought: 
"Soon, we're having a meeting . . . with the ambassador . . . to try to figure out . . . how we can get money, medicine, everything to Indonesia," he says. 
At this embassy in Northwest Washington, where the lobby walls are mostly bare save for the proclamation of the country's independence in 1945, Bakri today seems the most open in her sorrow. She likes to say that Alexandria is her home town, but Indonesia is her country, the land where she was born. She's spent almost 30 years in the embassy, now working as a secretary for the education attache, but her husband, a retired secretary for the ambassador, grew up in the seaside village of Ulee Lheue. She's 59. He's 62. 
Zuhaimi, her husband, is worried for his family: his 79-year-old mother, his 58-year-old sister (and his sister's four children and 11 grandchildren), his 56-year-old brother (and his brother's seven children and three grandchildren). 
Bakri visited them, all of them, for four days in September with her daughter, Meutia, 27. "I went to the beach," Bakri recalls, her eyes fixed on her computer screen. "Everything was okay." They stayed in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, and she remembers being summoned to prayer at 4:30 a.m. in a town of mostly Muslims -- like her, "moderate, liberal Muslims."  
The phone rings in the middle of her reverie. It's her daughter. She puts her on speakerphone.  
"Have you heard anything?" she asks.  
Nothing new, the mother tells the daughter. "Read the e-mail I forwarded you," the daughter says. 
Bakri prints the words, reads the e-mail to everyone she can: Lam Paseh, a small city near Banda Aceh, "is now together with the ground. . . . " 
"It's body, under body, under body." 
Clare Wolfowitz, who spoke at the Hari Ibu celebration, is among those listening. An anthropologist by training, she has a history with the largest Muslim country in the world: She first visited Indonesia in the summer of 1962 as an exchange student and came back for three years, from 1986 to 1989, when her then-husband Paul Wolfowitz served as the country's U.S. ambassador. (He's now the deputy secretary of defense.) She visits from time to time. Most recently, she was in Indonesia for a wedding. That was in June. 
 "Indonesia sits on the equator in a volcanic zone. Indonesians are aware of the force of nature," she says, sitting on a couch directly across from Bakri, who is holding the e-mail. "So much can be lost in such a short time. You can't control nature, but a warning" -- of earthquakes in the Indian Ocean, she clarified -- "would help." 
 Her mother-in-law, Bakri tells Wolfowitz, is in Banda Aceh. "Can you help?" she wants to know. 
 Wolfowitz promises to call the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia and pass along the name of Bakri's mother-in-law, Ibu Zaini Bakri. 
 "Terima Kasih," replies Bakri -- "thank you" in Indonesian. 
 "Today, as mothers, we lost our sons, our daughters, our nephews, our nieces," Bakri says, fighting off more tears. 

 Pope prays for peace on Earth; 
Asks that attempts to end conflict in Iraq, Africa and Holy Land prevail


VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II offered Christmas wishes Saturday for a world where he said timid but hopeful efforts at peace co-exist with worries over Iraq, the Holy Land and several tragic conflicts in Africa.
Challenging his frail health, the 84-year-old pontiff turned out in the chilly, steady drizzle of Rome to keep his traditional appointment of reading holiday greetings in dozens of languages to a crowd of thousands of Romans and tourists in St. Peter's Square. 
Children screamed in delight and adults cheered and hoisted their umbrellas in greeting as the pope, in gold-colored robes, was driven into the square in his white popemobile, whose top was covered with see-through plastic to protect him from the rain.
John Paul delivered his "Urbi et Orbi" (Latin for "to the city and to the world") message from a chair under a canopy atop the central steps of St. Peter's Basilica.
"Babe of Bethlehem, Prophet of peace, encourage attempts to promote dialogue and reconciliation, sustain the efforts to build peace, which hesitantly, yet not without hope, are being made to bring about a more tranquil present and future for so many of our brothers and sisters of the world," John Paul said, slowly pronouncing each word and often pausing to catch his breath.
"I think of Africa, of the tragedy of Darfur in Sudan, of the Ivory Coast and of the Great Lakes Region," John Paul said of those conflict areas.
"With great apprehension I follow the situation in Iraq. And how can I fail to look with anxious concern, but also with invincible confidence, toward that Land of which you are a son?" the pontiff said in reference to the Holy Land.
John Paul's one-page message this Christmas was far shorter than the several pages of the early years of his papacy, when he was strong and healthy. Now, Parkinson's disease makes it very difficult for him to speak in public. Still, he read every word, and then almost immediately launched into his crowd-pleasing reading of holiday greetings in 62 languages.
John Paul took deep breaths before each new language and seemed pleased with himself that he made it to the end. Languages ranged from the European ones, including Slavic tongues, which the Polish pontiff knows well, to the languages of Africa and Asia.
The Vatican said arrangements had been made with 72 countries to transmit the pope's message on TV, among them many countries with large Muslim populations, including Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Indonesia and Jordan. Many Latin American countries as well as Israel were on the list.
With a life-size nativity scene in the square, John Paul laced his message with images of Baby Jesus.
"Before the crib where you lie helpless, let there be an end to the spread of violence in its many forms, the source of untold suffering," John Paul prayed. "Let there be an end to the numerous situations of unrest which risk degenerating into open conflict," the pontiff said, without being specific.
He called for "firm will to seek peaceful solutions, respectful of the legitimate aspirations of individuals and peoples," and said peace is needed everywhere.


 U.S. should pay more attention to Asia

SINGAPORE -- In his second term, George W. Bush and his team need to pay more attention to Asia in general and Southeast Asia in particular, according to regional experts. 
And just as Asians need to recognize the importance Mr. Bush places on the war on terrorism, the Bush team needs to understand that a seemingly one-dimensional approach toward Southeast Asia -- frequently characterized in this part of the world as Washington's continued "hectoring" on terrorism issues -- detracts from achieving key U.S. objectives shared by the majority of East Asian states. 
These include the promotion of open markets, democracy and the rule of law; public health concerns such as the spread of HIV/AIDS, SARS, bird flu, etc.; and the need to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists.  
These are among the key findings of security specialists who participated in a recent Asia Foundation "America's Role in Asia" project. The findings of four task forces (from the United States and from Southeast, Northeast and South Asia) merit careful consideration by Washington and by those in the region concerned about the level of regional cooperation with the second Bush administration. 
China & Taiwan 
Each of the four task forces consider Sino-U.S. relations as a key factor in shaping the future geopolitical environment. Here, they say, Washington needs to better articulate its long-term vision regarding China, and Beijing needs to articulate its long-term vision for its own role in Asia. None of these experts takes China's "peaceful rise" for granted, and most still favor a continued U.S. military presence in Asia as a "hedge" against a more assertive China in the future. As one conference participant noted, "We have no doubt China's rise will be peaceful; it's what China will do once it has risen that is the real concern." 
While Washington's actions can affect the outcome (positively or negatively), ultimately it is up to Beijing to address the region's concerns about its future intentions. It is not a "zero-sum game," and neither Washington nor Beijing should approach its relations with that in mind. That said, Asian participants are worried that Washington is "losing the competition for influence in Southeast Asia," and that China is winning. 
Some of the participants paid a lot of attention to the most probable Sino-U.S. flash point -- Taiwan -- while Southeast Asians barely made passing reference to this problem, even though U.S. mismanagement of its own relations with Taipei could have disastrous consequences for the entire region. Isolating Taiwan is not the answer. Finding creative ways to integrate Taiwan into the economic, political and security dialogue makes more sense. But this requires a less confrontational approach by Taipei and more flexibility than Beijing has so far demonstrated. 
ASEAN summitry 
U.S. and Southeast Asian experts agree on the need for closer cooperation between Washington and the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations as a whole, rather than the current, largely bilateral U.S. approach, where we deal with individual (especially like-minded) ASEAN members one on one. China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand all now participate in annual summit meetings with ASEAN -- the United States does not. 
One key stumbling point is Myanmar (or Burma, we cannot even agree on its name). Virtually all the conference participants expressed hope that Washington will find more effective ways to promote political reconciliation and openness in Rangoon, but the also called on the military rulers there to honor their Roadmap to Democracy. Every Asia expert also urged Bush to find ways to reach out to Southeast Asia's 250 million Muslims, and they stressed in particular the need to effectively, but diplomatically (read "unobtrusively") support Indonesia's democratization. 
The message from Southeast Asia is clear: "We want to have good relations with the United States, based on a mutual recognition of the region's growing economic and political importance, not just as a 'second front' in the war on terrorism." 
U.S. and East Asian specialists alike are hoping that in its second term, the Bush White House will do a better job of articulating a comprehensive strategy and vision for Asia. 
Ralph A. Cossa is president of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based nonprofit research institute affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and a member of the Asia Foundation "America's Role in Asia" task force. 


 Elections to test Mideast democracy campaign; Several nations face challenges as 2005 begins

 
Hopes for a new era in the Middle East will be tested early in 2005 as Palestinians vote for a successor to Yasser Arafat and Iraqis strive to elect a legislature in the face of a bloody insurgency.
With Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders still at large, attacks by extremists remain a threat around the globe. And concerns are high about the danger of the spread of nuclear arms, with North Korea shunning talks on ending its weapons program and Iran threatening to resume work that the United States and others fear is arms-related.
The fight over Ukraine's attempt to elect a president at year's end is worsening relations between Russia and the West, which already was worried by anti-democratic trends in the Kremlin.
High oil prices and the weak dollar continue to affect the world's economies, and the old-line wealthy nations are watching the increasing economic clout of China and India. 
Voters in four African nations are looking ahead to elections that are designed to broaden participation in government and bring peace among longtime foes. But prospects seem bleaker for a quick end to ethnic fighting that has plunged Sudan's Darfur region into a humanitarian disaster.
The Associated Press asked some of its correspondents around the world to assess the prospects for 2005. Here are their reports:
Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq heads into the new year with plans to usher in a new, democratic society as the interim government battles to contain an insurgency that has made a mockery of some of Washington's hopes to transform the country.
Starting on Jan. 30, Iraq is scheduled to hold three elections in 2005: for a new parliament, followed by a referendum on a new constitution and - if the charter is approved - a third ballot for a fully democratic leadership by year's end.
That is a tall order for a nation which languished for decades under Saddam Hussein's tyranny and where large areas are virtual no-go zones for Westerners, government officials and Iraq's own security forces.
If elections do take place, they are expected to transfer power to Shiite Muslims, some 60 percent of Iraq's nearly 26 million people. That would spell the end of Sunni domination that predates the establishment of the modern Iraqi state after World War I, and would make Iraq the only Arab land with a Shiite-dominated government. The only other nation where Shiites rule is non-Arab Iran.
It will take considerable political skill for the power shift to avoid enflaming sectarian and ethnic passions among Iraq's angry Sunni Arabs and its separatist-minded Kurds. Sunnis form the core of the insurgency and rebel ranks are likely to swell if they feel marginalized.
The Sunni rebellion has already confounded U.S. plans for Iraq.
This time last year, American planners were hoping to transform the U.S. military presence into a lighter, more mobile force as Iraqis assumed greater security responsibility. Instead, in an effort to bolster security before the Jan. 30 election, Washington is expanding its military force by 12,000 soldiers to the highest level since the war began in March 2003.
Middle East
JERUSALEM - The death of Yasser Arafat, Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and fatigue on both sides after four years of bloodshed could make 2005 a breakthrough year for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Arafat's passing removed the man Israel and the United States called the main obstacle to negotiations. Palestinians elect a new president Jan. 9, and the front-runner, Mahmoud Abbas, is a moderate who is urging an end to violence.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has indicated a willingness to talk to the new Palestinian leadership and perhaps coordinate his pullouts from Gaza and four small West Bank settlements.
The controversial separation barrier Israel is erecting between itself and the Palestinian territories will likely be completed in the coming year, redrawing the political and geographical boundaries of the Mideast conflict.
Violence and intransigence, however, could torpedo the new optimism. Militant Palestinian groups that oppose Israel's existence have refused to halt attacks, though suicide bombings inside Israel have dropped sharply.
Arab countries will likely seek to capitalize on the new momentum for peace. Most are under U.S. pressure to reform their authoritarian regimes, and will continue to add democratic trappings that do not threaten the positions of kings, emirs and presidents.
Saudi Arabia plans its first municipal elections since the 1960s in February, giving Saudis - but only Saudi men - a say in local politics.
President Hosni Mubarak's term in Egypt expires in 2005, but he will easily carry on after a yes-no referendum.
Iran chooses a new president in May as international scrutiny of its nuclear program grows. President Mohamed Khatami, who disappointed young reformers by failing to wrest control from hard-liners, will not be a candidate.
Asia
SEOUL, South Korea - The deadlock in negotiations seeking to persuade North Korea to halt its quest to become a nuclear power will keep Asia's attention in 2005.
South Korea - along with China, Japan, Russia and the United States - is trying to coax the reclusive Pyongyang regime back to the bargaining table early in the year after it refused to attend a September meeting. The North insists Washington give up its "hostile" policy before it starts talking, and experts fear the country already has a handful of atomic weapons.
There are worries North Korea could spread nuclear weapons to terrorists, another key concern in the region, with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden still on the loose and believed to be hiding in the rugged frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In Southeast Asia, the Philippines is pushing military operations to flush out al-Qaida-allied militants in the Muslim south and Indonesia still pursues extremists in the regional terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. A growing Islamic insurgency in Thailand's Muslim-dominated south may dent Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's otherwise strong grip on power at parliamentary elections in February.
Afghanistan continues on its path to democracy, with parliamentary elections set for the summer to follow October's successful presidential vote that saw Hamid Karzai become the country's first popularly elected leader. The vote is potentially treacherous, with the country's various factions vying for power and disarmament going slowly.
Earthly concerns aren't all on Asia's mind. China plans to launch its second manned space mission in 2005, sending two astronauts into orbit for as long as a week.
Africa
DAKAR, Senegal - 2005 will put peace deals to the test in Africa's longest and deadliest wars, setting tension-raising deadlines for enemies from Congo to Sudan to follow through on hard-won pledges for sharing power.
After international intervention stopped the fighting, peace accords mandate elections to choose new governments in Africa's third-largest nation, Congo, where a 1998-2002 war killed millions; in a linked conflict in neighboring Burundi; in Ivory Coast; and in Liberia, finally freed of a Cold War-era charismatic leader who fueled West Africa's wars for nearly 15 years.
In Sudan, southern rebels are to gain posts in the Arab-dominated central government in 2005, under an accord to end a 21-year war in Africa's biggest nation. The latest in a series of all-but-ignored accords will be tested in a separate conflict in western Sudan's Darfur region, where a U.N. commission will pronounce on accusations of genocide by government supporters.
The question in all these newly calmed conflicts is whether combatants will make good on promises to share or yield power, or opt to start fighting again.
In southern Africa, parliamentary races in March will be unsettled Zimbabwe's first major elections since 2002, when President Robert Mugabe won re-election in a deeply flawed, widely disputed race that has been followed by political and economic turmoil.
Efforts continue in South Africa to get as many people as possible on AIDS drugs, after years of foot-dragging by the government.
Africa's offshore oil boom - part of a worldwide scramble for alternatives to Middle East oil - stands to boom on. The surge has the people of one despotic African backwater, Equatorial Guinea, on per-capita economic par with Americans, at least on paper.
Europe
LONDON - The Iraq war didn't hurt George W. Bush's re-election chances in 2004, and it's unlikely to rebound in the new year against his staunchest ally in Europe, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Blair, who has suffered a fall in opinion poll ratings and a rift with key European allies over his strong support for the war, is nonetheless likely to benefit from feeble domestic opposition if, as expected, he calls parliamentary elections for May.
If Blair wins, that would reinforce continuity in the key governments in the European Union: Blair took office in 1997, Jacques Chirac was elected president of France in 1995, and Gerhard Schroeder has headed Germany's government since 1998.
The European election with the most important fallout, however, is likely to be outside the EU's borders - the rerun of Ukraine's presidential election as the old year wound down.
The EU moved right up to Ukraine's border last year when it added 10 former communist states to its membership. That makes the EU the obvious destination for refugees if Ukraine's political crisis isn't solved amicably.
The first election, on Nov. 21, complicated the EU's relations with Russia, which regards Ukraine - once part of the Soviet Union - as within its sphere of influence. President Vladimir Putin had strongly backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, whose victory in the disputed vote touched off weeks of street protests and a Supreme Court nullification of the results.
Europe also has a money problem. The collapse in the dollar's value hurts European sales in the United States while making American goods cheaper and more competitive in Europe. There is no obvious European solution to the problem, which is rooted in burgeoning U.S. budget and trade deficits.









  
 Crackdown by Premier Strains Thailand's Friendship With U.S.

 
 A little over a year ago, as President Bush prepared to make a state visit to Thailand, he declared that the country's prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, was a "very strong leader and a very capable leader." Bush said he admired Thaksin because he is "not afraid to make tough decisions" and "stands his ground in the face of criticism." 
 Thaksin, for his part, earlier this month called Bush a "good friend," noting that "we're both Texas cowboys." During Bush's October 2003 visit, Bush rewarded Thaksin for his assistance in the war against Iraq by granting Thailand the coveted status of a "major non-NATO ally."  
 Now this relationship is being tested, in ways that some U.S. officials believe mirror the increasingly troubled partnership between Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. As with Putin, actions taken by Thaksin conflict with Bush's pledge to promote democracy and freedom around the world. And Thaksin's response to Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand has led to a nasty spat with Thailand's neighbors. 
 Thailand has long been considered a model of democracy and human rights in Southeast Asia. But Thaksin, a telecommunications billionaire who took office in 2001 and is running for reelection in February, in the past year has accelerated a campaign to tighten control over the media, attack human rights and democracy organizations, and oust critics in the government. Under Thaksin, for instance, there has been an increase in criminal defamation cases against the press and civil society groups, according to Article 19, a British free-speech group. 
 Thaksin's government has been widely criticized for a campaign against drug dealers in 2003 that left 3,000 dead, many through extrajudicial killings. The U.S. State Department's annual human rights report this year said the government's human rights record had "worsened with regard to extrajudicial killings and arbitrary arrests." The report concluded that a "climate of impunity" had been created through the government's failure to thoroughly investigate the deaths. 
 In October, a crackdown by the Thai army on Muslim protesters in a southern province left at least 85 people dead. An investigative report by the Thai Senate's foreign relations committee said recently that the Thai army had arrested nearly 1,300 protesters, tying their hands behind their backs and forcing them to lie in piles five-deep  in army trucks. The report said  78 people, many of whom were fasting because of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan -- suffocated as they were carried in the trucks for six hours. People who complained of the confining conditions were severely beaten with rifle butts, the report said. 
 Thaksin, whose family is reported to have business interests in Burma, also has become increasingly close to the military regime there, to the point of justifying the continued detention of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The 59-year-old democracy activist has already spent nine years in detention since 1989. Her party won a landslide election in 1990 that the military leadership has refused to accept. 
 Thaksin promised Bush in a private phone call in March that Suu Kyi would be released in May -- and instead the regime has further isolated her. Earlier this month, a few days after the White House issued a statement decrying the continued detention of Suu Kyi, Thaksin returned from a visit to Burma and said the military junta has reasonable and convincing reasons for continuing to keep her under arrest. 
 Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement that Thaksin's comment on Suu Kyi was "both reckless and dangerous, and calls into question his democratic credentials." 
 U.S. officials acknowledge that Thaksin's government has prompted concerns, but they said that overall Thailand remains a good ally of the United States. A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy, said Thaksin's remark on Suu Kyi was a "terrible comment," that Thailand has not handled the situation in the Muslim south "terribly well" because of an "appalling lack of cultural understanding" and that the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers were a "serious problem." 
 But, the official said, the bottom line is that Thailand has supported the invasion of Iraq, including providing troops for humanitarian tasks, and has been helpful in the war  on terrorism. 
  "We've tried to be clear with Thailand on areas that are important to us, with respect to democracy and the rule of law, and especially Burma," said another senior administration official. 
 During a regional economic summit attended by Bush in 2003, Thaksin went to great lengths to position himself as Southeast Asia's dominant statesman. Bangkok was scrubbed clean as 10,000 homeless people were shipped to army camps and 600 Cambodian beggars were rounded up and shipped  home.  
 But Thaksin has riled his neighbors with some of his comments. He said Malaysia and Indonesia had a hand in Thailand's troubles in the Muslim south, prompting fierce complaints, especially from Malaysia, which borders Thailand. "We do not see an outside hand in this," the State Department official pointedly said, adding that the United States has "no information" to back up Thaksin's claims. "If Thaksin has that information, he should share it with the Malaysian government." 
 Meanwhile, as the rest of Southeast Asia has increasingly distanced itself from Burma, Thaksin has sought an ever closer embrace. 
 Speaking on his weekly radio broadcast after a visit to Rangoon, Thaksin said Burma's military leaders had said  political instability caused by Suu Kyi's release could  split the country  along ethnic lines. 
 Burma, also known as Myanmar, "will be torn apart into many different countries," Thaksin quoted the senior military leader, Gen. Than Shwe, as saying. "The country will be a mess -- nothing will be left." 
 "These are the reasons they gave [for holding Suu Kyi], which are reasonable enough and convincing," Thaksin told the radio program. 
  His comments have prompted concern among administration officials and lawmakers who think his policy of engagement with Burma has failed. "The regime has stiffed him," said a senior U.S. official. 
 David I. Steinberg,  head of Asian studies at Georgetown University, called Thaksin's comments on Suu Kyi "really bad" and said his voicing them "endears him to no one." 
 The State Department official said the  administration has raised questions with Thai officials about Thaksin's remarks.  The problem, the official said,  is that "our normal interlocutors in the foreign ministry are scratching their heads like we are, so it's kind of difficult to get what he had in mind when he says things like that." 


 A wide world of Arabic speakers

 
Arabic is the native language of 186 million people, and a second language for 35 million to 60 million more, says the Online Computer Library Center, a library and research organization.
Arabic is the national tongue in more than 20 nations, stretching from Oman on the Indian Ocean to Mauritania in West Africa, and from Iraq and Syria south to Somalia, on the Horn of Africa. 
And because the holy book of Islam -- the Quran -- is written in Arabic, the language is used in Islamic religious services around the world, from Indiana to Indonesia.
The center's Web site (www.oclc.org) links to another that calls Arabic the world's sixth most widely spoken language, with 246 million speakers. Arabic trails:
Mandarin Chinese, with 1 billion-plus speakers. English, 508 million. Hindi, 497 million. Spanish, 392 million. Russian, 277 million.
But in the list of 10 most-spoken tongues, Arabic outranks:
Bengali, with 211 million speakers. Portuguese, 191 million. Malay-Indonesian, 159 million. French, 129 million.

 
 Muslim Scholars Increasingly Debate Unholy War

 
Muhammad Shahrour, a layman who writes extensively about Islam, sits in his engineering office in Damascus, Syria, arguing that Muslims will untangle their faith from the increasingly gory violence committed in its name only by reappraising their sacred texts. 
 First, Mr. Shahrour brazenly tackles the Koran. The entire ninth chapter, The Sura of Repentance, he says, describes a failed attempt by the Prophet Muhammad to form a state on the Arabian Peninsula. He believes that as the source of most of the verses used to validate extremist attacks, with lines like ''slay the pagans where you find them,'' the chapter should be isolated to its original context.
  ''The state which he built died, but his message is still alive,'' says Mr. Shahrour, a soft-spoken, 65-year-old Syrian civil engineer with thinning gray hair. ''So we have to differentiate between the religion and state politics. When you take the political Islam, you see only killing, assassination, poisoning, intrigue, conspiracy and civil war, but Islam as a message is very human, sensible and just.'' 
 Mr. Shahrour and a dozen or so like-minded intellectuals from across the Arab and Islamic worlds provoked bedlam when they presented their call for a reinterpretation of holy texts after a Cairo seminar entitled ''Islam and Reform'' earlier this fall. 
 ''Liars! Liars!'' someone screamed at a news conference infiltrated by Islamic scholars and others from the hard-core faithful who shouted and lunged at the panelists to a degree that no journalist could ask a question. ''You are all Zionists! You are all infidels!'' 
 The long-simmering internal debate over political violence in Islamic cultures is swelling, with seminars like that one and a raft of newspaper columns breaking previous taboos by suggesting that the problem lies in the way Islam is being interpreted. On Saturday in Morocco, a major conference, attended by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, will focus on increasing democracy and liberal principles in the Muslim world. 
 On one side of the discussion sit mostly secular intellectuals horrified by the gore joined by those ordinary Muslims dismayed by the ever more bloody image of Islam around the world. They are determined to find a way to wrestle the faith back from extremists. Basically the liberals seek to dilute what they criticize as the clerical monopoly on disseminating interpretations of the sacred texts. 
 Arrayed against them are powerful religious institutions like Al Azhar University, prominent clerics and a whole different class of scholars who argue that Islam is under assault by the West. Fighting back with any means possible is the sole defense available to a weaker victim, they say. 
 The debate, which can be heard in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, is driven primarily by carnage in Iraq. The hellish stream of images of American soldiers attacking mosques and other targets are juxtaposed with those of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi beheading civilian victims on his home videos as a Koranic verse including the line ''Smite at their necks'' scrolls underneath. 
 When the mayhem in Iraq slows, events like the slaying in September of more than 300 people at a Russian school -- half of them children -- or some other attack in the Netherlands, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia or Spain labeled jihad by its perpetrators serves to fuel discussions on satellite television, in newspapers and around the dinner tables of ordinary Muslims. 
 ''Resistance was never like this -- to kidnap someone and decapitate him in front of everyone,'' said Ibrahim Said, delivering pastry in the Cairo neighborhood of Nasser City recently. 
 ''This is haram,'' he went on, using the Arabic word for something forbidden or shameful, and then quotes the Koran on his own. '''Verily never will Allah change the condition of a people until they change it themselves.' That means nothing will change unless we change ourselves first.'' 
 Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, director of the Dubai-based satellite network Al Arabiya and a well-known Saudi journalist, created a ruckus this fall with a newspaper column saying Muslims must confront the fact that most terrorist acts are perpetrated by Muslims. 
 ''The danger specifically comes from the ideas and the preaching of violence in the name of religion,'' he said, adding, ''I am more convinced there is a problem with the culture, the modern culture of radicalism, which people have to admit. Without recognizing that as fact number one, that statistically speaking most terrorists are Muslims, we won't be able to solve it.''
 Mr. Rashed senses there is a movement in the Arab world, if perhaps not yet a consensus, that understands that Muslims have to start reining in their own rather than constantly complaining about injustice and unfairness. The violence has not only reduced sympathy for just causes like ending the Israeli occupation, he says, but set off resentment against Muslims wherever they live.
 On the other side is Abdel Sabour Shahin, a linguistics professor at Cairo University and a talk show stalwart, who says the Muslim world must defend itself and most foreigners in Iraq are fair game. In the new middle-class suburbs stretching into the desert beyond the Pyramids, Professor Shahin greets visitors inside a small gated compound of high white walls that includes his own mosque where he preaches each Friday.
 ''There is a large group of people who wear civilian clothes but serve the occupying forces,'' he said. ''So how can we demand from someone who is resisting the occupation to ask first if the person is a civilian or not?''
 When asked what he thinks of those who chop off heads, he responds: ''When a missile hits a house it decapitates 30 or 40 residents and turns them to ash. Isn't there a need to compare the behavior of a person under siege and angry with those who are managing the instruments of war?'' 
 His remarks echo those of Sheik Yousef Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born, now Qatari cleric whose program ''Islamic Law and Life'' on Al Jazeera satellite television makes him about the most influential cleric among mainstream Sunni Muslims, the majority sect.
 Last August Sheik Qaradawi seemed to imply that all Americans in Iraq could be targets. Asked whether that included civilians, the sheik responded with a question, ''Are there civilians in Iraq?'' In the ensuing uproar across the region he issued a clarification, suggesting that he meant only those who abetted the occupation, and pointed out that he had previously condemned beheadings. 
 Yet late last month, right after the renewed United States assault on Falluja, the sheik again put the Islamic seal of approval on anyone fighting back. 
 ''Resistance is a legitimate matter -- even more, it is a duty,'' he said on television. 
 While few Muslims argue with the right to resist a military occupation, the problem is that such sweeping, ill-defined statements are interpreted as a mandate to undertake any violence, no matter how vicious. 
 ''You condemn the beheading and then on a different question you say anybody who supports the occupation is worth fighting,'' said Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi expert on Islamic movements. ''So the message does not sink in.'' 
 In November, 26 prominent Saudi clerics signed a petition supporting the ''defensive jihad'' in Iraq. Although their statement ruled out attacking relief workers or other uninvolved parties, it was interpreted as a signal for Saudis to volunteer. Osama bin Laden and his followers emerged from a similar call 25 years ago to fight in Afghanistan, a fight that they subsequently spread around the globe.
 The discussion on the reinterpretation of Islam remains largely confined to an intellectual elite, but even raising the topic erodes the taboo that the religion and those schooled in it are somehow infallible. There are no opinion polls on the subject, but in talking to people on the streets, one gets the sense that they are grappling with these issues within their own understanding of their faith. 
 Some utterly reject any criticism and immediately identify Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Bush as those bearing the most responsibility for the butchery. They inevitably also mention the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib as needing to be avenged. 
 But others exhibit a certain introspection. 
 One sense of the growing public dismay in the Arab world is the muted reaction to the Falluja assault last month compared with the one six months ago. This has been partly attributed to the atrocities committed by the insurgents, including suicide attacks killing many Iraqis. 
 The wide public sympathy enjoyed by those fighting the American or Israeli soldiers, however, makes it difficult to mount any campaign against violence and terrorism, advocates of a change say. 
 Proponents of jihad argue that it is only natural for Iraqis and Palestinians to fight back, and point to what they call American hypocrisy. 
 Sheik Khalil al-Mais, the mufti of Zahle and the Bekaa region in Lebanon, compares the treatment of two despots, Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi, both with a long history of abusing dissidents and other ills. One did not yield to the West, while the other abandoned his unconventional weapons programs.
 ''Qaddafi bought his way out, but Qaddafi is still Qaddafi,'' the sheik said, donning his carefully wrapped white turban before leaving to deliver a Friday Prayer sermon. ''Why did they put Saddam in jail and leave Qaddafi in power? America should not talk about principles.'' 
 Asked about those who say the problem lies deep within restrictive interpretations of Islam itself, Sheik Mais grimaced and exclaimed, ''Take refuge in God!'' summing up the viewpoint of most Islamic scholars. 
 You cannot divide Islam into pieces, he says. You have to take it as a whole. 
 But whose whole, the would-be reformists respond, lamenting what one Saudi writer calls ''fatwa chaos.'' A important difficulty under Sunni Islam, as opposed to, say, the Shiite branch predominant in Iran or the Catholic Church, is that there is no central authority to issue ultimate rulings on doctrinal questions. 
 Those in the liberal trend believe that Islam, now entering its 15th century, needs to undergo a wholesale re-examination of its basic principles. Toward that end, the Cairo conference this fall recommended reviewing the roots of Islamic heritage, especially the Prophet's sayings, ending the monopoly that certain religious institutions hold over interpreting such texts and confronting all extremist religious currents. 
 Those taking part were harshly accused of dabbling in a realm that belongs solely to the clergy, with the grand sheik of Al Azhar, Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, Egypt's most senior religious scholar, labeling them a ''group of outcasts.'' 
 But Mr. Shahrour says he and an increasing number of intellectuals cannot be deterred by clerical opposition. 
 He describes as ridiculously archaic some Hadith, or sayings, attributed to Muhammad -- all assembled in nine bulky volumes some 100 years after his death and now the last word on how the faithful should live. 
 ''It is like this now because for centuries Muslims have been told that Islam was spread by the sword, that all Arab countries and even Spain were captured by the sword and we are proud of that,'' he said. ''In the minds of ordinary people, people on the street, the religion of Islam is the religion of the sword. This is the culture, and we have to change it.''


  



 Interpreter Says No To Secrecy; 
Indonesian Specialist Resigns to Protest Nondisclosure Rule

 
 Interpreters have long been the cogs in the wheel of international diplomacy. They make headlines only when they mess up, as when President Jimmy Carter's interpreter spoke of the Polish people's "lusts for the future" instead of their  "desires" for the future.  And even then, convention demands that interpreters  remain in the background, refraining from public comment. 
 This tradition does not sit well with Indonesian specialist Fred Burks, who is making a noisy exit from government service after 18 years of interpreting for top U.S. officials, including President Bush and former president Bill Clinton. Burks resigned last month in protest against what he sees as excessive government secrecy, and since then has been treating anybody who will listen with insider stories about private meetings he attended.  
 These included high-level negotiations with Indonesia over U.S. attempts to secure the handover of a radical Muslim cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, suspected by the Bush administration of connections to the terrorist group al Qaeda. According to Burks, the Indonesians resisted heavy White House and CIA pressure to transfer Bashir to U.S. custody. 
 Burks interpreted for Bush at an Oval Office meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri in September 2001, eight days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center  and the Pentagon. He says Bush displayed such a detailed grasp of Indonesian issues at the meeting that he came away thinking the president must have been fed information  through a hidden earpiece. 
 White House spokesman Sean McCormack dismissed Burks's allegations of a secret presidential wireless device -- similar allegations surfaced most recently during  Bush's election debate with the Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) -- with a laugh and a one-word comment: "Nonsense." 
 Burks says he is free to talk about his work as a contract interpreter for senior government officials because he was never required to sign a secrecy agreement. That changed last month when the State Department insisted he agree to a new contract that included a pledge never to disclose "any information" that he learned in the course of his government interpreting work to unauthorized outsiders. He refused. 
 "It was ridiculous," said Burks, who learned Indonesian while teaching in Borneo in 1981 and living with an Indonesian family. "In theory, it meant I couldn't even tell my family where I was traveling if that information had not already been made public." 
 He says he also has never had a security clearance. 
Burks's fluency in Indonesian and Mandarin Chinese made him a valued asset for the State Department. While the government has little difficulty recruiting interpreters for common European languages  such as French and Spanish, the demands of the war on terrorism  have resulted in a severe shortage of experts in Asian languages. According to Burks, he is one of only three Americans qualified to interpret into Indonesian at the highest level. 
Brenda Sprague, director of language services for the State Department, said Burks was one of 1,600 or so interpreters who work with the agency on a contract basis. She said State also has 38 career interpreters. 
State Department spokeswoman Julie Reside described the nondisclosure clause in the contract that Burks was asked to sign as "standard boilerplate" dating from October 2000. She said the department terminated its relationship with Burks after he said he could not sign the new version of the contract. 
In addition to his complaints about government secrecy, Burks is  at odds with the Bush administration over an unauthorized trip to Cuba that he made with his girlfriend in December 1999. The government initially fined him $7,590 for breaching the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba but eventually offered to let him pay only $250. Burks declined the deal, and the case has been referred to an administrative court for adjudication.  






  

 


 Habitat founder honored tonight;
Fuller hailed as a uniter

 
Tonight, in a church at Emory University, the World Methodist Council is to present a prestigious award to Millard Fuller and Habitat for Humanity International, the Christian home-building organization he founded 28 years ago.
"In bringing together persons regardless of their religious preference or background to work side by side to eliminate poverty housing," the council says, "Habitat for Humanity International promotes peace, reconciliation and justice."
The council praised Habitat for bringing together Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and blacks and whites in Selma, Ala., scene of some of the ugliest civil rights clashes of the 1960s. It will honor Fuller and Habitat in a ceremony to begin at 8 p.m. in Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church. 
Perhaps nowhere is Habitat's legacy of trying to unite disparate people on display more clearly today than in the Middle East, where the Christian group builds houses for the poor in predominantly Muslim Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. "Our intention is to go into every country on earth," Fuller says with characteristic aplomb.
Habitat has built about 5,500 houses in Egypt in the last 15 years and about 350 in Jordan and Lebanon since it started work there three years ago.
The nonprofit group's directors from Jordan and Lebanon came to Comer, in northeast Georgia, last month to confer with Don Mosley, a Habitat board member who helped start the organization. He focuses on Habitat's work in the Middle East and Africa and recently visited the Middle Eastern affiliates.
Muslims and Christians also work side by side on Habitat projects in other countries with Muslim majorities, such as Bangladesh and Indonesia. But Mosley said the Middle Eastern effort is especially important given the rise of Islamic extremism there.
"If we think there might be terrorism there, the best thing we can do is to build houses with them side by side," he said. "The way to counter extremism is to go out and make friends with them."
He is quick to point out that only tiny minorities in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon can be considered extremists, and he said he hopes that Habitat's work in some small way will counter portrayals of America as an enemy. "It demonstrates that we care about them as human beings," Mosley said.
Many Christian groups that work among Muslim majorities in the Middle East try to convert people, but Mosley and Fuller say Habitat avoids that. It usually gives Bibles to people for whom it builds houses, but it does not do that in the Middle East if it might upset people.
"We are not trying to convert people to Christianity," Mosley said. "We are trying to live out our Christianity, to live out our own faith."
Habitat hopes to expand into Iraq and Sudan, he said, but ongoing violence makes that impractical now. The organization wanted to spend $1.4 million for 170 houses for women and children displaced by an earthquake in Bam, Iran, but the U.S. government denied Habitat the necessary permit last month.
The denial does not deter Fuller. He remains ever eager to take Habitat into uncharted territory.
"There are no borders on God's love," he said.
ON AJC.COM
 
* Read more about Millard Fuller and Habitat for Humanity on ajc.com.




  
 An Islamic Democracy for Iraq?

 
Is ''Islamic democracy'' really possible? Or is it something meaningless, like ''Jewish science,'' say, or contradictory, like ''people's democracy'' under Communism? This is the question that will determine the future of Iraq, since the man with the greatest credibility in that broken country is Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite cleric, who refuses to run for office himself but says that he supports the idea of Islamic democracy.
 The ayatollah insists that an Iraqi constituent assembly must be chosen through direct elections and that ''any basic law written by this assembly must be approved by a national referendum.'' He makes only cursory reference to Koranic law as the basis for that legal code. Any attempts to postpone general elections because of security concerns, especially in the Sunni areas, have also been fiercely resisted. In mid-October, he issued a fatwa requiring all men and women to vote, equating voting with such basic religious duties as fasting during Ramadan. It is the duty of the Shiites, according to the ayatollah, to protect Sunni and Christian interests as well. And although he opposed a plan to allow Kurds, who make up 15 to 20 percent of the Iraqi population, veto power over the constitution, he has not squelched Kurdish hopes of preserving some degree of autonomy under a new government. All these are fine words, of course, yet to be tested in reality. But they are remarkable words for a Shiite cleric born in Iran and should be taken seriously. 
  Despite the recent surge of conservative Christian activism in the United States, the received opinion in the Western world is that in democracies, church and state do not mix. Islam, we are often told, is particularly unsuited to democracy because in Muslim countries the state was never untangled from the clergy. But Iraq was supposed to be a special case, because it was largely secular. In fact, both these assertions were too sweeping. Muslims have rarely been ruled by clerics. Worldly and spiritual authority have usually been kept separate in the Middle East. And until not so long ago, religious minorities, like Jews, were treated with more tolerance in the Muslim world than in Christendom. When worldly authority becomes intolerably oppressive, however, religion is often the only base of resistance. Such was the case in Poland under Communist rule, when the Catholic Church provided a source of dissent. Under Saddam Hussein, the mosque had begun to play a similar role. Political Islam was a way to fight back against secular Baathism, and Ali al-Sistani was its main Shiite spokesman. The pope played a somewhat comparable role under Communism.
 Still, the neoconservatives around President Bush mostly favored a secular route toward democracy in Iraq. In the early days of the war, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz frequently cited Turkey as a ''useful model for others in the Muslim world,'' and the administration pinned its hopes on secular exiles like Ahmad Chalabi, not Shiite mullahs exiled to London and Tehran. This line of thinking fell in easily with the views of another administration favorite, Bernard Lewis, the Princeton scholar who says that Kemal Ataturk got it right in Turkey: to promote modernism, religious authority must be forcibly expunged from politics. Ataturk said in 1917 that he would change Turkish social life in one blow. And that, in 1923, is what he proceeded to do. Women were stripped of their veils, Islamic schools were closed and dervish brotherhoods were banned. Even wearing the Turkish fez was forbidden in the new society ruled by ''science, knowledge and civilization.'' 
 Similar revolutions happened or were tried elsewhere. After the Meiji Restoration in Japan in the 1860's, Buddhist temples were razed in the name of civilization and enlightenment. The May 4, 1919, students' revolt in China was an attempt to replace Confucian tradition and religious ''superstition'' with ''Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy.'' In Persia, during the 1920's, Reza Shah Pahlevi tried to modernize his nation, later to be called Iran, by leveling mosques, murdering or arresting clerics and banning the chador. And the pan-Arabism of the early Baathists, some of whom were Christians in Syria, was a secular movement inspired by pan-German nationalism.
 Unfortunately, what came out of all this secularizing zeal was not democracy but militarism, absolute monarchy, fascism and variations of Stalinism. The religious revolution that now stalks the Muslim world has come as a reaction, in part, to the failure of modern secular politics. And yet many Middle East analysts sympathetic to the Bush administration, like Daniel Pipes, see a secular strongman, along the lines of Ataturk or Chiang Kai-shek, as the best option in Iraq, since elections in the short term would bring ''Khomeini-like mullahs'' to power. Neoconservatives are not alone in their distrust of clerics. This distrust split the left-leaning anti-Communist opposition in Poland too. It was hard for some dissidents to support the priests against the commissars. As Jerzy Urban, one of the last spokesmen for the Communist regime there, once remarked, it's either us or the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. But does it always have to be one or the other? Is the choice in Iraq really between Ataturk and Khomeini?
Islamic democracy has no track record, since it barely exists as yet. In Iran, a democracy of sorts is controlled by a religious council. Perhaps Turkey comes closest to a European model we know, based loosely on religious values without being a theocracy. Yet even Turkish democracy is distrusted by many Europeans and is actually considered sinful by some Muslims.
 The idea that modern democracy has to be secular in its ethos is, of course, rooted in European history. The Enlightenment was partly an assault on the authority of the church, especially in France. Political arrangements were to be subject to reason, not to theology. To be modern was to reject religion, or ''superstition,'' and to believe in science. It was not enough, in the view of Voltaire, among others, to put organized religion in its place; it was necessary to ''wipe out that rubbish.'' The belief in science as a solution for all human problems became a kind of superstition itself. Scientific socialism, a la Stalin and Mao, for example, led to all manner of crackpot experiments that caused the deaths of millions. 
 Of course, not all rationalists were so extreme. Many typical Enlightenment thinkers, like John Locke, were convinced that a political system based on enlightened self-interest could not survive without a strong basis in religious morality. The kind of anti-clericalism that inspired Stalinists and other authoritarians was more a product of the French Revolution than of the pursuit of democracy in itself. 
 In fact, anti-clericalism, much more than a history of religious zeal, formed the basis for many of the Middle East's bloodiest political failures: Nasserism in Egypt, Baathism in Syria and Iraq, the shah in Iran. These regimes were led by secular elites who saw religion as something that held their countries back or in a state of colonial dependence. The fact that a number of iron-fisted reformers, like Nasser himself, were routinely the objects of assassination attempts by religious zealots showed the gap between the secular ''progressive'' elites and the people they ruled. When organized religion is destroyed, something worse often takes its place, usually a quasi religion or personality cult exploited by dictators. When it is marginalized, as happened in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, it provokes a religious rebellion.
 This is not to say that Muslim clerics are naturally disposed to democracy. But, as Michael Hirsh pointed out in a recent article in The Washington Monthly, a number of Middle East scholars -- Richard Bulliet, author of ''The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization,'' among them -- have argued that religion for many centuries actually acted as a constraint on tyranny in the Muslim world. The destruction of traditional Muslim institutions, like religious schools and mosques, in the name of modernization left a social void in which extreme, political Islam would eventually thrive. 
 Ayatollah Khomeini was not acting as a traditional Shiite cleric but as a modern revolutionary who took power as a political strongman. And in the eyes of many believers, his worldly dictatorship in Iran undermined his stature as a religious figure, since mullahs are not supposed to act like politicians. Osama bin Laden is an amateur priest with more knowledge of Swiss bank transfers and media manipulation than of the intricacies of Islam. It would be hard to find a serious Muslim cleric or scholar who respects him. 
 It may be useful to reflect for a moment on how the West itself has coped with religion. The separation of church and state was indeed a necessary condition for democratic development in Europe and the United States, but the separation has never been absolute. Britain's constitutional arrangements include organized religion: the monarch is the protector of the Anglican faith. This may now be nothing more than a formality, but in continental European politics Christian democratic parties are still the mainstream. The first such party, the Anti-Revolutionary Party, was founded in 1879 by a Calvinist ex-pastor in the Netherlands named Abraham Kuyper. His aim was to restore God (not the church) as the absolute sovereign over human affairs. Only if secular government was firmly embedded in the Christian faith could its democratic institutions survive. That is what he believed and what Christian Democrats still believe. 
 I do not believe this. It is always tricky for an agnostic in religious affairs to argue for the importance of organized religion, but I would argue not that more people should be religious or that democracy cannot survive without God, but that the voices of religious people should be heard. The most important condition for a functional democracy is that people take part. If religious affiliations provide the necessary consensus to play by common rules, then they should be recognized. A Sharia-based Shiite theocracy, even if it were supported by a majority, would not be a democracy. Only if the rights and interests of the various ethnic and religious groups are negotiated and compromises reached could you speak of a functioning democracy.
 A tall order, to be sure, but given the miserable record of secular politics in the Middle East, and beyond, it makes sense that several distinguished experts on Islam have taken issue with the Ataturkian solution in Iraq. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and a former C.I.A. specialist, has argued that devout followers of Sistani offer not just the best hope for democracy but also the only one. In Gerecht's view, Sistani's ''Iranian blood and family in the Islamic republic has surely made [him] more sensitive to the pitfalls of clerical dictatorship,'' and ''in the matter of democracy in Iraq, Sistani may again become one of America's most effective allies.'' Noah Feldman, an N.Y.U. law professor, has also argued forcefully that Islamic democracy is possible in Iraq, a democracy that guarantees not just that people can vote but also that they can ''vote for laws infused with Islamic beliefs, ideals and values, and the state can endorse Islam and fund religious institutions and education.''
 The views of devout Shiites on the rights of women and other social issues may not be shared by most voters in the United States, but devout Shiites do claim to want popular sovereignty based on elections. The question is whether Sistani and his followers maintain this position because they are the majority in Iraq and elections would favor them, not the Sunnis, or whether they want an electoral system on principle. We will not know the answer until it is tested -- that is, until one faction or another loses an election and has to give its consent to being ruled by an alternative party. Sistani has worked hard to create a unified Shiite coalition, but Shiites are far from being united. A coalition between Chalabi and the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr could siphon off a number of Shiite votes. 
 In January, some 200 political groups will be vying for places in a 275-seat national assembly. As in Europe, in Iraq these parties are expected to form a patchwork of alliances (many of them no doubt along religious lines) and then work to appoint a prime minister and draft a permanent constitution. Elections for a full-term government are supposed to take place at the end of 2005. And apart from local elections for provincial leaders, the Kurds in the northern Kurdish region will be voting for a separate assembly at the end of January. 
This sounds complicated, but it is not more so than the situation in Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world. Three months ago, a group of Iraqi political delegates visited Indonesia to watch that country's democratic elections in action. Akif Khalik Ibraheem, of the Iraqi Independent Democrats, a largely Sunni party, said, ''The most important lesson here is not to be deterred by the complexity and difficulty of the task -- it can be done.'' Mahdi Jaber Mahdi, a delegate from the Iraqi Communist Party, a predominantly secular organization, expressed a similar feeling, telling a reporter for Agence France-Presse that, like Indonesia, Iraq had a variety of religious and ethnic groups and that the important thing was to ''manage that variety.'' He said that ''the more democratically you manage these, the more you are assured the country will not be split.'' 
 The transition to democracy in Indonesia has not been easy, following as it has years of secular dictatorship, during which political Islam was suppressed, much as it was in Iraq. Yet the outcome has not been a fundamentalist Islamic regime but a democratic system, however flawed, in which Islamist parties have to cast around for votes like any other party. 
 To be sure, Indonesian Muslims are different from Arabs. Their religious habits are less puritanical. Fanaticism is not in their tradition. Women enjoy a higher status. But their politics can be just as brutal, even though often couched in the language of tolerance and consensus. President Suharto, who took power in 1967 after a bloody coup, suppressed political Islam by forcing the Muslim parties to merge into one representative body, which had to accept non-Muslims too. It was called the P.P.P., the United Development Party. The official ideology was not Islam but Pancasila, devised by Suharto's predecessor, Sukarno, as a kind of state religion to form a common moral basis for national unity. Pancasila is a Sanskrit term encompassing five principles: belief in the supreme being, a just and civilized humanity, the unity of Indonesia, democracy and social justice for all Indonesians. Anodyne enough, you might say, if a little disingenuous, for there was no democracy under Suharto. But Muslims, forced to give the state ideology precedence over Islam, felt robbed of their religious identity. Riots broke out in Jakarta, Chinese people and Christians were attacked and the old Buddhist temple in Borobodur was bombed. Not one to take even peaceful dissent lightly, Suharto cracked down hard. Official Muslim organizations decided to accept Pancasila.
 Radical Islam, promoted and financed by Wahhabists from Saudi Arabia, began to attract a growing number of Indonesians for the same reason it appealed to Iraqis under Saddam Hussein: when all political opposition is crushed by autocrats, the mosque becomes the only place of political refuge. After an economic crisis led to the downfall of Suharto's dictatorship, the chaotic start of a new democracy created room for radicals, calling for an Islamic state, to operate more freely. Secular politicians refused to criticize the Islamists for fear of being accused of being anti-Islam, and moderate Muslims tried to ignore them. This pretense was no longer possible after a group named Jemaah Islamiyah, loosely linked to Al Qaeda, killed more than 200 people in a disco in Bali. Indonesians had to acknowledge that they had an Islamist terrorist problem.
 You might conclude from this that Suharto had it right. His rule may have been harsh and corrupt, but at least he kept the Islamists in their box. Democracy is resulting in terror. Yet this would be the wrong conclusion. Not only were Suharto's authoritarian methods largely responsible for the birth of religious extremism; democracy is proving to be the best cure -- for moderate Muslims, still the majority in Indonesia, are so appalled by the bloody mayhem caused by the terrorists that they won't vote for any party associated with them. This has forced the Islamist parties to publicly reject the extremists. 
Will Iraq be like Indonesia? Will democracy allow the differences between Arabs and Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, religious and secular, to be solved without violence? In principle, you would have to say that it would. But the Iraqis have problems that the Indonesians did not have to face. They have to build democratic institutions under a hated foreign occupation. 
 It is very difficult to build a democracy as pupils of foreign tutors who arrived in bombers and tanks. Even though the foreign occupiers say they want an Iraqi democracy too, anyone or any party believed to be on the side of foreigners is discredited from the start. The more those foreigners insist on secularism, the more the local people may turn to radical Islamism. And the more violence the Islamists unleash, the less likely it is that Iraqis can vote in safety. This is particularly true of the so-called Sunni triangle north and west of Baghdad. It is all very well for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and for leading Shiites and Kurds, to say that it would still be better to have elections, even if many people can't take part, but that won't do. ''There is no perfect election in the world,'' Sa'ad Jawad Qandil told The Boston Globe. Qandil is a senior official in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, a major Shiite party better known as Sciri. ''If there are some minorities who cannot participate because of security, that is not a reason to cancel the decision of the majority.'' Well, yes, it is. For if the Sunnis can't vote, Iraqi democracy won't work, because without the consent of this minority, the majority can never govern in peace. 
 There are other problems with a democracy incorporating a patchwork of faiths and denominations. A two-party system is not really feasible. Yet in a multiparty system, small parties can have too much influence, as they do in Israel. Most Israelis are secular people, but tiny orthodox parties can sometimes make or break governments. Perhaps the early Zionists, almost all secular, socialist kibbutzniks, gave too much away to the religious, by letting them set the rules for marriage, among other things. The fear was that without such a deal, the ultra-Orthodox would not recognize the state of Israel. But the founding fathers of Israel cannot have anticipated that autonomy in spiritual affairs would lead to so much clout in secular politics. 
 It is also true that the religious, in Europe, the United States or anywhere, often do what their priests or mullahs tell them to. Until not so long ago, many people in countries with Catholic or Protestant parties did just that. But at least they voted, and by consenting to the democratic rules, they managed to live together without going at one another's throats. If Shiites and Sunnis can do so in a future Iraq, by voting for religious parties, then so be it. But first they have to be able to vote without getting killed. That is the issue, and not religion per se. The answer will be shaped by a foreign occupation, which made democracy possible, but then, by its very presence, might help to snuff it out. 

  
 U.S. Free-Trade Deals Include Few Muslim Countries

 
The war on terrorism was high on the mind of U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick as he signed a free-trade agreement with the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain in mid-September. "A contest for the soul of Islam" is raging, and "we can help" by striking trade deals that generate jobs and reduce poverty, Zoellick said. 
But Bahrain, an island nation with a population of 678,000, is an exception in securing access to the giant U.S. market. Excluding oil, imports from Muslim countries have increased by just 3.2 percent since 2000, their growth suppressed by tariffs of 20 percent or more on key goods such as textiles, according to an analysis of U.S. trade statistics. 
Meanwhile, countries in the Andean region, sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere -- granted preferential, duty-free access to the U.S. market -- have enjoyed a comparative boom, with exports to the United States rising nearly 40 percent in some cases.  
The figures reflect a bias in U.S. trade rules that work against strategic allies such as Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey. Under current rules, for example, T-shirts made in Lesotho or Peru or El Salvador come into the country duty-free, while shirts from Turkey or Pakistan are hit with a 20 percent tariff. Looking at trade statistics in light of the 2001 terrorist attacks, some analysts question whether U.S. trade policy is adequately backing the country's national security goals. 
 "It is hard to argue that the greater Muslim world is of less strategic interest to the U.S. than the Andean region or sub-Saharan Africa," said Brink Lindsey, vice president for research at the Cato Institute, a free-market-oriented think tank. "Our de facto discrimination against Muslim imports sends a terrible signal, and indicates we're just not putting our money where our mouth is, in terms of using every lever at our disposal to make this a safer world." 
The Bush administration has hardly been stingy in providing financial assistance to its less-wealthy allies, particularly those in the forefront of confronting Muslim radicalism. Washington last year helped put together a $3 billion, five-year aid package for Pakistan, and engineered the recent deal among rich nations to forgive 80 percent of the $38 billion owed to them by Iraq. 
But when it comes to trade, officials of some Muslim nations complain that the United States is failing to provide meaningful export opportunities because of protectionist pressure from U.S. industries. 
"Having enhanced market access would be of enormous benefit to Pakistan," Humayun Akhtar Khan, Pakistan's commerce minister, said in an interview this fall. "The European Union has been much more forthcoming" than the United States in granting trade concessions over the past couple of years, he said. "We need help from our friends." 
Khan estimated that every $1 billion in exports yields 200,000 jobs and supports 1 million Pakistanis. "Trade is a much more cost-effective way [than aid] to help a country," he said. 
The United States has free-trade agreements with Jordan, Morocco and Bahrain, and has begun negotiations for similar deals with Oman and the United Arab Emirates -- smaller Arab countries whose industries would pose little threat to U.S. manufacturers. 
But the United States has specifically rejected granting trade concessions to Pakistan and Turkey, larger countries that are felt to be critical to the anti-terrorism effort. After the 2001 attacks, both countries asked for the right to export more textiles to the United States, hoping to bolster an industry important to economic growth, and which employs about 60 percent of Pakistan's industrial workforce. Both were turned down. Negotiations for a free-trade agreement with Egypt, meanwhile, have stalled. 
According to calculations by Edward Gresser, a trade specialist at the Democratic Party-affiliated Progressive Policy Institute, those decisions and tariff policies kept growth in non-oil imports from Muslim nations to 3.2 percent from 2000 to 2003. For example, imports from Indonesia, a hot spot of fundamentalism and the world's most populous Muslim country, fell to $9.1 billion from $9.8 billion from 2000 to 2003, though they appear on track to bounce back this year. Gresser examined U.S. trade statistics at The Washington Post's request. 
 Some key non-Muslim countries did not fare well either. While the Philippines has been battling an Muslim insurgent group with U.S. assistance, imports from the country other than oil fell from $13.7 billion to $10 billion from 2000 to 2003. 
 The past few years were ones of sluggish growth generally for global trade. Overall, non-oil imports by the United States rose only 2.1 percent since 2000. From that perspective, the imports from Muslim countries fared better than the norm. 
 But trade rules also appeared to be a factor. Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia can export most goods to the United States duty-free under the Andean Trade Preference Act, and imports from those countries jumped 16 percent. Central American nations, given preferential access to the United States under the Caribbean Basin Initiative, enjoyed an increase of around 5 percent. Imports from the 38 sub- Saharan countries covered by the African Growth and Opportunity Act, meanwhile, rose 39 percent.  
The U.S. reluctance to grant concessions may soon have even more adverse consequences, Lindsey said, when international textile and apparel quotas expire on Jan. 1. 
 Once the quota system expires, creating more of a free-for-all in the industry, China is expected to grab an enormous share of the global textile and apparel market. India is also poised to vastly expand its share. Many developing countries fear that the only way their industries can survive Chinese competition is with preferential tariffs that give them a price advantage in the United States and Europe. 
 "Many countries in the Muslim world are facing a trade shock" when the quotas are lifted, Lindsey said. 
A senior State Department official said that although "it's certainly true that some countries are going to have difficulties as quotas come off," Pakistan and Turkey are unlikely to be hit hard. Many industry experts forecast that Pakistan and Turkey will be among the winners in a quota-free world, because of their competitiveness and, in Turkey's case, its proximity to the European market. 
Pakistani and Turkish officials question whether such optimism is justified, and other populous Muslim countries -- Egypt, Bangladesh and Indonesia, for example -- could well be among the losers. Already, Muslim countries have suffered in competition with the Chinese in products such as baby clothes, for which quotas have been eliminated. According to Gresser, the share of U.S. imports of such goods from the Muslim world dropped from 16 percent in 2001 to 11 percent in 2003, and appears headed still lower this year. 
The Bush administration says it hopes to reach a free-trade agreement with Egypt, but only after the government there shifts from its long-standing policies of protectionism and heavy government control of its economy. More ambitiously, President Bush in May 2003 announced plans to join the nations of the Middle East -- including Israel -- in a free-trade arrangement by 2013. 
In an interview, Zoellick said that the proposed Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) has already sparked progress toward free markets and the rule of law in Arab countries that are prospective participants. In countries that are not yet members of the World Trade Organization, including Saudi Arabia and Algeria, the United States is trying to help make the economic policy changes necessary for entry. With Qatar and eight other nations, the United States has negotiated "trade and investment framework agreements," which set broad principles for bilateral commercial ties. For the nations most advanced in changing their economic policies, free-trade agreements are in order. 
"MEFTA is designed so we can customize our engagement based on their state of development," Zoellick said. 
Critics point out that MEFTA would not cover countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, and they view it as too much of a drawn-out process. "If the administration gets what it says it wants, the benefits won't be phased in, in a meaningful way, until something like 2020, so whatever good is to come of this initiative is a long way off," Gresser said. 
In Gresser's view, Washington should unilaterally grant duty-free status to goods from Muslim countries -- if they are allies in the war on terrorism -- and be patient until those nations are ready to lower their trade barriers. That idea was incorporated into legislation introduced last year by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), known as the "Silk Road Bill." 
The model for that approach is Jordan. In the mid-1990s, the country was allowed to ship goods -- mostly clothing -- duty-free to the United States from "qualified industrial zones," if the goods had a modest amount of Israeli content, such as zippers. The zones helped boost Jordanian exports to the United States from $16 million in 1998 to $673 million last year. They provide jobs to more than 30,000 people, helping to hold down Jordan's high unemployment. 
Bush administration officials have declined to support the Silk Road Bill, partly reflecting the clout of the U.S. textile industry. It has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the past several years, and its executives have long warned that opening the U.S. market further would create even more unemployment among people who typically lack job skills or higher education. 
The support of lawmakers from the Carolinas, where the U.S. textile industry is concentrated, is essential to pass almost any controversial trade legislation. If the administration were to propose giving Muslim countries tariff-free access for their textiles, textile-state legislators would almost certainly unite to block it and other trade bills the White House hopes to enact. 
"In addition to the politics, there are policy issues," Zoellick said in explaining the administration's lack of support for granting unilateral concessions to Muslim countries. "You really want to work toward greater two-way trade," which can make economies more competitive. Moreover, bilateral free-trade agreements of the sort Washington negotiates typically require partner countries to enforce the rule of law more faithfully. 
The U.S. industry's power was also evident in the administration's tepid response to Egypt's recent request to establish a number of Jordan-like qualified industrial zones. Egypt is entitled to set them up, but the Egyptian government has long resisted them because of the requirement for Israeli participation. When Egypt finally said a couple of months ago that it wanted to take advantage of the program, the Bush administration sought to limit the number of Egyptian zones, drawing sharp criticism from free-trade advocates. 
U.S. and Egyptian officials said they expect an agreement on the issue by year-end. 
Gresser argued that a more comprehensive approach is needed that would grant quick trade benefits to the entire Muslim world. He said that while some "frontline" countries such as Pakistan benefit from programs meant to encourage trade with developing nations, those programs typically exclude industries that employ the most people. Among Pakistan's top 100 exports to the United States, for example, only five currently qualify for duty-free treatment -- gold jewelry, flags, molasses, swords and toenail clippers. 
In general, Arab and Muslim partners of the United States "get aid and oil money, which are not bad things at all," Gresser said. "But oil money goes into a big national oil company, which is controlled by a few thousand people, and the government may not do a good job of spreading it around. It's not the same as the textile industry, which puts lots of people to work." 




  

 An Exotic Tale Formed of Clay And Imagination

 
If  Scheherazade had added a thousand-and-second tale to her Arabian Nights, it might have gone something like this: 
"During the reign of our great Caliph Harun al-Rashid -- blessed be his name and splendid his days in Heaven -- a loyal subject gave to him a gift of magnificent pottery, carried from the faraway court of the Emperor of China. It counted 20 cups and bowls, each one white as snow on blessed Mount Sinai, fine as a peacock's egg and lithe as the most beautiful new wife in the Caliph's harem. 'O, what beauty comes to us from distant lands,' said the great man. And then, his brow darkening: 'But why must it come across the seas to us? Our craftsmen without equal have been equaled, and indeed outdone, by these Chinese infidels.'  
"Quaking at their lord's wrath, the famous potters of Basra set about unraveling the secrets of the foreign bowls. The wheelmen copied tricks the Chinese potters used to thin their vessels' walls. Other craftsmen played with minerals and metals -- tin from Malacca, lead from Arabia -- until they'd achieved a glaze as white as anything that China's clays could yield.  
"But just as the snowy dishes were to enter the kiln, a learned master potter snatched one up in his left hand, grasped in the other a brush dipped in a blue glaze of his own invention, and with a splendid flourish wrote the word 'happiness' down the center of the plate. 
"The Caliph was pleased: 'Strangers may have taught us to make our dishes white, and fine,' he said. 'But we have added the blue of the night sky that floats above the desert, and the language of the Prophet that came out of it. And now, for as long as Baghdad stands and Basra receives visits from afar, the whole world -- from Cairo to Peking to barbarous London and Delft -- will follow where our potters have led.' " 
But of course Scheherazade could tell no such tale, since her storytelling stopped at the lucky number 1,001. The story we just heard comes to us instead care of the young scholar Jessica Hallett, guest curator of the exhibition "Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade and Innovation," which opens Saturday at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. And her yarn, for all its unlikely sea voyages and unprecedented inventions and cultural cross-currents, has the advantage of being as unfictional as she could make it. 
In a modest suite of rooms, full of pots and plates and shards brought in from all around the world, Hallett tells viewers of the birth of fine white stoneware in China, its export to Harun al-Rashid's Iraq around the year 800, its copying by Basra's potters, who added their newly invented cobalt-blue glaze to it, the re-export of the new blue-and-white technique to China, the reimporting of Chinese-made blue-and-white ware to the Muslim world, and then much later, in the 14th century, the large-scale manufacture of blue-and-white dishes -- now in true porcelain -- by the Chinese themselves, and eventually their wholesale export to all the foreigners who came in contact with them. 
If only every exhibition had as rich a tale to tell, and as much fresh scholarship to share. 
Some of the story is told by the objects on display. 
We start with a handful of rare white dishes made in the 9th century in Northern China. They would probably have resembled that gift to Harun al-Rashid, which is mentioned in texts but hasn't come down to us. It's no wonder those Chinese vessels impressed Iraqi connoisseurs: They are as simple and gracious and refined as anything could be. They were soon imported in bulk by daring Muslim merchants, who were some of the first traders to make the three-year trip direct from Iraq to China and back, cutting out the Silk Road's many intermediaries. 
Then the show gives us a sample of the first all-white imitations of them by Iraqi potters, apparently responding to a growing local taste for the Chinese designs. The Iraqi copies, though often close, never quite manage the delicacy of the originals: Arab potters didn't have access to the tough, all-white clays of their Chinese counterparts, so they used local clays that were softer and darker, then covered them with a dense, opaque white glaze. But the Arab whiteware has a sturdiness that's still very appealing. 
And once Iraqi potters began to add their own cobalt-blue detailing, the indigenous art form takes off. That "happiness" bowl -- one of three similar dishes in the show -- uses calligraphy to energize an otherwise plain surface in the most astounding way. It was joined by bowls with flowers and garlands and snaking decorations the Muslim world had never seen, in the same innovative blue. 
After the blue glaze had taken off, it looks as though it only took a bare few years for all of Iraq's ceramic arts to soar. Inspired by the exquisite metal and glass objects made for the caliphs' courts -- a handful have been included in this show -- potters soon invented lustrous metallic glazes in reds and yellows and oranges, which they used on dishes aimed at a flourishing middle class. 
Funnily enough, it was this brightly colored "lusterware," rather than the blue-and-white dishes that came before it, that for a while made the biggest splash. Ignored by the Chinese, the style passed from Basra to Egypt, Syria and Iran. Lusterware even came to be a specialty of Muslim and then Christian potters in far-off Spain. Eventually it crossed over to Italy, where the lustrous glazes invented in 9th-century Iraq became the hallmark of the famous majolica of the Italian Renaissance. The Sackler show includes fine examples of all these European wares. 
The exhibition also features some less prepossessing objects that are there as illustrations for Hallett's scholarly claims. One display case presents funny lumps of colored stuff: They are the raw materials that helped to spur Iraq's home-grown ceramic arts. An innovative Muslim glass industry produced the cobalt-blue "smalt" first used to color pottery in Basra. (Chemical tests suggest that it's also the major source for the blues on early Chinese pots.) Iraqi work and trade in metals of all kinds would have supplied the lustrous colored glazes that came shortly afterward, as well as the lead and tin required for the plain white surfaces that sit under them. 
Another case displays a quantity of brightly colored potsherds. It gives a sense of the plenty and variety produced by Muslim ceramists. But it also represents a small sampling of the many  shards whose materials were tested by Hallett, a student of chemistry as well as an art historian and Islamist. Almost all those tested  fragments -- from as far away as Thailand -- match clays discovered at an ancient kiln site in Basra. It had always been assumed that Iraq's innovative potters had flourished in court towns such as Baghdad and Samarra. Hallett's research -- which she began as a doctoral student under Oxford scholar Julian Raby, now director of the Sackler -- suggests that the small port town of Basra, on the Persian Gulf, was the region's crucial center for ceramic innovation and production. (Hallett has also gathered evidence for Basra's importance as a center for the metalwork and trade that influenced Iraqi potters.)  
Finally, a few wall panels present some of the exhibition's most exciting and controversial arguments. Hallett's scientific comparison of Chinese pots and their later Iraqi copies -- X-rays of both are included in the show -- indicates that they were shaped using the same peculiar molding techniques. Muslim traders may have had more direct contact with Chinese craftsmen than anyone has thought; it's possible that they commissioned pottery in China for Iraq's booming market in whiteware, then stole their suppliers' manufacturing technology while they were at it. 
They may also have introduced Basra's own innovations to their Chinese partners. A Muslim trading ship was recently discovered off Indonesia, apparently shipwrecked on its way home from the Far East sometime soon after 826. And even at that early date, the pots in its hold -- there are photos of them in the Sackler show -- included Chinese imitations of Iraq's blue-and-white ceramics, made using materials imported from the Middle East and techniques invented in Basra just a few years earlier. (The whole wreck is now for sale; rumors have it heading intact to a major museum.)  
There's only one loose end in this exhibition's plot. It is not clear why it took another 500 years for Iraq's innovative use of blue glazes on white to drift into the mainstream of Chinese ceramic art, and then out again to early modern Europe and the Middle East.  
 We'll just have to wait with bated breath for another show to give us that thousand-and-third tale. After all, Scheherazade invented the cliffhanger. 
Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade and Innovation runs through April 24 at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian's national museum of Asian art, on the Mall at 10th Street SW. Call 202-633-1000 or visit www.asia.si.edu. 







 


  

 Films About Islam Win Festival's Top Awards

 
If sheer numbers mean anything, the much-discussed documentary-film revival of the last year continues unabated: attendance by industry professionals was up more than 20 percent, to 2,300 from 1,900 a year earlier, at the just-ended International Documentary Film Festival here, regarded by many as the genre's equivalent of the far glossier annual film festival at Cannes.
 What remains less clear is whether the documentary world's next wave will remain as firmly polemical as the last, which grabbed attention and a surprisingly large share of the box office for hard-edged message films like ''Fahrenheit 9/11,'' ''Super Size Me'' and ''Control Room.'' 
  Major prizes at the Amsterdam festival -- where the memory of Theo van Gogh, whose murder this month, the police say, was committed by a Muslim extremist in response to one of Mr. van Gogh's films, loomed large -- went to works that took a head-on look at tensions within and around Islam. Top honors went to Leonard Retel Helmrich's ''Stand van de Maan'' (''Shape of the Moon''), about an Indonesian Christian woman confronting poverty and rising Islamic fundamentalism in Jakarta, while the youth film prize was awarded to ''Nabila,'' about a female Muslim rap artist in Sweden. 
 In another bow to world politics, the festival's ''audience award'' went to ''The Yes Men,'' an American film that chronicles the adventures of prankster activists who have made a career of sorts out of mimicking representatives of the World Trade Organization. 
 But the festival's forum, in which 45 aspiring documentarians get 15 minutes each to pitch their dreams to gatekeepers from HBO, PBS, Sundance, the BBC and other buyers, showed no discernible limits when it came to proposed subjects for next-generation films. Ideas ranged from a movie about the making of a North Korean film similar to ''Titanic,'' to a look at Kabul's Icelandic peacekeepers, who lack actual military experience because Iceland lacks an actual military.
 ''We're seeing more and more hybrids,'' said Diane Weyermann, director of the Sundance Institute's documentary film program, who pointed to increasing doses of reality-television-style gimmickry, animation and drama in today's documentaries. ''For so many years, documentaries were seen as medicinal -- worthy but boring,'' she added. ''But I think that has really been shattered now.'' 
 David Kwok, a programmer for the TriBeCa Film Festival, agreed. ''People are attuned to seeing nonfiction on television now. It's not so ghettoized anymore, and people don't differentiate as much.'' 
 At least some observers believe surging interest in documentaries has been fed not so much by a heated political environment as a welcome injection of humor. ''The media is not doing its job, so comedy has taken over the documentary,'' said Andy Bichlbaum, one of the jokesters who figure in ''The Yes Men.'' ''Michael Moore is sort of a comedian as well as a documentary maker.''
 But other industry veterans are less certain that documentaries are experiencing a rebirth at all. ''I think it's a fantasy to say that it's the renaissance of documentary filmmaking,'' said Frederick Wiseman, who first rose to prominence with ''Titicut Follies,'' his 1967 expose of a state prison for the criminally insane. ''It's only that never before has the announcement of the wave been quite as strong.''
 By Mr. Wiseman's account, documentary filmmaking quickly lost its commercial footing after seeming to gain traction in the early 1990's, when the basketball-themed ''Hoop Dreams'' won prizes and took in about $8 million at the box office for Fine Line Features, and in the mid-1960's, when ''The Endless Summer'' brought surf culture to the fore.
 And there were already signs of documentary fatigue, even at the industry's principal gathering, which ended on Sunday. 
 ''One of the things that feature docs have spawned is a real avoidance of good journalistic research,'' said Sydney Suissa, a vice president of National Geographic Channels International, and one of the buyers listening to those four dozen would-be sellers at the forum. ''It's like, I have an idea about this, and I'm going to go on a journey. A lot of those personal-journey films I find a little tedious.'' 




 




Caption only: Muslims protest war

 
Indonesian Muslims march toward the U.S. Embassy during an anti-Iraq war rally in Jakarta, Indonesia, Sunday. Thousands also gathered in Morocco and Turkey to show support for Iraqis and protest the recent U.S.-led offensive in Fallujah. 






 U.N. Tackles Issue of Imbalance of Power

 
No institutional concern at the United Nations has been studied more with less to show for it than the need to broaden the membership of the 15-nation Security Council to reflect the world of today rather than the one that existed at the Council's inception nearly 60 years ago.
 The Security Council is action central at the United Nations, the one body that can pass resolutions binding on all 191 members and cut through the delay and obfuscation that can thwart decision-making elsewhere in the ranks.
 Yet its composition is indisputably out of date. Its definitive authority -- the right to cast a veto -- is in the hands of the post-World War II powers of the United States, Britain, France and Russia, as well as China, and out of reach for countries like Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, which have gained economic and regional prominence since 1945. 
 The United Nations recognizes the need of such reform, but it has considered the possibility of ever coming to terms with the issue so remote that it assigned it to a panel called the Open-Ended Working Group, long derided at headquarters as the ''never ending'' committee.
 Now the subject is about to get high profile attention when a panel of 16 international figures commissioned by Secretary General Kofi Annan publishes its recommendations on Thursday on how to update the United Nations to face such 21st-century challenges as terror, failed states, nuclear proliferation, poverty, environmental decay and mass violence and genocide.
 Speaking after a year in which the United Nations and its most powerful constituent, the United States, had fallen into disagreement over Iraq, Mr. Annan announced the establishment of the panel in a speech to the General Assembly on Sept. 23, 2003. ''We have reached a fork in the road,'' he said. ''This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the U.N. was founded.''
 While the 60-page report will address critical issues like amending the charter to permit some uses of pre-emptive force as legitimate acts of self-defense or seeking a definition of terrorist acts that would not allow people to class them as acts of resistance, its section on Security Council reform will be avidly consulted inside the United Nations.
 According to diplomats who have seen it, the report recommends expanding the panel to 24 members with 6 each from the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe under 2 alternative formulas. The present makeup is 5 permanent veto-bearing members and 10 other countries, elected in annual blocks of 5, which serve two- year terms.
 One of the two suggested options would create a new tier of eight semi-permanent members with renewable four-year terms and one additional conventional two-year term member. The other would expand the number of permanent members to 11 from 5 and the number of those elected to two-year terms by 3.
 Neither option, however, extends granting veto power beyond the existing five countries -- a point that is sure to sharpen the debate in the General Assembly, which seems certain to continue into next summer.
 Changes in the composition of the Security Council must be approved by two-thirds of the 191 United Nations members and ratified by the legislatures of two-thirds of those governments, including those of all five permanent Council members.
 The Council was last expanded, to 15 from 11, in a 1963 General Assembly vote that took effect in 1965. In 1971, Communist China took over the permanent seat on the Council that had been occupied by the Nationalist Chinese. 
 The debate is expected to be intense because of the importance of the issue to many countries that want to be included and possibly just as many that object to the inclusion of others. Bill Rammell, a British Foreign Office minister who presented his country's ideas to the panel this summer, commented on the regional rivalries at work.
 ''For every country you can name,'' he said, ''there are two or three next in line who feel their positions entitle them to frustrate the process.''
 In Africa, the leading contestants are South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt. In the Americas, Mexico and Argentina will have doubts about the primacy of Brazil. In Asia, Pakistan can be expected to oppose India, and China is wary of admitting Japan and, with its veto, could single-handedly keep Tokyo out. 
 Egypt wants Arab and Muslim permanent representation on the Council while Indonesia pressed its case this fall to be considered the voice of what its foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, called ''moderate Islam.''
 Italy, which does not want to be the only major Western European country without permanent representation on the Council, has publicly sought to undermine Germany's candidacy. It suggests instead that there be a seat for the European Union, although the charter at the moment recognizes only nation states, not groups of states, as members.
 Japan's is the only candidacy for permanent membership that the United States has endorsed unequivocally. In October, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell appeared to back Brazil's candidacy in a speech in Sao Paulo, but State Department officials pointed out afterward that his expression of support had been carefully worded and conditional.
 Russia pledged its support for Brazil's candidacy during a visit by President Vladimir V. Putin to Brasilia last Monday.
 While the United States is the leading financer of the United Nations, accounting for 22 percent of the budget, Japan is a close second, at 19.5 percent, and Germany third, at 8.7 percent. As for the four other existing permanent members, Britain is at 6.1 percent, France at 6 percent, China at 2.1 and Russia at 1.1.
 There is a widespread perception that this opportunity to deal with the problem will not arise again, and, with that in mind, the front-runners Brazil, Germany, India and Japan this fall formed an aggressive lobby of mutual support to push for permanent membership for themselves and two unnamed countries representing Africa.
 Strategists for the group say they now intend to campaign hard in the General Assembly for full permanent member status with the right to cast vetoes -- a power not assigned in either of the report's options.
 The General Assembly voting will not be on the recommendations but on ballot items honed in the debate that will emerge from them. So while the never-ending conversation on Security Council reform may be nearing completion, there still could be lengthy closing arguments.                                







 
  

 In Nigeria, Talking Up Two Drops of Vaccine; 
Polio Eradication Efforts Get Back on Track After Hostility to Treatment Reignited Disease

 
 Children with lifeless legs roll themselves up to intersections on wooden dollies, begging motorists for spare change. A workshop makes and sells dozens of colorful tricycles with hand cranks instead of foot pedals.  
 But even in a place where the ravages of polio are so visible, parents such as Binta Sani, 18, have repeatedly refused to allow their children to be protected against the disease.  
 Twice health workers came to her home, asking to place drops of polio vaccine on the tongue of her 2-year-old daughter, Hasfat. Twice Sani refused, saying she had heard that the vaccine causes sterility. On their third try last week, she finally relented, but only after a man she knew and trusted persuaded her that no harm would come to Hasfat.   
"My neighbor convinced me that it was safe," Sani said, waiting inside her house while the man carried the screaming child out to receive the drops. "He has lived here for years. He would never do anything to hurt my child." 
Household by household, Nigerian health officials are making slow but steady headway against the misinformation and mistrust that for two years have sabotaged efforts to eradicate polio here. The crippling disease, wiped out years ago in much of the world, is spreading swiftly through Africa, and this ancient Muslim city in northern Nigeria is at the epicenter of the epidemic. 
Over the past several months, a barrage of radio and television messages from doctors, clerics and politicians has begun to overcome popular rumors -- fueled in part by rising anti-Americanism -- that the imported vaccine contains anti-fertility drugs or the virus that causes AIDS. 
As a result, officials said, the number of children being vaccinated is rising, and the number of rejections by fearful parents is dwindling. In July, a first round of immunizations reached 56 percent of the children younger than 5 in Kano. In September, a second round reached 65 percent. Last month, a third round reached 81 percent -- close to the level needed to prevent the disease from taking root in a community. Each child needs three or four doses of vaccine to be fully protected. 
With the rate of vaccinations rising so swiftly, global health officials are now predicting that polio will be eradicated by 2005 or 2006. 
 "We need only one or two years, and we'll finish it," said Abdulwahab Al-Anesi, a Yemeni physician from the World Health Organization who recently took over the vaccination program here. 
Not long ago, public hostility in this bustling but traditional city had brought the anti-polio campaign to a virtual halt. On the streets, children hurled stones at teams of high school girls hired to deliver the vaccine and chanted, "Don't take it! It's not a remedy. It's a disease." 
The job, for which the students are paid $3 a day, amounted to hazardous duty. "There were so many stones thrown at us, and the kids were booing," recalled Mariya Nafi'u, 17. She rolled up her right sleeve to show a scar where a rock had gashed her. "Some of us didn't have the courage to go out." 
Kano, a dusty metropolis with a distinct Arab flavor, is fertile ground for the spread of polio. The virus is spread via feces, especially in dense, dirty residential areas, and it can lead to paralysis and even death. Vaccines eliminated the disease from the developed world in the 1970s, but in 1988 there were still 350,000 cases in 125 poorer countries.  
A massive international campaign ensued, and by 2003, the virus remained endemic in just six countries: Nigeria, Niger, Egypt, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Efforts were getting underway to immunize children across Nigeria when politics suddenly intervened. 
 The U.S. invasion of Iraq exacerbated hostility toward the United States among Muslims in the region, where women cover all but their faces in public, T-shirts of Osama bin Laden are popular and the dominant source of news is al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite television network. Religious leaders and even doctors began questioning the safety of the U.S.-promoted vaccine. 
Sadiq Sulaiman Wali, a medical school professor, said people saw images of children in Iraq being killed by American bombs. "To them, it looked very contradictory," he said. 
Opponents also questioned the intense focus on polio when other health problems, including cholera and meningitis, were also taking a high toll. When tests revealed that the vaccine contained trace amounts of the hormones used in birth control pills, opposition grew fiercer, and the state government suspended vaccinations last year.  
The hiatus allowed the epidemic to spread. So far this year, there have been 682 cases of polio reported in Nigeria, up from 355 the year before. In Kano alone, there have been 159 cases, up from 89. 
The program was revived in July, after officials visited vaccine factories in Indonesia, which is largely Muslim. The new approach stressed Islamic values as well as health benefits, and Al-Anesi, an observant Muslim, brought both urgency and sensitivity to the flagging effort. Young single women were hired to deliver the vaccines since, unlike Muslim men, they may enter homes and meet women who are neither relatives nor family friends. 
Al-Anesi said he cited passages from the Koran that showed Muslims had a duty to support immunization programs. He also began performing his duties wearing a long white robe and traditional cap, declining to wear the green smock worn by vaccination workers elsewhere, after Muslims expressed suspicion of an emblem on the smocks denoting the U.S. Agency for International Development.  
He also tried logic. "Why are people getting sick from something that can be defeated so easily?" he demanded. "It is just two drops!" 
Despite significant recent progress in the eradication campaign, some still harbor suspicion about the imported vaccine. 
Three weeks ago, a baby girl in Kano named Fatima Hassan came down with fever. First her neck grew limp. By the third day, she couldn't walk. Health officials are listing the case as suspected polio, though tests have not been completed. 
Yet the girl's father, an English teacher, insists that the government was right to suspend the immunization campaign that could have protected his daughter. "I was really suspicious of the vaccine," said Hassan Danjuma, 40. "I wouldn't have allowed them [to vaccinate her] if they had come." 



 
 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian police said Wednesday they had arrested four Muslim extremists involved in the Sept. 9 suicide truck bombing outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, marking the first breakthrough in the investigation. 
Gen. Da'i Bachtiar, the national police chief, told reporters that the suspects included the chief planner, Iwan Darmawan, and two of those who made the bombs used in the attack, which killed 10 Indonesians.  
The four men, suspected members of the Jemaah Islamiah underground, were caught on Indonesia's main island of Java. They were wearing explosives strapped to their waists at the time but did not have a chance to detonate them before they were arrested, Bachtiar said.  
The Indonesian newspaper Kompas, meanwhile, reported that Indonesian police had repeatedly bungled the arrest of Jemaah Islamiah's chief bomb-maker. The newspaper said investigators had learned that Azahari bin Husin, a Malaysian militant, had been stopped three times by traffic police but that on each occasion he was not recognized and he paid a bribe to be released. 
 --  Alan Sipress 
THE AMERICAS 
*  MEXICO CITY -- Police raided a town to search for members of an angry mob who lynched two officers a day earlier, but said they had been powerless to prevent the attack. 
 Witnesses and radio reports said about 1,000 federal and Mexico City police, carrying photographs of the alleged attackers  caught on television the night before, had surrounded the town of San Juan Ixtayopan and were marching in groups from street to street. A police official said 17 people had been arrested.  
Dozens of people beat and burned the two plainclothes undercover officers to death Tuesday night, thinking they were trying to abduct children from an elementary school. 
*  MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- Nicaragua destroyed 334 surface-to-air missiles it obtained from the Soviet Union in the 1980s, in keeping with a U.S. request that it scrap its missile stockpile, the army said. 
THE MIDDLE EAST 
*  JERUSALEM -- Israel will allow international observers to monitor upcoming elections to replace Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority, Israel's foreign minister said. 
 "If the international community will want to send observers, Israel will allow the entrance of observers," Silvan Shalom told Israel's Army Radio. 
*  JERUSALEM -- A Gaza-born Canadian citizen pleaded guilty to planning attacks on Israelis in North America and was sentenced by a military court to four years in prison, the Israeli army said. Jamal Akkal, 24, was arrested in Gaza on Nov. 1, 2003, and charged by the military with conspiring to commit manslaughter. 
 Prosecutors said Akkal planned to attack Israeli officials traveling in the United States as well as to bomb Jewish targets in North America. 
*  DAMASCUS, Syria -- President Bashar Assad is ready to resume peace talks with Israel "without conditions," a top U.N. envoy said, but Syrian and Israeli officials suggested there was no imminent breakthrough between the longtime foes. 
EUROPE 
*  MOSCOW -- A Russian physicist was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of spying for China in a case condemned by human rights groups as part of a crackdown on scholars by the KGB's successor security agency. 
A jury had found Valentin Danilov guilty of passing information to China after an earlier jury acquittal was overturned. A judge in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk ruled that the information was a state secret. 
Danilov, 53, had argued that the information he provided was not classified and came from open sources, including scientific articles he had previously published. 
*  BRUSSELS -- The head of NATO will make an unprecedented visit to Algeria on Thursday in an effort to improve cooperation with the Arab world on counterterrorism, defense reform and military training. 
AFRICA 
*  TRIPOLI, Libya -- French President Jacques Chirac, on the first visit to Libya by a French head of state in more than half a century, said that turbulent times were over and a "true partnership" was ahead. 
Chirac, applauding "an exceptional moment" for the two nations, met for an hour with Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and cited the business benefits France hopes to achieve in the oil-rich North African nation. 
ASIA 
*  BEIJING -- China dismissed reports in a South Korean newspaper of an impending Chinese troop buildup along the border with North Korea. 
 --  From Staff Reports 
 and News Services 







 



  




 26 Charged in Va. In Document Fraud; 
4 Businesses Raided Over Fake IDs

 
Law enforcement officials said yesterday that they have broken up the largest known document fraud ring in Northern Virginia, charging 26 people in a scheme to sell identification to thousands of Indonesian immigrants nationwide. 
The document mill, operating primarily out of three businesses in Fairfax County and a fourth in Prince William County, was unusual in its size and scope, federal officials said. For millions of dollars in fees, it helped Indonesians fraudulently obtain documents ranging from green cards (permanent-resident documents) to passports, driver's licenses, Social Security cards and even baptismal certificates.  
No one answered the phones at the four businesses, all of which authorities raided yesterday, and it was unclear if lawyers for any of the defendants had been appointed. By late yesterday, 16 of the 26 people charged had been arrested. 
A particular focus was phony applications for asylum in the United States. Court documents say applications would contain false claims that applicants had been persecuted by Muslims in Indonesia because of their Chinese ethnicity or Christian heritage. The suspects also are accused of coaching applicants to manipulate asylum officers by crying, pleading or featuring women as the lead applicant out of a belief that they would be viewed more sympathetically than men. 
"This is the largest case of this kind we've ever had in this office," U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty, whose territory covers about half of Virginia, said at a news conference in Alexandria announcing the charges. 
Marcy Forman, director of the office of investigation for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called the network one of the nation's largest. "It was one-stop shopping for immigration fraud," she said. 
The two-year investigation primarily targeted four Indonesian immigration brokers: the Chinese Indonesian American Society in Fairfax Station; Asian American Placement Services in Springfield; Kumala Nusantara in Burke and Chinese Indonesian Pribumi Community Service in Manassas.  
Charges against the 26 people ranged from asylum fraud to labor certification fraud, identification document fraud and conspiracy. Twenty-three are Indonesian citizens, two are U.S. citizens and one is believed to be an Australian of Indonesian descent. 
Officials said the investigation by a federal-state task force was the latest step in a crackdown on document and identity fraud that has intensified since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Seven of the 19 hijackers in the attacks had obtained fraudulent Virginia identity cards. 
"In the post-September 11 world in which we live, we must be aggressive about this kind of crime," said McNulty, who added that there was no connection between yesterday's case and terrorism. 
It is unclear precisely how the investigation started. But federal officials said some of the Indonesians who fraudulently obtained the documents contacted authorities after becoming suspicious. 
Authorities said the ring had been operating nationwide since 1999 through so-called "branch offices," where family members or friends of the defendants would contact prospective applicants. It also advertised nationwide in Indonesian magazines. 
In one common tactic, court documents said eight female Indonesian immigrants filed applications for asylum between Oct. 31, 2000, and Jan. 16, 2002, in which they claimed to have been raped by a male taxi driver because of the applicant's Chinese ancestry. But it turned out that each application was essentially identical, with only the date and location of the alleged rape changed. 
Now, immigration officials are reviewing all asylum claims filed by the four immigration brokers. Any found to be granted fraudulently will be revoked, and the applicants may be sent back to their home countries. 
Staff writer Mary Beth Sheridan contributed to this report. 



 A War of Ideas

 
WHAT WE OWE IRAQ 
War and the Ethics of Nation Building 
By Noah Feldman. Princeton Univ. 154 pp. $19.95 
BANKING ON BAGHDAD: Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict 
By Edwin Black. Wiley. 471 pp. $27.95 
  Many Americans don't understand what they're currently up against. Al Qaeda has often been depicted as the superpower of terrorist and jihadist networks, commanding the allegiance of jihadist groups throughout the world and influencing global terrorist operations through a steady flow of money and recruits. In fact, al Qaeda has become a relatively small operational component of a violent, global movement bent on waging holy war.  
This jihadist movement, at the risk of oversimplification, can best be described as four concentric circles. The inner circle consists of the core of the al Qaeda organization, which now largely serves a symbolic, spiritual and ideological role in the greater jihadist movement. The second circle consists of active members and devotees of numerous jihadist groups that are often called "al Qaeda-related." The denizens of the second circle tend to be even more radical and dangerous than their inner-circle colleagues. The third circle consists of those who believe in the jihadist cause or identify with parts of its ideology; they may provide moral support, and some might offer a jihadist group logistical or financial help. The outer circle is the wider Islamic world. While the core of the jihadist movement consists of devoted terrorists,  they depend on the less ideologically hardened "outer" circles of sympathizers, which the inner core targets for recruitment and fundraising efforts.  
The jihadist threat is uniquely dangerous because it has become simultaneously more decentralized and more radical since Sept. 11. Never before have we faced a threat whose leaders enjoy so much financial and operational independence. Nor have we ever faced a threat whose "membership" can fluctuate daily and whose recruitment rate increases as the United States stages large-scale military and intelligence operations to eliminate them. 
Americans also often don't quite grasp how dangerous the Iraq misadventure is. One key to the overall U.S. response to the jihadist threat is understanding how U.S. actions affecting one of these four concentric circles affects the others. Supporting a democratically illegitimate government in Iraq or conducting counterinsurgency operations there that kill significant numbers of civilians may eliminate many al Qaeda members -- but also generate sympathy for al Qaeda and jihadists throughout the Muslim world. That could draw members from the outer circles to the inner ones, giving terrorist operatives better logistical resources, fresh recruits and more money. The lines between the outer and inner circles are also the frontlines of the war of ideas, and the United States needs to pay close attention to how its actions affect the movement among them. 
The hard reality is that the U.S. presence in Iraq makes it extraordinarily difficult for Washington to contribute successfully to the battle of ideas within the Islamic world. We are also clearly losing that same battle within Iraq. Popular support for the Iraqi insurgency is increasing not only inside Iraq, but also in the greater Arab world. As the United States fiercely fights insurgents in Iraq's Sunni triangle, it is missing the forest for the trees -- winning tactical victories in Iraq while rapidly losing the global war of ideas.  
Noah Feldman, a law professor at New York University and a former senior constitutional adviser to the Coalitional Provisional Authority (CPA), provides a cogent analysis of U.S. efforts in Iraq in What We Owe Iraq. Feldman details the behind-the-scenes power politics of the U.S. occupation and delivers a persuasive appeal for a more grassroots approach to nation building -- that is, an approach seen by most Iraqis as legitimized by local input. He argues that nation-building can be an effective long-term strategy to fight terrorism if its purpose is to create stable democracies. Feldman surmises, correctly, that terrorism festers not only in weak states but also in strong but undemocratic ones such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. 
Feldman's approach offers preventive medicine against insurgency and terrorism as well as a practical strategy for a longer-term global war of ideas. He recognizes that nation-building efforts stained by what is seen as illegitimate governance will be counterproductive. Every day that force is exercised "illegitimately" means many more days spent fighting to gain the ethical high ground. This is not a defeatist's calculus; it's an acknowledgment that successful nation-building requires the consent of the governed. Furthermore, it recommends a strategy that seeks to reduce anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Some may criticize this strategy, arguing that nation-building and the global war on terrorism are too important to be bounded by complaints from Muslim nations. The reality, however, is that the global jihadist movement feeds on the fruits of popular anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism and perceived oppression at the hand of illegitimate governments backed by Washington. 
Unfortunately, the nation-building effort Feldman describes in Iraq has not made it a priority to win hearts and minds. He details the absence of any overall plan, coupled with the "shamefully, shockingly low" number of Americans in the CPA who spoke Arabic. He portrays a military whose operations in Fallujah alienated Sunnis who lost relatives in the fighting, had their homes invaded by American soldiers and were searched at daily checkpoints. 
Feldman also describes the United States' biggest blunder in the nation-building effort: the failure to send enough troops to ensure public security after the invasion. He argues that the resultant chaos forced citizens to find safety within traditional religious groupings, which in turn provided the initial fodder for the current prolonged insurgency. Feldman's book is insightful, accessible and highly recommended for policymakers and readers interested in understanding the opportunities and hazards that will confront America as the world's foremost nation-builder. 
Edwin Black's Banking on Baghdad  underlines Iraq's long history of exploitation by Western powers and powerful corporations struggling for advantage and domination. His impressive analysis, which included looking at more than 50,000 original documents and hundreds of scholarly books and articles, provides a comprehensive history of Iraq that explains why the West's record in the region so complicates nation-building there today. Black writes that popular sentiment in Iraq in the post-World War II era is most aptly characterized by "resentment over foreign interference, anti-Zionism, and churning nationalism . . . fused into a rage against the West." Clearly, the West's imperial legacy in Iraq has placed the United States at a major disadvantage in the war of ideas in the Middle East. America's poor understanding of Iraq's history only makes matters worse. "Most Americans had never heard of Najaf," the great center of Shiite pilgrimage, Black points out, "and barely knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis." In one foreboding anecdote, he describes the British effort after World War I to bring Iraq under British colonial control, with limited sovereignty, using "40 handpicked representatives," all of whom were expected to support the British agenda. After Iraqi protests went unheard, the British soon had a protracted, nationwide insurgency on their hands. 
Black recounts numerous incidents of exploitation in intricate detail; his analysis of how Iraq's oil has greased the treads of war throughout modern history is particularly noteworthy. He writes that Iraqi crude fueled the tanks, warships, submarines and airplanes that helped fight for ultimate control of Iraqi territory during World War II. Well into the Cold War, Iraq remained a strategic outpost, even as its people remained "largely destitute, significantly unemployed, and detached en masse from the nation's oil wealth." Black's book is thoughtful and meticulous, though many readers may find the breadth of analysis too ambitious and, at just fewer than 500 pages, a bit tedious at points. His analysis, nevertheless, highlights the deficit of legitimacy the United States faces in Iraq and the wider Middle East. 
Since so few Arabs will seriously listen to arguments about democracy from the U.S. government, the war of ideas will have to be fought by nongovernmental organizations, governments other than the U.S. administration, and friendly leaders in the Islamic world. Washington could, however, play a role in stimulating such groups, governments and individuals to assume these tasks. The Office of Transition Initiatives at the State Department has staged many successful public relations campaigns for the United States by supporting local NGOs in Muslim countries critical to the global fight against al Qaeda, such as Indonesia and Afghanistan. 
Above all, U.S. nation-building efforts and operations against the global jihadist movement must be planned with an appreciation for how such efforts affect the global war of ideas. A sound and effective response in that contest could become our greatest asset; an inconsistent and ineffective response, as we are now seeing, will certainly become one of our greatest weaknesses. *  
Richard A. Clarke, the White House counterterrorism coordinator under Presidents Clinton and Bush, is the author of "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror." 





 Chinese Move to Eclipse U.S. Appeal in South Asia

 
In pagoda-style buildings donated by the Chinese government to the university here, Long Seaxiong, 19, stays up nights to master the intricacies of Mandarin.
 The sacrifice is worth it, he says, and the choice of studying Chinese was an easy one over perfecting his faltering English. China, not America, is the future, he insists, speaking for many of his generation in Asia.
 ''For a few years ahead, it will still be the United States as No.1, but soon it will be China,'' Mr. Long, the son of a Thai businessman, confidently predicted as he showed off the stone, tiles and willow trees imported from China to decorate the courtyard at the Sirindhorn Chinese Language and Culture Center, which opened a year ago. 
 The center is part of China's expanding presence across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, where Beijing is making a big push to market itself and its language, similar to the way the United States promoted its culture and values during the cold war. It is not a hard sell, particularly to young Asians eager to cement cultural bonds as China deepens its economic and political interests in the region.
 Put off from visiting the United States by the difficulty of gaining visas after 9/11, more and more Southeast Asians are traveling to China as students and tourists. Likewise, Chinese tourists, less fearful than Americans of the threat of being targets of terrorism, are becoming the dominant tourist group in the region, outnumbering Americans in places like Thailand and fast catching up to the ubiquitous Japanese.
 As the new Chinese tourists from the rapidly expanding middle class travel, they carry with them an image of a vastly different and more inviting China than even just a few years ago, richer, more confident and more influential. ''Among some countries, China fever seems to be replacing China fear,'' said Wang Gungwu, the director of the East Asian Institute at National University in Singapore.
 Over all, China's stepped up endeavors in cultural suasion remain modest compared with those of the United States, and American popular culture, from Hollywood movies to MTV, is still vastly more exportable and accessible, all agree. The United States also holds the balance of raw military power in the region. 
 But the trend is clear, educators and diplomats here say: the Americans are losing influence. 
 As China ramps up its cultural and language presence, Washington is ratcheting down, ceding territory that was virtually all its own when China was trapped in its hard Communist shell.
 ''The Chinese are actively expanding their public diplomacy while we are cutting back or just holding our own,'' said Paul Blackburn, a former public affairs officer of the United States Information Service who served at four American embassies in Asia in the 1980's and 90's.
 China Radio International, with light fare and upbeat news and features, now broadcasts in English 24 hours a day, while Voice of America broadcasts 19 hours and will soon be cut back to 14 hours, he said.
 CCTV-9, China's flagship English-language television channel, which features suave news anchors and cultural and entertainment shows, is broadcast worldwide. America may have CNN International, but in the realm of public policy, the United States has ''nothing comparable,'' Mr. Blackburn says.
 Across Southeast Asia, American centers run by the State Department's United States Information Service, which once offered English-language training and library services, were closed and staff was slashed as part of the worldwide cutbacks in the 1990's.
 The impact is still being felt. In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, the three United States information centers were shut. A new program, ''American Corners,'' provides books, computers and databases for a handful of Indonesian university libraries, but it has less impact, American diplomats said.
 As Washington cuts back, China is providing concrete alternatives. The Chinese president and Communist Party chief, Hu Jintao, made clear the importance of China's cultural offensive to Beijing when he addressed the Australian Parliament last year.
 ''The Chinese culture belongs not only to the Chinese but also to the whole world,'' he grandly offered. ''We stand ready to step up cultural exchanges with the rest of the world in a joint promotion of cultural prosperity.''
 The invitation is being accepted by growing numbers of Asian students who are taking advantage of proliferating opportunities for higher education in China. No longer are status-conscious Asian families mortified if their children fail to qualify for elite American universities, parents say. A berth in a Chinese university is seen as a pragmatic solution, even if the quality of the instruction falls short of the top American schools.
 In Malaysia, students of non-Chinese background are flocking to primary schools where Chinese is taught, a reversal of a more than three-decade trend, said N.C. Siew, the editor of the country's major Chinese-language newspaper, Sin Chew Daily.
 In Indonesia, the elite long favored American universities. The founding generation of government technocrats was called the ''Berkeley mafia'' because so many were graduates from the Berkeley campus of the University of California.
 Today, the numbers tell a startling story, especially in Indonesia, an American ally where relations with China have been historically difficult.
 Last year, 2,563 Indonesian students received visas to go to China for study, according to the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta, a 51 percent increase over the previous year.
 By comparison, only 1,333 Indonesian students received visas for study in the United States in 2003, the United States consul general in Jakarta says. That was a precipitous drop from the 6,250 student visas the office said it issued in 2000 and part of a worldwide decline after 9/11.
 Although many educators in Southeast Asia welcome the new openness to China, even longtime friends of the United States say China's influence appears to be growing at America's expense.
 ''You are losing ground, that's a fact of life,'' said Prof. Tanun Anumanrajadhon, the vice president of international affairs at Chiang Mai University. ''People here are talking of China and economics. People don't care about democracy now.''
 The difference in ambition is noticeable, others say.
 ''China wants to be more influential here to replace America,'' Vanchai Sirichana, the president of Mae Fah Luang University, where the Sirindhorn Chinese culture center was opened early this year under the patronage of the Thai royal family. ''China is very aggressive in terms of contributions.''
 Mr. Vanchai said he had proposed a balancing act to the American ambassador to Thailand, Darryl Johnson.
 ''I said, what about collaboration between the American government and universities in this area, because our door is open,'' Mr. Vanchai said, describing a conversation when Mr. Johnson visited the campus this year.
 ''He just laughed; there was no answer,'' Mr. Vanchai said, indicating that the ambassador's reaction was one of sorrow.
 A diplomat on Mr. Johnson's staff confirmed the incident. He said the ambassador's hands were tied; there was no money coming from Washington.

Flowing With the Tide
 Outgoing and articulate, Ngoh Eng Hong, 28, is as good a weather vane as any to read the shifting cultural winds in the region.
 She is one of the stars of the Economic Development Board in Singapore, a powerful government body that encourages foreign investment in the island. Its staff is handpicked from among the tiny nation's smartest brains.
 After she returned to Singapore in 1999 with two degrees in engineering from the United States, one from Stanford University, her bosses still felt she needed to top up with a degree from China. They sent her to Fudan University in Shanghai for a master's in business administration, from a program jointly run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 ''It is what you learn about them as people that is so important,'' Ms. Ngoh said of her experiences there. ''People say the Chinese are very intelligent. When you are there, you see what that means: they are very streetwise.''
 Ms. Ngoh says she has no question where China is headed. ''The world revolved around the United States for a very long time,'' she said in an interview. ''I think people are beginning to understand that one day China can become another superpower.''
 That view is more and more common in this part of the world. It is a measure of what many see as a leveling playing field between the United States and China.
 Today, while the Singapore government still sends a handful of students on scholarships to the top universities in the United States and Britain, it has introduced a parallel program to send equal numbers of its best students to China and India.
 ''People looked down on China,'' said Jessie Yak, who recently returned from Beijing, where she studied the Chinese language. ''Now there is a 180-degree change. In the past, experience in the United States was important; now experience in China is just as good.''
 The cultural exchange flows both ways. Middle-class Chinese students whose parents cannot afford the steep fees in the United States are coming to campuses in Southeast Asia.
 At Assumption University in Bangkok, Chinese enrollment was only 50 students five years ago. This year, 800 Chinese students are studying there. Most of the Chinese students pay $2,000 to $3,000 in annual fees, said Kamol Kitsawad, the registrar.
 Singapore, considered an educational center for the region, is attracting Chinese students at all levels, from primary school through high school and beyond.
 Chew Soon-Beng, the director of the Master of Science in Managerial Economics program at Nanyang Technological University, teaches mayors and provincial deputy governors from China. On a recent day, his students pondered questions like how to transform a country's free education system into a fee-paying system. They also discussed conflict of interest issues in government, a problem dealt with in different ways in Singapore and China. This summer, 51 Chinese officials graduated with a degree.
 What's in it for Singapore?
 ''Singapore is always pragmatic,'' Professor Chew said. ''In the past, the main engine of growth was Europe, Japan and the United States. We're trying to hitch on to the new engine.''

Discovering One Another
 Thirty years ago, as their nation's economy began to boom, Japanese tourists discovered the world, starting with Asia. Today, after more than a decade of galloping economic expansion, the Chinese are following suit.
 In the last several years, Chinese tourists have started to catch up to Japanese tourists in the region. In Thailand, a favorite country for tourists of all kinds, more than 800,000 Chinese travelers visited in 2002, compared with just over a million Japanese, according to the Pacific Asia Travel Association. Last year, Chinese tourists to Thailand outnumbered American, the association said.
 The new Chinese travelers range from low-income workers on package trips arranged by their factories to individual high rollers.
 They are taking in the transvestite shows in the seedy resort town of Pattaya, south of Bangkok. They are tasting Hindu culture in Bali. They are buying emerald-encrusted cellphones in Singapore.
 Similarly, Asian tourists are going to China, just a short plane ride away, and knitting the region together. Fashion conscious, business-driven young Asians view warp-speed Shanghai as a new version of Manhattan.
 Two billboards at the entrance to the Jakarta airport in Indonesia illustrate the juxtaposition: Manhattan in the form of the Empire State Building is featured on an advertisement for Singapore Airlines; Shanghai with its soaring skyline is the image for the express delivery service DHL. Until very recently, such equality in symbolism was unheard of.
 Strikingly, it is not only China's mega-cities that are appealing to Asian tourists.
 SilkAir, the Singapore Airlines regional carrier, runs advertisements aimed at young executives in Singapore, suggesting that they take a break in rural China.
 One panel of the ad shows a frazzled 20-something man toiling behind his computer late at night. ''Need to unwind?'' asks the caption. The other side shows the man, dressed in chinos, snoozing on the banks of the Min River, in Fujian Province, fishing rod beside him.
 ''The advantage of China is its proximity and the cultural experience,'' said Edmund Chua, regional director for the Singapore Tourism Board in Shanghai.
 Nearly 600,000 Chinese tourists had arrived in Singapore by August this year. A decade ago, the number was just 165,000 Chinese.
 Singapore sells itself to the Chinese in the way that Fort Lauderdale appeals to some Americans: not too far away, relatively safe, familiar food. But sometimes, the most popular attractions for Chinese tourists are what they cannot find at home.
 On a warm evening recently, busloads of Chinese tourists made the pilgrimage to Pattaya, the Thai beach resort. 
 They stayed at a favorite hotel for Chinese tourists, the clean yet inexpensive Golden Beach Hotel ($14 a room), and piled into Tiffany, a transvestite cabaret show. The Tiffany dancers are costumed in extravagant gowns that they never remove: the show conveys a hint of the risque but not more.
 Afterward, some of the Chinese tourists posed for snapshots with the transvestites, $1 a shot.
 Alice Wang, 32, an office manager in Guangdong, was on one of the buses. ''I didn't come just for the sex show like the other tourists,'' she said.
 Her main aim, she said, was some high-end shopping, including a crocodile handbag from a Bangkok store, a pastime once limited to monied Hong Kong businessmen. But not anymore.
 ''Its fun,'' she said. ''I've already been to the U.S. and India.''

China's Reach
 This is the second of three articles examining China's rising power in the Asia-Pacific region as it extends new economic, diplomatic and cultural ties. Audio from Jane Perlez and more photographs are at nytimes.com/international.


CORRECTION-DATE: November 19, 2004

 CORRECTION:
A front-page headline yesterday about China's growing cultural influence among its neighbors misidentified the region where that influence has been felt most deeply. It is Southeast Asia, not South Asia.


 
  

  

 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Amtrak starts conducting
random onboard ID checks
* Amtrak conductors have begun random checks of passenger IDs as a precaution against terrorist attacks. The onboard checks are part of a broader program to improve security and are intended "to make sure the person who's traveling with the ticket is the person whose name is on the ticket," Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said. - AP
N.M. vote count ends;
Bush is still the winner
* President Bush has kept his lead in New Mexico after the last county in that state to certify votes from the Nov. 2 election completed its canvass Tuesday. Democrat John Kerry picked up 206 votes in Dona Ana County, New Mexico's second largest, while Bush garnered an additional 100, giving him a 6,047-vote lead statewide in an unofficial Associated Press tally. Results from the official count will be released next week.- AP 
Wis. to spend millions
to back stem-cell research
* Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced plans yesterday to invest nearly $750 million to support human embryonic stem-cell research and other medical experiments. Doyle, a Democrat, wants to use a combination of public and private money to build two research centers and support scientists studying infectious disorders, cardiovascular illnesses and Alzheimer's disease. Parts of Doyle's proposal are subject to the Legislature's approval. - AP
Senate votes to raise
debt limit by $800 billion
* A divided Senate yesterday approved an $800 billion increase in the federal debt limit, a major boost in borrowing that Sen. John Kerry and other Democrats had attributed to President Bush's fiscal policies. The mostly party-line, 52-44 vote was expected to be followed by House passage today. Enactment would raise the government's borrowing limit to $8.18 trillion - more than eight times the total federal debt that existed when Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.- AP
Big Dig leaks are worse
than reported, papers show
* Leaks in Boston's Big Dig highway tunnel system are more widespread than officials have acknowledged, and top construction managers warned as far back as six years ago about problems that could cause waterproofing failures, records show. Documents obtained by the Boston Globe show there are nearly 700 leaks in a single 1,000-foot section of an Interstate 93 tunnel. Project managers have collectively signed off on at least $10 million in cost overruns to repair damage since early 2001, the records show. - AP
Top court in Florida gets
Limbaugh privacy case
* The Florida Supreme Court was asked yesterday to decide whether prosecutors violated commentator Rush Limbaugh's privacy rights when they seized his medical records in 2003 without warning during an investigation into his use of painkillers. Last month, an appeals court rejected Limbaugh's assertion that his privacy rights trumped investigators' power to seize his records. Limbaugh then appealed; he has not been charged with a crime.- AP
In the World
Asia-Pacific talks open; protesters also gather
* Officials from 21 Pacific Rim nations yesterday convened high-level trade and security talks in Chile, as police battled students protesting the gathering and a weekend visit by President Bush. Several hundred demonstrators were confronted by riot police, who doused them with tear gas and blasts from water-cannon trucks. There were no immediate reports of injuries, and the protest occurred miles away from the Santiago-area venue for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. - AP
As troops leave Kashmir, Indian leader offers talks
* Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday offered to hold unconditional talks on Kashmir "with anyone and everyone" as his country began withdrawing troops from the divided Himalayan region as a goodwill gesture to rival Pakistan. Hours before he spoke in Kashmir's capital, Srinigar, two suspected insurgents were killed and two soldiers and a civilian were wounded in a gun battle. - AP
Swarms of locusts
descend on Cairo
* Swarms of pink locusts swept through Cairo yesterday in scenes that recalled the biblical plague of Egypt. The flying insects arrived from neighboring Libya after devouring areas of central and western Africa in recent months. Agriculture Minister Ahmed el-Leithy said the locusts appeared to pose no serious threat to Egypt's crops "because the swarms are continuing to move and are not fully grown." - Reuters
Antiwar protest in Greece targets U.S. Embassy
* Police fired tear gas yesterday at demonstrators who hurled rocks and bottles at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece, during a rally against the war in Iraq. Dozens of youths clashed with riot police and at least 25 were detained, authorities said. There were no immediate reports of injuries. - AP
Indonesia's new leader
sets forth priorities
* Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told the nation yesterday that his administration would work in its first three months to eradicate corruption, create jobs, and settle the sectarian conflicts that have raged in the world's most populous Muslim nation. Yudhoyono's televised speech was his first since taking office Oct. 20. - AP

WORLD DIGEST

 
WEST BANK Qureia orders inquiry into Arafat's death
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia ordered an inquiry Wednesday to determine the cause of death of former leader Yasser Arafat.
The commission will take testimony from Palestinian and other Arab doctors in an effort to resolve questions surrounding the Palestinian leader's death in a French military hospital last week, a statement from Qureia's office said. 
Citing privacy rules, the hospital where Arafat died, has refused to publicly reveal his cause of death or hand over medical records to anyone but his widow, Suha, who has remained silent.
The secrecy has caused some Palestinian leaders to charge that Arafat was poisoned, though Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath has ruled that out. Le Canard Enchaine, a French weekly paper, cited French medical sources as saying that Arafat died of complications from cirrhosis of the liver.
INDONESIA President pledges to target corruption
Indonesia's newly elected president told the nation Wednesday that his administration would work in its first three months to eradicate corruption, create jobs and settle the sectarian conflicts that have raged in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's televised speech was his first since taking office Oct. 20. But his speech was largely short on specifics and rarely went beyond the themes he touched on during his election campaign. He overwhelmingly defeated former President Megawati Sukarnoputri in the country's first direct presidential vote.
Yudhoyono appeared to make corruption the centerpiece of his agenda, noting that he had told Attorney General Abdurahman Saleh to begin prioritizing the corruption cases to be prosecuted and advised his ministers they would be sacked if they engaged in corruption.
PAKISTAN Suspect in journalist's death is reported slain
An Islamic militant wanted in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl was killed Wednesday in a shootout with Pakistan police who were trying to arrest him, officials said.
Asim Ghafoor was fatally wounded as gunfire erupted as police and intelligence agents moved in to arrest him at a hideout west of Karachi, said a police official. Ghafoor was wanted in the January 2002 kidnapping and killing of Pearl, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. 
Police did not say what role Ghafoor might have played in Pearl's murder. The journalist's execution was videotaped and his remains were found in May 2002 on the eastern outskirts of Karachi.
EGYPT Millions of locusts swarm into north
In a replay of the biblical plagues, millions of locusts swarmed into northern Egypt on Wednesday for the first time in 50 years, prompting authorities to order emergency pesticide spraying to protect the region's important agriculture industry.
Clouds of the insects, up to 2 3/4 inches long, flitted about over Cairo, while others hopped around on rooftops. By evening, the skies were clear.
Christian Pantenius, program coordinator of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization office in Egypt, said the swarm was an offshoot of a serious locust infestation in West Africa that was blown by strong winds across the Sahara. He said locusts also were spotted in Crete and Lebanon.




 




 MUSLIMS GATHER IN A DAY OF JOY AND THANKS 

 
Muslims worldwide over the weekend celebrated Eid al-Fitr, a traditionally joyous event on the Islamic calendar.  
The holiday brings to a close Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. To commemorate Eid al-Fitr, Muslims pray and give thanks to Allah for life, health and opportunities, forgive others and perform acts of charity. At New Horizon School in Irvine, a private, Islamic elementary school, more than 700 people from various parts of Southern California marked the occasion on Sunday with food and festivities.
Lisa Liddane/The Register







 Palestinians say goodbye

 
CAIRO, Egypt -- Here in the capital of Arab nationalism, presidents, kings, crown princes and sheikhs paid their last respects to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a third-world icon. 
Amid tight security, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak led dignitaries representing more than 50 counties in a somber, subdued military funeral Friday morning before Arafat's body was flown to the West Bank city of Ramallah for interment. 
The ceremony here sharply contrasted to the mayhem in Ramallah, where tens of thousands of Palestinians overran Arafat's former compound and rushed his casket, many firing weapons into the air. 
"President Arafat would have wanted it this way, with exhilaration, feelings of loyalty, pain, sadness and love all at once," Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said. "The people reclaimed him. They wanted to say goodbye without distance."  
The frenzied burial took place at Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, where Israel kept him under siege for nearly three years. The burial allowed the Palestinian masses -- who adored Arafat even as the United States and Israel tried to marginalize him -- to say goodbye. 
"Everyone wanted to carry the coffin, to touch it, to say goodbye to the president," said Ahmed Tirwai, 22, a West Bank villager. 
Despite Arafat's falling-out with many Arab leaders during his turbulent history, the heads of state solemnly followed his horse-drawn casket, draped with a Palestinian flag. Many of the leaders from the Arab world and from developing nations came to recognize not only Arafat, but for the Palestinian nationalism that he espoused for decades. 
"It is a sad day, of course," said Walid Jumblatt, a Druze leader and member of the Lebanese Parliament. "But at the same time, he was the one who built up the Palestinian national movement, and that will remain." 
The military funeral, held at the Al-Galaa military compound in Heliopolis near Cairo's airport, was a closed event. Thousands of black-clad security forces stood shoulder-to-shoulder along the closed-off street; residents across from the military compound shuttered their windows as Egyptian security forces perched on their rooftops. 
Arafat's body was brought to a small white-marble mosque inside the base. Egypt's top religious cleric, Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, led a short prayer session attended by a few dignitaries. 
Leaders in attendance included Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the newly elected leader of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim state, and Khalid Meshal, head of the Damascus political bureau of the terrorist group Hamas. 
The dignitaries met in a tent decorated with red and gold Islamic designs, in a soccer field inside the complex. As they greeted each other, Quranic verses were played over a loudspeaker. Arafat's casket lay in the sun on its carriage, decorated with Pharaonic motifs, for nearly 20 minutes. 
Officers of various branches of the Egyptian army led the short march to the Al-Maza military airport. The funeral carriage, drawn by six black horses, was flanked by high-stepping Egyptian presidential guardsmen, while a military band played the Palestinian anthem. 
President Mubarak lead the dignitaries following the funeral cortege, walking with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, Jordan's King Abdullah, Syrian President Bashar Asad, Algerian President Bouteflika, and Tunisian President Ben Ali. 
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas also attended, as did Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath. 
Amr Musa, general secretary of the Arab League, called the attendance "a testimony that the leaders of the world appreciate the role played by" Arafat. 
Some officials expressed regret that the ceremony was closed to the public. "Certainly if they would have had a popular funeral, it would be much better -- it would have mobilized the Palestinians to their cause," said Iranian foreign minister Kamal Karazzi. "What remains for the Palestinians is to chose their leader and to continue their struggle for the fulfillment of their rights." 
"I was surprised," said Jumblatt, the Lebanese parliamentarian. "It was a shame. Arafat loved Egypt. This is the irony of the Arab world -- they are afraid of him. He didn't get what he deserved." 
Although Hamas and Arafat fought over tactics, including the use of suicide attacks, Hamas representative Mishal said his group is negotiating negotiations inside and outside of the Palestinian territories over its role in a future Palestine. "The roadblock in our history makes us more determined and unified," he said. "The future is for us, God willing." 
He repeated the conspiracy theory of recent days that Israel murdered Arafat: "I have absolutely no doubt that what happened to (Arafat) is a case of poisoning. It was a Zionist murder." 
Fearing demonstrations, Egyptian riot police in full gear lined the walls outside Al Azhar mosque where a popular funeral was held after Friday prayers. Several hundred protesters remained inside the mosque and chanted anti-Israeli, pro-Arafat slogans. The protest ended peacefully. 
"The people who come here are the extremists, and they don't like Arafat," explained Diaa Rashwan, an Islamist expert at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, who watched security forces arrayed outside the mosque. 






 Yasser Arafat 1929-2004

 
The most disgusting aspect of Yasser Arafat's death is not the representatives of at least 35 countries (from Algeria to Yemen) who attended the funeral of the international terrorist. 
Nor is it the 25 minutes French President Jacques Chirac stayed by Mr.  
Arafat's corpse in a French hospital conveying condolences.  
Nor Mr. Chirac saying the bearded butcher was "a man of courage and conviction who for 40 years has incarnated the Palestinians' fight for ... their national rights."  
"Fight" being French for "terrorism." 
Nor United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan being "deeply moved" by the death of the man who rewired children into bombs.  
Nor Mr. Annan's inadvertent irony that "President Arafat ... led the Palestinians to accept the principle of peaceful coexistence between Israel and a future Palestinian state."  
Nor Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-populated nation, saying Arafat was "a hero to us all" -- except perhaps to the survivors of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972, 21 Israeli school children in 1974, or Leon Klinghoffer, an old man in a wheelchair on the Achille Lauro who was dumped overboard in 1985. 
To name a few. 
The most disgusting aspect is that the United States would send anyone -- let alone William Burns, the State Department's top Middle East official -- to pay our final respects to the smiling sociopathic serial-killer. 








 



 U.S. Must Act As the Power It Is in Asia

 
Now that President Bush has a new term stretching out before him, things that were on hold until the election should be at the top of his list. It's not that the top challenges in Asia haven't been getting attention from his officials. They have. But both longstanding problems and an emerging one require a new approach.
The public estimate is that North Korea has enough nuclear material for two bombs. Privately, who knows? Squeezing North Korea to deny it revenue from drug trafficking and proliferation is a good idea. The Bush administration has also rightly resisted bilateral talks and the pressure to make concessions that would certainly follow. But that doesn't mean that the countries America relies on to keep a united front, China and, increasingly, South Korea for that matter, share Washington's goals. 
Beijing has been uncooperative, resisting the goal of dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear program. It has also just repatriated several dozen refugees to North Korea, where they face imprisonment and execution even as Mr. Bush signed new legislation offering them asylum. The Bush administration's reliance on China has given Beijing undue influence, and Beijing has turned around and used it to pressure Washington for concessions on Taiwan. Changing this dynamic isn't an instant solution to Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, but it is a part of one.
In Taiwan, the last four years have shown that its people have an increasingly independent identity, though not an overpowering need to declare independence. Meanwhile, the retirement of Jiang Zemin and the consolidation of power by Hu Jintao have had no appreciable effect on China's attitude toward Taiwan. Quite the opposite. The Pentagon is cautious in its public assessments of China's threat. But in an effort to convince the European Union not to lift its arms embargo on Beijing, Bush administration officials have been making clear just how precarious the situation has become over the last several years. That makes American clarity about aggression all the more vital in deterring Beijing and persuading our allies not to complicate things. It is hard to do either of those things so long as American policy is based on maintaining a nonexistent "status quo." Once Taiwan's parliamentary elections are held in December, it will be harder to blame Chen Shui-bian "pandering" to voter sentiment on independence. The Bush administration has done well to try to lessen Taiwan's isolation in some ways. But the policy toward Taipei will need to be changed to reflect the reality of the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
Islam in Asia is typically judged to be moderate, but it doesn't take a many radicals to stir things up. Al Jazeera is in the market for an Asian broadcasting base to reach Southeast Asia, where a quarter of the world's Muslims live. The prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, has autocratic tendencies that are exacerbating tensions in the mainly Muslim south. It's not clear how willing Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the new president of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is to face up to his country's terrorist problem. Meanwhile, unrest in China has drawn attention to the ethnically Chinese Hui and the non-Chinese Uighurs of the northwest, against which Beijing has launched an opportunistic crackdown using the war on terrorism as an excuse. Asia's Muslims are diverse populations with different experiences. Military and law enforcement measures are only one part of a policy. A tough antiterrorism policy requires rather than precludes an emphasis on democratic governance and an explicit commitment to religious freedom.
Four years ago, Mr. Bush set out to deal with Asia by reinvigorating America's alliances and dealing more realistically with China. September 11 unsettled those priorities, if not the need for acting on them. America's war in Afghanistan, and its presence in Central Asia initially put Beijing on its back foot. But since then, China has launched an energetic campaign of diplomacy designed to make America marginal throughout the region.
America is still the dominant power in Asia, but it doesn't always act like one. The president's lightening trip to the region one year ago contrasts poorly with the sustained efforts by General Secretary Hu Jintao. The problems the U.S. faces in Asia, long-standing ones like North Korea and the threat to Taiwan, as well as the emerging problem of Islamic radicalism, don't just need attention. They need fresh thinking as well.




 U.S. Must Act As the Power It Is in Asia

 
Now that President Bush has a new term stretching out before him, things that were on hold until the election should be at the top of his list. It's not that the top challenges in Asia haven't been getting attention from his officials. They have. But both longstanding problems and an emerging one require a new approach.
The public estimate is that North Korea has enough nuclear material for two bombs. Privately, who knows? Squeezing North Korea to deny it revenue from drug trafficking and proliferation is a good idea. The Bush administration has also rightly resisted bilateral talks and the pressure to make concessions that would certainly follow. But that doesn't mean that the countries America relies on to keep a united front, China and, increasingly, South Korea for that matter, share Washington's goals. 
Beijing has been uncooperative, resisting the goal of dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear program. It has also just repatriated several dozen refugees to North Korea, where they face imprisonment and execution even as Mr. Bush signed new legislation offering them asylum. The Bush administration's reliance on China has given Beijing undue influence, and Beijing has turned around and used it to pressure Washington for concessions on Taiwan. Changing this dynamic isn't an instant solution to Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, but it is a part of one.
In Taiwan, the last four years have shown that its people have an increasingly independent identity, though not an overpowering need to declare independence. Meanwhile, the retirement of Jiang Zemin and the consolidation of power by Hu Jintao have had no appreciable effect on China's attitude toward Taiwan. Quite the opposite. The Pentagon is cautious in its public assessments of China's threat. But in an effort to convince the European Union not to lift its arms embargo on Beijing, Bush administration officials have been making clear just how precarious the situation has become over the last several years. That makes American clarity about aggression all the more vital in deterring Beijing and persuading our allies not to complicate things. It is hard to do either of those things so long as American policy is based on maintaining a nonexistent "status quo." Once Taiwan's parliamentary elections are held in December, it will be harder to blame Chen Shui-bian "pandering" to voter sentiment on independence. The Bush administration has done well to try to lessen Taiwan's isolation in some ways. But the policy toward Taipei will need to be changed to reflect the reality of the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
Islam in Asia is typically judged to be moderate, but it doesn't take a many radicals to stir things up. Al Jazeera is in the market for an Asian broadcasting base to reach Southeast Asia, where a quarter of the world's Muslims live. The prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, has autocratic tendencies that are exacerbating tensions in the mainly Muslim south. It's not clear how willing Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the new president of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is to face up to his country's terrorist problem. Meanwhile, unrest in China has drawn attention to the ethnically Chinese Hui and the non-Chinese Uighurs of the northwest, against which Beijing has launched an opportunistic crackdown using the war on terrorism as an excuse. Asia's Muslims are diverse populations with different experiences. Military and law enforcement measures are only one part of a policy. A tough antiterrorism policy requires rather than precludes an emphasis on democratic governance and an explicit commitment to religious freedom.
Four years ago, Mr. Bush set out to deal with Asia by reinvigorating America's alliances and dealing more realistically with China. September 11 unsettled those priorities, if not the need for acting on them. America's war in Afghanistan, and its presence in Central Asia initially put Beijing on its back foot. But since then, China has launched an energetic campaign of diplomacy designed to make America marginal throughout the region.
America is still the dominant power in Asia, but it doesn't always act like one. The president's lightening trip to the region one year ago contrasts poorly with the sustained efforts by General Secretary Hu Jintao. The problems the U.S. faces in Asia, long-standing ones like North Korea and the threat to Taiwan, as well as the emerging problem of Islamic radicalism, don't just need attention. They need fresh thinking as well.






  




 Europe casts wary eye on Islam; 
Dutch murder spurs debate as Muslim ranks swell

 
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- A five-page letter pinned to the body of a Dutch filmmaker brutally murdered after making a movie critical of Islam called for Muslims to rise up against the "infidel enemies" in the West.
Other messages -- later left at the sidewalk shrine where Theo van Gogh's throat was slashed -- dripped with equal venom against radical Islam. "Enemies live among us," read one missive in a bed of flowers, votive candles and crosses.
Europe's complex interplay with Islam appears to stand at a tipping point, and Tuesday's slaying of the 47-year-old filmmaker as he was riding his bike down a busy boulevard in Amsterdam could indicate one direction in which it is headed.
"The Muslims say they're scared," said mourner Nicolette Toering. "No, we're scared." 
Dutch authorities were investigating whether the chief suspect, a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan man detained shortly after the attack, acted alone out of rage or had links to wider extremist networks.
The attack has underscored the hard political and social choices that European leaders face about Muslims and the wider Islamic world. 
In December, European Union leaders will decide whether to overlook widespread public objections and move ahead with membership talks with Turkey, a Muslim nation of about 70 million people and a galloping birthrate that could push it past Germany's population in a generation.
European police agencies have sharply boosted cooperation against suspected Islamic terrorist groups following the March train bombings in Spain that killed 191 people. Washington's European allies in Iraq are reassessing their levels of military and commercial support following waves of attacks, kidnappings and beheadings blamed on Islamic militants.
EU officials last month signed the text of a proposed EU Constitution that still could face opposition from voters demanding a clear reference to Europe's Christian history.
But those big issues fade on the streets of many European centers. Here -- even in places like tolerant Amsterdam -- it's often expressed as a gnawing feeling that militant factions in Islamic immigrant communities are gaining ground and chipping away at values such as free speech and secular politics.
"There is a general feeling that a social collision is becoming inevitable," said Jan Rath, co-director of the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies at the University of Amsterdam. "People think it's been building for years and now finally coming to the surface."
The landmarks along the way included the 1989 death threat "fatwa," or religious edict, against British writer Salman Rushdie for alleged insults to Islam in "The Satanic Verses," the rise of neo-Fascist movements, the assassination of Dutch anti-immigrant politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and France's ongoing showdown with Muslims over a ban on headscarves and other religious apparel in schools.
The Netherlands offers a good vantage point to gauge changing attitudes toward Muslim communities across Europe -- which have grown more than 100 percent in the past 15 years, according to U.N. reports. Some sources place the Muslim population as high as 13.5 million in Western Europe, or more than 2 percent of the population, in addition to more than 6 million native-born Muslims in the Balkans. 
Unlike the French or Spanish, the Dutch long had little direct contact with Islam apart from a colonial presence in distant Indonesia that ended in 1949. Muslim immigrants began arriving following World War II as reconstruction labor -- as they did in Germany and other countries.
The workers, mostly Turks, assimilated well into Dutch society. Moroccans and other North Africans began arriving in the 1970s and 1980s, when more lenient laws allowed men to bring in their families.
But the situation in Holland was getting tougher. Jobs were more scarce -- especially for the Moroccan immigrant children -- and some politicians began trying to connect the rising crime rate with the swelling Muslim community: now about 1 million in a country of 16 million people.
Last year, a parliament member, Geert Wilders, pressed for a five-year ban on immigration from Turkey and Morocco. Dutch anti-terrorist agents, meanwhile, have intensified probes into alleged radical recruitment among young Muslims.
Van Gogh -- a distant relative of the famous 19th-century Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh -- often tested the boundaries of free expression by denouncing Muslims in the most graphic terms. His last work, "Submission," a joint project with Somali-born lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali, attacked the treatment of women under Islam.
The filmmaker's fans were as passionate as his detractors.
"He was trying to warn us about the dangers of radical Islam," said teacher Geert Plas as he visited the site where Van Gogh was ambushed. "Now maybe we'll listen. To me this is not just a small event. It's part of the World Trade Center and Madrid. We must see this."
The letter pinned to the victim's body also threatened death to Hirsi Ali, who has gone into hiding, and predicted the downfall of the "infidel enemies of Islam" in Europe, America and the Netherlands.
"The jihad [holy war] has come to the Netherlands," parliament speaker Jozias van Aartsen said.
The memorials that piled up on the dark brick sidewalk often crossed the line from sympathy to seething recriminations. "This is the true face of Islam," said a handwritten message. A framed poem called "Imam" ends with a stanza: "If you want to improve the world, start with yourself and your faith."
A banner waved from a fence: "Theo rests his case."
Christian prayer cards, crosses and biblical passages sat amid the flowers -- a rare religious outpouring in one of Europe's most secular states.
"This doesn't just say something about the Netherlands," said Baukje Prins, assistant professor of social philosophy at Holland's Groninjen University. "It is an example of how international relations have become polarized."
At a mosque near the murder site, Friday prayers were dominated by talk of the slaying -- sprinkled with worry about a possible backlash.
"We are in danger," a Moroccan man told a group of friends sitting in a circle on a carpeted floor.
"No, no," another man said. "We cannot give in to fear. This is our home now."
Moulay Idrissi listened and shook his head.
"I'm afraid. I can't deny it," said Idrissi, who emigrated from Morocco in 1978. "I feel respect for Muslims is falling away in Europe. When people have no respect, anything can happen."
A few hours later, suspected arsonists set fire to a mosque in the central Dutch city of Utrecht, but no injuries were reported.
A 22-year-old student, Abdul Salam, said he tries to tell Christian friends that Muslims have been in Europe since the Moors crossed into Spain in the eighth century.
"So I don't know what to think when people say I don't belong here because I'm Muslim," he said. "I was born here. I don't even speak Arabic. I am European. That's what I feel. That's what I am."
But Salam represents just one side of an internal struggle within Muslim communities in Europe, said Akbar Ahmed, a professor of Islamic studies at American University in Washington.
"Right now the West sees all Islam as a kind of monolith and wipes away all nuances," said Ahmed. "Some want to draw boundaries around Islam in Europe. Other Muslims want to deal with non-Muslims in a broad and tolerant way. It's not new to Islam. It's just new to Europe."
MUSLIMS IN EUROPE
NOT JUST IMMIGRATION: The birthrates in many Muslims communities in Europe are among the highest, particularly in Nordic nations.
HEADING EAST: The most pressing political issue is whether to open full European Union membership talks with Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation of 70 million people. Turkish membership would stretch EU borders to Iraq and Iran.
TOUGHER LAWS: European anti-terrorism agencies have strengthened cooperation. Many countries also have tightened controls on illegal immigration and asylum claims.







 


  




 Thai King Urges Premier to Be More Lenient in the Muslim South

 
In a sign of national crisis, Thailand's revered king summoned Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and urged him to take a more measured approach toward Muslim violence in the south, Mr. Thaksin said Monday.
 ''He expressed his concern over the situation in the south and he asked the government to consider being more lenient in dealing with the problem and to allow locals to participate in problem-solving,'' Mr. Thaksin told reporters. 
 King Bhumibol Adulyadej, whose moral influence transcends politics here, has stepped in only at rare moments to admonish government leaders.
 Anger and dismay have grown in Thailand since Tuesday, when the government admitted that 78 Muslim men had died of suffocation in military trucks. They had been detained after a demonstration by 2,000 people in Narathiwait Province in which six people where shot to death.
 Mr. Thaksin said he had taken personal charge of the response to the demonstration.
 The government's initial blithe response -- that the victims had died of weakness caused by fasting during the Muslim month of Ramadan -- has fueled a surge of anger and threats of reprisals from Muslims in southern Thailand.
 Independent forensic examiners and survivors said the men died when they were piled on top of one another with their hands tied behind their backs and left in enclosed trucks for at least five hours. 
 ''His majesty has urged both sides to refrain from violence -- both the government and militants who keep hurting people,'' Mr. Thaksin said.
 King Bhumibol, 76, is the world's longest-reigning monarch and in his usually silent and ceremonial presence embodies Thai nationhood and commands widespread reverence.
 Until pressured by national and international outrage, particularly from Thailand's Muslim neighbors, Mr. Thaksin had declined to apologize for the deaths or admit wrongdoing and had said the government would not change its confrontational approach in the largely Muslim south. He has since expressed regret and pledged an independent inquiry.
 Military commanders in the south have also told journalists they intend to continue their policy of force.
 That will only fuel anger and insurgency and could lead to communal violence, said Chaiwat Satha-Anan, an expert on the south at Thammasat University in Bangkok. ''We are now witnessing a further erosion of trust, and also of relations between people of different religions who have been living together,'' he said.
 Other commentators are warning that Thailand has, in a stroke, become a target for both local and international Islamist terrorists.
 ''That's what I'm afraid of,'' said Kraisak Chunhavan, a Thai senator, who traveled to the scene with a fact-finding mission. ''The Muslim reaction to this has been very strong, from Bangladesh to Indonesia.'' He said one Muslim group in Malaysia, just across the border to the south, had already warned of reprisals.
 Thailand received a friendly warning from Indonesia, a Muslim country that has gone down this road.
 ''Indonesians have learned from insurgencies in Aceh and Papua -- even though our government has not -- that ruthless violence only begets violence,'' said The Jakarta Post, an English-language daily, in an editorial. ''The strong arm of the Thai military may win battles, but only through hearts and minds will they win such a war.''
 More than 400 people have died on both sides this year in the country's three southern provinces, home to most of the Muslims who make up 10 percent of this largely Buddhist nation of 63 million. 
 Some commentators and human rights advocates in Thailand said the tension in the south had crossed a point of no return.
 ''This carnage has shattered the hope for peace in the deep south,'' wrote The Nation, an English-language daily. ''It has dealt a big blow to the country's image as a civilized nation. Above all, it clearly demonstrates that this government lacks the moral authority to lead the country.''
 The king has in the past indirectly urged Mr. Thaksin to be more restrained and less imperious in his leadership.      






  

 OUR OPINION: Senate's third could be a first

 
Barack Obama --- who just a year ago was a little-known state senator from the South Side of Chicago --- is gaining the rock star status that envelops politicians who exude a certain charm and charisma. Like Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, he draws cheering, clapping throngs who want to share a photo, get an autograph, touch the hem of his garment.
Having bested several opponents to win the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, he vaulted into the ranks of political superstars with an inspiring --- occasionally soaring --- speech at the Democratic National Convention. Now, coasting along with a 40-plus-point lead over his GOP opponent, Alan Keyes, he is expected to win the election easily. 
He will be the third black American since Reconstruction to enter the world's most exclusive club --- and its lone black member currently. (Since Keyes is also black, the U.S. Senate gets another black member regardless of outcome.)
In 1966, Republican Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the first black American elected to the modern Senate. Moderate and generally well-liked, he nevertheless was rarely regarded as a prime mover. Brooke served until 1978, when he was defeated after a messy divorce trial.
The second black senator of modern times was Carol Moseley-Braun, a lawyer elected from Illinois in 1992. She lost her bid for re-election after she was overwhelmed by a scandal involving financial shenanigans by her former fiance and campaign manager.
Smart, confident and worldly, Obama seems poised for a more distinguished Senate career. The son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, he has an extraordinary background that lends itself to leadership on some of the major issues facing the nation --- from race relations to Islamist fanaticism. His Kenyan grandfather was Muslim; after his mother remarried, he spent several years as a child in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, and he still speaks Indonesian. He spent the rest of his childhood with his mother and her parents in Hawaii; he attended undergraduate school in Los Angeles and New York.
In his lyrical and unsparing memoir, "Dreams from My Father," he describes an adolescence and early adulthood in which he struggled to become comfortable with his racial identity. "Away from my mother," he writes, "away from my [maternal] grandparents, I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America."
He seems to have figured it out quite nicely. Reporters covering his campaign have frequently seemed dazzled by his appeal to voters across lines of color and class. Because of his heritage, perhaps, he's able "to be comfortable with whites without black folks feeling like you're trying to run away from them," as he puts it.
In the Senate, he doesn't intend to be a "spokesman for the race," but given his interests, he will undoubtedly end up advocating for issues of particular concern to black Americans, he said. "There has been no discussion of an urban agenda in this [presidential] campaign at all --- nothing about affordable housing, jobs for youth, the growing crisis of AIDS. I intend to work on those issues."
A Harvard-educated attorney, Obama has made it clear that he doesn't intend to spend his first term sitting quietly and soaking up the wisdom of veterans. He plans to serve on powerful committees and influence policy. In addition to domestic issues, he intends to be influential in formulating foreign policy --- especially in the Middle East.
He's likely to get what he wants. He has traveled to assist the election prospects of other Democrats, including Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold and Colorado Senate candidate Ken Salazar. He also has given generously to Democratic candidates --- including Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle --- from his campaign war chest. That assures Obama will arrive with some stature.
Obama could be a first --- a black U.S. senator who wields real clout.
 
* Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor. Her column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.
cynthia@ajc.com







COMMENTARY: WE NEED A WAR ON TERROR THAT FOCUSES ON THE TERRORISTS

 
In 9/11's wake, the Bush administration declared war on terrorism. The president promised to stay the course and track down the terrorists wherever they might be. He was clear, direct and resolute. He described the enemy and issued a clarion call to action. But what did his declaration really mean, and what are the implications? The war on terrorism is not so clear after all.
First of all, what is this war really all about? In my view, the words "terror," "terrorism" and "war on terror" (or terrorism) are misused, misconstrued and misunderstood - as well as applied indiscriminately to too many conflicts that don't affect America. 
Terror, according to Webster's, means intense fear, and terrorism is the act of inciting intense fear. Terror is an emotion. Terrorism, by way of contrast, can be a strategy or a tactic. How can the United States - or any country - wage war on both an emotion and a strategy? It can't.
I've read a lot about terrorism lately because it's a hot topic in the class I teach on Islam and Politics at The University of New Mexico. I need to explain what it is and isn't - even if the president's views don't meet my students' exacting expectations.
One of the best definitions I've found comes from U.S. Ambassador Ronald Spiers, who describes terrorism as "the use of violence by individuals, groups or nations to intimidate or instill fear for the purpose of advancing a political objective. And like formal warfare, terrorism frequently kills innocent bystanders, either deliberately or inadvertently."
Yes, more than a few young Muslims, enraged about U.S. power and influence abroad and despairing of their own prospects for the future, have transformed themselves into human weapons to be launched against Americans and their supporters.
But let's be realistic. Only a deadly handful of the approximately 1.3 billion Muslims in the world are terrorists. Most acts of terrorism by Muslims - and I stress Muslims because the administration is not talking about Colombian drug cartels, the Irish Republican Army or Basque separatists in Northern Spain who also fit the terrorist category - are not aimed at the United States or its interests abroad.
Too many Muslim groups labeled terrorists by this administration are fighting primarily to establish independent countries on their families' ancestral lands.
These nationalist groups use terrorism against oppressive governments because terrorism is the poor man's weapon, the only one they know. In general, their goals are well defined and their targets circumscribed.
Muslim Chechens, for example, continue to battle Orthodox Russians over a tiny slice of land in the northern Caucasus, just as they have for centuries. The Moros, or Filipino Muslims in the country's south, are challenging the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippine government as they did the American and Spanish overlords before them. There is little new here, only, perhaps our awareness of them as a result of Sept. 11, 2001.
Then there are - among others - the Uighurs in western China, the Acehnese in Indonesia, and the Muslim Kashmiris in India's Kashmir. The Uighurs are Turkic Muslims fighting Chinese communists; the Acehnese are Muslim fundamentalists fighting Muslim secularists; and the Muslim Kashmiris are fighting Hindus. Whatever the merit of their struggles for independence, or at least autonomy, none of their attacks have targeted the United States.
Even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is over land that the British promised both Jews and Arabs in 1917. The Palestinian suicide bombers, as horrible as they are, have not specifically targeted the United States or its interests, though there have been American casualties.
The United States was dragged into Iraq by an unholy alliance between the Iraqi National Congress, a group of clever and manipulative Iraqi exiles seeking to gain power over a country they had left years before, and a small band of American neoconservatives whose messianic goal is to remake the Middle East to the Sharon government's liking and who, to our peril, now control U.S. foreign policy. But Saddam Hussein, as much of a tyrant as he was to his own people, had not supported anti-U.S. terrorism in years.
In reality, only the most radical Islamists want to establish some vaguely defined Islamic super-state and to bring down America in the process. Those who look for this Islamic nirvana seek to create it on lands once under Muslim control. They hate our foreign policies, cultural permissiveness and economic materialism, but they do not covet our territory.
These people want us out of the Middle East, or, at the very least, to end our support of governments they consider corrupt, repressive, hostile to their personal ambitions and opposed to their utopian, filmy designs for the Muslim world.
The Bush administration, however, has dragged us into a maelstrom of its own making in a desperate search for allies in the name of fighting "global terrorism." Thus far, not only have we created a worse mess in Iraq and let Osama bin Laden remain on the run, but in Russia, we're silently letting Vladimir Putin squeeze out what little democracy remains in the name of fighting terrorists.
Yet, on Aug. 9, the New York Times reported the real threat: a resilient al-Qaida that is regrouping, growing and recruiting new operatives deadly to the United States here and abroad.
Thanks to this administration's confused thinking and costly Iraq diversion, we have lost sight of what should have been our post-9/11 goals all along: to eradicate those small cells of militant messianic Islamists who seek to disrupt the American way of life and to neutralize those who give them aid and comfort.
Not easy, but not impossible if the United States would focus on its real enemies and use more brains and less brawn in the pursuit. This requires a sea-change in attitude and new foreign-policy leadership. Isn't it about time?
Patricia Kushlis, a former Foreign Service officer, lives in Santa Fe and Albuquerque and teaches part time at The University of New Mexico.




 Indonesia Brings New Case Against Cleric Tied to Terror

 
Indonesian prosecutors opened a new terrorism trial on Thursday against an Islamic cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, charging him in connection with the suicide bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2003 and the bombings of two nightclubs in Bali in 2002.
  Mr. Bashir, the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian-based terrorist organization affiliated with Al Qaeda, was acquitted of related terrorism charges a year ago. But under pressure from the United States and Australia, the Indonesian government continued to detain him while seeking evidence to support the new charges. 
  According to a 65-page indictment that was read in court on Thursday, Mr. Bashir read a message from Osama bin Laden to Jemaah Islamiyah recruits at a training camp in the Philippines, calling on them to kill Americans and their allies. 
  Outside the courtroom, the trial raises the issue of how far the United States is willing to go in helping countries combat terrorism. Key witnesses against Mr. Bashir, a bespectacled 66-year-old, are in United States custody at secret locations, and the Bush administration has barred Indonesian investigators from questioning them.
  The trial also presents a quandary for Indonesia's new president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Mr. Yudhoyono, a retired general who was sworn in last week, has promised to crack down on terrorism, a commitment welcomed by Washington. 
  At the same time, he has said that there is no proof that Jemaah Islamiyah exists, which runs directly counter to assertions by the United States, as well as Australia and the United Nations, which have banned the organization.
  The United States has captured at least two Indonesians who it says are major figures in the group. They link Mr. Bashir to Jemaah Islamiyah and to terrorist acts. 
  The more important of the two is Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who was seized in a Central Intelligence Agency operation in Bangkok in August 2003.
  A senior intelligence official from a country closely aligned with the United States said it was reasonable for the United States not to allow the Indonesians access to the suspects during the earlier stages of the interrogation. But now, the official said, after more than a year, Indonesian interrogators should be allowed to talk to Hambali directly. 
  ''They cannot have it both ways,'' he said, pressing the Indonesians to prosecute Mr. Bashir but withholding crucial evidence. 
  Hambali, who was Al Qaeda's point man in Southeast Asia, arranging for money, bomb-making expertise and suicide bombers, has told his American interrogators that he had pledged his loyalty to and got his marching orders from, Mr. Bashir, according to ''The 9/11 Commission Report.'' 
  It will be hard for the Indonesian prosecutors to use the information in court against Mr. Bashir without calling Hambali as a witness, giving Mr. Bashir's lawyers an opportunity to cross-examine him.
  A senior American official said that the decision not to turn Hambali over to the Indonesians was made by the White House.
  Near the end of Thursday's court session, Mr. Bashir, wearing his trademark white Muslim skullcap, addressed the judges, accusing the Americans and Australians of pressuring Indonesia to pursue the case against him. 
  ''I ask the panel of judges and the prosecutors to be careful of attempts from these two enemies of God, the United States and Australia,'' he said.
  Mr. Bashir was not required to enter a formal plea. While often expressing admiration for Osama bin Laden, and for the men who carried out the attacks on the Bali nightclubs, which killed 202, he has repeatedly said he had no involvement in terrorist acts.
  In September 2003, a court acquitted him of several terrorism charges and said there was no evidence that he was the head of Jemaah Islamiyah. He was convicted on minor immigration charges.
  The current trial was adjourned until next week, and is expected to last several months.      






 
  




NATION & WORLD BRIEFING
Powell amends Taiwan remark
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan's government on Thursday applauded U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's decision to back away from his earlier controversial claim that both China and Taiwan favor unification. Powell's original reference to "a reunification that all parties are seeking" and his comment that self-ruled Taiwan "is not independent" had drawn praise from Beijing and stunned Taipei. The Taiwanese feared that U.S. policy had changed and that Washington was starting to pressure the democratic island to join China. Powell clarified his remarks in a TV interview Wednesday with the U.S. television channel CNBC. He said the goal "really is to have a peaceful resolution of the problem" between Taiwan and China, which split amid civil war in 1949. Most Taiwanese believe China is repressive and don't want to be ruled by the Communist government. But Beijing insists the island, just 100 miles off China's coast, must eventually unify or face invasion -- a conflict that could involve U.S. forces, who have helped defend Taiwan before. For decades, Washington's policy has been to avoid endorsing a specific resolution to the feud. 
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/news and click on Nation/World.
Emperor opposes patriotism effort
TOKYO -- Wading into a controversy over patriotism in schools, Japan's emperor said Thursday that no one should be forced to face the flag and sing the national anthem -- both potent symbols of Japan's brutal 20th century invasion of Asia. Since Japan's defeat in World War II, tacit taboos have prevented outward displays of patriotism and stifled debate. Last year, however, the Tokyo metropolitan government ordered teachers and students to sing the anthem at graduation. In March, the school board punished nearly 200 teachers for disobeying, and teachers sued. In unusually blunt remarks at the royal family's annual autumn garden party, Emperor Akihito expressed his opposition to the school board action. "It is desirable that it not be compulsory," the emperor replied, after Tokyo school board member Kunio Yonegawa said he was trying to make all Japanese students raise the flag and sing the anthem.
U.N. orders Belarus to free American
MINSK, Belarus -- The United Nations demanded Belarus free an American arrested while working on a U.N. project in the ex-Soviet republic, but the country's spy service on Thursday insisted the man was not protected by diplomatic immunity. Ilya Mafter, who works for philanthropist George Soros' Open Society Institute but was on contract to the U.N. Development Program, was arrested Oct. 15 by agents of the Belarusian State Security Committee -- which still goes under its Soviet-era abbreviation KGB. A KGB spokesman said Mafter had been charged with inflicting material damage on Belarus and being involved in entrepreneurial activities without a license. He said Mafter had set up an illegal communication facility and earned about $100,000 in illegal revenues in half a year.
6 sentenced for Pitcairn sex crimes
SYDNEY, Australia -- The mayor and five other men on the tiny Pacific island of Pitcairn were sentenced to up to six years in prison for rapes and sex attacks dating back 40 years on the isolated home of the HMS Bounty mutineers, British authorities in New Zealand said today. Steve Christian, the mayor of Pitcairn who claims to be a direct descendent of Bounty mutiny leader Fletcher Christian, was sentenced to three years after being convicted Monday of five rapes. The other sentences ranged from community service to six years in prison. The sentences will not begin until next year, after appeals by defense lawyers against Britain's jurisdiction over the island, which has a permanent population of 47.
Cleric's trial begins in Bali bombings
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A Muslim cleric accused of heading the terrorist group blamed for the Bali bombings proclaimed his innocence as his trial opened Thursday and said the charges were the work of President Bush and "his slave" -- Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Abu Bakar Bashir is charged with heading the al-Qaida-linked group Jemaah Islamiyah and with involvement in two attacks -- the Bali nightclub bombings and a suicide blast at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last year. The United States and Australia also accuse the 66-year-old cleric of being a key Southeast Asian terrorist leader. The trial is expected to last five months and is considered an early test of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's resolve to fight terrorism.
Cambodia marks king's coronation
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Cambodia began three days of celebrations Thursday as its new king, former ballet dancer Norodom Sihamoni, prepared to take over the throne from his father, Norodom Sihanouk, adored by his people for more than 60 years. At the Royal Palace, Sihamoni lit incense, bowed three times to the floor and placed chains of jasmine flowers on a pillow during a religious ceremony seeking permission to be Cambodia's king. The ceremony included musicians playing traditional Cambodian music on conch shells, pipes and drums.
New violence hits southern Thailand
PATTANI, Thailand -- Fresh violence erupted Thursday with the bombing of a bar in Thailand's mostly Muslim south, while villagers held a mass burial for some of the 78 protesters who suffocated while in army custody this week. The bomb exploded Thursday evening at a bar in the town of Sungai Kolok in Narathiwat province, on the border with Malaysia, killing at least two people and wounding 21 others, police said. No one claimed responsibility. Narathiwat is one of three southern provinces hit by violence attributed to Islamic separatists. The conflict has killed more than 400 people since Januar.






  






 Thai leader defends security forces over 78 detainee deaths

 
PATTANI, Thailand - Facing harsh denunciation from Islamic leaders across Southeast Asia, Thailand's prime minister defended his security forces Wednesday in the deaths of 78 young Muslims in army custody, maintaining troops used a "soft approach" in quelling a riot.
Thaksin Shinawatra also insisted security forces "did not fire a single round into the crowd," although at least seven other people apparently died from police bullets in clashes Monday that threaten to worsen sectarian unrest in the Muslim-dominated south of this mostly Buddhist country.
Police and soldiers detained about 1,300 people following the riot in Narathiwat province's Takbai district that erupted when a crowd marched on a police station to demand freedom for six men accused of giving arms to Muslim separatists. The prisoners were jammed into trucks to be driven to army camps and 78 died, most from suffocation, Justice Ministry officials have said. 
The deaths, which were not announced until a day after the riot, brought thunderous criticism and warnings that Thailand's government is worsening frictions with Muslims. Thaksin has been repeatedly accused of using excessive force in dealing with unrest in the south.
Since January, more than 400 people in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces have been slain, many of them security personnel or local officials. Authorities blame the violence on Islamic separatists.
Thai Muslims, about 4 percent of the country's 65 million people, have long complained about poverty and discrimination, especially in education and employment. While the government has promised aid to help develop the south, Islamic leaders and human rights groups allege security forces use heavy-handed tactics.
On April 28, police and soldiers killed 107 suspected militants who attacked police posts in a failed attempt to seize firearms. Many of those killed were armed with machetes and at least 32 were killed inside a 16th century mosque in a massacre that angered Muslims worldwide.
Thaksin expressed regret for this week's deaths, saying "there were some mistakes" in handling the detainees. He said authorities lacked enough trucks to properly transport them because it was a public holiday. Military officials and witnesses gave varying figures for the number of trucks used, from four to more than 25.
Troops had to "pile them up on top of each other, and they died," the prime minister said in a short speech to the Senate. "We are sorry for that, sorry they met an untimely death."
But Thaksin insisted the military used "the soft approach" in handling the riot.
Expressions of concern came from the governments of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as the United States, but the sharpest words came from regional Muslim organizations.
"It was brutal," said Dien Syamsuddin from Indonesia's second-largest Muslim group, Muhammadiyah. "What happened was state terrorism. We strongly denounce it."
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is home to several separatist rebellions and in recent years has battled rising Islamic militancy.
Hatta Ramli, a senior official with the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, which is Malaysia's largest Muslim opposition group, said the dead were victims of "a holocaust which the Thai government is responsible for."
He said the Malaysian should initiate discussions among Islamic countries to pressure Thailand into securing peace through talks with local Muslim leaders.
In Bangkok, the Thai capital, Muslim academic Vitaya Visetrat told The Associated Press that Thaksin "has made the situation in southern Thailand reach the point of no return."
"The latest inhuman treatment of the detainees paves the way for international terrorists to step in, full stream," Vitaya said.
Thai newspaper editorials made similar observations. "We are not sure that government is putting out the fire or putting more fuel on the fire," said the mass market Thai Rath.
Shadowy radical Islamic groups believed responsible for the violence in the south issued no public statements. In attacks Wednesday, gunmen riding on the back of motorcycles killed one person in Yala province and seriously wounded four in two separate shootings in Narathiwat.
Relatives wept Wednesday as a police spokesman read out names of the dead outside the Inkayuth-Borihan army camp in Pattani province, where detainees were being held.
Wadamae Hajehding, 62, waiting to learn if his 23-year-old son survived, said Thai security forces are "too cruel."
"They treat us worse than animals," he said.






  






 Letters to the Editor

 
 
Health Dept. did shots right
EDITOR: I just returned from obtaining a flu shot at the New Hanover County Health Department. I went, dreading the thoughts of long lines and understaffing.
What a wonderful surprise. The entire procedure was well-organized. Everything was set up so that the procedure ran efficiently. The staff members were all efficient, courteous and helpful. 
The Health Department is a wonderful organization, and I hope that the citizens of this area appreciate it.
I do!
George Fox
Wilmington
Spend on schools
EDITOR: This letter is in reference to Dwight Strickland's quote in the Oct. 2 Star-News. As a County Commissioner, he was quoted as saying, "schools are our top priority."
If they are, Mr. Strickland, why have you so inadequately funded them? The Pender County Board of Education has had to do battle with you during each budget. ...
The good citizens (and our children) are tired of you putting education on your "revenue neutral" account. Get our school system off the back burner. Like the county employees, it's time for our children to get a raise.
Elizabeth Stewart
Atkinson
The worst
EDITOR: I have never written to you before but two things in your paper have stirred me to do so.
Firstly, in your editorial the other day you endorsed Woody White even though you no not endorse his economic or other ideas. You spent much of your editorial blasting Julia Boseman's "flip-flops." What you did not state was that it took at least two Republican commissioners to vote with her since she is the lone Democrat.
On Sunday, there was a paid ad detailing Julia Boseman's lesbianism and saying that Woody White was pro-family. Does that indicate that anyone who opposes Mr. White is anti-family? I don't think so!
In the debate between them he brought out these same claims as to raising funds out of state and from the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund while he had "quality" contributors. I must not be a quality contributor, although I am pro-life and decidedly heterosexual!
Over the past eight years that I have lived here, I have noticed a growing absence of the "Christian" philosophy in the New Hanover County Republican Party. Countless times during the elections of 1998-2004, I have seen it stoop to ugly and denigrating campaigning to try to win.
This time is the worst I have seen. Mr. Allen says that the party wrestled with the issue to publicize this scathing ad. Apparently they did not wrestle with their consciences.
By the way, I was a 46-year Republican who has not even met Julia Boseman. I just believe that four years of experience with some bumps along the road is vastly superior to six months of experience brought about by being hand-picked by Patrick Ballantine. I also have continuously supported Mr. Ballantine, but he did not invoke such invectives!
Bill Hacker
Wilmington
Edwards forgot
EDITOR: When John Edwards ran for senator, he traveled across the state, smiled, played the crowds and told everybody what he was going to do for North Carolina. Then he won and forgot all his promises.
...  When John Kerry picked Mr. Edwards for his running mate, he did not pick him because of his alliances formed in the Senate or the things he accomplished there, because that was nonexistent.
He picked him because of his smile and ability to work a crowd, because he is likeable and can attract votes. ...
Don Howard
Wilmington
Fear this duo
EDTIOR: The Oct. 21 Nick Anderson political cartoon "Politics of Fear" illustrated the wrong candidates. It should have been Sens. Kerry and Edwards who are attempting to scare senior citizens, draft-age young people (and their parents), people with spinal injuries, etc.
Oscar Lennard
Wilmington
On wrong path
EDITOR: George Bush has led our nation down a dangerous path by leading the country into a war in Iraq under false intelligence with no exit strategy. ...
Mr. Bush seems to think that no opinion is valid unless it's in agreement with his. Are these the characteristics we desire in our president? ...
Eli Balsley
Wilmington
Compare records
EDITOR: After reading David Brooks' Oct. 20 column, I felt a need to respond. He suggested John Kerry is using fear tactics and over-reacting to the comments of his opponents. Perhaps Mr. Brooks would like Mr. Kerry to just hang his head and say nothing as Vice President Cheney tells the public that electing Sen. Kerry could expose cities to biochemical and nuclear attacks by the terrorists.
President Bush has called Mr. Kerry incompetent and not fit to be the commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Services. Shall we compare service records?
The president has not asked the general public to sacrifice in any way to support this war in Iraq.
The entire cost of this war is being put on the books to be resolved later - when, I have no idea.
The only thing asked of the public is to spend money and keep on spending.
How can we resolve our enormous deficit, which does not include the cost of the war, and keeping cutting taxes for the rich and giving tax privileges to big corporations is beyond me.
Mr. Brooks' final paragraph made sense. As he said, voters are not idiots. If one continues to attack his opponent negatively and offers no new thoughts or plans of his own, the voters will come to their own conclusions.
James L. Thompson
Wilmington
Lessons of Islam
EDITOR: Congratulations to the Star-News and staff writer Amanda Greene for the Oct. 16 article "Searching for Muhammad."
This kind of story helps non-Muslims understand the faith of Islam, an understanding always essential, but especially at this time of questions about Iraqi, Indonesian and Afghanistani "democratic" elections, the futures of these countries, as well as the hopes and determination of the Palestinian people.
The press story of Islam, Muhammad, the Quran and the holy month of Ramadan should encourage the University of North Carolina at Wilmington to establish an Arabic language and culture study course.
Rosanna "Posie" W. Ewart
Wilmington
Weird, indeed
EDITOR: Amy Hotz's "Weird Wilmington" could not be more timely.
As a tour guide for Ghost Walk and Pub Crawl of Old Wilmington, I can attest to the fact that Wilmington is one strange city. ...
There is no explaining it. Bizarre stuff always happens here. From 1739 until today, which makes it all the more interesting.
Lew Musser
Wilmington
This stinks
EDITOR: It seems that our caring members of Congress have been given the flu vaccine because they shake so many hands.
If they all fall under the guidelines that the rest of us do - fine. But to receive the vaccine so they can shake hands, when that shot could have gone to a person who couldn't get one because of a shortage stinks in my book. ...
To me, it appears that the powers in Washington feel that they are better than the people who put them there. ...
Jim Parsch
Calabash






  

 





 IN BRIEF

 
Shorter College leader goes to Brenau
Shorter College President Ed Schrader, who has led the school's fight to cut ties with the Georgia Baptist Convention, has resigned to accept the presidency at another Georgia college.
Schrader is scheduled to assume the presidency of Brenau University in Gainesville on Jan. 1, four years after his tenure began at Shorter. Brenau, founded in 1878, is a private liberal arts college that started as an institution for women.
Under Schrader's leadership, the Rome college was ranked by the U.S. News & World Report as one of the Top 20 Best Southern Comprehensive Colleges for four consecutive years. 
For the past two years, Schrader has led a legal challenge against the Georgia Baptist Convention for control of Shorter.
In November 2002, Shorter's board of trustees voted to break ties with the convention because, they said, its interference jeopardized the college's accreditation. The group challenged Shorter's actions in court two months later. The case eventually made its way to the state Supreme Court, where a decision is pending.
Schrader will continue to serve as Shorter College's president until the end of the year.
--- John Blake
CNN shows nation's 'Fight Over Faith'
A CNN documentary airing Sunday suggests that one of the world's biggest religious battles is taking place not between Christianity and Islam but within Christianity in the United States.
"The Fight Over Faith," which premieres at 8 p.m., explores the tension between conservative and liberal Christians who disagree on everything from politics to biblical inerrancy. Correspondent Carol Marin explores the divide by focusing on evangelical Christians and their growing influence.
Marin said she wanted to take a closer looker at evangelicals because the media have invoked the term so much but defining what evangelical means remains unclear. "The more you see it, the more you ask, what exactly is that," Marin said from her Chicago office.
The documentary shows how conservative Christians such as Southern Baptists have become increasingly politicized. It also examines how the conflicts over homosexuality and interfaith cooperation are dividing liberals and conservatives in mainline denominations. The program is scheduled to air again Oct. 30.
--- John Blake
Gospel music hall names inductees
Contemporary gospel artists CeCe Winans and Donnie McClurkin are among the inductees to the International Gospel Music Hall of Fame & Museum.
The pair and other honorees will be inducted tonight in Detroit.
Winans, a Grammy Award winner, has recorded several albums that reached gold and platinum status. McClurkin, also a Grammy winner, is known for his song "We Fall Down."
Other inductees are the Rev. Milton Biggham, who served as musical director for the movie "The Preacher's Wife"; Anna Crockett Ford, who published the Church of God in Christ's standard hymnal; Albert J. Lewis Jr., founder of the World Gospel Music Association of Newark, N.J.; Bill Moss and the Celestials, who first gained fame in the 1950s; Joseph Niles, a Barbados resident who has made significant contributions to Caribbean gospel music; and the O'Neal Twins, a celebrated gospel duo known for songs such as "Jesus on the Mainline" and "Jesus Dropped the Charges."
--- Religion News Service
Blasphemy laws remain for now
Britain plans eventually to drop 17th-century laws on blasphemy and blasphemous libel, but change isn't imminent, the government said Monday.
The Home Office denied a newspaper report that the government hoped to scrap the laws soon in a package of new laws concerning incitements to religious hatred.
"At some point the blasphemy laws will be changed so that they basically become extinct. But that is not seen as a priority now and will not result in imminent legislation," a spokeswoman said.
The laws, which penalize anyone who challenges the truth of Christian doctrine or the Bible, were last used successfully in 1979, when activist Mary Whitehouse won a civil libel case against the Gay News over a professor's poem about a homosexual centurion's love for Christ at the Crucifixion.
The last successful criminal case occurred in 1922, when a court upheld as blasphemous a publication that described Jesus entering Jerusalem "like a circus clown on the back of two donkeys."
--- Associated Press
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"I do feel regret, a deep and abiding regret, that this has been so painful to so many people in the Anglican Communion. . . . It certainly was not the intent of the Diocese of New Hampshire or the [Episcopal Church] in giving consent. I'm deeply sorry about that."
--- Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, who is gay, reacting to Monday's report on divisions within the Anglican Communion over his election.







 


October 21, 2004 Thursday



 World datelines

 
Afghanistan
KABUL -- Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has fallen out with some of his lieutenants, who blame him for the rebels' failure to disrupt the landmark Afghan presidential election, the U.S. military said Wednesday. Election officials, meanwhile, said U.S.-backed interim President Hamid Karzai could all but seal a victory Thursday as vote counting proceeds from an Oct. 9 ballot that came off largely peacefully.
Cambodia 
PHNOM PENH -- Thousands of Cambodians jubilantly welcomed their new king on his return to his homeland Wednesday, accompanied by his proud and protective father, the outgoing monarch. The relatively little-known Norodom Sihamoni arrived from Beijing with the ailing 81-year-old Norodom Sihanouk. The former king has spent most of the past nine months in China, for medical treatment and in self-imposed exile to protest bickering among his country's political leaders.
Cuba
HAVANA -- President Fidel Castro fell while leaving the stage after a televised speech Wednesday night, but he quickly recovered his composure and assured Cubans he was "all in one piece." Castro, 78, was shown sweating and sitting in a chair at the live outdoor event in the central city of Santa Clara after the fall. "Maybe I broke my knee . . . but I am all in one piece," he said jokingly.
Indonesia
JAKARTA -- Former Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono vowed to fight poverty, end separatist conflicts and make Indonesia safer from terrorism Wednesday as he was was sworn in the first directly elected president in the world's most populous Muslim nation. Yudhoyono, 55, won the presidency of the sprawling Southeast Asian country by a landslide in elections last month -- the first in which the country's 210 million people voted for their head of state directly.
Israel
JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a dramatic entrance into Israel's parliament Wednesday surrounded by a large phalanx of bodyguards, as security officials voiced concern for his safety before a parliamentary vote on his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. The increased security reflected the explosive political climate in the tense countdown to next week's vote. The plan has put Sharon, the one-time champion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, at odds with his former allies.
Lebanon
BEIRUT -- Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the self-made billionaire who rebuilt Beirut from the ruins of civil war, dissolved his Cabinet on Wednesday and said he won't lead the next government, a surprise move that could bolster Syria's role in Lebanese affairs. Hariri's decision could make him a more powerful force in Lebanese politics, building support among a disillusioned public ahead of parliamentary elections in May.
Spain
MADRID -- A Muslim militant schemed to punish Spain with the "biggest blow of its history" -- a half-ton suicide truck bombing of the National Court aimed at killing judges investigating Islamic terror, including the Madrid train attacks, said a police intelligence report obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.
Sudan
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- The African Union's Peace and Security Council voted Wednesday to boost the number of peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region and send a contingent of civilian police to monitor efforts to end violence that has driven more than 1.5 million people from their homes. The Peace and Security Council approved the increase in the size of its force in Darfur from 390 to 3,320 troops and civilian police, said Said Djinnit, head of the 16-member council.
Thailand
BANGKOK -- Authorities will kill about 40 tigers believed to be sick with bird flu after 30 others died at a private zoo, officials said Wednesday. The tigers, which have all died since Oct. 14, are among more than 400 at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in central Chonburi province. All are regularly fed raw chicken, which could have been infected with the bird flu virus.
Venezuela
CARACAS -- Venezuela rejected criticism by a U.S. State Department spokesman of a proposed media law that government legislators are trying to approve in the National Assembly, said an official Wednesday. The proposed media law would ban transmission of "violent" images and sounds from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Network owners say they'd be forced to wait to broadcast news of street riots or terror attacks.






  






 WORLD DIGEST

 
INDONESIA
President is sworn in, pledges to fight terror
Former Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono promised to fight poverty, end separatist conflicts and make Indonesia safer from terrorism Wednesday when he was sworn in as the first directly elected president in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Yudhoyono, 55, won the presidency of the sprawling Southeast Asian country by a landslide in elections last month -- the first in which the country's 210 million people voted for their head of state directly.
He took the oath of office at Indonesia's parliament in Jarkarta. After the ceremony, Yudhoyono repeated promises he made during the campaign that led to his defeat of incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri -- to create jobs, battle graft, tackle Islamic militancy and fix the ailing economy. 
RUSSIA
Rights group denounces vicious military hazing
Human Rights Watch urged Russian authorities on Wednesday to take action against the vicious hazing that plagues the nation's military. The organization says the abuse that kills dozens of conscripts every year and traumatizes thousands more can be prevented.
In an 86-page report, the U.S.-based group said first-year conscripts are subjected to pervasive humiliation, beatings and harassment by their seniors. Hundreds of conscripts are driven to commit suicide and thousands of others to flee their military units.
Hazing practices involve making new conscripts perform endless tasks -- buying alcohol, shining boots, making beds or obtaining money for senior soldiers. It also involves physical abuse, usually by drunken soldiers, such as beatings with stools or iron rods.
CHINA
Mine blast kills 56, leaves dozens missing
A gas explosion in a coal mine in central China killed 56 people and left dozens more missing or trapped, the government said today.
The explosion occurred late Wednesday at the Daping Mine in the city of Xinmi in Henan province, southwest of Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. More than 400 people were at work in the mine at the time of the explosion and 148 were trapped, Xinhua said. It said 56 were confirmed dead and rescuers were still looking for the rest.
China's coal mines are the world's deadliest, with thousands of deaths reported every year in explosions, underground floods and other accidents.
JAPAN
Deadly typhoon roars across country
A powerful typhoon blasted across Japan on Wednesday, killing 18 people, causing deadly mudslides and flash floods and prompting thousands to flee their homes, officials said. At least 13 people were missing.
Typhoon Tokage made landfall on Japan's main islands early Wednesday and -- though it was downgraded by the evening to a tropical storm -- was proving to be one of the deadliest storms of the season.
Television footage showed powerful winds uprooting a whole tree, flash floods submerging cars to their windows and entire hillsides crumbling away in landslides across southern and central Japan.






  


October 21, 2004, Thursday



 AROUND THE REGION

 
 
Navassa meeting set on pollutants
The town of Navassa is seeking cleanup and assessment funding from the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
A meeting is set for 7 p.m. Wednesday at Navassa Town Hall, 334 Main St., to give residents an opportunity to comment about hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants in the community.
Two citizen committees established during a public meeting in November will be resurrected and activated, town officials said. Citizens who want to participate in the process will be recruited to work on the two committees. 
The town first applied for the funds during the 2003-04 fiscal year and was not selected to receive the $ 200,000 grant it requested. Navassa did receive notice from the EPA that its application reached the finalist stage for a grant. Five hazardous waste sites, ranging from 15 to 300 acres, exist in Navassa.
Voting calls might be scams
If you've received a phone call asking for your Social Security number or credit card information to see if you're eligible to vote, you may have been talking with a con artist.
The Federal Trade Commission said such scammers use the information to commit identity theft. The FTC said legitimate organizations conducting voter registration drives generally make personal contacts, often providing a voter registration form to fill out. They do not need financial information.
If you get such a call, you can report it online at www.ftc.gov, or by calling (877) FTC-HELP (877-382-4357). If you already have shared your personal information with someone you do not know, you may be the victim of a scam. File your complaint, then visit www.consumer.gov/idtheft to find out what actions to take.
You can register to vote at your local county election office, but the deadline has passed to register for the Nov. 2 election.
Jane Jones, director of the Cape Fear Area Agency on Aging, said North Carolina residents can call the state Consumer Protection Division at 877-566-7226 to report suspected cases of fraud.
City's architecture featured in talk
Beverly Tetterton, the county's history librarian, will offer a glimpse into Wilmington's past with a slide lecture called "Wilmington Architecture: Lost But Not Forgotten," from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday in the New Hanover Room of the library's main branch, 201 Chestnut St. The event is sponsored by the Historic Wilmington Foundation.
The foundation ran a similar program last year, but all of this year's material is new, illustrating many magnificent structures the community has lost over the years.
Ms. Tetterton said she would look at the closing of the Atlantic Coast Line railroad and the 1960s urban renewal that doomed many historic buildings. She'll cover subsequent revitalization and preservation efforts including the Cotton Exchange and Chandler's Wharf. She'll also show slides of houses, schools, hospitals and churches that were destroyed, and invite participants to share memories of these lost treasures.
The fee is $ 5 for Historic Wilmington Foundation members and $ 7 for nonmembers. Reservations are required; call 762-2511.
Indonesian democracy subject of talk
Paige Tan, a political science assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, will discuss this weekend how an Islamic nation has made the transition to democracy.
Dr. Tan's talk to the Coastal Carolina Chapter of the United Nations Association USA is titled "Indonesia: The Emergence of Democracy in a Predominately Muslim Country." She'll speak at 1 p.m. Sunday in the Madeline Suite at UNCW.
In July, she monitored Indonesia's presidential election as a visiting fellow at Jakarta's Habibie Center. That was a landmark event for a nation ruled until 1998 by the dictator Suharto. The group said her talk will be especially timely considering the upcoming elections in Iraq and the one just held in Afghanistan.
Cost of the luncheon is $ 11. Call Wilma Kuzmuk at 686-2826 or Jean Shaefer at 395-6190 for reservations.
Water and sewer exec stepping down
Kurt Taube, the long-serving executive director of the Lower Cape Fear Water and Sewer Authority, is stepping down.
He announced his decision at the regional group's Oct. 11 meeting. Mr. Taube, who has worked for the authority for 27 years, has said he will remain in his position until a new top official is named.
"It was just time," he said. "It's been a wonderful experience, a very challenging and unique opportunity. But it was just time for a change."
The authority is in the midst of upgrading its pump station on the Cape Fear River in Bladen County just above Lock and Dam No. 1. The group also is actively seeking out new governmental partners to expand its water service. The authority provides raw water to Brunswick County and the U.S. 421 corridor in New Hanover County.
Authority Chairman Hamilton Hicks said Mr. Taube has left a lasting impression on the organization. "He's performed in an exemplary manner, performed quite well and followed the board's direction," he said. "He did a fine job."
Mr. Hicks added that the authority has hired a professional placement firm to find a replacement.






 
  











 



October 16, 2004 Saturday  




 Indonesian Cleric Faces New Charges

 
Indonesian prosecutors on Friday charged the militant Muslim cleric Abubakar Baasyir under a new anti-terror law, accusing him of leading a terrorist organization linked to al Qaeda and encouraging terrorist acts, including last year's bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. 
The charges reopen a case that ended last year with Baasyir's acquittal on a similar charge, brought under the criminal code, of heading a terrorist group. Officials said that this time they had the evidence to convict him.   
But Baasyir's lawyers said prosecutors could face difficulties. The constitutional court has ruled that the 2003 law cannot be applied retroactively. Much of the state's case relies on evidence that predates the law, police said.  
Baasyir was arrested shortly after a deadly attack on two nightclubs in Bali in October 2002 and has been in custody ever since, in part to serve an 18-month sentence on immigration violations. 
 Officials said that the prosecution of Baasyir demonstrated their commitment to combating terrorism in a country that has experienced three major terrorist attacks: Bali, the August 2003 bombing of the Marriott and last month's car bombing in front of the Australian Embassy. All were blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, the group Baasyir is accused of leading. 
 "We reopened the case because we have strong evidence," said Ansyaad Mbai, counterterrorism coordinator under Indonesia's chief security minister. "Reopening the case is proof that we are very serious about dealing with terrorism." 
 A police investigator said that officials did not have evidence of Baasyir's direct involvement in any terrorist activity after the Bali attack. But they charged that as head of Jemaah Islamiah, he was complicit in the Marriott bombing, according to the indictment. 
 To help prove their case, prosecutors cite an April 2000 speech made by Baasyir in the southern Philippines to the first group of Jemaah Islamiah recruits to complete military training. 
 In that speech, the indictment says, he spoke of having met with Osama bin Laden. No date was mentioned. He also encouraged the militants to carry out jihad, or attacks on infidels, whom he equated with "America and her allies," according to a partial copy of the 65-page indictment. 
 Police and prosecutors said they would try to prove that his words inspired the recruits to commit acts of terror, including the Marriott bombing, which killed 12 people. The Bali attack  killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. 
 Baasyir, 66, has repeatedly denounced the prosecution as politically motivated to curry favor with the United States and its allies. On Friday, his attorney predicted the prosecution would fail. 
 "The police don't have enough evidence to link the cleric with any terror acts in Indonesia," said the attorney, Achmad Michdan. "The testimonials from Jemaah Islamiah members are fabricated." 
Special correspondent Noor Huda Ismail contributed to this report. 






  

 





 Fears of violence rise as Ramadan celebrated

 
Washington --- Muslims in much of the Islamic world marked the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan today amid calls from clerics to focus on spiritual contemplation, repentance and charity.
But in Iraq, those calls were overlaid with concerns that insurgents may step up their attacks during the holy month as happened last year.
On the eve of Ramadan last year, which began Oct. 27, 2003, Iraqi insurgents killed 16 Americans when they shot down a U.S. military transport helicopter. Other attacks during that holy month included terrorist strikes in Turkey and Saudi Arabia in what was one of the bloodiest months since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. 
In the past week, U.S. and Iraqi forces have mounted a series of raids on insurgent strongholds in the Sunni Triangle area to try to head off just such a possibility this year.
Army Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for U.S. military forces in Iraq, said Thursday that U.S. forces are prepared for greater threats during Ramadan. "We have intelligence to be prepared for and to expect an increase in activity for attacks on the international zone," he said.
Military officials issued a written warning to U.S. citizens in Iraq detailing heightened security measures following bombings in the Green Zone and the start of Ramadan. It referred to fresh intelligence that warned of threats and cited "last year's increase in terrorist and criminal attacks on multinational forces, non-Iraqi civilians and innocent Iraqis."
Among the attacks mounted by terrorists during Ramadan last year were:
 
* A suicide bombing at the Italian military command post in Iraq that killed 19 Italians and 13 Iraqis.
 
* Deadly vehicle bombs exploding at two synagogues, the British consulate and outside a British bank in Istanbul, Turkey.
 
* A suicide attack on an affluent, guarded residential compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed 17 people and wounded 122, with many children among the victims.
 
* A car bombing outside the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad that killed 12 people, including two Red Cross staff members, and injured 22 others.
The South Korean government has issued a warning to its people in Iraq of the possibility of increased terrorist activity during Ramadan.
"There is a possibility of the terrorist act of kidnapping occurring frequently in the future, including the important religious ritual period of Ramadan, after some Islamic clerics made an announcement that appeared to be religiously authorizing kidnapping," the South Korean ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site.
Under Islam, Ramadan is one of the four haram months when fighting is discouraged. However, some Muslim scholars argue that an occupying army should get no respite from mujahedeen --- or holy warriors --- during Ramadan.
"It's forbidden to launch a foreign conquest during Ramadan, but it is not prohibited to fight an occupier," said Abdul-Salam al-Kobeisi, a senior cleric from the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni group suspected of maintaining links to some insurgent groups.
"In fact, Iraqis are duty bound to fight . . . since the American forces are the attackers and they are the defenders," he said.
Significantly, the first major battle in Islam's history occurred during Ramadan. The Battle of Badr in A.D. 624 was the Prophet Muhammad's first military victory and is credited with making Islam a major force in the region. Muhammad's much smaller force prevailed over an army of Arabic tribes in what Muslims view as a divine event.
Ramadan commemorates the revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad 1,400 years ago. During the month, Muslims abstain from food, drink and sex from dawn to dusk.
Once the sun sets, Muslims break their fast with a light meal called iftaar and formal prayers.
Ramadan nights are some of the most vibrant of the year in the Middle East. The Egyptian capital of Cairo is famous for its iftaar street festivals. Dubai, the shopping capital of the region, offers special late-night sales.
Unlike al-Kobeisi, the Iraqi cleric, religious leaders from Morocco to Indonesia urged the world's more than 1 billion Muslims to focus on prayer, repentance and charity during this period.
"This is a chance for the umma [the worldwide Muslim community] to purify itself," said Sheik Ismail Nawahida, a leading imam at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, considered the third holiest shrine for Muslims. "It is a time to restore balance . . .  [and] to remind ourselves about the basics."
In a sermon last week that has been echoed in mosques worldwide, Sheikh Osama Abdullah al-Khayyat, a prayer leader in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, focused on how believers should embrace the Ramadan spirit.
Speaking on Saudi television, which is broadcast on satellite television across the Middle East and Asia, he urged Muslims to mark Ramadan with a "pious mind-set" and dedication to doing good deeds.
Some Western experts cautioned about drawing a link between Ramadan and attacks against non-Muslims.
Alan Godlas, a professor of religion at the University of Georgia who teaches about Islam, said terrorists who struck Western targets last year during Ramadan must have had other considerations.
"If anything, Ramadan would have been a factor in their not attacking because it is a holy month," he said. "But . . . with these militant extremists, the ordinary considerations of the religion seem to go by the wayside and their own political and military objectives are foremost in their minds."
Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University in Scotland, downplayed links between Ramadan and strikes by terrorists.
"It's not really driven by significant dates or religious anniversaries," Ranstorp said of terrorism. "They have their own time schedule for attack. It's driven by opportunity. It's driven by logistical capability, and what they desire to do."
Eunice Moscoso and George Edmonson in Washington; Margaret Coker in Jerusalem







 


October 15, 2004 Friday

 INCREASE UNDERSTANDING OF MUSLIM HOLY MONTH

 
Ramadan, which starts Oct. 16 and runs through the middle of November, is an important time for millions of Muslims around the world. Yet there are many people who are not aware of, or who have misconceptions about, this holy month.
During this month, Muslims abstain from eating, drinking, having sexual relations and smoking from dawn to dusk. One of the goals of this fasting is to refrain from physical pleasures and focus on spiritual well-being. 
At sundown, Muslims break their fast, usually by eating something light and drinking some water at first, followed by a hearty meal. After the meal, many Muslims go to the mosque for a special evening prayer service.
FASTING IS vital for the spiritual health of a Muslim. Not only is it is one of the five pillars of the religion, it is also an opportunity for many of us to identify with the poor, the hungry and the downtrodden. The days of hunger, thirst, reflection and prayer strengthen the faith of the believers as they learn to be patient and learn to have compassion for those in the world who get no reprieve when the sun goes down and have to go to sleep with empty bellies.
During the last 10 nights of Ramadan, many Muslims will stay up in the middle of the night and pray to God, hoping that their prayers will be answered on the "Night of Power," which is described in the Quran as being the equivalent of 1,000 months - or 83 years and four months. The Night of Power is the anniversary of the first revelations that came to the Prophet Muhammad from God through the archangel Gabriel in 610 A.D.
At the end of Ramadan, Muslims celebrate the three-day holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Families and friends visit each other, adults dole out money or presents to children and everybody does a lot of eating.
Observing Ramadan in America poses unique challenges. It is sometimes difficult to see people eating and drinking at school or in the workplace. What's more, we are surrounded by a consumer society that creates temptation through television and other media. But for those who persevere, resisting temptation only strengthens willpower.
There are many psychological hardships during this month for Muslim immigrants whose families are still back home in their native lands. Part of the culture shock of living in America is the absence of the atmosphere that takes over Muslim-majority countries during Ramadan. Absent from their new American lives during this month are the shorter workdays, the friendlier strangers, the intoxicating aromas that fill the air as the sun wanes and the sweet sound of the call to prayer that echoes throughout the streets from atop the minarets of the mosques, informing people that their fast is over for the day.
To ease this homesickness, many immigrants join American-born Muslims at mosques throughout the country to break bread at sundown and stand shoulder to shoulder together in prayer.
THERE ARE many negative stereotypes of Islam. It seems impossible for some people to separate any discussion about Muslims from the topic of terrorism. Such narrow-minded views foster only ignorance.
According to the results of a survey commissioned by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, 32 percent of respondents made negative comments when asked what they thought when they heard the word "Muslim." The poll also found that those who believe they are knowledgeable about Islam tend to have more positive attitudes about the faith and its adherents.
With the Jewish high holy days fresh in our memories from last month, with Ramadan in our midst and with Christmas just right around the corner, it is a wonderful time for all Americans to learn about the beliefs and traditions of their neighbors from other faiths.
(Editor's note: The writer is a political and media consultant and the author of A Muslim's Guide to American Politics and Government.)
Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services







 


October 15, 2004 Friday  


 Cleansing Before The Fasting






  






 Paradise rebounds

 
KUTA, Bali -- Two years after terrorist bombs killed 202 nightclubbing revelers in this party-hearty corner of paradise, Paddy's Pub, rebuilt and relocated after the blast, is going strong.
The pulsing bass of techno-funk filters into the street, mixing with the crystalline sounds of traditional gamelan music wafting from a shop across the street. A sign outside announces, "Drinking Contest Thursday Night!" It's just a warm-up to Friday's advertised "Back to Bali Party."
Visitors are returning to this archetypal paradise, a perennial on "best" lists in glossy travel magazines. In the past, it has annually lured up to 80,000 U.S. visitors halfway around the world to experience its sybaritic pleasures. August was the second-best ever for tourist arrivals. New luxury hotels and villas have opened. Still others have been renovated, further signaling Bali's tourism comeback.
 
But for much of the past two years, the al-Qaeda-linked blasts on Oct. 12, 2002, coupled with the outbreak of SARS elsewhere in Asia, decimated tourism. The bombings targeted visitors in this densely populated seaside town, a haunt of Australian and U.S. budget travelers. That such violence would occur on an island that is as regarded for its harmonious ways as its natural beauty shocked residents and visitors alike. Headlines around the world asked, "Paradise Lost?"
The short answer is no. The spirituality and artistry that imbue everyday life is unshaken. The majority of its 3 million residents are Hindu, making the island culturally distinct from the rest of predominantly Muslim Indonesia. Balinese Hindus believe the gods are everywhere; their daily offerings to them -- bits of rice, fruit and flowers arranged on leaves like three-dimensional still lifes -- are ubiquitous, from sidewalks to dashboards to shop counters. Terraced rice paddies plowed by oxen glimmer like emerald sculptures throughout the island. Worshipers dressed in their best sarongs congregate at temples (there are thousands of various types) on frequent holy days.
"The people are wonderful: happy, pleasing, generous. They're smart. They're curious. And they live a really rich life," says April Armstrong, an administrative law judge from Butte, Mont., over coffee at the sprawling Le Meridien hotel on the island's west coast. It is her fourth trip here in just two years, and each time, she hires the same $45-a-day driver for forays around the Delaware-size island.
"Everybody asks me why I come back," she says. "I really don't know. But there's something magical here." That word is often invoked by habitues struggling to characterize Bali's allure.
"People say there's something mystical and magical here," says Trent Munday, general manager of the new Uma Ubud hotel in the interior highlands. "There are so many layers to Bali: the architecture, the sense of community, the spirituality."
Shortly after arriving, Munday came to realize just how pervasive that spirituality is. When a number of glitches occurred as the hotel was nearing completion, a Balinese employee pointed out that appropriate blessings and offerings hadn't been made. The rituals were performed. The trouble ended.
"We've had blessings of the rooms. Blessings of the mountain bikes. Blessings of everything," Mundy says. "There are logical reasons for everything, and you can question (the effectiveness) of the blessings. But at the end of the day, they believe. So it's very powerful."
Just west of Ubud in the village of Sayan, John O'Sullivan, general manager of the island's two Four Seasons resorts, relaxes on the terrace of the Sayan hotel, perched treehouse-style high above the rugged Ayung River Gorge. He boasts that not once in his tenure has an event been rained out, thanks to the employment of professional Balinese "rain stoppers" who, it is believed, have the power to redirect storms. Though O'Sullivan doesn't claim to understand the phenomenon, he doesn't quibble with success.
Occupancy at the architecturally spectacular hotel, where rooms start at about $400 a night, dipped after the bombing but is gradually climbing. In August, 80% of the accommodations were filled vs. 49% a year before.
Posh hotels and gorgeous scenery notwithstanding, Bali's real draw is its people.
"Bali is a lot of things to a lot of people. The Australians come to surf. Others come for the spa resorts. Some come to find themselves," O'Sullivan says. "But the reason Bali affects (visitors) is because of the people."
Its beauty also lies in the small moments that make up a tourist's day. It's in walking down a darkened street and hearing the sounds of the flutes, metallophones and drums of the Indonesian gamelan orchestra emanating from a nearby temple. It's in the almost nightly performances in which elaborately costumed dancers portray the cosmic struggle between good and evil.
It's in the street vendor who notices a flaw in the bag a customer has selected and insists she take another. (To do otherwise would be bad karma.) It's in the massage therapist who goes overtime in a superb $8, hour-long treatment, then seems genuinely surprised to receive a tip. It's in the service at a warung, or refreshment stand, where a cold drink is presented along with a cool, scented cloth.
And it's in the way the Balinese, with their tightly knit social structure and respect for tradition, have deflected the more corrupting elements of tourism.
Not that the place is perfect. Traffic is treacherous. In populated areas, the island's narrow two-lane roads are clogged by box trucks, tour buses and legions of motorbikes -- sometimes carrying a family of four -- mingling in clouds of blue exhaust. Bali could benefit from an anti-litter campaign. And beer-and-testosterone-fueled tourists rule in Kuta.
The cognoscenti make tracks to the lush, hilly countryside and artisan villages around Ubud; to the upscale lodgings of Jimbaran; the solitude of east Bali; or the planned seaside tourist enclave of Nusa Dua in the south, where large Western-branded hotels line a wide, manicured boulevard.
But even tourists disdainful of Kuta's commercialism will come to the island's most densely populated tourist mecca. Its narrow streets are lined with budget hotels and eateries, and Western icons such as the Hard Rock Hotel, Starbucks and storefronts bearing high-end designer names that may or may not be selling the real thing.
Kuta is Bali's Tijuana. It's also Bali's Ground Zero. The Sari Club, once the hottest nightspot in a town of nightspots and the scene of most of the carnage, was leveled. It's gone but not forgotten. The lot where it stood is surrounded by an iron fence festooned with tinfoil wreaths, bouquets, messages and Xeroxed photos of the dead.
But if paradise wasn't lost after the bombings, some innocence was. Islanders are more watchful of outsiders. At better hotels, guards check the undercarriages of vehicles. At least one resort, the sleek new Conrad Bali, has a bomb-sniffing dog on staff. And at Paddy's Pub, the crowd trickling in for the Thursday night drinking contest casually submits to a metal-detecting wand.
Still, for the Balinese, life goes on.
"Culturally, the Bali bombing was finished quickly," says Conrad general manager Michael Burchett. "After feeling they were being punished, they made their offerings, said their prayers and moved on."
And nowhere is that more apparent than on Kuta Beach, where the sellers are once again out in force. A phalanx surrounds a tourist, variously offering jewelry, massages, sarongs and pedicures. The tourist throws off her shoes and sits for a shoulder massage. The women settle down alongside her, delivering such cheerful banter that it's hard to distinguish the hucksterism from the fellowship.
Suddenly, they're shaken by movement from deep within the sand.
"Earthquake, earthquake, earthquake!" They cry in unison. After the 5.5 tremor subsides, they begin to chant another word that, roughly translated, means "alive."
Then, as suddenly as it began, the drama is over. They return to their banter and negotiations. Their world has been rocked, but only temporarily. They've uttered their prayers and now they move on.
If you go...
State Department warnings against travel to Indonesia were issued even before the October 2002 Bali bombings (and have been in effect since), but visitors traditionally have regarded the predominantly Hindu island as removed from Indonesia's trouble spots.
Reflecting that notion, tourism has rebounded in the past year, though primarily from Asia and Australia. Still, for many U.S. visitors, the most daunting prospect of going to Bali isn't security; it's the 20-odd hour flight to get there.
Tour operators such as Asian Affair Holidays (800-742-3133; asianaffairholidays.com), Singapore Airlines' tour operator, bundle air and hotel. Sample deal: round-trip air, five nights at Le Meridien with breakfast, transfers and a day-long tour, good Jan. 6-March 31, is $998, per person, double, from Los Angeles; $1,098 from New York.
Where to stay: Bali remains a bargain, with some five-star hotels available in the $100-$150 range. On the ultra-luxe end, a master suite (with butler) at the acclaimed Begawan Giri near Ubud starts at $1,250 a night. Midrange hotels can be had for $40-$50, and budget digs go for $10 a night or less.
Among new lodgings: the Conrad Bali Resort (800-445-8667; conradhotels.com) near Nusa Dua, $95, through year's end. In upcountry Ubud, Singapore hotelier Christina Ong of COMO Hotels & Resorts recently opened the stylish boutique hotel Uma Ubud (011-62-361-972-448; como.bz). Introductory rates through 2004 start at $145. A number of luxury resorts are getting into the villa market. Among them is Ritz-Carlton, which will unveil 38 one-bedroom cliff villas Dec. 20 (reservations available Oct. 22, 800-241-3333). Rates start at $850.
Where to eat: Excellent food at reasonable prices is available throughout the island. Seminyak, north of Kuta and home to many ex-pats, has a glut of good restaurants including seaside Ku de Ta (entrees about $24) and La Lucciola (entrees about $10). Spice, Conrad Bali's new signature restaurant, is getting great reviews (entrees $11-$25). The Ubud area also has dozens of wonderful eateries. The artful contemporary fare at Mozaic draws raves (entrees $11--$15). Cafe Lotus, with its temple view and lotus pond, is a popular hangout, as is Ary's Warung across the street. For delicious entree salads (around $3) in sleek surroundings try Barandi.
Information: TheWeb site balidiscovery.com posts general information, news and deals. For independent and budget travelers, baliblog.com is useful.







 


October 13, 2004 Wednesday



 How to pursue democracy is basis of election

 
   Every year about this time there arrives on my desk a map from New York-based Freedom House depicting how freedom is faring around the world
"Free" and "partly free" countries are colored in green or yellow. "Not free" countries show up in purple. Predictably, North America and most of Latin America, as well as Europe, southern Africa, Australasia and much of Asia, look good. But a broad swath of Africa, through the Arab world and across into China and North Korea is in purple -- countries not yet free. 
The explosion of democracy is one of the most significant developments of our times and inevitably will continue. Who could not be moved by the weekend pictures of endless lines of Afghans voting for the first time -- despite allegations of fraud -- in their first presidential election? Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, is colored a "partly free" yellow on the Freedom House map, but in light of recent elections should soon move into the "green" free column. Russia, in spite of Vladimir Putin's attempts to turn back the clock, will in time move from "partly free" to "free," and China, despite its leaders' vain hopes of maintaining communist control over a population fast embracing a free enterprise economy, will one day emerge from the ranks of the "not free" to become at least "partly free." Even in benighted Africa there is hope. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman, has just won the Nobel Peace Prize as an "inspiration for everyone in Africa fighting for sustainable development, democracy and peace."
It is in the Muslim Middle East that the outlook is darkest. In Iraq, where a dictator guilty of enormous crimes against humanity has been removed, but where democracy's tender shoots are just being planted, the Bush administration places its hope in the emergence of ultimate freedom that could be an example to the backward and angry Arab world.
It is this hope, and particularly the manner in which it is to be realized, that has clearly set the candidates apart in the current debates underpinning the contest for the American presidency.
The report last week by Charles A. Duelfer, top U.S. inspector for Iraq, makes it clear that Iraq no longer had the weapons of mass destruction the Bush administration believed it had when it launched its invasion of Iraq. But former chief weapons inspector David Kay said the international intelligence from a variety of countries was unanimous at that time that the weapons did exist. While Kay says we now need better intelligence collection and more skeptical evaluation of it by politicians and government officials, he suggested to National Public Radio that had Al Gore been president at the time and confronted by that estimate he would have moved as determinedly against Saddam Hussein as did Bush.
Of course we do not know whether Gore would have done so, nor do we know, despite Sen. John Kerry's angry declaiming against Saddam Hussein at the time, whether he, if in the White House, would have been as tentative and cautious toward Iraq as he now says he would have been.
President Bush is unapologetic about moving on faulty weapons intelligence and sees the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as part of a militant, near-religious vision to bring liberty to the unfree nations of the world. In an analysis of Kerry's foreign policy views in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, writer Matt Bai says Bush in the first debate seemed "to be looking at the world from a much higher altitude." In Bush's view, "America is the world's great force for freedom, unsparing in its use of pre-emptive might and unstinting in its determination to stamp out tyranny and terrorism." Kerry, by contrast, "seemed to offer no grand thematic equivalent."
Kerry rejects the "premise of viral democracy, particularly when the virus is introduced at gunpoint." Says Kerry: "You can't impose it on people." The Times article suggests that if forced democracy is Bush's panacea for the world's ills, then Kerry's is diplomacy. "Kerry mentions the importance of cooperating with the world community so often that some of his strongest supporters wish he would ease up a bit." Joe Biden, perhaps Kerry's closest friend in the Senate, is quoted in the Times article as despairing: "When people hear multilateral, they think multimush."
From Bush: militant pursuit of democracy. From Kerry: a more complex approach to what he sees as a more complex world. A clear distinction. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He is a former editor of the , which syndicates this column. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com






  

 

October 9, 2004 



 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
Afghanistan gets ready for election
In advance of Afghanistan's first direct presidential election, Muslim clerics urged worshippers Friday to embrace democracy, election workers scurried to ready voting booths and 100,000 troops went on high alert across the country.
Security forces thwarted a massive truck bombing planned for today in the southern city of Kandahar. Three Pakistanis in the vehicle were arrested after a sniffer dog detected anti-tank mines and rockets hidden in the tires. Three rockets rattled the capital, Kabul, and there were reports of rocket attacks in other parts of the country. 
At a refugee camp polling site in neighboring Pakistan, where some 740,000 refugees are registered to vote in the Afghan election, armed men wounded one police officer in an attack just hours before the ballots were to be cast. Unidentified assailants hurled grenades and fired assault rifles at the polling station on the outskirts of Peshawar, police said.
Economy top issue as Australians vote
Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his Labor Party challenger were in a virtual dead heat as voting began today in parliamentary elections, with Australians focusing on the economy and social programs more than Howard's decision to send troops to Iraq.
France tightens embassies' security
France tightened security around its embassies after a bomb outside the Indonesian Embassy slightly injured nine people in a pre-dawn explosion that shattered neighborhood windows and puzzled police. It was the first such bombing in nearly a decade in Paris and the first known attack since 1975 on Indonesian interests outside that country --- the world's most populous Muslim nation.
U.N. votes to press war on terrorism
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to step up the global campaign against terrorism, calling on all nations to prosecute or extradite anyone supporting, financing or participating in terrorist acts. The 15-0 vote culminated weeks of negotiations by Russia, which introduced the resolution after militants staged a series of attacks there.
Earthquakes strike in Iran, Philippines
An earthquake of magnitude 5.8 shook buildings in northeast Iran, injuring 12 people, state radio reported. An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 shook Manila, swaying high rises and knocking out power over a wide area. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
Cambodia begins search for new king
Cambodian lawmakers approved legislation to create a search panel that will replace King Norodom Sihanouk, who threw his country into turmoil when he announced he will step down because of poor health. A vote of five out of the nine members is required to approve the new king, and the successor must be chosen within a period of seven days "after the king dies, retires or abdicates," according to a draft of the legislation.
South Korea gets OK on nuclear work
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said that South Korea's recently disclosed work with uranium and plutonium did not appear to be part of a weapons program, describing it as "simply two scientific experiments on a small scale."
Pope says Christians should display faith
Pope John Paul II exhorted Christians to display signs of their faith more forcefully, contending the practice neither infringes on separation of church and state nor breeds intolerance. His comments appeared to be a clear reference to raging debates over laws such as France's recent ban on wearing Islamic headscarves, Jewish skullcaps or large Christian crosses in schools.







 


October 9, 2004 Saturday  




 THE WORLD 

 
Four Palestinians diein Israeli offensive
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Soldiers shot and killed a 10-year-old Palestinian girl and three other Palestinians died in missile strikes Friday during Israel's massive offensive into the northern Gaza Strip, witnesses and hospital officials said.
The deaths brought to 89 the number of Palestinians killed since Israel began the offensive Sept. 29 to stop Palestinian militants from launching homemade rockets into Israel. Almost half of the dead were civilians and 18 of them were younger than 17. 
The latest casualty came late Friday as an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at militants planting an explosive device in the Jebaliya refugee camp, a focal point of the offensive, the army said.
Witnesses said the blast went off near a crowd of people gathered in the street, killing one man and severely wounding another. The men were dressed in civilian clothes and were not armed, medics said.
Earlier, 10-year-old Samah Samir Nassar was shot in the stomach and the left leg as she stood on the street in front of her home.
Bomb boosts security in France
PARIS - France tightened security around its embassies Friday after a bomb outside the Indonesian Embassy slightly injured nine people in a pre-dawn explosion that shattered neighborhood windows and puzzled police.
It was the first such bombing in nearly a decade in Paris and the first known attack since 1975 on Indonesian interests outside that country, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Australia to decide on leader
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - Prime Minister John Howard and his Labor Party challenger were in a virtual dead heat as voting began today in parliamentary elections, with Australians focusing on the economy and social programs more than Mr. Howard's decision to send troops to Iraq.
Mr. Howard is a strong U.S. ally who sent 2,000 troops to Iraq last year despite protests.
Labor Party leader Mark Latham says he will bring the troops home by Christmas if elected today. He vowed to focus Australian anti-terrorism efforts closer to home.
In other news
RUSSIAN PROSECUTORS OPENED a criminal negligence case against three top-ranking police officers in the southern region of Ingushetia in connection with the seizure last month of more than 1,000 hostages in a school in neighboring Beslan, police said Friday.
THE U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL voted unanimously Friday to step up the global campaign against terrorism, calling on all nations to prosecute or extradite anyone supporting, financing or participating in terrorist acts.
POPE JOHN PAUL II EXHORTED Christians on Friday to display signs of their faith more forcefully, contending the practice neither infringes on separation of church and state nor breeds intolerance. His comments appeared to be a clear reference to raging debates over bans on Islamic headscarves.
AN EARTHQUAKE WITH a magnitude of 6.4 shook Manila on Friday night, swaying high rises, knocking out power and sending frightened residents into the streets. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
- Edited from wire reportsby Jennifer Bishop









October 9, 2004 Saturday  

 News in brief

 
HOUSE DEMOCRATS SEEK INVESTIGATION OF DELAY
  WASHINGTON - Democrats stepped up their attack on Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Friday, forcing the full House to consider whether to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Texas Republican's conduct.
  Republicans beat back the effort initiated by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, defeating the call for a special counsel 210-182 with five members voting present. 
  The vote to table Pelosi's motion was decided along party lines. The five Democrats who voted present included four who serve on the House ethics panel.
  The surprise move, coming in the closing days of the congressional session, left Republicans scrambling to deal with the Democrats' attempt to put a spotlight on DeLay's ethics troubles.
  In a statement after the vote, DeLay called Pelosi's resolution "a political smear."
U.S. OFFICIALS: NO TERROR THREAT LINKED TO DISK
  WASHINGTON - Federal officials said Friday there is no terrorist connection to a computer disk found in Iraq that contained information about schools in six states.
  The disk was made by an unidentified Iraqi man who was doing research and had no connections to al-Qaida or the Iraqi insurgents battling U.S. forces, according to the FBI. The man did have links to the Baath Party that ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein, but that's true of many former government officials and community leaders.
  Some material on the disk appeared to be randomly downloaded from a publicly accessible Education Department Web site and included such things as manuals on workplace safety, crisis management studies, student codes of conduct and building security diagrams. It also contained an Education  Department report on school crisis planning that was published in May 2003.
  "It's not about schools, it's about policy," said FBI Agent William Evanina, spokesman for the FBI field office in Newark, N.J. "There's no terrorism threat to these schools."
BUSH CAMPAIGN ASKED TO STOP USING 'OLYMPICS'
  DENVER - President Bush's campaign failed to respond Friday to a request from the U.S. Olympic Committee to shut down a John Kerry parody on its Web site that uses the word "Olympics."
  The whimsical cartoon game, "John Kerry's Flip Flop Olympics," asks players to guess Kerry's stances on issues. A "judging panel" consisting of  Howard Dean and Sens. Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy gives players a score based on their guesses.
  USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said the use of the word "Olympics" is barred under a federal law, the Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act, that makes the USOC the only entity in the United States authorized to use Olympic marks and terms.
STATE WORKER MOWS DOWN SEEDLINGS IN OHIO
  PERRYSBURG, Ohio - It was a clear-cut error: A state worker mowed down 28,000 young trees that had been planted as part of a $33,000 highway beautification project.
  The only thing left behind were signs that read "Do not mow or spray."
  "Shame on us. We wasted all that effort," Joe Rutherford, a spokesman with the Ohio Transportation Department, said Friday.
  The oaks, ash, birches, maples and sycamores were planted in 2002 and 2003 at the interchange of Interstate 75 and I-475 near this Toledo suburb.   The city, county and state paid for the seedlings, and volunteers put in more than 700 hours planting them.
MASTER MAPMAKERS TAKE NEW LOOK AT WORLD
  WASHINGTON - From lines scratched in ancient dirt to Medieval charts with drawings of monsters in unknown parts of the ocean to modern computer printouts, maps have served a vital role throughout human history.
  Now, one of the nation's most venerable mapmakers, the National   Geographic Society, is updating its massive Atlas of the World.
  "We live in an international age," Allen Carroll, chief cartographer for the society, said, adding that Americans have a responsibility to understand the world around them.
  The eighth edition of the classic volume goes on sale Oct. 14, featuring more than 15,000 changes and updates from the last version.
  It's a hefty book - 416 pages and seven pounds - with a price to match, $165.
INDONESIAN EMBASSY IN PARIS BOMBED; 9 HURT
  PARIS - France tightened security around its embassies Friday after a bomb outside the Indonesian Embassy slightly injured nine people in a pre-dawn explosion that shattered neighborhood windows and puzzled police.
  It was the first such bombing in nearly a decade in Paris and the first known attack since 1975 on Indonesian interests outside that country - the world's most populous Muslim nation.
  - From wire reports






October 9, 2004 Saturday 



 NATION & WORLD BRIEFING

 
Nuclear sludge to stay put
WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers agreed Friday to allow tons of radioactive sludge from Cold War bomb-making to be left in underground tanks at federal facilities in South Carolina and Idaho instead of being shipped to a central repository. The provision was put into a $447 billion defense bill during negotiations completed Friday. The House took up the measure and was expected to approve it. The legislation is certain to clear Congress before it adjourns for the elections. The measure reclassifies the sludge from high level to incidental, a category that means it can be left in the tanks and combined with concrete grout. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the reclassification will allow his department "to move forward with safe and sensible environmental cleanup" of the tanks, which hold millions of gallons of waste from decades of nuclear weapons reprocessing activities.
FBI: Disk found in Iraq no threat to schools 
WASHINGTON -- Federal officials said Friday there is no terrorist connection to a computer disk found in Iraq that contained information about schools in six states. The disk was made by an unidentified Iraqi man who was doing research and had no connections to al-Qaida, according to the FBI. The material on the disk appeared to be randomly downloaded from a publicly accessible Education Department Web site. "It's not about schools, it's about policy," said FBI Agent William Evanina, spokesman for the FBI in Newark, N.J. "There's no terrorism threat to these schools." The school districts are in California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey and Oregon.
Head of OAS quits amid accusations
WASHINGTON -- The head of the Organization of American States resigned Friday, just two weeks into his tenure, after allegations that he participated in a bribery scandal involving a French telephone company. Secretary-General Miguel Angel Rodriguez, from Costa Rica, disclosed his resignation in a letter read to a special session of the OAS permanent council. The resignation takes effect on Oct. 15. The first allegations of wrongdoing against Rodriguez surfaced Sept. 30 and prompted a demand for his resignation by President Abel Pacheco of Costa Rica. Rodriguez did not attend the session, and OAS officials were uncertain of his whereabouts. He also was expected on the Caribbean island of Grenada to view its recent hurricane damage but did not show up.
FluMist maker says it will double doses
COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- The maker of FluMist, a relatively new nasal flu vaccine, said Friday it would nearly double the number of doses it makes to help meet demand caused by a shortage of flu shots. The inhaled vaccine is an option for people who do not fall into the high-risk groups who are targeted for the nation's limited supply of flu shots. FluMist must be given by a health care professional and is approved only for healthy people ages 5-49. Last year, the nasal vaccine cost two to three times more than the flu shot. But on Friday, an East Coast supermarket chain quoted a price that is more competitive with the shot. The nasal vaccine is made with a weakened live virus.
Documents disclose no-fly list criteria
SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. government has no "hard and fast" rules for deciding who gets put on the secret no-fly list of terror suspects barred from boarding airliners, the Transportation Security Administration said in court papers Friday. The 301 pages of edited documents, filed in federal court in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union, also said the list grew from 16 names the day of the Sept. 11 attacks to 594 by mid-December 2001. The government did not reveal how many people are currently barred from flying. But the government disclosed criteria it uses to update the list. One is whether various intelligence agencies view an individual as a "potential threat to U.S. civil aviation." The other is whether the agency requesting someone be put on a list has provided enough information to identify the person to be flagged at the check-in counter.
French tightening security after blast
PARIS -- France tightened security around its embassies Friday after a bomb outside the Indonesian Embassy slightly injured nine people in a pre-dawn explosion that shattered neighborhood windows and puzzled police. It was the first such bombing in nearly a decade in Paris and the first known attack since 1975 on Indonesian interests outside that country -- the world's most populous Muslim nation. French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said a "bomb of medium strength" exploded outside the embassy in Paris' exclusive 16th district, not far from the Eiffel Tower. The 5 a.m. blast ripped chunks of stone facade from an embassy wall, damaged cars and left a small crater in front of the building. The injured were all hit by flying glass. Security at diplomatic missions and other sensitive sites in the French capital was being stepped up, the Interior Ministry said. Investigators were treating with deep skepticism an e-mailed claim of responsibility from senders who called themselves the Armed French Islamic Front.
Minute-long quake rattles Manila
MANILA, Philippines -- An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 shook Manila on Friday night, swaying high rises, knocking out power over a wide area and sending frightened residents into the streets. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. The shaking began at 10:36 p.m. and lasted for more than a minute. The epicenter of the quake was on Mindoro island, 55 miles south-southwest of Manila. The U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado said on its Web site the magnitude was 6.4 at a depth of about 73 miles. A magnitude 6 quake can cause severe damage, but the depth appeared to have eased the effect of Friday's temblor.
Escaped inmate, guard found at motel
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- An escaped Tennessee inmate was captured at a Texas motel Friday along with the female guard accused of giving him a uniform and helping him slip away from a prison hospital six days earlier. The married guard was just three weeks away from her 24th wedding anniversary when she ran off with inmate Edward McDaniel, who was serving a 20-year attempted-murder sentence for shooting a deputy five times in the leg in 1996. Family members suspected that guard Vickie Sanford, 51, had a lover on the inside when she got a new tattoo and started playing a tape of an inmate singing country songs. Authorities said that the singer was McDaniel, 37, and that the "Irish Pride" tattoo matched one of his. Sanford was working her Saturday shift when she talked another guard -- her own son-in-law -- into giving her a uniform, investigators said. McDaniel put it on and walked out. The son-in-law, 28-year-old Michael Moize, was jailed in Nashville.





October 9, 2004 Saturday 



 NATION / WORLD DIGEST

 
WASHINGTON Democrats turn up heat on DeLay
Democrats stepped up their attack on Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Friday, forcing the full House to consider whether to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Texas Republican's conduct.
Republicans beat back the effort initiated by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, defeating the call for a special counsel 210-182 with five members voting present. The vote to table Pelosi's motion was decided along party lines. The five Democrats who voted present included four who serve on the House ethics panel. 
DeLay received his second admonishment in six days from the House ethics committee earlier in the week. The panel said DeLay had created the appearance of linking political donations to a legislative favor, and in another questionable action, improperly got the Federal Aviation Administration to intervene in a Texas political dispute.
The previous week, the ethics committee chastised DeLay for offering to support the House candidacy of Michigan Republican Rep. Nick Smith's son in return for the lawmaker's vote for a Medicare prescription drug benefit.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. Escaped inmate, guard are captured at motel
An escaped Tennessee inmate was captured at a motel in Texas Friday along with the female guard accused of giving him a uniform and helping him slip away from a prison hospital six days earlier.
The married guard was just three weeks away from her 24th wedding anniversary when she ran off with inmate Edward McDaniel, who was serving a 20-year attempted-murder sentence for shooting a deputy five times in the leg in 1996.
Authorities would not say if the two were having an affair, but family members suspected that guard Vickie Sanford, 51, had a lover on the inside when she got a new tattoo and started playing a tape of an inmate singing country songs. Authorities said that the singer was McDaniel, 37, and that the "Irish Pride" tattoo matched one of his.
Police in El Paso, Texas, arrested the pair shortly after midnight.
WASHINGTON Half of those polled say Bush wants draft
In spite of denials by President George W. Bush's administration, half of young Americans believe Bush wants to reinstate the military draft, a national poll suggests.
The National Annenberg Election Survey found that 51 percent of adults age 18 to 29 believe Bush wants to reinstate the draft. Eight percent said Kerry supported bringing back the draft, and 7 percent said both wanted to. A fourth of those polled said neither candidate favored the idea.
Both Bush and Kerry say they do not support a renewed military draft. Earlier this week, the House defeated a bill paving the way to a draft 402-2. House Republicans have sought to quash the persistent Internet rumor that the president wants to reinstate the draft if re-elected while Democrats have fanned the flames on the rumor.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. Boy died from spider bite, official rules
A 5-year-old boy's death was the result of a bite by a poisonous brown recluse spider, the state medical examiner ruled. Nicholas Robinson was bitten while playing outside his home about 70 miles south of Nashville on July 29.
The child was taken to a doctor, who determined he was suffering from a virus rather than a bite. However, the child that night was rushed to a hospital, where his symptoms included hypersalivation, sweating and neurological problems before he died, according to the medical examiner's report, completed Thursday.
The brown recluse is one of two common spiders in the United States -- the other is the black widow -- that are considered poisonous, the National Institutes of Health said. The bite can cause a rash, swelling and flulike symptoms and in rare cases, kidney failure, seizures and coma.
MIAMI Briton is sentenced in murder plot
A British mercenary was sentenced to nearly three years in prison Friday for plotting to buy a Vietnam-era attack jet to kill Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the early 1990s.
David Tomkins, 64, pleaded guilty in June.
In 1991, Tomkins met an undercover U.S. customs agent pretending to be an arms dealer. The former soldier of fortune said he was looking to buy a plane able to drop bombs, and he made a $25,000 down payment on a $270,000 Cessna A-37B Dragonfly. Prosecutors said Tomkins was acting on behalf of the Cali drug cartel, the rival to Escobar's Medellin cartel.
AUSTRALIA Prime minister, rival are neck and neck
Prime Minister John Howard and his Labor Party challenger were in a virtual dead heat as voting began today in parliamentary elections. Most Australians were focusing on the economy and social programs more than Howard's decision to send troops to Iraq.
Howard is a strong U.S. ally who sent 2,000 troops to Iraq last year despite protests that portrayed him as a lackey of President George W. Bush. Australia now has 900 military personnel in and around Iraq, though none in combat roles. No Australian soldiers have been killed.
The prime minister has promised to keep Australian troops in Iraq until their work is completed. Labor Party leader Mark Latham says he will bring the troops home by Christmas if elected. He promised to focus Australian anti-terrorism efforts closer to home.
VATICAN Pope urges Christians to display faith symbols
Pope John Paul II exhorted Christians on Friday to display signs of their faith more forcefully, contending the practice neither infringes on separation of church and state nor breeds intolerance.
His comments appeared to be a clear reference to raging debates over laws such as France's recent ban on wearing Islamic headscarves, Jewish skull caps or large Christian crosses in schools.
In Italy, a Muslim activist's efforts last year to remove crucifixes from public school classrooms stirred widespread resentment in the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country.
FRANCE Security is tightened around embassies
France tightened security around its embassies Friday after a bomb outside the Indonesian Embassy slightly injured nine people in a pre-dawn explosion that shattered neighborhood windows and puzzled police.
It was the first such bombing in nearly a decade in Paris and the first known attack since 1975 on Indonesian interests outside that country -- the world's most populous Muslim nation.
French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said a "bomb of medium strength" exploded outside the embassy in Paris' exclusive 16th district, not far from the Eiffel Tower. The 5 a.m. blast ripped chunks of stone facade from an embassy wall, damaged cars and left a small crater in front of the building.







 


October 6, 2004 Wednesday



 Indonesia could set example for Arab lands

 
   While Iraq remains the controversial center of debate about the war against terrorism, Indonesia under its new leader is quietly emerging as a potentially significant counter to Islamic extremism.
Though the 3,000-mile-long Indonesian archipelago is the fourth most populous nation in the world, and the world's largest Muslim country, it is not routinely in the headlines of Western newspapers, or on TV screens in America or Europe. While correspondents stationed in other Asian capitals "parachute" in for occasionally breaking news, many major foreign news organizations have not generally thought the capital of Jakarta important enough to warrant resident staff coverage.
But Indonesia, a non-Arab country whose observance of Islam is mostly more moderate than the extremism displayed in some Middle Eastern countries, could, over time, and along with other non-Arab Muslim countries like Pakistan and Turkey, offer a constructive counter-weight and democratic example to those Muslim Arab lands imprisoned by backwardness and enslaved by bitterness. 
Last month Indonesians completed a complex new electoral process, capped by their first direct presidential election, moving their country impressively down the road to democracy, thus ending years of autocracy and turmoil.
Their new president is a former general, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose name is a little unusual in a country where many Indonesians bear only one name ("Sukarno, "Suharto"). Many of my Indonesian friends arriving in the United States for the first time have had trying experiences attempting to open bank accounts or get driving licenses or undergoing similar procedures at the hands of petty bureaucrats who say they just can't be legal here without a first and last name. In his own country, many Indonesians shorthand their new president's name by calling him "SBY," but henceforth in this column he will be known as Mr. Yudhoyono, the style apparently adopted by much of the Western media.
You will be hearing much more about President Yudhoyono, because he is widely predicted to be intent on boosting Indonesia's laggard economy, cracking down on corruption, reassuring foreign investors, slashing unemployment, and taking a tougher stand on terrorism.
That latter goal is of course something attractive to the United States, which is concerned about the activity of al-Qaida cells, and al-Qaida-linked terrorist cells, in Southeast Asia. Indonesia has had its own violent experience recently at the hands of such terrorists.
Yudhoyono is in many respects a president congenial to Washington. He has had some six different educational experiences in the United States, five of them military and one civilian. He is said by some American military men to be something of a "poster boy" for the International Military Education and Training Program, currently suspended for Indonesia, which brought foreign military officers to the United States for training. He has also undergone jungle warfare training in Panama.
But though there have been strong ties in the past between Indonesian and American military officers, and Yudhoyono might seek to restore them, Indonesians are proudly nationalistic. This nationalism, coupled with skepticism about U.S. actions in Iraq, and a perception among some Indonesians that the United States is anti-Muslim, make it impolitic for Yudhoyono to be perceived as an agent of American foreign policy. If he is to be tougher than his predecessor, Megawati Sukarnoputri, on terrorism, he must do so, because it is a threat to his own people, and a gathering scourge in neighboring Southeast Asian countries. He must be seen as taking anti-terrorism steps in concert with those of neighboring countries like Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, rather than acting at the behest of the United States.
Thus we should not expect President Yudhoyono to be clamoring for an early visit to Washington. More politic would be visits to Beijing or Tokyo.
In his earlier role as security minister in Megawati's administration, Yudhoyono was outspoken on the threat of terrorism, but the radical Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah, which Indonesian police claim is responsible for acts of terrorism, is still not yet officially outlawed and Yudhoyono does rely on the support of a number of strongly Islamic political factions.
The new president must also deal with rivalries between the police and his own old army colleagues who may be hoping for perks from on high, even though Yudhoyono has made clear his view that the army, long influential in Indonesian politics, should curb its role in civilian affairs.
Though challenges abound, Indonesia now seems headed in a direction which refutes the fallacy that Islam and democracy are incompatible. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He is a former editor of the , which syndicates this column. In 1967, he won the Pulitzer prize for his coverage of Indonesia. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com







 



October 5, 2004 Tuesday  




 Vote for Mom? Candidate Says She's Just the Ticket

 
As  an endless procession of Afghans passes through the grim Soviet-era office of Masooda Jalal, all apparently enthusiastic about electing her the next president of Afghanistan, there are strange echoes in her responses of familiar American political themes. 
She stresses her political independence above all else (echoes of Ralph Nader?), claiming to have no dealings with the political big dogs, the warlords and the United States,  jockeying for power in the elections that will be held Saturday. And as the only woman  in the field of 18 candidates, and decidedly an underdog, Jalal has  an approach to building a viable candidacy that is all about networking -- tell your friends, tell your family, tell everyone in your village to vote for the woman -- that feels almost like a low-tech, oral-culture version of Howard Dean's Internet insurgency.  
Foreigners who have come to Afghanistan to observe the campaign have noted, and even complained, that there doesn't seem to be much Western-style electioneering going on. Security concerns, plus the tribalization of Afghan politics, mean that most candidates stick to their home base. The familiar markers of American political activity -- advertising wars on the airwaves, orchestrated rallies and debates -- are minimal or absent. Except for colorful posters plastered all over Kabul -- Jalal's show a woman in traditional, even old-fashioned dress, holding a Koran, or with her hands cupped in front of her in the traditional gesture of prayer -- there are few overt signs of Afghanistan's first national elections. 
But a morning spent with Jalal suggests that she, at least, is making a strength of what might appear to outsiders as weakness. She and her supporters say that the constant stream of people visiting this morning is the mark of a candidate whose popularity is rising so fast that people come voluntarily to give her their acclamation. And as for being a woman in a very traditional society that has, in the days of the Taliban especially, forced women into subservience, that, too, is being turned to advantage. 
"Try to convince your relatives, neighbors, friends, young people, and all the people you say hello to," she says, urging a young man to help find her votes. If he can convince them, he says, she will have the support of the 400 people who work for him. She tells him exactly what to say: "The expression you should use is: Vote for the mother." 
Vote for the mother. The photograph of  Jalal used in her posters makes her look positively matronly, and this morning, she is stressing maternal femininity as an alternative to the warlords, ethnic panderers and puppet figures  she is running against. Motherhood is generosity, it is frugality, it is fairness, it is healing. Mothers love all their children, equally, and Afghanistan, she says, desperately needs a leader who will fight for the interests of all against the depredations of fierce partisanship. 
"The mother thinks always about her children, never about herself," says Dauod Noori, a teacher at Kabul University, who is one of Jalal's supporters. Although women have risen to top office in Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh, Noori (who teaches political history) points out that they have all gotten there on the coattails of men, or because of strong family connections. Jalal, he says, is different, a woman with no connections, no money, and only the strength of her reputation -- she is a doctor who stayed and worked, despite the hardship and peril, during the Taliban regime -- to recommend her to the people. 
"She is the only candidate who has been able to achieve a personal relation with voters," says Nasrine Gross, a women's rights activist and teacher at Kabul University. "She is making herself a member of the voter's family, and she hardly ever says 'I' or 'me.' She says 'vote for your sister.' " 
Gross, who observes that Jalal has not positioned herself as "a women's issues candidate," traces the effectiveness of the mother/sister message to the particular virtues associated with women in Afghan Islam: sacrifice, selflessness, care-giving. 
To the journalists who visit her office, she stresses her independence, her professionalism, her desire to disarm the warlords and lead Afghanistan to peace. She speaks English well, and stays tenaciously on message. Asked about what distinguishes her from Hamid Karzai, the interim president and the candidate everyone seems to think will win handily, she is blunt. 
"He's with the warlords, I'm with the people," she says. "I am independent, he's not. I am not owing anything to the warlords. He is owing the warlords." 
And what makes her think she could curb the warlords' power? 
"If I get the success, I will disarm them," she says, with a tone that falls somewhere between impatience and fatigue with stating the obvious. This may not be a candidate blithely promising to do what her predecessor found impossible, but the mark of a fundamentally different worldview than her male counterparts have brought to Afghan politics. Whereas male leaders have fought for dominance, or failing that, internecine alliances that momentarily quell the disruptive power of ethnic and regional rivalry, Jalal's rhetoric suggests that the peace that has eluded men might be had through the simple, sentimental, moral authority of a mother figure. As Noori says, the mother "has a special and holy place in the heart of the people," but the mother is also a woman, which, paradoxically, puts her both on the inside and the outside of male-dominated society. 
This may be a very good place for a politician to be. The future Afghan president must be able to make a deep, emotional claim to being an Afghan, with all the collective suffering and longstanding resentment of outsider intrusion that comes with that identity. But outsiders can offer a clean break with the past, and a catharsis that might allow the country to go in a new direction. Jalal often uses the phrase "create a history" or "make a great history" for  women, suggesting that a vote for her is not just a vote for her platform -- peace, stability, security, rebuilding -- but for a new chapter in the country's history. 
Jalal is a remarkably disciplined politician. To Western journalists, she talks of one set of problems (disarmament and drug production) and defends her vice presidential picks as the result of a disinterested, rigorous vetting process; to Afghan village leaders coming for an all-important bit of basic face time, Mom is kindly assertive. Go back to your villages. Go to the mosques and talk to the men. Tell your family and acquaintances to vote for me. Find the young men where they gather and urge them to think of me as their mother. Tell women not to be timid, to express support for their sister. When Jalal is handed a cell phone, and placed on the line with another woman doctor who is supporting her, the politician moves effortlessly into a new set of metaphors. 
"As a doctor, you give advice to the people for their healthiness," she says. "So now you have the responsibility to tell them that they should make a healthy decision as well." 
Everyone else in the room is a man, some of them with the creased and leathery skin of people who have spent years in the sun. Some are in neatly cut suits,  others in traditional clothing accented by expensive-looking gold watches. One man leaves with a roll of campaign posters tied up with the long scarf that he came in wearing on his head. 
Throughout a barrage of interviews and meetings, Jalal never flags. Her posture, and gestures, suggest a velvet way of running a room. Near the end of a conversation with two men who go by single names, Zarmai and Nasrullah, she signs her name to a form that authorizes them to represent her and requests that no one interfere with their efforts. The casual but confidently bureaucratic way she signs the forms and hands them to the men, and the respectful way they take the papers, fold them and place them in their pockets, suggests that there is more going on in the relation between the sexes than the generalized sense of pervasive oppression and misogyny that outsiders bring to the picture. 
Outside Jalal's office, Zarmai explains why he came to Kabul to meet her. 
"Today we have the idea that we could support her because she is a hero: the only woman," he says. "And she's independent." 
A video by washingtonpost.com's Travis Fox of Afghan presidential candidate Masooda Jalal receiving visitors in her office can be found at www.washingtonpost.com/world. 






  
  


October 4, 2004, Monday



 MILITANTS FORM SPLINTER GROUP IN SOUTHEAST ASIA







 


October 3, 2004 Sunday



 World datelines

 
Afghanistan
KABUL -- Afghan intelligence agents backed by international peacekeepers arrested 25 people allegedly linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida in an early morning raid in eastern Kabul Saturday, a spokesman for the peacekeepers said.
Australia
MELBOURNE -- The government will press on with a child pornography crackdown despite the suicides of four people being investigated in the operation, an official said Saturday. Justice Minister Chris Ellison said the deaths were regrettable but vowed they would not hinder Australia's biggest crackdown on child porn, an operation that he said would likely lead to 500 arrests. 
Britain
LONDON -- Looking relaxed, Prime Minister Tony Blair left for his country residence Saturday to spend the weekend recovering from an operation to correct an irregular heartbeat, his office said.
China
BEIJING -- Beijing saw double on Saturday as the Chinese capital opened its first festival for twins, attracting hundreds of lookalike siblings -- a rare sight in a society where birth control rules limit most urban families to one child.
Denmark
COPENHAGEN -- Denmark is joining Russia and Canada to see if it can lay a claim to the North Pole -- and whatever natural riches may lie beneath it.
Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Haitians demanding the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide hurled stones and fired shots in the air Saturday as the death toll from a surge of violence in the Haitian capital rose to 14. Three pro-Aristide politicians, meanwhile, barricaded themselves in a radio station for six hours before surrendering to police, denying involvement in the clashes.
Indonesia
JAKARTA -- An Islamic militant group claiming to have kidnapped two Indonesian women in Iraq demanded the release of a jailed Indonesian cleric, but the cleric Saturday refused to be freed in an exchange, saying hostage-taking is not in keeping with Islam.
Lebanon
BEIRUT -- A military prosecutor has charged 35 Arab nationals and alleged members of an al-Qaida-linked terror group with plotting to bomb foreign targets in Lebanon, including the Italian and Ukrainian diplomatic missions, judicial officials said Saturday. But only nine of the 35 defendants are in police custody, the officials said on condition of anonymity. The remaining suspects, including Lebanese, Saudis, Palestinians and Syrians, remain at large.
Mexico
TIJUANA -- A group of Mexicans marched solemnly for miles along a road lined with white crosses to mark the 10 years since the United States launched a border crackdown they say has contributed to the deaths of thousands of migrants.
Nigeria
ABUJA -- A militia leader who threatened "full-scale" war in this country's oil-rich Niger Delta made a triumphant return to his southern stronghold on Saturday, one day after making a tentative deal in the capital to disarm his fighters.
Romania
BUCHAREST -- Former Prime Minister Theodor Stolojan announced Saturday that he has withdrawn from Romania's presidential election because of poor health.
South Korea
SEOUL -- South Korea boosted security around air and sea ports and its diplomatic missions overseas Saturday after an audiotape attributed to al-Qaida urged Muslim youths to attack the United States and its allies, including South Korea.
Vatican
VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican's top official for family issues decried as a "sad step" Saturday the Spanish government's proposal to allow homosexuals to marry and adopt children. The remarks on Vatican Radio by Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, kept up Pope John Paul II's campaign against gay marriage. Spain's Cabinet proposed the measure Friday despite opposition by the influential Roman Catholic Church.
VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II denounced kidnappers for using human beings as bargaining chips, and said Saturday that journalists were paying a heavy price in their work during conflicts.







 



October 3, 2004 Sunday  




 U.S., Iraqi Forces Control Samarra; 
Sporadic Fighting Continues After Major Offensive North of Baghdad

 
U.S. and Iraqi forces took control of the central Iraqi city of Samarra on Saturday but engaged in sporadic clashes with insurgents who had dispersed into the narrowest of its closely packed streets to continue fighting in small bands. 
Iraqi officials used the apparent victory as an opportunity to warn resistance fighters who control or frequently destabilize other cities in central and northern Iraq and harass U.S. and Iraqi patrols on the roads between them. 
"This is the first step in operations to take back lawless areas," Interior Minister Falah Naqib, a native of Samarra, told reporters at city hall, which was recaptured by U.S. and Iraqi troops, news services reported. "The Iraqi government is moving from a defense position to an offensive position to regain control over all of Iraq.  
"We cleaned up the city from all the bad guys and terrorists," Naqib said. 
"It is over in Samarra," Hazim Shalan, the Iraqi defense minister, announced on al-Arabiya, a pan-Arab satellite news network. 
U.S. commanders estimated that 125 insurgents had been killed in the fighting, and hospitals in the area reported receiving more than 80 bodies, including an unknown number of civilians. 
But as tank and machine-gun fire continued after dusk, residents said many insurgents had simply scattered. 
One resident with ties to the resistance said fighters learned early in the battle not to gather in groups, which had made inviting targets for U.S. combat aircraft circling over the city, about 65 miles north of Baghdad. 
 "Concerning the movement of the mujaheddin, they take the small streets to attack. They don't move like before. They used to move in groups, but now they don't," the resident said by satellite telephone, speaking on condition that he be identified only as Hamad. 
"All the streets are empty. It is difficult for the people to take the killed and wounded to the hospitals and cemeteries," he said, adding that many people are being buried in yards. 
Army Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, which sent 3,000 soldiers into the city Thursday night, said: "This is great news for the people of Samarra, 200,000 people who have been held captive, hostage if you will, by just a couple of hundred thugs." 
The 1st Infantry Division, which lost one soldier in two days of battle, was followed into the city by 2,000 Iraqi forces, most of them freshly trained guardsmen, commandos and police. U.S. and Iraqi officials said real success would come only if the Iraqis managed to hold the peace when the armored U.S. forces withdraw. Samarra fell into insurgent hands this summer when its police force collapsed. 
Batiste, who spoke to a CNN crew accompanying his division, praised the Iraqi forces. Specially trained Iraqi units captured two religious sites in the city without suffering any casualties. 
 "The Iraqi security forces really handled themselves well," Batiste said. "They're getting better and better trained, better and better equipped. It ought to give us a lot of confidence." 
Iraqi officials have said that, in order to allow orderly elections to take place across Iraq in January, the offensive for Samarra would be repeated in at least three other urban battlegrounds held by insurgents. Each saw violence this weekend. 
In Ramadi, capital of the vast Anbar province 60 miles west of Baghdad, an explosion ripped through a newly renovated building that "was to be a symbolic centerpiece" of the city's renewal, a U.S. military statement said. A Marine patrol shot and killed a man who apparently set off the charge in the Ramadi Agricultural Center on Friday. 
In Fallujah, 35 miles west of the capital, U.S. combat aircraft on Saturday bombed a building that officials said housed foreign fighters and local insurgents who have controlled the city since April. Intelligence reports said 10 to 15  men were conducting military training in the building, which is on the outskirts of the city, the U.S. military said. 
 The strike killed five foreign fighters -- four Saudis and a Syrian -- residents said. The concussion also brought down the roof of a house next door, killing four women and a teenage boy, residents said. 
Residents also said an airstrike late Friday killed six members of a family and two overnight guests. Neighbors said the head of the household, Hamad Hdaib Mohammedi, was well known for his opposition to the insurgents. Television footage showed the dust-covered body of a small girl being pulled from the rubble of Mohammedi's home. 
Fifteen minutes after the strike, U.S. aircraft dropped leaflets calling on residents to eject foreign fighters and join the political process. The fliers offered $65 million in development projects but warned that the money would go to other cities if the population did not act soon. 
In Sadr City, also a rebel stronghold, clashes between 1st Cavalry Division patrols and the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada Sadr, a rebellious Shiite cleric, continued Saturday. U.S. forces ventured into most areas of the Baghdad slum only inside tanks or other heavily armored vehicles. The military said two soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated beside their armored personnel carrier. 
Elsewhere, a Marine was wounded Saturday morning when a suicide bomber detonated explosives beside a U.S. convoy east of Fallujah. Two soldiers in an Army convoy outside the northern city of Mosul were wounded in a similar attack, the military said. 
In Baghdad, a U.S. soldier was reported killed late Friday by small arms fire, bringing the number of death of American personnel in Iraq to 1,060. 
A video posted on an Internet site showed the beheading of an Iraqi man and displayed a pass granting him access to a U.S. base. The extremist Ansar al-Sunna Army said in a statement that the man, Barie Nafie Dawoud Ibrahim, was killed for being "one of the biggest contractors" working with the Americans. 
The al-Jazeera satellite television network broadcast footage of 10 hostages seized several days ago by another group, the Islamic Army in Iraq. The group has demanded that Indonesia release Abubakar Baasyir, a radical Muslim cleric facing trial on charges of being the spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah, a regional group operating in Southeast Asia that is linked to al Qaeda. Two of the hostages are Indonesian. 
Baasyir rejected the demand in a recording smuggled out of prison in Indonesia to the Associated Press. 
"I cannot justify this kidnapping," he said. "I demand that they be freed as Islam does not condone taking hostages of Muslim sisters and brothers. If the captors are Muslim, they truly do not understand Islam." 
Special correspondent Bassam Sebti contributed to this report. 








 


September 30, 2004 Thursday



 Yudhoyono Has Mandate For Change

 
While elections in Iraq seem more precarious by the day, those recently held in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, went off smoothly. A former general and Cabinet officer in the last government, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, known as SBY, is expected to be named president; the results will be made official in the next few weeks.
Just the successful staging of the presidential election comes as something of a relief. Indonesia's people went to the polls three times this year for parliamentary elections in April, then again in July, and on September 20 for two rounds of the presidential election. Nevertheless, election fatigue was not a problem. Some 120 million ballots were cast, with an 80% turnout rate. 
The apparent defeat of the incumbent is also relief of a kind. Megawati Sukarnoputri was unable or unwilling to lead. It was never clear whether her views or simply her temperament - detachment verging on boredom - caused her indifferent response to Indonesia's economic difficulties, corruption, and threat from terrorism.
Nevertheless, Ms. Megawati is guaranteed a respected place in her country's history. It was she against whom the dictator Suharto lashed out in 1996, at the beginning of his fall. She held her ground, sort of, protected by her status as the daughter of Sukarno, the leader of the Indonesian independence movement and the country's first president. When the first post-Suharto elections were held in 1999, she won the highest number of votes, only to step aside without a fight when she was maneuvered, for a time, out of the presidency.
Ms. Megawati's popularity derived largely from an enemy that no longer exists. Suharto's apparatus of state continues to fall away. Under the dictatorship, the official government party, Golkar, always won, with the vote tally announced in advance. This time, Golkar failed to advance its own candidate into the final round and then still lost when it joined in a coalition with its old adversary, Ms. Megawati and her party.
Entrenched corruption is still an enormous problem. But now it energizes civic activists who, free to challenge it openly, organize protests and bring about prosecutions of corrupt officials.
The military is no longer the unrivaled force in politics and society.
Earlier than planned, it has given up its seats in Parliament. The former General Wiranto, chief of the military under Suharto, and an indictee for war crimes in East Timor, was knocked out in the first round of voting. While Mr. Yudhoyono is a former general, he has a reputation as a reformer and is thought of as untainted by atrocities. However, his indecision is the trait most often mentioned by observers of his career. That will not be an asset in dealing with Indonesia's most pressing problems:
* An economy beset by high unemployment, low foreign investment and growth rates, and entrenched corruption.
* Indonesians are sick of corruption, but it will be difficult to break ingrained practices, including use of Cabinet ministries as prizes to pay off political allies.
* Violence and military abuses continue in far-flung parts of the archipelago, including Aceh, where Human Rights Watch this week reported systematic torture by the military.
* Indonesia has failed to resolve atrocities committed by the military as far back as the 1980s. According to the State Department, officers responsible for serious abuses hold senior government and military posts. The American Congress is demanding serious investigations into the murders of two Americans in Papua that may be tied to the military.
* The use of libel suits to chill free speech and press freedom has crept into the judicial system. Three journalists have been charged with criminal defamation. One defendant noted that such prosecutions signaled the signs of the collapse of Indonesia's first democratic experience in the 1950s.
* Terrorism. Despite improving police work, Indonesia has not come to grips with the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, failing even to ban Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian terrorist group.
The good news is that the new president, directly elected by the people for the first time, has a mandate. He has already shown he understands the need to be far more communicative and transparent in his governing style than his predecessor, convening large meetings to hear from ordinary citizens.
Years ago when Suharto was tottering, a lot of wise people said there was no alternative to the dictator. Indonesia's people have proved them wrong.







 



September 29, 2004 Wednesday  




 Kerry Is Widely Favored Abroad; 
Hostility Toward Bush Revealed in Surveys and Interviews

 
From Canada to Mexico, from London and Paris to Jakarta and Beijing, President Bush is widely unpopular as a candidate for reelection, according to surveys and interviews conducted in 20 countries. 
Sen. John F. Kerry appears to be the runaway favorite abroad, even though few people outside the United States know much about the Massachusetts Democrat or his positions on foreign policy questions. 
"If foreigners could vote, there's no question what the result would be," said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States. "Bush's image, even before the war in Iraq, was not good. The way he comports himself, the vocabulary he uses -- good versus evil, God and all that -- even his body language, most people think is not presidential." He added, "I've never seen such hostility."  
Kerry's foreign fans say they like his attitude about consulting allies and respecting their views. To them, he seems worldly, with an African-born wife. He attended school in Geneva and speaks French. A first cousin of Kerry's, Brice Lalonde, is a Green Party mayor of a small town in western France. 
Bush appears to have strong support in such places as Israel and Singapore for his stance against radical Islamic groups, and in some countries that are benefiting from world trade, such as India, for his free-market views. But elsewhere, a majority of people appear to be hoping he loses.  
"Kerry! Kerry! Kerry!" said Eros Djarrot, a filmmaker and founder of a small political party in Indonesia, the world' s most populous Muslim nation. "Simply because Bush knows what is good for Americans, but he doesn't understand what is good for people outside America, especially people in developing countries." 
Karim Raslan, a lawyer and commentator in Malaysia, another Muslim-majority country, was more blunt: "Everyone would want to see Bush out. He is loathed." He added: "The view in Asia-Pacific is, Bush is dreadful. You've got to get rid of him. But is the other guy better? I fear not." 
In the Arab world, Bush is widely despised for launching the Iraq war, supporting Israel and shoring up corrupt Arab governments in exchange for their help in the region. "Bush talks about helping Egypt, but he supports Mubarak," said Ahmed Shukri, an Egyptian computer science student, referring to Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's authoritarian president. "He supports lots of dictators. We don't trust Bush and we don't know Kerry." 
In the Muslim world as a whole, Bush's Middle East policies are often seen not as targeting terrorism but the Islamic faith. 
Elsewhere, the American president is viewed as too quick to use force, with no concern for the consequences to others. "I don't like Bush," said Hao Zhiqiang, 42, a taxi driver in China. "He launched the Iraq war. The price of oil is getting higher because of that." 
In Canada, a public opinion poll by the Globe and Mail newspaper conducted in July found that Canadians favored Kerry over Bush 60 percent to 29 percent. In Japan, an earlier opinion poll published in the Mainichi newspaper, conducted before Democrats had chosen a candidate, showed only 31 percent of respondents supporting Bush and 57 percent against him. 
In Russia, an opinion poll showed Russians preferring Kerry by a ratio of almost 4 to 1, although President Vladimir Putin quipped to reporters that the Bush supporters "include a few very influential people," an apparent reference to himself. 
And a survey by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, conducted  June 6  through 26 in nine European countries, found that 76 percent of European respondents disapproved of Bush's handling of international affairs, up 20 percentage points from a survey in 2002. The poll also found that 80 percent of Europeans surveyed -- compared with half of Americans -- said the Iraq war was not worth the cost in human life and material loss. 
The deep antipathy has produced a round of Bush-bashing magazine covers, books and television debates that many foreign policy observers say is unprecedented, stronger even than the widespread repudiation abroad of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. 
In Germany, Stern magazine offered this declaration on its cover: "George W. Bush, MORALLY BANKRUPT." In France, Nouvelle Observateur magazine published a cover story entitled: "Why It's Necessary To Beat Bush." 
In Canada, the animosity has been running so high that the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. this month aired a program called, "Has Bush-bashing gone too far?" And in France, a popular Sunday television show, "Le Vrai Journal," has a segment devoted entirely to Bush-bashing, with Americans invited to explain to the French why they hate Bush and plan to vote against him. 
At times, normally circumspect diplomats and politicians have found themselves swept up in the sentiment. A Canadian official called Bush a "moron." Britain's ambassador to Italy, Ivor Roberts, said at a conference in Tuscany last week that Bush is "the best recruiting sergeant ever for al Qaeda," according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper. And the Spanish prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, shortly after his upset victory in March, said he hoped Americans would follow Spain's electoral example and replace the incumbent president in November. 
The most obvious reason for these views is the war in Iraq, which remains almost universally unpopular around the world, even in countries whose governments have sent troops there as part of the U.S.-led multinational force. 
But Bush-bashing predates the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Many policy analysts date it to the administration's decision in its early days in office to reject the Kyoto protocol on climate change. That move affronted many people in the world, in part due to perceptions that it was announced in a high-handed way with no concern for world objections. His subsequent renunciation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty provoked similar dismay abroad.  
There was an outpouring of sympathy for a brief period following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in western Pennsylvania, and much of the world rallied to the side of the United States in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. But that goodwill flagged when the United States filled its military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with suspected terrorists and allowed them no access to the legal system. 
Political leaders of many nations who supported Bush in Iraq now find their own political fates tied to his. Australians go to the polls on Oct. 9, with conservative Prime Minister John Howard, a Bush supporter who sent Australian troops to Iraq, trying to fight off a strong challenge by the Labor Party leader, Mark Latham, who is promising to bring the troops home by Christmas. 
In Japan, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's support has plummeted to an all-time low of 40 percent, in part because of his strong association with Bush. And analysts cite the Iraq war in explaining the dismal showing of the British Labor Party of Prime Minister Tony Blair in recent European parliamentary and local elections. 
Some world leaders on the other side of the issue are said to be quietly hoping for a Kerry victory in order to improve ties with Washington. One of them is President Jacques Chirac of France, who has had a frosty relationship with Bush since France lobbied against the Iraq war at the United Nations. One French official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he could speak more candidly that way, said that if Kerry won, "I think it will change the atmospherics of the relations, because public opinion would say it's a new start." 
The hopes for a Kerry victory sometimes extend to political parties whose ideology is similar to that of the Republicans. Britain's Conservative Party, for instance, is shying away from Bush this year.  
The same is true in France, where most members of Chirac's ruling Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP are rooting for Kerry. "In my party, they are all pro-Kerry, except me," said Pierre Lellouche, a member of the National Assembly and a foreign policy specialist. "I am a very lonely voice here saying even if Kerry is elected, the fundamentals of U.S. policy will not change." 
Lellouche and some others contend that the biggest change in a Kerry administration might simply be a difference in tone and perception. For example, they said, a Kerry administration might be no more likely than the Bush team to sign the Kyoto climate treaty or endorse the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court without major exemptions for U.S. soldiers that the Bush administration has demanded. 
Also, a Kerry administration is likely to make uncomfortable demands on traditional U.S. allies to help share the military burden in Iraq, something that many diplomats say will not happen.  
For all the rancor against Bush, he does draw strong support in some parts of the world. He has backers in Israel, for instance, thanks to a strong pro-Israel policy. A recent opinion poll by the Maariv newspaper found that 48 percent of respondents in Israel supported Bush and 29 percent backed Kerry. Bush also has a good reputation in the affluent Southeast Asian city-state of Singapore, whose government largely shares Bush's fears of Islamic extremism. 
In East Asia and India, areas that are benefiting from the expansion of world trade, many people view Kerry warily because of criticisms during his campaign of the exporting of American jobs. 
One other place where Bush appears somewhat popular is Sudan, particularly in the Darfur region. 
Some Sudanese say they wish his interventionist policies would extend to their country. "We could use a regime change," said Halima Huessin, a Sudanese aid worker in Darfur, as she looked out over a gaggle of children covered in flies and men sleeping in thatched huts. 
Correspondents in Toronto, Mexico City, London, Moscow, Cairo, Jerusalem, New Delhi, Beijing, Tokyo, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Darfur, Sudan, and special correspondents in Berlin, Madrid, Budapest and Lund, Sweden, contributed to this report. 







 


September 23, 2004 Thursday  




 International news briefs

 
Palestinian teen blows herself up
JERUSALEM -- A Palestinian teenager blew herself up at a busy Jerusalem bus station Wednesday, killing two Israeli policemen who stopped her for a security check and wounding 16 bystanders in an attack that evaded Israel's clampdown on the West Bank for the Jewish holidays.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, dropped a plan to evacuate 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip simultaneously at the beginning of next year, reverting to an earlier formula -- a staged pullout in the summer of 2005.
That prompted Secretary of State Colin Powell to say Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia -- and not Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat -- should be empowered to take control of Gaza. Arafat "is not able to act in this manner," Powell said Wednesday. 
Afghan attack kills U.S. soldier
KABUL, Afghanistan -- An attack on a patrol killed an American soldier, the third U.S. fatality this week in Afghanistan, the military said Wednesday, amid a flurry of attacks that wounded over a dozen Americans in the run-up to the Oct. 9 presidential election.
Meanwhile, a group of 11 prisoners, including a former Taliban commander, arrived home from the U.S. jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The released prisoners included Naim Kuchi, a leader of Afghanistan's nomadic Kuchi tribe, who was detained near Kabul by U.S. forces in January 2003.
Kuchi served as a commander in Logar province during Taliban rule and retained his status as tribal leader after the fall of the hard-line regime.
Lebanon catches al-Qaida leader
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Lebanon announced the arrest of the country's top al-Qaida operative and said Wednesday that he and another Lebanese suspect plotted suicide attacks on Western embassies and recruited insurgents to fight in Iraq.
Senior security officials said the two, who were arrested Friday with eight accomplices, also planned to assassinate Western diplomats and attack Lebanese security and judicial targets.
Syria shuts down camps at Beirut
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Syrian soldiers dismantled their camps in the hills above Beirut on Wednesday, and the United States praised the move but said Syria must still end its political dominance of Lebanon.
Troops were seen taking down telephone lines and packing equipment at bases near the western towns of Aramoun, Chuwiefat, Damour, Doha and Khaldeh. About 3,000 Syrian troops were to redeploy from around Beirut to eastern Lebanon, probably to the Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border, where most of Syria's 20,000 troops in Lebanon are located. 
Secretary of State Colin Powell applauded Syria for dismantling the camps and said Damascus has offered to cooperate with allied forces in Iraq and its interim government.
Philippines base for terror camps
MANILA, Philippines -- A secret government report says Muslim guerrillas in the southern Philippines have hosted terror training camps for militant groups from Indonesia and Malaysia for at least seven years -- a period when Southeast Asia was plagued by bombings that have killed hundreds of people, like the Bali nightclub attack in 2002.
The training lasted at least until 19 new members of Jemaah Islamiyah -- the al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terror group -- finished in January, according to a copy of the government security assessment report obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.
Liechtenstein OKs nuke treaty
VIENNA, Austria -- The tiny Alpine republic of Liechtenstein has ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, bringing to 116 the number of nations endorsing the pact, the treaty organization said Wednesday.
Lawmakers in the nation the size of Washington, D.C., ratified the treaty Tuesday, the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty Organization said in a statement.
The treaty outlaws all nuclear weapons test explosions. It was drafted at an international conference in Geneva and adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1996.
-- From wire reports






  

 


 SPOTLIGHT ON INDONESIA

 
Indonesia held its first direct presidential election Monday. Unofficial tallies showed retired Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono defeating incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri. Official results are expected to be announced in two weeks. Yudhoyono, or "SBY" as he is known, ran on a platform of cracking down harder on terrorists, fighting corruption and stimulating the economy.
Historical background
Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago, comprising more than 13,500 islands, 6,000 of them inhabited. It straddles the equator between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean north of Australia and occupies a strategic location astride or along major sea lanes. It has the fourth-largest population in the world and the largest Muslim population in the world.
Indonesia achieved independence from the Netherlands in 1949. Although it was initially a multiparty democracy, its first president, Sukarno, imposed an authoritarian government in 1960. General Suharto deposed Sukarno in 1966 but continued to tightly control the political system until he resigned after the collapse of the economy in 1998. President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who was elected in 2001 and apparently ousted Monday, is the daughter of Sukarno.
After years of violence and suppression, East Timor achieved independence from Indonesia and elected its first president in 2002. Religious violence continues in certain regions, and several provinces continue to seek independence.




September 22, 2004 Wednesday  




NAME: Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

 A Cautious Reformer as Indonesia's Next President; Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

 
Indonesia's next president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, moved swiftly up the military ranks during the authoritarian rule of Gen. Suharto and then played a back-seat role in the undoing of that government. 
 He is considered a steady, broadly educated man who many here believe is the first person with a suitable background and sufficient training to become president since the country's transition to democracy began six years ago. 
  There is also much that is unknown about the general. He supports the secular tradition of Indonesia, where most people are Muslim. But how he will deal with the thorny issues of Islam and terrorism -- a subject on which the government and Muslim groups have remained largely silent so far -- remains unclear.  
 With more than half of the votes counted after the election on Monday, results showed that General Yudhoyono, 55, won a convincing victory over the incumbent, Megawati Sukarnoputri. With more than 77 million votes counted Tuesday night, General Yudhoyono had won 60 percent and Mrs. Megawati 39 percent, according to the Indonesian election commission. 
 In contrast to Mrs. Megawati, who took little interest in government but reveled in the pomp of being head of state, General Yudhoyono will immerse himself in details and is likely to play down the role of singular leader, an army colleague said. 
 ''He believes in the organization,'' said the colleague, a former general, Agus Widjojo, who was General Yudhoyono's boss in the military. ''He's aware that he's only one element in the decision-making process. He doesn't come from one of those charismatic, hero styles of leadership.'' 
 General Yudhoyono must wait for Mrs. Megawati to concede defeat before claiming victory, a process that may be several days away. He stayed closeted at his home in Bogor, outside Jakarta, on Tuesday, meeting with his running mate, Jusuf Kalla, and campaign officials. 
 The general faces big problems: one of the worst-performing economies in the vibrant Asian region, rampant corruption and a homegrown terror network that the police say may be poised for an attack. 
 As coordinating minister for security under Mrs. Megawati, he was more outspoken than many in the government on the threat of terrorism and the nature of Jemaah Islamiyah, the radical Islamic group that has been blamed for three terror attacks in the past two years. 
 But he was reluctant to push for more stringent measures against the group, said a Western official who dealt with him. Now that he is to become president, he needs to throw such caution aside and not find reasons not to act, the official said.
 General Yudhoyono was born on Sept. 9, 1949, in Pacitan, a small town in east Java that is likened to Dayton, Ohio, by an American friend, Dennis Heffernan, publisher of the Van Zorge Report, a biweekly review of Indonesia's politics and economy. ''A nice clean little town,'' said Mr. Heffernan, who accompanied the general on some campaign swings. 
 After emerging at the top of his class in the military academy in 1973, General Yudhoyono was selected to go to the United States in 1976 for military training at Fort Benning, Ga. 
 That was at the height of the warm relationship between the United States and the Suharto government, which was viewed in Washington at the time as a bulwark against Communism in Southeast Asia. In 1990, he was selected for a yearlong course at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
 In part because of those two stints in the United States under the International Military Education and Training Program, the Bush administration viewed General Yudhoyono as the best pick of the candidates in the presidential election. 
 The general wants a full resumption of military relations with the United States, General Widjojo said. The training program was stopped more than a decade ago after the Clinton administration objected to human rights abuses by the military under General Suharto. 
 By the mid-1990's, General Yudhoyono and some like-minded colleagues like General Widjojo began to work on a plan called the New Paradigm, which called for the military to step back from its upfront role in civilian affairs. 
 As the crisis around General Suharto's presidency reached a peak in 1998 after the collapse of the Indonesian currency, General Yudhoyono began meeting with one of the country's prominent Muslim leaders, Nurcholish Madjid, to find a way for General Suharto to resign. 
 In a less flattering light, the book ''Indonesian Destinies'' by Theodore Friend describes how General Yudhoyono encouraged a group of Muslim and Christian leaders to look into the bombing of dozens of churches across Indonesia on Christmas Eve of 2000.
 The general, according to the book, acknowledged that the facts of the bombings implicated some ''former colleagues and superiors'' of his. But when the group submitted a draft decree to investigate the matter, the author says General Yudhoyono declined to pursue the matter.
 By all accounts, the general is an avid reader and book buyer. From his bookshelves it is clear that the general prefers serious reading peppered with a splash of light fare. ''Debt of Honor'' by Tom Clancy and ''The World's Most Dangerous Places'' by Robert Young Pelton are among the books in his library. ''On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War'' by Harry G. Summers and ''Napoleon: How He Did It: The Memoirs of Baron Fain, First Secretary of the Emperor's Cabinet'' are also there.







September 22, 2004 Wednesday  




 
An article yesterday about the presidential election in Indonesia misstated the current position of Paul D. Wolfowitz, the Bush administration official who was ambassador there in the late 1980's and has said that the voting, in the world's most populous Muslim country, shows that Islam and democracy are compatible. He is deputy defense secretary, not assistant secretary.               







 



September 22, 2004 Wednesday  




 Indonesian Plans to Act Swiftly on Graft Cases; 
President-Elect to Battle Corruption, Advisers Say

 
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the projected winner of Indonesia's presidential election, will move quickly to prosecute major graft cases to counter the nation's reputation as one of the world's most corrupt countries, his advisers said Tuesday. 
Aides to the retired army general said he would set a tone for his presidency by accelerating highly publicized corruption cases now languishing in the hands of prosecutors. 
 "We shall make that the first thing," Yudhoyono's  running mate, Jusuf Kalla, said in an interview. "We will set a good example . . . and implement laws."  
 Yudhoyono huddled with much of his team Tuesday at his home in the Jakarta suburb of Bogor, one day after he scored a resounding runoff victory over incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri. 
 With about three-quarters of the ballots counted Tuesday night, Yudhoyono was leading with 61 percent of vote, officials reported. That was consistent with an independent projection released earlier, which showed him winning with the same percentage. He is to be inaugurated Oct. 20 for a five-year term. 
 Though Megawati was once widely loved as the daughter of Indonesia's founding father, Sukarno, she could not overcome widespread criticism of virulent government corruption and her response to the country's economic uncertainty. The two contenders struck similar positions during the campaign, but Yudhoyono portrayed himself as a more dynamic leader, citing his experience first in the military and most recently as Megawati's chief security minister. 
 Yudhoyono's advisers said he planned to establish a formal presidential office that would be similar in function to the White House in the United States. This would centralize much of the policymaking that Megawati left to individual ministries and departments. 
 "The president will be much more involved in policy formulation," said Andi Mallarangeng, a political commentator being considered for the job of  presidential spokesman. "So far we haven't had an office of the president. The president is alone over there." 
 This effort may involve setting up a U.S.-style council of economic advisers and moving the vice president's office into the presidential palace to take advantage of Kalla's popularity and experience as a social affairs minister. 
 Several advisers said the appointment of a new attorney general would be one of Yudhoyono's  most significant early moves. He is looking at several candidates, including two lawyers with strong records of defending civil liberties, to replace an incumbent widely criticized as incompetent. 
 During the coming weeks, Yudhoyono's team intends to determine how to  streamline regulations for businesses and reduce opportunities for corrupt bureaucrats to demand payoffs, according to a prominent member of the campaign team who may join the cabinet. 
 Yudhoyono has  stressed that he hopes to attract new foreign investment, which has slipped in recent years mostly  because of concerns over graft, by improving legal protections for businesses. Transparency International, a corruption watchdog organization, has identified Indonesia as one of the world's most corrupt countries. 
As the chief security official under Megawati, Yudhoyono was often the main government contact for U.S. officials concerned about terrorism. He has called for tougher measures against extremist groups, including the regional Jemaah Islamiah organization, which has been blamed most recently for a car bombing  this month outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta that killed nine people. But advisers said they did not expect him to push for a draconian internal security act similar to those in Singapore and Malaysia, which allow for indefinite detention of suspects without trial. 
Though Indonesian police have arrested dozens of suspected Muslim militants in the last two years, some senior operatives have eluded capture. Sources close to Yudhoyono said he would reform operations of the police and the national intelligence agency to improve their cooperation. 
  Despite his electoral mandate, Yudhoyono could face difficulty winning support for his programs from parliament, where political parties allied with Megawati hold the majority. But members of his inner circle said they expected some legislators to defect to his camp after seeing the size of his victory. At the same time, his advisers are trying to repair strains with Megawati loyalists that emerged after he quit her cabinet in March. 
 "We have to try to reach out to Megawati and her friends," said Rachmat Witoelar, who ran Yudhoyono's campaign and will likely join his cabinet. "We need confidence-building measures with several parties in Megawati's coalition." 







 


September 21, 2004 Tuesday  




 Arabs debate why so many terrorists are Muslims; 
Scholars argue such discussion is necessary for faith

 
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The rash of kidnappings, beheadings and explosions in Iraq, the killing of innocent children in Russia, and car bombings in Turkey and Indonesia have sparked debate among Arab intellectuals on why the majority of terror acts have been committed by Muslims acting in the name of Islam.
Some blame the violence on an atmosphere of intolerance and extremism that has bred hatred of non-Muslims and urge honest soul-searching as a remedy; others insist the problem is with the West, particularly the United States and its unconditional support of Israel and its war on Iraq.
The debate in newspaper columns, letters from readers and TV talk shows may be low-key, intermittent and limited to the intellectual elite, but some Arabs believe it's a step toward breaking the taboo of speaking out against problems within the Muslim religious establishment and its clergy and reversing support for extremism.
"The debate is a very positive indicator," said Sateh Noureddine, managing editor of the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir. "If it continues, it could pose the larger and more important question of how qualified are the Muslim religious establishment and clergy to lead a political platform?"
"Right now, Muslim youths can choose only between Osama bin Laden and semiliterate clerics," Noureddine added. "What is required is an Arab religious establishment that's civilized, educated and vigilant."
Speaking out against extremism is not new. A few months of the Sept. 11 attacks, carried out by 19 Arabs, dozens of columns and opinion pieces appeared in the region's newspapers, especially those in Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the hijackers, urging moderation.
But in the past few weeks, with the school siege in Russia that left more than 330 people dead and the resurgence of terror attacks in Iraq, where the victims of car bombs and beheadings are overwhelmingly Iraqis or Muslims, the debate has gained momentum. The effort is not an organized movement nor is it widespread, but it's a reflection of what's being discussed among some Arabs.
Condemnation has not only come from intellectuals, but also from some of the Muslim world's most prominent scholars. Egypt's foremost religious leader, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, says "beheadings and [the] mutilation of bodies stand against Islam." And Lebanon's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, maintains Islam doesn't sanction the killing and abduction of foreigners who are working and feel secure in Muslim countries.
However, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many religious scholars say suicide bombings carried out by the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad are acceptable.
"The Palestinian resistance against Zionist terrorism is one that we demand, bless and sanction," said Abdul-Aziz al-Khayat, a Jordanian scholar and former minister of religious affairs.
But he said blowing up buildings in Iraq, Turkey or Afghanistan, the abductions in Iraq, and attacks on Western residential compounds in Saudi Arabia "cannot be sanctioned because they don't target an oppressive power."
It's a view held by many Arabs, but it's being increasingly challenged.
Sulaiman al-Hattlan, a Saudi columnist, said Arabs "lack the human face" when it comes to condemning terror attacks, including those against Israelis. He said those who denounce such bombings usually do so for political reasons -- because they do not advance the attackers' cause -- and not for humanitarian reasons.
"You have to have a moral standard. You have to look at others as human," he said.
Abdulrahman al-Rashed, a Saudi who's general manager of Al-Arabiya television, said the problem of extremism is an internal one and the solution must come from within Muslim societies.
Al-Rashed wrote one of the most provocative pieces on the issue, saying in a column that followed the Russia school siege that Muslims must acknowledge the painful fact that they are the main perpetrators of terrorism.
In his column, published in Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, al-Rashed listed recent attacks by Islamic extremists -- in Russia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen -- many of which are influenced by the ideology of bin Laden, the Saudi-born al-Qaida leader.
"What a terrible record," he wrote. "Doesn't it say something about us, our societies, our cultures?" 
Not everyone agrees. One letter, from a reader identified only as Muhammad, said:
"I don't know whether al-Rashed lives on planet Earth or on Mars and can only see Fox News and Sky News. Do you know about the crimes of terrorist [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon? Do you know about the crimes of terrorist [President] Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan?"
"We all know," Al-Rashed wrote back. "But that's not an excuse to kill innocent, unarmed civilians."
Salama Ahmed Salama, an Egyptian columnist, said such self-blame "has been exaggerated."
He said while it's true most terror attacks have been perpetrated by Muslims, Europe and Asia were no strangers to terrorism.
"The logic of terrorism is not new in international politics," he said. "It's not Arabs who invented it."
"We shouldn't be unfair to ourselves," he added. "But at the same time we should tell groups that have chosen jihad as a course that it's not the right one. The world has turned against Islam and Muslims because of the barbaric acts."
Al-Rashed said the change of heart has also occurred among many Muslims who now believe terrorists are not only acting against their stated enemies -- the West and Israel -- but also against fellow Arabs and Muslims, such as in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
"People can now see that those groups do not have a political stand against America, but an extremist stand that believes everybody is wrong," said al-Rashed.
Al-Rashed said although the discussions are limited to the intellectual elite, word will filter down to impressionable youths.
"You can't convince the masses before you convince the elite," he said. "They are the ones who will take the word to the masses."







 


September 21, 2004 Tuesday 
  




 Ex-General Appears to Win By Big Margin in Indonesia

 
A former general who has promised to uphold civilian rule appears to have easily defeated President Megawati Sukarnoputri in Indonesia's presidential election on Monday, a nationwide sampling of votes indicates.
  Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is expected to win 61 percent of the vote, compared with 39 percent for Mrs. Megawati in the runoff election, according to the survey by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute.  
  ''There could be a shift of a couple of percentage points, but the count is pretty stable,'' said Paul Rowland, the executive director of the institute here in Indonesia. The survey, called a quick count, is based on votes cast at 2,000 polling places throughout the nation. 
  General Yudhoyono, 55, would become Indonesia's sixth president since independence in 1945, and the fourth since the fall of the authoritarian leader Gen. Suharto in 1998. 
  The Monday voting, which proceeded in a well organized and peaceful manner, was the final round in the first direct balloting for president in Indonesia.
  The results indicate that Indonesians are yearning for change after three years of lackluster leadership from Mrs. Megawati, who presided over an anemic economy and during whose term a homegrown radical Islamic group carried out three terror attacks. 
  General Yudhoyono presented himself as a man of competence who could set things right, though he gave few details of precisely what he would do. He pledged to continue the civilian rule that was established after General Suharto's ouster, and was viewed as more of a reformer than Mrs. Megawati, who largely practiced status quo politics. 
  The Bush administration -- particularly Assistant Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was ambassador to Indonesia in the late 1980's -- has said the success of elections here in the world's most populous Muslim country shows that Islam and democracy are compatible.
  During the Suharto era, General Yudhoyono was sent to the United States twice for military training, and American officials said they hoped that lessons he had learned there would infuse his administration.
  The United States did not publicly express its preference in the election, but Washington officials made it clear that they believed that the general had a better grasp of how to control Jemaah Islamiyah, the radical Islamic group held responsible for the three terror attacks.
  During the campaign, General Yudhoyono suggested that he would curb rampant corruption, create jobs and improve security. But his precise plans remain unclear. Those who know him describe him as cautious. ''He's a cautious reformer,'' said Harold Crouch, an Australian expert on the Indonesian military. 
  An estimated 150 million Indonesians were registered to vote. Thousands of domestic and foreign observers watched the voting, from Aceh in the northwest to Papua in the east.
  They reported few disruptions, though General Yudhoyono's camp said it would be especially watchful for possible fraud as the ballot boxes were moved from the polling places to collection points at subdistricts. 
  But as counting proceeded late Monday night, General Yudhoyono said: ''It is time for reconciliation. I acknowledged during this competition that there is distance between the supporters of Megawati and myself. I expect we have to be more united in the near future to face a national challenge of building a better Indonesia.''
  Here in Jakarta, much of the voting was completed by 11 a.m. Polls closed at 1 p.m., and less than an hour later the results were known at some polling places. 
  At one voting place in Kebonkacang, a working-class area in the city center, General Yudhoyono received 137 votes and Mrs. Megawati 39. 
  Those who voted for Ms. Megawati seemed conciliatory. ''I hope S.B.Y. will fulfill his promise to the people,'' said Ceisar Saragih, 27, referring to the former general by his initials, as many people here do. ''I hope he does not pressure people with his military stick.'' 
  Another Megawati voter, Joni Tampubolon, 53, said he worried that General Yudhoyono might bring back military rule. ''We're still learning democracy,'' he said. ''As long as he continues democracy and is not like Suharto, it's O.K.'' 
  The Indonesian Election Commission trained hundreds of thousands of election workers to staff the polling places, and the political campaigns trained observers to watch out for their interests as voting got under way. 
  For many of the election day workers, helping to give voters the ballots and ticking off names on the register proved a rewarding way to promote the new democracy. 
  ''I have to be involved,'' said Rudi Halim, 25, who usually works with his father at the family store but this morning was wearing the bright orange vest of an election worker. ''It's an obligation of being a citizen.'' 
  General Yudhoyono won a first round of the election on July 5. But he failed to win the more than 50 percent required for a first-round victory against Mrs. Megawati and three other candidates. His strong showing in the runoff will probably lead to a change in Indonesian politics.
  The general's political rise was swift. He was the security minister in Mrs. Megawati's cabinet, and left only in March. His entrance into the presidential race was predicated on the sense that he did not need a major political party to support him. 
  He was backed only by a small new party, the Democratic Party, and his gamble worked.
  One outcome of his victory is likely to be a housecleaning of Golkar, the party that Suharto created in the 1960's and developed into the political machine that kept him in power.
  The leader of Golkar, Akbar Tanjung, decided to back Mrs. Megawati against the wishes of his rank and file. Golkar handily won parliamentary elections in April, though, and General Yudhoyono will have to work with the party to get his programs through the legislature. 
  In a Golkar stronghold in the southern area of the province of Sulawesi, the party fared exceptionally badly. Instead of choosing Golkar, voters overwhelmingly voted for General Yudhoyono and his running mate, Jusuf Kalla, who comes from that region.
  An election observer, Smita Notosusanto, who is also the executive director of the Center for Electoral Reform, said that in some voting places in southern Sulawesi 98 percent of the vote had gone to the Yudhoyono-Kalla ticket.
  ''It shows that Golkar is factionalized, divided and no longer the machine that matters,'' Ms. Notosusanto said.


CORRECTION-DATE: September 22, 2004

 CORRECTION:
An article yesterday about the presidential election in Indonesia misstated the current position of Paul D. Wolfowitz, the Bush administration official who was ambassador there in the late 1980's and has said that the voting, in the world's most populous Muslim country, shows that Islam and democracy are compatible. He is deputy defense secretary, not assistant secretary.               






 
  


September 21, 2004 Tuesday 



 INDONESIANS CHOOSE NEW LEADER
GENERAL REPORTEDLY BEATS MEGAWATI

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesians voted President Megawati Sukarnoputri out of office Monday and replaced her with Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a general who's rejected his ties to the old authoritarian order, according to an independent voting survey.
It was the first time that Indonesians could choose their leader by direct vote, marking a milestone on the road to democracy for the world's most populous Muslim nation, which is emerging from a three-decade-long dictatorship that ended six years ago.
According to early election returns, Yudhoyono had 59 percent of the vote, and Megawati had 41 percent. An exit poll conducted by an independent coalition, which has been accurate in previous elections, predicted Yudhoyono would outpoll Megawati by 62 percent to 38 percent. 
Without offering many specifics, both candidates had vowed to maintain security, help the poor, fight corruption and implement political reforms. Political analysts here said that from a policy standpoint, a Yudhoyono administration wasn't likely to be much different from Megawati's. Both are Muslim leaders with moderate, secular views who are friendly to the United States.
Indonesia's new political order is still a work in progress. The country's longtime dictator, Suharto, was forced out of office in 1998, brought down by economic chaos and protests. The corruption and crony capitalism of his 32-year rule remain entrenched.
But if Indonesia's democratic journey isn't finished, it's already overcome formidable odds. It's taken root in a nation with an ailing economy, vast cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences, separatist violence in some areas, a military accustomed to sweeping powers and a shadowy Muslim terrorist network.
"We have a free voice. We have a democracy," said Wimar Witoelar of InterMatrix Communications, a Jakarta political consulting firm. "We thank Washington and Jefferson for the ideas, but we have only ourselves to thank for bringing democracy to this land."
Political analysts and reformers here said the nation's democratic experiment had succeeded first and foremost because the Indonesian people, whatever their differences, were hungry for freedom.
"Whatever you hear about political elites trying to sway people here, whatever criticism you may hear about corruption in government, the fact of the matter is, in the local areas, out in the provinces, the people know exactly what free and fair means," said Sandra Hamid, the program director of the Indonesia election program for the Asia Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to Asia-Pacific issues that's based in San Francisco.
Democracy also succeeded because Indonesians embrace a type of Islam that's compatible with democratic values, said Harry Bhaskara, a managing editor of the Jakarta Post. In a nation that was once a collection of feudalistic kingdoms, progressive Muslim leaders offered an inclusive religion.
"Their vision was very egalitarian," Bhaskara said. "Their Islam was a counterpoint to feudalism."






  



 WORLD DIGEST

 
AUSTRIA U.N. official urges tighter nuclear policing More than 40 countries with peaceful nuclear programs could retool them to make weapons, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Monday.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, suggested in a keynote address to the agency's general conference that it was time to tighten world policing of nuclear activities and to stop relying on information volunteered by countries.
Beyond the declared nuclear arms-holding countries, "some estimates indicate that 40 countries or more now have the know-how to produce nuclear weapons," ElBaradei said. "We are relying primarily on the continued good intentions of these countries, intentions, which . . . could . . . be subject to rapid change." 
COLOMBIA Attack may have killed paramilitary leader The leader of a paramilitary faction involved in peace talks was apparently one of five insurgents killed in an ambush on Monday, officials said.
The bodies were found in two vehicles on a road in the central plains region where Miguel Arroyave's faction is based. Police Gen. Alberto Ruiz said one of the bodies "has the characteristics that look like Miguel Arroyave," leader of the Centauros faction of the umbrella group United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.
Ruiz said the man's face was disfigured by a bullet wound and that fingerprint comparison would have to be carried out to confirm the identity. Arroyave is one of 10 paramilitary leaders involved in peace talks with the government in a protected zone in northwest Colombia. Ruiz said that "from what we've been able to establish, (the attack) is part of an internal dispute" within the group.
INDONESIA Former general leads in presidential race A U.S.-trained former general who led the fight against al-Qaida-linked extremists in Indonesia appeared headed for a landslide victory Monday in a presidential runoff heralded as a key step for democracy in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono -- who focused his campaign on fixing the economy and cracking down on corruption -- had nearly 59 percent of the votes in early returns. Incumbent President Megawati Sukarnoputri had 41 percent.
The General Election Commission said about 20 million votes had been counted by late Monday, from a turnout estimated at 147 million to 152 million voters.
GERMANY Berlin bans planned Islamic conference Berlin's city government on Monday banned a planned Islamic conference in the German capital that security officials feared would be a forum to preach support for terrorism.
State Interior Ministry spokeswoman Henrike Morgenstern said the city banned the Oct. 1-3 Arab Islamic Congress in Europe after concluding the conference Web site condoned suicide attacks against Israel and the United States.
Germany's top security official, Interior Minister Otto Schily, said last week that the conference "seems to fall under the heading of justifying terrorist acts" which would warrant a ban. The conference Web site urged "the liberation of all the occupied territories and countries in struggle against the American-Zionist hegemony and occupation."







 



September 21, 2004 Tuesday  




 President Heads For Defeat in Indonesia Vote; 
Retired General Projected to Win Big

 
Indonesian voters, frustrated by pervasive corruption and economic malaise, ousted President Megawati Sukarnoputri in a runoff election Monday, awarding her former chief security minister a decisive victory to run the world's most populous Muslim nation, according to partial returns and a independent projection. 
 Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, 55, a retired army general with U.S. military training who portrays himself as a cautious reformer, was on track to capture about 61 percent of the vote, according to the projection. 
The results marked a stunning change of fortune for Megawati, once adored by many for continuing the leadership of her father, Sukarno, founder of the modern Indonesian nation. If confirmed in final tallies, Yudhoyono's victory would be a rare example of a peaceful democratic transition in Southeast Asia, where heads of government and their parties are seldom turned out of office by a popular vote.  
Megawati's defeat comes 37 years after her father was forced out of the presidency. But while he fell victim to a military-backed coup, she is exiting as the result of a democratic process that she helped consolidate and that may be one of her most noteworthy legacies.  
 The peaceful balloting defied the predictions of foreign diplomats and security experts who said terrorist attacks or campaign violence might disrupt the voting. Indonesia has repeatedly been the scene of bombings by radical groups associated with al Qaeda. As security chief, Yudhoyono directed much of the country's effort against those groups. 
 Shortly after polls closed, he was projected as the winner by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education and Information, which is backed by the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute. The two organizations had accurately predicted the outcome of the first round of voting two months ago, in which Yudhoyono and Megawati emerged as finalists from a field of five contenders. 
 As of midday Tuesday, results representing more than half of about 120 million ballots cast showed Yudhoyono and his running mate, Jusuf Kalla, a former chief social welfare minister, winning three-fifths of the votes. They were carrying nearly all of the country's 32 provinces and rolling up a large majority on Indonesia's main island of Java. Only on Bali, where Megawati, 57, has family roots, was she enjoying a comfortable lead.  
The national election commission estimated turnout at 80 percent. 
 The task of conveying vote totals to the capital, Jakarta, from more than half a million polling stations, some deep in the rainforest and others high in the mountains, means that a full tally of ballots will not be available for at least several days.  
 Speaking Monday evening at his home in a suburb south of Jakarta, Yudhoyono called for reconciliation between the rival camps, which engaged in often bitter competition after he bolted the cabinet in March to challenge Megawati. 
 "I'd like to thank God that this election has been done peacefully and democratically," said Yudhoyono, dressed in a formal, black-and-white batik shirt. "I have to thank President Megawati Sukarnoputri for laying down the foundation" for establishing direct presidential elections. 
 A moderate Muslim described by his associates as an intellectual, Yudhoyono would head into a five-year term with one of the broadest electoral mandates ever afforded an Indonesian leader. But governing could be a challenge for him because his Democrat Party is a minor player in parliament, having gained only 7 percent of the votes in legislative balloting in April. 
 In the 1990s, during the final years of President Suharto's three-decade rule, Megawati became a symbol of the country's democratic aspirations. After Suharto was toppled by mass protests, she led her party to victory in elections in 1999. She served as vice president under President Abdurrahman Wahid, then became president after he was impeached for incompetence. 
Monday's results underscored how aloof and reclusive Megawati had become. Though she emerged from the palace in recent weeks at the urging of advisers to stump in schools and markets, her overall campaign strategy was centered on forming an alliance with old-time politicians from several major parties, including Suharto's Golkar movement, in the hope their machinery could churn out votes. Ultimately, vast numbers of party members abandoned their bosses to support the challenger. 
 Megawati made no public comments Monday evening but told reporters earlier in the day that she was calm despite recent opinion polls showing her running far behind. "No need to be nervous," she said after voting close to her private residence in southern Jakarta. "We'll see the result. I think that's better than making an early statement."  
 Her record after three years in office has been mixed. Her administration achieved economic stability, steadying the currency and fueling a surge in local stock prices. But it failed to foster enough growth to provide employment for the millions of new job seekers entering the market. 
 Ethnic violence ebbed on some Indonesian islands, but she ordered a brutal military offensive against separatists in the westernmost province of Aceh that drew criticism from human rights groups and Western diplomats. Her administration took steps to improve the police and courts, but corruption remains rife. 
 While investigators have arrested dozens of suspected Muslim radicals during the past two years, radicals linked to al Qaeda showed two weeks ago that they remain a potent threat, killing nine people in a car bombing outside the Australian Embassy. 
 At a polling station in Jakarta's Benhil neighborhood tucked behind downtown office towers, voters on Monday morning filed beneath a white wedding tent erected in the middle of an intersection to register their preferences. "They want a new leader because Megawati has been in office for a few years without any new achievements," said Agus Surya, 73, a retired photographer. "They want a fresh beginning with hope."  
 Voters collected ballots from orange-vested election workers, stepped behind metal carrels set out beside vases of plastic flowers, and punched holes with nails through the picture of their preferred candidate. Across the street, loudspeakers blared military marches and patriotic ballads.  
"Change is the most important thing," said Teti Garnasi, 33, shaking her left hand to dry the purple ink applied to her pinky to show she had voted. "I feel stagnant today. We haven't had much improvement in society or the economy." 
 Norhadiyati Hakim, 70, had traveled from her home in the mountains south of Jakarta to her old Benhil neighborhood, where she is still registered. She voted for Yudhoyono, commonly known by his initials SBY. "He is tougher and firmer," said Hakim, wearing a long white tunic and blue head scarf. "Until now, our government hasn't done much about corruption. I hope SBY can do something." 







 


September 20, 2004 Monday



 World datelines

 
England
LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair on Sunday admonished other nations not to waver in their support for military victory in Iraq and the establishment of democracy there, arguing that Iraq is now the "crucible" in which global terrorism will either succeed or founder.
Germany
BERLIN -- Voters in two east German states angry over high unemployment handed a rebuke Sunday to Germany's two biggest parties, giving big gains to far right and former Communist groups, television projections showed. Both Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats and the conservative Christian Democrats, lost support in Brandenburg and Saxony. 
Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Tens of thousands of people attended the funeral of a slain evangelical pastor on Sunday, calling on authorities to do more to combat crime in Haiti. The Rev. Jean-Moles Lovinksky Bertomieux, who hosted a popular radio show of religious songs and prayers, was shot Sept. 13 on his way to work in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Police said Saturday they have arrested three suspects, accusing them of shooting the pastor after trying to rob him.
Indonesia
JAKARTA -- Voting began Monday in historic elections in Indonesia with opinion polls showing a former general who has pledged to end rampant graft, fix the economy and fight terrorism set for a comfortable win over President Megawati Sukarnoputri. The runoff vote between Megawati and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was the second round in Indonesia's first-ever direct elections and caps a turbulent transition to democracy in the world's most populous Muslim nation since the downfall of former dictator Suharto in 1998.
Iran
TEHRAN -- A truck slammed into three vehicles Sunday in southern Iran, killing at least 18 people and injuring 22, state-run television reported. The truck driver apparently lost control and was on the wrong side of the road when it hit an intercity bus, a car and another truck on the main highway connecting the southern cities of Shiraz and Fasa, 560 miles south of Tehran.
Libya
WASHINGTON -- President Bush has decided to lift sanctions against Libya, which he expects to trigger release of more than $1 billion to families of Pan Am 103 victims, a senior administration official said Sunday. Bush could announce the step as early as today, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because Bush prefers to publicize such moves himself. The deadline for settlement with Moammar Gadhafi's government is Wednesday.
North Korea
WASHINGTON -- The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Sunday he does not believe North Korea set off a nuclear blast earlier this month but is not "100 percent sure." He said reports from other agencies with devices that monitor explosions suggest "that it doesn't look like a nuclear explosion," IAEA director Mohammed El Baradei said on CNN's "Late Edition."
Sudan
KHARTOUM -- A U.S.-backed U.N. resolution threatening oil sanctions for the violence in Sudan's Darfur region will only make it harder for the government to calm the insurrection there, a Sudanese official said Sunday. Despite his criticism, the foreign ministry official, Mutrif Sideeq, said his government would try to comply with the resolution meant to force Khartoum to rein in ethnic Arab militias accused of killing ethnic African villagers and creating an even deadlier humanitarian crisis.
Turkey
ISTANBUL -- A bomb exploded under a police car at a pop concert Sunday in southern Turkey, injuring at least 14 people, officials said. The blast happened in the southern Turkish city of Mersin, officials said. At least 14 people were injured in the blast, the prime minister's office said in a statement.
Uganda
KAMPALA -- Ugandan helicopter gunships and ground troops attacked a rebel hideout in southern Sudan, killing at least 25 insurgents and capturing seven others, an army spokesman said Sunday. The Ugandan army suffered no casualties in the attack late Saturday on Lord's Resistance Army rebels hiding in a forested valley, 90 miles north of the Ugandan border, Lt. Paddy Ankunda said. Ugandan rebel leaders, who rarely speak to journalists, could not be reached for comment.







 


September 20, 2004 Monday  




 Indonesians Making Final Choice for President

 
On the eve of a landmark election for president of Indonesia, Normawatie, 25, a receptionist in a beauty salon, knows precisely which of the two candidates she is going to vote for.
 ''Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. I fell in love with him right from the start,'' said Ms. Normawatie, who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name. ''He's smart, he knows how to argue, he showed some intellectual strength.'' 
 Without hesitation, Ms. Normawatie is choosing a former general over the incumbent, Megawati Sukarnoputri, 57, whose administration has seen a limp economy and three terrorist attacks in less than two years.
 The election on Monday is the last round in the first direct voting for president here in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
 Both candidates favor a continuation of Indonesia's secular tradition, and questions about possible changes to the tolerant brand of Indonesian Islam have barely been raised.
 General Yudhoyono, 55, served during the authoritarian Suharto era, but the candidate has projected himself as a believer in civilian rule, which was established here after General Suharto fell from power in 1998.
 Many of General Yudhoyono's supporters view him as the reform candidate, an educated man more able than the incumbent to tackle the economic and security problems that persist in Indonesia.
 Public opinion surveys released last week show a commanding lead for General Yudhoyono. The Washington-based International Foundation for Election Systems poll showed the general with the support of 61 percent of those polled and Mrs. Megawati with 29.3 percent.
 Voter surveys have proved to be fairly unreliable in Indonesia, though, and most election experts are expecting a much closer outcome.
 A senior adviser to the foundation, Hank Valentine, said he believed that Mrs. Megawati's party structure was well enough organized to produce a significantly stronger vote for her than the survey suggested.
 Mr. Valentine also said that the general's strength among younger, educated voters might not translate into actual ballots because those voters have shown they are less inclined to go to the polls.
 The runoff election is necessary because none of the candidates in the first round of the presidential balloting in July received more than 50 percent of the vote, which would have meant a victory in the first round.
 General Yudhoyono won 33.6 percent in that election, and Mrs. Megawati was second with 26.6 percent.
 Campaigning by the two candidates has been severely restricted by rules intended to ensure that the voting would proceed with a minimum of conflict.
 Under the election law passed by Parliament last year, only three days of public campaigning were allowed -- Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week.
 The restrictions have prompted widespread criticism.
 There has been virtually no violence. But there has also been almost no public airing of the issues. Indonesia has one of the most lackluster economies in Southeast Asia, and the education system is regularly listed in surveys by the United Nations as one of the weakest in Asia. Corruption is endemic at every level of government. Those problems have been largely ignored by the candidates.
 ''We're getting half-baked candidates,'' said Endy M. Bayuni, the chief editor of The Jakarta Post, the main English language newspaper. ''The candidates have not been thoroughly tested by the public. The public will have no idea about the candidates when they go to the polling stations tomorrow.''
 Mr. Bayuni said he believed that the election law passed by Parliament last year was a leftover of ''the Suharto mentality.'' In the more than three decades of Suharto's rule, ''there was always the fear of violence erupting,'' he said.
 Two national elections held so far this year -- parliamentary elections in April and the first round of the presidential vote in July -- proceeded without major hitches.
 The results of the public opinion surveys last week confirmed that voters were basing their decisions on vague impressions and personality rather than any knowledge of issues.
 So, Ms. Normawatie expressed concern about the state of Indonesia's economy and the lack of jobs that pay well. ''That is No.1,'' she said.
 But she said she could not be sure what General Yudhoyono would do to correct the problem, with 40 million Indonesians either unemployed or underemployed.
 Pointing to General Yudhoyono's military career, she said she was hopeful that he would be more effective in stopping the terror attacks. ''I like the military,'' she said. ''He knows how to handle these problems. It's going to be hard work. But he can do better than Megawati.'' 
 A car bomb attack outside the Australian Embassy here on Sept. 9 killed nine Indonesians, and the police blamed a militant Islamic group, Jemaah Islamiyah. The group, which is based in Indonesia and has links to Al Qaeda, was also held responsible for a terror attack against the Marriott hotel in Jakarta last year and the attack against a Bali nightclub in 2002.
 But questions about how to stem the terror attacks barely rated a mention in the campaign. In what passed for presidential debates, the candidates made three back-to-back but separate television appearances before a panel of journalists last week.
 The candidates were not queried specifically about Jemaah Islamiyah. They were asked in general terms about terrorism.
 Mrs. Megawati, who is known to have little grasp of or interest in the intricacies of policy, insisted that Indonesia was ''safe.''








 



September 20, 2004 Monday  




 A Broader Agenda For Indonesia

 
 The development of strong, prosperous and democratic states in the Islamic world is now a vital U.S. interest. Accordingly, much planning has focused on the Middle East. Support for strengthening democracy in Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population, should also be a core U.S. objective. 
 Indonesia is holding its most ambitious parliamentary and presidential elections since the end of the Suharto era in 1998. Voters all over the archipelago have cast votes for representatives, and today they select their president. Thus far, independent observers and Indonesians have applauded this demonstration of a vibrant and fair democratic process, as well they should. But while open elections are an important step for Indonesia, there is much farther to go on the path to stable democratic government.  
 Democracies depend on more than elections: the rule of law, a dynamic civil society, minority rights and a market economy are key components. The challenge for Indonesia is accelerating reforms in these areas. In particular, corruption and an ineffective judicial system have left many Indonesians skeptical of post-Suharto democracy; they have also turned off some foreign investors. 
 There is, of course, a security dimension. This traditionally moderate Muslim nation is home to several violent fundamentalist groups, most notably the al Qaeda-affiliated Jemaah Islamiah, which has been tied to terrorist bombings in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, most recently outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Popular disaffection with government and poor economic conditions can leave the door open for terrorist groups adept at exploiting local grievances and hardships. In a nation of more than 17,000 islands, the danger is that a jihadist group could gain the kind of territorial foothold that enables terrorist indoctrination, training and planning. 
 The United States has been increasingly concerned with this threat. Since the October 2002 Bali bombings, counterterrorism, understandably, has been the focus of U.S. policy toward Indonesia. But our agenda in Indonesia can be broadened beyond sharing intelligence and making arrests. Simply put, the United States should accelerate efforts to support the long-term growth, stability and democracy that undermine the terrorists. 
 To begin, the United States can bolster its commitment to Indonesian education. President Bush put us on the right track with a pledge of $157 million over six years. Education initiatives counter those who teach hatred and brighten prospects for the 20 percent of Indonesian children who receive no schooling. Further assistance in areas such as teacher training, school supplies and educational exchange can help Indonesia develop alternatives to those who exploit gaps in education to promote jihadist indoctrination. 
 Vigorous public diplomacy is also needed in a country where distrust of the United States has become the norm. This should include an explanation of American policies and values that engages Indonesians in a dialogue rather than simply pushing a message through advertisements and brochures. Another necessary element is the kind of support for civil society that the United States has employed in so many countries -- including support for cultural centers, nongovernmental organizations, academia, the media and the private sector. This could improve bilateral relations while helping Indonesians develop the vitality of their own democracy. 
 The United States should also move toward greater cooperation with Indonesia's police and military. For the judicial system to improve, the capacity of Indonesia's police to enforce the law must be enhanced, and that can be aided by support from this and other countries. Similarly, ties with the Indonesian military will be necessary -- both operational support and education about the relationship between military and civil control. This is controversial; accountability and human rights should be part of the equation. But ultimately the United States and Indonesia  will gain more from engagement than estrangement on these issues. 
 We are not seeking to impose an American agenda. As the elections demonstrate, the vast majority of Indonesians are willing to embrace political, judicial and economic reforms, although they are wary of the United States. Progress on reforms will lead to much-needed foreign investment in this resource-rich country, improving the standard of living for many Indonesians. Meanwhile, by helping Indonesia, the United States can help democracy gain a foothold in the world's largest Muslim country while undercutting efforts of terrorists. 
 There is great promise and potential peril in Indonesia: promise for a thriving democracy in an important Islamic country; peril arising from the regional erosion of state control that enables terrorism. A sustained and comprehensive U.S. policy of engagement and encouragement of democracy can help ensure that Indonesia's elections are part of a broader democratic success story -- one that someday may be looked back upon as a watershed for the Islamic world. 
 Lee Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, is president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. George P. Shultz was secretary of state from 1982 to 1989. The authors were co-chairs of the National Commission on U.S.-Indonesian Relations. 







 



September 20, 2004 Monday  




 Indonesia Set to Pick President in Runoff; 
Incumbent Megawati Trails in Opinion Polls as Voter Discontent Is Widespread

 
Indonesians will choose in a runoff election on Monday between incumbent President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her former chief security minister, both moderate Muslims who have pledged to work with the United States in fighting terrorism. 
 Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who won the first round in July but fell well short of a majority, had a lead of at least 20 percentage points in public opinion polls going into the balloting, tapping widespread discontent over unemployment, rising prices and pervasive corruption. 
 The two candidates offer voters a similar choice, agreeing on many policies and sharing close ties to the country's powerful military. But the prospect of a peaceful change of government in Indonesia is a notable achievement following the country's history of authoritarian rule.  
Criticized for her apparent aloofness, Megawati has overhauled her campaign at the urging of advisers, taking advantage of the incumbency to travel the archipelago to stump with farmers, students, artists and local merchants. The effort helped her chip away at Yudhoyono's lead, which dropped from as much as 32 points in polls earlier this month. 
 The final weeks of the campaign, however, have been lackluster. The national election commission, fearing violence between rival camps, banned the outdoor rallies and parades that are a traditional feature of Indonesian elections. 
 Official campaigning for the runoff was limited to three days last week. Public attention focused largely on three nights of televised discussions in which experts quizzed  candidates separately about their policies. A proposal for a  debate was shelved after Megawati, who is known to be uncomfortable in unscripted settings, objected to the format. 
 Despite the low-key conclusion to the contest, business in campaign caps, shirts and other paraphernalia has remained brisk at Uci Missusita's shop deep inside Jakarta's Pasar Senen market. Missusita, 24, said the store nearly doubled its hours in recent months to handle the demand, particularly for Megawati items. Stacked high on the floor Sunday were white T-shirts adorned with pictures of the president and her vice presidential running mate. But as a campaign worker stuffed them into a large plastic bag for distribution, Missusita, wearing a black head scarf, said she backed Yudhoyono. 
 "I think Megawati's presidency has failed, so why should I keep supporting her?" she said. "I see a lot of unemployment, and there's no solution. She's made a lot of promises, but they are only promises." 
 Two aisles away, Ng Seng Nyam, 65, sat inside his stuffy shoe stall and said he could no longer back Megawati despite her earlier role as a rallying symbol for opponents of former president Suharto, whose autocratic administration, dubbed the New Order, was toppled in 1998 following mass protests. 
 "She had been repressed by the New Order and became a representative of its victims," Ng said. "But after three years of her administration, the economy is getting worse, corruption continues and school fees are getting more expensive." 
 Megawati worked hard to assemble a coalition of political parties in support of her candidacy and even forged a formal alliance with Suharto's Golkar party, which has reemerged as the largest in parliament. Opinion surveys have indicated, however, that voters aligned with most major parties back Yudhoyono regardless of the official endorsements. 
 Megawati's advisers said they were counting in part on lingering affection for her, especially in the countryside, as the daughter of Indonesia's founding father, Sukarno. Yudhoyono has sought to portray himself as a cautious reformer, though some critics have called him more indecisive than cautious and alleged that his campaign team was drawn heavily from Suharto's military. 
 Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, but religion played only a minor role in the campaign. Megawati has donned a head scarf in some advertisements, and both candidates have visited Mecca in recent months. 
 But even after a car bombing outside the Australian Embassy this month that police attributed to Muslim militants, voters remained far less concerned about links between religion and extremist violence than about the daily struggle to make ends meet, according to opinion surveys and interviews. 
 Indonesia's economy, which grew at a rate of 4.1 percent last year, has failed to keep up with the demand for employment as millions of new job seekers enter the labor market. 







 


September 19, 2004 Sunday  




 ELECTION

 
Indonesia goes to the polls Monday to select a president in an election between two well-known figures: the incumbent, Megawati Sukarnoputri, and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, her former security minister. The world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia has made a quick transition to democracy since the dictator of three decades, General Suharto, resigned under pressure in 1998.   Jane Perlez







 
  


September 19, 2004 Sunday 



 INDONESIA TO ELECT 1ST PRESIDENT

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Just days after yet another terrorist blast shook their confidence, Indonesians are looking forward to some good news Monday: Citizens in the world's largest Muslim nation will directly elect their president for the first time.
Voters will choose between incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of a former president, and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former army general and Megawati's former security minister.
Recent polls show Yudhoyono with a 2-1 lead, but some seasoned political observers here think the election will be closer than that, and a few don't rule out a Megawati victory.
Whoever wins, the election will be a milestone on the path to democracy, which was re-established just six years ago after three decades of authoritarian rule under former President Suharto. 
"Americans, when they think of Indonesia, probably think of violence and terror before they thing of anything else," U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce said. "But quietly humming along below the surface in a less attention-grabbing way is the fact that this huge country is going through a massive democratic transition."
Indonesians, who generally practice a moderate, tolerant brand of Islam, are proving that Islam and democracy can coexist, Boyce said. "It's one of the more exciting experiments currently anywhere in the world."
Indonesia sits alongside shipping lanes vital to the United States, Japan and China, and the island nation's fight against the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network, which is allied with al Qaida, is crucial to maintaining security in Southeast Asia.
Jemaah Islamiyah is blamed for the 2002 explosions that killed 202 people on the resort island of Bali. Last year, it masterminded a bombing at the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, killing 12 more. Police also think the group was responsible for the blast at the Australian embassy Sept. 9, which killed nine Indonesians.
Candidates in this island nation of 240 million people barely mention the subject, however. Indonesians would recoil if either candidate tried to turn the terrorism issue to their advantage, said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a political analyst at the Indonesian Institute of Social Sciences.
"People here would regard it as very bad form to make fortune out of our common tragedy," she said.
So will the race turn on Indonesia's perennial problems: poverty, corruption, unemployment and the need for judicial and military reform? No. Both candidates have made sweeping commitments to implement political reforms and strengthen the economy, but neither has offered many specifics.
"The governments they head would be very much the same," said Wimar Witoelar, a political analyst in Jakarta. "Anyone on Susilo's side would have a chance to be in Megawati's government, except Susilo himself, and anyone on Megawati's side could be in Susilo's government, except Megawati herself."
With little to distinguish them on the policy front, the race may hinge on personality. Nearly everyone gives the edge to Yudhoyono, a former general with a crisp, commanding air. Megawati is viewed by many as queenly, aloof and arrogant.
"She just assumed the presidency was hers as a matter of divine right," Anwar said.
Megawati's most frequently aired television commercial shows her feeding the poor, saluting army officers and greeting foreign dignitaries. She doesn't say a word on the soundtrack, which features uplifting music instead.
Yudhoyono's commercials show him standing erect next to his running mate, with a reassuring smile.
During their televised candidate forums this week, Megawati repeatedly punted questions to her running mate, Hasyim Muzadi. Projecting more confidence, Yudhoyono answered questions while his running mate, Jusuf Kalla, generally deferred to the man at the top of the ticket.
Yudhoyono finished ahead of Megawati in the first presidential election round in July but didn't win the 50 percent of the vote necessary to avoid a runoff.






 
  


September 19, 2004 Sunday  



 WESTERNERS TREAD SOFTLY IN INDONESIA;
TERROR AIMED AT AMERICANS AND AUSTRALIANS FEARED AS NATION PREPARES TO SELECT PRESIDENT

 
Days after a terrorist bomb killed his friend and scattered body parts near his street vendor's cart, Dial is still emerging from shock.
"I'm scared to go anywhere," said Dial, 18, who, like many of his fellow Indonesians, goes by one name. "Indonesia is becoming a nest of terrorists."
This capital city of 14 million is on high alert after a truck bombing of the Australian Embassy on Sept. 9, which killed nine Indonesians. At shopping malls and hotels, every car is swept for bombs and every customer passes through metal detectors. 
With police announcing that several suspected bombers may still be on the loose, rumors abound about where they might strike next.
Authorities last Wednesday offered $100,000 for information leading to the capture of the suspects, who are believed to be members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant Islamist network considered to be a Southeast Asian affiliate of Al-Qaida.
The American, Australian and British governments have warned their citizens to avoid unnecessary travel to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. The country controls shipping lanes that are important to the United States, Japan, China and Western Europe, and its security is vital to the region.
Last week, U.S. officials cautioned that another attack could occur before Monday's presidential election and urged people to avoid Western-owned hotels and businesses in central Jakarta. U.S. intelligence officials in Washington said two areas in Jakarta often visited by foreigners -- Kuningan and the Pasar Festival Mall -- have been under surveillance by terrorists.
Long list of blame
Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for the 2002 bombing of the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people -- many of them Australian tourists -- and for a car bombing of Jakarta's Marriott hotel last year that killed 12 Indonesians.
Australians have been targeted because they have been staunch allies in the U.S.-led war on terrorism and have sent troops to assist U.S. forces in Iraq.
"The terrorists' objective is to say that anybody who joins forces with the United States in general or in Iraq in particular is vulnerable, and they have the capacity to target them," said Sydney Jones of the International Crisis Group, a leading expert on Jemaah Islamiyah.
Since the Bali bombing, Indonesian police have worked with Australian investigators to track down and arrest many terrorism suspects, including several in the top ranks of Jemaah Islamiyah.
The most recent attack is likely to weaken the organization further, Jones said. Because all the victims of the attack were Indonesians, the bombing probably angered most Jemaah Islamiyah members, who consider this type of bombing counterproductive, she said.
But as the organization's central command structure is weakened, the ability of individual factions to strike out on their own is strengthened.
Jemaah Islamiyah "is weaker but may be, paradoxically, more dangerous in the short term," Jones said. "Now different cells have the ability to go off on their own initiative and commit spectacular attacks."
Bounty on suspects
Police believe the bombing was masterminded by Jemaah Islamiyah members Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohammed Top, and they have placed a $100,000 bounty on both men.
In an effort to identify the suicide bombers, they are conducting DNA tests on 117 body fragments collected near the embassy.
While the nation has been riveted by the embassy attack, political analysts say it's unlikely to influence Monday's election, which pits incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri against challenger Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"Terrorism has no bearing on who people will vote for, but it is the primary issue on our minds," said Wimar Witoelar, a political commentator in Jakarta. "Every car that comes in now, we look at it. We are very nervous."
Many Indonesians who once admired the United States for its commitment to democratic values have been disillusioned by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, viewing them as wars against Islam. Anti-American sentiment is high.
Witoelar bristles when he hears foreign commentators suggest that Indonesians, who practice a moderate brand of Islam, might be sympathetic with the terrorists.
"When my dog has fleas, I don't ask her if she condones her fleas," Witoelar said. "She hates her fleas, but she doesn't know how to get rid of them."






 
  


September 19, 2004 Sunday  



 INDONESIANS TO DIRECTLY ELECT PRESIDENT FOR FIRST TIME MONDAY

 
Just days after yet another terrorist blast shook their confidence, Indonesians are looking forward to some good news Monday: Citizens in the world's largest Muslim nation will directly elect their president for the first time.
Voters will choose between incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of a former president, and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former army general and Megawati's former security minister.
Recent polls show Yudhoyono with a 2-1 lead, but some seasoned political observers here think the election will be closer than that, and a few don't rule out a Megawati victory.
Whoever wins, the election will be a milestone on the path to democracy, which was re-established just six years ago after three decades of authoritarian rule under former President Suharto. 
"Americans, when they think of Indonesia, probably think of violence and terror before they think of anything else," U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce said. "But quietly humming along below the surface in a less attention-grabbing way is the fact that this huge country is going through a massive democratic transition."
Indonesians, who generally practice a moderate, tolerant brand of Islam, are proving that Islam and democracy can coexist, Boyce said. "It's one of the more exciting experiments currently anywhere in the world."
Security factors
Indonesia sits alongside shipping lanes vital to the United States, Japan and China, and the island nation's fight against the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network, which is allied with Al-Qaida, is crucial to maintaining security in Southeast Asia.
Jemaah Islamiyah is blamed for the 2002 explosions that killed 202 people on the resort island of Bali. Last year, it masterminded a bombing at a Marriott hotel in Jakarta, killing 12 more. Police also think the group was responsible for the blast at the Australian Embassy on Sept. 9, which killed nine
Indonesians.
Candidates in this island nation of 240 million people barely mention the subject, however. Indonesians would recoil if candidates tried to turn the terrorism issue to their advantage, said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a political analyst at the Indonesian Institute of Social Sciences.
"People here would regard it as very bad form to make fortune out of our common tragedy," she said.
So will the race turn on Indonesia's perennial problems: poverty, corruption, unemployment and the need for judicial and military reform? No. Both candidates have made sweeping commitments to implement political reforms and strengthen the economy, but neither has offered many specifics.
"The governments they head would be very much the same," said Wimar Witoelar, a political analyst in Jakarta. "Anyone on Susilo's side would have a chance to be in Megawati's government, except Susilo himself, and anyone on Megawati's side could be in Susilo's government, except Megawati herself."
With little to distinguish them on the policy front, the race may hinge on personality. Nearly everyone gives the edge to Yudhoyono, a former general with a crisp, commanding air. Megawati is viewed by many as queenly, aloof and arrogant.
"She just assumed the presidency was hers as a matter of divine right," Anwar said.
Megawati's most frequently aired television commercial shows her feeding the poor, saluting army officers and greeting foreign dignitaries. She doesn't say a word on the soundtrack, which features uplifting music instead.
Yudhoyono's commercials show him standing erect next to his running mate, with a reassuring smile.
During their televised candidate forums this week, Megawati repeatedly punted questions to her running mate, Hasyim Muzadi. Projecting more confidence, Yudhoyono answered questions while his running mate, Jusuf Kalla,generally deferred to the man at the top of the ticket.
Yudhoyono finished ahead of Megawati in the first presidential election round in July but didn't win the 50 percent of the vote necessary to avoid a runoff.
Campaign skills
Since then, Megawati has made a concerted effort to work on her campaign skills, said Salim Said, a Jakarta political analyst.
"Her mistake in the past was she did not communicate with the people," he said. "She barricaded herself in the palace. But she is very active now, communicating with people in the grass roots."
The daughter of Sukarno, Megawati became president in 2001, after her predecessor, Abdurrahman Wahid, was forced out of office for ineffective leadership. Like his predecessors, Wahid was elected by members of parliament, a system that's being abandoned this year.
Megawati is credited with maintaining social and economic stability in this often-fractious island nation, but economic growth and foreign investment remain anemic.
The 54-year-old Yudhoyono earned public support after the Bali bombings, which killed mostly Australian tourists but also many Indonesians. As security minister, he spoke out strongly against the terrorists and helped launch an investigation that has significantly weakened Jemaah Islamiyah.
Megawati, 57, came to office promising to help Indonesia's legions of poor by implementing political reforms. But she has yet to make a significant dent in the corruption that permeates the government, and risks losing some of her grass-roots support as a result.
In the Batang neighborhood fish market in Jakarta, where the scent of garbage and the day's catch mingle, most people say they'll stand by Megawati. But a few, such as 40-year-old Hayati, are considering Yudhoyono.
"Megawati is not helping me," said Hayati, who, like many people here, goes by one name. "I will pick a leader who pays more attention to people at the grass roots." A mother of six, Hayati earns about $10 a day at her fruit stand.







 


September 16, 2004 Thursday  




 The First Draft of Freedom

 
The trial of one brave journalist in Indonesia has implications far beyond the courtroom in Jakarta. By the time this article appears, the Central Jakarta District Court is supposed to have handed down a verdict in the case of Bambang Harymurti, the chief editor of Tempo, Indonesia's leading newsmagazine, and two of his colleagues.
 I hope that reason will prevail on the court and this charge -- which never should have been filed -- will be dismissed. The mere fact that this case has been brought, however, is a threat to the freedom and democracy that Indonesia has enjoyed since the collapse of the Suharto government six years ago. 
  The Indonesian government has charged Mr. Bambang with criminal defamation. The charges stem from an article in Tempo that reported on accusations that a suspicious fire in a market in Jakarta in February 2003 may have been connected to plans to turn that area into a fancy commercial shopping center. The plans were possibly connected to a wealthy Indonesian businessman named Tomy Winata. 
 Mr. Winata sued for civil defamation and, unusually, the government charged Mr. Bambang and two of his colleagues with criminal defamation under laws dating to the Dutch colonial period and the early years of independence. Prosecutors have asked for two-year sentences and -- even more unusually -- have asked that Mr. Bambang be detained immediately, treating him like a dangerous criminal who should not be allowed to remain at large. 
 In the interest of disclosure, I should say that I have known Mr. Bambang for nearly 20 years. I knew him particularly well in the late 1980's, when I was American ambassador in Jakarta. I know him to be a journalist of enormous integrity, someone who takes seriously his responsibility not only to publish the truth but also not to publish falsehoods. He is also a Muslim who has courageously denounced terrorism and extremism on the editorial pages of his magazine.
 But my concerns about this case extend far beyond my worry about the fate of a friend. I believe that the whole world has a stake in the success of democracy in Indonesia. If this country of almost 240 million, with more Muslims than any other in the world -- indeed, with more than 15 percent of the world's Muslim population -- can demonstrate its capacity to develop democratic institutions, even in the face of economic adversity, it will be a valuable example for the rest of the world. This is particularly true because Indonesia's strong tradition of religious tolerance in a nation that is almost 90 percent Muslim also makes it an important role model in the post-Sept. 11 world. It is no accident that the terrorist fanatics associated with Al Qaeda have been attacking Indonesia, even before the horrendous bombings in Bali in October 2002. And the attacks continue, with one just last week.
 Indonesia has made remarkable progress in developing democratic institutions, despite the catastrophic economic conditions that the new government inherited with the financial collapse that accompanied the demise of the Suharto dictatorship. The country held a fair presidential election in 1999, parliamentary elections last April and is about to conduct a runoff on Monday to complete its second democratic presidential election. These are no small achievements. 
 While holding two fair presidential elections in a row is a hallmark of democratic progress, the real test of a democracy is how it protects the rights of its citizens. Our own Declaration of Independence doesn't speak of elections but rather about the rights of all human beings to certain ''inalienable rights,'' in particular ''life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'' And it is a fundamental principle of our Constitution that citizens cannot be deprived of those rights except by due process of law. Elections are properly viewed as a mechanism to hold government accountable, particularly in its most fundamental responsibility of protecting the rights of its individual citizens.
 Accordingly, the rule of law is one of the essential pillars of a democratic society. There are few powers that a democratic state possesses that are as awesome as the power to prosecute its own citizens lawfully. And few things are more threatening to a true democracy than the abuse of that prosecutorial power.
 One of the worst possible ways that power can be abused is to take away the freedom of the press and thereby remove one of the most important mechanisms for ensuring that government respects the rights of its citizens. As Mr. Bambang pointed out in his eloquent pleading before the court in August, the collapse of Indonesia's first brief experience with democracy in the 1950's began with ''an attempt to undermine freedom of the domestic press through the criminalization of journalists.'' 
 Under President Sukarno, 60 press cases were brought before the Special State Court in September 1957 alone. As Mr. Bambang said: ''The world's train has long raced away from the station where journalistic works are still criminalized. We ought to be included in the carriage of the world community's progress, and not left behind at the station of backwardness, one that is more fitting to be displayed in a museum and not as a destination.''
 Both of the candidates in next Monday's presidential runoff election have expressed concern over this case. One hopes that beyond acquitting Mr. Bambang and his colleagues of any of the criminal charges pressed against them, Indonesia will take steps to ensure that this intimidation of a free press should cease.                                                  






  September 16, 2004, Thursday



 HOW RUSSIA'S CHECHEN QUAGMIRE BECAME FRONT FOR RADICAL ISLAM
Evolution of Chechen conflict from nationalist struggle into Islamist jihad reflects broader shift set in motion by end of Cold War; radical Islam has emerged as convenient, off-the-shelf ideology that can clothe complex local conflicts that few people would otherwise care about; trend is also apparent in separatist struggles in Aceh in Indonesia, Indian-controlled Kashmir and other countries where Islamists have replaced communists as principal source of opposition to established g overnments; profile of former atheist Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev; drawing, map (L)




September 15, 2004 Wednesday



 Aim of terrorists' suicide bombings is political

 
   Throughout the bloody American involvement in Vietnam, the most perceptive anti-insurgency experts in the West always understood that the aim of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese was political -- the establishment of a communist regime in Saigon -- and that military operations were but a means to that end. For instance, the American Embassy in Saigon had no military significance for Hanoi but had high symbolic value. The costly Viet Cong attack on it in the Tet offensive of 1968, though actually a failure, was a brilliant political ploy, designed to shock the American public and undermine support of the war.
So it is with terrorism today. The hapless suicide bombers and truck-bomb drivers who are dispatched on missions of hatred and murder are instruments of terrorist leaders with distinct political agendas. So horrified will Russians be at the slaughter of their children in Beslan that they will get out of Chechnya, goes the reasoning. Kill enough morning commuters in Madrid and you may topple a government that has aligned itself with the U.S. war against terrorism. Kill enough Americans and behead enough other foreign nationals in Iraq and they might go away and cede the country to the extremists who despise democracy. 
And so it was in Indonesia last week. The suicide bomber who set off the explosion outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta was the pawn of a terrorist cell with distinct political aims. Of all the embassies chosen, Australia has been one of the sturdiest supporters of the United States in Iraq. Its U.S.-supporting Prime Minister John Howard is facing a lively election Oct. 9 against a Labor Party that has frowned on the dispatch of Australian troops to Iraq. Clearly, although no Australians and only Indonesians were killed in the blast, it was intended as a message of deadly political warning to Australian voters.
But it was not an Australian Embassy in Singapore or Manila that was targeted, but the embassy in Indonesia. That choice, too, is significant and points to a clear political design behind the planning. Indonesia is one of those countries -- like Pakistan and Turkey -- that are Muslim but not Arab. In fact Arabs make up less than a fifth of the Muslim world.
The observance of Islam in Indonesia, a country of 216 million, the largest Muslim country in the world, is far less radical than throughout the Arab world. This has been a bone in the throat of a radical minority in Indonesia, a violent terrorist arm of which has sought to destabilize the governing order and subvert Indonesia's current movement toward democracy. It is probably no coincidence that last week's explosion took place just 11 days before Indonesia's first direct presidential election on Sept. 20.
Indonesian voters have hitherto been underwhelmed by the efforts of the radical minority parties to gain legitimate political traction, but the militant Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah, which Indonesian police say is responsible for last week's terror attack, is nonetheless seeking to stir extremist fervor. The organization, whose fingerprints were on a 1995 plot to bomb 11 U.S. commercial airliners in Asia, and the 2002 bombing of a Bali nightclub that killed many Australian tourists, as well as the 2003 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, is believed by some terrorist experts to have links to al-Qaida. Its leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, an Indonesian of Yemeni descent, denies this but has expressed support for Osama bin Laden.
The political agenda of al-Qaida, the principal terrorist organization confronting the United States today, is clearly the crushing of any democratic tendencies in the Muslim, and especially Arab, world and the establishment and consolidation of Islamic radicalism.
Indonesia, and moderate Muslim countries like it, and the legions of moderate Muslims around the world, are irritating obstacles to al-Qaida's ambitions. Even in those Arab lands where extremists are at their most vocal, brave, but often lonely, voices are speaking out on behalf of freedom. The recent slaughter of Russian schoolchildren has spawned some unusual criticism and introspection in the Arab world. Particularly significant was a commentary by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, who heads the influential Al Arabiya television network.
In a newspaper column he wrote: "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is exceptionally painful that almost all terrorists are Muslims. What a pathetic record. What an abominable achievement. Does this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?"
It is a question that sets moderate Muslims apart from those who fuel their political agenda with terror. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. In 1967, he won the Pulitzer prize for his coverage of Indonesia. He is a former editor of the , which syndicates this column. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com








 

September 12, 2004 Sunday  




 Islam's links to terror attacks have local believers concerned

 
Reports about the slaughter of Russian children at the hands of Islamic militants this month distressed Samim Ezzat.
"I condemn it," said Ezzat, of Northglenn. "As a Muslim, I was really upset."
But if he was saddened over the deaths of at least 330 Russians taken hostage Sept. 1 at a Beslan school, Ezzat was equally anxious about yet another connection the Western world would draw between terrorism and Islam. 
"They are saying there is always a link between terrorism and Muslims," Ezzat said. "I wish they (the terrorists) would not be Muslim. I wish they did not come from Muslim countries. But they are."
In the Arab world, Muslims are examining their faith and culture in light of the fact that recent terrorist acts - such as Thursday's bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, and the downing of two Russian airliners last month - have been linked to Islam, albeit so-called "militant," "radical" or "extreme" Islam.
But locally, Muslims are treading gently. While quick to condemn terrorist acts, particularly against children, they say the Western world has failed to recognize that the militants are reacting to what they see as the persecution of Muslims worldwide.
Historical events - from the division of the Arab world by Colonial powers after World War I, and the settling of Jews in the former Palestine, a land Muslims believe is rightly theirs - has left Muslims feeling helpless, said Sheik Ammar Amonette, an Islamic studies scholar.
Muslims have been treated unfairly for most of the 1,400 years that Islam has been around, said Amonette, who delivered a lecture on the topic of "Extremism and Islam" on Saturday at the Denver Islamic Society on South Birch Street.
"The perception throughout the Islamic world today is that their opinions are the last to be counted," he said, because racism and bigotry leaves others to believe "they can never be trusted."
"When they feel that way, they join extremist movements," Amonette said. "All they care for is revenge" despite its contradiction to the peaceful teaching of Islam, he said.
Ezzat said those committing terrorist acts probably feel "it's the only way they can get revenge.... But that's wrong. Such acts shouldn't be committed in the name of Islam."
Emamudin Ghiasi, president of the Colorado Muslim Society, said Islam allows jihad, or holy war, under special circumstances.
"If you are attacked, you have the right to defend yourself," he said. Chechens, who have been seeking independence from Russia, have been under attack for the past 10 years, Ghiasi said. But he added that the militants had no right to attack schoolchildren.
"They're innocent," he said. But the Chechens, he said, "can't face the government directly, so they take their revenge on the innocent."
Ibrahim Kahn, a Los Angeles resident who visited the Colorado Muslim Society mosque on Parker Road for afternoon prayers Friday, said he believes the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were expressing their resentment over Israel's presence on land claimed by Palestinians.
"If you were turned out of your house by an aggressive person, naturally you have a resentment," he said. While not condoning the attacks, he said, "We as a community, we (Muslims) sympathize" with the Palestinians.
"You have a right to defend your home," said Kahn, 76.
But Amonette said there are exceptions to jihad. For example, a Muslim cannot attack someone who is not an enemy or who has repented for acts done against him.
"Jihad is not an open proclamation that Muslims have the right to kill people," he said.
Muslims are as sensitive to fighting in their homeland as the victims of terrorism, Kahn said. When U.S. planes drop bombs on Iraq, "do the boys care who they are killing?" he asked.
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-820-
1684 or krouse@denverpost.com.






  


September 11, 2004 Saturday



 <50>Jakarta picking up the pieces<P>

 
hGBK:Prime minister says another attack possible
@BY1:By LELY T. DJUHARI @BY2:Associated Press
@JAKARTA, Indonesia Police released a grainy photo Friday of a white delivery truck taken by a security camera just before it blew up outside the Australian Embassy and said they suspect two suicide bombers in the vehicle set off the explosion, killing seven other people.
As details emerged in the attack, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said at a Jakarta news conference that Indonesian police had received a mobile phone text message 45 minutes before the bombing, warning that foreign missions in Jakarta would be attacked unless the alleged head of al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah was freed from prison.
Australian officials said the threat was not passed on to Australian Federal Police until hours after Thursday's bombing. But Indonesian police said they had received no such warning. 
"That's not true. Where did Downer get that from?" said Indonesian police spokesman Maj. Gen. Paiman, who goes by a single name.
In Australia, Prime Minister John Howard said another attack in Jakarta was a "distinct possibility." Militants have repeatedly struck foreign targets in Indonesia, the deadliest in 2002 when they bombed nightclubs on Bali, killing 202 people, including many Australians.
"There has been a lot of 'chatter' as the intelligence agencies call it, and a lot of evidence coming forward suggesting it," he said of another attack.
The accused head of Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Bakar Bashir, is in jail as prosecutors draw up a revised indictment against him for allegedly inspiring his followers to launch attacks. In 2002, an Indonesian court cleared Bashir of terror charges, but sentenced him to 18 months in jail for minor immigration violations. He was rearrested in April after serving his sentence.
A claim of responsibility in Jemaah Islamiyah's name was posted Thursday on an Internet site known for carrying extremist Islamic content. Its authenticity could not be verified.
"We decided to call Australia to account, which we consider one of the worst enemies of God, and God's religion of Islam," the statement said. "Here we were able to call it to account today in Jakarta, where one of the mujahedeen [holy warriors] was able to execute a martyrdom operation with a truck bomb in front of the embassy."
Jemaah Islamiyah has also been blamed for the bombings at Bali and against the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta a year ago, which killed 12 people.
The Australian Embassy attack, which also injured more than 170 people, struck a key U.S. ally in the war in Iraq. It came just ahead of the Sept. 11 anniversary, shortly before Indonesia's Sept. 20 presidential election, and ahead of Australian parliamentary polls on Oct. 9 in which Howard is running in a tight race on a pro-American, anti-terror platform.
Police said the delivery truck was packed with 440 pounds of potassium chloride. Authorities said they recovered a vehicle chassis and other parts.
Indonesian police chief Dai Bachtiar said authorities were searching for two key alleged members of Jemaah Islamiyah suspected Malaysian bomb-makers Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Top. Police discovered an empty house near the airport rented last month by the suspects.
Lt. Gen. Suyitno Landung, the national police's chief of detectives, said information about the suicide bombers came from interrogations of six men arrested in June. Police also recovered letters in which a suicide bomber asked his family permission to take part in an attack.
Australian forensics experts and bomb experts joined Indonesian police at the bomb site Friday, marking evidence on the road by putting small orange flags on bits of bomb debris.
Bouquets of flowers lined the front of surrounding buildings along with posters saying: "Today, Indonesia is crying," and "Curse the terrorists!"
Australian leader Howard has come under fire for sending 2,000 troops for last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and still has more than 850 military personnel in or around the country. The Iraq war is deeply unpopular in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
But some analysts predicted the bombing could help Howard's government in next month's polls against the Labor Party because he is seen as stronger on security issues.
In Indonesia, analysts predicted the bloodshed could further alienate Indonesians from Jemaah Islamiyah and decrease the already-waning support for conservative Islamic political parties which fared poorly in April parliamentary elections.
AP-WS-09-10-04 1244EDT







 



September 11, 2004 Saturday  




 3 Fugitive Muslim Militants Suspected in Jakarta Attack; 
Police Memo Had Warned of a Possible Terrorist Bombing

 
 Indonesian investigators said Friday that they believed  Thursday morning's  bombing of the Australian Embassy, which killed nine people, was carried out by three suicide attackers who had eluded a police manhunt after their fellow Muslim militants were captured during raids in July and August. 
 As police carried out interrogations  in recent weeks, authorities grew increasingly worried that Jemaah Islamiah, an underground Muslim organization linked to al Qaeda, was planning a major terrorist bombing, investigators said.  
Within the last week, Indonesian police circulated an internal memo warning of a possible attack, according to three officers involved in the investigation of the Thursday bombing. The memo focused on potential targets such as embassies, foreign-owned company offices and hotels, and the national police headquarters and counterterrorism training center, the investigators said.  
Though the blast, which rocked the heart of Jakarta's modern financial district, killed nine Indonesians, it  caused only minor injuries to staff members inside the well-fortified embassy. More than 150 people in the surrounding area along Rasuna Said Boulevard were wounded. 
 Indonesian and Australian investigators have determined that the attackers packed a Daihatsu minivan with explosives and then detonated them as the vehicle approached the mission's high metal gates, said Lt. Gen. Suyitno Landung, chief of detectives for the national police. 
 The Australian police commissioner, Mick Keelty, who arrived in Jakarta hours after the attack, told reporters that evidence indicated that the bombers used about 440 pounds of potassium chlorate, a common component of explosives.  
 Investigators now plan to determine whether body parts from three unidentified victims could be those of the suicide attackers. Indonesian police said they would compare the DNA of those victims with samples taken from family members of the three fugitives being sought by authorities. 
 "Militants who were arrested recently said there were three men who were ready to become suicide bombers," Landung said. 
 Police officials described the three as members of a group recently  recruited in central and eastern Java to carry out attacks for Jemaah Islamiah. One of the three suspects had sent a letter to his family saying he was prepared to die, and he specifically mentioned two Malaysian leaders of Jemaah Islamiah,  the chief bomb maker, Azahari Husin, and financier Noordin Mohammed Top, according to Inspector  Gen. Paiman, a police spokesman who goes by  one name. 
 The two men top Indonesia's  list of most-wanted terrorist suspects. Immediately after the Thursday attack, Gen. Dai Bachtiar, the national police chief, blamed Azahari, who had previously been named a key suspect in the  bombings of two Bali nightclubs in 2002 and the attack a year later on the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, which together killed 214 people. 
 Speaking at a news conference here on Friday, Bachtiar said police may have come close to capturing Azahari and Noordin two months ago, when authorities raided a house in a Jakarta suburb near the international airport. "The men there were similar in appearance to Azahari and Noordin Mohammed, according to local residents," Bachtiar said. But the suspects fled, eluding capture as they had for nearly two years. 
 Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told reporters after meeting with President Megawati Sukarnoputri that Indonesian police had received a cell phone text message warning of the bombing 45 minutes beforehand. Downer said the message threatened attacks on foreign embassies unless Indonesian authorities released Abubakar Baasyir, a radical Muslim cleric facing trial on charges of being  the spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah. 
 Indonesian police officials said they were unaware of such a warning. 
 In Canberra, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said intelligence agencies had warned of the possibility of another major attack in Jakarta. "The information they have available indicates that the number of operatives . . . is sufficiently large to support the fear that there could be another attack," he told reporters. 
Special correspondent Noor Huda Ismail contributed to this report. 







 


September 10, 2004 Friday  




 Muslim militants explode car bomb outside embassy; 
Group: Australia get out of Iraq, have your citizens leave Indonesia

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Suspected Muslim militants detonated a car bomb Thursday outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, killing nine people and wounding 173 in a bloody strike at a key U.S. ally in the war in Iraq.
The blast -- the first major attack attributed to Jemaah Islamiyah in more than a year -- could influence elections in Australia, where the prime minister is running on a pro-American, anti-terror platform.
The bombing also comes just ahead of Indonesia's presidential elections and two days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The explosion left body parts and bloody corpses strewn across the busy thoroughfare and shattered windows in buildings 500 yards away. It gutted the Greek Embassy on the 12th floor of an adjacent building, slightly wounding three diplomats.
Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terror group linked to al-Qaida, purportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was punishing Australia for supporting the war in Iraq. The statement was posted on an Internet site known for carrying extremist Islamic content, and its authenticity could not immediately be verified.
"We decided to call Australia to account, which we consider one of the worst enemies of God, and God's religion of Islam," the statement said. "Here we were able to call it to account today in Jakarta, where one of the mujahedeen [holy warriors] was able to execute a martyrdom operation with a car bomb in front of the embassy."
The Internet statement also called on the Australian government to withdraw from Iraq and advised all Australians to leave Indonesia or face more violence.
Police said the bomb was likely the work of Azahari Husin, a reputed Jemaah Islamiyah member who has been on the run for three years.
No one in the heavily fortified Australian Embassy was killed, although several Australians and Chinese were wounded.
The bombing came less than a week after the United States and Australia upgraded long-standing travel warnings to their citizens in Indonesia, citing an increased risk of terror attacks on Western targets.
Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, and the Aug. 5, 2003, suicide bombing at the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people.
Australia, a key supporter of the U.S. war on terrorism, sent 2,000 troops for last year's invasion of Iraq and still has more than 850 military personnel in the country. The Iraq war is deeply unpopular in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan condemned the bombing in a statement issued in Pennsylvania, where President Bush was campaigning.
"This is yet another attack against civilized people everywhere," the statement said. "We condemn this outrageous act. The president reaffirms our solidarity with the governments of Indonesia and Australia in fighting the global war against terrorism."
Islamic extremists are believed to have tried to influence the outcome of elections elsewhere. They blew up commuter trains in Spain just before elections in March, killing 191 people. Days later, voters elected a Socialist administration that made good on its campaign pledge to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has faced criticism over sending troops to Iraq -- a decision his opponents say has made Australia more vulnerable to terror attacks.
"This is not a nation that is going to be intimidated by acts of terrorism," Howard said. 
Analysts were divided on how the bombing would affect Australia's Oct. 9 election. Howard is considered stronger on national security than Labor challenger Mark Latham -- who has pledged to bring the troops home before Christmas -- and could benefit from the perception that Australia is under attack.
The bomb exploded shortly after 10:15 a.m. near the embassy gate, flattening a section of the steel fence and shattering windows in nearby buildings.
Police were investigating whether a suicide bomber triggered the blast.
"It was an enormous bomb. The enormity of the crater, the police truck outside has been blown to bits, it's like the wind has been pushed out of you," embassy media officer Elizabeth O'Neill told Australia's Nine TV Network.
Bloodied victims lay sprawled and screaming in front of the embassy, as dazed survivors tried to find colleagues and relatives. A severed leg, human scalp and torso lay on the street among wrecked cars and motorbikes.
"I can't find my family," said one woman, Suharti, who had eight relatives working at the embassy. "I am terrified. I don't know where they are."
The dead included policemen, embassy security guards and passers-by. The wounded were mainly people who worked nearby and were cut by flying glass and debris.
One guard, Muhammad Amsor, said he was about to start work in front of the building when the bomb went off, killing a co-worker. "We have been trained to face bombings like this," he said. "But I am still utterly shocked that it could happen."
At the bomb site, national police chief Gen. Dai Bachtiar said the blast bore the hallmark of Jemaah Islamiyah.
"The modus operandi is very similar to other attacks, including the Bali bombings and the Marriott blast," he said. "We can conclude (the perpetrators) are the same group."
Bachtiar said the bombing was likely the work of Husin, a British-trained Malaysian engineer who is one of Asia's most-wanted fugitives. Husin has been linked to numerous bombings in Indonesia, including the Bali blasts.
President Megawati Sukarnoputri cut short a trip to Brunei, where she was attending a royal wedding, and toured the bomb scene.
"I ask all the Indonesian people to unite in fighting terrorism," she said. "Let us all condemn what has been done by (terrorists) because we have seen there are so many innocent victims."
The attack comes in the run-up to presidential elections Sept. 20 in which Megawati is trailing badly in the polls behind her former security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Terrorism is rarely mentioned by either candidate, both of whom are secular nationalists. Analysts say the bombing might benefit the challenger, who is seen as somewhat tougher on security.
Regional security consultant Bob Broadfoot said the militants wanted to make clear that they were able to carry out attacks.
"Governments in the region have done a pretty good job of restricting terrorist groups but that doesn't mean that they have extinguished the problem," he said. "That is what we saw today."







 


September 10, 2004 Friday  




 Car Bomb in Jakarta Kills 9 At Australian Embassy

 
The car bomb that exploded outside the Australian Embassy here on Thursday morning, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 150, was the work of the Qaeda-linked Islamic group, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian police chief said.
   The car bomb exploded about 10:30 a.m. on a busy street outside the embassy, which is in the central business district, leaving a crater nine feet deep near the embassy gate and blowing a wide hole in the metal fence, but leaving the four-story building largely intact. A police bus that stays parked outside the embassy for protection was destroyed. Witnesses said they saw body parts lying in the road and pieces of bone in the debris. In the immediate aftermath, a hospital nearby treated 98 people, many of them workers who were cut as windows in their offices in the two 10-story buildings on each side of the embassy were blown out.  
   The nine people who were killed were all Indonesians, including a guard who had been patrolling outside the building, the police said. None were in the building. An Australian child was in critical condition. The Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who arrived in Jarkarta on Thursday night with the Australian federal police commissioner, Mick Keelty, said the child, whose mother is Indonesian and father Australian, was caught in the blast. He said the mother was among those killed.
   The explosion was the third terror attack in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country with 228.4 million people, in less than two years, and the second directed at Australians, a strong ally of the Bush administration and a contributor of troops in Iraq. 
   The Australian prime minister, John Howard, blamed Jemaah Islamiyah. ''This has all the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiyah,'' he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ''This was a large bomb and it was a terrorist attack on Australia.'' 
   In the past year, the Australian government has loaned police officers to the Indonesians to help find Jemaah Islamiyah members, and that cooperation may have been a reason for the bombing, said an Australian official in Canberra, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But there were also suggestions that the target was chosen because ''it was easier to hit than the American Embassy,'' the Australian official said.
   A senior American official here concurred. The American Embassy, on a relatively quiet road where two lanes are closed to traffic, is set much farther back on its property than the Australian Embassy.
   After inspecting the scene, the police chief, Gen. Dai Bachtiar, said that judging from the effects of the blast, the bomb was similar to those used in the two other attacks, and that like them, it was probably the work of Jemaah Islamiyah. He said it was most likely organized by one of the group's most skilled bomb makers, Azahari Husin. In the first attack, in Bali in October 2002, a van crammed with explosives was parked in front of a nightclub and detonated, killing 202 people, most of them vacationing Australians. In the second attack, a suicide bomber detonated his bomb-laden sport utility vehicle last year at the entrance of a JW Marriott Hotel, also in the central business district here, killing 12. 
   Mr. Keelty, the Australian police chief, said initial forensic evidence showed that the explosive material was similar to that used in the Marriott attack.
   A number of Indonesians have been convicted in the Bali case, most of them members of Jemaah Islamiyah. The spiritual leader of the group, Abu Bakar Bashir, was convicted last year on relatively minor charges and awaits a new trial on terrorism charges. ''The modus operandi is very similar to other attacks, including the Bali bombings and the Marriott blast,'' said General Bachtiar. ''We can conclude the perpetrators are the same group.'' He said the police had recovered the chassis number of the car. The Australian official in Canberra said that the bomb was almost certainly detonated by a suicide bomber, and that the Australian government also believed that Mr. Azahari, in particular, probably planned the attack. Mr. Azahari, a British-trained Malaysian engineer, and his partner, Nurdin Muhammad Top, have eluded the police for more than a year. ''This is not a nation that is going to be intimidated by acts of terror,'' Prime Minister Howard said soon after the attack as he was campaigning for re-election. 
   Mr. Howard, a conservative, has made standing by President Bush in the campaign against terrorism a theme of his tenure. The Australian elections are scheduled for Oct. 9.
   In Australia, commentators compared the timing of the attack to the bombing of commuter trains in Madrid in March, just before national elections. In Spain, the party of the departing prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, another staunch supporter of Mr. Bush, was defeated.
   The Indonesian president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, cut short a trip to Brunei, and visited some of the victims in the hospital. She is running for re-election against a former cabinet minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in a vote set for Sept. 20.
   The United States heightened its travel warning about Indonesia on Wednesday, cautioning Americans to cancel nonessential travel.
   American officials say that Indonesia's government may have had pockets of complacency about Jemaah Islamiyah. On Wednesday, they noted, the acting minister for political and security affairs, Hari Sabarno, questioned the necessity of the new State Department warning.
   ''The warning is exaggerated, although the U.S. has the right to warn its nationals,'' he said after a government meeting on security matters. ''Is it true that there is a terrorist threat ahead of the election? Let's see whether this is true what the U.S. has been worrying about.''









 
 

September 10, 2004 Friday



 AUSTRALIA'S FORTITUDE

 
Emboldened by their success last spring in bombing a pro-American, staunchly anti-terror government out of office in Spain, Islamist fanatics yesterday struck in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta - hoping to cast a shadow over two upcoming national elections.  
A car bomb detonated outside the Australian embassy left nine dead and another 173 injured. All evidence points to Jemaah Islamiyah - an al Qaeda-linked Islamist terrorist group responsible for the anti-Australian Bali bombing in 2002 that killed 202 people.   
The blast comes less than a month before national elections in Australia, where Prime Minister John Howard - one of America's firmest allies in the War on Terror - has faced bitter criticism over his decision to provide 2,000 troops to the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq.  
Unbowed, Howard declared that he would not be cowed by the attack: "This is not a nation that is going to be intimidated by acts of terrorism," he said.  
The bombing also comes just days before national elections in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, where the war in Iraq is unpopular. But President Megawati Sukarnoputri - who is trailing badly in the polls - also stood firm, calling on "all the Indonesian people to united in fighting terrorism."  
As we have noted, resolution will prove decisive in the War on Terror.  
Such fortitude was not on display in Spain following the Madrid railroad bombings last March: Days later, in national elections, frightened voters ousted the pro-U.S. government and voted in a regime that had campaigned on a platform of appeasement.  
That time, the terrorists won.  
They won't emerge victorious this time.  
Because Australia's prime minister, in particular, understands - as does President Bush - that whenever the civilized world shows weakness in dealing with terrorism, the result is more terrorism.  
Will Australia's voters appreciate the moral strength shown by Prime Minister Howard? That remains to be seen.  
If they don't, it will be a significant defeat for those determined to rid the civilized world of the greatest political threat it faces today.  
It's a choice America's voters will themselves be facing in seven weeks.  






 
  

  

SEPTEMBER 9, 2004 Thursday 



 Foreigners favor Kerry over Bush in 35-nation polling

 
Only 1 in 5 foreigners wants to see President Bush reelected, according to surveys taken in 35 foreign countries this summer and released yesterday.
John Kerry would win a "global election" for president in 30 of the 35 countries, including overwhelming majorities among European allies and pluralities in the nine Latin American nations surveyed.
Only in Poland, Nigeria and the Philippines was Bush preferred. India and Thailand were closely divided. 
On average, 46 percent of respondents favored Kerry to 20 percent for Bush. One-third of those surveyed said that they had no preference or it didn't matter.
Kerry did best in Norway (74 percent vs. 7 percent for Bush). He also won overwhelmingly in Germany (74 percent to 10 percent), France (64-5), the Netherlands (63-6), Italy (58-14) and Spain (45-7). In the United Kingdom, Kerry won 47 percent to 16 percent, in Japan 43 to 23, and Canada 61 to 16.
The polls of 34,330 adults were conducted from May to August by GlobeScan, a Canadian research company, working with the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland in College Park and research institutes in each nation.
The margin of error ranged from plus or minus 2.3 percentage points to 5 percentage points. The largest sample was in China (1,800) and the smallest in Peru (400). In 11 countries, including Brazil, China, Colombia and Venezuela, polling was limited to urban areas.
On a second question, a majority of those surveyed also had a negative reaction to Bush's foreign policy. A majority or plurality in 30 countries said Bush's policy made them feel worse about the United States. On average, 53 percent of all surveyed said "worse" and 19 percent said "better."
GlobeScan president Doug Miller said the findings may reflect some endemic anti-American sentiment. But he said that recent surveys in five nations by the Pew Research Center showed a sharp drop in the favorable views toward the United States since 1999. The five were the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Morocco and Turkey. Only Russians viewed the United States more favorably.
Steven Kull, director of PIPA, said it was difficult to assess how much weight those in each country gave to U.S. policy overall, the Iraq war, or local factors in stating an opinion on Bush and foreign policy.
Among countries that have contributed troops to the Iraq war, most favored Kerry and said their view of U.S. policy had worsened.
Bush's strongest support was in the Philippines (57 percent to 32 percent), which has received significant U.S. aid to combat terrorist groups. In Venezuela, there was an even split (33 to 34) on U.S. policy, reflecting that country's sharply polarized population on the country's current leadership.
Government restrictions on surveys meant no Arab countries were included in the polling. In the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia, 57 percent favored Kerry while 35 percent favored the reelection of Bush.
To read more on the poll, go to www.pipa.org.






 
  


September 9, 2004 Thursday 



 NATION & WORLD BRIEFING

 
3RD JUDGE REJECTS BAN ON CERTAIN ABORTIONS
LINCOLN, Neb. -- A third federal judge has ruled the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional, adding judicial weight that some experts say could keep the issue from reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. The judge said Congress ignored the most experienced doctors when it determined that the banned procedure would never be necessary to protect the health of the mother. His ruling echoed decisions by federal judges in New York and San Francisco. The federal law, signed last year by President Bush, bars a procedure doctors called "intact dilation and extraction." During the procedure, a fetus is partially removed from the womb and its skull is punctured or crushed. A total of 1.3 million abortions are performed in the United States each year. Almost 90 percent occur in the first trimester. 
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/ news and click on Nation/World.
Blast in Jakarta kills at least 3
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A powerful explosion near the Australian Embassy in Jakarta killed at least three people today and damaged a high fence surrounding the diplomatic compound, witnesses said. The source of the blast was not immediately known. Windows of nearby buildings were shattered and several cars were damaged. Australia, the United States and several other countries have recently warned that Muslim militants may be planning new attacks in Indonesia. In the same neighborhood last year, 12 people died in a suicide attack on the JW Marriott hotel.
Poll: Fear of attacks persists
WASHINGTON -- An Associated Press poll found that 98 percent of Americans remember what they were doing on Sept. 11, 2001. For most, the dominant feeling about that day was deep anger that anyone would commit such acts, the poll conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs found. About four in 10 Americans say they worry about becoming a victim of terrorism. That's about the same level of concern people have about getting burglarized or losing their job. The poll of 1,000 adults has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Pollution, lung capacity linked
New research shows that teenagers who grow up in heavy air pollution have reduced lung capacity, putting them at risk for illness and premature death as adults. In the study, University of Southern California researchers followed children raised in communities around Los Angeles -- some very polluted, some not -- for eight years. They found about 8 percent of 18-year-olds had lung capacity less than 80 percent of normal, compared with about 1.5 percent of those in communities with the least pollution.
Sharon agrees to move barrier
JERUSALEM -- The separation barrier in the West Bank will move closer to Israel in one area to minimize hardship to Palestinians, leaving three small Jewish settlements on the Palestinian side, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided Wednesday. However, the system of concrete slabs, fences and trenches also will swing around at least two large Jewish settlement blocs so they can be included on the Israeli side. Sharon's decision came during a meeting with defense officials, who presented a revised route for parts of the barrier.
Clinton out of intensive care
NEW YORK -- Former President Bill Clinton was moved Wednesday from intensive care to a hospital room after his heart surgery, his office said. Clinton walked with assistance, sat up in bed and sat in a chair while continuing to recover from surgery he had Monday to bypass four severely clogged arteries, the office said in a statement. Clinton will continue to recuperate in the hospital for the next several days, his office said.
Just released, teen back in jail
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Lionel Tate, the teen who walked out of prison this year after his life sentence for killing a 6-year-old playmate was overturned, was arrested on charges of violating his probation after authorities said they found him out late at night with a knife in his pocket. Officials found Tate, 17, and a friend walking near Tate's home at 2:20 a.m. Friday. As part of a January deal, Tate was to be under house arrest for a year and probation for 10 years. Tate was 12 when he killed 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick; he claimed he accidentally killed the girl while imitating wrestling moves.
Some defy French scarf ban
PARIS -- About 100 to 120 girls have defied France's ban on Islamic head scarves in school, the education minister said Wednesday, and at least five boys from the country's tiny Sikh community have been barred from class for refusing to remove their turbans. If students do not agree to follow the new law during a period of discussions, measures are taken to expel them. The law is meant to bring France's Muslim population, estimated at 5 million, into line with its cherished principle of secularism.






  


September 9, 2004 Thursday 



 WORLD DIGEST

 
INDONESIA Blast near embassy kills at least three
A powerful bomb near the Australian Embassy in Jakarta today killed at least three people and wounded at least 50, witnesses and officials said.
Australia, the United States and several other countries have recently warned that Muslim militants may be planning new attacks in Indonesia. In the same neighborhood last year, 12 people died in a suicide attack on the JW Marriott hotel. In 2002, more than 200 people died in an attack on two nightclubs on the tourist island of Bali. 
An Associated Press photographer on the scene saw at least three dismembered bodies on the wide six-lane street close to the embassy. Four cars and the embassy's high metal fence were damaged. The windows on several surrounding high-rise buildings were smashed.
A doctor at a nearby hospital said "many injured" had been admitted as a result of the blast.
No embassy workers were wounded, said Lyndall Sachs, a spokeswoman for the Australian foreign ministry in Canberra. She said that windows of the building were shattered and that power was down.
CUBA Guantanamo detainee will be sent home
A captive at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay will be sent home to his native country after a military tribunal determined that he was not an enemy combatant, Navy Secretary Gordon England announced Wednesday.
The decision ends nearly three years of incarceration for the man, who was captured in Afghanistan in 2002.
England declined to provide details of the detainee's case, including his name and nationality, referring to an agreement with foreign countries not to release such information until the transfer home. Pentagon officials said the detainee was not an Afghan national.
SOUTH KOREA North Korea warns of nuclear arms race
North Korea accused the United States of applying a double standard on the Korean Peninsula and warned Wednesday of a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia after the revelation that South Korean scientists enriched a tiny amount of uranium in 2000.
The controversy over the South Korean experiment threatened to further disrupt efforts to persuade North Korea to dismantle its suspected nuclear weapons programs.
North Korea's envoy to the United Nations, Han Sung Ryol, told South Korea's news agency Yonhap that the United States was "worthless" as a dialogue partner because it was applying double standards to the two Koreas.
JAPAN Bobby Fischer wins reprieve in court
Former chess champion Bobby Fischer won a reprieve from the threat of deportation Wednesday when a court ruled that he may stay in Japan until it considers a lawsuit he filed to block his ejection, his supporters said.
Fischer is wanted by the United States for violating international sanctions against Yugoslavia when he played a rematch there in 1992 against rival Boris Spassky.
ISRAEL Sharon authorizes changes for barrier
The separation barrier in the West Bank will move closer to Israel in one area to minimize hardship to Palestinians, leaving three small Jewish settlements on the Palestinian side, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided Wednesday.
But the system of concrete slabs, fences and trenches will also swing around at least two large Jewish settlement blocs so they can be included on the Israeli side.






  


September 8, 2004 Wednesday, 



 Massacre in Russia shows terror's scope;
No one, including moderate Muslims, is safe from the threat that radicals pose.

 
Tens of thousands of Russians rallied in Moscow to express their outrage over the mass murder of as many as 600 people, many of them children, in the town of Beslan over the weekend.
That protest and many others around that vast nation reflect popular outrage there, a reaction similar to that experienced here after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Those attacks, and every one before and since, show that understanding the nature of terrorism is key to combating it effectively. 
Terrorism is not a problem that only the United States must confront. Terrorists motivated by radical Islamist ideas have attacked people all around the globe, in Indonesia and France, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan and Brazil, and many other places. The danger is worldwide, and thus the response must be global as well.
In fact, attacks on Iraqis, Saudis, Indonesians and Jordanians show that peaceful Muslims are much a target for the radicals as any other group. It's important to point out that this latest attack was condemned by commentators for Middle Eastern media in very strong terms.
Another point is that this callous and cruel slaughter of defenseless children, parents and teachers at a middle school cannot be fully explained by previous Russian harshness to separatists in the mostly Muslim province of Chechnya.
True, Chechen terrorists have been linked to the downing of two Russian passenger planes and an explosion outside a Moscow subway in recent days, and the 30 or so Beslan attackers were mostly Chechens.
Still, it is also true that Islamist leaders in the region indicate that their goals include not only Chechen independence, but the enhancement of an Islamist influence all through the southern Caucasus, including areas where Muslims are now a minority.
A third reminder from this incident is that anyone is a potential target, and the more innocent and defenseless individuals or groups are, the more likely they are to be targeted. Concentrating on such vulnerable groups creates the maximum amount of shock and horror in the wider community, which is the terrorists' principal goal.
As the United States enters the final stages of its presidential campaign, terrorism remains a central focus.  No matter who should win the White House, confronting this threat will be an immediate and difficult challenge in 2005 and beyond.






 
  

  

SEPTEMBER 5, 2004 Sunday BULLDOG EDITION



 U.S. warns about possible attacks in Indonesia

 
Americans in Indonesia should take precautions against possible attacks, the U.S. Embassy said Friday, as Australia switched a charity ball from a hotel bombed a year ago to its embassy, citing security fears.
A bomb attack on Indonesia's resort island of Bali in October 2002 killed 202, mostly foreign tourists. Last year, a car bomb at the JW Marriott luxury hotel in Jakarta killed 12.
In both cases, police and intelligence officials blamed the blasts on Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional group linked to al-Qaeda.
The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that it wanted "to remind Americans in Indonesia of the need to observe vigilant personal security precautions and to remain aware of the continued potential for terrorist attacks."
"The embassy continues to receive reports that terrorist organizations may attempt to carry out attacks against identifiably American or other Western facilities or businesses in Indonesia," it said.
U.S. government travelers have been told "to avoid identifiably Western hotels." A wide range of targets could be attacked, the statement added, suggesting that Americans "keep a low profile while in public" and "vary their daily routines."
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has arrested and convicted scores of people over the Bali and Marriott bombings, but police say some key players remain at large.
The Australian Embassy had planned a charity ball for 300 guests at the Marriott on Saturday. Embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth O'Neill said a last-minute switch to the embassy's well-protected grounds was not because of a specific threat to that hotel.
She noted the U.S. warning and said Australia would soon issue warnings of its own.






  


September 5, 2004 Sunday 



 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

 
Using attacks instead of facts
The venomous and twisted attacks on Sen. John Kerry's character at the Republican convention reveal the truth about the Bush administration. In a debate, if you don't have the facts on your side, you attack the man. The administration does not have the facts. Americans have lost more than 1.5 million jobs since President George W. Bush took office. Family income has declined while expenses have climbed. An ever-increasing number of Americans have no medical insurance. The deficit has ballooned. And we are bogged down in the war on Iraq while Iran and North Korea increase their nuclear weapons capability and the Taliban attack Americans in Afghanistan.
With the convention now concluded, undecided voters should ignore the hateful attacks and examine the facts.
Karen Knopf
Creve Coeur
Vicious rhetoric 
I can't remember when I've seen anything so negative as the vicious rhetoric flowing from the Republican convention last week. And remember, to the Republicans themselves, this is the compassionate, moderate side of the party.
Terry Heinemann
Cedar Hill
Casting insults
A Sept. 1 editorial asked, "Who are these guys?" It then proceeded to describe three of the key speakers at the Republican National Convention:
* A "war hero who seems to have swallowed his animosity." The current weight given to military experience by the Post-Dispatch seemed notably absent during the 1992 and 1996 campaigns. Please do not claim such a resume was unnecessary before Sept. 11, 2001. A nation always lives with the risk of war.
* A "governor/movie star/groper." In case I missed it, did the Editorial page during the Democratic convention mention the "former president/adulterer" who spoke there?
* A "former mayor" whose ex-wife "kicked him out . . . for philandering" but who "on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, had the foresight to turn to his police commissioner and say 'Thank God George Bush is president.' " Regarding philandering, I again direct your attention to the former president. The latter point -- that Mayor Rudy Giuliani, after 3,000 of his fellow New Yorkers had been killed, was making political calculations in his quote -- is incredibly cynical.
Moderate speakers are featured, and the Republican National Committee is accused of bait-and-switch. Had conservative speakers been featured, the editorial would have decried the lack of moderate voices. The Post-Dispatch sets a difficult standard.
Bryan Kirchoff
St. Louis
Compassionate?
If the Republican National Convention was an example of how Republicans are the compassionate and moderate party, perhaps they should call upon John Kerry for a heavy dose of his "sensitivity," which Vice President Dick Cheney likes to scorn.
I found the convention mean-spirited and extreme. And the party's newest compassionate candidate, Alan Keyes, is a prime example of what is lacking in the Republicans' approach to promoting the common good and welfare of all the people.
Perhaps their high attack energy should be leveled at the problems that truly are hurting our country and the world.
H.M. Byrne
St. Louis
How far do we go?
President George W. Bush uses the phrase: "keeping up the fight on terrorism." This phrase is too broad for me.
Does it mean next we will take on the Chechen rebels? Does it mean we will send our military to take out the drug lords in Colombia? Does it mean we will be after the next uprising of fundamentalist Muslims in Sudan or Indonesia?
Where next will Bush put our soldiers in harm's way? And what will be the reasons given? Will Bush decide the leader of Korea is "evil," and there must be a regime change? How far does this pre-emptive war stance go?
If the Iranians are found to have weapons of mass destruction, will Bush decide they are next?
It all sounds so patriotic and macho. Where is the leader who will use his brain instead of our military? Maybe, just maybe, it is John Kerry.
Joan Brannigan
Olivette
The real dividers
As we review 9/11 during this election year, I recall how united we were during those tragic days. Why didn't the unity last?
After 9/11, the Democrats were out of power and President Bush was rising in popularity. Political pressure on the Democrats led them to criticize Bush even though both parties supported his actions.
The press hated Bush from day one, so any negative news the Democrats fed the media became headlines. Soon we were all feeling miserable about everything, even today's economy, which has the same 5.5 percent unemployment rate as during Clinton's best years.
Did the Republicans bring on this division? No way; it was the Tom Daschle and Pat Leahy Democrats injecting hatred with the sole intention of diminishing Bush's popularity.
Now they're the ones saying "Bush divided the country." If they had been around during World War II, the United States wouldn't have lasted six months.
Rich Iezzi
St. Louis
Burke clarifies position on voting
Archbishop Raymond Burke did not give St. Louis Catholics much credit for intelligence when he said that we were confused by what he meant to say in June about the sinfulness of voting the wrong way. We knew exactly what he meant to say.
His current backtracking -- explained by calling it "remote material cooperation and if the reasons are really proportionate" -- might sound good in La Crosse, Wis., but we call it "common sense" here.
Perhaps he is beginning to understand that we Catholics will act on our own well-formed consciences, whether he agrees or not. Welcome to St. Louis, Archbishop Burke.
Robert Schutzius
Secretary, Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church
Florissant
A wide loophole
Pro-abortion Catholic voters and politicians must be breathing a sigh of relief after Archbishop Burke's clarification about how Catholics can support pro-abortion candidates, so long as they vote for them for other offsetting reasons.
What other reasons are more important? This is a loophole wide enough to accommodate a semi-trailer.
No politician will ever admit to being in favor of abortion. Politicians are all "personally opposed" to abortion, but with an all-important "but" attached. President Jimmy Carter invented the "personally opposed but" defense, and every pro-abortion politician has been using it ever since.
The archbishop's "clarification" is not a clarification at all, but an all-out retreat from his previous principled and courageous stand on this matter.
If this represents my church's official position on pro-abortion politicians and those who put them in office to support the culture of death, our bishops can cease issuing high-sounding guidelines on Catholics in public life. They are beginning to have a hollow ring to them.
F. Douglas Kneibert
Sedalia, Mo.
Instructing voters
We live in a topsy-turvy world. The politicians, in their conventions, have told us how we should set our moral compass, and Archbishop Burke has just clarified how we should vote.
I can't help but think that we would all be better off if the politicians focused on our economy and the bishops stayed out of my voting booth.
Kevin Supple
Ballwin
Voting for slogans
The conventions are over. The candidates are as polarizing as any in the last 50 years. We will hear endless repetition of the same sniping we've heard up to now. Nothing new will be said. So who are the undecided voters?
Anybody who at this point in time is still debating which of these two candidates to vote for is either incapable of rational thinking or just hasn't been paying attention. In either case, their decision will be based on which candidate or party produces the snappiest sound bite.
With the election too close to call, the future of our country will be decided by the undecided, who eventually will decide which slogan they like the best.
I am afraid, very afraid.
John Ebert
Hazelwood




September 4, 2004 Saturday



 Moving on with 'Hope not Hate'

 
   Lynn von Koch's parents worked for the Bureau of Land Management and were transferred to Grand County, Utah, just before she was born. So von Koch grew up in Moab. She watched her hometown get bigger every year as the red rocks were discovered by tourists from all over the world.
Yet in some ways, Moab remained a small town. In all her years of school, von Koch never had a friend who was Muslim. It wasn't until she went away to college, at the University of South Dakota, that she got to know any Muslims. 
Von Koch is a junior at University of South Dakota now, majoring in political science, and she has a passion to help Americans and Muslims from other countries get to know each other. To that end, she is helping to organize a town meeting. She's inviting speakers and trying to get publicity. Her town meeting is one of a series of town meetings being organized by students across the country.
The town meetings, titled "Hope not Hate," will be held Sept. 11.
As part of the meeting, through a videoconference setup, South Dakota students will talk to Muslim college students in Beirut, Lebanon. Von Koch and one of her fellow students, Jon Walz, are still figuring out the topics for discussion. They are fairly sure that U.S. foreign policy will be one of them.
Walz also grew up in a small town -- Huron, S.D. -- and says he knew no Muslims until he came to college. He and von Koch found out about "Hope Not Hate" through their school's political science department and went to Vermont for a weekend last July to talk about how college students from Middle America might get to know college students from the Middle East.
Von Koch and Walz met with college leaders from Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, where town meetings and videoconferences are also to be held on Sept. 11. In addition to the Lebanon/South Dakota dialogue, the videoconferences on other campuses will include conversations with Muslim students from Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey. Family members of those who died on 9/11 will also take part in the town meetings.
Seth Green, a law student at Yale, belongs to the nonpartisan Americans for an Informed Democracy and is one of the organizers of "Hope Not Hate." He describes it as a call to action out of the ashes of tragedy. He says it is a response to the recently released 9/11 Commission report, "which stresses that the U.S. must share America's 'vision of opportunity and hope' with the Muslim world."
As for Green, his youth was spent in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was in Princeton, N.J., packing to go to England for two years of graduate school. Like most Americans, he was traumatized that day.
Ten days later, still disoriented, he found himself making a new home in London -- in a predominantly Pakistani-Muslim neighborhood. The thing that helped him to feel better after 9/11 was the way he was treated by the women in his new neighborhood. Women his mother's age would stop him on the street when they heard his American accent and ask him where he was from. With worried looks on their faces, they would ask if everyone in his family was all right.
"There was a really deep, genuine concern. It wowed me," he says. Green was able to answer, with gratitude, that his brother had been in New York City that day but was fine.
During the two years he was abroad, he had a beautiful relationship with his Muslim neighbors, Green says. Yet he noticed a change in the attitude of many Londoners -- and not just Muslims -- a change in the attitude toward the United States. Meanwhile, back in the United States attitudes were changing as well.
Green cites Pew Research Center studies that show Americans have become increasingly suspicious of Muslims in the past three years. In July 2003, 44 percent of Americans said that Islam encourages violence.
Green compares that number to the same question asked in March 2002 -- only five months after the Sept. 11 attacks. At that time only 25 percent of Americans believed Islam encouraged violence.
In the earlier survey, he adds, the majority of people in Morocco, Indonesia and Turkey said they had a favorable view of the United States. Today, fewer than a quarter of citizens of those predominantly Muslim countries support the U.S. war on terrorism.
And yet, Green sees reason for hope. "It is important to remember that current tensions are not historically rooted," he says. We had more respect for each other only two and a half years ago.
People in the United States have forgotten that a billion Muslims are moderate and nonviolent, he says, even though Muslims might be critical of U.S. foreign policy. The reason we've forgotten is because "90 percent of our news coverage today of the Muslim world is about acts of terrorism." In the same manner, Muslims are being presented with an incomplete view of America, he says.
The lack of international solidarity comes from our lack of knowledge of each other, not from any lack of common values, Green says.
As for von Koch, she grew up caring about foreign policy and the global economy, she says. And maybe other people her age, even people who came from larger towns, were not all that interested. But since Sept. 11, 2001, they've started to care, she says.
She finds her hope for the future in the people her age. She sees a growing interest in foreign affairs, a growing number of students who are registering to vote. "That's where the hope lies." E-mail: susan@desnews.com





September 3, 2004 Friday



 World datelines

 
Argentina
BUENOS AIRES -- A federal court acquitted five men Thursday of being accessories to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people, the deadliest terrorist attack on Argentine soil. The verdict concluded a three-year trial -- the longest in Argentine history.
Bangladesh 
DHAKA -- Two Bangladeshi policemen were hanged early Thursday for raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl, a prison official said. Moinul Hoque and Abdus Sattar were executed in a jail in northern Rangpur.
Britain
LONDON -- Britain appointed its first black High Court judge on Thursday and she predicted she would be "the first of many." The Department for Constitutional Affairs confirmed the appointment of Linda Dobbs, 53, the first black lawyer promoted beyond the ranks of circuit judges, who hear lesser cases.
Egypt
CAIRO -- Egypt's antiquities chief on Thursday revealed a 2,500-year-old hidden tomb under the shadow of one of Giza's three giant pyramids, containing 400 pinkie-finger-size statues and six coffin-size niches carved into granite rock. Zahi Hawass, the director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said archaeologists had been working for three months to clear sand from a granite shaft found between the pyramid of Khafre and the Sphinx.
Indonesia
JAKARTA -- An Indonesian court sentenced a Muslim militant to 10 years in jail on Thursday after finding him guilty of involvement in last year's J.W. Marriott hotel bombing in Jakarta. Masrizal bin Ali Umar, alias Tohir, was found guilty of buying the truck used in the Aug. 5, 2003, attack and transporting 220 pounds of explosives. But he was acquitted on a separate charge of helping plan the attack.
Japan
TOKYO -- Responding to Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins' pledge to surrender after spending four decades in North Korea, U.S. military officials say they are ready to put the frail 64-year-old back in uniform, give him a haircut, set him up in on-base housing -- and then try him for desertion. "We're always ready to take in deserters and receive them back," said Maj. John Amberg.
Malaysia
PUTRAJAYA -- His sodomy conviction overturned by Malaysia's highest court, Anwar Ibrahim was set free Thursday six years to the day after the one-time heir apparent to the country's premiership plunged into a divisive fight with his political mentor. The 57-year-old emerged noticeably aged and nearly crippled from a back injury worsened by a police beating, and insisting he was jailed on trumped-up charges.
Nepal
KATMANDU -- Hundreds of soldiers and police patrolled Nepal's capital Thursday, a day after riots over the slaying of 12 Nepalese hostages in Iraq left two protesters dead and dozens injured.
Netherlands
THE HAGUE -- Overriding the defendant's objections, the U.N. war crimes tribunal appointed two lawyers to represent former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Thursday, hoping to speed up the long-delayed trial and curb his courtroom theatrics. The judges finally were swayed by reports from two cardiologists last week warning that the defendant's life would be at risk if he continued representing himself in court.
Poland
WARSAW -- The remains of 11 people believed to be Jews killed in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against Nazi occupiers were buried Thursday in a ceremony hailed by Jewish leaders as a sign of the rekindled relationship between their community and other Poles.
South Korea
SEOUL -- The U.S. military said Thursday that it is investigating the death of an American soldier found dead in his barracks near the South Korean capital. U.S. Army Spc. Dean G. Todd-Eckard, 21, from Canyon County, Calif., was found dead in his room in Camp Carroll north of Seoul on Tuesday morning, the 8th U.S. Army said in a statement.
Vatican
VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II assured American bishops from New England on Thursday that he supports their efforts to address the damage wrought by clerical sex abuse, acknowledging the scandal "cast a shadow" on the church. The pope urged them to encourage their flock to persevere in their faith.






 
  

  





 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
U.S. bars a scholar slated
to teach at Notre Dame
* Acting at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. government has revoked the work visa of a Muslim scholar who had been scheduled to teach at the University of Notre Dame this fall. Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen who has been criticized for links to Islamic militants and for remarks branded anti-Semitic, was supposed to begin teaching yesterday, the first day of the fall semester.
Houston court lowers bail
for heir cleared in killing
* An appeals court in Houston yesterday lowered the bail for New York real estate heir Robert Durst from $3 billion to $450,000, increasing the likelihood the cross-dressing millionaire and former fugitive will be released. Durst, 61, was found not guilty in November of intentionally killing his neighbor, Morris Black, 71, in 2001. He has remained jailed in Galveston, Texas, on bond-jumping and evidence-tampering charges because he fled the city shortly after his arrest. 
Time reporter agrees
to deposition in leak case
* Contempt-of-court orders against Time magazine and one of its reporters were dismissed after the journalist agreed to give a statement to prosecutors probing the Bush administration leak of a covert CIA officer's identity. In a statement yesterday, Time said reporter Matthew Cooper agreed to give a deposition after Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, personally released Cooper from a promise of confidentiality about a conversation the two had last year.
Wis. man sought in deaths
contacts police in Calif.
* A Wisconsin man contacted police in Sonoma County, Calif., yesterday and was questioned in the shooting deaths of two Christian camp counselors last week. Detectives had sent out a statewide alert seeking Nicholas Edward Scarseth of Chippewa Falls, Wis., as a "potential witness" in the killings. Lindsay Cutshall, 23, and her fiance, Jason Allen, 26, were found shot through the head as they slept on a beach near Jenner, in Northern California.
Ex-manager who taped
Hooters applicants jailed * The former manager of a Hooters restaurant in West Covina, Calif., was sentenced to five years in prison yesterday on charges he secretly videotaped job applicants as they changed into their skimpy uniforms. Juan Martin Aponte, 32, pleaded no contest in July to eavesdropping and using a minor for a sex act.
In the World
Nepalese rebels to end blockade of capital
* Rebels in Nepal said yesterday that they were removing a blockade of the capital that cut Kathmandu off from the rest of the country for a week. In a statement faxed to news organizations, the rebels said they made the decision after considering requests from the business community, human-rights activists and ordinary citizens. They had demanded that the government free jailed guerrillas and report on missing rebel suspects.
Pakistan and Afghanistan agree to prisoner exchange
* Afghan President Hamid Karzai promised yesterday to repatriate 400 Pakistanis who fought with the Taliban and have been in Afghan jails since 2001, a Pakistani official said. In exchange, Pakistan was to return 250 Afghans it was holding, mostly for minor offenses. The pact was reached during talks between Karzai and Pakistani Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain in Islamabad.
Israeli urges tougher stand
against anti-Semitic crime
* Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, on a hasty visit to Paris after a Jewish community center there was burned down Sunday, urged French officials and judges yesterday to punish anti-Semitic culprits more severely. Shalom praised France's efforts to counter anti-Jewish violence so far, but said the judiciary had to do more to punish those who preached hate.
Man who admitted Bali role cleared; gets jail in 2d case
* An Indonesian court in Jakarta yesterday sentenced a Muslim militant to 10 years in jail for involvement in last year's bombing of the Marriott hotel but acquitted him of helping plan the 2002 Bali attacks, even though he acknowledged participating in the plot. The court said Jhoni Hendrawan, alias Idris, could not be prosecuted over the Bali case because the country's top court last month prohibited the retroactive application of the antiterror law used to charge him. The law was enacted after the Bali bombing.
Typhoon slams Taiwan, leaves 5 fishermen dead
* Typhoon Aere battered northern Taiwan yesterday with howling winds and sheets of rain that grounded flights, shut down financial markets, and triggered mudslides on the densely populated island. Five fishermen drowned.
15 linked to al-Qaeda
sentenced in deadly blasts
* Uzbekistan's Supreme Court yesterday sentenced 15 al-Qaeda-linked Islamic militants to up to 18 years in prison for bombings that killed at least 47 people in March and April. They were members of the group Jamoat, which was blamed for the blasts.







 



August 25, 2004 Wednesday  




 2 More Nations Report Polio Cases; 
A Dozen African Countries Have Had Resurgence of Disease

 
Cases of polio have been found in Mali and Guinea, bringing to 12 the number of African countries recently reinfected by an ongoing polio epidemic in Nigeria. 
The new cases suggest the effect of northern Nigeria's 16-month boycott of a global polio-eradication program is not over even though that region resumed immunization efforts last month. A World Health Organization official said yesterday that it is likely polio is also being transmitted undetected in Liberia and Sierra Leone.  
"Our modus operandi has got to be that we assume these places could be infected, too," said R. Bruce Aylward, the global coordinator of the eradication initiative, which is in its 16th year. 
At the end of 2002, polio existed in three Asian and three African countries. Over the past year, however, 10 formerly polio-free countries in Africa recorded cases traceable by genetic fingerprinting to the populous state of Kano in Nigeria's Muslim north. Worldwide, 602 cases of polio have been found this year, 476 in Nigeria. 
 One in every 200 polio infections causes paralysis, but in most cases, the infection causes little or no noticeable illness. The virus multiplies in the intestine, is excreted for weeks in feces and spreads most easily in poor, crowded populations without sanitation. In addition to two cases in Mali and one in Guinea, WHO officials reported that three more cases have been found in the Darfur region of Sudan, where thousands of people live in refugee camps. A case there in June marked polio's first appearance in Sudan in three years. Mali and Guinea recorded their last polio cases in 1999. 
Polio immunization ceased in Kano and several neighboring states after rumors circulated that the vaccine contained anti-fertility agents and that polio eradication was part of an anti-Muslim agenda. Rejection of polio vaccination by many local leaders was also part of an internal political struggle between the Muslim north and the Christian south of Nigeria. 
Many leaders, including Kano's governor, recently endorsed resumption of vaccination after elaborate efforts to demonstrate the safety of the vaccine. They included tests of its purity, a visit by opponents to vaccine manufacturing sites overseas and a commitment by UNICEF and WHO to provide vaccine made in Indonesia, a Muslim country, to Nigerian states that requested it. 
Kano, which has 3 million children in the under-5 age group that is the target of polio vaccination, resumed population-wide immunization at the end of July. Aylward said 50 to 75 percent of children were reached, depending on the village and neighborhood. In general, at least 80 percent of children must be immune for the person-to-person chain of transmission to be broken. 
Vaccinators reported "much less resistance [to immunization] than they were led to believe," Aylward said. "People valued the opportunity to vaccinate their children because they were so aware of the burden of disease." 
Nigeria, which had hoped to stop polio transmission by the end of 2004, is planning immunization activities with a target of halting the virus by the end of next year. Two coordinated immunization campaigns will be held in 22 African countries this October and November, before and after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In all, 74 million children will be targeted. 
To date, about $3.1 billion has been spent on polio eradication.  






  


August 24, 2004 Tuesday



 <P>

 
oRebels vow to keep fighting in Indonesia
@BY1:By LELY T. DJUHARI @BY2:Associated Press
@JAKARTA, Indonesia Indonesia's military offensive against separatists in the Aceh province has failed to crush the insurgency and has left government forces in a quagmire from which they cannot escape, a senior rebel commander said Monday.
Tjut Kafrawi, commander of rebel forces in eastern Aceh, also pledged that the insurgents would press on with their struggle for independence regardless of the outcome of Indonesia's presidential elections.
"We are still a strong force," Kafrawi told The Associated Press in a rare phone interview from a jungle base in eastern Aceh. "We will continue our fight." 
Indonesia's security forces claim they have killed about 2,000 fighters of the Free Aceh Movement and captured thousands of others since May, when the government ended a six-month truce, pulled out of internationally brokered peace talks and arrested rebel negotiators.
But Kafrawi claimed that "only a fifth of the casualties are our fighters, while the rest are civilians."
Foreign analysts say the military offensive in which the government has engaged about 55,000 soldiers, marines and paramilitary policemen has barely made a dent in the insurgency, a guerrilla force estimated to number about 5,000 men and women.
Initially, the United States backed efforts by the Geneva-based Henry Dunant Center, which arranged the cease-fire, and provided funding for the peace process. But the Bush administration regards Indonesia the world's largest Muslim nation as a key ally in its war on terrorism, and is now reluctant to criticize Jakarta's conduct for fear of alienating authorities.
Fighting in Aceh, a province of 4 million people, has been going on intermittently since 1870, when Dutch colonial troops occupied the independent sultanate on the northern tip of Sumatra island.
The latest round of fighting began in 1976, and the rebels are now demanding a U.N.-supervised independence referendum akin to the one that ended Indonesian rule in East Timor in 1999.
Although the rebellion poses a serious threat to Indonesia's unity, the conflict has been dubbed "the Forgotten War" because it has never captured much international attention.
The military recently vowed to increase the pace of operations, and has promised that rebel strength will be reduced by 75 percent by the end of the year. Last week, 34 people were killed in combat-related activities.
"We have significantly reduced the rebels' strength. Security is improving in Aceh," military spokesman Lt. Col. Ahmad Yani Basuki said Monday. "We have not been able to get the leaders. But it's only a matter of time."
Kafrawi contested the military's claim that it is winning the war, saying, "Indonesian forces have yet to breach our strongholds. They can't get our leaders."
Indonesian and international human rights organizations say most of the victims in Aceh are innocent villagers caught up in army sweeps through the countryside. They have also warned that the military killings are fostering resentment against Jakarta and generating greater support for secession.
Foreign negotiators have said they do not expect the two sides to return to the negotiating table if President Megawati Sukarnoputri who is backed by a cabal of hardline army generals is re-elected on Sept. 20 for a five-year term.
But they have predicted that talks may reopen if challenger Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Megawati's former security minister, wins the runoff vote as now seems likely. Yudhoyono was instrumental in arranging the truce with the Free Aceh Movement in December 2003.
Kafrawi said the rebels were prepared to talk, but that Indonesia's negotiating position was now much weaker than a year ago because its armed forces had demonstrated their inability to win the war.
"We may agree to peace talks if there is a new president. But, we don't expect much to change," he said.
"The intensity of operations and the number of troops [in Aceh] will still be the same," Kafrawi said. "In reality we will still be here for a long time. The military cannot get rid of us."
AP-WS-08-23-04 1243EDT






  


August 9, 2004



 9/11 Commission's Report Promises Unending War

 
The 9/11 commission's 500-plus-page report is filled withsuggestions on how to reorganize the nation's defenses against sneak attacks.So great and so positive has been the reaction to this latest offering thatCongress is getting off the dime and cutting short one of its interminablevacations to consider acting on its recommendations.
Part of the document's power is that the report is touted asbipartisan and therefore deserving of special respect. But that is TV-news-hostpalaver. In truth, if it's bipartisan it is deserving of special suspicion,because "bipartisan" really means a put-up job, a behind-the-scenes deal,something in which the fix is in between the two political parties.Bipartisanism is what has gotten us into the foreign-affairs fix we are in.Years of bipartisan agreement on foreign policy brought us 9/11 and the Iraqidisaster. There is no more poisonous apothegm in American politics than the onewhich has it that "politics stops at the water's edge."
A bipartisan foreign policy is a policy decided in the back room,out of sight and without meaningful public debate. It is smother politics -- thatis, politics played by both parties and the ruling elites to cast a blanket ofsilence over foreign-policy decision-making. Whenever there is no argument,when debate is suspended in favor of locking arms and singing "God BlessAmerica," no good comes of it, and no good will come of this report. 
There is debate aplenty about some of the report'srecommendations. Already, screaming, yowling and shouting are audible as theelected ones and their appointees argue over whether or not to have anintelligence (not intelligent) czar and whether or not to consolidate variousagencies under such a person, as well as how to reorganize the Congressionaloversight committees -- which amounts to little more than a fight amongsteatopygic politicians over who gets what in the spoils and honors department.
All that carrying on is secondary to the report's major premise,which, if accepted and acted on, commits us to a dreary and even dangerousfuture. In the deepest sense, what these 9/11 commissioners would turn thecountry into is a vast walled fortification within which we are to immureourselves, except when we issue out the sally ports to act against a real orfancied enemy. Bunker America. If you are in, you don't get out, and if you areout, you don't get in.
They would have us make ourselves into the world's largestIsrael, a nation surrounded by concertina wire, search lights, sensors, patrolboats, electric fences, and a thick magnetic field of suspicion and secretdetentions. We are to become a bleak land of police officers asking for pictureID's. We are to be a fingerprinted, bio-recognized people whose irises arephotographed and kept in a Washington database, whose movements and words willbe the common property of ever-expanding police forces, security guards, rapidresponders and impolite imbeciles manning X-ray machines. We will be theworld's anti -- Motel 6, where the light is off and the unwelcome mat is out.
If Bunker America were to be a temporary, short-time thing whilewe win the war, we could endure its costs in liberty lost, money spent andwealth foregone. But that is not the thrust of this report. It promises us war,terror and mayhem long into the future, inasmuch as it does not envision apeace settlement of any kind at any time. It opposes an Arab/Muslim jihad withan American/Judeo-Christian crusade, although that word crusade hasn't beenspoken since that one time George Bush used it.
Yet the war aims in the report and the suppositions visiblebehind them reveal a desire to all but extirpate Arab/Muslim life as it nowexists. "The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is the threat posedby Islamist terrorism, especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and itsideology," says the report, which continues: "Islamist terrorist leaders drawon a long tradition of extreme intolerance ... [which is] motivated by religion and does not distinguishpolitics from religion, thus distorting both. It is further fed by grievancesstressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world against theU.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab andanti-Muslim, and support of Israel. Bin Ladin and Islamist terrorists meanexactly what they say: to them America is the font of all evil, the 'head ofthe snake,' and it must be converted or destroyed.
"It is not a position with which Americans can bargain ornegotiate. With it there is no common ground, not even respect for life, onwhich to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated." Nodeals, no negotiations, no agreements, no compromises, no peace treaties, no ententes cordials, no summits, nodetentes, just unconditional surrender, but not of a nation -- of a religion and acivilization.
In its rational, quiet way,this 9/11 commission is cuckoo. They tell us in their report that we mustproselytize and even wage war in the following countries and regions: westernPakistan and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region; southern and western Afghanistan;the Arabian Peninsula, especially Saudi Arabia and Yemen; the Horn of Africa,including Somalia and extending southwest into Kenya; Southeast Asia fromThailand to the southern Philippines to Indonesia; West Africa, includingNigeria and Mali; and various European cities with Muslim communities,especially cities in Central and Eastern Europe where security forces andborder controls are less effective. Are these people crazy or what?
The report would have our agents going into schools in tens ofthousands of Islamic communities, replacing their textbooks and the teachers oftheir religion with our teachers and our textbooks. Evidently the commission iswilling to have the United States force its way past the enraged hostility ofhundreds of millions of people to inculcate their children.
"Right or wrong," the commission says, just in case theimpracticalities of what it's proposing are not understood, "it is simply afact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict andAmerican actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across theArab and Muslim world. That does not mean U.S. choices have been wrong. Itmeans those choices must be integrated with America's message of opportunity tothe Arab and Muslim world." Yeah, there's a welcome message of opportunity ifthe sons and daughters of Allah ever heard one. From Morocco to Indonesia, ourglad tidings are already being barfed back in our faces.
The commission admits as much when it says: "The United States isheavily engaged in the Muslim world and will be for many years to come. ThisAmerican engagement is resented. Polls in 2002 found that among America'sfriends, like Egypt, the recipient of more U.S. aid for the past 20 years thanany other Muslim country, only 15 percent of the population had a favorableopinion of the United States. In Saudi Arabia the number was 12 percent. Andtwo-thirds of those surveyed in 2003 in countries from Indonesia to Turkey (aNATO ally) were very or somewhat fearful that the United States may attackthem."
Note in the quote above the tone of injury implicit in the asideabout Egypt's ingratitude for American aid. We call it aid, but do theEgyptians? Or do they call it a bribe? And what about the crack about Turkey,"a NATO ally"? Everything which Turkey feared would come of an invasion of Iraqseems to be coming to pass, namely an independent Kurdistan threatening Turkishinterests and thus driving Turkey, the NATO country, away from its Israelialliance and toward common cause with Syria, Iran and Jordan.
Much of the commission's writing revolves around misunderstandingMuslims or presuming to understand Muslims on the thinnest of evidence whensome effort might have been spent understanding ourselves. Less attentionshould have been paid to Muslim "extremism," which is hardly an undiscussedtopic in the United States, and more devoted to Judeo-Christian extremism.Christianity is a one-god-one-truth-and-we-Christians-own-it type of religion.Leaving aside abstruse arguments over the separation of church and state, amore immediate danger to the peace of the world is an America whose policiesare controlled by the intolerant spirit which lurks in this religion and fromtime to time dominates the civic life of its practitioners. You don't have tobe a Muslim to wonder if the highly organized Christian elements in the UnitedStates hold the levers of power and drive policy. It sticks out all over thisreport, which seems to neutral, agnostic eyes as a battle plan by one religionto destroy another. That's all fine and well, but when holy wars are fought,there is hell to pay.








 


August 6, 2004



 Winning War on Terror Requires Turning On the World to America

 
The recently issued report of the 9/11 Commission questions how Osama bin Laden, "a man in a cave," can do a better job of communicating than the United States, the world's leading communicator. The observation strikes right at the heart of the difficulties we face in winning the war on terrorism.
The members of the commission understood that there is a price to pay for losing the war of ideas - one that is far higher than the cost in blood and property that was lost in the event that the commission investigated. We must do a better job at communicating our principles and practices to the world. Their international legitimacy must not be taken for granted. 
If today's terrorists succeed at portraying us to the world as impious, intolerant, hedonistic and self-indulgently weak, the consequences will reach beyond declines in our international popularity. Debased currency reduces consumers' spending power; debased ideas strand those who benefit from them.
With notable exceptions, the world's nations generally agree on, even if they do not always act in concert with, some important principles: A prohibition against first use of nuclear weapons; the independence of sovereign states and rights of citizens to control their own government; a proscription against force to seize the territory of others; unalienable human rights and basic rules of democracy as the ends and means of United Nations action; and the desirability of free trade, to name a few.
These principles are good for us, good for our allies and friends, and good for the cause of political liberty and democracy as a whole. In one form or another, most of these ideas come from the United States and represent America's success at leadership in the world. Indeed, taken as a group they represent a world order - one that would be very different had the Nazis, Japanese warlords or Soviets won out.
The result of even the partial discrediting of the world's leading democracy would be a parallel discrediting of our ideas. In the immediate future, this is not likely to hurt us domestically, but it could have profound consequences globally.
Imagine, for example, how Islamic states ruled by radical fanatic orthodoxy would look upon such international occasions as the U.N.'s Year of the Woman. What sort of international sanctions are likely to be enforced against a state ruled by a Muslim dictator who is developing nuclear weapons, or who has used weapons of mass destruction against his own people? How would today's generally accepted understanding of minority rights fare in a world infected with the ideas of bin Laden and Wahhabism? In a world where ideology is called upon to justify the beheading of innocent kidnapping victims - and only a few blink - how will human rights come to be interpreted?
The answer, of course, is that ideas matter deeply. And those that burn brightly - even if only for the short span of six decades, as millions of Hungarians, Poles, Romanians and Russians over the age of 30 understand - can have a powerful and baleful influence.
Because we are a republic based on ideas, and because the ideas are so ingrained and successful here, we sometimes take them for granted. Nowhere in government does collective certainty in the inviolability and unassailability of our ideas take a more visible form than in international broadcasting.
Iran, the seat of state-supported international terrorism, has four 24-hour international television government; a proscription against force to seize the territory of others; unalienable human rights and basic rules of democracy as the ends and means of United Nations action; and the desirability of free trade, to name a few.
These principles are good for us, good for our allies and friends, and good for the cause of political liberty and democracy as a whole. In one form or another, most of these ideas
stations. American international broadcasting has one, the recently inaugurated Arabic-language channel Al Hurra. Last year, Beijing's international broadcasting operation, China Radio International, announced an increase in its worldwide English-language broadcasts to 24 hours a day from eight.
As a result of a tightening budget, the Voice of America is now broadcasting in English for 19 hours a day, down from 24 hours in 2003. American international television broadcasts to Iran amount to less than six hours per week. For Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim state, American international television broadcasting's time adds up to a total of four hours per week. Voice of America recently increased its radio broadcasts to 12 hours daily to Pakistan - a nuclear weapon-armed Muslim state with an invidious terrorist movement knocking at the government's very door - but the antennae and transmitter are weak, Soviet-era equipment living on a scarce diet of spare parts fast reaching decrepitude.
Is this enough to win the war of ideas - or, at least, not lose it? I hope so.
Giving voice and image to our ideas will not immediately reverse today's anti-Americanism. But the stakes are very high.
The 9/11 Commission's recommendation that we "defend our ideals abroad vigorously" acknowledges the terrible ideas that motivated those who carried out the attacks. The commission's report offers sensible proposals on how to counter those terrible ideas. None of the proposals would have a longer-term effect than the redoubling of our effort to tell the Islamic world who we are and what we stand for.





August 2, 2004 Monday  




 What Would Machiavelli Do?

 
John Kerry, tough-talking war hero, cut an impressive figure at last week's convention, maybe impressive enough to threaten the Republicans' time-honored dominance of the manliness issue -- that is, national security. But you can already hear the Republican reply taking shape: O.K., you've shown us your muscles, but where's the beef? What exactly is your strategy for the war on terrorism?
 It's a tricky question. National security challenges rarely lend themselves to the programmatic laundry lists that are tossed at domestic problems, and global terrorism may be the most complex national security challenge ever. That's why the few specifics Mr. Kerry did offer on the terrorism front were underwhelming (he's against closing fire stations, for example). Still, there is a way for Mr. Kerry and John Edwards to frame an antiterrorism strategy that, though not programmatic, would be genuinely illuminating and politically powerful, cutting to the core of President Bush's greatest national security failure. And they may be closer to this formula than they realize, for it fits naturally into the rhetorical framework the Democrats built at their convention. 
 Mr. Kerry rightly stressed how thoroughly Mr. Bush has lowered the world's opinion of the United States. In elaborating, he said that America can't fight a war on terrorism without allies. That's true, but it doesn't by itself underscore the penchant for complex thought that Mr. Kerry attributed to himself in his acceptance speech. Even Mr. Bush now seems to realize that antagonizing allies is a bad idea. In fact, since the dawn of recorded history, just about everyone has recognized this.
 What is new, and uniquely challenging, about the war on terrorism is that hatred of America well beyond the bounds of its alliance now imperils national security. Fervent anti-Americanism among Muslims is the wellspring of terrorism, regardless of whether they live in countries whose governments cooperate with us. Yet this is a part of world opinion Mr. Kerry didn't talk about.
 His reticence is understandable. Fretting about Muslim opinion sounds a little like worrying that your enemy may not like you (even though, of course, the Muslims you're worrying about are the ones who haven't signed on with the enemy but may be leaning that way). So when Democrats talk about Muslim hatred, they're just begging to be called wimps by all those right-wing bloggers who have Machiavelli's dictum -- better to be feared than loved -- tattooed across their chests.
 But, however steep the rhetorical challenge posed by the fact that real men don't need love, the Democrats have already gone a ways toward meeting it, and they've done so on the strength of a single word: respect. As anyone who tuned into the convention for more than a few minutes is probably aware, the Democrats want an America that is ''respected in the world.'' And even if Mr. Kerry's concrete elaborations on this theme were about the importance of allies, respect is the perfect entree to the issue of Muslim hatred -- a way to confront Machiavelli's dichotomy without winding up on the girlie-man side of it.
 We don't need to be loved in the Muslim world, but we need to be respected. And even real men want respect. After all, strength can command respect. In fact, instilling fear can help instill respect. It's just that fear isn't enough. (This could be the epitaph of Mr. Bush's foreign policy: Apparently fear wasn't enough.)
 For a nation to be thoroughly respected, the perception of its strength needs to be matched by a perception of its goodness. It helps to be thought of as just, generous, conscientious, mindful of the opinion of others, even a little humble. In lots of little ways, Mr. Bush has given the world the impression that we're not these things.
 Mr. Kerry touched on some of this, noting that global leadership means inspiring more than fear. But he didn't carry the respect theme explicitly into the context of Muslim opinion.
 Doing so wouldn't by itself amount to a strategy for the war on terrorism. But it would add a new dimension to the Democrats' emerging critique of the president's foreign policy -- and a potent one. The plummeting regard for America in Muslim nations like Indonesia over the last few years is a well-documented fact. If voters can see the link between this and the security of their children -- see that for every million Muslims who hate America, one will be willing to fly an airplane into a shopping mall -- then President Bush will have a lot of explaining to do. And existing criticisms of his policies will acquire new force. (Given how unpopular the Iraq war was known to be in the Muslim world, wasn't the lack of postwar planning beyond inexcusable?)
 The Kerry-Edwards ticket might also profit from the fact that much of this Muslim antipathy seems to be focused on President Bush personally. (His unfavorability ratings in Morocco and Jordan are 90 percent and 96 percent, respectively.) Changing administrations -- ''rebranding'' America -- could help give us a fresh start.
 Thoroughly addressing the issue of Muslim hatred would pose some risks. Mr. Kerry would have to stress that he's willing to antagonize Muslims -- or anyone else -- when essential American principles or obligations are involved. And even that assurance wouldn't wholly buffer him from right-wing flak.
 But the very difficulty of taking on this issue is part of its virtue. Mr. Kerry's biggest manhood problem has nothing to do with Vietnam or the war on terrorism. Rather, it's the sense that he never attacks an issue unflinchingly -- that he waffles on the tough ones, that his only constancy lies in the wordiness of his bromides. Maybe what he needs is to take a sensitive, complicated problem, lay down a core conviction, and stick with it through thick and thin. 
 By the way, Machiavelli might approve. Though he favored fear over love, he said that being feared and loved is the best situation of all. And failing that, a leader at least ''ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred.'' If George W. Bush is too macho for Machiavelli, then surely John Kerry can make the case that Mr. Bush is too macho for America.                                              






  






 Persecution of Christians is growing - in Sweden and Canada;
You may be surprised to hear that quoting the Bible can get you in trouble with the law in both places.

 
During Sunday services at the church I attend, the congregation is invited to offer prayers. It's not uncommon that someone will implore mercy for persecuted Christians abroad.
Among the nations often cited are China, where unregistered Christians are beaten, imprisoned and killed by government agents; Egypt, where Coptic Christians are assaulted by Muslims and authorities ignore it; India, where recently a missionary and his sons were burned alive by a Hindu mob and Christians are often abused; Indonesia, where Muslims, sometimes backed by soldiers, have wiped out whole villages; and Pakistan, where gunmen attack churches and clergy need full-time guards.
That's only a partial list: Freedom House, which tracks persecution worldwide, estimates that about 160,000 Christians are killed every year for their faith. 
Still, most people offering up those prayers likely never thought they would want to add Sweden and Canada to the list.
But here's an item I found last week on the Internet: "A Swedish court sentenced a Pentecostal minister to a month in jail after he was found guilty of offending homosexual persons in a sermon. In 2003, Pastor Ake Green said homosexuality was 'abnormal' and a 'horrible cancerous tumor in the body of society.' "
Harsh words? Yes, and it is true that a preacher who condemns any wrongful activity from the pulpit had best follow it immediately with the Gospel's message of the free forgiveness that accompanies repentance.
Of course, we don't know that Pastor Green didn't do that, but it likely wouldn't have made much difference. He had, after all, committed the crime of "offending homosexual persons," and that heinous offense earned him a stretch in the slammer.
But what's this about Canada? Aren't they just like us?
That's precisely what has some traditional Christians worried. Here's what R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, operated by the largest Protestant body in the United States, wrote in a May 24 column on www.crosswalk.com:
"On April 28, the Canadian Senate passed bill C-250 by a vote of 59 to 11. In passing this legislation, the Canadian Parliament added 'sexual orientation' to the nation's laws criminalizing 'hate speech.' The end result is that the Bible may now be considered a form of criminalized hate literature and Christians who teach that homosexuality is sinful may face criminal charges."
He quotes Anne Cools, a senator from Ontario, who "described the bill as 'an intent to create . . . a section which would be used to cleanse many people of their moral opinions.' Canada's first black senator, Cools expressed concern that the law will be used to criminalize churches opposed to homosexuality. 'Once you put a power before (authorities) and then try to rely on goodness for the power not to be exercised, you're indeed naive.' "
Mohler also cites University of Western Ontario professor Robert Martin, who described Canada as "a totalitarian theocracy" and argued that Canada is "ruled today by what I would describe as a secular state religion (of political correctness). Anything that is regarded as heresy or blasphemy is not tolerated."
Farfetched? Only if you haven't been paying attention to events in Canada before this law passed.
According to Catholic World Report magazine's June 2004 issue, over the past few years:
A Saskatchewan man, Hugh Owens, placed an ad in a local paper listing the Bible verses that establish male-female marriage as the biblical moral standard and exclude homosexuality. He and the paper were fined for it, and the paper was ordered never to print such an ad again.
In fact, the ad didn't even quote the verses; it just cited them. So printing "Genesis 1: 18-24,"
"Romans 1: 26-32" or "Jude 7-8" could get me fined in Saskatoon.
A Toronto-area Roman Catholic high school was forced by the courts to allow a same-sex couple at its prom. The school was also forbidden to cancel the dance.
Toronto printer Scott Brockie was fined "thousands" for refusing a print job from a homosexual group. His protest that printing such material violated his religious beliefs was rejected by the court.
Finally, "Mayors across the country have been fined thousands of dollars for refusing to proclaim Gay Pride Week, even if they testified that they could not in conscience do so because of their Christian beliefs. Their offices were ordered to proclaim the events, even though some mayors offered to end all proclamations as a compromise."
Of course, Americans may say, "That can't happen here, because we have the First Amendment to protect us."
Folks, the Bill of Rights is just a piece of paper. Its interpretation isn't the average citizen's option.
If lawmakers ignore its protections, and arrogant, bullying judges of the sort we've seen in Massachusetts and on the U.S. Supreme Court support them, we will find that it will provide no shelter for religious convictions.
Political correctness is a jealous god. Unless we stop it here, we too could discover that it will allow no other God before it.
M.D. Harmon is an editorial page writer and editor. He can be contacted at 791-6482 or at:
mharmon@pressherald.com







 



July 31, 2004 Saturday  




 Hostage Spared as Deadline Passes; 
Firm to Talk to Iraqi Mediator; 
Kidnappings Cause Unrest in Asia

 
Islamic militants who had threatened to behead a kidnapped Indian driver Friday let their deadline slip after the driver's employer reportedly agreed to meet with an Iraqi mediator Saturday. In India, meanwhile, angry protesters in the driver's native region blocked a highway and briefly detained a busload of foreign tourists. 
 The drama surrounding the kidnapping of the Indian and six other foreign drivers for a Kuwaiti company intensified as a videotape of the masked militants pointing a gun at the frightened, huddled man was repeatedly aired in Iraq and India. 
 An Iraqi tribal sheik who has been acting as a mediator in the kidnapping told news agencies in Baghdad that he planned to meet with the drivers' employers Saturday and expected a "positive outcome." The militants, a group calling itself the Hoisters of the Black Flags, had threatened to start killing the hostages Friday unless the Kuwaiti firm withdrew all its foreign workers from Iraq.  
 In Pakistan, meanwhile, political fallout continued over the slayings in Iraq of two kidnapped Pakistani workers  on Wednesday. Pakistani political leaders and analysts said public outrage  could prevent the government from sending troops to Iraq as part of the multinational force. 
 "There is a great deal of anger at the government for having allowed this to happen. You might say there is a Philippine-like syndrome, because there are millions of Pakistanis who work in jobs all over the Middle East," Aitzaz Ahsan, a Pakistani  lawmaker, said in a telephone interview from Islamabad. 
Kidnappings by Islamic militants here accelerated after a decision by the Philippine government last week to withdraw its 51 troops from Iraq after a group threatened to kill an abducted Filipino driver. The man was released unharmed, but the capitulation by Philippines officials aroused international criticism and warnings of copycat crimes by emboldened terrorists. 
 The spreading contretemps comes as officials in Saudi Arabia, with strong support from the Iraqi government and encouragement from the Bush administration, have proposed forming a military force from Muslim countries that would supplement and eventually replace the U.S.-dominated foreign force in Iraq. 
 Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has promoted the idea of such a force this past week during a tour of several Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia. Iraqi and Saudi officials have stressed that the force would not include troops from Iraq's immediate neighbors -- who are widely distrusted by the Iraqi public -- but would rely on more-distant Muslim nations such as Pakistan and Indonesia. 
 In a brief visit to Baghdad, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell vowed that terrorists and kidnappers would not be allowed to drag Iraq back into its violent past. He also urged foreign companies working and investing in Iraq not to be deterred by the abductions and threats. In most cases, the kidnappers have demanded that foreign governments and private firms withdraw from the country, accusing them of collaborating with American occupiers. 
The surge in violence and threats has also coincided with repeated postponements of a national political conference, which is now scheduled to begin Aug. 15. The setbacks have raised fears that Iraqi elections planned for next year may also be delayed and that the entire framework of the country's progress toward democracy, as established in June by outgoing U.S. occupation officials, will be weakened. 
 But Iraqi and U.N. officials here said the delay was needed to ensure success for the conference, which is intended to bring together 1,000 Iraqis from across the political, religious and ethnic spectrum to discuss crucial national issues and choose a small legislative council that would oversee the interim administration. Preparations for the meeting have been marred by the refusal of some key groups to participate and by wrangling among others over coveted delegates' seats. 
 "In a country that has lived for decades under authoritarian rule, where politics was killed and where insurgency is continuing, it is very important for Iraqis to see they can come together under one big tent to discuss the challenges and to see that a peaceful political process is the best way forward," said Jamal bin Omar, a U.N. official who is advising conference organizers. "We thought a few extra days would help." 
 Omar and other officials said they were confident that within the next two weeks, groups who have rejected the conference could  be persuaded to participate and disputes over delegate selection could  be resolved. The officials said that many Iraqis were still not certain what the conference was about and that more time was needed to build popular support for it. 
 In interviews Friday, Baghdad residents expressed only a vague understanding of the conference and questioned whether it was intended  to include only political elites. 
 "What is the purpose of this meeting? Is it for the officials, or is it for the people?" asked Uday Tariq, 25, who sells women's  clothing  in a shopping mall. "We don't know the first thing about it, and we don't understand why it has to be delayed. Everyone is asking the same questions." 







 



July 30, 2004 Friday  




 Powell Welcomes Saudi Proposal For Muslim Troops

 
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Thursday that the United States would soon begin "intensive discussions" with Islamic countries to explore Saudi Arabia's proposal to mobilize Muslim troops to help stabilize Iraq. 
 He described the Saudi proposal, outlined over the past two days in talks with Saudi and Iraqi officials in the Saudi port city of Jiddah, as "an interesting idea, a welcome idea." 
The United States had tried without success to persuade Islamic countries to join the multinational military force in Iraq. But Powell said the concept of a Muslim force from Middle Eastern and other countries is now more viable because two basic conditions have been met: The multinational force now has U.N. approval, and the United States handed over political power to an interim Iraqi government a month ago. He cautioned, however, that several key points still need to be explored.  
"The Saudis have indicated some conditions that would have to be met, as they see it, with respect to chain-of-command arrangements, with respect to what troops would be doing, whether it would be an offset to existing coalition troops in the country," Powell said in Jiddah, where he met with Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi for the first time. 
Powell said Iraq, the United States, members of the U.S.-led military coalition, the United Nations and any Muslim nations that volunteer troops still must sort out whether a new Muslim force would be part of the existing coalition, be part of a new force that would protect U.N. personnel in Iraqor be entirely separate. 
 Saudi Arabia envisioned putting Muslim troops under a chain of command that would be headed by the United Nations. Allawi, who has been trying for the past month to attract troops from other Muslim nations, has called for them to become part of the multinational force now in Iraq.  
 Allawi said he had already received some favorable responses to letters he wrote to Muslim countries shortly after he took office. Iraqi officials traveling with Allawi said Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan and Tunisia were among the countries he approached. 
Iraq's government and the prospective volunteers now "have to expand discussion on what kind of commitment they should have," Allawi said. "This is something we will pursue in the weeks ahead. I will be talking to some of them in the next few days to try and find the common ground." 
 Allawi conceded that troops from Arab and other Muslim countries might be as vulnerable as coalition troops to attacks by insurgents, but he said the Islamic world needs to take a united stand against terrorism. 
"These are forces of evil who are acting against us. We are going to suffer casualties," Allawi said. "There is no other route. I call upon the leaders of the Islamic countries and the Arab countries to close rank because this is basically our fight." 
The insurgents, Allawi said, "are people who claim to be part of Islam, and they are not. They claim to be part of the Arabs, and they are not." 
Pakistan, which has one of the largest and best-trained armies in the Islamic world, may be considering committing troops to Iraq, according to news service reports. 
 Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, said Thursday it would consider sending troops as part of a U.N. peacekeeping force  but not to help quell the insurgency. 
 "We certainly won't entertain the idea of having our troops there as part of a multinational force unless it is under a U.N. framework," said Marty Natalegawa, a spokesman for Indonesia's Foreign Ministry. "That is the only possible scenario within which we will operate." 
Hanging over the Saudi proposal is a new threat issued by an organization calling itself the Islamic Tawhid Group, which threatened all Islamic nations that decide to send troops to Iraq. "We will not remain silent if troops are sent to Iraq by any Arab or Muslim country, especially by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and others," it said in a statement posted Thursday on an Islamic Web site. "We will strike with an iron fist all the traitors of Arab governments who cooperate with the Zionists." 
Correspondent Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report. 







 


July 28, 2004 Wednesday



 Muslim religion and democracy can coexist

 
   Cynics in the West argue that Islam and democracy don't mix.
Democracy can't work in a Muslim country like Afghanistan, they say, because of the dictatorial grip of the warlords. It won't work in Iraq because the country is in chaos. It won't work in Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or the rest of the Arab world because of autocratic rulers and Muslim extremists. 
Such critics in the United States conveniently dismiss the presence of some four to seven million Muslims in this land who remain true to their religion but thrive and prosper under democracy and revere it.
But even in predominantly Muslim lands, there are examples of burgeoning democracy. One such land -- actually the largest Muslim country in the world -- is Indonesia.
Its 216 million people have survived colonialism under the Dutch, a slide toward communism under Sukarno, an abortive coup attempt that led to a nationwide bloodletting leaving tens of thousands dead, years of dictatorship and corruption under Suharto, violent separatist upheavals and religious tensions, and a flurry of al-Qaida-style terrorism.
By all measures, Indonesia should be an international basket case, difficult terrain for democracy. Yet with all this turmoil in its past, it is moving purposely through a complicated election process in which the once tender shoots of democracy are blooming healthily.
Earlier this month, Indonesians went to the polls in the country's first direct presidential election. A runoff between the two top candidates will take place in September. Hitherto, Indonesian presidents have been appointed by the Legislature.
Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, who has served as president for the past three years, seems unlikely to survive the runoff. Her presidency has been a time of stability, but she has not been dynamic in addressing Indonesia's varied problems. Her likely successor is the former army general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who topped the voting in the July 5 polls. He would be a welcome contrast to another former general, Wiranto (many Indonesians have only one name), who came in third in the polls. Unlike the more moderate Gen. Susilo, Gen. Wiranto is more controversial and has been indicted for crimes against humanity in East Timor. He would not be well regarded outside Indonesia and apparently failed to get the support of most Indonesians. The support for moderates like Megawati and Gen. Susilo also underlines the electorate's disaffection with extremist Islamic candidates who did not fare well. Not one of the top five candidates in the July 5 voting favored the introduction of sharia Islamic law.
Despite some minor problems, the elections were fair and peaceful. Registered voters numbered more than 153 million, and about 80 percent of them turned out to cast their ballots -- a performance that would have gladdened the hearts of many politicians in the United States. Former President Jimmy Carter was one of the observers and pronounced the elections fair. "The people have made a deep commitment to democracy and secular government with 87 percent Muslims," he said. "There has been no real challenge to secular governments."
Indonesia is known for its rather mellow pursuit of Islam, in contrast to the fervor found in many Arab countries. The practice of Islam varies in this far-flung archipelago, and there are pockets of Buddhism and Hinduism. But Indonesians are capable of violent eruptions, for example against Christians, and against a Chinese minority in their country which often dominates trade and commerce and therefore arouses envy. However, though militant terrorist groups like the Jemaah Islamiyah, responsible for a bloody attack on a nightclub on Bali in 2002, have attempted to galvanize Islamist radicalism, the elections show no major shift in that direction and, in fact, underscore a commitment to moderation by most Indonesians.
Clearly, the most backward nations in the world in the movement to freedom are those with majority Muslim populations, especially in the Arab world. Yet as New York-based Freedom House points out, half of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims live under democratically elected governments in countries like Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. Even Arab states like Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar are showing increasing signs of openness, and surprisingly Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral home and a haven for terrorists, is enjoying some civic involvement in the country's political process.
We are still far from seeing a democratic revolution in the Muslim lands of the Middle East. But countries like Indonesia are currently disputing the cynical view that Islam and democracy must forever be in contention. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Indonesia in the 1960s. He is a former editor of the , which syndicates this column. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com






 
  






 BOY 'DIVORCES' DAD AFTER MOM'S MURDER

 
CANTON, Mass. -- A teenage boy won a landmark legal battle Monday by getting a "divorce" from his father, who murdered the boy's mother six years ago while the child slept in the next room. Daniel Holland signed a settlement agreeing to give up his parental rights and waiving any right to be part of his son Patrick's life. He had been scheduled to face a closed-door trial Monday that experts said could have been precedent-setting. Patrick, 14, was one of the first children to independently initiate a "divorce" from a parent, despite the fact that he had a permanent home with his legal guardians. Patrick said he was relieved the case was over but was skeptical of his father's motives. "I don't think he did it for me; I just think he did it to make himself look good, to make himself look rehabilitated. . . . It's like a big weight's been lifted off my shoulders, knowing that I don't have to worry about him being in my life."
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/news and click on Nation/World. 
Gun law enforcement lags
WASHINGTON -- More than 7,000 people who should have been barred from buying guns were able to buy them in 2002 and 2003, according to a Justice Department review released Monday. The government rarely prosecutes such cases, the report said. Federal law stipulates that gun buyers might have to wait up to three business days before receiving their weapons; under a system of instant FBI background checks instituted in 1998, most sales are approved much quicker. Of the 17 million gun purchases in the last two years, 122,000 were denied because of the checks.
Bush tumbles off bike
CRAWFORD, Texas -- George Bush plunged down hills and plowed through the brush on his high-end, high-performance mountain bike -- and wound up flat on his back. A bit shaken up, the president dusted himself off, got back on his bike and kept rolling, a small cut on his knee and dirt on his back the only signs he had crashed. A one-time jogger, Bush has been riding the knobby-tired bikes since February.
Woman convicted for tale
PONTOISE, France -- A French woman who admitted to lying about being the victim of an anti-Semitic attack was convicted Monday for fabricating a story that stunned France. She was given a four-month suspended sentence. The 22-year-old woman, Marie Leblanc, was also ordered to receive counseling and put under probation for two years. Defense lawyers and her mother have described the woman as psychologically fragile and deeply sorry for her lie, which created an uproar in France as the government is trying to combat a rise in anti-Semitic and other hate crimes. The woman claimed she was robbed earlier this month by a knife-wielding gang that mistook her for a Jew and scrawled swastikas on her body.
Hero's brother joins Karzai
KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai dropped a powerful warlord to add the brother of a slain Afghan hero to his electoral ticket Monday. The surprise move followed political wrangling so intense that NATO peacekeepers stepped up their presence in the streets of Kabul. The U.S.-backed interim leader selected a little-known brother of resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massood as his chief running mate, a move sure to test this volatile nation's fragile ethnic and factional balance. "I hope the Afghan people will recognize us as a good team and I hope the people of Afghanistan will vote for us," Karzai told reporters.
Ground Zero cancer risk nil
WASHINGTON -- A group of hazardous chemicals released into the air following the collapse of the World Trade Center doesn't appear to be much of a cancer risk to local residents. Previous studies have indicated the chemicals may have endangered some unborn babies of women in the area. But a new report says the chemicals dissipated rapidly and any increase in the danger of cancer is very small. A team led by Stephen Rappaport of the University of North Carolina studied 243 samples collected near Ground Zero, analyzing the amounts of nine chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are known to cause cancer.
Indonesia to hold run-off vote
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian voters angry with corruption and poverty handed a first-round election victory to ex-army general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, but he faces a difficult task in unseating incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri in a September run-off. Final results released Monday showed Yudhoyono won 33.5 percent of the valid ballots cast in the July 5 polls, the first in which voters in the world's most populous Muslim nation chose their president directly. Megawati was second with 26.6 percent, ahead of another military general, Wiranto, who garnered 22.2 percent. Two other candidates shared the remaining votes. With no candidate gaining the simple majority needed to win the presidency outright, Megawati and Yudhoyono, the top two vote-getters, will face a run-off ballot Sept. 20.







 


July 24, 2004 Saturday



 Pluralism tour makes a S.L. stop

 
   In America we generally don't kill each other over religion. But that doesn't mean we don't have some passionate battles -- over whether "God" belongs in the Pledge of Allegiance, for example, or who gets to do what on a stretch of downtown Salt Lake sidewalk.
It is this nuanced tolerance and tension that religious scholars from around the world are studying this summer as they tour four U.S. cities, part of a State Department-funded program called "Religion in the United States: Pluralism and Public Presence."
Salt Lake City is the second stop on the tour that also includes Los Angeles, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Los Angeles was chosen because it is one of the most religiously diverse U.S. cities. Salt Lake City was chosen because, as historian Jan Shipps told the scholars earlier this week, Utah is "the most unpluralistic of all the states." 
In the United States as a whole there are at least 200 religions, maybe as many as 2,000 -- it all depends on how you count the splinter groups, says Wade Clark Roof, director of the State Department's Fulbright American Studies Institute. Globally there are thousands more, and it's estimated that two or three new religions are created every single day.
In the face of all these varied ways to contemplate the divine, the question, Roof says, is "how do we foster civility, and what does that do to religious traditions?"
The 18 academics who visited Utah this past week come from France, Georgia, Serbia and other countries that struggle to come up with answers. France has made headlines and angered Muslims around the world by passing a law banning head scarves and any other religious garb or insignia from public schools. This is both an attempt to lessen religious tensions and to fortify the government's insistence that France is a purely secular state.
Religion in France, notes tour co-director David Machacek, is seen as a negative influence on public life. The United States, on the other hand, is a secular state but there is a widespread sense that religion is positive, he says. Even strict church-state separationists in America -- and he counts himself among them -- would not say that religion should be silenced, says Machacek, who teaches at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
In Indonesia religious scholars "are trying to introduce the discourse on pluralism" into the world's most Muslim country, according to Iskandar, vice-director of the Center for Conflict Resolution at the State Institute for Islamic Studies Ar-Raniry. The belief "that Islam is not the only way to go to Heaven" is an increasingly popular view among young, educated people, he says.
Religious academics divide the world's religions into old, new-old, new and new-new, says Yu-shuang Yao, assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Fo Guang University in Taiwan. Mormonism is now considered a new-old religion, she says. Despite this relative longevity, most of the 18 scholars participating in this year's Institute were learning about the details of Mormonism for the first time.
Their three days in Utah included the lecture by Shipps, professor emeritus of history and religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University; a tour of Temple Square; a trip to the Missionary Training Center; and a discussion called "Religious Minorities in Mormon Land," with Mike Gray of Southeast Baptist Church and Rabbi Tracee Rosen of Congregation Kol Ami.
Last year's visiting scholars thought Salt Lake City was the most interesting of the stops, because "the public face of religion is very visible" here, says Holly Grether, project director in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which organized the month-long tour. E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com







 



July 12, 2004 Monday  




 Feud May Tear a Sultanate Asunder; 
Father's Unusual Choices Leave 2 Indonesian Princes Claiming a Kingdom in Decline

 
 There was once a crown prince, Djalaludin, who was being groomed as the sultan in a kingdom called Kanoman. 
 As he lazed in a courtyard one day beneath the broad canopy of a banyan tree, the prince spied a girl cutting across the palace grounds on her way home from school. She was 15 years his junior and the lowly daughter of a local restaurant owner, a commoner more comfortable in short skirts than finery and robes. 
 But the prince fell deeply in love with her.  
Over the protests of his parents, the reigning sultan and queen, Djalaludin married the girl, abandoning the palace for a time and risking his chance at the throne.  
 Djalaludin's decision to follow his heart planted the seeds for a conflict that decades later threatens to rip the kingdom asunder. It pits his two sons, one born to the beautiful commoner, the other to a woman of royal breeding. Both young princes  claim to be the 12th in a line of sultans tracing their ancestry back to the first holy men to reach Indonesian shores. 
The story of their lives was assembled in interviews with members of the royal family and people close to them.  
 The Sultanate of Kanoman now faces not only the prospect of filial bloodshed but a threat to the very existence of a 300-year-old kingdom that many on Indonesia's main island of Java still consider the essence of their culture. 
 The sultanate, like other royal courts sprinkled across the Indonesian archipelago from Java and Bali to Borneo and the Spice Islands, long embodied aristocratic traditions that predate Dutch colonialism. Kanoman was a center for the arts, painting, batik, music and masked dance. Its sultan traditionally presided over Muslim rituals, serving as a unifying symbol, according to local scholars. 
Like most of Indonesia's royal courts, the sultanate was stripped of its political power after the country's independence, then deprived of much of its property nearly a generation later. The leafy grounds of Kanoman became overgrown. Weeds pushed through the cobblestones and took root above on walls discolored by mold. Paint chipped and plaster crumbled, baring brick below. 
 Yet the throne remained a prize jealously sought. 
 It was 1970 when Djalaludin was first entranced by the commoner named Suherni. At age 33, the prince had been married twice before, but for her he would willingly gamble away the crown. They were wed a year later in a simple ceremony at her relatives' home outside the port city of Cirebon, she recalled. His family refused to attend. 
 But his mother, the queen, was determined to return her wayward son to the royal fold, members of the court now recall. She tracked him to the couple's humble nest in a quarter outside the palace and urged him to take an additional wife, allowed under Islam, one of royal descent. She proposed a distant relative. 
 Djalaludin acquiesced. Out of duty, he married that cousin, Sri Mulya, who was destined later to become his queen because of her royal blood. It was an extravagant affair of music and dance that drew guests from across Java. But out of love, he insisted that Suherni return to the palace with him as well. 
 Suherni was the first to give him a son. Their child, Saladin, was born in April 1973.  Two months later, Sri Mulya also gave birth to a son, Emirudin. 
 The young two princes grew to be friends, playing soccer and flying kites together in the gardens. Their mothers also became close, breast-feeding each other's younger children, family members said. 
 But Djalaludin made no secret of whom he favored. Saladin accompanied the sultan when he would meet government officials or participate in civic events. He proved comfortable in aristocratic circles and adept at dealings with local officials. Emirudin, by contrast, was already showing signs of the diffidence that would later make him a recluse. 
 Still, many in the royal court assumed Emirudin would someday become the next sultan by virtue of his mother's blue blood. 
 Djalaludin died in late 2002, reportedly from complications of diabetes.    Forty days after the sultan's death, following the traditional period of mourning, more than 100 members of the Kanoman family were summoned to the royal reception hall, according to family accounts. There, beneath the carved wood ceiling and crystal chandeliers, the late sultan's brother produced a testament that had been secretly stowed in a small black case. To a stunned audience, he declared the sultan's heir to be Saladin. 
 Many in the hall hooted in protest.  Emirudin's partisans called the final testament a fraud, though Emirudin himself said little in public. A slight man with a dark goatee, he only rarely ventures outside the palace grounds in his used 1980 Toyota, instead letting relatives, courtiers, lawyers and royal retainers argue his case. 
  "According to Islam, there is no blue-blood family, no distinction between a mother who has a royal background and one who does not. According to Islam, all wives should be equal," said Saladin, chain-smoking Marlboros from the pack he keeps in his T-shirt pocket. The late sultan's wishes must be honored, he insisted. 
 But one evening in March 2003, Saladin donned his royal black jacket with gold trim and had himself installed as sultan. The next morning, Emirudin put on similar attire and, despite efforts by his brother's loyalists to disrupt the ceremony, was likewise declared sultan. 
 Yet neither could rightfully claim the throne. Neither had yet acquired the famed sacred dagger of the Kanoman court, explained the late sultan's brother, Prince Imamudin, 50, who confided that he had locked away the heirloom and other royal weapons until the dispute was resolved. 
 "Both sides have supporters, and they're ready to fight," said Imamudin. "I'm waiting for a miracle from God and praying we can solve this without violence." 
 Until early last month, an uneasy truce prevailed inside the palace. Neither prince moved into the sultan's quarters, still occupied by Sri Mulya, but instead kept living with their immediate families under the same roof in the stately white building inhabited over the centuries by royal offspring. Only a pair of heavy green doors separated the rivals. 
 Yet fear invaded the inner sanctum. Intimidated by Emirudin's superior supporters within the court, Saladin began to counsel his visitors to bypass the main gates, instructing them to slip onto the grounds through a back alley that winds through an adjacent neighborhood. 
  During the standoff, the palace continued its decline. The electric company threatened to turn off the power for non-payment and some phone service was suspended, royal family members reported. Sheep grazed in front of the royal apartments. 
 On June 6, Emirudin issued a decree expelling Saladin and his immediate family, including his aging mother,  Suherni. Saladin refused to budge, vowing to die first. 
 The people of Cirebon warned that the Kanoman court is ominously reprising a dispute that almost destroyed the sultanate during colonial times, when the son of the sixth sultan secretly took up with the daughter of a Dutch official. Years later, when the couple's son was about to be crowned, the royal court erupted in protest, ultimately securing the throne for the son of another wife with royal blood. 
 Imamudin, Djalaludin's brother, recalled that his ancestors had prophesied a repetition of this excruciating history. 
 "They predicted that one day a thousand pains would merge into one, and what's happening now reflects that," Imamudin said. "My ancestors also said that after Kanoman overcomes this problem, we will regain our glory again." 
 But he added with a melancholy smile, "I don't know how." 








 


July 8, 2004 Thursday



 Indonesia's Democratic Growing Pains

 
More than 127 million Indonesians cast ballots Monday in the country's first direct presidential election. Just a fraction of them trickled through the polling station in a neighborhood of Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi, where my monitoring team of two from the Atlanta-based Carter Center watched the vote count.
While most everyone we spoke to saw improvements in preparations and logistics over the unwieldy legislative elections of the spring, there is room for improvement. A foreseeable problem with the ballot led to confusion and a recount of many ballots originally declared invalid. The process was marked by excessive informality in some places and disorder in others. The polling station at which we began the day opened more than an hour after the scheduled time. Many officials and voters stayed up past 4 a.m. the night before to watch Greece beat Portugal in the Euro 2004 soccer final. 
There was positive news on the general environment for the election.
Many noted the palpable easing of tensions since 1999. At that first election after the end of the Suharto dictatorship, experience of political freedoms was so limited that even simple partisan expressions like wearing a T-shirt from a political party were enough to cause anxiety.
This time, most reports indicate an atmosphere of calm and cooperation - though many of Indonesia's thousands of polling stations went unmonitored. We found very few polls attended by Indonesia's domestic election-monitoring organizations. It's possible they were assigned to cover remote, rural polling stations, where village heads tied to the provincial bureaucracy often exert improper influence in election process.
However, five years ago, in the same area, local observers were much more in evidence. Perhaps the reason is that while tension was in good supply in that first vote after the fall of a 32-year dictatorship, so was idealism.
These days, some disillusionment with Indonesia's political progress is understandable. The economy continues to languish seven years after the Asian financial crisis, but corruption is out of control. President Megawati's lackluster non-leadership has disappointed. Her impeached predecessor, Abdurahman Wahid, was most often called erratic. Unrest, sometimes created and stoked by the armed forces, is a concern for many Indonesians.
These factors have fueled speculation, especially abroad, that Indonesia's people may be ready for the return of a strongman. Two former generals were among the leading contenders in the election. One of them, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former security minister in the current government, has a significant lead in results tabulated so far.
Barring unforeseen developments, General Yudhoyono, known popularly as SBY - will compete in a September runoff with Mrs. Megawati.
It would be a mistake to think Indonesians nurse a nostalgia for authoritarian rule. To the contrary, said Asseng, a veil-wearing Muslim who belongs to a nonsectarian voter education network. People want strong leadership to bring greater progress on democracy and the rule of law, not as a substitute for them, she said
Indonesians are also savvy about the consequences of a return to hard-line rule for Indonesia's international standing. A graduate student, Arqam, said another leading contender, former General Wiranto, would not make it to the second round because Indonesians not only dislike the conduct that has earned him an indictment for war crimes in East Timor, they also know it would make him ineffective with other countries. Indeed, General Wiranto's connection to the military-sponsored militia brutality in East Timor has gotten him a visa ban from America.
The night before the election, a local university professor told me he opposed close ties between the militaries of our countries because he fears Washington would enlist Indonesian troops in attacks on other nations. I wanted to explain why Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, whose people suffered under the Suharto dictatorship, should understand the American-led actions to topple another brutal and dangerous regime. Or to offer my somewhat different concerns about American cooperation with an unreformed Indonesian military. But I was there as a neutral observer and he had just told me his views. So I thanked him and wished him luck with the election.
As Washington gets ready to begin a relationship with the next Indonesian government, it should make sure to take account of the views of ordinary Indonesians. Despite popular sentiment against the war in Iraq, Indonesia has not become a hotbed of anti-American sentiment. Washington should be careful to understand what ordinary Indonesians want from their government and from America.







 


July 8, 2004 Thursday  




 World Briefly

 
HONG KONG OFFICIAL QUITS OVER SARS CRISIS
 Hong Kong  
 Bowing to pressure over a slow, sloppy response to SARS, Hong Kong's health secretary resigned Wednesday to take blame for the crisis that killed hundreds and caused months of uncertainty and fear in the territory. 
 Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong became a rare political casualty in a territory where critics charge that top aides of Hong Kong's leader, Tung Chee-hwa, often avoid being held accountable for problems.  
 Yeoh's departure might give Tung a boost at a time when Hong Kongers are furious at a recent decision by Beijing ruling out full democracy in the next few years. The anger spilled into the streets last week in a pro-democracy march by several hundred thousand people. 
 Yeoh ran into trouble this week after a legislative report on Monday blamed him for many failures in the fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome. Dozens of relatives of SARS victims gathered outside the legislature Wednesday to call for Yeoh's removal.
COSTLY REBUILDING PREDICTED IN HAITI
 Washington  
 More than $1 billion will probably be needed to rebuild Haiti, the Americas' poorest country, after its recent political upheaval, a senior Treasury Department official said Wednesday. 
 John Taylor, the department's undersecretary for international affairs, offered the estimate as he prepared to visit Port-au-Prince Thursday and meet with government representatives to discuss their efforts to establish economic stability in Haiti. 
 Taylor said a donors conference for Haiti reconstruction will be held in Washington on July 20 at the World Bank, which is currently working on a needs assessment for the country. The money, he said, is needed to build roads and schools and improve electric power, among other things. 
 On his trip this week, Taylor also plans to visit the Dominican Republic, which is on the same island as Haiti. He will discuss economic matters with government officials in Santo Domingo, the republic's capital.
ANTI-INDIAN ALLIANCE LEADER RESIGNS
 Srinagar, India  
 The chairman of the main separatist alliance in Indian-controlled Kashmir stepped down Wednesday in an attempt to forge unity among its bitterly divided factions. 
 Abbas Ansari quit as head of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, which has split over holding talks with India over the Himalayan territory's status. 
 Ansari, 68, was the first member of the Shiite branch of Islam to head the alliance, which comprises nearly two dozen political and religious groups seeking Kashmir's independence, or its merger with Islamic Pakistan. Most Muslims in Kashmir are Sunnis. 
 "I have stepped down as chairman for the unity of the Hurriyat," Ansari said Wednesday in a statement. No successor was immediately named.
PART OF PARIS AIRPORT TERMINAL TO REOPEN
 Paris  
 France's busiest airport will reopen the undamaged part of a terminal in which the roof collapsed in May, killing four people, the transport minister said Wednesday. 
 Gilles de Robien said a segment of the three-building 2E terminal at the Charles de Gaulle airport would return to service on July 15. 
 "We can open the terminal that didn't give way," he told France-Info radio. 
 In the May 23 disaster, falling glass, steel and masonry killed four travelers - two Chinese, one Czech and one Lebanese. Three others were injured. 
 A preliminary report by experts said Tuesday that a weakness in the concrete that formed the futuristic terminal's vaulted roof may have contributed to the collapse. Officials are still unsure exactly what caused it to buckle.
CARTER BACKS INDONESIAN ELECTION
 Jakarta, Indonesia  
 Former President Jimmy Carter declared Indonesia's presidential election a success Wednesday, saying it proved Islam and democracy were compatible. 
 Carter, whose nonprofit Carter Center monitored Monday's vote, commented as a partial count showed former Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would likely face President Megawati Sukarnoputri in a runoff. 
 Carter described the vote in the world's most populous Islamic nation as largely peaceful and transparent, adding that his group had found no "pattern of cheating." 
 Carter also said Indonesia, which became the world's third-largest democracy after the fall of dictator Suharto in 1998, would help disprove the notion that Islam and free elections do not mix. 
 "This is a vivid demonstration that it's not a citizen's religious faith that decides whether they prefer democracy," he said. "This rejects the frequent statements I hear in America that the Muslim faith is incompatible with democracy. The people of Indonesia have proven this to be a false premise." 
 With just over half of the 130 million votes counted, Yudhoyono led the field of five candidates with 33.6 percent. Megawati had won 26.3 percent. Election observers said she was expected to hold her lead over Wiranto, a former armed forces commander who goes by just one name, who had 22.1 percent. 
 The runoff for the two top vote getters is set for Sept. 20.
TYPE: Briefs







 



July 8, 2004 Thursday  




 Opposing Parties Meet in Indonesia; 
Front-Runner in Presidential Election Attempts to Gather Support for Runoff

 
  -- Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the projected first-round winner of Monday's  presidential election in Indonesia, has opened talks with opposing  political parties to secure support in an upcoming runoff, although half the ballots  had not been counted, campaign sources said Wednesday. 
 Most significantly, Yudhoyono's aides have begun negotiations with the country's largest party, Golkar,  according to the sources, speaking on condition they not be identified. Golkar was headed by former president Suharto, the country's longtime dictator.  
 The discussions so far have remained informal because Golkar's presidential nominee, Gen. Wiranto, the former armed forces commander, continues to predict that he will reach the second round, the sources said. 
 But projections by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) indicated that the incumbent, Megawati Sukarnoputri, had narrowly defeated  Wiranto for second place, giving her the right to face Yudhoyono, her former chief security minister, in the  runoff on Sept. 20. 
 With slightly more than half the votes counted by Wednesday night, Yudhoyono led with 34 percent of the total,  followed by Megawati with 26 percent and Wiranto with 22 percent. Two other candidates  were far behind. 
 Yudhoyono's  Democrat Party is a relatively minor factor  in Indonesian politics, and Yudhoyono  must now build a coalition of secular and Muslim voters  if he is to  prevail. Analysts said Megawati would also seek broad appeal beyond her core supporters from people loyal to her as the daughter of Sukarno, the founder of modern Indonesia. 
 On Wednesday, a top official in Yudhoyono's campaign met with Akbar Tandjung, the chairman of Golkar,  a source close to Yudhoyono said.  
 "Informal offers are going back and forth," said Rachmat Witoelar, a senior political adviser to Yudhoyono. "It's logical that they would join with us because we share the same ideas. . . . Now it's a question of price." 
 The negotiations involved efforts by Golkar to win ministerial posts in any  Yudhoyono cabinet, but Witoelar said Golkar should not expect to secure  any of the most powerful posts. 
 "If they don't support us, we will win anyway," Witoelar said. "It's a sellers' market, not a buyers' market." 
 Officials with Yudhoyono's campaign  were optimistic that Golkar loyalists would prefer the former security chief to Megawati. An exit poll conducted by NDI showed that 31 percent of Golkar supporters bypassed their own party's nominee to vote for Yudhoyono, compared with only 8 percent for Megawati. 
 Hazairin Sitepu,  an official with Yudhoyono's team, said the senior campaign staff was being consolidated in part to make room for representatives of other parties. 
 In addition to approaching Golkar, Yudhoyono's advisers have also begun informal discussions with the National Awakening Party, loyal to former president Abdurrahman Wahid, campaign sources said. That party, which controls the third-largest block of seats in the parliament, had supported Wiranto's candidacy. 
 Representatives of Megawati's campaign also have met recently with a Golkar delegation to discuss a possible  deal,  a source in her campaign said. 
 Campaign officials said Megawati's advisers have been less aggressive about lining up expanded support for the runoff because they have been preoccupied with surviving the first round. 
Special correspondent Natasha Tampubolon contributed to this  report. 







 



July 7, 2004 Wednesday  




 Megawati Projected to Make Runoff In Indonesia; 
President Would Face Ex-Aide, Top Vote-Getter Yudhoyono

 
 President Megawati Sukarnoputri narrowly made it through the first round of Monday's nationwide election and will face a runoff Sept. 20 with her former chief security minister, Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, according to projections released Tuesday. 
 A tally of sample districts compiled by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute showed that Megawati will qualify in the race against Yudhoyono, who was projected as the top vote finisher. 
 The institute, which reported earlier that Megawati was in a statistical dead heat for second place, said revised estimates based on additional returns showed her outdistancing the former armed forces commander, Gen. Wiranto,  by almost 3 percent.  
 The quick count, based on results from 1,719 polling stations, gave Megawati slightly more than 25 percent of the vote. That would be much better than election eve projections, which suggested that Megawati, the daughter of Indonesia's founding father, the late president Sukarno, might be turned out of office. Many voters had expressed disappointment with her leadership, only three years after she ascended to the presidency as a symbol of the country's democratic aspirations. 
 Indonesia's election commission, reporting that nearly half of the vote had been counted, said Yudhoyono was leading early Wednesday with 34 percent, followed by Megawati with 27 percent. Wiranto trailed with 22 percent. Two other contenders were far behind. 
 Rizal Mallarangeng, a political analyst close to the president, said Megawati had reversed her sagging fortunes by retooling her campaign strategy in recent weeks. Widely considered  aloof, she took her campaign from the palace to crowded markets and revamped her television advertising, portraying herself as a caring, motherly figure, Mallarangeng said. 
 At the same time, he said, Yudhoyono's runaway popularity began to slip as voters took a closer look at a candidate who had surged into the lead since leaving the cabinet in March. Just last week, some surveys showed Yudhoyono, commonly known by his initials SBY, within reach of an outright majority, but now he looked unlikely to reach 40 percent of the votes. 
 "If I were SBY, I would not only be a little worried. I wouldn't be able to sleep," Mallarangeng said, asserting that the momentum has shifted to Megawati. 
 But Daniel Sparringa, a political sociologist at Airlangga University, said Yudhoyono remained in a strong position for the runoff. Sparringa contended that Megawati had moved up quickly because of an anonymous smear campaign against Yudhoyono. Spread by cell phone text messages and leaflets, the campaign accused him of supporting strict Islamic law and being insensitive to non-Muslim minorities. Sparringa did not blame Megawati for the attacks. 
 Though Wiranto also fared better than polls predicted, the National Democratic Institute projection indicated that his effort fell short. His elimination from the race would remove a potential irritant in relations between the United States and Indonesia. U.S. officials have expressed concern about the prospect of a Wiranto presidency. He has been indicted by a special U.N.-backed  tribunal examining crimes against humanity during a wave of militia killings in East Timor after its 1999 vote for independence from Indonesia. 
 Analysts said a crucial question would be whether Wiranto and his Golkar Party, the largest in parliament, would give unified support to either Yudhoyono or Megawati. 
 Former president Jimmy Carter, who led a mission from the Atlanta-based Carter Center observing the election, praised Indonesians for their "commitment to an honest and democratic procedure." 
  "This is a major step forward on a global scale," Carter said. He said that Indonesians "almost miraculously" have established a successful democracy just six years after the end of former president Suharto's authoritarian rule. Indonesia had demonstrated that the world's most populous Muslim country could adopt a democratic system and secular government, he said. 







 


July 6, 2004 Tuesday  




 Former General Wins Most Votes in Indonesia Election

 
A former general won the largest number of votes in the country's first direct presidential election on Monday, early results showed. But Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono failed to win a majority and will face a runoff election in September against the second-place candidate.
 A quick count of votes by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs from 2,500 polling stations showed that General Yudhoyono, 54, received 33.9 percent of the votes. President Megawati Sukarnoputri had 24.9 percent of the votes and another former general, Wiranto, had 23.8 percent in a tight race for second place. Similarly, the national Election Commission's tally of 13 million votes, about 9 percent of those cast, gave General Yudhoyono 33.18 percent, Mrs. Megawati 26.64 and General Wiranto 23.34 percent. 
 The possibility of a head-to-head battle between two former military men, General Yudhoyono and General Wiranto, who has been indicted for war crimes in East Timor by a United Nations-supported tribunal, is considered one of the worst possibilities by Indonesian political reformers.
 Both men served during the three-decade iron rule of General Suharto, although General Yudhoyono, who was minister for security in President Megawati's civilian government, is seen as a better prospect for restoring confidence in the faltering Indonesian economy. He was perceived by many voters as an anticorruption politician, but he remained vague about how he would tackle the pervasive problem.
 Soon after General Yudhoyono's victory seemed assured, his campaign manager, Rahmat Witoelar, told a television interviewer: ''We thank God and the people for this. We will enter the second round with a vow to do better.''
 An element of uncertainty about the results arose when an unexpected number of completed ballots were declared invalid at polling stations. The national Election Commission ruled that ballots inadvertently marked with two punches -- but where the voter's intention was clear -- should be recounted as valid.
 Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, and its unfolding democratic practices are being watched with interest in the West, particularly among those concerned with the debate over whether Islam and democracy are compatible. Of the five candidates, not one advocated establishing an Islamic state.
 Even if Mrs. Megawati qualifies for the second round, it appears that she would have difficulty overcoming the new appeal of General Yudhoyono, who left her cabinet several months ago to run against her.
 How well General Wiranto would fare in a runoff against General Yudhoyono remained in doubt. In Jakarta, General Wiranto, who had the backing of the old Suharto political machine, was defeated at his own polling station by General Yudhoyono.
 For Indonesian activists who pushed hard for democratic reforms since the collapse of General Suharto's authoritarian rule in 1998, the very fact that there was direct voting for president was a victory.
 ''This is a giant step,'' said Todung Mulya Lubis, the founder of the Center for Electoral Reform, as he toured polling places in the capital to monitor the voting. ''People are very happy that finally they have the opportunity to vote for the leader they want.'' 
 The presidents since Suharto's fall, including Mrs. Megawati, a daughter of the late Indonesia leader Sukarno, were chosen by the national legislature. 
 More than 153 million people were eligible to cast votes, and the turnout in some urban areas exceeded 70 percent just a few hours after the polls opened.
 International observers, including former President Jimmy Carter and 60 officials from his Carter Center and more than 100 monitors from the European Union, reported few problems during the voting. 
 In some polling places in Jakarta, General Yudhoyono had received more than 40 percent of the vote, according to Hank Valentino, a senior adviser to the International Foundation for Election Systems.
 There were also reports that he had taken 60 percent of the vote in some polling stations in West Papua, one of Indonesia's most remote provinces.
 In Bali, a traditional stronghold for Mrs. Megawati, General Yudhoyono had also come in first at some polling places, Mr. Valentino said. 
 The problem of the invalid ballots arose when election officials found that many ballots had been punched twice. That happened when voters failed to unfold the concertinalike ballot paper and punched the picture of their preferred candidate with the ballot still folded. The punch had then gone through to another part of the ballot paper. 
 But aside from that problem, lengthy preparations by the national Election Commission appeared to have paid off. Hundreds of thousands of polling place workers supervised the proceedings Monday, and a computerized tallying system was in place to count the final results. 
 In many places there were reports of an upbeat mood. Here in the capital, platters of cakes and sweets brought by volunteers for the election workers, and soft drinks to ward off the intense tropical heat, added an air of festivity. 
 In Tambora, a district of government-subsidized housing for the poor, polling stations were fashioned by pulling tarpaulins over open-air courtyards of the apartment blocks. 
 General Yudhoyono seemed to be a popular choice in the poorer neighborhood.
 ''We've already given Megawati a chance, and she can't prove anything,'' said Berlin, 27, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. ''Wiranto is too militaristic,'' he said, referring to the other former general in the race. ''S.B.Y. can reduce prices and make our country get better,'' he added, using General Yudhoyono's initials.









 


July 6, 2004 Tuesday



 Elections in Indonesia

 
In the world's largest Muslim-majority country,140 million voters went to the polls yesterday and indicated their preference for a change of government. There were no massacres and, so far as we can tell, no reports of intimidation or terrorist attacks. It was the first direct presidential election in Indonesia's history, and a landmark in the country's transition to full democracy following the ouster of Suharto, who ruled from 1966 to 1998. An Associated Press dispatch from Jakarta quoted a 40-year-old fish salesman, Budi Supriadi, who said, "This makes me feel like the freedom is real." 
America's deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, who served as America's ambassador to Indonesia during the Reagan administration, made an essential point two years ago when on a trip to Asia he remarked, "The Indonesians are kind of modest about themselves and don't go around blowing their own horn a lot. ...but I think it's a story that needs to get out more." Said Mr. Wolfowitz, "For those non-Muslims who think of all Muslims as being fanatics, it's an eye opener to see how different the overwhelming majority of Indonesian Muslims are from that fanatic lineage."
He went on, "For Muslims who may be tempted by the idea that the road to vindication is the road mapped by al Qaeda - does he know that the largest Muslim population of any country in the world is a group of people really have a very, very different [attitude] toward religion, toward non-Muslims, toward women?"
Mr. Wolfowitz said he believed that America and other advanced countries "have a big interest in seeing Indonesian democracy succeed."
If the world's largest Muslim population "embodies those values of tolerance and openness and acceptance of an important role for women," Mr. Wolfowitz said, "If Indonesia succeeds...it can be a very important model for the rest of the Muslim world."







 


July 4, 2004 Sunday  
 



 THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE YOUNG RECRUITS As a nation at war celebrates its independence, eager New Yorkers join Marine fighting machine

 
They stood at parade rest, hands clasped behind back, feet set squarely on red carpet, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, with the Stars and Stripes and military flags on display.
The two teenagers snapped to attention, and held up their right hands to solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies.
Brendan McMorrow of Manhattan and Rony Rachmans of Elmhurst, Queens, were now future Marines, bound for Parris Island in the coming months and, ultimately, for war.
Facing difficult military roles in Iraq and Afghanistan that have killed 174 Marines, McMorrow and Rachmans signed on for four years of active duty.
Patriotism, the leatherneck legend, and hopes for a better future are what brought them and Jose Rivera and Fernandez Payen and dozens more to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn last week. 
Their path started at a recruiting substation in a shopping mall or near a subway stop. Some have wanted to join since childhood because of family tradition, or watching Hollywood versions of USMC exploits. Some decided while in high school, when they met a young Marine recruiter, impeccably uniformed with imposing bearing.
Aims 'to be better person'
McMorrow - tall, trim, with close-cropped blond hair - decided to join a long time ago. "I think it will be a good match," McMorrow said. "I think it will be a good experience to go through the training. It teaches you to be a better person, responsible - gives you strength and discipline."
He was born and raised on E. 20th St., and he might seem an unlikely candidate for the Corps. People have tried to talk him out of it. And though his parents accept his decision, they are not happy about it, he said.
"I'm strong enough to do what I want to do," McMorrow said. "I wanted to enlist right out of high school. I have a good friend going in, too."
He will be leaving at the end of September. He plans to go to infantry school. "I always said if you're going to join the military, specifically the Marines, there's only one way to do it - infantry.
"I think of it as serving my country. 9/11 had a major impact on me. Once that happened, it sealed my decision. And after the Marines, I plan to be a fireman."
He met a recruiter in his junior year at LaSalle Academy, and they have been talking for a year. On June 20, his 18th birthday, McMorrow went to the recruiting station at Chambers and Greenwich Sts. near Ground Zero and signed up with Gunnery Sgt. Luis Ortiz.
Last Monday he took the aptitude test, and the next day Ortiz picked him up at 4 a.m. and took him to Fort Hamilton.
There, he underwent a medical exam, an interview ("Do you have any tattoos or body piercings? Have you ever taken illegal drugs?") and an FBI fingerprint check, listened to a briefing, signed a contract and took the oath.
"I want to be a paratrooper," he said. "I watched 'Band of Brothers' 16 times."
He was an Eagle Scout, which affords him the rank of private first class right out of boot camp.
"I'm happy to leave, but I'll miss the city. It's a good experience to get away and travel the world. I've never been on a plane; the first time will be when I go to Parris Island."
To 'protect my parents'
He still has a year to go before he ships out for boot camp, but 17-year-old Fernandez Payen is no less serious about what he is doing.
"I want to keep my community safe, and I want it so my parents can walk with their heads high," Payen said.
A rising senior at Thomas Jefferson High School in East New York, Brooklyn, he is in the ROTC program, ensuring him the private first class rank after training.
Born and raised in Flatbush, a child of Haitian immigrants, he is rail thin, and looks younger than his age, and younger than most of the other future Marines who sat watching the Civil War movie "Cold Mountain" as they waited to be processed.
His father had some military background in Haiti, and "he is behind me 100%," Payen said.
His "passion" is math and computers but Payen said he will probably be a Marine MP because he wants to join the NYPD after his service.
Payen said that in tough corners of Brooklyn, "some people like myself who have the ability to make it choose to follow those who do drugs and alcohol. And I could easily get a job with my transcript and grades.
"What better way to aid others than to fight for the country? Even though the war is not something I'm behind 100%, I should fight for the country and protect my parents."
Most are minorities
Maj. J.J. Dill, head of Recruiting Station New York, which includes the five boroughs and Long Island, said his is the largest recruiting station east of the Mississippi, shipping about 1,000 people to Parris Island each year.
"They know there is a war going on and they are still up for the challenge and want to serve their country," Dill said. "We never lie to them; we can't promise they won't go over [to combat]."
The majority of the enlistees and the Army and Marine sergeants taking them through recruiting were Hispanic and African-American but Dill said the USMC doesn't target minorities or the inner city. He said enlistees represent all economic, racial and ethnic groups, with 45% coming from affluent areas in Long Island.
Women turning out, too
The modern Marine Corps also wants a few good women, and four of them were at Fort Hamilton last week.
Michelle Castro - 18, short, with soft red hair - is one of three women recruited from the office on Myrtle Ave. in her Ridgewood, Queens, neighborhood since May by Sgt. Manuel Martinez.
She wants to be a pediatrician someday, and thinks the Marines will help her get her college education.
"I didn't want to do what everybody else was doing. All my friends don't want me to go . . . my friend is in the Marines, and he told me not to go. My father pushed us to go in the military. He said it's good for you."
Rachmans is 18 and just graduated from Aviation High School, where he studied to be an aircraft technician. He has wanted to join the Marines since eighth grade, when he saw the Discovery Channel series "Making the Marines."
"I walked into the Jamaica recruiting station three months ago and said, 'I want to be a Marine . . . I want it to be my career.' "
He is one of 70 from that station who will be shipped out anytime from now until next June. Before taking the oath, he sat clutching his paperwork, slightly nervous, saying he doesn't mind if he ships out right away.
"At first I thought I would go to college, but they have an opportunity for me to go to college," said Rachmans.
His parents are from Indonesia and the family is Muslim, but he said he is not religious, that his background played no role in his decision.
"This is my country, and my family supports my decision," he said.
A family tradition
Jose Francisco Rivera, 23, has wanted to be a Marine since he was 8.
Raised in Brooklyn and now a resident of Ridgewood, Queens, he graduated from Telecommunications High School in Brooklyn and took computer courses at Katherine Gibbs business school. He has been working as a chef at Belmont Park.
"Every member of my family is in the military - uncle, aunts, cousins, my father," said Rivera, who has been priming himself with mile-and-a-half runs and pullups.
"It was my long-term goal. My cousin has the best life; he's married and has children. I want the same."
Last year he went to the recruiting station on Flatbush Ave. He passed the written aptitude test but then his mother became terminally ill. He helped care for her until her death.
About six weeks ago, Rivera began the enlistment process again.
"I feel good - I feel great inside," he said, before taking the oath.
poshaughnessy@edit.nydailynews.com







 



July 4, 2004 Sunday  




 Security, Jobs Hover Over Indonesian Vote; 
In First Direct Presidential Election, Religion Appears to Play Minor Role

 
Uu Ukirman is a man with a face as round and bright as a full moon. Most mornings, before the sun rises, he is at the mosque 20 paces from his house. There, one recent morning, wearing a black pillbox hat, he raised his resonant voice, issuing the Muslim call to prayer. 
 "Allahhhhhuu Akbar," he cried, part wail, part chant, as men in sarongs and prayer shawls silently slipped into the mosque. 
 Meanwhile, his two grown sons slept through the prayer. He said he did not see this as an affront to Islam. It's a matter of "personal choice," he said.  
 Uu, his wife and one daughter say that in presidential elections on Monday, they will vote for a former armed forces chief, who they trust will bring security and prosperity. Uu's four other children will vote for a former security minister who has repeatedly spoken out against terrorism in Indonesia. 
Politics, Uu said, is also about personal choice. His choice is to reject extremism, as do most Muslims in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. "A majority of Indonesians live in peace," he said. "We don't like violence. We don't want to make enemies." 
Democracy is a new endeavor in Indonesia, a nation of 212 million people. This is the country's first direct presidential election after years of leaders being chosen by legislators. Voters will choose from five candidates. 
Some, such as Uu, are expressing priorities that sound similar to those of democracies elsewhere: security and jobs. A recent public opinion survey showed that religion was voters' least important consideration in choosing a president. Leadership quality was the most important. Indeed, religious issues do not dominate the campaign, and over the years, Indonesia's Muslim majority has dismissed calls by a radical minority for the adoption of Islamic law, known as sharia. The candidate who espouses sharia is in last place. 
 Uu, a religious but not a zealous man, is typical of Indonesian Muslims. His life is infused with Islam, yet it is not a brand of Islam that makes headlines. When Uu and his family see images of violence on television committed by radicals espousing Muslim ideals, they react with fear and distaste. 
"Indonesian Muslims . . . can be a model for the Muslim world," said Syafiq Hasyim, deputy director of the International Center for Islam and Pluralism here. "In Indonesia, Islam contributes to democracy." 
 Uu's favorite perch is an aluminum bench next to the mosque, in the little lane in front of his peach-colored house. Seated there, dressed in sarong and sandals, he can watch the world go by and discuss news of the day. Men in button-down shirts, carrying briefcases, stride by on their way to work. Vendors trundle by, toting bundles of fried vegetable cakes or pushing carts offering meatball soup, banging spoons on a pan to alert customers. 
At first, Uu said, he tried to tell his children to vote for Gen. Wiranto, the former military commander under President Suharto, the longtime authoritarian leader who was ousted following popular demonstrations in 1998. "They said, 'Pop, give me a break,' " he recalled, chuckling. "That's democracy. Everyone has their own vote." The children said they would vote for Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the former security chief. 
 Uu said he had heard that Wiranto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, has been indicted for human rights abuses in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony that Indonesia occupied in 1975 and which became independent in 2002 after years of armed resistance to Indonesian rule. Uu said he did not know whether there was any truth to the charges against Wiranto. In any case, he said, he liked the fact that Wiranto was a former military man who would be "firm."  
Uu, 53, said he was concerned about violence after years of terrorist attacks, including bombings of shopping malls, a mosque, churches, two Bali nightclubs and a hotel in Jakarta. The government blames Jemaah Islamiah, a Muslim terrorist organization most of whose members are Indonesians and Malaysians. 
"Indonesians are religious, so why are so many chaotic things happening?" Uu said. "Islam never taught us to do those things." 
 Uu's son Asep is a younger version of Uu, plump with a rascally grin, his baseball cap on backward. He works in his father's ironsmith shop around the corner from their house. Jemaah Islamiah, he said, pausing while welding a door one day, "is a different strain of Islam." He noted that the group leaders were trained in Afghanistan. "This group doesn't have any roots here," he said. 
 "Muslims in Indonesia are not terrorists," he said. "We love peace, and we won't attack other countries." 
Asep said he gets angry when he thinks about Indonesia's image abroad. "The majority of Indonesians are not part of that movement," he said. "Do you know the saying, 'One drop of poison ruins the whole jug of milk'?" 
 The answer is not the imposition of sharia, Uu said. "I don't feel comfortable with that," he added. "Indonesia is diverse. Not everyone is Muslim. If we want to implement sharia, it would mean everyone would have to be Muslim. It could be a problem." 
 In a country with an overwhelmingly Muslim majority, Christians and other minorities have not been subject to religious laws. And with a direct presidential election widely expected to be free and mostly fair, the country is gradually moving toward strengthening its institutions, analysts said. 
Islam was introduced throughout the Indonesian islands largely by traders from India, many of whom were Sufi mystics, beginning in the late 13th century. "The peaceful way of introducing Islam at the time became the prototype, the seed of democracy and pluralism in Indonesian Islam," Hasyim explained. 
Indonesian Muslims are flexible, blending the high Islamic traditions with local culture. Some visit the graves of family members every weekend, a Javanese practice alien to adherents of the strict Wahhabi sect of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, Hasyim said. 
 And the presence of large, moderate Muslim civic groups serves as a bulwark against extreme views, he said. 
On the bustling, fume-ridden city street where Uu welds iron into furniture frames and fences, the scenery is transformed by politics. Banners and posters for the presidential candidates adorn businesses, a riot of color and appeals to vote. 
 Religious issues do not dominate the campaign, but religion has shaped the campaign in some ways. 
 One banner shows President Megawati Sukarnoputri wearing a head scarf, as she almost never does. But Megawati -- who was elevated to the presidency when her predecessor, Abdurrahman Wahid, was impeached and pressured to resign -- is behind in the polls. Many people figure the president is trying to win a few more votes by boosting her appeal among traditional Muslim voters. 
 "It suits her," said Uu, sitting again on his bench, having traded in his sarong for denim shorts and a polo shirt. 
 "But it won't work," said Hayati, Uu's sparkly-eyed, diminutive wife, who wore a chiffon head scarf. "She has been in government a long time and she hasn't fulfilled her promises."  
Clerics belonging to the country's largest Muslim civic organization recently issued an edict that a woman should not be elected president. Some took it as a bid to undermine Megawati's campaign. 
 Other clerics from the same organization objected, saying the Koran did not forbid women from leading. 
  Yudhoyono, the front-runner, is the target of rumors that he is anti-Islamic, the candidate of the Christians. Uu said he heard it from a friend at the market the other day. But, he said, true or not, it really was not an issue. 
 "It's not a problem for me if a lot of Christians support Susilo," he said. "I'm sure a lot of Christians are voting for Wiranto. So why should I care?" 
 Uu's favorite prayer comes at dawn. It is when he asks God for a long life, protection for his family and a smooth-running business. "Every morning," he said. "That's what I ask." 
When he votes on Monday, he said, he will be hoping that the next president can work toward those goals -- security for the country and a better economy. 
 Politics, he likes to say, is separate from religion. But there is an element of faith to both. 
Special correspondent Noor Huda Ismail contributed to this report. 







 


July 1, 2004 Thursday 
  




 In Utah, Two Faiths and One Prayer

 
The men, all Muslims, kneeled in unison at evening prayers in the Khadeeja mosque, their incantations laced with anxiety over the fate of one of their spiritual brothers, a marine held captive on the other side of the world.
 ''Oh, Allah, we read the Koran to pray for the release of our brother Hassoun,'' the voice of the mosque's religious leader boomed over speakers around the white-walled room, referring to Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, 24, whose family worships at the mosque.
  At Salt Lake City's three mosques -- two Sunni and one Shia -- such supplications have become standard since Sunday, when news came of Corporal Hassoun's capture in Iraq. 
 Given its overwhelmingly Mormon population, Utah might seem an unlikely place for Muslim immigrants from Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Indonesia, Sudan and Pakistan. But the Muslim population of Utah has grown rapidly, to about 25,000, most of whom arrived in the last decade in the wake of conflicts around the world that in some cases involved ethnic cleansing. 
 The Iraqi community alone, its size swelled by the Persian Gulf war, numbers about 3,000. Many of the men are taxicab drivers here in Salt Lake City, where the street grid is designed around the location of Temple Square, the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
 Though far outnumbered by Mormons, some Muslims here point out how well the two faiths coexist, and have marveled at the way Mormons came forward to offer comfort not only after the attacks of Sept. 11 -- in which about 500 Muslims are believed to have died -- but also in the last few days.
 On Monday, several Mormon women approached the Hassoun family in West Jordan, a Salt Lake City suburb, and asked if they could organize an event to raise awareness of Corporal Hassoun's predicament, one of the women, Irene Smith, said. 
 Ms. Smith said that members of the family, who have largely been in seclusion since Sunday, replied that prayers had already been arranged at the mosque, and that they were welcome to attend. 
 ''We wanted to honor them during their special time in their sacred, um, what do you call this building?'' Ms. Smith said, hesitating over the name of the Khadeeja mosque, as she joined a group of women, some Mormon, some Muslim, for prayers. ''We feel like we are all a little part of a larger community.''
 The three Mormon women were given scarves to wear over their heads.
 ''To me, educating people about Islam is at least as important as praying for this man,'' said one of the Muslim women, Asha Patel, 23.
 Ms. Patel -- her father is Hindu, her mother Mormon -- said the Salt Lake Mormon community was tolerant of Muslims, and noted similarities between the two faiths. Both have codes of modesty and urge abstention from smoking and drinking. 
 But many elements of Islamic culture are still misunderstood, Ms. Patel said. Occasionally, when she wears a head scarf, she has noticed people staring, and she is often asked what she is doing for Easter or Christmas, holidays she does not celebrate. 
 ''For me, it is just another day,'' she said. ''Some people are very taken aback; they are like, 'Why wouldn't you celebrate Easter?'''
 Another of the women, Samar Omar, 20, said she did not believe that Salt Lake City was so tolerant. When she wears her head scarf in public, as she has done her whole life, she, too, notices the looks. ''I see people just staring at me with hate and anger,'' she said. ''You can read what they want to tell you on their faces.''
 After the gulf war, Ms. Omar, who was born in Kuwait, moved to Jordan and, seven years ago, to Salt Lake City. She said her family had not wanted to move to a bigger city like New York or Los Angeles, places that many Muslims believe are more dangerous than the Middle East.
 ''Salt Lake is more related to where we come from,'' Ms. Omar said. ''It is very peaceful. You do not see a lot of cops running around.''
 But two days after Sept. 11, 2001, a Salt Lake man tried to set fire to a local restaurant owned by Pakistanis, in retaliation for the attacks.
 Yet despite a community show of support for the restaurant, resentment of Muslims persisted. 
 ''I had people come up to me and say, 'Go back to your country,' '' Ms. Omar said. ''It happened three or four times. I can tell some people think I am a terrorist.''
 After prayers, Shuaib-ud Din, the imam, or religious leader, at the Khadeeja mosque, said that life in Salt Lake City had become no more difficult after Sept. 11 than it was before. Relations with the Mormon community, he said, were good.
 ''There's no conflict between Muslims and Christians,'' he said. ''To us, Jesus is a prophet. We accept the true teachings of Jesus, not the distorted teaching we hear today. We have no beef with the other faiths.''


CORRECTION-DATE: August 7, 2004

 CORRECTION:
An article on July 1 about Muslims in Salt Lake City misstated the number of their co-religionists who died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when Mormons came forward to offer comfort. Although a precise figure is unknown, a spokesman for the Islamic Circle of North America, a prominent Muslim group based in Queens, said it was probably 50 to 75, not 500. A reader pointed out the error the next day; this correction was delayed for research.







 



July 1, 2004 Thursday 
  




 Polio Warning Issued for Travel to Nigeria

 
The World Health Organization  warned travelers to northern Nigeria yesterday to get polio vaccine boosters because of "uncontrolled transmission of polio virus" in the region. 
The announcement comes as the region enters the season when polio transmission increases, typically rising five- to tenfold. There has been little or no polio immunization in Nigeria's northern states for more than a year because of rumors that the vaccine is a tool in a global plot to sterilize Muslims.  
WHO's warning, announced in Geneva, is purely advisory. The organization has no power to force the immunization of travelers, or even to monitor it. 
Nevertheless, the suggestion that visitors get a polio booster if they have not had one in four years further sounds the alarm that the outbreak in Nigeria presents an "extreme danger" and a "threat to every country," said David L. Heymann, a WHO physician helping lead the 16-year effort to eradicate polio. 
Six countries in the world still have "endemic," or freely circulating, polio virus in their populations. All except Nigeria are in the late stages of eradication campaigns. That country has had 259 cases of paralysis from the disease this year -- nearly 80 percent of the world total. For every known infection that causes paralysis, health experts say, there are about 200 "silent," or undetected, ones.  
Over the past 12 months, 10 countries in Africa that had been free of the disease for several years have recorded cases of polio traceable through genetic tests  to microbes originating in northern Nigeria. 
Both the epidemic and the resistance to immunization have centered in Kano state, but Heymann said yesterday that the government there has officially dropped its opposition. In a telephone news conference, he said Kano's governor recently told him that health workers have begun planning a vaccination campaign for later this month and another for August.  
Kano will use vaccine manufactured in Indonesia, a Muslim country. Whether that, as well as assurances by government and religious leaders that the vaccine is safe, will be enough to bring about widespread participation in the campaign remains uncertain. Polio vaccination campaigns target all children younger than 5; Kano has 3.3 million of them. 
WHO, Rotary International, UNICEF and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- the four organizations running the eradication initiative -- announced last month that emergency vaccination campaigns will be held simultaneously in 22 countries in the fall to try to stop the outbreak. This will add about $100 million to the cost of the eradication effort, which to date has cost $3.1 billion. 
Heymann said WHO will convene a panel of experts next week to review the pattern of the recent African cases and to consider whether any other recommendations about travel might help stop the outbreak. 
The most recently infected country is Sudan, which recorded a case in Darfur, a region where the number of refugees is rising, along with reports of genocide against certain ethnic groups. 
The campaign against polio is only the second attempt in history to eradicate a human disease. Smallpox was eliminated in the late 1970s.  

CORRECTION-DATE: July 2, 2004

 CORRECTION:
 A July 1 article incorrectly said that the campaign against polio is the second attempt in  history to eradicate a human disease. If the campaign succeeds, polio will be the second human disease to have been eradicated, joining smallpox. 
But there have been unsuccessful attempts against several diseases, and an effort is underway to eradicate dracunculiasis, also known as Guinea worm disease.  







 



June 28, 2004 Monday 
  




 Indonesia Polls Favor Former General; 
As Presidential Vote Nears, Front-Runner Woos Public With Songs, Security

 
The strains of a hearty tenor filtered out from behind the closed door of hotel room 103. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the front-runner in Indonesia's presidential race, was rehearsing a tune he would sing that morning to voters in this highland town in western Indonesia. 
 "I know you love me, so you will choose me," the thickset former general could be heard crooning in the local Batak dialect, practicing the lyrics he learned minutes earlier, just as he has been practicing for the country's top job for the last several years. 
In an interview, the man popularly known by his initials, SBY, chortled when a reporter asked about his singing. Like many Indonesians and another presidential rival, he said he just likes to sing. He always has, including when he played bass guitar in a high school band.  
 Soon, if the polls are correct, he could be facing a larger audience. According to several reputable national opinion surveys, the retired Army general and former cabinet minister in the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri has far outpaced his former boss in the running for the country's first direct presidential election. 
 Yudhoyono, who was Megawati's coordinating minister for security and politics, is surging in the polls at a time when Indonesians, after six years of a turbulent transition to democracy, are yearning for law and order, and for more and better jobs. Critics say he is too cautious and indecisive. But Yudhoyono says he is thorough, intent on hearing all sides of an issue. 
 So commanding is his lead over his four rivals that he has dared to hope for an outright majority of votes on July 5. If he falls short, a run-off between the top two choices is slated for September. 
 If elected, Yudhoyono said his goal is to put Indonesia's "house back in order" after the 1998 ouster of President Suharto, which was followed by rising separatist and militant activity and a failure to establish effective law enforcement and judicial integrity. 
 His broad agenda, he added, is to maintain the unity and security of Indonesia, a diverse nation with a Muslim majority, and to revive an economy not growing fast enough to ease poverty and unable to attract significant foreign investment. 
Memories of Suharto's military-backed authoritarian regime are fresh among Indonesians. Some warn about a reversal of democratic gains, with two former generals, Yudhoyono and former military commander in chief Gen. Wiranto, in the race. 
Even some friends worry that Yudhoyono will be swayed by conservative advisers and will lack the boldness to carry out military reforms he helped initiate. 
In 1998-99, he led a group of generals in writing a reform blueprint that stressed depoliticizing the military. The plan, only partially accomplished, included a proposal to end the military "dual function," a practice dating to 1958 in which, for instance, active duty military officers also held civilian government positions. 
 The military has given up some of its political role, for example, relinquishing its formerly guaranteed bloc of seats in parliament. But a key component, putting the armed forces under effective civilian control, has not been realized. 
Yudhoyono dismissed fears that he would stray from the path of reform. 
 "I think it is going a little bit too far to connect my candidacy with a return of militarism," he said. If he is elected, he said, it would be "by the people, democratically." 
 One important task, Yudhoyono said, would be to fight corruption. He says he would invite all government ministers to sign an anti-corruption contract, personally checking on officials' accountability and firing violators. 
 "Words are proven by deeds," he said, an allusion to the inability of Megawati, who is seeking a full five-year term, to eliminate corruption despite promises to do so since she took over the presidency in 2001. 
 Yudhoyono, 54, the son of an Army officer, was relaxed and engaged during the interview. He wore a blue button-down shirt and a black safari jacket, and spoke fluent English, polished during several study tours in the United States. He founded the Democrat Party in 1991, which became a vehicle for his prospective candidacy. Not too long ago, he was touted mainly as a vice presidential possibility. But since the 2002 Bali bombing, his profile has gradually sharpened as he has spoken out to condemn terrorism and reassure the public that security will be enhanced, while Megawati has remained largely silent. 
 In March, citing frustration with his increasing marginalization by Megawati, who he said was excluding him from key cabinet meetings, he resigned. An offhand comment by Megawati's husband that Yudhoyono was being "childish" won him instant sympathy from the public. He has led the five presidential candidates in opinion polls ever since. 
 Opinion surveys released this month showed Yudhoyono had the support of more than 40 percent of voters, far ahead of Megawati, leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P) and Wiranto, the nominee of the former Suharto party Golkar. Megawati and Wiranto are in a close race for second.  
 Yudhoyono, who is Muslim but like most Indonesians prefers that the country's laws be civil, said that Indonesia was in the process of "democratizing its policies," by strengthening human rights, rule of law and respect for the environment. "I do hope that the U.S. will maintain its cooperation" in pushing ahead those reforms, he said. 
 He noted that in the past, the two countries enjoyed full military relations and many Indonesian military officers continued their training in the United States. He completed Army Ranger and advanced infantry courses at Fort Benning, Ga. in 1976 and in1982-83. 
 From those experiences, "I know better the military system practiced in democratic nations," said Yudhoyono, who also earned a master's degree in business management from Webster University in St. Louis in 1991 and is finishing a doctoral degree in agricultural political economics at Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia. 
 He said that he hopes full U.S.-Indonesia military ties, including education training, can be restored. Military aid to Indonesia was cut following Indonesian military-backed mass killings of civilians in East Timor in 1999 after the former colony voted for independence. 
 In the battle against terrorism, he said that the U.S. government should grant Indonesia direct access to the captured Indonesian al Qaeda militant, Hambali, so Indonesians can better prosecute militants arrested at home. 
 Yudhoyono is seen as largely untainted by scandal. But an investigation has been reopened into a violent putdown of a July 1996 protest at the Jakarta headquarters of the then-opposition Indonesian Democratic Party, now PDI-P. Five students were killed. Yudhoyono was chief of staff -- second in charge at the Jakarta military command at the time, which was assigned to deal with the protesters. Two security officials involved in the investigation said so far, there was insufficient evidence to charge Yudhoyono in connection with the case. 
 At present, he is not on the list of suspects, according to the attorney general's office. Yudhoyono declined to discuss the matter, but said that it should be investigated in "a fair and open legal process." 
 On Saturday, he traveled to Medan, a provincial capital in western Indonesia and a PDI-P stronghold in 1999. About 5,000 people jammed a pavilion under a scorching sun. Two weeks earlier, Megawati drew an audience half the size. 
 Yudhoyono appealed for unity, democracy and human rights. 
 "One for all, all for one!" he said. 
 And then, his speech finished, he offered his Batak love song, drawing cheers and a few tears. 
 That night, back in Jakarta, he and Wiranto appeared on a wildly popular Indonesian version of American Idol. Clad in a black leather jacket, he sang a well-known contemporary ballad. He bobbled a few notes, but thousands of young people, familiar with the words, sang along. His performance rocked the house.  
 "For a singer armed only with courage," a judge on the panel commented, "you made a good decision to sing a popular song." 
Correspondent Alan Sipress in Jakarta and special correspondent Natasha Tampubolon in Siantar contributed to this report. 

CORRECTION-DATE: June 29, 2004

 CORRECTION:
 A June 28 article on Indonesian presidential candidate Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono incorrectly said that his father was an Army officer. He was a noncommissioned officer. 
The article also incorrectly said the candidate founded the Democrat Party in 1991. He founded it in 2001. 







 


June 26, 2004 Saturday



 UNDERSTANDING YOUR WORLD: U.S., SAUDIS HAVE LONG HISTORY

 
This week, Saudi Arabia took an important step in the war on terrorism. Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto ruler, went on television and issued an ultimatum to terrorists in Saudi Arabia: Surrender within a month and you might save your lives. Otherwise, you will face the full might of the kingdom.
It was a startling reversal in style and substance for Saudi Arabia, and is the clearest sign yet that the fundamentalist kingdom recognizes it is in deep trouble. Terrorist acts inside Saudi Arabia, including the recent beheading of an American civilian contractor, have shaken the confidence of a deeply insular society. 
The Saudi action was a good sign for the beleaguered Bush administration, which stands accused of weakening the war on terrorism by diverting time, resources and attention to an ill-conceived war in Iraq.
Despite America's current involvement in Iraq and the close relationship with Israel, our most important strategic relationship in the Middle East has always been that with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi kingdom may no longer be our most important source of overseas oil, but it remains the world's biggest oil producer, with the world's biggest known oil reserves. Saudi Arabia on its own can set the world-wide price of oil. That alone catches Washington's attention. We don't own Saudi oil, but long ago we decided that strategically, we needed a friendly Saudi Arabia.
Moreover, as the keeper of two of Islam's most important holy sites in Mecca and Medina (the third is Jerusalem), Saudi Arabia can deeply influence Muslim countries around the world. We need to remember that only 20 percent of the world's Muslim population is Arab. The remaining 80 percent is scattered around the world, especially in Indonesia, Pakistan and India, which have the world's three biggest Muslim populations.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by an Arabian prince, Abdulaziz al Saud. He did this after two decades or so of uniting most of the Arabian peninsula by the sword and through numerous adroit marriages with tribal princesses, thus binding the country's quarrelsome chieftains to him by blood. It was, by any standard, a remarkable performance. In his quest, he was supported by the puritanical Wahabi religious establishment, a key relationship in keeping the House of Saud in power. Even today, that relationship is critical to the survival of the kingdom in its present form.
America's relationship with the kingdom began in the 1930s, when Abdulaziz (whom we know as Ibn Saud) granted oil concessions to an American company. In fact, Abdulaziz was looking for water, not oil, and was said to be initially disappointed with the discovery of what turned out to be the world's greatest oil bonanza. Even though the bonanza did not really manifest itself until after World War II, President Roosevelt invited Abdulaziz to visit him aboard an American warship in the Middle East. The United States and Saudi Arabia go back a long way. The relationship, in fact, is our oldest in the region.
Thus, the revelation that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack were Saudis, was deeply shocking to both countries. The then Saudi Interior Minister at first denied it, though the evidence was overwhelming. Then came substantiated reports that prior to Sept.11, 2001, wealthy Saudis had given millions of dollars to Saudi-backed charities in the United States that in turn had channeled the money to various terrorist groups. Did these wealthy Saudis fully understand what they were doing? To what extent was the Saudi government involved? Moreover, Saudi schools run by the fundamentalist Wahabi religious establishment for years had indoctrinated tens of thousands of Saudi children with virulent ant-western and anti-Jewish propaganda. It added up to an ugly picture. What had happened to the old relationship?
Saudi Arabia has been in denial for years over the extent of support of its own people for al-Qaida. The kingdom is said to have 17 million people, of whom seven million are foreigners. Those seven million are necessary because Saudi Arabia is still rooted in a desert culture, with little physical infrastructure. Palestinians came as school teachers and engineers. Americans came as oil technicians. Britons came as doctors. Filipinos came as house maids and nannies. They came because there were no Saudis to do these jobs on the scale required, and the Saudis paid handsomely.
Though the number of educated Saudis has greatly increased, oil revenues have sharply declined in the past 10 years, and many educated young Saudis now can't find jobs. Moreover, the discrepancy in wealth has grown enormously, fueling discontent across a broad spectrum of society. The prolonged Palestinian-Israeli dispute, which the Saudis feel deeply, has eaten away at the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Finally, Saudi Arabia was opposed to the war in Iraq, though it did little to actually stop it. This was a policy that played into the hands of al-Qaida.
The Saudi governing style has been to pay everybody in order to satisfy the needs of a population that is still only a generation or two removed from the desert. Paying is not necessarily a form of corruption but a continuation of an old-tribal custom in which the ruling sheikh was expected to hand out largesse in order to keep the tribal family together. This is what the royal family has done on a national scale, knowingly or unknowingly helping al-Qaida.
Getting tough on terrorism poses real problems for the governing royal family. How do they crack down on the anti-westernism in education without offending the very religious establishment that helps to keep them in power? Political and social reform appeal to many Saudis, but many other Saudis disagree. How to reconcile these conflicting elements without bringing down the whole establishment, which of course is just what al-Qaida wants?
And if it came to civil war in Saudi Arabia, would the United States intervene? And if we did intervene, would anybody help us? After Iraq, the only realistic answer is "no."
William M. Stewart, a former Foreign Service officer and correspondent for Time magazine, lives in Tesuque.







 


June 24, 2004 Thursday



 Is West headed for same fate as Roman Empire?

 
   The Muslim world is at war with Western civilization. We have the military might to thwart them. The question is: Do we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation? Their intent is clear, but let's refresh our memories with a bit of history.
At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, several athletes were massacred. In 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was taken over and 52 hostages held for more than a year. In 1983, U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut were blown up, killing 241 U.S. soldiers. In 1988, Pan Am flight 103 was bombed, killing 270 people. In 1993, there was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, and in 2001, it was reduced to rubble, killing more than 3,000 Americans. In 1998, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, resulting in more than 200 dead and 4,000 injured. Who are the people responsible for these and other wanton murders of innocents, including the recent barbaric beheading of three innocent men? They were all Muslims. 
You say, "Williams, you can't make an indictment of a whole people and their religion!" I'm not, and let me clearly state: By no means are all Muslims murderers. But on the other hand, I've never heard broad Muslim condemnation of their fellow Muslims' murderous acts committed in the name of their God. If anything, there has been jubilation and dancing in the streets in the wake of Muslim attacks on Westerners. Contrast their response to the widespread Western condemnation of the, mild by comparison, behavior of a few coalition forces in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Muslim atrocities, and the collective Muslim response to those atrocities, might be better understood knowing their belief system as spelled out by a few, among many, passages from the Quran: "Fight those who do not believe in Allah" (Surat At-Taubah 9:29). "I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, Smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger tips of them" (Quran 8:12). "The unbelievers among the People of the Book and the pagans shall burn forever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures" (Quran 98:1-8). "Fight against those who believe not in Allah, and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (Islam), until they are subdued" (Surat At-Taubah 9:29).
Phil Lucas, editor of the Panama City, Fla., News Herald, in his April 4, 2004, editorial "Up Against Fanaticism," asks, "Can anybody name three ongoing world conflicts in which Muslims are not involved?" Lucas says, "They can't get along with their neighbors on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc., etc., etc."
My colleague Thomas Sowell observes, "Those in the Islamic world have for centuries been taught to regard themselves as far superior to the 'infidels' of the West, while everything they see with their own eyes now tells them otherwise." He adds, "Nowhere have whole peoples seen their situation reversed more visibly or more painfully than the peoples of the Islamic world." Sowell adds that few people, once at the top of civilization, accept their reversals of fortune gracefully. Moreover, they don't blame themselves for their plight. For the Muslim world, it's the West who's to blame.
History never repeats itself exactly, but we might benefit from the knowledge of factors leading to the decline of past great civilizations. Rome was one of those advanced civilizations. Rome was so caught up in "bread and circuses" and moral decline that it couldn't manage to defend itself from invading barbaric hordes who ultimately plunged Europe into the Dark Ages. The sooner we recognize the West is in a war for survival, the more likely we'll be able to escape the fate that befell the Roman Empire. Creators Syndicate







 



June 23, 2004 Wednesday  




 Polio Eradication Faces Setback in Africa

 
The 16-year effort to eradicate polio from the globe is threatening to unravel in Africa, with the report yesterday that a  10th country -- Sudan -- now harbors the disease after being free of it for three years. 
Nigeria, where the current upsurge began, now has five times as many cases of polio as it did this time last year, officials at the World Health Organization in Geneva said. New cases have been found in 30 of its 37 states, with most in the Muslim north, where immunization efforts virtually stopped last year because of political rivalries and rumors about the vaccine's safety. 
Africa's season of high transmission for the virus is about to begin, raising the specter that thousands of children may contract the disease in the year it was supposed to be extirpated.  
"Right when it should have been disappearing during the low season, this virus was gathering steam to come roaring out," R. Bruce Aylward, global coordinator of the eradication campaign at WHO, said in a telephone briefing. 
Last winter, health ministers of the countries where polio remains endemic won international agreement to step up the deadline for eradication to the end of this year, a goal that may now be in jeopardy.  David L. Heymann, another WHO leader of the eradication effort, said, however, that despite the setbacks, he and others are not ready to abandon that goal. 
"I think there's still a chance. Africa did it before -- except in Nigeria and Niger -- and there's no reason they can't do it again," he said. 
Smallpox is the only human disease ever to be eradicated. The original target date for polio eradication was pushed back several years ago from 2000 to 2005. Worldwide, there have been 333 cases this year, compared with 183 at this time last year. 
Polio's appearance in Sudan and continuing spread in Nigeria has lent urgency to a request last month by a group of African health ministers that WHO help them run a coordinated 22-country immunization campaign this fall. The campaigns will aim to vaccinate every child younger than 5 -- about 74 million -- during a one-week period in late October, and again a month later. The vaccine is given as two drops of liquid in the mouth. 
The fall campaign will cost about  $100 million, Heymann said. About $25 million will be needed by early August. 
"That's a good question," he said of where the money will come from. "We are working hard to get it." 
About $3.1 billion has been spent on polio eradication since the initiative was launched in 1988 at the suggestion of the service club Rotary International, which has raised about $600 million. 
Immunization rates generally need to be more than 80 percent to break the person-to-person chain of virus transmission. They were briefly that high several years ago in the African countries that were polio-free until the recent outbreak. In some cases, however, the rates have now dropped to 50 percent or lower, WHO officials reported. 
Only about 1 in every 200 polio cases results in the limb weakness or paralysis that allow physicians and nurses to recognize the disease. Consequently, finding a dozen cases implies that at least a thousand people are harboring, and possibly transmitting, the virus. 
The disease's appearance in Sudan, a country full of refugees living in temporary camps, was especially worrisome because people in crowded environments with poor sanitation are at greatest risk. Polio transmission follows a "fecal-oral" route. The virus grows in the intestine and is discharged in feces. It is then ingested by uninfected people, often through contaminated water. 
Until a year ago, the only sub-Saharan countries where polio was found were Nigeria and Niger. Since then, virus traceable to northern Nigeria has caused cases in Burkina-Faso, Chad, Benin, Ivory Coast, Togo, Cameroon, Ghana, Central African Republic and Botswana. 
Three hundred cases of polio have been found in the region this year, compared with 58 last year. Nigeria accounts for 257 cases, including 60 reported this week. 
Countries with renewed infections are not considered "endemic" for polio until numerous cases appear over a period of at least six months. Besides Nigeria and Niger, the only other polio-endemic countries are Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. 
The Nigerian outbreak is centered in Kano, a state with about 3 million children younger than 5 that last vaccinated widely in March 2003. Along with several nearby states, Kano stopped vaccinating because of rumors that the vaccine was part of a U.S. or Western plot against Muslims and would cause infertility or AIDS. Some local leaders also used suspicions about the vaccine as a vehicle to resist the country's Christian-dominated national government. 
Recently, a delegation of 22 people from northern Nigeria went to Indonesia, where the vaccine was tested and a manufacturing plant was inspected, and were convinced the vaccine was not contaminated. 
Heymann said he spoke yesterday to Kano's governor, who assured him there is no longer any official resistance to resuming vaccination. Kano will use vaccine made in Indonesia, a Muslim country, in future campaigns. 
 A public education and advertising campaign will begin soon, and Kano-wide polio vaccination may resume in July or August, he said. 






  


June 21, 2004, Monday, 



 Insurgency boils up in Thailand

 
DUWA, Thailand -- Asaha Dajing, 19, appeared to be thriving at an Islamic college in Yala, 20 miles north of this remote village. He had just won a $ 125 creative writing scholarship, big money in these parts. His family was proud.
But Asaha had friends his parents didn't know about: Islamic radicals who were recruiting impressionable young men for a mysterious holy war here in the jungles of southern Thailand.
Asaha's secret life was exposed only by his death. He was killed by police along with 13 other militants April 28 when they staged a suicidal assault on a government office near this village. Most were armed only with machetes.
 
"They used my son because he was young," says his father, rubber farmer Tama Dajing, 49. "He could be fooled very easily.  . . .  I blame myself because I just worked. I went out in the morning and I came home at night, and I didn't know what was going on."
No one seems to know exactly what is going on here in the predominantly Muslim southern tip of Thailand. Mysterious insurgents are terrorizing the countryside, bewildering the government in Bangkok and raising fears that radical Islamic groups from outside Thailand may have found a new base in Southeast Asia.
"It's still a witch's brew. It's still incubating," says Paul Quaglia, a former CIA official now working as a security consultant in Bangkok with Pacific Strategies & Assessments. "Regional Islamic terrorists are looking at the area for a possible jihad (holy war). Disgruntled Muslim youth form a potential labor pool" for terrorists.
Southeast Asia already is seething with Islamic violence. The group Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been linked to al-Qaeda, was behind bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, in Bali, Indonesia, in October 2002. A group called Abu Sayyaf has terrorized the traditionally Muslim region of Mindanao in the southern Philippines for several years, kidnapping tourists and attacking local Christians. Authorities fear that extremists also want to use the lawless jungles of southern Thailand to launch a holy war.
The United States has not turned southern Thailand into a new front in the war on terror and considers the insurgency an internal Thai matter. No Thai insurgent groups appear on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. However, there is some evidence that Jemaah Islamiyah, which is on the U.S. terror list, has been active in Thailand. One of the group's leaders was captured in central Thailand last year, and some of the attackers in a wave of violence April 28 reportedly wore Jemaah Islamiyah T-shirts and in some cases showed knowledge of sophisticated military tactics.
Country shaken
The violence has killed nearly 200 people, most of them Muslim, in Thailand this year. It has shaken a country that is 95% Buddhist and best known as a place where foreign tourists carouse in the raucous bars of Bangkok, relax on the white beaches of Phuket or explore the temples and handicraft markets of Chiang Mai.
The Thai government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has tried to downplay the violence and has sometimes blamed it on criminal gangs to protect the country's tourist trade. But the threat from Islamic extremism is becoming harder to ignore:
 * Last August, Indonesian-born Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist Riduan Isamuddin was arrested in a joint CIA-Thai operation in central Thailand. Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is the mastermind of the Bali bombings and apparently had been plotting to attack the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit last October in Bangkok.
 * On Jan. 4, insurgents raided an armory in Narathiwat province, killing four Thai soldiers and getting away with hundreds of assault rifles and machine guns.
 * In March, masked, armed men attacked a quarry stocked with rock-busting explosives in Yala province. They escaped with 56 sticks of dynamite, 176 detonators and 1.4 tons of ammonium nitrate, the fertilizer used in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.
In Thailand's deep south, the population is 80% Muslim. Militants have burned dozens of secular government schools, murdered Buddhist monks and attacked police posts.
"This is a volcanic area," says Panitan Wattanayagorn, a Thai expert on the security situation in the south. "From time to time, you have explosions."
Non-Thais in Thailand
The people of southern Thailand are distinct from the rest of the country's population. Their ethnic background is Malay, not Thai. Their religion is Islam, not Buddhism. Their language is a local dialect called Yawi, indecipherable to most Thais. And the southerners have a history of independence from the government in Bangkok. Until it was annexed in 1902, southern Thailand was part of an independent Malay kingdom with its capital at Pattani.
Many southerners have never accepted Thai rule. A violent separatist movement tore through the region in the 1960s and 1970s. The situation had settled by the 1990s, calmed by economic development and political changes that let local Muslims elect their leaders and send them to the national legislature in Bangkok.
But trouble continued to simmer. Government officials in the south were notoriously corrupt even by lax Thai standards. The local economy lagged the most prosperous parts of Thailand. A stricter, less tolerant form of Islam -- related directly or indirectly to hard-line Saudi Arabian Wahhabism -- began to gain influence.
A more potent form of Islam appeals to many Thai Muslims resentful of being left behind economically and inflamed by images of Muslims under siege by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza and by the United States in Iraq.
Even so, it is not entirely clear what is motivating the current insurgents: a revival of the separatist insurrection; local links with foreign terrorists seeking, as Hambali was, to establish a fundamentalist Islamic caliphate across Southeast Asia; or local power struggles.
The government declared martial law in three southern provinces -- Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat -- on Jan. 5, the day after the armory raid. It has begun joint border patrols with troops from neighboring Malaysia.
Tipped off that the insurgents planned a wave of coordinated attacks on 11 police and government posts across the three southern provinces April 28, Thai troops and police were waiting. They gunned down 108 insurgents, including Asaha Dajing, the teenage student. Critics question whether the lethal force was justified against attackers carrying mostly machetes, not firearms. "This is too many dead, absolutely too many," says Ambhorn Meesook, a member of Thailand's National Human Rights Commission. Five members of the Thai security forces also died.
Among the dead that day were 32 militants who had taken refuge in the 426-year-old Kreu-Se mosque in Pattani. They declared over a mosque loudspeaker that they would die there. They did, wiped out in a seven-hour police assault. So many Muslim pilgrims now visit the site that the mosque has become a tourist attraction, surrounded by stalls selling items from Pringles to sarongs.
Dozens of Thai Muslims also have been taken away by armed men believed to be police or security forces. Disappearances and mysterious killings have become more common under the increasingly authoritarian rule of Prime Minister Thaksin. A nationwide crackdown on drug dealers last year left nearly 2,300 dead. Many were believed to be victims of extrajudicial killings by police.
Deaths and disappearances
Authorities appear to be using the same brutal tactics against Muslims they see as troublemakers. Prominent Muslim human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit vanished in Bangkok on March 12 and hasn't been seen since. Four police officers have been arrested in his disappearance.
Around midnight Jan. 26, two pickups pulled into Tohporka, a sleepy village of 200 people in Narathiwat province where stray cats and roosters roam the streets and sheets of recently harvested rubber hang to dry from wooden houses that stand on stilts.
The trucks stopped in front of the house being rented by Ibrahim Se, 38, a rubber tapper. Five armed men wearing masks piled out of the trucks, broke down the door and hauled Se away. His wife, Nurida Kamae, 28, ran after them but was warned off by a masked man with a shotgun who taunted her: "Where are you going? Are you going to Bangkok with him?"
She hasn't seen her husband since. She says she has no idea why he might be in trouble. The couple spent all their time working in the rubber forests, saving money to build a house of their own and teaching Islam to the children of the village.
Nurida says that she suspects -- but can't prove -- that a neighbor may have framed him for reasons she doesn't want to go into.
Some analysts fear that the government's heavy-handed tactics will backfire.
"Over the long term, it's going to further estrange the Muslim community," security consultant Quaglia says. "They don't like it when human rights lawyers disappear. It scares them. They could be next."
Perhaps the backlash has begun. On May 30, the decapitated body of a 63-year-old Buddhist rubber farmer was found a mile from his home in Narathiwat province.
Next to his body was a written warning threatening to kill more "innocent Buddhists" if police arrested more "innocent" Muslims.







 


June 19, 2004 Saturday  




NAME: Sidney Jones

 Saying Farewell to an Indonesia She Knew Too Well

 
THE last thing Sidney Jones was thinking about when the scrap of paper was hand-delivered to her office early this month was that she was being served with a deportation order. But once she got over the shock, she was outraged -- the government had already refused to renew her work visa, so she was already being forced out. 
 ''It was so gratuitously excessive,'' she said before her rushed departure. ''It was so unnecessary, so over the top.'' 
 Over the years, Ms. Jones, an Albany native who has worked for a number of human rights organizations, had emerged as a leading analyst of Indonesia, with a particular expertise in the country's chief terror group, Jemaah Islamiyah. Her knowledge ran deep -- too deep, it seems, for the comfort of Indonesia's top intelligence officer.  
 For some months, she had been aware that Gen. A.M. Hendropriyono, director of Indonesia's intelligence agency, was unhappy with her detailed reports on the terror group, as well as on separatist groups in two far-flung provinces.
 Ms. Jones, a gregarious 52-year-old, had been in and out of Indonesia for 25 years, spoke the language fluently and knew many, many people in places high and low. She also knew the radical Islamic community -- the lawyers, prisoners, Islamic clerics and principals of Islamic schools. And if she didn't know the important people, she knew people who did.
 Her reports, written for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based organization with prominent former American diplomats on its board, were keenly read by Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Some had invited her to brief them. 
 Here in Jakarta, she was a valued resource for foreign embassies whose diplomats had no chance of ferreting out the inside information themselves.
 Ms. Jones, who worked on Asian issues for Human Rights Watch for 14 years before joining I.C.G., and had been the Asia officer for Amnesty International in the mid-1980's, says she does not know what specifically upset General Hendropriyono. ''I tried to find out what we did wrong,'' she said. ''We couldn't get a meeting.'' 
 The potency of Ms. Jones's work became clear in the aftermath of the bombing of a Bali nightclub in October 2002.
 Only two months before, Ms. Jones had published a report describing the backgrounds and training of the people who made up the core network of Jemaah Islamiyah, the group responsible for the attack. It quickly became a standard reference. 
 The story of how she came to know so much about Jemaah Islamiyah starts with her connection to the principal of an Islamic boarding school, Ngruki, that many of the militants attended. 
 ''When I was at Amnesty, I began to take an interest in Muslim prisoners,'' she said. That was back in the mid-80's, when the Indonesian strongman, Suharto, arrested Muslims for their political activities on behalf of Islam.
 One of those arrested was Irfan Awwas, who later became the principal of Ngruki. His offense was writing a newsletter, though ''there was nothing that suggested violence'' in his material, Ms. Jones said. Amnesty designated Mr. Awwas as a prisoner of conscience, and Ms. Jones kept in touch with his lawyers.
 So on her return to Indonesia in 2002, she got in touch with Mr. Awwas, and the group he headed, the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council, as well as former students of Ngruki. They all received her warmly, and spoke with her openly. That changed with the publication of her report, ''Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia: The case of the Ngruki Network in Indonesia.'' 
 ''They called me a traitor,'' she said.
 On another occasion, Ms. Jones wanted to find out who was behind terrorist bombings in the city of Medan in Sumatra Province. She quickly found out that the lawyer for one of the defendants was an old friend. ''He not only said, 'I've got all the documents here,' he said, 'Do you want to meet the guys in prison.'''
 Why do these people talk to her, when they have so much to fear? ''People behind bars are lonely and interested in talking to anyone on anything,'' she said. Some of her sources were disaffected members of Jemaah Islamiyah. ''In at least one case, the person was unhappy with the Bali and Marriott bombings. Some thought the attacks were a tactical mistake,'' referring to the 2002 nightclub bombing and an attack on a Jakarta hotel in 2003.
 IN many respects, tropical Indonesia is an unlikely place for Ms. Jones, the upstate New York native who calls shoveling snow ''fun.'' 
 Her mother, Anna Martha, who worked for a local museum and reviewed books for Publishers Weekly, and her father, Kearney, who was a New York State assistant health commissioner, have always been ''very strong liberals.'' She particularly identifies with her mother's rebellious streak: ''She broke with her very conservative Kentucky family when she left home to go to college.'' 
 Ms. Jones's high school years coincided with the peak of the anti-Vietnam War protests, and she was an active participant. 
 She says her involvement with Indonesia was ''a complete fluke.'' After training as a Middle East specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, she spent a year in Iran before the fall of the Shah. She thought she was an ideal candidate for a job at the Ford Foundation in the Arab world, but they sent her to Indonesia instead with the assignment of looking at Islamic education. 
 The best way to fulfill her mission, she decided, was to attend a mainstream Islamic boarding school. Photographs of Ms. Jones from that period show her with a soft shawl over her hair, the only Westerner in animated discussion with fellow students. 
 Those were the hard years of Suharto. ''It wasn't what you think it was, there was not a sense of overt oppression. There were a lot of arrests of students, but you didn't feel it.'' 
 Some of the persecuted fled the country for the United States and became good friends of Ms. Jones when she returned home and took up their cause at Human Rights Watch in New York. Her reputation as an Asia specialist grew in the 1990's as she became a familiar face on television interviews. She testified before Congress and was invited to a White House state dinner. 
 Ms. Jones is a workaholic, on call at all hours by e-mail and cellphone, even during trips to the most remote quarters of Indonesia. She lived in Jakarta without the handsome perquisites of most expatriates, choosing instead a modest high-rise apartment where her most frequent visitors were Indonesians. 
 ''I have more friends here than anywhere else in the world,'' she said with some passion in the days before leaving. ''I have longer and greater friendships and I have more in common with them.'' Even strangers consider her a friend. One sent a text message on her cell phone: ''Sidney, sorry for your troubles. Do you want to marry me? The only way you can stay is by being an Indonesian citizen.'' 
 AS her time ran out here, friends told her she should have adopted more of the character of the Javanese, the dominant Indonesian ethnic group known for their opaque nature. ''They tell me I am too much of a Batak,'' an ethnic group known for its forthrightness.
 Ms. Jones says she most worries about her Indonesian staff members, who gave her an emotional airport send-off. 
 ''I feel as though I have abandoned ship,'' she said. She will set up shop in Singapore, continue to work on Indonesia and wait for the moment to return. 
 ''In retrospect I knew we were treading on sensitive ground,'' she said. ''But if I went back over it, I wouldn't change a word.'' Then, she added: ''I have absolutely no doubt I will be coming back.''








 


June 9, 2004 Wednesday  
 



 TERRORISTS TARGET THE MESSENGERS

 
'Help me. I'm a Muslim."
Those, according to the Agence France Press, were the last words Frank Gardner spoke before collapsing in the street Sunday in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. 
Gardner isn't a Muslim. But, as an experienced Middle East hand, he knew the magic words. At least he thought he did.
Gardner is the Middle Eastern correspondent for the BBC who was out on a story when Saudi gunmen opened fire on him. He took a hail of bullets, then begged for his life before lapsing into a coma.
His cameraman, an Irishman named Simon Cumbers, was killed instantly.
Gardner had a Koran with him, too - part of his Islamic safety kit. He had a reason to imagine that posing as a Muslim might save him. Just a week before, another group of Saudi gunmen rampaged through a foreigners' housing compound in the eastern Saudi city of Khobar. First, they separated their hostages by religion. Then, they freed the Muslims and murdered the infidels.
Maybe the Saudi shooters didn't believe that Gardner was a Believer. Maybe they just didn't give a damn. Either way, they left him in the street for dead and killed his cameraman.
The Saudi government is, as usual, trying to sell the shootings as an aberration (Crown Prince Abdullah has not yet blamed "Zionists" - as he did after the attack in Khobar - but give him a few days). In fact, the attack on the BBC men was - like Al Qaeda itself - simply the logical outgrowth of venerated Saudi traditions.
The Saudi royal family always has practiced strict image control by judiciously doling out press visas to "safe" correspondents. Al Qaeda's press policy is essentially no different. The jihadis, too, want to impose censorship. Since Al Qaeda has no visas to deny (and no expensive jewelry to bestow on compliant foreign correspondents), it uses bullets and bombs to create its reporter-free zones - in Iraq as well as Saudi Arabia.
Once the Western press is driven away or confined to its hotels, Middle Eastern reality becomes what Al Jazeera and other jihad-friendly Arab "news" organizations portray. That picture will be calculated to further the strategic aim of the holy war: the purification of the House of Islam by ridding it of infidels and their influence.
Since the borders of Islam's house range from Spain to Indonesia and Chechnya to Nigeria, this amounts to a declaration of permanent war.
The Bush administration gets both the indivisibility and the gravity of this threat to Western civilization and international prosperity. The elites of Europe and their American useful idiots still hope to cut a deal.
The BBC has been one of the most eloquent and persistent voices for this brand of appeasement. Unhappily, that didn't matter to the jihadis. Nuance is not their strong suit. To them, Gardner and Cumbers were just a couple of foreigners in the service of the enemy. The body of Simon Cumbers will be sent home for burial. Saudi Arabia doesn't permit infidel funerals (Saudis have been known to dump unclaimed corpses into the sea). Gardner may recover. I hope so.
But from Daniel Pearl's dying "I am a Jew" to Gardner's pathetic "Help me, I'm a Muslim," the holy warriors of Islam have made it plain: There are no magic words. The only good infidel is a dead infidel.
Zchafets@yahoo.com







 



June 6, 2004 Sunday  




 For Muslims, Courtship Enabled by the Internet

 
Mukarram Shah wants to get married, but finding a spouse has been a challenge. 
Like many Washington area singles, the 32-year-old Gaithersburg resident has a demanding job that leaves him with little time to socialize -- he works 60 hours a week as a computer database engineer. 
But the biggest obstacle to meeting eligible women is his religion. As a Muslim, Shah is not allowed to date. Islamic law forbids any kind of physical intimacy between a man and a woman before marriage, as well as any rendezvous that could lead to such contact.  
So how will he find love? Shah is pinning his hopes on Zawaj.com. 
The Web site is one of dozens offering matchmaking services to Muslim men and women. For a monthly fee, the sites provide chat rooms where Muslim singles can get to know each other without violating the teachings of their faith. 
"Without these Web sites, what are my chances of meeting people? None," Shah said. "It's just a way to come across people with the [same] religion and culture. . . . It makes it easier. And obviously, you are not going to do any physical stuff." 
Like other online dating services, the Muslim Web sites ask their members to post photos, biographical profiles and descriptions of what they are looking for in a spouse. But instead of moving quickly to the dating stage, the user of a Muslim site typically spends weeks or months exchanging comments online with a potential mate before deciding whether to seek a meeting. 
 The next step is for the couple to meet in the presence of family members, friends or the leader of a mosque. If that goes well, they will set up other chaperoned meetings that could lead to an engagement. They are not allowed to be alone together until after they are engaged. 
Shah has met four women in the two years he has been using Zawaj.com and other sites. The first three relationships did not work out, he said, but the fourth woman is someone he would like to see again. He started Internet contact with her in October and flew to Los Angeles last weekend for their first meeting, spending six hours with her and her parents. 
 "It's a very good prospect. I made a follow-up call, and I'm waiting to hear from them," Shah said last week. 
Not all Muslims interpret the rule against social interaction with the opposite sex in the same way. But there is wide consensus among U.S. Muslim clergy that Western-style dating is forbidden, and many even disapprove of a social telephone conversation between a man and a woman because "the voice can be sexually arousing," said Yvonne Haddad, a professor of the history of Islam at Georgetown University. 
The matrimonial Web sites, however, are quickly gaining acceptance even among conservative Muslims, according to Islamic scholars and local imams. 
Imam Yahya Hendi, Muslim chaplain at Georgetown, said he has received many requests to serve as an intermediary for Muslim couples who have gotten to know each other through the Web, and he has rarely heard anyone in the Muslim community object to the online courtships. 
"There are few other ways to be intimate without being inappropriate, no doubt," he said. The Web sites "give opportunity for people across the spectrum from all backgrounds, from all locations to meet and engage in an open, honest discussion without violating what they believe would be the rules of Islam." 
Traditionally, single Muslim men and women have learned about prospective spouses through family connections. If a man noticed an eligible woman in a public setting -- at a workplace or a mosque, for example -- he would then try to arrange a chaperoned meeting, usually by contacting her parents. The Internet system gives single adults more independence and control in the courtship process, although parents still play an important role in approving an engagement. 
Zawaj.com, based in Oakland, Calif., is one of the oldest of the Web sites. Its founder, Wael Abdelgawad, said 30,000 Muslims have signed up since he launched the service in 1998, and about 6,000 use the site on any given day. 
Abdelgawad said about half of the site's members live in the United States, and a significant number are in Canada and Britain. But the site also has members in predominantly Muslim countries, including Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East, he said. 
Zawaj means "marriage" in Arabic. Another popular site is Naseeb.com, which was launched last year (naseeb means "fulfilling one's destiny" in Arabic).  
The Internet conversations, by putting the emphasis on a love interest's personality and mind rather than on his or her looks, are very much in tune with Muslim culture, Abdelgawad added. 
"It's not about falling in love; it's about meeting someone who is compatible and has the same goals in life and then getting married," he said. "Love grows, if you have things in common and you have the same goals in life. The whole concept of falling in love and the romantic whirlwind, it's a Western concept and it's a concept that doesn't necessarily exist in the Muslim world." 
Hana Baba, a radio talk show host for the Sterling-based Islamic Broadcasting Network, said she and her future husband spent years talking to each other online about current events and theological issues before he finally asked if they could meet. 
Despite the nontraditional way they met, her mother was excited about the match, Baba said. 
"We got to see the whole inside of each other before the outside," she said. "It's really an acceptable alternative -- it's Internet dating Islamic-style. And the parents are okay with it, as long as you are not touching and doing stuff." 
Sara Siddiqui, 28, of Crystal City said her mother, who lives in Pakistan, signed her up on muslimmatrimonial.com. 
"My mom is actually the one who is screening [the men]; I'm too busy," said Siddiqui, an admissions adviser at Devry University. "In this country, everyone is so spread out, and we can't really date . . . so the sites are a big breakthrough because, for someone in my situation, it hasn't been easy to meet someone." 
Using an online service is no guarantee of success, of course. Siddiqui had three words to describe her encounters so far: "Not too good." 
Adults who work with Islamic youth also note that the Web sites do not address the problems faced by Muslim American teenagers, who are growing up in a country where movies, television and pop music -- as well as their peers at school -- constantly present an ideal of romantic fulfillment through dating. Baba said that dealing with the temptations of adolescence is the most frequent topic on her talk show for Muslim teenage girls. 
Several girls who belong to Muslim youth groups in Northern Virginia said their faith is tested every spring during prom season. Conservative Muslims see the prom as a forbidden form of social interaction between the two sexes. 
"Everybody's just talking about prom in class," said Mouna Kamoun, 17, a junior at Herndon High School and one of several girls who said they agonized over whether to attend their school's dance. "I mean, you are in high school; it's the topic. You want to do it But when it comes to it, your religion basically has to outweigh" desire. 
 Kamoun said she and her parents ultimately agreed that going to the Herndon High prom, which was  being held this weekend, would violate the rules against physical intimacy. Besides, she said, her religion instructs women to clothe themselves almost completely, and "it's really hard to find a dress that would cover me. Everything's sleeveless or too short."  
Looking ahead to marriage, several of the girls said they planned to rely on their families rather than the Internet to find a husband. 
"So many people think it's an arranged marriage because parents have so much to do with it," said Afra Khan, 16, a sophomore at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County. "But it's not. . . . It's much more of two families coming together." 
Wafa Unus, 17, a junior at Herndon High, agreed. "I don't think dating is essential for meeting someone," she said. 
But she conceded that she occasionally struggles with boy issues. Like any teenager, she said, she has developed crushes. And because of her religion, she has had to suppress those feelings.  
"A lot of Islam is patience," she said. 







  


June 4, 2004 Friday  




 Strategic oil route vulnerable; 
Terrorists might hit Malacca Straits in Southeast Asia, some experts fear

 
SINGAPORE -- Fears are growing of terrorism in the Malacca Straits, the pirate-ridden Southeast Asian waterway that is a conduit for half the world's oil supply.
Despite those concerns, the Muslim nations of Indonesia and Malaysia have rebuffed U.S. offers to help police the strategic route. Part of the agenda when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld meets Asian officials today and Saturday will be Pentagon proposals to help provide intelligence, conduct joint patrols and send U.S. Marines into the straits.
The United States and Singapore believe the 50,000 commercial vessels -- from cruise ships to supertankers -- that travel through the straits each year are vulnerable targets for al-Qaida and its South Asian affiliates.
The narrow, 550-mile-long waterway straddling Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore has been a pirates' paradise since the 1800s. Piracy worldwide has tripled in the past decade, rising by 20 percent last year alone, said the U.N. International Maritime Bureau. It counted 189 incidents in Southeast Asia, more than 40 percent of the 2003 total.
"There is a fear that terrorists could resort to pirate-style tactics, or even work in concert with pirates," the maritime bureau's Secretary-General Efthimios Mitropoulos said.
"An uptrend in crew abductions could signal a move by terrorists to train themselves in operating and navigating large commercial vessels," he added during a late-May visit to Singapore.
In one incident last year, 10 armed pirates stormed an Indonesian chemical tanker from their speedboat in the Malacca Straits, escaping with $13,000 in electronic equipment and cash.
The United States and Singapore believe Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and its regional affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah are targeting the straits, where chemical and oil tankers mingle with small craft that could carry suicide attackers.
Al-Qaida is blamed for the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 American servicemen, and the bombing of the French tanker Limburg, which killed one and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil off the Yemeni coast.
"Al-Qaida's attacks on commercial shipping in Yemen and the Arabian Sea and planned or attempted attacks in several straits ... should be ample demonstration that our concerns are not merely theoretical," said Matthew Daley, a deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state.
Adm. Thomas Fargo, head of U.S. forces in the Pacific, told a congressional panel in March that the Pentagon's approach to secure the straits would likely include providing satellite and radar-tracking equipment to Indonesia. Fargo also hinted it might involve U.S. elite troops who could "take action when the decision has been made to do so."
Just after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, U.S.-led forces found a videotape in an Afghanistan safehouse showing plans to attack U.S. Navy warships heading through the straits to the Middle East. The warships would be targeted by suicide speedboats in a narrow "kill zone" in the straits, Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said.
Malacca Straits are about one nautical mile wide at their narrowest point and many ships barely skim above the shallowest point at 82 feet, putting them at risk from a bomb planted on the sea bottom.
A major attack would disrupt global trade for months. One quarter of the world's commerce passes through the straits, including 10 million barrels of crude oil heading daily from the Gulf toward boom economies of China, South Korea and Japan.
It is not immediately clear what maritime assets extremists groups have in the region. But Al-Qaida is believed to operate 15 to 25 vessels transporting people and weapons in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian and Atlantic oceans, said Kweilen Kimmelman, an analyst with the Maritime Intelligence Group, a respected Washington-based think tank.
Malaysia, on one side of the straits, has only 18 Marine Police boats in the water at a time. Indonesia, on the other side, has about 20 coast guard boats and several navy ships in the area, but not all at the same time.
On a recent day, an Indonesian Coast Guard crew of 14 patrolled aboard a ship a few miles south of Singapore, home to the world's busiest port.
"Indonesia can handle the terrorists at sea. We don't like them, and we have a duty to wipe them out," said Tri Yuswoyo, a 20-year veteran of the Indonesian Coast Guard. "We may need a thousand ships, but not the Americans. ... These are our straits."
Although Indonesia refuses American help in the straits, it takes advantage of American expertise. Yuswoyo just returned from a three-month course at the U.S. Coast Guard training center in Yorktown, Va., where teachers focused on combating terror.
Malaysian officials also reject U.S. help.
"I think we can look after our own area," Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi told the Far Eastern Economic Review last month.
Rumsfeld is expected to outline the Pentagon's proposal to secure the straits in greater detail at the security conference in Singapore today and Saturday with officials from 20 of the region's nations.
Singapore has welcomed American involvement.
The city-state escorts high-value vessels in and out of its waters, while helicopters and jets buzz overhead at designated safe zones. The government spent $1.5 million for a global satellite ship-tracking system.
Singapore fears a ship packed with explosives, or chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons could be hijacked and sailed into one of its three ports.
Extremists also could block the straits by sinking a big vessel in a narrow waterway, disrupting commerce for months and forcing ships to travel another 1,000 miles from the Middle East to Asian destinations.
Another fear is that lower-level crewmen -- mostly from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe -- could be recruited as terrorists. 
"It is very easy for terrorists to become sailors," said Andrew Tan, a security analyst with Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies. "Documents can be forged. ... The size, the scope of the maritime industry and the amount of seaborne trade is immense."
Requirements to work on a ship are much less stringent than to fly a plane, he said, which al-Qaida managed to do in the Sept. 11 hijack attacks. 







 



June 2, 2004 Wednesday  




 Indonesian Cleric's Media Empire; 
Millions Watch Imam's Broadcast Sermons, Buy His Line of Products

 
 Abdullah Gymnastiar straddled his customized electric bicycle and buzzed down the cobblestone alley into the crowd. 
 Wearing a white turban, Indonesia's premier television preacher toured the back streets of this hill town, greeting nearly 5,000 people who overflowed the mosque and who were waiting to follow his weeknight sermon on large-screen televisions. They pressed forward, some kissing his hand, others hailing him as if he were a rock star. 
 More self-help guru in sarong than Islamic scholar, Gymnastiar, 42, has built a following unrivaled among his fellow Muslim clerics by marrying soft, sonorous words of counsel and tearful prayer, delivered not in Arabic but Indonesian, with razor-sharp marketing acumen. 
 Widely known as Aa Gym -- "older brother Gym" in the local dialect -- he estimates that he reaches at least 60 million people weekly through television and radio, not including his books, cassettes, videos, newspaper, management training seminars and aphorisms printed on the red cans of the soft drink he markets, Qolbu Cola.  
 He is so popular that four of the five candidates in the presidential election to be held in July invited him to speak at their campaign kickoffs last  month. Police croon his song "Take Care of Your Heart" while seeking to calm surging crowds of protesters. All seven private television stations in Indonesia bought his programs for the holy month of Ramadan, paying up to $50,000 a show, according to his staff. 
Far more than the country's Islamic extremists, Gymnastiar articulates the sentiments of many in the world's largest Muslim country who are attracted by the United States but have grown distrustful of its intentions. 
 "I hope America and Indonesia will join together to build a civilization of the heart," he said in an interview, rejecting the extremists' talk of an inexorable conflict between Islam and the West. 
 But he was quick to heap disdain on a U.S. administration that launched military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
 "I'm so sorry to see the image of America deteriorating. There has been so much violence and so many people killed. Countries have been destroyed for reasons that haven't been proven, for instance, the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," Gymnastiar said, sitting cross-legged on the carpeted porch of his cottage as a television crew set up cameras on the backyard lawn for a live broadcast later in the day. 
  Gymnastiar, a boyish figure with round, metal glasses, thick lips and a thin, wispy beard, is by some measures the most American of Indonesian clerics, embodying a can-do entrepreneurial spirit that has tapped the latest technology to build a corporate empire. 
 Trained as an electrical engineer, he is the eldest son of an army officer, his name reflecting his father's passion for athletics. Gymnastiar said he continues to sky-dive and practice shooting at a cardboard target in his back yard. In free moments, he swaps his electric bicycle for one of four motorcycles kept under a dust cover in the alley.  
 His conglomerate, MQ Corp. -- the  initials stand for Heart Management in Indonesian -- has 18 subsidiaries, including a satellite television channel, a radio station, a publishing house, a recording studio, an advertising firm, a travel agency and companies merchandising clothing, mineral water, shampoo, cosmetics, detergent and instant noodles. In one of his new endeavors, his staff reported, more than 2 million Indonesian subscribers receive his daily teachings via text messages on their cell phones. 
 On a recent evening, as Gymnastiar plunged into the crowd on the electric bicycle -- a model that he sells -- he passed shops and stalls peddling T-shirts, key chains and other souvenirs to the tour groups who visit his Bandung complex from Indonesia's most distant  islands. 
 He steered past his supermarket, boutique, bank, hotel and pair of training halls. In one, 20 executives from the state-owned oil company were taking part in a three-day management seminar for $300 a person. Next door, 50 middle managers from a leading national bank were involved in another three-day course for $200 each. 
 Calling out the traditional Muslim  greeting "Salaam aleikum" -- "Peace be to you" -- he buzzed past walls decorated with his capsule teachings. One sign read, "Seven tips for success: Be calm, plan well, be skillful, orderly, diligent, strong and humble." Another advised, "Five tips for a good product: Cheap, high quality, easy to use, up-to-date and useful for both the world and hereafter." 
 It was the light touch of his teaching that Yenny Irene, 32, a Jakarta accountant, said first attracted her to Gymnastiar. "I started to follow him all the time," she said. "It has had a great, great impact on me." She watches him every night on video compact disc before going to sleep and has begun marketing his products. 
 Zuchal Munsief, 46, a buyer at an oil trading company, was schooled in a traditional Muslim boarding school but came to follow Gymnastiar because of his simple language and humble demeanor. "His teaching is very down to earth. It's easy to understand for common people like me," Munsief said. 
 Despite his unorthodox approach, Gymnastiar has won praise from many in Indonesia's Islamic establishment for drawing people closer to religion. "His teaching is unusual and a new type for us," said Umar Shihab, chairman of the Indonesian Council of Muslim Scholars. "In addition to using the Koran, he gives examples from real life. And while clerics usually do all the talking, he holds a . . . conversation with his audience. It's very good for Islam." 
 Gymnastiar does not share the insistence of other clerics that Indonesia implement rigid Islamic law. Although he is a traditional Muslim who prefers his women in head scarves and not in  leadership posts, Gymnastiar said imposing sharia, or Islamic law, is not his priority.  
 His chatty, playful and at times bawdy preaching rarely ventures into world politics, a common subject for the country's firebrand clerics. Yet he has not been shy about declaring his views. Days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Gymnastiar led 5,000 antiwar protesters to the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. In his arms, he clasped his young son, dressed theatrically in clothes stained red to look like blood. However, he also urged his followers not to resist the United States violently. 
 When President Bush came to Indonesia last fall, Gymnastiar and three other moderate Muslim leaders were invited to meet him. But Gymnastiar, who had seen Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during a similar visit a year earlier, boycotted the meeting. 
 "American people need a president with a good heart so that America will be loved in the world and that will make America safe," Gymnastiar said in an interview. "If America does not treat the world fairly, people will hate America, and that will make America insecure." 
 Gymnastiar made front-page news last month when he visited the imprisoned Muslim cleric Abubakar Baasyir, who Indonesian and U.S. officials contend is the leader of an extremist group linked to al Qaeda. Although it was widely seen in Indonesia as a show of support for Baasyir, Gymnastiar said in the interview he simply wanted to get Baasyir's  side of the story. 
 Reflecting the skepticism of many Indonesians, Gymnastiar dismissed the conclusion of Indonesian and Western investigators that Baasyir's Jemaah Islamiah underground group was behind the bombings of two Bali nightclubs in 2002 and the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last  year, which together killed 224 people. 
 Gymnastiar said that there was no terrorist threat by Muslim extremists against either Indonesia or U.S. interests in the region and that he thought U.S. warnings about terrorism were exaggerated. 
 "America has been saying so much about this, but they can't prove it," he said, raising his voice slightly. "America talks a lot. But they can't prove what happened in Iraq, either. When they attacked Iraq, they lied." 







 



May 29, 2004 Saturday  




 Indonesia Threatens to Expel Critic of Security

 
 The Indonesian government is preparing to expel the Jakarta representative of the International Crisis Group after she wrote a series of reports critical of the country's security policies, the Brussels-based organization said Friday. 
 Sidney Jones, a U.S citizen who has established herself as a leading analyst on terrorism and political conflict in Indonesia, said the government refused to renew her work permit and said it would not extend her residency permit when it expires in two weeks. 
 In a rare public comment on Thursday, Indonesia's intelligence chief, A.M. Hendropriyono, said he was tired of responding to reports by the ICG, a non-profit research group. Hendropriyono told reporters that ICG studies "were not all true" and that "actions should be taken against those . . . who damage the country's image."  
 Since her arrival in Jakarta two years ago, Jones has been   widely quoted in local and foreign media as a security expert. Her report in 2002 about a network of Muslim militants linked to radical cleric Abubakar Baasyir focused attention on religious extremism when many Indonesian politicians were seeking to play down  its danger. Two months later, extremists from the underground group allegedly led by Baasyir bombed two  nightclubs on the island of Bali, killing 202 people. 
 Since then, ICG has released 14 studies about Indonesia, including several criticizing government policies in the troubled provinces of Aceh and Papua, where security forces are trying to put down separatist uprisings. 
 "In every case where an error has been pointed out, very few cases, we have published corrections," Jones said. "If the government knows of other errors in the reports, we'd be happy to learn of them. We stand by the accuracy and content of our reports." 
 Jones said she was told that her work permit, which expired earlier this month, would not be renewed by the Labor Ministry because of complaints against her. She said she learned these came from the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) and was told by a government official that the dispute over the permit could only be resolved if she obtained a favorable letter from that agency. 
 Jones said immigration officials told her this week that she could not remain in the country beyond June 10 unless she received a new work permit. 
 "I don't think the accuracy of our reports is the real issue here. I think there's another issue that has not been explained to us that might have offended BIN," she said. 
 Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said he believed no final decision had been made  about whether to allow Jones to remain in Indonesia. "It's a clear case of them trying to create a crisis out of nothing," he said. "It's a classic case of Miss Sidney Jones trying to create a martyr out of herself."  
He said Indonesian officials were under no obligation to justify their actions if they decided not to extend her permits. 
 Jones, 51, worked for Human Rights Watch for 14 years before joining ICG as its Indonesia project director. She also lived in Indonesia from 1977 to 1982 while employed by the Ford Foundation and conducting research for a dissertation. 
Special correspondent Natasha Tampubolon contributed to this report. 







 


May 25, 2004 Tuesday  




 World / National Briefly

 
NEW MALAWI PRESIDENT SWORN IN
Blantyre, Malawi 
 Former President Bakili Muluzi's hand-picked successor was sworn in Monday, as opposition supporters waged running street battles with police over the result of this impoverished southern African country's third multiparty elections.
Witnesses said at least four people were killed when security forces fired live ammunition and tear gas to break up rioting which erupted Sunday when Bingu wa Mutharika was declared the winner of Thursday's vote. Hospital officials confirmed two of the deaths. 
Gwanda Chakuamba, who heads the seven-party opposition Mgwirizano coalition, accused the Malawi Electoral Commission of conspiring with the ruling party to rig the vote and declared himself the rightful winner Sunday.
Opposition supporters barricaded roads with large boulders and threw stones at police vehicles in crowded suburbs of the economic capital, Blantyre. The mobs ransacked shops and torched offices and cars belonging to the ruling United Democratic Front party.
Police spokesman Willy Mwaluka acknowledged that some protesters may have been killed in the clashes, but said he was not aware that security forces had used live ammunition against them.
SOLDIERS MOVE IN ON PERUVIAN TOWN
Ilave, Peru
Hundreds of soldiers entered a highland town near Lake Titicaca Monday, a day after Indian protesters clashed with police in the latest unrest since a mob killed the mayor there a month ago.
Streets were quiet in Ilave, about 565 miles southeast of Lima, as police cleared rocks placed by protesters off of the highway leading into town and soldiers in troop-carrying trucks patrolled.
President Alejandro Toledo decided late Sunday to send in the army to help police restore order in Ilave, after a dozen people were injured in clashes.
"Order and discipline are key elements in a democracy," he told reporters Monday in Lima. "We are not going to permit disorder and chaos."
Toledo said highland Aymara Indians around Ilave were being manipulated by "Peruvians and people from other countries," in an apparent reference to Bolivian congressman and Aymara leader, Felipe Quispe.
Interviewed later by Radioprogramas del Peru, Quispe rejected Toledo's accusation, saying that he has never been to Ilave.
Interior Minister Javier Reategui said 300 soldiers were sent to Ilave to support 630 police.
FRANCE REJECTS RELIGIOUS REFERENCES
Brussels, Belgium 
France said Monday it could not accept references to God and Christianity in a European Union constitution.
France and Belgium have been most opposed to religious references in the charter, while Italy and Poland, backed by Pope John Paul II, want the charter to acknowledge Christianity's role.
"I think the text as is, is a balanced one," said French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said. "The text already includes a mention to heritage."
The 25 EU foreign ministers set down for a new session of negotiations, one week after talks failed to narrow deep differences over a constitutional draft, which should be finalized by the June 17-18 summit of government leaders.
CASE AGAINST SHARON MAY BE DROPPED
Jerusalem 
Israel's attorney general is about to drop a bribery case against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israeli TV stations reported Monday, removing a threat to Sharon's continuing in office.
The case concerns a failed real estate deal. Businessman David Appel has been charged with bribing Sharon and one of the prime minister's sons over a project to turn a Greek island into a tourism center. In order to convict Sharon of receiving a bribe, criminal intent would have to be proved on his part.
An indictment could force Sharon from office, at least temporarily.
LAWYERS WANT SOLDIER'S STATEMENTS TOSSED OUT
Washington 
Attorneys for Pfc. Lynndie England, the U.S. soldier who was photographed holding a leash around the neck of an Iraqi detainee at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, will ask that her statements to investigators be thrown out because she was interrogated after she had asked for a lawyer.
Rose Mary Zapor, the Denver lawyer heading England's defense, said England was questioned by military investigators three times - twice in January and again in May. "The three statements were taken illegally, because she had invoked her right to counsel," Zapor said in a telephone interview Monday.
England, 21, also testified earlier this month at a preliminary hearing involving another soldier charged in the prisoner-abuse scandal.
England is charged with assaulting Iraqi prisoners, conspiring with Spc. Charles Graner to mistreat prisoners, committing an indecent act by forcing prisoners to masturbate and bringing discredit to the military.
PEACEKEEPERS SOUGHT FOR MALUKU ISLANDS
Los Angeles 
The fugitive leader of an Indonesian separatist group says international peacekeepers should be sent to the Maluku islands, where dozens died in Christian-Muslim violence last month.
Alex Manuputty, who has been convicted of treason in Indonesia and sentenced to four years in prison, accused the Jakarta government of inciting religious violence in the Malukus. He claimed snipers shot many of the 39 people who died in the Malukus last month.
"Indonesia continues to become a place where they harbor terrorism," the 56-year-old Manuputty told The Associated Press in an interview last week in California, where he has been living recently.
"You can no longer distinguish between the jihad forces, the Muslim militants, the police, the military or the Indonesian government itself," he said. "The military are supposed to protect the people, but instead they were used to kill the people."
Two-thirds of those killed in April were Muslims. But Manuputty and others say authorities are fomenting the religious intolerance to squelch the independence movement.
Manuputty was in Washington earlier this month to press for an inquiry by the United States or the United Nations into alleged abuses in the Malukus.
CLEANING OF 'DAVID' COMPLETED
Florence, Italy 
Michelangelo's "David" is brighter but hardly spotless after the completion Monday of a controversial cleaning timed for the 500th birthday of one of the marvels of world art.
Some pale yellow streaks on the left shin and violet-tinged mold stains on the lower back resisted a "minimalist" restoration of the Renaissance genius' depiction in marble of naked male beauty.
The cleaning of the towering masterpiece stripped away the grimy, gray patina of decades of dirt and soaked up damaging deposits of chalk in the marble's pores.
Work resumed in September after an aborted start when the original restorer quit in a dispute over how the statue should be cleaned, sparking alarm from restoration watchdogs abroad.
TYPE:  Briefs






 
  

  

MAY 23, 2004 Sunday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Three adults, two children
die in Virginia house fire
* A predawn fire leveled a two-story farmhouse near McGaheysville in northwestern Virginia on Friday, killing three adults and two children. Two people escaped. The blaze broke out around 4 a.m. and was beyond control when firefighters arrived about 15 minutes later, fire officials said.
Tornado destroys nearly
all 50 homes in Iowa town
* A tornado injured 15 people and destroyed nearly all the 50 homes in Bradgate, Iowa, late Friday as a powerful storm system swept through the Midwest. The severe weather knocked out power through parts of West Virginia, Nebraska, Michigan, Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. Michigan authorities blamed three deaths on the storm - all from trees falling on cars. 
President is scraped up
in bike crash at his ranch
* President Bush suffered cuts and bruises early yesterday afternoon while mountain biking on his Crawford, Texas, ranch. He was on the 16th mile of a 17-mile ride when he fell, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said. Bush suffered minor abrasions and scratches on his chin, upper lip, nose, right hand, and both knees, Duffy said. After the scratches were cleaned, Bush finished the ride.
FDA expands recall of raw
almonds from Calif. firm
* The Food and Drug Administration is expanding a recall of raw almonds distributed by a California company to a total of 13 million pounds because of the possibility of salmonella contamination. Paramount Farms Inc. of Lost Hills, Calif., distributed the almonds nationwide under such brand names as Kirkland Signature, Sunkist and Trader Joe's. The FDA said it was aware of 18 cases of illness possibly related to the almonds.
Prepared salads with basil, mesclun may have parasite
* Pre-mixed salads containing basil and mesclun may contain a parasite that can cause food poisoning, the Food and Drug Administration warned Friday. More than 90 people in Texas and Illinois have become ill from the Cyclospora parasite, which causes fever, diarrhea, vomiting and other severe symptoms, the FDA said. The FDA said it was working to find the source of two outbreaks traced to a restaurant in Wheaton, Ill., and another one in Irving, Texas - both in February.
In the World
Insurgents shoot rockets at U.S. base in Afghanistan
* Insurgents fired two rockets at an American military base in a troubled border zone of Afghanistan, injuring four U.S. soldiers, the military said yesterday. The rockets were fired at Camp Salerno, the military's main base in Khost province, 90 miles south of the capital, Kabul, on Friday afternoon, a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager, said.
Manmohan Singh starts job as India's prime minister
* The hero of India's economic reforms, Manmohan Singh, took over as prime minister yesterday, completing the return of the Congress party to power after a surprising election win. A team of 67 ministers, decided after marathon negotiations within the Congress-led coalition, was sworn in to form a left-leaning government to replace the Hindu nationalists who were voted out.
German man fatally shot
in Riyadh shopping mall
* A German man who worked as a caterer for Saudi Arabia's national airline was shot and killed in Riyadh yesterday, an Interior Ministry official said. The man was shot at a shopping mall on Prince Abdullah Highway, a popular shopping thoroughfare in eastern Riyadh. Authorities are investigating whether the attack was a terrorist or a criminal one, the official said.
Officials say ex-Indonesian ruler can't contest election * Indonesia's election commission yesterday ruled former leader Abdurrahman Wahid medically unfit to contest the July 5 presidential election, scuttling the nearly blind Muslim cleric's hopes of regaining the top job. The ruling is expected to boost former military chief Wiranto, the nominee from the Golkar party, which won the most seats in April 5 parliamentary elections.
British ambassador hurt
in blast in Bangladesh
* The British ambassador to Bangladesh was injured in a bomb blast that killed three people, an embassy official said yesterday. Ambassador Anwar Choudhury was hit in the leg and his bodyguard killed when the bomb went off as he took part in Friday prayers at a Muslim shrine in the northeastern city of Sylhet. Officials said they did not know who was behind the attack.
Somalis want Kenya to free warlord jailed for a debt
* Thousands of angry Somalis took to the streets of Mogadishu yesterday to protest Kenya's arrest of one of their country's most prominent warlords, who has been jailed for an unpaid $180,000 debt. A crowd estimated at several thousand demanded Kenya free Hussein Aideed, who was taken from Somali peace talks in Nairobi on Thursday on the orders of a Kenyan magistrate.







 


May 23, 2004 Sunday  




 'Ayat Jamiliah' author reading at Auntie's

 
Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion - and, says Sarah Conover, one of the most misunderstood. That's what led the Spokane author to write "Ayat Jamiliah: Beautiful Signs, A Treasury of Islamic Wisdom for Children and Parents" (Eastern Washington University Press, 276 pages, $19.95 paper). "It is one of the Abrahamic religions. We share a lot in terms of culture, values," says Conover, who will read from the book Thursday at Auntie's Bookstore. 
 Conover, a teacher who has degrees in religious studies from the University of Colorado and in creative writing from EWU, previously wrote "Kindness: A Treasury of Buddhist Wisdom and Stories for Children" (EWU Press, 2001).
 The roots of the new book go back well beyond that. Conover has been collecting materials on Islam for the better part of 15 years, and contributed most of the Muslim stories to the compilation "Daughters of the Desert: Stories of Remarkable Women From the Christian, Jewish and Muslim Traditions" (Skylight Paths Press, 2003).
 What she lacked was a knowledgeable collaborator - someone who could tell her, as Conover puts it, that "if you say this, you'll insult the Sunnis, and if you say that, the Shiites will say it's not true."
 She finally found that person in her co-author, Freda Crane, a longtime Muslim educator who lives in Ohio. The result of their combined efforts, Conover says, is the most far-reaching book of its type, exploring Islamic culture from Morocco to Indonesia, China to Tanzania.
 "There are more Muslims in China than in any single Middle Eastern country," Conover says. "People have this really strong association between Muslims and camels - Islam equals desert equals camels. These stories have been around for a long, long time, in many cultures."
 While Muslim extremists tend to get all the media attention in today's world, she says, "Islam is a beautiful, beautiful religion in many ways. There are a lot of values that can nourish our society."
 Some raise questions about our own values, even when cloaked in such rhetoric as Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni calling the United States the "Great Satan" in 1979. In Islamic terms, Conover says, that equates to "great distractor," a commentary on America's focus on wealth and material goods.
 "They're pointing to us to say, your consumer culture, is that getting you any closer to truth and love, life and death?" Conover says.
 Thursday's reading begins at 7:30 p.m. at Auntie's, 402 W. Main Ave. Illustrations from the book by local artist Valerie Wahl will be displayed.
 Among other area book events over the coming week:
 * Local science fiction authors John Dalmas and James Glass will read from their new novels, "Regiment Trilogy" and "Matrix Dreams & Other Stories," on Monday at 7:30 p.m. at Auntie's Bookstore, 402 W. Main Ave. (838-0206)
 * Montana author Marcus Stevens will read from his new novel, "Useful Girl," on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Auntie's Bookstore.
 * Local historians Tony and Suzanne Bamonte will read from their new centennial edition of "Manito Park: A Reflection of Spokane's Past," and Robin Briley and Jim Bolser will preview their new DVD by the same title on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Auntie's Bookstore.
 * Walla Walla author Patrick Carman will sign copies of the first book in his Land of Elyon fantasy trilogy, "The Dark Hills Divide," on Friday at 6 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, 15310 E. Indiana Ave. (922-4104).
TYPE:  Column: Book Notes







 



May 23, 2004 Sunday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The U.S. military on Saturday named a brigadier general to carry out a review of its secretive Afghan prisons, while officials in Washington revealed that they were looking into the deaths of two more Afghans. 
 Brig. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, deputy operational commander at the U.S. military's main base at Bagram, north of Kabul, will carry out the "top to bottom" review and deliver a report by mid-June, said a spokesman, Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager.  
 The commander of the 20,000 U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, ordered the review this month in response to the growing scandal about prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
 Jacoby will visit each of about 20 U.S. detention centers, including the main facility at Bagram "to ensure internationally accepted standards of handling detainees are being met," Mansager said. 
The United States recently announced two new criminal investigations into allegations of abuse by former prisoners in Afghanistan, where it is also under pressure over the unexplained deaths of prisoners in custody. 
Several investigations into the deaths of inmates detained by both the U.S. military and the CIA are underway. 
EUROPE 
*  STOCKHOLM -- Egypt has agreed to an inquiry into the treatment of two men extradited from Sweden, one of whom said he was tortured, the Swedish Foreign Ministry said. Sweden deported Ahmed Hussein Agiza to Egypt in 2001 to stand trial for violent acts against the government. 
Sweden said it had deported the two Egyptians after receiving diplomatic assurances from Cairo of fair treatment. 
AFRICA 
*  MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Thousands of Somalis took to the streets of Mogadishu to protest Kenya's arrest of one of their country's best-known warlords, who has been jailed for a month for unpaid debt. 
 A crowd estimated at several thousand demanded Kenya free Hussein Aideed, who was seized during Somali peace talks in Nairobi on Thursday on the orders of a Kenyan magistrate. 
Members of the Somali National Alliance, to which Aideed belongs, accused Kenya of humiliating Aideed, who came to power after the death of his father, Mohamed Farah Aideed, whose forces killed 18 U.S. troops in a failed raid in Mogadishu in 1993. 
*  HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Two journalists with Zimbabwe's last independent Sunday newspaper were re-arrested on charges of publishing false material to incite public disorder. The Standard's editor, Bornwell Chakaodza, and reporter Valentine Maponga were held for six hours Wednesday over a May 16 article reporting that relatives of a slain mining executive blamed unidentified senior government figures for his death. 
 They were re-arrested early Friday and later released on bail. 
THE AMERICAS 
*  CARACAS, Venezuela -- Troops arrested a former Venezuelan finance minister and retired army general accused of links to an anti-government plot, a senior officer said. Gen. Francisco Uson, who served briefly in President Hugo Chavez's cabinet before resigning during a short-lived 2002 coup, was detained at Puerto Ordaz in southeast Venezuela, National Guard Gen. Alberto Betancourt said. 
Police have arrested at least seven military officers and a number of civilians following the May 9 roundup of more than 100 Colombian paramilitaries who the government says were being trained in Venezuela as an anti-Chavez force. 
*  BOGOTA, Colombia -- Three people were killed in a Colombian town by a car bomb that the army blamed on Marxist rebels marking the 40th anniversary of their armed struggle. A car packed with 45 pounds of ANFO, an explosive used in the mining industry, blew up in the town of San Carlos, 200 miles northwest of the capital, Bogota, said the army, blaming the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. 
 The authorities have also blamed the rebel army for a bomb in Medellin Thursday, which killed four people, and for attempting to explode a ton of ANFO in a truck near Bogota on Friday. 
The rebel army has evolved from a band of peasants struggling for land reform into a 17,000-strong force funded by kidnappings and demanding protection money from the cocaine industry. 
THE MIDDLE EAST 
*  RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A German who worked as a caterer for Saudi Arabian Airlines was shot and killed by unknown assailants, an Interior Ministry official said. Authorities are investigating whether the attack was linked to terrorism or more conventional crime, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 
 The man was shot on Prince Abdullah Highway, a popular shopping thoroughfare in eastern Riyadh.  
ASIA 
*  DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A river ferry carrying about 250 passengers capsized during a storm in eastern Bangladesh early Sunday, police said, and dozens of people were feared dead. Many of the passengers were believed to be trapped inside the double-decker ferry, said a police officer at the scene. About 50 people swam to shore and some were rescued from inside the vessel. Several bodies had also been found. 
*  SINGAPORE -- A ship carrying 4,000 cars sank after colliding with an oil tanker just south of Singapore, authorities said Sunday. 
 The collision between the tanker MT Kaminesan, carrying nearly 279,950 tons of crude oil, and car carrier MV Hyundai occurred late Saturday night, the Maritime and Ports Authority of Singapore said. All 20 crew members of the Hyundai were rescued before it sank. 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The nation's election commission ruled Saturday that former leader Abdurrahman Wahid is medically unfit to run in the July 5 presidential election, scuttling the nearly blind Muslim cleric's hopes of regaining the top job. The commission said five other presidential candidates and their running mates had passed medical tests and other criteria. 
The ruling is expected to boost prospects for the former military chief, Gen. Wiranto, the nominee from the Golkar party, which won a plurality but not a majority of seats in parliament in April 5 legislative elections. 
 Wahid's Nation Awakening Party has said it would back Wiranto and his running mate, Salahuddin Wahid, the ex-president's younger brother, if the commission ruled against the elder Wahid. 
*  BANGKOK -- A policeman was killed in Thailand's troubled Muslim south where Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said the security situation was getting better. The policeman was shot by unknown gunmen as he rode his motorcycle home in Narathiwat province, one of three southern provinces where authorities are on alert for possible attacks as a key Buddhist holiday approaches. 
 --  From News Services 






 
  

  

MAY 19, 2004 Wednesday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Emergency-room care limit
for illegal aliens rejected
* The House rejected legislation that could have led to hospital emergency rooms denying some services to illegal immigrants while helping to get them deported. Hispanic legislators led opposition to the bill, joining medical groups in contending it would turn hospitals into law-enforcement agencies and prevent illegal residents from seeking life-saving treatment. The vote was 331-88.
After shootings, Boston
halts housing complex's mail
* Boston postal officials suspended mail delivery at a public housing complex yesterday because of shootings in the neighborhood. Tenants at the Bromley-Heath complex must pick up their mail at a nearby post office until further notice. "The customers are inconvenienced, and we feel very bad," spokesman Bob Cannon said, ". . . but when bullets are flying around, it's time to take drastic steps." 
Surviving climber stranded
on Mt. Rainier is rescued
* The surviving member of a pair of climbers stranded on Mount Rainier was evacuated by helicopter yesterday morning, the day after his severely injured companion died while being flown to a hospital. A helicopter reached Scott Richards, 42, at 9:50 a.m. His companion, Peter Cooley, 39, was flown off the mountain Monday but died en route to a hospital. He died of head injuries suffered Saturday.
Lay church monitor group,
U.S. bishops reach accord
* The committee of U.S. Roman Catholic bishops that deals with sexual abuse reached an accord with a lay watchdog panel that monitors church reform policies; no details were announced. Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Monday that the bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse and the lay National Review Board "came together on a proposal." They had disagreed over how soon audits of diocesan compliance should be required.
In the World
Some prison survivors say
Honduran fire was arson
* Some survivors of a Honduran prison fire that officials blamed on a short-circuit said yesterday that the blaze had been intentionally set by fellow inmates. At least 103 of 186 prisoners in the cell block at the state prison in San Pedro Sula died in the fire Monday; most were gang members. Vice President Vicente Williams denied the blaze was intentionally set and said the government was creating a special commission to improve the prison system.
Top U.N. aide denies
staffer's sex allegations
* U.N. High Commissioner
for Refugees Ruud Lubbers confirmed yesterday that a member of his staff had filed a sexual-harassment complaint against him, but he denied the allegations.  reported Monday that the United Nations was investigating a complaint, filed by an unidentified female employee of the Geneva-based commission, concerning an alleged incident in Lubbers' office in December.
WHO says China has halted
its latest SARS outbreak
* China has contained its latest SARS outbreak, which was linked to a Beijing research laboratory, the World Health Organization said today, urging continued vigilance. More than three weeks have passed since the last case in China was isolated, the WHO said in a statement posted on its Web site: "The chain of human-to-human transmission appears to have been broken."
Czarist-era Faberge eggs
shown at Moscow museum
* Fifteen Czarist-era Faberge eggs were unveiled in a Moscow museum yesterday, three months after billionaire Viktor Vekselberg purchased the collection as part of a campaign to bring home Russia's cultural heritage. The Easter eggs, treasures of intricately worked jewels and precious metals by jeweler Carl Faberge, are the highlight of an exhibit in the Patriarch's Palace Museum.
Muslim extremist gets
7-year term in Jakarta blast
* An Indonesian court yesterday sentenced a Muslim extremist to seven years in prison for involvement in the bombing last year of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. Mohamad Rais, 28, was the second man convicted in the blast, which killed 12 people and wounded about 150.






  


May 19, 2004, Wednesday, 



 Muslim CEOs of U.S. firms fight terrorism, 'stop evil'

 
ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Those who go to sleep at night with the threat of terrorism on their minds might be surprised to learn that Muslim CEOs are running companies that watch over our safety.
 * Fuad El-Hibri is CEO of BioPort, the only U.S. maker of anthrax vaccine.
 * Houssam Salloum is CEO of Axiolog, a Detroit firm developing a high-tech system for tracking international cargo into vulnerable U.S. ports.
 * Nafa Khalaf is CEO of Detroit Contracting, which after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 secured the five major treatment plants that supply water to 4.5 million residents of the Detroit area. Khalaf, 50, emigrated from Iraq in 1986, and his company is now working to protect water plants in Iraq.
 
 * Ahmad Mesdaq, owner of businesses in San Diego including a coffee lounge and cigar factory, this summer will launch an auto registration system in his native Afghanistan that will help authorities stop widespread shipments of explosives and drugs by warlords. Getting Afghanistan back on its feet brings security to the USA, he says.
The past three years have shown the war on terror is complicated. Just as sides can't be drawn up by national boundaries, neither can the good guys and bad guys be identified based on their religion or national origin.
Throughout history corporate executives have played important roles in winning wars. President Franklin Roosevelt made Robert Wood Johnson, the late CEO of Johnson & Johnson, an Army general in World War II and put him in charge of bringing small business into the war effort. Executives will likely play a critical role in the war on terrorism as well. But they won't all have names like Johnson. Some may have names like El-Hibri or Mesdaq.
"American Muslims are making endless efforts to stop evil," Mesdaq says.
These executives are the antithesis of the celebrity CEO so common now in Corporate America. After all, these are times when Muslims running companies in homeland security could attract the attention of both Islamophobes and terrorists. It took months of searching trade associations, chambers of commerce and homeland security experts for  to find a cadre of companies that contribute to the security of the U.S. and have a Muslim at the helm. When found, some said they were under contractual obligations not to talk to the media. Some, like Salloum, declined to be interviewed so as not to attract attention. Others were like El-Hibri, who agreed to an interview with reservation.
"Some successful business people in the Muslim community are worried that there are forces working against them," he says, sitting in his office tucked away in a building with no exterior signage in this Washington, D.C., suburb.
"I'm trusting, not paranoid," says El-Hibri, 46, who became a U.S. citizen in 1999. He was born in Germany and spent his childhood equally in Europe and the Middle East before coming to the USA to get an economics degree from Stanford and an MBA from Yale. "But there is a group who don't think the anthrax vaccine should be in the hands of someone with an Arab or Muslim background."
Scrutiny surrounds anthrax vaccine
Conspiracy-theory Internet sites have taken a special interest in El-Hibri's formative years in Lebanon and Sudan, and a more recent three-year assignment in Saudi Arabia with Citibank. The sites imply crimes ranging from ties to Osama Bin Laden to being the mastermind behind the mailing of anthrax spores that killed five people in 2001. El-Hibri calls the Web sites annoying and jokes that he's lucky to be in the vaccination business so that he can inoculate himself from the pain of accusers who can't be confronted.
Even some members of Congress have objected to BioPort's anthrax role. That criticism reflects ignorance, says retired admiral William Crowe, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Reagan administration and the first George Bush administration and now is on BioPort's board of directors. BioPort recruited Crowe, a friend of El-Hibri's father. Crowe received 8% of BioPort's stock to serve on its board, largely because of his expertise about the key customer, the Defense Department. But Crowe's presence also mitigates the attention on El-Hibri.
BioPort keeps a small supply of anthrax spores under five layers of security to verify the potency of the vaccine, a requirement of the Food and Drug Administration. That makes El-Hibri a suspect of conspiracy theorists, who say the unsolved anthrax mail crime of 2001 increased demand for BioPort's product while El-Hibri and his family were safely inoculated from the fatal bio-threat.
"That's a terrible stretch," says Crowe, who says El-Hibri is straightforward and honest and is one who has "never entertained even the slightest idea of fooling the government" and "bends over backward to make sure the Defense Department is aware."
Muslim executives were careful and measured when responding to most questions but became noticeably uneasy when asked how devout they were to Islam. A typical response: "I attend mosque when I have time," Khalaf said. "My philosophy is to be good, to live with others and to be equal with others."
"I don't drink alcohol or gamble," said Mesdaq, 32. "I go to mosque," but he emphasized: "I'm not a political Muslim. I'm a normal American. I like to drive nice cars, go out and have fun and dance. I'm very blessed."
El-Hibri says he attends mosque once a year. His mother is German and Catholic. He adopted the faith of his Lebanese father. Islam, Christianity and Judaism are essentially the same, El-Hibri says, with a "belief in one God, what's right and what's wrong. Do the best things in the eyes of God, that's most important."
That there are Muslims fighting terrorism comes as no surprise to Daniel Lubetzky, the Jewish CEO of Peaceworks, a New York company that fosters joint ventures in regions of conflict. For example, Peaceworks markets Meditalia food products made in cooperation among Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians and Turks; and Bali Spices made by Muslims, Buddhists and Christians working as partners in Indonesia.
Lubetzky finds that business leaders are usually moderates who see extremism as the enemy to solving poverty. The majority of Muslims have the most to lose from terrorism, because the moderates always pay for the backlash against the extremists, Lubetzky says. "Terrorists hurt their own people the most."
Making Afghanistan safer helps the USA
Mesdaq is the son of a brigadier general in the Afghani air force who immigrated to the USA as a 9-year-old after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. After the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent U.S. war in Afghanistan, he returned a year ago to his native country to visit family. He found a country with more than 500,000 vehicles and no efficient system of registration and licensing. SUVs with tinted windows and diplomatic plates from Iran, Pakistan and the former Soviet republics are everywhere, loaded with explosives or drugs and driven by warlords, he says.
Mesdaq had an idea for a registration system using license plates with holograms. The U.S. State Department approved his plan last month, and he says it will be launched this summer. A one-time registration fee of $ 100 a car will generate $ 50 million for the country.
Mesdaq says it's important that Afghanistan not become dependent on aid from the U.S. "They need to lift themselves if they love their country," he said.
Salloum is a former captain for the Italian merchant marine who left Lebanon at 17. He has lived in the USA since 1998 and is developing a tracking system that uses satellites to monitor U.S.-bound cargo.
Under the present system, if authorities become suspicious about U.S.-bound cargo, the U.S. Coast Guard boards the arriving ship six miles out at sea, checks the paperwork and, if necessary, examines individual crates. The Axiolog system aims to let enforcement agents worldwide use intelligence more efficiently to flag questionable shipments.
For example, a shipment of books might be inspected if Axiolog finds no record of that company ever receiving paper to publish books. Axiolog would allow such anomalies to be examined by computer while the cargo is en route, cutting down on expensive delays to legitimate shipments.
Such a system could prove invaluable. Even the threat of a dirty bomb could close the port of Los Angeles for a week. It would then take nearly two months to clear the backlog of incoming ships, economic terrorism that could cost billions of dollars.
El-Hibri says it's a myth that a belief in Islam interferes with being good in business. A study last year by Marcus Noland at the Institute for International Economics supports El-Hibri's position. Noland found no evidence that Islam was a drag on economic development in countries with large Muslim populations -- outside of oil-rich regions where extremist views often interfere with education.
"The Islamic religion promotes hard work and the idea that there's nothing wrong with being a financial success as long as you do it in an ethical and moral way," says El-Hibri, an avid polo player whose father's company built telecommunication networks in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Poland, Venezuela and El Salvador.
Khalaf, who took just 18 months to get a civil engineering degree from Wayne State University when he came to the USA in 1986, then earned an MBA from George Washington University, agrees that Muslim executives have their priorities straight.
"When you become an American citizen your priority is to protect Americans," he says.






  

 





 Nigerian province rejoins polio vaccination effort

 
The Nigerian province of Kano has agreed in principle to rejoin the global effort to eradicate polio, apparently ending a 10-month standoff that threatened the entire campaign, the World Health Organization said Monday.
The province's willingness to resume vaccinating was announced in Geneva during the first day of the World Health Assembly, the annual meeting of the WHO's governing body.
"The minister of health for Nigeria has told us that he believes by Friday the impasse will be resolved," Dr. David Heymann, chief of the polio campaign, said in an interview after the announcement. 
Nigeria now houses more than two-thirds of the remaining polio cases in the world. Kano, an Islamic province in the north near the Niger border, stopped vaccinating last August after rumors began to circulate that WHO-provided vaccine was contaminated.
Tests performed in several Muslim countries failed to find any contaminants. To solve the impasse, the Nigerian government agreed to buy fresh vaccine from a WHO-approved lab in Indonesia, a majority-Muslim nation. The Indonesian vaccine is expected to arrive in Kano this week, and vaccinations could begin next month, Heymann said.
During the Kano standoff, polio spread from that province to nine other countries in Africa that had already vanquished the disease. To deal with the new infections, Nigeria and 20 other central and West African countries will stage simultaneous massive vaccination campaigns in the autumn and into next spring, the WHO said. The campaigns will aim to vaccinate every child in each of the 21 countries several times.
The success of the 15-year, $3 billion campaign will be unclear until planners determine the disease has been eliminated from Africa, something that will not become clear until the middle of 2005.
"It could go either way right now," said Dr. Bruce Aylward, the WHO's coordinator for the eradication initiative. "There could never be another child infected . . . or we could see a tragic epidemic leaving thousands of children paralyzed."
ME: METRO VERSION LONGER







 


May 9, 2004 Sunday  




 War and Abuse Do Little Harm To U.S. Brands

 
When American troops moved into Iraq last year, European executives at the Ford Motor  braced for an adverse consumer reaction.
 ''Our sales and image and market share are things we monitor extremely closely,'' said Niel Golightly, a Ford spokesman in Cologne, Germany. ''So the potential fallout risk from Ford being perceived as a symbol of America's foreign policy is something we're always looking at.''
 But aside from a single incident at a dealership in Italy last year, the company has seen no evidence that widespread anti-Americanism abroad has been aimed at the well-known Ford brand. In Europe, Mr. Golightly said, Ford's market share has remained steady, and sales are expected to improve slightly this quarter. And the business outlook remains upbeat despite recent developments in Iraq, including the revelation of photographs depicting the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.  
 For a variety of reasons, American companies that sell globally say that they have so far experienced little if any disruption from discontent over the war in Iraq. For the most part, consumers around the world seem as likely to be influenced by economic conditions as by politics. And, in a display of the growing sophistication in marketing big American brands in global markets, many people see products originating from the United States as firmly rooted in their own home nations.
 Even Muslims in the Middle East and Southeast Asia do not seem to translate their anger into a boycott of American products. For example, as Hidayat bin Ismail, 19, emerged Friday from midday prayers at the Sultan Mosque in Singapore, he acknowledged that he was still patronizing places like McDonald's and KFC even after seeing the pictures of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.
 ''When Americans do these things, I don't think all Americans are bad,'' he said. ''And if one Muslim is bad, it doesn't mean all Muslims are bad either.''
 Still, while there are few signs that goods and services clearly identified with the United States are being shunned overseas, that has not prevented American companies from worrying that their products might eventually become a bigger target for dissatisfaction with the Bush administration's conduct in Iraq. 
 ''We're more concerned at the moment with higher taxes than with anti-Americanism,'' said Fred Irwin, president of the American Chamber of Commerce here in Frankfurt. ''That said, there's always a cloud over industry if political issues are left unattended. You have to remain vigilant about reminding people that politics is different from business.''
 That message sometimes falls on deaf ears. When Heiko Muller sought a way to display his opposition to the United States occupation of Iraq, he decided there was only one way to show he meant business. He canceled his orders with Americans.
 As an owner of Riese und Muller, a bicycle manufacturer near here, Mr. Muller responded last year to the invasion of Iraq by canceling orders to American suppliers for brakes and gears worth nearly $400,000. 
 ''The only thing we could do as a company was to hit the Americans where it hurt, in their pocketbook,'' Mr. Muller said. ''Everything that is happening in Iraq tells me our decision was justified.'' 
 Some places are more prone to outbursts. In Argentina, Quebracho, a small nationalist organization, has temporarily taken over a few branches operated by some American banks. Quebracho members demonstrated in March on the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq; a Citibank branch in downtown Buenos Aires was vandalized in the protest.
 In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, Remy Sjahdeini, a prominent lawyer in Jakarta, expressed surprise that there had been no response to what he called the ''disgusting'' behavior toward Iraqi prisoners. He said the public, particularly the politically vocal student population, was preoccupied with the nation's election campaign. 
 Companies that have been operating internationally for decades seem relatively immune to anti-American attitudes, in part perhaps because they avoid being perceived as particularly American. 
 At many longtime multinational companies, executives say they always try to give their products, marketing and image the unique flavor of the locality where they operate. Other companies try to blend in by maintaining a geographically generic image, so they are not associated with any one country or culture. 
 Eastman Kodak is a prime example of the first approach. Kodak's sales in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, a region it treats as one entity for reporting purposes, have been rising lately, gaining 14 percent in the first quarter of this year over the corresponding quarter in 2003. 
 ''I'm not aware of any effect on our business from current attitudes towards America,'' said Gerard Muechner, a Kodak spokesman. 
 Kodak attributes the marked lack of hostility to the pains it has taken to cater to local tastes and sensibilities. Its self-service kiosks in the United States are generally tall and boxy; in China, they are much smaller and shaped almost like arched parabolas, a shape that fits more easily into Chinese stores, and is more aesthetically pleasing to the Chinese eye.
 Even McDonald's, one of the most vivid symbols of the United States abroad, has sought to emphasize how locally integrated it has become. McDonald's, one of the largest private-sector employers in Brazil, is sometimes the target of taunts in left-wing demonstrations on Avenida Paulista, one of Sao Paulo's main streets, but it is also common to see demonstrators eating at McDonald's after the rallies. 
 Such feelings about McDonald's were echoed in Asia and Europe. ''We've been in Japan more than 30 years and all of our employees are Japanese,'' said Tatsuyuki Kanari, a McDonald's Japan spokesman. 
 Similarly, Ricarda Ruecker, a spokeswoman for McDonald's Germany in Munich, noted, ''Two-thirds of our stores are owned and operated by German entrepreneurs so we try to remind people that hurting McDonald's is like hurting fellow citizens in Germany.'' 
 For the most part, boycotts announced against American products last year have fizzled out.
 When the United States was preparing to invade Iraq last year, the Muslim Consumer Association of Malaysia called for a boycott of Coca-Cola, and there was a flurry of news media reports on the sudden popularity of local brands of cola.
 But Marimuthu Nadason, secretary general of the Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations, said that boycott was ignored by most of the public. The latest news from Iraq had done little to diminish Malaysian's taste for American imports. ''Anyone can call for a boycott,'' he said, ''but it won't work.''







 
  

  

MAY 7, 2004 Friday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Senate OKs bill to aid kin
of disabled children
* Hundreds of thousands of middle-income families with disabled children would be eligible for Medicaid under legislation that passed the Senate on a voice vote yesterday. The bill is designed to address the dilemma faced by parents who have to turn down jobs or raises and, in some cases, give up custody of their disabled children to continue receiving government-paid health care. The House has not acted on it.
Lesbian partner of victim
in 9/11 gets aid from U.S.
* The partner of a gay woman killed in the Sept. 11 attacks has been awarded money by the government's compensation fund, the first such award to a same-sex survivor who was not a legal heir, her attorney said yesterday. Compensation was paid this week to Nancy Walsh, a New Hampshire nurse whose partner, Carol Flyzik, was a passenger on a Los Angeles-bound jet that hit the World Trade Center, lawyer Jennifer Levi said. 
Nichols juror is replaced
after a heart attack
* A juror in the trial of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols had a heart attack before arriving in court in McAlester, Okla., and was replaced by an alternate. Judge Steven Taylor said the man was hospitalized and was expected to fully recover. A female alternate took his place, leaving two alternates. The jury has six women and six men.
Actress was killed by gun
in mouth, coroner says
* An actress killed at music producer Phil Spector's home near Los Angeles was shot with a gun inside her mouth and had gunshot residue on both hands, indicating she may have fired the weapon, according to a coroner's report. The forensic analysis involving the .38-caliber Colt revolver was prepared four days after the Feb. 3, 2003, death of Lana Clarkson at the home of Spector, who has been charged with murder and is free on $1 million bail.
Tombstone of victim
of dragging is vandalized
* The tombstone of a Texas black man who was dragged to his death in 1998 was found broken, with an obscenity and racial epithet carved into a metal plate on the bottom of the stone, police said yesterday. Two people at the Jasper City Cemetery tending to a relative's gravesite noticed the damage to the stone on the grave of James Byrd Jr., police said.
U.S.: Freeze assets
of three Bosnian charities
* The Bush administration ordered banks yesterday to freeze any assets found in the United States belonging to three Bosnian charities accused of diverting contributions to help finance al-Qaeda activities. The charities are Al Furqan, Al Haramain & Al Masjed Al-Aqsa Charity Foundation, and the Bosnian branch of Taibah International, the Treasury Department said.
In the World
630 corpses reported
in Nigerian attack
* A Muslim community leader in the central Nigerian town of Yelwa said yesterday that 630 corpses had been buried after an attack Sunday by Christian militiamen, and survivors said the final death toll could reach 1,000. Police have spoken only of "hundreds" killed in the attack, but access to the remote town has been limited because of the threat of reprisals. The conflict between Christian Tarok and Muslim Fulani has been fueled by disputes over land and religious differences.
In drug case reaching Colombia, U.S. indicts 9
* Nine reputed leaders of Colombia's largest drug cartel have been indicted on charges their organization smuggled more than $10 billion worth of cocaine into the United States, federal officials announced yesterday in Washington. Only one is in U.S. custody. The others remain at large.
Buckingham Palace gets new chief of security
* Buckingham Palace appointed a new security chief yesterday as a report commissioned by the British government warned that extremists could exploit the lax security surrounding the royal family. Palace officials said Brig. Jeffrey Cook, 49, a retired army officer, began work this week as director of security liaison. Cook formerly was responsible for training army recruits.
Indonesia's chief puts
top Muslim on ticket
* Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri said yesterday that she had chosen the leader of the country's largest Muslim group as her vice presidential running mate for the July 5 election. The choice of Hasyim Muzadi, chairman of the 40 million-member Nahdlatul Ulama, was seen as an effort to boost her popularity after her party lost ground in the April 5 parliamentary election.
Pope to U.S. bishops: Train seminarians on chastity
* Pope John Paul II told visiting U.S. bishops yesterday they should pay closer attention to educating seminarians on chastity, celibacy and theology. He urged bishops from Michigan and Ohio to visit seminaries to make sure they are producing "mature and balanced" priests.







 


May 6, 2004 Thursday



 War between Muslims threatens us all

 
   Some people argue that the war on terrorism is a war between Islam and Christianity. But actually, the war that will do much to determine the future of terrorism is the war between Islamic extremists and Islamic moderates.
This is a war of worldwide scope, played out not only in the Middle East but in lands from Indonesia to Pakistan, and such European countries as Spain and France and Germany, where sizable Muslim communities are beset by rising Islamic radicalism.
The United States, primary target of Islamic terrorism, has a major stake in the outcome of this war. If moderation is the victor, political and economic freedom will flourish, and extremism will wither. If moderation does not prevail, terrorism will become emboldened and even more dangerous. 
The United States cannot stand aloof from this civil war between Muslims. One of its principal weapons in aiding the moderate cause is public diplomacy, our bureaucratic term for better explaining U.S. motives, policies and democratic ideals to an often skeptical audience.
Public diplomacy is currently not going well for the United States, partly because of such horrors as the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some American soldiers but also because it is not getting the attention or the resources that it needs.
It took a further hit last week when Margaret Tutwiler, the seasoned public affairs specialist and diplomat brought in to head public diplomacy at the State Department, announced her pending departure June 30. Tutwiler followed the short-lived tenure in that job by Charlotte Beers, a New York advertising executive.
Tutwiler's resignation will mean another time-consuming managerial restructuring in the midst of all the uncertainties of a presidential election.
There are, however, a couple of relatively immediate opportunities for action on the public diplomacy front.
First, in Iraq, ambassador John Negroponte is about to preside over a new American embassy in Baghdad.
It may have a staff as big as 5,000. That will mean political officers and economic specialists and military attaches and a host of other advisers and operatives. Let us hope that several hundreds of them will be public affairs veterans familiar with the culture of Iraq, comfortable in the language -- experts at working with media, who can engage Iraqis in constructive dialogue.
Second, the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington will soon make recommendations for more effective ways of dealing with terrorism.
They ought to make a strong pitch for funding and attention to public diplomacy that would counter the negative image of America promoted by radical Islam. Military readiness, improved intelligence, home defense, are all areas for discussion as we look to cope with the current threat.
But of equal concern for us in the Islamic world should be the generation-in-waiting whose views of the West are yet to be formed.
They deserve to learn about America with an open mind, not through a hate-clouded lens.
In the Cold War era, the United States Information Agency did a yeoman job of telling America's story abroad. Its magazines, in many languages, reached masses. Its broadcasts penetrated areas where truthful information was little known. Its public affairs officers, stationed in capitals around the world, engaged in discussion with local journalists, parliamentarians and university professors. Its libraries of American books and films were packed with curious students. Exchanges brought prominent Americans to these countries, and community leaders from them were sent to the United States to learn about Americans as they really are. Many world leaders got their first impression of America on such exchange programs.
As the Cold War wound down, so did congressional support and funding for USIA.
Finally it was dismantled in 1999, its few remaining components subsumed under the State Department.
With increasing foreign hostility to the United States lately, the need for USIA's discarded skills has become evident. In addition to brave soldiers and dedicated aid workers, we need public diplomacy "boots on the ground" practitioners who can wage a campaign of words and ideas with inquiring listeners. We need funding for increased broadcasting, especially television, in targeted countries. We need a resumption of large-scale exchange programs.
Even with the need for vigilance against terrorism, we need to restore the flow of foreign students to American universities, which is in sharp decline. Public support and private-sector funding for some of these programs is there.
If it is politically unfeasible to revive the agency itself, it should not be impossible to create a structure that would replicate many of its functions. The challenges of the day demand it. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He was associate director of USIA and director of the Voice of America in the Reagan administration. He also is a former editor of the , which syndicates this column. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com







 


May 6, 2004 Thursday 
  




 For Technology, No Small World After All

 
OVER the last two years, Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist employed by Intel Research, has visited 100 households in 19 cities in seven countries in Asia and the Pacific to study how people use technology. Twenty gigabytes of digital photos later -- along with 206,000 air miles, 19 field notebooks, two camera batteries, five umbrellas, three hats, two doses of antimalarial drugs and one pair of her favorite sandals -- she has come back with some provocative questions about technology, culture and design.
 Some of what she learned in the field will be folded into Intel's design process, passed on to industrial designers and engineers and perhaps eventually embodied in a device. But many of Dr. Bell's findings also raise deep questions about the meaning of technology in an interconnected world. 
  Her fieldwork project began four years ago with the insight that Intel might have a misconception about the potential users of its products elsewhere in the world. ''We thought, there's a group of people just like us all over the world who will buy the technology and have it fill the same values in their lives,'' Dr. Bell said. ''I was fairly certain that wasn't going to be the case. I'm an anthropologist. Culture matters.'' 
 Dr. Bell, 37, who received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford with a dissertation on American Indian boarding schools, joined Intel in 1998. She is working on a book for M.I.T. Press about her Asian research. 
 Her project sent her to seven countries: India, China, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, and Australia. She found that in some places, ''it's harder for some forms of technology to get over the threshold of the home'' -- not simply for economic reasons but for religious ones as well. 
 For example, she said, values of humility and simplicity may make technology less welcome in some Hindu homes in India or some Muslim homes in Malaysia and Indonesia. ''If part of the value of the home is this space of purity that's protected from the pollutedness of the world, a place where you express values like simplicity, humility, modesty, grace,'' Dr. Bell said, ''that becomes a barrier to adopting some technologies.''
 She also pointed out that most American homes have space for leisure activities, and often that space is private. By contrast, Japan's tighter quarters afford little privacy, which may account for the attraction of young people there to text-messaging over mobile phones. 
 Even the reliability of power may be an American assumption to be overcome: in Malaysia, power surges caused by monsoons can fry computer motherboards.
 Such insights challenged Intel's vision of a world of ''smart homes'' and a chip-driven lifestyle, Dr. Bell said, which assumes that users are secular. In those visions, there's no point at which residents stop to pray, visit a church, or have a moment of internal reflection. All this prompted her to ask David Tanenhaus, Intel's vice president of research: ''What if our vision of ubiquitous computing is so secular, so profoundly embedded in a set of Western discourses, that we've created a vision of the world that shuts out a percentage of people in a way we can't really even begin to articulate?''
 Intel is not alone in wanting to know more about values and habits in emerging markets. ''Over the last 18 months we've seen more interest in doing international and intercultural research in design for products,'' says Mike Kuniavsky, a principal with Adaptive Path, a San Francisco-based consulting firm that works with international clients like Peoplesoft, a major business-software company.
 For instance, the Korean electronics company LGE has introduced a mobile phone with an embedded compass to allow Muslim users to locate the direction of Mecca using Global Positioning System technology. Myung Whoon Lee, a senior LGE designer, said the company sought to design something ''whose concept is reflected in the situation or culture of its actual place.'' 
 In the past, marketing teams might have been given the task of making a product cross-culturally palatable. Increasingly, however, culture is taken into account earlier, at the design stage. 
 For its part, Intel relies on a cycle of design that begins with high-level prognostication about potential markets. Then ethnographers like Dr. Bell and market researchers are sent to meet those people. The resulting information is incorporated into portraits of individual users. These portraits, called personas, describe a person's life.
 ''This personifies something that otherwise looks like an aggregate of people,'' explained Herman D'Hooge, Intel's innovation strategist, who is in charge of acting on insights like Dr. Bell's.
 One such ''persona'' that Dr. Bell produced in China describes ''Sally Lu,'' a 25-year-old woman living in Shanghai -- a day in her life, her activities and concerns, her attitudes about technology. ''She thinks that new high-tech products must not be too expensive, and the functions don't need to be too fancy,'' like cellphones with video screens, the document says. ''As long as it fulfills basic functions and is easy to operate, people will like it and buy it.'' 
 These personas become tools to help industrial designers and engineers understand how users think about products. The challenge, Mr. D'Hooge said, is to keep the element of innovation open for as long as possible in this process. By understanding their users, they hope to produce radically innovative concept devices for little risk.
 For Intel, a first iteration of this user-centered design cycle yielded a combination PC-entertainment center for use by people in small living spaces, while the second resulted in a PC-like device intended for Chinese users who could not afford a full-size machine. (This concept device has not yet been released.)
 Dr. Bell recognizes that translating her ideas into products is difficult. 
 ''These things are interesting as a design brief,'' she said. ''They're really hard as a product challenge.'' She said that technology companies like Intel should nevertheless be willing to consider information that challenges the grander visions of technology. This involves challenging some Western cultural assumptions about digital technology.
 ''I think I would like to imagine that I am doing the thing that all anthropologists do,'' she said, ''asking these harder questions about what is real and true.''


CORRECTION-DATE: May 7, 2004

 CORRECTION:
An article in Circuits yesterday about an anthropologist's work for Intel on the use of technology in other cultures misspelled the surname of the company's vice president for research. He is David Tennenhouse, not Tanenhaus. 






 
  

  

MAY 2, 2004 Sunday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Flooding in northern Texas results in five deaths
* Two toddlers swept away in a stalled car were found dead yesterday, bringing to five the number of people killed in northern Texas floods during weekend storms. Police said the children were in their father's car, which was swept away in the early morning hours yesterday after it stalled on a bridge in Corsicana. In Fort Worth, a woman and her 2-year-old son died Friday night when she tried to drive across a flooded road. The body of a man whose vehicle was swept against a guard rail by rising waters also was found yesterday. 
Supreme Court justice
is attacked while jogging
* Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter suffered minor injuries when a group of young men assaulted him Friday night as he jogged on a Washington street, a court spokeswoman said yesterday. Supreme Court police took Souter, 64, to a Washington hospital, where he was examined and released. Souter, who was not robbed, was running alone when he was attacked. He lives in a neighborhood not far from the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill, but it was unclear whether the assault occurred near his home.
Wis. priest gets 15 years for sexually abusing boys
* A Roman Catholic priest convicted in Appleton, Wis., of sexually abusing two brothers at their home in 1978 was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison. The Rev. John Patrick Feeney, 77, was convicted in February. Bishop David Zubik said the Green Bay Diocese would remove Feeney from the clergy.
President of Notre Dame
to step down after 18 years
* The Rev. Edward A. Malloy has announced he will retire next year after 18 years as president of the University of Notre Dame. Malloy, 62, plans to step down in June 2005 and take a sabbatical, then resume teaching, writing and preaching. Malloy will be succeeded by the Rev. John I. Jenkins, a university vice president for four years.
Former legislator makes bid for old Ga. seat
* Cynthia McKinney, the former U.S. House legislator from Georgia who was defeated after accusing President Bush of ignoring warnings of the 9/11 attacks, has qualified to seek her old seat. The incumbent, Democrat Denise Majette, defeated McKinney, also a Democrat, two years ago but now is running for the U.S. Senate seat to replace retiring Democrat Zell Miller. Several other Democrats also are running in the July 20 primary, including former Atlanta City Council President Cathy Woolard.
Photos of boy with pot pipe prompt Ky. couple's arrests
* A Bardstown, Ky., man and woman were arrested after an employee at a photo lab saw pictures of a toddler posing with a pot pipe. John R. Gray, 20, and Elizabeth Lyvers, 24, were charged with first-degree unlawful transaction with a minor, a felony. Police also charged Gray with one count of marijuana possession and one count of possession of drug paraphernalia. The boy and the couple's 1-year-old child were taken by social service workers.
In the World
Two Canadians, American die in blaze at Rome hotel
* A fire ripped through one of Rome's most prestigious hotels early yesterday, killing a Canadian couple and a man from the United States, a spokesman for the city's fire service said. James Lowry, 58, of Georgia, plunged to his death from one of the balconies of the six-story Hotel Parco dei Principi ai Parioli as he tried to escape the flames by climbing down a rope made of pillowcases tied together. Paul Emile Busque, 64, and his wife, Bernice Marie, 61, of Lac-Frontiere, Quebec, died of smoke inhalation in their suite. Pro tennis stars Andy Roddick and Marat Safin were among those evacuated from the hotel; neither was injured.
Pakistan's army releases
78 Pakistani, Afghan men
* The Pakistani army yesterday released 78 Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen arrested during a recent counterterrorism operation near the Afghan border. Local official Hamayun Khan said the men were allowed to return to their homes in the South Waziristan tribal area after investigators declared them innocent. In all, 141 of the 163 Pakistani and foreign suspects captured during the March 16-18 operation in the region have been released.
Morocco arrests 3 men over Casablanca attacks
* Moroccan security forces seized three men yesterday in connection with suicide bombings that killed 42 people in Casablanca a year ago, the official MAP news agency said. The men were injured in an exchange of gunfire and arrested during an overnight police raid on a house on the southern outskirts of Casablanca. One of those held was Abdelmalek Bouzgarene, 27, believed to be a top planner of the Casablanca attacks.
Indonesian police, bombing suspect's supporters clash
* Indonesian police fired warning shots into the air and clashed with supporters of Muslim preacher and bombing suspect Abu Bakar Bashir in the eastern port city of Makassar yesterday, injuring dozens. It was the second day of violence following Bashir's arrest on Friday for suspected links to the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.
22 people drown after boat sinks off Vietnam coast
* Authorities have recovered 22 bodies, including that of an 8-year-old boy, after a tourist boat carrying about 130 passengers sank off the coast of southern Vietnam, police said yesterday. The boat, carrying students and tourists to Hon Khoai island, sank Friday afternoon off Ca Mau province. About a dozen people are still missing; 92 were rescued.
Explosion at coal mine kills
35 workers in north China
* An explosion in a coal mine in northern China killed 35 miners, state media and a local official said yesterday. The blast early Friday ripped through the government-owned mine in Linfen, a city in Shanxi province, about 380 miles southwest of Beijing, the Xinhua news agency reported.







 


May 1, 2004 Saturday



 Bridging the gap between Muslims and the West

 
Part one of a two-part series.  
As an American-born convert to Islam, I find myself in an increasingly frustrating position.  I spend a lot of time trying to explain -- to diverse parties -- both my religion and my country.  
Islam is the second-largest religion in the world. It is therefore shocking how very little is known about our religion here in the West. Muslims can share the blame for this lack of understanding, because we tend to keep to ourselves. The majority of Muslims in the United States are first-generation immigrants. America is a new world to them, and they have come here to make a life for themselves and their families. With the concerns of earning a living, family life, religion and orienting themselves to the language and culture, not much time is left for public relations.  
The time has come, however, for Muslims to break out of our shells. We need to open ourselves up to our communities and take part in local charities, voting and social events. Muslims need to be a part of the American system, be proud of our culture and heritage and share it with fellow Americans rather than hide away in our suburban homes and let the corrupt leaders of Muslim countries, or the terrorism of the extreme fringe, speak for us.   
Not all blame rests with the Muslim population, though. Most non-Muslim Americans would be hard-pressed if you asked them to name one positive aspect of Islam.  The media rarely portrays the beautiful, extensive celebrations; the rich heritage of art and science, or the scenic beauty of these varied and distant lands. We don't see pictures of close-knit Muslim communities from Pakistan, Morocco, Indonesia or other countries where Muslims are a majority: the traditions, the weddings, the grieving upon the passing of a loved one.  
In the West, we only see burning buildings, angry men in turbans and social upheaval. We're shown footage of people with anti-American banners and pictures of our president spray-painted to look like the devil. In the West, we see women with no rights and men justifying violence with holy words.    
Many Americans don't understand Islam, because they have failed to learn what Islam really is: a religion that transformed a primitive people into scientists, architects and scholars. It is a religion of simplicity, of peace, of submission to one God. Islam gave the warring tribes of Arabia a common goal. It benefited women by (among other things) guaranteeing the right to divorce with alimony, to own property and to receive inheritance, centuries before these concepts were accepted in the West. It taught us that all people are equal and deserve respect and an opportunity to live in freedom and worship God without being forced or oppressed or made to follow a certain dogma. Islam gave its followers the Quran--a book of law and lore written in such exquisite poetry and prose that the listener is often moved to tears when it is recited.  
Non-Muslims often lump Muslims into one category. Very few realize that the differences between Muslims from different parts of the world and in different sects are vast. The country with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia. The sixth-largest population of Muslims in the world resides in China -- twice as many as those in Saudi Arabia. The great irony is that the word "Islam" means "peaceful submission" in Arabic. The great majority of Muslims are moderates working for peaceful and happy lives. Nevertheless, in the West, Muslims are often depicted as violent, misogynistic, and terroristic.  The peaceful lives of the moderates are ignored.  
I tell my non-Muslim friends these things. They say they understand, but I fear the prejudice is so deeply ingrained that it is not even conscious on their part. 
And what of my immigrant friends? Those who have come from other places to make a life here in the "land of opportunity"? Despite the fact that many admit that their lives here are of a higher quality, they refer to America as a huge, faceless government, taunting them with deportation while taking their taxes.   
They stay in their homes and rarely socialize with Americans, but judge them and their "system" as corrupt and dismiss it as money-driven. Many immigrants I know can count on one hand the number of times an American has been inside their home. They feel that they are the victims, both of their own country's social deficiencies and of the American juggernaut. They know that Americans don't understand them, yet they have no desire to change the perception by becoming involved in their community. America is not the paradise that we Muslims seek, despite the great benefits and general ease of living here. As most Muslims (and very few Westerners) know, the world "jihad" literally means "to struggle."  This is the American Muslim's jihad:  the struggle to promote our faith in the face of both extremist violence and general mistrust by our neighbors, our community, our government. We must counteract the evil done in the name of our religion with good works, with prominent peace. 
Amanda Quraishi worships at The Islamic Center of Greater Austin and serves on the board of Austin Area Interreligious Ministries. Learn more about them at aaimaustin.org. 







 



May 1, 2004 Saturday  




 Indonesia Touts Evidence Against Cleric; 
Report Said to Link Him to Al Qaeda Prompts New Arrest on Departure From Prison

 
 The new arrest of radical cleric Abubakar Baasyir on Friday was based on what the government described as solid evidence he was the leader of a terrorist organization linked to al Qaeda. 
Police stopped Baasyir and told him he was under arrest on suspicion of terrorism as he headed through the gate in the thick stone walls of Jakarta's Salemba prison at the end of his 18-month sentence on immigration and forgery charges. 
  Central to the new case against him is a report, addressed to Baasyir as commander of the Jemaah Islamiah underground, which details the military training provided to recruits at a secret jungle camp in the southern Philippines.  
The cover sheet, obtained by , indicates that the report was sent to Sheik Abdush Shomad, Baasyir's longtime alias, from the regional command of Jemaah Islamiah's Hudaibiyah Camp. It identifies Abdush Shomad as the emir, or chief commander, of Jemaah Islamiah.  
 Although investigators claim they finally have a solid case, Indonesian officials acknowledge that public sentiment in favor of Baasyir, 66, has never been greater. Prominent Muslim clerics and politicians, most recently the country's popular televangelist Abdullah Gymnastiar, have streamed through Salemba prison to demonstrate their solidarity with Baasyir, who held court for supporters each afternoon in his private corner of the yard. 
 They accuse police of reopening the investigation because of U.S. pressure, noting that Indonesian judges rejected prosecutors' efforts to prove Baasyir headed Jemaah Islamiah at a trial last year. The allegations tap into anti-American anger at a time when U.S. standing in Indonesia is low because of the occupation of Iraq. 
 "The Bush administration has a project to destroy Islam and to control Islam in Indonesia," Baasyir said during an interview at the prison conducted shortly before he was released and re-arrested. "I am a person who struggles constantly for Islam. I want to implement Islamic law here, and Bush just doesn't like it." 
 Suspicions about U.S. pressure were fueled last month by a moderate Muslim leader, Ahmad Syafii Maarif, head of the 30-million- member Muhammadiyah movement. Maarif wrote a newspaper column alleging that U.S. Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce privately asked him to intervene with the Indonesian supreme court to keep Baasyir in prison. 
 U.S. Embassy officials have declined to say much  about the case, worried that any comment would only aggravate popular discontent further. Western diplomats confirmed that Boyce spoke with Maarif about Baasyir but said the issue of the supreme court did not come up. 
 In his previous trial, Baasyir was prosecuted for treason and immigration violations. The treason charges were dismissed, causing consternation among police, and the original sentence was sharply reduced on appeal.  
This time, police and security officials said they would demonstrate that Baasyir both headed a terrorist organization and approved specific terrorist acts, in particular the bombing of two Bali nightclubs in 2002, which killed 202 people, most of whom were foreign tourists. 
 "We are more optimistic than before because the police now have strong evidence of Abubakar Baasyir's involvement in terrorism. We didn't have that evidence when his first trial was going on," said Ansyaad Mbai, counterterrorism coordinator in the security ministry. 
 Baasyir, who denies he is the head of Jemaah Islamiah, said he would not cooperate with a police investigation that he called unjust. 
 "If at the end the court says I'm guilty, it's only because the whole legal process is fabricated and stage-managed," he said, seated cross-legged in the prison yard dressed in a white shirt and red-and-black sarong, freshly washed by a fellow inmate who did Baasyir's laundry and cooking. 
 Though Baasyir demanded to be released, he said with a laugh that his time beneath the red tile roof of Salemba prison had not been unpleasant. He said he had a well-maintained cell with a private bathroom and a door that was never locked.  
He gave religious lectures to about 60 inmates nearly every day and was able to keep up with outside developments on a television that he rented from another prisoner for about 15 dollars a month. Prison regulations ban inmates from using mobile phones but Baasyir said guards allowed him to continue using one to remain in touch with his supporters. 
 Baasyir said in the interview he did not personally approve of the Bali bombings but would not fault the militants responsible for the attack. 
 "It is up to God to decide what they did was right or wrong, but they are not terrorists," he said. "In terms of intention, what they did was good because they wanted to defend Islam." 
   But at least three Jemaah Islamiah suspects questioned by police in Indonesia and Malaysia have confirmed that Baasyir attended an April 2000 graduation ceremony at the training camp in the southern Philippines, according to Indonesian security officials and suspected militants. 
 One  Jemaah Islamiah suspect now in prison confirmed in an interview this week that an operative known as Mustofa, the regional commander for the organization, had invited Baasyir to the ceremony at the Hudaibiyah camp. 
 Mustofa was also the chief author of the report addressed to Baasyir on military training, according to security and Jemaah Islamiah sources. 
 The report, reviewed by , has 10 chapters, is dated March 31, 2000, and is written in Indonesian and Arabic. It lists students who underwent training and records their scores in various activities, including the use of weapons, making explosives, map reading, and infantry tactics. It even specifies the type of weapons and ammunition used. 
 Though most of the students appeared to be from Southeast Asia, a few were from Britain and Australia, according to the report. After completing the course, graduates were assigned to find recruits in Indonesia, help Muslim fighters in the Philippines or remain in the camp as trainers. 
 Some of the trainers were veterans of another militant academy located in Pakistan on the Afghan border and run by the Ittihad Islami militia of Abdul Rasool Sayyaf, who had close ties with Osama bin Laden, according to  Muhammad Saifudin, an Indonesian extremist who was interviewed in prison. Police said their interrogation of Jemaah Islamiah suspects showed that Baasyir  had a warm relationship with bin Laden. 
 U.S. officials have provided Indonesian police with information about Jemaah Islamiah activities throughout the region and have helped local investigators analyze the data, Western diplomats said.  
The U.S. government has also given Indonesia more than 100 intelligence reports based on the interrogation of Hambali, whose real name is Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin and who was Jemaah Islamiah's chief strategist until his capture in Thailand last August. But these reports are not admissible in court, and officials said Hambali, now in U.S. custody, will not be allowed to testify. 
Correspondent Ellen Nakashima and special correspondents Natasha Tampubolon and Noor Huda Ismail in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report. 






 
  


April 30, 2004 Friday 



 WESTERN NATIONS VOW TO FIGHT HATE CRIMES

 
BERLIN -- Western nations pledged Thursday to fight "new forms" of anti-Semitism, rejecting any attempt to use the strife in the Middle East as a justification for hate crimes against Jews. At a two-day meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 55 countries unanimously adopted a declaration that condemned anti-Semitism and all forms of religious and racial intolerance. The "Berlin Declaration" commits governments to collect and submit reliable information about anti-Semitic and other hate crimes. The OSCE includes the United States, Canada and countries across Europe. The conference declared "unambiguously that international developments or political issues, including those in Israel or elsewhere in the Middle East, never justify anti-Semitism." That was as close as the declaration came to meeting Jewish organizations' demand that the conference point a finger at extremist Muslim groups whom they blame for the increased attacks on Jews and other anti-Semitic acts.
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/news and click on Nation/World. 
Soyuz craft returns from space station
KOSTANAI, Kazakhstan -- A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a U.S.-Russian-Dutch crew returned to Earth early today from the international space station, landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan. The snug capsule carried American astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, who spent six months on the space station, and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands, returning after a nine-day mission on the craft. Shortly before the landing, Russian space officials said they had been in radio contact with the crew, and all three were feeling fine.
Mother in C-section case gets probation
SALT LAKE CITY -- A woman originally charged with murder for allegedly delaying a Caesarean section that could have saved one of her twins was sentenced Thursday to 18 months' probation for lesser counts of child endangerment. Melissa Ann Rowland also was ordered into a drug treatment program, which she will attend in Indiana, said her attorney, Michael Sikora. Prosecutors dropped their capital murder charge against Rowland earlier this month based on her mental health history. Rowland pleaded guilty to two counts of child endangerment and admitted using cocaine in the weeks before she underwent the C-section in January that produced a stillborn boy. Rowland was first institutionalized for mental disorders when she was 12. The surviving twin, a girl, was adopted.
Indonesia re-arrests cleric in bombings
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Police today re-arrested a militant cleric who allegedly heads the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group, whisking him away for questioning about a series of deadly bombings. Indonesian authorities said this week that Abu Bakar Bashir would be freed today after serving an 18-month term for minor immigration offenses. Dozens of his supporters yelled and tossed bottles as he was led away. Police responded by spraying them with water cannons and tear gas. A number of Indonesian Muslim leaders have also pleaded for his release. But Indonesian authorities ay they now have reams of documents linking Bashir to the group.
China confirms two more SARS cases
BEIJING -- As China confirmed two more SARS cases Thursday, the World Health Organization called for reducing the number of virus samples around the globe to prevent laboratory infections like the one apparently responsible for China's latest outbreak. The mother and aunt of an infected nurse are the latest confirmed SARS cases, the Ministry of Health said. They previously were listed as suspected cases. China's number of cases now stands at four confirmed and five suspected. Quarantines continued for about 1,000 people who came into contact with the confirmed SARS cases, official media said.
Student cheating prevalent, poll finds
WASHINGTON -- More than seven in 10 teenagers say students in their school cheat on tests, and almost as many say cheating on homework is widespread, too, a national poll finds. Almost a third of students admit to cheating, according to the ABC News Primetime poll of kids age 12 to 17. Older teens were most likely to be involved in cheating. More than two in 10 students age 12 to 14 say they've cheated; the number rose to more than 4 in 10 among students age 16 and 17. Two in three students said at least some students at their school have handed in homework or papers not their own, such as work copied from another student or downloaded from the Internet. The telephone poll of a random sample of 504 students was conducted Feb. 4 to 8. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
Panel OKs bill on defense for airliners
WASHINGTON -- A House panel approved a bill Thursday that is intended to counter the threat of shoulder-fired missiles to American airliners by speeding the development of defense systems. The subcommittee chairman noted that Israel is installing anti-missile devices on its commercial airliners. The United States, though, faces a bigger challenge because it has far more aircraft, said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla. The bill would require the Federal Aviation Administration to expedite approval of missile defense systems. The Air Transport Association said Wednesday that the cost of outfitting the commercial aviation fleet -- about 6,800 planes -- with missile defenses would be between $50 billion and $100 billion over 20 years.
Threat to mall in Los Angeles probed
LOS ANGELES -- Police beefed up patrols at shopping malls Thursday as a terrorism task force investigated an "uncorroborated" threat, and federal officials say an attack may have been planned for Thursday. No specific mall was named, but an anonymous call to federal officials several days ago indicated a mall near the Federal Building in West Los Angeles, Police Chief William Bratton said. The warning was analyzed for several days along with other information that Bratton declined to specify. Malls were notified and police were placed on citywide alert.






  
  


April 30, 2004, Friday



 WORLD WATCH -- ASIA/PACIFIC: INDONESIA TO RE-ARREST MUSLIM CLERIC BAASYIR






 
  

  

APRIL 28, 2004 Wednesday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Son wins trial in bid to end jailed father's parent rights
* A 14-year-old boy yesterday won the right to go to trial in Massachusetts in his two-year battle to end his father's parental rights after the man killed the boy's mother in 1998. A judge in Norfolk County set a trial for July to decide the petition by Patrick Holland, who now lives in New Hampshire with Ron and Rita Lazisky, his mother's best friends. Daniel Holland is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole in Massachusetts for murdering Elizabeth Holland.
Ex-congressman charged
in Okla. crash that killed 2
* Former U.S. Rep. Wes Watkins of Oklahoma was charged yesterday with two counts of negligent homicide for a traffic accident near Stillwater that killed a couple. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol concluded inattentive driving by Watkins, 65, caused the April 19 crash that killed Brian Cullen, 32, and Ardith Cullen, 34. Negligent homicide can carry a maximum of one year in the county jail, but the prosecutor said in such cases, someone with a clean record would often get probation. 
Bush aide rejects criticism of her abortion comments
* Presidential adviser Karen Hughes yesterday rejected criticism that she had compared participants in Sunday's abortion-rights march in Washington to terrorists, calling that interpretation "a gross distortion" of her remarks. Hughes' comments, made during an interview Sunday on CNN as the march was forming, drew criticism yesterday from abortion-rights groups and eight Democratic lawmakers, who demanded that she apologize.
Conviction tossed in death
of 'Killing Fields' actor
* A federal judge in Los Angeles has overturned the conviction of a man found guilty of the 1996 killing of Haing Ngor, who won an Oscar as best supporting actor in The Killing Fields. The judge agreed that the prosecutor in Tak Sun Tan's trial misrepresented evidence and played on jurors' emotions by stressing the hardships faced by Ngor, a doctor who lived through the mass killings in Cambodia in the 1970s under the Khmer Rouge. Monday's ruling said Tan must receive a new trial or be released.
Funds sought for university named for Ronald Reagan
* Supporters of former President Ronald Reagan have begun raising money to establish a university in his name in Colorado. The organizers have received 200 acres of donated land with a view of the Rocky Mountains near Denver, said Terry Walker, the university's founding president. The want to open the university by 2010, he said Monday.
In the World
Politicians' risk may be less than Vatican official seeks
* Roman Catholic politicians who advocate policies contrary to church teaching on abortion and other issues may risk sanctions that fall short of denial of Holy Communion, the head of a U.S. bishops task force examining the problem said yesterday. Asked what sanctions the group might recommend, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, D.C., said in a Rome interview that Catholic universities might deny honorary degrees, dioceses might withhold honors and Catholic institutions might decline to offer invitations to speak. A Vatican official said last week that priests may deny Holy Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.
North Korean train victims
in dire need of medical aid
* Victims of a North Korean train explosion last week are wasting away in hospitals with little medicine, aid workers said yesterday in a plea for more help. But North Korea rejected doctors from South Korea, the South's government said. North Korea estimated property damage at $356 million in Ryongchon, the city where the blast occurred Thursday, killing 161 people.
Ex-military commander killed in Afghan execution
* Afghanistan has carried out its first execution since the fall of the Taliban, putting a former military commander to death with a bullet to the head, officials said yesterday. The April 20 execution remained secret for a week until it was revealed by Amnesty International, which accused powerful politicians of silencing Abdullah Shah before he could expose their human-rights violations. Shah was convicted in 2002 of more than 20 counts of murder.
On Saudi tape, a new threat against Americans
* On an audiotape that surfaced yesterday, a man claiming to be al-Qaeda's top agent in Saudi Arabia promised renewed attacks on Americans in the kingdom. The speaker identified himself as Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, Saudi Arabia's most-wanted extremist. The tape was posted on a Web site known for extremist Muslim content.
Suspect in Bali bombings
goes on trial in Indonesia
* A Muslim extremist who said he wanted to punish the United States and others that "oppress Islam" went on trial yesterday in an Indonesian court, accused of involvement in fatal bombings at two Bali nightclubs and a Jakarta hotel. Jhoni Hendrawan, 32, faces a maximum sentence of death.






 
  


April 28, 2004 Wednesday 



 SHARON VOWS TOUGH STANCE AFTER PULLOUT

 
JERUSALEM -- Israel's response to Palestinian violence after a pullout from the Gaza Strip would be even harsher than it is now, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday. Interviewed on Israel's Channel 10 television for Israel's independence day, Sharon defended his "unilateral disengagement" plan, including a pullout from the Gaza Strip. Members of his Likud Party vote on the plan in a referendum on Sunday. After a pullout, Palestinians could no longer explain violence by saying that Israel was occupying their land, Sharon said, "and Israel's responses (to violence) would be much harsher." He refused to give specifics beyond noting that Israel is already taking stiff measures, an apparent reference to the slayings of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/news and click on Nation/World. 
Arteries may provide early diabetes signs
CHICAGO -- Blood proteins suggesting early artery damage might also be early warning signs of diabetes, researchers say. Diabetics face an increased risk of circulatory problems and artery disease. But a study, which appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, found possible evidence of artery damage as much as eight years before diabetes was diagnosed, leading the authors to suggest the vessel inflammation might impede blood flood and lead to high blood-sugar levels. The results stem from blood tests on 32,826 women from a study of U.S. nurses that began in 1976.
Terror figure warns Americans on tape
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- On an audiotape that surfaced Tuesday, a man claiming to be al-Qaida's top agent in Saudi Arabia promised renewed attacks on Americans in the kingdom. But the speaker denied responsibility for last week's suicide attack in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. "Jews, Americans and crusaders will be the target of our coming operations," the man said. The speaker identified himself as Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, Saudi Arabia's most wanted militant. The tape was posted on a militant Muslim Web site. Its authenticity could not be verified.
Violence continues in Indonesian region
AMBON, Indonesia -- Snipers spread terror across the capital of Malukus province Tuesday in a third day of bloodshed that intensified fears the region could plunge back into a Muslim-Christian war that killed 9,000 people three years ago. Gunmen killed two paramilitary police officers and critically wounded a third, and a bomb explosion later killed a Muslim man, bringing the death toll since Sunday to 24. The latest round of violence erupted Sunday after several members of the region's small, largely Christian, separatist movement rallied in the city center, and Muslims assaulted them.
Dental X-rays might affect birth weight
CHICAGO -- Women who undergo dental X-rays while pregnant face an increased risk of having underweight babies, a study found. While doctors and dentists usually are cautious about taking X-rays during pregnancy, the academy has told pregnant women that medical and dental X-rays are safe. The study, which appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, involved about 4,500 women who gave birth while in a dental insurance plan in Washington state between 1993 and 2000. Women who had had dental X-rays during pregnancy faced about double the risk of having a low birth weight baby born either prematurely or full-term, and more than triple the risk of having a full-term underweight baby.
Battles kill 85 in southern Thailand
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Suspected Islamic militants clashed with police in Thailand today, leaving at least 85 people dead in the heaviest fighting yet in the troubled Muslim-dominated south, officials said. The clashes erupted after militants launched simultaneous attacks on police bases and checkpoints in several districts of Yala and Pattani provinces, officials said. The government said most of the dead were young men attempting to rob weapons from police and army bases. At least three policemen and one soldier were also killed. It was the worst fighting so far in the south where almost daily attacks by gunmen have left nearly 150 people dead this year.
Helicopter found; 3 bodies recovered
FLORENCE, S.C. -- An Army helicopter that vanished during a training flight was found Tuesday night on a river bank after it was spotted by a trucker, and searchers recovered the bodies of three soldiers, Army officials said. The wreckage of the UH-60 Black Hawk was found near a bridge off Interstate 95, about 100 miles northeast of Columbia, a Fort Bragg spokesman said. The helicopter was reported missing Monday night during a flight from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Florence that involved training with night vision goggles.
China accuses U.S., Britain of hypocrisy
HONG KONG -- China's foreign minister responded angrily on Tuesday to American and British criticisms of its latest restrictions on democracy here, accusing both countries of holding China to a double standard. Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said the running of Hong Kong was an internal concern of China. "Are you clear on that?" he asked. "Hong Kong is China's Hong Kong." Historians here noted there was some truth to the complaints. Britain did not allow direct elections for the Legislative Council until 1991, allowing residents to choose 18 of 60 seats. Chinese officials said that Britain appointed governors, but China had allowed a committee of local residents to choose the chief executive, subject to their approval. The strong reaction was the latest sign of a growing assertiveness in China's foreign policy.






  


April 27, 2004 Tuesday



 Violence between faiths escalates in Indonesia

 
@pCREDIT:ASSOCIATED PRESSIndonesian police officers take cover during a search Tuesday for snipers in the Talake village in Indonesia. @BY1:By CHRIS BRUMMITT @BY2:Associated Press
@AMBON, Indonesia Snipers spread terror across thisprovincial capital Tuesday in a third day of bloodshed that intensified fears the region could plunge back into a Muslim-Christian war that killed 9,000 people three years ago.
Gunmen killed two paramilitary police officers andcritically wounded a third and a Muslim man later was incinerated by a bomb explosion, bringing the death toll since Sunday to 24. 
The violence underscored the fragility of Malukus province,known as the Spice Islands during Dutch colonial rule and once held up as a model of religious harmony. Communal tensions worsened in recent decades with an influx of Muslims from elsewhere in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Coming in a region where Islamic extremists have been tryingto drum up support, the new bloodshed is a further complication for Indonesians heading into a presidential election in July. Six years after protests ended the dictatorship of Gen. Suharto, the main election issue has been stability in this sprawling nation of 210 million people.
Community leaders in Ambon urged calm, hoping to head off aresumption of the 1999-2001 war.
"I'm telling Christians to stay indoors and don't beprovoked," Ambon's Roman Catholic bishop, Petur Canis Mandagi, told The Associated Press after talks with Muslim leaders and security chiefs at police headquarters. "The conflict can be stopped, but we must be quick."
Muslim men armed with machetes and sharpened sticks gatheredoutside the main mosque, chanting "God is great" and calling for holy war against Christian separatists. Mobs put up barricades between the Muslim and Christian parts of Ambon, which is spread across wooded hillsides overlooking a sparkling blue bay.
"We are defending our area," said one man at a checkpoint."If we are attacked we will respond in kind."
The U.S. State Department advised Americans to leave Ambonor put off travel to the region.
The latest round of violence erupted Sunday after severalmembers of the region's small, largely Christian, separatist movement rallied in the city center. Muslims, who view such public displays as a provocation, assaulted the demonstrators, touching off sectarian clashes in the city.
Islamic radicals have been trying to whip up Muslim fervorin the Malukus in reaction to the global war on terrorist groups.
The earlier conflict here galvanized militant Muslims acrossIndonesia, and it also attracted Islamic fighters from around Southeast Asia and from the Middle East.
Many members of Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linkedextremist group blamed for a series of deadly bombings in Indonesia, have told authorities that they fought in the conflict.
There have been reports of a rift within Jemaah Islamiyahbetween militants who want to target Westerners and those who wish to limit their holy war to fighting Indonesian Christians in regions like the Malukus.
Many politicians and diplomats said the 1999-2001 fightingin Malukus was encouraged by hardline military commanders loyal to Suharto who wanted to destabilize the administrations that followed his ouster.
The country's security forces were criticized for failing toquell that violence, and many Christians now say they no longer have faith in the Indonesian state to protect them.
The province's 2 million people are evenly divided betweenMuslims and Christians.
Most of the Muslims in the Malukus are settlers who weremoved to the region from other densely populated islands in the 1970s and '80s under Suharto's migration program to dilute secessionist sentiment in non-Muslim areas.
Christians complain that the settlers have come to dominategovernment work and retail sector, siphoning off jobs and business from Christians.
AP-WS-04-27-04 1338EDT






  
   


April 27, 2004 Tuesday



 
China rules out Hong Kong vote
Hong Kong's pro-democracy forces had demanded the right to elect a successor to their chief executive, but China rejected a direct election in '07. The Congress Standing Committee also said there would be no direct vote on Hong Kong's lawmakers in '08. Tung Chee-hwa, an ex-shipping tycoon and the nation's current leader, was chosen by the 800-member panel.
JORDAN: State TV aired the confession of a suspect of planning chemical and poison gas attacks vs. the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan. He said he acted on the orders of Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zaraqawi, believed to be al-Qaida's top man in Iraq.
ISRAEL: Military officials think Mahmoud Zahar, a surgeon and a Hamas hard-liner, is the terror group's new leader. Israel has slain the two previous leaders this year.
BELGIUM: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi makes his first trip to the West in 15 years Tuesday, aiming to improve relations with the EU.
INDONESIA: Muslim militants set fire to a Christian-run university in the Maluku islands. Two days of violence have left 23 dead.
COLOMBIA: A judge found three suspected IRA members innocent of training Colombian rebels, but convicted them of traveling on false passports and identity documents.






 
  

  

APRIL 27, 2004 Tuesday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Jackson says replacing
attorneys was his decision
* Pop star Michael Jackson said yesterday that he personally "terminated" his two lead defense attorneys in his child-molestation case, Mark Geragos and Benjamin Brafman, suggesting that they had failed to give him their full attention. He said he had hired veteran Los Angeles lawyer Thomas Mesereau Jr. and was keeping two other members of his defense team, Steve Cochran and Robert Sanger. Brafman said Sunday that he and Geragos had "decided to step down."
Professor who alleged racist vandalism is charged
* A Southern California psychology professor who alleged last month that someone vandalized her car with racist and anti-Semitic slurs on the campus of Claremont McKenna College was charged yesterday by the Los Angeles County prosecutor with making it up. Kerri Dunn, 39, who was teaching on a one-year appointment at the college, was charged with filing a false police report and insurance fraud. 
FDNY graduates its first antiterror-trained class
* The first class of New York Fire Department officers to complete a military course in terrorist tactics graduated at a City Hall ceremony yesterday. Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta called the course an important part of the department's effort to prepare for possible attacks on the city.
Judge clears way for trial on sex offender's release
* A Massachusetts judge ruled yesterday that there was enough evidence to hold a trial on an effort by prosecutors to keep a former priest and convicted child molester, James Porter, locked up indefinitely as a sexually dangerous person. Porter, 69, completed his prison sentence in January after serving 11 years but remains in custody while prosecutors make their case to have him committed to a treatment center for sexual offenders.
Nov. 3 trial set for Briton
accused of missile offers
* A British businessman accused by the government last year of trying to sell shoulder-fired missiles capable of downing airliners will stand trial Nov. 3 in Newark, N.J., a judge announced yesterday. Hemant Lakhani, 69, has pleaded not guilty. Two other men indicted in the case as being financial middlemen pleaded guilty in the last month to illegally transferring money.
In the World
Vatican names a new
archbishop of Dublin
* The Vatican replaced Cardinal Desmond Connell as the archbishop of Dublin yesterday after years of criticism that Connell had not done enough to stop sexual abuse by priests. Pope John Paul II announced that Diarmuid Martin, coadjutor archbishop of Dublin, had succeeded Connell, 78, as leader of the Irish Archdiocese's nearly 1.1 million Catholics. The Pope's statement said Connell's resignation - originally offered in 2001 - had now been accepted because of his age.
Dozens killed in weekend
of Congo-Rwandan clashes
* Clashes in Congo between government troops and Rwandan insurgents killed at least 61 over the weekend, officials said yesterday. A spokesman for the governor of South Kivu province said that the Congolese army killed 39 Rwandan insurgents in a series of battles, and that three government soldiers were slain. Rwandan rebels killed 19 civilians while attacking and looting a village, the spokesman said.
Film producer convicted
of fraud in Poland
* Lew Rywin, a coproducer of the Oscar-winning film Schindler's List, was convicted of fraud by a Polish court yesterday and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in a bribery scandal. Rywin, 58, was found guilty of trying to trick the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza out of $17.5 million. He told the paper he could use his influence with lawmakers to have media laws changed to allow its publisher to buy a television station.
Gunfire, grenades, bombs mar voting round in India
* Voters cast ballots yesterday in the third round of India's parliamentary elections, as extremists attacked polling sites with gunfire, grenades and bombs; at least six people were killed. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee dismissed exit polls indicating his backers would win a slimmer majority than forecast, saying he would secure a multiparty coalition strong enough to continue his policies.
Fires are set in Indonesia
as religious violence rages * Mobs set fire yesterday to buildings at a Christian-run university in Indonesia's Maluku islands, where at least 22 people have died in two days of clashes between Christians and Muslims, authorities said. The violence was the worst in the Malukus since a 2002 peace agreement ended two years of religious conflict that killed 9,000 people.
Nicaragua to destroy
350 surface-air missiles
* Nicaragua will destroy 350 surface-to-air missiles it obtained from the Soviet Union in the 1980s, partly bowing to U.S. demands to scrap its missile stockpile, newspapers in the Central American country said yesterday. The SAM-7 missiles are among about 2,000 surface-to-air weapons Nicaragua possesses.






 
  


April 27, 2004 Tuesday  



 24 DEAD AS CLASHES CONTINUE ON MOLUCCAS

 
Snipers shot and killed three paramilitary police and a mob hacked a man to death as bloody clashes between Muslims and Christians continued for the third day in Indonesia's eastern Molucca Islands, police and witnesses said today.
Machine gun-wielding armored vehicles patrolled the streets in provincial capital Ambon amid sporadic gunfire in the bloodiest outbreak of violence in the region since a peace deal in 2002 ended two years of religious violence that killed 9,000 people.
Tuesday, police officials said at least 24 people had been killed since three days ago.







 


April 26, 2004 Monday



 World datelines

 
 Afghanistan
KANDAHAR -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai returned Sunday to a Taliban stronghold where he was nearly assassinated 19 months ago and said he would welcome rank-and-file members of the militia back into society. But Karzai said about 150 leaders of the ultra-religious Islamic movement supplanted by his government after a U.S.-led war are unworthy of rehabilitation and could be prosecuted.
Austria 
VIENNA -- A senior parliamentary official on Sunday defeated a rival backed by right-wing populist Joerg Haider in a presidential election that also indicated voter dissatisfaction with the country's government. With half of the ballots counted, Heinz Fischer, the candidate of the opposition Social Democrats, had close to 52 percent. Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the conservative endorsed by Haider, had just over 48 percent. Haider's backing of Ferrero-Waldner added spice to an otherwise humdrum race for the mostly ceremonial position.
China
BEIJING -- Evoking bad memories of last year's outbreak, China announced Sunday it was investigating four fresh suspected SARS cases in its capital and ordered an affected southern province to gird for a coming holiday when millions of Chinese will be traveling. All of the new suspected cases have been traced back to a single patient, the government said, suggesting the problem was still tightly confined and not a general outbreak.
Cyprus
NICOSIA -- Disappointed and angry after Greek Cypriots rejected a U.N. plan to reunite Cyprus, the European Union pledged to start searching for ways to extend a hand of friendship to the island's long-ostracized Turkish side. The U.N. reunification plan required agreement from both sides of the island. But, despite American and European support, Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected it and Turkish Cypriots endorsed it in referendums on Saturday.
England
MANCHESTER -- Angry demonstrators emptied a garbage can on the car of French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen on Sunday after he spoke in support of the anti-immigration British National Party. Le Pen, who has been convicted of racism and anti-Semitism at least six times in France, was appearing at two British National Party events Sunday despite some demands that he be barred from the country.
India
PATNA -- A crucial third round of parliamentary elections opened today in India, a day after rebels trying to disrupt the vote killed at least eight people and wounded at least 20 across the country.
Indonesia
AMBON -- Muslim and Christian gangs fought running battles in Indonesia's Maluku islands on Sunday, leaving at least 10 people dead, including two youths who were hacked to death by sword-wielding men, witnesses and officials said. At least 50 people were wounded in the clashes in the provincial capital Ambon, hospital officials said. At least three buildings were set ablaze, including a church and an office housing U.N. agencies working in the region. There were no reports of U.N. staffers being hurt.
Japan
TOKYO -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's ruling party snapped up all three parliamentary seats in by-elections Sunday, marking a solid victory for the leader in the first electoral test since a hostage crisis cast a shadow over Japan's role in Iraq. The voting for three vacancies in the 480-seat lower house of Parliament was considered a preview of a major electoral battle looming in July in the legislature's upper chamber.
Pakistan
PESHAWAR -- In a gesture of reconciliation, Pakistan on Sunday freed 50 men arrested in a bloody counterterrorism offensive near the Afghan border, saying investigations proved them innocent. The releases came a day after authorities pardoned five renegade tribal leaders accused of harboring al-Qaida fugitives. In exchange, the leaders promised to live peacefully and not help terrorists.
Sri Lanka
COLOMBO -- President Chandrika Kumaratunga's alliance won a key regional election Saturday, nearly three weeks after it emerged as the single largest party in parliamentary polls. The Election Commission said Kumaratunga's United Freedom Alliance took 29 seats in the Northwestern Provincial Council election. Former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's United National Front got 19. Sri Lanka has eight provincial councils, which administer regional affairs.







 


April 26, 2004 Monday  




 International news briefs

 
Muslim-Christian fighting kills 10
AMBON, Indonesia -- Muslim and Christian gangs fought running battles in Indonesia's Maluku islands on Sunday, leaving at least 10 people dead -- two of them youths hacked to death by sword-wielding men.
At least 100 people were wounded in the clashes in the provincial capital Ambon, police said. At least three buildings were set ablaze, including a church and an office housing U.N. agencies working in the region. There were no reports of U.N. staffers being hurt.
Sunday's clashes -- some of the bloodiest since a 2002 truce -- occurred after about a dozen members of the region's small Christian separatist movement paraded through Ambon to mark the anniversary of a failed independence bid 54 years ago.
Blast overwhelms N. Korea hospital
DANDONG, China -- Injured children lay on file cabinets as an overcrowded North Korean hospital struggled to cope without enough beds or medicine for hundreds of victims from last week's train explosion, an aid worker who visited the facility said Sunday.
Sinuiju Provincial Hospital, just across the border from China, was treating 360 people injured in the blast in the town of Ryongchon, according to Tony Banbury, Asia regional director for the U.N. World Food Program. More than 60 percent of the victims there were children, he said.
The death toll rose by seven to 161 Sunday, but it was unclear whether the higher number reflected new fatalities or simply freshly confirmed casualties.
Pakistan frees 50 arrested in sweep
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- In a gesture of reconciliation, Pakistan on Sunday freed 50 men arrested in a bloody counterterrorism offensive near the Afghan border, saying investigations proved them innocent.
The releases came a day after authorities pardoned five renegade tribal leaders accused of harboring al-Qaida fugitives. In exchange, the leaders promised to live peacefully and not help terrorists.
The deal could end months of fighting between tribesmen and Pakistan's army in the lawless region of South Waziristan, which has emerged as the front line in the country's battle to control tribal militants with strong ethnic and ideological ties to Afghanistan's former Taliban regime.
Israel backs off threats vs. Arafat
JERUSALEM -- Israeli leaders on Sunday backed away from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's latest threats against Yasser Arafat, saying there are no immediate plans to kill the Palestinian leader.
Sharon declared in a television interview over the weekend that he is no longer bound by a promise to the United States not to harm Arafat.
With Arafat's movements limited, there is little the Palestinians can do to protect him from Israel's air force. However, Israeli Vice Premier Ehud Olmert and Cabinet minister Gideon Ezra said Sharon has no plans to expel or assassinate Arafat. They said the Israeli leader had merely repeated a long-standing Israeli position.
China suspects 4 new SARS cases
BEIJING -- Evoking bad memories of last year's outbreak, China announced Sunday it was investigating four fresh suspected SARS cases in its capital and ordered an affected southern province to gird for a coming holiday when millions of Chinese will be traveling.
All of the new suspected cases have been traced back to a single patient, the government said, suggesting the problem was still tightly confined.
Nevertheless, the announcement issued by the Ministry of Health on its Web site, was an alarming reminder that the disease that killed 349 people in China during last year's outbreak still poses a threat despite the government's efforts to stop it.
-- From wire reports







 


April 26, 2004 Monday  




 The Lemelson Foundation, named for a prolific inventor, aims to reward inventions that help poor countries develop.

 
AT a reception last week at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, featuring a performance by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the Lemelson-M.I.T. program awarded two of the biggest prizes open to inventors. 
 The first, with a $500,000 purse attached, went to Nick Holonyak Jr. for inventing the first practical red light-emitting diode. The other, worth $100,000, went to Edith Flanigen for her pioneering work with zeolite Y, a molecular sieve used widely in petroleum refinement.
 In its 10th anniversary, the Lemelson Foundation, which endowed the invention prizes, is poised to take a new direction with its philanthropy, a direction that seems surprising given that Jerome Lemelson, whose millions made the foundation possible, was an ardent supporter of the American inventor. 
 By 2006, the foundation aims to devote half of its estimated annual $13 million budget on financing what the foundation calls ''sustainable invention'' in the developing world, a very different tack from rewarding American ingenuity with lucrative cash prizes and lush ceremonies. In addition, the foundation has already begun to make relatively small investments in innovators and entrepreneurs in places like Costa Rica, Indonesia and Kenya.
 To a large extent, this shift reflects the interests of Jerome Lemelson's sons, Rob and Eric, who along with their wives, and their mother, Dorothy, oversee the foundation. Jerome Lemelson died in 1997.
 Rob Lemelson, an anthropologist who was a Fulbright scholar in Indonesia, has a special interest in that country. ''Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world,'' he said, adding that it was important for Indonesians ''to realize that Americans and American foundations are interested in addressing key issues that are relevant to their lives like water purification and poverty.'' 
 Dorothy Lemelson sees this new direction as an expansion of her husband's original vision. ''All his life, Jerry wanted to celebrate American invention. He felt it was what made this country strong,'' Mrs. Lemelson said. ''Now it's time to turn to the rest of the world and see what we can do for them.''
 Ashok Gadgil, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, serves as an adviser to the foundation. ''We are talking about the bottom one-third of humanity on the planet, who earn less than $2 a day,'' he said. ''A video cellphone is not going to help them. They lack access to safe water and suffer the effects of smoke inhalation from dirty biomass cook stoves. Forget about a G.P.S.-navigated automobile; these are people who don't even have a bicycle.''
 The Lemelson brothers started thinking about sustainable innovation about three years ago. They hired an executive director to begin developing a program two years ago, and they expect the program to be in full gear by 2006. 
 One invention that the foundation has subsidized is a pump produced by ApproTec, a nongovernmental agency in Kenya. The treadle pump, which is operated with pedals -- something like a Stairmaster -- allows a farmer to sharply increase the water he can use to irrigate crops. The Lemelson grant went toward creating a drill to pierce the water table. The foundation gave ApproTec $100,000.
 ApproTec's distribution of the treadle pump and other projects have been credited with raising the gross domestic product of Kenya by $35 million, or 0.35 percent, a notion that was described as ''astounding'' by Eric Lemelson, an environmental lawyer by training who operates an organic vineyard in Oregon.
 ''Raising living standards to levels where people can think about things beyond keeping themselves and their children alive from day to day is a critical part of how to solve the sustainable development puzzle,'' Mr. Lemelson said.
 Calestous Juma, professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government suggested that the foundation needed to focus on rewarding true innovations rather than financing programs already in existence. The ApproTec pump, for example, was already part of a successful program when the Lemelson Foundation gave it a $100,000 grant last year.
 ''That is a big distinction,'' Professor Juma said. ''It's not that clear what they are supporting so far.'' Offering prizes in the developing world similar to the Lemelson-M.I.T. award, he said, would be ''a very significant incentive.''
 ''If they go the route of simply funding projects, they are competing with much bigger foundations like the Rockefeller, MacArthur, and Ford foundations,'' he said. ''I think the strength of Lemelson would be to continue their tradition of rewarding innovators. No one else is doing this and if they do so, they will serve as an inspiration for other foundations to do similar things.''
 The foundation is no longer stressing patents over the act of invention since many developing countries have no patent system at all or a poorly enforced one. The ideas the foundation finances ''don't have to be patentable,'' Eric Lemelson said. ''They just have to improve lives on a basic level.'' But the foundation plans to fund efforts to strengthen intellectual property institutions. 
 During his lifetime, Jerome Lemelson received more $1 billion in royalties for licenses to his bar-code and machine vision patents, and gave away more than $100 million. While he was revered by independent inventors as the epitome of an American success story, Jerome Lemelson was criticized by corporate lawyers who characterized him as more of a shrewd manipulator of the patent system than as an inspired inventor. 
 The recipient of 562 patents before his death at the age of 74 in 1997, Mr. Lemelson was second only to Thomas Edison, who was awarded 1,093 patents. Mr. Lemelson has continued to receive patents posthumously, his 590th last month. 
 By most accounts, Jerome Lemelson's sons have been proven to be thoughtful stewards of their father's many millions. Indeed, they say they encouraged their father to pursue philanthropy. 
 ''He was so busy inventing 24 hours a day,'' Rob Lemelson said. ''We said, 'you have great resources, you have great responsibility.' This couldn't have been done without my father's achievement. Eric and I just gave him a little push.''
 Would he have agreed with the new direction the foundation is taking? ''Although the impetus for our international program lies primarily with my brother and me,'' Eric Lemelson said, ''I think Jerry would be fully supportive were he alive today.''

Patents may be viewed on the Web at www.uspto.gov or may be ordered through the mail, by patent number, for $3 from the Patent and Trademark Office, Washington, D.C. 20231.









 


April 26, 2004 Monday



 FOREIGN DESK

 
SOUTHEAST ASIA
MUSLIM, CHRISTIAN GANGS BATTLE AMBON, Indonesia - Muslim and Christian gangs fought running battles in Indonesia's Maluku islands yesterday, leaving at least 10 people dead, including two youths who were hacked to death by sword-wielding men, witnesses and officials said.
At least 50 people were wounded in the clashes in the provincial capital Ambon, hospital officials said. At least three buildings were set ablaze, including a church and an office housing U.N. agencies working in the region. There were no reports of U.N. staffers being hurt. 
Yesterday's clashes occurred after around a dozen members of the region's small Christian separatist movement paraded through Ambon to mark the anniversary of a failed independence bid 54 years ago.
Gangs of Muslim and Christian youths hurled rocks at each other in the center of the city, witnesses said. Gunfire was heard throughout the afternoon. The bodies of eight Muslims - most of them with gunshot wounds - were taken to the city's Al-Fatah hospital, the hospital's director, Dr. Riva Ambon, said.
An Associated Press reporter saw a gang of around 50 people armed with swords and sticks hack two men to death close to the city's Pattimura University. The victims' bodies were left lying in the street. Their religious affiliation was not known. - Associated Press
EAST ASIA
KOIZUMI'S PART Y WINS THREE SEATS TOKYO - Prime Minister Koizumi's ruling party snapped up all three parliamentary seats in by-elections yesterday, marking a solid victory for the leader in the first electoral test since a hostage crisis cast a shadow over Japan's role in Iraq.
The voting for three vacancies in the 480-seat lower house of Parliament was considered a preview of a major electoral battle looming in July in the legislature's upper chamber. Final results posted on local election board Web sites showed Mr. Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party handily won two of the three seats up for grabs. His party also secured the third, according to early results and exit polls. The candidate, Minoru Terada, was already celebrating with supporters amid victory cries of "banzai" in footage shown by public broadcaster NHK late yesterday.
The wins boost the LDP's number of lower house seats to 245 and its already comfortable coalition majority to 279. Yesterday's outcome backed expectations that Mr. Koizumi's party got a big boost from his handling of a hostage crisis in Iraq earlier this month.
- Associated Press
CENTRAL EUROPE
SOCIAL DEMOCRAT WINS IN AUSTRIA VIENNA, Austria -A senior parliamentary official yesterday defeated a rival backed by right-wing populist Joerg Haider in a presidential election that also indicated voter dissatisfaction with the country's government. With half of the ballots counted, Heinz Fischer, the candidate of the opposition Social Democrats, had close to 52%. Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the conservative endorsed by Mr. Haider, had just over 48%.
Mr. Haider's backing of Ms. Ferrero-Waldner added spice to an otherwise humdrum race for the mostly ceremonial position. Ms. Ferrero-Waldner was supported by the conservative People's Party and key members of its government partner, Mr. Haider's right-leaning Freedom Party. Mr. Fischer is a deputy speaker of parliament. Although the post of president is largely symbolic, the result indirectly shows how the government coalition is faring in popularity midway through its term and in the aftermath of pension reforms and other unpopular legislation.
The Austrian president is commander in chief of the country's tiny military, and the constitution gives the president the power to reject nominations for Cabinet ministers or even to remove them from office - something that has rarely been done. The rightist Freedom Party, whose former leader, Mr. Haider, is notorious for past remarks that sounded sympathetic to the Nazis and contemptuous of Jews, did not give an official endorsement.
- Associated Press
WESTERN EUROPE
BRITISH PROTESTERS ATTACK LEPEN'S CAR ALTRINCHAM, England - Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the ultra- right-wing French National Front, was mobbed by hundreds of protesters yesterday as he sought to publicize the British National Party's campaign in the European elections.
Mr. Le Pen found himself trapped inside his car as he left a press conference in Manchester with demonstrators throwing full garbage cans at the windshield before lying down in the car's path. Police guarding the supposedly secret venue, a hotel in the usually quiet south Manchester suburb of Altrincham, were almost overwhelmed as the crowd surged forward, hurling missiles and shouting "scum."
The 75-year-old Frenchman finally escaped after police dragged men and women from under the car's wheels and opened a path to the road.
The staff member who took the booking for a "community club presentation" at the Cresta Court Hotel will be regretting the decision today. A spokesman for the hotel said: "We had absolutely no idea who was coming."
Mr. Le Pen, who last addressed the British far-right more than 10 years ago, had earlier flown into Britain protected by heavy security provided by the B.N.P., which is aiming to capture its first seat in the European Parliament in elections in June. The visit drew a warning from the home secretary, David Blunkett, that Mr. Le Pen, a defeated candidate for the French presidency, faced arrest if he incited racial hatred. - The Daily Telegraph
CENTRAL ASIA
KARZAI VISITS TALIBAN STRONGHOLD KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - President Karzai returned yesterday to a Taliban stronghold where he was nearly assassinated 19 months ago and said he would welcome rank-and-file members of the militia back into society.
But Mr. Karzai said about 150 leaders of the ultra-religious Islamic movement supplanted by his government after a war are unworthy of rehabilitation and could be prosecuted. "Our problem is mainly with the top Taliban - who may number no more than 150 people - who had links with Al Qaeda," Mr. Karzai said. "Those people are the enemies of Afghanistan and we are against them."
"But those Taliban who are doing jobs and tilling the fields and working as shopkeepers, we want to welcome those Taliban," he said. - Associated Press







  


April 26, 2004 Monday  




 Foreign student applications drop ; 
Colleges watching national trend

 
The number of international graduate students applying for admission to Oklahoma colleges and universities is dropping sharply, reflecting a nationwide trend, higher education officials said.
At the University of Oklahoma, applications are down 44 percent from a year ago, while other state universities with high international enrollments are receiving 20 percent to 30 percent fewer applications.
Two reasons cited are delays in getting visas and the fact that other countries, particularly Australia, Canada and Britain, are making admission into their universities easier for international students.
"After the 9/11 attack, Homeland Security passed all these regulations just immediately that the INS and U.S. Consulate were not equipped to handle," said Dennis Dunham, manager of enrollment at Oklahoma City University, where nearly one in five students is international. 
The delays for visas can be long and interpretation of the rules inconsistent, Dunham said.
William Velie, a Norman immigration lawyer, said the immigration rules have not changed so much, but they are being interpreted strictly.
Before Sept. 11, 2001, a visa took a few weeks to obtain. Now obtaining one can take months, said college officials who work with foreign students. The delays are catching up with students who had not anticipated the time delays.
Steve Pike, press officer for the State Department in Washington, told  that international students must wait about 45 days to obtain a visa, compared with two weeks before 9/11.
Nationwide, graduate students submitted fewer applications at nearly half the 250 colleges that responded to a National Association of Foreign Student Affairs survey.
Directors of international student offices said they have seen a marked decline in students from the 25 countries the U.S. government selected for special scrutiny because of possible ties to terrorist groups, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Ismail Basri, an OU student from Indonesia -- which has a large Muslim population -- said he received his visa in about three months but is thankful his got through.
When University of Central Oklahoma recruiters went to the Mideast this month, they found parents hesitant to let their children travel to America to study.
The parents question whether their children will be treated right in the United States, said Jalal Daneshfar, director of immigration and international activities at UCO.
Matt Hamilton, OU associate vice president, said officials are monitoring the application downturn. Hamilton said the decrease could mean OU will end up with fewer international graduate students.
OCU would be more severely affected if international enrollment lapsed because nearly 20 percent of its students comes from foreign countries.
Dunham said he anticipated the fluctuations and is looking to countries such as Canada to attract more students.
On the undergraduate side, applications at Oklahoma universities are flat or growing slightly. These are students who come usually for only a semester or a year. State Regents for Higher Education report that in fall 2003, about 9,100 international students -- both graduate and undergraduate -- were in Oklahoma's public colleges. For fall 2002, about 7,900 were enrolled.
Dunham, who has recruited students for two decades, said the efforts of Australia and others to attract international students amaze him.
"These other countries have jumped on this. They are actually using government money to recruit students," Dunham said. "For many, Australia and the United Kingdom are becoming the No. 1 and No. 2 choices, and we are becoming third choice."
Tim Huff, in charge of international programs for OSU, said the experiences of some international students here contribute to a drop in applications.
One of his former students, Shoaib Mushtaq, told  that when he returned from Pakistan after the Christmas break, he was detained in Houston for seven hours, while it should have taken only two.
"This should not have happened," Mushtaq said. "It was a bad experience. They kept me in a room for hours, and I didn't know what was going to happen. I missed my plane to Tulsa and did not know what was going on."
Bassam Tarhini, a Lebanese student seeking a master's degree at Oklahoma City University, said when 9/11 happened, his fellow students were supportive of him."My opinion is that if you are going to live here, you are going to have to love and respect America," Tarhini said.






 
  

  

APRIL 26, 2004 Monday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Jackson replaces attorneys
in child-molestation case
* Michael Jackson is replacing high-profile attorneys Mark Geragos and Benjamin Brafman in his child-molestation case, the lawyers said yesterday. Jackson's new attorney will be Thomas Mesereau Jr., who represented actor Robert Blake in his murder case until they recently parted company. Jackson was secretly indicted last week; details of the indictment are expected to be revealed Friday at a hearing in Santa Maria, Calif.
2 campers in Okla. killed
in flood; girl dies in Ark. 
* Water rushing from a swollen creek on Saturday swept away three campers at a campground in Sequoyah County, Okla., killing two of them, authorities said yesterday. The victims were caught in flooding that also damaged parts of northern Arkansas, where a 3-year-old girl died and her 2-year-old brother was feared dead after a pickup they were in was swept off a bridge near Huntsville.
Two dogs attack and kill
8-year-old Wash. boy
* Two dogs, believed to be bull mastiff-German shepherds, attacked and killed an 8-year-old boy in Sifton, Wash., authorities said. John Streeter was found dead Saturday in the back yard of a neighbor's home where the dogs' owners lived.
Paper: Little action taken
on candy containing lead
* More than 100 brands of candy sold in California, most of them from Mexico, have tested positive for dangerous levels of lead in the last decade and little has been done about it, the reported yesterday. In nearly every case, the candy - mostly marketed to Latino children - stayed on store shelves and no action was taken against the Mexican manufacturers, the newspaper said, citing state and federal records.
Part of largest dairy farm
set aside for 4 rare species
* A section of the country's largest dairy farm will be set aside for conservation of four rare prairie species under a federal agreement, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Saturday. The agreement with the Threemile Canyon Ranch, a 94,000-acre cattle and potato operation in the Oregon desert east of Boardman, will protect the burrowing Washington ground squirrel and three species of birds - the loggerhead shrike, ferruginous hawk and sage sparrow.
In the World
Pakistan frees tribesmen
arrested in major sweep
* Pakistan yesterday released 50 tribesmen who were arrested last month during a major counterterrorism operation near the Afghan border, saying investigations had proved them innocent. They were freed a day after five powerful tribal leaders who had been targeted in the same operation for allegedly harboring al-Qaeda fugitives were granted amnesty in return for a promise to live peacefully and not help terrorists.
Sudan expects peace deal
soon with southern rebels
* Sudan expects a peace deal between the government and southern rebels to be reached within days, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said yesterday during a visit to Bahrain. Talks between Khartoum and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army to end the 21-year civil war have been complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.
Far-right leader's choice
rejected in Austrian vote
* Austrians rejected a candidate backed by far-right leader Joerg Haider in a presidential election yesterday, picking instead an opposition Social Democrat for the largely ceremonial post. Heinz Fischer, a career Social Democratic parliamentarian, took 52.4 of the vote, according to the Interior Ministry. Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner got 47.6 percent.
100 in England protest
French far-right leader
* About 100 demonstrators near Manchester, England, emptied a garbage can on the car of French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen yesterday after he spoke in support of the anti-immigration British National Party. Le Pen, who has been convicted of racism and anti-Semitism at least six times in France, appeared at two events despite some demands that he be barred from England.
Muslims, Christians fight
on Indonesian islands
* Muslim and Christian gangs fought running battles on Indonesia's Maluku islands yesterday, leaving at least 10 people dead, two of them youths hacked to death by men with swords. At least 100 people were wounded in the clashes in the provincial capital Ambon, police said. Muslims and Christians signed a government-sponsored peace pact in 2002, but sporadic violence between them has continued.






 
  


April 26, 2004 Monday 



 NATION & WORLD BRIEFING

 
FINANCE MINISTERS PROMISE TO HELP POOR
WASHINGTON -- World finance ministers promised Sunday to do more to deal with global poverty, promising help in such areas as education, debt relief and AIDS. Separately, the United States said it had made progress pushing an initiative to bolster peace prospects in the Middle East by promoting economic development. Treasury Secretary John Snow told reporters Sunday that he had been encouraged by the support the United States received on the issue from potential donor countries and from the region. Streets around the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank remained cordoned off Sunday although demonstrators against the two institutions had for the most part left. The three days of discussions concluded with a World Bank session focused on the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals: cutting poverty in half by 2015, boosting the fight against AIDS and educating 100 million children not now in school. 
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/news and click on Nation/World.
China quarantines 500 amid SARS scare
BEIJING -- China announced Sunday it was investigating four fresh suspected SARS cases in its capital. All of the new suspected cases have been traced to a single patient, the government said. Nevertheless, the announcement issued by the Ministry of Health, was a reminder that the disease that killed 349 people in China during last year's outbreak still poses a threat. Today, nearly 500 people were in quarantine in Beijing and in the province of Anhui before millions of travelers hit the road during the national May Day holiday. The latest cases brought the total in China for the past week to two confirmed and six suspected.
Ruling party wins 3 races in Japan
TOKYO -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's ruling party snapped up all three parliamentary seats in by-elections Sunday, marking a solid victory for the leader in the first electoral test since a hostage crisis cast a shadow over Japan's role in Iraq. The voting for three vacancies in the 480-seat lower house of Parliament was considered a preview of a major electoral battle looming in July in the legislature's upper chamber. The victories boost the LDP's number of lower house seats to 245 and its already comfortable coalition majority to 279.
Austrians reject ally of right-wing party
VIENNA, Austria -- A parliamentary official Sunday defeated a rival backed by right-wing populist Joerg Haider in a presidential election that also indicated voter dissatisfaction with the country's government. With half of the ballots counted, Heinz Fischer, the candidate of the opposition Social Democrats, had close to 52 percent. Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the conservative endorsed by Haider, had just over 48 percent. Ferrero- Waldner was supported by the conservative People's Party and key members of its government partner, Haider's right-leaning Freedom Party. Fischer is a deputy speaker of parliament. Although the post of president is largely symbolic, the result shows how the government coalition is faring in popularity.
Pope puts 6 more on path to sainthood
VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II added six people to the ranks of Catholics on the path to possible sainthood Sunday. Among the six was a paralyzed laywoman, Alexandrina Maria da Costa of Portugal, who the Vatican says lived the last 13 years of her life eating only the bread and wine of Communion. Beatification is the last formal step before possible sainthood. Honored were: August Czartoryski (1858-1893) of Poland, a prince who became a Salesian priest; Laura Montoya (1874-1949) of Colombia, who founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Mary; Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala (1878-1963) of Mexico, co-founder of the Congregation of the Servants of Saint Margaret Mary and the Poor; Nemesia Valle (1847-1916) of Italy, a nun of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Giovanna Antida Thouret; Eusebia Palomino Yenes (1899-1935) of Spain, a nun of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians; and da Costa (1904-1955), who became a lay Salesian cooperator.
Muslims, Christians clash in Indonesia
AMBON, Indonesia -- Muslim and Christian gangs fought battles in Indonesia's Maluku islands Sunday, leaving at least 10 people dead, witnesses said. At least 50 people were wounded in the clashes in the provincial capital Ambon, hospital officials said. At least three buildings were set ablaze, including a church and an office housing U.N. agencies working in the region. There were no reports of U.N. staffers being hurt. More than 9,000 people were killed in the between 1991 and 2001 in fighting between Muslims and Christians. The two groups signed a peace pact in 2002, but sporadic violence between them has continued and they now live in separate communities.
Study questions hernia laparoscopy
Groin hernias repaired by laparoscopic surgery are twice as likely to reopen as those fixed by the standard operation, a Veterans Affairs study has found. There was one exception: Surgeons who had done more than 250 laparoscopic hernia repairs had about the same recurrence rate as those who used an open incision, Dr. Leigh Neumayer of the V.A. Medical Center in Salt Lake City found. The V.A. patients in this study had very thin, flexible mesh placed behind the gap in their abdominal muscle. The difference was whether the surgeons worked through an open incision or used laparoscopic surgery, in which doctors make tiny incisions and insert slender instruments and a miniature camera. Overall, 87 of the 862 patients who had laparoscopic surgery needed a second repair of the same hernia within two years, compared to 41 of the 834 who got open-incision repairs. Twenty of the 78 surgeons doing laparoscopic surgery had done more than 250 such operations for hernias, and their recurrence rate was less than 5 percent, said Neumayer. Her study will be published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Top Saudi cleric condemns attack
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Those responsible for Saudi Arabia's latest suicide attack will be "burned in hell," the kingdom's top cleric said Thursday, as investigators searched for clues to the bombing. Five people, including two police officers and an 11-year-old girl, were killed along with the suicide bomber in Wednesday's attack on the administrative building of the General Security, the Interior Ministry said. The purportedly al-Qaida inspired al-Haramin Brigades released a statement claiming responsibility for the attack. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified. Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik, the kingdom's highest religious authority, condemned the attack "as one of the greatest sins."






 
  


April 26, 2004 Monday  



 MUSLIMS, CHRISTIANS CLASH;
10 PEOPLE SLAIN

 
Muslim and Christian gangs fought running battles in Indonesia's Molucca Islands on Sunday, leaving at least 10 people dead -- two of them youths hacked to death by sword-wielding men. 
At least 100 people were wounded in the clashes in the provincial capital Ambon, police said. At least three buildings were set ablaze, including a church and an office housing U.N. agencies working in the region. There were no reports of U.N. staffers being hurt.






  






 WORLD DIGEST

 
FRANCE
Aventis board OKs merger with Sanofi
The board of Franco-German drugmaker Aventis SA accepted a new offer from Sanofi-Synthelabo SA on Sunday in a deal that would merge France's two largest drugmakers, authorities said.
If approved by shareholders, the merger would create the world's No. 3 pharmaceutical giant behind Pfizer Inc. of the United States and Britain's GlaxoSmithKline PLC.
The deal corresponds to France's "strategic interests," Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said. 
Sources close to Aventis had said earlier Sunday that the board of Aventis accepted a sweetened takeover bid from smaller rival Sanofi.
BRITAIN
French far-right leader gets angry reception
Angry demonstrators emptied a garbage can on the car of French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen on Sunday after he spoke in support of the anti-immigration British National Party.
Shouting "Nazi scum, off our streets!" about 100 demonstrators slowed Le Pen's car as he tried to leave a hotel in Altrincham on the outskirts of Manchester.
Le Pen, who has been convicted of racism and anti-Semitism at least six times in France, appeared at two British National Party events Sunday.
At a news conference in the hotel in Altrincham, Le Pen gave his backing to the British party ahead of June elections for the European Parliament.
Le Pen expressed mild surprise at the protests his visit generated.
"I've walked about freely in Iraq and Turkey, in Malaysia and Indonesia," he said. "I don't see why I shouldn't be able to walk about freely in England."
INDONESIA
Muslim, Christian gangs feud, killing at least 10
Muslim and Christian gangs fought running battles in Indonesia's Maluku islands on Sunday, leaving at least 10 people dead.
At least 100 people were wounded in the clashes in the provincial capital of Ambon, police said. At least three buildings were set ablaze, including a church and an office housing U.N. agencies working in the region. There were no reports of U.N. staffers being hurt.
More than 9,000 people were killed in the Malukus in a decade of fighting between Muslims and Christians that attracted Islamic militants from all over Southeast Asia.
The two groups signed a government-sponsored peace pact in 2002, but sporadic violence between them has continued.
PAKISTAN
50 suspected terrorists are cleared, released
In a gesture of reconciliation, Pakistan on Sunday freed 50 men arrested in a bloody counterterrorism offensive near the Afghan border, saying investigations proved them innocent.
The releases came a day after authorities pardoned five renegade tribal leaders accused of harboring al-Qaida fugitives. In exchange, the leaders promised to not help terrorists.
The deal could end months of fighting between tribesmen and Pakistan's army in the lawless region of South Waziristan, which has emerged as the front line in the country's battle to control tribal militants with strong ethnic and ideological ties to Afghanistan's former Taliban regime.
CHINA
Beijing reports 4 cases of what may be SARS
Four new suspected cases of the potentially deadly SARS disease have been reported in Beijing, officials said Sunday.
No new suspected or confirmed cases of the flulike illness that killed hundreds of people worldwide last year were reported in other provinces, but 337 people were under medical observation in the Chinese capital, the Health Ministry said in a statement.
One Chinese woman from eastern Anhui province suspected of having SARS died on April 19.







 



April 26, 2004 Monday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
TOKYO -- The death toll from Thursday's massive train blast in North Korea has risen to 161 -- almost half schoolchildren -- with another 1,300 injured, Red Cross officials said Sunday.  
 Emergency food and medical aid from China began arriving in the area as relief workers continued to survey the devastated disaster site in Ryongchon, 12 miles from North Korea's border with China. 
 The blast, according to North Korea's official KCNA news service, occurred after a train loaded with fertilizer chemicals ignited on electric power lines.   
 Red Cross officials said that as many as 1,800 homes were destroyed by the blast. Emergency aid was also on its way from South Korea, the European Union and Japan.  
  --  Anthony Faiola 
Asia 
*  AMBON, Indonesia -- At least 10 people were killed and a church and a U.N. office were torched as Muslim and Christian residents of the eastern Indonesian city of Ambon fought pitched street battles, witnesses and police said. 
Nearly 90 people were hurt as groups rampaged through the provincial capital of Moluccas province in the worst day of violence since factions signed a peace deal in February 2002. 
 Gunfire and explosions were heard in the city, and thick black smoke billowed into the air. It was not clear who was firing, as the mobs were mostly using stones and knives. 
*  BEIJING -- China announced that it was investigating four new suspected cases of SARS in the capital and ordered an affected southern province to gird for a coming holiday, when millions of Chinese will be traveling. 
 All of the new suspected cases have been traced to a single patient, the government said, suggesting the problem was still tightly confined and not a general outbreak. 
*  PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- In a gesture of reconciliation, Pakistan freed 50 men arrested in a bloody counterterrorism offensive near the Afghan border, saying that investigations proved them innocent. 
 The releases came a day after authorities pardoned five renegade tribal leaders accused of harboring al Qaeda fugitives. In exchange, the leaders promised to live peacefully and not help terrorists. 
Europe 
*  VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II added six more people to the ranks of Catholics on the path to possible sainthood, beatifying 19th- and 20th-century Europeans and Latin Americans at a ceremony in St. Peter's Square. 
 Among the six was a paralyzed laywoman, Alexandrina Maria da Costa of Portugal, who the Vatican says lived the last 13 years of her life subsisting on only the bread and wine of Communion. 
 With the six, representing Poland, Colombia, Mexico, Italy, Spain and Portugal, John Paul has beatified 1,330 people during his 25-year pontificate. 
The Americas 
*  BRASILIA -- Brazil hopes to develop a role as a regional crisis mediator by leading a U.N. peace mission to Haiti to rebuild the poorest nation in the Americas, diplomats and analysts in Brazil said. 
 President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has sought to champion the interests of the world's poorest nations since taking office, has offered Brazil's biggest ever U.N. peacekeeping force for the job. 
 Lula has conditioned Brazilian leadership of the mission on international support to build a democracy in Haiti after two U.S. interventions within 10 years failed to halt a series of coups and rebellions. 
 --  From News Services 






  


April 26, 2004 Monday



 World +5;
+6 U.S. convoy ambushed in southern Afghanistan

 
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Suspected insurgents ambushed an American military convoy on a road in southern Afghanistan, setting off an explosion that wounded three Marines, one of them seriously, the U.S. military said today.
The attack occurred Saturday near the village of Dailanor, in restive Kandahar province, said Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager, a military spokesman. The wounded men were taken to a military hospital at the U.S. base in Kandahar, the main coalition headquarters in southern Afghanistan. 
The men are part of a contingent of 2,000 Marines who arrived in Afghanistan in recent weeks, bringing the total size of the U.S.-led coalition to about 15,500 soldiers. They are the first soldiers from the force known to be wounded in action.
Some 110 U.S. soldiers have been killed -- 39 of them in combat -- since Operation Enduring Freedom began in Afghanistan in late 2001.
Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai returned yesterday to a Taliban stronghold where he was nearly assassinated 19 months ago and said he would welcome rank-and-file members of the militia back into society. But Karzai said about 150 leaders of the ultra-religious Islamic movement are unworthy of rehabilitation and could be prosecuted.
China rejects direct elections in Hong Kong
Mainland China dealt a crushing blow to Hong Kong's hopes for full democracy today when its most powerful legislative panel ruled the territory won't have direct elections for its next leader or for all its lawmakers in 2008.
Many people in Hong Kong have been demanding the right to democratically elect a successor to their chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, a former shipping tycoon chosen for his position by an 800-member committee that tends to side with Beijing.
But the Chinese National People's Congress Standing Committee said "universal suffrage shall not apply" to the selection of Tung successor in 2007 or members of the Legislative Council the following year.
Under the ruling, the territory will be allowed to make changes to its electoral methods -- but only "in the principle of gradual and orderly progress," China's official news agency Xinhua quoted the committee as saying.
Toll at 161 in North Korea
DANDONG, China -- Hygiene kits, instant noodles and water purification tablets by the thousands are streaming into a North Korean town pulverized by a train explosion last week as international aid efforts accelerated.
As a cold rain fell on the devastated community of Ryongchon, just across the Chinese frontier, relief workers cautioned that more assistance was necessary. The death toll stood at 161 today, and more than 1,300 people were listed as injured in Thursday's huge blast, fed by oil and chemicals.
U.N. officials estimated 40 percent of Ryongchon was damaged.
Fighting kills at least 10
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- At least 10 people were killed and the offices of the United Nations were set on fire yesterday when fighting erupted between Muslims and Christians in the remote Molucca Islands, authorities and witnesses said.
The clash broke out in Ambon, the provincial capital, during a demonstration by Christian separatists who advocate independence for the Indonesian region once known as the Spice Islands.
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April 24, 2004 Saturday



 World datelines

 
China
BEIJING -- China confirmed Friday that two laboratory workers have contracted SARS and that the mother of one has died -- making her the first apparent SARS fatality in the country since July. Hundreds of people have been quarantined.
Cyprus
NICOSIA -- Waving European Union flags and shouting slogans in both Greek and Turkish, tens of thousands of Cypriots turned out for a final show of support for a U.N. plan to end the 30-year division of their island. 
Denmark
COPENHAGEN -- The Danish defense minister resigned Friday as parliament members questioned whether the military exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein to justify the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Svend Aage Jensby stepped down just days after the prime minister reiterated that Denmark would not pull its troops out of Iraq despite continuing violence and a failure to find Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
France
LYON -- A court cleared the way Friday for the return to France of Abdelkader Bouziane, a Muslim cleric who was expelled to Algeria after advocating wife-beating and stoning of women.
Germany
BERLIN -- The retrial of the only person ever convicted in the Sept. 11 attacks will begin at a Hamburg court in August, the Moroccan's lawyer said Friday. Mounir el Motassadeq, whose conviction on charges of aiding the Sept. 11 plotters was overturned by federal appeals judges in March, won his release from prison earlier this month after the Hamburg state court ruled that the evidence against him was too weak to hold him pending the retrial.
Indonesia
JAKARTA -- Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror network, has accused Washington of pressuring Indonesia to keep him in prison to stop his campaign to establish Islamic law in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Japan
TOKYO -- No well-wishers were at the airport when three Japanese civilians taken hostage in Iraq returned home safely. As they left the plane, the two volunteer aid workers and freelance photojournalist hung their heads and were silent. Noriaki Imai, 18, Nahoko Takato, 34, and photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama, 32, have been accused of rashly ignoring government warnings to stay away from Iraq and blamed for imperiling the Japanese military's humanitarian mission there.
Latvia
RIGA -- Latvia will expel a Russian diplomat accused of trying to spy on NATO infrastructure in the Baltic state, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said Friday. Details were sketchy, and the diplomat was not identified.
Saudi Arabia
RIYADH -- Security forces foiled a planned terror attack in the port city of Jiddah by carrying out raids that left five Islamic militants dead, the Interior Ministry said Friday. The crackdown followed Wednesday's suicide bombing of the General Security building in the capital of Riyadh that killed six people, including the assailant, and wounded 148.
Spain
MADRID -- Authorities arrested one more suspect Friday in the Madrid terror bombings and requested arrest warrants for six other people, court officials said.
MADRID -- Three people jumped to their deaths Friday after the hot air balloon they were in hit a smokestack and caught fire, an official said.
Sri Lanka
COLOMBO -- In a major political setback, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's alliance has lost a crucial parliamentary vote, failing to get its candidate into the powerful speaker's post.
Thailand
BANGKOK -- A massive fire raced through a slum in downtown Bangkok on Friday, snarling traffic and spewing plumes of black smoke over embassies and five-star hotels, officials said. There were no reports of injuries.
Vatican
VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican insisted Friday that lay people must not deliver sermons or preach the Gospel during Mass, issuing a new directive to crack down on practices that are becoming increasingly frequent in the United States and Europe.







 



April 24, 2004 Saturday  




 Holdout Threatens Global Polio Eradication Effort; 
Suspicious of Vaccine, Nigerian State Refuses to Join Countrywide Immunization of Children

 
The northern Nigerian state of Kano, whose 3 million children younger than  5 are one of the world's last reservoirs of the polio virus, will not participate in a nationwide immunization campaign that starts today, according to observers there. 
Over the last year, virus originating in northern Nigeria has caused new polio outbreaks in nine African countries where the disease had earlier been eliminated. Kano's decision to continue its 12-month boycott of mass polio immunization threatens further spread of the virus and is jeopardizing the 16-year, $3 billion effort to eradicate the disease from  Earth. 
The World Health Organization earlier this month reported that a 7-year-old boy in Botswana was paralyzed in February by polio virus that was shown by genetic fingerprinting to have originated in Nigeria. Through mid-April, there were 89 cases of polio worldwide this year, 63 in Nigeria.  
Polio remains endemic, or freely circulating, in only six countries -- Nigeria, Niger, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt. All six are publicly committed to ridding themselves of polio by the end of the year -- a goal that will require multiple rounds of near-universal vaccination. 
Kano stopped mass immunization because of rumors the oral vaccine contained sterilizing drugs that were part of a global conspiracy against Islam. Several neighboring Muslim states had also dropped out, but by last month had rejoined the eradication effort. 
To allay local fears, the standard oral polio vaccine being used worldwide was recently tested -- and proved pure -- under the auspices of a committee that included Nigerian religious, governmental and medical leaders. In the last month, the United Nations agency UNICEF also procured a large supply of the vaccine made in Indonesia, a Muslim country, for Kano officials to use. 
Neither development, however, has  persuaded the local government to join the "national immunization days," which will try over four days to give a dose of polio vaccine to all 42 million of Nigeria's children younger than 5. 
"We thought that the report of the expert committee and the declaration of the religious authorities were enough. I still hope it will solve the issue," Mohammed Belhocine, WHO's top representative in Nigeria, said by telephone yesterday. He added that "we are told there are some positive signals" in negotiations between Nigeria's central government and local Kano officials. 
Abdulai Tinorgah, a physician who heads UNICEF's health programs in Nigeria, said by phone, "I think it is clear that Kano would like a new source of vaccine." UNICEF has 10 million doses of Indonesian-made vaccine on hand, but Kano officials have not requested it, he said. 
 Tinorgah added, however, that "having special vaccines for different parts of the country itself could generate problems. . . . The solution really is to move as quickly as possible to establish confidence" in all WHO-certified polio vaccine used in the eradication campaign. 
The 22-member expert committee that oversaw testing of the vaccine included the emirs of three states and a vociferously anti-vaccine physician, among others. The delegation  took samples of the vaccine to laboratories in India and Indonesia.  
Last month, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said the committee's report "categorically attests to the safety of the oral polio vaccine and clears it of contamination by HIV, cancerous agents and anti-fertility agents." He then went to Zamfara, a Muslim state near Kano, and symbolically launched March's immunization days there. 
The full report -- and evidence that everyone on the committee agrees with it -- has not been released, however. 
 The reluctance of leaders in the north to embrace polio vaccination is the product of Nigeria's north-south and Muslim-Christian rivalries as well as rumors of an international conspiracy. 
WHO, UNICEF and other global agencies have supported efforts to show the vaccine's safety and benefits but have not put direct pressure on local officials. The polio campaign operates on the principle that each country must "own" the goal of eradication, not have it forced on it from outsiders. 
Botswana, which has not had a case of polio in 13 years, does not share a border with Nigeria. How the virus reached there is unknown. However, because it is 99.7 percent identical to Nigerian viruses, it clearly arrived recently. 
"It's not something that has been bouncing around for six months. It's been there a much shorter time than that," said Christopher Maher, a scientist with the polio eradication campaign in Geneva. 
Most infections with polio virus produce few, if any, symptoms.  About 1 in 200 infections causes paralysis, which is how cases are found. Consequently, detecting a single case implies that hundreds of people may be carrying the virus and a significant fraction of the population is susceptible. 
Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Togo and Ivory Coast have all reported polio cases in the last year traceable to northern Nigeria. All are undertaking mass immunization campaigns, as is Botswana. 
If the global campaign is successful, polio will become only the second human disease eradicated. Smallpox was eradicated after an 11-year campaign. The last natural case of that disease occurred in Somalia in 1977, with the last cases ever in England in 1978 after a laboratory accident. 
When the polio eradication campaign began in 1988, there were 350,000 cases of polio a year worldwide, and it was the leading cause of paralysis in children. 




 U.S. Pressure to Hold Militant Sets Off Outcry in Indonesia

 
An effort by the Bush administration to ensure that Abu Bakar Bashir, the leader of the militant Islamic organization Jemaah Islamiyah, remains in jail and is fully prosecuted on terrorism charges has set off a diplomatic and political tempest here.
 In the middle of an intense political campaign, Islamists and nationalists are denouncing what they see as undue interference in Indonesia's internal affairs, and presidential candidates are expected to join in condemning the American pressure.
 A lawyer for Mr. Bashir said in a brief telephone interview on Monday that he thought his client would not be released because of the pressure from the United States. Indonesian officials also indicated that they would continue to detain Mr. Bashir and would probably charge him again. They said their thinking was based on new evidence linking him to the bombing of nightclubs in Bali in October 2002, not because of pressure from the United States and Australia, which has made the same case against Mr. Bashir, the officials said. 
 ''We are not troubled by America's, and Australia's, views on Abu Bakar Bashir,'' Mary Natalegawa, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview on Monday. ''We would like to ask them to be more circumspect, more economical in expressing their views.''
 Based on interrogations of several suspected members of Al Qaeda now in United States custody, American officials say Mr. Bashir was a critical participant in several terrorist attacks, including the ones in Bali, which killed more than 200 people.
 Mr. Bashir -- who has steadfastly denied any terrorist activities, but not a loathing for the United States and Jews -- was convicted of only relatively minor offenses last September, and a Supreme Court ruling last month made him eligible for release. Hoping to block that, the American ambassador, Ralph L. Boyce, has appealed to President Megawati Sukarnoputri, police officials and the heads of several Islamic organizations.
 Australia has made similar entreaties. ''We've been talking to the Indonesians,'' said the Australian ambassador here, David Ritchie. ''It disquiets us that he may be out of jail,'' he added.
 The challenge for the United States and Australia has been has been to get the Indonesians to look for ''other options,'' as Mr. Ritchie put it, while keeping a low profile. 
 Mr. Boyce's problems arose out of his trying to enlist prominent Indonesian Muslim leaders to the cause. Last month, he called on Syafii Maarif, the leader of Muhammadiyah, one of the country's two largest Muslim organizations. Mr. Maarif was one of the Muslim leaders who met with President Bush in Bali last October, and Mr. Boyce presented him with a photograph with Mr. Bush. However, Mr. Maarif wrote in a column last week in Republica, the most pro-Islamic of Indonesia's mainstream newspapers, that the real purpose of the visit was Mr. Bashir.
 Mr. Boyce asked Mr. Maarif to intercede with the Supreme Court and the police to keep Mr. Bashir in jail, Mr. Maarif wrote. The column touched off a public outcry.
 In a meeting with Indonesian journalists on Monday, Mr. Boyce acknowledged that he had met with Mr. Maarif but declined to say what the two men had discussed, according to individuals who were present. 
 The Indonesian government has complained that it has been unable to present a strong case against Mr. Bashir because the United States has denied Indonesian officials access to a senior Qaeda leader, Riudan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who has been in American custody at an undisclosed location since he was seized by the C.I.A. in Bangkok last August. But similar information has come from other detainees, an Indonesian official said.








 


April 15, 2004 Thursday



 Will Indonesia reject Islamic extremism?

 
   If Muslim but non-Arab countries such as Indonesia (216 million people) and Pakistan (130 million people) can resist extremism and chart a moderate Islamic course, they would provide a significant counterweight to the Islamic fundamentalism abroad in Arab lands.
While my previous column discussed Pakistan, this one considers the threat of extremism to Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world.
If one could generalize about an entire nation, one would perceive Indonesians as a gentle, artistic and moderate people. Having said that, they are capable of sudden outbursts of violence on grounds of religion (sometimes against Christians), ethnicity and minorities (against Chinese who control trade, for example) and politics and ideology. 
The Malay word "amok" characterizes a tendency among peoples of the region to erupt in violent rage. The most savage example of this in Indonesia's history was the sikat (sweep), or military-ordered purge of communist supporters, on which I reported in 1965 and '66. After an abortive communist coup and the midnight murder of the Army's high command, the Army swept across the country initiating and encouraging the elimination of PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) members. Many old scores were settled in the name of anti-communism. Victims included Chinese traders and peasants who were nominal PKI members with little understanding of ideology.
Reports of the death toll ranged as high as 1 million, but my own estimate was about 200,000 killed in the last three months of 1965, with perhaps another 50,000 killed in early 1966. The official figure was 78,000, but then-President Sukarno transposed the figures in announcing them, and 87,000 was what went 'round the world. (When I later protested to one of the investigating commissioners that the 78,000 figure was woefully unrealistic, he cheerfully agreed but pointed out that Sukarno was still in power at the time and they gave him the figure he wanted.)
Although Sukarno was revered as the man who led Indonesia to independence from the Dutch, he badly mismanaged the country for 20 years. His time had come, and he was deposed in 1967.
General Suharto, who played a key role in putting down the coup attempt, became president. His three decades of authoritarian rule were characterized in turn by widespread corruption and a disappointing failure to realize the country's economic potential. He was succeeded briefly by two weak presidents and finally, in 2001, by Megawati Sukarnoputri, Sukarno's daughter.
Last week, Indonesians began an extraordinarily complicated election process, which will culminate midyear with the first direct presidential vote. Early returns in parliamentary elections suggest Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle fell behind Golkar, the party of former strongman Suharto, and recent opinion polls give her little chance of winning another term.
But there was no great surge of support for the small minority Islamic political parties. Intriguingly, instead of pressing extremist religious views, they campaigned on workaday issues of government.
This is significant. Indonesia has been beset by a surge of Islamic radicalism and terrorism from militant groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah, responsible for the October 2002 nightclub bombing in Bali, among other attacks. Though the sprouting of these extremist cells is troubling, it is not yet translating into support at the polls for the religious radicalism that would move Indonesia away from the world's mainstream and ally it with the least-developed nations of Islam.
There are several hopeful factors.
First, while Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesians do not follow Islam with the hard-line fervor prevalent in some Arab countries. The practice of Islam varies widely in this sprawling archipelago, which is no stranger to Buddhism and Hinduism.
Second, while there is much poverty in Indonesia, it is a lush, tropical country favorable to agriculture and quite different from the arid deserts of the Middle East. "Poke a stick in the ground, and something will grow," say Javanese on Indonesia's main island. For many, it may be a subsistence economy, but it is not starvation.
Finally, there is a desire for freedom manifested by an upcoming generation that hungers for it even though that generation has never really tasted the full flavor of democracy.
Stability may elude Indonesia in the months ahead as it wallows in frustration and political turbulence. The long-term question is whether it will veer from the moderate to the radical. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He is a former editor of the , which syndicates this column. In 1967, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Indonesia. E-MAIL: hughes@desnews.com






 
  


April 12, 2004 Monday 



 REFUGEE DECISION HAS BIGGER PICTURE
U.S. RESETTLEMENT OF HMONG MAY BRING BENEFITS AS WELL AS REPAY PAST DEBT

 
Hmong soldiers may have fought bravely on behalf of the United States in Laos 30 years ago, but if you want to know why their families and descendants are being welcomed now, look to the Ford pickup truck plant in St. Paul.
Thailand, where the Hmong fled the war in their native Laos, just happens to be home to another Ford plant that makes Ranger pickups -- a diesel-powered version built for export that doesn't compete for the U.S. market. For now.
"It could be made cheaper to send vehicles to the U.S. from Thailand. That would not bode well for our St. Paul plant," Mayor Randy Kelly said, shortly after returning from his recent fact-finding mission to Southeast Asia. 
And while no one believes there will be a quid pro quo for the U.S. offer to take in thousands of refugees from Thailand, the Ford plant in St. Paul is just one example of why the resettlement of the Hmong is more complex than just a lingering obligation to a Cold War ally.
The resettlement issue, in the long run, may touch on everything from soybean fields to Social Security to the U.S. war on terror.
TRADE AND JOBS
The issue of pickup trucks is coming up shortly. One of Kelly's lesser-known stops was a meeting with Ford officials and a talk with U.S. Ambassador Darryl Johnson about bilateral trade negotiations with Thailand set to open in June -- negotiations that could potentially lower U.S. tariffs on light trucks and send Thai-built Rangers, among other things, to the United States.
Thailand is already the world's second-largest producer of light trucks, and Ford last fall announced its intention to invest another $500 million in its Thailand operations. That's about the amount it would take, coincidentally, to retool a plant for a new product, like a gasoline-powered pickup.
So bringing thousands of unskilled, impoverished refugees to Minnesota, ironically, just might help save American jobs if it helps to keep auto trade barriers from being significantly altered.
And while the mayor insists the resettlement wasn't his choice to make, he hopes to make the best of it.
"If we're being open and friendly to Thailand, we would hope they would take that into consideration," said the mayor of the potential impact on upcoming trade talks. "It can't hurt."
Another hot issue involves Minnesota's work force. The 2000 census results show the state is becoming increasingly middle-aged and ready to move out of the work force. And despite the recent economic downturn, hospitals and nursing homes -- among the largest private employers in St. Paul, as it happens -- are already having trouble finding people to take their jobs.
Immigration from other states and countries has been a key to keeping Minnesota's economy moving and likely will be again, according to state demographer Tom Gillaspy.
"It's not unlike the late 1880s, when people were going to Scandinavia and putting up signs and telling people there was work in Minnesota," Gillaspy says. "Not everybody was happy with the Scandinavians moving here. And before that it was the Irish. The newcomers are always the problem ... but if you want someone to take care of you when you're old and in the nursing home, that's who's going to do it."
SOCIAL SECURITY AND MORE
Some of those same demographic forces were also behind Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan's recent suggestion that the federal government trim retiree benefits offered by Social Security. Currently, there are about three active workers supporting each retiree, but that may fall below two workers per retiree within 20 years.
Immigration experts say the United States will need more than 15 million new workers by 2015 to keep the Social Security checks going out to American retirees, and the U.S. birthrate isn't even enough to keep the population constant -- and is even expected to drop further in the next 20 years.
There are other, subtler reasons, as well, that the United States may want to extend a welcome to the Hmong.
Thailand, for instance, is one of the founding members of the Association of South East Asian Nations, known as ASEAN. The 10-nation trade group could become a market as big as India, particularly for pharmaceuticals, cars and such agricultural products as soybeans, a major Minnesota crop.
But even though Thailand is a key entry point to ASEAN and one of America's oldest allies and 18th largest trading partner, ties occasionally have been strained.
A dispute over AIDS drugs nearly sparked a trade war in 2001, and U.S. shrimp producers last year filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission, accusing farmers from Thailand and five other countries of dumping seafood on the U.S. market.
For its part, Thailand imposes tariffs as high as 60 percent on U.S. specialties, such as consumer-ready agricultural products. U.S. trade officials also complain of an "explosion of copyright piracy" in Thailand, particularly relating to DVDs.
In February, the U.S. State Department also issued a report critical of human rights in Thailand, noting, among other things, that more than 1,100 people died in police custody last year partly in the wake of a national "war on drugs."
'STAKE IN A MAJOR RELATIONSHIP'
Still, Thai and U.S. officials seem keen to patch up their differences.
Short-term burdens, such as resettling the Hmong in the United States, are "part of the overall texture and relationship" between our nation and Thailand, one senior state department official said last week. "It offsets some of the other irritants -- for instance, our recent human rights report. Some of these other things, where we are seen to be keeping a promise that we made decades ago, these are the kinds of things that convince other countries that they have a stake in a major relationship with us."
That stake is quite valuable to Thailand.
Exports to the United States are also a backbone of the Thai economy, accounting for about 10 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, according to a nonpartisan Congressional Research Service report released March 25.
The Hmong also have been a continuing strain on Thailand as it attempts to improve relations with neighboring Laos, with which the Thai fought a brief border war in the 1980s. Hmong men in the Wat Tham Krabok refugee compound readily admit they've slipped back into Laos to fight the Communists there long after the Lao monarchy fell in 1975.
The Lao government is still battling Hmong insurgents, in fact, and has pressured Thailand to clamp down on -- or be rid of -- the Hmong at Tham Krabok.
And there are even larger, strategic reasons why the United States might want to make friends in Southeast Asia by taking in the Hmong.
U.S. businesses, for example, are facing "increased competition" there from "China's growing economic role in Asia and its quest for new markets, materials and trade deals," the report noted.
Free-trade advocates are making an "us or them" case for improving relations with ASEAN countries like Thailand. They hope the Thais will buy a lot of American computer equipment, aircraft, machinery and agricultural products, before China gets the business.
"The competition is real," says Frances Zwenig, spokeswoman for the US-ASEAN Business Council, which is pushing for a speedy deal with Thailand. "It's a happening thing both economically and politically."
She notes that Chinese firms actually built Cambodia's Parliament building and that the street signs in Mandalay, Myanmar, are now in Chinese.
And there's an even more ominous urgency to U.S. relations with Southeast Asia.
China is rapidly modernizing its military, said Randall G. Schriver, deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, during testimony in February before the federally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
That military activity seems directed at Taiwan, but the United States has long counted on its ASEAN allies to shore up its firepower elsewhere in Asia -- the ASEAN alliance was founded in 1967 in part to help thwart Communist expansion in the region.
Thailand, in fact, hosted U.S. air crews and planes when the U.S. military was fighting Chinese allies in Vietnam. More recently, Thailand has sent troops to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It's also a neighbor of Indonesia, the largest Islamic country in the world and home to a growing number of radical Muslim groups, such as the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah.
It's hard to see immediately how the Hmong fit in to these bigger pictures, such as the U.S. manufacturing sector or international terrorism.
There is widespread concern now about the most obvious issues, including the public expense of health care, welfare and housing needs that immigrants will bring with them when they start arriving in Minnesota this summer.
Ramsey County Commissioner Jim McDonough was a member of the St. Paul delegation that went to Thailand in late February and early March to try to assess what burdens Minnesota will have to bear when the Hmong arrive.
And he came back apparently convinced that resettlement was as much an opportunity as a debt being repaid.
"This isn't about the past," he said, shortly after he got back. "It's about the future."
Tim Nelson can be reached at tnelson@pioneerpress.com or 651-292-1159.







 


April 11, 2004 Sunday  




 U.S. Warns the Philippines on Terror Groups

 
The Bush administration has quietly warned the Philippine government that it has not been doing enough to crack down on terrorist groups in the country, Western and Philippine officials said.
 The diplomatic reproach, which has not been made public, was delivered to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at a late-night meeting nearly three weeks ago and comes after two years of public praise from Washington for her support in the Bush administration's campaign against terrorism.
 It also comes after a reassessment about the terrorist capacities, objectives and international connections of Abu Sayyaf, the Philippine rebel group that has a reputation for kidnapping and beheading hostages.
 At the same time, a new Islamic organization has emerged that claims Muslims were here before the Spaniards, who brought Christianity, and focuses on converting Christians to Islam, then sending them for terrorist training. American officials said they know little about the group. 
 In spite of recent arrests, which came as a result of the American warning, there is still a high level of tension here about a possible terrorist attack. There is a lot of chatter on intercepted phone conversations that has everyone worried, Western and Philippine officials said.
 The warning the Americans delivered to the Philippines is similar to one they delivered to the Indonesian government weeks before the attacks in Bali in October 2002.
 The Philippine government has been ''in a state of denial'' about the terrorist threat, said a Western diplomat, explaining what prompted the American warning, which was made on March 22. The United States was joined by Australia and Britain in the warning, diplomats and Philippine officials said.
 Over a period of months, the United States had given the Philippines intelligence that should have led to the arrest of suspected terrorists, including the leader of Abu Sayyaf, and the Philippine government did not act, one Western diplomat said. 
 Asked about the warning, President Arroyo's national security adviser, Norberto Gonzales, said, ''I think they have changed their position by now.'' 
 Eight days later, on March 30, Philippine authorities, acting on intelligence provided by the United States, arrested six people suspected of planning attacks in Manila.
 On Tuesday, the United States Justice Department began proceedings that could lead to the extradition of one of those arrested, Alhamser Manatad Limbong.
 Along with several other suspected members of Abu Sayyaf, Mr. Limbong was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington in December 2002, charged with the kidnapping and murder of several Americans. 
 After his capture, he confessed to taking part in the beheading of one American hostage, Guillermo Sobero, in June 2001, Philippine officials said. 
 They said that another of the six people arrested on March 30 had confessed to planting an explosive device, concealed inside a television, on a ferry in Manila harbor. The ferry attack caused an explosion and fire that killed more than 100 people. Until the confession, the Philippine government had steadfastly refused to call the explosion, on Feb. 27, a terrorist attack.
 The United States has bomb experts here who could determine the exact cause of the explosion, diplomats said, but the Philippine government has not allowed them. 
 Its ''utter refusal to do anything'' about the ferry attack was another reason for the warning, a Western diplomat said.
 When the police arrested Mr. Limbong and the others they also seized nearly 180 pounds of TNT, leading Mrs. Arroyo to say that ''another Madrid'' had been avoided.
 Diplomats and security officials said that in invoking the train bombings in Madrid, Mrs. Arroyo engaged in a bit of election-time hyperbole. The presidential election is May 10. Still, they do not deny their concerns.
 Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian-based terrorist group, often seen as Al Qaeda's surrogate in the region, is continuing to operate camps in the southern Philippines, with another 40 recruits reported to have graduated in February, Western and Philippine officials said.
 An alliance of sorts has been formed between Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has been waging a war against the Philippine government in Mindanao for more than two decades.
 In areas controlled by the front, Jemaah Islamiyah has camps, where Indonesian instructors train recruits from Indonesia and the Philippines, including members of Abu Sayyaf, according to the Philippine and Western security officials.
 The Moro leaders have repeatedly denied that they tolerate any camps, saying that if they exist, they are in areas controlled by renegade factions, a claim American officials say they find hard to accept. 
 The Arroyo administration has been reluctant to move militarily against the Moro Front, arguing that it will upset peace negotiations.
 The new group on the scene is the Rajah Solaiman Movement, which recruits Christians, then presses them to convert to a militant form of Islam.
 Founded in 2002, its goal is the ''Islamization of the whole country on the belief that before the Spaniards came with Christianity, there were Muslims'' here, according to a Philippine intelligence report. 
 The movement has a Special Operations group and a Special Action Force, and is financed by money from Saudi Arabia that is channeled through charities in the Philippines, the report says.
 Three American officials from different agencies said that they were not aware of the report, which was prepared two years ago, and that they knew little about the group.
 On one occasion, the leader of Abu Sayyaf, Khadaffy Janjalani, gave the Rajah Solaiman Movement the equivalent of about $200,000 for operational activities, the report said.
 Abu Sayyaf was founded in the early 1990's with the goal of creating an Islamic state in the Philippines. Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, provided early encouragement and financial support. Within a few years, however, Abu Sayyaf had lost most of its religious orientation and become what American officials called ''thugs for hire.''
 Within the past year or so, Abu Sayyaf apparently has returned to its religious roots, the officials said. It may have done so after receiving a message from Al Qaeda to cease kidnappings because they were bringing too much retaliation from the American military, an American official said.
 On more than one occasion in recent months, the United States has pinpointed the whereabouts of Mr. Janjalani ''within a few square miles,'' and passed the information to the Philippine Army, a Western official said.
 Either for a lack of will or means, the Philippine Army did not move to capture him, the diplomat said.







 


April 8, 2004 Thursday



 A stable Pakistan could change Middle East

 
   The challenge of militant Islam seems rooted in the Arab lands of the Middle East. From such countries come hard-line terrorists committed to killing Westerners and overthrowing their civilization.
But also significant to the ultimate direction of Islam are Pakistan (population 130 million) and Indonesia (at 216 million, the world's fourth most populous nation), whose culture and religion may be Islamic but whose people aren't Arab.
Both are under siege internally from small but dangerous Islamic militant groups, but it is by no means certain they will succumb to religious extremism. For one thing, their economies are more vibrant than those of much of the Arab world and thus do not offer the same breeding ground of poverty and despair. If they become prospering, progressive and tolerant Muslim countries, they would offer a striking contrast to the hate-filled concepts of Islam taught in the madrassahs, or religious schools, of the Arab world. 
Pakistan is of particular concern to the West for a variety of reasons. (Indonesia, I'll feature in next week's column.) It is critical in the containment of Taliban and al-Qaida remnants in neighboring Afghanistan. It is an essential U.S. partner in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. As has recently been discovered, it has exported nuclear-arms technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya and so must be counted a player in the nuclear-proliferation stakes. Finally, if unchecked, its long-simmering hostility with India could unleash a devastating, and perhaps nuclear, war.
The United States is gambling on Pakistan's current military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to act constructively in these areas while keeping Islamist fundamentalists in check.
The U.S. relationship with Musharraf has not always been so agreeable. After he seized power in a 1999 coup, Musharraf got the cold shoulder from the Bill Clinton administration, which considered him undemocratic. In addition, elements of Pakistan's army and intelligence service backed the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, Musharraf became a welcome U.S. ally, his country vital for its airspace and logistical support against al-Qaida and the Taliban. Recently, Pakistani forces have been galvanized in the hunt along the rugged Afghan border for the elusive bin Laden and al-Qaida fighters. Though both the U.S. and Pakistani governments deny that U.S. forces operate on the Pakistani side of the border, there's clearly Pakistani cooperation with U.S. units and surveillance aircraft on the Afghan side.
Musharraf also has sought more friendly relations with India, has regretted the export of nuclear technology -- while professing his regime's noninvolvement -- and has spoken out against intolerance, calling for a "jihad against extremism." U.S. gratitude for his antiterrorism support has been expressed by lifting sanctions, substantial economic aid, and muted public criticism of Pakistan's nuclear indiscretions.
In the area of democracy, Musharraf is something of an enigma. He has promised to step down as army chief by the end of this year and speaks forcefully of reforms, but he has garnered wide powers to remain president until 2007. He speaks disparagingly of Islamic militancy but has made political concessions to extremists and hasn't moved with dispatch against Pakistan's madrassahs, which spawned many Taliban and al-Qaida supporters.
Is Musharraf skillfully balancing dangerous political forces -- he survived two recent assassination attempts -- as he moves Pakistan as fast as it can go toward democracy, stability and moderation? Or is he playing a clever game, keeping U.S. aid and goodwill flowing while he retains his grip on power?
When Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage testified before the 9/11 commission recently, he argued that it took some time for the Bush administration to mobilize Pakistan's support against the Taliban because, initially, it had little leverage with the Musharraf regime.
Clearly that has changed. If Musharraf is the best bet for stability and reform in Pakistan, the administration should be balancing its strong public support of his stand on terrorism with strong private urging for consistent reform. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He is a former editor of the , which syndicates this column. In 1967, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Indonesia. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com







 


April 7, 2004 Wednesday  




 Ex-hostage details Islamic terror training; 
Filipinos witnessed Indonesian militants teach bomb-making, other skills at camp

 
MANILA, Philippines -- Indonesian Islamic militants taught dozens of Abu Sayyaf recruits how to make cell phone-triggered bombs and other terror skills while dodging helicopters and troops in a jungle camp last year, one of several former hostages told The Associated Press.
About 40 men completed the bomb-making course and 60 were taught sniping and combat techniques from late 2002 to the middle of 2003 by two unidentified Indonesians, who officials believe were members of the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network, the ex-hostage said.
The eyewitness accounts by Rolando Ulah and several other Filipinos once held by Abu Sayyaf provide a glimpse into clandestine terror training by suspected militants with ties to al-Qaida and to rebels in the southern Philippines, home to this mostly Roman Catholic nation's Muslim minority.
Philippine authorities have long suspected that Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesia-based al-Qaida ally, has links with the brutal Abu Sayyaf and the larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Muslim separatist group accused of providing sanctuary and training grounds to foreign militants.
Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for numerous attacks and plots across Southeast Asia, including the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people in October 2002. Jemaah Islamiyah seeks to establish a hard-line Islamic caliphate comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the southern Philippines.
The Abu Sayyaf, known for kidnap-for-ransom schemes, has been blamed for bombings in the Philippines, including an attack in 2002 outside an army camp in southern Zamboanga city that killed an American Green Beret and two Filipino civilians. It has claimed responsibility for an explosion and fire on a ferry a month ago that killed more than 100 people.
According to the former hostage accounts, training started with a dawn jog and was capped at night by an Arabic reading of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, and prayers led by the Indonesians, who spoke a smattering of Tagalog, English and Arabic. Their yells of "Allahu Akbar," or "God is Great," echoed through the jungle as they trained, Ulah told AP.
"They were taught sniping, combat, tae kwon do and dismantling bombs and making bombs that could be set off using cell phones and alarm clocks," said Ulah, who escaped from the Abu Sayyaf last June after more than three years of captivity on southern Jolo island.
The Indonesians taught the young guerrillas, mostly recruits from Jolo and the nearby island of Basilan, how to safely open mortar rounds or unexploded bombs dropped by Philippine air force planes and picked up by villagers, who sold them to the rebels. The explosives could be rigged as timed bombs or their powder could be used to make separate bombs, he said.
Breaking into smaller groups, the recruits were taught to make bombs that could be remotely detonated using mobile phones or alarm clocks. Such bombs, made using soldering irons and other electrical equipment, were detonated in explosive tests in the jungle, he said. Ulah said the homemade bombs he saw were made from mortar rounds and unexploded bombs dropped by twin-propeller attack planes.
The recruits also were taught to use the locally available M16 and M14 rifles as well as the grenade-firing M203, aiming at red targets on trees, he said. The training occasionally was disrupted by troops aboard helicopters, but it would resume after they passed, Ulah said..
The training, mostly at temporary encampments on Mount Buod Bagsak, in Jolo's coastal town of Patikul, was witnessed by three other former captives, including a sailor who escaped last year and told military interrogators the trainers were fellow Indonesians.
Ulah, 44, and four other hostages surfaced Monday when they were called by authorities to identify some of six alleged Abu Sayyaf guerrillas who reportedly were planning Madrid-style bombings in Manila. They sat down with AP on Monday for interviews.




  


April 6, 2004 Tuesday



 Ex-hostage saw terror training Indonesian militants taught sniper skills, bomb-making to rebels;
Indonesian militants taught sniper skills, bomb-making to rebels

 
The eyewitness accounts by Rolando Ulah and several other Filipinos once held by Abu Sayyaf provide a glimpse into clandestine terror training by suspected militants with ties to al-Qaida and to rebels in the southern Philippines, home to this mostly Roman Catholic nation's Muslim minority.
Philippine authorities have long suspected that Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesia-based al-Qaida ally, has links with the brutal Abu Sayyaf and the larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Muslim separatist group accused of providing sanctuary and training grounds to foreign militants.
Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for numerous attacks and plots across Southeast Asia, including the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people. Jemaah Islamiyah seeks to establish a hard-line Islamic caliphate comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the southern Philippines. 
The Abu Sayyaf, known for kidnap-for-ransom schemes, has been blamed for bombings in the Philippines, including an attack in 2002 outside an army camp in southern Zamboanga city that killed an American Green Beret and two Filipino civilians. It has claimed responsibility for an explosion and fire on a ferry a month ago that killed more than 100 people.
According to the former hostage accounts, training started with a dawn jog and was capped at night by an Arabic reading of the Quran, the Muslim holy book and prayers led by the Indonesians, who spoke a smattering of Tagalog, English and Arabic. Their yells of "Allahu Akbar,' or God is Great, echoed through the jungle as they trained, Ulah said.
"They were taught sniping, combat, tae kwon do and dismantling bombs and making bombs that could be set off using cell phones and alarm clocks,' said Ulah, who escaped from the Abu Sayyaf last June after more than three years of captivity on southern Jolo island.
The Indonesians taught the young guerrillas, mostly recruits from Jolo and the nearby island of Basilan, how to safely open mortar rounds or unexploded bombs dropped by Philippine air force planes and picked up by villagers, who sold them to the rebels. The explosives could be rigged as timed bombs or their powder could be used to make separate bombs, he said.
Breaking into smaller groups, the recruits were taught to make bombs that could be remotely detonated using mobile phones or alarm clocks. Such bombs, made using soldering irons and other electrical equipment, were detonated in explosive tests in the jungle, he said. Ulah said the homemade bombs he saw were made from mortar rounds and unexploded bombs dropped by twin-propeller OV-10 Bronco attack planes.
The recruits also were taught to use the locally available M16 and M14 rifles as well as the grenade-firing M203, aiming at red targets on trees, he said. The training occasionally was disrupted by troops.
"Sometimes a Sikorsky [helicopter] would fly over and everybody would run for cover to avoid being seen. After it passed, they would resume training again,' Ulah said.
The training, mostly at temporary encampments on Mount Buod Bagsak, in Jolo's coastal town of Patikul, was witnessed by three other former captives, including a sailor who escaped last year and told military interrogators the trainers were fellow Indonesians.
Ulah, 44, and four other hostages surfaced Monday when they were called by authorities to identify some of six alleged Abu Sayyaf guerrillas who reportedly were planning Madrid-style bombings in Manila. They sat down with AP on Monday for interviews.
Abu Sayyaf chief Khaddafy Janjalani left Jolo aboard boats with the two Indonesians and about 40 of the newly trained guerrillas a month before he escaped in June, Ulah said. The military, sometimes helped by U.S. surveillance planes, has been hunting Janjalani since.
Former hostages also disclosed seeing two Arab nationals who met Janjalani and stayed with the guerrillas for about a month in 2001 on southern Basilan island, where the rebels had a strong presence until they were crippled and displaced by U.S.-backed assaults. Basilan is near Jolo and Abu Sayyaf guerrillas are active in both impoverished islands.
Ulah was kidnapped in April 2000 with 20 Western tourists and Asian workers from Malaysia's Sipadan resort, where he was a handyman. The other hostages were ransomed off. Now under a government witness protection program, Ulah said he was helping the government prosecute the guerrillas so they would not be able to destroy innocent people's lives.







 


April 5, 2004 Monday  




 NEWS SUMMARY

 

INTERNATIONAL   A3-13

Organized Militia Uprising In Iraq Kills 7 U.S. Soldiers
A coordinated uprising against the American-led occupation rippled across Iraq. Seven American soldiers were killed in Sadr City, one of the worst losses for the American forces in any firefight since Baghdad was captured a year ago. The thousands of militiamen are loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, a 31-year-old Shiite cleric.   A1

Moktada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, has been spewing invective and threatening a widespread insurrection for months, while American occupation authorities have been focused on a more moderate Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.   A1

L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian administrator in Iraq, is scheduled to hold a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill, and two senior senators warn that the June 30 date for transferring sovereignity to the Iraqis may be premature.   A8

Renewed Seal Hunt in Canada
Canada's seal hunt, by far the world's largest and commercially most valuable, has undergone a gradual revival over the last six years that has virtually escaped world attention. This year, the government will allow the killing of up to 350,000 baby harp seals.   A1

Top Suspect Among Dead
Forensic experts in Madrid have identified one of at least four bodies of the men who blew themselves up during a police raid of an apartment as the man suspected of masterminding the March 11 train bombings. Another suspect was also identified among the dead.   A3

Basque Arsenal in France
French and Spanish investigators have uncovered in southwestern France what may be ''one of the largest weapons arsenals'' of the Basque separatist group ETA. The police raid also resulted in the arrests of two suspected ETA members.   A3

Sri Lankan Parliament Elections
President Chandrika Kumaratunga's alliance won the most seats in Sri Lankan parliamentary elections, but it does not have the clear majority needed to form a government. Despite complaints of irregularities, election officials said that any call for a new election would be rejected.   A13

Indonesians Focus on Economy
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, will vote in parliamentary elections that surveys indicate will turn on the country's widespread dismay with the limping economy rather than on questions about Islam.   A6

Peru's Corruption Fight
President Alejandro Toledo's government is carrying out its promise to pursue corrupt officials in what is considered the most far-reaching and aggressive anticorruption investigation in Latin American history, but his own integrity has been tarnished by a string of scandals.   A6

NATIONAL   A12-19

Stymied by Politicians, Wal-Mart Turns to Voters
Voters will go to the polls in Inglewood, Calif., to decide whether to turn over 60 acres of barren concrete to Wal-Mart, a test of the company's political and marketing muscle. Wal-Mart sponsored the ballot initiative, collecting signatures to put it to voters, after the City Council blocked the proposed development.   A14

Preview of Rice Interview
The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed that evidence gathered by their panel suggested that the attacks could have been prevented. Their remarks offered a preview of the difficult questions likely to confront Condoleezza Rice when she testifies.   A16

New Park Name, New Visitors
When Congaree Swamp National Monument dropped the word S-word from its name and upgraded its status from a monument, backpacking and birding hordes bore down on the 22,000-acre flood plain, South Carolina's first national park. Since the new park designation, the monthly visitor count has more than doubled.   A14

Foundation Grants Slip
Grants from the nation's almost 65,000 independent, community and corporate foundations in 2003 totaled an estimated $29.7 billion, a 4.7 percent decrease from 2002, says a survey from the Foundation Center. The decrease is a result of the stock market malaise in 2002.   A19

Kerry Returns to Campaigning
Senator John Kerry issued a report accusing the Bush administration of fueling the deficit and crippling state budgets by approving or proposing programs costing more than $6 trillion without paying for them. After Mr. Kerry's two-week hiatus, aides said it was the opening round in a weeklong focus on the economy.   A18

Editing Ban Is Eased
The federal government has eased a ban on editing manuscripts from nations that are under United States trade embargoes, a move that appears to leave publishers free to edit scholarly works from Iran and other such countries.   A15

SCIENCE/HEALTH

The New Face of AIDS
A black woman was 23 times more likely to have AIDS than a white woman, according to government studies of data from 1999 to 2002 from 29 states. Though new cases of H.I.V. among black women have remained stable in the past few years, the number of those who have been infected through heterosexual sex has risen.   A1

OBITUARIES   B7

John Taras
The internationally known American choreographer and balletmaster, he was 84.   B7

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-5

Statue of Liberty Donations Under Investigation by U.S.
Federal investigators have begun an inquiry into the National Park Service's dealings with a nonprofit foundation it relied on to handle the reopening of the Statue of Liberty, according to a government official. They are investigating how the foundation spent donations it raised for projects at the monument and whether it followed federal guidelines on competitive bidding for certain contracts.   A1

Palm Sunday Relived
For the second consecutive year, congregants from the cathedrals and storefront churches of the South Bronx gathered to re-enact the events of Palm Sunday. Every detail was faithful to the Biblical text, except a last minute replacement of a mule for Jesus' donkey.   B5

Inside the Tyco Jury
Interviews with more than half the members of the jury in the Tyco International trial have helped reconstruct some pivotal moments in their deliberations and shed light on the thought processes of Ruth B. Jordan, Juror No. 4, who said at one point during deliberations that she could not in good conscience vote to convict the two defendants.   B1

College Dance Turns Violent
A student was shot and at least six other people were slashed or bludgeoned when a fight escalated into a free-swinging melee at a student center dance on the Madison, N.J., campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University, law-enforcement and school officials said.   B1

ARTS   E1-8

SPORTSMONDAY   D1-10

Connecticut Women in Final
The University of Connecticut's 67-58 victory over Minnesota put them in the National Colligate Athletic Association's national championship game against Tennessee. Connecticut will be vying for its third straight national championship.   D1

The star-free Tennessee Lady Vols scrapped their way to a 52-50 victory over Louisiana State University, whose fans had made the short, hour's drive from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, in the first women's semifinal. Guard Shanna Zolman led Tennessee with 12 points and guard Tasha Butts had 11.   D1

BUSINESS DAY   C1-12

Web Engines Plan To End Gambling Ads
Google and Yahoo, two of the most widely used Web search engines, have decided to stop running advertisements for online casinos, a shift that could thwart the growth of Internet gambling. The move comes as federal prosecutors are threatening action against American companies that do business with Internet casinos that are based abroad.   C1

Gauging Effect of File Sharing
While the music industry holds that downloading hurts sales, two economists have released a draft of the first study that makes an economic comparison of directly observed activity on file-sharing networks and music buying that reveals quite the opposite. The study states that downloads have no effect on record sales.   C1

Taxation of the Internet
Because of a strange tax glitch, consumers are paying monthly taxes on their high-speed Internet connection depending on whether they use a cable connection or a telephone data line. This odd situation has grabbed attention in the Senate, and it is part of a debate on whether to extend a tax moratorium on Internet services.   C1

Business Digest   C1

EDITORIAL   A20-21

Editorials: False promises on gas; finding money for better schools; terror in Tashkent; reproductive rights assaulted.

Columns: William Safire, Bob Herbert.

Autos   D10
Metro Diary   B2
Bridge   E8
TV Listings   E7
Crossword   E6
Weather   D12








 


April 5, 2004 Monday  




 Indonesians Vote, With the Economy, Not Islam, in Spotlight

 
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, will vote on Monday in parliamentary elections that surveys indicate will turn on the country's widespread dismay with the limping economy rather than on questions about Islam.
 This is the second parliamentary election since the fall of Suharto in this country known for moderate Islamic beliefs. The polls indicate that Indonesians are likely to choose between the two well-established secular parties and give only fleeting attention to the small Islamic parties.
 The elections will set the stage for presidential elections in July and most analysts will be watching to see how the Democratic Party for Struggle of President Megawati Sukarnoputri will fare against Golkar, the party founded by General Suharto. 
 A poll published over the weekend, by the Washington-based International Foundation for Election Systems, gave Golkar a substantial lead, which seemed to reflect the general disaffection with Ms. Sukarnoputri's relaxed leadership style. But it also showed a large group of undecided voters.
 Unlike more populous India, which staggers its voting over a number of days, Indonesia has decided to accomplish the vote on one day.
 With 147 million eligible voters living on 17,000 islands, 585,000 polling places have been established so that villagers do not have to travel far. Voting will be from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. to allow for counting to take place during daylight. 
 But with many polling places far from telephones and electricity, it is likely to be weeks rather than days before the official vote tally is completed. 
 ''Will the infrastructure work?'' asked Hank Valentino, a senior adviser to the International Foundation for Election Systems. ''Where election workers have to bring the ballots by road, will there be an avalanche? If they have to go by boat, will the boat be there?''
 Given the complicated logistics, Mr. Valentino, who advised the Indonesians in their first post-Suharto parliamentary election in 1999, said the participation in the preparations had been encouraging. About five million poll workers, most of them teachers, have been designated.
 ''Indonesia has made tremendous steps in democratic reforms, especially given the size of the country,'' he said. ''It's a huge leap.''
 The Indonesian Election Commission carefully regulated campaigning during the 22-day campaign period, giving each party designated days to stage rallies. But many rallies were little more than pop concerts, with hired singers often outperforming the candidates. The timetable also gave little room for real discussion of the issues.
 But polls and informal comments by voters demonstrate a hankering for a return to some of the stability that many Indonesians felt before the economic collapse in 1997.
 About one-third of the 100-million-member labor force is either unemployed or underemployed, according to Western economists. The World Bank said last December that Indonesia's economic growth could not absorb the 2 million to 2.5 million new entrants in the labor force every year. The bank said child health had deteriorated to such an extent that the rate of immunization of children was lower than in 1990, and that one quarter of all children were underweight. To add to the dark picture, the bank noted that Indonesia had one of the world's weakest education systems. 
 One of the surprises in the last few weeks has been the large crowds who came to hear a former senior minister in Ms. Megawati's cabinet, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
 Mr. Susilo is running on the platform of the little known Party Democrat. To nominate a presidential candidate, a party must reach 5 percent of the popular vote or 3 percent of the parliamentary seats.
 Mr. Susilo's party seemed within reach of 5 percent, according to the International Foundation's poll. Mr. Susilo's personal rating jumped from 8 percent on March 10 to 18.4 percent on March 28, the survey said. 
 Support for Ms. Megawati has remained flat in the polls, around 11 percent in the last several months. The leader of the Golkar party, Akbar Tandjung, whose conviction on embezzlement charges was overturned by the Supreme Court in February, had 6 percent in a question about the popularity of leaders in the International Foundation survey.
 Another candidate for the Golkar nomination, Gen. Wiranto -- who has been indicted by a United Nations tribunal for East Timor on charges of crimes against humanity connected with the turmoil there in 1999 -- slightly trailed Mr. Akbar in the survey.
 In some respects, the Indonesian results are expected to mirror the outcome in Malaysia two weeks ago when the radical Islamic party, Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, lost considerable ground from gains it had made several years ago. 
 As in Malaysia, the Islamic parties in Indonesia will not attract a substantial vote. 
 But one of the Indonesian Islamic parties, the Prosperous Justice Party, which is run by relatively young Western-educated men and women, is expected to do better than in the past.
 Yet even this Islamic party has based its campaign on an anticorruption theme rather than emphasizing its beliefs in the need for a system of Islamic law.      






 
  


April 5, 2004 Monday 



 NATION & WORLD BRIEFING

 
5 police die as militants attack in Karachi
KARACHI, Pakistan -- Suspected Islamic extremists stormed a police station in the southern city of Karachi on Sunday and killed five police, forcing their victims to recite Quranic verses before shooting them, authorities said. Police officials indicated they suspected Lashkar-e-Janghvi, a militant group linked to al-Qaida that had recently been the target of a police roundup. "We suspect that they are the same whose accomplices have been arrested by police," Syed Kamil Shah, provincial police inspector-general, told reporters, while declining to name the group outright. Survivors -- including two men who had been in detention at the station and one policeman who had been at morning prayers -- said 10 gunmen stormed the building around dawn. 
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/news and click on Nation/World.
Taiwanese leader refuses gesture
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan's prime minister rejected the resignation of Taiwan's interior minister in response to a mysterious shooting that slightly injured the president a day before last month's election, an election official said Sunday. Interior Minister Yu Cheng-hsien offered to step down to take moral responsibility for the shooting, Cabinet Secretary General Liu Shih-fang said. But Premier Yu Shyi-kun has asked him to stay, noting that the Cabinet will resign en masse on May 12 to pave the way for a reshuffle prior to President Chen Shui-bian's inauguration, Liu said. The two Yus are not related. It is a Taiwanese tradition for government and military officials to take responsibility for problems or mistakes and resign.
Restoration of rights rejected
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia -- Slovenes overwhelmingly voted Sunday against restoring the rights of thousands of ethnic Bosnians, Croats and Serbs who were stripped of citizenship when Slovenia broke away from Yugoslavia. More than 18,000 people were officially erased from state records after Slovenia declared its independence in 1991. The move effectively made them nonpersons in the eyes of the government. In a referendum Sunday, 95 percent of voters denied restoring the rights to the ethnic minorities. Only 4 percent supported a Constitutional Court ruling that last year recommended the government restore rights back to the group, widely known as "The Erased."
Israel closing corruption probe
JERUSALEM -- Israel's attorney general will close the corruption investigation against Vice Premier Ehud Olmert, the Justice Ministry said Sunday, but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon might still be charged. Olmert, a close confidant of Sharon, was suspected of involvement in a bribery case that threatens to bring down the prime minister. Sharon is suspected of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from an Israeli real estate developer to promote a tourism project on a Greek island. Attorney General Meni Mazuz is expected to make his decision on whether to indict Sharon in the coming weeks. Developer David Appel has already been charged in the case.
7,700 detained on drug charges in Iran
TEHRAN, Iran -- Police have detained 7,700 people on drug-related charges and confiscated 6.4 tons of narcotics nationwide during the two weeks that Iran marked the Persian new year, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Sunday. IRNA quoted a police report as saying the amount of drugs confiscated during the March 20-April 1 Nowruz holiday season was double the amount seized during the holiday last year. It was not clear why there was such an increase. According to the report, 7,700 drug smugglers, distributors and addicts were arrested in the crackdown, IRNA said. Nowruz is one of a few national festivals that survived the advent of Islam and recent efforts by hard-line Iranian clerics to discourage pre-Islamic celebrations.
Election tests Indonesian leader
JAKARTA, Indonesia --Indonesian voters are putting President Megawati Sukarnoputri to a crucial test of her hopes for a second term. Her job is not at stake in today's vote for the 550-seat national assembly, but it will set the stage for the country's first direct presidential elections July 5, with Megawati in second place in opinion polls. Ironically, the biggest winner in Parliament is likely to be the Golkar Party, the political machine of ousted dictator Suharto. In contrast to the heady days of 1999, when the world's most populous Muslim nation voted in its first free election following Suharto's downfall, the poor are seen as apathetic and shortchanged by the new, democratic Indonesia.
Slovakia runoff vote to take place April 17
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia -- A former authoritarian prime minister and his one-time ally will face one another in a runoff election that decides who will be the Slovak leader as the nation joins the European Union, according to election results Sunday. Vladimir Meciar's first-place finish in Saturday's presidential ballot comes only weeks before Slovakia joins the EU. The smooth-talking nationalist and his opponent and former right-hand man, Ivan Gasparovic, finished one and two to eliminate the favorite, Foreign Minister Eduard Kukan. Turnout was only 47.94 percent. Since no candidate won 50 percent or more of the votes, Slovak election law calls for the top two candidates to vie in an April 17 runoff.
Rebel attack kills 9 in Nepal
KATMANDU, Nepal -- Maoist rebels attacked a police station during the night in southern Nepal, killing at least nine policemen, officials said today. About 400 rebels were involved in the attack in the village of Yadukuna, about 190 miles southeast of the capital, Katmandu, a police official said. Nine police officers were killed and 26 were missing and feared to have been abducted by the rebels. Fighting between the rebels, who say they are inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, and government forces has escalated since the guerrillas withdrew from a seven-month cease-fire in August. The rebels have been fighting since 1996 to replace Nepal's monarchy with a communist state. The insurgency has claimed more than 9,000 lives.






 
  


April 5, 2004 Monday  



 VOTE IS LIKELY TO MIRROR ECONOMIC DISCONTENT

 
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, will vote today in parliamentary elections that surveys indicate will turn on the country's widespread dismay at the limping economy rather than on questions about Islam. The polls indicate that Indonesians are likely to choose between the two well-established secular parties and give only fleeting attention to the small Islamic parties.







 



April 3, 2004 Saturday  




 In Indonesia, Political Rallies Mean a Payday

 
Mukti Wibowo, a stocky street tough with tattooed biceps, hung back in the shadows of the alley as his operatives corralled the stragglers onto a string of buses and handed out the final green T-shirts. 
 This was Saturday so it must be green, the official color of Indonesia's largest Islamic party. 
 But green, red or blue, it didn't matter much to Wibowo. He has arranged crowds for the country's ruling party as well as three opposition parties, both religious and secular. All within a single week. Often by paying the same people to turn up, he said. And in each case, he got his cut, an easy $100 or more per rally.  
 "Democracy isn't bad for business," he quipped. 
 The return of democratic elections to Indonesia in 1999 changed Wibowo's life. A former hoodlum in Jakarta's rough, working-class neighborhood of Manggarai, he has staked out a business as one of Indonesia's countless crowd brokers, those local fixers bankrolled by political parties to pay many of the tens of thousands of people now cramming into campaign rallies. 
 He and his associates in Manggarai estimate that at least two-thirds of those participating in rallies ahead of parliamentary elections on Monday do so not out of conviction but to get a free T-shirt and cash. The going rate is about $2  a head plus several liters of fuel for those riding their own motorcycles. Though party officials deny these payments, Indonesia Corruption Watch, which monitors election activity, reported this week that 40 percent of the campaign money spent by political parties is used  to buy attendance at rallies to try  to demonstrate popularity and power. 
 "Today, people don't trust political parties anymore," Wibowo said. "They take the money and then don't vote for the party." 
 Wibowo, 35, got into the business when Indonesia was still flush with democratic promise after the 1998 ouster of longtime dictator Suharto and cynicism had yet to corrupt the campaign trail. His break came when Megawati Sukarnoputri's party approached him about organizing a rally during its successful 1999 campaign, which  led to her becoming president two years later. She faces reelection in July. 
 "Political parties usually look for the most influential people and ask them to gather people," he explained, flashing a broad, disarming smile, baring badly stained teeth. "They consider me to be one of the influential people in this area. They know I dare to fight in the street."  
 Wibowo recounted how he had trained in the Indonesian martial art of silat since age  15, fasting and reading  Muslim scripture until, he claimed, he became immune to pain and injury. To prove the point, he turned his clove cigarette upside down and nonchalantly put it out on his outstretched tongue. 
 "I snap my fingers and people come," he continued, relighting his cigarette. "They're mainly young and unemployed. There's millions of unemployed in Indonesia, so it's very easy for me." 
 Wibowo himself has  found steady work as a security guard for a publishing company, and he dabbles in debt collecting. But his forte remains assembling crowds, sometimes to protect political VIPs, sometimes to intimidate his clients' adversaries, most often to fill the ranks of campaign rallies. He keeps the rally schedule, published by the local election commission, posted in his guard booth. 
 Party officials usually inform him several days ahead of time how large a crowd they'd like to hire  from his quarter, he said. In turn, he taps other local brokers, subdividing the quota. "Multilevel marketing," he calls it. In the back streets of Manggarai alone, there are at least 10 field operators. 
 Sometimes they keep formal lists, scrawling participants' names on notebook paper.  At other times they memorize the names to avoid any evidence of payments. Sometimes the brokers distribute coupons to be redeemed with the local party after the rally.  At other times they pay up directly, peeling bills off wads of cash. 
 As his men prepared last weekend to dispatch the green-shirted supporters of the United Development Party -- the country's largest Islamic party, headed by Vice President Hamzah Haz -- Wibowo sat in the shade of a small porch, sharing cigarettes and notes with a younger broker, Erwin Saputra. 
 On this day, Wibowo and Saputra collaborated in lining up about 150 people. A day later, they'd be organizing for rival rallies, with Wibowo churning out blue-shirted supporters for a small secular party headed by Indonesia's former security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, while Saputra drew the deal for the red shirts of Megawati's party. 
 Though only 24, Saputra has already been in the business for five years. He has a barrel chest and a scar on his left temple where he said he was pistol-whipped by a policeman during a fight after a motorbike accident. He spent two months in jail and then found a job as a parking attendant. 
 Arranging crowds is harder work, he said, but the money is better. Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of  Struggle is especially "royal," he said, using the local word for extravagant, because it often offers  him a cut of up to $6  a head. 
 Unlike Wibowo, who stays in the background, Saputra is a cheerleader, escorting his charges to the rallies and modeling a different color T-shirt each time. 
 Last week, Saputra tugged on a tight green-and-white shirt from the small Crescent and Star Party and piled into a sweltering bus with about 35 of his people. Many were women. But while this party is a fundamentalist Islamic group, only two women were wearing the head scarves required of devout Muslims. 
 "Money is spirit," explained Setiowati, a boisterous 38-year-old wearing a T-shirt with a picture of the party's famously handsome leader, adding that she planned to attend the rally of a rival party the next day for the same reason. "Politicians give you promises. They say they'll solve Indonesia's problems, but the result is zero." 
 The other women murmured their agreement. 
 "This party's good as long as they give me a T-shirt and money," Setiowati continued as the amen chorus swelled. "A T-shirt and money." 
 "A T-shirt and money," the others echoed. "A T-shirt and money." 
 Special correspondent Noor Huda Ismail contributed to this  report. 






  


April 1, 2004 Thursday



 A musical movement

 
A music teacher at Crestview Preparatory School is going to China as part of a group that will demonstrate the music and martial art techniques Filipinos once used to resist Spanish invaders. Wendy Mazon , 29, from Chatsworth, will attend the 2004 International Women's Leadership Conference from May 17-31 in Beijing and Shanghai with other musicians from the World Kulintang Institute based in Reseda. The Crestview Association will help Mazon with the $3,500 cost of traveling to China. The Cal State Northridge graduate has been at the school five years and is the school's band director. 
The martial art is called Kali ," Mazon said, and it uses the hands, sticks and daggers. The music, called Kulintang , uses drums and gongs and helped train fighters. Both are more than 300 years old and were used by the Indonesians and the Malaysians, where it originated."People in the Southern Philippines, many of them Muslims, practiced Kulintang, she said.
The Spanish would watch people performing Kulintang and thought they were just dancing, not practicing martial art moves," Mazon said. The music also was used to send messages, called Apad , from village to village about plans to attack the Spanish."
Eleanor Academia of Reseda, Mazon's Kulintang teacher and founder of the WKI, was invited to attend the conference after she submitted a paper about Kulintang to conference officials. The conference will include presentations on the arts, culture, medicine, literature, science and other fields from around the world. It's an exchange of cultures. We will do our presentation and the Chinese, who have a counterpart to Kulintang, will do theirs," Mazon said.
There is a possibility, she said, her group will be allowed to do an exchange with monks at one of China's famous Shaolin Temples and may be permitted to stay overnight at a temple. Mazon said Kulintang is vanishing. Young Filipinos prefer Western music, Kulintang masters are dying off and others are fleeing fighting in the Southern Philippines between Muslim rebels and government troops. The rebels have melted many ancient Kulintang instruments to make bullets, she said.
The major instruments are the kulintang, five large gongs suspended from a rack; the dabakan , a large goblet-shaped drum; the agung , two large hanging gongs; the babandir , a small time-keeping gong, and the gandingan , four hanging gongs that were used to send messages. Many people in the Philippines are unfamiliar with the music," said Mazon, who is half Filipino. It's rare music and the purpose of the WKI is to share it with the world and keep it from becoming extinct."-- Emanuel Parker can be reached at [626] 578-6300, Ext. 4475, or by e-mail at emanuel.parker@sgvn.com.







 



March 28, 2004 Sunday  




 The Sick Man of the World

 
In the 19th century, "Sick Man of Europe" was a phrase used to describe the 500-year-old Ottoman Empire. Decaying, unable to protect its territories, it was ruled by sultans who steadfastly resisted change. Ottoman subjects on three continents -- Arabs, Turks, Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, and Serbs -- and of three faiths -- Muslim, Christian and Jewish -- clamored for change, to no avail. Instead of reforming itself, the empire simply grew more repressive. 
Much of what is happening in the Middle East today is reminiscent of the Sick Man of Europe. Most of the 30-odd countries of what American officials are calling the Greater Middle East have been sociopolitically stagnant for decades. This is not for lack of popular desire for change. Saudi women defied the puritanical Wahhabi traditions and broke a stifling taboo by driving their cars in the streets of Riyadh 14 years ago. Thousands of political prisoners have been rotting in Syrian, Tunisian and Egyptian detention compounds for years without trials.  
Such people provide an eloquent answer to the Arab rulers who met recently in Riyadh and Cairo for the purpose not of proposing plans for reform but of circumventing such plans, rumored to be coming from the United States and Europe. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak seems to be taking the lead in resisting democratization in the region. He was quoted in a New York Times report from Cairo as saying, "If we open the door completely before the people, there will be chaos."  
Never mind the condescending tone vis-à-vis his own people. How about just keeping the door ajar, as the opposition parties have pleaded with him to do for 20 years? In a joint statement with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia two weeks earlier, the two Arab leaders rejected any attempt to impose reform from "the outside." This is quite understandable for people who suffered from colonization. But what about the persistent demands from within? 
On Nov. 18, 2002, Egypt's five major opposition parties and 10 civil society organizations formed the Committee for Defense of Democracy (CDD) and drafted an elaborate but gradual plan for constitutional and political reform. Since its establishment, the CDD has sought an audience with Mubarak to present the case for the overdue reforms, some of which were promised by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1968 following massive demonstrations by university students. In February 1974 President Anwar Sadat renewed the promises of democratic reform in a document called "The October Paper." Last year the CDD organized three rallies in Cairo, each of which braved its way out of a police cordon and marched to the presidential palace to present demands for reform. Not even a presidential aide would see them. The farthest the CDD got with the Mubarak regime occurred Feb. 15, when the president disdainfully allowed the fourth march to hand a "petition" to the guards of the outside gate of the palace. 
 The last major force to join the chorus for change is the Muslim Brotherhood, the mother of all Islamic movements in the world, from Indonesia to Morocco. On March 3 the newly sworn-in Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood declared his full endorsement of the same list of demands contained in the CDD manifesto. How much more authentic and endogenous can popular demands be before Fahd, Mubarak and other Mideast rulers will listen? 
 Like the antique Ottoman sultans in the last decades before their final fall in 1924, most Middle Eastern leaders have been eager for Western aid, trade and investment. They have accepted conditions imposed on them by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Club of Paris and other outside creditors. They don't invoke "national dignity" or express resentment of the "outside," except when the advice is to share power with their own people.  
Three years ago a U.N. Arab Human Development report cited democratic governance as essential to socioeconomic progress in the region. This was not a matter of "outsiders" dictating to Arab leaders; the U.N. had commissioned an all-Arab team of internationally renowned scholars to prepare the report. Secretary General Kofi Annan and several world leaders on both sides of the Atlantic made frequent public references to it. But Arab rulers ignored it completely, as if it were about another region on another planet. 
More recently, another eminent Arab public figure, Ismail Serageldin, convened a pan-Arab conference of nongovernmental organizations in the newly reborn Library of Alexandria in Egypt to deliberate the issue of reform. At the end they issued the Alexandria Declaration, a sort of Arab Magna Carta. We hope the Arab Summit in Tunis this week will implement it. 
 Of course, Palestine and Iraq are invoked time and again in this ongoing argument, as they should be: The Arab and Muslim world has historical and legitimate grievances that must be settled if democratization is to strike roots and be sustainable. But it should be clear to all concerned that it will not be tyrannical regimes that settle these grievances. For half a century, they have held their peoples and democracy hostage, and everything just got worse. So for a change, give democracy a fair chance -- implement the Alexandria Declaration. 
 Saad Eddin Ibrahim is a professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo and a visiting professor this semester at New York University. 







 



March 27, 2004 Saturday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
 WARSAW -- Prime Minister Leszek Miller announced Friday that he would step down on May 2, the day after Poland is to join the European Union, taking the blame for his government's collapse in popularity and raising the prospect of early elections. 
 "If my departure is to serve Poland and Poland's left, my choice is to resign from leading the government," Miller said at a joint news conference with President Aleksander Kwasniewski. 
Kwasniewski, who accepted the decision, expressed confidence that it would ultimately help political stability in Poland -- a key U.S. ally in Iraq -- after months of weakness under Miller.  
 Miller, a Communist Party official before Poland's 1989 turn to democracy, has been in power since leading the Democratic Left Alliance in September 2001 elections. 
ASIA 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia -- U.S. Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce told Indonesia's chief security minister that the Bush administration was deeply concerned that the alleged leader of a regional terrorist network was allowed to threaten the United States during a television interview inside a Jakarta prison, Indonesian security officials said. 
 In comments to an Australian television network earlier this month, Muslim cleric Abubakar Baasyir, whom U.S. and Indonesian intelligence officials have named as the head of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah network, said the United States and its allies "will be destroyed in the name of Allah."  
 --  Alan Sipress 
AFRICA 
*  ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- Security forces cracked down on opposition strongholds in Abidjan, Ivory Coast's largest city, rounding up opponents as pro-government mobs with sticks and iron bars roamed mostly empty streets a day after bloody protests. 
Amid sporadic and occasionally heavy volleys of gunfire, opposition leaders accused security forces of carrying out summary executions in different parts of the city. Police denied the charge.  
EUROPE 
*  KIEV, Ukraine -- Several hundred decommissioned Soviet-built surface-to-air missiles are unaccounted for in Ukraine's arsenal, the defense minister told a newspaper. 
 Yevhen Marchuk, in an interview published Thursday in the Den newspaper, appeared to suggest that the missiles might have been dismantled without proper accounting, rather than stolen or sold. 
THE MIDDLE EAST 
*  UNITED NATIONS -- Several U.N. agencies could be forced to cut back or end humanitarian work in the Gaza Strip because of Israeli restrictions on travel into and out of the territory, a U.N. statement said. Most of the 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are partly dependent on aid. 
THE AMERICAS 
*  PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Haiti will block dozens of ex-members of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government from leaving the country, including former prime minister Yvon Neptune, the new justice minister said. 
  --  From News Services 






  


March 26, 2004, Friday, 



 Hamas leader Yassin was obstacle to peace

 
The killing of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin raises important questions about the future of the Middle East ("Hamas pledges to keep fighting, as does Israel," News, Wednesday).
Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department and the European Union. Its goals are not open to concession or negotiation.
 
Had it not been for the likes of leaders such as Yassin, a two-state peace resolution likely would have been achieved in the summer of 2000.
Yassin was a perverted "spiritual leader" and a terrorist mastermind. His organization has sworn to destroy Israel. His targeted assassination was part of Israel's ongoing effort to combat terrorism and its sources.
I hope Yassin's demise will serve the cause of peace in the long run.
He was a dangerous, extremist Islamic ideologist, who represented a threat to the entire region. And he was an obstacle to any peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
Josh Basson
Seattle
Slaying derails peace plans
Israel's assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin effectively helped destroy the peace plans it claims to support.
What could the Israelis hope to accomplish by killing a quadriplegic and his bodyguards? One would think after years of warring, Israelis would realize that the Palestinian cause won't die with an old man. His death only can serve to mobilize an already-motivated enemy.
These recent actions, along with those of Jewish terrorists, are making it increasingly difficult for Israelis to maintain their facade of victimhood. The media have been happy to accommodate them with favorable coverage, and they all but ignore Palestinians' plight.
Finger-pointing now will serve no constructive purpose. Both sides need to reform the way they deal with each other, because neither side is going anywhere. The Palestinians need to embark on a rigorous campaign to dismantle the terrorist cells in their midst, and the Israelis must immediately desist from their "search-and-destroy" targeted assassinations. That is, if both sides actually want peace. That's another prudent question that begs an answer.
Orlando Ashah Jr.
Bridgeport, Conn.







  


March 25, 2004 Thursday  




 400 foreign students gather in halls of state government

 
Ismail Basri says he is thankful he was granted permission to leave Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country, to study in America. He chose Oklahoma City University.  
Mei Kwan Hun, a high school student from Hong Kong who is attending Garber Public Schools this year, decided to wear her lime-green Eskimo Joe's T-shirt Wednesday to the state Capitol.
It was all part of International Day activities where 400 high school and college students gathered at the center of state government.
Julieta Sevene from Mozambique is studying political science at Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva.
"We all think that America is New York City. I went to a small town in Oklahoma, and it was much easier than living at home." Sevene went to prep school in Pretoria, South Africa.
The students assembled in the House chambers, getting to sit at lawmakers' desks while the Legislature was out of session Wednesday.
They heard Gov. Brad Henry and House Speaker Larry Adair, D-Stilwell. When Sen. Bernest Cain, D-Oklahoma City, read a roll call of countries represented, students from the country named stood up and cheered.
They also heard Edward J. Perkins, former ambassador who heads the international program at the University of Oklahoma.
Perkins told the students he had been to many of their countries, having served on all continents.
"It is unfortunate that the nation state is being attacked at this time," said Perkins, urging the students to learn how to work with other countries when they return to their homelands.
"We have to look within to find solutions," he said.






  
  


March 25, 2004, Thursday



 IN INDONESIA, AIDS EDUCATION CLASHES WITH ISLAM


Alarming 62% rise in HIV cases to 210,000 in 2003 has prompted World Health Organization to rank Indonesia as higher priority than China and Thailand, where AIDS epidemics have affected millions of people; AIDS educators say country's Islamic fundamentalist groups are stifling efforts to encourage safe-sex practices; activists worry they are losing opportunity to keep infections to manageable level; fundamentalists allege AIDS education promotes sinful behavior; HIV is being spread by intravenou s drug use and by estimated 10 million men who visit prostitutes each year; drawing (L)




 


March 22, 2004 Monday  




 Court setbacks mount in terrorism trials; 
U.S. refuses to let witnesses testify; cooperation poor

 
BERLIN -- The post-Sept. 11 war against terrorism is suffering as much in the courts as in the streets with several legal setbacks involving suspected members of al-Qaida and other terror groups around the world.
The biggest reversal came in Germany when a court threw out the only conviction of a Sept. 11 suspect. But other cases have been hindered, too, including against a militant Indonesian cleric and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only alleged Sept. 11 conspirator charged in the United States.
The U.S. reluctance to let witnesses in custody testify and the sheer complexity of cross-border investigations are mostly to blame.
And the Madrid bombings that killed 202 people last week showed that while investigators struggle to build judicial cases against suspects, terrorists are still successfully plotting and carrying out attacks.
Spanish authorities had one of the chief suspects in the Madrid bombings, Jamal Zougam, on their radar since at least 2001 as a possible al-Qaida operative, even once searching his apartment, but were unable to build a case against him. Zougam, arrested two days after the bombings, operated in at least two countries, Morocco and Spain.
The court decision in Germany to order a retrial for Mounir el Motassadeq -- charged with aiding the three Hamburg, Germany-based Sept. 11 hijackers -- focused attention on the limits of international cooperation.
"The threat is a very broad global Islamic front where terrorist operatives of one nationality will go to a second country to plan a terror operation then move to a third country to carry out their attacks," said Richard Evans, editor at Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center in London.
"Intelligence cooperation between countries like the United States and its allies has increased enormously, but there's still a long way to go," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
In granting el Motassadeq a retrial last month, a German appeals court pointed to the lack of evidence from Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni in secret U.S. custody who is believed to have been the key al-Qaida contact for the Hamburg cell that included lead hijacker Mohamed Atta.
Judges ruled that the lower court, which found the Moroccan guilty in February 2003 of more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and belonging to a terrorist organization, failed to weigh how the United States' refusal to allow Binalshibh to testify influenced the case.
Fighting terrorism is no "wild, unregulated war," Presiding Judge Klaus Tolksdorf explained in the March 4 verdict, saying authorities' need for secrecy can't outweigh a defendant's right to a fair trial.
A German investigator in the case said the dilemma persists.
"Every country and every service has its own ideas and purposes and has to be careful with human sources and information or the politics of their country. So of course the flow of information is not one-to-one," said Manfred Murck, deputy head of the Hamburg state agency that tracks extremists. "Nobody gets the full information of the other services."
U.S. authorities provided German intelligence with interrogation transcripts from Binalshibh, who was captured in Pakistan on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. But they came with the proviso that the information not be used in court.
Even if they were allowed, Murck said the judges likely would have wanted the witness in person to evaluate the testimony.
The ban was also a key factor when the Hamburg state court found el Motassadeq's friend and fellow countryman Abdelghani Mzoudi not guilty of the same charges last month.
In the United States, the federal conspiracy case against Moussaoui has stalled because the Justice Department refuses to let Binalshibh testify.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia ruled that unless Binalshibh appears in court, she would ban any evidence connecting Moussaoui to the Sept. 11 attacks, and bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty.
An appeals court is considering Moussaoui's right to question Binalshibh and two other al-Qaida suspects.
While the United States never explained its stand in the Hamburg trials, government attorneys argued in the Moussaoui case that U.S. national security should override his right of access to the witness.
One reason behind the U.S. position may be that keeping operatives like Binalshibh incommunicado could keep prime suspects guessing, including al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden who's still at large.
"If you're Osama bin Laden you have to be sitting around wondering if they're talking ... but if you produce one of them and he's not cooperating, that sends a clear signal he's not talking," said Walter Purdy, director of the Terrorism Research Center outside Washington.
In Indonesia, a problem with witness access also emerged in the Jakarta trial of militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, suspected of al-Qaida links and being a leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah extremist group.
Bashir has never been charged with terror activities blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah, such as the October 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people. But he was sentenced to four years in prison for treason, immigration and forgery.
At trial, three key suspects held in Malaysia and Singapore were only allowed to testify by video linkup. Defense attorneys argued they could have been under duress and the court discounted their statements.
The United States also refused to allow a witness in its custody to testify, providing investigators' notes in which the man implicated Bashir. Attorneys argued the evidence was inadmissible, and the judges ignored it.
Bashir's sentence was reduced on appeal to three years after a court annulled the treason conviction. Last Tuesday, the Indonesian Supreme Court halved that sentence as too harsh for the remaining charges and Bashir is now scheduled to be released next month.
SUCCESSFUL POST-SEPT. 11 TERROR PROSECUTIONS IN SOME COUNTRIES
* Belgian court last September convicted 18 al-Qaida suspects believed to have been planning suicide bombing aimed at U.S. military. Convicted on charges such as supplying false passports, use of forged documents, membership in criminal association.
* In Germany, four Algerians were convicted last March of plotting to bomb busy Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, on New Year's Eve 2000. Sentenced to 10-12 years in prison on charges of conspiring to murder, conspiring to plant bomb, weapons violations.
* In Italy's key post-Sept. 11 case, prosecutors in February 2002 convicted Essid Sami Ben Khemais, a Tunisian known as "The Saber" and suspected of heading Osama bin Laden's European logistics operations. Charges included criminal association with intent to obtain and transport arms, explosives and chemicals.
* In Kenya, four al-Qaida suspects are on trial on murder charges for alleged roles in bombing of Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa on Nov. 28, 2002. Three others are charged with conspiracy in hotel bombing, near simultaneous attempt to shoot down Israeli charter airliner with surface-to-air missiles, 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and alleged plot last June to destroy new U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.
* In the United States, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid sentenced to life in prison in January 2003 after pleading guilty to eight charges, including attempted murder and attempted use of weapon of mass destruction.







 


March 22, 2004 Monday  




 New Premier Of Malaysia Gets Mandate All His Own

 
The major Islamic party in Malaysia lost significant ground in parliamentary and state elections here on Sunday as the governing coalition of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi coasted to victory. 
 The Islamic party, Parti Islam se-Malaysia, lost the state legislature in the northern state of Terengganu but appeared to be hanging on with a narrow margin in the neighboring state of Kelantan. In a humiliating setback, the leader of the party, Ulama Hadi Awang, lost his federal parliamentary seat.
 The fortunes of the Islamic party, which won control of the Terengganu state legislature four years ago, were being closely watched as a barometer of militant Islam in Southeast Asia. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, holds parliamentary elections early next month.  
 Since taking control in Terengganu, the Islamic party, or Pas, has imposed religious laws, including bans on alcohol and gambling. 
 ''If this election says one thing, it says that Malaysia is rejecting the Islamization policies of Pas,'' said Bridget Welsh, assistant professor of Southeast Asia studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, who is visiting here. ''Pas has been decimated.''
 Mr. Abdullah, 64, who inherited the prime minister's job in November from the longstanding incumbent, Mahathir Mohamed, ran on an anticorruption platform. He presented a more benign tone than did his brittle predecessor, and as a descendant of Muslim scholars, the new prime minister appealed to voters who support a moderate version of Islam. 
 That approach stymied the efforts of the Parti Islam se-Malaysia to build on its gains in the Malay heartland in the north.
 Mr. Abdullah, whose coalition is dominated by the United Malays National Organization, called the early elections as a way of affirming his position at the helm of Southeast Asia's most modern Muslim country. 
 As a symbol of Malaysia's modernity, Sunday's elections had to compete for attention with the victory of Michael Schumacher in the Malaysian Grand Prix, which attracted big crowds at the racetrack and around television sets in the streets of the capital, Kuala Lumpur.
 Mr. Abdullah emphasized throughout the brief campaign that Malaysians needed to deliver an outstanding majority of votes for him so that foreign investors, who had helped turn the country into an electronics manufacturing hub, would keep coming. His unspoken plea was that China was breathing down Malaysia's neck as an economic competitor. 
 About 60 percent of Malaysia's 23 million people is Muslim. Ethnic Indians and Chinese are significant minorities, who play an important role in the Malaysian economy. Nervous about the Parti Islam se-Malaysia, those ethnic minorities have been stalwart backers of the coalition that has run the country since 1957.
 The ethnic Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party did particularly well in Sunday's voting. 
 ''This election was a referendum on what Abdullah Badawi stands for,'' said Karim Raslan, a newspaper columnist and lawyer here. ''He is remarkably popular in the Malay heartland. He has Islamic credentials. He's very Malay -- very nice, very gentlemanly.'' 
 For the United States, the outcome of the voting was positive, Dr. Welsh said. The overriding concern of the Bush administration in Malaysia was the campaign against terror, and on that score Mr. Abdullah is likely to be cooperative, she said.
 But there were inherent tensions because the Bush administration always wanted more attention given to terrorism. ''Malaysia feels there are limits to what they can do,'' she added. 
 The Bush administration is deeply unpopular in Malaysia, largely because the campaign against terror is interpreted as a campaign against Islam. 
 For their part, senior American officials have expressed concern that Malaysia provided a haven for Jemaah Islamiyah, the militant Islamic group held responsible for the attack on a nightclub in Bali that killed 202 people in October 2002. The officials have said Malaysia needs to take firmer measures against suspected members. 
 Leaders of the Islamic party said the government had imposed unfair restrictions on their activities, forcing their candidates to campaign in unfavorable circumstances. The government controlled the newspapers, television and radio, said Dr. Syed Azman Syed Ahmad, a member of Parliament from Terengganu. 
 ''I am an angry man,'' he said in an interview in his office in the state capital, Kuala Terengganu, the day before the election. ''We don't have access to media. We are fighting them within a framework of democracy with our hands tied.''







 
  


March 21, 2004 Sunday 



 SENATE CANDIDATE EMBODIES DIVERSITY
CHICAGO DEMOCRAT TAKES POLITICS BEYOND RACE

 
CHICAGO -- Meet Barack Obama.
With his smashing primary victory in the race to become the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Illinois, the 42-year-old state senator and University of Chicago law instructor stands poised to enter the national stage, and history.
If elected -- and the odds now favor him -- he would be only the third black senator since Reconstruction.
"The moment he sets foot in the U.S. Senate he is going to be a national figure, not only national but international," says U.S. Rep. Janice Schakowsky, an early supporter, whose district embodies the "lakefront liberals" -- mostly white and Jewish -- who are part of Obama's base. 
Tall, fresh and elegant, Obama is certain to be an overnight sensation in national Democratic circles.
He is their best chance to pick up a Senate seat now in Republican hands (the incumbent, Peter Fitzgerald, did not seek re-election). But he is also the candidate from central casting for a new generation of national black leadership, still moored in the values of the civil rights movement but in tone and approach more cool than hot.
This was the political year in which the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York ran for president in an apparent bid to become the new Jesse Jackson, without much success. Instead, it is likely to be Obama who becomes the rising star -- with the active support of both Jackson and his son, Jesse Jr., a congressman from Chicago's South Side.
And should he make it to the Senate, Obama would be a multicultural figure unlike any to have served in the world's most exclusive club, a man peculiarly in sync with the nation's changing zeitgeist on race.
As he wrote a decade ago in a memoir, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," his mother, a Kansan, was "white as milk"; his father, a Kenyan who left when Barack was 2 and returned to Africa, was "black as pitch."
"In 1960," he wrote, "the year that my parents married, miscegenation still described a felony in over half the states in the Union."
TRANSCENDING RACE
Obama grew up in both Hawaii and Indonesia, where he attended Catholic and Muslim schools (his father's father was a Muslim but Obama is a member of Chicago's giant Trinity United Church of Christ). After earning a political science degree from Columbia University he went to Harvard Law School, where professor Laurence Tribe remembers him as "among the most intellectually creative and energetic students I can recall." He was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.
After law school, he moved back to Chicago, where he had spent years as a community organizer. And there, through seven years in the state Senate, he has emerged, outside the machine and remarkably unscarred, from the dense thicket of Chicago politics and especially the precincts of the black South Side, arguably the most self-consciously black political space in the nation.
"What is remarkable about this race has been the degree to which Barack has developed an appeal that crosses racial, geographic and economic lines," said David Axelrod, the Chicago political consultant who advised the Obama campaign.
As Obama puts it, "I'm rooted in the African-American community, but I'm not limited by it."
He acknowledges that his biography is "exotic" in the context of American politics. But the background that a few years ago would have effectively disqualified him from seeking statewide office now carries cachet in a nation seeking guidance amid its rapidly growing diversity.
"He is the embodiment of the multicultural society, the kind of multicultural society we have become, because he himself is multicultural," said Joe Moore, who is white and represents the very diverse Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park on the Board of Aldermen.
Barack Obama stands as both a symbol and a champion of black aspirations and a sort of Tiger Woods figure, a harbinger of a politics beyond race.
'BLACK ENOUGH' FOR BLACK VOTERS
"Chicago is racially charged to the nines," Tracy Ullman, a new mother, said after shaking Obama's hand at Lou Mitchell's, a popular Chicago diner, the day before the election. But in Obama, Ullman, who is white and has worked in TV production and publishing, sees someone who defuses those tensions.
"He's got a lovely personality, a charm and charisma," she said.
In fact, Obama's campaign was dogged by the question -- now answered in the affirmative -- of whether he was "black enough" for black voters.
"Who in the hell is black enough?" asked R. Eugene Pincham, a retired state appellate court judge and lion of black politics in Chicago, who encouraged Obama to run for the Senate. "Black folks have been voting for white folks for as long as black folks could vote. Now we've got to make white folks vote for black folks, and I thought Obama was the person who could attract votes in the white community."
If elected, Obama would reclaim the seat lost six years ago by Carol Moseley Braun, who was the second black senator since Reconstruction, the first being Edward Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts. There are no blacks in the Senate now and no other black Democratic prospects this year.
Meanwhile, Obama faces an attractive Republican candidate in Jack Ryan, an investment banker turned teacher on the South Side, who is also handsome, Harvard-educated and in his early 40s.
It is certain to be a high-profile race, and, in national political circles, the until-now obscure name of Barack Obama will be tripping off people's tongues.
A few weeks ago, Schakowsky joined 18 members of the Black Caucus who met with President Bush about Haiti. On their way out, she said, the president noticed her "Obama" button and asked about it.
"I really do think he thought it said, 'Osama,' Schakowsky recalled. "I said, 'No, Obama, Barack Obama, he's running for the United States Senate from Illinois.'
"He said, 'Well, I don't know him.' I said, 'You will, Mr. President.' "







 


March 18, 2004 Thursday



 Iraqi reform must be Arabs' own initiative

 
   When the Arab-TV version of "Big Brother" aroused widespread opposition among Bahrain's Muslim population, it was not too surprising. A commercial attempt at introducing the Arab world to the Western concept of reality television, it contained a first-meeting kiss between a young Arab man and a young Arab woman.
To most Americans, this might not seem particularly shocking. But in parts of the Muslim world such behavior borders on depravity, and the show was quickly taken off the air. 
Throughout much of the Muslim world, members of the same sex might hold hands in public, but members of the opposite sex generally may not.
In many Arab countries it is rude to gesture or eat with the left hand. In Egypt, pointing at a person is impolite, as is walking in front of a person in prayer. In Indonesia, a mainly Muslim but not an Arab country, crossing the legs is usually inappropriate, but if crossed, one knee should be over the other, not an ankle on the knee. As in many Arab lands, the bottom of the foot should not point toward another person.
To many Westerners, such cultural differences might seem quaint. But to many Arabs, customs of the West seem just as quaint -- even bizarre. And the violent, sex-laden depiction of American culture portrayed and exported by Hollywood is downright offensive.
Despite such intriguing cultural differences, there are basic desires common to all mankind. One of the most compelling is the desire for freedom. Freedom to pray as one chooses; to travel where one wants; to follow a profession of choice; to prosper and provide safety and education for one's children.
But the collapse of a Bush administration plan for the Arab world that promoted just such goals offers a sharp lesson for U.S. diplomats in dealing with the Muslim world. The "Greater Middle East initiative," as it was called, was shot down barely after takeoff by governing regimes of countries whose citizens might most have benefited from it.
The plan sought to have other industrialized nations join the United States in promoting economic development, political freedom, equality for women, and other democratic institutions in the Middle East. The new Iraqi constitution calls for such basic human rights. The constitutions of other Arab countries sometimes have similar provisions. The problem is that the provisions are not enforced.
Criticism of the Bush plan came swiftly from influential Arab leaders who saw it being imposed on them heavy-handedly. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak charged the Bush administration as behaving "as if the region and its states do not exist, as if they have no sovereignty over their land, no ownership."
Another criticism was that there had been no movement in resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which overshadows the whole Middle Eastern political situation. The Bush administration was to seek support for the plan at a meeting of the eight leading industrial nations in June at Sea Island, Ga. That idea is now dead.
It's naive to suggest that Arabs are a branch of mankind untouched by the desire for freedom. It's insulting to conclude that, despite the backwardness into which the Arab world has lapsed, it is incapable of embracing and practicing democracy. In various Arab lands, intellectuals and brave reformers are watching, waiting and working for the constructive changes they dream of. The stake in democracy-building begun in Iraq is too valuable for the rest of the Islamic world to be allowed to founder.
But democracy cannot be imposed like a Coca-Cola marketing plan. It must have grass-roots support, and by suasion and diplomacy come to be accepted by testy, proud, protective Arab societies that have a culture that is often very different from those of the West.
Abdullahi Gallab, a former director-general of information in the Sudan, now a professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, says reform must be the Arabs' own initiative, not be imposed on them. He recommends round-table talks with religious and political leaders in the region, seeking response and dialogue.
The Islamic concepts of consultation (shura), consensus (ijima), and independent interpretive judgment (ijtihad), he argues, are totally compatible with democracy.
Despite the Bush program's failure, its underlying ideals and goals must not die. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He is a former editor of the , which syndicates this column. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com







 


March 17, 2004 Wednesday  




 Killing Iraq With Kindness

 
One year later, most of the stated reasons for invading Iraq have been discredited. But advocates of the war still have one compelling argument: our troops are not there to impose American values or even Western values, but ''universal'' ones. The underlying assumption is that the United States itself represents these universal values, and that freedom to pursue happiness, to elect our own leaders and to trade in open markets, should be shared by all, regardless of creed, history, race or culture. 
 Some might question whether America is as shining an example of these good things as is often claimed. Nonetheless, spreading them around is certainly a more appealing policy than propping up ''our'' dictators in the name of realpolitik. Still, history shows that the forceful imposition of even decent ideas in the claim of universalism tends to backfire -- creating not converts but enemies who will do anything to defend their blood and soil.  
  Such was the response two centuries ago of the German-speaking areas of Europe when Napoleon's armies invaded them under the banner of universal freedom, equality and brotherhood. Napoleon was a despot and his Grande Armee could be brutal, to be sure, but his reforms were mostly beneficial. Religious freedom was established, government efficiency improved, and the Napoleonic legal code has served continental Europeans well for two centuries. 
 Yet France's armed intervention was deeply resented. Some nativist reactions were relatively benign: romantic poetry celebrating the native soul, or a taste for folkloric roots. But in other cases the native soul, especially in Germany, turned sour and became anti-liberal, anti-cosmopolitan, and anti-Semitic. Some 19th-century nativists claimed that Napoleon was a Jew. This was not just because he liberated the Jews from their ghettoes and declared that France would be their homeland, but also because universal ideals, promising equality for all, have often been associated by nativists with rootless cosmopolitanism, which in their eyes is synonymous with Jewishness.
 As soon as Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, the liberal laws he instituted in Prussia were annulled. And a century later, the resentments planted by Napoleon's armed liberation sprouted their most bitter fruits in Nazi Germany.
 Arab and Muslim extremism may never become as lethal or powerful as the 20th-century German strain, but it has already taken a terrible toll. Once again a nation with a universalist mission to liberate the world is creating dangerous enemies (and once again Jews are being blamed). This is not necessarily because the Islamic world hates democracy, but because the use of armed force -- combined with the hypocrisy of going after one dictator while coddling others, the arrogant zealotry of some American ideologues and the failures of a ham-handed occupation -- are giving America's democratic mission a bad name. 
 One problem with American troops' liberating the Middle East is that it confirms the opinions of both Muslims and Westerners who see the Iraq war as part of a religious war, a ''clash of civilizations'' in the phrase of the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. On the face of it, this would seem an unlikely proposition. Saddam Hussein did not rule over an Islamic state. Far from it; he killed large numbers of Muslims. Whatever his values are, it would be an insult to claim they represent Arab civilization. And although Tony Blair (also a fan of the phrase ''universal values'') and George W. Bush are Christians, religion does not appear to have played a major part in their war aims.
 Yet to many Arab Muslims inside and outside Iraq, this does indeed look like a war unleashed by ''Zionists and Crusaders'' to keep the Muslims down, or worse, impose a foreign civilization on an Arab nation. This is certainly the way Islamist extemists see it. But then, they always were believers in Mr. Huntington's thesis. 
 Islamists, however, do not represent Muslim or Arab civilization -- any more than the Christian Coalition, let alone ''Zionists,'' represents the West. Iraq is a perfect example of how ethnic, religious and cultural fault lines run inside national borders. The future of Iraq is not being forged out of a battle between West and East, or between Muslims and Christians, but between Shiites and Sunnis, Kurds and Arabs, Baathists and democrats. The main fault line crossing most Muslim societies isn't even between secularists and religionists, but between Muslims with different ideas about the proper role of religion. 
 Islamists of the kind represented by Al Qaeda are religious revolutionaries. But it is perfectly possible for a practicing Muslim to be against United States intervention, free-market capitalism, sexual freedom and the importing of Hollywood movies without being a theocratic revolutionary. Such a person may be a moderate reformer who believes, as did many Europeans until just a few decades ago, that democratic politics is best organized along religious lines. 
 The real question for the Western universalists, then, is whether the cause of moderate Muslims is helped by the revolutionary war that has been set off by the American and British armies. For that is what the war in Iraq is: not a clash of civilizations, but a revolution unleashed through outside force.
 There seems to be little doubt that most Iraqis were more than happy to see Saddam Hussein go. Most would have remained grateful to the United States and Britain, if only the coalition forces could have somehow gone home quickly, leaving Iraq with a functioning administration, electricity, running water and safestreets. This, of course, would not have been possible even if Britain and America had done everything right. The fact that the coalition got so much spectacularly wrong has made things far worse. 
 Iraq is so violent and chaotic now that it would be highly irresponsible to pull the troops out. As a result, we may be seeing more and more Huntingtonians. This is especially true of Arabs living outside Iraq, who never felt the lash of Saddam Hussein directly. 
 In the face of what is seen as continued Western aggression, it is harder for Muslims in any country to take a strong stand against fellow Muslims for fear of being branded as traitors. The Liberal Islamic Network, for example, has done a brave job of promoting a moderate form of Islam in Indonesia, where extremists bombed a Bali nightclub in 2002. These liberal Muslims advocate the separation of church and state, and a non-literal interpretation of the Koran. They were able to fight extremism without being seen as American stooges -- until American troops invaded a Muslim country. 
 ''When the Bali bombings occurred, I thought the fundamentalist groups would fade, because people would see that they were wrong,'' according to one member of the group, Nong Darol Mahmada. ''But now the Iraq war becomes a new justification for the fundamentalist attitude toward America or the West. Everything we've been working for -- democracy, freedom of thought -- all seems in vain.'' She may be wrong. All might not be lost. But so far, in Iraq and beyond, the neoconservative mission is achieving the opposite of what it intended.                                                            







 


March 16, 2004 Tuesday  




 A Leaner, Meaner Jihad

 
The coordinated train bombings in Madrid have altered Europe's political structure, shaken global financial markets and unsettled the American-led coalition in Iraq. Although we still do not know for sure who committed the atrocity, the only groups to have claimed responsibility so far say they represent Al Qaeda. 
 In any event, the attacks are clearly consistent with jihadist doctrine and aims. Osama bin Laden, specifically mentioning the loss of southern Spain to Christianity in 1492, has made it clear that any land once in Muslim hands was fair game for global jihad.  
 For the last year the Israeli historian Reuven Paz has monitored jihadist writings about Spain, which focused on the Spanish government's participation in Iraq. ''In order to force the Spanish government to withdraw from Iraq,'' one online tract read, ''it is a must to exploit the coming general elections in Spain.'' It added that two to three attacks would ensure ''the victory of the Socialist Party and the withdrawal of Spanish forces,'' the first domino in the collapse of the American-led coalition.
 No matter who is responsible for the Madrid attacks, they remind us that America faces a task reminiscent of Hercules' fight against the Hydra, the monster who sprouted new heads for each one severed. From the bombings in Morocco, Indonesia and Turkey last year, to the more recent suicide attacks in Iraq and Pakistan on the Shiite holy day of Ashura, it is clear that since 9/11 we have misunderstood the nature of global jihad. 
 While most Westerners have imagined a tightly coordinated transnational terrorist network headed by Al Qaeda, it seems more likely we face a set of largely autonomous groups and cells pursuing their own regional aims. Yes, some groups -- from Ansar al-Islam in Iraq to Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia to Pakistan's Jaish-e-Muhammed -- seem to be coordinating strategy and perhaps tactical operations among themselves. But for the most part the factions are swarming on their own initiative -- homing in from scattered locations on various targets and then dispersing, only to form new swarms. 
 While these groups share the motivations and methods of Al Qaeda, it is likely they have had only distant relations with Osama bin Laden and the Sunni salafists around him. In fact, Mr. bin Laden and the Qaeda hardcore should perhaps be viewed as they were in the 1990's, as just one hub of a loosely knit global network of mujahedeen leaders left over from the Soviet-Afghan war. It was only after the F.B.I. began investigating the 1998 American Embassy bombings in Africa that American prosecutors -- and the rest of the world -- began referring to Al Qaeda as a global terrorist organization. We may be overestimating Mr. bin Laden's reach.
 The suicide bombings last November in Istanbul are a case in point. Turkish officials immediately attributed the bombings to Al Qaeda, although it quickly became clear that the explosives were probably made and detonated by Turkish groups claiming to represent Al Qaeda's aims. In fact, Osama bin Laden's greatest threat may be that simply by claiming to act in his name, regional groups are better able to recruit and coordinate operations.
 United States special forces have recently stepped up their pursuit of Mr. bin Laden in the no man's land between Pakistan and Afghanistan. While it would of course be a triumph to capture or kill him, his demise is unlikely to prove decisive. The war in Iraq has energized so many disparate groups that global terrorism is better prepared than ever to carry on without Mr. bin Laden. Even with many top Qaeda leaders now dead or in custody, the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London is reporting that global recruitment for anti-American jihad is rising and that many small, decentralized groups have sprung up that are harder for governments to identify and neutralize than was the case before the invasion.
 Last year, there were 98 suicide attacks around the world, more than any year in contemporary history. Suicide terrorism plagues Iraq for the first time since the 13th-century assassins. A distinct pattern in this litany of atrocities has been pointed out by Robert Axelrod, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. Charting terrorist attacks by organization and lethality, he has noted an increasing interest in well-planned attacks intended to produce high numbers of civilian casualties -- a pattern into which the Madrid bombings, on commuter train stations at the morning rush, fit neatly. This trend also seems to point to an eventual suicide attack using chemical or nuclear weapons. 
 So what can we do? Traditional top-heavy approaches -- strategic bombardment, invasion and other large-scale forms of coercion -- will not be any use against border-hopping jihadist swarms, and they would only add to their popular support. 
 Surprisingly, however, pinpoint responses may not be the answer either. Kathleen Carley, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has used intelligence data and computer modeling to monitor changes in jihadist networks, including the cell responsible for the suicide bombing of the American Embassy in Tanzania. She found that eliminating the ''central actors'' -- that is, cell members who have the most ties to other cell members and to other groups -- has actually spurred terrorists to adapt more quickly, and has been less effective in the long run than eliminating less-central foot soldiers. Thus assassinations of leaders (a favorite Israeli tactic) may be counterproductive, in addition to causing public revulsion.
 Rather, destroying terrorist networks requires what David Ronfeldt, a RAND analyst, calls ''netwar.'' This is, in effect, mimicking the swarming tactics of the enemy. It involves long missions by smallish, mobile military units that can quickly descend on terrorist groups. 
 This approach also requires a sort of global spider web -- a set of international and interfaith alliances bonded by mutual trust and purpose. Such a true coalition of the willing would have the collective intelligence and resourcefulness needed to stop the swarms. While Spain's incoming prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, intends to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq, he has said he would back efforts in Iraq and elsewhere as part of a United Nations enterprise. So would much of the world. Just as Hercules needed the help of his nephew Iolaus to kill the Hydra, the United States will not conquer the Islamic terror without the popular support of its allies. The jihadists are betting America will try to go it alone.







  


March 16, 2004 Tuesday



 Pirates of the modern day

 
http://media.mnginteractive.com
CARGO VESSELS DOCK at and navigate through the Port of Oakland. With 1,800 ships coming into Oakland every year,the threat of a terrorist or pirate attack is real, but the Coast Guard's Sea Marshals are working to make sure the threat stays remote. The Coast Guard has closed-circuit TV cameras [top] at strategic points throughout the Bay that Richard Brewer can use to track cargo vessels. He supervises the Vessel Traffic Service on Yerba Buena Island. [NICK LAMMERS]Picture a pirate, and the mind conjures an image of a scalawag with a hook for a hand and a patch in place of an eyeball -- somebody who guzzles rum by the gallon and never quenches his thirst for gold doubloons.
This villainous, but dashing caricature has been immortalized as a Hollywood hero and by Disney theme rides for a public comforted in thinking real-life buccaneers vanished two centuries ago. 
Reality is more sinister.
On Feb. 13, pirates shot dead four crew members from an oil tanker, after the ship's owner refused to pay a
$50,000 ransom to an Islamic separatist group in Indonesia. It was just the latest example of a growing intersection between piracy, violence and terrorist links, particularly in Southeast Asia.
Last year, modern-day pirates seized 311 ships and took 359 merchant mariners hostage. They killed 21 seafarers and 71 more are still unaccounted for. Attacks, most of them on the high seas, rose 20 percent last year and 37 percent in 2002. The International Maritime Bureau's, or IMB's, Piracy Reporting Center in Malaysia and the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence keep track.
Pirates attack with pistols, machine guns, machetes, long knives and, recently, rocket launchers. Raids are so common in the South China Sea and the world's busiest shipping channel, the Malacca Strait, that trade ministers in the region describe piracy and terrorism as twin scourges.The area is home to thousands of jungle-carpeted islands and Muslim separatists. It's an ideal place to hide a pirate lair, its booty or a terrorist camp. Al-Qaida is known to have deep roots throughout the region. At its heart is Indonesia with the world's biggest Muslim population.
"Terrorism camouflaged as piracy. That's a bigger concern for us than just simple piracy," Singapore Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng told the Agence France-Presse recently.
Many of the vessels that steam through those waters are bound for the Port of Oakland. About 11 percent of Oakland's import cargo comes from Southeast Asia, a figure that's on the rise, port spokeswoman Marylin Sandifur said. Three of Oakland's top five importers -- China, Thailand and Taiwan -- ply those waters. More than 250,000 tons, or 7 percent of Oakland's imports, came from India, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, all hotbeds of piracy and terrorism.
"On the seat of my pants, I would say that about a dozen ships that had Oakland as a port of call have been attacked," said Bob Middelton, chaplain at the Seafarers' Club, a hospitality service for the world's merchant mariners.
It's not an outlandish claim. The IMB estimates that on average, one ship in 170 has reported a run-in with pirates, and authorities figure that anywhere from half to 90 percent of attacks go unreported, for fear of delays or inflated insurance costs. About
1,800 ships a year steam in and out of Oakland.
"Among the rank-and-file seafarers, piracy is a palpable, daily concern," said Middleton, noting that just about every other week, a sailor will tell of his brush with pirates. "In a seafarer's career of 20 years, to experience an attempt or even a boarding by these hostile bandits once or twice would be common.'
In the 85 attacks reported worldwide between September and December, pirates seized loot 47 times, but local police or coast guards were contacted just nine times. And authorities almost never respond. No arrests have been made since Oct. 26.
Only Israeli and Russian mariners tend to arm themselves, and the shipping industry recommends that the best defense is a 9,000-volt electric fence around ships' hulls to stun would-be attackers.
Typically, bandits in high-speed power boats rush a cargo vessel and clamber aboard under the cover of night. They rob crew members of their valuables and steal the ship's cash box and sometimes empty the storeroom. A typical heist will net $20,000, according to an unclassified British military intelligence report.
But British and U.S. naval intelligence officers, Southeast Asian anti-terror officials and the shipping industry have all reported disturbing signs of growing al-Qaida involvement and terrorists' plans to use tankers as floating bombs.
Last year, one pirated ship in five was an oil or chemical tanker. In the last three months of 2003, 26 of the 85 attacks targeted tankers.
Nearly half of the world's crude oil and two-thirds of the world's liquid natural gas -- as well as one-third of all cargo -- is shipped through the 500-mile-long Malacca Strait, which is the gateway between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
Last March, pirates commandeered the Indonesian chemical tanker Dewi Madrim, steered it for half an hour through the strait, which narrows to 30 miles wide in some places, and left with equipment and technical documents.
Last August, three crew members taken hostage from an oil tanker in the Malacca Strait were released in return for $100,000. The Malaysian government said the money went to Indonesian Islamic separatists in the Free Aceh Movement, which has decreed that merchant vessels cannot sail through those waters without the group's permission.
Aceh rebels, who executed the four hostage sailors last month, are responsible for more frequent and violent pirate attacks in the area, said Capt. Pottengal Mukundam at the International Maritime Bureau. He said they are after ransom money to pay for their rebellion.
The biggest terrorist threat to shipping is to scuttle a cargo vessel in a busy shipping channel or explode a tanker in a heavily populated port.
The threat to the Port of Oakland and the Bay Area is real, but remote. No pirate attack has been reported off the West Coast since the Office of Naval Intelligence starting keeping records in 1985.
"You'd have to be a pretty formidable pirate to attack an inbound ship to the Bay Area," Middleton said. "Oakland would not be high on the list of ports vulnerable to piracy. It's a phenomenon of narrow waters."
Nonetheless, a pirate ramming a tanker into a Bay Area bridge or dock is "likely enough for us to put a lot of effort into planning for it," said Rear Admiral Kevin Eldrige, who commands the Coast Guard's 11th District, which patrols the Pacific Ocean.
"The threat of piracy in the traditional sense in U.S. waters is remote," Eldridge said, "The Coast Guard's efforts to increase homeland security against the threat of terrorism will certainly address any threat of piracy that may arise in the future."
Contact Sean Holstege at sholstege@angnewspapers.com .






  


March 16, 2004, Tuesday, 



 Al-Qaeda may be showing a new face

 
WASHINGTON -- The deadly commuter train bombings in Madrid last week are an ominous signal that al-Qaeda and its allied terror groups are adopting new techniques for carrying out attacks and could threaten Europe and the United States, European and U.S. officials said Monday.
As Spanish authorities revealed more evidence suggesting that radical Muslims were responsible for the attacks that killed 200 people and wounded 1,600, several top U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials said they were not ready to definitively link the attacks to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
But the officials said the attacks likely were the work of what CIA Director George Tenet has described as the new face of al-Qaeda: a loose network of groups -- some tied to bin Laden's organization, others that merely sympathize with al-Qaeda's anti-American message -- scattered around the world. Because many of the groups are not closely tied to what remains of al-Qaeda's top leaders, the groups are difficult to detect, intelligence analysts say.
 
Officials across Europe and in Washington are weighing the possibility that radical Muslim groups, regardless of whether they had anything to do with the Madrid bombings, will be inspired by the notion that the pre-election attacks swayed Spanish voters to elect a new government that will not support the Bush administration's policies in Iraq.
Intelligence and law enforcement officials say the bombings could lead to attacks timed to disrupt or influence the outcome of elections in other countries, including the U.S. presidential election. Meanwhile, U.S. and European officials scrambled to devise ways to improve rail security, a particularly daunting task in rail-dependent Europe.
Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary of Homeland Security, said on NBC's Today show that much can be done to improve security in the U.S. rail system, but that "we have to recognize that it has been historically an open system, very difficult to add layers of security."
The United States' improved security since 9/11, along with its relative isolation from the bases of al-Qaeda and other radical Muslim groups, generally are believed to make it more difficult to attack than Europe, Indonesia and Africa, which have been other targets for al-Qaeda in recent years.
A top Justice Department official said the five men with ties to radical Islam who have been arrested in Spain -- three Moroccans and two Indians -- may have supplied parts to those who planted the bombs aboard trains in backpacks. Hutchinson said that "there is an al-Qaeda connection" to the case, but Homeland Security officials later pulled back a bit from that assertion and said the evidence was not conclusive.
Even so, there were several signs that bin Laden's group was involved. Among them: a videotape found in Madrid in which a man speaking Arabic with a Moroccan accent claimed responsibility on behalf of al-Qaeda in Europe, and a connection between one of the suspects and a suspected al-Qaeda leader who is jailed in Spain on charges that he helped plan the 9/11 attacks. ETA, a Basque separatist group that has launched much smaller attacks in Spain in the past and claimed responsibility for them, continued to say it was not involved in the bombings.
One of those in custody, Moroccan Jamal Zougam, was listed as an al-Qaeda operative on a Spanish indictment handed up last fall in connection with the prosecution of Imad Yarkas, a jailed al-Qaeda leader suspected of helping the 9/11 plot.
Analysts say Zougam's possible involvement in the bombings underscores the difficulty of uncovering such plots. He had been under surveillance by Spanish authorities since last fall, yet neither Spanish officials nor U.S. intelligence, which closely tracks al-Qaeda, had any warning of the train bombings.
A top Homeland Security official said none of the five suspects arrested in Spain is on U.S. terrorist watch lists. But a top FBI official said the suspects were "known" to U.S. counterintelligence. FBI officials suspect the bombers represent a hybrid terrorist group that is inspired by al-Qaeda but not controlled by it. A top U.S. intelligence official said the FBI and CIA are considering the possibility that militant Muslims formed a loose alliance with ETA. All three officials asked not to be identified.
The idea of an emerging hybrid terrorist structure mirrors a portrait described by Tenet in testimony before the Senate days before the bombings. While U.S. forces pursue al-Qaeda's leaders near the Afghan-Pakistan border, Tenet said, "we must overcome . . .  a global movement infected by al-Qaeda's radical agenda."
The spread of al-Qaeda's goals and tactics to terrorist cells not directly tied to the network, Tenet warned, "ensures that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future, with or without al-Qaeda in the picture."
Tenet, FBI Director Robert Mueller, President Bush and other administration officials have said the USA is safer as a result of the U.S.-led war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq.
Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that "an argument can be made that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are actually winning" the war on terrorism. He says that "if al-Qaeda's ideology wins victories, it does not matter if al-Qaeda is destroyed in the process."
European Union officials said Monday that EU law enforcement specialists will meet in Madrid on Friday to discuss ways to fight terrorism. State Department spokeswoman Brenda Greenberg said that because the United States is not an EU member, it would not participate.







 



March 15, 2004 Monday  




 'It's Fun Going to School'; 
Twin Sisters Help Educate 1,600 Kids In Indonesia

 
 Their school has a highway overpass for a roof, and there's a garbage dump behind the blackboard. When the classroom floods (and that happens a lot), students are up to their ankles in dirty water. 
But all in all, the kids know that going to this school is better than what they might be doing on the streets of Jakarta, Indonesia: begging for food or working in factories.  
 "It's fun going to school," said Asa, a smiling 5-year-old. As trucks rumbled overhead, her class broke into song: "Sebelum kita makan, yok! Cuci tanganmu dulu, yok!" (Before we eat, c'mon! Let's wash our hands, c'mon!) 
 Students in this school get school supplies, daily milk and snack and their uniforms free of charge. There are five of these schools, run by twin sisters, in Jakarta's poorest areas. The schools educate 1,600 children ages 5 to 17. 
Indonesia is a country of more than 13,500 islands in Southeast Asia. About 220 million people live there, making it the fourth biggest country in the world in population. Most of the people who live in Indonesia are of the Muslim faith. 
But education in Indonesia is a problem because many Indonesians are so poor. While the government says that more than 90 percent of 7- to 12-year-olds go to school, almost half of them drop out when they turn 13. Many parents can't afford the $2 a day it costs to send a child to a public school, so the kids quit school and go to work to help their families. 
Sisters Sri Irianti and Sri Rosyanti use their own money (about $2,400 a month) to run the schools, which teach religion along with reading, writing and math. 
 "We had to do something," said Rosyanti, a teacher. "Our dream is that these kids have some education to improve their lives." Asa's mother, Sri Rizki, is happy her daughter can go to this school and learn things she didn't have the chance to.  
"I want Asa to have a better life." 
 -- Lely T. Djuhari, Associated Press 







 


March 14, 2004 Sunday  
 



 MIGHTY QUINN

 
News item: JAKARTA (Reuters) - Couples caught kissing passionately in public in Indonesia could spend five years in jail.
Members of parliament in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, have proposed an anti-pornography bill that includes a ban on kissing on the mouth in public.  
Heavy kissing could carry a maximum penalty of five years in jail or a $29,000 fine. Anyone caught flashing would face similar penalties.
The bill also proposes bans on public nudity, erotic dances and sex parties, with jail terms ranging from three to 10 years. Watching such shows could lead to two years behind bars.
Note to self: Reconsider Jakarta as possible honeymoon site, if and when you get married.
Mighty hit with Duke yesterday. Today it's the Cavaliers. The deficit is 100 sirignanos.







 


March 10, 2004 Wednesday  




 INSIDE

 

Bush to Answer 9/11 Panel
The White House said President Bush would privately answer all questions raised by the panel investigating the 9/11 attacks.   PAGE A14

Hijacker Dies in Iraq
Abu Abbas, the mastermind of the 1985 Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking, died, apparently of natural causes, at an Iraqi prison.   PAGE A3

Sniper Sentenced to Death
John A. Muhammad was sentenced to death in the 2002 shooting spree that left 10 people dead in four states and Washington, D.C.   PAGE A14

Cleric's Sentence Reduced
The prison sentence of a radical Indonesian Muslim cleric, the suspected leader of a group linked to terrorism, was cut in half.   PAGE A8







 


March 10, 2004 Wednesday  




 Cleric's Sentence Is Reduced by Indonesian Court

 
On the eve of a visit to Indonesia by the secretary for homeland security, Tom Ridge, the Indonesian Supreme Court has reduced the prison sentence of the suspected spiritual leader of an Islamic group, Jemaah Islamiyah, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization.
 The cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, who was convicted last September on minor immigration charges and sentenced to three years, is likely to be free within a few weeks. The court on Tuesday declined to reinstate treason charges against Mr. Bashir, which the prosecution had sought. 
  The American Embassy expressed extreme disappointment with the court's decision. ''We believe there is extensive evidence of Bashir's role as the leader of J. I. and that the organization committed numerous terrorist acts at his direction,'' said Stanley Harsha, an embassy spokesman. He added that the United States was planning to ask Indonesian authorities to reinstate the charges or file new ones ''using fully available evidence at their disposal.''
 He declined to discuss that evidence. But another member of Jemaah Islamiyah currently on trial has told Indonesian authorities that he delivered a message from Osama bin Laden to Mr. Bashir shortly after Sept. 11.
 Mr. Ridge is expected to raise the case with Indonesia's president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, when he meets with her on Wednesday. But with parliamentary elections scheduled for April 5 and presidential elections in July, it is considered unlikely here that Mrs. Megawati will take any decisive action that might anger Indonesia's Muslims. 
 A fiery speaker with a considerable following, Mr. Bashir could play a significant role in the elections.
 Indonesian authorities long resisted entreaties from the United States, along with Australia and Singapore, to move against Mr. Bashir, whose roots in Islamic radicalism date from the early 1980's. His objective was the establishment of a pan-Islamic nation, but he later linked up with Mr. bin Laden, and Jemaah Islamiyah became in effect Al Qaeda's Southeast Asian franchise.
 Omar al-Faruq, a Qaeda operative seized here in June 2002 who was turned over to the Central Intelligence Agency, had told his interrogators that Mr. Bashir was the major organizer of a plot to blow up the American, Australian and Israeli Embassies in Singapore. The attacks were foiled when several Jemaah Islamiyah members were captured.
 Authorities have also said that Jemaah Islamiyah was behind the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings.
 It was only after that terrorist attack that Indonesian police arrested Mr. Bashir. His arrest and trial surprised many Indonesians and Western diplomats, who did not think the country's political leaders had the will to move against him. 
 The trial's outcome reinstated some of their concerns. The five- judge court found him guilty of immigration violations and acquitted him of any acts of terrorism. The judges also said they had no evidence that he led Jemaah Islamiyah. 
 The prosecution was widely criticized for presenting a weak case, particularly by Indonesian police who have taken the lead against Jemaah Islamiyah.
 The Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday is not likely to have an immediate visible impact on Jemaah Islamiyah, said Sidney Jones, a leading expert on the organization. Mr. Bashir had already relinquished operational control of the organization, and many of the organization's members who are on the run are not likely to return quickly.
 But the ruling will the organization's morale.
 ''It is going to give a big boost to those who don't believe that J. I. exists, who believe that the whole case against J.I. was the work of outsiders,'' Ms. Jones said.






 
  

  

MARCH 10, 2004 Wednesday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
S.D. governor says he will
allow bill limiting abortions
* South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds said yesterday that he would allow a bill that would all but ban abortion to become law if technical corrections were made. The bill is designed to challenge Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion. Rounds said he vetoed the bill because of the technical issues. If simple majorities in the House and Senate agree to the technical changes Monday, the legislation becomes law. 
Last of 11 'Virginia jihad'
defendants is acquitted
* A man was acquitted yesterday of supplying services to the Taliban and other charges stemming from his alleged role in what prosecutors called a "Virginia jihad network." Sabri Benkhala was the last of 11 defendants charged last year in an alleged conspiracy to aid terrorists. Six pleaded guilty to various charges and five went to trial. Three were convicted and two, including Benkhala, were acquitted of all charges. Prosecutors said the group used paintball games in the woods near Fredericksburg in 2000 and 2001 to prepare for a holy war.
Police: GOP security costs
in N.Y. could hit $65 million
* The New York Police Department's security costs at the Republican National Convention this summer could climb to $65 million, far higher than the city's previous estimate, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration had said the city would spend $22 million for police protection. The federal government has agreed to provide the city with $25 million for security costs.
Indian Point nuclear plant
gets clean bill of health
* For the first time under the current federal oversight system, the Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y., has received a clean report card. As a result, the plant on the Hudson River will no longer be subjected to extra inspections from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said yesterday. A leak of radioactivity in February 2000 was followed by other safety problems at the plant.
Rep. Tauzin of Louisiana
has a rare intestinal cancer
* Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R., La.) was diagnosed with a rare form of intestinal cancer, but he is confident he will recover, his spokesman said yesterday. The cancer was found in the upper small intestine during tests at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where Tauzin, 60, will undergo surgery next week, Ken Johnson said. Tauzin announced early this year that he would not seek reelection after 24 years in Congress.
In the World
U.S. agrees to tone down
nuclear criticism of Iran
* The United States agreed with key European nations yesterday to tone down criticism of Iran for its nuclear programs. U.S. diplomats also accepted a draft resolution containing some praise of Iran's willingness to open its nuclear efforts to outside inspection. Both sides signed off on the draft document prepared for an International Atomic Energy Agency conference in Vienna.
Greece's new premier
takes charge of Olympics
* The leader of Greece's new government took personal charge yesterday of the preparations for Athens' troubled Olympics. Prime Minister-elect Costas Caramanlis announced his cabinet and named himself culture minister, the head of the department overseeing most projects for the Aug. 13-29 Olympics. Starting today, 400 U.S. military and other personnel will join 2,000 Greek officers in security exercises to help prepare for the Games.
Indonesian court halves
Muslim cleric's sentence
* Indonesia's Supreme Court yesterday reduced the prison sentence of a prominent militant Muslim cleric accused of links to terrorism, clearing the way for his release April 4. Abu Bakar Bashir, whose three-year sentence was cut in half, is alleged to be the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian group tied to al-Qaeda.
French scientists stage
protest over funding cuts
* More than 2,000 French scientists resigned their administrative duties yesterday to protest funding cuts they say are hobbling research in France. The action came after several months of protests by state-funded researchers over budget cuts, the freezing of funds, and a recent government decision to eliminate 550 full-time research positions.
Macedonia's acting leader calls for elections April 14
* Macedonia's acting head of state yesterday called early presidential elections for April 14 to choose a successor for Boris Trajkovski, who was killed in a plane crash in southern Bosnia late last month. The Balkan nation's major political parties have not announced their candidates to succeed Trajkovski.







 



March 10, 2004 Wednesday  




 Indonesian Court Cuts Term of Terror Suspect

 
The Indonesian Supreme Court has reduced the jail sentence for Abubakar Baasyir, a Muslim cleric named by security officials as the leader of a Southeast Asian terrorist network, allowing him to go free by early next month, a court official said Tuesday. 
Without explanation, the judges slashed in half the three-year prison sentence imposed by a lower court. 
Baasyir was first detained in October 2002 after the bombing of two nightclubs on the island of Bali that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. That attack was blamed by Indonesian investigators on Jemaah Islamiah, a radical Muslim underground group linked to al Qaeda, and several of its members have admitted that the group was involved.  
But Baasyir, 65, the founder of a religious boarding school in central Java attended by several leading militants, has repeatedly denied allegations by Indonesian and U.S. officials that he is the spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah or that the group even exists. 
When he was brought to trial in Jakarta last year, judges rejected the main accusation against him -- that he was the emir, or commander, of the network -- on the grounds that prosecutors had failed to prove their case. 
Instead, Baasyir was convicted in September of a lesser charge of treason for involvement with Jemaah Islamiah, and on unrelated immigration and forgery offenses. The original five-judge panel sentenced him to four years in prison, far less than prosecutors had sought. 
While some U.S., Australian and Asian diplomats said at the time that Indonesia's determination to root out terrorism was slipping, other officials said the treason conviction offered some reason for optimism. Only a year earlier, the Indonesian government had routinely denied that an international terrorist group was active on its soil. 
But in December, the initial ruling was softened further when an appeals court threw out the treason conviction and reduced Baasyir's sentence to three years. 
Now, after the latest Supreme Court decision, Baasyir could walk free by April 4, according to Moegihardjo, a court official who uses only one name. 
 In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was quoted by the Associated Press as saying: "We've not yet seen an official verdict or a rationale for a judgment of reduction of sentences, but I think it's safe to say we'd be extremely disappointed were the Supreme Court to reduce" the sentence. 
The ruling was welcomed with chants of "Allah Akbar," or "God is Great," from several hundred of Baasyir's followers, who clustered around the courthouse. His supporters have consistently claimed that Indonesian authorities prosecuted him only because they were under U.S. pressure. 
While Baasyir's arrest and trial provoked wide public interest in Indonesia, the disclosure of the ruling received much less attention in a country that is preoccupied with a national election campaign that is officially scheduled to begin Thursday. 






 
  


March 5, 2004 Friday  



 BAY AREA GROUP REIGNITES GAMELAN;
ENSEMBLE'S IMPACT HAS BEEN FELT IN U.S., ON BALI

 
Bali's most esteemed contemporary composer, Nyoman Windha, recalls the pleasant shock he felt upon hearing Gamelan Sekar Jaya during the El Cerrito ensemble's first trip to his homeland in 1985.
"I was very surprised that they learned our culture," says Windha, the group's guest artistic director, who is studying at Mills College for a master's degree. "It made me proud. They collected people to play gamelan and practice three times a week! They are very serious and want to learn about the different styles." 
Several styles of gamelan will be on display at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, when Sekar Jaya kicks off its 25th anniversary season with a program of traditional pieces as well as new worksby Windha and Wayne Vitale, the organization's general manager. A percussion orchestra composed of instruments made of bronze, iron, wood and bamboo, gamelan is found throughout Java and Bali, a largely Hindu island in the midst of the archipelago of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
With about 50 members and five distinct ensembles, Sekar Jaya has become the most respected gamelan orchestra outside of Bali. Windha is one of many Balinese artists with whom the group has established close ties. As part of its silver anniversary season, for instance, Sekar Jaya is holding a 10-day summer intensive workshop series in Balinese music and dance, supported by an National Endowment for the Arts grant. On a scale unprecedented in the United States, the workshop will bring together seven of Bali's most acclaimed musicians and dancers, experts in various fields of Indonesian arts and participants from many of the 100 or so U.S.-based gamelan orchestras that have sprung up since Sekar Jaya was formed in 1979.
The group's impact has been felt far from the United States. Sekar Jaya has toured Bali five times and helped spark a cultural renaissance on the island.
"It's not an exaggeration to say that Sekar Jaya is a household word in Bali," Vitale says. "They associate foreigners playing gamelan with our group. When we first performed there in 1985, it was a kind of wake-up call. Here we were, foreigners who were passionate about gamelan when many young people . . . were more interested in Western music.
"Balinese music and dance is thriving now," Vitale says. "They have gamelan competitions every year, and 6,000 people will show up."
Like many Bay Area arts organizations, Sekar Jaya has collaborated widely, performing scores for silent films and with symphonies, dance troupes and improvisational ensembles.
"The bottom line is that none of us can explain it: You get hooked, or you don't," says Deborah Lloyd, a health-care facilitator at the University of California-Berkeley, who helped found Sekar Jaya and who, like the rest of its members, is a volunteer. Though she dropped out for a long stretch after having two children, she has been active in the group for the past five years.
"It's group music," she explains, "and it's not notated; so you learn it by rote, and it's a very physical experience. It gets into your body. We may have learned a piece six or seven years ago, and we'll hear the introduction, and we just start playing it, though we won't remember the name of the piece."
Most gamelan orchestras in the United States are associated with university ethnomusicology programs. Sekar Jaya's independence has proven to be one of the group's strengths. Embraced by the Balinese people, Sekar Jaya has facilitated an ever-deepening cultural exchange.
"We have created a conduit with another culture that's incredibly strong and vibrant, filled with a lot of goodwill on both sides," Vitale says. "This kind of scene is hard to attain in an academic setting. Universities just can't provide the continuity.
"Artists come from Bali and live here for months or years and have contact with a lot of different artists. We hang out, cook meals, go on tour. It has the most local, community, homey feeling and this international aspect. It's like having a sister city."
Gamelan Sekar Jaya
Where: Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St.
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Tickets: $22
Call: (650) 903-6000







 


March 1, 2004 Monday



 World datelines

 
Bermuda
HAMILTON -- Bermuda Premier Alex Scott said Sunday the government would begin discussing steps toward independence from Britain. Speaking at a meeting of his center-left Progressive Labor Party, Scott said islanders should begin discussing if the 22-square-mile mid-Atlantic territory should cut ties with Britain.
China 
BEIJING -- A bus carrying migrant workers to faraway factory jobs plunged off a mountain road in central China, killing 12 and injuring 35, a local government official said Sunday. The bus swerved across the center line about 1 a.m. Sunday and crashed through the guardrail, falling 36 feet into a riverbed, said the officer, who declined to give his name.
Egypt
CAIRO -- Egypt and Saudi Arabia will propose at an Arab summit that the region adopt a unified strategy for political and economic reforms, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press on Sunday. The idea is partly a response to a Bush administration proposal for political reform in the Middle East that is modeled on the 1975 Helsinki pact the West used to press for greater freedom in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
Germany
HAMBURG -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's party was handed a stinging defeat by voters in Hamburg in Sunday elections reflecting the pent-up anger over his push to cut cherished state benefits. Schroeder's Social Democrats slumped to a postwar low in the northern port city they ruled for decades until 2001, while the conservative Christian Democrats surged to a majority on a campaign built on Mayor Ole von Beust's personal popularity.
Indonesia
JAKARTA -- A Muslim activist has been arrested in central Indonesia for last year's J.W. Marriott Hotel bombing, becoming the 15th suspect detained in connection with the blast that killed 12 people, police said Sunday. The suspect, identified only as Dahlan, was captured Thursday in the East Java town of Ngawi, about 354 miles southeast of Jakarta, said a police official in nearby Surabaya.
Kuwait
KUWAIT CITY -- Kuwait has agreed to export Iraqi oil from its ports, the first such deal between the neighboring nations since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a senior official said Sunday.
The state-owned Kuwait News Agency quoted Issa al-Aoun, the undersecretary of the Energy Ministry, as saying Kuwaiti oil officials and a visiting delegation of their Iraqi peers have formed a team to study the technical requirements needed for transporting Iraqi oil to Kuwait, including pipelines and pumping stations.
North Korea
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea warned Sunday that six-nation talks won't help resolve the standoff over its nuclear program if the United States does not change its policy toward the communist state. The comments came a day after a meeting of the six governments in Beijing, which ended with an agreement to hold more negotiations before July and form a lower-level "working group" to handle details of the 16-month-old dispute.
Russia
MOSCOW -- The head of the Federal Property Fund has been charged with exceeding his authority in the privatization of a fertilizer company that is part of the politically charged case against tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Vladimir Malin was charged on Friday and released on his own recognizance, news reports said, adding that the Prosecutor General's office is seeking to have him suspended as chairman of the fund. The Federal Property Fund is the nominal owner of all of Russia's state assets.
Spain
MADRID -- The suspected coordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks is being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and has told investigators he met with the lead hijacker, a Spanish newspaper reported Sunday. El Pais, the country's largest daily newspaper, said Ramzi Binalshibh, who was arrested in Pakistan in September 2002, acknowledged meeting Mohamed Atta of Egypt in July 2001 -- two months before the attacks in the United States.
MADRID -- For the second time in just more than two months, Spain on Sunday averted a bombing by the Basque separatist group ETA after the Civil Guard stopped a small truck and found about 1,100 pounds of bomb-making chemicals, officials said. Two alleged ETA members were arrested, but their identities were withheld.






 
  

  

FEBRUARY 27, 2004 Friday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Democratic Party chief
to step down next year
* Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said yesterday that he planned to step down as head of the party when his term concluded early next year. McAuliffe, 47, a close ally of former President Bill Clinton, said he had always planned to serve only one term and looked forward to spending more time with his family.
Congresswoman seeking extension for 9/11 probe
* House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) called on Republican leaders yesterday to give a federal commission reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks more time to complete its work. She said the GOP opposition was undermining the panel's investigations. The commission is scheduled to finish its work May 27, but members are seeking at least a two-month extension. 
Judge: No jury sequestering in Calif. double-murder trial
* The jury in Scott Peterson's double-murder trial will not be sequestered, a California judge ruled yesterday, rejecting defense arguments that jurors would be tainted by saturation news coverage of the case. Another judge ruled that Peterson was free to sell his story to the movies or to make book deals, over the objections of the mother of Peterson's slain wife. Authorities allege Peterson murdered his wife and their unborn son in 2002. Jury selection is expected to begin next week in Redwood City, Calif.
FBI imposes crime-scene ban
after agents take WTC items
* The FBI has banned its employees from taking any items from crime scenes or evidence sites after Justice Department investigators found that 13 agents took debris from the rubble of the World Trade Center in New York. Three of the agents have been referred to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility for further disciplinary action, officials said yesterday.
Amid controversy, lawmaker
backs out of drug-lobby job
* Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R., La.), former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has ended negotiations to head the pharmaceutical industry's lobby, his spokesman said yesterday. Critics complained that he was considering the job while chairing the powerful committee that regulated the industry. The controversy is too much of a distraction, the spokesman said.
Fla. to track road-ragers
with 1,800 patrol cars
* The Florida Highway Patrol has more patrol cars on the highways than ever in an effort to stop aggressive drivers in response to growing concerns over road rage. The agency said that for two days, yesterday and today, it would use 1,500 marked cars, 300 unmarked cars, motorcycles, video cameras, radar and airplanes to track irresponsible drivers on all interstates and other major state roads.
In the World
Qatar arrests Russian agents accused in Chechen's killing
* Russian intelligence agents orchestrated the Feb. 13 killing of a Chechen separatist leader in Qatar, authorities in the Persian Gulf state said yesterday. Qatar has arrested and charged with murder two Russian agents operating out of their country's embassy in Doha, the Qatari capital, while releasing a third agent because he held a diplomatic passport. Russia denied involvement in the car bombing that killed Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, and demanded the release of the suspects.
China releases Tibetan nun
imprisoned for 15 years
* China yesterday released one of its longest-serving political prisoners, a Tibetan nun who spent nearly 15 years behind bars for campaigning for Tibetan independence and recording songs in prison that were used to inspire sympathizers, a U.S.-based human rights activist said. Phuntsog Nyidron was granted a one-year sentence reduction and allowed to leave Drapchi Prison in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, said the activist, John Kamm.
Muslim militant sentenced
in Jakarta hotel bombing
* An Indonesian court sentenced a Muslim militant yesterday to 10 years in prison for involvement in the bombing last year of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people and wounded 150. Sardona Siliwangi, 23, was found guilty of storing explosives that later were used in the bombing.
Putin opens piece of road to transcontinental travel
* President Vladimir V. Putin opened a stretch of highway yesterday in Russia's Far East that would make it possible for the first time to travel by road across the country. Russian officials hope the 6,214-mile Moscow-to-
Vladivostok route will open a window to the expanding Chinese market.
18 killed, 18 injured at cafe in Siberian gas-leak blast
* An explosion from a suspected gas leak tore through a cafe in Russia's Siberia region yesterday, killing 18 people and injuring 18, the Emergencies Ministry said. Investigators said they had found four exploded gas canisters at the site in the city of Chita.
Man who lost family is held
in air controller's death
* A man who lost his wife and two children in an airplane collision has been arrested on suspicion that he stabbed to death the air traffic controller on duty at the time of the 2002 accident, officials in Zurich, Switzerland, said yesterday. They declined to identify the suspect, but evidence they disclosed indicated that the 48-year-old was a Russian on a visit to Switzerland. The controller was killed Tuesday.






  


February 27, 2004 Friday



 Speaker clarifies Muslim positions; Decisions lecture shows similarity in religions

 
America's image in the Muslim world is for the most part badly tarnished. At the same time, many Americans view the Islamic world with antipathy. Both sides are fearful of each other. 
That's the view from Amer Ahmed, who as an American Muslim has a foot in both worlds. He spoke Thursday on diversity in Islam at the Northeast Iowa Community College Town Clock Center for Professional Development as part of the Great Decisions lecture series. Ahmed, 25, is the director of intercultural programs at Loras College.
Ahmed was born in the United States to Muslim parents from India. He has studied diverse faith traditions and cultures and traveled to a number of countries, including several Islamic states.
The lens through which most Americans view the Muslim world is colored by numerous misconceptions, Ahmed said.
"We associate Islam with the Middle East, but the largest populations of Muslims are found in Indonesia and India, and many in the Mideast are not Muslims," he said.
Many Americans don't realize that Islam, Judaism and Christianity are "95 percent the same religion" stemming from Abrahamic traditions, he said. "The Passion of the Christ" will be as important in the Muslim world as it is in the U.S. because in Islam, Christ is considered an important prophet, though not a savior.
The Muslim world, 1.5 billion strong, feels just as much under attack as America, Ahmed said. Americans think a "holy war" has been declared on Western ideals by Muslims. Islamics see the U.S. as an imperialist nation imposing its power on Muslim countries.
"We are at a critical time during this election year. Are we going to say we will share power with and not dominate? Muslims want to love us all, except when they feel threatened," Ahmed said. "If we choose the wrong path, it will be detrimental to all of our futures."
The audience had a lot of questions for Ahmed, such as what did the perpetrators of the 9/11 destruction hope to accomplish.
"They were trying to create war. They knew how Americans would respond," he said. "Don't forget, they weren't mainstream Muslims. They were coming from a side agenda."
To a question about "just, reasonable profiling" in light of new national security concerns, Ahmed admitted he has been told to "go back home" and had been targeted in a national airport.
"It was an egregious experience. They were trying to intimidate me. The deterioration of our rights is unfortunate," he said.
When someone expressed surprise that there are more Muslims in the U.S. than Lutherans, Ahmed said most Muslims have recently immigrated to the U.S. and have been "taught to be quiet and lead good lives." Therefore, they are nearly invisible to Americans.






 
  

  

FEBRUARY 25, 2004 Wednesday 



 CIA chief: Al-Qaeda inspiring 'next wave';
"Dozens of such groups" have grown up around the world, he warned.

 
Eliminating Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network will not end the danger to Americans from growing Islamic extremism, CIA Director George Tenet warned yesterday.
Tenet told the Senate intelligence committee that new groups inspired by bin Laden, his followers and their methods "have become the next wave of the terrorist threat. Dozens of such groups exist."
"We must overcome . . . a global movement infected by al-Qaeda's radical agenda" of attacking the United States with weapons capable of causing mass casualties, he said. 
Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, bolstered the warning, saying that support in the Muslim world for the U.S.-led war on terrorism and for the United States itself had plunged even in countries considered friendly, fueling radical Islam and opposition to pro-American regimes.
The appraisals cast in a far more somber light the progress President Bush is citing in the U.S.-led fight against terrorism and in initiatives to promote democracy in the Middle East.
Tenet, Jacoby and FBI Director Robert Mueller delivered public versions of annual assessments their agencies compile for Congress on threats facing the United States.
The three cited significant progress in eradicating al-Qaeda cells: Three-quarters of its known leaders have been killed or caught; its ability to plan, fund, train for and stage attacks is crippled; it has lost havens; and operatives of al-Qaeda, as well as other radical Islamic groups, have been prosecuted in the United States, the officials said.
They also testified that Pakistani forces, coordinating with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, were pressing a major operation to capture al-Qaeda members on Pakistan's side of the Afghan-Pakistan border, where bin Laden is believed hiding.
Even if bin Laden and his network are eradicated, other extremist groups will continue to attack targets overseas and in the United States for years to come, Tenet warned.
Al-Qaeda has "infected others with its ideology, which depicts the United States as Islam's greatest foe," he said. "The steady growth of anti-U.S. sentiment through the wider Sunni extremist movement and the broad dissemination of al-Qaeda's destructive expertise ensure that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future - with or without al-Qaeda in the picture."
Those inspired by bin Laden include the al-Zarqawi network in Iraq; Ansar al-Islam, an Iraqi Kurdish organization; and groups in Libya, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kenya, Somalia, and other Asian and African countries.
"These far-flung groups increasingly set the agenda and are redefining the threat we face," Tenet said. "They are not creatures of bin Laden, and so their fate is not tied to his. They have autonomous leadership. They pick their own targets. They plan their own attacks."
The threat, Tenet said, goes beyond these groups to individual "jihadists" who see the presence of 120,000 U.S. troops in Iraq as a "golden opportunity."
Jacoby warned that a failure of U.S. policy in Iraq could turn that country into "a training ground for the next generation of terrorists."
He said he was concerned about trends in the Muslim world that boded ill for the United States and Arab governments close to Washington.
Poverty, corruption, unemployed young people, and poor education, combined with hostility to U.S. policies, threaten the stability of pro-U.S. regimes and will create a terrorist threat for years to come, he said.
"Favorable [U.S. ] ratings in Morocco declined from 77 percent in 2000 to 27 percent in spring of last year, and in Jordan from 25 percent in 2002 to only 1 percent in May 2003," Jacoby said in a statement submitted to the committee.
The Bush administration's perceived bias toward Israel was cited in recent polls as a leading reason for anti-U.S. fervor, he said.
Tenet, Jacoby and Mueller agreed that al-Qaeda could still stage an operation on the scale of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Al-Qaeda is intent on obtaining such extremely lethal weapons as anthrax, poisons, and a "dirty" bomb of conventional explosives and radioactive materials, Tenet said.
"Al-Qaeda continues to enjoy considerable support and is able to recruit terrorists," Jacoby said. "Capable but less experienced individuals are replacing those captured."
The network "appears to recognize the operational advantage it can derive from recruiting U.S. citizens," said Mueller, adding that there had been cases of Americans not of Arab descent apparently involved in "operational planning."
Contact reporter Jonathan Landay at 202-383-6012 or jlanday@krwashington.com.






 
  


February 25, 2004 Wednesday 



 DANGER WON'T END WITH AL-QAIDA
TENET SAYS NEW GROUPS OPERATE INDEPENDENTLY

 
WASHINGTON -- Eliminating Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network will not end the danger to Americans from a growing Islamic extremist movement, CIA Director George Tenet warned Tuesday.
Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that new groups inspired by bin Laden, his followers and their methods "have become the next wave of the terrorist threat. Dozens of such groups exist." 
"We must overcome a movement, a global movement infected by al-Qaida's radical agenda" of attacking the United States with weapons capable of causing mass casualties, he said.
Adm. Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, bolstered Tenet's warning, saying that Muslim support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism and for the United States has plunged even in countries considered friendly, fueling radical Islam and opposition to pro-U.S. regimes.
The appraisals cast a far more sober light on the progress that President Bush is claiming in the fight against terrorism and initiatives to promote democracy in the Middle East.
Tenet, Jacoby and FBI Director Robert Mueller delivered public versions of assessments their agencies compile annually for Congress on worldwide threats facing the United States.
The three cited significant progress in eradicating al-Qaida cells overseas and at home:
-- Three-quarters of the network's known leaders have been killed or caught.
-- Its ability to plan, fund, train for and stage attacks has been crippled, and it has lost havens.
-- Operatives of al-Qaida and other radical Islamic groups have been prosecuted in the United States.
They also said Pakistani forces -- coordinating with U.S. troops in Afghanistan -- were pressing a major operation to capture al-Qaida members on Pakistan's side of the Afghan-Pakistan border, where bin Laden is suspected of hiding.
Even if bin Laden and his network are eradicated, other Islamic extremist groups will continue attacking targets overseas and in the United States for years to come, Tenet warned.
Al-Qaida has "infected others with its ideology, which depicts the United States as Islam's greatest foe," he said.
"The steady growth of Osama bin Laden's anti-U.S. sentiment through the wider Sunni extremist movement and the broad dissemination of al-Qaida's destructive expertise ensure that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future -- with or without al-Qaida in the picture."
Those inspired by bin Laden include the al-Zarqawi network, active in Iraq; Ansar al-Islam, an Iraqi Kurdish organization; and groups in Libya, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kenya, Somalia and other Asian and African countries.
"These far-flung groups increasingly set the agenda and are redefining the threat we face," he said. "They are not creatures of bin Laden, and so their fate is not tied to his."






 
  


February 25, 2004 Wednesday  



 SOMBER VIEWS ON NATIONAL SECURITY

 
Eliminating Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaida network will not end the danger to Americans from a growing Islamist extremist movement, CIA Director George Tenet warned Tuesday.
Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that new groups inspired by bin Laden, his followers and their methods "have become the next wave of the terrorist threat. Dozens of such groups exist." 
"We must overcome a movement, a global movement infected by Al-Qaida's radical agenda" of attacking the United States with weapons capable of causing mass casualties, he said.
Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, bolstered Tenet's warning, saying that support in the Muslim world for the U.S.-led war on terrorism and for the United States itself has plunged even in countries considered friendly, fueling radical Islam and opposition to pro-U.S. regimes.
The appraisals cast in a far more sober light the progress that President Bush is claiming in the U.S.-led fight against terrorism and initiatives topromote democracy in the Middle East.
Tenet, Jacoby and FBI Director Robert Mueller delivered public versions of assessments that their agencies compile annually for Congress on worldwide threats facing the United States.
The three cited significant progress in eradicating Al-Qaida cells overseas and at home.
Three-quarters of the network's known leaders have been killed or caught; its ability to plan, fund, train for and stage attacks has been crippled; it has lost havens; and operatives of Al-Qaida, as well as other radical Islamist groups, have been prosecuted in the United States, they said.
They also testified that Pakistani forces -- coordinating with U.S. troops in Afghanistan -- were pressing a major operation to capture Al-Qaida members on Pakistan's side of the rugged Afghan-Pakistan border, where bin Laden is suspected of hiding.
Even if bin Laden and his network are eradicated, other Islamic extremist groups will continue attacking targets overseas and in the United States for years to come, Tenet warned.
Al-Qaida has "infected others with its ideology, which depicts the United States as Islam's greatest foe," he said. "The steady growth of Osama bin Laden's anti-U.S. sentiment through the wider Sunni extremist movement and the broad dissemination of Al-Qaida's destructive expertise ensure that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future -- with or without Al-Qaida in the picture."
Those considered to be inspired by bin Laden include the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi network, active in Iraq; Ansar al-Islam, an Iraqi Kurdish organization; and groups in Libya, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kenya, Somalia and other Asian and African countries.
"These far-flung groups increasingly set the agenda and are redefining the threat we face," he said. "They are not creatures of bin Laden, and so their fate is not tied to his. They have autonomous leadership. They picked their own targets. They plan their own attacks."
The threat, Tenet said, goes beyond these groups to individual jihadists, who see the presence of 120,000 U.S. troops in Iraq as a "golden opportunity."







 


February 17, 2004 Tuesday  




 Special Diets Are an Adventure in Packing

 
For someone who never went to overnight camp as a youngster, 22 years of traveling to Asia has been an adventure. There is still an excitement when I get ready for a trip. 
 It is especially noticeable since 9/11, when I start packing, get all the files together, load everything up into the car and head to the airport. But before you've even gotten on the first plane, you feel dehumanized -- you are profiled, poked and prodded.  
  Being a diabetic has been the most challenging thing, trying to maintain a sugar balance when you are crossing time zones and your entire body clock has completely shifted. So having religious and dietary restrictions, I pretty much bring my own food, enough to last for a couple of weeks. (I just clean out the hotel minibar and put my own stuff in.) I look like I'm emigrating, because I have a lot of luggage and our Department of Homeland Security considers my blocks of cheese as suspicious. 
 I always carry a few cans of Diet Coke, which I pack in my luggage. My bags always get opened. But the last time I put all the soda in a separate bag, and all the food in another. They never even put the soda through the CTX scanner, but my bag with the food did go through. 
 What is really striking is how some people in the travel industry go out of their way for you. In boarding a Singapore Airlines flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco, I was told a late-booking first-class passenger had been given the Hermolis kosher meal I had ordered and the airport caterer had provided a substitute meal with an inferior brand. 
 Before I even had a chance to express disappointment, the purser delayed the flight, called the caterer and asked him to bring my preferred brand to the plane. The pilot announced that we were ''waiting for some catering supplies.'' We were delayed for 45 minutes. 
 Once a colleague and I had this bright idea of flying overnight from Singapore to Osaka Itami to catch a domestic flight to Haneda Airport, to save money and avoid the long bus ride into Tokyo. We had a three-hour layover, and to escape the hard plastic benches for coach passengers, asked a Japanese woman who worked for Singapore Airlines if its lounge was open. It wasn't, but she opened it for us since we flew with them from Singapore, and just kind of left us to ourselves. She simply asked that we turn off the lights and lock the door when we left -- showing us trust and respect. I don't drink and we had no desire to take advantage of them, but we were left with enough liquor to open a tavern.
 The thing that has always fascinated me about Asian cultures is their deep respect for the elderly, and their younger people understanding they need to pay their dues. It's a culture that is more family based, not like American culture, which is a little bit off the rails. People do what they want and then justify it later. Asian cultures are a little bit more bound by rules.
 I find it so refreshing that my Muslim colleagues in Indonesia will take time out from meetings for prayer call. Our office has a room where they can say their prayers. And generally I will have some prayers that I need to say at some point during the day, and will go off to the side and do it also in the office. 
 These are the kind of people that I feel a kinship to -- they respect my feelings and I respect theirs. These people have this as part of their life on a day to day basis and for some reason I am kind of tickled by it. 








 


February 15, 2004 Sunday



 No one dares guess why al-Qaida hasn't hit again

 
   WASHINGTON -- The single most puzzling -- and arguably most important -- question of the day is the one that no one raises in public: Why have we not been attacked again?
We are coming up on 2 1/2 years since Sept. 11. Think back: On Sept. 11, everybody was waiting for the other shoe to drop -- within days or weeks, but surely within months. When nothing happened, it was said that al-Qaida works on 18-month cycles, with long planning and preparation. 
Well, it is now almost a year plus 18 months. And while there have been terrorist attacks against generally soft targets in other (mostly Islamic) countries, we have not had a single attack, major or minor, in the United States.
It is easy to understand why nobody wants to talk about this. The administration dare not take credit for what is on the face of it an amazing phenomenon but one that can reverse itself in a flash. And the opposition hardly wants to highlight a development that might shed favorable light on this administration's post-9/11 stewardship.
Even commentators are uneasy about bringing it up. Any analysis could instantaneously turn into embarrassment.
Nonetheless, it seems odd to have a moratorium on so intriguing a question. I ask it of almost every intelligence expert I meet. Their speculations fall along two lines.
The first is that al-Qaida has been so severely degraded and disrupted that it simply cannot do it. It has lost its Afghan base, lost much of its funding and is reduced to going back to where Islamic radicals were years ago: launching minor guerrilla operations in Pakistan/Afghanistan, and sending operatives out to hit soft targets such as synagogues in Tunisia and embassies in Istanbul.
A variation on this theme is the idea that as al-Qaida International shrinks, terrorism is becoming more regionalized, being taken over by actors such as Jemaah Islamiyah (Indonesia), Abu Sayyaf (Philippines) and Ansar al-Islam (Iraq).
That may not be a terribly good development for the world, but it would be an explanation for why America has not been attacked. If you are an Indonesian terrorist, your objective is to destroy your government and to take it over. Hitting the Vegas Strip -- no matter how spectacularly -- becomes a distraction.
But I remain puzzled. Let's say that al-Qaida is so badly hurt that it cannot organize another Sept. 11 with 19 hijackers, four planes and years of training. But how much training, how much planning can it take to pack a few truck bombs and blow them up in a bunch of crowded shopping malls? Considering the economic and psychological havoc that would wreak, why haven't they done it?
After all, Timothy McVeigh did not need a huge terror apparatus to kill 168 people in the heartland of America. It takes but a primitive level of organization to do that. It is hard to believe al-Qaida is not capable of doing the same. So why hasn't it?
The other explanation is that it is a matter of pride. Having pulled off the greatest terrorist attack in the history of the world, it does not want to sully its reputation by resorting to the cheap car bomb.
Or put it less psychologically and more strategically: Part of the appeal of al-Qaida -- what it uses to recruit people and funds -- is its mystique. Superhuman feats, brilliant execution, masterful planning. That aura feeds its ideology of historical inevitability, that ultimately it will prevail over Western decadence, because the seeming high-tech West lacks the diabolical and methodical will that Islamism brings to the war.
Could that be it? For the sake of its own mythology, is al-Qaida biding its time until it can pull off the next spectacular?
I don't know. I tend to favor the second theory. But I have no doubt that reorganizing homeland security, redirecting law enforcement (from locking up bad guys to preventing worse guys from attacking) and increasing vigilance at the borders have had a significant deterrent effect.
Add to that a forward strategy of attacking not only the terrorists but the states that support them. Maybe al-Qaida does lack the capacity for even simple terrorism on U.S. soil. If so, it speaks well for an administration that immediately after Sept. 11 designed and carried out a radically new strategy, both offensive and defensive, to fight the war on terror.
But no one dares say it. It could prove catastrophically wrong tomorrow. Charles Krauthammer's e-mail address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com. Washington Post Writers Group







 


February 13, 2004 Friday  




 Indonesian Court Overturns Politician's Corruption Conviction

 
In a decision likely to carry ramifications for Indonesia's first direct presidential elections this year, the country's Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a corruption conviction against a powerful politician. 
 The court ruling in favor of the politician, Akbar Tandjung, 58, the parliamentary speaker and leader of the Golkar Party, leaves the way open for Mr. Akbar to run for the presidency.  
 Golkar was the main political vehicle for the deposed authoritarian leader, Gen. Suharto, whom Mr. Akbar served for many years. 
 After an all-day reading by a five- judge panel, Judge Paulus Lotulong finally got to the crux of the ruling at dusk on Thursday evening.
 ''According to the team of judges, we find that the defendant should not have been found guilty,'' the judge said. He called for Mr. Akbar's name to be ''rehabilitated.''
 Columns of riot police officers and a water cannon were positioned outside the courthouse, but the judge's reading took so long that many of the student demonstrators who planned protests against Mr. Akbar had left by the end of the day.
 Mr. Akbar was found guilty in September 2002 of embezzling nearly $4.8 million of state funds intended for a 1999 food program for the poor. The money ended up in the Golkar Party's coffers, the prosecution said. 
 In January 2003, the Jakarta High Court upheld the guilty verdict. Mr. Akbar was sentenced to three years in jail, but he remained free and continued to hold his top government and political jobs. 
 Thursday's positive outcome for Mr. Akbar, whose political fate had been in doubt, will allow him to consolidate his already firm control of the Golkar Party machinery, considered the most disciplined in the country.
 He is described in the current issue of the respected weekly magazine Tempo as one of the ''old faces'' of ''unstoppable'' political endurance.
 Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is scheduled to hold direct presidential elections on July 5. Parliamentary elections, in which political analysts believe Golkar will do well, are scheduled for April 5.
 Both the presidential and parliamentary contests will be dominated by the two nationalist secular parties, Golkar and President Megawati Sukarnoputri's party, the Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle. The less well-established religious Islamic parties are expected to receive a smaller percentage of votes, political analysts say. 
 The court's decision will dampen the presidential prospects of Gen. Wiranto, a retired general, who is running for the Golkar nomination and whose charismatic style appeared to be proving popular among grass-roots voters. 
 The general has been campaigning on an anticorruption platform aimed at both Mrs. Megawati and Mr. Akbar. 
 General Wiranto has been charged by a United Nations Human Rights Court in East Timor with crimes against humanity. He was the head of the Indonesian military during the 1999 violence when the East Timorese were voting for independence from Indonesia. 
 In one respect, the court's ruling is considered a positive development for Mrs. Megawati, whose popularity had faded in the past year. She had feared a strong challenge from General Wiranto, and some of her political colleagues have made no secret of their hope that the official clearing of Mr. Akbar's name could cripple the general's campaign.                                        







 



February 13, 2004 Friday  




 The Other Shoe

 
 The single most puzzling -- and arguably most important -- question of the day is the one no one raises in public: Why have we not been attacked again? 
 We are coming up on  21/2 years since Sept. 11, 2001. Think back: On Sept. 11, everybody was waiting for the other shoe to drop -- within days or weeks, but surely within months. When nothing happened, it was said that al Qaeda works on 18-month cycles, with long planning and preparation.  
 Well, it is now almost a year plus 18 months. And while there have been terrorist attacks against generally soft targets in other (mostly Islamic) countries, we have not had a single attack, major or minor, in the United States. 
 It is easy to understand why nobody wants to talk about this. The administration dares not take credit for what is on  its face  an amazing phenomenon, but one that can reverse itself in a flash. And the opposition hardly wants to highlight a development that might shed favorable light on this administration's  post-Sept. 11 stewardship. 
 Even commentators are uneasy about bringing it up. Any analysis could instantaneously turn into embarrassment. 
 Nonetheless, it seems odd to have a moratorium on so intriguing a question. I ask it of almost every intelligence expert I meet. Their speculations fall along two lines: 
 The first is that al Qaeda has been so severely degraded and disrupted that it simply cannot do it. It has lost its Afghan base, lost much of its funding and is reduced to going back to where Islamic radicals were years ago: launching minor guerrilla operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and sending operatives out to hit soft targets such as synagogues in Tunisia and consulates and banks  in Istanbul. 
 A variation on this theme is the idea that as al Qaeda's international presence  shrinks, terrorism is becoming more regionalized, being taken over by actors such as Jemaah  Islamiah (Indonesia), Abu Sayyaf (Philippines) and Ansar al-Islam (Iraq). 
 That may not be a terribly good development for the world, but it would be an explanation for why the United States has not been attacked. If you are an Indonesian terrorist, your objective is to destroy your government and to take it over. Hitting the Vegas Strip -- no matter how spectacularly -- becomes a distraction. 
But I remain puzzled. Let's say that al Qaeda is so badly hurt that it cannot organize another Sept. 11 with 19 hijackers, four planes and years of training.  Yet how much training, how much planning can it take to pack a few trucks with explosives and blow them up in  crowded shopping malls? Considering the economic and psychological havoc that would wreak, why haven't they done it? 
 After all, Timothy McVeigh did not need a huge terror apparatus to kill 168 people in the heartland of America. It takes but a primitive level of organization to do that. It is hard to believe al Qaeda is not capable of doing the same. So why hasn't it? 
 The other explanation is that it is a matter of pride. Having pulled off the greatest terrorist attack in the history of the world, al Qaeda does not want to sully its reputation by resorting to the cheap car bomb. 
 Or, to put it less psychologically and more strategically: Part of the appeal of al Qaeda -- what it uses to recruit people and funds -- is its mystique. Superhuman feats, brilliant execution, masterful planning. That aura feeds its ideology of historical inevitability, that ultimately it will prevail over Western decadence, because the  seemingly high-tech West lacks the diabolical and methodical will that Islamism brings to the war. 
 Could that be it? For the sake of its own mythology, is al Qaeda biding its time until it can pull off the next spectacular? 
 I don't know. I tend to favor the second theory. But I have no doubt that reorganizing homeland security, redirecting law enforcement (from locking up bad guys to preventing worse guys from attacking) and increasing vigilance at the borders have had a significant deterrent effect. 
 Add to that a forward strategy of attacking not only the terrorists but the states that support them. Maybe al Qaeda does lack the capacity for even simple terrorism on U.S. soil. If so, it speaks well for an administration that, immediately after Sept. 11, designed and carried out a radically new strategy, both offensive and defensive, to fight the war on terror. 
 But no one dares say it. It could prove catastrophically wrong tomorrow.  
 letters@charleskrauthammer.com 






  

 

February 12, 2004 Thursday 



 EAT: MYSTERIES OF BALI;
NEW BUT LIKE AN OLD FRIEND, EXOTIC BUT NOT FANCY, IT'S A PLACE OF INDONESIA INTRIGUE.

 
BALI INDAH 2257 Lenox Road N.E. *
BALI INDAH HAS ARRIVED on the restaurant scene via a tear in the time-space continuum. Reason tells you that it's a new place, having just moved into the small building off Cheshire Bridge road that was vacated by Sea Siam. Don't listen to reason: Bali Indah has been there forever.
You know this as fact when you walk in. The shopworn carpeting. The motel lighting. The posters for a Balinese dance troupe. The tattered menus with derelict and unappetizing four-color photos of mysterious food. Surely these pictures were shot in the '70s --- these avocado green and faded orange squiggles of . . . of . . . fish (?), vegetables (?) piled in a heap on a footed steel serving plate. 
The place even smells like an old restaurant. Not in a bad way, but in the way some cars smell new and others smell old. Bali Indah smells of faint spice, vacuum cleaners, incense and Windex.
Is it Atlanta's only Indonesian restaurant? I think so. Owner/chef Mady Yata has been around Atlanta, cooking his way through Chinese restaurants before deciding to take a big chance and prepare the foods of his native Bali. To a newcomer, these dishes will be sometimes strange verging on funky, sometimes lush and easy, but always intriguing.
Maybe since the restaurant looks like a ready-made old-timer, word has been slow to get out. Yata says he prays for good business daily. He lights sandalwood incense. He makes a paste of rice and water and uses it to make the mark called bije on his forehead. (The people of Bali island, alone in predominantly Muslim Indonesia, are Hindu.)
The business comes --- in dribs and drabs. For local Indonesians, the restaurant is a magnet. The middle-aged ladies arrive on Sundays to perform their dances. The young toughs in leather jackets come during the day to joke loudly with the waiter in rat-a-tat-tat bursts and drink tall glasses of bandrek, a hot ginger tea sweetened with palm sugar.
As far as other customers go, things have been slow. A few people come, crack open that strange menu and comb through its pages of utter foreignness.
The food isn't fancy like in Thai restaurants. The satays --- lamb, beef or chicken --- are just a few pellets of chewy, well-seasoned meat threaded on wooden sticks. The dipping sauce is but a little dish of ketjap manis, the treacly soy sauce that is indispensable to Indonesian cooking.
You do look around and see people's faces lighting up as they try dishes that are familiar but somehow different and better. Chicken curry, called "kare ayam," is rich like a Thai curry but warm with spice like an Indian curry, and the boneless chicken feels soft and velvety in your mouth.
Fried rice is dark and a little sticky with ketjap manis, and fragrant with a panoply of smells: onion, pepper, the floral fragrance of jasmine rice. It is one of the treasures of Indonesia; no one fries rice better.
The menu, long and confusing, challenges you with questions. Do you want chicken with lemon and salam leaf or fried chicken Surabaya style? I'm not sure the food answers the mysteries. Sauteed shrimp in Bengkulu's spices and chicken with salam leaf both seem to have the same sauce of coconut milk brightened with chile flakes and citrus. And both offer the same tiresome surfeit of red and green bell peppers and cabbage that bulk up many dishes here.
I make my first ventures into the menu with my small Indonesian checklist. Rendang daging brings a famous Sumatran dish of cubed beef cooked for many hours in coconut and spices --- cooked until the sauce coats the meat in a thick paste. I've had versions I've liked better (with more of an undertow of sweet spices), but the chewy/shreddy texture is right, both defiant and yielding at the same time.
The gado gado, however, is nothing to write home about. This salad of green beans, bean sprouts and other veggies with fried tofu and peanut sauce seems dispirited --- the sprouts limp, the tofu bouncy --- when it should be plush.
But the only way to explore this menu is to throw darts and hope for luck. A half roast duck steamed in a banana leaf tingles the tongue with its thick Balinese spice rub, though the duck is firm and slippery. Empek-empek palembang brings weird, wild deep-fried cakes made of pounded fish and glutinous rice that you dip in a vinegar sauce. They're springy. And they grow on you. Urab combines shredded, marinated cabbage and carrots with dried shrimp and toasted coconut. Again, you're not sure you like it until the second bite. Daging mesitsit, a springy beef stir fry with a cloying sauce, says all it needs to after one bite.
Yata doesn't skimp on the use of fermented shrimp paste --- an ingredient that gives a funky, Fancy-Feast-in-hell smell to stir-fried watercress and tamarind vegetable soup. Then again, it is whoa-nelly wonderful in a thick hot pepper sauce served alongside an excellent marinated grilled snapper. The fish is cooked to a near crisp and served with a small dish of this sauce. A small dish is all any chilehead can take.
The sweet servers, each one with a white bije mark on his forehead, are eager to turn you from a looky-loo customer into a regular. They will encourage you to try the shaved ice with avocado and jackfruit, offer to pop a Balinese dance tape into the VCR and extract a promise to visit again.
Which may be why I barely know Bali Indah, and yet I feel like I've been going here for years.




1

  

 

February 10, 2004 Tuesday 



 A fight over religious symbols: French target Muslims

 
London --- In the town of High Wycombe, England, a church was prevented from advertising a Christmas carol service on the public library's bulletin board for fear it would offend.
In Italy, a Muslim activist successfully sued to have a cross removed from a public school classroom, prompting the heavily Roman Catholic population to take to the streets in protest.
And today in France, the National Assembly is expected to approve legislation that would outlaw "conspicuous" religious symbols from public classrooms, including Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and big Christian crosses.
Across Europe, governments are grappling with dramatic demographic changes that have the potential to transform their culture. More than 12 million Muslims live in Western Europe, and some cities are on track to be majority Muslim by 2020. 
The challenge, sociologists and political experts agree, is to integrate Muslim residents into secular societies when their devout culture and tradition recognize no separation of religion and state.
The bill French legislators are expected to approve today has sparked widespread criticism from Muslims in France and abroad who deem it discriminatory and warn that it could encourage, rather than prevent, Islamic radicalism.
France has Western Europe's largest Muslim population --- 5 million --- and a rigidly secular constitution, making it a test case for the rest of the continent.
"Islam is becoming the second most significant religion on the continent and it's created some public anxiety among those who practice other faiths, and so that's why what's happening in France is of interest to so many people," said Simon Serfaty, a European affairs expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Surveys show most Muslims in France oppose the ban, while a majority of the French favor it. Muslims constitute about 8 percent of France's population of 60 million. After the vote in the National Assembly, the measure is scheduled to go to the Senate for consideration early next month.
Political scientist Farhad Khosrokhavar recently wrote in the French daily Le Monde that even though the ban is against all large religious symbols, it is clearly an attack on the head scarf and, therefore, on Islam. "The rest is trivia," he said.
Complicating matters is that many feminists view the traditional Islamic head scarf, or hijab, as a symbol of oppression. They say many Muslim women are forced by their families to cover up.
The French government, admittedly concerned about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, points out the bill also would ban such symbols as Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes. It also has pledged to review the measure a year after it takes effect, which has done little to placate critics.
Hundreds of people, mostly women wearing veils, marched Saturday through central Paris to protest the ban.
Tensions have been brewing for years and were aggravated after two girls in Aubervilliers, a Paris suburb, were expelled from school last fall for wearing the full head scarf, covering their ears, neck and hairline.
That led President Jacques Chirac to push for the ban, saying it is needed to stave off danger to the country's secular foundations, which date to 1789.
In Britain, where there is no formal separation of church and state, Muslims have expressed outrage over the French proposal.
"Look at nuns. They've been wearing a habit for years. Should we stop that?" asked Safina Sarwar, chairwoman and founder of the Basildon Muslim Women's Group in England. "I'm not bothered if someone wears a cross. We respect all religions. Intelligent people don't worry about things like scarves. I don't think Britain would ever attempt a ban on scarves."
Yet Home Secretary David Blunkett plans to introduce citizenship tests --- requiring a basic knowledge of English as well as British history --- to immigrants seeking British passports.
In France, officials fear that Muslims aren't assimilating as well as they could and say that failure has created tensions heightened by worries about terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.
The attitudes of some Muslims toward Jews, who number about 700,000 in France, are also an issue. According to a European Commission report, France has experienced a steady rise in anti-Semitic intimidation and violence, much of it committed by Muslim youth.
Alain Juppe, head of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement party, said the ties between religious fanaticism and political militancy make a ban on head scarves necessary.
"It's not about forbidding head scarves, only about establishing neutral and peaceful spaces where the conspicuous assertion of religious belonging can have no place," he said.
But Abeer Pharoan, president of the Muslim Women Society in Britain, said more segregation will result if the ban on head scarves is approved.
"I believe the proposed ban will push the Muslim community in France toward isolation because they will end up forming their own schools and attending them and they will be isolated from society," she said. "I believe what is needed is religious freedom."
In recent decades in Europe, some officials say, migrants from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa have seemed more eager to preserve their identities than to assimilate.
An intolerant Muslim cleric who rails against homosexuals isn't going to sit well with, say, the famously tolerant Dutch.
Many in France are disturbed by the open display of religious beliefs and worry that if the government allows head scarves today, then what's to stop Muslims from making other demands in the future?
Already there have been calls for new school holidays for Jews and Muslims --- calls that have been rejected by the French government.
"France has a long history of separating religion from public life and the issue goes to the core of the nation's identity," Serfaty said.
--- Correspondent Sarah Dalglish in Paris contributed to this article.






 
  

  

FEBRUARY 10, 2004 Tuesday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Bush's press chief gives testimony in leak probe
* President Bush's press secretary said yesterday that he testified last week before a federal grand jury investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name. Scott McClellan did not discuss the substance of his testimony or questions asked by prosecutors. The Justice Department is trying to determine who leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to syndicated newspaper columnist Robert Novak in July.
Bishop testifies he saw
no pedestrian after crash
* Catholic Bishop Thomas O'Brien testified at his hit-and-run trial yesterday in Phoenix that he heard a loud crash on the night he struck and killed a pedestrian but never saw anyone in the road. O'Brien said he drove on without figuring out what had happened. He spoke publicly for the first time about the June 14 accident that killed Jim Reed and ended the bishop's 21-year career as head of the Phoenix Diocese. 
Teacher shot at N.Y. school;
student, 16, to be charged
* A 16-year-old student in Upstate New York wounded special-education teacher Michael Bennett in the leg yesterday with birdshot fired from a shotgun, authorities said. Jon W. Romano will be charged with attempted murder, police said. Police did not disclose a motive for the shooting at Columbia High School in East Greenbush, a suburb of Albany.
3 in Ore. group get prison for trying to aid Taliban
* The final three members of a group of men from the Portland, Ore., area who tried to enter Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 2001 were sentenced to prison yesterday. Maher Hawash, 39, received seven years; brothers Ahmed Bilal, 25, and Muhammad Bilal, 23, got 10 years and eight years. Two other men and a woman were sentenced to prison earlier for conspiring to wage war on the United States. One suspect was killed in Pakistan.
Attacks on 2 vehicles tied
to other Ohio shootings
* Two gunshots at vehicles south of Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday were linked yesterday to a string of highway sniper shootings, bringing the total to 23, investigators said. A van and a Mercedes were shot within minutes from overpasses about a mile apart on Interstate 71. A woman was killed by one of the bullets in November, but no one else has been injured.
In the World
Powell says scientist's
fate is up to Pakistan
* Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he had called on Pakistan to uproot a network believed to be led by a Pakistani scientist who gave nuclear-weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. But Powell emphasized that it was up to Pakistan to decide the fate of the scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was granted a pardon last week by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Powell also told reporters in Washington that he hoped to visit Pakistan by the end of the summer.
Seven arrested in deaths
of workers in English Bay
* Seven people have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in the deaths of 19 Chinese workers who drowned last week while searching for shellfish in England's Morecambe Bay, police said yesterday. Authorities said five suspects arrested Sunday were among the 16 reported survivors of the drowning. Two other suspects turned themselves in to police yesterday.
Blair plans new agency
to fight organized crime
* British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced plans yesterday for an elite new police force to combat organized crime on a national scale. Dubbed the "British FBI" by local media, the Serious Organized Crime Agency will tackle offenses including people-smuggling, drug trafficking, high-tech crime and money laundering. The Home Office said the government would soon introduce legislation to set up the agency and hoped to have it running by 2006.
Prince Charles, in Iran, visits Khatami, quake site
* Britain's Prince Charles met yesterday with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and visited with survivors of the devastating earthquake that struck the city of Bam on Dec. 26. Charles' visit was the first to Iran by a member of the British royal family since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
In Indonesia, 31st person convicted in Bali bombings
* An Indonesian court convicted a Muslim militant yesterday and sentenced him to life imprisonment for helping build and transport bombs used in the 2002 Bali nightclub blasts, which killed 202 people. Abdul Goni, 35, was found guilty of helping plan the attack and possessing illegal weapons. He was the 31st defendant convicted in the case.






 
  


February 8, 2004 Sunday 



 INTERVIEW Woman's plea to fellow Muslims: Reform Islam

 
As America fights a two-front war in the Muslim countries of Iraq  and Afghanistan and al-Qaeda terrorist bombs blow up in Pakistan  and Indonesia, Canadian writer Irshad Manji's new book, 'The  Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's Call for the Reform of Her Faith'  (St. Martin's, 229 pages, $ 22.95), comes at an important time.  Manji has positioned herself as a Muslim demanding a dialogue with  other Muslims to reform their faith.
Manji, a TV personality and journalist, has asked for a  re-examination of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, for its  inconsistencies and contradictions, and questions why Muslim  schools from Saudi Arabia to Vancouver, Canada, teach anti-Semitism  and the inferiority of women.
The very serious problem with 'The Trouble with Islam,' though,  is Manji's gross generalizations about the Muslim world. She  insists that the billion Muslims of the world are adhering to the  extremist and medieval 'desert Islam' interpretations of the  Koran, as used in such countries as Saudi Arabia. 
'My cause is the democracy of thought and freedom of expression,'  said Manji in an interview at a New York City hotel during an  American tour to support the book. 'What I want to give my fellow  Muslims with this book is the permission to think - and to think  out loud.'
Manji is a small woman with a shock of black hair and fashionable  glasses. She first came to prominence in Canada by producing  'Queer Television,' the first commercial gay program in Canada.  Manji herself is gay. She has not had it easy since the publication  of her book in Canada. She routinely gets credible death threats  through e-mail, her address is secret, and the windows of her  Toronto home are bulletproof. At the interview, a burly Israeli  bodyguard watched her like a hawk.
Manji, 35, hails from a South Asian Muslim family that was expelled  from Idi Amin's Uganda in 1972 and settled in Vancouver. Along with  her secular suburban education, at age 8 Manji was sent to a  madrassa, a religious school, to study the Koran. 'I imbibed two  major messages - that women are second class, and that Jews are not  to be trusted and are treacherous,' she said.
During the six years she studied at the madrassa, she challenged  her bigoted teacher, asking him for evidence of a Jewish conspiracy  and also such questions as 'Why can't a Muslim woman lead  prayer?''
'I am not some Johnny-come-lately for religious reform,' said  Manji. 'I came out vocally at the age of 8. I have been fighting  for religious freedom since I got kicked out of the madrassa at  14.'
The issue of the diversity of Islam is also raised. What about the  Bosnian Muslims, who have Islam as a crucial part of their identity  yet drink liquor and eat pork or the moderate practices of Islam in  Indonesia, despite the bombings? Could her interpretation of Islam  be rather narrow?
'Maybe your conscience wants you to hear that there are plenty of  other Islams,' responded Manji. 'Understand where your own  motives are coming from and how you are interpreting the book.'
On the Canadian TV shows where Manji is featured, she has a  reputation for winning debates. But debating is distinct from the  search for truth. It is not hard to look at examples of moderate  Islam. Look at the 10 million Muslims in the United States of many  different sects, who are successfully integrated as citizens, as  businesspeople, as police officers around the country and in the  U.S. military.
Manji does raise many interesting issues in her book. There are the  inconsistencies of the Koran. 'I point out very early in my book  the Koran is contradictory and ambiguous, which means that any  interpretation of the Koran will be naturally selective,' she  said. 'You are not allowed to question the divinity of the Koran.  That is what makes you a blasphemer, an apostate. Most Muslims  consider the Koran to be God 3.0, the most perfect, final  manifesto.'
In addition, Manji demands that Islamic countries not blame the  West and the CIA for all their problems. In the book, she points to  the brutal governments of Syria and Saudi Arabia, which have proud  histories of repressing, torturing and killing their citizens.
Some of her sound bites are provoctive. 'Can you tell me why Islam  is at the heart of terrorism and human-rights violations, more so  than any other religion?' asked Manji. 'Can you do that without  pointing a finger at anybody but Muslims? Are we so  unimpeachable?'
One of the weakest parts of her book is her trip to Israel. Manji  fixates on the fact that she was degraded by brutal Muslim security  guards by being forced to put on a girdle at the Al Aksa Mosque in  Jerusalem. She then takes a one-day trip into the West Bank and  meets with Palestinian intellectuals. She mocks them by comparing  the Israeli occupation to South Africa's old apartheid system.  Besides mentioning the suicide bombings, she barely discusses the  raging combat that goes on in the occupied territories.
'People will take away from this book what suits their  prejudices,' said Manji, matter-of-factly.
'This book is a plea,' she said. 'I deliberately wrote this book  in a conversational manner to approach both Muslims and  non-Muslims. Too many people confuse being angry with being  animated. I am animated. From time to time, I say the intemperate  thing.'
Though Manji's calls for reform and dialogue are brave, 'The  Trouble with Islam' gets bogged down in her egotistical,  historically questionable sound bites. She writes well and has a  sharp intellect, but it is not an open mind. It is possible she has  a more mature work in her, but it would entail getting out of the  TV studios of Canada and traveling around the world, where she can  see a much more diverse Muslim world than her present, narrow  view.
Dylan Foley is a freelance writer from Brooklyn, N.Y.






 
  


February 7, 2004 Saturday 



 NATION & WORLD BRIEFING

 
FAO downplays bird flu in swine
ROME -- U.N. experts sought to dampen fears Friday that bird flu had spread to another species after tests found the virus in the snouts of pigs in Vietnam. Two more people died of the disease, bringing the human death toll to 18. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said the results do not necessarily mean the pigs are infected. The tests -- nasal swabs -- may merely be confirming the presence of infected chicken droppings. Even if the pigs are infected, that would not be a cause for alarm, said Peter Roeder, a veterinary virologist and animal health expert at FAO headquarters in Rome. Experts have known for years that pigs can get bird flu. "The issue is whether they are important in the propagation and transmission of this epidemic," Roeder said. "There's absolutely no evidence that this is so at the moment." "Let's not be alarmist. Let's just deal with things as they evolve," he said. 
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/news and click on Nation/World.
2nd rover scoots toward bedrock
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA on Friday pronounced its Spirit rover cured of the computer ills that crippled the vehicle for two weeks. "I think I can say this morning with as much certainty as we can say anything here that our patient is healed," mission manager Jennifer Trosper said. The rover, which abruptly stopped sending scientific data to Earth last month, underwent delicate repairs as programmers deleted files and cleaned out its flash memory. Halfway around the planet, Spirit's twin, Opportunity, rolled across a pebbly patch of Mars on Thursday, moving closer to a jagged outcropping of lighter-colored bedrock that contrasts sharply with the ubiquitous reddish-grey soil.
Schroeder drops party leadership
BERLIN -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder unexpectedly announced Friday that he will give up leadership of the governing Social Democrats, freeing him to concentrate on steering the country while handing over to Franz Muentefering, a trusted aide, the job of quelling dissent within the party. "I will concentrate on my work as chancellor and head of government, which involves not just pushing forward domestic reforms but also a series of international commitments that simply need time," Schroeder told reporters.
GM recalls cars for ignition repair
DETROIT -- General Motors said Friday it is recalling 1.8 million cars to repair potential problems with the ignition switch that may cause a fire in the steering column. No injuries have been reported. The models involved include some 1998-2001 Chevrolet Cavaliers and Pontiac Sunfires built between March 1997 and April 2001. In addition, some 1998 Pontiac Grand Am, Oldsmobile Achieva and Buick Skylark cars built between March 1997 and January 1998 are being recalled. Most of the incidents happened within minutes of an unsuccessful attempt to start the car, GM said. Because of the number of vehicles involved, the repairs will occur in phases between March and June. The company will notify individual owners to tell them when to come in.
Tests set to show polio vaccine safe
ABUJA, Nigeria -- With its polio outbreak spreading, Nigeria is sending a team of scientists, officials and Muslim leaders abroad Sunday to bring back proof that the vaccine is neither contaminated nor a Western plot to spread AIDS. Three predominantly Muslim northern states have suspended door-to-door vaccinations since October, citing fears that the vaccine could cause infertility or AIDS. The mission announced Friday will take the team to South Africa, Indonesia and India for a week to observe a battery of tests on the vaccine, Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said. "We want all the stakeholders to see for themselves and be convinced about whether or not the polio vaccines are safe," Lambo told the Associated Press.
Baby in surgery to preserve brain
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- A team of surgeons began a rare and risky operation Friday to remove the second head of a Dominican baby -- a partially formed twin that threatens the girl's development. The parents of 7-week-old Rebeca Martinez followed her to the door of the operating room and said a prayer over their baby. "Be strong, Rebeca. May God be with you," 26-year-old Maria Gisela Hiciano, said .The surgery is complicated because the two heads share arteries. Although only partially developed, the mouth on her second head moves when Rebeca is being breast-fed. The pressure from the second head, attached on top of the first and facing up, could prevent Rebeca's brain from developing.
No new evidence in ricin investigation
WASHINGTON -- The ricin investigation has expanded to Tennessee and trucker radio shows, but investigators still had no clues about the origin of the poison found in a Senate office, officials said Friday. Searches of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's six offices in his home state, plus those in the Capitol complex, were completed Thursday. Investigators have not found the letter or package the ricin may have spilled from. A federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a letter containing a small vial of ricin and addressed to the White House, which was intercepted Nov. 6 by the Secret Service, bore a postmark from Chattanooga, Tenn.
Final ephedra ban set for early April
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration finalized its ban of ephedra Friday, moving to get the herbal stimulant off store shelves by early April. It is the government's first-ever ban of a dietary supplement. Ephedra has been linked to 155 deaths and dozens of heart attacks and strokes. On Friday, the FDA issued a regulation formally setting that ban in motion. The law requires a 60-day phase-in period after the regulation is published pushing the formal ban into mid-April.







 
 

February 4, 2004 Wednesday  
  



 Report Cites Emergence of New Islamic Militia in Indonesia 

 
A new militant Islamic militia has emerged here, according to a report released Tuesday by the International Crisis Group, just as Attorney General John Ashcroft is scheduled to arrive to address a conference on terrorism.
     The new group, Mujahedeen Kompak, was formed by hard-liners who split from Jemaah Islamiyah, considered Al Qaeda's affiliate in Southeast Asia, according to the report, which was written by Sidney Jones, widely considered the leading authority on Jemaah Islamiyah. Kompak, an acronym, translates roughly as Action Committee for Crisis Response. 
 The emergence of the group in central Sulawesi Province, which has been racked by Christian-Muslim violence, "suggests a need to revise assessments about the nature and gravity of the terrorist threat in Indonesia," Ms. Jones wrote in the report. "While the shorter-term prospects are somewhat encouraging, there is an underappreciated longer security risk."  
The organization presents a possible new partner for Al Qaeda, she wrote.
This is the sixth report about Jemaah Islamiyah and terrorism in Southeast Asia by Ms. Jones, an American who speaks fluent Bahasa Indonesia, the national language. American, Australian and Asian intelligence and police officials are in general agreement that she has done a better job of understanding and analyzing the organization than have their own agencies.
One of the most arresting facts in the 41-page report is contained in a footnote that establishes the date of the founding of Jemaah Islamiyah as Jan. 1, 1993. That comes from a document Ms. Jones obtained. It will surely be uncomfortable for many Indonesians, including senior government officials and religious leaders, who continue to insist that Jemaah Islamiyah does not exist.
Mr. Ashcroft is scheduled to speak Wednesday morning at the terrorism conference, which is being held in Bali and is jointly sponsored by Indonesia and Australia. He is hoping to meet with the Indonesian president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, in the afternoon, American and Indonesian officials said.
High on Indonesia's agenda will be a request that the United States turn over a top Jemaah Islamiyah operative, Riudan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, a senior Indonesian official said. After an intensive manhunt, Mr. Isamuddin, an Indonesian who was one of the few non-Arabs to earn a place in Osama bin Laden's inner circle, was captured by the Central Intelligence Agency in Bangkok in August. He is being interrogated at an undisclosed location, and the United States has resisted persistent entreaties from the Indonesians for access to him.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has had a team, or teams, of agents in Indonesia since August 2002, when two Americans were killed and eight were wounded in an attack in the easternmost Indonesian province of Irian Jaya. The attacks were in an area owned by Freeport-McMoran Copper and Gold Inc., the giant mining company, which had paid Indonesian soldiers to provide security. More F.B.I. agents came two months later, after the car bomb attacks that killed more than 200 in Bali. 
Publicly, American officials say the Indonesians have been cooperating with the F.B.I. in those investigations. Privately, however, American officials complain about the lack of full cooperation.
All indications are that Indonesian soldiers were involved in the killings in Irian Jaya, American officials have said. Because of a lack of full cooperation and the absence of vital forensic evidence, however, they are doubtful that the killers will ever be found.
In the attacks in Bali, the Indonesian government has not given the F.B.I. as much direct access as it would like to those under arrest, several of whom have been convicted and are facing execution, officials said. The officials added that this was not considered a serious impediment, because, they noted, the Indonesians had done a good job of rounding up and prosecuting the attackers.
The arrests have seriously crippled Jemaah Islamiyah, which has also been weakened by internal divisions "over how, when and where to wage jihad," Ms. Jones said in her report.
A top priority for governments now, she concluded, is to prevent central Sulawesi from becoming an international training center like Afghanistan was under the Taliban.







 
 

February 2, 2004 Monday  
  



 ARTS BRIEFING 

 
     HIGHLIGHTS

THEATER: ACCOLADES -- Tony Walton, the Tony-, Oscar- and Emmy Award-winning designer, was named today the first winner of the Robert L. B. Tobin Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatrical Design. The award, an extension of the lineup of annual Theater Development Fund-Irene Sharaff Awards for theatrical costume design, will be presented at the Hudson Theater on March 26. Anthony Powell, a Tony Award winner for his costume designs for John Gielgud's "School for Scandal," among many productions, was named the winner of the TDF/Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award. Other winners of this year's TDF/Irene Sharaff Awards are the "Avenue Q" costume designer Mirena Rada (Young Master Award); Nino Novellino of Costume Armor Inc., a sculptor whose work can be seen in "Gypsy" (Artisan Award); and Lemuel Ayers, the set and costume designer of classics like "Kismet," "The Pajama Game" and "Kiss Me, Kate" (Posthumous Award). Robert L. B. Tobin, a Texas art collector and patron who died in 2000, was heir to a family fortune derived from aerial surveys used in the oil business.

MARIAH CAREY: DEMURE BUT SEXY -- Responding to concerns that the pop diva Mariah Carey's customary costumes might offend the sensibilities of her audience at a concert on Feb. 14 in Jakarta, the capital of predominantly Muslim Indonesia, a manager has indicated that she would not wear revealing attire but would, nevertheless, look sexy. "I have consulted the promoters here on what Mariah should wear," Tom Hudak, Ms. Carey's production manager, said in a report carried by Agence France-Presse. "It looks like in Indonesia Mariah will not appear as revealing as she usually does."

ANYBODY SEEN YODA? -- What do you do when Yoda disappears? File a missing Jedi master report, describing a wizened wise man some 900 years old and about three feet tall? Anyway, it wasn't actually the sage who trained Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker that was reported missing last week; it was a 170-pound limited-edition bronze statue of that "Star Wars" stalwart, The Associated Press reported. Valued at $20,000 the statue, commissioned by Lucasfilm Ltd., executed by Lawrence Noble and one of four bolted to the floor of a flatbed truck, was stolen in Pasadena, Calif. Mr. Noble posted a $1,000 reward for its return. "It's a real high-end collectible," he said.

FILM: A U.N. O.K. -- At the United Nations it was no, nyet, nein when Alfred Hitchcock sought permission to film scenes there for his 1959 thriller "North by Northwest." But times change. Reversing course after years of such vetoes, the United Nations gave permission last week to Sydney Pollack, above, the director of films like "Tootsie" and "Out of Africa," to use its headquarters as a location for his thriller "The Interpreter," Reuters reported. The film co-stars Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman, playing a Kenyan-born United Nations translator who overhears an assassination plot, becomes a target herself and helps thwart the murder of an African leader addressing the General Assembly. Shashi Tharoor, the United Nations undersecretary-general for public affairs who was instrumental in winning approval for the filming, said, "It is a way of making the United Nations accessible to people who would not ordinarily think of the U.N."

GIRL BAND DISBANDS -- Another band from Liverpool is splitting up after selling millions of records. This time it's the Atomic Kittens, whose members -- Jenny Frost, 25, Natasha Hamilton, 21, and Liz McClarnon, 22 -- said they wanted to spend more time with their young families. After a tour of Britain next month, the Kittens will go their separate ways, Reuters reported, but they left open the prospect of reuniting later. The band, which sold seven million records in five years, had three chart-topping singles in Britain: "Whole Again" and "Eternal Flame" in 2001 and "The Tide Is High" in 2002.

EXHIBITION: COFFEE, CHOCOLATE, TEA -- Chocolate, the drink restricted to Aztec kings, priests, warriors and warrior-merchants until encountered by 16th-century Spanish explorers, remained largely unknown in Europe until the 17th century, when coffee, arriving by way of Greece and Turkey, became popular, as did tea, brought to Europe from China by the Portuguese. As a result, fine furniture, silver, porcelain, glass and pottery were developed to serve these new beverages. From tomorrow through July 11, "Chocolate, Coffee, Tea" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will illuminate the response of Europe's luxury trades to these drinks.

FOOTNOTES

The highly acclaimed 20-year-old pop-jazz virtuoso Peter Cincotti, left, playing the piano and singing with his quartet, makes his Lincoln Center debut with performances tonight and tomorrow at 8 in the American Songbook series at Alice Tully Hall . . . The opera and theater director Mark Lamos will open to public view the collaboration between director and actors in "A Director's Perspective" from 6:30 to 8 tonight at the Kaye Playhouse. In this Shakespeare Society presentation, the stage will become rehearsal room where actors will perform and discuss scenes from "A Midsummer Night's Dream." . . . Manhattan gets a new jazz room tomorrow night when Howard Stein, the impresario and owner of Au Bar, opens Le Jazz Au Bar at 41 East 58th Street. The opening attraction, through Saturday, is the Grammy and Tony Award-winning Dee Dee Bridgewater. Coming up are Marlena Shaw, from Feb, 11 through 14; and the George Shearing Trio, from Feb. 18 through 21.







 


January 31, 2004 Saturday



 Muslims, Jews seek understanding

 
   WEST VALLEY CITY -- The story of God creating heaven and Earth in six days is literally true. Or it's a metaphor for events that took place over millennia. Revelation by God ended about 300 years before the present era. Or revelation ended with the death of Muhammad more than 900 years later.
Those are some of the belief differences between mainstream Islam and mainstream Judaism, discussed Sunday night during an interfaith meeting among local Jews and Muslims. 
But far more prevalent at the meeting than religious differences were shared good will and the wish to understand one another.
Although Christians attended and one served as a moderator, representatives of Christianity were not among presenters giving the basics of their beliefs.
The session was held at Khadeeja mosque, 1019 W. Parkway Ave. (2430 South), West Valley City, with about 50 attending. Snacks prepared by members of the three faiths were shared before the discussion, which was held between two Muslim prayer sessions.
Speakers were Shuaib ud-Din, imam at the mosque, and Tracee Rosen, rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami. Asking prepared questions about the two religions' basic tenets was Jeanne Leigh-Goldstein, a member of the United Church of Christ whose husband and daughter are Jewish.
"In essence, Judaism as the foundation religion of all monotheistic religion has the concept that there is one God, indivisible . . . one united, sovereign force in the universe," Rabbi Rosen said.
Imam Din said that in the Muslim holy book, the Quran, main themes concern God, the prophet Muhammad and the existence of a hereafter. God is divine, but no human was, Muslims believe. Muhammad is seen as God's messenger.
Compassionate, merciful, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-hearing -- these are some of the attributes of God, he said. Muslims don't think about physical aspects of God but about attributes. He noted that on a wall of the mosque is a plaque with 99 inscriptions, one the name Allah (God) and the others representing attributes of Allah.
From the start, he said Islam was a multiethnic religion. Many, especially in the West, think all Arabs are Muslim and all Muslims are Arabs. But that's untrue, Imam Din added.
Non-Arabs make up 84 percent of the world's Muslims. Indonesia alone has 200 million Muslims, while India has another 117 million, and there they are a minority.
Rabbi Rosen said the Jewish religion is open and accepting to converts of all ethnic backgrounds. "They are welcomed into our faith as if they have always been there," she said.
Jews live in China, Ethiopia and India, and all these types of people have gathered in Israel, where they coexist, she said. She added that "unfortunately" most people who consider themselves Jewish think of that in cultural or ethnic terms, rather than in terms of the religion. That's her job to work with, she added.
Asked what it means to be a leader, Rabbi Rosen said, "Rabbis have historically been those who are learned within their community."
The word rabbi is Aramaic and means "my teacher." The rabbi is not an intercessor with God. The rabbi can lead prayers, but so can any knowledgeable person over 13, she said.
Rabbis are not needed to elevate or sanctify the prayers of the congregation in any way. she added. "We are primarily teachers."
"Imam means 'in front,' " Imam Din said. This person stands in front during the prayer service. The congregation also does not believe in a religious hierarchy. "Everybody has a direct link with God," he added.
"When a person is standing in prayer, we believe he or she is directly communicating with God."
Every adult Muslim can lead a prayer, but to avoid confusion "there's a designated imam." There are schools where people can be educated in Islamic theology, he added.
Rabbi Rosen said after earning a bachelor's degree a person can apply to rabbinical school. After five or six years, the person can end up with an ordination and a master's degree. She said the process is like becoming a physician but without a commensurate salary.
Leigh-Goldstein told the Deseret Morning News this is the third year for these interfaith meetings. For now, the idea is to keep discussions on the topic of religion so that people can better understand each other. For now the meetings are education and social.
After that understanding is achieved, she added, "we can talk about issues together." E-mail: bau@desnews.com






 
  

  

JANUARY 30, 2004 Friday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
U.S., Ga. probe possible hacking of student data
* U.S. and Georgia authorities are investigating whether computer hackers gained access to Social Security and credit card numbers for at least 31,000 University of Georgia students and applicants, officials said yesterday. School spokesman Tom Jackson said there was no sign that the hackers used any of the information. The university said it learned of the breach last week.
Record number of women apply to Air Force Academy
* A record number of women have applied to attend the Air Force Academy this fall despite a year of turmoil because of a sexual-assault scandal. The academy had received 2,962 applications from women as of Wednesday - 34 percent more than the 2,212 received a year ago and the most since the academy began accepting women in 1976. Patriotism, online admissions and reforms since the scandal are behind the interest, academy officials said. 
Judge in Mass. orders death for carjacker
* A federal judge in Boston yesterday imposed the first death sentence in Massachusetts since 1973, ordering the execution of a man who killed two people in a carjacking in 2001. U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf specified that Gary Lee Sampson, 44, be put to death in New Hampshire, saying it was nearby and relatives of Sampson's victims may want to witness the execution. Wolf imposed the death sentence decided by a jury in December.
High smoking rate found among Native Americans
* American Indians and Alaska natives are more likely to smoke than any other group in the United States, with 40 percent of adults defined as smokers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday. People of Chinese descent were the least likely to smoke, with just 12 percent admitting to having smoked a cigarette in the past month, the CDC survey showed. Twenty-five percent of blacks said they were smokers, compared to nearly 26 percent of whites and 26.5 percent of the population overall.
San Jose, Calif., mayor
has stroke during speech
* The mayor of San Jose, Calif., had a mild stroke during his annual state of the city address and was in fair condition yesterday, authorities said. Mayor Ron Gonzales, 52, was alert but "obviously uncomfortable" as paramedics took him to San Jose Medical Center Wednesday evening, said David Vossbrink, the mayor's spokesman. Gonzales was expected to remain hospitalized until today or tomorrow.
In the World
Pakistan frees scientist held in nuclear probe
* Pakistan has released one of several scientists detained amid suspicions that Pakistan's nuclear weapons technology was leaked to Iran and Libya, a senior intelligence official said yesterday. Abdul Majid, director general of health physics at the Khan Research Laboratories, was released Wednesday, the official said. Six other KRL employees - two scientists and four security officials - were still in custody.
4 Dominican protesters die of gunshot wounds
* Four protesters have died from gunshot wounds suffered in clashes with security forces in the Dominican Republic, officials said yesterday on the second day of a national strike that has shut down businesses across the Caribbean nation. President Hipolito Mejia refused to meet strike leaders and condemned the 48-hour shutdown to protest economic conditions, saying it would cost the country $60 million.
Somali warlords sign pact after decade of fighting
* Rival Somali warlords blamed by civilians for more than a decade of bloodshed signed an agreement yesterday aimed at rebuilding the Horn of Africa nation. The accord establishes a federal system that will be used for five years by a transitional administration while a new constitution is written. The warlords have carved Somalia into a patchwork of fiefdoms since the country's military leader was ousted in 1991.
Russian craft heads
to space station
* A Russian cargo ship carrying supplies, material for experiments, and a spare hose for the International Space Station blasted off yesterday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakstan. The unmanned Progress M1-11 is scheduled to dock with the station tomorrow, Mission Control said.
Brazil to deport American who splashed baby on jet
* An American who splashed a cup of water in the face of a crying baby during a flight to Brazil will be deported, Brazilian federal police said yesterday. Ronald Harry Duffy, 35, whose home was listed only as Pennsylvania, had his visa revoked because of disorderly behavior and was not allowed into the country after the Miami-Sao Paulo flight on Wednesday, police said.
Muslim militant is found guilty in Bali bombings
* A court in Indonesia convicted a Muslim militant and sentenced him to life in prison yesterday for helping plan the bombings on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people in 2002. Sarjio, 32, was found guilty of helping organize planning meetings and preparing the explosives used in the attacks.







 



January 19, 2004 Monday  




 Indonesia's Partway Democracy

 
 After three decades of dictatorship the strongman of a Muslim country finally was removed, producing scenes of jubilation but also a devastating outbreak of looting and the breakdown of law and order. With support from the West, the new regime promised democracy -- but many were dubious. They predicted the country would break up along ethnic lines, that Islamic extremists or nationalist generals would come to power, and that even if democratic elections were held, the resulting government would be unable to manage the country. 
As it turned out, none of those disasters  has come to pass in Indonesia. Nearly six years after the overthrow of dictator Suharto -- and five after its first elections -- the world's largest Muslim country instead has merely  a lot of problems. Terrorists linked to al Qaeda have carried out two major attacks in 18 months; corruption and poverty are rampant; in one province, a low-grade civil war drags on in which the army has been accused of major human rights abuses.   
Indonesia, however, is still a democracy. It will have at least two and probably three major elections this year. It is far freer than it was four years ago; its economy has stabilized; and its government, though not particularly friendly to the Bush administration, is on the right side of the war on terrorism. 
Indonesia, in other words, offers some broad ideas about what, in the best case, Iraq might look like in five years' time. It's a picture that wouldn't please human rights advocates, wouldn't make the case for Muslim democracy irrefutable and probably wouldn't silence opponents of the war. But it would represent a huge improvement over the previous dictatorship, and it would offer a reasonable prospect of further liberalization over time. 
Looking back at Indonesia's  past half-dozen years, the lesson that leaps out is that democratic transition in a large, poor and potentially fractious country didn't produce either the chaos that pessimists expected or the democracy that some hoped for, but a complex and sometimes confusing mixture of the two, combined with lingering elements of the old order. The mix could persist for decades. What matters is the trend line -- whether such institutions as a free press, independent judiciary and civilian-run military are slowly gaining ground. 
"A lot of people take a snapshot and say 'this country doesn't fit my ideal of democracy,' " says Tim Meisburger, the director of democratization and election programs for the Asia Foundation. "But it's better to look at the context. If you look at countries like Taiwan or Thailand, you can see that democratic transitions in Asia historically have taken about 40 years. It's a long process, and Indonesia is five years into it." 
Meisburger, who lives in Jakarta, is an unapologetic optimist -- as someone in his job probably needs to be. His organization recently published the results of a large survey of Indonesian attitudes about democracy that produced predictably mixed results. On one hand a majority of Indonesians said they might favor a return to "a strong leader like Suharto, even if it reduces rights and freedoms." 
 But almost as many said they believed that the upcoming elections for parliament and president would make a difference, and an overwhelming majority, 93 percent, said they planned to vote. 
Meisburger contends that Indonesia actually "is the most democratic Muslim country in the world." The crises it has lived through in the past five years are in some ways a testament to what can be overcome. Its first president, chosen in backroom horse-trading, was the blind leader of an Islamic movement and proved utterly incompetent. The democratic system managed to remove him. His successor, Megawati Sukarnoputri, is also weak -- but her government has managed to stabilize the economy, and the stock market is  booming. The military has been unrestrained in waging a dirty war against separatists in the province of Aceh, and one former general indicted by the United Nations for crimes in East Timor is running for president.  
But, Meisburger argues, the once-all-powerful military is steadily losing influence. A constitutional reform stripped it of its appointed seats in local and national parliaments, while mandating, this July, the first direct popular election for president in Indonesia's history. 
It's true: Indonesia's Muslims have embraced religious moderation and secular rule more fully than Iraqis; the economy and middle class are more globalized; and the revolution and transition to democracy were home-grown, not imposed by Western invasion.  
Still, Indonesia shows that democracy can be launched abruptly in a large and undeveloped Muslim country, that it can flounder under poor leadership, be challenged by Islamic terrorist movements, fail to control elements of the old dictatorship and endure localized insurgent movements -- and that after all this, the system will still be standing and freedom still spreading. "The trend," says Meisburger with a grin, "is positive." 







 



January 11, 2004 Sunday  




 Indonesian Artists Test New Freedoms; 
Filmmakers, Writers Breaking Taboos as Post-Suharto Era Takes Hold

 
They were young, bright and hungry to make a mark, and in the final two years of the Suharto dictatorship, Riri Riza and three fellow filmmakers shot their first movie underground, with borrowed cameras and unpaid cast, stopping when money ran out, picking up again when cash was found.  
"Kuldesak" was a fatalistic film about the lives of four young people in Jakarta. One is obsessed with grunge rocker Kurt Cobain and, like his idol, commits suicide; another  robs a laser disc shop to finance a film; a third is raped by her boss and decides to take revenge; and a fourth sells movie tickets and finds a soul mate in her gay neighbor.  
The directors had evaded the Suharto-era rules that required a years-long process of official apprenticeship to become a licensed filmmaker. They were working without a government permit. Six months after Suharto and his New Order  fell in 1998, "Kuldesak" was released -- the country's first independent film and the first movie to show a gay kissing scene. It created a buzz among moviegoers.   
 "This was a time of change, a very exciting time," Riza said. "The sweet irony is that kuldesak means dead end. But for us, 'Kuldesak' was like a new beginning." 
 For many filmmakers and writers, Suharto's  fall has marked the beginning of a new era of artistic experimentation. In print and on celluloid, they are testing boundaries, exploring themes of politics and sexuality and reexamining history.  
"Many, many, many more viewpoints are being written down," said John McGlynn, an American who has lived for more than 20 years in Jakarta, where he publishes and translates Indonesian literature. "Many books that were not printed during the New Order regime are coming out, on everything from sex education to communism." 
Riza, 33, and his production partner, Mira Lesmana, have crafted some of the hottest movies to hit the Indonesian market, including the top box-office draw to date: "Ada Apa Dengan Cinta," or "What's With Love?," a movie about teenagers that sold 2.5 million tickets. 
Riza said now they are working on a film that is "a little bit more serious, darker." By casting a Chinese Indonesian student activist as their real-life protagonist, they are defying convention.  
The ethnic Chinese in Indonesia make up only about 3 percent of the country's 220 million people. (The vast majority are Muslims of Malay ethnicity.)   Disproportionately successful in business, the ethnic Chinese were manipulated by New Order elites and  made into scapegoats during times of turmoil. Many were killed and raped during the 1998 riots that brought down Suharto. 
The late activist, Soe Hok Gie, "always asked questions" and "disturbed the ruling government," Riza said. "My dream is for the 2.5 million people who saw 'Ada Apa Dengan Cinta' to see 'Gie.' It's important for them to know that there's this skinny Chinese guy who had an important role in building the nation." 
The New Order's end heralded the reform era, or the reformasi movement. In 1999, the government abolished the Information Ministry, which had regulated all forms of media and banned more than 2,000 books. In the 1980s, filmmaker Garin Nugroho recalled, the censors changed the title of a comedy film  from "Left, Right, Okay?," to "Right, Left, Okay?," ostensibly to avoid any connotation of support for communism. 
 A national censor board still exists, but it is now under the Culture Ministry, and the government exercises much less influence over the censors. The Indonesian film industry once churned out as many as 70 films a year. But by the early 1990s, Hollywood imports and the growth of private television networks slowed film production to a trickle. 
 Today, a rebirth is taking place. 
 "This is the time where it's possible for you to challenge the conventional wisdom," said Riza, a slim, clean-shaven director whose father used to make propaganda films for the New Order. "Now is the right time to do it. It's the best time to do it." 
 "Arisan," a satirical comedy set in Jakarta about friendship, homosexuality, adultery and the shallowness of the nouveau riche, is causing a stir. Director Nia diNata said the film's characters are composites of people she knows -- the career woman whose husband leaves her, the rich housewife whose husband has had an affair, the gay architect struggling with his sexual identity, and a claque of socialites with too much money and time on their hands. The vehicle is an arisan, a regular gathering for women to socialize and pool their money, sort of like a Tupperware party with a lottery draw. 
 DiNata said she got the idea for the film after attending an arisan with a friend. The chat about the latest "croco" handbag while "so many people are starving really bothered me," she said, smoking a cigarette in her office, one room in a rambling three-story house turned into a preproduction studio. "It's crazy!" 
 She said she expected the government censors to  cut the scene of two men kissing or some of the dialogue, but they didn't. 
 Ayu Utami, 35, is part of a group of writers taking on themes of sex and identity, and domestic violence. Her first novel, "Saman," created waves  because it dealt with the seduction of a Catholic priest by a political activist. "I'm not being dirty," she said, sitting under a vine-covered pergola at an outdoor cafe. "I'm being direct, as a way to free the Indonesian language." 
 Utami said her efforts were shocking to a people whose language and recent history were steeped in euphemism and vagueness. One standard dictionary, she noted, translated "orgasm" as "anger" and "orgy" into "religious party." 
Lontar, a small publishing house, is releasing uncut versions of novels censored during the New Order, said McGlynn, Lontar's editor. Among them is Ahmad Tohari's "The Dancer," which, in tracing the life of a village through the 1960s, shows sympathy for the victims of a massacre of alleged communists and depicts the military in an unflattering light. 
 The 1965 communist slaughter, McGlynn said, "is the seminal historical event of contemporary Indonesian history," but for years, he said, was "not being sufficiently dealt with." 
 Some artists who worked through the New Order and found ways to evade the censors are skeptical of the new freedom. 
Writer Seno Gumira Ajidarma, 45,  once published a horrific account of a massacre in  East Timor, then an Indonesian province, by embedding witness accounts  in jazz commentary and fiction. Today, he said, the Information Ministry is gone, but  "does the difference mean something better? Television is booming, and it's contributing to the degradation of our culture. People just don't read anymore." 
 Garin Nugroho, 42, has made films about a 1965 massacre in Aceh province and political repression in Papua province. He has won awards abroad but  his work has been panned at home. 
 "In Indonesia now," he said, "censorship is not from the government but from society." 
 Nugroho's latest work is "Five Worlds," about Muslims in five countries, and the relationship between religion, politics and society in Indonesia. In it, he said, he tried to  transcend stereotypes of "radical" and "fundamentalist" Islam. 
 "My films," he said, "generally are like that." 




2

 
  


January 9, 2004 Friday 



 NATION & WORLD BRIEFING

 
THAIS PROBE LINK TO AL-QAIDA
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Thai officials are investigating whether a wave of bomb and arson attacks in Thailand's Muslim south is linked to al-Qaida's network in the region, the country's new national security adviser said Thursday. Retired Gen. Kitti Rattanachaya said that security officials believe the attacks, which have killed four soldiers and two police officers and torched 20 schools, were the work of local separatists possibly linked to regional militant networks such as al-Qaida affiliate Jemaah Islamiah. In Indonesia, that group has been accused of bombing two Bali nightclubs in 2002 and the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last August. Though separatists have carried out low-level attacks on police targets before, the coordination of these attacks is unprecedented, said Paul Quaglia, PSA Asia director.
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/news and click on Nation/World. 
Murder, kidnapping suspect shoots self
RANGER, Ga. -- A manhunt across the Southeast ended late Thursday when a tip led authorities to a jealous ex-husband who allegedly killed three former in-laws and his infant daughter, then fled with three girls. The girls were found safe, and the suspect shot himself in the face after a police chase on Interstate 75 near the Tennessee line. Authorities said he was hospitalized in critical condition. Jerry William Jones, 31, is accused of shooting the former in-laws to death and strangling his infant daughter Wednesday before fleeing with the girls in a stolen sport utility vehicle. Two of the girls are his daughters, and the other is a former stepdaughter.
Georgian region declares emergency
TBILISI, Georgia -- Authorities in Georgia's autonomous region of Adzharia imposed a state of emergency Thursday, fearing the newly elected Georgian president may try to rein in the province. Adzharian government-run television announced the state of emergency overnight, claiming that "certain forces" -- presumably opponents of the Adzharian leadership -- were planning to foment tension and possibly commit terrorist acts. The former Soviet republic of Georgia is torn apart by separatism, with two regions -- Abkhazia and South Ossetia -- winning de facto independence in armed conflicts in the 1990s. The state of emergency calls for tightening controls on Adzharia's border and increasing police powers within the region. Citizens must show identification documents to police immediately upon request.
Child flu deaths may be higher than normal
At least 93 young Americans have died so far this year from the flu, more than double the previous count, federal officials said Thursday. Because flu deaths are not routinely tallied by the federal government, it remains unclear if this year's flu season is unusually deadly for children. But one study estimated that an average of 92 children age 5 and younger succumb to the respiratory disease over the course of a typical flu season. Based on past patterns, this year's season could be about half over. The age of the pediatric victims ranged from four weeks to 17 years; the median age of death was 4. Eight deaths occurred in children younger than 6 months, 24 in children ages 6 to 23 months, 23 in children 2 to 4 years, 19 in youths 5 to 11.
Judge moves trial of Scott Peterson
MODESTO, Calif. -- A judge ruled Thursday that murder suspect Scott Peterson cannot get a fair trial in his dead wife's hometown and ordered the case moved out of the county. Judge Al Girolami said extensive news coverage of the case, including 8,000 articles published worldwide and more than 150 stories in the local newspaper alone, swayed him to agree with the defense that the trial should not be held in Modesto. He did not immediately say where the trial would be held. The trial was scheduled for Jan. 26 in Modesto, but it will most likely be postponed now that the location has been changed.
Low-tar cigarettes not safer, study says
LONDON -- Low-tar cigarettes do not carry a lower risk of lung cancer, according to the first study comparing lung cancer deaths among smokers of ultra-light, mild and medium filtered cigarettes. The finding, published this week in the British Medical Journal, supports what experts long suspected. Previous research has found smokers of "lighter" cigarettes compensate by taking deeper drags, holding the smoke longer and smoking more cigarettes. Scientists suspected they would probably be just as vulnerable to lung cancer and other diseases as those who smoke harsher varieties. Tobacco industry representatives said manufacturers never claimed light cigarettes were safer, and they didn't dispute the findings.
Woman drops claim on winning ticket
CLEVELAND -- A woman who told police she bought and lost a lottery ticket worth $162 million all but admitted Thursday she made it up, saying tearfully: "I wanted to win so bad for my kids and my family. I apologize." Elecia Battle, 40, said she is dropping her lawsuit over the Mega Millions jackpot that was awarded Tuesday to 34-year-old Rebecca Jemison. When she was asked directly if she lied, Battle's lawyer, Sheldon Starke, refused to let her answer.
Haitian opposition begins 2-day strike
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Government opponents began a two-day strike that shut down most businesses in the capital Thursday, the latest in a series of sometimes-violence protests in the Caribbean nation. In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was "very disturbed" about the deteriorating situation. Powell spoke a day after a protest left three dead and more than two dozen injured. Since mid-September, at least 45 have been killed. Tensions have been rising since Aristide's party won 2000 legislative elections that observers said were flawed. The opposition refuses to participate in new elections unless Aristide steps down, but he says he will serve out his term until 2006.






 
  


January 9, 2004 Friday 



 NATION & WORLD BRIEFING

 
THAIS PROBE LINK TO AL-QAIDA
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Thai officials are investigating whether a wave of bomb and arson attacks in Thailand's Muslim south is linked to al-Qaida's network in the region, the country's new national security adviser said Thursday. Retired Gen. Kitti Rattanachaya said that security officials believe the attacks, which have killed four soldiers and two police officers and torched 20 schools, were the work of local separatists possibly linked to regional militant networks such as al-Qaida affiliate Jemaah Islamiah. In Indonesia, that group has been accused of bombing two Bali nightclubs in 2002 and the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last August. Though separatists have carried out low-level attacks on police targets before, the coordination of these attacks is unprecedented, said Paul Quaglia, PSA Asia director.
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/news and click on Nation/World. 
Georgian region declares emergency
TBILISI, Georgia -- Authorities in Georgia's autonomous region of Adzharia imposed a state of emergency Thursday, fearing the newly elected Georgian president may try to rein in the province. Adzharian government-run television announced the state of emergency overnight, claiming that "certain forces" -- presumably opponents of the Adzharian leadership -- were planning to foment tension and possibly commit terrorist acts. The former Soviet republic of Georgia is torn apart by separatism, with two regions -- Abkhazia and South Ossetia -- winning de facto independence in armed conflicts in the 1990s. The state of emergency calls for tightening controls on Adzharia's border and increasing police powers within the region. Citizens must show identification documents to police immediately upon request.
E.U. anti-Semitism seminar on track
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- A Jewish group patched up its differences with the European Union's chief executive on Thursday after accusing his office of "moral treachery" amid plans for a European seminar on anti-Semitism. The World Jewish Congress alleged the European Union censored a study highlighting involvement of Europe's Arab minorities in anti-Semitic attacks. It also complained about an opinion poll in which Israel was named a threat to world peace more than any other country. Stung by the group's charges of anti-Semitism, European Commission President Romano Prodi abruptly called off an E.U. seminar on the issue. On Thursday, he met with an official from the group and said the event was back on. The seminar is expected to be held next month.
Child flu deaths may be higher than normal
At least 93 young Americans have died so far this year from the flu, more than double the previous count, federal officials said Thursday. Because flu deaths are not routinely tallied by the federal government, it remains unclear if this year's flu season is unusually deadly for children. But one study estimated that an average of 92 children age 5 and younger succumb to the respiratory disease over the course of a typical flu season. Based on past patterns, this year's season could be about half over. The age of the pediatric victims ranged from four weeks to 17 years; the median age of death was 4. Eight deaths occurred in children younger than six months, 24 in children ages six to 23 months, 23 in children two to four years, 19 in youths five to 11.
Judge moves trial of Scott Peterson
MODESTO, Calif. -- A judge ruled Thursday that accused murderer Scott Peterson cannot get a fair trial in his dead wife's hometown and ordered the case moved out of the county. Judge Al Girolami said extensive news coverage of the case, including 8,000 articles published worldwide and more than 150 stories in the local newspaper alone, swayed him to agree with the defense that the trial should not be held in Modesto. He did not immediately say where the trial would be held. The trial was scheduled for Jan. 26 in Modesto, but it will most likely be postponed now that the location has been changed.
Father sought in murder, kidnapping
RANGER, Ga. -- A jealous ex-husband shot three former in-laws to death and strangled his infant daughter, then kidnapped three little girls and fled in a stolen sport utility vehicle, authorities said Thursday. Police launched a manhunt across the Southeast for Jerry William Jones, who allegedly abducted his two daughters and a former stepdaughter. The girls were feared to be in great danger. The victims were found dead in two homes down the street from each other in this rural Georgia town 55 miles north of Atlanta. Jones has a long criminal history, including convictions for burglary and auto theft.
Low-tar cigarettes not safer, study says
LONDON -- Low-tar cigarettes do not carry a lower risk of lung cancer, according to the first study comparing lung cancer deaths among smokers of ultra-light, mild and medium filtered cigarettes. The finding, published this week in the British Medical Journal, supports what experts long suspected. Previous research has found smokers of "lighter" cigarettes compensate by taking deeper drags, holding the smoke longer and smoking more cigarettes. Scientists suspected they would probably be just as vulnerable to lung cancer and other diseases as those who smoke harsher varieties. Tobacco industry representatives said manufacturers never claimed light cigarettes were safer, they don't dispute the findings.
Woman drops claim on winning ticket
CLEVELAND -- A woman who told police she bought and lost a lottery ticket worth $162 million all but admitted Thursday she made it up, saying tearfully: "I wanted to win so bad for my kids and my family. I apologize." Elecia Battle, 40, said she is dropping her lawsuit over the Mega Millions jackpot that was awarded Tuesday to 34-year-old Rebecca Jemison. When she was asked directly if she lied, Battle's lawyer, Sheldon Starke, refused to let her answer.







 



January 4, 2004 Sunday  




 Years of Living Dangerously; 
A reporter investigates the newest threat to Southeast Asia's democracies.

 
 SEEDS OF TERROR 
An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda's Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia 
By Maria A. Ressa. Free Press. 254 pp. $26 
  In February 2002, contingents of U.S. troops -- eventually numbering more than 1,200 -- began to arrive in the southern Philippines. In the wake of the ousting of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the deployment was widely touted as the opening of the United States' second front in its war against Islamic terrorism. By that time, Maria Ressa, the CNN bureau chief in Jakarta, the capital of nearby Indonesia, had already wagered with several friends that there would be a major terrorist attack in Indonesia before the end of the year. On Oct. 12, 2002, Ressa won her bet, in the worst way possible. Two suicide bombings killed more than 200 people at nightclubs in the popular tourist resort of Bali. It was an attack that, as Ressa repeatedly shows in Seeds of Terror, could have been prevented but is a "virtual certainty" to be repeated.  
In part, Seeds of Terror is a deftly written and meticulously reported exercise in straightforward shoe-leather and police-blotter journalism. Ressa gained excellent access to a treasure trove of background interviews with counterterrorism officials, intelligence reports and interrogation summaries -- most of them classified and many previously unreported. She pulls all this material together in a comprehensive account of the who, what, when and where of Jemaah Islamiyah, the multinational Islamic terror network that brought such carnage to Bali and continues to menace southeast Asia's fragile new democracies. 
But Ressa also wants -- with an intensity that will be familiar to anyone who has covered the slow-motion, neighbor-against-neighbor wars of ethnic and religious conflict -- to know "why." Uncovering al Qaeda's network in Southeast Asia, she writes, "meant revisiting many of the stories I had covered over the past fifteen years -- particularly those that had struck me as incidences of irrationality and senseless violence." 
 It is a fascinating question and one that her background makes her better placed than most to answer. Born in the Philippines but educated at a U.S. university, she describes the odd schizophrenia of the formerly colonized. "Just as the colonizers are emulated, they are hated." For Ressa, many of the answers lie in the extent to which al Qaeda has co-opted national or even local religious organizations into its global jihad, "fueling conflicts that, had they remained domestic issues contained within borders, may long ago have ended or been controlled." The almost forensic detail in which she documents the links between al Qaeda and regional groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is impressive, and there is the occasional flash of brilliant empathy -- for example, she compares the sense of exclusive belonging and self-affirming discipline that al Qaeda recruits get to her own experience as a student at Princeton. 
But in the end Seeds of Terror proves unable to address the "why?"question without lapsing into pat pop psychology -- as when a Singaporean official whom she quotes calls the recruits "simple minded." Perhaps the question is not answerable at all. 
Nonetheless, with both Indonesia's first direct presidential poll (election) and the election of a successor to Filipino President Gloria Arroyo scheduled for later this year, Seeds of Terror is nothing if not timely. A month ago the Indonesian appeals court overturned the sedition conviction of Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah. Although Ba'asyir remains imprisoned for immigration offenses, the court's decision is likely to fuel the belief of a growing number of Indonesians that his prosecution was politically motivated in an effort to win U.S. favor, and that the U.S. war against terrorism is in fact a war against Islam. As Ressa points out, Ba'asyir's legal Islamic umbrella group, the Mujahedin Council of Indonesia, continues to operate openly, recruiting for the Islamic militias that wage jihad -- holy war -- in the protracted and bloody ethnic conflicts that have swept this vast and variegated archipelago in the years since the toppling of the brutal Suharto dictatorship. 
Ressa -- whose years at CNN have given her a television reporter's eye for the revealing and attention-holding anecdote -- does a very creditable job of laying out the complex politics of these conflicts: often shifting, sometimes obscure but always deadly. In particular, she highlights how, by "merging radical Islam with intense nationalism," the Muslim militias became a nexus between the terrorists and the military that was supposed to be confronting them. 
Looking ahead to next year's poll, Ressa writes: "The danger is clear. Radical groups linked to al-Qaeda will be looking to destabilize Indonesia's first ever direct presidential elections by infiltrating not only the political parties themselves but the very security forces tasked to keep the order." This danger is exacerbated, she argues, by the enmity that U.S. military action in Iraq -- seen as unilateral and arbitrary -- has aroused. The United States in Southeast Asia, she writes, "is like a bull in a china shop," and its "actions intended to make the world safer are actually pushing moderate Muslims to take a step closer to the radicals." *  
Shaun Waterman is the homeland and national security editor for United Press International. 






   

 

December 28, 2003 



 BOOKS: How the ultimate dictionary came to be

 
NONFICTION
The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. By Simon Winchester. Oxford University Press. $25. 260 pages.
The verdict: Definitive.
I am a snob, but I restrict my snobbery to important things. Dictionaries, for example. Only my Oxford makes me feel that my word usage is impeccable. 
Oxford University Press encourages such confidence. The cover of the New Oxford American Dictionary describes its contents as "the most accurate and richly descriptive picture of American English ever offered in any dictionary." The Canadian Oxford describes itself even more bluntly as "All You Need to Know."
These books derive from the voluminous Oxford English Dictionary, or "OED": a collection of every meaning of every English word, current or obsolete, with quotations illustrating each definition. The first edition, published in 1928, comprised 12 volumes and took 71 years to complete. That the people involved --- etymologists, philologists, editors and so on, plus thousands of volunteers who perused all manner of printed material for the all-important quotes --- worked so rigorously for so long is stunning.
Simon Winchester is right to say in his captivating new book, "The Meaning of Everything," that nothing in any language matches this accomplishment.
Three members of London's Philological Society --- Herbert Coleridge, Frederick Furnivall and Richard Chenevix Trench --- launched the OED in 1857. They recruited volunteers to scour all known English literature for the illustrative quotes, and by the mid-1870s, they had accumulated several tons of correspondence but accomplished little else. The project was moribund, if not dead.
Enter James Murray, the man most responsible for the OED, on whom Winchester rightly focuses. Like his forerunners, Murray did not live to see the project fulfilled, but not for lack of effort. Although Murray devoted the last 40 years of his life to the undertaking, when he died in 1915, the OED was still 13 years from the day when King George V and President Calvin Coolidge would receive the first complete sets.
Winchester marvels not at how much time the task required, but how little. By comparison, the Grimm brothers' Deutsche Worterbuch, begun in 1838, dragged on until 1961; a similar 19th-century Swedish project languishes at the letter S.
It's no surprise that vibrant characters and entertaining observations animate "The Meaning of Everything," since Winchester already scored hits with such popular histories as "Krakatoa" (which argues that the volcano's devastating eruption pushed Indonesia into radical Islam, ushering in its troubled 20th century) and "The Professor and the Madman" (about Murray's relationship with W.C. Minor, one of the OED's most prolific contributors despite his murderous insanity).
Unfortunately, lapses into cliche suggest Winchester wrote this book quickly, a suspicion strengthened by his factual gaffes --- most blatantly when he relates that Murray befriended someone who had been alive "when Parliament proclaimed William and Mary joint sovereign in 1689," even though said companion would have had to be 148 years old for this anecdote to be true.
Errors might be inevitable, though, since --- 71 years in the making or no (plus continual updating since 1928) --- the OED also has mistakes.
Though trivial, these mistakes --- Winchester's and the OED's --- prove that people's preference for the OED is part superstition, and that even Homer nods. However, the larger point, particularly with dispatches from the OED's next edition available at www.oed.com, is that rumors of literacy's death are greatly exaggerated.
Charles Reeve is the editor of Art Papers, a bimonthly arts journal in Atlanta.






   


December 22, 2003 Monday



 Terror fears mar Indonesia's Christmas season; U.S. Embassy is warning Americans about 'high' risk

 
Al-Qaida linked militants are feared to be targeting churches this Christmas in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, but priests and preachers said they aren't canceling yuletide services.
With memories of a string of church bombings still fresh, the U.S. Embassy is warning Americans in Indonesia that the risk of terror attacks over Christmas and New Year's is "particularly high."
Some 140,000 police will be deployed over the holiday, worshippers will have to pass through metal detectors at most churches, and police guards will search the buildings before Christmas services, said National Police Chief Da'i Bachtiar. 
Three years ago, bombs exploded at 11 churches across Indonesia on Christmas Eve, killing 19 people and injuring around 100. The attacks have since been blamed on the al-Qaida-linked terror group Jemaah Islamiyah.
The group, which allegedly has cells across Southeast Asia, also has been implicated in last year's Bali bombings, which killed 202, and an Aug. 5 attack on the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta that killed 12.
The U.S. Embassy has warned that places of worship popular with expatriates, shopping centers and hotels are possible targets over the holidays. The Australian Embassy also is telling its citizens to be on alert.
"There is a climate of anxiety," said Rev. Andrew Lake, an Australian who heads an Anglican congregation in Jakarta.
Lake said that some worshippers might skip Christmas services at the All Saints Anglican Church in the heart of Jakarta because of the terror fears.
"I accept that. I don't want them to feel guilty," he said.
Christians make up less than 10 percent of Indonesia's 210 million people. Around 85 percent are Muslims and there are Buddhist and Hindu minorities.
Jemaah Islamiyah is believed to still pose a threat despite the arrests of dozens of suspected operatives over the last year, including al-Qaida's alleged point man in Asia, Indonesian cleric Hambali.
On Friday, Abu Bakar Bashir, who foreign governments claim is the group's spiritual leader, said that Osama bin Laden and three militants sentenced to death for last year's Bali bombings were not terrorists but "soldiers in Allah's army."
He made the comments to his followers in prison, where he is serving out a three-year sentence for immigration violations.
"The enemies of Islam are the Jews who are led by America and who always slander Muslims as terrorists," he said.









December 21, 2003 Sunday  
  



 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 

 
     MOSQUE
Written and illustrated by David Macaulay.
96 pp. Boston:
Walter Lorraine Books/Houghton Mifflin . $18. (Ages 8 and up)

MUHAMMAD
Written and illustrated by Demi.
Unpaged. New York:
Margaret K. McElderry Books.
$19.95. (Ages 4 and up)
 NO child is too young to become a cosmopolitan multiculturalist. And now that Islam is a hot topic in America, not to mention probably the fastest-growing religion in the world, two new books offer the discerning young reader a glimpse of the Islamic world.
Well, O.K., these books are probably aimed more at the discerning parents of the undiscerning kid, who will doze as Mom or Dad reads aloud about the mihrab, the minber, the muezzin and other features of Islam. But they make a lovely introduction -- and I mean lovely, for both books are gorgeously illustrated.
David Macaulay is renowned for spectacular children's books with an architectural flavor, among them "Cathedral" and "Pyramid." "Mosque" is a superbly illustrated and technically engrossing explanation of how a great Turkish mosque complex would be built in about 1600. It's like an erector set packed into a book.
Frankly, I had no idea that I was interested in how mosques were put together, but I found the subject fascinating. And I learned how to make a brick and build a dome, and also a good deal about the economics of the Ottoman Empire and the role of the mosque in society. Macaulay's mosque is fictional, but loosely based on those built around Istanbul (then Constantinople) in the late 16th century by Sinan, a great architect of the Ottoman Empire.
Macaulay imagines a Turkish admiral who, in 1595, decides to invest his fortune in a complex that would include not just the mosque but also a tomb (for himself), a religious school, a soup kitchen, a public bath and a public fountain to provide drinking water. As mosques usually are, this one would be a community center as well as a religious focal point.
We're taken through the design process, including some of the complexities of putting a circular dome over a square room. Macaulay explains: "Because of the dome's hemispherical shape, there are hidden forces within it trying to push the sides outward. While piers and arches could easily be designed to support the great weight of a masonry dome, they could not, on their own, counteract its self-destructive tendencies." He explains how the engineering and architecture are allied in tackling this challenge and, wonder of wonders, with colored drawings it is all comprehensible. 
The drawings and text also explain the various elements of the mosque -- all those mysterious "M" words. The mihrab is a niche facing Mecca that symbolizes the entry into paradise. Then there's the minaret, the tower from which the muezzin issues the call to prayer five times a day. And don't forget the minber, the high pulpit used to deliver sermons during Friday prayers.
Macaulay explains that a minaret is built largely without scaffolding -- until the balcony, which bulges out from the rest. The builders simply climb their own creation, raising it as they go.
The mechanics of making a stained-glass window are richly explicated, enhanced by six drawings. So are the methods for decorating the interior with Arabic calligraphy. The pictures grow more colorful and lavish as the mosque nears completion.
Macaulay remains respectful of Islam without fawning. That's a knack that I wish Demi's biography of Muhammad had achieved. Demi has produced other children's books with a spiritual bent, including volumes about Buddha and the Dalai Lama. Her "Muhammad" is spectacular, with dazzling illustrations in a very Islamic style, and I found myself flipping the pages just to admire the pictures. She adheres to the Islamic tradition of not depicting either Muhammad or his family members in pictures, because that might smack of idolatry. So we have a lovely illustrated life that never actually illustrates the subject. Instead, pictures are of random people at that time, or else Muhammad is shown in a golden silhouette.
My guess is that the publisher intends to market this biography to American Muslims, and that's probably a shrewd business move. But it comes across not just as respectful, which would be fine, but as reverential. For example, Demi recounts as fact that Muhammad was visited by the angel Gabriel during Ramadan in 610, and then under divine inspiration began to recite the Koran. Sure, Muslims believe that, but I felt funny reading this aloud -- as historic fact -- to my 6-year-old daughter.
"Muhammad was called upon to be God's messenger," Demi writes, "to make known God's will to the whole of humanity and to show the way to human dignity, progress and real happiness." On the next page, the Koran is described as "the eternal and infallible word of God." Hmm.
Why not just say that Muslims consider the Koran to be the infallible word of God, and leave it at that? Multiculturalist parents may want to expose their children to the world's major religions, but I doubt they want to indoctrinate them.
IT'S a pity, because there's an intellectual struggle in America now about how to portray Islam. Some conservatives, particularly evangelical Christians, see it as "a very evil and wicked religion," as the Rev. Franklin Graham put it. Some Arabists insist that Islam is warm, fuzzy and far more tolerant than other religions, because it accepts Judaism and Christianity as legitimate and just believes they are incomplete.
I fall somewhere between the camps. Islam clearly has a problem with fundamentalism and violence, and it hasn't adapted as well to modernity as some other religions. But the common American perception of overseas Muslims as violent hotheads is the complete opposite of the warmth and hospitality one mostly finds traveling in places like Yemen, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. It would have been nice to have an introduction to Muhammad or Islam that didn't seem to be written by propagandists for either side.
That's a particular problem with a biography of Muhammad, because his was a time of war and violence, in which he did his share of fighting. In a children's book one doesn't expect a balanced scholarly analysis, but one wants something less saccharine than "People accepted Islam because Muhammad taught God's words that said that all men and women, black and white, rich and poor, must be treated with dignity and respect." The result, unfortunately, will I think be to limit appreciation of this book to Muslim readers -- who least need an introduction to the faith.






   

 

December 15, 2003 Monday 



 'WE GOT HIM': INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY: Many embrace opportunity for healing;
Leading critics of U.S. policy offer praise

 
London --- The international community, which was bitterly divided about the wisdom of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, was united in delight Sunday at the capture of Saddam Hussein.
As Europeans watched TV news about the U.S. operation that seized Saddam, they saw scrolled across the bottoms of their screens something unfamiliar in recent months --- messages of congratulation from German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac.
The two leaders had disagreed loudly with the Bush administration over its decision to lead an invasion of Iraq, about the pace of the transition to an Iraqi-led government and about the U.S. decision to exclude French, German and Russian companies from bidding on contracts to rebuild Iraq.
Sunday, however, they offered nothing but praise. 
"It's with great delight that I learned of Saddam Hussein's capture," Schroeder wrote in a telegram to President Bush. "I congratulate you on this successful operation. Saddam Hussein caused horrible suffering to his people and the region."
Chirac called the capture "a major event which should strongly contribute to the democratization and stabilization of Iraq and allow the Iraqis to once more be masters of their destiny in a sovereign Iraq."
It seemed that Saddam, a man accused of ordering the murder and torture of thousands of his compatriots, might be helping, albeit unwillingly, to heal the divisions caused by the war.
'Moment to . . . reconcile'
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the leader of the country that did more than any other to help the U.S.-led invasion, seized on that theme.
"The shadow of Saddam has finally lifted from the Iraqi people," he said. "We give thanks for that, but let this be more than a case simply for rejoicing. Let it be a moment to reach out and reconcile."
He was referring specifically to reconciliation among the Iraqi people. But he commented as well on relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds, noting that Muslims had been Saddam's victims. And his remarks could have applied equally to healing the trans-Atlantic alliance, which was badly strained by disagreements over how to deal with Saddam.
"Psychologically, it helps," said Chris Brown, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.
But the primary effect, Brown said, will be determined by what happens in Iraq. The hope is that, with Saddam in custody, more Iraqis will be willing to help U.S. and coalition forces establish security, and fewer will launch attacks.
Violence may continue in the short term, but should diminish over time, he said.
"At that point, I think, quite plausibly you might look for the international community to take a more positive attitude and be more helpful," he said.
Trial site a critical issue
The capture still could prove divisive if the United States were to remove Saddam from Iraq and incarcerate him at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or try him in the United States. European governments probably will support a trial in Iraq but not elsewhere, Brown said.
Meanwhile, the international organization Human Rights Watch warned against holding a "political show trial" in Iraq and said international jurists should be involved.
Germany and France were not the only countries who opposed U.S. policy in Iraq that applauded Saddam's capture.
Officials from Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, joined the chorus of praise, and China expressed hope that Saddam's capture would help realize peace and stability in Iraq. And Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the arrest would help make Iraq a safer place.
A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the capture of Saddam Hussein provided a chance "to give fresh impetus to the search for peace and stability in Iraq."
Countries such as Australia and Spain, which supported the invasion, also expressed delight.
"The moment has come for him to pay for his crimes," Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said of Saddam.
--- This article includes material from news services.






  


December 14, 2003 Sunday 



 WAR IN IRAQ ADVANCES TO A NEW FRONT: BOOKSHELVES

 
"The Iraq War"
Williamson Murray and Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales Jr., USA (ret.)
Published by Belknap Harvard, 312 pages, $25.95
"Operation Iraqi Freedom"
Col. Walter J. Boyne, USAF (ret.)
Published by Forge, 304 pages, $25.95
"Winning Modern Wars"
Gen. Wesley K. Clark, USA (ret.)
Published by Public Affairs, 218 pages, $25
"Beyond Baghdad"
By Ralph Peters
Published by Stackpole, 337 pages, $22.95
"Boots on the Ground"
By Karl Zinsmeister
Published by St. Martin's, 213 pages, $24.95
Wars not only make history; they also inspire historians. The recent war in Iraq has already found its way into a spate of books, with more surely on the way. At the front of the parade is "The Iraq War," a joint effort by military historian Williamson Murray and retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales Jr. The two men played roles in writing the official histories of the first Persian Gulf War. That gives their book a rich depth and perspective. 
Murray and Scales offer plenty of detailed combat accounts. But largely, their book seeks to step back and put the war in a larger frame. They conclude that the U.S. war plan succeeded in substituting velocity for the mass that marked the American campaign in the first Gulf War. But they say the high-speed, high-tech razzle-dazzle that rolled over the Iraqi army will be of marginal use in winning the peace.
Scales came of age in the Army, on the ground. As you might expect, he's dubious about claims that the high-tech and much-touted "Revolution in Military Affairs" won this last war.
He and Murray write that the key American advantage was as old as the old Roman army: "the disciplining of young men into combat formations characterized by cohesion, interdependency, and trust in one another and in commanding officers. The result is a military unit that is obedient and responsive not only to its commanders but to civil authorities as well."
The book has splendid maps and dozens of color combat photos, plus an extremely useful and analytical set of appendices on weaponry. And lest you think it's an ode to the Army, Scales and Murray go out of their way to praise the Marine Corps -- and a St. Louis native who wears a lieutenant general's three stars: "Big, bluff, well-read, Jim Conway represented all that was best about the new United States Marine Corps."
East St. Louis native Walter J. Boyne has given his "Operation Iraqi Freedom" a subtitle that says it all: "What Went Right, What Went Wrong, and Why."
When Boyne retired as an Air Force colonel, he had 5,000 hours of flying time. So it's no surprise that among his list of things that went right in Iraq was the stunning performance of air power. Readers may dispute his suggestion that air power has muscled aside ground power as the dominant battlefield force. But nobody can dispute Boyne's case that a ir power disemboweled Iraq's Republican Guard.
Like Murray and Scales, Boyne also singles out American "jointness" -- the ability of the armed forces to mesh together to deliver more than the sum of their parts. Also praised: information dominance, night-vision devices, the Army's old-fashioned heavy armor and, not least, the skill of the American fighting man and woman.
What went wrong? Too much fratricide. Not enough aerial tankers and transports. Slow and fragile helicopters and supply trucks. A shortage of soldiers overall, and a special shortage of special operations and military police soldiers.
But overall, Boyne says, the pluses magnificently outshone the negatives. Now, he says, the task is to keep improving what went right -- and to work on fixing what went wrong.
Boyne's book teems with a mother lode of facts. Alas, it also teems with military abbreviations, acronyms and jargon (like "reachback" and "bringback"). And for a work of analysis, it's relentlessly chronological, although that's understandable in a book that was written day by day as the war progressed.
Still, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is a valuable addition to the military bookshelf. Although Boyle snipes at press coverage from everybody except the embedded reporters, military writers will find much that's useful in the book and its appendices. One appendix stoutly defends the Boeing F-18E-F Super Hornet. That ought to win some fans for Boyle out at Boeing's Lambert Field complex, where the Super Hornets are hatched.
Two other books come from retired Army officers. One of them, four-star Gen. Wesley Clark, far outranks the other, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters. What's more, Clark has become a headline name, so his book will no doubt draw more attention. But Peters' book is by far the more interesting.
First, the general. The ink on Clark's "Winning Modern Wars" book has hardly dried; it mentions events of early September. Given that Clark joined the race for the Democratic presidential nomination that same month, readers might be justified in judging his slender book as a campaign tract.
Well, it is a campaign tract. His closing words: "We cannot lead by example unless we are sustained by good leadership." What precedes those closing words makes it clear that old soldier Clark gives a flunking grade to George W. Bush and his inner circle for leadership.
But for all that, Clark makes his case strongly -- and despite the book's title, that case goes way beyond war to take in diplomacy, the economy and a bunch of other candidate's concerns.
Mostly, Clark's case runs toward the negative. He calls the war in Iraq an ill-judged affair, waged for trumped-up reasons. Clark has much praise for the Americans in uniform who fought the war but says their civilian leaders back in Washington scrimped and gambled. He says that planning for the postwar occupation was abysmal and adds that the U.S. armed forces are ill-trained and too small to police an empire. Who needs the burden of Iraq, he asks, when Osama bin Laden and his band remain on the loose?
True, his arguments are fairly standard op-ed stuff, with little that's new. They'll surely fall flat among conservatives, who have their own strongly argued op-ed rebuttals.
But among Democrats -- especially the liberals who vote heavily in primaries, the backers Clark needs right now -- "Winning Modern Wars" should go down well. His last chapter calls for a return to multilateralism and international cooperation abroad -- and a return to a more active government at home.
Peters' book, "Beyond Baghdad," reprints essays and op-ed pieces about the war and its aftermath -- and about much, much more.
The pieces originally appeared in such varying publications as Parameters, which is the scholarly journal of the Army War College, and the much less scholarly opinion pages of the New York Post. Peters shows a knack for adjusting his tone to his audience.
Post readers get raw-meat phrases such as "library lefties and bow-tied wise guys," which suggests that Peters is coming at the topic from the black-and-white right. But in his longer pieces, his writing shows nuance and depth.
For example, a constant theme through several pieces holds that until Arab societies liberate their women, they will lag behind the rest of the w orld. He has a fascinating prescription for countering the militant Islamist threat: Write off the Arab core states as hopeless and concentrate instead on Islam's frontiers, in places like Indonesia and North America. He underpins his views with a broad grasp of history -- you'll read a comparison of bin Laden with Spain's Philip II -- and the close-up observations of a man who traveled the world as an Army intelligence officer.
In the here-and-now, Peters (like Clark) takes a dark view of Donald Rumsfeld and the defense secretary's attitude toward the Army. Both men suggest that the Army triumphed in Iraq not because of Rumsfeld but despite Rumsfeld.
Peters writes with vastly more zing than Clark. In an op-ed essay written for a German newspaper, he has a tart message for Germany: "You have asserted your independence from America. Now you have it. Good luck." In the same essay, he has even sharper words for France: "France seems to us an aging whore desperate to attract even the most diseased customers." Ouch!
Well, that's Peters for you -- often in-depth, sometimes over the top, always thought-provoking, never dull.
"Boots on the Ground" is the first of what will probably be many Iraq War memoirs by embedded reporters to reach my mailbox. That may be the sole distinction for "Boots."
The author is Karl Zinsmeister, editor-in-chief of American Enterprise magazine. He spent a month or so in Kuwait and Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division. That unit was assigned to mop-up chores for strongholds bypassed by the Americans who led the charge for Baghdad. As a result, Zinsmeister has little in the way of glory to recount.
Still, he's at his best when he's talking about the soldiers and what they did. Alas, that part is less than a third of this slender book, and we get to know very few of the soldiers up close. Since he wandered about with one of the 82nd's brigades, that gives his account a wider scope. But it prevents Zinsmeister from forming intimate relationships with a tight little band of Americans in uniform.
Much of the rest of the book is political padding: Zinsmeister making the geopolitical case for invading Iraq, and Zinsmeister accusing his fellow reporters of leftist tendencies. He makes his cases strongly. But whether they belong in a first-person close-up account of a war is another matter.
Finally, Zinsmeister devotes much of his writing to a topic toward which most readers are supremely indifferent -- the hardships of doing journalism from a desert across which shots are being fired.
Bottom line: One of these days, this "Boots" is going to march all over the bargain-basement table.







   
 

December 13, 2003 Saturday  
  



NAME: Gen. A. M. Hendropriyono 

 THE SATURDAY PROFILE; 
An Indonesian Voice in the Antiterror Wilderness

 
IN the year before terrorists killed more than 200 people in a Bali nightclub, the head of Indonesia's intelligence agency, Gen. A. M. Hendropriyono, says he was a lonely man.
     He had alerted Indonesian leaders that terrorists were at work, and could strike at anytime. No one listened, he said. After the World Trade Center attack, some politicians who noticed his friendship with the United States ambassador, denounced him as a tool of the Americans.  
 "I warned all of these things might happen," the general, dressed in a bold, blue-checked shirt, said over a takeout Chinese brunch his staff had laid out elegantly in his spacious, wood-paneled office. "Instead of listening to me, they blamed me."
To illustrate how prescient he was, the general has a presentation titled "The Problem of Terrorism in Indonesia" ready for viewing in an adjoining conference room.
Prominently featured is the Indonesian vice president, Hamzah Haz, saying, "I guarantee there are no terrorists in Indonesia," juxtaposed with portraits of the Islamic militants who have been arrested in the 14 months since the Bali attack.
General Hendropriyono -- widely known in Indonesia as "Hendro" -- says he feels less alone today, now that his political colleagues can no longer deny that terrorism is a problem for Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
He has in fact become an important component here of the American campaign against terror and has helped Indonesia arrest scores of militants from Jemaah Islamiyah, the homegrown terror organization responsible for the Bali attack and for an attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in July that killed 12 people.
Earlier this month, he met in Washington with the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, and White House officials, and according to an American official he was shown appreciation for his "leadership from the very beginning" in fighting terrorism. Another American official said he gave the general top marks for infiltrating Jemaah Islamiyah but wondered whether he wanted to "manipulate" rather than "crush" the group.
BEYOND satisfying the demands of the Americans themselves, it is no easy job being a crucial ally of the United States in a region where American policy has generated deep resentment. One of Mr. Hendropriyono's colleagues, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, in a speech attended by the United States ambassador, said this week that America's "arbitrary" war in Iraq had made the world more dangerous. Polls show a deep popular suspicion of the United States since the Iraq war.
But General Hendropriyono is convinced that terrorists here are now on the run..
"Jemaah Islamiyah is no longer intact," the general said, and the result is that "it is difficult to trace individuals one by one."
His most wanted man, Jemaah Islamiyah's chief bombmaker, Azahari Husin, recently slipped through the fingers of the Indonesian police. The general said he believed that Mr. Azahari had been isolated, and knew that he was no longer able to conduct reconnaissance of a site he wished to attack.
While most spymasters are reluctant to talk about their work, the general is not above trying to build a higher profile for himself in the rivalry between the police and his intelligence agency, which, much like the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., compete for credit. He is also keen to demonstrate that the intelligence agency, which has a reputation for wielding a strong hand at home, is today a less secretive, more modern outfit.
He agreed to an interview to coincide with the publication of "Intel: Inside Indonesia's Intelligence Service," an account of the service's history since its founding 50 years ago. The book was written by an American expert, Ken Conboy, and published by Equinox, an English-language press here.
Born in central Java in 1945 three months before World War II ended, A. M. Hendropriyono followed in his father's footsteps and chose a military career. As a special forces officer, he received early training in Australia and climbed the military command during the authoritarian rule of President Suharto. He was banished in the early 1990's after supporting Megawati Sukarnoputri, who later became president, during her efforts to lead an opposition party. As president, Mrs. Megawati appointed him head of Indonesia's intelligence agency in August 2001.
He received military training in the United States in 1979, when Washington viewed Indonesia as an important bulwark in another struggle, the one against Communism.
Such exchanges were suspended during the Clinton administration because of abuses by the Indonesian military, an indication even today of how the need for allies can compete with a desire to promote humans rights. The program remains on hold -- a mistake, the general says.
"It is very hard for many Indonesians to understand the ideas of the United States if they have never been to school there," he said. "These people consider a big country like the United States with suspicion."
THE general's own record is blemished by an incident 14 years ago, in Lampung, on the island of Sumatra, where he was head of the regional military command.
After a group of Islamic militants hacked a military commander to death, he retaliated with an attack on their compound, killing as many as 100 people. The event has gone down in contemporary Indonesian history as a particularly violent one.
Asked about it, the general said that under the circumstances he had "no choice." He also had at the ready a book on the incident that described later reconciliation efforts he had made.
His experience as a jungle fighter against Communist insurgents in the 1970's taught him how difficult it was to fight terrorists, who, the general said, can operate with less popular support than guerrillas need. His early knowledge of Islamic militants goes back to the mid-1980's, when they were exiled to Malaysia.
"The radicals are only a thin layer of our society but they are well prepared because they are cast very wide," he said.
He says he believes that Indonesian extremists are largely self-motivated, and do not receive much help from Al Qaeda.
"I don't think they are guided by Al Qaeda," he said. "Maybe money comes from outside." 
Despite his successes in Indonesia, and his clear affection for America, the general said that on his visit to the United States he still had to defend Indonesia to his American friends.
"I showed how the bomb in Jakarta was not worse than at the World Trade Center," he said, "and that the W.T.C. did not mean New York was unsafe afterward."







 
 

December 9, 2003 Tuesday  
  



 A REGION INFLAMED: ALLIES; 
Indonesian Criticizes U.S. Over the War in Iraq

 
The foreign minister of Indonesia, a critical ally of the United States in the campaign against terrorism, said Monday that the American policy in Iraq might have made the world more dangerous, rather than making it safer as the Bush administration contends.
     "The situation in Iraq today bears momentous implications on the global war against terrorism," Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said in a speech, attended by the American ambassador and a deputy assistant secretary of state. "The situation in Iraq today shows that smart bombs and air cover cannot turn the tide against terrorism. Terrorists have no fixed addresses that can be obliterated once and for all with surgical strikes."  
 Mr. Wirajuda, an American-educated lawyer, argued that by acting unilaterally, waging what he called "an arbitrary pre-emptive war," the United States has set a precedent that other countries might follow.
His remarks underscored the difficulties that the war in Iraq has caused for the Bush administration's efforts to gain support for its campaign against terrorism. More broadly, they reflected the strained relations between the United States and Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, which are said to be at the lowest point in more than 40 years.
Mr. Wirajuda spoke at a conference organized by the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, a private group made up primarily of strategic studies organizations throughout the region that also has government members, including the United States, Australia, Canada and Japan. It provided financial support for the three-day conference here, which ends Tuesday.
Mr. Wirajuda spoke at a session called "The World After the Iraq War." Matthew P. Daley, deputy assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific, was on the same panel.
Many of those taking part in the conference, which included the ambassadors from Britain, France and India and the foreign minister of Australia, were surprised by Mr. Wirajuda's remarks.
"Pretty strong," an American businessman said at the conclusion of the speech.
American officials said Mr. Wirajuda's criticism of the United States for acting unilaterally neglected history and the fact that several administrations had worked in the United Nations for resolutions to get Iraq to allow weapons inspections and give up any illegal weapons.
If the United States had waited for the multilateral approach that Indonesia, and many other countries, wanted, Ralph L. Boyce, the American ambassador here, told the conference, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and they would not be discussing how to achieve a stable, democratic Iraq.
Mr. Boyce took strong exception to Mr. Wirajuda's statement that "an entire country has been leveled to the ground." In no war in history, the ambassador said, has an army gone to greater lengths to avoid civilian casualties and destruction.
Mr. Wirajuda's criticisms of Washington's policy in Iraq are not entirely new. In Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic country, the war in Iraq is widely seen as a war on Islam, and recent opinion polls indicate that only 17 percent of the population holds a positive view of the United States. Just a few years ago, that number was 60 percent.
Several diplomats said Mr. Wirajuda's speech was a reminder of the work that the Bush administration needed to do to get across its view of the world and the war.
Mr. Wirajuda's delivery was moderate in tone, but his points were firmly made. Aides said he had written the speech himself.
"An arbitrary pre-emptive war has been waged against a sovereign state -- arbitrary because it is without sufficient justification in international law," Mr. Wirajuda argued. "Does that mean that any state may now individually and arbitrarily decide to use force pre-emptively against any other state perceived as a threat?"
He did not elaborate, but for an Asian audience the fears are that China may use the Iraq war and pre-emption doctrine to strike Taiwan, and that India may invoke it against Pakistan, or vice versa.
Nor did Mr. Wirajuda mention Indonesia's own war against secessionist rebels in Aceh Province. It is a war that is being fought out of the international eye, because the Indonesian military has largely banned journalists and Western observers.      







  



December 9, 2003 Tuesday  




 Indonesian Foreign Minister Calls U.S. Policy in Iraq 'Utter Failure'

 
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, strongly criticized U.S. policy toward Iraq on Monday, charging that Washington's "unilateralist" approach was "an utter failure" that threatens the cause of global peace. 
 Speaking at a regional security conference in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, Foreign Minister Noer Hassan Wirajuda issued his sharpest criticism so far of U.S. policy on Iraq.  
He warned of a Balkanization of Iraq along ethnic and sectarian lines and the prospect of "a new and terrible round of internecine violence." 
 Such developments would threaten the entire Middle East at a time when Muslims are already feeling "a keen sense of grievance," he said.  
Indonesia opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which was highly unpopular among the country's vast moderate Muslim majority. But with Southeast Asia widely regarded as the second front in the Bush administration's war on terrorism, Indonesian support for that effort is pivotal. 
Wirajuda said that by invading Iraq without allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to complete their work, the United States may have damaged international nonproliferation efforts. "That would make the war in Iraq a debacle to the cause of global security and peace," he said, according to a copy of his speech. 
The U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Ralph L. Boyce, who attended the conference, called Wirajuda's remarks "thoughtful and provocative." But he added: "It is a little too early to declare the Iraq situation a failure. We are only a few months into this historic effort." 
  --  Ellen Nakashima 







  



December 7, 2003 Sunday  




 I Went to Indonesia, And Ran Into a Mountain of Trouble

 
 In August 2002, I went to Indonesia to finish climbing the Seven Summits. The challenge of scaling the highest mountain on each continent had never been the focus of my climbing, but over the years I'd made it to the top of six. Only Carstensz Pyramid -- the highest peak in Australasia -- remained, and it was starting to look like that last pea rolling around on a dinner plate. I thought I might as well finish it off. 
It never occurred to me that I might come close to being finished off myself. I wasn't worried about Indonesia's political troubles, even though I'd heard the islands were training grounds for terrorists. In all my years of traveling, I'd always managed to steer clear of local conflicts. I figured I'd go, climb, leave -- end of story.  
Instead, I found myself staring down the barrel of a rifle, my life in danger -- and surrounded not by terrorists, but by Indonesian soldiers. I got out in one piece, relieved that I'd never have to give the country or that moment another thought. But when I recently heard President Bush recommend that we increase military ties with Indonesia to help in our war on terrorism, the moment came back to me. I couldn't help thinking that the president's suggestion -- even though the White House later retracted it -- was a bad idea. Here's how I arrived at that opinion. 
My climbing partner and I had a simple plan. We would land in the capital city of Jakarta, on the island of Java, and catch a flight to Timika, a small town in the eastern province of Papua. There, we'd hire a helicopter to take us as close as possible to the base of Carstensz. We estimated a seven-day round-trip for the climb. A snap. As it turned out, the only thing that went according to plan is that we landed in Jakarta. 
 Delayed by weather for a day, we killed time touring the National History Museum. It was clear from the rows of glass-encased dioramas we viewed that the more than 200 million people on Indonesia's 13,000 far-flung islands have little to unite them. In the United States, our differences form a melting pot. In Indonesia, it's a powder keg. There are dozens of guerrilla movements on the islands. Some fight for control of local resources and political life. Others fight to maintain their ethnic identity. Still others, the Muslim extremists, fight to establish strict Islamic law. And fighting them all is the Indonesian military, with a long record of human rights violations. I didn't know much about this at the time, but I was about to get an education, up close and personal. 
In the middle of the jungle on Papua, where we were headed, is one of the largest gold deposits in the world, the Freeport-McMoRan Mine, a 1.25-million acre colossus that starts near Timika and runs northeast right to the base of Carstensz. A Louisiana financier owns the mine, meaning that much of the profit from it goes to the United States -- a source of resentment for many Papuans. After a riot by local residents in 1996, the mine's management began increasingly to hire Indonesian soldiers to protect it and keep trespassers off its property. 
Fortunately, we didn't have to worry about any of this, since we'd be helicoptering over the mine. Unfortunately, two hours after our plane landed in Timika, we learned that the helicopter we'd hired had broken down. We contacted the mine to check whether officials there would let us pass through. A manager said no; no non-mine employees were allowed on the property. That left us with only one way to do the climb. We'd use a technique I've employed in countless Third World countries. We would bribe our way across the Freeport mine. 
Through a local travel company, we found an interpreter who contacted someone in authority at the military unit patrolling the mine. We offered the military officer $500, and he agreed to escort us through personally. At midnight, he pulled up to our hotel in an army Jeep, and we jumped in for the long ride. We still hadn't reached the end of the mine when the sun started to come up and we could be spotted by mineworkers, so we pulled into a barracks and bought the silence of every soldier who saw us. That night, we climbed back into the Jeep and rode to the end of the property, where a squad of soldiers occupied a machine-gun nest strategically placed at the highest point overlooking the mine. Equipped with floodlights and coffee, they keep the area clear of trespassers. For a fee, they turned their backs and we trekked on to Carstensz. 
 Two days later, we scaled the summit. As we stood on the 16,023-foot peak, a light snow began falling. It seemed like we were anywhere but Indonesia. 
 Two nights later, having completed our descent, we were back at the mine, standing just outside the range of the floodlights beaming down from the machine-gun nest. We had radioed our contact to alert him when we would arrive, and he had assured us that the guards would let us pass without incident. At 10 p.m., I stepped into the light. There were no rifle cracks, no whistle of bullets. We figured we'd be safely off the property within a few hours. 
But when we arrived at the road for the ride out, a surprise awaited us. The officer who had driven us earlier wasn't there. He had sent someone else to drive us. The replacement didn't have any brass on his uniform, not even a stripe. We no longer had a potent military escort. For the first time, I felt a twinge of concern. 
For the next four hours, we drove in silence. Then, at 2 a.m., as we approached the mine exit, our driver was suddenly waved off the road. 
Men in military uniforms surrounded our Jeep, their rifles pointed at the windows. The driver shouted to the soldiers, then turned to explain the situation in broken English. Our contact, he said, had misrepresented himself; supposedly, he only had authority for the "top half of the mine." The driver said there was someone else in charge of the bottom half, and he was standing in our headlights. Things got very quiet. 
Mentally, I reviewed our situation: surrounded by armed soldiers with weapons drawn, trespassing in a gold mine at 2 a.m., not sure whose side our driver was on. I saw only one chance. Without a word, we offered the soldiers every last penny we had -- a few hundred dollars. They lowered their rifles. We drove on. 
My climbing partner was shaken. We had very nearly gone off the rails. Still, we thought that perhaps our original contact had simply set up a dramatic way to squeeze us for whatever money we had left. A few days later, we realized that what had been at stake was probably a great deal more than that. 
We had traveled to a nearby island to surf and recover. On Sept. 1, I picked up a local English-language newspaper and read some shocking news: The day before, Aug. 31, 10 people traveling through the Freeport mine along the same road we had used had been ambushed. Two Americans, teachers at the school for children of the mine's international employees, were shot to death, along with an Indonesian. Eight other Americans were wounded. The article quoted a military commander accusing a local guerrilla group of the shootings. The guerrillas denied any involvement in the killings and called for an international investigation. 
The ramifications for U.S.-Indonesian relations have been enormous. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, and President Bush relies on the Indonesian military to help fight the war on terrorism. But can it be trusted? The White House dispatched a team of FBI investigators to Papua late last year to look into the ambush. In February of this year, Congress received intelligence reports that said there was a "strong possibility" that Indonesian soldiers were the murderers. One theory, reported in the media, had it that the soldiers planned to create chaos, then squeeze Freeport for more money to combat it. 
 That theory didn't sound far-fetched to me. After all, I know some of the soldiers are corrupt. I was counting on it when I bribed them. And, thinking of that scene as we were leaving the mine, I have no trouble believing they could have gunned people down without blinking. 
I'm just a mountain climber who went to a distant country to pursue my passion. But after what I experienced there, I find it disheartening that the administration would consider increasing its ties to the Indonesian military. Maybe we could overlook the ambush -- if the military was in fact involved -- for the sake of the war on terrorism if it were an isolated incident, one act by a rogue element. But the Indonesian military's human rights abuses stretch back decades. Over the past three months alone, 18 defendants, mostly Indonesian soldiers, have been tried for participating in a wave of killings, lootings and rapes in the province of East Timor. 
I suppose you could say that I also funded the Indonesian military. But that last payout may have saved us. What would have happened if we hadn't had a few hundred dollars in our bags? I'm convinced those soldiers were planning an ambush, and looking for American targets. We had a fistful of money, so their fingers eased off the triggers. But as the United States looks for allies in the war on terrorism, we would do well to remember that there are times when those triggers are pulled instead. 
Author's e-mail: slakeyf@georgetown.edu 
 </body>Francis Slakey is the Cooper-Upjohn Lecturer in Biology and Physics at Georgetown University. He is one of fewer than 80 climbers in history to complete the Seven Summits. 






  
  


December 2, 2003 Tuesday 



 CLERIC AVOIDS TREASON CONVICTION

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- An appeals court has overturned the treason conviction of Abu Bakar Bashir and reduced his prison sentence from four years to three, a key victory for the best known Islamic radical in the world's largest Muslim country.
But lawyer Achmad Michdan on Monday denounced the court's decision to uphold a conviction on lesser charges of forging identity documents and said his client would appeal to the Supreme Court. 
The 65-year-old cleric was arrested shortly after the 2002 Bali bombings with Indonesia under international pressure to crack down on extremism. A court in September convicted him of treason for involvement in a plot to overthrow the government. He was cleared of the main charge of heading Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terror group.
Foreign governments claim Bashir is spiritual head of the group blamed for the Bali attack that killed 202 people and an Aug. 5 hotel bombing in Jakarta that killed 12.
The decision to reduce the sentence and reverse the treason conviction was made last month but only made public Monday. A court official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was not enough evidence to support the charge.
The ruling could re-ignite criticism that Indonesia is treating Bashir too leniently.







  



December 2, 2003 Tuesday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
BANGKOK -- An Indonesian appeals court has cleared a Muslim cleric of treason and reduced his sentence on other charges from four to three years, court officials said Monday. 
 Abubakar Baasyir, 65, was convicted in September of treason in a plot to overthrow Indonesia's government. He was cleared of charges of being the leader of Jemaah Islamiah, a terror network linked to al Qaeda, which has been accused of staging the bombings of two nightclubs in Bali that killed 202 people in October, 2002, and the bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August that killed 12. The appeals court upheld his conviction on lesser immigration charges. Baasyir said the ruling vindicated his contention that the trial was political.  
 --  Ellen Nakashima 
the middle east 
*  UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan urged a new 17-nation advisory group to help him forge an international approach to Iraq's postwar political transition, according to diplomats. 
Annan told the group that he would present the Security Council with a report on the world body's future role in Iraq within the next week. The advisory group includes 10 Security Council members and Iran, Syria and Egypt, which border Iraq.  
Annan also said he would move quickly to appoint a deputy special representative for Iraq, to be based in Cyprus or Jordan, to oversee the limited U.N. humanitarian operations there. 
The initiative is designed to begin healing divisions that have split the council since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. U.S. and British officials, however, criticized Annan's failure to invite Iraqis to the meeting.  
John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the closed-door gathering that the United States wanted a commitment from Iraq's neighbors that they would stop interfering in Iraq's internal affairs. He also said governments should do more to repatriate frozen Iraqi assets. 
 --  Colum Lynch 
europe 
*  PARIS -- French diplomats and other Foreign Ministry personnel staged a strike to protest planned budget cuts, shutting down embassies and consulates worldwide and hindering services at home. 
 Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, speaking on French radio, said half of the nation's diplomatic personnel abroad and one-third of those in Paris were on strike.  
 The walkout was a one-day stoppage to protest employment conditions, according to the leading union at the ministry. It hobbled embassies in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Rome. The unions reported 97 percent of staff at the French Embassy in Washington walked off the job.  
africa 
*  LIVINGSTONE, Zambia -- A global plan to rush lifesaving drugs to millions of people suffering from HIV-AIDS was launched Monday, World AIDS Day, as warnings were issued that the war against the disease was being lost. 
As world leaders called for urgent action, the Vatican defended its controversial position against advocating condoms as protection against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The Vatican said abstinence was the best way to fight HIV-AIDS in a "pan-sexualist society." 
 The World Health Organization and UNAIDS promised cheaper drugs, simpler treatment regimens and more money as part of the new campaign, which aims to provide 3 million HIV-infected people with the latest drugs available by the end of 2005 at a cost of $5.5 billion. 
 --  From News Services 








 


November 28, 2003



 CAMPAIGN CONFIDENTIAL

 
Smacking the Saudis: Trying to sound tough on Middle East terrorism, former Vermont governor Howard Dean smacked Saudi Arabia in response to a question from Tom Brokaw during Monday night's NBC-televised presidential candidate debate in Iowa.
Asked by Brokaw whether he considered Saudi Arabia a "friend" or an "enemy," Dean replied, "Seventy-five years ago, the Saudis made a deal with the devil. They decided that in return for leaving the royal family unchallenged by the very fanatical Wahhabi sect, that they would essentially fund the export of radical Islam to the Islamic world. 
"Unfortunately, because the Saudis have an enormous amount of money, coming from us, principally, they have been very successful," Dean continued. "Moderate Muslim nations such as Indonesia have begun to see the problems of radicalization. As long as the Saudis continue to fund the export of radical Islam around the world, they cannot be considered friends. ... Right now you can't get peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians because our oil money goes to the Saudis, who then spend it on terrorist groups and on teaching small children to hate Americans, Christians and Jews."
Dean went on to plug ethanol, a corn derivative, as a way to lessen American dependence on Middle Eastern oil. One of the biggest corn producers is... Iowa. Funny how that works.
* * *
Conservative Calumny: GOPUSA, a conservative Web site, was criticized all over the blogosphere and at Salon.com last week for publishing, briefly, a column on financier George Soros that many found antisemitic.
Soros recently brought down the ire of conservative commentators by agreeing to spend millions on various Democratic efforts to defeat President Bush.
The GOPUSA columnist, however, trafficked in something way beyond mere commentary, which the site tacitly acknowledged when it pulled the column after a day.
"Satan Lives in George Soros," wrote the pseudonymous columnist, who publishes weekly at the site under the pen name "Sartre."
"The fiction which is interdependency has a prolocutor in the congregation of Moloch. His name is George Soros. No other single person represents the symbol and the substance of Globalism more than this Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock. He is the embodiment of the Merchant from Venice. ... If Soros is correct when he says a 'supremacist ideology' guides the White House, what would you call the practices of the archfiend of Free Enterprise? The Soros deception would make Shylock proud. ... [I]t's not about antisemitism! [Outgoing Malaysian Prime Minister] Mahathir Mohammad was just stating the truth."
Democrats went ballistic.
"Suddenly deleting such vile antisemitism from this Republican site - with no explanation, and no apology - simply won't cut it," the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman, said in a press release. "Virulent antisemitism causes very real damage, and GOPUSA must acknowledge this."
The editor of GOPUSA, Bobby Eberle, did not respond to calls and an e-mail seeking comment.
* * *
Appraising Ann: In more columnist controversy, Ann Coulter, the stringy, famously unmarried blond who has carved out a place as the Gloria Steinem of the right with her ideologically-driven commentary, got a boost this week from an unlikely quarter - the Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abraham Foxman.
After a Democratic operative complained to us that he thought a syndicated Coulter column on the Democratic presidential contenders had wandered into bigoted territory, we asked Foxman what he thought.
The offending passage?
"[T]he Democrats' other big idea - too nuanced for a bumper sticker - is that many of them have Jewish ancestry," Coulter wrote. "There's Joe Lieberman: Always Jewish. Wesley Clark: Found Out His Father Was Jewish in College. John Kerry: Jewish Since He Began Presidential Fund-Raising. Howard Dean: Married to a Jew. Al Sharpton: Circumcised. Even Hillary Clinton claimed to have unearthed some evidence that she was a Jew - along with long-lost evidence that she was a Yankees fan. And that, boys and girls, is how the Jews survived thousands of years of persecution: by being susceptible to pandering."
While allowing that Coulter tends to express herself in an "over the top" manner, Foxman said, "I don't disagree with her. I find it a little strange, offensive and patronizing to flaunt your Jewish antecedents. Who cares? American Jews vote on issues. ... Are [the candidates] running around flaunting their pedigrees as Baptists, Christians or Lutherans? They're not."
* * *
California Catch-up: California Senator Barbara Boxer, a liberal Democrat whom Golden State Republicans are itching to replace, lost one of her potential GOP challengers this week. Rep. Darrell Issa, the conservative San Diego lawmaker who made waves by bankrolling the recall of Democratic Governor Gray Davis, ended speculation that he would challenge Boxer by filing papers Tuesday for re-election to the 49th congressional district, according to his office.
* * *
New York News: Empire State election lawyer Jerry Goldfeder was named "of counsel" to Gephardt's New York campaign, he told us in an e-mail.







  



November 28, 2003 Friday  




 Debating Polygamy's Resurgence; 
Indonesians Divided Over Meaning of Koran

 
 A suspicious cell-phone number on the family phone bill tipped off Titin Salpomiatin that her husband, Erlangga, was cheating on her. 
 When she confronted him, Erlangga claimed that the woman in question was just a friend. But a year later, he felt he could not hide the truth. He broke the news to Titin that he had taken a second wife and that they had a newborn baby. 
 "She was furious. She cried. She protested," he recalled.  
Erlangga, a personnel manager in a palm oil company who goes by one name, said he argued that the Koran allows him to have up to four wives. Titin recalled that she accused him of exploiting the Koran to justify his sexual wandering. 
 Today, he divides his time equally between Titin and his second wife. While he has two wives, Titin said, "I don't feel that I have a husband." 
Titin and Erlangga, both 46, came of age at a time when the authoritarian government of President Suharto discouraged conservative expressions of Islam. Although polygamy is not illegal, Indonesia's longtime president, under pressure from his wife, virtually banned civil servants from engaging in the practice in the early 1980s. Indonesia's Islamic and general family codes also set strict conditions for polygamy, including permission from the first wife.  
 But today, five years after Suharto was forced out of office by mass protests, some Muslim activists are seeking to establish a society that follows traditional, conservative interpretations of the Koran, as well as to bring about Islamic law, or sharia. 
 High-profile polygamists are extolling the practice. Progressive clerics and feminists are countering with interpretations of the Koran that support equality of the sexes. An official in the religious affairs ministry is drafting an alternative Islamic family code that would outlaw polygamy and make it easier for women to get a divorce. 
The debate is part of a broader struggle to define the role of Islam in Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population. 
No government agency accurately tracks polygamy rates. But ministry officials said many more men marry privately, in the presence of a Muslim cleric and witnesses, without seeking permission from an Islamic court, which would require permission from the first wife. 
 At the same time, counselors at women's crisis centers report a rise in the number of women coming forward for help in dealing with polygamous marriages. Certainly, the practice is becoming more visible. The topic is increasingly in the news and debated on talk shows. The vice president, Hamzah Haz, openly acknowledges that he has three wives. The minister of cooperatives, Alimarwan Hanan, has two wives. President Megawati Sukarnoputri has not given her views publicly although her father, Indonesia's founding father Sukarno, practiced polygamy; she is the daughter of his second wife. 
 In July, Puspo Wardoyo, an eccentric entrepreneur who owns a popular chain of chicken restaurants, elevated polygamy to new prominence when he staged his first annual Polygamy Awards. The marketing pro, who has boosted sales at his Ayam Bakar Wong Solo restaurants on the strength of the buzz about his four wives, handed out 90 statuettes and cash prizes to men from across the Indonesian archipelago who had at least two wives. Eleven had four. 
 "I want to spread the polygamy virus," he said. 
 These days, Titin, who has a law degree that she has never used, draws support from friends. Many also have polygamous husbands, she said.  
 "I was very angry," she acknowledged. But she stayed with Erlangga for the sake of their two children. He spends half the week with Titin, half the week with his second wife, Mardiana, in two small houses about four miles apart.  
Titin and her friends commiserate with one another about their husbands' use of religion to suit their sexual desires, and about how polygamy hurts their children, not just themselves. Titin's daughter, Siti Iqlima, 9, often asks where her daddy is. Titin replies, "He's gone out." Her 19-year-old son knows the truth, but Titin said she will tell Siti only when she is older. 
 A petite, personable woman, Titin is distanced enough from the trauma to be philosophical. "I am facing a great dilemma," she said during an interview at a Dunkin' Donuts shop. "But I have to accept this dilemma in order to maintain my children." 
Her sense of betrayal is never far from the surface. "I can accept him, but with a lot of question marks and exclamation points and commas -- never a period." 
Asked if her husband was a good Muslim, she paused. "I think he is a good Muslim, but he should appreciate his wife more," she said. "Love cannot be divided. If you have only one wife, you will focus on her. What makes me saddest is wondering: When will I have a husband who is totally mine?" 
Erlangga said he had never expected to have more than one wife, even though his father had three and his grandfather two. And he truly loved Titin, whom he had met in college and wed in 1983. But 13 years and two children later, he fell in love with Mardiana, now 37, who was a widow. 
 "It was a mix of passion, love and social responsibility," he explained, sitting in a Pizza Hut restaurant in Jakarta one afternoon. "She is the type of person who needs protection." 
He feels that he is a better Muslim for helping a widow without financial means. He acknowledged that most women, Titin included, object to polygamy. But he said, "A woman should accept that it is part of the religious institution of marriage in Islam." 
A gregarious man who is also general secretary of the Islamic Students Alumni Association and was imprisoned from 1984 to 1990 for political activism, Erlangga said that in the days of Suharto, men took more than one wife but kept it hidden longer. "Now, it's in the open," he said. "Now there's no fear." 
In 1983, Suharto issued a rule, still on the books, that requires civil servants wishing to take another wife to obtain permission from a superior, who must ascertain that the man has written consent from his first wife and has proved he can provide for all wives and children equally. 
At the Islamic State Institute in Bandung during the Suharto era, only one among 400 lecturers admitted to having more than one wife. Today, at least 48 do, said Nurrohman, a researcher there. 
Polygamy is mostly a lower- to lower-middle-class phenomenon. For middle-class women, especially those who are college-educated, the sense of humiliation is particularly acute if their husbands marry again. 
That was the case with Ama, a lecturer at the prestigious Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, who spoke on condition that her full name not be used. She found out two years ago that her husband had another wife. At first, she was in shock. She did not eat for two days. She lost weight. "You look great," said colleagues, unaware of the reason. She said she was livid when she found out that he had actually married in 1996, and had managed to keep that marriage from her for five years. "He stole five years of my life!" she exclaimed. 
Eventually, she realized that he was not leaving that wife. Last month, she filed for divorce. But she is too embarrassed to tell people the reason why, she said. 
Women who have accepted a polygamous mate often do so for financial reasons. Last year, Neneng, 23, a Jakarta housemaid, became the second wife of Makmur, 30, who drives a motorized rickshaw. Makmur's other wife lives in a town in central Java. 
 "It is better being a second wife rather than staying single for my whole life," she said. "At least I am economically secure now." 
First of all, explained an Islamic cleric, settling into a folding chair, "Islam brings solutions to problems in society." 
Thus, said Irfan Awwas, executive director of the Indonesian Mujaheddin Council in Yogyakarta, "polygamy is part of the solution to society's problems." 
Asserting that women outnumber men -- and that a man's sex drive, unlike a woman's,  lasts an entire lifetime -- he said that polygamy allows men and women to fulfill their sexual desires without resorting to adultery. 
Of course, he said, there are conditions, laid down in the Koran in the chapter on women, Verse 3. A man may take a second or third or fourth wife only if he is able to provide for each equally, he said. 
He must strive for equality in the emotional realm too, but it is recognized that "love is beyond a man's control," Awwas said. So if he falls short, that is all right, he said. 
But other scholars, such as Husain Mohammed, say they believe the Koran was meant to be interpreted in light of current societal conditions. Mohammed, who runs an Islamic research center in Cirebon, a town 120 miles east of Jakarta, is at the forefront of the movement in Indonesia working to reinterpret the Koran in a progressive manner. Today, he and his assistant are focusing on issues of religious tolerance, as well as abortion, inheritance, divorce and women's leadership, emphasizing equality of the sexes. 
 Mohammed's work is controversial in even the most moderate of mainstream Indonesian Muslim organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama, of which he is a senior member. During a conference this year in East Java, he asserted that women could become imams and lead prayers, an idea that provoked much dissent. Fellow clerics challenged him to defend his argument at a future conference. 
It is true that the Koran, read literally, permits polygamy, given strict conditions, he said. But the text was written in the 7th century, when wars made many women widows, and polygamy in the Arab world was widespread. Today, he said, the Koran, read according to the principles of modern justice, bars polygamy. 
The practice is accepted to varying degrees in Muslim countries, with many imposing conditions such as permission of the first wife or economic means to support two households. But Turkey and Tunisia have banned the practice outright. 
In a dim office at the Department of Religious Affairs in Jakarta, Siti Musdah Mulia, an adviser on women's empowerment to the minister, is drafting an alternative Islamic family law that would, among other things, ban polygamy. "A barbaric tradition," she calls it. But she is facing an uphill battle. 
 "It is mission impossible," said Nandi Naksabandi, the ministry's director of research and legal drafting. "The majority of people in this ministry are conservative Muslims." He said that to ban something "written clearly in the Koran goes against Islamic values." 
That is an argument Titin knows well. She and her female friends like to joke about how their men are always quoting the Koran and how they should make up their own verse. "If religion allowed us to take another husband, I would be the first person to do that!" she said, laughing. "But of course, the religion does not allow that."  
 Special correspondent Noor Huda Ismail in Jakarta contributed to this report. 






  


November 27, 2003, Thursday  



 OSAMA AIDE GETS 4 YRS.  Ex-bodyguard dishes on Al Qaeda

 
Osama Bin Laden's former bodyguard was given a light four-year prison sentence by a German judge yesterday after spilling the dirt on Al Qaeda's inner workings.
Shadi Abdalla, 27, gave up valuable secrets about the Afghanistan terror camps, officials said, describing lectures akin to "brainwashing" where no dissent was tolerated. 
"One could only listen and keep quiet," he testified. "Those that questioned something were regarded as secret agents."
Abdalla took training courses in weapons handling, poisons and explosives and watched videos documenting "atrocities" against Palestinians and Muslims in Indonesia.
"When I got back from Afghanistan, I was full of hate," he said. "I was convinced of the need for jihad, until my arrest."
During his five months in the camp he heard Bin Laden lecture several times, bragging about his plans.
"We want to hit America in the spinal column. Thousands will die. We will hit them hard," Abdalla quoted the terror chieftain as saying.
A binge-drinking hashish-smoker who often frequented gay bars, Abdalla went to Afghanistan in 2000 in search of "true Islam."
He was handpicked by Bin Laden to serve as his bodyguard for two weeks because of his 6-foot-4 frame. Abdalla also formed a close relationship with Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who is the leader of Ansar al-Islam, the Iraqi-based Al Qaeda affiliate now believed to be attacking U.S. troops around Baghdad.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Abdalla was ordered to attack Jewish targets in Dusseldorf, and he ordered a pistol with a silencer and a crate of hand grenades.
But police had the group under surveillance and arrested Abdalla and eight others in his cell. His four-year sentence was a reward for cooperating with authorities, a judge in Dusseldorf said.






   

 

November 26, 2003 Wednesday 



 Debate rages within Islam over faith

 
Shortly after terrorists bombed two synagogues in Istanbul a little over two weeks ago, killing 24 people and injuring 300, Imam Plemon El-Amin began putting together comments for a regular Sunday round table at the Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam.
He wanted to press upon worshippers at the mosque that the suicide bombers, who had parked vehicles packed with explosives in front of the synagogues, were in no way acting on behalf of Islam.
"We recognize that people who misunderstand the religion or use the religion to express their political hurts or pains or disagreements are operating out of an extreme that is not Islamic-based," said the 53-year-old El-Amin, who has spent the last 19 years as imam at the East Atlanta mosque. "Islam is a very balanced religion. . . . [But] Islam has been maligned and distorted, and we have to make sure our people see where the fallacies are in the extremist perspective."
A time of soul-searching
Such discussions are nothing new for El-Amin, a longtime leader in fostering interfaith dialogue in the metro area. But in recent years, he said, that dialogue is occurring with even greater frequency and more urgency among the Muslim ummah (community) in the United States and abroad. 
The debate "went to a very high level" after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, said Akeel Hanano, president of the Georgia chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "Nineteen people committed an act that affected 1.5 billion Muslims."
The soul-searching is particularly relevant this week, when Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr. The festival marks the end of Ramadan, the month of sunrise-to-sunset fasting that is a basic tenet of Islam and a period when Muslims are expected to tap into their well of faith.
"One of the great things about Islam in America is we have this really great legacy of critical thinking," said Tayyibah Taylor of Atlanta-based Azizah magazine. "And we have this Islamic legacy of the pursuit of knowledge."
Is Islam a progressive, tolerant religion, as the majority of the world's Muslims believe, or a vengeful faith bent on world domination, as the militants want it to be and as it is often projected in the media?
Counteracting terror
The question is especially relevant as militants warn of more attacks, having already carried out deadly bombings in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, predominantly Muslim countries with strong ties to the United States. Al-Qaida is widely believed to have been behind both, working with local groups.
Over the past months, there have also been attacks in Kenya, suicide squads from Hamas and Islamic Jihad have struck at Israelis and an al-Qaida offshoot has been wreaking havoc in Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Then there are the almost daily attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Because . . . these attacks [are] done in the name of Islam, it only makes our work here more difficult," said Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Council on Arab Islamic Relations, an advocacy group. Whenever there is an attack by Islamic militants, she said, her organization gets calls from Muslims who ask it to issue a statement condemning the act as soon as possible. "They know all eyes are on us," she said. "People are talking. They're not oblivious to it or ignoring it. It's affecting people's lives in America. You have to have a proactive response."
Media cloud picture
Several Muslim community leaders said that often that response flies under the radar of Westerners and non-Muslims. Part of the blame, they said, rests with the media, which tend to focus on the bombings and the fiery rhetoric of Osama bin Laden. These reports often end up woven into the West's interpretation of Islam, even though some of these aspects may be manifestations of culture rather than religion.
Bin Laden appears to have replaced the scowling visage of former Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the "face" of Islam in much of the world.
When Khomeini's Islamic revolution overthrew the repressive but secular and pro-Western regime of the shah in 1979 and replaced it with a theocracy, the internal debate among Muslims about their faith soon turned into an "Islam vs. the West" confrontation.
In 1996, Harvard University professor Samuel Huntington sketched out a scenario in his book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" that appeared to indicate a battle between the predominantly Christian and secular West and a resurgent, militant Islam was inevitable.
Then came Sept. 11.
Muslims said that before the terrorist attacks, the United States rarely seemed to acknowledge the debate raging within global Islam between reformists and radicals.
Sudanese-born Abdullahi An-Na'im, Candler professor of law at Emory University, said Muslims have protested the rise of intolerance and violence within the ummah for decades.
"They're just not doing it in  or doing it in [London-based] The Guardian. They're not doing it on CNN. They're doing it in their own neighborhoods, in their own local languages in their local press," An-Na'im said. He himself was arrested in his native Sudan in the 1980s for opposing the religious extremism of ruling regime.
'Moderate Muslims'
At the same time, though, "a lot of Muslims who are doing this as a matter of principle deeply resent having to perform to appease Western society. . . . People resent having to appear to be moderate Muslims," he said.
An-Na'im said he and many of his fellow Muslims take issue with use of the phrase "moderate Muslim." "It's very insulting because it is moderate in relation to what? It defines [us] in terms of Western security interests. It's a relative term," he said.
He and other Muslim advocates said that the spotlight on Islam since Sept. 11 often has made them uncomfortable, that adherents of other religions who preach extremist viewpoints often don't get put under a similar microscope.
The U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. support for Israel add another level of complications to the debate among Muslims about their religion.
Hameed Agberemi, a research fellow with the Islam and Human Rights Project at Emory University's School of Law, is from largely Christian southern Nigeria.
Youths rebellious
Back home, Agberemi, a graduate student at the University of Ibadan and owner of an Internet cafe, is alarmed by what he sees as a growing trend among young Muslims to embrace more militant interpretations of Islam.
He said that when he tries to reason with the youths and challenge their interpretation of Islam, he runs into a brick wall.
For many of these young Muslims, he said, dialogue is considered less effective than violence to fight hopelessness, despair and what they perceive as U.S. injustices against Muslims.
"Before you can talk two minutes, they challenge you," Agberemi said. "They say, 'Look what the U.S. is doing.' You're not given a chance to even engage them in a discussion."
Azyumardi Azra, rector of Jakarta's Syarif Hidayatullah State University in Indonesia, one of the oldest state-supported Islamic schools, has drawn criticism for his moderate leanings.
Azra, one of several Islamic scholars and clerics who met with President Bush during his visit to Bali in October, recently criticized hard-line Islamic groups that wanted to close places serving alcohol during Ramadan. Instead, Azra said, Muslims should exercise self-restraint and fight corruption.
In a speech to a group of religious scholars meeting at Emory University last week, Azra talked about the divisions between well-organized "militant Muslims" and "mainstream" Muslims.
He said militants consider mainstream Muslims to be "too modern" and lax and not practicing "pure Islam."
Challenging those interpretations is a task he is prepared to continue in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, he said.
An-Nai'm stressed that the dialogue among Muslims about the interpretation of Islam, while healthy, is not guaranteed to change the minds of all militants.
"We have to protect the name of Islam," he said. "You cannot stamp out radicalism, but we can reduce those numbers."






  


November 24, 2003, Monday



 TABLE FOR FIVE? CHICKEN MAGNATE PUTS POLYGAMY ON MENU
Restaurateur Puspo Wardoyo is perhaps most prominent advocate polygamy in Indonesia; Muslim custom permits men to take ad many as five wives, but secular and authoritarian Suharto regime discourages polygamy as a backward practice; recently, polygamy is one of many long-repressed Islamic customs that are being revived and are clashing with moderate values of many Indonesian Muslims; drawing (L)







  



November 23, 2003 Sunday  




 A Dissident Asks: Can Bush Turn Words Into Action?

 
 I must confess that President Bush's speech on democracy in the Middle East earlier this month came as a pleasant surprise. Like most Arabs, I have strong misgivings about his unilateral intervention in Iraq and failure to maintain consistent standards toward Palestinians and Israelis. 
But as a lifelong advocate of democracy in the Arab world, I could not have written a better speech. The president hit the right notes when he admitted past foreign policy mistakes and vowed not to condone dictatorial regimes, even among close traditional allies. He dismissed as false the cultural arguments that Islam is inherently incompatible with freedom and democracy. And yet, for the speech to be truly meaningful, Bush must now translate some of that fine rhetoric into policy. 
For many years, those of us who struggle for democratic transformation in the Arab world felt alone in confronting despotism. As Bush himself admitted, Cold War and geopolitical considerations made the United States dance all too often with Arab dictators. Now that this era may be over, dissidents are beginning to speak a little more loudly.  
Our numbers are small, not so much for lack of fellow citizens yearning for liberal governance, but out of fear of publicly expressing those yearnings. When the Egyptian regime imprisoned me and 27 young associates three years ago, charging me with taking foreign grant funds without permission and tarnishing Egypt's image abroad with my work, most Egyptian intellectuals and civil society activists in our country did not act for many months. They were paralyzed. Meanwhile, international civil society and the media in democratic countries that kept up the pressure until our full acquittal by Egypt's highest court in March. 
One tactic of the region's dictatorial regimes is to deflect attention from domestic injustices by whipping up anger over external issues. Thus, Arab dictators, through their state-controlled media, dismissed the Bush speech as hypocritical and arrogant. For them it merely revealed a U.S. double standard. The U.S. president, they would say, should not speak out on Arab governance until there is a final resolution of the Palestinian question and/or immediate withdrawal from Iraq. This plays to popular and legitimate demands of the Arab people, but with ulterior motives. 
 These anti-democratic regimes have opted not to declare such hostility outright. Instead, they allege that any Arab voice that calls for regime change is supporting a nefarious American agenda in the Middle East. Then the allegation extends to those who call for greater freedoms in any sphere of life, labeling them "cultural agents" of a hegemonic America. Since the war in Iraq and the quest for its democratization, Arab democrats like me have become favorite targets for that broad anti-reform coalition. 
 I have just returned from a lecture tour of the United States, which was arranged months ago and initially did not include Washington or meetings with any administration officials. Yet the coincidence of Bush's speech with my presence in the United States caused the yellow press in Egypt to go wild. Al-Osbou Weekly, a reputed mouthpiece of the state security agency, went so far as to credit me as the unseen author of the speech. It alleged that Congress subsequently rewarded me by appropriating several million dollars for my development studies center. The front page headline read: "Saad in Washington to incite the US against Egypt and the Arab World." This baseless story also appeared in several other Arab newspapers. My true mission? To lobby, along with other members of the international human rights movement, for the worldwide repeal of emergency laws such as the Patriot Act. 
Demagoguery aside, there is valid apprehension among Arab democrats about whether Washington is serious about supporting their efforts toward overdue democratic transformation. And if so, how will the United States go about it -- with helpful encouragement or heavy-handed interference? 
 Arab democrats recognize that U.S. success in Iraq would strengthen their own democratic efforts elsewhere in the region. They wish the United States had planned more wisely for a postwar Iraq. It should have consulted more closely with Arab and Iraqi democratic forces in the region. It should not have so quickly dissolved the Iraqi army, which was as alienated from Saddam Hussein as the rest of the Iraqi people. 
 But it is never too late to admit mistakes and move forward. As I see it, Washington could call upon the United Nations and Arab legal, economic and political advisers from around the region to work with local counterparts toward reconstructing Iraq. Security could be improved by reconstituting units and brigades of the old Iraqi army. With brief retraining, they could expedite the transition to a stable and democratic Iraq. 
 Those who wish for American failure in Iraq are an unholy alliance of anti-democratic groups: Arab tyrants, old leftists, Baathists and Nasserites. These spent forces recognize on some level that history has finally moved beyond them. The graphic fall of Saddam's statue was a moment of truth for them. But an American failure in Iraq would give them a new lease on life. 
 Unfortunately, a regional democratic coalition has yet to emerge. Although its constituent elements are all there, both in the business community and in civil society, they are widely scattered. Arab regimes have long put activists in prison or under permanent siege. Older democracies around the world should help lift that siege by demanding a greater margin of freedom. They can do so in several ways. One is by providing interaction with democracy advocates in Eastern Europe and elsewhere who successfully defied their own despots. Funds without strings attached, travel opportunities and training also would be welcome. Similar post-Helsinki support in the 1970s and '80s hastened peaceful transformations of governance across the former Soviet sphere. 
What else should the United States do to promote democracy in the Middle East?  
*  Work multilaterally. Actively welcoming other democracies, particularly those with no colonial history in the region, to join in the Iraq project would ward off much of the suspicion that still lingers of a sinister design to rob Iraq of its oil, or to consolidate imperial hegemony. 
 Along the same lines, it would help both the Americans and the indigenous Arab democrats if the United States declared a timetable for transferring power to Iraqis -- and adhered to it faithfully. The recent statements from Washington to this effect must be widely publicized in Iraq and the region at large. And then they must be honored. 
*  Resume an active role in peacemaking between Palestinians and Israelis. This is a noble goal in itself. It is also a sine qua non for establishing sustainable democratization in the Middle East. Arab regimes have used the highly emotional Palestine question as an excuse to engage in authoritarian practices. The world has come close to an equitable resolution of the conflict several times, always aborted by extremists on both sides. The silent majorities in Palestine and Israel have yet to enjoy the opportunity to vote on a historical compromise of the kind entailed in the road map, or Camp David I and II. 
*  Support making aid, trade and investment conditional upon Middle East governments' (including Israel's) taking concrete steps toward full democracy. This strategy is neither new nor draconian. It was effective in bringing about and sustaining an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. We also saw the success of this strategy in Europe. South and East European countries eager to join the European Union were given a twin mandate: Create democracy and a market economy. The European Union has subsequently grown from seven to 15 and, soon, to 25 member countries. Europe is now more democratic, united, peaceful and prosperous than at any time in the past 10 centuries. Democracy should not be imposed by external armed forces -- and does not take root this way.  
 *  Build on regional liberal traditions. President Bush has correctly noted on several occasions, including in his recent speech, that there is no contradiction between Islam and democracy. Two of the largest Muslim countries, Indonesia and Bangladesh, have elected democratic governments and female heads of state. And while many in the West may not know it, in several parts of the Middle East there were liberal traditions from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, including pluralistic multiparty systems, a free press and vibrant civil societies. The West should acknowledge and build its support for the region on this liberal tradition. It is still part of the Arab collective memory. 
 *  Invigorate partnerships with civil society organizations. At a time when ruling elites are too fossilized to change or allow others to bring about badly needed changes, Arab civil society organizations are working actively for political and cultural reforms. They have not waited for official approval. Our Ibn Khaldun Center reopened this past June 30, exactly three years after it was shut down by the authorities. Saudi intellectuals are loudly and forcefully demanding sweeping reforms. Palestinian and Israeli moderates have been searching for common ground for years. Bravely, they found enough of it to sign a "virtual" peace accord in Geneva last month. Similar initiatives are under way in Syria and Tunisia despite ongoing repression. 
It is this budding Arab civil society that provides the future infrastructure for democracy. Its counterparts in the United States and other Western democracies must now stretch helping hands across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. And the United States should pressure reluctant Arab regimes to lift legal and other restrictions that strangle local civic participation. 
 Arabs have long lamented past betrayals by the West. Bush's democracy speech is a promise to correct the historical record. But it's up to Arab democrats to make Arab democracy a reality. 
Author's e-mail:  
semibrahim@hotmail.com 
</body>Saad Eddin Ibrahim directs the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies and is a professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo.  




4


  



November 22, 2003 Saturday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Assailants shot and killed the daughter of a U.S. consular officer in Bolivia during a carjacking attempt in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, officials said. 
 Jessica Nicole Borda, 22, was shot to death as she was driving home with two friends after three men surrounded their car and ordered the women to get out. One of the other women was wounded, Interior Minister Alfonso Ferrufino said. Police said Borda was the daughter of Rhea Borda, a U.S. consular official.  
EUROPE 
*   TBILISI, Georgia -- Georgia's powerful security chief declared this month's parliamentary elections fraudulent and called for a new vote, signaling a rift in President Eduard Shevardnadze's government. 
 Security Council Secretary Tedo Dzhaparidze, who oversees Georgia's police and security forces, warned that the political crisis could slide into bloodshed as opposition demonstrators advanced on the capital. 
 On Thursday, Georgia's election commission validated the Nov. 2 parliamentary elections after a delay of more than two weeks,  punctuated by some of the largest street protests seen in this former Soviet republic in years. Election officials declared the main pro-Shevardnadze party the top vote-getter.  
*  TIRANA, Albania -- An Albanian court convicted the head of a guerrilla group of inciting ethnic hatred in the Balkans but set him free after handing him a minimum sentence. 
 Gafur Adili is the political leader of the Albanian National Army, a little-known group branded a terrorist organization by the U.N. mission in neighboring Kosovo. The Tirana court sentenced Adili to 10 months in jail, but he was released  because he had already served five months in custody awaiting trial.  
ASIA 
*  NEW YORK -- The United States and its allies announced they would suspend work on a nuclear power project in North Korea for one year -- a step toward closing down an operation strongly opposed by the Bush administration. But the organization building the project will maintain the site for at least one year while five countries try to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programs. 
 The New York-based Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) said the suspension would start Dec. 1. 
*  KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Abdullah Ahmad, 66,  editor in chief of Malaysia's New Straits Times group, said he had lost his job after publishing comments that upset the Saudi royal family. The New Straits Times is linked to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's ruling United Malays National Organization. 
 Media executives said the Nov. 12 story, which criticized the kingdom's royal family, had sparked a strong but previously unpublicized protest from the Saudi government. 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesia has sent more than 2,000 additional police and soldiers into the remote eastern district of Poso after a series of attacks against Christian villages attributed to Muslim militants threatened to unleash a new round of inter-religious warfare. 
 Security officials said they believed that members of the Jemaah Islamiah extremist network instigated the attacks last month in an effort to re-ignite communal clashes that left up to 1,000 people dead from 1999 until a government-brokered peace deal in December 2001. 
 The latest deployment came after gunmen killed at least 12 Christians in the areas of Poso and nearby Morowali in the middle of October. Three more Christians were killed last weekend. 
 Several Indonesian security officials said the attacks in Poso on the island of Sulawesi were designed to help recruit new militants by provoking a backlash that could be depicted as evidence that Muslims are at risk from pro-Western Christians and must be defended by force. 
 "They want people to believe there is a so-called movement to oppress Muslims and then they use that as a justification for carrying out jihad," said Inspector Gen. Ansyaad Mbai, counterterrorism adviser to Indonesia's chief security minister.  
 --  Alan Sipress 
AFRICA 
*  HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe's embattled President Robert Mugabe has stepped up a crackdown on his opponents by arresting more than a dozen people over e-mails supporting anti-government protests. Zimbabwe state media reported that 14 people had been arrested in the past week and charged with "circulating a subversive e-mail inciting the public to oust President Mugabe from office." They were freed on bail. 
 --  From News Services 







   
 

November 21, 2003 Friday  
  



 A REGION INFLAMED: ISTANBUL; 
Blasts Hit 2 British Sites in Turkey as Bush Visits Blair

 
Two huge truck-bomb explosions wrecked the British Consulate and a British bank here on Thursday, killing at least 27 people and wounding 450 in an assault that coincided with President Bush's state visit to London.
     As Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain prepared for a joint declaration of antiterror resolve, the 18-story Istanbul headquarters of HSBC bank, and minutes later the British Consulate several miles away were blown apart by bombs that witnesses said were contained in pickup trucks driven up to the buildings. 
 The British consul general, Roger Short, a 58-year-old career diplomat, was among those killed. Distraught people, screaming for help with blood streaming from open wounds, ran through the busy streets that surround both the bank and the consulate. Rescue workers dug into rubble searching for the dead and injured, and guided others from the carnage via second-story windows or wrecked storefronts.  
In London, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said before flying to Istanbul to see the devastation first hand that the bombings bore "all the hallmarks of international terrorism practiced by Al Qaeda." 
An anonymous caller to the Anatolian news agency said the attack on Thursday was a joint effort of Al Qaeda and a Turkish group, the Islamic Front of the Raiders of the Great Orient, or IBDA-C, the agency reported. The same group also claimed responsibility for the twin bombings of two Istanbul synagogues on Saturday, in which 23 people were killed. 
Just before the Istanbul attacks, a bomb killed five people at the offices of a pro-American Kurdish group in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.  Page A13. 
American officials said they do not see evidence of coordination between the attacks in Iraq and the terrorist bombings in Turkey, a longtime NATO member and American ally whose government nonetheless refused after long hesitation last spring to allow American troops to pass through Turkish territory to invade northern Iraq.
Most Turks opposed the war in Iraq. But this week's attacks suggest that terrorists want to punish any country, and particularly Muslim nations, allied with the United States. As Mr. Bush noted in a speech in London on Wednesday, Islamic states allied with the West have become terrorist targets many times in recent months -- in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, in Saudi Arabia, in Morocco, and in occupied Iraq itself. 
Since the war in Iraq, one fear of neighboring governments had been that instability and violence would spread outward from Iraq itself. In recent days, attacks in the region have seemed to gain in gruesome intensity.
Seventeen people died in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, when a bomb ripped through a housing compound on Nov. 9. Now, two carefully selected twin bombings in less than a week have struck at both Turkey's close ties with the West and with Israel, and the coexistence of Jews and Muslims for centuries here.
In the United States, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday that this week's bombings were very much in the mode of Al Qaeda. "We should make no mistake in thinking that terrorism is somehow abating," he said.
While Turkey has long suffered terrorist attacks, largely because of a war with Kurdishseparatists, it has not seen anything like this week's bombings in its 80-year history as a secular Muslim state.
Both the government and many citizens, stunned by Saturday's synagogue attacks, had hoped that they would prove an aberration. Suicide bombings have not been a tactic used by Turkish groups in the past. But events have now raised the chilling prospect of a ready reservoir of young Turks willing to give their lives for an amorphous cause.
Some critics linked the spread of violence to the rise of political Islam in Turkey despite a carefully cultivated secular political culture. 
The violent acts during the holy month of Ramadan are likely to alienate moderate Muslims even further from terrorism carried out in the name of Islam. More Muslims have died in the two sets of bombings than either Christians or Jews.
"Those who bloodied this holy day and massacred innocent people will account for it in both worlds," said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "They will be damned until eternity." 
Certainly, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair drew a stark and forceful contrast between terrorists who they said hate freedom, and those of any religion or ethnicity who practice democracy and tolerance.
"They hate freedom," Mr. Bush said of the terrorists. "They hate free nations. Today, once again, we saw their ambitions of murder. The cruelty is part of their strategy. The terrorists hope to intimidate; they hope to demoralize. They particularly want to intimidate and demoralize free nations. They're not going to succeed." 
Mr. Blair, alluding to the stakes in Iraq, emphasized the importance of defeating terrorism everywhere. "It is in a free, democratic and stable Iraq that not just the violence, but the wretched and backward philosophy of these terrorists will be defeated and destroyed," he said. 
Mr. Erdogan called the attacks "another example of a callous assault against peace and stability in the country by those circles who have no sense of humanity."
The first Istanbul blast, shortly before 11 a.m., was at the Turkish headquarters of HSBC, the world's second-largest bank, shearing off the facade and shattering the windows of nearby high-rises. 
Body parts, the charred shells of cars and broken glass were scattered around a 9-foot-deep crater in the streets outside the bank. Water gushed from the top floors of the building. 
Bystanders bloodied and covered in dust looked dazed as they walked past lines of ambulances. Several people helped carry the limp bodies of victims. 
Minutes later, at least 15 people were killed when the consulate in the historic Beyoglu district was blown apart.
The explosion occurred just 300 yards from the Neve Shalom synagogue that was attacked on Saturday. The cramped district where both buildings were located is frequented by tourists and business people, and features shops, bars and restaurants, as well as several consulates. The American Consulate nearby was moved just months ago to a more secure location.
The building where Mr. Short was working was destroyed, witnesses said. He had served as consul general in Istanbul since 2001, was Britain's ambassador to Bulgaria from 1994 to 1998, and oversaw peace-building efforts in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1999 to 2000. 
"I thought somebody hit our bus from the back, then I saw black smoke rising," said a sobbing Mehmet Altan, who was on a bus near the bank when the explosion occurred. "Cars were damaged all around us. I saw the charred body of a driver at the wheel."
Mehmet Celik, who was slightly injured, said a light brown pickup truck exploded in front of the HSBC headquarters. One bank employee, Suleyman Karatas, told the Anatolia news agency that the scene inside the bank, which has 600 employees, was like "a bloodbath." 
Cigdem Dicle, blood and dust covering her suit, stood in shock only a few feet from the wrecked building in which she was working when the bomb exploded. "There was a massive explosion, I couldn't tell what was happening," she said. Another banker's pink shirt was soaked with the blood of friends he helped carry into the ambulances.
Near the British Consulate, Hakan Kozan said the blast came from a white pickup truck. "I heard a slam on the brakes and 10 seconds later the explosion came," Mr. Kozan told The Associated Press. 
Gunduz Akyurek and his friend had been unloading their car nearby when the explosion came. "A car hit the wall of the building and we were about to rush to help whoever was inside, thinking that it was an accident, when we were thrown back by a huge explosion," he said. "People who were lying unconscious on the ground, and the car was upside down, partly destroyed." 
In remarks defending the Turkish police work, Mr. Erdogan highlighted the difficulty of combating terror attacks on soft targets such as consulates, which are intended to be beacons of a foreign country's culture that are located in central districts and accessible to all would-be visitors. "Terrorism does not have a specific address. We don't know when, what, where and how terrorism will hit the targets. Can you show me one country that has sorted out the terrorism problem?"
Some experts in the United States said that police work is just as important as military action in trying to combat the forces that struck hardest at America on Sept. 11, 2001. 
"You can't just win this war militarily," said Bruce Hoffman, a leading expert on terrorism and a vice president of the RAND Corporation in Washington, "Military force plays an important part, but an equally important part is intelligence sharing and law enforcement." A report that is to be issued next month by the United Nations predicts that, of necessity, Al Qaeda will turn attention to targets more accessible than warships, embassies and landmarks that were their early hallmarks. 
The lesson driven home by the recent attacks, a senior United States government official said, is that "the terrorists can attack anywhere, and the civilized world has to be ready to defend everywhere."






  


November 17, 2003



 Bush's Democracy Is Fit for Kings

 
George W. Bush is no Woodrow Wilson, let alone Winston Churchill. Yet in his speech last week at the National Endowment for Democracy, Mr. Bush said much that deserved saying. He also left out a lot that was worth saying, as American politicians almost always do when they talk about democratic values.
In urging the militaristic and hereditary regimes of the Middle East toward reform, Mr. Bush rightly mocked the notion that any nationality or ethnic group should be supposed incapable of self-government and uninterested in liberty because of its nature or history. Although too many of his supporters on the religious right are spreading just such bigoted nonsense about Arabs and Muslims, he insisted: "Islam, the faith of one-fifth of humanity, is consistent with democratic rule." He properly emphasized that many millions of Muslims live as free citizens of many democratic governments, and went on to praise the "progress" he detects in predominantly Muslim nations such as Turkey, Indonesia, Senegal, Albania, Niger and Sierra Leone. 
The most quoted line of his address departed from decades of American policy toward the oil-rich oligarchs and military rulers of the world's most strategic region. "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe," he said, "because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."
From now on, the United States will seek to encourage freedom everywhere, according to the President -- perhaps even among the petroleum states where the Bush family and its cronies have so long enjoyed the patronage of oppressive regimes. At least that is what everyone who read the speech assumed, even though the President never mentioned Saudi Arabia by name (and reserved his scourging for Syria and Iran).
Assuming that Mr. Bush meant what he said, however, a hard question arises: Aside from forcible "regime change" throughout the region, how does the President plan to encourage democracy, freedom, women's rights and all the other benefits of enlightenment in that region? Doesn't democratic reform pose a lethal threat to the royalists and other corrupt elites that have prospered from dictatorial rule? Wouldn't the Arab and Muslim peoples, freed from the feudal yoke, immediately throw off those wicked rulers and seize their ill-gotten gains?
They probably would, which leaves the President with the difficult task of persuading his autocratic friends to take such risks. Still, there are reasons to hope that he can persuade them.
As the legatee of a political dynasty founded in part on oil wealth, Mr. Bush provides a fitting role model for the men who will someday inherit the Gulf states. Of all the Western politicians of our time, he may well be the best suited to guide the Mideast autocrats toward democracy. He could point out how little change may be required for them to meet the standards that our own government has set lately.
To a dictator who expresses doubt about imitating American freedoms enshrined in habeas corpus and the Fourth Amendment, the President could mention the Patriot Act. These days, as he could explain, the President of the world's greatest democracy can order a citizen to be seized and thrown into prison indefinitely without trial or even charges. He can deny the prisoner access to family members or legal assistance for as long as he pleases, simply by applying the term "enemy combatant" to him.
To an autocrat who voices concern about the hobbling of the security services that have kept his kind in power for decades, the President could mention his administration's ongoing "reforms" of certain basic American traditions. Federal agents can now seize library records, credit-card receipts, bank statements and other personal data without review by a judge; they can monitor your telephone and computer without judicial authority, too.
To a king or prince who worries over the outcome of an election in which everyone has only a single vote, the President could point out the enormous fund-raising advantage, not unlike his own, that any of the fabulously wealth oil monarchs would certainly enjoy. And should the king or prince rudely argue that Mr. Bush actually lost the popular vote in 2000 despite spending $65 million more than his opponent, the President could simply note that he doesn't intend to let that happen again -- because he expects to outspend his opponent by $150 million or more next year.
So despite the marvelous advances in technology and development that herald worldwide liberty, the autocrats, kings and dictators can be reassured: They can mimic democracy without undue concern about their own political survival. Last week, the President told the world's authoritarians why they inevitably will someday resemble us. But it's hard not to wonder whether that is likely to happen before we begin to resemble them.







  



November 17, 2003 Monday  




 Al Qaeda Affiliate Training Indonesians On Philippine Island; 
Persistence Startles Officials in Manila

 
A regional terrorist network linked to al Qaeda has continued to train its militants in the southern Philippines, aided by local Muslim separatists, police and intelligence sources said.  
The militants, all Indonesians, are training at a camp established three years ago and now operating under the protection of rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, according to intelligence sources and a summary of the interrogation of Taufiq Rifqi, an Indonesian militant who was captured here last month. 
Rifqi's testimony startled Philippine officials, who assumed they had deprived al Qaeda's Southeast Asian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiah, of its primary training ground three years ago when government soldiers overran its base. It also raises the stakes for peace talks aimed at ending the 31-year insurgency on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Diplomatic and security sources said a peace deal could close Mindanao as a vital center for the training and transit of foreign terrorists -- what a Western official in Manila called "a kind of Afghanistan east."  
Within three weeks of Rifqi's arrest, police backed by military forces raided two safe houses that contained handwritten notes in Indonesian on making biological weapons, diagrams of amateur rockets, components for jury-rigging explosives and other documents and bomb-making materials. 
 The capture of Rifqi, who security officials said was Jemaah Islamiah's treasurer and logistics chief in the Philippines and arrived in Mindanao in 1998, was a wake-up call for the government, which had been "in denial about the existence of Jemaah Islamiah in Mindanao," a Philippine intelligence official said. 
 "We are open in saying that the Jemaah Islamiah is a major threat," Defense Secretary Eduardo R. Ermita said in an interview. "We know the Philippines is a good target for their activities." 
 Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Asian and Western intelligence officials have unearthed extensive details about the operations of al Qaeda's Southeast Asian affiliate. Under interrogation, suspects have described a geographic division of labor in which Indonesia serves as the primary theater for attacks -- two nightclubs on the resort island of Bali were bombed a year ago and the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, the capital, was hit in August. The Philippines was designated as the main training ground. 
 Until 1995, Southeast Asian terrorists were training in Muslim mujaheddin camps in Afghanistan, but Jemaah Islamiah's leaders decided to seek a location closer to home. Hundreds of militants, mainly Indonesians, slipped into the Philippines by fishing boat and other vessels through unregulated borders and trained at the main Moro Islamic Liberation Front camp. That site was destroyed by government troops during an offensive in mid-2000. 
What officials did not know was that a new camp -- Jabal Qubah -- was set up almost immediately. Rifqi told interrogators that groups of 15 to 20 Indonesians have been attending 18-month training courses at the new site on the forested slopes of Mount Cararao in Maguindanao province, according to the interrogation summary and intelligence officials. There, in a few huts, Indonesian instructors have been teaching Indonesian recruits how to build bombs, fire weapons and read maps. Physical training and religious studies are part of the program. 
 The camp, several hours' walking distance from a Philippine rebel base, has operated under the protection of a rebel commander, identified by an intelligence official as Gordon Syaifullah. The training weapons were provided by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front forces, according to the interrogation. Jemaah Islamiah members in Indonesia financed the camp by transferring money through ATMs. 
 Including the instructors, about 30 militants -- all Indonesians -- have been training at the site, Rifqi told investigators. 
 "Our intelligence tells us because they know the military is on their trail, some may have left," said Ermita, the defense secretary. He added that about 20 Indonesian militants from several locations had fled the country in recent weeks, leaving about 30. Indonesian police agree that militants who trained in the Philippines have been returning to Indonesia. 
 Although security officials said they had learned of no specific attack planned for the Philippines, they  were worried about the prospect of a bombing in the period from the current month of Ramadan through Christmas and New Year's. In December 2000, 22 people died in Manila in a series of blasts that police later attributed to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Jemaah Islamiah. Rifqi coordinated logistics for those attacks, a senior police official said. 
 Military commanders in Mindanao are planning a strike against the camp, security officials said. But senior Philippine officials, concerned that this could disrupt a four-month-old cease-fire with the rebels and undermine peace talks, have yet to approve the operation. Any offensive "should be surgical and not shotgun. There's something very important to protect here. That's the peace process," said a Philippine military official. 
Rebel leaders deny that their forces are providing sanctuary to Jemaah Islamiah militants. 
 "These foreign terrorists are like worms and nobody likes to be infected by worms. We have nothing to do with it," Ghazali Jaafar, vice chairman for political affairs for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, said in an interview here. He added, "How can we control every inch of land in Mindanao?" 
 More to the point, Philippine and Western officials say, is that the Front's leadership cannot control all its local commanders, some of whom maintain ties with Indonesian militants. The Front's chairman, Al Haj Murad, is struggling to consolidate his authority after replacing Hashim Salamat, who died after a heart attack in July, Philippine and Western officials said. 
 In fact, Murad had ordered his followers to evict all Jemaah Islamiah militants from the training camp, a Philippine intelligence official said. But Murad lacks the organizational and religious standing of Salamat, who was an Islamic scholar trained in Egypt, officials said. 
 Ermita, the defense secretary, said of the report that the rebels had disassociated themselves from the terrorists: "We take that with a grain of salt. It seems the local commander doesn't believe in negotiations and doesn't necessarily follow orders from Haji Murad." 
 Security officials point to mixed signals being sent by the rebels. They said a commander in Lanao del Sur province in Mindanao gave sanctuary to the fugitive Jemaah Islamiah bomb-making expert Fathur Rahman Ghozi after he escaped from a Manila prison in July. But security officials said that rebel sources also provided information to the government about Ghozi's whereabouts before he was tracked down and shot dead by security forces in Mindanao last month. 
 A Philippine intelligence official also confirmed that Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, Jemaah Islamiah's operations chief arrested in Thailand in August, told his U.S. interrogators that he had sent money to a Moro Islamic Liberation Front contact a month earlier for an attack in the Philippines. But the intelligence official warned that Hambali might have been lying. 
 Ermita said the Philippine government was preparing to provide rebel leaders with a list of criminals and Indonesian terrorists believed to be in areas under their control. Under an agreement last year, the Front is required to "neutralize, interdict and isolate" so-called lawless elements. 
 Negotiators from both sides are awaiting a final round of exploratory discussions in Malaysia that would set the date and agenda for formal peace talks. Philippine officials would like to secure an agreement before presidential elections in May. As an incentive, the U.S. government has promised development aid for Mindanao if the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has disavowed terrorism, also ends its armed insurgency. 
About 300 U.S. troops are in the southern Philippines training local forces in counterterrorism. The United States proposed earlier this year to send 3,000  troops to the area to help eliminate the Abu Sayyaf, a smaller Muslim militant group designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. But that plan stalled after opponents said it violated a constitutional ban on foreign combat troops on Philippine soil. 









November 16, 2003 Sunday  
  



 Everybody Hates Somebody Somewhere 

 
     TERROR IN THE NAME
OF GOD
Why Religious Militants Kill.
By Jessica Stern.
368 pp. New York:
Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. $27.95.
 SHORTLY after the 9/11 attacks, I was invited to dinner by a middle-class professional family in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. It was an educated household and I was warmly entertained. It was the kind of home in which I expected to encounter a shared perspective, but I was wrong: my host was convinced that 9/11 was a conspiracy between the Jews and the Pentagon to give a pretext for attacking the Muslim world, and shared at length his suspicion that Freemasons had pulled the West's strings for a millennium. None of that family, as far as I knew, supported acts of terror. But mistrust of the Other and a sense of persecution -- preconditions common to all the terrorists that Jessica Stern encounters -- are worryingly widespread.
In "Terror in the Name of God," Stern recounts her four-year odyssey into the hearts and minds of religious terrorists. She talks to Christian, Jewish and Muslim extremists, violent anti-abortion warriors and admirers of Timothy McVeigh, and discovers how much they have in common. Nothing she finds leads the reader to suppose that any of the religious faiths is inherently more prone to violence than the other: the problem is not the words on the page, but how they are read. 
A rough social template can be extrapolated from Stern's account: the leaders of such groups tend to have much younger, attractive and submissive wives who support their views; long hair, robes, veils and conspicuous deference are popular in all three faiths. The leaders tend to live in comfortable houses and enjoy the trappings of their power: large cars, acolytes and bodyguards. They talk in generalities about the justice of their cause and the Almighty's firm support. Those who serve as cannon fodder, on the other hand, are likely to be young, vulnerable, socially disadvantaged and poorly educated, and to have a sense of personal or collective humiliation. Violence for the cause gives them a feeling of purpose, dignity and the transcendent experience of serving, and perhaps dying for, ideals that they regard as pure. With faith, the weak become strong, the selfish become altruistic, and rage turns to conviction. 
If some of this sounds predictable, it is not to diminish the interest of Stern's account. A leading expert on terrorism and a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, she has tracked down and interviewed an impressive range of activists in a variety of causes from Florida to Kashmir. On a subject that tends to be richer in rhetoric than in detail, a writer able and willing to get this close is hard to find. 
These are not always profoundly penetrating encounters: there is an implicit bargain -- which Stern readily acknowledges -- that if you are allowed across the threshold it is because your interlocutor has an agenda that he imagines will be furthered. Terrorists need people to notice what they do and, for reasons of fund-raising and recruitment, want to convince a wider circle that the cause is just. Perhaps Stern's critics would deem this a reason to stay away, but they would be wrong. She is a levelheaded investigator whose knowledge of the background of groups like these adds perspective to her interviews. 
A feeling of complete certainty, let alone absolute purity, is hard to come by in the examined life. To foster the conviction that God supports the murder of innocents requires a tightknit group and a settled hatred of the Other: in these circles, whites hate blacks and Jews; Jews and Christians hate Muslims and vice versa; anti-abortion crusaders hate gynecologists. All of them seem to have it in for homosexuals and most, even the Americans, hate contemporary America. Tolerance and women's rights, as Stern observes, are irritating to those left behind by modernity.
Consider this passage, part of a conversation with one religious extremist: American culture, he tells her, "is absolutely destroyed by Afro-Americanism. The lowest of the low." And: "America is also causing terrible damage . . . by exporting its culture. American culture should be treated the same as we treat drugs . . . as a poison. . . . In America, people have no education, no religion. They play with computers, television, pop music. These people have no values to fight for."
Is it a Muslim, raging at the evils of Osama's Great Satan? Is it a Christian in the United States, plotting to blow up another Federal building? It is, in fact, Avigdor Eskin, a millenarian Jew who believes, rather against the evidence, that the United States is conspiring to destroy Israel. To meet him, Stern, who is careful to share this kind of detail, dressed in a long skirt, long sleeves and a scarf that covered her hair, neck and shoulders completely -- an outfit that would have been equally de rigueur for a meeting with a strict Muslim. And as Eskin himself volunteers, they resemble each other in more than their dress code: "Here in Israel, we don't like to say this very loudly, but the radical right Jewish groups have a lot in common with Hamas." Both, Stern adds, have twin political and religious objectives and both use selective readings of religious texts and of history to justify violence over territory.
If to the outsider the manners are similar, each group believes itself to be uniquely favored by the Almighty, and each individual follows his own trajectory. A Palestinian suicide bomber might be suffering from what Stern describes as the epidemic of despair that afflicts his people. An American Identity Christian who was sickly as a child still burns with the humiliation of being made to join a girls' gym class at school. A young madrassah student in Pakistan says that the day he came to the religious school was the first time in his life he had enough food to eat or clothes to wear; two of his fellow pupils tell her that education and wealth are the two greatest threats to their cause. 
The argument is often a fight about land and resources expressed through the powerful ideologies of identity. Some groups -- the mujaheddin who fought in Afghanistan or the Muslim warriors in Indonesia -- were created by state security services but have now escaped from control. Most enjoy ample funds and money has become, for many, a reason for continuing the war. 
In between her interviews, Stern offers a cogent analysis of methodologies and structures: she distinguishes between lone-wolf avengers and organizations with hierarchies of command, between networks, franchises and freelancers, between inspirational leaders and leaderless resistance. She lays out the impact of the post-9/11 war on terror on organizations like Al Qaeda and confirmed my suspicion that both the rhetoric and the reality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have boosted their numbers without crippling their capacity to harm. To fight today's terrorism with an army is like trying to shoot a cloud of mosquitoes with a machine gun.
The hard part, of course, is what to do instead. Stern describes how winner-take-all globalization provokes powerful resentment in a wide range of communities. Failed states, weak or tyrannical governments, social deprivation, arbitrary use of power and a perception of injustice -- all help generate recruits. The Internet and the easy availability of weapons helps empower the discontented. On an individual level, though, why one true believer in search of a transcendent experience should become a saint and another a terrorist seems to be chance: it can come down to the wrong company at the vulnerable moment. On a global scale, Stern ventures some general policy advice, without claiming to offer a solution. As a description of the problem, though, this is a serious and provocative beginning. 







  



November 16, 2003 Sunday  




 Bush Policy or Bush Philosophy . . .

 
 The advance e-mail notice to reporters from the White House said that President Bush's Nov. 6 speech proclaiming a "forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East" would "rank among the most important foreign policy speeches the president will deliver in his first term." The e-mail called the speech "a fundamental break with a half-century of American foreign policy."  
Given that buildup, it's fair to ask: Has anything changed? Articulating a philosophy is one thing; making policy is another.  
Bush's rousing speech, with its neo-Wilsonian flourishes, struck many of the notes Americans find inspirational. Complaining that for 60 years Western nations have made excuses for the lack of freedom in the Middle East, Bush vowed a new policy because "stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." Casting his lot with the neoconservatives in his administration, he asserted that the peoples of the Middle East can and will have their rendezvous with history.   
Yet to succeed, Bush's vision must be backed by more than a near religious belief in the universality of democracy and in what he termed America's "calling" to bring it about. After all, it was just such faith that led the White House to minimize the obstacles to democracy in Iraq. Having set our sights beyond Iraq's borders, the Bush administration must translate a philosophy into a long-term regional strategy suited to the complexities of Arab politics. He must find a way to promote democratic institutions there, not just assert his faith in them from here.  
In doing so, however, Bush may be hindered by the Cold War framework he used to describe the task of bringing democracy to the Middle East. While Bush acknowledged differences among countries of the Arab world, he still compared U.S. efforts to promote democracy there to America's efforts to promote freedom in Eastern Europe and likened his speech to President Reagan's June 1982 declaration that Soviet communism had failed.  
Yet it is a mistake to assume that Soviet-style totalitarianism is common to the Middle East, or that, as Bush put it in his speech, the peoples of the region live in "despotism," bereft of all "freedom" and "liberty." The word "despotism" is misleading. Most autocrats in the Arab world sustain themselves through an absence of total state control and the presence of state-managed political competition. And those regimes have proven more durable than outsiders expected. From Morocco to Jordan, "liberal autocracies" give the press, professional associations and legislatures measures of freedom -- so long as they do not assail the right of the king or president to wield ultimate power. In these multi-dimensional systems, what appears to be an element of democracy is mostly a safety valve. Arab democrats constantly probe but rarely violate the ambiguous boundaries of dissent. They know that the secret of liberal autocracies is this: While they provide a relative freedom of speech, they do not guarantee freedom after speech.  
Many opposition leaders have tolerated such limitations because they fear, as much as the autocrats themselves, that a move to full democracy might invite instability. This fear is often warranted. While liberalized autocracies are not good at economic development and do not truly respect democratic institutions, they do allow for the relatively peaceful coexistence of mainstream secular, ethnic and Islamist groups under the state's watchful eye.  
But such coexistence is illusory and unstable. Because the Islamists control the mosques, they possess a huge organizational advantage over secularists and are best able to take advantage of limited political openings, which often end in conflict between regimes and opposition groups. The result is a cycle of liberalization and crackdown that makes it hard for the most genuine of reformist rulers to risk real democratization.  
How can the administration help Arab reformers escape the trap of liberalized autocracy? Two camps are vying to answer this question. Neoconservatives favor a policy of shaking up the region in the hope that a shock to the system will empower democratic forces. Neo-realists favor a decidedly less optimistic policy of incremental change, a strategy in keeping with years of American efforts to promote democracy in the Arab world.  
Although Bush's heart is certainly with the first camp, a close reading of his Nov. 6 speech reveals that his head may be partly with the second. On the one hand, he insisted that "liberty is the direction of history" and that Islam is not a barrier to the universal longing for democracy. On the other hand, he added the familiar loophole in American Middle East policy, namely that "working democracies always need time to develop. . . . We've taken a 200-year journey toward inclusion and justice, and this makes us patient . . . as other nations are at different stages of this journey." 
This second formulation soothes our allies in Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait and Yemen. The leaders of these countries constantly remind us that they are in a marhalla intiqaliyya, a "transitional phase" that must proceed at a rate consonant with local cultural and religious traditions. When Bush echoes this premise, he repeats one of the central rationales for a decade of incrementalist American democracy aid programs, all of which have emphasized small reforms over regime transformation, much less regime overthrow.  
Such caution is born of an unwillingness to antagonize the very Arab leaders whose support in the "war against terrorism" the administration seeks. It also reflects anxiety about the growing influence of illiberal Islamists who are waiting to hijack liberal reforms. The result is predictable: Take a close look at the State Department's "Middle East Partnership Initiative" (MEPI) and you will find a long-standing emphasis on the usual liberalization formula: economic reform, promotion of women's rights and the building of civil society. These piecemeal reform programs are designed not to tinker with the fundamental ruling institutions.  
If Bush is serious, his administration will have to break with these policies and address the heart of the problem: the institutions and ideologies of Arab states. This can't be done by simply denouncing them or ousting them or waiting for them to collapse of their own weight. Instead, it means pushing rulers to embrace the kind of constitutional reforms recently enacted in Indonesia -- the world's largest Muslim country -- that have created legislatures with the authority and power to speak for elected majorities. No such legislatures actually exist in the Arab world, where almost every constitution manages by hook or crook to give ultimate power to non-elected executives, be they presidents or kings. 
The most telling aspect of Bush's speech, and of the policies being pursued by State's MEPI, is the absence of any discussion of fundamental constitutional reforms. The administration would like to have its cake and eat it, too, by bringing about sudden regime change in Iraq and deploying the rhetoric of sweeping change for the region, while adhering to a gradualist policy elsewhere that reassures our Arab friends that we will not push them too hard. The administration explains this approach by offering the hope that success in Iraq will inspire Arab leaders to alter their ways. But even if we are lucky enough to prevail in Iraq, unless we encourage Arab rulers to transform their own ruling institutions our policies are likely to foster only resentment, not democratization.  
Author's e-mail: dbrumberg@ceip.org 
</body>Daniel Brumberg is an associate professor in the department of government at Georgetown University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 







  November 15, 2003 Saturday  
  



 BOOKS OF THE TIMES; 
Understanding Indonesia, By Its Leaders and Its Gossip

 
INDONESIAN DESTINIES
By Theodore Friend
Illustrated. 628 pages. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. $35.
     Midway through Theodore Friend's compelling "Indonesian Destinies," the reader comes across the essential kernel needed by any outsider to understand the complexities of the history and society that underlie Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. Mr. Friend wisely chooses to devote a fat paragraph to the words of a retired Roman Catholic priest, architectural planner, writer and social activist, Romo Mangun. 
 The writer tells Mr. Friend that the ancient, class-ridden culture of Java, the politically dominant and most densely populated island of the Indonesian archipelago, underpins all that happens and doesn't happen in Indonesia. This is what Romo Mangun says:
"Javanese culture is like a tapeworm. It is very unlike the tooth and claw of the Russian bear, or the Chinese dragon, or the lion of the Netherlands and the U.K., or the beak and talon of the American eagle. It is 'aesthetic' and silent; it is polite (no commotion); it is insinuating. It weakens without turmoil and it is ultimately deadly. Javanese culture, like the tapeworm, cannot be yanked out or cut out. It will require strong and repeated doses of medicine to 'free it out.' "
This description seems to explain a great deal about why Indonesia, despite its vast natural resources, has not modernized in the fashion of some of its Southeast Asian neighbors and still languishes as a corrupt and undereducated nation that since the fall of its founder, Sukarno, has chosen to play beneath its weight on the world stage.
But even before the reader hits this basic insight, Mr. Friend, a former president of Swarthmore College and clearly a devotee of Indonesia, goes a long way in helping a newcomer understand a place we should know more about but don't. Mr. Friend succeeds in part because he has concentrated on the postcolonial era, after the Dutch left Indonesia, rather than attempting the broad sweep from the Buddhists in the eighth century, the Hindus a little later, followed by the coming of Islam.
Mr. Friend also succeeds in making Indonesia comprehensible because he uses a wealth of contemporary Indonesian contacts to paint a lively historical, sociological, anthropological and at times gossipy portrait of the country. As he moves from the Sukarno period immediately after independence through the three-decade-long rule of the authoritarian General Suharto to the messy aftermath of his downfall, Mr. Friend quotes politicians, army generals, teachers and ordinary street people as if he has known them for years.
To show how close he was to the major players, Mr. Friend describes visiting Abdurrahman Wahid in 1998 in the hospital after he had had a stroke and was lying in a "fetal position, wearing unmatched pajama top and bottom, both too short for even his small frame." At the time Mr. Abdurrahman was the leader of the world's largest Muslim organization and was soon to become Indonesia's president.
The strongest section of Mr. Friend's narrative is devoted to the 1998 downfall of Suharto. He demonstrates how the student demonstrations were critical but not decisive in the way "people power" had been in the undoing of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in 1986, or of the leaders in East Germany in 1989.
In Indonesia, he writes, there was a combination of factors that gave Suharto the final push: "The I.M.F. as the voice of international bankers, the students as the pulse of middle-class and national conscience, the mob as the raised fist of the suppressed, his own collaborators as greedy-handed opportunists: all opposed him." Suharto chose to resign, gave a brief speech and was chauffeured home to a well-guarded residence in the heart of Jakarta, where he remains hidden and silent to this day.
In building the scenario leading to Suharto's end, Mr. Friend dwells with some passion on the runaway corruption among the Indonesian elite and the failure of the World Bank and other international agencies to do much about it. He points out that the "irresponsible plantation operators" allowed forest acreage the size of "seven or eight Vermonts" to burn. These losses amounted to $4.5 billion, or more, he says, than the legal damages assessed in the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and in the chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, combined. But for the most part, the international organizations looked the other way. The World Bank assessed its own performance in Indonesia as "marginally satisfactory" in the 1990's. More accurate, Mr. Friend writes, would be "sharply disappointing."
Mr. Friend brings his account up to the present. He ruminates on the role of some factions in the army in promoting radical Islamic groups, and he laments the fallout of the Bali terrorist attack last year. He describes the current president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, as an "unbudgeable matron," a reflection on her physical size and lack of intellectual curiosity. He knowingly quotes a State Department official, saying of Ms. Megawati, "She is limited."
For those who know little about Indonesia and for those who know much, this is a captivating rendition. It helps that Mr. Friend can write. He calls the nouveau riche homes built by the Jakarta elite castle-compounds. He says tables in a receiving room in the palace of the Sultan of Yogyakarta, where he met the sultan, were overloaded with trinkets from abroad. He calls it "high-bourgeois appetite for world tourism; low-bourgeois taste for eclectic display."
Some readers may regret the lack of discourse on Islam in Indonesia. But with so much around on that subject, both informed and not so informed, its absence in "Indonesian Destinies" is almost refreshing. It may also turn out that in the end, as Mr. Friend hints, Javanese culture will continue to be the defining theme for Indonesia's future.







  



November 9, 2003 Sunday  




 Back to Bali; 
Tourists Return After a Tough Year

 
"You wait, okay?" A Balinese schoolgirl wearing a purple lace blouse approaches and touches my arm. "The ceremony starts." Her three teenage friends giggle at her overtures to my friend Bill and me, but her timing is superb: After watching a scattered crowd of Hindus make ceremonial preparations at a jungle temple in Manuaba, a small village in the hills near the town of Ubud, Bali, we were about to pedal away on our rented bicycles. 
But we wait. A melodic, percussive beat resembling a mix of Andean flute music and a Grateful Dead drum solo rises from the open-air temple, which sprawls inside mossy walls. From the road we see the meru -- the tiered-roof shrines made of black thatch from sugar palms, which the Balinese use only in temples. Some villagers peer over the walls, while others play the drums, gongs, xylophones, metallophones and other percussion instruments that produce the music Indonesians call gamelan. 
The girls, all wearing purple tops and richly colored sarongs, stand patiently on the roadside. The women climb a steep set of stairs near the back of the temple carrying offerings of woven palm fronds, flowers and food. A few late-arriving men pull up on motorbikes, the predominant vehicle in Bali, dressed in loose white shirts and sarongs. Many wear white headdresses; others have colorful scarves tied around their foreheads.  
It has been just over a year since Bali's paradisiacal aura was shattered by three car bombs that leveled two nightclubs and killed 202 people, mostly Australian tourists. The effects of those bombs -- and of the Aug. 5 bombing of the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, on the island of Java -- are still apparent on Bali: Tourism dropped to almost nil after last October's attack, saw a tepid resurgence in the summer and again ebbed after the Jakarta blast.  
But Bali lovers are a resilient bunch, and tourism is returning to the island. Travel agents report steady bookings to Bali, with interest increasing with each terrorism-free week, and online travel bulletin boards report significant activity in the popular tourist areas of Kuta and Ubud. This is occurring despite a sobering summary from the U.S. State Department: "Indonesia is experiencing an ongoing terrorist threat. The potential remains throughout Indonesia for violence and terrorist actions against U.S. citizens and interests." In an Aug. 28 travel warning, the department advises U.S. citizens to "defer all nonessential travel to Indonesia."  But to address Indonesia as a cohesive country is misleading. The serious trouble spots -- Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, where the government has imposed martial law due to fighting with rebels, and the northern islands near the Philippines, where the Aby Sayyaf terrorist group roams -- are far from the placid shores of Bali.  
Even the undercurrent of anti-Western sentiment in Jakarta is distant from Bali, largely because Bali is almost exclusively Hindu while the rest of Indonesia is Muslim. At the core of the Hindu faith is a disarming conviviality and a trust in the peaceful stewardship of the spirits. Of course, not all Muslims are anti-Western, and most are not extremist. But some are, and that goes a long way toward explaining the State Department's stance on Indonesia.  
We arrive on the 87-by-50-mile island and head immediately to the five-star Le Meridien hotel, near the Tanah Lot temple on Bali's south coast. I am not typically a five-star kind of guy, but the package bargain I found included the Le Meridien for about the price of a Comfort Inn in Gaithersburg. The drive takes us through Denpasar, Bali's teeming capital, where drivers, motorbikers, bicyclists and pedestrians weave through clouds of exhaust smoke and blocks of one- and two-story shops, offices and markets. 
The mayhem in Denpasar is the closest thing on Bali to a real city, and we are happy to leave it behind. The road to Le Meridien winds through terraced rice paddies and past street-front stores and modest homes. Outside Denpasar the countryside opens up a bit, but Bali is well-populated and the residents have tilled much of the island's land into rice paddies and used the rest for homes, temples and tourist-targeting businesses.  
 Bill and I have no set plan, but we know we didn't fly halfway around the world to sit at a resort. We've heard that the hills and markets of Ubud are beguiling, so we take a 45-minute taxi ride to a bike rental shop on the edge of Ubud, and 30 minutes later find ourselves as the only foreigners amid a sea of locals. 
 Villagers of all ages begin streaming from the temple's ornately sculpted stone entranceway, among them the gamelan players who maintain the hollow beat while walking. In the middle of the crowd, participants carry a red cloth and gold-plate rendition of what looks like a dragon; other marchers carry tall, tasseled umbrellas. Women balance baskets of fruit on their heads.  
 We ask a man if we can walk with them. 
"Yeah, okay, come," he says in English. The Balinese hold hundreds of ceremonies yearly to summon the gods from the mountains for events ranging from planting crops and building homes to sending off the dead. That two foreigners want to crash this ritual -- and we never learn its purpose -- seems to bother no one. Throughout our week on the island, we will pass at least 20 ceremonies ranging from small prayer sessions to rousing cremations, with burning pyres mere feet from the road. 
We fall in near the rear of the group. Some of the men hold hands, and even the smallest children don't seem to mind the trudge. The procession snakes through the verdant, hilly countryside. Palm trees and other flora line the terraced rice paddies. Cone-hatted rice farmers, standing knee-deep in the muddy paddies, regard the ceremonial march languidly.  
The welcome Bill and I feel during the walk is typical of our weeklong stay on Bali. Our car rental agent delivered the vehicle to our hotel, a 50-minute round-trip drive for him, at no extra charge. Two older women we encountered on a bemo -- a public transit minibus -- tried in vain to break the language barrier to advise us about local travel. The guys who rented us boogie boards cut us a break when we stayed out on the reef an extra two hours. 
It's all part of the Balinese belief in karma phala, that one's behavior toward others dictates the treatment one receives. Karma, which can sound flaky when espoused by a hippie in the United States., is a serious guiding principle in Bali. 
It was perhaps for this reason -- there is no other plausible explanation -- that we decided to rent a car in a country where the steering wheel is on the right, driving is on the left and the traffic makes the Beltway at rush hour look like a lonely country lane. 
In the worst spots, and there were many, motorbikes carrying up to five passengers or an absurd volume of cargo swerved chaotically among cars, trucks and bicycles, all of which came a hair's breadth from tragedy before slowing or veering away. 
Yet not once during the entire week did we see one argument, middle finger or indignant glare. Often, when I was the offender in a near-death blind pass -- a moment that would trigger a profane outburst from, say, the Pope -- I would guiltily glance toward the other driver, prepared to pull over and apologize, only to find him grinning at me, delighted at the serendipity of the road spirits. 
The Oct. 12, 2002, bombings on Jalan Legian, the busiest street in Kuta, Bali's busiest tourist district, stopped tourism cold. 
 "In February, you could sit here and literally count the cars passing by," says Rick Lamirande from a table in a street-front bar on Jalan Legian, just a few hundred feet from the bomb site. Before us, a steady stream of cars and motorbikes file past. Rick and his wife, Ruth, from Houston, are on their 11th visit to Bali in the past seven years. "I feel completely safe here," Ruth says. "I wouldn't think of vacationing anywhere else." 
The strip looks less like a South Seas daydream than a scene from Cancun, minus Mexico's high-rise hotels: An interminable string of bars, shops and street vendors offers everything from cheap massages and tattoos to $1 watches and rental motorbikes. Jalan Legian parallels the beach a few hundred yards inland, and the space between the avenue and the shore is a labyrinthine carnival of color and chattering hawkers that appears busy enough at first glance. But the mostly empty bars and desperation in the peddlers' voices tell a different tale. 
The beaches and streets of Kuta, Legian and Seminyak in the south -- about a 30-minute drive from our hotel -- were the only places we encountered appreciable crowds of tourists, mostly Australian, British, Japanese and Taiwanese. Most had come to surf or decompress on the  wide beaches. 
We find time for both. Twice I pay about $2.50 for a ride in an outrigger, piloted by a sun-charred Balinese man in a thatch cone hat, to the reefs off of Kuta. Hauling myself over the gunwale as the lone passenger, I ask my driver if he speaks English. "Yes," he says. Excellent, I think, because the surf looks treacherous from shore and I want some guidance. 
"Which of these reefs is best for body-boarding?" I ask. 
"Yes," he says. 
Five minutes later he slows the boat to the leeward side of one reef. We are floating on an indigo plane; behind us, Kuta's crescent beach stretches up the coast, smattered with tourists and peddlers. Beyond that, faintly visible through the humidity, rise the green hills of central Bali and Ubud.  
"Where should I go in?" I ask, waving my hand alternately toward a few nearby breaks. 
"Yes," he answers. 
Ah, well. Just as I am dropping over the side, he recalls one of his few English phrases and, gesturing toward the horizon, exclaims, "Set coming! Set coming!" 
I spend the next 90 minutes riding the biggest, most consistent and well-formed waves of my life. The waves range from about eight to 15 feet and peel powerfully across the coral. Numerous times I find myself completely enveloped in a tube, bracing for the beating of a closeout wave, only to reemerge into sunlight, coasting above the colorful reef visible through the crystal water beneath me. 
Eager to get a little closer to the reef life, we desert our hotel for two days and drive to Bali's east coast, where the scuba diving is renowned. 
 "Relax, we will dive today," says Wolfram "Sigi" Siegmeth, moments after we pull into the Tauch Terminal dive resort in the east coast town of Tulamben. The resort sits like an oasis at the end of a dusty gravel road, with white canvas umbrellas and a thatch-roofed massage bed adjacent to a swimming pool, all overlooking the tranquil Bali Sea. A canopied dining deck is next to the dive shop.  
There is something disorienting about a German guy telling me to relax, but Sigi, the robust, balding resort manager, has a case. Bill and I are strung out after four hours of driving on sporadically marked roads. We had pulled off the main road at 4:30 p.m. and jumped out of the car, inquiring immediately if we could dive the wreck of the American Liberty cargo ship, which rests 150 feet offshore from the resort. 
Sigi sets us at one of the waterfront tables and saunters off to find a guide. He has good reason to want us happy: Though a few Dutch and German guests mill around the pool, the hotel is far less full than it would be in a typical July, one of Bali's high seasons. 
The ship was torpedoed -- but not sunk -- by the Japanese in 1942. The U.S. military towed the vessel to shore, offloaded the cargo and abandoned the craft. A massive eruption in 1963 of "Mother Mountain," the 9,888-foot Gunung Agung volcano, killed more than 1,000 people and shook the ship off the shelf where it sat. The 300-foot-long boat, now coral-encrusted and teeming with fish, rests on its side in water ranging from 15 to about 100 feet. It is among Bali's most popular dives. 
We walk down a narrow, black-stone beach followed by a wiry Balinese woman in flip-flops, who carries our scuba tanks on her head. Our Hungarian guide, Misa, explains that the dive resorts "pay the villagers here not to fish the reefs, but then other villages come and fish it." At least, Misa says, the locals have stopped bomb-fishing -- dropping explosives into the reef -- and harvesting coral to make cement, a practice that greatly accelerated beach erosion down the coast in the town of Candidasa in the 1980s. The resorts also pay village women and children to carry the scuba tanks to steer them away from more destructive wage earning. 
 But we see little evidence of ruin underwater. Clouds of fish ply the ship: bright yellow cornet fish, vibrant queen angelfish, a huge school of jacks and a small black tip reef shark. Most interesting are the species I haven't seen in my limited diving career, including nudibranchs, flatworms and odd fish like the Oriental sweetlip. 
 The next morning we leave Tulamben shadowed by the hulking mass of Gunung Agung. Somewhere up there, the gods are keeping a close eye on the karma ledger. They have much accounting to do. Whether Bali will emerge from uncertain times as a place of peace, war or fear is uncertain. Driving down the coast on a breezy day, all I see are clear skies, blue waters and the smiles of a people who are holding firm to a welcoming way of life.  
John Briley last wrote for Travel about skiing in Chile. 






  
   


November 7, 2003 Friday



 Bush's 'Age Of Liberty'

 
The roots of our democracy can be traced to England, and to its Parliament -- and so can the roots of this organization (the National Endowment for Democracy). In June of 1982, President Ronald Reagan spoke at Westminster Palace and declared the turning point had arrived in history. He argued that Soviet communism had failed, precisely because it did not respect its own people -- their creativity, their genius and their rights.
President Reagan said that the day of Soviet tyranny was passing, that freedom had a momentum which would not be halted.
He gave this organization its mandate: to add to the momentum of freedom across the world. Your mandate was important 20 years ago; it is equally important today. 
Freedom Grows
Historians will note that in many nations, the advance of markets and free enterprise helped to create a middle class that was confident enough to demand their own rights. They will point to the role of technology in frustrating censorship and central control -- and marvel at the power of instant communications to spread the truth, the news and courage across borders.
Historians in the future will reflect on an extraordinary, undeniable fact: Over time, free nations grow stronger and dictatorships grow weaker. In the middle of the 20th century, some imagined that the central planning and social regimentation were a shortcut to national strength. In fact, the prosperity and social vitality and technological progress of a people are directly determined by extent of their liberty. Freedom honors and unleashes human creativity -- and creativity determines the strength and wealth of nations. Liberty is both the plan of Heaven for humanity, and the best hope for progress here on Earth.
The progress of liberty is a powerful trend. Yet we also know that liberty, if not defended, can be lost. The success of freedom is not determined by some dialectic of history. By definition, the success of freedom rests upon the choices and the courage of free peoples, and upon their willingness to sacrifice.
Never To Be Free?
Our commitment to democracy is also tested in the Middle East, which is my focus today, and must be a focus of American policy for decades to come. In many nations of the Middle East -- countries of great strategic importance -- democracy has not yet taken root. And the questions arise: Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom, and never even to have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it. I believe every person has the ability and the right to be free.
Some skeptics of democracy assert that the traditions of Islam are inhospitable to the representative government. This "cultural condescension," as Ronald Reagan termed it, has a long history. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, a so-called Japan expert asserted that democracy in that former empire would "never work." Another observer declared the prospects for democracy in post-Hitler Germany are . . . "most uncertain at best" -- he made that claim in 1957.
Seventy-four years ago, The Sunday London Times declared nine-tenths of the population of India to be "illiterates not caring a fig for politics." Yet when Indian democracy was imperiled in the 1970s, the Indian people showed their commitment to liberty in a national referendum that saved their form of government.
Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country or that people or this group are "ready" for democracy -- as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress. In fact, the daily work of democracy itself is the path of progress. It teaches cooperation, the free exchange of ideas and the peaceful resolution of differences. As men and women are showing, from Bangladesh to Botswana to Mongolia, it is the practice of democracy that makes a nation ready for democracy, and every nation can start on this path.
It should be clear to all that Islam -- the faith of one-fifth of humanity -- is consistent with democratic rule. Democratic progress is found in many predominantly Muslim countries -- in Turkey and Indonesia, and Senegal and Albania, Niger and Sierra Leone. Muslim men and women are good citizens of India and South Africa, of the nations of Western Europe, and of the United States of America.
More than half of all the Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically constituted governments. They succeed in democratic societies, not in spite of their faith, but because of it. A religion that demands individual moral accountability, and encourages the encounter of the individual with God, is fully compatible with the rights and responsibilities of self-government.
Yet there's a great challenge today in the Middle East. In the words of a recent report by Arab scholars, the global wave of democracy has -- and I quote -- "barely reached the Arab states." They continue: "This freedom deficit undermines human development and is one of the most painful manifestations of lagging political development."
The freedom deficit they describe has terrible consequences, of the people of the Middle East and for the world. In many Middle Eastern countries, poverty is deep and it is spreading, women lack rights and are denied schooling. Whole societies remain stagnant while the world moves ahead. These are not the failures of a culture or a religion. These are the failures of political and economic doctrines.
Soviet Alliances
As the colonial era passed away, the Middle East saw the establishment of many military dictatorships. Some rulers adopted the dogmas of socialism, seized total control of political parties and the media and universities. They allied themselves with the Soviet bloc and with international terrorism. Dictators in Iraq and Syria promised the restoration of national honor, a return to ancient glories. They've left instead a legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin.
Other men, and groups of men, have gained influence in the Middle East and beyond through an ideology of theocratic terror. Behind their language of religion is the ambition for absolute political power. Ruling cabals like the Taliban show their version of religious piety in public whippings of women, ruthless suppression of any difference or dissent, and support for terrorists who arm and train to murder the innocent. The Taliban promised religious purity and national pride. Instead, by systematically destroying a proud and working society, they left behind suffering and starvation.
Many Middle Eastern governments now understand that military dictatorship and theocratic rule are a straight, smooth highway to nowhere. But some governments still cling to the old habits of central control. There are governments that still fear and repress independent thought and creativity, and private enterprise -- the human qualities that make for strong and successful societies. Even when these nations have vast natural resources, they do not respect or develop their greatest resources -- the talent and energy of men and women working and living in freedom.
Instead of dwelling on past wrongs and blaming others, governments in the Middle East need to confront real problems, and serve the true interests of their nations. The good and capable people of the Middle East all deserve responsible leadership. For too long, many people in that region have been victims and subjects -- they deserve to be active citizens.
Which Path?
As changes come to the Middle Eastern region, those with power should ask themselves: Will they be remembered for resisting reform, or for leading it? In Iran, the demand for democracy is strong and broad, as we saw last month when thousands gathered to welcome home Shirin Ebadi, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The regime in Teheran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people, or lose its last claim to legitimacy.
For the Palestinian people, the only path to independence and dignity and progress is the path of democracy. And the Palestinian leaders who block and undermine democratic reform, and feed hatred and encourage violence, are not leaders at all. They're the main obstacles to peace, and to the success of the Palestinian people.
The Saudi government is taking first steps toward reform, including a plan for gradual introduction of elections. By giving the Saudi people a greater role in their own society, the Saudi government can demonstrate true leadership in the region.
The great and proud nation of Egypt has shown the way toward peace in the Middle East, and now should show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.
Champions of democracy in the region understand that democracy is not perfect, it is not the path to utopia, but it's the only path to national success and dignity.
As we watch and encourage reforms in the region, we are mindful that modernization is not the same as Westernization. Representative governments in the Middle East will reflect their own cultures. They will not, and should not, look like us. Democratic nations may be constitutional monarchies, federal republics or parliamentary systems. And working democracies always need time to develop -- as did our own. We've taken a 200-year journey toward inclusion and justice -- and this makes us patient and understanding as other nations are at different stages of this journey.
Of The People
There are, however, essential principles common to every successful society, in every culture. Successful societies limit the power of the state and the power of the military -- so that governments respond to the will of the people, and not the will of an elite. Successful societies protect freedom with the consistent and impartial rule of law, instead of selectively applying the law to punish political opponents.
Successful societies allow room for healthy civic institutions -- for political parties and labor unions and independent newspapers and broadcast media. Successful societies guarantee religious liberty -- the right to serve and honor God without fear of persecution. Successful societies privatize their economies, and secure the rights of property. They prohibit and punish official corruption, and invest in the health and education of their people. They recognize the rights of women.
And instead of directing hatred and resentment against others, successful societies appeal to the hopes of their own people.
These vital principles are being applied in the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq. With the steady leadership of President Karzai, the people of Afghanistan are building a modern and peaceful government. Next month, 500 delegates will convene a national assembly in Kabul to approve a new Afghan constitution. The proposed draft would establish a bicameral parliament, set national elections next year and recognize Afghanistan's Muslim identity, while protecting the rights of all citizens.
Afghanistan faces continuing economic and security challenges -- it will face those challenges as a free and stable democracy.
In Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council are also working together to build a democracy -- and after three decades of tyranny, this work is not easy. The former dictator ruled by terror and treachery, and left deeply ingrained habits of fear and distrust. Remnants of his regime, joined by foreign terrorists, continue their battle against order and against civilization. Our coalition is responding to recent attacks with precision raids, guided by intelligence provided by the Iraqis themselves.
And we're working closely with Iraqi citizens as they prepare a constitution, as they move toward free elections and take increasing responsibility for their own affairs.
As in the defense of Greece in 1947, and later in the Berlin Airlift, the strength and will of free peoples are now being tested before a watching world. And we will meet this test.
Historic Event
This is a massive and difficult undertaking -- it is worth our effort, it is worth our sacrifice, because we know the stakes.
The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world, increase dangers to the American people, and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region. Iraqi democracy will succeed -- and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation. The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.
Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo.
Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results.
As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace.
The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country. . . . We believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom -- the freedom we prize -- is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind.
Working for the spread of freedom can be hard. Yet America has accomplished hard tasks before. Our nation is strong; we're strong of heart. And we're not alone. Freedom is finding allies in every country; freedom finds allies in every culture.
And as we meet the terror and violence of the world, we can be certain the author of freedom is not indifferent to the fate of freedom.
With all the tests and all the challenges of our age, this is, above all, the age of liberty. Each of you at this Endowment is fully engaged in the great cause of liberty. . . . May God bless your work. And may God continue to bless America.






  
  


November 7, 2003 Friday  



 MILITARY OPERATIONS WILL EXPAND IN ACEH PROVINCE

 
Indonesia has announced a six-month extension of military operations and martial law in Aceh province, where more than 1,000 people have been killed since Jakarta resumed one of Asia's longest and bloodiest wars in May.
Rights groups warned that Thursday's decision would probably fuel Aceh's separatist rebellion, one of several that threaten to divide Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country.




5


  



November 7, 2003 Friday  




 'The Advance of Freedom Leads to Peace'

 
  Excerpts from President Bush's speech, provided by FDCH e-Media Inc: 
We've witnessed in little over a generation the swiftest advance of freedom in the 2,500-year story of democracy. . . . It is no accident that the rise of so many democracies took place in a time when the world's most influential nation was itself a democracy. The United States made military and moral commitments in Europe and Asia which protected free nations from aggression and created the conditions in which new democracies could flourish. 
 As we provided security for whole nations, we also provided inspiration for oppressed peoples. . . .  
 The progress of liberty is a powerful trend. Yet we also know that liberty, if not defended, can be lost.  
 The success of freedom is not determined by some dialectic of history. By definition, the success of freedom rests upon the choices and the courage of free peoples and upon their willingness to sacrifice. 
 In the trenches of World War I, through a two-front war in the 1940s, the difficult battles of Korea and Vietnam, and in missions of rescue and liberation on nearly every continent, Americans have amply displayed our willingness to sacrifice for liberty. 
 The sacrifices of Americans have not always been recognized or appreciated, yet they have been worthwhile. 
 Because we and our allies were steadfast, Germany and Japan are democratic nations that no longer threaten the world. A global nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union ended peacefully, as did the Soviet Union. The nations of Europe are moving toward unity. . . .  
 Every nation has learned, or should have learned, an important lesson: Freedom is worth fighting for, dying for and standing for, and the advance of freedom leads to peace. 
 And now we must apply that lesson in our own time. We've reached another great turning point, and the resolve we show will shape the next stage of the world democratic movement. 
 Our commitment to democracy is tested in countries like Cuba and Burma and North Korea and Zimbabwe, outposts of oppression in our world. The people in these nations live in captivity and fear and silence. Yet these regimes cannot hold back freedom forever. And one day, from prison camps and prison cells and from exile, the leaders of new democracies will arrive. 
 Communism and militarism and rule by the capricious and corrupt are the relics of a passing era. And we will stand with these oppressed peoples until the day of liberation and freedom finally arrives. 
 Our commitment to democracy is tested in China. The nation now has a sliver, a fragment of liberty. Yet China's peoples will eventually want their liberty pure and whole. . . .  
 Our commitment to democracy is also tested in the Middle East, which is my focus today and must be a focus of American policy for decades to come. . . .  
Some skeptics of democracy assert that the traditions of Islam are inhospitable to representative government. . . . It should be clear to all that Islam, the faith of one-fifth of humanity, is consistent with democratic rule. Democratic progress is found in many predominantly Muslim countries: in Turkey, Indonesia and Senegal and Albania and Niger and Sierra Leone. 
 Muslim men and women are good citizens of India and South Africa, the nations of Western Europe and of the United States of America. More than half of all Muslims live in freedom under democratically constituted governments. 
 They succeed in democratic societies, not in spite of their faith, but because of it. A religion that demands individual moral accountability and encourages the encounter of the individual with God is fully compatible with the rights and responsibilities of self-government. . . .  
 In many Middle Eastern countries, poverty is deep and it is spreading, women lack rights and are denied schooling, whole societies remain stagnant while the world moves ahead. These are not the failures of a culture or a religion. These are the failures of political and economic doctrines. . . .  
 Many Middle Eastern governments now understand that military dictatorship and theocratic rule are a straight, smooth highway to nowhere, but some governments still cling to the old habits of central control. . . .  
 Instead of dwelling on past wrongs and blaming others, governments in the Middle East need to confront real problems and serve the true interests of their nations. . . .  
 Governments across the Middle East and North Africa are beginning to see the need for change. Morocco has a diverse new parliament. King Mohammed has urged it to extend the rights to women. . . .  
 In Bahrain last year, citizens elected their own parliament for the first time in nearly three decades. Oman has extended the vote to all adult citizens. 
 Qatar has a new constitution. Yemen has a multiparty political system. Kuwait has a directly elected national assembly. And Jordan held historical elections this summer. . . .  
 As changes come to the Middle Eastern region, those with power should ask themselves: Will they be remembered for resisting reform or for leading it? 
 In Iran, the demand for democracy is strong and broad, as we saw last month, when thousands gathered to welcome home Shirin Ebadi, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. . . .  
 For the Palestinian people, the only path to independence and dignity and progress is the path of democracy. . . .  
 The Saudi government is taking first steps toward reform, including a plan for gradual introduction of elections. . . . The great and proud nation of Egypt has shown the way toward peace in the Middle East, and now should show the way toward democracy in the Middle East. . . .  
 As we watch and encourage reforms in the region, we are mindful that modernization is not the same as Westernization. Representative governments in the Middle East will reflect their own cultures. They will not, and should not, look like us. . . . And working democracies always need time to develop, as did our own. . . . There are, however, essential principles common to every successful society in every culture. 
 Successful societies limit the power of the state and the power of the military so that governments respond to the will of the people and not the will of the elite. 
 Successful societies protect freedom, with a consistent impartial rule of law, instead of selectively applying the law to punish political opponents. 
 Successful societies allow room for healthy civic institutions, for political parties and labor unions and independent newspapers and broadcast media. 
 Successful societies guarantee religious liberty; the right to serve and honor God without fear of persecution. 
 Successful societies privatize their economies and secure the rights of property. They prohibit and punish official corruption and invest in the health and education of their people. They recognize the rights of women. And instead of directing hatred and resentment against others, successful societies appeal to the hopes of their own people. 
 These vital principles are being applied in the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq. . . .  
 Securing democracy in Iraq is the work of many hands. . . . This is a massive and difficult undertaking. . . . It is worth our sacrifice, because we know the stakes: The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world and increase dangers to the American people and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region. 
 Iraqi democracy will succeed, and that success will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation. The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution. . . .  
 Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. . . .  
 Therefore the United States has adopted a new policy: a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. . . .  
 We believe that liberty is the direction of history. . . . And we believe that freedom, the freedom we prize, is not for us alone. It is the right and the capacity of all mankind. . . .  
 With all the tests and all the challenges of our age, this is, above all, the age of liberty.  







  
 

November 6, 2003 Thursday  
  



 Critics Mobilize and London Police Brace for Bush's Visit 

 
President Bush, who has been shielded from protests in recent travels, arrives in Britain on a state visit in two weeks, and the police here are weighing how to control promised street demonstrations without resorting to crowd control measures that could be seen as curbing free expression.
     "There will be substantial demonstrations over President Bush's visit -- as much as 50,000 to 60,000 people," Sir John Stevens, the Scotland Yard chief, told the Police Complaints Authority. "Apart from ensuring his safety, which is our primary concern, we have to ensure the demonstrations are allowed to take place in the normal way we do in this democracy." 
 Mr. Bush is the least popular American president in memory with Britons, and Prime Minister Tony Blair has been castigated by critics as the president's "poodle" for being Mr. Bush's loyal ally and fighting an unpopular United States-led war in Iraq. 
"A central problem for Bush in Britain is that while he is greeted with wary respect at 10 Downing Street, his unilateralism and folksy Texas style don't go down well with the chattering classes, who regard him as exceedingly dangerous and something of a buffoon," said Anthony King, professor of government at Essex University.
Mr. King said that while Mr. Bush profits from appearing with Mr. Blair, the president's presence is a liability for Mr. Blair.
"Bush's visit will remind people, and not just the members of the chattering classes, of what Blair has done that they dislike most," he said, "namely, joining the United States in the war in Iraq."
On his recent visit to Australia, another ally of the United States during the Iraqi war, Mr. Bush left after 21 hours and was whisked down roads clear of ordinary people. He avoided Sydney, where tens of thousands had come out to protest the war earlier this year, in favor of Canberra, the less contentious capital city.
The visit to London is certain to meet protests from militants representing a wide range of causes, who are expected to congregate here. "Many groups and activists are uniting to make London inhospitable for Bush," the Web site for Global Resistance predicts. "We need to make the place as unwelcome as possible."
The London police were harshly criticized in 1999 when they cracked down on actions against the visiting Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, and a Scotland Yard spokesman said that in light of that episode, the police were now being counseled to make sure policing was "appropriate, relevant and proportionate."
Ghada Razuki, spokeswoman for the Stop the War Coalition, said that while the police were restricting access to the government center, they were raising no objections to plans for large street protests and a demonstration in London's traditional forum of dissent, Trafalgar Square.
"The police have said to us directly that it is our democratic right to march, and that they want to uphold that," Ms. Razuki said.
During Mr. Bush's trip to Asia in October, both the agenda and the security arrangements assured that he saw few protesters. He met Indonesian leaders on Bali, a Hindu-dominated resort island where anti-American feeling does not run as high as in Jakarta, the capital of what is the world's most populous Muslim nation. In Manila, demonstrators were kept far from Mr. Bush, and his arrival at the Philippine Congress was delayed until a large crowd could be dispersed.
In Britain, Mr. Bush will travel by helicopter and limousine and is unlikely to confront protesters personally, but their presence will be far more visible than on his Asian swing.
"We want to make sure that the biggest photo opportunities are ones of streets filled with protesters," Ms. Razuki said. 
Mr. Bush will arrive in London the evening of Nov. 18 and begin the public part of his state visit the next morning with a formal reception followed by a speech in an as yet undisclosed public hall in London before an audience of dignitaries. The queen will give a banquet in his honor at Buckingham Palace that night. He will leave on Nov. 21 after meetings with Mr. Blair.      







  



November 2, 2003 Sunday  




 A War of Choice, and One Who Chose It

 
 HILLA, Iraq  
It was a classic Paul Wolfowitz moment: He was speaking at a new women's rights center here nine days ago when someone asked for his advice on writing an Iraqi constitution. Wolfowitz, the professor turned Pentagon war planner, began quoting Alexis de Tocqueville's theories about democracy to the residents of this ancient city on the banks of the Euphrates River. 
 "There are people in the world who say that Arabs can't build democracy," Wolfowitz told the crowd. "I think that's nonsense. You have a chance to prove them wrong. So please do it."  
 That interaction captured the missing element in many analyses of the Iraq conflict. Commentators in Europe and the Arab world write darkly about America's designs on Iraqi oil, or a conspiracy to enrich Vice President Cheney's old friends at Halliburton, or a plot to help Israel. It would be nice, in a weird way, if the Iraq war were anchored to such worldly interests. But it isn't. 
 The reality is that this may be the most idealistic war fought in modern times -- a war whose only coherent rationale, for all the misleading hype about weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda terrorists, is that it toppled a tyrant and created the possibility of a democratic future. It was a war of choice, not necessity, and one driven by ideas, not merely interests. In that sense, the paradigmatic figure of the war is Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and the Bush administration's idealist in chief.  
 I traveled through Iraq with Wolfowitz on the whirlwind trip last weekend that concluded with a rocket attack Sunday on the hotel where we were staying in Baghdad. For people watching on television, that assault may have conveyed the vulnerability, and perhaps futility, of America's mission: We keep trying to help the Iraqis, it seems, and they keep shooting missiles back at us. 
 But seen through Wolfowitz's eyes, the rocket attack was just a blip -- no more daunting than the car bombs, assassinations and ambushes that are daily facts of life here for U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies. More important to Wolfowitz were the dozens of Iraqis and Americans he met who are risking their lives for the U.S. mission and the ideals that Wolfowitz holds dear. In that sense, the trip was fuel for Wolfowitz's intellectual engine. 
 As we were flying back to Washington in a lumbering C-17, I asked Wolfowitz if he ever worried that he was too idealistic -- that his passion for the noble goals of the Iraq war might overwhelm the prudence and pragmatism that normally guide war planners. He didn't answer directly, except to say that it was a good question. And it's a starting point for some reflections on Wolfowitz and his war, seven bloody months after U.S. troops invaded Iraq. 
 Wolfowitz is a rare animal in Washington -- a genuine intellectual in a top policymaking job. He was dean of the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University before taking his current Pentagon post, and he has the kind of curious mind that makes him as good a listener as talker. He is also a man who for more than a decade, ever since he served as ambassador to Indonesia, has been fascinated with the Muslim world. 
 That passion undercuts the widespread notion that Wolfowitz is simply a neoconservative tool of Israel. He is instead a kind of amateur Orientalist: He reads about the Arab world, bleeds for its oppression and dreams of liberating it. He seeks out Arab intellectuals who can advise him on policy, and he says he opposes Israeli settlements. Wolfowitz, as an outsider, may romanticize the Arab world, but there's no denying his intellectual interest.  
 His idealism about the potential for change in the Middle East was on display throughout his recent trip. He told the gathering at the women's rights center in Hilla, for example, that democracy wasn't just about elections -- which are somewhat discredited in Arab countries by the experiences of Egypt, Jordan and even Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Ultimately, he argued, democracy was about justice. 
 "To Americans, the most important thing about democracy is to guarantee human rights and justice for all," he said. At other stops, he made a similar pitch about the role of courts and legal institutions in a free society. 
Wolfowitz's emphasis on justice emerged in part from conversations he had in September with Jamil Mroue, publisher of the Daily Star in Beirut. Over a four-hour dinner in Washington, Mroue argued that if America simply stressed security in Iraq, it would be no different than the authoritarian rulers who govern in the name of security throughout the Arab world. The missing ingredient was justice, said Mroue. Taken with the argument, Wolfowitz arranged for Mroue to meet with his top aides. 
Mroue is only one Arab influence on Wolfowitz's thinking. Wolfowitz's initial mentor on Iraq was Ahmed Chalabi, the long-exiled leader of the Iraqi National Congress and a man with powerful ties to the neoconservative establishment in Washington. A brilliant if abrasive intellectual, Chalabi helped convince Wolfowitz that the Iraqi people longed for liberation and would rally behind an American invasion. 
 Chalabi had a receptive audience. Wolfowitz, as under secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, had advocated toppling Hussein after the first Gulf War in 1991. He thought then and for most of the '90s that the regime could be overthrown by Iraqi insurgents, without sending U.S. troops to Baghdad. But after 9/11, Wolfowitz decided it was too dangerous to wait, and began arguing forcefully within the administration for an Iraq invasion.  
The once close relationship between the administration and Chalabi has cooled, in part because of Chalabi's inability to get along with the head of the U.S. occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III. (Indeed, President Bush is said to have used crude language in expressing his anger toward Chalabi in a conversation in September with Jordan's King Abdullah. Chalabi professes to be unconcerned about his new unpopularity in Washington. "Do you know that Adenauer was arrested by the British in 1945?" he told me at a reception in Baghdad a week ago, referring to the man who eventually became the architect of postwar Germany, Konrad Adenauer.)  
The Iraqis who matter to Wolfowitz now are the indigenous leaders who can take over responsibility for Iraq's governance and security. Here, too, Wolfowitz's views were shaped by a conversation with an Arab intellectual -- a Lebanese professor and former cabinet minister named Ghassan Salame, who outlined a plan for a rapid transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis when he met with Wolfowitz for two hours in September. Much of Wolfowitz's schedule a week ago was meant to highlight this new strategy. Wolfowitz visited Iraqi police stations in Hilla, Kirkuk and Baghdad, and a Civil Defense Corps training camp in Tikrit. 
 At each stop, he argued that only the Iraqis can provide security for their country. That is undoubtedly true, but I suspect that Wolfowitz may be overly optimistic about how quickly the new security forces will be ready to take over from American troops. The Iraqis recruits are courageous and well-meaning -- but at this point they are no match for the insurgents.  
Still, Wolfowitz feels an almost visceral sense of loyalty to his Iraqi allies. And that helps explain why he is so determined to stay the course. Everywhere he went he saw reminders of the cost Iraqis have paid. The Hilla meeting, for example, was chaired by a local leader, Iskander Witwit, who lost 34 members of his family to Hussein's forces after the 1991 Shiite uprising in southern Iraq. Witwit carries with him a photo of his late brother, who was decapitated by Hussein, to remind himself what he's fighting for. 
 Wolfowitz asked the audience in Hilla how many had lost close relatives to Hussein's secret police. About half the people in the room raised their hands. 
The Pentagon number two also stopped near Kirkuk for a moving visit to a site where U.S. troops had been ambushed days before. He heard the story of how Lt. David Bernstein, a young officer who graduated eighth in his class at West Point, died saving the life of one of his men. His voice heavy with emotion, Wolfowitz told the commander of the unit that had been ambushed, "We're going to win this."  
 Wolfowitz's Iraq is haunted by the ghosts of those who have died fighting for the dream of a free Iraq. That's the paradox of intellectuals in politics -- the abstract ideals they preach become encrusted with the blood of those who fight to make them real.  
 I find it impossible to fault on moral grounds the case for toppling Saddam Hussein last March, and for staying the course now. America did a good deed in liberating Iraqis from a tyrannical regime. But Hussein never posed the sort of imminent danger to America that administration rhetoric implied, and Wolfowitz must share the blame for exaggerating that threat. However dubious the arguments for war may seem in retrospect, I believe it would be wrong to abandon Iraq now, when a relatively small number of insurgents are waging a ruthless campaign to subvert the change and reconstruction that most Iraqis seem to want. 
 One lesson of this painful year is that too much moralizing is dangerous in statecraft. The idealism of a Wolfowitz must be tempered by some very hard-headed judgments about how to protect U.S. interests. Wolfowitz said in an interview with a Vanity Fair reporter earlier this year that he was a "practical idealist" and that, for him, policymaking wasn't "just a matter of doing business and being sensible." His commitment to principle is admirable, but sound policy can't be premised on the dream of human perfectibility, in Iraq or anywhere else.  
 America's problems in Iraq stem in large part from wishful thinking, and Wolfowitz and his colleagues must be careful to avoid any more of it now as they try to craft a sustainable strategy. What worries me most after touring Iraq with Wolfowitz is how little the U.S. forces know about their adversaries here. Pressed at a briefing about who is controlling the resistance, a general answered, "We don't have the intelligence to lay this out on a chart." That was chilling.  
 Now that the going is difficult in Iraq, the Bush administration needs to think more with its head and less with its heart. The idealists can win this war, but only if they act with brutally honest pragmatism. 
Author's e-mail: 
 davidignatius@washpost.com 
</body>David Ignatius is a columnist for The Post and a former executive editor of the International Herald Tribune.  






  


October 29, 2003, Wednesday  



 W DUCKS REAL NATURE OF THE WAR U.S. IS IN

 
At yesterday's White House press conference, President Bush was asked about the chilly reception he received from Islamic leaders at an Asian summit last week in Indonesia.
These leaders asked Bush why Americans think all Muslims are terrorists. Bush replied that the leaders were mistaken - Americans know perfectly well that terrorism is restricted to "the acts of a few." 
The President has been saying this since 9/11. It's possible that many people here believe him. But quite obviously, the Islamic world doesn't.
Why not? The answer isn't complicated. Muslim leaders know better. And they think Bush does, too.
Part of the problem derives from what Bush would call fuzzy language. He insists on talking about "the war on terror." But terrorism is a technique, not an enemy, and you don't make war on a technique. You make war on enemies.
For reasons of domestic political correctness and international diplomacy, the Bush administration refuses to name its enemies, even in a general way.
The President talks about terrorism as if it existed in a vacuum. He never uses the terms "Islamic terrorism" or "Arab terrorism." At his press conference, he blamed the recent spate of bombings in Baghdad on "foreign terrorists" - as though these fighters could easily be Belgian Catholics, Chinese Buddhists or Indian Hindus.
The administration also dissembles by using surrogate demons. Osama Bin Laden is the enemy, but not Saudi Arabia, the source of Bin Laden's anti-American doctrines. Saddam Hussein and his band of followers are the enemy, but they are merely a small and unrepresentative band of outlaws who can be rounded up and rooted out. Yasser Arafat is an enemy, but he is the false leader of a people yearning for compromise and peace. The ayatollahs are the enemy, but the Iranian masses love America and yearn for democracy.
This is sheer nonsense, and nobody knows it better than the Arab and Iranian dictators of the Middle East and their Islamic allies. They know perfectly well that America is hated and feared by the clerical and political classes - the only ones that matter - from North Africa to Southeast Asia.
This hatred is so widespread and powerful that it unites ancient rivals. Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, Baathists and royalists, tribal leaders and urban intellectuals, theologians and supposedly secular military officers - all gather under the banner of jihad.
Bush can insist all day long that America isn't at war with Islam. But that misses the point. In varying degrees, the Islamic world is at war with the U.S., its interests and purposes.
Muslim leaders know that, obviously, and they think Bush must know it, too.
Last night, Bush hosted his annual dinner marking the Muslim holiday of iftar. The guest list included many dignitaries from Islamic countries and organizations now engaged in undermining U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Mideast and elsewhere. Or, in Bush's own terms, actively aiding and abetting terrorists.
In past years, the President has used this dinner to proclaim that the U.S. isn't at war with the Islamic world, only individual bad guys who happen to be Muslims, that Islam is a religion of peace and there is no inherent conflict between American and Islamic ideologies or interests.
This message always wins Bush a round of polite applause. But not a single one of his guests believes it. They all know better.
We can only hope that the President does, too.
E-mail: zchafets@yahoo.com







October 29, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ; 
Bush on Guerrilla Strikes: 'Desperate Attacks on Innocent Civilians Will Not Intimidate Us'

 
     Following are excerpts from President Bush's news conference on Tuesday, as recorded by the White House. A full transcript is online at nytimes.com/international.

Opening Statement

. . . After decades of oppression and brutality in Iraq and Afghanistan, reconstruction is difficult, and freedom still has its enemies in both of those countries. These terrorists are targeting the very success and freedom we're providing to the Iraqi people.
 Their desperate attacks on innocent civilians will not intimidate us or the brave Iraqis and Afghans who are joining in their own defense and who are moving toward self-government. Coalition forces, aided by Afghan and Iraqi police and military, are striking the enemy with force and precision. Our coalition is growing in members and growing in strength. Our purpose is clear and certain. Iraq and Afghanistan will be stable, independent nations, and their people will live in freedom. 
This essential goal in the war on terror requires continued American leadership and the continued support of Congress. . . . 
Finally, the United States Senate must step up to serious constitutional responsibilities. I have nominated many distinguished and highly qualified Americans to fill vacancies on the federal, district and circuit courts. Because a small group of senators is willfully obstructing the process, some of these nominees have been denied up-or-down votes for months, even years. More than one-third of my nominees for the circuit courts are still awaiting a vote. The needless delays in the system are harming the administration of justice, and they are deeply unfair to the nominees themselves. The Senate Judiciary Committee should give a prompt and fair hearing to every single nominee, send every nomination to the Senate floor for an up-or-down vote. . . .

Questions and Answers

Q. Mr. President, you just spoke about the suicide bombers in Iraq as being "desperate." But as yesterday's attacks show, they're also increasingly successful and seem to be trying to send a warning to institutions like the police and the Red Cross not to cooperate with the United States. Has the United States been able to identify who is behind this surge of attacks, where they come from, and how to stop them?

PRESIDENT BUSH -- Yeah, I think it's a very interesting point you make in your question: they're trying to send a warning. Basically what they're trying to do is cause people to run. They want to kill and create chaos. That's the nature of a terrorist. That's what terrorists do. They commit suicide acts against innocent people, and then expect people to say, "Well, gosh, we better not try to fight you anymore."
We're trying to determine the nature of who these people were, but I will tell you, I would assume that they're either/or -- and probably both -- Baathists and foreign terrorists. The Baathists try to create chaos and fear because they realize that a free Iraq will deny them the excessive privileges they had under Saddam Hussein. The foreign terrorists are trying to create conditions of fear and retreat because they fear a free and peaceful state in the midst of a part of the world where terror has found recruits. . . . 

Q. Mr. President, if there are foreign terrorists involved, why aren't Syria and Iran being held accountable?

A. Yeah, well, we're working closely with those countries to let them know that we expect them to enforce borders, prevent people from coming across borders, if in fact we catch them doing that.
The coalition forces have stepped up border patrol efforts. There are now more Iraqis patrolling the border. We are mindful of the fact that some might want to come into Iraq to attack and to create conditions of fear and chaos, and that's why General Abizaid in his briefing to me yesterday talked about, the additional troops we have on the borders. And that is why it is important that we step up training for Iraqis, border patrol agents, so they can enforce their own borders. . . . 

Q. In recent weeks, you and your White House team have made a concerted effort to put a positive spin on progress in Iraq. And at the same time, there's been a much more somber assessment in private, as with Secretary Rumsfeld's memo. And there are people out there who don't believe that the administration is leveling with them about the difficulty and scope of the problem in Iraq.

A. I can't put it any more plainly: Iraq is a dangerous place. That's leveling. It is a dangerous place.
 What I was saying is there's more than just terrorist attacks that are taking place in Iraq. There's schools opening; there are hospitals opening. The electricity, the capacity to deliver electricity to the Iraqi people is back up to prewar levels; where nearly two million barrels of oil a day are being produced for the Iraqi people. I was just saying, well, we've got to look at the whole picture; that what the terrorists would like is for people to focus only on the conditions which create fear. . . .
The tactics to respond to, you know, more suiciders driving cars, will alter on the ground: more checkpoints -- whatever they decide -- how to harden targets will change. And so, we're constantly looking at the enemy and adjusting. . . .

Q. As you heard last week from Muslim leaders in Indonesia, your policies are seen as biased towards Israel. And I'd like to ask you about that. The government of Israel continues to build settlements in occupied territories, and it continues to build the security fence, which Palestinians see as stealing their land.
 You criticized these moves mildly a couple of times, but you've never taken any concrete action to back up your words on that. Will you?

A. My policy in the Middle East is pretty clear. We're for a two-state solution. We want there to be a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.
Now in order to achieve a two-state solution, there needs to be a focused effort by all concerned parties to fight off terror. There are terrorists in the Middle East willing to kill to make sure that a Palestinian state doesn't emerge. It's essential that there be a focused effort to fight off terror. . . .
You asked about the fence. 
I have said the fence is a problem to the extent that the fence is an opportunity to make it difficult for a Palestinian state to emerge. There is a difference between security and land acquisition. And we have made our views clear on that issue. . . . 

Q. Are you considering the possibility of possibly adding more U.S. troops to the forces already on the ground there in Iraq to help restore order?

A. Yeah, that's a decision by John Abizaid. He makes that -- General Abizaid makes the decision as to whether or not he needs more troops. I've constantly asked the secretary of defense, as well as when I was visiting with General Abizaid, does he have what it takes to do his mission? He told me he does. . . .

Q. You recently put Condoleezza Rice, your national security adviser, in charge of the management of the administration's Iraq policy. What has effectively changed since she's been in charge? And second question, can you promise a year from now that you will have reduced the number of troops in Iraq?

A. The second question's a trick question, so I won't answer it.
 The first question was Condoleezza Rice. Her job is to coordinate interagency. She's doing a fine job of coordinating interagency. She's doing that. The role of the national security adviser is to not only provide good advice to the president, which she does on a regular basis -- I value her judgment and her intelligence -- but her job is also to deal interagency and to help un-stick things that may get stuck, is the best way to put it. She's an "un-sticker." Laughter.  . . .

Q. Thank you, Mr. President. You have repeatedly urged Americans to have patience when they view postwar operations in Iraq. But isn't there a limit to American patience, particularly in an election year when your foreign policies will be --

A.  Chuckles.  Interesting question.

Q. -- will be the center of debate?

A. Well, I think the American people are patient during an election year because they tend to be able to differentiate between, you know, politics and reality. As a matter of fact, the American people -- the electorate -- is a heck of a lot smarter than most politicians. . . .









October 27, 2003 Monday  
  

 Observing Ramadan 







   
 

October 26, 2003 Sunday  
  



 Page Two: Oct. 19-25; 
MEANWHILE, IN ASIA

 
     The most interesting moments in the president's six-nation tour of Asia and Australia came when his hosts told him what they thought of American foreign policy.  
Sometimes, it was a rude surprise for the president, as when when Indonesian religious leaders said that they thought Americans regarded all Muslims as terrorists. 
 The president tried to convince them otherwise, but told aides that his message to the Muslim world was clearly not getting through. He had more luck on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, apparently convincing China to join an American strategy that would offer security guarantees to the north, but only after it has begun dismantling its weapons.   David E. Sanger









October 26, 2003 Sunday  
  



 Don't Tread on Us; 
Radical Islam Gains a Seductive New Voice

 
AMERICAN officials scolded Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia last week for declaring to the world's largest Muslim organization that Jews control the world and that frustrated Muslims should try to learn from them. President Bush privately told the Malaysian leader that his comments were "wrong and divisive," presidential aides said. The national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said, "I don't think they are emblematic of the Muslim world."
     By many accounts, though, Ms. Rice is voicing wishful thinking. 
 After Mr. Mahathir spoke, the Muslim heads of state gathered at the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference gave him a standing ovation for his speech, which ultimately criticized the Islamic world for failing to modernize. 
The acceptance of such conspiratorial views may strike Americans as despicable or even laughable, but they reflect the influence of Islamic radicals on the worldviews of millions of Muslims. Conveyed with ease and authority via the Internet and satellite television, anti-American and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories abound, not only in Muslim countries but across the world.
Many of these theories are spread by radical groups that adhere to an ideology loosely known as political Islam. Stridently anti-Western and antimodern, political Islam portrays itself as the strongest ideological counter to democracy and capitalism.
Radical Islamists do far more than simply declare that President Bush and Israel, for example, are evil. Political Islam is a sophisticated mixture of fundamentalism and nationalism that can foment acts of violence against Western targets. But for its followers, it is a romantic liberation movement -- a militant ideology with Marxist echoes that combines Islam's powerful call for social equality with a critique of Western corporate imperialism and the corrupt Muslim elites who benefit from it.
The growing voice of political Islam suggests that the United States faces a much more nebulous enemy in its war on terrorism than a movement of religious zealots. It is an ideology that persuades some alienated young Muslims, whether deeply religious or not, to join what they see as an epic struggle against an evil empire.
Pollsters emphasize that popular support for radical Islamists remains relatively low in the Muslim world, a vast amalgam of 1.5 billion people that is by no means monolithic. But by taking advantage of overwhelming Muslim public disapproval of American policies in Israel and Iraq, political Islam appears to be gaining traction in some regions.
Growing numbers of Muslims surveyed after the invasion of Iraq say they see the American war on terrorism as a campaign to weaken Muslims -- a charge long made by radical Islamists. Majorities in seven of eight predominantly Muslim countries say they worry that the United States might threaten their countries.
At the same time, statements by Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders perceived to be offensive are instantly transmitted around the world on satellite TV or on the Internet, fueling polarization on all sides. Recent comments made at a church breakfast by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, a top Pentagon official, likening America's war against Muslim extremists to a battle against Satan, are a case in point.
Statements like that, analysts say, play into Islamist conspiracy theories, which blame the United States and Jews for the Muslim world's oppressive rulers, stagnant economies and sense of powerlessness.
"You are explaining events that are painful to the public, for which the public has no other explanation that is available, and over which the public has no power," said Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland and a member of a Bush administration panel that recently surveyed Muslim attitudes and found "shocking levels of hostility" toward the United States. "They put forth a theory that explains that the responsibility lies with someone else."
The Islamist groups are keenly political, often with excellent organizational and public relations skills. In Pakistan, for example, a coalition of religious parties that received only 11 percent of the popular vote in parliamentary elections last year has turned itself into the country's main opposition group.
The organizations vary widely, ranging from Algeria's ultra-conservative and ultra-violent Armed Islamic Group to Jamaat-e-Islami, a decades-old political movement in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India that calls for establishing Islamic rule through nonviolent, democratic means. The goal, like that of any political organization, is gaining power. At times, they blame their enemies for their most reprehensible acts. They try to turn their own weakness, as well as their opponents' overwhelming strength, into an asset. 
After a car bombing on Oct. 12 at an American complex in Baghdad, crowds of Iraqis began chanting that the United States had set off the explosion itself. Two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many Pakistanis still believe the United States invaded Afghanistan solely for its natural gas reserves, which are, by global standards, comparatively small. 
Last week, President Bush appeared to be surprised by the depth of suspicion that moderate religious leaders expressed to him in Indonesia. "Do they really believe that we think all Muslims are terrorists?" he asked his aides, shaking his head.
Robert Jackall, a sociology professor at Williams College, said the Islamists' voice was far larger than their numbers. "There is a fanatical group, a fringe element," he said, "that have been able to command the media and have been able to propagate a series of fantastic world images and a series of fantastic conspiracy theories."
From Iraq to Afghanistan, the number of people who join the guerrilla wars being waged against American forces may not be large, but as past attacks have shown, even a small number can do huge damage.
In an Oct. 16 memo published by USA Today last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asked whether the United States was losing the effort to halt the creation of a next generation of terrorists. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?" Mr. Rumsfeld wrote, referring to Islamic religious schools. "The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."
For American policymakers, countering political Islam and its conspiracy theories can seem baffling. After his meeting with Muslim leaders in Indonesia, Mr. Bush seemed particularly perplexed by their belief that the United States was uninterested in the creation of a Palestinian state, something the president has repeatedly said he supports. It was unclear whether the Muslim leaders had not heard Mr. Bush's prior statements or considered them a subterfuge.
Fouad Ajami, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University, said part of political Islam's antimodern approach was a rejection of the Western scientific method. So when some Islamists declared, for instance, that al Qaeda caused this summer's blackout on the East Coast, that could be accepted without any proof. 
"When there is a break in cause and effect," Mr. Ajami said, "it's easy to sell these views of the world."
Supporters of an aggressive military campaign against terrorism say the United States, as the world's lone superpower, will be distrusted no matter what it does. But members of the Bush administration panel that surveyed Muslim attitudes say American public diplomacy efforts must be redoubled.
Professor Jackall said the problem was more difficult in some ways than battling Communism. Sweeping efforts to counter political Islam could confirm its conspiracy theories and demonstrate its suppleness as an ideology. After Mr. Mahathir's statements were harshly criticized, for example, the Malaysian prime minister said the outcry his speech provoked had proved him right. "The reaction of the world shows that they control the world," he said, referring to the Jews.









October 26, 2003 Sunday  
  



 Wolfowitz's Hotel Is Attacked in Baghdad 

 
The hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz stayed overnight during a visit to Iraq was hit by what American soldiers said were rockets early Sunday morning, wounding a number of people. Mr. Wolfowitz was not hurt.
     Shortly after 6 a.m., three or four explosions were heard outside the Rashid Hotel, where Mr. Wolfowitz and his delegation are staying. The hotel is also a center for American contract workers in Baghdad. 
 Although details remained sketchy shortly after the attack, it appeared that rockets hit on the 3rd, 8th and 11th floors. There were an unknown number of people wounded. At least three were seen being carried though the lobby on stretchers. Mr. Wolfowitz appeared to be unhurt, and he was rushed by security guards out a side door of the lobby. He appeared unfazed, and even exchanged greetings with correspondents who had rushed to the lobby. Smoke filled some of the upper floors, but there were no signs of a fire immediately after the attack. 
The attack on the well-known Rashid, especially during the visit of a high-ranking American dignitary, will only serve to underscore security concerns for the American-led stabilization effort and questions about how best to rout loyalists of the Saddam Hussein government. 
The rockets fired at the hotel came from beyond a tall security wall that marks the perimeter. One left a line of fireworks-style sparks as it came toward the building, and the 11th floor, where correspondents traveling with Mr. Wolfowitz were staying, shuddered.
One soldier outside the compound said 12 rockets had been left nearby on a generator. Six or seven remained, all set to go off. "It looks professional," the soldier said. "Whoever set this up knew what they were doing."
It was the second attack on the hotel in a month. On Sept. 27, three explosive devices blasted through the concrete and barbed-wire cocoon of security around the main compound for Americans in Baghdad, hitting the 14th floor but causing little damage and no injuries. 
Hotel residents were evacuated on Sunday through fire stairways, following a light trail of blood left by the wounded as they were carried out by colleagues and emergency medical workers.
The shell that struck a room on the eighth floor punctured a fist-sized circle through the window and wrecked the room. 
The atack was a stark contrast to a visit to Kirkuk on Saturday by Mr. Wolfowitz, the intellectual architect of the plan to oust Mr. Hussein. There he wrapped a flak jacket over his button-down blue shirt and went out on foot patrol with paratroopers in volatile northern Iraq. 
A little girl ran up and shouted, "Saddam is a donkey!" Mr. Wolfowitz laughed. 
A young woman hugged him. He responded with Ramadan greetings in the smattering of Arabic he has taught himself.
A money changer plying his trade from a card table held up an old note with Mr. Hussein's picture, jubilantly tearing it to pieces. Mr. Wolfowitz, a former graduate school dean and not a politician, responded by discussing the progress in introducing a new Iraqi currency. 
In the bustling marketplace of Kirkuk, Mr. Wolfowitz was cheered, exactly the kind of response that he desired and that his weekend trip to Iraq was devised to demonstrate to the American public, to skeptical members of Congress and to American allies. 
But like the two Apache helicopter gunships that whirled overhead in a heavy security force, policy questions also shadowed his visit.
Almost six months since President Bush declared that major combat operations had ended, the administration is being dogged by questions about what America's mission is today in Iraq, and how well it is being accomplished. "I think I'm a realist, as well as an optimist," said Mr. Wolfowitz, who visibly agonizes over reports of daily violence, attacks and death, but argues that perspective is missing in assessing the strides made in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq, and pointing it toward democracy. 
"If you measure this place by unrealistic standards, you can get discouraged," he said. "If you measure it by the horror it's been through for the last 35 years, it's already an enormous breakthrough. And if you measure it by the quite impressive progress it has made in just six months, again it is encouraging." 
He did not deny that problems remained. But he appears indefatigable in making others take note of progress in creating a stable and democratic Iraq. He is undeterred by the continued attacks on American troops and Iraqi security forces, the setbacks in securing foreign commitments for more troops, and the sense of the long slog ahead that darkens Congressional debate and even appeared in a recent internal memo by his boss, Donald H. Rumsfeld. 
Mr. Wolfowitz is a man in a hurry to make his point. 
He is devoting a grueling weekend trip of 18-hour days to throwing a spotlight on a nascent women's rights movement, on easing ethnic and religious tensions, on the growth of Iraqi security forces, and on steps to improve quality of life by bringing power plants back online. No big change in strategy is needed, he said, just a greater determination to push onto the Iraqis responsibility for their own security and economy.
Along the way, he asked every Iraqi he met if a relative had been killed under Mr. Hussein's rule and if they were better off today. He asked every member of the new Iraqi security force he met whether they were getting what they needed, and he clearly hoped Congress would listen as they described their needs. 
Security remains a priority. A week before Mr. Wolfowitz's visit, two paratroopers were killed in an ambush outside of Kirkuk. Early Saturday, a Black Hawk helicopter that had landed to support an American patrol outside Tikrit was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and damaged, military officials said. Its crew was evacuated. 
Even one of Mr. Wolfowitz's motorcades in Baghdad was rerouted when the Iraqi police set up a roadblock after an improvised explosive device was found along the route four hours before his arrival, senior military officers said. 
Mr. Wolfowitz's focus was on the steps being taken to turn Iraqi security over to Iraqis, and he visited a neighborhood police station in Kirkuk. Its officers and patrolmen were trained at a special academy run by the 173rd Airborne Brigade. 
"We've worked ourselves out of a job," said Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, in charge of training the Kirkuk police, describing how the new force allows his troops to step further out of harm's way.
"They control the city," he said of the force. "We're in the antiterror business." 
During a Saturday morning visit with members of the new Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, Mr. Wolfowitz complimented the young Iraqis who "are stepping forward to fight for their country alongside our people."
"There are things they can do that we can't do," he said. "They can read the local situation, read the population in ways that we can't. Iraqis come forward with information much more readily than they do with us." 
Senior officials traveling with Mr. Wolfowitz carry reams of statistics describing efforts in Iraq, as if they are tracking futures of a stock they are certain will grow and in which they have invested heavily. 
Prewar electricity production was 3,300 megawatts, officials said, which had dropped to 200 megawatts on May 1, the day Mr. Bush declared the end of major combat. Power production is now up to 4,417 megawatts. 
About 85,500 Iraqis are now in the ranks of the new border patrol, the police, the civil defense corps, the infrastructure protection service and the new army. The goal is to reach 170,300 people filling those rosters by next year, officials said. 
In a session with 11 Islamic clerics at a new museum in Kirkuk, Mr. Wolfowitz spoke of his time as ambassador to Indonesia, with its population of 200 million Muslims. After the expected pleasantries, the clerics -- who were Arab and Turkmen and Kurd, but all Sunni Muslim -- complained about alcohol sales since the fall of the old government. They asked why mosques in Tikrit, which Mr. Wolfowitz also visited on Saturday, were getting more money than those in Kirkuk.
They saw nothing odd about asking Mr. Wolfowitz, the son of a Polish-Jewish emigre to America, to intercede with Islamic leaders in Baghdad to declare the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that begins with the sighting of the first sliver of the new moon.






  
  


October 25, 2003 Saturday  



 A HIDDEN VOICE OF ISLAM;
AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSLIMS SHOW HOW DIFFERING FAITHS CAN PEACEFULLY CO-EXIST HERE

 
In the midst of an impoverished East Oakland neighborhood as concerned with the war on drugs as the war in Iraq lie answers to a question roiling the country since Sept. 11, 2001: Can Islam and the United Statesco-exist?
They can, say members of a largely African-American mosque there, offering their decades-old history as proof. But that history is often ignored and misconstrued.
Perhaps no group of Americans can speak about Islam and the United States with the same intimacy or authority as African-American Muslims. But their voice -- and story -- frequently is missing in the national conversation about Islam after Sept. 11, 2001. 
In some ways, it is a question about what is Islam, and what is Middle East politics, says Faheem Shuaibe, the imam, or spiritual leader, of the East Oakland mosque, Masjidul Waritheen.
"What role do black American Muslims play in terms of America and Muslim countries?" asks Shuaibe, whose 1,500-member congregation is the largest mostly African-American mosque in Northern California. "They're not a factor. As long as the conversation is about geopolitics, that's fine. But when you talk about Islam in America, I'm the one to talk to."
No thorough study has ever been done on the number of Muslims in the United States, and estimates vary from 2 million to 8 million. Some studies have estimated that African-American Muslims make up a third of the Muslim population in the United States.
At its core, the Islam practiced at Masjidul Waritheen is no different from what is practiced in Indonesia, India or Saudi Arabia. The Koran and the collected sayings of the Prophet Muhammad form the basis for all beliefs.
But there are differences of interpretation, culture and history. Most African-Americans Muslims are converts; many feel they are returning to the religion of their ancestors, slaves who were Muslims. Many came to the faith through the Nation of Islam, which even African-American Muslims consider to have Islamically heretical beliefs. Women also have a higher status and more visible presence in the mosque. And music plays a role in the community.
African-Americans were the first to promote and develop Islam in America, says Howard University Professor Sulayman Nyang, an immigrant and author of "Islam in the United States of America."
Decades ago, "African-Americans were the ones who took Islam out of the closet," Nyang says. "Immigrants who were Muslims, they were not coming out. That's a fact. Nobody can question that."
Afghans, Indo-Fijians and Yemenis, to name a few, all have their own mosques in the Bay Area. Those mosques play a dual role for many, providing religion and ethnic and linguistic community.
Amjad Obeidat, a Jordanian immigrant who works in Sunnyvale, says that some of the differences between African-American and immigrant Muslims is simply because of the nature of immigration.
"Immigrants tend to hang out a little bit more with the people that are close to them," says Obeidat, a spokesman for American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism. "As a corollary, the immigrant community did not get as close to the Muslims who are African-American."
Muslims in training?
"A common misperception has been that they are Muslims in training even though they are fully Muslim and they have a lot to offer," says Shahed Amanullah, 35, a child of Indian immigrants and a spokesman for United Muslims of America.
Race and class play a role in the divisions, some immigrants and African-Americans say. But many African-American Muslims' historic ties with the Nation of Islam and its quasi-Islamic beliefs play a role in why immigrant Muslims sometimes don't view African-Americans as full followers of the faith.
Remnants of that history are still visible. Go to Masjidul Waritheen on a Friday afternoon, the Muslim Sabbath, and you might see this: Alfred Raoof, 64, selling bean pies he's brought from San Jose; Abdul Sabry, 64, selling strawberries, mangoes and other produce; and Yusuf Rashed, 85, selling vegan chocolate chip cookies along with soap and tea.
It might as well be a farmers market. Nothing in the Koran calls for this explicitly, and it doesn't happen at immigrant mosques. But Masjidul Waritheen's congregants believe that economic self-reliance is one more step on the straight path toward Islam.
"For African-Americans, we live in a capitalistic society where we've never had the capital," says Sabry, an Oakland resident who three decades agowas the first chairman of the black studies program at San Jose State University. "It is an example of self-sufficiency that is lacking in our community."
For Masjidul Waritheen members who were once part of the Nation of Islam, their history is a source of strength. The Nation of Islam sought to lift them, and other African-Americans, out of the cycles of poverty, racism and humiliation that for centuries defined white America's treatment of blacks.
Self-reliance and autonomy -- in spiritual, financial and even segregationist terms -- were cornerstones of the faith. But so was racism. Black people were gods. White people were devils. It was an attempt to lift up the self by bringing down and demystifying their oppressors.
Before the Nation of Islam, "we were straightening our hair" to seem more white, says Tauheedah Muwwakkil, 54, a Masjidul Waritheen member who joined the Nation while she was a student at San Jose State in the early 1970s. "We were bleaching our skin. We were imitating the image the media put before us."
"Now comes this man who says, 'Let's look at your own kind,' " she says, referring to Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam's founder. " 'You're not the scum. You're not the leftover. You're the best of what God created, the cream of the planet Earth.' This set the psyche turning in a different way."
But these teachings had no basis in the Koran, Islam's holy book, which says that all races are equal.
W. Deen Mohammed became the spiritual leader of the Nation of Islam after his father, Elijah Muhammad, died in 1975. The son soon pointed the Nation toward traditional Islam, one built around the Koran.
The racist views were eliminated from the teachings, as was the name Nation of Islam. Whites were allowed to join. The newspaper for a faith community that once viewed the United States as an enemy and called for a separate black nation now carried the American flag -- as it does today.
It was a decision that disgruntled some, such as Louis Farrakhan, who resurrected the Nation of Islam and its black supremacist philosophies a few years later. But the vast majority of the community had already changed, African-American Muslims say.
Immigrant Muslims also offer other reasons for why African-Americans are perceived as still developing in the faith.
Arabic reading required
Islam requires the reading of the Koran in Arabic, a language still being learned by some African-Americans. And some immigrant Muslims say "scholars," unofficial interpreters of the faith sought for guidance, must be trained in one of the four streams of Sunni thought -- the branch of Islam encompassing roughly 85 percent of Muslims worldwide. Some African-Americans find that exclusionary.
Silicon Valley's prosperous Muslim community, primarily immigrants and their descendants, has been able to raise millions of dollars to build mosques. Masjidul Waritheen, meanwhile, is trying to scrape together $12,000 so that required pre-worship hand and face washing can be done at something other than the hallway sink, which lacks hot water.
One of the most striking differences involves the role of women.
At Masjidul Waritheen, women follow the Koran's teachings on modest dress. But they also serve in leadership roles. Men and women mingle freely after services, sometimes exchanging hugs. Both genders pray in the same room. This is uncommon in many immigrant mosques.
"We're different," says Imam Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed, the national representative for Imam W. Deen Mohammed. "We look at things differently. We are struggling to learn what are our principles that serve our unity."
Carla Ali, the principal of the Masjidul Waritheen-run school, says she believes African-American Muslims' history, rising from slavery and discrimination into Islam, is a model of what the religion can be in America.
"First of all, we are Americans," says Ali, 43. "We do have that American experience. Islam has raised a band of people up from what most people would agree are horrible conditions and challenges. And here we are. We are trying to live as peacefully as possible, forgiving the past, trying to bring people into the knowledge of what the religion is. . . . Who better to explain and show the light of Islam than African-Americans?"




6


  



October 25, 2003 Saturday  




 In Asia, Hoping Domestic Themes Also Travel Well

 
 The twin pillars of President Bush's campaign speeches are jobs and the war on terrorism, and the White House description of the mission of his six-country Asia trip was to "encourage increased efforts to combat security threats and promote economic growth." 
The similarity, according to foreign policy specialists and some administration officials, reflects the architecture of a foreign swing that was designed to bolster Bush for his reelection campaign at the same time he was rewarding and building overseas alliances. 
His trip emphasized what his advisers believe is his biggest strength, his command of the war on terrorism, and included overt steps to shore up vulnerabilities. 
Bush pressed China and Japan to loosen their currency policies, which politicians in both parties  increasingly blame  for the losses of manufacturing jobs in the swing states of the Rust Belt. And he confronted Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia for what Bush called "reprehensible" comments alleging global domination by Jews, who are a major new fundraising target for Republicans.  
Bush, who returned to the White House on Friday morning after a stopover in Hawaii, said at a fundraising reception here that his trip "made progress on a broad agenda, an agenda that will help make America more secure and more prosperous." 
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice also suggested a domestic inspiration for Bush's overseas message. She told  reporters at the outset of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok this week that Bush "looks forward to discussing two of the cornerstones of his policies at home," economic growth and security matters. 
U.S. presidents have long used foreign travel as a backdrop for promoting initiatives that are primarily of domestic interest, said Daniel Benjamin, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who was on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council staff and wrote scores of speeches for him to deliver overseas. But Benjamin  said White Houses tend to overestimate the resonance of  overseas events back in the  States. 
"The picture at home was of President Bush raising the war on terrorism in virtually every forum," Benjamin said. He noted that by tradition Bush had to go to the economic summit, and emphasizing the national security message "was a way to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, even though the audience on the other side might have been happy to hear about something else when the president came to call." 
The trip's frenetic pace was one indication of the White House's limited ambition for making an impression on local audiences. Bush spent 17 hours in Japan, 9 in the Philippines, 64 in Thailand, 15 in Singapore, 3 in Indonesia and 21 in Australia. That left no time  to mingle with locals, speak to a nongovernment audience, eat in a restaurant, view a tourist attraction or attend a public cultural event. 
 An aggressive Australian campaign to persuade him to stop by the Rugby World Cup was rebuffed by the White House long before the trip. 
Bush's aides said his schedule was so tight because he is a businesslike person who likes to do his work and get on to the next stop, and because he knows his security and entourage are tremendous burdens on his hosts. 
In one event aimed mostly at a local audience, Bush had hoped to elevate Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, which was the largest source of troops for Iraq and Afghanistan after the United States and Britain.  
But Bush's visit was preceded by hostile coverage about his reference to Howard as a "sheriff" when prompted by an interviewer, and the president's message to parliament about remaining steadfast against terrorists was overwhelmed by news coverage of the hecklers who interrupted him. 
Bush also had at best mixed results from his trip to Indonesia, home of the world's largest Muslim population, to meet with moderate Muslims and draw a distinction between the religion and the extremists who  the United States and its allies are trying to incapacitate. Bush met with moderate Muslim leaders who nevertheless were sharply critical of him, although he said later  he thought  they were "appreciative of the fact that I took time to listen to them." 
A variety of analysts said the trip's major foreign policy initiative -- an offer to work with four other countries on a joint pledge not to attack North Korea in return for the dismantlement of its nuclear weapons program -- could have major political ramifications. Discussing that initiative and an agreement by Iran to cooperate with nuclear inspectors and stop reprocessing uranium after pressure from European powers, Bush said both show the power of patience and collective voices in resolving disputes peacefully. 






   

 

October 23, 2003 Thursday 



 OUR OPINIONS: Anti-Muslim remarks fuel fire

 
President Bush has repeatedly stressed that our war against terror is not a war against Islam, making that point most recently in comments during a three-hour stopover this week in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation.
"Americans hold a deep respect for the Islamic faith, which is professed by a growing number of my own citizens," Bush said. "We know Islam is fully compatible with liberty, tolerance and progress." 
Unfortunately, the president's deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence has been publicly sending a message that directly contradicts his commander in chief. Lt. Gen. William Boykin, often standing in his U.S. Army uniform and often with videotapes running, has told church congregations around the country that this is in fact a war between religions and a war between gods, the real god of Christianity against the alleged idol of Islam.
Boykin should be fired immediately, not for his beliefs but because of the harm he has done to his country by expressing them in public, and in uniform. By doing so, he has handed ammunition to those in the Muslim world already trying to stir up anti-American sentiment. They have been claiming that this is a war against Islam; now they have videotapes of a high-ranking uniformed American officer confirming that claim.
Earlier on his Asian trip, Bush had chastised Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for publicly expressing crude anti-Jewish sentiments that also tried to cast world affairs as a battle between religions. The president was right to do so.
However, he cannot chastise another head of state for such behavior while tolerating similar comments from a member of his own administration. Already, the failure of the Bush administration to act has allowed Mahathir an unfortunate chance to depict himself as the victim, not the perpetrator.
"You know, if I say something that is legitimate and correct factually about the Jews, I am called anti-Semitic," he told a news conference. "If they regard Muslims as Satan and all that, that is quite proper for them. So you can see there is double standards here. On the one hand, they said you shouldn't say nasty things about the Jews but, on the other, you can say anything you like about the Muslims. That is the kind of liberal thinking that we see out in the West."
Unless Bush acts, Mahathir will have a legitimate point.






  


October 23, 2003, Thursday  



 W MOVES TO SOOTHE MUSLIMS

 
WASHINGTON - President Bush tried yesterday to convince Islamic leaders that the U.S. is their friend and even rebuked a top Pentagon commander whose comments insulted Muslims.
"I wanted to make it very clear that I didn't feel that way and Americans don't feel that way," Bush said after meeting with a small group of religious leaders in Muslim-dominated Indonesia. 
"I assured them that Americans know that these terrorists are hiding behind Islam in order to create fear and chaos and death," Bush said.
The President took aim at Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, an evangelical Christian, after the Islamic leaders said they felt threatened by his anti-Islamic remarks.
"I said, 'He didn't reflect my opinion. Look, it just doesn't reflect what the government thinks.' "
In a speech, Boykin called the enemy in the war on terrorism "a spiritual enemy . . . called Satan" who can be beaten "in the name of Jesus."
Bush also tried to quash concerns the U.S. is slanted toward Israel at the expense of Islamic countries.
"They said the United States' policy is tilted toward Israel, and I said our policy is tilted toward peace," Bush said he told the religious leaders.
He reminded them he was the first U.S. President to support creation of a Palestinian state.
"I say it quite a bit. . . . In Indonesia, maybe they didn't pay attention to it, but anyway, I explained it," Bush said.






   


October 23, 2003 Thursday



 Bush praises Australia for supporting war in Iraq

 
http://media.mnginteractive.com
Australian Federal Police block a demonstrator who attempted to cross a barricade outside Parliament House in Canberra as President Bush arrived. AP photo Associated Press
Associated Press
Associated Press
CANBERRA, Australia - As thousands of anti-war demonstrators protested outside Parliament, President Bush thanked Australia today for sending troops to Iraq and Afghan-istan to stand and fight alongside the United States "instead of wishing and waiting while tragedy drew closer."
Bush personally saluted Prime Minister John Howard as "a leader of exceptional courage" for not buckling earlier this year to his nation's largest peace marches since the Vietnam War. Instead, Howard sent 2,000 troops to Iraq. 
Forty-one opposition lawmakers signed a letter criticizing Bush's war decision, saying the war was conducted on the basis of a clear and present danger in Iraq that did not exist.
Outside Parliament, thousands of demonstrators banged drums and shouted at the president from security lines 100 yards away from where Bush entered. Other protesters jostled with security officials outside the U.S. embassy compound where Bush stayed overnight.
Bush came here, his last stop on a six-country trip, from Indonesia, where he tried to convince skeptical Islamic leaders yesterday that America is not biased against Muslim countries. He praised the anti-terror work of Indonesia's president in an appearance near the site of an al-Qaida-sponsored bombing that killed more than 200.
Before speaking to Parliament, Bush met with Howard and said the United States hopes to complete a free-trade agreement with Australia by December. "It's good for America. It's good for American workers. It's good for Australia," Bush said.
In his speech, Bush vigorously defended using force in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying that terrorists had been trying to gain chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
"America, Australia and other nations acted in Iraq to remove a grave and gathering danger, instead of wishing and waiting while tragedy drew closer," the president said.
While no weapons of mass destruction have been found, Bush said the United States has discovered secret biological laboratories in Iraq, design work on prohibited long range missiles and a campaign to hide an illegal weapons program.
"Who can possibly think that the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power?" Bush said, citing evidence of mass killings, torture and rape. "Today Saddam's regime is gone and none should mourn its passing."
The president was interrupted briefly by an Australian lawmaker who opposed the war. Bush smiled politely, winked at someone in the audience and then continued.
The president cautioned the world still faces grave threats from terrorists.
"With decisive victories behind us, we still have decisive days ahead," the president said. "We cannot let up in our offensive against terror, even a bit. And we must continue to building stability and peace in the Middle East and Asia as the alternatives to hatred and fear."
Earlier during a 312-hour stop on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, Bush praised President Megawati Sikarnoputri, an ally against terrorism, and tried to dispel the conviction of many Muslims that the war on terror is, in fact, a war against Islam. He presented his case in a meeting with moderate religious leaders.
"I felt he was a quite warm person," said Azyumardi Azra, a Muslim scholar at the National Islamic University in Jakarta. "He responded and he listened."
With gunboats on the horizon and 5,000 troops on shore, Bush's visit took him within several miles of the spot where 202 people were killed in al-Qaida linked terrorist bombings a year ago.
Trying to counter anti-American lessons in many Indonesian schools, the president said he would ask Congress for $157 million in education grants for Megawati's government. Like Bush, Megawati faces an election next year, and she tried to appear close to Bush while saying that her citizens are suspicious of the United States.
"We do not always share common perspective," Megawati said at an oceanside news conference under a thatched-roof platform.
Introducing Bush to Parliament, Howard acknowledged the fierce debate over the war. "We had a divided view in this nation," he said, adding that "we believe the right decision was made."
Opposition leader Simon Crean said that "on occasions friends do disagree as we did on this side with you on the war in Iraq." But he said that such differences "can enrich rather than diminish, they can strengthen rather than weaken the partnership. Our commitment to the alliance remains unshakable, as does our commitment to the war on terror."
Bush's stop in Bali had special significance in Australia. Many of the 202 tourists killed in terrorist bombings a year ago were Australian.
"No people are immune from the sudden violence that has come to an office building or an airplane or a nightclub or a city bus," Bush said. "Your nation and mine have known the shock, and felt the sorrow, and laid the dead to rest. And we refuse to live our lives at the mercy of murders."
En route to Australia, Bush recounted his meeting with religious leaders, talking to reporters gathered around an Air Force One conference table. Bush was weary with jet lag, his elbow on the table to prop up his chin. He sat with an open collar and no tie and wore a dark blue jacket emblazoned with his name.
"They said the United States' policy is tilted toward Israel, and I said our policy is tilted toward peace," Bush said.
 Copyright and permissions







  
 

October 23, 2003 Thursday  
  



 Greeted Coolly, Bush Urges Indonesia to Bolster Democracy 

 
President Bush injected himself directly on Wednesday into Indonesia's struggle between democratization and Islamic fundamentalism, saying during a lightning visit that both peace and economic growth in Asia depend on Indonesia's success "as a pluralistic and democratic state." Mr. Bush's three-hour stopover in the most populous Muslim nation was restricted for security reasons to Bali, the overwhelmingly Hindu resort island, and he traveled less than a mile from where Air Force One was parked on the tarmac. 
     But his goal was to show support for President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who faces an election next year, and to engage with Muslim moderates who, in nearly an hour of conversation with Mr. Bush, were sharply critical of his policies toward the Middle East and Iraq.  
 "There was kind of a sense that Americans believe that Muslims are terrorists," Mr. Bush said aboard Air Force One en route to Canberra, Australia, recounting the discussion for reporters. He said he made it "very clear that I didn't feel that way and Americans don't feel that way." 
Mr. Bush is deeply unpopular in Indonesia, and even President Megawati, while greeting him warmly, kept some political distance, noting in their televised joint appearance, "We do not always share common perspective."
The Indonesian government had first sought to have Mr. Bush visit Jakarta, the capital. That was rejected, but a senior Administration official said on Wednesday that "it would have been unwise, by every measure" to pass over Indonesia en route to Australia. 
"That would have sent the wrong message," the official said, "at a moment that the president knows we have a lot of work to do with the Islamic world."
So Mr. Bush tried to make the best of what many Indonesians seemed to regard as an awkward visit. In a short speech, he dwelled on what he called the common values of the United States and Indonesia: religious diversity and respect for liberty. 
"Your national motto, 'Unity in diversity,' sounds a lot like our own, 'Out of many, one,' " he said. "Americans hold a deep respect for the Islamic faith, which is professed by a growing number of my own citizens. We know Islam is fully compatible with liberty, tolerance and progress. We see the proof in your country." 
But a senior American official acknowledged that the administration is deeply concerned about the growing popularity of radical Islamic movements in Indonesia and their challenge to the secular government. 
"The people with more extreme, more exclusionary views have been making inroads," this official said.
Mr. Bush came armed with modest gifts, including $157 million in American support for education. American officials said the money would go chiefly to primary schools, including Islamic boarding schools. 
 Mr. Bush, speaking later on his plane, said Indonesians had expressed concern about how the money would be spent. "They wanted to make sure this wasn't America's education system," he said. "I said, 'It's not, it's money available for the Indonesian government to help basic education develop.' "
 But a senior administration official on the trip said, "The fundamentalists are pouring money into these schools, and we have to help counter them." 
Mr. Bush never explicitly mentioned Indonesia's role as the base for Jemaah Islamiyah, a terrorist group that has been held responsible by the United States for the attack on a Bali nightclub last year that killed more than 200 people. The attack took place, Mr. Bush noted, just a few miles from where the two presidents met on Wednesday. The same group is blamed by the United States for the suicide bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August. 
With the battle with terrorists continuing here, American warships patrolled waters offshore from the airport meeting place. The pilots guiding Air Force One and a nearly identical backup plane made an unusual landing here, low and fast over the water, and Mr. Bush never came in contact with the Balinese in this crowded city.
The most interesting encounter was between Mr. Bush and the representatives of Muslim, Hindu and Christian groups here. They included Hasyim Muzadi, the chairman of the largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, which has a membership estimated at 40 million. He said he told Mr. Bush that his Middle East policy unfairly favored Israel. 
 Mr. Bush, recounting the same conversation aboard Air Force One, said he responded that "our policy is tilted toward peace" and discussed his thoughts about the formation of a Palestinian state. 
 "There wasn't a lot of debate," Mr. Bush said. One interlocutor accused him of deciding to invade Iraq long before the war, he said, and he responded that "a process had gone under way before I made the decision to use military force, that the world has spoken before about Saddam Hussein." 
Mr. Muzadi said he asked the president when American troops would leave Iraq to the Iraqis, and told Mr. Bush that the United States should stop seeing Indonesia as a "terrorists' nest, because Indonesia is a terror victim." 









October 23, 2003 Thursday  
  



 Bush Says He Disagrees With General's Remarks on Religion 

 
President Bush said on Wednesday that he disagreed with comments by a top Pentagon general who had cast the war on terrorism in religious terms, but the Defense Department said the officer would not be reassigned.
     The comments by Mr. Bush were his first in public aboutLt. Gen. William G. Boykin, the deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence and war-fighting. General Boykin has likened the battle against Islamic militants to a Christian struggle against Satan and said at evangelical gatherings that a militant Muslim militia leader in Somalia worshiped an "idol" and not "a real God."  
 Mr. Bush, speaking before a group of moderate Muslims during a stopover in Bali, Indonesia, said the general's comments "didn't reflect my opinion," adding, "Look, it just doesn't reflect what the government thinks." 
The president's remarks came as some Congressional Republicans had begun to suggest that General Boykin move aside temporarily or even resign. "The political reality up here is that no one thinks Boykin will survive," said a senior Congressional Republican official.
Calls for the general's temporary reassignment have come from, among others, Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee. But according to the Pentagon's spokesman, Larry DiRita, "nobody's thinking about asking him to step aside."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on Tuesday that General Boykin had requested an internal investigation, and that he had agreed. But Mr. Rumsfeld declined to criticize the general's comments.
The defense secretary was scheduled to meet behind closed doors later on Wednesday with senators from both parties for a regular meeting on Iraq, and Congressional officials said they expected the issue of General Boykin to be addressed.
Two Republican Congressional officials said they believed that Mr. Rumsfeld had made a mistake in refusing to criticize General Boykin, and that he had allowed personal loyalty to get in the way of political wisdom.
One senior Republican official said anger had redoubled concern about Mr. Rumsfeld that has until now focused on the secretary's reluctance to accept responsibility for setbacks in Iraq. 
Another said the sense was that Mr. Rumsfeld was increasingly becoming a problem for the administration.
General Boykin, a highly decorated officer who was confirmed by the Senate in June as a deputy under secretary of defense, came under criticism last week, after NBC News and The Los Angeles Times reported details of his comments during several speeches before Christian evangelical churches.
On Friday, the Pentagon released a written statement in which the general said he wanted to apologize "to those who have been offended by my statements." 
But he made clear in a written statement that he had no intention of resigning, and that he believed that at least some of his remarks had been taken out of context. 
Religious leaders from many denominations have said General Boykin's words run the danger of inflaming anti-American sentiment across the Islamic world. 






  
  

  

OCTOBER 23, 2003 Thursday 



 Bush hears Muslims' criticism in Indonesia;
Support for Israel and the Iraq war led clerics' concerns.
In Australia, he was heckled and cheered.

 
President Bush met with Muslim clerics in the world's most populous Muslim nation yesterday and found himself on the defensive about Israel, Iraq, and Americans' views on Muslims.
In an extraordinary encounter for a president who rarely invites criticism, Bush got an earful from three Muslim leaders during a visit to terror-scarred Indonesia. The clerics criticized Bush's staunch support for Israel, questioned the war in Iraq, and expressed fears that most Americans considered Muslims to be terrorists. 
Bush, on a nighttime flight from Indonesia to Australia, said, "I'm glad I did it," referring to his meeting with the clerics. His arrival in Australia, the last stop on his six-day, six-country tour, sparked thousands of people to march through the streets of Sydney to protest the U.S. war against Iraq.
In the capital, Canberra, about 5,000 protesters demonstrated outside Parliament as Bush spoke this morning. Nearly half of the lawmakers withheld their applause when Bush entered the chamber, and two members of the antiwar Green Party were threatened with ejection when they interrupted Bush's speech with heckling.
Bush defused tension and won applause by saying, "I love free speech."
The President thanked Australia for sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan to stand and fight alongside the United States.
Although the meeting in Bali was behind closed doors, Bush recounted the conversation to reporters traveling with him on Air Force One to Australia. He seemed to relish the discussion, which lasted nearly an hour and included Christian and Hindu clerics.
"They did a lot of talking," Bush said. ". . . I gave them all a time to speak, and I listened and would occasionally interject some thoughts. They were direct."
When the religious leaders complained that U.S. policy was "tilted toward Israel," Bush told them that it was "tilted toward peace." He stressed that he was the first U.S. president to explicitly call for the creation of a Palestinian state.
The Indonesians were also highly skeptical about the war in Iraq. When one suggested Bush ordered the invasion without justification, he countered by saying that the United Nations had repeatedly called for Saddam Hussein to disarm.
"I also made the point very clearly that there was a lot of human suffering, a lot of Muslims suffered in Iraq. I did bring up the mass graves and the torture rooms."
Bush tried to dispel the idea that Americans equated Islam with terrorism.
"There was a kind of a sense that Americans believe that Muslims are terrorists," he said. "I wanted to make it very clear that I didn't feel that way and Americans don't feel that way."
Although the President rated the meeting a success, the Indonesians gave him mixed reviews. Ahmed Hasyim Muzadi, chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's largest Islamic organization, left the meeting dissatisfied. He said he would need to spend a lot more time with Bush to resolve his concerns.
Azyumardi Azra, a scholar at National Islamic University in Jakarta, said he was impressed by Bush's willingness to listen.
Bush came to Indonesia under tight security to counter growing anti-American sentiment and to shore up a somewhat reluctant ally in the war on terrorism.
"Terrorists who claim Islam as their inspiration defile one of the world's great faiths," he said during a brief news conference with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. "Murder has no place in any religious tradition. It must find no home in Indonesia."
He met with Megawati and the Indonesian clerics at a seaside resort on Bali, the site of terrorist attacks that killed more than 200 people last October.
Contact reporter Ron Hutcheson at rhutcheson@krwashington.com.






  
  


October 23, 2003 Thursday 



 INTERNATIONAL BRIEFING

 
France will resist budget cuts
France will abide by the "spirit" of European budget rules, but will resist deficit cuts that endanger its economy, Finance Minister Francis Mer said Wednesday. The European Commission on Tuesday demanded that France cut its projected deficit for 2004 by 0.4 percent of gross domestic product in return for being allowed to exceed the E.U. limit on budget deficits another year. Mer's ministry said Tuesday that such a cut -- about 6 billion euros ($7 billion) -- would be "destabilizing." Mer echoed the comments Wednesday, saying reducing the deficit further than planned could damage the fragile French economy. Euro-zone finance ministers are likely to react to the Commission's proposal on the French deficit when they meet on Nov. 3.
Noyer replaces Trichet at Bank of France
The French Cabinet on Wednesday named Christian Noyer, a former vice president of the European Central Bank, as governor of the Bank of France. Noyer is to replace current Bank of France President Jean-Claude Trichet, who takes over from Wim Duisenberg as ECB president on Nov. 1. Noyer, 53, will coordinate with other national central banks across the euro zone as well as the European Union's monetary authorities. His experience in the ECB's No. 2 job is expected to help him in that task. Since leaving the ECB in June 2002, Noyer has worked as a special adviser to French Finance Minister Francis Mer.







  



October 23, 2003 Thursday  




 Bush: Pressure Is Building on N. Korea; 
After Indonesia Stopover, President Engages Reporters En Route to Australia

 
 President Bush said Wednesday that regional pressure was building on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program and expressed hope that Iran would fulfill a pledge to stop enriching uranium and allow inspectors unrestricted access to its nuclear facilities. 
His comments came in an unusual conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One. Bush said his decision to enlist China, Japan, Russia and South Korea for talks with North Korea had created "a different dynamic" and that "the neighborhood is now speaking." He called those countries "our partners in this effort" to restrain North Korea's reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il. 
The subject of North Korea has hung over Bush's six-nation Asian tour. His offer of some undefined security guarantees to North Korea in exchange for its abandonment of its nuclear ambitions was abruptly dismissed by Kim.  
"Kim Jong Il is used to being able to deal bilaterally with the United States, but the change of policy now is, is that he must deal with other nations, most notably China," Bush said. "Now he's got his big neighbor to the right on his border, he's got a neighbor to the south, he's got Japan, he's got another neighbor, Russia, all saying the same thing." 
 Bush also repeated his sharp criticism of the North Korean leader. "I just can't respect anybody that would really let his people starve and shrink in size as a result of malnutrition," Bush said. 
Bush said that he believed the four other partners in the nuclear talks would back an agreement with Kim like the one the administration is drafting. "He's been saying, 'I want a security guarantee,' " Bush said. "What we have now said is that in return for dismantling the programs, we're all willing to sign some kind of document -- not a treaty, but a piece of paper -- that says we won't attack you."  
The president said he was also optimistic about Iran's agreement this week with three European foreign ministers to suspend uranium enrichment and open the doors to unrestricted inspections. "The Iranians, it looks like they're accepting the demands of the free world, and now it's up to them to prove that they've accepted the demands. It's a very positive development," he said. 
Bush said the administration was hopeful it could reach a deal with Iran on the handful of key al Qaeda leaders who the administration believes are there. Bush said abandoning nuclear weapons and giving up the al Qaeda leaders "will help relations with Iran." His national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said last month that it was unclear whether these leaders were being detained, but she said the administration would continue to insist that Iran must "transfer these people out." 
Bush spoke to reporters as he flew to Australia, the last stop of his seven-day trip. On Thursday morning, he addressed a raucous session of the Australian Parliament. On Wednesday, he visited Indonesia, making a three-hour, heavily guarded stop on the resort island of Bali. There, he met President Megawati Sukarnoputri and sought to reassure moderate Muslim leaders that the war against terrorism was not a war against their religion. 
"We know that Islam is fully compatible with liberty and tolerance and progress, because we see the proof in your country and in our own," he said with Megawati at his side after a  walk on the beachfront. "Terrorists who claim Islam as their inspiration defile one of the world's great faiths. Murder has no place in any religious tradition, must find no home in Indonesia." 
However, Muslim leaders in a round-table discussion Bush held with Indonesian clerics told him that the United States would be a better model of democracy if it used peaceful means to resolve conflicts. 
Azyumardi Azra, president of the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, said the meeting was supposed to last 30 minutes but went for 55. Bush did a lot of listening and took a pad out of his pocket and took his own notes, Azra said. "We criticized him on many fronts, on his foreign policies," Azra said. "At least he was willing to listen, and we hope he would reflect on this and, hopefully, it would bring some changes in his policies." 
Bush also announced that the administration would give $157 million over six years to Indonesia to improve general education in both religious and secular state schools. 
Bush told reporters later that he had been asked about the recent controversy around remarks made by Army Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin. An evangelical Christian who heads a Pentagon office focused on hunting Osama bin Laden and former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Boykin described the United States as "a Christian nation" and credited "our God" with the capture of a Somali warlord. In remarks that offended Muslims, he said the war on terrorism was being fought against a "spiritual enemy" represented by Satan. 
"Boykin came up," Bush said. "I said he didn't reflect my opinion. Look, it just doesn't reflect what the government thinks. And I think they were pleased to hear that." 
In his 34-minute session with reporters, Bush appeared relaxed and confident, wearing a blue flight jacket with his name stitched on a breast pocket, chomping noisily on butterscotch candy and pretending to play a shell game with the array of tape recorders before him. He repeatedly refused the pleas of his senior aides to cut off the interview, then lingered to speak off the record to the reporters. 
 In the interview, Bush suggested that he was adopting a more cautious approach on some issues.  
"I've been saying all along that not every policy issue needs to be dealt with by force," he said. "You've got to have some patience in foreign policy." Even before the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush's ties with Europe had been frayed by his tendency to act in what he considered the United States' interests, without always consulting affected countries. Bush told the reporters around a large wooden conference table that "by working hard to establish good relations on a lot of fronts, when a common problem arises, we can affect the solution in a positive way." 
In his meeting with the religious leaders, Bush said, the issue of the Middle East conflict came up. "They said the United States is tilted toward Israel, and I said our policy is tilted toward peace . . . and then I went through the notion of a Palestinian state, and the need for us to fight off terror in order for a state to develop," he said. 
 Bush was reminded by a reporter of his earlier optimism about the Middle East in a summit attended by Mahmoud Abbas, who subsequently resigned as the Palestinian prime minister. Bush said he was "disappointed" that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "shoved" Abbas "out of the way," which he called "an unfortunate decision, because it stopped good progress toward a Palestinian state." 
Referring to the stalled U.S.-backed peace initiative, Bush said, "The road map is still there."  
Bush said he was "the first president to have articulated" the policy favoring creation of a Palestinian state. However, in January 2001, President Bill Clinton had also called for a "viable Palestinian state."  
In his speech to the Australian Parliament on Thursday morning, Bush delivered a new warning about the possible spread of nuclear weapons to terrorists. Bush, who has been accused  of overstating Iraq's arsenal of unconventional weapons in making his case for war, spoke of extremists who "hide and strike within free societies." 
"The terrorists hope to gain chemical, biological or nuclear weapons -- the means to match their hatred. So we're confronting outlaw regimes that aid terrorists, that pursue weapons of mass destruction, and that defy the demands of the world," Bush said. 
After Britain, Australia was the biggest source of military personnel for the U.S.-led forces that attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. Prime Minister John Howard endured harsh criticism for backing Bush. The U.S. president hailed Howard as "a man of steel," which Bush said was "Texan for 'fair dinkum,' " an Australian expression for a genuine person.  
Police estimated that 5,000 demonstrators, including students and trade unionists, massed outside the Parliament House during Bush's speech. Two Green Party senators interrupted Bush's address with shouts, and were ordered to leave the chamber but refused. Bush drew applause when he ad-libbed, "I love free speech." 
Reaching out to his many critics in the Parliament, Bush said the United States is "committed to multilateral institutions, because global threats require a global response." 
"We're committed to collective security," he added. Bush then went on to outline a defense of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. "Collective security requires more than solemn discussions and sternly worded pronouncements," he said. "It requires collective will."  
Bush implored the lawmakers not to slacken their commitment to the U.S.-led war on terrorism. "Every milestone of liberty was considered impossible before it was achieved," he said. 
Bush was scheduled to leave Australia later Thursday for a one-day visit to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. He is scheduled to return to the White House on Friday morning. 
Correspondent Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta and staff writer Bradley Graham in Washington contributed to this report. 






   

 

October 22, 2003 Wednesday 



 BACKGROUNDER: Bush's stop symbolizes stakes in war on terror;
Indonesia a key ally in struggle

 
Washington --- President Bush stops today in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim nation nursing its own terrorism scars and battling to break strong ties between some of its people and terrorist groups.
America's relationship with Indonesia is one of the most complicated in the U.S. foreign policy portfolio. Today's visit, an important stop in Bush's weeklong tour of Asia, is meant to symbolize support for Indonesian anti-terrorism efforts.
On Tuesday, Bush also stopped in Singapore to praise it for its tough stand against terrorism.
Since 2001, Singapore has arrested more than 30 suspected Islamic militants on suspicion of plotting to blow up the U.S. Embassy and other Western targets. Meeting with Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Bush thanked him for his efforts. 
Indonesia's Islamic establishment reviles Bush, however. Some accuse him of using his anti-terrorism campaign to launch a 21st century crusade against Islam.
The venue of Bush's talks with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri is symbolic. They will meet on the resort island of Bali, where two car bombings killed 202 people a year ago.
The group Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for the Bali bombings, and Bush has urged Megawati to choke off the militant Islamic organization's funding, root out its operatives and shake down its support base --- with the help of some $25 million in U.S. aid to Indonesian police and security forces.
Abuses targeted
Bush has voiced optimism that the United States will increase military training assistance to Indonesia, aimed chiefly at improving the human rights record of its military and impressing upon its officers the importance of civilian control. Congress has held up additional aid because of concerns about Indonesia's investigation of the ambush-style slayings of two Americans in eastern Indonesia in August 2002.
Home to more Muslims than any other nation on earth, Indonesia is struggling to get a grip on Jemaah Islamiyah, a powerful terrorist group with close ties to al-Qaida. Indonesia is considered a key base for terrorist groups, with about 2,000 of Jemaah Islamiyah's estimated 3,000 members believed to be there.
A country of 210 million people, Indonesia is the third-most-populous democracy in the world, after India and the United States. Arab traders brought Islam to the area's largely Hindu and Buddhist cultures in the 15th and 16th centuries, and today about 87 percent of Indonesians are Muslims. During his stop, Bush planned to meet with leaders of the nation's two largest modern Muslim organizations.
Only over the past two generations has Indonesia begun to emerge from centuries of colonial rule. In the early 1600s, the Dutch East India  began turning the country's rich stores of oil, minerals and tropical spices and fruits into a source of vast colonial wealth. Japan ousted the Dutch during World War II and occupied the area until its surrender in 1945. Indonesia then declared independence, but the Dutch didn't cede sovereignty until 1949. Decades of authoritarianism followed.
Washington is supporting Indonesia's moves toward democracy, sending about $24 million to support elections next year.
Indonesia is made up of more than 17,000 islands, 1,000 of which are permanently inhabited. That leaves vast tracts of isolated hideouts for militant groups ranging from Muslim separatists --- some of which have waged guerrilla rebellions for decades --- to groups affiliated with Jemaah Islamiyah, which has found willing recruits in a country where per capita income averages just $700 a year.
Regarded as a terrorist group by the United States, Jemaah Islamiyah is closely linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. It has been blamed for detonating the two car bombs near a Bali discotheque in October 2002 that killed 202 people, including seven Americans.
Indonesian authorities have convicted 29 people in those blasts. Three have been sentenced to death, and others have received prison sentences.
In August, the country suffered another terrorist attack when militants blew up a car bomb near the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, killing 11 people and raising concern in the Bush administration about the level of intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation it was receiving from Indonesia.
U.S. holds militant
While Bush praises Megawati in public, U.S. officials say privately that far more needs to be done to counter terrorist groups.
Bush has refused to hand over to Indonesian authorities the operations chief of Jemaah Islamiyah, a man named Hambali. Also known as Riduan Isamuddin, Hambali is believed to have close ties to al-Qaida and is alleged to be the mastermind behind the Bali bombings. Thai authorities arrested him in Thailand two months ago and handed him over to U.S. officials. He remains in U.S. custody, being questioned at an undisclosed location.




7

  
  


October 22, 2003 Wednesday 



 BUSH SUPPORTS MODERATE MUSLIMS
SECURITY HEIGHTENED FOR BRIEF BALI VISIT

 
SINGAPORE -- President Bush is visiting one of the epicenters of terrorist violence today to show support for Muslim moderates.
Protected by extraordinarily tight security, Bush is to meet with Muslim leaders in Bali, Indonesia, the site of a terrorist attack in October 2002 that killed more than 200 people. Islamic extremists with links to the al-Qaida terrorist network followed up the Bali bombing with an attack this summer on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. 
Authorities blamed the violence on Jemaah Islamiyah, a terrorist group that wants to create an Islamic state that includes all or parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.
U.S. officials hope that Bush's visit will increase the influence of Muslim moderates and send the message that terrorism has no basis in Islamic teachings. Indonesia, with 210 million people, is the world's most populous Muslim country.
"The president has gone out of his way to talk about the fact that this is not a war of religions," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said. "It's not a matter of the Muslim faith. It's a perversion of the Muslim faith."
Because of the security concerns, Bush will spend just three hours in Indonesia and will not leave the airport.
Bush was scheduled to arrive in Bali this morning after a layover in Singapore on his way from an international summit in Bangkok, Thailand. Leaders from 21 nations that border the Pacific Ocean wrapped up the three-day Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum with a joint statement pledging to work together to defeat terrorism and encourage economic growth.
At Bush's urging, the APEC leaders vowed to "dismantle fully and without delay transnational terrorist groups" that threaten their economies. The statement also called for reviving international free trade talks that collapsed last month at a meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
But Bush left Thailand with little to show for his efforts.
He failed to get international help in Iraq. Although South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said he would send troops, the offer came with conditions. Roh said the size of the force, its duties and the timing of the deployment would depend in part on public opinion in South Korea.
Bush also failed to persuade Asian nations to let free-market forces set their currency values. The relatively low fixed rates for some Asian currencies, especially China's yuan, discourage exports from the United States to China and encourage imports from China. U.S. manufacturers say that trade imbalance is costing U.S. jobs.







  



October 22, 2003 Wednesday  




 Bush Arrives in Bali To Send a Message; 
Stopover in Indonesia Is Intended to Defy Terrorists and Court Muslims, Officials Say

 
President Bush landed  on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Wednesday to send a defiant message to terrorists who crippled the tourist trade here and to try to improve his image in the world's most populous Muslim country. 
Bush landed in a hot, sticky breeze and was surrounded by a cordon of security on land, air and sea. The Secret Service considered the trip the riskiest of his presidency because of the possible threat from terrorist cells that they believe are active in Indonesia. 
Bush planned to deliver a message stressing the importance of religious tolerance and democracy in heading off future generations of terrorists. He was to announce a five-year, $150-million grant to improve basic education in Indonesian schools. The money is to be used for both secular schools and to encourage more moderate teaching in Islamic boarding schools, aides said.  
He was scheduled to spend three hours and 15 minutes at the airport and in an adjacent hotel with grass-thatched roofs. His visit came one year after the  bombing of two nightclubs in Bali killed 202 people, most of them foreigners, sparking fears of terrorism in Southeast Asia. 
After landing, Bush immediately went into a villa at the hotel for separate private meetings with President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Muslim leaders that lasted an hour. He was expected to praise Megawati's efforts to crack down on extremists operating in the country, though domestic political pressure made her a reluctant and tardy convert to the war on terrorism, administration officials said. Indonesia, with 210 million people, is the fourth-largest country and about 87 percent of its residents are Muslim. 
The meeting with the clerics included moderate Muslims leaders who are critical of Bush's policies and planned to tell him of their objections. Christian and Hindu representatives also participated.   
Bush said last week that part of the purpose of the Indonesia trip "is to make sure that the people who are suspicious of our country understand our motives are pure." 
"We believe in freedom for all people," Bush said. "We believe in peace. We don't believe a few killers ought to determine the fate and the future of a lot of people." 
A senior administration official traveling on the six-country presidential swing through Asia and Australia said Bush "has seen some mischaracterizations of his policies on Iraq and on the Middle East coming out of Indonesia." 
"He wants to correct those misunderstandings and share views with them," the official said. 
Muslim critics of the administration point to Bush's careless use of the word "crusade" to refer to the war on terrorism five days after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in September 2001.  
The administration's close ties to Israel are a perennial complaint of these critics, and the invasion of Iraq inflamed opposition overseas.  
The administration is deploying a variety of propaganda tools, including a 24-hour satellite network aimed at the Arab world to be launched later this year, to combat the impression among many people that the war on terrorism is a war on Islam. 
Bush's appointees have started public diplomacy and information projects aimed at improving the image of the United States in the Arab and Muslim worlds, including the White House Office of Global Communications, created in January to coordinate a U.S. media strategy for foreign audiences. 
The Middle East Television Network, a 24-hour, Arabic-language satellite network, is scheduled to begin airing in late January. Officials said the channel, which will consist mostly of news and information, would be available to 300 million Arabic-speaking Muslims in 22 countries in the Middle East. 
Bush has made similar, if sporadic, efforts to reach out to Muslims at home, twice visiting a Washington mosque and making an annual tradition of holding an iftar, the evening meal that  breaks the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan. 
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations,  laughed when asked about  Bush's efforts. He said Muslims and Arab Americans believe they are being targeted by administration law enforcement policies. 
"We had high hopes after 9/11, when the president did reach out to the Muslim community, but within months the situation had reversed itself," Hooper said. "When policies change, minds will change. But all we've seen so far is PR spin." 
Bush's trip was built around the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok, which ended  Tuesday. White House officials said they consider the meeting, which included the leaders of 22 countries, to have been very successful because they accomplished their goal of broadening the discussion from the traditional APEC agenda of trade issues  toward a recognition of the connections between economic security and counterterrorism. Several countries had privately opposed this change as a break with APEC's roots and an effort by the United States  to co-opt a multinational organization for its own purposes. 
The summit's final communique included a section labeled "enhancing human security," which stated that the leaders agreed that "the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction [poses] direct and profound challenges to APEC's vision of free, open and prosperous economies." 
The leaders agreed to "dedicate APEC" to advancing prosperity and to the "complementary mission of ensuring the security of our people." 
 However, in a major disappointment for some on Bush's team, the leaders did not issue a statement reaffirming their opposition to the development  of nuclear weapons by North Korea, which they had codified in a special statement last year. Many of the administration's   meetings at the summit were devoted to promoting Bush's plan to offer North Korea a statement of assurances that the verifiable dismantlement of nuclear arms would be matched by a pledge that North Korea would not be attacked by the United States or its allies in the region. "We were not pushing for a statement," said an administration official who briefed reporters at the summit's conclusion. "In many ways, we have moved beyond statements." 
 Late Tuesday, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency dismissed Bush's plan, saying it was laughable and not worth considering, the Reuters news service reported. The commentary said North Korea wanted a bilateral treaty with the United States, which Bush has ruled out. 
Bush  flew  to Singapore on Tuesday for a meeting and dinner with Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, one of his closest allies in Asia. "Call me Chok," the prime minister said. Bush replied, "Call me George," according to one of their dinner  companions. 
After Bush's visit, Singapore said it would assist the U.S.-led effort in Iraq. Singapore will send C-130 Hercules transport planes and warships to the Persian Gulf, its first military contribution to operations in Iraq, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said. Support personnel will accompany the equipment, she added. She  declined to specify how many planes and ships would be deployed.  
Correspondent Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta contributed to this report. 







October 21, 2003 Tuesday 
  
 



 Malaysia Talk Attacking Jews Draws Bush Ire 

 
President Bush told Malaysia's pugnacious prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, on Monday that he was "wrong and divisive" when he declared last week that Jews ran the world by proxy.
     Mr. Bush, who rarely recounts his private conversations with other world leaders, sent his press secretary out to report the encounter at the opening of the Asian summit meeting here. The president said the Malaysian leader's comment "stands squarely against what I believe in."  
 It was a strange and choreographed encounter, another twist in an up-and-down relationship. For four days after Mr. Mahathir spun out his theory of how Jews survived efforts to destroy them -- and then went on to succeed at the expense of Muslims -- Mr. Bush was silent on the speech, even as Italy, Australia and other countries condemned it as offensive and anti-Semitic.  Excerpts from the speech, Page A13. 
Mr. Mahathir is retiring in a few months, and it seemed that the White House had decided not to pick an open fight with a prickly leader whom Mr. Bush praised in the Oval Office last year as a strong ally in the campaign against terrorism.
In fact, Malaysia has often been cited by administration officials as an exemplary moderate Islamic nation, even if it was run by a man who once blamed the Asian financial crisis in 1997 on the Jews and often said Western-style democracy would be a disaster in the developing world.
Mr. Bush began to sour on Mr. Mahathir this year, though, when he declared that invading Iraq would be a racist attack on a Muslim state.
But by the time Mr. Bush landed in this jammed capital for a state visit and the two-day annual summit meeting, it became clear, White House officials said, that the president could no longer be silent.
So Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, told reporters on Monday that "everyone thinks the comments were hateful, they are outrageous," and that Mr. Bush regarded them as "reprehensible."
"I don't think they are emblematic of the Muslim world," she said. 
But as Mr. Bush prepares to drop in, for three hours on Wednesday, on the most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, some White House officials are clearly concerned that Mr. Mahathir's speech on Thursday may have had considerable resonance.
It received a standing ovation from Muslim leaders of many nations, including Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, at the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest Muslim group.
"Clearly, we had to respond," one White House official said Monday. "But the president wanted to do it in a quiet way, without further public embarrassment for Mahathir."
In the past, Mr. Bush has bitten his tongue when asked about Mr. Mahathir. When the two men took questions from reporters in the Oval Office in May 2002, the president was asked whether the United States had changed its view that Mr. Mahathir's former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, was a political prisoner. 
Mr. Ibrahim, the former finance minister and a potential rival to Mr. Mahathir, was convicted of sodomy and jailed in 1998. But the president, intent that day on emphasizing Malaysia's cooperation in fighting terrorism, made no public reference to Mr. Ibrahim's fate, and said, quietly, "Our position has not changed." 
Mr. Mahathir clearly knew that his comments last week would gain considerable circulation: there were cameras in the room, recording his farewell speech to the group. It included these words: "The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy: They get others to fight and die for them." 
He seemed, in some of his remarks, to be saying that Muslims should study the success of Jews. Later, he defended his remarks by citing that point. But he added that "1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews."
Mr. Mahathir told Mr. Bush on Monday that he was quoted out of context. His foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, later told Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that the speech was more critical of Muslims than of Jews, and that only "one or two portions" had been problematic. 
Mr. Mahathir expanded on his views in an interview with The Bangkok Post published on Tuesday. He said, "In my speech I condemned all violence, even the suicide bombings," adding later, "but those things were blacked out in the Western media." Then he said, referring to Jews, "The reaction of the world shows that they do control the world."
"Israel is a small country," he said. "There are not many Jews in the world. But they are so arrogant, they defy the whole world. Even if the United Nations says no, they go ahead. Why? Because they have the backing of all these people."
While the president confronted Mr. Mahathir, he was once again confronted by the belligerence of North Korea, which is not a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group and has never been invited to attend. Still, it has a way of making its presence known.
Mr. Bush has made clear here that he is trying to persuade Asian nations to sign on to a new plan to offer some loose security guarantees to the North in return for dismantling its nuclear weapons program. On Monday, North Korea tested a Silkworm ship-to-ship missile.
As a threat, it was not much. The missile cannot reach Japanese or American forces in Asia. 
Asked to compare the threat posed by North Korea to that posed by Saddam Hussein, the president ducked. Instead, he compared approaches, and on North Korea he said: "We're making progress on the diplomatic front. I'd like to resolve all issues in a peaceful way, without using our military, and I think we have an opportunity to do so."
One of his top advisers put it this way: "In Iraq, we had lots of military options, and we chose one." But in Korea, the aide said: "There are bad options and really bad options."
Between meetings, Mr. Bush sped through Bangkok, a city of grit and neon that is now glistening.
Before the leaders arrived here, a neighborhood of slums was artfully screened from view. Taxi drivers and hotel workers were trained on how to be on their best behavior -- and how to spot shoulder-launched missiles. Even the city's famed red-light districts reportedly had regular visits from the police.
In the middle of the river that runs through the most picturesque part of the city, near the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, giant fountains sprayed a sheet of water that became a movie screen with images from Thai history. A barge procession, a rare event, represented the descent of the gods to earth.
It would have been a great show for Bangkok's citizens, but they were given a holiday and told that the best contribution they could make to a good summit meeting was to leave, and take their street-clogging cars with them. Millions did just that.

CORRECTION-DATE: October 22, 2003

 CORRECTION:
A front-page article yesterday about President Bush's criticism of Mahathir Mohamad, the Malaysian prime minister, for his recent remarks attacking Jews misstated Mr. Mahathir's planned retirement date. It is Oct. 31, not a few months from now.
A front-page article yesterday about President Bush's criticism of Mahathir Mohamad, the Malaysian prime minister, for his recent remarks attacking Jews misstated Mr. Mahathir's planned retirement date. It is Oct. 31, not a few months from now.






  
  


October 21, 2003 Tuesday 



 BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS BLIND TO THE CONCERNS OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

 
President Bush's weeklong swing through six Asian nations is long overdue. Despite being home to half the world's population and the globe's most dynamic economies, Asia has received scant attention from this administration.
Unfortunately the president has only one subject on his agenda -- the war on terrorism.
The president is touching lightly, if at all, on the other issues that matter most to this region -- economic globalization, China's growing presence and political instability fed by economic disparities. This is not surprising. The Bush administration doesn't seem to think much about global economic issues. And when it does speak, as it has recently on the issue of currency manipulation by China and Japan, the administration's policy is confusing and contradictory. 
In Asia, the single-minded focus on terrorism leaves an opening for others -- China first of all -- who are more in tune with the region's concerns.
"I've never seen a time when the U.S. has been so distracted and China has been so focused," Ernest Bower, the head of the U.S. business council for Southeast Asia, told a business magazine.
Faced with multiple challenges, the countries of Southeast Asia have accelerated plans to create a regional economic bloc like the European Union. The Chinese, followed closely by India and Japan, are embracing the idea, proposing the creation of a vast East Asian free trade area that would encompass nearly 2 billion people but notably not include the United States.
When national security adviser Condoleezza Rice briefed reporters on the president's trip, the focus was almost entirely on security issues. Bush's itinerary is designed to highlight the nations working closely with the United States to combat al-Qaida-linked Islamist terror groups in Southeast Asia -- Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. Or to reward those who are backing the war in Iraq -- Japan and Australia. Even at the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok, Bush plans to "stress the need to put security at the heart of APEC's mission because prosperity and security are inseparable," Rice said.
No one can argue with that basic proposition. The example she cited was the terrorist bombing a year ago in Bali, Indonesia, which shut down tourism, a vital source of income for Indonesians. But let's not look at that link through the wrong end of the telescope. We need to grapple with the poverty and income inequality in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-populated nation, which feeds growing Islamic radicalism.
East Asia has largely emerged from the financial crisis that swept through this region in 1997-98 and sent countries such as Indonesia into economic collapse. Economic growth should pick up to almost 6 percent next year, the World Bank has predicted. But much of this is driven by China's rapid growth, which is in turn sparking a sharp rise in trade within the region, much of it between countries in the region and China.
These countries look warily on this rising giant. China is sucking away foreign investment from places like Silicon Valley that used to flow to them, and with it, jobs.
At the same time, progress toward a global free market that ensures fair competition has stalled. The world trade talks in Cancun last month collapsed in rancor, and the United States seems content now to pursue its own bilateral trade deals with favored countries such as Singapore and Australia.
This has encouraged the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations to accelerate plans to create a European Union-style economic community. The Chinese sent a huge, high-powered delegation led by their premier to their recent meeting, signed a friendship treaty with the group and pledged to negotiate a free-trade zone with the group.
"The Chinese are moving in in a big way," says Stanford University expert Donald Emmerson.
Where is the United States in all this?
"We're outside, and our businesses are going to be outside," says Brookings Institution global economic expert Lael Brainard. "The Bush administration needs to get a handle on this."
If it doesn't, the United States will wake up one day from its infatuation with unilateralism and return to Asia to find that the furniture has been rearranged and the locks have been changed.
Sneider is foreign affairs columnist for the , 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, Calif. 95190-0001. E-mail him at dsneider@mercurynews.com. Distributed by Knight Ridder News Service.







  



October 21, 2003 Tuesday  




 Rumsfeld's Crusader

 
  President Bush's commission on public diplomacy recently noted that in nine Muslim and Arab nations, only 12 percent of respondents surveyed believed that "Americans respect Arab/Islamic values." Such attitudes, the commission argued, create a toxic atmosphere of anti-Americanism that cripples U.S. foreign policy and helps terrorists. To address the problem the commission suggested a major reorganization of the American government, hundreds of millions of dollars of funding and the creation of a new Cabinet position. I have a simpler, more urgent suggestion: Fire William G. Boykin. 
 Boykin is the Army general who has recently been appointed to a senior Defense Department post. Over the past two years the general has given dozens of addresses to evangelical Christian groups in which, describing his battle with a Somali (Muslim) warlord, he has said: "I knew that my God was bigger than his God. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." He has also repeatedly explained that America's enemy is "a spiritual enemy . . . called Satan." The enemy will be defeated, he added, only "if we come against them in the name of Jesus."  
 A few more of these and Osama bin Laden won't need to make videos anymore. He can just put together the greatest hits of Boykin, Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and they will make his point nicely: that Americans see all Muslims as enemies. Oh, and here's a quick refresher course for the Pentagon intelligence chiefs: Islam was founded, in part, as a reaction against idol worship and rigorously prohibits any graven images. When have you seen a statue of Muhammad? 
 When confronted last week, Lt. Gen. Boykin claimed, of course, that his remarks had been taken out of context. When referring to the Somali warlord's God, he explained, he meant money and power. Untrue. In Boykin's original tale, he explained that the Somali warlord had bragged that the Americans would not capture him because his God, Allah, would protect him. "Well," Boykin continued, "my God was bigger than his God."  
His dissembling gets almost comic over another one of his comments. Boykin routinely told audiences that God elevated George W. Bush to the presidency. "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him," he would say. "I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there." Boykin now explains that he believes God routinely decides American elections and has done the same thing for "Bill Clinton and other presidents." This is surely the first time a conservative evangelical has argued that Clinton's election was caused by divine intervention. 
 When asked about these remarks, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld refused to condemn them, explaining, "We're a free people." The issue, though, is not whether the general is free to express his views but whether Rumsfeld wants someone who holds such views in high office. After all, were Boykin to have expressed the opinion that the Iraq war was a blunder, he would have been fired. Were he to have made an anti-Semitic comment (like the noxious ones Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad made last week), he would have been fired. Why? Because those freely expressed views would contradict the Bush administration's basic philosophy. So are we to assume that Boykin's views do not contradict administration policy? No one is urging that Rumsfeld muzzle Boykin, merely that he allow him to enter the private sector, where he may express his views even more freely. He could even sit in for Rush Limbaugh. 
 This is not simply a matter of symbolism, though that is important because this story is now being broadcast across the globe. The position Boykin holds -- deputy undersecretary for intelligence -- is one in which he would have to interact routinely with Pakistanis, Egyptians, Afghans, Indonesians and other Muslims from all over the world. Will he be effective in establishing close working relationships with these officials, who have all watched him slur their religion? Is this a man who will be able to objectively sift through intelligence and analysis about the state of Muslim societies, the difference between moderates and extremists, the distinctions among various fundamentalist groups? Or does he look at them all and see . . . Satan? 
 Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Boykin's remark was its utter ignorance. Compare Boykin's crude machismo about "my God" being bigger than "his God" to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's eloquent -- and historically accurate -- remarks last Friday to an Arab American group. "We meet here today not as Muslims or Christians or Jews," Lieberman said, "not as people of Arab or European descent or African or Asian descent. . . . We are children of the same God and of the same father, Abraham. We are quite literally brothers and sisters." That is the message America should send to the world. And it will cost us nothing. 
The writer is editor of Newsweek International and a columnist for Newsweek. 







  



October 21, 2003 Tuesday  




 U.S. Policy Censured in Indonesia; 
Muslim Leaders To Caution Bush

 
Two national religious leaders who will meet with President Bush during his three-hour stop in Indonesia on Wednesday said they plan to tell him that they fear U.S. foreign policy is alienating the people of the world's most populous Muslim country and that the United States needs to take a more balanced approach to terrorism.  
 "Because the problem of terrorism is very complex, President Bush should be more careful in pointing his fingers at Muslim terrorists," said Azyumardi Azra, rector of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, one of the country's oldest and most prestigious state-supported Islamic universities. In an interview Monday, Azra said he appreciated the U.S. efforts to fight terrorist acts, but at the same time, root causes such as corruption and a lack of law enforcement need to be addressed.  
Ahmad Syafii Maarif, chairman of the 30 million-member Muhammadiyah civic organization, said that U.S. policy in the Middle East "has a very, very destructive, negative impact on other nations, particularly the Palestinians." He added, "If this continues, it will be very hard for us to see a peaceful world in the future." 
 Maarif, Azra and other religious leaders will confer with Bush in Bali, where he will meet President Megawati Sukarnoputri. The views of civic leaders such as Azra and Maarif are influential in ensuring stability among Indonesia's 180 million, mostly moderate Muslims. 
Bush will announce a $150 million, five-year grant to help improve basic education in Indonesia's ailing schools. The money will be available for both secular and religious schools, including Islamic boarding schools, U.S. officials said. 
 Abdullah Gymnastiar, a religious boarding-school director and popular Islamic television evangelist, declined  to meet Bush because of what he described as "sadness for the innocent women and children killed in Afghanistan, Palestine and other countries because of George Bush's insensitive policies." 
 According to an opinion poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project released in June, only 15 percent of Indonesians hold a favorable opinion of the United States, compared with 75 percent three years ago. 






  


October 20, 2003 Monday, 



 Anti-U.S. attitude perilous, Pachios says

 
A young Syrian journalist says he does not believe anything he hears from the American government.
A Turkish government official says America has treated his country with disrespect since the end of the Cold War.
Nine Egyptian college students in a focus group agree on one point: No Jews died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, which they believe was really a secret American government plot.
Portland lawyer Harold Pachios ticks off some of the negative opinions and misinformation he has encountered throughout the Arab and Muslim world through his work on a government research team. The anti-American attitude, he says, is creating a crisis in the nation's foreign relations. 
After a period of support following 9/11, Pachios says, America's credibility with Arabs and Muslims is at an all-time low and dropping. While some Americans may say they don't care what people in other countries think, Pachios says that this country fails to protect its image at its own peril.
"The U.S. cannot go it alone, or the world will become a very dangerous place for Americans," Pachios said. "We need allies in the war on terrorism, and we can't achieve our foreign policy goals without friends."
Pachios is a member and former chairman of the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, which issued its report, "Changing Minds Winning Peace," to the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee this month. The group, made up of academics, business people and foreign affairs specialists, traveled to Egypt, Syria, Turkey, France, Morocco and Senegal this year, speaking with a variety of people to gauge their opinions of America.
What they found was disturbing, Pachios says. Due to what's seen as a bias toward Israel in its conflict with Palestinians, and the nearly unilateral invasion of Iraq, America is seen as a threat in many parts of the world. To reformers, he says, the United States is viewed as hypocritical when it professes democratic values while aligning itself with undemocratic governments.
"There is enormous anger against the United States," Pachios said. "They like our free society, our diversity and the fact that we are a meritocracy, but there is a disconnect when it comes to our policy."
Polling done by committee member John Zogby, president of an international policy analysis company, shows some troubling trends. In a survey conducted among Muslims in Jordan, Nigeria, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Iraq had a higher favorable rating than the United States. And President Bush was considered less trustworthy than Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.
According to a report issued by the Council on Foreign Relations: "America has a serious image problem. Around the world, from Western Europe to the Far East, many see the United States as arrogant, hypocritical, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and contemptuous of others. American language and culture and industry dominate the world stage in a way that many find disconcerting."
A cause of the problem, Pachios says, is an information explosion, in which independent news services, such as Al Jazeera, spread misinformation about America and its goals. This is especially true in the Middle East, where even the poorest homes have access to satellite television hookups and get most of their news from Arab language television.
In the past, Pachios says, the United States could conduct diplomacy by bargaining with a handful of national leaders. Today, public opinion plays a role in even the countries with repressive governments.
"This has made public opinion the single most important factor in our relations with the Arab and Muslim world," Pachios said. "No leader will go along with us on anything unless the public opinion in his country supports it."
To repair its image, Pachios believes this country should invest in its own Arabic language news and entertainment service and develop a reputation of providing credible news, not propaganda. The network would replace the Cold War relic Voice of America, which still broadcasts news programming on little-used short wave radio frequencies.
"Voice of America, in its day, worked, and this will work," he said.
The committee's research also showed that the Arab and Muslim world is not as hostile as it sometimes appears to Americans.
"The polling shows that most people want a job, education opportunities for their children and financial security," Pachios said. "The results you get in Syria and Jordan, remarkably, are what you would expect to find in Portland, Maine."
Staff Writer Gregory D. Kesich can be contacted at 791-6336 or at:
gkesich@pressherald.com







  
 

October 17, 2003 Friday  
  



 Stressing U.S. Right to Attack Foes, Bush Leaves for Asia 

 
President Bush embarked on his longest trip to Asia on Thursday by reasserting America's right to take pre-emptive action against its enemies, and with a warning that the world cannot allow Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, to be "defined" by Islamic extremists.
     Mr. Bush's comments, in a speech here just a few hours before he departed for Japan and in comments to Asian and Australian reporters that were released by the White House, marked an assertive declaration of what he called "a new American strategy" as he headed to several countries where anti-American sentiment runs high. He told the reporters that part of his aim during the trip would be "to make sure that the people who are suspicious of our country understand our motives are pure."  
 Mr. Bush rarely talks so directly about his pre-emption strategy, unveiled 13 months ago in a national security strategy that has come to define a major turn in America's approach to the world. His comments here were notable both for their timing, as he urged Asian nations to enter a new phase of a campaign against terrorism, and for the setting -- he delivered them on a stage alongside Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose "Terminator" movies came to define an image of America around the world that is more vivid than most White House policy papers.
"America is following a new strategy," he said. "We are not waiting for further attacks. We are striking our enemies before they can strike us again."
Among those enemies, he made clear in the interview, are the militant Islamic groups in Indonesia and the Philippines that have been closely linked to Al Qaeda. He said he would use his three-hour visit next week to Indonesia, where he is to land on Bali, the country's primarily Hindu tourist resort, "to make it clear to the world that, by far, the vast majority of Muslims in that country value democracy and want to have a peaceful life."
"At the same time, it's very important not to allow a few killers to define Indonesia," he said, adding that he would tell President Megawati Sukarnoputri that "there needs to be a focused, concerted effort to bring people to justice."
That could be a particularly difficult message for Ms. Megawati, who is constantly balancing her commitment to fight terrorism with pressure from a significant minority in the country that wants to see it transformed into an Islamic state.
Some Asian diplomats have expressed concern in recent days that Mr. Bush's affinity for direct language and his determination to turn an economic policy meeting in Thailand into a forum on security issues could backfire, highlighting the president's public image in the region as a leader who is intent on expanding American influence, by military means if necessary.
"The way he chooses his words about North Korea, about Indonesia, will be very important because it will be amplified this week," said one senior Southeast Asian diplomat involved in helping plan the trip, which includes a speech on Saturday to the Philippine Congress. "We've been trying to make that clear to the White House."
In California, though, Mr. Bush gave no indication of moderating his tone, declaring that America was still at war, and "wars are won on the offensive."
Mr. Bush's speech on Thursday was described by the White House as a policy address, but much of it was identical to recent speeches he has given at Republican fund-raising events, including two here on Wednesday that raised $1.8 million for his campaign.      







  
 

October 15, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 White House Memo; 
Fast Lane for President: 6 Nations, 6 Days, Safely

 
When George W. Bush arrives in Manila for a state visit on Saturday, there will be no time to luxuriate in Gen. Douglas MacArthur's old suite at the sumptuous Manila Hotel, the usual overnight spot for presidents.
     This visit will have no overnight. It lasts exactly eight hours, because the Secret Service will not permit Mr. Bush to stay past dinner in a country whose army officers are sometimes of dubious loyalty and where terrorist groups still strike with audacity.  
 But the Philippine government is not complaining. Indonesia gets the presidential presence for only three hours. It is all part of what one official calls "the trip from Al Qaeda hell." 
Even for a president who does not like to linger -- he once toured the square outside the Kremlin in 20 minutes -- this will be an extreme version of Mr. Bush's brand of high-speed tourism.
The visits, before and after a three-night stay in Bangkok for the annual economic summit meeting of Asian leaders, will reward two of Mr. Bush's most important allies at a time when terror groups still have a potent presence in Asia. The enforced haste shows how much Southeast Asia has changed from the region Mr. Bush's predecessors once traveled in so freely.
For 15 years, when American presidents visited Asia, it was to celebrate the region's dynamism and to marvel at the semiconductor factories and auto plants that sprang up like bamboo before the Asian economic crisis. 
But the politics of globalization, too Clinton-sounding to be a favorite subject in the Bush White House even before terrorism took center stage,
seems to be the furthest thing from Mr. Bush's mind.
Instead of factories, Mr. Bush is visiting Thai troops who recently returned from Afghanistan. 
When Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, briefed reporters about the trip on Tuesday, she described no new economic programs with Asian allies and never mentioned the trade deficits with China or a decade of stagnation in Japan. Mr. Bush, she said, was intent on putting "security at the heart" of the Asian talks.
"Economics and security are inextricably linked," she argued, citing what happened to tourism on Bali after last year's bombing, in which 200 people were killed.
The degree to which the security situation has deteriorated is evident to anyone who glances over the president's public schedule and compares it to how presidents have toured the same places in years past. 
In November 1996, President Clinton spent a leisurely few nights in the MacArthur Suite, with its commanding view of Corregidor, the site of the general's last stand in defending the Philippines. 
And in 1986, when Indonesia was under the iron rule of Suharto, President Reagan soaked in the sun on Bali, the resort island where Mr. Bush's three-hour meeting with President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Islamic leaders will take place.
The White House will not say for certain where exactly the meeting is taking place -- at a resort, a government guest house or near the airport. 
One senior official said the dispute with the Secret Service over going to Indonesia at all got so heated "that the whole thing had to end up in the Oval Office, with the president declaring that we are going."
All this has put Indonesia and the Philippines in the same heightened security category as Colombia, where the threat of attack by the drug lords forced the first President Bush to visit for only a day in 1990.
Thus Mr. Bush, not an ever-curious tourist, will see less than usual.
After a day and a half in California to raise campaign cash and embrace Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Bush will hit six countries in six days. 
He arrives in Tokyo for what Ms. Rice today called "a layover" rather than a visit, though he is expected to eat at a restaurant with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. No doubt his host already knows what Mr. Bush told visitors today: He does not eat sushi. 
There are hints that Japan may contribute several billion dollars to rebuilding Iraq, but Ms. Rice said on Tuesday that the president is not going with his hand out. 
He would not have it out for long; he goes next to the Philippines to address a joint meeting of Congress there, the first president to do so since Dwight D. Eisenhower visited four decades ago. 
Then it is on to a state dinner at Malacanang Palace with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who could receive a boost from a Bush visit.
He will be gone by sundown, off to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit talks and another state visit. He will sleep in Bangkok three nights, but that, too, worries security officials.
Two months ago, when Thai and American officials arrested Riduan Isamuddin, an Indonesian terror leader known as Hambali, he apparently disclosed plans to blow up two American-owned hotels in Bangkok during the meeting. 
The threat has been taken seriously, as have reports that shoulder-fired missiles may have been smuggled into Thailand. 
Hambali was the main link between Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, the militant Islamic organization that wants to turn Indonesia, with the world's largest Muslim population, into an Islamic state. 
The number of his followers who remain at large is still a mystery. But they are the primary reason that Indonesia was initially scratched from the president's schedule, before some aides who consider bolstering President Megawati a top priority made their case.
"We need to show her support," one of the aides said. "We're just going to show her that support very quickly." 
When Mr. Bush leaves Thailand, he will spend the night in Singapore, dining with Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and using it as a staging area for visiting Bali. 
Then it is on to Australia, which provided special forces for the early days of the Iraq war, and where Prime Minister John Howard has made the alliance with Washington a key element of his tenure. 
Past presidents have taken in the restaurants of Sydney or the wonders of the country. Not Mr. Bush: He cut the trip down to a visit to Canberra, a capital that is a bit like Ottawa but not quite as vibrant.
He will be there for just 21 hours, on his way to a day of fundraising in Honolulu, perhaps the only time he will make it to Hawaii between now and the election.







  



October 15, 2003 Wednesday  




 Bush to Meet Moderate Muslim Leaders

 
 President Bush will meet next week with moderate Muslim leaders in Bali, Indonesia, as part of a week-long swing through Southeast Asia aimed at rewarding and shoring up alliances in a region laced with al Qaeda operatives and Muslim extremists. 
The risky stop on the island of Bali, where the bombings of a nightclub killed 202 people last year,  is designed to symbolize Bush's determination to keep pursuing terrorists using financial systems, intelligence alliances and, when necessary, military strikes. 
 Because of fears of a terrorist attack, the White House is confining Bush's stop in Bali to three hours and is allowing only eight hours for a state visit to the Philippines. While in Manila, Bush will become the first U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960 to address a joint session of the Philippine Congress.  
The trip to Asia and Australia will take Bush to six countries and keep him out of Washington for 10 days. He leaves this morning for California for a Thursday meeting with Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), then will fly to Japan and on to the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Australia, with a stop on the way back for a wreath-laying at Pearl Harbor. 
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Bush will use the visit to Indonesia "to pay tribute to the tradition of religious tolerance in the world's most populous Muslim nation." 
The stop in Bali will include lunch with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who has cooperated with the United States in investigating terrorism but said at the United Nations last month that the war in Iraq created more problems than it was intended to solve. 
Bush calls Iraq "the central front" in the war on terrorism. Rice said at a briefing yesterday that the administration views Southeast Asia as "a very important front,"  since al Qaeda cells could migrate there from the Middle East. 
"With terrorism, if you clamp down in one place, it emerges someplace else," she said. "That's why these cooperative efforts that we have with the Southeast Asians are so important." 
Rice offered measured praise for the steps taken by Indonesia and the Philippines to crack down on extremist groups. "This is an area that's trying very hard to step up to the plate," she said. "It's complicated. These groups have been around for a long time. . . . But I think the will is there, and we're working very hard with them." She called the Philippines "a very good warrior in the fight on terrorism." 
The  Pacific Rim journey is built around a three-day stay in Bangkok for the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which is made up of 21 member economies, including China, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea and Taiwan. 
Bush said in a roundtable interview with Asian journalists yesterday that he will use the occasion to continue urging Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to stop intervening in their currency markets. The administration contends that their policies give China and Japan an unfair trade advantage and cost U.S. jobs. 
"Countries need to be mindful that we expect there to be fair trade," Bush said. "I will remind them that this nation has a strong dollar policy, and we expect the markets to reflect the true value of currency. . . . Markets ought to be evaluating our respective currencies." 
North Korea's nuclear ambitions will be a  dominant topic, and the United States  may seek a repetition of last year's APEC statement of support for a nonnuclear Korean peninsula. "Whatever the state on the Korean peninsula, it is not an acceptable state," Rice said.  
Rice said Bush does not plan to push for specific commitments for financial support of the reconstruction of Iraq, which will be the focus of an international meeting in Madrid next week. "He will, undoubtedly, remind people that we have a donors' conference coming up and that we would hope people would be generous," she said. 
Rice said Bush will "stress the need to put security at the heart of APEC's mission, because prosperity and security are inseparable." 




8

  
 






   

 

October 12, 2003 



 Terrorism fight tops Bush agenda in Asia

 
Washington --- President Bush leaves Wednesday on a Pacific trip that combines a summit of regional leaders with the most extensive swing through Southeast Asia that a U.S. leader has made since the Vietnam War.
The timing is no coincidence. With visits to the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia, Bush will sweep through a region that trails only Iraq and Afghanistan as a U.S. priority in the global anti-terrorism campaign.
"This is the second front in the war on terrorism," said Derek Mitchell, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "It's not in the spotlight, but it's in the wings," Mitchell said, "because of its large Muslim population, its porous borders and its failed societies and weak institutions." 
Southeast Asia --- which also includes countries such as Malaysia and Brunei that are not on Bush's itinerary --- is home to nearly 300 million Muslims, almost one-third of the world's Islamic population. A small number have joined ranks with al-Qaida and other militant organizations in the cross hairs of U.S.-led counterterrorism activities.
Bush has looked to the region's leaders for help in ferreting out, prosecuting and interrogating the ringleaders of a movement that has long set a goal of carving out an independent Islamic state. Some have helped more than others, but all have seen it as largely in their interest to join forces with Bush in his anti-terrorism campaign.
"These are all countries that are seen as threatened by extremists and cooperating with us," said a U.S. diplomat. "Obviously they have different agendas and their own political inhibitions."
Tokyo, then Manila
Bush will arrive in Tokyo on Friday, then journey Saturday to Manila for an eight--hour stay hosted by Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, a stalwart partner in the anti-terrorism campaign.
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration marked the southern islands of the Philippine archipelago as a hotbed of militant Islamic groups loosely aligned with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist organization.
More than 1,200 U.S. troops, including about 150 members of special operations forces, have operated off and on there, helping train and equip Philippine forces to combat militant organizations such as the Abu Sayyaf group. The operations assisted Arroyo in combating an insurgency movement based on the islands of Mindanao and Basilan.
The Philippine Constitution, however, prohibits foreign forces from fighting on the country's soil. In part, it's a reaction to the country's tortured colonial history. One of Bush's aims will be to press Arroyo to expand the potential role that U.S. forces might play in efforts to root out terrorist groups, said Mitchell, who served as special assistant for Asian affairs in the Pentagon during the Clinton administration.
From the Philippines, Bush will travel Saturday to Bangkok, Thailand, to attend the annual summit of leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, or APEC. The group brings together the United States and 20 other countries, including Russia, China, Mexico and nations of East Asia.
APEC was formed in 1989 as a forum for addressing economic issues amid the rapid growth of East Asian economies. One such issue expected to be high on Bush's agenda is a devaluation of China's currency, which the administration hopes will tame its widening trade surplus with the United States.
Bush is also sure to talk with his Asian counterparts about efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and he will doubtless raise, with at least some leaders, efforts to win further international assistance for Iraqi reconstruction.
At the core of his diplomacy, however, will be Bush's efforts to knit regional players more closely into the fabric of his global anti-terrorism drive.
After three nights in Bangkok, Bush will travel to Singapore, where authorities are credited with heading off a major terrorist operation shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. officials believe terrorists were set to target four or five U.S. embassies and military positions abroad for bombings.
Next stop: Indonesia
On Oct. 22, Bush will visit Indonesia, which --- with a population of 210 million --- is the fourth most populous nation in the world. Nearly nine in every 10 Indonesians are Muslim, making it the home of the world's largest Islamic population.
Cautious about not aligning her nation too closely with a U.S.-led operation seen by some Muslims as a 21st-century anti-Muslim crusade, Indonesia's president, Megawati Sokarnoputri, was a reluctant convert to Bush's anti-terror campaign. For more than a year, she resisted his appeals for increased scrutiny of Islamic militants and intelligence sharing with U.S. agents.
What changed that, administration officials say, was the terrorist bombing a year ago of a discotheque in the Indonesian resort of Bali. More than 200 people were killed.
"We're getting very good cooperation from the Indonesians," said White House spokesman Sean McCormack. "There's always more to be done."
From Bali, Bush will travel to Australia for a brief visit with Prime Minister John Howard. On Oct. 23, he will stop in Honolulu before returning to Washington.









October 12, 2003 Sunday  
  



 THEATER; 
In Bali, All the Post-9/11 World's a Stage

 
"WHERE is my leg?" moaned a disembodied head in a temple courtyard a few miles from the site of last year's terrorist bombings in Bali. "Where is my arm?" 
     This past August, the memory of the carnage was still vivid to the audience, but the actor playing a victim of the bombings turned the mood of hushed dread into one of comedy, evoking sudden peals of laughter by quoting the tagline of a popular Indonesian television show about the undead: "Don't watch me! I'm not here!" 
 "The audience laughed out of relief," said Gusti Ngurah Windia, a well-known Balinese actor, as he recalled his performance a few days later. He was sitting on the porch of his home in the village of Carang Sari, several miles from the southern town of Kuta, where the bombings took place. "For a moment, the horror of their memories was transformed into fiction, a dream from a television melodrama, as if it never really happened." 
A year ago today, more than 200 people were killed in the terrorist attack by Islamic radicals. In other parts of the globe a similar assault might have led to ethnic retaliation, but the Balinese, living on the only Hindu island in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, answered with art.
During the last 12 months, performers in temple courtyards, village halls and on television frequently have used traditional Balinese theater forms -- masked comedies, shadow plays and folk operas -- to refer to the attack and its aftermath, which has shattered the island's tourist-driven economy.
Another response took place on Nov. 15, 2002, when purification ceremonies, accompanied by theater, music and dance performances, were staged in every village across the island. 
This grassroots event stretched as far as New York, where, on the same day, Balinese musicians in sarongs and flowered head-dresses led a ceremonial procession from the World Trade Center site to the Battery Park Esplanade. Among the hundreds of Americans and Indonesians who participated were family members of the American victims of the Bali bombing. They joined a masked Balinese performer in throwing flowers into the Hudson River, a Hindu ritual symbolizing the release of the soul to heaven.
Wearing the sacred mask of Sidha Karya, a mythological Balinese figure representing death and renewal, Nyoman Catra, the performer, surveyed the scarred skyline of Manhattan and said, "People are trying to destroy our world, our country, our village." In keeping with Balinese tradition, he was playing a character in a 15th-century story, but he was also speaking of contemporary events as he connected the terror victims of the two islands -- Bali and Manhattan -- by turning them into inhabitants of one town. 
"Maybe the bombers wanted to create chaos and fighting between Hindus and Muslims," said Made Sumadi, an official in Bali's ministry of religion, during an interview in August near the island's capital, Denpasar. "But we did not respond the way the bombers expected. In Bali we responded to violence with peace. The bomb had a great impact on everyone, but it could not stop our performances."
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz called 19th-century Bali a theater-state, where performances were inextricably linked to politics, religion and the problems of everyday life. Similar theatrical impulses exist in 21st-century Balinese society, where almost every village temple ceremony includes some form of theatrical event, with clown narrators serving as mediators between the invisible world of gods and ancestors and the tangible one of current events. In improvised dialogues, the clowns grapple with issues like globalization and overdevelopment that endanger the island's Hindu-animist traditions.
In traditional Balinese mythology, an era marked by death and violence is referred to as "Kali Yuga" or "the time of Kali," a reference to the Hindu deity of destruction. Many Balinese performers have invoked Kali Yuga as a metaphor for the chaos brought on by the bombings. This context has encouraged the Balinese to forgo violent acts of revenge and respond instead with religious offerings designed to restore spiritual harmony to the universe.
In August, shortly after the trial that condemned a mechanic, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, known as Amrozi, to death for his role in the Bali bombings, a troupe of actors assembled in the village of Kerobokan, a few miles north of Kuta, to put on a play in a temple courtyard. The plot was based on an ancient legend, but the clown narrators made numerous references to Amrozi, including a slapstick gag in which one character jumped in fright at the sound of a slamming door because he thought it was a terrorist attack. Anxiety of this type is a recurring source of comedy in Bali. "Every time somebody burps, I think it's a bomb," joked another clown.
Later, an actor in a buck-toothed mask ran aggressively into the audience. "Don't worry!" he shouted. "I'm not Amrozi." He then told a story about a black magic curse that had left shops without customers. As the characters in the play overcame the curse by performing ritual offerings, spectators staged similar ceremonies of renewal to exorcise evil and invoke prosperity. A procession of elderly women in sarongs snaked through the courtyard between the actors and the audience, while a white-bearded priest chanted mantras on a flower-covered shrine. The boundaries between the play and the audience dissolved further when a woman in the crowd began sobbing and flailing her arms. 
"She's in a trance," someone shouted, as a priest sprinkled holy water on her head to revive her. Within a few minutes other spectators began weeping, as if the temple were plagued by a contagion of communal sadness. All this occurred during the appearance of an actor portraying Sidha Karya, who wore the same mask of death and renewal that had evoked tears from onlookers at the Balinese ceremony in Lower Manhattan.
"The trances were proof of the ceremony's success," said Ketut Jagra, the actor who played Sidha Karya in the village. "The bomb brought us sadness, but it can also lead to good things. Maybe it is fortunate that the bomb exploded in Bali, because now, finally, the terrorists responsible for a bombing have been caught and put on trial."
Many performances in Bali feature a masked figure whose long, pointed nose is the caricature of a Westerner. Played by Wayan Juana last August in Denpasar, the character claimed to be part American and part Balinese, manifesting his anxiety about terrorism by chain smoking and bouncing his head up and down like a bobble-head doll gone berserk.
In their masked performances, Balinese clowns create a carnival of contradictions: identity is fluid, the living speak to the dead, East and West converge. And sometimes Balinese actors play the roles of Javanese Muslims.
"We want to welcome tourists, not terrorists," said an actress, Wayan Murniasih, to a masked actor playing a Javanese migrant worker in a performance in Kerambitan in southern Bali. After making a few puns on Amrozi's name, she offered to rent the worker a room in her house, "but only if you register with the local authorities first." The message seemed ambiguous: be kind to Muslims, but be sure they are registered with the police.
"It is easy to make an audience laugh, but it is hard to teach them something useful," said Mr. Windia, the actor who played the disembodied head. His most popular character is a clown figure in female drag named Ratu Jegeg, who is famous for comedy routines based on sexual innuendo. But Mr. Windia also peppers his racy monologues with information about free treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder. As he swiveled his hips in mock seduction during a performance, he listed the most common symptoms of severe stress. The information came from psychiatrists working with the International Medical Corps, a nonprofit organization that hires traditional performers to publicize counseling services.
"Balinese artists have always played an important role in maintaining the psychological balance of the community," said Dr. Denny Thong, a consultant to the medical corps and director of the Bangli State Psychiatric Hospital in northern Bali. "Without artists, the culture would collapse. The masked clowns are particularly good at capturing events of the moment and using jokes to soften the pain. The best way to relieve stress is to laugh at yourself."
Mr. Windia agreed: "We have always had stress in Bali, but now the source of our stress is more fierce. Our traditional repertory is full of stories about times in Balinese history when people were killed by black magic and natural disasters. These were metaphorical bombs, but now the bomb is here and it is real."









October 12, 2003 Sunday  
  



 The World: Leave No Madrasa Ahead; 
Enlisting Aid to Education In the War on Terror

 
IN his visit to Indonesia during an Asian tour that begins this week, President Bush is likely to announce as much as $150 million in aid for this nation's schools over the next five years. From the administration's viewpoint, Mr. Bush's emphasis on the importance of education abroad fits neatly with his interest in improving schools at home. Applied here, this emphasis is aimed at countering one of the broadest challenges to the United States: the appeal of fundamentalist Islam to young people in the Muslim world.
     On the theory that ignorance and poor education are among the reasons that young people are drawn to radical Islam, the Agency for International Development has been revamping its programs in Muslim countries in the last two years to spend more on schools and less on other things, including family planning.  
 After the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration sought increases in foreign assistance, arguing that the aid was crucial in fragile but friendly Muslim nations. Pakistan ($600 million), Afghanistan ($297 million) and Jordan ($250 million) were the main beneficiaries, and schools in those countries were given new attention.
Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, did not receive a significant increase in assistance, but with a school system that ranks among the weakest in the world, the president's visit is seen as an opportune time for the new emphasis on classroom learning. In spending per student, Indonesia has been the lowest in Asia, after Laos. Aggravating the problem, a handful of Islamic preachers have stepped into the void left by the state and established religious boarding schools that have turned out to be havens for young terrorists.
The United States is coming late to the game. Saudi Arabia has invested directly in Islamic schools here for years. At Gontor, the most prestigious religious boarding school in Indonesia, for example, the newest building is known as the Saudi building, after a Saudi government donation. The library has crisp new books in Arabic; its English books are more than a decade old.
In a study this year, A.I.D. found that the quality of education in primary and secondary secular schools had declined in all 12 Muslim countries that the report covered. The quality of schooling in Islamic institutions was even weaker. It turned out parents did not seem to care about the poor academic standards in the religious schools and indeed sought them for their strict Islamic education. Moreover, in all the countries, these religious institutions were seen growing in number: they were often located in poor neighborhoods, and were generally more affordable than state schools that required costly uniforms, textbooks and extra payments or bribes to teachers.
So how does the United States strengthen state schools in Indonesia -- or Pakistan or Egypt -- so that fewer parents send their children to Islamic boarding schools?
The most obvious option would be to strengthen the secular schools by working through national education bureaucracies. That seems to be the strategy in Pakistan, where A.I.D. has committed $100 million to the education ministry over six years. The money would not go to religious schools, known as madrasas, where direct American influence would be unwelcome anyway.
But in some countries, particularly Indonesia, the national education departments are famously corrupt. So American officials are seeking a new route: building alliances with school officials at the local district level. This is painstaking work, but holds the prospect of producing results because education in some of these countries is being decentralized.
In Egypt, where illiteracy rates are extraordinarily high among women and girls and where ideologically driven terrorism has been a problem for decades, A.I.D. financed a pilot program in community-based schooling in Alexandria, and persuaded the city's popular governor to back it. Though it still has a long way to go, the program, now several years old, is being replicated in four major provinces of Egypt.
In Indonesia, if all goes well, A.I.D.'s efforts could resemble the best of the results that the United Nations Children's Fund has achieved in one part of eastern Java. In the last two years in Probalinggo, with a population of 200,000, Unicef has introduced the idea of giving parents a role in deciding how school budgets are spent; it has also paid for teacher training that stresses student participation, and has encouraged community involvement in fund-raising.
At the weakest school in the district, the Raudlatul Ulum madrasa, run by an Islamic charity, it has been difficult to get the message across. The teachers still stand at the front of the class with long rulers in their hands, ready for disciplinary threats. The weekly parent-teacher meetings are only for men; female teachers are excluded. Sutik, a fifth-grade teacher who says she receives a monthly salary of $8 a month, says she has raised only $4 from parents for a bookshelf. (There is no money for books yet.)
But at the Ngepung state primary school, 10 miles away, Unicef has achieved a virtual transformation. Mothers work as teacher aides in overcrowded classrooms. The school has become known as the "banana school" because the local farmers donated their banana crop for an auction where local businessmen paid crazy sums so the school could buy computers.
Before class the other day, third-grade boys were making art on computer screens, while the girls learned multiplication tables with an innovative set of playing cards designed by the principal, Hadi Trilaksono. Showing a visitor classrooms with desks arranged in a friendly circle, Mr. Hadi said: "I'm trying to make the students more active, and not just sit and listen. I can tell the students enjoy it more that way."
For a nation known for the stultifying rote learning of its state education, those were rare scenes.







 


October 12, 2003 Sunday



 His ears are still ringing; 
`It's been hell,' a Newport man says of the year since he survived the Bali bombing that killed his surfing buddy.

 
NEWPORT BEACH Twisted metal. Burned torsos. Bodies covered with white sheets.
Steve ``Crabby'' Cabler scrolls down his computer screen, viewing images seared in his memory.
It feels like only yesterday he was drinking Bintang beers at the Sari nightclub on Kuta Beach in Bali with his surfing buddy Steve ``Webby'' Webster of Huntington Beach. 
He doesn't need a reminder of what it felt like that deadly night a year ago today when a bomb exploded across the street at Paddy's Discotheque.
The friends stood up as the lights went out, speechless, ears ringing from the blast.
Cabler's heart hammered in his chest.
Minutes later another explosion from a car bomb rocked the Sari club.
Flames everywhere. Screams of horror. A whirl of deadly debris.
The two blasts killed about 200 people, including Webster. They wounded 300 others.
Instantly, a surfer's paradise, thousands of miles across the Pacific from Orange County, turned into the center of the deadliest terrorist attack in the world since 9/11.
``Look at this wreckage,'' said Cabler, 43, ``This is what I got out of.''
Cabler may have gotten out, but the Bali bomb blasts have hardly gotten out of him.
On good days, Cabler ventures out to the shoreline and attempts to tackle tame waves on a longboard. On bad mornings, he lays in bed for hours, fighting dizzy spells. He sleeps with the TV on and the fan whirring -- the ringing in his ears rarely ceases.
He can't stand crowded places. He hates the feeling that his car's going to explode.
Cabler hasn't worked much this past year. His girlfriend left for reasons he can't put his finger on. He's had bouts of depression and even contemplated suicide.
``It's been hell,'' he said.
The disturbing images he shared on a computer screen in his Newport Beach bedroom this week are on www.fin gerrecords.com , a Web site that features his band El Centro.
Cabler slowly has been healing his body and soul.
Only a tiny scar remains on his left palm from third-degree burns he suffered on his hands when, he says, he attempted to lift hot metal debris from Webster. The dislocated shoulder is fully healed. Cabler says he only has partial hearing in both ears -- but it is improving -- and his balance on the board is not what it used to be.
``It is kind of like the twilight zone. It is still another day; I'm still dizzy. I still lost my friend. Still see all the images I saw.''
Cabler had been to Bali, an island in predominantly Muslim Indonesia, several times. Last September, he arrived about 10 days ahead of his two friends, Webster and John Parodi Jr. of Huntington Beach, to surf near the Sumatran coast.
``Surfing is all I lived for,'' Cabler said. ``It's better than sex, drugs. It's better than alcohol and anything that you can ever think of. People who have not been able to ride in a tube or surf the crest of a wave have been cheated out of an experience.''
The three friends had grown up on O.C.'s beaches, thumbing through surfing magazines with Bali pictorials. It was the first trip to the island for Webster and Parodi.
The night of the blast, Parodi, 42, had opted to stay at the hotel. He will never forget the hours and days after the blast spent looking for Webster: the stench of burnt flesh, the cries of people being operated on without anesthesia.
For months he was in virtual seclusion, afraid to go to movie houses or restaurants. He hasn't gone back to work. He sought counseling instead. He took quiet walks to the beach with Emerson, his golden retriever, and surfed.
``I haven't had a good night's sleep in a year,'' Parodi said. ``I still wake up seeing Steve's face, burning bodies and body parts.''
Webster's body turned up a few days later in body bag No. 105 at storage container No. 2, one of various makeshift morgues set up around Kuta.
Parodi's voice chokes as he remembers ``Webby.'' He speaks with his best friend's wife, Mona, weekly. Saturday night, he and some friends put together a collage of eulogies and gave them to Mona.
Parodi and Cabler say the incident taught them to live life to the fullest. They are now closer to their families.
Both pay more attention to terrorist violence. They know that 19 people killed in a Middle East bombing implies 190 more were affected.
``When is it gonna stop?'' Parodi asks.
Two nights before the Bali blast, Cabler believes he came face-to-face with one of the bombers at a bar. The man berated him about America and President George W. Bush. Cabler pretended to be Australian and the men left.
``That face, that smile, I will never forget,'' Cabler said.
Amrozi bin Nurhasyim smiled broadly and thrust out both hands in a thumbs-up sign last August when a judge in Bali sentenced the Islamic militant to die by firing squad for his role in the blast. Thirty- three suspects have been arrested in the attacks. Two others have been sentenced to death since. Many of the suspects are believed to be members of an Indonesian terrorist network allied with al-Qaida. Nearly half of those who died in the nightclub blast were Australians on vacation.
On the left side of his chest, Cabler has tattooed a round Stars and Stripes insignia with the bald eagle at its center. Around it are the words ``In Memory of Steven Brooks Webster.''
``I am here to show that these terrorists are not going to stop me,'' he said.
Meanwhile, Parodi has become a conduit for people across the country who lost loved ones in Bali.
A Palmdale woman sent him a picture of her niece and wondered if he had run into her. A Texas father sought him out because Parodi met his 23-year-old daughter just days before she was killed. An Indiana man has called and written him.
They all seek some connection, some news about their relatives, to whom they didn't get to say goodbye.
Parodi said he believes in an eye for an eye. He would like to witness one of the bomber executions in Bali.
The U.S. State Department earlier this year asked him and Webster's family to attend a memorial service today in Bali, but they refused.
``It is too early,'' Parodi said.
Register news services contributed to this report.
vjolly@ocregister.com or (714) 704-3740







  



October 12, 2003 Sunday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
KATMANDU, Nepal -- At least three policemen and 35 Maoist rebels were killed in an overnight battle as the rebels resumed attacks on Nepalese government forces after a nine-day cease-fire, police said Saturday. 
 The rebels attacked the forces at a base camp at Kusum village, about 310 miles west of the capital, Katmandu, on Friday night. Fighting continued until Saturday morning, police said. At least nine policemen were also injured.  
 Police reached by telephone said they had recovered 35 rebel bodies and expected to find more while searching the jungles around the battle site. 
 The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said police reinforcements were sent to the area, and that soldiers had taken control of it. Roadblocks have been set up, and authorities were preparing to impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew.  
 The nine-day cease-fire by the rebels during the Hindu festival of Dasain, the biggest in this Himalayan kingdom, ended Friday. About 80 percent of Nepal's population is Hindu. 
The Middle East 
*  GAZA CITY -- Israeli forces killed a Palestinian and razed dozens of homes in a strategic Gaza Strip refugee camp as the Palestinians put off naming a new security chief to help spearhead Middle East peace moves. 
 Witnesses in Rafah, a camp on Gaza's border with Egypt where militants regularly smuggle in weapons, said Israeli forces killed a 19-year-old Palestinian and demolished 42 homes, although it was not immediately clear how many were individual buildings. 
 A military spokesman said the dead man was armed and that five buildings used by militants to fire on troops were demolished, along with three used to conceal gunrunner tunnels. 
 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia met in the West Bank city of Ramallah but failed to settle on an interior minister in charge of security forces for their emergency cabinet formed last week, Palestinian officials said. 
 The original nominee, Nasser Yusef, had angered Arafat by declining to appear at the swearing-in ceremony -- apparently in a demand the cabinet, whose authority expires in a month, be ratified. 
The Americas 
*  LIMA, Peru -- A passenger bus plunged off a 1,000-foot cliff in the Andes mountains Friday, killing at least 30 people and wounding 17, rescue workers said. 
 The accident took place on a mountain highway 150 miles northeast of Lima. The bus was headed from Huanuco to La Union, said the Huanuco fire chief, Leoncio Pardave. 
 The cause of the accident was not immediately known. 
 Pardave said the exact number of victims was not yet known because the difficult terrain delayed rescue efforts. Also, several people had climbed aboard or gotten off while the bus was moving. 
*   EL ALTO, Bolivia -- Demonstrators angry about a government plan to export gas through Chile clashed with the army and police near the Bolivian capital, leaving a police officer and a child dead, witnesses and hospital officials said. 
 Protesters shot and killed the police officer, court prosecutor Jimmy Pareja said. Witnesses told local radio stations that a 7-year-old boy was also killed. 
 Another man was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the head and was not expected to survive, hospital officials said. 
 Witnesses said the clashes began after police and government soldiers dispersed crowds of looters. It was the second day of violence in El Alto, a city of 750,000 people. The city has been nearly shut down by the strike. 
Asia 
*  BALI, Indonesia -- Indonesia warned that Muslim militants were planning more attacks but insisted Bali was safe on the eve of the first anniversary of nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, mainly foreign tourists. 
 Hundreds of survivors and relatives of the dead from 20 countries have flown in from around the world to attend commemorative services over the weekend. They are being guarded by more than 2,000 Indonesian police. 
Maj. Gen. I Made Pastika, the Bali police chief who led the investigation into the blasts, said militants -- whom he did not identify -- still had significant amounts of explosives and had assembled two bombs. 
 "The two bombs are not in Bali. In Indonesia, but not in Bali. . . . These bombs do not contain much metal. So, our metal detectors are not very useful for them," he said. He gave no more details, nor did he say where the information came from. 
 The first commemoration of last year's attack, a small service for the 23 Britons who died, was held in an open-air Protestant church overlooking the ocean, with Bali's famous Mount Agung volcano visible in the distance. 
About 35 family members from Britain and several survivors sang "Amazing Grace" as the sun set. In the distance, a call to prayer echoed from a mosque, one of the few in this mainly Hindu enclave in the world's most-populous Muslim nation. 
 -- From News Services 







  
 

October 11, 2003 Saturday  
  



 The Real Face of Indonesian Islam 

 
A year ago tomorrow, Islamic terrorists blew up two crowded nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people. Last August, a bombing suspected to have been organized by the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiyah killed 12 people at the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. Surely, with attacks like these, politically militant Islam is on the rise in Indonesia? 
     Surprisingly, the answer is no. Survey and election results show that the number of Islamists, Muslims who want an Islamic state, is no more than 15 percent of the total Indonesian Muslim population of 200 million. The remaining 85 percent are moderately or strongly opposed to an Islamic state. Most important and least recognized in the current climate of fear in the non-Muslim world, Islamism as a political ideology appears to be losing ground in Indonesia, not gaining it.  
 Perhaps the most obvious evidence for this is the drop in voters' support for parties committed to turning secular Indonesia into an Islamic state. In the first free elections in Indonesia, held in 1955, the two major pro-Islamic-state parties, Masyumi and Nahdlatul Ulama, won 21 percent and 19 percent of the vote respectively. In the second free elections, held in 1999 (two dictators, Sukarno and Suharto, ruled in the intervening years), the three parties favoring an Islamic state won only a combined 14 percent of the vote. 
The main cause of the decline in support for an Islamic state was a change of heart by the leaders of Indonesian Islam's two largest social and educational organizations: the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama, which dominated the party of the same name, and the modernist Muhammadiyah, which dominated the Masyumi party. Nahdlatul Ulama, founded in 1926 as an association of religious teachers, adheres to the classical school of Muslim jurisprudence whose followers are more inclined to accommodate than to challenge the power of secular states. 
The group's leaders campaigned for an Islamic state in the 1950's not out of a real conviction, but mainly from fear of being outflanked by the larger and more aggressive Masyumi. Under the dictatorships, the group withdrew from partisan politics, but with the restoration of democracy it formed a new party, National Awakening, open to all religions and committed to a secular state. National Awakening was the third-place party in 1999, winning 12 percent of the vote. 
Muhammadiyah, founded in 1912, is the leading organization of Islamic modernists in Indonesia. Modernists reject the classical schools of jurisprudence in favor of direct reading of the Koran. Modernists today are divided between conservatives, who believe that the Koran's meaning is fixed, and moderates or liberals, who believe that God intended men and women to use their powers of reason.
In the 1950's Masyumi was dominated by Muhammadiyah modernists who used an Islamic-state platform to attract unsophisticated villagers. Under Sukarno, Masyumi was banned; Muhammadiyah leaders instead concentrated on building Indonesia's largest network of hospitals as well as private schools modeled on the secular state school system.
In the 1990's, a new generation of Muhammadiyah leaders, inspired by the liberal religious thinker Nurcholish Madjid (who coined the slogan "Islam yes, Islamic party no"), supported Suharto. Today they are influential in the secular Golkar Party, which won 22 percent in the 1999 election, and dominate the secular National Mandate Party, which won 7 percent. 
Are Muslim conservatives likely to make a comeback in the 2004 elections? A national poll we conducted in November 2002 for the Center for the Study of Islam and Society at Indonesia's State Islamic University found that only 14 percent of the Muslim respondents share the values of the pro-Islamic-state parties. 
These figures are unlikely to have been affected by the American invasion of Iraq, which angered many Indonesian Muslims but has little to do with their conception of the relation of Islam to domestic politics. Secular nationalism is deeply rooted in Indonesian history, even among pious Muslims. 
The poll results also indicate that Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, the bulwarks of moderate Islamic civil society, continue to command considerable loyalty among Muslim voters. Fully 75 percent of Muslim respondents consider themselves a part of or attached to either group. Membership in these two giant organizations also correlates positively with participation in secular civil society organizations and with participation in democratic politics. 
Members of the Islamist minority, on the other hand, typically shun non-Muslim social and political organizations and activity. If Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah members are the good citizens of Indonesia's fledgling democracy, the Islamists are the parochials who are likely to remain on the margins of public life. United States policy toward Indonesia should be shaped by an appreciation of the continuing strength of this moderate center, which is as opposed to terrorism as Americans are. 






  



  



October 9, 2003 Thursday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi security agents captured four suspected terrorists accused of plotting attacks, but three others escaped after a shootout with authorities, an official news report said Wednesday. 
 The Saudi Press Agency issued a statement by an unidentified Interior Ministry official saying the crackdown on two terrorist cells had foiled attack plots that were in the early planning stages. 
 The official said agents, acting on a tip, arrested a member of a cell in al-Qassim, 220 miles northwest of the capital, Riyadh. The suspect said three of his colleagues were hiding in a nearby farm.  
 Police raided the farm. Two security men were wounded in a firefight during a car chase with the three suspects, who escaped. Agents uncovered arms and large quantities of chemicals used to make explosives on the farm, the official said.  
 An earlier tip identified a cell of three people in a desert area east of Riyadh, the official said. Security officials raided their hide-out Sunday and arrested all of them. 
africa 
*  BUJUMBURA, Burundi -- Burundi's president hailed the signing of a pact on a transitional government and a new army as a major step toward ending a decade-long civil war. 
 U.S. officials also applauded the accord, signed by the government of Burundi and the main rebel group, Forces for the Defense of Democracy, or FDD, at peace talks in Pretoria, South Africa. 
 The FDD will be allocated 40 percent of the positions in the new army's command, while the government will have 50 percent. Ten percent will go to two smaller rebel groups, which already have joined President Domitien Ndayizeye's transitional administration. 
 "The FDD leader Pierre Nkurunziza publicly called on his combatants for an immediate cessation of hostilities. I, too, asked that government troops follow this path," Ndayizeye said. 
 The FDD will also get four ministerial posts,  the governorship of three of Burundi's 17 provinces, two ambassadorships and 15 seats in the transitional parliament. The National Assembly has 182 members from 17 political parties. 
 More than 200,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict since it erupted in October 1993 after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected leader, a Hutu. 
asia 
*  KABUL, Afghanistan -- Fighting erupted between warlords who each claim allegiance to the government of President Hamid Karzai, and an official of one of the warring groups said as many as 60 people were killed and scores more wounded. 
 A commander for the other side, however, said only three people were killed in a battle outside the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif. It was impossible to verify either account. 
 The fighting came as a deal was signed in Kabul between the Afghan government and the United Nations that opens the way for teams of U.N. and Afghan personnel to deploy to cities across Afghanistan to start a program to disarm militiamen loyal to warlords. 
 Gen. Abdul Sabur, a spokesman for warlord Ostad Atta Mohammed's Jamiat-e-Islami faction, said that hundreds of rival soldiers were massing around Mazar-e Sharif. 
 He said fighters loyal to northern Uzbek commander Abdurrashid Dostum began battling Atta's supporters about midday, and the battle continued late into the night. Sabur said 60 people were killed in that fighting, which involved tanks, heavy artillery and other weapons. 
 However, Syad Noorulla, one of Dostum's commanders, said that Atta's forces ambushed his troops about 30 miles west of Mazar-e Sharif and killed three of his militiamen and wounded four. 
*  ZAMBOANGA, Philippines -- A suspected Muslim rebel who escaped with Indonesian terror suspect Fathur Al-Ghozi from a maximum security jail nearly three months ago was captured, the military said. 
 Acting on a tip, soldiers arrested Omar Opik Lasal and a man traveling with him at a checkpoint in Zamboanga del Sur, in the southern Philippines, said army Col. Roland Rodriguez, Al-Ghozi remains at large. 
 Troops recovered a pistol from Lasal, who did not resist arrest. At least 11 others traveling with them were questioned and released.  
 Al-Ghozi is a confessed member of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian Muslim extremist group that has been linked to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terror network. In July he escaped from a maximum security jail in Manila, along with Lasal and Abdulmukim Edris. 
 Lasal and Edris were suspected members of the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group. 
the americas 
*  CARACAS, Venezuela -- Simultaneous explosions at a military airfield and an army base were the work of opposition groups seeking to undermine President Hugo Chavez, the government said. 
 Defense Minister Jose Luis Prieto said Tuesday that the explosions were planned to "generate alarm and provoke fear in the civilian and military population." 
 In the first incident, two gasoline tankers were ignited Sunday night at the Francisco de Miranda air force base in Caracas, the capital. 
 The second blast shattered windows at a restaurant in the Fuerte Tiuna army base in Caracas, Prieto said in a statement. 
The explosions have raised fears of more political unrest as Venezuela's opposition seeks a recall vote against Chavez. 
 Information Minister Jesse Chacon Escamillo blamed opposition groups who "don't believe in the recall" and are seeking a "violent outcome" of the political crisis. 
 Opponents are pressing for a recall referendum to end Chavez's six-year rule, which runs to 2007. They accuse the former army paratrooper of amassing power, ruining the economy and fomenting class hatred. Chavez says a corrupt political elite is trying to regain power. 
europe 
*  MADRID -- Police in Spain and France arrested 33 people in raids targeting the Basque armed separatist group ETA, police sources said. 
 Twenty-eight people were detained in Spain's northern Basque and Navarra regions on suspicion of belonging to ETA and recruiting for the organization, which is listed as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union. 
 French police sources said four men and one woman connected to the banned radical Basque youth group Segi were arrested in Bayonne in the south of the country. 
 ETA has killed more than 840 people since 1968 in a campaign for an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southwest France. 
 -- From News Services 







  



October 6, 2003 Monday  




 Sensitizing Police Toward Muslims; 
Justice Department Initiative Helps Counter Stereotypes

 
Lobna Ismail, a Muslim woman in a veil, silently takes the podium in a suburban Maryland auditorium filled with about 150 police and local government officials. A message flashes on a screen: "Discuss stereotypes in society about women dressed like me." 
"You're a foreigner," says a man in the audience. 
"What are you trying to hide?" shouts another.  
"Not equal to men," offers one woman. 
Ismail has heard worse. Anti-American. Fanatic. Terrorist. 
"And yet, I'm none of these," Ismail says. She is an American, a businesswoman -- and, perhaps most surprising, a trainer for the U.S. Justice Department. 
Ismail's recent presentation for police from the Washington area is part of a new nationwide program to help law enforcement officials become more culturally sensitive to Muslims and Arabs. 
A kinder, gentler Justice Department? Muslim and Arab American groups hardly think so. They have been among the department's harshest critics, charging that their communities have been unfairly singled out for monitoring and prosecution since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. And yet, even as the two sides disagree on policy, they have quietly reached out to one another. 
For example, the Justice Department will soon offer a police training video to raise awareness about Arabs and Muslims. Its officials have attended town hall-style meetings with Muslims and Arab Americans in such states as Florida, Ohio and Michigan. In Washington and other metropolitan areas, FBI offices have set up committees with Arab and Muslim leaders to strengthen relations. 
"There's almost a dichotomy at the Justice Department between the political leadership and the professional staff," said Jean AbiNader, managing director of the Arab American Institute, an advocacy group. 
Staff members, he said, "have all been very supportive and very active in terms of reaching out to the affected communities.  
"But the political leadership has not shown the same kind of interest in working with Arab Americans, Sikh Americans and American Muslims," AbiNader said. 
Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo denied such a split, saying: "We are all committed to pursuing justice." 
Ismail's recent morning-long presentation was sponsored by the Justice Department's Community Relations Service, a 47-person office that bills itself as the agency's "peacemaker" in racial or ethnic conflicts. Its new program tries to help law enforcement officials who must respond to reports of hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs and solicit citizen cooperation in investigations. 
After the Sept. 11 attacks, "we just grabbed somebody from the [local] mosque" to instruct police about Muslims, said Sharee M. Freeman, director of the Community Relations Service. "I thought a better way to do this is to . . . have sort of a standard curriculum that we know meets constitutional muster." 
Enter Ismail. 
The daughter of Egyptian immigrants, she runs Connecting Cultures Inc., a Silver Spring company that instructs business executives, police, government officials and others on Islam and Arab American cultural norms. 
She has trained more than 2,000 law enforcement officers in various cities under the Justice Department program, including local police officers and immigration and FBI agents. Ismail is often paired with a Sikh who gives a presentation on that faith. 
Ismail also has coached scores of volunteers to conduct such sessions. 
"There's been an overwhelming response from Arabs and Muslims," she said. 
The Justice Department's training efforts go beyond Ismail's program. After the Sept. 11 attacks, for example, the FBI called on its 56 field offices to provide cultural-awareness instruction about Arab Americans and Muslims. 
 Muzaffar Chishti, a New York University law professor who recently helped compile a lengthy, highly critical report on the government's domestic anti-terrorism policies, said he was startled to hear positive comments from many Arab American and Muslim leaders about the FBI and local police. 
"Despite all the outcry against the FBI, among the federal agencies . . . it has been the most sensitive to issues of civil liberties," Chishti said. He attributes that to the harsh criticism the agency received for its campaigns against the civil rights movement in the 1960s. That "did create an incentive for them to be more sensitive," he said. 
Four hours is a short time to take on a 1,400-year-old religion and an ancient culture. But in the recent session held at Prince George's Community College, Ismail tried. She started by leading the police officers and government officials through a true-false quiz. 
"The Muslim country with the largest population is Saudi Arabia," she said, reading one of the statements. "True!" yelled some officers. "False!" called others. 
"False," said Ismail, noting that Indonesia has more than 200 million Muslims. "Compare that to 18 million in Saudi Arabia. Not even close." 
She peppered her presentation with advice for officers doing investigations: Don't write on or place something on top of the Koran. Don't walk with shoes on a prayer carpet. Don't be surprised if a Middle Eastern person avoids eye contact; it may be considered disrespectful in his native culture. 
Those attending the session said it had been enlightening. 
"Most Arab Americans are Christians -- I would never think of that," said Lt. Bob Mueck, 42, of the University of Maryland police. 
Sgt. Rick Reynolds, 49, who is in charge of training for the Hagerstown, Md., police, said the instruction was very practical. 
"Our officers are only human. If they don't know the facts based on a stereotype, they could draw the wrong conclusion about something innocent," Reynolds said. In addition, "the training helps you understand what's permissible in a different culture." 
Such sensitivity is no small matter, he said, even to hard-nosed cops. 
"Things go a lot better for us if people aren't mad at us," he said. 




9

  
  


October 3, 2003 Friday 



 POPE'S 'LAST DAYS' NEAR, CARDINAL SAYS

 
VATICAN CITY -- One of Europe's top cardinals said Thursday that Pope John Paul II was nearing "the last days and months of his life," the first ranking prelate to say the 83-year-old pontiff is dying. With John Paul visibly weaker in recent weeks, concern over his health has been growing. Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn was the second leading prelate this week to express alarm over the pope's health. Schoenborn is considered a possible candidate for the papacy. A spokesman later told the media the comments, made to the Austrian state broadcaster, were "to be interpreted philosophically." The Vatican, which generally refrains from commenting on the pope's health, declined to respond to the Austrian cardinal's remarks. But other Vatican cardinals have this week tried to minimize concern about the pontiff's health. "Many journalists who in the past have written about the pope's health are already in heaven," said Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz, promoted to archbishop by John Paul on Monday.
For more on this story, go to www.twincities.com/news and click on Nation/World. 
California could be next Nile virus hub
BERKELEY, Calif. -- Westward expansion of the West Nile virus has prompted the government to look to California as the possible epicenter of next year's virus season. Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe the mosquito-borne illness will hit the West Coast hard next year, particularly California, said Dr. Lyle Petersen, acting director of the CDC's division of vector-borne diseases. Areas of particular interest are the Imperial Valley in southern California, where the virus has already turned up in large numbers of birds, and the northern California's San Joaquin Valley.
NASA questions Atlantis inspection
NASA is examining whether the nose cap of Atlantis was inspected properly for corrosion, a situation that could further delay the first shuttle launch since the Columbia disaster, a space agency official said Thursday. NASA officials making return-to-flight preparations have called into question whether the metal framework inside the nose cap was checked properly for corrosion, a problem that in recent years has been found and fixed on the shuttles Discovery and Endeavour. Senior NASA executives who make up the Spaceflight Leadership Council planned to meet today to discuss the inspections and possibly pick a new launch date for next spring.
Chicago diocese settles abuse claims
CHICAGO -- The Chicago Archdiocese agreed Thursday to pay $8 million to 15 people who say they were molested by priests over the past five decades. Individual settlements will range from $200,000 to $1.7 million, said attorney Jeffrey R. Anderson, whose firm worked out the agreement. At a news conference, Anderson released the names of the 11 priests accused of committing the abuse, plus the name of a priest covered in an earlier settlement. None of the men are now active in the priesthood and several are dead, Anderson and archdiocese officials said. The archdiocese has also agreed to develop a Web site listing all priests named in credible accusations of abuse.
Pakistan tests nuke capable missiles
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan successfully test fired a medium-range, nuclear-capable missile early today, army spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan said. The Hatf-III reportedly has a range of 180 miles and can carry conventional and non-conventional weapons. Its range means it can hit many important targets inside rival India. The test occurred while Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali was visiting the United States, and days after he met with President Bush. India and Pakistan have frequently used missile tests as a form of diplomatic muscle-flexing.
FCC sets fine for sex-in-church show
WASHINGTON -- The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday proposed the second-biggest fine ever for indecency: $357,000 against Infinity Broadcasting for a radio segment in which a couple was said to be having sex in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. The FCC responded to an outpouring of complaints following an August 2002 broadcast of the "Opie and Anthony" show on 13 Infinity radio stations. The nationally syndicated show was canceled a week later, and DJs Greg "Opie" Hughes and Anthony Cumia were fired. Four commissioners voted for the fine. The fifth said the agency should have gone after Infinity's licenses instead. The man and woman who allegedly had sex were charged, but Brian Florence, 38, has since died. Loretta Lynn Harper, 36, is expected to plead guilty to a minor charge and avoid jail.
Azerbaijan leader turns helm to son
BAKU, Azerbaijan -- Azerbaijan's ailing and long-absent leader Geidar Aliev announced his withdrawal from the presidential election Thursday, passing the ruling party's mantle to his son in what could result in the first family succession in a former Soviet republic. Opposition politicians and independent analysts have long predicted that Aliev, 80, would attempt to install his son, Ilham, as president. In recent months, Aliev prepared the way by pushing through constitutional changes, appointing his son prime minister and ensuring Ilham was registered as a candidate in the Oct. 15 election. The Azerbaijani opposition, which has long speculated that Geidar Aliev is in fact dead or incapacitated, said his withdrawal bodes well for its own chances in the election.
Bali bomb suspect gets death sentence
BALI, Indonesia -- The last of four main suspects in the deadly nightclub bombings on Indonesia's Bali island was convicted Thursday and sentenced to death by firing squad. The verdict for Ali Ghufron, an Afghan-trained militant who bragged of his friendship with Osama bin Laden, is the latest sign that Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, is serious about confronting Islamic militancy. Death sentences in Indonesia are rare, but are allowed under an anti-terror law adopted after last year's bombings on Bali, which killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. Two others were sentenced to death and the fourth received life in prison. Ghufron, alias Mukhlas, reacted calmly to the ruling and told the judges that he would appeal.
Afghan landmine kills 2 Canadians
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A land mine hidden in a sandy track in the Afghan capital exploded Thursday, killing two Canadian peacekeepers and wounding three others. The blast came 24 hours after engineers checked the road for explosives and found nothing. However, officials said it was too early to determine whether the explosion was caused by an old land mine or one laid recently in an effort to target international peacekeepers. The explosion comes as NATO leaders are considering expanding the peacekeeping force and deploying to regions outside the capital, Kabul. Afghanistan is among the most heavily mined countries in the world.







  



October 2, 2003 Thursday  




 Changes in U.S. Diplomacy Sought; 
Efforts to Influence Islamic World Inadequate, Panel Says

 
Even though it has staked much of its foreign policy future on the Islamic world, the Bush administration is doing a poor job of influencing Muslim and Arab public opinion, an administration advisory group said yesterday in calling for fundamental changes in the U.S. public diplomacy program.  
"In this time of peril, public diplomacy is absurdly and dangerously underfunded," wrote the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World. "The entire system of public diplomacy urgently requires a broad and deep transformation." 
The Bush administration undertook the extensive public relations program last year, with the goal of explaining U.S. policies better and improving links with Arabs and Muslims. The advisory group, appointed by the administration, said it deserves a prominent place as an instrument of foreign policy but warned that "spin and manipulative public relations and propaganda are not the answer."  
The panel reported that tens of millions of dollars designated for Muslim outreach is spent on salaries and exchange programs, leaving  $25 million for outreach to the Arab and Muslim world. Rarely do programs reach beyond capitals. 
The State Department, said panel Chairman Edward P. Djerejian, has only 54 staff members who have tested at the "fully professional or bilingual" level of Arabic, and some are posted outside the Arab world. He said five employees are capable of appearing effectively on Arab television. 
"The situation with other languages common in the Muslim world is worse," said the report, which said it is "imperative" to recruit qualified linguists, especially first-generation Arab Americans and Muslim Americans. 
Many skeptics in Washington and the Islamic world contend that a sharper message will mean little unless administration policy changes on essential issues, notably the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A great majority of Muslims and Arabs say the Bush administration favors Israel to a fault and are troubled by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. 
Djerejian acknowledged the point while arguing that the broader sweep of U.S. policy encompasses shared values of political openness, personal freedom and economic opportunity. That "principled position," he said, should be conveyed, in contrast to often uncontested anti-Americanism. 
"We don't have to be apologetic about the general thrust of what we're trying to achieve," Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Israel, said in an interview. 
The 13-member panel described this as a dangerous period in which extremism is an increasingly powerful force and "our enemies have succeeded in spreading viciously inaccurate claims about our intentions and our actions." 
Fifteen percent of people in Indonesia, the country with the largest number of Muslims, have a favorable view of the United States, compared with 61 percent early last year, the report said. Elsewhere, only 7 percent of Saudis and 3 percent of Spaniards hold a "very favorable" view of the United States. 
The group called for a review of $540 million in spending on U.S. government-sponsored broadcasting, noting that Muslims living under political repression are highly skeptical of government programming. A General Accounting Office survey of State Department press officers found that 27 percent considered government-sponsored international broadcasts at least generally effective. 
A better solution, Djerejian said, would be a public-private effort in which existing satellite broadcasting outlets were provided with high-quality programming. 
The report said that Radio Sawa, the U.S. government's most popular Arabic station -- underwritten by $22 million from taxpayers last year -- "needs a clearer objective than building a large audience." It must demonstrate through research, the advisers said, that it can change attitudes. 
The group also called for a strategic coordinator in the White House and a revamped State Department office. It urged stronger educational exchange programs and scholarships for Muslims in American universities.  







   
 

September 27, 2003 Saturday  
  



 U.S. Asks Muslims Why It Is Unloved. Indonesians Reply. 

 
A group of Indonesian Muslims, handpicked by the United States Embassy here for their moderate views, this week told an expert panel from Washington in unvarnished terms why America is unloved in the Islamic world. 
     The basic problem is policy, not public relations, said Yenni Zannuba Wahid, 28, who is the daughter of the nation's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, and who has just returned from a year of graduate study at Harvard. 
 "There is no point in saying this is a problem of communication, blah blah blah," said Ms. Wahid after a videoconference on Thursday night with the advisory group on public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim world. The panel is to report to the White House and Congress on Wednesday. "The perception in the Muslim world is that the problem is the policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq." 
That said, Ms. Wahid added, it would help alleviate, but not close, the distance between the Muslim world and the United States, if Washington would "explain the policy."
"Just talk to us," she said. 
Another panelist criticized the United States' preoccupation with Islamic fundamentalists. "Every country has fundamentalists," said Zaki M. Mansoer, the director of a Muslim magazine, Panjimas. "I think Billy Graham Jr. is a fundamentalist," he said, referring to the Rev. Franklin Graham, who has called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion."
Ms. Wahid, whose father was president from 1999 to 2001, joined a group of a dozen Muslims, including leaders of the largest Muslim organizations, in a hotel conference room on Thursday night. The head of the advisory group, Edward P. Djerejian, who is a former United States ambassador to Syria, was on the screen in front of them with several of his colleagues.
Mr. Djerejian's 12-member panel, which includes John Zogby, the president of the polling company, Zogby International, and Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, was asked this summer by Congress to come up with some rapid solutions to anti-Americanism in the Muslim world.
Angered by a series of opinion surveys that showed a sudden slump in the United States' standing in the world, particularly in Muslim countries, Congress froze the administration's budget for public diplomacy -- the efforts by the State Department and others to explain the United States abroad -- until the Djerejian panel released its findings. 
Among the issues panel members say they are considering is whether there should be an increase in the number of exchange students from the Muslim world who travel to the United States for yearlong stays with American families and for other kinds of programs. One member of the panel said the exchanges were an excellent way to build "constituents across the world." 
Another question was whether the Bush administration should establish a new position, a "public diplomacy adviser," as recommended in a recent study by the Council on Foreign Relations. That report concluded that anti-Americanism was so severe it was "endangering our national security and compromising the effectiveness of our diplomacy." 
The Djerejian group traveled to Cairo; Damascus, Syria; and Istanbul; where its members met face to face with Muslim intellectuals and opinion leaders. 
In Cairo, they peered through a two-way mirror into two focus groups of Egyptians who discussed their attitudes toward the United States, particularly what they saw as American support for Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.
One of the panel members, Stephen P. Cohen, who is the senior scholar with the Israel Policy Forum and is well traveled across the Middle East, said many of the Muslims interviewed held "a great deal of regard for American values, especially American education."
In some ways, he said, this only makes things worse. "We wouldn't be so upsetting to people if they didn't believe we had these universal values for our own society, and completely ignored them internationally."
The panel was supposed to visit Pakistan and Indonesia, but faced with a tight budget and a scramble to write the report by Wednesday, it made do with videoconferences. 
The dialogue with Indonesia was intended to give the panel a sample of opinion in the world's most populous Muslim country, a place that is considered moderate in its overall religious views but where there are increasing calls for Shariah, or Islamic law. 
Mr. Mansoer, the director of Panjimas, said he and his colleagues took the videoconference as a chance to "let off steam." Hot-button issues, he said, included the overarching one of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, followed by concerns specific to Indonesian Muslims.
Most damaging to America's standing in Indonesia, Mr. Mansoer said he told the panel, is the perception that the Indonesians that the United States "picked on" were fundamentalist believers of Islam. These people have a right to practice that form of their religion, just as fundamentalist Christians do in America, he said. 
Mr. Mansoer was referring in particular to the elderly Islamic preacher Abu Bakar Bashir, who the United States believes heads a terrorist organization, Jemaah Islamiyah. At his trial earlier this month, Mr. Bashir was found not guilty of the charge that he leads the group. 
Ms. Wahid, whose father was the head of Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organization in Indonesia, and is considered the personification of Indonesia's moderate Islam, said that as the panel grappled with solutions it should consider the following: "How come what the extremists say has currency with the larger mass in the Muslim world? How is it the radicals manage to use the political situation to advance what they are preaching?"
The United States needs to be more sensitive, even about small things, she said.
At the invitation of the American Embassy, the Indonesians gathered for dinner at a hotel here before the videoconference. They were invited to eat at 6 p.m., the time when many Muslims go to the mosque for prayers, she said. "My more conservative friends were asking: 'Why at 6 p.m.? Are they doing this on purpose?' "
In the end, Mr. Mansoer said, the United States faces a long haul. "It will take time to build trust again. You can't make a quick fix. This is the equivalent of nation-building."







   
 

September 27, 2003 Saturday  
  



 NEWS SUMMARY 

 
     INTERNATIONAL   A2-7

Iraqis Show Impatience With Reconstruction Pace
Iraqi officials are growing impatient with the strictures of the American occupation, which they say has slowed reconstruction efforts. But the United States is convinced that the Iraqi Governing Council, which was appointed rather than elected, is not ready to take control of an unstable and still violent country.   A1

The United States military said two American soldiers were killed near the end of a week in which attacks around Iraq spiked. The United Nations ordered further reductions in its foreign staff in Iraq after a second car bomb attack on its main compound in Baghdad.   A6

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, after working with President Bush on education and health initiatives, is digging in for a fight over Iraq, calling it the "defining issue" of this Congressional session.   A7

The top American official for Iraq said the United States was holding at least 19 members of Al Qaeda in custody there.   A6

The Bush administration says its plan to rebuild Iraq is modeled on the the Marshall Plan, but lawmakers and historians are finding flaws in the analogy, many of which are at the heart of the debate over the administration's $87 billion spending request.   A7

U.N. Tries to Salvage Peace
The United States joined with senior envoys from the United Nations, Europe and Russia to try to salvage the situation in the Middle East with appeals to the Palestinians to stop their attacks on civilians and to the Israelis to exercise restraint in cracking down on terrorists.   A5

A Palestinian gunman killed two people, one of them a baby girl, and wounded two others when he opened fire on an Israeli family celebrating the Jewish New Year at their home in a settlement outside the West Bank town of Hebron.   A5

Moderate Muslims Fault U.S.
A group of moderate Indonesian Muslims told an expert panel from Washington that America is unloved in the Islamic world because of policy, not public relations.   A3

Putin Visits Bush
President Bush welcomed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to a meeting at Camp David. They appear still divided on Iraq and on Russia's continued insistence that its sales of nuclear technology to Iran are benign.   A3

Pornography Ring Found
An international investigation uncovered an immense child pornography ring involving 166 countries and about 26,500 suspects who swapped illegal images over the Internet, officials in Germany said. Police officers searched more than 500 homes throughout Germany, seizing computers, videotapes, compact discs and diskettes.   A3

NATIONAL   A8-12

Poverty Rate Increasing, Census Bureau Reports
The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.7 million last year and the median household income declined by 1.1 percent, the Census Bureau reported. The wor-sening conditions fell heaviest on Midwesterners and non-whites.   A1

The incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans fell 18 percent in 2001, as did their income taxes, shaving $66 billion off revenues and showing how dependent the federal government is on its wealthiest citizens.   C1

Actor Declines Debate
Arnold Schwarzenegger brushed off a debate challenge from Gov. Gray Davis and picked up the endorsement of Representative Darrell Issa.   A8

Water Transfer Urged in Florida
Florida real estate developers urged Gov. Jeb Bush to allow the transfer of water from the state's northern regions to its far more populous south. Critics say development in South Florida is contributing to a statewide water imbalance.   A8

Scooter Recalled for Instability
The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of all 6,000 Segway Human Transporters, saying the scooters can tip when the batteries are low.   A8

Nursing Home Fire Kills 8
A fire in a four-story nursing home in Nashville, Tenn., killed eight residents and critically injured about 20, the authorities said.   A9

Airline Sought for Security Test
The Transportation Security Administration is searching for a substitute for JetBlue to provide information on passengers for a test of the government's security screening system, the agency's administrator said.   A9

Troops Return Home for Rest
Soldiers arrived home from Iraq for two weeks of R&R in the first wave of the military's largest home-leave program since the Vietnam War.   A9

Democrats Look to Early States
The leading Democratic candidates for president are primarily focused on stopping Howard Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire, strategists said, despite the attention lavished on Gen. Wesley K. Clark's entry into the race.   A11

Beliefs   A12

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-7

2-Attack Claim Rejected In Setback for Silverstein
The United States Court of Appeals rejected the argument that there were two separate attacks on the World Trade Center, requiring two insurance payouts. The ruling was a setback for the efforts of Larry A. Silverstein, the leaseholder of the World Trade Center site.   B1

Providers Object to Audits
Oxford Health Plans has angered psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers in the New York metropolitan area with audits that deemed their notes inadequate evidence of sessions. The insurer demanded repayment of thousands of dollars from each provider.   B1

Woman's Trial in Son's Suicide
Prosecutors say that the single mother of a 12-year-old boy who hanged himself last year placed him at undue risk by keeping a disheveled household and failing to get him proper counseling.   B1

Evictions for the Homeless
The state's highest court cleared the way yesterday for New York City to evict homeless men and women from its shelters if the individuals are repeatedly disruptive.   B3

Restaurant Workers' Victory
A Federal District Court judge in Newark ordered the owners of a Chinese restaurant to pay nearly $3.5 million to two former waitresses who claimed that they had not been paid a base wage and were forced to hand over their tips.   B6

ARTS & IDEAS   B9-18

A Jolt to the Oscar Race
The major Hollywood studios, seeking to curb movie piracy, halted the distribution of thousands of DVD and VHS copies of Oscar-contending films to those whose votes decide the winners. The videos have reportedly been found for sale frequently on Internet sites like eBay.   B9

   D1-8

OBITUARIES   A13

Robert Palmer
A debonair English singer who channeled his fondness for American rock and soul into a string of hits in the 1970's and 80's, he was 54.   A13

BUSINESS DAY   C1-14

Management Changes at Nokia
Nokia, the world's biggest cellphone manufacturer, announced its first reshuffling of upper management in five years, spurring speculation that it may be preparing to change its chief executive.   C1

Allegheny Near Bankruptcy
Allegheny Energy, an important supplier of electricity and natural gas service in five states, is considering several measures to stave off a bankruptcy filing, including a sale of assets to raise cash.   C2

Stock Slide Continues
The Dow fell 30.88 points to 9,313.08, 331.74 points below last week's close. The Nasdaq dropped 25.17 points to 1,792.07, 113.63 points below last week's close.   C4

Lukoil Takes Manhattan
The Getty station in Manhattan bought by the Russian oil baron Vagit Alekperov was renamed after his huge oil company, Lukoil.   C1

Business Digest   C1

SCIENCE/HEALTH   

Disclosure Rules Tightened
The journal Nature and its sister publications said that they were expanding their policy requiring contributors to disclose financial ties to products or companies.   A10

EDITORIAL   A14-15

Editorials: Attack of the telemarketers; saved from stoning; Chicken Littles and ostriches at NASA; the truth is out there, but it's classified.

Columns: David Brooks, Nicholas D. Kristof.

Bridge   B16
TV Listings   B18
Crossword   B16
Weather   A16








 


September 26, 2003



 The Failed State of the Palestinians

 
Ten years after the signing of the Oslo accords, three years after the outbreak of the intifada and three weeks after the fall of prime minister Mahmoud Abbas's government, this much is clear about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Without a tough strategic decision to enforce what Max Weber called the hallmark of sovereignty - the monopoly on the legitimate use of force - it is highly unlikely that Palestinians will be able to achieve statehood.
The transition from an underground life of guerrilla warfare and terrorism to statehood is never an easy one for a national movement. 
It was not easy for Eamon de Valera, who led the Irish Free State to independence. After partition in 1921, elements of the Irish republican movement opted to continue the armed struggle against the British, in the process threatening the authority of the nascent government in Dublin. For all his commitment to an undivided Ireland, de Valera ruthlessly decided to suppress the dissidents.
Nor was it easy for David Ben-Gurion, who faced down a serious challenge from right-wing paramilitary organizations as Israel fought against its Arab neighbors for independence in 1948. His harsh move against Menachem Begin and the Irgun over the Altalena affair guaranteed the emergence of a coherent and democratic Jewish state - and ironically let Begin graduate from commander of a semi-legal militia to parliamentary leader to prime minister.
Given the difficulties inherent in consolidating power, one can well understand the reluctance of any Palestinian leader to engage in a similar set of steps, which may lead to something akin to civil war. While few Palestinians like to talk about it, Palestinian collective memory is still deeply aware of the internecine struggles that took place from 1936 to 1939; in what Palestinians proudly call "The Revolt," more Palestinians were killed by each other than by the British Army or the weak Jewish self-defense organizations.
Yasser Arafat has understood this reality better than any other Palestinian. Over the last four decades, he has amassed considerable resources - controlled personally by him - through voluntary contributions from fellow Palestinians and other Arab states, as well as through ransom money and simple robbery. His continued control over clandestine funds - whose details are still unknown even to his colleagues, let alone to the United States or European Union - have enabled him to continue to control large sections of the Palestinian population.
It is now equally clear that Arafat still controls at least part of the security apparatus, and it was this issue which, coming to a head in late August, brought down Abbas and his short-lived government. Despite pressure from both Washington and Jerusalem, Arafat, ever the master technician, managed to maintain control over two of the major Palestinian security organs, the General Security Service and the Preventive Security Directorate. Under these conditions, Abbas had no chances of stabilizing the situation. Whether the newly appointed prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, will be more successful remains an open question.
What is certain, however, is that the nature of the recent internal power struggles has shattered the hope that the Palestinians - by having been exposed, albeit under the harsh conditions of Israeli occupation, to the working of an open and democratic society - would try, after achieving statehood, to emulate the Israeli societal experience. It appears that this was simply a pious wish.
With no Arab society serving as a model for democracy, and with no serious movement toward democratization in any Arab country, it might have been asking too much from the Palestinians to be the first Arab society to develop what the whole Arab world has until now failed to achieve: an open society.
This general Arab democratic deficit, which was openly addressed for the first time last year by a number of courageous Arab intellectuals in the Arab Human Development Report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, is a serious flaw in Arab societies. It is not a consequence of Islam per se; that much can be gleaned from the examples of Turkey, Bangladesh and Indonesia, and even from recent encouraging developments in Iran.
It is still an unanswered question, avoided equally by scholars and policy makers: Why in a world which in the last 15 years has seen tremendous development toward democratization in practically every region - Eastern Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia - is the Arab world the only area which did not experience a similar development?. Where are the Arab Mikhail Gorbachevs, the Arab Lech Walesas, the Arab Vaclav Havels?
Without a leader of such stature and moral commitment to democracy, Palestinians are unlikely to achieve statehood. Most Israelis are now reconciled to living side-by-side in peace with a Palestinian state. But no country can accept the emergence on its doorstep of a failed state - akin to Lebanon during the 1980s or present-day Liberia - in which militias, armed gangs and various terrorist organizations act freely in defiance of legitimate state authority.
Bringing order to a combustible national movement, then, is the daunting task set before Palestinian leaders today. Fifty-five years ago, Ben-Gurion ruthlessly used force against his own countrymen; shots were fired by Jews at Jews, and people died on the beaches of Tel Aviv. Yet his harsh move guaranteed the emergence of Israel as a coherent and democratic state.
Whether Palestinians will at long last achieve the statehood that they so dearly seek will depend on the political will of their leaders. They have failed in the past - in 1947-48, and again at Camp David in 2000 - to make use of historical opportunities to achieve statehood. If Palestinians fail again, it will be a tragedy not only for them and for Israelis, but for the whole region.
Shlomo Avineri is a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.






  
  

  

SEPTEMBER 25, 2003 Thursday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Man charged with having sex with boys in Cambodia * A man was charged in Seattle yesterday with having sexual contact with young boys in Cambodia in what is believed to be the first indictment of its kind under a new federal law aimed at protecting children. Michael L. Clark, 69, could receive up to 30 years in prison if convicted. The Protect Act, signed in April by President Bush, makes it a crime for U.S. citizens to travel abroad to have sex with children.
Fla. widow sues U.S.
in 2001 anthrax death
* The widow of a photo editor killed in the nation's first anthrax attack in 2001 sued the federal government yesterday in West Palm Beach, Fla., alleging that lax security at an Army lab caused his death. Maureen Stevens, widow of Robert Stevens, is seeking more than $50 million. The Army lab at Fort Detrick, Md., is the primary custodian of the strain of anthrax found in envelopes sent to Robert Stevens and three other victims. 
Ban on unsolicited e-mail
signed into law in Calif.
* California will prohibit Internet advertisers from sending unsolicited e-mail under legislation signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Gray Davis. Backers say it is the toughest law of its kind in the nation, providing for fines of up to $1 million. The measure covers all unsolicited commercial e-mail sent or received in California.
Ohio court upholds ban
on concealed weapons
* The Ohio Supreme Court yesterday rejected a challenge to the state's 144-year ban on carrying concealed weapons, leaving Ohio just one of five states with such a restriction. Five of seven justices agreed to overturn two lower court rulings in favor of a pair of Cincinnati men who had argued the ban violated their constitutional right to bear arms.
Warning is issued
on 'yo-yo water ball'
* The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a warning yesterday about risks associated with the "yo-yo water ball," but stopped short of banning the toy from stores. The agency said there is "a low but potential risk" to children of getting the toy's stretchy cord wrapped around their necks while playing with it. The toy features a rubbery, liquid-filled ball on an elastic cord.
In the World
British tourist escapes from Colombia kidnappers * A British tourist kidnapped almost two weeks ago in the mountains of northern Colombia escaped and was picked up by an army patrol, Colombia's army chief said yesterday. Matthew Scott, 19, of London, evaded his captors during a forced walk through the thick jungles of the Sierra Nevada mountains, said Gen. Carlos Alberto Ospina. Scott was among eight backpackers - four Israelis, two Britons, a German and a Spaniard - captured from remote cabins near the archaeological ruins of Ciudad Perdida, or the Lost City.
War-crimes charges against Bush are dismissed
* Belgium's highest court dismissed war-crimes complaints yesterday against President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, ruling the country no longer has a legal basis to charge them. The decision was expected to improve Belgium's diplomatic relations with the United States and Israel, which hit their lowest points in decades over the complaints. The lawsuit was brought under a controversial Belgian law that lets its courts try foreigners for war crimes.
Bali police fear plot
to mark bomb anniversary * The police chief of Bali said Muslim militants have two bombs and could be preparing to use them to mark the anniversary of the Oct. 12 nightclub bombings on the island - the worst terror strike since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Authorities throughout Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, are searching for an undisclosed number of militants in connection with a possible anniversary plot, Maj. Gen. I Made Pastika, the police chief, said.
French officials spread blame for heat deaths
* French lawmakers studying why so many people died during a scorching summer heat wave blamed the country's complex health system, neglect of the elderly, and lack of air conditioning in retirement homes. The health system had no way to anticipate or rapidly alert authorities to the crisis, said a report released yesterday; the report added that France "turned its back on its elderly."
Progress in peace talks reported for Sudan, rebels
* Sudan's government and its biggest rebel group said yesterday they had cleared the main stumbling block in peace talks aimed at ending a 20-year-old war that has killed about two million people. "They have come to an agreement regarding the deployment of forces, the sizes of forces and other points which were sticking points during the past week," said Said el-Khatib, a Sudanese government spokesman. Peace negotiations have been taking place in Kenya between Sudan's first vice president, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, and John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.






   


September 24, 2003 Wednesday



 Countries unconvinced by Bush's U.N. speech

 
New York Times
New York Times
New York Times
UNITED NATIONS - President Bush's exhortation that "all nations of good will" should support the reconstruction and political transformation of Iraq met yesterday with a largely skeptical response, laced with some general expressions of approval, in both the General Assembly and in capitals around the world.
By the rough measurement of applause, the appeal of Bush's remarks fell well behind those of President Jacques Chirac of France, his chief rival for hearts and minds in the arena of international diplomacy. In his speech, Chirac declared that multilateralism "is a guarantee of legitimacy and democracy, especially in matters regarding the use of force or laying down universal norms."
In remarks to a Russian television correspondent after the morning session, Moscow's foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, chose not to criticize Bush directly, falling back instead on a general endorsement of multilateralism. "Every country, small and large, should strictly respect international law," he said. "Only in this way can we tackle such problems as terrorism, organized crime and nonproliferation." 
President Pervez Mush-arraf of Pakistan said Bush's speech "was good, very forceful," adding: "It encompassed all the issues that face the world today. It was a very balanced speech." But he remained noncommittal about whether Pakistan could aid the effort in Iraq unless its troops could be part of a Muslim force that was invited to help by Iraqis themselves.
Most diplomats and scholars focused on Bush's unapologetic tone on the subject of the war in Iraq. A U.N. official, speaking on condition that he not be identified, said he thought the president's remarks were tailored "for a domestic audience," because they seemed not to have much resonance among the representatives of 191 nations gathered here for the annual General Assembly.
In her speech yesterday afternoon, President Meg-awati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, said: "The war has created far many more problems than those it intended to solve. I do believe that a great many lessons can be learned from the Iraq war" - in particular, that unilateralism carries heavy costs.
Some commentators around the world thought that the target audience for the Bush speech might have been the leaders of nations from which Washington is seeking money or troops.
Professor Ernst-Otto Czempiel, a leading foreign policy expert at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, said that given Bush's tough tone, and the gulf between Europe and the United States, the main targets of yesterday's speech might not have been Jacques Chirac or the German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, but leaders of other nations that might offer support in Iraq, like Turkey or India.
He added that Bush's message, as he read it, was: "Allies should give some help, but should not expect to co-determine the future of Iraq."
In effect, Czempiel said, the speech could be seen as a barometer of Bush's problems in Iraq. "The situation is not so desperate that he needs to make any concessions now," he said. But, he added: "The situation in Iraq is likely to deteriorate further, with more guerrilla fighting and U.S. casualties. If this happens, Bush will be forced to make some concessions."
Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States at the French Institute for International Relations, called Bush's speech disappointing, adding: "The president seemed to say a few nice things about the U.N., the idea that the differences during the war should be placed behind us, but on the other hand, didn't seem to be willing to give very much on the authority of who will determine the future of Iraq. Nor did he say anything about the responsibility of the United States for the security of Iraq, which under international law is clearly the responsibility of the occupying power."
Several people commented on the contrast between Bush's remarks and those of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who preceded him, and Chirac, who followed.
Annan, in a sharp rebuke of the United States' pursuit of war without an explicit Security Council mandate, said the doctrine of pre-emptive action "could set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without justification."
Menzies Campbell, the foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrat Party in Britain, a party that has been critical of Britain's going to war, said the speech would do little to convince skeptics in Europe that they had enough of a stake in Iraq to help out the Anglo-American coalition.
"From the reaction of the U.N. General Assembly," Campbell said, "President Bush is going to have to go a long way further before he can persuade France and Germany and other countries who were skeptical about the war in Iraq to now take a serious hand in its reconstruction.
"Kofi Annan's carefully chosen words contained a rebuke of unilateralism and pre-emptive strikes," he added, "and there clearly is a great deal to be done in New York before it can be said that the U.N. has overcome the strains of the last 12 months."
Jean Chretien, the Canadian prime minister, struck a more conciliatory note at a news conference yesterday, saying that despite the significant differences between Washington and Paris, "This is a matter of knowing that there are ways to provide an acceptable solution. Reason will prevail."
 Copyright and permissions







   
 

September 24, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: REACTION; 
Bush's Remarks Draw Skepticism

 
President Bush's urging that "all nations of good will" should support the reconstruction and political transformation of Iraq met today with a largely skeptical response, laced with some general expressions of approval, in both the General Assembly and in capitals around the world.
     By the rough measurement of applause, the appeal of Mr. Bush's remarks fell well behind those of President Jacques Chirac of France, his chief rival for hearts and minds in the arena of international diplomacy. In his speech, Mr. Chirac declared that multilateralism "is a guarantee of legitimacy and democracy, especially in matters regarding the use of force or laying down universal norms."  
 In remarks to a Russian television correspondent after the morning session, Moscow's foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, chose not to criticize Mr. Bush directly, falling back instead on a general endorsement of multilateralism. "Every country, small and large, should strictly respect international law," he said. "Only in this way can we tackle such problems as terrorism, organized crime and nonproliferation."
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said Mr. Bush's speech "was good, very forceful," adding: "It encompassed all the issues that face the world today. It was a very balanced speech." But he remained noncommittal about whether Pakistan could aid the effort in Iraq unless its troops could be part of a Muslim force that was invited to help by Iraqis themselves.
Most diplomats and scholars focused on Mr. Bush's unapologetic tone on the subject of the war in Iraq. A United Nations official, speaking on condition that he not be identified, said he thought the president's remarks were tailored "for a domestic audience," because they seemed not to have much resonance among the representatives of 191 nations gathered here for the annual General Assembly.
In her speech this afternoon, President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, said: "The war has created far many more problems than those it intended to solve. I do believe that a great many lessons can be learned from the Iraq war" -- in particular, that unilateralism carries heavy costs. 
Some commentators around the world thought the target audience for the Bush speech might have been leaders of nations from which Washington is seeking money or troops.
Prof. Ernst-Otto Czempiel, a leading foreign policy expert at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, said that given Mr. Bush's tough tone, and the gulf between Europe and the United States, the main targets of today's speech might not have been Mr. Chirac or the German chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, but leaders of other nations that might offer support in Iraq, like Turkey or India.
He added that Mr. Bush's message, as he read it, was: "Allies should give some help, butshould not expect to co-determine the future of Iraq."
In effect, Professor Czempiel said, the speech could be seen as a barometer of Mr. Bush's problems in Iraq. "The situation is not so desperate that he needs to make any concessions now," he said. But, he added: "The situation in Iraq is likely to deteriorate further, with more guerrilla fighting and U.S. casualties. If this happens, Bush will be forced to make some concessions."
Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States at the French Institute for International Relations, called Mr. Bush's speech disappointing, adding: "The president seemed to say a few nice things about the U.N., the idea that the differences during the war should be placed behind us, but on the other hand, didn't seem to be willing to give very much on the authority of who will determine the future of Iraq. Nor did he say anything about the responsibility of the United States for the security of Iraq which under international law is clearly the responsibility of the occupying power."
Several people commented on the contrast between Mr. Bush's remarks and those of Secretary General Kofi Annan, who preceded him, and Mr. Chirac, who followed. 
Mr. Annan, in a sharp rebuke of the United States' pursuit of war without an explicit Security Council mandate, said the doctrine of pre-emptive action "could set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without justification."
Menzies Campbell, the foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrat Party in Britain, a party that has been critical of Britain's going to war, said the speech would do little to convince skeptics in Europe that they had enough of a stake in Iraq to help out the Anglo-American coalition.
"From the reaction of the U.N. General Assembly," Mr. Campbell said, "President Bush is going to have to go a long way further before he can persuade France and Germany and other countries who were skeptical about the war in Iraq to now take a serious hand in its reconstruction.
"Kofi Annan's carefully chosen words contained a rebuke of unilateralism and pre-emptive strikes," he added, "and there clearly is a great deal to be done in New York before it can be said that the U.N. has overcome the strains of the last 12 months." 
Jean Chretien, the Canadian prime minister, struck a more conciliatory note at a news conference here this afternoon, saying that despite the significant differences between Washington and Paris, "This is a matter of knowing that there are ways to provide an acceptable solution. Reason will prevail."






   


September 24, 2003, Wednesday, 



 Plans for prosperity die amid fighting in Mideast

 
Yoel Benesh is an Israeli Jew who operates a gourmet food plant in Even Yehuda, a small city two miles from the Mediterranean Sea and about 25 miles north of Tel Aviv.
Ten years ago, he decided to seek out Palestinian business partners and began buying olives and other food supplies in the nearby West Bank.
Over time, he forged a relationship with Palestinians like Abdullah Ganem, who has olive groves a few miles north of Even Yehuda in an area populated by Arab Muslims. Ganem not only sold olives to Benesh but, as clashes between Israelis and Palestinians worsened, acted as a broker with farmers along the West Bank.
Such a partnership is extremely rare, even though distances are short in this region -- often less than 30 miles -- and traveling to the West Bank is like going from Brooklyn to Queens in New York. Benesh had traveled throughout the region for years, as his father had before him.
 
Not anymore. Since the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, began three years ago, about 2,600 Palestinians and 850 Israelis have died. Palestinians say they are fighting for an independent state; Israelis say they are fighting for survival.
In January, Massoud Elon, a Jewish clothing dealer in his 70s, was calling on Palestinian customers. His family said he had done business for years with Arab villagers, who liked and trusted him. His body was found in a burned-out car near the settlement of Bekaot. This month, the Israeli government made it illegal to enter the West Bank without a permit.
Checkpoints have become maddening. Trips that once took 10 minutes now take hours. Since the latest conflict began, the annual purchases Benesh makes directly from farmers in the West Bank have fallen to $ 50,000 from $ 200,000.
The economy of the West Bank and Gaza has suffered during the years of conflict. Only foreign aid is preventing economic collapse, according to a report by the World Bank. Half the Palestinian population is unemployed, and 60% live on less than $ 2 a day.
Palestinian exports fell 35% in 2002 after a 13% drop in 2001, and the area's gross domestic product dropped 25% from 2001 to 2002.
Israel has not gone unscathed. Its GDP contracted 1.1% in 2002 after shrinking 0.5% in 2001, the first negative years since 1953, according to the CIA World Factbook.
"All efforts big or small to build bridges make a difference," says Nasser Beydoun, executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce. "We should never give up, because there is no alternative but hope."
But the hope that moderate business partners had wanted to inspire is shrinking instead of growing. The goal was for small, initial success, such as that between Benesh and Ganem, to spread by convincing others that relinquishing animosity leads to a higher standard of living.
"When more dollars cross borders, less bullets cross borders," says Ben Cohen, the Jewish co-founder of Ben & Jerry's Homemade.
That's the theory, anyway. People and nations are reluctant to initiate conflict when their livelihoods are intertwined. But in the Middle East, the premise has met its match.
Partners, not employees
Daniel Lubetzky, the son of a Holocaust survivor, founded New York-based PeaceWorks a decade ago when he brought Benesh, bankrupt at the time, and Arab suppliers together.
PeaceWorks is a company that opens the lucrative North American market to importers by marketing and distributing food products that are produced from business partnerships between groups in conflict.
Benesh was PeaceWorks' first client when Lubetzky said he would market Benesh's gourmet food in the USA if Benesh would buy from Palestinians and other Arab suppliers.
Lubetzky didn't want Arabs working for Benesh; that becomes adversarial. He wanted them to be business partners.
Benesh's business was going under, and he says he agreed willingly. The Meditalia line of sauces and spreads owned by Benesh has become a commercial success and is sold in 5,000 North American specialty food stores. But the model of cooperation is failing. PeaceWorks' second attempt in the region, a chocolate factory, has closed at least temporarily, and it has been four years since Lubetzky has considered a new venture in the Middle East.
Convinced that the Middle East is an aberration and that commerce plays a role in peace, Lubetzky has started business ventures between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia; blacks and whites in post-apartheid South Africa; and Tamil rebels and the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka.
He has found some success in these hot spots, but not in the Middle East.
"Sometimes I get really depressed that we've been working on this 10 years, and things are getting worse. It's pretty depressing, really," Lubetzky said.
Majority want peace
Yasser Abbas -- the son of Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned this month as the Palestinian Authority's first prime minister -- is a leading Arab businessman in the region. He is chairman of the Falcon Group, which owns Falcon Telecom and Falcon Tobacco, and is a trustee of OneVoice, a group of Jewish and Arab business leaders.
He says the majorities on both sides want peace, and conflict is exacerbated by small groups of extremists. "I'm always optimistic; otherwise I would leave," Abbas says.
He says he went to Tel Aviv in August to meet with the leaders of three Israeli corporations, but nothing came of it except "relationship building" that might pay dividends if there is progress toward peace.
At that meeting, no one mentioned regional politics -- for obvious reasons: The topic is too divisive. Abbas, considered very moderate just for being in a room with Jewish businessmen, says the Israeli government does not want to give up any land for peace. "They don't want any road map (the term for the U.S.-backed peace plan)," he says. He also says, "A suicide bomber here and there should not lock 3 million Palestinians inside."
Many elected U.S. officials won't meet with Arab-Americans unless they are assured there will be no publicity, says Ray Hanania, a Palestinian-American Christian columnist and comedian.
Hanania says he isn't a fan of commercial efforts in the Middle East, because when they fail, they do more damage than no effort at all. It's better not to have commerce, not to have hope, than to destroy it after it has been erected, he says.
"The threat of being undermined by one act of violence is so great, and the damage so enormous, it's not worth the risk," Hanania says. "Once you start laying brick and mortar, it becomes a target."
Abandoned dreams for business
Stef Wertheimer, chairman of Iscar, a metal company based in Tefen, Israel, says he once dreamed of building a border industrial park where Egypt, Israel and Gaza meet. There would be plants built on each side of the border with a coffee shop in the middle. He now chuckles at his naivete and says he abandoned plans of doing business with Palestinians four years ago.
Wertheimer's four industrial parks generate $ 2 billion a year, or 7% of Israel's exports, and he has close ties with Turkey, Jordan and the Arab sector of Israel. But the West Bank and Gaza are uniquely resistant to a business cure, he says.
Dov Lautman is the Jewish chairman of Delta Galil, an Israeli textile company that saw $ 567 million in revenue in 2002 and is traded on the Nasdaq exchange. It makes intimate apparel that is sold by retailers, including Wal-Mart and Victoria's Secret, under brand names such as Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein.
Lautman manufactures in Jordan, Egypt and Turkey, and he says he has developed true friendships with business associates in those countries. "We discuss everything from personal problems to politics."
"You'd be surprised how many Egyptians and Jordanians think both Israelis and Palestinians are wrong," Lautman says.
Although commerce has helped pave the way for improved relations between the governments of Israel and those countries, Lautman says peace must precede commerce between Israelis and Palestinians.
Business ties do make a difference, says Farhad Mohit, co-founder and chairman of Internet comparison-shopping site Bizrate.com in Los Angeles. Mohit was born in Iran and says he is an atheist with a Muslim background. Bizrate.com's CEO is Chuck Davis, who is an American Jew, as is board member David Reibstein. Mohit's co-founder, Henri Asseily, is Lebanese and a Greek Orthodox Christian.
The company is a case study in diversity, and Mohit says Middle East politics never come up. It is the common goal -- business -- that ties such a group together and makes them friends, he says.
"It's very simple. When people interact, they realize that people are people," Mohit says. "Ideological barriers prevent you from seeing others as human beings."
Mohit cites an example outside of the Middle East conflict that gives him hope: Farhad is a common name in Iran, so when Iranians stumble upon his Yahoo handle, they often send him instant messages. Mohit says he tells them the USA is not Hollywood, nor are the USA and Israel the land of Satan. Iranians, especially women, enjoy hearing about U.S. freedoms, he says.
Benesh, the Israeli owner of the gourmet food company, sometimes visits his former forklift operator, a Palestinian named Wagad, who had to quit because he could no longer cross the checkpoints and drive to his job 12 miles away. Benesh remembers giving Wagad hand-me-down clothes and videocassettes when Benesh traded in his VCR for a DVD player.
Wagad got a job at the Matola pickle plant in the West Bank. Benesh used to venture there for visits but says he hasn't seen Wagad in more than a year. "I get a big hug and kisses," Benesh says. "I wish he were here, but there is no way I can hire him. Everybody is hurt, both sides."






  
  


September 19, 2003 Friday 



 TEARFUL BALI TERRORIST GETS LIFE TERM
HE TESTIFIED AGAINST FELLOW BOMBING DEFENDANTS

 
BALI, Indonesia -- A Muslim radical who testified against his fellow defendants and tearfully apologized for his role in the Bali terrorist bombings was spared the firing squad Thursday and instead received life in prison.
The life sentence for Ali Imron came somewhat as a surprise, since prosecutors had demanded only a 20-year term.
The five-judge panel ruled that Imron's cooperation had to be balanced against the severity of the Oct. 12 nightclub attack on Indonesia's Bali island in which 202 people were killed, most of them foreign tourists. 
"He has shown remorse and has instructed his students and family not to follow the path of violence as he has done," Judge Mulyani said. "But his crime is extraordinary. Not only has he been responsible for killing of 202 people, but his crime has far-reaching effects on the community."
Imron, 33, an Islamic boarding school teacher, was arrested in January and admitted to building one of the two bombs that ripped through two packed nightclubs. He also said he drove the bomb-laden minivan to the attack site.
Imron's older brother, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, and the mastermind of the attacks, Imam Samudra, have already been sentenced to death. Both have repeatedly chastised the West and defended the bombings as necessary to avenge the treatment of Muslims at the hands of the United States and Israel.
"We picked Bali because we wanted to target America and its allies," Imron told investigators. Eighty-eight Australians and six Americans were among the dead.
Shortly after his arrest, Imron gave a press conference in which he apologized to the victims' families and showed how he and others allegedly assembled the explosives. In court, he broke down in tears and his lawyers said he believes the attacks were not in accordance with Islamic teachings.
Ten people have been convicted in the blasts, out of 35 arrested.
The Bali attack is blamed on the Jemaah Islamiyah network, which reportedly wants to turn much of Southeast Asia into an Islamic state. The network's commander, Riduan Isamuddin Hambali, was captured last month and is in U.S. custody.
 contributed to this report.




10


  



September 19, 2003 Friday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
SINGAPORE -- An Indonesian court sentenced a Muslim militant to life in prison yesterday for his role in last year's bombing of two Bali nightclubs but stopped short of ordering the man's execution, citing his expressions of remorse. 
 The judges found that Ali Imron, a 33-year-old Indonesian, had participated in the manufacture of the bombs and had driven a minivan loaded with explosives into the heart of Bali's entertainment district, which was packed with foreign tourists. But the judges also noted that, after his arrest, Imron had asked his friends and family not to follow his violent example. His statements of regret contrast with those of other central figures in the plot, which is blamed by police on Jemaah Islamiah, a regional terror network that has been linked to al Qaeda.  
 Two suspects -- the alleged mastermind and one of Imron's older brothers -- have been sentenced to death. Another older brother, charged with overall responsibility for the attack, could also face the death penalty when his verdict is announced in the coming weeks. 
 -- Alan Sipress 
The Americas 
* BOGOTA, Colombia -- One in four fighters in Colombia's guerrilla war is a child, forced to kill comrades and attend torture sessions as members of right-wing death squads or Marxist rebel armies, a human rights group said. 
 Chilling accounts by former child fighters, some of whom enlisted as young as 7, were released in a 150-page report by Human Rights Watch. 
 The rights group estimated there were more than 11,000 children in Colombia's four-decade-old conflict, which claims thousands of lives every year. 
* OTTAWA -- The opposition in the Canadian Parliament renewed its attack on gay marriage with the introduction of legislation to cement a heterosexual-only definition of matrimony while allowing provinces to provide for same-sex civil unions. 
 The move by the Canadian Alliance comes two days after its motion to reaffirm marriage as solely a union between a man and a woman was narrowly defeated in a deeply divided House of Commons. The proposed new legislation -- framed by the Alliance as a compromise -- would run contrary to the Liberal government's plans to legalize same-sex marriage, but the Alliance believes the bill could succeed, given that more than 50 Liberals voted for their motion Tuesday. 
Europe 
* MADRID -- Police arrested five suspects on orders of a Spanish judge investigating the al Qaeda terror network, a day after the judge issued the first known indictment against Osama bin Laden for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 
 The five men, whose arrest was announced by the Interior Ministry, were not among the 35 suspects indicted in the dramatic order issued Wednesday by Judge Baltasar Garzon. 
 But four of them are linked to some of those indicted, according to Garzon's 700-page order. 
* MOSCOW -- Russia suspended flights by its top-of-the-range strategic bomber after one crashed on a training exercise, killing the four-member crew, the air force chief of staff was reported as saying. 
 The Tu-160 supersonic plane, known in the West by its NATO code name of Blackjack, came down in the Volga region after an unexplained blaze broke out in one of its four engines, defense officials said. 
 "The Tu-160 flights have been suspended until we find out the reasons why the plane crashed," Gen. Boris Cheltsov, the air force commander in chief as well as chief of staff, was quoted as saying. 
* BERLIN -- France signaled today that it was willing to help Germany train a new Iraqi police force, as both countries renewed their pressure on the United States for a quick handover of government to Iraqis. 
 French President Jacques Chirac, speaking after talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said he would like to see the transfer of power in postwar Iraq as soon as possible -- "in a matter of months, not years." 
 "That is our common assessment," Chirac said after meeting with the German leader at the chancellery in Berlin. 
 France has demanded a quick timetable for transferring power as a condition of accepting a U.S.-proposed resolution on Iraq at the United Nations. Last week, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin called for a provisional government in a month, a draft constitution by year's end and elections next spring. 
 -- From News Services 






   

 

September 18, 2003 Thursday 



 Q&A

 
Q: Another terrorist was sentenced to death in Indonesia for the Bali bombings. What is the method of execution in Indonesia?
--- William B. McKee Jr., Flowery Branch
A: The firing squad is used, according to Amnesty International. 
More than 200 people died in the Bali bombings last Oct. 12.
A five-judge panel in Jakarta, Indonesia, sentenced Imam Samudra, born Abdul Azis bin Sihabudin, to death Sept. 10. Samudra, 33, was depicted as a Muslim extremist who espoused a bitter hatred for Americans and Jews.
In August, a separate Indonesian court sentenced Amrozi bin Nurhasyim to die for his role in the attacks.
Q: An obituary referred to the deceased as a "lifelong yellow dog Democrat." What is the origin and meaning of that?
--- Scott MacLean, Forest Park
A: It means an unswerving party loyalist and is used only as a compliment.
The Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins says it dates to post-Civil War days and applies to loyal Democrats who, according to an old story, would vote for a yellow dog before voting for any Republican.
Q: Braves announcers the other night kept talking about the "infield fly rule." No one at my house knows what that is. Can you explain?
--- Lurie Croft, Decatur
A: The book "The Language of Sport" explains that it's a special rule in effect only in the case of a fair infield fly ball judged catchable with less than two out and base runners at first and second, or loaded bases.
In this circumstance, the batter is automatically called out whether or not the ball is actually caught, thus removing the force on the base runners should the fly not be caught.
This prevents an infielder from choosing not to catch the fly so he can make a double play on the other runners (who must stay near their bases so they won't be trapped off base in the event of a fielded fly).
Q: Has the coast of Georgia ever been hit by a hurricane?
--- Jim Connah, Sandy Springs
A: Yes, but only a "moderate number" of direct tropical cyclone strikes have occurred on Georgia's Atlantic coastline during the past three centuries, according to the Encyclopedia of Hurricanes, Typhoons and Cyclones.
Between 1752 and 1995, Georgia was affected by 69 documented hurricanes and tropical storms, with 30 of these mature systems making landfall on the state's east coast. Of these, 11 were considered major hurricanes (Category 3 and 4 systems).
The deadliest and most violent occurred Aug. 26, 1881, when a massive storm swept ashore just south of Savannah, tearing the roofs from hundreds of buildings and killing about 335 people; and Aug. 27-28, 1893, when the "Savannah-Charleston Hurricane" took about 500 lives as it inundated several riverside rice plantations before its storm tide submerged vast sections of Charleston, S.C., drowning an additional 1,400 people.
Other major storms hitting the coast have included a hurricane that pounded Savannah and environs in August 1940; a storm that struck Sapelo Island Oct. 15, 1947; Hurricane Gracie, on Sept. 16, 1959; Dora, on Sept. 9, 1964; and David, on Sept. 4, 1979.
Most storms striking Georgia have originated in the Gulf of Mexico or western Caribbean and come ashore in northwestern Florida.
Do you have a question about the news? Colin Bessonete will try to get an answer. Call 404-222-2002 or e-mail q&a@ajc.com (include your name and city).






   


September 18, 2003 Thursday



 Remorseful bomber spared firing squad

 
BALI, Indonesia A Muslim radical who testifiedagainst his fellow defendants and tearfully apologized for his role in the Bali terrorist bombings was spared the firing squad Thursday and instead received life in prison.
The life sentence for Ali Imron came somewhat as a surprise,since prosecutors had demanded only a 20-year term. 
The five-judge panel ruled that Imron's cooperation had tobe balanced against the severity of the Oct. 12 nightclub attack on Indonesia's Bali island in which 202 people were killed, most of them foreign tourists.
"He has been helpful. He has shown remorse and hasinstructed his students and family not to follow the path of violence as he has done," Judge Mulyani said. "But his crime is extraordinary. Not only has he been responsible for killing of 202 people, but his crime has far-reaching effects on the community."






   


September 18, 2003, Thursday



 PLANE SCARED - TERRORISTS DON'T STAND A CHANCE AGAINST TOUGH SUPERMODELS

 
"Threat Matrix" [ ] (three stars)
Tonight at 8 on ABC
----
WHAT would you get if the models fell out of the J. Crew catalog and took over the primo, elite, terrorist-threat task force under the direction of the president of the United States?
If you guessed a group of incredibly tough, top secret, martial-arts fighting CIA agents, who look like super models but instead work very hard to keep the world safe for democracy, you'd be right.
In this case, it's call "Threat Matrix" and it's ABC's newest attempt at yet another "Alias," the best secret-agent action show on this or any other tube. 
"Threat Matrix" is a lot better than the too-pretty actors would suggest. That aside, the plots involve an elite force within the terribly-named homeland security (which sounds like a home-alarm company), formed to stop each day's highest security threat.
Right off, I have to say that as a New Yorker I deeply resent any show that is making dough off of what happened to us on 9/11. But "Threat Matrix" is not doing that with references to al Qaeda and Muslim terrorists. Instead, it is piggybacking on the horror terrorists created. (NBC was one of the first with its back-door pilot/TV flick, "War Stories" last year.)
I assume that because two years have passed since the attacks of 9/11 and it's only a matter of time before stores start having 9/11 white sales, networks will be jumping all over themselves to cash in on our horror and the nation's fear.
OK, now that I've said all that, how can I like still the show? Because I'm a sucker for good writing and this show is well written, tightly directed. It has very interesting plot lines. And truthfully, history happens, and fiction always follows.
In tonight's premiere, we meet the Threat Matrix task force - the insanely good-looking super agents, including the company leader, John Kilmer (James Denton) and his ex-wife Frankie (played by Kelly Rutherford) whom he refers to constantly as Mrs. Kilmer.
Each day the team presumably springs into action to avoid a horrible terrorist threat of some kind. Tonight, the drama involves granting asylum to a drug lord who has sold his secrets to Muslim terrorists from Indonesia who are about to blow the Chicago Stock Exchange into next week.
Frankie - who not only looks great in adventure outfits but is also a profiler and an interrogation expert - is sent to Indonesia to find out the truth about a container full of terrorists that is about to dock at a U.S. port.
The scenes at the exchange with anti-globalization protestors outside and the skin-bleached terrorists inside are riveting. Now, if I can just get passed my 9/11 prejudice, I'd really enjoy this new show.







   
 

September 17, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 Indonesia Vows to Pursue Economic Plan 

 
Ending a month of delays, Indonesia's government released an economic blueprint today, drafted to reassure the investment community that it will not backslide on making changes once it emerges from the supervision of the International Monetary Fund next year.
      In a document signed by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, Indonesia promised to adhere to the goals it adopted as part of its $5 billion economic aid program with the I.M.F., saying that it would continue to promote economic stability, overhaul its financial sector and encourage investment, exports and job growth. 
 In addition to assigning the document the stature ofa presidential decree, the government said Mrs. Megawati had put her three most senior ministers in charge of coordinating the effort to bring about changes, many of them spelled out with explicit deadlines. 
 "The fact that the plan has been set out now clearly and transparently means the public and the investment community will be able to assess for themselves the progress of the government's reform efforts," said David C. L. Nellor, the I.M.F.'s chief resident representative here. "This will provide an opportunity, and perhaps discipline, on the part of the government as it goes into 2004." 
 The government consulted private economists on the plan and drafts of it had been circulating for weeks, so economists said it held few if any surprises. While they said they were skeptical that the deadlines would be met, they said they were encouraged by the resolve the plan demonstrated.
 "I think setting some kind of clear targets, even though the targets are unrealistic, makes it easier to evaluate their performance and policy direction," said Anton Gunawan, an economist at Citibank in Jakarta.
 Indonesia is the last of Asia's economies to recover from the effects of the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and 1998. Even now, Indonesia's projected economic growth rate this year of 4 percent is well below the 6 percent that many economists say is required to help alleviate unemployment among the country's roughly 214 million people.
 Hard times for Indonesia's largely rural population have proved a recipe for violence and radicalism. There has been intermittent racial and religious violence as well as a rise of radical Islam among Indonesia's traditionally moderate Muslim majority.
 The security problems were underscored last month by a suicide bombing at a hotel in the capital that killed 12 people. The bombing has been linked to the Islamic radical group Jemaah Islamiyah.
 Despite the problems, Indonesia has regained some favor with overseas fund managers thanks to a period of relative political calm, low inflation and falling interest rates. With an influx of money helping to push up its stocks, currency and foreign reserves, Indonesia announced in July that it would not renew its program with the I.M.F. when it expires at the end of this year.
 Since late 1997, when the country asked the I.M.F. for help in warding off the crisis, the fund has served as a frequent scapegoat. In return for funds to shore up its foreign reserves, Indonesia was bound to a long list of policy goals, austerity measures, deregulation and fiscal targets. 
 Today's blueprint also spelled out continued measures to overhaul the struggling financial sector, including the sale of state-owned banks. 







  



September 17, 2003 Wednesday  




 Indonesia's Clerics Push for Restraint; 
Powerful Scholars From Two Huge Groups Counteract Militants' Zeal

 
After terrorists bombed a pair of Bali nightclubs packed with Western tourists last year, Sahal Mahfudz recalled that students at his Islamic boarding school were dismayed to learn that fellow Muslims were responsible.  
 This was not the Islam they had learned from Mahfudz, a gaunt cleric with sunken cheeks but lively eyes who allows the teenage boys to hang posters of European soccer stars, pop singer Avril Lavigne and rocker Axl Rose in their cramped dorm rooms alongside pictures of their favorite clerics in turbans and robes. "We cannot live alone in this world," he said he has told them. 
 So as soon as they heard about the attacks, teachers and students gathered in small groups in classrooms arrayed around the dirt courtyard at the end of an alley and talked about how to be vigilant and make sure the school was not penetrated by radical ideas, several teachers recounted. "We have to be introspective and ask how these things can happen," said Asnawi Rahmat, an Arabic teacher.  
 That same question is being posed with increasing urgency at Islamic schools and scholarly gatherings that, like the boarding school in Pati, are affiliated with Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama. Whether the militants' message finds a receptive audience in the world's most populous Muslim nation depends largely on the influence of Nahdlatul Ulama and its sister organization, Muhammadiyah. The two movements claim a total of 70 million members -- a third of the country's population and more Muslims than in any Arab country.  
 "Radical forms of Islam chip away at the authority and legitimacy of NU and Muhammadiyah as institutions," said Douglas E. Ramage, director of the Asia Foundation in Indonesia. 
 Nahdlatul Ulama, which means Awakening of the Clerics, and Muhammadiyah run extensive networks of schools, clinics, women's groups and other institutions seeking to advance Muslim culture. While most of Nahdlatul Ulama's authority rests with thousands of local scholars in rural areas whose words are taken as law, Muhammadiyah's followers are mostly urban professionals.  
Both the national leaders and local clerics in the two groups express confidence that Indonesia remains largely receptive to their moderate teachings, but they acknowledge they are competing with the radicals for the loyalty of a population that sends conflicting signals about its religious views. 
 A poll taken by the Center for Islamic and Social Studies in Jakarta reported last year that 71 percent of Indonesians surveyed said they supported the official imposition of Islamic law, known as sharia, up 10 percentage points from 2001. 
 But when respondents were asked about the specific elements traditionally embodied in Islamic law, their views were much more moderate. Only 36 percent said the government should require Muslim women to wear traditional head scarves. Even fewer said they supported the practice of cutting off hands as punishment for certain crimes or seeing police enforce the ritual of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. 
 During a national debate last year, the leaders of Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah were the most persuasive opponents of making sharia part of the constitution. "If included, this means discrimination against other religious groups," said Ahmad Syafii Maarif, chairman of Muhammadiyah. About 10 percent of Indonesians are non-Muslim. 
The two groups "provide religious legitimacy for pluralism in Indonesian politics, and they buttress this through a variety of social and educational programs reaching down into the smallest crevices and corners of Indonesian society," said Robert W. Hefner, an expert on Indonesian Islam at Boston University. "There's nothing else like these organizations anywhere else in the Muslim world." 
After police investigators revealed that many of the suspects implicated in the bombings had studied at religious boarding schools, the leaders of Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah pressed their members to keep radical teachers and extreme interpretations of Islam out of their institutions. They condemned the Bali attack, which killed 202 people, and the more recent car bombing at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta that killed 12, making it easier for the government to crack down on suspected terrorists. 
 The leaders have sought to channel their followers' anger without reinforcing the militants' anti-Western message. When radicals called for boycotting American goods and expelling U.S. diplomats in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the leaders counseled restraint. 
 In confronting extremism, much of the moderates' influence is felt far from the capital -- in the villages where revered religious scholars known as kyai preach at modest schools and onion-domed mosques built amid the rice paddies and fields of sugar cane, tobacco and lemon grass. 
In East Java province, more than a thousand followers of Kyai Abdullah Faqih journey as far as 100 miles each Sunday along narrow country roads to hear him teach inside the old, blue, wood-plank mosque at his Langitan boarding school, affiliated with Nahdlatul Ulama. His rendering of a classic Arabic text inevitably turns to current affairs. And after the Bali and Marriott attacks, the 71-year-old cleric, dressed in white from his prayer cap to his sarong, has repeatedly urged his audience of politicians, teachers, students and fellow preachers to stand against radicalism. 
When a young scholar faced death threats from radical Muslims late last year after espousing a flexible form of Islamic law, an influential Nahdlatul Ulama kyai in East Java, Muhyiddin Abdusshomad, rose to his defense. Abdusshomad told audiences that the radicals had concocted the rigid notion of an Islamic state without a basis in religious texts. 
"They want to give us the concept of an Islamic state, but we look in the classical discussion of Islam and there's no such concept as an Islamic state. They came up with it themselves," said Abdusshomad, 48, a stocky, sober cleric with a lavender cap and a thin, graying goatee. 
 Abdusshomad started his school in 1984 with a mosque fashioned from bamboo. His in-laws gave him 25 acres of rice paddies and he used the proceeds to build a campus with three mosques, computers and cramped but clean dormitories for 300 boys and girls. 
 As the leader of Nahdlatul Ulama in Jember district, he also built his Nurul Islam school into a social force, introducing classes on women's rights, publishing a monthly newspaper countering the radicals and successfully lobbying the provincial government to reject the proposed implementation of Islamic law. He dispatches his group's militia to guard 10 churches at Christmas. 
 Abdusshomad said the extremists are infuriated by his initiatives but do not dare to respond. "They can't threaten me," he said, "because I am the leader of NU in this area." 
Special correspondent Noor Huda Ismail contributed to this report. 






   


September 16, 2003, Tuesday, 



 Report lists 'public diplomacy' failures

 
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration spends $ 1 billion a year trying to polish the United States' image around the world, yet polls show anti-Americanism rising to record levels, especially in Muslim and Arab nations where the U.S. government is concentrating its efforts.
A new report from Congress' General Accounting Office explains why the federal government's efforts at "public diplomacy" have failed. The report, released this month, concludes that:
 * The State Department's efforts have been scattershot and uncoordinated.
 * Foreign service officers charged with promoting the nation's image too often get stuck filling out paperwork, and one in five foreign service officers aren't fluent enough in the language of the country in which they're stationed.
 
 * The government isn't trying to scientifically measure whether its public relations efforts are having any effect. Instead, it gauges success through anecdotes or even by how many speeches a local ambassador gives.
Spending on public diplomacy has risen 9% since the Sept. 11 attacks, and more than 50% in the Middle East and South Asia. But a comprehensive poll in foreign countries this spring showed that in Muslim nations from Morocco to Indonesia, the United States has fallen far from favor. In many places, Osama bin Laden got more favorable ratings than President Bush.
"Americans are brilliant at communication. Why in the world we are all thumbs in this particular area just strikes me as one of the anomalies of history. But it's an important one to solve pretty fast," says Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Public diplomacy, the government's effort to sway the masses, became a top priority after the terrorist attacks. The Bush administration pledged to dispel mistaken impressions of America, challenge anti-American views and tout the United States' good deeds around the world. But criticism of the government's public diplomacy efforts continues.
Charlotte Beers, the Bush administration's first undersecretary for public diplomacy, resigned this year for health reasons and has not been replaced. The State Department said it largely concurred with the GAO's report.
Congress was so dismayed at public diplomacy results that it created a special commission to recommend how to reach the Arab and Muslim world better. The commission is headed by Edward Djerejian, a former Middle East expert in the State Department. It is to report its findings Oct. 1.
One of the GAO report's top criticisms is that unlike private companies, the federal government spends little on polling or focus groups abroad. Marketing and public relations experts the GAO interviewed said the $ 3.5 million the State Department spends on overseas opinion research is about a tenth of what it needs to spend.
Private and business groups aren't waiting for the government to solve its public diplomacy problems. A group of Kuwaiti and American citizens launched the American-Kuwait Alliance last week.
"Homeland security is too important to leave to the government alone," says Kenneth Minihan, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who helped organize the group.
Yousef Al-Ebraheem, a Kuwait University professor and alliance organizer, says he believes perceptions of the United States among Arabs will improve if the United States makes good on its word to turn Iraq into a democracy.
"They want to see some results," he says.
This summer, Keith Reinhard, chairman of advertising giant DDB Worldwide, organized business leaders -- their names have not been released -- to launch their own public diplomacy campaign. They hope that without government's bureaucracy, stifling mandates or money problems, business will have more freedom to influence public opinion abroad.
"Anti-Americanism is indeed a business problem," Reinhard says. "And one that U.S. business is uniquely positioned to solve."
The United States has had some successes. A government-financed station called Radio Sawa, broadcasting in the Middle East, has proved hugely popular among Arab youths. Some question whether its news snippets are helping in the public relations battle -- its songs are what draw listeners -- but the government is sufficiently encouraged that it plans to set up an Arabic-language satellite TV station this year.
Barbara Barrett, a Phoenix lawyer who chairs an advisory commission for public diplomacy, says the government is still "retooling" its efforts after being geared toward fighting communism. After the Soviet Union's collapse, public diplomacy all but disappeared from government priorities, she says.
"The end result (of the renewed effort) won't be perfect affection for America," she says. "We will, however, keep working to have an honest and fair perception of America encouraged around the world."







   
 

September 15, 2003 Monday  
  



 India's Muslim Time Bomb 

 
Soon after arriving at the site of the bomb explosions in Bombay that killed more than 50 people last month -- the sixth and most lethal in a recent series of blasts in the city -- Lal Krishna Advani, the deputy prime minister in India's Hindu nationalist government, blamed terrorists based in Pakistan. 
     This was to be expected: the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party routinely describes India as besieged by Muslim terrorists backed by Pakistan and based there or in the disputed valley of Kashmir, where Indian security forces have fought a Muslim insurgency for more than a decade. This time, however, Mr. Advani's accusation was swiftly contradicted by the Bombay police. The four people arrested this month in connection with the attacks were Indian Muslims, part of a new group called the Gujarat Muslim Revenge Force. They may have received logistical support from a Pakistani militant outfit with links to Al Qaeda, but they were Indian citizens.  
 This can be only disturbing news -- for India, the region and the United States. The radical Islamist movements that spread so quickly in the last decade in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan had heretofore left untouched India's 140 million Muslims, even as the Hindu nationalists rose to power in India by demanding, among other things, that Muslims adopt what they define as India's "Hindu culture." 
Indian Muslims had stayed away from the anti-India insurgency of their culturally distinct co-religionists in Kashmir. More remarkably, they had not heeded the many pied pipers of jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan who lured Muslims from all parts of the world, and managed to delude even a non-Muslim from California. 
It may be that most Indian Muslims are too poor and downtrodden to join radical causes elsewhere. It is also true that they have an advantage denied to most Muslims in the world: they can participate in regular elections and choose -- since they comprise just 13 percent of India's population -- their representatives if not rulers. 
But this faith in democracy, which Indian Muslims have long expressed by voting tactically and in large numbers, has been tested repeatedly in the last decade. In 1992 Hindu nationalists demolished a 16th-century mosque in the town of Ayodhya that they claimed was built by a Muslim conqueror of India upon the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which assumed power in 1998 promising to restore Hindu pride, promises to soon complete the construction of a temple on the site of the demolished mosque. 
In the nationwide violence that followed the demolition of the mosque a decade ago, almost 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in Bombay alone. In 1998, an inquiry identified some Hindu police officers and politicians responsible for the killings; not one has been tried or convicted. Observing the 10th anniversary of the killings last year, Amnesty International noted that "even when those responsible are identified, they are allowed to go unpunished." 
And early last year, more than 2,000 Muslims were killed in the western Indian state of Gujarat in a series of attacks by mobs that Human Rights Watch has said were organized and protected by Gujarat's Hindu nationalist rulers. Here, too, the perpetrators of the very public massacres are mostly known. But they are unlikely to face justice, judging by the collapse of one recent trial in which the primary prosecution witness in a massacre case withdrew her testimony; human rights groups say she was threatened by Hindu extremists. 
So the surprising thing, perhaps, is not that militant groups like the Gujarat Muslim Revenge Force are now emerging in India, but that it has taken so long. As revealed by the English-language newspaper The Indian Express, most of the 27 Muslims who have been arrested by the Bombay police in connection with the string of bombings confessed that they did so in revenge for the state-assisted killings of Muslims in Gujarat. 
What is particularly worrisome about the new Muslim terrorism is the backgroud of its adherents. Many of these young men have degrees in business management, forensic science, and chemical and aeronautical engineering. They have been radicalized in a geopolitical environment that has never been more highly fraught for the Muslim community at large. And so while the rage and resentment of such educated Muslims may have purely Indian origins, they are now likely to feed faster on the international events -- the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the bombings in Indonesia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Baghdad -- that probably still seem too remote to an older, impoverished generation of Indian Muslims. 
The parallel with Indonesia, a new and floundering democracy, is striking. In the only country with more Muslims than India, a new, educated and politically aware generation has outgrown the old tolerant culture of Indonesian Islam. Its distrust of the Indonesian government, which they call anti-Muslim and pro-American, is increasingly channeled into the politics of anti-Americanism and, for some young Muslims at least, into association with Al Qaeda and radical Islamist groups in East Asia. 
Yet while religious violence has made the Indonesian government cautious in its dealings with both radical Islamists and the Bush administration, the Hindu nationalists in New Delhi and the provinces seem eager to expand the Indian Muslim list of grievances. Their initial desire to assist the Bush administration and commit Indian troops to postwar Iraq was checked only by strong protests from opposition parties. And in a spectacular reversal of India's traditional support for the Palestinians, the Bharatiya Janata Party is developing close political and military relations with Israel, whose prime minister, Ariel Sharon, visited India last week. 
With general elections next year, the nationalists are unlikely to tone down their anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan language. Muslims pondering their fate in Hindu- nationalist-ruled India will feel only a greater sense of isolation and impotence. 
It is exactly these sorts of local political frustrations that -- in North Africa, the Middle East and, more recently, East Asia -- have given the network of terrorism its global range and resilience. In historical retrospect, the explosions in Bombay may come to be seen as the moment when the recruiters of Al Qaeda, heartened by the mess in Iraq and by fresh gains in Indonesia, received news of some more unexpected bounty: militant disaffection among the second-largest Muslim population in the world.







   
 

September 11, 2003 Thursday  
  



 Indonesia Sentences Defiant Islamic Militant to Death for the Bali Nightclub Bombing 

 
An Indonesian court sentenced a defiant Islamic militant to death today after convicting him of playing a major role in the Bali nightclub attack that killed 202 people last year. 
     The defendant, Imam Samudra, 33, was described by the panel of five judges in Denpasar, the capital of Bali, as the "intellectual actor" and main organizer behind the bombing. He is the second man to be convicted in the Bali case. The first, a 41-year-old motorcycle mechanic named Amrozi, was convicted a month ago.  
 After hearing the sentence, Mr. Samudra, who has shown a belligerent demeanor throughout his three-month trial, shouted, "America, Australia, go to hell!" 
In particular, he directed his anger at an Australian waving an Australian flag affixed with small portraits of the 88 Australians killed in the blasts. Relatives of some of those victims sat in the courtroom for the verdict and later expressed satisfaction over the sentence. 
The judges said Mr. Samudra had planned the bombing in order to seek revenge against the United States for its strikes in Afghanistan.
In reading the sentence, one of the judges, Ifa Sudewi, said Mr. Samudra had committed "a crime against humanity." She said the bombings were a "cruel, savage, inhuman and from the religious aspect, a forbidden action."
Mr. Samudra trained at camps run by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan after 1991, according to Indonesian investigators. He told the police after his capture in November that he had instructed the bomb makers for the Bali blast, and that he had instructed others in the plot to buy a car for the car bomb. He also told the police he had been involved in the planning for a series of bombings of Christian churches in Indonesia in December 2000, the authorities said.
The prosecutors alleged that he was a member of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian-based Islamic group that investigators believe has direct links to Al Qaeda. 
Mr. Samudra had said on several occasions that he would welcome the death sentence as a martyr for his cause. Mr. Amrozi in August greeted his own death sentence with a broad grin and two thumbs up. But after the sentencing today, one of Mr. Samudra's lawyers said his client had instructed him to appeal any death sentence. 
Mr. Samudra insisted that he should have been tried under Islamic law, said the lawyer, Qadhar Faisal. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, is a secular state. 
The reaction to the death sentence among moderate Muslim leaders, who represent a vast majority of Muslims here, was supportive of the court's reasoning. A leading Islamic scholar, Azyumardi Azra, told Agence France-Presse that the sentencing was justified. "There will be a positive impact for the government from the verdict because it sends signals that terrorism is intolerable in Indonesia," he said. 
Officials of the country's largest Islamic organization, the moderate Nahdlatul Ulama, also praised the verdict. 
The tough verdict and the quick support for it were in contrast to the verdict last week in another case involving an Islamic militant. 
Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, was sentenced to four years in jail on charges of treason, a far lighter sentence than the 15 years the prosecution had sought.
He was acquitted on charges of ordering the bombings of the Christian churches in 2000, the attacks that Mr. Samudra said he was involved in. Many Indonesian leaders said the acquittal on those charges and the lenient sentence for treason were fair because the prosecution had been prevented by the United States from presenting crucial evidence against Mr. Bashir.
The United States has refused to allow Indonesian officials to question an Indonesian it has in custody, Riduan Isamuddin, who goes by the name of Hambali. He was arrested last month in Thailand, and is alleged to be the link between Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah. 







   
 

September 11, 2003 Thursday 
  
 



 TWO YEARS LATER: WORLD OPINION; 
Foreign Views Of U.S. Darken After Sept. 11

 
In the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, the view of the United States as a victim of terrorism that deserved the world's sympathy and support has given way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.
     "A lot of people had sympathy for Americans around the time of 9/11, but that's changed," said Cathy Hearn, 31, a flight attendant from South Africa, expressing a view commonly heard in many countries. "They act like the big guy riding roughshod over everyone else." 
 In interviews by Times correspondents from Africa to Europe to Southeast Asia, one point emerged clearly: The war in Iraq has had a major impact on public opinion, which has moved generally from post-9/11 sympathy to post-Iraq antipathy, or at least to disappointment over what is seen as the sole superpower's inclination to act pre-emptively, without either persuasive reasons or United Nations approval.
To some degree, the resentment is centered on the person of President Bush, who is seen by many of those interviewed, at best, as an ineffective spokesman for American interests and, at worst, as a gunslinging cowboy knocking over international treaties and bent on controlling the world's oil, if not the entire world. 
Foreign policy experts point to slowly developing fissures, born at the end of the cold war, that exploded into view in the debate leading up to the Iraq war. "I think the turnaround was last summer, when American policy moved ever more decisively toward war against Iraq," said Josef Joffe, co-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. "That's what triggered the counteralliance of France and Germany and the enormous wave of hatred against the United States."
The subject of America in the world is of course complicated, and the nation's battered international image could improve quickly in response to events. The Bush administration's recent turn to the United Nations for help in postwar Iraq may represent such an event. 
Even at this low point, millions of people still see the United States as a beacon and support its policies, including the war in Iraq, and would, given the chance, be happy to become Americans themselves. 
Some regions, especially Europe, are split in their view of America's role: The governments and, to a lesser extent, the public in former Soviet-bloc countries are much more favorably disposed to American power than the governments and the public in Western Europe, notably France and Germany.
In Japan, a strong American ally that feels insecure in the face of a hostile, nuclear-armed North Korea, there may be doubts about the wisdom of the American war on Iraq. But there seem to be far fewer doubts about the importance of American power generally to global stability.
In China, while many ordinary people express doubts about the war in Iraq, anti-American feeling has diminished since Sept. 11, 2001, and there seems to be greater understanding and less instinctive criticism of the United States by government officials and intellectuals. The Chinese leadership has largely embraced America's "war on terror."
Still, a widespread and fashionable view is that the United States is a classically imperialist power bent on controlling global oil supplies and on military domination.
That mood has been expressed in different ways by different people, from the hockey fans in Montreal who boo the American national anthem to the high school students in Switzerland who do not want to go to the United States as exchange students because America is not "in." Even among young people, it is not difficult to hear strong denunciations of American policy and sharp questioning of American motives.
"America has taken power over the world," said Dmitri Ostalsky, 25, a literary crtic and writer in Moscow. "It's a wonderful country, but it seized power. It's ruling the world. America's attempts to rebuild all the world in the image of liberalism and capitalism are fraught with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world."
A Frenchman, Jean-Charles Pogram, 45, a computer technician, said: "Everyone agrees on the principles of democracy and freedom, but the problem is that we don't agree with the means to achieve those ends. The United States can't see beyond the axiom that force can solve everything, but Europe, because of two world wars, knows the price of blood." 
Lydia Adhiamba, a 20-year-old student at the Institute of Advanced Technology in Nairobi, Kenya, said the United States "wants to rule the whole world, and that's why there's so much animosity to the U.S."
The major English language daily newspaper in Indonesia, The Jakarta Post, recently ran a prominent article titled, "Why moderate Muslims are annoyed with America," by Sayidiman Suryohadiprojo, a prominent figure during the Suharto years.
"If America wants to become a hegemonic power, it is rather difficult for other nations to prevent that," he wrote. "However, if America wants to be a hegemonic power that has the respect and trust of other nations, it must be a benign one, and not one that causes a reaction of hate or fear among other nations."

Bush as Salesman
Crucial to global opinion has been the failure of the Bush administration to persuade large segments of the public of its justification for going to war in Iraq.
In striking contrast to opinion in the United States, where polls show a majority believe there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terrorists, the rest of the world remains skeptical. 
That explains the enormous difference in international opinion toward American military action in Afghanistan in the months after Sept. 11, which seemed to have tacit approval as legitimate self-defense, and toward American military action in Iraq, which is seen as the arbitrary act of an overbearing power.
Perhaps the strongest effect on public opinion has been in Arab and Muslim countries. Even in relatively moderate Muslim countries like Indonesia and Turkey, or countries with large Muslim populations, like Nigeria, both polls and interviews show sharp drops in approval of the United States.
In unabashedly pro-American countries like Poland, perhaps the staunchest American ally on Iraq after Britain, polls show 60 percent of the people oppose the government's decision to send 2,500 troops to Iraq.
For many people, the issue is not so much the United States as it is the Bush administration, and what is seen as its arrogance. In this view, a different set of policies and a different set of public statements from Washington could have resulted in a different set of attitudes.
"The point I would make is that with the best will in the world, President Bush is a very poor salesman for the United States, and I say that as someone who has no animus against him or the United States," said Philip Gawaith, a financial communications consultant in London. "Whether it's Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, people have just felt that he's a silly man, and therefore they are not obliged to think any harder about his position."

Trying to Define 'Threat'
But while the public statements of the Bush administration have not played well in much of the world, many analysts see deeper causes for the rift that has opened. In their view, the Iraq war has not so much caused a new divergence as it has highlighted and widened one that existed since the end of the cold war. Put bluntly, Europe needs America less now that it feels less threatened.
Indeed, while the United States probably feels more threatened now than in 1989, when the cold war ended, Europe is broadly unconvinced of any imminent threat.
"There were deep structural forces before 9/11 that were pushing us apart," said John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics." "In the absence of the Soviet threat or of an equivalent threat, there was no way that ties between us and Europe wouldn't be loosened.
"So, when the Bush Administration came to power, the question was whether it would make things better or worse, and I'd argue that it made them worse."
"In the cold war you could argue that American unilateralism had no cost," Professor Mearsheimer continued. "But as we're finding out with regard to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, we need the Europeans and we need institutions like the U.N. The fact is that the United States can't run the world by itself, and the problem is, we've done a lot of damage in our relations with allies, and people are not terribly enthusiastic about helping us now."
Recent findings of international surveys illustrate those divergences. 
A poll of 8,000 people in Europe and the United States conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and Compagnia di Sao Paolo of Italy found Americans and Europeans agreeing on the nature of global threats but disagreeing sharply on how they should be dealt with.
Most striking was a difference over the use of military force, with 84 percent of Americans but only 48 percent of Europeans supporting force as a means of imposing international justice.
In Europe overall, the proportion of people who want the United States to maintain a strong global presence fell 19 points since a similar poll last year, from 64 percent to 45 percent, while 50 percent of respondents in Germany, France and Italy express opposition to American leadership.
Many of the difficulties predated Sept. 11, of course. Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, listed some in a recent paper: "Economic disputes relating to steel and farm subsidies; limits on legal cooperation because of the death penalty in the United States; repeated charges of U.S. 'unilateralism' over actions in Afghanistan; and the U.S. decisions on the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court and the Biological Weapons Protocol."
"One could conclude that there is today a serious question as to whether Europe and the United States are parting ways," Mr. Sandschneider writes.
From this point of view, as he and others have said, the divergence will not be a temporary phenomenon but permanent.
A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project showed a growth of anti-American sentiment in many non-European parts of the world. It found, for example, that only 15 percent of Indonesians have a favorable impression of the United States, down from 61 percent a year ago.
Indonesia may be especially troubling to American policy makers, who have hoped that, as a country with an easy-going attitude toward religion, it would emerge as a kind of pro-American Islamic model.
But since Sept. 11, a virulent group of extremists known as Jemaah Islamiyah has gained strength, attacking in Bali and Jakarta and making the country so insecure that President Bush may skip it during an Asian trip planned for next month.
One well-known mainstream Indonesian Muslim leader, Din Syamsuddin, an American-educated vice president of a Islamic organization that claims 30 million members, calls the United States the "king of the terrorists" and refers to President Bush as a "drunken horse."
This turn for the worse has occurred despite a $10 million program by the State Department in which speakers and short films showing Muslim life in the United States were sent last fall to Muslim countries, including Indonesia.

A Residue of Good Will
Still, broad sympathy for the United States exists in many areas. Students from around the world clamor to be educated in America. The United States as a land of opportunity remains magnetic.
Some analysts point out that the German Marshall Fund study actually showed a great deal of common ground across the Atlantic.
"Americans and Europeans still basically like each other, although such warmth has slipped in the wake of the Iraq war," Ronald Asmus, Philip P. Everts and Pierangelo Isernia, analysts from the United States, the Netherlands and Italy, respectively, wrote in an article explaining the findings. "Americans and Europeans do not live on different planets when it comes to viewing the threats around them."
But there is little doubt that the planets have moved apart. Gone are the days, two years ago, when 200,000 Germans marched in Berlin to show solidarity with their American allies, or when Le Monde, the most prestigious French newspaper, could publish a large headline, "We Are All Americans."
More recently, Jean Daniel, the editor of the weekly Nouvel Observateur, published an editorial entitled, "We Are Not All Americans."
For governments in Eastern Europe, Sept. 11 has forced a kind of test of loyalties. Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Poland have felt themselves caught between the United States and the European Union, which they will soon be joining.
Here, too, the war in Iraq seems to have been the defining event, the division of Europe into "new" and "old" halves, defined by their willingness to support the American-led war.
Most Eastern European countries side with the European Union majority on such questions as the International Criminal Court, which is opposed by the Bush administration, while helping in various ways with the Iraq war. Poland and Romania have sent troops and Hungary has permitted training of Iraqis at a military base there.
But even if the overall mood in the former Soviet Bloc remains largely pro-American, recent polls have shown some slippage in feelings of admiration. 
"We would love to see America as a self-limiting superpower," said Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a former Polish defense minister.
Perhaps the administration's decision to turn to the United Nations to seek a mandate for an international force in Iraq reflects a new readiness to exercise such restraint. The administration appears to have learned that using its power in isolation can get very expensive very quickly.
But the road to recovering global support is likely to be a long one for a country whose very power -- political, economic, cultural, military -- makes it a natural target of criticism and envy.
Even in Japan, where support for America remains strong, the view of the United States as a bully has entered the popular culture. A recent cartoon showed a character looking like President Bush in a Stars and Stripes vest pushing Japanese fishermen away from a favorite spot, saying, "I can fish better."

CORRECTION-DATE: September 12, 2003

 CORRECTION:
A front-page article yesterday about changes in foreign views of the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, misspelled the surname of a Russian literary critic who was quoted. He is Dmitri Olshansky, not Ostalsky.




11

  
  


September 11, 2003 Thursday 



 VICTORY IN IRAQ DOESN'T MEAN END OF TERRORISM

 
Even some officials in the president's administration worry that in his address to the nation Sunday he glossed over his shifting rationales for war in Iraq, oversimplified the sources of anti-American rage there and overstated the benefits of victory, both to the war on terrorism and to American policy in the Middle East.
Making the war in Iraq a central part of the war on terrorism that Osama bin Laden started two years ago today sidestepped Bush's earlier rationale for war in Iraq -- Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons and its nuclear ambitions -- and ignored the fact that it was the American-led invasion that made Iraq a magnet for international terrorists, these officials said.
Before the war, intelligence analysts at the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon acknowledged there was no evidence of cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida and no evidence of an Iraqi hand in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. None has yet surfaced. 
"There was no substantive intelligence information linking Saddam to international terrorism before the war," said Vincent Cannistraro, the former director of counterterrorism operations and analysis at the CIA. "Now we've created the conditions that have made Iraq the place to come to attack Americans."
The president also may have underestimated the complexity of the problem the United States now faces in Iraq. He suggested that the enemy there consists of "members of the old Saddam regime" and "foreign terrorists." Both are major parts of the problem, and foreigners appear to be a growing part of it, thanks in part to the fact that U.S. officials dissolved Iraq's border guards without having enough American soldiers to police the borders.
But there's growing evidence that some ordinary Iraqis are joining the enemy, motivated not by nostalgia for Saddam or hunger for holy war but by Iraqi and Arab nationalism, resentment of foreign invaders, suspicion of America's motives and the continuing lack of electricity, public safety and other necessities.
"The war in Vietnam was not just about communism, and the war in Iraq isn't just about terrorism," one senior administration official said Monday, speaking only on the condition of anonymity because he disagreed with much of what his boss had said. "We lost in Vietnam because we didn't understand that as well as we should have."
And just as an American victory in Vietnam wouldn't have dealt a mortal blow to Moscow or Beijing, much less Havana or Pyongyang, victory in Iraq isn't likely to deal a mortal blow to al-Qaida, as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has suggested it would.
Radical Islam is a faith, and its adherents in Indonesia, Yemen and Algeria aren't likely to fold their tents because some of their brethren die in Iraq.
Walcott (e-mail: jwalcott@ krwashington.com) is the Washington Bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers. Distributed by Knight Ridder News Service.






  
  

  

SEPTEMBER 9, 2003 Tuesday 



 Some in administration uneasy over Bush speech

 
Even some officials in President Bush's administration worry that in his address to the nation Sunday night he glossed over his shifting rationales for war in Iraq, oversimplified the sources of anti-American rage there, and overstated the benefits of victory, both to the war on terrorism and to U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Making the war in Iraq a central part of the war on terrorism that Osama bin Laden started two years ago this week sidestepped Bush's earlier rationale for the war - Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons and its nuclear ambitions - and ignored the fact that it was the U.S.-led invasion that made Iraq a magnet for international terrorists, these officials said.
Before the war, intelligence analysts at the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon acknowledged that there was no evidence of cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and no evidence of an Iraqi hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None has surfaced since. 
"There was no substantive intelligence information linking Saddam to international terrorism before the war," said Vincent Cannistraro, the former director of counterterrorism operations and analysis at the CIA. "Now we've created the conditions that have made Iraq the place to come to attack Americans."
The President also may have understated the complexity of the problem the United States now faces in Iraq. In his speech, Bush suggested that the enemy there consisted of "members of the old Saddam regime" and "foreign terrorists." Both are major components of the problem, and the presence of foreigners does appear to be increasing - thanks in part to the fact that U.S. officials dissolved Iraq's border guards without having enough American soldiers to police the borders.
But there is growing evidence that some ordinary Iraqis are joining the enemy, motivated not by nostalgia for Hussein or hunger for holy war but by Iraqi and Arab nationalism, resentment of foreign invaders, suspicion of America's motives, and the continuing lack of electricity, public safety and other necessities.
"The war in Vietnam was not just about communism, and the war in Iraq isn't just about terrorism," one senior administration official said yesterday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he disagreed with much of what his boss had said. "We lost in Vietnam because we didn't understand that as well as we should have."
And just as an American victory in Vietnam wouldn't have dealt a mortal blow to Moscow or Beijing, much less Havana or Pyongyang, victory in Iraq isn't likely to deal a mortal blow to al-Qaeda, as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice suggested it would Sunday.
Radical Islam is a faith, and its adherents in Indonesia, Yemen and Algeria aren't likely to fold their tents because some of their brethren die in Iraq.
Contact reporter John Walcott
at 202-383-6002 or jwalcott@krwashington.com.






  


September 4, 2003, Thursday  



 RAISING A STINK ABOUT THE EPA

 
As traumatized New Yorkers trudged through ash-covered streets after 9/11, many wondered how dangerous it was to breathe the acrid air that smelled of chemicals and death. Common sense said the asbestos, benzene and other toxins released in the collapse would harm those who inhaled them. But the Environmental Protection Agency insisted otherwise.
A week after the attacks, then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said, "I am glad to reassure the people of New York . . . that the air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink." She offered no data to prove this. In fact, the air downtown was not safe. 
Six weeks after the attacks, Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez reported that internal government documents revealed that toxic substances were in the air and soil around Ground Zero at levels far exceeding federal standards. But instead of focusing on a cleanup, the EPA had launched a coverup.
Whitman even wrote an Opinion article for this paper in October 2001. Given The News' coverage, she declared, "the public could understandably conclude that the situation at Ground Zero presents a major environmental health hazard to area residents and employees. That would be inaccurate."
Turns out, Whitman was, ahem, inaccurate. A recently released EPA inspector general's report says she should not have made such a "blanket statement" because the facts proved otherwise. It also says James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, "influenced EPA press releases" to downplay the health risks of breathing the air in lower Manhattan. In other words, Whitman and Connaughton were blowing smoke.
Whitman's explanation for that? "We didn't want to scare people." She also argues that when rescue workers declined to wear protective clothing and masks, "we couldn't force them to do it." But why did they decline? Because Whitman had told them the air was safe.
The inspector general's report recommends that the EPA now "employ aggressive testing" in residential and commercial buildings. Washington owes at least that much to New York.
A News poll of New Yorkers found that 77% believe the EPA's voluntary cleanup program downtown was insufficient and that the federal government should pay for a full decontamination of commercial and residential buildings affected by 9/11.
The feds did more than tell white lies about the white ash that wafted over lower Manhattan. Now they must set the record straight about who knew what when, and undertake a new cleanup that will ensure that downtown buildings are absolutely safe.
Insanity in Indonesia
If you check the Web for information on Bali and Indonesia, you will find one site that asks: "Should I still travel to Bali?" And answers: "Yes, because otherwise you let terrorists win." The site needs an update. This week, Indonesia itself let terrorists win.
Throughout his four-month trial in Jakarta, radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir serenely asserted that it was not he but the United States, Australia and "the Jews" who were responsible for a wave of terror bombings across Indonesia. He insisted that the fanatical group Jemaah Islamiyah did not even exist.
Bashir's denials were roundly contradicted by several self-admitted Jemaah Islamiyah bombers who hailed him as their spiritual leader and proudly admitted to last year's Bali hotel blast that killed 202. But this week, the court bought most of Bashir's defense, finding him guilty of a few lesser sedition charges but innocent of being an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist mastermind - and sentencing him to just four years in prison.
It will be remembered that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, had to be pressured to bring Bashir up on charges at all. And it is difficult to take seriously Indonesia's pious claim that it is "firmly committed" to the international war on terror - particularly now that Vice President Hamzah Haz himself has made a point of publicly celebrating Bashir's wrist-slap by denouncing the United States as the real "terrorist king" of the planet.
Bashir's champions are already in the streets, shrieking that the U.S., Australia and "the Jews" will soon stage more bombing "incidents" to discredit Islam. "This sentence will obviously frustrate the U.S. and its allies," notes Bashir's lawyer. "We will alert everyone to be vigilant."
Yes, be vigilant. Particularly against hypocritical governments.







   
 

September 3, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 Indonesian Art to Admire and to Wear 

 
The exhibition is called "Sari to Sarong," and the stunning gold-leaf cloths and vermilion wraps on display at the national gallery here give considerable perspective on Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
     The notion for the exhibition, which runs until Oct. 6 and includes samples from the prized collection of two New York City textile experts, is to show the 500-year-old tradition of Indonesian textiles as art, not ethnography. 
 The textiles, from large to small, many brilliantly hued, are hung flat on the gallery's walls, much like paintings. Some, with their clean-cut look, could pass for contemporary art; others, with intricate patterns of branches and leaves, bear a resemblance to the 19th-century British designer William Morris. 
But the subtext is how Indonesia, frequently in the news for terrorist acts by Islamic extremists, draws much of its cultural heritage from the Hindu and Buddhist beliefs that crossed the ocean from India. The National Gallery of Australia, a contemporary building on the banks of an artificial lake, is a leading repository of Asian textiles.
In a way, the show is a reminder that for the most part, Indonesians wear their Islam lightly, and often mix their basic belief with mystical elements from home and abroad. 
Recurring motifs in the textiles on display originate from the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Well after Java, the main island of Indonesia, succumbed to Islamic conquest in the 16th century, the Hindu themes continued to be embroidered or drawn onto cloth. 
"The batiks with the Ramayana and Mahabharata motifs have all been made in Islamic courts," said Robyn Maxwell, the senior curator of Asian art at the gallery and the organizer of the show. "These are Hindu images alive and well in the 19th century when Java had been Muslim for a long time."
The motifs -- particularly the garuda, a giant bird from Hindu mythology, and its nemesis, the serpent, known as the naga -- continue to be used today.
When the Sultan of Yogyakarta visited the gallery last year, antique royal ceremonial skirt cloths were instantly recognizable to him because similar cloths with Hindu imagery were still in use, Ms. Maxwell said.
In 1979 the National Gallery's director, James Mollison, was captivated by a show in Washington that showed textiles as art. He decided that the gallery should focus on textiles from Indonesia, Australia's northern neighbor.
"We say this is one of the great art forms of Asia and we make no excuse for that," said Ms. Maxwell, author of the recently reissued "Textiles of Southeast Asia," a visually rich book published in Singapore by Periplus.
The reputation in Asian textiles was enhanced last year when a Manhattan couple, Robert Holmgren and Anita Spertus, sold half of their 800-piece collection of Indonesian pieces to the gallery. The $6.5 million price tag for the collection, which ranged from all over Indonesia -- Sumatra, Kalimantan, Bali and Java -- caused a stir in Australia. 
But for the gallery, the collection amassed by the couple over decades of traveling around the archipelago and delving into basements in the Netherlands, once Indonesia's colonial master, was a coup. "The Holmgrem collection was the one to have," Ms. Maxwell said. 
It consisted not only of flat pieces of cloth but also some costumes, including a spectacular 19th-century ceremonial vest and nobleman's trousers in gold silk and gold thread with sequins, from southern Sumatra. 
The Holmgrem pieces, which are well represented in the show but do not dominate it, fit precisely into the exhibition's theme of how the textiles of India exerted overwhelming influence over Indonesian textiles. The Indians traded their textile skills for Indonesian spices. Over the centuries hundreds of thousands of yards of Indian cloth were shipped to Indonesia and reached not only the towns but also the inner rural areas, as well as Bali, which remains mostly Hindu today. 
The Indonesians adopted techniques of embroidery, applique, batik and pigment painting, and much of the cloth survived in reasonable condition because it was treasured, often as heirlooms or sacred regalia. 
But Ms. Maxwell's emphasis on textiles as art in the show gives the visitor little help in understanding how the pieces were worn. But there are clues that many of the fabrics, when wrapped around the body, were designed for ostentation.
Royal ceremonial skirt cloths measuring about two yards by three yards from the court of Surakarta (now the city of Solo, and a hotbed of Islamic extremism) fall into the dress-to-impress category. Made from very dark cotton and embroidered with gold leaf, the cloths have a large diamond center of plain white fabric. 
When properly wrapped the white center -- designed to be a nonprickly, comfortable fabric -- sits next to the skin, the gold leaf embroidery shown on the exterior giving a sense of luxury. Even today such skirt cloths -- known as dodots -- are worn by both men and women at upper-class weddings, Ms. Maxwell said.
On top a woman would wear a breast cloth -- another piece of gold leaf embroidered fabric -- wrapped around the upper part of the torso. "The result is bare arms and shoulders and a lot of jewelry," Ms. Maxwell said. "The look is particularly glamorous. In the gallery we look at the textiles as art objects, but they look very good on."







   
 

September 3, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 Once Mild, Islam Looks Harsher In Indonesia 

 
The moderate strand of Islam that absorbed touches of Buddhism and Hinduism, and some mysticism, along its journey over the centuries here, is being eroded, some fear at a rapid pace.
     The battle for the soul of Islam in Indonesia is under way. Some have begun to ask whether the Islamists who want to create a caliphate across the Muslim areas of Southeast Asia will at the very least eventually succeed in Indonesia. 
 A group of American experts, headed by a former United States ambassador to Syria, Edward P. Djerejian, is scheduled to arrive here in coming weeks as part of a worldwide look at Islam. Eventually, they will report to the Bush administration on how to mold the American message to the Muslim world. They are likely to find some of the same underlying themes in Indonesia as in the Middle East, where the group has begun its work. 
Far-reaching changes in Indonesia's Islam have been under way for 20 years, says the distinguished historian of Indonesia, Merle Ricklefs. But the trends were largely hidden, he says, during the three-decade authoritarian rule of Gen. Suharto, which ended in 1998. 
No one argues about what's causing it: a political and economic leadership that even after the end of the dictatorship remains corrupt and inordinately selfish. World Bank statistics show that indicators of poverty and health improved under the Suharto government. But these numbers do not mean a lot to the 40 percent of the 220 million population who, by most estimates, are unemployed. 
To compound the social malaise, the Indonesian military -- which commands respect and remains one of the most revered institutions -- is widely regarded as corrupt. During the late 1990's, the army high command tolerated links between some of its officers and militant Islamic groups. Jemaah Islamiyah, whose spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir was sentenced to four years in jail today, seems not to have enjoyed military support. But Laskar Jihad, a group that specialized in fighting Christians in the Maluku Islands, and the Islamic Defenders' Front, which has vandalized nightclubs and bars in Jakarta, have been linked by human rights groups to the army. 
Adding to this volatile mix came Suharto's decision in his waning days to court Muslim associations that he had previously suppressed. With his encouragement, they sent students to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and many returned with anti-Western and anti-Semitic ideologies that had been largely absent from Indonesia. This growing connection with the Middle East developed further in the 1990's, when Saudi Arabian charities began financing mosques and the large network of Muslim boarding schools in Indonesia. The highly conservative Wahhabi strain of Islam, which was largely unknown in Indonesia, filtered into some of the boarding schools through teachers from Saudi Arabia. 
The end of the Suharto government gave an important impetus to the most extreme of Indonesia's Islamic groups, Jemaah Islamiyah.
Many of its members, young men in their 20's and 30's, had been forced into exile in Malaysia, and from there had gone for training at Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. After 1998 they returned home to the freer atmosphere of a more democratic Indonesia. They used familiar stamping grounds -- mostly small religious boarding schools, like Al Mukmin in the village of Ngruki in central Java -- to regroup, and plot their terror attacks. 
But Jemaah Islamiyah was only the most extreme of a number of groups that were galvanized by the events of 9/11 and the American response in Afghanistan. Indonesia's Council of Muslim Scholars, considered a fairly benign organization, intensified its polemics, calling on all Muslims of the world to unite against the United States. The articulation of such common grievances helped fortify Indonesian Islam with the anti-Western and anti-Jewish ideology of the Arab world in ways that were quite new. 
The growing strength of the militant groups has been accompanied by adherence to stricter forms of Islam among mainstream Muslims. In a recent poll by Tempo magazine, the nation's leading newsweekly, 60 percent of those questioned said they would not object to the introduction of Sharia, the often harsh Muslim system of justice. A new political party, the Justice Party, has made the imposition of Sharia one of its main planks. The party is led by smart, highly educated men and women, who say they are determined to bring both orthodox Islam and economic prosperity to Indonesia. 
The Justice Party has only a few seats in the Parliament, but in alliance with other larger Islamic parties it has pushed legislation calling for such things as a legal right for Muslims to be treated by Muslim doctors.
So far, none of these bills have made it into the law books. But each time they come up for discussion they serve as the catalyst for volatile debates and make some Westerners wonder whether they should view Indonesia as a creeping Islamic state.
The president of Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri, is the daughter of Sukarno, the nation's founder and a determined secularist. She is reputed to be a secularist, too, but unlike her forceful father, she remains mostly above the fray. She has said virtually nothing about Jemaah Islamiyah, or any of the militant groups. The leaders of the major moderate Muslim organizations have refrained from criticism, too. It is not appropriate, they argue, for one Muslim to criticize another. 
Mr. Djerejian's group, which includes Dr. Shibley Telhami, professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, and John Zogby, the president of the polling firm, Zogby International, is supposed to figure out how to win friends for the United States in the Muslim world. If they are finding it a hard slog in the Middle East, they are unlikely to find it much easier in Indonesia.







   
 

September 3, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 Islamic Cleric Gets Mixed Verdict In Indonesian Trial for Terrorism 

 
An Indonesian court this evening acquitted the radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, widely identified as the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda's Southeast Asia affiliate, of charges that he ordered a series of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, and of plotting to assassinate the Indonesian president.
     The court also said the prosecutors had not proved that Mr. Bashir was the head of Jemaah Islamiyah. He was, however, found guilty of aiding and abetting treason, apparently based on his support of the organization's goal to establish an Islamic state. The court also found him guilty of minor immigration violations.  
 Mr. Bashir, who turned 65 two weeks ago, was sentenced to four years and said he would appeal; the prosecution, which under Indonesian law also has the right to appeal, had asked for 15.
The verdict was a serious setback for the Bush administration, as well as Australia and regional governments, which had a hard time advancing their view to the Indonesian government that Mr. Bashir, who runs an Islamic boarding school that preaches vitriol against the West and Jews, and Jemaah Islamiyah were serious terrorist threats.
"It's obviously very disappointing," said a senior Western diplomat here. 
Today's verdict will reinforce the view of many Indonesians, including senior political leaders, that the United States has exaggerated the terrorism problem here. The majority of Indonesians, who are moderate Muslims, view the campaign against terrorism as a war on Islam, and the war in Iraq has fueled those views.
Courts here are not known for being independent, and several Indonesians -- analysts, and ordinary citizens -- voiced the opinion that the judges had acted in accordance with what the Indonesian government wanted. The government-appointed judges had also expressed concern about their safety if they convicted Mr. Bashir on the terrorism charges.
Mr. Bashir has denied he engaged in terrorism, but he has expressed unabashed admiration for Osama bin Laden. He accused the United States and other "infidels" of pushing the Indonesian government to file the charges against him.
At the end of today's marathon session, he took the microphone, and warned his supporters to be on guard for "American provocateurs."
The judges commended Mr. Bashir for his politeness during the trial, suggesting that this, and his age, might have contributed to the lighter sentence.
It took the panel of five judges, including one woman, nearly seven hours to read their decision, which included a recitation of evidence. Several men who are on trial in connection with the Bali bombing testified against Mr. Bashir, and suspected terrorists being held by Singapore in connection with a plot to blow up the American Embassy there testified by a video linkup. Jemaah Islamiyah has been linked by investigators to both of these plots.
By the time the judges had finished their summary and delivered their verdict, they had sown considerable confusion among nearly everyone, from courtroom spectators to Indonesian lawyers to diplomats.
"On the one hand, the judges acquit him on charges of being a mastermind of terrorist acts, but on the other hand, they say that he was involved in treason," said Adnan Buyung Nasution, a member of Mr. Bashir's legal team. 
At one point, the judges -- who acted as jury -- said Mr. Bashir was not guilty of treason, later that he was. They threw out the charge that contained the allegations that he was responsible for a series of bombings of churches in Indonesia in December 2000.
The American Embassy here declined to comment. Asked at today's State Department briefing about the court's ruling, Richard A. Boucher, the department's spokesman, noted that Mr. Bashir was convicted on three charges. He declined to say whether the department was satisfied with the outcome. "At this point, it's still an ongoing matter in front of the Indonesian courts," he said, noting the possible appeals.
The Indonesian government long denied that Jemaah Islamiyah even existed. Attitudes changed after the terrorist attacks in Bali last October that killed more than 200 people.
Indonesian antiterrorism officials have criticized the United States for not helping enough to prosecute Mr. Bashir. Much of the evidence came from Omar al-Faruq, a senior Qaeda operative who was picked up here in June 2002, and turned over to the C.I.A.
During interrogation, according to intelligence officials, Mr. Faruq said that Mr. Bashir was the mastermind of a plot to blow up American embassies in southeast Asia, including Singapore, and that he had provided men and materiel from Jemaah Islamiyah for the bombings here in December 2000.
The Bush administration would not allow Indonesian authorities to interrogate Mr. Faruq. They were allowed to submit questions, which the Americans then asked. 
Mr. Bashir, who has Yemeni ancestors, became active in Islamic politics in Indonesia in the mid-1950's, when he was the leader of a moderate Islamic student organization. A primary objective was the establishment of an Islamic state, but through peaceful means.
In the early 1970's, Mr. Bashir was co-founder of an Islamic boarding school in Ngruki, in central Java, which has been, and remains, a breeding ground for radicals. Nearly all of the men who have been charged in connection with the Bali bombing graduated from that school.
In the 1980's, the Indonesian dictator Suharto, who had used the Islamists against the Communists, began to crack down on them. Mr. Bashir was sentenced to nine years in prison for treason.
He fled to Malaysia, along with several others, including Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who was arrested by the C.I.A. last month in Thailand. The two were among a very small community that lived quietly in a rural village.
It was during this time that Mr. Bashir appears to have made contact with Osama bin Laden, according to Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Bashir and Hambali spoke at mosques and in homes, raising money and encouraging young men to go off to fight first against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and then to Qaeda training camps.
In early 1990, there was a split within the movement to establish an Islamic state in Southeast Asia. Mr. Bashir founded Jemaah Islamiyah, a military organization, according to Western governments and an authoritative report on Jemaah Islamiyah by Sidney Jones, an expert on the organization; her report was released last week by the International Crisis Group.
Mr. Bashir eventually became the amir, according to witnesses in his trial, as well as the report.
He returned to Indonesia in 1998, after Suharto was toppled. His base was the Ngruki boarding school. 
With a population of 220 million, Indonesia is the world's largest Islamic country. But it is a secular state, and the overwhelming majority of Muslims are moderate.
Political leaders had been reluctant to criticize Mr. Bashir, fearing that it would appear to be a broad attack on faithful Muslims. Even after Western and Asian governments linked him to terrorist activities, he was defended and even feted by some top government leaders. 
The Bali bombing changed attitudes, and Mr. Bashir was arrested a few weeks later. Lately, however, political leaders have been noticeably reluctant to mention Jemaah Islamiyah.







  



September 3, 2003 Wednesday  




 Indonesian Cleric Guilty Of Treason; 
Rejecting Main Charges, Court Sets 4-Year Sentence

 
An Indonesian court today convicted Muslim cleric Abubakar Baasyir of treason for involvement with the Jemaah Islamiah underground terrorist organization and sentenced him to four years in prison, far less than prosecutors had sought. 
 Indonesian police have identified the preacher, 65, as head of the regional network, which investigators say works with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and carried out the bombings in Bali last year that killed 202 people. But the five-judge panel ruled that prosecutors failed to prove Baasyir was the group's commander. 
 The sentence was not the resounding rebuke of terrorism that law enforcement officials and Western diplomats were seeking. Prosecutors had asked for a 15-year term; the maximum allowable sentence was life in prison.  
 Nonetheless, the conviction represents a milestone in Indonesia's evolving effort to uproot a militant network that has proved more extensive than many terrorism analysts initially thought. Just a year ago, Indonesian officials routinely denied that an international terrorist network was active on their soil and resisted U.S. demands for Baasyir's arrest. 
 Some analysts said the ruling was unlikely to make U.S. officials more receptive to Indonesia's request that they turn over Hambali, the alleged Jemaah Islamiah operations chief, for trial in Jakarta. Hambali, an Indonesian citizen and suspected al Qaeda member, is now in U.S. custody at an undisclosed place after being captured in Thailand last month. 
 In addition to the Bali bombings, Jemaah Islamiah has been blamed by Indonesian police for the bomb attack last month on the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12. Baasyir was not charged in connection with any of those bombings. 
 Instead, the judges convicted him of trying to overthrow the Indonesian government, saying he had approved military training abroad for his followers, with the goal of establishing an Islamic state. 
 "The defendant . . . had knowledge of an organization that is trying to topple the government," said chief judge Muhammad Saleh. He added, "In order that the defendant does not repeat his mistake . . . he must be punished." 
 The attacks last October in Bali stunned many Indonesians, prompting a police investigation that has netted dozens of Jemaah Islamiah suspects, including several of the group's leaders. The Indonesian government also arrested Baasyir last fall despite concerns among some senior officials that doing so could provoke a backlash among the country's Muslims. 
 Baasyir's five-month trial concluded under extremely tight security, with dozens of police lining the makeshift courtroom in a government auditorium in central Jakarta and scores more surrounding the building. A line of riot police carrying shields and batons stood guard in the street against several hundred of Baasyir's followers, who had arrived in Jakarta on chartered buses from other Indonesian cities on the eve of the verdict. 
 Many of the cleric's followers wore T-shirts emblazoned with his face and slogans such as "Resist American Imperialism" and "Free Our Clerics." Others, from the Laskar Mujaheddin militia loyal to Baasyir, donned military-style camouflage uniforms and carried a banner proclaiming "Abubakar Baasyir is a Warrior, not a Terrorist! Free him!" 
 Supporters also crowded the courtroom, lining up as early as 5 a.m. to claim seats. When Baasyir was escorted into the courtroom five hours later, wearing a white cap and a black jacket over a red-and-blue sarong, many in the audience of about 250 people sprang to their feet, pumped their fists and raised a thunderous chorus of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great). 
 Baasyir appealed for calm from his supporters, saying that American provocateurs would be looking to make trouble. 
 In handing down a light sentence, the judges cited Baasyir's cooperative attitude and his age. 
 The panel also rejected one of the main charges against him: that he was involved in a series of church bombings across Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000 that killed 19 people. The judges said the prosecution had failed to prove the allegation despite calling about three dozen witnesses, including seven Jemaah Islamiah suspects being held in Singapore and Malaysia, who testified by video. 
 Baasyir consistently denied any role in the church bombings and said he was not the leader of Jemaah Islamiah. He contended there was no such group. 
 The judges said they were convinced that Jemaah Islamiah exists and has a formal structure and membership. But they added that the witnesses had given conflicting descriptions of Baasyir's role in the group and none had testified to knowing firsthand that Baasyir was the commander. 
 Still, the judges found that he had been closely involved with the group's treasonous activities. "Members of Jemaah Islamiah conducted actions which the defendant, Abubakar Baasyir, had knowledge of. Moreover, he approved several actions, including military training in the southern Philippines and Afghanistan," said Saleh, the chief judge. 
 The panel also found Baasyir guilty on an immigration charge related to 14 years he spent in exile in Malaysia during Suharto's rule as Indonesian president. 
 Baasyir said he would appeal. "Just because I have been struggling for the implementation of Islamic law, I was accused of planning to overthrow the government. It is a mistaken decision, so I can't accept it," he told the court. 
 A U.S. Embassy spokesman said he had no comment on the verdict. 
 Outside the courtroom, the ruling provoked criticism from some of Baasyir's backers, who said it reflected U.S. pressure on the Indonesian government. 
 "This was stage-managed," said Andi Mulya, 45, who sported a long black beard and a blue Baasyir T-shirt. "Even a sentence of one day, we can't accept that." 
 But Ramly, 43, another follower, who uses only one name, said he was not disappointed by the verdict. "He got much less than he could have on a treason charge," he said. "We should accept this." 






    
  


September 2, 2003, Tuesday



 TEACHING INTOLERANCE: INDONESIAN SCHOOL HAS CHILLING ROSTER OF TERRORIST ALUMNI






  
  

  

August 30, 2003 Saturday 



 MUST-SEE MUSLIM TV?;
CABLE STATION WOULD BE NATION'S FIRST

 
Are U.S. television audiences ready for an American Muslim version of the game show "Jeopardy"? Or a Muslim sitcom? How about a standup routine about the Muslim experience after Sept. 11, 2001?
Former Concord resident Muzzammil "Mo" Hassan and his supporters are betting on it: They are trying to start the country's first Muslim-themed cable channel.
They have enlisted hundreds of mosques around the country, including many in the Bay Area, to spread the word and help get Bridges TV into living rooms by next summer.
The idea came to Hassan's wife, Assiya Hassan, in November 2001 as the couple were driving in their current home state of New York, listening to a commercial talk-radio station, the Bridges TV CEO said. 
"She became upset that the host and the callers were turning negative toward Muslims, and she felt there was a need for American Muslims to create their own programs and show themselves both as Americans and as Muslims," Hassan said.
"We want to help build bridges of understanding between American Muslims and non-Muslims."
First, Hassan and his backers need to convince major cable and satellite companies that their idea has legs, which means enrolling at least 10,000 paid subscribers before a single program airs. The station has signed up 2,500 subscribers so far.
Hassan has recruited the financial and moral support of prominent American Muslims, including boxing legend Muhammad Ali and basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon, to help raise the $15 million needed to start the channel.
Tim Fitzpatrick, spokesman for Comcast, the nation's biggest cable company with 21.3 million subscribers, said he could not talk about specific negotiations between his company and the channels they work with.
He said: "The range of programming we offer varies from market to market, and we try to serve the unique interests there."
As reflected on the Bridges TV Web site, some American Muslims wonder if such a cable channel would be censored for presenting Muslim viewpoints at a time when thousands of people of that faith are being detained, questioned and deported.
Earlier this year, Comcast refused to air advertisements during President Bush's State of the Union speech that opposed a U.S.-led attack on Iraq, a position that many American Muslims espouse.
The Web site says Bridges TV executives have met with government officials and have received only positive feedback.
The fact that such fears even exist convinces San Francisco's Abu Qadir El-Amin that the station is desperately needed.
"It's an opportunity to help give a balance," said El-Amin, who leads the Muslim Community Center and is helping to promote the plan. "We're Americans, we're citizens and we don't plan to go anywhere else."
Although viewers will have to pay a separate fee to view the station, Hassan said he hopes it will reach Muslims of all backgrounds, from African-Americans to Indonesians to Saudis, as well as the general public.
The station's programming will be in English rather than Arabic or other languages spoken on foreign-based stations such as al-Jazeera.
Concord resident Juveria Aleem already brims over with ideas for Bridges TV programs.
A member of the station's programming committee, Aleem imagines an Islamic version of MTV or a Muslim cooking show or an Oprah-style talk show.
The channel will eschew violence, foul language and excess exposure of flesh, in accordance with Muslim values, said Aleem, who is also organizing what she said will be the nation's first Muslim Film Festival. It will take place in the Bay Area in March.
"That's another reason why Muslims don't relate to what's on TV," Aleem said. "We see moral values degrading to Muslims."
But how will a TV station speak to everyone from Indonesians to black Muslims to the curious masses?
"We will focus on things unique to the American Muslim experience," Hassan said. "The melting of ethnicities, free-speech issues, or how my daughter is being told by her Islamic schoolteacher that she can't go out for Halloween because it's pagan or satanic.
"We could build a whole sitcom on that."







  



August 20, 2003 Wednesday  


 The Deadly Shape of Things to Come

 
 NO END TO WAR 
Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century 
By Walter Laqueur 
Continuum. 288 pp. $ 24.95 
In late April, two British middle-class men of Pakistani heritage walked into a busy jazz club near the U.S. Embassy in Israel on a suicide mission. One of the men had regularly attended meetings of al-Mahijiroun, a British Islamist group broadly sympathetic to the goals of al Qaeda. Once inside the club, the younger of the two succeeded in detonating a bomb, killing himself and three bystanders. The other man fled the scene.  
In one respect, the attack was highly unusual; it was the first time that a British citizen had committed an act of suicide terrorism in Israel. Yet the attack is also emblematic of a number of the themes of Walter Laqueur's excellent new book: the transnational character of 21st-century terrorism; the widespread use of suicide as a terrorist tool; the lack of scruple about civilian casualties that characterizes religiously inspired terrorists; and the insufficiency of poverty as an explanation for what causes terrorism. 
Laqueur, a prodigiously prolific historian of the Cold War, fascism, the Holocaust and the Middle East, can fairly be described as the dean of terrorism studies, having published extensively on political and religious terrorism over the past three decades. In "No End to War," he draws on a wide variety of Russian, Italian, French, German, Hebrew, Spanish and Arabic sources to provide a comprehensive and learned account of what terrorism in the 21st century is likely to look like. Although leavened by occasional flashes of a bone-dry wit -- at one point, Laqueur dismisses film director Oliver Stone as "one of the giants in the field of conspiratology" -- "No End to War" raises a number of vital, serious points that can be all too easily drowned out by the alarmist pitch of today's political debates over terrorism's causes and remedies. For those who see some ticker tape victory parade following the "war on terrorism," he points out that "terrorism is relatively cheap and will be with us as long as anyone can envision, even if not always at the same frequency and intensity." Moreover, the terrorists' "aim is no longer to conduct propaganda but to effect maximum destruction." 
So how did we get to this point? Laqueur makes short work of the leftist bromide that poverty causes terrorism. He points out that "in the forty-nine countries currently designated by the United Nations as the least developed, hardly any terrorist activity occurs." Laqueur posits that underemployment is a much more important force behind the incubation of Islamist terrorism in many Muslim countries both rich and poor, and observes that the mismatch of jobs to workers is compounded by educational systems that have often been hijacked by extremists. But he also says that to understand acts of terrorism, one must "consider psychological factors such as aggression and fanaticism." Indeed, the vast majority of Islamists are not terrorists, and fanaticism certainly seems to be necessary to explain the actions of someone like Mohamed Atta, the lead Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker. After all, nothing in the Koran countenances the murder of thousands of innocents. 
Laqueur goes on to explain how Egyptian Sayyid Qutb and Palestinian Abdullah Azzam respectively created the jihadist ideology and armed movement that spawned al Qaeda's suicidal foot soldiers. However, the suicide attacks that al Qaeda and affiliated groups have employed, most recently in Jakarta, are not peculiar to Islamist terrorists. Laqueur explains that Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka have used suicide attacks as their prime tool for two decades, yet "Tamil separatism is . . . secular, and its leadership is atheist." Moreover, 30 percent of the Tamils who engage in suicide terrorism are women. In short, terrorism comes in a multitude of guises, from the 19th-century Russian anarchists who would suspend their operations if innocents might be killed, to the members of al Qaeda who rejoice in the deaths of thousands of civilians. 
 Laqueur has interesting things to say about the "intelligence failure" surrounding Sept. 11 that go beyond the normal boilerplate complaints that the FBI and CIA underestimated the importance of al Qaeda. Laqueur also assigns blame for much of the country's former complacency to the American media, which had drastically cut back on foreign coverage in the decade before Sept. 11, and to the PC-prone in academia who, even after the attacks on Washington and New York, took refuge in the usual pieties emerging out of "postcolonial studies . . . and antiglobalism." Laqueur also neatly skewers the many "important personalities" in the Arab world who opined that Zionists were behind the Sept. 11 attacks: "The main problem was, of course, how to combine two sets of belief that were mutually exclusive -- that the Jews had carried out the attacks and that the Muslim world was proud that America had been humiliated and defeated?" 
Laqueur ends his book by noting that predicting trends in terrorism is problematic: "The behavior of small groups in a society is no more predictable than that of very small particles in the physical world." However, Laqueur is prepared to make some predictions. He is not as sanguine as some observers about the eventual withering of political Islam posited by such analysts as Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy: "The prophets of the decline of political Islam might still be right, but not within the time frame they have in mind." Laqueur points to deteriorating economic conditions in countries such as Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan and the possibility of political upheaval in others such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia, where there will be fertile ground for the Islamist terrorists of the future. The attack yesterday in Baghdad underscores this.  
And, of course, the greatest worry remains that "it is only a question of time until radiological, chemical, or biological weapons will be used more or less systematically by terrorist groups." Then we will have truly entered "the age of catastrophic terrorism." 




12


   
 

August 19, 2003 Tuesday  
  

 Jakarta Faithful Gather to Pray For Their Lives 







  



August 16, 2003 Saturday  




 Southeast Asia's New Corps of Suicide Bombers

 
The bombing of a hotel in Jakarta last week, along with the deadly blasts last year on the resort island of Bali, suggest a regional terrorist network connected to al Qaeda has developed a cadre of Southeast Asian foot soldiers fanatical enough to die in suicide bombings, analysts say. 
The group suspected in the attacks, Jemaah Islamiah, has matured since its creation about a decade ago, and now includes 300 to 400 trained militants and a core of senior operatives who have worked with one another for years, according to analysts. And despite dozens of recent arrests, the group is believed to be planning more attacks. 
Just two years ago, at a meeting of Islamic militants in Malaysia, an Indonesian cleric reportedly got no response from Southeast Asians when he asked for volunteers to undertake a suicide mission. Only one man, an Arab, stepped forward. And when plans were made that year for a suicide attack in Manila, no Southeast Asians were put on the roster.  
The two accounts, taken from summaries of interrogation reports and interviews with analysts familiar with intelligence briefings, underscore how reluctant Southeast Asians were to follow the example of Middle Eastern Arabs and South Asians in carrying out suicide bombings.  
 But last week's brazen lunchtime attack on a crowded restaurant at the American-run JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Jakarta, which killed 12 people, was the work of a 28-year-old Indonesian suicide bomber, a senior Indonesian security official said. Last October, an Indonesian militant blew himself up in a nightclub in Bali as part of an attack that killed 202 people, mostly Western and Australian tourists, including seven Americans.  
After its creation about a decade ago, Jemaah Islamiah spent seven years or so developing its network, recruiting and training people, setting up front companies to finance its activities and serving as a "back office" for al Qaeda, according to Zachary Abuza, a professor at Simmons College in Boston and author of a forthcoming book on militant Islam in Southeast Asia.  
Only when the group had enough trained militants did it undertake attacks in its own right, most notably in December 2000 with a string of church bombings in Indonesia and a series of bombings in metro Manila, which killed 41 people. By last October, it had developed the capacity to launch a major attack in Bali. Despite dozens of arrests connected to those bombings, Jemaah Islamiah continued to try to mount attacks, analysts and intelligence agents say.  
 Abuza said that in the Marriott case, it appears that the militants refined their tactics even more, using a suicide bomber to hit a Western business symbol. At least seven U.S. oil companies, including Halliburton, Exxon Mobil and Unocal, are apparently among targets they have considered; their names were on two lists recovered by police last month, as the Los Angeles Times first reported. 
 "If you attack the Marriott, then you go after some of the big multinationals, you're really going to hurt the Indonesian economy," Abuza said. "That's the goal, to maximize political and economic chaos." 
 "Suicide bombings are a new development in Jemaah Islamiah activities," said Umar Abduh, a former member of Darul Islam, a precursor organization to Jemaah Islamiah. "When I was in the movement, we never had that concept. But what we did have is the understanding that we will face death in our struggle." 
Police say that Jemaah Islamiah has formed a special force group called Laskar Khos or Unit Khos, capable of carrying out assassinations and bombings and including members willing to die as suicide bombers. The group initially reported directly to Abubakar Baasyir, the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah who was arrested last fall -- bypassing the command structure of individual cells across Southeast Asia.  
 "There were at least a dozen suicide bombers recruited, and perhaps several dozen," said Sidney Jones, Indonesia program director of International Crisis Group, a research and advocacy organization. She said another Jemaah Islamiah leader, Zulkarnain, who is sought in connection with the Bali bombings, led the special force. 
The unit emerged as early as 2000 in Poso, on the island of Sulawesi, one of two major zones of conflict between Indonesia's Muslims and Christians, according to Mahendradatta, a lawyer defending Islamic militants. The other major conflict zone was Ambon, in the Moluccas. Al Qaeda operatives have visited Ambon, and videos of the combat there have been used to recruit for Jemaah Islamiah. 
 Well before Bali, the group was plotting suicide attacks against Western targets such as the U.S. Embassy and oil companies, according to interrogations of militants. But these plots, all frustrated by arrests in 2001 and 2002, were to be carried out by Middle Eastern Arabs. Southeast Asians would do the prep work: target surveillance, explosives purchasing, bomb construction. 
 Gradually, the resistance to suicides has melted, analysts said. 
 "It's a combination of the video images of Palestinian suicide bombers and the elements of radical teachings involved with the jihads in both Ambon and Poso that changed the climate here," Jones said. 
 By last November, the signs that there were new foot soldiers were becoming clearer. According to Abuza, two suspected militants arrested in Malaysia told police they were among six men recruited for suicide missions by Hambali, the Indonesian cleric who was captured this week in Thailand. The network has also shown an ability to adapt. When plots aimed at "hard" Western targets such as U.S. embassies and shipyards were foiled, the group moved to "soft" targets such as the Bali nightclubs, a change in strategy attributed to Hambali.  
Special correspondents Noor Huda Ismail and Natasha Tampubolon contributed to this report. 








 


August 15, 2003



 Chechnya Shows Signs of 'Palestinization'

 
In the wake of this month's devastating suicide bombing of a hospital near Chechnya, diplomatic analysts have increasingly been speaking of the "Palestinization" of the Chechen conflict.
In recent weeks, suicide bombings have suddenly become the most visible, if not dominant, métier of the Chechen resistance. Since mid-May, there have been eight successful or attempted suicide bombings in Russia. They have been responsible for more than 150 deaths - despite the fact that this kind of terrorism was virtually nonexistent in the Chechen conflict before last year.
The sudden onset of the bombings has prompted some scholars, including Masha Lipman of the Moscow Carnegie Center and Leon Aron of the American Enterprise Institute, draw comparisons to Israel's fight against terrorism. 
According to Aron, "Palestinization" refers to the hijacking of a once-secular independence movement by nihilistic, uncompromising jihadists. "What began as a movement for Chechen autonomy has degenerated, on the fringes, into a radical, fundamentalist Islamic movement," he said. "Insofar as Hamas is aimed at the destruction of Israel, the group of Chechen rebels reflected by the suicide bombers will not stop fighting until the green banner of Islam is flying over the Kremlin."
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom appeared to back this theory during a trip to Moscow in June. "[Islamic terror] is the main cause of the terrorist acts that are happening in our country, that took place in Morocco, in Saudi Arabia, in Indonesia and also in Chechnya," he said.
The U.S. State Department has added three Chechen rebel groups to its terrorist blacklist, alleging ties to Osama bin Laden, who has cited Chechnya alongside Israel, Kashmir and Bosnia as justifications for jihad.
"We should view [attacks on Muslims in these places] not as separate, but as links in a long series of conspiracies, a war of annihilation in the true sense of the word," the mastermind of the September 11 attacks insisted in a November 2001 message to his followers.
According to Rajan Menon, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University and an expert on Chechnya, "there is no denying that there are radical Wahhabist elements in Chechnya, some of them native, others from the wider Arab world." He cautioned, however, not to conflate the fundamentalists with the majority of the Chechen population who "run the gamut from people with whom Moscow could have a meaningful dialogue to those who have no desire for negotiation."
Other experts stress the limits of comparisons between the Chechen and the Palestinian conflicts.
"There are some similarities and there are also some real differences," said Stephen Solarz, who represented Brooklyn for 18 years in the House of Representatives and is now a co-chairman of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. Among the most significant divergences: "Israel has agreed to permit the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, albeit there has been no agreement on where the borders should be," he said. "In the case of Chechnya, however, the Russians categorically reject that possibility."
Solarz also pointed out that "Russia's conduct in the war in Chechnya has been infinitely worse and far more deplorable than anything Israel has done vis-à-vis the Palestinians. It bears no comparison."
Gal Luft, founder of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and a former lieutenant colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces, agreed. "The Russians are not as affected by international pressure as Israel," he said. "Therefore, they use means and methods that would not be acceptable in the case of Israel."
There is also concern that any association with Middle Eastern terrorism will only serve to demonize the Chechen cause further.
"'Palestinization' is a cute buzzword, but the core issue isn't Islam. It's national self-determination. You could also call it 'East Timor-ification,'" said Glen Howard, president of the Jamestown Foundation, referring to the former province of Indonesia that is now an independent state. "[Moscow] is using the issue of Islam to deflect accusations of its own abuses."
Russia has waged two wars in Chechnya in the past decade. During the first, which lasted from 1994 to 1996, Russians shelled the Chechen capital of Grozny, making little effort to distinguish between enemy combatants and civilians. Although Moscow carefully restricts access to Chechnya, the U.S. government estimates that 80,000 Chechens have died since the second war ignited in 1999, and the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya calculates that Chechen casualties since 1994 are as high as 250,000. Human Rights Watch and other nongovernmental organizations have also documented hundreds of "forced disappearances" and other depredations by poorly-paid Russian troops.
But the dynamic fueling the continued violence in Chechnya may in part transcend any ideology - whether Russian chauvinism, Islamic fundamentalism or Chechen self-determination (the traditional bugaboos).
In his account of his travels in the Caucasus, Israeli journalist Yo'av Karny quotes Dzhokhar Dudayev, president of Chechnya during the first war with Russia, as remarking: "I need [the war] more than Russia does.... What would I do if the Russians suddenly pulled out? I've got 300,000 men, aged 17 to 50, homeless, jobless, embittered and with nothing to do. All they can do is fight. I need a little war and an enemy to send them to battle against."
In this regard, the damage inflicted by the suicide bombers goes beyond mere carnage. Rather, the violence strengthens the worst elements in Russian and Chechen society.
The American Enterprise Institute's Aron elaborated, "Radicals can only exist, as we know from totalitarian states in general, by perennial warfare.... Who would need [Chechen extremist leader] Shamil Basayev in a peaceful, democratic Chechnya? Who would need Arafat in a peaceful, democratic Palestine?"
It is for this reason, Solarz of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya said, that "at the end of the day, there is no military solution to either the Chechen or the Palestinian conflict."
Vance Serchuk is a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. From 2001 to 2002, he lived in Russia as a Fulbright scholar.






  
  

  

AUGUST 15, 2003 Friday 



 U.S. holds suspected key figure in al-Qaeda;
The Indonesian is accused of masterminding the Bali
bombings that killed 200. Bush announced the arrest.

 
A man suspected of being al-Qaeda's top lieutenant in Southeast Asia and accused of masterminding last year's deadly nightclub bombing in Bali has been taken into U.S. custody. The Bush administration yesterday called his seizure "a devastating blow to the enemy."
Riduan Isamuddin, who is known as Hambali, is the operations chief for the shadowy Islamic terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. The group is suspected in a number of attacks, including a string of deadly church bombings in the Philippines and Indonesia in 2000. 
Hambali is a leading suspect in the bombing last week at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people. He is also suspected of playing an organizing role in the Oct. 12, 2002, bombing of two nightclubs in Bali that killed about 200 people, including many Australians.
In a sign of Hambali's importance, President Bush announced the catch himself at the Miramar Air Station in California before a crowd of rowdy Marines, some just back from action in Iraq. Bush called Hambali, who is Indonesian, "one of the world's most lethal terrorists."
"He's a known killer who was a close associate of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed," the President said. "He is no longer a problem to those of us who love freedom, and neither are nearly two-thirds of known senior al-Qaeda leaders, operational managers and key facilitators, who have been captured or have been killed."
Hambali, 39, facilitated a January 2000 meeting in Malaysia that included two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, according to a senior Bush administration official aboard Air Force One who spoke on condition of anonymity yesterday. The White House provided a transcript of his remarks.
'A significant victory'
"His detention effectively diminishes the group's lethal capabilities and global reach," the official said of Hambali. "This is a significant victory in the global war on terrorism and a devastating blow to the enemy. He was one of the few remaining senior planners of al-Qaeda, and their most important link to terrorist groups in Southeast Asia."
The official said that shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Hambali was told to recruit pilots for more hijackings in the United States. Earlier this year, he received a large sum of money from an al-Qaeda representative in Pakistan for a major attack, the official said. That information came from a senior al-Qaeda detainee and was confirmed by other sources, the official said.
The bespectacled Islamic preacher for some time has been the most-wanted man in Southeast Asia, sought simultaneously by law-enforcement authorities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.
He is believed to be the only non-Arab to become a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda and was considered the crucial link between Osama bin Laden and Southeast Asia, where a violent brand of Islamic extremism has been on the rise.
A decade of recruiting
Hambali has been on the run in recent years after spending a decade in Malaysia recruiting like-minded radicals. He was apprehended earlier this week in Thailand in a joint operation by Thai antiterrorism forces and the CIA, U.S. officials said.
Bush, vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, was informed of the capture Wednesday morning by CIA Director George Tenet during the daily intelligence briefing by videoconference.
Jemaah Islamiyah's roots stretch back to the 1940s, when extremists tried to create an Islamic state in Indonesia. The movement was reenergized when Islamic fighters returned from fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Members of Jemaah Islamiyah want to create an Islamic "superstate" that would unite the region's 230 million Muslims by stitching together Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and predominantly Muslim sections of southern Thailand and the Philippines.
Contact reporter Shannon McCaffrey at 202-383-6164 or smccaffrey@krwashington.com.
Ron Hutcheson of the Inquirer Washington Bureau contributed to this article.






  
  


August 15, 2003 Friday 



 SUSPECTED BALI BOMB MASTERMIND IS SEIZED
BUSH CALLS ARREST 'DEVASTATING BLOW' TO AL-QAIDA

 
WASHINGTON -- A man suspected of being al-Qaida's top lieutenant in Southeast Asia and accused of masterminding last year's deadly nightclub bombing in Bali has been taken into U.S. custody, the White House said Thursday.
The Bush administration called the arrest of Riduan Isamuddin -- known as Hambali -- "a devastating blow to the enemy."
Hambali, an Indonesian, is the operations chief for the shadowy Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah, which suspected in a number of attacks, including a string of deadly church bombings in the Philippines and Indonesia in 2000.
Hambali is also a leading suspect in the bombing last week at the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people. 
However, the Bali attack by far is believed to be his most devastating. The Oct. 12, 2002, bombing killed nearly 200 people, many of them Australians.
In a sign of Hambali's importance, President Bush announced the catch himself at the Miramar Air Station in California before a crowd of Marines, some just back from military action in Iraq.
Bush called Hambali "one of the world's most lethal terrorists."
"He's a known killer who was a close associate of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed," the president said. "He is no longer a problem to those of us who love freedom, and neither are nearly two-thirds of known senior al Qaida leaders, operational managers and key facilitators, who have been captured or have been killed."
Indonesian and U.S. officials said that Isamuddin was captured in Thailand in an operation by the CIA, but Bush administration officials would not confirm it.
Hambali, 39, facilitated a January 2000 meeting in Malaysia that included two of the Sept. 11 hijackers and a top al-Qaida figure who organized the USS Cole bombing, said a senior Bush administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity Thursday. The White House provided a transcript of his remarks.
"His detention effectively diminishes the group's lethal capabilities and global reach," the official said of Hambali. "This is a significant victory in the global war on terrorism and a devastating blow to the enemy. He was one of the few remaining senior planners of al Qaida, and their most important link to terrorist groups in Southeast Asia."
The official said that shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Hambali was told to recruit pilots for more hijackings in the United States.
Earlier this year, he received a large sum of money from an al-Qaida representative in Pakistan for a major attack, the official said. That information came from a senior al-Qaida detainee and was confirmed by other sources, the official said.
The bespectacled Islamic preacher for some time has been the most wanted man in Southeast Asia, sought simultaneously by law enforcement authorities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.
He is believed to be the only non-Arab to become a high-ranking member of al-Qaida and was considered the crucial link between Osama bin Laden and Southeast Asia, where a violent brand of Islamic extremism has been on the rise.
Hambali has been on the run in recent years after spending a decade in Malaysia recruiting like-minded radicals.
Bush was informed of the capture Wednesday morning.
Hambali was one of two key leaders the CIA had identified as leaders of Jemaah Islamiyah. The other, the Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, founded the group in 1989 and served as its spiritual leader, U.S. officials said. Bashir lived openly and was detained in October 2002. He denies any links to Jemaah Islamiyah.
Jemaah Islamiyah's roots stretch back to the 1940s, when Islamic extremists tried to create an Islamic state in Indonesia. The movement was re-energized when Islamic fighters returned from fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Members of Jemaah Islamiyah want to create an Islamic "superstate" that would unite the region's 230 million Muslims by stitching together Indonesia, Malay-sia, Singapore, Brunei and sections of southern Thailand and the Philippines.
The Associated Press and New York Times contributed to this report.







   
 

August 14, 2003 Thursday  
  



 Indonesian Art With Attitude; 
Engaging the Community and Upsetting the Establishment

 
Nindityo Adipurnomo and Mella Jaarsma artists and co-founders of a prominent gallery here -- have been at the frontier of Indonesia's spirited contemporary art scene for more than a decade. Some say this Indonesian and Dutch couple created the frontiers, then kept pushing them forward. 
     Their gallery, the Cemeti Art House, has promoted installation art and almost anything that takes creativity out of the gallery and into the community. They have staged performance art and hung Mr. Nindityo's vast rattan sculptures in the shape of Javanese women's hairpieces. In a spoof of the spurious election before the downfall of the authoritarian leader President Suharto in 1998 they organized a show called "Slot in the Box." 
 They continue to ruffle establishment sensibilities with works that speak of the poor and assault the rich. In the 15 years since its founding, Cemeti (in Indonesian it means moving forward) has moved from a small living room in the couple's house to a space that would make downtown New York dealers envious.  
In a sign of its impact beyond this cultural center of Java, the gallery has become a symbol of much that the rich collectors and dealers in the hectic capital, Jakarta, dislike. 
There the byword for Cemeti among those who favor paintings on vast canvases purchased for big prices at glitzy ballroom auctions has become A.B.C. "It stands for Asal Bukan Cemeti" -- anything but Cemeti," Ms. Jaarsma said proudly. 
The couple, who are also artists, take the epithet as a badge of honor. But the habits of the wealthy Indonesian collectors serve as a damper on the creativity of young artists that Cemeti tries to discover and cultivate, Ms. Jaarsma said.
"Since the collapse of the stock exchange, rich people are buying up young artists, sometimes buying 200 pieces at once," she said. Often these paintings are resold at auction and bought back by the collectors in an effort to inflate the prices. "So it's becoming very hard to find young artists," she said. "We showed a very good painter from Bali. Then the collectors started to run after his work." 
When she called the artist recently to see if he was interested in another Cemeti show, he replied that he was too busy churning out paintings on demand.
Ms. Jaarsma, 43, and Mr. Nindityo, 42, met in the early 1980's, when she was a young artist visiting Indonesia to see her father, an aeronautical engineer, who was living here. They went together to the Netherlands, where Mr. Nindityo, a student at the Indonesian Arts Institute, won an art scholarship. He rediscovered aspects of Javanese culture (in particular, the introversion of the culture), which he explored on their return to Indonesia in 1987. They married in 1988 and threw themselves into the vibrant but disorganized Yogyakarta art scene.
"There were lots of artists from Yogyakarta, but they had all moved to Jakarta or Bali," Ms. Jaarsma said. To encourage them to return and to stop others from fleeing, the couple opened a gallery in a 12-by-21-foot room in their house.
By 1999 Cemeti was recognized at home and abroad as the most formidable center for contemporary Indonesian art, and they had moved to a stand-alone gallery in a house. The gallery, which also runs a foundation for art research, is now the beachhead for a string of galleries, antique stores and artists' studios on the south side of the city. 
It achieved its stature as Suharto's rule was crumbling. In the early 90's, the couple selected artists who "reflected the political situation, who took an attitude," Ms. Jaarsma said. The government knew something was going on in the gallery and sent spies around, she said, but mostly they didn't understand what was in front of them, and the gallery was left alone.
On some occasions, to avoid the attention of the authorities, invitations were by word of mouth. In one memorable piece, FX Harsono, an early force in the modern art scene, put three wooden chairs in an open field and took a chain saw to them. The chair is a symbol of power in Indonesia, and Mr. Harsono's message wasn't lost on the crowd who turned up on their bicycles to watch. The event was photographed, and the image of the artist, in a suit and tie, hacking into the chairs is an icon of the end of the authoritarian period. 
In the new period of Indonesian democracy, the gallery has kept up the tradition of promoting artists who go beyond canvas and paint. For Cemeti's 15th-anniversary show the theme is "Exploring the Vacuum," a reference to the difficulties that Indonesian artists -- like many Eastern European artists after the fall of the Berlin Wall -- face as they adjust to freedom. "At first everyone was very confused," Ms. Jaarsma said. Some Indonesian artists went abroad, others turned to work that was more personal than political, she added.
For the anniversary, 20 artists have been invited to take part in projects that involve activities outside their studios, and even outside the field of fine arts. For example, one artist will produce a work that involves the people of a village. "The real thing will happen outside the gallery," Ms. Jaarsma said. "At the gallery it will be the documentation" by video or other means.
The couple's own works have generally reflected a mix of the personal and political. 
Mr. Nindityo is known for his art around the theme of the Javanese women's traditional hairpiece, a bulbous oval shape pinned to the back of the head to lend a regal demeanor. He has painted them to give erotic suggestions, sculptured them out of stone and rattan and used the shape as the backing for a teak armoire. 
"The shape represents the introversion of the Javanese -- it is tied and hidden on the backside of the head," Mr. Nindityo said. "The shape is very compact. It is beautiful. It is erotic." He added, "The shape of the hairpiece says something about the sex appeal of the woman." 
In the last several years Ms. Jaarsma has concentrated on a series called "Moral Pointers" -- live models dressed in seemingly offensive animal skin costumes that have been shown in exhibitions in Bangkok, Singapore and Indonesia. She has made costumes of frog skins as a way of talking about the conflict between Muslim Indonesians and ethnic Chinese Indonesians (the Chinese eat frog legs as a delicacy; for Muslims they are forbidden). For a show in Bangkok she stitched costumes from squirrel skins (the animals are considered pests in Indonesia but are coveted in Bangkok).
The most universal of her works is destined for an international exhibition, "Art and Human Rights" next month at the National Art Gallery in Canberra, Australia. A male model will be wearing a reconstituted Indonesian military uniform, patiently sewn together by machine by Ms. Jaarsma from 15 uniforms bought at a flea market. 
As inspiration for the piece, she has pinned to her studio wall a newspaper photo of ferocious-looking Indonesian troops in action in a civil conflict.
The ragged endsof Ms. Jaarsma's military uniform will float in a liquid soup of dried seaweed, an effort, she said, to help viewers understand the connection between civil war and the perpetual food aid crisis that it breeds in Africa, and closer to home, in Indonesia's province of Aceh.







   
 

August 11, 2003 Monday 
  
 



 Militant Islamic Congress Is Sparsely Attended in Indonesia 

 
Menacing looking young men with their heads wrapped in Arabic scarves guarded the foot of an outdoor stage and others guided guests to their seats for the opening of a militant Islamic congress here in central Java today.
     The meeting of a group founded by the country's best-known Islamic militant, Abu Bakar Bashir, was supposed to show that the radical Islamic movement was very much alive despite the fact that Mr. Bashir is now on trial on treason charges. Mainstream politicians, including Vice President Hamza Haz, have embraced Mr. Bashir in the past.  
 But only a relatively small crowd of several thousand turned up, leading the organizers to hold the ceremony under tarpaulins outside the walls of the city stadium, instead of inside the arena. 
Furthermore, none of the invited mainstream politicians showed up.
Most notably, Mr. Haz, who was listed on the program, did not come. Nor did Din Syamsuddin, a top official of Muhammadiyah, one of the nation's largest Muslim organizations. Hidayat Murwahid, the leader of the Justice Party, an increasingly popular group that wants to impose Islamic Shariah law on Indonesia, was also absent. 
Today's sparsely attended event comes five days after the bombing of the J. W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed 10 people and wounded more than 150. The Indonesian police have said the Marriott attack was almost certainly the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant Islamic group founded by Mr. Bashir in the mid-1990's and closely linked by Western officials to Al Qaeda.
Operatives of the group, which has been declared a terrorist organization by the Indonesian government, have also been declared responsible for the bombings in Bali last October that killed more than 200 people. Some leading Jemaah Islamiyah members are graduates of Mr. Bashir's religious boarding school, a run-down complex of buildings on the outskirts of this city.
The group that met today, Majelis Mujahedeen, was founded by Mr. Bashir in 2000. In contrast to the underground Jemaah Islamiyah, it operates openly, intent on making secular Indonesia into an Islamic state. 
The lack of big names may have deprived the event of the legitimacy it sought.
But many paramilitary groups were on display. Brigade Al-Ishlah members wore their black baseball caps. The Jakarta-based Movement of Islamic Youth, some of whose members trained in Afghanistan, was there, as well as Lasker Hezbollah. But the most numerous were young students from Mr. Bashir's boarding school here, in blue sweat shirts, blue fatigues and black boots.
The poor turnout showed that Indonesian leaders now know it is no longer useful to be associated with radical Islam, said Sidney Jones, an expert on Indonesia. "That means there is a real sea change in Indonesia since the Bali bombing," said Ms. Jones, the director of the International Crisis Group, a Geneva-based organization that focuses on crisis prevention. She has written extensively about Mr. Bashir.
"The Indonesian political elite and the Indonesian public now feel that organizations that flirt with violence are no longer acceptable," she said. 
A Western intelligence specialist on Indonesia said he regarded the meeting today as an important barometer of popular feeling about radical Islam here in the world's most populous Muslim nation. 
"This means it's a dirty association," the intelligence official said of the poor turnout. "It has lost its legitimacy. At last the message is getting through that Bashir may be a terrorist." 
An overwhelming majority of Indonesians practice moderate forms of Islam, but Western officials have become increasingly frustrated as President Megawati Sukarnoputri and other leaders have refrained from criticizing the militants. Vice President Haz, for example, visited Mr. Bashir during his early days in prison. 
That reluctance to create distance with the militants had changed to a limited degree over the last few months as testimony in the Bali trials indicated that Jemaah Islam-iyah had a well organized terror network inside Indonesia.
The bombing of the Marriott, an American-managed hotel in downtown Jakarta that Indonesian government officials used for meetings and entertaining, drove the point home even further. A former government minister was among those wounded in the blast.
The 64-year-old Mr. Bashir had asked to be released from prison in order to appear at the gathering today. When that was refused, there was some talk that he would send a video. But that did not happen either.
Instead, his longtime associate Irfan S. Awwas read a speech that he said had been written by Mr. Bashir. 
The speech railed about how the Indonesian Constitution guarantees freedom of speech but does not guarantee the right of Muslims to practice Shariah. "What is the meaning of freedom if Muslims can't have Shariah law?" he said.
The crowd booed the local governor when he reminded them that Indonesia had been founded as a secular state. 
The biggest crowd pleaser was Mr. Bashir's lawyer, known as Mahendra, who came to Solo from Jakarta on a flight this morning dressed in casual weekend clothes and then quickly changed into the all-white garb suitable for a religious appearance. "Some Muslims say they are Muslims but don't support jihad," he said, referring to religious war. "They are not real Muslims." There were shouts of approval.

CORRECTION-DATE: August 12, 2003

 CORRECTION:
Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about a meeting of an Islamic militant group in Indonesia misidentified the headquarters city of the International Crisis Group, which focuses on crisis prevention. It is Brussels, not Geneva.






  


August 11, 2003



 When You Assume, You Get Bad News

 
I recently returned from the wilds of western Virginia, where I swore off "media" for a blessed week. So I missed reading about the great celebrations thrown by Islam's defenders upon the sudden but regrettably not premature deaths of the awful Hussein boys. I can only assume that clerics and sheiks from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia took the occasion to point out that the Husseins were prolific killers of Muslims. Now that Uday and Qusay are dead, Muslims in Iraq are considerably safer than they were five months ago.
There's a pile of old newspapers on my desk, but I know I'll never get through it, so I'll just assume that the front pages are filled with pictures of Muslim spokesmen smiling over the fate of these murderers. And I assume that the chroniclers of complaint in the Middle East have revised their canon of crimes visited upon Muslims since the fall of Granada to include the antics of Saddam's darlings. 
What's more, I assume that all those op-ed pages I'll never read are filled with contributions from Muslims pointing out that Iraqis are now more free to practice their faith than they were when Saddam terrorized them. I only wish I had the time to get through all my old newspapers; I'm sure I'd be delighted to read these wonderful pieces.
One bit of news that did find its way to my self-imposed exile concerned the nation's fine friends in Saudi Arabia, who, according to a Congressional investigation of 9/11, have been gleefully funding Islamic terrorist organizations for years. Of course, I won't find too many further details in the newspapers on my desk, as the specific charges were deleted from the panel's public report. National security, you see.
We do know, however, that a Saudi national by the name of Omar al-Bayoumi apparently gave heaps of money to two of the 9/11 hijackers. The report said that Mr. Bayoumi "had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia." What's more, this upstanding fellow may have connections to the Saudi intelligence services; in any case, he's back in his homeland and unavailable for further comment. And it appears that he won't be answering the U.S. government's questions any time soon.
Again, I've been quite out of touch for more than a week, so I assume that I missed the nation's outrage and anger upon learning these not especially surprising revelations about our Saudi friends. I'm guessing that if I managed to work my way through the old papers, I'd find stories about the Bush administration's new plan to wean us from imported oil once and for all. I assume that the leaders of America's automotive industry have come forward to pledge that they will no longer shove S.U.V.'s down the throats of consumers, lest somebody brand them as traitors. After all, if big, hairy blond authors can get on television and accuse liberals of treason -- not corruption, not stupidity, not arrogance, but treason -- well, who's to say that somebody won't file similar charges against General Motors, Ford and Chrysler?
I'm sure these stories must have made their way into the papers while I was gone. I almost wish I had picked up a newspaper or watched a little television, just to hear about the nation's determination to cast aside its four-wheeled indulgences in the name of national security. I spent lots of time on the interstate highways between Virginia and Rhode Island in late July, and I have to believe that the owners of all those unsafe, oil-guzzling monstrosities I saw are now reflecting on the part they've played in making this nation more dependent than ever on the Saudis.
I'm sure that none of this is new to you, who have been able to follow these events more closely than I have. You know all about the billions the Bush administration has set aside to fund the most important national-security initiative since 9/11 -- the plan to raise standards for fuel efficiency, to eliminate the kinds of loopholes that gave birth to the S.U.V. in the first place and to build -- soon, like next year -- an inexpensive car that will run on something other than oil. You know about the pledges the auto industry has made to cooperate in making the nation more secure -- and not through a wider distribution of the self-indulgent Hummer. You know about the S.U.V. owners who are lobbying the administration to create tax incentives that will allow them to junk their personal national-security threats for more efficient vehicles -- even if they're made in Japan.
I'm just sorry I missed it all, and I regret that, given the pressures of time, I'll never even get around to reading that pile of newspapers which contains all this exciting news.






  


August 11, 2003 Monday 



 WORLD DIGEST

 
TOKYO
Death toll rises to 8 in wake of tropical storm
Three bodies were found overnight after a tropical storm hit Japan over the weekend, leaving at least eight people dead and a dozen missing, officials said today.
Etau - rated a typhoon until it was downgraded Friday to a tropical storm - hit Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido early Sunday. It weakened further and was classified as a tropical depression as it moved off into the Pacific Ocean, according to the Meteorological Agency. 
Twelve people were missing early today after heavy rain brought flooding, the National Police Agency said.
RUSSIA
Rebels kill eight soldiers, police in Chechnya
Eight Russian soldiers and police were killed in rebel attacks in a day of violence in Chechnya, the region's Kremlin-backed administration said Sunday.
Russian warplanes bombed suspected rebel positions in one region of the republic, and artillery pounded two other regions, an official in the administration said.
Five of the soldiers were killed in attacks on military positions, one died when a military vehicle hit a mine, another while trying to defuse an explosive device and a policeman was killed in an attack on a police vehicle, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
PAKISTAN
Indian prime minister makes appeal for peace
India's prime minister sent a strong message to a peace conference in Pakistan on Sunday, saying the nuclear-armed rivals must end decades of bloodshed and stop denying people on both sides their right to better lives.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee did not attend the meeting, and neither did Pakistan's prime minister. But Vajpayee helped set a friendly tone before the conference, the latest effort to ease Indian-Pakistan tensions that almost erupted into war last year.
The two-day meeting was organized by a journalist group with branches in both nations, and participants included 33 lawmakers from India as well as legislators from 12 Pakistani parties.
PHILIPPINES
Troops hunting militant clash with gunmen
Army troops searching for a suspected Islamic militant clashed with unidentified men in the southern Philippines on Sunday, killing three gunmen, the military said. Six soldiers were wounded.
The separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front had warned that the massive hunt for Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi could threaten peace talks. Troops have deployed near the group's strongholds in two southern provinces to hunt for him.
The fighting broke out in the southern town of Sultan Naga Dimaporo, military spokesman Lt. Col. Daniel Lucero said.
Al-Ghozi is an Indonesian suspected in deadly bombing attacks in the Philippines. He escaped last month from a prison where he was serving a 12-year term for illegally possessing explosives, and is a member of the Jemaah Islamiyah extremist group.
INDONESIA
3,000 Muslim militants rally in support of cleric
About 3,000 Muslim militants rallied Sunday in the city of Solo to support detained Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who allegedly heads the group accused in the deadly bombing at Jakarta's Marriott Hotel.
The rally came as the death toll from the bombing rose to 11 on Sunday.
Bashir, in a speech read by an aide, urged people at the rally to fight for the adoption of Islamic law and to ignore being labeled "terrorists."
Bashir, 64, is believed to be the founder of the group Jemaah Islamiyah. The group been blamed for various attacks, including Tuesday's hotel blast and the Oct. 12 Bali bombings.






    
  


August 11, 2003, Monday



 THE BATTLE FOR INDONESIA




13


  



August 11, 2003 Monday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
SOLO, Indonesia -- In a message sent from his jail cell, the Indonesian cleric believed to lead the militant group Jemaah Islamiah urged Muslims yesterday to adhere to their faith without fear of being labeled "terrorists." 
 The fiery address from Abubakar Baasyir came as officials at a school he set up confirmed that a man identified by police as the suicide bomber in the attack at Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel, Asnar Latin Sani, 28, was one of their pupils. School officials said he graduated in 1994.  
AFRICA 
* NAIROBI -- Sudan's shaky peace process enters a critical phase today when talks resume. Experts warn that failure could spark even greater destruction in a conflict that has killed 2 million people. Delegates arrived at a hotel in central Kenya in preparation for the talks. 
* BUJUMBURA, Burundi -- African leaders trying to end Burundi's civil war plan to discuss rival power-sharing proposals at a meeting in mid-August, officials from both sides said. The summit will focus on competing proposals on sharing senior government posts. 
* GISENYI, Rwanda -- President Paul Kagame dismissed opposition charges of harassment two weeks before the country's first elections since ethnic warfare in 1994. The Aug. 25 vote will be Rwanda's first since extremists from the Hutu majority massacred hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days of slaughter. 
ASIA 
* MANILA -- Army troops searching for a suspected Islamic militant clashed with unidentified men in southern Philippines, killing three gunmen, the military said. Six soldiers were wounded. The separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front had warned that a massive hunt for Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi could threaten peace talks. Troops have deployed near the group's strongholds in two southern provinces to hunt for him. Al-Ghozi, an Indonesian suspected in bombing attacks in the Philippines, escaped last month from a prison where he was serving a 12-year term for possessing explosives. 
EUROPE 
* MOSCOW -- Russia will hold talks with North and South Korea in Moscow this week to prepare for six-way negotiations in Beijing aimed at defusing a standoff over the North's nuclear ambitions, Alexander Losyukov, Russia's deputy foreign minister, said in Beijing. 
* VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia -- Eight Russian soldiers and police died in rebel attacks in a day of violence throughout Chechnya, the region's Kremlin-backed administration said.  
THE MIDDLE EAST 
* CAIRO -- The United States has canceled this year's annual "Bright Star" maneuvers with the Egyptian military because U.S. forces are over-stretched, a U.S. diplomat said. 
"This decision was made purely on technical grounds because of commitments we have in Iraq, Afghanistan and in fighting the war against terrorism," diplomat Gordon Gray said in remarks posted on the U.S. Embassy's Web site. The Bright Star maneuvers, set for next month, have been held in Egypt every two years since 1981.  
 -- From News Services 






  
  


August 10, 2003 Sunday 



 INDONESIA BECOMING DEADLY TERRORIST BASTION
AL-QAIDA INFLUENCE IS SURPRISING STRONG

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Even as a top Bali bomber awaits execution and Indonesia basks in world praise for tackling terrorism, investigators say they are confronted with a network of terror far wider than previously imagined.
A blast at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta two days before the bomber's sentencing has reinforced a suspicion that Islamic militancy in the world's most populous Muslim country is taking on new, more dangerous dimensions.
Jemaah Islamiyah -- the al-Qaida-linked terror network blamed for the Bali and Marriott attacks -- is using methods previously unheard of in Indonesia: a loosely defined command structure, individual cells operating independently of each other and a willingness to commit suicide.
Investigations into bombings blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah have also exposed links between Islamic militants in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore. 
"Security in the region is under threat," said Arturo Lomibao, the Philippine chief of intelligence.
On Saturday, Indonesia's defense minister Matori Abdul Djalil said the perpetrators of the Marriott blast that killed 10 trained with al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are many more Jemaah Islamiyah operatives still on the loose in Indonesia, he added.
Matori's comments followed some successes in the investigation of the Oct. 12 nightclub bombings on Bali that killed 202 people, including a death sentence issued Thursday to Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, the first of three dozen suspects to go on trial.
Before the Marriott blast, progress against Jemaah Islamiyah had begun to ease fears that the country would succumb to extremist violence.
But Tuesday's bombing brought a stark reminder that Indonesia still has a long road ahead to crush Islamic militancy.
And the battle is greatly complicated because Jemaah Islamiyah is, by all indications, taking its cues from foreign terrorists far removed from Indonesia's traditionally moderate practice of Islam.
"They're so rapacious they don't care if their collateral damage is innocent Indonesian taxi drivers," said Ralph Boyce, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia.
The Marriott attackers, like the perpetrators of the Bali bombings, made use of a suicide bomber, a mobile phone to detonate the explosives and exploding vehicles whose chassis numbers were scraped off to hide their identities.
The similarities between the attacks have led authorities to suspect that Jemaah Islamiyah -- widely considered to be al-Qaida's Southeast Asian branch -- was responsible for both.
Lending credence to the possibility of al-Qaida involvement in the Marriott blast was an unauthenticated claim of responsibility appearing Friday in a London-based Arabic daily from an al-Qaida-linked terrorist cell, the Abu Hafs el-Masri Brigades.
According to the paper, the Brigades called the attack "a strong slap in the face of America and its agents in Islamic Jakarta."
Jemaah Islamiyah's alleged goal is to set up an Islamic state across Southeast Asia.
The desire for Islamic rule is not new in secular Indonesia. A civil war was fought over the issue in the years before independence in 1945. Former dictator Suharto used Islamists as allies in bloody anti-communist purges, then turned on the radicals when they lost their political value.
Jemaah Islamiyah traces its roots to the Islamists who opposed Suharto. Many of them, including Jemaah Islamiyah's spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir, fled to Malaysia in the 1980s -- then returned to Indonesia when Suharto fell in 1998.
Regional security officials say Jemaah Islamiyah members received arms and bomb-making training at Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and in camps run by Islamic rebels in the southern Philippines.
More recently, however, Maluku and Poso -- two Indonesian regions that witnessed bloody clashes between Muslims and Christians between 1999 and 2001 -- replaced Afghanistan and the Philippines as the preferred militant training centers, officials say.
The terrorists' new methods more closely resemble those used in Afghanistan and the Middle East than anything Indonesia has ever seen -- reinforcing the concern Indonesian terrorists will be more difficult to defeat than previously thought.
There are an estimated 3,000 Jemaah Islamiyah operatives in Southeast Asia, including 2,000 in Indonesia, according to Andrew Tan, a security analyst at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies.
Still on the loose is the group's suspected operations chief, Riduan Isamuddin, alias Hambali, who's been called bin Laden's point man in Southeast Asia.
"As long as the leadership is alive there will be more attacks," said terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna, author of a book on al-Qaida.







  



August 10, 2003 Sunday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
 BEIJING -- Toxic gas that leaked from canisters left behind from World War II sickened 36 people in northeast China, the official New China News Agency reported yesterday. The agency said experts had concluded that the canisters were chemical weapons left by the Japanese army. Japan is believed to have abandoned about 700,000 chemical weapons loaded with mustard gas and other poisons in China's northeast after its 13-year occupation of the region ended in 1945. 
Twenty-nine people were reportedly hospitalized after the cans were unearthed Monday in the city of Qiqihar, about 650 miles northeast of Beijing. Fumes from an oily substance in the canisters caused headaches, eye irritation and other symptoms, according to the news agency.  
 Lawyers for Chinese plaintiffs who have sued the Japanese government say the weapons have caused about 2,000 deaths since the war. 
Europe 
* PARIS -- France said it has asked Argentina to extradite Alfredo Astiz, a former navy captain known as the "blond angel of death," for the assassination of two French nuns in 1977. 
 Astiz, a symbol of the horrors of Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship, was sentenced in absentia by a French court in 1990 to life imprisonment for the murders of nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet. 
 He was arrested last month in Argentina in a roundup of military officials accused of murdering Spanish citizens during Argentina's dictatorship. 
A government spy with boyish good looks and a fearsome reputation, Astiz infiltrated human rights groups during the dictatorship and reportedly identified some victims to be kidnapped and murdered by kissing them during a church service. 
Asia 
* JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The perpetrators of the bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Indonesia's defense minister said, adding that there are many more terrorists still in the country. 
 "Each one of them has special abilities received from training in Afghanistan and Pakistan," said Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil. 
He said the bombers were linked to alleged members of the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiah who were arrested last month in the eastern town of Semarang. 
The State Department said it expected more such attacks on "soft targets" in Indonesia and warned against travel to the world's most populous Muslim nation. 
 "The U.S. government believes extremist elements may be planning additional attacks targeting U.S. interests in Indonesia," the State Department said in a new travel warning issued in response to Tuesday's bombing, which killed 10 people and wounded 150. 
 Predicting attacks on "softer targets," the advisory warned, "These may include facilities where Americans and Westerners are known to live, congregate, shop, or visit." 
* KABUL, Afghanistan -- Supporters of former king Mohammed Zahir Shah announced the formation of a movement to press for the restoration of the Afghan monarchy, hours after Zahir Shar, 88, returned from medical treatment abroad. The National Unity Movement, led by one of Zahir Shah's cousins, Sultan Ghazi, invited other royalists to join it. 
 "Apart from forming the movement today, participants also asked for the return of the constitutional monarchy," said Hakim Noorzaye, deputy head of the group. 
 In announcing the new movement, Noorzaye also resigned from his post as deputy head of intelligence in the government of the U.S.-backed president, Hamid Karzai. He criticized the administration as "a tool of warlords" and charged that a commission it appointed had already opted for a presidential system in a new constitution being secretly drafted. 
The Americas 
* RIO DE JANEIRO -- Eighty-four prisoners escaped from a maximum-security prison in northeastern Brazil through a 50-yard tunnel they dug to the jungle outside, police said. 
 In a breakout reminiscent of the 1963 Hollywood hit "The Great Escape," prisoners burrowed through a cell block, under two buildings and beyond a prison wall topped with watchtowers. 
 Only three prisoners had been captured by yesterday afternoon, police said, but the hunt continued. 
 A police officer in Joao Pessoa, a city in Paraiba state, said the breakout was the largest in the state's history. 
* MEXICO CITY -- The head of Mexico's largest leftist political party resigned, blaming an internal campaign to discredit her. Rosario Robles, president of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), had been dogged by media reports that said the party's debt was spiraling out of control under her leadership. 
The PRD nearly doubled its representation in Congress during July 6 midterm elections, winning 95 spots out of 500, and consolidated its hold on the capital's local legislature. 
 -- From News Services 






  
York Sunday News (York, PA)

August 10, 2003 Sunday



 Terror web wider than imagined;
Indonesian bombings unearth links between Islamic groups across region

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Even as a top Bali bomber awaits execution and Indonesia basks in world praise for firmly tackling terrorism, investigators say they are confronted with a network of terror far wider than previously imagined.
A devastating blast at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta two days before the bomber's sentencing has reinforced a suspicion that Islamic militancy in the world's most populous Muslim country is taking on new, more dangerous dimensions.
Jemaah Islamiyah -- the al-Qaida linked Southeast Asian terror network blamed for both the Bali and Marriott attacks -- is employing methods previously unheard of in Indonesia: a loosely defined command structure, individual cells operating independently of each other and a willingness to commit suicide. 
Militant links: Investigations into bombings blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah have also exposed links between Islamic militants in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore.
"Security in the region is under threat," said Arturo Lomibao, the Philippine chief of intelligence.
Yesterday, Indonesia's defense minister Matori Abdul Djalil said the perpetrators of the Marriott blast that killed 10 and injured 150 people trained with al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are many more Jemaah Islamiyah operatives still on the loose in Indonesia, he added.
Matori's comments followed some successes in the investigation of the Oct. 12 nightclub bombings on Bali that killed 202 people, including a death sentence issued Thursday to Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, the first of three dozen suspects to go on trial.
Before the Marriott blast, progress against Jemaah Islamiyah had begun to ease fears that the country would succumb to extremist violence.
Tuesday's bombing in the heart of Jakarta brought a stark reminder that Indonesia still has a long road ahead to crush Islamic militancy. And the battle is greatly complicated because Jemaah Islamiyah is, by all indications, taking its cues from foreign terrorists far removed from Indonesia's traditionally moderate practice of Islam.
"They're so rapacious they don't care if their collateral damage is innocent Indonesian taxi drivers," said Ralph Boyce, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia.







   
 

August 9, 2003 Saturday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: TERRORISM; 
Indonesia Identifies Hotel Bomber

 
The suicide bomber who the police say was responsible for the attack on the J. W. Marriott Hotel here was identified today as a 28-year-old recruit of the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah.
     The police said that after his vehicle exploded, the head of the recruit, Asmar Latin Sani, landed on the fifth floor of the hotel. He was identified from photographs by two Jemaah Islamiyah operatives who had been in police custody since June, according to Jakarta's chief of detectives, Erwin Mappaseng.  
 Jemaah Islamiyah has close links to Al Qaeda, according to terror experts, and the experts believe that the Indonesian group's operatives planned and carried out the attack in Bali last October. Both were aimed at American citizens, American officials said. But either because of faulty planning or chance, no Americans died in Tuesday's attack, while only 7 Americans were among the 202 killed in the Bali attack. 
The chief detective said the man identified as the suicide bomber had been recruited into the militant group by the two men in custody.
Initial reports had placed the number of dead at 16. But the Indonesian Red Cross said today that 10 people, including a Dutch businessman, were killed when the vehicle exploded in Jakarta, damaging the Marriott, a restaurant and an office building. Of the 152 wounded, most were Indonesians, the Red Cross said. 
A videotape of the scene taken by the hotel's security cameras in the moments before the vehicle exploded showed that the attack could have caused many more casualties, according to people who saw it. But, they said, the vehicle exploded before it could move close to the entrance of the Marriott lobby.
The Indonesian-made sport utility vehicle carried such a heavy load of explosives that the driver had trouble ascending the incline at the hotel's driveway, those who saw the tape said. As the driver, who came from Lampung, on the island of Sumatra, struggled with the clutch near the foot of the driveway, two hotel security guards approached, they said. The driver appeared to panic,setting off the explosion then.
The United States Embassy often booked rooms at the hotel for official guests. A former American ambassador to Indonesia, Edward Masters, and a former American ambassador to Malaysia, Paul Cleveland, were staying at the hotel, but were not inside the building at the time.
The connection of Jemaah Islamiyah to the Jakarta attack shows that Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, faces a deeper problem of destabilization from extremist Islam than its leaders have been willing to admit, Western officials said. In the last three years, there have been eight major bomb incidents in Indonesia.
But today, in an unusually candid assessment, the country's president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, conceded that Indonesia could not fight its terrorists alone. "It has become clear that no single country or group of countries can overcome this threat alone," Mrs. Megawati told a conference of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. She urged the association, whose members have prided themselves on not interfering in one other's affairs, to become a "full-fledged security community."
In another official admission of failure in combating terror, the national police chief, Da'i Bachtiar, said he was sorry that the authorities had not prevented the blast. "I apologize to the people," he said.







   
 

August 8, 2003 Friday  
  



 AFTER THE WAR: INDONESIA; 
Court Decides To Sentence Bali Bomber To Death

 
A court sentenced a grinning motorcycle mechanic to death today after convicting him for plotting the Bali nightclub terror attack that killed 202 people last October. 
     The man, known as Amrozi, 41, a suspected member of the Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, is the first defendant to be convicted in the Bali case. 
 Indonesian and American officials have said Jemaah Islamiyah was probably responsible for the car-bombing of the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta on Tuesday that killed 16 people and wounded more than 150. There was some speculation among officials that the attack had been timed as a warning to the Indonesian government on the eve of the verdict, the first in the Bali case. 
The verdict read to the court by the chief judge, I Made Karna, described the Bali attack as an "extraordinary crime" and a "crime against humanity." 
Immediately after the verdict, Amrozi, who has smiled at many of his court appearances, swiveled in his chair to face the crowded courtroom. He flashed a wide toothy grin and stretched out both arms with a thumbs-up gesture. In brief interviews during the trial that began in mid-May, Amrozi had said he wanted to be a martyr, and he mounted little defense during the trial. 
After the sentencing a lawyer for Amrozi said the defendant apologized to those who were not intended as targets. "He doesn't have anything personal against the Australians, for instance," the lawyer, Wirawan Adnan, said. "The targets were the Americans and the Jews." 
Nearly half of those who died in the nightclub blast were Australians on vacation, and there were loud cheers today from some of the victims' families who came for the sentencing. 
In announcing the sentence, Judge Karna said the panel of five judges had taken into account the feelings of the families. But the families of several British victims said they would appeal the sentence to prevent Amrozi from becoming a martyr in the eyes of Islamic extremists. 
The judges said they had also considered the feelings of the wounded and the extensive damage to the tourist-dependent Bali economy. 
Amrozi was the first suspect arrested in the Bali case. More than 30 others have been arrested and the trials of some, including that of Imam Samudra, considered to be the main organizer of the Bali operation, are drawing to a close.
During their trials, the defendants, who include two of Amrozi's brothers, said they were seeking to strike at Western interests and to inflict as many casualties as possible. The similarity of targets between the Bali nightclub and the Marriott hotel -- easy-to-enter places that are frequented by Westerners -- is one reason American and Indonesian officials believe Jemaah Islamiyah was involved in the attack on Tuesday. 
The Bali police chief, I Made Pastika, who led the Bali nightclub investigation and was at the courthouse briefly today, said "it looks like" Jemaah Islamiyah conducted the Marriott attack. He said the attacks were very similar in the type of explosives and the use of a car bomb. Today, the Indonesian police said the car bomb at the Marriott was activated by a mobile phone, the method used in Bali. 
The Indonesian government has been under considerable pressure from Western governments to show it is serious about the terrorist threat in the country, the most populous Muslim nation in the world. 
The Bush administration has praised the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri for its investigations into the Bali attack, and for the conduct of the trials. But a senior American official said that in order to keep the good will of the Bush administration, the Indonesian government would have to show the same commitment to investigating the Jakarta blast. 
Amrozi was sentenced according to provisions of a new antiterror decree imposed by the government after the Bali attack. He was captured by the Indonesian police in his village in East Java less than a month after the Oct. 12 nightclub bombing. Soon afterward, the police said, he confessed to buying explosives for the Bali bomb. He also said he bought a Mitsubishi van that was packed with explosives and detonated outside the nightclub. 
He followed a pattern common to many members of Jemaah Islamiyah. He went to Malaysia in the 1990's where he met the Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, described by Western and Indonesian officials as the head of the group. 
He apparently returned to Indonesia committed to the Jemaah Islamiyah cause of building an Islamic state in Indonesia and across substantial swaths of Southeast Asia. Mr. Bashir is on trial in Jakarta for involvement in a series of bombings in Indonesia, including attacks against Christian churches.







  



August 8, 2003 Friday  




 Militant Convicted In Bali Bombings

 
A Balinese judge today pronounced Islamic militant Amrozi bin Nurhasyim guilty of helping organize last October's nightclub bombings here and sentenced him to death. It was the first verdict in a series of cases growing from Indonesia's worst terror attack, which killed 202 people, many of them foreign tourists. 
Survivors and relatives of the victims cheered, applauded, embraced and wept as the chief judge, I Made Karna Parna, read the verdict and sentence in a firm, resonant voice. 
 Amrozi, dubbed the "laughing bomber" by the Indonesian press for the often amused expression on his face, swiveled in his chair to face the spectators after the verdict. He beamed and flashed two thumbs up. "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great," he shouted six times.  
 "He got death? Death!" said Danny Hanley, an Australian, as he pumped his fist in jubilation outside the courtroom. Hanley lost his two daughters when a powerful bomb that Amrozi was convicted of helping create exploded at the Sari Club, one of two nightclubs devastated on the resort island.  
Amrozi had acknowledged helping in the bombing and said earlier that he would willingly "die a martyr" and that "after me, there will be a million more Amrozis." But his attorneys said they would appeal the verdict. 
 "The death penalty is speaking about revenge, and that's not what justice is all about," said Wirawan Adnan, one of Amrozi's attorneys. "We appeal not because we believe our client is innocent. We appeal because we believe we need to correct the applications of the law. We believe that our client. . . is not getting a fair trial." 
The trial, which began April 10, was the first conducted under an anti-terror decree issued by President Megawati Sukarnoputri after the bombings and made into law earlier this year. Human rights groups have criticized the measure as repressive. 
The government contends that the law balances needs of security and counter-terrorism against demands for civil liberties in this country of 220 million, more than 80 percent of whom are Muslim, as it tries to build democracy after more than three decades of military-dominated rule. 
 Megawati's government has promised to destroy terrorist networks in Indonesia. Until a crackdown that began after the Bali bombings, the country had been criticized by neighbors as a laggard in the fight against radical Islamic militants. 
 Some analysts and human rights activists said the death sentence could lead to more attacks by a Southeast Asian network called Jemaah Islamiah, which many analysts here said was behind the bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in the capital, Jakarta, on Tuesday. In hopes of learning the identity of the bomber, authorities today released a photo of a severed head recovered at the scene. Investigators said it may be that of the bomber.  
 "The death sentence itself will be seen as the first step toward martyrdom by the people right in and around this small and dangerous group of people," said Sidney Jones, Indonesia project director for the International Crisis Group, a research and advocacy organization. 
 "It will create a desire for revenge, especially among alumni of training camps in Afghanistan, the southern Philippines and Chechnya," said Ismail Yusanto, a spokesman for Hizbut Tahrir, a Muslim group that seeks to impose Islamic law, or sharia, in Indonesia. 
 But a leader of one of the country's largest moderate Muslim organizations praised the outcome. "If the result comes from a fair trial, there is no reason to reject it, especially if Amrozi himself accepts it," said Din Syamsuddin, secretary general of Muhammadiyah, which claims 28 million members. "In Islam, we accept the death penalty. If you kill someone, then you have to accept that someone can kill you. 
In their investigation, police traced the van that carried one of the bombs to Amrozi through a serial number on the chassis. They also obtained testimony from the shop owner who sold him the chemicals used to make the bomb, and from Amrozi's brother, who said Amrozi had taken part in planning sessions.  
At the trial, Amrozi, 41, a motorcycle mechanic and one of three brothers arrested in connection with the attack, admitted he bought the explosives and the van. But he denied belonging to Jemaah Islamiah. 
The 20 or so survivors, victims' relatives and friends in court today appeared to care about only one thing: a conviction. Six Australians sat attentively in two rows toward the back of the courtroom. For seven hours, they heard a panel of judges reading in Bahasa Indonesia from the judgment document, which contained particulars of the testimony of 58 witnesses. 
 The Australians turned occasionally to an interpreter, who whispered a recap of the judges' words. "They said he had been at a meeting in July 2002, where they discussed a plot to kill white Westerners," she said at one point. "They said that Amrozi had bought the van . . . and had been involved in other bombings before. . . . So it's not looking good for Amrozi." 
 "Good," said Hanley, 57, whose eyes still appeared haunted by the loss of his daughters -- Renae Anderson, who perished at the scene, and Simone Hanley, who died 58 days later. 
 David Ure, 23, who was in the Sari Club with his girlfriend when the bomb exploded, said he was never sure the court would convict. "It seemed the judges swayed back and forth," said Ure, who lives in Victoria, Australia. "But in the end, common sense prevailed." 
 Natalie Juniardi, another Australian, clutched a photo of her husband, John, one of 38 Indonesians killed. He had gone to the Sari Club for drinks with the staff of the shop the couple owned. "It's a relief," she said of the verdict. "Here, at least, I've been able to let out some of my anger." 
 Australia, which lost 88 citizens in the attack, has no death penalty, but Australians who were interviewed here today were adamant that Amrozi deserved no less. "We're just all relieved that one person got the death penalty, and we just hope the rest get it as soon as possible," Juniardi said. 
 Hanley had more vehement words for Amrozi. "I've got a message for you," he said, looking into television cameras. "You will not be going to paradise with your 14 virgins. You will burn in hell." 
 Special correspondent Noor Huda Ismail contributed to this report. 






  
   


August 7, 2003 Thursday



 IBD'S TOP 10

 
EU Says Microsoft Monopolizing
1 Its antitrust arm charged the firm abused the dominant position of Windows. The EU may order Microsoft to share software code with rivals and change the way it distributes its Media Player. It could also levy a fine of up to 10% of Microsoft's worldwide sales. The investigation has been under way for four years. But investors weren't too worried; Microsoft lost 1 cent. More on this page
Pfizer Restricts Sales To Canada
2 The world's No. 1 drug maker joins other rivals in restricting sales to Canada. Pfizer will sell its drugs in Canada directly to pharmacies. That'll make it easier for Pfizer to track them. Congress is debating reimportation of drugs from Canada. Drug makers have tolerated Canada's price controls because it's a small market. But the U.S., the world's biggest, is key to profits. 
First U.S. Troops Land In Liberia
3 A helicopter carried 7 Marines to the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia. Outside the capital, a West African force that had grown to 500 awaited equipment before moving in. President Bush said the Marines will clear the way for humanitarian aid. Food is scarce after the last two months of civil war. President Charles Taylor is expected today to formally announce his plan to resign.
Nasdaq Dips Again In Fast Trade
4 The tech-laden index fell 1.2%, its 2nd straight distribution day and the third in the last 10 sessions. The S&P 500 edged up 0.2%, the Dow 0.3%. The five-year Treasury auction fared better than Tuesday's three-year auction, lifting blue chips and bonds. The 10-year Treasury yield fell 12 basis points to 4.28%. More on this page
Police See Link In Jakarta Blast
5 Indonesian police suspect the militant Muslim group Jemaah Islamiah of car-bombing Jakarta's five-star JW Marriott Hotel. At least 10 were killed. Singapore's Straits Times reported the group claimed responsibility. In July, police seized documents showing it had targeted the area. Jemaah Islamiah has links to al-Qaida and is widely blamed for last year's attack in Bali.
Home Buyers Try To Lock In Rates
6 With mortgage rates racing from a 45-year low to a 1-year high, applications for home mortgages rose 6.9% last week to the 2nd highest level ever. Refi demand fell to an eight-month low. Overall mortgage demand rose 1.1%. Luxury home builder Toll Bros. said home building revenue rose 20% in Q3, with business picking up after rates started rising.
Zimmer Wins Centerpulse Battle
7 Britain's Smith & Nephew dropped out of a bidding war for the Swiss maker of orthopedics and spinal and dental implants, leaving U.S. rival Zimmer the winner with its $3.1 bil offer. A Centerpulse buy would make Zimmer the world's No. 1 orthopedics firm. Zimmer rose 7% to a new high of 50.43; Smith & Nephew added 7% to 64.25. But Centerpulse pulled back 2% to 27.05.
HMO Stocks Tumble On Outlook
8 Despite strong Q2 results, HMOs have been sliding on fears of slowing enrollment and tight government budgets. Dismissed by some as the usual yearly re-evaluation of HMOs, Smith Barney cut HMOs. Humana fell 6%, UnitedHealth 4% and Aetna 9%. A Kansas court blocked Anthem, which fell 5%, from buying Kansas Blue Cross.
Israel Sets 334 Palestinians Free
9 Meant as a goodwill gesture, the prisoner release wasn't part of the U.S.-backed peace road map, but was a key Palestinian demand. Despite emotional reunions, Palestinians complained too few were let go and many were due for release soon anyway. They want thousands freed. Israel holds over 7,000, most suspected of terrorism.
Public Bankruptcies At 3-Yr Low
10 In the 1st half, 76 public companies filed for bankruptcy, the fewest since 1st-half '00, said PricewaterhouseCoopers. Bankruptcy assets at filing fell to $38 bil vs. $104 bil in 1st-half '01 and $147 bil in 1st-half '02. Pricewaterhouse sees just 160 filings in '03 vs. 189 in 2002, a record 257 in 2001 and 179 in 2000. It cited lower borrowing rates.






   


August 7, 2003 Thursday



 U.S. links Marriottbombing to terror group

 
New York Times
JAKARTA, Indonesia - The terror attack at the J.W. Marriott Hotel that killed at least 16 people and wounded 150 on Tuesday was almost certainly the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, a group that is closely linked to al-Qaida, U.S. officials said yesterday.
Most of the senior members of Jemaah Islamiyah, including its top operations officer and its most skilled bombmakers, still were at large even though about 50 members of the group have been arrested since the attack on a Bali nightclub 10 months ago, they said. 
The blast at the Marriott illustrated what had been known for months: that Jemaah Islamiyah, a group intent on achieving an Islamic state in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, consisted of many independent cells, each with the capacity to mount attacks, the officials said.
Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world, and its sprawling archipelago with 220 million people lends near-perfect cover for fugitives.
The operations officer of Jemaah Islamiyah, known as Hambali, is among the "top echelon" of al-Qaida members wanted by the United States, an American official said. The bomb experts, Dulmatin and Azahari Husin, believed to have made the bomb for the Bali explosion, have been targets of searches by the Indonesian authorities for many months.
Another bomb expert, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, escaped from a jail in the Philippines last month.
Amrozi, a defendant in the Bali bombing trials and an accused member of Jemaah Islamiyah, is scheduled to appear in a Bali court today to hear the verdict in his case. There was some speculation that the Marriott attack was timed as a warning to the government not to impose the death penalty, which Amrozi could face if convicted.







   
 

August 7, 2003 Thursday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE ATTACK; 
Group Linked to Al Qaeda Seen Behind Jakarta Blast

 
The terror attack at the J. W. Marriott Hotel that killed at least 16 people and wounded 150 on Tuesday was almost certainly the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, a group terror experts have linked closely to Al Qaeda, American officials said today. 
     Most of the senior members of Jemaah Islamiyah, including its top operations officer and its most skilled bomb makers, remain at large even though about 50 members of the group have been arrested since the attack on a Bali nightclub 10 months ago, they said. 
 The blast at the Marriott illustrated what had been known for months, the officials said: that Jemaah Islamiyah, a group intent on achieving an Islamic state in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, consisted of many independent cells, each with the capacity to mount attacks. Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country, and its sprawling archipelago with 220 million people provides near perfect cover for fugitives.  
The group's operations officer, known as Hambali, is among the "top echelon" of Qaeda members wanted by the United States, an American official said. The bomb experts, Dulmatin and Azahari Husin, who the Indonesian authorities have said made the bomb for the Bali explosion, have been the targets of searches by the Indonesian authorities for many months. 
Another bomb expert, Fathur Roman al-Ghozi, was allowed to escape from a Philippine jail last month, according to the Philippine government. 
A defendant in the Bali bombing trials and a suspected member of Jemaah Islamiyah, Amrozi, is to appear in a Bali court on Thursday to hear the verdict in his case. There was some speculation that the Marriott attack was timed as a warning to the government not to impose the death penalty, which Mr. Amrozi could face if convicted. 
Another defendant in the Bali attack, Imam Samudra, told reporters in Bali today that he was "happy" about the attack in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. 
The center of the city returned to a sense of normalcy today as Indonesian officials said they would impose new security measures at major hotels and businesses. But precisely what those measures would be was not immediately clear. 
The choice of the 33-story Marriott, the most visibly American building in the city, left little doubt about the intentions of the terrorists. 
"In 20-20 hindsight, the Marriott was an obvious choice," said Ken Conboy, who heads a security company, Risk Management Advisory. "It had a reputation as an American brand; it flaunted its American connection." 
Interrogations of Jemaah Islamiyah members who have been arrested showed that they tended to give considerable thought to their choice of targets and the aftereffects, Mr. Conboy said. 
The Marriott, which was often the site of American events, was considered to have some of the best security in the capital. Even so, the trunks and undercarriages of cars were not inspected before they drove up to the front door, and the floor-to-ceiling windows of the coffee shop that bore the brunt of the attack on Tuesday faced the driveway. Guests at a Fourth of July celebration at the Marriott this year had to leave their cars at the foot of the driveway and walk 100 yards to the hotel entrance. 
A Jakarta police spokesman, Prasetyo, said the Indonesian authorities had found information about a planned attack on the Marriott when the police raided a Jemaah Islamiyah hideout in Semarang in central Java last month. Nine suspected members of Jemaah Islamiyah were arrested in Jakarta and Semarang at or around the same time. 
But the United States ambassador, Ralph L. Boyce, dismissed the notion that there was prior knowledge. "We didn't have any information that the Marriott was targeted," he said today. 
Because of mounting information from Indonesian sources of possible new attacks by Jemaah Islamiyah, he said, the United States Embassy has been at a "very high state of alert" and warnings had been in place for Americans living in and visiting Indonesia. "Soft targets" where foreigners gathered -- hotels and restaurants, for example -- have been of particular concern. 
The Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, took the unusual step of predicting a possible terrorist attack in Indonesia "in the next day or so," and on Aug. 17, when Indonesia celebrates its independence. "That is a day when we think it's possible there could be a terrorist attack in the central Jakarta area," he said. 
American officials said they preferred not to be so precise about possible attacks but, instead, to emphasize precaution at all times. 
The methods used in the Bali and Jakarta attacks were similar, the head of the Jakarta criminal investigation department, Erwin Mappaseng said today. 
Both involved a vehicle packed with explosives being driven to the site. The police said today that potassium chloride and TNT, both substances used in the Bali bomb, were found on the Marriott driveway, where an Indonesian brand sport utility vehicle packed with explosives blew up. The bomber appears to have been in the S.U.V., Indonesian officials said. A suicide bomber was involved in the Bali attack. 
A senior Australian official said today he was not surprised by the Marriott blast. "Everyone has been waiting for another attack," he said. "This is no more and no less than a reminder that Jemaah Islamiyah is still there, has the capability, and will use that capability from time to time." 
But the Australian warned that the Jakarta attack showed a ratcheting up of Jemaah Islamiyah's tactics. "Bali was rationalized by the expatriates as being a tourist place, of being Hindu," he said. 
Senior Australian officials said that by attacking a Western institution in the heart of the capital, the Islamic group was trying to create fear in the expatriate community. By intimidating foreigners, the militants would drive the struggling economy into deeper trouble, a goal that was consistent with their ideal of wanting to establish a radical Islamic state in a place where most of the population is moderate in its religious beliefs. 




14


  



August 7, 2003 Thursday  




 Terror in Indonesia

 
 INDONESIAN POLICE officials disclosed yesterday that they had unearthed documents a month ago warning of a terrorist attack in the Jakarta neighborhood where a truck bomb was detonated Tuesday. Officials at the U.S. Embassy and at the JW Marriott Hotel, where at least 10 people were killed when the bomb went off, said they hadn't been told anything about such documents, The Post's Ellen Nakashima reported. The revelation will focus more attention on the question of whether the Indonesian government is doing enough to combat the threat from radical Islamic terrorist organizations, notably the al Qaeda-affiliated Jemaah Islamiah. There's no question that Indonesia was slow to acknowledge the threat, that the government has been moving more aggressively in recent months and particularly since a deadly bombing in Bali last fall and that a lot more needs to be done. How much more may emerge as the investigation into this latest bombing unfolds.  
Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous nation, and the most populous with a Muslim majority. Its significance in the global fight against Islamic terrorism can hardly be overstated. Traditionally Indonesian Muslims have shared their Asian archipelago nation with Christians, Hindus and others; Islamic rule has never been imposed. Lately, though, a more doctrinaire form of Islam has been gaining ground among a growing minority of Indonesians. 
The response has to be both tactical and strategic. As the International Crisis Group has reported, many of the leaders of the terrorist organizations have been trained in Afghanistan, either during the anti-Soviet war or since; it will take intelligence and police work to track them down. Many of the foot soldiers are young students of Islamic schools that preach intolerance, often with Saudi financing. While the focus of such groups used to be internal -- resentment of communal violence against Muslims within Indonesia -- now they are looking outward and particularly seeing the United States as a target. The larger picture is of a nation in difficult transition from dictatorship; since the 32-year reign of autocratic President Suharto ended in 1998, the nation has had three leaders. Its challenges include deep-seated economic troubles, ethnic divisions, corruption, tensions over the place of the powerful military in society and human rights abuses by some parts of those armed forces. It's in the West's interest to help the transition in any way possible -- to help a Muslim-majority country succeed as a tolerant democracy. 
The terrorists who attacked the Marriott Tuesday showed themselves, as have the perpetrators of past attacks in other continents, to care as little for Muslim life as for anyone else. Most of the dead and injured are Indonesians, many of them poor workers. The larger effect will also be primarily to hurt Indonesia, by discouraging tourists and investors. But harm to Indonesia reverberates painfully around the globe. 







  



August 7, 2003 Thursday  




 Jakarta Police Were Warned of an Attack

 
 Indonesian police seized documents last month showing that terrorists had targeted the Jakarta financial district, which includes the JW Marriott Hotel where a powerful bomb concealed in a van exploded and killed at least 10 people Tuesday, police said.  
 Authorities said they responded to the documents by increasing police patrols in the area and warning businesses and hotels. But officials at several of the hotels, including the Marriott, said Wednesday that they were never notified of a threat. 
 It was not clear whether the documents foretold Tuesday's attack, which police said today was probably detonated by a cell phone signal. About 150 people, including two Americans, were injured in the attack, the worst terror strike in Indonesia since 202 people were killed in the bombing of two nightclubs on the island of Bali last October.  
 The documents were captured in a raid on a safe house in Semarang, a city in the central region of Java, Indonesia's main island. In connection with the raid, police charged eight people alleged to be members of Jemaah Islamiah, a regional terror organization that investigators have linked to al Qaeda. The raid also netted large amounts of explosives, including 2,000 pounds of potassium chlorate, a fertilizer compound. 
 "In the documents there were some strategic areas [noted], including the area where the Marriott is located," said a spokesman for the Jakarta police department, Prasetyo, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. "There was a warning that there were some targets, and we have been anticipating an attack." 
 Some Western security officials expressed concern that the discovery of the documents and explosives did not lead authorities to move more aggressively to protect the area. "These guys are in effect saying they had advance warning," a security official said. "I can't believe it." 
 The public relations manager at the Marriott, Melani Sola Gratia, said Wednesday that the hotel had not received a police warning within the past month. Officials from the Jakarta Convention Center and two nearby hotels, the Park Lane Jakarta and the Sahid Jaya, also said they had not received a warning. 
 U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce said Wednesday that U.S. officials had not been told about the documents. If they had been, he said, they would have been required under a "duty to warn" policy to alert civilians and government officials. Since the Marriott opened two years ago, it has been a favorite venue for U.S. Embassy functions. 
Police in Jakarta said this morning they had identified a suspect named Asmal, who they believe was the driver of the van. Police said they were trying to obtain DNA samples from members of his family to compare with a severed hand found near the bomb site. 
The Jakarta bureau of the Straits Times, a Singapore newspaper, received a call from a man claiming to speak for Jemaah Islamiah, according to the bureau chief, Derwin Pereira. The caller said the group carried out the bombing as a "bloody warning" to President Megawati Sukarnoputri to stop a crackdown on Islamic militants.  
 The bomb was hidden in a Toyota minivan that entered the Marriott driveway in front of a restaurant packed with lunch-hour diners. 
Police said a hotel security videotape showed a metallic blue minivan slowing as it entered the hotel's U-shaped driveway, stopping about 50 yards from the lobby entrance, close to the hotel restaurant. 
Two security guards approached the driver, but before they could ask him to move, the bomb exploded, police said. The tape showed a fireball rolling toward the hotel entrance. Part of a body believed to be that of the driver was recovered on the hotel's third floor.  
Police said the vehicle's hand brake was set, and determined that four jerrycans of gasoline were placed around the bomb, presumably to maximize its impact. 
Charlotte Sterling, spokeswoman for Marriott International Inc., the Bethesda-based company that manages the Jakarta hotel, said a security guard at the hotel saw a the van struggling to come up the driveway. It looked suspicious to him, so following standard procedure, he went to check on it. She said the bomb detonated as the guard approached the van, and he was among the people killed. 
"Had he not been following protocols, you could imagine the impact could have been so much worse," Sterling said. "He was really heroic." She said hotel workers were trying to establish a fund for him and other workers who were killed. 
Police said 10 people were killed in the attack. A Washington Post check of hospitals and morgues on Wednesday, however, found 10 identified and two unidentified fatalities. The Australian government said 16 people were killed. 
Police released a sketch of a man who allegedly bought the vehicle from its previous owner for about $ 3,000 two weeks ago. 
Indonesia's chief security official, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, acknowledged Wednesday that the country's intelligence capabilities needed to be strengthened. He said there could be more terrorist attacks in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world. 
Intelligence services from Indonesia and other nations had warned for months about the possibility of attacks in the region, on the grounds that police have only partially disrupted Jemaah Islamiah. "The score card is they're down, they're not out," said Zachary Abuza, a professor at Simmons College in Boston who has written about the group.  
In Australia, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told reporters that his government had obtained intelligence in the hours after the bombing that there could be more terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including in central Jakarta, in coming days. 
 Police from several countries, including Australia, Singapore and the United States, are helping Indonesia in the probe. President Bush expressed his condolences to Indonesia's president in a telephone call on Wednesday from his ranch in Texas. 
Forensic experts continued searching the wreckage of the bombing Wednesday, as hotel employees came to retrieve belongings. Wreaths of flowers adorned the area, a gesture also seen at the site of the last year's bombing in Bali. 
 Special correspondent Noor Huda Ismail, and staff writers Mike Allen in Crawford, Tex., and Dana Hedgpeth in Washington contributed to this report. 






   


August 6, 2003 Wednesday



 Bombing at hotel in Indonesia kills 14;
148 injured in blast outside Marriott

 
Associated Press
JAKARTA, Indonesia - A suspected suicide bombing at the Marriott Hotel created lunchtime carnage in Jakarta's business district yesterday, killing 14 people and wounding 148, setting cars afire and scattering glass shards for blocks in a bloody reminder of the continuing threat of terrorism in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
The blast came two days before a verdict in the trial of a key suspect in the Bali nightclub bombings last Oct. 12 that killed 202 people, many of them foreigners. A Dutch banker was among the dead yesterday, and at least 10 foreigners, including two Americans, were reported injured.
The attack occurred on the first day of testimony in another bombing case by the alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been blamed for the Bali bombings. Authorities have linked the group to al-Qaida and say it hopes to create an Islamic state across Southeast Asia. 
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the Marriott bombing.
The governor of Jakarta, Sutiyoso, said the attack was "very likely" carried out by a suicide bomber. The national police chief, Gen. Da'i Bachtiar, said the van carrying the bomb was moving at the time of the explosion.
World leaders expressed horror and outrage. The White House called it a "deplorable attack on innocent civilians" and declared its support for the Indonesian government's fight against terrorism.
The Marriott - a frequent site for U.S. Embassy functions and a popular destination for foreigners - was shattered just after noon when the bomb exploded on the driveway leading to its front entrance.
The blast smashed many windows in the 33-story hotel and smoke from burning cars blackened the outside of lower floors. The lobby ceiling caved in on charred sofas and overturned tables.
"Women ran out of the hotel screaming, 'Help! Help!' " said Supria, a construction worker. He said rescuers used fire extinguishers to douse people engulfed in flames.
"I thought a plane must have hit the building," said office worker Iin, who like many Indonesians uses a single name.
Inside a ground-floor restaurant at an adjacent building, half-eaten pasta dishes sat on tables covered in broken glass. At an abandoned Marriott restaurant, a table held a plate of fish, salad and corn on the cob, alongside bottles of Hunt's ketchup and extra hot chili sauce.
Ceiling and wall panels lay in the street outside the hotel. The blast damaged the embassies of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark in the adjacent Rajawali building, but no staffers were injured, officials said.
"People were screaming, panicking," said Sodik, a witness. "I thought it was an earthquake."
Puddles of blood and broken glass could be seen for two blocks around the Marriott. The Indonesian Red Cross put the death toll at 14 and said 148 people were wounded.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said no Americans were killed. He said one of the two injured Americans was hospitalized with burns and the other was treated and released. Their identities were not released.
It was just under 10 months ago that suspected Islamic militants blew up two nightclubs on the idyllic island of Bali and catapulted Indonesia into the front lines of the international war on terrorists.
The government has won praise for its efforts to crack down on extremists and bring those responsible for the Bali attacks to justice. In recent months, tourism and foreign investment had begun to rebound, and the U.S. Embassy in April gave permission for staffers to bring back their families.
All that has now been thrown into question.
The Indonesian currency, the rupiah, fell more than 2 percent yesterday and the Jakarta stock exchange closed 3.1 percent lower. Businesses and hotels reported immediate cancellations.
"This is another very, very tragic event for Indonesia's efforts of recovery," said Anders Backman of the Swedish Embassy.
Bachtiar, the police chief, said officials suspected the bomb was carried in an Indonesian-made Kijang van. He said its chassis number had been found along with the vehicle's registration number.
"From the things we found at the crime scene it looks very much like the bomb in Bali," Bachtiar said. "The situation is like it was in Bali."
Suspicions immediately pointed toward Jemaah Islamiyah.
The group's alleged leader, Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, took the stand for the first time yesterday at his trial on treason charges tied to Christmas Eve church bombings in 2000. Testifying before the Marriott explosion, he admitted giving his blessing to Islamic militants who trained in the Philippines and in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
Bashir, however, denies any link to terrorism.
About three dozen people suspected of belonging to Jemaah Islamiyah have been arrested in the Bali blasts and could be executed if convicted.
Having seen the economic fallout from the Bali bombings, Indonesian leaders moved quickly yesterday to bolster security.
Security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the government had ordered strict security checks at the airport and other public places.
He called the blast a "diabolical and inhumane terrorist attack."
President Megawati Sukarnoputri toured the wreckage and visited the wounded at a hospital. On Friday, she gave a state-of-the-nation address calling militants "a terrifying threat" and vowing to "dismantle the terrorist network to its roots."







   
 

August 6, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 The Jakarta Bombing 

 
Indonesia, hit yesterday by its second high- profile terrorist bombing in less than a year, is acquiring a reputation as a soft target for international terrorism. The country's oil, large Muslim population and strategic location are all contributing factors. But as important as anything are the cumulative effects of chronic misgovernment. 
     It isn't yet clear who is responsible for yesterday's car bombing of the Jakarta Marriott Hotel, which killed 10 to 15 people and injured about 150. Early indications, including the choice of an American-owned target, suggest that Al Qaeda or one of its local affiliates may be involved. Perhaps not coincidentally, two men from one of those affiliates, Jemaah Islamiyah, are now being tried for last year's bombings in Bali, which left more than 200 people dead, many of them Western tourists. 
 There is nothing inevitable about Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population, becoming a haven for terrorists. The characteristic forms of Islam in Indonesia are moderate and tolerant. The main motor of instability there is not religion but repression. 
President Megawati Sukarnoputri enjoys far more democratic legitimacy than her predecessors. Sadly, she has not so far used her authority to press for needed reforms. She is not doing nearly enough to subordinate the country's harsh and corrupt military to civilian control and promote the rule of law. Without this, victory over terrorism will be hard to achieve. The Bush administration is right to offer Jakarta help in the common struggle against terrorism. It must also insist, however, that civil liberties and democratic accountability not become the first victims of the Megawati government's enhanced antiterror campaign. 
Helping fight terror in Indonesia should not mean handing unchecked power to its already unaccountable army, which remains repressive more than five years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship. Mrs. Megawati has wrongly indulged the military. She has allowed it to retain excessive influence over economic and political life, let high-ranking officers escape accountability for massacres in East Timor and unleashed a ruthless new campaign against separatists in the province of Aceh. Fighting terror effectively requires winning the cooperation of ordinary Indonesians, not further alienating them through military highhandedness.
Mrs. Megawati's failures do not excuse these or any acts of terrorism. Al Qaeda fanatics are fighting their own international jihad, which has little to do with democracy or Indonesian politics. But misgovernment has helped make Indonesia a soft target. Jakarta can best fight back by speeding its transformation into a more democratic society. 







   
 

August 6, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE ATTACK; 
INDONESIA BOMBING KILLS AT LEAST 10 IN MIDDAY ATTACK

 
A sport utility vehicle packed with explosives blew up here in Indonesia's capital early Tuesday afternoon, killing at least 10, and as many as 15, people and wounding nearly 150 in a Marriott hotel, a large restaurant and an office building. It was the most devastating attack on Indonesian soil since the twin blasts in Bali last October.
     There were no immediate claims of responsibility, but because all three buildings were frequented by Americans, Indonesia's vice president, Hamzah Haz, said the attack appeared to have been aimed at American interests.  Page A10.  
 But the toll may be high among Indonesians. An American Embassy spokesman said here today that no Americans had been killed, though one had been treated for injuries and released and a second was still being treated at a local hospital but was not in critical condition. Local news media said this morning that of 15 dead counted at various hospitals, all but one was Indonesian. 
PT Rabobank Duta Indonesia, a bank that is majority-owned by Rabobank of the Netherlands, said the blast had killed Hans Winkelmolen, a Dutch citizen who had been its president until last Friday. 
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. The faith has traditionally been moderate here, but more radical pockets have taken root in recent years, first bringing separatist fighting, then terrorist attacks. Many have been linked to the group Jemaah Islamiyah, which has itself been linked to Al Qaeda. 
The explosion on Tuesday came two days before an Indonesian court was expected to announce a verdict in the first of a number of cases of men suspected to be members of Jemaah Islamiyah and accused of planning and carrying out the Bali attack, which killed 202 people, many of them Australian. At least one suspect has said the Bali attacks were meant to hurt "America and its allies because they are international terrorists." 
The White House strongly condemned the bombing Tuesday and said it would provide any assistance possible to Indonesia.
Prime Minister John Howard told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the attack "had all the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiyah." 
The Jakarta government immediately said it would impose more stringent controls on its people. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the coordinating minister for political and security affairs, said aftera cabinet meeting, "Those who criticize about human rights being breached must understand that all the bombing victims are more important than any human rights issue." 
The explosion on Tuesday appeared to have been carefully planned and timed. Indonesian officials said the vehicle was apparently moving through the horseshoe-shaped driveway serving the buildings when it exploded, and they suggested that this pointed to a suicide bomber. The police said the vehicle was a Toyota Kijang, which can carry eight people in its three rows of seats. (It is slightly larger than the Toyota 4Runner sold in the United States.) The S.U.V. burned fiercely after the blast.
The explosion took place at lunchtime, devastating the hotel's Sailandra Restaurant, a popular gathering place for expatriates and wealthy Indonesians. It ripped a six-foot hole in the pavement, tearing open a ragged skylight for the hotel basement below. 
It seriously damaged the 33-floor Marriott's lower floors and blew in windows on its higher floors. John Wolf, a Marriott spokesman, said 273 guests were registered. Three guests and eight hotel employees were injured, he said. He added that while no Marriott employees had been killed, he did not know whether any guests were among the dead. 
The hotel, which opened just two years ago, had been a symbol of Indonesia's gradual recovery from the Asian financial crisis of 1997, which so devastated the economy that it remains under the supervision of the International Monetary Fund. The bombing is a serious blow to hopes of emerging from that supervision by the end of this year. The American Embassy held its last two July 4th parties at the hotel. 
The office building, which houses the offices of many American companies, was also damaged. 
This morning, more than 100 local residents watched silently, pointing at some of the worst gashes in the buildings' facades, while four long military trucks stood near the Marriott. Dozens of white-shirted police officers stood outside the yellow tape cordoning off the site. Investigators appeared slow to enter the site, perhaps because of the criticism Indonesia received after evidence was not preserved at the Bali scene. 
Six incinerated taxis still stood near the entrance to the driveway while two gray, soot-stained pieces of metal that appeared to be chunks of automotive body panels could be seen in the Marriott's blue-tiled swimming pool, located on a terrace 20 yards above street level and nearly 100 yards from the site of the blast. In an adjacent office building, workers on several floors were picking up glass that had gone scything across offices shortly before 1 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon. 
President Megawati Sukarnoputri visited the site within hours, but made no public statement. 
The first verdict in the Bali cases, involving the trial of Amrozi, a defendant who is accused of playing a central role in planning that attack, is to be handed down on Thursday. 
Abu Bakar Bashir, a 64-year-old cleric whom intelligence officials have described as leading Jemaah Islamiyah, is being tried separately for subversion, although he is not accused of direct involvement in the Bali attacks; he has denied that Jemaah Islamiyah exists.
The man believed to be Jemaah Islamiyah's top bombmaking expert, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, escaped from a jail in the Philippines last month. Another activist often described as the former operations chief of Jemaah Islamiyah, Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, has been the target of an international manhunt by law enforcement agencies since 2001. He isbelieved to be the link between Al Qaeda and the Indonesian group. 
Noel Choong, the southeast Asian regional manager of the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Center, said in an interview last week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that Jemaah Islamiyah was an especially hard group to counter because its very loose organization meant that even a handful of activists could decide to carry out an attack.
Indonesia has considerable oil and natural gas reserves and lies astride the main routes used by ships carrying oil from the Mideast to East Asian countries. It has been struggling to rebuild its tourism industry since the Bali bombings. 
The State Department renewed on June 12 its advice for Americans to defer all nonessential travel to Indonesia, citing the continued risk of terrorism as well as a stepped-up effort by the Indonesian military since May to suppress a secessionist movement in Aceh province, in the country's northwestern corner.






   


August 6, 2003, Wednesday



 HOTEL HORROR BLAST - 14 KILLED BY INDONESIA BOMB LINKED TO QAEDA

 
WASHINGTON - A terror group linked to al Qaeda has reportedly claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of a Marriott hotel in Jakarta yesterday that killed at least 14 and injured 150.
Singapore's Straits Times reported that an "operative" from Jemaah Islamiyah - which is believed to have carried out the bombing of a Bali nightclub last year - told the paper that the group had blown up the hotel as "a bloody warning" against further crackdowns on Islamic militants in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
"This is a message [to] all our enemies that, if they execute any of our Muslim brothers, we will continue this campaign of terror in Indonesia and the region," the operative said, according to the newspaper. 
Yesterday's bombing was similar to the Bali attack - both involved explosives in vans and targeted places where foreigners gather - and it coincided with the terrorism trials of two high-profile Jemaah Islamiyah members.
About three dozen alleged members face execution for the Bali blasts, which killed 202.
The Marriott is frequented by Americans who work at the nearby U.S. Embassy. Two Americans were hurt by the blast, which sent flames roaring through the lobby, bringing down its ceiling.
One of the two was hospitalized with second-degree burns, and the other was treated and released, the State Department said. Names weren't released, but a source said one was an overseas contractor. The explosion occurred during the lunch hour. Many of the victims were dining in the cafes and restaurants in the hotel or those along the street.
The hotel was about 75 percent full. The embassies of Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, all nearby, were damaged.
"Women ran out of the hotel screaming, aeHelp! Help!' " said a construction worker named Supria.
Rescuers used fire extinguishers on people who were in flames.
The attack occurred just hours before Jemaah Islamiyah's spiritual leader, Muslim cleric Abu Bakar, started testifying at his trial in a Jakarta courtroom, on charges stemming from a series of Christmas Eve bombings three years ago.







   
 

July 29, 2003 Tuesday  
  



 Failed Manila Mutiny Leaves U.S. Ties Secure 

 
For the Bush administration, the Philippines is seen as a beachhead for American troops in the campaign against terrorism in Southeast Asia, and the mutiny by some 300 soldiers over the weekend seems unlikely to change Washington's warmth toward President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
     Mrs. Arroyo, who was trained as an economist and educated in the United States, appears to be President Bush's favorite leader in the region. He treated her to a state visit in Washington in May, and he plans to come to Manila in October en route to an Asian summit meeting in Thailand. No other country in the region has received such personal attention from Mr. Bush.  
 That is in part because no other country -- not the Muslim nations of Indonesia or Malaysia, not even pro-American Singapore -- has been willing to allow American troops to train on its territory to the extent that the Philippines has, officials said. 
Mrs. Arroyo delivered her State of the Nation address today, and made no reference to the revolt beyond pledging again that she would ask an independent commission to investigate the complaints of the rebellious officers. 
Just before her speech, the government said it had arrested a member of the cabinet of the former president, Joseph Estrada, in connection with the mutiny. The arrested man, Ramon Cardenas, was deputy executive secretary to Mr. Estrada, Mrs. Arroyo's immediate predecessor. Some of her supporters have suggested that Mr. Estrada, in alliance with conservative elements in the military, was behind the mutiny. 
Western experts said the mutiny was certainly not the handiwork of idealistic young officers. The handsome armbands, the sophisticated food supplies and the blue water bottles of the mutineers suggested logistical support well beyond the means of officers pooling their resources, one expert said. 
In an effort to show resolute support for Mrs. Arroyo, the American ambassador, Francis Ricciardone, said in a statement on Sunday that "at this time, we don't believe there is a real threat to the Arroyo government." 
Plans by the Pentagon to conduct a joint mission with the Philippine military later this year, an effort to build on smaller training efforts in the last two years, are still under way, an American military official said today.
"We are still talking with the Philippine government about a possible training event later this year," the official said. No decisions have been made on location or schedules, he said. 
The Pentagon announced earlier this year that 1,700 American soldiers would go to the southern Philippines, an area that has become a training ground for Al Qaeda's Southeast Asia affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah. The Philippines, a former colony of the United States, is predominantly Christian.
In June, the commander of the Pacific forces, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, said the exercise would be delayed until the end of year to allow time to work out the rules of engagement. The Philippine Constitution forbids foreign forces to fight on its territory, a prohibition that American military planners say requires defining more precisely the nature of the mission. 
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has pressed Pentagon planners to devise more flexible troop deployments in the Pacific arena, and has become intensely interested in having American troops do more antiterror training there, the American military official said.
The weekend revolt highlighted the difficulties the United States faces in trying to help the Philippine military, which is considered one of the most corrupt in the region. Some of the 70 officers who led the revolt were members of two elite rapid reaction forces chosen by the Pentagon in the last year for antiterror training.







  



July 28, 2003 Monday  




 Immigrants Fear Deportation After Registration; 
Number of Mideast, Muslim Men Expelled Rises Sharply

 
Andre Aniba acknowledges he hasn't always played by the rules. In 1998, the former pastry chef came to the United States from Tunisia on a three-month tourist visa. He has lived here ever since. 
But when Congress passed legislation two years later that allowed illegal immigrants to apply for permanent residency, Aniba quickly sent in the proper forms.  Early this year, when the government called on visitors from 25 nations that are considered havens for terrorists to register with immigration authorities, he dutifully appeared. 
To his horror, Aniba, whose application to work as a chef at a Maryland restaurant was pending, was told he would be deported.  
His experience was hardly exceptional. With little public notice outside immigrant communities, the government is moving to deport the largest number of visitors from Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries in U.S. history -- more than 13,000 of the nearly 83,000 men older than 16 who complied with the registration program by various deadlines between last September and April. 
When they showed up, they were found in violation of immigration laws -- even though, like Aniba, many were already participating in the government-sponsored program to become legal residents. 
 "The sheer numbers are mind-boggling," said Sohail Mohammed, an attorney in Clifton, N.J., who handles many of the cases and says Muslims are being unfairly singled out in the tightening of immigration procedures after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "We could end up deporting almost as many Muslims in one year as we have in the last 10. And to me that shows that we're not administering our immigration laws fairly." 
To Aniba, now 27 and living in Rockville, the frustration is more personal. "It's like [the United States] said to me, 'Yes, come here. Get a green card.' And then suddenly said, 'Oh, wait! I changed my mind,' after I had gone through all that hassle and expense and waited more than two years for my application to go through," said Aniba, who agreed to speak only on condition that his nickname of Andre be used to avoid jeopardizing his deportation case. " . . . It's unfair and it's discrimination." 
Middle Easterners still make up a very small percentage of the 150,000 to 180,000 foreign nationals deported annually; the overwhelming majority are Mexican. Yet even if many of the 13,000 men facing deportation proceedings persuade judges not to expel them, government officials agree that the number of Middle Eastern and Muslim men forced to leave probably will dwarf totals from previous years. 
Deportations of people from the same Middle Eastern and largely Muslim countries totaled about 1,300 annually in recent years. They reached about 2,800 in the year after the Sept. 11 attacks. Among the 25 nations on the list are Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Tunisia, and one non-Muslim nation, North Korea. 
The dramatic rise in deportations is a side effect, not an objective, of the registration program, said Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. 
 "The goal was to register individuals from these particular countries. . . . I don't know that anyone expected that we would have that many visitors who were here unlawfully," he said. "And any time an immigration officer comes into contact with someone who is unlawfully present, they do have a responsibility to place that person in deportation proceedings." 
Strassberger described the program as the first step in establishing a new entry and exit system under which all visitors to the United States eventually will be required to register. He said visitors from the 25 countries covered in the initial stages of the program are considered "higher risk" because people from those countries have been linked to terrorist organizations. 
"Since 9/11, the country is at a higher alert," he said. "We have to take extra precautions, and that would include monitoring the arrival, departures and travels of individuals from countries that have an active terrorist organization presence that poses a threat to us." 
But Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the policy "is being used as almost a deportation trap. I think it's causing a lot of fear and apprehension. It creates a sense of being besieged. There are heart-wrenching stories of whole communities being decimated." 
Muslim and Arab American advocates also charge that those costs have not been matched by corresponding benefits in the war on terrorism. They note that government officials have said the registration program, and an associated program to track visitors as they enter and leave the United States, have netted only 11 men with possible links to terrorism. 
"The next Mohamed Atta is not going to register," said Arlington lawyer Tariq Syed, referring to the leader of the airplane hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center. Instead, Syed said, the registration program has snagged people who were trying to comply with the law. 
Aniba agreed. "Why are they doing this to us?" he asked. "When they asked me to come register, I did. Now I'm being punished." 
When they signed up, some visitors were discovered to be in the United States illegally, and have been deported or ordered to return home. Others appear to have committed technical infractions of immigration law such as paperwork errors or missed filing deadlines on their visa applications. 
But many had previously applied for permanent residency under the same provision as Aniba -- a since-expired 2000 law that allowed illegal immigrants who paid a $ 1,000 fee to seek a green card while living in the United States. 
That law had a catch: It did not protect applicants from deportation if they drew the attention of immigration authorities before their green cards were approved. Because so many immigrants rushed to apply before the law's April 2001 deadline, their green cards have been delayed by huge backlogs at the Labor Department, which must approve employer sponsorships, and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  
Now they are in a race against time -- pleading with immigration judges to postpone a ruling on whether they should be deported until their green cards come through. The judges, however, face pressure from the immigration system's chief judge to avoid clogging immigration courts by issuing a final ruling on each case within eight months of its first hearing. 
"That timetable is in direct conflict with the time it takes to get an immigrant visa petition processed," Falls Church immigration lawyer Antoinette J. Rizzi said. 
Kamal Nawash agreed: "I'm down to the last 90 days with all my clients. There are not a lot more excuses I can use." Nawash is a Northern Virginia lawyer and a Republican candidate for the state Senate.  
Many of his clients have told him that if they lose their cases, they will go into hiding rather than allow themselves to be deported.  
"They say if they go back now, they'll be even worse off than when they came here," Nawash said. "Any money they managed to save they had to spend on legal fees, which came to thousands of dollars." 
Aniba, whose lawyer got his next deportation hearing pushed back to late September, still has a chance of squeaking through. 
Less fortunate is Ahmed Nahaf, 25, a former travel agent from Egypt living in Parsippany, N.J. He overstayed his tourist visa about two years ago and does not have a pending application for a green card. 
His best option was to take a judge's offer to leave the country "voluntarily" by September, rather than be officially deported. Immigration attorneys say many clients in similar positions are making that choice because it leaves the possibility of applying for a waiver of the three- to 10-year ban on reentering the United States that illegal immigrants face. Illegal immigrants who have been deported cannot appeal. 
Still, that is slight consolation, Nahaf said. Unable to find employment in Cairo, he came to the United States to support his six younger siblings and his parents, who are nearing retirement age at home. He has found only odd jobs here -- the last at a Dunkin' Donuts. But they have paid enough to allow Nahaf to supplement his father's small salary as a clerk in a government office and to enable the family to save money for his sisters' weddings. 
Now he is struggling to plan his next move. "It gives me bad headaches," he said. "In Egypt there is no good work, and it's expensive to live. But I have a responsibility to my family. So what can I do?" 







   
 

July 24, 2003 Thursday  
  



 Surabaya Journal; 
For These Transvestites, Still More Role Changes

 
For two years, Merlyn Sopjan lived with her boyfriend. Using his name, she became Mrs. Nanang. She was known in the neighborhood as his wife, and tucked his photo into her wallet. She was admired for her feminine looks: with liquid eyes and pancake makeup, she has the allure of a model.
     Merlyn, 30, is a transvestite. The women on the block knew, she said, that under her demure clothes and despite her "wiggling" walk, she was physically a man.  
 "I lived in his house and I was part of the community," she said, showing off a snapshot of herself with Mr. Nanang as they posed as a couple in casual clothes, her arm on his shoulder.
Transvestites go back many centuries here in the world's most populous Muslim country, and their recognition stands in contrast to the relative disapproval of homosexuality, sociologists say.
Now Merlyn and others like her are trying to create roles for themselves beyond their long tolerated positions as television stars, entertainers and beauticians, moving even into the political arena.
Last month Merlyn tried to register as a candidate for mayor in Malang, the town in East Java near here where she is now finishing her civil engineering thesis at the university.
Her application was denied by city officials on the ground that she missed the filing deadline by five minutes. It was not an explicit rejection on the basis of gender, though Merlyn suspects that had something to do with it.
The rejection received sympathetic press coverage, with reporters asking why a "waria" -- a combination of "wanita" (woman) and "pria" (man) -- should not have the same rights as anyone else. "I want waria to have a role in government," Merlyn said. "That's my mission."
They have before. Public records of transvestites date from a 14th-century ruler, Hayam Wuruk, who is described in court annals as dressing as a woman in front of his ministers and using a woman's name. Later, after the arrival of Islam, men often played the role of women in the village dance dramas of East Java, and they still do.
The first president of independent Indonesia, Sukarno, writes proudly in his memoirs of playing female roles when he was a young man, putting powder on his face and rouge on his lips, and stuffing "two sweet breads" in his blouse.
"With this addition to my shapely figure, everybody said I looked absolutely beautiful," he said. "After the show I pulled the breads out of my blouse and ate them."
Under the autocratic rule of Sukarno's successor, Gen. Suharto, and even more so now, transvestites have won some rights. While they are still sometimes rounded up and held in detention if working as prostitutes, in some cities they court business openly in what amounts to a late-night transvestite parade down the main thoroughfares.
In the major cities of Java, including this one, local governments provide training programs for transvestites who want to run beauty salons and wedding businesses (gowns, decor and makeup, all in a package).
At a training session in Jakarta, the supervisor, 56-year-old Nancy Iskandar -- she changed her name from Nandy to Nancy at 21 -- encouraged a group of young transvestites who had just been picked up off the street by the police to learn the art of hairdressing.
She had hired a professional, Iwan, 34 and also a transvestite, to primp the hair of the young transvestites like Bella, 23, who sat in front of a mirror, polish on her nails, while Iwan teased her long black hair, coaxed it into a bouffant and coated it with lacquer.
"This is a way for the old waria to help the young waria to be independent, to earn money," Nancy explained.
In many places, self-help groups founded by transvestites stress AIDS prevention. In Malang, where Merlyn heads the local transvestite group, a weekly volleyball game has been held for more than a decade.
"The lifestyle of most waria is to sleep all day," Nancy said. "The sport is to get them out of bed and up in the morning." In the last several years, she has organized the distribution of free condoms at the games.
On Indonesian television, transvestites are regular hosts on comedy shows and appear as characters in a popular puppet show.
In 1977, when sex-change operations were still relatively unusual in the West, government television showed a movie called "I Am Vivian." Based on a true story, it showed how an Indonesian boy who felt more like a girl was finally accepted by his family as a transvestite. In one of the more striking scenes, a doctor advises Vivian to have a sex-change operation. The movie ends with her in a white wedding gown, complete with veil, being carried by the groom to the bridal suite.
These days, sex-change operations are out of vogue, and for reasons of religion, many of the advocates say they do not encourage them.
Here in Surabaya, Irma, 38, a former teacher who left the classroom because she was not allowed to dress as a woman, said that according to her interpretation of the Koran, it was against the tenets of Islam for a person to change sex. "When we die, what will we say to God?" said Irma, who runs a beauty business and leads the local transvestite support group.
In keeping with Indonesia's mostly relaxed practice of Islam, the imams appear to be tolerant, too. "The imams say: 'Follow your heart,' " Nancy said. When she visits the elders of the Islamic Council, Nancy wears a jilbab, the head covering worn by some women here. But when she goes to the mosque, "to pray, I must go as a man."
For Merlyn, the breakup of the eight-year relationship and two years of living with Mr. Nanang came when he decided he needed to marry and have children, she said.
She gets solace, she said, from the fact that the women in the neighborhood still show her respect. And she has moved on to a new boyfriend, a young handsome policeman whom she met when trying to release some transvestites from the police station. His photo is a new addition in her wallet.






    
  


July 21, 2003, Monday



 MS INUL'S 'DRILL' SHAKES THINGS UP IN MUSLIM INDONESIA




15

  
  

  

JULY 15, 2003 Tuesday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Red Cross disaster fund
nearly empty, group says
* The American Red Cross said yesterday that its disaster fund was nearly depleted, after it spent three times more in aid to victims in the last year than it received in contributions. Spokesman Ray Steen said that if the fund is depleted, the Red Cross would have to tap other accounts, such as money used to administer blood donations. The disaster fund had $1.5 million as of June 30.
Fire leads to evacuation
at Arizona reservation
* A rampaging, 2,000-acre wildfire prompted the evacuation yesterday of as many as 700 people on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in eastern Arizona, authorities said. The fire was sparked by lightning Sunday in juniper and ponderosa pines east of an area burned by a huge fire last summer. Elsewhere, a fire burning near Yakima in south-central Washington was holding steady at 2,000 acres. 
Critics of Calif. governor
turn in recall petitions
* Organizers of the Republican-led drive in California to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis fanned out across the state yesterday to turn in their last batch of petitions. The organizers said they had collected 1.6 million signatures, almost twice what they needed. The recall has been fueled by discontent over California's energy crisis and a $38 billion budget deficit, sending Davis' approval ratings to record lows.
Kucinich says campaign
has raised $1.54 million
* Democratic presidential candidate Dennis J. Kucinich said yesterday that his campaign had raised $1.54 million during the second quarter of this year, mostly from small Internet donations. Rep. Kucinich, of Ohio, is slated to file financial reports with the Federal Election Commission today. He entered the race in February and raised $173,080 in the first quarter. Kucinich's total puts him near the bottom among the nine Democratic candidates.
Sharpton to face a federal
tax audit, report shows
* The Rev. Al Sharpton, a Democratic presidential candidate, is the subject of a federal tax audit, a new financial disclosure report shows. The report, filed with the Federal Election Commission last week by Sharpton lawyer Michael Hardy, said Sharpton faces a civil audit. The Internal Revenue Service audit covers several years in the 1990s, Hardy said. "We don't know what the result will be," Sharpton said. "They could owe me."
In the World
Cyprus parliament accepts
European Union entrance
* The Cyprus parliament voted unanimously yesterday to approve the Mediterranean island nation's entrance into the European Union. The EU accepted the whole of Cyprus as a member in April, but with the provision that EU laws and benefits from membership, which apply to the Greek Cypriot south, will not be extended to the Turkish-controlled north until after reunification. Cyprus has been split since 1974 into a Greek Cypriot-controlled south and a Turkish-occupied north.
Chinese tycoon gets
18 years in fraud case
* A tycoon once ranked by Forbes magazine as China's second-richest businessman was convicted of fraud and bribery and sentenced yesterday to 18 years in prison, an assistant to his lawyer said. Yang Bin, who was arrested in October soon after being picked by North Korea to run a special economic zone, also was fined $280,000 by a court in the northeastern city of Shenyang.
U.S. to pay North Korea
to search for war missing
* The United States will pay North Korea $2.1 million to conduct four searches this summer and fall for remains of U.S. servicemen missing from the Korean War, the Pentagon said yesterday. The money is reimbursement for services provided by the North Korean government, including the provision of aircraft for potential medical evacuation of U.S. search personnel, a military spokesman said.
No charges in crashing
of Prince William's party
* The stand-up comedian who crashed the 21st birthday party of Britain's Prince William will not face charges, London police said yesterday. The Crown Prosecution Service advised there was no suitable charge to be filed against Aaron Barschak, who broke into the June 21 party by climbing a wall and then duping a police officer inside.
Cases dropping, but SARS death toll rises in Toronto
* Health officials in Toronto reported another SARS death yesterday, raising the death toll from the deadly disease in the city to 40. Ontario's Health Ministry said a 76-year-old woman died Friday. It also said the number of probable cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome fell to 17, from 21 two weeks ago.
Indonesian suspected in bombings escapes from jail
* An Indonesian man who allegedly confessed to involvement in bombings that killed 22 people in the Philippine capital, Manila, escaped from jail yesterday with two other suspected Muslim extremists, police said. Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, a reputed leader of the terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, and the other two men escaped from Philippine national police headquarters in Manila.






  
  


July 15, 2003 Tuesday 



 SPRINGER FILES FOR SENATE RACE

 
WASHINGTON -- Jerry Springer, the talk show host whose nationally syndicated program often spotlighted strippers and skinheads, officially filed papers on Monday to run for the U.S. Senate from Ohio. The Senate clerk received the statement of candidacy and organization for the "Jerry Springer for U.S. Senate" committee on Monday afternoon, according to a spokesman at the clerk's office. Springer, the former mayor of Cincinnati, will make a final decision on whether to run for the Democratic nomination by the end of the month. State Sen. Eric Fingerhut has already announced his candidacy for the party's nod and the right to challenge first-term Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.
Texas coast braces for high winds, heavy rain 
SEADRIFT, Texas -- Residents along a 200-mile stretch of coastline braced for hurricane-force winds, torrential rain and pounding tides as Tropical Storm Claudette plodded toward land, heading north of where forecasters had anticipated. The National Hurricane Center extended its warning north along the Texas coast, from the sparsely populated area around Baffin Bay, 30 miles south of Corpus Christi, to High Island, just east of Galveston and 75 miles south of Houston. Forecasters believed Claudette could become a hurricane early today.
Man sexually assaults girl, 11, in store
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Police searched for a man Monday who allegedly sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl at knifepoint at a Target store, shuffling her from aisle to aisle to avoid being seen by shoppers. The alleged assault was captured by a surveillance camera at the suburban Charleston store, beginning when the suspect started stalking the girl in the toy section, police said. He then assaulted the girl in the garden and men's clothing departments before she was freed, police said. Police Lt. H.S. Leishman said the suspect posed as a security guard Saturday night, told the girl he saw her steal something and ordered her to follow him. Police released the surveillance video showing the man, described as a white male in his 30s. Police also have been talking with investigators probing a similar incident at a Wal-Mart in Ashland, Ky., Gray said.
More shuttles likely to be lost, report says
WASHINGTON -- Even if NASA corrects the problem that doomed the Columbia, the agency is likely to lose more shuttles before the fleet reaches its planned retirement date of 2020, according to the draft of a study done for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. "Given uncertainties about the full set of causes for the loss of Columbia and given unforeseen and unplanned aging issues, it is not obvious that the shuttle system will reach even a 30-year life of useful service," says the draft, written by the RAND Corp. NASA hopes to fly the shuttles for 40 years.
U.S. to pay N. Korea $2 million for searches
WASHINGTON -- The United States will pay North Korea $2.1 million to conduct four searches this summer and fall for remains of American servicemen missing from the Korean War, the Pentagon said Monday. The deal was struck Saturday after three days of talks in Bangkok, Thailand, between North Korean Col. Gen. Li Chan Bok and an American delegation led by Jerry Jennings, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW-MIA affairs, according to Jennings' spokesman, Larry Greer. The $2.1 million is reimbursement for services provided by the North Korean government.
Terrorist suspect escapes Philippine jail
MANILA, Philippines -- An Indonesian man who allegedly confessed to involvement in bombings in Manila that killed 22 people escaped from jail early Monday along with two other suspected Muslim extremists, police said. Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, a reputed leader of Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, and the other two men escaped from police intelligence custody, national Police Chief Hermogenes Ebdane said. The escape took place before dawn from the heavily secured command building at Camp Crame, the national police headquarters in Manila.
Pulitzer winner to be N.Y. Times editor
NEW YORK -- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Keller was named executive editor of the New York Times on Monday, saying he hoped to "quickly put the wounds behind us" from the scandal involving reporter Jayson Blair. Keller, 54, a former Times managing editor and foreign correspondent, was chosen by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to replace Howell Raines. Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd resigned under pressure on June 5, five weeks after the discovery that Blair, one of the paper's young stars, had plagiarized material, invented quotes and wrote stories under datelines of places he had never been.
Final bull running leaves 2 hospitalized
MADRID, Spain -- An American and a Spanish runner were gored and at least four other people were hospitalized Monday after the eighth and final running of the bulls at Pamplona's San Fermin festival. The American, identified as Robert Fluhr, 27, of Arkansas, was gored in the buttock. He was hospitalized in one of Pamplona's main hospitals and underwent surgery. Jose Lorente Garcera, 30, from Val-encia, was gored in the right leg. Both were in serious condition.






  
  


July 15, 2003 Tuesday 



 SPRINGER FILES FOR SENATE RACE

 
WASHINGTON -- Jerry Springer, the talk show host whose nationally syndicated program often spotlighted strippers and skinheads, officially filed papers on Monday to run for the U.S. Senate from Ohio. The Senate clerk received the statement of candidacy and organization for the "Jerry Springer for U.S. Senate" committee on Monday afternoon, according to a spokesman at the clerk's office. Springer, the former mayor of Cincinnati, will make a final decision on whether to run for the Democratic nomination by the end of the month. State Sen. Eric Fingerhut has already announced his candidacy for the party's nod and the right to challenge first-term Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.
Washington wildfire threatens homes
YAKIMA, Wash. -- Flames raced across densely timbered slopes near this Washington community Monday, keeping evacuees from returning to about 20 homes and threatening 130 other houses. Elsewhere in the West, however, a busy highway south of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks was reopened after smoke lifted, and crews were close to containing a month-old blaze that destroyed hundreds of homes in southern Arizona. The fire near Tampico, 20 miles west of Yakima in south-central Washington, had jumped to more than 1,900 acres by Monday morning. 
Man sexually assaults girl, 11, in store
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Police searched for a man Monday who allegedly sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl at knifepoint at a Target store, shuffling her from aisle to aisle to avoid being seen by shoppers. The alleged assault was captured by a surveillance camera at the suburban Charleston store, beginning when the suspect started stalking the girl in the toy section, police said. He then assaulted the girl in the garden and men's clothing departments before she was freed, police said. Police Lt. H.S. Leishman said the suspect posed as a security guard Saturday night, told the girl he saw her steal something and ordered her to follow him. Then he pulled a knife and forced her into the garden department, where he assaulted her. When too many shoppers walked into the area, he led her into the men's clothing department where he assaulted her again, Leishman said.
Pulitzer winner to be N.Y. Times editor
NEW YORK -- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Keller was named executive editor of the New York Times on Monday, saying he hoped to "quickly put the wounds behind us" from the scandal involving reporter Jayson Blair. Keller, 54, a former Times managing editor and foreign correspondent, was chosen by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to replace Howell Raines. Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd resigned under pressure on June 5, five weeks after the discovery that Blair, one of the paper's young stars, had plagiarized material, invented quotes and wrote stories under datelines of places he had never been.
Terrorist suspect escapes Philippine jail
MANILA, Philippines -- An Indonesian man who allegedly confessed to involvement in bombings in Manila that killed 22 people escaped from jail early Monday along with two other suspected Muslim extremists, police said. Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, a reputed leader of Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, and the other two men escaped from police intelligence custody, national Police Chief Hermogenes Ebdane said. The escape took place before dawn from the heavily secured command building at Camp Crame, the national police headquarters in Manila. Ebdane said three police officers guarding the three were being investigated.
German general leads Bastille Day parade
PARIS -- In a gesture of European unity, a German general, Holger Kammerhoff, headed France's Bastille Day military parade Monday for the first time. Thousands of security forces oversaw the march after President Jacques Chirac survived an assassination attempt a year ago. Police arrested six protesters, including three carrying banners in support of militant farmer Jose Bove, who was jailed last month for destroying genetically modified crops. It is illegal to stage demonstrations during the parade.
U.S. to pay N. Korea $2 million for searches
WASHINGTON -- The United States will pay North Korea $2.1 million to conduct four searches this summer and fall for remains of American servicemen missing from the Korean War, the Pentagon said Monday. The deal was struck Saturday after three days of talks in Bangkok, Thailand, between North Korean Col. Gen. Li Chan Bok and an American delegation led by Jerry Jennings, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW-MIA affairs, according to Jennings' spokesman, Larry Greer. The $2.1 million is reimbursement for services provided by the North Korean government.
Final bull running leaves 2 hospitalized
MADRID, Spain -- An American and a Spanish runner were gored and at least four other people were hospitalized Monday after the eighth and final running of the bulls at Pamplona's San Fermin festival. The American, identified as Robert Fluhr, 27, of Arkansas, was gored in the buttock. He was hospitalized in one of Pamplona's main hospitals and underwent surgery. Jose Lorente Garcera, 30, from Val-encia, was gored in the right leg. Both were in serious condition.






  


July 15, 2003 Tuesday 



 WORLD DIGEST

 
PHILIPPINES
Man held in bombings escapes from jail
An Indonesian man who allegedly confessed to involvement in bombings in Manila that killed 22 people escaped from jail early Monday along with two other suspected Muslim extremists, police said.
Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, a reputed leader of the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, and the other two men escaped from police intelligence custody, national Police Chief Hermogenes Ebdane said.
The escape took place before dawn from the heavily secured command building at Camp Crame, the national police headquarters in Manila. Ebdane said three policemen guarding the three were being investigated, and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered them fired immediately. 
BURUNDI
Residents return home after deadly rebel attack
Residents of a battle-scarred neighborhood of Bujumbura returned to their homes Monday following the deadliest rebel attack on the capital in more than two years.
On Sunday, the U.S. State Department ordered nonemergency personnel at the American embassy to leave this central African nation, which is in the midst of a nearly 10-year civil war.
The latest fighting erupted July 7 when Hutu rebels of the National Liberation Forces attacked the Musaga neighborhood at the southern tip of Bujumbura. The Tutsi-dominated army retaliated with mortars and helicopter gunships, eventually forcing the insurgents back into the hills.
As the fighting ended late Sunday, the rebels released 39 civilians abducted from Musaga during clashes.
FRANCE
German general leads Bastille Day parade
In a gesture of European unity, a German general headed France's Bastille Day military parade Monday for the first time. Thousands of security forces oversaw the march after President Jacques Chirac survived an assassination attempt a year ago.
Police arrested six protesters, including three carrying banners in support of militant farmer Jose Bove, who was jailed last month for destroying genetically modified crops. It is illegal to stage demonstrations during the parade.
Bastille Day is the equivalent of the Fourth of July in the United States. It commemorates the storming of Paris' Bastille prison by a mob in 1789, sparking the French Revolution that rid France of its monarchy.
BRITAIN
Crasher at prince's party won't be charged
A comedian who dressed up as Osama bin Laden and crashed Prince William's 21st birthday party won't face any charges, London's Metropolitan Police said Monday.
Self-styled "comedy terrorist" Aaron Barschak, 37, got into the June 21 event at Windsor Castle by scaling a steep embankment, climbing a tree, then jumping onto a wall and clambering to a terrace. Once inside, he persuaded police officers that he had legitimate business at the party.
The stunt was a major breach of royal security and has led to an official investigation.
CORSICA
Bomb injures three, damages post office
A bomb ripped through a post office on the troubled French island of Corsica on Monday, injuring three bystanders and badly damaging the building, police said.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack in the northern town of Folelli, but such bombings are often the work of Corsican nationalists fighting for more independence from France.
The attack Monday was unusual, however, because it was carried out in the middle of the day and coincided with France's Bastille Day celebrations. Most attacks target empty buildings overnight, and injuries are rare.
The bombing took place after a Paris court on Friday handed eight Corsican separatists prison sentences ranging from 15 years to life for their roles in the 1998 killing of the highest official in Corsica.







  



July 15, 2003 Tuesday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
SRINAGAR, India -- At least 21 people, including five soldiers and 12 Muslim rebels, were killed in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, the worst violence in the insurgency-torn region in months, officials said yesterday. 
It was the highest single-day death toll since India and Pakistan, which both claim the restive region, began improving ties in April. 
A police spokesman said militants ambushed an army patrol near the Pakistan border in the Kupwara district, killing two soldiers. 
Suspected militants killed another soldier in the heart of Srinagar, the summer capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state and the center of the insurgency.  
No group claimed responsibility for the attacks. 
Additionally, 12 militants, two soldiers and four civilians were killed in separate shootouts across the strife-torn region in the past 24 hours, police said. 
* MANILA -- An Indonesian man who allegedly confessed to involvement in bombings in Manila that killed 22 people escaped from jail along with two other suspected Muslim extremists, police said. 
 Fathur Rahman Ghozi, a reputed leader of Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiah, and the other two men escaped from police intelligence custody, national police chief Hermogenes Ebdane said. 
 Ebdane said three policemen guarding the three were being investigated, and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered them dismissed immediately. 
* JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A bomb exploded at Indonesia's parliament, spraying nails and concrete over a wide area in an attack that came just days after police caught nine suspected Muslim militants and seized a large cache of explosives. 
The blast also followed parliament's passage last week of a bill paving the way for Indonesia's first direct presidential election in 2004. Security analysts said they saw a growing threat of political assassinations before the vote. 
Police called the bombing a terror attack, although parliament was in recess and no one was hurt. Damage was minor. 
National police chief Dai Bachtiar said the attack bore the hallmarks of bombings in April at Jakarta's international airport and near the U.N. headquarters . No one died in those blasts. 
He said the explosives used were of the same type found in a raid on suspected Jemaah Islamiah operatives in Central Java province last week.  
* VANCOUVER, B.C. -- Lai Changxing, described as China's most wanted smuggling kingpin, warned that Canada put his life in peril when it denied him political asylum. 
Lai asked the Federal Court of Canada to grant him a new hearing, saying the first ruling was based on a Chinese criminal investigation that was politically motivated and used torture to collect evidence. 
An immigration panel last year rejected his bid for asylum, saying the allegations against him were for such "nonpolitical crimes" as running a smuggling empire that bribed scores of Chinese officials. 
Lai, who came to Canada in 1999 with his family, listened through an interpreter as his attorney, David Matas, attacked the criminal investigation, saying China's political leaders had declared Lai guilty before it even began. 
 Beijing accuses Lai of smuggling billions of dollars of goods, including oil, into China in the mid-1990s without paying duties, and bribing scores of officials to turn a blind eye. 
Lai has denied criminal wrongdoing. 
* TORONTO -- Health officials in Toronto reported another SARS death, which brought the toll from the deadly disease in the city to 40. 
 Ontario's Health Ministry said in a statement that a 76-year-old woman died Friday. It also said the number of probable cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome fell to 17, from 21 two weeks ago, with seven people remaining in critical condition. 
Toronto, a city of about 4 million people, is the only place outside Asia where SARS has claimed lives.  
* OTTAWA -- Canadian diplomats in Tehran are hunting for the body of a Canadian freelance photographer who died from alleged head wounds after she was arrested, officials said. 
Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, has ordered a probe. Zahra Kazemi, 54, was arrested in late June after taking pictures of Tehran's notorious Evin jail, where many dissidents are held. 
Kazemi's son and friends in Canada insist she was beaten into a coma; Iranian officials say she fell ill after her interrogation started and died of "a brain attack." 
* BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Alvaro Uribe, seeking to show the nation he is in control, will govern Colombia this week from an army base in the war-torn Arauca province. 
* JERUSALEM -- A top Palestinian official said that Palestinian police would do all they could to free an Israeli taxi driver feared kidnapped by militants, and Palestinian prisoners in Israel called for the missing man's release. 
 The disappearance of Eliyahu Goral, 61, has stoked Israeli fears that a Palestinian truce could break down because of rogue operations by Palestinian militants, forcing Israeli retaliation. The June 29 cease-fire declaration has brought two weeks of relative calm. 
In London, Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was rebuffed by Britain in his calls to boycott Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom Israel and the United States accuse of fomenting terrorism. 
"We will continue to have dealings with [Arafat] as long as we judge it to be useful," a British official said after Sharon met with Jack Straw, the foreign secretary. 
 While Sharon was meeting Blair, the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas held talks with Arafat in the West Bank city Ramallah and declared an end to a rift that had threatened U.S.-led peace efforts. 
 Abbas threatened to quit as prime minister last week and resigned from a top policymaking committee headed by Arafat after some of his colleagues said he was too soft in peace negotiations with Israel. 
 Early today, a Palestinian stabbed one person to death and wounded two others on a seaside promenade in Tel Aviv, police said. 
 The motives of the attacker, who was shot and wounded as he fled by an Israeli man, were not immediately clear. But police said it was the first attack by a Palestinian in an Israeli city since the cease-fire. 
 -- From News Services 






  
  


July 13, 2003 Sunday 



 NATION & WORLD BRIEFING

 
IRANIAN CONJOINED TWINS LAID TO REST SATURDAY
LOHRASB, Iran -- Ladan and Laleh Bijani, twins who died Tuesday in separation surgery, were prayed over by a cleric, then buried in separate graves Saturday as thousands of mourners wept. The deaths of the 29-year-old sisters, who had been joined at the top of their heads, caused sadness around the world but particularly in their homeland. Approximately 20,000 people attended the burial ceremony in the twins' home village. A nearly two-mile convoy of vehicles packed the road from nearby Firouzabad to Lohrasb, 680 miles southwest of Tehran, as the coffins were taken to the burial site. The sisters had captivated the nation with their bravery and charm, and the admiration grew when it was revealed that they left wills donating all their property to blind children and orphans. A government official proposed a National Day of Love to mark the twins' Dec. 31 birthday. 
Man gets life for sucking boys' toes
SANTA ANA, Calif. -- Trenton Veches, the former supervisor of a Newport Beach youth program, was sentenced Friday to life in prison on 25 counts of lewd conduct and assault for sucking the toes of 20 boys. Veches, 32, will be eligible for parole in 15 years. At his trial, Veches' lawyer said his actions with boys 6 to 10 years old were "horseplay." But the prosecutor said Veches "clearly befriended these children, manipulated them and he sexually molested them." Veches was arrested in April 2002 after a co-worker reported seeing him sucking a boy's toes.
Thousands gather for Love Parade
BERLIN -- Hundreds of thousands of techno music fans -- many in costume, others in not much at all -- jammed into the German capital Saturday for the annual Love Parade. Youthful partygoers from across Germany and beyond danced on and alongside some 30 trucks pounding out club tracks as they converged slowly in Berlin's Tiergarten park. Police estimated the crowd at more than 500,000, while organizers put the turnout at 750,000. Begun in 1989 as a small procession of 150 ravers protesting for the right to party in a city still divided by the Berlin Wall, the parade mushroomed after German reunification the next year into a Berlin institution and a massive draw for partiers as well as tourists. More than 800 first-aid personnel were on duty Saturday, and more than 30 people were taken to the hospital, though police reported only one serious injury after a man fell from a wall.
Irish Protestant day peaceful
BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- The Orange Order, the major Protestant brotherhood in Northern Ireland, mounted its largest annual demonstrations Saturday to commemorate a long-ago victory over Irish Catholics. The day's parades -- involving lodges of men in suits and orange vests accompanied by bands of piercing fife and thumping bass drum -- passed through Belfast and scores of other towns and villages across this British territory. Each lodge carried a massive oil-painted banner, some depicting scenes from the Old Testament, others the grandfathers of the men marching Saturday. Most showed scenes from battles fought in Ireland from 1689 to 1691, when King William of Orange, a Dutchman, defeated the Catholic James II, an Englishman, to establish two centuries of Protestant ascendancy on this predominantly Catholic island. The Protestant celebrations got off to a rowdy, alcohol-fueled start with traditional midnight bonfires, but no major violence or injuries were reported.
Chechen recruiter killed in raid
MOSCOW -- Russian forces in Chechnya have killed Aslan Gasayev, a Chechen fighter who recruited women for suicide bombing missions, military spokesman Ilya Shabalkin was reported as saying Saturday. Russian soldiers killed Gasayev, commander of a group of Chechen separatist fighters, and three of his bodyguards during a raid on the village of Alkhan-Kala, Shabalkin told Russian news agencies. Shabalkin was quoted by Interfax as saying that Gasayev's "reported involvement in the latest terrorist attacks in Moscow is being investigated. He allegedly recruited female suicide bombers and exerted psychological pressure on them." But it was not immediately clear whether Gasayev had any part in the bombings of last Saturday, in which two women, whom authorities identified as Chechens, blew themselves up at an outdoor music festival. They killed themselves and 13 other people.
Extremists sentenced to death
CASABLANCA, Morocco -- A Moroccan court has sentenced 10 Islamic extremists to death and eight others to life in prison for their roles in a series of slayings, thefts and attacks over a four-year period, the state news agency reported Saturday. The defendants -- part of a group of 31 extremists whose trial ended late Friday -- are the first Islamic militants to be sentenced to death in Morocco. The 31 were linked to the Salafiya Jihadia, a clandestine group suspected of a role in a series of five nearly simultaneous suicide bombings carried out May 16 in Casablanca that killed 44 people, including 12 attackers. However, the trial did not link the 31 to those attacks. A separate trial is expected in the fall for dozens of people arrested in connection with the suicide attacks. Among those sentenced to death were the head of the group of 31, Youssef Fikri, and Mohamed Damir. Their arrests a year ago put police on the trail of the Salafiya Jihadia, alleged to have links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Of the other defendants in the trial, seven received 20-year terms, five received 10 years in prison and one, a single year, the agency said.
Terror suspects planned attacks
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A group of Indonesian terror suspects arrested with a huge cache of explosives and weapons was planning a series of attacks on churches and shopping malls across the world's most populous Muslim nation, police said Saturday. The capture of the nine men underlined the threat Islamic militants still pose in Indonesia despite the arrests of scores of suspects since last year's Bali bombings, which killed 202 people. One of those arrested, identified only as Ihwanudin, allegedly committed suicide in police custody after seizing a weapon from his interrogators. On Friday, police announced the arrests of three men in Jakarta and four in Semarang in Central Java, between July 4 and July 11. Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Edward Aritonang confirmed Saturday that another two had been arrested, one in Jakarta and another in Magelang, Central Java. All the men are suspected members of the al-Qaida linked Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been blamed for the Bali attacks, a string of church bombings and an attempt to kill Megawati in 2001.






  
  


July 13, 2003 Sunday  



 9 ACCUSED OF PLOTTING TO BOMB CHURCHES, MALLS

 
A group of Indonesian terror suspects arrested with a huge cache of explosives and weapons were planning a series of attacks on churches and shopping malls across the world's most populous Muslim nation, police said Saturday.
According to authorities, the detention of the nine men underlined the threat Islamist militants pose in Indonesia despite the arrests of scores of suspects since last year's Bali bombings killed 202 people.
One of those arrested allegedly committed suicide in custody after seizing a weapon from his interrogators.






  


July 13, 2003 Sunday 



 WORLD DIGEST

 
INDONESIA
Group had planned series of attacks, police say
A group of suspected Indonesian terrorists arrested with a huge cache of explosives and weapons had been planning a series of attacks on churches and shopping malls across the world's most populous Muslim nation, police said Saturday.
The capture of the nine men underlined the threat Islamic militants still pose in Indonesia despite the arrests of scores of suspects since last year's Bali bombings, which killed 202 people.
One of those arrested allegedly committed suicide in police custody after seizing a weapon from his interrogators. He was detained Friday in a rented house just 200 yards from a private residence of Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri. 
All the men are suspected members of the al-Qaida linked Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been blamed for the Bali attacks and a string of church bombings.
MOROCCO
10 Islamic extremists are sentenced to death
A Moroccan court has sentenced 10 Islamic extremists to death and eight others to life in prison for their roles in a series of slayings, thefts and attacks over a four-year period, the state news agency reported Saturday.
The defendants - part of a group of 31 extremists whose trial ended late Friday - are the first Islamic militants to be sentenced to death in Morocco.
The 31 were linked to the Salafiya Jihadia, a clandestine group suspected of a role in a series of five nearly simultaneous suicide bombings in May.
MOZAMBIQUE
Gadhafi says "straight" people need not fear AIDS
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said at a conference of African leaders Saturday that Africans who are "straight" need not fear AIDS.
Speaking through a translator, Gadhafi drew some laughter with his reference to AIDS affecting only homosexuals.
He said, at the closing session of the eight-day annual African Union conference, "All you have to do is observe the rules. If you are straight, you have nothing to fear from AIDS."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says HIV can be spread by an infected person through heterosexual or homosexual sexual contact, the sharing of needles or syringes and, less commonly, through transfusions of blood or blood clotting factors.
Also, babies born to HIV-infected women may become infected before or during birth, or through breast-feeding.
BELGIUM
Leaders will scrap law that angered U.S.
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said his new government, sworn in on Saturday, has decided to scrap a war crimes law that has angered the United States.
Verhofstadt said the move was aimed at preventing abuses of the law, which has seen cases launched against President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The law gave Belgian courts the power to try war crimes cases no matter where they were committed.







  



July 12, 2003 Saturday  




 World in Brief

 
ROME -- The Italian government official who aggravated a diplomatic spat by calling Germans "hyper-nationalist" arrogant blonds resigned yesterday at the request of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. 
 Stefano Stefani, an Industry Ministry undersecretary responsible for tourism, expressed regret for his remarks as he gave up his post, spokesman Giuseppe Pinetti said. Stefani announced his resignation during a rally in northern Italy, the ANSA news agency reported. 
 Stefani's original comments, which followed a diplomatic gaffe by Berlusconi, prompted German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to cancel his planned vacation to the Marche region in central Italy.  
 "He has expressed regret because he was only defending Italy and its prime minister," Pinetti said, declining to provide further details. 
 The comments embarrassed many in Berlusconi's government, with some ministers openly distancing themselves from the remarks. Pressure had mounted, from at home and in Germany, for Stefani's dismissal. Berlusconi said he requested the resignation. 
 * JERUSALEM -- Palestinians warned that Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, whose government is backed by the United States, could be forced from power if Israel does not take more concrete steps toward peace, while Israeli officials announced that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would travel to Washington in July. 
Sharon is to meet with President Bush nearly two months earlier than expected -- suggesting a sense of urgency about the halting implementation of the "road map," a peace plan designed to end nearly three years of fighting and create a Palestinian state by 2005. 
 After troop pullouts from parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Bethlehem last week, Israel is refusing to hand over more Palestinian towns until the Palestinian Authority moves to disarm militant groups. Abbas is highly reluctant to try to do this by force, saying he will only use persuasion. 
 There is also a major disagreement over Israel's refusal to release thousands of Palestinian prisoners accused of involvement in terrorism, although this issue is not referred to in the road map. 
 The deadlock is apparently eroding support for Abbas within his own Fatah movement, where some are starting to believe he cannot wrest concessions from Israel. Abbas has the strong backing of Washington, which sees him as an alternative to Yasser Arafat. 
* JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian police arrested seven terror suspects -- one of whom allegedly committed suicide while being questioned -- and raided a bomb-making factory, seizing explosives more powerful than those used in last year's Bali bombings, officials said. 
 They also found three books containing schedules of church services in Indonesia, police said, raising fears of attacks on the country's Christian minority. 
 The arrests showed that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, is trying to crackdown on Islamic militancy. 
 The seven suspects were believed to be members of Jemaah Islamiah, the Southeast Asian terror group linked to al Qaeda and accused in the Bali blasts of Oct. 12, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. 
 * LIMA, Peru -- Shining Path rebels killed seven people from military patrols in the worst attacks by the group in nearly three years, the Defense Ministry reported. 
 The rebels attacked three patrols in a remote village in southeastern Peru, killing five members of the security forces and two civilians, the ministry said. 
 The fighting occurred Thursday when troops were on patrol in the zones of Matucana and Irquis of Huanta province, 250 miles southeast of Lima. 
 An army major, three soldiers and a member of the navy died in the fighting, according to the Defense Ministry. 
 "Two brave members of the self-defense committees of the zone also died," the statement said, in reference to the civilians killed. 
 The Maoist Shining Path rebels -- whose actions declined sharply after the capture of their legendary leader, Abimael Guzman, in 1992 -- have been conducting raids in remote towns of southeastern Peru over the last few weeks. 
 -- From News Services 







   
 

July 6, 2003 Sunday  
  



 A Delicate Balance 

 
     AFTER JIHAD
America and the Struggle
for Islamic Democracy.
By Noah Feldman.
260 pp. New York:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $24.
 THE question bound to preoccupy readers of Noah Feldman's "After Jihad" -- the only reason most readers will pick it up in the first place -- is to learn what kind of future the author envisions for Iraq. 
The reason the answer matters, and that Feldman himself is suddenly so newsworthy, is that he has just been tapped by the Bush administration to help draft Iraq's new constitution. His selection stunned most observers: although Feldman is extremely accomplished and has a background in Islamic as well as United States constitutional law, he's very young (in his early 30's), was raised an Orthodox Jew and worked for Al Gore during the Florida vote recount. Nonetheless, he's already been to Baghdad and back.
For good or ill, however, this slight book doesn't reveal much about how Feldman plans to handle his new responsibilities. He devotes just a few pages to Iraq: it's only one of the many op-ed-length chapters that make up this somewhat disjointed work.
Feldman's project in "After Jihad" is to focus on a more general question: how can political Islam and democracy be reconciled? The answer matters, he writes, because Islamism is one of the few vibrant intellectual movements alive today in the Muslim (especially Arab) world. Repressive governments have found it much harder to shut down mosques than political parties. Canny clerics have tapped into widespread anger while providing much-needed social services that corrupt governments have failed to offer. As a result, political Islam now seems the only alternative to autocracy for many of the planet's 1.2 billion Muslims. Should elections be held in their countries, Islamists of one stripe or another could dominate. 
According to Feldman, however, such a result needn't worry us. On a theoretical level, he finds nothing irreconcilable between Islam and democracy, and argues that they actually have a lot in common. As "mobile ideas," both view everyone as equal; both are flexible (adaptable to different cultures and circumstances) and relatively simple.
True, Islamism's image may have been tarnished in the West by extremists. But that savagery was the work of a few fanatics. "Sept. 11, and the sporadic attacks which have followed," he writes, "are the last, desperate gasp of a tendency to violence that has lost most of its popular support." In contrast, Feldman points to reassuring counterexamples like the rise of moderate Islamic parties in Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco and Turkey, and to the writings of reformers like the Tunisian exile Rachid Ghannouchi to show that fusions of Islam and democracy are not only possible, but inevitable.
With these arguments,Feldman has thrown himself into the center of an unruly brawl now raging in policy circles over what to do with the Arab world. One faction consists of the cautious staff members of the State Department, pessimists (or "realists," as they prefer to be called) for whom culture is destiny and the Middle East an unredeemable mess. Another camp is represented by thinkers like Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, who are almost as critical of Arab states as the pessimists but advocate a new American imperium to remake the region. Still a third faction includes scholars like Graham Fuller and John L. Esposito, who have so much faith in Arab reformers that they oppose outside interference. 
And now Feldman has staked out territory squarely in the middle. On the one hand, he joins with Lewis and company in pushing for America to intervene on the side of democracy. Feldman is unabashed about his support for Western activism: "If these methods sound interventionist," he writes at one point, "that is because they are." Such language makes him sound at times like one of Donald Rumsfeld's wild-eyed neoconservatives. Where he parts company with the right, however, is in his unflinching insistence that democracy in the Arab world should be Islamic in character (although he hedges on just what that will mean).
Eying this debate from the outside, how should a lay reader sort out the battling experts' radically different views? Feldman himself provides a kind of answer. Deciding whether to trust in Islamic democracy is a bit of a gamble, he admits. Push for open elections in the Arab world, and the short-term result may be radical, anti-American governments. But ignore the urge for democracy and the United States risks engendering an even bigger backlash. Besides, Arab dictators run the real danger of bloody overthrow. Thus, "in the starkest terms, the question is whether to entertain the risk of disaster in the form of a revolution that is not certain but would be extraordinarily costly, or to take on the less costly risk of destabilization that definitely accompanies a process of democratization."
This account gets far more right than it gets wrong; uncritical support for Arab dictators (including, at one time, Saddam Hussein) has indeed been a disastrous policy, and a betrayal of America's revolutionary democratic example. The main problem with the choice Feldman offers, however, is his presumption that moderation will ultimately prevail. For that to happen, we have to rely on the Islamists not to interfere with future elections once they themselves win office. Unfortunately, Islamists have proven unreliable protectors of pluralism: for example, the Ayatollah Khomeini's mullahs assembled a broad-based republican coalition to topple the shah in 1979 -- and then proceeded to undermine and eliminate every rival. Absolutists and fundamentalists tend not to be good compromisers.
As for Iraq, Feldman is now almost uniquely well positioned to help shape the rules of the game there. And one of the few things Feldman does promise for that country's future is that it will be Islamic as well as democratic. A few words of caution, however. Iraq's main fault lines are ethnic, tribal and sectarian. Feldman says very little about the role of economics, class or culture in the development of democracy -- factors that could play an even greater role than religion. Furthermore, Iraq is famously split between two very different forms of Islam: Shiite and Sunni (to say nothing of half a million Christians). How can Islam play anything more than a symbolic role in government when future voters cannot even agree on the definition of "Islamic"? Untangling that knot may prove impossible. Let's hope that in trying, Feldman doesn't overlook the solution that has worked pretty well in the West: a secular constitution that favors no one religion at all. 




16


   
 

July 5, 2003 Saturday  
  



 Saudis Quietly Promote Strict Islam in Indonesia 

 
In high school, Atep Arofiq was fascinated by Islamic studies, and with meager means for higher education, a free institution financed by Saudi Arabia in this bustling capital seemed like a natural choice. There was an added attraction: the best students could graduate to further study in Saudi Arabia, all expenses paid.
     Mr. Arofiq, 25, entered the Educational Institution of Indonesia-Saudi Arabia, housed in a gleaming building on a main thoroughfare. He lasted in the austere environment for two years. 
 "There were too many forbidden things," he said of the school where the Arabic language, taught by teachers from Saudi Arabia, is the focus of the curriculum. "You were not allowed to join any other student organization. Jeans were out, and they preferred that you wear a beard and long Arabic clothes." 
Mr. Arofiq did not feel at home at the Saudi-run school, where he said the strict Wahhabi form of Islam was the basis of the teaching. But he was the exception. Most students persevered for the full five years, he said. From the financing of educational institutions to giving money for militant Islamic groups, the influence of Saudi Arabia, and Saudi charities, has been growing steadily here in the world's most populous Muslim country.
Until recently, Indonesia has been famously relaxed about its religion. But slowly Indonesians are becoming more devout and in the battle for the soul of Islam here the Saudis are playing an important though stealthy role, Indonesian scholars say.
The Saudi money has come in two forms, Indonesian and Western officials said: above-board funds for religious and educational purposes, and quietly disbursed funds for militant Islamic groups. The Saudi money has had a profound effect on extremist groups, allowing some to keep going and inspiring others to start recruiting, the officials said.
A Saudi charity, Al Haramain, provides a good example of this dual role. Three years ago it signed a formal memorandum of understanding with the Indonesian Ministry of Religion that allowed it to finance educational institutions.
But Al Haramain also appears to have served as a conduit for money to Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terrorist organization that aims to build Islamic states in the region. A senior member of Jemaah Islamiyah, Umar Faruq, who was arrested last year and is now in American custody, told the Central Intelligence Agency that Al Haramain provided money to his group.
Earlier this year, under pressure from Washington, Saudi government officials announced that Al Haramain had been asked to close down in all the Muslim countries where it was operating.
The large two-story house that Al Haramain used as its headquarters in a remote suburb of Jakarta was put up for rent last month. But the offices moved to a smaller house down the block and a Haramain official continues to oversee the completion of the charity's expensive new religious boarding school on the outskirts of Jakarta.
Meanwhile, the Saudi influence in Indonesia's religious boarding schools, known as pesantren, is by no means dominant, but it is allowing stricter interpretations of Islam to gain favor, said Alwi Shihab, an Islamic scholar and a former minister of foreign affairs. 
"I told Condoleezza Rice last year that you are going to see the consequences of all this rigid interpretation because of all the money being poured in here," Mr. Shihab said.
The Saudis spread their largess broadly -- from a rundown pesantren called Darul Istiqamah al Haramain in Makassar, a city in southern Sulawesi, to a prosperous one, Al Irsyad, in the town of Salatiga in central Java. Exactly how much money the Saudis give is unclear.
At the school in Makassar, 8-year-old girls wear jilbabs, the head coverings worn by some Indonesian Muslim women. Seven mosques, several financed with Saudi money, are scattered around the campus. At Al Irsyad, the daily newspapers are displayed on a notice board with all photographs of human faces scratched out -- an effort to present the news to the male students without the distraction of pictures, a teacher said.
The new Haramain pesantren built on acres of land at Bekasi, just outside Jakarta, is set to open in August. Its spacious grounds and clean, cream-colored buildings contrast with the cramped conditions in most Indonesian pesantren. 
The Saudi influence here is relatively new. As part of an effort to cultivate Islamic leaders, the former authoritarian ruler, President Suharto, encouraged a Saudi presence in Indonesia in the decade before he was toppled in 1998.
For years, more than 200,000 Indonesians have made the annual hajj, the pilgrimage to Islam's holy sites in Saudi Arabia. Many others have taken charter flights to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to find work as maids and laborers. But after returning home, most Indonesians continued with their inclusive brand of Islam, which tolerates a smattering of Sufism here and a touch of Buddhism there.
But as the Indonesian state has become increasingly unable to look after basic needs -- the unemployment rate is about 20 percent -- growing numbers of Indonesians are finding some of the stricter tenets of Saudi Arabia's Islam more attractive.
Last month, the Pew Global Attitudes Project, an international poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, showed striking support among Indonesians for the Saudi leader, Crown Prince Abdullah, whom Indonesians rated as one of the three leaders they trusted the most, and a huge drop in support for the United States.
In 2000, 75 percent of Indonesians said they had a favorable opinion of the United States. This year, 83 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion.
Meanwhile, the Saudi government's charitable financing continues apace. The libraries of many pesantren -- including the prestigious Gontor pesantren in East Java -- are filled with books from Saudi Arabia. (Gontor's newest building, the Saudi building, is also a gift from Saudi Arabia.) Few pesantren libraries hold any recent books by Western authors.
The Saudi religious affairs office in Jakarta churns out translations from Arabic to Indonesian -- about one million books a year, an official there said. The titles include "Questions and Answers about Islamic Principles," by Bin Baaz, one of Saudi Arabia's most venerated interpreters of Islam.
The religious affairs attache also offers scholarships for study to Saudi Arabian universities, and the students who receive them are increasingly those with a conservative religious bent, Indonesian officials said.
Students affiliated with Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest, oldest and most inclusive Islamic organization in Indonesia, said they had been excluded from scholarships to study in Saudi Arabia because they refused, in interviews with Saudi education officials, to cut their ties with the group.
Mr. Shihab, the former government minister, said that in principle he had no quarrel with the Saudis trying to influence Islam in Indonesia. "The Saudis have noble intentions for their religion," he said. "They see that Christianity, Sufism, the Shiites, should be guarded against in order not to pollute Islam. I don't accuse them of being terrorist extremists. They want to expand their form of Islam, the rigid understanding of Islam."
Even though the moderates in Indonesia still hold the upper hand, Mr. Shihab said the United States should recognize the competition from Saudi Arabia and not remain complacent.







   
 

July 5, 2003 Saturday  
  



 INSIDE 

 
     Islands of Saudi Influence
Saudi Arabian teaching and financing of fundamentalist Islamic education and militant groups has helped promote a recent hardening of Indonesia's traditionally relaxed take on Islam.   PAGE A3

Barry White Is Dead
The singer, whose booming bass voice and suggestive lyrics brought him pop stardom in the 1970's and whose comeback won him Grammys in the 90's, was 58.   PAGE C5

Roddick Out at Wimbledon
Andy Roddick, the last American left in the men's draw, lost in the Wimbledon semifinals to Roger Federer, who will meet unseeded Mark Philippoussis in the final.   SPORTSSATURDAY, PAGE D1

Black Americans on Mugabe
Is it wrong for African-Americans to criticize repressive black African leaders? A stand by the lobbying group TransAfrica against Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has raised the question.   ARTS & IDEAS, PAGE B7






  


July 2, 2003 Wednesday 



 WORLD DIGEST

 
SAUDI ARABIA
Terrorism crackdown nets 124 arrests, official says
Saudi police have arrested 124 people during the kingdom's recent crackdown on terrorism, and some of the suspects are linked to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, the government said Tuesday.
Saudi authorities launched an extensive manhunt after the May 12 bombings in the capital, Riyadh, that killed 34 people and a June 14 raid on a terrorist cell that was allegedly planning attacks in Mecca, Islam's holiest city.
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said 124 people have been arrested in Saudi cities, including Riyadh and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The detainees include people linked to al-Qaida, individuals who have returned from Afghanistan, foreign nationals and at least five women, the Saudi Press Agency quoted the prince as saying. 
HONG KONG
Anti-subversion law draws massive protest
A new law targeting crimes against the state drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of Hong Kong on Tuesday in a protest that overshadowed the sixth anniversary of the handover of the territory from Britain to China.
The protesters marched through the city peacefully to show opposition to anti-subversion legislation, which many fear will be used to suppress free expression and other liberties traditionally available in Hong Kong but nonexistent in China.
March organizer Richard Tsoi said more than 500,000 people turned out, dressed in black and waving signs as they brought much of Hong Kong island to a standstill during the 6 1/2 hour march. Police estimated the crowd at 350,000.
NETHERLANDS
Serbs hand over colonel accused of war crimes
Seeking to relieve political pressure from Washington, Serb authorities Tuesday handed over a colonel wanted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in connection with the massacre of 200 people during war in the Balkans.
Col. Veselin Sljivancanin was indicted for the 1991 killings near the Croatian town of Vukovar. He was flown to The Hague and taken into U.N. custody, tribunal spokesman Jim Landale said.
Sljivancanin's arrest last month sparked a night of clashes between dozens of riot police and hard-line Serb nationalists who threw rocks and set cars alight.
Serb officials said at the time that his arrest was proof of their commitment to meet U.S. demands that fugitives be transferred to the tribunal.
The United States threatened to withhold badly needed aid unless Serbia complied with the court.
AUSTRALIA
Prime minister wants stronger ties with U.S.Australia plans to seek even closer ties with the United States and take a more assertive role in the Pacific region, Prime Minister John Howard said Tuesday.
Howard has worked assiduously to boost ties with the United States and sent troops to serve with the U.S.-led coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Canberra's alliance with Washington has irked some Asian neighbors.
"America will grow more, not less, important to Australia as the years go by," Howard said in a speech to the Sydney Institute, an independent think tank.
Howard went out of his way before the Iraq war to explain his support for military action to President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and one of Australia's closest neighbors.
FRANCE
Alpine mountain climbers fall to their deaths
Two Belgian climbers, a man and a woman, fell to their deaths on Mont Blanc in France's Alpine region Tuesday, rescue workers said.
The two climbers were heading down the mountain, the highest in Western Europe, when one of them took a wrong step and fell some 750 feet, dragging the other along. Officials in Grenoble did not give their names.
NETHERLANDS
Politician's killer seeks reduction of sentence
The killer of anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn said Tuesday he "still hadn't decided" whether the slaying was justified. He spoke at a hearing to determine whether his 18-year prison sentence should be changed.
Volkert van der Graaf, 33, an animal rights activist, shot Fortuyn on May 6, 2002, throwing Dutch elections into chaos and sparking a year of political instability. He appealed his sentence on the grounds that 12 to 16 years is the usual punishment for a single murder in Netherlands.






    
  


July 2, 2003, Wednesday



 COUNTERSTRIKE: HOW POLICE TURNED BALI BLAST INTO WIN IN WAR ON TERRORISM







  



July 2, 2003 Wednesday  




 Victims of Asian Wars Lack Protection, Hope; 
Civil Strife Creates Internal Refugees

 
 Insecurity and fear gnaw at Basaluddin Gialodin. Insecurity because he and his family have been forced out of their home and are living in a makeshift shack with a tarp for walls. Fear that if they go home, they will be killed in the battle between the government and Muslim rebels. 
 Gialodin, his wife and six children have been displaced since February, forced out when a government attack on rebels in the southern Philippines destroyed their home for the second time in three years.  
 They live in an "evacuation center" with 5,700 other people on the edge of the war zone in Maguindanao province. Around them lie listless men, too despondent to flick away the flies flitting about their faces. Row upon ragged row of tents built of bamboo sticks and tarp or thatch are separated by lanes of mud. Corn and coconut husks smolder in open fire pits.  
 It is squalid, but preferable to the threat of living in a war zone. "If we go back," said Gialodin, a 35-year-old farmer, "we cannot trust that fighting will not break out again." 
 Across Southeast Asia, more than 1.5 million people live the life of refugees, but are denied the protections of refugees because of a technicality: They have not crossed an international border. They are casualties of conflict, but their plight is often obscured by governments and news media focusing on the battles themselves. They live in tents, shacks, warehouses, wherever they can find shelter.  
 They have fled conflicts between government troops and rebels, or between Muslim and Christian militias, or between warring ethnic groups. Afraid to go home, they are the region's "internally displaced people," refugees in their own land. 
 According to the United Nations, there are an estimated 25 million such people worldwide, almost twice the number of refugees. The number fluctuates as people are uprooted and, sometimes months or years later, make their way home.  
At the end of last year, Sudan, Colombia, Angola, Congo, Iraq, Burma and Indonesia had the highest numbers of displaced persons, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees.  
Although refugees can seek protection from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention, internally displaced people do not have such safeguards. They are not protected by international refugee law and many are inaccessible to outside monitors.  
During war, civilians are supposed to be protected under international humanitarian law, but in today's conflicts, in which civilians are frequently targeted, the law often does them little good, said Marc Vincent, an adviser on internally displaced people with the United Nations in Geneva.  "It's a global problem," Vincent said. "But ultimately the responsibility rests with the governments concerned." 
 In a typical tale of upheaval, Majria Hehanussa, her husband and four children find shelter in a plywood stall in a converted exhibition center on the island of Ambon in the Moluccas, the former Spice Islands of eastern Indonesia. They have fled two conflicts. The bloody 1999 violence in East Timor sent them to Seram island in the Moluccas, then the brutal sectarian conflict there sent them to nearby Ambon, where a peace agreement was signed last year. 
 Although the conflict in Ambon has officially ended, they are among thousands of families afraid to go home.  
 In another part of Ambon, Max Reawaruw recalled wistfully how he used to live in a four-room house on 100 acres of land bursting with papaya, coconut and clove trees in the village of Waai. Today home is a 9-by-12-foot plywood stall in a former clove warehouse that he shares with his wife, two blind daughters and three other children. 
 Although the warehouse is only 13 miles by paved road from Waai, Reawaruw has not been back since he fled in 1999. "I'm afraid of the jihad fighters," he said, sitting on a wooden bench, his face gaunt and furrowed. "They say that they have gone home, but I know that they are still there." 
 Now, at the northwestern end of the Indonesian archipelago, another battle has uprooted more than 35,000 people since it erupted in May. The conflict between the government and Muslim rebels in the northwestern province of Aceh has gone on for more than a quarter-century. 
 In the Philippines, the three-decade conflict between the government and rebels on the main southern island of Mindanao has claimed at least 120,000 lives and displaced more than 3 million people -- mostly Muslims, but also Christians and indigenous peoples, according to aid organizations.  
 In fighting in dozens of towns since February, 400,000 people were displaced. Despite two unilateral rebel cease-fires, 200,000 people still have not gone home, including the Gialodins.  
 On a recent day, Gialodin was sitting with several men on a bench under a shade tree, despairing that he was not able to tend his corn and rice crops. Although he is Muslim and generally sympathetic to the rebels, he said he would not want to fight with them. "I have many children, and am obliged to care for them," he said.  
 He would like to return home, as he has in past conflicts. But despite assurances from the local government that it is safe to do so, "soldiers are still in the villages," he said. He was waiting, he said, for a "genuine cease-fire." 
 A few miles west along the highway, up a dirt path, lies a village inhabited by 40 Christian, Muslim and indigenous families, whose spirituality is rooted in the land. It was declared a "sanctuary for peace" after the families, assisted by a Catholic priest, won agreement from the soldiers and rebels that the site would not be a battle zone. During the day, the men work the crops. At night, they return to sleep in their homes in the forest clearing. 
 A conflict in 1997 forced many people living there to flee. They returned, but fled again during a battle in 2000, which the Filipinos refer to as a war. Such is their sense of humor and the impact of the conflict on their lives that children born during that period were given names such as Eva May, for evacuation in May, Eva Kate, for evacuate, and Gym Boy, for the gym in Pikit town where Gym Boy's family took shelter for two months in 2000. 
 Maxima Alim, 68, an indigenous woman, still shudders when she recalls the whizzing sound of bullets. She blames Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels for the conflict. In her mind, the soldiers are protecting the civilians. But rebels aside, she has nothing against Muslims. "Those who do not join the fighting are good people," she said. 
 As she spoke, standing outside her home, where a water buffalo slumbered under a tree, Tessie Cedeno and two friends walked by. The women, all Christians, greeted Alim warmly, a sign of friendship forged of the shared trauma of displacement. Cedeno, 43, was displaced in both 1997 and 2000.  
 Although she lives in a sanctuary, Cedeno is nervous. "I'm scared to the bones, especially in the evening," she said. "There are rumors that 'elements' will attack the village. We don't know if they are soldiers or rebels." 
 Fed up with the seemingly endless cycle of flight and return, with the crops wasted and schooling interrupted, 8,000 displaced people last week staged a rally to urge an end to the conflict. They held signs along the highway for two hours each day: Cease-fire Now; Stop the Hatred, United for Peace. They hailed passing buses, trucks and "tricycles" -- working-class taxis fashioned out of a scooter and sidecar festooned with a riot of colorful streamers, plastic flowers and designs. 
 The military said it was trying to support their return home. "But if these armed groups are conducting operations, we have no choice but to enter those areas," said Chief of Staff Narciso Abaya in a telephone interview. 
 The Moro front, too, expressed sympathy. "That's unfortunate," said Mohagher Iqbal, the group's chief information officer, in an interview in a house near Cotabato. "We do not want that to happen. But in war, that is always the case." 
The government has helped 222,000 people return home and has spent $ 1.4 million on food, sanitation and supplies since January, according to Corazon "Dinky" Soliman, the Philippines' secretary for social welfare and development. 
 The long-range plan, she said, is to promote land ownership among Muslims and to fulfill the terms of a 1996 peace agreement that includes establishing courts based on Islamic law, or sharia, and giving Muslims in southern Mindanao authority over political institutions. 
 "The most important thing is to address the root cause of the conflict," she said, "and that is to reverse the government's neglect of Muslim Mindanao." 







 
 


July 1, 2003 Tuesday



 Police Arrest Most-Wanted in Bali Bombing

 
Police have arrested the most-wanted fugitive in last year's Bali nightclub bombings as he plotted more terror attacks with other Al Qaeda-linked militants, officials said yesterday.
The announcement came as prosecutors recommended a death sentence in the trial of the militant known as the "smiling bomber" - the first suspect to face trial for the October 12 attacks on the resort island, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.
The arrest of the latest suspect, known as Idris, appeared to be a major victory for Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, in its fight against Islamic militancy. 
Washington has criticized Indonesia for not acting to stamp out terrorism and on Friday renewed its travel warning for the country, saying militants may be planning new attacks on American targets.
"He has confessed to his entire role in the bombing," Bali police chief Maj. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika said. "This is a very important arrest."
Mr. Pastika said the suspect, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, was part of a gang that robbed a bank in the city of Medan, on Sumatra island, last month to raise money for terrorist operations.
Idris was arrested in Medan on June 12 with ten other alleged gang members, all been accused of belonging to the regional Islamic militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah.
Police announced the capture of the other suspects last week but did not disclose Idris's arrest, fearing it would inspire militants to go into hiding.
Jemaah Islamiyah, which reportedly wants to establish an Islamic state across Muslim parts of Southeast Asia, has been linked to Al Qaeda and is blamed for the Bali bombings.
Many of the 35 people arrested in connection with the attacks have allegedly admitted to being Jemaah Islamiyah members - including one who prosecutors say fought alongside Osama bin Laden.
Prosecutors have accused Idris of serving as the deputy to Imam Samudra, the alleged mastermind of the Bali bombings. Mr. Samudra is one of three bombing suspects already on trial.
Idris - who uses the aliases Joni Hendrawan and Gembrot - allegedly attended many planning meetings for the Bali attack and handled most of the group's logistics.
He is also accused of providing Bali suspect Amrozi bin Nurhasyim with money for bomb-making materials and was with him when he bought the minivan used in one of the resort island bombings.
The 35-year-old Idris is believed to have studied in an Islamic school in Malaysia headed b yAli Ghufron - one of three suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members who is also on trial for the Bali attack.
Three other Bali bombing suspects remain at large.
Police are also hunting for former Jemaah Islamiyah operations chief, Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali. He is believed to be bin Laden's point man in Southeast Asia, but has not been directly implicated in the Bali plot.
Prosecutors called on judges to sentence Mr. Amrozi to death for his alleged role in the bombings, the bloodiest terror attacks since September 11.
"We conclude that the defendant is responsible for terrorist acts that have caused anxiety, damage and the loss of lives," Prosecutor Urip Trigunawan told the Denpasar District Court.
Mr. Amrozi listened impassively and stroked his beard as he listened to the sentence recommendation.
The father of an Australian killed in the bombings cried out, "Amrozi, you die!" immediately after the prosecutor spoke.
Mr. Amrozi would face a firing squad if Indonesia carries out the sentence. In earlier testimony, he admitted his role in the attack and told his lawyers he was ready for punishment.






   


July 1, 2003, Tuesday



 DEATH CALL FOR BALI 'SMILING BOMBER'

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Prosecutors said yesterday they are seeking the death penalty for the militant known as the "smiling bomber" - the first suspect to face trial for the Oct. 12 bombings of a Bali nightclub, which killed 202 people.
"We conclude that the defendant [Amrozi bin Nurhasyim] is responsible for terrorist acts that have caused anxiety, damage and the loss of lives," prosecutor Urip Trigunawan told the Denpasar District Court.
Amrozi listened impassively and stroked his beard as he listened to the sentence recommendation. 
The father of an Australian killed in the bombings cried out, "Amrozi, you die!" immediately after the prosecutor spoke.
Amrozi would face a firing squad if Indonesia carries out the sentence.
In earlier testimony, he admitted his role in the attacks and told his lawyers he was ready for punishment.
Soon after his arrest in November, Amrozi was dubbed the "smiling bomber" after he outraged survivors and relatives of victims by giggling before TV crews.
He and other key suspects are alleged to have taken part in the attacks, which killed mostly foreign tourists, to avenge what the killers claim is the suffering of Muslims at the hands of the United States and its allies.
Police also have arrested the most-wanted fugitive in the bombings as he plotted more terror attacks with other al Qaeda-linked militants, officials said.
The arrest of the latest suspect, known as Idris, appeared to be a major victory for Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, in its fight against Islamic militancy.
Washington has criticized Indonesia for not acting to stamp out terrorism, and on Friday renewed its travel warning for the country, saying militants may be planning new attacks on U.S. targets.
Idris "has confessed to his entire role in the bombing," Bali police chief Maj. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika told The Associated Press. "This is a very important arrest."
Pastika said the suspect, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, was part of a gang that robbed a bank in the city of Medan, on Sumatra island, last month to raise money for terrorist operations.
Idris was arrested in Medan on June 12 with 10 other alleged gang members. All have been accused of belonging to the regional Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiyah.
Police announced the capture of the other suspects last week, but did not disclose Idris' arrest, fearing it would inspire militants to go into hiding. Post Wire Services






  


June 30, 2003 Monday



 Suspected organizer of Bali blast arrested;
Most- wanted fugitive held after robbery

 
The announcement came as prosecutors recommended a death sentence in the trial of the militant known as the "smiling bomber' the first suspect to face trial for the Oct. 12 attacks on the resort island, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.
The arrest of the latest suspect, known as Idris, appeared to be a major victory for Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, in its fight against Islamic militancy.
Washington has criticized Indonesia for not acting to stamp out terrorism and on Friday renewed its travel warning for the country, saying militants may be planning new attacks on U.S. targets. 
"He has confessed to his entire role in the bombing,' Bali police chief Maj. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika told The Associated Press. "This is a very important arrest.'
Pastika said the suspect, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, was part of a gang that robbed a bank in the city of Medan, on Sumatra island, last month to raise money for terrorist operations.
Idris was arrested in Medan on June 12 with 10 other alleged gang members, all accused of belonging to the regional Islamic militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah.
Police announced the capture of the other suspects last week but did not disclose Idris's arrest, fearing it would inspire militants to go into hiding.
Jemaah Islamiyah, which reportedly wants to establish an Islamic state across Muslim parts of Southeast Asia, has been linked to al-Qaida and is blamed for the Bali bombings.
Many of the 35 people arrested in connection with the attacks have allegedly admitted to being Jemaah Islamiyah members including one who prosecutors say fought alongside Osama bin Laden.
Prosecutors have accused Idris of serving as the deputy to Imam Samudra, the alleged mastermind of the Bali bombings. Samudra is one of three bombing suspects already on trial.
Idris who uses the aliases Joni Hendrawan and Gembrot allegedly attended many planning meetings for the Bali attack and handled most of the group's logistics.
He also is accused of providing Bali suspect Amrozi bin Nurhasyim with money for bomb- making materials and was with him when he bought the minivan used in one of the resort island bombings.
The 35-year-old Idris is believed to have studied in an Islamic school in Malaysia headed by Ali Ghufron one of three suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members who is also on trial for the Bali attack.
Three other Bali bombing suspects remain at large.







  



June 26, 2003 Thursday  




 Indonesian Army's Upper Hand; 
Military Reasserts Broad Influence, Diplomats Say

 
Five years after Gen. Suharto was ousted and a newly democratic Indonesia pledged to reform the military, the ambitious effort has largely stalled and the generals are resurgent, according to Indonesian and Western analysts. 
 The armed forces' newfound confidence was on display this spring, when the chief of the Indonesian army summoned his senior generals to an unprecedented meeting in the troubled province of Aceh. 
 Commanders of the army's special forces, strategic command and Indonesia's 12 military regions were among more than four dozen generals flown in by Hercules transport planes to a gas company's compound, separated by walls and barbed wire from the rebellious villages beyond. The generals donned the jungle camouflage uniforms of the war zone. Nearly 2,000 soldiers and police were deployed to guard the session.  
 The army was conducting its annual review outside the main island of Java for the first time in 38 years. It was a sensitive moment. A cease-fire that the government had concluded -- over the military's objections -- three months earlier with rebels fighting for Aceh's independence was faltering. By gathering in combat uniforms in the oil- and gas-rich province, at the northern tip of Indonesia's western island of Sumatra, the generals were sending what many Indonesians saw as a stark message of dissent. 
 "It was a deliberate move by the army commander to show the wishy-washy politicians in Jakarta that the army is the one that would protect the territorial integrity of Indonesia," said Juwono Sudarsono, a former defense minister. "It was open defiance." 
 In May, two months after that meeting, the government finally endorsed a military solution for Aceh, and the Indonesian armed forces launched their largest offensive since the invasion of East Timor in 1975. The military had regained the upper hand in setting the course in the rebellious province and reasserted its lead role in protecting the country's internal security, according to Indonesian and Western defense analysts and diplomats. This occurred despite the government's previous efforts to transfer that responsibility to the police. 
 The reversal underscores the military's broadening influence over Indonesia's most sensitive policies, the diplomats and analysts say. In their view, there is much less talk now about reform -- removing the military from politics and placing it under civilian control, making it accountable for human rights violations and turning its attention to national defense rather than domestic policing. 
 This reflects the officer corps' determination to preserve its role as guardian of the nation as well as to maintain the riches it reaps through a network of patronage and private enterprises, according to the diplomats and analysts. But these revived fortunes are also the result of a civilian leadership that these observers say has proved more interested in currying the favor of the military than disciplining its excesses. 
 "The civilians don't have the guts and the confidence to control the army. They're not strong enough," said Salim Said, senior partner at the Indoconsult business consulting firm in Jakarta, who follows military affairs.  
 Instead, civilian politicians are competing with one another to woo military support ahead of landmark elections next year, which will be the first direct vote for president in the country's history and an important step in the transition to democracy. 
 "No political party wants to risk confrontation with the military by pushing for military reform," said Rizal Sukma, director of studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. He added that President Megawati Sukarnoputri "believes the continuation of her power depends on support from the military." 
Megawati said in a speech in Tokyo this week that she had turned to the military in Aceh because Indonesia was facing a challenge to its territorial integrity and that "the constitution makes clear that Indonesia is a unitary state, and it is unacceptable that any people should aim for an arrangement contrary to that." 
Just last year, the military had agreed reluctantly to relinquish its traditional quota of seats in parliament. Eleven of its officers had been ordered by Indonesian judges to stand trial for alleged atrocities in East Timor after the former Indonesian province voted in 1999 for independence. It was losing the debate over Aceh policy while the rival police were winning international plaudits for capturing the suspected terrorists behind the bombing of two Bali nightclubs in October. 
 But in recent months, the armed forces, known in Indonesian as Tentara Nasional Indonesia or TNI, have turned the tide. They have reestablished themselves in internal security and rejected a historic proposal by reformers within the military to roll back the army's ubiquitous presence in towns and villages. The armed forces have also pushed for an expanded role in intelligence-gathering, according to analysts and officials familiar with military planning. 
 "The trend is certainly going in a different direction to what it initially followed when we began the military reform four to five years ago," Sukma said. "The military has been able to regain a lot more influence than they had a year ago both in defense policy and in the political process." 
Military leaders deny that reform of the armed forces has stopped. "Internal change within the TNI will continue in line with government policy," said Lt. Gen. Djaja Suparman, commander of the military's command and general staff college. "Should there be an opinion that internal reform of the TNI is being done half-heartedly or even has not started due to reluctance on TNI's part, that would be mistaken." 
 With Indonesia facing a wave of terrorist attacks, separatist rebellions in two provinces, Aceh and Papua, and Muslim-Christian violence elsewhere in the archipelago, Indonesians are increasingly nostalgic for the generals' firm hand. 
 "The trust of the people in the armed forces is now growing," said retired Gen. Agum Gumelar, Indonesia's transportation and communications minister and former commander of the army's special forces. "It's because they feel, I'm sorry to say, the existing government [has] disappointed [them]. In this situation, the people are looking to the armed forces again. They feel that Suharto's era is better than now." 
 Under Suharto, military personnel filled the upper ranks of the civil service under a concept known as dwifungsi, or dual function, which guaranteed the armed forces a guiding role in politics as well as national defense. Though the military no longer holds those posts, Gumelar said, it still has the duty to prevent the civilian government from jeopardizing the national interest, in particular national unity. 
 "If there is an element of the nation that tries to go in the wrong direction, the armed forces must remind the government we have to make a correction," said Gumelar, one of six active or retired generals who hold cabinet-level posts in Megawati's government. 
 In a speech this spring, the army chief of staff, Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu, said the military would uphold Indonesia's laws but would not take a back seat to the elected government. 
 "The meaning of civil supremacy is not that soldiers are under civilians, but that the whole nation including the soldiers have to obey the prevailing civil laws," he said. 
 Senior officers say they have reformed since the Suharto era, building a professional force seeking to avoid the human rights abuses that long tarnished the military's international reputation. But rights advocates and foreign governments continue to raise concerns about military conduct, including reports that soldiers in Aceh have killed innocent civilians. 
 U.S. officials are also investigating whether members of the military were responsible for the killing of two American teachers and an Indonesian colleague near the Freeport gold and copper mine in the province of Papua last August. U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew P. Daley said recently that the "preponderance of evidence" points to members of the military. The Indonesian military has denied involvement. 
 As the spirit of reform swept Indonesia following Suharto's ouster, one of the most dramatic proposals was to overhaul the military's longtime territorial command system, under which officers were stationed across the country at all levels of government, in essence forming a power structure parallel to the civilian bureaucracy. 
 Lt. Gen. Agus Widjojo, chief of territorial affairs through 2001, ran a series of workshops to plan for eliminating the military's presence at local levels. This would have curtailed severely the army's power in local politics and limited its involvement in side business enterprises. 
 But the initiative encountered fierce resistance within the army ranks, Widjojo recalled. "It was just unthinkable for them to change," he said. 
The military establishment was equally bold late last year when Megawati's defense ministry asked for its input on a new law regulating the military. In response, the military provided an entire draft bill, including an article that would allow the military to carry out emergency operations without the approval of the president, according to Sukma, who served on the panel drafting the legislation. 
 The legislation is now awaiting action by the parliament, where it seems likely to pass.  
 But it is over Aceh policy that the military has won its most decisive battle. Last year, Indonesia's chief security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, almost single-handedly persuaded Megawati and her cabinet to reach a negotiated settlement with the separatists. Though a former general himself, Yudhoyono faced opposition from senior military officers and the other retired generals in Megawati's inner circle. He was widely cheered, however, by foreign governments, in particular the United States. 
 The December agreement called for a cease-fire and partial demilitarization, with the rebels required to turn over their weapons at cantonment areas under international supervision and Indonesian forces obligated to pull back from some front-line positions. The two sides were also required to begin negotiations over the future status of the province, home to 4.1 million people. 
 In the following months, military officials accused the rebels of using the cease-fire to rearm and reorganize. The military refused to pull back troops as the agreement demanded. With tension mounting, the rebels delayed resuming peace talks, and Yudhoyono found himself increasingly isolated. 
 Rather than redouble efforts toward a peaceful settlement, Megawati declared martial law in Aceh on May 18 and promised to crush the rebels within six months. Her senior officials said they ended the peace process because the separatists had refused to renounce their goal of independence and lay down their weapons. 
 About 300 people have been killed in the first month of the offensive, pitting about 40,000 Indonesian troops against about 4,000 to 5,000 separatists. The military says most of the casualties are rebels, but rebels, human rights activists and some Western diplomats assert that the victims include scores of civilians and government troops. 
The military's resurgence has met little opposition from Megawati, who Indonesian political analysts say feels comfortable with the generals and shares their view that Indonesia's unity must be assured by force. That position also has popular support, according to recent public opinion polls. 
 The president maintains good relations with Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, the military's commander, and army chief Ryacudu. 
Away from the capital, in the villages of this far-flung archipelago, the military's power is even greater. Military officers control patronage networks that can deliver electoral support. The officers can stir up trouble to undermine civilian politicians or, at a minimum, refuse to calm protests that prove embarrassing to the government. Civilian politicians recognize that after only five years of democracy, their parties cannot match the military's resources, according to Sudarsono, the former defense minister. 
 "They know at the end of the day, the real power remains with the military. It has the organizational structure, especially in the boondocks. 
"That has to be left unsaid, but that's in the back of their minds," he said.  
Special correspondent Natasha Tampubolon contributed to this report. 







   
 

June 24, 2003 Tuesday  
  



 Investors Clamor for Stake in Biggest Indonesian Bank 

 
More than five years after Indonesia was forced effectively to nationalize a banking system on the verge of collapse, the country's biggest bank, Bank Mandiri, is moving back into the equity markets with an initial public offering to global investors that looks set to raise at least $300 million. 
     According to bankers close to the sale, which is being underwritten by ABN Amro, Credit Suisse First Boston and Danareksa of Indonesia, Bank Mandiri had received so many orders for shares by today that it decided to double the number in the offering to four billion, equivalent to 20 percent of the bank's equity. The underwriters said they expected to announce the full results of the offering on Tuesday; the shares are scheduled to begin trading publicly July 14. 
 The clamor for Mandiri's stock is only the latest vote of confidence in the outcome of Indonesia's $85 billion bailout of its financial system. Indonesian bank stocks have nearly doubled in value so far this year, helping to drive the benchmark Jakarta composite index up 19 percent in local terms and 29 percent in dollar terms since Jan. 1. And despite separatist Muslim revolts in several provinces and the terror bombing last October in Bali, approvals of foreign direct investments in the country were up nearly 85 percent in the first five months of this year.  
"It is an important sign," David Nellor, the International Monetary Fund's chief representative in Jakarta, said of the Bank Mandiri sale. The ability to attract buyers for its shares, Mr. Nellor said, not only demonstrated Mandiri's achievements but also underscored Indonesia's renaissance in the global financial community. "All these things show progress," he said. 
But Mr. Nellor and other experts on Indonesia cautioned that the eager reception for Mandiri's shares had at least as much to do with a global hunger for high-yielding assets as it did with any newfound confidence in Indonesia's economic management. In a country that so often seems to be moving backward, some analysts worried that investors might be rewarding Indonesia merely for standing still. 
"Indonesia is not out of the woods," said Fabrice Desmarescaux, a management consultant in charge of McKinsey & Company's Southeast Asian banking practice. Corruption remains rife in the country, the courts remain capricious, and the economic growth rate of 4 percent, still too low to reverse growing unemployment, may now be held down by a decline in consumer spending. 
None of this is preventing the government from making the most of its improved reputation among investors. With plenty of demand in international money markets for Indonesian debt, the government is considering an exit from the economic rescue program that the monetary fund set up for the country in the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. That would mean forsaking the loans but escaping the policy strictures that come with them.
The Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency, set up to oversee the banking rescue, plans to wrap up its operations by early next year. And President Megawati Sukarnoputri is in Tokyo this week to try, among other things, to persuade the Japanese government to consider a free trade agreement with Indonesia. 
Bank Mandiri is itself a creature of the crisis. It was assembled in 1998 by merging four insolvent state-owned banks, at a time when, at the behest of the monetary fund, the bank restructuring agency was busy closing 67 banks and taking over more than 50. 
To revive the banks that remained standing, the agency exchanged the banks' nonperforming loans for government-backed recapitalization bonds. To help recover the cost of doing so and to ease the government's budget deficit, the agency then set about trying to collect on the bad loans itself, or to sell them or the collateral tied to them.
Since then, the agency has succeeded in returning stakes in some of the biggest seized banks to the private sector, including Bank Central Asia, Bank Niaga and, most recently, Bank Danamon.
Mandiri, meanwhile, went through a wrenching reorganization, closing 194 branches and cutting its 26,600-strong work force by 9,000. Its pile of nonperforming loans, more than 70 percent of its total loan portfolio to start with, was whittled down to 7.3 percent at the end of 2002. 
In April, the bank's standing had risen to the point that it was able to sell $300 million in bonds at interest rates lower than the Philippine government pays; in May, it reported 1.55 trillion rupiah ($188 million) in profits for the first quarter. 
But analysts say the Indonesian banking sector remains far from healthy. Banks have depended too much on the interest income from the recapitalization bonds, the analysts say, while new lending has been anemic. The banks struggle to find creditworthy borrowers in a nation where bankruptcy courts rarely offer the banks any protection. 
"They're not able to assess the risk with confidence," said Mr. Desmarescaux at McKinsey. 
But the banks are under pressure to lend anyway. Falling inflation and a strengthening Indonesian rupiah have enabled the central bank to lower interest rates; the benchmark three-month rate has been cut by nearly seven percentage points over the last 18 months. That has helped companies by making it cheaper to raise money and repay their foreign debts, which are equivalent to 40 percent of Indonesia's gross domestic product. 
But falling interest rates also reduce the returns the banks earn on the portion of their recapitalization bonds that pay floating rates. Banks are trying to compensate by lending more to small and medium-size companies, analysts say, but they may be ill equipped to manage the risks of such lending.
Moreover, many of the loans appearing on the banks' books as new are really restructured loans they have repurchased from the bank restructuring agency. Some analysts say that many of these loans are likely to go into default once again. 
Indonesian banks also suffer from inefficiencies that sap their profitability. According to Mr. Desmarescaux, Indonesian banks spend more than three times what banks in Singapore do to manage a given amount of money. 
How will Indonesia fare without the International Monetary Fund? The fund has said that the government should now be able to finance its debts without any outside help, provided that it continues to shore up the country's legal system and to return state-owned companies to the private sector, where it is assumed they will be more transparent and better run. 
"We believe that the financing situation is manageable, but the reform effort will have to continue strongly," Mr. Nellor of the International Monetary Fund said. 
But some analysts say the impetus for reform is flagging as Indonesia's leaders prepare for presidential elections next year. Politicians have blamed the monetary fund when politically unpalatable measures had to be imposed, like cuts in fuel subsidies or sales of state-owned assets to foreign investors. 
Now that investors are prepared to lend freely to Indonesia, the government appears confident it can chart its own course without the monetary fund to guide it -- or to take the blame.      




17


  



June 22, 2003 Sunday  




 A Nightmare, and a Mystery, in the Jungle; 
Ambush of School Outing Left 3 Dead, 8 Wounded And Suspicion of Involvement by Indonesian Army

 
From the back seat, social studies teacher Steve Emma heard what he thought were rocks striking the Toyota Land Cruiser carrying him and his colleagues from the Tembagapura International School on a picnic outing through the rain forest of Papua, Indonesia, on Aug. 31, 2002. 
Then the windshield shattered. 
Rick Spier, behind the steering wheel, jerked and pitched forward. Blood and tissue splattered onto the seat and dashboard. In the passenger seat, principal Edwin "Ted" Burgon slumped over, moaning and gurgling.  
"Get down! Get down!" Emma shouted to the two women behind the front seats. As bullets riddled the vehicle, owned by the teachers' employer, the PT Freeport Indonesia gold and copper mine, Emma peeked out the windshield. He could make out three figures. One held a rifle. 
He strained to see their faces. But the thick fog and cracked window glass obscured his view. "Who are you?" Emma recalled asking. "Why are you doing this?" 
Today, nearly 10 months later, the U.S. government still does not know for certain who ordered or carried out the ambush in which two Americans and one Indonesian were murdered and eight other Americans were wounded. 
Congress has been given intelligence reports that support the conclusion of a preliminary Indonesian police investigation that found that "there is a strong possibility" the shooting was carried out by members of the Indonesian military. The military has denied involvement in the attack. The FBI is continuing to investigate. 
"The preponderance of evidence indicates to us that members of the Indonesian army were responsible for the murders in Papua," Matthew P. Daley, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said in an interview. "The question of what level and for what motive did these murders take place is of deep interest to the United States." 
The possibility of military involvement in the attack was raised at a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 20, 2003. At the meeting, a CIA analyst reviewed intelligence reports on the murders, and also discussed intelligence indicating that military personnel were seeking to withhold evidence from FBI agents who were coming to Indonesia to investigate the crime, said several knowledgeable officials. The CIA and FBI declined to comment. 
The discussion prompted the committee to approve an amendment prohibiting the release of $ 600,000 in military training funds until President Bush certifies that the Indonesian government is taking effective measures to bring to justice those responsible for the shootings. Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), who sponsored the amendment, confirmed the nature of the committee's deliberations but declined to discuss specifics. The amendment is expected to reach the Senate floor this summer.  
The Bush administration has opposed the amendment. A White House spokesman, Sean McCormack, said "it is important that we do everything possible to improve the human rights record of the Indonesian military through continued interaction with the U.S. military." 
Separately, the State Department is still debating whether to release $ 400,000 in fiscal year 2003 military funds to Indonesia given the incomplete status of the investigation. In December 2002, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Ralph L. "Skip" Boyce, delivered a message from Bush to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Resolution of the case was important to overall bilateral relations, he told her, according to State Department officials.  
But at the same time, Indonesia has received other funds from the United States. Since the attack, the Defense Department has given $ 4 million to the Indonesian military, known as TNI, or Tentara Nasional Indonesia, for counterterrorism training.  
For two decades, the State Department and some in Congress have wrangled with Pentagon officials over the wisdom of providing training for the Indonesian military. U.S. officials have long been wary of TNI's grip on political power, its vast, shadowy economic holdings and its well-documented human rights abuses -- most notably in the provinces of East Timor, Aceh, Papua and the Moluccas islands. 
 In 1999, President Bill Clinton suspended all military aid to Indonesia after the eruption of violence throughout East Timor by disgruntled troops and army-backed militias following the territory's vote for independence from Indonesia. By the time Bush took office, only very small U.S. military education programs had been restored. 
But U.S. policy abruptly shifted after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The United States made it a priority to win the Indonesian military's support in fighting al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamyiah, a militant Islamic group based in Indonesia. 
Now, Congress and the administration are investigating whether the Indonesian military, an important instrument of control in the most populous Muslim country in the world, might have been involved in an act of terrorism against Americans. 
The investigation has been difficult for the FBI. When agents visited Indonesia in January, they were required to interview witnesses in the presence of Indonesian authorities and not allowed to bring forensic evidence back to the United States for analysis, sources familiar with the investigation said. 
Recently, Indonesian authorities told U.S. officials they would allow forensic evidence to be escorted by Indonesian police to the United States for analysis at some later date. The authorities also promised that the FBI could carry out unsupervised interviews with witnesses. The FBI has yet to schedule a new visit. 
The preliminary Indonesian police investigation questioned 30 soldiers and 44 civilians. Under "temporary conclusions," the Indonesia police report said, "there is a strong possibility that the Tembagapura case was perpetrated by the members of the Indonesian National Army Force," according to a copy of the report obtained by . The probe was headed by veteran investigator I Made Pastika. 
Among the circumstantial evidence described in the police report was the fact that the weapons used in the attack, mostly M-16s, are standard issue to the military. The killers fired more than 130 bullets, according to the document. 
At a Jakarta news conference shortly after the attack, the chief of the Indonesian army, Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu, laid blame on a separatist movement, the Free Papua Movement. The group has repeatedly denied it was involved. 
Allen Behm, a former top Australian Defense Ministry official with extensive contacts in Indonesia, said he believes the Free Papua Movement could not have mounted such an assault. "The separatists simply don't have the motivation or the type of ammunition that was used," Behm said. 
The ambush occurred about 500 yards from a major military post, along a steep, winding road between Tembagapura, a Freeport company mining enclave, and Timika, a town built by the company. Drivers and passengers are required to use plastic security cards to drive on the road and must stop at three manned checkpoints along the way, each time sharing identification and stating a reason for travel to the Freeport security guards. 
Since 1967, New Orleans-based Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold has owned and operated the major share of the world's largest gold mine there. The open pit Grasberg mine looks like a ragged bullet wound in the middle of a lush green carpet. Trucks with six-foot-high wheels run 24 hours a day hauling out some of the mine's estimated 53.3 billion pounds of copper and 62.2 million ounces of gold. 
To attract employees, of which there are nearly 9,250, the company has its own airline and port and has built a $ 400 million community in Kuala Kencana, complete with luxury hotel, golf course, schools, health clinics and power plants. The school teachers and principal were contract employees, educating the 74 children of Freeport's American, British and Australian employees. 
Freeport's exploitation of Papua's rich resources and 700,000 acres of surrounding land has generated deep resentment among local people, many of whom live in poverty and were relocated as the mine grew. 
In 1996, a riot by local residents halted mining operations. In response, Freeport began to hire many more soldiers from the Indonesian military to protect the mine. The company paid $ 35 million for military barracks and other facilities and equipment. Over the years, the military, police and Freeport's security detail grew from 200 people to 2,000, according to a Freeport report. The company and its partners in the mine paid the military and police $ 5.8 million in 2001 and $ 7 million in 2002, according to the company. Most of the money went for food, housing and vehicle maintenance, a Freeport official said. 
Providing security for the mine has become a lucrative enterprise for the military in Papua, where it also has other money-making enterprises, such as export of tropical birds and tree resins as well as logging and mining. Overall, only about one-third of the military's budget comes from government funds. The rest comes from a vast network of side businesses. 
According to press reports at the time of the attack, the company had discussed reducing the number of soldiers and police who guard the mine and facilities. Freeport said no such discussions took place, and there are no plans to change the security arrangements. The FBI still is investigating the possibility that the ambush was designed to persuade Freeport to increase its payments to the military, according to sources close to the investigation. 
 "Freeport has been trying to wean the military off the corporate nipple for a long time," said Chris Ballard, who used to work for Freeport and is now a professor at the Australian National University. 
Human rights groups have accused Indonesian soldiers and special forces of killing or kidnapping tens of thousands of Papuans in the last three decades. In November 2001, seven soldiers in Kopassus, the Indonesian special forces, were convicted in connection with the killing of a Papuan independence leader, Theys Eluay. 
U.S. officials said they believe elements of the military may have wanted to frame the separatist group, Free Papua Movement, in the hope of prompting the State Department to add the group to the department's terrorist list. If the separatists were listed as a terrorist group, it would almost guarantee an increase in U.S. counterterrorism aid to the Indonesian military, the officials said. 
Steve Emma, still immobilized by his injuries and suffering debilitating flashbacks, said Bush should apply his with-us-or-against-us formula on terrorism if the Indonesian military was involved. "This was an outrageous act of terrorism," he said of the attack. 
Denver resident Patsy Spier, wife of murdered schoolteacher Rick Spier, has walked Capitol Hill for the last six months, campaigning for a cutoff of U.S. military aid to Indonesia pending the outcome of the investigation. Her flowing, strawberry blond hair, bright green eyes and often cheery manner mask the pain of 70 pieces of shrapnel lodged in her torso from the attack. 
Spier carries a primer, "Congress At Your Fingertips," in her big purse, to help her figure out how Washington works. She has wrangled meetings with top U.S. officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, the U.S. ambassador in Jakarta from 1986 to 1989, who still is a major influence on U.S. policymaking toward Indonesia. 
 Wolfowitz declined several requests for interviews. But at a meeting with Asian defense ministers in Singapore in May, he defended continued U.S. military assistance to Indonesia. "I think it is important to understand . . . that the issue of [military training] at times is too often, I think, made the one point on which we use to indicate our dissatisfaction over issues. . . . I believe exposure of Indonesian officers to U.S. [military personnel] has been a way to promote reform efforts in the military not to set them back." 
Spier is not convinced. "I have led a very fortunate, happy life, and so has Rick," Spier said at the end of her first trip to Capitol Hill in January. "It's because of his life that I can't let this horrible act happen to anyone else. . . . Someone's got to learn something from this. Something positive has got to come from this whole thing." 
Rick and Patsy Spier had a romantic marriage. They met at The Pits tavern in Wray, Colo., on Patsy's 25th birthday, she recalled recently. 
 "What do you want for your birthday, Patsy?" a friend had asked her as they sat in the bar. 
"I want me a long, tall cowboy," she responded. 
Just then Rick, employed as a cowhand, walked by. Her friend called to him: "Hey Stretch, come and dance with this girl!" 
After three months of dating, Patsy fell in love, she said. They eloped and a couple of years later began what would be 12 years of teaching abroad, including at a copper mine in Peru and in Khartoum, Sudan. The couple vacationed in Tasmania and Antarctica. They had just begun their third year teaching in the province of Papua, formerly called Irian Jaya. 
 "We loved it," she said. "We were together all the time." They walked to school together and ate lunch together. "We were best friends, and we never felt safer anywhere, including America, than we did in Tembagapura." 
When the teachers were unable to book rooms at the company-built hotel for the weekend because a golf tournament had filled it up, Rick Spier suggested a picnic. The surrounding area is home to the largest number of endemic species anywhere in the world, and so diverse it includes rain forests, mangrove swamps and alpine tundra covered with glacial ice. The Spiers wanted four new staff members -- Ted and Nancy Burgon, Steve Emma and Francine Goodfriend -- to see the bright orchids, loud frogs, two-story waterfalls and veiny Sarracenia purpurea -- fly-trapping pitcher plants -- that made their isolated tip of Indonesia so enchanting. 
But by 12:30 p.m., a thick fog and constant drizzle drove them to cut the outing short and head back home. Navigating around Freeport's huge dump trucks and tractor trailers slowed the vehicles to a crawl and separated the one driven by Rick Spier from the second one, driven by Ken Balk, by five to 10 minutes. 
Emma, who had been in Indonesia for two weeks, recalled he was asking Rick Spier and Nancy Burgon about the Papuans' tribal lifestyle when the first volley of shots penetrated the vehicle.  
By the third volley, he said, "I knew Ted was dead." 
Emma could hear the metal rip through the vehicle. The gunfire sounded as if it came from more than one weapon, not the rat-tat-tat of an automatic weapon. After a brief silence, the shooting began again. 
"Oh my God!" cried Goodfriend, as bullets tore through her right side and blood began pouring from her head. 
"They're still out there. They're coming through," Nancy Burgon screamed. It seemed whoever was shooting had moved around to the right side of the vehicle, which was pierced by hot lead that then broke up into shrapnel and ricocheted inside the vehicle. Burgon was grazed on the hip and metal fragments embedded in her face. 
Emma's upper right shoulder began burning; the heat trickled down his back. Another shot tore open his left hip and leg, sending a feeling of fire throughout his body. 
 Outside the Toyota, a fuel-tanker truck appeared at the vehicle's side. 
But bullets fired at the truck driver's neck and face stopped him, too. Emma could see fuel spraying through bullet holes in the truck's tank and onto the SUV. The vehicle's engine was still running. 
 "It smells like gas. They're trying to blow us up," Emma recalled telling Nancy Burgon.  
They debated trying to drive away, but decided it would be too risky. "We're going to blow up! We need to turn off the engine!" yelled Burgon. "I'll do it." 
"No, I'll do it," said Emma, just as Nancy Burgon hoisted her bloody body over Rick Spier's, and saw for the first time how gruesome his wounds were. "How do I turn it off?" she fumbled, stunned by the sight and beginning to shake. 
"Turn the key to the left," instructed Emma. 
"I can't," replied Nancy Burgon, unable to move Spier's body out of the way. 
 "I think Rick and Ted are dead," she said. 
 Emma nodded and grabbed her hand. "We'll get through this," he told her, and lifted himself over the seat to reach the key. But inside, Emma could feel himself losing control and composure. 
Overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness and by a wrenching, unforgiving pain, Emma kicked open the back door. "God damn it! Come and get me!" he yelled. The shooting stopped briefly and then resumed. 
"That was a stupid mistake," Emma told himself. 
From the opened back door, he could see three of the six passengers from the second SUV -- Ken Balk, his wife Saundra Hopkins and their 6-year-old daughter, Taia -- huddled outside their vehicle behind a tire. 
Balk's vehicle caught up with the first one, which was positioned headfirst in an embankment.  
Driving the second vehicle, Balk had noticed a Papuan dressed in military fatigues on the road just in front of the vehicle. From the front passenger seat, his wife, Hopkins, recalled seeing several Papuans, one in a black shirt, another in black camouflage pants, and a third with an ill-fitting jacket vest. As their SUV approached the scene, Patsy Spier saw two puffs of dirt on the road in back of a pickup that swept past in the opposite direction. Then everything went into slow motion. 
As Spier, Balk and Hopkins tell the story, a hail of invisible bullets and their fiery shrapnel cut through Spier's back, exploding her 11th rib and piercing her kidney with more than 70 shards. Bullets hit their Indonesian colleague, Bambang Riwanto, who fell onto Spier, dead. 
 Screams blended with the loud crash of shattering glass. In the mayhem, the immediate focus was to shield little Taia, sitting behind the front passenger seat. Lynn Poston, seated next to Taia and badly wounded herself, helped push Taia to the floor and cover her with a blanket. 
Balk, by then bleeding profusely from bullet wounds in his right side, knee, colon and lumbar artery, got out of the vehicle and pulled his wife out. As they pulled Taia out, she was shot in the buttock. They moved together to the ground and the three huddled behind a tire. 
"Gurus! Eskola Amerika! Bebe!" yelled Hopkins, who had been hit in the hip and had shrapnel lodged in her head. "Teachers! American school! Child!" 
 As mother and father crouched on the gravel, protecting their daughter, Balk saw a pair of black boots underneath the truck, some 20 yards away. 
"Why are they doing this, Mommy?" Taia asked. 
"Shhh, be still, be quiet now," Hopkins whispered back. 
 Balk took another shot to his thigh, and his blood, bones and muscle splattered onto Taia. He was already drenched in blood, and was losing so much that the couple discussed what they would do if he died. "You should just go home, get off the mountain," Balk told his wife. 
For what seemed like forever, the parents prayed. They tried to comfort their daughter. They both had the same fear: that they would see a pair of boots coming toward them.  
They also tried to talk to Poston and Patsy Spier, both still inside the vehicle. Balk feared they were going into shock.  
"Lynn, are you okay? Patsy, can you hear us?" he said. 
Poston had become hysterical. And both of their voices were becoming audibly weaker. 
"They aren't going to stop," Patsy Spier thought to herself. "My God, when is this going to end?" 
Spier thought a lot about her husband as she sat nearly paralyzed in the second vehicle. "I had a feeling in my heart that Rick was already gone because I knew if he wasn't, he'd be trying to get me out." 
Her pain and fear, like the terror described by Emma, Balk and Hopkins, overtook all other senses. Dying would end it. "I'm ready. It's okay, they can come and get me," Spier thought to herself, she recalled. "Just do it." 
In a brief lull, Spier heard a distinct human imitation of a bird whistle -- and a whistled response. It was not, she later recalled, the whooping calls of the Amungme tribe. 
They were just 500 yards from the nearest military post. How could anyone get on this road without the military or Freeport's knowledge? 
Spier was shot again, this time in the foot, which made her think perhaps the shooters were under the vehicle. She apologized to Bambang Riwanto, for having to shift her weight and move him, a movement that seemed to provoke more shooting as his body came into view from the window. 
Some 15 to 20 minutes into the ambush, a Freeport manager, Andrew Neale, came upon the vehicles as he drove south with his wife. He put the car in reverse and sped away to get help. At about the same time, another Freeport manager, Bob Kilborn, driving north, saw the tanker truck, two dump trucks and their injured drivers. He carried one injured man to his car and another man jumped through his window before Kilborn sped away for help, according to a Freeport security document. 
When Kilborn reached the nearest military post, he ran into a group of soldiers. Some of the soldiers agreed to get in this car and head back to the ambush site. By then, Neale had arrived with soldiers, too. A brief exchange of gunfire followed before the soldiers fanned out on the road, firing their weapons.  
"Help! Help! We need medical care," Hopkins, bloodied and still crouching near the tire with her husband and daughter, told the first soldier she saw. He looked terrified, she recalled, and disappeared.  
At the same time, Patsy Spier, inside the second SUV, heard banging on the back of the vehicle. Someone was trying to open it. They were Indonesian soldiers there to rescue her. Four of them pulled her limp body from the vehicle. They laid her on the ground. Two Papuan men sat next to her and patted her hand and put a cooler lid under her head as a pillow. 
"Terima kasih, Terima kasih," she whispered to them. "Thank you. Thank you." 
Kilborn came over to see how she was. "What about Rick?" she asked him. 
"Just a minute, I'll go see," he replied, but never came back. 
In the meantime, an Indonesian army soldier, dressed in full camouflage, walked up and stood over her, glaring down. She looked at his black boots. 
"I kept wanting to touch his gun, to see if it were hot," she said. "But I stopped myself." 
At the hospital in Tembagapura, Patsy Spier learned what she already sensed -- that her husband was dead. 
"I want to see him. I have to see him," she told doctors through her sobs and shock. "And I want him autopsied. I want everyone to know he was murdered." 
Around 9 p.m., some eight hours after she and her husband had started out on a picnic, the nurses wheeled Patsy's gurney into a room with Rick's body. 
 He had a hunk of red cotton in his mouth. The nurse lifted his hand so she could hold it. She told him she would always love him. And she said goodbye. 
Correspondent Doug Struck and researchers Robert Thomason and Margot Williams contributed to this report. 






   

 

June 21, 2003 



 A filmmaker's journey;
When his legendary mentor died just as work on a PBS series about African-American spirituality was beginning, Dante James found his own faith tested.

 
Dante James set out on a five-year mission to document the African-American spiritual journey.
Little did he know that the experience would ignite a spiritual crisis of his own.
James is the co-executive producer of "This Far by Faith: African-American Spiritual Journeys," a PBS special that airs for three nights starting Tuesday. The six-hour special examines African-American spirituality through the past three centuries, from the arrival of enslaved Africans to the civil rights era and today. 
James, an Atlanta area resident, was scheduled to make the series with Henry Hampton, the producer of the Emmy Award-winning "Eyes on the Prize." It was Hampton who came up with the idea for the series and asked James, himself a veteran filmmaker, to work with him.
But just as James began filming the series in November 1998, Hampton, his friend and mentor, died after struggling with cancer and other ailments throughout his life. The death of the 58-year-old legendary film producer plunged James into depression.
"It was a challenge to my faith," James says. "Here was Henry, this incredibly talented and gifted man, who had given so much to so many people through his film, and he was taken away from us, prematurely."
James says he became bitter, wondering why Hampton had died so young while so many others lived longer. "I struggled with it," he says. "I finally came to the conclusion that perhaps I was being a little selfish. Perhaps Henry had given all that he had to give."
James talked about "This Far by Faith" recently by telephone from Harlem. James, who declines to give his age, lives near Lithonia and describes himself as an "occasional" worshipper at Trinity Baptist Church. He's been a busy man, promoting the series, filming another documentary on slave narratives, and preparing to get married in early July.
Q: Why focus an entire series on the African-American spiritual experience?
A: In our struggle as a people to have other people recognize our humanity and our dignity, religion and spirituality have always been a source of strength we could go to.
There have been other tools we could use but they haven't been constant. Sometimes the political climate has been favorable, but more often it's not. The economic and judicial climate has been the same. But our religion and spirituality have always been there. It's the one thing we could control and draw from.
Q: What are some of the messages you want people to take away from the series?
A: In the last program, we have a Buddhist-organized pilgrimage that makes a trek through the middle passage [the slave trade route from Africa to the Americas]. It stops at a mosque in New York, a Christian co-op in Alabama, and what they all find are areas of common ground. To me, that's what religion and spirituality are all about. It's about finding common ground as human beings, and that common ground can . . . be the launching pad for a better understanding for each other as human beings.
Q: What persons from the series stood out to you?
A: Denmark Vesey [a 19th-century freedman who used the Bible to fight against slavery]. The idea that he would use a biblical text to inspire him to lead a revolution is pretty incredible.
Warith Deen Mohammed [the son of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, who broke with his father over his father's black supremacy theology] was another one. Here is a man who followed his own spiritual path, even though as a child he was told that he was the anointed one and that his father was a messenger from God. He was not only denying what he had been taught about his father but what he had been told about himself all of his life. This speaks to his strength and dignity in finding his own spirituality.
Q: How was your faith impacted by producing this series?
A: Sometime ago, I went on a film mission with the World Bank and [television station] WETA in Washington, D.C. We were doing a series of films called "Global Links" that looked at development in the developing world. I made a stop in Tokyo, then in Thailand, which is a Buddhist country. All the while I'm reading and trying to learn about the Buddhist faith. After that, we went to Jakarta, Indonesia, which is a Muslim community. I went from this Christian culture to a Buddhist culture to a Muslim culture to a Hindu culture. One of the things I found out was the universality of spirituality. For most of us, a religious faith or spiritual experience is part of being fully human. It really doesn't matter where you find your spirituality --- just find it and experience it and be fully human.
Q: Where do you find your spirituality?
A: I find it in a number of places. I find it in my parents, my wife-to-be, and in much of the work that I do. I find it in art, in literature. I find it in almost every aspect of life. I think it's like that for many African-Americans. African-Americans don't really separate religion from any other aspects of their life.
Q: What was Henry Hampton like?
A: He was absolutely brilliant. But beyond that, he was just a good person. We talked about everything, not just filmmaking. He was funny, engaging. Henry had polio as a child. He wore a brace on his left leg and he also used a cane. But he moved around with such dignity and grace that it was just a pleasure to be around him.
 
* ON THE WEB: For more information: www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith







  



June 15, 2003 Sunday  




 They Don't Like Us. Worse, They Don't Trust Us

 
 A global survey that revealed a deepening dislike of the United States across the Muslim world got a lot of ink and airtime when it was released earlier this month. And while that finding was striking, it was only one of many disturbing conclusions of the Pew Global Attitudes Project poll, which surveyed 16,000 people in 20 countries between May 28 and June 15. 
 The poll results suggest that the United States is losing, or has lost, the hearts and minds battle -- and that on a variety of issues, citizens of Muslim countries are deeply suspicious not only of U.S. policies, but of American motives and intentions. While not as pronounced, distrust among allies -- in South Korea, Brazil and in EU and NATO countries -- is also striking.  
 Among the findings: In country after country, respondents expressed not only anti-Americanism but also fear of U.S. military might. In Indonesia, 74 percent of respondents said they were somewhat or very worried about a potential U.S. military threat. In Nigeria and Pakistan, the figure was 72 percent; in Russia -- and in NATO ally Turkey -- 71 percent expressed such fear; in Lebanon, 58 percent; and in Jordan, 56 percent. Even in Kuwait, which was liberated by the United States in the first Persian Gulf War, 53 percent expressed such fears. 
Concerned? There's more. When asked if they were happy or disappointed that the Iraqi military put up so little resistance to the United States and its allies, 93 percent of Moroccans polled said they were disappointed; in Jordan, the figure was 91 percent; in Lebanon, Turkey and Indonesia, 82 percent; in the Palestinian Authority-ruled areas, 81 percent; and in Pakistan, 74 percent. There was even substantial disappointment in some countries much friendlier to the United States: South Korea (58 percent), Brazil (50 percent), Russia (45 percent) and France (30 percent). These figures are "just another measure of hostility toward the United States," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, which conducted the poll. 
A sure sign that American public diplomacy is faltering badly in the Muslim world comes with the finding that overwhelming majorities in several countries believe the United States "didn't try hard enough" to avoid civilian casualties in Iraq: In Jordan, 97 percent agreed; Morocco, 91 percent, Turkey, 88 percent, Indonesia, 83 percent, Pakistan 81 percent. Among Palestinians, 95 percent agreed. 
Anti-Americanism translates into declining support for Washington's anti-terrorism efforts. The goodwill reported after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is far from universal. Fewer than a quarter of respondents in Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and South Korea said they support the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Among Palestinians and Jordanians polled, support is a mere 2 percent. 
Whom do they support? Osama bin Laden. When asked if they had confidence in bin Laden "to do the right thing in world affairs," 71 percent of Palestinians said yes. The figure in Indonesia was 58 percent; in Jordan, 55 percent; in Morocco, 49 percent; in Pakistan, 45 percent. 
In the silver lining department, there was this: Large majorities in most Muslim countries surveyed said that Western-style democracy could work well in their countries. In Kuwait, 83 percent of those polled agreed; in Nigeria, 75 percent; in Lebanon, 71 percent; in Jordan, 69 percent; in Morocco, 64 percent; in Pakistan, 57 percent; in the Palestinian areas, 54 percent; and in Turkey, generally viewed as the strongest Muslim democracy, 50 percent agreed. 
Given last week's deadly back and forth among Israelis and Palestinians, the response to this query -- Is there a way for the Israeli state and Palestinian rights to coexist? -- is particularly bad news. While 67 percent of Israelis said yes, only 17 percent of Palestinians did so. Jordanians (14 percent) were even more pessimistic. The only Muslim group to broadly answer yes was Arabs in Israel, (62 percent). 
 -- Kathleen Cahill, for Outlook 







   
 

June 8, 2003 Sunday  
  



 Indonesia Wants to Acquit General in Human Rights Case 

 
Indonesian prosecutors told a human rights court this week that one of the nation's most senior military officers was not guilty of crimes against humanity during the violence that engulfed East Timor four years ago, and they asked that he be acquitted of all charges.
     The unusual request means that a government tribunal established last year under international pressure to try Indonesian soldiers for their brutality against East Timorese independence groups is unlikely to pass any serious sentences. 
 The prosecution's move was interpreted as one of several signs of the reassertiveness of the military here, and of the continuing lack of serious civilian control of an army that ruled until the collapse of President Suharto's government in 1998.
The Bush administration, eager to increase American influence in the world's most populous Muslim country and to keep Indonesia on its side during the campaign against terror, has made initial steps to renew relations with the military after ties were cut because of human rights abuses in East Timor.  
The prosecution told the special tribunal on Thursday that Maj. Gen. Adam Damiri, who was the commander in East Timor at the time of a military-backed rampage by militia groups in September 1999, should be acquitted of all charges. 
General Damiri is now chief of operations for the Indonesian military. He failed to appear at four of his scheduled court dates for sentencing proceedings on the East Timor charges because of his duties organizing the army's new offensive against separatist rebels in the northern province of Aceh. 
As one reason for a not-guilty verdict, the prosecutor, Sarani Hozie, said that General Damiri had been awarded a medal for his service in East Timor. "Moreover, the defendant is polite in court and never obstructs the proceedings," Mr. Hozie said. 
In one hearing at the tribunal, where the public space is usually packed with uniformed members of the army, a judge submitted a copy of a letter written by General Damiri to his superior on the success of the military-backed militia that was attacking pro-independence groups. The letter was not included in the prosecutors' case. 
Another hearing for General Damiri will be held next month. It would be highly unlikely that the judges would rule against the prosecution's request, lawyers here said. 
General Damiri was the most senior and last of 18 soldiers and militiamen, as well as a few civilians, who were brought before the court.
Of these defendants, 12 have been acquitted. The five who were convicted included two soldiers, the most senior of whom, Brig. Gen. M. Noer Muis, received a sentence of five years in prison. That term was less than half the minimum sentence called for under the statutes. The five who were convicted remain free pending appeals. 
The special tribunal did not indict the former Indonesian military chief, Wiranto, who was the top commander at the time of the East Timor killings. United Nations officials estimated that more than 1,000 pro-independence East Timorese were killed in the rampages organized by military-backed militia after a United Nations referendum. 
The United States ambassador to Indonesia, Ralph L. Boyce, criticized the request for a not-guilty verdict in the Damiri case.
"While reserving judgment until the final verdict is reached, we find it particularly disappointing that it was the prosecution that sought a not-guilty verdict in this case," Mr. Boyce said. 
The Pentagon allocated $4 million for counterterrorism training to the Indonesian Army last year. In addition,Congress approved $400,000 for Indonesian officers to go to the United States under the prestigious International Military Education and Training program. 
But last month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the $400,000 should be put on hold until the Indonesian military and government gave better cooperation to the F.B.I., which is investigating the murders of two American teachers in the province of Irian Jaya last year. An inquiry by the Indonesian police into the killings concluded that it was highly probable that the army was involved in their deaths. 
President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who is running for a second term next year, sees the military as the institution that enforces national unity. 
Since President Megawati came to power in 2001, the military has declined to dismantle its system of territorial commands that places military officials in parallel positions with civilians through most layers of provincial and village government. 







   
 

June 6, 2003 Friday  
  



 Ubud Journal; 
Bomb That Killed 202 Goes On Destroying Lives

 
I Made Degun, a woodcarver who creates cats, koala bears and kangaroos for the trinket trade, sat at the lowest rung of what seemed to be the infinite tourism boom in Bali. His inexpensive souvenirs, snatched up by visitors who ventured to this artistic town by the vanful, gave him a new way of life: a house with a second story, a motorcycle to ferry the goods to market, even a modest shop in his front yard. 
     But eight months after Islamic militants blew up a Bali nightclub with a car bomb, killing 202 people, most of them Australian revelers, Mr. Degun's income has vanished.  
 He is months behind on payments for loans on his house and precious motorbike. His 6-week-old baby, born with Down syndrome, was delivered free of charge by a sympathetic midwife. A garden of scrawny leaf vegetables and donations of rice from relatives help Mr. Degun, and his wife, Ni Ketut Masni, feed their four children.
Soon after the terror attack, there were predictions that Bali's tourism business would bounce back: the dominant Hindu culture, distinctive from the rest of Muslim Indonesia, would beckon travelers.
But the Iraq war, and then the spread of SARS, particularly in Singapore and Hong Kong, major transit points for Bali, set back the hopes for the island. 
From the luxurious hotels where the cheapest room sells at $700 a night to the cheap joints near the ill-fated Sari nightclub, customers are scarce.
Here in Ubud, the sleek 30-room Amandari Hotel, once the boite of choice for rock stars and fashion designers, is now an echo chamber. For three consecutive recent nights, it was empty, said the area manager for Aman Resorts, Guy Haywood.
Other nights, only one or two rooms were occupied under a no-bargaining policy on the $700 and up rates, he said. The company, which runs three hotels in Bali and two others elsewhere in Indonesia, has considered closing one of their properties. But closure turned out to be more expensive than eking out an existence with 6 to 8 percent occupancy, he said. 
At the less luxurious Raja's cafe in Kuta, where the regulars tend to be Australian tourists in shorts and thongs, demand has fallen for the supercharged drinks for two: the $5 pink Raja cocktail and the $7 brown concoction called Brain Damage.
They come in tub-sized glasses with two straws and a lit sparkler emitting crackle and dazzle as it is delivered to the table. 
Now the cafe sells only half a dozen or so of the Raja (gin, rice wine, grenadine and a medley of juices) and rarely any of the Brain Damage (brandy, rum and Coca-Cola), the waiters said. 
In a report on Bali this week, the World Bank confirmed, in its understated way, what is obvious on the streets and in the villages. 
"A survey among market traders, beach vendors and taxis reveals sharp drop in sales revenues and profits, up to 70 percent in some cases," the report said. 
Even with the smart marketing that they plan, hotel managers say they face obstacles from the United States and Indonesian governments. 
Last month the State Department issued a travel warning that makes fairly grim reading for even the gamest of travelers. It makes no distinction between Indonesia as a whole (where there is civil conflict in the northern province of Aceh), and the island of Bali, which remains a favorite weekend retreat for American diplomats and business people living in Indonesia. 
"The terrorist attack in Bali, which took place in an area with a large number of foreign tourists, clearly indicates that a security threat extends to private American citizens," the warning says.
Another obstacle, say the hoteliers, is the Indonesian government's plan to introduce a $45 visa fee for Americans, Australians and many Europeans wanting to come here as tourists.
For Balinese like Mr. Degun, the tourism crash has hit particularly hard. In the 1990's, when the Balinese, who used to toil in rice paddies, suddenly made money as waiters, artists and drivers, financial institutions introduced the idea of consumer credit. 
The Balinese began borrowing for everything: from television sets to the mandatory contributions to cremations for the dead.
In the Hindu culture here, cremations are an important and expensive village event that involves the building of an ornate float for the ceremony and provision for a feast. 
The village rumor mills are now thick with stories of people being unable to repay their loans for cremations, and of some village banks reclaiming motorcycles because of the owners' failure to pay monthly installments.
Mr. Degun said he is three months behind on his loans for his house and motorcyle. "After five months they will start to come after me," he said of the village bank.






   


June 5, 2003, Thursday, 



 'Krakatoa' erupts in fascinating detail

 
Krakatoa
By Simon Winchester
HarperCollins, 416 pp., $ 25.95
---
Journalist, author and geologist Simon Winchester (The Professor and the Madman) is a master at telling a complex story compellingly and lucidly. His latest endeavor, Krakatoa, doesn't just describe one of the largest, loudest explosions in Earth's history, it explains why the Indonesian volcano erupted and examines the wide-ranging consequences.
On Aug. 27, 1883, in a series of explosions culminating in a boom heard nearly 3,000 miles away, Krakatoa, in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, exploded. The island, which was formed from two tectonic plates rubbing together, was obliterated. Left behind were a skeletal volcanic cone and two new islands shaped like parentheses.
 
More than 6 cubic miles of rock and ash was blown into the sky. The blast left the region dark for days, changing weather patterns and causing brilliant sunsets around the world.
But it wasn't the suffocating ash, burning hot pumice stone and gases that killed most of the nearly 40,000 who died that day. It was the huge eruptions sloshing the ocean, creating tsunami after tsunami that crashed into and destroyed villages in Java and Sumatra.
Building thrillerlike suspense, Winchester gives voice to firsthand accounts from scientists, ship captains and local observers of the buildup of volcanic activity that ended so spectacularly. He also presents the men who pieced together geological information, culminating in plate tectonics theory. If you've ever sat through a dry geology lecture, Winchester's human-oriented volcanology will grip you.
Krakatoa also presents vignettes about Indonesian society under Dutch rule during the 1800s.
Winchester links Indonesia's current struggles with Islamic militants to a charismatic Muslim cleric who gained converts during the times of colonial racism and simmering discontent by preaching that Krakatoa was brought on by Allah to punish infidels.
The eruption, which was covered extensively by the startup news agency Reuters, was the first inkling of the global news coverage we now take for granted. The first underwater cable linking telegraphs in Batavia on Java (now Jakarta) to the rest of the world was laid in 1870, so when Krakatoa erupted, "the world's people suddenly became part of a new brotherhood of knowledge."
Winchester's extensive research also uncovered a report using amateur meteorologists' barometric readings from around the world. The popular barograph -- a barometer that records on paper barometric pressure -- showed that Krakatoa's explosion sent a wave of pressure around the Earth seven times. This was the first time scientists realized that an event on one side of the planet could be felt on the other, which opened the door to measuring global pollution and greenhouse gases.
In a rather chilling conclusion, Winchester visits the Sunda Strait and explains that Krakatoa's offspring volcano, Anak Krakatoa, burst violently from the sea in 1930 and is growing at a rate of 5 inches a week.
"The child-mountain is growing steadily and rapidly, as the elemental fires that created the world rage deep inside."






  


June 4, 2003, Wednesday  



 U.S. AT BOTTOM OF WORLD IN NEW POLL

 
WASHINGTON - Hatred and fear of the U.S. worldwide have spiraled since the Iraq war, a poll released yesterday found.
In predominantly Muslim countries, resentment of America was so deep-seated that solid majorities in Jordan and Indonesia and 71% in the Palestinian Authority expressed confidence that terror lord Osama Bin Laden is "doing the right thing regarding world affairs." 
"I was shocked by the results," former Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said of the Pew Global Attitudes Project poll of 66,000 people in 20 countries.
As the world's only superpower, "you don't have to be loved," she said, "but I don't like this terror of American power."
Pew Research Center Director Andrew Kohut said, "There's been a great deal of collateral damage" to the U.S. image from the Iraq war.
The survey said "the war has widened the rift between Americans and Western Europeans, further inflamed the Muslim world and softened support for the war on terrorism."
Since last year, favorable opinions of the U.S. in Europe dropped across the board, including France, to 43% from 63%; Germany, to 45% from 61%; Russia, to 36% from 61%, and Britain, to 70% from 75%.
Support for the U.S. fell most dramatically in Indonesia, where it dropped to 15% from 61%, and in Nigeria, to 38% from 72%.
Majorities in seven of the eight predominantly Muslim countries surveyed also said they expect their nations to be attacked by the U.S.
President Bush also fared poorly, with majorities expressing no confidence in him in France (51%), Turkey (80%), Pakistan (81%) and Brazil (67%).
British Prime Minister Tony Blair had higher favorables than Bush in most countries, and even in the U.S. He outpointed Bush 83% to 78% in confidence ratings.







   
 

June 4, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 AFTER THE WAR: OPINION; 
World's View of U.S. Sours After Iraq War, Poll Finds

 
The war in Iraq may have been a military success, but it has only deepenedinternational skepticism toward the United States, its global policies and President Bush, with even military allies voicing growing disappointment or suspicion, a new poll has found.
     The war, moreover, has rattled much of the Muslim world, prodding majorities in most countries to worry about the future of Islam and American military ambitions within their borders, the poll showed. 
 In a survey conducted since the end of hostilities in Iraq, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has released new data as part of an ambitious project to assess changes in global attitudes. The nonpartisan center surveyed 38,000 people in 44 nations during the summer and fall of 2002, and followed up with interviews of 16,000 people in 20 nations and in the areas administered by the Palestinian Authority after the end of the war. 
"The war has widened the rift between Americans and Western Europeans, further inflamed the Muslim world, softened support for the war on terrorism, and significantly weakened global public support for the pillars of the post-World War II era -- the U.N. and the North Atlantic alliance," said Andrew Kohut, the Pew center's director.
Favorable views of the United States have declined in nearly every country since last summer. 
Some of the sharpest turns in public opinion took place in Western Europe, where, for example, more than 60 percent of the French and the Germans held a favorable view of the United States last summer. After a difficult dispute over whether the United Nations should authorize the Iraq war, the follow-up poll showed that positive views of the United States had dwindled to 45 percent in Germany, 43 percent in France and even 38 percent in Spain, where the government supported the war.
Russians, who gave the United States a 61 percent favorable rating last summer, have turned far more critical, with only 36 percent now voicing support.
Americans are returning the ill will. Sixty percent of them feel negatively toward France, which led the opposition to international action against Iraq, a drastic turnaround since last year when 79 percent held favorable views.
Majorities in only 7 of 20 foreign nations surveyed had a favorable view of the United States -- Israel, Britain, Kuwait, Canada, Nigeria, Australia and Italy. But even in most of these nations, support for the United States has slipped. 
Dislike of the United States has spread in the Muslim world. Majorities in seven out of eight predominantly Muslim nations expressed a worry that their countries might be threatened by the United States. They voiced concern that Islam itself was in jeopardy, and large majorities in Indonesia, Jordan and the areas administered by the Palestinian Authority expressed at least some confidence in Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Despite his popularity at home, President Bush is a polarizing figure abroad. Nations that expressed unfavorable views toward the United States overwhelmingly said the problem was "mostly Bush" and not "America in general." 
Yet, for all their misgivings about the United States, most nations support the democratic, free-market model that America advocates, and even embrace the tenets of globalization, the survey found. Most Muslim populations expressed the view that Western-style democracy could work in their countries.
One of the biggest casualties of the war was the credibility of the United Nations. Only a handful of nations see the world body as a positive influence in the world today.
"The idea that the U.N. is less relevant is much more prevalent now than it was just before the war, and is shared by people in countries that backed the war, the U.S. and Britain, as well as in nations that opposed it, notably France and Germany," Mr. Kohut said.
Support has slipped for the American-led war against terrorism. Majorities in Western Europe and Australia still back the fight, but support has dropped 15 points in France and 10 points in Germany since last summer. The staunchest allies in the antiterrorism battle are Israel, at 85 percent; Italy, at 70 percent; Australia and Canada, at 68 percent each; Great Britain and Spain, at 63 percent; and Germany, Nigeria and France, at 60 percent each.
In mostly Muslim nations, people take a harsher view. Fewer than one in four in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and Jordan support the war on terror. In Morocco, only one in 10 backs the effort. There is considerable concern in several nations that the American policy of pre-emption could pose a threat against them, especially in Indonesia (with 74 percent very worried or somewhat worried) and Nigeria and Pakistan, at 72 percent each.
The United States was widely believed to favor Israel. In every country surveyed -- with the exception of the United States -- majorities or pluralities said American policy excessively favored Israel over the Palestinians. Even the Israelis agreed, with 47 percent saying they receive too much favor, compared with 38 percent who say the policy is evenhanded, the survey found.
There are strong doubts among Muslim populations over whether Israel and a Palestinian state can coexist in a way that meets the Palestinians' needs. Eight in 10 Palestinians are dubious, but two-thirds of Israelis believe it is possible. Outside the Muslim world -- especially in North America and Europe -- there is a consensus that the aspirations of both nations can be accommodated.
The survey, called "Views of a Changing World," was released today by Madeleine K. Albright, the former secretary of state who is chairwoman of the global project. The latest survey was conducted with about 500 to 1,000 adults in 20 countries and the area administered by the Palestinian Authority. The polling was done by telephone and face-to-face interviews in late April and May. In most countries, the survey involved national population samples, but others were done only in urban areas. The margin of sampling error ranges from plus or minus three percentage points to four percentage points.







  



May 31, 2003 Saturday  




 Muslim Clerics In a Twist Over 'Dangdut' Dancer

 
The klieg lights dimmed. The crowd roared: "Inul! Inul!" 
The petite, sensuous singer emerged in a lavender and pink cling-wrap jumpsuit, looked at her audience and teased: "Are you ready to be drilled by Inul?" 
 An eight-piece band struck up a tune with a saucy, syncopated beat, and Inul (pronounced ee-NOOL), the hottest new dance sensation in Indonesia, began to sing. More to the point, she began to bump and to grind and to undulate.  
 Midway into the number, she pitched the crowd into delirium: coquettishly turning her back and bending over at the waist. Then she rocked her hips, and she rolled them. She shimmied and shook. Fast, faster and faster, till her hips were a gyrating blur. 
 It's a move all her own that Indonesians call "the drill." 
 The drill has revolutionized the Indonesian music genre known as dangdut, broadening its audience from village and city slum dwellers to middle-class bank clerks and teachers. It has scandalized conservative Muslim clerics who have tried to ban her performances. Such controversy, in the world's most populous Muslim country, has only driven Inul's popularity to greater heights. 
Earlier this month, hundreds of protesters gathered at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle and fountain and, in a car-stopping show of Inul solidarity, tried to do the drill as a pickup truck circled the fountain, blaring dangdut music. 
 "Indonesians are too reserved," says Inul, the 24-year-old daughter of a village shopkeeper. "They are not free.  . . . If an artist creates something new and people condemn it as anti-religion, they are killing creativity." 
 Inul believes she is helping Indonesians discover their soul. The majority may be Muslim, but that does not mean they should give up freedom of expression, she says. A Muslim who says she prays five times a day, Inul says her music has nothing to do with religion.  Inul burst onto the scene earlier this year, thanks to cheap, bootleg recordings of her stage performances. She gained more prominence through television appearances. Since then, two Islamic organizations in East Java, a stronghold of traditional Islam, have called for a ban on her dangdut-dancing, charging that it is morally damaging. And a third, the Indonesian Council of Ulemas (scholars), tried to halt a concert in Solo in central Java, a bastion of conservative Islam, for the same reason. Then Rhoma Irama, the self-styled "King of Dangdut" who revolutionized the genre in the 1970s by taking it from acoustic to electric, loudly disparaged Inul's work. A musician who doubles as a Muslim preacher, he asserted that her dance encourages free sex and rape. 
 She is not a singer, she is a dancer -- a sexual dancer, he sniffs, in an interview at his home. "People never talk about the quality of voice," he says. "People talk about the eroticism of her stage act. . . . . Dance should not be about sexuality. Sexuality is for bed, not the stage." 
 In a mix of insouciance and earnestness, Inul replies: "I don't give a [expletive] what they say. The most important thing is that I do my religion in a good way. I will continue to sing, no matter what the Indonesian Council of Ulemas says." 
 Inul Daratista was born Ainul Rokhimah in a poor East Java village called Gempol.  She loves all kinds of music -- Mandarin Western Latin. She admires the Colombian singer Shakira, American singer-actress Jennifer Lopez and Indonesian dangdut performer Rita Sugiyanto.  At 12, she began performing at kampong, or village, celebrations. 
 Just a year ago, she was still playing weddings for a dollar a song. But now, Inul, whose name she said comes from her physiognomy -- "I have a round butt. When I walk, it makes the sound nul-nul" -- is among Indonesia's highest-paid entertainers. Even the president's husband is a fan. 
 Dangdut evolved as a hybrid of Malay, Indian and Arab musical forms. It is marked by a pulsating rhythm and a populist appeal with lyrics about love and life's struggles. Traditionally, the middle and upper classes have looked down on dangdut, seeing it as a musical opiate for the poor.  There are, in fact, dangdut performers who wear revealing costumes and whose moves are provocative. And perhaps Inul's moves are tame compared with say, Tina Turner's. But in the relatively staid world of Indonesian music, her high-octane gyrations, particularly her exaggerated tush action, have set her apart. She has also drawn a few rock and pop tunes into her repertoire, which has helped broaden the dangdut audience. 
 "In the old days," Inul says, "dangdut was for the lower classes only. Now I have managed to cross that bridge. To bring it into the middle class." 
 That fact was on vivid display recently at a Jakarta nightclub. The crowd was overwhelmingly professional, a mix of white collars and women with headscarves. 
 "I think Inul's drill dance is energetic, not erotic," says Nana, 39, who like many Indonesian Muslims, uses only one name. She was sporting a red headscarf, and was chatting excitedly with 12 friends from her women's Islamic study group. "There are many other dangdut singers whose dancing is more erotic." 
 Eroticism, in this case, is in the eye of the beholder. 
 "She is an exciting woman, an exciting woman," said Johan Papilaya, a 44-year-old doctor with two children, who came to the club alone, straight from work. A middle-class Christian, he was never a dangdut fan. But Inul has hooked him. "Her motion," he says, "is so good." 
 She performed a 45-minute, five-song set, luring men onstage with a coy, "Who wants to dance with me?" She made them blush with her breathy sighs and teasing banter: "Ahh. Ahh. Ah-ohh. You want a kiss?" 
 When it comes to her fiercest critics, Inul may have the last laugh. A month ago Irama led a group of dangdut performers in condemnation of the Queen of Drill. But a couple of weeks ago, a pack of cameramen, acting on a tip, filmed the married Muslim moralist leaving the apartment of a young starlet. It was 3 in the morning. 
 Inul says she is pleased that she can lift people's spirits in a country where corruption is rife and the price of sugar, rice and fuel has skyrocketed. 
 "By seeing me, they can smile, right?" she says. "At least they can forget their problems for a while." 
 Still, the most important thing, she says, is "to just dance, from my soul, from my heart." 






  
  


May 29, 2003 Thursday 



 NATION & WORLD BRIEFING

 
Aftershock collapses Algerian apartments, REGHAIA, Algeria -- Rescuers with dogs searched Wednesday for survivors in the rubble of an apartment block that collapsed in a powerful aftershock to last week's earthquake. The 15-story building in Reghaia had been damaged in the May 21 earthquake and had been evacuated, but some of its displaced residents were inside recovering belongings when it collapsed late Tuesday in a magnitude-5.8 aftershock that sowed fresh panic in the quake zone, east of the capital Algiers. At least 2,251 people were killed in the May 21 quake, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday, raising the death toll by 33 as more bodies were recovered from the ruins. Another 10,243 people were injured. Algerian state radio said at least three people were killed in Tuesday's aftershock.
Shuttle inspections criticized
HOUSTON -- Interviews with shuttle workers at NASA and its contractors found no one who believed that preflight safety inspections were adequate, a member of the board investigating the loss of the Columbia said Wednesday. At the board's final briefing before it shifts operations to Washington to write its final report, the panel member, Air Force Brig. Gen. Duane Deal, said investigators found that there were too few eyes on the shuttle during flight preparations. Inspections once carried out by NASA workers were conducted by contractors with little direct NASA oversight, Deal said, and the number of inspections has dropped by nearly 80 percent. 
Suspect admits terrorism role
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A key Bali bombing suspect admitted in court Wednesday that he was the operational chief of the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, and said he knows Osama bin Laden "very well." Ali Ghufron, alias Mukhlas, testified at the treason trial of Abu Bakar Bashir, a Muslim cleric and the alleged spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiyah. Mukhlas told a packed courtroom he took over as the operations chief after his predecessor, Riduan Isamuddin, alias Hambali, went into hiding. Mukhlas was arrested last year for allegedly masterminding the Oct. 12 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people. He is facing trial on terror charges for the attack.
Cambodia nabs terror suspects
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Authorities in Cambodia said Wednesday that they closed a Saudi-funded religious school and arrested three foreigners with links to the terror group suspected in deadly bombings on Bali. Police, prompted by a tip from U.S. officials, arrested a man from Egypt and two others from Thailand on terrorism charges Sunday. It was a rare sign of militancy among Cambodia's small Muslim minority. The men have links to Jemaah Islamiyah, an extremist group with ties to al-Qaida, official said.
Colombian drug lord convicted
MIAMI -- One of the biggest Colombian drug lords of the 1980s was convicted Wednesday of getting back into the cocaine business after he was released from prison in his homeland and given amnesty. Fabio Ochoa, 46, could get life in prison when he is sentenced Aug. 19 on federal drug conspiracy charges. Ochoa is the most prominent Colombian drug figure to be brought to justice in the United States since the two countries resumed extraditions in 1997. Prosecutors said that from 1997 to 1999, Ochoa was part of a network suspected of smuggling up to 30 tons of cocaine a month into the United States. During the 1980s, Ochoa and two brothers led the now-defunct Medellin cocaine cartel. He served five years in Colombian prisons in the 1990s and then received amnesty under a government program aimed at bringing peace to the country.
Study: Condoms don't push sex
WASHINGTON -- Teenagers at high schools where condoms were available were no more likely to have sex than other teens, a study says. The study published Wednesday in the American Journal of Public Health backs earlier research on the programs developed in the 1990s to stem the spread of HIV and reduce teen pregnancy. It says that students in high schools with condom programs were more likely to use condoms, while students in other high schools were more likely to use other forms of birth control. Overall, there was no difference in pregnancy rates.
N.Y. Times reporter resigns
NEW YORK --  accepted the resignation of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg on Wednesday, after suspending him over a story that carried his byline but was reported largely by a freelancer. The resignation comes as the Times tries to rebound from a scandal in which the newspaper found fraud, plagiarism and inaccuracies in articles written by reporter Jayson Blair. Bragg blamed his suspension on what he called a "torturous atmosphere" at the newspaper since Blair's May 1 resignation.
Texas rejects same-sex unions
AUSTIN, Texas -- Gov. Rick Perry signed a law preventing Texas from legally recognizing same-sex unions that are formed in other states. Tuesday's signing of the Defense of Marriage Act makes it the 37th state to enact such a law. Texas only permits marriage between a man and a woman. The new law denies same-sex couples who were joined in a marriage or civil union in another state the right to claim any legal protection or benefit granted to married people in Texas, including the ability to divorce or to demand job benefits given to married people.




18


  



May 29, 2003 Thursday  




 Militants Say Network Is Led by Cleric; 
Two Suspects in Bali Bombings Testify Against Baasyir at His Treason Trial

 
Two Muslim militants suspected of involvement in bombing a pair of Bali nightclubs last year testified today that they believe the underground movement blamed for the attack, Jemaah Islamiah, is led by Indonesian cleric Abubakar Baasyir. 
 Though U.S. and other officials have identified Baasyir as the head of the regional militant network, he has denied any connection with the group. The testimony today by Ali Imron and Hutomo Pamungkas marked the first time in open court that confessed members of the group have named the elderly preacher as their leader. 
 The two militants did not directly tie Baasyir to the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people in October, most of them foreign tourists. Nor did they offer concrete evidence that he is the emir, or commander, of Jemaah Islamiah, which Western and Asian intelligence officials have linked to al Qaeda.  
 Their testimony came in a Jakarta courtroom overflowing with Baasyir's followers where the cleric is on trial, charged with treason and seeking to overthrow the Indonesian government. He is also accused of involvement in a series of church bombings in Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000 that killed 19 people. 
 Baasyir is not charged in connection with the Bali bombings, though some senior Indonesian police officials have said they believe he approved the attack. Indonesian police have already arrested 34 suspects in the Bali attack, and a separate series of trials began this month in Denpasar, the Balinese capital. 
 To accommodate crowds of spectators and reporters, Indonesian officials moved Baasyir's proceedings to a makeshift courtroom in a government building housing a geophysical and meteorology auditorium. Most of the 250 folding metal chairs in the hall were claimed by Baasyir's backers, most of them young men sporting scraggly beards, many with traditional Muslim caps and shirts bearing the names of militant Islamic groups. 
 As Baasyir was ushered into the hall, a repeated cry of "Allahu akbar," or "God is great," rose first from supporters, building in a thunderous crescendo inside the courtroom, with many in the audience jabbing their fists in the air. Baasyir walked slowly up the central aisle, lifting his hands in recognition as he made his way to a seat beside his team of lawyers. 
 Scores of police in brown berets deployed both inside and outside the hall, some with automatic rifles, watched without interfering. 
 A similar show of support greeted each of four jailed activists as they were escorted into the hall to give evidence. Police pressed the crowd back as several supporters tried to hug the witnesses. 
 The first, Ali Imron, told the five-judge panel that he understood Baasyir had taken over Jemaah Islamiah after the death in 1999 of its previous leader, Abdullah Sungkar, who shared the title of respected teacher, or ustadz. 
 "My feeling . . . or as far as I know, it's Ustadz Abubakar Baasyir" who leads Jemaah Islamiah, said Ali Imron, a veteran of military training in Afghanistan now accused of helping to assemble and transport the bombs used in the Bali attack. Ali Imron said he concluded that Baasyir had replaced Sungkar because the two preachers had a close personal relationship. 
 Asked about Ali Imron's statements by the judges, Baasyir softly repeated his longstanding denial that he was the leader of Jemaah Islamiah. 
 Pamungkas, also known as Mubarok, testified he had been told by an official in the underground movement that Baasyir had become the emir after Sungkar's death. Pamungkas also told the judges that another leading Jemaah Islamiah activist, Zulkarnaen, had spoken of his close coordination with Baasyir, implying that the cleric was the leader of the movement. 
 Pamungkas, who described his role as a military trainer for Jemaah Islamiah, is accused of helping drive a van with explosives to the site of the Bali blast. 
 Baasyir, asked about the testimony, denied a special relationship with Zulkarnaen. 
 The final witnesses included two of the most senior Jemaah Islamiah figures charged in connection with the Bali bombings -- the alleged mastermind, Mukhlas, and his field commander, Imam Samudra. Neither implicated Baasyir. 
 To whoops of support from the audience, Samudra recanted testimony he had provided to police that he had taken a pledge of loyalty to Baasyir as the movement's commander. Samudra said he had made this statement only after he was beaten and stripped naked by investigators. 







   
 

May 19, 2003 Monday  
  



 Indonesia Attacks Separatists After Tokyo Peace Talks Fail 

 
Indonesia's military carried out rocket attacks on rebels in Aceh today and troops began parachuting in as a big offensive got under way just hours after the president put the province under martial law.
     Film broadcast on local Metro TV showed smoke rising from a set of hills after two warplanes swooped low over a rise, not far from the airport here at the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. 
 Hercules transport planes dropped scores of troops near the airport. Laden with heavy packs, many took defensive positions in fields. Officials also said around 700 fresh marines had come ashore near the industrial town of Lhokseumawe. 
Just after midnight on Sunday, President Megawati Sukarnoputri gave the go-ahead for war against the rebels after last-ditch peace talks in Tokyo collapsed, leaving a landmark peace pact that had been welcomed by Aceh's four million people in tatters.
"The offensive has begun," Major General Erwin Sujono, an operational commander, told reporters at the airport without elaborating on the precise targets and their location. "Two planes launched the rockets, many of them." 
Another military official said offensive patrols had begun and operations would focus on six parts of Aceh.
In Banda Aceh, there was little sign of martial law as children went to school, shops opened and traffic clogged the city's busy central market.
Tengku Muhammad, 47, said that Acehnese felt helpless andthat he prayed that the war would not be long and costly in human life.
"Everyone in Aceh is in fear, I have resigned myself to God," said the trader, wearing an olive green Muslim shirt and sarong as he leaned against a pillar inside the city's grand mosque.
In a decree, Mrs. Megawati said the refusal of Free Aceh Movement rebels to give up their 27-year fight for independence gave her no option but to get tough.
The Tokyo talks were a last effort to rescue a December peace pact, but Jakarta's ultimatum to the rebels to accept Indonesian sovereignty over Aceh, which is rich in oil and gas, was always going to be hard for the separatists to swallow.
The rebels have said they were ready to resume one of Asia's longest-running separatist wars that has killed 10,000 people, adding that they would appeal for United Nations intervention.
Mrs. Megawati has put the Aceh military chief, Maj. General Endang Suwarya, in charge on the northern tip of Sumatra. The military has the power to impose a news blackout and curfews, detain people and limit or stop transport into and out of Aceh.
Her decree runs for six months, but can be extended.
The police have already arrested five leading rebel peace negotiators who were staying at a hotel in Banda Aceh, about 1,060 miles northwest of Jakarta.
The government's chief negotiator, Wiryono Sastrohandoyo, said on Sunday that Indonesia had worked hard to find an agreement. 
"But there is one thing that is not negotiable," he said, "and that is the integrity and sovereignty of the nation."
The peace agreement has been troubled by bickering and mistrust over the issue of independence, which the rebels has long demanded but Indonesia refuses to give. The peace pact did not address this in detail, focusing more on trying to halt the fighting.
The staunchly Muslim province is one of two separatist hot spots in Indonesia. The other is Papua in the far east.
The government has boosted troops and police officers here from 38,000 to more than 45,000. The rebels have an estimated 5,000 fighters.
Despite 27 years of trying, the military has failed to wipe out the rebels. What these often brutal military operations have done, however, is alienate large segments of Aceh's people.      







   
 

May 18, 2003 Sunday  
  



 Indonesia Frees 5 Delegates and Opens Talks With Separatists 

 
Last-ditch peace talks between the Indonesian government and Aceh separatists began here today, as the Indonesian police released five rebel officials detained while on their way to the negotiations.
     The talks provided a glimmer of hope that a fresh round of fighting could be avoided in the staunchly Muslim region, where Indonesia has continued to beef up its troops in preparation for what could turn into its biggest military operation in decades. 
 Delegates to the talks, which are a desperate effort to rescue aDecember peace pact, refused to comment to reporters as they arrived this evening. 
Earlier today, Mahmood Malik, leader of the Free Aceh Movement of separatist rebels, said the talks were unlikely to go ahead unless his five colleagues were released.
Mediators spent much of the day going back and forth between the sides.
The five rebel officials were detained on Friday in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, about 1,060 miles northwest of Jakarta, while on their way to the Tokyo talks.
The police spokesman in Aceh, Sayed Hoesainy, said the rebels had been set free but did not say if they would be allowed to leave the province to attend the talks.
He said that the men were being investigated under tough antiterrorism regulations and that they could be detained again if necessary.
One of the men, Amni bin Marzuki, confirmed that they had been freed. "All of us have been released," he said, poking his head out of a Banda Aceh hotel room, "but we can't meet you now, as we are exhausted."
More than 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in decades of simmering conflict between the government and the rebels on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra.
Although the talks finally got going, room for compromise appeared slim.
The rebels have been unwilling to drop their demand for independence, while the government is prepared to offer only autonomy and wants the rebels to disarm.
The government has increased troops and police strength in the resource-rich province to more than 45,000 from 38,000 in recent weeks, and the armed forces chief said he was awaiting orders to launch an offensive.
In a port close to the industrial town of Lhokseumawe, a fresh battalion of Indonesian troops backed by 10 amphibious vehicles came ashore today, part of the preparations for the offensive against the rebels.
The troops appeared set to provide security in the area around Lhokseumawe, part of a region that is home to gas fields operated by the oil and gas giant ExxonMobil. The military protects those fields.
Many people in Aceh appeared to be taking the near collapse of the peace agreement in stride. Children continued going to school. Traffic in Banda Aceh, a city of 400,000 people, was still busy.
The military presence on the streets was not as heavy as on previous days. 







  



May 18, 2003 Sunday  




 World; 
In Brief

 
 europe 
 VATICAN CITY -- A top Vatican official acknowledged what many observers have long suspected -- that Pope John Paul II suffers from Parkinson's disease. He said the pontiff's prayers helped him cope with the degenerative neurological disorder. 
 Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Congregation of Bishops, made the comments in an interview with the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera on the eve of the pope's 83rd birthday. It was the first time a top Vatican official had publicly acknowledged the pontiff suffers from Parkinson's.  
 "If we want to look for the secret weapon that has allowed him to beat the years and Parkinson's, we must look to prayer: He puts himself in the hands of God and feels God and the Madonna by his side in the path of life," Re was quoted as saying. 
 Associated Press 
MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chechnya's pro-Moscow local leader pledged to provide rapid compensation to residents affected by two suicide bomb attacks staged by separatists this past week. 
 Putin met Akhmad Kadyrov following bombings that gave a considerable jolt to Kremlin plans to resolve the conflict without the participation of committed separatists. 
 News reports from Chechnya showed the death toll in the two attacks had risen. Sixty people were killed when two bombers drove a truck full of explosives into a government complex; 18 others were killed when a woman blew herself up as Kadyrov was speaking at a religious festival in the mainly Muslim region. 
Reuters 
asia 
TOKYO -- Last-ditch peace talks between Aceh separatists and the Indonesian government began in Tokyo as Indonesian police released five rebel officials detained while on their way to the negotiations. 
 The talks provided a glimmer of hope that war could be avoided.  Indonesia has continued to beef up its troops in the staunchly Muslim region, preparing for its biggest military operation in decades. 
 Delegates to the talks, a desperate effort to rescue a December peace pact, declined to speak to reporters as they headed for a meeting in central Tokyo on Saturday evening. 
 The five rebel officials were detained on Friday in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.  
 Reuters 
 MANILA -- The Philippine president authorized the military to use bombing and artillery attacks on terrorist cells in the southern region of Mindanao. 
 In a live television address just hours before leaving for a visit to the United States, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said that local governments had been warned of possible terrorist reprisals and that relief agencies were on alert. 
 Arroyo did not name the targeted groups, but communist guerrillas, the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayyaf militant group are all active in the region. 
 Associated Press 
THE AMERICAS 
 HAVANA -- Five men were sentenced to life in prison for attempting to hijack a plane to the United States, Cuban authorities said in a statement published in the official Granma newspaper. 
 A Havana court convicted the five men of terrorism for planning to commandeer a plane with a stolen rifle and knives. 
 The five would-be hijackers, and three accomplices -- who received jail sentences ranging from 20 to 30 years -- were arrested as they prepared to commandeer a domestic airliner at the Isle of Youth airport on April 10, during a spate of hijackings in Cuba. 
 Reuters 
The Middle East 
AIN EL-HILWEH, Lebanon -- A radical Islamic leader in Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp was shot by unknown assailants in an ambush as he drove home from a funeral, sparking a gun battle that sent mourners fleeing in fear, witnesses said. 
 Camp security sources said Abdullah Shreidi, a foe of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, was shot in the head, back and chest. Two other people were killed.  
Reuters 
FOR THE RECORD 
The United Nations appealed to church leaders in northeastern Congo to help find two missing military observers from the agency. . . . A former Yugoslav army captain, long sought by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for his alleged role in the massacre of more than 200 people during the 1991 Croatian war, was extradited to the Netherlands-based court. Capt. Miroslav Radic is accused of supervising the killing of civilians and prisoners of war during Croatia's war for independence. 







   
 

May 16, 2003 Friday  
  



 For a Change, Asia's Woes Are BypassingIndonesia 

 
Belying its reputation among investors for unpleasant surprises, Indonesia has emerged as a bright spot in Southeast Asia -- a region grappling with the economic toll of a deadly respiratory disease and an uncertain outlook for exports.
     Indonesia's government received an important vote of confidence on Monday, when Standard & Poor's raised its ratings on the nation's debt, citing improvements in government finances that are likely to culminate this year in an end to the country's economic supervision by the International Monetary Fund. 
 Standard & Poor's upgraded Indonesia's long-term foreign currency rating to B- from CCC+, ranking the country on a par with Lebanon and Turkey. The agency also raised its ratings on Indonesia's local currency debt, to B from B-, and lifted the ratings of several of the country's largest banks to reflect the higher quality of the government bonds that represent the core of their assets. 
"It is getting clearer that the government will not extend the current program with the I.M.F.," said Takahira Ogawa, director of Standard & Poor's sovereign ratings group in Singapore. The I.M.F. program is due to end this year, but some officials in Jakarta have advocated continuing it. Those opposing a continuation have been bolstered, Mr. Ogawa said, by the fact that Indonesia is now whittling down its public debt.
Casting off the I.M.F.'s steadying hand would normally be a source of investor unease. But Indonesia's moves to chart its own course for the first time since the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and 1998 come as it enjoys a revival among foreign investors. Its currency and stock markets are among the world's top performers this year. 
Unlike many Asian economies, Indonesia is not heavily dependent on exports for growth, relying instead on domestic consumption. Recently, inflation has cooled, interest rates are falling and the government has managed to return to its pre-crisis penchant for keeping spending below what it takes in.
"Indonesia has always been fiscally conservative," said Bert Hoffman, an economist at the World Bank in Jakarta. "They've never been a spendthrift government."
Most of all, Indonesia is benefiting from low expectations. "People were afraid it would blow up," said David L. Cohen, director of macroeconomic analysts at MMS International, a financial advisory firm in Singapore. During the buildup to the Iraq war, many in Indonesia believed that cities in the predominantly Muslim country would erupt in protest, a prospect they considered more likely the longer the war went on.
"The quick end to the Iraq war has given investors confidence that the country won't break into chaos," said Steven Lim, a money manager at Daiwa SB Investments Singapore, one of the many fund managers who have been increasing their investments in Indonesian stocks.
Ferry Wong, an analyst who covers some of Indonesia's largest blue-chip stocks at BNP Paribas in Jakarta, said that once "the war ended the requests from fund managers started." 
Investors have also been encouraged by Indonesia's efforts to crack down on those responsible for the terrorist attack in Bali in October, with the trials of two accused conspirators already under way. 
Indonesia has remained largely untouched by severe acute respiratory syndrome, with only two reported cases so far. Even so, funds from SARS-affected markets are not being moved into Indonesia, analysts and fund managers say, because the market is simply too small to absorb it all. The benchmark index has risen more than 16 percent this year on an influx of less than $80 million of investor funds into the stock market, according to the big investment bank Nomura International. 
Concluding its program with the I.M.F., which has contributed $3.6 billion to central bank reserves in the last three years, would end Indonesia's ability to renegotiate debts owed to major international lenders like the United States and Japan, Mr. Ogawa of S.& P. said. S.& P. treats such restructurings as a default, so eliminating Indonesia's ability to negotiate them will make it more creditworthy in S.& P.'s view.
Instead, Indonesia will have to rely on selling the stakes in banks and other assets it acquired when it bailed out the banks during the crisis. Such sales have in the past been delayed by political resistance to foreign takeovers of national assets, but Indonesia last week managed to sell 51 percent of the country's fifth-largest bank to a Singapore-based consortium for nearly $350 million.
The government will also have to start tapping capital markets to finance budget shortfalls. So far, investors appear eager to buy debt from emerging issuers like Indonesia, especially as global interest rates fall.
Indonesia will have more work to do if it is to translate the newfound faith among portfolio investors into a return of capital investment by foreign corporations, which dropped 35 percent last year, Mr. Hoffman at the World Bank said. Once the I.M.F. is gone, Jakarta will still have to contend with endemic corruption among officials and in the country's legal system. 







 
 


May 16, 2003 Friday



 The Real Problem

 
Uzi Landau's well-intentioned article catalogs the many ills in the supposedly "new" leadership, as well as in the "road map" for peace ["The Real Abu Mazen," Opinion, May 13, 2003]. However, any prescription for the malignancy that is Middle Eastern terrorism runs the risk of being a mere palliative unless the root cause is dealt with - funding for terrorists. 
In ending Saddam Hussein's funding of terrorist homicide bombers, President Bush struck a body blow to the murderous plans of the terrorists. Unfortunately, the flow of money from the real fount of terrorism, Saudi Arabia, continues unabated. Together with other Arab donors, the Saudis pump more than $50 million a month into the coffers of the Palestinian Authority. Virtually none of that goes toward improving the sorry lot of the Palestinians.
Not to be outdone, the European Union's vigorous efforts at replenishing ostensibly depleted Palestinian funds exceeded $4.5 billion by the middle of last year. These monies get distributed via Palestinian conduits that have the transparency of a lead pipe. The E.U. commissioner, Chris Patten, not particularly known to have even a modicum of empathy for Israel, acknowledged last year that corruption is so endemic in the PA that he has no idea where the money ends up.
Unless a concerted effort is made to clean up the Saudi act, which includes the infamous telethon of last year that raised funds for families of the homicide bombers, there is little chance of any real leadership coming to the fore among the Palestinian Arabs or any other part of the Islamic world. Saudi funds for Madrasas that center around promoting the virulent and exclusionary form of militant Islam is the fundamental affliction in a variety of regional conflicts that span the globe from Israel to Indonesia and Pakistan.






  
  


May 13, 2003 Tuesday 



 TRIAL OF FIRST BALI BOMBINGS SUSPECT BEGINS
'SMILING TERRORIST' ACCUSED IN KILLINGS OF 202

 
BALI, Indonesia -- The man dubbed the "smiling terrorist" went on trial Monday for the bombings of two Bali nightclubs packed with tourists, an attack prosecutors said was aimed at punishing Washington and its allies for their perceived oppression of the world's Muslims.
Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, a 40-year-old mechanic, is the first of 33 suspects accused in the Oct. 20, 2002, bombings on the resort island. It was the world's bloodiest terror attack since Sept. 11, 2001, killing at least 202 people. 
If convicted, the suspects could be executed under tough new anti-terror laws.
Prosecutors say Amrozi bought bomb-making materials and a minivan used in the attack, making the purchases and helping coordinate the car bombing while on his home island of Java.
The 33-page indictment did not say where Amrozi was the night of the attacks at the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar. But it described him as one of the plotters who talked about the obligations of Muslims on behalf of other Muslims "who have been oppressed and slaughtered by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, Palestine, Kashmir ... and Iraq."
The trial is seen as a test of Indonesia's willingness to crack down on radical Islamic groups in the world's most populous Muslim nation and, like most high-profile trials here, is being televised nationally.
It also could shed light on the inner workings of Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaida-linked group blamed for the carnage on Bali as part of wider campaign to establish a Southeast Asian Islamic state.
A police convoy brought Amrozi to a courthouse packed with spectators including survivors and relatives of the dead. Hundreds of officers, including bomb squads and sharpshooters, stood guard outside the court, a short drive from the tourist strip where the bombings happened. Roadblocks were set up and security force helicopters hovered.
Amrozi got his nickname in the Indonesian media when he grinned and giggled in front of news crews after his arrest last November.
He exhibited none of that cockiness Monday, giving only single-word answers to questions from the five-judge panel, including his age, religion and whether he had a criminal record. He declined twice to address the court.
Prosecutors say they have a confession from Amrozi, testimony from 102 witnesses, and physical evidence such as receipts for the explosives and the chassis of the minivan used in the attack.
But defense attorneys say the case fails to prove Amrozi actively took part.







  



May 13, 2003 Tuesday  




 World; 
In Brief

 
 EUROPE 
LONDON -- The cabinet secretary overseeing Britain's role in reconstructing postwar Iraq resigned in protest yesterday, accusing the United States and Britain of usurping the role of the United Nations. 
International Development Secretary Clare Short called "shameful" a draft U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq being proposed by the Bush administration and Britain. 
She told the House of Commons that Britain had gone back on its commitment to support a major U.N. role in Iraq and was colluding with the United States "in trying to bully the Security Council into a resolution that gives the coalition the power to establish an Iraqi government and control the use of oil" while providing "only a minor role for the U.N."  
 Before the war, Short opposed military force, calling Prime Minister Tony Blair's policies "reckless" and threatening to resign. 
 Short's main objection to the draft resolution was a legal one -- that under international conventions governing military occupations, the United States and Britain lack the authority to establish an interim Iraqi government or set the terms for adopting a new Iraqi constitution. Only the Security Council has such authority, she said. 
 Short is the second cabinet member to resign over Iraq. Robin Cook, who served as foreign secretary and party parliamentary leader, quit in March.  
Glenn Frankel 
 ASIA 
SEOUL -- North Korea said that a 1992 agreement with South Korea to keep the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons was nullified. 
 The accord was the last remaining legal obligation under which North Korea was banned from developing nuclear arms. In January, Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a global accord to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. 
 "The joint agreement to keep the Korean Peninsula nuclear free was nullified because of a sinister and hostile U.S.," said the North's official news agency. The statement was monitored by the South Korean news agency Yonhap. 
 Associated Press 
BALI, Indonesia -- An Indonesian mechanic went on trial over the deadly bombings in Bali last October in the first of a string of cases that will test the resolve of the world's most populous Muslim nation to tackle the roots of terror there. 
 Amrozi is charged with helping plot terror acts and is accused of buying explosive materials and a minivan that later became a massive bomb. 
 If convicted, he and others accused of carrying out attacks on nightclubs, which killed 202 foreign nationals and Indonesians, face the death penalty. 
 Reuters 
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Unable to meet the national government's payroll, President Hamid Karzai ordered key governors who have refused to turn over their revenues to report to the capital immediately.  
Governors who continue to defy the president could be fired, Said Tayab Jawad, Karzai's chief of staff, said. "We hope it doesn't get to that point and all these governors will agree to come to Kabul," he said. "They will basically be told . . . it is time to implement these laws which require the collection of the revenues by the central government." 
 As the government's financial woes have deepened, there has been growing tension between the Karzai administration and provincial leaders, some of them powerful warlords who hoard the customs duties and taxes they collect. 
 April Witt 
THE MIDDLE EAST 
BEIRUT -- Tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims cheered as Iranian President Mohammad Khatami drove through the streets of Beirut, making the first visit by an Iranian president to Lebanon. 
 Khatami was met at the Beirut airport by Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and cabinet ministers, as well as Sheik Naim Kassem, the deputy leader of Hezbollah, the leading Shiite militant group in Lebanon. 
 Iran, a Shiite-majority country, is the main financial backer of Hezbollah, which periodically attacks Israel across Lebanon's southern border. 
 Associated Press 







   
 

May 12, 2003 Monday  
  



 AFTEREFFECTS: ASIAN FRONT; 
First Trial Begins in Bombing on Bali That Shocked Indonesia

 
Seven months after more than 200 people were killed in the bombings of two nightclubs here in Bali, a smiling man who says he was "delighted" at the carnage went on trial today on terrorism charges.
     Amrozi, a 40-year-old mechanic linked to an Islamic militant group, is the first of more than 30 people who are to be tried for an act of violence that sounded an alarm for Indonesians that there were terrorists among them. 
 The bombings, which killed mostly young foreign tourists, spurred the government to begin taking a harder line against Islamic militants and began a shift in public attitudes away from support of the militants' positions.
The police say that Mr. Amrozi has admitted to buying explosives, attending planning meetings and driving to Bali the minibus that was used in the bombing. He faces a possible death sentence under the country's new antiterrorism law. 
In a televised conversation with the police after his arrest on Nov. 5, Mr. Amrozi, looking handsome and boyish, joked and laughed and said he was proud of what he had done.
"I am very happy that it exploded," he said.
The statement caused fury in Australia, home to 88 of the victims. But it produced a different sort of shock among Indonesians, who saw one of their own sons freely admitting to terrorism.
"It was a coming-of-age moment," said Greg Barton, an Australian expert on Indonesian politics and Islam. "It was quite an awful realization to come to, that this was really a local network, that these were village boys, from East Java of all places."
Investigators say the bombers were linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant group with ties to Al Qaeda that says it wants to form a Southeast Asian Islamic state.
Over the past year, Singapore and Malaysia have arrested scores of members of Jemaah, some of whom were accused of involvement in a plot to bomb the United States Embassy and other targets in Singapore. The chief regional operative of the group, Hambali, remains at large.
Investigators have not identified Mr. Amrozi as a member but have said that one of his brothers -- who is also charged in the bombing, along with a third brother -- is the network's operational chief in Indonesia.
Last month, in a sign of its increasingly aggressive policy, the government charged Abu Bakar Bashir, 64, a soft-spoken cleric it accuses of heading Jemaah Islamiyah, with treason.
He was not charged in the Bali bombing, but in connection with a series of church bombings that killed 19 people in December 2000.
As an indicator of the public mood, his arrest did not bring the street demonstrations or public outcry that the government had feared.
For months, fed by anger at American actions in Afghanistan and the Middle East, Islamic militants had held center stage in Indonesia. Politicians found it expedient to echo their view, and more pro-Western Muslims stayed largely silent.
The government ignored or failed to act on warnings from the United States and other nations that terrorists were active in Indonesia.
Since the Bali bombing, some Muslims have begun speaking out more strongly against violence and have found that much of the public is receptive to them.
The openness and low-key professionalism of the investigation into the bombings, led by Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika, the chief of the Bali police, has been important to this shift in attitudes, said Sidney Jones, who represents the International Crisis Group, a Geneva-based organization that focuses on conflict prevention.
"This whole process has been successful in separating the radical fringe from the Muslim mainstream," she said. "It has served to put an important wedge between the people committed to using violence and the people committed to practicing their faith through other means."
According to the 33-page indictment, Mr. Amrozi took part in a meeting at which "there was a big project of declaring war against the United States of America and a plan was made for some bombing targets in Bali."
It says he bought more than a ton of explosives, which were used to destroy two nightclubs in the popular resort area of Kuta Beach late on the night of Oct. 12, 2002. The huge explosions leveled the nightclubs and destroyed 422 other buildings, according to the indictment.
Mr. Amrozi's trial is to be followed by those of three other major defendants, most prominently his older brother Ali Ghufron, also known as Mukhlas, a senior figure in Jemaah Islamiyah who is accused of commanding the Bali bombing.
A younger brother, Ali Imron, is accused of helping select the targets -- the Sari Club and Paddy's Club, popular night spots among backpackers, surfers and other young travelers, particularly Australians.
A fourth major defendant is Imam Samudra, an engineer who is said to have fought in Afghanistan and is described as the mastermind of the Bali attacks.
In September, the indictment says, Mr. Amrozi bought one ton of potassium chloride in Surabaya, in East Java. On Oct. 5, he is accused of delivering the van to Bali. It had been stripped to house the bomb, and its chassis and engine numbers had been removed.
Two suicide bombers were involved in the attack, according to the indictment. One, a man who used the names Feri and Isa, wore a vest filled with explosives, which he detonated inside Paddy's Club at 11:08 p.m. That blast, which is believed to have killed eight people, was intended to drive patrons into the street. They were then vulnerable to the much larger bomb in the van parked outside the Sari Club, just across the narrow roadway.
The second bomb was set off 29 seconds later by a man known as Arnasan or Jimi, who also died in the blast, according to the indictment.
"They wanted to kill as many Americans as possible," General Pastika said Mr. Amrozi told him. "They hate Americans. They tried to find where the Americans are gathering."
He said the bombers were disappointed to learn that they had killed mostly Australians.






   


May 12, 2003, Monday



 BALI BOMB SUSPECT ON TRIAL

 
BALI - The first suspect in last year's deadly nightclub bombings went on trial today, a case seen as a test of Indonesia's willingness to crack down on radical Islamic groups in the world's largest Muslim nation.
Amrozi, who uses on name, arrived at the court in a convoy of police cars. He said nothing as he entered the courtroom, surrounded by hundreds of armed officers.
Amrozi, a 40-year-old mechanic, was accused of buying the minivan and materials used to make the bombs that ripped through two crowded nightclubs in the heart of the island's tourist district on Oct. 12. Most of the 202 people killed were foreigners, 88 of them Australians.
A prosecutor read the indictment that charges Amrozi with planning and carrying out an act of terrorism that caused "massive casualties." Dressed in brown shirt and slacks, Amrozi faced the three-judge panel and gave a series of single-word answers to questions from the judge about his age, religion and whether he had a criminal record.
Amrozi and 32 other suspects could be sentenced to death if they are convicted under new anti-terror laws enacted after the near-simultaneous explosions, the deadliest terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Australian Natalie Grezl Juniardi, whose husband, John, was among those killed at the Sari Club, said she hoped for ultimate justice.
"I think they should die," she said. "I just wish they would hurry up and do it."




19

  
  

  

MAY 9, 2003 Friday 



 Bush plans push for Arab freedom;
In an address today, the President was to outline a strategy
of economic and political change throughout the Middle East.

 
Fresh from victory in Iraq, President Bush today will challenge the Arab world to embrace political and economic freedom as the fastest path to peace and stability in the Middle East.
In a commencement address at the University of South Carolina, Bush also will outline plans for a Middle East free-trade zone that could ultimately link the economies of Israel and its Arab neighbors.
The address signals Bush's determination to use the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as a catalyst for economic and political change throughout the region. It also serves notice to Saudi Arabia and other Islamic autocracies that Bush is serious about trying to spread democracy beyond Iraq's borders. 
"What he's really saying is that we have an opportunity that the United States is willing to seize," said a senior administration official, who offered a preview of the speech on the condition of anonymity. "The whole theme throughout this speech will be that freedom and liberty equal peace and security."
Bush's vision for the Arab world is a key element in his strategy to build on the U.S. victory in Iraq and try to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The President and his foreign-policy advisers are convinced that fostering democracy and economic opportunity for Palestinians and Arab nations is the best way to eradicate terrorism and promote regional peace.
Later today, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will travel to the region to push for a Middle East peace plan that calls for creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. Powell will seek support for the proposal in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Many Arab leaders contend that the first step to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is improving conditions for the Palestinians, and they might not like much of what Bush has to say. They want Bush to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to remove security checkpoints, roll back Israeli forces, and dismantle Israeli settlements in Palestinian areas.
The administration official said Bush would make clear in his speech that he expected Israel to stop settlement activity in return for a Palestinian crackdown on terrorism and other steps.
Most of Bush's speech is directed at the Arab world. Although he will note that about half of all Muslims live under democratic governments, citing Indonesia and Turkey as examples, he will also make the case that the Arab world is "missing out on the economic progress of our time," the official said.
Contact reporter Ron Hutcheson at 202-383-6101 or rhutcheson@krwashington.com.






  
  


May 9, 2003 Friday  FINAL STREET EDITION



 BUSH TODAY TO OUTLINE BROAD PLANS FOR TRADE, DEMOCRACY IN ARAB WORLD

 
Fresh from victory in Iraq, President Bush today will challenge the Arab world to embrace political and economic freedom as the fastest path to peace and stability in the Middle East.
He also will outline plans for a Middle East free-trade zone that could ultimately link the economies of Israel and its Arab neighbors.
The planned commencement address at the University of South Carolina signals Bush's determination to use the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as a catalyst for economic and political reform throughout the region. It also serves notice to Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries that Bush is serious about trying to spread democracy beyond Iraq's borders. 
"What he's really saying is that we have an opportunity that the United States is willing to seize," said a senior administration official, who offered a preview of the speech on the condition of anonymity. "The whole theme throughout this speech will be that freedom and liberty equal peace and security."
Bush's ambitious vision for the Arab world is a key element in his strategy to build on the U.S. victory in Iraq and try to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bush and his foreign-policy advisers are convinced that fostering democracy and economic opportunity for Palestinians and Arab nations is the best way to eradicate terrorism and promote regional peace.
The president also will announce plans for a U.S. conference next month in Jordan, to be hosted by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, to promote three principles critical to reform: political freedom, economic growth and education.
Powell will travel to the region today to push for a Middle East peace plan that calls for creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. Powell will seek support for the proposal in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Many Arab leaders contend that the first step to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is improving conditions for the Palestinians, and they may not like much of what Bush has to say. They want Bush to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to remove security checkpoints, roll back Israeli forces and dismantle Israeli settlements in Palestinian areas.
The administration official said Bush will make clear in his speech that he expects Israel to stop settlement activity in return for a Palestinian crackdown on terrorism and other steps.
"The president will reiterate the fact that all parties have responsibilities. That includes the Israelis. That includes the Palestinians. And that includes other partners in the Middle East," the official said.
But most of Bush's speech is directed at the Arab world. Although he will note that about half of all Muslims live under democratic governments, citing Indonesia and Turkey as examples, he will also make the case that the Arab world is "missing out on the economic progress of our time."
The official said Bush will cite statistics showing that the economies of all Arab nations combined are smaller than Spain's, and that Internet access is better in sub-Saharan Africa than in the Arab world.






  


May 6, 2003 Tuesday



 Far from the pain

 
Wouldn't you know it would be someone from Arcadia complaining about South Pasadena's concern for the noise that 200-plus trips by the Gold Line per day will inflict upon their community.
In Pasadena I'm concerned about the traffic back-up on California, Del Mar and Glenarm where the Gold Line is at grade level. These streets are already compacted during rush hours.
But hey, not to worry you just want to gain without the pain. Perhaps the next phase will go right by your front door and then see how you like it. 
Althea GrahamPasadena
Soto better choice
I work with Cristine Soto in the Pasadena Juvenile Court. She is bright, dedicated and caring about the young people that she represents.
It is unfortunate that too many voters fell for the negative campaigning of Bill Bibbiani. Over the past 30 years, PUSD has fallen into the lower rungs in almost every measure of competence in all areas except the large numbers of administrators, where they are among the highest in the state.
As Bibbiani was part of that group, he bears responsibility for that fall. How could we have done any worse with Soto? We might just do better. The status quo remains in effect. A sad day for our young people.
Benjamin BroudyPasadena
Where are our values?
The American flag once represented the protection of basic rights and equal respect for everyone.
Somehow it has evolved into the cloak of American nationalism and the rationale that, for this country, the end justifies the means, even if those means include lying, mass murder, and the destruction of another nation's property.
How ironic and hypocritical for our government to insist we are fighting terrorism when our current government [meaning also you? I? We? Us?] is the biggest terrorist in the world.
The two stars on the Scout badge represent truth and knowledge, not pragmatism and ignorance.
I have replaced the flag patch on my Scout uniform with the world Scouting patch. I do not plan to salute the flag until this government practices the values it once promised to uphold.
Johnny RiskPasadena
That fussy, liberal stuff
Those pesky, unpatriotic liberals are at it again. The ink isn't even dry on our glorious victory and they're slinging mud not only about the rebuilding contracts, but also the so- called "looting' going on in Baghdad.
So what if Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, was handed the very first contract, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, without a bid? Cheney was too modest to admit it during the 2000 presidential debates, but Halliburton subsidiaries did over $75 million in business with Saddam during the nineties. Doesn't experience count for something?
The Democrats are also grousing that Bush I Secretary of State Jim Baker is crassly representing the Saudis against a lawsuit brought by the surviving families of those killed in 9/11.
While Bush did say "You're either for us or against us,' he was talking about those other Arabs, not the Saudis who helped bankroll the Bush family all these years.
And lastly, why is everyone piling on Bush for ignoring the looting and destruction at the Iraqi National Museum and Library while the U.S. Army protected the Oil Ministry down the street? Who cares about a few pots, trinkets and statues, anyway? Besides, did you see the quality of some of that stuff? It was so cheap, it would break apart right in your hands!
OK, maybe it would have been nice to station a few troops around the building. But let's face it. The oldest "antiquity' in the museum was only 8,000 years old. But oil, heck, it takes millions of years to make that stuff. As far as I'm concerned, that's the real treasure.
Tim BakerSouth Pasadena
Snodgrass has it wrong
Re Your View, "We've reached Rubicon,' Bob Snodgrass [April 25]:
Snodgrass is right that Iraq never attacked us directly, but we have yet to learn of indirect Iraqi support for others who have done so. He goes on to imply that the United States invited Saddam's attack on Kuwait in 1990 by paraphrasing then U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie [the transcripts vary as to exactly what she said to Saddam Hussein.]
Snodgrass neglects, however, to point out what Glaspie and others said later in her defense. Testifying before Congress, she said she had been the victim of "deliberate deception on a major scale.'
Even Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tarik Aziz, gave Glaspie some vindication in November, 1992. He said she had not given Iraq a green light. "She just listened and made general comments,' he told USA Today. "We knew the United States would have a strong reaction.'
Snodgrass goes on to say that they, presumably Muslims, hate us because of Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. This argument is such spurious hyperbole that it doesn't deserve a response.
Perhaps Snodgrass can explain why Muslim extremists are also murdering Phillipinos and Indians. Perhaps he can explain the Muslim terrorists in Chechnya or the Balkans. Perhaps he can explain Muslim extremism in Indonesia and Sudan. I suspect he would have some difficulty tying all these places of turmoil to Perle, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
I'm afraid they hate us for much less tangible reasons than that. They hate us because, unlike themselves, we are successful. We celebrate freedom, equality, religious tolerance and economic vitality, all of which are defended by our military power. They celebrate none of those things. They hate us because they have been lied to from the time they were born about the world outside of Islam, particularly Israel and the United States. And yes, they hate us because we stand in support of Israel, one of the few nations that shares our values.
Lastly, with no evidence other than blatant assertion, Snodgrass accuses Secretary of State Colin Powell of lying to the United Nations about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, suggesting that the same lie is forthcoming for Iran, Syria and Yemen.
For nearly 25 years Iran has been hurling hate toward the United States and is known to have been supporting the Hizbollah terrorists in Lebanon. Syria is well-known for being home to more terrorist groups than any other nation, most with offices in Damascus. In addition, Syria has illegally occupied Lebanon for a decade or more. Yemen has, to my knowledge, never been mentioned as a target of U.S. enmity. There would be no need to manufacture evidence against the other two.
If Snodgrass is truly concerned about the "fear and loathing of America in the Islamic world,' perhaps he should relocate to France. Everybody loves the French, except of course, we hate-filled Americans who, along with President Bush, believe that Perle, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz may just have it right.
A.O. Kragh Arcadia
Stand by soldiers
The bombs, the sirens, the bullets and fear,Soldiers trying hard to not shed a tear. Our brave, courageous, valiant young heroes, Risking their lives so others can strive. Day after day, night after night, They try so hard to keep up the fight. Scrapes and bruises, losses of lives, What for, but for power and might. Running, ducking, sneaking and spying, Bearing a burden of a thousand men dying. Strategic thinking, technical jargon, All I know is there is no room to bargain. United we stand, divided we will fall, Support our guardians of freedom and all.
Hold your head high, salute the flag,Stand by our soldiers, for they will fight, for life, liberty and justice for all.
Lizette N. AcunaMonrovia







   
 

May 5, 2003 Monday  
  



 Who Wants to Be a Martyr? 

 
One given in the war against terrorism seems to be that suicide attackers are evil, deluded or homicidal misfits who thrive in poverty, ignorance and anarchy. 
     President Bush, at last year's United Nations conference on poor nations in Monterrey, Mexico, said that "we fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror." Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican, argued that a new security doctrine including wars of preemption was necessary because "those who would commit suicide in their assaults on the free world are not rational." A State Department report issued on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks said that development aid should be based "on the belief that poverty provides a breeding ground for terrorism." 
 As logical as the poverty-breeds-terrorism argument may seem, study after study shows that suicide attackers and their supporters are rarely ignorant or impoverished. Nor are they crazed, cowardly, apathetic or asocial. If terrorist groups relied on such maladjusted people, "they couldn't produce effective and reliable killers," according to Todd Stewart, a retired Air Force general who directs the Ohio State University program in international and domestic security.  
In the suicide bombing of a cafe in Tel Aviv last week that killed three bystanders, for instance, the bomber and the man accused of being his accomplice grew up in Britain, in relatively prosperous circumstances, and attended college. 
The Princeton economist Alan Krueger and others released a study in 2002 comparing Lebanese Hezbollah militants who died in violent action to other Lebanese of the same age group. He found that the Hezbollah members were less likely to come from poor homes and more likely to have a secondary school education.
Nasra Hassan, a Pakistani relief worker, interviewed nearly 250 aspiring Palestinian suicide bombers and their recruiters. "None were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded or depressed," she reported in 2001. "They all seemed to be entirely normal members of their families."
A 2001 poll by the nonprofit Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research indicated that Palestinian adults with 12 years or more of education are far more likely to support bomb attacks than those who cannot read. 
Officials with the Army Defense Intelligence Agency who have interrogated Saudi-born members of Al Qaeda being detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have told me that these fundamentalists, especially those in leadership positions, are often educated above reasonable employment level; a surprising number have graduate degrees and come from high-status families. Their motivation and commitment are evident in their willingness to sacrifice material and emotional comforts (families, jobs, physical security), to travel long distances and to pay their own way. 
The body of research shows that over all, suicide terrorists tend not to have the attributes of the socially dysfunctional (fatherless, friendless, jobless). They don't vent fear of enemies or express hopelessness or a sense of "nothing to lose" because of lack of a career or social mobility as would be consistent with economic theories of criminal behavior. Suicide attackers don't opt for paradise out of despair. If they did, say Muslim clerics who countenance martyrdom for Allah but not personal suicide, their actions would be criminal and blasphemous.
A study of world attitudes toward America by the Pew Research Center in December 2002 and many other polls of Muslims from Algeria to Indonesia show ever-rising support for "martyrs." A United Nations report indicated that as soon as the United States began building up for the Iraq invasion, Qaeda recruitment has picked up in 30 to 40 countries. Recruiters for groups sponsoring terrorist acts tell researchers that volunteers are beating down the doors to join.
This allows terrorist agents to choose recruits who are intelligent, psychologically balanced and socially poised. Candidates who mostly want virgins in paradise or money for their families are weeded out. Those selected show patience and the ability to plan and execute in subtle, quiet ways that don't draw attention. Al Qaeda, especially, is rarely in a hurry. It can wait years and then strike when least expected.
It's the particular genius of the institutions like Al Qaeda, Hamas or Hezbollah that they are able to make otherwise well-adjusted people into human bombs. Intense indoctrination, often lasting 18 months or more, causes recruits to identify emotionally with their terrorist cell, viewing it as a family for whom they are as willing to die as a mother for her child or a soldier for his buddies. Consider the oath taken by members of Harkat al Ansar, a Pakistan-based ally of Al Qaeda: "Each martyr has a special place -- among them are brothers, just as there are sons and those even more dear." 
Brian Barber, a psychologist at the University of Tennessee, has interviewed some 900 young adults from Gaza and a comparison group of Bosnian Muslims who had also suffered through violence but had not become a source of suicide bombers. The Bosnians had markedly weaker expressions of self-esteem and less hope for the future. Faith was the largest difference: the Palestinians routinely invoked religion to invest personal trauma with social meaning, whereas the Bosnians did not consider religion significant to their life.
This overall pattern was also captured in a white paper by the Parliament of Singapore concerning captured operatives from Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant group allied with Al Qaeda: "These men were not ignorant, destitute or disenfranchised. Like many of their counterparts in militant Islamic organizations in the region, they held normal, respectable jobs. As a group, most of the detainees regarded religion as their most important personal value." 
Like the best Madison Avenue advertisers, but to ghastlier effect, the charismatic leaders of terrorist groups turn ordinary desires for family and religion into cravings for what they're pitching.
How do we combat these masters of manipulation? President Bush and many American politicans maintain that these groups and the people supporting them hate our democracy and freedoms. But poll after poll of the Muslim world shows opinion strongly favoring America's forms of government, personal liberty and education. A University of Michigan political scientist, Mark Tessler, finds Arab attitudes to American culture most favorable among young adults (regardless of their religious feeling) -- the same population that recruiters single out. 
It is our actions that they don't like: as long ago as 1997, a Defense Department report (in response to the 1996 suicide bombing of Air Force housing at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia) noted that "historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States." 
Shows of military strength don't seem to dissuade terrorists: witness thefailure of Israel's coercive efforts to end the string of Palestinian suicide bombings. Rather, we need to show the Muslim world the side of our culture that they most respect. Our engagement needs to involve interfaith initiatives, not ethnic profiling. America must address grievances, such as the conflict in the Palestinian territories, whose daily images of violence engender global Muslim resentment. 
Of course, this does not mean negotiating with terrorist groups over goals like Al Qaeda's quest to replace the Western-inspired system of nation-states with a global caliphate. Osama bin Laden seeks no compromise. But most of the people who sympathize with him just might.






   

 

April 29, 2003 Tuesday 



 Persecution in Indonesia;
Photos show Christians' plight

 
Daniel Homrich was traveling around Bali days before he was scheduled to arrive with a missionary team in Indonesia.
He'd wanted to spend some time alone, exploring his grandfather's birthplace.
What Homrich didn't know was that organizers had canceled the trip on the heels of a U.S. State Department travel advisory. Americans were advised in late March to stay out of Indonesia, where anti-U.S. sentiments stemming from the Iraqi war ran high. 
Three of Homrich's team members decided to stay in America. Homrich, though, was already in the country. He learned that the excursion had been aborted when he contacted Indonesians who were to serve as guides for the missionaries.
" [The organizers] thought I had been lost or captured, so they were a little worried," recalled Homrich, 21, of Lawrenceville. "Fortunately, everything turned out fine. I had people all over the country praying for me. Two other team members wound up coming over because I was already there."
Over six days, Homrich photographed the plight of Christian Indonesians who have been persecuted for their religious beliefs. The trip was arranged by the Voice of the Martyrs Inc., an Oklahoma-based group that does mission work in more than 50 countries.
In Indonesia, humanitarian groups and religious liberty organizations say thousands of Christians have been beaten, mutilated and killed. The world's most populous Muslim country --- an archipelago of islands between Asia and Australia --- is experiencing religious clashes between Islamic extremists and Christians.
At a kitchen counter in his parent's home, Homrich picks up a half-melted Communion glass that sits on a charred tray. The items, villagers told the missionaries, had been in a church that was doused with gasoline then torched.
It's the kind of story the missionaries heard repeatedly as they visited Christian villages and refugee camps. They talked to people who'd lost limbs in skirmishes and attacks. They stood in churches reduced to hollow shells.
Homrich captured the imagery in hundreds of photographs, some of which will accompany June and September newsletters of the Voice of the Martyrs, said Todd Nettleton, the mission's assistant director of news services.
"Often we don't have photos to go with stories we publish," Nettleton said Monday. "Images play a huge role in our goal of letting people know what's going on. [Homrich] did a fantastic job of capturing what's going on."
Quite a compliment for someone who didn't pick up a camera until a year and a half ago. God, Homrich said, led him to photography --- a gateway to his dream of becoming a documentary photographer who exposes the plight of Christians living in hostile regions.
Homrich, who is studying photography at Gwinnett Tech, said: "The Lord asked me, 'How are you going to get into closed countries?' A camera is a powerful tool. I never realized how powerful, but the Lord knew the next step. It's my tool into these hostile nations."
The trip to Indonesia came about when Homrich met some representatives of the Voice of the Martyrs at a youth conference in Oklahoma. They agreed to let him join a mission trip, provided he pay his own way. Donations from friends helped the 2000 Duluth High graduate raise the $7,000 to pay for digital equipment and airfare.
"Most people who know me know my heart is to aid missionaries," Homrich said. "My goal is to raise awareness of the hostile conditions for Christians, to encourage them and share the stories of what they are going through. Indonesia is just one country, a glimpse of what's going on where Christian persecution is common. There are casualties on both sides of the issue. It breaks your heart."







   
 

April 25, 2003 Friday  
  



 BOOKS OF THE TIMES; 
A Voyage to Krakatoa, by Way of Everywhere

 
KRAKATOA
The Day the World Exploded: August 23, 1883
By Simon Winchester
Illustrated. HarperCollins. 416 pages. $25.95.
     The acknowledgments section of Simon Winchester's latest book cites an unusually large and far-flung group of helpers, and no wonder: Mr. Winchester's "Krakatoa" is a trove of wonderfully arcane information. The author has been able to attach so many tentacles to a single event -- the spectacular and catastrophic eruption of the title volcano -- that there seems to be nowhere he can't go. 
 For instance: how do you get from red-hot lava to stone-washed denim jeans? This is just one of the many heretofore unasked questions that "Krakatoa" is able -- and eager -- to answer. In this case, it's all in the pumice: this is the lightweight volcanic rock that rained down from the sky in large chunks after Krakatoa's huge, self-immolating blowout. And it is also used to weather fabric as "it brushes softly against the cloth, whitening and aging it in a way that finds favor with youngsters."
This manner of amplifying science or history with odd, figurative footnotes has become extremely popular; just read a full-length book about salt, for example. But since "The Professor and the Madman" (1998), about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, Mr. Winchester has emerged as the leading practitioner of the method. He incorporates research that ranges far and wide, serving up both real and cocktail-party science. And all the while, in scattering these trails of bread crumbs, he keeps track of his story's central path.
The rich and fascinating "Krakatoa" confirms his pre-eminence, not only for its inspired choice of subject (the author has vastly more to work with than he did in his preceding book, "The Map That Changed the World"), but also for its enthralling trivia. Here you will learn that William Syer Bristowe is "perhaps the most famous figure in the spider world, known for calculating that the weight of insects devoured by British spiders in an average year exceeds the total weight of all British people combined." And you will learn that Rattus rattus is the precise terminology for black rat.
This time, Mr. Winchester has no trouble demonstrating that the main event warrants such close attention. When he refers to "what might be called the Krakatoa community," he does not mean resident Krakatoans (of whom there were fortunately very few); he means the scholars still sifting over the many complex aftershocks of this 120-year-old apocalypse. Without breaking a sweat, Mr. Winchester leads this account through the history of Krakatoa's pre-1883 activity, the plate tectonics theory that delineates the world's volcano belts, the start of rapid worldwide news dissemination, the political evolution of what is now Indonesia from Dutch colonialism to anti-infidel, militant Islam (an eerily resonant part of this story), and the amazing physical details of an explosion that could be heard 2,968 miles away.
The Poughkeepsie firemen who leaped into action three months later at the sight of an unusually bright sky may have been responding to the Krakatoa eruption's aftereffects. Then there is the landscape painter inspired to turn out 533 watercolors of the oddly vibrant 1883 sunsets. In addition to the atmospheric fallout that yielded this effect, the event had widespread consequences for scientific researchers. Here is a book that can explain how the jet stream was first identified for weather forecasters on the same page that notes how the World Series got its name.
Of particular interest are the book's final sections about the area's natural history after Krakatoa blew itself into oblivion. Like so many good stories, this one has a sequel: the birth of Anak Krakatoa, the new volcanic island that began to emerge decades later in the same region between the islands of Java and Sumatra. Since this was pure lava at first, Mr. Winchester's theories of how it came to develop dense foliage and diverse wildlife -- and the frustrations of watching this new growth rise and fall again with the whims of the still-active volcano -- address one of the planet's essential mysteries.
When last seen in his book's epilogue, the author is making an adventurous pilgrimage to Anak Krakatoa, where he meets a six-foot-long lizard that eats his sandwich. Still, he marvels at finding "a freeze-frame picture of the future of life itself -- a demonstration of the utterly confident way that the world, however badly it has been wounded, picks itself up, continues to unfold its magic and its marvels, and sets itself back on its endless trail of evolutionary progress yet again."
Among the minor marvels to be found here is the way swiftlets are farmed for the saliva used in bird's nest soup; the sci-fi sounding continents of Laurasia and Gowandaland, named by the apparent crackpot Alfred Lothar Wegener (who turned out to be right about how the planet looked before continental drift began); the mechanism that creates the shape of raindrops, a find also partly attributed to Wegener; and the discoverer of the undersea transform fault, who "created paper-and-crayon diagrams of the model, cut them out, and kept them in his wallet, showing them to anyone who would give him the time of day."
Then there is what may be the world's longest book: a six-million-word history written in Court Javanese. And there is the world's largest flower, named for the British colonizer Thomas Stamford Raffles, "which has blooms a yard wide, weighs as much as 24 pounds, and has a memorably horrible smell." When Mr. Winchester occasionally overreaches for the sake of such details, he packs in stories like the one about the baby circus elephant that went wild, perhaps sensing Krakatoa's imminent eruption before humans could. Maybe this is meaningful and germane. Then again, maybe this elephant just did not like being left alone in a hotel room while his mistress went out to dinner.
Like the controversial Immanuel Velikovsky, the honorary godfather of this genre (who could trace almost any event in the Earth's ancient history to rogue behavior of the planet Venus), Mr. Winchester takes his subject everywhere it can possibly go. Inevitably, this leads him to Hollywood's best-loved bit of idiocy: "Krakatoa, East of Java," the 1969 Cinerama debacle that accidentally confused east with west. As delighted as he is by specifics and oddities, Mr. Winchester is someone who will point out that the film's fake-looking little volcano models were made of polystyrene.






  
  

  West County Times

April 25, 2003 Friday 



 EAST BAY ROUNDUP

 
Richmond
Oakland symphony concert Saturday
The city of Richmond will present the Oakland East Bay Symphony in its final concert of the 2003 West County Series at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Richmond Memorial Convention Center.
The free concert features choirs from Hilltop Community Church and St. John Missionary Baptist Church. Michael Morgan will conduct. 
For information, call 510-620-6793.
Richmond
Trail group to lead Earth Day bike tour
A member of Trails for Richmond Action Committee will conduct a special bike tour of Richmond's Bay Trail to the West County Earth Day Festival on Saturday.
The flat, 12-mile ride begins at Central Avenue and Rydin Road just west of Interstate 580 at 9:30 a.m., and winds through Marina Bay and Point Richmond before arriving about noon at the Earth Day celebration at the Integrated Resource Recovery Facility at 101 Pittsburg Ave.
For information about the bike tour, contact Phil Maynard of TRAC at 510-237-7520, or philmaynard@attbi.com.
Bay Area
Men from 5 countries must register today
Male visitors from five Muslim-dominated countries - Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Kuwait - must register with federal immigration authorities by today or face possible deportation.
The order affects all men older than 16 from the listed countries except U.S. citizens, permanent residents, refugees, and asylum recipients and applicants.
Affected men in the Bay Area should register at Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services offices at 630 Sansome St. in San Francisco or 1887 Monterey Road in San Jose.
Richmond
Man shot in the leg while driving home
A resident driving home from a grocery store was shot in the leg Wednesday night and told police a man fired at his car.
He was taken to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.
The victim told police he was driving in the 1900 block of Bissell Avenue about 8:50 p.m. when a man or a teenager stepped out from a curb, raised a gun and fired at the car, Richmond police Lt. Eva Wilson said.
One round went through the car door and hit him in the leg, and another hit the car, police said.
Police ask anyone with information to call Sgt. George Garcia at 510-620-6647.







 
 


April 24, 2003 Thursday



 Jakarta Puts Cleric on Trial for Treason

 
A militant Muslim cleric suspected of leading a regional terror network with ties to Al Qaeda went on trial in Jakarta yesterday charged with plotting to overthrow the Indonesian government.
Abu Bakar Bashir, 64, is accused of treason, a crime that carries a life sentence, and sanctioning a string of church bombings.
The case is considered an important test of the willingness of authorities in Indonesia - the world's most populous Muslim nation - to commit to the war on terror by prosecuting extremists. 
Mr. Bashir is not accused of involvement in the Bali nightclub bombings in October of last year, which killed 202 people, a majority of them Australian and British tourists. But Jemaah Islamiah, the radical Muslim network of which he is spiritual leader, is widely believed to have orchestrated them.
It is considered in some intelligence quarters effectively to form the Southeast Asian arm of Al Qaeda. Many of the suspects arrested so far in connection with the Bali bombings are known followers of the white bearded cleric. Their trials are due to start next month.
The court was told that Mr. Bashir sanctioned a series of church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000, killing 19 people, as part of a plan to wreck religious tolerance and destabilize the Indonesian archipelago.
His ultimate aim, the prosecution claimed, was to topple the secular government in Jakarta and establish a pan-Islamic state spanning much of Southeast Asia.
He also stands accused of involvement in an abortive plot to assassinate President Sukarnoputri, when she was vice president. Further allegations include plans to murder priests and bomb other Western interests in the region.
Mr. Bashir, an avowed admirer of Osama bin Laden, has consistently rejected accusations of terrorist activity, claiming that he is simply a religious teacher.
He remained defiant yesterday. "I do not accept the charges. These are lies from America," he said as he was hustled out of the court room and into the back of a prison van.







  



April 24, 2003 Thursday  




 Cleric Rejects Charges As Jakarta Trial Starts; 
Bombing and Assassination Plots Alleged

 
The trial of a Muslim cleric accused of trying to overthrow the government began today, with about 200 supporters shouting "Allahu Akbar!" and "Amerika Terroris!" as he entered the courtroom. 
Abubakar Baasyir, 64, an ailing preacher with an ivory beard and gold-rimmed glasses, acknowledged his supporters but betrayed little emotion as the prosecution read a 25-page indictment charging him with attempting to replace the Indonesian government with an Islamic state. It alleges that he approved a series of church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000 that killed 19 people, a failed plot to bomb U.S. interests in Singapore and a plan -- later dropped -- to assassinate Megawati Sukarnoputri, now the president, in 2001, when she was vice president. 
The process of reading the indictment, which took 68 minutes, set in motion the highest-profile court case in Indonesia since the government clamped down on terrorism after bombing attacks in Bali in October. Baasyir's case is widely seen as a test for Megawati, who is balancing a resolve to combat terrorism with a need to show she is not targeting Islam in the most-populous Muslim nation in the world.  
The government alleges that Baasyir is the leader of Jemaah Islamiah, an organization that the United Nations and the United States have labeled a terrorist group, and that police accuse of conducting the attacks in Bali. Baasyir has denied that such an organization exists and said today that he was innocent of the charges, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. 
 "I do not accept the charges. These are lies from America," said Baasyir, who wore a white tunic over a plaid sarong, a white prayer cap and an orange scarf. 
 "If we were not sure of the evidence, we would not bring this case to court," said the chief prosecutor, Hasan Madani. 
 A year ago, authorities refrained from arresting Baasyir, fearing it would fuel a backlash among Muslims, who make up more than 80 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people. 
 Baasyir, as spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, is "a very symbolic figure," said Robin Bush, director of the Islam and civil society program at the Asia Foundation. "From the regime's perspective, for the regime's credibility, it's important that he go to trial. There are international interests at stake here." 
 Bush said the government is trying to "play off both sides" in the trial. "They're hoping to have concrete proof that they are taking action against this alleged terrorist and, on the other hand, they are taking a toned-down stance to appease extremists," she said. 
As an example of the latter, she noted that Baasyir was not charged with involvement in the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, mostly Australian tourists. Prosecutors said that police have so far not provided them with evidence linking him directly to the attack. 
 Muhammad Ismail Yusanto, a spokesman for the formerly banned Hizbut Tahrir organization, predicted that Baasyir would be convicted to ease pressure from Western countries. A conviction would "energize" the Muslim community, he said, but would not lead to violence. 
 The opening of the trial coincided with an announcement at police headquarters that 18 Islamic militants had been arrested. All are suspected members of Jemaah Islamiah. 
Police said Nasir Abbas, a Malaysian reputed to be the leader of a Jemaah Islamiah cell that includes northern Indonesia and the southern Philippines, was arrested near Jakarta. In central Java, police arrested Abu Rusdan, who has been serving as Jemaah Islamiah's temporary leader. 
 Of the 16 others arrested, three are suspected in the Bali bombing, police said, bringing to 32 the number of suspects being held in connection with the blasts.  
 Special correspondents Noor Huda Ismail and Natasha Tampubolon contributed to this report. 






  


April 23, 2003 Wednesday 



 LOOKING FORWARD

 
TODAY:
Treason trial begins in Jakarta, Indonesia, for Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who is alleged to be the leader of the al-Qaida-linked group Jemaah Islamiyah. He is charged with plotting to overthrow Indonesia's government and turn the most populous Muslim nation into an Islamic state.






    
  


April 23, 2003, Wednesday



 WORLD WATCH -- ASIA/PACIFIC: INDONESIAN CLERIC FACES TRIAL IN TERRORISM CASE







   
 

April 20, 2003 Sunday  
  



 The Island That Went Straight Up 

 
     KRAKATOA
The Day the World Exploded:
August 27, 1883.
By Simon Winchester.
Illustrated. 416 pp. New York:
HarperCollins Publishers. $25.95.
 WHEN a volcano erupts, it can do terrible damage, as Vesuvius did in A.D. 79, burying the cities and inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But as the tens of thousands of people now living on its slopes can attest, Vesuvius is still there, and so are most of the world's better-known volcanoes, such as Etna, Rainier, Kilauea, Paricutin and Fujiyama (yes, Fuji is a volcano; it last erupted in 1707). Even Mount St. Helens, the top of which blew off in 1980, is (mostly) still there. It is very rare that an eruption is so great that it destroys the entire mountain; we know of Mount Mazama (which left behind Crater Lake in Oregon), Santorini (which may have taken out the Minoan civilization and left a great hole in the Aegean) and Krakatoa, the subject of Simon Winchester's brilliant new book, which not only blew up the mountain, it blew up the island the mountain sat on. 
Krakatoa was (past tense) located in the Sunda Strait, between the large islands of Sumatra and Java, and composed of three peaks: Rakata, at 2,600 feet; Danan, at nearly 1,500; and Perboewatan, at 400. The volcano began to signal its intentions with violent earthquakes in May 1883. "It began with a sudden trembling," Winchester writes. "At first it was slight, more of a quivering of the air, a series of windy rumblings, of vague, barely noticeable atmospheric flutterings." After three months of rumbling earth tremors, the island blew up with a succession of blasts that could be heard 3,000 miles away. (If Pikes Peak in Colorado had exploded with the same force, every person in the continental United States would have heard it.) There were four detonations over the course of five hours; the last, occurring at 10:02 a.m. local time at Krakatoa on Monday, Aug. 27, 1883, was one of the biggest explosions in recorded history. 
Most accounts of volcanic eruptions, including Pliny the Younger's eyewitness account of the eruption of Vesuvius (which killed his uncle, Pliny the Elder), concern themselves with the pyrotechnics of the eruption, the billowing clouds of smoke, molten lava or burning ash rolling down the slopes and, ultimately, the death toll. But Winchester's book is a murder mystery with more than 36,000 victims, and everything in the book -- from the early Dutch settlers, the history of the spice trade in the East Indies, the discovery of the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates and the history of the undersea telegraph -- leads ineluctably to the solution. He tells us not only what happened, where and when; assisted by modern geological theory, he explains why Krakatoa exploded. Many people thought it was the end of the world or the Day of Judgment, but Winchester -- trained as a geologist -- identifies the forces at work within the earth that can (and do) bring about such cataclysms. Although we are still unable to predict when a volcano will erupt, we have managed to acquire at least a partial understanding of the forces that can cause the earth's plates to move, producing the not unrelated seismic phenomena of earthquakes and volcanoes. 
At Krakatoa, when the earth split asunder, cold seawater contacted the red-hot magma, the steam exploded with catastrophic violence, and six cubic miles of rock and ash were hurled more than 20 miles into the stratosphere. An hour after the explosions, as lightning stroboscopically lit up the blackening skies, a thick, muddy rain fell on Batavia (now Jakarta). Broiling-hot debris from the blast, some chunks three feet around, fell over hundreds of square miles. Since the island was uninhabited at the time, nobody on Krakatoa was killed, but giant tsunamis rolled out in all directions, flooding the coasts of Java and Sumatra, submerging nearly 300 towns and villages and killing more than 36,000 people. It was as if a mountain-size red-hot rock had been dropped into the ocean. (Indeed, some 65 million years ago, a mountain-size asteroid slammed into what would later be known as the Yucatan peninsula, where, many scientists believe, it wreaked such ecological havoc that the nonavian dinosaurs disappeared forever.) 
A 72-foot-high wave engulfed and totally destroyed the town of Telokbetong at the head of Sumatra's Lampong Bay, killing 2,200 people. Water cascaded into the town of Tangerang, and when it swept out again, it carried people, animals, houses and trees. No one expected the waves to return after they had receded. It is likely that many people believed the worst was over and returned to their shoreside villages, only to experience another, more catastrophic, inundation. The town of Merak, which had suffered little damage from the first wave, was destroyed by the second. The huge wave, after traveling at hundreds of miles per hour, entered the narrow bay, and as the shoaling beach slowed down the leading edge of the wave, millions of gallons of water began piling up behind, until the wave reached the astonishing and totally terrifying height of 135 feet, as tall as a 10-story building. This mountain of seething water rolled over Merak, obliterating everything in its path and drowning all but two of its 2,700 inhabitants. Anjer was drowned by a 33-foot wave, and Tyringin, 24 miles from the volcano, was smashed by a 70-foot-high locomotive of roiling water. It was not the lava, noxious gases, flame, smoke or volcanic bombs that destroyed those unfortunate thousands; it was the terrible power of water. In the vast majority of instances death came at the hands of seismic sea waves. 
To the accompaniment of thunderous explosions, the wave swept around St. Nicholas Point on Java and headed for Batavia, 94 miles from the epicenter. At approximately 12:15 p.m., two hours after the final explosion, the sea roared into the capital city. It receded, and then came back. Thousands of ships, ranging in size from steamships to small proas, were destroyed in Batavia's harbor. Nine hours after the eruption, many riverboats were swamped and sunk in Calcutta, 2,000 miles away, and ships strained at their anchors at Port Elizabeth, South Africa, 5,000 miles from the blast.
What did not remain, Winchester writes, "was the volcano that had caused it all. . . . Krakatoa, after the final majestic concatenation of seismic and tectonic climaxes that occurred just after 10 on the Monday morning, had simply and finally exploded itself out of existence." Where once there had been a tropical peak that was 2,600 feet tall, there was now a hole in the ocean floor that was 1,000 feet deep. Krakatoa's explosion generated a climate-altering ash cloud that produced lurid red, blue, green and copper-colored sunsets, and lowered temperatures around the world. 
In 1815, the eruption of the volcano Tambora, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, caused the "year without summer" in 1816, when so much ash was carried into the upper atmosphere that it blocked the sun; it snowed in Boston in June and a famine spread across parts of Europe. The parallels between today's "weapons of mass destruction" and the destructive power of volcanoes are painfully obvious -- both can kill thousands of innocent people -- but Winchester identifies an unforeseen repercussion of the 1883 eruption: the willingness of the Javanese to blame the gods for the destruction of their islands and villages opened the door to Islamic militants, who rapidly gained the hearts and minds of the people, making modern Indonesia the largest Muslim country in the world. 
Like its subject, Winchester's book is rife with superlatives. Here is his description of the giant wave that drowned Merak: "This too was Krakatoa's most colossal wave, the biggest consequence of the biggest and final explosion. It was a wave so enormous and so powerful that it turned out to be the grimmest of grim reapers, the terrible climax to a long and deadly day." Krakatoa (the volcano) wasn't the largest or deadliest of recent Indonesian volcanic eruptions. That dubious distinction goes to Tambora, which erupted with more than twice the power of Krakatoa, killed 10,000 people outright and caused the death of another 82,000 by starvation and disease. "Krakatoa" (the book) is, also like its subject, deserving of superlatives: It is thrilling, comprehensive, literate, meticulously researched and scientifically accurate; it is one of the best books ever written about the history and significance of a natural disaster.







   
 

April 15, 2003 Tuesday  
  



 A NATION AT WAR: THE ASIAN ARENA; 
Radical Cleric Is Charged With Treason In Indonesia

 
Prosecutors in Indonesia indicted a radical Islamic cleric yesterday on charges of treason and plotting to overthrow the Indonesian government and establish an Islamic state.
     If convicted, he faces life imprisonment. 
 The government alleges that the cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, was involved in the bombings of several churches in Indonesia in December 2000, and in a plot to blow up the American Embassy in Singapore. The plot was foiled in December 2001 when the Singaporean authorities rounded up a dozen suspects; some of their interrogations pointed to Mr. Bashir's involvement, and Singapore, along with the United States, pressured the Indonesians to crack down on the Islamic preacher. 
The indictment signals a change in policy and attitude toward terrorism by the Indonesian government, which long denied that terrorism was a problem or that that the group Mr. Bashir leads, Jemaah Islamiyah, even existed. Mr. Bashir had many influential political and military supporters, and the government was reluctant to touch him for fear of protests by the country's Muslims.
Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population, and though it is a moderate, secular country, there is a fundamentalist bloc, which while relatively small numerically in a country of 220 million, is vocal and politically potent.
Mr. Bashir, 64, has always denied any link to terrorism, but the United States says Jemaah Islamiyah has connections to Al Qaeda, and Mr. Bashir has expressed admiration for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban government of Afghanistan.
In the 1980's, when Indonesian Islamic radicals were being persecuted by President Suharto, Mr. Bashir left and established a base for Jemaah Islamiyah in Malaysia.
Mr. Bashir returned to Indonesia after President Suharto was toppled in 1998, and he resumed his activities as director of a religious boarding school linked to several of the men who have been indicted in connection with the October 2002 bombing of two Bali nightclubs that were popular with Western tourists.
The indictment does not charge Mr. Bashir in connection with the Bali attack, which killed more than 180 people.
Much of the case against Mr. Bashir comes from what a senior Qaeda operative, Omar al-Faruq, told the Central Intelligence Agency during his interrogations last year. 






  
  


April 15, 2003 Tuesday 



 NATION & WORLD BRIEFING

 
School shooting kills boy, 15
NEW ORLEANS -- A gunman with an AK-47 rifle opened fire in a high school gym Monday, killing a 15-year-old boy and wounding three teenage girls in a spray of more than 30 bullets that sent students scrambling for cover. Four suspects, ranging in age from 15 to 19, were arrested in a sweep of the neighborhood near John McDonogh High School. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he did not know if the suspects attended the school. Students said the shooting was apparently gang related and may have been retaliation for a previous fight. "They started shooting and I started running," said ninth-grader Garick Jacob, who was in the gym. The gunman managed to slip out of the gym and the suspects were arrested about three blocks away.
Study links bullying, carrying weapons
CHICAGO -- Bullies and their victims are both much more likely to carry weapons and get into fights, according to a study that also suggests that more than 2.7 million students have carried a weapon in the past 30 days -- including nearly 2 million who carried one to school. Researchers said the findings shed light on some of the school shootings in recent years. Many such incidents involved young assailants who were said to have been bullied. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development led the study, which was released Monday in April's Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. 
Proof sought of IRA commitment to peace
DUBLIN, Ireland -- Britain and Ireland will not publish their plans for Northern Ireland's future until the Irish Republican Army offers more proof that it's committed to peace, the province's British governor said Monday. Paul Murphy confirmed that the two governments received a draft statement from the IRA on Sunday night, and "have asked the IRA to clarify a number of questions arising from it." Efforts to get the IRA to confirm it will fully disarm and stop hostilities -- key demands by Britain and Ireland -- have held up publication of a much wider Anglo-Irish document on promoting Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord.
Pakistan convicts 4 militants in bombing
KARACHI, Pakistan -- An anti-terrorism court on Monday convicted four members of an outlawed Islamic militant group of orchestrating a truck bombing outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi last year that killed 12 Pakistanis. Two defendants were sentenced to death by hanging and two were sentenced to life in prison. The June 14 bombing was one of several aimed at foreigners and Pakistan's small Christian minority. It was believed to be retaliation for the government's alliance with the United States in the war against the al-Qaida terrorist network and Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
Vigorous exercise urged for heart health
LONDON -- A half-hour brisk walk every day may make you feel better, but it is not enough to ward off premature death from heart trouble, new research suggests. A study published this week in Heart, a British journal, found that only vigorous exercise -- such as jogging, hiking, climbing stairs, racket sports and swimming -- seems to help lower the risk of early death from heart disease. The study, done by scientists at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, found that activities considered to provide mild exercise as well as pursuits of moderate intensity did not lower the risk of early death among 2,000 British men followed for a decade.
Indonesia charges cleric with treason
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Prosecutors filed treason charges Monday against Abu Bakar Bashir, a 64-year-old cleric accused of plotting to overthrow the government and turn the world's most populous Muslim nation into an Islamic state. Bashir is the suspected spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linked terror group operating in Southeast Asia. Bashir's trial is expected to start at the end of April, prosecutors said.
Ruling party leads in Nigeria elections
LAGOS, Nigeria -- President Olusegun Obasanjo's ruling party took a lead in legislative elections, according to partial returns Monday, boosting his hopes for re-election in presidential balloting later this week. Though voting billed as an important test for Nigeria's young democracy was marred by violence, observers and witnesses said the weekend election was more peaceful than expected. With more than half the seats determined, Obasanjo's Peoples Democratic Party was solidly ahead.







  



April 13, 2003 Sunday 
  




 The Fire This Time; 
To Some Scholars, Iraq's Just Part of Something Bigger

 
 How would we know if we were already in World War III? 
 You couldn't look it up in the encyclopedia. Not yet. 
 But suppose Iraq is just one front -- like Afghanistan, or Lower Manhattan. And other fronts develop -- Korea, say, or the Taiwan Straits, or Iran, Syria, Kansas City. And maybe nukes, chemicals and germs kill millions, and scholars look back years hence and say, yep, that was World War III all right.  
 It's possible. 
 The focus now is Iraq, but there's a Big Picture feel to things. Alliances shattering, new ones forming. International institutions in crisis. Millions under arms in the Middle East, Asia, Europe -- fighting, or ready to. A nuclear standoff on the Subcontinent. Terrorist networks spanning 60 nations. Hideous new technologies. Ideological hatred. 
 Already, thousands of Americans have been slaughtered. The president warns that no nation harboring terrorists is safe, designates North Korea, Iran and Iraq as members of an "axis of evil" that includes "at least a dozen countries" with terrorist training camps and "their terrorist allies." 
 "We're at war," he declares, referring to more than Iraq as he advances a new doctrine of military preemption to replace the old Cold War doctrines of containment and deterrence. "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen." 
 With American armies triumphant in downtown Baghdad, the secretary of defense issues another stern warning to Syria. 
 The Eagle is on the wing. 
 You think of Woodrow Wilson in 1917, making the world "safe for democracy." Of FDR and Churchill, meeting on a ship off Newfoundland in 1941 to forge the Atlantic Charter with its emphasis on democratic principles. 
 And now George W. Bush, too, has a broad vision -- the "spread of democratic values" throughout the Middle East. 
 "I can't believe I've lived," Elizabeth Taylor says in Hollywood, "to see the beginning of World War III." 
 But some scholars who ponder such things say no, this isn't World War III. Because that was the Cold War, and we won it. 
 This is World War IV. 
 You could say this is all just rhetoric, that it doesn't matter whether we call it the War on Terror or World War IV, or break it down into the Afghan War, the Iraq War, the Hunt for al Qaeda -- but that would be to dismiss the important enterprise of understanding what's going on in the post-Cold War era, and how the United States fits in. 
 Nobody's totally sure right now. 
 The effort to understand has revved up in universities, government agencies, Washington think tanks. There's a nexus connecting the ideas themselves, the strategic thinkers who generate them, the minds of the president and his aides, and American troops around the world. 
 Ideas have consequences. 
 "World War IV might be in the making," warns Dennis K. McBride, president of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, a technological think tank that does a lot of federal defense work. "We do not have to assume that a world war necessarily includes mobilization of millions of troops, exchange of millions of tons of explosives. . . . World War IV may end this way [but] it certainly might not germinate this way." 
 In his study on "BioCyber Terrorism," McBride theorizes that World War IV may develop as "one complex adaptive system -- like ideologically driven hate -- [tries to] bring down another, like world economic order" by spreading disease engineered to be incurable. 
 Too wild? Maybe, yet some thought Saddam Hussein was behind the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, and you can't help but notice that the killer virus SARS began its rampage as the United States was invading Iraq. 
 "You can't rule out that this is a weapon," McBride says of SARS. Personally, he doesn't think so, but adds that these days, there's always "an underlying default assumption of mischief." 
 In any case, a Potomac Institute germ warfare specialist briefs Vice President Cheney weekly. 
 "A [U.S.] city getting nuked is not the worst case," says military historian Frederick Kagan. "It would be worse if terrorists got an effective biological agent effectively dispersed. Casualties would be enormously greater. You could easily be talking about tens of millions." 
 This month PBS is airing an eight-part documentary, "Avoiding Armageddon," about the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological war. 
 In a broad sense, a world war "against civilization" is underway, Gregory R. Copley, editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, wrote shortly after 9/11. The journal claims 130 "heads of government" among its readers. 
 "We can define the 'enemy' of civilization," he writes, "as a loose bloc of forces which has been building in strength and cohesiveness since the end of the Cold War" and that amounts to "a 19th Century bolshevik-type entity, writ large upon the global stage, and with enormous access to resources." 
 Copley quotes strategic thinker Eliot Cohen, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, and a member of the Defense Policy Board, which advises the secretary of defense on grand strategy. 
 Cohen's ideas pack a wallop. President Bush read his book "Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime" while on vacation last summer. It tells how Lincoln, Clemenceau, Ben-Gurion and Churchill stuck to the big picture, overriding timid generals. 
 And Cohen's intellectual allies are influential -- strategists like Richard Perle, Thomas Donnelly and Michael Ledeen at the American Enterprise Institute, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, journalist William Kristol, Daniel Pipes at the Middle East Forum, Michael Vickers at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Clinton CIA chief R. James Woolsey. 
 The thinking of strategists like these, it's said, drives the Bush administration's global planning. So it was noticed when, in the aftermath of 9/11, Cohen was the first major scholar to grab hold of the World War IV notion. 
 Norman Podhoretz quoted Cohen in a piece in Commentary magazine, "How to Win World War IV." Woolsey, too, picked up the idea from Cohen. 
 "Now for the fourth time in 100 years we've been awakened, and this country is on the march," said Woolsey, who's in line for a top postwar reconstruction job in Iraq, in a speech last year. 
 "Truth, particularly in wartime, is so unpleasant that we drape it in a veil of evasions," Cohen had written in a column titled "World War IV" in the Wall Street Journal. 
 That was November 2001, just a week after the ouster of the Taliban from Kabul, and President Bush had already used the "War on Terror" phrase in his Sept. 20 address to Congress. 
 Cohen wanted something broader. "The '9/11 War,' perhaps? But the war began well before Sept. 11, and its casualties include, at the very least, the dead and wounded in our embassies in Africa, on the USS Cole, and, possibly, in Somalia and the Khobar Towers." 
 He settled on World War IV as "less palatable but more accurate," because the war we're in is global, involves both violent and nonviolent effort, requires "mobilization" of expertise and resources "if not vast numbers of soldiers," will be long, and has "ideological roots." 
 The idea caused a stir, less for Cohen's World War IV label than for his unequivocal -- and daring -- designation of the enemy: 
 "Militant Islam." 
 Calling anything Islamic "the enemy," even the radical fringe, is about as politically incorrect as you can get these days. Radioactive, even. 
 The president has steered clear of such rhetoric. After an initial post-9/11 slip in which he called the war on terrorism a "crusade," he visited a mosque to say Islam is a "religion of peace" and to make clear the United States is not at war with it. 
 After all, there are 1.2 billion Muslims in an arc from North Africa through the Middle East to India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia and the Philippines. 
 The Arab nations -- including Iraq, with its secular government -- are predominantly Muslim. There's a large Muslim presence in Europe, and an estimated 7 million Muslims in the United States. 
 "The last thing in the world we want to do," as Kagan puts it, "is fight Islam." Militant Islam, sure. That's the enemy, Kagan agrees, adding that the numbers of militants like Osama bin Laden are "very, very small." 
 Islam, however, is a proud faith with a glorious past. From its 7th-century roots in Arabia with the Prophet Muhammad, it had by the 11th century fostered a civilization advanced in art, science, medicine and military prowess. In 1187, the warrior Saladin, confirmed by the Baghdad caliph as sultan of Egypt and Syria, defeated European Crusaders in the Holy Land. 
 Now, both bin Laden and Hussein have appealed to past glories. 
 Hussein styled himself a new Saladin, a descendant of the Prophet. The other day, the Iraqi regime issued a statement in Hussein's name denouncing U.S. "aggression against the fortress of faith." 
 And bin Laden, whose terror network circles the globe, has called for Holy War against "Crusaders and Jews" to restore fundamentalist, anti-Western governance in the Islamic world. He's sided with Iraq in the war even though he despises Hussein's secularism. 
 Many in the Islamic world celebrated the 9/11 attacks, and now thousands fill the streets of Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt and other Muslim and Arab nations protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. 
 Indeed, as the splendor and power of Islam faded after its zenith, much of the Islamic world was colonized by Western powers, and 20th century decolonization left behind much poverty, many despotic governments and autocracies -- and a residue of rage. 
 Targeting just "militant" Islam is tricky. There's spillover. 
 In his "World War IV" piece, Cohen expressed hope not only that this can be done, however, but that there will be another kind of spillover as "Muslim fanatics" face "almost as many enemies among moderate Muslims as among infidels." 
 He wrote, further, that by non-military backing of pro-Western elements in countries like Iran -- where there's popular outrage against a repressive theocracy -- the United States can win the broader "contest for free and moderate governance in the Muslim world." 
 And, finally, Cohen asserted that by using military force selectively -- "Iraq is the obvious candidate" -- America will gain respect. 
 No way, some say. 
 "You don't teach someone democracy by dropping bombs on them," protests Mohammed Abu-Nimer, an American University professor who teaches peace and conflict resolution. "Eliot Cohen is helping the small minority of militant Islam to expand its public legitimacy, and that's dangerous." 
 Abu-Nimer, author of "Peace-Building and Non-Violence in Islam," believes there is indeed a "solid base in the Muslim world and religion for pluralism." 
 But "I get very concerned when I see a U.S. official, or Cohen, saying this is a war between us and militant Islam. It's very difficult to keep the separation." Such rhetoric, he worries, could promote a "clash between religions or civilizations." 
 Holy War. 
 Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace finds the World War IV notion -- or at least the suggestion of U.S.-imposed regime change in Iraq as part of a strategy to promote moderate governance in the Muslim world -- a "dangerous fantasy, because there isn't a democratic kernel within each of these countries waiting to blossom. 
 "Bringing democracy to the Middle East should be our goal, but it's going to take a very long time and it won't be hastened by occupying one of the key Arab nations. This is a social experiment that's been tried before -- it's called colonialism." 
 Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, another Washington think tank, says the current situation "threatens to become World War IV if the U.S. takes the lesson from this attack on Iraq that . . . we can do it wherever, whenever and against whomever we choose. It's very frightening." 
 The United States is following, Bennis believes, a "law of empire." 
 Leon Fuerth, who was Vice President Al Gore's national security adviser, calls the World War IV notion "a large and interesting idea [and] probably a good fit for the way the administration sees what's happening." 
 But, he wonders, is "an explicit philosophy based on dominance and the exercise of American power without external constraint going to be a force that will motivate others to stay with us to deal with the whole set of dangers and struggles that constitute [the] metaphor for World War IV?" 
 In a phone interview, Cohen sighs. 
 "One thing that troubled me," he says, "is that the World War IV piece was read in some places as an argument for a primarily military approach. In fact, we need both military and a whole host of non-military approaches." 
 As for militant Islam, he says what's happening is really an "internal crisis" in the Muslim world as fundamentalists struggle for control with the bulk of moderate Muslims -- and the United States is involved. 
 "Look," he says, "I don't think you'll see mass conversions" to militant Islam. "Unlike communism and Nazism, radical Islam doesn't offer anything that works. It has no viable alternative model for economic development or governance. 
 "It's messianic and utopian and very dangerous . . . a view of the world that can be tremendously cruel, particularly to women." 
 It "became a very large problem for the United States because of weapons of mass destruction, and the kind of thing that happened September 11. That's why this gets elevated to an extraordinarily high level of seriousness. 
 "If that potential didn't exist, frankly, we wouldn't care." 
 Ideas have consequences. 
 You could see it one recent morning as 20 protesters marched in front of the nondescript downtown Washington office building where the American Enterprise Institute is located. 
 Their chant, reminiscent of the Vietnam era: "Hey hey! Ho ho! Richard Perle has gotta go!" 
 Perle is an avuncular guy based at AEI whose job is to sit around and think, and talk with other thinkers -- like Cohen and Woolsey -- about global strategy.  Which is just what he's doing inside, in a "Black Coffee Briefing" on "The Road to War and Beyond." 
 More than 100 reporters jam the room, furiously taking notes. TV cameras capture every word. When it's over, reporters mob Perle and his co-panelists. 
 The scene is almost surreal. The reporters aren't asking Perle about the controversy over his business deals that will, a few days later, result in his stepping down as chairman of the Defense Policy Board -- though he remains an influential member. 
 They're asking about his ideas. Ideas like militant Islam, and democratizing the Middle East, and what's next after Iraq. 
 They're interested because the bureaucrats and pols running the world's only Hyperpower -- including the president -- need to know, broadly speaking, what to think. 
 They need guidance, context, vision -- and Perle, Cohen, Woolsey and others in the AEI orbit have Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's ear. They have Vice President Cheney's ear. And so they've got the president's ear. 
 In short, if there's a new American Imperium, the AEI group is its intellectual Praetorian Guard. Some 20 AEI scholars serve in the Bush administration, and though Cohen isn't on today's panel, he's a member of AEI's Council of Academic Advisers, present in spirit. 
 It was no accident that President Bush delivered a major speech at AEI in February on his vision for the Middle East. "From Morocco to Bahrain and beyond," he declared, "nations are taking genuine steps toward political reform. A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region." 
 A reverse domino theory? 
 The vision has been enshrined in the official U.S. "National Security Strategy," which Bush sent to Congress last fall. It says the "war of ideas [against] terrorism" includes supporting moderate governments "in the Muslim world" -- but it also specifies that the war "is not a clash of civilizations," but, rather, reveals a "clash inside a civilization, a battle for the future of the Muslim world." 
 Cirincione thinks any hopes for a "democratic tsunami" in the Middle East will be dashed. Even "militant Islam," in his view, has "legitimate grievances. The whole area has been shackled by autocratic regimes set up by the retreating colonial powers, then propped up by one side or the other during the Cold War. 
 "Now they feel they have an opportunity to overthrow these governments, and suddenly a new colonial power appears, picking and choosing which government will stay and which will go. 
 "Just look at it from their point of view." 
 But that point of view, says Middle East scholar Pipes, is "a terroristic interpretation of Islam. . . . We defeated fascism in Italy, Germany and Japan with military force. We defeated Marxism-Leninism through . . . political and economic means. 
 "I don't know what the means will be in this case, but it must be defeated and replaced with something moderate." 
 At the AEI Black Coffee Briefing, Woolsey sits to Perle's left. To his right is Michael Ledeen, a Reagan administration national security consultant and author of "The War Against the Terror Masters." 
 While World War IV isn't the main topic, the notion hovers along the edges of the room like an uninvited guest. 
 "We're living through one of the most fascinating moments of history," Ledeen says. "It's rare that we can look at the world and see it ready to pivot because the tectonic plates that were set in motion at the end of the Cold War are still moving. 
 "No one would have dreamed," he adds with a wry grin, "that the United States and Turkey might find themselves at war in the year 2003, and yet it is imaginable." 
 Perle diplomatically jumps in for a bit of damage control -- facing a Turkish TV reporter and cooing that, in his view, "the long-term and close relationship" between the United States and Turkey needn't change. 
 As for militant Islam, Ledeen's views are widely known. "Islam was once at the pinnacle of civilization," he wrote recently, "and so we know that Muslims are capable of self-government. 
 "They have fallen [from past glory] and Osama and the mullahs say they fell because they strayed from 'fundamentalism.' But we say they fell because they failed to embrace freedom. That's the real clash of civilizations." 
 It's Woolsey who uses the broadest brush this morning. Mentioning World Wars I and II, the Cold War and Iraq war virtually in the same breath, he says all were launched for "freedom." 
 The Iraq war "and further efforts . . . in the Middle East are essentially a long-term war, and that's why I like Eliot Cohen's formulation that this is World War IV." 
 Woolsey attacks "the notion, especially in Europe but to some extent in this country: 'You crazy Americans, there you go being idealistic again. Everybody knows that Arabs can't run democracies.' 
 "There's only one word for that . . . 'racist.' " 
 And he goes on to sketch a history of the rise of democracies, from a dozen in 1917 to 121 today -- "an amazing thing. 
 "And that development was one where all along the way the smart money, the highly sophisticated individuals said . . . 'Germany, Japan, those with an Asian culture . . . will never be able to be a democracy.'" 
 Just as the United States worked during the Cold War with "allies and people like Sakharov and Walesa and Havel," it must now, in Woolsey's view, support democratic forces in the Middle East. 
 "This takes time. . . . The problem is certainly not Islam. The majority of the world's Muslims live in democracies. . . . We are going to have to be involved for the next, I think, several decades in helping change the face of the Middle East." 
 Perle again steps in to tweak the concept. 
 "There are things we can do and there are things we can't do," he says soothingly, "and we're not going to make war on the world for democracy. That has never been the view of those of us who believe deeply in trying to bring democracy to the Middle East. 
 "But we should be using all the instruments of American influence to accomplish that purpose, and most of those instruments are not military." 
 A deft touch. Not damage control exactly, since Woolsey has been saying essentially the same thing. Just a matter of reemphasis. 
 Call it nuance control. 
 World War IV? Muslims aside, opinions vary. 
 Kagan doesn't think we're in it -- though he's written that we're in a "grave national crisis" and need more military spending. 
 "The question is, do we actually have major military conflicts going on around the world? And the test would be, do we have to go to some sort of mobilization beyond the ordinary to support our forces? Right now, we're not doing anything like that." 
 "I'm more worried about American culture," says Victor Davis Hanson, who teaches military history at the U.S. Naval Academy. World War IV may come, he says, but right now, "I'm worried about the rise of radical pacificism among a bored, pampered elite." 
 "I guess," Cohen says of "World War IV," that "I used that phrase to remind us of what a dangerous world it is. 
 "The big difference between the U.S. and some Western European countries is that we have a visceral understanding that it's dangerous, because it reached out and tapped us on September 11." 
 We must, he says, fight. 
 "I think we'll survive no matter what, but the kind of society and polity we are could be transformed by catastrophic events. This is like the other World Wars in that what's at stake is happiness or misery for lots and lots of people." 
 Perle agrees. 
 Back in 1997, he recalls, he predicted terrorists would hit the World Trade Center again -- they'd already struck it in 1993 -- and that an enraged America "would throw all caution to the winds. 
 "I was wrong. We've been remarkably measured and sensible. But if it happens with nukes or biological weapons with hundreds of thousands of American deaths, then I don't know what we'd do. 
 "This war is a defense of our civil liberties in a most fundamental way." 
 And, he adds, there's this: 
 "We gotta win." 

CORRECTION-DATE: April 24, 2003, Thursday 

 CORRECTION:
 An April 13 Style article incorrectly reported that a Potomac Institute germ warfare specialist briefs Vice President Cheney weekly. Institute representatives have discussed bioterrorism issues with the vice president's staff, but not regularly. 







   
 

April 11, 2003 Friday  
  



 A NATION AT WAR: SOUTHEAST ASIA; 
In Far East of Many Muslims, Press Is Anti-U.S. but Hardly Pro-Jihad

 
"Heartening," one Filipino columnist wrote today after watching scenes of cheering Iraqis on television. But, he added, "it's still an unjust war."
     Baghdad seemed farther away than ever, and more puzzling, in Southeast Asia, a region whose Muslims had opposed the war in dutiful but somewhat uncertain solidarity with their Arab brothers. 
 The press in Islamic Indonesia and Malaysia has been almost uniformly critical and often derisive about the war. The tone has been the same in the Philippines, a Roman Catholic nation with close American ties and a significant Muslim minority. 
But the opposition has had a half-hearted, been-there ring to it, lacking the intensity and the calls for jihad that accompanied America's attack on Afghanistan more than a year ago and that still run through the Arab media in the Middle East.
When Garin Nugroho, a leading Indonesian film director, wanted to show his opposition to the war, he announced that he would refrain from drinking Coca-Cola -- for a day.
The press in the region seems to feel less obligation now to stand in solidarity with Islamic brothers in the Middle East and a bit more leeway to offer a glimpse of the other side of the argument. The tone is striking in a region where Al Qaeda has found refuge and is seeking recruits.
"It's a challenge for the media to remain balanced in their reports of the war," said Ulil Abshar-Abdalla of the Liberal Islam Network in a radio discussion of press coverage.
In an attempt to present the American, Arab and Asian perspectives on the war, the private Indonesian station Metro TV, in its daily program "Iraq Under Attack," is showing images from CNN, Al Jazeera and Cable News Asia.
"Even in so-called Islamic media, the tendency has largely been toward not portraying this war as a religious one," said Atmakusumah Astraatmadja, chairman of Indonesia's independent Press Council. "Iraqis have been fleeing to Indonesia for years, and refugees usually flee countries with oppressive policies."
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said, are "related to the survival of Americans decades ahead, while we can only think of planning for tomorrow." He added: "I don't quite like the arguments, but they have their own reasons, not just to hit at suggested terrorists."
In Malaysia, where the press is firmly under the thumb of the government, opposition to the war has been modulated by pragmatism. Public figures are quoted warning that anti-Americanism and boycotts can be politically and economically damaging.
"Malaysians have been urged not to vent their anger by boycotting American brands as the action would make a dent in our economy," said the minister of youth and sports, Hishammuddin Tun Hussein, quoted in The Star, an English-language daily.
Public protests have been carefully appropriated by the Malaysian government for maximum political gain as it looks toward parliamentary elections in the coming year. The point is made repeatedly that the criticisms are antiwar rather than anti-American.
At the same time, any attempt at protest by opposition parties is squelched -- particularly calls for Muslim solidarity by the Islamic party known as PAS.
"The war is not a war between Christians and Muslims," said Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. "There is no crusade. Many Christians including Pope John Paul and other Christian leaders opposed the attack on Iraq. But we fear, eventually, the targets are Muslim countries."
Dr. Mahathir, who was transformed from gadfly to ally when he gave America full backing in its war on terror, has begun to annoy the United States again with repeated barbs about Iraq.
Washington threatened diplomatic and economic reprisals last month after he called Americans cowards and bullies and said: "Maybe after Iraq, Iran; and after Iran, probably Syria or Libya." No leader could be sure he would not be next, he said.
The small government-owned afternoon daily, Malay Mail, has been particularly harsh, with headlines like "When Will This Parody End?" "High Noon for Cowboy Bush," and "Israel the Real Winner."
In the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the columnist Rina Jimenez-David described the cheering crowds in Baghdad and wrote, "The images are heartening indeed." But she added, "While 'regime change,' one of the stated reasons for the campaign, is a near certainty by now, that still doesn't make this unjust war a just one."
The Philippines is the most pro-American nation in Asia, and polls there show that most people support the war. But this is also the country with some of the most unfettered media anywhere. Columnists and editorial writers have indulged themselves in paroxysms of anti-American wit.
"When the allied forces are done leveling Iraq to the ground, will the world let them off with an 'Oops, sorry. At least we made sure there were no weapons of mass destruction?' " Jenny Manuel and Gai Olivares, regular columnists in The Daily Tribune, wrote last week.
"Americans have this hero complex," they wrote. "They're the Great Liberator! You'll see it in their movies; they always come in with their superior technology and save the world, whether it's from aliens, mammoth asteroids or giant spiders." 







   
 

April 7, 2003 Monday  
  



 A NATION AT WAR: THE TV WATCH; 
Ubiquitous Messenger Drives Home U.S. Policy

 
On American television yesterday morning, it was all Wolfowitz, all the time. The usually reticent deputy secretary of defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz, held court on the Sunday talk shows, including simultaneous broadcasts of appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" on CBS.
      And a little like the Saddam Hussein marathon on Iraqi television this weekend (continuous loops of the Iraqi leader, or an impersonator, having his hand kissed by admirers or smiling alongside his sons and generals), Mr. Wolfowitz's sudden ubiquity left open the possibility that at least one deputy secretary was a Wolfowitz double.  
 When the "Face the Nation" anchor, Bob Schieffer, asked about the Iraqi minister of information's claim that United States forces were in retreat, his guest seemed amused. But would the real Mr. Wolfowitz have lightheartedly compared the Iraqi regime to a "Saturday Night Live" skit?
 It could be, of course, that there are two sides to this adviser. A hard-nosed conservative, Mr. Wolfowitz was the chief architect of the plan to pre-emptively invade Iraq. He is also a romantic idealist who dreams of erecting a democracy, made in America, that can be set down in Baghdad and serve as an "inspiration" to the Arab world.
 That at least, is how he is described in books, newspapers and news documentaries.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld usually prefers to do the Sunday programs himself. But by allowing his deputy to fill in, Mr. Rumsfeld gave viewers a good look at the adviser who is increasingly known as Wolfowitz of Arabia.
 Mr. Wolfowitz is an accomplished speaker, articulate and thoughtful in tone. But there was no mistaking his appetite for staring down the enemy, or enemies.
"They are doing some things they shouldn't be doing, and the sooner they stop, the better it will be for them," Mr. Wolfowitz coolly replied when Tim Russert, the "Meet the Press" host, asked about Syria providing night goggles to Iraqi soldiers. Later Mr. Wolfowitz said, "And there's got to be change in Syria as well."
 On "Fox News Sunday," the anchor, Tony Snow, asked him whether he was contemplating regime change in Syria. Mr. Wolfowitz replied that taming Baghdad came first, then he morphed back to his dreamier self, musing that a democracy in Baghdad might be so influential in the region it could even rub off on Damascus.
 On Fox, CBS and NBC, Mr. Wolfowitz sketched out the same vision of a new age of Arab democracy. 
"If the Iraqi people can succeed in creating a government that represents them and demonstrates this possibility of freedom and democracy in the Arab world, it's going to be an inspiration for other countries in a way that's very positive," he said. "Not necessarily military at all. The power of the idea, we've seen it in East Asia, the power of democracy in Japan has spread across Asia in places that had no use for the Japanese."
 The White House made the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, available to ABC's George Stephanopoulos, whose "This Week" trails "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" in the ratings. Mr. Russert was able to cross-examine General Pace and Mr. Wolfowitz side by side.
 By stacking the Sunday shows, the Bush administration had an opportunity to hammer home its message of the day, but viewers also got to observe some of the idiosyncrasies that shaped the messenger.
 Mr. Wolfowitz, who said the American military would ensure civilian rule for and by the Iraqis, repeatedly rejected the term "interim government," insisting that it be labeled an "interim authority." He was not as fastidious about historical analogies. Few disagree with his assessment that Mr. Hussein is a ruthless dictator, but saying the regime "reminds one of some of the worst dictatorships of the last century" put the Iraqi leader on the same plane as Hitler and Stalin. 
 Mr. Wolfowitz repeatedly compared the future of the Middle East to East Asia, a region he knows intimately.
He was the State Department point man when the Reagan administration withdrew its support from Ferdinand Marcos and propelled the Democratic opposition to power in the Philippines. After that, Mr. Wolfowitz was ambassador to Indonesia, which is the fourth-largest country in the world and has the largest Muslim population. 
His arguments on talk shows that Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan could serve as models for the Middle East would have been more compelling had he also served as an ambassador to Egypt.
 Mr. Wolfowitz smiled when Mr. Russert asked him about the Wolfowitz of Arabia label, calling it "amusing but inaccurate."






 
  


April 6, 2003 Sunday 1ST EDITION



 Krakatoa fueled tides of death, upheaval

 
At 10:02 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 27, 1883, the loudest explosion ever  heard emerged from a small island off the coast of Java, in  modern-day Indonesia. The explosion was heard as far away as 3,000  miles. The island was called Krakatoa, and the reason for the  explosion was the massive eruption of a volcano. The very word  Krakatoa has since become synonymous with natural disaster. In all,  36,416 people died as a result of the eruption, most of them  victims of the tsunamis (huge ocean waves) that devastated the  coast of Java in the wake of the volcanic blast.
The eruption of Krakatoa hurled massive amounts of rock and ash  into the Earth's atmosphere. So plentiful was the ash that it  remained circulating in the atmosphere for months. With the sun  thus obscured, global temperatures dropped and gorgeous sunsets  were noticed all over the world. The English poets Alfred Lord  Tennyson and Gerard Manley Hopkins even wrote about these  rose-colored, Krakatoa-induced sunsets. 
The Krakatoa eruption and its global impact is a story skillfully  detailed by best-selling author Simon Winchester ('The Professor  and the Madman'), who uses his talent not only as a historian but  also as a scientist (Winchester is an Oxford-trained geologist). In  Winchester's telling, the Krakatoa eruption was the first natural  disaster that became 'instant' global news. With the invention of  the telegraph and the submarine cable, news of the disaster reached  Europe within hours. Indeed, Winchester argues that the event  helped create our current concept of the 'global village.'
'Here was the event,' writes Winchester, 'that presaged all the  (modern) debates a about global warming, greenhouse gases, acid  rain, (and) ecological interdependence.' It is in explaining the  science behind the eruption where Winchester really excels. Reading  this book is like taking a course in introductory geology taught by  an entertaining, passionate professor.
Why did Krakatoa erupt? Winchester traces the development of the  theory of continental drift: the idea that the continents sit on  shelves that are gradually moving and, sometimes, bumping into one  another. When these shelves meet, as two shelves meet off the coast  of Java, one shelf will plummet beneath the other. This plummeting  is called 'subduction' and the resulting 'subduction zones' are  where volcanoes push up violently from below. The science  Winchester uses to explain the eruption of Krakatoa is all fairly  recent, most of it gaining acceptance in the late 1960s. Indeed,  Winchester himself helped advance this science (known as 'plate  tectonics') as a geology student at Oxford.
Winchester treats us to more than just the geological history of  Krakatoa. He also gives us the history of the Dutch East Indies,  describing how the region was colonized by Dutch spice traders in  the 17th century and how these traders built their capital of  Batavia, now called Jakarta. The eruption even played a small role  in ending Dutch colonial rule.
To the native Javanese Muslims (Indonesia is today the world's most  populous Muslim nation), the eruption was interpreted as a divine  message in opposition to the power of the Dutch oppressors. Soon  after Krakatoa erupted, anti-Dutch violence also sprang up. The  Dutch quelled the Muslim opposition, but their power over the  natives began to weaken gradually. Thus, Krakatoa had a political  significance as well as its more obvious geological one.
Although the eruption destroyed Krakatoa, the legacy of the island  continues. In 1930, a new island emerged from the ocean in the same  spot as the original Krakatoa. The Javanese call this new (and  volcanic) island 'Anak Krakatoa' or 'child of Krakatoa.' Every  year the island grows, and the volcano on the island gets taller  and taller. Presently, it surges to 1,500 feet.
The Javanese are still superstitious about visiting Anak Krakatoa.  Winchester ends the book by climbing to the top of the new island  and taking in the long view. The ultimate question, of course, is  will Krakatoa erupt again? The answer, supported by all the  science, is that yes it will. But fortunately for us, events such  as the 1883 Krakatoa eruption seem to occur once every millennium  or so.
In telling the tale of one disastrous day in 1883, Winchester has  successfully blended history and science to create a concoction  that is sure to please the general reader.
Chuck Leddy, a book reviewer from Quincy, Mass., regularly reviews  history books for Publishers Weekly.  KRAKATOA The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883 By Simon Winchester HarperCollins, 432 pages, $ 25.95







  



April 6, 2003 Sunday  




 War Boosts the Shipment of Aid, Not Fighters, to Iraq

 
In a twisting lane hidden in a working-class Jakarta neighborhood, hundreds of sarong-clad men and boys stood on colorful prayer rugs in a mosque on Friday, some on the sidewalk outside, their heads bowed, their voices mixing in response to the imam chanting a midday prayer. Nearby, vendors' wagons carried stickers saying "We Love Iraq" and "Bush, Blair, Howard -- Crazy Animals, Halal Blood." 
 Doni Satria, 28, a slim, cleanshaven university student in a lime-colored tunic and a black pillbox hat, strode briskly from the mosque when prayers ended. He seated himself on a worn carpet in the nearby headquarters of the Islamic Defenders Front, known as FPI, a small militant Islamic organization in Indonesia, the world's most-populous Muslim country.  
 He traveled 36 hours by bus and ferry two weeks ago from his home in Sumatra island to Jakarta, drawn by the news that the FPI was registering volunteers to fight in Iraq. FPI leaders claim he was among 28,000 or so Indonesians who have signed up. 
 "My aim is to die as a martyr," said Satria, who looks almost too small and untested to be sent to war. But he claims that he fought with a Muslim militia in Ambon in the Maluku islands of eastern Indonesia during a bloody sectarian conflict with Christian forces that erupted in 1999. He claims he knows how to shoot. "As long as other Muslims are being killed," he said, "we will fight." 
 On Friday, all he had was a duffel bag and a prayer rug. He did not know how he would get to Iraq, or when. "It is in God's hands," he said. He said he had two passports, and displayed one, which he acknowledged was a fake. 
 FPI leader Habib Rizieq Shihabtwp, 38, was vague on details of how he might send these men to Iraq. Although the Iraqi Embassy here has said it does not need volunteers yet, Rizieq aides have a six-inch-high sheaf of papers with names, addresses, birth dates and identification photos that they say represent volunteers for Iraq. 
 Rizieq is under house detention after being arrested last year for attempting to incite violence. His claims are viewed with skepticism by Indonesian officials and by leaders of moderate Muslim organizations with large bases. 
Although some men are showing up to volunteer to fight in Iraq, there appears to be little evidence so far that any group has the wherewithal to send large numbers of fighters. "Actually this kind of drive, in my opinion, is only to get attention from the media," said Azyumardi Azra, rector of the State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah, in Jakarta. 
Other Muslim leaders, activists and academics agree that the war is energizing Indonesians, more than 85 percent of whom are Muslims, to donate money for food, clothing and medical supplies to help Iraqi citizens. But, Azra said, "there is no clear indication" that militancy "will translate this humanitarian issue into political or radical action." 
In the 1980s, he said, Indonesians could not express their opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan openly, so they did it secretly by sneaking to Afghanistan through Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Pakistan. Today, they can express their opposition in public, which has afforded "some kind of release" for Muslims, he said. 
 But the war appears to be helping at least one Indonesian Islamic group that is striving to create an Islamic state, the formerly banned Hizbut Tahrir. Spokesman Muhammad Ismail Yusanto, said the conflict was increasing "our Islamic spirit." 
 "This war is good for us," Yusanto said. "So thank you, Mr. Bush!" 






  
  


April 5, 2003 Saturday  



 POPE URGES UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS

 
Pope John Paul II has warned that the war in Iraq, already "a human tragedy," could become "a religious catastrophe" if it serves to set Christians and Muslims against each other.
The 82-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff issued the warning in an address to 36 bishops from predominantly Muslim Indonesia, where Catholics make up only 3.4 percent of the population. 
"War must never be allowed to divide world religions," the pope said. He urged the bishops to work "at this unsettling moment" with "your own people, with those of other religious beliefs and with all men and women ofgood will in order to ensure understanding, cooperation and solidarity."
"Let us not permit a human tragedy also to become a religious catastrophe," he said.




1


   
 

April 4, 2003 Friday  
  



 A NATION AT WAR: MISSIONARIES; 
Groups Critical of Islam Are Now Waiting to Take Aid to Iraq

 
Two evangelical Christian organizations whose leaders have outspokenly denounced the Islamic faith are among the aid groups waiting at Iraq's borders to take humanitarian relief -- and a Gospel message -- to a nation whose people are predominantly Muslim.
     The situation presents a dilemma for the Bush administration, which does not want to alienate its strong Christian evangelical constituency but cannot afford to have the war in Iraq perceived as a crusade to Christianize a Muslim nation. 
 Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said yesterday that it was not the administration's responsibility to determine which groups will provide aid in Iraq. But he distanced President Bush from the leaders' past remarks. 
"The president knows that Islam is a religion of peace," Mr. Fleischer said in an interview. "It doesn't matter to him who says it is not. He disagrees with anyone who holds that point of view." 
The two evangelical groups, the Southern Baptist Convention and Samaritan's Purse, have been in the forefront of Mr. Bush's supporters.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, says that since the war started, about 800 missionaries have volunteered through its International Mission Board to take spiritual and physical aid to Iraqi communities. 
A past leader of the convention offended many Muslims and other religious leaders last year when he said that the prophet Muhammad was a "pedophile" and a "terrorist." 
Samaritan's Purse is a relief group run by the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is a son of the evangelist Billy Graham and who gave the invocation at Mr. Bush's inauguration. Staff members of the organization are in Jordan and Kuwait readying water purification equipment and medical supplies for use in Iraq. 
Mr. Graham provoked controversy last year with a book and interviews arguing that Islam is inherently evil and violent.
Asked this week about those statements, he said: "I haven't seen anything that has changed my mind. I love the people of Islam, I love the Arab world, I've been there many times and have many friends. I just disagree with their religion, and they disagree with me."
Muslim leaders said yesterday that while Iraqis needed aid, the American government should limit the work of groups that express antipathy for the faith of the people they are purporting to serve. 
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations in Washington, said: "I think it would be inappropriate for these people to have any kind of American government support at a time when the entire Muslim world suspects that there is currently a war against Islam. This kind of activity could only be perceived as confirming those suspicions." 
Mr. Hooper accused the two Christian aid groups of being more interested in making converts than in rebuilding Iraq. "They seek out the most vulnerable in a society and use a wildly disproportionate power relationship to almost coerce people into leaving their faith," he said. 
Evangelicals believe that by sharing the Gospel with non-Christians, they are following Jesus' imperative to "make disciples of all nations." In recent years, missionary groups have focused on what they call the "10-40 window," the latitudes that include most of the Muslim world.
The Southern Baptists and Samaritan's Purse said they had advanced beyond the old stereotype of the Christian missionaries who used bread as bait to win converts. 
"Evangelical missionaries don't go to make a sales pitch for changing your religion," said Mark Kelly, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists' missions board. "Evangelicals are motivated by their own experience of God's love and how it's changed their lives, and by a desire for other people to understand that God loves them and wants to have a personal relationship with them." 
About 97 percent of Iraqis are Muslim. But Mr. Graham pointed out in an interview that Christianity predated Islam in Iraq, and that his group had been invited into the country by local Christian churches to assist Christians, although it also plans to supply aid to Muslims.
"When we provide medicine or food, I'm not doing it in my name, but we do it in the name of God's son," he said. "But we don't force it. It's not a carrot on the end of a stick." 
Samaritan's Purse, based in Boone, N.C., has a projected 2003 income of $194 million. It has received government contracts in the past, but has also run into trouble for putting preaching before aid.
In Saudi Arabia, which has strict prohibitions on Christian activity, the group surreptitiously distributed missionary tracts in the first gulf war. In El Salvador, where evangelicals and Roman Catholics vie for converts, Samaritan's Purse workers held prayer meetings before teaching villagers how to build temporary homes after a 2001 earthquake. The group, which had a contract from the United States Agency for International Development, was warned by the State Department not to mix religious and relief activities. 
The development agency, known as U.S. AID, is charged with deciding which groups receive government contracts to offer humanitarian aid; other groups may enter Iraq on their own. In a briefing on Wednesday, the agency's administrator, Andrew S. Natsios, announced $20 million in contracts to six nongovernmental aid organizations, none of them Christian missionary groups. 
The overtly evangelical groups have caused concern for other Christian groups that have not expressed hostility to Islam. 
Donna Derr, associate director for international emergency response with Church World Service, the aid arm of the National Conference of Churches, said, "In some countries we've seen organizations very actively couple their aid with proselytization, and that creates some very difficult dynamics." 
Ms. Derr said the activities of one group she would not identify led the government of Indonesia, a Muslim country, to evict all nongovernment groups from one region. 






   

 

April 2, 2003 Wednesday 



 THE ECONOMICS OF WAR: ASIA: Exports, investment at risk if conflict long;
Currency flow, possible unrest are also issues

 
Beijing --- Asia's growing economies, driven largely by exports and foreign investment, face the threat of a sharp and deep downturn.
Asian financial markets already have given back the initial gains that followed the launching of the war.
For many Asian countries, global economic stagnation and a souring U.S. economy would be a worst-case scenario. 
"The U.S. economy affects the whole world," said Terence Chong, economics professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "If the war lasts a long time, it will hurt exports."
That's on top of uncertainty already permeating the region. South Korea is in a downturn caused largely by the North Korean nuclear crisis, and travelers are wary of Hong Kong because of a deadly disease that has infected hundreds throughout Asia.
Even if the war is over relatively quickly, Asian countries are concerned that the U.S. invasion of Iraq will inflame political tensions and Islamic extremists at home.
Indonesia is home to the world's largest Muslim population, the Philippine government has been battling Muslim insurgencies for 30 years in the south, and Pakistan's public is resentful of Islamabad's cooperation with Washington.
Some Southeast Asian countries have been losing foreign investment to China. Revenge attacks in the Philippines or prolonged protests in Indonesia --- real possibilities --- would give investors more reason to keep away.
"This region is very much dependent on foreign investment to drive growth," said Kevin Chew, research fellow at the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research.
The capture of Iraqi oil fields in the south eased fears that most of Iraq's wells could be sabotaged, but exports cannot resume as long as combat continues. Should the conflict drag on, heavily oil-dependent countries, including China, South Korea, Japan and India, could be hard hit if prices rise.
Oil exporters Malaysia and Indonesia "would benefit directly from the higher price of oil, but they would be hurt in other ways: from the unrest, from the civil disturbance and instability," said Ernesto M. Pernia, lead economist at the Manila-based Asian Development Bank.
The war also is hurting several Asian countries in other ways. A significant source of foreign exchange for many of them is money sent home by their nationals working in the Middle East, mainly as domestic helpers and construction workers.
The Philippines alone has 1.4 million nationals in the Persian Gulf, who send home $6 billion annually. Nearly 5 million Indians remit $13 billion a year, more than covering the $12 billion India spends on oil imports, according to B.B. Bhattacharya, director of the Institute of Economic Growth of the University of Delhi.
Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand and even North Korea also have nationals employed in the region.
And once the war ends, the difficult and expensive work of reconstruction could exact another heavy cost: Japan, the world's second-largest economy and a close U.S. ally, is likely to be asked to help defray the expenses, as it was after the last Persian Gulf War.
In 1991, Tokyo footed one-sixth of the $61 billion cost of the war. But that was during its bubble years. Since then, Japan has been through four recessions, faces a mountain of debt and is plagued with economic sluggishness.
"Should such contributions be requested again, such funding may become a major problem," said Tatsuya Torikoshi, senior economist of the Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo.







   
 

March 31, 2003 Monday  
  

 A NATION AT WAR; 
Indonesians Protest the War






  
  


March 31, 2003 Monday



 IRAQ

 
At Basra, hundreds of residents trying to leave came under Iraqi fire. British troops let the women and children proceed but chaos ensued when they tried to stop the men. British forces also killed a colonel with the Republican Guard and captured a general and four senior Iraqi Army officers.
In An Nasiriyah, a U.S. raid secured buildings held by Iraqi troops that contained chemical decontamination equipment, weapons and ammunition.
U.S. troops surrounded Najaf, where a suicide attack Saturday killed four U.S. troops. The Americans might enter the city soon to root out paramilitary forces. 
At Camp Udairi, a U.S. military base in Kuwait, a man in civilian clothes drove a pickup truck into a group of soldiers. Fifteen soldiers sustained minor injuries. The driver was shot and was undergoing surgery Sunday night. He was not identified by military officials.
 
IRAQ
In Baghdad, an Iraqi army officer who killed four U.S. soldiers in a suicide attack was honored posthumously. The government reportedly gave his family 100 million dinars, the equivalent of $34,000 -- a fortune by Iraqi standards.
 
TURKEY
Officials said they have reached agreement with the United States on the conditions under which Turkish troops could enter Iraq. More diplomacy is planned today to create "early warning" mechanisms to resolve Turkish concerns before the Turks feel the need for an incursion.
In Jakarta, Indonesia, more than 100,000 anti-war protesters, some of them chanting that America is the "No. 1 terrorist," marched from the British Embassy to the U.S. Embassy. Some estimated the crowd was as large as 300,000.
In Peshawar, Pakistan, 100,000 peace demonstrators joined a rally organized by Islamic leaders.
 
WASHINGTON
U.S. forces are searching a terrorist compound in northeastern Iraq that probably was the site for making the biological toxin ricin, traces of which had been found by police in London, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Gen. Richard Myers said in a televised interview that Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaida worked on poisons at the site, including ricin. There is no treatment or antidote for ricin, which can take days to kill.
------
 
TEXAS
Working Assets, a long-distance telephone company based in San Francisco and founded as a social-activist corporation, has tried to strike a pro-soldier, antiwar message with its slogan: "Support Our Troops -- BRING THEM HOME NOW." Working Assets tried to buy billboard space in Crawford, near President Bush's ranch, but was turned down.
 
QUOTE
"I want our troops home and I want them home before more of them are killed."
--Robin Cook, a former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet, who resigned in protest when it became clear that Britain would go to war
The 101st Airborne Division encircled the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Sunday, preparing for a possible door-to-door battle to root out Saddam Hussein's fighters -- but leery of damaging some of the faith's most sacred shrines.
U.S.-backed Kurdish troops took control of territory left by Iraqi forces withdrawing toward the northern oil center of Kirkuk. They advanced almost 10 miles -- slowly, as the cleared more than 300 mines, some the size of ashtrays, others as big as layer cakes.
In what was described as the Royal Marines' largest operation of the war so far, the British Press Association reported fierce fighting for the town of Abu al Khasib, southwest of Basra. It said 30 Iraqis had been killed and hundreds captured in what the British are calling Operation James, named after James Bond.
 
SYRIA
About 650 grim-faced Iraqis lined up outside the United Nations office in Damascus seeking refuge or any aid they could get. "Most of them ... have left their country because of the war situation in Iraq," Ajmal al-Khybari, a U.N. official, said. He said 1,100 Iraqis have approached the agency since March 20.
Iraq's leadership said 4,000 Arabs have come to Saddam Hussein's aid and suggested coalition soldiers would face more attacks from plainclothes killers like the suicide bombing that left four Americans dead Saturday in Najaf in south central Iraq.
A Marine UH-1 Huey helicopter crashed Sunday night at a forward supply and refueling point in southern Iraq, Three people aboard were killed and one was injured as the helicopter was taking off.
Answering questions about how long the war might last and whether the United States had committed enough troops, Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the allied coalition, sidestepped when asked if it could go on into the summer. "One never knows how long a war will take," he said.
British troops moved into villages on the fringes of Basra, the southern city where an outnumbered but persistent core of Saddam loyalists have held off the coalition for about a week. British soldiers have also staged raids into the city before withdrawing.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington that the British are getting "increasing assistance from the local people as to where the death squads are located, where the thugs are. And they're systematically working them over."
The U.S. Central Command said the latest Baghdad targets hit by coalition aircraft Sunday included military facilities at the Abu Garayb Presidential Palace, the Karada military intelligence complex and the barracks of a major paramilitary training center, all in different sectors of Baghdad. Several telephone exchanges in the city also were hit, as well as a train loaded with Republican Guard tanks.
Tens of thousands of protesters marched on the U.S. Embassy in the Indonesian capital on Sunday in what appeared to be the nation's largest anti-war demonstration yet.
In Morocco, riot police ended an anti-war march by some 200,000 people as frenzied demonstrators began throwing stones, burning U.S. flags and tearing down posters advertising American products.
Front-line U.S. troops resumed a slow advance toward Baghdad on Sunday, meeting friendly farmers and little else.
American forces are searching a terrorist compound in northeastern Iraq that was probably the site where militants made ricin, a biological toxin, the Pentagon's top general said Sunday.
An Iraqi defense officials said more than 4,000 volunteers have come from numerous Arab countries to participate in suicide attacks "against the invaders."
Senior Pentagon officials expressed new skepticism Sunday that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons survived a strike designed to kill them on the opening day of the war. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld all but challenged Saddam to show himself and prove that he is still alive after the U.S. bombarded a bunker in Baghdad where the Iraqi leader and his sons were thought to be sheltering. Gen. Richard B. Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff echoed Rumsfeld's remarks.
About 250 war protesters blocked traffic and some were pepper-sprayed and arrested during a snowy demonstration in Pittsburgh on Sunday, while thousands of protesters marched through Philadelphia in a cold rain.
In Philadelphia, several thousand people braved the weather, many wearing buttons that read "Bring Our Troops Home."
In Los Angeles, a crowd estimated by police at 5,000 marched through downtown in an early spring heat wave that brought temperatures into the 80s. The march was peaceful and there were no arrests.
Police said about 1,500 people participated in a pro-troop rally that filled Taos Plaza in Taos, N.M., with veterans of World War II, Vietnam veterans on motorcycles and others.
In Oak Ridge, Tenn., about 200 peace activists danced in the street leading to the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, blocking access until scores of law enforcement officers made a handful of arrests. About 40 counterdemonstrators held their own rally, waving American flags and playing patriotic songs on a boombox as the peace activists marched past.
In other cities Sunday, groups rallied in support of the war.
Hundreds braved rain, sleet and frigid temperatures to gather in downtown Dover, Del. The Stars and Stripes floated high above a sea of umbrellas, under which demonstrators listened to speeches and patriotic music and chanted "U-S-A! U-S-A!"
Gov. Ruth Ann Minner reminded people that U.S. troops overseas were fighting to defend their fellow citizens.
"What kind of weather do you think they're enduring?" Minner asked as sleet pounded on the pavement. "This is nothing."
In Kingsport, Tenn., about 150 people from more than 20 churches joined to pray for swift victory in the war. In St. Louis, about 100 gathered downtown, waving American flags behind a banner saying "We Support Our Troops."
And in New York, about 100 veterans and family members of Sept. 11 victims gathered at the mesh fence adjacent to ground zero, waving flags and singing "God Bless America."
U.S. troops are ready to launch a major assault against Iraqi Republican Guard forces protecting Baghdad, but the commanding general may wait for pressure to build on Saddam Hussein before striking, U.S. war planners said Sunday.
American peace activists confirmed a report last week that a hospital in Rutbah in Iraq's western desert was bombed. They said no Iraqi military presence was evident. U.S. Central Command denied knowledge of the bombing.
 
TEXAS
Working Assets, a long-distance telephone company based in San Francisco and founded as a social-activist corporation, has tried to strike a pro-soldier, antiwar message with its slogan: "Support Our Troops -- BRING THEM HOME NOW." Working Assets tried to buy billboard space in Crawford, near President Bush's ranch, but was turned down.
BC-War-Surviving the Desert, 1st Ld-Writethru,0399
Two U.S. soldiers survive a week lost in the desert
Eds: INSERTS 1 graf after 3rd to include Pentagon saying it has no info on the two
NORTHERN KUWAIT (AP) -- They gave away much of their food to Iraqis. They drew "SOS" in the sand. One of them passed the time writing poems to his wife back home.
For a week, two American soldiers were stranded in the Iraqi desert. They survived -- hungry, thirsty and tired, but eager to get back to their unit and back to the war.
In a dispatch Sunday from a reporter embedded with the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force,  Web site reported the story of Specialist Jeffrey Klein, 20, of Independence, Ky., and Sgt. Matthew Koppi, 22, of Asheville, N.C., both mechanics with the Army's Third Infantry Division.
The Pentagon told The Associated Press on Sunday it had no information about the two.
The soldiers said they were stranded when their truck's clutch failed on the way to tow an officer's Humvee that had broken down as the division was traveling toward Baghdad. They said a staff sergeant had ordered them to wait, and said they would be picked up.
No one did. So the two dug trenches to defend their position, and took turns on watch.
They gave most of their food to hungry Iraqi civilians, and watched nervously as white vehicles -- a trademark of Saddam Hussein's paramilitary Fedayeen -- passed by. Koppi had become a father 10 days before he was deployed, and he wrote poems to his wife.
"It has been weeks since we have spoken, I know her heart is close to broken," went one couplet.
The soldiers were found Friday by Marines in Chinook helicopters. They were dropped at a desert battle outpost, and then taken to Camp Udairi in northern Kuwait by Col. Richard R. McPhee, who commands the 75th Exploitation Task Force, which was on a mission in southern Iraq.
They were given a medical checkup, new uniforms and a hot meal. Klein's wife, four months pregnant with their first child, took a while to calm down when he called her on a satellite phone.
McPhee praised their resourcefulness and dedication.
"When we found them, they just kept saying that they wanted to return to their unit as soon as possible to be part of the battle," he said.
_AP-CS-03-30-03 1955EST
 (c) 2003, Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military's top civilian and uniformed leaders and the commander of the war, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, joined ranks Sunday in a robust defense of their war plan and the way it is being carried out.
Franks also disputed a published report that he had wanted to delay the ground war in Iraq until the Army's 4th Division's arrival in Kuwait next month. The decision and the timing were his, Franks said at command headquarters in Doha, Qatar.
Franks and his superiors, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were responding to questions being raised by military commanders in the field and retired officers about the progress and strategy behind the military campaign.
Generals in the field have complained in recent days that the U.S.-led invasion has been blindsided. They have described overstretched supply lines and troops caught off-guard by unexpectedly passionate Iraqi fighters employing guerrilla tactics.
_AP-NY-03-30-03 1955EST
bc-war-arnett-post repeating
 (wap) (ATTN: National editors)
//Arnett Interview With Iraqi TV Draws Critical Response//(Washn)
By Howard Kurtz
 (c) 2003, 
WASHINGTON -- Peter Arnett, who fought off charges of conveying Iraqi propaganda during the first Gulf War, has handed fresh ammunition to those who say he sympathizes with Saddam Hussein's regime.
Arnett, who is in Baghdad covering the war for NBC, MSNBC and National Geographic, granted an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV. In the interview, which aired Sunday, he pronounced the U.S. effort so far a failure:
"It is clear that within the United States there is growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war. So our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces... help those who oppose the war...
"The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan."
The correspondent portrayed himself as a minority voice, saying: "Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces. And I personally do not understand how that happened, because I've been here many times and in my commentaries on television I would tell the Americans about the determination of the Iraqi forces... But me, and others who felt the same way, were not listened to by the Bush administration."
NBC spokeswoman Allison Gollust said that "Peter Arnett and his crew have risked their lives to bring the American people up-to-date, straightforward information on what is happening in and around Baghdad. His impromptu interview with Iraqi TV was done as a professional courtesy... His remarks were analytical in nature and were not intended to be anything more."
Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division fired on suspected enemy positions on the outskirts of Samawah, 150 miles south of Baghdad, on Sunday night during a second day of clashes here between U.S. Army forces and Iraqi military and militia groups.
BC-USIRAQ:WA -- world (1330 words)
Coalition forces strike multiple targets, capture Iraqi general
(PHOTOS, GRAPHICS) (HAS TRIMS)
By Peter Smolowitz and Steven Thomma
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
DOHA, Qatar -- Allied bombs pummeled Baghdad defenses Sunday as coalition forces seized a suspected terrorist camp in Northern Iraq and captured an Iraqi general in the besieged southern city of Basra.
U.S. and British warplanes struck fuel depots, a train believed to be carrying Iraqi tanks and a presidential palace used by Saddam Hussein. And top U.S. officials again raised the prospect that Saddam may be dead or disabled, the possible victim of a U.S. strike on the war's first day.
Not all news Sunday was good for the coalition: A man in civilian clothes drove a pickup truck into a line of U.S. soldiers in Kuwait, injuring 15. And the U.S. death toll grew to 43 with the deaths of five Marines in three separate incidents.
Facing reporters at his headquarters in Qatar, U.S. Army General Tommy Franks brushed aside questions about the progress of the war or disagreements inside the Pentagon. The war is proceeding well, he said, and the Iraqi government is doomed, with or without Saddam.
"The regime is in trouble," said Franks, overall commander of the war, "and they know it."
American and British pilots continued to enjoy command of the skies, bombing military targets in and around the capital.
They struck the Abu Garayb Presidential Palace, the Karada Intelligence Complex, two surface-to-air missile complexes, a paramilitary training center and telephone exchanges, all in Baghdad, according to the U.S. Central Command. They also struck a train and fuel storage depots near Karbala, where the Republican Guard is dug in to stop the expected assault on Baghdad by the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division.
Allied forces also attacked the suspected Khurmal terrorist camp north of Baghdad in northeast Iraq -- identified by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in a prewar speech to the United Nations -- killing an undetermined number of presumed terrorists in the process, U.S. officials said. British media reported that 120 were killed.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
Franks called the facility used by the militant group Ansar al-Islam "massive" and said ground forces were searching it Sunday. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it comprised dozens of sites, including tunnels and bunkers.
"We have destroyed a major portion of it. We've killed a large number of terrorists," Rumsfeld said on the Fox News Sunday program.
"We know that... they were developing toxins and poisons in that area. We know that al-Qaida was connected to it... We're not certain what we'll find, but we should know more in the next three days, three or four days."
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN that he believed the camp was used to develop a biological toxin, ricin, traces of which were discovered earlier this year in London and Paris.
In another troubling sign that Iraq might be preparing to use chemical weapons, Marines raided a building used by Iraq's 11th Infantry Division inside An Nasiriyah and found more than 300 chemical suits and gas masks, as well as injectors of the nerve gas antidote atropine, the U.S. Central Command said Sunday.
Marines also seized more than 800 rocket-propelled grenades, 300 mortar shells and more than 17,000 rounds for rifles and machine guns.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
In a daring raid, British Royal Marine commandos captured an Iraqi general in the besieged city of Basra, officials said Sunday. Officials called him the highest-ranking enemy yet captured and hoped to learn valuable military information from him.
Commandos also killed a Republican Guard colonel who they suspect was sent to Basra to invigorate pro-Saddam forces there, according to British Group Capt. Al Lockwood.
Elsewhere, Britain's 16th Air Assault Brigade captured the Baath Party's No. 2 official for the Rumaila region.
Three U.S. Marines were killed Sunday when their UH-1 Huey helicopter crashed at a forward supply and refueling site in Southern Iraq. Two others also were killed Sunday, one struck by a Humvee during a firefight, the other drowned when his Humvee rolled into a canal.
At Camp Udari in Kuwait, a man in civilian clothes driving a stolen white pickup truck plowed through throngs of soldiers as they waited in line at a post store, injuring 15. He was shot and critically wounded when he ignored orders from military police to stop.
The driver was identified only as a third-party national, meaning he is neither American nor Kuwaiti.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
"We heard his engine revving and he veered to the left and luckily I went right," said Maj. Lora Elliott, a historian with the 101st Airborne Division. "He was fishtailing, he accelerated so hard."
The incident came just a day after a suicide bomber killed himself and four Americans in Iraq, and amid threats of a wave of such attacks in Iraq and in the United States.
Iraqi television reported that Saddam posthumously honored the Saturday bomber and that his family has been awarded $34,000. "This is just the beginning," said Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. "The day will come when a single martyrdom operation will kill 5,000 enemies."
U.S. officials again raised the possibility that Saddam Hussein was killed or seriously injured on the first day of the war.
"We have not seen Saddam Hussein or his sons live anywhere or heard any reports live," Rumsfeld said, adding that videotapes of Saddam could have come from a previously recorded bank of tapes. He said the tapes "do not look legitimate to me."
American officials noted with interest a recent photograph showing one of Saddam's personal bodyguards guarding someone else, Rumsfeld said. "It may be an indication that Saddam Hussein is not moving around much," he said.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
Elsewhere, there were signs that Iraqi hostility might be easing, at least in the port city of Umm Qasr.
Franks noted that two brothers sent to launch suicide attacks surrendered instead. "They chose to fight for the future of Iraq," Franks said, "rather than fight for this dying regime."
Also, British Royal Marines patrolling the port felt safe enough there to switch from helmets to berets to look less belligerent to locals.
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
Still, Franks said, allied forces would stiffen their guard in most parts of Iraq. Among the added precautions: Allied soldiers will increase the "standoff" distance between themselves and civilian vehicles.
The U.S. Marines Sunday also signaled a new approach to stopping the harassment of their lines by pro-Saddam forces who dress in civilian clothes and mingle with the populations of towns along the Marine supply routes.
The Marines said Sunday they have detained 300 civilians, a change in the Pentagon's Rules of Engagement. Some of those being held could be shipped to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States is interrogating suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan and other places.
The decision to detain suspicious civilians came after Marines began noticing young, well-fed civilians with military boots, short haircuts and nice watches dawdling in unusual places.
And with allied forces facing more difficulty than expected, Franks and Rumsfeld disputed media accounts that Franks had argued unsuccessfully for a larger force before starting the war.
"I did not request additional troops before the beginning of what you refer to as the ground war," Franks said in Qatar. "There are very few people who know the truth of how this plan was put together."
"Everything they've requested has in fact happened," Rumsfeld said of the military commanders.
------
(Smolowitz reported from U.S. Central Command Headquarters in Qatar; Thomma anchored from Washington. Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents Jessica Guynn at the Pentagon, John Sullivan at Camp Udari in Kuwait, Juan O. Tamayo at Marine Headquarters in Iraq, and Jeff Wilkinson in Kuwait contributed to this report.)
------
(c) 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
----------
PHOTOS (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): USIRAQ
GRAPHICS (from KRT Graphics, 202-383-6064): USIRAQ
_AP-NY-03-30-03 1914EST
BC-USIRAQ-CIVILIANS:WA -- world (1190 words)
Suspect Iraqi civilians rounded up by U.S. Marines
(HAS TRIMS)
By Juan O. Tamayo, Patrick Peterson and Andrea Gerlin
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
MARINES COMBAT HEADQUARTERS, Iraq -- U.S. Marines have detained 300 Iraqi civilians in a new campaign to crush pro-Saddam gunmen who are resisting the U.S. occupation of southern Iraq.
Some detained Iraqis could end up imprisoned at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners from Afghanistan have been held.
Marines also are weighing whether to issue weapons captured from Iraqi soldiers to anti-regime civilians to help them defeat Saddam loyalists and protect the U.S. rear guard when American forces move against Baghdad, said Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, commander of all Marines in Iraq.
The roundup of suspect civilians signaled a change in the Pentagon's Rules of Engagement (ROE) for the Iraq campaign, a thick document that drew a sometimes excruciatingly complex line between military and civilian targets.
"All this nice guy ROE, that's going out the window," said one senior Marine officer. "We're going to have to expand the ROE a bit."
The detention campaign is aimed at pro-government militias and soldiers in civilian clothes who have taken the bloodiest toll on U.S. Army and Marine units in southern Iraq, ambushing them from urban centers and roadsides and then melting into the populace.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
A white flag means nothing in this war.
A carload of Iraqi civilians with a white flag approached Marines Saturday on a highway south of the Iraqi city of al Kut on the Tigris River. An Iraqi military truck with five soldiers followed and shot at the civilians when they were near a Marine checkpoint, where an M-1 tank blocked the way.
Marines fired on the Iraqi truck when it began to fire on the civilians.
After the gunfight, a woman was dead from a wound to the back of the head. Several men in the car, a Volkswagen Passat, came toward the Marines, who told the men to sit in the road. An injured girl climbed into her father's lap as he held his hands above his head. An infant in the car was not harmed.
The truck was loaded with weapons and explosives. One of the Iraqi soldiers pretended to be dead for more than an hour, then raised a pistol when Marines investigated. He was killed, said Maj. Chris Gideons of Richmond, Va.
The incident was another in a series of Iraqi attempts to use civilians as shields.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
While many residents of the farming area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers have waved to the Marines, the military has become more cautious when they see a civilian with a white flag.
"We're going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, and they're using it against us," said Capt. Daniel Rose of the 1st Marine Division.
U.S. Marine battalions operating near Qal'at Sukkar also reported encountering soldiers discarding their uniforms, donning regular clothes and forcing civilians to serve as human shields in efforts to overrun American defenses.
Two U.S. officers said the decision to detain suspicious civilians came after Marines began noticing young, well-fed civilians with military boots, short haircuts and nice watches dawdling in unusual places. The two officers asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive issues surrounding the arrest of civilians in wartime.
Troops from 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit first noticed them in the southeastern port of Umm Qasr, and later the Marines of Task Force Tarawa saw them in the south central city of An Nasiriyah.
"They're the only well-fed Iraqis in the area," said one officer. "Seeing young, healthy males in the middle of a firefight makes you wonder what they're doing there."
"We're still figuring this out because we thought we'd have mass surrenders, not this crap," said one of the officers.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
Pentagon officials had expected tens of thousands of soldiers to surrender. Instead, only 4,000 POWs have been captured, while many thousands more appear to have simply put on civilian clothes and returned home.
But some have apparently joined the pro-Saddam militias that are ambushing U.S. supply convoys, especially in the so-called "Ambush Alley" near two vital bridges in Nasiriyah, where about half of all U.S. casualties so far have occurred.
"These are bad guys and it would be insane to let them roam the battlefield," said one officer. "If we get a few who are innocent, I'm sorry, but we can't just let them go out there and start shooting at us again."
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
Civilians detained under the new Marine policy will get a so-called "Article V" hearing to determine whether they are enemy prisoners or war or "unlawful combatants," like the al-Qaida and Taliban suspects held at Guantanamo.
Article V of the Geneva Convention on the rules of war says that military personnel lose their rights as protected combatants if they doff their uniforms.
U.S. soldiers will need probable cause to detain the civilians, but the Section V hearing will require a preponderance of evidence to declare them Enemy Prisoners of War (EPWs) or unlawful combatants, they said.
EPWs will get released at the end of the war, they said, adding that the U.S. military is trying to organize hearings soon.
"This isn't something we even dreamed about doing. This has been forced upon us," said one of the officers.
As for giving captured Iraqi arms to other Iraqi civilians, Gen. Conway said he regarded that as one possible way to speed the defeat of loyalist forces in southern cities and ensure that they do not return to power when the Marines move north to Baghdad.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
It is "first incumbent upon us to eliminate the death squads (pro-Saddam militias) keeping the people under their boot," said the commander of the 60,000 member 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
To do that, the Marines "need good intelligence on location of their headquarters, key members," he said, "and then we hit them... overtly and covertly."
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
When Iraqi citizens start to lose their fear of the regime, he added, "then it's time for them to become more proactive in their own effort... (and) at that point we would consider giving them limited amounts of weapons."
Saddam's supporters "may come back when we get focused on Baghdad" he added, but the civilians could then defend themselves with the U.S.-provided weapons, such as assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
"Our question becomes, if we've got weapons, before we destroy them, should we not consider giving them some of these weapons, small arms exclusively, to defend themselves?" Conway said.
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
The Marines, with tanks and artillery, have stopped on the road to al Kut for several days while supplies catch up with them. They have not announced plans for entering al Kut, where an estimated 5,500 members of the Republican Guard are garrisoned. The city could become a difficult obstacle if the Iraqi soldiers scatter and launch suicide attacks using civilians with white flags as shields.
------
(c) 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
_AP-NY-03-30-03 1844EST
BC-USIRAQ-FRONTLINE
Attn: National, foreign editors
Direct questions to editor Dave Tepps at 202 383 6107 (office)
or 408 569 5835 (cell).
Story is 642 words (20")
Military action
In Basra, in southern Iraq, hundreds of residents trying to leave Sunday came under fire from Iraqi forces. British troops let the women and children proceed but -- concerned about terrorism and enemy soldiers -- tried to stop the men in the group. Chaos ensued. British officers said the only way to avoid this dilemma might be to engage in the house-to-house combat necessary to occupy the city.
Also in Basra, British forces killed a colonel with the Republican Guard and captured a general and four senior Iraqi Army officers.
Elsewhere in southern Iraq, a U.S. Marine UH-1 Huey helicopter crashed, killing three.
In An Nasiriyah, a U.S. raid secured buildings held by Iraqi troops that contained chemical decontamination equipment, weapons and ammunition.
To the north, en route to Baghdad, troops surrounded Najaf, where a suicide attack Saturday killed four U.S. troops. The Americans might enter the city soon to root out paramilitary forces.
At Camp Udairi, a U.S. military base in Kuwait, a man in civilian clothes drove a pickup truck into a group of soldiers standing outside a store. Fifteen soldiers sustained minor injuries requiring brief treatment or none at all. The driver was shot and was undergoing surgery Sunday night. He was not identified by military officials beyond being a "third-party national" -- not American or Kuwaiti.
Casualties to date
U.S. military: 43 dead.
British military: 24 dead.
Iraqi forces: Unavailable.
Elsewhere overseas
In Baghdad, an Iraqi army officer who killed four U.S. soldiers in a suicide attack was honored posthumously. The government reportedly gave his family 100 million dinars, the equivalent of $34,000 -- a fortune by Iraqi standards.
In Ankara, Turkey, government officials said they have reached agreement with the United States on the conditions under which Turkish troops could enter Iraq. More diplomacy is planned Monday to create procedures that would help prevent the need for a Turkish incursion.
In Kabul, Afghanistan, a rocket hit the headquarters of the international peacekeeping force. There were no reports of injuries; al Qaeda operatives were suspected.
In Jakarta, Indonesia, more than 100,000 anti-war protesters, some of them chanting that America is the "No. 1 terrorist," marched from the British Embassy to the U.S. Embassy. Some estimated the crowd was as large as 300,000. In Peshawar, Pakistan, 100,000 peace demonstrators joined a rally organized by Islamic leaders.
In Washington
The Pentagon's top general said U.S. forces are searching a terrorist compound in northeastern Iraq that probably was the site for making the biological toxin ricin, traces of which had been found by police in London. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said in a televised interview that Ansar al-Islam and al Qaeda worked on poisons at the site, including ricin. There is no treatment or antidote for ricin, which can take days to kill.
Around the USA
New billboards advocating an end to the war are being erected in major U.S. cities, but not in Crawford, Texas, near President Bush's ranch. Working Assets, a long-distance telephone company based in San Francisco and founded as a social-activist corporation, has tried to strike a pro-soldier, antiwar message with its slogan: "Support Our Troops -- BRING THEM HOME NOW." Working Assets tried to buy billboard space in Crawford, but was turned down.
Weather in Baghdad
Monday
Partly cloudy
High temperature: 77 Low temperature: 51
Quote
"I want our troops home and I want them home before more of them are killed."
-- Robin Cook, a former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet, who resigned in protest when it became clear that Britain would go to war
For complete coverage of the war in Iraq, go to the Web site of the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau (www.krwashington.com
03-30-03
dt-jlk-rar
_AP-DATAPORT-NY-03-30-03 1839EST
bc-war-embed
 (wap) (ATTN: Foreign editors)(Includes optional trim)
//For Pentagon Leaders, 'Embedded' Reporters
Prove a Mixed Blessing//
By Jonathan Weisman
 (c) 2003, 
The deluge of gritty, violent images rolling into American living rooms from the battlefields of Iraq has begun to spark regret among Pentagon leaders about the unprecedented access they have granted war correspondents, defense officials say.
The Pentagon's civilian and military leadership have spent much of the war either trying to debunk reports from the battlefield or to put those reports into what they have called a broader context. In recent days, the fundamental problem has been squaring depictions from inside Iraq of pitched battles, guerrilla warfare and hungry soldiers with the upbeat assessments of the war effort issued from the press room podiums of the Pentagon and Central Command at Doha, Qatar.
"It's giving the leadership fits," a defense official said Sunday.
The trend of trying to hold the press as far from the battlefield as possible ended before the current conflict, when Defense Department officials decided to deploy -- or "embed" -- hundreds of newspaper, television, radio and magazine reporters with front-line Army, Marine and Navy war fighters.
Pentagon officials say they're pleased with the results, especially the positive images of determined and dedicated troops performing professionally under tremendous pressure.
But behind the scenes, the embedded reporters have helped to create problems, both militarily and with the public's perception of the war, defense officials say. On Saturday, some Army and Marine units forbade reporters from using a type of satellite phone, called a Thuraya, for fear the phone's signal would broadcast troop locations to the Iraqi military.
Thurayas issue global positioning satellite signals, and Air Force Major General Victor Renuart told reporters the new restriction stemmed from "a requirement for the operational commander to ensure that his movements are appropriately secured."
But concerns over battlefield reporting are mainly about image control, a defense official said.
"It does require people to square reports from the field -- that's nothing new," the official said. "It's just happening in real time."
On Saturday, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke and Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal struggled to deflate reports that Marines deployed deep inside Iraq were down to one military meal -- or Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) -- a day because of stretched and harassed supply lines.
"There are many advantages to the embedding program," Clarke said. "There are also some challenges. One reporter may have heard one person say 'I haven't gotten my second or third MRE of the day yet,' and that gets back, and it gets back very quickly... Because of the volume and velocity of the reporting coming directly from the field, we all have to take a breath sometimes and say, 'OK, is this representative of a broader picture, or is this an individual incident?' "
Especially with TV reports, Pentagon leaders are asking the public to place more faith in their assessments of a smoothly progressing war than the more chaotic images viewers are seeing with their own eyes, a defense official said.
On Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld opened his press briefing with a broadside against the war coverage. "We have seen mood swings in the media from highs to lows to highs and back again, sometimes in a single 24-hour period," Rumsfeld complained. "For some, the massive TV, the massive volume of television -- and it is massive -- and the breathless reports can seem to be somewhat disorienting. Fortunately, my sense is that the American people have a very good center of gravity and can absorb and balance what they see and hear."
When the program was hatched, defense leaders thought the technological challenges of broadcasting from a battle zone would naturally limit coverage, a defense official conceded. They envisioned television reporters finding time and a strong enough satellite signal to broadcast "live shots" only once or twice a day.
Instead, television reporters are beaming grainy footage of battles and interviews on the fly over videophones from the back of a speeding Humvee.
"We just thought the natural challenges of broadcasting from the field would restrict it," the official said. "Had we known it would be this wide open, we might have considered restrictions."
 (Begin optional trim)
Ed Offley, editor of DefenseWatchmagazine and a director of the journalism group Military Reporters and Editors, said he was sympathetic to complaints that war reporters are capturing only pieces of the action, not the larger war picture. But the embed program has been a "spectacular improvement" compared to coverage of the first Gulf War or the invasions of Panama and Grenada, he said.
Kenneth Bacon, who headed media affairs for the Pentagon during the Clinton administration, said by and large, the battlefield coverage has been positive for the war effort -- a fact reflected in strong public approval of the war.
"The public is getting a view of combat that we haven't gotten since Vietnam, a more intimate view, a more realistic view," he said.
But some of the raw violence of war is beginning to creep into coverage in ways that the Pentagon would rather not see, he said. In Saturday's New York Times, for instance, a Marine sharpshooter described opening fire on an Iraqi soldier standing among civilians and watching a woman fall. "I'm sorry," the sergeant was quoted saying. "But the chick was in the way."
Bacon also was sympathetic to complaints from Pentagon leaders that reports from the front may distort public perceptions of the overall war progress. "War is a mosaic," Bacon said. "It's difficult even for top commanders to see the entire mosaic fitting together."
_AP-NY-03-30-03 1803EST
bc-war-embed
 (wap) (ATTN: Foreign editors)(Includes optional trim)
//For Pentagon Leaders, 'Embedded' Reporters
Prove a Mixed Blessing//
By Jonathan Weisman
 (c) 2003, 
The deluge of gritty, violent images rolling into American living rooms from the battlefields of Iraq has begun to spark regret among Pentagon leaders about the unprecedented access they have granted war correspondents, defense officials say.
The Pentagon's civilian and military leadership have spent much of the war either trying to debunk reports from the battlefield or to put those reports into what they have called a broader context. In recent days, the fundamental problem has been squaring depictions from inside Iraq of pitched battles, guerrilla warfare and hungry soldiers with the upbeat assessments of the war effort issued from the press room podiums of the Pentagon and Central Command at Doha, Qatar.
"It's giving the leadership fits," a defense official said Sunday.
The trend of trying to hold the press as far from the battlefield as possible ended before the current conflict, when Defense Department officials decided to deploy -- or "embed" -- hundreds of newspaper, television, radio and magazine reporters with front-line Army, Marine and Navy war fighters.
Pentagon officials say they're pleased with the results, especially the positive images of determined and dedicated troops performing professionally under tremendous pressure.
But behind the scenes, the embedded reporters have helped to create problems, both militarily and with the public's perception of the war, defense officials say. On Saturday, some Army and Marine units forbade reporters from using a type of satellite phone, called a Thuraya, for fear the phone's signal would broadcast troop locations to the Iraqi military.
Thurayas issue global positioning satellite signals, and Air Force Major General Victor Renuart told reporters the new restriction stemmed from "a requirement for the operational commander to ensure that his movements are appropriately secured."
But concerns over battlefield reporting are mainly about image control, a defense official said.
"It does require people to square reports from the field -- that's nothing new," the official said. "It's just happening in real time."
On Saturday, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke and Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal struggled to deflate reports that Marines deployed deep inside Iraq were down to one military meal -- or Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) -- a day because of stretched and harassed supply lines.
"There are many advantages to the embedding program," Clarke said. "There are also some challenges. One reporter may have heard one person say 'I haven't gotten my second or third MRE of the day yet,' and that gets back, and it gets back very quickly... Because of the volume and velocity of the reporting coming directly from the field, we all have to take a breath sometimes and say, 'OK, is this representative of a broader picture, or is this an individual incident?' "
Especially with TV reports, Pentagon leaders are asking the public to place more faith in their assessments of a smoothly progressing war than the more chaotic images viewers are seeing with their own eyes, a defense official said.
On Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld opened his press briefing with a broadside against the war coverage. "We have seen mood swings in the media from highs to lows to highs and back again, sometimes in a single 24-hour period," Rumsfeld complained. "For some, the massive TV, the massive volume of television -- and it is massive -- and the breathless reports can seem to be somewhat disorienting. Fortunately, my sense is that the American people have a very good center of gravity and can absorb and balance what they see and hear."
When the program was hatched, defense leaders thought the technological challenges of broadcasting from a battle zone would naturally limit coverage, a defense official conceded. They envisioned television reporters finding time and a strong enough satellite signal to broadcast "live shots" only once or twice a day.
Instead, television reporters are beaming grainy footage of battles and interviews on the fly over videophones from the back of a speeding Humvee.
"We just thought the natural challenges of broadcasting from the field would restrict it," the official said. "Had we known it would be this wide open, we might have considered restrictions."
 (Begin optional trim)
Ed Offley, editor of DefenseWatchmagazine and a director of the journalism group Military Reporters and Editors, said he was sympathetic to complaints that war reporters are capturing only pieces of the action, not the larger war picture. But the embed program has been a "spectacular improvement" compared to coverage of the first Gulf War or the invasions of Panama and Grenada, he said.
Kenneth Bacon, who headed media affairs for the Pentagon during the Clinton administration, said by and large, the battlefield coverage has been positive for the war effort -- a fact reflected in strong public approval of the war.
"The public is getting a view of combat that we haven't gotten since Vietnam, a more intimate view, a more realistic view," he said.
But some of the raw violence of war is beginning to creep into coverage in ways that the Pentagon would rather not see, he said. In Saturday's New York Times, for instance, a Marine sharpshooter described opening fire on an Iraqi soldier standing among civilians and watching a woman fall. "I'm sorry," the sergeant was quoted saying. "But the chick was in the way."
Bacon also was sympathetic to complaints from Pentagon leaders that reports from the front may distort public perceptions of the overall war progress. "War is a mosaic," Bacon said. "It's difficult even for top commanders to see the entire mosaic fitting together."
_AP-NY-03-30-03 1803EST
BC-USIRAQ-MIDEAST
Attn: national, foreign editors
Direct questions to editor Renee Schoof at 202-383-6004 or 202-549-4587 (cell) or 301-608-0319 (home).
Eds: We will update with comment from Powell's address tonight.
Trims to 460 words (14.4") from 675 words (21").
By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- The United States will mount a forceful diplomatic campaign to implement an international plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians while war rages in Iraq, according to top State Department officials.
In the coming weeks, the Bush administration hopes to release the so-called "road map," a plan that lays out steps both sides should take to halt 21/2 years of violence. Then the administration will coax both sides to take action.
There will be "a fairly aggressive push" to implement the peace plan, which foresees an eventual Palestinian state at peace with Israel, said a senior State Department official. He was expanding on comments in recent days by Secretary of State Colin Powell and President Bush.
Powell was to spell out the U.S. position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an address to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the principal Jewish-American lobby, on Sunday night.
The secretary of state believes that implementing the peace plan would require difficult steps by both sides, another department official said. That phrase is sometimes interpreted as insisting that Israel be prepared to remove Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Bush administration officials say several calculations are driving the renewed diplomatic attempt to end the conflict.
One is an assessment that the Palestinian Authority has made good-faith efforts toward the political and financial reforms Washington has long demanded.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat recently named Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to the post of prime minister, bowing -- at least in theory -- to demands that Arafat relinquish his monopoly on political power.
Washington has said it is waiting for Abbas to be confirmed in the position before making public the diplomatic roadmap, drafted by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
Still, steps the Bush administration has been waiting for, including an election in Israel and the beginnings of transformation of the Palestinian Authority, "have come to pass. We're in a position to move forward," said the senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Powell will ask new Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom to help bolster Abbas' political position, reports from Israel said Sunday. Powell and Shalom meet Monday in Washington.
The help to Abbas could involve Israel removing roadblocks that hinder Palestinians' movement and improving conditions in Palestinian areas, where basic living conditions have declined markedly.
The road map lays out three phases toward creating a Palestinian state in 2005. In the first, Palestinians would end violence, resume security cooperation with Israel and undertake reforms, including some that are already under way. Israel would withdraw its troops to positions they held when the Palestinian revolt began in September 2002 and freeze settlement activity.
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
Bush caused a diplomatic flap in mid-March when he said during a Rose Garden appearance that Washington would "welcome contributions" to the road map from Israel and the Palestinians, suggesting it was open for further negotiation.
The war in Iraq has increased pressure on Bush from the Arab world and Europe to make Middle East peace.
Bush "understands that the whole world is going to be looking to him to do something about the Middle East once Iraq has been dealt with," Powell said in an interview with a Washington Post columnist last week.
Powell was responding to questions about whether other top administration officials, including Bush, Vice President Cheney and hawks at the Pentagon and National Security Council, feel strongly about solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The senior State Department official said Israel should also feel less under threat -- and more able to make peace -- because the United States is destroying the Iraqi regime, one of its enemies.
Any new Middle East peace effort faces numerous challenges.
It could founder on continued Palestinian violence, such as the suicide bombing in the Israeli city of Netanya on Sunday that injured 30 Israelis.
And hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who oversees a right-wing government, has consistently demanded that the first concessions must come from the Palestinians, not Israel.
(e-mail: wstrobel(at)krwashington.com)
03-30-03
rs-ch
_AP-DATAPORT-NY-03-30-03 1755EST
BC-War-Protests, 1st Ld-Writethru,0840
Tens of thousands from Indonesia to Egypt march against war
Eds: AMs. LEADS throughout with details of protests in Spain, Jordan, Brazil and elsewhere. CHANGES dateline from JAKARTA, Indonesia. CHANGES byline.
AP Photos NN101; JAK103,4,6
By TANALEE SMITH
Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Egyptian university students called for holy war against allied "aggression" in Iraq, and Indonesians accused America of terrorism as hundreds of thousands around the world staged more rallies Sunday denouncing the war.
In Alexandria, Egypt, more than 15,000 students burned U.S. and British flags, demanded boycotts of goods from both countries and called for jihad -- or holy war -- "to deter the oppressive American aggression."
Egyptians have criticized their government for allowing allied ships to cross the Suez Canal on their way to Iraq. Another three U.S. cruisers were crossing the strategic waterway Sunday.
"No to opening the Suez Canal to the enemies; Salute to the Iraqi steadfastness," the students said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press in Cairo.
In Spain, protesters condemned their government for allowing coalition forces to use Spanish air space and bases for refueling.
At least 25,000 people holding banners that read "No to War" and "Not in Our Name" marched to the edge of the Rota Naval and Air Base, which is shared with U.S. forces. Organizers estimated 60,000 people participated. Thousands more marched to military bases in Moron, Zaragoza and Albacete and Torrejon.
One of the largest rallies was in Jakarta, Indonesia, where more than 100,000 people chanted "America imperialist, No. 1 terrorist!" and peacefully marched a mile from the British Embassy to the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. Some witnesses estimated the crowd was as large as 300,000.
Protesters -- many dressed in Muslim garb -- carried banners that read, "Bush, Iraq is not your killing field."
Outside the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy, speakers demanded the United States pull out of Iraq and said President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard should be tried as war criminals.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation and its government has been a vocal opponent of the war. Sunday's was the country's largest demonstration yet.
Bush was also condemned in protests in Amman, Jordan -- where some 300 marching journalists chanted, "Bush, be patient, we will dig your grave" -- and in Sao Paolo, Brazil -- where some of the more than 5,000 demonstrators held pictures of Bush with a Hitler-style mustache drawn in.
"Who does Bush think he's kidding when he says that the war will free the Iraqi people of a tyrant. Bush's war is just a vehicle to expand U.S. power and if this goes on, war will never stop for U.S. greed will never be satiated," said Fernanda Alvarez, 32, a marketing director for a cosmetics company in Sao Paolo.
An estimated 100,000 demonstrators marched in the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar in a protest organized by hard-line Islamic leaders.
It was the fourth in a series of large-scale protests in Pakistan's main cities organized by the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance, or United Action Forum, and dubbed the "Million Man March." Demonstrations of several thousand people also were held in the cities of Multan in central Pakistan and Quetta in the southwest.
Traffic came to a halt in many parts of Calcutta, India, where tens of thousands of activists marched six miles to the American Center, a U.S. cultural organization.
In South Korea, 30,000 workers protested the war and demanded that the National Assembly reject a government bill that calls for dispatching 600 military engineers and 100 medics to support the war. The United States is a key ally of South Korea, but amid rising anti-war sentiment, the assembly delayed voting on the bill twice last week.
An anti-war march in Rabat, Morocco, erupted when some of the 200,000 demonstrators began throwing stones, burning U.S. flags and tearing down posters advertising American products. About a dozen people were injured by stones and bottles before riot police broke up the march, hospital sources said.
Students at China's elite Peking University staged a quiet demonstration against the U.S.-led war, in a rare instance of campus political activism permitted by Chinese authorities.
About two dozen students set up signboards displaying photographs of wounded Iraqi civilians and passed out handbills criticizing the war. However, police dispersed anti-war protesters who sought to gather in other parts of Beijing, continuing a practice of forbidding most public demonstrations.
In Japan, more than 2,000 people formed the Japanese words for "No War" against the backdrop of a medieval castle in the western city of Osaka, then marched toward the U.S. Consulate.
_AP-CS-03-30-03 1746EST
BC-War-Protests-Glance, 1st Ld-Writethru,0375
Significant protests around the world Sunday
Eds: UPDATES with items on Spain, Morocco, Jordan and Brazil
With BC-War-Protests
By The Associated Press
Demonstrations around the world Sunday related to the war in Iraq:
-- More than 100,000 Indonesians, chanting America is the "No. 1 terrorist," marched from the British Embassy to the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. Some estimated the crowd was as large as 300,000.
-- At least 25,000 people in Spain marched to the edge of the Rota Naval and Air Base, which is shared with U.S. forces. Thousands more marched to military bases in Moron, Zaragoza and Albacete and Torrejon.
-- Some of the 200,000 demonstrators in Morocco threw stones, burned U.S. flags and tore down posters advertising American products.
-- In Sao Paolo, Brazil, some of the more than 5,000 demonstrators held pictures of President Bush with a Hitler-style mustache drawn in.
-- In a rare state-sanctioned protest, about two dozen students at China's elite Peking University held signboards with photos of wounded Iraqi civilians and distributed handbills criticizing the war.
-- About 100,000 demonstrators joined a rally organized by hardline Islamic leaders in the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar. Thousands more demonstrated in Multan in central Pakistan and Quetta in the southwest.
-- In South Korea, 30,000 workers demanded the National Assembly rejected a government bill that calls for dispatching 600 military engineers and 100 medics to support coalition forces.
-- More than 2,000 people formed the Japanese words for "No War" in Osaka, then marched toward the U.S. Consulate.
-- About 15,000 university students in the Egyptian city of Alexandria burned U.S. and British flags and called for "holy war" to help the Iraqis. Another 15,000 people, mainly members of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party, rallied in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura.
-- Some 5,000 Greek Cypriots marched on the British air force base at Akrotiri in Cyprus, police said.
-- About 300 reporters marched in Amman, Jordan, and chanted, "Bush, be patient, we will dig your grave."
_AP-CS-03-30-03 1744EST
BC-USIRAQ-POLL:WA -- world (680 words)
Poll: Americans favor U.N. control of postwar Iraq
(EDITORS: Embargoed for release in Monday March 31 papers. Please keep reference to poll sponsor Knowledge Networks. The poll of 795 people was taken March 22-25 and has error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percent.)
(HAS TRIM)
By Frank Davies
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
WASHINGTON -- A majority of Americans expects at least a two-year U.S. occupation of Iraq once the war ends and favors having the United Nations administer the country until a new Iraqi government is formed, a new survey has found.
Most Americans, according to the poll, are also patient about the war's duration. By a 2-to-1 margin, those surveyed said U.S. forces should try to limit the number of civilian casualties in Iraq, even if that means the war must last longer.
The poll of 795 people was conducted over four days through last Tuesday, when Americans were absorbing the first few days of war news.
The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland wrote the questions, and Knowledge Networks, a market research firm, conducted the survey, which was to be released Monday.
Some 54 percent agreed with President Bush's decision to invade Iraq without U.N. authorization, while 23 percent opposed it. Some 21 percent disagreed with the decision but still supported Bush.
"We're seeing the traditional "rally 'round the president' factor at the beginning of a war, but confidence in the decision to go to war is not overwhelming," said Steven Kull, director of the Maryland program.
The public's views on the consequences of the U.S. invasion mix optimism over Iraq's postwar future with worry over the war's effect on the United States.
An overwhelming majority, 85 percent, agrees that when the war ends the United States has the responsibility to remain in Iraq until a stable government is established. Most think that will take at least two years.
By a 2-to-1 margin, most Americans predict a stable and democratic government in Iraq five years from now.
While most Americans support the war, 51 percent agreed that the risk of terrorist attacks against the United States will increase after the war. Half of those polled said anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world will grow.
"This shows some pessimism about the consequences of the war," said Kull, who has surveyed foreign policy attitudes for several years.
The poll also showed continued support for the United Nations and its involvement in solving problems around the world.
The United Nations "will continue to be relevant in matters of war and peace in the future," said 58 percent, while 37 percent said it will not be relevant. The Bush administration said the United Nations risked making itself irrelevant when the Security Council chose not to support using force against Iraq.
Once Saddam Hussein is toppled, 52 percent agreed that the United Nations should administer the country until an Iraqi government is established, while 44 percent favored direct U.S. rule or some combination of coalition and exile forces.
Large majorities also support letting the United Nations, and not the United States, take the lead role in trying to stop North Korea and Iran from developing nuclear weapons or spreading terrorism.
By almost 3-to-1, those surveyed said the United States should not punish countries on the Security Council that refused to back the U.S. position on use of force.
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
Most Americans also seem to be cautious about using pre-emptive force, though they support it in Iraq. In this poll, 66 percent agreed that U.S. leaders "should not feel more free to use force without U.N. authorization."
This survey did not try to measure the public's tolerance for U.S. casualties in the Iraq war, though a February survey found that Americans expected "significant casualties," defined as 1,000 or more service men and women killed.
"Concern over casualties is not a driving factor, as long as the public sees the goals of the war as valid and legitimate and that progress is being made," Kull said.
------
(c) 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
_AP-NY-03-30-03 1744EST
BC-War-Syria-US, 1st Ld-Writethru,0413
Syria slams U.S. government, some Arab leaders for war in Iraq
Eds: AMs.
By ZEINA KARAM
Associated Press Writer
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- Syria's foreign minister Sunday criticized the U.S. government for attacking Iraq, saying it was leading the American people to "catastrophe" by putting them in direct confrontation with the international community.
Speaking to parliament, Farouk al-Sharaa said the United States was invading Iraq under the pretext of liberating it and protecting democracy, justice and human rights but was now killing and destroying the Iraqi people.
"Syria has a national interest in the expulsion of the invaders from Iraq because the truth is that the U.S. administration has led its people to a catastrophic stage and put them in confrontation with the entire international community," he said.
Al-Sharaa's remarks came two days after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Syria of supplying military equipment to Baghdad. Rumsfeld said the Syrian government would be held "accountable for such shipments."
Syria has denied Rumsfeld's accusations, saying they were an attempt by America to cover up its failures in Iraq.
Syria, the only Arab country on the U.N. Security Council, is one of the fiercest opponents of the war on Iraq. Its official media criticized some Arab leaders Sunday for assisting the U.S.-led attack.
Gulf countries including Kuwait and Bahrain host large numbers of U.S. military personnel taking part in the war, and the U.S. Central Command -- which runs the coalition's military operations -- is based in Qatar.
The Tishrin newspaper, the Syrian government mouthpiece, said some Arab leaders had "entrapped themselves by offering facilities for the brutal aggression against Iraq... instead of taking a national stand, or at the very least remaining silent instead of trumpeting the aggression."
During recent state-sanctioned protests in Damascus, protesters denounced Egypt for its close ties with America and doing too little to oppose the war. Egypt's foreign minister summoned Syria's ambassador in response to Cairo to complain.
Egypt has also come under criticism at home for allowing U.S. and British warships to cross the Suez Canal en route to participating in the war. U.S. vessels in the Red Sea have fired missiles across Saudi Arabia toward Iraqi targets.
_AP-CS-03-30-03 1727EST
BC-War-Human Rights,0345
Amnesty International: Governments using Iraq war as opportunity to violate human rights
By JANE WARDELL
Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) -- Amnesty International delivered a petition to Prime Minister Tony Blair's office Sunday, calling on the government to make more information public about civilian deaths in the war in Iraq.
Amnesty representatives from 50 countries -- including Britain, the United States and Israel -- presented the petition at No. 10 Downing St., urging the government to abide by international law during the conflict.
Neil Durkin, a spokesman for the human rights group, said he wanted to know what kind of investigations were under way into attacks on civilian areas of Baghdad. "Also, we hear a lot about how the Iraqis are treating POWs," he said. "But there is not much information on how Iraqi POWs are being kept."
Amnesty earlier issued a report that said some governments were using the conflict in Iraq to muzzle human rights.
The group said that since the start of the U.S.-led war it had found evidence of abuses in 14 countries, including the United States and Britain.
The report said people in several countries had been prevented from demonstrating against the war. In Belgium, the group said, some 450 anti-war activists were placed under preventive arrest, while British police used anti-terrorist laws to stop and search people "without reasonable suspicion."
Amnesty also documented cases in which police used excessive force against demonstrators. The worst was in Sudan, where three students reportedly were killed during anti-war demonstrations in Khartoum.
The United States was criticized for detaining an unknown number of asylum seekers from Iraq and more than 30 other countries for background checks as part of a national security plan dubbed Operation Liberty Shield.
The group also alleged abuses in Denmark, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Jordan, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and Yemen.
------
On the Net:
http://www.amnesty.org/
_AP-CS-03-30-03 1723EST
BC-USIRAQ-POLL
Attn: National, foreign editors
Please direct questions to editor Robert A. Rankin at 202.383.6017.
EDS: This poll is embargoed for release in Monday March 31 papers. Please keep reference to poll sponsor Knowledge Networks. The poll of 795 people was taken March 22-25 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.
Story trims to 515 words (16") 620 words (19.5")
By Frank Davies
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- A majority of Americans expects at least a two-year U.S. occupation of Iraq once the war ends and favors having the United Nations administer the country until a new Iraqi government is formed, a new survey has found.
Most Americans, according to the poll, are also patient about the war's duration. By a 2-to-1 margin, those surveyed said U.S. forces should try to limit the number of civilian casualties in Iraq, even if that means the war must last longer.
The poll of 795 people was conducted over four days through last Tuesday, when Americans were absorbing the first few days of war news.
The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland wrote the questions, and Knowledge Networks, a market research firm, conducted the survey, which was to be released Monday.
Some 54 percent agreed with President Bush's decision to invade Iraq without U.N. authorization, while 23 percent opposed it. Some 21 percent disagreed with the decision but still supported Bush.
"We're seeing the traditional 'rally 'round the president' factor at the beginning of a war, but confidence in the decision to go to war is not overwhelming," said Steven Kull, director of the Maryland program.
The public's views on the consequences of the U.S. invasion mix optimism over Iraq's postwar future with worry over the war's impact on the United States.
An overwhelming majority, 85 percent, agrees that when the war ends the United States has the responsibility to remain in Iraq until a stable government is established. Most think that will take at least two years.
By a 2-to-1 margin, most Americans predict a stable and democratic government in Iraq five years from now.
While most Americans support the war, 51 percent agreed that the risk of terrorist attacks against the United States will increase after the war. Half of those polled said anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world will grow.
"This shows some pessimism about the consequences of the war," said Kull, who has surveyed foreign policy attitudes for several years.
The poll also showed continued support for the United Nations and its involvement in solving problems around the world.
The U.N. "will continue to be relevant in matters of war and peace in the future," said 58 percent, while 37 percent said it will not be relevant. The Bush administration said the U.N. risked making itself irrelevant when the Security Council chose not to support using force against Iraq.
Once Saddam Hussein is toppled, 52 percent agreed that the U.N. should administer the country until an Iraqi government is established, while 44 percent favored direct U.S. rule or some combination of coalition and exile forces.
Large majorities also support letting the U.N. take the lead role, not the United States, in trying to stop North Korea and Iran from developing nuclear weapons or spreading terrorism.
By almost 3-to-1, those surveyed said the United States should not punish countries on the Security Council that refused to back the U.S. position on use of force.
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
Most Americans also seem to be cautious about using preemptive force, though they support it in Iraq. In this poll, 66 percent agreed that U.S. leaders "should not feel more free to use force without U.N. authorization."
This survey did not try to measure the public's tolerance for U.S. casualties in the Iraq war, though a February survey found that Americans expected "significant casualties," defined as 1,000 or more service men and women killed.
"Concern over casualties is not a driving factor, as long as the public sees the goals of the war as valid and legitimate and that progress is being made," Kull said.
(e-mail: fdavies(at)krwashington.com)
03-30-03
rar-ch
_AP-DATAPORT-NY-03-30-03 1719EST
BC-War-US Military, 1st Ld-Writethru,790
U.S. troops ready for major assault on Republican Guard units protecting Baghdad, official says
Eds: SUBS 9th graf to UPDATE with new sortie numbers, targets
By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. troops are ready to launch a major assault against Iraqi Republican Guard forces protecting Baghdad, but the commanding general may wait for pressure to build on Saddam Hussein before striking, war planners said Sunday.
"We have the power to be patient in this, and we're not going to do anything before we're ready," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We'll just continue to draw the noose tighter and tighter."
Myers and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said coalition ground forces were closing in on Baghdad from the south, west and north. The U.S. troops south of Baghdad were within 49 miles of the capital, Rumsfeld said, and reporters traveling with those units said several were on the move again Sunday.
More significantly, Myers said days of relentless airstrikes had reduced some Republican Guard units to less than 50 percent of their prewar capacity. Armed reconnaissance elements of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division also have fought with Republican Guard units, Myers said.
U.S. war planners want to be sure the Republican Guard -- the best trained and equipped of Iraq's military -- are significantly softened up before coalition troops meet them in ground fighting. During the 1991 Gulf War, for example, U.S. ground forces didn't attack until Republican Guard units had lost 50 percent to 60 percent of their capacity.
American commanders have a target percentage in mind for the degradation of the Republican Guard before launching the ground assault, a senior defense official said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity. Officials will not discuss the goal to avoid revealing their strategy.
Parts of the Army's 82nd Airborne and other units moved into south-central Iraq over the weekend to help protect supply lines that have come under attack by Iraqi forces. Other U.S. fighting units, including members of the 3rd Infantry Division, moved closer to the Republican Guard forces between them and Baghdad.
The U.S. military has detected signs that reinforcements are being sent to some front-line Republican Guard units, while other Iraqi units are pulling back, closer to Baghdad, the senior official said.
A military official said coalition aircraft focused 60 percent of nearly 800 strike sorites Sunday on three Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad: The Hammurabi, to the north, west and south; the Medina, to the south; and the Baghdad, centered southwest of the capital around Kut.
"I imagine their morale is a little low right now because they've lost a lot of their force," Myers said. "Their fighting capability is going down minute by minute, hour by hour. There's not going to be much left to fight with."
Myers and Rumsfeld, making the rounds of the Sunday television talk shows in Washington, would not say when the ground assault on Baghdad would begin. Both predicted such fighting could be brutal.
"It's going to get more difficult as we move closer to Baghdad," Rumsfeld said. "I would suspect that the most dangerous and difficult days are still ahead of us."
The attack on Baghdad, population 5 million, might not be a siege of the city, Myers said, saying the term "conjures up, sometimes, some really bad images."
"It will not be a sort of siege that people have thought about before," Myers said. "We have plans for several different contingencies."
Pentagon officials continued Sunday to raise the possibility that Iraq could use chemical weapons.
"There is no doubt that they have chemical weapons, that they have weaponized them, they have them in artillery shells," Myers said. "They probably have other means of delivery."
He cited the discovery by coalition forces of protective gear and nerve agent antidotes left behind by Iraqi military and paramilitary forces. Myers said the discoveries indicate that Iraqi troops planned to wear the protective gear while using chemical weapons.
Marines searching a compound used by Iraq's 11th Infantry Division in the Euphrates River city of Nasiriyah on Saturday found more than 300 chemical protection suits and gas masks, U.S. Central Command reported. The Marines also found atropine injectors -- antidotes for nerve agents -- and chemical decontamination vehicles and devices, Central Command said.
Earlier last week in the same city, Marines found more than 3,000 chemical protection suits in a hospital used by Iraqi paramilitary forces as a base.
Also Saturday, British troops south of Basra found Iraqi training equipment for nuclear, biological and chemical warfare -- including a Geiger counter, nerve gas simulators, gas masks and protective suits, according to British press reports.
_AP-CS-03-30-03 1704EST
BC-mccain-taxes
McCain Says Tax Cuts Should Wait Until Iraq War Costs Are Clear
By Daniel Goldstein
c.2003 Bloomberg News
Washington, March 30 (Bloomberg) -- Senator John McCain said Congress shouldn't enact any tax cuts until it knows how much the U.S. will have to pay to defeat Saddam Hussein's regime and rebuild Iraq.
"Clearly we should hold off until we see what the cost of the war is," McCain said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.
The Arizona Republican said he wouldn't rule out cutting income taxes after the Iraq conflict, depending on the performance of the U.S. economy. "We may need a stimulus," he said.
The U.S. Senate last week voted for a budget plan that would halve President George W. Bush's proposal for $726 billion in tax cuts over the next decade. McCain went against party leadership in the Republican-controlled Senate to join Democrats in opposing the tax cuts. In addition to the cost of war in Iraq, opponents cited projections of rising federal budget deficits.
U.S. citizens would respond positively to calls from the government to make sacrifices while fighting the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism, said McCain, a former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
"They want to be told more than just take a trip or spend money," he said. "We should ask more of them. You'll be amazed at the response."
The centerpiece of the president plan is eliminating the tax investors pay on dividends. Bush also proposed accelerating income tax rate cuts due to take effect in 2004, 2006 and 2009, and allowing small businesses to deduct more expenses. White House officials have promoted the legislation as a way to boost the economy and encourage investors back into the stock market.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that under Bush's proposals, the deficit would widen to $287 billion this year and $338 billion in 2004. That doesn't include the cost of the Iraq war.
The Senate version of the $2.2 trillion budget with its lower tax-cut proposal must be reconciled with a House version that includes all of Bush's $726 billion, 10-year tax-cut plan.
--Daniel Goldstein in Washington (202) 624-1863 or at dgoldstein1bloomberg.net Editor: Sobczyk
-0- (BN ) Mar/30/2003 21:42 GMT _
BC-War-Saddam, Bjt,1040
Saddam reorganized chain of command before war
Eds: Stands for BC-Iraq-Saddam on the News Digest
AP Photos SRS103, 104l LRL106
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Saddam Hussein set up a system giving his most trusted lieutenants and local tribal leaders the power to mount a guerrilla campaign or other military measures without waiting for his orders.
Saddam reorganized his chain of command before the war so that he need not give every order and thus make himself vulnerable to U.S. electronic detection. U.S. officials, however, see the absence of Saddam's strong hand on the battlefield as a sign that he may be dead or wounded.
Although Saddam may not be issuing all the orders, his prediction of a tough ground fight is on the mark, and his defensive measures appear to be paying off.
"I don't know whether the leader of this regime is dead or alive," Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. war commander, said in Doha, Qatar. "I have not seen credible evidence over the last period of days that this regime is being controlled from the top."
Five days before the war began, the Iraqi government announced Saddam had divided the country into four military regions under the command of his son Qusai, head of the elite Republican Guards, and three of his most trusted lieutenants.
Each of them was given sweeping powers to use all the resources of the Iraqi military and state for the defense of his region. That meant commanders in Najaf, Basra, Mosul and other areas did not have to wait for instructions from Saddam before taking action.
Saddam could remain hidden from U.S. electronic surveillance while being assured that his strategy for defending Iraq would be implemented by his son and aides -- even if coalition forces destroy his communications.
In Baghdad, the government has gone to great lengths to emphasize Saddam is in charge. On Saturday night, Iraqi television showed him meeting with key aides.
Although there was no audio of Saddam, the announcer said the meeting was to praise a suicide attack that killed four U.S. soldiers near Najaf.
A few hours after the attack on Baghdad that launched the war March 20, Saddam appeared on Iraqi television in a military uniform but appeared subdued and showed signs of strain. That appearance could have been taped earlier, however, and U.S. officials note there have been no live pictures of Saddam since the initial attack.
Four days later, a composed Saddam appeared on TV again to rally his people and his troops with a stirring address U.S. intelligence determined that speech was recorded, but it was unclear when.
"Where is Saddam Hussein? Where is Qusai, where is Uday -- his sons? They're not talking," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.
In the weeks leading up to war, Saddam bolstered his position through overtures to Iraq's tribes and clans.
Immersed in Iraq's complex and bloody politics for about 40 years, Saddam probably knows his people better than any other politician in this country of 26 million people.
This is a huge asset in a country with about 150 major tribes that break down into some 2,000 smaller clans. In recent years, he is thought to have deepened their loyalty with gifts of money, land, cars and arms and by making key tribesmen local leaders of his Baath Party.
Saddam also has used television to tell tribal leaders he cares about their people and that he is one of them. He would talk of how he grew up in the countryside and offer advice about such things as physical fitness and how to find directions on moonless nights.
But his pep talks included doses of reality -- pointing out the technological edge of the United States and its ability to hit Iraq from afar.
He boasted in January that even if the United States brings its entire army and those of its allies, Iraq will never be conquered. "The enemy can destroy and hurt but will never be able to occupy the land," he said.
The clan and tribal chiefs are reciprocating his trust and gestures.
Clad in flowing robes topped by gold-rimmed black and brown cloaks, scores of tribal chiefs came to Baghdad in the past week from across Iraq to reassure Saddam of their loyalty and, in their words, to receive an update on their fighting orders.
The chieftains command the loyalty of tens of thousands of men and represent one of the wild cards that Saddam has thrown into the battle against U.S. and British forces -- using their familiarity with the terrain to punish coalition forces with surprise attacks.
"They can hit us with their warplanes, but we will triumph with our rifles for the sake of Iraq," Mouseet al-Sheik al-Shamsi, one of the chieftains from the southern Zi Qar province, said outside a Baghdad hotel on Sunday. "It's our land and we will defend it under Saddam's leadership," enthused another, Malek Al-Baaj from the southern town of Souk el-Sheiouk.
Saddam's gestures have yielded results in the south. Reports from there suggest that tribal militias have a significant part of the fighting, slowing down the advance of U.S. and British forces to Baghdad, harassing the rear of their armored columns, and putting up stiff resistance in several towns.
The tribal and clan fighters have been singled out for lavish praise by Iraq's officials and media. State TV has been playing a new song dedicated to Ali Obeid, an elderly tribesman who became a national hero after authorities credited him with downing an Apache helicopter with his rifle. The U.S. military denied the claim.
Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf boasted that tribal fighters shot down a helicopter and killed its two pilots Saturday. U.S. Central Command said it had no information of such an incident.
"We tell (President) Bush to come to Mosul to try his luck," Mahmoud Abdullah al-Sabawi, a clan leader from the northern city of Mosul, said on television. "We tell them that we will never give up Saddam or a single inch of Iraq."
_AP-CS-03-30-03 1624EST
BC-WEA-USIRAQ-DUSTSTORM:FT -- world (470 words)
Iraq's dust storm season just starting, expert says
 
KRT NEWSFEATURES
By Chris Vaughn
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
FORT WORTH, Texas -- The dust storm consultant who advised the British military before the Persian Gulf War in 1991 said the fierce storms that swept Iraq this week are just the start of a storm season.
"The worst months are yet to come," said Andrew Goudie. March is the beginning of dust storm season, a period in which they will grow in intensity and number through June.
Although the storms occur naturally, Goudie said the presence of so many heavy armored vehicles traveling all over Iraq and Kuwait is making it worse. The number of dust storms tripled during the North African campaign of World War II, he said.
Much of the talk last week centered on the storm's effect on equipment and troop movement, but dust storms affect people, too, particularly Americans and British unaccustomed to them. Goudie said he would expect a sharp increase in the number of soldiers with conjunctivitis, sore throats and respiratory infections.
"The dust contains allergen spores, it contains feces, it contains all sorts of things it picks up off the ground," he said. "You're breathing these things."
He said the dust storms will affect the military in several other ways: They will reduce visibility, sometimes down to just a few feet; they create static electricity that disrupts radio and cellphone communications; and they can damage hardware from electronics to helicopter rotors.
"Dust has an awful habit of getting into things," said Goudie, who has been in at least 20 major dust storms around the world, most of them in the Middle East.
Goudie, head of the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, this week to deliver a series of lectures on dust, global warming and other issues at Texas Christian University.
The U.S. and British forces are in one of the worse places in the world for dust storms.
Nasiriyah averages 33 days of dust storms a year. Basra averages 25, and Kuwait City averages 27. Baghdad averages 17 days. Compare that with Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which averages 7.5 days.
The dust storms -- sandstorms are not the proper description, he said -- typically begin in the Sahara Desert of North Africa and work their way northeast across the Red Sea and into the Middle East, picking up material as they go.
Goudie, a geomorphologist, or someone who studies the Earth's surface, describes the dust storms as "very beautiful," although he conceded that it may sound perverse.
"People find tornadoes exciting. I find dust storms exciting," he said. "You find nature being rude and rough in them."
------
(c) 2003, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Visit the Star-Telegram on the World Wide Web: www.star-telegram.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
_AP-NY-03-30-03 1553EST
BC-War-Divided Britain,0620
Deep splits over war in Iraq resurface in Britain
By THOMAS WAGNER
Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) -- Britain's deep divisions over the war in Iraq -- pride in its soldiers, horror at the bloodshed, doubt about the justification -- surfaced Sunday in a bitter and confused debate among top politicians.
For months, Prime Minister Tony Blair's argument for joining the war against Saddam Hussein had failed to win over many Britons or their legislators. The debate has become more complicated since the war started and 23 British soldiers have died.
Robin Cook, who resigned as the governing Labor Party's leader in the House of Commons in opposition to the military action, wrote an article in the Sunday Mirror saying U.S. hopes of a swift victory had been frustrated.
"I have already had my fill of this bloody and unnecessary war," wrote Cook, a former foreign secretary. "I want our troops home, and I want them home before more of them are killed."
But under sharp attack from fellow Laborites, Cook appeared to back down.
"I'm not in favor of abandoning the battlefield... There can be no question at this stage of letting Saddam off the hook. I wasn't in favor of starting this war, but having started this war it's important to win it. The worst possible outcome would be one that left Saddam there," Cook said on BBC radio.
Cook -- an articulate Scotsman and respected intellectual force in Labor politics -- seemed to epitomize British anguish over the war when he came close to tears as he announced his resignation in a nationally televised speech to the Commons on March 17.
His argument against waging war without United Nations approval echoed the feelings of many Britons. But after Sunday's article, he came under sharp attack from Labor colleagues.
Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien noted that Parliament had voted for war.
"Ten days after it started, I don't think this is the time to start telling our troops that they have got to withdraw, leave Saddam Hussein in place and leave his butchery to continue in Iraq," O'Brien told BBC-TV. "I have enormous respect for Robin, but I just think this was the wrong time to say these sorts of things."
Home Secretary David Blunkett asked: "Who do you wish to win" the war?
However, Doug Henderson, a former defense minister, supported Cook, saying Britain should pull its 45,000 troops out of the "hellish" situation in Iraq.
William Hopkinson of the Royal Institute of International Affairs said the debate reflects the difficulty facing opponents of the war.
"One doesn't want to stab the soldiers in their backs when they are risking their lives," he said. "At the same time, the fact that they are risking their lives doesn't make a bad cause a good cause."
He said the bloodshed shocks many Britons, but seeing coalition forces in combat is increasing British nationalism and hatred of Saddam.
That change of spirit also has been reflected in polls.
A majority of Britons opposed the war before it started, and one-third of Labor legislators rebelled against Blair and voted against him on March 18. But a survey published Sunday showed that only 11 percent believe British troops should withdraw now. The ICM Research survey, conducted Thursday and Friday, also said 84 percent favored continuing the war until it achieves its objectives.
Blunkett dismissed suggestions that Blair would face a fresh Labor rebellion if the war dragged on. Still, he conceded that if the war was not over when the party holds its annual convention in the fall, things could get "difficult."
_AP-CS-03-30-03 1549ES






    
  


March 31, 2003, Monday



 WORLD WATCH -- ASIA/PACIFIC: MODERATE MUSLIMS DIRECT INDONESIAN PROTEST






   


March 30, 2003 Sunday



 Media reports paint different pictures of war; Fast: Some coverage is highly critical of America, and a bit is supportive

 
The reports are gripping, visceral, passionate - products of a fast-moving war and the fast-moving media racing to process it. Around the world, news columns and airwaves crackle with conflict, amassing a first rough draft of dismay, condemnation and occasional support.
An Indian journalist warns that the United States "seems headed for a quagmire." An Indonesian newspaper upbraids the "barbaric invasion" of American forces. "The USA underestimated Iraq," a Swedish paper says. And from a Sri Lanka daily: "Stop this war forthwith." 
"How can Washington achieve its democratic ends if much of the world believes its means are undemocratic?" a reporter for Singapore's Straits Times, Janadas Devan, wrote in a commentary Friday.
After a week of fighting, the world's media are steeped in coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Much of it is emotional, some of it is highly critical of the United States and a bit of it is supportive.
From Russia to Latin America, Africa to Southeast Asia, newspapers and TV stations are pulling out all the stops to deliver information - and strong opinions - to their readers and viewers. Often, that involves distinct criticism of the United States.
"So far, we have seen no weapons of mass destruction in the coalition forces' march from southern Iraq to Baghdad," Ana Marie Pamintuan wrote Friday in the Philippine Star. "So far, we have not seen the whoops of joy that you expect from liberated people."
In Britain, the top U.S. ally though its citizenry is divided, the tabloids are robustly patriotic: "Desert heroes close in on tyrant's henchmen," Thursday's edition of The Sun wrote. War coverage there is so intense that some newspapers have columnists to cover the coverage. Most aren't impressed.
In China, state TV has been offering unprecedented blanket coverage and its version of analysis. Like state-controlled newspapers, it reflects the government's opposition to the war. The Communist Party newspaper People's Daily invoked former President Jimmy Carter's anti-war comments in its coverage.
"When will the humanitarian disasters end?" the People's Daily wondered Friday.
In another article, it said: "Unilateralism has been running wild since the Bush administration took office."
Across Arab nations, sentiment is running squarely against U.S. action. In Cairo, a front-page column Friday by Al-Ahram's editor in chief, Ibrahim Nafie, featured the headline: "Stop aggression against Iraq before it's too late."
The popular satellite network Al-Jazeera, which has been strongly criticized in the United States for its coverage of Iraq and for using footage of coalition forces' corpses, said it had a duty to show the world casualties no matter where they're from.
"War has victims from both sides," Al-Jazeera's editor in chief, Ibrahim Hilal, said Thursday. "If you don't show both sides, you are not covering."
In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, opposition is running high. Photos of dead U.S. or British soldiers and Iraqi civilian victims as well as news of coalition setbacks are played prominently.
"The cradle of civilization is being destroyed by those who call themselves civilized," Jakarta's Republika newspaper said in an editorial Thursday.
And in Kenya, a "before and after" cartoon in Friday's East African standard showed Saddam Hussein with Horns and George W. Bush with a halo. The next panel showed it the other way around.
One English-language newspaper in Bangkok is offering a unique take. The Nation has published daily reports about life under bombardment from a Thai law student holed up in a Baghdad apartment near one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces.
"The whole city was being lit up. Huge clouds of smoke hung in the air. Then a missile whizzed past just over our heads. My heart was in my mouth," 30-year-old Wanich Amnuayphorn wrote.
Many media outlets are covering anti-war protests heavily as well.
In Denmark, The Politiken, one of the country's three largest dailies, said the media covering the conflict are being manipulated.
"One barely wants to repeat it: When at war, the truth is the first victim," the newspaper said. "And the present war is no exception to the rule."







  



March 30, 2003 Sunday  




 Operation Security: Staying Safe Abroad

 
 E. Alan Platt, a former CIA agent, is vice president of global security and intelligence for International SOS (www.inter nationalsos.com), a medical and security assistance company. David Wallis interviewed Platt by telephone from his office in Trevose, Pa. 
Q What security precautions can travelers take before setting off on a trip? 
A Make sure people at home know your itinerary -- the flights you are on, the hotels you are staying in, how you can be contacted at any given moment of the day in case of an emergency. 
If you are going to [someplace like] Afghanistan or Islamabad, you need to be aware of the surroundings, the culture, the do's and the don'ts, all of the things that can inadvertently get you in trouble if you take a wrong turn, say the wrong thing or make a wrong hand gesture. 
Aside from Iraq, what countries should U.S. travelers avoid in the coming months? 
The whole Middle East region is going to be in turmoil. Highly populated Muslim countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan are also going to be areas of concern . . . There's a potential for spontaneous civil disobedience, unrest, violent protest and terrorist activity.  
A lot of this is common sense. It's just that the press of business or your own invincibility gets in the way of that common sense a lot of times. 
Suppose you find yourself in the middle of a spontaneous violent protest? 
Obviously, do everything possible to minimize your profile. If there is a likelihood of protest, don't go out to take pictures. Stay in your hotel room or safe haven that's been provided to you. If you are caught in a spontaneous protest, get out of there as quickly and calmly as possible. You should not engage in discussion or make eye contact. 
How can an American abroad look less like an American abroad? 
Americans like to wear sneakers. Many wear jeans when they are traveling. A lot wear logos that are specific to America. They will wear a jersey of their favorite football team. Luggage tags are a giveaway. I like to use luggage tags that have a flap . . .  
Wear a nice sports coat and a nice pair of slacks and don't bring attention to yourself by talking loudly. 
Should you slap the Canadian flag on your backpack? 
You can do that, particularly if you can weave a word or two into conversation that makes you sound like a Canadian. 
Like "oot"? 
Or "eh." Just putting a Canadian flag on a backpack [is not enough] if you have not thought out a story to go with it.  
This goes back to my old background. You need to have a plausible story so when a casual observer asks, "Oh, so where are you from in Canada?" you say "Ottawa" off the top of your head. Then you need to speak with some authority about Ottawa. Sometimes you need a cover story, which is a terrible thing to say, but that's today's reality. 
Suppose someone finds himself held hostage. Any advice on how to behave? 
Keep your wits about you. You're not there to change the mind of the hostage-taker. You're there to save your life. You are not going to win an argument with someone who is holding a nine-millimeter to your head.  
Do what they ask you to do as calmly and quickly and deliberately as possible. All the while, look for an opportunity that presents itself to escape. 
 We had an interesting scenario unfold several years ago in Istanbul. Terrorists took over a hotel lobby late one night and started calling the rooms and telling the guests to come downstairs. They were trying to concentrate all the hostages in one area. An employee of a client had the presence of mind to call one of our alarm centers.  
We said, "Don't go downstairs. Stay in your room. Hide in the closet. If someone comes to the door pretend you are asleep." 
 He did that, and [the terrorists] completely forgot about him. Two hours later, when we were scheduled to call him back, there was no answer . . . What he had done was go to the minibar and drink himself to sleep. He just got lit and didn't even hear the phone ring. 
Describe the most challenging case that your company has responded to. 
During the coup in the Ivory Coast, we evacuated several hundred people, [including] one person who was traumatized because that person had witnessed some of the execution-type killings that had taken place. One of the things we had to determine before we could proceed was whether that person was capable of traveling because of trauma. 
Grade the security measures that the government has implemented to protect travelers after 9/11. 
I've been impressed with the integrated and dedicated approach to implementing all these new procedures.  
Yesterday, going through the airport in Detroit, the new Transportation Security Administration personnel was a vast improvement over what we had before in terms of professionalism and their polite demeanor. The standards are much higher, but the lines haven't gotten much longer. 
What do you pack in your suitcase to bolster your safety or deal with any situation? 
Enough telephone numbers on me at any given time so that I can contact anybody I need to. My international cell phone. A laptop as a backup. A Swiss Army knife. Plenty of money -- cash, plastic or traveler's checks, so if I do need something, on a moment's notice I can get it, including a ticket out of there.  
When I went to a Third World destination, I used to travel with a survival kit: plenty of water, granola bars, a spare tire, matches and a flashlight. 
Did you manage to do some sightseeing while traveling on CIA missions? 
I tried. Today when I leave my itinerary on the counter before I walk out the door my wife jokes, "It's nice to see where you're going this time." 
What was your favorite place to travel to during your service? 
Morocco. La Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech was one of my favorite places. 
What trick did the CIA teach you that you can share with readers to help them reduce risk abroad? 
Stay calm and always be prepared for any eventuality ahead of time. I would sort through in my own mind what I was going to say or do given any circumstance. Have a game plan, including worst-case scenarios. 







  



March 30, 2003 Sunday  




 Pope Warns That War Could Bring 'Religious Catastrophe'

 
Pope John Paul II said today he hoped that the human tragedy of the war in Iraq would not set Christians and Muslims against each other and spark "a religious catastrophe." 
"War must never be allowed to divide world religions," he told visiting Roman Catholic bishops from Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country.  
The pope said good inter-religious relations were important "at this moment of heightened tension in the entire world community." 
"Let us not permit a human tragedy to become a religious catastrophe," he said. 
The pope is opposed to the war in Iraq and led a Vatican diplomatic campaign to avert it. The Iraq conflict has put the Vatican at odds with the Bush administration because the pope has refused to bless the conflict as a "just war." 






   

 

March 29, 2003 



 WAR IN THE GULF: WORLD: ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATIONS: Muslim world erupts in protest;
Iraqi war likened to Israel's Palestinian occupation

 
Hundreds of baton-wielding riot police rushed anti-American demonstrators in Amman, Jordan, on Friday as anger over the U.S.-led war in Iraq brought more than a million people into the streets across the Islamic world.
In mostly peaceful demonstrations, marchers lashed out at America and its allies as invaders, not liberators, and appealed for an end to fighting.
The Iranian capital, Tehran, reported the largest turnout yet for an anti-war demonstration. State media reported that more than 1 million people streamed through the streets shouting, "Down with the United States!" and throwing stones at the British Embassy. 
Around 100,000 people marched in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, after state television earlier in the week announced the planned anti-war rally. Demonstrators venting their anger at the "unjustified" invasion of Iraq led by the United States chanted: "Jihad, jihad, from Sanaa to Baghdad!"
In Amman, Sheikh Zeid Kilani told worshippers at Friday prayers that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's defiance of the U.S.-led force seeking to topple him made the Iraqi leader "a new Saladin," a reference to the legendary Islamic warrior who fought the Crusaders.
After prayers, crowds of young men quickly organized and marched, chanting: "America is the enemy of God and the faithful. Bush, you are despicable!"
Although the march was peaceful, police converged on the protesters from the warren of tight side streets that is characteristic of the area. Swinging batons at everyone in their way, the security forces dispersed the crowd. No arrests or injuries were reported.
Jordanians who gathered in storefronts to escape the blows of the police had harsh words for their government, which has aided Washington in its military operation.
"Bush's allies are not democratic allies. The whole world is against this war. We see protests in Europe, in Asia and here. Why doesn't the war end?" asked Abu Sultan, a 60-year-old Palestinian from the Jordanian city of Zarqa.
In Cairo, the Egyptian capital and the Arab world's biggest city, the mood was tense. Between 5,000 and 10,000 people held a peaceful rally outside the historic al-Azhar mosque, in stark contrast to last Friday's demonstration, which turned violent when much larger crowds hurled furniture, rocks and shoes at police and some protesters set a firetruck alight.
This week, the government reportedly tried to muzzle protests by tightening freedom of movement in all of Egypt's regions.
Israel, another U.S. ally, also tightened security around public outcry to the war.
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported Friday that Israeli police had stepped up patrols in Arab neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem and near entrances to the Temple Mount, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews where clashes between protesters and Israeli police are common.
In Ramallah and other Palestinian cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, thousands of people flooded the streets to show their solidarity with Iraqis.
"We're all in the same boat. We've all gone through the same thing. . . . The United States is now occupying Iraq just like the Israelis occupied us," said Rana Ahed, a Palestinian woman who recently moved back to Ramallah after living in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Mustafa Barghouti, a political activist in the West Bank, said the Palestinian protests reflect support for the Iraqi people, but not for Saddam.
"Saddam is a dictator. Nobody supports his dictatorship," said Barghouti. "But there is a difference between Saddam and his people. Those who are killed now and injured are not Saddam."
People expressed similar sentiments across Asia, from Jakarta, Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, to Karachi, Pakistan.
At a rally of 1,000 students in Jakarta, some staged a play with a student "Bush" ordering his men to crush Iraq. Others unfurled banners saying, "Bush, stop the invasion or go to hell!"







  



March 29, 2003 Saturday  




 Inquiry Shows Indonesian's Ties to Al Qaeda

 
Long before he achieved notoriety as Hambali, the most wanted Islamic militant in Southeast Asia, the man was known to his neighbors in this village as a youngster who idealized America. He dreamed of rocketing into space like lunar pioneer Neil Armstrong, of visiting the United States and seeing its powerful computers. 
 "At that time, America was the image of status, the most advanced in technology," said a former classmate, Ujang Iskandar. "He kept saying, 'I want to travel around the world and see for myself and decide.' " 
 But over time, Hambali came to view the United States as a major cause of the Muslim world's problems. He moved deeper and deeper into radical Islamic groups, and today the 38-year-old cleric is sought by police worldwide as the prime leader of al Qaeda in Southeast Asia.  
 Investigators said Hambali approved, planned or financed at least eight successful or abortive attacks in the region, including the October 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali that killed more than 200 people. Analysts said he set up a meeting of September 11 conspirators in Malaysia in 2000 and arranged for flying lessons in Malaysia for a would-be hijacker. 
 The capture of al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed in Pakistan four weeks ago has given investigators new insights into his operations. According to intelligence officials in Southeast Asia familiar with a report on the subsequent interrogation, Mohammed has told of working for years with Hambali. Just last November, Mohammed said, he sent $ 50,000 to Hambali to finance an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta or Bangkok. 
Intelligence analysts said al Qaeda has counted on Hambali since the assaults on the United States to put fresh attacks on the scoreboard. With Mohammed's capture, the stocky, 5-foot-5 Hambali ranks as one of the world's most senior al Qaeda leaders still on the loose. He is now the strategic guide of Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asia terrorist network that began in the early 1990s as an al Qaeda spinoff, analysts said. Police continue the search. One analyst in Southeast Asia said Hambali may be in Thailand; other reports have placed him in southeastern Bangladesh, near the Burmese border. 
 Here, in the village of Pamokolan, in the foothills of West Java, people remember Hambali by his given name, Encep Nurjaman, a serious young man who lived up a dirt lane near the mosque.  
Growing up as the second of 13 children, the son of a teacher who was a mosque leader, Hambali had a tendency to play the moralist, friends and acquaintances said. That was not unusual behavior; his village is in a stronghold of Darul Islam, a religious movement that seeks to establish an Islamic state. 
 "He was very critical, asked a lot of questions," recalled his former fourth grade teacher, Apip Arifin. "If I made a mistake, he would complain." He excelled at math and tried to teach himself English with a book called "24-Hour English." And he had that interest in America. 
 As Hambali grew into adolescence, he became interested in social issues, criticizing the U.S.-supported government of President Suharto for political oppression. 
 Hambali graduated from high school in 1983 and failed an exam to enter the military, recalled his former classmate, Ujang. In 1985, he went to Malaysia to find work. In those years, Malaysia was also the chosen place of exile for Indonesians who felt persecuted. He was deep into Islamic studies now. 
 By 1987, he was in Afghanistan and involved in militant Islamic causes, according to Umar Abduh, a former Darul Islam activist. There, said Umar Abduh, Hambali trained in a camp with an Islamic guerrilla movement fighting Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He acquired the nom de guerre Hambali, borrowed from a revered imam of Islamic history.  
 And there he met Khalid Sheik Mohammed and forged their close relationship. They became attack organizers -- strategists, not operatives. "There are very few people in the world who can put big operations together," said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism analyst affiliated with the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. "You need years of experience and a certain mind-set. Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Hambali have that mind-set." 
 In 1989, Hambali returned to Southeast Asia, taking up residence again in Malaysia, said Umar Abduh. During this period he lived with Abubakar Baasyir and Abdullah Sungkar, two Indonesian militants who were exiled in Malaysia and founded Jemaah Islamiah in 1993-94. He often led religious services. 
Hambali lived frugally, and married a Chinese Malaysian woman who had converted to Islam. Whenever he brought her to the home village for a visit, she would remain in the background, veiled from head to toe in a chador, only her eyes visible. "Only the family were allowed to talk to her," Apip said. "He said, 'My wife is my personal property.' " 
 As early as 1996, according to the sources who have seen reports of the Mohammed interrogation, Hambali worked for Mohammed on al Qaeda's media committee, which publicized the network's exploits with a newspaper, fliers and videos, and culled press reports for leader Osama bin Laden.  
 In 1996, Mohammed visited Malaysia and Singapore to observe Hambali's recruitment and found him to be "charismatic and popular among his recruits," according to an account of his interrogation. Hambali and his group, "unlike Gulf Arabs, were poor, and therefore take great care in how they spend money for operations," this account said. 
 After the fall of Suharto in 1998, a Christian-Muslim armed conflict erupted in the Molucca islands of eastern Indonesia and it greatly influenced Hambali. He saw it as emblematic of a worldwide war on Islam and used it to motivate Jemaah Islamiah members, showing them graphic videotapes of attacks on mosques and villages, according to a report of an interrogation of an operative captured in Singapore. 
 Hambali was growing so trusted within the al Qaeda network that he was tapped to arrange a meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 at which, analysts said, about a dozen senior al Qaeda members discussed the pending attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen and the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackings. He also arranged flight lessons for Zacarias Moussaoui, now awaiting trial at U.S. District Court in Alexandria on charges of aiding the Sept. 11 plot. 
 But Hambali was also actively carrying out assaults in this region as well, investigators said. They included a bombing attack on the Philippine ambassador to Indonesia in August, 2000, and on Christian churches in 11 Indonesian cities on Christmas Eve that year.  
 Mohammed told investigators that it was Hambali who planned a car bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta in the summer of 2001, an unsuccessful operation previously thought to be the work mainly of al Qaeda operatives from Yemen. 
 On Sept. 11, 2001, Hambali was back in Afghanistan, wanting to be close to bin Laden and Mohammed, said Gunaratna, citing an interrogation report of a captured al Qaeda suspect. After the hijackings, Hambali returned to Kuala Lumpur, where he worked on yet another plan, to attack Western embassies in Singapore with truck bombs. In mid-December, Singapore foiled that plot and he fled to Bangkok, according to intelligence reports. 
 In a January 2002 meeting there with al Qaeda members, Hambali discussed conducting "small bombings in bars, cafes, or nightclubs frequented by Westerners" in Southeast Asia, another captured al Qaeda member, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, has said, according to an FBI document. That meeting, intelligence officials from countries in the region said , provided the inspiration for the Bali attacks. 
 And last November, Mohammed sent him the $ 50,000 for further attacks. According to three intelligence sources in Southeast Asia who have seen summaries of Mohammed's interrogation, it was decided that if the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok or Jakarta proved too difficult to hit, Hambali's network would strike a "tourist" or "economic" target, similar to the Bali nightclubs. 
 A highly placed U.S. official added that Mohammed said Hambali also planned an attack on an oil company or tanker and possibly an Israeli embassy in the region. 
 Apip, his former teacher, said he feels very sorry for the man. "If I had the chance to meet him," Apip said, "I'd say, 'Please surrender yourself. Your family is under a lot of pressure.' " Right after the Bali bombing, Apip recalled, television reporters descended on the dirt lane where Hambali's mother lives. She could not bear to talk to them, he said, and she fainted. 
 Staff writer Susan Schmidt in Washington and special correspondents Noor Huda Ismail and Natasha Tampubolon in Jakarta contributed to this report. 




2

  
  


March 28, 2003 Friday 



 Illness, war hurting Vietnam tourism;
OFFICIALS CONFIDENT TRAVEL WILL REBOUND;
international travel

 
The deadly illness gripping Asia the past two months has claimed another victim: Vietnam's tourism industry.
With people scared away by the mysterious flulike ailment, hotels are losing bookings, tours are canceling and airlines are flying fewer passengers.
On top of that, war in Iraq is making things worse for an industry that in recent years had been enjoying unprecedented growth -- 13 percent last year alone.
In the days immediately after the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, as the mysterious illness has been dubbed, the Caravelle Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City lost more than 500 bookings as anxious travelers canceled their reservations. 
In Hanoi, the Handspan travel agency has lost 20 percent of its bookings this month, while Buffalo Tours has had to cancel 14 tours after about 100 customers called off their trips. Most were worried about the pneumonia-like illness that the World Health Organization says has infected 1,376 people and killed 53 since Feb. 1, mostly in Asia. Four of the deaths have occurred in Vietnam.
''We started receiving e-mails from customers saying they wanted to cancel their tours,'' said Nguyen Phuong Nam, sales manager for Buffalo Tours. ''They were worried about two things: the attack on Iraq and the flu spreading in Hanoi.''
Vietnam's national tourism office, desperate to keep the good times rolling, issued a statement late last week beseeching travelers not to panic.
''Vietnam is still a safe destination for tourists,'' the statement said. ''Visitors to Vietnam will be well taken care of and served with high-quality products and services and safety.''
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta advised people to postpone non-essential travel to Hanoi, Hong Kong and China's Guangdong province until further notice. The World Health Organization issued a global travel advisory intended to heighten awareness of the illness, whose symptoms include high fever, cough, shortness of breath and difficult breathing.
In Hanoi, 60 people have been hospitalized and two have died as a result of the illness, which was first recognized after an American businessman traveling to Hanoi from China via Hong Kong fell ill and later died. The Hanoi hospital where he was treated closed down after more than 30 of its staff became afflicted with the illness, an atypical pneumonia whose cause and cure remain under investigation.
 
Cautious optimism
By the end of the week, the spread of the disease had been slowing in Hanoi, and health officials expressed cautious optimism about the prospect of containing it here.
Many travelers are not reassured.
''The illness is in the back of your mind and it takes away from the experience a little,'' said Chris Weldon, 31, a San Franciscan visiting Vietnam with his friend Duncan Carling, another Bay Area resident.
''Our parents are probably worried sick,'' said Carling, who was recently laid off by a Foster City software firm. ''I told my mom we'd probably be safer in Hanoi than we would be in the U.S., but that was before I heard about the flu virus.''
Weldon and Carling knew about the virus before they left but decided to come anyway. As they planned their trip, Carling said, the United States was on the brink of attacking Iraq.
''If Vietnam were a Muslim country, maybe we wouldn't have come,'' Carling said, adding that he bypassed Indonesia and Malaysia because they seemed like potential targets for terrorists. ''I would not have visited a predominantly Muslim country on this trip.''
Tourism in other Asian nations affected by the outbreak also is suffering. Tourism officials in China, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere are reporting travel slowdowns.
 
Recent boom
But despite the recent one-two punch of illness and war, hoteliers, travel agents and tourism officials are confident that the long-term trajectory of Vietnam's tourism industry will continue sharply upward.
The number of tourists discovering Vietnam -- which had been isolated by years of war and economic blockades -- has risen steadily in recent years. Last year, with the economy roaring and business travelers also converging on the country, international arrivals on Vietnam Airlines rose by 20 percent.
Visitors have been lured by a variety of factors: Vietnam is seen as a new, undiscovered destination, it is relatively inexpensive and the number of resort hotels has grown. And, with its predominantly Buddhist population and a communist government, Vietnam seemed a safe alternative to other countries in the region where the terrorist threat posed by Muslim extremists could make even a glorious sun-drenched beach seem ominous.
After Sept. 11 and the terrorist attacks in Bali in October, Vietnam saw a surge in tourism as people sought a less threatening Southeast Asian destination. The country has no known Muslim extremist groups, and the security police in the fast-changing nation keep close watch on the population.
Now, fear of flying is scaring away tourists.
Thursday, the WHO urged airlines flying out of a handful of cities hit by SARS -- including Hanoi -- to question passengers at check-in desks for signs of sickness and to bar anyone with flulike symptoms from boarding.
With airline passengers now donning masks to prevent the spread of SARS or staying away because of war, the industry knows it has some tough times ahead. Still, some executives see a quick recovery.
 
Immediate reaction
Stephen O'Grady, manager of the Caravelle Hotel, said the travel industry is always subject to fluctuations because of world events. He predicted that Vietnam would continue to draw increasing numbers of visitors in the future.
''Whenever something like this happens, you get an immediate reaction from the general international traveling public,'' O'Grady said. ''They stop and assess what is happening in the world, and then business returns to normal.''
For O'Grady, whose hotel caters to business travelers in a city where the economy has been booming, normal has meant 100 percent occupancy on many weekdays. The same is true at other upscale hotels in Ho Chi Minh City.
In Hanoi, many visitors said they wouldn't let their travel be hemmed in by the threat of illness or war.
Sharon Goodman, 33, a native of Brisbane, Australia, who is visiting Vietnam with her mother, came to Hanoi from Bangkok. As they were about to board their flight, her father called to warn them about the flu. ''You're not going there!'' he told her, but they ignored his advice and came anyway.
''I have a lousy attitude about things like that,'' Goodman said of SARS. ''I figure when your number's up, it's up.''






  
  


March 28, 2003 Friday  



 ILLNESS, WAR HURTING VIETNAM TOURISM;
THE MYSTERIOUS FLULIKE AILMENT GRIPPING ASIA, PAIRED WITH THE WAR IN IRAQ, IS HAVING AN IMPACT: HOTELS ARE LOSING BOOKINGS, GROUP TOURS ARE CANCELING AND AIRLINES ARE FLYING FEWER PASSENGERS.
OFFICIALS CONFIDENT TRAVEL WILL REBOUND

 
The deadly illness gripping Asia the past two months hasclaimed another victim: Vietnam's tourism industry.
With people scared away by the mysterious flulike ailment, hotels are losing bookings, tours are canceling and airlines are flying fewer passengers.
On top of that, war in Iraq is making things worse for an industry that in recent years had been enjoying unprecedented growth -- 13 percent last year alone.
In the days immediately after the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, as the mysterious illness has been dubbed, the Caravelle Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City lost more than 500 bookings as anxious travelers canceled their reservations. 
In Hanoi, the Handspan travel agency has lost 20 percent of its bookings this month, while Buffalo Tours has had to cancel 14 tours after about 100 customers called off their trips. Most were worried about the pneumonia-like illness that the World Health Organization says has infected 1,376 people and killed 53 since Feb. 1, mostly in Asia. Four of the deaths have occurred in Vietnam.
"We started receiving e-mails from customers saying they wanted to cancel their tours," said Nguyen Phuong Nam, sales manager for Buffalo Tours. "They were worried about two things: the attack on Iraq and the flu spreading in Hanoi."
Vietnam's national tourism office, desperate to keep the good times rolling, issued a statement late last week beseeching travelers not to panic.
"Vietnam is still a safe destination for tourists," the statement said. "Visitors to Vietnam will be well taken care of and served with high-quality products and services and safety."
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta advised people to postpone non-essential travel to Hanoi, Hong Kong and China's Guangdong province until further notice. The World Health Organization issued a global travel advisory intended to heighten awareness of the illness, whose symptoms include high fever, cough, shortness of breath and difficult breathing.
In Hanoi, 60 people have been hospitalized and two have died as a result of the illness, which was first recognized after an American businessman traveling to Hanoi from China via Hong Kong fell ill and later died. The Hanoi hospital where he was treated closed down after more than 30 of its staff became afflicted with the illness, an atypical pneumonia whose cause and cure remain under investigation.
Cautious optimism
By the end of the week, the spread of the disease had been slowing in Hanoi, and health officials expressed cautious optimism about the prospect of containing it here.
Many travelers are not reassured.
"The illness is in the back of your mind and it takes away from the experience a little," said Chris Weldon, 31, a San Franciscan visiting Vietnam with his friend Duncan Carling, another Bay Area resident.
"Our parents are probably worried sick," said Carling, who was recently laid off by a Foster City software firm. "I told my mom we'd probably be safer in Hanoi than we would be in the U.S., but that was before I heard about the flu virus."
Weldon and Carling knew about the virus before they left but decided to come anyway. As they planned their trip, Carling said, the United States was on the brink of attacking Iraq.
"If Vietnam were a Muslim country, maybe we wouldn't have come," Carling said, adding that he bypassed Indonesia and Malaysia because they seemed like potential targets for terrorists. "I would not have visited a predominantly Muslim country on this trip."
Tourism in other Asian nations affected by the outbreak also is suffering. Tourism officials in China, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere are reporting travel slowdowns.
Recent boom
But despite the recent one-two punch of illness and war, hoteliers, travel agents and tourism officials are confident that the long-term trajectory ofVietnam's tourism industry will continue sharply upward.
The number of tourists discovering Vietnam -- which had been isolated by years of war and economic blockades -- has risen steadily in recent years. Last year, with the economy roaring and business travelers also converging on the country, international arrivals on Vietnam Airlines rose by 20 percent.
Visitors have been lured by a variety of factors: Vietnam is seen as a new, undiscovered destination, it is relatively inexpensive and the number of resort hotels has grown. And, with its predominantly Buddhist population and a communist government, Vietnam seemed a safe alternative to other countries in the region where the terrorist threat posed by Muslim extremists could make even a glorious sun-drenched beach seem ominous.
After Sept. 11 and the terrorist attacks in Bali in October, Vietnam saw a surge in tourism as people sought a less threatening Southeast Asian destination. The country has no known Muslim extremist groups, and the security police in the fast-changing nation keep close watch on the population.
Now, fear of flying is scaring away tourists.
Thursday, the WHO urged airlines flying out of a handful of cities hit by SARS -- including Hanoi -- to question passengers at check-in desks for signs of sickness and to bar anyone with flulike symptoms from boarding.
With airline passengers now donning masks to prevent the spread of SARS or staying away because of war, the industry knows it has some tough times ahead. Still, some executives see a quick recovery.
Immediate reaction
Stephen O'Grady, manager of the Caravelle Hotel, said the travel industry is always subject to fluctuations because of world events. He predicted that Vietnam would continue to draw increasing numbers of visitors in the future.
"Whenever something like this happens, you get an immediate reaction from the general international traveling public," O'Grady said. "They stop and assess what is happening in the world, and then business returns to normal."
For O'Grady, whose hotel caters to business travelers in a city where the economy has been booming, normal has meant 100 percent occupancy on many weekdays. The same is true at other upscale hotels in Ho Chi Minh City.
In Hanoi, many visitors said they wouldn't let their travel be hemmed in by the threat of illness or war.
Sharon Goodman, 33, a native of Brisbane, Australia, who is visiting Vietnam with her mother, came to Hanoi from Bangkok. As they were about to board their flight, her father called to warn them about the flu. "You're not going there!" he told her, but they ignored his advice and came anyway.
"I have a lousy attitude about things like that," Goodman said of SARS. "I figure when your number's up, it's up."






  
  

  Philadelphia Inquirer

March 27, 2003 Thursday ADVANCE EDITION



 Rick Nichols / With fries like these, who needs enemies?

 
Long before Cubbie's scribbled "freedom fries" on its menu down in Beaufort, N.C., and fired the shot that echoed through the white-bread cafeterias of Congress, a funny thing had happened to the french fry.
It had stopped being French, such as it ever really was. (Belgians claim paternity and, frankly, still make the best version.)
It had become, in fact, more American - and more globally associated with America - than apple pie, by far the longest-range field piece in the nation's formidable fast-food arsenal. 
Idaho alone is the world's largest supplier of frozen fries, an export market worth $356 million in 2001. (And that's just for 14 percent of the total U.S. fry production.)
In the annals of value-added farm products, processed fries are a triumph: J.R. Simplot, the Northwest's potato baron, made a fortune buying raw Russet Burbanks at a nickel a pound, then selling them abroad for 30 cents a pound as fries.
But as with so many all-American success stories, there is a dark side: The fry now stands so overarchingly dominant that it inspires the sort of love-hate reactions normally reserved for, well, the planet's only remaining superpower.
If you happen to be a European anti-fast-foodie (or a French farmer wary of biotech corn or an English homemaker skeptical of hormone-enhanced U.S. beef), a bag of McDonald's fries has the scent of cultural imperialism.
If you are a red-blooded American doctor, on the other hand, you might have another concern: To a cardiologist, the french fry, loaded with trans-fatty acids, is the nutritional equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction.
Though you won't hear it from the big talkers in Congress, fries have also had an unpretty impact on innocent rural landscapes.
Even as fry profits soared (the reason for such fevered competition for fry-share between Burger King and McDonald's), Idaho was losing about half its small potato farmers, the acreage bundled into massive corporate holdings.
The result, as chronicled in Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, has made land patterns in rural Idaho reminiscent of those in blighted 19th-century Ireland: One class runs the farms; another owns the land.
But it isn't a famine so much as a glut of potatoes that has had the most visible impact on America's bottom - as in derriere, pardon my French - line.
The typical congressional constituent now downs an awesome 26 more pounds of fries annually than in 1960, due in part to the tripling of serving sizes.
Of course, once the domestic appetite has been sated, the surplus fries - crisp and irresistible - are precisely targeted at the international market.
Japan continues to be the largest overseas consumer, though analysts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture say its aging population and long recession don't bode well for growth of the market.
Better bets? China and South Korea, provided the lid doesn't blow to the north.
Each foreign market has its own dynamic: In 1998, the Portland Oregonian's Richard Read detailed the U.S. fry invasion of Indonesia as that country's economy took off.
The J.R. Simplot plant in Hermiston, Ore., even put in a halal line (using strictly vegetable oil) to make the fries acceptable to Indonesia's Muslim population.
Then the Indonesian economy tanked, making it unpatriotic for local McDonald's franchisees to buy imported fries with the requisite U.S. dollars at a time when the staggering rupiah needed propping up.
What goes around comes around: Now it's their presumed French-ness that has given America's fries a bad name.
Given that fast-food spuds have been sliced and diced, sprayed with exotic compounds of starch, fried in odd baths of beef-extract-flavored oils, and otherwise bizarrely altered, a question occurs.
Why didn't the French petition Congress to have their name removed long ago?
Contact columnist Rick Nichols at 215-854-2715 or rnichols@phillynews.com






  
  

  

MARCH 27, 2003 Thursday ADVANCE EDITION



 With fries like these, who needs enemies?;
Switching from 'french' to 'freedom' won't solve the problems with fries

 
Long before Cubbie's scribbled "freedom fries" on its menu down in Beaufort, N.C., and fired the shot that echoed through the white-bread cafeterias of Congress, a funny thing had happened to the french fry.
It had stopped being French, such as it ever really was. (Belgians claim paternity and, frankly, still make the best version.)
It had become, in fact, more American - and more globally associated with America - than apple pie, by far the longest-range field piece in the nation's formidable fast-food arsenal. 
Idaho alone is the world's largest supplier of frozen fries, an export market worth $356 million in 2001. (And that's just for 14 percent of the total U.S. fry production.)
In the annals of value-added farm products, processed fries are a triumph: J.R. Simplot, the Northwest's potato baron, made a fortune buying raw Russet Burbanks at a nickel a pound, then selling them abroad for 30 cents a pound as fries.
But as with so many all-American success stories, there is a dark side: The fry now stands so overarchingly dominant that it inspires the sort of love-hate reactions normally reserved for, well, the planet's only remaining superpower.
If you happen to be a European anti-fast-foodie (or a French farmer wary of biotech corn or an English homemaker skeptical of hormone-enhanced U.S. beef), a bag of McDonald's fries has the scent of cultural imperialism.
If you are a red-blooded American doctor, on the other hand, you might have another concern: To a cardiologist, the french fry, loaded with trans-fatty acids, is the nutritional equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction.
Though you won't hear it from the big talkers in Congress, fries have also had an unpretty impact on innocent rural landscapes.
Even as fry profits soared (the reason for such fevered competition for fry-share between Burger King and McDonald's), Idaho was losing about half its small potato farmers, the acreage bundled into massive corporate holdings.
The result, as chronicled in Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, has made land patterns in rural Idaho reminiscent of those in blighted 19th-century Ireland: One class runs the farms; another owns the land.
But it isn't a famine so much as a glut of potatoes that has had the most visible impact on America's bottom - as in derriere, pardon my French - line.
The typical congressional constituent now downs an awesome 26 more pounds of fries annually than in 1960, due in part to the tripling of serving sizes.
Of course, once the domestic appetite has been sated, the surplus fries - crisp and irresistible - are precisely targeted at the international market.
Japan continues to be the largest overseas consumer, though analysts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture say its aging population and long recession don't bode well for growth of the market.
Better bets? China and South Korea, provided the lid doesn't blow to the north.
Each foreign market has its own dynamic: In 1998, the Portland Oregonian's Richard Read detailed the U.S. fry invasion of Indonesia as that country's economy took off.
The J.R. Simplot plant in Hermiston, Ore., even put in a halal line (using strictly vegetable oil) to make the fries acceptable to Indonesia's Muslim population.
Then the Indonesian economy tanked, making it unpatriotic for local McDonald's franchisees to buy imported fries with the requisite U.S. dollars at a time when the staggering rupiah needed propping up.
What goes around comes around: Now it's their presumed French-ness that has given America's fries a bad name.
Given that fast-food spuds have been sliced and diced, sprayed with exotic compounds of starch, fried in odd baths of beef-extract-flavored oils, and otherwise bizarrely altered, a question occurs.
Why didn't the French petition Congress to have their name removed long ago?
Contact columnist Rick Nichols
at 215-854-2715 or rnichols@phillynews.com.







  



March 27, 2003 Thursday  




 Local Muslims Turn Attention To Civil Rights; 
Registration for Immigrants Becomes Particular Concern

 
Friday prayer services at the Prince George's Muslim Association Community Center in Lanham have always been followed by a series of cheerful public announcements -- the start of a new Arabic class, an upcoming feast to celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan, another sale at a local halal grocery of items required by Islamic dietary laws. 
But recently the list is just as likely to include a more serious type of event -- the latest seminar on how to stand up for your rights as a Muslim in the United States. 
There have been many such events from which to choose. Mosques and community groups across Prince George's County are expanding their mission to address new immigration and security laws that the U.S. government maintains are needed to prevent terrorism but that critics charge unfairly target thousands of innocent Muslims and Arab and South Asian residents.  
 "A lot of families in our community are feeling very apprehensive . . . and immigration lawyers tell us it's only going to get worse," said Minhaj Hasan, editor of the Muslim Link, a monthly newsletter published by the Dar-us-Salaam mosque in College Park. 
 About 10,000 copies of Muslim Link are printed for distribution across the Washington region, and the publication has been quick to adapt. Founded four years ago, it originally featured meditations on "the basics of Islam, rules and regulations, things like that," he said. 
 Now it also contains articles on civil rights and editorials exhorting readers not to abandon their faith in the face of discrimination, or to shop at Muslim-owned businesses that lost non-Muslim customers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. 
The most recent issue also has a "questions and answers" column with an immigration lawyer. The first in what Hasan said will be a series, it deals with one of the most controversial federal security initiatives -- a program to register, fingerprint and question thousands of male visitors from 25 countries considered sources of terrorism. 
The "special registration" effort has caused panic and confusion because more than 1,600 of the 41,000-plus men nationwide who have signed up were detained for visa violations, and many had applications pending for permanent residency. Large numbers of those arrested spent a night or more in jail. 
 Although nearly all have been released, they and about 3,800 who were not detained face deportation proceedings. The government has refused to release statistics on the number of registrants detained in the Washington area. 
The deadline for most nationals who must register for the program has passed. Those from Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, and Kuwait have until April 25. 
Because the program covers countries with large non-Muslim populations, a few local churches also have mobilized to help immigrant parishioners navigate the program's legal questions. 
That's the case at St. John the Baptist, a Catholic church at 12319 New Hampshire Ave. in Silver Spring, close to Prince George's. A few weeks ago, church officials organized an informational meeting on special registration for about 50 Indonesian parishioners with David Cleveland, a lawyer with Catholic Charities who speaks their language. 
"People asked a lot of questions that we didn't know the answers to," Cleveland said. "Congress has written an unclear law, the [U.S.] attorney general has issued some unclear rules, and he constantly makes amendments, so the law today may be different from the law next month." 
Another regional group providing legal outreach in Prince George's has been South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SALT). During successive weekends, its members have visited county butcher shops, pizza parlors and mosques that Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indonesian residents are known to frequent. They passing out fliers with the hotline number. 
Not everyone approached is grateful, noted Deepa Iyer, a SALT member. 
"Sometimes, people will say, 'I don't need this. This doesn't affect me because I'm a legal permanent resident.' . . . It's a defensive response," she said. 
But many more express deep gratitude. "They say, 'I'm so concerned. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to turn,' " Iyer said. 
 Another South Asian group, Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, based in the District, has set up a hotline. It is staffed by law students who speak a range of South Asian languages. The group offers legal referrals to area immigrants seeking advice on special registration and has negotiated with lawyers to provide low rates for clients it refers. 
The group's services are in high demand, said Iyer, who is also involved with the District group and oversees its hotline. 
 "Before special registration was announced, a lot of the people calling in had questions about divorce, or child custody issues. . . . Now we're getting people saying 'I'm undocumented, and I'm really scared to register. Should I do it?' " 






 Reed Elsevier Inc.


 Daily Variety

March 26, 2003, Wednesday



 Winds of war whip Mip attendance

 
CANNES --- Tom Jones and Mariah Carey brought some musical relief to Mip TV Tuesday --- though war with Iraq and economic gloom kept the five-day market humming in a minor key.
There are 8,000 delegates, 1,000 fewer than at the same time last year and well down on the 12,000 high of three years ago, organizer Reed Midem said --- something those inside the convention center sensed.
Key last-minute defections were from the U.S., Japan and Latin America --- most of whom were put off by the war.
"A lot of people didn't even cancel, they just didn't show up," Reed Midem chief exec Paul Zilk said. 
However, the topper insisted Mip wasn't doing that badly. "I think it's a good market in the context. People are saying, 'Life goes on, and we have to do business.' "
Effectively, Mip has taken a double whammy: the war in Iraq and the sluggish state of the international TV market.
Zilk revealed pre-registration had been up 2%-3% before the war kicked off two days prior to Mip Doc's opening Saturday.
Logistical limits
"Mip is too close now to NATPE (in late January). People are genuinely afraid of traveling and have seen their acquisition budgets cut," said Televisa Intl. manager Eugenio Lopez Negrete.
However, some participants were philosophical. "I wasn't worried about traveling," said Triandy Suyatman, program chief at Indonesia's National TV.  "I'm a Muslim and a fatalist. You can die crossing the street."
Endemol did go ahead Tuesday night with its Euro talent-spotting finale of "Star Academy," known as "Eurobest." Special guests included Jones, Carey and Atomic Kitten.
Nixed shindigs included Hallmark's miniseries launch party, France 2's dinner and Mip's opening 40th anni fireworks. Those parties that did go ahead promoted specific product, such as Canal Plus' bash for its set-top box, Pilotime.
Echoing the views of many mart goers, Sesto Cifola, head of sales for Italy's RAI Trade, said: "It's difficult to sell programming when there's a war going. It's saddening. You watch the TV and it makes you think about what one is doing here, selling fiction during this tragedy."
Documakers demur
Three major docu players --- National Geographic, the Discovery Channel and Japan's NHK --- canceled or appeared in depleted numbers. Talked-up product focused on war and terrorism.
German United Distributors' "Das Kartell," about George W. Bush's oil industry connections, drew keen interest from --- who would have guessed? --- French broadcasters. Three Gallic webs, including TF1, acquired non-exclusive rights to the pic.
"Das Kartell" also sold to broadcasters in Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain.
Meanwhile, ZDF extended its agreement with Qatar-based news network Al-Jazeera for exclusive material.
If a war wasn't bad enough short-term, the international market faces long-term challenges.
"There are two factors at play," said one sales agent. "Normally when there are ad downturns, they occur regionally, but we've got a global downturn.
"Also, the big groups are still investing in long-term diversification from a cable buildup to Internet, 3G, interactive TV, digital satellite platforms," the agent added. "But these massive investments are not generating the revenues, which they have in their budgets, in the time frames they had expected."
Downbeat delegates
Delegates were in a pretty downbeat mood. "Since Sept. 11, all the TV markets are suffering," said Jean-Paul Connin, chief operating officer of France Televisions Distribution. "NATPE was a disaster; trade markets are very diminished."
But there were a few rays of hope. DVD dealing has reached fever pitch in Cannes, with several of the biggest programmakers in the world kicking off the market by announcing DVD pacts (see below).
"It is beyond doubt the start of a new golden age," Stuart Snaith, director of video, sponsorship and events at BBC Worldwide, told a panel discussion Tuesday on the potential growth of DVD. "DVD is the fastest-growing technology ever to be taken up in the U.K. Last year, 4 million DVDs were sold, and this year we're expecting 5 million."
China beachhead
Another, if more minor and nebulous hope, is China.
The newly amalgamated conglom Shanghai Media & Entertainment Group staged a press conference Monday at which CEO Li Ruigang stressed time and again SMEG's enthusiasm for collaborating with the West. This could take the form of project-by-project collaboration or longer-term partnerships.
Two "significant deals," which could service 3.5 million fiber optic households, could be announced this April or May, he added.
Despite tough market conditions, some deals have trickled through:
Endemol has closed Argentina, Canada and Australia on gameshow "Deal or No Deal."
Televisa has renewed --- and hiked the hours --- on a telenovela output deal with Romania's Acasa TV.
BBC Worldwide's pre-teen CGI super hero "Ace Lightning" has been picked up by Nickelodeon (Spain), SIC (Portugal,) RAI 2 (Italy) and Televisa (Mexico) as well as others.
National Geographic has inked a deal with Associated Press TV to deliver news content to its international news service.
Granada has been appointed sole distributor for CNN's flagship current affairs specials and biography programming. Agreement covers two of CNN's major programming strands to be distributed under the banners "World in View" and "Front Page Profiles."







   
 

March 25, 2003 Tuesday  
  



 TELEVISION REVIEW; 
How a Nightmare Began and Might Continue

 
Their tones may differ, but in each of three documentaries about the roots of 9/11 and its aftermath in the Muslim world there is one truly terrifying moment.
     In "Al Qaeda 2.0," which will be shown tonight with "Terror's Children" on the new Discovery Times Channel and includes dramatic scenes of suspected Al Qaeda terrorists being hunted down in the caves of Afghanistan and the slums of Karachi, Pakistan, Dr. Saad al-Fagih, a leading Saudi dissident, says, "There is an impending attack coming, and this attack is immense, huge and either as big or even bigger than Sept. 11, and this attack is full of surprise." 
 In "Terror's Children" a boy of 10 who has bright eyes and a curiosity that is being stifled in a religious school in Pakistan visits a swimming pool where men and women frolic together. He surveys the scene, turns to an interviewer and says, "Everyone here is going to hell." 
In "Searching for the Roots of 9/11," which will be shown tomorrow night on the Discovery Channel and on April 1 on Discovery Times, Thomas L. Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for , visits Al Azhar mosque in Cairo. Once the sermon ends, young men take over the mosque and "in aninstant we went from prayer to politics," Mr. Friedman says. While most of the worshipers had left the mosque, he adds, "it struck me that in some sense they were letting Islam and its spiritual message of a God of mercy and compassion be hijacked."
Each program is straightforward, an individual search by a journalist trying to understand some aspect of 9/11. Mr. Friedman's quest is twofold: "First, what motivated those 19 young men, those hijackers, to board those planes and kill 3,000 of my brothers and sisters? And second, why did so many of their fellow Arabs and Muslims applaud what they did?" His approach is measured and thoughtful as he travels to Belgium, Egypt, Bahrain, Indonesia, even to the studio of Al Jazeera television in Qatar. ("I, little Tommy Friedman, Jewish boy from Minneapolis, have been interviewed" on Al Jazeera, he says. "They get in my face, and I get back in theirs.")
Dyab Abou Jahjah, a young Muslim leader in Belgium, offers one root of 9/11: he says the United States has been supporting bullies in the Middle East for 50 years. Mr. Friedman's friend Rami Khouri, a Jordanian writer, tells him he thinks the United States has a "hypocritical policy and applies one standard here," another there. In Cairo, walking in the old neighborhood of Mohamed Atta, a leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Friedman and Ali Salem, a playwright, talk about Mr. Salem's idea that in Egypt art, education and the economy had been leveled, making the hijackers feel like dwarfs. Consequently, they searched for tall buildings to bring down.
Throughout the program, produced by New York Times Television, Mr. Friedman returns to a softly lighted room and a comfortable chair, which paces the hour effectively, making it easy to absorb the ideas and information being presented.
No such calming effect is in order for Peter L. Bergen's quick-paced, action-packed "Al Qaeda 2.0." Mr. Bergen is the author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden" (The Free Press, 2001). In March 1997, while working as a producer for CNN, Mr. Bergen, along with Peter Arnett, interviewed Mr. bin Laden, and "Al Qaeda 2.0" opens with Mr. bin Laden saying, "Targeting the Americans and the Jews by killing them in any corner of the earth is the greatest of obligations and the most excellent way of gaining nearness to Allah."
"Al Qaeda 2.0" asks, Where will Al Qaeda's next move be? If watching the hour is a bit dizzying, that is perhaps appropriate to the subject. A United States government counterterrorism coordinator says of Al Qaeda, "We're after them from the North Pole to the South Pole; there's no place to go, no place to run," but it is hardly reassuring when that statement is juxtaposed against the comment from a former C.I.A. operative that "they're everywhere and nowhere; we don't know where they are."
"Everywhere" is reinforced by the program's locations: Tora Bora, Karachi, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh.
If "Searching for the Roots of 9/11" is the intellectual quest and "Al Qaeda 2.0" the on-the-ground, cloak-and-dagger search, then "Terror's Children," also produced by New York Times Television, is the personal one, and the most moving. 
Sharmeen Obaid, a recent graduate of Smith College, returns to Karachi, where she grew up in relative affluence. Her purpose in "Terror's Children" is to meet and understand the Afghan children living in a refugee camp, children she sees wandering the streets of Karachi, "picking through trash and hustling odd jobs at the local markets," children most Pakistanis consider a nuisance, children who "are being brainwashed and trained as terrorists."
A first-time filmmaker, Ms. Obaid is compassionate but not sentimental. She speaks openly and matter-of-factly and, by letting the audience know her background, avoids the posturing of reporters who go to places with third-world conditions and assume an unctuous familiarity with their subjects.
Individual children come alive, if only for a brief time. It's hard not to wish the camera or editor had stayed in the company of some of them longer, but it was not always possible. Following people with a camera means calling attention to them; one boy who works as a garbage picker is hassled by private security forces more than usual. 
"Our first attempt at getting close to one of the refugees has only made his life more difficult," Ms. Obaid acknowledges. "Without notice he slips away."
She is professional, but she cannot help but grow close to some of the children. Abdur Raheem, a 13-year-old working as a carpet weaver, helps support his four brothers, including an older one who spends his time "pursuing personal pleasures" like using opium. Offended by his living off his younger brother, Ms. Obaid takes him to task a little. "As an outsider, and a woman," she says, "interfering any more with this Afghani man might be dangerous. But I hope life improves for this little family."
So, too, do we. 

AL QAEDA 2.0
Discovery Times Channel, tonight at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7 Central time

Directed by Carsten Oblaender; Peter L. Bergen, Mr. Oblaender and Vicky Matthews, producers; Ms. Matthews, co-producer; Andreas Cutzeit, executive producer; Mr. Bergen and Mr. Oblaender, writers; Christoph Senn, editor. For , Douglas Frantz and Don Van Natta Jr., editorial consultants; Lawrie Mifflin, director of television programming; Michael Oreskes, executive in charge. For Discovery Times, Bill Smee, executive producer; Vivian Schiller, executive in charge of production.

TERROR'S CHILDREN
Discovery Times Channel, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8 Central time

Sharmeen Obaid, Mohammed Naqvi and Jay Keuper, producers; Ahmad Khan, director of photography; Mr. Keuper, editor; David Rohde, reporter for . For New York Times Television, William Abrams and Ann Derry, executive producers; Philip A. Boag, senior producer; Lawrie Mifflin, director of television programming; Michael Oreskes, executive in charge. For Discovery Times: Bill Smee, executive producer; Vivian Schiller, executive in charge of production.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN REPORTING
Searching for the Roots of 9/11

Discovery, tomorrow night at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time; and on Discovery Times Channel, April 1 at 8 p.m., Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time.

Ann Derry, executive producer; Edward Gray, producer-director; Stephen Reverand, executive producer for Discovery Channel; Clark Bunting, executive in charge of production.







   
 

March 23, 2003 Sunday  
  



 A NATION AT WAR: DEMONSTRATIONS; 
Thousands Denounce War and the United States in Cities Around the World

 
Angered by television images of Baghdad ablaze and allied columns rolling across Iraq, tens of thousands of protesters from Berlin and London to Indonesia and Malaysia took to the streets today to condemn the United States-led war, though the numbers were far below the millions who gathered before the war.
     But the anger at the war was unmitigated. "Dresden 1945, Baghdad 2003: the same crime," read a placard hoisted aloft on the Alexanderplatz in Berlin, comparing the bombing of the Iraqi capital to the World War II firestorm in Dresden. 
 In London, the police said more than 200,000 demonstrators took to the streets in an antiwar protest, far fewer than the approximately one million who protested last month but double the initial police forecast. 
Some protesters tried to block Oxford Street, a major shopping street. Police officers in riot gear broke up the protest after accusing demonstrators of throwing bottles and stones. Ten people were arrested, the police said.
"I am here to express my frustration and anger about what's happening," Shaf Hussain, a dental student, told Britain's Press Association in London. "No one is listening to us. And all those people are dying out there.
"There is no guarantee that they will kill Saddam Hussein because they have not managed to kill Osama bin Laden."
The protests in Europe have drawn in church leaders and politicians, schoolchildren and labor leaders. Pope John Paul II, in his first remarks about the war since it began, urged peace.
"When war, like the one now in Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is even more urgent for us to proclaim, with a firm and decisive voice, that only peace is the way of building a more just and caring society," he said in a speech to employees of Telepace, a Roman Catholic television station. "Violence and weapons can never resolve the problems of man."
In Spain, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets for the third day running to protest against the war and their government's unwavering support for the operation. About half a million people joined a march in Barcelona, according to the city's authorities. An estimated 100,000 were marching in Madrid, despite clashes on Friday night between police and demonstrators outside the American Embassy.
"It is not too late to let them know they must not wage war in our name," said Montserrat Garcia, a metalworker, as she walked along a central avenue in Madrid. "We have spent months struggling to persuade them to find another way to resolve things, and they have ignored us. And we'll be out on the streets every day until they stop."
Another protester, Juan Antonio Diaz, said he felt more strongly each day that the war went on. "I feel even more anger than on the first day because of the images we have seen on television of Baghdad burning, the same thing that happened to Madrid, the city I live in, during the Spanish Civil War," he said.
Four hours after the march began, the police clashed with young demonstrators on a central Madrid avenue, firing rubber-coated bullets to disperse the crowd. Thirty people were treated for injuries and three were detained.
More than 10,000 people protested against the war in towns and cities across Ireland. In Dublin, at least 5,000 people lay down on main streets outside Trinity College to simulate casualties of war.
In Germany, whose government opposes the war, and Britain, whose government supports it, protests were not limited to the capitals, but spread to provincial cities.
In Washington tonight, the police arrested seven people who were lying in the middle of H Street N.W., on the north side of Lafayette Park, one block from the White House. The police had told them they were violating the law and would be arrested.
The protesters were singing "Give Peace a Chance" and "We Shall Overcome," among other songs.
Earlier, in Asia, thousands of Muslims carried out peaceful protests at places including the United States Embassy in Indonesia and Malaysia's northeastern state of Kelantan. Scattered protests were also reported in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and among Muslims in India. Nearly 5,000 men and women marched to the American Embassy in New Delhi.
While no violent incidents were reported, some specialists in the region said the muted tone of the protests masked a seething anger among Muslims.
Other protests spread in New Zealand, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea and Australia. Australia has sent 2,000 troops to support the campaign against Saddam Hussein.
In Tokyo today, hundreds of antiwar demonstrators held up photographs of Iraqi children wounded in the 1991 Persian Gulf war and carried banners with peace messages.
Demonstrators marched on the United States Navy base in Yokosuka -- headquarters of the Seventh Fleet -- just south of Tokyo, the police said.
United States embassies and diplomatic offices in some Persian Gulf countries remained closed today, a day after violent protests in several Middle Eastern countries, including one in which three people were fatally shot outside the American Embassy in Yemen.
"There is a great deal of anti-American sentiment prevailing in the region following the war in Iraq," said a United States official in Saudi Arabia, explaining the decision to keep the embassy in Riyadh and consulates in Jiddah and Dhahran, as well as the American school, closed for another day.






  
  


March 23, 2003 Sunday 



 Worldwide demonstrations smaller but more violent;
POLICE KILL PROTESTER IN SUDAN; STREETS CLOSED IN CENTRAL LONDON

 
Peace marchers from around the world were in the streets again Saturday, their numbers much smaller than in earlier demonstrations, but in many cases their participants angrier and more violent.
''Bush, murderer,'' protesters chanted in Paris, while demonstrators in Finland roared: ''George Bush, CIA, how many kids did you kill today?''
Organizers said they had little time to plan the protests, and there was little sign of people responding to calls to pour into the streets or responding spontaneously to the start of war. Despite large turnouts in some cities Saturday, the mostly peaceful marches were dwarfed by anti-war protests Feb. 15, which saw some of the largest demonstrations in history. 
In the African nation of Sudan, anti-riot police fatally shot a 19-year-old university student during a protest in the capital, Khartoum, his cousin told the Associated Press. Police were not immediately available for comment. No further details were available.
In London, an anti-war crowd estimated by police at 200,000 forced the closing of central city streets from Westminster to Hyde Park, and eight people were arrested after riot police charged into a crowd that was trying to block Oxford Street. Many marchers said they were infuriated at televised scenes of the bombing of Baghdad and other Iraqi sites by U.S. and British forces.
''I remembered the Blitz of London,'' 82-year-old Devon resident Brenda Nixon said of the German air attacks on Britain in World War II, ''and this was a hell of a lot worse.''
Member of Parliament Alice Mahon, one of dozens of Labor Party MPs who have challenged Prime Minister Tony Blair's commitment of British forces to Iraq, told the assembled Hyde Park crowd that ''last night's ferocious bombing will be remembered by generations to come.''
On Feb. 15, a record London protest crowd, estimated at 750,000 to 2 million, decried the approaching war, joining millions in cities around the world. Saturday's marches were considerably smaller, with crowds at different sites in the low thousands.
But the demonstrations -- organized in just the past week -- again took place worldwide. Protest cities included: Belfast, Northern Ireland; Glasgow, Scotland; Seoul, South Korea; New Delhi, India; Taipei, Taiwan; Brisbane and Melbourne, Australia; Stuttgart, Germany; Sa%7Eo Paulo, Brazil; Paris; and Athens, Greece.
Police and about 15,000 demonstrators clashed in Athens.
U.S. and British embassies often were the targets of anger. Protesters threw stones at the British Embassy in Bahrain, and police in New Delhi had to keep hundreds of demonstrators away from the U.S. Embassy. Thirty women were arrested.
U.S. embassies and offices remained closed in several Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, after protests turned violent Friday. In Yemen on Friday, three protesters were shot dead as about 30,000 fought with police.
Outside London, many British protests Saturday were targeted at U.S. military bases in the country; crowds of demonstrators outside the bases have grown in recent days and weeks.
In Asia, the largest demonstrations were in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, but only a few thousand took part, some burning U.S. flags and photos of Bush. ''Fight back, Americans are killers,'' protesters chanted outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.
In Bahrain, riot police used tear gas against some 200 high school students who threw stones near the U.S. Embassy. Hundreds of riot police watched as about 5,000 students gathered at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.
''Oh Arab army! Where are you?'' the Cairo students chanted, calling on Arab nations to support Iraq.
In Great Britain, about 1,000 demonstrators brought aluminum foil to the U.S. military surveillance center in Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, with the hope of disrupting satellite communications at the base. A handful threw stones at police officers.
The U.S. air base at Fairford in Gloucestershire -- home to B-52 bombers believed to be used in the Iraq bombing campaign -- drew an estimated 5,000 protesters Saturday. A week ago, two anti-war activists sneaked onto the base at night and damaged dozens of supply and service trucks before being arrested.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.







  



March 23, 2003 Sunday  




 War News Filtered Through Nations' Politics; 
Reporting Is Extensive, but Nature of Coverage Largely Depends on Stance of Governments

 
 British journalists are blanketing television, radio and newspapers back home with extensive, round-the-clock coverage of the war, while the Arab news media are focusing almost exclusively on the view from inside Iraq and on antiwar demonstrations around the world. And Chinese viewers are getting perhaps their least-censored access ever to war reports. 
As the American- and British-led invasion of Iraq unfolds, what people see and read around the world still largely depends on where they live and on the stance their governments have taken. Many editorials have been relentlessly critical of the United States. But there is better access to and more information about this war than during any recent conflict.  
The BBC has mounted one of its most ambitious broadcast operations, with some 200 journalists and technicians deployed in Iraq and 12 nearby countries, including three correspondents and crew members in Baghdad. It is operating seven satellite dishes and broadcasting coverage 24 hours a day on television, radio and the Internet. The network's 10 p.m. news program Thursday drew 7.6 million viewers, its largest news audience since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a spokeswoman. 
 Britain's Sky News and ITN have also dispatched news crews to the region. Three members of an ITN crew were reported missing outside the southern Iraqi city of Basra after fighting broke out there. 
 British newspapers have also produced blanket coverage. The tabloids generally have fallen in behind the government and its armed forces. The Sun, in a 3 a.m. "war edition" this morning, called Friday night's bombardment of Baghdad "hypnotic and horrifying," but laid the blame for any civilian casualties "squarely on the shoulders of the wicked dictator," Saddam Hussein. 
 One exception has been the antiwar Daily Mirror, which headlined Friday night's attack "Shocking and Awful." The Mirror has tried to straddle the line, supporting British forces while attacking the government. "Troops are heroes, the war's insane," read one headline. 
 France, which opposes the war, has no troops in the field. But the story of the war has taken up more than half the space allotted to news coverage in papers, and the bulk of time on television as well. Most of the newspaper coverage has been straight reporting -- although there are signs of an antiwar or anti-American perspective. Friday's edition of the left-of-center Le Monde carried the large lead headline, "The American war has begun." 
 The Arab news media generally succumbed today to feelings of frustration and overall gloom as U.S.-led troops surged further into Iraq. 
 Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite network that has attracted a huge following in the Arab world, broadcast dramatic images tonight of casualties it said were caused by the attack on Basra.  It offered interviews with the first Iraqi casualties at a Baghdad hospital. Al-Jazeera also reported widely on the violent demonstration Friday outside the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, in which two people were killed. And it broadcast a special report detailing ties between senior members of the Bush administration and U.S. oil companies. 
 Most Arab news outlets continued to blame the United States for the fighting and called for a quick end to the bombing. "It is not enough for them to see some Arab territories bleeding, our airspace and waters turned into passages of death," wrote al-Thawrah, one of Syria's main papers. "They want to add our bodies to these, to complete their portrait, which they have been preparing for decades." 
 There were fears that the invasion could set off ethnic turmoil between Arabs and Kurds, and worries that U.S. and British forces would be emboldened to conquer other Arab nations. Several editorials called the war in Iraq "American imperialism." 
 "Even if the Iraqis hate Saddam they cannot love those who light fires in their airspace and destroy their positions," wrote the paper al-Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. 
 A minority blamed Hussein for causing the war. "In very simple words, Saddam Hussein is solely responsible for everything that's happening in Iraq and he must weather the misery of his people," Ossama Agag wrote in an op-ed column in Akhbar al-Yawm, an Egyptian paper. 
 In predominately Muslim Indonesia, television journalists have been reporting energetically on casualties, chronologies of attacks and official statements from both sides. An editorial in the Jakarta Post, an English-language daily, laid blame on both President Bush and Hussein.  
In Mexico, where polls show the overwhelming majority against the war, newspapers are steadily criticizing U.S. "aggression." The enormous banner headline in Reforma newspaper was: "The U.S. Strikes Without Mercy." 
 Friday's papers devoted a great deal of coverage to antiwar demonstrators around the world. Bush was called "the grave digger of world peace." One editorial cartoon depicted Bush sitting on top of a world in the shape of a bomb, with a match in his hand. 
 News of the war was mixed with special apprehension in Australia, which had sent 2,000 military personnel to the Iraqi theater. News executives in Australia chafed at the comparative secrecy surrounding the Australian troops, which have not followed the U.S. lead in "embedding" large numbers of reporters. 
 Some private Japanese networks returned to their fare of soap operas and game shows Friday. But the public NHK broadcast network kept up nearly continuous coverage of the war, with straightforward commentary from military analysts armed with the pointers and maps that are a staple of Japanese TV. 
China's Foreign Ministry ordered all Chinese journalists to leave Baghdad a day before the war began. Nonetheless, the state-run Central Television ran live footage from CNN of the first cracks of antiaircraft fire from Baghdad. Two CCTV channels have cut into regular programming to air speeches by Bush and Hussein, and to report other key developments. 
The Chinese media have generally been free from the anti-American screeds that characterized China's reporting of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the U.S.-led NATO attacks on Yugoslavia. 
 Still, hopes among Chinese journalists that China's media outlets would dispatch up to 100 war correspondents to the region have gone up in smoke. One weekly publication, 21st Century World Herald, had planned a special daily edition for each day the war lasted. But the paper ran afoul of Beijing's censors for printing an interview calling for political reform earlier this month. Chinese authorities closed the paper on March 13, the day the paper's war correspondent, Michael An, arrived in Baghdad. An is now on his way back to Beijing. 
Wax reported from Cairo. Correspondents Mary Jordan in Mexico City, Robert J. McCartney in Paris, Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta, John Pomfret in Beijing and Doug Struck in Tokyo contributed to this report. 




3


  



March 23, 2003 Sunday 
  




 Democracy Be Careful What You Wish For

 
There were two striking results in an opinion survey conducted earlier this month by Zogby International in six Arab countries -- Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. 
One was that a huge majority of people in those countries said that, if given the choice, they would like their Islamic clergy to play roles bigger than the subservient ones currently prescribed by most Arab governments.  
 Equally impressive, less than 6 percent of those polled believed that the United States was waging its campaign in Iraq to create a more democratic Arab or Muslim world. Close to 95 percent were convinced that the United States was after control of Arab oil and the subjugation of the Palestinians to Israel's will. The survey, commissioned by University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami, also showed that overwhelming margins said that terrorism was going to increase, rather than decrease, as a result of the U.S.-led invasion.  
President Bush has said that the invasion of Iraq, and the establishment of a new government there, would be a "catalyst" for change in the region. But what kind of change? Rather than leading to liberal, pro-Western democracy, as Bush suggests, the war in Iraq is likely to bring only more radical Islamic fundamentalism. After all, the Islamic fundamentalist parties, grouped under the big tent of the Muslim Brotherhood, are the only forces with the organization, capability and ambition to take power if democracy were to become an option in the Arab world. 
Arab leaders are plainly worried by this prospect. A few weeks ago in Cairo, during a fact-finding trip for the Council on Foreign Relations, I had a three-hour private conversation with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak about the politics of the region, the coming war in Iraq and U.S. policy. Though closely allied with the United States, Egypt has been pressed by the Bush administration to undertake democratic reforms. 
Mubarak recounted an episode to illustrate the degree to which radical Islam has infiltrated Egypt, the most populous Arab country. When Mustafa Mashhour, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, died in the middle of the night last November, Mubarak ordered his domestic intelligence and security services to go on high alert and block tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood followers from flocking to Cairo from all over the country to take part in the funeral. As in Judaism, Islamic burials have to be carried out a day after death. The adherents had no more than a few hours and word of mouth to get word of the funeral out through their vast secret network. 
 Yet the Muslim Brotherhood is, to use a Saddam Hussein euphemism, the mother of all Islamic militant organizations. Founded in Egypt in the 1930s, it has helped give birth to every Muslim radical movement, from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda to Palestinians' Hamas and Islamic Jihad to Lebanon's Hezbollah. Its tight structure helped spread the word of the funeral quickly. 
 "I had security people block all the entry points and exits of Cairo," Mubarak said, speaking of the Egyptian metropolis of 16 million people. "It was a massive security operation and our services are among the best at it," he said, gesturing to make his point. By all accounts, tens of thousands were turned away. Hundreds of buses were searched. Well-known militants were arrested or sent home.  
 "Yet, you know what," Mubarak said, raising his eyebrows. "When the funeral took place, there were over 80,000 Muslim Brothers there." The president paused, and jabbing his finger at me, said, "When your Americans talk about democracy in the Middle East, who do they think is going to take over? Democrats?" It will be the Muslim Brotherhood's pawns in Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and Palestine, Mubarak asserted. 
Mubarak has reason to be concerned. Given sentiments in the Arab world today, democracy could lead to one-time elections and the triumph of radical Islam. It happened in Algeria in 1992, forcing the army there to void the election results and resume its rotten dictatorial rule. Civil war there has claimed more than 100,000 lives. 
Everywhere you look in the Middle East and the Muslim world, including places such as Pakistan and Indonesia, fundamentalism is rising, thanks to the social services, medical care and religious education that Islamic groups provide as an alternative to the failed services of failed states. 
Yet Islamic fundamentalism appeals not only to the poor. Most leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood are graduates of engineering and medical schools, people one might consider less inclined to blindly embrace religion. Bin Laden is an engineer. Ayman Zawahiri, his number two, was a successful physician. Mohammad Atta, who led the attack on the World Trade Center, was a multilingual architect.  
While the radicals are gaining strength, alienation is spreading among the ruling elites, business class, academic and artistic circles, and moderate religious leaders -- America's natural friends, who could provide liberal alternatives. Take the sheik of Egypt's prominent Al-Azhar University, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, who is renowned as both a scholar and a moderate. Over the past two years, with considerable difficulty, Sheik Tantawi has ousted radical preachers from his university. Yet last week, on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he said people should wage jihad against the United States.  
Anger emerges in popular culture, too. The most popular singer in Egypt is Shaaban Abdel-Rahim, an illiterate man whose tape "I hate Israel" has sold more than 5 million copies. One of the most successful plays, "Mama America," a virulently anti-American piece by well-known artist Mohammed Sobhi, has been running for months.  
 Around the region, the story is similar. In Jordan, Muslim Brotherhood leaders have bonded with Palestinian Islamic movements, hoping to arouse the Palestinians, who make up 70 percent of Jordan's population, to rise in support of their brethren in the Israeli-occupied territories next door. In Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabi preachers are thriving still, the bin Laden message continues to resonate. Despite denials from the Saudi royal family, the population knows that U.S. forces are using Saudi bases to operate against Iraq. 
Even Syria, despite its fearsome reputation for crushing dissent, is struggling to contain the radical Islamic threat. Alarmed by the spread of Islamic influence in medical school classrooms, Syrian President Bashar Assad has made several speeches recently attempting to disconnect science from Islam. People close to him say that Assad, a physician himself, has argued that science should encourage the questioning of beliefs, not the blind embrace of them. 
The rising power of radical Islam is driven by two forces. One is anger that the bankrupt states of the Muslim and Arab world have offered nothing better than the sort of repression Assad's father, Hafez Assad, delivered for years. The other is deep mistrust of U.S. intentions and policies toward Palestinians, Iraqis and Muslims in general -- before and, more so, after Sept. 11. In surveys conducted over the past two years, Arabs and Muslims describe the Palestinian issue as very important, indeed not central to their antagonistic attitude toward the United States.  
There is little question Arab and Muslim regimes are contributing to what I believe will be their ultimate demise by running on empty. While Islamic militants have no genuine social program -- except the empty slogan of "Islam is the solution" -- the governments repressing them don't have programs either. Instead the governments have tolerated corruption and grave social neglect. Democracy is the last thing on the minds of either side. Radical fundamentalists believe it is positively anti-Islamic. Present governments are not prepared to depart. 
 Above all, hardly anyone in the Middle East believes the Bush administration gives a hoot about it either. I recall a dinner last spring given by a senior Saudi prince at the plush Globe restaurant in Riyadh on top of the Faisaliyah towers, just after Bush called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "a man of peace." My host, a graduate of UCLA, looked at me and asked, "Is that how your American pals are planning to make friends in this region?" He was speaking of his American pals, too. 
 </body>Youssef Ibrahim is a former Middle East and energy correspondent for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and a former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

CORRECTION-DATE: March 25, 2003, Tuesday 

 CORRECTION:
 An extra word muddled the point of a sentence in a March 23 Outlook article on how the Iraq war might affect democracy in the region. It should have read, "In surveys over the past two years, Arabs and Muslims describe the Palestinian issue as very important, indeed central to their antagonistic attitude toward the United States." 






   

 

March 22, 2003 



 WAR IN THE GULF: PROTESTS: WORLD: Anti-U.S. feeling erupts in violent clashes

 
Jerusalem --- Religious leaders across the Islamic world delivered fiery sermons Friday against the U.S.-led attack on Iraq, while street demonstrations in nearly every Arab capital amplified the long-simmering anti-American sentiment in the region.
Many demonstrations turned violent as police sought to break up the protests.
In San'a, Yemen, police clashed with an estimated 30,000 anti-war demonstrators outside the U.S. Embassy, setting off an exchange of gunfire that killed two people and injured dozens.
Riot police fired rubber bullets at a smaller crowd in Bahrain, a small Persian Gulf state where the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet is based, while water cannons and tear gas were used in Egypt and Jordan. 
In Jerusalem's Old City, Israeli police shot tear gas and stun grenades at a spontaneous march by Palestinian worshippers leaving the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites. Police said there were no injuries, but Palestinian sources said many protesters had to be treated for gas inhalation.
Thousands of Palestinians in major towns in the West Bank cities and Gaza Strip took to the streets. A group of about 500 Palestinians in Ramallah held pictures of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat and shouted in unison: "Palestine and Iraq are one. With our blood and souls we will defend our Iraqi brothers."
In most cases, however, the demonstrators appeared much more anti-American than pro-Saddam. In Beirut, Grand Ayatollah Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah used his Friday sermon to denounce both the United States and Saddam.
"We call on the Iraqi people to topple the tyrant who has destroyed Iraq and thrown the Arab and Islamic world into disarray," Fadlallah said.
Meanwhile in Gaza, the militant group Hamas urged Iraqis to defend their country against American invaders by carrying out suicide bombings against the U.S.-led invasion force. The call was echoed by clerics in Beirut and Cairo
"Iraqis should prepare explosive belts and . . . martyrs to combat the U.S. occupiers," Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantissi said from his offices in the Gaza Strip. "The American invaders are now on Iraqi soil; therefore, Iraqis must confront them with all possible means."
Friday, the Muslim holy day, provided an opportunity for many ordinary people who would be too busy on a workday to organize and attend protests.
In Cairo, the largest city in the Middle East, thousands swarmed downtown streets, while helmeted riot police chased them with plastic shields and sticks, The Associated Press reported.
The Egyptian government had issued permits allowing some to demonstrate. However, the scene in Cairo quickly turned unruly. A fire truck set on fire in front of the ruling party headquarters sent black smoke wafting over the Nile. Fifty protesters were arrested, according to AP.
In Jordan, on Iraq's western border, King Abdullah II went on television to plead for calm after police entered a downtown mosque in Amman and took away two imams who delivered fiery sermons.
"I know the pain and anger you are feeling because of the suffering and ordeal that the Iraqi people are suffering," said the king, a close U.S. ally. He asked his subjects to act in "a civilized manner."
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, demonstrators threw eggs and vegetables at the British Embassy, besieged U.S. fast food restaurants and banks and blocked traffic.
Anger at the war was not limited to street protests. Editorialists also vented their fears of the war's consequences on ordinary Iraqis.
"A humanitarian tragedy of immense proportions is beginning to unfold," the Arab News, based in Saudi Arabia, wrote.
The paper predicted U.S. television news organizations would find pictures of Iraqi refugees "unsuitably depressing" or too offensive for their newscasts.







   
 

March 22, 2003 Saturday  
  



 A NATION AT WAR: INTERNATIONAL REACTION; 
Crowds Protest Iraq War In Cities Around World

 
Demonstrations against the American-led war in Iraq roiled cities around the world today, with the riot police in several Arab nations turning water cannons, tear gas, batons and finally bullets on unruly protesters who surged by the thousands into the streets after Friday Prayers.
     But the reaction in some countries was more muted than expected. 
 In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, and across Southeast Asia, rallies against the war drew fewer people than expected. Islamic religious leaders in Indonesia said 100,000 followers would march in Jakarta, but no more than a few thousand, at most, did so. 
Angry demonstrations, ranging in size from hundreds to thousands, were held in several Pakistani cities today to protest the attacks on Iraq.
But a call by hard-line Islamic groups for a nationwide strike fizzled and stores generally remained open as normal. The Islamic parties have called for a major demonstration on Sunday in the city of Lahore.
The worst violence was in Yemen, where about 4,000 people tried to march from the ancient city center to the American Embassy on the outskirts of Sana. The embassy building is set back from a highway behind barricades and concrete blocks.
The government said protesters opened fire on the riot police, setting off a gun battle that killed two demonstrators, one of them an 11-year-old boy, and left three police officers hospitalized in critical condition.
At Al Azhar mosque in Cairo, the country's leading cleric, Sheik Muhammad Tantawi, had barely finished his sermon with a prayer for the victory of the Iraqi people, when shouts of "Save Iraq" rang out from mass of worshipers.
The riot police beat back protesters trying to leave the mosque, as other demonstrators climbed to a parapet on the building and threw down stones and bits of furniture.
Protesters also scuffled with the police in Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. 
Even in Bahrain, the tiny Gulf nation that provides the base for the Navy's Fifth Fleet, 300 anti-American demonstrators gathered in front of the fortresslike American Embassy and hurled stones at police officers.
Bush administration officials have talked of a period of reform and modernization for the people of the Middle East once the government of Saddam Hussein is dismantled.
They have suggested that, with the assistance of the United States, a new Iraq will arise from the ruins of Mr. Hussein's despotic rule andstir democratic reform across the region.
But that vision has generally failed to move the Arab public, although dissatisfaction with the autocratic governments of the region is widespread. The United States' motives for the war in Iraq are viewed with suspicion.
Antiwar marchers also filled the streets of many European cities, although generally in smaller numbers than on the first day of American and British strikes on Iraq. Protest leaders across Europe have called for giant demonstrations on Saturday
In Madrid today, several hundred people planted white crosses in a square opposite the Parliament and called for the resignation of Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish prime minister, who has been one of President Bush's strongest supporters on the war. In London, where some analysts said antiwar fervor appeared to lose steam once British forces were engaged in battle, bicyclists protesting the war blocked the square in front of the House of Commons.
While the antiwar sentiment is shared between Europe and the Arab world, its roots appear to be different.
European commentators and politicians tend to criticize the United States and Britain for acting on their own, jeopardizing the credibility of established international institutions and the rule of international law.
In contrast, Arab anger tends to focus on what is seen as American bias in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on perceived American hypocrisy in backing some repressive Arab governments while going to war to dislodge Mr. Hussein.
The belief is also widespread that America's main interest is to plunder the resources of the Arab world, chiefly oil.
"The political, cultural and social point of reference that America has been, is now eclipsed in the eyes of billions of people," Der Tagesspiegel, the Berlin daily, commented today. "The overwhelming impression: an imperial power is doing what it wants, regardless of its friends and its foes."
Critics of Prime Minister Tony Blair's support for President Bush argued that Britain's credibility with traditional allies in Europe had been diminished.
"We were never much loved, always recalcitrant bad neighbors, demanding and unpleasant," Polly Toynbee wrote in The Guardian today. "Now we look like the 51st state, and a puny one at that."







  



March 22, 2003 Saturday  




 Bush Sees 'Progress' In War Reports; 
President's Aides Urge Iraq Forces to Surrender

 
Bush administration officials warned the Iraqi military yesterday that time was running out to surrender before selective British-U.S. strikes become an all-out attack from land and air. 
On the third day of hostilities in Iraq, President Bush, meeting with congressional leaders before leaving for Camp David for the weekend, reported that "we are making progress" in the war. "We will stay on task until we've achieved our objective," he said, shortly after the government reported the first of the day's two American combat deaths, bringing U.S. fatalities in the conflict to six.  
In coordinated appearances, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Myers, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and White House press secretary Ari Fleischer all appealed to Iraqi soldiers to surrender to avert protracted violence and inevitable defeat.  
"We have been issuing, through a variety of methods, communications urging the Iraq military to surrender, and apparently what we have done thus far has not been sufficiently persuasive that they would have done that," Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon. "It may very well be that with the initiation of the ground war last evening and the initiation of the air war this afternoon, that we may find people responding and surrendering." 
Across the Potomac River, Powell delivered a similar warning. "The operation is going, I think, in a very fine manner," he said. "And in order to prevent any loss of life beyond that which may have occurred already, it would be wise for Iraqi leaders to recognize that their day is over and that this is going to happen." 
By day's end yesterday, the pressure on Iraqis to surrender yielded its first major victory: the commander of Iraq's 51st Infantry Division surrendered and apparently so did the 8,000 troops he led. 
Administration officials are hoping that by frightening Iraqi soldiers into surrender, they can shorten the conflict. That would help the international U.S. image, which is being further injured by fresh diplomatic obstacles. Russia and Canada defied a U.S. request to expel Iraqi diplomats; the State Department listed only Australia and Romania as cooperating with the request. The administration squabbled with Turkey over its ambitions in northern Iraq, while at the United Nations, some smaller countries in the General Assembly tried to pass an antiwar resolution.  
The diplomatic troubles were accompanied by more shows of anti-American anger in the streets. Inflamed by television images of explosions in Baghdad, tens of thousands of demonstrators across the world rallied against the war. Protests in parts of the Muslim world, including Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Indonesia, were particularly bitter and at times violent. The United States shut its embassy in Nigeria over security concerns.  
Domestic antiwar protesters again disrupted traffic in major American cities. In San Francisco, Washington, Chicago and elsewhere, demonstrators carried coffins and smeared fake blood on themselves and on dolls. There were scattered reports of violence and arrests, as well as some counter-demonstrations in support of the troops. 
In Washington, the House and Senate passed resolutions in support of the troops. Bush sent a formal notification of the military action to Congress under the 1973 War Powers Resolution. "These military operations have been carefully planned to accomplish our goals with the minimum loss of life among coalition military forces and to innocent civilians," Bush wrote in the notification. "It is not possible to know at this time either the duration of active combat operations or the scope or duration of the deployment of U.S. Armed Forces necessary to accomplish our goals fully." 
Markets yesterday continued to reflect optimism about a decisive American victory. As crude oil prices dropped for the seventh straight day, stock prices continued an eight-day rally. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 235 points, to 8522.  
Despite the evident military progress in the air and on the ground in Iraq, the White House cautioned anew that the war "still can be a long, lengthy, dangerous engagement," as Fleischer put it. Underscoring that point, the government reported that two Marines had been killed, along with the four Americans and eight Britons who died in a helicopter crash Thursday. 
While not mentioning the American casualties, Bush said: "All of us involved here in Washington are extremely proud of the skill and bravery of our young Americans who are willing to sacrifice for something greater than themselves." The president, in his only public appearance, took no questions and did not discuss specifics about the war, advising reporters that Rumsfeld would be conducting a briefing. 
Fleischer also predicted that as U.S. and British forces take control of more areas of Iraq, they will discover chemical and biological weapons that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has claimed he does not have. "There's no question that Saddam Hussein possesses biological and chemical weapons," he said. "And all this will be made clear in the course of the operation for whatever duration it takes." 
With an eye toward the domestic agenda, Fleischer linked passage of the president's economic and tax cut package yesterday to the well-being of the men and women serving in the Persian Gulf. "The president believes that no matter what happens in the pursuit of a war, it is vital that jobs are available for the soldiers and the Marines and all the service men and women when they come home from the war," he said. 
The day presented a vivid image of modern warfare: On split television screens, clear footage of mushroom clouds and burning buildings in Baghdad was paired with confident briefings by Bush administration officials about military advances and growing international support (Rumsfeld put the number of cooperating nations at 45, 10 more than on Thursday). With both the air and ground phases of the U.S. operations fully underway, Rumsfeld, asserting control of "a growing portion of the country of Iraq," cited increasing confusion and diminishing communication among Iraqi forces. "They're beginning to realize, I suspect, that the regime is history," he said.  
U.S. officials sought to project an aura of inevitable collapse of Hussein's regime in order to bring about surrender with limited violence. Asserting that "the liberation is underway and it is inevitable," Powell said "there are a number of channels open" to encourage Iraqis to surrender -- though officials said there are no negotiations over a general surrender of the Iraqi military. 
Fleischer also addressed the hope of Iraqi soldiers' surrender in his briefing, saying "the use of force is being pursued to help make this get settled in the most peaceful way possible." 
Rumsfeld noted that the air assault that opened yesterday came only after "additional time" was given to senior military leaders in Iraqi to heed calls to surrender, defect or in other ways separate themselves from Hussein. "When that did not happen, the only choice one has is to proceed and use coercion," he said. 






  
  

  

March 21, 2003 Friday 



 FIRMS ARE QUIET ON SECURITY AT OVERSEAS SITES

 
As war shook Iraq on Thursday, East Bay companies with offices or operations in the Middle East or in Muslim countries were tight-lipped about any special security precautions they had implemented to protect employees.
The terse reaction of Fred Gorell, a spokesman for San Ramon-based oil giant ChevronTexaco Corp., was typical of the handful of local companies that would even respond to inquiries about the matter. "We have a policy of not commenting on our specific security measures," Gorell said. 
Last week, Bloomberg News reported that ChevronTexaco and other oil companies had withdrawn some employees from Kuwait, a major oil producer that borders Iraq. Gorell declined to comment. "In the current situation, we just don't discuss the relocation of employees."
Gorell wouldn't say how many employees ChevronTexaco has in the Middle East, where the company lifts oil from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and owns petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. ChevronTexaco was also the largest U.S. importer of crude oil from Iraq under the now-suspended United Nations Oil for Food program.
Other local companies have a more limited presence in the Middle East. Clorox Corp., an Oakland-based consumer products maker, has affiliates and manufacturing facilities in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, according to its securities filings and Web site.  spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment.
Like other technology companies, Sybase Inc., a Dublin-based software maker, has sales affiliates in the region. Sybase's Web site lists partners in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, but the company has no direct employees there, said spokesman Rick Myllenbeck. Sybase has not changed its travel policies, but it is "encouraging our employees to use good judgment and exercise caution," he said.
Two other East Bay companies' Web sites list offices in Israel: Wind River Systems Inc., an Alameda-based software maker, and Polycom Inc., a communications equipment maker based in Pleasanton. Neither company responded to requests for comment.
UTStarcom Inc., an Alameda-based maker of telecommunications equipment, closed its Israeli office late last year. The company decided not to seek a replacement after the departure of its sole employee there, said spokeswoman Chesha Kamieniecki.
UTStarcom is "monitoring the situation" at its other overseas offices, including one in India, where it has several dozen employees, mostly Indian nationals, and at a small office in the Philippines with only one or two employees, Kamieniecki said. Both countries have large Muslim populations.
San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., an engineering firm with projects around the world, has "extensive operations" in the Middle East, according to spokesman Jonathan Marshall. After the 1991 Gulf War, Bechtel employed 16,000 workers in Kuwait extinguishing fires and restoring production from hundreds of oil wells. Recently, Bechtel was invited by the U.S. Agency for International Development to bid on contracts for the post-war reconstruction of Iraq.
Bechtel has Middle Eastern offices in Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as in the predominantly Muslim countries of Indonesia and Malaysia. Marshall said the security of local and expatriate employees is the company's "top priority" but that its "policy is never to specify what we're doing relative to security."
Rick Jurgens covers the housing, development and energy industries. Reach him at 925-943-8088 or at rjurgens@cctimes.com.






  


March 21, 2003, Friday  



 PROTESTS BREAK OUT AT HOME AND ABROAD

 
As angry protesters took to the streets around the globe and some of the world's largest nations condemned America, the Bush administration said that support for the war on Iraq is growing.
With more than 40 nations now backing the U.S., "all told, the population of the coalition of the willing is approximately 1.18 billion people," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "Every major race, religion and ethnic group in the world is represented." 
Sensitive about losing the international PR war, Bush's top aides are anxious to reverse the impression that most of the world opposes the U.S.-led war.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the coalition is larger than the one that Bush's father put together in 1991. That effort, however, included far more active participation from allies - both militarily and financially - and had the blessing of the United Nations.
In many world capitals, reaction to the attack was sharp and furious.
Russian President Vladimir Putin - a strong ally of Bush - branded the attack "a big political error" and accused America of having replaced international law with "the law of the fist."
China accused Washington of violating the UN charter and called for "an immediate halt to military action."
In North Korea - which has increasingly worried U.S. officials after the country took steps to restart its nuclear weapons program - the state-run news agency said the attack on Iraq would have "disastrous consequences."
Indonesia, the world's biggest Muslim nation, called on the UN to hold an emergency meeting to try to stop the U.S.
France, Germany and Pakistan deplored the attack, while India said war was "avoidable" and not justified, based on progress by UN weapons inspectors.
Even Iran - which has no love for Saddam Hussein after a brutal war with Iraq in the 1980s - called the attack "unjustifiable and illegitimate," and warned it will cause regional instability.
Street protests flared around America and around the world.
In San Francisco, in the largest show of civil disobedience since the Vietnam War, thousands of activists swarmed downtown, paralyzing traffic and wreaking havoc on the financial district. More than 1,025 demonstrators were arrested.
Protesters get violent
Italian cities were paralyzed by tens of thousands of protesters blocking train stations and highways. London police hauled away demonstrators, including many school children. Protesters stopped traffic in Melbourne, Australia.
Protests turned violent in Egypt, Britain, Spain, India, Belgium, Switzerland, the Philippines and Lebanon.
In Cairo, the Arab world's biggest city, riot police used water cannons and batons to beat back thousands of rock-throwing protesters who tried to storm the U.S. embassy.
Greek cities were filled with demonstrators. "We cannot accept the cowboy stance of the supposed planet lord," Athens teacher Christos Gotzias said of Bush.
Kuwait was one Arab country where citizens were supportive of Washington. When Bush appeared on a TV screen in a local coffee shop to announce the war had begun, a burst of applause filled the room.
"Bush is a real man," Ahmad Hussein Ahmad said. "His dad liberated Kuwait and now the son will liberate Iraq."







   
 

March 21, 2003 Friday  
  



 A NATION AT WAR: WORLD REACTION; 
Wave of Protests, From Europe to New York

 
Leaders and protesters around the world today condemned the start of war in Iraq, with President Jacques Chirac of France warning that it "will be fraught with consequences for the future." 
     In Russia, President Vladimir V. Putin called for an immediate halt to the American-led assault, saying, "This military action cannot be justified in any way." 
 Regardless of whether their governments supported or opposed the war, hundreds of thousands massed at protests across Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Britain. In Berlin, an estimated 40,000 demonstrators streamed past the United States Embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate, waving banners that read, "Stop the Bush Fire" and "George W. Hitler." 
In the United States, the antiwar demonstrations were generally smaller, but thousands descended on military bases or blocked roads and bridges to voice their opposition. Chanting "Peace Now," some 5,000 people demonstrated in Times Square in New York. 
The wave of global protest began even as the first missiles were hitting Baghdad, with tens of thousands in Melbourne, Australia's second city, bringing traffic to a standstill. In the Middle East, demonstrations were scattered -- a crowd of only 1,000 in Cairo, for instance -- but more vociferous protests were expected on Friday, the day of Muslim worship.
In France, the American Embassy and consulate buildings, just off the Place de la Concorde in Paris, were heavily guarded as tens of thousands of demonstrators assembled, chanting antiwar slogans. The National Assembly briefly suspended its session in symbolic protest.
In Madrid, about 40,000 people packed the Puerta del Sol tonight in protest at the Spanish government's support for President Bush. Fliers that called for a boycott of American consumer goods passed through the crowd.
"At least we can show the world that our government does not represent us," said Javier Velazquez, an economics professor. "It is important to have a European response to a country that just does anything it wants, which is the United States."
American flags were burned outside the embassy in Athens, where an estimated 80,000 demonstrators, mainly students and labor activists, marched peacefully, chanting anti-American slogans.
Sentiment ran generally high against the United States. Fans in Montreal booed loudly tonight when "The Star-Spangled Banner" was sung before the Canadiens' game against the New York Islanders.
Appearing on national television this morning, Mr. Chirac reiterated France's opposition to the war and said he regretted it was "initiated without United Nations backing."
While emphasizing that France was supported by many other nations, he added an appeal for the world and especially Europe toreunite in pursuit of common goals.
"Tomorrow, we shall have to meet again, with our allies, with the whole international community, to take up together the challenges awaiting us," he said. "Europe must realize the need to express its own vision of world problems and support this vision with a credible common defense."
Mr. Chirac spoke before attending a previously scheduled summit meeting of the leaders from the 15 European Union nations in Brussels, where an attempt was made to paper over the continent's deep rifts with a common statement on how best to secure peace after the war in Iraq.
Also attending the summit meeting was Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Mr. Bush's staunchest ally. Before leaving for Brussels, Mr. Blair recorded a five-minute speech that was broadcast in Britain at 10 p.m., formally acknowledging that British troops are now at war.
"I know this course of action has produced deep divisions of opinion in our country," said Mr. Blair, who has faced strong popular protest and a revolt in his Labor Party. "But this new world faces a new threat: of disorder and chaos born either of brutal states like Iraq, armed with weapons of mass destruction, or of extreme terrorist groups. Both hate our way of life, our freedom, our democracy."
Spain's prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, who has also backed Mr. Bush, sent only a hospital ship and 900 personnel to the Persian Gulf. He told his country: "We have assumed our responsibilities. There were more comfortable options, but we don't want to pass on to the future risks that we should confront in the present."
Yet here and there, even among leaders critical of the war, a sense of resignation -- and a desire to begin healing divisions -- were evident.
In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder said on television that "the wrong decision was taken." Yet he added, "The differences over the war are clear differences of opinion among governments, not deep-seated differences between friendly peoples."
The New China news agency reported that the former Chinese foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, in a telephone call with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, appealed for an end to military operations, "so that the Iraq issue can be returned to the current track of a political solution."
In Russia, Mr. Putin called the war a "big political mistake."
Mr. Putin, a staunch defender of Russia's sovereignty over the rebel region of Chechnya, said, "If we allow international law to be replaced by the law of the first, in which the strong is always right, and has the right to do anything, then one of the most basic principles of international law will come into question: the inviolability of state sovereignty." 
Yet this evening, Russia's foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, told reporters that Russia and America "remain partners, not opponents, despite the war in Iraq."
In Canada, Prime Minister Jean Chretien sought to smooth relations with Washington, saying, "We must do nothing to comfort Saddam Hussein."
"We hope it will be brief, with a minimum of casualties on both sides," Mr. Chretien said of the war.
In the Pacific, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, all close allies of the United States, expressed support.
Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, despite widespread opposition to the war in Japan, said Baghdad had "not acted sincerely."
The Philippine president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, said her country was "part of the coalition of the willing."
But Malaysia and Indonesia, Muslim nations, condemned the war.
Severe condemnation of the war came from the papacy and theleaders of other religions.
In Rome, the papal spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said Pope John Paul II was "deeply pained." In a statement, he deplored the fact that Baghdad "did not accept the resolutions of the United Nations and the appeal by the pope himself, which asked for the country to disarm." But he also criticized the rupture of negotiations toward peaceful disarmament.
The papal displeasure was echoed in denunciations of the war from leaders of Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Muslim groups.
In South America, official reaction of the six governments making up the Mercosur group, led by Brazil, was uniformly negative. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil condemned the American position as an act of "disrespect to the United Nations and the rest of the world." 
"All of us want for Iraq not to have atomic weapons or weapons of mass destruction," he said, "but that does not give the United States the right to decide by itself what is good and what is bad for the world."






  
  

  

MARCH 21, 2003 Friday 



 Violence marks protests outside U.S. embassies

 
Anti-war demonstrators staged huge marches across the world yesterday, often clashing with police as they converged on heavily guarded U.S. embassies.
Violence erupted at protests in Egypt, Spain, India, Belgium, Switzerland and Lebanon as police used water cannons or batons to disperse the crowds.
Barely three hours after the first cruise missiles slammed into Baghdad, a wave of demonstrations began in Asia and Australia and rolled swiftly across the Middle East and Europe. 
In Egypt and Syria, demonstrators demanded the expulsion of U.S. ambassadors.
Riot police used water cannons and batons against hundreds of rock-throwing protesters who tried to storm toward the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, the biggest city in the Arab world.
"This war is a sin," said Cairo taxi driver Youssef, 43, as religious music blared from his car radio. "It's a sin because ordinary Iraqis will suffer."
In the Gaza Strip, about 1,000 Palestinian women and children marched in the Rafah refugee camp, holding Iraqi flags and posters of Saddam and burning Israeli and U.S. flags.
Anti-U.S. sentiment was also strong in Muslim Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan.
In Belgium, where Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said his country was "profoundly disappointed" by the attack on Iraq, police fired a water cannon to disperse more than 2,000 demonstrators outside the U.S. Embassy in Brussels.
Swiss police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters, mainly students, who marched on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva.
Spanish police in riot gear fired rubber balls at antiwar demonstrators, including celebrities, who gathered in central Madrid to protest Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's support for the attacks on Iraq.
They also beat demonstrators with batons in an attempt to break up the crowd, witnesses said, injuring at least two people, according to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
Violence erupted in Calcutta in eastern India when about 1,000 protesters waving banners reading "U.S. warmongers go to hell" tried to storm a U.S. cultural center. At least 12 police officers and six demonstrators were injured when police drove them back with canes, a senior police official said.
In Mauritania in West Africa, protesters raided the compound of the U.S.-based aid agency World Vision, smashing windows and attacking cars.
The only reported clash outside a British embassy was in Beirut, where about 1,000 protesters were doused with water from a fire truck when they crossed barriers outside the mission. Witnesses said police beat several of them.
In Italy, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is one of Washington's staunchest allies on Iraq, the three biggest trade unions staged a two-hour strike.
Italian cities were thrown into chaos as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets, blocking train stations and highways. The biggest demonstration was a march on the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
More than 100,000 Germans took part in antiwar protests, with youngsters skipping classes to attend rallies and pensioners waving banners. More than 60,000 people marched through Berlin's city center.
In Paris, more than 40,000 protesters, mostly students, marched on the U.S. Embassy.
Thousands of people in Britain, enraged by the involvement of British troops in a war they see as an illegitimate grab for oil by Washington, blocked roads and scuffled with police.






  


March 21, 2003 Friday 



 OPPOSED TO WAR

 
CHINA
Called for an immediate halt to military action and a return to efforts to resolve the crisis peacefully.
FRANCE
President Jacques Chirac said he saw serious consequences for the future no matter how long hostilities lasted. 
GERMANY Planned to double its troop presence in Kuwait but insisted it would take no part in military action.
INDIA
Said U.S. lacked justification judging from statements made by U.N. weapons inspectors.
INDONESIA President Megawati Sukarnoputri said Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, "strongly denounced" the strike and called it a threat to world order.
IRAN
Has little sympathy for Saddam, but said an invasion to topple him will increase instability in the Middle East.
MALAYSIA
Called the attack "a black mark in history" and predicted a new wave of anti-American backlash.
PAKISTAN
The key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism said it deplored the strikes and would continue pushing for peace. "There is no way that the government of Pakistan would want to support military attack on the brotherly people of Iraq," said Foreign Minister Mian Mehmood Kasuri.
RUSSIA
President Vladimir Putin called military action "a big political error."
SAUDI ARABIA
Confirmed it would take no part in the conflict.
TURKEY
Said the U.N. Security Council process on Iraq should have been allowed to finish.
THE VATICAN
Said it was deeply pained by the outbreak of war.






  


March 20, 2003, Thursday 



 ANTI-WAR PROTESTS RING GLOBE

 
As night fell over Iraq today, anti-war protests broke out across the globe.
Americans opposed to the U.S. military strikes were being urged to participate in walkouts and protests in New York, Boston, Washington and Chicago, while demonstrators took to the streets in several major cities from Europe to the Far East.
Barely three hours after the first U.S. missiles struck Baghdad, a crowd that police said numbered tens of thousands brought Australia's second-largest city, Melbourne, to a standstill. 
In Germany, 50,000 students marched from Berlin's central Alexanderplatz past the guarded U.S. Embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate.
In Paris, Rome, Madrid and Athens, tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated outside heavily guarded U.S. embassies.
Central Athens was turned into a huge protest arena as nearly 10,000 people, including many school children, marched to the U.S. Embassy.
British anti-war campaigners blocked roads, boycotted schools and workplaces, and protested in London's Parliament Square.In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian children marched in the Rafah refugee camp, holding Iraqi flags and posters of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and setting fire to Israeli and U.S. flags.
Egyptian police in Cairo's central Tahrir Square beat back protesters trying to reach the nearby U.S. Embassy.
Anti-U.S. feelings
Anti-American sentiment was stronger still in Muslim Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, where many saw the attack as the beginning of an American campaign to subjugate the Islamic world and seize control of oil.
Meanwhile, a call by a number of U.S. anti-war groups for protests, walkouts and marches today followed a day of intense anti-war rallying by people in small towns, big cities and rural outposts from Utah to Wisconsin decrying war hours before the U.S. began its attack.
John Parrish, 44, of Silver Spring, Md., demonstrating in Washington, called the President's stance on Iraq "absurd."
"What if Pakistan did a preemptive strike against India," he said. "They can say, 'The United States does it, why can't we?' "
"George W. Bush has unleashed an all-out war against Iraq," the International ANSWER coalition said in a statement posted on its Web site last night shortly after the United States began strikes inside Baghdad.
"We join with peace-loving people all over the world in resisting and acting to stop this brutal, illegal and criminal war of aggression," it said.
The Shirts Off Coalition called for a march of resistance and bike race against war in Washington today to bolster its anti-war campaign.
"I am very ashamed to be an American right now," Lydia Riley, 63, said yesterday at a protest by about 200 demonstrators in Washington. "There's been nothing but lies and misrepresentations by the Bush administration."
She joined about 200 demonstrators, some with red dye on their faces and clothes to represent anticipated Iraqi civilian casualties, blocking rush-hour traffic as they marched from a park near the White House to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's house in northwest Washington.
"We must not, we cannot, we will not allow the voice of dissent to tear our nation apart again," said Ray Alcorn, a retired Navy captain who spent seven years as a POW in North Vietnam.




4

   


March 20, 2003, Thursday



 WORLD WAR OF WORDS: REACTIONS OF GLOBAL LEADERS MIXED

 
The world chose up sides early today as America began its war with Iraq.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, putting a security alliance with the United States ahead of public opinion, reiterated his moral support for Washington.
"At this time . . . I understand and I support the start of the use of force by the United States," Koizumi said. 
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said Manila was giving political and moral support.
"The Philippines is part of the coalition of the willing. We are giving political and moral support for actions to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction," she said.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard proudly said his country's troops were already in the fight.
"Our forces have started combat and combat-support operations," Howard said.
"The F/A-18 Hornet aircraft have started operations over Iraq. They are conducting missions to escort high-value coalition tanker and airborne early-warning and control aircraft."
But the German government said it was dismayed by the start of the U.S.-led military campaign against Iraq and offered humanitarian help to the Iraqi population.
"News of the start of the war against Iraq has sparked grave concern and dismay in the federal government," it said in a statement. "Now everything must be done to avert a humanitarian disaster for Iraq's civilian population," said the government, which opposes the war and formed an alliance with France to try to prevent it.
South Korea's military went on its highest alert in seven years today as concerns arose that North Korea could use the distraction of war in Iraq to raise tensions on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.
Syafii Maarif, head of the 30-million-strong moderate Muhammadiyah Muslim group in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, denounced the assault.
"This is not an attack on Islam, but an attack on humanity," he said.
Thailand said it wanted no part in the war.
"But we are ready to help rehabilitate [Iraq] after the fighting, up to the extent of our resources," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said.
The country expelled eight Iraqis who posed as tourists - including one who worked for a son of Saddam Hussein - and was considered a potential terrorist threat, Shinawatra said.
Murid Timasaen, spokesman for Thailand's Muslims for Peace Group, said Americans would never live in peace again.
"Countries like Iraq don't have the capacity to fight the Americans in a conventional war, so more terrorist means will be deployed," he said.
China had no immediate comment on the start of hostilities, but state television broadcast Bush's address live in a rare move.With Post Wire Services






  


March 20, 2003 Thursday 



 S. KOREA GOES ON ALERT; THAILAND EXPELS IRAQIS

 
Reactions to the U.S. attack on Iraq this morning ranged from South Korea's military going on high alert to Thailand expelling Iraqis because of security concerns. Indonesian officials condemned the attack while the Japanese prime minister issued a statetment of "moral support" for the United States.
South Korea's military went on its highest alert in seven years as concerns arose that North Korea could use the distraction of war in Iraq to raise tension on the Korean peninsula, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said. 
Yonhap, quoting unnamed sources, said South Korea elevated its military's Watch Condition to a Level 2 for the first time since 1996.
The move affects mostly military intelligence and other units assigned to watch the tense border and does not involve any major southern troop movements.
The Defense Ministry would not confirm the report.
In Indonesia, Muslim leaders immediately condemned the start of U.S.-led strikes, labeling them an attack on humanity and warning of big protests.
Asked on his way into a Cabinet meeting for a reaction to news that the United States had started the attack, Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: "We will discuss that now."
He did not elaborate, but Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa told Reuters News Service that an official response was being drafted and would be made public after the meeting. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Indonesia, generally a U.S. ally, has consistently opposed any attack against Iraq.
Political and religious leaders warned that a strike could spark a widespread, possibly violent backlash. "This is not an attack on Islam but an attack on humanity," Syafii Maarif, head of the 30 million-strong moderate Muhammadiyah Muslim group, said today.
In Japan, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, putting a security alliance with the United States ahead of public opinion, reiterated his moral support for Washington.
"At this time ... I understand, and I support the start of the use of force by the United States," Koizumi said at a news conference about an hour after President George W. Bush announced that the war had begun.
Japanese voters overwhelmingly oppose a U.S.-led attack on Iraq, but the authorities have said they had no choice but to give priority to an alliance that has been the pillar of Japanese diplomacy for five decades, given worries about nearby North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
Japanese troops, however, will not be fighting alongside U.S. forces. Japan's postwar, pacifist constitution renounces war as a means of settling international disputes.
Meanwhile, officials in Thailand said the country was expelling another eight Iraqis, including one with links to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, on grounds of national security as the United States began its attack. The move brings to 11 the number of Iraqis expelled from Thailand this week.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters today that the eight Iraqis had been posing as tourists but had been in Thailand for some time. He did not say whether the Iraqis had already left the country.






  


March 20, 2003 Thursday 



 MILITARY LEADERS;
 THESE MEN WILL DIRECT THE TROOPS AND BE KEY PLAYERS IN A U.S.- LED WAR ON IRAQ

 
UNITED STATES
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
Role: He is the top defense policy adviser to the president. A member of the president's Cabinet and the National Security Council, he is responsible for the formulation of general defense policy.
Background: Rumsfeld also served as defense secretary to President Gerald Ford in 1975-76. In addition to managing the federal government's largest department, Rumsfeld leads the military campaign against terrorism and has undertaken the task of transforming the nation's approach to defense. A graduate of Princeton University and a former Navy pilot and flight instructor, Rumsfeld was elected to Congress in 1962 at the age of 30 from his native Illinois, serving four terms. He also has been White House chief of staff, U.S. ambassador to NATO, special presidential envoy to the Middle East, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, and chief executive of two Fortune 500 companies. In 1977 he received the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
Role: The No. 2 man at the Pentagon, he is one of the most hard-line defense officials, particularly with regard to policy on Iraq, where he thinks the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could lead to positive changes in the region. As deputy secretary, Wolfowitz can act on Rumsfeld's behalf with the same power and authority.
Background: For the past seven years, he was dean and professor of international relations at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Wolfowitz was sworn in March 2, 2001, as the 28th deputy defense secretary, for his third tour of duty at the Pentagon. He was undersecretary of defense for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney from 1989 to 1993, heading the defense policy team that had a major role in reviewing war plans for the Persian Gulf War. The 700-person group also helped develop plans that raised $50 billion in allied financial support for the war and prevented Iraq from opening a second front with Israel. Wolfowitz previously served as ambassador to Indonesia, the largest country in the Muslim world. He holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers
Role: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he is the top uniformed military adviser to the president, Rumsfeld and the National Security Council. In that position, he regularly joins Rumsfeld in leading Pentagon briefings on the status of the war against terrorism, the conflict in Afghanistan and the situation with Iraq.
Background: Myers became the chairman on Oct. 1, 2001, after serving 19 months as vice chairman. From August 1998 to February 2000, he held comma nd positions responsible for defending the United States through space and intercontinental ballistic missile operations. He previously commanded U.S. forces in Japan. Myers entered the Air Force in 1965 through the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. A native of Kansas City, he holds an MBA degree.
Gen. Tommy Franks
Role: He has been commander of the United States Central Command, or CentCom, since June 2000; in that position, he will run the war against Iraq.
Background: He has operational control of U.S. combat forces in an area of responsibility stretching from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia. He is also the top U.S. military commander in the war on terrorism and oversaw the campaign in Afghanistan. A veteran of the Vietnam and Desert Storm wars, Franks holds an undergraduate degree in business administration and a master's in public administration from the University of Texas. He commanded the Second Infantry in Korea in the mid-1990s.
Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley
Role: He heads the Central Command Air Force. His command includes six wings in the eastern United States with more than 350 aircraft and 26,000 active-duty and civilian personnel. Air power from U.S. personnel stationed in Qatar and other bases in the Persian Gulf is expected to play a critical role in the campaign against Iraq. As air component commander for CentCom, he is responsible for developing plans for conducting air operations in the 25-nation area of responsibility stretching from Kenya southward to the Seychelles Islands and across the Arabian Peninsula and southwest Asia to Pakistan.
Background: The holder of bachelor's and master's degrees in political science, he previously commanded the F-15 Division of the USAF Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.
Lt. Gen. Earl B. Hailston
Role: He heads the Marine Corps Forces Central Command, a post he assumed on Aug. 10, 2001. The command provides Marine expeditionary forces capable of conducting a wide range of operations, including on Navy amphibious ships and in air ground task forces.
Background: A Vietnam veteran, Hailston enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1967. He has also served in Korea.
Vice Adm. Timothy Keating
Role: He heads the Naval Forces Central Command, which is based in Bahrain and exercises control over all naval operations in CentCom's area of responsibility. During normal periods, Navy forces make up 70 percent of the overall U.S. military presence in theater. Keating was appointed to his post in February 2002.
Background: He previously served as deputy chief of naval operations for plans, policy and operations. A Navy pilot and a veteran of Desert Storm, Keating has served in Saudi Arabia and Japan. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1971.
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan
Role: Head of Army Forces Central Command. He assumed that position on Sept. 4, after serving as the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations. The large number of ground forces in Kuwait is expected to have a lead role in the campaign against Iraq.
Background: McKiernan entered the Army in 1972, and has served in Korea and Germany.
Brig. Gen. Gary Harrell
Role: Heads the Special Operations Forces Central Command, whose culturally sensitive forces train local forces in host countries. Special ops forces and their activities are often top-secret
Background: Citing security reasons, CentCom and Special Operations Forces Central Command declined to provide any biographical information on Harrell.
==========
ALLIES
Geoff Hoon
Role: Britain's secretary of state for defense is the top adviser to the prime minister on defense matters. His role includes making and executing defense policy. Hoon, who has been in that position since October 1999, is the counterpart of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Because Britain is the leading American ally on Iraq, Hoon would play a major role in planning and carrying out a military campaign.
Background: Hoon, who previously had responsibility in the ministry for the Middle East, has been a member of parliament since 1992. Before that, he lectured in law at Leeds University and was visiting professor of law at the University of Kentucky.
Adm. Sir Michael Boyce
Role: The chief of the British defense staff since February 2001 is the main military adviser to Hoon, a position similar to that of Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Background: Boyce joined the Royal Navy in 1961. After commanding submarines, he served as senior naval officer for the Middle East. He was knighted in 1995. In 1997 he became NATO's commander in chief for the Eastern Atlantic and commander of allied naval forces in northwestern Europe. He served as head of the Royal Navy from 1998 to 2001.
Australian Defense Minister Sen. Robert Hill
Role: He is the most senior elected official responsible for defense policy and for operations of the country's defense force. In a war against Iraq, he would work closely with Australia's prime minister and foreign minister in overseeing the country's commitment of troops and equipment.
Background: He's also an elected member of Parliament, serving since 1981 as a Liberal senator for South Australia. He is a past environment minister.
Peter Cosgrove
Role: He has been Australia's chief of the defense force since last July. In that position, he serves as the top uniformed military adviser to the government and heads all three services, the Army, Navy and Air Force, a role comparable to that of the U.S.'s Meyers.
Background: Cosgrove previously served as chief of the army. He led the international force that went into East Timor in 1999. Cosgrove, who joined in the infantry in 1968, is a Vietnam veteran. He attended the Marine Corps Staff College at Quantico in Virginia. Cosgrove was named Australian of the Year in 2001.
==========
IRAQ
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
Role: He has ultimate authority over every aspect of Iraqi society, including the military, but several military leaders serve under him. Among the key ones:
Qusay Hussein
Role: Heads the Republican Guard, Iraq's elite fighting force. Regarded as the more level-headed of Saddam's two sons, Qusay has edged out his older brother, Uday, as heir-apparent to Saddam, observers believe. Qusay oversees all Iraq intelligence and security services and has been linked by exiles to brutal crackdowns on suspected opponents of the regime. In addition to overseeing the Republican Guard and the Special Republican Guard, regarded as particularly loyal to Saddam, he was named deputy of the Ba'ath Party's Military Bureau in 2001.
Background: He has studied law and is married to the daughter of Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed.
Abed Hamid Hamoud
Role: Has a position similar to that of the national security adviser to the American president but with the added role of exercising direct authority over Iraq's armed forces. He also serves as the doorkeeper to Saddam.
Background: He is regarded by some observers as perhaps the most powerful figure after Qusay, and is often seen next to or behind Saddam.
Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed
Role: He took office in 1995. During Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, he was given command of the central region of Iraq. He was the commander delegated to sign the cease-fire with the U.S.-led coalition aft er the Gulf War in 1991. Earlier, he was decorated for bravery during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
Background: Ahmed, considered a military professional, began his career in military intelligence after graduating from Baghdad's National Security Institute in 1975.
Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz
Role: A key adviser to Saddam on foreign policy and other issues and answers only to him.
Background: A native of Mosul, he is the only Christian in the Iraqi leadership. He studied English and literature at Baghdad College, joined the Ba'ath party in 1957 and worked closely with Saddam to overthrow British imposed monarchy. Since the 1970s, he has been Saddam's conduit with the outside world and main adviser on foreign affairs.
General Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti
Role: Secretary-general of the army's general command, he is a clansman of Saddam.
Background: He served the Iraqi ruler during the 1980-1988 war with Iran and later in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, demonstrating absolute loyalty.
Gen. Ibrahim Abdel Sattar
Role: He spent almost all his career in the Republican Guard, and was made army chief of staff three years ago.
Background: He is from near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.
Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan
Role: He is also commander of the Popular Army, a militia composed of civilian volunteers to protect the Ba'ath regime against internal opposition and to serve as a power base, as well as a counter-balance to the Ba'ath Party Militia.
Background: Vice president since 1991, he threatened suicide attacks against the United States in February. A native of Mosul, in northeastern Iraq, he headed a revolutionary court that executed 44 officers in 1970 for allegedly plotting to overthrow the regime.
Uday Hussein
Role: Saddam's older son is the commander of Fedayeen forces, a paramilitary group. He also oversees Iraq's state-run media.
Background: The brothers have been bitter rivals in the past. The target of an assassination attempt in 1996, Uday is at least partially paralyzed. He is married to the daughter of the former head of Iraqi intelligence, Barzan Ibrahim Hasan Tikriti, Saddam's half brother.
Gen. Kamal Mustafa
Role: A commander of the Republican Guard, where he has spent almost his entire career.
Background: He is Saddam's cousin and his brother is married to Saddam's youngest daughter, Hala.







  



March 20, 2003 Thursday  




 Muslim Institutions Focus on Legal Matters; 
Immigrant Issues Become Common Topic

 
Friday prayer services at the Prince George's Muslim Association Community Center in Lanham have always been followed by a series of cheerful public announcements -- the start of a new Arabic class, an upcoming feast to celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan, another sale at a local halal grocery store. 
But recently, the list is just as likely to include a more serious type of event -- the latest seminar on how to stand up for your rights as a Muslim in America. 
There have been many to choose from. Faced with several new immigration and security laws that the government maintains are needed to prevent terrorism but that critics charge unfairly target thousands of innocent Muslims, Arab and South Asian residents, mosques and community groups across Prince George's County are increasingly expanding their mission.  
 Once, they focused on improving members' spiritual or social lives, but now they also offer immigration information, legal referrals and pep talks. 
 "A lot of families in our community are feeling very apprehensive . . . and immigration lawyers tell us it's only going to get worse," said Minhaj Hasan, editor of Muslim Link, a monthly newsletter published by the Dar-us-Salaam mosque in College Park. 
 About 10,000 copies are printed for distribution across the Washington region, and the publication has been quick to adapt. Founded four years ago, it originally featured meditations on "the basics of Islam, rules and regulations, things like that," he said. 
 Now there are also articles on civil rights and editorials exhorting readers not to abandon their faith in the face of discrimination or to shop at Muslim-owned businesses that lost non-Muslim customers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 
The most recent issue also has a "questions and answers" column with an immigration lawyer. The first in what Hasan said will be a series, it deals with one of the most controversial federal security initiatives -- a program to register, fingerprint and question thousands of male visitors from 25 countries considered sources of terrorism. 
The "special registration" effort has caused widespread panic and confusion because more than 1,600 of the more than 41,000 men nationwide who have signed up were detained for visa violations, and many had applications pending for permanent residency. Large numbers of those arrested spent a night or more in jail. 
 Although nearly all have been released, they and about 3,800 who were not detained face deportation proceedings. The government has refused to release statistics on the number of registrants detained in the Washington area. 
The deadline for most nationals who must register under the program has passed. However those from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have until tomorrow, and those from Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, and Kuwait have until April 25. 
Because the program covers countries with large non-Muslim populations, even a few local churches have mobilized to help immigrant parishioners navigate legal questions it entails. 
That's the case at St. John the Baptist, a Catholic church on New Hampshire Avenue just across the Prince George's County border with Montgomery County in Silver Spring. A few weeks ago, church officials organized an informational meeting on special registration between about 50 Indonesian parishioners and David Cleveland, an attorney with Catholic Charities who speaks their language. 
"People asked a lot of questions that we didn't know the answers to," Cleveland said. "Congress has written an unclear law, the [U.S.] attorney general has issued some unclear rules and he constantly makes amendments, so the law today may be different from the law next month." 
To help people navigate that system, a South Asian group called Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center in the District has set up a hotline, staffed by law students who speak a range of South Asian languages. The group offers legal referrals to area immigrants seeking advice on special registration and has negotiated with lawyers to provide low rates for clients it refers. 
The group's services are in high demand, said Deepa Iyer, who oversees the hotline. "Before special registration was announced, a lot of the people calling in had questions about divorce, or child custody issues. . . . Now we're getting people saying 'I'm undocumented, and I'm really scared to register. Should I do it?' " 
Much of the legal outreach in Prince George's has been done by another regional group called South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SALT). Over successive weekends, its members have visited county butcher shops, pizza parlors and mosques that Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indonesian residents are known to frequent, passing out fliers with the hotline number. 
Not everyone approached is grateful, noted Iyer, also a SALT member. 
"Sometimes, people will say, 'I don't need this. This doesn't affect me because I'm a legal permanent resident.' . . . It's a defensive response,she said. 
But many more express deep gratitude. "They say, 'I'm so concerned. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to turn,' " Iyer said. 
 Shopkeepers are also appreciative, she added, offering to post the fliers and sometimes giving free drinks to volunteers distributing them.  







   
 

March 19, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 Suddenly, a Seller's Market for Arabic Studies 

 
Prof. Muhammad S. Eissa has never been busier.
     Each weekday he teaches Arabic to students at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and because the demand for experienced Arabic instructors has overwhelmed the supply nationwide, his lectures are videotaped for replay in classrooms at a college and a university in Utah. 
 In his free time, Dr. Eissa, an Egyptian-born Muslim, has also been lecturing church groups and Rotary Clubs that are suddenly eager for information about Islam. 
As the pursuit of Al Qaeda and America's confrontation with Iraq intensifies, Arabic-speaking educators and Islamic organizations, as well as universities and schools across the nation, are straining to respond to requests by students and the public for information and instruction about the language and culture of Islam.
"It's just snowballed," said Karin Ryding, who heads Georgetown University's Arabic languages department, which offered five beginning Arabic classes last semester, instead of the usual two. Other universities reported similar increases or new courses because of the demand.
Historically, most Americans have been only dimly aware of Islam and its liturgical language, Arabic, but this is not the first time that national interest has built to a fever. The 1979 hostage crisis in Iran led to a burst of study of the Muslim world, and the federal government made more money available to train teachers of Mideastern languages and for study abroad. By the mid-1980's, however, government and public interest had waned, only to increase again, for a while, at the time of the Persian Gulf war.
But now some of Dr. Eissa's students are digging in for the long term, betting that an intellectual investment in Arabic will pay off in their careers.
"If we go into Iraq, we're going to need to be over there for a long time to build it back," said Lars Longnecker, a third-year law student who decided in December to study Arabic. "So I see our involvement in the Mideast increasing, and I figured Arabic would give me a leg up in that area."
Students across the country appear to agree. Kirk Belnap, a professor of Arabic and the director of a federally financed consortium, the National Middle East Language Resource Center at Brigham Young University, said many universities were reporting "double or triple enrollments" in Arabic classes.
"There's been an explosion in interest," said John C. Eisele, executive director of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic. The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., where Dr. Eisele teaches, offered two beginning Arabic classes last fall, but had to turn away 20 students. Because the demand is similar nationwide, many colleges and universities, as well as half a dozen federal agencies, are seeking to hire people fluent in Arabic. "There's a ton of jobs out there," Dr. Eisele said.
It is not only college campuses that have experienced the surge in interest. In Alabama, so many middle school and high school students asked about Islam that nearly 200 Alabama teachers signed up last summer for a course, Understanding Islam, taught by Dr. Angelia Mance, associate director of the National Council on Geographic Education.
"It was the most popular course I've given," said Dr. Mance, who taught it in classrooms packed with teachers in the Alabama towns of Florence, Jasper and Hamilton. One of her students was Gail Spann, a public school librarian whose son, Johnny Michael Spann, an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, was killed in Afghanistan in November 2001, Dr. Mance said.
"War is God's way of teaching world geography to Americans," Dr. Mance said, quoting Ambrose Bierce, the 19th-century satirist.
The Islamic Networks Group, formed in the mid-1990's by California Muslims who believed their religion was being misrepresented in the public schools, has in recent months expanded its network of speakers bureaus to 25 cities from 18, said Maha ElGenaidi, the group's co-founder, who grew up in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The speakers originally lectured about Islam mostly in public schools, she said, but in recent months, the group has been flooded with invitations to explain the religion to police departments, groups for the elderly, community centers and Rotary Clubs.
But if some Americans are suddenly eager to learn about Islam, there is much ignorance to overcome.
Even many university students "lack a rudimentary knowledge of the nature of the Islamic faith," according to a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Instructional Psychology. After hearing statements betraying ignorance of Islam, its authors, Thomas Mastrilli and Deborah Sardo-Brown, professors at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, circulated a questionnaire among 218 students about to become teachers in public schools.
About half the students could not identify the Koran as the Islamic holy book or Mecca as the holiest Islamic city (one in seven guessed Jerusalem), their report said. Not one of the students surveyed could name the world's three most populous Muslim countries: Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh. The two professors called for more education about Islam to foster religious tolerance.
In contrast, a study released this month warned against too much tolerance of Islam. It was written by Gilbert Sewell, a former education editor at Newsweek who heads the American Textbook Council, a New York group opposed to multicultural teaching. Mr. Sewell examined seven widely used middle school and high school world history textbooks and concluded that publishers made "an effort to circumvent unsavory facts that might cast Islam in anything but a positive light." For instance, textbooks have "defanged" the term jihad, Mr. Sewell contended, defining it as Muslims' struggle for spiritual improvement rather than more narrowly as holy war.
But several textbook publishers criticized Mr. Sewell's objectivity.
"A lot of his language is just slanted against the religion of Islam," said Collin Earnst, a spokesman for Houghton Mifflin.
Bernard Lewis, a Princeton Mideast scholar cited extensively by Mr. Sewell, declined through his assistant to comment on the report. Rashid Khalidi, a professor of history and Near Eastern languages at the University of Chicago, called Mr. Sewell's study "a terribly biased document full of bigoted statements."
Mr. Sewell and his critics agree on the importance of increasing Americans' familiarity with Islamic civilization -- the challenge to which Dr. Eissa has devoted his professional life since he began teaching Arabic at American universities in 1978.
"American interest in Islamic affairs comes in waves and then it ebbs," Dr. Eissa said, just before video cameras focused on him as he began conjugating Arabic verbs at the start of another class here. "But this current tide of fascination seems more intense and wider in perspective."







  



March 19, 2003 Wednesday  




 Opponents of War Decry U.S. Stance; 
Many Nations Assail End of Diplomacy

 
President Jacques Chirac accused the United States today of "favoring force over law" for issuing an ultimatum against Iraq, and many other nations joined him in opposing the American-led push for war. 
 From Beijing to Mexico City, governments expressed regret that the United States had given up on diplomatic efforts at the United Nations to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government. Many said war was not justified at this time, especially without the blessing of a new United Nations Security Council resolution that Washington unsuccessfully sought. 
 "Iraq does not represent today an immediate threat that justifies an immediate war," said Chirac, who led opposition to the war at the United Nations. Germany and Russia also spoke out against war, as did the Arab League and the European Commission, the executive body of the 15-member EU.  
 "We still believe that a solution to the crisis should be found within the U.N. Security Council," said a government spokesman in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country. 
 The United States drew support from Britain, Spain, Italy, Japan, Australia and more than two dozen other countries, especially in eastern Europe and the Persian Gulf. Some antiwar countries made conciliatory gestures. France said it would offer units to the United States to help combat chemical or biological attacks, if Iraq used such weapons. 
 But others kept their distance from the imminent U.S.-led attack. 
 "The vast majority of countries in the world, and the vast majority of countries in Europe, are not enthusiastic, and at the same time are very surprised, very sad and very concerned," said Nicole Gnesotto, director of the EU's Institute for Security Studies in Paris. 
 "There is a question about the legitimacy of the war, and there is a question of U.S. legitimacy in the world" regarding how America wields its power, she said. 
President Bush on Monday issued an ultimatum in a television address warning Hussein that he would face war unless he, his sons and some other top officials went into exile within 48 hours. 
 One of the most pointed criticisms today came from German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who appealed to antiwar sentiment in riding to a narrow reelection victory in September. 
 "My question was and is: does the degree of threat stemming from the Iraqi dictator justify a war that will bring certain death to thousands of innocent men, women and children? My answer was and is: no," he said in a three-minute television speech. 
 The German and French foreign ministers were scheduled to travel to New York on Wednesday for a Security Council meeting that would be a symbolic, last-gasp antiwar gesture. U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who has said the time for diplomacy was over, was not planning to participate.  
A spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations likened the session to "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." 
 France and other countries were still pressing the issue publicly to justify their pursuit of a diplomatic solution even as the effort failed, according to European analysts. 
 "It's an issue of credibility, to show that they were in the right," said Gianni Bonvicini, director of the Institute of International Affairs in Rome. They want "to underline that they have a different idea [from America] of how to manage multilateral affairs and to protect the U.N. Security Council," he said. 
 In Beijing, China's new president, Hu Jintao, told Bush by telephone, "China hopes for peace instead of war," the official New China News Agency said. In his first conversation with Bush since becoming president over the weekend, Hu said, "On the Iraq issue, China always advocates a political solution in the framework of the United Nations." 
 India, the world's second most populous nation after China, issued a statement distancing itself from U.S. unilateralism. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said it was "obvious any resort to force is fraught with numerous deaths, large-scale destruction and consequences that go beyond this region." 
 Mexican President Vicente Fox said he regretted the failure of diplomacy and that his country's opposition to military action would not hurt ties with Washington. 
 Among countries supporting the United States, Australia said it would commit 2,000 troops to the war effort. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called the ultimatum "a very difficult decision" for Bush and said, "It was a decision that had to be made." 
 Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who has staunchly backed the U.S. position in the United Nations, reiterated his support but also said Spain would not send combat troops to the conflict. Spain will contribute 900 troops, for purposes such as medical support and anti-mine work, and three ships. 
 In some countries whose governments are supporting the United States, there were signs of popular opposition. In Italy, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has backed Washington, the nation's three main labor unions, representing 11 million workers, said they would call national protest strikes. 







  



March 17, 2003 Monday  




 On the Road And On Camera With Tom Friedman

 
 Traveling with a camera crew, Thomas Friedman says, is harder than it looks. 
 From Qatar to Indonesia to Bahrain, the New York Times columnist spent months interviewing Muslims for a cable documentary called "Searching for the Roots of 9/11." And he learned something about the limitations of television. 
 "One thing about being a columnist is you get to talk to a lot of people off the record because you don't really need any quotes," he says. "That means a higher percentage of the time, people will tell you the truth. The thing that was so hard in doing this is getting people to tell you the truth on camera -- about an incredibly sensitive subject."  
 Friedman's venture into filmmaking stems from a partnership between the Discovery Channel and the Times's new television unit, which are also launching the digital-only Discovery Times Channel. His program is part of a monthly "Spotlight" series that includes NBC as a partner and debuted last month with a Tom Brokaw special on bioterrorism. "This is something that almost no one else does in television," says Discovery Communications executive Don Baer. 
 Friedman hardly needs more outlets to tell the world what he thinks. He's won three Pulitzer Prizes, writes best-selling books and appears on such programs as "Face the Nation." But he was drawn to using television to capture the anger and frustration of the Arab world. 
 "Lots of people can do a great two-minute interview," says Discovery Channel General Manager Clark Bunting. "Weaving together a story as complex as the roots of 9/11 is an editorial and creative challenge of the first order." 
 Friedman doesn't profess to be neutral in the hour-long show, which airs on Discovery on March 26 at 10 p.m. He even engages a Jordanian professor in a debate on the Arab network al-Jazeera. "This has a little bit of attitude, because I'm not a reporter and I can't pretend to be," he says. 
 The program contends that anger at the United States and Israel fueled both the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the way they were applauded by some Arabs. But Friedman says there's also a sense of humiliation among Arabs whose societies have fallen far behind the rest of the world.  
 Some of those interviewed were candid with Friedman only in private. "When you're writing a column, you can say 'an Egyptian youth,' 'a Moroccan intellectual,' 'a Saudi official.' " Still, he says, "it's very important to get these voices. Nine-eleven blew a hole in the wall of civilization, and we can't begin to repair that hole unless we understand what it was all about." 
 Discovery executives hope Friedman will do four such pieces a year. But he wants to see how this program is received, especially overseas, and there's another consideration as well. 
 "Being a columnist is a four-day-a-week job. I discovered that being a documentary filmmaker is also a four-day-a-week job, and together they add up to eight days." 
 Washington Post business reporter Jonathan Weisman announced last week that he had "violated journalistic ethics" by using a quote from an administration economist that White House spinmeisters had changed. 
 In a posting on Jim Romenesko's media Web site, Weisman said that for a January profile of former economic adviser R. Glenn Hubbard, he agreed to e-mail the off-the-record quote to Ari Fleischer's office for approval. The office fiddled with the quote, and after Weisman objected, the office fiddled again before the comment was printed. 
 "I believe that reporters should stop playing along with a system where quotes are vetted by the White House press office and can be rejected and even modified," Weisman says now. 
 Jill Dutt, The Post's assistant managing editor for financial news, says Weisman hadn't told his editors and was unaware of the paper's rules. "Post policy is that you cannot change a quote once a source has uttered it," she says. 
 White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan says that the practice is "infrequent" and that it was done "to accommodate Jonathan," who had told her by e-mail that the unnamed official was "very skittish about even talking on background." But Weisman says he was told the arrangement was the only way the interview would be granted. 
 How did Salt Lake City's Deseret News get the best family photos of the return of Elizabeth Smart? 
 Answer: Tom Smart, the 15-year-old's uncle and a family spokesman during her abduction, is a staff photographer. Editor John Hughes sees no problem, saying Smart is on leave and the pictures were made available to news outlets around the world. Photo Editor Ravell Call says that the photos will now be sold by Getty Images but that Smart plans to donate the proceeds to a children's fund. 
 "It's an odd situation," says Salt Lake Tribune Editor Jay Shelledy. He adds that the rival paper "pulled a lot of punches" last year when police gave Smart a polygraph test as a possible suspect and Smart proclaimed his innocence in the News. Hughes says that the story was fully reported and that the Tribune editors are "petty people" for not crediting Smart's photos to the News. 
 When a group called the Young Conservatives of Texas was preparing to protest a Bill Clinton appearance in the state, Steve McLinden, a Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter, used the paper's e-mail to send the group this message: 
 "Ah, the heartless, greedy, anti-intellectual little fascists are mobilizing again. (Let me guess. All you frat boys saved up your allowances and monies from your McDonald's jobs for those Beemers you'll be driving to the protest, and those new jackboots you'll be sportin' en route)." 
 Editor Jim Witt let McLinden go that day and apologized to the group. "Obviously, reporters have opinions," Witt says. "But we expect our reporters not to express those opinions unless they're columnists." 
 Bush administration officials have stopped putting out estimates of how many health care workers would be covered under their smallpox inoculation program. 
 The reason: They don't like the way the media are covering the issue. 
 In January, President Bush called for 500,000 hospital workers and others who would deal with a smallpox emergency to be immunized. In recent weeks, news stories have suggested that the effort has flopped, noting that fewer than 5,000 people have heeded the call. Even Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson admits he's disappointed. 
 But HHS spokesman Bill Pierce says reporters keep portraying the 500,000 figure as a goal: "We've never said it was our goal. . . . We recommend the inoculations. The 'recommend' word is not just the casual use of a phrase. We don't tell them they have to. It's a voluntary program. . . . This is not something that needs to be looked at in success-or-failure terms." 
 But if there's an attack and less than 1 percent of the first responders are inoculated, wouldn't most people deem that a failure? "Any level of vaccination is a good thing," Pierce says. 
 When the administration suggested that more health care workers, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, get their shots, HHS refused to estimate how many people that would include. "For us there's no value to putting out numbers the way the media have portrayed them," says Pierce. "They're using the numbers back at us for purposes we never intended." 
 "The Fayetteville Observer has brought home its reporter and photographer team from Kuwait after reporter Tanya Biank became engaged to an Army major in the unit she was covering." -- the North Carolina paper on Friday. 







  



March 13, 2003 Thursday  




 U.N. Absurdity

 
 War precipitates clarity as well as confusion, and the war against Iraq already has clarified this: The United Nations is not a good idea badly implemented, it is a bad idea. 
 For France, and for the United Nations through which France magnifies its own significance, the objective of disarming Iraq, if ever seriously held, has been superseded by the objective of frustrating America. And for America, the imperative of disarming Iraq will soon be supplanted by the imperative of insulating U.S. sovereignty from U.N. hubris. 
 Certain political phrases become, through mindless repetition, cant that bewitches the intelligence. One such phrase is "the international community," which is oxymoronic because "community" denotes unity based on shared political interests and cultural values. And beware of political entities absurdly named. Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, the United Nations is a disunited collection of regimes, many of which do not represent the nations they govern.  
 The United Nations is premodern because it is unaccountable and irresponsible: It claims power not legitimized by the recurring consent of periodically consulted constituencies of the governed. Inebriated by self-approval, the United Nations is grounded in neither democratic consent nor territorial responsibilities, nor independent fiscal means, nor the material means of enforcing its judgments. 
 The United Nations should contemplate the prudence required of the U.S. Supreme Court. The court's power flows from the public's deference, which depends on the court's accepting a limited role amid powerful political forces. The court has occasionally imperiled its authority by overreaching, as when it tried to settle the slavery controversy with the Dred Scott decision and when it tried to stem powerful political tides by finding constitutional infirmities in major New Deal measures. France, by trying to lasso the American locomotive with the cobwebs of U.N. procedures, has emboldened Iraq and made war inevitable, much as the Dred Scott decision lit the fuse of war. 
 France wants to use the United Nations to acquire derivative dignity in a "multipolar" world with blocs of nations comparable to America in economic vigor, military power and political will. France evidently believes such blocs can be summoned into existence because their existence would be convenient. Remember the joke about the economist trapped at the bottom of a well. "No problem," he thinks. "I'll assume a ladder." 
 France would be well advised to avoid the subject of other potential powers. With India already the most populous democracy and soon to be the most populous nation, with its population growing more in a week than the entire European Union's grows in a year, why exactly is France (population 60 million) a permanent member of the Security Council? What of the largest Latin American nation (Brazil, 176 million), or the largest East Asian democracy (Japan, 127 million), or the largest Muslim nation (Indonesia, 232 million)? 
 Reverence for the United Nations translates into resistance to change. Liberals eager to be the definers of true conservatism say that once liberal institutions have been put in place it is unconservative not to conserve the institutions. 
 But it is reactionary, not conservative, to preserve the status quo of NATO 15 years after the end of the Cold War. Or of the U.N. Security Council, which is a snapshot of 1945 delusions and compromises. Both, liberals seem to believe, are of undiminished utility and authority. Actually, both call to mind Churchill's story of the man who received a telegram saying his mother-in-law had died and asking for instructions. The man wired back: "Embalm, cremate, bury at sea. Take no chances." 
 Liberals, who call conservative hostility to the United Nations "radical," disregard the recklessness, and the incoherence, of the United Nations' new presumption. The United Nations, a collection of regimes of less than uniform legitimacy, has anointed itself the sole arbiter of what are legitimate military actions. And it has claimed a duty to leash the only nation that has the power to enforce U.N. resolutions. How long will that nation's public be willing to pay one-quarter of the United Nations' bills? 
 It is a measure of the intellectual vertigo into which the United Nations has plunged "the international community" that America, which is going to war to enforce Resolution 1441, is said to be doing so "in defiance of the United Nations." The war will be followed by a presidential election in which all candidates must answer this: "Do you believe that any use of U.S. military power lacks legitimacy unless approved by France, Russia and China?" The Republican candidate has already answered. 







   
 

March 12, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 Indonesia Is Urged to Intervene in  Loan Debacle 

 
The United States, Japan, Canada and eight European nations have written to the Indonesian president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, urging her to intervene in efforts to recover $6.5 billion in loans from Asia Pulp and Paper. The company, a family-owned conglomerate at the center of one of Asia's biggest and longest-running financial debacles, defaulted on $13.9 billion in debt in 2001.
     Creditors appear to be drawing close to a deal to restructure the debts of the four Indonesian units of Asia Pulp and Paper. But they remain at loggerheads with the Indonesian authorities over safeguards against a second default, according to a person close to the European export agencies involved in the negotiations.  
 A letter signed jointly by the 11 countries' ambassadors in Jakarta is the latest effort by creditors to pin down Asia Pulp and Paper. "We are trying to get the Indonesian government more involved in the restructuring," said Bo Ollison, spokesman for the United States Export-Import Bank, which is owed at least $108 million by Asia Pulp and Paper. "We are still working through the negotiation process and are hopeful that an agreement can be reached." 
But bankers close to the talks said they were doubtful that the letter would gain the creditors much leverage, given the Indonesian government's reputation for inaction and Asia Pulp and Paper's adroitness in thwarting outside efforts to wrest control from its founding family, the Widjajas.
"The family will outlast them all," said a former adviser to Asia Pulp and Paper. 
The letter sent to Mrs. Megawati emphasizes the risk that the company's defiance poses to investors' future willingness to do business in Indonesia.
But bankers in the region say the most remarkable thing about the Asia Pulp and Paper mess is how it has been walled off by the markets.
Most of the company's unpaid creditors are export credit agencies like the Export-Import Bank, or dealers in distressed debt; almost no one else has any tangible stake in the outcome, though a successful resolution would remove a cloud from the general investment climate in Indonesia, the bankers said. 
Looming much larger are questions about how a war in Iraq may affect Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country with a presidential election due next year. The country's uncertain legal environment, corrupt courts and growing labor unrest are also scaring away foreign direct investment.
Still, the way the government handles Asia Pulp and Paper will grow in importance as the country strives to emerge next year from a $5 billion economic aid program administered by the International Monetary Fund. The export credit agencies, owed about $960 million by the company, have pointed out that Indonesia may need them to help finance an estimated $100 billion in infrastructure projects over the next decade.
"The longer it drags on, and the more complex it becomes, the more difficult it becomes for Indonesia to access international capital markets," said Steven Hess of Moody's Investors Service in New York.
Asia Pulp and Paper is the flagship of the Sinar Mas Group, a conglomerate founded by one of Indonesia's most prominent Chinese immigrants, Eka Tjipta Widjaja, now in his eighties. That his family remains in control, bankers say, is attributable in part to a byzantine corporate structure that has made it possible for the company to play some creditors off against others.
While creditors have been fighting to restructure the $6.5 billion owed by Asia Pulp's units in Indonesia, other creditors have been trying to win control of the holding company in a court in Singapore, where Asia Pulp and Paper is based. Units in China, where Sinar Mas is a major investor, have reportedly reached a separate deal with creditors. Meanwhile, the company and its former auditor, Arthur Andersen, face lawsuits over allegations of accounting irregularities.
The Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency, which became Asia Pulp and Paper's largest single creditor when it took control of the Widjajas's bank during the Asian financial crisis in 1999, signed a preliminary restructuring agreement in December with the company. The agency, known as IBRA, wants to finalize that deal by the end of thismonth. But the export credit agencies want an independent company set up to monitor Asia Pulp and Paper's operations and ensure they are repaid, and they want a mechanism that would give creditors control of the company's stock if it defaults again. IBRA reportedly opposes both ideas, and it is not clear what recourse creditors would have if it rejected them. 







   
 

March 11, 2003 Tuesday  
  



 Maumere Journal; 
On an Indonesian Island, a Reverence for Tolerance

 
Until recently, the poor and largely Catholic island of Flores was considered immune from the often-violent clashes between Muslims and Christians that have occurred in other parts of Indonesia.
     But that all changed last year when a mob came close to attacking a mosque in the capital, Maumere. 
 A seaman was convicted of desecrating the wafer during a Roman Catholic Mass, a crime for which he was sentenced to eight years. Somehow, word got around that the man was a Muslim and that was enough to ignite the mob's passions. Violence was averted at the last minute by the intervention of the Catholic priests. 
To ease the tensions, which appear to be as much a product of poverty and provocation by the local military as anything else, the priests at the Roman Catholic seminary here say they have redoubled their efforts to stress forbearance.
Certainly, a recent philosophy lesson at the seminary was devoted to the work of Max Scheler, a German thinker who wrote about the need for believers in one religion to understand the values of other faiths. 
For the trainee priests, where a majority of Roman Catholics surround a tiny minority of Muslims, tolerance is not a new message.
But they are hearing it more urgently than ever before. 
"Some of my relatives are Muslims," said the Rev. Philipus Tule, the director of the St. Paul Major Seminary, who grew up in Flores and recently completed a doctorate in the anthropology of religion at the Australian National University in Canberra. "We inherited the same land and we still celebrate local customs."
"We even pray for our Muslim relatives," he continued. "It is a very advanced theology. I started to do that when I studied Islamic theology and when I understood other believers had the same aim: searching for God."
Catholicism arrived in 1914, when fathers from the German-based Society of the Divine Word landed on the coast of Flores and pushed into the malaria-filled mountainous hinterland. They succeeded -- where their Jesuit colleagues had failed in the previous century -- in converting almost everyone, leaving only scattered Muslim villages and some followers of local pagan beliefs.
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, where there is also a significant Christian minority of about 10 percent, Flores retains the greatest concentration of Roman Catholics, about 1.1 million people.
Pope Paul VI visited Flores in 1967, and the current pope came in 1989 to conduct a Mass at the Maumere stadium. Sukarno, the nation's first leader after independence, was exiled by the Dutch here, and wrote movingly about the common values of the Catholics and the Muslims. 
Currently, 700 students, almost all of them from the island, are studying at the seminary, which was founded in 1937. Like their predecessors, some will become pastors in other parts of the world, including the United States and Latin America. Others will stay behind, to serve as diocesan priests or as missionaries. 
Because Flores lacks the minerals, timber and oil of most of the rest of Indonesia, the island is the nation's poorest. Crops grow, but the prices for cocoa and cashew nuts are low. Some of the villagers who scratch a living from the fields here look as destitute as people from some of the most devastated places of sub-Saharan Africa. They have barely enough food, and not much else.
The priests and sisters from the Holy Spirit order say they spend much of their time dealing with social issues that the government ignores.
Sister Eustochia Nata, born in Flores 60 years ago, is one of the most active. She has taken things into her own hands, in part, she said, because of the failure of the World Bank to live up to its promises of easing poverty on the island.
Bank officials had asked her on a variety of occasions to work with their projects, but she refused.
"The last time they came to me, I said, 'What percentage of your money goes to the poor people and what percentage goes to operational?' " she recalled. "They didn't reply and never contacted me again."
Instead, three years ago, she founded an interfaith human rights group called Truk 4. She trains young members on a variety of social issues, including encouraging rape victims to report their cases to the police.
The influence of the priests also reaches beyond the churches and the classrooms. 
They have organized a new radio station, Radio Sonia, run by young journalists who left the government station. In recent days, the station has spearheaded an anti-Iraq-war drive that calls on listeners to send small packets of rice -- as a symbol of peace, not war -- to the American ambassador in Jakarta. 
The Rev. Paul Budi Kleden, who returned recently to Flores after 13 years studying and serving as a priest in Europe, writes a column in the island's largest circulation newspaper, Pos Kupang. He recently wrote against the eight-year sentence handed down to the seaman for desecrating the wafer. 
"I don't agree with such a long sentence," Father Paul said.
On the other hand, he said, he tried to understand the motivations of the youths who wanted to attack the mosque.
"The people have lost economic possibilities, they have lost participation in politics," he said. "Religion is the only place where they have some space. If that is taken away they are very angry."




5


 
 


March 10, 2003 Monday



 Pakistani Islamists Rally for Iraq

 
Hundreds of thousands of people in Pakistan and Indonesia, two of the world's largest Muslim countries, attended rallies yesterday against the looming American-led war in Iraq, mixing sympathy for the Iraqi people with calls for jihad.
In Indonesia, more than 100,000 people gathered in Surabaya as clerics read passages from the Koran and led the crowd in chants for world peace. It was the largest in a series of anti-war protests in the world's most populous Muslim nation, where the government has repeatedly come out against the planned war. But it lacked the fiery anti-Americanism of earlier, smaller rallies. 
In the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi there was no shortage of firebrand polemics, as speakers urged: "Wake up Pakistanis. It's time for jihad. Your Islamic faith is calling on you."
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a six-party opposition Islamic alliance which organized the march, denounced what they called an "American crusade."
Many of the young protesters wore headbands bearing verses from the Koran to demonstrate their readiness for jihad. Some carried pictures of fugitive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and placards reading "Bush is the terrorist, Osama is our real hero."
Organizers dubbed the protest the "Million Man March" but numbers were far lower, with observers estimating anything from 200,00 to 500,000. Nonetheless, it was still one of the largest rallies in Pakistan for years. It followed a similar 100,000-strong demonstration in the port city Karachi last weekend.
The protests present a dilemma for President Musharraf. Pakistan, holding a rotating seat as a non-permanent member of the United Nation's Security Council, has not spelled out how it will vote on a proposed second resolution authorizing force if Iraq fails to disarm unconditionally.
Mr. Musharraf is torn between supporting his anti-terror ally, America, and unleashing a torrent of domestic criticism. The MMA is now the second largest component in government.
The fate of Mr. Musharraf's nephew has emerged as an unexpected wild card in the diplomatic maneuvering.
Aamir Javed Musharraf was released on bail on Friday after spending a fortnight in custody in America for overstaying his visa. He could face deportation.
The younger Mr. Musharraf, who is married to an Arab-American, was found to be staying in America on a visa that expired in 1994.
Pakistanis, as well as citizens from several Middle Eastern countries, have been ordered to report to the authorities to be photographed and fingerprinted as part of efforts to tighten security against terrorism at home.
Mr. Musharraf was reported to be blind, supposedly the reason why he failed to act on letters telling him to revise his immigration status.
His treatment at the hands of American officials is unlikely to work in the interest of the American cause.






  
  

  

MARCH 10, 2003 Monday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Musicians' strike darkens
Broadway for third day
* A dispute over the size of orchestras for musicals left 18 Broadway theaters silent yesterday for the third straight day of a strike. The American Federation of Musicians and the League of American Theatres and Producers held no negotiations yesterday and said none were scheduled. New York officials said the strike cost the city's economy $7.2 million over the weekend.
Many violent crimes in U.S.
not reported, survey says
* More than half of all violent crimes committed in the United States in 2000 were not reported to police, often because the victim felt it was a private matter or the injuries were not significant, the Justice Department concluded in a report issued yesterday. The report was based on interviews of more than 872,000 people age 12 or older who were crime victims between 1992 and 2000. Armed robbery was the most likely to be reported to police, simple assault the least likely. 
Tot who survived air crash
leaves New York hospital
* A toddler who survived 18 hours on a snowy mountain after his family's plane crashed has been discharged from the hospital. Ryan Ferris, 2, was discharged Friday night from Albany, N.Y., Medical Center, while two brothers - Jordan, 5, and Tyler, 10 - were upgraded from serious to fair condition. Their parents and two other brothers died in the March 2 crash in western Massachusetts.
Times Sq. nightclub brawl
critically injures two people
* Eight people were shot, two others were stabbed and two trampled early yesterday when fighting broke out inside a nightclub above a Times Square arcade, police said. A man who was shot in the chest and a woman shot in the stomach were in critical condition. The other injuries were not life-threatening.
Californians unhappy with
Gov. Davis, but reject recall
* California Gov. Gray Davis' popularity has dropped to its lowest level since he took office, with only 27 percent of Californians approving of his job performance, according to a Los Angeles Times poll released yesterday. Despite the low rating, most voters surveyed were skeptical of a recall effort launched last month: 51 percent oppose a special election to unseat him. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Telemarketers even reach
governor's disaster line
* The emergency telephone in North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven's office rang three times in its first week, but it wasn't news of a disaster or terrorist attack. One caller had a wrong number. The other two were telemarketers. "It was a guy trying to sell him two pizzas on special," Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple said. The phone line now blocks nonemergency calls.
In the World
Referendum on joining EU
is approved in Malta
* Malta voted to join the European Union in a referendum tallied yesterday, the first popular test among 10 nations invited to become EU members next year. According to official, hand-counted results, 53.7 percent voted in favor on Saturday. Malta is a former British colony of about 400,000 people in the Mediterranean near Italy.
Ukraine leader's critics
rally for his resignation
* Tens of thousands of Ukrainians rallied in Kiev yesterday to demand that President Leonid Kuchma resign. It was one of the largest protests since the country gained independence in 1991. Kuchma's critics also accuse him of endemic corruption, abuse of office, arms dealing, and vote rigging. Organizers estimated the crowd at more than 100,000, but the Interfax news agency said police estimated it at 20,000.
Iran denies its officials
played role in 1994 attack
* Iran's Foreign Ministry yesterday denied accusations that four of its officials were involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina that killed 85 people, Iran's state media said. An Argentine federal judge on Friday asked Interpol to arrest four Iranians for alleged involvement in the bomb attack on the Buenos Aires center. The four were identified as Moshen Rabbani, a former cultural attache in the embassy in Buenos Aires; Barat Ali Balesh Abadi, a former embassy courier; Ali Fallahijan, the former intelligence minister; and Ali Akbar Parvaresh, a former education minister.
Muslims around globe
rally against Iraq war
* Hundreds of thousands of people in Pakistan and Indonesia, among the world's largest Muslim countries, rallied yesterday against a U.S.-led war in Iraq. More than 50,000 Muslims in India's capital, New Delhi, also protested. In Indonesia, more than 100,000 people joined a protest in Surabaja. In Rawalpindi, Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of people rallied. Organizers claimed that about one million people participated, but journalists at the scene estimated the crowd at 500,000.
Afghan women can tune in
to radio just for them
* The first Afghan radio station programmed solely for women has begun broadcasting in the capital, Kabul, the station's director said yesterday. "The Voice of Afghan Women" aired its inaugural broadcast on Saturday, which also marked International Women's Day, said director Jamila Mujahed, who is also chief editor of a monthly magazine for women called Malalai.






  
  


March 10, 2003 Monday  



 PAKISTAN PROTESTS U.S. WAR FOOTING;
MASSIVE DEMONSTRATION HIGHLIGHTS MOUNTING PRESSURE ON MUSHARRAF

 
Waving banners and shouting slogans denouncing the United States, tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of this congested city Sunday to protest a war on Iraq and their own president's support of the U.S.-led fight against terrorism.
The massive rally, which may have surpassed 100,000 people, according to some independent estimates, followed a similar huge demonstration last week in the southern city of Karachi. It highlighted the mounting pressure on President Pervez Musharraf as he contemplates Pakistan's vote this week on a U.S.-backed resolution on Iraq at the United Nations Security Council. 
Meanwhile, thousands of people also protested in Indonesia and in India.
In Indonesia, at least 100,000 people gathered in a field in the eastern city of Surabaya as clerics read passages from the Koran -- the Muslim holy book -- promoting unity and leading the crowd in chants for world peace.
It was the largest in a series of anti-war rallies in the world's most populous Muslim nation, where the government repeatedly has come out against a potential war in Iraq.
In India, more than 50,000 Muslims protested in New Delhi. The anti-war demonstrators also demanded that the United States disarm Israel.
The Pakistan protest, the second in a series organized by the nation's most influential Islamic political party, also underscored the pressure on Musharraf to distance his government from the aggressive U.S. efforts to track down Al-Qaida terrorists, some of whom have been sheltered by Pakistan's Islamists.
Complaints about the government's crackdown on extremists have grown louder in recent days as the search for Osama bin Laden has intensified.
Many believe the Al-Qaida chief, moving with a small band of bodyguards, is on the run in the remote and lawless tribal area along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
At Sunday's rally, surrounded by banners declaring "No war for oil" and "Down with Bush," more than a dozen religious and political leaders railed against Washington's war plans as a plot against the entire Islamic world.
"Bush is pursuing the agenda of a greater Israel," parliament member Imran Khan told the crowd. "This is a war for oil. Bush is insulting the whole civilized world."
Many at the rally had come from the tribal area where bin Laden may be hiding, an area where sympathy for Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime remains strong and where the Islamic group that sponsored the rally, Jamiat-e-Islami, is the dominant political party.
The rally was peaceful but the mood was militant.
"I believe we are striving for the supremacy of Islam in Pakistan and the whole world," said 32-year-old truck driver Shakeel Ahmed. "If we do not resist the U.S. intentions to invade Iraq, the next target will be Pakistan."
Abdul Nasir, a 17-year-old student of an Islamic school, or madrasah, denounced Bush as "a terrorist." As for his own president, Nasir said, "Every U.S. friend is a traitor to Pakistan."







   
 

March 9, 2003 Sunday  
  



 Farm Worker Held in Bombings At Two Universities in Beijing 

 
The police seized a farm worker today who they say has confessed to setting off explosions late last month at two Beijing universities. The arrest apparently concluded a nationwide dragnet for the person who caused the rare terrorist incidents in China's tightly patrolled capital.
     A police spokesman told reporters that the man, Huang Minxiang, 27, had been apprehended in his home province of Fujian in southeastern China and had immediately confessed to causing both explosions, which came within two hours of each other.  
 "He has unreservedly confessed to causing this incident," the spokesman, Liu Wei, said.
The blasts were set at cafeterias at Beijing University and Qinghua University at the lunch hour on Feb. 25. At least nine people were wounded and glass was shattered in the areas around the blasts. The explosions alarmed students accustomed to relative quiet and tight security in the sprawling, gated campuses of China's most elite universities.
Though Muslim separatists from the Xinjiang region have been accused of causing explosions in the Chinese capital in the past, the latest bombing led to concerns that China might not be as isolated as people here once believed from the wave of terrorist bombings that has hit the United States, Indonesia and other nations.
It also prompted a major police reaction because it came days before China's annual two-week parliamentary session, now under way in Beijing.
Mr. Liu did not say whether Mr. Huang had told the police the motive for the bombings. The official New China News Agency reported that the police had discovered the location where Mr. Huang is said to have made the explosive, as well as remnants of fuses.
Farm incomes in China have been stagnant despite the nation's rapid economic growth, and there are regular peasant uprisings to protest high and arbitrary taxation.
It was unclear if economic grievances prompted the bombing. But top leaders have used the latest session of the national legislature, which is formalizing a sweeping leadership transition, to promise that they intend to address China's growing wealth gap and stubborn rural poverty.
Officials at Beijing University said earlier this week that they had identified a male suspect between 20 and 40 years old whose image was captured in security cameras.
Though high-profile bombings in public places are rare, ingredients to make explosives are widely available. 
Because guns are much more tightly controlled, crude bombs are often the weapons of choice for disgruntled workers and spurned lovers. 






  
  

  

MARCH 9, 2003 Sunday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
High levels of bacteria detected at S. Fla. beaches
* Health officials have warned of extensive bacterial outbreaks at five South Florida beaches popular with spring-break crowds. The bacteria can increase the risk to swimmers of developing gastrointestinal diseases. High levels of enterococci bacteria were detected Thursday in the water off two Fort Lauderdale beaches, Pompano Beach, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, and Gulf Stream.
Girl, 12, stabs brother, 15, to death during argument
* A 12-year-old girl stabbed her 15-year-old brother to death during an argument, Rockville, Md., authorities said yesterday. The siblings, who were not identified, had been quarreling at home Thursday when the stabbing occurred. Prosecutor Douglas Gansler said the girl faced a second-degree-murder charge and would be tried as a juvenile. He added that she was aware of what she had done. 
Plane flies into power lines in N.M., killing all 3 aboard
* A small private plane plowed into power lines as it prepared for landing in Albuquerque, N.M., killing all three people on board. The single-engine plane went down Friday night two miles from Double Eagle Airport on the western edge of the city. Killed were pilot Richard Fuller; Erik Fuller, his son; and Patrick Chavez.
Judge drops gun-makers from public-nuisance suit
* A San Diego judge has dismissed gun-makers as defendants in a public-nuisance suit filed by 12 California cities but ruled the case can continue against several gun dealers. Superior Court Judge Vincent DiFiglia did not issue a written opinion in the ruling Friday in favor of 29 weapons-makers and three trade associations. The remaining claims against three wholesalers and two retailers could go to trial in late April, he said.
Military training jet crashes into 2 Fla. homes
* A T-38 military training jet crashed yesterday in a residential area of Valparaiso, Fla., hitting two homes, officials said. The pilot ejected and suffered minor injuries, and no one on the ground was hurt.
Ex-forest worker's lawyers seek to toss out sentence
* Attorneys for Terry Lynn Barton, the former forest worker who started Colorado's largest wildfire, say her 12-year state prison sentence should be thrown out because the judge had to flee his home to escape the smoke. Attorney Sharlene Reynolds said the judge's involvement with the fire created the appearance of impropriety. Barton also has been sentenced to six years on federal arson charges.
Arguments canceled on
the disabled's right to sue
* The Supreme Court has canceled arguments in a case that jeopardized disabled Americans' rights to sue states over inadequate public accommodations, such as public transportation. Justices had scheduled arguments March 25 in a California case that tested the scope of the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act. California asked the court last year to hear the appeal, then urged the court this month to dismiss the case.
Audit: Miami police lost thousands in seized funds
* Miami's Police Department lost more than $24,000 seized from drug dealers and other criminals, and a supervisor acknowledged taking $3,000 of it, according to a city audit. The cash had been in the department's property room, which the internal report said had lax deposit procedures and shoddy record keeping.
In the World
1 million Indonesians set to rally against war on Iraq
* About one million Indonesians are expected to protest against war on Iraq at a prayer rally today in the world's largest Muslim nation. Thousands of buses and trucks will carry worshippers to the city of Surabaya for a rally organized by the Muslim group Nahdlatul Ulama.
Separatists blow up gas storage tank in India
* Separatist rebels bombed a gas pipeline and blew up a gasoline storage tank in India's oil-rich Assam state in predawn raids yesterday and said they would stage more attacks in coming days. There were no injuries. Police said the strikes were the biggest in two years against oil installations in Assam by rebels fighting for independence for the northeastern state of 26 million. Flames shot 230 feet into the air as the million-gallon storage tank at Digboi refinery exploded.
Five arrested in Spain thought to be in al-Qaeda
* Five suspects arrested Friday in Spain are allegedly part of the financial network supporting al-Qaeda, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said yesterday. He said the five may have been involved in the synagogue bombing on the Tunisian resort island of Jerba in April, which killed 21 people. The detainees are four Spaniards and one Pakistani. The Interior Ministry said investigations pointed to the existence of individuals and businesses who laundered money in Spain and channeled profits to Osama bin Laden's network.
Zimbabwe police accused of using excessive force
* Baton-wielding police in Zimbabwe beat dozens of women yesterday to break up an International Women's Day gathering and briefly detained at least 15 organizers for questioning, witnesses said. Journalists covering a ceremony in Bulawayo said police charged into a group of women who blocked the path of a police truck taking away the organizers. The police then moved in with batons to disperse the remaining 500 or so women who were meeting in a city park, the witnesses said. Police denied they used excessive force.
Farmworker admits to planting bombs in Beijing
* A farmworker from southern China has confessed to planting bombs on two Beijing college campuses, police said yesterday. The official Xinhua news agency quoted Huang Minxiang, 27, as saying he hoped to achieve fame by planting the two bombs, which exploded 90 minutes apart Feb. 25 at the prestigious Peking and Tsinghua Universities next to each other in Beijing. Nine people were injured.






  
  


March 6, 2003 Thursday 



 See INDONESIA;
INDONESIA: ANGER IS ON THE RISE AMONG MUSLIMS

 
Anti-American sentiment raged in Indonesia in the fall of 2001, after the United States began bombing Afghanistan in the first stage of the war on global terrorism. Now the heat is rising again as Washington prepares for a possible war against Iraq, and resolute disapproval of U.S. policy is unanimous in the Islamic zone of Southeast Asia.
Protests have been peaceful so far, but analysts worry that religious identification with Iraqi Muslims could turn criticism into animosity. Should local Muslim tempers boil over, America risks losing the confidence of strategic counterterrorism allies in a heavily Muslim region that has gained urgent importance since October, when a terrorist group allegedly linked to the Al-Qaida network bombed two nightclubs in Bali, killing nearly 200 Western tourists. 
''People here think the U.S. should seek a peaceful solution to the problem instead of using military force,'' said Amir Husein, a 52-year-old crab wholesaler at the Luar Batang fish market in north Jakarta's crumbling old colonial district.
''I don't see it as religious conflict, but I can't help feeling emotionally involved because I'm a Muslim,'' said Amir, betraying the ambivalence expressed by many Indonesians. ''Tell me, what is your president thinking? He's planning violence against a country that never threatened him.''
Leading the anti-war campaign is Malaysia's outspoken Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has mobilized citizens in a government-orchestrated peace movement. Mahathir made provocative remarks at a recent summit of non-aligned nations in Kuala Lumpur, describing possible U.S. military action as ''a war to dominate the world.'' In a separate address to an audience of business leaders, he predicted that an attack against Iraq ''will simply anger more Muslims who see this as being anti-Muslim rather than being anti-terror.''
Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri also raised her voice in opposition to the Bush administration's designs for Iraq: ''Indonesia is firm in its rejection of war as a solution,'' she told the non-aligned conference.
But U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce was quick to point out that Megawati's government does not consider the standoff between Washington and Baghdad a religious conflict.
''I think the Indonesians have a pretty good understanding that one of the greatest enemies to Islam in the world today is Saddam Hussein, in terms of his propensity to cross borders into fellow Muslim states or to use his weapons against Muslims in his own country,'' he said in an interview last week. ''There are no blinders here at all.''
The embassy sent home half its staff and all of its dependents, responding to anti-American threats of violence last year. After a lull, Boyce was getting ready to bring them back, but the unpredictable response to war in the Gulf forestalled that move.
It remains far from clear how Indonesia, an economic basket case that is home to the world's largest population of Muslims, might react to war.
At the massive marble and steel Istiqlal Mosque in central Jakarta, Imam Ahmad Shodikin sat watching television on a recent afternoon between leading prayers, and smiled as an image of Saddam Hussein flickered on the screen.
''Yes, Iraq is a country of Muslims and it is part of our family,'' said Ahmad, 68, wearing a polo shirt and a plaid sarong. He's one of six prayer leaders at the giant state-run mosque, which can accommodate 120,000 worshipers. ''We don't like war. I think that if American leaders want to do good, they should give Indonesia development aid instead of going to war.''
Open contempt for America is more apparent in Jakarta's Petamburan district, a poor area that is receptive to radical strains of Islam. Mukhtahudin, 45, a middle school teacher at a religious school, warned of a potential backlash to a U.S. attack on Iraq.
''If you attack the Iraqi people, you are attacking the Muslims of Indonesia,'' said Mukhtahudin, relaxing at the neighborhood mosque after Friday prayers. ''When I tell my students the U.S. is getting ready to invade an Islamic country, they get excited and say they want join the jihad.''
Mukhtahudin said the Bali bombing was justified, in his opinion, because it was an attack on a nightclub that violated ''Muslim values'' by allowing dancing and serving alcohol.
Indonesians have their own share of problems to worry about, but the public has been ''very critical'' of the Bush administration's policy on Iraq. That's despite widespread sympathy after the Bali bombing, said J. Kristiadi, deputy director of Jakarta's Center for International and Strategic Studies.
''I don't think people see this as an attack on Islam, but there's a perception that America has a convenient double standard, that it feels free to use military muscle to enforce U.N. Security Council sanctions for Iraq, but not for Israel,'' Kristiadi said. ''I've heard people call the U.S. a bully democracy.''
One Indonesian software entrepreneur described ''a loss of respect and a loss of sympathy for America because its leaders are acting so arrogantly on Iraq.''
Toto Sugiri, an entrepreneur of Chinese ancestry who founded the Jakarta-based software company Sigma, maintains strong ties to business partners in the United States. ''I don't think religion has much to do with it,'' he said. ''It's a sense of irritation and disillusionment rather than animosity against the United States.''
But Robin Bush, a specialist in Islam and civil society at the Asia Foundation's office in Jakarta, thinks there is an undercurrent of anti-Americanism in Indonesia, and the Bali bombing has not softened its edge.
''It's been under the surface for a long time,'' said Bush, who grew up in Indonesia as the daughter of missionaries. ''It's increasing as people get more educated, and understand Indonesia's history and its role in the global economy.''
Bush added that there is ''an Islamacization of society going on, especially in the countryside. The trend is for religious practice to be more conservative, not moderate. In a lot of families, the mothers wore the kerudung (scarf) on their heads as young women, but their daughters are wearing the jilbab veils.''
In cosmopolitan Jakarta, however, young women are testing the tolerance of their more conservative parents by following the ''dangdut'' dance craze, which involves sexy corkscrew hip movements that Islamic clerics denounce as evil. Pop star Dewe danced the dangdut to pulsing rock music at a recent political rally for Megawati's ruling party held on Jakarta's main downtown thoroughfare, snarling traffic as party supporters in orange T-shirts tried to keep the beat.
It's no party, however, when Southeast Asia's Muslims travel abroad. Many Indonesian and Malaysian professionals say they are choosing not to travel to the United States these days because the Arabic names on their passports too often trigger humiliating body searches and long delays at airport immigration checkpoints.
''I avoid it if I can,'' said Karim Raslan, a 30-something attorney who practices law in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. 'I'd rather take my vacations in Europe.''
Contact Karl Schoenberger at kschoenberger@sjmercury.com






  
  


March 6, 2003 Thursday  



 INDONESIA: ANGER IS ON THE RISE AMONG MUSLIMS

 
Anti-American sentiment raged in Indonesia in the fall of 2001, after the United States began bombing Afghanistan in the first stage of the war on global terrorism. Now the heat is rising again as Washington prepares for a possible war against Iraq, and resolute disapproval of U.S. policy is unanimous in the Islamic zone of Southeast Asia.
Protests have been peaceful so far, but analysts worry that religious identification with Iraqi Muslims could turn criticism into animosity. Should local Muslim tempers boil over, America risks losing the confidence of strategic counterterrorism allies in a heavily Muslim region that has gained urgent importance since October, when a terrorist group allegedly linked to the Al-Qaida network bombed two nightclubs in Bali, killing nearly 200 Western tourists. 
"People here think the U.S. should seek a peaceful solution to the problem instead of using military force," said Amir Husein, a 52-year-old crab wholesaler at the Luar Batang fish market in north Jakarta's crumbling old colonial district.
"I don't see it as religious conflict, but I can't help feeling emotionally involved because I'm a Muslim," said Amir, betraying the ambivalence expressed by many Indonesians. "Tell me, what is your president thinking? He's planning violence against a country that never threatened him."
Citizens mobilized
Leading the anti-war campaign is Malaysia's outspoken Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has mobilized citizens in a government-orchestrated peace movement. Mahathir made provocative remarks at a recent summit of non-aligned nations in Kuala Lumpur, describing possible U.S. military action as "a war to dominate the world." In a separate address to an audience of business leaders, he predicted that an attack against Iraq "will simply anger more Muslims who see this as being anti-Muslim rather than being anti-terror."
Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri also raised her voice in opposition to the Bush administration's designs for Iraq: "Indonesia is firm in its rejection of war as a solution," she told the non-aligned conference.
But U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce was quick to point out that Megawati's government does not consider the standoff between Washington and Baghdad a religious conflict.
"I think the Indonesians have a pretty good understanding that one of the greatest enemies to Islam in the world today is Saddam Hussein, in terms of his propensity to cross borders into fellow Muslim states or to use his weapons against Muslims in his own country," he said in an interview last week. "There are no blinders here at all."
The embassy sent home half its staff and all of its dependents, responding to anti-American threats of violence last year. After a lull, Boyce was getting ready to bring them back, but the unpredictable response to war in the Gulf forestalled that move.
It remains far from clear how Indonesia, an economic basket case that is home to the world's largest population of Muslims, might react to war.
At the massive marble and steel Istiqlal Mosque in central Jakarta, Imam Ahmad Shodikin sat watching television on a recent afternoon between leading prayers, and smiled as an image of Saddam Hussein flickered on the screen.
"Yes, Iraq is a country of Muslims and it is part of our family," said Ahmad, 68, wearing a polo shirt and a plaid sarong. He's one of six prayer leaders at the giant state-run mosque, which can accommodate 120,000 worshipers. "We don't like war. I think that if American leaders want to dogood, they should give Indonesia development aid instead of going to war."
Open contempt for America is more apparent in Jakarta's Petamburan district, a poor area that is receptive to radical strains of Islam. Mukhtahudin, 45, a middle school teacher at a religious school, warned of a potential backlash to a U.S. attack on Iraq.
Seeing justification
"If you attack the Iraqi people, you are attacking the Muslims of Indonesia," said Mukhtahudin, relaxing at the neighborhood mosque after Friday prayers. "When I tell my students the U.S. is getting ready to invade an Islamic country, they get excited and say they want join the jihad."
Mukhtahudin said the Bali bombing was justified, in his opinion, because it was an attack on a nightclub that violated "Muslim values" by allowing dancing and serving alcohol.
Indonesians have their own share of problems to worry about, but the public has been "very critical" of the Bush administration's policy on Iraq. That's despite widespread sympathy after the Bali bombing, said J. Kristiadi, deputy director of Jakarta's Center for International and Strategic Studies.
"I don't think people see this as an attack on Islam, but there's a perception that America has a convenient double standard, that it feels free to use military muscle to enforce U.N. Security Council sanctions for Iraq, but not for Israel," Kristiadi said. "I've heard people call the U.S. a bully democracy."
One Indonesian software entrepreneur described "a loss of respect and a loss of sympathy for America because its leaders are acting so arrogantly on Iraq."
Toto Sugiri, an entrepreneur of Chinese ancestry who founded the Jakarta-based software company Sigma, maintains strong ties to business partners in the United States. "I don't think religion has much to do with it," he said. "It's a sense of irritation and disillusionment rather than animosity against the United States."
Undercurrent
But Robin Bush, a specialist in Islam and civil society at the Asia Foundation's office in Jakarta, thinks there is an undercurrent of anti-Americanism in Indonesia, and the Bali bombing has not softened its edge.
"It's been under the surface for a long time," said Bush, who grew up in Indonesia as the daughter of missionaries. "It's increasing as people get more educated, and understand Indonesia's history and its role in the global economy."
Bush added that there is "an Islamacization of society going on, especially in the countryside. The trend is for religious practice to be more conservative, not moderate. In a lot of families, the mothers wore the kerudung (scarf) on their heads as young women, but their daughters are wearing the jilbab veils."
In cosmopolitan Jakarta, however, young women are testing the tolerance of their more conservative parents by following the "dangdut" dance craze, which involves sexy corkscrew hip movements that Islamic clerics denounce as evil. Pop star Dewe danced the dangdut to pulsing rock music at a recent political rally for Megawati's ruling party held on Jakarta's main downtown thoroughfare, snarling traffic as party supporters in orange T-shirts tried to keep the beat.
No visits to U.S.
It's no party, however, when Southeast Asia's Muslims travel abroad. Many Indonesian and Malaysian professionals say they are choosing not to travel to the United States these days because the Arabic names on their passports too often trigger humiliating body searches and long delays at airport immigration checkpoints.
"I avoid it if I can," said Karim Raslan, a 30-something attorney who practices law in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. 'I'd rather take my vacations in Europe."







   
 

February 27, 2003 Thursday  
  



 Borobudur Journal; 
Buddhist Monument and Mall: Will Twain Meet?

 
The ancient carved stone terraces of the Borobudur monument rise out of the plain of central Java like a grand wedding cake trimmed with hundreds of Buddha statues.
     But the sanctity of the temple that symbolizes the Buddhist civilization that flourished here more than a millennium ago is under threat. Gov. Mardiyanto of central Java, a powerful local politician, has announced plans to build a mall that he says will provide a cleaner environment for the souvenir stands that jostle each other for space around the gateway to the monument. 
 What especially offends the sensibilities of Indonesian conservationists is the governor's proposed name for the mall: Java World, a shade too close to Disney World, say the opponents. Moreover, they argue that Mr. Mardiyanto's plan for a tramway to take tourists from the mall to the base of the monument could shake the monument's foundations, which are already sinking year by year. 
Angry local villagers have held protests. They asked Mr. Mardiyanto to attend a meeting with them under the shade of a banyan tree to explain why he wanted to introduce Western style commercialism to the monument that is the most popular tourist destination for Indonesians. For Indonesian schoolchildren, an excursion to Borobudur is a landmark event, far more so than a visit to a Hindu temple in the Westernized playground of Bali. 
Mr. Mardiyanto told the protesters that he wanted to get rid of the shabby stalls and grubby ice chests of the soda pop vendors at the entrance to the monument.
The local leader of the protests, Sutanto, said he agreed that the hawkers give a tawdry image to a place that should be serene. But he said a fancy building would be worse. 
"I don't want a big building with three stories," said Mr. Sutanto, who led a "poetry protest" that consisted of readings in honor of the monument. "I'm worried that if the mall is successful there will be an immigration of very rich investors and this will become like Fifth Avenue."
Mr. Sutanto added, "If you're tired in New York and you want a break, you won't want to come here for McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken." 
Instead of building a substantial new structure, Mr. Sutanto proposed a low slung shelter with an attractive Javanese style roof. 
To the critics' surprise, the governor agreed to put his plans on hold, pending further discussion.
The opposition says it is not letting up. In Jakarta, architects have sent letters to Unesco headquarters in Paris, saying that the governor's plans would desecrate the monument and destabilize its foundations. 
In 1991, Unesco made Borobudur as a world heritage site, a designation that is supposed to protect it from commercial intrusions.
"We are concerned that the construction phase of a project of this size in this location would endanger the foundations of the temple," the Indonesian chapter of the International Council of Monuments and Sites told Unesco in a letter last month.
No written records have been found to explain why Borobudur was built. No ancient cities have been found on the surrounding plain. 
The lack of evidence gives today's experts ample room for speculation. Some theorize that the builders of Borobudur, whose construction began about 770 and took about 60 years to complete, did not intend to create a temple. There is no obvious sanctuary as a place for worship; there are no rooms to store icons.
Rather, these experts believe the idea was to establish an extravagant showpiece that demonstrated the principles of Buddhism. With its intricate carved reliefs depicting the essence of Buddhism, the builders of Borobudur wanted "to engage the mind" and to "give a visual aid for teaching a gentle philosophy of life," an expert on the temple, John N. Miksic, wrote recently in a historical book, "Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddhas."
Like many archaeologically important monuments, Borobudur has gone through difficult phases. For reasons not entirely clear, it was abandoned in the 10th century. Four hundred years later Islam came to Indonesia via Arab traders. 
For years Borobudur was overgrown by jungle. Early 19th-century drawings by a British artist show huge trees sprouting from its terraces. By 1850, cleared of some of the growth by the Dutch colonizers of Indonesia, it became a popular picnic spot. The Dutch went so far as to build a teahouse on its pinnacle. 
Under the authoritarian rule of Suharto, the monument was restored. From 1974 to 1983, local farmers were marshaled into a labor force for dismantling and rebuilding, supervised by international engineers and archaeologists. 
Most of the cost of the $25 million restoration was paid by Indonesia. To benefit from that investment, argues Marco Kusumawijaya, an architect in Jakarta, Indonesians should hold fast to the true character of Borobudur. "Aren't we supposed to show that we are a civilized nation that can take good care of what has been entrusted to us as an heirloom by one of the world's biggest civilizations and at least for another 1,000 years?" he asked.






   

 

February 21, 2003 



 BACKGROUNDER: TURKEY: Turkey expected to end stalemate with U.S. today

 
Washington --- A major showdown on Iraq could come next week when the United States and Britain ask the U.N. Security Council to support action to disarm Iraq of any weapons of mass destruction.
On another front in preparations for possible war, word was expected today from Turkish officials on their standoff with the United States over troop deployments.
On Thursday, work continued on wording the so-called "second resolution" to authorize enforcement of the Security Council's November vote demanding disarmament, with U.S. officials saying publicly the timing of its introduction had not been set. A Bush administration official said privately it would be presented Monday, although an additional day or two may be needed. 
France, Russia and China --- each a permanent member of the Security Council with a veto --- have expressed reservations about military action against Iraq.
In the United States, general support for military action against Iraq was at 66 percent, according to a poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, but that tends to drop in polls when people are asked about attacking without allied backing.
Nearly six in 10 Americans, 57 percent, say the United States should get the second U.N. resolution before attacking Iraq, and about the same number, 58 percent, say this country does not have enough international support for such an attack. The Pew poll has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Speaking at Kansas State University on Thursday, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) stressed the importance of allies in the war against terrorism.
"At this critical time, our policies and our rhetoric should not create distance between America and her allies," he said. "If that is the price of waging war in Iraq, then victory, in the long run --- in the war on terrorism, in the Middle East, on the Korean peninsula and against weapons of mass destruction --- will not be ours."
After Turkey's Parliament recessed Thursday without taking up the divisive issue of deployment of U.S. troops in preparation for a possible war, Prime Minister Abdullah Gul said there would be an announcement today, the Turkish news agency reported.
The level of financial assistance the United States would provide for Turkey is said to involve several billion dollars. The United States wants to position troops and equipment in Turkey, which borders northern Iraq, for a key role in an invasion. Support from Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation, is also seen as important in the Arab world.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, meeting reporters after a session with NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, reiterated the U.S. position that the amount of its offer was firm, though he added "there may be some other creative things we can do."
In Iraq, the U.N. weapons inspection team was expected soon to order the destruction of Al Samoud 2 missiles recently determined to have the capacity to travel beyond the range set under U.N. resolutions. A spokesman said a letter was expected to be delivered to Iraq within a day or so.
In another effort to show it is cooperating with the inspections, Iraq gave the U.N. team names of scientists involved in destruction of biological weapons and missile programs about a decade ago. Those scientists likely will be approached for interviews.
Iraq also allowed another flight by an American U-2 spy plane.
At the United Nations, Iraq delivered a 20-page letter aimed at refuting statements earlier this month by Powell to the Security Council alleging ties between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network through Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq. A U.N. spokesman said the letter would be presented to members of the Security Council, possibly today.
At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II continued to urge a peaceful solution to the Iraq situation.
The pope told a group from Indonesia "neither the threat of war nor war itself should be allowed to alienate Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and members of other religions." War, he added, was not only a defeat for humanity but "a tragedy for religion."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of Bush's most steadfast allies on Iraq, is scheduled to meet with the pope Saturday.
Staff writer Bob Deans and news services contributed to this article.






  


February 21, 2003 Friday



 Brits, Americans mull new Iraq resolution;
The attempt to secure additional support for attacking Iraq will likely occur next week

 
COX NEWS SERVICE
A major showdown on Iraq could come next week when the United States and Britain ask the U.N. Security Council to support action to disarm Iraq.
Work on wording of a so-called "second resolution" to authorize enforcement of the council's November vote demanding disarmament continued Thursday, with U.S. officials saying publicly that the timing of its introduction had not been set. But a Bush administration official, speaking on condition on anonymity, said it would presented next week.
President Bush, in suburban Atlanta Thursday to pitch his economic program, said war with Iraq was the "last option." The United States, he said, had a broader cause than security: "If war is forced upon us, we will liberate the people of Iraq from a cruel and violent dictator. ... We don't believe freedom and liberty are America's gift to the world; we believe they are the Almighty's gift to mankind." 
France, Russia and China -- each a permanent member of the Security Council with a veto -- have expressed reservations about military action against Iraq at this time. Germany, another strong opponent to war, ends its one-month term on Feb. 28 presiding over the council. A new schedule, including a date for the next report by U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, will be presented next week by Guinea, which occupies the presidency for March.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel,
R-Neb., in a speech Thursday at Kansas State University, talked about the importance of allies in the war against terrorism.
"At this critical time, our policies and our rhetoric should not create distance between America and her allies," he said. "If that is the price of waging war in Iraq, then victory, in the long run, in the war on terrorism, in the Middle East, on the Korean peninsula, and against weapons of mass destruction, will not be ours."
On another front in the preparations for possible war, word was expected Friday from Turkish officials on their standoff with the United States over troop deployments.
After the country's parliament recessed Thursday without taking up the divisive issue, Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul said there would be an announcement Friday, according to the Turkish news agency.
The level of financial assistance the United States would provide for Turkey is said to involve several billion dollars. The United States already has upgraded some Turkish military bases and continues flying from air fields there. It wants to position troops and equipment in Turkey, which borders northern Iraq, for a key role in an invasion. Support from Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation, is also seen as important in the Arab world.
"It's a question of how active a role will Turkey play," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, meeting reporters after a session with NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, said he expected to hear from Turkey by the end of the day Thursday, but that appeared unlikely. He reiterated the U.S. position that the amount of its offer was firm, though he added "there may be some other creative things we can do."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a briefing that the issue was "not a question of buying Turkish cooperation." He said Turkey, which is in an economic downturn and suffered greatly after the 1991 Gulf War, could face economic costs from a fight with Iraq.
"And we are prepared to help Turkey, as a friend and an ally, with those economic costs and consequences," Boucher said.
Henri Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania who has studied and written extensively on Turkey, said he was not surprised at the Turkish bargaining, but thought officials may have gone too far. "They also made it a little bit unseemly by just focusing on the money," he said.
Turkish officials, he said, are playing to a domestic audience where opposition to war with Iraq runs high. "They're in a very tight spot," he said, "and they misplayed it because they did not prepare their own public."
The U.N. weapons inspection team was expected soon to direct Iraq to destroy Al Samoud 2 missiles recently determined to have the capacity to travel beyond the range set under U.N. resolutions. A spokesman said officials were working Thursday to determine what equipment would be included in the order and a letter was expected to be delivered to Iraq within a day or so.
The U.N. team also received Thursday from Iraq the names of scientists involved in destruction of biological weapons and missile programs about a decade ago, which Blix had requested and who likely will be approached for interviews.
At the United Nations Thursday, Iraq delivered a
20-page letter aimed at refuting statements earlier this month by Powell to the Security Council alleging ties between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network through Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq.
A U.N. spokesman said the letter would be presented to members of the Security Council, possibly Friday, and then be made public.
The often-discussed possibility of exile for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein came up again in Italy. According to Italian press reports Thursday, an unnamed government minister disclosed Italian contacts involving Libya, the Arab League and Saudia Arabia on the subject. Also in Italy, a press report quoted Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov rejecting the prospect of exile.
Last week, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was quoted in an Italian newspaper saying Saddam would not accept exile.
On Thursday, the pope told a group from Indonesia that neither the threat of war nor war itself should be allowed to alienate Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and members of other religions. War, he added, was not only a defeat for humanity, but a tragedy for religion.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of Bush's most steadfast allies on Iraq, is scheduled to meet Saturday with the pope.
[Washington Bureau correspondent Bob Deans contributed to this report.]
George Edmonson's e-mail address is gedmonson[at]coxnews.com.
ENDIT
Story Filed By Cox Newspapers
For Use By Clients of the New York Times News Service




6


   
 

February 19, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: OUT IN THE WORLD -- Indonesia; 
Close Personal Ties, But New Wariness

 
LeRoy Hollenbeck, a development specialist, has lived in Indonesia for 21 years, speaks the language and works with an all-Indonesian staff.
     Because of his close ties to the people and his familiarity with the culture, Mr. Hollenbeck, 52, says he remains essentially at ease here. But the terrorist attack on Bali in October and the looming war against Iraq have injected a new sense of wariness, especially when he steps into the streets of Jakarta, a crowded capital city.  
 "I feel less secure, but that doesn't mean I'm afraid," he said. 
Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world, and the newspapers here are filled with news about a possible war with Iraq. Strains of anti-Americanism lie beneath the surface. 
In the aftermath of the Bali attack, the families of American diplomats and nonessential employees at the United States Embassy were sent home last fall. Because Mr. Hollenbeck's work is financed by the United States Agency for International Development, his wife, Philomenia, was among those evacuated. His two grown sons live in the United States. 
Unlike many Americans here, he lives in an apartment complex where all the other residents are Indonesian. 
"Other Americans here who do not speak the language and have children in school are more concerned," he said. 
Still, a conspicuous figure in a Asian city -- he is 6 foot 1 inch with graying hair -- Mr. Hollenbeck is taking modest precautions. 
He goes to shopping malls less: once a month, instead of once a week. He said he felt pangs of anxiety the other day when he walked to lunch with colleagues from the office along one of the busiest streets.
"We were walking for about 12 minutes, and I wondered if people were looking at me more than usual," he said. "But that passed relatively quickly."
The companionship of Indonesian colleagues gives him a sense of reassurance, he said. Moreover, his Indonesian friends "never give me the sense they look at me differently now." 
He lived for many years in some of the outer provinces of Indonesia, where he still travels for work. When he goes to those areas, he feels safe in familiar places, he said. 
Indonesians out there, he said, are "less concerned with world events." 
   JANE PERLEZ







   
 

February 19, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: OUT IN THE WORLD; 
Americans Abroad Cope With Anger at U.S.

 
These are uneasy, tense times for Americans living abroad. As the possibility of war against Iraq rises, especially a war that the United States may fight virtually alone, so does anti-Americanism in the streets, newspapers and cafes of foreign cities. 
     Interviewed around the world, Americans expressed confidence that people nearly everywhere tried to distinguish between them and their government. But they acknowledged that anger over American policies -- and resentment of American power -- had translated into varying degrees of wariness, discomfort and even risk for Americans living in different parts of the world.  
 In some places, like Pakistan and Egypt, old pique at the United States is now fortified by fury at what many people see as the Bush administration's hostility to Islam. 
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, the outpouring of opposition to a war against Iraq is likely to be substantial. The American Embassy in Jakarta is taking no chances. A potential war brings "a situation so fraught with uncertainty," the embassy said, that families of American diplomats evacuated last fall after the Bali terrorist attack will not be allowed to return. 
In the Middle East, too, some American embassies have started to send home the families of diplomats and nonessential staff members. The question whether American executives and their families should follow this example is an issue for many corporations. 
In both the Middle East and Indonesia, schools attended by American children have been turned into virtual fortresses. Some international schools have asked students to keep several days of clothing in their lockers in case they are unable to leave the campus.
Even in Africa, where people are so beset by their own daily tribulations, anti-Americanism simmers in some corners. 
Beyond concerns for their physical safety, Americans abroad, no matter what their location or political persuasion, are faced anew with troubling questions. 
Why have feelings of sympathy for America after Sept. 11, 2001, been transformed in Europe to sullen resentment? 
Why is what the writer Fouad Ajami calls the "unfathomable anti-Americanism" in Egypt so prevalent, even among wealthy and educated people with the deepest ties to the West?
Why, in so many places, has the allure of the United States as a promoter of democracy and champion of the little guy been replaced with rage at its power? 






  
  

  Philadelphia Inquirer

February 18, 2003 Tuesday 



 Indonesian refugees at a crossroads;
After fleeing their country, they must register here or risk deportation.

 
Each morning for years, Theny Landena never left home before checking the radio. No news of Muslim protests, he recalls, meant it probably was safe to go to work at his church.
"Muslim extremists threatened us. They said... we had no right to be there in Indonesia," says Landena, an Indonesian Christian pastor now ministering in South Philadelphia. "My life was at risk. But I'm a preacher; we're all targets." 
Now, Landena and thousands of other Indonesian immigrants are finding that Islamist extremism, perhaps ironically, has become a reason for scrutinizing and possibly deporting them from the United States.
In a post-Sept. 11 measure, Indonesian Christians are among the few non-Muslims who must submit to "special registration," under which certain foreign males report for fingerprinting, photographing and questioning - or face possible deportation. Others include Eritreans and North Koreans, the latter said to number very few.
While saying they support tighter security, Indonesian Christians with expired visas face a nerve-racking choice: Should they go the Immigration and Naturalization Service and risk getting detained, go home and risk being attacked, or do nothing and hope for the best?
"People are trying to decide," said Landena, 39, who came last August to minister to a surging community of Indonesian evangelical Christians in South Philadelphia. "If they stay, they are illegal. But if they go back, they could get hurt."
Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population and at least one radical Muslim group, was the site of a bombing Oct. 12 at a Bali resort that killed about 190 people, many Westerners. The attack has been blamed on Indonesia-based Islamic radicals who U.S. officials allege have ties to al-Qaeda.
The multiethnic country also has seen sporadic violence between Christians and Muslims, including church bombings and harassment, human-rights groups say.
Twenty-five countries are now listed for registration, which applies to men older than 16 who are not permanent residents, diplomats or asylum applicants. The next registration period runs from next Monday to April 25 for men from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait. (March 21 will be the deadline for an estimated 14,000 men from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.)
Estimating their community at 5,000 in Philadelphia, Indonesians may constitute one of the region's largest immigrant groups affected by the registration. By their own count, 80 percent are Catholics or Protestants who fled Indonesia after Muslim-Christian violence in 1998.
"If there is turmoil in Indonesia, the victims are always Christians or [ethnic] Chinese," asserted the Rev. Yulianus Astanto Adi, an Indonesian Catholic priest at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in South Philadelphia.
Fleeing or fearing attacks, many Indonesians have arrived here on short-term tourist visas but never applied for asylum. For them, submitting to registration not only could mean deportation but also conjures memories of times when Indonesia authorities spot-checked IDs to find out a person's religion, some said.
"It is a traumatic thing... . It reminds people of ID sweeps," Landena said. "It's the right of the United States government to protect its country and people... . But if the main goal is to protect from terrorists, we have to look at people case by case."
An estimated 600 Indonesians swamped an information session with INS officials last weekend at St. Thomas Aquinas Church. The turnout seemed to reveal a deep need for the INS outreach, which was lacking during initial phases of registration when hundreds of men were detained in Los Angeles and immigrant communities nationwide recoiled in fear.
"There is an uncertain risk from going in to register," said Father Astanto Adi, the Catholic priest. "If they know they won't be detained, they will register."
The meeting appeared to help. Local INS officials reiterated the policy that people with minor violations, such as expired visas, will not be detained on the spot and simply may get a notice to appear before a judge to decide their status later.
"The INS gave us assurances, if a bit under duress, that if people are here illegally, they will get a notice, not detention, unless there is something criminal involved," said the Rev. Thomas Betz, director of the Philadelphia Archdiocese Office for Pastoral Care for Migrants and Refugees. "People are terrified, but they heard the message and they are probably going to do the registration now."
Still, advocates are not taking chances. A cadre of volunteer priests and nuns is being enlisted to monitor the registration. Hundreds of Indonesians have snapped up forms to request accompaniment, Father Betz said.
"We will... sit in the waiting room and see who comes out," he said.
Ordered by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, the registration program began last autumn at ports of entry and has been expanded to men already in the country. By 2005, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System must keep track of roughly 35 million foreign visitors annually.
As of last week, according to INS officials, 37,939 people have reported for registration at INS offices nationwide, and 67,071 were registered as they entered the country. About 2 percent (1,666) were detained and about 4 percent (3,975) received notices for alleged immigration-law violations.
Registration now is looming for Landena. He said his visa (and those of his wife and 3-year-old daughter) expired last week. He has applied for a religious-worker visa and hopes that will insulate him during registration.
"But if not, what can I do?" the pastor said. "If it's God's will, we will go back."
Contact staff writer Thomas Ginsberg at 215-854-4177 or tginsberg@phillynews.com







   
 

February 17, 2003 Monday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: JAKARTA; 
U.S. Praises Indonesia For Its Fight On Terrorism

 
The American Embassy here is now full of praise for Indonesia's fight against terrorism, in a marked departure from the sharp criticism leveled by American officials at the government here for nearly two years.
     After denying there was a terrorist threat here and calling travel warnings alarmist, the Indonesian police in recent months have rounded up more than two dozen suspected terrorists, including several men thought to be senior Qaeda operatives in Southeast Asia. The police have also increased security at the American Embassy and at residences of American diplomats, as the United States has been demanding. 
 "Progress on every one of our benchmarks has been extraordinary," the American ambassador, Ralph L. Boyce, said in a letter last week to American diplomats. 
While Americans at home have been warned to buy duct tape and bottled water to prepare for terrorist attacks, Mr. Boyce wrote that "there has been no new credible threat information against the official American community" in Indonesia for nearly two months. A copy of the letter was provided to  by a recipient.
Mr. Boyce wrote that he and his staff believe that the security situation here has "so dramatically improved" that it would be appropriate to allow the families of American diplomats to return. They were ordered out of the country after an attack on two nightclubs in Bali last October.
There is one sticking point, however -- the increased possibility of a war with Iraq.
"The prospect of war with Iraq casts a cloud of uncertainty on our situation that warrants extreme caution," Mr. Boyce wrote. "Previously friendly, moderate leaders have warned that war might unleash an enormous anger against the American community that could turn violent."
The cloud and the anxiety hang over all of Southeast Asia.
In general, Southeast Asian nations oppose the war, even more strongly if the United States acts unilaterally.
Only Australia, under its conservative prime minister, John Howard, has strongly endorsed the American position with an offer of troops. But even there, the public opposition to the war is growing. On Sunday, more than 250,000 people marched in Sydney against the war, and more than 100,000 in Adelaide. Given Australia's small population, these are proportionally stronger displays of opposition to a war than in New York or Europe.
A senior Singaporean official said that the Bush administration's policy in Iraq was changing perceptions of the United States in the region.
It is accepted that the United States is the lone superpower, but until now it had been seen as a "benign superpower," he said. Now, he said, the United States has made clear that it will act unilaterally whenever it deems appropriate, and that is contributing to a perception of American arrogance.
"Everyone is worried," said a senior law enforcement official in Singapore, where the government is not accustomed to allowing anything to get out of control.
"If the war is over quickly and there are few civilian casualties, the response may be muted," he said. But if it is prolonged, "it will be more and more difficult for us to hold the ground."
Large anti-American demonstrations are expected in Malaysia, and the American Embassy there has plans to evacuate dependents should the protests get out of hand.
But the source of greatest concern to the United States in the region has been Indonesia, which has a Muslim population of more than 200 million and where thereis a pervasive conviction, even among intellectuals and moderates, that America's campaign against terrorism is really a campaign against Islam.
A week ago, 50,000 Indonesians marched peacefully to the American Embassy to express opposition to a possible war.
"Demonstrations, while still completely peaceful, are growing larger and more frequent," Mr. Boyce said in his letter. "While we have responded with an unprecedented public diplomacy campaign putting senior embassy officials in every available press outlet to make our case on Iraq, it is clear that Indonesian political leaders and the general public are going to continue their staunch opposition to U.S. policy." 






   

 

February 16, 2003 



 U.S. overtures toward Indonesian public founder

 
Jakarta, Indonesia --- The U.S. government has been working hard to woo public opinion in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. It has aired television ads, sponsored scholarships and visits to the United States and even organized a town-hall-style exchange between Indonesian and U.S. audiences via satellite hookup.
But the campaign is failing. The perception of U.S. efforts, say shopkeepers and scholars alike, ranges from insincere at best to hypocritical at worst. Actions speak louder than words, say many Indonesians who take a dim view of recently imposed U.S. immigration restrictions on men from certain Muslim countries, including Indonesia. American foreign policy, especially its unwavering support for Israel, also rankles here. 
With a war in Iraq looming, Indonesian analysts are concerned growing anti-American sentiment could have troubling political and social consequences. Not only could a war cost the United States the support of moderate Islamic leaders, but it could also destabilize Indonesia's government and gain radical groups members and media coverage.
"We share the idea of anti-terrorism and anti-fundamentalism, but when [President] Bush tries to force his will on Iraq, then even the idea of friendship [between the United States and moderate Muslims] will be very doubtful," said Muhammad Hikam, a political scientist and co-chairman of the moderate National Awakening Party.
The U.S. outreach campaign, also launched in Pakistan, Malaysia and Kuwait, aims to win over hearts and minds amid rising anti-Americanism. Its main component was a documentary-style TV ad aired last fall featuring Muslims in America describing their country as a place of religious tolerance.
The effort has focused especially on Indonesia. With 225 million people, more than 85 percent of whom are Muslim, it is also the world's fourth most populous country and has traditionally been friendly to the United States.
A worldwide survey released in December by the Pew Research Center found that although the number of Indonesians with a favorable view of the United States fell to 61 percent last year from 75 percent in 1999, the figure was still far higher than just about anywhere else in the Islamic world.
Indonesia is especially important because Washington sees it as a "beacon of hope," said a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity, a potential symbol for the Muslim world that "Islam and democracy are not mutually exclusive." An archipelago stretching more than 3,000 miles in the Pacific, it is important as a major oil exporter on vital shipping lanes.
The Indonesian government has cooperated with the U.S. war on terror, providing intelligence information on radical groups. The United States also has been able to cultivate friendly relations with Indonesia's moderate Islamic community, which it sees as a crucial element in countering the rise of extremism in the Muslim world.
But as U.S. war rhetoric intensifies, it's become harder for mainstream Islamic leaders to get their message across.
"My argument is, to address radicalism, we need to strengthen democracy. We need to learn about the United States," said Azyumardi Azra, the rector of the State Islamic University. "Now I lost my justification to say the United States is a model for democracy and human rights."
Azra was one of several influential Muslim moderates considered friends of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta who recently turned down an invitation to visit Washington for a national prayer breakfast. Besides being opposed to Bush's war plans, he conceded that declining the invitation was also partly to avoid being seen as too pro-American.
Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based Indonesia expert, says the lesson Washington has yet to learn is that the way to promote democracy is not by courting individuals or groups but by strengthening institutions. Indonesia's legal system, for example, is notoriously corrupt and inefficient.
"One of the standard American policy responses is to try to court the moderate Muslims as a way of saying, 'These are the kinds of Muslims we like.' As a result, a lot have been tainted as American stooges," she said. "I think strengthening democratic institutions should be an end in itself, not just to show a lesson to Muslims."
Washington launched its media campaign knowing it needed to boost its image in the Muslim world. The television ads, which ran for several weeks in Indonesia last December, showed ordinary American Muslims trying to counter the image of the United States as an intolerant, anti-Islamic society. There were also print and radio ads and a booklet called "Muslim Life in America."
"They say we should promote peace in the world, but they make war. They say they maintain equality, but now they ask residents of Muslim countries to register," said Ismail Yusanto, spokesman of Hizbut Tahrir, a small but growing group seeking an Islamic "superstate." "I think the campaign will make people hate America because of the hypocrisy."
 
* ON THE WEB: Web site of the U.S. State Department-sponsored outreach campaign to Muslims: www.opendialogue.org







 
 

February 16, 2003 Sunday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: AMERICAN MUSLIMS; 
Pilgrims Find Changes on Both Ends of Journey

 
On the way home from the hajj, his emotion-laden pilgrimage to Islam's holy shrines in Saudi Arabia, Shamsul Quadir began to worry that he might get in trouble for coming back a changed man.
     "I left clean-shaven and with a full head of hair, and now look at me," Mr. Quadir said after clearing the immigration and customs booths at Kennedy International Airport in New York on Friday. 
 Indeed, Mr. Quadir, a Pakistan-born shopkeeper from Louisiana, wore a five-day growth of dark beard, and when he shyly lifted his baseball cap he revealed a bare, shiny scalp. In the Muslim tradition, he had shaved his head as a sign of piety, and his appearance did not quite match his passport picture.  
"I was a little scared," he said, "with all the security issues."
So it was for many American Muslims on their homecoming from this year's annual religious pilgrimage to the birthplace of Islam, an event that would normally stand as the unalloyed religious high point of their lives.
They came back transformed, often physically and certainly spiritually. They also arrived, with a jolt, back in a country on heightened alert for hidden terrorists. 
Many of the returning pilgrims, disconnected from the press of daily news and living in vast tent cities in Mecca, learned only on their way home that the national threat level had been raised over fears of terror attacks timed to coincide with the end of the hajj.
Their journey brought more than a mood shift. In the United States, many Muslims have felt on edge since Sept. 11 and defensive about the image of Islam. In Saudi Arabia, they said, even in a throng of nearly two million Muslims during a solemn ceremony meant to erase such differences, they felt the distinction of being American. 
Again and again in interviews, the first wave of returning pilgrims spoke of how Muslims from other countries made a point of probing whether they were truly comfortable living in the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. 
"When they'd see me and realize I was American, they acted as though I must have an F.B.I. agent following me everywhere and that I was fingerprinted at every grocery store," said Irfan Malik, a Baltimore engineer of Pakistani descent on his first hajj. 
"They had all these misconceptions," Mr. Malik added. "They'd heard that some Muslims were getting arrested and then assumed that everyone was getting arrested."
Mr. Malik, 49, said he tried hard to reassure the people he met in Saudi Arabia that his family's life was normal, that government agents were indeed arresting and investigating some Muslims, but that over all, Muslim Americans had a voice in their country's affairs.
When he felt hints of hostility, it was directed toward American policy in the Middle East and the prospect of war on Iraq. 
"We didn't hear anyone saying Saddam is a good guy, yet also they didn't want thousands and thousands of orphans and people being killed," Mr. Malik said. 
Customs and immigration officials said they were not singling out the hajj flights from the Middle East for special attention. All border entry points to the United States, they said, have been on high alert for terrorists. 
A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York, where many of the direct hajj flights land, also said strict security precautions were being applied to all passengers and flights.
Immigration officials said both Saudia and Egypt Air, the airlines that most American hajj travel agencies used, were among the airlines that now provided passenger manifests to authorities here while their flights were en route to the United States. The names are supposed to be compared against those on databases of suspected terrorists before the flights arrive.
Those pilgrims who returned over the past two days said they had been told to expect long waits at the airports, going out and coming back, for extra security checks. Some were taken to the airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, six hours or more in advance of their return flights and said that their bags were opened and searched when leaving Saudi Arabia and searched again as they transferred to connecting flights in the United States. 
Dr. Aziz Ahmad, a lean man in a white skullcap, was one of American Muslims who learned about the alarm in the United States on the plane coming home to New York City. 
That is when he heard, as well, that the Bush administration had advised Americans to stock up on things like duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal their homes in the case of a biological or chemical attack.
Dr. Ahmad, 31, was not at all sure whether airport officials would consider him prescient or suspect when they saw his luggage, which he had wrapped in duct tape before leaving Saudi Arabia to keep it closed.
"Anyway, I've still got some left," he said after greeting his father at the airport. 
Making the pilgrimage, which starts on the eighth day of the 12th month of the Muslim lunar calendar, is a requirement in Islam, an obligation that every adult Muslim with the financial means and physical ability is supposed to complete at least once.
It is an arduous experience, not least because of the polyglot crowds from all over the world. The hajj involves long uphill walks, camping out and exacting rules for when and how to pray during symbolic rituals re-enacting events in the life of the biblical patriarch Abraham and his son Ishmael. Muslims regard Abraham as a prophet and Ishmael as the father of the Arabs.
"It's a very humbling experience," said Mona Negm, a retiree who left her home in Baltimore to perform the hajj in honor of her mother, who at 80 was too infirm to go. "There are people who can't walk, who don't have the means to be living in luxury, and we all gather in one place and we all worship one god."
It is also exhausting. "It's like giving birth," Mrs. Negm said as she waited, clutching a hard-bound edition of the Koran, to transfer planes in New York. "It hurts when you're going through it, but then you just remember the wonder of the experience."
Mrs. Negm, too, was struck by how often she was asked about discrimination in the United States. She shrugged the questions off. "They're fascinated to know how we're being treated," she said. "I just say it's a wonderful country, and we're lucky to be part of it."
This year's hajj drew more than1.9 million Muslims to Mecca, according to Saudi authorities. All but about 500,000 of the pilgrims came from outside Saudi Arabia, with at least 10,000 of them from the United States.
For this year's pilgrimage, Saudi authorities issued visas only to people who came as part of tour groups organized by travel agencies accredited by the Saudi government. As a result, many pilgrims spent much of their time with fellow Americans.
Some people, though, said they felt an undercurrents of hostility toward the United States and, by extension, to the American pilgrims.
Faheem Zahir, 49, from Bridgeport, Conn., could not shake the memory of standing in a pharmacy in Medina, where the prophet Muhammad is buried, and waiting in vain to buy cough medicine. The pharmacist, Mr. Zahir said, pointedly ignored him.
"This was supposed to be my Muslim brother," Mr. Zahir recalled when he landed in New York. "I did feel some discrimination because I was American. It just wasn't a good experience."
Others said they managed to come to a mutual understanding with those they met.
Dr. Hahd Alsaghir, a physician from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said an Indonesian man cornered him for 45 minutes after discovering he is American, peppering him with questions about the situation of Muslims in the United States.
"I talked about how people need a better understanding of Islam and how we've been connected to terrorism and it's not fair," said Dr. Alsaghir after arriving in Detroit. "We are both frustrated by the far right in our religion."






  
  


February 16, 2003 Sunday 



 Democracy in the Arab world

 
WHEN is a war a ''good'' war? When the status quo is worse. A number of Arab government officials warn that an attack on Iraq would destabilize the region, as though maintaining the current form of stability and the existing regimes there were desirable. If there is any positive side to a U.S.-imposed regime change in Iraq, it is that this could be the catalyst for a wholesale change of leadership throughout the Arab world.
I am an Arab of Palestinian and Libyan descent, and I believe that the Middle East needs relief from the self-serving, unrepresentative governments that have, with few exceptions, ruled the Arab world since the 19th century. These governments, whether hereditary monarchies or so-called revolutionary republics, have for the most part failed their people miserably. From Assad's Syria to Hussein's Iraq to the monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, there are no true democracies -- not one -- in the Arab world. 
This failure is highlighted by the recent U.N.-sponsored Arab Human Development Report. Among its shocking conclusions: More than half of Arab women are illiterate; the region's infant mortality rate is double that of Latin America and the Caribbean and four times that of East Asia; and during the last 20 years, economic growth per capita in the region has been lower than anywhere except impoverished sub-Saharan Africa. To a large extent, these ongoing problems are what breed terrorists like those who burst on the world stage Sept. 11, 2001.
Although Arabs are largely responsible for the failure of their governments, the West shares the blame. Before Sept. 11, Washington exploited Arab regimes shamelessly, concerned with ensuring access to cheap and reliable sources of oil and a marketplace for military and consumer goods. That none of the Arab governments was democratic or representative was of little interest to U.S. policymakers.
The Sept. 11 attacks made Americans realize that this laissez-faire approach has consequences.
The United States needs to rethink its approach to the Arab world in a way that meets long-term American strategic interests. Many commentators have suggested that Washington needs to pursue a more balanced solution to the Palestinian-Israeli problem to reduce resentment against the West, thereby creating a more stable Middle East.
Although I agree with that view, the real problem is the lack of representative and accountable government to address the needs of the people.
Is democracy incompatible with Islam? The recent successes of Turkey and Indonesia suggest it is not. If it is in the interest of the United States to remove Saddam Hussein, then it is of greater importance that the United States devote the same energy to what will follow.
A stable democratic government must be the goal -- one created in conjunction with the Iraqi people, not one imposed and run by the U.S. for the benefit of the United States. Successful nation-building in Iraq is vital for real stability in the region.
Only with successful and representative governments will the breeding grounds for terrorists end. Creating hope and opportunity and removing fear, despair and cynicism will help bring the Arab countries into the democratic community of nations.
There are likely to be more terrorist attacks. A new strategy for the Middle East would not be able to contain the immediate threat, but it could reduce or even eliminate the likelihood of a second or third generation of terrorists.
Democratizing Iraq would require the determined involvement of institutions such as the United Nations, the European Community and the World Bank.
And as daunting as the venture seems, there are a few mitigating factors. First, Iraq has a large, well-educated and wealthy expatriate community that could play a key role in rebuilding the country. Second, Iraq has historically been an important center of Arab culture and education. Baghdad, together with Cairo and Damascus, is one of the most important cities in the Arab world.
The creation of a successful democratic government in Iraq would have a profound effect on other Arab states. Whatever the cost -- even if it's war -- it will be less than the impoverishment suffered by Iraqis under the current regime. The expense of building an independent, vibrant and prosperous Iraq is the best investment Iraqis can make.
Tarek Ben Halim is a banker based in Europe. This was written for the Los Angeles Times.







  



February 14, 2003 Friday  




 Maverick Cleric Is a Hit on Arab TV; 
Al-Jazeera Star Mixes Tough Talk With Calls for Tolerance

 
 His head draped in a white scarf in the tradition of the prophet Muhammad and his body made soft by years of religious study, Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi spoke slowly, his words simple, measured and frank. 
The U.S. military has occupied the Persian Gulf, he declared, and any Muslim who dies trying to expel it should be deemed a martyr. An invasion of Iraq will "grow the seeds of hatred," giving rise to another Osama bin Laden, perhaps a thousand Osama bin Ladens. Palestinian suicide bombings -- martyrdom operations, he insisted -- are the weapon of the weak, their toll justified as a defense of sacred land. 
Moments later, he seamlessly shifted to words more welcome in the West. Women must be given greater rights, he said, and autocratic Arab states must turn to democracy. Islam must reform and celebrate tolerance. Terrorism like the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks must be denounced. "By God, I was sympathetic with the Americans from the beginning," the 76-year-old sheik explained in an interview. "But truthfully, I didn't imagine then that America would go on to declare a war against the world."  
The views espoused by Qaradawi -- part religious scholar, part television star and part enigma -- have made him one of the most celebrated figures in the Arab world. His teachings are carried on what many contend is the most popular weekly show on al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite network. In translation, his tapes and videos are available as far away as Indonesia and Malaysia. 
Qaradawi's appeal provides an insight into the religious currents flowing through the Middle East in the shadow of a war with Iraq. Despite the Bush administration's continuous insistence that terrorism is the enemy, many in this part of the world have interpreted the anti-terrorism campaign as a war against Islam. In this landscape, seething with resentment and perceptions of injustice, the Egyptian cleric is seen as a voice of moderation. 
That might not seem obvious in the United States, given his views. But taken as a whole, Arab analysts point out, Qaradawi's message gives voice to what many view as the Arab Muslim mainstream, embracing awe of the United States, fear of its power, admiration of its democratic ideals -- and loathing of the way those ideals are often put into practice. Unlike the views of Western-oriented reformers or secular activists, his message is heard around the region. 
"When you talk about Sheik Qaradawi, you're talking about an audience of hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world, someone who actually creates public opinion," said Azzam Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London. "If Sheik Qaradawi gives a fatwa," he said, using the term for a religious ruling, "that fatwa will be heeded tomorrow in hundreds of places around the world." 
Qaradawi is among a prestigious and relatively small group of Arabic-speaking religious leaders who emerged over the past decade at the intersection of technology and faith, using modern communications to deliver blunt and often provocative messages. At the same time, these people have maintained independence from governments, enhancing their reputations as straight talkers. 
Qaradawi has the added reputation of being a reformer, a voice not afraid to defy 1,300 years of sometimes sclerotic religious study. It is a measure of attitudes in the Middle East that his critics chastise him not for his support of Palestinian suicide attacks or his opposition to war in Iraq, but for his demand that Christians and Jews be respected as "people of the book" who share the God of Abraham. 
Among those in the most militant strands of Islam, his fondness for movies and music is scandalous. Qaradawi is said to enjoy listening to Um Kalthoum, an Egyptian singer who is still a giant more than 25 years after her death. His call for dialogue with non-Muslims, some contend, is naive. They see in his embrace of democracy and his call for greater women's rights a slavish imitation of the West. In elections last year in Bahrain, he wrote a fatwa sanctioning women, especially those past their child-bearing years, as candidates in municipal elections. A Saudi cleric quickly weighed in: Not permitted, he ruled. 
"The sheik is a one-and-only kind of guy," said Maher Abdullah, 43, the host of "Sharia and Life," the 90-minute program on al-Jazeera that carries Qaradawi across the Arab world and beyond. "He is a cast of his own." 
Abdullah recalled that Qaradawi traveled with a delegation of religious scholars to Afghanistan in 2001 to appeal to the Taliban to save the towering, almost 2,000-year-old statues of Buddha in Bamian. More conservative voices accused him of supporting idol worship and paganism. "It's like they were talking about [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon," Abdullah said. 
Far more controversial was Qaradawi's consent to a fatwa in October 2001 that legitimized American Muslims fighting in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. Caller after caller lambasted Qaradawi, Abdullah recalled, but the Egyptian cleric held his ground. "I had faxes saying, okay, Sheik Qaradawi, Afghan orphans will put slogans on their chests saying our fathers were killed by American Muslims because Sheik Qaradawi said they could do so," Abdullah said. 
And then there was the show still gossiped about more than four years later. The topic was sex in marriage and, by the standards of a deeply conservative Arab world, the talk about what was sanctioned under Islam was graphic. Qaradawi was decidedly liberal. The crux of his message: The bottom line is consent of both partners. 
Qaradawi made clear in the interview that he was seeking to create a new, moderate current in Muslim thinking, one that "seeks balance between intellect and the heart, between religion and the world, between spirituality and materialism and between individualism and the group." To do so, Qaradawi is fighting tradition that, Abdullah said, "takes a bulldozer to shift just a little." Some colleagues and family members point to a past that fostered what they see as his independent path. 
Qaradawi was born in 1926 in Saft Turab, an Egyptian village in the Nile delta crisscrossed by irrigated cotton farms. His father died before his birth. His mother followed before he was a year old. Raised by aunts and uncles, Qaradawi was urged to choose a way to make a living -- running a grocery or perhaps learning carpentry, said his son, Mohamed Qaradawi. 
Instead, he memorized the Koran before his 10th birthday and embraced religion as a course of study at Al-Azhar University, the preeminent seat for Sunni Muslim scholarship in Cairo. From there, he was swept up by the seismic events shaping Egypt after World War II. Like thousands of other Egyptians, he embraced the teachings of Hassan Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who enunciated a message not unfamiliar today: religious renewal, a fierce nationalism wrapped in faith and hostility to what was perceived as an imperial West. Throughout was a subtle critique of the weakness and corruption of the Arab world's own leadership. 
The Brotherhood ran afoul of Egypt's rulers. Qaradawi was imprisoned first under the monarchy in 1949, then three times after the revolution that brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power in 1952. He was tortured, but says little about the experience. By 1961, he had left Egypt, settling in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar and eventually distancing himself from the Brotherhood's politics. 
"His objective was never to satisfy anyone. He always had his own way of thinking," said Mohamed Qaradawi, 35, a professor of mechanical engineering at Qatar University. "He does feel it, the pressure. I believe he's a moderate. He believes he's a moderate, yet there's all this pressure on him from both sides to change his thinking. The Americans believe he's an extremist; the [Muslim] extremists in places like London think he's sold out." 
During the interview, Qaradawi sat somewhat feebly in his home, which is adorned with East Asian art and gold Koranic inscriptions set on black. But he became impassioned when he spoke of the Palestinian uprising and suicide bombings -- a term he rejects. 
"God gave the weak weapons that enable them to resist the powerful," he said, mixing the formal Arabic of scholarship with the colloquial Egyptian Arabic. "With these weapons they can sacrifice their lives for the sake of their countries and their people. These weapons are the only ones that others cannot wrest away from them." 
That view -- widespread in the region -- has wrecked Qaradawi's reputation among some in the West. Soon after he issued a fatwa sanctioning such attacks, he said, Qatari officials passed on a message to him from the U.S. Embassy that his 10-year U.S. visa had been revoked. 
The passion of his anti-U.S. statements has deepened since. He has denounced the prospect of a U.S.-led attack on Iraq. While not calling for attacks on U.S. soldiers, he said those killed trying to expel them should be considered martyrs. He said he is not opposed to a U.S. presence in the region, but that the latest buildup has evolved into an occupation laying the groundwork for an illegitimate strike against an Arab and Muslim country. 
"My position is against this war, which has no justification. In my view, the death, ruin and destruction it will bring will bequeath hatred between West and East, between Americans and Arabs and Muslims," he said. "It's not necessary." 
He also lamented U.S. support for Arab governments in a region populated by what he called "democracies of 99.99 percent." 
Unlike many Muslim scholars, he said he believes that Israel and a Palestinian state can coexist. In a region where bin Laden is often declared innocent of the Sept. 11 attacks, he was forthright in assigning blame and called on Arabs to give blood for the victims. In the interview, he praised Western ideals, if not the way they are carried out in the Middle East. 
Three of his four daughters have PhDs from British universities -- in nuclear physics, organic chemistry and botany. The fourth has a master's degree in biology from the University of Texas. His son Mohamed earned his PhD from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. One of his two other sons is working toward a master's degree in business administration at the American University in Cairo. 
"In the modern age, Muslims and Arabs considered America a friend to them, the closest to them," Qaradawi said after demanding his guest drink the carrot juice he had offered. "America had not occupied Arab nations or Islamic nations. It didn't have the historical baggage that the British, French, Spanish, Italians, even the Dutch, who colonized Indonesia, had. Its history was unblemished." 
There is still room for dialogue and respect, he insisted, despite the prospect of war, and coexistence, even now, is a better goal than a clash of civilizations. "We're all the sons of Adam," he said. 







  



February 10, 2003 Monday  




 World; 
In Brief

 
 The Middle East 
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq -- Kurdish leaders yesterday blamed a Muslim militant group believed to be linked to al Qaeda for the weekend slaying of a prominent Kurdish official and five other people in northern Iraq. 
 The assassination of Gen. Shawkat Haji Mushir, 55, a senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, underscored increasing tensions between the autonomous Kurdish administration and Ansar al-Islam, which Secretary of State Colin L. Powell accused of harboring al Qaeda fugitives from Afghanistan.  
Mushir was attacked Saturday night in Qamesh Tapa, 45 miles east of the Patriotic Union capital of Sulaimaniyah. He had been trying to use his influence and standing as a prominent member of the Jaf tribe to lure Ansar al-Islam fighters out of their mountain stronghold and into the fold of the Patriotic Union. 
 But three Ansar members apparently laid a trap by posing as would-be defectors, witnesses and party officials said. After coming to negotiate, they turned on Mushir with Kalashnikovs and grenades, killing him, two other party officials and three civilians. The Ansar attackers escaped, officials said. 
Associated Press 
 THE AMERICAS 
CARACAS, Venezuela -- President Hugo Chavez threatened to jail the thousands of oil workers fired for leading a two-month strike against him. 
 "Fired is nothing! Many of them should go to prison for sabotaging the Venezuelan economy," Chavez said of the more than 9,000 workers dismissed from the state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA. 
 Chavez's threats came one day after more than 100,000 Chavez opponents protested in Caracas in support of the fired oil workers. Thousands more held a similar protest yesterday in the state of Carabobo, 66 miles west of the capital. A bicycle protest also was organized in Caracas. 
 The nationwide strike was called Dec. 2 to demand Chavez's resignation or early elections. But its leaders -- business groups, labor unions and leftist and conservative politicians -- agreed to end the protest last week in all areas but the crucial oil industry. 
 Chavez today called the strike an "oil coup" aimed at unseating him by paralyzing the oil industry, which provides half the government's income. He also has accused his opponents of waging an "economic coup" that he blames for Venezuela's deteriorating economy. 
 Associated Press 
ASIA 
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- A British researcher jailed for five months after being accused of spying in Indonesia's Aceh province was released from prison. 
 "I'm free. It feels fantastic to be out. It's been a long five months," Lesley Jane McCulloch said, hugging fellow prison inmates as she walked out of her cell. 
 McCulloch, a British citizen who works at Australia's University of Tasmania, was arrested in September along with Joy Lee Sadler, a nurse from Iowa. 
 The two were initially accused of spying in Aceh, where rebels have waged a 27-year war for independence, but were later convicted of a lesser charge of violating the terms of their tourist visas. 
 Indonesian authorities, fearing outside interference in the long-running conflict, have been sensitive to the presence of foreigners in the province. 
 Sadler was released Jan. 13 after serving a four-month sentence. 
 Both women staged hunger strikes to protest their detention. Sadler said she was in Aceh for vacation and that she had treated children and the elderly at a refugee camp there. McCulloch has studied the separatist uprising in Aceh for several years, but said she was not conducting any research when she was detained. 
 Associated Press 
EUROPE 
PODGORICA, Serbia and Montenegro -- Montenegro failed to elect a president for the second time in three months because turnout was below the 50 percent required by law, monitors said. 
 The result came days after Montenegro replaced the Yugoslav federation with a loose union with its neighbor, Serbia, where a low turnout also led to the failure of two presidential votes last year. 
 The Center for Monitoring Elections said 47.1 percent of the electorate had cast votes when the polls closed at 9 p.m. The turnout was even lower in the Dec. 22 election, at 45.9 percent. 
 Filip Vujanovic, candidate of the main ruling party and the front-runner, won the support of 81.7 percent of voters, and the rest of the votes were shared among eight candidates, the center said. 
 About 1.5 percent of the 450,000-strong electorate did not vote because of bad weather in the north. The vote will be held there when the weather improves, but monitors predicted this would not be enough to make the overall election valid. 
 Opposition parties, led by the Socialist People's Party, boycotted the election again. 
 Reuters 







   
 

February 9, 2003 Sunday  
  



 Satellite TV Tries to Bridge a Culture Gap 

 
A group of students, religious leaders and educators gathered in a television studio here Friday to see if they could sort out their differences with American counterparts in Washington via a live satellite hookup. 
     The forum was the brainchild of the State Department's public diplomacy campaign for moderate Muslim nations, which aims to convince them that America is not hostile to them. 
 As the most populous Muslim country in the world, and a place where mainstream Islam still prevails, Indonesia is a prime target of the effort.
So for 90 minutes the two sides wandered around the prescribed topics: religion, family, education and charity. As an introduction to each segment, they viewed videos that were supposed to show what life was really like in one another's country.  
In the discussion on family, for example, the Indonesians emphasized togetherness and the all-encompassing nature of an Indonesian household, which can embrace several generations. The Americans showed how the elderly members of a family are often cared for "away from home." 
The overall rubric for the program -- "Common values, common challenges," printed in Indonesian in large letters on the Jakarta studio backdrop -- was intended to emphasize the positive.
Such subjects as the terrorist attack in Bali in October, in which nearly 200 people were killed, or the question of why Indonesian males visiting the United States must register within 30 days under a new Immigration and Naturalization Service policy, were skirted. 
The one political question -- posed by an Indonesian woman to the American audience gathered at George Washington University -- was "How do you tell the difference between a Muslim and a terrorist?" It remained unanswered. 
Before the satellite link began, Yanto Soegiarto, the news director of RCTI, the government-owned television station that organized the Indonesian end, said everyday life, not politics, was the point of the show.
"To most Indonesians, America is like a monster," said Mr. Soegiarto. "Most Indonesians do not know what Americans are like. They only know that Bush wants to bomb Iraq. They don't know how Americans think and Americans don't know how Indonesians think, that's for sure." 
How much new understanding was achieved was hard to measure. The true test of that, the organizers said, would come only when the shows are broadcast in the United States and Indonesia. Mr. Soegiarto said a tape of the show would be broadcast on his station this month. It was not immediately clear where or when the tape would be shown in the United States. 
The stodgy format of the show -- a host in each studio taking questions from the audience in front of them and then relaying it to the audience in the other country -- crimped chances of crisp dialogue. 
The carefully chosen participants tended to talk in fairly predictable cliches, especially on the topic of religious tolerance. The Indonesian video on education emphasized that under law children must receive nine years of schooling. In fact, however, Indonesia regularly scores near the bottom of United Nations surveys on education in Asia.
Still, glimmers of differing lifestyles emerged.
"My parents were divorced when I was 12, and I was brought up my mother," said one of the American participants. "I don't just think of family in the traditional way." 
Another, Sara Wolfowitz, the daughter of Paul D. Wolfowitz, President Bush's deputy secretary of defense and a former ambassador to Indonesia in the late 1980's, explained that American families "don't always live together all in one house." 
"But when we are together, it is based on love," Ms. Wolfowitz added. 
The real sparks came when the Indonesians spoke off camera.
"Americans should give a more honest diplomacy," said Ledyani Simarmata, 20, a student in media management at Padjadjaran University in Bandung. "They should just tell us what they think. They say that Islam is a peaceful religion, but in their policy on registration for Indonesian men they tell the world that they believe Islam is not a peaceful religion. There is a difference between their comments and the facts." 
For Patmo Mangoendipoero, 40, a management consultant, the main question was the lack of American curiosity. "Americans know about their own people, but not about other people. They are just satisfied with their own lives." 
One of the most topical questions here was not asked. One young woman said before the show, "I want to ask, 'How do you feel that the people in the world will hate you because your president is taking you to war' "?




7


  



February 7, 2003 Friday  




 Key Allies Not Won Over by Powell

 
France and other key U.S. allies declared today that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had not made a compelling case for an early armed strike against Iraq in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council Wednesday. France immediately began a diplomatic campaign to shore up opposition to going to war soon. 
"There is no change in the French position, no change at all," said Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, whose country has been one of the most forceful voices for giving U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq more time to work. 
French President Jacques Chirac spoke by telephone today with counterparts among other Security Council members -- Vladimir Putin of Russia, Vicente Fox of Mexico, Ricardo Lagos of Chile, Paul Biya of Cameroon and Bashar Assad of Syria.  
 He told them that France refuses to accept that war is inevitable and that this view is widely shared in the world, according to a spokeswoman, Catherine Colanna, news services reported. He and Putin agreed that their governments would continue to work for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. France has not ruled out supporting a war but argues that peaceful means have not been exhausted. 
 Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, said it was premature to discuss a new Security Council resolution authorizing a strike. "A second resolution? We are not at the time for that right now," de Villepin told Europe 1 radio in an interview. France holds a veto in the Security Council.  
 In other countries that are generally friendly to the United States, people expressed skepticism that Powell had provided proof justifying war. "If Americans know so much, why do they produce so little?" said Vladimir Lukin, a top Russian legislator and former ambassador to the United States. "Let them tip the inspectors off regarding smoking gun evidence." 
France and Germany lead European opposition to a speedy attack. But Britain, Italy, Spain, Denmark and Portugal, as well as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, have firmly backed the U.S. position. On Wednesday, 10 more European governments, in the former communist east, jointly declared support for Washington. They were Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. 
In the Americas, the United States' immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico, signaled that their positions remained unchanged. 
Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham called Powell's presentation "disturbing and persuasive" but said Canada favored more time for the inspectors. 
 Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, who watched Powell from Mexico's seat on the Security Council, said his country's preference for a nonmilitary solution had not changed. "Secretary Powell's presentation strengthens Mexico's conviction about the necessity to advance toward an effective and verifiable disarmament," he said in a statement. But he said Mexico still believes the "ideal way" to disarm Iraq is more inspections. 
 About 86 percent of 32,000 people who took part in a telephone poll Wednesday night on Mexico's most-watched television news show, El Noticiero, answered "no" to the question, "Should Mexico support a U.S. military attack against Iraq?" 
Meanwhile, the disagreements over Iraq delayed a decision on whether NATO will begin military assistance to one of its members, Turkey, which is seeking AWACS radar surveillance planes and Patriot missiles to defend itself against a possible attack by Iraq. France, Germany and Belgium have blocked efforts to make a decision on NATO helping Turkey, arguing that it is premature because no decision has been made to go to war. 
 Today, NATO Secretary General George Robertson, a close ally of Washington, tried to break the stalemate and force a decision on the issue next week. He invoked what is known as the "silence procedure," meaning that certain steps will begin next week in the planning for Turkey's defense unless one or more countries openly object by midday Monday. 
Robertson today acknowledged continuing disagreement in the alliance on this issue, but said, "I am confident we will reach a decision early next week." France, Germany and Belgium may still object. "It is premature to decide today on the issue of an eventual NATO involvement in the Iraq crisis," said Belgium's foreign minister, Louis Michel.  
In Germany, spokesman Bela Anda said the government is "concerned" that Iraq may still have weapons of mass destruction, but maintains that "the inspectors must be given the necessary time and means for their task." 
The German government's strident opposition to even a U.N.-sanctioned war is beginning to raise concerns that it is becoming isolated from its immediate neighbors as well as the United States.  
This sense was heightened today by a jab from Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who in remarks to the House Armed Services Committee grouped Germany with Libya and Cuba as countries refusing to help in a war. 
 German officials have noted that their country has agreed to open its airspace to U.S. warplanes, is protecting U.S. bases in Germany with German troops, and has units in Kuwait that specialize in dealing with nuclear, biological or chemical attacks. 
In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of Washington's most staunch allies in the crisis, pledged to provide humanitarian help for Iraq in case of war. But he suggested he would await a new Security Council resolution before committing Italy to the coalition against Iraq. 
During a visit to Moscow, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, joined Russia's Putin in a joint statement opposing the unilateral use of force. Musharraf said he has no information to back up Powell's claim that al Qaeda operatives used the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan as a "liaison office." 
In Indonesia, the world's most populous predominantly Muslim nation, government officials said the evidence produced by Powell demonstrated the need for more work by U.N. weapons inspectors. In Bangkok, hundreds of Thai Muslims protested outside the U.S. Embassy, accusing Washington of unfairly condemning Iraq and calling for a boycott of American products. 
Correspondents Peter Finn in Berlin, Sharon LaFraniere in Moscow, Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Kevin Sullivan in Mexico City contributed to this article. 






  


February 6, 2003, Thursday  



 PAKISTANIS FEAR INS REGISTRATION RULE CALLED A CATCH-22

 
Pakistani citizens living in New York feel they are facing a Catch-22: Register with the government by the Feb. 21 deadline, or face arrest and deportation.
But those who do register may be arrested and deported anyway.
A federal mandate that Pakistani men register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service has created intense fear in the large Pakistani communities of Brooklyn and Queens, sources said. 
"People are panic-stricken," said Adam Carroll, relief coordinator at the Islamic Circle of North America, based in Jamaica, Queens. He said his group receives up to 100 calls every day about special registration.
According to Carroll, men with pending visa applications who show up for registration "but haven't yet fixed their immigration status . . . are at risk for getting detained."
Special registration for citizens of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia was announced on Dec. 18, the third phase of a program the INS hopes will shore up national security. 25 nations on list It requires men older than 16 who entered the United States before last Sept. 30 on a student or work visa to register at an INS office.
Starting Feb. 24, citizens of Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Kuwait will be called in. The INS has highlighted 25 nations for which registration is required - all of which are predominantly Muslim, with the exception of North Korea. Afghanistan and Iraq were included in the initial phases last year.
The security measures may have had unintended consequences. Leaders in the Pakistani community and lawyers working with them say that registration has touched off an exodus of thousands who are leaving New York to seek asylum in Canada or to return to their homelands.
The 2000 census indicated that there were 24,099 Pakistanis living in New York, although sources said the actual figure is much larger.
"Drastic as it may sound, this registration law is forcing evacuation of whole communities," said Sin Yen Ling, attorney for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
"I have families that are seriously considering picking up and leaving in two weeks, after they've been here for so long," she added. Citizens afraid, too Jagajit Singh, program director of the Council of Pakistani Organizations, points to anecdotal evidence: plummeting attendance at Brooklyn's largest mosque, Makki Masjid on Coney Island Ave; the closing of neighborhood grocery stores in Midwood, and less foot traffic along major streets in Pakistani neighborhoods.
"Even those who are citizens, Pakistani-Americans, I haven't seen anybody who is not feeling fear," said Bobby Khan, director of the Coney Island Avenue Project, a Pakistani community organization formed after 9/11.
"Everybody's saying that this is not the place for them to live - it's better to leave."
The registration program is biased against Muslims, said Mohammad Rizwan, 22, of Midwood. Rizwan, who said he spent 25 hours being quizzed by INS agents while registering, said an INS agent asked him for his "real name" and birth date three times.
Some men were detained up to 48 hours without access to a lawyer, family or food, said Ling.
"The government is not fair to Muslims," said Rizwan, a Pakistani citizen attending Pace University on a student visa.







  



February 4, 2003 Tuesday  




 Indonesia Arrests 2 Militants Suspected in Terror Plots

 
Indonesian police said today they have arrested two members of the regional Islamic militant network Jemaah Islamiah -- the leader of the group's Singapore branch and a suspect in October's nightclub bombings on the resort island of Bali. 
 Mas Selamat Kastari, wanted in Singapore for alleged participation in a hijacking plot, was arrested Sunday on the Indonesian island of Bintan, a short ferry ride from Singapore's southern coast, said Erwin Mappaseng, head of the Indonesian criminal investigation department. 
 Kastari, a Singaporean who fled the island city-state in December 2001, planned to hijack a U.S., British or Singaporean jetliner flying out of Bangkok and crash it into Singapore's Changi Airport, Mappaseng said.  
 National Police spokesman Didi Rochyadi said a Malaysian named Noor Din, suspected of helping plan the blasts last October on Bali that took almost 200 lives, was arrested early today in the town of Gresik on the eastern part of the island of Java.  
 During Noor Din's arrest, police seized an M-16 rifle and ammunition that belonged to a Bali suspect, Ali Imron, who is already in custody, police said.  
 The arrests are evidence of Indonesia's political will to shut down the regional terrorist network and to pursue suspects beyond the Bali case, said Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asia terrorism expert who teaches at Simmons College in Boston. 
 Indonesian police have arrested 29 suspects in connection with the Bali attack, which they have said was executed by Jemaah Islamiah. But several key suspects are still at large, including the group's operational commander, an Indonesian who goes by the single name Hambali and is also known as Riduan Isamuddin. 
 Kastari has not been named a suspect in the attack.  
 Announcement of the arrests came on a day that a bomb exploded at the National Police headquarters, demonstrating that terrorists continue to operate in Indonesia. No one was killed or injured.  
The National Police chief, Dai Bachtiar, said in parliament, "I am sure there is some sort of political message" in the early morning bombing. 
 A security analyst in Jakarta speculated that the incident was linked to the detention at the headquarters of Abubakar Baasyir, an Indonesian Muslim cleric who intelligence analysts contend heads Jemaah Islamiah. 
 Baasyir was arrested in October in connection with a plot to kill President Megawati Sukarnoputri and conduct a string of church bombings in December 2000. 
 Police two weeks ago extended his detention to March 1, his attorney said. He was moved to the police headquarters in December. 






  (Walnut Creek, CA) 
  
 

January 31, 2003 Friday



 Lindh moved to Victorville federal prison;
AROUND THE NATION

 
John Walker Lindh, the American serving a 20-year sentence for helping the Taliban, has been transferred to a federal prison in this desert community northeast of Los Angeles.
Lindh, 21, arrived at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Victorville on Saturday, under guard by federal marshals, authorities said. He had been held at a federal lockup in Virginia. 
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison last October after pleading guilty to supplying services to the Taliban during the war in Afghanistan and carrying explosives in commission of a felony.
At the prison on the former George Air Force Base he will be housed with 1,656 other inmates, said Traci Billingsley, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman.
Lindh's attorney, James J. Brosnahan Jr. of San Francisco, declined to comment. Lindh's parents live in the Bay Area, where he grew up.
INS gives colleges 15 more days for data
MIAMI -- The Immigration and Naturalization Service gave the nation's colleges and universities an extra 15 days to begin feeding information about their foreign students into a new Internet database.
The immigration agency said the new Feb. 15 deadline would let schools make sure their computers could link to INS equipment.
The INS had set a Thursday deadline for about 3,000 schools to be ready to start supplying data to the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, which is meant to replace the paper-based system the INS has used for years to track foreign students.
The INS has had a mandate to create a computerized system since 1996. But the long-delayed project was accelerated after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Schools must provide information on the academic, personal and financial status of foreign-born students and their dependents. Colleges must also provide data on any disciplinary action, off-campus employment and whether the student has dropped below a full course of study.
Powell labels group terrorist organization
WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin Powell designated an al-Qaida-linked radical Islamic group in Pakistan as a foreign terrorist organization. It is believed responsible for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl last year.
The designation means that Americans are prohibited from providing assistance to the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi group.
In making the announcement Thursday on Powell's behalf, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the group has claimed responsibility for the 1997 killing of four American oil workers in Karachi.
The Sunni Muslim group also has engaged in numerous bus and church bombings. One bus bombing last year killed 15 people, including 11 French technicians, Boucher said.
Militant leader gets incitement acquittal
JAKARTA -- An Indonesian court acquitted a prominent Islamic militant leader Thursday on charges of inciting Muslims to attack Christians on the religiously divided Maluku Islands.
The cleric, Jaffar Umar Thalib, the head of a paramilitary group called Laskar Jihad, walked free to chants of "Allahu akbar!" (God is great!) from his followers.
In contrast, two Christian separatist leaders were each sentenced two days ago to three years' imprisonment for subversion during the violence on the Malukus, in which thousands of people have been killed.
The verdict could give renewed vigor to Islamic radicals who have been on the defensive in Indonesia since the terrorist blast in Bali last October, analysts said.







   
 

January 30, 2003 Thursday  
  



 U.S. Links Indonesian Troops to Deaths of 2 Americans 

 
Bush administration officials have determined that Indonesian soldiers carried out a deadly ambush that killed two American teachers returning from a picnic in a remote area of Indonesia last August, senior administration officials say. 
     The conclusion, which follows a preliminary investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is likely to muddy relations between Washington and Jakarta. 
 Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, and the Bush administration has been trying to persuade its president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, to take a more aggressive stand against terrorism and to support Washington's policy on Iraq. 
Last month, in a reflection of the administration's concern about the killings, President Bush secretly dispatched an influential emissary to tell President Megawati that the Indonesians must mount a serious investigation -- with F.B.I. participation. The official, Karen Brooks, is the National Security Council's senior Asian specialist; she also has a deep personal and professional relationship with President Megawati.  
Indonesian leaders tend to bristle at outside interference, and especially as the United States prepares for a possible war with Iraq, which the vast majority of Indonesians oppose. Even so, Ms. Brooks's mission seems to have been successful, at least in part. Two F.B.I. agents arrived in Indonesia last week to help in the investigation. 
The Indonesian military has denied any involvement in the ambush, which also killed an Indonesian teacher and wounded eight Americans. But a report by the country's police force last year suggested that the military was behind the killings. 
The two F.B.I. agents now in Indonesia are gathering evidence for the Justice Department in Washington, American and other Western officials in the region said. 
"There is no question there was military involvement," said a senior administration official. "There is no question it was premeditated." 
The administration official and diplomats from other countries said there was still a mystery about who ordered the killings and why. They said the most likely explanation was that soldiers were trying to send a message to the teachers' employer, an American company that operates one of the world's largest copper and gold mines in the area. The company, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, had reduced payments and other benefits to soldiers, the officials said. 
"Extortion, pure and simple," said a Western intelligence analyst, explaining what he believed was behind the attack. 
Freeport has declined to answer any questions about the killings or about payments to the police and the military. 
"This is a police matter, and we cannot comment on the ongoing investigation," said a company spokesman, Siddharta Moersjid. "Freeport hopes the perpetrators, whoever they are, will be brought to justice." 
The victims, who taught at Freeport's international school, were ambushed last Aug. 31, as they traveled a twisting mountain road between two military posts near Tembagapura, a mile-high company town on the equator in Irian Jaya, an eastern province also known as Papua. 
The party -- the school's new principal, his teachers and their families -- had cut its Saturday picnic short when fog and mist rolled in. At a bend in the road back to town, with a steep gorge on the right and a small hill on the left, several men sprayed the group's two Toyota Land Cruisers with automatic weapons fire. 
The Americans slain in the ambush were the principal, Edwin Burgon, 71, a former smoke jumper in Idaho who had taught around the world, and Ricky Lynn Spier, 44, a fourth-grade teacher from Colorado. The school's Indonesian teacher, Bambang Riwanto, was also killed. 
Immediately, Indonesian and Freeport officials blamed a separatist group, the Free Papua Movement, which has been fighting a low-level guerrilla war for independence, or at least more autonomy for Papuans, for several decades. Many Papuans harbor deep animosity toward Freeport; along with some international human rights groups, they say the company has destroyed sacred lands, ravaged the environment and failed to share mineral wealth with local communities. 
Soon after the ambush, a team from the American Embassy, including an F.B.I. agent from Singapore, went to Irian Jaya to investigate; the F.B.I. also interviewed survivors, who had been flown to a hospital in Australia. 
Suspicion quickly turned away from the separatists, though. In the course of that early investigation, the Australian government gave the United States a telephone intercept between Indonesian military commanders. The conversation, which took place after the incident, leaves no doubt of military involvement in the killings, said a Western official, but he added that it did not implicate senior army commanders. 
Indonesian police investigators also exonerated the rebels. For one thing, the police report says, the group "does not have the quantity of bullets" used in the attack, and the organization "never kills white people." The report, dated last Sept. 28, concluded that "there is a strong possibility" that the killings were perpetrated by members of the Indonesian Army. 
But that was pretty much the end of the police investigation. 
"The police don't have any right to investigate the army," said Brig. Gen. Raziman Tarigan, who was deputy police chief in Irian Jaya until he was abruptly removed this month and assigned to a desk job in Jakarta. 
Still, the police report does raise the possibility that money from Freeport may have been the motivation. A soldier's pay is roughly $15 a month, the report says, adding that soldiers have a "a high expectation" when they get assigned to the Freeport area. But they had been disappointed by what they received, and some "perks" had been reduced. 
General Tarigan said Freeport regularly gave policemen and soldiers money and other benefits, like airline tickets to Jakarta. A general received a first- or business-class ticket, while colonels and others received economy tickets, he said. In addition, former Freeport employees said the company had a $10,000 monthly "slush fund" for government security personnel. 
The Indonesian military receives less than one-third of its budget from the government. To make up the difference, it relies on its own business activities as well as supplements from foreign businesses, especially natural-resource companies. 
Freeport had begun to reduce these payments, on the advice of company lawyers who said they would have to be disclosed under new American corporate-responsibility laws, Western officials and people close to the company said. They also said the military wanted a portion of payments -- 1 percent of profits -- that Freeport makes for community projects, part of its effort to improve local relations. 
That pressure was apparently on the increase: investigators say they have been told that, in the weeks before the attack, Freeport had received threats of retaliation from the military if more money was not forthcoming. 







   
 

January 29, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: JAKARTA; 
2 Top Muslims In Indonesia Rebuke U.S. On Iraq Policy

 
The leaders of Indonesia's two biggest Muslim groups have declined an invitation to go to Washington, saying that they were offended by the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq.
     One of the leaders, Hasyim Muzadi, who heads Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim group in the country, also cited new immigration restrictions on Indonesian males in the United States as a reason for refusing to attend the annual congressional inter-religious prayer breakfast next month. 
 The announcement by Mr. Muzadi and Ahmad Sjaffii Maarif, head of the second-largest Muslim group in Indonesia, is considered significant because they are often invited by the United States Embassy to meet visiting American officials. They are introduced on such occasions as the embodiment of mainstream Islamic thinking here in the world's most populous Muslim nation. 
Last year, Mr. Muzadi, whose organization claims 40 million members, was among a small group of Islamic thinkers invited to meet Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during his visit here. Ten days ago, he met with the Assistant Secretary of State for Asian and Pacific Affairs, James A. Kelly, at the American Embassy.
Mr. Maarif holds two degrees from the United States, including a doctorate in Islamic thought from the University of Chicago. 
Explaining his decision not to attend the prayer breakfast, the usually politic Mr. Maarif said on Indonesian television tonight that "only idiotic people" would attend such a prayer session, scheduled from Feb. 4 to Feb. 7. The timing meant, he said, "that people could be praying for world peace at the same time as there was an attack on Iraq."
Earlier, Mr. Muzadi told reporters that he believed the prayer breakfast, which he attended last year, had little to do with his hopes for promotion of "peace and justice" by the United States. "Following its new immigration policy, which mostly affects Indonesian citizens living there and its plan to attack Iraq, I don't think the event is relevant at all," Mr. Muzadi said.
The Indonesian government has taken strong exception to Indonesia being added to the list of countries whose male citizens in the United States must register with the immigration authorities.
Indonesia is the only country in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations among the 25 nations whose citizens must comply with the new registration requirements. Indonesia was added to the list 10 days ago. 
Designed by the Bush administration as way of keeping track of potential terrorists, the policy takes effect next month. The Indonesian government has called it discriminatory. Under the new regulations Indonesian males now in the United States have until March 28 to show they have valid visas and working documents for employment or study.
In some ways, the boycott of the prayer breakfast by two of the most progressive Islamic leaders came as little surprise. Their public statements appeared to reflect the growing anti-Americanism in Indonesia as the possibility of a war against Iraq increased. 
The military and the police have begun to prepare for violence and unrest if the United States goes to war. The police announced the formation today of a committee to protect foreign interests in Indonesia. 
An expert on Indonesian Islam said today that Mr. Muzadi and Mr. Maarif had already been under pressure for being too pro-American. "These progressive leaders are often criticized for being too pro the United States," said Robin Bush, the director of Islam and civil society program at the Asia Foundation here. "If war breaks out, any association with the United States will be a political liability for them."






  
  

  Philadelphia Inquirer

January 27, 2003 Monday 



 Explanation of INS rules adds to fears

 
As a Christian, Antonius Lugita feared for his livelihood and his children in his predominantly Muslim homeland, Indonesia.
Over the weekend in Center City, he listened to lawyers explain a new U.S. government rule - spurred by the Sept. 11 attacks - that could result in his being deported to his majority Muslim homeland.
The 39-year-old father was not the only one in the audience caught in the crosshairs of that irony.
About 250 of his fellow countrymen gathered at the Nationalities Service Center over the weekend to hear more about the requirement that they and certain men from 24 other countries show up in person to register at the Immigration and Naturalization Service by late March. 
Most of them were ethnic Chinese and Christians from Indonesia who might have reason to fear persecution if they returned to their country, said Yubie Albert, a case manager at the center, an immigrant outreach group.
And for some of them, the prospect of deportation is real. Like Lugita, some of them entered the United States on now-expired tourist visas. And like Lugita, their lives on the margins - renting single rooms in apartments and flitting from cash-only job to cash-only job through subcontractors - means they lack the pay stubs, leases and other papers that the INS requires them to have when they register.
On the other hand, if they don't register, that jeopardizes their stay here and leaves them open to misdemeanor charges and a $1,000 fine.
As Dennis Mulligan described the penalties and the requirements, murmurs of disquiet spread through the room.
"The proof they want, it's impossible," Lugita explained.
Advocacy groups have criticized the registration requirement as a misguided reaction to Sept. 11 that penalizes the wrong people and that harms America's core, historical role as a haven for immigrants.
Organizers of another gathering over the weekend also issued a warning about how the fallout from Sept. 11 might redefine what the United States signifies.
A gathering of about 75 people at the Sister Clara Muhammad School in West Philadelphia was told that provisions of the USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress after Sept. 11, were unconstitutional.
The legislation expanded the government's authority to monitor and detain people as part of the war on terror. The weekend meeting was called by Unite for Peace, a local interfaith network that promotes peace and justice, and other activist groups.
"As Muslims, we find ourselves basically at the brunt of the aggression that's taking place around the world today," said Asim A. Rashid, imam of the Philadelphia Masjid, a mosque.
Malia Blink, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the legislation reduced the judiciary's ability to act as a check on other branches of government. She also said it gave authorities access to people's personal information without probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
Blink urged residents to lobby City Council to adopt a resolution that would express Philadelphia's opposition to the law.
"We have seen what is happening in our cities, and we don't like it - not in the name of terrorism, and not in the name of being free," Blink said. "We can be both safe and free."
The requirement for foreigners who entered the United States on certain visas - including students, visitors and workers - was not a part of the Patriot Act. The Justice Department set forth the rule last year, focusing on countries where it said al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups bunker.
The list of countries whose citizens are affected has grown since the first deadline for registration in December, when hundreds who showed up at INS offices in Los Angeles were arrested and detained.
With the exception of North Korea, the countries are all predominantly Muslim ones, including key U.S. allies in the war on terror such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Indonesia - as well as Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait - were recently added to the list.
Most of the attendants at the Nationalities Service Center briefing were Indonesian because Philadelphia is a magnet for refugees and immigrants from that country. In fact, one-third of the Indonesians settled in the United States live in this region.
Many of them, like Lugita, are anxiously trying to figure out their next move. Some are wondering whether marriages to citizens or applications for political asylum might give them a shot at staying in this country.
Luckily for Lugita, his own application for political asylum has been on file for more than a year.
"I'm not scared, because I know the U.S. is good," he said.
Contact staff writer Gaiutra Bahadur at 856-779-3923 or bahadug@phillynews.com







  



January 27, 2003 Monday  




 Terrorists Find Easy Passage Into Thailand; 
Experts Say Lax Border Controls Are Opportunity for Al Qaeda, Regional Militants

 
All that separates northern Malaysia and southern Thailand here is a meandering ribbon of dun-colored water. Men with wiry bodies ply the river in wooden boats dozens of times a day, smuggling bags of Thai rice or Malaysian flour, and ferrying women in head scarves and men in Muslim caps on the five-minute trip across the water to shop or visit relatives. Border guards are few. 
 It is here, said an intelligence official from the region, that a key Indonesian al Qaeda operative named Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, crossed from Malaysia into Thailand in January 2002. Then, in February, Hambali, Southeast Asia's most-wanted Islamic militant, went to the Thai capital, Bangkok, Indonesian police said. There, according to terrorism analysts, he convened a meeting of al Qaeda operatives at which he discussed a tactical shift in operations in the region. 
 The targets would no longer be Western embassies; the attacks would instead hit bars, cafes and nightclubs frequented by Westerners. That decision appears to have culminated in the bombing last October in Bali that killed almost 200 people.  
 Intelligence analysts do not consider Thailand to be a breeding ground for international terrorism. But in the past year, its lax immigration controls have made it a country of opportunity for militants on the run, according to some of those experts. Just as stanching the flow of money across borders is important to fighting terrorism, they said, so is stopping the flow of terrorists. 
 "It's a great point of transit," said Zachary Abuza, an expert in Southeast Asian terrorism at Simmons College in Boston. "It's also a great place to do business. Thailand's important to groups like al Qaeda because it's always been a center of people-smuggling, gun-smuggling, document-forging, and it has such a large underground economy." 
 Another al Qaeda suspect, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, crossed the border from Malaysia here at about the same time as Hambali, intelligence sources said. And about 25 miles east of this town, at a spot where the Kolok River flows into the Gulf of Thailand, another Islamic militant fleeing Singapore and Malaysia crossed the border in December 2001, according to an intelligence official in the region. Mas Selamat Kastari, a Malaysian in league with Hambali, had allegedly plotted to hijack a U.S., British or Singaporean plane and crash it into Singapore's airport. 
 Thai authorities said they missed capturing Hambali by less than a day as he moved within the country. And, they said, by the time they learned and verified that Kastari was in Thailand, he had fled. The men were sought here as Singapore cracked down on militants plotting to hit Western targets in Singapore, analysts said. 
 Thai officials, including Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, firmly deny that Hambali and his colleagues did anything but travel through the country. They deny they ever held a meeting in Bangkok to discuss terror tactics. 
 "If you ask whether there is a terrorist operation in Thailand, the answer is no," Foreign Minister Surakiat Sathirathai said in an interview this month in Phuket, an island resort in southern Thailand. "There is no network, no operation, no cell, no serious planning of anything." 
 The far south of Thailand, where Muslims are the majority in a country that is 90 percent Buddhist, was the scene of secessionist attacks in past decades, but in recent years such violence largely died out. 
 In the past year, however, the region has been hit by a series of Buddhist temple bombings and schoolhouse torchings, and the killings of 21 police officers. The government attributes the violence mostly to criminal gangs and bandits jockeying for control of the gun, drug, gambling and prostitution trades. Other analysts see politics possibly coming back into play. 
According to Southeast Asian terror expert Rohan Gunaratna, an underground group called Jemaah Salafiya has emerged in the southern Thai provinces. It is associated with Jemaah Islamiah, a regional Islamic militant network that claims Hambali as a key strategist, he said. The Thai group's members have attended meetings with Jemaah Islamiah members in Malaysia, by his account. 
 Thai officials from several security and intelligence agencies said they had never heard of Jemaah Salafiya. They expressed doubt that radicals could make inroads in the south because established separatist groups are for the most part inactive and because people here largely practice a moderate form of Islam. 
 Outside the government, some Thais believe their country could be courting trouble. Like Indonesia last year, they said, Thailand appears to be more concerned with maintaining an image of safety that will keep foreign tourists and their money flowing in than with confronting possible threats. 
 Kavi Chongkittavorn, an editor at the Nation, an English-language national newspaper, said that the porous nature of Thailand's borders and the move by some young Muslims in the south toward a more austere, puritanical Islam could one day be turned to the advantage of terrorists. 
 "Thailand is an ideal situation for a person like Hambali, who comes in and moves out," Kavi said. "We insist on believing that we are such a nice country, that nobody's going to hurt us. I think that is a very selfish way of looking at things." 
 Some said that high unemployment among young Muslims in the south is feeding a sense of alienation. "There is a very, very high possibility that they can fall victims or become tools" of Islamic militants, said Yusouf Longpi, a founder and former member of the Pattani United Liberation Organization, once a potent Muslim separatist movement in the south. 
 As smugglers on either side of the Kolok River tossed bags of chilies and containers of palm oil into boats, Haji Ahmad, a gentle 42-year-old cleric who teaches in a mosque here, acknowledged local problems. "You get guys who have trouble with the law and then move here because this is not in the eyesight of the authorities," he said. "People go back and forth. There is a lot of trafficking. I feel very heavy-hearted." 
 Certainly, here in this small border town, Muslim tolerance is on display. At night, men in Muslim robes ride scooters past nightclubs featuring dangdut, sensuous, salsa-like moves set to melodies evoking India. Young women seductively comb coal-colored tresses at tinsel-strung cafes, and hookers in hip-huggers play cards on plastic tables. 
 Under a 1997 amendment to the Thai constitution, the central government in Bangkok delegated more to the provinces, and has developed programs aimed at alleviating the south's poverty so as to help avert extremism bred of disaffection. 
Paisal Deraman, the elected head of Lubokgong village near the Kolok River, said that thanks to a government grant of 600,000 baht (about $ 14,000), his village is opening a batik factory that will provide badly needed jobs and income to residents. 
 He sat cross-legged on a bench on his porch, wearing a black and white checked sarong. The reports that Hambali had passed through did not concern him, he said. "Look, here there have been shootings, arson attacks against schools, fighting between the separatists and the government," he said. "It's almost normal." 
 Ismail Lutphi, a cleric and rector of Yala Islamic College, preaches a purist Wahhabi Islam, but said he molds his sermons to his audience and eschews politics. He said he is puzzled by notions of Islamic militants gaining a toehold here. "I cannot see how they're going to penetrate the community because the governance of our community is pretty solid, top to bottom," he said. 
 Thai officials said the government continues to watch closely for the possible emergence of terrorism, but lack of resources has hampered intelligence-gathering. Some agencies lack satellite phones and phone-tapping equipment, a Thai security official said. And the immigration police's computer system in remote locations such as this is not connected to police and intelligence in Bangkok, he said. 
 "We cannot compare to the CIA. . . .  We cannot compare to Singapore or Malaysia," he said. Another Thai security official said that lack of coordination and rivalries among agencies also have hampered intelligence operations. 
 Nonetheless, Thailand has established a counterterrorism task force. It has stepped up security at airports and along its borders, officials said. Security and intelligence officials hold regular consultations with Muslim clerics and other leaders from the south to assess community feelings on topics including the economy, security and a possible U.S.-led war with Iraq. 







   
 

January 24, 2003 Friday  
  



 Indonesian Educators Ponder Lessons After U.S. Visit 

 
A treasured souvenir from Muhammad Ishom's trip to America is a color photograph he snapped in an elementary school classroom. It shows, in pastel tones, a poster familiar to many American children: "We are each unique and special."
     "This impressed me very much," said Mr. Ishom, 37, a teacher of religion at an Islamic boarding school here. "We would never say something like this in Indonesia. Sometimes we only take care of the group and forget the individual." 
 Mr. Ishom was one of 25 directors and teachers from traditional Islamic schools who traveled to the East Coast last September for a monthlong trip organized by the State Department to show skeptical Indonesian Muslims that America is a land of tolerance and diversity. The Indonesians visited schools and universities, learned about democracy and were greeted at the State Department by senior officials. The Statue of Liberty, the Empire State building and the all-American pastime of shopping, though on an Indonesian budget, were a bonus. 
The program was part of the Bush administration's public diplomacy campaign that tries a soft-sell approach to the Islamic world. As Washington ramps up for possible war against Iraq, the State Department is pursuing television and radio programming, newspaper advertising, videoconferences and specially tailored visits to the United States to show that America is not hostile to the interests of Islam.
As the most populous Muslim country and a place where mainstream interpretations of Islam remain dominant, Indonesia has served as a willing laboratory. In contrast to some of Washington's allies in the Middle East that rejected television videos on Muslims in America on the ground that they were propaganda, Indonesia allowed the videos to be broadcast.
Early next month, in a town-hall style exchange, a television studio audience in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, will talk with an audience in the United States, and the results will be shown later in both countries.
In some respects, the tour for the educators, 23 men and 2 women, appears to have worked. In interviews on their campuses across Java, the main island of Indonesia, several said they had come to appreciate that within the United States, Americans respected different religions.
But in other respects, the educators remained unconvinced, particularly about attitudes in Washington. "I believe the United States government thinks Indonesian Muslims are terrorists," said Abdulloh Munif, an assistant director at the Langitan Pesantren, one of the nation's best-known traditional Islamic schools where the former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, was once a student.
Indonesia's Islamic boarding schools, known as pesantren, are generally far less militant than the equivalent institutions in Pakistan. But American officials believe that some of these roughly 6,000 schools, often run according to the whims of the founders and with little government oversight, have become breeding grounds for extremists.
Fifteen miles from the Langitan Pesantren, for example, a small secretive pesantren turned out to be the recruiting center for some Indonesians arrested in connection with the terrorist attack on two Bali nightclubs last October. 
Participants in the tour of America last September were carefully chosen for their "open minds" about the United States, an official involved in the program said.
A senior Indonesian in the group, Ahmad Hidayatullah Zarkasyi, 47, is the director of the girl's branch of Gontor, the most prestigious pesantren in Indonesia. Even though it is a high school, Gontor is sometimes referred to as the Harvard of Indonesia -- in part because it offers a healthy dose of secular subjects. 
Recounting his visit during a conversation on the veranda of his home on the school grounds near the town of Ponogoro in East Java, Mr. Zarkasyi said he was pleased that Americans were less class-conscious than Europeans, and certainly friendlier. 
But on matters that deeply concerned him -- knowledge of Islam, and the policies of the American government -- Mr. Zarkasyi remained distrustful. After participating in open-air Friday prayers in Hartford, Conn., with a group of Muslims, Mr. Zarkasyi said an American told him, "You look as though you are from Asia, why are you praying as a Muslim?" He was astonished, Mr. Zarkasyi said, that an apparently educated American did not know that many Asians practice Islam.
The group's encounters with State Department officials, including the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, James A. Kelly, and the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, Lorne Craner, were disappointing, he said. When one Indonesian asked State Department officials why the United States was unwilling to encourage the return of land to Palestinians, Mr. Zarkasyi said, "they didn't say anything."
Mr. Zarkasyi studied Arabic in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, before returning to Gontor where the student population is divided on separate campuses -- 4,000 boys and 4,000 girls. His American experience, he said, confirmed his pride in Gontor's accomplishments.
"If we had as much money as Cushing Academy, we could do better than them," said Mr. Zarkasyi, referring to a well-endowed private secondary school the group had visited in Ashburnham, Mass.
In contrast, one of the two women in the group, Hindun Anisah, 27, a deputy director of the Krapyak Pesantren, a liberal Islamic institution in Yogyakarta, said she learned a lot at Cushing. "I noticed the rules for boys and girls are the same," she said. "They both have to be in the dormitory at 8 p.m."
Mrs. Anisah, among a handful of women in a senior position at an Indonesian pesantren, calls herself an Islamic feminist. She is firmly opposed to polygamy, she said. (A fierce argument over polygamy broke out during the trip, and Mrs. Anisah recalled that most of her male colleagues shouted her down on the question of polygamy.) 
Even before going to the United States she had been pushing for more gender equality at her school. She achieved one victory when she was allowed to introduce a course on "reproduction according to Islamic law" for girls older than 15.
But so far she has had no luck on winning later hours for the girls. She was now ready to try again. "Why should the boys be allowed to go anywhere until 11 p.m. but the girls must be inside by 6 p.m.?" she said.
Mr. Ishom, who speaks and writes English well, was the most favorably impressed with the program.
All sorts of things struck him. He showed a photograph he took of school bags hanging unattended in an elementary school. "This would never happen in Indonesia," he said. "The bags wouldn't be safe."
He stocked up on miniature American flags as gifts for friends back home and splurged on two books -- one on wives of American presidents, the other on nature -- at a used bookstore in Amherst, Mass. 
Although Mr. Ishom disagreed with American foreign policy toward Islam, he said that would not deter him from a new dream. After attending a session at Georgetown University's Department of Religion and International Affairs, Mr. Ishom said he would like to return for a masters degree in Liberal Islamic Studies.
In the meantime, he said, his pesantren, called Al Muayyad, was planning to play host to a seminar this summer called "Islam and Pluralism" and to invite an American as the star speaker, a bold initiative for a small Islamic boarding school.






    
  


January 22, 2003, Wednesday



 INDONESIAN POLICE SEEK TRAIL FOR MUSLIM CLERIC




8


   
 

January 21, 2003 Tuesday  
  



 Corrections 

 
     An article on Saturday about protests abroad over American plans to fingerprint and register visitors from predominantly Muslim countries misstated the title of an Indonesian official who said the plans were unacceptable. The official, Marty Natalegawa, is a Foreign Ministry spokesman, not the foreign minister.






  


January 20, 2003, Monday  



 BALI SUSPECT: BLASTS PAID FOR BY AL QAEDA

 
An imprisoned suspect in the Bali nightclub bombing has told cops Al Qaeda may have funded the terror attack that killed more than 180 people.
Accused bomber Ali Gufron told interrogators he believes Osama Bin Laden gave $25,000 to the Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, which it used to fund the attack, Time magazine reports in its upcoming issue. 
"Jemaah Islamiyah's jihad operations were funded by Al Qaeda," the magazine reports, quoting an Indonesian police document.
The magazine also reports cops are investigating whether a hardened Al Qaeda member from Yemen mixed the chemicals used in the bombing.
Police suspect the Yemeni named Syafullah, who entered Indonesia on a fake visa, may have been a key link between the two radical groups.
Gufron, known by his code name Mukhlas, told cops that top Jemaah leaders have maintained close contact with colleagues in Al Qaeda since the late 1980s. Cops have been hunting the group's operations chief, Riduan Isamuddin, since the Oct. 12 bombing that killed mostly Australian tourists.
Despite the increasing signs of an Al Qaeda link to the bombing, Indonesian officials have downplayed the issue and have charged Jemaah's spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, with only minor immigration violations.







   
 

January 18, 2003 Saturday 
  
 



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: IMMIGRATION; 
U.S. Plan to Monitor Muslims Meets With Widespread Protest

 
American plans to fingerprint and register visitors from a number of predominantly Muslim countries met with widespread protest and indignation yesterday. The foreign minister of Pakistan made plans to fly to the United States this weekend to protest in person, and the government of Indonesia advised its citizens to avoid traveling to the United States.
     Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, the Pakistani minister, said the decision to place his country on a list of nations whose male citizens must be fingerprinted, photographed, interviewed and registered was blatantly unfair in light of Pakistan's crucial role in combating Al Qaeda and the Taliban. 
 "Our effort is to get Pakistan out of the list," Mr. Kasuri said in a television interview before he was to fly to the United States today. He will attend a one-day meeting of foreign ministers from the 15 nations on the Security Council at the United Nations in New York on Monday before visiting Washington for talks with American officials. 
"We are a front-line state. It's unfair to bracket us with other countries," he told Agence France-Presse in an interview last week, when word of the American plans had already begun to leak.
The American requirements have become a major political issue in Pakistan, where the perception that the United States is hostile to Muslims and to Pakistanis has stoked a rising tide of anti-American sentiment.
"We understand American concerns regarding security, but Pakistan cannot be equated with other countries, that's what we are telling the United States," Mr. Kasuri said.
Pakistanis comprise the largest number of Muslims visiting or temporarily residing in the United States.
The Patriot Act, which is intended to allow authorities to track potential terrorists, was passed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and requires men from the designated countries who are visiting or living in the United States without permanent resident alien status to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The measure concerns only males above the age of 16.
An embassy spokesman said the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, emphasized that Pakistan was an important partner in the campaign against terrorism. 
Meanwhile, the Indonesian government advised its citizens to put off all nonessential travel to the United States after the country's foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, dismissed the new regulations as "arbitrary, hard to understand and unacceptable."
A spokesman said the government was telling its citizens not to travel "to avoid unwanted difficulties."
Bangladesh, which this week was added to the list of 25 countries whose nationals have to register, also is officially upset. Its foreign secretary, Shamser Mobin Chowdhury, said the registration requirement was an affront to Bangladesh's "credentials as a moderate, Muslim democracy" that was committed to the global effort against terrorism.
Human rights groups have condemned the registration requirement as racial profiling and said the measure had created a climate of fear after some who turned up to register had been detained because of visa violations. Foreigners who fail to register face possible arrest, detention, fines and deportation. In addition, visitors from the designated countries are being fingerprinted and photographed at points of entry.
Despite more stringent immigration tests, the Immigration and Naturalization Service acknowledged earlier this month that more than 300,000 people ordered to be deported were still living illegally in the United States.
Earlier this week, immigration authorities extended until Feb. 7 the deadline for registering for citizens of Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, who originally had been told to register by Jan. 7. 
Pakistanis and Saudis must report by Feb. 21. Citizens of Bangladesh, Egypt, Kuwait and Jordan were told this week to register between Feb. 24 and March 28. Men from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria had to register last month, by Dec. 16. 

CORRECTION-DATE: January 21, 2003

 CORRECTION:
An article on Saturday about protests abroad over American plans to fingerprint and register visitors from predominantly Muslim countries misstated the title of an Indonesian official who said the plans were unacceptable. The official, Marty Natalegawa, is a Foreign Ministry spokesman, not the foreign minister.







   
 

January 18, 2003 Saturday  
  



 Beliefs; 
On the agenda in Davos: rebuilding trust in institutions, religion not least among them.

 
When more than 2,100 people -- business executives, government officials, social activists, academics, religious leaders and others -- gather at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, next week, the decline of trust will be a major theme.
     The decline of trust will also be a fact on the ground, as the phrase goes -- and in the air. The meeting will be guarded by thousands of soldiers and private security agents. Cars and trains will be stopped and checked for potential troublemakers. Over the Swiss village and ski resort, army helicopters will be patrolling a no-flight zone, where the military is prepared to shoot down unauthorized aircraft not responding to warnings.  
 As part of the meeting's umbrella theme of "building trust," a panel on "restoring trust in religion" will examine the effect of religion's use for political purposes and recent scandals involving religious leaders.
The panelists will include the Most Rev. George Carey, formerly archbishop of Canterbury; Karen Armstrong, author of books on Islam and other world religions; Zaki Badawi, president of the Muslim College in London; and Arthur Schneier, senior rabbi at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and the founder and president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, an interfaith organization promoting religious freedom and tolerance.
Douglas Miller, the president of Environics International, a Canadian concern coordinating public opinion surveys for the World Economic Forum, said that in recent years, trust in religious institutions and religious and spiritual leaders had declined "by statistically significant margins" in more than two of every three nations surveyed. 
These include predominantly Muslim nations like Indonesia, predominantly Christian ones like Argentina, nations split between faiths like Nigeria and South Korea, and less religious countries like Canada. Only in Turkey did pollsters find that trust in religion had actually increased. 
The decline has been especially steep in the United States -- largely, it seems, because of the sex scandals of the Roman Catholic Church. According to a Gallup poll released last June, those Americans who still express "a great deal" of confidence in religious institutions has dropped to 45 percent, a 30-year low, from 60 percent in 2001.
On the other hand, religious institutions and spiritual leaders have not done badly compared with many other institutions, in which trust "has fallen to critical proportions," according to the World Economic Forum's analysis of its surveys.
The most disturbing findings of the organization's polling in 47 countries on six continents are the low levels of trust in parliaments or other legislative bodies that claim to be democratic.
That may be easily understood in Latin American or Middle Eastern nations where such assemblies have been more of a democratic facade than a deeply implanted reality. But even in North American and European Union nations, fewer than a majority of respondents expressed "some" or "a lot" of trust that their elected legislatures were operating in society's best interests.
Asked whether their country was "governed by the will of the people," two-thirds of the 36,000-person sample surveyed worldwide said no. In only 4 of the 47 countries did a majority say yes.
The institution generally enjoying the most trust? The armed forces. The next three most trusted institutions were nongovernmental organizations like human rights, environmental and other social advocacy groups; the educational systems; and the United Nations.
Religious institutions came next, ranked fifth among 17 major institutions. The news media and labor unions were 10th and 11th. Large national and multinational companies and the International Monetary Fund stood just above elected legislatures at the very bottom of the ranking.
Another poll, conducted for the World Economic Forum in 15 countries, showed that most leaders garnered even less trust than the institutions they lead.
Religion's record in building trust is obviously mixed. Historically, trust in one's own faith was correlated with distrust of others. Then, too, religion has often warned against placing trust in anything earthly. "Put not your trust in princes, nor in any mortal," warns Psalm 146. A familiar, homelier sentiment goes: "In God we trust. All others pay cash."
Rabbi Schneier counters with the point that Judaism includes a prayer for civic authorities in its worship, as do many other faiths. He is heading to Davos with the message that trust in all religious institutions and leaders is inextricably tied to their commitment to pluralism.
Religion has, of course, always had a lot to say about trustworthiness, how to define it, how to foster it and, for that matter, how to destroy it. Will there really be a chance for much of that to be said in Davos, however?
Rabbi Schneier maintains that the attention given religion at the World Economic Forum is growing significantly. Still, type in "religion" in the search menu that the forum provides for finding sessions related to a specific topic, and four are listed -- among well over 200 sessions at the meeting. Type in "security," and 19 sessions pop up. For "technology," the number is 17.
The forum's Web site also indicates that 37 of the 2,150-plus participants will be religious leaders, compared with 239 "public figures," 172 "academic experts" and 264 "press and media representatives."
Oddly enough, the greatest obstacle for religious leaders at a meeting like this may not be that no one wants to hear a sermon but that so many others want to give one. If reports from last year's meeting are accurate, not only religious leaders but also politicians and entertainers were far readier with sermons than with convincing arguments.
With everything on the agenda in Davos, from war in the Middle East to the rising opposition to globalization, religion's contribution to building trust may require a few strong arguments. 







   
 

January 17, 2003 Friday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT; 
U.S. Expands List of Nations Whose Visitors Must Register

 
The Justice Department yesterday expanded a registration program for visitors, most of them from Muslim and Arab nations, to include men from Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Kuwait.
     At the same time, officials said men from 18 of the 20 nations already on the list who failed to meet previous registration deadlines would have extra time to report to Immigration and Naturalization Service offices around the country. 
 The program was instituted by Attorney General John Ashcroft to track visitors to the United States, many of whom overstay their visas and fail to inform the immigration service of their whereabouts. But the program has prompted criticism that it unfairly singles out men 16 and older of specific nationalities who in many cases are in the process of applying for residency or citizenship. Hundreds of registrants have been arrested since the program began on Dec. 16, with most released to await hearings before immigration judges. 
Dr. William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A., said yesterday that he was "deeply disturbed" that the government "once again is targeting individuals on the basis of citizenship, gender and nationality." He said the registration program might "violate United Nations and international treaties to which the U.S. is party."
But an immigration official in Los Angeles said the Justice Department planned to include in the program visitors from all nations by 2005 and not just those considered a security threat.
"Eventually, everyone will have to comply," the official said.
A registration deadline for men from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen has been extended to Feb. 7, while Pakistanis and Saudi Arabians have until Feb. 21 to register. The deadline for visitors from the five nations added yesterday is March 28.
Visitors from those nations who fail to register are subject to deportation. Typically, the registration process entails submitting to fingerprinting, a criminal background check and questions on finances and employment. 







   
 

January 15, 2003 Wednesday  
  



 Indonesian Province Enjoying First Signs of Peace 

 
Children are playing outside again, street vendors are selling soda and couples are strolling on the rutted walkways, simple pleasures that perhaps spell some return of normalcy to Aceh, the northern Indonesian province torn apart by conflict for nearly 30 years.
     The first blush of peace in this city is particularly welcome to residents who have missed using the central park, a graceful retreat of green trees, sand pits and slides that had long been too dangerous for residents to frequent for fear of ambush by soldiers or extortion by guerrillas. 
 "We have been waiting for this moment for years," said Cut Syamsurniati, the leader of the human rights organization Rehabilitation Action for Torture Victims in Aceh, as she strolled in the shade, her face wreathed in smiles.
A peace accord signed in Geneva on Dec. 9 by the Indonesian government and the separatist group in this province, the Movement for a Free Aceh, has worked better than expected, Acehnese people and Western diplomats say. 
The number of reported killings of civilians has plummeted. Twelve war-related civilian deaths were reported during the first month of the accord, compared with a monthly average of 87 in 2002, according to David Gorman, a negotiator for the Henry Dunant Center, the Swiss-based private group that mediated the peace deal. So far, armed clashes have been reduced to occasional skirmishes, he said.
Most significantly, the government has permitted foreign monitors to visit Aceh (pronounced AH-chay) for the first time. Previously the Indonesians insisted that Aceh was an internal matter, a posture that diplomats said kept the dirty war and its human rights abuses by both sides -- murders, kidnappings, torture -- hidden from the world.
Behind the scenes, the United States encouraged both sides to go to the peace table. Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the retired former head of the Central Command, is an adviser to the Henry Dunant Center and was critical to reaching agreement on the final details in Geneva last month.
Now the United States Agency for International Development is financing a public information campaign intended to embolden civilians to call a hot line with complaints about violations of the accord.
A settlement of the conflict would mean less trouble for the large Exxon Mobil natural gas plant near here, which has been a longtime target of the guerrillas.
The Bush administration, which is considering a renewal of military ties with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and a place where Islamic militancy has shown some signs of spreading, would welcome improved behavior from the armed forces and the police as well.
But it remains unclear whether the progress of the first month reflected the heady days of a skimpy peace or the long slog to an enduring reconciliation.
 The American ambassador to Indonesia, Ralph L. Boyce, said in Aceh on Tuesday that fulfillment of the peace deal would be a "long-term problem." 
A leader of the rebels, Isnandar Al-Pase, said in an interview that his group was relatively pleased with the specifics of the accord. Moreover, he said, "I am happy when I see our people happy."
The accord makes considerable demands on both sides, with the most difficult tasks to start early next month. The Indonesian Army is to relocate its forces to defensive positions, meaning among other things that it should take down roadblocks.
The most vicious element of the police force, commonly known as Brimob, is to be melded into the regular Indonesian police under the leadership of a newly installed police general, Bachrumsyah Kasman.
For their part, the rebels are expected to deposit their weapons at sites designated by the rebels but open to inspection without notice by the Henry Dunant Center's monitors.
Gen. Tanongsuk Tuvinun of Thailand, who arrived last month to head teams of monitors from Thailand and the Philippines, said he was upbeat so far. "In this one month we have established credibility," he said. But that credibility "will go down" quickly, he warned, unless more foreign monitors arrive and unless a couple of sticking points in carrying out the accord are resolved.
Most critical for cementing the good feelings is a quick infusion of money to rebuild schools, which were a target of the war, and to reconstruct villagers' homes that were burned by the army as it hunted suspected rebels. The World Bank has pledged money, but how fast and how much is still undecided, said Andrew Steer, the bank's representative in Indonesia.
Another early problem is how and where to set up "peace zones" that the peace accord says are to be established in "locations of conflict." 
General Tuvinun said he had been meeting privately with both sides to find agreement on at least a first peace zone. Neither side wanted to give up a supposed territorial advantage. He said he was now considering imposing a zone.
In some contested rural areas, the signs of peace have been promising enough for people to take matters into their own hands and return home from camps of the displaced.
In the village of Indrajaya in the Pidie district, about an hour's drive south of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, Muhammad Ali and his wife, Nurlaila, were reunited in their house last week. Mr. Ali said he ran away four years ago after the army came looking for him as a suspected member of the rebel movement. They harassed his wife, so two years ago she ran away too, he said.
In the last few weeks the local soldiers have been less abusive, the villagers at Indrajaya said. They said that instead of routine intimidation during patrols, soldiers were now riding through on motorbikes, their weapons no longer so visible.
Further south, along the main dirt track into the village of Cempedak, about 10 miles south of Lhokseumawe, soldiers guarded four roadside posts. This has been one of the most violent areas in the war. A few hundred yards off the track, three workers of Ms. Syamsurniati's group were shot and killed by Indonesian soldiers in December 2000. No case has been brought against the troops.
As she traveled down the track, Ms. Syamsurniati noted that the soldiers appeared to be less threatening. Before, she had to ask permission to go to Cempedak, and soldiers would stop her at each roadside post. Now they just waved her on from the comfort of their shacks.
In the village itself, people milled around on the main center, and at the corner coffee shop the tables were crowded, even at dusk. "We can sit here until late at night," said Zakana, a rice farmer. But the owner, Lutan, said gunfire could still be heard some days, forcing customers to flee. 
Mr. Zakana said: "It's still not completely normal. If you go to the rubber fields, the soldiers come and ask for money." General Tuvinun said he considered such reports of extortion an encouraging sign. 
"Prior to the signing there were a lot more serious incidents," he said, citing killings and rapes. "All those serious cases have gone down," he said. Now people are daring to come out and talk about extortion."







  



January 14, 2003 Tuesday  




 Indonesians Begin to See Conspiracy as Homegrown

 
Barely three weeks after the massive Bali bombing, police displayed their first catch, a handsome young Indonesian suspect named Amrozi, with thick bangs and a winning smile, who confessed to buying the explosives and minivan used in the attack. As he joked with his interrogators for the television cameras, Indonesians began to put a face to terrorism. 
 That picture became clearer when police produced the suspected field commander of the attack two weeks later, a cooler customer named Imam Samudra, from the western end of Java island, who appeared briefly before the media in leg irons and a blue Converse T-shirt. He made clear to detectives his abhorrence of the United States. 
 With each advance in this fast-moving investigation, Indonesian police have come closer to solving the worst terrorist attack in the country's history. They have also gradually chipped away at the conviction, prevalent among Indonesian politicians and laborers alike, that the Oct. 12 attack in Bali was the work of foreign provocateurs in the pay of Western governments, most likely CIA agents.  
 "A lot of people at the time believed the CIA or other agents from the United States or Israel or Australia must be involved in the Bali bomb blast," said Bhakti, a political analyst at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name. Bhakti himself initially suggested the CIA might have carried out the October attack as a way of precipitating a crackdown by the Indonesian government against Islamic activists. 
 "But after the police investigated matters, a lot of Indonesians, particularly observers like myself and politicians in the parliament, have bit by bit changed their minds," he said. "Now they believe it is possible that radical Muslim groups in Indonesia are involved." 
Indonesian suspicions about CIA involvement in the attack reflect not only the agency's Cold War record of covert operations in Indonesia but also an abiding reluctance of many here to think their fellow citizens capable of such a horrific act. Moreover, many Indonesians became susceptible to conspiracy theories during three decades of dictatorial rule by President Suharto, when the public's access to information was sharply restricted and news was often passed around in whispers.  
The police forwarded a 1,600-page dossier to prosecutors last week detailing the evidence against Amrozi, who is the first of more than 20 suspects held in connection with the Bali attack to face court proceedings. The police now expect him to go on trial next month. As the evidence becomes public, investigators and analysts are confident that even more Indonesians will accept that their fellow citizens carried out the bombing, which killed nearly 200 people, half of them tourists from Australia. 
 "If the trial is conducted in a transparent way, people will probably realize that blaming another country is not wise," said J. Kristiadi, deputy executive director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. 
[Early Tuesday, Indonesian police said they had arrested two more key suspects in the bombing, the Associated Press reported. 
 [Ali Imron, described as the "field coordinator" of the attack, and Mubarak, who police said helped finance it, were arrested on Berukan island, in eastern Kalimantan province, as they tried to flee the country, said Lt. Gen. Erwin Mapaseng, chief of national police detectives.] 
 The public's recognition that the attack was homegrown, in turn, could strengthen the hand of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's government as it presses for tougher anti-terrorism laws. Kristiadi said Islamic militant groups might now be reluctant to demonstrate against the proposed measures. 
 But even as the evidence mounts and jail cells fill, the notion of CIA responsibility has proven stubborn. In the cheap-food stalls that line Jakarta's traffic-clogged streets and in the corridors of parliament, some Indonesians still say they believe that local militants such as Amrozi, a mechanic, and Samudra, a computer expert, were unwittingly exploited by Western agents. This view has adherents even among members of Megawati's political party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. 
 "To be honest, the police will only be able to determine the actors in the field and will not be able to reveal the mastermind behind the attack. But I think the CIA was involved in this case," said Permadi SH, a legislator from Megawati's party who sits on the security, defense and foreign affairs committee. "We'll never know the truth, like they don't know who killed Kennedy or who is really behind the World Trade Center attack." 
 Indonesia has been abuzz with talk of CIA involvement from the moment that a pair of bombs devastated the heart of Bali's nightclub district. Some Indonesians spoke of a blue flash that preceded the detonation and said this was a well-known CIA signal. Others shared rumors of a bomb dropped from covert aircraft. In recent weeks, speculation has mounted that the larger of the two blasts, which leveled the Sari Club, was caused by something called a micro-nuclear device that is believed to have originated in the West. 
 In the week after the attack, an opinion poll conducted for the Jakarta news magazine Tempo found that 62 percent of the respondents doubted the bombing was carried out by Indonesians. Of those who blamed outsiders, nearly 70 percent said the attack was part of a conspiracy to paint Indonesia as a "nest of terrorists." Even after the capture of Samudra, the accused ringleader, in November, nearly half the respondents in another Tempo poll said they doubted his arrest would lead to the discovery of who was ultimately behind the attack. 
 Din Syamsuddin -- general secretary of the Indonesian Council of Muslim Scholars and deputy chairman of Muhammadiyah, a large organization of moderate Muslims -- said the participation of investigators from the FBI, the Australian Federal Police and other foreign agencies in the Bali probe has raised doubts about the credibility of the police findings. He faulted detectives for ignoring evidence that could incriminate the CIA. A leading political activist who holds a doctorate from UCLA, Syamsuddin said the Bush administration or its allies could have hatched the plot to build support for its global conflict with al Qaeda. 
 "It's our belief that it was done by professional intelligence operatives from a foreign intelligence agency, maybe making use of Indonesian citizens with the purpose of creating a certain image of Indonesia," he said in a recent interview. 
 Profoundly suspicious of Western intelligence agencies, Indonesians are quick to recite the history of CIA interference in their domestic affairs. 
 During the Cold War, the Eisenhower administration provided covert support to a pair of unsuccessful army rebellions on the western island of Sumatra and the eastern island of Sulawesi against President Sukarno. 
 Some Indonesians also believe U.S. agents were involved in a series of events in 1965 that ultimately ended with Sukarno's ouster by Gen. Suharto, though no American role has ever been proven. 
 Indonesian police, burdened by their own record of corruption and ineptitude, are now trying to reassure the public that the conclusions of the Bali investigation are credible, not "engineered." 
 Meanwhile, media watchdogs have tried to dampen speculation in the press about the involvement of Western intelligence agencies in the Bali attack.  
 But it is the suspects themselves who may have done the most to convince Indonesians that the West was not the source of the bombing. Earlier this month, as Samudra was waiting under guard outside the Bali police headquarters, he raised his handcuffed fists for the television cameras and called out: "Pray for America's destruction!"  






  


January 12, 2003 Sunday



 Bishop steps back

 
 An Episcopal bishop has withdrawn from the feud between another Pennsylvania church leader and a conservative priest over same-sex unions and ordaining women.
Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan has transferred canonical oversight of the Rev. David Moyer to a diocese in Central Africa after earlier inviting Moyer to preach in the Pittsburgh Diocese.
Duncan had extended the invitation after the priest had been defrocked by Bishop Charles Bennison Jr., head of the Episcopal diocese based in Philadelphia. 
But in a Dec. 16 letter, Duncan shifted authority for Moyer to the African diocese, saying he was trying to extract himself from the fight between the priest and Bennison.
"It is more of a battle than Bishop Duncan wants to be in," said Ronda Carman, a spokeswoman for Duncan.
Name to be removed
The name of a former Roman Catholic bishop who resigned last year after admitting to sexually abusing a student will be removed from a church's family life center.
Michael Woods, pastor of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Oak Ridge, Tenn., announced at Sunday Mass that he and the parish council had decided to remove the Rev. Anthony J. O'Connell's name from the center.
O'Connell, the founding bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville, resigned from the Diocese of Palm Beach, Fla., in March after admitting to sexual contact with an underage student at the Missouri seminary O'Connell led.
Epiphany celebrated
Almost a dozen Greek Orthodox competed in the freezing waters of Istanbul's Golden Horn to retrieve a wooden cross in a ceremony Monday commemorating the baptism of Jesus Christ.
About 100 Greek Orthodox gathered on the shores of the Horn, a 41/2-mile arm of the Bosporus, to celebrate Epiphany with the ceremony of Blessing the Waters.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, led a two-hour liturgy at the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George, before heading a procession to the shores of the Horn.
Bartholomew, based in Istanbul, threw a gold-painted wooden cross into the water. Giorgos Aristotelis Sakellariou, 21, outswam 10 competitors and was first to reach the cross, which he kissed then waved above his head as worshippers applauded.
Indonesians campaign
Indonesia's two largest moderate Muslim organizations have called on radical groups to end a campaign for the imposition of Islamic law, or Shariah.
"There is no need to press ahead with the struggle for Shariah," said Ahmad Syafii Maarif, who heads the 25-million strong moderate Muhammadiyah organization, The Jakarta Post reported Dec. 31.
The county's other main religious organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, said that the calls for imposition of Shariah were unrealistic.
"What we need is to develop universal values for the people's prosperity," said Hasyim Muzadi, chairman of the group, which claims 40 million members.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. However, most of its 190 million faithful do not follow hardline Islam.
Seminary leases buildings
The country's oldest nondenominational seminary has agreed to lease three of its buildings to Columbia University for 49 years as it struggles to shore up its income.
New York's Union Theological Seminary, which has seen its endowment drop to $60 million from $79 million during the last several years, will also transfer its million-volume library collection to Columbia.
"Most institutions are having to reassess their income and expenditures," said the Rev. Dr. Joseph Hough, the seminary's president. "We saw this as a possible way of converting excess space to income."
Columbia said it would use the buildings on the Upper West Side for extra classrooms or offices. Union, which has about 350 students, will continue to use seven buildings for its operations.
-- Associated Press







   
 

January 9, 2003 Thursday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: JAKARTA; 
Indonesia Opposes Use of Military Power to Topple Iraqi Leader

 
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, opposes military action to topple the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, the foreign minister said today. 
     The minister, Hassan Wirajuda, said "regime change" through military intervention "would be difficult to accept." Instead, he said, Indonesia supports "every effort on the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction through the United Nations Security Council."  
 Indonesian government officials, preoccupied by the aftermath of the Bali attack in October, which killed almost 200 people, and the threat of terrorism at home, have said little about Iraq. 
The foreign minister said he would question the British foreign minister, Jack Straw, during a meeting in Jakarta on Thursday, about any evidence of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. Twenty-six British citizens were killed at Bali. 
Western diplomats said there had been no expectation that Indonesia would support intervention against Iraq. The hope, said one diplomat, was to persuade the government to keep its statements on Iraq as moderate as possible. 
The minister's comments, part of a presentation to the news media on Indonesia's foreign policy in the past year, were fairly low key, and stressed the importance of the United Nations. But they appeared to reflect an unease among some Indonesian officials at the prospect of widespread anti-American protests in the event of a war against Iraq. 
The minister for political and security affairs, Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has warned publicly that an American-led war against Iraq would set off anti-American demonstrations. 
During the American strikes against Afghanistan in 2001, the United States Embassy became the scene of large demonstrations over a period of more than three weeks. At that time, a number of leaders made scathing statements about the United States. 
A war against Iraq could serve to embolden Islamic militants, who have been on the defensive since the roundup of more than a dozen suspects in the Bali bombing, several officials said. 
An American expert on Indonesian Islam, Dr. Robin Bush, told the American Chamber of Commerce this week that foreign businesses should be prepared for protests if war started.
"Be prepared for the fact it will be messy," said Dr. Bush, who heads the Islam and civil society program at the Asia Foundation. 







  



January 9, 2003 Thursday  




 Indonesia's Radical Arabs Raise Suspicions of Moderate Countrymen

 
Many eyes watch over Habib Rizieq Shihab these days. There are his thuggish followers from the Islam Defenders Front, who fly the militia's white banner along the narrow streets of his crowded, rundown quarter of the Petamburan neighborhood, and the plainclothes police who make unannounced visits to the family compound where Rizieq is under house arrest. 
 In the modest concrete courtyard of Rizieq's home hangs a large color portrait of Osama bin Laden, and nearby is a black-and-white poster of Abubakar Baasyir, the elderly Indonesian preacher suspected by security officials of heading a terrorist network in Southeast Asia linked to al Qaeda. 
 But there are other faces that Rizieq keeps even closer at hand. In the small study where the bearded young cleric receives guests, he displays a framed poster with dozens of portraits of Muslim holy men who were responsible for spreading the teachings of Islam centuries ago in far-off Yemen.  
 These men are Rizieq's fore- fathers. Rizieq is part of a small minority of Indonesians of Arab ancestry, nearly all of whom are descended from merchants who came from Hadramawt, a hardscrabble region of Yemen at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Known as Hadramis, the Arabs represent, at most, 2 percent of Indonesia's overwhelmingly Muslim population, according to the estimates of experts. 
 But like Rizieq, the Arabs in Indonesia have become leaders of the country's main Islamic radical groups, wielding an influence far beyond their proportion of the population. 
 They include Baasyir, whose followers are suspected of carrying out a massive bomb attack in Bali in October, and the late Abdullah Sungkar, who helped establish Baasyir's Jemaah Islamiah network. Baasyir is now under arrest for alleged involvement in a series of church bombings two years ago and a plot to assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri. 
 Another Hadrami, Jafar Umar Thalib, headed a radical militia, Laskar Jihad, that dispatched thousands of fighters to join in Muslim-Christian clashes in eastern Indonesia before the group was disbanded last fall. Yet another Hadrami, Habib Husein Habsy, head of the Indonesian Muslim Brotherhood, made headlines last month when he issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for Megawati's overthrow. 
 Worldwide, perhaps the most prominent Hadrami is bin Laden, whose father was born in Yemen and emigrated to Saudi Arabia. 
 Rizieq is quick to note that he and bin Laden have a common background, and that it should be no surprise that Arabs have emerged as the most aggressive protectors of Muslim interests and partisans of strict Islamic rule. 
 "One of the characteristics of Arabs is when they believe something, they really, truly believe it. We say this is right and this is wrong. A basic characteristic of Arab people is they are very outspoken, outgoing and strong," said Rizieq, a charismatic man who stirs his young loyalists with rapid-fire preaching and cutting humor. 
 "Because of the difficult economic and moral situation in Indonesia now, the Indonesians need someone who is very strong," he said in an interview, briefly interrupted by three police officers who suddenly appeared upon learning he had a guest. 
 His militia, the Islam Defenders Front, has not been linked by investigators to international terrorism, but it gained notoriety for smashing up Jakarta nightclubs, bars and pool halls it considered dens of vice. Rizieq was arrested in October, and his group announced a month later it was suspending its vigilante campaign. 
 The radicals represent only a fraction of the country's Arab community, which distinguished itself during Indonesia's fight for independence and has produced some of the country's most prominent politicians, artists, journalists and human rights activists. The dean of Indonesia's diplomats, former foreign minister Ali Alatas, for instance, is descended from one of Yemen's leading families. 
 "The radicals tarnish the reputation of Islam," said Alwi Shihab, a Hadrami who served as foreign minister under former president Abdurrahman Wahid. In his office, Shihab displays pictures not of extremist preachers but of his joint appearances with secretaries of state Madeleine K. Albright and Colin L. Powell. 
 But as the United States and other governments began focusing on terrorist activities in Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Indonesians have increasingly turned their suspicions toward the Arabs in their midst. 
 "Arabic descendants are being monitored," said a senior Indonesian military official. "If you look at all the names, the leaders of the vocal groups are Arabic descendants. The ones who make trouble are the Arabic descendants." 
 These militant activities do not sit well with many of the country's non-Arab Muslims, who largely practice an eclectic and inclusive form of Islam that reflects the Hindu, Buddhist and mystical traditions once prevalent in Indonesia. Many of these moderates are followers of Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's largest Muslim organization. With as many as 40 million members, the group represents more Muslims than do most Arab countries. 
 Some of the Arab Indonesians, said the group's chairman, Hasyim Muzadi, "want to establish an Islamic state here and bring the violence of the Middle East here. These things are not done by local people but are mainly done by the Hadrami people. They try to influence the indigenous people." 
 This is a pattern that scholars say was first set by Hadrami immigrants who established communities in India and East Africa. Armed with a zealous view of Islam and the grievances of a minority, Hadramis headed several rebellions there more than a century ago. 
 In Southeast Asia, Arab merchants began to settle in the Indonesian archipelago as long ago as the 13th century. But the first major migration to this region came in the late 1700s, when thousands of Hadrami men, enticed by tales of fortune, began to abandon their impoverished Arabian homeland. The first traders settled at the western end of what is today Indonesia and spread eastward across the islands over the following century. 
 They eventually emerged as religious leaders, attracting local Muslims who often associate anything Arab with Islam. Since Islam was founded by Muhammad in Arabia, and the religion's holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, are located there, many Indonesians accord Arabs a special status. Even Arabic love songs continue to receive a reverence at odds with their profane lyrics. 
 Moreover, some Hadramis, known as sayyids and including Rizieq, trace their ancestry to Muhammad.  Many Indonesians still uphold the tradition of kissing a sayyid's hand. 
 One of the most prominent sayyids is Habib Abdul Rahman Habsy, who runs an Islamic community center that is an oasis of calm in the bustling Jakarta neighborhood of Kramat. Hadramis and non-Hadramis alike wait to kiss his hand as Habsy, bearded and barefoot and wearing a white Muslim cap and a green shawl, shuffles through the hall. One visitor plays Arabic music on a boombox while others sleep under lethargic ceiling fans. During the fasting period of Ramadan, which ended last month, Habsy had his cooks prepare large vats of rice each day, and at sunset an estimated 10,000 people spilled into the surrounding grid of alleys to break the daytime fast. 
 But other Hadramis put their status to more radical ends. Over the generations, many Hadramis urged a radical effort to cleanse Indonesian Islam of its local traditions and return it to the form practiced in the Arab world. 
 "They believe all these indigenous leaders are very accommodating, too compromising to local beliefs and local positions and to the political situation," said Azyumardi Azra, rector of the State Institute for Islamic Studies, who has written about the Hadrami community. "They believe that the Islam they adhere to and their interpretation of Islam is more accurate than the indigenous brand." 
Both Baasyir and Sungkar were activists in an Arab-Indonesian movement committed to purifying the country's Islamic practices but broke away when the group, Al-Irsyad Al-Islamiah, proved insufficiently militant. So too, Jafar Umar Thalib of Laskar Jihad attended Al-Irsyad schools and even ran one before he was fired for extremism, officials of the group said. 
 Though most Hadramis no longer speak fluent Arabic and have long since stopped thinking of the Middle East as home, some continue to maintain ties with Arabia. Community leaders and other experts estimate that thousands of young Hadramis have been sent back to Yemen in recent decades for religious studies, some at militant schools that operate beyond the regulation of the Yemeni government. 




9


  



January 5, 2003 Sunday  




 Call It by Any Other Name, It Still Adds Up to a Crusade

 
 It has become fashionable these days to emphasize that the post-Sept. 11 war against terrorism is not directed against the Islamic world, and that Osama bin Laden represents a radical fringe, while grudgingly accepting the premise that much of the fault for the attacks may lie in global frustration over American arrogance and foreign policy myopia, particularly as it relates to the Palestinian problem. That is, at least, the starting point of the argument against any intervention in Iraq and of charges that President Bush is overreacting badly to the current sorry state of international affairs. 
But the issues are even more complex than that analysis would imply. For example, it took no less than Yasser Arafat himself to remind us that Arab and Muslim are far from the same thing. Arafat recently told the Sunday Times of London: "Bin Laden . . . never helped us. He was working in another, completely different area and against our interests. . . . I'm telling him directly not to hide behind the Palestinian cause." The Palestinian cause does not generally regard itself as a religious one, but rather a geopolitical one, hence Arafat's reference to bin Laden's "completely different area."  
The al Qaeda leader, in the "Letter to the American People" published in November and attributed to him, spoke from that "different area," spelling out our nation's faults, from alcohol consumption to sexual permissiveness (even mentioning President Bill Clinton's peccadilloes) to our disregard for the world environment. The letter makes very clear that bin Laden's ultimate goal is to undermine Western civilization in its totality, which strongly implies that even if Israel didn't exist, he would still be pursuing what is really, as reluctant as we are to say it, a religious crusade in the true historical sense. 
Throughout history, disruption of the social and political order of the day has been a regular occurrence. But this is a different kind of fight, one with long roots in the past and one that will last long into the future. In the letter, bin Laden purportedly said, "it is to this religion that we call you," implying the need for a global theological upheaval.  
Islam arose in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century. Like Christianity, Islam officially condemned forced conversions. But unlike Christianity, Islam instructed its followers to ensure that the world was under the political control of the Faithful. Hence Islam's political domination could be, and was, spread by the sword. Islamic cavalries burst out of Arabia and quickly took control of the Middle East, Byzantium and Persia. The Middle Eastern armies of the Christian Byzantine Empire were defeated and annihilated in 636, and Jerusalem fell in 638. By the early 8th century, Arab Islamic forces had reached the Straits of Gibraltar and crossed into European Spain. By 712 they had reached the center of the Iberian Peninsula, and by the 730s they were raiding deep into the heart of France. 
In the spring of 1095, Pope Urban II allowed Byzantine delegates to address the Council of Clermont in France, and in his speech there he called for the first crusade to aid Byzantium and take back Jerusalem. Crusades and counter-crusades between Muslims and Christians followed for centuries.  
What is striking is how much bin Laden today sounds like Pope Urban in 1095. The pope said: "I beseech you as Christ's heralds to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends." And, "All who die along the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins." 
 Meanwhile, hear bin Laden in recent years: "It is our duty to make Jihad so that God's word is the one exalted to the heights and so that we drive the Americans away from all Muslim countries." And: "In our religion, it is not permissible for any non-Muslim to stay in our country. If the Americans refuse to listen to our advice and the goodness, guidance and righteousness that we call them to, then be aware that you will lose this Crusade, just like the other previous Crusades in which you were humiliated." And, not incidentally, he, too, guarantees immediate salvation to all those who die in the effort. 
Lest there be any doubt that what is going on now is a real crusade, and not just a protest against American hegemony, it is important to note that al Qaeda and other Muslim forces are now or have been engaged in conflicts not just against the West proper, but against Hindus in Kashmir and increasingly in other parts of India, as well as against Orthodox Russians in Chechnya. Moreover, the Muslim Uighurs are fighting the mostly Buddhist Chinese; and Muslims are doing battle in Indonesia and the Philippines. Hundreds were recently killed in Muslim-Christian violence in Nigeria over a beauty pageant (ironically won by a Turk, after it was moved to London). Muslim extremist cells are operating in scores of countries, and their cross-border cooperation in training and financing gives credence to the assumption that the driving force is not strictly localized grievances (witness Kenya, Bali) as much as a clarion call to a worldwide transnational Islamic revival. 
All of this brings us to a number of hard political realities.  
First, the discontent in the Islamic world is largely the result of inept and corrupt leaderships that have squandered vast fortunes in oil revenues. Despite its petro-windfall, the Arab world largely ignored and almost completely missed out on the economic boom and technological advances of the last 20 years. That isn't universally true of the Islamic world (witness Malaysia) but it does raise a serious question. Can Islam and democracy coexist at all? (Witness Iran and watch Turkey's efforts in that regard closely.) The alternative has been the emergence of demigods with 99.9 percent of the vote in rigged elections, such as Saddam Hussein, who heads a nominally secular Baath Party but seeks legitimacy in a dictatorship wrapped in Islamic trappings, or Moammar Gaddafi, who coined the phrase "Islamic Bomb" in urging development of an atomic one. 
 Absent a true reformation within Islam itself (which seems increasingly unlikely), the frustration over the present and the dreams of past glory of the 7th century are manifested by a destructive effort to bring the rest of the world down to Islam's current level. It is worth noting that the vanguard of these warriors for yesteryear is not averse to using American-developed technology to build and trigger its bombs, or the Internet, originally created by the Pentagon, to coordinate its attacks on the "Great Satan." 
If Saddam Hussein poses a major threat to the world by backing this emerging Muslim militancy, he becomes every bit as dispensable, as part of the unavoidable collateral damage of war, as were the people in the World Trade Center. America's transgressions and Palestine's future aside, bin Laden speaks for a growing militancy that stems largely from the failure of Islamic leadership to adapt to a changing world. It is not likely to subside any time soon, and to face that reality and be prepared for it is not a sign of reverse bigotry or racial profiling, and certainly not an overreaction in light of the continuing aggressive attacks by Islamic groups against a vast array of national and theological targets. 
A British journalist recently said, "The Americans were late in getting into the last two world wars and are determined to be first in this one." When softer targets in Europe and elsewhere come into focus for al Qaeda and others, and prove easier to attack than American ones, he may find the United States -- by acting alone against the new threat -- is doing the right thing. That is, of course, unless this time the Europeans are willing to convert. Because for many of the suicide bombers we face today, and will face tomorrow, that is the only way the latest crusade can end and religious peace again prevail.</body>Dennis Mullin, president of Mullin Communications Inc. of Washington, worked and traveled widely in the Islamic world for 10 years as a foreign correspondent for U.S. News and World Report and other publications. 







   
 

January 4, 2003 Saturday  
  



 INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS; 
Making Near Beer Acceptable in Near East

 
When Heineken, the Dutch beer giant, bought Egypt's sole brewery, Al Ahram Beverages , for $280 million in October, most analysts thought of it as yet another Heineken acquisition of a successful monopoly. It was also the biggest deal in Egypt's financial history.
     But both management teams had something more specific -- and ambitious -- in mind: using Heineken's expanding global network to penetrate the Islamic world and distribute Ahram's popular Fayrouz line of nonalcoholic flavored beers. 
 While the brewing process of other nonalcoholic beers yields alcohol, Fayrouz's does not. This led Al Azhar, a university and Sunni Islam's most prestigious body, to certify that the beer was halal, or permitted for consumption by Muslims, a ruling that gave Fayrouz a corner on the nonalcoholic beer market throughout the Muslim world. 
"Al Ahram has beautiful malt drinks, and we believe these have a solid future in Saudi Arabia," said a Heineken spokesman, Albert Holtzappel. "The nonalcoholic drinks are very fine, and very attractive for export. We are going to help Al Ahram to improve and expand further with our brewery technology, financial and technical support."
Ahmed Zayat, executive chairman of Ahram, said his company's products would benefit greatly from Heineken's distribution muscle. Heineken owns 110 breweries in countries around the world, including some with Muslim majorities including Indonesia, Nigeria and Arab countries like Morocco and Lebanon.
"There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, and many of them want to drink beer but do not because they are religiously observant or for social reasons," Mr. Zayat said. "They want something fizzy, malt-based, flavored and socially acceptable."
Fayrouz, which comes in four fruit flavors, has already had considerable success in cracking this market.
Al Ahram Beverages, widely known as A.B.C., introduced its pineapple-flavored Fayrouz in 2000, and within six months it sold 70,000 hectoliters (1.82 million gallons) -- 14 percent of A.B.C.'s total nonalcoholic volumes. Its mango-flavored Fayrouz appeared the next year and quickly sold out.
The introduction of these two most popular flavors was accompanied by a television marketing campaign depicting youths dancing to Western music, with the motto: "The Natural Development of a Soft Drink."
"The Islamic world market has an extremely young and fast-growing population, and it is underserved," said Steven Keefer, a former New York investment banker and now chief of staff to Mr. Zayat and head of the market development group at A.B.C. "It makes sense to have a nonalcoholic beer as a popular drink."
Al Ahram also brews and bottles the nonalcoholic beer Birell, under license from Brauerei Hurlimann of Switzerland. It produces and distributes Lipton iced teas, through a joint venture with Unilever Egypt, and distributes SAFI bottled water throughout Egypt, under an agreement with the Egyptian Army.
The company also produces the century-old Stella and newly acquired Sakara beers, as well as wines and spirits. And it has been producing beers under license from the Danish brewer Carlsberg and Guinness of Ireland for a couple of years, but as part of the Heineken deal will soon exit that business.
In 2001, A.B.C. derived 52 percent of its sales from beer; 29 percent from nonalcoholic malt beverages, including Fayrouz; 11 percent from spirits and wine; and 8 percent from soft drinks. It reported net profit of $22.8 million on revenue of $105 million.
Heineken's purchase of 97.8 percent of Ahram's shares also gives the Dutch company access to the heavily protected Egyptian market in a way that allows it to avoid the 300 percent duty on imported alcoholic drinks. Heineken, which is still trying to pick up the remainder of the shares, expects its own beer to be on sale in Egypt within six months.
The Egyptian alcoholic drinks market is, however, highly vulnerable to the ebbs and flows of foreign tourists, who consume around 15 percent of A.B.C.'s beer and 85 percent of its wine.
After the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, tourists began to shun Egypt. The country's bad economic performance and policies and a liquidity squeeze caused many Western investors to flee the Egyptian stock market, and Ahram's share price slid to $15 from $24.
And again, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the company's stock price dipped to $5, as hundreds of large Western institutional shareholders withdrew from the Egyptian market.
Despite the market's recent troubles, Heineken paid $14 a share, three times the actual market price, yet almost half the price of Ahram shares just three years earlier.
"We know that presently the tourist level is a bit low, but Heineken is a long-term-oriented company," Mr. Holtzappel, the Heineken spokesman, said. "We know sooner or later tourism will come back."
In addition to securing a monopoly in Egypt, Heineken can take advantage of the country's growing number of free-trade agreements, including that with the 20-member Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, or Comesa, which encompasses a population of 380 million, Mr. Zayat of A.B.C. said.
But then, there are the increasing tensions over Iraq, which continue to haunt Western investors in the Middle East.
Since buying Ahram from the government in a 1997 privatization, Mr. Zayat, a Harvard- and Boston University-educated investor who has worked in New York, has wanted to be part of a bigger international family. Just before the Sept. 11 attacks, he was in talks with Interbrew of Belgium and South African Breweries (now SABMiller). Concerns over growing political tensions overshadowed the negotiations, however, and quashed this as well as other planned acquisitions in the region.
"A.B.C.'s product portfolio depends heavily on perceived local political stability, which affects tourism," said Taher Gharghour, an analyst with HSBC in London. "If the conflict in Iraq turned out serious enough to impact tourism in Egypt, then it will impact Al Ahram."






   


January 3, 2003, Friday, 



 Killings in Yemen challenge Muslims to be for war or peace

 
The killing by a fundamentalist Muslim of three Christian missionaries in Yemen, precisely because they were Christians, shows clearly that a certain dimension of Islam has declared war on Christianity ("Suspects hunted in Yemen slayings: 3 Americans killed at mission hospital," News, Tuesday).
Unless we hear from the Islamic community, including in the USA, we must conclude that the war is by Islam itself as a world religion.
There is an expression to the effect that there can be no peace in the world without peace among world religions. Unfortunately, there is much hatred against "infidels" -- both Christians and Jews -- being taught in Islamic schools and even in the Koran itself.
 
This poses real problems among these major world religions, but so far the aggression is almost totally from Islam against Christianity and Judaism and not the other way.
Either Islam and Islamic schools begin to preach tolerance, goodwill and love -- or there will be war.
Christians cannot be expected to continually turn the other cheek while Muslims kill them in Yemen, Lebanon, Algeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, East Timor, New York and Washington, D.C.
Self-defense has never been denied Christians; only hatred of any group.
Muslims must cease their hatred of "infidels" by which they teach their people violence, or Christians will have to take all means of self-defense.
Peace or war is up to Muslims.
Peter Riga
Houston
Was the work worth the risk?
Even though the gunning down of three American hospital missionaries in Yemen, including a physician and a hospital administrator, by an Islamic militant was a cowardly and savage act, these people knew the risks they were taking. They were in a vulnerable and unsafe country where negative sentiments against Americans run high and where they couldn't be guaranteed protection ("Slain missionaries didn't want to be anywhere else: Stayed to aid Yemenis even after warning," News, Tuesday).
What they were doing was commendable, but I believe it simply was not worth the risk. A dead humanitarian does people little good.
Kenneth L. Zimmerman
Huntington Beach, Calif.







  



January 3, 2003 Friday  




 A Quiet Voice Echoes Among Islamic Radicals; 
As Exiled Indonesian Cleric Pushed Cause, His Followers Embraced Message of Jihad

 
 When Abubakar Baasyir vanished from his home on the main Indonesian island of Java 17 years ago, he took with him little more than a black Yamaha motorbike and a reputation for opposing the dictatorship of Gen. Suharto. At the time he went into exile in Malaysia, he was a cleric with a small but devoted following centered at the Islamic boarding school he had founded in central Java with a fellow radical preacher. 
 It was a different Baasyir who returned to Indonesia in 1999 after protests forced Suharto to resign. Baasyir had become a prominent preacher, sought out by politicians and day laborers alike, with connections to leading radical thinkers around the world, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. His followers, inspired by his teachings of jihad, had gone to fight on battlefields in Afghanistan, Bosnia and the southern Philippines. 
Baasyir returned to Indonesia with a broader vision than when he left, seeking to establish Islamic rule not only in Indonesia but across several Southeast Asian countries, and he embraced a campaign to promote militant Islamic causes worldwide. His more expansive ambitions were emblematic of a new generation of Islamic militants in Indonesia who are believed to be responsible for attacks on Westerners in the region, including the bombing of nightclubs filled with tourists on the island of Bali in October, and a series of plots to blow up foreign embassies.  
Today, Western and Asian intelligence officials have identified Baasyir, 64, a soft-spoken cleric with thick gold-rimmed eyeglasses and a white beard tinged with yellow, as the head of Jemaah Islamiah, a radical network connected to al Qaeda with operational cells in several Southeast Asian countries. But they have not yet offered evidence.  
 Baasyir is rarely seen without a coterie of advisers, supporters and fellow clerics. They streamed to his bedside in a Jakarta police hospital, where he was held for nearly two months until being moved last month to a jail cell at the national police headquarters. Authorities determined that Baasyir, who has complained of difficulty breathing, is healthy enough to face charges of involvement in a series of church bombings two years ago and a plot to assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri.  
 In a September interview, Baasyir denied he was a leader of Jemaah Islamiah and asserted that no such organization exists. The name Jemaah Islamiah refers only to the community of Muslim believers he had gathered while in exile, he said. Baasyir recalled that he had provided religious instruction for an informal network of followers in Malaysia and Singapore called the Sunna Group. He urged them to "implement the teaching of jihad," he said, and some of his listeners did so by taking up arms on behalf of fellow Muslims in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, the Philippines and the Moluccas, an Indonesian region beset by violence between Muslims and Christians.  
The story of how Baasyir rose from an obscure cleric to embody the militant Islamic movement in Southeast Asia goes back to the 1970s. He and a fellow cleric, Abdullah Sungkar, founded an Islamic boarding school, Pondok Pesantren Ngruki. The school was nothing more than a few classrooms arrayed around small courtyards and shade trees tucked into the narrow back streets of Solo, a city long known for the intense religious devotion of many of its people and the proliferation of Islamic schools.  
 Baasyir and Sungkar campaigned for the adoption in Indonesia of sharia, or Islamic law, which was considered subversive by Suharto. They were arrested in 1978 and jailed on charges they belonged to a group engaging in violent opposition to the state. 
 After serving four years in prison, and facing the imminent prospect of re-arrest, they fled in 1985 to Malaysia. 
 Suddenly, it was as if the world opened to them, according to those who know them. Malaysia had earned a reputation for hosting exiles and dissidents from neighboring countries. There, Baasyir and Sungkar were free to preach and organize. Soon after arriving, they convened a clandestine meeting not far from the capital, Kuala Lumpur, with several confidants to chart the future of their movement, according to evidence in an Indonesian trial of a man who served as their courier. 
They directed their supporters in Java to follow them into exile, especially those who could find work in Malaysia's construction industry, according to the court documents, which Indonesian and Western experts describe as credible.  
Baasyir and Sungkar also decided to sharpen the military skills of Indonesian activists by dispatching them to Afghanistan, where they could get combat training and experience in the battle against Soviet troops, according to evidence in the courier's trial. The exiled leaders also vowed to send Indonesian fighters to the southern Philippines and southern Thailand to support Muslim insurgencies there. 
Baasyir traveled widely during his exile, visiting not only nearby countries such as Singapore and Australia, but Pakistan and countries in the Middle East and Europe, associates said. Along the way, they said, he met leaders of the Afghan mujaheddin. 
His religious philosophy became more global in ambition and scope, according to interviews with associates who knew him before, during and after his exile. "His horizons broadened. He started to interact with many people and many nations and many schools of thinking," said Muhammad Hafidz, an Indonesian who has known Baasyir for more than 20 years. As he compared notes with Islamic scholars and activists, Baasyir concluded that Indonesian Muslims were not alone in facing government repression, recalled Ade Hidayat, director of student affairs at the Ngruki school. 
The sources of this repression were varied. Baasyir found that in some places such as Egypt, Muslim militants faced resistance when they tried to press their governments to implement Islamic law. In others, such as the southern Philippines and the separatist Russian republic of Chechnya, insurgents were battling to break away from the grip of central governments. 
According to a report by the International Crisis Group, Baasyir's worldview was especially influenced by a veteran Indonesian militant, Abdul Wahid Kadungga. Since moving to Germany as a student more than 30 years ago, Kadungga developed a circle of Islamic activists in Europe while building friendships with Muslim leaders around the world, from Malaysia to Egypt, according to several published accounts. Two years ago, a religious Indonesian magazine, Suara Hidayatullah, described Kadungga as a jet-setting activist who visited Osama bin Laden in his Afghan hideaway.  
 Kadungga was responsible for helping to establish Baasyir and Sungkar in Malaysia, according to Sidney Jones, an Indonesia expert and author of the Crisis Group's report. It was also Kadungga who introduced them 10 years later to the radical thinking of an Egyptian militant organization, the Islamic Group, converting them to the vision of an Islamic state spanning beyond Indonesia, Jones said. 
 After disappearing from public view, Kadungga, 62, was detained last month in Jakarta and questioned about possible connections to terrorism. He was released but must remain in Indonesia and report regularly to police, officials said. 
 In the mid-1990s, Baasyir settled in the Malaysian village of Sungai Manggis, a string of wood-plank houses 60 miles south of Kuala Lumpur. He rented one of several modest homes alongside a rutted dirt alley that stretches into a grove of banana trees. Baasyir converted the back room into a small prayer and preaching hall. 
Next door was Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who is now considered by Western intelligence officials to be Jemaah Islamiah's main liaison with al Qaeda. Hambali had arrived there three years earlier, according to the landlord. He appeared to make a living selling medicine and perfume. 
Later, Baasyir and another Indonesian preacher, Mohamad Iqbal, shifted to more spacious quarters down the road, sharing a duplex with whitewashed walls and a mangosteen fruit tree in the front yard. The two preached to local residents, neighbors recalled. 
Baasyir and Iqbal received countless visitors. In particular, the landlord recalled some from the Middle East and Africa who kept to themselves. 
"He talked about jihad, about creating an Islamic state," Abdul Halim, one of Baasyir's local devotees, said of Baasyir in a recent interview. "He didn't talk only about Indonesia. He talked about Malaysia, Afghanistan, the Philippines." 
According to another Malaysian who attended the small discussions, participants were privately asked whether they would volunteer for "dangerous missions." 
But Baasyir and Sungkar, who were wandering the country as itinerant preachers, could not pay their followers' way to the battlefront. The task of raising money for the jihadists ultimately fell to Iqbal, a gregarious if at times severe orator, who is now in a Malaysian prison accused of extremist activities. Iqbal solicited contributions from wealthier Malaysians, according to interviews with his brother, Irfan S. Awwas, and another Indonesian who was part of the group, Muzayyin. 
Muzayyin, who uses only one name, had been one of Baasyir's best pupils at the Ngruki school in Indonesia, and followed him into exile, working in construction, farming and the sale of traditional Javanese food. A short, slight man with a thin beard and mustache, he also became one of the first in the movement dispatched to Afghanistan, according to court records. 
 "Abubakar Baasyir encouraged his listeners to do jihad by explaining its importance in the Koran," Muzayyin said in an interview at Ngruki, where he is now a religious teacher. "In Malaysia, it was much easier to go abroad than in Indonesia, much easier to go to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines and other places. The political atmosphere in Malaysia was very supportive." 
 The strategy of sending Indonesians overseas began slowly, with only six recruits by December 1985, the records show. But it was the start of a new international outlook for Indonesia's Islamic radicals, who already had a long tradition of resistance at home, dating to the country's fight against Dutch colonialism and its first years of independence. 
 The suppression of Islamic activists during Suharto's 32-year dictatorship radicalized some Muslims, and the willingness of clerics like Baasyir and Sungkar to publicly challenge him attracted more followers to their cause.  But Indonesia's activists truly began building their international network and adopting ambitions beyond the country's borders only after Baasyir and his followers went into exile. 
The 1980s were an especially heady time for Indonesians who made their way to Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. "The jihad atmosphere dominated our campus," recounted Ikhwan Abidin, a graduate of Baasyir's school in Ngruki, who later studied in Pakistan. Students protested daily in support of the Muslim forces fighting the Soviets, distributed leaflets on behalf of the jihadists and underwent military-style training, he said. 
 Many of Abidin's fellow Indonesians rushed to the battlefield, signing up with predominantly Arab forces, he said in an interview. They joined Muslims from other Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia and Thailand. Even after the Soviet defeat in 1989, Indonesians continued to journey to Afghanistan, where they could fight with several Muslim militias skirmishing over the spoils. 
 A 31-year-old native of Java, Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi, went to Pakistan and Afghanistan after graduating 12 years ago from Baasyir's boarding school.  He had rebellion in his blood: His father had been imprisoned by Suharto.  
Al-Ghozi was recruited into Jemaah Islamiah after meeting other Indonesian militants while studying in Pakistan, according to regional security officials. 
 In recent years, as al-Ghozi rose through the group's ranks, he slipped from country to country in Southeast Asia, using five different passports and speaking several languages. 
 But al-Ghozi, a bomb-making expert, made headlines last January when he was arrested in Manila on charges of possession of illegal explosives, becoming one of the first Indonesians captured on suspicion of involvement with al Qaeda-related violence. He told police he had helped carry out a series of attacks in the Philippines two years ago, authorities said. Asian and Western security officials have implicated him in a more recent plot by Jemaah Islamiah to bomb U.S. and other Western targets in Singapore. Those attacks were never carried out. 
 The current investigation into the Bali bombings has netted more Indonesians with similar credentials, though a new report by the International Crisis Group concludes that Baasyir did not order that attack. The report says that although Baasyir knew more about the planning of the attack than he admits, he reportedly objected to the bombings for tactical reasons, fearing they would provoke a crackdown on Islamic radicals in Indonesia. Some of his followers, feeling they had outgrown his leadership, went ahead with the operation, according to the report. 
 Though steeped in the indigenous tradition, the new Indonesian militants are organized in covert cells rather than in guerrilla bands, said Landry Haryo Subianto, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. They are radical intellectuals, not the pious villagers of 40 years ago. Most important, he said, "They are trying to make all of Southeast Asia into one Islamic state." 
 When Baasyir returned to Indonesia three years ago, both he and his homeland had changed dramatically. Democracy had been restored, and it was legal to press for the implementation of Islamic law. But Baasyir and his followers wanted more. 
 Baasyir was elected chairman of a new militant umbrella organization, the Indonesian Mujaheddin Council, which has been identified by some Western terrorism experts as the public face of the underground Jemaah Islamiah. The council issued a manifesto two years ago declaring goals of "building a solid and strong line of religious warriors in the country, region and world"; working toward "the realization of an Islamic state and of an Islamic leadership in the country as well as in Muslim communities throughout the world"; and calling on Muslims to pursue "evangelism and jihad in the whole world." 
 Muhammed Sholeh Ibrahim, now the principal of the Indonesian boarding school that Baasyir founded, today lives off a long narrow alley, with a picture of Osama bin Laden on his door. Beside it is a poster for the Ngruki school, depicting a raised arm brandishing a rifle and green banner that reads "There is no God but Allah." Inside Ibrahim's small study is another poster -- aimed at the United States -- showing a sword buried in the side of Afghanistan with the slogan: "The suffering of Afghanistan is the suffering of all Muslim people." 
 Ibrahim, sitting cross-legged on the floor, explained quietly how the fight against the Soviets and, more recently, opposition to the U.S. war in Afghanistan brought together Indonesian and other Muslim militants, despite differences of nationality and language. "The ones who went abroad learned how to organize the Islamic movement, how to make the Islamic movements into one," he said. "They have common enemies, like the United States and Russia before that. It made them become closer to each other, to become unified." 






  


December 26, 2002, Thursday  



 HUGE BOMB CACHE SEIZED

 
A huge cache of ammonium nitrate that may have been headed to a fugitive bomber was seized yesterday by Indonesian police.
More than 500 pounds of the fertilizer - which can be mixed with fuel oil to create a powerful explosive - was packed inside sugar sacks that were being driven to a terrorist, police said. 
Ammonium nitrate was used to blow up two Bali nightclubs Oct. 12, killing 192.
"If this was used to make a bomb, it would be much larger than the one in Bali," said Indonesian police Col. Tatang Somantri.
The car had been under surveillance and was stopped in Palu, the capital of Sulawesi province.
The driver confessed that he was smuggling the chemical from Malaysia and bringing it to a fugitive named Ipong, who is wanted in connection with a Dec. 5 bombing of a McDonald's in Makassar, police sources told The Associated Press.
A passenger in the car escaped. Police also found three license plates in the vehicle.
The news was another shock to Indonesia, which has grappled with years of violence and Muslim extremism. In Bali, tourism is down nearly 70%, and resorts were sparsely populated despite the Christmas holiday.
"I'm losing a lot," said tycoon Kadek Wiranatha, whose bar, Paddy's, was destroyed in the bombing and who has had to close two hotels and postpone the launch of Bali's first airline. "We're talking about millions of dollars," he said.







  



December 25, 2002 Wednesday  




 Lands of the Free

 
 FROM THE NARROW perspective of Washington, D.C., the year 2002, marked by fears of terrorism and recession, hardly seems the most cheerful on record. From the perspective of Dakar, the capital of Senegal, 2002 might seem more upbeat. Senegal, whose current leader was chosen by free and fair elections, is one of a handful of countries that have, according to an annual survey published by Freedom House, joined the ranks of free nations this year, along with Bahrain, Brazil and Yugoslavia. This is no mean feat. The Freedom House survey, which began informally in 1955 and has been published as an annual report, "Freedom in the World," for the past 30 years, is a comprehensive independent study of political evolution, evaluating countries according to their civil liberties, independent civil institutions and independent media, as well as their electoral politics.  
This year's Freedom House report is notable because it records some otherwise unnoticed trends. One is the number of Muslim countries that are quietly making progress toward greater political freedom and personal liberty: Afghanistan, Albania, Tajikistan, Qatar and Turkey as well as Senegal and Bahrain. While the 30-year record of the survey does indicate that, as a rule, few countries with Islamic majorities are democracies, it does not show any "inexorable link" between Islam and tyranny, as some have lately speculated. Indeed, if the Muslims who live in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Turkey, Western Europe and North America are all counted, it seems that most of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims actually live under democratically elected governments. 
Although the survey does not answer the chicken-and-egg argument about democracy and prosperity, it does demonstrate a remarkable correlation between the two. At the moment, the world's 89 free countries control 89 percent of the world's GDP. The 103 "partly free" and "not free" countries control a mere 11 percent. Most of the world's economic, technological and military resources are therefore in the hands of democratic governments. This bodes well for further movement toward open societies, particularly given that the rich, free world has lately started to pay more attention to this issue than it once did. Progress toward political liberty will be one of the conditions required for receipt of aid through the administration's Millennium Challenge program, and is also meant to be a factor in the decisions of donors such as the World Bank. 
But the list of free and unfree countries may contain other hints for politicians too. Of the world's least-free countries, a striking number are directly associated with the export of international terrorism: Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya. The same is true of disputed territories, which the survey measures too: Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir. Again, there is no evidence of cause and effect, but the correlation is notable, and worth thinking about. In explaining the growth of terrorism, and in looking for its roots, much attention has been paid to the religious causes that the terrorists claim to support, and to their hatred of the United States. Far more might be learned from a closer examination of the political climate of their native countries -- and far more might be gained by policies that aimed to make that climate more open. 






   


December 23, 2002, Monday, 



 Terrorists target local Christians

 
As Christians throughout Indonesia were gathering for worship on Christmas Eve 2000, bombs exploded outside dozens of churches and religious schools, even the nation's Roman Catholic cathedral. The assault left 15 dead and more than 100 wounded and led Pope John Paul to decry a "tragic time of trial and suffering."
The carnage in Indonesia offers a sadly appropriate image for this yuletide. As the handiwork of al-Qaeda associates, it supplies bloody proof that Islamist terrorists view Christians among their chief targets -- not just Christians as emblems of the West, or Christians as stand-ins for Americans, but Christians as Christians, period.
 
The past few months alone have seen the murder of a Christian missionary in Lebanon and the burning of Nigerian churches. Workers at a Christian charity were executed in Pakistan. Nightclub revelers in Bali perished in a bombing designed to punish supporters of Southeast Asia's Christian minority.
Neither an ideological nor a military war against the Islamists can be won without recognizing the fact of anti-Christian hatred. Yet, time after time, American leaders in media, religion and politics have downplayed the inescapable conclusion, as if the worthy goals of interfaith tolerance, ecumenical dialogue and diplomatic alliance require rationalizing away atrocities.
The very phrase "war on terror" skirts reality. It is not the Irish Republican Army or Basque separatists or Colombian guerrillas, contemptible though they are, who leave a trail of death from Moscow to Mombasa, from the World Trade Center to the Philippines. And Islamists do not wish to destroy just America or the West or Israel or the Jews.
Osama bin Laden's own words could not be any more direct. Al-Qaeda merged with Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1998 -- before the collapse of the Middle East peace process, before the election of George W. Bush -- under the name "World Islamic Front for Holy War Against Jews and Crusaders.""There are two parties to this conflict," bin Laden told al Jazeera in 1998, "world Christianity" and "the Islamic world." Repeatedly, al-Qaeda has described its enemy as the "Jewish Crusader coalition" or the "Jewish Crusader alliance" or "infidels."
Years before Islamists bombed a nightclub in Bali, they assailed Indonesia for ending its occupation of East Timor and granting independence to the largely Catholic territory. Threats had been made against the Australian embassy in Singapore because of Australia's role in brokering the East Timor settlement.
It was no coincidence, then, that al-Qaeda affiliates blew up a nightclub favored by Australian tourists. Although virtually no Western media paid attention, the author and human-rights activist Paul Marshall of Freedom House has pointed out that bin Laden said in his taped message last month that the nightclub had been attacked because of Australia's "despicable effort to separate East Timor" from overwhelmingly Muslim Indonesia.
"The Islamists have needed to build an enemy," said Rohan Gunaratna, author of the book Inside Al Qaeda. "They need to have a symbol, a group of identifiable opponents. They have been opposed to Jews, but they have been equally opposed to Christians. Osama's own statements are the best guides to al-Qaeda's future actions. He's very consistent. He has a very clear mission."
One could rightly ask, then, why there is such a resounding silence on terrorism against Christians. It is true, of course, that the intolerance does not flow only in one direction. Such prominent evangelical Christians as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Jerry Vine have issued offensively broad condemnations of Islam. The Balkans war saw Bosnian Serbs, who were Christians, slaughtering Bosnian Muslims, most notoriously in Srebrenica. Several nuns in Rwanda were complicit in the mass murder of Tutsis by the country's Hutu majority.
Still, no one purporting to speak for Christianity, in the way bin Laden has sought to speak for Islam, has called for, or indeed mounted, holy war. By using the terms "Crusader" and "infidel," bin Laden has played on the image of Christians as the invaders, the oppressors and the overdogs. And by conflating Christianity with the West, journalists and politicians have inadvertently evoked the same archtype.
But the Christians who are dying, the churches that are burning, are in Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, Algeria, Pakistan and the Philippines -- nations that are neither white nor Western. The historian Philip Jenkins of Penn State University calculates that by the year 2025 close to 70% of the world's 2.6 billion Christians will live in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Already in Nigeria one can see Islamism encroaching on modernity province by province, as adulterers are sentenced to be stoned to death in accordance with Islamic law and the presence of a beauty pageant with women in swimsuits offers reason enough for a cataclysm of anti-Christian rioting.
"What Americans need to realize is that we're in an age of Southern (hemisphere) Christianity, not Western (hemisphere) Christianity," said Professor Jenkins, the author of The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. "Americans are still living in a legacy of guilt, and it's not that atrocities weren't committed by Christians. But if we want to defend the poor and nonwhite of the world, then we have to pay attention to these religious conflicts. Defending Christians, besides being part of human decency, makes good policy sense."
Samuel G. Freedman, associate dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is the author most recently of Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry. He is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.







   
 

December 22, 2002 Sunday  
  



 U.S. Fears Islamic Militancy Could Emerge in Cambodia 

 
"I say Cambodia is safe," said Ahmad Yahya, one of the most prominent Muslims in the country, addressing fears that Islamic militants could find a niche in this unruly land.
     "But who knows?" 
 With its porous borders, its corruption, its hide-and-seek legal system and its disorganized Muslim community, some analysts say, this small Southeast Asian country could easily become a refuge and a breeding ground for terrorists. 
"I told the ambassador, don't worry about our people," Mr. Yahya said, referring to the American envoy. "Our people I can guarantee. But the Bangladeshis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Saudis and people like that who come here, I cannot guarantee."  
Those foreigners, and the mostly fundamentalist Islamic schools and mosques they are rapidly setting up, have already changed the face of Islam in Cambodia. The question is whether they are bringing radicalism and militancy with them. 
It is a question that is also being asked in neighboring Thailand, another overwhelmingly Buddhist country, where officials now concede that members of the terrorist group Al Qaeda have held meetings. Militancy has also grown in other Southeast Asian countries with Muslim populations -- Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.
For Cambodian Muslims, this is a time of internal turmoil and uncertainty as the religion seeks to redefine itself after a period of repression that almost destroyed it.
Like most others in the country's Muslim minority, Mr. Yahya, a member of Parliament who heads a local Islamic foundation, is an ethnic Cham, descendant of a great empire that dominated much of the region early in the last millennium. 
The communist Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia in the late 1970's, targeted the Cham for extermination and devastated their culture and their religious institutions. 
Researchers say that more than half the small Muslim population may have died from 1975 to 1979. Still a small minority, Muslims now make up 5 percent or less of Cambodia's population of 12.5 million. 
As they rebuild their religion, many Muslims are moving away from the magic and mysticism that their fathers mixed with the teachings of the Koran, trying to adapt their religion to a more modern world. 
"This country is ripe for Muslim missionaries," said Bjorn Blengsli, a Norwegian anthropologist who is studying Cambodian Islam. "They had to start all over again. They had no religious leaders, nothing. They lost almost everything -- their script, their rituals, almost all their written material. They were left with a couple of myths." 
He added, "That's why today a purification movement is so easy. They are very vulnerable, and a lot of people are coming into Cambodia and telling them how to change." 
But he said that "being fundamentalist does not mean being a terrorist."
"If you have radical, militant Muslims living in Cambodia, I have not seen any proof," he added.
Over the past decade, foreign Islamic groups, including the fundamentalist Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia, have been financing mosques and opening religious schools throughout the country. 
The number of mosques has risen to more than 150 from about 20, Mr. Blegsli said, and there are many smaller places of worship. 
Money has flowed in from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Malaysia and Indonesia, and scores of new Islamic boarding schools are staffed in part by teachers from other Muslim nations. 
Every year, Muslim officials say, about 80 Cambodian students travel abroad to study in Wahhabi schools. Another 400 travel to Malaysia, where a fundamentalist movement called Dakwah is widespread.
"There do seem to be growing links with the Middle East," an American diplomat said. "It does actually make us a little nervous that this is happening, that these links are being formed." 
Although he said there was no evidence now of radical activity here, "This is a great place to disappear and re-emerge with a new identity, a great place to get weapons and explosives." 
In an annual review at the end of November, the Cambodian Defense Ministry raised its own warning. "Terrorist groups could choose Cambodia as a place for trafficking their resources," the review said. "Border areas, both land and sea, could be the main targets for such infiltration. Cambodia is concerned about its defense effectiveness because the skills and techniques of the border defense units are inadequate."
A Cambodian intelligence official said in an interview that some Islamic militants, possibly traveling on forged passports, appeared to have met with foreign Muslim clerics who are based here. "Everything is easy because this is a corrupt country," he said. 
The official said it was possible that some Cambodian Muslims who had gone to study in Malaysia or Saudi Arabia had also visited Afghanistan during the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban. 
If so, they would still be an anomaly among the poor, dispersed Cham villagers, who are mostly known as skilled fishermen along the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers. 
Whether or not they turn toward militancy, Cambodia's Cham Muslims are working out a new, stronger sense of Islamic identity. More young men are studying the Koran and the Arabic language and more feel a connection with the Muslim world beyond their borders. 
Now, when young Cham speakers are asked to name their language, Mr. Blengsli said, they often say they are speaking "Islam."







   
 

December 16, 2002 Monday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: ALLIES; 
Australia Comes to Terms With a New Sense of Vulnerability

 
As the car crept down the wide streets of this capital city on a June afternoon, a man with a video camera panned the buildings. "Slowly, slowly, slowly," he told the driver as the lens zoomed in on a sign, in English and Hebrew, that read, "Embassy of Israel."
     The man with the camera was on a mission on that day two years ago. He had met with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and he had been assigned to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Canberra and the Israeli Consulate in Sydney. 
 For unexplained reasons, the plot was never carried out. But in providing access to the previously unpublicized videotape and other evidence about the plot in recent days, Australian officials have tried to drive home the point that even this quiet, out-of-the-way nation is vulnerable to terrorist attacks. 
In interviews this week, senior Australian law enforcement, intelligence and defense officials outlined the terrorist threat they had belatedly come to realize their nation faced. An attitude of "it can't happen here" was shattered by the terrorist attack in Bali, resulting in the deaths of 88 Australians, the largest loss of Australian lives in a single incident since World War II. 
"We face an unprecedented risk from terrorism," the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a government-financed but politically independent research organization in Canberra, said in a report released earlier this month. 
Australia's population of 19 million includes fewer than half a million Arabs, so for help in carrying out attacks, the authorities said, Mr. bin Laden's network, Al Qaeda, turned to a British immigrant who converted to Islam, and, the police said, adopted the cause of extremism.
The British immigrant is Jack Roche, who had immigrated to Australia, married an Indonesian Muslim and converted to Islam.
Mr. Roche, short and with a full beard, had been given another mission: to establish a clandestine cell in Australia for Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesia-based radical Islamic organization, which Australian officials describe as Al Qaeda's regional affiliate.
Mr. Roche, who was arrested last month, withdrew from both missions, for reasons that are "a bit murky," as one official put it. 
But Al Qaeda's effort to recruit him was not an isolated one. Australian intelligence officials know the identity of one other man that Al Qaeda had approached to set up a cell, and they are aggressively searching for others, officials said. They believe there are Jemaah Islamiyah cells in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. 
Officials said that they had no doubt that Jemaah Islamiyah and Al Qaeda were responsible for the Bali attack and that the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Bakar Bashir, had given his blessing to the operation, even if he probably was not involved in the execution.
"Like bin Laden, he doesn't pore over the plans," one official said. Mr. Bashir visited Australia 11 times from 1991 to 1998. His visits did not raise any concern at the time, but officials now believe he was trying to recruit.
The ultimate mastermind was probably Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of Mr. bin Laden's senior operational commanders, an Australian intelligence official said this week. "He has a long interest in Southeast Asia," the official said.
In spite of the arrest in September of Mr. Bashir by the Indonesian authorities, as well as the breakup of a cell that was responsible for the Bali attack, Jemaah Islamiyah still has "a very significant capability" to carry out a terrorist attack in the region, another senior Australian official said.
It will take at least two years to wrap up the Jemaah Islamiyah network, and that assumes a serious commitment by Indonesia, which several officials here said was in question. Consequently, it is almost certain that the American Embassy in Indonesia will not allow dependents to return any time soon, American and Australian officials said this week. The dependents, along with nonessential personnel, were sent home after the Bali attack.
The United States and Australia share virtually all intelligence, as part of a select community whose only other members are Canada and Britain.
Adding to the tension, intelligence officials now believe that Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah will start using women to carry out attacks, as some Palestinian groups have done. "I am certain we will see women emerge," a senior official said.
Until the attack on the nightclubs in Bali, Australians did not believe that terrorism would reach their shores. This is a nation that has been remarkably free of violence. Independence came from negotiation, not a revolution; there has been no civil war; and terrorist incidents have been rare, with the last one, an attack on a Commonwealth heads of state meeting, more than a quarter century ago.
"It surprises me the number of people -- across the government -- who were not prepared psychologically for a terrorist attack," a senior government official said.
Bali dealt Australians a deep blow. It is the country's vacation playground, for the rich and famous and for Australians from surfers to families and football clubs.
In meeting the new terrorist threat, Australians are engaged in the same balancing act as in the United States -- security versus civil liberties. Last month, the police raided the homes of Indonesian Muslims throughout the country, bringing protests from many groups. 
Prime Minister John Howard, a conservative, has asked for expanded powers for the country's domestic intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.
The proposed legislation generated a fierce partisan debate. Parliament recessed for the summer on Thursday without passing a new law for the security agency, and with both parties, Labor and Liberal, blaming each other. Opponents of the legislation argued that it would give the Australian intelligence agency more powers than the Federal Bureau of Investigation has.
Two weeks ago, the Australian government closed its embassy in Manila because of terrorist threats, and it has urged its citizens looking for fun in Thailand to exercise extreme caution.
Asian governments have accused Australia of overreacting. But to some officials here, the government has failed to act with sufficient rigor in the past. With better intelligence, the Bali attack could have been prevented, a senior Australian official with close ties to the intelligence community said this week.
"The biggest intelligence failure between 1991 and 2001 was the failure to recognize the transformation of Jemaah Islamiyah from an extremist religious group to a terrorist organization," the official said.
He added that the activities of Mr. Roche in the heart of the capital, undetected for more than two years, is "a living symbol of the failure by the intelligence community." 
Ten days before he was arrested, Mr. Roche met with a reporter for The Australian and gave a six-hour interview on tape.
He told the newspaper that he had been to Malaysia, where he met Mr. Bashir and Riudan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, Al Qaeda's senior operative in Southeast Asia, who is still at large. Mr. Roche also said he had been to Afghanistan, where he had met Mr. bin Laden and received training in explosives. He also explained why he had been recruited.
They wanted a local person, someone who was not from the Middle East, Mr. Roche said. 
"It's not easy to get into the U.K., it's not easy to get into the U.S., particularly if you're of Muslim appearance," he said. "I shave my beard and I'm just Joe Blow, you know."
Mr. Roche said he was not alone. "I know there are similar groups in Australia, but they are very much keeping to themselves."






  


December 16, 2002



 I'm Back in Bali: Islam Persists -- So Get Used to It

 
KUTA,INDONESIA -- The Northern Europeans haven't left Bali. Swedes, Germans and Dutch dot Kuta beach. Two couples are in matching thongs -- the women's pastel, the men's dark green or black. The women put their tops back on to walk up to the flat, to the shade of flowering ficus trees, and get a beer. They seem to be riding out Muslim extremism just fine.
The Indonesians themselves are determined to move on. To a New Yorker, it's shocking. The Sari Club is now a construction site. The bombing happened Oct. 12. On Dec. 6, men on a truck were moving cinderblocks onto the crime scene to rebuild, just a few feet from a refrigerator peeled open like a banana by the bomb and a couple of fading wreaths. At the Paddy's Bar site across the way, where the first bomb went off -- a suicide bomb that sent partygoers into the street that night to be killed by the car bomb -- there was an arrangement of flowers, and nothing else. 
The media center a block from the Sari Club was locked the morning I visited, though someone lay asleep on a mat on the floor. Apart from the T-shirts in the Kuta market that say "Fuck Terrorist," it's hard to know that the bombing even happened here. The Indonesians staged a cleansing ceremony at the Sari Club a month after the bombing and slaughtered some turtles and cows, but with that, the mourning of 190 victims was over. The cover of the Garuda in-flight magazine says boldly, "Back to Bali." Five weeks after.
Indonesia may be in denial, but then we often seemed to wallow in it back home. Sept. 11 has generated endless cleansing ceremonies. The Times did its series of portraits on the victims; the memorials to the missing were still up in Grand Central when I left the city a month ago. In Oklahoma City, 160 died -- fewer than in Bali -- and more than seven years later, they are archiving the mementos that people leave on the fence.
There is an innocence about the American response to such events -- why would anyone ever want to do this to the U.S.? -- a refusal to believe that we are still in history.
Indonesia is very much in history, and terror is too familiar here. Since becoming a democracy in 1998, Indonesia has been plagued by sectarian violence. More than 10,000 have died since 1976. Of course, no one in the First World paid much attention till the Bali bombing. Oct. 12 has become Australia's Sept. 11, and the Western press is filled with sinister reports about doings in Indonesia, the world's biggest Muslim country.
I share the conventional prejudice against Islam, so when I got here I was prepared for the medieval, the absence of free speech and women's rights. The conservatives instruct us that we are in a religious war. Andrew Sullivan wrote in the Sunday London Times lately that the Miss World riots in Nigeria must prove at last to cultural relativists that Muslim culture is dangerous, that there is a war on between civilizations.
A week in Indonesia, and that kind of formulation seems simplistic and foolish. This is a fairly permissive society. There are scantily clad women on television; you can buy The New York Review of Books (for $10) at bookstores in Jakarta. Muslims here are gearing up to celebrate Christmas. Like Nigeria, Indonesia is a big place with many angry divides along ethnic, religious and economic lines.
Of course, if you want to have a war between civilizations, there are plenty of extremists here who will play. But even moderate Indonesians fear that the world's one superpower is planning some fresh crusade.
"Tell me what country runs the United Nations -- answer me honestly," an irritable Javanese man said to me on my Sydney-Jakarta flight, before supplying the predictable answer.
We arrived to news that extremists had bombed a McDonald's in the province of South Sulawesi. There are constant alerts. The American Embassy in Jakarta was evacuated. They are building a blast wall at the international school in Jakarta, so that a car bomb won't do too much damage.
The American government is trying to defuse Muslims' fears about Western aims. Not long ago, the United States launched an expensive campaign to air television infomercials here about happy Muslim families in the United States. But the press wrote the commercials off as propaganda. Indonesians are too sophisticated for that kind of thing. People here know how hard it is for Muslim students to get visas into the United States, and they see the U.S. as being one-sided in the Middle East.
Anyone who thinks that the Palestinian issue has nothing to do with 9/11, or with the tolerance of terrorist networks in Islamic countries, should spend some time here. American policy in the Mideast is simply a constant in mainstream rhetoric about the United States, and though it may be a distraction from troubles here, the critics certainly have a point.
The biggest problem with the religious war is that Islam is not going away. This won't be like the last war between civilizations, when Communism actually crumbled. Islam won't do that. It's not clear what Mr. Sullivan intends to do about all the backward-thinking people in Nigeria or Indonesia. Are we supposed to run those nations, too, along with Afghanistan and Iraq? What about the surprising number of women in djellabas you see walking along the streets in the western suburbs of Sydney? Invading Iraq will only make those people more fearful, make Indonesians more hospitable to the sort of idiots who bomb McDonald's.
There are hopeful things happening in Indonesia that don't get much notice back home. Lately, the American government has helped to broker a historic peace deal in the breakaway province of Aceh. It could end decades of violence. The Bali bombing brought about great cooperation between the Indonesians and the Australians. To begin with, Aussies took over the Denpasar Hospital in Bali, running sightseers and reporters out of the corridors.
After that, the Australian and Indonesian police worked well together. The arrests the Indonesians have made seem genuine. The papers in Sydney have questioned the spirit of the police actions -- the fact that Amrozi, a leading suspect, was shown on television joking with the chief of police during an interrogation.
Here, that moment had a different significance. It said, Look, the police are not beating Amrozi up; they are not guilty of human-rights abuses. By such small steps, freedom may actually take hold here.
And bombing or not, Kuta beach feels more Western than Indonesian. It belongs to world culture, and most everyone seems to like it that way. Sex and marijuana are for sale on Legian Road under the Kelly Slater billboard. Quiksilver and Rip Curl shops charge more for a surfer T-shirt than a farmer makes in a week (the minimum wage in Jakarta is $65 a month). German women walk through the market in bikini tops.
The bombing and travel advisories have made the Balinese desperate -- twice, a woman pursued me down the street offering to clip my fingernails -- but Bali is too lovely a place to ever be abandoned by tourists. At my bungalow in the morning, a plate of papaya arrives cut in neat florette shapes. The serving girl is fine-boned, poised and full of preemptive apology for the fact that they don't have avocado juice today.
Back at the Sari Club that afternoon, the media center was open but empty. Inside were two computers, both shut off, and a cold cup of coffee on a table, as well as a copy of the Jakarta Post.
Outside, Indonesian and Japanese tourists were taking photographs of one another at the crime scene as a policeman directed traffic. I opened the note atop one of the wreaths, then put it back when I saw I was prying:
"Will you forgive me for not being myself the last time I saw you?" Katie had written. "I will miss you heaps."
Just then, there was rock played loud, and a truckful of young men drove by. Six or seven hung out the windows with surfboards strewn among them like pickup sticks. None had a shirt on, just Billabong shorts. The one at the wheel was swollen by beer and sun, and smeared with sunblock that made his burn look scorchier. The back gate was open so that a skinny guy could pan the site with a video camera, ignoring the wreaths, holding the camera on a pretty German girl. Ah yes, the Aussies are back.




10


   
 

December 14, 2002 Saturday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE ALLIES; 
Australia Is Noncommittal On Scope of Any Role in Iraq

 
The United States deputy secretary of state, Richard L. Armitage, said here today that America expected Australia to contribute to any military effort against Iraq that Washington might undertake. But he stopped short of specifying what the assistance might be, and his Australian hosts were not specific either. 
     The fairly muted statements by Mr. Armitage and the Australians appeared to indicate that despite the strength of the alliance between the two countries, Australia would be contributing less to any Iraqi campaign than either side had envisioned a few months ago.  
 The October terrorist attack on Bali in which nearly 90 Australians were killed cooled the interest that Prime Minister John Howard showed some months ago for sending Australian troops to fight with Americans in an Iraqi campaign.
"I can't imagine any great endeavor in the world going on without some sort of collaboration between Australia and the United States," Mr. Armitage said during a day of talks that was part of an Asian tour that has been dominated by discussion of Iraq and North Korea.
The Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said today that Mr. Armitage had not made any requests of Australia. Australian defense analysts said it was likely that groups of up to 150 Australian special forces would serve in rotation in a campaign in Iraq, as three such groups did in Afghanistan.
The analysts said that Mr. Howard, an ardent supporter of the Bush administration, was constrained by domestic public opinion and the limitations of the Australian military at a time of growing terrorist threat in Southeast Asia. 
Mr. Howard conceded as much in a major speech here last month. The Prime Minister endorsed all the Bush arguments about Iraq, including the notion that Saddam Hussein "has a long history of giving support to terrorist groups." 
But Mr. Howard then said, "I have indicated it has been made clear that any Australian contribution in a new theater such as Iraq would need to be within our resources and not detract from immediate defense and national security needs."
Australia already has two frigates deployed in the Persian Gulf to help enforce the United Nations arms embargo against Iraq.
In a more enthusiastic mood several months ago, Mr. Howard raised the possibility of sending an armored brigade of Australian soldiers. But that idea, which was never fully described by the prime minister, was soon dropped.
When the Bush administration then asked the Howard government to consider contributing a battalion of about 1,200 soldiers, the informal request was considered by Australia but eventually turned down. Washington does not need Australian "boots on the ground" for a war against Iraq for military reasons, Australian officials said, but sought such a commitment for reasons of moral support. 
Along with the Blair government in Britain, the conservative government in Australia is seen as one of the most likely military partners of the United States if there is a war in Iraq. A few Australian soldiers, along with several hundred British troops, were included by the United States in a military exercise at the as-Sayliyah base in Qatar this week.
The Howard government would prefer a United Nations mandate for a war against Iraq, but is prepared to back the United States without one, according to officials in the capital, Canberra. 
Joining the United States without the cover of the United Nations could severely harm Australia's standing among its Asian neighbors, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia with their large Muslim populations. 
Since the attack in Bali, Australians have grown far more wary of sending the Australian military far overseas. Opinion polls show that Australians are also beginning to question the wisdom of unseating Saddam Hussein, in part because they now see themselves as targets for Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden has mentioned Australia as a nation hostile to the interests of Islam. 







   
 

December 12, 2002 Thursday 
  
 



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: SEABORNE TRADE; 
Warnings From Al Qaeda Stir Fear That Terrorists May Attack Oil Tankers

 
As the distant jungle shore of Malaysia faded from green to gray to black at sunset, Noer Rahman put a bright red fire ax on the back deck of this aging tanker, then tied two high-pressure fire hoses to the stern handrail and turned them on.
     Mr. Rahman, an experienced Indonesian sailor, was getting ready to fight pirates and terrorists, dangers especially great in this important waterway, the fastest route around the southernmost tip of continental Asia. 
 A recent audiotape believed to have been made by Osama bin Laden praised and seemed to take responsibility for a suicide attack two months ago in which a speedboat packed with explosives rammed and crippled a French tanker, the Limburg, off Yemen. Other leaders of Al Qaeda have vowed to cut the "economic lifelines" of the world's industrialized societies. 
The threats have focused the attention of intelligence agencies and marine police worldwide on the vulnerability of tankers. Representatives of most of the world's seagoing nations are meeting in London to discuss how to keep ships safe from the long-term problem of piracy and the new risks of terrorism.
"With the attack on the Limburg, commercial vessels, especially vulnerable vessels like tankers, are terrorist targets," said Pootengal Mukundan, the director of the International Maritime Bureau, a United Nations affiliate that works with Interpol to combat seaborne crime.
Nowhere has the concern been more acute than here in the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia and Indonesia. A quarter of the world's trade passes through the strait. That includes half of all sea shipments of oil, bound for East Asia or sometimes the United States, and two-thirds of the world's shipments of liquefied natural gas.
More pirate attacks occur in Indonesian waters than anywhere else in the world. The pirates have spies in ports to identify valuable targets, and sometimes confederates aboard as well. 
Since Indonesia has many radical Muslim groups with a history of violence, which have been linked to the bombing in Bali in October, law enforcement and intelligence officials worry that terrorists may tap the pirates' expertise to mount attacks on ships in the region.
Smaller tankers like this 420-foot-long vessel, making slow trips through the strait while fully laden with valuable cargos, run the greatest danger, Mr. Mukundan said. 
The big fear is that Al Qaeda might seize a ship and crash it into another vessel or into a refinery or port.
Singapore, where the Petro Ranger started its current journey, has the world's second-busiest port, after Hong Kong's, so its government has taken the threat of terrorism very seriously.
As the ship began inching away from the jetties of Singapore's immense refinery, where it took on three million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel, a brown Singaporean F-4 Skyhawk fighter flew overhead on combat air patrol, a precaution started after the attacks on Sept. 11 of last year. 
A Singaporean Hawkeye airborne surveillance plane circled twice over the refinery in the next hour, while a half-dozen fast patrol boats with deck guns and a small gray warship cruised the anchorage. One of the patrol boats escorted the Petro Ranger.
But once vessels enter the Strait of Malacca they are essentially on their own. An hour from Singapore, the Petro Ranger peacefully steamed past Iyu Kecil, a jungle-covered Indonesian island that Mr. Mukundan described as a base for an organized crime gang that has been hijacking small tankers to sell the cargos.
Three hours later, the Petro Ranger sailed past Laboh Point, Malaysia, where the tanker's crew had a close call just two months ago. A watchman on the deck of the Petro Ranger spotted a fast, low boat with no lights within 100 yards of the stern. 
The tanker's bells sounded to wake the unarmed crew, a radio call went out to the Malaysian coast guard and Istaque Hossain, the second officer, aimed a spotlight at the craft to signal to the occupants that they would not take the Petro Ranger unawares.
The spotlight revealed the boat to be packed with crouching men. "All of them were squatting, coming very close in masks and full black body suits," recalled Fong Chung-chen, the Petro Ranger's Malaysian chief officer. After it was caught in the light, the boat sheered off and vanished.
Armed with machetes, swords, even assault rifles and hand grenades, pirates often climb up the stern of a vessel, using grappling hooks and rope or sometimes shinnying up thick bamboo poles with hooks at the top. Pirates frequently choose the stern because it is low and because they are unlikely to be seen by officers on the bridge watching the sea ahead. 
Once aboard they try to disable a ship's radio systems before the crew can send a distress signal to local coast guard units.
Experienced sailors say pirates consider fire axes and hoses to be fair defensive weapons, unlike guns, for which they often punish ship crews. The axes are used to sever the pirates' grappling hooks, and the hoses spraying water off the stern are supposed to make the pirate boats wet and slippery platforms from which to mount an attack.
The pirate boats are typically equipped with several outboard motors on the back, allowing them to go up to three times as fast as the tankers, which lumber along at 11 knots, the equivalent of 13 land miles an hour. The pirates also use a low-tech version of stealth technology: they choose boats made of wood, which are hard to spot on radar.
Laws in many ports bar the equipping of tankers with deck guns. Many companies, including Petroships Pte. Ltd., which operates the single-hull Petro Ranger and seven newer tankers, also ban the crews from carrying guns.
"Let's say we shoot at them," Mr. Fong said. "When they board they would kill us all. Once they board we are finished -- if we lock the doors, they break the glass" of the windows.
Four and a half years ago, a dozen pirates swarmed aboard this tanker off the eastern coast of Malaysia and took the crew prisoner. The pirates sailed to China to try to sell the gasoline and diesel fuel, then worth about $2 million at wholesale prices. But a Chinese marine police vessel discovered the tanker and freed the crew.
The International Maritime Bureau's records show a decline in reported attacks against vessels in the Strait of Malacca in the last two years. 
Bureau officials say that partly reflects the fact that fewer captains are reporting incidents, but also some progress in combating piracy.
China has begun keeping pirates out of its waters, notably by executing members of one gang that murdered the entire crew of a vessel. Malaysia has purchased more fast patrol boats and has identified some of the ringleaders of pirate gangs based in nearby countries, said Muhamad Muda, the commander of Malaysia's marine police.
"We gave them the warning that if they ever came into Malaysian waters we will apprehend them and eliminate them," he said.
Indonesia, struggling with a crippled economy, has proven unable to mount such an ambitious effort. Intelligence officials say most pirates are based on the Indonesian side of the strait and buy the collusion of villagers by sharing their loot.
A few shipowners, notably Petroships' chairman, Alan H. J. Chan, say efforts to date have been completely inadequate, and have begun calling for the formation of a small military force, operating under a license from the United Nations, to patrol the strait. 
"A big project may cost millions but save billions, and save lives, too," Mr. Chan said.
But Malaysia and Indonesia oppose the idea, arguing that intelligence gathering and law enforcement ashore are just as important.
Additional patrols might discourage pirates but will not stop terrorists willing to die for their cause, Mr. Mukundan said. The International Maritime Bureau has begun calling for the creation of special shipping lanes reserved for commercial vessels in waterways like this one, with military force used to exclude fishing boats and pleasure craft.
"The only way to stop it is to blow it out of the water before it hits the tanker," Mr. Mukundan said. The United States and other countries have been leery of such a drastic response.
By 9 p.m. on the second day of its voyage, the Petro Ranger was chugging across calm seas in moonless, utter darkness. The nearest land was Tuan Point, Malaysia, where the captain of a fishing trawler was kidnapped by pirates in broad daylight. He was later released unhurt.
Aboard the Petro Ranger, Mr. Fong fretted over the radar. A long, thin fishing boat was barely visible by its navigation lights, yet the radar showed no trace of it. 
When Mr. Fong turned up the radar, it showed a mass of reflections from every ripple on the sea, and still no boat was discernible. The boat quietly passed around the stern of the Petro Ranger, where it unexpectedly turned up on the radar, and then sailed off into the distance.
Two hours later the Petro Ranger's 31-year-old engines began spewing clouds of sparks because of a fuel mixture problem. The bridge officers were alarmed that sparks might blow onto the cargo tanks, or that pirates might see the sparks as a sign of engine distress and pounce. It took an hour for the ship's engineers to fix the problem.
After traversing the narrowest and most dangerous 130 miles of the strait, the Petro Ranger safely sailed up an estuary and docked at 6 a.m. at Port Klang, the main port for the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. Mohda Hadapi, the Malaysian helmsman, was relieved after a nerve-racking night of scanning a pitch-black sea.
His wife cries each time he leaves, he said. "Pirates and now terrorists -- after January, I'm going to sign off, maybe find a job ashore," he added.

CORRECTION-DATE: December 14, 2002

 CORRECTION:
An article on Thursday about fears of terrorist attacks on oil tankers misspelled the given name of the director of the International Maritime Bureau, which works with Interpol to combat seaborne crime. He is Pottengal Mukundan, not Pootengal.







  



December 12, 2002 Thursday  




 Megawati in the Middle; 
Indonesian Leader Struggles to Strike Balance Between Efforts Against Terrorism, Placating Moderate Muslims

 
President Megawati Sukarnoputri, leader of the world's most populous Muslim country, stood before thousands of worshipers at the country's largest mosque last month and read a speech urging the audience to uphold the peaceful ideals of Islam and resist thoughts that "justify terrorism or any acts of violence." 
 It was a message of tolerance that Western governments like to hear. But another passage reflected a very different tone. Megawati lamented the "ambition to conquer other nations" in what seemed to be a veiled swipe at the United States and its campaign against Iraq, although she did not name any country.  
 The speech was the latest example of Megawati's efforts to simultaneously support the U.S.-led war on terrorism and reach out to moderate Muslims, who are extremely wary of her government's efforts to crack down on Islamic militants. She made a similar speech at the same mosque last year, which some political observers said probably helped defuse protests over the U.S. attack on Afghanistan.  
 "You don't want to radicalize the moderates," said her husband and adviser, Taufik Kiemas, in a recent interview. "We have to win their hearts." 
 "She is caught between her core beliefs of a secular government and the rising power of Islam in politics," said Douglas Ramage, Jakarta representative for the nonprofit Asia Foundation. 
Megawati inherited a politically potent name but not the oratorical gifts of her father, Sukarno, the founder of Indonesia. She could use those talents now, because she is facing the most challenging period of her 16-month tenure, balancing the strong tensions within a nation that is struggling toward democracy after nearly 40 years of authoritarian rule. 
 Her performance, the record suggests, has been mixed. The country is politically stable after the upheaval surrounding the ouster of her father's successor, the authoritarian Suharto; direct presidential elections will be held in 2004. Inflation is in check. But Indonesia is the only country hit by the 1997 Asian financial crisis that is still suffering a net loss of capital. And Megawati's poll ratings have slipped. She has been criticized for not speaking out forcefully on such issues as the economy and a recent crisis over migrant workers expelled from Malaysia. 
After the Oct. 12 bombings on the resort island of Bali, which killed almost 200 people, Megawati made no national speech to rally the country to the fight against terrorism, despite the urging of her advisers. Nor did she order that flags be flown at half-staff. 
 In the hours after the bombings, her husband recalled, he persuaded her to go to Bali, where she stayed for about five hours. Less than two weeks later, she traveled to Mexico for an Asian-Pacific regional meeting and then, under criticism for being absent at a sensitive time, cut short her trip and made a second visit to Bali. And after a cabinet meeting in which the vice president and a cabinet minister got into an argument over how to handle the Bali tragedy, word leaked to the press that Megawati had remained silent. 
 "We are dealing with somebody who does not have any political ambition," said Rizal Mallarangeng, a political analyst and informal adviser to Megawati. "She became president because of the force of events, not because she drove events to achieve her ambition." 
Megawati, who once reportedly aspired to become chief of the Bogor Botanical Garden, entered politics in 1987 at the urging of others to revive her father's political magic. In elections in 1999, she led the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle to the largest share of the popular vote, but was outmaneuvered for the presidency in the subsequent parliamentary balloting by Abdurrahman Wahid. Two years later parliament impeached Wahid, and Megawati moved up. 
 Megawati's half-steps have raised questions about whether she has the will to crack down on terrorism, and whether she has the ability to lead. Her friends acknowledge that she lacks the confidence and creativity to take bold political steps. She "plays by the book," as one close friend said, and acts only when pushed. 
 Her cautious nature was shaped by the restraints of Javanese culture and an intensely public and tumultuous personal history. She saw her mother quit the presidential palace when her father married another woman, an event that turned an already introverted child further inward, said a cousin, Agnita Singadikane. She was a young woman when her father was placed under house arrest by Suharto, and she and her family experienced the stresses of being political outcasts, according to relatives and friends. "She was hurt very much," a close friend noted. 
But she developed a resourcefulness that she has called upon in the face of political adversity, friends and colleagues recalled. When the activities of her party were severely circumscribed in the mid-1990s by Suharto, the general who ousted her father in 1966, she avoided scrutiny by holding party meetings from midnight until dawn and on the margins of party officials' weddings. 
 In the final months of 2000, when Wahid was deemed incompetent by leaders in parliament, Megawati as vice president exercised growing influence. She ran cabinet meetings and made a potentially unpopular decision to gradually raise fuel prices, so the government could reduce its budget deficit and strengthen international confidence in Indonesia's ability to manage loans. "She is one of the most underestimated politicians in Southeast Asia," the Asia Foundation's Ramage said. 
 Journalists say she is more voluble and relaxed on foreign trips. "When we travel abroad, she almost never reads from a text, and she speaks quite clearly and with a lot of ideas," said Uni Lupis, a television journalist. 
Since taking office, Megawati has hewed to a few simple themes: economic recovery, democratic reform and preserving national unity -- a cause that resonates deeply with Indonesians -- by resisting separatist pressures. But she has no stable of advisers to help effectively advance her agenda, Mallarangeng said. 
 So she is muddling through, some analysts said, and acting only when pushed. After the Bali bombings, for example, she issued decrees allowing authorities to detain suspected terrorists for up to six months without charges and calling for the death penalty in extreme cases. The national police, who report to the president, arrested a radical Muslim cleric, Abubakar Baasyir, in connection with an earlier series of bombings and an alleged assassination attempt against Megawati. She put a respected provincial police chief in charge of the Bali investigation, which quickly resulted in several significant arrests. 
 Azyumardi Azra, a leading Islamic intellectual and a political commentator, said Megawati has not done enough to reach out to moderate Muslims and seems timid in confronting terrorism for fear of a political backlash. 
 "She should not be afraid to be critical of the radicals, because the radicals are not supported by many Muslims," said Azra, rector of the State Islamic University in Jakarta. "She doesn't really have a good grasp of the nature of Islam. I don't think there is an expert among her advisers who really understands the Islamic movement in Indonesia." 
 Little progress has been made on the domestic agenda. Official corruption is still rampant, and military reforms are proceeding slowly, experts said. The stock market is down by more than 50 percent since mid-year, and foreign and Indonesian companies are investing elsewhere. 
Megawati has also prompted questions about her commitment to democracy. Last month, parliament passed a broadcast bill, supported by Megawati, that critics at home and abroad have assailed for licensing and censorship provisions that threaten media freedom. In a recent speech, Megawati warned against what she called "ultra democracy," saying the abuse of democratic rights could endanger Indonesia's post-dictatorship reform process. She expressed annoyance at the proliferation of political parties, which she said could threaten national unity by raising racial and religious tensions.  
 "What of significance has she done? Nothing," said Salim Said, an Indonesian analyst of military affairs. "She doesn't know how to make decisions. She is not trained in politics, trained to be a leader, and that is the problem." 
 But a Western diplomat cautioned that "it would be a serious miscalculation to dismiss Megawati as an empty suit." He said she has demonstrated "a clear political talent" for steering the middle path on potentially controversial issues. 
 "Her restraint in the face of Indonesia's crisis-ridden atmosphere to 'Do something! Anything!' is in a certain sense admirable," he said, and has produced "an unusual degree of political stability in contrast to the four years preceding her presidency." 
Megawati has long believed that the carping about her performance comes from the political and intellectual elite, observers said.  
"She has always said . . . that she is confident that the grass roots still support her," Lupis said. "She thinks that the polls and the newspapers are not representative of all the Indonesian people. She thinks the press is biased and always sees the negative side of her and her administration. She said, 'The people are still with me.' " 
There are signs, however, that the working class, which forms the backbone of her constituency, is losing patience. One poll taken after the Bali bombings by Kompas, a leading national daily, showed dissatisfaction with her government's performance in improving security and ending corruption at almost 80 percent -- an all-time high. 
 "She made lots of promises during the campaign, but none of them came true," said Unip, 32, who drives an angkot, or public transport minivan, in Jakarta. "She said that prices would go down, the little people would have a better life. But look at me: Nothing has happened in my life." 






  


December 10, 2002 Tuesday 



 WORLD DIGEST

 
JAPAN
First snow of season snarls air, road traffic
Tokyo, the Japanese capital, got its earliest blanket of snow in a decade on Monday, snarling air, road and rail travel and causing accidents that injured more than 200 people.The Meteorological Agency recorded 0.4 inch of slush on the ground across the city and said the temperature hovered just above freezing. The last time Tokyo got snow this early was in December 1991, when about the same amount fell. The snow stopped falling in the capital by Monday evening. 
Utsunomiya, a city north of Tokyo, got nearly 7 inches of snow, the most there for December since 1912. Public broadcast station NHK reported that 208 people in the Tokyo area were injured in accidents because of the snow and the resulting slippery streets and sidewalks.
BRAZIL
Mudslides swamp homes, kill at least 34
Mudslides triggered by torrential rain slashed through the southeastern city of Angra dos Reis Monday, burying houses and killing at least 34 people, firefighters said.
About 1,500 people were driven from their homes by the torrent of water and mud in the city of about 60,000 tucked between mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, 100 miles west of Rio de Janeiro.
In 24 hours, the city got more than 5 inches of rain - nearly as much as the average rainfall for two weeks, the National Weather Institute in Rio said.
UNITED NATIONS
Sanctions are lifted from ex-Angolan rebel group
The Security Council lifted 9-year-old sanctions against Angola's UNITA movement on Monday, welcoming efforts by the government and the former rebel group to end the country's civil war.
The 15-member council voted unanimously to lift the sanctions, first imposed in 1993 in hopes of forcing the rebels to end fighting that began after Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975.
Two peace deals failed before the United Nations brokered a deal in 1994 after four years of negotiations. But the rebels and government forces returned to war in 1998 after UNITA repeatedly postponed plans to surrender areas under their control. In an attempt to force UNITA to end the war, the Security Council imposed a travel ban on UNITA leaders and a ban on rebel diamond exports and an arms and fuel embargo.
SWITZERLAND
Indonesia, Aceh rebels sign peace accord
The Indonesian government signed a peace deal with rebels from Aceh province Monday, taking a major step toward ending a 26-year conflict that threatened to destabilize the world's most populous Muslim nation.
The deal with the insurgents in Aceh grants its 4.1 million people autonomy but not independence. It sets a cease-fire and calls for the eventual disarmament of the rebels. The region is the size of Maryland and is rich in oil and timber.
President George W. Bush called the accord reached in Geneva a "courageous effort" and said the United States will help provide humanitarian and reconstruction assistance for Aceh. About 12,000 people have killed in the Aceh fighting over the last 10 years. Insurgents have been fighting on-and-off for independence in Aceh since 1870, when Dutch colonialists occupied the region.







  



December 6, 2002 Friday  




 Violence and Islam

 
Is Islam an inherently violent religion? A debate on this subject has received much attention in the United States. The question is absurd. It is like asking whether Christianity is a religion of peace. Well, there is Francis of Assisi. And there is the Thirty Years' War. Which do you choose? 
 Religions are interpreted by the people of their time and thus change over time. Scripture can be invoked to support almost any position. Islam has its periods of violence and its periods of tolerance. The Ottomans gave refuge to the Jews expelled from Catholic Spain in 1492. Today the Arab world is the purveyor of the most vicious anti-Semitic propaganda since Nazi Germany. (Egyptian state television is currently showing a 41-part television series based on the notorious czarist forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.")  
 Which stands for the real Islam? The question is not just unanswerable, it is irrelevant. The real issue is not the essence of an abstraction -- who can say what is the real Christianity or the real Judaism? -- but the actions of actual Muslims in the world today. And there is no denying the fact, stated most boldly by Samuel Huntington, author of "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," that "Islam has bloody borders." 
 From Nigeria to Sudan to Pakistan to Indonesia to the Philippines, some of the worst, most hate-driven violence in the world today is perpetrated by Muslims and in the name of Islam. 
 Take the most recent example, the Miss World riots in northern Nigeria. Muslim mobs respond to an offensive newspaper article by burning down the newspaper's offices, massacring innocent Christians and issuing a fatwa on the article's author. 
 In Sudan, the Arab government in Khartoum has for decades been conducting a genocidal campaign against the Christian and animist blacks in the south -- a campaign that includes mass starvation, the bombing of hospitals and slavery. 
 In Pakistan, Muslim extremists have attacked Christian churches, killing every parishioner they could. Just last month in Lebanon, an evangelical Christian nurse, who had devoted her life to caring for the sick, was shot three times through the head, presumably for "proselytizing." 
 The Bali disco bombers have confessed to a series of previous church bombings. In the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf specialize in kidnappings and beheadings of hostages in their terrorist campaign against the predominantly Catholic central government. 
 On the northern tier of the Muslim world, even more blood flows -- in Pakistani-Kashmiri terrorism against Hindu India, Chechen terrorism in Russian-Orthodox Moscow and Palestinian terrorism against the Jews. (The Albanian Muslim campaign against Orthodox Macedonia is now on hold.) And then of course there was Sept. 11, 2001 -- Islamic terrorism reaching far beyond its borders to strike at the heart of the satanic "Crusaders." 
 This says nothing about inherent violence; most Muslims are obviously peaceful people living within the rules of civilized behavior. But the actual violence, bloodletting against nearly every non-Muslim civilization from Hindu to African animist, demands attention. 
 Underlying most of the individual grievances is a sense that Islam has lost its rightful place of dominance, the place it enjoyed half a millennium ago. Al Qaeda deputy Ayman Zawahiri's allusions to the loss of Andalusia (medieval Spain) reinforce Osama bin Laden's promise of revenge and redemption. 
 This feeling of a civilization in decline -- and the adoption of terror and intimidation as the road to restoration -- is echoed in a recent United Nations report that spoke frankly of the abject Arab failure to modernize. It is one thing for the Arabs to have fallen behind the West. But to fall behind South Korea -- also colonized, once poor and lacking any of the Muslim world's fantastic oil wealth -- is sheer humiliation. 
 Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia and leader of perhaps the largest Muslim society in the world, traces Islamic radicalism not just to a failure of self-respect and self-identity -- deep feelings of inadequacy and loss -- but also to an enormous failure of moderate Muslim leadership. The murderers speak in the name of Islam, and the peaceful majority cannot find the courage to challenge them. 
 "The Islamic world today is being held prisoner," writes Salman Rushdie, "not by Western but by Islamic captors, who are fighting to keep closed a world that a badly outnumbered few are trying to open." And "the majority remains silent." 
 Until they speak, the borders of Islam will remain bloody. 







  



December 6, 2002 Friday  




 Bush Revisits Mosque to Praise Islam

 
 President Bush pushed ahead yesterday with his administration's efforts to portray Islam in a favorable light, returning to the Islamic Center of Washington for a second visit to the mosque he toured in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 
Bush's speech at the Islamic Center, on Massachusetts Avenue near Rock Creek Park, was the 17th time since the terrorist attacks that the president has devoted a speech, or a passage of a major speech, to proclaiming the peaceful and humanitarian values of Islam. In doing so, Bush has defied the wishes of several religious and military conservatives who say he should regard the religion as hostile to the United States.  
"Islam brings hope and comfort to more than a billion people worldwide," Bush said at the mosque, using wording similar to his earlier remarks on the religion. "Islam affirms God's justice and insists on man's moral responsibility. . . . Islam gave birth to a rich civilization of learning that has benefited mankind." 
The White House has created a page on its Web site featuring the new postage stamp honoring the Muslim holiday of Eid and displaying a photograph of Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill at an Iftaar dinner in Islamabad, Pakistan. The page also noted Iftaar dinners, which celebrate the Ramadan holiday, attended by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and Bush himself. Last month, the White House issued a compilation of Bush quotations titled "In the President's Words: Respecting Islam." 
The purpose of the regular references to Islam as a benign faith is to prevent discrimination against American Muslims and to demonstrate to Muslim countries, such as Pakistan and Indonesia, that the United States is hostile to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government but not to Muslims generally. 
"Millions of our fellow Americans practice the Muslim faith," Bush said at yesterday's celebration of Eid, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. "They lead lives of honesty and justice and compassion." 
Bush's efforts continued to rankle some conservatives. The conservative Free Congress Foundation yesterday released an article by one of its scholars, William S. Lind, mockingly comparing Bush's efforts to a celebration of the Japanese religion of Shinto after the Pearl Harbor attacks. 
American Muslim groups have urged Bush to speak out more forcefully against conservatives who have maligned Islam as an enemy of the United States. Even these groups, however, have been surprised by the number of opportunities Bush has taken to deliver his "Islam is peace" message, as Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations described it recently. "Even I get a little tired of that," Hooper said. 






   

 

December 5, 2002 Thursday 



 U.S. image declines worldwide, poll finds

 
Washington --- U.S. popularity has plunged across much of the world amid a growing perception that the United States is running roughshod over other nations and doing too little to help poor countries, a report released Wednesday concludes.
The trend is particularly pronounced across the Muslim world, where increasing numbers of people see the American anti-terrorism campaign as a way for the United States to bully its Islamic foes.
Growing anti-Americanism could make it increasingly difficult for leaders of democratic nations to support controversial U.S. initiatives.
It also threatens the stability of autocratic regimes that back U.S. policies. 
Those are among the key findings of the report released by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, a widely respected public opinion organization.
President Bush blamed the trend on "propaganda machines" bent on casting the United States "in a bad light."
"We'll do everything we can to remind people that we've never been a nation of conquerors; we're a nation of liberators," he said.
But former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who served under President Clinton and chaired the Pew survey, said part of the problem is Bush's tendency to muscle other countries into going along with his views.
"Basically, we tell other people what to do, rather than try to get consensus," she said. "That ultimately will have a cost."
In its Global Attitudes Project, Pew surveyed more than 38,000 people --- most of them in their homes --- in 44 countries around the world, asking how their attitudes toward the United States have changed over the past two years.
The survey showed that, while much of the world empathized with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, overall favorability ratings have slipped significantly.
"Images of the U.S. have been tarnished in all types of nations: among longtime NATO allies, in developing countries, in Eastern Europe and, most dramatically, in Muslim societies," Pew said in a 150-page summary. "True dislike, if not hatred, of America is concentrated in the Muslim nations of the Middle East and in Central Asia, today's areas of greatest conflict."
In Pakistan, a key partner in U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, 10 percent of the public has a favorable view of the United States, down from 23 percent two years ago.
And in Turkey, a NATO ally, public support for the United States has plunged to 30 percent from 52 percent two years ago.
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, U.S. favorability is 61 percent. It was 75 percent before.
Although Bush has stressed that the anti-terrorism campaign is not a new crusade against Islam, many people among the world's 1 billion Muslims see it as precisely that, Pew director Andrew Kohut said.
"We're not being heard," he said, "because we don't have credibility with their public."
Kohut briefed White House officials on the survey's findings, but Bush said he had not seen the report as of midday Wednesday.
"I hope the message that we fight not a religion, but a group of fanatics which have hijacked a religion, is getting through," Bush said. "I understand the propaganda machines are cranked up in the international community that paints our country in a bad light."
Bush cited U.S. toppling of the harsh Taliban regime in Afghanistan as an example of an American contribution to the Muslim world.
"Thanks to our strength and our compassion, many young [Afghan] girls now go to school for the first time," he said.
Even among a number of close U.S. allies, however, U.S. popularity is on the wane.
Over the past two years, support for the United States has fallen to 61 percent in Germany, down from 78 percent; and to 75 percent in Britain, down from 83 percent.
But a few countries have bucked the trend. In Russia, 61 percent of the public has a favorable view of the United States, up from 37 percent two years ago.
Another positive for Americans is that U.S. citizens are still rated favorably by majorities in 35 of 44 countries whose citizens were polled.
The surveys were performed independently --- under contract with private polling firms --- in each country.
In most cases, the margin of error ranged between 3 and 4 percentage points. Sample sizes typically were between 700 and 800 people per country, although they ranged from 500 to 3,000.







   
 

December 5, 2002 Thursday  
  



 World Survey Says Negative Views of U.S. Are Rising 

 
While people in most non-Muslim countries continue to view the United States favorably, negative opinions have increased in most nations over the past two years, according to public opinion surveys in 44 countries.
     The surveys of 38,000 people conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press indicated that, although there is widespread support for the United States-led campaign against terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, it was tempered by large minorities or even majorities in many countries who say the Bush administration is ignoring their nations' interests. 
 Moreover, followup polls last month in four countries -- Britain, France, Germany and Russia -- found substantial percentages of people saying they thought that the main reason the United States would go to war with Iraq would be "because the U.S. wants to control Iraqi oil." That view was held by 44 percent in Britain, 54 percent in Germany, 75 percent in France and 76 percent in Russia. A parallel survey in the United States found 22 percent agreeing with the war-for-oil theory. 
While polling could not be conducted in some important countries, like Saudi Arabia, and sensitive questions could not be asked in others, like China, the combined surveys appeared to be the largest simultaneous effort to gauge world opinion ever conducted, said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center.
"The main lesson," Mr. Kohut said, "is that while there is a reserve of good will toward the United States, the most powerful country in the world has an increasing number of detractors." He said the post-cold-war reality was "how old friends who need us less, like us less," especially in Europe, while "the Russians have a better opinion of us."
Favorable views of the United States declined in the past two years in Britain from 83 to 75 percent and in Germany from 78 to 61 percent, while they increased in Russia from 37 to 61 percent. There were also striking increases in favorable opinions in Uzbekistan, from 56 to 85 percent, and in Nigeria, from 46 to 77 percent.
The United States-led campaign against terrorism was opposed by most people surveyed in several nations with Muslim majorities. The percentages opposed were 79 percent in Egypt, 85 percent in Jordan, 64 percent in Indonesia, 56 percent in Lebanon, 64 percent in Senegal, 58 percent in Turkey and 64 percent in Indonesia. Pluralities took that view in Pakistan -- 45 percent -- and Bangladesh -- 46 percent. 
The only other non-Muslim countries surveyed where majorities opposed the effort against terrorism were Argentina and South Korea. Argentina, in the midst of an economic crisis when the survey was taken earlier this fall, was critical of the United States on several other measures. In South Korea, Mr. Kohut said, relations with North Korea, a point on which the Seoul government and the Bush administration differ, may have been a factor. But throughout Europe, at least two-thirds of the public backed the policy, and in the predominately Muslim Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan, where the presence of American troops helps the economy, 91 percent supported it.
The findings on Turkey, where the Pentagon wants to use air bases and ports in case of war with Iraq, were singled out as important by Mr. Kohut and Madeleine K. Albright, the former secretary of state and a consultant on the project.
In Turkey, favorable views of the United States have dropped from 52 to 30 percent in the past two years. Only 30 percent said they supported the campaign against terrorism and 74 percent said the United States did not pay either much or any attention to Turkey's interests when setting policy. This week, Turkey's foreign minister, Yasar Yakis, cited public opinion in explaining to American officials why his country could not accept large numbers of American ground troops for a war with Iraq. Dr. Albright said this showed the difficulties in weighing "what we're asking countries to do in terms of leadership versus what people want us to do."
A delicate issue raised in the surveys was suicide bombing. In 14 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, respondents were asked if they believed that "suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies."
Majorities said it was often or sometimes justified in Lebanon (73 percent) and Ivory Coast (56 percent). More than 40 percent found it justified it in Bangladesh, Nigeria and Jordan. More than 25 percent said it was justifiable in Pakistan, Indonesia, Ghana, Mali, Senegal and Uganda.
But in many countries the question was not asked. Mr. Kohut said that in Egypt, for example, "A question about suicide bombing is not only impolitic, it could get you thrown in jail."
He said in order to do any polling at all in China and Vietnam, certain questions had to be omitted. "In Saudi Arabia," he said, "you have to get permission to do a poll, and we didn't get permission."
Although in some countries the polling was conducted by telephone, most people were interviewed face to face. In most countries, the survey involved national population samples, but others were done only in urban areas. They took place between July and October. The margins of error varied, from as low as plus or minus two percentage points to as much as plus or minus four percentage points.






    
  


December 5, 2002, Thursday



 AFTER MILITANCY, A NEW THREAT?







  



December 5, 2002 Thursday  




 Suspected Organizer Of Bali Attack Jailed

 
Indonesian police have arrested a man they said organized the massive bombing in Bali two months ago, recording the latest breakthrough in a fast-moving investigation. 
 Police announced today they had captured an Indonesian cleric named Mukhlas, described by Asian intelligence officials as the operational chief for the regional Jemaah Islamiah network, during a raid late Tuesday in central Java. 
 The arrest came as a welcome surprise to terrorism experts, because they had repeatedly speculated that Mukhlas was hiding in Malaysia, where he had taken over operational responsibilities for Jemaah Islamiah from another Indonesian militant, Hambali. 
 Western and Asian security officials have identified Hambali, whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, as the network's main liaison to al Qaeda, making him the most-wanted man in Southeast Asia. But officials in Singapore and elsewhere in the region said in recent weeks that Hambali had turned over his responsibilities after he became the object of a global manhunt.  
 Muchyar Yara, spokesman for Indonesia's national intelligence agency, said he was confident that investigators would be able to follow the fresh trail to the top of the region's radical network. "I hope we'll be able to get to the big guy soon, Hambali," Yara said. 
 He added that the recent progress could also help strengthen the case against another Islamic cleric, Abubakar Baasyir, who has been named by the United States and other governments as the leader of Jemaah Islamiah. "The sooner we get the soldiers, the sooner we get to the general," Yara said, explaining that he meant Baasyir. Baasyir was arrested by Indonesian police two months ago for alleged involvement in a series of church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000 and a plot to assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri. So far, investigators have not linked him directly to the Oct. 12 attack in Bali, which killed about 190 people. 
 Indonesian police investigating the bombing of Bali's teeming nightclub district arrested Mukhlas in the town of Klaten along with eight other people, including his wife, according to Gen. Erwin Mappaseng, national police chief for criminal investigations. Authorities discovered a handgun, bullets and radical Islamic literature during the sweep, he said. 
 Mukhlas's capture came after police last month arrested his younger brother, a mechanic named Amrozi, who told authorities that he was the owner of a minivan used in the attack.  
Amrozi's confession helped lead investigators to the plot's alleged field commander, Imam Samudra, caught two weeks ago as he was preparing to board a ferry from Java to the neighboring island of Sumatra. Indonesian security officials said they believed Samudra received his orders from Mukhlas. 
 According to investigators, Mukhlas lived for the last decade outside Indonesia, primarily in Malaysia, where he ran a radical Islamic school in the southern state of Johor. Several Indonesian militants, including Baasyir, taught at the school. 
 Mukhlas, also known as Ali Ghufron, is a veteran of combat in Afghanistan, and fought U.S.-led forces after Sept. 11, 2001, Asian security officials said. Earlier this year, officials in Singapore said he was also involved in a plot to blow up pipelines that carry water from Malaysia to Singapore. The attack was never carried out. 
 The capture of Mukhlas is "a major coup for the people who arrested him," said Sidney Jones, Indonesian director for the International Crisis Group and an expert on radical Islam in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. "Potentially, if he does talk, we'll know much more about the structure of Jemaah Islamiah. It could be a devastating blow to the Jemaah Islamiah organization." 
 Rohan Gunaratna, a Southeast Asia terrorism expert, said the leads gathered by Indonesia could ultimately lead beyond Hambali to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who heads al Qaeda's military committee. It was Mohammed who directed Southeast Asian militants to consider shifting tactics this year and begin striking "soft" targets such as bars and nightclubs, Gunaratna said. During discussions in southern Thailand and Bangkok, Mukhlas and Hambali first talked about targeting Bali, according to Gunaratna, author of "Inside al Qaeda." 
 Another regional security analyst said Mukhlas is a valuable prize because he was responsible for networking among militant cells. 
 As the Bali probe has made swift progress, Indonesians and foreign officials alike have praised the role of Maj. Gen. I Made Pastika, the police chief who leads the international investigation. These officials note that Pastika remains committed to the probe, even if the trail should lead to prominent Islamic clerics such as Baasyir. Others in the government have been reluctant to pursue such an aggressive course, fearing this could provoke a backlash among some Muslims. 




11


   
 

December 3, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 TERROR IN AFRICA: TOURISM; 
It's Business Almost as Usual at Mombasa's Beach Resorts

 
Even as investigators pick through the rubble of the bombed-out Paradise Hotel, there are still men leading sluggish camels along the scorching sand of Kenya's picturesque coastline, goading tourists into taking a ride.
     "I'm praying the tourists don't go away," said Ali Hassan Abdi, 31, who makes a living by charging the equivalent of $6 for a ride on his camel, a sturdy beast named Amsa. 
 Mombasa's so-called beach boys, young men eager to make some easy money, are still offering boat rides to the coral reefs, help in securing marijuana or sex on the beach for lonely women.
"We need our daily bread," said Jamal Hamisi, 27, one of the men who swarm around tourists as soon as they venture out of their walled resorts for walks on the sand. "We're trying to tell them the trouble has passed." 
Many tourists do not seem to need to hear the pitch. Hotel owners reported that relatively few vacationers packed up and left after the bombing, nor were switchboards flooded with cancellations. Throughout the day today, the lounge chairs at resort after resort were full of lobster-red vacationers, who seemed to flip themselves over on their towels in unison.
Well before this latest catastrophe, tourism had fallen off badly here, dropping significantly after violent pre-election clashes in 1997 and only lately beginning to pick up. Tourism is Kenya's second-largest earner of foreign exchange, after tea, bringing in about $320 million last year.
"Every time I see the headlines I groan," said Simon Balls, who runs Kelly and Peacock Safaris, which takes visitors into Kenya's many game parks. "People living overseas may think they will get blasted away if they come here. There was a major incident at the coast, but it was very targeted and Kenya is not under siege."
The most jittery visitors were clearly Israelis, many of whom cut their vacations short and returned to Israel. Their break from the violence they experience every day at home was thoroughly spoiled.
Still, some have stayed on. Schlomo Vered, a retired aviation mechanic from the Israeli city of Rehovot, arrived on the same plane that militants later tried to shoot down as it departed from Mombasa's airport. 
Three days after most Israeli tourists left, Mr. Vered sat in the bar of the Ocean View Hotel today, declaring that he might stay three or four months more.
"We live with terror in Israel, and we don't run from that," said Mr. Vered, clad in a T-shirt, baggy knee-length shorts and a baseball cap. 
In fact, Mr. Vered, 65, had an added incentive to stay. At his side, dressed in tight pants and a leopard-skin tank top, was 24-year-old Masi Wambu, whom he had befriended on an earlier visit. Ms. Wambu nodded happily at Mr. Vered's words.
Mr. Vered, who described himself as "almost divorced," is like many of the European men who visit Mombasa in search of a new, laid-back lifestyle.
"I went through a lot of women until I met one I liked," he said.
Other vacationers were quite blunt in stating their hesitancy to stay at hotels known for attracting large groups of Israelis. Germany, Britain and France provide the largest numbers of tourists to Kenya.
"After the attacks, some tourists asked whether we had Israeli clientele, and we answered in the negative," Farid Abdalla, manager of the Nyali Beach Hotel, which caters mostly to the British, told Reuters.
Charles Cufal, 52, a Swiss journalist watching the waves from the restaurant at Bamburi Villas, said: "For myself, I feel safe. But I would prefer to stay at a hotel not frequented by Israelis, and I'm not speaking negatively of them."
Of course, it was people from other countries who were killed in other recent terrorist attacks. When a powerful car bomb was set off outside a crowded disco in Kuta Beach on the Indonesian island of Bali in October, Australians made up at least 82 of the nearly 200 deaths. Indonesian and Australian investigators attribute that attack to a Muslim group that they suspect has links to Al Qaeda.
In April a suicide bomber killed 21 people, including 15 tourists, in an attack on Africa's oldest synagogue, on the island of Djerba off the coast of Tunisia.
"Whatever happened in Mombasa was rather unfortunate, but we should be able to root out these problematic people," said Freddie Kiuru, general manager of the Travelers Beach Hotel here, which was reopened recently after a fire swept through the resort last year. "We would not like it to happen again."
Mr. Balls, the safari operator, said he did not believe that the 1998 bombing of the American Embassy in Nairobi, followed by the bombing on the coast, signaled a violent trend in Kenya.
The government-run Kenya Tourist Board recently began a major promotional campaign to lure more visitors to "magical Kenya." One slick brochure shows two women lying on the sand in thong bikinis and offers these inspiring words: "The sun-soaked beaches and warm inviting waters of the Indian Ocean are a haven of peace and tranquillity. Lay back, relax and let the rest of the world drift away."
That seems far more difficult now.
The American Embassy in Nairobi issued an updated travel warning today urging tourists visiting Kenya to beware of "the continuing threat posed by terrorism in East Africa and the capacity of terrorist groups to carry out attacks."
Still, the American woman who was jailed for several days as a suspect in the Mombasa bombing continued her vacation at the beach today after she and her husband were released over the weekend.
"As far as tourists anywhere in the world, it's not a safe situation until we get these terrorists," said the woman, Alicia Talhammer, 31, of Tallahasee, Fla., whose decision to check out immediately after the bombings had aroused police suspicions. "But I don't think people should stop traveling. There's too much to see."







   
 

December 2, 2002 Monday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: ASIA-PACIFIC; 
Startling His Neighbors, Australian Leader Favors First Strikes

 
Prime Minister John Howard said today that he would like to see the United Nations Charter changed to allow pre-emptive action against terrorists, one of several such statements in recent days that have alarmed countries in the region.
     "It stands to reason that if you believe that somebody was going to launch an attack on your country," Mr. Howard said in a television interview, "either of a conventional kind or a terrorist kind, and you had a capacity to stop it and there was no alternative other than to use that capacity, then of course you would have to use it."  
 Asked if that meant acting to interdict terrorists in a neighboring country, Mr. Howard said, "Oh yes, I think any Australian prime minister would."
This and similar remarks in recent days come in the wake of the Oct. 12 bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali, which killed more than 180 people, at least 82 of them Australians. Indonesian and Australian investigators attribute the attack to an Indonesian Muslim group, which they suspect has links to Al Qaeda.
Last week, Australia temporarily closed its embassy in the Philippines, saying it had learned of the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack. Australia also advised its citizens against nonessential travel to the Philippines.
Any Australian prime minister "would be failing the most basic test of office" if he did not order pre-emptive action if there was no alternative to stopping an attack, Mr. Howard said today.
He said he thought international law had to "catch up with that new reality" of international terrorism.
Chapter VII, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter says, "Nothing shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs."
When the Charter was written the idea of attack was defined as "an army rolling across the border," Mr. Howard said.
Now, he said "it is different." "You're getting nonstate terrorism, which is just as devastating and potentially even more so."
A spokesman for the Indonesian Foreign Ministry criticized Mr. Howard's proposal, saying: "In the fight against terror, no country can act above the law and norms. Any change has to be decided by the members of the U.N."
An Indonesian legislator, Alvin Lie, told The Associated Press that Mr. Howard's view was "very dangerous," and said that the Australian leader "should learn to control himself."
The national security adviser for the Philippines, Roilo Golez, was reported as saying that "governments must work together, not act unilaterally." He said Mr. Howard's comments did "not follow the doctrines of peacekeeping and sovereignty."
Australia has the military and logistical capacity, including Special Forces units, to take some action over security threats in its region.
A 100-member Special Forces unit, which Australia sent to Afghanistan a year ago, was withdrawn last week. The government said the unit's basic task there was finished, but analysts here said the redeployment also meant that the special unit was now available for action in Southeast Asia or Iraq.
Mr. Howard has not given a specific commitment to join a military strike against Iraq, but has promised a parliamentary debate before any such action. The opposition Labor Party says the government should give priority to Australia's regional security.
Australia is a longtime ally of the United States, and the two have a mutual security treaty signed in 1954. Australia is known to have an "Iraq group" of military and intelligence officials studying contingency plans for possible war in Iraq.







   
 

December 1, 2002 Sunday  
  



 NEWS SUMMARY 

 
     INTERNATIONAL   3-28

American Command Post Set Up in Persian Gulf
The United States military is installing a new command center at a base in Qatar that could serve as a headquarters for the American general who would lead an attack on Iraq. The official purpose of the work at the As Sayliyah base is to prepare for a major military exercise.   1

Africa's bin Laden Links
As investigators struggled to determine who was behind the attacks on Israeli targets in Kenya on Thursday, they re-examined evidence that East Africa has served as both a useful base and a target for Osama bin Laden's terrorist network for nearly a decade. But while Al Qaeda remained a strong suspect, the Kenyan police reported few leads in the case.   1

Turkey Ends Emergency Rule
Turkey has lifting a 15-year state of emergency in the southeast region of the country, ending an era in which security forces wielded sweeping powers to combat a Kurdish separatist rebellion that led to 30,000 deaths. Human rights groups had complained of serious human rights violations.   4

East Timor Acquittals
An Indonesian human rights court has acquitted four former security officials, including two army officers, on charges of crimes against humanity during the bloodshed that engulfed East Timor three years ago. The Bush administration had pressed Indonesia for convictions.   8

New U.S. Aid in Philippines
The United States and the Philippines may soon begin a new military training operation against Muslim militants in the southern Philippines. The proposed exercise reflects the Pentagon's growing concern that militant Islamic networks pose an increasing threat to Americans.   32

NATIONAL   37-46

Recession Strikes Texas, But Not in Old Oil-Fed Way
After Enron's bankruptcy many in Texas, and throughout the Southwest, worried about an economic collapse rivaling the oil bust era of the 1980's. But what has happened in the last 12 months has been more complicated than the boom-or-bust cycles that once defined the regional economy. Texas is in a recession that reveals how the state's economy has diversified so broadly that the old assumptions no longer apply.   1

Stormy Time for S.E.C.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, still reeling from the recent resignation of top officials, is plagued by problems that have undermined its ability to police companies and markets, government officials and legal experts say.   1

Court Faces Tough Choices
The Supreme Court faces choices in the next few weeks that could have a momentous effect on the country's legal, political and social agendas.   39

Union Makes Concessions
United Airlines' flight attendants gave approval to $412 million in contract concessions. Their move came even as the leader of the airline's mechanics pleaded with members to reconsider their rejection and save the airline from bankruptcy.   42

Quakes Make Region Anxious
Residents in Northern California are concerned about the possibility of a major earthquake after a swarm of smaller quakes struck near San Francisco last week.   37

Wildlife and Oil Rigs
Padre Island National Seashore in Texas is not a good test case for those who would draw absolute lines in the sand about what should be allowed in a national park. The park is a heavily traveled, natural-gas-producing wedge of sand that happens to be a terrific place to rescue endangered birds and turtles.   37

NEW YORK/REGION   49-57

Confessions in Jogger Case Seen in a New Light
In April 1989, the words of teenagers recounted the maiming and near murder of a jogger in Central Park and ultimately helped send five boys to prison for gang rape. More than a decade later, the official view of those words has taken a sharp turn, with new evidence leading authorities to reopen a chapter in New York history that seemed long closed.   1

Planners Vow Cooperation
Stung by criticism that interagency fights have slowed the pace of the rebuilding in Lower Manhattan, officials overseeing the planning are taking a new tack: acknowledging their previous disagreements while also promising that the effort will soon pick up speed.   49

Neediest Cases   52

OBITUARIES   58

Noel Regney
The co-writer of the song "Do You Hear What I Hear?" was 80.   58

Chess   57
Weather   59
TV Listings   57







  



December 1, 2002 Sunday  




 Turn East From Mecca; 
Islam's Future Will Be Decided on Its Frontiers

 
 Throughout much of the 1990s, when I was part of the intelligence community in Washington, we were not quite forbidden to consider religion as a strategic factor, but the issue was considered soft and nebulous -- as well as potentially embarrassing in those years of epidemic political correctness. Now, of course, religion may be discussed in intelligence circles, as long as it is bracketed with careful disclaimers noting that all religions have problems and that we are not bigoted toward any one faith. 
The time has come for honesty. The good news is that the Islamic world, on its populous and expanding frontiers, is far more open to us than we might suspect. Millions of Muslims are willing to keep that door open, despite the actions of a legion of fanatics.  
But make no mistake: A struggle of immense proportions and immeasurable importance is underway for the soul of Islam. It is a mighty contest that pits a humane, tolerant and progressive faith against a hangman's vision of a punitive god and a humankind defined by prohibitions.  
And we have not even noticed. 
We have been looking in the wrong direction, because that is where we have been conditioned to look. Blinded by oil and riveted by the Arab-Israeli conflict, we have kept our attention on Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other places in the Middle East. Last week, the issue of whether Saudis are involved in financing terrorism arose once again. It will be a recurring point of contention as long as the kingdom continues to appease terrorists while professing friendship with the United States. 
But this great battle -- this war for the future of one of the world's great religions (and, certainly, its most restive and unfinished) -- is not being fought in the Arab homelands, which insist upon our attention with the temper of spoiled children. It is time to recognize, belatedly, that Islam's center of gravity lies far from Riyadh or Cairo -- that it has, in fact, several centers of gravity, each more hopeful than the Arab homelands. On these frontiers, from Delhi to Jakarta to Detroit, Islam is a dynamic, vibrant, effervescent religion of gorgeous potential. 
 The U.S. government can never be a decisive factor in this struggle for Islam's future. That role is reserved for Muslims themselves. But we can play a more constructive role. Until now, we have not even bothered to participate. 
Our lack of involvement -- indeed, our lack of interest -- has abandoned the field to our mortal enemies. Over the past few decades, Middle Eastern oil wealth has been used by the most restrictive, oppressive states to export a regressive, ferociously intolerant and anti-Western form of Islam to mosques and madrassas abroad, from the immigrant quarters of London to the back-country of Indonesia. When we noticed anything at all, we dismissed it as no more than an annoyance, our attitude drifting between the Pollyanna notion that everyone is entitled to his or her own form of religion (no matter if it preaches hatred and praises mass murder) and the "serious" policymaker's view that religion is a tertiary issue, far less instructive and meaningful than GDP numbers or arms deals. 
 But in this disturbed and dangerous world, no other factor is as important as belief. Religious intolerance always returns in times of doubt and disorder. The ease with which today's Americans of diverse faiths interact has allowed us to forget that our ancestors, in their homelands, massacred one another over the contents of the communion cup, or slaughtered Jews and called it God's desire, or delivered their faith to their colonies with Bibles and breech-loading rifles. Some brought their hatreds to these shores, but America conquered most of their bigotries over the generations -- although we have not vanquished intolerance completely. 
 On its frontiers, Islam remains capable of the changes necessary to make it, once again, a healthy, luminous faith whose followers can compete globally on their own terms. But the hard men from that religion's ancient homelands are determined to frustrate every exploratory effort. The extremist Muslim diaspora from the Middle East has one consistent message: Return to the past, for that is what God wants. 
 Beware, no matter his faith, the man who presumes to tell you what God wants. 
Our strategic blunder has been to attempt to work outward from Islam's inner sanctum. But in terms of population density and potential wealth (not to mention power), Islam's centers of gravity lie not to the west of Afghanistan, but east -- in the countries of India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. 
Pakistan suffers from a ravaged education system that opened the door for the pernicious expansion of fundamentalist schools, but it still has not strayed irretrievably into the extremist camp. It may -- may -- even have turned a corner toward some fitful progress. But the path to economic, social and cultural health will be long and steep. Together with impoverished hard-luck Bangladesh, Pakistan remains the least promising of the region's states. 
The most powerful determinants of Islam's future course, however, will probably be the success or failure of modernizing forces in Indonesia and India. Over the past two years, I have enjoyed extended stays in both places. Most Americans, and most government officials, haven't a clue about the on-the-ground reality in either one. 
 First, India. Recurring violence between Hindus and Muslims within India is undeniably a serious problem. Widespread pogroms a decade ago killed Muslims by the thousands, as well as hundreds of Hindus. The founding of India and Pakistan was anointed with the blood of at least half a million Muslims and Hindus. But consider what hasn't happened: Despite the resurgence of virulent Hindu fundamentalism among a small minority of India's citizens, hundreds of millions of Hindus and Muslims (as well as those of other faiths) have not killed each other. Instead, they have learned to work together as Indians, in the government, in the military, in business. The frequency and intensity of interfaith violence has decreased impressively over the past half-century. Given that Muslims make up at least 12 percent of India's billion people, and given the poverty that still afflicts much of its population, India could be regarded as an emerging model of tolerance. 
Islamic extremism has not made nearly the inroads it has across the border in Pakistan or even next door in Bangladesh. Overwhelmingly, India's Muslims have accepted an Indian identity. Indian Muslims realize, for the most part, that their faith cannot express itself in acts of aggression without paying a high price and that reasonable accommodation is much to their advantage. For all its merciless corruption, India is a rule-of-law state, displaying surprising religious diversity within its government and armed forces. 
 All this seems to have encouraged a more flexible form of Islam. I would not paint the picture in pious, stained-glass hues -- and some would argue that Muslim docility is the result of repression -- but there is something to be said for a country where a Muslim friend and I can enjoy a couple of beers in public, where the murder of a compromised woman by her relatives is not accepted as business as usual, and where local pogroms shock citizens throughout the country. 
The importance -- and promise -- of Indonesia is even greater than that of India. The danger -- real, if slight -- comes not from the syncretic, humane, tolerant, homegrown forms of Islam. It comes from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, insinuated into Indonesia through infusions of cash, missionaries, hateful propaganda, and the building of mosques and madrassas where secular schools and clinics are badly needed. 
 Yet, as one friend put it, the unhappiest investors in the world are not the Americans whose fortunes burst with the dot-com bubble, but the Saudis who spent millions upon millions to bring extreme fundamentalism to Indonesia. The Indonesians took the money, then did whatever they wanted to do. 
 You can go to fundamentalist schools in Solo, in central Java, and hear more denunciations of the West than you can possibly absorb between lunch and dinner. Terrorists, both Indonesians and deadly vagabonds from abroad, certainly use Indonesia's sprawling territories (more than 17,000 islands, of which more than 6,000 are inhabited to some degree) as a base. Yet, except for Aceh, where a long-term separatist struggle continues, the root causes of most of Indonesia's interfaith violence have been disputes over territory, local power and economic benefits. 
 In Yogyakarta, the old cultural capital of "Muslim" Java, the elite and the middle class send their children to Christian-run schools for a better education, they use Christian-sponsored hospitals because of the higher-quality care and they've got far more interest in Britney Spears than in Osama bin Laden. 
 This is not a metaphorical statement. While I was in Indonesia, Miss Spears, in all her inarticulate, trailer-court-tart splendor, got far more air-time than did Osama. Now, hard-headed politicos may dismiss the Cult of Britney, but a society in which girls and women tune into such video displays of life-affirming exuberance is unlikely to sign up for the whole fundamentalist package.  
 Technically speaking, Indonesia may contain almost 200 million Muslims, but I would say that fewer than 20 percent of them -- and that is a generous estimate -- would begin to pass muster with the mullahs of the Middle East. One woman who was showing me around described her female employer as a "most devoted Muslim, very strict," then added approvingly, "She doesn't pray during the day or wear religious clothing, and she likes to drink a little bit, but she is really a very good Muslim." 
 I am not belittling the devotion of Indonesians. On the contrary, they are often profoundly religious. But they have adapted Islam to their own culture, rather than adapting their culture to the extremist form of Islam. 
One of my enduring images of Indonesia is from a small "supermarket" on the dusty edge of Solo. The young cashier wore a miniskirt that wasted no fabric on modesty, while the girl bagging my groceries wore demure Islamic kit, including the local head scarf. The two girls were friends, and there was no tension in their interaction -- or in their dealings with me. While Indonesia remains a male-chauvinist society, the opportunities afforded to women have dramatically outpaced anything in the Middle East -- and this is a country with a popular, elected female president. 
Indonesia faces a long list of challenges, some of which may prove intractable. Yet the manner in which the United States has alternately scolded and ignored this huge, strategically positioned country is simply remarkable. 
The most vital frontier may be the one closest to home. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, created a wide variety of stresses upon and distress for America's Muslim citizens and residents. This newest body of immigrants reacted with complex emotions: Horror at the attacks, anger at the damage done to their adopted country as well as to their chosen religion, alarm that their faith might be misunderstood by their fellow Americans and anxiety about blind retribution. But there was also defensiveness about the often-disastrous societies they had left behind, incendiary excuses for the inexcusable and, among the most disappointed and disaffected, muted pleasure that the proud had been given a public blow by the weak. 
 American Muslims are in perhaps the most difficult situation of any immigrant group since the Irish fled the Great Famine. Many of our Muslim citizens have long-since integrated into American society -- some have been fully Americanized for generations -- while some new arrivals are still in the process of adapting. All of this is the normal stuff of the immigrant's experience, with its shocks, discords and ultimate success. What matters, not only to us but to the world, is that the long-overdue, liberal reformation of Islam is likeliest to happen here, where tolerance is woven most firmly into the fabric of society. 
 In the dark days of the Cold War, American strategists touted the notion of "rolling back" communism. In fact, we never rolled it back much, but did our best to hold the line. We did not imagine that we could defeat Soviet communism starting in Moscow. Likewise, Islamic extremism cannot be engaged most effectively where it was born and bred.  
 The complex, exasperating and frequently inspiring world of Islam faces a historically unique challenge. An entire religious civilization, of remarkable variety, must change if it is to survive economically and culturally. We are foolish if we do not do what lies within our power to enable that change to occur. 
 </body> Ralph Peters, a retired U.S. Army officer, is the author of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World" (Stackpole). This essay, which was based on his recent travels in Indonesia and India, is adapted from a longer version in the fall issue of Parameters, the U.S. Army War College's quarterly journal. 







  



December 1, 2002 Sunday  




 Voices Who Speak for (and Against) Us

 
 From Indonesia to Pakistan, Muslims tuning into television after breaking Ramadan fasts this month are viewing a smorgasbord of U.S.-funded advertisements praising religious tolerance in America. Designed to highlight an appealing attribute of U.S. society, these 30-second spots seem harmless, though most likely ineffectual in countering anti-Americanism. On closer inspection, however, this $ 15 million ad campaign is just the most high-profile example of a policy of "dumbing down" our outreach to Muslim peoples.  
Since 9/11, the Bush administration has been fighting two wars. One, against terror, has been fought with creativity and vigor; another, for the hearts and minds of the world's Muslims, has been waged with a baffling lack of clarity and confidence. Instead of recognizing that millions of Muslims dislike America because of the alleged injustice of our policies on contentious issues such as terrorism, Iraq and Israel, we have chosen to believe that if only Muslims knew us better -- our society, values and culture -- they would hate us less. Hence, the administration's "public diplomacy" -- outreach to people in foreign countries over the heads of foreign governments -- focuses disproportionately on "soft" topics, such as values, while shying away from advocating the foreign policies many Muslims don't like and may, in fact, not know enough about.  
A prime example is the State Department's "speakers program," which sends U.S. specialists abroad or arranges for them to speak to foreign audiences via digital video conference. In the public diplomacy arsenal, the "speakers program" has special attraction. Dispatching one person abroad is easy to organize and offers a quick response to changing national priorities. Once in the field, speakers can leave a powerful personal imprint on the message they are transmitting.  
In the year after Sept. 11, 2001, about 1,600 such programs were planned or implemented, reaching tens of thousands of nongovernmental elites, such as journalists, scholars and businesspeople. Many of these programs offered valuable information on such items as new ways to fight corruption or battle drug abuse. Other speakers opened vistas of Americana -- such as black history or American poetry -- in corners of the world that have little contact with our culture.  
While important, these issues hardly reflect the core mission of public diplomacy, which is to inform people overseas about U.S. policy. In fact, a review of data prepared by the State Department's Office of International Information Programs shows how reluctant Foggy Bottom is to dispatch speakers to address contentious national security issues rather than soft topics such as religious tolerance. 
According to State's own accounting, twice as much money was spent on speakers programs about "American Life and Values" than about the themes of "combating terrorism," "Middle East peace," "weapons of mass destruction" and "Iraq" -- combined. In a year that saw war against al Qaeda and the Taliban, the total spent on speakers sent abroad to talk about Afghanistan was zero.  
The post-9/11 agenda is mostly avoided by these speakers, especially those who visit the Muslim world. Of the approximately 125 programs convened in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East or Asia, fewer than 20 touched on any policy issue. Amazingly, "terrorism" was the stated theme of just five. More than four times as many programs (22) focused on the role of Arabs or Muslims in American society. State sent out a more balanced group to non-Muslim-majority countries, where twice as many speakers discussed terrorism as those who discussed issues of domestic tolerance in America. Nine officers from the New York City Police and Fire departments were dispatched abroad to talk about their moving 9/11 experiences, but none was sent to a Muslim nation.  
If, at a time of war, that mix seems skewed, then so, too, does the composition of the group of "experts" speaking on America's behalf. More than 40 percent of programs on Islam, Arabs and Muslims in America, or on religious tolerance within the United States, featured current or former representatives of domestic Arab or Muslim advocacy organizations. Many of the speakers, such as the American Muslim Council's former executive director Aly Abuzaakouk (who was sent to Nigeria) and communications director Faiz Rahman (who spoke via teleconference to Bulgaria), have either publicly minimized the threat posed by bin Ladenism or criticized the Bush administration's anti-terror or Middle East policies. Advocates of these positions -- while legitimate in a domestic political debate -- are hardly the sort of messengers the administration should want to promote in its diplomacy abroad.  
Similarly, many of the scholars recruited to talk about Islam in America have soft-pedaled the threat from radical Islamists for years. Especially prominent is the group from Georgetown University, which alone provided 40 percent of the Islam-related speakers. Here, the list includes John Esposito, founder of Georgetown's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, whose best-selling 1992 book "The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality" was dedicated to the proposition that Islamist threats to our national security would be increasingly unlikely. Five other current or former associates of the center were also State Department speakers.  
The inclusion of some of the academics on an official government speakers list is truly stunning. A prime example is Asma Barlas, political science professor at Ithaca College, who spoke via teleconference to Indian elites on "Women and Islam." Apparently, no one at State checked her Web site, a collection of blame-America-first tirades, such as, "When we ask, 'Why do they hate us?' I believe it is because we don't want to ask the question we should be asking: Why do we hate and oppress them?" (Ithaca College Quarterly, 2001), or "[I]t is difficult to regard this as a war rather than as terrorism" (Daily Times, Pakistan, June 18, 2002).  
All told, the makeup of the Islam-related speakers list provides a self-defeating twist on the legislation governing "public diplomacy," the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. That law authorized the federal government "to disseminate abroad information about the United States, its people, and its policies." Nowhere does the law suggest that advertising our diversity needs to clash with the advocating of our policies.  
To be sure, finding the right mix of people to speak on behalf of America overseas is not easy. Speakers should be independent, not government surrogates, and constructive critiques of U.S. policy should be tolerated. But we should not enlist speakers whose views lend succor to our enemies.  
State sometimes got it right. The choice of speakers dispatched to Europe and Latin America, replete with national security experts from both Democratic and Republican administrations, shows a healthy respect for the need to explain America's case, leavened with a sense of the honest debate taking place at home.  
In addressing Muslim issues or Muslim countries, however, we have our priorities backward. With a few noteworthy exceptions, such as the courageous Iranian feminist Azar Nafisi, now at Johns Hopkins University, we, too, often have exported our loudest critics, with an official stamp of approval, rather than dispatching experts who could present -- heaven forbid! -- robust expositions of our policies. 
Privately, well-meaning State Department officials recognize that the speakers program needs fixing and say they are righting the course. But the two themes chosen for special attention in the coming year -- "Outreach to the Muslim World" and "Perceptions of U.S. Unilateralism" -- echo the self-defeating programming of the past. We need to explain our perceptions of ourselves and the world, not our views of their views of our views. 
Like other skewed aspects of the administration's public diplomacy -- such as official publications that highlight condemnations of the 9/11 attacks by Muslim clerics famous for their praise of other suicide bombings -- fixing our public diplomacy requires a wholesale change of approach. Washington's public-diplomacy designers need to operate on the basis that America is, in fact, at war. Advertising our diversity may be a worthy goal in times of peace, but we don't have that luxury today. At a time when the world looks to us for clarity of purpose, activist naysayers should not be chosen to speak abroad under the State Department banner. 
Moreover, we need to take Muslim elites seriously. Values are important -- they are what America is all about. But there is scant evidence that Muslim crowds from Cairo to Karachi burn Uncle Sam in effigy because of perceptions about intolerance toward their co-religionists in America. Many may never support our policies on terrorism, Iraq and Israel, but the key elites in Muslim-majority countries are sophisticated people who deserve frank talk. Rather than shy away from our policies, we should defend them. Serving up a diet of fluff is not just wrong, it's condescending, a foreign policy version of what President Bush, in another context, called the "subtle bigotry of low expectations." 
The battle for hearts and minds begins with respect. Our current public diplomacy respects neither the citizenry it claims to represent nor the Arabs and Muslims it is designed to impress; as such, it is doomed to fail. If we change that dynamic, we at least stand a chance of winning this fight.  
 </body>Robert Satloff is the director for policy and strategic planning at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 







  



November 30, 2002 Saturday  




 Conservatives Dispute Bush Portrayal of Islam as Peaceful; 
Critics, Include Some Policy Advisers, Call Stance Political

 
President Bush finds himself in a rare disagreement with conservatives in his party over his efforts to portray Islam as a peaceful religion that is not responsible for anti-American terrorism. 
In a score of speeches since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the president has called for tolerance of Muslims, describing Islam as "a faith based upon peace and love and compassion" and a religion committed to "morality and learning and tolerance." 
But a large number of foreign policy hawks -- some of them with advisory roles in the Bush administration -- have joined religious conservatives in taking issue with Bush's characterizations. While most of them understand the political rationale for Bush's statements -- there's no benefit in antagonizing Muslim allies such as Pakistan and Indonesia -- they say the claim is dishonest and destined to fail.  
For Bush and for the country, the outcome of the argument is crucial. The administration, and moderate governments in Arab and Muslim nations, are struggling to prevent the war on terrorism from becoming what Osama bin Laden wants: a war of civilization between the Judeo-Christian West and a resentful and impoverished Muslim world. 
Calling Islam a peaceful religion "is an increasingly hard argument to make," said Kenneth Adelman, a former Reagan official who serves on the Bush Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. "The more you examine the religion, the more militaristic it seems. After all, its founder, Mohammed, was a warrior, not a peace advocate like Jesus." 
Another member of the Pentagon advisory board, Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, wrote an article on the Wall Street Journal editorial page arguing that the enemy of the United States enemy is not terrorism "but militant Islam." "The enemy has an ideology, and an hour spent surfing the Web will give the average citizen at least the kind of insights that he or she might have found during World Wars II and III by reading 'Mein Kampf' or the writings of Lenin, Stalin or Mao." 
Cohen acknowledges it is impolitic and "deeply uncomfortable" for the administration to say such things. "Nobody would like to think that a major world religion has a deeply aggressive and dangerous strain in it -- a strain often excused or misrepresented in the name of good feelings. But uttering uncomfortable and unpleasant truths is one of the things that defines leadership," he said. 
At the same time, social conservatives are resisting Bush's efforts to portray Islam in a favorable light. "Islam is at war against us," Paul Weyrich, an activist who is influential in the White House, wrote last week. "I have had much good to say about President Bush in recent months. But one thing that concerned me before September 11th and concerns me even more now is his administration's constant promotion of Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance just like Judaism or Christianity. It is neither." 
Earlier this month, Bush distanced himself from virulent anti-Islamic remarks made by a number of U.S. religious leaders. "Some of the comments that have been uttered about Islam do not reflect the sentiments of my government or the sentiments of most Americans," the president said in the Oval Office before a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. "Islam, as practiced by the vast majority of people, is a peaceful religion, a religion that respects others. Ours is a country based upon tolerance, Mr. Secretary General, and we respect the faith and we welcome people of all faiths in America." 
Bush's remarks came after religious broadcaster Pat Robertson was reported as saying that "Adolf Hitler was bad, but what the Muslims want to do to the Jews is worse." Another religious conservative, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, referred to the prophet Mohammed as a "terrorist"; Falwell later apologized. The Rev. Franklin Graham, who spoke at Bush's inauguration, has called Islam "evil." Lesser-known religious leaders have been downright vulgar in their descriptions of Mohammed. 
In an interview with the Washington Times published this week, an unapologetic Robertson complained that Bush "is not elected as chief theologian" and objected again to Bush's description of Islam as peaceful. 
Muslim Americans worry that the anti-Islam conservatives are winning the battle. "These right-wingers are trying to set up a civilizational conflict with all their might in the same way as Osama bin Laden," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We're trying our darndest to prevent it but every day it's looking more and more like it's heading in that direction. . . . It really is getting a bit frightening. At some times I feel like a member of the Jewish community in Germany in the latter stages of the Weimar Republic." 
In fact, Americans see themselves as increasingly tolerant despite the harsh words from conservatives. In an Ipsos-Reid poll this month, 56 percent of Americans said they had become more likely over the past year to respect cultures that do not share their values, while only 27 percent said they found it harder to have such respect. 
Bush was trying to encourage that sentiment when he hosted a White House dinner earlier this month for Muslim diplomats and Muslim American leaders for the Muslim holiday of Ramadan . "America treasures your friendship; America honors your faith," he said at the Iftaar dinner. 
Last month, at a White House event promoting U.S. efforts to rebuild Afghanistan, Bush celebrated Islam as "a vibrant faith." "Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn't follow the great traditions of Islam. They've hijacked a great religion." 
Bush has delivered such speeches almost monthly since the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, beginning with an appearance at the Islamic Center of Washington on Sept. 17, 2001. "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam," he said. "That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace." 
Conservatives say they understand the political and even moral reasons for such pronouncements. Jeffrey Bell, a Republican operative, said there is no denying that there is a "clash between Western values and the radical Islam we've seen" but said it need not be "a war of Christianity versus Islam." 
 "Bush is doing his best to minimize it," Bell said, and so far has avoided a clash of civilizations. 
Adelman agreed that describing Islam as peaceful "is the right political argument, but it's a harder intellectual argument to make." 
That likely won't get any easier with the intellectual ferment among American conservatives, many of whom are coming to a conclusion reached earlier this year by Norman Podhoretz in Commentary magazine. "Certainly not all Muslims are terrorists," he wrote. "But it would be dishonest to ignore the plain truth that Islam has become an especially fertile breeding-ground of terrorism in our time. This can only mean that there is something in the religion itself that legitimizes the likes of Osama bin Laden, and indeed there is: the obligation imposed by the Koran to wage holy war, or jihad, against the 'infidels.' " 






  


November 29, 2002 Friday



 Al-Qaida setting sights on Asia

 
The defense minister of the world's largest Muslim country said Friday that al-Qaida is setting its sights on Southeast Asia and became the first Indonesian official to publicly implicate a detained Muslim cleric in last month's Bali bombs.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Matori Abdul Jalil also said Washington must work harder to explain to Muslims why war may be necessary in Iraq.
"The United States needs to continue its campaign to convince other countries that the danger that they are dealing with now involves people who do not think rationally,' Matori said. 
He said the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia should keep visiting Muslim schools and meeting Islamic leaders to make the case against Iraq.
Detained men formally placed under investigation
PARISTwo brothers-in-law detained in an anti-terrorism sweep one considered an important player among radical Muslims were formally placed under investigation Friday for an alleged plot to bomb a marketplace and cathedral in Strasbourg.
Four other people detained in Monday's sweep were released, officials said.
The six were taken into custody in one of three operations over a four-day period that resulted in 19 people being detained. Seven have been placed under investigation a step short of being charged under French law.
Nicolas Belloni and Slimane Khalfaoui were placed under investigation for "criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise,' said the judicial officials, who spoke on condition they not be identified.
General: War on terror remains on track
BAGRAM, Afghanistan The U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan is on track, and the United States will remain in the country carrying out combat operations and reconstruction projects "for as long as it takes,' the U.S. general overseeing the war said Friday.
Speaking to reporters at Bagram Air Base, the headquarters of U.S and coalition military operations in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks said U.S.- led efforts to root out al-Qaida and Taliban remnants in Afghanistan were maintaining their momentum. As commander of U.S. Central Command, Franks oversees all U.S. troops in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Attacks and hostile incidents on U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan in the past three months have increased. On Wednesday, a U.S. special forces soldier was shot and wounded in an ambush and on Thursday, gunmen fired as many as five rockets at a U.S. base in southeastern Afghanistan.
Malaysia arrests leader of terrorist group
KUALA LUMPUR, MalaysiaMalaysia has arrested a mid-level leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah, a terror organization allied with al-Qaida and blamed for the Oct. 12 bombings in Bali that killed 200 people.
The suspect was arrested on Monday, a government official said Friday on condition of anonymity. He is not connected to an alleged suicide-bomb cell whose members were rounded up last week, the official said.
He said most of the Jemaah Islamiyah's leaders are either in custody or have fled abroad, probably to Indonesia.
Jemaah Islamiyah is accused of a string of plots and attacks in the region over the past few years, including the bombings in Bali, Indonesia.
: From wire reports






   


November 29, 2002, Friday, 



 Battered country tangles with terror

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Lisa Mallory's taxi is nowhere to be seen. Waiting outside the front gate of the Jakarta International School, she's getting nervous. "I don't feel safe standing here," the lanky math teacher says. "I'm a little spooked."
On Nov. 15, schools catering to U.S. and Western students here closed after Western intelligence officials reported "credible" evidence that Islamic extremists planned to attack them. The report came a month after the bombing of a disco on the Indonesian island of Bali killed almost 200 people. It was the worst terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001.
 
On Thursday, after an anxious two-week hiatus, the schools reopened. The Jakarta International School, where about one-third of the 2,500 pupils are Americans, had readied new long-handled mirrors to check for car bombs, introduced armed Indonesian police patrols and tightened its operating procedures. That's why Sacramento native Mallory, 37, four months into her first overseas posting, must wait for her taxi outside the walled compound.
"We had a good level of security by normal standards," headmaster Niall Nelson says. "We're understandably a much harder target now."
Deadly terrorist cells -- allegedly with al-Qaeda links -- remain poised to strike Western targets, officials say. "This country has become a fairly convenient one for international terrorists. They're already deep into Indonesia," says Muchyar Yara, an adviser to the head of the National Intelligence Agency.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. About 90% of its 231 million people are Muslim. It has a long tradition of moderate Islam, but as an archipelago of 17,000 islands with porous borders and a weak central government, it is potentially hospitable terrain for radical infiltrators. Offshore, modern-day pirates prey on commercial ships. On land, coordination among law enforcement agencies in different parts of the country is poor, Sidney Jones of the non-partisan International Crisis Group says.
In recent years, the country has been battered by the Asian financial crisis, separatist rebellions, Christian-Muslim conflict and a spate of bombings. The mood today is nowhere near as tense as during the 1998 death throes of the Suharto dictatorship, but the reported threat to schoolchildren has caused an undeniable spike in anxiety among U.S. and other Western expatriates.
"I think the schools are a unique target. If anything happened there, it would probably cause a mass exodus," says one American businessman, who requested anonymity.
On Oct. 13, the U.S. Embassy, already fortified with concrete barricades and barbed wire, evacuated a significant portion of its diplomatic staff and the wives and children of those who remained behind. The embassy says U.S. citizens are "at risk" here. Roughly 10,000 Americans live in Indonesia.
The recent killings in the Mideast of an American missionary and a U.S. diplomat have some business executives worried they could be targeted as individuals. Multinational companies inform employees of possible dangers via e-mail and cellphone text messages. But there's been no rush for the exits among executives, many of whom say they are more concerned with the government's onerous tax and labor policies than with terrorism. "We have increased our level of awareness and taken more precautions," Richard Ness of Newmont Mining says. But "our people have remained here. We're not having any attrition."
The investigation of the Bali bombing Oct. 12 has led to the arrests of 15 people. Police say they found videotapes of speeches by Osama bin Laden in one suspect's house but no conclusive evidence that al-Qaeda ordered the attack. "We have not yet come to the mastermind," says Gen. I Made Mangu Pastika, who heads the multinational investigation.
Indonesian intelligence officials, however, say they believe an al-Qaeda operative from Yemen named Syafullah ordered local Muslim radicals to carry out the Bali attack. A hard corps of perhaps two dozen local extremists remains at large in Indonesia, Western analysts and diplomats say. The National Intelligence Agency also has identified 272 Indonesians who received military training in Afghanistan, either during the 1980s war against the Soviet Union or alongside the Taliban a decade later, Yara says. These individuals are available to carry out missions against Western targets.
Many are members of a regional group called Jemaah Islamiyah, which seeks to replace secular governments in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore with an Islamic theocracy. The group's leader, the Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, was arrested last month, but has not been charged in the Bali bombing. And most members of the group have no links to violence, analysts say.
Western analysts and diplomats are convinced that the Bali attack and the threat against the international schools are the handiwork of Islamic terrorists. But among Indonesians, deep skepticism remains. Many here believe that the Central Intelligence Agency staged the attack to prod Indonesia into supporting the U.S. war on terrorism or a possible conflict in Iraq.
A key source of alternative theories is Djuanda, 42, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. The self-proclaimed intelligence expert sketches a shadowy tale of foreign spy masters choreographing the Bali blast along with elements of the Indonesian military. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, decorated with leopard-skin pillows and five photographs of former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeni, he claims that one of the arrested suspects once worked for the CIA. "This is inside information," he says, nodding sagely.
His assertions of convoluted conspiracies have received front-page play in some of Jakarta's sensational newspapers and found fertile soil in a public psyche scarred by more than three decades of dictatorship. Under Suharto, the police and intelligence agencies routinely penetrated Muslim organizations and instigated demonstrations or violence. So when police blame the Bali attack on Muslim extremists, not everyone believes them.
Even Din Syamsuddin, secretary-general of the Indonesian Council of Ulama, an umbrella organization of Muslim groups, says he thinks it is possible the CIA was behind the attack. Syamsuddin, who was educated at the University of California-Los Angeles, has met several times with the U.S. ambassador here to promote interfaith dialogue.
But doubting the government's impartiality, he also helped create a fact-finding team of Muslim experts that carried out a separate investigation of the Bali bombing. "We need to investigate comprehensively . . .  the involvement of outsider, external forces," he says.







   
 

November 27, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 Defusing The Holy Bomb 

 
     To: Leaders of the Muslim world
From: President George W. Bush
Dear Sirs,
 as you approach the end of Ramadan and we approach our Thanksgiving, I thought it would be a good time for me to share with you some concerns. Let me be blunt: I am increasingly worried that we are heading toward a civilizational war. 
How so? Well, let me point out just a few news stories in recent days: Imam Samudra, the Indonesian Islamist accused of masterminding last month's Bali bombing -- in which nearly 200 tourists were killed -- reportedly said during his confession that it was a "holy bomb" that ripped apart that disco, and that it was aimed there because it was full of foreigners -- i.e., non-Muslims. There is nothing "holy" about a bomb that kills 200 people just because they are foreigners.
Then I read about Bonnie Penner, a young U.S. missionary nurse at a prenatal clinic in Sidon, Lebanon, that provided care for needy Palestinians and Lebanese. She was shot three times in the face. A Palestinian security official told The A.P. that "the killing was the result of a hostile Muslim reaction in Sidon to the preaching . . . lessons the center was giving to Muslim youths." Do you know how much proselytizing Muslim groups do in America? A lot. We have no problem with that. That's who we are. Who are you? I have no idea whether this woman's clinic was involved in proselytizing Muslims, but I do know that she was a nurse, caring for Muslims, and she was shot for who she was.
Then there was Azmi Abu Hilayel, whose son Na'el strapped himself with dynamite and blew up an Israeli bus with school kids. Azmi was quoted as saying: "I thanked God when I heard that my son had died in an operation for the sake of God and the homeland." I can't believe that the God of Islam, a God of mercy and compassion, would bless killing anyone's kids. Believe me, I know Israeli soldiers have killed dozens of Palestinian children during the intifada. That is shameful. But I don't hear Israeli generals, parents or rabbis thanking God their sons could kill Muslim kids. Soldiers shooting kids is wrong. Suicide killing is wrong. There is no God that blesses either.
On top of all this, we just had the imam of a Paris mosque arrested for allegedly helping the airplane shoe-bomber. And we had two U.S. marines shot in Kuwait, a country we helped rescue from Saddam, and we saw one of our top aid officials in Jordan killed in his front yard for a similar "crime" -- being an American in the Muslim world. Now you see why I ordered that young men from most Arab countries who are studying in America be fingerprinted and photographed by the I.N.S. I had no choice.
You say all this is happening because we support Israel. I know we need to do more to bring peace, but I don't think that nurse was shot, or that Bali bomb was made "holy," because we support Israel. I think it has to do with the rise within your midst of a deeply intolerant strain of Islam that is not simply a reaction to Israel, but is a response to your failing states, squandered oil wealth, broken ideologies (Nasserism) and generations of autocracy and illiteracy. Armed and angry, this harsh fundamentalism now seems to totally intimidate Muslim moderates.
But the values it propagates will bring ruin to you and conflict with us. As Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute wrote in National Review, "No faith will make rote memorization of ancient texts, suppression of critical inquiry and dissent, subjugation of women, and a servile deference to authority the recipe for anything other than civilizational decline."
The decent, but passive, Muslim center must go to war against this harsh fundamentalism. Yes, we have our intolerant bigots too. I just publicly distanced myself from those Christians who smear Islam with a broad brush. But our moderate majority and press regularly denounce them too. They are not dominating our society. We've had our civil war against intolerance. Now I'm urging you to have yours. Don't tell me you can't. Look at those courageous Iranian students who are now taking on the extreme fundamentalists within their own society -- risking their lives to fight those who want to take Islam, and Iran, back to the Dark Ages. God bless them.
Friends, unless you have a war within your civilization, there is going to be a war between our civilizations. We're just one more 9/11 away from that. So let's dedicate this next year to fighting intolerance within so we can preserve our relations between.
Sincerely, G.W.B.







  



November 27, 2002 Wednesday  




 Malaysia Arrests 4 Men Suspected of Suicide Plot

 
 Malaysia has arrested four suspected Islamic militants who were planning to carry out a suicide attack against Western targets in Singapore, including the U.S. and other embassies, officials in Kuala Lumpur said today. 
 Malaysian police arrested the men between Nov. 16 and 20 in the state of Johor, which borders Singapore, and identified them as three Malaysians and a Singaporean. 
 "I believe these groups identify themselves as a suicide bombing [squad] . . . they call themselves as a suicide squad," Malaysian Police Chief Norian Mai told reporters.  
 The announcement of the arrests comes as concern grows in the region about whether militants are turning to suicide attacks, a tactic that has become common in the Middle East and South Asia but has remained unacceptable in Southeast Asia. While acts of great brutality are not without precedent in Southeast Asia, Muslim leaders have long prided themselves on practicing a moderate form of Islam that would not sanction suicide attacks. 
 Indonesian police, however, are now investigating whether one of the suspects involved in the massive attack on the resort island of Bali last month, which killed nearly 200 people, was a suicide bomber. 
 Police disclosed last week that the Indonesian man, identified only as Iqbal, may have carried out the first of two bombings, which occurred moments apart, by detonating explosives in his backpack. Investigators said he was responsible for the blast in Paddy's bar, in the heart of Bali's nightclub district, which was followed by a far more devastating car bombing across the street outside the Sari Club. This information was obtained during the questioning of Imam Samudra, the suspected ringleader of the plot who was arrested last week. 
 The Indonesian newspaper Kompass reported this week that Iqbal had left a note for his family apologizing for his death as a Muslim martyr. But Indonesian police officials said they could not confirm this report, adding that a suicide attack would mark an ominous departure for Indonesia. 
 "This would be the first time for Indonesia," said Maj. Gen. I Made Pastika, who heads the international investigation into the Bali bombing. "That's very dangerous." 
 In Malaysia, the suspects arrested this month had been planning to strike "Western interests, including embassies," said Rohaizad Abdul Rahim, a spokesman for Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who also heads the Home Affairs Ministry. 
 The suspects were part of a wider militant ring that had been planning to carry out attacks against Western and other targets in Singapore, including water pipelines and government buildings, security officials said. That conspiracy was disrupted by Singapore last December, when it captured what it said were many of the plot's leaders. 
 Singaporean officials said the plot had been the work of Jemaah Islamiah, a regional extremist network with ties to al Qaeda. Some Asian and Western intelligence officials have also said they suspect Jemaah Islamiah was behind the attack in Bali, though Indonesian investigators have yet to provide public proof of a link. 
 Malaysia is now holding about 72 suspects under a tough internal security law for alleged involvement in extremist activities. 
 Though concerns remain high in Southeast Asia that militants may be planning new attacks, the British and Australian international schools in Jakarta announced today they intended to reopen Thursday with heightened security after a two-week closure. These schools and the Jakarta International School closed after Western officials said they received "credible information" about a threat against these institutions. The Jakarta International School, which a number of American students attend, has not announced when it will reopen. 
Correspondent Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report. 




12

  


November 22, 2002 Friday



 Man's terrorist claim diverts plane's flight

 
A Northwest Airlines jet carrying 351 people from Minneapolis to Tokyo was diverted to Anchorage and searched by bomb-sniffing dogs after an unruly passenger claimed to be a terrorist, the FBI said.
Matthew Leggett, 42, of Houston was charged with interfering with a flight crew, FBI agent Eric Gonzalez said. He was taken into custody by airport police and taken to Alaska Psychiatric Institute.
"Mr. Leggett had threatened to kill another passenger,' Gonzalez said. "The pilots were able to calm him down, and a decision was made to divert the plane. 
"Mr. Leggett was very agitated. He claimed to be a terrorist,' he said.
More ground zero plans announced
Plans for redeveloping the World Trade Center site include proposals for memorials on the tops of buildings and below ground, a garden and the tallest building in the world, a published report said.
Although it is not yet known which elements will make it into the final design, the director of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency charged with overseeing the redevelopment process, praised the new plans for their creativity,  reported Friday.
Cop who allegedly shot U.S. soldiers arrested
A Kuwaiti police officer said to have a history of mental problems was arrested in Saudi Arabia on Friday, a day after he allegedly shot two American soldiers and fled across the border, a Kuwaiti official said.
The suspect, Khaled al-Shimmiri, was picked up in eastern Saudi Arabia near the border, the state-run Kuwait News Agency reported. He was expected to be extradited to Kuwait, the agency said.
While Kuwait has sought to the portray the incident as the work of a single, unbalanced man, the shooting came amid increasing fears that anti-Americanism is growing in this Gulf state, long a staunch American ally. It was the second shooting of American troops here in the past six weeks.
Suicide bombing indicated in Bali blasts
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- One of two blasts in the Bali nightclub bombings came from a suicide bomber's backpack, a sign Islamic militants in Indonesia are taking their cues from abroad, police said Friday.
Police said a key suspect made the revelation in a confession they hope will reveal more about the inner workings of Jemaah Islamiyah, the group linked to al-Qaida that is believed to be behind the blasts.
If what Imam Samudra says is true, it would be the first time a suicide bombing has been used as a tactic in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country.
Iraqi Kurd arrested in alleged bomb plot
KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Iraqi Kurd carrying about 22 pounds of explosives was arrested Friday in a posh Kabul neighborhood on suspicion of planning a suicide bombing attack against Afghanistan's president or defense minister, the government said.
Afghan intelligence services arrested the man on a street corner in the Wazir Akbar Khan district, where many foreigners live and work, a government statement said.
The suspect was identified as Akram Taufiq Muramy, an Iraqi Kurd.
The statement alleged Muramy was a member of an international terrorist organization that previously has tried to attack President Hamid Karzai and his government. The target of this latest planned attack was either Karzai or Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, the statement said.
Officials probe motive in missionary's death
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Lebanese authorities were investigating Friday whether the slaying of an American missionary was linked to anti-U.S. sentiment in the Middle East, but a Palestinian guerrilla official said the killing was to avenge her Christian evangelist activity in a Muslim town.
The U.S. Embassy, however, said it was too early to speculate on the motive behind the first targeted killing of an American in Lebanon in more than a decade.
Bonnie Penner, 31, who worked as a nurse at a missionary clinic caring for needy Lebanese and Palestinians, was shot to death Thursday in the southern port city of Sidon.
A senior Palestinian guerrilla official denied Friday that the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon, where anti-U.S. extremist groups have taken shelter, had anything to do with the killing. He linked the slaying to the Unity Center's Christian activities.
Moroccan man held in plane bomb hoax
PARIS A Moroccan man was detained Friday as he arrived in Paris on an Air France flight from Montreal after authorities were told he had brought a bomb on board.
But a search of the plane turned up no explosives, and a top French transportation official described the incident as a "bad joke.'
Police said Canadian authorities were contacted by a person in Montreal who claimed the man had written of his intentions to blow up the flight.
The airline said there was no hijacking attempt, contrary to initial police reports that the passenger had threatened to blow up the Boeing 767.
Flight 345 proceeded "normally' to Charles de Gaulle Airport, Air France said. The airline refused to give further details. It was unclear if the man had been restrained during the flight.
Police said the passenger was a Moroccan man, born in 1977, who lives in Canada. He was being held for questioning in the anti-terrorism section of a Paris police station.
From wire reports






  
   


November 19, 2002 Tuesday



 
Bali bombing probe called harsh
Indonesia Vice President Hamzah Haz, a hard-line Muslim, signaled a potential political backlash to the probe of last month's bombing that killed nearly 200 people. He condemned police raids on a Muslim school. Police traced the attack to a local group linked to al-Qaida. Earlier, Haz claimed there are no terrorist groups in Indonesia.
SPAIN: A teen with a knife took 20 other children hostage at his former school and held them for hours until a plainclothes officer jumped him while delivering pizza.
INDIA: A land mine blew up under a passenger bus, killing as many as 35 passengers. Officials blamed a Marxist-Leninist group.
ISRAEL: Police searched the home of the father of a knife-wielding Israeli Arab accused of trying to storm the cockpit of an El Al plane en route to Turkey when he was overpowered by security guards.






   


November 19, 2002, Tuesday



 AUSSIE HELD IN ANTI-ISRAEL BOMB PLOT

 
SYDNEY- An Australian man has been charged in an alleged plot to bomb Israeli diplomatic missions in Australia, police said today.
The 49-year-old man, who was not immediately identified, was accused of conspiring to bomb the Israeli embassy in Canberra and the consulate in Sydney. 
Police spokesman Ben McDevitt said the arrest followed a series of raids on several homes across Australia in the wake of the Oct. 12 bombings in Bali, which killed more than 180 people, including up to 90 Australians.
McDevitt said the arrest is not connected to the Bali bombings.
Australian media had already interviewed the suspect after his home in Perth was raided last month. They said he was an English-born man who had converted to Islam 10 years ago and spoke fluent Indonesian. Post Wire Services






   

 

November 17, 2002 



 Islamic schism tears Malaysia;
Fundamentalist Muslim party gains ground

 
Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia --- The head of Malaysia's opposition Islamic party, Abdul Hadi Awang, wants to see people stoned to death for committing adultery and their hands amputated for stealing.
At least, that is the side of him the government-controlled media in Malaysia likes to accentuate.
This Southeast Asian nation, which has a majority Muslim population, has long been known as a moderate, multiracial society with an investor-friendly business climate. But Abdul Hadi's fundamentalist Pan-Malayan Islamic Party, or PAS, which hopes to establish an Islamic state in Malaysia, has growing support and has emerged as the greatest challenge to the power of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Asia's longest-serving ruler.
Militants arrested
Because of PAS' popularity, Mahathir, who has emphasized rapid modernization in his 21-year rule, has been forced to respond by burnishing his own religious standing. The result, many observers here say, is a competition between the two sides, with each trying to prove itself more "Islamic" than the other. 
A U.S.-led war against Iraq, they say, will make it only harder for the moderates to hold their ground in this country of 23 million, where Muslim Malays make up 58 percent of the population and ethnic Chinese and Indians make up the rest.
"If they decide to go to war in Iraq, it will be more difficult for the middle path to hold their own," said Chandra Muzaffar, a political scientist who runs a think tank called International Movement for a Just World.
Mahathir was one of the first Muslim leaders to support the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Police have arrested more than 70 suspected Islamic militants, and Malaysia agreed last month to host a U.S.-proposed regional counterterrorism training center.
But Mahathir cannot afford to appear a U.S. lackey. He has criticized the United States for failing to address the root causes of terrorism and said the Republican victory in the midterm elections, coupled with the rise of Islamic parties in several countries, would increase the risk of confrontation between Islam and the West.
Islam was introduced to Southeast Asia by Arab traders in the 13th and 14th centuries. While Indonesia and Malaysia have majority Muslim populations, the diversity --- including Hindus, Buddhists and Christians --- has resulted in a more tolerant and pragmatic form of Islam. Political leaders have emphasized national unity over religion.
PAS' fundamentalist approach to religion is troubling to some but attractive to many as an Islamic revival spreads from rural areas into the cities and even into the Malay middle class. Beyond its religious appeal, its calls for a clean government run according to strict morals is a welcome message for those fed up with the alleged corruption and crony capitalism under Mahathir.
PAS holds power in two of Malaysia's 13 states, under-developed Kelantan and oil-rich Terengganu. Its greatest gains came after Mahathir sacked and jailed his popular deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998.
'We have no freedom'
Washington's war on terrorism, perceived by many as a war on Islam, has helped PAS, too.
"If the United States is harsh toward Iraq or Palestine, it will benefit us," said Kamarudin Jaffar, a PAS parliament member. "People will see us as the savior of oppressed people in Malaysia."
Since taking over Terengganu three years ago, PAS has tried to outlaw bikinis, require separate checkout lines for men and women at supermarkets and ban mingling of the sexes at concerts. The state has been unable to enforce these measures consistently, partly because some agencies, such as the police, are federal.
But the message is clear.
"We have no freedom to wear what we like," said 18-year-old Shaylyn Siehweewoon, an ethnic Chinese in Kuala Terengganu, the state's sleepy capital.
In July, the state assembly passed hudud, the Islamic criminal code, which includes stoning and amputation as punishments for certain crimes. PAS says those sanctions are meant more as deterrents and would unlikely ever be carried out. Its passage is merely symbolic anyway because implementation would require a change to Malaysia's constitution.
Yet it is part of Abdul Hadi's vision to run all aspects of government according to Islamic principles.
"We want to introduce Islam as a way of life," he said in an interview at his house in Rusila, a village just a few miles outside Kuala Terengganu.
Abdul Hadi, president of PAS as well as Terengganu's chief minister, studied in Saudi Arabia and Egypt before returning to Malaysia in the mid-1970s. He lives modestly in the house where he grew up, declining the palace provided by the state.
Asked why non-Muslims would want to live in an Islamic state, Abdul Hadi said: "If they can accept a system that comes from the West . . . why can't they give a chance to Islam to rule the country? Islam brings justice to Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Clampdown on party
Steven Gan, editor of Malaysiakini.com, the country's only independent news outlet, says despite some of its extreme positions, PAS is not a militant organization and is willing to negotiate.
"They are committed to the democratic role and are seeking change through the ballot box," Gan said. "It's important we don't push PAS into a corner so they have no other choice than to use extra-parliamentary means to achieve their goals. To combat terrorism, you need to democratize Muslim countries."
But Mahathir's strategy has been to isolate rather than engage. He has restricted the party's newspaper, reducing publication from twice weekly to twice monthly. He diverted Terengganu's royalty payments from the state-owned oil company, causing a 70 percent drop in the state's budget. He just ordered a freeze of funding for 500 religious schools because he said they are anti-government.
Yet he has not been able to ignore PAS' criticism that Mahathir and his ruling party are un-Islamic, so last year he declared that Malaysia is already an Islamic state. The statement alarmed Malaysia's non-Muslims.
The opposition Democratic Action Party, which is led by ethnic Chinese, launched a campaign called "No to 929," a reference to the date, Sept. 29, when Mahathir made the comment. But the statement did have its intended effect on PAS.
"PAS has to become more fundamentalist, more Islamic, to secure their seats," said S. Arutchelvan, a political organizer with Suaram, a human rights group.
In fact, Islam is Malaysia's official religion, according to the country's constitution, which also guarantees freedom of religion. Historically, adherence to religious rituals was loose.
Now the heightened social pressure to appear "Islamic" has resulted in stricter enforcement of religious matters. Those caught eating in restaurants during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month when believers are supposed to fast during daylight hours, are fined.
Perhaps the best barometer of religious fervor in Malaysia is women's fashion. Twenty years ago, few women wore a tudung, or headscarf. But the Islamic revival, sparked partly by the Iranian revolution and partly as a response to globalization and rapid development, has changed that.
Now, not only is the tudung the norm, even in hyper-modern Kuala Lumpur, so is the loose fitting tunic and long skirt favored by conservatives. A few women even don gloves and socks in this tropical country, and headscarves can be seen on girls as young as 3.
At the Astaka shopping center here recently, Aida Ghazali was just about the only female clerk without a headscarf. Although PAS had made the tudung a requirement for store workers, Ghazali resists.
"I'm not interested in it," said Ghazali, 23. "It's not required by Islam. It's up to the individual."
She says she practices other aspects of the religion but doesn't like what PAS has done politically and economically in the state.
"The state is going more and more backwards," she said. "There's no development. PAS focuses only on religion and isn't concerned with anything else."
Tapping grass roots
Still, PAS has its loyal supporters. Every Friday, thousands of them head to the mosque in Rusila, near Abdul Hadi's house, and listen to him speak for nearly two hours.
They spill out into the parking lot, sitting on newspapers or anywhere they can find some shade. For about 25 years, it has been his Friday ritual.
Since having its newspaper severely curtailed, PAS has turned to alternative forms of media to spread its message. At a recent PAS rally in Kuala Lumpur, thousands gathered to listen to speakers rail against loose Western morals and to browse at stalls where vendors sold sweet dates from Tunisia and Oman and recordings featuring speeches by the PAS leadership.
"Islam has everything we need to be a modern nation," said 25-year-old Masrizal Hadri, a teacher at a religious school attending the rally.






  


November 17, 2002, Sunday  



 PRAYERS IN A PARADISE LOST

 
In Bali a couple of days ago, thousands of people turned out for an extraordinary cleansing ceremony called the Pemarisudha Karipubhaya to mark the nearly 200 deaths in the terror bombing there Oct. 12. The blast at two nightclubs injured hundreds in what had until then been a top destination for honeymooners and hikers. Paradise.
The world trembled after the Bali blast, wondering who and where would be next. But in Bali, the Hindu center of Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation on Earth, the religious consulted the ancient texts and knew exactly what to do. 
And so on Friday, they gathered in white sarongs and T-shirts and headbands. They chanted and prayed to try to cast out evil spirits and bring back peace - and the tourism dollars upon which 90% of them rely.
Several days before, the religious leaders, following the ancient directives, measured the site and marked the spots where everything was to take place. They erected a bamboo fence around the site and a kind of gazebo for the priests. Then there was a gathering of animals to be sacrificed on behalf of us fallible but arrogant humans - a buffalo, a deer, a monkey, a pig, a duck and a swan were among them.
As poet Nikki Giovanni wrote so many years ago, "Our ancient rituals demand that we give what we hope to receive."
Here in New York, of course, we are struggling constantly, it seems, to find the proper way to mark the calamities we've experienced in recent years. Flight 800, crashing in the Atlantic off Long Island. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Flight 587 a month later in Queens en route to the Dominican Republic. On Fire Island last year, not many weeks after Sept. 11, neighbors and friends gathered to remember one young man. Some of his mates from childhood, West Point and Wall Street stripped down to their skivvies and had one last swim in his honor. From that autumn swim to paintings on urban walls to teddy bears and candles and bouquets of flowers left at our own private ground zeros, we're making it up as we go .
The Pemarisudha Karipubhaya dates back centuries, we're told. It's nearly as ancient as the hideous human behavior - mass murder - that gave rise to it in the first place.
How sad. How predictable. We as a human race have had too much experience with mass death. Even now, we are preparing for more loss of life, in Iraq and wherever Osama Bin Laden next sets his sights.
While we'll continue to make up our rituals as we go along - the AIDS quilt with 44,000 lovingly crafted panels; the U.S. Holocaust Museum reminding us of the millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, mentally and physically handicapped and others deemed by the Nazis as "life unworthy of life" - we won't be so different from the Balinese who gathered Friday to, as one organizer put it, "ask for the forgiveness of God to rebalance the imbalances" in our lives.
I can hear Hemingway saying it now: "Isn't it pretty to think so?"
E-mail: eshipp2002@hotmail.com







  



November 17, 2002 Sunday  




 Bridging the Transatlantic Gap

 
 Freed from the immediate burdens and dangers of a 45-year Cold War centered on its terrain and its allegiances, Europe is today a status quo power that resists and resents being hurried into a turbulent new era by the United States, Russia, Turkey, Israel and other global agents of radical change. 
 It is not that the Europeans want to stop the world and get off, as some U.S. officials and commentators suggest. The current period of transatlantic dissonance should be a temporary and tactical pause rather than a permanent cultural shift. The Bush administration can best pursue its goals at this week's NATO summit in Prague by treating Europe as malleable and a still-significant security partner for the future.  
 The Europeans need to come to Prague recognizing that their plea to the Bush White House to deal with the world "as it is" ignores how rapidly and dramatically the world is changing around them. Equivocation and tinkering -- the heart and soul of Europe's current global diplomacy -- is rapidly falling behind history's ever-accelerating curve. 
 Today's true foreign policy realists try to identify, cope with and influence the currents of radical change that fuel Islamic extremism, renewed political upheaval in the Middle East and the global wars on and by terrorism. Investing effort and treasure to shore up a disappearing world is a self-defeating endeavor. 
 Diverging attitudes over what is sustainable and what is doomed are rapidly becoming divisive factors in transatlantic relations. An intellectual investment in the status quo ties France, Germany and others to the Arab governments of the Middle East at least as much as commerce and oil do. Cataclysmic change in the Middle East is a notion that falls somewhere between inevitable and desirable for the Bush White House. It is anathema to Europe's leaders and intellectuals. 
 One small but telling example of how nations are arranging themselves along history's moving line came at the end of the tragic hostage siege by Chechen guerrillas in a Moscow theater last month. A Russian deputy foreign minister called in the capital's Arab ambassadors and pointedly noted that none of them had offered to help during the siege. Up to that point, the official added, Arab countries had not even expressed sympathy to the Kremlin, which in Soviet days provided many of them with economic aid and weapons. 
 Silence and inaction in such circumstances are acquiescence to terror, the Russians were saying. They implicitly echoed George W. Bush's declaration in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001: "with us or against us." Russia and the United States today share a sense of urgency and a willingness to act militarily against terror networks. Europe demonstrates neither convincingly. 
 European leaders and intellectuals still express sympathy for the aims of Bush's war on terrorism. But they increasingly criticize its tactics and direction for, among other things, allegedly undermining the existing authoritarian regimes of the Arab world. 
 "America is simply expanding Israel's preemptive assassination policy to a global level and creating an unending new sea of recruits for the terrorists," a French friend asserted to me recently in a representative comment. "Bush acts as if America's only real allies are Israel and Russia, while Europe is an obstacle." 
 The Prague summit will underline the superficiality of that assessment -- if Europe and the United States can effectively shift the focus of their security cooperation away from the Old Continent, which is no longer platform and prize in a superpower struggle, toward the imploding zone of wars within Islam stretching from the Middle East to Indonesia. 
 Prague is a fitting apogee for the golden age of NATO. The summit will consecrate the expansion of the alliance into the Balkans and the Baltics, which arrives unopposed and almost unnoticed by Russia. It will showcase the remarkable talents of NATO's civilian boss, Secretary General George Robertson, and its top military commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston. It will most importantly crown five decades of U.S.-European courage and common values that overcame the Soviet threat. 
 But resting on those laurels would amount to a death sentence for the alliance. Giant tasks -- such as anchoring Turkey's increasingly democratic society more firmly in the West -- will be resolved only if present American-European differences are overcome and submerged into a bold new transatlantic program for global security. 
 Americans can learn from and let their readiness for action be tempered by Europe's deep sense of history. But the Europeans cannot go on shunning the reality that we all stand on the cusp of cataclysmic change around the world. That change must be anticipated and channeled, not ignored. 







   
 

November 16, 2002 Saturday  
  



 Is There an Audience for Public Diplomacy? 

 
Public diplomacy the current and gentler term for international propaganda -- has lately been the subject of task force reports and articles in Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs, and both houses of Congress will be considering relevant legislation early in their next session. One of the first applications of the new thinking on public diplomacy is State Department mini-documentaries about the lives of Muslim Americans, currently broadcast as commercials on Indonesian television. The State Department is trying to emphasize American values and their wide applicability, as well as the accomplishments of Americans.
     I have been doing international broadcasting audience research for 25 years, and I am not aware of any persons huddled by their radios to hear about the achievements and values of the United States or any other country.  
 People do listen to foreign broadcasts if they are in countries where information is controlled by the government. They listen to the stations that best provide a credible substitute for the news they are not getting from their domestic media. 
During most of the postwar years, Radio Moscow was the behemoth of international radio. Yet its audience was normally a small fraction of that of the major Western stations. This is because Radio Moscow transmitted propaganda. 
Britain spent much less than the Soviet Union on international broadcasting and still spends less than the United States. But its BBC World Service has the largest audience and most prestige of any international radio station. This is largely because the BBC World Service has with rare exceptions remained independent of British government control.
The American radio stations -- Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia -- have generally adhered to their news missions and have earned good reputations among their audiences. There is, nonetheless, a persistent ambiguity to American international broadcasting. The BBC is prohibited from broadcasting editorials; V.O.A., by contrast, is officially required to broadcast United States government editorials.
Almost all of the recent reports, articles, bills and speeches about public diplomacy put international broadcasting in the same basket as public diplomacy. Public diplomacy, however, manages information to put the United States and its policies in the best light. In my experience, this is exactly the type of pro-government reporting that audiences seek to escape by tuning to foreign broadcasts. 
American decision-makers may wonder why on earth they should provide money to a radio or television station that merely tells the truth. For the answer, let us consider the Arab target audience. Arabs are largely opposed to American policies toward Israel and Palestine and to any possible American invasion of Iraq. No amount of spin will make a dent in the public opinion of the Arab world. 
However, Arabs will listen to a radio station or watch a television channel that provides news that is more comprehensive and reliable than what they get from their domestic media. Well informed, they can make up their own minds about current events. They will be grateful to the United States for providing such a service. 
The independent journalism of such an American station would be an example of how democracy works. Arab audiences will hear debate in Congress, among pundits and in assembly halls. Sometimes it will be raucous, but that's part of its attraction. They may wish for such open differences of opinion in their own countries. 
Sooner or later they will hear a viewpoint, perhaps from a member of Congress, perhaps from an American newspaper editorial, that is not so far from their own. They will understand that such an opinion may not be the Bush administration's foreign policy, but it is American, and something that will help them relate to America. Then audiences in the Arab world and elsewhere may understand America a bit more and dislike it a bit less. All told, it might be enough to make a difference. 







  



November 16, 2002 Saturday  




 Trying to Become Whole on Bali Rubble; 
Mourners Gather at Site of Bombings for Traditional Healing Ceremony

 
Under a piercing sun, a priest began to chant. Soon it was a chorus of sacred voices rising in Sanskrit, Javanese and Balinese, appealing to God to cleanse the soil and air of negative spirits. 
 The chanting grew louder and louder, carried on a gentle, incense-laced breeze. It enveloped a place that slightly more than a month ago was filled with revelers and surfers, dancing and drinking on a Saturday night until a pair of bombs exploded.  
 Today, amid the remaining wreckage and on a nearby fine-grained beach, thousands of Balinese, as well as mourners from Australia, the United States, Britain, Japan and a host of other countries, gathered for a purification ceremony, Indonesia's first real marking of the Oct. 12 explosions that claimed almost 200 lives here. 
 White-garbed Balinese Hindu priests sprinkled holy water from their villages into the crater left by the explosion outside the Sari Club, which remains surrounded by mounds of rubble laced with twisted, charred metal. Victims' relatives put framed pictures and flowers on a low fence around the site. 
 The ceremony included the ritual sacrifices of animals to restore balance between the earth and the sea. Offered to the heavens and the earth were 80 creatures, as prescribed by the religious texts of Bali's Hindu majority, including a water buffalo, a cow, a goat, a dog, a goose, a black duck and a white duck, a black chicken and a white chicken. A young priest gulped the blood of a freshly killed piglet while another holy man sprinkled him with sacred water. 
 Westerners proffered mementoes of their loved ones, including a surfboard and a bottle of local Anker beer. Priests purified these with holy water as well. 
 The rituals encapsulated the paradox that Bali has become -- a mystically Eastern place whose storied beaches have become a draw for Western tourists. 
Today's ceremony, on a national day of prayer, provided a way to express the nation's grief for the dead, who, though mostly Australian, came from 18 countries. It also served to assert the country's will to heal and move on. 
 "The world feels Bali's tears and will pray for Bali," said Gov. Dewa Baratha, who expressed conviction that this island of 3 million and its vital tourist industry will recover. His remarks underscored how the ceremony was also meant to restore Bali's image as Indonesia's main tourist destination and a significant generator of foreign revenue. 
 Famed for its misty jungle hills and rituals blending Hindu, Buddhist, Javanese and Balinese animist traditions, Bali was a place long thought immune to the kind of terrorism and political violence that have afflicted the rest of the region. Bali was once an enclave where tourists could indulge in esoteric Eastern healing and then rent the latest American videocassette, but the explosions have shattered the idyll. Police blame the attacks on Indonesian Islamic militants with support from extremists in other countries. 
 So, today, Muslims joined with Hindus, and Westerners with Indonesians, in an effort to heal. Balinese are seeking to salve not only the physical wounds, but also a religious rift that local residents have warned could produce a Hindu backlash against Muslims on the island. Bali is a Hindu enclave in the world's largest Muslim country. 
 Priests, who came from throughout the island, meditated, tossed marigold petals and made offerings of rice and fruit to the spirits of the air and soil. Male actors in masks and red and gold sarongs recounted traditional Balinese stories about truth triumphing over evil. Balinese men played bronze chimes and beat on drums. Girls in saffron and orange sarongs danced. 
 On nearby Kuta Beach, near a pair of Hindu temples and several luxury hotels, animals were offered to the ocean to restore balance between the earth and the sea. According to Balinese Hindu tradition, the animals will be reincarnated into a better life. 
The island's religious tradition extended to the bombing case's chief investigator, Maj. Gen. I Made Pastika, who happens to be from Bali. It was only after Pastika prayed for divine guidance at the Balinese Hindus' largest temple, Besakih, two Saturdays ago that his investigators got the big break -- uncovering the serial number on the chassis of the van that carried the bomb -- that led to the arrest of their first suspect. 
"Spiritual support is very important," said Pastika, who traded in his civilian safari suit today for a traditional yellow and purple sarong and a cream-colored jacket. 
 For family and friends from far away, today's rites provided comfort and meaning. 
 Carla Knighton of Adelaide, Australia, and her two sisters "had a chance to walk in our mother's footsteps." Their mother, Tracy Thomas, a mine site worker who had come to Bali for "a little R&R," was killed in the blast. The trip "lets us feel what she felt when she was here. She loved Bali. It's a beautiful thing." 
Smaller ceremonies were being conducted today and Saturday at the site of the World Trade Center attacks in New York and in San Francisco, London, Sydney and Toronto. 
Correspondent Alan Sipress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report. 







  



November 15, 2002 Friday  




 Indonesian Leaders Stage Show of Unity Against Terrorism

 
In a country where the ruling party is riven by infighting, where the police vie -- at times violently -- with the military, where the president and vice president barely speak to one another, something rare happened today. 
 On the eve of a national day of mourning for the nearly 200 victims of last month's bomb blasts here, the government got on message. 
 Some of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's closest associates, including her husband, schmoozed and lobbied foreign journalists, flown in on a special military flight from Jakarta, to convince them that Indonesia has fully joined the international war on terrorism. The government is sincere, they said, about stopping a "radical minority" from "hijacking the peaceful majority of Muslims" in this country of 220 million.  
The effort, including a subsequent news conference, marked a clear break with the denials and mixed signals from the government over the past year about the extent of the terrorist threat in the country and Jakarta's will to combat it. 
 The public relations blitz was choreographed to a degree the White House would recognize. On the flight to Bali, reporters were invited, singly or in pairs, to the center cabin, where they cloistered with the president's husband and key political strategist, Tawfiq Kiemas. Upon landing, the entourage was taken to a hotel on Bali's famous Kuta Beach. Reporters again were summoned, individually, to Kiemas's third-floor suite with a view of the waves to make sure the message was hitting home. 
 The media outing came as the government gathered in preparation for a major ceremony here Friday that is meant to cleanse the negative spirits that many Indonesians believe linger after the massive bombing on Oct. 12 in the heart of Bali's nightclub district. 
 Kiemas opened this evening's news conference with praise for Maj. Gen. I Made Pastika, who is leading the international investigation into the blasts and has made progress in the past week with the arrest of a key suspect and the identification of several others. Pastika then gave a color, computerized presentation detailing how investigators collected evidence to build their case "from the ground up" and cooperated with international forensic teams in a professional and open manner.  At the news conference, 20 officials, some in batik shirts, others in polo shirts, were arrayed before reporters and television cameras. A moderate Muslim leader, Alwi Shihab, chairman of the Muslim-based National Awakening Party, was there to lend support. 
 "This is almost like a united front," said a smiling Rizal Mallarangeng, an informal adviser to Megawati and Kiemas, after the news conference. "We realized that one of our weaknesses was that we needed to explain ourselves more. This is only a first attempt. This is an effort to convince the world that we are really doing this as best as we can." 
Foreign governments have been skeptical about Megawati's commitment to tackling Islamic militancy in the world's most populous Muslim country. And now, with the Bali bombing, foreign investors have been spooked, casting new doubt on Indonesia's ability to restore its economy after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. 
 The display of unity also was aimed at a domestic audience. Megawati's approval ratings have been slipping. The president, who has said very little publicly since last month's attack, has been criticized variously for failing to reach out to moderate Muslims and for kowtowing to U.S. pressure to go after home-grown militants. 
 By way of explanation, Kiemas, the man who knows Megawati best, said she "is moving step by step in her own way. If she is not careful, she could unleash some radical forces." He said that if the president speaks out and is misinterpreted, it could backfire and wind up "radicalizing moderate Muslims." 
 Tonight, for the first time, government officials made a concerted effort to show they know where they stand. 
 "We will never allow our country to be the second front of the Taliban," said Laksamana Sukardi, the minister of state-owned enterprises and Megawati's close friend and adviser. 
 His words were echoed by other officials. 
 One journalist wanted to know the government's response to Australian outrage over images, televised Wednesday, of Indonesian police laughing and joking with the chief suspect in custody, an Indonesian motorcycle mechanic named Amrozi. 
"Even if he is a terrorist, he must be treated as a human being," Pastika said. "We, of course, are concerned about the victims and their families. But especially now, Amrozi is a Muslim and he is fasting, so we have to respect his customs. If the Indonesian people see that Amrozi was not treated as a human being, there would be a big reaction." 
 Sukardi appealed to foreign countries not to issue travel warnings in the wake of the Bali blasts, arguing that to do so would be to "reward" the terrorists "seeking to undermine this legitimate government." He rattled off positive economic factors -- a stable rupiah, tamed inflation, restructured debt -- that he hoped would serve as an antidote to worried investors. He hammered at the theme of Indonesia as a moderate Muslim nation. "We are a country that has been terrorized," he said. "We are far from a terrorist country." 






   

 

November 14, 2002 Thursday 



 CRISIS DEVELOPMENTS

 
Bali suspect 'delighted' with blast
Confessed Bali bomber Amrozi, laughing and joking as Indonesia's top cop questioned him about his role in the Oct. 12 attack, said Wednesday he was "delighted" with the results of the blast.
In an odd show staged for the media, reporters were invited to watch through the windows of the room as Indonesia Police Chief Dai Bachtiar conducted the interrogation. Amrozi, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, waved and smiled for the cameras. 
The public interrogation was apparently designed to demonstrate to skeptical Indonesians that Amrozi has been acting under his own free will in confessing that he took part in the bombing to further the agenda of extremist Muslims. The blast killed 191 people.
Sea port protection bill close to passage
Congress was poised late Wednesday to pass a bill establishing a framework for protecting the nation's vulnerable deep sea ports. The bill gives the Bush administration six months to prepare a plan for financing the program initially estimated to cost $4 billion over six years. The bill gives the Coast Guard broad new responsibilities and authorities to identify potentially dangerous ships, take the lead in a maritime intelligence network and develop maritime security plans.
Smallpox workers to get legal protection
Congress is set to give special legal protection for health care workers who will be administering smallpox vaccines. Under a new provision in the homeland security bill, people or facilities that deliver the dangerous but highly effective inoculations would not face personal liability from lawsuits by people injured or killed by the vaccine. Instead, the federal government would defend any suit and pay any damages.
Army bioterror unit doubles in size
The Army has more than doubled the size of its oldest active chemical and biological operations unit over the last year. The Technical Escort Unit, with about 200 members, is headquartered at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and has companies in Virginia, Arkansas and Utah. Their duties range from escorting the movement of hazardous material --- the initial assignment when the unit was created in 1943 --- to rapid sampling, decontamination and disposal. They donned protective suits and ran through three scenarios this week at the Pentagon.
85 families assisted by federal 9/11 fund
The federal September Eleventh Victim Compensation Fund has offered 85 awards to the families of people who died in last year's terrorist attacks, with an average payment of about $1.5 million.
--- From staff writers George Edmonson and Larry Lipman and news services.




13


  



November 14, 2002 Thursday  




 New Suspects Named in Bali Bombings; 
Indonesian Police Probe Family Ties

 
Indonesian authorities named four new suspects today in their investigation of last month's bombing attack in Bali as investigators focused on links to regional terrorism within the Indonesian family of the prime suspect in the blasts, who is now in custody, and three of his brothers, who are at large. 
National Police Chief Da'i Bachtiar said today "it is very possible" that an Islamic teacher named Mukhlas, who is an older brother of chief suspect Amrozi, may now be acting as operations chief of the regional militant Islamic network Jemaah Islamiah, and that Mukhlas is a key suspect in the Oct. 12 explosions, which killed almost 200 people, most of them foreign tourists. 
 Jemaah Islamiah has been headed by Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali. The change in leadership may have taken place because Hambali, the region's most-wanted terror suspect, left for Afghanistan, Bachtiar said. Intelligence officials say Hambali is the main link between Jemaah Islamiah and al Qaeda.  
 Beginning with last week's arrest of Amrozi, a 40-year-old motorcycle mechanic and the alleged field commander in the Bali operation, police have made steady progress in unraveling the bombing plot and identifying suspects in the worst act of terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001. 
Today Bachtiar interrogated Amrozi in a glass-enclosed room, allowing reporters to see, though not hear, their discussion. After the hour-long interrogation, Bachtiar told reporters that Amrozi was in good condition, adding that he was fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.  
 Mukhlas and Amrozi have long-standing ties to radical Muslim cleric Abubakar Baasyir, with the older brother graduating in the early 1980s from an Islamic boarding school in central Java founded by Baasyir and becoming an Arabic language teacher there. 
 When Baasyir fled to Malaysia in 1985 to avoid a crackdown on Islamic militants by then-President Suharto, Mukhlas joined him in exile, according to acquaintances from the school. He lived intermittently with Baasyir in Malaysia over the next 11 years, according to teachers who knew him in central Java. Mukhlas is still in Malaysia, according to another brother, Mohammed H. Khozin, who founded an Islamic boarding school in East Java similar to Baasyir's. 
 Singaporean authorities say they believe Mukhlas is the regional chief for the Malaysian wing of Jemaah Islamiah, which includes Singapore. Officials there said he was involved in a failed plot to blow up the pipelines that supply Malaysian water to Singapore. He also ran an Islamic school in Johor, in the southern Malaysian peninsula, they said. Mukhlas, they said in September, was wanted by Malaysian authorities and had gone into hiding. 
 Amrozi spent many years traveling between Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as in other Southeast Asian countries. He first visited Malaysia in 1985, police said, and worked there in construction. In the early 1990s, he studied Islam under his brother and Baasyir in Malaysia, Bachtiar said. 
 It was then that Amrozi began to believe in the need to defend Islam from kedholiman, an Arabic word meaning threat to Islam, Bachtiar added. Amrozi began to idolize Mukhlas, Baasyir and a third cleric, Jafar Umar Thalib, the leader of an Islamic militia, Laskar Jihad, whom Indonesian police arrested last spring on charges of inciting hatred. 
According to Indonesian investigators, both Mukhlas and Amrozi spent time in Afghanistan.  
National police spokesman Ahmad Basyir Barmawi told the Associated Press that teams of investigators have been sent to Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia to search for evidence in the Bali blasts and uncover the terrorists' regional network. 
In his interrogation today, Amrozi looked fresh and relaxed, occasionally laughing, as he spoke to Bachtiar. 
 Amrozi told Bachtiar that a man named Imam Samudra asked him to buy the chemicals to make the powerful bomb that destroyed the Sari Club in Bali's famed Kuta district as well as the Mitsubishi L-300 van used to carry the bomb.  
 Samudra, also known as Hudama, is one of four new suspects in the Bali attack named by police today. Authorities had already been searching for him because of his alleged involvement in a series of church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000, including one on the island of Batam near Singapore.  
Baasyir is under arrest for suspected involvement in the same church blasts. 
 The three other suspects named today were identified only as Umar, Idris and another Umar, which is in keeping with the Indonesian tradition of using only one name. Complicating this case is the fact that most of the suspects also have aliases. 
 Amrozi said that he, Samudra, Idris and another man, named Martin, met more than once in Solo, in central Java, to discuss the bomb plan, according to Bachtiar's account. The three others promised to give Amrozi money to buy the materials for making the bomb. Amrozi told police that Idris gave him the equivalent of more than $ 5,000 in U.S., Singaporean and Malaysian currency. 
 Amrozi told Bachtiar that his "friends" made the bomb. According to Bachtiar, the men, whom he did not name, met on Oct. 6 in Denpasar, the capital of Bali. On that day, Amrozi visited one of the rooms rented by his friends and saw a Nokia 5110 cell phone with a cable linking it to the bomb, Bachtiar said. 
 Amrozi, who was raised in a remote farming village, Tenggulun, in East Java, has 12 brothers and sisters. Besides Mukhlas, two other brothers, Ali Imron and Ali Fauzi, are wanted by police in connection with the bombings. They are both teachers at Al Islam, the Islamic school in Tenggulun founded by their brother Khozin. 
 Bachtiar also played a tape of apology by Amrozi. "I apologize to my parents, brothers and sisters and other relatives over the incident that has caused so much trouble," he said. "Those involved were me and my younger brother Ali Imron." 
 According to Bachtiar, Amrozi heard about the bombings in Bali on the radio at 7 a.m. on Oct. 13. He was "very excited" to hear that "his bomb [attack] worked," Bachtiar said. Then Amrozi laughed. When his wife asked him why he was laughing, Bachtiar said, he could not explain why. 
 Sipress reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 






  


November 13, 2002, Wednesday  



 OSAMA'S NEW TERROR TAPE Experts say voice is likely Bin Laden

 
A chilling new Osama Bin Laden tape aired yesterday threatening a fresh wave of terror strikes on the West and mentioning recent attacks in Bali and Moscow - the clearest evidence yet the Al Qaeda kingpin is probably alive.
The world's most wanted terrorist - if it is Bin Laden's voice - vowed more attacks on the West just as the Bush administration is gearing up for war with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
"It is time we get even," the voice says, according to a U.S. government translation. "You will be killed just as you kill, and will be bombed just as you bomb. And expect more that will further distress you." 
U.S. intelligence officials said they were trying to authenticate the tape last night by comparing it to known recordings of Bin Laden.
But they believe the voice on the tape, which was aired on the Al Jazeera satellite TV station, was Bin Laden's.
"It does sound like him," one official told the Daily News, calling it an ominous development.
"The very fact that a tape has been released could signal that future attacks may be coming," he added, declining to elaborate on why many U.S. analysts take that view.
"We're always concerned . . . that some secret code is being used to trigger attacks," said another official. "At a minimum, it's a useful device to rally the troops." Rash of reports A top U.S. law enforcement source said intelligence about potential attacks on the United States and its allies has increased sharply in the past week or 10 days, rising to the level before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Several European nations have issued alerts after receiving hints about possible new attacks.
Alerts for strikes against railways, oil and gas and other economic targets remain in effect, a spokesman for the Office of Homeland Security said.
The release of other Al Qaeda tapes has heralded new attacks worldwide.
A bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, last month came shortly after the release of a tape in which Bin Laden castigated Australia for securing independence for East Timor from Indonesia, a Muslim nation.
Unlike previous purported Bin Laden tapes, yesterday's address definitely was made recently.
The speaker on the tape mentions the Oct. 12 Bali bombings, the killing last month of a Marine in Kuwait, the bombing of a French oil tanker last month off Yemen and the hostage crisis at a Moscow theater, which ended three weeks ago.
The voice on the tape says those attacks were "only a reaction in response to what [President] Bush, the pharaoh of the age, is doing by killing our sons in Iraq and what America's ally Israel is doing, bombarding houses with women and old people and children inside with American planes."
Arabic-language analysts said the speaker uses the literary style favored by Bin Laden but talks more quickly and less softly than on known tapes of the Al Qaeda leader.
Bin Laden has not been seen since the first weeks after his Taliban allies were routed from power in Afghanistan last year.
U.S. officials repeatedly have said they do not know whether he is dead or alive but conceded the evidence is mounting that he survived the Afghan war.
Experts said it's no surprise that the Bin Laden tape is audio, not video.
A videotape could reveal whether Bin Laden is injured, has significantly altered his appearance or where he is hiding.
Some intelligence analysts believe Bin Laden is likely holed up in the lawless border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In September, Al Jazeera aired voice recordings of Bin Laden and top Al Qaeda operatives timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The CIA authenticated Bin Laden's voice then, but officials said the recordings probably weren't recent and could have been doctored.
The last certain evidence Bin Laden was alive was a videotape of him having dinner with some of his deputies, a meeting believed to have been filmed in Afghanistan on Nov. 9, 2001.
In another video, aired in late December, Bin Laden appeared gaunt and possibly wounded.Graphic:   Excerpts from a terrorist
On recent terror attacks in Bali, Kuwait, Jordan and Tunisia:
They were "undertaken by sons who are zealous in the defense of their religion."
The attacks were "only a reaction in response to what Bush, the pharaoh of the age, is doing by killing our sons in Iraq and what America's ally Israel is doing, bombarding houses with women and old people and children inside with American planes."
On the Mideast:
"If we defend our people in Palestine, the world is disturbed and allied against Muslims under the banner of combating terrorism."
On attacking civilians:
"If you don't like looking at your dead ... so remember our dead, including the children in Iraq."
To U.S. allies:
"What business do your governments have to ally themselves with the gang of criminality in the White House against Muslims? Don't your governments know that the White House gang is the biggest   serial killers in this age?"
On the Bush administration:
"Rumsfeld, the butcher of Vietnam, killed more than 2 million people, not to    mention those he wounded. Cheney and Powell killed and destroyed in Baghdad more than Hulegu of the Mongols."







  



November 12, 2002 Tuesday  




 New Arrest Made in Bali Blasts; 
Friend of Chief Suspect May Have Stored Explosives for Him

 
Indonesian police today detained a man they suspect of storing weapons and explosives for Amrozi, the chief suspect in the Oct.12 bombing of two Bali nightclubs. 
 After questioning Komarudin, a friend of Amrozi's and a forest ranger in this East Java village, police here recovered two canisters, one of which contained five weapons, including two M-16s and one AK-47. Police suspect the weapons came from Ambon, capital of the Molucca Islands in eastern Indonesia that have been riven by tensions between Muslims and Catholics.  
 Officials would not reveal the contents of the second canister, but Bali police spokesman Yatim Suyatmo said it might contain an explosive device. 
 The police are making rapid advances in their investigation following the arrest last Tuesday of Amrozi and raids over the weekend at properties in Tenggulun, a village in the Lamongan district, and in Bali. Amrozi and Komarudin, like many Indonesians, use one name. 
 On Sunday night, police detained another villager, Tafsir, 38, who they said drove Amrozi in his Mitsubishi L-300 van to Bali before the two nearly simultaneous explosions, which killed almost 200 people, most of them foreign tourists. Police have traced the larger explosion, at the Sari Club, to the van owned by Amrozi.  
 Today, Maj. Gen. I Made Pastika, who heads the international police investigation, told reporters that Amrozi was a student of Abubakar Baasyir, a radical Muslim cleric who founded Pondok Pesantren Ngruki, an Islamic boarding school, in Solo in central Java in 1972. "Abubakar Baasyir is a major preacher who has many students," Pastika said at a news conference in Bali. "One of his students is Amrozi." 
Baasyir has been in police custody since Oct. 19 for his suspected involvement in a series of church bombings two years ago. 
 But Amrozi's brother, Mohammed H. Khozin, who founded the Al Islam boarding school here, said that Amrozi never studied at Baasyir's school and that Amrozi had merely attended lectures Baasyir has given at Al Islam.  
Baasyir, speaking from his bed at a police hospital, told the Reuters news agency today that he had been to the school in Amrozi's village twice but denied knowing Amrozi. 
 Baasyir, Pastika said, was a co-founder of the Jemaah Islamiah militant Muslim network in Malaysia. That is the clearest link Indonesian police have drawn between Baasyir and Jemaah Islamiah. Until now, police have described him as the network's spiritual leader.  
 But Pastika said police have not found any evidence that Baasyir ordered Amrozi to conduct the blast. "So there is a missing link between . . . Baasyir and Amrozi," he added. 
 Sunday and today, police went to the central Java cities of Solo and Yogyakarta and to Tasikmalaya in West Java looking for suspects, according to investigators. 







   
 

November 11, 2002 Monday  
  



 Our Role in Indonesia 

 
To the Editor:
Re "Indonesians Say They Suspect C.I.A. in Bali Blast" (news article, Nov. 7):
     It seems that United States foreign policy has managed to wreak enough havoc in Indonesia to make the idea that the C.I.A. was responsible for the terrorist attack in Bali seem plausible to many Indonesians.  
 One would hope that this would shock us into seriously rethinking the often callous manner in which we pursue our interests abroad. Instead, the Bush administration seems to think that a couple of vapid, glossy television commercials about Muslims in America will be enough to make Indonesians forget Sukarno, Suharto, half a million slaughtered "Communists" and decades of repression of Muslim political expression. 
If we want the world to take our "war on terror" seriously, we'll have to do far more to convince it that our own hands are clean.

CHRISTOPHER ALBIN-LACKEY
New York, Nov. 7, 2002






  


November 10, 2002, Sunday  



 SEVEN DAYS The Last Word On Last Week

 
BUSH WINS AGAIN
Even though voters kept hearing how terribly important Tuesday's midterm election would be, the majority didn't sense enough urgency to bother voting. The 39% who turned up at the polls offered no emphatic indication of where they'd like the country to go. Nevertheless, Republicans defied historic trends by gaining seats in the House and retaking the Senate. Some interpreted the vote as a mandate for President Bush's agenda, especially since Bush threw himself into dozens of campaigns, giving "national meaning to local elections," as one pundit put it. Democrats didn't hesitate to engage in ritual self-flagellation, even though its senators still represent more than half the country. "It would be foolish to believe the public is telling us something about tax cuts or government regulation or the judiciary," said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. Indeed, if there was any resounding message of the election, it may be that the country is as closely divided and as politically apprehensive as ever. 
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
In a test of civic decency, the Chicago Sun-Times placed 20 ostensibly "lost" wallets around the city - in a bathroom, restaurants, a park, a library, a train, a mall, a church, a parking garage and in the offices of its competitor, the Chicago Tribune - and then waited to see what would happen. Depending on how you look at it, you could say that the honesty glass in Chicago is half-full or half-empty. In four weeks, 11 wallets were returned, but one of those didn't have the $20 left inside. Chicagoans were nowhere near as scrupulous as the good people of Oslo, Norway; Odense, Denmark; Moncton, Canada, and Ribeirao Preto, Brazil, where all the "lost" wallets were dutifully returned, cash included. New Yorkers can be grateful they haven't had to take this test.
PUBLIC RELATIONS
More indications of U.S. image problems: Many of Indonesia's 180 million Muslims believe the Central Intelligence Agency, and not Al Qaeda, is responsible for the recent bombing of a Bali nightclub in which more than 180 people were killed.
HARVEY'S PATTER
Harvey Pitt was that guy on the dance floor who never realized he had no rhythm. With his embattled tenure as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission marked by a series of embarrassingly clumsy missteps, it seemed fitting that he also made a completely graceless exit. Just minutes after the polls closed Tuesday, Pitt tendered his resignation. The music of corporate scandals plays on, though, and the President now must find somebody who will face it.
DIMINISHING RETURNS
The arithmetic didn't work out quite the way Tom Golisano expected in his third bid to be New York's governor. In 1998, having doubled the $6 million spent in his first run, he managed to double his share of the votes, to 8% from 4%. He must have figured that if he spent 10 times as much this time around - more than $60 million of his own money - his percentage of the vote would go up accordingly. In fact, it did go up - but only to about 14%. At that rate, he'd have to spend some $214 million to win a majority of the votes in 2008. "You don't need to be a genius to be a billionaire," said Gov. Pataki's spokesman, Michael McKeon. "Tom Golisano proved that."
FLAG WAVING
The Confederacy isn't dead yet, at least in Georgia, where Gov. Roy Barnes paid a high price for reducing the prominence of the Confederate battle cross on the state flag. A lot of white voters took offense, and his Republican challenger, Sonny Perdue, took notice, promising to undo Barnes' design changes. It apparently worked. Trouncing Barnes among rural white voters, Perdue became the state's first GOP governor in 130 years.
FISH TO FRY
John Routh, 43, was pulling down $80,000 a year as Billy the Marlin, the mascot of the Florida Marlins - a part-time job he held for 10 seasons. The team had him filleted - er, fired - but not, they said, because he was paid more than twice as much as local public school teachers or law enforcement officers. The team just wanted to rebuild.
SAY WHAT?
"I can't throw up on my own and Ozzy can't get drunk on his own." Sharon Osbourne, telling Barbara Walters that she has had enough of MTV following her family around.    "She came, she stole, she left. End of story." Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Ann Rundle, summing up the case against Winona Ryder, convicted of shoplifting.
"People have no morals, I swear to God. The things that people do for ratings. It's unforgivable. The world is collapsing."   Madonna, after ABC's "Good Morning America" aired footage of a woman breast-feeding her 8-year-old son.







   
 

November 10, 2002 Sunday  
  



 November 3-9: INTERNATIONAL; 
ARREST IN BALI

 
     The attack on a Bali disco nearly a month ago was intended to kill American tourists as a revenge for "what Americans have done to Muslims," according to an account given by a suspect and made public by the chief Indonesian investigator.  
The suspect, Amrozi, now under arrest, is believed to be one of a group of about 10 people linked to a radical Islamic organization, Jemaah Islamiyah, that ordered the attack. More than 180 people were killed in the bomb blast that engulfed the Sari Club on Oct. 12. The Indonesian and Australian police who are jointly running the investigation into the terrorist attack said they believed they now have sufficient information to make further arrests.   Jane Perlez







   
 

November 9, 2002 Saturday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: INDONESIA; 
Suspect Tells Police That Target of Bali Bombing Was Americans, Not Australians

 
A suspect in the terrorist attack on a Bali disco told his interrogators that the group that carried out the blast intended to attack Americans and regretted that instead they killed many more Australians, the head of the investigation said today.
     A senior Western diplomat said today that all indicators from the investigation of the bombing, which killed 180 people, including 87 Australians and 7 Americans, were "pointing in the direction" of the operational leader for Al Qaeda in southeast Asia being the mastermind of the blast. 
 The man, an Indonesian known as Hambali, is the object of a manhunt all over southeastern Asia.
Australian and Indonesian police who are working together to investigate the bombing reported good progress in two days of interrogation of the Indonesian suspect, Amrozi, arrested mid-week, who is linked to a radical Islamic group. They said they expected to make further arrests soon in Indonesia and abroad in connection with the blast, which that ripped apart a crowded Saturday night bar and dance floor filled with tourists on Oct. 12. 
According to the account of Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika, the chief Indonesian investigator, Mr. Amrozi told his interrogators: "They wanted to kill as many Americans as possible. They hate Americans. They tried to find where the Americans are gathering."
They believed that Bali was a haunt of Americans, and afterward were "not happy because Australians were killed in big numbers," General Pastika said. The attackers sought revenge for "what Americans have done to Muslims," General Pastika said.
If what Mr. Amrozi said is true, the toll showed the attackers' ignorance of Western travel patterns. Because of its proximity, Bali has been a traditional getaway resort for Australian surfers and backpackers for the last two decades, but it has been far less popular with Americans, mainly because of distance.
The head of the Australian Federal Police, Mick Keelty, said here today that the questioning of Mr. Amrozi should lead to further arrests. "We want to maximize the opportunity to make arrests" of others "anywhere in the world," Mr. Keelty said.
A senior American official said today that the Indonesians, assisted by more than 100 Australian police investigators, were conducting a "very methodical, steady" investigation that was now "going to get really interesting."
It appeared that Indonesian intelligence had information about some possible suspects before the Bali bombing from wire taps and were able to act on what they knew only after the attack, two Western officials said.
Mr. Amrozi, in custody here in Bali, has told his Indonesian interrogators that he knows the two leaders of Jemaah Islamiyah, an extremist Islamic organization that the United States believes was behind the Bali attack, Indonesian officials said. One of its leaders, an elderly cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, is in custody in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta; the other is Hambali.
In an apparent effort to demonstrate their confidence in their investigation, the police have released details of Mr. Amrozi that paint him as just one of a network of Islamic radicals. The police knew the names of another 6 to 10 people involved in the attack, General Pastika said. 
The officials said Mr. Amrozi had confessed to taking part in a bomb blast at the Jakarta Stock Exhange that killed 15 people in 2000, an attack on the Philippine ambassador's house in Jakarta the same year and a bombing of the Philippine Consulate in North Sulawesi Province last month.
The arrest of Mr. Amrozi mid-week was based on his ownership of the Mitsubishi van that was packed with the bomb that blew up the club. Then, during his interrogation, Mr. Amrozi took officers to a room in a modern apartment house in Denpasar, Bali's capital, where the bomb was made, the police said. Neighbors said that Mr. Amrozi rented the room on Oct. 6, six days before the bombing, for about $25 a month, a fairly expensive rate here. Small groups of men would come to the apartment in the early morning hours, a neighbor said. Visitors to small tiled room today saw only a mattress on the floor, an empty water bottle and a plastic sack. 
The owner of a shop in the city of Surabaya where Mr. Amrozi said he bought explosives for the Bali bombing was arrested yesterday, the police said.
Biographical details that emerged from friends and family, appeared to show that Mr. Amrozi, who told his interrogators he was 40 years old, drifted through life until he went to Malaysia in the 1990's. He returned a committed Islamist who devoted his days to reading the Koran and espousing a more radical kind of Islam, according to Astuti, a former wife interviewed on Indonesian television today.
The principal of the Islamic school in East Java to which Mr. Amrozi came to pray described him as an "expert in fixing cars" and "fixing the antenna" of mobile phones. Muhammad Zakaria, the principal, who is a graduate of Mr. Bashir's Islamic school in central Java, said Mr. Amrozi was in Malaysia in the late 1990's. Others have said that Mr. Amrozi spent those years with Mr. Bashir, who lived in exile there, preaching radical Islam.
Mr. Bashir was a favorite speaker at the school, Al Islam, and had given the yearend speech this year and last, Mr. Zakaria said.
The spokesman for the Indonesian police investigation, Gen. Edward Aritanang, said today that Mr. Amrozi described going to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, to "look for work." But the general said the police were investigating the real purpose of his trips.







  



November 9, 2002 Saturday  




 Jailed Indonesian Suspect Details Links to Bombings; 
Man Said to Describe Bali Attacks as 'Revenge' on U.S.

 
An Indonesian man arrested this week in connection with the Oct. 12 bombings in Bali has told interrogators he knows several of Southeast Asia's most prominent terrorism suspects, and said he was involved in an August 2000 bombing at the Philippine ambassador's house in Jakarta, officials said today. 
 Amrozi, a 40-year-old East Javanese car repairman, told police that the Bali bombings, which destroyed two nightclubs and killed more than 180 people -- about half of them Australian -- were "revenge" for "what Americans have done to Muslims," according to Maj. Gen. I Made Pastika, a senior Indonesian police official who is the head of an international investigation into the attack. 
"They said they want to kill as many Americans" as possible, Pastika said, speaking to reporters at an anti-terrorism conference in Manila. "They hate Americans. They tried to find where the Americans are gathering. That is in Bali. But they were not that happy because Australians were killed in big numbers."  
A police spokesman said Amrozi -- who, like many Indonesians, uses one name -- also told investigators that he has met with Riduan Isamuddin, an Indonesian better known as Hambali. Intelligence officials describe Hambali as a leader of Jemaah Islamiah, a regional group of Islamic militants, and as al Qaeda's top operative in Southeast Asia. 
The police spokesman, Brig. Gen. Edward Aritonang, said Amrozi also told investigators that he had met with Abubakar Baasyir, Indonesia's most outspoken radical Islamic cleric, and an alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiah. Police arrested Baasyir last month in connection with a series of bombings on Christmas Eve 2000 in Indonesia and an alleged assassination attempt on President Megawati Sukarnoputri. 
Baasyir has denied involvement with any terrorist activities. Hambali is at large. 
Amrozi told investigators that he took part in a bombing at the Jakarta stock exchange in 2000 that killed 15 people, the Associated Press reported. He also said he was involved in the bombing of the Philippine consulate in the province of North Sulawesi on Oct. 12, the same day as the Bali blasts, officials told the AP.  
Amrozi told police, according to investigators, that he also knows Fathur Rohman Ghozi, an Indonesian who graduated from an Islamic boarding school founded by Baasyir. Indonesian authorities said Ghozi, who was arrested by Philippine authorities in January, is an explosives expert for Jemaah Islamiah. Ghozi has told interrogators in Manila that he was involved in a number of bomb plots, including a van explosion at the Philippine ambassador's home that killed two people. 
The information reportedly provided by Amrozi lends credence to the theory held by intelligence analysts in Southeast Asia that the Bali attack was the latest operation in the region conducted by al Qaeda with the help of Indonesians involved with Jemaah Islamiah. 
Indonesia's defense minister, Matori Abdul Djalil, told reporters in Jakarta today that he was "convinced" that the attack was the work of al Qaeda. 
 "When you look at intention and capability, the only groups that have both are al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah," said Andrew Tan, a terrorism expert at the Institute of Defense and Security Studies in Singapore. 
Police officials said that it was too early to conclude whether Jemaah Islamiah and al Qaeda were behind the attack. They said that they have identified six to 10 Amrozi associates whom they are seeking in several regions in Indonesia.  Police officials also said that they believe that the locals were financed by foreign militants. 
The police investigation has yielded significant information. A police investigator in Bali said Amrozi, told interrogators he bought at least one ton of chemicals in Surabaya, the capital of East Java, for which police have obtained the sales receipt. The owner of the shop that sold him the chemicals, which police believe were used in the Bali bombings, was detained by police today, according to Indonesia's official Antara news agency. Amrozi led police to a home in Denpasar, the capital of Bali, where explosive residue was found, a police investigator in Bali said. 
Police also said that Amrozi used foreign currency to buy the Mitsubishi L-300 minivan that carried the explosives used to flatten the Sari Club, where most of the Bali casualties occurred. Pastika, the chief investigator, said Amrozi paid in Malaysian ringgit and Singapore dollars. 
"That indicates this has a link with Malaysia, Singapore and other countries in Southeast Asia," Pastika said. 
Another Indonesian official said U.S. dollars were used. 
The police official in Bali said that investigators found airline tickets to Malaysia and Singapore, as well as passports, Islamic magazines and religious articles in Amrozi's house. The official said Amrozi had traveled to Malaysia and Singapore. 
Acquaintances of Amrozi said he was raised in Lamongan, East Java, graduated from the School of Machine Technology in Surabaya andworked in an auto repair shop, where he fixed cars, motorbikes and cell phones. The acquaintances said he lives with his parents and has two wives. 
Amrozi has other links to Baasyir, according to people who know him. He is the younger brother of Mohammed H. Khozin, the founder of Al Islam, an Islamic boarding school in Lamongan. Zakaria, a teacher at Al Islam, invited Baasyir to speak to graduating students there at least twice since 1991, and Amrozi has heard Baasyir speak at Al Islam, Zakaria told local reporters. Baasyir last lectured there several months ago, according to a local Islamic teacher. Zakaria, an acquaintance said, is a 1992 graduate of Pondok Pesantren Ngruki, an Islamic boarding school founded by Baasyir in the central Java city of Solo. 
Zakaria told the Indonesian newspaper Kompas that in 1993 Khozin went to the Pondok Pesantren Ngruki school to recruit one of its directors, and that a teacher had recommended him. Zakaria was detained this afternoon by police in Bali, according to a relative. 
Pastika said today that fragments of cell phones that police suspect were used to detonate the bombs in the Bali nightclub district had been recovered at the site. 
The bombing of the home of then-Philippine ambassador Leonides Caday also involved remote-control detonation, Caday said in an interview. A suspect in that case, an Indonesian known as Abdul Jabar, is allegedly an expert in that type of bombing, and is also being sought for possible involvement in the Bali explosions, authorities said. 
Earlier this year, al-Ghozi told Philippine interrogators that he and Hambali had planned the bombing of Caday's house, which seriously injured the ambassador. Intelligence officials said that they suspect Hambali, now the most wanted man in Southeast Asia, is also linked to the Bali bombing. 
An East Java native, al-Ghozi taught an explosives training course in the mid-1990s at Camp Abubakar, a militant training camp in the southern Philippines, which authorities have since shut down, said Zachary Abuza, a U.S. security analyst at Simmons College in Boston. According to Philippine military analysts, Hambali visited the camp in 1998. 
Regional intelligence officials last month said that Hambali, at a mid-January meeting in southern Thailand, spoke of attacking "soft targets" such as bars, nightclubs and cafes in the region. Some regional analysts said they believe that authorities, particularly in Indonesia, lost a prime opportunity to prevent the Bali blasts because they did not follow up on the intelligence. 
Links between al-Ghozi, Hambali and Baasyir continue to emerge. According to a Philippine intelligence official, al-Ghozi told interrogators he met with Hambali and Baasyir in Manila before a series of bombings in that city in December 2000. They gave him about $ 23,000 to buy additional explosives that authorities believe were intended for use in a foiled operation to bomb Western embassies in Singapore. 
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said this week that al Qaeda had boasted on Web sites about the Bali bombing as well as other attacks in Tunisia and Kuwait. 







   
 

November 8, 2002 Friday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: INDONESIA; 
Suspect Admits He Planted Bomb in Bali Attack, Police Say

 
The Indonesian police said today that a man they arrested who is reportedly linked to an extremist Islamic group had admitted to planting the car bomb that blew up a Bali nightclub in a terror attack last month.
     A senior American official described the announcement by the national police chief, Da'i Bachtiar, as the first promising sign in the nearly monthlong investigation. 
 The arrest of the man, identified by the police as Amrozi, took place on Tuesday in the town of Tenggulun in eastern Java, the main island of Indonesia, which abuts Bali, the police said. They also said he resembled one of four sketches of suspects in the Bali bombing issued by the authorities. He is now in police custody in Bali, officials said. 
After more than a dozen arrests since the Oct. 12 blast, which killed more than 180 people, most of them Western tourists, Mr. Amrozi is the first person to be declared a suspect. 
The police said he was the owner of a Mitsubishi L300 minivan that was parked in front of the Sari club moments before the bomb exploded.
Mr. Amrozi admitted "he used the vehicle to carry out the bombing in Bali," Mr. Bachtiar said, adding: "He has disclosed many things and admitted his acts in Bali. Therefore we are pursuing his companions." 
According to Indonesian television accounts, Mr. Amrozi was affiliated with an Islamic boarding school called Al Islam, which is supported by the leading Indonesian extremist cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir.
Followers of Mr. Bashir founded the school in Tenggulun, and Mr. Bashir visited it as recently as June, according to a leading newspaper, Koran Tempo.
Mr. Bashir, who was arrested by the Indonesian police two weeks ago, is considered the intellectual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Islamic group with links to Al Qaeda. 
The American official said that it appeared Mr. Amrozi could provide details critical in buttressing information from a captive Qaeda source who has described the inner workings of Jemaah Islamiyah. The source, Omar al-Faruq, was arrested in Indonesia in June and has been in American custody ever since.
The United States has said it believes the Indonesian operational head of Jemaah Islamiyah most likely masterminded the Bali bombing. The operative, Hambali, is an acolyte of Mr. Bashir. The Indonesian police say they are focusing their questioning of Mr. Bashir, who so far has not been charged in the Bali case, on what they say is his role in a series of bombings in Jakarta at Christian churches around Christmas 2000.
American investigators describe Mr. Hambali as the most senior Qaeda operative in Southeast Asia; his whereabouts remain unknown and he is the subject of a manhunt throughout Southeast Asia. 
Presumably the Indonesian police will question Mr. Amrozi, who is thought to be a lower field operative, about his knowledge of Mr. Hambali, American officials said.
A Western diplomat said tonight that according to Indonesian law enforcement officials, a search of Mr. Amrozi's house had turned up compact discs featuring Osama bin Laden.
In addition, the head of Al Islam school told an Indonesian television newscast today that Mr. Amrozi worked in Malaysia during the 1990's, when Mr. Bashir lived in exile there. Mr. Bashir's plans to found an Islamic state in Indonesia had forced his departure, bringing him into conflict with Suharto, the sectarian strongman who then led the country. 
Since the Bali bombing last month, Indonesian politicians and the public have been reluctant to accept the idea that Indonesian Islamic extremists may have been involved in it. If Mr. Amrozi turns out to be as closely tied to Mr. Bashir as seemed likely this evening, that reluctance would be severely challenged, the American official said.
The Indonesian government is under considerable pressure from the United States to run a credible investigation into the Bali attack. American officials say the Bush administration has told the Indonesian government that it will not change a stringent warning against travel to Indonesia, or allow the return of more than 100 diplomats who were ordered to leave by the State Department after the bombing, until the network that carried out the attack is broken up.
An American official said he was pleased that the police chief heading the investigation, Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika, was doing "painstaking work" to solve the case.
In a separate move today, a militant Islamic group known as the Islamic Defenders Front announced that it was disbanding. 
The group, which was reportedly supported by elements in the Indonesian Army, specialized in break-ins at nightclubs and gambling dens in the capital, Jakarta. It was the second such group in the past three weeks to announce its dissolution.
But Indonesian commentators said the two groups -- the other is Laskar Jihad -- might just be retreating while the investigation into the Bali attack was under way.







   
 

November 8, 2002 Friday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: SOUTHEAST ASIA; 
Qaeda Meeting in Thailand Reportedly Plotted Attacks on Tourists

 
A group of Al Qaeda operatives met in Thailand and discussed plans to attack bars, nightclubs and tourist resorts throughout the region months before the October bombing in Bali killed more than 190 people, Asian and Western officials said this week. 
     The group was led by a senior lieutenant of Osama bin Laden and included a Qaeda explosives expert, who was later arrested and told American officials of the January meeting during his interrogation. 
 "They talked about hitting soft Western targets throughout Southeast Asia," an American official said. The blast at an Indonesian resort area in Bali may have been the first such attack, Western diplomats said.  
"Is Thailand next?" is the question being asked by seemingly everyone here, from bartenders to hotel owners, to businessmen and diplomats, as well by many Thai officials when they are speaking privately.
The presence of Al Qaeda in Thailand, with its free-wheeling culture, chaotic cities and porous borders, is greater than the Thai government has been willing to acknowledge, or than Western governments, including the United States, were aware of, diplomats from several countries said in interviews. 
An attack here could further unsettle a region where Thailand serves as the economic engine and the hub of tourist industry that draws more than 10 million visitors a year to this country alone. 
A Western intelligence analyst said Thailand was a vital link in the "international terrorist's underground railroad." 
Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers traveled from Afghanistan to Malaysia and then in effect laundered themselves through Thailand before entering the United States, Western officials said this week. 
Last month, a dozen suspected Qaeda operatives fled to Thailand from Malaysia and Singapore, and then disappeared, to the embarrassment of the Thai government, Asian and Western officials said. 
A Thai government spokesman, Sita Divari, said today that the government was certain that there was no Qaeda network in Thailand and that there was no serious threat of a terrorist attack. 
It is an assertion that diplomats here have been hearing for months and which they do not take seriously. "People who claim this country is devoid of any prospects of terrorism are naive," one ambassador said.
Officials investigating the Bali attack are now looking closely at Thailand and suspect that the plan to set off a car bomb in front of a popular nightclub on Oct. 12 was hatched during the meeting in January. 
The meeting, these officials said, was called by a man who has become the most wanted terrorist in the region, Al Qaeda's top man in Southeast Asia, Riadun Isamuddin, known as Hambali. 
Also attending, they said, was a Qaeda explosives expert, Mohamed Mansour Jabara, a Kuwaiti national with a Canadian passport who was picked up in Oman in March and is now in American custody. Precisely when he told American officials about the January meeting is not clear. 
Mr. Jabara was one of the main planners in a plot to blow up the American, Australian and Israeli embassies in Singapore last December. When the plot was uncovered, he and several others fled undetected to Thailand, Asian and Western officials said. 
Counterterrorism experts say Al Qaeda, no longer dependent on camps for its operations, is probably working in small groups, much like the one that met here. The Bali operation, an American official said, may have been the work of cells in several countries, none of them larger than six or eight men.
The fear now is that Thailand will not only provide an easy base of operation for terrorists working in smaller cells, but also that the country itself is high on the list of potential targets as Al Qaeda shifts its focus to tourist sites. 
"We have already seen in recent months more and more information that tourist centers are under threat," the chief of German intelligence, August Hanning, said this week. "It is because tourist centers cannot be guarded." 
He named the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand as the likely next targets. 
Thailand has long been a route for drug traffickers and people smugglers, a country where guns and explosives are readily available and where preparing fraudulent documents is a developed industry. 
"It is easy to get a false passport in Thailand," a European ambassador said. adding, "A professional terrorist can enter this country and leave quite easily, after having launched an attack."
Even a Thai intelligence official acknowledged that it would be relatively easy for a terrorist "to hibernate" in Bangkok, a teeming city of 12 million people, thousands of whom are tourists or transients. 
Western diplomats agreed. Until recently, visas were not required here for citizens of most countries, including those from the Middle East. The government did not ask a lot of questions of visitors, especially of the foreign men who patronize the bars and nightclubs that form the center of Bangkok's tourist industry.
"Who knows who's here," an ambassador said.
Deepening worries is the relative inexperience and disorganization of Thai intelligence agencies, which are short on manpower, training and resources, officials from several countries said. Generally speaking, they are considered better than the intelligence services in Indonesia, the officials said, but not in league with a country like Singapore.
"I don't think anyone's intelligence here is terrific," a Western ambassador said. 
But diplomats and others also said the Qaeda presence in Thailand, a largely Buddhist country of 62 million people, is not as big as in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. 
Nonetheless, in recent weeks Germany, several other European nations and Australia have issued warnings to their citizens to exercise extreme caution in certain popular tourist areas in Thailand. The United States has issued a new travel advisory covering all of Southeast Asia. 
The Western intelligence analyst summed up the reactions here since the Bali blasts as "hysteria, and a false sense of confidence." Western governments have overreacted with their travel warnings, he said, while the Thai government has refused to face up to terrorist threat it faces. 
It is not clear why the travel warnings vary from country to country, since they are sharing intelligence, diplomats said. "We interpreted it differently," an American diplomat said. 
But several ambassadors acknowledged that the warnings were heavily influenced by the domestic political concerns of governments seeking to protect themselves against charges, in case of another attack, that they did not take all precautions.




14


  



November 8, 2002 Friday  




 First Suspect Arrested In Bali Bombing Case

 
 The owner of a minivan that exploded outside a Bali nightclub last month and killed nearly 200 people has told investigators that he was involved with a group that carried out the bombing, Indonesian police said today. 
 The arrest of the man, identified by police only as Amrozi, represents a major break in the case and gives Indonesian police custody of their first formal suspect. Police said he was arrested this week in East Java.  
 "While questioned, he confessed what he did in Bali," said the chief of the National Police, Dai Bachtiar. "Now we are still going after his friends." 
 He said investigators had traced the Mitsubishi L-300 van to Amrozi through a series of previous owners by using an identification number recovered in the wreckage. The police found a van seat and tire at Amrozi's family's house in Lamongan, in East Java, according to a local television report showing police officers pointing to the items. The van had changed hands at least twice before it came into Amrozi's possession, Bachtiar said. He said police had been able to identify the vehicle, though an effort had been made before the attack to erase the numbers on the chassis and the engine. 
 The van explosion, on Oct. 12, was one of two blasts that occurred seconds apart at two nightclubs in the heart of Bali's entertainment district, killing scores of foreign tourists, including two Americans, as well as many from Australia. 
 Though police have not yet identified the group or groups believed to have conducted the attack, Indonesian and foreign investigators have said they suspect that Islamic militants were involved. Some Indonesian and Western officials have pointed to al Qaeda. A regional analyst with knowledge of the investigation said that police suspect a connection between Amrozi and Jemaah Islamiah, a regional network that Western and Asian intelligence officials say is headed by Abubakar Baasyir, a prominent Indonesian cleric arrested last month in connection with bomb attacks unrelated to Bali. The analyst said that Amrozi has told interrogators that Baasyir had visited him. 
 According to a local television report, Amrozi, 30, was arrested at an Islamic boarding school, Al Islam, in Lamongan. An acquaintance of the school's director, Zakaria, said Zakaria graduated in 1992 from Pondok Pesantren Ngruki, an Islamic boarding school founded in 1972 by Baasyir. Zakaria invited Baasyir to give religious lectures at least twice at the Al Islam school, said Muktakin, a teacher at Ngruki. Zakaria, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, told a local television station that Amrozi had attended at least one of those lectures, according to the Associated Press.  
 Baasyir has been linked to a series of church bombings in Indonesia in 2000 and an alleged plot to assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri, but has not been named a suspect in the Bali attack. 
 Bachtiar, the police chief, said Amrozi was linked to three other suspects, still at large, whose sketches were released by police last week. A fourth sketch was released tonight by police. 
A police spokesman said Amrozi had been taken to Bali after his arrest in East Java. 







   
 

November 7, 2002 Thursday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: CONSPIRACY TALES; 
Indonesians Say They Suspect C.I.A. in Bali Blast

 
The American ambassador here, Ralph L. Boyce, does not have to venture far from his heavily fortified embassy to be challenged about who was responsible for the Bali bombings that killed more than 180 people.
     The perception among many of the educated elite in this largely moderate Muslim country is that it was not, as the United States has suggested, a radical Islamic group with links to Al Qaeda. 
 Instead, they blame the Central Intelligence Agency. Some have argued that the United States prompted the Bali attack as a way of prodding Indonesia to join a possible war against Iraq. 
Yet again, Mr. Boyce told a news conference -- this time in Bali several days ago -- that Indonesians should stop "pointing fingers elsewhere."
"The country needs to come together behind the leadership here and address the issue of terrorism," he said.
For many Indonesians, and especially moderate Muslim leaders, it is proving difficult to accept the idea that a homegrown radical Islamic organization -- Jemaah Islamiyah, headed by a frail-looking cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, who lies ailing in a hospital bed in police custody -- could have had a hand in a terrorist act on its own soil.
But given the history of the United States in Indonesia during the cold war, it is not illogical to blame Washington for the Bali violence, some Muslim leaders said. 
"People see the hand of the United States in the fall of Sukarno," said Nurcolish Madjid, the most prominent Indonesian Muslim scholar. He was referring to the covert support in 1958 by the Central Intelligence Agency of dissident Indonesian generals ouster of Indonesia's founding president in 1965 after he incurred Washington's displeasure for many years. 
Further, during the three decades of authoritarian rule under Suharto, Mr. Sukarno's successor,many Indonesians viewed the United States as supporting the government efforts to repress Islamic expression, Mr. Madjid said.
"They take that as a precedent for this kind of thing," Mr. Madjid said in an interview.
Remarkably, there have been no strong stirrings against the arrest of Mr. Bashir. The absence of protests is an encouraging sign, American officials said, illustrating the idea that the vast majority of Indonesia's approximately 180 million Muslims are indeed of moderate persuasion. Threats by some Muslim leaders that Mr. Bashir's detention would inflame emotions have not been borne out so far.
The police have said Mr. Bashir was being questioned about a series of bomb attacks in Jakarta, including one at the city's biggest mosque, in 2000. Mr. Bashir, who was arrested in the days after the Bali bombing, is not a suspect in that case, the police said. 
But while the lack of public protests over Mr. Bashir's arrest is a relief for Washington, American officials say they are dismayed by the reluctance of moderate Muslim leaders to discredit radical Islam in Indonesia and its connections to terrorism. 
The Americans ask why mainstream Indonesian Muslims will not say in public what they say in private: that radical Islam's connection to terror is un-Islamic. They also wonder why conspiracy theories about the United States are so prevalent in Indonesia. Is it ignorance or arrogance, one American official asked this week, that makes Indonesians blind to the threat of radical Islam? 
Mr. Madjid, 64, a graduate of the University of Chicago who is considered an elder statesman of moderate Muslim thought in Indonesia, cautioned, "If the government, especially, is too quick to point the finger to Muslims, that will feed the radicals."
Americans should recall, he said, that initial suspicions in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City "were that Muslims did it," and that those suspicions "turned out not to be true."
Mr. Madjid said it was not clear to him that a radical Islamic group was the instigator of the Bali attack, which hit a nightclub filled with Western tourists drinking and dancing on a Saturday night.
He doubted, he said, that an Indonesian group would have "strong" links to Al Qaeda, as the United States is asserting.
Rather, he said, he believed that the attack had more to do with Indonesia's "internal politics." He said he suspected that some elements in the Indonesian Army, anxious to take advantage of the weak leadership of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, might have been involved in the bombing. 
"In an underdeveloped country like this, to be in power is everything," Mr. Madjid said. "The military is out of power. For some of the military people to be out of power is unacceptable. Military factions could have had a hand in this." 
Another Muslim leader, younger and more politically involved is Din Syamsuddin, secretary general of the Indonesian Council of Ulama. He said he strongly objected to the American focus on radical Islam as a source of terrorism.
He said he believed that the United States was behind the attack. "There is no logic that it was done by an Islamic group in Indonesia," Mr. Syamsuddin said. "Muslims don't deny there are terrorists in this country. But there is no fact that there are Indonesian Muslims doing it." 
Indeed, Mr. Syamsuddin, 44, who has a doctorate from the University of California at Los Angeles, said logic dictated that the United States directed the Bali operation. 
He said he based his conclusion on his interpretation of the following events: the deportation of a Qaeda operative, Omar al-Faruq, who worked with Jemaah Islamiyah, from Indonesia to American custody in Afghanistan in June; the dispatch of Indonesian police officials to see Mr. Faruq around the time of the Bali bombing; and the arrest of Mr. Bashir, several days after the bombing.
American officials have said the Indonesian police were sent to question Mr. Faruq as part of an effort to persuade the Indonesian government that Jemaah Islamiyah was indeed connected to Al Qaeda.
American officials dismissed Mr. Syamsuddin's account as one of the "conspiracy theories" now going the rounds in Indonesia.
Mr. Syamsuddin, who organized three meetings between Ambassador Boyce and Indonesian Muslim groups this year, said the United States could do one thing to show its sincerity in determining who is responsible for terrorism in Indonesia.
He said there was "an insistence that al-Faruq should be brought back from United States custody, to make a fair trial here" for Mr. Bashir. 
That would allow the accuser and the accused to face off in court, he said, adding, "If Bashir is found guilty, no one will support him." 






  
  


November 3, 2002 Sunday



 Wavering in the war on terrorism?

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia
As Indonesia braces for violent reactions to a crackdown on Islamic extremists, many Indonesians and others wonder if President Megawati Sukarnoputri will stay the new course she has set since a devastating bombing last month at a nightclub in Bali.
Her determination to challenge the militant minority in the world's most populous Muslim nation has arrived late, and many experts fear it could depart early. They cite Megawati's personal limitations and the powerful political forces aligned against her.
Despite enormous pressures from the international community and increasingly from the country's once-silent moderate majority, Megawati's challenge to extremism is likely to be muddled and ineffective, they say. 
"There is a feeling here that the government is not really leading," said political analyst Dewi Anwar. "Megawati went to Bali (immediately after the bombing) but she didn't say anything. We have a weak, invisible president."
The president has her defenders, though they appear to be dwindling in number. Panda Nababan, a close friend of Megawati's and a member of parliament, said her low-key, consensus-seeking approach to leadership was an antidote to the harsh reign of former dictator Suharto, who ruled by force and intrigue.
"To foreigners, Megawati's tendency to be careful is her weakness," Nababan said. "To me, it is her advantage."
But even many who praised the Megawati government's anti-terrorism decree and the arrest of the alleged head of the regional terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah are not convinced that those steps will lead to a more serious crackdown.
The anti-terrorism decree provides the death penalty for terrorist acts and allows authorities to detain suspects for seven days without strong evidence of wrongdoing. It was issued to circumvent Parliament, where proposed anti-terrorism legislation has languished for months because of deep divisions over what, if anything, to do about terrorism.
While encouraged by the decree, a senior U.S. official in Jakarta, who requested anonymity, said there still has not been a "decisive demonstration that the government of Indonesia is going to pursue the threat of terrorism in this country."
The United States has ordered about half of its embassy employees in Jakarta to depart and has urged Americans to avoid traveling to Indonesia or to exercise extreme caution.
Security at many Indonesian airports, power plants, shopping centers and other sites has been beefed up after warnings from the government's chief security minister that intelligence information indicates that terrorists plan to follow up the Bali blast with an attack on a different part of the country, perhaps the capital.
The consequences of inaction in the face of such threats are grave, say Megawati's many critics.
Bali's huge bombing, which killed nearly 200 people and injured 300 on Oct. 12, confirmed for much of the world the mounting suspicion that Indonesia had become a haven for Islamic extremists, including some with ties to Jemaah Islamiyah and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
Those extremists have frightened off foreign tourists and investors, which provided desperately needed sources of revenue and capital for Indonesia's shaky economy. Worse, they have plotted to destabilize Indonesia's democratic government by fomenting sectarian violence. According to a terrorist in U.S. custody who has admitted serving as al-Qaida's liaison to the group, Jemaah Islamiyah had hatched a plan to assassinate Megawati.
"I feel deep concern for the future of this nation," said Syafii Maarif, chairman of Indonesia's second-largest Muslim group, Muhammadiyah, which has about 30 million members. "Can we survive? I don't know."
With stakes so large and personal, many leaders might overreact. But the danger in Indonesia, critics say, is that Megawati will underreact.
"Megawati is not just reluctant to take action against militants, she's reluctant to take action on anything," said Masdar Masudi, an official with the nation's largest Muslim organization, Nahdahtul Ulama, which claims 40 million members. "She's psychologically reluctant and intellectually limited."
The daughter of Indonesia's first president, Megawati, 55, became president herself primarily because of the popularity she won by opposing the authoritarian Suharto regime, which fell in 1998. But polls indicate that her popularity is waning, and she is widely seen as a tragic symbol of Suharto's legacy.
Suharto jealously guarded his power for more than three decades by eliminating potential rivals and banning the political parties and institutions he could not control. One result was that the next generation of political leaders had nowhere to learn the skills of democratic governance.
Even a talented and capable leader would find Megawati's dilemma daunting.
She must balance the pressures to crack down on extremists against the pressures from within her weak coalition government, which includes Islamic parties that are suspicious of the international war on terrorism.
Until the Bali bombing, Megawati's vice president, who heads the nation's largest Islamic party, had insisted that Indonesia had no Islamic terrorists. When the head of an Islamic vigilante group was jailed a few months ago for violent attacks on nightclubs and liquor stores, Vice President Hamza Haz visited him in jail in a show of Islamic solidarity.
He now acknowledges that there are terrorists in Indonesia, but it remains unclear how far he will go in supporting a crackdown.
Haz is expected to challenge Megawati for the presidency in 2004, and the Islamic parties are his base of support. Many members of those parties are opposed to cracking down on Islamic militants, who are seen by some as the victims of a U.S. campaign to discredit Islam.
Suspicions about the international war on terrorism run so deep that it is widely believed within Islamic parties that the United States did the Bali bombing to justify a global attack on Islam. That may sound far-fetched to most Americans, but the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Ralph Boyce, felt compelled to deny it publicly.
Those who hold such extreme views may be a minority, but they cannot be dismissed as a lunatic fringe. Some of them occupy positions of influence and power.







 Lincoln Journal Star,
 


November 2, 2002 Saturday  




 Islam: The oneness of God

 
This is one of a series of stories about world religions.
In the year 610, an Arab named Muhammad had a vision in which an angel appeared to him, telling him to "recite." The message he received was that there is only one true God ("Allah" in Arabic) and it is the duty of all humans to worship and obey him.
Over the next 22 years, Muhammad continued to receive messages from Allah. Although he was illiterate, his companions recorded the words in the Quran ("recitation"), which has been called the most eloquent and beautiful book in the Arabic language. 
The religion Muhammad began was called Islam, which literally means "submission." One who submits his or her will to God voluntarily is called a Muslim. The words "Islam" and "Muslim" are also closely related to the Arabic word for peace.
Muslims believe that Allah is all-powerful, all-knowing and the creator of all that exists. Yet Allah is not part of his creation, and no created being can share his attributes.
They believe that God revealed himself through earlier prophets, including Abraham, Moses and Jesus, whom they recognize as the Messiah. They believe that Jesus was born of a virgin but do not regard him as divine.
Muslims believe that Muhammad was the last of the prophets and that the words of the Quran represent Allah's complete and perfect revelation to humanity. They do not worship Muhammad or consider him divine.
Muhammad's message met resistance at first in his native city of Mecca, so he and his followers fled to Yathrib, whose name was changed to Medina, meaning "city of the prophet." There he established the first mosque, or Muslim house of worship.
He gained followers and in 630 peacefully took control of Mecca. He went to the Ka'ba - an ancient stone structure  that was a pilgrimage site for the polytheistic Arabs - and ordered the destruction of all the pagan images, rededicating it as a focal point for the worship of Allah.
Following Muhammad's death in 632, the Arabs became unified under Islam. They began to conquer other lands, and by 750 an Islamic empire, centered in Arabia, stretched from Spain to India. Islamic culture became highly developed in art, science and literature. Throughout the empire, Christians and Jews were allowed to practice their religions in peace, being regarded as "people of the book" who also had received revelations from God.
The Muslim world suffered during the Crusades, when armies from Europe tried to take control of the Holy Land, sacred to Christians, Jews and Muslims. The Crusades produced a legacy of bitterness between Christians and Muslims that has continued to this day. In the 1500s, the Ottoman Turks gained control of most of the Arab world, maintaining Islam as the state religion.
Today there are approximately 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, living on all continents but primarily in North Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, India and Indonesia. Estimates of the number of Muslims in the United States vary from 3 million to 6 million.
All Muslims follow the "five pillars of Islam," which consist of five obligatory acts:
1. The declaration of faith, that there is no God but Allah, and that Muhammad is his prophet.
2. Prayer five times daily, facing Mecca.
3. Almsgiving, a freewill offering of gifts to the poor and needy.
4. Fasting during the month of Ramadan, which this year begins on Wednesday. Muslims refrain from eating, drinking and sexual activity from sunrise to sunset during this holy month.
5. Pilgrimage (Hajj) - at least once in a lifetime, if a Muslim is able, he or she should make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
In addition to praying five times daily, Muslims observe Friday as a special day of public prayer. They assemble at the mosque, where a leader (imam) leads the prayers.
Muslims have no clergy, only scholars who have studied the Quran and the hadith - writings about the teachings and actions of Muhammad - and are able to teach others. They believe that each human has an individual relationship with God and that no other person can act as an intermediary to convey prayers or forgive sins.
Those who die in a state of submission to God will be rewarded by eternal life in Paradise, while those who "disbelieve and die in disbelief" will be condemned to hell.
While all the world's Muslims share basic beliefs, there is a major division that traces its origin to a disagreement over the early successors to Muhammad.
About 85 percent of the world's Muslims are Sunnis, who stress following the "Sunnah," or way of the prophet, in all aspects of life. Some 10 percent to 15 percent are Shi'ites, who place authority in a succession of imams who they believe gave the true interpretation of Islam. Many Shi'ites believe in a "hidden imam" who will return one day to establish peace and justice on Earth.
The Sufis (Islamic mystics) seek personal union with Allah through certain disciplines, including fasting, dancing and sometimes the use of stimulants to produce a trancelike state.
The Wahhabis, a conservative sect predominantly in Saudi Arabia, seek to return to the true teachings of Muhammad. They believe most Muslims have fallen away from the faith in one God and regard all who disagree with them as heretics.
The Nation of Islam, a movement  among African-Americans in the United States, claims to be a form of Islam but is regarded by most traditional Muslims as a distortion of the true faith.
Lincoln has two mosques, where local Muslims meet for prayer and instruction: Nebraska Islamic Foundation (Shi'ite), 7125 Douglas St.; and Islamic Foundation of Lincoln (Sunni), 3636 N. First St.
The Islamic Center of Omaha (www.ico-ne.org) offers informational materials and a speakers bureau to help educate people about Islam.
(Sources for this article included "A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam," published by the Jeddah Dawah Center, Saudi Arabia; and "Islam Is: Understanding Islam and Its Principles," published by the Al Haramain Foundation, Saudia Arabia.)
Next week: Sikkhism
Reach Bob Reeves at 473-7212 or at breeves@journalstar.com
On the Web
www. islamicity.com - news articles and information about Islam
www.islamworld.net - detailed explanations of Islam and the Quran
www.islam-is.com - Al Haramain Foundation
www.islam-guide.com - Jeddah Dawah Center
www.cair-net.org - Council on American-Islamic Relations
www.amconline.org - American Muslim Council







   
 

November 2, 2002 Saturday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: INDONESIA; 
3 Sought in Bali Bombings; Investigation 'Going Well'

 
The Indonesian and Australian police, who have been jointly investigating the Bali bombings, said today that they had completed the initial forensic work and had information about three suspects. 
     The suspects, officials said, are believed to be low-level operatives involved in planting the bombs rather than the masterminds. 
 At a news conference in Bali today, the United States ambassador, Ralph L. Boyce, said the investigation into the Oct. 12 explosions, which killed more than 180 people, mostly Western tourists, was "going well." The ambassador, who was visiting the island in an effort to lift local morale, declined to discuss any specifics.  
The Indonesian head of the investigation, I Made Mangku Pastika, said the Indonesian police had the name of only one of the three suspects.
Composite sketches of the three, described as Indonesian men 20 to 30 years old, have appeared in the Indonesian press. The sketches, developed with the help of the Australian police, were based on descriptions given by witnesses to the explosions, Western officials said. One sketch shows a fairly distinctive heart-shaped face of a man with shoulder-length black hair parted down the center. Another shows a man with close-cropped hair and a round face; the third shows a man with a green shirt, robust lips and hair touching his collar. 
Mr. Pastika said "four teams" of Indonesian police officers were trying to find the one man whose name they knew. The Indonesian chief of police, Gen. Da'I Bachtiar, was reported to have told Indonesian legislators that the police had found a photograph of one of the three suspects during a raid on a house. 
 The police have arrested a man who resembles a sketch of one of the suspects, investigators told The Associated Press on Saturday. The man, identified only by the initials R.S., was detained on Thursday at a bus terminal in Bajawa, about 310 miles east of Bali, and taken to Denpasar, the capital of Bali, General Pastika said. 
There were no details on where in the vast Indonesian archipelago the raid had taken place, or where the police were concentrating their search. 
Western officials said the chief interest in finding the suspects was to question them for information about who directed the operation.
Since the attack, the Indonesian intelligence agency has been looking for a cell of seven men -- four Indonesians and three foreigners -- linked to the radical Muslim group Jemaah Islamiyah. Whether the three suspects are thought to belong to that cell is not clear. 
The military, police and intelligence agencies in Indonesia have all presented different information in briefings since the bombings.
Lately, the theory that a seven-member cell linked to Jemaah Islamiyah was responsible for the bombings seems to have receded, a Western official said today.
A newsletter on Indonesian politics widely read here said in its most recent issue that "a pattern of clues" pointed to the possibility that disgruntled retired officers of the Indonesian Army "may have been directly involved in aiding the bombers." The newsletter said that there was no firm evidence for such a conclusion but that there was an "alignment of motives" between the retired officers and Jemaah Islamiyah and Al Qaeda.
Jemaah Islamiyah is still believed to be have been behind the bombing, the Western official said, but whether the Indonesian authorities know much about who within the organization carried out the operation remains unclear.
American officials have repeatedly said they believe that Jemaah Islamiyah, which has roots in Indonesia and cells across Southeast Asia, was behind the Bali bombing. The operational head of Jemaah Islamiyah, Riudan Isamuddin, an Indonesian also known as Hambali, is described by Western law enforcement as the leading Qaeda operative for Southeast Asia. He is the most wanted terrorist in the region. 
Jemaah Islamiya was designated a terrorist organization by the United States and Indonesia last week, and the group's intellectual leader, the cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, is in custody in Jakarta.
The Indonesian authorities have said that Mr. Bashir, 64, the principal of a radical Islamic boarding school in Solo, in central Java, is not a suspect in the Bali blasts but is being held in connection with earlier bombings here in the capital, including one outside the biggest mosque.






  


November 1, 2002, Friday  



 AL QAEDA IS THRIVING ON OUR FORGETFULNESS

 
The CIA has told Congress that the risk of a new terror attack inside the United States is still as immediate as before the first attacks on New York and Washington, that Al Qaeda, the critical and most powerful Muslim terrorist army, is already in resurgence and would strike again.
Not might or could, but would.
The warning was delivered Oct.17. Since then, Muslim terrorists have managed to bomb the heart out of Bali, which Western journalists like to refer to as the "lovely island" in Indonesia. The bombs blew off arms, legs, testicles, breasts. And so on. The victims included nonterrorist Muslims who would have preferred to stay alive and in one piece, and Christians who had the same ambition. 
Al Qaeda rarely works at random. Bali was targeted as part of a strategy to make the island independent of Indonesia, thus increasing by one the number of Muslim countries - already the most important bloc in the United Nations. This fits in with the expansion plans of other arms of the international terror network.
That network's wealthy nations and private donors provide the money, arms and training in weaponry. It has other sources, too, for as long as Muslim clerics are allowed to spew anti-American poison unchallenged by their own intellectuals, they will remain potent terrorists of the mind.
Yet neither the CIA nor any other branch of the government or the White House has revealed precise data on which countries arm the international terror forces, where they are trained and why their camps are not immediately bombed out of existence in whatever country they are established.
The silence of the United States and other Western countries about these specifics are among the seeds of the struggle between the U.S. and Iraq - and quite likely will be the seeds of future struggles. Peaceful Muslims and Christians and Jews in and out of Israel will never live in peace unless Western governments, particularly we Americans, continuously expose all available information about countries, banks, manufacturers and organizations that had any part at all in carrying out the slaughters in New York and Washington.
The United States occasionally does concede that it has specific information about the rivers of arms and money that go from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, China, Bosnia and Russia to Muslim terrorists, particularly those specializing in trying to destroy Israel.
I suppose now we have to face the routine question about why so many Muslims hate Jews so insanely and regard their various complaints as full reason for massacring them.
But I do not think we have to examine Muslim navels too long or pore over books saying the hate was created by Jewish usury and that gunk. Muslim fanatics kill because it gives them kicks and satisfies lusts we cannot grasp - think pedophile rapists. But 72 virgins await them not - Satan does. End of story.
By now, Bali has been pretty well forgotten. There are so many other guerrilla operations to keep track of in the mind - or just push aside. Westerners cannot get their heads around them and probably will not until terrorists get nuclear missiles, either from North Korea or Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
But we all know which countries have been breaking international laws for decades, devastating neighbors and carrying on full Hitlerian propaganda campaigns. We know Saddam, despite a United Nations embargo on the export of his oil and the import of war material, buys and sells like someone running a murder bazaar, which, of course, he is.
Even though Al Qaeda has not thoughtfully provided us with receipts, world intelligence knows where and from whom it gets its weapons.
Are we going to fortify and preserve the terrorist gangs and their suppliers by pretending we do not know this? Are we going to forget we knew that with American help North Korea would one day be naughty and produce nuclear weapons?
Countries that provide the equipment of war to terrorists, countries whose people dress just like us, are part of the axis of evil, whatever name they use at the UN or at conclaves of the killers.
And the corpses in Bali are somehow related to us all. Our souls tell us so, without receipts.
E-mail: rosecolumn@aol.com






  
   


November 1, 2002 Friday



 Radio Free Islam

 
Foreign affairs: The U.S. is sending a message to the Muslim world that America isn't so bad. Meantime, malicious lies undercut any good will attempt we make.
This week, a series of State Department-produced documentaries began airing in several Muslim countries. They're part of a "wide range of communications initiatives and exchange programs so that Americans and Muslim nations can achieve a better understanding of each other's policies and values," according to a State Department spokesperson. 
The documentaries show Muslim life in the U.S. They seek to improve America's image in the Muslim world and counter anti-American feelings.
But no matter how good its intentions, the public relations campaign may be a waste of resources. Most people in the world know that living in the U.S. is almost always better than staying at home. Look at the steady stream of both legal and illegal immigrants, including many of the more than 2 million Muslims living in America.
Taxpayers' money would be better spent on a Voice of America-style program that could inspire Muslims living under oppressive regimes to rise against their oppressors. Call it Radio Ali.
It's too soon to know if the State Department's "Muslim Life in America" public relations project will have any positive effect. But some Muslims who saw the preview screening this week in Jakarta, Indonesia, took a jaded view.
That might be about the best reaction the U.S. should expect. No amount of public relations is going to convince the radical elements of Islam that America is a friend.
That point was driven home this week by the senior columnist for Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the Palestinian Authority's official daily. In his column, he claimed that last week's attack in a Moscow theater by Islamic terrorists actually was a CIA trick.
Fuad Abu Hajleh insisted the U.S. staged the hostage crisis to move the Russians to support America's position on Iraq. The writer also speculated that France might be the next victim of an attack fomented by the U.S. but made to look like Muslim terrorism. Like Russia, France has opposed the U.S. push for a U.N. Security Council vote authorizing force against Iraq.
The writer's fanatical tale sounds much like the lies spread last year by Muslim elements that claimed Israel organized the Sept. 11 attacks and disguised them as Muslim terrorism to goad the U.S. into a war against Israel's enemies.
A simple U.S. good will campaign will have little impact on a culture of deceit that has been deeply rooted by corrupt leaders. When the State Department finally realizes its glitzy marketing will be ineffective, it should consider supplementing its pop music- and news-oriented Radio Sawa with Radio Ali.







   
 

October 30, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 Muslim-as-Apple-Pie Videos Are Greeted With Skepticism 

 
Rawia Ismail, a vivacious young teacher in Toledo, Ohio, her head covered with an Islamic head scarf, appears in a United States government video that will have its first public showing this week on national television here in the world's most populous Muslim country. 
     The Lebanese-born Ms. Ismail is shown with her three smiling children in her all-American kitchen, at a school softball game, and in front of her class, extolling American values. 
 "I didn't see any prejudice anywhere in my neighborhood after Sept. 11," says Ms. Ismail.
The portrayal of Ms. Ismail as a woman who practices her Muslim faith in America with ease is one of the images that the Bush administration is offering to the Muslim world as an example of how America is not at war with Islam. 
The message, in four videos about American Muslims that are to be shown here and in other Islamic countries, is one of tolerance at home and a desire to reach out abroad.
But viewers who have seen the videos were skeptical about whether life for Muslims in the United States is really so rosy.
The videos are part of a major campaign, conceived by a former Madison Avenue advertising executive, Charlotte Beers, who is under secretary of state for public diplomacy, to sell the United States to a skeptical -- and in places, hostile -- Muslim world. 
They tell the stories of a prominent doctor, Elias Zerhouni, the Algerian-born director of the National Institutes of Health; a Libyan-born baker, Abdul Hammuda, in Toledo; a Brooklyn-born medic with the New York Fire Department, Farooq Muhammad; and Ms. Ismail. 
The theory underpinning the videos, and newspaper ads and radio spots that will accompany them, is that the United States is a misunderstood place. In reality, the message implies, America recognizes Islam as an important religion and one of the fastest-growing in America. 
Another feature of the broader campaign is a new radio station, Radio Sawa, that broadcasts in the Arab world, playing pop music in Arabic and English and providing top-of-the-hour news from an American point of view. Muslim academics from Asia and the Middle East are also being sent to the United States for study tours. More than 20 principals of Islamic schools in Indonesia visited the United States this summer.
At a preview of the videos here today, presided over by the American ambassador, Ralph L. Boyce, and attended by Indonesian journalists and academics, the reception was mixed.
Indeed, inside the State Department, some diplomats who have lived in Islamic countries criticized the scripts before their release for being patronizing and too simplistic, department officials said.
Some adjustments were made, they said. But according to today's viewers, not enough.
No East or Southeast Asia Muslims appeared in the videos, even though the videos were being introduced in this region, they said. It was as if the State Department believed Muslims only lived in Arab countries and only those Muslims migrated to the United States, several in the audience said.
The most telling critique came from Rizal Mallarangeng, a television host and political analyst who has just finished eight years of study at Ohio State University. 
Mr. Mallarangeng praised the State Department for trying to overcome the hostility in the Islamic world toward the United States. 
But, he said, the videos' story lines missed the complexities of being a Muslim in America. 
"I have friends like this," he said referring to the characters in the videos. "They want to be good Muslims and good Americans. This is a bipolar way of life and the question always is how to solve the perpetual conflict."
There were straightforward matters, said Mr. Mallarangeng, like how a Muslim student could pray the requisite number of times while attending an American public school. 
"How does a student find a place to pray?" he said. "At an American public school there is no religion and I understand. But what does the religious father of a Muslim student say at home about this?"
Others in the audience said that by presenting a picture of universal tolerance in the United States, the videos bordered on being propaganda. 
Mr. Muhammad, the Fire Department medic in Brooklyn, for example, speaks of working with colleagues of the Hindu, Christian and Jewish faiths. "We're all brothers and sisters," he says. Dr. Zerhouni, of the National Institutes of Health, says, "The tolerance and support I have received myself is remarkable," and, "I don't think there is any other country in the world where different people from different countries are as accepted and welcomed as members of a society." 
Rosita S. Noer, who just completed studies at Harvard, said she found the scenes "too hard-sell." 
"When I was in Harvard Square after Sept. 11," she said, "I heard young people saying very hard things about Muslims." 
For the videos to make a more convincing case to skeptical Indonesians, said Muhammad Rusmadi, a journalist at the Islamic newspaper, Rakyat Merdeka, he would have liked to see American Muslims actually living alongside people of other religions. "It would be good to see American Muslims interacting with American Jews," he said. 
It would be even better, said Mr. Rusmadi, for American officials to go to Islamic schools and to make their case directly to students. Others in the audience said they regretted that the United States had closed its cultural center in the miod-1990's, a place where they could read and study in a friendly atmosphere.
The videos shown today are intended for a number of Islamic countries. So far, the Egyptian government has declined to allow them to be shown on its television stations, saying it does not accept paid programming from a foreign country, an American diplomat in Cairo said. But the embassy was still pursuing the case, he said. In Pakistan, the programs have not yet been offered to the government-run television station because of the uncertainties in the aftermath of the recent election, in which militant Islamic parties showed surprising strength, an American official there said.
Indonesia was chosen as the first country to see the series of videos because it is the most populous Muslim country, a State Department official said. Neighboring Malaysia is scheduled to begin airing the series next week. 
Discussions about showing the videos are under way with a number of countries in the Middle East, including those in the Persian Gulf. There are no plans at this time to show the series in Saudi Arabia, the State Department official said. Officials hope to show the videos in Jordan but have no definite schedule yet.
In many countries, the videos will be shown on government-run television and will need to win the approval of government censors. In some places where American foreign policy is a major source of irritation, this may be tough. The target audience is the "nonelite," 15- to 59-year-olds, he said. In all, $10 million to $15 million will be spent on production, research and buying television time. The advertising company McCann-Erickson produced the videos based on the State Department's research. The department hopes the videos will run in many of the target countries through Ramadan, which begins in early November and ends in early December.
Ramadan was deemed a suitable period for the videos because it is a time when Muslims concentrate on family and spiritual life, themes that the videos try to reflect.
Special efforts will be made to give audiences here in Indonesia, elsewhere in Asia and in the Middle East the chance to respond to the videos and the print campaign accompanying them, the official said. A special booklet in local languages with articles about Muslim life in the United States will be distributed with a tear sheet in the back asking readers to send their reactions to either a local post box number in the country or directly to the State Department.
The characters in the videos, like Ms. Ismail, will also be made available for two-way satellite interviews.
To the protests that the characters presented a pretty veneer to the complicated picture of Muslim life in America, Mr. Boyce said, "We will take that on board."







   
 

October 30, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 NEWS SUMMARY 

 
     INTERNATIONAL   A3-14

U.S. and France Moving Toward Iraq Compromise
The United States and France are moving toward a compromise on Iraq that would oblige the Bush administration to consult the United Nations Security Council before embarking on military action against Saddam Hussein but still leave it the freedom to act alone. Administration officials said they were hopeful that an agreement on the resolution's wording could come as early as Friday, but that most likely it would be next week.   A1

Political Crisis in Israel
Israel's 19-month-old coalition government was on the brink of breaking apart as ministers from the left-leaning Labor Party said they would depart rather than support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposed budget. Labor leaders are demanding that Mr. Sharon move money away from settlements to other social needs.   A1

U.S. Chides Russia
The American ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow, said that Russian secrecy about the use of a powerful anesthetic gas may have needlessly raised the death toll in Saturday's raid on Chechen separatists in a Moscow theater.   A12

Iranian Leader Criticizes U.S.
President Mohammad Khatami of Iran said that his country opposed a war against Iraq and contended that a misguided campaign against terrorism by the United States had strenghtened support for Osama bin Laden in the Muslim world.   A16

U.S. Video Campaign Begins
Four United States government videos about the lives of American Muslims will have their first public showing this week on national television in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. The videos are part of a big campaign to sell the United States to a skeptical -- and in places, hostile -- Muslim world.   A1

Chirac Snubs Blair
A dispute between Britain and France has prompted President Jacques Chirac to back out of a traditional year-end meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair.   A13

NATIONAL   A20-25

U.S. Case Ended Questions, Sniper Investigators Say
State and federal investigators said that the sniper suspect John Muhammad had begun to open up to them when the United States attorney for Maryland told them to bring him to Baltimore to face federal charges, ending a promising interrogation.   A1

The Justice Department brought federal extortion and firearms charges against John Muhammad that could result in his execution, raising tensions over where and how he should be prosecuted.   A25

Candidates Plea for Funds
A week before Election Day, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee is inundated with requests for campaign funds from struggling candidates.   A1

Election Overhaul Bill Signed
President Bush signed a bill that sets minimum federal standards for election procedures, a move intended to prevent future election debacles.   A22

Mourners Gather for Wellstone
Some 20,000 people, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, packed into two sports stadiums in Minneapolis for a somber memorial to Paul Wellstone.   A23

Haitians Seek Refuge in Florida
About 200 Haitian refugees jumped off a wooden boat into the shallows off Key Biscayne in a scramble to complete their desperate journey to Miami.   A20

Court Rules in Marijuana Case
The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the federal government may not revoke the licenses of doctors who recommend marijuana to their patients.   A20

EDUCATION   B11

Doubts on School Privatization
A report released by General Accounting Office concluded that claims of success by three private companies hired to run public schools in Washington, D.C., cannot be substantiated.   A23

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-11

Hearings on Plane Crash Begin in Washington
In the first of four days of National Transportation Safety Board hearings on the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, the plane's manufacturer argued that the tail failed when forces on it reached more than the normal expected strain.   B1

Trial Opens in Wendy's Murders
The lawyers defending the man accused of masterminding the massacre of five Wendy's employees in 2000 admitted in opening remarks to a Queens jury that he had taken part in the murders, but pleaded with the panel to consider his "flawed humanity" in deciding whether he should be sentenced to death.   B1

OBITUARIES   B12

SCIENCE/HEALTH

Creating a New Genome Map
An international consortium announced the creation of a $100 million project to develop a new kind of map of the human genome. Its goal is to hasten discovery of the variant genes thought to underlie common human diseases like diabetes, asthma and cancer.   A23

Hospitals Fight Rebel Doctors
As doctors rush to invest in specialty hospitals that cater to the more profitable patients, community hospitals are striking back by stripping the defectors of medical privileges or setting up physician groups to compete against them.   C1

DINING   F1-14

ARTS   E1-10

Money From Universities
As artists and arts organizations find themselves facing a decline in financial support, they are increasingly turning to universities that are providing rehearsal facilities, technical support, audiences and money.   E1

BUSINESS DAY   C1-18

Reform of Stock Research Near
Ten large brokerages and investment banks are near an agreement with regulators for fixing the problems with stock research. But champions of independent investment advice are criticizing the plan and the process that produced it.   C1

Fox Cancels 'Girls Club'
Fox television has canceled "Girls Club," a program about three young lawyers, after anemic ratings.   C1

Stocks Fall, Then Bounce Back
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 170 points in early trading after a report that consumer confidence dropped sharply to reach a nine-year low, but it recovered late in the afternoon to close up a fraction.   C1

Business Digest   C1

World Business   W1

   D1-7

A New York Marathon Debut
Marla Runyan, 33, who in 2000 became the first legally blind American to compete in the Olympics, will make her marathon debut on Sunday.   D1

EDITORIAL   A26-27

Editorials: Competing for the sniper trial; Brazil's next president; the search for a knockout weapon; Frank Lautenberg for U.S. Senate.

Columns: Thomas L. Friedman, Maureen Dowd.

Crossword   E8
TV Listings   E9
Public Lives   B2
Weather   D8






   


October 30, 2002, Wednesday, 



 Even if USA won't say it, terrorists want religious war

 
From the beginning of the war he declared on terrorism, President Bush has said its targets are the people who put America in their cross hairs, not the Islamic religion. But for those Muslims who are on the other side of the battle line, religious beliefs are at the heart of this conflict.
"Every Muslim should rush to defend Islam," Osama bin Laden said shortly after the United States attacked his forces in Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Some extremists apparently have taken up bin Laden's call: In quick order this month, an American Green Beret was killed when an explosion was set off in a karaoke bar in the Philippines; a Marine died when two gunmen fired on Americans taking part in a military exercise in Kuwait, and 180 people, including several Americans, perished when bomb explosions ripped through a nightclub full of foreigners in Bali. All of this carnage is thought to be the work of Muslim extremists with close ties to al-Qaeda.
 
The world has been divided into two regions, bin Laden said in his post-9/11 message: "one of faith where there is no hypocrisy and another of infidelity, from which we hope God will protect us."
That argument seems to have taken hold in much of the Muslim world. In March, a Gallup Poll found that 80% of the people in Pakistan thought the U.S. military action against al-Qaeda and Afghanistan's Taliban government was "largely or totally unjustifiable." That view was shared by 86% of Moroccans, 89% of Indonesians and 69% of Kuwaitis.
Officially not admitted
No one in official Washington or the capitals of Europe will admit it, but the world is being drawn into holy war -- one that pits the United States and its allies against al-Qaeda and the untold number of Muslims from Africa to Southeast Asia who sympathize with the goals of bin Laden's terrorist organization.
Publicly, the Bush administration has ignored the religious nature of this conflict, choosing to paint al-Qaeda and its supporters as a band of thugs and downplaying the way the terrorist organization has succeeded in using religion to lure Muslims to its side. On one level, this is understandable. Publicly acknowledging al-Qaeda's appeal to millions of faithful Muslims would make it even harder for the leaders of Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to support the U.S. efforts to defeat al-Qaeda and disarm Saddam Hussein.
But the painful reality is that what started out as a military operation to wipe out al-Qaeda -- a campaign that had fairly definable goals and objectives -- has morphed into something far more uncertain. With bin Laden now dead or in hiding, the war against terrorism has become a far-flung battle in which Muslim zealots in Tunisia, Pakistan, Yemen, Kuwait and Indonesia have attacked this country's forces or its allies, forcing the Bush administration to fight on an expanding number of fronts.
Sympathy fed by favors
A war against these religious fanatics will not be easily won. The likelihood is that their ranks will grow as the Bush administration moves closer to war with Iraq. To much of the world, Saddam is a brutal, sadistic dictator. But over the years, he has enhanced his standing among Muslim radicals and devout followers of Islam by giving a financial bounty to the families of the suicide bombers in Israel and providing a safe haven or sympathy for Muslim terrorists.
Bush didn't pick this fight; it was thrust upon him and the American people. But now that the battle has been joined, he must understand how consuming it is likely to become for the U.S. military and how dangerous the emerging Islamic holy war is to the world.
Last week, former senators Warren Rudman, R-N.H., and Gary Hart, D-Colo., who co-chaired a Council on Foreign Relations task force that looked at this nation's vulnerability to attack, offered an ominous conclusion: "A year after 9/11, America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil."
Before this nation goes to war with Iraq, it must defeat al-Qaeda and the wider terrorist movement it has spawned. To do otherwise would increase the danger of another terrorist attack at home and swell the ranks of Muslim extremists abroad.
DeWayne Wickham writes weekly for .




15

  
   


October 29, 2002 Tuesday



 
Toll of bomb suspects up to 175
Israel has captured 175 Palestinians this year suspected of plotting suicide bombings. Since Sept. 2000, 83 Palestinians have blown themselves up, killing 296 Israelis. Palestinians say harsh Israeli military strikes and strict travel bans in the West Bank and Gaza Strip provoke further bombings and shootings.
INDONESIA: Police whisked radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir from a hospital to question him on the deadly Bali bombing and other terrorist attacks. He is spiritual leader of al-Qaida-connected Jemaah Islamiyah.
ZIMBABWE: The ruling party won a parliamentary by-election, but the opposition said the vote was rigged and swayed by violence and intimidation.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Gunfire rocked the capital for a fourth day as rebels battled government supporters.
AFGHANISTAN: The three main factions in the volatile north agreed to disarm their fighters. Gunmen must disarm or join the police.






    
  


October 29, 2002, Tuesday



 INDONESIA'S ARREST OF MUSLIM CLERIC RISKS A BACKLASH







  



October 29, 2002 Tuesday  




 WORLD; 
In Brief

 
ASIA 
 TOKYO -- Showing solidarity with Washington, Japan's foreign minister said yesterday that her country would not normalize ties with North Korea or give it economic aid unless Pyongyang scrapped its nuclear weapons program. 
 But Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi added that Japan, which is eager to make progress on the emotional issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea, would do its best to keep Pyongyang engaged in dialogue. 
 Japan and North Korea resumed talks today for the first time in two years on establishing diplomatic ties.  
 Kawaguchi acknowledged that talking tough with North Korea carried risks, including the possibility of endangering discussions on the fate of five abductees now visiting Japan and of their families back in North Korea. 
ReutersAFRICA 
 BANGUI, Central African Republic -- Mortar and automatic-weapons fire rocked Bangui for a fourth day as rebels backing an ousted army chief battled government supporters for control of the nation. Each side accused the other of enlisting forces from other countries in the region. 
 There were no reliable reports on casualties, but tens of thousands of residents have fled the capital. President Ange-Felixe Patasse was reported to have left his residence for refuge in a foreign diplomatic mission.  
 The U.S. State Department described security as uncertain and advised Americans to defer travel to the country. It advised U.S. citizens living in Bangui to exercise caution and to remain in their homes until the situation stabilizes. 
 Patasse has accused Gen. Francois Bozize, the ousted army chief, of trying to overthrow him last November. Bozize sought refuge in neighboring Chad after the government tried to arrest him. 
Associated PressTHE MIDDLE EAST 
 RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Israel has captured 175 Palestinians suspected of plotting suicide bomb attacks, Israeli officials said, calling the figure evidence that Palestinian militants are relentless in trying to attack Israelis. 
 Security officials said most of the suspected plotters were captured in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A smaller number were intercepted while en route to Israel. 
 Since September 2000, 83 Palestinians have blown themselves up, killing 296 Israelis on buses, in malls, at gas stations and in cafes. The Palestinians say that harsh Israeli military strikes and strict travel bans in the West Bank and Gaza provoke bombings and shootings. 
Associated PressFOR THE RECORD 
 The second of two kidnapped sisters of Mexican pop star and actress Thalia has been freed in a case that has riveted Mexico and renewed the nation's anguish over a kidnapping epidemic. . . . Radical Muslim cleric Abubakar Baasyir was taken to Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, for questioning about alleged links to a terrorist network. . . . Nepal's army killed at least 32 rebels and foiled a midnight attack on a small airstrip in the country's mountainous east, a Defense Ministry statement said. . . . Workers scrambled to clear roadways and railways of trees and other debris after a fierce storm pummeled much of northern Europe with deadly gale-force winds, killing as many as 31 people and leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity. 






  
  


October 27, 2002 Sunday 1ST EDITION



 THE OPEN FORUM

 
 A real Jekyll-and-Hyde tale
Re: 'Children's advocacy group rips Allard's voting record,' Oct.  10 news story.
An unintentionally comic version of Robert Louis Stevenson's  classic story, 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,'  seems to be playing out in Colorado's overheated U.S. Senate race.  Kindly Dr. Allard repeatedly casts votes that ultra-right wacko  Marilyn Musgrave would be proud of, and then releases his  nightmarish alter ego, Mr. Wadhams, to screamingly counter any  groups or individuals who challenge, or even question, those  votes.
For example, it was revealed recently that kindly Dr. Allard was  the '1' in a 98-to-1 Senate vote funding a program to prevent,  detect and treat babies with fetal alcohol syndrome. He was  criticized by the group Every Child Matters for having 'one of the  worst, if not the worst, voting records in the United States  Senate.' The group took issue with Dr. Allard's votes against  spending to protect abused children; treatment of babies born  addicted to alcohol; health insurance for children; funding for  child care and early childhood education; and programs aimed at  dropout prevention, among others. 
Dr. Allard offered no response, but Mr. Wadhams immediately  attacked Every Child Matters as an organization being largely  funded by a 'filthy-rich Hollywood liberal' (Rob Reiner) who  'wants to impose extreme values on Colorado.' Take that, you  mean-spirited child protectors!
Allard has not explained his campaign ads that trumpet his  experience as a veterinarian over Tom Strickland's background as an  attorney for a job that involves making laws, so the only rationale  I can think of is that kindly Dr. Allard's experience in dealing  with horses' posteriors prepared him well for working with such  colleagues as Jesse Helms.
STEPHEN M. OPPERMANN
Denver
How hypocritical of Every Child Matters to target Wayne Allard for  his voting records when he stands firmly against abortion. Does  every child matter only once it is born? What about before it's  born?
MARK E. EDGAR
Aurora
Why is there no support from Sen. Wayne Allard to reauthorize the  Superfund tax that required corporate polluters to pay for the  cleanup of their messes, including 33 Superfund sites in Colorado?
The 'polluter pays to clean up their mess' has been basic since  the Superfund was created. Industries paid 82 percent of the  cleanup and taxpayers only 18 percent. But in 2003, 54 percent must  be paid by taxpayers and only 46 percent by industry. Without the  tax on corporate polluters, the Superfund trust fund is running out  of money. The Bush administration said it would reduce the number  of sites to be cleaned up nationally from 77 to 44. This action  affects Colorado, directly eliminating funding for the  lead/arsenic-contaminated area of north Denver, home to 10,000  Coloradans.
How can this trend be reversed? Reauthorize the tax on corporate  polluters. This would generate about $ 16 billion to pay for  cleanups for the next decade. The 'Toxic Clean-up Polluter Pays  Renewal Act' in Congress would do this. But Sen. Allard is not  sponsoring and has not expressed support for this bill. Something  to consider in November.
EDWARD TALBOT
Arvada
'Scary and risky' is how Tom Strickland characterizes Republican  initiatives to reform Social Security. But what, pray tell, is so  wonderful about this venerable government program that has won Mr.  Strickland's unconditional support?
In essence, Social Security, spawned in the 1930s depression, is  nothing more than an elaborate pyramid scheme. Such a scheme can  function so long as an increasing number of workers, with  increasing contributions, enter the system to pay ever-increasing  benefits to those who have retired. Conversely, the system  collapses when a diminishing number entering the system are able or  willing to adequately finance recipient benefits. Such is the  predicted fate of Social Security within the next 15 years as a  result of the retiring baby-boom generation. As it stands, an  18-year-old entering the system today who earns an average salary  throughout his working life can expect to pay approximately  $ 700,000 in Social Security taxes while receiving just $ 140,000 in  benefits.
Ultimately all pyramid schemes collapse - which is why they are  outlawed in the securities industry. That alone would suggest an  urgent need to revamp Social Security so that future generations  can receive their fair share of benefits from the system. For Tom  Strickland and his fellow myopic Democrats to suggest otherwise  poses a very scary risk.
RAOUL De CHANT
Parker
Sen. Wayne Allard failed to support 11,000 railroad families in  Colorado when he failed to support passage of the Railroad  Retirement and Survivors Improvement Act of 2001. This legislation  was supported by management, labor and the retirees in the railroad  industry. Sen. Allard was one of nine senators who voted against  the bill. This legislation benefited some 50,000 widows and  widowers across the country with an increase in their benefits.  These monies are contributed by the railroad employers and workers  while they are working. Sen. Allard's lack of support was based on  that we were taking our own money off-budget. It should have never  been there in the first place.
Based on Sen. Allard's voting record on a great number of issues,  he has not been very supportive of seniors and working people. I  encourage railroad families in Colorado to get out and vote on Nov.  5.
THOMAS J. DWYER, Legislative Director
Nat'l Assn. of Retired & Veteran Railway Employees, Inc.
Coon Rapids, Minn.
At some point a distinction must be made between wasteful  government and spending that is required for the good of the  nation. Education must be made into one of those priorities.  Education is the key to individual success as well as the success  of the nation.
Unfortunately, Wayne Allard seems to feel that it is wasted  spending. As a senator, Allard voted against increasing Pell Grants  for low-income students. Colorado had such a strong economy, based  in large part on our comparatively high population of people with  higher education. Giving people the tools they need to succeed,  particularly when they start from an economically disadvantaged  position, is not something that I think taxpayers find a waste.
Putting children in modernized schools that have roofs that don't  leak is a worthwhile goal, but Allard voted against aid to local  districts to repair and modernize schools. Allard has also voted to  end a class-size reduction program. Common sense tells anyone that  smaller classroom sizes and more individual attention lead to  better opportunities for all children to succeed. I won't be  casting my vote for someone who considers public education to be  taxpayer waste.
MARC HARNISH
Lakewood
In a recent debate between Sen. Wayne Allard and Tom Strickland,  Strickland made an incredible statement: 'The real enemy we have  is not a particular terrorist group or a particular extremist  philosophy. It's the hopelessness and despair that so many people  around the world feel. We've got to be a partner with the rest of  the world in addressing those concerns with other nations.'
Was it hopelessness or despair that destroyed the lives of nearly  3,000 people Sept. 11, or planted the bomb in Bali? Was it  hopelessness or despair that has killed more than 2 million people  in southern Sudan and more than 3,000 people in Indonesia? No, they  were all terrorists with a particular extremist philosophy - they  were all extremist Muslims.
If Tom Strickland does not understand that the U.S. has a terrorist  enemy, as a senator he will be dangerous to our American security.  How can Strickland protect us from a danger he does not believe  exists? In contrast, Sen. Wayne Allard recognizes the U.S. has a  clear and present threat to deal with. Wayne Allard will act  decisively to defend our nation from these threats.
KEN ROBERTS
Lakewood
----------------------------------------
Bravo for Quillen
Re: 'How not to waste your vote,' Oct. 20 Ed Quillen column.
For years I've been considered by my friends and acquaintances as  weird, politically uncorrect, stupid and a rebel against the system  simply because I've voted for minor-party candidates. A wasted  vote, I'm always told.
But now on my horizon appears Ed Quillen, a kindred spirit who  encourages voters to cast their ballots for minor-party candidates  as a way to get the attention of the Dems and the GOP. Bravo. Three  cheers and probably an ole!
I believe Quillen has the major parties tagged correctly, i.e., no  ideology. Winning elections is what they are after, and damn the  cost - or the tactics.
I'm proud to join Ed in rattling the Plutocrat cages!
ED SMITH
Arvada
----------------------------------------
Re: 'The Post picks a In the Colorado Senate,' Oct. 6 endorsement  editorial.
I take exception to The Post's endorsement of Ed Jones in Senate  District 11.
Jones' commercials falsely attack his opponent, Tony Marino,  calling him a liar time and again. The fact is Marino lied about  nothing. In a 1996 campaign Marino cited the wrong bill number. The  subject of the legislation cited was correct - the number wrong.  Marino discovered the error and corrected it himself. This is not  about a campaign issue - it is about character assassination for  political gain.
When asked by the Colorado Springs Gazette if he ever failed to pay  taxes, Jones said no. The Gazette reported that tax records  indicate he did so for a number of years - the same years he was  cited numerous times for driving without valid license tags or  insurance. An accident he had while uninsured resulted in serious  injuries. He has not paid off the victim's expenses 10 years  later.
In earlier campaign literature, Jones said he had a college degree.  He did not. In campaign literature for this campaign, Jones claims  to be a lifelong Republican. He is not, having switched from being  a Democrat in 1986.
The Independent newspaper has reported that Jones frequented a  local bar notorious for drug dealing and that he is a good friend  of the owner, a convicted drug dealer.
Character is certainly a factor in a campaign. Lying about oneself  is unacceptable. Lying about your opponent is despicable. Marino  will tell you he is not perfect - nor is anyone. He is honest, a  decorated combat Marine, a former police officer, a fiscal  conservative and the owner of a small business.
Marino hasn't lied about anything. His campaign has stuck to the  issues despite the muddy campaign Jones is waging.
The Post erred significantly in endorsing political insider Ed  Jones. The best choice for Senate District 11 is Tony Marino.
FRANK WIMBERLEY
Colorado Springs
----------------------------------------
Ideas wanted
The three of us - two Republicans and one Democrat - are leaving  the CU Board of Regents in December with 36 years of combined  service. We regard the future of CU and the qualifications of  regent candidates as very important. We are extremely concerned  that the current campaign in the 2nd Congressional District has  been riddled with unfounded rumors and mischaracterizations by one  candidate.
Contrast this behavior with that of Diane Greenlee, who brings  extensive higher-education experience to the board. Greenlee has  given time and personal resources to benefit all four CU campuses.  She is a candidate with a rare blend of knowledge, achievements and  proven commitment to improving CU. Greenlee will bring practical  business experience, new problem-solving approaches and creative  ideas to the board. We agree with  and The Daily  Camera that Diane Greenlee is the best candidate to represent the  2nd CD.
Although individual regents are affiliated with a political party,  the board rarely deals with policy issues on a partisan basis.  Greenlee's record indicates she is more committed to a stronger  university than to her allegiance to a political party or faction.  All voters, Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated, will be best  served by Diane Greenlee.
NORWOOD ROBB, 6th CD
BOB SIEVERS, 2nd CD
MAUREEN EDIGER, At-large
Sanity wanted
In order to bring some sanity to the Board of Regents, it is  necessary that, on Nov. 5, Cindy Carlisle be elected. She is  intelligent, courageous, cares about the quality of education and  has a great deal of common sense. As an alumna, a classicist and a  Republican, I am convinced that the university needs pluralism of  ideas and ideological diversity in order to provide the students  with a sound education.
It is terribly wrong for members of one political party to dominate  the board for more than 20 years. The university should not be the  pawn of any party. It will be much better for the university that  there be balance on the board. The election of Cindy Carlisle will  be a significant step toward that goal.
ELIZABETH HATFIELD
Boulder
Solutions wanted
I am a centrist, moderate, registered Democrat. In 1991, I ran  statewide for an at-large regent seat and lost to Jim Martin by  less than 1 percent of the total votes cast. Given this background,  plus my many years at CU before retiring, I have a special  perspective and interest in this year's 2nd CD race for regent. It  may come as shock to my many good Democratic and Republican friends  that I am supporting Diane Greenlee.
Partisan politics has no place in a regent race. I want the best  qualified and the most dedicated CU advocates on the Board of  Regents irrespective of their party affiliation. Having worked with  Diane Greenlee on the Norlin Library Development Advisory and the  CU Foundation Boards, I can say with absolute assurance that Diane  is highly competent, totally committed to CU and a very caring  human being. I would feel totally at ease knowing that Diane was on  the board looking after the best interests of students, staff and  faculty. I would also feel better knowing that CU, which affords  its constituents and state an unparalleled economic, intellectual,  cultural and athletics environment, was electing a staunch  supporter.
CU is facing a financial crisis. State support is abysmal. Some of  the ways the university can balance its budget are to admit more  students, raise its tuition or be forced to cut educational  programs. I would feel better knowing that someone as knowledgable  about CU, as skilled in business and as loyal an alumna as Diane  would be tackling these issues.
LANNY PINCHUK
Boulder
----------------------------------------
Who's more equal?
Re: 'All candidates are not created equal,' Oct. 20 Sue O'Brien  column.
Ms. O'Brien misleads us. She suggests the media ignore minor-party  candidates because they do not stand out or have galvanizing ideas,  that the 'best news stories of the past century' were based on  powerful ideas.
In reality, those stories were about celebrities. Teddy Roosevelt  was a former president when he ran on the Bull Moose ticket; Henry  Wallace was a former vice president. George Wallace was governor of  Alabama and John Anderson was a congressman. Ross Perot was a  multi-billionaire who appeared on the Larry King show regularly,  and Ralph Nader had been a noted consumer advocate for decades  before becoming politically active.
When crooner Barbara Streisand espouses a relatively old and worn  political idea, it garners immediate media attention and a spot on  the front page. When the Libertarians' Biff Baker or the Reform  Party's Victor Good espouses a galvanizing idea, the press release  rarely survives the trip from the fax machine to the editor's  desk.
Minor-party candidates and their ideas do not get any media  attention because they are not celebrities. To this degree, Ms.  O'Brien is correct: 'All candidates are not created equal.'
NORM OLSEN
Golden
The writer is campaign director for the Libertarian Party of  Colorado.
----------------------------------------
Pass Aurora bonds
The passage of Aurora public school bonds is essential. Please vote  'yes' on 3A.
More than one-third of the 43 schools in the district are nearly 40  years old. A 'yes' vote will eliminate dangerous, outdated  electrical wiring that does not meet fire code, replace old heating  systems and repair rotted plumbing and leaky roofs. It will help  the district install new computer wiring and networks to ensure  that students can compete for the jobs of tomorrow. The district is  not asking for new taxes, but permission to continue a tax already  being paid.
MADOLYN PAROSKE
Aurora Public Schools Board
of Education







   
 

October 27, 2002 Sunday  
  



 U.S. and 2 of Its Allies Warn North Korea on Atomic Arms 

 
The United States, Japan and South Korea issued a joint statement here today calling on North Korea to dismantle its clandestine nuclear weapons program "in a prompt and verifiable manner" and warned Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, that his "relations with the international community" hinged on his quick compliance with the demand.
     The statement was issued after considerable behind-the-scenes diplomacy by the United States to form a common front with the Asian allies against North Korea's project to enrich uranium in its latest attempt to develop atomic weapons. But it stopped short of threatening the complete economic isolation of North Korea that the Bush administration has talked about in the last week. 
 The statement said Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, who traveled to North Korea to normalize relations just before the nuclear disclosure, warned today that "normalization talks would not be concluded" until the nuclear issue was fully resolved. That statement was considered crucial by American officials because Japan is the largest potential source of trade and investment for North Korea. 
The statement came as the administration seemed increasingly anxious that members of the United Nations Security Council -- including Mexico, the host of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting that started here today -- are still unwilling to give Washington a broad latitude to strike at President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. 
The French said they would introduce their own resolution if the Security Council does not reach a consensus on the Bush proposal.  Page 8.  
President Vicente Fox of Mexico told President Bush today that his country was still consulting with France and Russia, among other nations. Mexico holds a pivotal vote on the Security Council as it debates how to confront Iraq. 
Mexico, France and Russia have pursued an alternative resolution that Mr. Bush finds too constraining, and he warned anew today with some frustration in his voice that he has told the world "in speech after speech after speech" that "if the U.N. won't act, if Saddam Hussein won't disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him."
Underscoring the president's impatience with the six-week-long debate in the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that "we have reach the point where we have to make a few fundamental decisions in the early part of next week" about whether the United Nations is ready to pass a resolution that Mr. Bush believes will make it clear to Mr. Hussein that failure to disarm will result in an attack. 
"If resolution is not possible," said Secretary Powell, who had argued strongly this summer that any war with Iraq would have far more legitimacy if the United States first went to the United Nations, "then let's come to that realization and move forward."
Mr. Bush's effort today to manage the twin crises of Iraq and North Korea was a study in two very different diplomatic approaches. The president and his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, made it clear that the White House had just about run out of patience with the continuing debate over Iraq, and even the more patient Secretary Powell said "we can't continue to have a debate that never ends."
But on North Korea, where administration officials have concluded that no real military option is available because of the North's huge array of conventional weapons within easy reach of Seoul, the South Korean capital, Mr. Bush seems content to engage in the kind of slow consensus building that his critics say has been missing from the Iraq debate. In the 10 days since the White House made public North Korea's disclosure that it has violated a 1994 agreement to freeze its weapons in return for Western energy help, American diplomats have toured Asia, Russia and Western Europe to piece together a common declaration that a North Korean nuclear weapon could not be tolerated.
Administration officials make no secret of where they are headed: They want to win agreement on an economic isolation of North Korea, already one of the world's least developed and most isolated nations, if it refuses to dismantle the new nuclear project. An older nuclear program, involving the production of plutonium at a nuclear reactor site called Yongbyon, appears to have remained inactive.
The United States is not talking directly to the North Koreans after the meeting early this month where the existence of the program was disclosed, Secretary Powell said today. But Japan and South Korea are going ahead with previously scheduled talks. A senior Japanese official here said today that "we have no plans to give economic assistance to North Korea" before the nuclear issue and the question of abducted Japanese citizens are resolved.
Secretary Powell was equally forceful on that point after the North Koreans, in a statement on Friday, said they would negotiate about the program only if the United States signs a nonaggression pact. "You can't violate an agreement and then show up and say, 'We violated this agreement, what will you pay us for this violation in order to get out of the violation,' " he told reporters. 
When that issue came up in the 1990's, North Korea said part of the deal is the withdrawal of all American troops from South Korea, which today number around 37,000. In the statement today, however, Mr. Bush repeated an assurance he made in February shortly after calling North Korea part of the "axis of evil" -- that the "United States has no intention of invading North Korea."
Part of the American strategy seems to be to wait for South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung, to leave office in a few months. Mr. Kim, a Nobel Prize winner, built his legacy on engagement with the North, and he seems more reluctant to follow the path of isolation. Today, he said very little in public.
But not all of those here are convinced of the urgency of the problem. The Russian prime minister, Mikail M. Kasyanov, said here on Friday that North Korea and its newly disclosed nuclear weapon program posed no danger to the world.
"We do not have any evidence and proof that North Korea holds any threat," he said.
Mr. Bush arrived in this sealed-off resort early today, under bright blue skies after a hurricane blew through 180 miles away. He met his host, President Fox, for a conversation that was dominated by the American counterterrorism agenda and issues of immigration that seemed on the verge of making progress before the Sept. 11 attack. But after the meeting, their seventh in 22 months, the two men appeared to be at an amiable impasse.
Mr. Bush said he recognized Mr. Fox's desires for legal rights for undocumented Mexicans in the United States. But the two did not reach any accord on that issue, or on the question of heavily subsidized American agricultural imports, which threaten to swamp Mexican farmers and businesses, driving even more migrants north.
Nor did Mr. Bush win Mexico's pivotal support in the Security Council vote on Iraq. Mr. Fox remained noncommittal on the American desire for a resolution that could lead to military action against Iraq.
The leaders will announce on Sunday an accord aimed at achieving "'the twin goals of enhanced security against terrorist threats and continued facilitation of the movement of goods, capital and people." According to a copy of the agreement, they will "freeze the assets of terrorists and their supporters without delay," block them from "accessing the international financial system," and "investigate and prosecute money launderers and terrorist financiers." 
In the focus on terrorism, many of the past initiatives of the meetings seemed almost ignored. There was little discussion of global financial stability efforts, which dominated these meetings during the financial crises of the 1990's, particularly the Asian collapse in 1997 and 1998. There was surprisingly little talk of Japan's deepening banking crisis, and little noticeable pressure on Mr. Koizumi to fix the system after 10 years of decay. "We've got a lot of fatigue on that subject," one American official said. Even trade, the reason the group came into existence, seemed a passing thought.
Instead, terror dominated. Mr. Kasyanov, standing in for President Vladimir V. Putin, who stayed home to deal with the aftermath of the hostage crisis in Moscow, said world events compelled "the countries which were to some extent reluctant to join in this coalition to more actively participate in combating all signs of terrorism."
Mr. Bush also met with Indonesia's president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, aiming to stiffen her spine against militant Islamic forces in Indonesia. It took the bombing in Bali this month, which killed some 200 people, for her to acknowledge the force and depth of that militancy in predominantly Muslim Indonesia.






   

 

October 26, 2002 



 SNIPER SHOOTINGS: Islam connection shakes Muslims;
Metro adherents say killers tar their image

 
The good news came first, recalled Suhail Ali, a Muslim accountant who lives in Atlanta.
The Washington, D.C.-area sniper, after a three-week reign of terror in a city where Ali had relatives and friends, had finally been caught.
The bad news followed seconds later. One of the suspects was a convert to Islam named Muhammad. 
"Ordinarily we celebrate when we hear someone has converted to Islam," said Ali. "But we rue the day when John Allen Williams took the name of our holiest prophet."
For many of metro Atlanta's 32,000 Muslims who gathered at area mosques for noon prayers Friday, the sniper suspect's faith was cause for consternation.
Some said Muhammad had once again tarred the image of a peaceful religion, just as it was recovering from the shameful blow dealt by the Sept. 11 hijackers. Others disapprovingly noted that a true Muslim would never boast he is God, as the sniper did in a note at one of the shootings, much less kill without justification.
Still others emphatically pointed to reports that Muhammad was a member of the Nation of Islam, a fringe group that combines Islam and black nationalism, and is led by controversial firebrand Louis Farrakhan.
"His ties to Islam are tenuous at best," said Faheem Abu Na'im, an optometrist from Atlanta.
Muhammad reportedly is a Muslim convert who adopted his new surname last year and once served as a security guard at Farrakhan's Million Man March in Washington.
Nation of Islam officials in Chicago declined to comment on Muhammad's alleged link to the group.
Steven Muhammad, a follower of the Nation of Islam group in Atlanta's West End, said while Farrakhan has made pronouncements against America, the main focus of the sect is to improve conditions in the inner cities.
"We try to fix America, not kill Americans," he said.
Although officials haven't said whether religious beliefs played a role in the attacks, some Muslims fear that message has seeped into the American consciousness. The recent terrorist attacks in Indonesia, Kuwait and other countries where Americans were killed have strengthened the belief that Islam fosters terrorism, some said.
Tarek Aziz, a real estate agent in Sandy Springs, has seen the effects of such a distortion on a close friend.
"He always stood up for me when others asked me all these hostile questions about Islam," said Aziz. "But after this latest incident, he says, 'You know, Tarek, there's always a reason behind stereotypes.'
"Even he had internalized that being a Muslim means you're anti-American."







  



October 25, 2002 Friday  




 The Clinton Paper Chase

 
 During the Clinton administration, which of these deserving nations became the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the Asia-Pacific region? 
 (a) The Philippines, longtime friend and ally. 
 (b) Indonesia, moderate, Muslim and developing. 
 (c) Cambodia, impoverished and rebuilding. 
 (d) North Korea, a deranged Stalinist dictatorship that feeds its million-man army while starving its people, that sells ballistic missiles to America's worst enemies and that is building nuclear weapons.  
 Did I tip my hand? 
 The great divide in American foreign policy thinking is between those who believe in paper and those who believe in power. The paper school was in charge of the 1990s. 
 In the 1990s the main objective of Clinton foreign policy was to get as many signatures as possible on as many pieces of paper as possible promising peace and brotherhood. There was a mania for treaties -- on chemical and biological weapons, nuclear proliferation and testing, land mines, antiballistic missiles, climate control. And, of course, treaties with mortal enemies. 
 One of the proudest achievements of the Clinton administration was the Agreed Framework with North Korea. Clinton assured us that it froze the North Korean nuclear program. North Korea gave us a piece of paper promising to freeze; we gave North Korea 500,000 tons of free oil every year and set about building -- also for free -- two huge $ 2 billion nuclear power plants that supposedly could be used only to produce electricity. Japan and South Korea were induced to give tons of foreign aid as well, Clinton being the committed multilateralist, even in extortion. 
 It turns out the North Koreans took the loot and lied. Surprise! All the while they were enriching uranium. They now brazenly admit to having a nuclear weapons program and other weapons of mass destruction. 
 Jimmy Carter just won a Nobel Peace Prize for, among other things, his 1994 intervention with the North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung that led to this agreement. Carter had returned from his talks in Pyongyang declaring, "The crisis is over." He was missing only the umbrella. (Carter also enthused that "there is an incredible reverence and exaltation of President Kim Il Sung," author of one of the most grotesque police states in all of history.) 
 At the time, the New York Times enthusiastically applauded this achievement of peace in our time ("Nuclear Breakthrough in Korea") and praised "U.S. negotiator Robert Gallucci and his North Korean interlocutors" for having "defied impatient hawks and other skeptics who accused the Clinton administration of gullibility and urged swifter, stronger action." 
 At the time, in this space, I called the agreement "worse than dangerous, it is shameful" and suggested that it should have been signed on the battleship Missouri, as it amounted to unconditional surrender. 
 Eight years and a few North Korean nukes later, the Times has seen the light. It concludes a deeply disappointed editorial with this priceless discovery: "Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of dictators who want them requires more than signed agreements." 
 The North Korean fiasco was not the only Clintonian attempt at paper diplomacy. The bloodiest farce was the Oslo "peace" between Israel and the Palestinians. President Clinton insisted that it be signed on the White House lawn under his upraised arms. He then spent the next seven years brokering one new agreement after another while declaring the peace irreversible. He knew it was so because Yasser Arafat had promised -- in writing -- an end to violence and terrorism. Then Arafat decided to start up the violence and terrorism in September 2000, bringing on the worst Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed in this hundred-year war and leaving the Clinton paper-pushers surprised. 
 This is not that hard to figure out. Living by paper -- contracts and laws and courts and binding agreements -- is lovely. It's what makes domestic society civilized and decent. The problem is that the international arena is not domestic society. It is a jungle. It is a state of nature. At home, autoworkers make peace with GM with a signed agreement. That doesn't work with Kim Il Sung, or with his deranged son Kim Jong Il. 
 Agreements with them or Arafat or Saddam Hussein are not worth the paper they are written on. Laboring over every jot and tittle -- the life work of our paper-pushing peace processors -- is quite mad. The beginning of wisdom is giving up this supremely naive belief in paper. 
 It is not the end of wisdom, to be sure. It does not answer all questions. But it will keep us from repeating the disasters of the delusional '90s, disasters that haunt our sleep now and will haunt us for decades to come. 







   
 

October 24, 2002 Thursday  
  



 Wary Companies Are Staying in the Muslim World 

 
Despite the apparently globe-girdling reach of Islamic terror groups, some of the biggest Western multinational corporations are holding fast to their investments in most Muslim countries.
     Though foreign investment is falling in countries where terrorists have struck, other predominantly Muslim countries with a good record of controlling violence have experienced little or no diminution. 
 Most developing countries, including those with large Muslim populations, badly need foreign investment to help develop modern industries and service sectors. Such investment has been depressed in recent years by the global economic slowdown. But now, as the worst of the slowdown appears to have passed, the threat of terrorism is continuing to hamper foreign economic engagement in some countries. 
Even before the devastating attack in Bali, investment in Indonesia was declining as the country's problems with terror groups received more attention. In the first nine months of 2002, the country attracted 780 investment projects worth $5.4 billion, compared with 1,017 projects worth $6.1 billion in the period in 2001, according to the country's Investment Coordinating Board.
Contrast that experience with nearby Malaysia, half of whose territory lies on Kalimantan, an island it shares with Indonesia and Brunei. About 60 percent of Malaysia's population is Muslim, according to estimates by the State Department. Yet it is light-years distant from Indonesia's troubles in the eyes of multinational companies and foreign portfolio managers.
"Being a Muslim country has not been a deterrent" to investment, said Rafidah Aziz, the minister of international trade and industry in Malaysia, in an interview last week. "We have become the kind of Muslim country that people do not fear."
On Sept. 11, 2002, the United States closed its embassy in Malaysia -- along with those in Cambodia, Indonesia and Vietnam -- after officials cited "credible and specific" threats of terrorism. Yet at virtually the same time, all three major credit-rating agencies raised their ratings of Malaysia's unsecured foreign-currency debt, a vote of confidence.
Foreign investment in Malaysia has not suffered; rather, it has risen as the country has come to be seen as a more affordable alternative to Singapore, Ms. Aziz said.
Central Asia has also been called a potential hotbed of terrorist activity. Some terrorists from Al Qaeda who trained in Afghanistan may have come from nearby Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and may have slipped back there since the Taliban's fall. But terrorism and the fear of it have not affected all the region's largely Muslim countries.
"In countries like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, domestic politics is much more important for the way foreign investment works out," said Alexander G. Zaslavsky, director of consulting at the Eurasia Group, a political consulting firm. These resource-rich countries, he said, "have much more pressing issues than those of religious conflict."
More than one-third of Kazakhstan's foreign investment has come from the United States, and that trend shows no signs of slowing. Much of the investment has been in oil, but earlier this month, the two countries began a program to make more of American investors' money available to small- and medium-size businesses in Kazakhstan.
"Relationships with companies have been strong for the past 10 years," said Roman Vassilenko, press secretary at Kazakhstan's embassy in Washington. "They have seen no change whatsoever in the past year. They have even strengthened."
Even in the countries abutting Afghanistan and Pakistan that have not yet received much money from the West, Mr. Zaslavsky said, the business climate may be improved by the new presence of American armed forces. "It brings legitimacy to the regimes," he said. "It changes the perception, perhaps, of foreign investors as well -- it conveys the image of greater stability."
Among most big multinationals, the mantra is to stay the course, with a bit of extra care. "We have certainly changed security procedures, but not slowed down any investments," David J. O'Reilly, chairman and chief executive of ChevronTexaco, said in an interview last week. "You can't be deterred from your ambition by one set of events." ChevronTexaco has big stakes in oil fields in West Africa and Indonesia.
Coca-Cola has significant investments in more than a dozen Muslim countries in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. The company has not canceled or delayed any investment plans in these countries, said Kari Bjorhus, a spokesman. The same goes for Sara Lee, which operates divisions in Malaysia and elsewhere in Asia, said Hillary Sterling, a spokeswoman.
In the view of General Motors, a big Muslim population is not enough, by itself, to suggest the presence of a radical fringe or a major risk of terror.
"I don't think whether a region or a country is predominantly Muslim or otherwise is even a criterion for us," said Toni Simonetti, a spokeswoman for the company, which has both a sales subsidiary and an assembly plant in Indonesia. "We look at things like the stability of a country, the merits of a proposal, the needs of our business."
Nevertheless, Ms. Simonetti said, General Motors assesses the security situation of its far-flung divisions just about every day. "To the extent that there are political risks to conducting business, we go into that with open eyes," she said.
Though multinationals with extensive experience investing abroad appear undaunted, small companies have begun to seek extra assurances that their investments will be safe.
Ms. Aziz regularly travels abroad to drum up investment. In meetings during her latest trip to the United States, she said, "there would be one odd question out of one local guy, who has never stepped out of his state," about security. In such cases, she said, she would try to ease the potential investor's jitters by explaining Malaysia's situation.
"Then," she said, "I tell them, 'If you're still worried, you'd better not go. It's not good for your health!' "







  



October 23, 2002 Wednesday  




 Group to Be Added to Terror List; 
Jemaah Islamiah Tied to Al Qaeda, Suspected in Bali Blast

 
 The State Department today will list as a terrorist organization a group suspected in the Oct. 12 nightclub bombing in Bali that killed more than 180 people, a senior administration official said yesterday.  
 The official said Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiah has been under review for designation as a terrorist organization for a number of months and today's announcement is unrelated to the Bali bombing. "We can't say yet it is responsible for Bali," he said. 
 Jemaah Islamiah is being cited because of its links to al Qaeda, and its plans to attack embassies and diplomatic buildings in Singapore, the official said. He also said its leaders had admitted to church bombings in Indonesia. "They are a dangerous group," he said.  
 Jemaah Islamiah will become the 35th organization designated as a terrorist group by the State Department. Adding the group to the list will make it a crime to contribute funds to it, bar its members from receiving visas to enter the United States and require U.S. financial institutions to block its funds. 
 U.S. officials are also discussing with Australian and Indonesian officials whether to apply to the United Nations to add Jemaah Islamiah to its list of terrorist organizations. That listing requires all members of the United Nations to freeze the group's assets and deny entry to its members.  
 Before the Bali bombing, U.S. officials had pressed Indonesian officials to crack down on terrorism, with little success. During a visit in August, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced a $ 50 million, three-year anti-terrorism assistance package.  
 Since the bombing, Indonesian authorities, with support from influential moderate Muslim groups, have moved to take steps against extremist groups.  
 The State Department's global terrorism report this year listed Jemaah Islamiah in the lesser category of "other terrorist group." The report said the group, with about 200 members, hoped to "create an Islamic state comprising Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the southern Philippines." 
 In December, authorities in Singapore arrested 15 Jemaah Islamiah members, some of whom had trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, according to the State Department. The group had planned to attack the U.S. and Israeli embassies, as well as British and Australian diplomatic buildings. 
 Jemaah Islamiah's operational head, a fugitive known as Hambali, decided at a mid-January meeting in southern Thailand to target bars, nightclubs and cafes in the region, along with Western diplomatic targets, according to Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism analyst in Southeast Asia who based his statements on information from terrorism briefings by law enforcement officials. 
 There was nothing in the briefings that specified Bali, he said, though Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore were named. 
 According to a high-ranking security official in the region who asked not to be identified, the information about the meeting in southern Thailand came from Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a Canadian born in Kuwait who is in U.S. custody as a material witness. "That's why we're watching all these joints," the official said. 
 He said the information was shared among regional intelligence agencies several weeks ago in a report that did not specify individual countries.  
 On Sunday, Indonesian Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil declared that "al Qaeda and its internal network is behind this Bali bomb blast." He said intelligence agencies had determined that Hambali, whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, was a leading operative in al Qaeda-related terrorism in Indonesia. The same day, Indonesian authorities arrested Abubakar Baasyir, the alleged spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah. 
 The decision to attack "soft targets" -- nongovernmental buildings and facilities whose destruction would have mainly economic consequences -- was a "decisive shift" in Jemaah Islamiah's strategy, Gunaratna said. The group had previously focused on Western diplomatic and naval targets. The soft operation, he said, was code-named Terminal. U.S. Embassy officials in Jakarta said last night that they were unaware of any of these allegations, including the Thailand meeting. 
 Two U.S. intelligence officials in Washington, meanwhile, said the warnings about possible attacks in Indonesia were consistent with the view that South Asian terrorists had turned their attention to less defensible targets such as tourist sites. An intelligence report dated Sept. 25 that was circulated throughout the U.S. intelligence community, mentioned Bali as a possible target. 
 But lacking a specific time or place, said one U.S. intelligence source, the report probably did not stand out among the "gigantic pile of information" on threats to Western targets in Indonesia streaming into intelligence stations around the world at that time. 
 Another U.S. intelligence official said many of the threats reported in late September focused on Jakarta as a possible target. 
 "The Australians got the same reporting we had," said one official. "It was an admittedly vague warning." 
Nakashima reported from Bali. Staff writers Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt contributed to this report. 







   
 

October 22, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 For Indonesia Leader, Small Talk Edges Tough Talk 

 
When the Australian foreign minister arrived here after the bombings in Bali to talk about terrorism, President Megawati Sukarnoputri greeted him with the kind of inconsequential remark expected from a protocol officer.
     The Indonesian weather, Australian officials say she told the minister, Alexander Downer, was very hot. 
 The daughter of Sukarno, Indonesia's charismatic founder, Mrs. Megawati often behaves like a court princess, bound by codes of formal conduct and minimal public expression. 
There are frequent accounts in Jakarta of Mrs. Megawati, when confronted with a serious question by a visiting diplomat, replying across the tea set, "Have another cookie." 
Yet, beneath the polite exterior lies a desire, say her admirers, to bring stability to an ethnically diverse nation that has known terrible violence and a dedication to democracy after three decades of authoritarian rule.
She is very supportive of the military, a sympathy that can be explained, they assert, by a yearning for national cohesion. Her reluctance to take on Islamic militants, even as the United States has repeatedly linked some of them to Al Qaeda, stemmed, they say, from her concern that a crackdown would lead to turmoil. 
President Megawati is scheduled to leave here on Tuesday for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Mexico, where she is scheduled to meet with President Bush to discuss terrorism. In an unusual challenge to a foreign president, Mr. Bush said last week that he hoped to "hear the resolve of a leader" when he sat down with Mrs. Megawati in Mexico. 
That is the question in Indonesia, too: Can the 55-year-old president of the world's most populous Muslim nation, who has spent much of her life as a housewife, change her modus operandi after 14 months on the job? Can she rule rather than reign?
"She has started to move, but not fast enough," said Jusuf Wanandi, the director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. "She's trying to lead. She is now at last calling frequent cabinet and security meetings." 
Those cabinet meetings exposed the divisions within her government. They also underscored the balancing act Mrs. Megawati must try to carry off as she faces the international community over terrorism and as she faces re-election in 2004.
Overwhelming numbers of Indonesians practice a moderate form of Islam, but there are increasing calls for an Islamic state with Shariah law. President Megawati is in the contradictory position of wanting to avoid a harsh crackdown that might increase sympathies for the Islamists while avoiding looking too weak in the face of a challenge from her vice president, Hamzah Haz, who is likely to be an opponent in the 2004 contest, political analysts say. 
Mrs. Megawati was able to smooth the severe divisions in her cabinet last week and, finally, after a marathon cabinet session that ran until midnight last Friday, the government issued two new antiterrorism decrees that provide for sweeping powers of investigation and detention. They were laws that the United States had been urging on the government since last year. 
True to form, Mrs. Megawati did not speak publicly about the stern edicts she had been previously reluctant to push. But one thing was clear. She had somehow laid the political groundwork so that not only were there no immediate public protests, but the most important moderate Muslim leaders openly embraced the new laws.
Like a number of other leaders in Asia who are women, Mrs. Megawati ascended with the help of a political pedigree. But hers was a difficult rise, fraught with personal unhappiness and political persecution. 
She was born in 1947, in Yogyakarta, the intellectual center of Indonesia when it was still battling the Dutch. Her name means cloud, and she grew up in the pleasant surroundings of the presidential palace in Jakarta. Sukarno took her on his frequent trips abroad, including one to meet President John F. Kennedy. 
Apparently upset about the bloody overthrow of her father, Mrs. Megawati dropped out of college after only a year. Soon after her father's death in 1970, her first husband, Surindro Supjarso, an air force officer, was killed in a plane crash. She then eloped with an Egyptian diplomat, only to have the marriage annulled by her family. 
In 1973, she married her present husband, a businessman, Taufik Kiemas. After staying at home for more than a decade raising children, she joined her husband in running for Parliament in the mid-1980's as members of the opposition Democratic Party of Indonesia.
By 1999, largely on the power of her name as Sukarno's daughter, she had become the country's most popular politician. Her party won 35 percent of the votes in the first free elections since the 1950's.
But even though she was the top vote getter, Mrs. Megawati could not bring herself to negotiate with other political parties to form a government. She became vice president to Abdurrahman Wahid and, when Mr. Wahid's tenure ended amid impeachment charges last year, she emerged as president with a coalition that included Islamist politicians.
The broker behind all her political moves has been Mr. Taufik. As she has moved up the political ladder, he has moved from managing a chain of gas stations during the Suharto era to becoming the consummate dealmaker of his wife's administration. 
Until the attack in Bali, however, the dominant question in Indonesian politics was whether Mrs. Megawati's election prospects would survive the political damage from Mr. Taufik's business deals, American diplomats said. The perception that Mrs. Megawati is unable to move decisively against corruption does not help, nor does her announced ignorance of economic matters. For example, she referred during a recent foreign trip to applying the "housewife's management system" to the nation's economic problems.
Mrs. Megawati has proved a perplexing problem for the Bush administration. She was one of the first foreign leaders to see President Bush after the Sept. 11 attack, and promised to fight terror. But when she came home to a widespread anti-Americanism, she carefully distanced herself from Washington.
Last month, the White House dispatched Karen B. Brooks, 31, a specialist on Indonesia on the National Security Council, and the person Mrs. Megawati likes best in the administration. Only Ms. Brooks, it was reasoned, could persuade her that Qaeda-linked militant Islamic groups were operating in her country. Sadly, however, Mrs. Megawati took notice only after the deaths of more than 200 people in Bali, a senior American official lamented.




16

  
  

  

October 22, 2002 Tuesday 



 2 Muslim groups seek antiterror laws in Indonesia;
In a nation where moderate and liberal Islamics are in the majority, the largest groups pressed for action.

 
Even before the Oct. 12 bombing in Bali drew world attention to Indonesia's Muslim extremism, a struggle for the soul of Islam was raging across this archipelago, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
On one side are such extremists as Abu Bakar Bashir - alleged head of the group Jemaah Islamiyah, suspected in the Bali bombing - and their supporters, some of them linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network. They are fiercely devoted to causes ranging from imposing strict Islamic law here to creating an Islamic "super state" for Southeast Asia's 230 million Muslims.
Aligned against them are the moderate and liberal Muslims who are the vast, and often passive, majority of Indonesian society that favors modernity and globalization. 
Yesterday, prompted by the Bali blast, leaders of Indonesia's two largest Muslim groups - the 40-million-member Nahdlatul Ulama, and the Muhammadiyah, with 30 million - called for antiterror legislation.
"I believe that Bashir is a terrorist," said former President Abdurrahman Wahid, a leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama.
President Megawati Sukarnoputri dallied for months, despite mounting international pressure to crack down. But after the Bali bombing killed nearly 200 people, she acted, issuing two emergency antiterrorism decrees Friday. The same day, police named Bashir as a suspect in several cases, though not the Bali attack.
But several moderate and liberal Muslim leaders warned that a crackdown alone would not suffice. Only by addressing causes of extremism, they say, can moderate Muslims prevail.
One cause is disillusionment about the government's ability to improve Indonesians' lives.
"If the government is weak, anything can happen," said Syafii Maarif, chairman of Muhammadiyah. "Unfortunately, our government is weak."
Indonesia has had three presidents since 1998, when the dictator Suharto was forced from power. He was despised as corrupt and oppressive - but his successors have been ineffective, failing to end endemic corruption or to reverse the economic slide that has impoverished millions.
Many also blame U.S. Mideast policy. Hamid Basyaid of the Islamic Liberals Network said anger at unconditional U.S. support for Israel was shared by all Indonesian Muslims - militants, moderates, liberals.
But beyond such aggravating factors is a larger issue, Maarif said. "Our main mission now is to enlighten the minds and hearts of people," he said. "We have to teach people how to deal with modernity."
That requires a successful challenge to the strain known as Wahhabi Islam, exported from Saudi Arabia and espoused by such zealots as bin Laden and Afghanistan's former Taliban regime.
Historically, Indonesia has represented a more tolerant and pluralistic Islam. Other traditions - Hinduism, Buddhism, animism - have been tolerated here to a greater degree than in many other Islamic countries.
Suharto ruthlessly repressed militancy, except when he used it for his own purposes. After his fall, many policies against both militants and democracy activists were lifted. Experts disagree on whether extremism has grown much since then.
Basyaid, of the Islamic Liberals Network, which organized to challenge extremist views, said militants had simply become louder due to fewer restraints.
"The radical camp is a small minority but very vocal," he said, noting that Islamic parties drew only 15 percent in the 1999 elections. He and others also noted that a push in parliament to impose sharia, Islamic law, was overwhelmingly defeated.
But Husein Umar, father of the new generation of militancy here, said those developments did not reflect the dramatic changes taking place.
Umar, whose ultraconservative Indonesian Missionary Council trains militant clerics, said he was convinced that the majority of young Indonesians were looking to Islam for solutions to society's problems.
"After years with the IMF and the World Bank, all we've got is suffering and corruption," he said. "We want sharia law to control the morality of our people."
Contact Michael Dorgan at mdorgan@krwashington.com.






  
  


October 22, 2002 Tuesday



 Factions struggle in Indonesia;
MILITANTS' ACTIONS DROWNING OUT MAJORITY OF MODERATE MUSLIMS

 
Even before the massive bombing in Bali drew world attention to Indonesia's Muslim extremism, a struggle for the soul of Islam was raging across the vast archipelago that forms the world's most populous Muslim nation.
On one side are militants such as Abu Bakar Bashir -- alleged head of the group Jemaah Islamiyah, which is suspected in the Bali bombing -- and their hard-line supporters, some of whom have ties to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida terrorist network. Their numbers are small, but they are fiercely devoted to their causes, which range from imposing strict Islamic law on Indonesia to creating an Islamic "super state" for Southeast Asia's 230 million Muslims.
Aligned against them are the moderate and liberal Muslims, who compose the vast majority of Indonesian society, though not as vocal as the extremists. They favor embracing modernity and globalization, which the militants reject as antithetical to Islam. 
Prompted by the Bali blast to take a stand, the leaders of the nation's two largest Muslim organizations -- the Nahdlatul Ulama, which claims 40 million members, and the Muhammadiyah, with 30 million members -- called Monday for harsh anti-terrorist legislation.
"I believe that Bashir is a terrorist," said former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, a leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama.
President Megawati Sukarnoputri, herself a reluctant warrior in the fight against Islamic extremism, dallied for months despite mounting pressure from the United States and other countries to crack down on militants. But after the Bali bombing -- which killed nearly 200 people, including more than 100 Australians and at least two Americans -- Megawati finally made a move.
Her government issued two emergency anti-terrorism decrees Friday that, among other things, allow the death penalty in terrorism cases and permit authorities to detain people for seven days without strong legal evidence that they were involved in terrorism. Also Friday, police named Bashir as a suspect in several cases including a string of bomb attacks, although not the Bali bombing.
Australian officials and others say the bombing appears to be the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been blamed for bombings and terrorist plots in several countries, including Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.
But several moderate and liberal Muslim leaders warned in interviews that a crackdown alone will not achieve an enduring victory. Only by addressing the causes of extremism, they say, can moderate Muslims and their supporters prevail.
One cause is the utter disillusionment many Indonesians feel about their government's failure to improve their lives.
"The role of government is dominant," said Syafii Maarif, chairman of Muhammadiyah. "If the government is weak, anything can happen. Unfortunately our government is weak."
Changing leadership
Indonesia has had four presidents in as many years. Former dictator Suharto, who was forced from power in 1998, was despised for being corrupt and oppressive. But all three presidents since have been weak and ineffective. None has delivered on promises to end the corruption that pervades every level of government. None has succeeded in reversing the economic decline since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which impoverished millions of people.
Many people also blame U.S. policy in the Middle East for Islamic extremism.
Hamid Basyaid, a leader of the Islamic Liberals Network, said anger over America's unconditional support for Israel was the one thing that all Indonesian Muslims shared -- militants, moderates and liberals alike.
"We all have the same view of the double standard America uses in the Middle East," he said.
But beyond such aggravating factors is a larger issue, Maarif said. "Our main mission now is to enlighten the minds and hearts of people," he said. "We have to teach people how to deal with modernity."
That requires a successful challenge to the militant Wahhabi creed, widely exported in recent decades from Saudi Arabia. That harsh strain of Islam has served as an ideological foundation for such zealots as bin Laden and Afghanistan's former Taliban regime.
Historically, Indonesia has represented a different side of Islam, a more moderate, tolerant and pluralistic one. What is now Indonesia became Muslim not by conquest but by gradual conversion after Arab traders introduced Islam to the area in the 13th century. Other cultural and religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and native animism, have been tolerated here to a greater degree than they have in many other Islamic countries.
In recent decades, Islamic militancy was ruthlessly repressed by the Suharto regime, except when he used militants for his own purposes. After his regime fell, many of the policies that had repressed militants and democracy activists were lifted. Experts disagree on whether Islamic extremism has grown significantly since then.
Fewer restraints
Basyaid, of the Islamic Liberals Network, which organized a year and a half ago to challenge extremist views, said the militants had simply become louder and more active because of fewer government restraints.
"The radical camp is a small minority, but very vocal," he said, noting that all the nation's Islamic parties combined drew only 15 percent of the vote in the 1999 elections.
He and others also noted that a recent push in Parliament to impose Shariah, Islamic law, was overwhelmingly defeated.
But Husein Umar, whom many regard as the father of the new generation of Islamist militancy in Indonesia, said the popular vote and the actions of Parliament did not reflect the dramatic changes that are taking place throughout the country.
Umar is general secretary of the ultra-conservative Indonesian Missionary Council, which recruits, trains and deploys many of the young militant clerics who hope to introduce a stricter form of Islam. He said he was convinced from his travels around the country that the vast majority of young Indonesians were looking to Islam for solutions to society's problems.
"After years with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank, all we've got is suffering and corruption," he said. "We want Shariah law to control the morality of our people."
Unless the Indonesian government can find a way to restore order and hope for the future, the effort to stop the spread of militancy could be protracted and the outcome uncertain.






  


October 22, 2002 Tuesday 



 MALAYSIAN TRADE OFFICIAL PEGS AL-QAIDA AS "DEVIANT"

 
* Minister says members of terrorist group are not representative of Islam's true fundamentalists.
When Malaysia's ranking trade official made a pitch here Monday to attract investment in her majority-Muslim country, she first tackled the question of fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism.
Calling members of al-Qaida "deviant Muslims," Rafidah Aziz said she believes in the tolerance, diversity and nonviolence that her faith teaches. 
"We are the fundamentalists," said Aziz, minister of international trade and industry. "We want to live in peace with everyone. . . .We are not about to condone anything that smells of terrorism."
U.S. intelligence sources have said some members of al-Qaida met in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital, before they carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
That fact has become a sensitive point as Malaysia, a Southeast Asian country of 24 million people with a 60 percent Muslim population, seeks to deepen its global trade and investment ties, particularly with the United States.
Aziz also made several favorable comparisons between her country and neighboring Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country.
Although the two countries share parts of the same Southeast Asian archipelago, Aziz stressed that Malaysia has a history of political stability and peaceful transition of power since its independence from Britain four decades ago. British common law is easily understood by foreign investors, and English is the language of business.
Corruption is not a problem, she said. "We do not condone the greasing of the palm," said Aziz.
As for the recent terrorist attack on the Indonesian island of Bali that killed nearly 200 people, Aziz said: "Bali is 1,000 miles from Malaysia. . . .
"We are doing everything we can to nip terrorism in the bud," she told 240 business executives, academics, consultants and students at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Clayton.
Aziz's trade mission, which included national and provincial leaders and Malaysian business leaders, was designed to inform companies of all sizes in the St. Louis area of investment opportunities. It was sponsored by the Missouri Department of Economic Development, the Regional Chamber & Growth Association, the Boeing Co., the Boeing Institute of St. Louis University, the World Trade Center St. Louis and the Illinois Trade Office at Southern Illinois University, among others.
This is the second of three trade missions that are visiting the area. A delegation from Hong Kong was here Thursday, and a South Korean mission will be here Nov. 6.
Aziz portrayed Malaysia as a potential regional springboard for c ompanies seeking a way to enter the growing free-trade zone of the 10 countries that comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
With a few exceptions, Aziz said, foreign investors do not need to link up with local firms to form joint ventures, as is true in many less-developed countries. She also ticked off a list of tax advantages and said a large middle class is key to Malaysia's stability and economic progress.
P.K Basu, chief economist covering Southeast Asia and India for Credit Suisse First Boston in Singapore, said investors would find "a First-World economy at Third-World prices."
Elmer Jackson, president of J&J International Enterprise, Inc., a Springfield, Mo., firm that hopes to sell cosmetics in Malaysia, said the session was useful.
"It's an untapped market," said Jackson, who has traveled to Kuala Lumpur.
"Al-Qaida doesn't deter us," said Chris Johnson, the small firm's vice president.
John Yu, vice president of JJO Control Systems Inc., of Manchester, said he too had been to Malaysia, his wife's native country.
He said he's considering investments there because of the 100 percent tax holiday for the first five years.







  



October 22, 2002 Tuesday  




 Top Muslim Groups Urge Crackdown In Indonesia

 
 Indonesia's two largest Muslim organizations, claiming nearly one-third of the population as members, today urged the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri to crack down on Islamic militants suspected of violent activities. 
 Following the arrest of a radical cleric, Abubakar Baasyir, the two main groups representing mainstream Muslims here have joined the public debate, tagging Islamic extremists as a fringe minority in the world's most populous Muslim nation. 
 Leaders from Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah have rallied behind a pair of government decrees issued over the weekend that make it easier to detain people suspected of involvement in terrorist activities, such as the massive bombing of Bali's nightclub district on Oct. 12, which killed at least 183 people. Some moderate Muslim leaders have urged Megawati to propose even more draconian measures.  
 "We badly need such regulations to prevent terrorist attacks," said Hazim Muzadi, chairman of the 40-million member Nahdlatul Ulama. "All countries have similar laws." 
 Some human rights groups have warned that the new anti-terrorist measures could be abused and mark a return to the autocratic practices of former president Suharto, who was ousted in 1998. But moderate Muslim figures said these fears are overstated. 
 "It's rubbish," said Syafii Maarif, chairman of Muhammadiyah, which has 30 million members. "If those so-called radicals did not do anything wrong, they should not worry." 
 Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah have emerged as a force for stability in Indonesian politics. Their leaders were outspoken in their opposition to an effort last summer by Muslim militants to heighten the role of sharia, or Islamic law, which would have proved highly divisive even though nearly 90 percent of Indonesians classify themselves as Muslim. 
 Muhammadiyah represents many of the country's more modern Muslims and has a large following in the cities. Nahdlatul Ulama draws its support from a more rural population that tends to follow a form of Islam heavily tempered by other traditional religious beliefs and cultural practices. 
 Together, they reflect a society that is more moderate in both politics and religious practice than many other Muslim countries. They have long been at odds with some of the more radical Islamic groups in Indonesia, including those associated with Baasyir. 
 While some government officials warned that Baasyir's arrest could provoke a backlash from Muslim militants, former president Abdurrahman Wahid, a leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, declared his support for the move. "I believe that Baasyir is a terrorist," he said during a recent radio interview. 
 Police handed Baasyir an arrest warrant Saturday but have yet to question him. He remains under police guard in a hospital in the central Java city of Solo after complaining Friday of heart and respiratory problems. 
 Baasyir, the founder of an Islamic boarding school in Solo, has been identified by U.S. and Asian intelligence officials as the head of Jemaah Islamiah, a radical network active in several Southeast Asian countries. These officials said the group has links with the al Qaeda terrorist network.  
 Though Indonesian security officials suspect Jemaah Islamiah members were involved in the Bali attack, Baasyir was not charged in connection with that bombing. Instead, he was arrested for his alleged involvement in a series of church bombings in Jakarta and nine other Indonesian cities on Christmas Eve 2000. Those explosions killed 19 people. 
 Investigators disclosed today that the main bomb in the Bali attack was made of ammonium nitrate, a compound stockpiled by Jemaah Islamiah, the Associated Press reported. 
 Baasyir has denied participating in terrorist activities and said that Jemaah Islamiah does not exist. 







  



October 22, 2002 Tuesday  




 We Need A Political Strategy

 
 Last week George Tenet warned us that al Qaeda is armed and dangerous. He pointed to the series of threats and attacks around the world -- from Kuwait to Yemen to Bali -- as evidence that the organization is rejuvenated and in the "execution phase." One has to take Tenet's warning seriously, and yet the recent episodes of terrorism can be interpreted differently. Consider the two major "successes": the bombing of a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen and the explosions in Bali. In both cases al Qaeda -- or groups inspired by it -- went after non-American targets, and relatively easy-to-hit ones at that. For the past decade al Qaeda's chief objective has been to attack major symbols of American power -- military, political and economic. It bombed embassies, naval vessels and, of course, the World Trade Center. But since 9/11, with the exception of the recent killing of a soldier in Kuwait, it has not been able to hit America. Also, look at where it struck. In Yemen, al Qaeda has deep connections; in Indonesia, it is exploiting a weak and unstable country and government.  
 The terror attacks in Yemen and Indonesia will also result in much greater anti-terror vigilance and cooperation from France, Australia and Indonesia. Osama bin Laden's strategy should have been to divide America from its allies in the war on terror. His past rhetoric and actions have recognized this. But these latest scattered attacks are forging a more united coalition. It's always dangerous to make claims about al Qaeda. It is certainly trying to do America harm -- and it will certainly strike again. But before 9/11 al Qaeda was doing what it wanted; now it is doing what it can. 
 The war on terror has had an effect. The destruction of al Qaeda's base camps in Afghanistan, the detention of suspects around the world, the scrutiny of bank accounts -- all this has made mass terror more difficult. But while the Bush administration has a coherent military strategy in place, it does not have a similar political one. And on that crucial front, the war on terror is failing. 
 Two weeks ago Pakistan held national elections, and Muslim fundamentalists did well. This event did not get the attention it deserved. Islamic politics is not a new phenomenon in Pakistan. Voters have gotten used to listening to fiery fundamentalists promising purity and delivering nothing. And yet over a half-century of intermittent elections in Pakistan, the fundamentalists never received more than 5 percent of the vote. This month they got nearly 25 percent. 
 I asked a Pakistani politician who took part in this election for an explanation. "America became a huge issue in the election," he said. "The fundamentalists were voted in to protest [Gen. Pervez] Musharraf's alliance with America. For those like me who advocate reform and close ties with America, the atmosphere is now very bad. People watch this [Bush] administration -- its arrogance, its bullying, its double standards on the Israel-Palestine issue -- and they conclude America is anti-Muslim." 
 America has become the big issue around the globe, but particularly in the Muslim world. Pro-American forces are fearful and quiet. This is partly why Indonesia's government did not want to crack down on Muslim fundamentalists. It is why not a single Arab regime -- including many that hate Saddam Hussein -- will publicly back the American campaign against Iraq. Doing what America wants is seen as carrying out orders from an imperious superpower. 
 This is not simply a public relations problem for Washington. Pakistan could stymie crucial efforts to flush al Qaeda out of provinces along its Afghan border -- provinces that are now run locally by Muslim fundamentalists. Scientists in its large nuclear establishment -- some of whom were sympathetic to the Taliban -- could leak know-how and materials to al Qaeda. Indonesia could become a haven for terror, which, given its size and geography, would be a nightmare. And throughout the Muslim world, the growing anti-Americanism only makes it easier to recruit young men for suicide missions. 
 During the Cold War, the United States had two approaches to confronting Soviet communism: military and political. The first involved nuclear weapons, proxy wars and covert action. The second was a concerted effort to build alliances with countries that had a common cause, to foster trade and to provide aid to Third World countries that eschewed communism. America built dams, funded magazines and created the Peace Corps, all as part of this effort. 
 In the war against terror, we are doing well militarily. But it will count for little without an effective political strategy. Otherwise we will kill fundamentalists but feed fundamentalism. 
The writer is editor of Newsweek International and is a columnist for Newsweek. 






   


October 21, 2002 Monday



 Bali bomb made of ammonium nitrate

 
rr
BALI, Indonesia - Investigators piecing together evidencein the Bali nightclub bombings disclosed Monday the main bomb was made of ammonium nitrate, a compound stockpiled by an Islamic extremist group allied with al-Qaida.
Though police stopped short of saying the bomb was made andplanted by Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been blamed for a series of bombings in Southeast Asia in recent years, the use of ammonium nitrate reinforces suspicions the group was involved. 
More than 180 people died in the Oct. 12 bombings, and aU.S. consular official said Monday the dead include seven Americans - two whose remains have been identified and five others who are missing and presumed dead.
Meanwhile, Indonesia's moderate Muslim organizationsdemanded that authorities crack down against Jemaah Islamiyah and religious extremists, who they said represent a fringe minority of the country's 170 million Muslims.
The demands came amid a continued standoff in the town ofSolo, in central Java, between police, who want to question Jemaah Islamiyah spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir, and scores of students at his Islamic boarding school.
Bashir, 64, is hospitalized with reported respiratory andheart problems, though police have said they do not believe he is ill. They have made no move to take him by force, but are deployed around the hospital and say they will wait to question him.
For the third day, students from Bashir's school turned outand vowed to prevent him from being taken away. Their determination raised fears of a possible clash if police try to move Bashir to Jakarta.







   
 

October 21, 2002 Monday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: IN MOURNING; 
Bombing Victims Remembered Across Australia

 
Pop ballads, surf alarms, Aboriginal music and Balinese flower rituals mingled today as Australia mourned its victims of the bombing on Bali. 
     It was a national day of commemoration of more than 100 Australian men, women and children presumed killed in bombings on the Indonesian island last weekend; altogether more than 200 people died and many more were injured. 
 Here in Canberra, the national capital, two church services were addressed by political leaders, including Prime Minister John Howard. He returned overnight from visiting Australian survivors in Bali who are trying to identify the burned and shattered bodies of relatives.  
In Sydney, Australia's largest city, a dirge was played on a didgeridoo, an indigenous pipe instrument, as hundreds of relatives and friends of victims placed orchid blossoms in water, a gesture chosen to reflect a Balinese mourning custom. 
The secular ceremony, televised live from a downtown park, was attended by about crowd of about 40,000. Countless people wore sun hats against a spring heat wave and dark glasses concealing tears. 
On Sydney's beaches, lifeguards sounded alarm sirens at noon to signal national observance of a minute of silence. 
Near Brisbane swimmers scattered wreaths in the surf. 
In other centers, Buddhist and Islamic groups, including Indonesians wearing Balinese batik cloth turbans and Muslim migrant women in black robes, held prayer services for the victims. 
The latest official toll names 40 Australians known dead in Bali among more than 200 people from 20 countries. 
Casualty lists also name 103 Australians missing and believed dead, and 80 injured, many of them seriously burned. 
In Melbourne, the second largest city, banks of flowers covered sidewalks near major churches. 
In Perth, Western Australia, the home city of the Kingsley rugby club, which suffered seven presumed dead and two injured among 20 vacationing team members, church bells rang today to announce special services, and two candlelight vigils were also held. In all, about 50 residents of the city are dead or missing. 
In Adelaide, South Australia, where the Sturt rugby club lost two players to the bombers, there were memorial services in city and suburban churches. 
The remains of Angela Golotta, 19, the first victim returned for burial, arrived in Adelaide last night, her coffin draped in the national flag. 
In the wake of the Bali bombings, Mr. Howard, a conservative elected in 1996, is under political pressure to reconsider his support for intervention by the United States in Iraq and to focus on dangers nearer home, particularly in neighboring Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation. 






  
 


October 21, 2002



 Urgent Work Awaits: Are We Really Prepared?

 
For many years, there was an urban legend among New York conservatives that a secret soulmate worked on layout at . Now and again, he would show his sympathies by producing a juxtaposition of stories, or of advertisements and stories, which cut through the hard fruitcake of The Times' worldview with malicious Tory wit.
This probably imaginary being struck again on Oct. 14, when the front-page story on the terrorist disco bombings in Bali jumped to page 10, where it faced a full-page ad from Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. The sensible business leaders, led by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, have as their top priority stopping the war on Iraq. "THEY'RE SELLING WAR," the ad proclaimed over snarling pictures of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. "WE'RE NOT BUYING." Subheads warned that war will wreck the economy, breed terrorism and exact a fearful toll in human life. 
Tell that to the survivors in Bali. "Like you look at their face [i.e., the face of a victim] and you can't make anything out," said Jared Kays, 23, of London. "People were missing ears, people were missing limbs, their skin was peeling off."
No one sold the terror war. It was given to us, for free, and we have it, whether we like it or not. Ben Cohen should be running his peacenik ads in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, northwest Pakistan and wherever else Al Qaeda lurks. Maybe he can sweeten the message by air-dropping free cartons of Cherry Garcia.
Mr. Cohen has thought of terrorism. His ad argues that if we try to defend ourselves against future waves of it by invading Iraq, we will get more of it. "Bombings, slaughter, 'collateral damage' will make recruitment posters for a new generation of terrorists." But we face a generation of terrorists right now, without having done anything to provoke their zeal. They behaved so well at the World Trade Center, and at the Balinese discos, do we want to see what they will do when Saddam slips them a nuke?
The bombings in Indonesia, the attack on the French oil tanker in Yemen and the murder of the U.S. Marine in Kuwait have prompted the blogosphere to speak of a fall offensive by Al Qaeda and its sympathizers. Maybe the Maryland/Virginia sniper is part of the pattern: The unidiomatic syntax of the warning on the Tarot card ("Dear Policeman ... ") certainly recalled the Berlitz English of the anthrax letters. On the other hand, this country produced thrill-killers long before the Islamists gave us their missionary attentions.
Al Qaeda has been decapitated, but its limbs can twitch for a long time. White supremacist terrorists in this country pioneered the doctrine of "leaderless resistance" to cope with such eventualities; the strategy is not beyond the wit of foreign enemies. We can expect more strikes abroad; since America is a huge, relatively unpoliced country, we can expect more strikes here.
Whether we invade Iraq or secure an inspection of its resources that amounts to regime change, there will still be work ahead of us. The Islamic country that already has an atomic bomb is Pakistan, which uses it to threaten its rival and fellow atomic power, India. Could those bombs be turned to other purposes? Gen. Musharraf decided, post-9/11, to help us in the terror war. But before that, he encouraged Islamist elements in the army, the intelligence services and the nation at large, seeking to brighten dictatorship with the gloss of fanaticism. Now he and his own instruments have turned against each other; in the recent election that he sought to stage-manage, Islamist parties ran unexpectedly well. We find ourselves, not for the first time, allied with a lesser evil, against whom the greater evil can pose as a force of reform and change.
Yet Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation on earth, has been enjoying reform since it cast off its military dictatorship several years ago. The result is a weak state with strong Islamist parties and terrorist cells. We believe, as a matter of democratic habit, that people will rally to the appeals of freely chosen leaders. But what sorts of leaders does Indonesia have on call? Strong men give us bad choices; so does the will of the people.
But why do two far-flung and different countries present a similar problem? One can cite all the usual answers, from the last United Nations report to the reportage of V.S. Naipaul: poverty, frustration, aspiration. But why do urgent, desperate people choose the particular script of Islamism? They choose it, in part, because Saudi money puts it before them, in mosques and religious schools throughout the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia, after an initial burst of unhelpfulness, has been allowing us to use the multimillion-dollar facilities we built to defend the kingdom when Saddam was preparing to attack it 12 years ago. But this is a tactical adjustment, to accommodate a momentarily roused great power. The Saudi government continues to subsidize anti-American clerics, and diverts their followers and their resources to foreign adventures and missionary activity. In the long run, regime modification in Saudi Arabia will be more important than regime change in Iraq.
I can hear a voice, abrasive, cackling (Pat Buchanan's?), asking how we will do all these things. Don't know yet; it's a new problem. The alternative to thinking about it is to let your chances of being blown up depend on the mercies of Osama bin Laden II.
Which raises a final long-term question. President Bush and his toothy cronies in Ben Cohen's ad see terrorism and terror regimes as a serious priority, and a problem with many stages. They did not rest with freezing a few assets, or toppling the Taliban; they evidently believe there is a long haul ahead. Have they mobilized the nation sufficiently for the task? There has been no shift to war production, no draft, none of the "good" fascism that accompanied both the world wars of the 20th-century in this country. One sign of such a general mobilization would have been an attack, led by the White House, on Ken Lay and the Enron villains as profiteers in wartime.
Those steps have not been taken. We seem to be confident that improvements in the technique of warmaking make the general mobilization, pioneered by the French Revolution, unnecessary. Political calculations, and fears of a backlash, encourage the administration in its confidence. Are they right?






    
  


October 21, 2002, Monday



 INDONESIAN ARREST OF MUSLIM CLERIC RAISES CRITICISM






 The Evening Sun  
The Evening Sun (Hanover, PA)

October 20, 2002 Sunday



 Indonesian cleric linked to Bali blast

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia [AP] The spiritual leader of a militant Islamic group linked to al-Qaida was arrested in his hospital bed Saturday as police accused his fugitive top aide of responsibility for many of Indonesia's terrorist bombings. Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil stopped short of directly accusing Abu Bakar Bashir of organizing the bloody nightclub attack last week in Bali, but said it was unlikely that he would not have known about many of the country's bomb attacks. Matori blamed the nightclub attack on al-Qaida "and its internal network" a reference to Bashir's organization, Jemaah Islamiyah. A pair of bombs exploded Oct. 12 outside a Bali nightclub jammed with tourists, setting off a conflagration that left at least 183 people dead and more than 300 injured. Matori said planning for many bombings in Indonesia fell to Bashir's long-time right-hand man, a militant known as Hambali who is wanted by security agencies across Southeast Asia. Bashir and Hambali, whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, are accused of running Jemaah Islamiyah, a shadowy group that seeks to create a pan-Southeast Asian Muslim state and is believed to be al-Qaida's main ally in the region. Hambali is also accused of arranging a meeting of two of the Sept. 11 hijackers and al-Qaida operatives in Malaysia in January 2000. His whereabouts are unknown. Bashir, 64, has been hospitalized since Friday with breathing problems. Police arrested him Saturday in the hospital in his hometown of Solo and later accused him of feigning illness, dispatching a team of police doc7tors to examine him.




17


   
 

October 20, 2002 Sunday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: BOMBING'S AFTERMATH; 
Indonesia Suggests a Cleric Had No Part in the Attack in Bali

 
After arresting a militant Muslim cleric who has been linked to Al Qaeda and a series of terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia, Indonesian officials have indicated that he is not a suspect in the bombing of two nightclubs in Bali a week ago.
     The cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, 64, was arrested as he lay in a hospital bed in his home city, Solo, apparently suffering from exhaustion. His lawyers had said earlier that he would not show up for questioning because he was sick. 
 The arrest of Mr. Bashir, long urged by the United States, "does not mean he will be put in jail," Gen. Aryanto Sutadi, director of the police department's criminal division, said at a news conference after visiting the cleric in the hospital. General Sutadi took pains to be solicitous toward Mr. Bashir, calling him a "gentle person."  
While Indonesian authorities said he was not a suspect in the Bali bombing, which killed nearly 200 people, mostly foreigners, American officials have have said that they believe that his network, Jemaah Islamiyah, was involved in the attack and that they expected the police to question him about it.
General Sutadi expressed concern about the health of Mr. Bashir, saying that if he wanted treatment at a better hospital the police would not object. This morning several newspapers showed pictures of him lying on a hospital dolly with respiratory equipment attached to his nose.
The odd circumstances of his arrest -- which, according to General Sutadi, was accomplished by the signing of papers -- provided an anticlimactic conclusion to months of requests by the United States for the Indonesians to take him into custody. 
The show of respect for Mr. Bashir may well have been intended to fend off a reaction among his militant Islamic followers. Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, is a center of moderate Islamic faith, although radicalism is making some inroads. 
The American Embassy warned Americans here to be be extra vigilant and the State Department urged Americans to consider leaving the country.
Few appear to have done so. But the State Department ordered nonessential embassy staff members and all family members to leave and by Friday night about 300 had left. Some 100 diplomats remain. 
"We and other embassies are preparing for a violent reaction" to Mr. Bashir's arrest, a senior American official said on Friday.
The initial response was quite mild. As word of the arrest spread, about 100 people, most of them male students from Mr. Bashir's boarding school, protested outside the hospital. The Indonesian Mujahedeen Council, an umbrella organization of radical Islamic groups, issued a statement saying that because Mr. Bashir was "old and sick" he would not try to flee the country and so there was no reason to arrest him. 
At the site of the disco blast in Kuta, a beach resort in Bali, Indonesian investigators, joined by top police officials from Australia and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, continued to search for evidence in the charred remains.
Mr. Bashir, who has denied any involvement with Jemaah Islamiyah and even its existence, is considered the group's ideological inspiration. 
In addition to asserting that the group was involved in the Bali bombing, American officials have said that it plotted with Al Qaeda to blow up the United States Embassy in Singapore last year and the United States Embassy here last month.
In the aftermath of the Bali blast, the Indonesian authorities acknowledged for the first time that Jemaah Islamiyah was linked to Al Qaeda and that Mr. Bashir was the Jemaah Islamiyah leader. 
A Qaeda operative, Omar al-Faruq, who was seized here in June and has been in American custody, has said that Mr. Bashir was behind attacks in Indonesia, including the bombing of the biggest mosque in Jakarta in 1999 and other bombings in the city in December 2000. He also said that Jemaah Islamiyah organized a plot to kill President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
As part of its effort to convince Indonesia of the seriousness of the terrorist problem here, the Bush administration made Mr. Faruq available for questioning by Indonesian officials this week.







   
 

October 20, 2002 Sunday  
  



 NEWS SUMMARY 

 
     INTERNATIONAL   3-10

North Korean Violation May Lead to Isolation
The Bush administration has decided to stop providing Western energy aid in light of North Korea's violation of a 1994 arms control accord. North Korea has a choice between abandoning all of its nuclear weapons programs or facing near-total economic isolation.   1

Iraq Sees Many Allies
As Iraq confronts the possibility of a new war with the United States, its leaders appear to have concluded that, this time, the world is on its side and against the United States.   1

Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister and part of Saddam Hussein's inner circle, said the Iraqi government has had no links with Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, denying a charge made by President Bush.   13

Long Trek to Iraq Accord
The United States and other permanent Security Council powers have retreated to closed rooms and telephone calls for more negotiations on a resolution to force Iraq to disarm.   13

Hard Questions Over Bali
The first bodies have finally begun returning home after the terror attack in Bali, and angered Australians are asking questions about why warnings were missed.   14

Indonesian officials have arrested a militant Muslim cleric who has been linked to Al Qaeda, though they say he is not a suspect in the Bali attack.   14

European Union Expansion Vote
Irish voters appeared to have given overwhelming endorsement to the most ambitious expansion of the European Union, a project they rejected only last year.   10

Sharp Rebuff From I.R.A.
The Irish Republican Army was reported to have delivered a sharp rebuff to demands for its disarmament by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, in what was taken as a significant setback to efforts to cement Northern Ireland's frail peace.   8

NATIONAL   16-33, 36

New Shooting in Virginia Extends Area of Manhunt
Detectives tracking the deadly suburban sniper raced to a shooting near Richmond, Va., as police reported a man was wounded by a single shot in a parking lot outside a restaurant. Detectives in the manhunt for the sniper, who has killed nine and wounded twoso far this month, emphasized it was not immediately known whether the shooting was connected.   1

Casinos Don't Cure Town's Ills
The once dilapidated town of Tunica, Miss., has bloomed into the nation's third-largest gambling center, after Las Vegas and Atlantic City, despite the sluggish economy that has driven most states and the federal government into deficits. Still, 28 percent of all residents are poor.   1

The Threat Posed by Trucks
Fresh threats against economic targets and three attacks overseas this year using fuel trucks have convinced officials that America's trucks, particularly rigs hauling loads of explosive fuel or toxic chemicals, pose a significant security risk.   1

Ex-Mayor Acquitted of Murder
Charlie Robertson, the former mayor of York, Pa., was acquitted of murder in the death of a black woman 33 years ago during more than a week of race riots. The other two defendants were found guilty of second-degree murder.   16

Doubt Over Change in Gun Laws
After three weeks of silence as a sniper stalked the Washington suburbs, the head of the gun lobby dismissed talk of a ballistic fingerprinting system and predicted that Congress would enact no new legislation in response to the killings.   33

Guards Cite Overwork
To increase security after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan increased the number of guards and expanded their shifts to 12 hours, often six days a week. The guards say it has made them tired and error prone.   16

NEW YORK/REGION   37-42

Gunman Shoots Three, One Fatally, in Queens
A gunman fatally shot a woman and wounded two men in the Springfield Gardens section and then barricaded himself into the house of his estranged girlfriend with two other people for several hours before killing himself, the police said. The episode appeared to be the culmination of a bitter and often violent feud between the gunman, Jarrett Jordan, 23, and his former girlfriend and her family, police said.   37

Costly Legislative Stalemate
Legislative gridlock has become a chronic affliction in Albany. It has grown worse over the last decade and experts argue that it is worse there than in any other state capital.   1

OBITUARIES   35

Raymond T. McNally
The college professor whose theories linked the fictional Dracula with monstrous historical figures, was 71.   31

Chess   43
Weather   44
Cong. Vote   39







   
 

October 20, 2002 Sunday 
  
 



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: TERROR'S TOLL; 
As Bodies Start Coming Home, Australians Criticize Leaders

 
After an agonizing weeklong wait, the first bodies have finally begun returning home after the terror attack in Bali, and angry Australians are asking hard questions about everything from their intelligence service to the country's foreign policy.
     The Australian Foreign Ministry has been excoriated for not taking seriously enough intelligence warnings from the United States about the possibility of a terrorist attack in Indonesia. And in recent days, with estimates of the total number of Australian dead approaching 200, relatives of the victims have bitterly accused the government of dragging its feet in the recovery of bodies. 
 At a news conference on Friday, Prime Minister John Howard winced as a man in shorts and sandals interrupted the journalists to demand information about his missing son, Anthony. "He's 6-foot-4, he's got a distinctive watch, orange, he's got capped teeth, he's had an arm reconstructed, and his appendix is missing," said the father, David Stewart. "How long before my wife and my family can bring him home?" 
Just as pointed has been the debate over the country's close alliance with the United States. The alliance itself is not in serious question, but Mr. Howard, a popular prime minister in his third term and a strong supporter of the Bush administration's campaign against Iraq, has suddenly found himself under surprisingly strong attack.
Australia is a country with a widely cherished myth of innocence, one reinforced by the country's distance from other continents and most zones of conflict. Many commentators, pointing to the Bali disaster, are saying that Australia's pro-American foreign policy is dragging the country into fights it would do better to avoid.
Although most of the early criticism along these lines has come from small opposition parties whose positions are largely predictable and present little threat to the government, the sentiments were given much more weight Friday from a more unlikely quarter, the Anglican archbishop of Australia.
"Given the bombing of Afghanistan and the dispersal in disarray of Al Qaeda and Taliban forces, and Australia's high-profile support of President George Bush's stance in relation to a possible war on Iraq, it was surely only a matter of time before Australian lives were sacrificed in some form of retaliatory action," Bishop Peter Carnley said in a radio interview. 
Comments like these have also become common in political circles, but usually with none of the archbishop's deliberate tact.
The archbishop's comment quickly drew a defensive reaction from a government that has enjoyed little of the rallying around the flag that prevailed in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks. "If we don't know who did it, then it's pretty hard to know what their motives were. And obviously, if Archbishop Carnley's Diocese has some information that can assist with the investigation then we would obviously appreciate that information," said Alexander Downer, the foreign minister.
Discussion of the government's involvement in Afghanistan and potentially in Iraq alongside the United States has already gone well beyond questions of partisan politics or ideology. A serious debate is under way, for example, over whether Australia can afford to engage its resources in far-flung regions of the world, especially with important security concerns right on its doorstep.
Next door to Australian sits Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, and also an unstable, fledgling democracy. Political analysts here have wrung their hands all week over the risks of having Indonesia view Australians as part of an anti-Muslim Western coalition led by the United States. For similar reasons, the government has been conflicted over how hard to push Indonesian authorities for a crackdown on Muslim militants. Some fear that too much pressure on the president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, could actually backfire, encouraging Muslim hard-liners to strike against her elected government.
This debate over Australia's ties with Indonesia has become commingled with the scathing criticism of the country's intelligence and diplomatic services for failing to attach a higher priority to American intelligence warnings about Indonesia. On Sept. 26, Washington issued a travel warning urging travelers to "avoid large gatherings known to cater primarily to a Western clientele, including certain bars, restaurants and tourist areas" in Indonesia.
That warning was reinforced just a day before the Bali attack in a message delivered personally to the Australian government by the United States ambassador, J. Thomas Schieffer, which spoke of an increased threat to "soft targets" in Indonesia.
Australia amended its security warnings for Indonesia in late September, but in an official bulletin, the Foreign Ministry wrote in bold type that tourist services were "operating normally" in Bali, which is by far the most popular tourist destination for Australians.
"This is simply unforgivable," said Warren Reed, a former Australian intelligence officer and political commentator. "Inevitably, a lot of Australians will see the prime minister's official acts of sympathy in very cynical terms. It is like having the person who allowed a crime to take place going to pay a call on the victims." 

CORRECTION-DATE: October 23, 2002

 CORRECTION:
An article on Sunday about Australia's anger over the bombing of two Bali nightclubs that killed nearly 200 Australians misidentified the United States official who warned of a bombing threat to "soft targets" in Indonesia the day before the bombing. He was Ralph C. Boyce, the American ambassador in Jakarta; the same day, the American ambassador to Australia, J. Thomas Schieffer, warned that government of terrorist threats to energy installations.







   
 

October 20, 2002 Sunday  
  



 The World: Defining Al Qaeda; 
'They're Coming After Us.' But Who Are They Now?

 
FROM Lackawanna, N.Y., to Bali, officials use the words Al Qaeda to explain the potential threat or the grisly reality of almost anything resembling a terrorist attack, potential anti-government plot or suspected sleeper cell. The message is heavily coated with fear.
     George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, made the case dramatically before Congress Thursday: "They have reconstituted," he said. "They are coming after us . . . They plan in multiple theaters of operation. They intend to strike this homeland again."  
 But defining what Al Qaeda is seems to become only more difficult with time, as alleged operatives range from a handful of Muslim converts in Portland, Ore., who tried to get to Afghanistan but never made it, to a fundamentalist Muslim cleric in Indonesia suspected in the disco bombings that killed nearly 200 a week ago in Bali.
So what is the current Al Qaeda? An organization? A movement? An ideology? Answering the question is a key to figuring out how to fight it.
A year ago, most Americans thought they knew what Al Qaeda was: an organization led by Osama bin Laden pursuing a vague Islamic ideology, with a base and training camps in Afghanistan and cells of operatives around the globe. The cells were thought to operate either on signals from the top or to some extent on their own initiative. 
That kind of organization, most Americans thought, was vanquished in Afghanistan, when its camps were overrun and its leaders killed, captured or scattered. But now Al Qaeda seems to be reappearing everywhere.
In describing Al Qaeda's suspected presence in Lackawanna, for example, the authorities portrayed six Americans of Yemeni descent as members of a cell awaiting orders to strike from Qaeda leaders. In the case of a recent explosion on a French tanker off Yemen, the authorities have said the attack may have involved a boat loaded with explosives, like the one that struck the destroyer Cole two years ago. In the Bali bombings, they said the huge blast and careful planning point to Qaeda training.
Al Qaeda always was a singular kind of organization, loosely coordinated from the top and using scattered cells with more than the usual latitude for taking initiative. Intelligence officials say they believe that with the leadership now operating from hiding, Al Qaeda's links to local groups have assumed more significance. And these groups, which have bought into Al Qaeda's ideology and techniques, are playing more prominent roles in deciding when and where to strike.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the only attack connected directly to a Qaeda order was the suicide bombing of a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, last April, American and European officials say. Three hours before the attack, German authorities said, the suicide bomber talked by telephone with Khalid Shaik Mohammed, a bin Laden lieutenant hiding in Pakistan.
More often, proof of Qaeda links is more tenuous.
Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber" who pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner last December, admitted he was a member of Al Qaeda and prosecutors have said he had an accomplice. But they have shown no evidence he acted on orders.
Often, the strongest sign of a link to Al Qaeda is that an attack shares the movement's modus operandi: it is intended to kill Americans and other Westerners, embarrass leaders of Muslim countries aligned with the United States or disrupt tourism, transportation and tranquillity.
Attacks on Pakistani Christians, French engineers and the American consulate in Karachi, for example, seem to fit Al Qaeda's style, but Pakistani authorities have not found any clear link and so far blame local militants.
Direct evidence pinning the Bali bombings on Al Qaeda also seems to be absent so far. But there are longstanding ties between the network and the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiyah, which is suspected of carrying out the bombing. Last week, the Indonesian government decided to question the group's leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, a cleric who is an avowed acolyte of Mr. bin Laden, about the bombing.
In the United States, fear seems to be building about a single enemy with many tentacles. But Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, warns against overestimating Al Qaeda's solidity, even as he warns against underestimating its real power. "We in the West like order and structure and that is a mistake when thinking of Al Qaeda," he said. "It is an ideological movement as much as an organization." And movements are much harder to fight than organizations.
American intelligence officials estimate that before Sept. 11, 2001, at least 10,000 men were trained at Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, but that only 300 or so were made full members of the organization.
Certainly some of these operatives are planning and participating in attacks. The financial network set up by the bin Laden hierarchy remains largely in place and its curriculum for terror is widely distributed. But experts in and out of government say no single unseen hand directs all the mayhem.
Rather, the organization has dispersed its adherents to groups and cells capable of operating independently, with the result that the global movement has gone local. That does not mean every plot qualifies in the same way for the label "Al Qaeda attack." It does help in understanding how to fight the threat.
In places like the Philippines and the former Soviet republic Georgia, the United States has tried to counter indigenous groups linked to Al Qaeda by sending in troops to train local soldiers. In other cases, the United States may also decide to participate in sweeps against local militants, as it has done in isolated cases in Pakistan.
MEMBERS of the network do have a common ideology based on hatred of the United States and Israel, and Al Qaeda remains their inspiration. So recent broadcasts on Al Jazeera network showing Qaeda leaders are seen by many experts as a likely trigger for the spate of recent attacks.
But terrorism experts say this is more like a green light than an order. And some believe that for anyone sharing Al Qaeda's ideology, the approaching American-led war on Iraq is just as likely a trigger for an attack.
From the start, Al Qaeda was far more diffuse than any previous terrorist organization. But now it has mutated into an international jihad, and most experts say that means governments must transform themselves, too. The authorities, they say, must now focus more on the organization's links to local groups and the grievances that motivate them -- a task likely to prove harder than the war in Afghanistan.
"It is almost a never-ending process," said Mr. Ranstorp. "It is not a winnable war in the traditional sense. Bin Laden opened Pandora's box."






  
  


October 20, 2002 Sunday



 Bali bombing reminds us why war on terror must be won

 
The horrendous bombing attack on a tourist nightclub district in Bali sends a warning to the Bush administration:
Keep your eye on the long-term struggle against international Islamist terrorism. Don't let the Iraq issue undercut that fight.
The carnage on the idyllic Indonesian island is a chilling example of how al-Qaida has adapted and decentralized since the destruction of its Afghan bases. The Bali bombing follows a series of smaller attacks in Tunisia, the Philippines, Kuwait, Pakistan, and against a French tanker off Yemen. This hydra-headed monster must be crushed, which requires intense, ongoing international cooperation. 
The Bali bombing reminds us why we can't afford to fail.
Anyone who has been to Bali knows this lush island seemed the antithesis of terrorist violence. My memories from a 1998 trip: sitting at the feet of a shadow-puppet master as he cut delicious shapes of legendary Balinese kings out of leather, then watching impossibly graceful dancers sway to gamelan chimes. For Western tourists, Bali was a symbol of peaceful delights.
What better way than bombing Bali to terrify the West? The Bali attack, writes a foremost expert on radical Islam, the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, "fits the al-Qaida picture as we have come to know it." The goals: attack economic targets symbolic of capitalism -- such as Bali nightclubs packed with Australians and other foreigners dancing to pop music. And try to embarrass pro-Western Muslim rulers, like Indonesia's Megawati Sukarnoputri.
But there is another devilish aspect to the Bali slaughter that has claimed at least 200 victims from around the world.
With al-Qaida leaders in hiding, they have turned for help to local Islamic radicals with whom they have old ties -- often from training camps in Afghanistan. In Indonesia, the prime suspect is Jemaah Islamiyah, a network that also has links to the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia. Though Indonesia has a history of tolerant Islam, these radicals seek the forceful establishment of an Islamic "caliphate" throughout Southeast Asia.
They also seek to shift the blame for the bombing to the West. They hope to provoke a clash between the weak Megawati government and Islamists, even as they deny any blame for the bombing. The purported JI head, the Indonesian religious leader Abu Bakar Bashir, charges the United States with setting off the bomb to gain support for an Iraq war. This absurd charge is widely believed in Indonesia, where the Megawati government is unpopular and unable to improve the economy.
It's no accident that the bomb was exploded in Bali, rather than another Indonesian island. This guaranteed that few Muslims would be killed -- Bali is predominantly Hindu. The killing of so many Australians plays to the hostility Indonesians feel toward the Aussies for helping bring about the independence of their former (and mainly Christian) colony, East Timor.
Western countries must not let this twisted al-Qaida strategy deter their antiterrorist fight.
In fact, the strategy of al-Qaida and its Indonesian allies is more harmful to Indonesia than to the West. It may destroy the tourism industry in Bali, which is crucial to Indonesia's hard currency earnings. It will scare off foreign investors.
The Bali bombing cannot be blamed on the West, or on Australia's admirable efforts in East Timor. Nor can it be blamed, as some Australian pundits argue, on Australia's support for Bush policy on Iraq.
Jemaah Islamiyah seeks to establish an Islamic state by violence. This isn't what most Indonesians want. JI will seek that goal, by any means, regardless of what Australia or America may do in Iraq.
That said, the Bush administration must consider carefully the best strategy to respond to the new al-Qaida threat. A unilateral war on Iraq would play into Islamists' hands, in Indonesia and in other vulnerable countries like Pakistan.
It will turn large segments of their populations against their pro-Western governments, and feed the myth that war on terrorism is a Western war on Islam.
U.N. sanctions for any action on Iraq would give those rulers cover, which is a key reason why it's worth pursuing the U.N. route to the end. The Bali tragedy is proof that al-Qaida has adapted its strategy to its new situation. The West must adapt equally well to outwit these murderers.
Rubin (e-mail: trubin@phillynews.com) is a columnist and member of the editorial board at the Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, PA 19101. Distributed by Knight Ridder News Service.







  



October 20, 2002 Sunday  




 Indonesia Arrests Cleric In Deadly Church Attacks; 
Officials Suspect Baasyir Knew of Bali Plot

 
 A militant Islamic cleric was arrested today for his alleged involvement in a series of church bombings two years ago by a radical network that intelligence officials have linked to al Qaeda, police said. 
 Abubakar Baasyir, who was hospitalized Friday in central Java after complaining of heart and respiratory problems, remained there while police tried to determine whether he was well enough to be taken to Jakarta for questioning. 
 Although police have not named Baasyir as a suspect in the deadly bombing in Bali a week ago, Indonesian Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil said that Baasyir would have had advance knowledge of the attack because of the suspected role of his deputy. Djalil said intelligence agencies had determined that Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, was Baasyir's chief lieutenant and a leading operative in al Qaeda-related terrorism in Indonesia.  
 "Al Qaeda and its internal network is behind this Bali bomb blast," Djalil said at a news conference in Bali. "It is illogical if Abubakar Baasyir says that he doesn't know about the bombings in Indonesia." 
 Baasyir's arrest comes one day after the government of Megawati Sukarnoputri, riding a wave of outrage over the Bali attack, which killed at least 183 people, issued emergency measures by decree that make it easier to detain people suspected of terrorist activities. 
 U.S. and Asian intelligence officials say that Baasyir, 64, heads Jemaah Islamiah, a radical Islamic network accused of plotting terrorist attacks in several Southeast Asian countries. 
 Baasyir has repeatedly denied involvement in terrorism and has said that Jemaah Islamiah does not exist. 
 The intelligence agencies have named Isamuddin as the primary link between Jemaah Islamiah and al Qaeda. He is now the most-wanted man in Southeast Asia. 
 While Malaysia and Singapore have sought Baasyir's arrest, he had lived freely in Indonesia until this week. 
 A team of Indonesian investigators this week questioned Omar al-Farouq, a suspected al Qaeda operative who was captured in June and is in U.S. custody at an undisclosed location. Farouq has reportedly told U.S. interrogators that Baasyir played a direct role in several terrorist attacks, including a series of church bombings in Jakarta and nine other Indonesian cities on Christmas Eve 2000. Nineteen people were killed and dozens injured in those attacks. 
 U.S. officials said Farouq repeated that account to the Indonesian investigators. After they returned to Jakarta, Indonesian officials said they had grounds to arrest Baasyir. 
 Police initially summoned Baasyir on Thursday to appear for questioning in Jakarta today. After attending Friday worship, during which he prayed for Osama bin Laden and later held a news conference, Baasyir was taken to a hospital in the central Java city of Solo.  
 National police spokesman Saleh Saaf suggested that Baasyir was faking his illness. "He's probably just pretending," Saaf told reporters this evening. "He was able to conduct a press conference in Solo. But right after we announced that his warrant had officially been issued, then he suddenly got sick." 
The decision to arrest Baasyir came as the United States put intense pressure on Megawati's government to move against Islamic militants, including the cleric. 
 The Bush administration has already determined that there is sufficient evidence to designate Jemaah Islamiah as a foreign terrorist organization, but has held off to give the Indonesian government time to take its own action against the group, U.S. officials said. The United States and some Southeast Asian countries are moving toward asking the United Nations to name Jemaah Islamiah as a terrorist group, an action that could take place this week. The designation would impose financial and other sanctions against the organization and its members. 
 Indonesian officials said they expected the arrest to be unpopular with some radical Muslims. About 300 people, including students from an Islamic boarding school founded by Baasyir, protested today outside the hospital but dispersed without incident. 







  



October 20, 2002 Sunday  




 So Long, Fellow Travelers

 
 George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as "evil." Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the "lesser evil." 
This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, "lesser evil" is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism -- the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it -- is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than "cowboy" language. 
Actually, the best case for a regime change in Iraq is that it is the lesser evil: better on balance than the alternatives, which are to confront Saddam later and at a time of his choosing, trust him to make a full disclosure to inspectors or essentially leave him alone.  
You might think that the Left could have a regime-change perspective of its own, based on solidarity with its comrades abroad. After all, Saddam's ruling Ba'ath Party consolidated its power by first destroying the Iraqi communist and labor movements, and then turning on the Kurds (whose cause, historically, has been one of the main priorities of the Left in the Middle East). When I first became a socialist, the imperative of international solidarity was the essential if not the defining thing, whether the cause was popular or risky or not. I haven't seen an anti-war meeting all this year at which you could even guess at the existence of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam, an opposition that was fighting for "regime change" when both Republicans and Democrats were fawning over Baghdad as a profitable client and geopolitical ally. Not only does the "peace" movement ignore the anti-Saddam civilian opposition, it sends missions to console the Ba'athists in their isolation, and speaks of the invader of Kuwait and Iran and the butcher of Kurdistan as if he were the victim and George W. Bush the aggressor. 
Some peaceniks clear their throats by saying that, of course, they oppose Saddam Hussein as much as anybody, though not enough to support doing anything about him. 
But some don't even bother to make this disavowal. In the United States, the main organizer of anti-war propaganda is Ramsey Clark, who perhaps understandably can't forgive himself for having been Lyndon Johnson's attorney general. However, he fails to live down this early disgrace by acting as a front man for a sinister sect -- the International Action Center, cover name for the Workers World Party -- which refuses to make any criticism of the Saddam regime. It is this quasi-Stalinist group, co-organized by a man with the wondrous name of Clark Kissinger, which has recruited such figures as Ed Asner and Marisa Tomei to sign the "Not In Our Name" petition. Funny as this may be in some ways (I don't think the administration is going to war in the name of Ed Asner or Marisa Tomei, let alone Gore Vidal), it is based on a surreptitious political agenda. In Britain, the chief spokesman of the "anti-war" faction is a Labour MP named George Galloway, who is never happier than when writing moist profiles of Saddam and who says that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst moment of his life. 
For the democratic and libertarian Left, that same moment was a high point and not a low one. But there were three ruling parties in the world that greeted the liberation of Eastern Europe with unreserved gloom. These were the Socialist Party of Serbia, the Ba'ath Party of Iraq and the Workers' Party of North Korea, guided by their lugubrious yet megalomaniacal leaders. Since then, these three party-states and selfish dictators have done their considerable best to ruin the promise of the post Cold War years and to impose themselves even more ruthlessly on their own peoples and neighbors. It took a long time for the world to wake up to Slobodan Milosevic and even longer to get him where he belongs, which is in the dock. It will probably be even more arduous ridding ourselves of the menace of Saddam Hussein. 
The most depressing thing, for me at any rate, has been to see so much of the Left so determined to hamper this process, which is why, after 20 years, I have given up my column in the Nation magazine. The Left has employed arguments as contemptible as those on whose behalf they have been trotted out. It maintained that any resistance to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo would lead to a wider war, chaos and/or the rallying of the Serbs to Milosevic. It forecast massive quagmires and intolerable civilian casualties. If this sounds familiar, it may be because you are hearing it again now and heard it last year from those who thought the Taliban-al Qaeda base in Afghanistan was not worth fighting about.  
But the element of bad faith in the argument is far worse than the feeble-minded hysteria of its logic. In the Balkans, those on the Left and Right who favored intervention could not live with the idea that Europe would permit the extermination of its oldest Muslim minority. At that point, the sensibilities of Islam did not seem to matter to the Ramsey Clarks and Noam Chomskys, who thought and wrote of national-socialist and Orthodox Serbia as if it were mounting a gallant resistance to globalization. (Saddam, of course, took Milosevic's side even though the Serb leader was destroying mosques and murdering Muslims.) 
Now, however, the same people are all frenzied about an American-led "attack on the Muslim world." Are the Kurds not Muslims? Is the new Afghan government not Muslim? Will not the next Iraqi government be Muslim also? This meaningless demagogy among the peaceniks can only be explained by a masochistic refusal to admit that our own civil society has any merit, or by a nostalgia for Stalinism that I can sometimes actually taste as well as smell.  
There is, of course, a soggier periphery of more generally pacifist types, whose preferred method of argument about regime change is subject change. The same people, in other words, who don't think that Saddam has any weapons of mass destruction will argue the next moment that, if attacked, he will unleash them with devastating effect. Or they say that a Palestinian solution should come first, which would offer Saddam a very long lease, given the prospects of a final settlement with Israel (which, meantime, he would have the power and incentive to disrupt). Or they say we should try deterrence or containment -- the two terms most ridiculed by the Left during the Cold War. And what about the fact that "we" used to be Saddam's backers? And, finally, aren't there other bad guys in the region, and isn't this a double standard? 
The last two questions actually have weight, even if they are lightly tossed around. The serious response to the first one would be that, to the extent that the United States underwrote Saddam in the past, this redoubles our responsibility to cancel the moral debt by removing him. The serious response to the second one would involve noticing that the Saudi Arabian and Turkish oligarchies are, interestingly enough, also opposed to "regime change" in the region. And since when is the Left supposed to argue for preservation of the status quo? Even a halfway emancipated Iraq would hold out at least the promise of a better life for the Kurds (which annoys the Turks). Its oil resources, once freed up, could help undercut the current Saudi monopoly. Excellent. This is presumably unintelligible to those content to chant, "No war for oil," as if it were a matter of indifference who controlled the reserves of the region, or who might threaten to ignite or even irradiate these reserves if given the chance. 
 As someone who has done a good deal of marching and public speaking about Vietnam, Chile, South Africa, Palestine and East Timor in his time (and would do it all again), I can only hint at how much I despise a Left that thinks of Osama bin Laden as a slightly misguided anti-imperialist. (He actually says he wants to restore the old imperial caliphate and has condemned the Australian-led international rescue of East Timor as a Christian plot against Muslim Indonesia). Or a Left that can think of Milosevic and Saddam as victims.  
Instead of internationalism, we find among the Left now a sort of affectless, neutralist, smirking isolationism. In this moral universe, the views of the corrupt and conservative Jacques Chirac -- who built Saddam Hussein a nuclear reactor, knowing what he wanted it for -- carry more weight than those of persecuted Iraqi democrats. In this moral universe, the figure of Jimmy Carter -- who incited Saddam to attack Iran in 1980, without any U.N. or congressional consultation that I can remember -- is considered axiomatically more statesmanlike than Bush. 
 Sooner or later, one way or another, the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples will be free of Saddam Hussein. When that day comes, I am booked to have a reunion in Baghdad with several old comrades who have been through hell. We shall not be inviting anyone who spent this precious time urging democratic countries to give Saddam another chance. 
 </body>Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and professor of liberal studies at the New School in New York. His most recent book is "Why Orwell Matters" (Basic Books). 






  


October 19, 2002, Saturday  



 KEY BALI BOMBING SUSPECT DUCKS ARREST WITH SICK CALL

 
A top suspect in the bloody Bali bombings denounced the U.S. and prayed for Osama Bin Laden - then checked into a hospital yesterday to avoid investigators.
But as the Indonesian government moved against Abu Bakar Bashir, other terror groups with ties to Al Qaeda were creating havoc around the world.
Bashir is the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Islamic group linked to Bin Laden. It is thought to be behind the bomb attack last week that killed 183 people. 
"The terrorist is America," the 64-year-old cleric told followers yesterday.
Then, instead of turning himself in to police, as he had promised, Bashir checked into a hospital in his hometown of Solo. Aides said he had asthma and possibly a heart ailment.
Indonesian authorities had kept their hands off Bashir to avoid riling Islamic extremists in the world's most-populous Muslim country, but the international outcry has forced them to act.
The Bali bombings - along with shooting attacks against U.S. troops in Kuwait, an oil tanker bombing off Yemen and multiple bombings in the Philippines - has raised fears of a reconstituted Al Qaeda.
CIA Director George Tenet told a congressional panel Thursday the attacks showed that the terror group is still a powerful force.
"The threat environment we find ourselves in today is as bad as it was last summer - the summer before Sept. 11," Tenet said. "It is serious. They've reconstituted. They are coming after us. They want to execute attacks. You see it in Bali, you see it in Kuwait."
Despite Tenet's strong words, a spokesman for Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said the national threat assessment remained at the elevated yellow level.
"It's [the current threat] fairly general in nature," the spokesman said.
"We evaluate the threat level constantly as intelligence comes in," the spokesman said. "At this point, it's staying at yellow."
Elsewhere in the troubled region, Al Qaeda's allies reared their ugly heads.
In the Philippines, a bus bomb killed at least three people and injured 23 more in a Manila suburb. Police suspect the blast was the work of the Abu Sayyaf group, which has been linked to Al Qaeda. Abu Sayyaff also was blamed for Thursday's bombings in the city of Zamboanga that killed seven and injured more than 150.







   
 

October 19, 2002 Saturday  
  

 Wanted for Questioning, Indonesian Cleric Falls Ill 







   
 

October 19, 2002 Saturday  
  



 NEWS SUMMARY 

 
     INTERNATIONAL   A3-7

U.S. Seeks to Build Consensus on North Korea
American officials opened a diplomatic drive across Asia and Europe to build international pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.   A6

Japan's plan for billions of dollars in aid to North Korea's rickety economy is being shelved in light of its nuclear weapons program, which violates a series of signed agreements.   A6

Indonesian Suspect in Hospital
The militant Muslim cleric who was to have been questioned by the Indonesian police was instead hospitalized. The illness of the cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, was met with great skepticism, and there were conflicting accounts of what was ailing him.   A8

Iraq Resolution Debate
The United States and France moved closer to agreement on a draft resolution to force Iraq to disarm. But French officials are worried about the language that would give Washington authorization to go to war.   A8

Politician Killed in Moscow
A sniper equipped with a silencer shot and killed one of Moscow's regional governors and tried to shoot the province's vice governor.   A4

European Pact Criticized
The president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, whose office is meant to enforce the 1997 Stability and Growth Pact, called the pact "stupid." Many economists argue that the pact leaves governments unable to jump-start stalled economies.   A3

Ireland to Vote on Europe
Irish voters will decide in a referendum whether to approve the Treaty of Nice, which sets rules for redrawing Europe's east-west divide.   A3

Israel Pulls Out of Jenin
The Israeli Army has moved out of the West Bank city of Jenin, surrounding it and digging a trench to prevent militants from sneaking out.   A5

Troop Pullout Jolts Congo
The United Nations has persuaded all foreign armies to leave eastern Congo. They are being replaced by local militias. The departures are bringing more disorder than stability.   A7

NATIONAL   A9-14

Vatican Tells U.S. Bishops To Rewrite Policy on Abuse
The Vatican failed to endorse a stringent new policy by American bishops to combat child sexual abuse by priests, saying that parts of it needed to be rewritten to make it conform with the laws of the Roman Catholic Church.   A1

While victims of sexually abusive priests expressed despair and outrage at the Vatican's failure to endorse the American bishops' zero tolerance policy, many bishops, priests and even some laypeople privately breathed a sigh of relief.   A1

Sniper Disrupts School Life
More than two weeks after a sniper began terrorizing suburban Washington, schools are locked down and preschoolers are spending playtime in the auditorium and on trampolines in the hallway rather than outside.   A1

A tip to detectives led to the seizure of a white rental box truck that contained a spent shell casing, the Montgomery County police said.   A10

Unusual Politics in Hawaii
Citing a sour economy and a rash of scandals involving local politicians, voters in Hawaii will hold two special elections to fill the seat of Representative Patsy Mink, a Democrat who died last month but remains on the ballot.   A12

Daschle Points Finger at Bush
With Congress leaving the Capitol for a last bout of campaigning, Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader, blamed President Bush for a "very disappointing Congress" and asserted the nation was in worse shape than when Mr. Bush took office.   A13

Charges Filed in Wisconsin
Prosecutors filed criminal charges accusing Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly of illegally running campaign operations from state offices and using government employees to do so.   A9

Safety Measure Ruled Invalid
A federal judge in Washington struck down rules that required drug companies to test their products in children, stating that the rule exceeds the Food and Drug Administration's statutory authority.   A9

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-6

New York Changes Rules For Mental Patients
In response to a Justice Department review, officials at state psychiatric hospitals in New York ordered social workers to stop releasing patients to locked units in private nursing homes, ending a 6-year-old practice that was supposed to help scale back the state's costly psychiatric system but has raised civil-rights concerns.   A1

Louima Lawyers End Squabble
The legal dispute over $3 million in legal fees from the Abner Louima abuse case stopped as the two sides negotiated a settlement.   B1

State Police Head Steps Down
Joseph J. Santiago, brought in seven months ago to restore credibility to a police agency at the center of the debate over racial profiling, stepped down as superintendent of the New Jersey State Police.   B1

Religion Journal   B6

ARTS & IDEAS   B7-18

SCIENCE/HEALTH

Science and Security
The presidents of the National Academies of Science said that the Bush administration was going too far in hiding some science out of fear that it could aid terrorists.   A8

Shuttle Crew Returns to Earth
The space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of six returned to Earth after an 11-day construction mission to the International Space Station.   A11

OBITUARIES   A15

   D1-7

Baseball Great Is Charged
Kirby Puckett, 41, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame who starred with the Minnesota Twins from 1984 to 1995, was charged with dragging a woman into a restaurant bathroom in Eden Prairie, Minn., last month and grabbing her breast.   D4

BUSINESS DAY   C1-16

S.E.C. May Get Less
President Bush signed legislation last summer to increase the budget of the Securities and Exchange Commission for policing corporate America. Now the White House wants to reduce that budget to $568 million from $776 million.   A1

Brokerage Deal Considered
Prudential and Wachovia are discussing a joint venture to merge their brokerage and research businesses. The companies envision a brokerage that cannot be compromised by investment banking.   C1

Stocks on a Two-Week Roll
The Dow and S.& P. 500 have risen 10.5 percent and the Nasdaq 13 percent -- one of the better two-week performances since World War II.   C4

Executive Falsified Resume
Ronald L. Zarrella, the chief executive of Bausch & Lomb, admitted that his resume contained false information about his education.   C2

Business Digest   C1

EDUCATION

Disparity in Aid for Schools
Schools in New York City boroughs with less poverty tend to receive more federal aid for each child.   A1

EDITORIAL   A16-17

Editorials: Squabbling over the homeless; bring back Hetch Hetchy; Baltimore's homegrown terrorism; a miracle at Assisi.

Column: Bill Keller.

Bridge   B14
TV Listings   B17
Crossword   B14
Weather   D8




18


   
 

October 19, 2002 Saturday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE BALI INVESTIGATION; 
Indonesian Suspect Agrees to Questioning, Then Collapses

 
The Indonesian government's fledgling campaign against terrorism was jolted late this afternoon when a prominent militant Muslim cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, who was to have been questioned by the police on Saturday, was admitted unexpectedly to a hospital.
     After more than a year of resisting entreaties from the United States and other countries to crack down on Mr. Bashir, and on the network he leads, Jemaah Islamiyah, the police summoned Mr. Bashir on Thursday for questioning. He was to be asked about his suspected links to Al Qaeda and his possible role in several terrorist operations.  
 With his customary confidence, Mr. Bashir, 64, who is an unabashed admirer of Osama bin Laden, said at a news conference in Solo this afternoon that he would go to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, as requested. He appeared as strong as ever when he delivered his standard tirades. "The Americans and Jews are the terrorists," he said. 
He said he fully expected to be arrested.
Not long after the news conference, he collapsed and was taken to the hospital, his lawyer said.
"He's sick, he's tired," the lawyer, Mahendradatta, said by telephone from Solo where Mr. Bashir was hospitalized. "He is not going to Jakarta tomorrow." 
There were conflicting accounts from Mr. Bashir's lawyers and colleagues about what was ailing him. Some said he was just tired; others said he was suffering from heart and lung diseases.
Mr. Bashir's hospitalization was met with great skepticism by many Indonesians.
"So typical," said a young office worker, "Just like Tommy." Tommy Suharto, son of the former dictator, frequently found the hospital a more comfortable environment than the court when he was facing charges of corruption and murder (on which he was ultimately convicted). His father has used notes from a doctor about his own ill health to avoid facing charges of corruption arising out of his dictatorial reign. 
A Western diplomat said he hoped the Indonesian government would see through Mr. Bashir's ploy and demand that he appear for questioning. The United States and other countries, notably Australia and Singapore, have urged the government not only to question Mr. Bashir but to arrest him, and to declare Jemaah Islamiyah a terrorist organization.
 On Saturday, Indonesian police sent a team of investigators to interview Mr. Bashir in the hospital and to check on his health, Reuters reported. 
The government has long resisted taking action against Mr. Bashir or Jemaah Islamiyah, fearing violent protests by Mr. Bashir's supporters, who include Vice President Hamzah Haz.
The car bombing in Bali, which killed nearly 200 people, mostly foreigners, has changed the attitude of many of the country's leaders, notably President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Her cabinet is far from unified, though, and there have been shouting matches between Mr. Haz and cabinet members who want to take a tough stance against Mr. Bashir.
The investigation into the bombing has gone slowly, which is not surprising to Indonesians and foreigners living here. The police are poorly paid and poorly trained, many are corrupt, and they lack basic tools for investigating crimes, like computers. 
Friction between law enforcement agencies is to be expected, but the lack of cooperation between Indonesia's police and intelligence agencies is notorious. Neither the intelligence agency nor the military trust the police, which is the weakest security branch in the country. 
Privately, American and Australian law enforcement officials who have been sent to help in the investigation have expressed dismay that the crime scene was not cordoned off after the attack. "It has been completely corrupted," a Western security analyst said.
Nor did the authorities seal off Bali after the attack -- by shutting airports and halting ferries -- to prevent the culprits from escaping. 
Gen. Made Mangku Pastika was named chief investigator, but not until Thursday. Although he is highly regarded, he is working with limited resources, less than what most small towns in the United States have. 
At a news conference today, General Pastika said that more than 50 Bali residents had been interviewed, but that the investigation had produced no suspects. He denied reports that the police had a witness who had seen the bombs planted.
About a hundred foreign investigators have arrived, including a team from the F.B.I. The lead outside investigators are Australian police officers.
The leader of the Australian team, Graham Ashton, said today that "significant information" had been gathered and that the investigators had an opinion about the group responsible. He decline to give any details and said the investigation would be long and exhaustive.






   

 

October 18, 2002 



 Thomas Oliver's @ WITS' END

 
Saddam re-elected supreme dictator, 11,445,638 to 0
But unlike other dictators in the world, his term is about up.
North Korea has secret nuclear weapons program:
This shocks those who actually believed a deal with a member of the Axis of Evil could be brokered by the same party that let Saddam kick out the inspectors.
Profiling redux:
Angry, middle-aged white guys make up 99.9 percent of known serial killers. Would anyone (or any group) protest if they learned sniper investigators were looking first for an angry, middle-aged white guy? 
Question on Georgia History 101 final:
The state constitution directs that judges be elected by the people. The monopoly party has circumvented that mandate by:
1) legislating new judgeships in which the governor has the authority to appoint the first judge until the next scheduled election;
2) by secretly encouraging sitting judges to resign instead of not seeking re-election, thereby letting the governor appoint a replacement;
3) by establishing a judicial commission that discourages vigorous campaign debate;
4) by allowing judges to contribute money to campaigns of governors who appoint them;
5) all of the above.
The rich are different, though not necessarily smarter:
You know you have more money than sense when the day before the Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to tell the world your company's anti-cancer drug won't be approved, you try to sell your stock and advise friends and family to do likewise.
Conspiracy Theory MCMLXIV:
Remember when the J-E-W-S piloted the airplanes into the World Trade Center towers?
The Muslim cleric who heads the Indonesian terrorist cell, Jemaah Islamiah, said the Bali bombings "were engineered by infidels (that would be us) to launch war against Islam."
Escape to Atlantis:
Atlanta megalopolis spreads from South Carolina border to Alabama and from Chattanooga to Macon.
Bush hands Carter Nobel Prize:
You think Jimmy will say thanks?
Question on Naval Academy Code of Conduct final:
If a sailor is taken prisoner and he signs a statement condemning "the line the current U.S. administration has taken on Iraq," he would be considered:
1) a hero for criticizing a problematic war;
2) an honorable sailor acting under duress;
3) as aiding and abetting the enemy.
@ Wits' End Maxims:
 
* Greed is a mirror through which we see ourselves deserving someone else's rewards.
 
* Wisdom comes to those who live long enough to find out they were mostly wrong about almost everything.
 
* Style isn't acquired from fashion trends; it comes from the habits of being.
Quote:
"Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other."
--- Oscar Ameringer
Thomas Oliver's column appears on Friday.  Except when it doesn't.






   


October 18, 2002 Friday



 Terror's calling card left in Bali

 
THE MASSACRE at an Indonesian nightclub on the idyllic island of Bali, apparently the work of al-Qaida and local allies, is a horrifying reminder that Islamic extremists who target America and the West may be on the run but are not defeated. Even as the Bush administration readies for confrontation with Iraq, it must take new steps to combat a resurgent, international terrorist threat with no single address or state sponsor.
Most of the nearly 200 people killed and hundreds others injured on Saturday were foreign tourists, but Indonesia has been badly hurt as well. Its sense of security has been jolted, its stock market is reeling and Bali's economically important tourist industry faces ruinous free fall. 
This was the latest and deadliest of several recent assaults. Together they offer evidence that al-Qaida and its allies have survived the war in Afghanistan and are regrouping to organize new strikes. Two weeks ago Kuwaiti terrorists opened fire on U.S. Marines in the country for joint exercises with the Kuwaiti military, killing one of them. One of the assailants left behind a tape pledging allegiance to Osama bin Laden. On Monday more gunfire was directed at U.S. troops in Kuwait. Late last month a French oil tanker was set ablaze off Yemen in what Paris believes was a terrorist attack. Meanwhile a new tape by Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has begun circulating. U.S. authorities believe it was recorded recently.
A reactivated al-Qaida is a threat America cannot afford to ignore, as President Bush acknowledged on Monday. An array of different strategies will be needed, including heightened cooperation with foreign governments, police and military forces and financial monitoring agencies. Fighting loosely linked and mobile terror cells is an entirely different operation from invading Iraq. Bush said that the two could be done simultaneously, and perhaps they can. But fighting terror is partly a battle for Muslim hearts and minds. A war against Iraq is likely to make it harder.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, presents one of the toughest challenges. Law and order are extremely fragile in the sprawling archipelago, while its brutal and corrupt armed forces are politically and professionally unreliable.
Thus far, President Megawati Sukarnoputri has failed to acknowledge the seriousness of the Islamic terror threat. She has also been unwilling to take the steps needed to force the army to become more accountable, and the Bush administration has been reluctant to pressure her to do so. This must now change. Until Jakarta shapes up its policies and security forces, it will be difficult for Washington or anyone else to halt al-Qaida's inroads there.
The United States continues to run up against conflicts between its desire to bolster its allies in the Islamic world and the need to take a stand against corruption and anti-democratic governments. In Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a crucial U.S. ally, has isolated himself through high-handedness and thwarting of constitutional procedures. As a result he emerged from last week's legislative elections in a weakened position, not only in relation to the secular parties he unwisely tried to stop, but also to a strengthened Islamic fundamentalist political movement.
The war against terror requires Washington to build and lead a broad coalition, using diplomatic as well as military tools, and hold it together for many years to come. It is unclear how war with Iraq will affect this endeavor, but the events of the last few weeks are a reminder that it is likely to make things harder rather than easier.
- New York Times







   
 

October 18, 2002 Friday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: BALI; 
Nightclub Blasts Leave Carefree Crowd Less So

 
If there is any place on earth where war and terror could be forgotten it should be this carefree seaside town where the only imperative is self-indulgence. 
     But since the terrorist attack last Saturday, the young travelers who gather here from around the world have begun to carry the weight of the world in their backpacks. 
 Intentionally or not, the terrorists who bombed two nightclubs packed with partygoers have sent a shock through a borderless, shifting but increasingly cohesive world of low-budget travelers that has taken form in recent decades. 
As much, perhaps, as the World Trade Center was a symbol of international commerce, the name of Kuta has resonated as a capital and a crossroads for people on the backpacker circuit.  
When disaster struck, these citizens of the world turned to one another on the Internet, their common home, where they often meet to share the latest news from Katmandu in Nepal or Khaosan Road in Thailand. 
"How can they do this to Bali?" lamented a person with the cybername Chowmaipohtang. "This is too much. Is nowhere safe?" 
In the days since then, the travelers' Web sites have taken on a tone of fear and anger, and shown a new appetite for political discourse. Bulletin boards created to share low-budget travel tips are heavy with surprisingly sophisticated analyses of world affairs. 
"Just wondering whether the bomb blast in Bali would affect the whole backpacking culture here in Southeast Asia in general and in Muslim countries like Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia," wrote Intruder. "Would it get any worse if the Americans do decide to attack Iraq?" 
The concept of a backpacking culture has been emerging since the 1970's, when the pioneers of rough travel put places like Nepal on the map and invented what is now almost a uniform of sandals and loose cotton clothes. 
Low-budget travelers now have guidebooks to a worldwide network of guest houses and Internet cafes that has emerged to serve them. On their voyages of discovery they are accompanied by legions of their peers. As they follow a beaten track, way stations like Kuta offer a haven where they can share tales of their common experiences while they drink and dance and bunk together. 
This carefree culture, it seems, is already being affected.
Web sites now carry impassioned debates over the question of safety, particularly here in Bali. There is a shared sense that the world is a more dangerous place even for people who want to have nothing to do with it. 
"It can happen again anytime, anywhere," wrote Wimos. "Nobody expected Bali, nobody expected New York. Next target?" 
Some correspondents even have the temerity to suggest that it might be safer to stay home. 
These fears have met with fierce expressions of something that sounds like patriotism. If backpackers had a flag, they might all be flying it now. 
"I am a traveler and this unspeakable act of terrorism will not stop me from trekking around this crazy world," wrote Swayze. 
A man who introduced himself as Jason Gaspero, a surfer, sounded a bit like Patrick Henry as he said: "Let me tell you this, and I believe it from the bottom of my heart. Evil will lose. Freedom will win. Our sense of freedom and traveling spirit is too strong to be defeated." 
If a clincher was needed, NicB declared that if young travelers abandon their surfboards, temporary tattoos and banana pancakes, "The terrorists win." 
A number of people are making a more serious argument that backpackers have a moral duty to continue to support the economy that has evolved to serve them. 
That notion was attacked widely by people like PST, who said, "We are talking about going on VACATION here -- not support for countries under attack just because the people of that particular country are nice. How about a cheap vacation in Afghanistan? Bosnia? Get real." 
The economic argument cuts both ways, though. Now is the time to come, urge the less timid, when a rare visitor can be king of the waves and the beaches, and when rates at guest houses are expected to drop. 
A shameful notion, said Manydreams. "While 200 people lay dead, you are going to be in Bali having a 'damn good time.' Pathetic." 
But this is in fact a pattern among backpackers and surfers, said Bill Dalton, an authority on travel in Indonesia. "Veteran travelers know that if there are any upheavals or revolutions or civil wars or hurricanes -- like, if there's a coup in the Seychelles you drop everything and you go to the Seychelles," he said.
These veteran low-budget travelers are likely to be heading for Bali now, Mr. Dalton said. All the infrastructure of tourism remains in place, "only 30 percent cheaper." 
No one knows how deeply the world of the backpacker has been affected, but there are new, real concerns. 
"Something tells me inside that the bombing is just a precursor to the terror that may come," wrote Donluciano. "Not only in Bali, but worldwide. Iraq, Europe, Israel, you can expect some very wicked things to come." 
There was a quick reply, though, from Ptclouds: "A bit extreme?" 







   
 

October 18, 2002 Friday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: JAKARTA; 
Indonesia Orders Muslim Cleric to Undergo Questioning

 
A fundamentalist Islamic preacher who has been linked to Al Qaeda and a string of terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia, was ordered today to appear for questioning by Indonesian police, a lawyer and Indonesian officials said.
     Abu Bakar Bashir, 64, heads Jemaah Islamiyah, which American officials believe was involved in the Bali bombing. 
 A lawyer for Mr. Bashir said his client had been ordered to appear at the central police station in Jakarta on Saturday, and that Mr. Bashir would comply. A police official in Jakarta said the papers were signed today for Mr. Bashir to be ordered to appear for questioning. 
A declared admirer of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Bashir said tonight that he was aware of reports that he was to be questioned. In a telephone interview, he said, laughingly, that there were no police at his house yet. 
It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Bashir would be arrested or detained under emergency powers that the Indonesian Parliament granted the government this evening. President Megawati Sukarnoputri was expected to sign the measure into law Friday. 
Under the new emergency powers Indonesia's intelligence agency would be permitted to detain terrorist suspects for nearly a year without trial, and provides for the death penalty in the most severe cases. 
The measure is based on an antiterror law that has languished in Parliament for months, largely because many Indonesian politicians have said they remain unconvinced that Islamic organizations are involved in terrorist activity.
The planned interrogation of Mr. Bashir came as the government, long criticized by the United States for its refusal to take terrorism seriously, moved to shore up political support among Indonesia's moderate Muslims for more aggressive action against Jemaah Islamiyah. 
As part of this effort, the minister for state security, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, announced today that his investigators had returned from interviewing an Indonesian-based Qaeda operative who is now in the custody of United States forces in Afghanistan.
Based on the interrogation of the operative, Omar al-Faruq, the government would take "legal steps" in the "next one or two days," Mr. Yudhoyono said.
Indonesian officials said tonight that Mr. Faruq had told their interrogators what he had previously told United States agents: that Jemaah Islamiyah and Al Qaeda planned and worked together on terrorist plots in Indonesia as well as in Singapore and Malaysia.
At a news conference today, the National Police spokesman, Inspector General Saleh Saaf, said that the interrogation showed that Mr. Bashir was, "involved in many of Faruq's plots." He said those plots included an effort to kill President Megawati, a bomb attack on Jakarta's biggest mosque in 1999 and another set of bombings in Jakarta at Christmas 2000.
Meanwhile, the newly appointed head of the police investigation into the Bali attack, Gen. I Made Pastika, arrived tonight at the scene of the destroyed Sari bar and disco in Bali. 
Mr. Pastika, who is Balinese-born and heads the Indonesian police in the troubled province of Papua, is regarded by Western diplomats as one of Indonesia's most competent police officials. "We have to work from the crime scene, and from that we will move to suspects," he said in a telephone interview this evening.
Mr. Pastika said the powerful bomb at the disco, which resulted in more than 180 deaths, was caused by C-4, a plastic explosive, which ignited ammonium nitrate. He said it was clear to him that the bomb was planted in at least one vehicle.
"We are not exactly sure whether it is one, or two or three" vehicles, he said. "It could be more than one." 
An Indonesian intelligence official said investigators had identified suspects and were searching for them. He declined to be more specific.
Overall, Indonesian law-enforcement authorities have given conflicting accounts of their progress in the investigation. The police in Jakarta said they were questioning four men. In Bali, the police said they were focusing on eight men.
Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Australian investigators have complained that the Indonesian authorities failed to secure the crime scene for three days, resulting in a vast loss of evidence. They were also frustrated that the Bali authorities failed in the aftermath of the attack to close exit routes from the island. 
The question of where responsibility lies for the attack is the object of debate here. Many educated Indonesians say they believe the United States was somehow responsible for the Bali attack. There is little support for the notion that Islamic radicals with roots in Indonesia masterminded the attack. 
The public skepticism made it important for the government, now under heightened pressure from the United States and from neighboring countries, to seek formal legal authority to step up its efforts against terrorism, officials said. 
After meeting with Mrs. Megawati at the presidential palace, several members of Parliament, including Vice President Hamzah Haz, who has embraced Mr. Bashir in the past, agreed to the creation of a special "antiterror unit" composed of officials from the ministries of defense, justice and intelligence. 
Moderate Muslim leaders, who until now had been silent about Mr. Bashir, cautiously welcomed the new emergency powers passed by Parliament. A prominent moderate Muslim scholar, Azymardi Azra, said today that the authorities should not hesitate to move against Mr. Bashir or alleged extremists if "legal indications" were sufficient. 
But human rights groups -- and many Indonesians -- feared the new law would allow the police and army to revert to the repressive tactics common during the three decades of authoritarian rule by Suharto.
Officials from the United States, Australia and Singapore -- the three countries that have been pressing the Indonesians for months on terrorism -- said they were mildly encouraged by the steps taken to close in on Mr. Bashir and to take the Bali investigation seriously. 
The Indonesian police interviewed the cleric in February after officials in Singapore said that he was part of a regional terrorist network that had plotted to blow up the United States Embassy in Singapore.
But the questioning in February was so polite an American diplomat later called the two-day interrogation at police headquarters a "tea party."
Mr. Bashir, who runs a boarding school in the city of Solo in central Java, has been defiant in declaring that he does not belong to Jemaah Islamiyah, and, indeed, denies that the organization exists. 
In a bizarre interview over a conference telephone call to reporters gathered in a Jakarta hotel for what had been billed as an appearance by Mr. Bashir today, the cleric challenged the Indonesian government to put him face to face in a room with Mr. Faruq. Mr. Bashir said he would prove that he had nothing to do with Jemaah Islamiyah.
One of Mr. Bashir's lawyers said the cleric did not show up in person at the hotel because he was "not feeling well."






  
  

  

October 18, 2002 Friday CITY-D-EAST EDITION



 Trudy Rubin: Keep focus in antiterror war

 
The horrendous bombing attack on a tourist nightclub district in Bali sends a warning to the Bush administration:
Keep your eye on the long-term struggle against international Islamist terrorism. Don't let the Iraq issue undercut that fight.
The carnage on the idyllic Indonesian island is a chilling example of how al-Qaeda has adapted and decentralized since the destruction of its Afghan bases. The Bali bombing follows a series of smaller attacks in Tunisia, the Philippines, Kuwait, Pakistan, and against a French tanker off Yemen. This hydra-headed monster must be crushed, which requires intense, ongoing international cooperation. 
The Bali bombing reminds us why we can't afford to fail.
Anyone who has been to Bali knows this lush island seemed the antithesis of terrorist violence. My memories from a 1998 trip: sitting at the feet of a shadow-puppet master as he cut delicious shapes of legendary Balinese kings out of leather, then watching impossibly graceful dancers sway to gamelan chimes. For Western tourists, Bali was a symbol of peaceful delights.
What better way than bombing Bali to terrify the West? The Bali attack, writes a foremost expert on radical Islam, the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, "fits the al-Qaeda picture as we have come to know it." The goals: attack economic targets symbolic of capitalism - such as Bali nightclubs packed with Australians and other foreigners dancing to pop music. And try to embarrass pro-Western Muslim rulers, like Indonesia's Megawati Sukarnoputri.
But there is another devilish aspect to the Bali slaughter that has claimed at least 200 victims from around the world.
With al-Qaeda leaders in hiding, they have turned for help to local Islamic radicals with whom they have old ties - often from training camps in Afghanistan. In Indonesia, the prime suspect is Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a network that also has links to the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia. Though Indonesia has a history of tolerant Islam, these radicals seek the forceful establishment of an Islamic "caliphate" throughout Southeast Asia.
They also seek to shift the blame for the bombing to the West. They hope to provoke a clash between the weak Megawati government and Islamists, even as they deny any blame for the bombing. The purported JI head, the Indonesian religious leader Abu Bakar Bashir, charges the United States with setting off the bomb to gain support for an Iraq war. This absurd charge is widely believed in Indonesia, where the Megawati government is unpopular and unable to improve the economy.
It's no accident that the bomb was exploded in Bali, rather than another Indonesian island. This guaranteed that few Muslims would be killed - Bali is predominantly Hindu. The killing of so many Australians plays to the hostility Indonesians feel toward the Aussies for helping bring about the independence of their former (and mainly Christian) colony, East Timor.
Western countries must not let this twisted al-Qaeda strategy deter their antiterrorist fight.
In fact, the strategy of al-Qaeda and its Indonesian allies is more harmful to Indonesia than to the West. It may destroy the tourism industry in Bali, which is crucial to Indonesia's hard currency earnings. It will scare off foreign investors.
The Bali bombing cannot be blamed on the West, or on Australia's admirable efforts in East Timor. Nor can it be blamed, as some Australian pundits argue, on Australia's support for Bush policy on Iraq.
Jemaah Islamiyah seeks to establish an Islamic state by violence. This isn't what most Indonesians want. JI will seek that goal, by any means, regardless of what Australia or America may do in Iraq.
That said, the Bush administration must consider carefully the best strategy to respond to the new al-Qaeda threat. A unilateral war on Iraq would play into Islamists' hands, in Indonesia and in other vulnerable countries like Pakistan. It will turn large segments of their populations against their pro-Western governments, and feed the myth that war on terrorism is a Western war on Islam.
U.N. sanctions for any action on Iraq would give those rulers cover, which is a key reason why it's worth pursuing the U.N. route to the end. The Bali tragedy is proof that al-Qaeda has adapted its strategy to its new situation. The West must adapt equally well to outwit these murderers.
Contact Trudy Rubin at 215-854-5823 or trubin@phillynews.com.






   


October 18, 2002, Friday, FIRST EDITION



 Bali blast prompts Australia to raise support for war on terror

 
CANBERRA, Australia -- Responding to the biggest loss of lives in a single incident since World War II, Australia is vowing to intensify its support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
The government here expects Australians to account for more than half the 183 deaths from the Oct. 12 bombing in a crowded tourist district of Bali, Indonesia. More than 300 people were hurt.
The anger and shock here has been similar to reaction in the United States following the Sept. 11 attacks. Sunday has been designated a national day of mourning.
 
Australia's distance from the United States and Europe has historically isolated it from the politics and foreign affairs that dominate the rest of the world. The attack in Bali may change that.
"It just raises our profile I think, and you've just (got) to assume that the sort of reflex enthusiastic support that Australia gives the United States will increase," said Michael McKinley, an expert on terrorism at the Australian National University in Canberra. "Ultimately it will reinforce the prime minister's hand, and those who weren't so enthusiastic or undecided will support him, if he decides we should be involved in any action against Iraq."
Bali, a mostly Hindu island that is considered an oasis of peace in a country that has endured years of political and economic unrest, is a popular destination for Australians.
Until the attack, Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, had denied terrorists were operating on any of the hundreds of islands that make up the Indonesian archipelago.
Both the U.S. and Indonesia suspect al-Qaeda was behind the Bali bombings. Since then, Indonesia's government has begun placing pressure on extremist groups operating within its borders. The Indonesian government said Thursday that police summoned for questioning Abu Bakar Bashir, leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been suspected of supporting terrorism.
And the Indonesian Parliament on Thursday voted to support new anti-terrorism measures introduced by President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Indonesia has been under pressure from the United States and other Western governments to crack down on Jemaah Islamiyah and other groups suspected of terrorism.
Australia Prime Minister John Howard vowed Thursday to "bring to justice those responsible for this foul deed." He spoke after flying to Bali to attend a memorial service -- despite a government warning for citizens to leave Indonesia amid what it called "disturbing information of threats" against Westerners.
U.S. officials downplayed suggestions that the attack was retribution for Australia's support for the war on terrorism. "I would suggest that if you are paying a price, it's because you have a different view from those who want to bring about ruin, destruction and death to innocents," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in an interview broadcast here Thursday.
"When the Sept. 11 attacks occurred, I was appalled, but I didn't have words to describe it. Now I know what it feels like," said Sue McKerrow, 51, whose 23-year-old daughter, Kim, suffered burns and shrapnel injuries in last Saturday's attack.
Kim McKerrow, who is being treated in a hospital in her hometown of Melbourne, was in Paddy's nightclub, which was hit by the first of two explosions.
After freeing herself from the wreckage, McKerrow made her way to a the hotel where she was staying with her parents. "We started desperately driving Kim around, looking for a hospital that wasn't already crowded with injured people," said Sue McKerrow, 51, Kim's mother. "She was just saying, 'Let me die, let me die. I don't want to live anymore' because the pain was so bad," Sue McKerrow said.
"I will support absolutely any action which the government wants to take to get the terrorists who were responsible for this," she said.






   


October 18, 2002, Friday, 



 Bali blast prompts Australia to raise support for war on terror

 
CANBERRA, Australia -- Responding to the biggest loss of lives in a single incident since World War II, Australia is vowing to intensify its support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
The government here expects Australians to account for more than half of the 183 deaths from last Saturday's bombing in a crowded tourist district of Bali, Indonesia. More than 300 people were hurt.
The anger and shock here have been similar to reaction in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks. This Sunday has been designated a national day of mourning.
 
Australia's distance from the United States and Europe has historically isolated it from the politics and foreign affairs that dominate the rest of the world. The attack in Bali may change that.
"It just raises our profile I think, and you've just (got) to assume that the sort of reflex enthusiastic support that Australia gives the United States will increase," said Michael McKinley, an expert on terrorism at the Australian National University in Canberra. "Ultimately it will reinforce the prime minister's hand, and those who weren't so enthusiastic or undecided will support him, if he decides we should be involved in any action against Iraq."
Bali, a mostly Hindu island that is considered an oasis of peace in a country that has endured years of political and economic unrest, is a popular destination for Australians.
Until the attack, Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, had denied that terrorists were operating on any of the hundreds of islands that make up the Indonesian archipelago. About 90% of Indonesia's 231 million people are Muslim.
Both the United States and Indonesia suspect al-Qaeda was behind the Bali bombing. Since then, Indonesia's government has begun placing pressure on extremist groups operating within its borders. The Indonesian government said Thursday that police summoned for questioning Abu Bakar Bashir, leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been suspected of supporting terrorism.
And the Indonesian Parliament voted on Thursday voted to support new anti-terrorism measures introduced by President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Indonesia has been under pressure from the United States and other Western governments to crack down on Jemaah Islamiyah and other groups suspected of terrorism.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard vowed Thursday to "bring to justice those responsible for this foul deed."
He spoke after flying to Bali to attend a memorial service -- despite a government warning for citizens to leave Indonesia amid what it called "disturbing information of threats" against Westerners.
U.S. officials downplayed suggestions that the attack was retribution for Australia's support for the war on terrorism. "I would suggest that if you are paying a price, it's because you have a different view from those who want to bring about ruin, destruction and death to innocents," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in an interview broadcast here Thursday.
"When the Sept. 11 attacks occurred, I was appalled, but I didn't have words to describe it. Now I know what it feels like," said Sue McKerrow, 51, whose daughter, Kim, suffered burns and shrapnel injuries in last Saturday's attack.
Kim McKerrow, 23, who is being treated in a hospital in her hometown of Melbourne, was in Paddy's nightclub, which was hit by the first of two explosions.
After freeing herself from the wreckage, McKerrow made her way to the hotel where she was staying with her parents.
"We started desperately driving Kim around, looking for a hospital that wasn't already crowded with injured people," Sue McKerrow said. "She was just saying, 'Let me die, let me die. I don't want to live anymore' because the pain was so bad.
"I will support absolutely any action which the government wants to take to get the terrorists who were responsible for this."






    
  


October 18, 2002, Friday



 BELIEF AND BALI'S BOMBING






   

 

October 17, 2002 Thursday 



 CRISIS DEVELOPMENTS

 
Indonesia admits local ties to blast
Indonesia's top security minister said today that a group of foreign terrorists may have carried out the Bali nightclub bombing. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also said the alleged Indonesian leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional Muslim militant group also suspected in the attack, could face legal action. 
"I don't want to say who is behind this act of terror," Yudhoyono said. "There could be involvement of foreign nationals or Indonesians or there could be joint cooperation between foreigners and Indonesians."
The comment came just one day after Yudhoyono denied that Jemaah Islamiyah existed in Indonesia. Indonesian government officials have long tried to delicately balance a crackdown on local militants with fears that aggressive moves could spark a backlash by the extremists.
Explosion kills 2 in Philippine city
An explosion in the southern Philippine port city of Zamboanga killed at least two people and injured others at midday today, according to radio reports. Police said they suspected a bomb was responsible. The same city was hit by a bomb blast two weeks ago that killed four people, including an American Green Beret.
-- From staff writer Yolanda Rodriguez and news services




19

  
  
 

October 17, 2002 Thursday



 Pressure mounts on Indonesia to fight terror;
Foreign minister says government will issue an emergency decree that would provide legal tools to combat extremists

 
Responding to international and domestic pressures in the wake of the massive bombing in Bali that killed more than 180 people, Indonesia's government on Wednesday signaled that it finally may be ready to crack down on terrorists.
Police on Wednesday disclosed that the Bali blast originated in a minivan whose roof had been packed with C-4 plastic explosive, and Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda told reporters the government is preparing to issue an emergency anti-terrorism decree that will give authorities legal tools to combat extremists.
Such a decree would be a major step by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who has long been criticized by some of Indonesia's neighbors and by the United States for not responding to mounting evidence that the world's most populous Muslim nation has become a haven for terrorists.
Pressure on her has increased since Saturday's bombing, which many experts suspect was the work of Jemaa Islamiyah, a regional terrorist network with links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. 
Megawati's chief minister for security, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, claimed Wednesday that Jemaa Islamiyah does not exist in Indonesia "as an organization."
But he told reporters that Jemaa Islamiyah existed in Malaysia and Singapore, and that Indonesians, including Abu Bakar Bashir, a militant Indonesian cleric, were "the former leaders."
Government officials in Malaysia, Singapore and the United States say Bashir is still the leader of Jemaa Islamiyah, which hopes to create a pan-Islamic state uniting Southeast Asia's 230 million Muslims.
Whether or not Bashir and other Indonesians are members of Jemaa Islamiyah, they will be prosecuted if evidence links them to international terrorism, Susilo said.
"I have urged the Indonesian police to increase their efforts to monitor and to watch every suspicious activity," he told reporters.
"There is no need for us to argue whether or not there is terrorism in Indonesia, but there is a need for us to do something to stop it. All the nations should be united to fight against terrorism."
Bashir, a 64-year-old cleric who runs an Islamic school, denies that Jemaa Islamiyah exists or that the Bali bombing was linked to al-Qaida.
He has charged repeatedly that Saturday's bombing was a plot by the United States to discredit Islam.
Police are expected to interrogate the militant cleric today, although the ostensible reason is a multimillion-dollar libel suit he has filed against Time magazine for linking him to international terrorism.
Police on Wednesday grilled another Islamic hardliner, Habib Muhammad Rizieq, the head of the Front Pembela Islam.
Several of Rizieq's followers went on trial Wednesday for violent attacks on nightclubs, liquor stores and other businesses that violate the strict codes of Islam.
In what may be another sign of a government crackdown, the Laskar Jihad, a Muslim militia group that has sent members to fight Christians in the Maluku islands and elsewhere in Indonesia's sprawling archipelago, has disbanded, the group's lawyer said on Tuesday.
About 1,200 Laskar Jihad members were being withdrawn from the war-torn area, according to local news reports.
Details of the planned emergency decree have not been disclosed, but it would give the government a stronger hand in dealing with militants.
The decree also would allow Megawati to circumvent parliament, where proposed anti-terrorism legislation has languished for months.
Critics fear the legislation would be a step toward resurrecting the draconian internal security act that the former authoritarian Suharto regime used to jail its critics.
Similar internal security acts in Singapore and Malaysia have been used over the past year to detain without trial dozens of suspected Jemaa Islamiyah members.
Akbar Tandjung, the speaker of the House of Representatives, said he supports the emergency measure, but urged the government to consult with parliament.
"In principle, we agree with the government's move to take immediate and stern measures to handle the problem," he told a local news service.
Announcement of the emergency decree was not the only indication of a shift in the government's stance.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, after emerging from a meeting with Hassan, said he was "very optimistic about the degree of cooperation unfolding between Indonesia and Australia."
Downer told CNN that he thinks the Indonesian government now realizes the need for a tougher stand against terrorism and has agreed to create a joint investigative team with Australia to probe the Bali bombing.
Australia has a strong interest in the bombing, the most deadly terrorist attack since Sept. 11 of last year, because most of those killed in the blast that leveled a Kuta Beach nightclub district were vacationing Australians.
The number of Australian casualties is not yet known. Identification of the dead has been slow because many bodies were badly burned or dismembered.
As of Wednesday, 33 Australians had been confirmed dead, but 140 remained missing. Two Americans, whose identities have not been officially released, also were killed.
Downer said details of the joint investigating team have not yet been worked out, but that 45 bomb and forensic experts from Australia's federal police already are gathering evidence at the site.
An Indonesian national police spokesman also disputed a Washington Post report that a former member of the Indonesian air force had confessed to building the bomb.
"There hasn't been any confession from anyone," National Police spokesman Gen. Saleh Saaf said Wednesday. "It's only a rumor."






  


October 17, 2002 Thursday



 Will A Fledgling Democracy Survive Terror In Indonesia?

 
The bomb blast that killed nearly 200 in Indonesia looks like another well-planned al-Qaida operation.
The island of Bali was a logical target for extremist Muslims. It's a Hindu enclave in a nation of 230 million that's 88% Muslim, poor and angry.
The targets were Australian and European tourists. Many were young, their libertine behaviors offensive to Islam. 
But nothing is simple in Indonesia. In the land of shadow-puppet theater, the subplots can be obscure.
To begin with, it's hard to tell who's really in control.
"The Bali bombings were an attack on the presidency of Megawati Sukarnoputri as much as anything else," said Jeff Hadler, a Southeast Asia expert at the University of California, Berkeley.
Known by her first name, Megawati is the daughter of Indonesia's first dictator, the pro-Communist Achmad Sukarno. He died under house arrest in 1970 after a coup led by anti-Communist army chief Mohamed Suharto.
Asia's 1997-98 financial crisis sparked street riots that brought down the military-backed Suharto. Now he's under house arrest.
"The military was the most potent element in Suharto's Indonesia," said Hadler. With Suharto's downfall, Indonesia began reforms to strengthen democracy and reduce the army's political role.
Megawati's Ordeal
Megawati, who took office in July 2001, now faces a real test, says Hadler.
"She's queenly, not presidential," Hadler said. "She likes to be a figurehead before the little people of Java. She's a palace kid -- imperious, with a sense of entitlement."
Megawati enraged the U.S., Australian, Malaysian and Singapore governments by ignoring warnings of impending attacks. Yet her government quickly blamed al-Qaida and its local ally, Jemaah Islamiyah.
Belatedly, she announced plans on Wednesday for emergency laws to crack down on terrorism.
She hid behind the democratic reforms begun in 1998 to justify taking no action against terrorism, says Kees van Dijk, an expert on Indonesian Islam at Leiden University in Holland.
"Megawati used the excuse that Indonesia doesn't have anti-subversion laws anymore," said van Dijk. "She said the government can't arrest people without evidence, that it couldn't act sooner because Indonesia is now a democracy."
That argument was bogus, he says. Megawati feared the result of arrests.
"She may have wanted to find hard evidence," he said. "But when you arrest people in Indonesia, you arrest Muslims."
Muslims and Hindus have been killing each other in Indonesia for years. Buddhists, Christians and animists have died, too.
Muslims even slaughter Muslims, says van Dijk. "It's hard for the army to maintain control everywhere among the 15,000 islands. The navy is only 50% operational."
Megawati gets a bum rap, say others. According to Allen Hicken, South Asian Studies professor at the University of Michigan, the new constitution leaves her with little power.
She governs at Parliament's whim. Parliament impeached her predecessor. The system lets many small, religion-based parties gang up on her, he says.
The electoral system will get its first real test in 2004. Indonesians will then have their first direct vote for their president.
The military may not like the idea of a strong president. In the weeks before the Bali blast, key army brass argued to have their power restored, including their guaranteed seats in Parliament.
That lust for power launched a rumor that the army bombed Bali.
"It's not beyond the realm of possibility that the army wants a pretext to move against the Islamic opposition," said Hicken.
Reports from Jakarta say the military could have supplied the bombers with the C-4 explosive for the Bali bombings.
"If you scratch below the surface of any radical Islamic group in Indonesia you will find the hand of the military at work," Sidney Jones, Jakarta chief for the International Crisis Group, told Britain's Guardian newspaper.
The army may have targeted an Aussie hangout to get revenge on Australia. In 1975, Indonesia's army grabbed East Timor as Portugal left the former colony.
Australia led the campaign that freed Timor from Indonesia in 1999. An unofficial count puts Australia's dead or missing in Bali at 210.
"Megawati and her advisers fear that if things boil over, the military will step in," said the University of Michigan's Hicken. The sick economy stokes the fire, he says.
"Of all the countries hit by the Asian economic crisis, Indonesia was the hardest hit and slowest to recover," Hicken said.
Megawati's government claims unemployment is only 8%. The opposition say she's cooking the books.
The real figure is 50%, they say. "Young men have a sense of desperation that makes them likely to join extremist groups," said Hadler.
The bombings made Indonesia's economic woes worse. Bali's tourism brought in $5 billion a year.
Indonesians hoped Bali would escape violence, says Robert Jackson, a specialist in crises and violence at the University of Redlands, Calif.
Just back from Bali and Timor before the bombings, he found Indonesians worried.
"Everywhere I went I heard people say, "If we lose to terrorism, we are finished here,' " he said.
Now, Indonesians see themselves at the center of terrorism, says Andrew MacIntyre, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Australian National University in Canberra.
"Until now, even sophisticated and informed Indonesians have been skeptical of warnings about militants connected to al-Qaida," he said.
"They were more inclined to view this as the U.S. tarring Muslims with one uncomprehending brush. This is the start of a whole new level of political drama for Indonesia."
Crackdown Coming?
The Indonesian government will get serious and the president will get tougher, MacIntyre predicts. "Political opponents will find it harder to score points off Megawati."
Indonesia won't swing back to "anti-democratic practices," MacIntyre said. "One of Megawati's core values is social democracy."
Jackson disagrees. "Many people there believe neither the central government nor the military can control all districts of the country."
The Indonesian government "is afraid of its own shadow," Jackson said. "If it took on some Muslim groups, that would make other Muslim groups join the opposition."
Jackson sees Indonesia "as close to a failed state. And it could be the next failed state."
Van Dijk also sees a bleak future. "I'm very pessimistic. There is so much communal and sectarian violence. They don't seem to be able to solve the problem."






   
Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA)

October 17, 2002 Thursday



 No immunity from terror

 
http://media.mnginteractive.com
  Whether Osama bin Laden still lives is not the question. The relevant answer is that al-Qaeda is still very much alive.
Maybe al-Qaeda doesn't pack the punch to pull off a big operation like it did on Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airlines and killed 2,800 people on America soil. And maybe it doesn't have the financial network in place that funneled money to commanders throughout the globe. But al-Qaeda is out there, planning to kill innocent people and harm American interests everywhere. 
Al-Qaeda's most recent statement was the Bali bombing, where two popular Indonesian nightclubs where destroyed and 183 tourists killed. It didn't matter that most of the victims were Australians and not Americans; the terror group had achieved its goal: to spread terror to a Southeast Asian country that had largely ignored the threat's existence. President Bush had been urging the Indonesian government for months to crack down on terror groups in the Muslim nation.
While Bali is far from America, the bombing's impact isn't lost on our shores. Like the Twin Towers attack which cost the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue, the Bali attack will likely decimate Indonesia's $5 billion a year tourist industry. Bali's dreamland paradise will never be the same and that's one of two goals al-Qaeda had hoped to achieve. The other was to put the world on notice that despite the U.S. military success in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is capable of striking anywhere, any time. The attacks can be small killing a Marine in Kuwait, big disabling a French oil tanker at sea, and brutal the Bali bombing.
All of the incidents spread fear.
U.S. intelligence experts say there are at least 40 al-Qaeda networks operating in 60 countries. Some are better organized than others, with local leaders responsible for selecting targets. They don't need bin Laden to tell them what to do, since driving out the infidel America and its allies and tearing down modern economies is a collective goal.
Indonesia must now face up to the insidious menace within its borders. Sadly, its leaders and citizens learned the hard way that al-Qaeda won't leave any nation alone even those which were previously reluctant to join the U.S. coalition's war against terrorism.






 Wilmington Star-News, Inc.  
Morning Star (Wilmington, NC)

October 17, 2002, Thursday



 TERROR ECHOES WORLDWIDE; The Bali connection

 
 
It's almost like getting hit by a second 9-11, said Arnie Cullipher, owner of Blue Hand Home, a Wilmington furniture shop that imports from Indonesia.
He's been on the phone to Bali every night since car bombs massacred nearly 200 people a few miles from where he rents a home on the Indonesian island, he said.
So far, the death has hit only as close as a distant acquaintance, he said. 
With few confirmed American deaths, last weekend's terrorist attack was a distant event for most people. But for several area shopkeepers, Bali is the next business trip away.
Only recently returned from the island, Paul Cowan, whose downtown shop sells Balinese woodcarving and metal work, said he is unafraid to head back in February.
A frequent visitor, he avoids the tourist magnets targeted by the terrorists, who are suspected of being connected with al-Qaeda
Still, the viciousness has given him pause. He'll still eat in the same restaurant favored by expatriates, but with precautions. The target may be smaller there than in a packed nightclub, but it could still be tempting.
"I'll scope it out first," he said.
Sharon Copland, owner of the Bali Trading Co., plans to head out after Christmas. The evil is the work of a small minority that may not even be from there, she said.
Besides, there's no use worrying.
"If your time is up, your time is up," she said.
An island in a country of islands, Bali has long been thought of as an oasis of calm in a turbulent country. A mix of Hindus and Muslims in the world's most populous Islamic nation, Bali has kept a cool, inviting image even as problems flared in other parts of the nation.
The spread of islands has always been a volatile place, like the volcanic land that makes it, said Mr. Cullipher, who fell in love with Bali while traveling the world and spent six years living there.
But the extent of Saturday's violence was beyond anything he had seen. He felt it was by outsiders, said Mr. Cullipher.
"It's absolutely not them," he said. "I never had any anti-American sentiment directed toward me in my entire time over there."
In a macabre way, the bombing will probably help the bottom line of businesses that import from the country, Mr. Cowan said, though that was not what he wanted to see happen.
With tourism inevitably declining, artisans will have fewer places to sell, he said.
"It's important not to take advantage of that, Mr. Cullipher said. "The business is the least of it for me."







   
 

October 17, 2002 Thursday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: JAKARTA; 
Indonesia Links Muslim Group With Terrorism

 
The Indonesian government, under pressure from the United States to act decisively against terrorism here, took a major step today toward declaring a fundamentalist Islamic group, Jemaah Islamiyah, a terrorist organization.
     For nearly a year, Indonesia has dismissed claims that the organization was a threat, or even that it existed. But this week, several foreign governments said that they had strong reason to believe that Jemaah Islamiyah was involved in the blast in Bali. 
 At a news conference this morning, Indonesia's minister for state security, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said that Jakarta had to "respect and believe" assertions that Jemaah Islamiyah was part of "an international terrorist network." 
He added that Indonesia "cannot disagree" with the views of Singapore and Malaysia that Jemaah Islamiyah is a terrorist organization.
In another abrupt about-face, Mr. Yudhoyono conceded that the organization's leader is Abu Bakar Bashir, a 64-year-old preacher who runs an Islamic boarding school in central Java. Mr. Bashir, who expresses admiration for Osama bin Laden and loathing for Jews and the West, has steadfastly denied that there is any such group as Jemaah Islamiyah.
Mr. Yudhoyono also acknowledged for the first time publicly that another Indonesia cleric, Hambali, is a leader of Jemaah Islamiyah.
In a recent interview, Singaporean intelligence officials -- who by nearly all accounts have the best dossier on Jemaah Islamiyah -- said that Mr. Hambali was inducted into Al Qaeda's inner circle, a rare occurrence for a non-Arab, and was the mastermind of several bombing attacks in Southeast Asia. It was through Mr. Hambali that Jemaah Islamiyah, which began as a religious movement in the 1970's, made common cause with Al Qaeda in the 1990's, according to Asian and Western intelligence agencies.
Philippine officials said today that they plan to indict Mr. Hambali, who has been a fugitive for many months, on charges of illegal possession of explosives.
The indictment charges that in 2000, Mr. Hambali instructed another member of Jemaah Islamiyah to buy at least five tons of explosives that were to be used for the attacks on the American and Israeli Embassies in Singapore last December. The attacks were thwarted by Singaporean police, but not all of the explosives were recovered, raising the possibility that they may have been used in the Bali bombing. 
Mr. Yudhoyono stopped short of saying that Indonesia was prepared to arrest Mr. Bashir, a step that the United States and other countries have requested, or declare outright that Jemaah Islamiyah is a terrorist organization. Such a declaration would make it easier for the government to proscribe its activities. 
He said that the government would have to await the return of Indonesian intelligence officials who he said were on their way back from Pakistan after interrogating Omar al-Faruq, an admitted Al Qaeda operative. Mr. Faruq told the C.I.A. last month that Mr. Bashir, despite his denials, was responsible for several terrorist attacks in Indonesia and was behind plans to blow up the American Embassy there.
Mr. Faruq has been detained at the American base in Bagram, Afghanistan, since being picked up here by Indonesian intelligence and turned over to the United States in June.
Another senior Indonesian official explained this evening that the government wanted to build political support in the country before cracking down on Jemaah Islamiyah. This would be easier, the official said, if it did not appear that the government was acting solely on what it had learned from the United States.
Indonesian officials also said today that President Megawati Sukarnoputri was planning to issue a decree that would allow the country's intelligence agency to pick up terrorist suspects and question them for as long as seven days without filing any formal charges. She is expected to act before Saturday, officials said.
Today, after meetings with Mr. Yudhoyono and Mrs. Megawati, Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said he expected Jakarta to take some action "in the next week or so" on Jemaah Islamiyah or Mr. Bashir. Most of those killed in the blast this weekend were Australians.
The American Embassy today denied a Washington Post report that the United States had specific information in advance about a terrorist attack on a tourist site in Bali. If the United States had such information, a diplomat said, American Embassy personnel would not have been in Bali on vacation last weekend, which some were.
The American Embassy also said that Ambassador Ralph Boyce had met with Mrs. Megawati not the day before the Bali blast, as had been reported in The Times, but the week before. He met with other officials the day before the blast, relaying general information about a possible terrorist attack. 
Without providing details, an Indonesian intelligence official said today that investigators are now convinced that Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah carried out the Bali attack, which is what American and Australian officials have said as well. The attack has the characteristics of other Qaeda operations -- the bombings of the American Embassies in Africa and more recent attacks in Pakistan, officials said. It was meticulously planned, the target shrewdly chosen to inflict maximum economic, political and physical damage. Indonesian officials added that local groups lack the expertise to make a bomb like the one used. 
Singaporean officials said in the recent interview that explosives experts trained at Qaeda camps in Afghanistan had been sent to Singapore to work alongside Jemaah Islamiyah members in the foiled plot to blow up the American Embassy. 
Literally translated, "Jemaah Islamiyah" means "Islamic Community." Mr. Bashir is the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, while Mr. Hambali, who is in his late 30's, is in charge of operations, Asian intelligence officials say.
In the 1970's, Mr. Bashir and other Islamic scholars saw the creation of an Islamic community as the first step toward establishing an Islamic state across an arc of Southeast Asia. When the Suharto dictatorship cracked down on the Islamists, in the mid- to late-1980's, Mr. Bashir and others fled to Malaysia.
Mr. Hambali had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980's. After the Soviet withdrawal he, like so many veterans of that campaign, took up a religious struggle against the West.
It appears he first took action in the Philippines. Intelligence officials there say he was part of the group with Ramzi Yousef that plotted to blow up 11 airliners over the Pacific and to assassinate the pope in the early 1990's. Mr. Yousef is now in jail in the United States, convicted of masterminding the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993.
By the mid-1990's, Mr. Hambali, who had sworn an oath of allegiance to Mr. Bashir, had set up an elaborate but highly clandestine operation across Southeast Asia and Australia.






  
  

  

October 17, 2002 Thursday CITY-D-EAST EDITION



 Indonesia promises terrorism crackdown;
Under pressure after the Bali bombings, Jakarta was preparing to issue a decree broadening officials' powers.

 
Responding to international and domestic pressures after the bombing in Bali that killed more than 180 people, Indonesia's government signaled yesterday that it finally may be ready to crack down on terrorists.
Police said yesterday that the Bali blast originated in a minivan whose roof had been packed with C-4 plastic explosive, and Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda told reporters the government was preparing to issue an emergency antiterrorism decree that would give authorities legal tools to combat extremists.
Such a decree would be a major step by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who has long been criticized by some of Indonesia's neighbors and by the United States for not responding to mounting evidence that the world's most populous Muslim nation had become a haven for terrorists.
Pressure on her has increased since Saturday's bombing, which many experts suspect was the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist network with links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization. 
Megawati's chief minister for security, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said yesterday that Jemaah Islamiyah did not exist in Indonesia "as an organization." But he told reporters that Jemaah Islamiyah existed in Malaysia and in Singapore and that Indonesians, including Abu Bakar Baasyir, a militant Indonesian cleric, were "the former leaders."
Government officials in Malaysia, Singapore and the United States say Baasyir is still the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, which hopes to create a pan-Islamic state uniting Southeast Asia's 230 million Muslims.
Regardless of whether Baasyir and other Indonesians are members of Jemaah Islamiyah, they will be prosecuted if evidence links them to international terrorism, Susilo said.
"I have urged the Indonesian police to increase their efforts to monitor and to watch every suspicious activity," he told reporters. "There is no need for us to argue whether or not there is terrorism in Indonesia, but there is a need for us to do something to stop it. All the nations should be united to fight against terrorism."
Baasyir, 64, a cleric who runs an Islamic school, denies that Jemaah Islamiyah exists or that the Bali bombing was linked to al-Qaeda. He has said repeatedly that the blast was a plot by the United States to discredit Islam.
Police are expected to interrogate the cleric today. Yesterday, police grilled another Islamic militant, al Habib Muhammad Rizieq, the head of the Front Pembela Islam. Several of his followers went on trial yesterday for violent attacks on nightclubs, liquor stores and other businesses that violate the strict codes of Islam.
In what may be another sign of a government crackdown, the lawyer for the Laskar Jihad, a Muslim militia group that has sent members to fight Christians in the Maluku islands and elsewhere in Indonesia, said Tuesday that the group had disbanded. About 1,200 Laskar Jihad members were being withdrawn from the war-torn area, according to local news reports.
Details of the planned emergency decree have not been disclosed, but it would give the government a stronger hand in dealing with militants. The decree also would allow Megawati to circumvent Indonesia's parliament, where proposed antiterrorism legislation has languished for months.
Critics fear the legislation would be a step toward resurrecting the draconian internal security act that the former authoritarian Suharto regime used to jail its critics. Similar internal security acts in Singapore and Malaysia have been used in the last year to detain without trial dozens of suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members.
Announcement of the emergency decree was not the only indication of a shift in the government's stance.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, after meeting with Hassan, his Indonesian counterpart, said he was "very optimistic about the degree of cooperation unfolding between Indonesia and Australia."
Downer told CNN he believed the Indonesian government now realized the need for a tougher stand against terrorism and had agreed to create an investigative team with Australia to probe the Bali bombing. Many of those killed in the blast were vacationing Australians.
Contact Michael Dorgan at mdorgan@krwashington.com.






  
  


October 17, 2002 Thursday



 Blast spurs Indonesia to confront terrorists

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Responding to international and domestic pressure since a bombing killed at least 183 people in Bali, Indonesia signaled Wednesday that it finally may be ready to crack down on terrorists.
Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said the government plans to issue a decree that will give authorities legal tools to combat extremists.
The decree would be a major step by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who has been criticized by Indonesia's neighbors and the United States for not responding to evidence that the world's most populous Muslim nation has become a terrorist haven. 
Criticism has increased since Saturday's bombing, which many experts suspect was the work of Jemaa Islamiyah, a terrorist network linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.
Megawati's chief minister for security, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said Wednesday that Jemaa Islamiyah does not exist in Indonesia "as an organization."
But he said that the group exists in Malaysia and Singapore, and that Indonesians, including Abu Bakar Baasyir, a militant Indonesian cleric, were "the former leaders."
Baasyir and other Indonesians who belong to Jemaa Islamiyah will be prosecuted if evidence links them to international terrorism, Susilo said.
Malaysia, Singapore and the United States say Baasyir still leads Jemaa Islamiyah, which hopes to create a pan-Islamic state uniting Southeast Asia's 230 million Muslims.
Baasyir, 64, who runs an Islamic boarding school, denied Wednesday that Jemaa Islamiyah exists or that the Bali bombing was linked to al-Qaida. He said the bombing was a U.S. plot to discredit Islam.
Foreign countries have repeatedly urged Indonesia to arrest Baasyir. However, Indonesia has not moved against him, apparently fearing an extremist backlash.
Details of the planned emergency decree have not been disclosed, but it would give the government a stronger hand in dealing with militants. The decree also would allow Megawati to circumvent Parliament, where proposed anti-terrorism legislation has languished for months.
Critics fear the legislation would be a step toward resurrecting the internal security act that the former Suharto regime used to jail its foes.
Similar internal security acts in Singapore and Malaysia have been used to detain without trial suspected members of Jemaa Islamiyah.
Also Wednesday, police said the Bali blast originated in a minivan whose roof had been packed with C-4, a plastic military explosive.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.






  
  


October 17, 2002 Thursday



 Blast spurs Indonesia to confront terrorists

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Responding to international and domestic pressure brought on by a bombing that killed at least 183 people in Bali, Indonesia signaled Wednesday that it finally may be ready to crack down on terrorists.
Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said the government plans to issue a decree that will give authorities legal tools to combat extremists.
The decree would be a major step by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who has long been criticized by Indonesia's neighbors and the United States for not responding to evidence that the world's most populous Muslim nation has become a terrorist haven. 
That criticism increased after Saturday's bombing, which many experts suspect was the work of Jemaa Islamiyah, a terrorist network linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.
Megawati's chief minister for security, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said Wednesday that Jemaa Islamiyah does not exist in Indonesia "as an organization."
But he said the group exists in Malaysia and Singapore, and that Indonesians, including Abu Bakar Baasyir, a militant Indonesian cleric, were "the former leaders."
Baasyir and other Indonesians who belong to Jemaa Islamiyah will be prosecuted if evidence links them to international terrorism, Susilo said.
Malaysia, Singapore and the United States say Baasyir still leads Jemaa Islamiyah, which hopes to create a pan-Islamic state uniting Southeast Asia's 230 million Muslims.
Other countries have repeatedly urged Indonesia to arrest Baasyir. However, Indonesia has not moved against him, apparently fearing an extremist backlash.
Baasyir, 64, denied Wednesday that Jemaa Islamiyah exists or that the Bali bombing was linked to al-Qaida.
Details of the emergency decree weren't disclosed, but it would give the government more power to deal with militants. The decree also would allow Megawati to circumvent Parliament, where proposed anti-terrorism legislation has languished for months.
Critics fear the legislation would be a step toward resurrecting the internal security act that the former Suharto regime used to jail its foes.
Police said Wednesday that they suspect the Bali attack was carried out by eight men who arrived at the site in two vans. One van was loaded with C-4, a plastic military explosive, and was destroyed in the blast.
Two of the men are believed to be Arabs connected with al-Qaida. Five are Indonesian. Police believe the eighth attacker died in the blast.
The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.






  
  


October 17, 2002 Thursday 



 Indonesia to crack down;
JAKARTA PREPARING EMERGENCY DECREE TO FIGHT EXTREMISTS

 
Responding to international and domestic pressures in the wake of the massive bombing in Bali that killed more than 180 people, Indonesia's government Wednesday signaled that it finally might be ready to crack down on terrorists.
Police on Wednesday disclosed that the Bali blast originated in a minivan whose roof had been packed with C-4 plastic explosive, and Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda told reporters the government was preparing to issue an emergency anti-terrorism decree that would give authorities legal tools to combat extremists.
Such a decree would be a major step by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who has long been accused by some of Indonesia's neighbors and by the United States of not properly responding to mounting evidence that the world's most populous Muslim nation has become a haven for terrorists.
Pressure on her has increased since Saturday's bombing, which many experts suspect was the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist network with suspected links to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida. 
Megawati's chief minister for security, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, claimed Wednesday that Jemaah Islamiyah does not exist in Indonesia "as an organization."
But he told reporters that Jemaah Islamiyah existed in Malaysia and Singapore, and that Indonesians, including Abu Bakar Bashir, a militant Indonesian cleric, were "the former leaders."
Government officials in Malaysia, Singapore and the United States say Bashir is still the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, which hopes to create a pan-Islamic state uniting Southeast Asia's 230 million Muslims.
Whether or not Bashir and other Indonesians are members of Jemaah Islamiyah, they will be prosecuted if evidence links them to international terrorism, Susilo said.
"I have urged the Indonesian police to increase their efforts to monitor and to watch every suspicious activity," he told reporters. "There is no need for us to argue whether or not there is terrorism in Indonesia, but there is a need for us to do something to stop it. All the nations should be united to fight against terrorism."
Bashir, a 64-year-old cleric who runs an Islamic school, denies that Jemaah Islamiyah exists or that the Bali bombing was linked to Al-Qaida. He has charged repeatedly that Saturday's bombing was a plot by the United States to discredit Islam.
Police are expected to interrogate the militant cleric today, although the ostensible reason is a multimillion-dollar libel suit he has filed against Time magazine for linking him to international terrorism.
Police on Wednesday grilled another Islamic hard-liner, Al-Habib Muhammad Rizieq, the head of the Front Pembela Islam. Several of Al-Habib's followers went on trial Wednesday in connection with violent attacks on nightclubs, liquor stores and other businesses that violate the strict codes of Islam.
In what may be another sign of a government crackdown, Laskar Jihad, a Muslim militia group that has sent members to fight Christians in the Maluku Islands and elsewhere in Indonesia's sprawling archipelago, has disbanded, the group's attorney said Tuesday. About 1,200 Laskar Jihad members were being withdrawn from the war-torn area, according to local news reports.
Details of the planned emergency decree have not been disclosed, but it would give the government a stronger hand in dealing with militants. The decree also would allow Megawati to circumvent parliament, where proposed anti-terrorism legislation has languished for months.
Critics fear the legislation would be a step toward resurrecting the draconian internal-security act that the former authoritarian Suharto regime used to jail its critics.
Announcement of the emergency decree was not the only indication of a shift in the government's stance.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, after emerging from a meeting with Hassan, said he was "very optimistic about the degree of cooperation unfolding between Indonesia and Australia."
Downer told CNN that he thinks the Indonesian government now realizes the need for a tougher stand against terrorism and has agreed to create a joint investigative team with Australia to probe the Bali bombing.
Australia has a strong interest in the bombing, the most deadly terrorist attack since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, because most of those killed in the blast that leveled a Kuta Beach nightclub district were vacationing Australians.






  


October 16, 2002 Wednesday



 IBD'S TOP 10

 
Market's Bulls Make Giant Leap
1 The Nasdaq bagged a 5.1% gain. The Dow surged 4.8%, the S&P 500 4.7%, the S&P 400 and 600 small- and mid-cap indexes 4% each. Volume came in higher than Friday's level, the last nonholiday session. Several more leading stocks shot out of their bases, led by medical offerings. Bottom fishers grabbed chip and networking groups, shoving them up 10%-plus. More on this page, B2
Fixed-Income Market In Free Fall
2 Treasury yields spiked to their highest levels in more than a month, chased up by a fiery rally in stocks that also sparked a pullback in expectations of a Fed rate cut. The key 10-year note ran up to 4.02%, a return it hasn't brought since Sept. 12. Yields on two- and five-year notes drove back over 2% and 3%. The 30-year bond plunged 2 1/2 points to 4.97%. More on A15
Intel Falls Short, Falls After Hours 
3 The chip giant fell 11% after hours after it earned 11 cents in Q3 before items, missing views by 2 cents. Sales fell slightly vs. last year to $6.5 bil, also missing views, though profit jumped 500%. The firm's CFO said the economy isn't recovering, spoiling rebound hopes. Intel sees Q4 sales of $6.5 bil-$6.9 bil, at the low end of views.
Banks Follow Consumer Rainbow
4 Consumer business offset drops in trading and investments, boosting Q3 earnings for big U.S. banks. Citigroup beat views by 1 cent with 74 cents, a 19% jump over last year. Bank of America earned $1.45, which beat views by 4 cents and was 13% above last year. Bank One met views of 70 cents, 9% better than last year. Wells Fargo met views of 84 cents, a 12% jump vs. last year.
J&J Profit Rises On Strong Sales
5 It beat views by 1 cent with 60 cents vs. 50 cents last year, excluding items, a 20% jump. Sales of medical devices and over-the-counter products rose 13%, prescription drugs 16%.The stock has been a star in its sector over the last year, up about 5%. It raised its '02 outlook by 1 cent to $2.26, but warned analysts not to raise '03 views, now at $2.61.
ImClone's Waksal Pleads Guilty
6 Ex-CEO Sam Waksal pleaded guilty to six counts related to insider trading in a scandal that also threatens his friend Martha Stewart. There was no sentencing agreement. Waksal's was the second guilty plea in the probe of the biotech firm. A broader case against Waksal and those he tipped off may be brewing, a prosecutor hinted.
11th Sniper Victim Is FBI Analyst
7 Linda Franklin, shot dead outside a Home Depot, was the ninth victim to die. She analyzed terror threats. Ballistics linked the shooting to the 10 others this month in the Washington area. Police think new witness accounts will lead them to the killer. There were no indications the sniper targeted Franklin, 47, because of her job. The military may help with surveillance.
Sun May Cut 8,000 More Jobs
8 That's about 20% of the networking gear maker's work force. They may go as early as this quarter, Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich said. Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi expects Sun Microsystems to cut 4,000 to 8,000. Sun CEO Scott McNealy said last week the firm will consider layoffs. More on this page
EDS And Dell Are Getting Cozier
9 Dell will use EDS for tech support and customer care in the U.S. and warrantee service in Latin America. EDS will use Dell as the preferred vendor for most of its internal Intel-based systems, including servers, desktop PCs and laptops. Terms weren't disclosed. Dell rose 0.89, or 3%, to 27.54. EDS, which traded as high as 72.56 in the last 52 weeks, leaped 1.34, or 10%, to 14.75.
Police In Bali Interrogate 2 Men
10 Officials were tight-lipped as a security guard and another man were questioned about the nightclub bombing that killed nearly 200 people Saturday night, most of them Western tourists. C-4 plastic explosive traces were at the scene. U.S. officials said the sophistication of the attack points to Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian Muslim extremist group linked to al-Qaida.







 Lincoln Journal Star,
 


October 16, 2002 Wednesday  




 Bali bombing shows reach of terrorism

 
Chances are more than a few Nebraskans have visited the idyllic island of Bali, where former Husker football All-American Jake Young is feared dead in a terrorist bombing.
Not only is the island a popular destination for tourists from the United States, it also was frequented by U.S. military personnel on leave during the Vietnam War.
The bombing in Bali shows yet again the long reach of terrorism and how essential it is that the United States have allies in the struggle to rid the world of its grasp. 
The Indonesian island was famed for its tolerance and peaceful atmosphere, flavored by a unique strain of Hinduism, mysticism and Buddhism.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. Its population practices a moderate form of Islam that is far different from that practiced in countries like Saudi Arabia. An Indonesian political party that wants to establish strict Islamic law collected less than 2 percent support in the last election.
Radical Islam, however, does have a foothold in Indonesia, and the United States had been pushing for authorities there to crack down.
One of the primary suspects in the blast is an extremist Islamic organization known as Jemaah Islamiyah that operates in southeast Asia.
The organization shares many of the same goals as al-Qaida, and U.S. authorities were quick to mention al-Qaida as a possible suspect in the Bali nightclub blast, or of providing assistance to a local group.
But even though Indonesia officials rightfully can be criticized for failing to act quickly enough against their local extremist organizations, the nation can hardly be regarded as an enemy in the fight against terrorism.
It's more reasonable to view the developing democracy as another victim. The country's economy already is struggling. The nightclub bombing will devastate the lucrative tourist businesses for months, and perhaps years, to come.
Following Saturday's bombing, the government headed by President Megawati Sukarnoputri seemed ready to end its reluctance to take action against extremist groups.
A group known as Laskar Jihad that has attacked Christians in parts of Indonesia announced that it was disbanding. Laskar Jihad has ties to the Indonesian military, and its dissolution was seen as a sign that government leaders will no longer ignore its activities.
The challenge that faces U.S. policymakers is to find an approach that will support both Indonesia's fragile democracy and its efforts to stamp out terrorist groups. If a democratic Indonesia becomes an effective ally in the fight against terror, the world will be a far safer place.







   
 

October 16, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 Terror's Aftermath in Indonesia 

 
After Sept. 11, there was a sense among Americans that the country had to come together for comfort, for protection and for rebuilding. The reaction in Indonesia to the Bali bombings has been very different, and it speaks to the lack of faith that Indonesians have in their own government. It also suggests that the United States and other nations with a significant presence in Indonesia should redouble efforts to strengthen political institutions here and demand accountability from government. Without more popular support, the war on terror here is not going to be won.
     In Bali itself, the overwhelming response has been anger at the army and police. "They tricked us into thinking Bali was safe, and look what happened," one caller said on a local talk show. If distrust of security forces is generally high around the country, it took a quantum leap in Bali after Saturday night. Policemen in Indonesia stand no chance of being turned into heroes the way New York's Finest were; the zero credibility of the two institutions on the front lines of combating terrorism does not make the government's task any easier.  
 In Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, where a separatist rebellion has resulted in thousands of civilian casualties, a different kind of distrust was voiced. "It's appalling that a civilian site was targeted," a local lawyer told me. "But it's important not to jump to conclusions about who was involved."
He remarked that the army tends to blame Acehnese whenever a bomb goes off. He also cited the example of a local army commander who suggested Acehnese rebels were behind a recent attack in North Sumatra when it was clear from the beginning that the commander's own soldiers were responsible.
It used to be that if you wanted to bring down a business rival, a political opponent or an obstreperous neighbor, you could just spread the rumor that he was a Communist, and he would become an instant pariah. Indonesians are so jaded by political labeling that they are not apt to believe official statements about who may have been involved in the Bali attack.
In a town near Poso, Sulawesi, where a communal conflict between Muslims and Christians has raged for the last two years, a university lecturer said his colleagues were saying that the Bali blast showed the incompetence of civilian government. "It's very worrisome: they want Suharto back," he told me, referring to the former president. I got the same reaction Monday in a crowded minivan going from Pare-pare to Makassar in Sulawesi, a stronghold of the former ruling party, Golkar. "Whatever you say about Suharto, at least we felt safe," one passenger said.
With the assumption widespread that a Muslim organization is behind the bombing, there is now real alarm about escalating ethnic and religious violence and the government's ability to handle it. In Indonesia, there has been very little rallying around the president, as there was in the United States last year. On the contrary, if radio talk shows, politicians' statements and informal conversations are any guide, President Megawati Sukarnoputri's standing seems to have plummeted.
A Jakarta newspaper magnate had another reaction. In a televised discussion, he warned that the government would be making a serious mistake if it made fighting terrorism its main objective, at the expense of legal reform and ending corruption. Neither he nor the passengers in the minivan had any confidence in their government, but for very different reasons.
Extraordinary as this seems in the West, many Indonesians are convinced that the United States sponsored the Bali bombing in order to convince reluctant governments to join its war on terror and support an attack on Iraq. Hard-line Muslims like Abu Bakar Bashir -- said to be the head of Jemaah Islamiyah -- are not the only ones making this claim. The Bush administration's pressure on Indonesia to take action against Muslim terrorists, its policies in the Middle East and the presence of American troops in the Philippines' Muslim South have all fueled suspicions in conservative circles that Washington has an anti-Muslim agenda. Some Indonesians seem to believe that the only organization with the capacity to carry out such a devastating attack is the American government.
"American troops want to establish a presence in Indonesia," one commentator said on a television panel Monday night. "They'll establish a foothold by offering to help out with the investigation in Bali, and then we'll see the influx." If some in Washington think that the Bali blast will convert all skeptics to the need for more stringent antiterrorism measures, they'll need to reconsider.
In Jakarta, there has been an outpouring of sympathy for the foreigners killed, particularly for the many Australians who died. At the same time, if foreigners are worried about coming to Indonesia now, some Indonesians are also worried about having them in their midst.
Indonesia needs better governance at least as much as it needs improved security. The risk is high that Jakarta's reaction to the Bali bombing will be not only ineffective but counterproductive. Many advocates of political reform in Jakarta have expressed fear over the last two days that new antiterrorism legislation -- now being drafted by the Megawati government -- will be an Indonesian version of the draconian internal security laws used in Singapore and Malaysia.
This government has never lacked the laws to go after people reasonably suspected of planning criminal acts. But it has lacked the will to use them. To give the army and police more powers in a country widely castigated for its corrupt legal system and weak political institutions is to invite abuse.
On Oct. 27, the Consultative Group on Indonesia -- the main consortium of donor countries, led by the World Bank -- will hold its annual meeting to discuss how much aid to give to Indonesia. The group's meeting could send a powerful message about international confidence in Indonesia. Donors will be sympathetic to the need to bolster an already weak economy further devastated by the bombing. Given what ordinary Indonesians are saying about their own lack of confidence, however, the donors would do well to put governance at the top of their agenda.







   
 

October 16, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 TERROR IN BALI: THE MOURNING; 
At the Scene, Tears Shed For the Dead And Bali, Too

 
The blackened shells of two shattered nightclubs were filled with activity again this evening, not with the hundreds of partygoers who died here in a terrorist attack three days ago but with their memories.
     Beyond the blue plastic sheeting that now conceals the site, past yellow tape that surrounds what is now a crime scene, police officers opened the street for a few hours to the public to pray and to cry. 
 The mourners brought memorial wreaths, bouquets and baskets of red and pink flower petals, and the scores of candles they planted in the rubble made the hollow ruins glow in the twilight like chapels.
The police, the rescuers, the journalists and the forensic investigators had all had their moments on the scene of the explosion, which killed more than 180 and injured 300. 
Now it was the turn of the people who belong here -- the Balinese and the foreign tourists they welcome -- to express their grief at the violation of their peaceful world.
The broken street was silent as people knelt in prayer before heaps of flowers and clusters of sticks of incense or stood embracing each other for comfort.
But the written messages, in English and in Indonesian, that they left behind on long makeshift cloth murals shouted their laments and their anger.
"So many tears. So much pain. Why?"
"Hey you . . .! terrorists -- get out of my dream land."
"You make my Bali and all the people cry."
"You have destroyed my Bali. I hope you die."
"To the boys from the Nina Hotel -- nice knowing you. God bless."
"To our darling daughter Charmaine Whitton, 29 years old, we love you so much. Rest in peace. XXXX. Mum Dad John Craig."
As one perfect, sunny day has followed another here, the people of Bali have struggled to adjust to the invasion of their idyll by what seems an increasingly violent world.
"This is the first time anything like this has ever happened here," said Putri Wahyuni, 26, who works in a software company and came to pay her respects this evening. "This is so tragic. Bali was always so safe."
Karin Sorrer, who owns a restaurant here, said she was grieving both for the dead and, in a way, for Bali's own loss of innocence.
"Every day I crossed this street," she said. "I saw the young people, so happy in their lives. I think about the parents who are waiting for their children, around the world, and a lot of the children are never coming home."
Indeed, since many of the victims were young travelers without set itineraries, many of their parents may not yet realize that they are missing or even that they were here in Bali.
They may never know for certain. Most victims were burned beyond recognition or were recovered without personal documentation. So far, officials say, only a few dozen of the bodies have been positively identified, and the exact death toll may never be known.
It is a kind of horror that Bali has not known in recent times.
Until now, this island of three million people had mostly been spared the turmoil of the rest of Indonesia, which for the last five years has been torn by riots, insurgencies, tribal clashes and religious wars.
Nurturing a culture of religious harmony and an almost mystical air of placidity, this Hindu enclave in a mostly Muslim nation has offered a haven of peace for visitors from elsewhere in Indonesia.
Over the decades it has grown into one of the world's leading vacation spots and one of Indonesia's economic assets, drawing the big share of the country's five million tourists every year.
In the process it has become dangerously dependent on its one lucrative industry. "Our economy is undiversified," said John M. Daniels, a tour operator who publishes a report on Bali's tourist industry. "We are going to suffer terribly."
The fear sown by the attack could throw thousands of people out of work, he said. Already, the island's hotels are growing quieter, its boutiques and craft shops stand nearly empty, its diving schools and surfing clubs are at a near standstill.
Around the world, travel agents say, tourists are canceling future bookings.
"We're finished," said Aburizal Bakrie, chairman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as tourists crowded Bali's airport departure lounge. Telling people "that doing business in Indonesia is safe is finished."







   
 

October 16, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 TERROR IN BALI: WARNING TO JAKARTA; 
U.S. SAYS IT TOLD INDONESIA OF PLOT BY TERROR GROUP

 
The United States repeatedly warned the Indonesian government in the weeks before the bomb blast that killed more than 180 people in Bali that a group linked to Al Qaeda was planning attacks to kill Americans and other Westerners, Bush administration officials said today.
     The American ambassador, Ralph C. Boyce, delivered the latest warning to President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her top advisers just a day before the bombing and gave her a deadline of Oct. 24 to act, the officials said. 
 The various warnings contained no details about where and when attacks might occur, they said. But Washington took the likelihood of an attack seriously, basing its judgment on Central Intelligence Agency questioning of a Qaeda operative, senior American officials said.
The operative, Omar al-Faruq, was detained in central Java in June and was turned over to the Americans but only started talking early in September.  
American officials reacted to his warnings about terrorist actions by shutting their embassies in Jakarta and some other capitals around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The officials said that because planning for attacks was made several months beforehand, Mr. Faruq had given what appeared to be credible information about assaults planned for Indonesia.
Indonesian officials had no comment tonight, but American officials said they had reacted before this weekend largely with demands for more concrete evidence of a terrorist plot and Qaeda activity. Since the weekend bombing, senior Indonesian officials have conceded for the first time that groups linked to Al Qaeda are active in their country, although President Megawati has not said so.
In its warnings to Indonesia, the United States said an attack would not necessarily have an official American site as its target, but perhaps one known to attract American civilians, a senior American official said.
"We told them: 'Wrap it up. Block it. Demonstrate that you are serious about eliminating the threat against us,' " the official said, declining to be any more specific about what action was expected.
If the government did not act by the time President Megawati was to see Mr. Bush at a meeting in Mexico in late October, the Indonesian leader was told, the United States planned to send a public signal that Indonesia was a terrorist haven by ordering all but the most essential American diplomats home, the official said.
In the aftermath of the Bali bombing, that is now happening. About 350 Americans connected with the United States Embassy -- about 100 diplomats and the families of all diplomats -- were ordered to leave the country by Friday, a State Department officer said.
About 100 American diplomats are to remain at the embassy in downtown Jakarta, which is heavily guarded and surrounded by new concrete barricades. Ambassador Boyce told departing diplomats at an outdoor meeting in the embassy courtyard today that their return would depend entirely on Indonesian government action to decrease the threat to Americans here.
American officials voiced concern that even in the face of the Bali attack, President Megawati lacked the resolve to take action against militant Islamic groups. She heads the world's most populous Muslim country but has a famously passive style and has been reluctant to cross her vice president, Hamzah Haz, and other prominent supporters of the groups.
In an effort to embolden her, and to convince her ministers of the terrorist threat, the United States invited Indonesian intelligence and police officials to interview Mr. Faruq. They were still interviewing him on Saturday night when the attack occurred, two American officials said.
One of the best-known Islamic groups, Laskar Jihad, announced today that it was disbanding. In a statement, it declared that its work in the province of Maluku, where its fighters had clashed with Christians, was completed.
It is not clear what role, if any, was played by the Indonesian government, which had no comment on the statement. An American official said that it was not clear what Laskar Jihad's intentions were and that the announcement needed "more study."
The leader of Laskar Jihad, Jafar Umar Thalib, was arrested in the spring and is currently on trial on charges of inciting violence in Maluku. There has been considerable debate among Western intelligence officials about whether Laskar Jihad has been used as a front for Al Qaeda in Indonesia.
It is more important to the United States, American officials said, that Indonesia act to break up Jemaah Islamiyah, or Islamic Community, a group described in detail by Mr. Faruq.
In particular, Washington would like the government to arrest Abu Bakar Bashir, the group's leader and intellectual inspiration.
Jemaah Islamiyah has long advanced the idea of an Islamic state in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia. A few years ago, according to Western and Asian intelligence officials, Jemaah Islamiyah developed links and pooled resources with Al Qaeda.
Mr. Bashir, 64, the principal of an Islamic boys' boarding school in central Java, was described by Mr. Faruq as providing money, explosives and operatives for several terrorist acts, including an plan to blow up the American embassies here and in Malaysia, the officials said.
Immediately after the Saturday night bombing, Mr. Bashir blamed the deaths on the "arrogance" of the United States. In an apparent taunt to the central authorities to arrest him, Mr. Bashir said today that he would travel to Jakarta Wednesday to appear in court in a defamation suit he has brought against Time magazine over a recent article about reported Qaeda activity in Indonesia.
At the scene of the Bali attack, criminal investigators, who include specialists from Australia and F.B.I. officials, found what could be a key piece of evidence, a Western security official said.
The engine block of a Kijang vehicle, a popular Indonesian-made car, was found among the debris, the official said. 
The car was probably a rental vehicle, and if a serial number can be found on the engine block, the investigators will have a useful clue, the official said.
The explosion on Saturday night was caused by a car bomb using C4, a powerful plastic explosive that is manufactured in the United States and used by military forces around the world, he said. The C4 was used, he said, to set off a homemade bomb made of ammonium nitrate or TNT.
Work at the site of the bombing was made more difficult, officials familiar with the work said, because the wreckage was not properly cordoned off and experts found the ruins trampled -- and evidence therefore destroyed -- before they arrived.
So far, the Western security official said, it appears that a relatively small bomb went off in a bar near Sari's disco just moments before the huge explosion. About the same time, a man tried to hurl a bomb near the office of the honorary United States consul some miles away. The man ended up burning himself and may provide clues on the disco bombing, the security official said.
While Bush administration officials remain unconvinced that President Megawati will take serious action to reduce the terrorist threat, a leading Indonesian analyst said he believed that she would have no choice. "Maybe at last she might do it because her survival is at stake," said Yusuf Wanandi, the director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a critic of President Megawati. "The economy will go down the drain if she does not act."
An estimated 40 million of Indonesia's 220 million people are unemployed. Foreign and domestic investment have fallen dramatically in the last year because of shaky security and are now expected to dry up.
The public in Indonesia, a vast majority of whom are moderate Muslims, has expressed shocked at the violence on Saturday. But there has also been widespread criticism of the United States. 
Callers to a radio talk show on Monday said Americans must take the blame for the calamity, although by far most of the foreigners who died in the blaze were Australians, followed by Britons and Germans.
The American Embassy said today that it was believed that two Americans died in the explosion. Three Americans are missing.
President Megawati has remained largely silent since Saturday night. She is part Balinese and has visited the grisly scene in the town of Kuta, which she told aides she knew well.
But she declined to talk on television about the horrors of what she had seen or to galvanize a sense of outrage. She left it to her defense minister, Matori Abdul Jalil, to emerge from a cabinet meeting on Monday and declare for the first time that "Al Qaeda is here" in Indonesia.







   
 

October 16, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 Messages From the Bali Bombing 

 
To the Editor:
While the Bali bombing does not resemble 9/11 (front page, Oct. 15), it does not represent a new phase in the terrorist war against the West. 
     The assault in Bali, apparently by Al Qaeda, is an outgrowth of the Muslim world's attempt to expel foreign influences from its midst over the last hundred years.  
 To Al Qaeda, the hotels and clubs are cancerous anathema imposed by force -- economic, if not military -- that must be eradicated. To the terrorists, the tourists and their hosts who openly display contempt for the ways of Islam and have the temerity to bar Indonesians from the clubs have committed crimes that are punishable by death.
The Europeans and others who have turned a blind eye and even justified Palestinian terrorism are now reaping its bitter fruits. 

MENACHEM PETRUSHKA
Flushing, Queens, Oct. 15, 2002






   


October 16, 2002, Wednesday



 PROBERS FIND AL QAEDA LINK AS THEY CLOSE IN ON FIENDS

 
Australian officials yesterday said investigators are making headway in finding the terrorists behind the Bali massacre.
Searching through the charred wreckage of the Sari Club, officials found fragments of the explosives-packed SUV that the killers used to wreak havoc last Saturday.
Smeared on the vehicle, were traces of C4 plastic explosives - the kind used in other al Qaeda attacks in Southeast Asia, including the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. 
Indonesian cops have questioned at least 47 people - including a security guard at the club and another man who were being "intensively interrogated," police said.
One of the two men's identity papers were found at the scene. Sources told The Australian newspaper that the pair became suspects after one was found with two fake IDs. 
There were also unconfirmed reports that a former air force member admitted building the bombs.
Witnesses told investigators that a woman was seen driving the death vehicle and then parking it in front of the Sari Club.
Another witness saw a man placing a white plastic bag at the scene. When he walked up to the man, he ran away" a top police official said.
The ensuing police crackdown prompted an Indonesian extremist Muslim group, Laskar Jihad, to disband, and the leader of another group to submit to questioning.
A Bush administration official would not confirm a New York Times report that U.S. ambassador Ralph Boyce had warned Indonesia's president the day before the bombing that an al Qaeda-linked group planned an attack.
So far, 181 people have been confirmed dead, including 33 from Australia and 18 from Britain, the two nations hardest hit.
"There may still be more bodies which, and I'm sorry to put it as crudely as this, but who were very close to where the bomb went off and their bodies have disintegrated," said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.







  



October 16, 2002 Wednesday  




 Traces of Explosives Found in Wreckage

 
 Indonesian investigators have recovered traces of C-4 plastic explosives at the scene of the bombing Saturday night in Bali that killed at least 181 people, National Police Chief Da'i Bachtiar said. 
 The material is similar to the explosives used to bomb the residence of the Philippine ambassador in Jakarta in August 2000, an attack that Philippine intelligence officials have blamed on a radical Islamic network known as Jemaah Islamiah. 
 That group, which Western and regional intelligence officials say is headed by radical Indonesian cleric Abubakar Baasyir, is active in several Southeast Asian countries. Baasyir has denied involvement in the Bali bombing.  
 The police chief, Bachtiar, also said Tuesday that investigators were "intensively" interrogating two other men in connection with the attack. Police officials said one was a guard who witnessed the attack and the other was related to a person whose identification card was recovered at the scene. Police said they have questioned about 50 people. 
 Early today, an Indonesian security official said authorities had detained a former military officer who might have assembled the bomb. 
 Another government official, however, cautioned that it remains unclear whether the man is responsible. This official said the Indonesian joint terrorism task force is moving closer to the suspected perpetrators. 
 "We are very close and have enough information to follow the right direction," the official said. 
 Meanwhile, the United States and other countries continued to pressure the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri to crack down hard on its homegrown militants. 
 "This has been a very sobering experience for the Indonesian leadership when they see this kind of tragedy," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in Washington on Tuesday. "So we now can see that you are not exempt from this; you cannot pretend it doesn't exist in your country. It exists everywhere where conditions are right and where this kind of terrorist organization can thrive. And that's why we have to go after them wherever they are." 
 In the week leading up to the Bali bombing, senior U.S. officials repeatedly warned Megawati's government that they believed militants in Indonesia from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network were planning attacks on American targets, according to U.S. and Indonesian officials.  
 U.S. Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce raised these concerns on several occasions with Megawati and her top security advisers. He also arranged last week to have Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, commander in chief of U.S. Pacific Command, call the influential chief of the Indonesian military, Endriartono Sutarto, to press U.S. concerns that extremists linked with Jemaah Islamiah were posing an urgent threat to Americans, according to senior officials from both countries. 
 Senior U.S. officials made clear that the Bush administration would withdraw many diplomats and embassy families from Jakarta unless Indonesian authorities stepped up their efforts to investigate and capture suspected militants. After the attack in Bali, U.S. officials moved immediately to pull nonessential diplomats and embassy families from Indonesia.  
 Megawati and her cabinet greeted the warnings with skepticism, particularly those concerning Jemaah Islamiah. To persuade the Indonesians that intelligence about the Jamaah Islamiah was genuine, the Americans permitted Indonesian authorities to question Omar al-Farouq, a Kuwaiti operative linked to al Qaeda.  
 The U.S. officials said they expected action from Indonesia's security forces before Megawati is scheduled to meet President Bush on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting next week in Mexico, according to sources familiar with the conversations. 
 Indonesian government officials said today that Megawati plans to announce an emergency law this week that would give authorities new powers to apprehend suspected terrorists. The law, which would be in force for one year and then would be subject to parliamentary approval, would enable anti-terrorism investigators to hold suspects for at least seven days without charging them. 
 One of Indonesia's most violent Islamic militant groups, Laskar Jihad, announced Tuesday that it was disbanding and suspending operations in the eastern region of the Moluccas islands, where radical militiamen two years ago intervened on the side of local Muslims feuding with the neighboring Christian community. Thousands have been killed in clashes in the Moluccas. 
 Intelligence officials have not linked Laskar Jihad to the Bali explosion or other terrorist attacks on foreigners. But the sudden announcement Tuesday signaled that the group has decided to lower its profile at a time when Megawati faces foreign pressure. 
 "It has nothing to do with the bombs. There was no pressure on us from military. It is an internal matter," said the group's spokesman, Achmad Michdan. He said religious scholars in Indonesia and the Middle East had disagreed with the teachings of Laskar Jihad leader Jafar Umar Thalib, asking him to dissolve the group. 
 A senior police official said 5,400 officers, both in uniform and plain clothes, are now engaged in a massive operation on Bali, a resort island, to determine who was responsible for the worst terrorist attack in Indonesia's history. 
 Indonesian forensic investigators continued picking through the blackened ruins, collecting the engine block, carburetor and other bits of the vehicle that they believe was used in the bombing in the Kuta entertainment district. Specialists from the FBI, Australia and Japan were helping. 
 The head of Indonesian intelligence, Mohamad Abdul Hendropriyono, said Tuesday during a visit to Sanglah hospital in Denpasar, the capital of Bali, that "this attack has been well-planned and it required expertise in handling high-tech" bombs. "It is a very complicated task and is outside the ability of local hands." 
 The corridors of the hospital are becoming less chaotic. Most foreigners have been airlifted out, but 31 Indonesians remain in the wards. Medical officials said about 40 bodies have been identified and about 140 others remain in the hospital morgue, tightly guarded by Indonesian soldiers. Dozens of plywood coffins are stacked outside, awaiting bodies that have been identified.  
 Indonesian officials said authorities have broadened their investigation and were following leads in several regions of the sprawling archipelago where Islamic militants suspected of ties to al Qaeda have been active, including eastern Java, southern Sulawesi and Lombok. 
 In Manado, located on northern Sulawesi island, police are questioning two suspects, both local residents, in connection with the bombing there of the Philippine consular office, also on Saturday. No one was hurt in that attack. Police said they were not sure if it was connected to the Bali bombing. 
 The investigation has taken on great urgency because of concerns that the Bali attack might be the opening of a broader campaign to target Westerners in Southeast Asia. 
 "There is some concern that this isn't just an isolated incident," said Andrew Tan, a security analyst at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Security Studies. "This could well be the first of a number of attacks in this region." 
 The primary focus of the investigation remains Jemaah Islamiah, which intelligence officials from Indonesia and Western governments have linked to al Qaeda. According to Tan and other analysts, Jemaah Islamiah is present in Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. It also has an arm in Australia, Tan said. 
 Nakashima reported from Jakarta. Staff writer Peter Slevin in Washington contributed to this report.   







  



October 16, 2002 Wednesday  




 Among Bali's Hindus, Rumblings of Revenge; 
Attack in Longtime Enclave Fuels Suspicion, Resentment of Island's Muslim Minority

 
 When a huge car bomb devastated the heart of Bali's entertainment district Saturday night, four of Made Swarna's friends were inside the Sari Club bar, where they worked as waiters. Not one of these Balinese men survived. 
 His 3-year-old daughter, Cindy, was more fortunate. His wife snatched her from bed just moments before the ceiling of their home, about 150 yards from the blast, came crashing down, he said.  
 Swarna was at work himself at the time, waiting tables at Mama's German Restaurant down the block from the explosion, which killed at least 181 people. He saw the injured streaming along Kuta's main drag, soaked in blood. And he said he doesn't believe the bloodshed is over yet. 
 Swarna said he is sure that Muslim militants originally from elsewhere in Indonesia were involved in the attack and he is equally convinced that his fellow Hindus, who make up most of the island's population, will now take revenge on Bali's Muslim minority. 
 "This will cause religious clashes," said Swarna, 34, holding Cindy in his arms and offering an ominous prediction that has suddenly become common here. "We will sweep them out of Bali and make them go back to their homes so that Bali will be safe." 
 Bali has been a Hindu enclave surrounded by Muslim islands for 500 years, ever since the collapse of the Hindu Majapahit kingdom that ruled much of what is today Indonesia. In recent years, however, Muslims from other parts of Indonesia have been moving to Bali as laborers, government employees and small traders, attracted by the wealth generated by the island's world-famous tourism.  
 The attack Saturday night not only killed many native Balinese. It also dealt a staggering blow to the industry on which many people here depend. 
 "It will have a drastic effect on the number of [tourists] who will want to come to Bali. Of course, we're angry," said Katut Agus, 26, a Balinese Hindu sitting on a shady doorstep along Jalan Legian, Kuta's main street. 
 Muslims in Bali are starting to feel at risk. "I'm afraid," said Chairil Anwar, 30, a Muslim born in Bali, speaking as he completed his afternoon prayers inside a mosque adjacent to police headquarters in Denpasar, Bali's capital. "I already feel the tension, and we're thinking [the Hindus] may take revenge." 
 Yayuk Tri, 24, a Muslim, came to Bali from Java, Indonesia's main island, almost two years ago to wait tables. "I'm terrified of [being] labeled as a Muslim if this turns out to be terrorism," she said. 
 Many shops and cafes along Jalan Legian remained closed today, with metal shutters lowered. The Polo and Atelier Versace stores were boarded up. So was the Made Bar, a restaurant with an Internet cafe. Much of the shattered glass had been swept into large mounds on the sidewalks and street. Dozens of tropical floral wreaths, from local companies and resorts, were mounted on stands as memorials in front of the gutted buildings. 
 From behind a yellow police tape surrounding the ruins of central Kuta, Agus, a cashier at a local McDonald's restaurant, watched investigators at work in the wreckage. "It's a very dangerous time now," Agus said. "This could create a religious war. It's happened elsewhere in Indonesia and I'm scared it will happen here." 
 In the past four years, religious conflicts between Muslims and Christians have erupted in several Indonesian areas, in particular the eastern regions of the Moluccas islands and in Poso in central Sulawesi. These battles have left more than 5,000 people dead, according to official estimates. Another 1,200 people, mainly ethnic Chinese, were killed during 1998 rioting in Jakarta, the national capital, shortly before the ouster of President Suharto. 
 Bali has remained immune to such turmoil. Literally an island of stability in a turbulent region, Bali and its mythic Indian Ocean beaches last year drew nearly 1.5 million foreign tourists, about 40 percent of Indonesia's total, according to the Bali Tourist Authority. That revenue helped make the island among the richest places in the country. 
 But now tensions are rising. Since the attack, traditional Hindu security guards, clad in sarongs and batik hats, have been making the rounds of Muslim neighborhoods and dormitories, demanding to see identification papers, local residents say. Small Hindu communities have been convening traditional councils in local open-air halls to discuss the bombing and how best to respond. 
 "We're starting to get suspicious" of the Muslims, said I. Made Satvika, 18, an economics student in a college in Denpasar. "We are very angry because the name of Bali has been ruined." 
 Investigators have yet to provide evidence that any of Bali's Muslim residents were involved in the attack. And like most of Indonesia's Muslims, those on this island are largely moderate in both their politics and their religious practices. 
 But religious resentments are not entirely new to Bali. Native Balinese have criticized the influx of Indonesians from outside and complained about the construction of mosques on the island. They had been accustomed to seeing few signs of religion to compete with the countless Hindu temples and carved stone Hindu shrines that dot the roadsides. 
 Native islanders have also complained that many outsiders have become aggressive merchants and street peddlers, hassling tourists and fostering petty crime. In recent years, native Balinese have sought to clear the streets of these hawkers by destroying dozens of their kiosks, according to local residents. 
 Since the bombing Saturday, thousands of red-and-white Indonesian flags, displayed at half-staff, have suddenly appeared along Bali's traffic-clogged main roads and narrow back alleys, mounted in front of homes, stores and even meager stalls selling fried rice. This is more than a show of national unity, say the Balinese, who have been strong supporters of the Indonesian state and its current leader, President Megawati Sukarnoputri. They say it is also a show of rage. 
 Top Indonesian religious leaders, including Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Confucians, met Monday in Jakarta and appealed for calm, urging believers not to blame any specific religion for the terror attack. Several national religious leaders said they were planning to visit Bali this week to demonstrate their concern. 
 But some Balinese wondered whether everyone would heed their call. "It could be that the Balinese will expel the non-Balinese," said Made Suparta, 41, a native Balinese elementary school teacher wearing a traditional sarong as he waited for a ride outside the modern Duta shopping mall in downtown Denpasar. "It would be extraordinarily violent if that happened." 






   

 

October 15, 2002 Tuesday 



 Bush: 'It's al-Qaida';
As president blames group for recent attacks, alleged bin Laden statement praises 'holy war.'

 
Washington --- President Bush said Monday that terrorist attacks last week in Indonesia, Kuwait and Yemen are the work of al-Qaida and tried to link the terrorist group to Iraq. In a statement released Monday, Osama bin Laden reportedly also had something to say about Iraq, calling U.S. war plans part of a broader "crusade" against Islam.
As the death toll from a weekend bombing attack in Bali neared 200, Bush compared the terrorists to those who struck this nation a year ago, setting off a global anti-terrorism campaign.
"A bunch of coldblooded killers decided to take life, to take innocent life, just like they did on Sept. 11, 2001," Bush said at a fund-raiser in Waterford, Mich. 
He then raised the specter that Iraq's leader might call on the same terrorist group.
"We need to think about Saddam Hussein using al-Qaida to do his dirty work," Bush said.
He said the Bali bombing and strikes last week against U.S. Marines in Kuwait and a French tanker in Yemen "look like a pattern of attacks."
"We have to assume it's al-Qaida," Bush said at the White House before leaving for Michigan. "They are still lethal, and they are still dangerous."
As if to confirm that assertion, a statement purportedly signed by bin Laden and praising the attacks in Yemen and Kuwait as part of a "heroic holy war" against the United States and its allies was released Monday.
The statement said the strikes were acts of defiance a year after the U.S.-led attacks against al-Qaida and the Taliban began in Afghanistan. The statement, like a similar message released via audiotape a week ago, could not be authenticated.
"Holy warriors, with God's help, haven't been weakened by what befell them," read the statement, dated Oct. 12 and sent to the Arab satellite television station Al Jazeera. "We congratulate our Islamic community on the bold, heroic holy war that was executed by its sons of the faithful holy warriors in Yemen against a crusader oil tanker and in Kuwait against the invading and occupying American troops."
Last week, terrorists bombed a French tanker in Yemen, and two gunmen thought to be linked to al-Qaida killed a Marine and wounded another on training exercises in Kuwait. Both gunmen were killed in return fire by the soldiers.
U.S. Army forces in Kuwait were fired on from two civilian vehicles Monday. There were no injuries, and it wasn't clear whether the attacks came from terrorists. Authorities were investigating.
The tanker attack in Yemen killed one crewman and spewed 90,000 barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Aden. Officials are investigating whether the attack was carried out by a small boat, similar to the strike al-Qaida is believed to have conducted against the USS Cole in Yemen two years ago.
The bin Laden statement went on to accuse Bush of fomenting conflict against Iraq to help create "the state of greater Israel" and to seize Iraqi oil.
"America is getting ready for a new round of its crusade against the Islamic world," the statement read.
As he has in the past, Bush said he could not be certain whether bin Laden remained at large a year after the United States launched attacks that destroyed his Afghan bases.
"This is a long war, and it's going to take awhile to fully rout al-Qaida," Bush said. "We don't know whether bin Laden is alive or dead. . . . We do know that al-Qaida is still dangerous."
Bush, who received authorization from Congress last week to wage war to disarm and dislodge Saddam, said he has made no decision to move militarily against Iraq.
"I hope we never use one military troop in Iraq," said Bush. "If Saddam doesn't disarm, though, the United States, with friends and allies, will disarm him."
Bush rejected the notion that confronting Baghdad might undercut the broader U.S. campaign against terrorism.
"We will fight, if need be, the war on terror on two fronts --- we've got plenty of capacity to do so," Bush said. "Iraq is a part of the war on terror."
On Monday, that campaign centered on the South Pacific archipelago of Indonesia. A powerful bomb destroyed a nightclub popular with foreign tourists in the resort of Bali on Saturday. It was the deadliest terrorist strike since Sept. 11, 2001.
In Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil blamed al-Qaida and a local affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah.
"We are sure al-Qaida is here," he said. "The Bali bomb blast is linked to al-Qaida with the cooperation of local terrorists."
The leader of Jemaah Islamiyah denied involvement and implicated the United States, The Associated Press reported.
Early Monday, Bush phoned his closest military ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to coordinate their response to the latest attacks.
Blair said in London that the weekend bombing attack on Bali that killed nearly 200 people and wounded 300 more --- many of them believed to be Australian tourists --- was an "appalling terrorist outrage." The bombing was committed by "extremist groups . . . whose evil knows no limits."
At least two Americans and up to 30 British citizens were killed in the attack.
With 228 million people --- nearly 90 percent of whom are Muslims --- Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic country. It is one of 60 nations where al-Qaida cells are believed to operate.






  


October 15, 2002, Tuesday  



 PREACHER, PAL FANS OF OSAMA

 
The spiritual and military allies of Osama Bin Laden in Indonesia are fiery Islamic preacher Abu Bakar Bashir and his Jemaah Islamiyah band of terrorists.
Bashir has openly praised Bin Laden. And one of his best friends is Riduan Isamuddin, a hard-core terrorist known as Hambali, who is believed to be Al Qaeda's man in Indonesia. 
But the weak Indonesian government has been reluctant to move against Bashir and his group for fear of antagonizing the powerful Islamic parties - and starting a civil war in the world's biggest Muslim country.
Bashir remained free yesterday and tried to pin the blame for the bloody Bali bombings on the U.S.
"I suspect that the bombing was engineered by the United States and its allies to justify allegations that Indonesia is a base for terrorists," he said.
Indonesian leaders dismissed the Islamic cleric's claims, and U.S. officials hoped that international outrage would prod the country's leaders to finally crack down on Bashir and his Al Qaeda backers.
Radicals seeking to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state formed Jemaah Islamiyah in the early 1990s. But their warped world view did not catch on in the secular country, where the Muslim majority traditionally has tolerated its Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities.
Al Qaeda, however, saw the organization as a way of extending its terrorist tentacles across the world. Bin Laden lieutenant Mohammed Atef personally recruited Hambali, who was among the dozens of Indonesians who trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Hambali is considered the brains behind a wave of Indonesian church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000, but he has eluded capture.
Singapore also is seeking Hambali for the failed truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy last year. And Philippine officials suspect he had a hand in a New Year's Eve 2000 bombing in Manila that killed 22 people.




1

  


October 15, 2002, Tuesday  



 W blames Al Qaeda Americans flee Indonesia as bomb death toll may hit 400

 
President Bush and Indonesian officials blamed the Bali bomb attacks on Al Qaeda yesterday as rescue workers feared the death toll could soar to 400.
Bush also pinned a string of recent incidents on Al Qaeda after a new statement that purports to be from Osama Bin Laden surfaced praising the "heroic" shooting of U.S. Marines in Kuwait and the bombing of a French supertanker off Yemen.
"It does look like a pattern of attacks that the enemy, albeit on the run, is trying to once again frighten and kill freedom-loving people," Bush said.
Although the supposed Bin Laden note is silent on Bali, Bush nevertheless pointed the finger at Al Qaeda. 
"The attack in Bali appears to be an Al Qaeda-type terrorist . . . attack," the President said.
Bush said the American-led coalition has made great progress in dismantling the terror network, but he said that recent attacks taught the world a lesson: "It's going to take a while to fully rout Al Qaeda."
The car bombing of a popular Bali disco killed at least 180 people and wounded more than 300. Two Americans died in the blast, and four were wounded.
Rescue workers, still pulling bodies from the rubble feared the death toll could double, because more than 200 people were still missing.
The U.S. Embassy ordered nonessential staff and dependents to leave Indonesia, and the State Department urged travelers to avoid the country.
Tourists, dollars flee
Tourism officials watched with mounting despair yesterday as hordes of tourists - and the dollars that keep Bali's economy afloat - fled the resort-filled island.
"How could this happen in paradise?" asked Arian Ardie of the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia.
Saturday's bomb attack in the crowded Kuta Beach nightclub district refocused attention on Bin Laden, the world's most wanted man.
Intelligence officials are operating under the assumption that he survived the U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban and scattered Al Qaeda.
A U.S. government official said they could not yet tell whether the signed Bin Laden note, which first appeared on an Islamic Web site, was the real deal.
"It's too soon to tell the authenticity of it, and we may never be able to tell," the official said.
Intelligence analysts noted, however, that the latest statement was more political and "remarkably more coherent and less prone to flights of fancy," the official said.
The recent surge in terror activity appears timed to underline Al Qaeda's determination.
A copy of Bin Laden's message faxed to the Al Jazeera Arabic satellite TV network yesterday was addressed to "the Islamic nation, on the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the American new crusade war." The U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan began Oct. 7, 2001.
And the Bali bombing came on the two-year anniversary of Al Qaeda's attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole.
For many years, the Indonesian government has turned a blind eye to the Islamic terrorist groups based in the overwhelmingly Muslim country.
Change in rhetoric
But yesterday, the country's defense minister accused Al Qaeda and its Indonesian allies, the Jemaah Islamiyah group, of planting the bombs.
"We are sure Al Qaeda is here," Matori Abdul Djalil said after a cabinet meeting in Jakarta. "The Bali bomb blast is linked to Al Qaeda with the cooperation of local terrorists."
For many years, the U.S. and other countries have called for the arrest of Jemaah Islamiyah leader Abu Bakar Bashir.
Djalil declined to say whether they were planning to arrest Bashir, but until now Indonesian investigators had insisted they had no clues or suspects in the Bali attacks.
Probers "have names that would lead in some directions to solve this case," Bali police spokesman Yatim Suyatmo said.
Bashir denied involvement in the attack, but a Muslim cleric in London suspected of ties to Al Qaeda said it was "definitely" behind the Bali bombings.
"There will be more attacks like this because of American arrogance and Iraq and Palestine," Abu Hamza al-Masri said. "The attack was a message for the Indonesian government about tourism, which Islam refers to as prostitution, and a message for the United States to stop its anti-Islamic action."






  


October 15, 2002 Tuesday



 IBD'S TOP 10

 
Confidence Hit In IBD/TIPP Poll
1 The IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index fell in Oct. to its lowest point since just after the recession began 19 months ago. Americans' six-month outlook turned pessimistic for the first time in nearly a year. Declines were broad-based and raised the possibility that consumer spending may not keep the economy afloat. More on this page
Holiday Market Manages Gains
2 The major indexes made minor gains after two prior sessions of heavy activity. The Dow rose 0.3%, the S&P 500 0.7% and the Nasdaq 0.8%. The mid-cap S&P 400 outperformed its peers, rising 1.3%. Columbus Day volume dried up. A few more stocks in leading medical sectors broke out. But generic drug makers got whacked. More on B2
Al-Qaida Blamed For Bali Blast 
3 Indonesia's defense minister blamed the extremist Muslim terrorist group and its allies for the huge bomb attack that killed over 180 people in the nightclub district of Bali. FBI and Australian detectives joined the hunt for the killers as forensic experts tried to identify bodies. The leader of a local group linked to Osama bin Laden denied involvement and implicated the U.S.
Bush Sees Pattern In Terrorism
4 President Bush said there's "a pattern of attack" by al-Qaida in Kuwait, Indonesia and Yemen, showing the group remains active. Members are "on the run," he said, but remain a pressing danger to the U.S. and other countries. He said the battle with al-Qaida won't distract him from his confrontation with Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
Retailers Get Solid Start In Oct.
5 Cold weather helped boost sales for some major U.S. retailers. Consumers favored discounters amid the sluggish economy. Wal-Mart's sales in the week ended Oct. 11 were in line with growth target of 2%-4%. Target hit plan, too. Penney's sales tracked above its 3%-4% forecast for October. But Federated Department Stores still expects October same-store sales to fall 1%-2%.
Wall Street Layoffs Don't Let Up
6 J.P. Morgan cut hundreds of jobs from its equities unit. The bank's expected to slash about 3,000 positions worldwide, or 10%-15% of its investment banking staff. Merrill Lynch reportedly may cut more than 20% of its investment bankers, or 250-300, by early next year, its sixth round of layoffs since the market decline started in '00. Other banks are also planning big cuts.
Boeing Loses Big One To Airbus
7 Though it owns a fleet of Boeing 737s, Europe's no-frills EasyJet is buying at least 120 rival Airbus A319s, maybe 120 more. It's a surprise loss. Bargain carriers usually stay with a single plane to cut costs. The sale is worth up to $12.4 bil, minus any discounts. Also, reports say Boeing may slash its production through '04, a year longer than expected. Its shares fell 3%.
Economic Damage Still Unknown
8 Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said full economic impact of the 10-day shutdown of West Coast ports is not yet clear. He noted the shippers' lockout may have cost $2 bil a day. Ports were clogged with a backlog of full cargo containers and vessels waiting to be unloaded. Getting the supply chain back to normal will probably take weeks.
Sharon Urges Arafat's Overthrow
9 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, heading to the U.S. to meet President Bush, called on Palestinians to "change the despotic regime that is leading you from failure to failure, from tragedy to tragedy." Bush has also urged the replacement of Yasser Arafat, who tentatively scheduled elections for Jan. Sharon said Arafat let "terrorist gangs" take over Palestinian territories.
Ulster Back To Direct British Rule
10 As Britain expressed regret, it seized back the government in Northern Ireland amid a crisis provoked by a spying scandal. Britain vowed to try to restore home rule next year. The British and Irish governments will work frantically to convince the mutually distrustful Protestants and Catholics to recommence the carefully constructed home-rule experiment.







   
 

October 15, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 Still Living Dangerously 

 
A smart terrorist understands that he is not engaged in conventional warfare. Instead he kills to call attention to his cause, to radicalize moderates, to disrupt the lives and livelihoods of those who would prefer not to be involved, to provoke his opponents into actions that drive more people into his camp. 
     In case you haven't noticed, the people running Al Qaeda are smart. Saturday's bombing in Bali, presumably carried out by a group connected to Al Qaeda, was monstrously evil. It was also, I'm sorry to say, very clever. And it reinforces the sinking feeling that our leaders, who seem determined to have themselves a conventional war, are playing right into the terrorists' hands.  
 Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has not been a major breeding ground for terrorists. It is, however, a nation with severe economic, social and political problems -- the kind of problems that could radicalize the population and turn it into a terrorist asset. And Saturday's bombing was clearly an attempt to intensify those problems.
To understand why the attack was so clever, you need to appreciate Indonesia's fragility. Five years ago the country became the biggest victim of the Asian financial crisis. When inflows of foreign capital dried up, the economy's modern core imploded; big companies that had borrowed overseas found that their debts had ballooned to unpayable levels. 
What saved Indonesia from complete economic collapse, and made a partial recovery possible, was the resilience of the country's economic and geographical periphery. The big companies on Java were devastated by the plunge in the rupiah, but smaller enterprises, especially on the other islands, saw the weak currency as an export opportunity. That included, in particular, the tourist industry of Bali, which has flourished in post-crisis Indonesia as an affordable destination for foreigners. 
Now who will vacation on Bali? Indonesian officials are putting a brave face on it, assuring tourists that they are still safe, insisting that the economy can handle the blow. But it seems all too likely that the bombing has effectively destroyed one of the country's key industries. And given the already wobbly economy and the already weak authority of the government, a serious setback might set the stage for social and political turmoil -- maybe with an ethnic and religious edge. For Indonesia is an overwhelmingly Muslim country in which a small ethnic Chinese minority, mainly Buddhist or Christian, dominates the economy.
In short, the people who set off that bomb knew what they were doing.
The bomb blast in Bali followed bad news from the world's second-most-populous Muslim country. Hard-line Islamic parties did unexpectedly well in Pakistan's election last week, and Pervez Musharraf's hold on power may be slipping. Do I need to point out that Pakistan is a lot bigger than Iraq, and already has nuclear weapons? 
And that gets to my worries over the direction of U.S. policy. I don't think we could have done anything to prevent the blast in Bali -- but the attack does suggest that our early military success in Afghanistan has done little to weaken terrorist capabilities. It's not clear whether the U.S. could have done anything to improve the situation in Pakistan, though it might have helped if we had done a better job in Afghanistan, both in pursuing our foes and in helping our friends; it might also have helped if the administration had made good on its promise to let Pakistan increase its textile exports to the U.S. .
What's clear is that the biggest terrorist threat we face is that one or more big Muslim countries will be radicalized. And yet that's a threat hawks advising the administration don't seem to take seriously. The administration adviser Richard Perle, quoted by Josh Marshall in The Washington Monthly, brushes off concerns that an invasion of Iraq might undermine the stability of Middle Eastern regimes: "Mubarak is no great shakes. Surely we can do better. . . ." 
Meanwhile, plans to invade Iraq proceed. The administration has offered many different explanations, some of them mutually contradictory, for its determination to occupy Baghdad. I think it's like the man who looks for his keys on the sidewalk, even though he dropped them in a nearby alley, because he can see better under the streetlight. These guys want to fight a conventional war; since Al Qaeda won't oblige, they'll attack someone else who will. And watching from the alley, the terrorists are pleased. 







   
 

October 15, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE WHITE HOUSE; 
BUSH TIES BOMBING AT BALI NIGHTCLUB TO QAEDA NETWORK

 
President Bush said today that the bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali appeared to be the work of Al Qaeda and that the attack was part of a pattern that included recent attacks in Kuwait and Yemen.
     Those incidents, he said, show that Al Qaeda is on the rise and will continue to be a threat to the United States. 
 "I'm concerned about our homeland," Mr. Bush told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before leaving for a political fundraising trip here. "Obviously, if I knew of a specific piece of intelligence that would indicate a moment or a place in which the enemy would attack, we'd do a lot about it." 
The Bush administration has repeatedly pressed Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, to crack down on Islamic extremists there, only to have its concerns brushed aside by top Indonesian officials. But the attack on Saturday in Bali, in which many of the victims were foreign holidaymakers, seemed to mark a turning point in their attitude. 
An Indonesian official made that nation's most explicit acknowledgment that Al Qaeda was operating there. "The Bali bomb blast is linked to Al Qaeda with the cooperation of local terrorists," the defense minister, Matori Abdul Djalil, said in Jakarta, the capital. "I am not afraid to say, though many have refused to say, that an Al Qaeda network exists in Indonesia." Page A12. 
Mr. Bush had particularly strong words today for Indonesia's president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, suggesting that his patience with Indonesia's lack of cooperation had grown thin. He said that he planned to call Mrs. Megawati to discuss the terrorist acts there and that he expected a "firm and deliberate" response from her. "I'm going to make it clear to her that we need to work together to find those who murdered all those innocent people and bring them to justice," Mr. Bush said. "And I hope I hear the resolve of a leader that recognizes that any time terrorists take hold in the country it's going to weaken the country itself."
The State Department said today that at least two Americans were killed. The Associated Press reported that one of the dead was identified by her family in Phoenix as Deborah Snodgrass. No other details were released.
It was the Indonesians, rather than the Americans, who today were warning of further attacks. The security minister, Bambang Susilo Yudoyono, told reporters that security was being increased at American-run industrial sites, including an Exxon Mobil liquefied natural gas plant in the province of Aceh and a Caltex refinery in Sumatra.
Although Indonesia overwhelmingly embraces a moderate form of Islam, radical groups have raised their profile in the last year, exploiting widespread anti-American sentiment as well as divisions within the government.
Some Islamic militants were pressing a theory that the United States had masterminded the Saturday attack as a means to manipulate the Indonesian government and to strengthen its argument for a war against Islam.
"The United States intelligence agency is behind the Bali bombings in an attempt to justify their accusation that Indonesia is a terrorist base," said Abu Bakar Bashir, the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Islamic group that many analysts say may itself have organized the attack.
Mr. Bashir condemned the bombing and denied that his group was involved. "All the allegations against me are groundless," he said at a news conference. "I challenge them to prove anything."
Today was the first time that Mr. Bush had connected the Bali nightclub blast that killed more than 180 people on Saturday to an attack on American troops in Kuwait that killed one marine on Oct. 8 and the bombing of a French oil tanker off Yemen on Oct. 6.
"I believe the attack on the French vessel was a terrorist attack," Mr. Bush said. "Obviously, the attack on our marines in Kuwait was a terrorist attack. The attack in Bali appears to be an Al Qaeda-type terrorist -- definitely a terrorist attack, whether it's Al Qaeda-related or not, I would assume it is. And therefore it does look like a pattern of attacks that the enemy, albeit on the run, is trying to once again frighten and kill freedom-loving people."
Mr. Bush added that "they're trying to intimidate us, and we won't be intimidated."
The president said that the attacks showed once again that the campaign against terrorism would be a protracted one, and that his administration had a long struggle ahead. The president said that he did not know whether Osama bin Laden was dead or alive but that he did know that "there are still some of his top lieutenants roaming around" and that Al Qaeda remains dangerous. 
"It's going to take a while to fully rout Al Qaeda," Mr. Bush said. "We just learned a lesson this week. It's going to take a while to succeed."
He added that disarming Saddam Hussein was part of the campaign against terrorism, and that the United States military was capable of fighting terrorism on two fronts, in Iraq and the rest of the world. 
The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution this evening condemning the bombing in Bali and urging all countries to help Indonesia bring to justice the "perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks."
At a political rally at the Oakland County International Airport here, Mr. Bush again linked Mr. Hussein to Al Qaeda, without citing evidence, and suggested that the Iraqi leader could give a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon to the terrorist organization for use against its enemies. "We need to think about Saddam Hussein using Al Qaeda to do his dirty work, to not leave fingerprints behind," Mr. Bush said. --------------------

Americans Missing in Bali
OMAHA, Oct. 14 (AP) -- A former All-America football player at the University of Nebraska, Jake Young, 34, remained unaccounted for today in the area of the bomb blasts in Bali, Indonesia, his father said. A California man was also missing, the man's wife said.
Mr. Young was in Bali to play a final tournament with his rugby team from Hong Kong, said his father, Jacob Young of Midland, Tex. 
The family of Steven Brooks Webster, 41, an environmental consultant of Huntington Beach, Calif., said he, too, was missing.







   
 

October 15, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 Terror's Calling Card in Bali 

 
The weekend massacre at an Indonesian nightclub on the idyllic island of Bali, apparently the work of Al Qaeda and local allies, is a horrifying reminder that Islamic extremists who take aim at America and the West may be on the run but are not defeated. Even as the Bush administration readies for confrontation with Iraq, it must take new steps to combat a resurgent international terrorist threat with no single address or state sponsor.
     Most of the nearly 200 people killed and hundreds others injured on Saturday were foreign tourists, but Indonesia has been badly hurt as well. Its sense of security has been jolted, its stock market is reeling and Bali's economically important tourist industry faces ruinous free fall.  
 This was the latest and deadliest of several recent assaults. Together they offer evidence that Al Qaeda and its allies have survived the war in Afghanistan and are regrouping to organize new strikes. Two weeks ago Kuwaiti terrorists opened fire on American marines who were in the country for joint exercises with the Kuwaiti military, killing one of them. One of the assailants left behind a tape pledging allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Yesterday more gunfire was directed at American troops in Kuwait. Late last month a French oil tanker was set ablaze off Yemen in what Paris believes was a terrorist attack. Meanwhile a new tape by Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has begun circulating. American authorities believe it was recorded recently.
A reactivated Qaeda is a threat America cannot afford to ignore, as President Bush acknowledged yesterday. An array of different strategies will be needed, including heightened cooperation with foreign governments, police and military forces and financial monitoring agencies. Fighting loosely linked and mobile terror cells is an entirely different operation from invading Iraq. Mr. Bush said that the two could be done simultaneously, and perhaps they can. But fighting terror is partly a battle for Muslim hearts and minds. A war against Iraq is likely to make it harder.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, presents one of the toughest challenges. Law and order are extremely fragile in the sprawling archipelago, while its brutal and corrupt armed forces are politically and professionally unreliable.
Thus far, President Megawati Sukarnoputri has failed to acknowledge the seriousness of the Islamic terror threat. She has also been unwilling to take the steps needed to force the army to become more accountable, and the Bush administration has been reluctant to pressure her to do so. This must now change. Until Jakarta shapes up its policies and security forces, it will be difficult for Washington or anyone else to halt Al Qaeda's inroads there.
The United States continues to run up against conflicts between its desire to bolster its allies in the Islamic world and the need to take a stand against corruption and anti-democratic governments. In Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a crucial American ally, has isolated himself through high-handedness and thwarting of constitutional procedures. As a result he emerged from last week's legislative elections in a weakened position, not only in relation to the secular parties he unwisely tried to stop, but also to a strengthened Islamic fundamentalist political movement. 
The war against terror requires Washington to build and lead a broad coalition, using diplomatic as well as military tools, and hold it together for many years to come. It is unclear how war with Iraq will affect this endeavor, but the events of the last few weeks are a reminder that it is likely to make things harder rather than easier. 







   
 

October 15, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 NEWS SUMMARY 

 
     INTERNATIONAL   A3-12

Bush Says Attack in Bali Seems to Be Qaeda's Work
President Bush said that the bombing in Indonesia appeared to be the work of Al Qaeda and that the attack was part of a pattern of terrorist acts that included recent violence in Kuwait and Yemen. Taken together, he said, these incidents show that Al Qaeda is on the rise and will continue to be a threat to the United States. In Indonesia, the defense minister made that nation's most explicit acknowledgement to date that Al Qaeda was operating there.   A1

Top Indonesian officials have begun to concede that their nation, the most-populous Muslim country, faces a terrorist threat. The government has brushed aside recent similar statements from its neighbors and the United States, but they are reluctant to undertake a crackdown that could inflame political and religious tensions.   A12

Prices fell in financial markets across the region and there were calls for increased security for the oil and gas industry, the mainstay of Indonesia's already tottering economy. Indonesia's stock market was hit the hardest, with the main index plunging 10.4 percent.   A12

U.N. Dispute Over Iraq Widens
The impasse between the United States and France over military action in Iraq has deepened in recent days after an effort to reach a compromise stalled, with the French insisting that the Americans must come back to the United Nations Security Council before they can use force, diplomats said.   A1

President Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel plan to discuss strategies to neutralize the threat of an Iraqi missile attack on Israel and to avoid the need for Israel to retaliate against Iraq itself in the event of a war, administration officials said. An official said meetings that begin today with Mr. Sharon's arrival in Washington would focus on plans for the United States to locate and destroy Iraqi missile sites in the initial phase of a war.   A15

Britain Reasserts Ulster Rule
Britain took back political authority over Northern Ireland, saying it saw no other way to preserve a future for the province's elected government, which shares power between its Catholic minority and its Protestant majority. This is the fourth time in three years that the Northern Ireland Assembly has been suspended, putting the government on hold and allowing it to be restarted.   A3

Kenya Party Split by Naming Of Kenyatta as Candidate
The party that has ruled Kenya since its independence was split after it named Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of the country's founder but a political unknown, as its candidate to replace President Daniel arap Moi. The selection prompted dissident members of the Kenya Africa National Union party to leave the party.   A8

New Look at the Rosary
John Paul II is planning to broaden the saying of the rosary to honor other events in the life of Jesus.   A10

NATIONAL   A16-24

New Shooting in Virginia; As Manhunt Intensifies
A woman was fatally shot in the head outside a suburban Virginia store, sparking a highway dragnet for the roving sniper who has killed 8 people in the Washington area in the last two weeks, but there was no official confirmation that this shooting was linked to the others.   A1

The van or car of the sniper operating in suburban Washington has surely been captured at least briefly by a government camera, one of hundreds set up to continuously record traffic on the highways and streets, but suspects are few because the cameras in use are outdated.   A24

Education Law Threatened
Less than a year after passage of a sweeping overhaul that promised a new era of accountability in public education, federal, state and local officials are taking steps that threaten to weaken crucial elements of the law.   A21

Dam Proposal Incites Feud
A proposal by a group of California environmentalists to drain the Hetch Hetchy Valley reservoir, a 300-foot-deep and eight-mile-long holding tank that serves San Francisco and its suburbs, has come under fire from City Hall, politicians, and the water establishment.   A1

Gore on Campaign Trail in Iowa
Al Gore campaigned across Iowa on behalf of Democratic Congressional candidates, lacerating the record of President Bush and invoking his own disputed loss in Florida in 2000 as he urged Democrats to vote.   A20

Congress Weighs Welfare Bill
Congress, facing an impasse on welfare, is weighing a three-year extension of the existing program, with tougher work requirements and more money for child care, lawmakers and the Bush administration officials said.   A20

Maine Mayor Angers Somalis
An influx of more than 1,000 Somali immigrants in the last 18 months into Lewiston, Me., a city of 36,000, has created tensions that became public when Mayor Laurier T. Raymond Jr. wrote an open letter asking them to stop others from coming.   A16

Bush to Tackle Tax Question
Administration officials said the White House will soon begin reviewing specific options to overhaul the federal tax system, edging into one of the most politically volatile of all economic issues.   A18

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-10

A Season of Desolation For New York Sports Fans
It is only mid-October, a time when championships, or at least hopes for them, are usually ripening, and it already feels like this could be the longest, loneliest sports season in 15 years. But in perhaps the most alarming measurement of the city's sense of sporting desolation, fans searching for a local winner may be forced to turn to New Jersey.   A1

Parade Without Bloomberg
The Columbus Day Parade crawled up a brilliantly sunny, crisp Fifth Avenue like a society dinner, with fine music and fabulous gowns and hearty badmouthing of people who were not there. As he had promised, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg did not attend the parade, a show of protest over organizers' outrage with his having invited two stars of the HBO mob drama "The Sopranos" to join him on the march.   B1

Uphill Battle for a Candidate
With the latest polls now showing him about 20 points behind, William E. Curry Jr., Connecticut's Democratic nominee for governor, is working without the three things that political analysts say could put him within striking distance of Gov. John G. Rowland: money, loyalty and, rather conspicuously, Bill Clinton.   B5

SCIENCE TIMES   F1-8

Health & Fitness   F5

FASHION   B11

ARTS   E1-10

Sam Shepard the Fiction Writer
Sam Shepard is in New York not as a playwright or actor, but in a less familiar role as a writer of fiction. He has a new book, "Great Dream of Heaven," a collection of short stories.   E1

   D1-7

Giants Win National League
San Francisco defeated the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-1, to win the National League Championship Series and advance to the World Series against Anaheim.   D1

BUSINESS DAY   C1-16

Court Opinion in Divorce Case Reveals Firm's Secrets
Closely guarded financial secrets of the accounting firm Ernst & Young, a private partnership, have been disclosed in the divorce proceedings of its new chief executive. The disclosures are almost certain to be of interest to competing firms.   C1

Resurgence of Family Sitcoms
For years, the family comedy, a staple of network television, has been seen as a creaky relic in a state of decline. But the new television season has seen a lot of conventional sitcoms claim high ratings in the weekly Nielsen poll.   C1

Brazil Raises Interest Rate
Brazil's central bank surprised investors by raising overnight interest rates by 3 percentage points, to a three-year high of 21 percent, in an effort to halt the decline of the nation's currency and keep short-term investment in the country.   C1

Ill-Fated Investment in Enron
Months before the star money manager at Alliance Capital Management bought millions of Enron shares last year, the firm's energy analyst had downgraded the stock and sold the holdings from a fund she managed.   C1

Business Digest   C1

World Business   W1

OBITUARIES   A25

EDITORIAL   A26-27

Editorials: Terror's calling card in Bali; before Congress leaves; you call that a debate? Pluto's plight.
Columns: Paul Krugman, Nicholas D. Kristof.

Crossword   E8
TV Listings   E9
Public Lives   B4
Weather   D8






   


October 15, 2002, Tuesday



 TARGET: AMERICA'S FRIENDS

 
The weekend murder of hundreds of foreign tourists, most of them Australian, on the Indonesian island of Bali dramatically underscores the dangers attending friendship with America in these terribly troubled times.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the atrocity on Bali, but by late yesterday both the U.S. and Indonesian governments were terming the blasts the work of Islamist terrorists linked to al Qaeda.
It certainly would seem so. 
For one thing, the car bombs that went off outside the Kuta Beach nightclubs were detonated on the second anniversary of the attack on USS Cole.
For another, Kuta has long been popular with young people from Australia, a nation with longstanding social, economic and security ties to America - and a staunch ally in the war on terror.
While there have been previous attacks by Islamic fundamentalists on nightclubs and bars in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, they have always been on a much smaller and more primitive scale.
It could well be that local Islamist militants - whose presence Jakarta has until now taken pains to deny - carried out the attacks with the help of sophisticated international terrorists.
Certainly there have been warnings for some time about more serious terrorist activity in Indonesia, a country with the world's largest Muslim population, long beset by ethnic and regional tensions.
America, Malaysia and Singapore (nearby allies in the war on terror) have complained bitterly about the refusal of Indonesia's government, led by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, to crack down on Islamist militants.
Earlier this year, for example, Indonesian authorities let suspected al Qaeda members escape after a plan to blow up the U.S. embassy in Jakarta was foiled.
But the most significant manifestation of the Indonesian government's refusal to take a tough stance has been its failure to arrest radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.
Bashir is a fan of Osama bin Laden's and the alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiah, an extremist group that seeks to establish an Islamic state comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippine island of Mindanao.
As well as attempting to appease local Islamist extremists, Jakarta has sometimes used Islamist militants to help quash non-Muslim separatist movements in places like East Timor (which seceded from the federation in 1999).
Obviously, none of this insulated Bali from Islamic terror.
It is important to note that this latest horrific attack - like the attacks on French and German citizens abroad earlier this year - seems designed to remind other nations that they, too, are vulnerable to terrorist violence.
But Indonesia did its best to distance itself from the American-led war on terrorism, in the deluded hope that so doing would spare the archipelago.
Now perhaps nations that had been dragging their feet understand - with the clarity born of suffering - that there is only one way to prevent such attacks, and that is by joining America's struggle.
Victory won't come overnight, and it won't come cheap: Witness Bali's agony, and Australia's.
Thirteen months ago, it was America.
This past weekend, it was one of America's staunchest allies.
A butcher's bill has been presented.
In due time, it will be paid.






   


October 15, 2002, Tuesday



 INDONESIANS: IT WAS AL QAEDA

 
Indonesia blamed Osama bin Laden's network of evil yesterday for the Bali bomb blast that killed 181 people and admitted the Muslim nation is honeycombed with terrorists.
The South East Asian country has long been a nagging worry for the U.S. and other members of the anti-terror coalition who have pressured the world's most populous Muslim nation to crack down on fanatics. 
Those worries came home to roost Saturday when a car-bomb blast turned the Sari nightclub - packed with western tourists - into a fiery slaughterhouse.
It was the worst terror attack since Sept. 11, 2001.
Most of the dead and wounded are Australian - but at least one American man and woman have been killed in the blast and four others injured, sources said yesterday.
A team of FBI agents is now on the ground in Indonesia helping investigators.
Yesterday, Indonesian Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil reluctantly linked the latest bloodbath to al Qaeda and said the bomb was planted by cold-hearted professionals.
"I am not afraid to say, though many have refused to say, that an al Qaeda network exists in Indonesia," he said. "I am convinced that there is a domestic link with al Qaeda."
A U.S. official said that while Indonesia wasn't hindering the anti-terror campaign, they weren't doing enough to crack down on violent radicals.
"It's not that they're not cooperating. Our view is more could have been done," the official said.
U.S. intelligence agencies also believed the sophisticated attack had all the earmarks of an al Qaeda operation.
"There were near simultaneous explosions designed to inflict the greatest amount of casualties on innocent people," one intelligence source said. "It's clearly the work of a sophisticated terrorist organization."
Additional reporting by Larry Celona






  
  

  

October 15, 2002 Tuesday 



 Al-Qaeda is blamed in Bali club bombing

 
With the task of identifying charred and mangled bodies barely under way, Indonesia's defense minister yesterday blamed Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network for the weekend bombing here that killed more than 180 people and injured more than 300.
"The Bali bomb blast is linked to al-Qaeda, with the cooperation of local terrorists," Matori Abdul Djalil said after a cabinet meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital. Djalil offered no evidence that al-Qaeda was behind the car bombing Saturday night, which turned a crowded Kuta Beach nightclub into an inferno.
Most of those killed were believed to be foreigners, including two Americans. One was Deborah Snodgrass, who moved to Bali one year ago to teach English. Chris and Susan Snodgrass of Phoenix yesterday confirmed their daughter's death. Steven Brooks Webster of Huntington Beach, Calif., was confirmed dead by morgue authorities in Indonesia, friend Trent Walker said from California. Three other Americans were listed among the injured. 
In Washington, President Bush agreed on the terror-group link.
"I think we have to assume it's al-Qaeda," he said.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the size and the sophistication of the explosion suggested that al-Qaeda had assisted Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian extremist group believed to have set off the blast.
The Sari Club, which was leveled by the blast, was a popular nightspot for the 20-something sun, sand and surf set, especially from nearby Australia. It also was a highly vulnerable "soft target" and a symbol of the Western decadence denounced by bin Laden.
The bombing stoked U.S. concerns that bin Laden's network may be on the rebound after its disruption by the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden purportedly sent a communique yesterday to the Arab satellite television network Al-Jazeera, threatening the United States and Israel with fresh carnage.
There was no way to authenticate the statement, which praised those responsible for last week's killing of a U.S. Marine in Kuwait and the suspected bombing of a French-owned oil tanker off Yemen. The communique made no reference to the attack in Bali.
Bush said the recent attacks "reflect the international nature of these cells, these killer cells."
"They're trying to intimidate us, and we won't be intimidated," he said. "Here at home, we're not immune from these kinds of attacks, and I'm concerned about it... . The enemy still wants to hit us."
A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition he not be identified, said al-Qaeda might have helped Jemaah Islamiyah by choosing the target, assembling or detonating the bomb, or training the bombers.
The initial investigation indicated that the bomb was made of a large amount of explosives and a flammable substance similar to napalm that apparently caused the burns suffered by many victims, the official said.
The explosives, he said, may have come from the stockpile that Jemaah Islamiyah planned to use last year to build seven huge truck bombs to attack mostly U.S. targets in Singapore.
That plot was foiled, but Singaporean and Malaysian officials never found as much as 1,100 pounds of the explosives that were to be used in the attacks, the intelligence official said.
Police in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia have connected Jemaah Islamiyah to other bombings throughout Southeast Asia. But the devices planted in those attacks were smaller and less sophisticated than that used in the Bali bombing.
Jemaah Islamiyah wants to unite the region's 230 million Muslims in a "super state" comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and the southern portions of Thailand and the Philippines.
Jemaah Islamiyah's alleged leader, an Indonesian cleric who denies any terrorist network exists, says he was not involved in Saturday's bombing, the most deadly assault since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Abu Bakar Baashir, who runs an Islamic school on the island of Java, has accused the United States of instigating the Bali bombing "to create the impression that international Islamic terrorists were present in Indonesia."
Ralph Boyce, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, denounced Baashir's allegation as "outrageous and totally unfounded." He accused the cleric of spreading "a very dangerous rumor."
U.S. officials said the Bush administration had for months pressed Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri to crack down on Baashir and Jemaah Islamiyah. But Megawati has declined, partly because she fears a mutiny by Muslim extremists within her own security forces, the officials said.
Bush, who phoned Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Sunday night to offer condolences for the deaths of Australians killed in the blast, said he planned to call Megawati to urge her to move against Indonesian terrorist groups.
The State Department yesterday warned Americans to avoid Indonesia. Nonessential U.S. employees at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and consulate in Surabaya will be leaving the country beginning this week, embassy spokesman Stanley Harsha said.
As of yesterday, only 38 victims had been identified. They included nine from Australia, eight from Indonesia, four from England, two each from the United States, Sweden and Singapore, and one each from Ecuador, France, Germany, the Netherlands and South Korea.
"Many of the bodies will be hard if not impossible to identify because they are only bits and pieces or have been badly burned," a spokeswoman at Bali's Sanglah Hospital said.
At a makeshift morgue behind the hospital, volunteers and paramedics packed bodies and body parts into plastic bags containing ice, then loaded them into an insulated truck to try to slow decay and reduce the stench. But the smell of death hung heavy in the hot, humid air as an entourage of officials paid respects.
Many fear that Bali's tourism-based economy may be devastated by the attack, which shattered the perception of the island as a pleasure haven in the sprawling Indonesian archipelago, many parts of which in recent years have been rocked by sectarian or separatist violence. The Indonesian economy has been in a severe slump since the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Contact Michael Dorgan at mdorgan@krwashington.com.






  


October 15, 2002 Tuesday, 



 Bombing of Bali clubs shows target is the West;
Extremists prove again that the war on terror is worldwide.

 
The bomb blasts that rocked a pair of night clubs frequented by Western tourists on the Indonesian island of Bali show that it isn't only Americans who are targeted by Islamic extremist groups around the world.
Their target instead is the presence and influence of Westerners, as the clubs that were attacked were popular with Australians and Europeans. The death toll was estimated at more than 180 Monday, with the possibility of it soaring well past 200. 
Many of the dead and injured were Australian, but at least 30 Britons were also listed among the missing, as were at least two Americans. Australia has been a strong American ally for many years, most recently contributing forces and support in both the Gulf War and Afghanistan. Further, Australia's commitment to a peacekeeping force under U.N. auspices in the breakaway province of East Timor has been unpopular with many Indonesians.
Because Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation and because there have been many attacks there on minority groups, especially Christians, intelligence agencies and governmental leaders have speculated that al-Qaida terrorists may have sought influence or refuge there.
Australia's prime minister, John Howard, claimed Sunday that his government and U.S. leaders have often asked Indonesia to strengthen its anti-terror effort, saying, "There is no doubt that there are terrorist cells with links to al-Qaida in Indonesia." That was confirmed by Indonesia after the bombing: "We are sure al-Qaida is here," Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil said in Jakarta Monday. "The Bali bomb blast is linked to al-Qaida with the cooperation of local terrorists."
What is now apparent is what many terrorism experts have long been warning about: Al-Qaida and its allied extremist groups have a worldwide reach. The group was likely behind such recent attacks as the killing of one U.S. Marine and the wounding of another in Kuwait, and the damage caused by an explosives-laden small boat to a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen.
As the world waits to see if Saddam Hussein will cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors or rebuff them again, Americans and their allies - including many Muslim nations - have seen once more why terrorism is the enemy of civilization.




2

   
San Bernardino Sun 

October 15, 2002 Tuesday



 Terror in Bali creates reluctant ONT travelers

 
The doors were hardly open Monday before Inland Valley travel agents began hearing from customers wanting to cancel travel to Bali and nearby destinations.
The nightclub bombings in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, are causing shocks all through the industry, which was only recently regaining some of the business it lost after Sept. 11, 2001.
Now travelers and tour operators are temporarily canceling trips there, forcing travel agents to find suitable alternatives.
"People are definitely calling," said Leroy Gaines of San Dimas-based Lunar Travel. "They're telling us they definitely do not want to go anywhere near that part of the world." 
State Department officials are urging Americans already there to leave the popular resort island, and urging non-essential Americans to leave Indonesia. That has industry officials saying that the violence would likely strengthen travelers' desire to stay closer to home, a sentiment that gained force after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"Most people who are making travel plans on an elective basis" - that is, anyone except business travelers - "will probably decide not to go to Bali right now," said David Buda, executive vice president at Tzell Travel Group in New York. Instead, Buda expects to see more American travelers to exhibit "the stay-at-home syndrome," or visit Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean.
Manager Terri Tully of Above & Beyond Travel in Upland said she is not advising customers to travel to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tahiti or Bali.
"We're saying they should put trips to that part of the world on the back burner until things settle down," she said. "We've had a few calls already."
Owner Sue Barnett of Action Travel in Rancho Cucamonga said Bali isn't a big destination for her company, but she would be telling customers the same thing.
"I feel so sorry for the Australians," she said. "Bali is sort of like Australia's Hawaii. I can only imagine what it would be like if this had happened in Hawaii or Cancun."
Bali is a popular destination for surfers, who travel there during hurricane season in search of massive waves. They can still be counted on, said John Dekker, manager of Carlson Wagonlit in Huntington Beach.
"These are people who look off the edge of the cliff anyway, so they're not going to let something like this stop them," Dekker said. Dekker has five clients currently on a surfing trip in Bali and they do not plan to cut their travels short.
But for the most part, travel agents around the globe were canceling upcoming trips to the Indonesian resort.
Club Med suspended travel to its Bali "village" for a week. The Coral Gables, a Fla.-based company, is offering to send customers to a different resort through Oct. 20, or will allow them to rebook their trip for sometime in the future.
For the 600 Club Med vacationers already in Bali, "all the excursions have been canceled," a spokeswoman said.
All British tour operators, meanwhile, have canceled tours to Bali over the next few days and are offering penalty-free cancellations and alternative tours to affected clients. Britain's Foreign Office is warning Britons not to go to Bali at all and to avoid Indonesia except on essential business.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation and has gotten a reputation as a dangerous place for travelers in recent years because of the rise of radical Islam there and around the world. Bali, however, is mostly Hindu and had always been considered relatively safe. That peaceful image has certainly been tarnished, although travel agents were hopeful it wouldn't ruin the island's all-important tourism industry.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.







  



October 15, 2002 Tuesday  




 Official Links Bali Bombing To Al Qaeda; 
Indonesian Says Group Worked Through Locals

 
 Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, working through a local group, played a role in the Saturday night bombing that killed more than 180 people in Bali, Indonesia's defense minister said today. The government promised concerted action to prevent more attacks, ending a long-standing position that terrorism is not a problem in this overwhelmingly Muslim country. 
 "We are sure al Qaeda is here," Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil said after a cabinet meeting in Jakarta. "The Bali bomb blast is related to al Qaeda with the cooperation of local terrorists." 
 He offered no evidence, and other officials, including some in the Indonesian Defense Ministry, criticized Djalil for pinning the explosion on bin Laden's network so soon. Some foreign diplomats have suggested the Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiah may have been involved.  
 At the White House, President Bush echoed Djalil's remarks. "I think we have to assume it's al Qaeda," Bush said. "We're beginning to hear some reports that's more definitive than that, but I wait for our own analysis." 
 He said the bombing, along with a recent explosion on a French supertanker off Yemen and an attack on U.S. Marines in Kuwait, appeared to be part of a campaign by the organization blamed for the Sept. 11 hijackings last year. "It does look like a pattern of attacks that the enemy, albeit on the run, is trying to once again frighten and kill freedom-loving people," Bush said. 
 Bali police today said they detained 27 people for questioning about the bombing, which devastated two nightclubs and surrounding buildings in the Bali resort town, a haven for surfers, sailors and sun-seeking backpackers. The police also said they questioned 10 Pakistanis, but they were not detained. 
 A spokesman for the Bali police, Yatim Suyatmo, indicated that the detainees, who lived in the neighborhood near the clubs, were not suspected of carrying out the attack but might help police determine who did. "From these people we can get more information to trace the suspects and solve the case," Suyatmo said. ". . . We will reveal who was the actor behind the bombing." 
 With the help of a national police forensics team from Surabaya, the capital of East Java, investigators in Bali are trying to determine what explosive was used. Indonesian authorities said they were also receiving technical assistance from four Australian Federal Police agents and from the FBI. 
 As medical teams continued working to identify bodies recovered from burned wreckage, police and diplomats put the confirmed death toll at 181. That was slightly lower than an estimate a day earlier; officials warned that the number could rise again. 
 An official at the Australian Foreign Affairs Ministry said more than 1,700 Australians had been flown out of Bali on commercial flights since the explosion. More than 70 other injured Australians, some of them wounded critically, have been evacuated on a Hercules military transport plane. 
 The official added that Australia also airlifted 12 victims of other nationalities to Australia for medical care. About 220 Australians are listed as missing. He cautioned that this does not mean they are all dead. Two Americans have been confirmed dead.  
 Today, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta began preparations to evacuate nonessential embassy personnel for at least 30 days. They will not return until the United States decides it is safe for them to do so. 
 Carol A. Hessler, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia, said American companies are individually evaluating whether to withdraw employees from Indonesia and may reach different conclusions. 
 The bombing, which devastated an island that had long avoided the political turmoil common elsewhere in Indonesia, continued today to roil the country. The Jakarta Stock Exchange index fell 10.4 percent to a four-year low, and the Indonesian currency, the rupiah, fell to its lowest level against the dollar in almost six months.  
 The government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri promised to move decisively. "Enough is enough," said Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. "The government will take very firm action, and there will be no more doubts in combating terrorism." He admonished other government officials for making "unobjective statements that there is no terrorism in Indonesia." 
 Vice President Hamzah Haz, who once challenged authorities to arrest him before arresting Indonesian Muslim hard-liners linked to terrorism, also changed direction. "Regarding the threat of terrorism," he told reporters after the cabinet meeting, "whoever the perpetrators are, whether they are ordinary people, government authorities or clerics, none of them have any impunity." 
 Suyatmo said police are still investigating whether one or two bombs destroyed the Sari Club and Paddy's, the two bars in Kuta Beach that exploded. He added that the roof of a vehicle believed to have been armed with a bomb was blown into the air and found on the third floor of a building near the Sari Club. 
 Police officials said they found traces of material they believe was part of the bomb, but they have not determined its composition. They also recovered identification papers at the blast site they believe might provide clues about the bombers. 
 A senior Indonesian security official said investigators are seeking clues in East Java, where Islamic militants have been active. But he added that they had not found a tie between East Java radicals and the bombing and added that suspects in other parts of the country may also come under scrutiny. 
 There appeared to be "outside influence" involved in the attack, the Western security consultant said. "You can be positive on the grounds of the knowledge of the system of bombs. The attack required intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance. It was a well-thought out, highly cynical target." 
 The assailants were targeting Westerners, he said. The vast majority of those killed and injured were from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Britain, France and Belgium. 
 He noted that Bali is a Hindu enclave in a Muslim country. "If the bomb went off in Jakarta, you'd take out a lot of Muslims," he said. "But if you do it in Bali, you only take out Hindus, to the extent that you take out locals. It is distant and remote from the heartland of Indonesia." 
 Yudhoyono, the chief security minister, said Sunday that the government had increased security at critical installations, in particular at power plants and other facilities in the energy sector. He said the government was acting on intelligence that these could be the next targets. 
 Yudhoyono added that the police, with help from the military, will take the lead in this and other terror investigations. That would be a significant change in a country in which the police and military are struggling for primacy and rivalry is common. 
 The government is also seeking to better coordinate its four intelligence organizations run by the military, the police, the military's strategic intelligence agency and the national intelligence agency. "The Indonesian intelligence apparatus is hamstrung by internal competition, creative tension," the Western security consultant said. "It is like the CIA-FBI rivalry, but is exacerbated by political considerations." 
 Some of Indonesia's neighbors, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, have pursued terrorists aggressively. Singapore has arrested more than 35 people accused of terrorism in the past year, and Malaysia has detained more than 60. 
 In Manila today, prosecutors said they planned to file charges against two members of an Islamic group alleged to have ties to al Qaeda. The two are believed to have been involved in buying explosives in the Philippines. 
 One is Hambali, also known as Riduan Isamuddin, an Indonesian cleric and a suspected leader of Jemaah Islamiah, which Washington and other governments in the region have linked to various terror plots in Southeast Asia. The other man, according to a Justice Department document, is Faiz bin Abu Bakar Bafana, a Malaysian alleged to be a member of Jemaah Islamiah. 
 Philippine officials said they were bolstering security at their embassies abroad and at strategic targets in the country. 
 Sidney Jones, a human rights activist and an expert on Indonesia's militant movements, said Megawati will be under "increasing, real severe pressure to make some arrests" to prove that she is serious about combating terrorism. 
 Jones said high on the most-wanted list is the Muslim cleric Abubakar Baasyir, an Indonesian accused by the Singaporean and Malaysian governments of leading Jemaah Islamiah. "I think it may be that Abubakar Baasyir's days as a free man are numbered," Jones said. 
 Baasyir, whose base is in Solo, central Java, today strongly denied involvement. "All the allegations against me are groundless. I challenge them to prove anything," the Associated Press quoted him as saying. 
 He repeated a position sometimes heard among more moderate Indonesians: "I suspect that the bombing was engineered by the United States and its allies to justify allegations that Indonesia is a base for terrorists." 
 A Western diplomat in Jakarta called his claims "outrageous in the aftermath of the carnage in Bali. They are malicious, divisive and, if anything, serve to divert attention away from what Indonesia and its government leadership now says is the task at hand." 
 Western diplomats and some political analysts call overblown the common belief that Megawati will face a groundswell of Muslim opposition if she pursues terrorists linked to radical Islamic organizations. 
 "I've never thought that she was going to get a big backlash that she could not survive," said the Western diplomat in Jakarta. "This notion that if you take an action that somebody might criticize and therefore you don't take it is not leadership. She's just extremely cautious." 
 Jones agreed that the Bali bombing has changed the equation. If terrorists are brought to court on the basis of hard evidence, she said, "then the backlash would be substantially mitigated." 
 Sipress reported from Kuta. 







  



October 15, 2002 Tuesday  




 Bush Stresses Anti-Terror Resolve; 
Attack in Bali Shows That U.S. 'Must Pursue the Enemy,' President Says

 
The devastating nightclub bombings in Bali and recent attacks in Yemen and Kuwait demonstrate that the United States must "pursue the enemy before they hurt us again," President Bush said yesterday as investigators sought to identify the plotters of the Indonesian attack. 
Bush said U.S. authorities assume a resurgent al Qaeda terrorist network was responsible for Saturday night's car bomb attack in Bali, although officials said they had no definitive evidence. The president said he was "concerned" about possible further attacks on the United States in the aftermath of a series of apparent terrorist strikes. 
"Those of us who love freedom must work together to do everything we can to disrupt, deny and bring to justice these people who have no soul, no conscience; people who hate freedom," Bush said. He described yesterday as a sad day that shows "we've got a long way to go to make the world more secure and more peaceful."  
The U.S.-led effort to strip Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction is a central part of the war on terrorism, Bush said in Washington before leaving for a campaign fundraiser in Dearborn, Mich. Asserting that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is linked to al Qaeda, the president said the United States has "plenty of capacity" to fight the terror war on two fronts. 
"This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al Qaeda as a forward army. We need to think about Saddam Hussein using al Qaeda to do his dirty work, to not leave fingerprints behind," Bush said in Michigan. "I hope we never use one military troop in Iraq, but for the sake of the peace and security of the United States, Saddam Hussein must disarm, or the United States, with friends and allies will disarm him." 
Bush spoke by telephone with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia to offer sympathy for Australian travelers killed or injured in the Bali inferno, which was triggered when a bomb hidden in a Toyota sports utility vehicle exploded in front of an open-air bar favored by Westerners. Indonesia's defense minister blamed the attack -- the worst in Indonesia's history -- as the work of al Qaeda and a local group. 
U.S. officials, frustrated by what they consider inadequate Indonesian efforts against terrorist groups, said they hoped that Saturday's attack would energize the Jakarta government. Bush said he would speak soon with President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, and expected to hear a commitment to crack down on Islamic extremists. 
"I hope I hear the resolve of a leader that recognizes that any time terrorists take hold in the country, it's going to weaken the country itself. There has to be firm and deliberate desire to find the killers before they kill somebody else," Bush said. 
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a former ambassador to Indonesia who continues to play an important role in U.S. policy there, described the attack as "horrible beyond belief. This is a body blow to the whole country. The only good that might come out of it is, it's a wake-up call for the Indonesians." 
The Bush administration has been quietly pressing the Indonesian government to deal more firmly with suspected terrorists, with mixed results, said U.S. officials. Several individuals have been detained, but other suspects identified by U.S. and Asian intelligence agencies have been allowed to escape.  
Investigations have been slowed or stymied, in part because of significant skepticism in Indonesia about the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic extremism. U.S. Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce held a series of discussions last month with Indonesian Muslim leaders to say American anti-terrorism efforts are not a plot "to destroy the image of Islam in Indonesia." 
"Just because you cannot see them," Boyce said, "it does not mean that they are not there." 
Last week, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, called Indonesia's military chief to demand greater efforts to investigate a Sept. 23 grenade explosion outside a U.S. Embassy house in central Jakarta. Fargo emphasized the danger posed by Jemaah Islamiah, a radical Islamic group operating in several Southeast Asian nations that is believed to be linked to al Qaeda. 
National Security Council member Karen B. Brooks traveled to Jakarta last month to give Megawati evidence about Jemaah Islamiah and its presumed leader, Indonesian Muslim cleric Abubakar Baasyir Intelligence experts believe the organization had the ability to carry out Saturday's attack. 
Indonesian officials have told U.S. officials that their government has insufficient evidence to arrest Baasyir, who denies any connection to the organization. Indonesian political leaders point to significant arrests in recent weeks and note it is difficult for a fledgling democracy to harness its military that is infamous for corruption and autonomy from civilian authorities. 
"There has been a problem of al Qaeda going back at least since I arrived as ambassador three years ago," said former U.S. ambassador Robert S. Gelbard, who described attempting to brief Indonesian authorities. "There was no interest on the part of that government, nor has there been much interest since then. There has been over the last month increasing responsiveness on the issue of foreign al Qaeda, but still a complete refusal to do anything about domestic groups." 
"What we look for at this point is an intensification" of Indonesian government action, a U.S. official said yesterday, citing law enforcement, intelligence gathering and the investigation of terrorist financing. "I think this will have about the same effect on changing perspectives there as Sept. 11 did here." 
Staff writer Mike Allen in Dearborn contributed to this report. 







  



October 15, 2002 Tuesday  




 Means of Influence

 
 THE DEVASTATING terrorist bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali has tragically underscored the failure of that Muslim country to act aggressively against local extremist organizations. It has also demonstrated the Bush administration's lack of success in exercising influence over a conflicted but mostly friendly democratic government. For much of the last year the administration has been pressing Indonesia's president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, to crack down on organizations such as Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been linked to Osama bin Laden as well as to terrorist activities throughout Southeast Asia. But under pressure from Muslim movements, including some in her own coalition, Mrs. Megawati has resisted, declining even to arrest the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah -- who yesterday was still giving interviews and blaming the United States for the slaughter. There were some signs that the attack will at last jar Jakarta into taking more effective action; the defense minister acknowledged that the bombing was likely the work of al Qaeda operating "with the cooperation of local terrorists." While encouraging such a shift, the Bush administration also should consider how to better manage relationships with governments that don't neatly fit into its categories of good and evil.  
Indonesia, which has been nourishing its democracy but ducking its terrorists, is one such regime; its mirror image is Pakistan, where Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been cooperating with U.S. troops while suppressing democracy. Last week Gen. Musharraf reaped the result of this crude strategy: a huge surge in support in parliamentary elections for a coalition of radical Islamic parties. The Islamists clearly benefited from Gen. Musharraf's concerted campaign against Pakistan's major secular parties, which have been resisting his attempts to rewrite the constitution and extend his term as president. The Bush administration could have avoided this outcome by pressing Gen. Musharraf to negotiate with the civilian parties; instead, it has effectively supported his power play. Though a delegation of European Union observers pronounced the election "seriously flawed," the State Department called it "an important milestone in Pakistan's ongoing transition to democracy." Now the United States could face a new Pakistani government that formally allies Gen. Musharraf's party with the Islamists, a coalition that would only reduce the prospect of effective action against terrorists. 
In Indonesia, the Bush administration has rhetorically supported Mrs. Megawati and the recent democratic reforms. In practice, however, the Pentagon has reacted to the president's relatively weak political position by trying to restore close U.S. ties with the Indonesian army, an institution whose human rights abuses and violations of democracy helped create Indonesia's problem with extremism. In the weeks ahead, the administration should aim for a strategy that encourages a strong response to the terrorists that is led by Mrs. Megawati and democratic institutions, rather than by the military. As the worsening situation in Pakistan demonstrates, the challenge of engaging with a complex civilian political elite, though formidable, may prove more fruitful over time than the simple embrace of a willing general. 






  


October 15, 2002 Tuesday



 U.S.: Indonesia must target terror;
Pressure grows in wake of Bali nightclub bomb

 
The United States is increasing its pressure on Indonesia's government to crack down on Islamic militants in the wake of the weekend bombing on Bali that killed scores of tourists.
The bombing also may boost the arguments of top Pentagon officials who want to resume ties with Indonesia's military that Congress severed because of the army's systematic atrocities against civilians.
"This is the first and most powerful recognition that the battle against terrorism is not strictly limited to the Middle East or south Asia," said Kurt Campbell, a former Defense Department adviser now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Human rights worries in the short term will be overridden by national security concerns." 
The car bomb that exploded on the resort island of Bali on Saturday killed more than 180 people and forced Indonesia's government to acknowledge for the first time that al-Qaida is active in the southeast Asian archipelago. Some of Indonesia's neighbors, particularly Singapore, have complained that Indonesia has been reluctant to crack down on Islamic militants.
Americans killed: Two Americans were killed and four injured, the U.S. State Department said. U.S. authorities have not released any names, but one of the slain Americans was identified by family members as Deborah Snodgrass. Her hometown and other details were not immediately released.
Also confirmed dead today was Steven Brooks Webster, of Huntington Beach, Calif., according to a family friend in Newport Beach, Calif. The father of two was in Bali for a surfing vacation to celebrate his 41st birthday.
Former Nebraska All-America football player Jake Young, 34, remains unaccounted for. He was in Bali to play a final tournament with his rugby team from Hong Kong, said his father, Jacob Young. He was then planning to join his wife, Laura, and their 2-year-old son in the Kansas City area, he said. The young attorney had been working in Hong Kong for a London-based law firm.
Bush speaks: President Bush turned up the pressure yesterday on Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Bush said he planned to speak to Megawati about the attack.
"I want to make it clear to her that we need to work together to find those who murdered all those innocent people and bring them to justice," Bush said. "And I hope I hear the resolve of a leader that recognizes that any time terrorists take hold in a country it is going to weaken the country itself. There has to be a firm and deliberate desire to find the killers before they kill somebody else."
The comments suggest Bush is looking for results from the assistance the United States has pledged for Indonesia's anti-terrorism fight. Congress passed legislation this summer giving Indonesia's police force $16 million, including $12 million to set up a special anti-terrorism unit.
Indonesian fears: U.S. officials say they fear Indonesia, the world's largest predominantly Muslim country with 210 million people, could become a breeding ground for Islamic radicalism. With more than 13,000 islands spread across 3,000 miles, there are plenty of places to hide.
Indonesia has a long tradition of tolerance, and the Islam practiced there is among the most moderate strains in the world. But the country has been plagued by sporadic outbursts of violence -- often involving or fanned by the military -- over religious, ethnic or other divides.
Critics, including top officials in neighboring Singapore, say Indonesian officials have looked the other way when asked to go after Islamic extremists such as a group called Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been linked to al-Qaida. Jemaah Islamiyah's leader, Abu Bakr Bashir, remains a free man in Indonesia, despite calls from Singapore, Malaysia and the United States to arrest him.
Denials: Bashir denies any links to terrorism and says Jemaah Islamiyah doesn't exist. Indonesian authorities have said they do not have enough evidence to arrest Bashir, while U.S. officials say privately that Indonesia fears a political backlash if Bashir is jailed.
Indonesian authorities also inexplicably released an Islamic militant, Jafa Umar Thalib, earlier this year, just before he was to go to trial on charges of inciting violence against Christians. Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz raised eyebrows in May when he visited Thalib in jail, perhaps courting hard-line Muslim support ahead of 2004 national elections.






  


October 14, 2002, Monday CITY 



 INDONESIA HORROR RAISES FRESH FEARS 2 Americans die in terror strikes

 
WASHINGTON - The devastating weekend bombing of two Indonesian nightclubs packed with tourists - the latest in a string of terror attacks - has raised fears that Al Qaeda has regrouped and is planning a large-scale attack, a ranking senator said yesterday.
"There is a definite terrorist link here," said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"We don't know all the facts. Is it directly Al Qaeda? Is it an affiliated group? I believe this is the beginning of a lot more that we're going to see, perhaps in the U.S.," Shelby said. 
The attacks - which killed at least 183 people, including two Americans - came three days after the State Department issued a worldwide terror warning. There was no specific threat, but officials cited a string of recent attacks - including the bombing of a French tanker and the killing of a U.S. Marine in Kuwait.
On guard
Those incidents, taken together with recent taped warnings from Al Qaeda leaders and links between the terror network and smaller militant groups, have prompted officials and security experts to warn that Al Qaeda may strike again.
Asked on ABC's "This Week" if a major attack could be coming, Shelby said, "I think these are indications that a lot of things are coming together."
There was no proof that Osama Bin Laden's henchmen planted the two deadly bombs on Bali - or a third blast that went off near the island's U.S. consular office - but suspicion focused on Al Qaeda and its terror partner, Jemaah Islamiyah.
As FBI investigators headed to Indonesia to help in the investigation, the State Department ordered most government staff and their families out and urged Americans not to travel there.
President Bush called the attacks - coming on the second anniversary of Al Qaeda's deadly bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole - "a cowardly act."
"The world must confront this global menace, terrorism," Bush said. "And, we must call this despicable act by its rightful name, murder."
Before the attacks, there were signs that Indonesia was vulnerable to terrorists. Threats closed the U.S. Embassy in the capital of Jakarta last month and a grenade exploded outside.
Although neighboring countries have arrested scores of Jemaah Islamiyah militants, Indonesia has ignored U.S. pleas to move on the group that is seeking to build a regional Islamic empire.
No response
"This horrible incident has only made it that much more urgent that they find some way to deal with this problem," said Ralph Boyce, U.S. ambassador to Indonesia. "They are in the middle of doing that."
Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) said the attacks show the international reach of militants intent on hurting the U.S.
"This network of terrorists has expanded throughout the world, and we have to be ever vigilant, we have to be ever aggressive," Nickles told "Fox News Sunday."







 The Durham Herald Co. 


October 14, 2002 Monday  




 Blasts spark al-Qaida fears; 
Affiliated group also suspected in Indonesia attacks

 
BALI, Indonesia - Terrified tourists tried Sunday to flee this island paradise that turned into an inferno, with the death toll from a pair of bombings climbing to 188 and fears growing that al-Qaida has taken its terror campaign to the world's largest Muslim country.
Many of those killed by the two bombs that tore through a nightclub district on Bali island Saturday were Australians as well as other foreigners from Canada, Britain, Germany and Sweden. Two Americans were killed, while three were among the more than 300 people injured.
No one claimed responsibility for the bombings - the worst terrorist attack in Indonesia's history - but suspicion turned to al-Qaida and an affiliated group, Jemaah Islamiyah, which wants to establish a pan-Islamic state across Malaysia, Indonesia and the southern Philippines. It is accused of plotting to blow up the U.S. and other embassies in Singapore. 
In Washington, President Bush condemned the attack as "a cowardly act designed to create terror and chaos" and offered U.S. help in finding the perpetrators.
"The world must confront this global menace, terrorism," he said.
The attacks were on the second anniversary of the al-Qaida-linked attack against USS Cole off Yemen that left 17 sailors dead and took place amid signs of increasing terrorist activity that had led to the closure of U.S. embassies and renewed terror alerts for Americans.
The destruction started when a small homemade bomb exploded outside Paddy's Discotheque in the maze of clubs and bars on Kuta Beach, a popular haunt with young travelers. Shortly afterward, a huge blast from a bomb in a Toyota Kijang, a jeep-like vehicle, 30 yards down the street devastated the crowded Sari Club, a surfers' hangout.
A third, smaller bomb exploded outside the U.S. consular office. No one was injured in that blast.
The second blast ripped into the open-air bar, triggering a massive burst of flames that officials said was caused by the explosion of gas cylinders used for cooking. The explosion collapsed the roof of the flimsy structure, trapping revelers in flaming wreckage. The explosions and fire damaged about 20 buildings and devastated much of the block.
Identification of the dead was slow, since some were burned beyond recognition.
American Amos Libby, 25, felt himself lifted off his feet as he walked by the Sari Club as the bomb detonated.
"All the buildings in the vicinity just collapsed, cars overturned and debris from the buildings fell on them," he said, without giving his hometown. "I have never seen anything so horrible. There were so many people, 18 to 20 year olds, people in pieces all over the street."
Indonesian National Police Chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar called the it "the worst act of terror in Indonesia's history."
President Megawati Sukarnoputri flew to Bali and wept as she toured the wreckage. Asked about a possible link to al-Qaida, she said: "That will be continuously investigated to that this can be uncovered as soon as possible." She promised to cooperate with other nations to fight terror.
U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce told The Associated Press that it was not possible yet to pin the Bali attack on al-Qaida, but noted that increasing evidence in recent weeks has confirmed al-Qaida's presence in Indonesia and reaching out to local extremists.
"In recent weeks, we have been able to put an end to a year of speculation as to whether al-Qaida might be in Indonesia, or relocating to Indonesia, or using Indonesia as a base of operations, after the fall of Afghanistan," Boyce said.
He said three Americans were among the wounded but there was no confirmation by late Sunday that any Americans had been killed.
The United States and Indonesia's neighbors have urged Jakarta for months to pass an anti-terrorism law that has been languishing in the Parliament contending there is a strong al-Qaida presence here. Without the law, Indonesia says, security forces cannot arrest suspects without clear evidence they have committed a crime.
While its neighbors have arrested scores of militants from Jemaah Islamiyah, Jakarta has done little and denied that it is a haven for terrorists.
The U.S. Embassy was considering scaling back staff, though no decision had been taken. Americans were warned on the Embassy Web site to consider leaving the country.
Bush said the United States has offered Indonesia assistance "to help bring these murderers to justice," and a senior White House official said U.S. investigators already were at the scene.
In Denpasar, Bali's main city, the airport was thronged by stunned, mostly young travelers desperate to go home after the most terrifying night of their lives.






   


October 14, 2002 Monday



 Bali attack shocks travel industry as tourists cancel trips

 
The doors were hardly open Monday before Inland Valley travel agents began hearing from customers wanting to cancel travel to Bali and nearby destinations.
The nightclub bombings in Indonesia, the world's largestMuslim nation, are causing shocks all through the industry, which was only recently regaining some of the business it lost after Sept. 11, 2001.
Now travelers and tour operators are temporarily cancelingtrips there, forcing travel agents to find suitable alternatives. 
"People are definitely calling,' said Leroy Gaines of SanDimas-based Lunar Travel. "They're telling us they definitely do not want to go anywhere near that part of the world.'
State Department officials are urging Americans alreadythere to leave the popular resort island, and urging non-essential Americans to leave Indonesia. That has industry officials saying that the violence would likely strengthen travelers' desire to stay closer to home, a sentiment that gained force after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"Most people who are making travel plans on an electivebasis' - that is, anyone except business travelers - "will probably decide not to go to Bali right now,' said David Buda, executive vice president at Tzell Travel Group in New York. Instead, Buda expects to see more American travelers to exhibit "the stay-at-home syndrome,' or visit Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean.
Manager Terri Tully of Above & Beyond Travel in Upland saidshe is not advising customers to travel to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tahiti or Bali.
"We're saying they should put trips to that part of theworld on the back burner until things settle down,' she said. "We've had a few calls already.'
Owner Sue Barnett of Action Travel in Rancho Cucamonga saidBali isn't a big destination for her company, but she would be telling customers the same thing.
"I feel so sorry for the Australians,' she said. "Bali issort of like Australia's Hawaii. I can only imagine what it would be like if this had happened in Hawaii or Cancun.'
Bali is a popular destination for surfers, who travel thereduring hurricane season in search of massive waves. They can still be counted on, said John Dekker, manager of Carlson Wagonlit in Huntington Beach.
"These are people who look off the edge of the cliffanyway, so they're not going to let something like this stop them,' Dekker said. Dekker has five clients currently on a surfing trip in Bali and they do not plan to cut their travels short.
But for the most part, travel agents around the globe werecanceling upcoming trips to the Indonesian resort.
Club Med suspended travel to its Bali "village' for aweek. The Coral Gables, a Fla.-based company, is offering to send customers to a different resort through Oct. 20, or will allow them to rebook their trip for sometime in the future.
For the 600 Club Med vacationers already in Bali, "all theexcursions have been canceled,' a spokeswoman said.
All British tour operators, meanwhile, have canceled toursto Bali over the next few days and are offering penalty-free cancellations and alternative tours to affected clients. Britain's Foreign Office is warning Britons not to go to Bali at all and to avoid Indonesia except on essential business.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation and hasgotten a reputation as a dangerous place for travelers in recent years because of the rise of radical Islam there and around the world. Bali, however, is mostly Hindu and had always been considered relatively safe. That peaceful image has certainly been tarnished, although travel agents were hopeful it wouldn't ruin the island's all-important tourism industry.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.






   


October 14, 2002 Monday



 Two Americans confirmed dead in Bali bombing

 
BALI, Indonesia - With the grim task of identifying charred and mangled bodies barely under way, Indonesia's defense minister on Monday blamed Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network for this weekend's bombing that killed more than 180 people, with the first Americans identified among the dead on Monday.
Two Americans were killed and fourinjured, the U.S. State Department said. Indonesian government officials said 181 people died, although hospital workers put the total at 190. More than 300 people were injured. 
Only 39 victims have been identified.They included nine from Australia, eight from Indonesia, four from England, two each from the U.S., Sweden and Singapore, and one each from Ecuador, France, Germany, Holland and Korea.
"Many of the bodies will be hard ifnot impossible to identify because they are only bits and pieces or have been badly burned,' said a spokeswoman at Bali's Sanglah Hospital.
The Indonesian government acknowledgedfor the first time Monday that al-Qaida is active on its soil - setting the stage for a possible crackdown on extremists
"The Bali bomb blast is linked toal-Qaida, with the cooperation of local terrorists,' Indonesian Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil told reporters after a cabinet meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital.
[STORY CAN END HERE]
The initial investigation indicatedthat the bomb was made up of a large amount of high explosive and a flammable substance similar to napalm that apparently caused the burns suffered by many victims, an Indonesian official said.
The explosive, he said, may have comefrom the same stockpile that Jemaa Islamiyah militants planned to use to build seven huge truck bombs to attack mostly U.S. targets in Singapore last year.
That plot was foiled, but Singaporeanand Malaysian officials never found as much as 500 kilograms of the explosive that were to be used in the Singapore attacks, the intelligence official said.
Police in Singapore, Malaysia, thePhilippines and Indonesia have connected Jemaa Islamiyah to other bombings throughout Southeast Asia. But the devices planted in those attacks were smaller and less sophisticated than the one used in the nightclub bombing.
Jemaa Islamiyah wants to unite theregion's 230 million Muslims in a super state comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the southern portions of Thailand and the Philippines.
Jemaa Islamiyah's alleged leader, anIndonesian cleric who denies any terrorist network exists, says he was not involved in Saturday's bombing, the most deadly terrorist assault since the U.S. attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Abu Bakar Baashir, who runs an Islamicschool on the island of Java, has accused the United States of instigating the Bali bombing "to create the impression that international Islamic terrorists were present in Indonesia.'
Ralph Boyce, the U.S. ambassador toIndonesia, denounced Baashir's allegation as "outrageous and totally unfounded.' He accused the cleric of spreading "a very dangerous rumor.'
U.S. officials said the Bushadministration has for months pressed Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri to crack down on Baashir and Jemaa Islamiyah. But Megawati has refused, partly because she fears a mutiny by Muslim extremists within her own security forces, the officials said.
Bush, who called Australian PrimeMinister John Howard on Sunday night to offer condolences for the Australian deaths, said he planned to call Megawati to urge her to move against Indonesian terrorist groups.
The State Department on Monday warnedAmericans to avoid Indonesia. Non-essential U.S. employees at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and consulate in Surabaya will be leaving the country beginning this week, said embassy spokesman Stanley Harsha.
[EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE]
At a makeshift morgue behind thehospital, volunteers and paramedics on Monday night packed bodies and body parts into plastic bags with ice, and then loaded them into an insulated truck to try to slow decay and reduce the stench. But the smell of death hung heavy in the hot, humid air as a large entourage of national officials paid their respects at the scene.
Many fear that Bali's tourism-basedeconomy may be devastated by the attack, which shattered the perception of the island as a pleasure haven on the sprawling Indonesian archipelago, many parts of which in recent years have been rocked by sectarian or separatist violence. The Indonesian economy has been in a severe slump ever since the 1997 Asian financial crisis.







   
 

October 14, 2002 Monday  
  



 TERROR IN BALI: THE CONSEQUENSES; 
Bombing in Bali Seen as Opening New Front in Fight on Terror

 
The blast that killed nearly 200 people on the Indonesian resort island of Bali this weekend is a different type of terrorism from what the Bush administration has campaigned against, and will open a new geographic front in that campaign, Western officials said yesterday. 
     The target was not an American embassy, military outpost or financial institution that would represent American power, of the sort that terrorists have attacked in the past. Rather, it was a nightclub whose revelers were mostly Europeans and Australians; indeed, Indonesians were often turned away at the door. 
 President Bush called the attack "heinous," and Prime Minister John Howard of Australia said it was "an act of barbarity."  
The State Department ordered all dependents of American diplomats in Indonesia to leave the country, along with all nonessential personnel, a department official said last night. 
The attack puts intense pressure on the Indonesian government to face the terrorist threat at home more seriously, Western officials said. 
For months, American and Singaporean officials have been saying Al Qaeda cells were hiding in Indonesia, a Muslim nation with porous borders and weak law enforcement. The attack confirms those warnings, which the Indonesian government has until now ignored, Western officials said.
Prime Minister Howard of Australia said, "We would like to see a maximum effort on the part of the Indonesian government to deal with the terrorist problem within their own borders." He added, "It's been a problem for a long time."
The attack killed mostly foreigners, and an early tally of the dead who have been identified included at least 15 Australians, 3 Singaporeans, 2 Britons, several others from elsewhere in Europe and one Ecuadorean. Two Americans were reported to be among the dead, and three Americans were wounded.
The outpouring of condemnation of the attack and sympathy for the victims echoes that which followed the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon 13 months ago. 
"This will be the event that changes Indonesia's perception of terrorism like 9/11 did ours," a senior Bush administration official said. 
With cold calculation and meticulous planning, including reconnaissance, the bombers chose an unusual target, one that was certain to sow fear far beyond Bali, said a Western security analyst in Jakarta.
It was on a faraway island, primarily populated by Hindus, with a reputation for tranquillity, and popular as a resort with backpackers and the wealthy alike. 
It was one of the deadliest attacks on civilians anywhere in the world in the last decade, one that seemed intended to undercut feelings of safety even in a remote enclave. 
The response will be a renewed determination against international terrorism, several world leaders made clear yesterday. The search for Al Qaeda operatives so far has been focused in Pakistan, and to a lesser degree in Yemen, with the cooperation of those governments. 
"There is a definite terrorist link here," Senator Richard C. Shelby, senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said yesterday. He was briefed Sunday morning by the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.
Speaking on the ABC News program "This Week," Mr. Shelby said: "We don't know all the facts. Is it directly Al Qaeda? Is it an affiliated group?" 
"I believe that this is the beginning of a lot more that we're going to see," he added. 
In Indonesia, the United States Embassy was bracing for more attacks, and other governments were responding similarly, the Western security analyst said.
Although lacking any immediate evidence, American and Australian officials concluded that based on earlier intelligence gathering and the nature of the blast, the bombing was probably the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional fundamentalist Islamic organization based in Indonesia and headed by Abu Bakar Bashir. Many of the group's members have trained at Al Qaeda camps in Indonesia, they said. 
"As far as I'm concerned this is Jemaah Islamiyah, in some form," said the security analyst, who has worked in Indonesia for many years.
"A lot of planning went into this, into the preparations and execution," he said. "This is not the work of some weirdo radical group."
"This bomb was beyond the expertise of Indonesian terrorists working alone," he said. The blast compared in magnitude to the attack on two American Embassies in Africa in 1998, he said.
Singaporean intelligence officials said in a recent interview that there were not many explosives experts who knew how to make and detonate bombs capable of destroying large buildings, and that Jemaah Islamiyah had at least two experts who had been trained at Al Qaeda camps. 
Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said Australia had been worried about an attack on Australians in Indonesia since Jemaah Islamiyah plotted to blow up the Australian Embassy in Singapore in December. That plot that was foiled when the Singaporean authorities rounded up a score of suspected members of the group. 
He added that Jemaah Islamiyah had "financial as well as personnel links to Al Qaeda."
When Australian troops were in East Timor, which is predominately Christian, in support of that country's transition to independence from Indonesia, Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader, publicly accused Australia of being on a crusade to break up Muslim Indonesia.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain said there was "no question this is a terrorist outrage." The British government advised its citizens to stay away from Bali and offered assistance to the Indonesian president, Megawati Sukarnoputri.
In an open letter to her, the French president, Jacques Chirac, offered to provide "all possible assistance to identify the perpetrators of these ignoble deeds and their commanders, and to bring them before justice."
The pressure will now be on Mrs. Megawati to cooperate with other governments and to crack down on the Islamist fundamentalists at home, to arrest Mr. Bashir and to mount a serious search for Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who Singaporean intelligence says is the operational head of Jemaah Islamiyah.
Mr. Hambali has pledged personal fealty to Mr. bin Laden, a senior Singaporean intelligence official said in a recent interview. After the suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members were arrested in Singapore in December, Mr. Hambali "was so angry that he vowed revenge," the official said.
Mr. Hambali, an Indonesian national who lived and operated in Malaysia alongside Mr. Bashir, has not been seen since December. Singaporean officials believe that he has been hiding in Indonesia, a view shared by American officials, though with somewhat less certitude.
The attack will strengthen those in Mrs. Megawati's government who want to take a stronger stand on terrorism and against Mr. Bashir, Western officials said. But she will still have to face her vice president, Hamzah Haz, and his allies who have been open admirers of Mr. Bashir.      




3

   


October 14, 2002, Monday



 OSAMA EYED IN BALI BLASTS - TOLL SOARS, BUSH RIPS COWARDS'

 
President Bush yesterday slammed the "cowardly" car-bomb attacks that killed 188 people and injured hundreds on the island of Bali - as experts fingered an al Qaeda offshoot for the latest terror atrocity.
Bomb blasts ripped through two Kura Beach nightclubs on Saturday night, turning the packed hot spots into fiery deathtraps, raining blood and body parts through the chaotic streets. The bombings were the deadliest terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001. 
Most of the dead and missing are young Australians who traveled to the popular tropical paradise in Indonesia to party.
The casualties also included two Americans missing and feared dead. One is Jake Young, 34, a former All-American football player at Nebraska, the Omaha World-Herald reported. The other was identified by The Los Angeles Times as Steven Brooks Webster, 41, of Huntington Beach, Calif.
Three Americans were injured. The Times identified one of them as William Steven Cabler, 42, of Newport Beach, Calif.
It's believed Canadians, Britons and Swedes were also among those killed.
An FBI team is en route to Bali to help with the investigation.
So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the massacre, but one U.S. official said there was a "definite" terrorist link. A radical Islamic group known as Jemaah Islamiyah, which has ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, is heavily entrenched in Indonesia.
"There are a number of reasons that you have to say it might be them [al Qaeda], but we don't know that," another U.S. official said. "They've been in Indonesia . . . They're all running from Afghanistan. They've got to go someplace."
The latest terrorist outrage comes on the second anniversary of the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 American sailors.
Outside the rubble of the Sari nightclub yesterday, one charred corpse after another was taken to the morgue as people scoured the resort for loved ones. Others fled Bali, fearing more attacks.
Three bombs rocked the resort area in rapid succession
The second bomb exploded at a club 30 yards from Sari.
The third blew up near the U.S. consulate. There were no casualties in that explosion.
Bush yesterday vowed to fight "this global menace," calling the attacks "a cowardly act designed to create terror and chaos."
"We must together challenge and defeat the idea that wanton killing of innocents advances any cause or supports any aspirations," Bush said. "And we must call this despicable act by its rightful name: murder."
The State Department issued an advisory to Americans against traveling to Indonesia and recommended that U.S. citizens now there leave. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta said it was sending non-essential personnel home and "re-evaluating . . . its presence in Indonesia."
The attacks intensified calls for Indonesia to crack down on radical Muslim rebels. The U.S. and Singapore have been pressing the world's most populous Muslim nation to arrest cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, leader of Jemaah Islamiyah and a figure believed to be a bin Laden ally.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard also called for a crackdown. He described the slaughter as "wicked, cowardly, barbarous, despicable and brutal."
Shockingly, Bashir blamed the United States, saying, "It would be impossible for Indonesians to do it. Indonesians don't have such powerful explosives. I think maybe the U.S. is behind the bombings because they always say Indonesia is part of the terrorist network."






  
  


October 14, 2002 Monday



 Southeast Asia ripens as target

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- While America prepares for a possible war with Iraq and U.S. troops press the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a new terrorist threat to the United States and its allies is spreading across Southeast Asia.
That threat came into full focus on Saturday night, when a devastating bomb on the island of Bali claimed the lives of at least 187 people, including many foreign tourists. Although no one claimed responsibility for that attack, it seemed to bear out earlier warnings.
The U.S. embassies in Indonesia and Malaysia closed temporarily last month after a suspected terrorist began telling intelligence officials that a regional Islamic terrorist group planned to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 bombings by attacking the American Embassy in Jakarta and other Western targets in the region. 
It is only the latest evidence that Southeast Asia -- with a large Muslim population; religious tensions; grinding poverty; corrupt, inefficient or authoritarian regimes and a legacy of Western colonialism -- has become fertile ground for bin Laden's brand of Islamic extremism.
From Malaysia through Singapore and across Indonesia to the southern Philippines, Islamic militants who once concentrated on local causes have formed regional terrorist networks with help from al-Qaida, bin Laden's terrorist network. Over the past two years, they have planted bombs in churches and train stations that have killed dozens and wounded hundreds in Indonesia and the Philippines. In Malaysia, they helped plan last year's Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
In Singapore late last year, they schemed to set off seven huge truck bombs simultaneously, each bigger than the bomb that blew up the Oklahoma City federal building, mostly directed at American targets, including the embassy.
Al-Qaida instigated that plan because "it wanted to show it could still throw a punch," said the U.S. ambassador to Singapore, Franklin Lavin. But the thwarted plot was to have been carried out by secret local cells of a regional terrorist network called Jemaah Islamiyah, according to Singapore authorities.
U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the group was suspected of planning anniversary attacks in Jakarta and elsewhere. They said the Bush administration was considering whether it had enough evidence to add the group and its leader to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
In an interview in August with Knight Ridder at a religious school he runs in Solo, Indonesia, on the island of Java, the alleged leader, Abu Bakar Baasyir, denied with a wide smile that he's the head of Jemaah Islamiya.
The soft-spoken 63-year-old cleric said the terrorist network, which authorities in several countries blame for a series of attacks, didn't exist. The allegations that he oversees an Islamic terrorist network are "part of a global strategy of the United States against Islam."
But his dark eyes shone as he praised bin Laden for "trying to protect Islam." They shone again when he took obvious delight in the Sept. 11 attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in the United States.
"We believe this to be the curse of God to punish the arrogance of America," he said. "Not only did Osama bin Laden feel happy about the attacks. I also was happy and I believe many Muslims in Indonesia were happy in seeing the attacks. But that does not mean that they were responsible for the attacks."
"Zionist Jews" were responsible, Baasyir said, a "small but dominant community in America."
A photograph of bin Laden hangs on the wall of the clinic at the school, which is building a big addition to accommodate more students from the island of Java and beyond. A placard on the administration building declares: "Jihad is our way. Death in the way of Allah is our greatest aspiration."
Jemaah Islamiyah "is operating as the branch office in Southeast Asia for al-Qaida," said a Western diplomat in Jakarta.
The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the group as "shadowy" and "decentralized," a web of numerous small, secret cells spread across several countries.
Members of Jemaah Islamiyah, like other Southeast Asian militants, hope to create an Islamic superstate that would unify the region's 230 million Muslims by fusing what are now Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the predominantly Muslim southern portions of Thailand and the Philippines.
Baasyir and other militant clerics want to make Islam in Indonesia more "pure." Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, and most of the Muslims who live there are abangans, the name for Muslims who have blended Islam with Hinduism, Buddhism and other beliefs. The overwhelming majority are politically moderate. Still, many see the U.S.-led war on terrorism as an assault on Islam.
"Militant Islam feeds upon the insecurities and alienation that globalization generates among the less successful," Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew told a gathering of international security experts in May. "And because globalization is largely U.S.-led and driven, militant Islam identifies America and Americans as the threat to Islam."
Lee linked the regional threat directly to bin Laden, who he said "successfully twined together a broad range of local groups, each with its own history of struggle for its own objectives, into a common universal jihad against the enemies of Islam."
Among the groups Lee cited as having been co-opted by al-Qaida are the Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia, and Jemaah Islamiyah, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf, the latter two based in the largely Muslim southern Philippines.






   


October 14, 2002, Monday, FIRST EDITION



 Attack comes amid signs of terrorists regrouping

 
The State Department on Sunday night advised Americans living or working in Indonesia to consider leaving as investigators sought those responsible for a nightclub bombing that killed more than 180 people on the island of Bali.
Saturday's bombing occurred on the second anniversary of the al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. sailors in Yemen. That connection led to speculation that the terrorist network was behind this weekend's attack, which killed at least two Americans and wounded three others.
 
"The world must confront this global menace, terrorism," President Bush said in a statement. "And, we must call this despicable act by its rightful name, murder." The State Department told non-essential U.S. government personnel and family members to leave.
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said he would "not be surprised if we find this incident in Bali was an al-Qaeda attack." Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, receives highly classified briefings, but it was not known whether he had been briefed on the Bali explosion. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country.
No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion. The club was filled with foreign tourists. Thirteen Australians were among the dead, and 110 were injured. More than 200 others are unaccounted for.
Administration and congressional officials said that in recent days they have seen worrisome signals -- like those that preceded the Sept. 11 attacks -- that may indicate another major terrorist strike is looming. An attack on a French oil tanker off Yemen, a shooting that killed a U.S. Marine in Kuwait, and the release of threatening tapes by senior al-Qaeda leaders suggest that al-Qaeda may be regrouping.
And the bombing on the vacation island bore an al-Qaeda hallmark, simultaneous attacks: a car bomb outside the club, another bomb nearby and a third outside a U.S. consular office.
Graham, who is co-chairing a House-Senate inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks, was sharply critical at a -sponsored debate Sunday of the Bush administration's progress in the war on terror. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who also spoke, said U.S. agencies were hampered by "bureaucratic inertia."
The FBI hasn't responded aggressively enough to the "probability" of additional attacks, Graham said. He plans to press FBI Director Robert Mueller on the issue at a hearing Thursday.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to respond to Graham's comments.






   


October 14, 2002, Monday, 



 Attack comes amid signs of terrorists regrouping

 
The State Department on Sunday night urged Americans to defer travel to Indonesia and advised those already there to leave as investigators sought those responsible for a nightclub bombing that killed at least 185 people on the resort island of Bali.
Saturday's bombing occurred on the second anniversary of the al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. sailors in Yemen. That connection led to speculation that the terrorist network was behind the weekend attack, which killed at least two Americans and wounded three others in the world's most populous Muslim country.
 
The State Department ordered non-essential U.S. government personnel and family members to leave now.
The United States and other Western governments have been critical of Indonesian leaders for what they say is a failure to crack down on Muslim militants with possible al-Qaeda links.
"The world must confront this global menace, terrorism," President Bush said in a statement offering Indonesia assistance. "And, we must call this despicable act by its rightful name, murder." Some U.S. investigators arrived Sunday in Bali, U.S. officials said.
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said he would "not be surprised if we find this incident in Bali was an al-Qaeda attack." Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, receives highly classified briefings, but it was not known whether he had been briefed on the Bali explosion.
No one has claimed responsibility. The club was crowded with tourists. Fourteen Australians were among the dead. At least 300 people were injured.
Administration and congressional officials say they have seen signals -- like those that preceded the Sept. 11 attacks -- that may indicate another major terrorist strike is looming. An attack on a French oil tanker off Yemen, a shooting that killed a U.S. Marine in Kuwait and the release of threatening tapes by al-Qaeda leaders suggest that al-Qaeda may be regrouping.
Graham, who is co-chairing a House-Senate inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks, was critical at a -sponsored debate Sunday of the Bush administration's progress in the war on terror. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who also spoke, said U.S. agencies were hampered by "bureaucratic inertia."
The FBI hasn't responded aggressively enough to the "probability" of additional attacks, Graham said. He plans to press FBI Director Robert Mueller on the issue at a hearing Thursday.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to respond to Graham's comments.







  



October 14, 2002 Monday  




 Death Toll in Bali Attack Rises to 188; 
Most Victims Were Foreigners; 
Terror Network Suspected

 
 The death toll rose to 188 today in the aftermath of a devastating car bomb attack Saturday that turned several teeming Bali nightclubs into deadly infernos. The attack brought new demands for Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, to crack down on Islamic militants. 
 No one asserted responsibility for the attack. A top Indonesian official said the government had a suspicion about who was behind the bombing but declined to provide details. Several foreign diplomats said they suspected it was the work of the Jemaah Islamiah, an Islamic militant network in Southeast Asia that intelligence officials say is linked to al Qaeda. 
 At least three-quarters of the victims were foreigners, packed into crowded bars in the entertainment district of Kuta Beach. The buildings burned and collapsed in a series of fires and explosions set off by a bomb hidden in a sport-utility vehicle.  
 Among the dead were tourists celebrating after the opening of a rugby tournament. They included at least 14 from Australia; others were from Canada, Britain, Germany and Sweden. The State Department said two Americans were known dead and three were among the nearly 300 injured. 
 The State Department tonight ordered the departure of all non-emergency U.S. government officials and their families from Indonesia, and is advising all American citizens in the country to consider leaving, a department spokeswoman said. 
 In Washington, President Bush condemned the attack as "a cowardly act designed to create terror and chaos." Indonesia's national police chief, Da'I Bachtiar, called it "the worst act of terrorism in Indonesia's history." Australian Prime Minister John Howard declared, "The war against terrorism must go on with unrelenting vigor and an unconditional commitment." 
 Australia dispatched passenger jets and Hercules C-130 military transport planes to evacuate frightened tourists and the injured, and Australian Embassy officials said an estimated 120 injured people had been evacuated to Australia on military and commercial flights. Bali hospitals reported shortages of some medicines to treat the wounded. 
 The attack seemed to signal a shift in tactics by militant groups, diplomats said. They noted that earlier attacks were aimed at embassies and U.S. Navy vessels, including a threat that prompted the closing of the U.S. Embassy for six days last month. 
 But the Bali attack was aimed at civilians. "It's clear that whoever's behind these attacks is branching out to softer targets," a U.S. Embassy official said. "That's why we're concerned about it." 
 "The fact of the matter is, groups are targeting Westerners and using the most outrageous [means] to target foreigners," U.S. Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce said. 
 The attack came on the second anniversary of the bombing of the destroyer USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, in which 17 sailors died. In other attacks Saturday, police reported bombings near the U.S. Consulate in Bali and at the Philippine Consulate in the Indonesian city of Manado. No injuries were reported in either incident. 
 After an emergency cabinet meeting, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri flew here to see the devastation, which was centered at a popular nightspot, the Sari Club. 
 According to police, the attack came at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday, when a small, homemade bomb went off in front of a disco, Paddy's. That was followed by a huge blast across the street in front of the Sari Club. The second bomb, hidden in a Toyota Kijang, ripped into the open-air bar, triggering a massive burst of flames caused by gas cylinders used for cooking. Subsequent fires and explosions flattened about 20 buildings and much of the block, trapping victims under flaming debris. 
 "This bombing is a warning to all of us that terrorism is a real danger and potential threat to national security," Megawati said. "The Indonesian government will continue cooperation with the international community to overcome terrorism." 
 Indonesia has been under growing pressure to deal with Islamic militancy, and the attack Saturday brought new demands from abroad for action. Although Indonesia's Muslim population is overwhelmingly moderate, U.S. officials have said that the country's geography -- 17,000 islands offering myriad ports of entry that are difficult to control -- makes it easy for militants to penetrate and operate away from official scrutiny. Bali, a largely Hindu enclave, had been considered immune to political violence. 
 Megawati's chief security minister vowed that the attack in Bali would force the Indonesian government to strengthen its efforts against terrorism. "This incident has created a turning point, and from now on, the government will not be able to entertain doubts about harsh action," the minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, told Indonesian reporters, adding that the government had suspicions about who was responsible but would not provide details. 
 Boyce, the U.S. ambassador, told the Associated Press that although it was not possible to pin the attack on al Qaeda, there has been growing evidence that the network of Osama bin Laden has been reaching out to local militants. 
 "In recent weeks, we have been able to put to an end a year of speculation as to whether al Qaeda might be in Indonesia, or relocating to Indonesia, or using Indonesia as a base of operations, after the fall of Afghanistan," Boyce said. 
 Howard, the Australian prime minister, said: "We would like to see a maximum effort on the part of the Indonesian government to deal with the terrorist problem within their own borders. It's been a problem for a long time." 
 Jusuf Wanandi, founder of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, said Megawati's government must now act "for their own survival and for the republic's survival." Failure to do so "will damage the credibility of Indonesia." He added, "If she does not make a real effort to combat terrorism, the number one backlash will be from the international community." 
 Australia said it was sending an investigative team, including forensic specialists, to assist the Indonesians. The United States dispatched a regional security officer from the embassy in Jakarta and an FBI agent from Singapore to help, officials said. 
[On Monday, Indonesian government officials said they welcome foreign investigative assistance if it is coordinated by the Indonesians. Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, the armed forces chief, said government officials would discuss how to coordinate their intelligence efforts, now run independently by the military, the police and the state intelligence agency.] 
 Before the Bali bombing, the United States had been urging Indonesia to investigate some earlier attacks more vigorously. In particular, U.S. officials want to see police actively pursue a Sept. 23 grenade explosion outside a U.S. Embassy house in central Jakarta. Indonesian and Western officials said the blast was a bungled attempt by Islamic militants to attack a U.S. target. The police have dismissed the grenade explosion as a debt-collection effort gone awry, unrelated to terrorism. 
After the blast in Bali, the State Department said it was recalling nonessential diplomatic personnel. "These measures reflect our assessment of increased security concerns in Indonesia arising as a result of the most recent bombings," spokeswoman Jo-Anne Prokopowicz said. 
 The United States has also issued a travel warning advising Americans to defer travel to Indonesia, she said. The embassy in Jakarta and consulate in Surabaya will remain open, though they may closed occasionally for security reasons, she added.  
 The last time the embassy sent staff members home was during the 1998 riots that led to President Suharto's downfall. 
 The withdrawal of U.S. diplomats could further sour the confidence of investors and enthusiasm of tourists for Indonesia, economists said. The Indonesian economy is already struggling to recover from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and tourism, a crucial component of the economy, was dealt a major setback by the Saturday attack on an island that offers tropical beaches, lush forests and a mystical aura. 







  



October 14, 2002 Monday  




 The Bali Bombing

 
THE DEATH toll from Saturday night's bombing on the Indonesian resort island of Bali makes this latest act of terrorism the worst of its kind worldwide since the Sept. 11 attacks in America. More than 180 people were killed and more than 300 wounded in the bomb explosion outside of the tourist-packed nightclub. It was, said the country's national police chief, "the worst act of terror in Indonesia's history." The explosion was not, however, the first despicable act of terrorism on Indonesian soil. As walls of flame were blocking the escape of frightened nightclub patrons, another bomb was exploding near a U.S. consular office in the Bali capital city of Denpasar. On the same evening, a small bomb exploded outside another discotheque, and a small handmade bomb broke windows of the Philippine consulate on another Indonesian island. Last month, a grenade was exploded during the early morning hours in a vehicle in front of an unoccupied U.S. building in Jakarta. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is becoming a haven for terrorists, both home-grown and, as many suspect, the al Qaeda network.  
It should not have taken a deadly inferno to demonstrate to President Megawati Sukarnoputri's government that stronger action must be taken against the extremists now operating nearly at will in Indonesia. That a strong anti-terrorism law is bottled up in parliament underscores the lack of official resolve in confronting a danger and threat to Indonesia and her neighbors that grow worse with each passing day. There is no accommodating Jemaah Islamiyah, the militant Indonesian group with ties to al Qaeda and its dream of a pan-Islamic state across the region. Either local extremists and al Qaeda are sought out and fought, or Indonesia will become the base of operations for global terrorism and a scourge to its Southeast Asian neighbors. 
The Saturday bombings, coming as they did two years to the day after the USS Cole was bombed in a Yemeni port, are a reminder that Western interests, particularly American interests, are always in the crosshairs of terrorists. The attacks are also a sobering reminder that the war against terrorism is in its early stages, that more attacks against American interests and targets can be expected and that to the extent this country becomes distracted from the overriding demand to break the back of terrorism, we do so at our own peril. 







  



October 14, 2002 Monday  




 Bali Bombing May Represent New Wave Of Al Qaeda Strikes

 
 For the last month, the level of terrorist threat against Americans at home and overseas has remained higher than it was around Sept. 11, but U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to narrow the threat to particular geographic locations and did not detect any heightened terrorist activity preceding Saturday's deadly bombing in Indonesia, U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday. 
 The perpetrators of the attack on Bali have not been identified, but U.S. officials said it appeared that the bombing represents the latest in a new wave of attacks being carried out or directed by a partially intact al Qaeda leadership and their sympathizers. 
 CIA stations around the world and foreign intelligence agencies working more closely with their American counterparts than at any time in recent history have received a flood of information about threats to Americans. But the information is usually so general or cryptic that it cannot be used to thwart a specific act.  
 "This has been coming in for a while now; people have been warning of all kinds of attacks," said a U.S. official with access to daily intelligence reporting. 
 A recorded call-to-arms broadcast on the al-Jazeera network Tuesday by the second-ranking al Qaeda leader, Ayman Zawahiri, threatened attacks "on America and its allies." The tape was released one day after an audiotape of Osama bin Laden was aired and in the midst of a string of attacks of a level unseen since Sept. 11, 2001. 
 They include what is believed to be a terrorist bombing Oct. 6 on a French oil tanker near Yemen, the shooting death of a Marine in Kuwait on Oct. 8, the bombing death of an Army Special Forces soldier Oct. 2 in the Philippines and other recent attacks against French and German targets in the Middle East. Law enforcement officials also have not ruled out the possibility that the Washington area sniper attacks, which have killed eight people and wounded two others, are connected to international terrorism. 
 The ranking member of the U.S. intelligence committee, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), said yesterday he believed the world may be witnessing a second wave of attacks by a reinvigorated al Qaeda. But, he added, the attacks are likely "to manifest themselves in a different way" because the organization is smaller and operating in a more decentralized fashion. 
 Shelby, who is regularly briefed by intelligence officials, said the level of "chatter," or communications being picked up from suspected terrorists and cells around the world, indicates the likelihood of more attacks, including large-scale ones, possibly on U.S. soil. He said the Indonesia attack was not surprising. "We know there are cells there," he said. 
 But, he added, the Bali bombing should be understood "in the context of recent events," other bombings in Yemen, Indonesia and elsewhere. "I'm sure there will be more." 
Intelligence officials said they did not know who was behind the Bali bombing in which at least 180 people died but were certain its aim was to kill westerners and hurt the robust western-based tourism on the lush, largely Hindu island.  
 The Bali blast occurred on the second anniversary of the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen sailors died in the attack. The Cole's destruction has a key link to Indonesia: It was organized in part by Riduan Isamuddin, a key leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Asian version of al Qaeda. 
 After the Cole attack, Isamuddin, also known as "Hambali," fled Malaysia to Indonesia. Even after U.S. officials helped Indonesia locate Hambali, the Indonesian authorities did little to apprehend him and may have tipped him off to the search, a knowledgeable official said. Hambali fled and is believed to be in Pakistan.  
Indonesia's approach to Hambali is representative of its mostly hands-off approach to terrorist groups inside the country, which is the largest Muslim nation in the world.  
As a result, said U.S. officials and Asia experts, Indonesia has become fertile ground for launching terrorist attacks because it remains one of the few countries that have been unwilling to clamp down on domestic terrorist groups with known links to al Qaeda. As the worldwide manhunt for al Qaeda members continues, the organization has turned to Indonesia not only as a refuge but also as a platform from which to kill Americans and other westerners, these officials said. 
 "The Indonesians have steadfastly avoided doing anything with the domestic groups," said Robert Gelbard, who was U.S. ambassador to Indonesia until fall 2001. "There has been an utter lack of political will" from Jakarta. 
Gelbard and other officials said Indonesian authorities have been "grudgingly" willing to apprehend foreign-born suspected terrorists, but neither the government nor the powerful, semi-autonomous Indonesian military have been willing to arrest many Indonesians suspected of terrorist activities. In part, Indonesia authorities fear a backlash, Gelbard said.  
 The U.S. embassies in Jakarta and a half-dozen other Southeast Asian cities were temporarily closed last Sept. 11 because intelligence agencies had detected a heightened threat of attack. 
 Yesterday, President Bush called the Bali attack "a cowardly act designed to create terror and chaos. We must together challenge and defeat the idea that the wanton killing of innocents advances any cause or supports any aspirations." 
 On CBS's "Face the Nation" yesterday, Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D), said there was no evidence linking the Washington area sniper shootings to international terrorism. "I do not, nor have I heard any suggestion from anyone that this is a formal terrorist organization in that sense," he said. "I will tell you, however, the net impact in many ways is the same, in that it brings terror into the communities and the individuals." 






  


October 13, 2002, Sunday  



 BALI CAR BOMB KILLS 170   Qaeda link seen in carnage

 
A massive car bomb incinerated two nightclubs packed with tourists in the Indonesian resort of Bali last night - killing at least 170 people, wounding more than 250 and sparking fears of Al Qaeda terrorism.
A nearly simultaneous smaller explosion caused minor damage 300 feet from a U.S. consular office on the island. Hours earlier, a blast blew out three windows at the Philippine Consulate in the port city of Manado. 
There was no immediate claim of responsibility - but the horrific attack took place on the two-year anniversary of Al Qaeda's bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen.
"This is the worst act of terror in Indonesia's history," Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said in Jakarta.
As rescue workers battled flames and combed through the rubble, the death toll mounted by the hour.
"Seventy-five percent are foreigners," Sanga Hospital spokesman Dr. Puta Putra Wisade told Reuters.
It was unclear whether Americans were among the dead. Many of the casualties were from Australia, with others thought to be from Britain, New Zealand and Sweden.
The White House said it was monitoring the situation. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta recently issued a warning about possible attacks on Americans by Muslim extremists.
Last night's blasts underscored concern that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has become a haven for terrorists, including Al Qaeda operatives.
'Blinding light'
The militant Abu Sayyaf group, which operates in the southern Philippines and has Al Qaeda ties, uses Indonesia as a way station. The Jemaah Islamiyah group, which aims to create an Islamic state in Southeast Asia, also may be based there.
But while the rest of Indonesia has been hit by violence in recent years, Bali, which is mostly Hindu, was protected from the unrest - until last night.
The bomb that rocked Katu Beach exploded around 11:30 p.m., when the beachfront was jammed with weekend revelers, many of them tourists.
Some witnesses reported hearing two blasts, a smaller one followed moments later by a massive explosion that unleashed an inferno.
Flames engulfed the Sari and and Padi nightclubs, which face each other on the commercial strip - but the Sari took the brunt of the explosion.
British tourist Matt Noyce saw a "blinding light."
"There was just complete panic in the bar, with lots of people diving to the door trying to scramble over each other," he told the BBC. "Outside it was awful. It was like a scene you'd see from Vietnam."
The walking wounded stumbled out of the wreckage and past dozens of wrecked shops and charred cars.
Melbourne tourist Martin Lyons was walking toward the clubs when the bomb went off.
"Basically, we were just confronted with masses of people running towards us up the street," he said. "It was just horrific.
"It's nothing quite like anything I've ever seen - there was more blood, the smell of burnt skin and the pain that they were in - you can't really put that into words."
Several Australian football clubs were in the Sari when it was leveled.
"The place was packed, and it went up within a millisecond," Simon Quayle, a coach from Perth, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
After he escaped, he sent his wife a text message by cell phone.
"I can't believe I'm alive," it said.






  


October 13, 2002, Sunday CITY 



 CARNAGE IN BALI Possible Qaeda bomb kills 110

 
A car bomb ripped through a nightclub packed with tourists in the Indonesian resort of Bali last night - killing at least 110 people, wounding 180 and sparking fears of Al Qaeda terrorism.
Hospital sources said the death toll was as high as 150.
A simultaneous smaller explosion caused minor damage 300 feet from a U.S. consular office on the island. Hours earlier, a blast blew out three windows at the Philippine Consulate in the port city of Manado. 
It was unknown whether the three bombings were linked, and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
"This is the worst act of terror in Indonesia's history," Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said in Jakarta.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the attack was carefully coordinated.
"It clearly looks like an attack against foreign interests," he said.
As rescue workers battled flames and combed through the rubble, the death toll mounted by the hour.
"The bodies just keep arriving here," a morgue worker told Agence France-Presse. "It's difficult to identify them, but most of them are foreigners."
It was unclear whether Americans were among the dead. Many of the casualties were from Australia, with others thought to be from Britain, New Zealand and Sweden.
The White House said it was monitoring the situation. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta recently issued a warning about possible attacks on Americans by Muslim extremists.
Last night's blasts underscored concern that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has become a haven for terrorists, including Al Qaeda operatives.
'Blinding light'
The militant Abu Sayyaf group, which operates out of the Philippines and has Al Qaeda ties, uses Indonesia as a way station. The Jemaah Islamiyah group, which aims to create an Islamic state in Southeast Asia, also may be based there.
But while the rest of Indonesia has been hit by violence in recent years, Bali, which is mostly Hindu, was protected from the unrest - until last night.
The bomb that ripped through the Sari nightclub exploded around 11:30 p.m., when the beachfront was jammed with weekend revelers, many of them tourists.
An inferno engulfed the building and quickly spread to the crowded Padi nightclub.
British tourist Matt Noyce saw a "blinding light."
"There was just complete panic in the bar, with lots of people diving to the door trying to scramble over each other," he told the BBC. "Outside it was awful. It was like a scene you'd see from Vietnam."






  


October 13, 2002, Sunday FOUR STAR EDITION



 Bali blast kills 58 Qaeda tie seen in club bombing

 
A suspected car bomb ripped through a nightclub packed with tourists in the Indonesian resort of Bali last night - killing at least 58 people, wounding 180 and sparking fears of Al Qaeda terrorism.
A simultaneous smaller explosion caused minor damage 300 feet from a U.S. consular office on the island. Hours earlier, a blast blew out three windows at the Philippine Consulate in the port city of Manado. 
It was unknown whether the three bombings were linked, and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
"It does look as though a terrorist organization was involved, and, secondly, it clearly looks as though this attack has been coordinated, and it clearly looks like an attack against foreign interests," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
As rescue workers battled flames and combed through the rubble, the death toll mounted by the hour.
"The bodies just keep arriving here," a morgue worker told Agence France-Presse. "It's difficult to identify them, but most of them are foreigners."
It was unclear whether Americans were among the dead. Some of the casualties were thought to be from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.
The White House said it was monitoring the situation. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta recently issued a warning about possible attacks on Americans by Muslim extremists.
Last night's blasts underscored concern that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has become a haven for terrorists, including Al Qaeda operatives. 'Blinding light' The militant Abu Sayyaf group, which operates out of the Philippines and has Al Qaeda ties, uses Indonesia as a way station. The Jemaah Islamiyah group, which aims to create an Islamic state in Southeast Asia, also may be based there.
But while the rest of Indonesia has been hit by violence in recent years, Bali, which is mostly Hindu, was protected from the unrest - until last night.
The bomb that ripped through the Sari nightclub exploded around 11:30 p.m., when the beachfront was jammed with weekend revelers, many of them tourists from Australia and New Zealand.
British tourist Matt Noyce saw a "blinding light."
"There was just complete panic in the bar, with lots of people diving to the door trying to scramble over each other," he told the BBC. "Outside it was awful, it was like a scene you'd see from Vietnam."
The blast was felt miles away, blew out windows in stores up and down the strip, and sent bodies flying through the air.
"I saw one man who looked Indonesian, whose head had been blown off," a local photographer said. "The area is a wreck."




4


   
 

October 13, 2002 Sunday  
  



 Bombing at Resort in Indonesia Kills 150 and Hurts Scores More 

 
A powerful car bomb detonated in front of a discotheque on the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali late last night, killing at least 150 people and wounding more than 200 others, Indonesian and Western officials said. 
     A hospital official in Bali said today that 75 percent of the dead were foreigners. It was one of the worst attacks on civilians in Southeast Asia in many years. 
 The nightclub where the car was parked, the Sari, and an adjacent one engulfed by the flames, were popular with Western tourists. Officials said many of the dead and injured were foreigners, most of them Australians and Europeans. An American official said there were Americans among the casualties, though he did not have the number or names.  
Members of a football team from Perth, Australia, were at the Sari Club, Australian officials said. 
"The place was packed, and it went up within a millisecond," Simon Quayle, the coach of the football team, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.
Mr. Quayle, whose team was visiting Bali and at the resort at the time of the blast, said that he made it safely out of the building but that 8 of his 19 players were missing.
The blast left a crater large enough for three cars, an American official said.
Bloodied and mangled bodies were being removed from the carnage into the early morning hours, and fear gripped the serene island, where Hindus and Muslims have lived in notable harmony. The airport was shut.
Shortly after the attacks at the nightclub in Kuta, there was a bomb blast near the honorary American consulate in nearby Denpasar, Bali's capital. No one was injured.
No group took responsibility for the attacks but suspicions immediately fell on a radical Islamic organization based in Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiyah. The group and its leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, have been linked to plots against Americans by an operative of Al Qaeda who was seized in Indonesia and turned over to the Central Intelligence Agency several months ago.
American officials described the bombings as terrorist acts, and said that they appeared to have been aimed at the United States. An F.B.I. team was en route to the bombing sites, a senior American official in Washington said last night.
The bombings are certain to have consequences far greater than the immediate death and destruction, which is what a terrorist group would intend. In a country reeling economically, tourism on the legendary island of Bali is certain to suffer, and foreign investors will stay away. 
The government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri may also have been a target of the attack, much as Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has been a secondary target of terrorist attacks.
Indonesian attitudes and American-Indonesian relations may also be shaken by the attack.
The United States and its major allies in the region, Australia and Singapore, have criticized the Indonesian government for not acting decisively against suspected terrorists.
Bush administration officials say that Jemaah Islamiyah fits all the criteria to be listed as a terrorist organization, but the United States has refrained from doing so for fear of destabilizing Indonesia politically and making life more difficult for President Megawati. Mr. Bashir has a significant following among Indonesian Muslims, and has been warmly embraced by the country's vice president, Hamzah Haz.
"If anything is needed to convince Indonesians that they have terrorism on their doorstep, this is it," Sidney Jones, director of the International Crisis Group in Indonesia and an expert on Jemaah Islamiyah, said in a telephone interview from Jakarta, Indonesia's capital.
The Bush administration's frustration with the Indonesian government's reluctance to recognize the extent of terrorism in the country boiled over with last night's carnage.
"We hope this sends a message to the Indonesians that terrorism is not just an American problem, but an Indonesian one as well," a senior administration official said.
The motive for the attack in Bali "wasn't a local commercial dispute," the official said scornfully.
In September, after a grenade exploded prematurely inside an automobile in a central Jakarta residential area, not far from the home of an American diplomat, the Indonesian police dismissed out of hand the suggestion that it was aimed at Americans. The police said the assailants were using the grenade to collect a debt from a person who happened to live next to the American. 
Ten days ago, the American embassy in Jakarta took initial steps to evacuate certain nonessential personnel and dependents of embassy officials because of threats of attacks on Americans, an American diplomat said. The diplomat declined to discuss the nature of the threats but said they were specific in nature.
The Bush administration went to the Indonesian government with another plea to provide more security.
In early September, the American Embassy in Jakarta was closed because of specific terrorist threats. It remained closed for several days while the Bush administration sought to convince the Indonesian police of the seriousness of the threats and urged it to provide increased security at the embassy.
Eventually, the police erected heavy barriers on the busy street in front of the embassy, and assigned more policemen to patrol the area. Embassy windows have been covered with bulletproof steel.
The move has angered many Indonesians who refuse to accept that terrorism is a threat in their country and see the American effort against terrorism as basically anti-Islamic. 
In an effort to convince the Indonesians that they must take the terrorist threat more seriously, President Bush telephoned President Megawati in September, then sent a top Indonesian specialist at the National Security Council, Karen Brooks, to deliver the message in person.
American officials said Ms. Megawati has now come to accept that the problem is serious, but she is not a strong or decisive leader and has not brought all of her top security officials on board.







  



October 13, 2002 Sunday  




 Bombing Kills At Least 180 in Indonesian Club; 
Site Popular With Foreigners; 
2nd Blast Hits Near U.S. Office

 
 A bomb ripped through a nightclub popular with foreign tourists on the resort island of Bali late Saturday, killing at least 180 people and injuring more than 170, police and hospital officials said. 
 A second bomb exploded almost simultaneously near a U.S. consular office in Denpasar, the capital of Bali, a few miles away. Police reported no injuries in that blast. 
 The list of dead and injured included many Australians, and also Germans, New Zealanders, Norwegians, Britons, Italians, Swiss, French and several other nationalities, officials at three hospitals said. A U.S. Embassy official said at least one American was injured.  
 "This is the worst act of terror in Indonesia's history," said Gen. Da'i Bachtiar, the national police chief, according to the Associated Press. 
 Police this morning said it was too early to offer a possible motive for the blasts. 
 Indonesia has been beset by religious violence and cited as a potential base for anti-Western operations by the al Qaeda terrorist network. The bombings Saturday night came on the second anniversary of the attack on the USS Cole in a Yemeni port, an operation investigators believe was carried out by al Qaeda. That blast killed 17 sailors. 
 According to a U.S. Embassy official, the explosion at the Indonesian club might have been caused by a car bomb, based on the account of a witness from the Australian defense attache's office who said he saw a crater the size of three automobiles at the site of the blast.  
 If that was the case, the U.S. official added, the incident would be the worst act of terror worldwide since Sept. 11. 
 A high-level Indonesian security official said a ministerial-level meeting, led by President Megawati Sukarnoputri or her deputy, would be convened today in Jakarta. 
 Bali, a Hindu enclave in the world's most populous Muslim country, has remained largely free of the strife that has beset other regions in the Indonesian archipelago, where U.S. officials have warned of the potential for terrorist attacks. On Thursday the State Deparment issued an alert for travelers and other Americans abroad "in light of the recent audio tape attributed to Osama bin Laden and other reports of threats to American interests." 
 The Bali blasts came after other attacks affecting Westerners in recent days. A French oil tanker was damaged last Sunday off the coast of Yemen in what authorities now believe was a terrorist strike. One U.S. Marine was killed and another was injured in an attack Tuesday in Kuwait, and a U.S. Special Forces soldier was killed in an Oct. 2 bomb blast in the southern Philippines. 
 In Bali, shortly after 11 p.m., an explosion destroyed the Sari Club on Legian Street near the famous Kuta beach strip, said Lt. Col. Yatim Suyatmo, a police official.  
 This morning, the site where the club had been appeared to be reduced to a blackened, vacant lot with smoldering corrugated poles strewn about. Around the site, several buildings had been gutted, including a hotel, cafes and bars on both sides of the street. 
 Red tiles blown off roofs lay everywhere and the air was thick with the smell of smoke. 
 Broken glass littered the street, which was lined by cars that were demolished after being engulfed in flames. Crowds of Indonesians gathered to look at the lot where the club once stood. 
 Agus Sugiyarto, a receptionist at Hotel Ramayana near the blast site -- an area with many hotels, restaurants and a booming nightlife -- had just arrived at work at 11 p.m Saturday. "And at 11:10, we heard 'Boom!' Like a bomb," he said. "Smoke was everywhere." The explosion shattered glass at a hotel next door, he said, and power was out briefly. 
 An Australian visiting Bali was drinking a beer in a bar about 400 yards away from the night club. "It was just like a bang, like an earthquake," he said. "It's pretty devastating. 
 Arian Ardie, the vice president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia, who was in Bali for the weekend, was sitting in his hotel room a few miles away when he, too, felt the blast. A "sharp jolt," Ardie said in a phone interview. "I thought it was an earthquake, but it didn't go on long enough." 
 Ardie rushed to the Sanglah Hospital, Bali's largest hospital, after he learned what had happened. Casualties were arriving every two to three minutes, he said. The governor of Bali, at the hospital, said that officials were doing everything they could to help. 
 Ardie said he saw a list of about 60 names of the injured and dead about 2 a.m. None was American, he said. 
 At least five Britons were among the injured, the British consulate in Indonesia said. 
 Some of Ardie's friends, rugby players, were piled into five taxis heading to the Sari Club, which is frequented primarily by Australians, he said. About 150 yards away from the club, the bomb exploded, he said. The windows in the first two cabs were blown out, injuring some of his friends. 
 Earlier Saturday evening, a small handmade bomb broke three windows at the Philippine consulate on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The building was closed at the time of the blast. 
 Indonesian officials have recently said they are investigating allegations that groups linked to regional and international terror networks are operating in their country. 
 An alleged al Qaeda operative, Omar al-Farouq, arrested by Indonesian authorities and turned over to U.S. officials, recently revealed that plots to bomb U.S. embassies in Jakarta and other Southeast Asian capitals were linked to Abubakar Baasyir, a Muslim cleric in Indonesia. Singapore has been pressing Indonesia to arrest Baasyir, who officials in Singapore allege is the leader of Jemaah Islamiah, a radical group seeking to establish an Islamic state in the region. Baasyir has denied he has any links to al Qaeda or that Jemaah Islamiah even exists. Indonesian officials said they lack sufficient evidence to arrest him. 
Nakashima reported from Jakarta. Staff writer Mike Allen in Washington contributed to this report. 







  



October 11, 2002 Friday  




 U.S. Warns Indonesia Over Investigation of Blast

 
 The Bush administration has warned Indonesian officials that it will withdraw some diplomats from the country unless police step up efforts to investigate a grenade explosion outside of a U.S. building last month, a senior Indonesian security official said today. 
 Indonesian investigators linked the Sept. 23 blast to a network of Islamic radicals in Indonesia by tracking two of the suspects to a house frequented by other militants, according to Indonesian and Western officials. 
 The explosion occurred in the early morning in a vehicle in front of an unoccupied U.S. Embassy home now used as a warehouse. Investigators believe that a grenade detonated prematurely. One of the vehicle's four passengers died. The driver was arrested and the others fled.  
 Indonesian police have made no arrests since then and discounted terrorism as a motive, frustrating U.S. officials. Senior police officials say the attackers were not targeting Americans but had intended to use the grenade in an effort to collect a debt from the owner of a house on the same residential street in the upscale Menteng neighborhood. 
 To stress American concerns, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, called Indonesia's military chief, Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, on Wednesday. 
 "He discussed with the general the seriousness with which the U.S. government views the threat to American interests and Americans in Indonesia," said Navy Capt. John Singley, spokesman for the command. In particular, he said, Fargo highlighted the danger posed by Jemaah Islamiyah, a group headed by an Indonesian cleric, Abubakar Baasyir, that U.S. and some regional intelligence officials describe as a radical Islamic network operating across Southeast Asia. 
 The issue of American security concerns was also on the agenda of a meeting at President Megawati Sukarnoputri's home attended by her top national security team, according to the senior Indonesian official. 
 He said his government has reassured the United States that the investigation is being taken seriously and that Americans are safe in Indonesia. U.S. diplomats have previously praised the Indonesian police for increasing their presence outside the embassy in Jakarta after it closed for six days last month because of warnings of an imminent attack by militants linked to al Qaeda.  
 By withdrawing diplomats or embassy families, however, the United States would be signaling that it believes Indonesian police are no longer willing or able to protect Americans in a country where there is increasing evidence of al Qaeda operations. 
 Such a move could strain relations between Washington and Jakarta at a time when Indonesian officials have been adopting other measures against international terrorism. Last month they arrested Seyam Reda, a German citizen suspected of links to al Qaeda, and opened an investigation into his activities. 
 Even as Indonesian security officials speak more openly about the presence of suspected al Qaeda followers in their country, the government has been under political pressure not to move too aggressively against them. Police and military officials say they risk a backlash from some Muslims and nationalists if the authorities are seen as doing Washington's bidding. 
 U.S. officials in Jakarta and Washington have made no public statements about the grenade investigation. But other Western officials said the police handling of the probe has caused much consternation in the diplomatic community. 
 In the hours following the blast, National Police Chief Da'i Bachtiar announced that his investigators had concluded the passengers in the vehicle intended to throw the grenade at the embassy warehouse. By the next day, Bachtiar and other top police officials offered a different explanation, saying the attackers had been hired to collect a debt of nearly half a million dollars from a businessman, Hasyim Setiono, who lived on the same street. Police officials later announced that they had ruled out terrorism as a motive. 
 Police questioned the driver of the car and tracked two suspects who fled the scene to a house in Purwakarta, about 70 miles east of the capital, according to sources familiar with the investigation. They said this house had previously provided haven for at least one other Islamic militant. 
 Engkesman R. Hillep, inspector general of the national police, said findings so far support the debt-collection theory. "Of course we're not going to stop right there," Hillep said. "We'll also continue our investigation into this matter. But as for a connection with terrorism, we're still working on it." 






  


October 6, 2002, Sunday  



 N.Y. POLS LEAN TO BUSH 10 in House support attack against Iraq

 
Much of the New York congressional delegation appears ready to go to war, according to a Daily News survey.
Ten of the 20 House members from the city and nearby suburbs said they'll vote with President Bush. Seven Democrats oppose him, and three House Democrats were undecided.
Observers also expected Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, currently undecided, to ultimately back Bush in an overwhelming vote that could see the President win over as many as 80 of the 100 senators. 
Both houses are poised to set aside major misgivings about Bush's strategy for Iraq and give him big majorities by late next week for an expected campaign to complete the job his father left undone: ousting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
"I would be surprised if there are more than 100 no votes and maybe as few as 50, when all is said and done," said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn), who supports Bush.
"It's not a very happy yes, but it's an absolutely necessary yes," said Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Queens). "Sit through the hearings and the briefings, and you come to the incontrovertible conclusion that this guy [Saddam] is not just posturing, he's preparing to do something terribly evil.
"Each day he remains unchecked is a day that he gets stronger and our job becomes tougher and more dangerous."
"Sending Americans to die is serious business, but the issue itself is very basic," said Rep. Pete King (R-Nassau). "We're talking about a real threat to our national security."
Still on the fence
But several New Yorkers are wrestling with the decision.
"The Senate is now considering several solutions on Iraq," Clinton said Friday. "I'm reviewing them and hope to support a resolution that garners broad, bipartisan support."
"Each day, new information is coming in," said an undecided Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Nassau). "At this time, I'm undecided."
So is Rep. Nita Lowey of Westchester, a key Democratic foreign policy player as the ranking member of a foreign aid spending subcommittee.
New York representatives who quickly said they would vote no include liberal Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan), whose district includes Ground Zero - and the six members of minority groups who represent New York in Congress.
"My conscience tells me that this resolution would send us forth on a perilous course," Nadler said.
"It should not go unnoticed that foot soldiers, infantry, Marines are basically people who enlist because of lack of economic opportunities," said Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan), who is African-American. "Once again, you would find your casualties sharply higher among poor folks from rural areas and inner cities."
He said the war-footing shift of U.S. government priorities from domestic to international problems also hurts minorities.
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Queens) said he will vote no unless the administration shows him "something that they haven't . . . thus far": proof that Saddam's threat is suddenly more urgent now than during the last four years.
"If not . . . it appears that we could be doing it for political reasons," Meeks said, adding that he fears serious fallout in friendly Muslim nations, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, that are helping in the war on terrorism.
Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx) said he will vote no.
"My subcommittee with the State Department has shown me that we have no information . . . that merits a yes vote. This is one of those, 'Trust me, we have the information at the White House, we just can't show it to you.' "Graphic:    HAWKS AND DOVES
SENATE
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D)
YES NO      UNDECIDED 
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D)
YES NO      UNDECIDED 
HOUSE  
Manhattan
YES     NO      UNDECIDED
Carolyn Maloney      (D)     
Jerrold Nadler       (D)     
Charles Rangel       (D)     
Brooklyn
Edolphus Towns       (D)     
Major Owens (D)     
Nydia Velazquez      (D)     
Anthony Weiner       (D)     
Staten Island
Vito Fossella        (R)     
Queens
Gary Ackerman        (D)     
Gregory Meeks        (D)     
Joseph Crowley       (D)     
Bronx  Jose Serrano (D)     
Eliot Engel (D)     
Long Island
Felix Grucci (R)     
Steve Israel (D)     
Pete King (R)                
Carolyn McCarthy(D)
Westchester
Nita Lowey(D)       
Sue Kelly(R)
Rockland
Benjamin Gilman (R)      







  



October 6, 2002 Sunday  




 Searching For Buried Treasure; 
Minister's Dig Unearths Only Questions

 
The 40-mile drive from Jakarta to Bogor, where suspected al Qaeda operative Omar al-Farouq was arrested last June, suggests that Indonesia is still a country in suspended animation from the Asian economic collapse of 1997. One sees the occasional unfinished highway overpass, roads to nowhere which have become a haunting leitmotif of the countryside. They complement Jakarta's unfinished buildings, great hulking structures of concrete through which light and the ever-present city smog pass unimpeded. 
 Bogor, once a colonial-era retreat, made news again late last month when Indonesian police connected explosives found there to suspects in a mysterious grenade explosion in Jakarta which, briefly, was thought to be terrorist-related.  It is a busy jumble of a city built around one of the most spectacular botanical gardens in the world, home to one of former president Sukarno's more imposing palaces (rumored to be haunted) and, last month, the site of an odd little caper known simply as the Treasure Hunt. 
 Perpetrator of this escapade: Minister of Religious Affairs for the Republic of Indonesia Said Agil Husin Al Munawar.  
 One might expect a man with Munawar's title, in the nation that is home to more Muslims than any other in the world, to be held a bit in awe, a grave figure known for his sage deliberation. But Munawar is a laughingstock in this densely populated nation of 17,000 islands, publicly embarrassed after it became known that he led an unauthorized treasure hunt beneath one of the country's historic sites. He was looking for legendary stocks of gold and jewels with which he hoped to pay off the country's huge foreign debt. It was a generous economic gesture but a dubious exercise in amateur archaeology; even worse, it turned out it was inspired by advice from soothsayers. 
 "Ridiculous," says a tour guide at the historic Prambanan site outside of Yogyakarta, in central Java, where ancient Hindu temples rise from the ground like giant morel mushrooms. 
 "It is, of course, very embarrassing," a Western-educated lawyer says in fluent English on a domestic flight into Jakarta, which is also on the island of Java. 
 Among other things, including several major universities and institutes, Bogor is home to the Batutulis, a stone carved in 1533 to honor a king of the local Sundanese people. The carving is in ancient Sunda Kawi letters, a script that dangles and reclines in gentle looping characters. The stone itself is housed in an unprepossessing, plain white house, where it attracts a modest number of visitors, some of whom revere it with a quasi-religious awe. Like other historic sites in the country, the Batutulis has attracted rumors that it marks the site of hidden treasure, left over from a more glorious age. 
 The actual events of the Munawar affair remain a bit murky. The local press reported that he showed up in Bogor one day, early in August, with a carload of self-professed psychics, who guided an excavation that began a few days later. By Aug. 10, the excavation, which wasn't authorized by the country's department of culture and tourism (which would normally be required to approve this kind of project), had made headlines. The minister reportedly made various claims -- that he had permission from the country's president for the dig, and that the lost treasure had been found and then spirited off by unscrupulous excavators -- that didn't draw fire away from his own role in the affair. 
 Outside a small wartel (a one-stop communications shop that offers telephone and other services for a small fee) next to the Batutulis site, Rudy Rohmansyah, a Bogor native, confirms the basic lines of the story -- men claiming to be on government business put up fencing around the site, blocking the view, and proceeded to dig for days, despite mounting protests from local residents. Late in August the site was still cordoned off with yellow police tape, though one could see ample signs of digging in the yard around the house that contains the stone. 
 "We are very, very disappointed," says Rohmansyah. "It is sad, a bad precedent for our future. It is irrational. I was born here, so I feel I want to guard it. What were they thinking?" 
 What Munawar was thinking quickly became a source for wide public speculation. An interview request faxed to Munawar at the Ministry of Religious Affairs was unanswered, and the Indonesian Embassy in Washington declined to comment on the incident. 
 But within Indonesia Munawar has a reputation as an intellectual, an author and a master reciter of the Koran. And as head of a religious ministry that must at least pay lip service to the idea of equal treatment for all of the country's major religions (including Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and animism), he is known as a tolerant and moderate figure. 
 Whatever Munawar's motivation, for a brief while it looked as if events might spin out of control. Students and others who saw the caper as proof that the government is hopelessly inept began to protest; the local Sundanese community, one of Java's principal ethnic groups, was also incensed. There were rumors of a large protest in Bogor planned for later in August, with students gathering from universities there and in Jakarta and Semarang. That, in turn, inspired ominous rumors that the Front Pembela Islam -- roughly, the Islam Defender Front -- would weigh in as well. 
 "It was definitely the sort of thing that could have turned violent if the Front Pembela Islam got involved," says John McGlynn, an American translator and scholar who helps run the Lontar Foundation, one of the country's premier cultural heritage organizations. "The front has been used by many individuals and organizations to fight for their causes. They are a group for hire." 
 In the end, everything fizzled. Munawar apologized, the students stayed home, and the Front never showed. The Jakarta Post, an English-language newspaper, opined that it all would "have been humorous if it were not so sad." 
 Some commentators took it as a sign that the country wasn't exactly making progress on the path from superstition into, to borrow the Post's phrase, "the sane world of modernity and rationality." 
 Others saw it as further proof that the government's progress from the corrupt autocratic days of former president Suharto to an efficient, modern democracy wasn't proceeding apace, either. And the minister's embarrassment was used as ammunition in broader calls for President Megawati Sukarnoputri to shake up her cabinet. 
 But it was the might-have-been quality of the story that remained most telling about how countries like Indonesia are perceived in the West. If Munawar hadn't apologized, and a demonstration involving a group with the word "Islam" had turned violent, it's easy to imagine what the news coverage would have been: a few seconds of CNN footage showing "unrest" and "Islamic agitation" in a country that the State Department has had under a travel warning for almost a year (a warning deeply resented by Indonesians). Very likely, all the delicious Evelyn Waugh absurdity of the tale would have been wrung out of it as news wires transmitted something more telegraphic and ominous: Violent street clashes rock Southeast Asian nation . . . 
 Like a lot of poor countries on the far horizon of American consciousness, Indonesia generally makes news in the United States only when it's bad news. Given that the Western press is scouring the world for a very particular brand of bad news -- any that smacks of terrorism -- Indonesians are nervous. Especially worrisome are accusations of al Qaeda connections, which have emerged since the June capture, in a Bogor mosque, of al-Farouq, suspected of being a major al Qaeda lieutenant. But despite al-Farouq's Indonesian connection, and concerns that the radical Indonesian cleric Abubakar Baasyir has terror connections, most observers here scoff at the notion that the country is brewing the next big radical Islamic movement. 
 For people here, the Munawar affair was symbolic of the country's peculiar mix of government incompetence and religious heterodoxy that makes "the world's most populous Islamic nation" feel so much more benign than that phrase implies in a post-9/11 world. For people outside Indonesia, especially those involved in the war on terrorism, that same mixture makes the country seem potentially volatile. 
 Everywhere throughout the country are scenes that just don't seem to square with the idea that, beneath the surface of this extravagantly friendly country, there is a seething Islamic revolution. Take, for example, a woman in full head scarf (an Islamic traditionalist?) sitting in a gay bar on the island of Bali, waiting for a drag revue based on "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" to begin. After the Munawar debacle, the local newspapers carried stories of how deeply superstition, which coexists happily with Islam, permeates daily life. 
 Just when you scratch at one of the country's supposed fault lines, another fault line emerges: What looks like religious conflict is often ethnic conflict, or economic conflict, or in some cases, such as the Munawar affair, absolutely inexplicable conflict. From the outside it looks terribly fractious, and has led to warnings like this one from the State Department: "Indonesia's frequent political demonstrations are usually peaceful, but can quickly turn violent with little forewarning." And that in turn reinforces a popular cliche of writing about Indonesia: that the country is, like its geology, a vast volcano of social unrest. 
 But if one wanted a metaphor for the society (and no society is easily reduced to just one), it's not harebrained treasure hunts or volcanoes, it's traffic. The road to Bogor looks superficially like a modern, limited-access highway; it is, in fact, a terrifying, high-speed obstacle course, in which lane markings are considered merely advisory. Yet despite the imminent danger of multi-vehicular pileup, it never seems to happen. Chaos here never stumbles. Few even bother to wear seat belts, a quirk of local reasoning -- "you never see accidents" -- that is no less superstitious than looking for buried treasure. 







  



September 30, 2002 Monday  




 Jakarta's New Tack Against Terror; 
Indonesian Security Forces 'Beginning to Take Ownership'

 
 Indonesia's decision to detain and interrogate Seyam Reda, a German citizen suspected of links to al Qaeda, marks a significant shift for Indonesian security forces, which earlier turned suspects over to the United States for questioning elsewhere, according to diplomatic and security sources. 
 Reda was arrested after his name was given to U.S. officials by Omar al-Farouq, a suspected al Qaeda operative picked up in June in Indonesia. Reda, a burly man who speaks Arabic and German but little Indonesian, was seized in what police and diplomatic sources have described as a $ 4,000-a-month South Jakarta home, with a swimming pool and an internal camera system. German police arrived in Jakarta last week to aid in the probe. 
 Unlike in the cases of al-Farouq and another al Qaeda suspect, Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, both of whom were quietly handed over to U.S. authorities and whisked out of Indonesia, police here are taking charge of the Reda matter themselves, including the interrogation. Also, in another indication of a different approach, the police have disclosed these steps as they take them.  
 "It's a sign they're beginning to take ownership," said a Western diplomat based in Jakarta. 
 In the past week, several Indonesian military officials, including the armed forces chief, Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, have acknowledged that the al Qaeda network has been active in Indonesia. His comments were notable given the prevailing opinion that Indonesia is free of international terrorists. 
 Taken together, these developments could indicate that the Indonesian government is overcoming ambivalence about the U.S.-led war on terrorism and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. At the same time, there continues to be widespread public support here for steering a course independent of the United States, reflecting Indonesian nationalism and the success of conservative Islamic politicians in dominating much of the debate in this overwhelmingly Muslim country. 
 The most pressing issue now is whether Indonesia will move against radical cleric Abubakar Baasyir. U.S. and Southeast Asian intelligence officials say he is the leader of a regional militant network, Jemaah Islamiah, with links to al Qaeda. The Bush administration intends, in a matter of weeks, to place Jemaah Islamiah on its list of foreign terrorist organizations, though the precise timing remains uncertain, diplomats said. Baasyir denies the allegations of links to terrorism. 
 President Megawati Sukarnoputri, a secular nationalist who will be up for reelection in 2004, is facing "two unpalatable choices," the Western diplomat said. One is "taking a position that will bring down some opposition in the streets and charges of being a flunky" of the United States. The other, the diplomat said, is doing nothing despite the "inexorable march" toward U.S. designation of Jemaah Islamiah as a terrorist group, which will place even greater pressure on her government to arrest Baasyir. 
 The United States, aware of Megawati's dilemma, has been pursuing a strategy of quiet diplomacy, sharing intelligence with Indonesian officials and hoping to persuade them to act on their own. The Bush administration has refrained from applying open pressure while delaying the designation of Baasyir's group, despite what officials say is compelling evidence of its ties to terrorism. 
 The stakes got higher on Sept. 9, the day al-Farouq gave interrogators details that led to Reda and pointed to plots to bomb U.S. embassies in Jakarta and other Southeast Asian capitals. The United States quickly closed a dozen embassies and raised the nationwide terrorist threat index. According to a U.S. government document, al-Farouq also told investigators that Baasyir was behind the embassy plot as well as a series of bombings at Indonesian churches and Jakarta's largest mosque in 1999 and 2000. 
 U.S. officials decided to quietly share the information with Megawati so that she could move against Baasyir without appearing to yield to U.S. pressure. According to officials, Karen B. Brooks, a member of the White House National Security Council staff who is close to Megawati and speaks Indonesian, flew to Jakarta for a two-day visit to speak privately with the Indonesian president. 
 On Sept. 16, Brooks laid out the details provided by al-Farouq and made the case for action, the officials said. That night, President Bush called Megawati. He wanted to convey to her the seriousness with which the United States took the information. An embassy spokesman declined to discuss Brooks's visit. 
 But an official familiar with the briefing said Megawati appeared to be coming to "substantially the same conclusions" the United States had reached. "She was remarkably attentive to the details," the official said. 
 In the following days, Megawati summoned her top ministers at least twice to discuss terrorism. That week, Indonesian police arrested Reda, one of a half-dozen al Qaeda suspects whom officials said al-Farouq had identified. Indonesian authorities said Reda had violated immigration law by claiming to be a journalist while in the country on a tourist visa. Investigators said a search of his home found videos of al-Farouq giving weapons and military instruction to Islamic militants in eastern Indonesia. 
 The same day that Brooks briefed Megawati, however, the U.S. strategy of approaching Megawati quietly was disrupted. Time magazine disclosed the details of documents from the CIA and Southeast Asian intelligence agencies similar to those that Brooks shared with Megawati. Bush administration officials were dismayed by the public disclosure, especially since many Indonesians assumed the U.S. government had leaked the information to embarrass Indonesia. 
 In an effort to quiet the furor, U.S. Ambassador Ralph L. "Skip" Boyce held a series of discussions last week with Muslim leaders, including a visit to the headquarters of the country's second-largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah. 
 "The idea that the United States would be trying to destroy the image of Islam in Indonesia, by providing information that comes to us about al Qaeda, sending agents to Indonesia with the express mission of creating problems in Indonesia, that somehow that should be a plot by Washington to destroy the image of Islam? No! Al Qaeda is trying to destroy the image of Islam in Indonesia," Boyce told about a dozen Muslim leaders seated around a conference table, as reporters listened. He added, "Do not condemn the messenger for the message. Just because you cannot see them, it does not mean that they are not there." 
 Moderate Islamic leaders, though respectful of Boyce's effort, remained skeptical that al Qaeda militants have a toehold in Indonesia. "Provide hard evidence," the deputy chairman of Muhammadiyah, Din Syamsuddin, said in an interview. 
 Meanwhile, Indonesian security officials have been seeking to dispel the notion that they have been laggards in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism. "It's totally wrong to say that Indonesia is doing nothing against terrorism," said Brig. Gen. Dadang Garnida, who heads the national police unit dealing with transnational crime, in an interview last week. 
 In a document titled "Endeavors in Combating Terrorism," Indonesian police described their efforts to investigate a string of violent activities linked to Islamic militants. The booklet, written in English, was prepared for presentation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during his visit to Jakarta two months ago. 
 The document includes an organizational chart outlining the structure of Jemaah Islamiah and its purported ties to foreign militant groups. The chart, which Indonesian officials said originated with Singapore and Malaysia, shows Baasyir as the group's leader, although Indonesian authorities continue to insist they have no evidence to arrest him. The chart also links Jemaah Islamiah to members of al Qaeda, including bin Laden. 







   
 

September 24, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: SOUTHEAST ASIA; 
Indonesians Distrust Report By C.I.A. on Qaeda Suspect

 
"Beware of U.S. Propaganda." That front-page headline in one of the leading newspapers here this morning spoke to far more than just the article below it.
     In the newspaper account, various leaders heaped scorn on reports that a man named Omar al-Faruq had confessed to the C.I.A. that he was an operative for Al Qaeda in Indonesia and that working with a local militant organization, he had carried out attacks against Christians, tried to kill the country's president twice and plotted to blow up the American Embassy. 
 Across Indonesian society there is a strong sense that this is all a fabrication. People see it as part of a C.I.A. plot to paint Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world, as a hotbed of terrorists to keep pressure on President Megawati Sukarnoputri to march to the dictates of President Bush in his campaign against terrorism. 
Considering the C.I.A.'s history here in the 1950's and 60's, the fears are not totally irrational, American officials acknowledge. In that era, the agency spread disinformation, planted photos of President Sukarno in compromising positions and aided and abetted coup plotters.
But American officials are surprised, perplexed and worried about the public reaction to Mr. Faruq's statements. In the view of the United States, as well as important neighbors of Indonesia like Australia and Singapore, this country has a serious terrorism problem, which it has been reluctant to confront and which Mr. Faruq only confirmed.
In an effort to counter the crescendo of skepticism, the United States ambassador, Ralph Boyce, has decided that he must take the American case to the doubting Indonesian public. On Tuesday he will meet with representatives of several Muslim organizations.
Reflecting Washington's anxiety about the issue, Mr. Bush quietly dispatched Karen Brooks last week to talk to President Megawati. 
Ms. Brooks is not only the senior White House aide on Indonesia. She was also a Fulbright scholar here, speaks fluent Indonesian and has a deep and strong personal relationship with the Indonesian president.
Her mission was to impress on Ms. Megawati the seriousness of the problem, but even more important, it was to give some courage to the Indonesian leader, who faces the prospect of widespread demonstrations by Muslims if she cracks down too hard, an official said. 
Ms. Brooks slipped in and out of town without the knowledge of reporters, which is as both sides wanted it.
Nationalism and pride are strong here. At the same time, not since the days of Sukarno, the current president's father, has the country played a role on the world stage, or even regionally, commensurate with its size -- it has the fourth-largest population in the world -- and strategic location.
The political attacks have already begun.
"The U.S. controls Indonesia," the president's politically active sister, Rachmawati Sukarnoputri, a constant critic, told a local newspaper, Suara Merdeka, which devoted an entire article to heaping doubt on the C.I.A. document.
The storm broke here when Time magazine arrived on newsstands last week with its cover story, "Confessions of an Al Qaeda Terrorist." It was based on the C.I.A.'s summary of the interrogation of Mr. Faruq.
The summary says Mr. Faruq told his C.I.A. interrogators that as Al Qaeda's representative, he had made an alliance with Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant Indonesian Islamic group, and that its leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, had provided money, supplies and men for several terrorist acts. 
Mr. Bashir steadfastly denies a role in any terrorist activities, though expressing admiration for Osama bin Laden, who he says is not a terrorist.
Dissenting from the unassailable assumption of Indonesians that the C.I.A. summary was leaked in Washington by the agency, several diplomats here suggest quietly that it was leaked by a senior Indonesian official, who is one of the few in the government contending that the country has a terrorism problem and must act.
The first newspaper to carry the story here was Koran Tempo, one of the largest-circulation and most respected newspapers, with this headline: "CIA: Al Qaeda Tried Twice to Assassinate Megawati."
In other words, the paper was pinning the allegation on the C.I.A., not on Mr. Faruq. It reflected some of the raw emotions here, Indonesians say.
The country's Muslims have not come to grips with the fact that Mr. Faruq, or someone like him, could be among them, said an Indonesian businesswoman who is a prominent intellectual.
"They're in denial," she said.
This is a secular country, and an overwhelming number of Muslims are moderates. The highly observant Muslims are a tiny minority, the militants even fewer.
Yet no major Muslim leader has been willing to speak out, the businesswoman noted, to accept that what Mr. Faruq is reported to have said is true and that the country has a problem.
Solahuddin Wahid, a leader of the country's largest moderate organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, accused Washington of "propaganda tricks."
"What has been leaked by the C.I.A. is described by many as a mere American scenario to corner Indonesia into nodding to whatever the U.S. is planning to do," he said.
It is an insult to all Muslims, he added.







  



September 24, 2002 Tuesday  




 Tighter U.S. Policy Leaves Foreign Students in Limbo; 
Visas Delayed by Months for Thousands of Men From 26 Countries With Large Muslim Populations

 
 It took seven years, but Abdul Malik has completed his research for a doctorate in social psychology from the New School University in New York. The Indonesian student is now set to take the final step, by defending his thesis later this month. His adviser has agreed to fly in from Paris.  
 But Malik, an Indonesian citizen, fears he will not make the date. Though for the past decade he has consistently received permission to study in the United States, this year he was told to come back later when he applied for a visa on June 30. Almost three months later, he is still waiting. His Indonesian wife received her visa in June and left for New York without him.  
 Malik is among 10,000 men from 26 predominantly Muslim countries who are experiencing delays of two months or more as they await permission to study, work or vacation in the United States, the result of a quiet tightening of the visa review process in Washington prompted by the Sept. 11 attacks of a year ago. 
 There is the group of 52 Indonesian accountants whom Ernst & Young wanted to send to the United States to be trained in tracking money-laundering, a crucial element of the war on terrorism. They did not get their visas in time to go. There are the Whirling Dervishes of Damascus, a 12-member ensemble from Syria who will not be performing at an international music festival this month because they could not get their visas in time. Nor will 30 Indonesian musicians, masters of the gamelan, a traditional percussion instrument. 
 They are all men age 16 to 45 from a group of 26 countries with large Muslim populations, from Indonesia and Malaysia to Egypt and Turkey to Somalia and Eritrea. Washington has judged that all 26 countries present terrorism concerns. The U.S. government has not officially released the list. 
 It is not just ethnic Arab students who are affected. A number of Malaysian students of Chinese descent have not received visas in time to return to fall classes in the United States, some of them at Harvard, Yale and MIT. Malaysia, which traditionally sends thousands of students stateside, has suffered the largest backlog, well over 5,000, though in recent days some visa approvals have begun to come through. Indonesia has a backlog of 2,500 and Egypt about 800, according to U.S. and other government officials.  
 The bureaucratic limbo is the latest unintended consequence of the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Since late June, the number of agencies that must review each visa application has multiplied, greatly prolonging the process and swelling the backlog. 
 "It's a backlog that we have to juggle and keep track of," said a U.S. government official. "It's not a management problem. It's an image problem." 
 Before June, a U.S. embassy could issue a visa if the applicant qualified and the State Department did not object within 30 days. Today, embassy officials must have written approval from Washington for each applicant. Also affected are men who were born in, but are not citizens of, any of the 26 countries that are subject to the new scrutiny. 
 Even U.S. diplomats frustrated with the new policy agree that tougher border controls are warranted. Many of the Sept. 11 terrorists were in the United States on student visas. But the policy has complicated life for thousands of students and created diplomatic headaches for embassy staff. 
 Malik, who is staying with relatives in Jakarta, has repeatedly rebooked his flight to New York. After the fifth time, he gave up. He checks the embassy Web site every few days for visa announcements. His visits to the embassy have produced no visa and no explanation why. 
 "It is very, very frustrating," said Malik, 42, whose two daughters, born in the United States, are with his wife. "You want to plan, but you can't. I'm in limbo, and basically what they told me is to check. So you check every day hoping that today you will get it. It is like being trapped in time." 
 Officials at the New School "have the highest opinion" of Malik, according to one professor, noting that if the United States were seeking a student to promote the ideals of tolerance and international friendship, and who embodies the spirit of moderate Islam -- as do most of Indonesia's 220 million people -- he would be a model candidate. 
 "It's a personal tragedy and it's a political tragedy," said Richard J. Bernstein, dean of the faculty of political and social science. "This is a student we know extremely well. . . . If America is really serious about its policy of trying to fight terrorism and make friends among moderates, then this is just the type of student you want to invite in." 
 At Pennsylvania State University, about 100 international students are still awaiting visas for the fall semester that began Aug. 27. Although the university is allowing them to register late, many may have to withdraw until next semester or make alternative arrangements, said Barbara W. Pennypacker, assistant dean of the graduate school.  
 In the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, students have demonstrated at the U.S. Embassy, and some are opting to go to New Zealand or Australia. Some have written letters to local newspapers decrying the wait and what they call discrimination against them.  
 "For the last 40 years, the only really pressing issue with foreign students was whether they were going to go home when they finished," said Donald McCloud, executive director of the Malaysian American Commission on Educational Exchange in Kuala Lumpur. "Well, now there are real security issues. When you have a government that never has had to deal with that, you can't just turn around the next day and say, 'Okay, we have a system.' " 
 Exceptions can be made. For instance, if an embassy officer knows the applicant personally and there is some foreign policy interest involved, the restriction can be waived. Thus the Indonesian ambassador's son got a visa to visit his father in the United States. But these cases are rare. 
 U.S. government officials say they are sympathetic to the students' plights, and embassies from Jakarta to Djibouti have issued notices requesting that applicants apply extra early and expect waits of two months or longer.  
 A State Department official said the policy is not meant to target men because they are Muslim. He said that Muslims from many countries, such as those in Europe, are not subject to the new rules. 
 "It causes some inconvenience to some people. But if we are going to be serious about improving border security, some people are going to be inconvenienced," he said. He added that U.S. officials are trying to work out the kinks. "As it happens in the U.S. government when you have interagency cooperation, it takes time," he said. "We're trying to streamline and clear the logjam." 
 Though no deadline has been set for resolving the delays, the official predicted it would be a matter of weeks, not months. 






  


September 23, 2002, Monday  



 1 KILLED IN CAR BLAST NEAR EMBASSY BLDG.

 
A car carrying explosives blew up near an unoccupied U.S. Embassy building in Indonesia early today, raising already heightened fears of terrorism in the volatile Muslim nation.
One of the occupants of the car died in what police called a botched attempt to attack a vacant embassy warehouse in a plush residential neighborhood in Jakarta. 
National Police Chief Da'i Bachtiar told reporters another of the car's occupants was captured and two escaped.
Bachtiar said police had "confirmed an explosion."
"It was a grenade, which was to be thrown at a warehouse owned by the U.S. Embassy but exploded in the car," the chief said.
An embassy source also confirmed the blast took place near the warehouse.
No Americans were hurt and the embassy, which is in another section of the city, was open for business this morning.
Explosions linked to political, religious or gangland feuds are common in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
But threats have taken on added significance in recent months amid the global war against terror.
The U.S. Embassy was closed on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ambassador Ralph Boyce cited a "credible and specific threat" that he suggested was linked to the Al Qaeda terror network.







  



September 23, 2002 Monday  




 An Inspiration for Muslim Fighters; 
Cleric Implicated in Anti-U.S. Plots Says His Guidance Is Religious, Not Military

 
 Abubakar Baasyir is a wanted man in Malaysia and Singapore. The Bush administration is weighing whether to add him to its terrorist list for what intelligence officials say is his leadership of a militant Islamic network linked to al Qaeda. 
 The government in Indonesia, where he lives, faces growing international pressure to arrest him, but fears a Muslim backlash. Details provided by suspects seized in Singapore and Indonesia, revealed this month, implicate him in plots to bomb U.S. embassies and other targets in Southeast Asia. 
 But the 64-year-old cleric, who was imprisoned in the late 1970s as a potential political enemy of the Suharto government and later spent 14 years in exile, shows little sign of agitation. He not only denies he is the leader of Jemaah Islamiah, the militant network, but also says no such organization exists.  
 However, Baasyir, with his gold-rimmed glasses and gray beard tinged with yellow, volunteered in an interview late last week that his lessons have been the inspiration for an informal network of followers called the Sunna Group, based in Singapore and Malaysia. So committed are they, he said, to the values he preached that they have set off to fight for Muslim causes in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, the Philippines and the Moluccas, an Indonesian region beset by violence between Muslims and Christians. 
 "The students who absorb my teaching and finally understand Islam completely want to implement the teaching of jihad," he said.  
 He offered them Islamic guidance, he said, but they found their own military training and paid their own way. Many of these followers, whom he calls his "listeners," have been arrested in Malaysia and Singapore, including one man jailed by Singaporean authorities in December, he said, for allegedly participating in a plot to attack the U.S. Embassy and other Western targets in the city-state. 
 Baasyir spoke slowly and steadily, settled comfortably into a torn, blue armchair in the busy headquarters of the Indonesian Mujahadin Council, a militant Muslim organization he helped found. The group is based in downtown Yogyakarta, a university town in central Java that was the center of an Islamic resurgence in the 1980s. His discussion of Islamic teaching and the recent allegations against him continued for nearly an hour, broken only by the song of his mobile phone, alerting him to incoming calls with a traditional Arabic tune. 
 Intelligence agencies are focusing more intently on Baasyir following information provided this month by a suspected al Qaeda operative, Omar al-Farouq, under interrogation by U.S. investigators. According to a government document summarizing key points of the interrogation, al-Farouq said Baasyir was the "coordinator" of a plot to carry out truck and car bombings of U.S. embassies across Southeast Asia around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Al-Farouq reportedly said Baasyir had authorized him to use Jemaah Islamiah operatives and resources in the attacks. 
 According to the document, al-Farouq said Baasyir was behind a 1999 bombing of a mosque in Jakarta, meant to incite Muslim anger against Christians, and a series of church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000 that killed 18 people. Al-Farouq also said that "al Qaeda encourages Baasyir's goal to spark a religious civil war in Indonesia in order to achieve his vision of a pure Islamic state under Islamic law." 
 Baasyir denied the allegations, point by point. He said he has never met al-Farouq. "I ask the American government to give me proof that I am linked to terrorism," he said. "I am prepared to face Omar al-Farouq face to face. But don't persecute me in a cowardly way." 
 Baasyir called the accusations a CIA setup. He was a victim, he said, of a U.S.-sponsored vilification campaign. 
 "They are accusing me of being a terrorist because I have a very objective assessment of Osama bin Laden," Baasyir said. "I don't call him a terrorist. Even until today, the American government cannot prove that he is a terrorist connected to the World Trade Center. In fact, I would even call Osama a great Islamic warrior until the U.S. government can come up with evidence that he is a terrorist." 
 He asserted that the U.S. government objects to his outspoken advocacy of an Islamic state under religious law. "The enforcement of sharia must become the law of the country," he said. "This is not popular among Americans. And this is what they're afraid of the most." 
 President Bush, he said, is using the war on terrorism to "camouflage" his true goal of defeating Islam. 
 Baasyir is the spiritual leader of a militant network that has at its hub a religious boarding school, Pondok Ngruki, founded in 1972 by Baasyir and fellow cleric Abdullah Sungkar.  
 The school, in the city of Solo 40 miles southwest of Yogyakarta, has turned out at least one student now charged with terrorist activities. Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, 30, has been detained in Manila since January in connection with illegal possession of explosives and falsification of documents. Philippine authorities say he participated in the plan to attack U.S. assets in Singapore. 
 Baasyir's vision of an Islamic state sharpened during his years in exile. He and Sungkar, who were persecuted by the Suharto government in the 1970s and fled Indonesia in 1985 after their release from prison, began Islamic discussion groups in Malaysia. These, Baasyir said, grew into the Sunna Group, dedicated to realigning Islamic practice in Malaysia and Singapore with the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. Over the years, the number of "listeners" at his lectures grew, he said. 
 Baasyir returned to Indonesia after Suharto fell from power in 1998 and organized Koranic reading groups. But they are unrelated to those of the Sunna Group, he said. 
 Baasyir has mellowed since he opened Pondok Ngruki 30 years ago, said Ibnu Chanifah, the assistant academic director at the school. "Before he saw things in black and white," said Chanifah. "But now he's ready to discuss other religious ideas, meet with other Islamic communities." 
 The school today educates 2,100 boys and girls in the sciences and Islamic studies in three compounds of whitewashed buildings arranged around courtyards shaded by mango and cashew nut trees. Each classroom is plain, with simple wooden desks, Koranic inscriptions and a single ceiling fan to counter the heat. The boys, dressed in white shirts and blue pants, peer out of dormitory windows, eager to try out their English, which they practice with one another every Monday and Thursday. 
 Baasyir had no contact with the school while in exile, Chanifah said. Since his return, he "has put a very strict limit" on his involvement, Chanifah said. 
 Baasyir said he continues to focus his teachings on the urgent need to establish an Islamic state, not just in Indonesia but wherever there are Muslims. He said members of other religions, including Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, would be able to follow their own beliefs under the protection of an Islamic government. 
 Because bin Laden shares the goal of promoting Islamic rule, Baasyir said that he would pray for his welfare. So, too, Baasyir said he hopes that all Indonesian Muslims will pray for him, as pressure intensifies on the government to arrest him. 
 Flashing a smile, Baasyir said that unlike politicians, he is unwilling to predict what will happen if he is arrested. "I will defend myself the best I can, as long as it's in line with sharia law and it doesn't strongly contradict Indonesian law."  




5


   
 

September 22, 2002 Sunday  
  



 The Sunshine Warrior 

 
Fort Leavenworth in midsummer is a sultry campus for the Army's new leaders, American and allied majors on the fast track and generals who have just earned their first star. When Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, steps out of an Air Force Gulfstream into the Kansas heat, it is not just an overdue courtesy call and not just a peace overture to a rankled service. (He has just killed the Army's prized new $11 billion artillery piece, the Crusader.) It is one more engagement in the war over the coming war.
     The subject of his remarks, which the former political-science professor delivers seminar style to the majors and more formally to the generals, is his recent visit to Afghanistan. But Iraq is never far out of sight. Introducing Wolfowitz to an auditorium full of new one-stars and their wives, General Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, points out that as a young Pentagon analyst Wolfowitz directed a secret assessment of Persian Gulf threats that marked Iraq as a menace to its neighbors and to American interests. This, Shinseki informs them with everything but a drumroll, was in 1979, a dozen years before Desert Storm.  
 Wolfowitz then proceeds to use Afghanistan to illustrate how far the military's pinpoint-targeting ability has advanced since that war, when American air and ground forces, unable to communicate with one another, succeeded in destroying only a single one of Saddam Hussein's Scud missile emplacements (and that one was a harmless decoy). The message is that next time around, if there is a next time, what was demonstrated in Afghanistan -- that choreography of unmanned aerial vehicles, precision-guided weapons, indigenous insurgents and special-operations soldiers on the ground -- should, in the first hours of an attack, prove far more adroit at disabling Saddam's most fearsome weapons.
Soldiers tend to cock an eyebrow when civilians who have not known combat talk confidently about the coming conquest, but the closest thing to an open challenge this day comes during Wolfowitz's session with the majors -- from a British officer who raises a hand and asks about Scott Ritter, the former U.N. weapons inspector. Ritter has been in London arguing that Iraq's destructive capability is already neutralized. So where is the threat worth spending American blood? 
An exasperated look crosses Wolfowitz's wide, boyish face; Ritter's comments are "simply amazing," he says. Then he stops himself. He acknowledges that Ritter knows something about Iraq and concedes that Saddam has probably not been able to rebuild his nuclear program, not yet. But he notes that when inspectors went in after the gulf war, they found he was far closer than anyone imagined, that in fact he was pursuing four separate avenues for manufacturing a nuclear weapon. And chemical weapons, which he has employed against his own people, or biological weapons are threat enough, and much easier to construct in a secretive, fearsome police state. This is, Wolfowitz tells the majors, a man who has been known to have children tortured in front of their parents. (The line would later turn up in the president's address to the U.N.) 
Revisiting Ritter's argument a few days later in his Pentagon office, Wolfowitz seems genuinely puzzled by the notion that we need evidence of imminent danger to justify getting rid of Saddam. He has encountered this argument earlier -- from the State Department and the C.I.A., in fact, before President Bush stifled that particular line of internal debate by declaring Saddam an intolerable threat, end of story. By the conventions of American foreign policy, a pre-emptive strike against an uncertain threat is perhaps the most radical new security notion of the post-cold-war era. But Wolfowitz says he believes Sept. 11 has awakened us to a world where certainty is an expensive luxury.
"There's an awful lot we don't know, an awful lot that we may never know, and we've got to think differently about standards of proof here," Wolfowitz tells me. "In fact, there's no way you can prove that something's going to happen three years from now or six years from now. But these people have made absolutely clear what their intentions are, and we know a lot about their capabilities. I suppose I hadn't thought of it quite this way, but intentions and capabilities are the way you think about warfare. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the way you think about law enforcement. And I think we're much closer to being in a state of war than being in a judicial proceeding."
Wolfowitz is always careful to say that the president has not decided exactly what to do about Iraq and that he himself is not completely convinced yet that a military liberation of Baghdad is worth the risk. But in an administration that is not exactly a hotbed of Saddam coddlers, Wolfowitz has been on the case longer, more consistently, more persistently, than anyone. His tenacity is one reason that the internal debate has moved, astonishingly fast, from a theoretical possibility to questions of method and timing. So fast, in fact, that one argument some make for invading is that Bush has already gone too far out on the limb to back down.
In the first days after Sept. 11, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others within the administration contended it was too early to put Iraq on the agenda -- that there was a war to win in Afghanistan first and that there was no evidence Iraq was complicit in the attacks on the Pentagon and the twin towers -- Wolfowitz argued that Iraq was at the heart of the threat. He suspected then that those who were saying "not yet" really meant "not ever." Now that the president has declared "regime change" the party line, Wolfowitz says, he takes his more skeptical colleagues at face value when they say "not yet." But, he adds, "it seems to me that people who want to say, 'I'm in favor of a regime change, but not now,' have a certain burden to answer the question, 'O.K., well, when?"'
The answer to that question remains a secret, if it has been decided at all. But on the way home from Fort Leavenworth at the end of July, we stopped at Scott Air Force Base, the military's main transportation dispatching hub, where Wolfowitz spent a couple of hours closeted with the men who, soon thereafter, began routing shipments of men and materiel to the gulf. Just in case.
In Washington, some people go straight to caricature, without getting much chance to be interesting or complicated. Paul Wolfowitz, who is interesting and complicated, has been cast since Sept. 11 in the role of zealot. Except for one humanizing incident when he was booed for mentioning the suffering of Palestinians at a pro-Israel rally, Wolfowitz has been summarily depicted as a hawk (The Economist preferred "velociraptor"), conservative ideologue, unilateralist, nemesis of Colin Powell's State Department and, sometimes, "Israel-centric." These epithets capture something of Wolfowitz's views and something of the company he keeps. His mentors have been hard-liners, many of his friends are devout Reaganites and the tracts he has signed when out of public office were written by those who now happily talk of a new American imperialism. One close friend of Wolfowitz's is Richard Perle, the combative defense analyst who might actually relish being called a velociraptor; he heads an adjunct group of advisers, the Defense Policy Board, that has been a vehicle for introducing controversial, even incendiary, viewpoints into the government tent. Perle, in fact, was offered the No. 3 position in the Defense Department, under secretary for policy, and after he declined the job, it went to Douglas Feith, a lawyer and firebrand who worked for Perle in the Reagan Defense Department. President Bush may employ many people who worked for his father, but this is decidedly not his father's Pentagon.
The shorthand version of Paul Wolfowitz, however, is inadequate in important ways. It completely misses his style, which relies on patient logic and respectful, soft-spoken engagement rather than on fire-breathing conviction. The stereotype also overlooks a critical distinction in his view of the world. Unlike many conservative gloom-mongers, he does not see the world plummeting toward an inevitable clash of civilizations. 
From a few months' immersion in the subject of Paul Wolfowitz, it seems to me he has brought at least three important things to the table where American policy is made, qualities that have made him, though he holds the rank of deputy, a factor in moving America this close to invading Iraq. One is something of a reputation as a man who sees trouble coming before others do, his long anxiety about Iraq being one example. 
The second thing he brings is an activist bent. It is forged partly of humanitarian impulse, a horror of standing by and watching bad things happen. He often talks about Kitty Genovese, the New York woman murdered in 1964 while dozens of neighbors watched from their apartment windows without lifting a phone to call the police. His inclination to act derives, too, from his analytical style, a residue, perhaps, of the mathematician he started out to be. In almost any discussion, he tends to be the one focusing on the most often overlooked variable in decision making, the cost of not acting. On Iraq, that has now been taken up as a White House mantra.
The third striking thing about Wolfowitz is an optimism about America's ability to build a better world. He has an almost missionary sense of America's role. In the current case, that means a vision of an Iraq not merely purged of cataclysmic weaponry, not merely a threat disarmed, but an Iraq that becomes a democratic cornerstone of an altogether new Middle East. Given the fatalism that prevails about this most flammable region of the world, that is an audacious optimism indeed. 
Wolfowitz's moralistic streak and the generally sunny view of the world's possibilities may explain the affinity between the born-again and resolutely unintellectual president and this man he calls "Wolfie," the Jewish son of academia who dabbles in six foreign languages and keeps Civil War histories at his bedside. A senior official who has watched the two men interact says that Wolfowitz and the president have reinforced each other in their faith in "a strategic transformation of the whole region."
If the interventionists are right, America can reasonably expect to be more secure, respected and very, very busy -- and much of the foreign-policy old guard will have been proved wrong. But if Wolfowitz and those with him are wrong, if Iraq comes down around their ears, America will be standing deep in the rubble, very alone.
If you spend much time with Wolfowitz, you will probably hear him tell the joke about Saddam Hussein's barber, an old one that dates from the years of Communist collapse. The story goes that every time Saddam shows up for a trim, his barber asks about Nicolae Ceaucescu, Romania's cult-of-personality tyrant, who has recently been executed in a popular uprising. Irritated, Saddam demands to know why the barber insists on bringing up this toppled dictator at each visit. "Because every time I do, the hair goes up on the back of your neck, and it's easier to cut it."
Wolfowitz loves the story because he feels if Romania can throw off a despot and muddle toward modernity, how much more promising is Iraq, with its bitterly oppressed but educated, energetic people and the ability to pump billions of dollars worth of crude oil a year? Look at the Iraqi Kurds, he says, who have created in their American-protected enclave in northern Iraq a comparatively open society "by Middle East standards," despite suffering the U.N. sanctions against the country.
Wolfowitz says he worries deeply about the risks of going into Iraq -- about disabling the small arsenal of Scud missiles before one possibly delivers poisons to Israel or the Saudi oil fields, about persuading Israel (as he personally helped do during the gulf war) not to join the war even if attacked, knowing that would tend to mobilize the Arab world against the United States, about the potential mess of urban warfare and civilian casualties. "I think the getting in is the dangerous part," he says.
He worries considerably less about the day after. 
"I don't think it's unreasonable to think that Iraq, properly managed -- and it's going to take a lot of attention, and the stakes are enormous, much higher than Afghanistan -- that it really could turn out to be, I hesitate to say it, the first Arab democracy, or at least the first one except for Lebanon's brief history," he says. "And even if it makes it only Romanian style, that's still such an advance over anywhere else in the Arab world."
This is a notion regarded with deep skepticism at the State Department, where Powell and others tend to see the aftermath of an invasion as a long, world-class headache administered by an American general. Not only within the State Department but elsewhere where foreign policy is discussed and formulated -- including the Capitol Hill offices of leading senators of both parties -- there reigns the view that Iraqi democracy is a utopian fantasy, that the country will fragment like a grenade into ethnic enclaves, that American garrisons will be targets for an eruption of Arab fury, that oil supplies will be endangered, that Americans lack the patience and generosity to midwife a free and pro-Western Iraq.
"This is a very risky operation at best," I was told, typically, by Henry Siegman, a Middle East scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And the expectation that we will then be splendidly situated to resolve all the region's problems is wildly optimistic." 
Iraqi democracy, it should be said, is not the president's declared purpose of "regime change" in Iraq, which is to get rid of a very bad man with a fondness for terrorists and a hunger for weapons of hideous power. But it is, to many in the administration, including Wolfowitz, a large part of the enticement.
"You hear people mock it by saying that Iraq isn't ready for Jeffersonian democracy," Wolfowitz says, citing a line that Colin Powell has been known to use. "Well, Japan isn't Jeffersonian democracy, either. I think the more we are committed to influencing the outcome, the more chance there could be that it would be something quite significant for Iraq. And I think if it's significant for Iraq, it's going to cast a very large shadow, starting with Syria and Iran, but across the whole Arab world, I think."
The idea of Iraq as a launch pad of Arab democracy and a counterweight to Islamist extremism has gained some credence in Washington. As unromantic an expert as Dennis B. Ross, who ran the Middle East account for President Clinton, thinks Wolfowitz is right, that liberating Iraq would not only chasten despots and encourage democrats but that it could also unleash a joy in Iraq that would help alleviate the wider Arab anger against America. So does Henry Kissinger, whose cold realism has not often meshed with Wolfowitz's sense of the world.
A democratic Iraq, however, is sure to be unnerving to some of America's less-than-democratic allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia. Wolfowitz does not demonize the Saudi royal family, as a briefer did in July at one of Perle's Defense Policy Board meetings, but he seems more pleased than not that democracy in Iraq (and a free flow of competing Iraqi oil) makes the Saudis uneasy. He does not sound so sure that rocking the stability of tyrannies in the Arab world, even West-leaning tyrannies, is a bad thing.
In January, Bob Woodward, the investigative eminence for , and his colleague Dan Balz wrote a voluminous reconstruction of the decision making in the Bush administration during the weeks following Sept. 11. Most senior officials, including the president, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, gave interviews for the series. Paul Wolfowitz, following the advice of the Rumsfeld press office, declined. That may have some bearing on the fact that he was one of the few officials to come across in the series as less than commanding. He is portrayed as single-mindedly obsessed by Iraq. At one point, Colin Powell and General Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are described sharing an eye roll over Wolfowitz's war fever.
The narrative reaches a climax in the Laurel Lodge at Camp David, where the president gathered his war council the weekend following the attacks. During the meetings, Wolfowitz keeps pushing Iraq toward the front burner. He is so persistent, so seemingly deaf to the politics of the moment, that he even interrupts Rumsfeld to push his point. During a break, Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, on a signal from the president, takes Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld aside to ask that the Defense Department speak with one voice, which is a polite way of telling Wolfowitz to shut up.
The story has congealed into Washington wisdom, confirming the image of Wolfowitz as a man possessed.
Wolfowitz and two others who were in the room told me an alternative version of the day. It is not exactly incompatible (though both Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz say the Card scolding never happened, while Card, through a spokesman, confirms it), but it casts the day in a somewhat different light. They say that during a break in the meetings, the president listened in as Wolfowitz expounded on the Iraqi threat for a small group gathered around the fireplace of the rustic lodge. The president asked Wolfowitz why he hadn't made those points in the meeting and encouraged him to do so. Far from being an unwelcome voice, he was invited to speak up.
Some students of Washington intrigue have deduced from all this that Wolfowitz was set up. Rumsfeld brought him to Camp David specifically to make the Iraq case, knowing full well that the State Department, the C.I.A. and some of the brass would be opposed, knowing that a war with Iraq was more than the president could bite off in the first phase. The defense secretary wanted to define the ultimate problem as something bigger than Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan. So he pushed Wolfowitz forward. Wolfowitz would end up with the knives in him -- better a deputy than Rumsfeld himself -- but he would get the case for Iraq out where the president could consider it. And, sure enough, the president did define the terrorism problem early on as a global one including state sponsors. (Rumsfeld denies any such Machievellian design and says he doesn't even remember his deputy talking at the meeting.)
The larger point is that even as early as Sept. 15 of last year, the president was intrigued by what Wolfowitz was saying. By April, sooner than anyone expected, the president was telling journalists that "regime change" was his goal for Iraq. And when the president earlier this month assembled his war advisers in the Laurel Lodge, Iraq was on everybody's front burner. 
In Washington, no career-conscious official would ever suggest that he had influenced the president. It is essential to the mythology of executive leadership that presidents make up their own minds, and this administration is more hypersensitive than most to any suggestion that the president needs to be propped up by smart people. In any case, on the question of a more muscular American presence in the world, Wolfowitz is hardly a lone voice. His most important Washington patrons -- Cheney, whom he served in the first Bush Pentagon, and Rumsfeld -- have increasingly taken over the role of drum majors on Iraq. But the new worldview evolving in the Bush administration Washington -- interventionist, idealistic, less sensitive to alliance diplomacy -- is one created more at the Pentagon than the State Department and one to which Wolfowitz has brought intellectual weight. Morton Abramowitz, a veteran diplomat who has worked with, and occasionally sparred with, Wolfowitz, calls him "the pre-eminent house intellectual." 
Wolfowitz says that the new approach reflects the president's own instincts, which he maintains were evident even during the 2000 campaign to anyone who cared to look beyond the awkwardness of a foreign-policy novice -- and the scorn he heaped on nation building. Wolfowitz, who was one of the so-called Vulcans, the small cadre of thinkers who advised the campaign on defense and foreign policy, clearly finds the younger Bush more open to big, bold, activist ideas than his father.
"He's much more comfortable with speeches that lay out visions," Wolfowitz says. "I think he really believes in them. So there's that sort of Reaganism, if you want to call it that, in him, but a little more on the pragmatic side than Reagan when it comes to actual policy."
When the new Bush administration was coalescing, Colin Powell called Wolfowitz and offered him the job of ambassador to the United Nations. Given this administration's standoffish relationship with the U.N. and Wolfowitz's own wariness of multilateralism, that could be regarded as a trap rather than an honor, but Powell insists it was a sign of his great admiration for Wolfowitz's ability to think big and argue an issue to the ground. Wolfowitz has been similarly effusive in his praise of Powell, especially since news reports of their battles over Iraq.
And not only Iraq: the tensions between State and Defense are rooted in starkly different views of how America should deal with the world. The State Department tends to see the world as a set of problems to be handled, using the tools of professional diplomacy and striving for international consensus. This Defense Department tends to define leadership as more (in the Pentagon's favorite buzzword of the moment) "forward leaning," including a willingness to act unilaterally if need be and to employ muscle. Rumsfeld and Cheney, who have been friends since the Nixon administration, are visceral advocates of this more assertive view, but Wolfowitz is its theorist -- its Kissinger, as one admirer put it.
"What I think distinguishes him, and it's very alarming to some people, is that there is this spirit in Washington that foreign policy consists of managing problems," said Charles H. Fairbanks, a Johns Hopkins political scientist who has known Wolfowitz since college. "Paul Wolfowitz is really free of that tendency."
In 1992, in what would turn out to be the last year of the first Bush administration, Wolfowitz, then under secretary for policy in Cheney's Defense Department, presided over the writing of a new "Defense Planning Guidance," a broad directive to military leaders on what to prepare for. An early draft proposed that with the demise of the Soviet Union the United States doctrine should be to assure that no new superpower arose to rival America's benign domination of the globe. The U.S. would defend its unique status both by being militarily powerful beyond challenge and by being such a constructive force that no one would want to challenge us. We would participate in coalitions, but they would be "ad hoc." The U.S. would be "postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated." The guidance envisioned pre-emptive attacks against states bent on acquiring nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. It was accompanied by illustrative scenarios of hypothetical wars for which the military should be prepared. One of them was another war against Iraq, where Saddam had already rebounded from his gulf-war defeat and was busily crushing domestic unrest.
After the draft was leaked to  and was roundly denounced as bellicose and unilateralist, the language was softened. But a number of years later, in an essay published in The National Interest, Wolfowitz contended that most Americans had come around to favoring the kind of Pax Americana envisioned in that document. He argued that American interventions in the Balkans and elsewhere had demonstrated a growing consensus for an American leadership, which entailed "demonstrating that your friends will be protected and taken care of, that your enemies will be punished and that those who refuse to support you will live to regret having done so."
That now seems to have become the Bush doctrine, sprung from Sept. 11, and Iraq stands to be its most serious test. The evidence suggests that the world consensus is somewhat shakier than Wolfowitz predicted. Allied support is confined to the loyal Tony Blair, who may pay a high price at home for it; the American public is supportive, but in no hurry; the president's father's inner circle is sounding cautions.
Wolfowitz regards all of this as little different from the hand-wringing before Desert Storm or before the intervention in Bosnia. "If we get to the point where we're talking about reconstructing a post-Saddam Iraq, I think we'll have an awful lot that we agree on," he says. "And a lot of the differences of today, which revolve around how you get there, will seem like ancient worries."
In its early days, the Bush administration set in motion a review of Iraq policy, but it dragged on without much direction, so that by Sept. 11 the Bush policy on Iraq was essentially the one inherited from the Clinton administration. At the C.I.A., the holdover director, George J. Tenet, was pushing the idea of "stateless" terrorism, which implied less, not more, emphasis on the role of state patrons. At State, Colin Powell seized on an idea that had been gestating in the Clinton administration -- smart sanctions" -- that would have eased restrictions on food and medicine sales to Iraq but would have clamped down hard on smuggling of equipment for Saddam's rearmament. There was general agreement within the administration that sanctions were an abject failure, doing little to impede Saddam's military ambitions while creating a P.R. nightmare of hungry children. It is not clear that anybody had much faith that sanctions could be fixed, but smart sanctions created the impression of doing something. Iraq was, frankly, nobody's high priority -- not Rumsfeld, who was preoccupied with missile defense; not Cheney, who was consumed by the domestic agenda; not Condoleezza Rice or Powell, who had Russia and China to think about. When the Sept. 11 terrorists struck, Wolfowitz was the first into this vacuum. 
Friends of Wolfowitz's say his initial reaction was that Iraq was probably a party to the attacks. He had already studied the work of Laurie Mylroie, an investigator who has labored to connect Iraq to earlier terrorist attacks, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and now an ardent student of clues connecting Saddam to Sept. 11. The Clinton administration treated Mylroie as, in her words, "a nut case," but Wolfowitz -- then spending the Clinton years as dean of the prestigious School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins -- listened to her 90-minute briefing on the evidence trail and wrote a sympathetic blurb for her book blaming Iraq for the first trade-center attack. After Sept. 11, he encouraged his friend R. James Woolsey, the former C.I.A. director, to visit England as a consultant to a Justice Department mission and sniff out evidence of Iraqi connections. Woolsey contends that evidence connecting Iraq with terrorist assaults on America, while circumstantial, is "about as clear as these things get." Few others go that far, Wolfowitz included. He can describe the evidence in detail, the clandestine meetings between Iraqi intelligence and figures who may have been Al Qaeda operatives, and says he finds it intriguing but not conclusive. 
But the more general connection between Saddam and terrorists -- his hosting of the murderous and recently deceased Abu Nidal, his subsidies for Palestinian suicide bombers -- is enough, in Wolfowitz's view, to make their future collaboration against America almost a given. While Iraq might arm a missile or a bomber with one of those horrible weapons, Wolfowitz says, the more likely delivery system is via the terrorist international. And that, too, is an underlying assumption in the administration's case for war.
Throughout his career, Wolfowitz has managed to push hard against the prevailing view while avoiding the kind of confrontation that gets you marked as not a team player. But several people who know Wolfowitz say he seemed galvanized by Sept. 11 into a bet-your-career sense of purpose.I think Paul tended to be Mr. Interagency Stealth in the past, and now he's Mr. Open Warfare," says Stephen Sestanovich, a Russia expert who once worked for Wolfowitz as a policy planner. "Right after Sept. 11, the idea that Iraq was where we had to go next was the lunacy that had to be fought back. Now, in this town, there's a near consensus about it. They've accepted the Wolfowitz goal, and now they're just haggling about how it's to be done. That was a result that could only be achieved by open warfare."
A result of his being so out front, of course, is that along with the considerably higher stakes of human life and strategic order, one thing riding on the future of Iraq is Wolfowitz's future. If, as some of his friends believe, Wolfowitz, who is 58, would like to ascend to a cabinet job -- Rumsfeld would be 72 at the start of a second Bush term; Powell has dropped hints of being a one-termer; and a shuffle could land him as national security adviser or C.I.A. director -- his prospects are paradoxically wedded to those of Saddam Hussein.
Wolfowitz grew up in a household in which Hitler and Stalin were not abstractions. His father, a mathematics professor at Cornell and an innovator in the field of statistics, was a Polish Jew who emigrated from Russian-held Warsaw in 1920. He often told his children how lucky they were to have escaped the totalitarian horrors of Europe for the benign security of America. There were many Wolfowitzes consumed in the Holocaust, and according to Wolfowitz's sister, Laura, the world's perils and America's moral responsibility were constant topics at their dinner table.
As a teenager, Wolfowitz was a lonely John F. Kennedy Democrat in his conservative Ithaca, N.Y., high school. He says the only time he ever marched in a demonstration was when he was 19, at Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights spectacular in Washington. He remains, by his own description, a "bleeding heart" on social issues and a civil libertarian. The day I watched him under questioning from those eager majors at Fort Leavenworth, he argued against the use of torture in interrogating terror suspects and against the deployment of the military in domestic crises.
But his sense of America's large place in the world, like his father's, has always hewed close to that of the late Senator Henry M. Jackson, the pioneering Democratic hawk nicknamed Scoop, who believed in an American obligation to support democracies and in the willingness to use military force sometimes to accomplish that. (Jackson was also Richard Perle's mentor.) Wolfowitz, who switched parties during the Reagan administration, now describes himself as "a Scoop Jackson Republican."
Wolfowitz followed his father into mathematics, taking courses from him at Cornell, shifted to chemistry and "probably would have ended up a very unhappy biochemist" if not for the intervention of Allan Bloom, the charismatic political philosopher, who was a resident scholar in the elite student dormitory where Wolfowitz lived. Bloom emboldened Wolfowitz to follow his childhood fascination with world affairs, to the enormous dismay of his father, who regarded political science as roughly equivalent to astrology.
Wolfowitz earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago, a seedbed of what is now called neoconservative thinking in economics, political science and strategic studies. His mentor there was Albert Wohlstetter, perhaps the most influential thinker about military strategems of the nuclear age and godfather of the anti-detente school during the cold war.
Student deferments kept him out of the military draft during the Vietnam War, and he looks back on that war with a kind of scholarly detachment that is in striking contrast to, say, Colin Powell, who served two tours there and regards Vietnam as the paradigm of good intentions gone wrong. Wolfowitz was sympathetic to the war and only later came around to the view that it was "a very costly overreach." At the same time, he wonders if the American role in Vietnam might have given anti-Communist forces in Asia time to gather strength. "We know the costs of Vietnam," he says. "They were horrendous." And then he adds a quintessentially Wolfowitz kicker: "But we don't know what that part of the world would have looked like today if it hadn't been." 
After three years teaching political science at Yale, Wolfowitz was recruited through Wohlstetter's profuse grapevine to work in Washington at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In the waning days of the Nixon administration, the agency was one link in a network of conservative insurgents. Their target was the diplomacy of patient coexistence with the Soviet Union. Their ringleader was Perle, operating out of Scoop Jackson's office. Their Antichrist was Kissinger, the mastermind of detente. The insurgent view was that the Soviet Union should be not simply contained but challenged on all fronts. They argued that American intelligence agencies had played down the aggressive designs and military advances of the Soviet Union to conform to the White House drive for arms control.
In the waning days of the Ford administration, the C.I.A. (director: George H.W. Bush) sought to appease the hard-liners by commissioning "Team B," a group of kibitzers with license to second-guess the intelligence reports on the Soviet Union. Wolfowitz was one of the 10 members. The report they produced was more than Bush bargained for. It painted the Soviet Union as an expansionist boogeyman. In hindsight, much of the Team B report was worst-case hyperbole; it credited the Soviet Union with developing superweapons it never had and ignored the handicaps of a failing Soviet economy. But Team B became a political bludgeon to batter the proponents of arms control and drive up American military spending. Wolfowitz, who contributed a thoughtful and unhysterical chapter on the importance of intermediate-range missiles to the Soviet strategy, says he never bought Team B's alarmist contention that the Soviet Union believed it could fight and win a nuclear war. But he says the report was a useful guerrilla attack on conventional thinking, including the tendency of intelligence agencies to assume that rival countries think the same way we do.
It was a similar Team B-style exercise that led to his current job. Rumsfeld was impressed by Wolfowitz's work for him on a commission set up by Congressional hawks in 1998 to prod the Clinton administration toward deploying missile defense. (Rumsfeld is a missile-defense devotee; Wolfowitz somewhat less so, since he worries it would not stop low-flying cruise missiles.)
Wolfowitz abandoned the Yale tenure track and threw himself into the practice of national security, moving back and forth between Defense and State. His earliest jobs were in the wonkish realm of policy analysis -- gazing at the horizon. He had a knack for luring bright, opinionated thinkers, some of whom rank high in the current administration. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was captivated by Wolfowitz's political science course at Yale and worked for him at the in-house think tanks in both the State and Defense Departments. Condoleezza Rice's deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, who is chairman of an influential committee of cabinet deputies that meets several times a week on national-security issues, worked for Wolfowitz in the Cheney Defense Department and was a fellow Vulcan in the campaign. 
Contrary to his ideologue image, Wolfowitz is described by colleagues as open to new ideas and encouraging of dissent. Dennis Ross went to work for Wolfowitz shortly after writing a paper trashing the work of Team B. "What I always found in him that separated him from everybody else on that side of the political spectrum is not that he didn't have predispositions, but that he was much more open, much more intellectually open, to different kinds of interpretations," Ross says. Charles Fairbanks, who also worked for Wolfowitz in the policy-planning office of the State Department, recalls him as "sort of on the one hand, on the other hand on most issues," but ardent on the subject of certain regimes he regarded as outside the norms of civilized behavior, including the radical Baath party of Iraq and Muammar el-Qaddafi's Libya. "I once presented talking points on Libya, which I considered very tough. He said: 'You don't understand. I really want to destroy Qaddafi, not just constrain him."'
His proteges cite several examples of Wolfowitz's homing in on subjects before they grew into major issues, often when they were politically inconvenient. For example, as the Soviet empire was unraveling and the first President Bush was clinging to the waning figure of Mikhail Gorbachev, Wolfowitz and his boss, Cheney, believed that Boris N. Yeltsin represented a better prospect of a real end to the cold war. 
And then there is Iraq. When he arrived at the Pentagon in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the Arab oil embargo, Wolfowitz was surprised to find that the Persian Gulf region was scarcely on their minds.
"There was a fairly big NATO office," he recalls, "and a modest size East Asian one and then a cats-and-dogs office. I said, 'Where's the Persian Gulf office?' 'Oh, we don't plan forces for the Persian Gulf.' This was 1977. And one of the unspoken reasons, I think, was Vietnam. But one of the spoken reasons was, the shah takes care of the Persian Gulf for us. And I said, 'Well, that's a little shortsighted."'
So he assembled a small group, including Dennis Ross, and they wrote a secret assessment of threats. Much of the report was about possible Soviet moves into the region, but planted in the midst of this is a bright red flag about Iraq. Examining Iraq's outsize military and unresolved territorial claims, the report talked about possible attacks on Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, which would give Iraq control of the West's oil lifeline. The U.S. was seen as woefully unprepared to respond. The report recommended beefing up forces to provide "a credible and visible balance to Iraq's local power."
The report was not well received by the Carter administration, which was then busy courting Iraq as an offset to the new revolutionary regime in Iran. But Wolfowitz persisted, and one result was a decision to permanently pre-position cargo ships in the gulf region loaded with tanks, artillery and ammunition. By the time of the gulf war, some of the equipment was rusty, but as Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, points out, it was the first heavy weaponry to hit the ground against Saddam's army. 
When Iraq swooped into Kuwait in 1990, Wolfowitz was Cheney's under secretary for policy. He was the strongest advocate for dispatching warships early as a sign of American resolve, and his was a persistent voice for putting American troops on the ground. After Iraq was driven out of Kuwait, Wolfowitz argued unsuccessfully that America should support the Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south in their attempts to finish off Saddam.
There is an entertaining echo of his frustration in "Ravelstein," Saul Bellow's roman a clef about Wolfowitz's college guru, Allan Bloom. In the novel, Wolfowitz has a walk-on part as a former student who has made it big in Washington and periodically delights his old tutor by phoning in tidbits of inside dope. Professor Bloom/Ravelstein returns from one such phone call during the gulf war to inform his friends: "Colin Powell and Baker have advised the president not to send the troops all the way to Baghdad. Bush will announce it tomorrow. They're afraid of a few casualties."
Neither Wolfowitz nor anyone else in the administration was calling for sending American troops to Baghdad, since that far exceeded their mandate from Congress and the United Nations to liberate Kuwait. But Wolfowitz was dismayed by the decision to quickly extricate American troops and let the situation in Iraq run its course. When Clinton, who inherited the aftermath of the war, continued to stand by as Saddam suppressed the Kurds, Wolfowitz wrote a blistering op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, calling it "Clinton's Bay of Pigs" -- a rebuke he could as aptly have applied to the first President Bush. In language unusually fierce for Wolfowitz, he derided "our passive containment policy and our inept covert operations" and clearly implied that ousting Saddam should be American policy without quite saying it. The following year he was explicitly proposing "the military option," unilateral if necessary, to rid the world of Saddam.
Until America came directly under attack last year, Wolfowitz says, he was still thinking in terms of providing arms, training and air support for indigenous rebels, not sending in American divisions.
"I certainly would not then have favored us sending occupying forces into Iraq," he says. "But we might have overthrown a terrible regime. It might have worked out well. It could hardly be worse than what we've had for the last 10 years. And if it had been a mess, we could've said, O.K., well, we gave them their chance.
"In contrast, we're at a point now, I think, that if Iraq is liberated, our responsibility for it is going to be so large that our responsibility for the outcome -- and our stake in the outcome -- is going to be much larger."
Wolfowitz's pentagon jobs under various presidents persuaded him that Iraq was chronic trouble. His vision of Iraq as an opportunity, though, evolved from his work in the State Department.
Two years into the Reagan administration, Wolfowitz asked Secretary of State George P. Shultz to move him from the world of theory into the world of practice, as assistant secretary of state for East Asia. Shultz says he hesitated -- Wolfowitz was known for his brains, not his management skills -- but agreed. Wolfowitz quickly found himself riding shotgun on another campaign against the geopolitics of Henry Kissinger, this time on how to deal with China. Shultz and Wolfowitz agreed that Kissinger put too much value on China as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union, with the result that the U.S. bent over backward to preserve "the relationship" by making concessions on issues like Taiwan. The new team argued, in essence, that it was possible to be a hard-liner on the Soviet Union without pandering to China. Once China was downsized as a factor in the cold war, the administration felt freer to turn more attention to Japan, first, but also to the emerging Asian democracies of South Korea and Taiwan. 
For his next act, Wolfowitz applied to be ambassador to Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population and a place that his wife and college sweetheart, Clare, had chosen as the focus of her anthropological studies. (They are now separated, but she speaks of him with intense admiration.) He threw himself into the public diplomacy, learning the language well enough to take questions at public gatherings and even entering a cooking contest sponsored by a women's magazine. (He won third place for a dish he dubbed Madame Mao's Chicken.) He especially prides himself on a public speech that called on the Indonesian strongman, Suharto, to introduce political openness -- a message he diplomatically saved for the end of his tour as ambassador but one that still infuriated Suharto.
Wolfowitz has talked for years about the incubation of Asian democracies and the more recent currents of freedom in Indonesia as reason to hope for something similar in the Islamic Mideast. Since Sept. 11, this has been a favorite theme in his speeches.
Wolfowitz was still a young Pentagon wonk when President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt braved the wrath of the Arab world to visit Jerusalem and deliver a speech of peace to the Israeli Parliament. To an American Jew raised with a high sense of individual moral obligation, this was such an admirable piece of statesmanship that Wolfowitz bought Arabic language tapes and studied them in his car on his commute to the Pentagon so that he could appreciate the valor of Sadat's speech in the original.
You hear from some of Wolfowitz's critics, always off the record, that Israel exercises a powerful gravitational pull on the man. They may not know that as a teenager he spent his father's sabbatical semester in Israel or that his sister is married to an Israeli, but they certainly know that he is friendly with Israel's generals and diplomats and that he is something of a hero to the heavily Jewish neoconservative movement. Those who know him well say this -- leaving aside the offensive suggestion of dual loyalty -- is looking at Wolfowitz through the wrong end of the telescope. As the Sadat story illustrates, he has generally been less excited by the security of Israel than by the promise of a more moderate Islam.
"As a moral man, he might have found Israel the heart of the Middle East story," Stephen Sestanovich says. "But as a policy maker, Turkey and the gulf and Egypt didn't loom any less large for him."
After Sept. 11, Wolfowitz supported the successful effort to include the localized killers of Hamas and Hezbollah on America's global terror list and was part of a large administration chorus (basically, everyone except the State Department) that argued for bypassing Yasir Arafat. But he has not hesitated to tell Israel when American interests trumped theirs. He supported selling sophisticated surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia, despite intense Israeli lobbying against the sale -- and those Awacs planes proved invaluable in the gulf war. Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing former prime minister, still complains that Israel was wrong to succumb to Wolfowitz's diplomacy during the gulf war, when he persuaded Israel to hold its fire as Iraqi Scuds were landing. Netanyahu, who generally admires Wolfowitz, thinks this forbearance emboldened his country's enemies. If there is a new war, persuading Ariel Sharon to show similar forbearance may be more difficult, but Wolfowitz will be foremost among those arguing the case.
Alongside the conference table where we did our talking, Wolfowitz has mounted a painting that, from across the room, resembles a tranquil Maryland landscape. On closer inspection, the dark foreground is a river of corpses. Wolfowitz, a Civil War buff, had it copied from a painting called "The Bloody Lane," a rendering of the deadliest battle in American history, Antietam, which shattered the momentum of the South and emboldened Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. It seems like sobering company for a man who deals in the gruesome cost-benefit analysis of warfare.
Wolfowitz says that he agonizes a good deal over the dangers of dispatching Americans to war, that he respects the traditional conservatism of men in uniform who know the Antietams of the globe firsthand. Interventions that are only indirectly about American interests, like Somalia, he says, should be "as close to risk-free as possible," and, he suggests, "maybe somewhere along the way we should have a volunteer force that is specifically volunteering for missions other than defending the country." The opposite of the Peace Corps, you might say.
Wars that defend our safety may command a higher price. What price? Would the danger posed by a nuclear-armed Saddam be worth, say, the lives of thousands of American soldiers, if that is what the experts estimated it would take to disarm him by force?
Wolfowitz posed the question himself and answered no. Weapons of mass destruction would not be enough to justify the deaths of thousands of Americans. And in any case, thousands killed would mean the mission had gone badly wrong.
But Wolfowitz was not letting the discussion end there. Later, he e-mailed me an afterthought about that grisly calculus of going to war against Iraq.
"So if that's what you estimate the costs of action to be, then you have to have something more on the other side of the ledger than just the possession of weapons of mass destruction," he wrote. Whether that "something more" that would justify that greater sacrifice meant evidence that Iraq was on the verge of using its weapons, or the prospect of establishing Iraq as an outpost of democracy, or a smoking gun tying Iraq to Sept. 11, he did not specify. "In the end, it has to come down to a careful weighing of things we can't know with precision, the costs of action versus the costs of inaction, the costs of action now versus the costs of action later." 







   
 

September 21, 2002 Saturday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: INDONESIA; 
U.S. Embassy in Jakarta Reports a 'Credible Threat' in an Area of Islamic Militancy

 
The American Embassy here said today that it had "credible threat information" that Westerners in central Java "may be targeted for violence in the immediate future."
     The warning did not say who was behind the threats, but the area around Yogyakarta, east of Jakarta, the capital, is a hotbed of Islamic militancy. 
 The embassy, which was closed most of last week because of a threat, remained open today but it was under heavy new security, with concrete barriers and rifle-toting police officers.
The security and warnings are the latest manifestations of American concern that Al Qaeda has a strong base here and has made common cause with local militants, a view generally shared by Indonesia's neighbors. 
For nearly a year, these governments have been telling Indonesians that their country is ripe for exploitation by Al Qaeda: vast area, porous borders, weak law enforcement and the world's largest Muslim population, making it easier for Islamic militants to blend in.
The Indonesian response has been categorical declarations that there are no terrorists here. Now attitudes appear to be changing, several diplomats said this week. 
"There's been a sea change," a Western diplomat said. "Al Qaeda in Indonesia is no longer a matter of speculation." 
President Megawati Sukarnoputri now understands she has a serious problem and has said she is going to get involved personally in dealing with it, a Western diplomat said. 
But there are questions as to how far she is willing to go. The most immediate sign will be how she deals with a group called Jemaah Islamiyah (Islamic Community) and its leader, Abu Bakar Bashir. 
The turnaround in attitude came after the United States presented the Indonesian government with the results of the interrogation of a Qaeda operative, Omar al-Faruq, who was picked up here in June and turned over to the United States.
Ten days ago, he told his interrogators that Mr. Bashir had provided money, explosives and men for several terrorist acts, including a plan to blow up the American Embassies here and in Malaysia, according to intelligence sources.
Mr. Bashir has long maintained he was not involved in any terrorist activities and today he said on television that he did not know Mr. Faruq.
Islamic Community has a history going back decades, when it began advocating an Islamic state here. A few years ago, it linked up with Al Qaeda, Western and Asian intelligence officials and diplomats say. 
"There was a convergence of interests," said a Western diplomat. The local group wanted the training and expertise Al Qaeda could offer to help it press for an Islamic state; Al Qaeda wanted links to the community and money for its attacks against the United States.
Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have all urged Indonesia to crack down on Jemaah Islamiyah.
In the Philippines, the group formed an alliance with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Singaporean and Philippine law enforcement officials say.
"Jemaah Islamiyah should be declared by the Indonesian government to be a terrorist organization" and Mr. Bashir should be arrested, a senior Philippine intelligence official said. "The activities of people identified with him are jeopardizing peace in the region. Why is he still out there?" 
The Bush administration is poised to declare Mr. Bashir's group a terrorist organization but is prepared to give the Indonesian government a reasonable period to take some strong action against the group, administration officials said. Several months ago, under international pressure, the police here called Mr. Bashir in for questioning. "It was a tea party," a diplomat said.
Labeling Islamic Community "terrorist" could cause serious problems for President Megawati. The group has a large following -- Vice President Hamzah Haz recently had Mr. Bashir to dinner and called him a Muslim brother -- and the campaign against terrorism is seen by many here as a campaign against Islam.
The Indonesian government has said that it has not been able to act against Mr. Bashir because there is no evidence that he has done anything illegal in Indonesia. It is hard to see how the government can continue to make that argument, an Asian diplomat said this week.
Mr. Faruq told his C.I.A. interrogators that when he arrived in Indonesia in 1998, having been sent by a top aide to Osama bin Laden, he linked up with Agus Dwikarna, an Indonesian businessman and member of Jemaah Islamiyah. He helped Mr. Dwikarna set up an organization, Laskar Jundullah, which carried out attacks on Christians in Sulawesi, intelligence officials said. 
(Mr. Dwikarna was arrested in Manila in March as he tried to board a plane with a suitcase full of explosives. There have been allegations that the explosives were planted, which several Western and Asian officials did not deny, but they disagreed on who planted them.)
Al Qaeda encouraged Mr. Bashir's goal of trying to set off a religious war in Indonesia, Mr. Faruq told the C.I.A., according to a summary of the interrogation that was the basis on which the Bush administration put the country on orange alert last week. 
A Bashir lieutenant obtained the explosives that were to be used in the attack on the American Embassy here, Mr. Faruq told the C.I.A. Mr. Bashir also dispatched another member of Islamic Community to bomb the American Embassy in Malaysia, an attack that had been intended for the Sept. 11 anniversary, Mr. Faruq said.
On Thursday, Singapore issued a detailed report on the activities of Islamic Community members there, 19 of whom were arrested last month. The government said the group was plotting to overthrow the governments of Malaysia and Singapore in order to form Islamic states. The Singapore cell was also plotting to blow up the airport, a United States Navy ship and a bar frequented by American servicemen, the government said.







  



September 21, 2002 Saturday  




 WORLD; 
In Brief

 
EUROPE 
 BERLIN -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder apologized to President Bush yesterday for the offense caused by a report that his justice minister had compared Bush's methods to Adolf Hitler's. 
 The election-eve report in a regional daily angered a U.S. administration already upset about the chancellor's voluble -- and highly popular -- opposition to a prospective U.S.-led war in Iraq. 
 Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin tried to calm the transatlantic dispute by denying the report.  
 The report said Daeubler-Gmelin had told a preelection gathering that, by threatening to attack Iraq, "Bush wants to distract attention from his domestic political problems. That's a favorite method. Hitler did that, too." 
 Schroeder wrote to Bush, saying: "I want to let you know how much I regret the fact that alleged comments by the German justice minister have given an impression that has offended you." 
Reuters 
 ANKARA, Turkey -- The head of Turkey's most popular party was banned from running in November polls because of a past conviction for "Islamist" sedition. 
 The ban added to the uncertainty clouding an election widely viewed at home and by NATO allies as one of the most important and unpredictable in Turkish history. 
 An electoral board ruling against Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of the Justice and Development Party, crushed his hopes of being Turkey's next prime minister. But the charismatic former Istanbul mayor seems certain to remain a defiant and strong force in turbulent Turkish politics. 
ReutersTHE AMERICAS 
 BUENOS AIRES -- Gunmen fired shots at the home of one of Argentina's most prominent human rights activists, two days after she formally pressed courts to investigate alleged police repression. 
 Estela Carlotto said the early morning shooting shattered her front-door window but injured no one. Carlotto is head of the white-scarved Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, who have campaigned to know the fates of thousands of their grandchildren from Argentina's 1976-83 dictatorship. 
 Police and judicial officials did not comment on the case. Local television showed a shattered entrance door and several bullet holes in the walls of Carlotto's house. 
ReutersASIA 
 JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian security officials reported more details about a German apprehended in Jakarta earlier this week on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, saying he was not an Arab as initially reported but of Afghan ancestry and had worked for a German television station. 
 The suspect, identified as Seyam Reda, had also applied for work as a cameraman with al-Jazeera, an Arabic-language news network based in Qatar, but had been turned down for the job, according to Othman al Battiri, the station's Indonesia correspondent. 
 Indonesia's top police chief also told reporters that investigators had found videotapes in Reda's possession showing civil strife in either the Moluccas or Central Sulawesi, both Indonesian areas where Islamic militants have fomented violence between Christian and Muslim residents. 
 Meantime, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta warned Americans visiting the popular tourist area of Yogyakarta in central Java to be vigilant because of new information that Westerners could be targeted for violence. 
Alan Sipress 






  


September 20, 2002 Friday 



 WAR DIGEST

 
WASHINGTON
Panel says farms are vulnerable to bioterrorism
A year after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States remains vulnerable to bioterrorism aimed at farms that produce the nation's food, a panel of scientists said in a report released Thursday.
"It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when," said R. James Cook, a committee member from Washington State University. "While there may be a very low probability now, what about in 20 years?"
The scientists said an attack was unlikely to result in a famine or malnutrition but could shake public confidence in the food supply and devastate the economy - costing anywhere from millions of dollars to tens of billions of dollars. The report was prepared by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. 
Terrorists could carry diseases past U.S. border inspectors to farms in remote areas, infecting cattle with mad cow disease, spreading anthrax or contaminating crops with bacteria, the study warned.
In its report, the council urged U.S. officials to improve their communication with intelligence agencies, universities and farm groups.
NEW YORK
Judge won't allow anonymous suits in 9-11 cases
Families of those who died or were injured in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, cannot sue airlines and airport security companies anonymously because of the high public interest in the disaster, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein cut short the oral arguments of a lawyer for 10 families seeking to press their claims anonymously. The judge noted that the families could keep their identities secret by joining the federal Victim Compensation Fund.
The fund, set up by the government, requires participants to give up their rights to sue airlines used in the attack and other entities but allows them to sue terrorists. Attorney John A. Greaves said about 10 families sought anonymity in lawsuits against the airlines, airports and security companies because they feared for their personal safety.
BUFFALO, N.Y.
Al-Qaida suspect says he wanted out of terror camp
One of the six men suspected of being part of a New York terrorist cell grew afraid after being taken to an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and repeatedly asked to leave, his lawyer said Thursday.
At a bail hearing, lawyer James Harrington said Sahim Alwan had asked several people at the camp if he could leave. He could not get out until a few days after Osama bin Laden spoke at the camp, Harrington said. Alwan then got a ride to Kandahar.
"I was scared and missed my family. I did not agree with the mentality of some of the people at the camp," Alwan, 29, told FBI investigators. "After realizing the crazy, radical mentality of people at the camp, I decided to leave."
Alwan spoke to the FBI several times before his arrest, according to the criminal complaint, which disclosed details from the interviews.
Defense attorneys have moved to dismiss the charges. The men, who are accused of supporting bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network, are all U.S. citizens.
SINGAPORE
Group is said to have planned attack on U.S. warship
A U.S. Navy ship and a bar frequented by American troops had been targeted for attack by 21 men arrested last month, Singapore government officials said Thursday. Singapore suspects the men have links to al-Qaida, and the terrorist group also planned to hit the country's Defense Ministry and water pipelines, the officials said.
The men were acting on orders from an Indonesian Muslim cleric, Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, said Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry. Hambali, whose whereabouts is unknown, is believed to be the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional group officials have linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.
The government allegations were based on recovered maps, photos and notes from the homes of three suspects, copies of which were provided in the government's statement.






    
  


September 20, 2002, Friday



 ANTITERROR WAR PRESSURES INDONESIA







  



September 20, 2002 Friday  




 Militant Alliance in Asia Is Said to Seek Regional Islamic State

 
 Islamic extremist groups with roots in at least five Southeast Asian countries have forged a coalition seeking to transform their separate, local struggles into a campaign to establish a single regional Islamic state, Singaporean officials said today. 
 The alliance, formed over the last three years, is the handiwork of Riduan Isamuddin, an Indonesian militant considered by regional intelligence agencies to be one of al Qaeda's chief operatives in the area, according to Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry. Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, is the region's most-wanted man. 
 Singaporean officials described Isamuddin's efforts in a lengthy statement detailing the activities of 21 suspects arrested last month for alleged involvement in extremist activities, including ties to a militant group that plotted to blow up the U.S. Embassy and three other embassies in the city-state. The detention of the 21 suspects, all Singaporean citizens with jobs ranging from butcher and taxi driver to used-car salesman and part-time foot reflexologist, was announced this week. They are being held under Singapore's tough Internal Security Act.  
 In support of its allegations, the Singaporean ministry also released copies of maps, photographs, a reconnaissance report and other notes and documents that officials said were recovered from three of the arrested men. 
 The latest details supplied by Singapore reveal the extent to which the combined efforts of U.S. and regional intelligence agencies have been able to penetrate the cells of al Qaeda's Southeast Asian allies. They also show how audacious and far-reaching these cadres have become. 
 While some of the targets contemplated by Isamuddin and his colleagues were meant to further al Qaeda's campaign against the West, other potential targets were selected to create instability that militants could exploit in a bid to overthrow existing governments, officials said. 
 Among the projects contemplated by the groups, officials said, were attacks on pipelines in Singapore that transport water from the island's northern neighbor, Malaysia. The militants also considered blowing up Singapore's Defense Ministry. 
 "The aim was to create a situation in Malaysia and Singapore conducive to overthrowing the Malaysian government and making Malaysia an Islamic state," the Home Affairs Ministry reported. "The attacks on key Singapore installations would be portrayed as acts of aggression by the Malaysian government, thereby generating animosity and distrust between Malaysia and Singapore." 
 Isamuddin's strategy was to foment ethnic strife between Singapore's majority Chinese community and the majority Muslim population of Malaysia, creating "a situation which would make Muslims respond to calls for jihad," the officials said. 
 For this particular plot, Isamuddin drew upon members of the Jemaah Islamiah organization in Singapore and Malaysia, which he headed and had steered increasingly toward armed activities and away from traditional Islamic proselytizing, officials said. 
 Intelligence officials say Jemaah Islamiah is a militant network operating primarily in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, headed by radical Indonesian cleric Abubakar Baasyir, who runs a Muslim boarding school in central Java. Earlier this year, Singapore's senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew, labeled Isamuddin as "Baasyir's right-hand man." Baasyir has denied any terrorist connections. 
 At the same time that Isamuddin was plotting against targets in Singapore, he had bolder objectives in mind. According to officials, Isamuddin was seeking to coordinate the activities of his Jemaah Islamiah network with Muslim radicals in Thailand and Muslim separatists in the southern Philippines in a regional alliance called Rabitatul Mujaheddin.  
 "The objective was to unify the Islamic militant groups in the region, with the ultimate goal of realizing an Islamic state comprising Malaysia, Indonesia and [the southern Philippine island of] Mindanao, following which Singapore and Brunei would eventually be absorbed," the Home Affairs Ministry reported. 
 The alliance sought to promote cooperation among the separate militant groups in obtaining arms, training and financial support, as well as conducting terrorist attacks, officials said. A central committee established by Isamuddin included leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) from the Philippines and a militant group based in Narathiwat in southern Thailand, the officials said. The central committee met secretly three times in 1999 and 2000. 
 One example of regional cooperation was military training, officials said. They said one of the Jemaah Islamiah suspects arrested in August, Habibullah, had attended the MILF's camp on Mindanao in 1995, 1996 and 1997, learning how to use guns, make explosives and conduct ambushes. He later organized tours for Jemaah Islamiah members to the MILF's Abu Bakr camp and raised money in Singapore for the Philippine separatist group. 
 The statement by the Home Affairs Ministry said Jemaah Islamiah considered the MILF to be a crucial ally, and provided funds in return for combat training at Abu Bakr camp. Since 1997, Indonesian militants were reportedly allowed to run their own facility within the larger camp, officials said. 
 Jemaah Islamiah's Singapore wing played a significant role in financing militants around the region, officials said. The Home Affairs Ministry said many members in Singapore contributed 5 percent of their salaries to the organization, with half the proceeds forwarded to Jemaah Islamiah operations in Malaysia and Indonesia. Within Singapore, the group used the funds for local cells' operating expenses and to finance military training. 
 Malaysian members of Jemaah Islamiah, meanwhile, offered military training to their Singaporean counterparts, including 14 of the suspects arrested in August, officials said. This training, in Gunung Pulai and Kulai, was limited in the first half of the 1990s to physical fitness, but by the late 1990s participants were being schooled in ambush technique and guerrilla warfare. By 2000, courses at Kota Tinggi included urban warfare and reconnaissance. 
 These skills were put to use in Singapore during the last three years, when Jemaah Islamiah members surveilled water pipelines, the airport at Changi, the radar station at Biggin Hill, the Jurong Island chemical complex and the Defense Ministry, officials said. The operatives also observed possible American targets, including a warship at Changi naval base and a pub frequented by U.S. servicemen. Singaporean officials said no plan to attack any of these targets was ever finalized.  
 In Indonesia today, police identified a terrorism suspect detained Tuesday in South Jakarta as Seyam Reda, 40, a German citizen from Saudi Arabia working as a journalist for al-Jazeera, an Arabic-language news network based in Qatar. He was originally detained for violating his tourist visa by working as a journalist. Investigators are pursuing the possibility that he is Abu Daud, a man wanted by both Singapore and Malaysia for links to international terrorism, a spokesman for the Indonesian police, Saleh Saaf, said.  
 Police so far have found no evidence linking Reda to al Qaeda or Omar al-Farouq, an al Qaeda operative seized by Indonesian authorities in June and turned over to U.S. authorities, Saaf said. 
 Documents and videotapes showing what appeared to be Indonesians or Malaysians training to use automatic weapons in a rural area were found in Reda's home, he said. 
 Meanwhile, in the Philippines, an Indonesian operative of Jemaah Islamiah told police of the group's plan to bomb Western targets as part of a jihad, or holy war, intended to establish an Islamic state in the region. Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, jailed in Manila for illegal possession of explosives, made the disclosure in a statement to police in July, a copy of which the Reuters news agency obtained today. 







  



September 19, 2002 Thursday  




 Arrests Provide Indonesia With New Al Qaeda Leads; 
Probe Could Bring Politically Sensitive Moves Against Militants

 
 Indonesian authorities are investigating extensive new information about al Qaeda operations here following the apprehension of terrorist suspects linked to church bombings as well as to plots to assassinate Indonesia's president and blow up U.S. embassies here and in other Southeast Asian capitals. 
 The country's military intelligence chief acknowledged today that an investigation has begun to determine if an international terrorist network exists in Indonesia, a shift from previous police denials and one that could present politically vexing choices if the government pursues Indonesians suspected of involvement in the terrorist operations. 
The key figure in custody is Omar al-Farouq, an al Qaeda operative from Kuwait who was seized in June and quietly handed over to U.S. officials. He told U.S. interrogators about the bombing and assassination plots and said he was behind the church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000 that killed 18 people, according to a U.S. document summarizing key points in his interrogation.  
 The most recent detention came in Jakarta on Tuesday, when police seized a German citizen of Arab descent suspected of al Qaeda involvement after investigators found documents in his house linking him to violent activities in this country. The national police chief said today that a preliminary investigation has connected the man to al-Farouq. 
 According to the U.S. document -- first reported by Time magazine -- al-Farouq said al Qaeda encouraged the efforts of radical Indonesian Muslim cleric Abubakar Baasyir to "spark a religious civil war" in Indonesia to achieve Baasyir's vision of an Islamic state. The church bombings, he said, were planned with Baasyir's "knowledge, approval and logistical support." Baasyir has denied involvement with al Qaeda or al-Farouq. 
 It was al-Farouq's disclosure on Sept. 9 of terrorist plots that led to the shutdown of more than a dozen U.S. embassies, including the one in Jakarta, and to the elevation of the U.S. terrorist threat index to orange, or high risk. 
 The information provided by al-Farouq has prompted authorities to investigate at least six other suspected militants, likely including the German taken into custody on Tuesday, said a Western security source in Jakarta. Officials declined to specify what the documents found in his house contained beyond a vague reference to "involvement in riots." He is said to have undergone two days of intensive questioning. 
 The greater openness by officials about Indonesia's anti-terror efforts and the latest revelations from al-Farouq are sure to increase pressure on officials in Jakarta to take politically difficult steps, including the arrest of Baasyir and other Indonesian suspects. 
 "Well before today, they have quietly been quite cooperative with the Americans, quietly because of Muslim sensitivities," said Andrew Tan, assistant professor at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore. "Turning over Farouq has been an example." 
 But President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who is up for reelection in 2004, faces great pressure from her grass-roots constituency as well as religious parties not to appear to crack down too severely on Muslim radicals in the world's most-populous Muslim country. Already today Indonesian newspaper Web sites were reporting predictions of a backlash if the government goes after Islamic militants. 
 Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said authorities are investigating Baasyir's activities to see if there are grounds for moving against him. "It's still quite impossible for us to detain or arrest him unless we have been able to prove those foreign intelligence reports as correct," Yudhoyono said. 
 In response to intelligence reports of al Qaeda cells operating in Indonesia involving both Indonesians and foreigners, he said, "All reports gathered from the intelligence and our cooperation with other countries still need to be clarified, confirmed and justified according to the Indonesian legal system. That's exactly what we're working on now." 
 According to the document summarizing key points of his interrogation, al-Farouq said he was al Qaeda's senior representative to Southeast Asia, sent to plan large-scale attacks against U.S. interests in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Cambodia. 
 He told interrogators that key figures in the bombing plot against U.S. embassies in the region were members of Jemaah Islamiah, a militant organization seeking to establish Islamic rule across Southeast Asia. U.S. and other intelligence officials say this organization is headed by Baasyir. 
 According to al-Farouq, Baasyir dispatched Jemaah Islamiah member Abu al-Furkan to oversee the Malaysian segment of the embassy bombing plot. The organization provided him with financing and more than one ton of explosives. 
 Al-Farouq said he was involved in a 1999 plot to assassinate Megawati and about 40 other prominent Indonesians. He said he was assigned to be the gunman and his wife, Mira Agustina, acted as a translator during the planning. Al-Farouq also revealed a second plot to kill Megawati last year, which failed when the bomb to be used in the attack detonated prematurely at a Jakarta mall and the would-be assassin's leg was blown off. 
 He also said he planned to bomb a U.S. warship in the east Java port of Surabaya in May 2002, but the plan was never carried out. 
 In a phone interview today, Baasyir denied he was involved with al Qaeda or al-Farouq. "He was lying," Baasyir said, through an interpreter. "I never met him. He never knew me at all. I don't have any connection to al Qaeda. That's just what the media says." 
 He scoffed at the notion, advanced by some Western analysts in the region, that for Indonesia to show it is serious about squelching terrorist activity, it must begin to arrest Indonesian militants. "That's a kind of [psychological warfare] based on hate toward the rise of Islam in Indonesia," said Baasyir, 64, who runs a religious school in Solo in central Java.  
 Indonesia's disclosure that it has detained the German suspect came two days after Singapore announced the arrest of 21 men, all Singaporeans, allegedly involved in "terrorism-related activities," including participation in a separate Jemaah Islamiah operation to bomb U.S. and other embassies in the city-state. That plot was disrupted by authorities in Singapore late last year. 
 Officials in the Philippines, meanwhile, said today they would charge an Indonesian man, Uskar Mukawata, with planning bomb attacks that killed 15 people in the southern city of General Santos in April. Mukawata was arrested in a raid Saturday. The air force intelligence chief, Col. Francisco Cruz, told reporters that the attacks were an indication that Jemaah Islamiah may have established a toehold on the southern island of Mindanao. 







   
 

September 17, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: DETAINEES; 
Singapore Announces Arrests of 21 Men Linked to Planned Attacks on U.S. Targets

 
Authorities in Singapore announced today the arrests of 21 men they identified as members of an extremist Islamic organization that spans Southeast Asia, strengthening evidence gathered by American investigators that the group was preparing attacks on American targets. 
     In Indonesia, group members have carried out surveillance of the American Embassy, the American ambassador's residence and other American facilities in recent weeks, Western officials here said. 
 "Before, we always regarded the terrorist threat here as a question mark," said a Western intelligence analyst who has long investigated terrorist activities in Southeast Asia. "Now we know that the threat is high and the network has a capability to deliver."  
The Singaporean government, which thwarted a plot to bomb the American Embassy in Singapore in December, provided scant details about the arrests today, beyond saying that the men were detained in August, that some of them had trained at camps in Afghanistan and that they had "conducted reconnaissance and surveys of selected targets" on the instruction of the leadership of the group, Jemaah Islamiyah. 
The group is headed by a radical Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, who American investigators believe has been directly involved in terrorist activities. Much of the new information about Mr. Bashir, his group and their connections to Al Qaeda has come from the interrogation of Omar al-Faruq, who was picked up here in June and turned over to the Americans. He was moved for questioning to the American air base in Bagram, Afghanistan.
At the time, he was described as a midlevel operative of Al Qaeda who had primarily raised money. But investigators now say that he was a key player, and that his arrest and interrogation is helping the United States penetrate and unravel Al Qaeda's operations.
The United States and Singapore have urged the Indonesian government to arrest Mr. Bashir, and many officials in the Bush administration have sought to put Jemaah Islamiyah on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. 
The Indonesian authorities, which govern the world's most populous Islamic nation, have resisted, fearing a backlash among those Indonesians who see Mr. Bashir as a legitimate preacher and interpret America's war on terrorism as a war against Islam.
But American pressure to act will certainly increase in light of the recent evidence, including indications of a plot to assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri, diplomats here said today.
Indonesian officials received a report on Mr. Faruq's interrogation last week, an American official said. Indonesian officials declined comment on a detailed report in Time magazine this week about what Mr. Faruq said.
Mr. Bashir is an unapologetic admirer of Osama bin Laden, and easily expresses a loathing of American leaders and Jews. But he has steadfastly denied involvement in any terrorist activities.
But American officials say that while he has his own regional agenda -- primarily the creation of an Islamic state across an arc of Southeast Asia -- he has made his organization available to Al Qaeda for terrorist operations against the United States. 
"He's not just a rabble rouser and troublemaker, but has been directly involved in terrorist activities," said a senior American official in the region.
Mr. Faruq said Mr. Bashir had provided resources and logistical support for the planned attack on the American Embassy.
A senior American official in Southeast Asia, asked about Time's account of what Mr. Faruq told the C.I.A., said it was "all true," although some of the account was still being checked.
For three months of interrogation, Mr. Faruq provided investigators with only scraps. "He was a hostile interrogation," said a Western intelligence specialist. 
Then, two weeks ago, the interrogators "broke him," the specialist said. He declined to provide any details of the techniques employed in the questioning. 
Mr. Faruq then told his interrogators of preparations to attack American embassies throughout Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Cambodia, officials said.
The plan called for trucks loaded with explosives to be driven onto embassy grounds, or close enough to cause serious death and destruction, similar to the attacks on the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, an American official said. There were also plots to attack American ships in Indonesian ports, like the attack in October 2000 on the destroyer Cole in Yemen. 
Largely based on what was learned from Mr. Faruq, the American embassies here and throughout the region were closed last week, and the Bush administration put the United States on orange alert.
Mr. Faruq said he was Al Qaeda's senior representative in Southeast Asia. He reported to Abu Zubaydah, the chief of operations for Mr. bin Laden, who was seized in Pakistan in March.
Mr. Faruq's life as a Qaeda operative reveals the stretch of the terrorist network across Southeast Asia.
In the mid-1990's, he went to the Philippines, on a false passport, and attended a training camp on Mindanao run by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which is fighting for an Islamic state. Two of the men arrested in Singapore attended that camp, Singaporean officials said today.
Then he moved on to Indonesia, married an Indonesian woman and sought to blend into the community.
At the time, Mr. Bashir was in exile in Malaysia, having fled the Suharto repression, where Malaysian authorities have said he continued developing his network. Western and Asian intelligence officials have said that another Indonesian cleric in exile, Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, was the operational head of the network. Mr. Hambali is in hiding.
Mr. Faruq told his interrogators that Mr. Bashir was intimately involved in the terrorist operations, helping to procure weapons and explosives, Time reported. 
Mr. Faruq's terrorist plots were aimed not only at the United States. He told the interrogators, according to the Time report, that he was behind a wave of bombings of Christian churches here in Dec. 2000, which killed and injured more than a hundred people.
Mr. Bashir was also behind a bombing of a mosque in Jakarta in 1999, which was blamed on Christians, Mr. Faruq said.







  



September 17, 2002 Tuesday  




 Singapore Announces Arrest of 21 Militants; 
Majority of Suspects Allegedly Involved in Foiled Plot to Bomb Western Embassies

 
 Officials in Singapore said tonight that they had arrested 21 Islamic militants, seriously disrupting a radical network tied to al Qaeda that had planned to bomb the U.S. Embassy and other Western embassies here. 
 Nineteen of those arrested last month belonged to Jemaah Islamiah, a regional militant group that officials said had been plotting to attack Western targets in this city-state, according to a statement by Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry. 
 Officials said these suspects had carried out reconnaissance of potential targets at the direction of their Jemaah Islamiah leaders, most of whom were arrested in a sweep last December when the bomb plot was foiled. That breakthrough prompted further investigation, which in turn led to the most recent arrests.  
 Two of the militants arrested were linked to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Muslim rebel group active on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, officials said. 
 All 21 suspects were identified as citizens of Singapore, a staunch U.S. ally that has long prided itself on its stability in a highly unsettled region. They were arrested for "terrorism-related activities" under an internal security law that allows for indefinite detention without trial. 
 "There is no known imminent security threat" from other Jemaah Islamiah elements in the country and officials continue to investigate the group, the ministry statement said. 
 The announcement of the arrests by Singapore's Internal Security Department followed the capture last week of suspected al Qaeda militants in Pakistan and Upstate New York. 
 Also today, the U.S. embassies in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the U.S. Consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia, reopened with heightened security. The facilities were closed last week when a detained al Qaeda suspect revealed details of a plot to bomb embassies in the region on or near the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. 
 U.S. officials welcomed the most recent arrests. "We appreciate Singapore's strong support in the campaign against terrorism and continue to engage with the Singaporean government on numerous aspects of the campaign," said a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Jakarta. U.S. officials said Singapore's actions illustrated that "law enforcement cooperation and intelligence-sharing are among the most important tools in the war on terrorism." 
 A few of the militants trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and at the Moro Islamic Liberation Front's Camp Abu Bakar in Mindanao, the ministry statement said. 
 Officials in Singapore have previously reported that some Jemaah Islamiah members active in their country had trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Last December, Singapore arrested 15 suspected extremists, including 13 men authorities said were Jemaah Islamiah members. 
 After the earlier arrests, Singaporean officials said they had thwarted a potentially "catastrophic" plot to drive trucks packed with powerful fertilizer bombs into the embassies of the United States, Britain, Israel and Australia. Before the plan was foiled, the suspects conducted detailed reconnaissance of the embassies, profiled the possible targets and acquired four tons of ammonium nitrate. 
 Another cell in Singapore allegedly was plotting to blow up U.S. warships docked at the Changi Naval Base, attack a shuttle used by U.S. military personnel and target the offices of U.S. companies. 
 Militants linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network had been planning to strike targets in Singapore since the mid-1990s, but the plans accelerated immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, Singaporean officials said.  
 Officials said following the December arrests that they had largely destroyed Jemaah Islamiah's operations, but acknowledged that about a dozen members had slipped through the police dragnet to other countries in the region. 
 Singapore has been especially outspoken in demanding that Indonesia turn over radical Muslim cleric Abubakar Baasyir, who runs an Islamic school in Java and has been identified by some terrorism investigators as the leader of Jemaah Islamiah. Jakarta, however, has balked, citing a lack of evidence. 
 Since Sept. 11, dozens of suspected Islamic extremists have been arrested throughout the region. 






  
  
 

September 15, 2002 Sunday



 Southeast Asia deemed fertile ground for terror;
Poverty, religious strife, authoritarian regimes and a legacy of Western colonialism serve to incite extremists

 
While American troops press the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a new terrorist threat to the United States and its allies is spreading across Southeast Asia.
The U.S. embassies in Indonesia and Malaysia closed indefinitely last week after a suspected terrorist began telling intelligence officials that a regional Islamic terrorist group planned to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 bombings by attacking the American Embassy in Jakarta and other Western targets in the region.
The plot the man described is only the latest evidence that Southeast Asia -- with a large Muslim population; religious tensions; grinding poverty; corrupt, inefficient or authoritarian regimes and a legacy of Western colonialism -- has become fertile ground for bin Laden's brand of Islamic extremism.
From Malaysia through Singapore and across Indonesia to the southern Philippines, Islamic militants who once concentrated on local causes have formed regional terrorist networks with help from al-Qaida, bin Laden's terrorist network.
Over the past two years, they have planted bombs in churches and train stations that have killed dozens and wounded hundreds in Indonesia and the Philippines. In Malaysia, they helped plan last year's Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. 
In Singapore late last year, they schemed to set off seven huge truck bombs simultaneously, each bigger than the bomb that blew up the Oklahoma City federal building, mostly directed at American targets, including the embassy.
Al-Qaida instigated that plan because "it wanted to show it could still throw a punch," the U.S. ambassador to Singapore, Franklin Lavin, said.
But the thwarted plot was to have been carried out by secret local cells of a regional terrorist network called Jemaah Islamiyah, Singaporean authorities said.
U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the group was suspected of planning anniversary attacks last week in Jakarta and elsewhere.
They said the Bush administration was considering whether it had enough evidence to add the group and its leader to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
In an interview last month at a religious school he runs in Solo, Indonesia, on the island of Java, the alleged leader, Abu Bakar Baasyir, denied with a wide smile that he is the head of Jemaah Islamiyah.
The soft-spoken 63-year-old cleric said the terrorist network, which authorities in several countries blame for a series of attacks, does not exist.
The allegations that he oversees an Islamic terrorist network are "part of a global strategy of the United States against Islam."
But his dark eyes shone as he praised bin Laden for "trying to protect Islam."
They shone again when he took obvious delight in the Sept. 11 attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in the United States.
"We believe this to be the curse of God to punish the arrogance of America," he said. "Not only did Osama bin Laden feel happy about the attacks. I also was happy and I believe many Muslims in Indonesia were happy in seeing the attacks. But that does not mean that they were responsible for the attacks."
"Zionist Jews" were responsible, Baasyir said, a "small but dominant community in America."
A photograph of bin Laden hangs on the wall of the clinic at the school, which is building a big addition to accommodate more students from the island of Java and beyond.
A placard on the administration building declares: "Jihad is our way. Death in the way of Allah is our greatest aspiration."
Jemaah Islamiyah "is operating as the branch office in Southeast Asia for al-Qaida," a Western diplomat in Jakarta said.
The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the group as "shadowy" and "decentralized," a web of numerous small, secret cells spread across several countries.
Members of Jemaah Islamiyah, like other Southeast Asian militants, hope to create an Islamic superstate that would unify the region's 230 million Muslims by fusing what are now Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the predominantly Muslim southern portions of Thailand and the Philippines.
Baasyir and other militant clerics want to make Islam in Indonesia more "pure." Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, and most of the Muslims who live there are abangans, the name for Muslims who have blended Islam with Hinduism, Buddhism and other beliefs.
The overwhelming majority are politically moderate. Still, many see the U.S.-led war on terrorism as an assault on Islam.
"Militant Islam feeds upon the insecurities and alienation that globalization generates among the less successful," Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew told a gathering of international security specialists in May. "And because globalization is largely U.S.-led and driven, militant Islam identifies America and Americans as the threat to Islam."
Lee linked the regional threat directly to bin Laden, who he said "successfully twined together a broad range of local groups, each with its own history of struggle for its own objectives, into a common universal jihad against the enemies of Islam."
Among the groups Lee cited as having been co-opted by al-Qaida are the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayyaf, both based in the largely Muslim southern Philippines, the Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia and Jemaah Islamiyah.
Muslim militants remain a tiny minority in each of the Southeast Asian countries where they operate. But specialists warn that despite their small numbers, they pose a significant threat to the region and a formidable challenge to the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
Jemaah Islamiyah's size is not known. But it is believed to have at least several hundred members in Singapore and Malaysia, and probably a larger number in Indonesia.
"It's not just numbers, but dedication and ability," said Col. Rodolfo Mendoza, the former head of intelligence for the Philippine National Police, who oversaw investigations that linked individuals in the Philippines to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
"Over the long term, the trend is worrisome," agreed a Southeast Asian official in a different country, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It's not just a numbers game -- it does not take many to make bombs."
Fathur Rohman Ghozi, an Indonesian bombmaker and suspected key figure in the Singapore plot, told Philippine police after he was arrested in Manila in January that Jemaah Islamiyah was created to follow the example that Islam's founder set 1,500 years ago.
"The principle of our organization is the establishment of an independent Islamic state like Prophet Muhammad did," said Ghozi, who confessed to planning the December 2000 bombings of commuter trains in Manila that killed 22 people and injured nearly 100.
Baasyir acknowledged in his interview that some of his former students, including Ghozi, have been implicated in terrorist attacks.
But he said he could not be held responsible for what his students did after they graduated.
"Yes, I was teaching Islam in Malaysia and Singapore, but I never taught them to make bombs or to behave in a violent way," said Baasyir, who had fled to Malaysia in the mid-1980s when the former Suharto regime in Indonesia cracked down on Islamic militants.
But among those linked to Baasyir and Jemaah Islamiyah is Indonesian cleric Riduan Isamuddin, who authorities in several countries charge is al-Qaida's main contact in Indonesia.
Isamuddin, a fugitive, is wanted by authorities in at least four countries.
On an organizational chart of Jemaah Islamiyah that Singaporean authorities compiled, Isamuddin appears directly below Baasyir as part of a three-member regional council.
Baasyir and Isamuddin "have been in regular contact since Sept. 11," the Western diplomat in Jakarta said.
Indonesian police seek Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, for allegedly masterminding a series of attacks in which 36 bombs went off at Christian churches and schools throughout Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000, killing 20 people and injuring more than 100.
He is wanted in the Philippines for alleged involvement in the Manila train bombings that took place five days later.
Malaysian authorities also are looking for Isamuddin, who has been linked to a bank robbery last year in that country by Islamic militants who authorities say wanted money to buy guns for Islamic militants who are fighting Christians in Indonesia's Molucca Islands.
The Malaysians also want to ask Isamuddin about his ties to Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian military captain whose condominium south of Kuala Lumpur, the capital, was used in January 2000 to plan the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Among those who attended that meeting were the two hijackers who ended up in the cockpit of the plane that hit the Pentagon.
Sufaat, who is in detention, also is accused of purchasing 4 tons of ammonium nitrate that was to be used along with 17 additional tons in the thwarted Singapore truck bombings, which Singaporean authorities say Isamuddin also masterminded.
In an affidavit filed after his arrest, Sufaat admitted that he'd bought the ammonium nitrate but said he sold it to someone for use in a quarry.
Authorities say that at least eight of 13 suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members who have been detained in connection with the Singapore bombing plot received military training in Afghanistan.
Jemaah Islamiyah's roots reach back to the late 1940s, when Islamic extremists struggled to create an Islamic state in Indonesia.
Dormant for decades, the movement was energized when Islamic volunteers from throughout Southeast Asia returned home after fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, an effort partly funded by the United States.
Radicalized by their exposure to zealots such as bin Laden, some began to form networks and lay the foundation for global jihad.
Singaporean authorities say their investigation into the bombing plot there established that Baasyir is the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah.
A news release earlier this year from the Ministry of Home Affairs of Singapore, using a different spelling of Baasyir's name, said:
"Some of the detained Jemaah Islamiyah members in Singapore, including key figures like Ibrahim Maidin and Khalim Jaffar, have described Abudus Samad (also known as) Abu Bakar Bashir as the 'amir' or overall leader of the JI organization covering the Singapore/Malaysia as well as the Indonesia networks."
The 13 suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members are being held under Singapore's Internal Security Act, which allows for unlimited successive detention periods of two years each without trial.
Malaysia has detained more than 60 alleged Islamic militants in the past year or so under its own Internal Security Act, which also allows detention without trial. Most of those detained are thought to be linked to Jemaah Islamiyah.
Indonesia's government has arrested two people with alleged links to international terrorism in the past year, the Western diplomat in Jakarta said.
Indonesia got rid of its Internal Security Act after the authoritarian Suharto regime fell in 1998. But Jusuf Wanandi, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, a research center, said the Indonesian government's problem was not a lack of legal tools but a lack of will.
Indonesia's military and police have close ties to many extremists because they used them as "shock troops" against dissidents during the Suharto regime, he said.
Another problem, according to Wanandi, is that President Megawati Sukarnoputri is too politically weak to crack down on the militants because she lacks support from the nation's main Muslim organizations.




6

  
  
 

September 15, 2002 Sunday



 War on terrorism fuels resentment of U.S. in region

 
A former head of the Philippine Armed Forces has some friendly advice for the United States about its global fight against terrorism, especially in Southeast Asia: Be careful. You may win every battle and still lose the war.
"There is concern in the region about America's presence," said Rodolfo Biazon, who fought communist rebels, Islamic separatists and plotters of every description during his long military career and is now a popular senator.
"Right now this war on terrorism is a new ballgame without rules. And it seems President Bush is making up the rules unilaterally." 
More than a dozen officials and specialists interviewed in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines say resentment against America is rising in the region's Islamic community.
What worries Biazon most is that the Bush administration, if too clumsy and aggressive in its efforts to rout Islamic extremists in Southeast Asia, will violate other nations' sovereignty, disrupt the regional balance of power and so anger the region's 230 million Muslims that many more than the current tiny minority will turn militant.
The only strategy that has a chance of success, many officials and analysts say, is one that respects sovereignty and is sensitive to each country's political, historical and cultural profile.
"There is a threat here of Islamic assertiveness," said Murugesu Pathmanathan, a political analyst at the Center for Policy Sciences, a private research center in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. "Any perception of a heavy hand by the United States will accentuate this."
Neither Pathmanathan nor the others interviewed see a great groundswell of Islamic extremism in the region.
But they say resentment of America is growing in Southeast Asia, fueled by widely held perceptions that the United States gives unconditional support for Israel against the Palestinians, and is targeting all Muslims in its war on terrorism.
Many Southeast Asian Muslims also accuse the United States of callously ignoring the misery that economic sanctions have brought to Iraq's people in the past decade.
And they warn that a military attack on Iraq would infuriate Muslims worldwide.
"There is growing anti-Americanism among the Muslim masses" in Malaysia, Pathmanathan said. "America is not very popular here."
America may be even less popular in neighboring Indonesia, a much larger and far more important country in determining the success or failure of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in the region.
About 88 percent of Indonesia's citizens are Muslim, making it the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Both Muslims and Indonesians of other faiths are concerned about the way the United States is conducting its war on terrorism.
Those concerns are not shared unanimously by Southeast Asians.
Philippine Secretary of Defense Angelo Reyes, who recently returned from a trip to Washington, said that American officials are aware that there is no "one-size-fits-all policy" for combating global terror.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials were "very, very sensitive to our domestic situation," Reyes said.
But Jusuf Wanandi, a non-Muslim senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research center in Jakarta, Indonesia, argued that the Bush administration "has forgotten about the principles that made America so successful and become a model for everyone else."
"We all have to cooperate. There's no question about that," Wanandi said. "But in Indonesia, the best thing for the United States is to make democracy here a success. That will put moderate Islam on top and provide a more stable government."
Instead, he and others say, the United States seems ready to sacrifice its highest ideals to pursue suspected terrorists.
Singapore and Malaysia, for example, have won praise from the Bush administration for cracking down hard on extremists, even though they use draconian police powers that past U.S. administrations have harshly criticized.
Both countries have nearly identical Internal Security Acts, legal holdovers from the colonial era under which suspects who are deemed a threat to the state -- and sometimes mere political opponents -- can be arrested and detained indefinitely without trial.
Singapore police arrested 15 suspects between Dec. 9 and Dec. 24 last year in connection with a plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy and other targets. Two were released.
The other 13, just two weeks after the final arrest, were ordered detained for two years under the ISA, which allows for an unlimited number of successive two-year detentions without trial.
Malaysian authorities have detained more than 60 alleged terrorists over the past year or so, also without trial.
U.S. officials sharply rebuked Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for using Malaysia's ISA a few years ago to jail former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on what were widely assumed to be trumped-up sodomy charges.
When Al Gore was vice president, he openly criticized Malaysia's human rights record during a visit there.
Last year, Mahathir used the ISA to jail the six top leaders of Anwar's political party.
Mahathir was invited to the White House this spring for the first time in many years. He said late last year that those who had criticized Malaysia for trampling on civil liberties and the rule of law "are now learning from us."
The United States has made its biggest show of force in Southeast Asia in the Philippines, sending in 1,000 troops early this year to provide military training and help track down members of Abu Sayyaf, a kidnap-for-ransom gang with past links to al-Qaida.
Those troops have since withdrawn, but more are expected.
Biazon, the senator, said the American troops helped to find members of the gang, which had only a couple hundred followers and was largely confined to a few small, far-southern islands.
But he predicted trouble if American troops become involved in operations against the much larger and more dangerous Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the communist New People's Army, both of which are on the U.S. list of terrorist groups.
The New People's Army, which is estimated to have more than 10,000 armed fighters across the Philippines, has threatened to kill Americans.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has about 13,000 armed fighters on the large southern island of Mindanao, is involved in a shaky peace process with the government that Biazon fears could be unraveled by an expanded U.S. military presence.
Biazon, vice chairman of the senate's defense committee, said that before the first American troops were sent, U.S. military officials insisted that American commanders be authorized to take unilateral action if Philippine troops were unable or unwilling to fight the terrorists.
His committee refused to grant that authorization, convinced that it would compromise the Philippines' sovereignty. But he fears other encroachments ahead.
"If U.S. troops start taking casualties, will they call in the bombers from Guam?" he asked.






  
  


September 15, 2002 Sunday



 Terror's new front?

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia
While American troops press the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a new terrorist threat to the United States and its allies is spreading across Southeast Asia.
The U.S. embassies in Indonesia and Malaysia closed indefinitely last week after a suspected terrorist began telling intelligence officials that a regional Islamic terrorist group planned to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 bombings by attacking the American Embassy in Jakarta and other Western targets in the region.
The plot the man described is only the latest evidence that Southeast Asia -- with a large Muslim population, religious tensions, grinding poverty, corrupt, inefficient or authoritarian regimes and a legacy of Western colonialism -- has become fertile ground for bin Laden's brand of Islamic extremism.
From Malaysia through Singapore and across Indonesia to the southern Philippines, Islamic militants who once concentrated on local causes have formed regional terrorist networks with help from al-Qaida, bin Laden's terrorist network. Over the past two years, they have planted bombs in churches and train stations that have killed dozens and wounded hundreds in Indonesia and the Philippines. In Malaysia, they helped plan last year's Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. 
In Singapore late last year, they schemed to set off seven huge truck bombs simultaneously, each bigger than the bomb that blew up the Oklahoma City federal building, mostly directed at American targets, including the embassy.
Al-Qaida instigated that plan because "it wanted to show it could still throw a punch," said the U.S. ambassador to Singapore, Franklin Lavin. But the thwarted plot was to have been carried out by secret local cells of a regional terrorist network called Jemaah Islamiyah, according to Singaporean authorities.
ATTACK PLANS SUSPECTED
U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the group was suspected of planning anniversary attacks last week in Jakarta and elsewhere. They said the Bush administration was considering whether it had enough evidence to add the group and its leader to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
In an interview last month at a religious school he runs in Solo, Indonesia, on the island of Java, the alleged leader, Abu Bakar Baasyir, denied with a wide smile that he's the head of Jemaah Islamiyah.
The soft-spoken 63-year-old cleric said the terrorist network, which authorities in several countries blame for a series of attacks, didn't exist. The allegations that he oversees an Islamic terrorist network are "part of a global strategy of the United States against Islam."
But his dark eyes shone as he praised bin Laden for "trying to protect Islam." They shone again when he took obvious delight in the Sept. 11 attacks that killed 3,000 people in the United States.
"We believe this to be the curse of God to punish the arrogance of America," he said. "Not only did Osama bin Laden feel happy about the attacks. I also was happy and I believe many Muslims in Indonesia were happy in seeing the attacks. But that does not mean that they were responsible for the attacks."
"Zionist Jews" were responsible, Baasyir said, a "small but dominant community in America."
A photograph of bin Laden hangs on the wall of the clinic at the school, which is building a big addition to accommodate more students from Java and beyond. A placard on the administration building declares: "Jihad is our way. Death in the way of Allah is our greatest aspiration."
AL-QAIDA 'BRANCH OFFICE'
Jemaah Islamiyah "is operating as the branch office in Southeast Asia for al-Qaida," said a Western diplomat in Jakarta.
The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the group as "shadowy" and "decentralized," a web of numerous small, secret cells spread across several countries.
Members of Jemaah Islamiyah, like other Southeast Asian militants, hope to create an Islamic superstate that would unify the region's 230 million Muslims by fusing what are now Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the predominantly Muslim southern portions of Thailand and the Philippines.
Baasyir and other militant clerics want to make Islam in Indonesia more "pure." Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, and most of the Muslims who live there are abangans, the name for Muslims who have blended Islam with Hinduism, Buddhism and other beliefs. The overwhelming majority are politically moderate. Still, many see the U.S.-led war on terrorism as an assault on Islam.
"Militant Islam feeds upon the insecurities and alienation that globalization generates among the less successful," Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew told a gathering of international security experts in May. "And because globalization is largely U.S.-led and driven, militant Islam identifies America and Americans as the threat to Islam."
Lee linked the regional threat directly to bin Laden, who he said "successfully twined together a broad range of local groups, each with its own history of struggle for its own objectives, into a common universal jihad against the enemies of Islam."
Among the groups Lee cited as having been co-opted by al-Qaida are the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayyaf, both based in the largely Muslim southern Philippines, the Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia and Jemaah Islamiyah.
THREAT TO REGION, U.S.
Muslim militants remain a tiny minority in each of the Southeast Asian countries where they operate. But experts warn that despite their small numbers, they pose a significant threat to the region and a formidable challenge to the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
Jemaah Islamiyah's size isn't known, but it's believed to have at least several hundred members in Singapore and Malaysia, and probably a larger number in Indonesia.
"It's not just numbers, but dedication and ability," said Col. Rodolfo Mendoza, the former head of intelligence for the Philippine National Police, who oversaw investigations that linked individuals in the Philippines to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
"Over the long term, the trend is worrisome," agreed a Southeast Asian official in a different country, speaking on condition that he not be identified. "It's not just a numbers game -- it does not take many to make bombs."
Fathur Rohman al Ghozi, an Indonesian bomb maker and suspected key figure in the Singapore plot, told Philippine police after he was arrested in Manila in January that Jemaah Islamiyah was created to follow the example that Islam's founder set 1,500 years ago, according to transcripts of his interrogation obtained by Knight Ridder.
"The principle of our organization is the establishment of an independent Islamic state like Prophet Mohammed did," said al Ghozi, who confessed to planning the December 2000 bombings of commuter trains in Manila that killed 22 people and injured nearly 100.
LINKS TO FUGITIVE
Baasyir acknowledged in the interview that some of his former students, including al Ghozi, have been implicated in terrorist attacks. But he said he could not be held responsible for what his students did after they graduated.
"Yes, I was teaching Islam in Malaysia and Singapore, but I never taught them to make bombs or to behave in a violent way," said Baasyir, who fled to Malaysia in the mid-1980s when the former Suharto regime in Indonesia cracked down on Islamic militants.
But among those linked to Baasyir and Jemaah Islamiyah is Indonesian cleric Riduan Isamuddin, who authorities in several countries charge is al-Qaida's main contact in Indonesia. A fugitive, Isamuddin is wanted by authorities in at least four countries.
On an organizational chart of Jemaah Islamiyah that Singaporean authorities compiled, Isamuddin appears directly below Baasyir as part of a three-member regional council.
Baasyir and Isamuddin "have been in regular contact since Sept. 11," said the Western diplomat in Jakarta. Indonesian police seek Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, for allegedly masterminding a series of attacks in which 36 bombs went off at Christian churches and schools throughout Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000, killing 20 people and injuring more than 100.
He is wanted in the Philippines for alleged involvement in the Manila train bombings that took place five days later.
Malaysian authorities also are looking for Isamuddin, who has been linked to a bank robbery last year in that country by Islamic militants who authorities say wanted money to buy guns for Islamic militants who are fighting Christians in Indonesia's Molucca Islands.
The Malaysians also want to ask Isamuddin about his ties to Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian military captain whose condominium south of Kuala Lumpur, the capital, was used in January 2000 to plan the Sept. 11 attacks. Among those who attended that meeting were the two hijackers who ended up in the cockpit of the plane that hit the Pentagon.
Sufaat, who's in detention, also is accused of purchasing 4 tons of ammonium nitrate that was to be used along with 17 additional tons in the thwarted Singapore truck bombings, which Singaporean authorities say Isamuddin also masterminded.
In an affidavit filed after his arrest, Sufaat admitted he bought the ammonium nitrate but said he sold it to someone for use in a quarry. That would be the only quarry to prefer the crude blasting materials used by terrorists.
Authorities say that at least eight of 13 suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members who have been detained in connection with the Singapore bombing plot received military training in Afghanistan.
FOUNDATION FOR JIHAD
Jemaah Islamiyah's roots reach back to the late 1940s, when Islamic extremists struggled to create an Islamic state in Indonesia.
Dormant for decades, the movement was energized when Islamic volunteers from throughout Southeast Asia returned home after fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, an effort partly funded by the United States. Radicalized by their exposure to zealots such as bin Laden, some began to form networks and lay the foundation for global jihad.
Singaporean authorities say their investigation into the bombing plot there established that Baasyir is the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah. A news release earlier this year from the Ministry of Home Affairs of Singapore, using a different spelling of Baasyir's name, said:
"Some of the detained Jemaah Islamiyah members in Singapore, including key figures like Ibrahim Maidin and Khalim Jaffar, have described Abudus Samad (also known as) Abu Bakar Bashir as the 'amir' or overall leader of the JI organization covering the Singapore/Malaysia as well as the Indonesia networks."
The 13 suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members are being held under Singapore's Internal Security Act, which allows for unlimited successive detention periods of two years each without trial.
Malaysia has detained more than 60 alleged Islamic militants under its Internal Security Act, which also allows detention without trial. Most of those detained are believed to be linked to Jemaah Islamiyah.
Indonesia's government has arrested two people with alleged links to international terrorism over the past year, according to the Western diplomat in Jakarta.
Indonesia got rid of its Internal Security Act after the Suharto regime fell in 1998. But Jusuf Wanandi, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, said the Indonesian government's problem was not a lack of legal tools but a lack of will.
Indonesia's military and police have close ties to many extremists because they used them as "shock troops" against dissidents during the Suharto regime, he said.
Another problem, according to Wanandi, is that President Megawati Sukarnoputri is too politically weak to crack down on the militants because she lacks support from the nation's main Muslim organizations.







   
 

September 14, 2002 Saturday  
  



 BRIDGE; 
Still on the Road to Bali, But 9/11 Postponed the Trip

 
In 1953, Dorothy Lamour, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope starred in "Road to Bali." The bridge community planned to follow that path in 2001 for the Bermuda Bowl and Venice Cup world championships.
     But after the Sept. 11 attacks, the American teams said that they would not travel to such a remote island, part of Muslim Indonesia, although Bali itself is not Muslim.  
 So, the tournament was switched abruptly to Paris, despite the fact that all the supplies were on a container ship already nearing Singapore, bound for Bali.
The island bridge community was promised the 2003 world championships, but the continued political unrest makes it unlikely that the World Bridge Federation will stage the event there. A decision is expected in December and the likely location is Warsaw. But Bali will be the host as soon as possible, perhaps in 2005.
Indonesia has been successful in national and international events for the last 20 years. A team from that country has finished second in two world team championships: the World Team Olympiad in Rhodes, Greece, in 1996, and the Rosenblum Cup last month in Montreal.
This deal featured excellent card-reading by Ferdy Waluyan, one of the regulars on Indonesia's international team.
West was strong for a weak two-bid. Most players would open one spade.
West started with the spade ace and another spade. After winning with his king, East returned a trump, Waluyan playing low from hand, West discarding a spade, and dummy winning with the five.
Declarer crossed to his hand with a trump, then finessed dummy's diamond queen. Waluyan cashed three more rounds of trumps and the diamond ace, leaving this position:
Waluyan led a club to his ace, then exited with the spade jack, endplaying West. He had to lead away from his club queen into the split tenace of the jack in declarer's hand and the king in the dummy.
Why did Waluyan play this way, rather than take a simple club finesse? West's opening lead was a card worth a thousand words.
To lead from an ace-queen holding was dangerous, and strongly suggested that West also had unattractive holdings in the minors. So Waluyan placed West with the club queen as well as the known diamond king.






  
  


September 14, 2002 Saturday 



 U.S. is warned about asia

 
A former head of the Philippine armed forces has some friendly advice for the United States about its global fight against terrorism, especially in Southeast Asia: Be careful. You might win every battle and still lose the war.
"There is concern in the region about America's presence," said Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, who fought communist rebels, Islamist separatists and plotters of every description during his long military career before entering politics. "Right now this war on terrorism is a new ballgame without rules. And it seems President Bush is making up the rules unilaterally." 
More than a dozen officials and experts interviewed in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines say resentment against the United States is rising among the region's Muslims.
What worries Biazon most is that the Bush administration, if it is too clumsy and aggressive in its efforts to root out extremists in Southeast Asia, will violate other nations' sovereignty, disrupt the regional balance of power and so anger the region's 230 million Muslims that many more than the current tiny minority will turn militant.
The only strategy that has a chance of success, many officials and analysts say, is one that respects sovereignty and is sensitive to each country's politics, history and culture.
'Islamic assertiveness'
"There is a threat here . . . of Islamic assertiveness," said Murugesu Pathmanathan, a political analyst at the Center for Policy Sciences, a private research center in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. "Any perception of a heavy hand by the United States will accentuate this."
Neither Pathmanathan nor the others interviewed for this article see a great groundswell of Islamic extremism in the region. But they say resentment of the United States is growing in Southeast Asia, fueled by widely held perceptions that the United States gives unconditional support for Israel against the Palestinians and is targeting all Muslims in its war on terrorism.
Many Southeast Asian Muslims also accuse the United States of callously ignoring the misery that economic sanctions have brought to Iraq's people over the past decade. And they warn that a military attack on Iraq would infuriate Muslims worldwide.
"There is growing anti-Americanism among the Muslim masses" in Malaysia, Pathmanathan said. "America is not very popular here."
America may be even less popular in neighboring Indonesia, a much larger and far more important country in determining the success or failure of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in the region.
Almost 90 percent of Indonesia's 225 million citizens are Muslim, making it the world's most populous Muslim nation. Both Muslims and Indonesians of other faiths are concerned about the way the United States is conducting its war on terrorism.
Those concerns are not shared unanimously by Southeast Asians.
Philippine Secretary of Defense Angelo Reyes, who recently returned from a trip to Washington, said U.S. officials are aware that there is no "one-size-fits-all policy" for combating global terrorism.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others he met with were "very, very sensitive to our domestic situation," Reyes said.
But Jusuf Wanandi, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research center in Jakarta, Indonesia, argued that the Bush administration "has forgotten about the principles that made America so successful and become a model for everyone else."
'Have to cooperate'
"We all have to cooperate. There's no question about that," said Wanandi, who is not Muslim. "But in Indonesia, the best thing for the United States is to make democracy here a success. That will put moderate Islam on top and provide a more stable government."
Instead, he and others say, the United States seems ready to sacrifice its highest ideals to pursue terrorism suspects.
Singapore and Malaysia, for example, have won praise from the Bush administration for cracking down hard on extremists, even though they use draconian police powers that past U.S. administrations have harshly criticized.
Both countries have a nearly identical Internal Security Act (ISA), a legal holdover from the colonial era under which suspects who are deemed a threat to the state -- and sometimes mere political opponents -- can be detained indefinitely without trial.
Singapore police arrested 15 suspects between Dec. 9 and Dec. 24 last year in connection with a plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy and other targets. Two were released. The 13 others were ordered detained for two years under the ISA, which allows for an unlimited number of successive two-year detentions without trial.
Malaysian authorities have detained more than 60 alleged terrorists over the past year or so, also without trial.
U.S. officials sharply rebuked Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for using Malaysia's ISA a few years ago to jail former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on what were widely assumed to be trumped-up sodomy charges. When Al Gore was vice president, he openly criticized Malaysia's human rights record during a visit there.
Last year, Mahathir used the ISA to jail the six top leaders of Anwar's political party.
Mahathir was invited to the White House this spring for the first time in many years. He said late last year that those who had criticized Malaysia for trampling on civil liberties and the rule of law "are now learning from us."
The United States has made its biggest show of force in Southeast Asia in the Philippines, sending in 1,000 soldiers early this year to provide military training and help track down members of Abu Sayyaf, a kidnap-for-ransom gang with past links to Al-Qaida. Those troops have since withdrawn, but more are expected.
Biazon, the senator, said the U.S. troops helped to find members of Abu Sayyaf, which had only a couple of hundred followers and was largely confined to a few small, far-southern islands.
But he predicted trouble if U.S. forces became involved in operations against the much larger and more dangerous Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the communist New People's Army, both of which are on the U.S. terrorist list.
The New People's Army, estimated to have more than 10,000 armed fighters across the Philippines, has threatened to kill Americans. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has about 13,000 armed fighters on the large southern island of Mindanao, is involved in a shaky peace process with the government.
Biazon, vice chair of the Philippine Senate's defense committee, said that before the first U.S. forces were sent, U.S. military officials insisted that American commanders be authorized to take unilateral action if Philippine troops were unable or unwilling to fight the terrorists.
His committee refused to grant that authorization, convinced that it would compromise the Philippines' sovereignty. But he fears other encroachments ahead.
"If U.S. troops start taking casualties, will they call in the bombers from Guam?" he asked.
Contact Michael Dorgan at mdorgan@krwashington. com.






  
  


September 13, 2002 Friday 



 Southeast Asia incubator for Islamist terror;
POVERTY, ECONOMIC TENSIONS HELP NOURISH RISING MILITANCY

 
While U.S. troops press the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaida lieutenants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a new threat to the United States and its allies is spreading across Southeast Asia.
The U.S. embassies in Indonesia and Malaysia closed indefinitely this week after a suspected terrorist began telling intelligence officials that a regional Islamist terrorist group planned to mark the anniversary of Sept. 11 by attacking the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and other Western targets in the region.
The plot the man described is only the latest evidence that Southeast Asia has become fertile ground for bin Laden's brand of extremism, because of its large Muslim population, religious tensions, grinding poverty, corrupt, inefficient or authoritarian regimes, and a legacy of Western colonialism.
Southeast Asian militants say they hope to create an Islamist super-state that would unify the region's 230 million Muslims by fusing what are now Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the predominantly Muslim southern portions of Thailand and the Philippines.
From Malaysia, Singapore and across Indonesia to the southern Philippines, Islamic militants who once concentrated on local causes have formed regional terrorist networks with help from Al-Qaida, bin Laden's terrorist network. During the past two years they have planted bombs in churches and train stations that have killed dozens and wounded hundreds in Indonesia and the Philippines. In Malaysia, they helped plan last year's Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. 
In Singapore late last year they schemed to set off seven huge truck bombs simultaneously, mostly at U.S. targets, including the embassy. Each bomb was bigger than the truck bomb Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City.
Al-Qaida instigated that plan because "it wanted to show it could still throw a punch," said Franklin Lavin, U.S. ambassador to Singapore. But the plot was to have been carried out by secret local cells of a regional terrorist network called Jemaah Islamiyah, according to Singaporean authorities.
U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the group was suspected of planning anniversary attacks this week in Jakarta and elsewhere. They said the Bush administration was considering whether it had enough evidence to add the group and its alleged leader to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
In an interview last month at a religious school he runs in Solo, on the island of Java, Abu Bakar Bashir denied with a wide smile that he's the head of Jemaah Islamiyah.
The soft-spoken 63-year-old cleric told the Mercury News that no such terrorist network exists and that he does not oversee one, calling the allegations "part of a global strategy of the United States against Islam."
His dark eyes shone, however, as he praised bin Laden for "trying to protect Islam," and he took delight in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in the United States.
'Jihad is our way'
"We believe this to be the curse of God to punish the arrogance of America," he said. "Not only did Osama bin Laden feel happy about the attacks. I also was happy, and I believe many Muslims in Indonesia were happy in seeing the attacks. But that does not mean that they were responsible for the attacks."
Who was responsible?
"Zionist Jews," Baasyir said, blaming a "small but dominant community in America."
A photograph of bin Laden hangs on the wall of the clinic at the school, which is building a big addition to accommodate more students from the island of Java and beyond. A placard on the administration building declares: "Jihad is our way. Death in the way of Allah is our greatest aspiration."
According to one Western diplomat in Jakarta, Jemaah Islamiyah "is operating as the branch office in Southeast Asia for Al-Qaida."
The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the group as "shadowy" and "decentralized," a web of numerous small, secret cells spread across several countries.
Indonesia's central government faces two major obstacles in trying to combat radical Islamists, said Jusuf Wanandi, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.
Indonesia's military and police have close ties to many extremists because they used them as "shock troops" against dissidents during the Suharto years, he said. Another problem is that President Megawati Sukarnoputri is too politically weak to crack down on the militants, because she lacks support from the nation's main Muslim organizations.
Baasyir and other militant clerics say they want to make Islam in Indonesia more "pure." Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, and most of the Muslims who live there are abangans, the name for Muslims who have blended Islam with Hinduism, Buddhism and other beliefs. The overwhelming majority are politically moderate. Still, many see the spread of global capitalism and the U.S.-led war on terrorism as direct assaults on Islam.
"Militant Islam feeds upon the insecurities and alienation that globalization generates among the less successful," Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew told a gathering of international security experts in May. "And because globalization is largely U.S.-led and -driven, militant Islam identifies America and Americans as the threat to Islam."
Lee linked the regional threat directly to bin Laden, who, he said, "successfully twined together a broad range of local groups, each with its own history of struggle for its own objectives, into a common universal jihad against the enemies of Islam."
Among the groups Lee cited as having been co-opted by Al-Qaida are the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf, both based in the largely Muslim southern Philippines, the Kumpulan Mujahedeen Malaysia and Jemaah Islamiyah.
Small numbers
Muslim militants remain a tiny minority in each of the Southeast Asian countries where they operate. But experts warn that despite their small numbers, they pose a significant threat to the region and a formidable challenge to the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
Jemaah Islamiyah is believed to have at least several hundred members in Singapore and Malaysia, and probably a larger number in Indonesia, though its true size isn't known.
Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, an Indonesian bomb maker and suspected key figure in the Singapore plot, told Philippine police after he was arrested in Manila in January that Jemaah Islamiyah was created to follow the example that Islam's founder set 1,500 years ago, according to transcripts of his interrogation obtained by the Mercury News.
"The principle of our organization is the establishment of an independent Islamic state like Prophet Muhammad did," said Ghozi, who confessed to planning the December 2000 bombings of commuter trains in Manila that killed 22 people and injured nearly 100.
Bashir acknowledged in the interview that some of his former students, including Ghozi, had been implicated in terrorist attacks. But he said he could not be held responsible for what his students did after they graduated.
"Yes, I was teaching Islam in Malaysia and Singapore, but I never taught them to make bombs or to behave in a violent way," said Bashir, who had fled to Malaysia in the mid-1980s when the former Suharto regime in Indonesia cracked down on Islamist militants.
But among those linked to Bashir and Jemaah Islamiyah is Indonesian cleric Riduan Isamuddin, who authorities in several countries contend is Al-Qaida's main contact in Indonesia. A fugitive, Isamuddin is wanted by authorities in at least four countries.
On an organizational chart of Jemaah Islamiyah that Singaporean authorities compiled, Isamuddin appears directly below Bashir as part of a three-member regional council.
Bashir and Isamuddin "have been in regular contact since Sept. 11" last year, said the Western diplomat in Jakarta. Indonesian police seek Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, for allegedly masterminding a series of attacks in which 36 bombs went off at Christian churches and schools throughout Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000, killing 20 people and injuring more than 100.
He is wanted in the Philippines for alleged involvement in the Manila train bombings that took place five days later.
Malaysian authorities also are looking for Isamuddin, who has been linked to a bank robbery last year in that country by militants who authorities say wanted money to buy guns for Islamist militants who are fighting Christians in Indonesia's Molucca Islands.
The Malaysians also want to ask Isamuddin about his ties to Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian military captain whose condominium south of Kuala Lumpur, the capital, was used to plan the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Among those who attended a meeting in the condo were the two hijackers who ended up in the cockpit of the plane that hit the Pentagon.
Sufaat, who's in detention, also is accused of purchasing four tons of ammonium nitrate that was to be used along with 17 additional tons in the thwarted Singapore truck bombings, which Singaporean authorities say Isamuddin also masterminded.
Authorities also say that at least eight of 13 suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members who have been detained in connection with the Singapore bombing plot received military training in Afghanistan.







  



September 12, 2002 Thursday  




 Detainee Called Key Al Qaeda Figure in Southeast Asia

 
Omar al-Farouq, the detainee whose information prompted the United States to raise its terrorist threat indicator for the first time, is al Qaeda's facilitator for Southeast Asia and reported directly to Abu Zubaida, the terror group's senior operations coordinator, government sources said yesterday. 
Al-Farouq, who has been in U.S. custody in Afghanistan since June, told interrogators on Monday that al Qaeda was seeking to launch multiple same-day attacks on U.S. embassies in South Asia, was not committed to any particular date and would act when there is a letdown in security.  
"Next week to them is just as good as today," said one U.S. official, summarizing what al-Farouq has told investigators. 
Information provided by al-Farouq helped prompt the shutdown of 13 U.S. embassies and consulates this week and led the government to elevate the terrorist threat status Tuesday to "Orange," reflecting a "high" chance of attack on U.S. interests.  
"He's helping knit together a lot of things out there," said a Jakarta source familiar with the al-Farouq investigation. A security official in the region said, "his information was the final straw that pushed Washington and Jakarta into that increased awareness mode. He was able to provide a lot of detail." 
Al-Farouq, an Arab in his mid-thirties, is a key al Qaeda link to Jemaah Islamiah, a regional terror network in Southeast Asia suspected of organizing a foiled plot earlier this year to blow up the U.S., British and Australian embassies in Singapore, according to U.S. and Indonesian officials. Al Qaeda leaders put out word in advance, al-Farouq has told investigators, that if they were incommunicado, lower level operatives could conduct attacks on their own. 
Al-Farouq's disclosures, along with information now being provided by several other detained al Qaeda operatives, is described as specific and concrete, a welcome advance on the diffuse and often coded "chatter" that intelligence agencies have obtained during months of monitoring computer and telephone communications. His revelations appear to show increasing success by the government in securing vital information about terrorist plots from the hundreds of detainees in U.S. military custody and scores of others who have been arrested or held by other governments, officials said. 
Al-Farouq and another detainee in Afghanistan -- one with knowledge of al Qaeda cells in Yemen and other Gulf states -- have been supplying the names of al Qaeda operatives planning attacks on U.S. interests, government sources said. Zubaida, the highest ranking al Qaeda official in custody, has confirmed al-Farouq's role in al Qaeda's operations and has verified some of the information he has provided, according to one U.S. official. 
"People only hear about the tip of the iceberg, but there have been some real success stories lately," one U.S. intelligence official said. "It's like a line of dominos: One of them falls, and that tips another one over and so on." 
 But authorities also conceded that progress in obtaining information is still slow and fractured, hampered by the small number of high-level al Qaeda operatives in custody. Zubaida provided snippets of information and tips last spring that led to a flurry of mid-level terror alerts and were instrumental in the apprehension in Chicago of Jose Padilla, who allegedly was scouting targets for a radiological "dirty" bomb. But many of Zubaida's other claims have never been confirmed, and, according to some officials, may have represented attempts to fool his captors. 
 One official said U.S. military and intelligence agencies are improving their ability to detect misleading accounts, in part because the pool of evidence is always expanding. "Many of them are trained in anti-interrogation techniques, but that's detectable and, over time, it can be overcome," the official said. "You just have to try different approaches and continually check every piece of information." 
 One U.S. official said, however, that Zubaida has helped establish al-Farouq's credibility. "Zubaida was coordinating tactics, techniques and procedures," said the official. "When Farouq says they were going to do X, they run that by Zubaida, who says 'yes, that is what they were told to do.' " Some of the information concerns building explosive devices or conducting reconnaissance, the official said. 
 One source in Indonesia familiar with the case said the information from al-Farouq expanded on the account of another informant, who had told Indonesian police that he had been approached for help in constructing a car bomb. Indonesian sources said al-Farouq revealed the information that led to this week's threat alert in an almost casual aside with interrogators. 
Al-Farouq was picked up by Indonesian authorities in June after his telephone number was discovered in the files of another al Qaeda suspect's computer. He was described by an Indonesian intelligence official as a native of Kuwait or Iraq who went through al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan. Zubaida dispatched him to Indonesia four years ago, the official said, where he built ties with local Muslim militants. He has been a recruiter for Zubaida, and emerged as a top financier for extremist activities in Indonesia. Using local Islamic charities, he raised money both from within Indonesia and overseas to finance these groups. 
Al-Farouq developed a working relationship with Agus Dwikarna, an Indonesian businessman accused of militant bombing plots, Jakarta sources said. Dwikarna was sentenced to 17 years in prison after his arrest at the Manila airport in March with plastic explosives and detonation cable in his suitcase. U.S officials discovered al-Farouq's phone number in Dwikarna's computer. Indonesian police arrested him and turned him over to U.S. authorities. 
Correspondents Ellen Nakashima and Alan Sipress in Jakarta contributed to this report. 







   
 

September 11, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 THREATS AND RESPONSES: EMBASSIES; 
PLAN TO ATTACK EMBASSIES CITED

 
The Bush administration's decision today to declare a higher terrorist alert status was made after investigators uncovered a plot by a radical Islamic organization with links to Al Qaeda, American officials said. The group was planning attacks at several American embassies in Southeast Asia, the officials said.
     In response, embassies in Indonesia and Malaysia were shuttered indefinitely, while those in Vietnam and Cambodia were closed through Wednesday. Three other embassies and one consulate in the Middle East and Asia were ordered closed today for Sept. 11.  
 American officials -- interviewed several hours before the alert was declared -- said crucial confirmation of the plot came to light during the continuing interrogation of a Qaeda operative, Omar al-Faruq, who was picked up in central Java in June and quietly turned over to the United States, according to Western intelligence officials. "He has proved reliable in the past," said an American official in the region, who refused to provide further details.
In Washington, senior government officials would neither identify the source of the information that led the Bush administration to act, nor comment on whether Mr. Faruq was the main source. But in a description that fit Mr. Faruq, they said the source had been in custody for several months in another country and was a mid-level Qaeda operative who had only in recent days started to supply information about possible attacks in Southeast Asia.
The information provided by the source was very precise, American intelligence officials said, going so far as to identify specific embassies as targets. It was generally corroborated, they said, with information United States investigators had received recently from a more senior Qaeda operative.
The embassies that closed down had already seen warning signs that caused them to take the new threat seriously, officials said. In recent days, American security personnel had noticed suspicious activity around the embassies in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, suggesting that they might be under surveillance.
 Citing "a general terrorist threat," Britain temporarily closed its embassy in Jakarta on Wednesday, Reuters reported.  
Officials said there were similarities between this plot and one uncovered in late 2000, when the American embassy here detected that it was under surveillance by a group linked to Al Qaeda. Some six months later, a group of men came from Yemen to carry out the attack but the men fled before they could be captured.
The discovery of the current plot is evidence that the group Mr. Faruq was associated with, Jemaah Islamiyah, has more of a regional reach and is more active in Southeast Asia than the Americans had realized, an intelligence analyst said.
During joint naval exercises this summer by the United States and Indonesia, American intelligence picked up credible information that the group was planning attacks on the American ships, he said.
The Bush administration is preparing to put Jemaah Islamiyah and its founder, Akbar Bashir, on its list of terrorist organizations, officials said today, a move that could create diplomatic tensions here.
Mr. Bashir, an Indonesian cleric of Yemeni descent, lived in Malaysia for many years before returning in 1998 to run a religious boarding school in central Java. Intelligence officials say members of Jemaah Islamiyah helped arrange for two people involved in the Sept. 11 attacks to move to and from Malaysia in 2000 for a meeting that now appears to have been critical to the plans.
The United States and Singapore have long asked the Indonesians to crack down on the organization and arrest Mr. Bashir, but the government has been reluctant to do so, fearing a backlash from Muslims.
Mr. Bashir, 64, denied involvement in any plot against American embassies and dismissed the incident as nothing more than a propaganda ploy by the United States.
"They want to create the impression that Indonesia is filled with terrorists, so that there is a justification for arresting Islamic leaders," he said in a telephone interview late this evening.
Mr. Bashir said that he was fully prepared to be put on the terrorist list but that he was unconcerned. "I am innocent," he said.
Officials in Singapore have said Jemaah Islamiyah was behind a plot to blow up the American, Australian and Israeli Embassies there last year. That scheme was thwarted when 13 men were arrested in Singapore and several more were detained in Malaysia. 
The organization has links to Al Qaeda, having received money from Osama bin Laden and having sent many of its members -- including Mr. Faruq -- to Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, Western and Asian intelligence officials said. They stress, however, that Jemaah Islamiyah has its own regional agenda and acts on its own. Officials said today that there was no evidence that Mr. bin Laden, if he is still alive, or any of his lieutenants had been behind the plot that led to the embassy closings.
Other embassies in the region remained open despite the threat, deciding either that they were not targets or that their defenses were more than adequate. 
The road in front of the embassy in Bangkok can be closed, for example, and the embassy in Singapore looks like a prison on a hill. The American ambassador there, Franklin L. Lavin, said the embassy had no plans to close and was planning to hold a memorial service on Wednesday.
The embassy in the Philippines was also open today in spite of reports there that Philippine intelligence had uncovered evidence of a similar plot.
Today, the American Embassy here released a statement urging American citizens in Indonesia "to maintain a high level of vigilance" and to "maintain a low profile." But American officials said privately that there was no evidence that American individuals or American businesses here had been targeted, and most went about their day as usual.






   


September 11, 2002, Wednesday



 ANNIVERSARY TERROR ALERT ; THREATS SEND NATION INTO 'CODE ORANGE' YEAR AFTER ATTACKS

 
President Bush yesterday put America on "code orange," for high risk of a terror attack, after new warnings reminiscent of those issued before Osama bin Laden struck one year ago today.
"The threats that we have heard recently remind us of the pattern of threats we heard prior to Sept. 11. We have no specific threat to America, but we're taking everything seriously," Bush said.
The alert - the second highest in the new system - was sparked by interviews in the past few days with "a senior al Qaeda operative," as well as intercepted conversations of suspected terrorists that were recently analyzed, a senior FBI official said. 
The operative is being held by another government and has been held for several months, but only revealed the threats in the last day or so, officials said.
"Within the last 24 hours, we've had additional information that has been valuable to us," said Attorney General John Ashcroft who warned of possible car bombs and suicide attacks.
Code orange is one step down from the top alert - red for "severe risk." This is the first time the alert level has been raised from yellow, the midpoint, since the system began last March.
"Let's do it," Bush said yesterday as he approved the "code orange" after huddling with advisers in the top-secret White House situation room, officials said.
The higher alert sent Vice President Dick Cheney out of the White House and back into a "secure, undisclosed location" to protect the presidential succession. He canceled a speech last night and sent a video instead.
Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld ordered anti-aircraft Stinger missiles out of storage and deployed them at key sites around Washington for homeland defense as part of the Avenger defense system.
The missiles were in storage until Rumsfeld's order yesterday, although the Avenger system had already been deployed.
The Pentagon said it was "a prudent precaution" but stressed there was no "specific threat" to the nation's capital.
But the alert prompted the shutdown of nine U.S. embassies - including the one in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation - and more than a dozen other diplomatic posts.
The most specific threats center on Southeast Asia where al Qaeda operatives have been buying explosives since January to prepare for anti-American car or truck bombs, officials said.
Extra U.S. sky marshals were on duty to foil any new skyjacking.
In the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain, home to the U.S. 5th Fleet, the security alert was raised to the top level - "Delta."
U.S. Navy officials in Bahrain also issued an alert to shippers after unconfirmed reports that al Qaeda may target oil tankers.
But at home, Bush urged Americans to go ahead with their normal plans and "honor the memories of those who were lost," the White House said.
Last year around Sept. 11, there also were vague hints at an anti-American threat, but nothing specific, before terrorists struck, officials noted.
The operative who sparked the orange alert isn't Abu Zubaydah, the bin Laden lieutenant who's provided some good information and some bad information in recent months, officials said.
Intelligence agencies also picked up "chatter" in the Mideast that al Qaeda is planning suicide bombings aimed at American targets, either in the Mideast or the United States, a senior FBI official said.
The FBI also fears that sleeper al Qaeda cells could choose today to rise up in "small strikes" to show they're still in operation.
Targets could include embassies, military facilities, monuments, bridges, tunnels, ports, railroads or nuclear facilities, officials said.
Bush planned a full day of events to commemorate 9/11, starting this morning with a private church service and a moment of silence outside the White House at 8:46 a.m. when the first plane struck.
Then he heads to the three sites marked by terror - the Pentagon, Shanksville, Pa., and Ground Zero in New York. He'll speak to the nation at 9:01 p.m. from Ellis Island with the Statue of Liberty behind him.
A large contingent of White House aides also planned to go to Shanksville where doomed passengers on United Flight 93 stood up to the hijackers and crashed the plane so it couldn't head to Washington and target the White House or Capitol Hill.
Many Bush aides, including Cheney, say they believe their lives were saved by the Flight 93 passengers.
According to a new revelation, Cheney refused to be evacuated from the White House bunker on that day of terror even though Secret Service agents feared he was in danger there.
Cheney told the CBS show "60 Minutes II" that he decided to stay when he knew the presidential succession was safe after others in the line had been evacuated and he had "a professional job to do."
The CBS show, which airs tonight, describes Bush's frustration as his calls to Cheney kept getting cut off while Air Force One flew around the country to keep the president safe.
At one point Bush pounded his airborne desk, shouting: "This is inexcusable! Get me the vice president," it reports.
When Bush did get through to Cheney, the report says, he spoke in stark, direct terms according to notes taken by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.
"We're at war, Dick. We're going to find out who did this and kick their ass," he said. And at another point: "We're not going to have any slap on the wrist crap this time."
For fear that the hijackers could eavesdrop on air-traffic control, Air Force One flew across the country without giving its destination - and the pilot spoke to controllers by phone.







  



September 11, 2002 Wednesday  




 White House Raises Terrorism Alert; 
Live Missiles Moved To Launch Sites Around Washington

 
 The Bush administration yesterday elevated the nationwide terrorist threat index for the first time, warning of a "high risk" that al Qaeda cells in Southeast Asia and suicide bombers in the Middle East would launch attacks to coincide with today's anniversary of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings. 
 The heightened alert, approved yesterday by President Bush, came as the Pentagon moved live anti-aircraft missiles to launchers deployed around Washington for the first time in four decades. The Pentagon said the deployment was "not a response to any specific threat, but is a prudent precaution to increase the radar and air defense posture in the national capital region," which is being constantly patrolled by fighter jets. 
 The elevated alert prompted the State Department to shutter more than a dozen embassies and consulates, including the embassies in Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Bahrain and diplomatic missions in Malaysia, Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates, Tajikistan and Malawi. 
 Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other U.S. officials warned that the volume and type of intelligence reports received in recent weeks was eerily similar to the climate last summer, when authorities had evidence of an imminent attack but no inkling the strikes would come on U.S. soil.  
 The new warning -- based primarily on information gleaned within the previous 24 hours from an al Qaeda operative who is in custody -- revived the jittery atmosphere that prevailed after last fall's attacks, which killed more than 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. 
 As the nation prepared to commemorate those events, Vice President Cheney, who had emerged from protective hiding in February, canceled a Tuesday night speech and was again taken to an undisclosed location. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Cheney had also spent Monday night in a secret spot, and his schedule for today was undecided. 
 Today's schedule for President Bush, including appearances at the Pentagon, New York's Ground Zero and the Shanksville, Pa., field where Flight 93 went down, would remain unchanged, Fleischer said. 
 "We take every threat seriously," Bush told reporters at the Afghan Embassy in Washington. "The threats that we have heard recently remind us of the pattern of threats that we heard prior to September the 11th. We have no specific threat to America, but we're taking everything seriously, obviously." 
 A Kuwaiti extradited from Indonesia earlier this year gave U.S. officials information about a plot that led to the threat warning and the embassy closings, sources said. 
 The man was identified as Omar al-Farouq, an al Qaeda "money man" and the link between a regional terrorist network and al Qaeda, sources said. The information he yielded was crucial but not the only element in the decision to issue the warning. 
 Al-Farouq, who was first named by the New York Times, was picked up in West Java in June and almost immediately turned over to U.S. officials, sources said. 
 "He said, 'Why don't you look here or there. They did and uncovered some worms, not just al Qaeda but indications that there was a stronger network here than people had led them to believe,' " the source said. 
 "Most of the information seemed to be pushing in the direction of a regional network." 
 The information led to a "specific and credible" security threat against official U.S. facilities, but not U.S. citizens or business interests. 
 Three years ago, al Qaeda officials sent al-Farouq to Indonesia, and he spent part of the time in the troubled areas of Ambon and Poso, where Indonesian authorities suspect he played a role in support of Islamic militants involved in ongoing violence with local Christians. Indonesian intelligence officials said al-Farouq may have provided weapons, ammunition and financial support to the local Islamic extremists. 
 Officials also said they had learned that al Qaeda terror cells in that region had been stockpiling explosives since January in preparation for attacks. 
 Ashcroft, joined at a Justice Department news conference by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, announced the change in the color-coded system from "yellow" -- which signifies an elevated risk of attack -- to "orange," which represents a high risk. 
 The only higher level is "red," which indicates an imminent or ongoing attack. The country had been on yellow alert since the five-tier warning system was unveiled in March. 
 "As we have been forced to do in the past, today we once again call on the American people to remain alert but defiant in the face of this new threat," Ashcroft said. 
 Ashcroft said information from "a senior al Qaeda operative" and other sources indicate possible attacks to coincide with Sept. 11. In addition to possible attacks in South Asia, Ashcroft said that other intelligence information indicates that Middle Eastern terrorists might be plotting suicide attacks against U.S. facilities. Officials also fear that some of the thousands of low-level al Qaeda operatives who were trained in Afghanistan terror camps may seek to launch freelance attacks around the time of today's anniversary. 
 Another U.S. official said the operative "is naming names of people who want to do this." 
 "He is just beginning to sing," a senior government official said of the Kuwaiti who trained in Afghanistan with al Qaeda. 
 One White House official said the most specific threat information came in Monday and began "creeping up the ladder" of the West Wing until top-level officials were informed during a 6 p.m. concert taping at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 
 Bush was told about the threat when he returned to the White House after the taping, and was provided more details yesterday morning. At about 9 a.m., his advisers formally recommended elevating the threat level. "Let's do it," Bush said, according to the official. 
 The most likely terror targets would be "symbols of American power and authority" such as embassies, military facilities and national monuments, Ashcroft said. Authorities were not recommending cancellation of any Sept. 11 events, however, and federal employees are expected to report to work as usual, officials said. 
 "We'll do everything we can to protect the American people," Bush said. "And Americans need to go about their lives. They just need to know that their government, at the federal and state and local level, will be on an extra level of alert to protect us." 
 Ridge held a series of conference calls yesterday with governors, state homeland security directors, mayors and business leaders. Many already had prepared response plans based on the threat system Ridge unveiled in March, and Ridge told them that they should follow those.  
 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered the nation's 103 nuclear power plants to heighten security, while the Energy Department ordered precautions at nuclear weapons facilities, research laboratories and other sites. Transportation officials said they would, starting today, restrict blimps, news helicopters and other small aircraft over major sporting events indefinitely. 
 The Association of Oil Pipe Lines and the American Petroleum Institute contacted companies to urge tighter restrictions on access to facilities and other protective measures.  
 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered the use of live missiles in the Washington-area launchers "as a prudent precaution," the Pentagon said in a statement. 
 The launchers had originally been intended for a training exercise, and the conversion to live ammunition recalled the the 1960s and 1970s, when Nike guided-missile sites ringed Washington and other U.S. cities. Last Friday, jet fighters resumed 24-hour patrols over New York and Washington. 
 At the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain, where about 4,000 sailors and other troops are based, the level was increased to "delta" -- the highest protective condition in the military. U.S. forces elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region remained on the heightened but lower status of "charlie," officials said. 
 U.S. Navy officials in Bahrain also issued a warning to shippers that al Qaeda might be planning attacks on oil tankers. Ashcroft listed the "transportation and energy sectors" as likely targets. 
 The State Department late Monday issued a worldwide alert urging Americans to be vigilant during the period surrounding the anniversary. It also ordered more than a dozen embassies and consulates closed yesterday. 
 In many cases, the embassies are reviewing whether security precautions need to be upgraded, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. 
 Boucher said of potential attacks, "Some could be imminent, some could be suicide operations, some could be against U.S. government facilities or other identifiably American facilities, but even American citizens could be subject to kidnapping or other acts of violence because of this." 
 In Jakarta, U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce, who announced the closure of the embassy there, told reporters that "there are al Qaeda cells in the region," but their exact nature remains "murky." Embassy officials here and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital, warned Americans to be "extremely cautious" in the coming days. 
 In both cities, the police provided increased security for embassy buildings. 
 The U.S. Embassy in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country with 220 million people, was closed in October 2000 and after the Sept. 11 attacks, both times due to "credible and specific" security threats. In Malaysia, a mostly Muslim country of 23 million people, the U.S. embassy was closed in 1998 after the attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. 
 In the Philippines, authorities tightened security at embassies, airports, power plants and telecommunications facilities after a man suspected of having links to al Qaeda reportedly revealed a plot to carry out attacks. 
 Nakashima reported from Jakarta. Staff writers Mike Allen, Karen DeYoung, Bradley Graham, Glenn Kessler, Bill Miller, Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt in Washington and Alan Sipress in Jakarta contributed to this report. 







  



September 10, 2002 Tuesday  




 U.S. Shuts Embassy In Indonesia After Threat of Attack

 
The U.S. Embassy in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta and the consulate in the city of Surabaya were closed to the public yesterday until further notice because of a threat of attack, the State Department said. 
 "They have received credible and specific threat information that the American embassy in Jakarta and consulate general in Surabaya are at risk of terrorist attack," spokesman Richard Boucher told a briefing.  
Surabaya is in East Java. 
 "That means that they've closed their facilities to public activity until further notice, and they're reviewing their security postures," he said. 
 Asked whether the threat was linked to the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Boucher said, "I don't think I can go into any more detail, but we're all aware of the date." 
 Yesterday, 15 Indonesian Mujahedin Council members staged a protest at the Jakarta embassy, calling the United States the true terrorist on the global scene. 
 Analysts have said a U.S. attack on Iraq could cause unease among the moderate Muslim majority in Indonesia, which is under pressure to do more in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, and would inflame the country's small radical Islamic groups. 




7

  
  
 

September 9, 2002 Monday



 23 are killed as typhoon hits China AROUND THE WORLD

 
Typhoon rains and high winds tore through parts of eastern China, leaving 23 people dead, five missing and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands, officials said Sunday.
Worst hit was Wenzhou, a large industrial city of 7 million in coastal Zhejiang province, near where Typhoon Sinlaku made landfall at around 6:30 p.m. on Saturday.
A city official, who refused to give his name, said Sunday that 16 people were dead and one missing.
About 350,000 Zhejiang residents have been evacuated, said an official of the provincial Anti-Flood and Anti-Drought Headquarters who only gave his surname, Lu. 
About 420,000 acres of farmland have been affected, the official Xinhua News Agency said, and 7,900 houses have collapsed.
The China Meteorological Administration has said Sinlaku packed sustained winds of 81 mph. Up to 3.5 inches of rain inundated Zhejiang, Lu said.
Children and elderly residents of Qidu, an island off Wenzhou with a population of 10,000, were evacuated to the mainland in anticipation of high tides, gales and torrential rains, the reports said.
Chile
Coup anniversary's march becomes riot
SANTIAGO -- Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse demonstrators Sunday after violence erupted during a march marking the 29th anniversary of the military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
While most of the 1,500 demonstrators peacefully marched more than 25 blocks from downtown Santiago to the city's main cemetery, small groups of masked youths started throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at stores, bank offices and at police.
As the march went past the presidential palace, which was destroyed by air force jets during the coup, the demonstrators burned a U.S. flag. It was widely believed that the U.S. government and CIA supported the coup.
The march took place three days ahead of the actual Sept. 11 anniversary. Organizers said they moved the march ahead because, unlike previous years, that date is no longer a holiday.
According to a government report after Pinochet stepped down, 3,190 people were killed for political reasons during his long reign. More than 1,000 dissidents remain unaccounted for.
Since civilian rule was restored in 1990, several officers under Pinochet have been convicted and served prison terms. But the Supreme Court ruled that the 86-year-old former dictator is physically and mentally unfit to stand trial.
Papua New Guinea
Offshore 7.6 quake claims 2, hits homes
A strong earthquake struck just off Papua New Guinea's northern coast early Monday, reportedly killing at least two people and ripping seaside homes from their foundations.
The magnitude 7.6 earthquake hit at 4:44 a.m. local time about 60 miles northwest of the coastal town of Wewak and 530 miles northwest of the capital, Port Moresby, a spokesman for the Australian Geological Survey Organization said.
Papua New Guinea's national broadcaster, NBC, quoted an unnamed church official as saying that two people died in the quake. The broadcaster also said some coastal homes were ripped from their raised platforms by the quake.
An earthquake in the same area in 1998 caused a huge wave, known as a tsunami, that killed about 1,600 people.
Seismologist Lawrence Anton of the Papua New Guinea Geophysical Observatory said there was no risk of a major tsunami following the latest quake.
Guatemala
Bodies linked to war found under school
GUATEMALA CITY -- Anthropologists digging under a school in Guatemala's northern highlands have unearthed the remains of 47 people killed during the country's 36-year civil war, local media reported Sunday.
Human rights activists came to Rabinal, 120 miles north of Guatemala City, after years of testimony from residents who said the bodies of men, women and children were secretly buried under schools, government buildings and a soccer stadium.
The United Nations has described Guatemala's 1960-1996 war between leftist guerrillas and hard-line state forces as a genocide against the country's Mayan population. An estimated 200,000 people were killed before peace accords finally ended the bloodshed.
This week's excavation marks the largest unearthing of civil war victims since May, when scientists working in San Martin Jilotepeque found the remains of 66 bodies.
Austria
Party rift may lead to early elections
VIENNA -- Austria's vice chancellor and two other Freedom Party leaders resigned Sunday amid a rift in their far-right party, leading to possible early elections.
Vice Chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer, Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser and the party's parliamentary speaker, Peter Westenthaler, said they were resigning from their posts following a conflict with former party leader Joerg Haider, a controversial figure known for past comments defending the Hitler era.
The resignations were a clear victory for Haider, who has opposed the work of the ruling coalition of which the Freedom Party is a member. They also were expected to lead to early elections.
The Freedom Party has been plagued for months by a conflict over who is in control: Riess-Passer, the elected leader, or Haider, a charismatic figure who led the party to popularity.
Under Riess-Passer, the party has sought to ditch its image as a home to racists and anti-Semites, although some of its officials continue to draw fire for what critics say are xenophobic comments.
Indonesia
Gunmen kill three on beach, spark riot
JAKARTA -- Unidentified gunmen shot and killed three Muslim women Sunday on a beach in Indonesia's Maluku province, setting off a riot that killed a Christian in the provincial capital.
The violence is the latest in a series of clashes between Muslims and Christians that have rendered a February peace accord largely meaningless.
The three women apparently were bathing in the sea when they were shot on the island of Saparua, police Lt. Edi Watimena told the Associated Press.
Apparently in reaction, a Muslim mob torched a minivan carrying Christians in Ambon, Watimena said. One person was burned to death and two others injured before police dispersed the rioters, he said.
Maluku, about 1,600 miles east of Jakarta, has been wracked by three years of fighting between Christians and Muslims. Up to 9,000 people have been killed. -- Wire reports






  


September 9, 2002



 Still No Moral Outrage From Islamic 'Moderates'

 
When the electric blanket switched off in late-August and we had some days that were still warm, but clear and invigorating, my wife and I simultaneously had the same thought: This is like last September; in fact, like ...
The coming anniversary lurks behind our end-of-summer pleasures, tugging our attention, like an undertow, away from the hammocks and the tractor pulls. One call to reflection came, perhaps surprisingly, from the Reverend Franklin Graham, son of Billy. The younger Graham had gotten some bad press after 9/11 when he said that Islam was an "evil" religion. Muslim groups in America blasted him, and President Bush -- at whose inauguration he'd spoken -- distanced himself from him. Last month, Reverend Graham was at it again. On Fox TV, he said of the Koran, "The violence ... is there," whereat criticism ensued. 
Such controversies must always be a possibility in a regime of religious liberty. When we learn to live with citizens of other major religions, we learn an etiquette that makes daily interaction possible. If we only hurled anathemas, we would have no time left over to buy bread. But freedom to worship, and to go about our business, also includes freedom to criticize and dispute. The standard history curriculum when I was in high school taught that Roger Williams, the founder of the colony of Rhode Island, was a good guy because, unlike the Puritans to his north, he tolerated Quakers, Catholics and even American Indians. So he did. But the reason he welcomed all comers was that he believed that all Protestants, except himself, were tools of the Pope, and hence of the Devil -- so why balk at sectaries and pagans? Liberty can come from equality of contempt as well as equality of respect; if the contempt drained away completely, the respect hardens, and lardens.
But the Reverend Graham made another, quite different point. Like Bob Dole staggering through the 1996 campaign, he asked where the outrage was: "When people go up and blow themselves up, and the religious leaders of this religion say nothing, something's wrong here." The Muslim world, the Reverend Graham was saying, had not condemned 9/11 sufficiently. This point could be made by someone who thought Islam was a worthy and respectable faith; in theory, it could be made by a Muslim.
Who then should come to the beleaguered holy roller's help but ? The paper of record reported on a popular Muslim cleric in Indonesia, Abdullah Gymnastiar. Mr. Gymnastiar has his own TV show, and he was described in The Times as a moderate -- not some dour old fire-breathing ayatollah, but a kind of Islamic Shmuley Boteach or Norman Vincent Peale, putting the happy face on his faith. Mr. Moderate isn't quite ready for prime time yet, however -- at least not in this country -- because he said, of 9/11, that he had yet to see enough proof that Osama bin Laden was responsible. "There has to be a visible trial," The Times quoted him as saying.
This is more scrupulous than Alan Dershowitz or Norm Siegel. Does Mr. Gymnastiar believe that the Nuremberg Tribunals established the guilt of Goering et al. but not of Hitler, because he was unable to take the stand? There have been no trials of Communists in the former Soviet Union. Does that mean The Gulag Archipelago is waste paper? We have not summoned a grand jury in Tora Bora. But there was a video of Osama bin Laden himself, broadcast worldwide, on which the long string of eel shit said that he expected the towers to collapse above the impact of the airplanes, but that he was surprised to see them flop down all the way to the ground; and his attendant gnome, the fat little crippled Saudi, gave him the compliments of the day anyway, since his heart was in the right place; and their politeness was exceeded only by their piety, unless both were exceeded by their pleasure, which exceeds everything. Did Mr. Gymnastiar see that video? This must be why the Muslim world, after a fast start, fell so far behind in the pursuit of science. There are some problems examining evidence.
Let us give the man some credit: He evidently believes that the cowardly mass murder of 3,000 people was wrong, else he would not be at such pains to brush the responsibility from a co-religionist's shoulders. He was not dancing in the streets, or standing on the Brooklyn Heights esplanade, having himself photographed against a backdrop of the smoking gap. Part of his heart is truly in the right place. But there is also a failure of intellect, which is at bottom a failure of will and of courage. It is hard to admit that our fellows or our ancestors have been wrong. It is hard for an American who is not an anti-American to admit that slavery was wrong, or that the Indians were treated shabbily. Even when one has said that slavery existed throughout the world, and that the Indians were no beauties themselves, one still has to repeat the initial judgment of the wrongs. It is hard to know what restitution to make, or even if restitution is possible; affirmative action and casinos don't seem to be the right answers. It is harder, perhaps, to know simultaneously that one is in history and its sins, and that one has an obligation to make now, which is tomorrow's history, better. That's all hard. The Islamic world, on the evidence of Mr. Gymnastiar -- who is undoubtedly among the best of the lot -- isn't even trying. Most Muslims face societies of their own making, in which there are no rules, no rights, just thievery and despair. All they can do is vituperate Israel, and wait for Osama bin Laden's trial.
It is not for non-Muslims to say what Muslims should think. A social mass as large and old as Islam has its own resources, its own internal compasses and its own needs. Muslims will do what they must, and what they can. But non-Muslims will observe what Muslims think. It's a free country.






  
  

  

September 9, 2002 Monday 



 Experts disagree on impact of widening U.S. military ties

 
Not since the chilliest days of the Cold War has the United States been so active in building relationships with foreign armies it considers sympathetic to its cause. This time, the cause is the war on terrorism. During the Cold War, of course, the war was against communism.
Supporters of the new American military posture say these new relationships may forestall another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Critics say the war on terrorism is leading us to support undemocratic states, with antiterrorism replacing anticommunism as the reason to turn a blind eye to abuses of human rights. 
For supporters, the new policy is a matter of vital expediency. "The most important thing is to win this war [against al-Qaeda]. Everything else is secondary to that," said Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy research center in Washington.
For critics, the policy is the start of a descent down a slippery slope.
"My concern is that there's a foot-in-the-door problem," said Natalie J. Goldring of the Global Security and Disarmament program at the University of Maryland. Once U.S. military training and arms sales open up to questionable nations, it can be difficult to halt, she said. "We've lowered the bar, and I think that's dangerous."
In the weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Washington focused on the military necessity of securing alliances with the front-line countries near Afghanistan.
It lifted sanctions against Pakistan and India, and reached accords to use military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, despite repressive regimes in those nations.
Even Russia, which had been harshly criticized for its war in Chechnya, saw U.S. criticism end as it recast that conflict in terms of the antiterrorism fight.
"There were [people from] countries all over the world coming to Washington and saying, 'Me, too! Me, too!' " said E. Wayne Merry, a veteran American diplomat who is now a senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council, a Washington research center.
The areas where the United States is expanding its military ties have moved beyond the immediate Afghanistan region:
In the Horn of Africa, Washington has offered security-related assistance to three nations that border Somalia: Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya. "Somalia is a failed state that has no effective central government. Somalia could be another Afghanistan," said Francis X. Taylor, the State Department's senior counterterrorism official.
In the former Soviet republic of Georgia, the Pentagon recently launched a $64 million training program in a nation where the ragtag military operates on an annual budget of about $20 million. Washington wants Georgian troops to move into the remote Pankisi Gorge, where it believes that al-Qaeda-linked Chechen rebels are holed up among ethnic kin.
In the Philippines, leaders have been equally content that hundreds of U.S. soldiers and trainers arrived earlier this year on Basilan Island to help that country smash the Abu Sayyaf, a small Muslim group dedicated primarily to hostage-taking and banditry.
Washington has made an about-face on Indonesia, which has a huge and restive Muslim population. In 1999, the United States banned all forms of military aid to the country because of an appalling human-rights record. But Washington now fears that Indonesia may become fertile ground for terrorism. In early August, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced $50 million in security and counterterrorism aid.
Colombia, the source of most of the cocaine that enters the United States, has benefited from the war on terrorism. U.S. legislators recently agreed to let nearly $2 billion in recent U.S. aid and donated military aircraft to be used to fight three outlaw armies as well as drug traffickers.
President Bush set out his policy to offer military training to any nation that is fighting terrorism in March, marking six months since the Sept. 11 attacks.
He has made good on the pledge. In the last year, the White House has sought nearly $3.8 billion from Congress in security-related aid for 67 countries. It also has lifted a series of restrictions on arms sales and transfers.
But critics worry that just as Washington once ignored human-rights abuses in countries such as Guatemala and Indonesia in the name of fighting communism, its push to fight terrorism will bolster authoritarian or repressive governments.
Of the 67 nations earmarked to receive U.S. security assistance since Sept. 11, 32 have what the State Department labeled "poor" or "very poor" human-rights records, according to the Federation of American Scientists, a liberal group concerned about the shift.
Supporters of American policy say the threat of terrorism is so dire that such concerns must be shoved aside.
"It's national survival. It's that simple," said retired Army Col. Kenneth Allard, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a conservative center for national security studies in Washington.
Experts differ on whether the expanded U.S. role will alter regional military balances, slow progress on global human rights - or have little effect at all.
"Once the war is over, [American military officials] will say, 'Let's go home,' " said Ledeen, the conservative analyst.
Goldring, of the University of Maryland, offered a less optimistic assessment.
"The kinds of agreements we are making now risk significant long-term consequences," she said. "You've got to ask whose hands the weapons will end up in. If you are training bad guys, there is a chance that you will be training more effective bad guys."






   


September 9, 2002, Monday, 



 Al-Qaeda fragmented, smaller, but still deadly

 
A year into the war on terror, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network appears weakened but still capable of carrying out attacks, U.S. intelligence officials say.
Even though the group has been forced from its stronghold in Afghanistan and the fate of its leader is unknown, al-Qaeda's operatives are regrouping, recruiting, changing their tactics and planning more terror missions against the West, the officials say.
Among the warning signs:
 * For the first time, al-Qaeda has begun recruiting Afghan and Middle Eastern women to distribute money and messages to its operatives around the world and offer other logistical help, U.S. law enforcement officials say. The action breaks a long-standing taboo by the group. In its training manual, it had urged male members not to use women in "jihad business."
 
 * Al-Qaeda members from the Middle East and Asia are trying to hack into American computers that control water, electrical and communication facilities, including 911 networks, in at least 30 municipalities, U.S. law enforcement officials say. They believe the group is gathering data for a future cyberterrorist attack.
 * In Britain, Germany and Spain, al-Qaeda recruiters are combing mosques for disenchanted Americans who might be eager to become suicide bombers, European officials say. They believe a terrorist attack against U.S. embassies or installations overseas could take place within six months. (Sunday, German officials said a Turkish-American couple arrested last week for plotting to bomb the U.S. military bases in Heidelberg did not have any links to al-Qaeda.)
 * In Pakistan, al-Qaeda operatives, identifying themselves as Saudi refugee workers, are teaching anti-American doctrine at religious schools in Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar and are soliciting contributions from shop owners for "the next 9/11," Pakistani officials say.
"We are proving the kuffar (infidels) in Washington wrong," says Jamal Waheeb, 32, a Saudi refugee official in Quetta who Pakistani officials suspect is an al-Qaeda operative. "They said al-Qaeda would be finished. But we are emerging stronger and will hit America's shopping malls, stadiums and kindergartens. This is our promise."
That could be bluster. FBI documents show there are only 200 hard-core al-Qaeda operatives still active in the group worldwide, down from several hundred before the attacks last September. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon failed to mobilize other Muslim extremists to attack the United States in the "clash of civilizations" bin Laden had wanted. Still, just 19 hijackers carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, and officials remain concerned that small numbers can cause huge damage.
The war on terror has not destroyed al-Qaeda but dispersed it around the world, making it harder for law enforcement officials to track the group's activities and capture its members.
Although the number of hard-core fanatics appears to be in the hundreds, officials fear that up to 20,000 men who have attended bin Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan since the 1990s are still potential martyrs in his crusade.
"These are the sort of people who just won't give up, and their infrastructure in a lot of places, like Pakistan, is still intact," says terrorism expert and former Defense Intelligence Agency official Julie Sirrs.
Last week, a United Nations report warned that al-Qaeda "is by all accounts, 'alive and well' and poised to strike again how, when and where it chooses." A top counterterrorism expert agrees.
"Al-Qaeda is absolutely the most dangerous immediate threat to American society," says Paul Bremer, U.S. counterterrorism ambassador during the Reagan administration. "There are thousands of al-Qaeda operatives burrowed into societies around the world, including the United States. We're not out of the woods yet."
Al-Qaeda today
One year into the U.S.-led war on terror, here is what al-Qaeda looks like, according to U.S. and coalition intelligence and law enforcement officials:
 * Size: The group still operates terror cells in as many as 65 countries. Some of the largest cells are in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives are believed to be hiding in Pakistan's northern tribal areas and the country's Baluchistan Province.
Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in last September's attacks claimed citizenship, is also a major al-Qaeda stronghold. Since June, nearly 80% of the hits on a secretive al-Qaeda Web site have originated from e-mail addresses in Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda uses the site to deliver fiery sermons against the West and encrypted messages to its operatives.
"For every terrorist plot we discover and every terrorist cell we disrupt, there are dozens of others in the works," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Service Committee in July.
At least four al-Qaeda cells are operating in the United States, possibly in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, and Seattle, FBI officials say.
Mosques in nine U.S. cities are under surveillance by the FBI for possible links to those cells. They are in Cleveland; Falls Church, Va.; Fort Lauderdale, Jersey City; Laurel, Md.; Norman, Okla.; Pembroke Pines, Fla.; San Diego; and Tucson, FBI officials add.
The use of female recruits for the first time represents an attempt to foil U.S. law enforcement authorities who have developed a profile of al-Qaeda members as young Muslim men.
In January, British police say they raided an al-Qaeda cell in London and arrested two women who were forging passports and documents for the group. In June, Moroccan police say they detained two women who were carrying money and messages to al-Qaeda operatives who had planned to bomb U.S. and British ships in the Strait of Gibraltar.
 * Leadership: After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush said he wanted bin Laden captured "dead or alive." Now the raging debate is whether the al-Qaeda leader is dead or alive.
Most U.S. intelligence officials believe bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan's northern tribal areas. Pakistani intelligence officials say they last saw him on Nov. 17 in a 25-vehicle convoy, heading from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, into the nearby Tora Bora mountains. Soon after, he is believed to have escaped, along with chief lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri, across Afghanistan's White Mountains into Pakistan.
Other officials say bin Laden must have been killed last year at Tora Bora during a U.S.-led bombardment of the area during the first two weeks of December. Some U.S. special operations commanders, convinced that bin Laden is dead, have asked to be freed from their ongoing search for the al-Qaeda leader. They cite bin Laden's failure to appear in a new video as proof.
Bin Laden's death would rob the group of a wealthy, charismatic leader but would not stop it. Some experts, and suspected al-Qaeda members, even believe bin Laden could be more popular as a martyred leader than as a living one. His son Saad, meanwhile, appears to be assuming a greater leadership role in the group.
Of 33 top al-Qaeda leaders, the whereabouts of 21 are unknown, 6 have been killed and 6 have been captured, according to separate tallies by  and the Associated Press.
So far, Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaeda operations chief, is the highest-ranking member of the group to be arrested. Zubaydah, who is being questioned at an undisclosed location, has provided little valuable information to investigators. But the computer hard drives, CD-ROMs and documents found by the FBI and CIA in his rented house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, where he was captured on March 28, have led to the surveillance of at least 200 people in the United States. Many of them are believed to be linked to al-Qaeda.
U.S. officials fear at least seven other top al-Qaeda leaders still on the loose -- including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the planners and financiers of last September's hijackings -- may be plotting attacks.
Mohammed, along with Saad bin Laden, is believed to have planned an April 11 bombing of a Tunisian synagogue that killed 19. The suicide bomber who carried out the blast phoned Mohammed three hours before detonating the explosives.
 * Money: Al-Qaeda continues to receive millions of dollars in contributions from Islamic charities and prominent businessmen in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other countries.
The terrorist group operates bank accounts in Dubai, Hong Kong, London, Malaysia and Vienna, all of which are registered in the names of others. The U.N. report valued al-Qaeda's financial empire at $ 30 million and said the group has little problem moving its money when necessary.
More than $ 300,000 of al-Qaeda's money was recently wired from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to a terrorist group in Morocco that had planned to blow up U.S. ships there. Al-Qaeda also reportedly sent several shipments of gold recently to Sudan for safekeeping.
9/11 the beginning or end?
Just how big a threat is al-Qaeda today?
Like bin Laden's status, the question is a matter of intense debate in the intelligence community.
Some FBI, CIA and Pentagon officials say al-Qaeda is no longer capable of a large-scale attack. They say the U.S.-led war on terror has weakened al-Qaeda by bombing its camps and strongholds in Afghanistan, arresting nearly 2,000 people in 95 countries and freezing the financial assets of more than 200 people and dozens of Islamic groups and charities since Sept. 11.
The officials also say they have curtailed the group's ability to communicate internationally by monitoring its satellite phones, faxes and e-mails. Their efforts have foiled at least six terrorist plots since last September, including the planned bombing of the U.S. embassies in Paris and Singapore.
"Al-Qaeda is a confused, fractured, rudderless terrorist organization that is only capable of local action by autonomous cells," says terrorism expert Ken Katzman of the Congressional Research Service. "Their high mark is over."
He believes al-Qaeda has been reduced to conducting smaller, yet deadly, attacks like a May 8 car bombing of a Karachi hotel that killed 14 people and the April 11 Tunisian synagogue bombing.
Others say the threat from al-Qaeda persists.
"Clearly, military, intelligence and law enforcement efforts have had an impact on al-Qaeda, but that doesn't mean you have removed the threat," says terrorism expert Ben Venzke, CEO of IntelCenter, a Virginia-based security and intelligence company. "You'll no sooner get rid of terrorism than you will crime and hatred in the world. It can't be done."
Waheeb, the suspected al-Qaeda member interviewed by  at a mosque in western Pakistan, warns that the holy war against the West has just begun.
"Our people are already in place for our next attack and have been for years," Waheeb says. "We are ready to move forward. 9/11 was just the beginning."







   

 

September 8, 2002 



 REMEMBER 9/11: U.S. FOREIGN POLICY: Collapse of twin towers realigned the whole world

 
London --- In the space of a day, the attacks of Sept. 11 lent a new and terrible clarity to U.S. foreign policy. Fighting terrorism, which had been almost an afterthought, became the overriding purpose.
Viewed through this new lens, the world suddenly seems a different place. Old enemies, such as Russia and China, look friendlier and more useful. Old friends, such as Saudi Arabia, are now viewed with more suspicion. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose name George W. Bush could not recall as a candidate, became one of President Bush's most important allies.
And time-honored international institutions, such as NATO, began all at once to look hopelessly out of date. 
"Now terror is the prism through which the U.S. looks at security, and it's not clear what role NATO has in that," said William Hopkinson, a defense expert at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. "NATO is no longer one of the prime factors, it seems to me, in U.S. security."
The organization, designed to fight Soviet expansionism, has no history of fighting terrorism, and does not --- as yet, anyway --- appear geared to play a significant part.
"I find it still hard to identify what exactly NATO should do, how NATO should adapt itself, to make itself relevant to the war on international terrorism," said Dick Leurdijk of the Clingendael Institute of International Relations in the Netherlands.
Even the new configuration of world alliances might be on the verge of changing again, if the Bush administration presses ahead with plans for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. The idea is wildly unpopular among long-standing U.S. allies, such as Europe, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and also among new friends, such as Pakistan.
"A possible attack on Iraq could well become a nightmare for our international system as we know it," Leurdijk said. It would probably spill beyond Iraq's border, involving other Arab countries as well as Israel, he said.
New view of Musharraf
The new focus of U.S. foreign policy affected virtually every region of the globe.
In Asia, U.S. policy toward Pakistan changed markedly. Before Sept. 11, U.S. officials considered Musharraf a dictator and called on him to cede power. That criticism was muted after the attacks because Pakistan borders Afghanistan and the United States needed Musharraf's help in attacking al-Qaida. Far from ostracizing Musharraf, Bush has met with him and praised him.
Relations between Washington and Beijing also improved. Eager to be seen as a responsible member of the international community, Chinese President Jiang Zemin showed resolute support for Bush's war on terrorism and happily hosted Bush in Shanghai last October for a regional economic conference --- Bush's first overseas trip after the attacks.
"Relations improved recently because of one fact --- that Americans understand by this event the major threat to the United States does not come from a single country, like China," said Wang Yizhou, deputy director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Still, the two countries could hardly be called allies. China views U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as a major obstacle to closer ties.
U.S. military aid to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, was restricted in 1999 following outrage over human rights abuses in East Timor. But human rights are no longer as important as they once were in determining U.S. friendships. The Bush administration is now making efforts to resume military cooperation with Indonesia.
Administration officials see military ties, including assistance and training, as a way to help reform the Indonesian military while allowing the United States some influence over it.
But critics say resuming ties would be seen as condoning corruption and past human rights abuses of the military. They also fear an anti-American backlash in Indonesia, where the war on terrorism is viewed as a war on Islam.
In the Middle East, U.S. alliances have not changed radically --- yet.
Shortly after Sept. 11, Iranians took to the streets to demonstrate in sympathy with America. But relations between the United States and Iranian governments have not warmed appreciably.
The Iranian government is split between moderates and hard-liners, and Washington, in a change of emphasis, now says there are "two governments" in Iran --- one that shows promise but is weak and one that is strong and possibly sheltering al-Qaida.
Jordan, one of America's closest allies in the Middle East, is voicing strong opposition to an attack on Iraq. But this, too, represents little change. In the 1990 Gulf War, Jordan remained "neutral," which was viewed in the West as akin to siding with Iraq.
Ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia are still strong on the surface. But the White House has not been pleased by the Saudi government's vocal opposition to an attack meant to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, has called talk of removing Hussein "unwise, to say the least." Bush administration officials are known to think that the Saudi royal family is being undermined by its own greed, and they have no wish to tailor U.S. policies to meet Saudi desires.
There was speculation, after Sept. 11, that the Bush administration would put increasing pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. The goal would have been to mollify Arab allies the United States needed to fight terrorism.
But the pressure never materialized, largely as a result of U.S. disappointment with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat over his connections with terrorism. Now, U.S. support for Israel is greater than it has been in decades. Bush has never met with Arafat.
Latin America sympathetic
In Latin America, the attacks generated widespread sympathy and support for the United States --- not a surprising response from neighbors with little history of religious extremism and few terrorist groups that might target the United States. A recent opinion poll in 17 Latin American countries showed that 85 percent of Central Americans, 65 percent of South Americans and 63 percent of Mexicans have a favorable view of the United States, numbers that have changed only marginally in the last two years.
But some in Latin American are concerned that the region might now be ignored by Washington as the United States focuses on the war on terrorism.
The biggest loser in Latin America has been Mexico, whose president, Vicente Fox, was making historic strides toward persuading Bush to consider a sweeping migration accord that recognized U.S. dependence on Mexican workers.
Fox has waited patiently, sometimes facing ridicule from opponents for saying Mexico should continue to try to work with the United States toward an agreement.
His government is trying to sell the Bush administration and Congress on the idea that an accord would be a national security improvement that could help the United States control its southern borders better. But progress toward an agreement has stalled.
And in Argentina, a nation beset by an economic and political crisis since last December, only 38 percent of those polled had a favorable view of the United States, perhaps a result of the widely held perception that Argentina's woes are at least partially due to U.S.-backed economic liberalization during the past decade.
'Model for good and bad'
Some analysts worry that the post-Sept. 11 atmosphere might endanger the fragile gains made in the past decade as Latin American nations have jettisoned dictatorships and military juntas and struggled toward building free, democratic societies with open economies and strong civil institutions.
"The U.S. is a huge model for good and bad in Latin America," said Kimberly Stanton, deputy director of the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank. "So it's very important that we think about the message being sent when we make decisions to hold suspected terrorists without access to lawyers or formal charges. Those are practices we've condemned in the past. If the U.S. curtails its commitment to legal due process, governments abroad may feel empowered to do the same."
Stanton also worries that the terrorist label will be applied with a broad brush to opposition groups in Latin America, leading to a crackdown that could resemble the often brutal anti-Communist crusades that the United States supported in much of the region in past decades.
In such an atmosphere, legitimate grievances springing from long-standing problems such as unequal distribution of land and resources may be swept aside, hindering reform efforts, she said.
There are other risks to Washington's changing alliances, analysts say. In the 1980s, the United States, fearing that Iran might become too strong in the Middle East, covertly assisted Saddam Hussein in his war against that country. And in that same decade, the United States found radical Muslims, including men like Osama bin Laden, valuable allies in the fight to eject the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.
In this new war, Russia is an ally, not the enemy. But the United States could still be embarrassed by its new friends if, Hopkinson suggested, the Musharraf regime in Pakistan turns out to crumble or if Russian atrocities are discovered in the breakaway province of Chechnya.
--- Staff correspondents Julie Chao in Beijing, Mike Williams in Miami, Larry Kaplow in Jerusalem and Susan Ferriss in Mexico contributed to this article.






   


September 8, 2002, Sunday



 MUSLIMS VS. MODERNITY ; HOW MURDERERS LAID CLAIM TO A GREAT WORLD RELIGION

 
SEPT. 11 is a landmark in the long and unequal encounter between Islam and the West.
Millions of Muslims have come to appreciate what the West has to offer, and some now even live here. But many more millions believe that the West is somehow preventing them from finding their rightful place in the world.
Correspondingly, they feel that their own civilization of Islam is letting them down. Violence and war alone can purge the painful sense of shame and inferiority from which they are suffering. A few are even willing to kill themselves so long as they can destroy some symbol of Western might, like the World Trade Center. 
It is a mindset conditioned by history.
Islam was once a spectacular success story. Fourteen hundred years ago, a band of warriors burst out of Arabia, conquering and converting in the name of the Prophet Mohammed and his revelation of God. In due course, from Morocco to Indonesia, from Central Asia to halfway down Africa, a succession of caliphs, sultans, shahs and emirs built empires and raised monuments testifying to the glory of Islam.
The religion adopted a great deal from Judaism and Christianity, its spiritual forebears, but it has essential differences.
ITS vision of equality and justice obliges the faithful to obey the divine law, and (as the practice of Islam developed) the sole duty of Islamic rulers is to enforce that law. The compulsory fusion of religion and politics makes for totalitarianism.
Another defining feature is the absolute certainty that Islam is the final revelation. Whoever questions or rejects this doctrine is seen as an infidel or a heretic, and never to be tolerated.
In their triumph, Muslims felt that they had nothing further to learn from others. In reality, Christians and Jews were refining their visions of equality and justice. The Reformation, and then the Age of Enlightenment, laid the base of the humanist societies of the West, in which the individual settles his relationship with God according to his conscience, and his relationship with temporal authority by due processes of consent. The arts and sciences of the Industrial Revolution then liberated the creative energies of the West.
MUSLIM chroniclers testify to the shock of discovering that the settled assumption of Islamic supremacy was an illusion. Foreign armies, and foreign goods and ideas, took over their lives, and there was nothing to be done about it except submit.
The Indian sub-continent, Central Asia, the Arab lands, fell into the hands of Christians of one nationality or another. Even the despised Jews laid claim to hitherto Muslim land.
How were Muslims to catch up, and be rid of the sense of shame and inferiority now searing them? To many, it seemed obvious that they had only to borrow from the West whatever served their purpose.
In the course of the 20th century, revolutionaries seized power in one Muslim country after another. Usually army officers, and secular in outlook, these revolutionaries declared themselves nationalists and modernizers, and they offered their people pride in themselves.
TO the extent that they threw out foreign occupiers, they were successful. But instead of introducing the political and social institutions that gave the West its strengths, these new nationalists have proved to be one-man tyrants like the caliphs and sultans of old, but far more ominous because they have at their command all the resources of a modern police state with which to repress their people.
Saddam Hussein is the perfect prototype: a secular leader who has nonetheless incorporated a religious slogan on the Iraqi flag, and whose concept of modernizing is limited to acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
An influential minority of Muslims go further and reject the West and all its ways. To them, the West is the source of corrupting un-Islamic ideas like democracy and human rights and sexual liberty.
An expanding polemical literature warns Muslims against what one Iranian writer has called "Westoxification," or the temptation to take to the West as to a drug or alcohol. Muslims, these writers claim, have only to revert to the strict beliefs and practices laid down by the Prophet Mohammed all those centuries ago.
This means rejecting nationalism, and uniting as the community of the faithful that they once were. A billion strong in the world, they will then be great again, and at last the West must bow to their supremacy. According to a popular slogan, "Islam is the solution."
Ayatollah Khomeini's seizure of power in Iran early in 1979 marked the moment when fanaticized political Islamism found public expression.
Iran today is a police state like any other, and modernizing there is also limited to the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. But in imitation of the Iranian model, Islamism has spread through every Muslim country, in a multitude of parties and groupings of the al Qaeda or Taliban type, prepared to impose themselves with civil war at home and terror abroad.
These are the people who danced in the streets on Sept. 11.
Secular nationalists and Islamists appear to have different and incompatible aims for their people, but together they have fostered a generalized climate of rage against the West, and the United States in particular. They share the same vocabulary about the "arrogance" of the United States, and the need to recover their own honor and dignity.
They share similar triumphalist fantasies, in the one case about sending Americans home in coffins; and in the other case about how Islam must eventually rule the whole world.
YEARS of violence will no doubt have to pass while Muslims worldwide work out for themselves how to reconcile Islam and tolerance of others, faith and pluralism, tradition and modernity, and shape a successful society out of these elements. When they achieve this end, they will meet the West on equal terms, and events like Sept. 11 will become inconceivable.
Until that time, the damage they continue to do to the West is bad enough but still small compared to the damage they do to themselves.
David Pryce-Jones is a senior editor at National Review and the author of "The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs" (just republished by Ivan R. Dee).






   

 

August 25, 2002 



 After Taliban, Afghans seek natural Islam

 
Kabul, Afghanistan --- After years under the stern and humorless Taliban, a different vision of Islam has come home to Kabul: The smiling mullah is back. He has repainted his mosque in pastels, he is preaching moderation and hope, and he is packing in the faithful.
The "smiling mullah" is Abdel Rauf Nafeh, 55, and he shows the face of what Islam in Afghanistan could be.
The Taliban banned Nafeh from his large downtown mosque because he refused to pray for their leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. When they fled in November, he came back and repainted the mosque. 
Now, Nafeh attracts a thousand worshippers every Friday, where the Taliban, despite their lashings of those who didn't pray, could only drum up 200.
Unlike the Taliban, Nafeh doesn't care about the length of your beard or whether you own a satellite dish that pulls in Western channels.
"People practice Islam because they want to, not because of politics," he said.
Holding a handkerchief over his face, he demonstrates how the Taliban hid behind the name of Islam. "The people will not be deceived anymore."
The Taliban's fall marks only a new chapter in the long-running battle for Afghanistan's religious identity.
On one side and holding the upper hand are the fundamentalists, who comprise factions with clout in the new U.S.-backed government. This has long been a traditional country with areas ruled largely by religious edict.
But the fundamentalists got the advantage they hold now largely because Americans, Pakistanis and Saudis armed them to fight the Soviet invasion two decades ago. Moderates and modernizers had prevailed for much of the last century.
Today, they don't have the weapons to counter the fundamentalists, but they have re-emerged with hopes of restoring what they see as Afghanistan's moderate, natural Islam.
Some changes are evident
As soon as the Taliban fell, secret schools for girls started operating in the open. Banned mullahs, such as Nafeh, replaced the Taliban preachers who had abandoned their mosques.
Afghan Islam is based on Hanafism, the most open to interpretation of the four schools of Sunni law.
Thirty years ago, women in Afghan cities could walk in public freely in skirts, not confined to the all-encompassing burqas they wear now. They held jobs as professionals. The national airlines, Ariana Afghan Airlines, was partly owned by Pan Am and sent its pilots to America for training.
Pakistanis used to take weekends in Kabul to enjoy the nightclubs.
If they can thrive, today's moderates may rebuild a society with less government enforcement of religion, more rights for women and greater openness to the West. They could even help turn the fundamentalist tide that washed over the Middle East and Asia in the last 20 years.
"It is a condition that has not occurred in any country," said Afghan law professor Ghulam Dareez.
The world should care about who prevails. Some of the factions that first sheltered Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida are still intact.
The Taliban's Mullah Omar reportedly wanted to help bin Laden launch a fundamentalist revival throughout Central Asia and China.
It was a dream also held by warlord Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, who still roams the country with his private army, evading at least one reported American attempt to kill him.
The U.S.-backed government in Kabul includes anti-Taliban militias whose rigid interpretation of Islam is only slightly less severe than the Taliban's.
After backing them against the Soviets, the United States turned to many of the "mujihadeen" or "holy warriors" to defeat the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks. They include most notably the Northern Alliance, led by the ethnic Tajiks.
Religion remains a priority
Afghans and foreign analysts say now is the time for the outside world to aid and encourage moderate Afghans. They need laws and institutions that will assure they can speak freely and hold powerful jobs.
"It isn't very easy for the liberals to get power because the ordinary people can't be very assertive right now," said Sarfraz Khan, an expert on Afghanistan at Pakistan's University of Peshawar.
"If America ignores Afghanistan, the fundamentalists right now will come to power with the force of arms and the help of their neighbors, Iran and Pakistan."
Undoubtedly, Afghanistan is a devout and traditional country. Truckers pull over by streams on narrow mountain roads to make their ablutions and pray. Nearly all stores and offices close on Friday, the day of prayer.
Most Afghans demand an Islamic government and a government that supports mosques and Islamic education. Even among the few women who now feel free to give up their burqas, none goes without covering her hair in a scarf. No woman drives and many would face resistance within their own families if they tried.
The moderates tried to make a stand at the recent national council meeting that elected moderate President Hamid Karzai. Many openly criticized the fundamentalist militias and their rule by gun.
But prominent militia leaders rose to pointedly warn that anyone who criticized the mujahideen would be profaning Islam. They also succeeded in naming Karzai's new regime an "Islamic government" --- something that even delegates who thought it unnecessary could not publicly oppose.
After the nine-day council, extremists succeeded in bullying from office the outspoken feminist and woman's affairs minister, Sima Samar.
Even in Kabul, where there is greater security than in the rest of the country, there is intimidation. Afghan police recently entered a party being held by foreigners and beat two Afghans they accused of drinking alcohol.
'Still in the 14th century'
Nearly all women still wear their burqas, worried they could be spotted by extremists looking to set an example.
"We have freedom, but government should control the freedom," said Ayatollah Mohammed Asaf Mohsini, a prominent conservative cleric. He said Westerners should not impose liberalism on Afghanistan.
"We are still in the 14th century. If you were in the 14th century, you wouldn't accept so much freedom. Let us develop first," he said.
Jamila Mujahid, the progressive editor of a new woman's magazine, counters that fundamentalists disguise restrictive customs, like the burqa, as religion.
"There are people who have misused the name of Islam for their policies. A good example is the mujahideen and the Taliban. They don't want the women to take power," she said.
Her magazine prints quotes from the Prophet Mohammed that encourage women's potential, such as: "A woman's beauty lies in her talents."
Over the next two years, Afghanistan's transitional government will oversee the writing of a new constitution that should set out just how the country will reconcile Islamic law and civil liberties.
The effort will highlight the many subtleties of the religion. For example, the Taliban used amputations against criminals and most Afghans agree the practice is well based in Islamic law. But reformers say the Taliban ignored restrictions that render the practice difficult or nearly impossible to implement.
"Afghanistan will be in the middle way," said Dareez, the law professor. He compared the country with moderate Muslim states such as Egypt and Indonesia.
"Not too much fanatic and not too easy in Islam."







   
 

August 25, 2002 Sunday  
  



 Refueling in Style in Bali 

 
WE could have blamed it on the rain. (The monsoon season was inching its way out.) We could have blamed it on fatigue (a marathon of long-haul flights). But if my husband and I became food-obsessed slackers in Bali, we really had only ourselves to blame -- and the kitchens at two hotels where we spent a week in early April. 
     Yes, we straggled out for bursts of sightseeing and shopping and a few restaurant meals, but they never measured up to what we could get just steps from our room. Then again, maybe the room had something to do with it. 
 Encouraged by some tempting discounted rates, we had booked three nights each at the Chedi, in the Ayung Valley, outside the central hill town of Ubud, and at the Serai, a beach-front affiliate on the eastern coast near Candidasa. (Just recently, we learned that these two hotels and their management group parted company. They have new names, but the local staff, we were told, remains the same -- and so, of course, do their prime locations.) 
The Chedi was very chic and very private, the Serai more open and expansive, so together they promised a yin-yang contrast. 
The Chedi seemed designed for the world weary (a single television in a corner of the library, a well-stocked bar near the infinity pool, a full-service spa), while the Serai, although nicely laid out for serious loafing, also catered to those for whom the world is never enough (mountain bikes for rent, an outrigger canoe on call and an itinerary of guided treks that included a four-hour climb to the summit of Mount Agung, departing at 2 a.m. to catch the sunrise). We were more interested in sunsets.
An hour north of the airport and the multilane highways and modern sprawl of southern Bali (a good chunk of which, an Australian acquaintance had suggested, is to her countrymen what Tijuana is to Californians), the Chedi is tucked into the side of a steep, jungly gorge and resembles a secluded stone-and-thatch village -- admittedly, a pretty upscale village. Mossy and misty and low-slung, it's the sort of place that manages to be both elegant and cozy. 
The two-story main buildings burrowed into the hillside in an arrangement that could have produced a honeycomb of dank caves but instead yielded a series of shady lairs. Our room was small, but nicely fitted out with wooden paneling and built-in cabinets, rather like a well-designed stateroom -- except for the teak-ceilinged outdoor shower at the back, with its own grotto of a garden, and the little terrace out front, surrounded by waist-high, ivy-covered walls. In other words, an ideal den for high-end hobbits.
Breakfasts (included in the room rate) were lavish. Here Continental did not, as it so often does, translate as mingy. In fact, this Continental breakfast was almost too generous: a gigantic fruit plate, a big bowl of granola with yogurt and fruit, an assortment of pastries, a large custom-blended fruit drink (pineapple, orange and ginger was a favorite) and ample refills of excellent coffee. Also on the Chedi menu was a breakfast sandwich with a fried egg, smoky ham and Jarlsberg cheese with pepper, coriander and chili relish. My husband, John, who won't get within 10 feet of a McMuffin, ate two of them.
To fill in the time between meals, we took the free van service (which runs from midmorning until about 10:30 p.m.) into Ubud, about 20 minutes away. Strung out along a surprisingly long and sometimes steep main road, the town is packed with museums and temples and galleries -- and more shops than even the most dedicated browser could cover ( I tried), as well as a crafts market for those who don't have the time or inclination to explore the neighboring villages, each of which has its own particular specialty. 
In Ubud, you can buy tickets to performances of traditional dances and gamelan music and book excursions to farther-flung temples and tourist sites. Or you can hire a car and driver from the hotel, as we did on another day, for $15 an hour. We set off on a whirlwind tour, but (perhaps fittingly) just as we finished exploring Pura Tirta Empul, a temple with a 1,000-year-old sacred spring, the rain began in earnest.
Luckily, the Chedi has a soothing wine list. Import duties send most wine prices skyward, but the hotel offers a few specials: a nice 1999 Alexis cabernet sauvignon, for example, was about $14. We further consoled ourselves with minced prawn and lemongrass brochettes, lacquered duck breast, roasted sea scallops with barbecued prawns, and a parfait of caramelized banana, honey and almond praline. 
The rain continued on and off, so we had plenty of time, the next night, for a Balinese version of the traditional Indonesian rijstaffel, a kind of smorgasbord of rice, meat and vegetable dishes, and for lunch a stir-fry of chicken, shrimp and egg noodles in a spicy coconut and yellow curry sauce and another of Hokkien noodles with five-spice chicken, black beans and asparagus. Is it any wonder that when I wandered over to the spa, I wound up being scrubbed first with coconut and then with shredded carrots?
The Chedi may feel private even when it's booked solid, but the high-roofed, open-air dining pavilion, approached up a flight of steps lined with lanterns and providing a view out over the pool and the river valley, couldn't have been more than a third full. Our fellow guests seemed to be mostly Japanese and Australian, although we detected a smattering of French, German and British accents.
Occasionally -- on the streets of Ubud, at the Denpasar airport, around the hotel pools -- we heard American voices, but rarely enough so that we weren't surprised when a waiter at a lovely but very empty restaurant in Candidasa said we were the first Americans he'd met all year. The State Department's warning "to defer nonessential travel to Indonesia," which is predominantly Muslim, appears to have affected Bali -- where the distinctive blend of Hindu and Buddhist worship coexists with extensive tourism -- particularly hard. Reassuringly, the department's consular information sheet also reports that "Bali has been largely free of the disturbances seen in other parts of Indonesia."
The peace and quiet at the Chedi were echoed an hour's drive east at the Serai, which sits on a green lawn in a grove of coconut palms just beyond a rocky beach. There, too, the architecture is all stucco and thatch, but everything seems lighter and airier, with two-story buildings arranged around a sun-dappled swimming pool. Our room, on the second floor, decorated in shades of beige and brown with pink-and-black checkered silk pillows, was sparer than the room at the Chedi (in fact, the bathroom was almost spartan), but the balcony, with a large built-in daybed, was the ultimate creature comfort: perfect for reading or napping or zoning out to the sound of the surf. 
Investigating the room, we flicked on the television and suddenly found ourselves watching a live broadcast from London of the Queen Mother's coffin being carried to Westminster: the stiff-upper-lip British counterpart to a colorful funeral procession we'd just passed in a village in central Bali. Retreating to the bar, we got acquainted with a drink called a Serai cooler (gin, ginger cordial, mint and tonic water) that performed a similarly subversive take on that old colonial standby, the gin and tonic. 
The Serai is known for its food. With a bit of notice, you can sign up for cooking classes, and the driver we hired the next day (for $10 an hour) took us along a rice-paddy route through the hills that's part of a more extensive package available to serious students of Balinese cuisine. 
Staying in path-of-least-resistance mode, we simply trolled the East Bali section of the hotel menu, full of small plates to share: spiced pork with coconut and lemongrass; grilled chicken in spicy chili and tomato sauce; a curry of tofu, tempeh and quail egg; and green vegetables tossed in a spice paste called Balinese bumbu. The dessert, a grapefruit creme brulee, might have stretched the Balinese label a bit but, as with the Bali ginger cake, it was an entirely forgivable sin. And so was the bakery basket at breakfast (muffins, croissants, butter almond kuchen, homemade banana jam) 
The only disappointment in three days of Serai meals came at tea: the complimentary afternoon tea, served either at poolside or in our room, amounted to a tea bag in a thermos, with a few tired sweets. 
East Bali, around the Serai, is a scuba-diving center, but it's also home to cool, pool-studded water palaces built by local rajahs, as well as temples and craft villages (the region is famous for its ikat weaving). You can drive inland for a visit to Bali's largest temple complex, Besakih, and if the weather cooperates, have lunch high up on the ridge leading to volcanic Mount Batur, with views of the lake far below. (The hotel can send you off with a box of sandwiches, biscuits, fruit and soft drinks, a more promising option than the tourist restaurants on the Mount Batur road.)
The spa at the Serai, like the one at the Chedi, is run by Mandara, but has a more limited array of treatments and is far less luxurious, stashed in a couple of converted hotel rooms. My spa sampler was competently delivered and reasonably priced (a Balinese massage and half-hour facial came to $45, with tip), but there was something a little disconcerting about listening to other patrons arriving on the outside of the sliding glass door. And showering in a tiny, utilitarian hotel bathroom put something of a damper on my blissed-out post-massage mood.
It was nothing, though, to rival the thud of re-entry the next morning, when the hotel van collected us for the two-hour journey back to the airport. As the ramshackle villages of East Bali gave way to the larger and larger towns of the coast road and then to the mini-malled, fast-food-infested capital, Denpasar, I found myself unexpectedly energized -- with a desperate urge to hurry back to my daybed at the Serai. 
And I found myself wishing that we'd taken our trip just a little later, in time for Bali's celebration of Nyepi, the lunar new year, for which monster-shaped floats were being constructed in open sheds throughout the island. New Year's Day itself is a day of silence. Businesses are shuttered and everyone, including hotel guests, stays indoors. The airport closes down, so nobody can come -- or go. Now that's my idea of a perfect holiday.

A couple of slices of paradise
On Aug. 1, the Chedi in Ubud and the Serai in Manggis, near Candidasa, switched management from the Singapore-based General Hotel Management group to Alila Hotels and Resorts, which also owns the new Alila Hotel in Jakarta. The local staff and management are expected to remain the same.
The hotels may be contacted directly (Bali is 12 hours ahead of New York) or through their United States representative, Heston Associates, 7 Dey Street, New York, N.Y., 10007; (212) 732-4747, fax (212) 587-1580; e-mail, HestonInc@aol.com.
The Chedi, now the Alila Ubud, is about 1 hour 15 minutes from the Denpasar airport, at Desa Melinggih Kelod, Payangan, Gianyar 80572, Bali; (62-361) 975-963, fax (62-361) 975-968. The hotel has 60 rooms and suites, a restaurant with 24-hour service, a poolside restaurant and bar, a swimming pool, a meeting room, a fine-art gallery, health spa, library, television lounge and boutique. Village trekking and bicycling excursions are also offered. 
The Serai, now the Alila Manggis, is two hours from the Denpasar airport, at Buitan, Manggis, Karangasem 80871, Bali; (62-363) 41011, fax, (62-363) 41015. There are 56 rooms and suites, a restaurant with room service, a swimming pool, a boutique, spa treatments, and a cooking school. Village trekking, bicycling and diving excursions are also offered. 
Booking through Heston (which also handles Alila's properties), we paid $1,331 for six nights' lodging, airport transfers, land transfers between the resorts, daily breakfast and afternoon tea. This fee also included local taxes and 10 percent service charge. Nonpackage rates at the Alila Ubud start at $260 night; at the Manggis, they start at $155.   ALIDA BECKER







   
 

August 25, 2002 Sunday  
  



 THE TALK OF ...; 
Indonesia: A Plan Bono Would Envy

 
INDONESIA'S minister of religious affairs, concerned about the nation's crushing foreign debt, found a peculiar way to pay it off. The minister, H. Said Agil Munawar, traveled to Bogor, a city in the foothills of Salak mountain about an hour from the capital, Jakarta, and begun digging under a stone inscribed in Sanskrit by a 15th-century Javanese king. 
     A soothsayer had told him about a buried treasure worth enough to cover the country's $155 billion debt, the minister claimed. He added that President Megawati Sukarnoputri had also blessed his treasure hunt. That was enough to put the search on the front pages of Indonesian newspapers, captivating the public, which reacted with bemusement, ridicule and criticism. 
 Muslims, who make up most of Indonesia's population of 220 million people, were offended that Mr. Munawar had invoked a soothsayer. Such an act is a breach of monotheism, said Helmi Sutikno, a Muslim youth group leader. 
One member of Parliament said the government should promote rational, not irrational, ways of solving the country's problems. In the face of mounting anger and derision, President Megawati denied she had ever endorsed the mission, and a few days after launching his treasure hunt, Mr. Munawar called it off, leaving Indonesia with its debt.   Dian Saputra






   


August 23, 2002 Friday



 
BC-Photo Update, 12:45 pm. EDT Photo Update Friday, Aug. 23, 2002
The photo supervisor is Jim Collins [212] 621-1900.
For AP International Photos [212] 621-1906.
For AP Photo Specials [212] 621-1980.
For AP Photo reruns [212] 621-1904.
To expedite your rerun request, you may access the AP Photo Rerun Archive at ">photorerun.ap.org.RETRANSMITTED FOR ADDITIONAL INT PHOTOS:
BUSH:
President Bush proposed Thursday to end the government's "hands-off' policy in national forests and make it easier for timber companies to remove wood from 190 million acres of the most highly fire-prone forests. Bush continues his three-day Western swing today with appearances planned in Stockton, Calif., and Santa Ana, Calif. 
First event in Stockton begins at 1:10 p.m. EDT. Photos are expected one hour after the start of the event.
NEPAL:
A small plane crash, a bus accident and a landslide that swept away dozens of houses have left at least 128 people feared dead in Nepal in the past two days, including 15 foreign tourists.
We would like to call you attention to a series of dramatic images from the landslides.
Of note:
AED101, Five-month-old Nepalese Pratina Basnet, a victim of a landslide, lies lifeless in the mud as one of her relatives prepares for the funeral proceedings in what is the single most deadly monsoon caused incident this year in South Asia, in the Nepalese village of Thapru.
AED102, Nepalese landslide victim Amar Bahadu Khadu's body is carried by relatives through the mud and debris left in the Nepalese village of Thapru.
AED103, Nepalese homes stand in a lush green valley of rice fields spared by the raging landslide waters next to the ravaged area of the natural disaster in the Nepalese village of Thapru.
AED105, Nepalese villagers stand on the debris left after their village was hit by a lanslide next to an overgrown river in the Nepalese village of Thapru.
PHILIPPINES HOSTAGES:
Philippine military leaders gave civilian officials on a remote island five days to negotiate with the captors of four Jehovah's Witnesses on Friday and said they were preparing a "killer punch' if the talks fail.
Of note:
JOL104, Philippine Army soldiers aboard military trucks move out of their military camp for deployment Friday, Aug. 23, 2002 to different areas on Jolo island in southern Philippines to pursue the abductors of members of the religious group the Jehovah's Witnesses.
RUSSIA NORTH KOREA
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il capped his second visit to Russia in a year with a long meeting with President Vladimir Putin and a taste of the consumer delights that are in short supply in his hermetic and impoverished country.
Of note
MOSB102,109, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il tours the supermarket "Ignat' in Vladivostok.
MOSB107, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il waves to people from his armored car as he leaves after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok, Russia.
XAZ114, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il greet each other during their meeting in Vladivostok.
Also of note in today's report:
ARGENTINA SQUATTERS
We would like to call attention to the series of pictures BAI101-108 on an Argentine squatter family at the house she and her family moved to several years ago in Buenos Aires. An estimated 250,000 squatters have taken over homes in the Argentine capital. The number of squatters has risen dramatically in recent months as the country wallows through its worst economic crisis in history, pushing one half of Argentines into poverty.
MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANS
AXLP101, Relatives of Palestinian Madhat Al Yazgi, gather around his body in the morgue of Gaza City's hospital. Yazgi was killed when he, along with two other Palestinians armed with assault rifles and grenades and disguised as Israeli soldiers, tried to infiltrate the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in central Gaza, the Israeli army said.
INDONESIA ISLAM
JAK103, Indonesian worshippers take part in midday prayers at Istiqlal mosque, the largest mosque in Southeast Asia. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation and the majority practice a moderate form of the religion.
The AP
AP-WS-08-23-02 1249EDT




8


   
 

August 23, 2002 Friday  
  



 Jakarta Journal; 
A TV Preacher to Satisfy the Taste for Islam Lite

 
Abdullah Gymnastiar, this nation's most popular Islamic preacher, possesses the boyish good looks and eternal smile that send Indonesian women scrambling for invitations to join his television audience. Men come, too. 
     Everyone sits on mats on the studio floor, though the preacher is perched a little higher, on a cushion, dressed in a crisp white jacket and perfectly pressed sarong that play well to the cameras. 
 He is taping six back-to-back shows, which will reach into living rooms, beauty shops and sidewalk cafes in this hyperactive city of 13 million people, where he is best known. Unlike religious leaders who recite repetitious Koranic verses, Mr. Gymnastiar, 40 years old and known as Gym (with a hard G), offers chirpy practical advice. He is up front about the personal issues on the soap operas that his program competes with. 
"Should a woman have sex in the office?" asks one woman. Mixing English and Indonesian words for a flirtatious effect, he replies, "A good sexy woman doesn't show off to others, just to her husband."
For those who say Indonesians wear their religion lightly and are profoundly moderate in their practice of Islam, the emergence of Mr. Gymnastiar in the last several years is proof enough. 
He attracts overflowing crowds to the Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta, the largest in Southeast Asia. President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who runs the world's most populous Islamic country but whose Islamic credentials are sometimes questioned, has invited him to appear alongside her at big outdoor events. Earlier this month, the American Embassy included him in a small group of Islamic leaders -- all of them moderate, but most of them older -- to meet Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. 
In his sermons and television programs, Mr. Gymnastiar often uses the word adil, meaning fair. It is, he says, the essence of Islam. 
"In Christianity the significant word is love," he said. "But in Islam it is fair. Because if we are not fair, we hurt someone. If we make war, we have to be fair with our enemy."
He tried, he said, to get this concept across to Secretary Powell. Most important, he said in an interview afterward, he tried to explain why the United States is mistrusted in the Islamic world. 
"I said: 'You don't look fair. I feel so sad that America looks too powerful,' " Mr. Gymnastiar said he told the secretary. He then drove the point home, he said, with the Middle East: "Why is it that Israel takes Palestinian land, and why is that the U.S. always helps this?" 
At the same time, he said, he tried to reassure Secretary Powell: "I said we don't hate America. I just said America is unjust, unfair. If Bush has a fair ideal, every country is going to love America. But as Muslims we feel we are treated unjustly, unequally." 
Mr. Gymnastiar's appeal among Indonesia's young and the middle class appears to lie in a combination of his modernity, his background as the son of a soldier and his interest in business. In the country's precarious economic environment, where an unruly democracy is unfolding after three decades of dictatorship, his homilies inspire hope and confidence.
"Success is how we can improve ourselves all our life," he said during a taping. "Don't think success is only money, a beautiful wife and a good job -- but how we can improve ourselves to the end of our life." 
At his base in Bandung, a city in West Java, he charges $100 for three-day motivational seminars on how to succeed. A local supermarket, a radio station and a variety of home industries opened by his organization are supposed to illustrate to the participants how to do better in their own businesses. 
Always mindful of the reach of his television audience, Mr. Gymnastiar had a waterfall built in the backyard of his modest home there, so the cameras could film him for special segments in front of an attractive backdrop.
Every Monday he gathers his senior staff of eight men, all under 40, on his veranda to plan the week's commercial activities.
His latest venture is "Al Quran Selular," a telephone service that allows subscribers to call daily to listen to their favorite texts from the Koran, recited in his deep voice. For several years, he has run charter flights to Mecca. 
"I like his knowledge," said Imaniza, 38, a fashion designer of what she called Muslim clothes. She had listened to his tapes and read his books at home before coming to the seminars. "He's not extreme. I've learned about entrepreneurship and human resources from him." 
With the exception of constantly upbraiding Indonesian leaders for being corrupt, Mr. Gymnastiar keeps politics out of his sermons. But, recently, he expressed harsh sentiments about the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, at the Istiqlal mosque. Afterward, a close friend and financial backer, Palgunadi Selyawan, a retired auto executive, said he scolded his protege for letting go of his emotions. 
But Mr. Gymnastiar is not afraid to say he has yet to see enough proof that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. "There has to be to be a visible trial," he said. 
In a measure of the suspicions about the United States in Indonesia, he said he was reluctant to accept an invitation to travel to the United States. He was scheduled to go to Los Angeles just before Sept. 11. But now, a visit could send the wrong signal. He said, "I don't want to appear as someone groveling." 
In short, he said, his followers would not approve.






   
Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA)

August 20, 2002 Tuesday



 Muslim democracy

 
While it may take years for the people of Afghanistan to realize the true governmental democracy they deserve, they can take heart in the fortunes of another Central Asian country that is cementing its ties to the principles of freedom.
Recently, Indonesia's political leaders approved an amendment to the country's constitution calling for a major expansion of democracy. The 700-member People's Consultative Assembly voted to require direct presidential elections by the people and to end the decades-old practice of reserving seats in Parliament for unelected military leaders.
Even more extraordinary, the assembly rejected calls to impose Islamic law in the world's most populous Muslim nation, saying freedom of religion was essential to its constitution.
Since 1945, Indonesia's assembly had elected a president for five-year terms with broad powers. This led to widespread abuses by General Suharto, who gained the presidency in 1966 and proceeded to rig six consecutive presidential elections by buying off assembly politicians. Four years ago, Suharto was ousted in a people's uprising that paved the way for last week's changes.
Indonesia's reforms are bold and refreshing in a part of the world that is often mischaracterized and misunderstood. They show that a Muslim country of 210 million people believes direct democracy and diversity of religion are true cornerstones to peace, stability and progress.
Indonesia's example should serve to inspire the people of Afghanistan and other Muslim nations that monarchies, oligarchies and dictatorships offer few if any hope for a better global future.







   
 

August 20, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 Losing Our Best Allies in the War on Terror 

 
An Asian human rights activist proudly introduced herself to my class as a threat to national security: her commitment to democratic values put her so at odds with two Southeast Asian governments that she had to travel clandestinely. Yet, as our seminar on democratic culture came to an end earlier this month in Cracow, Poland, she, of all people, declared: "I have doubted a simple assertion for years, but I am now convinced that American democracy requires the repression of democracy in the rest of the world."
     Worse still, she was expressing the consensus of the students. These young people, moved by values of human rights and democracy, have become convinced that the existence of these rights in America is predicated on their repression elsewhere.  
 Every January, I travel to Cape Town, South Africa, to teach in a program on democracy and diversity. Every July, I travel to Cracow, Poland, to teach in a parallel program. Advanced graduate students, professors, human rights activists and young public policy advisors are brought together by the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies of the New School University. The program has its origins in the Democracy Seminar, a clandestine intellectual exchange between Budapest, Warsaw and New York in the 1980's, organized by Adam Michnik and me. Democratic oppositionists and New School scholars became colleagues as they read and discussed classics in political theory and the pressing problems of the day. The students attending our seminars -- from Southern Africa, Eastern and Central Europe, the nations of the former Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, and North and South America -- continue this discussion.
What I observed last January in Africa and just a few weeks ago in Central Europe among young opinion leaders from around the world has been alarming. Anti-Americanism is not just a hysterical judgment popular on the political fringe. It has become a principle of some committed democrats and this, unfortunately, makes a great deal of sense when it comes to the war on terrorism.
In my seminar last January, we started our deliberations with reflections on the Sept. 11 attacks. I was shocked by the class discussion. With the exception of one young professor from Nigeria, all the students in Southern Africa were focused not on confronting Al Qaeda but on the American war on terrorism. It seemed that the participants could not imagine that the Americans were victims. They could only understand our power and condemn our excesses.
Whereas I understood the American operation in Afghanistan as fundamentally a liberation, my South African co-teacher and our students understood it as superpower bullying. Whereas I wanted to understand the mind-set of those who would kill thousands of innocents, including one of my dearest friends, in a suicide bombing, they could only see the horrors of collateral damage of the war on terrorism.
In Cracow, I waited until the end of the seminar to open the discussion to Sept. 11 and its aftermath. Before Sept. 11, anti-Americanism in Europe was a mild affair and a key part of the love-hate relationship between the French and the Americans. In the aftermath of the September attacks and with the war on terrorism in full swing, it could not be more serious.
One of the students explained why they must focus on the reaction to the attacks and not the attacks themselves. It is the war on terrorism that is being used as a cover by dictators around the world to justify crackdowns on democracy advocates. Suddenly the rights of Muslims in the Philippines and Indonesia -- or of the democratic critics of the authoritarian "Asian way" in Singapore, Malaysia and Burma -- are not important to the Bush administration. Suddenly the strategic resources of Central Asian dictatorships are more important than the lives of human rights activists. Suddenly the defense of the American way of life and our democracy seems to be predicated upon a lack of concern for the democratic rights of people in less advantaged countries.
As a rule American democracy does not depend on the frustration of the democratic prospects in the rest of the world. At times we have played crucial roles in supporting democratic activists, as in Poland. But we did sometimes let the struggle for democracy play a secondary role in our geopolitical calculations during the cold war, and we are doing this again.
When I think about my students, it seems to me that the young Muslim from Indonesia, the Burmese dissident living in Thailand, the democrat returning to Burma, the feminists in Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Indonesia are the keys to victory against dogmatism and its terrors. Only they are actually capable of presenting the alternatives to terrorism to their compatriots; that work cannot be done from afar. They are on the front lines of the antiterrorist struggle. Any war that undermines their position -- and they convincingly report that it is doing so -- is self-defeating.
I believe that my Asian activist student is wrong when she posits a necessary connection between American democracy and foreign dictatorships -- and that she wants to be convinced that she is wrong. Warriors on terrorism should be advised. If the war on terrorism is to be a success, people like her must be on our side. We must face military threats on military terms, yet we must realize that the struggle for democracy and against terrorism demands that we listen with great care to the world's democrats and act accordingly. 






  
  
 

August 18, 2002 Sunday



 The Mideast threat that's hard to define;
Wahabism's extremist teachings are causing a great rift in the Islamic world.

 
THERE ARE people inside the American defense establishment -- the most powerful, technologically sophisticated military in the history of mankind -- who believe that the greatest threat they face today may come from followers of an early 18th century religious extremist who called for a renewal of Islamic spirit, moral cleansing and the stripping away of all innovations to Islam since the seventh century. Those disciples are known as Wahabis.
Their namesake would have vanished into obscurity but for an act of political savvy that assured his followers influence over what has become one of the world's wealthiest, most pivotal regions.
In 1745, the religious leader Mohammad Ibn Abdul Wahab forged an alliance with Mohammad Ibn Saud, the principal tribal leader of a large portion of the Arabian peninsula.
Ibn Abdul Wahab wanted to propagate his brand of Islamic orthodoxy. Ibn Saud wanted to unite tribes and secure political command, becoming the founder of the Al Saud dynasty that still rules what is now known as Saudi Arabia. 
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, perpetrated by people who mostly came from Saudi Arabia, "Wahabism" has entered the vocabulary of American policy makers almost as synonymous with death, destruction and terror. Moreover, Wahabi teachings and influence in Riyadh have colored our image of Saudi Arabia, threatening to move it from the category of a friend helping to stabilize oil prices and the region to one of a foe alien to our values and bent on hurting us.
Less obvious, however, is that the Sept. 11 attacks also have strained ties between the "Wahabis" and Arab governments.
The alliance between the House of Saud -- wealthy, cosmopolitan, and increasingly Western in tastes and habits -- and the proponents of an austere form of Islam based on a literal interpretation of the Koran is becoming harder to sustain.
An increasing number of newspaper commentators, regional leaders and Saudi officials are daring to speak up against the backwards "Wahabi" vision of society. And Persian Gulf governments are taking a tougher line against extremists once thought to be useful, or at least relatively harmless.
Instead of representing growing Wahabi power, the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath in Afghanistan may signal the peak of Wahabi influence, and a turning point in Arab attitudes toward such extremists.
These nuances are important for the United States as it wages its war against terror and tries to decide, to paraphrase the president, who is with us and who is against us.
The Bush administration must better distinguish between Islam and the real enemy -- radical extremists within Islam. Otherwise we risk a collision with 1.2 billion Muslims around the world who do not appreciate being demonized just because they disagree with our policies in the Middle East or our plans to invade Iraq.
It is true that the links between Saudi rulers and Wahabi followers have been real and durable.
The pact of mutual convenience made more than 250 years ago continues. The Saudi minister of religion is always a member of the Al Sheikh family, descendents of Ibn Abdul Wahab. Moreover links between Ibn Abdul Wahab and the house of Saud have been sealed with multiple marriages.
The Wahabis' sway over mosques has ebbed and flowed, but they possess their own notorious religious police and have extended their reach via networks of schools throughout the Muslim world.
It is difficult to pinpoint the boundaries of Wahabism. It is not a religion or an offshoot of Islam. Its followers are not a tribe or ethnic group, and they prefer to identify themselves as muwahiddun, which means "the unifiers."
As Abdallah Al Obeid, the former dean of the Islamic University of Medina and member of the Saudi Consultative Council, explains, Wahabism is a political trend within Islam that has been adopted for power-sharing purposes.
"It has no special practices, nor special rites, and no special interpretation of religion that differ from the main body of Sunni Islam," he says.
It is, however, extremely austere and rigid. It tolerates little dialogue and less interpretation. It frowns on idolatry, tombstones or the veneration of statues and artworks.
Wahabis forbid smoking, shaving of beards, abusive language, rosaries and many rights for women. They expect their followers to pray five time a day and they regard all those who don't practice their form of Islam, including other Muslims, as heathens and enemies.
Their prominence is a relatively recent phenomenon. During the 1950s, Cairo, infused with Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalism, was the intellectual center of the Arab world. But the massive Israeli victory over Arab armies in the 1967 Six Day War dealt a blow to Nasser's prestige. Islamic religious leaders stepped into that ideological vacuum.
When the big oil money of the 1970s started flooding the Persian Gulf region, the balance in religious matters shifted away from the progressive Levantine version of Islam that existed in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Algeria, to the Wahabis' rigid tendencies.
As millions of Egyptian, Moroccan, Pakistani and other guest workers poured into Saudi Arabia, they returned home with both money and a new religion. Egypt started to tip over. Anwar Sadat, who had struck his own alliance with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood to fight the remnants of Nasserism, was killed by it.
Later there were at least five attempts by Islamic extremists against the life of his successor, Hosni Mubarak.
The war against the Soviets in Afghanistan gave radical Islam a chance to deploy its military prowess. Wahabis in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt profited, fattening their ranks with new recruits and coffers with new contributions.
At that time, the American government considered the Saudis' links with these groups useful. With the encouragement of the Carter and Reagan administrations, the Saudis funded the jihad against the Soviets jointly with the CIA, while Egypt gave the mujaheddin arms from its arsenal and Pakistan provided land and training grounds.
Ironically, the money that brought Wahabis power throughout the Arab world and financed networks of fundamentalist schools from Sudan to northern Pakistan, has also widened the gap between Wahabis and Arab societies.
Increasingly, the Wahabi outlook is detested by the Saudi ruling elite, the growing middle class and the vast powerful business community in Saudi Arabia.
Earlier this month at a conference on Islam in Amman, Jordan's Crown Prince Hamzeh urged educational reforms to "prepare our students ... to integrate into the modern world" and "set them free from their isolated mentality."
The attack on the United States by al-Qaida may spell the beginning of the end of this brand of radical Islamic extremism, as people in the region deal with the harm Wahabi disciple Osama bin Laden has done to the reputation and welfare of Muslims around the world.
The entire Saudi religious establishment is under pressure from both the royal family and the Saudi public. For the first time, artists, politicians and pundits are openly criticizing the clergy in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia and throughout the world of Islam.
The historic alliance between the Sauds and Wahabis may be coming apart -- unless we in the United States intervene with unreasonable demands for instant reforms couched in barely disguised racial slurs. Instant anything in Saudi Arabia or the conservative world of Islam is impossible.
The simple-speak propagated by the Bush White House has mixed mainstream Islam with Wahabism into a confusing mish-mash.
The two are different. True, Arab governments coddled the fundamentalists. But so did we. The United States gave a green card to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in recognition for his service in rounding volunteers in Egypt to fight the Soviets.
He ended up with a life sentence for conspiring to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel and the World Trade Center.
I would argue that just as the 1967 war spelled the end of Nasserism, the Sept. 11 attack will mark the beginning of the end of radical extremist Islam in all its varieties.
The money from Islamic charities is drying up. After Sept. 11, the "swamps" that provided recruits are drying up, too, so much so that two Islamic groups in Egypt, Jihad and al Gamaa al-Islamiya, have formally announced they are abandoning the armed struggle.
In Saudi Arabia, half the population of 18 million sees Wahabism as oppressive. The same goes for people in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait.
That does not automatically translate into loving the United States. The bin Laden attacks have given us an opening, though.
Millions of Muslims who belong to the secular middle and business classes and the ruling elites also detest Muslim fundamentalists. But they equally detest our Middle East policy.
It is time to bond with them on fighting fundamentalism without demanding that they subscribe to every one of our policies.
Our friends there, the secularists, need to be offered a way to bond with us instead of being presented with simplistic choices of black and white.
The author is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.







   
 

August 18, 2002 Sunday  
  



 For Some Indonesians, Echoes of 'Coolie' Nation 

 
Bent with the strain of balancing 12 years' of belongings, Zainal, a migrant worker who had just been expelled from Malaysia, struggled to board a navy boat that would take him back to his village. His long run of work abroad had abruptly come to an end. 
     Two of his three children tottered along with him, clutching at his arms, their faces tight with fear. Born in neighboring Malaysia, they had never seen their parents' home country.  
 "I had to leave my job at the watermelon plantation and I have no money for a new passport and a work permit," said Mr. Zainal, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, as he headed for the gangplank. 
Day after day, thousands of Indonesian migrant workers have been sailing to their home provinces from this equatorial port, fleeing new laws in Malaysia that took effect on Aug. 1. The laws call for the imprisonment and caning of illegal workers and heavy penalties for their employers. 
Thousands more expelled workers linger in the rickety town here, waiting, they say, for documents that will allow them to return legally to Malaysia, where the money is good and their heavy labor on construction sites and plantations is in demand. 
They are sleeping on the streets, on verandas and, if they are lucky, in packed tents or halls, where they find a roof over their head and minuscule packets of rice for sustenance. At least 21 workers have died here in the last two weeks. At the sole medical clinic, several migrant workers lay on the floor, the cause of their illnesses unknown because there was no doctor to offer a diagnosis, and virtually no medical supplies. 
As many as 400,000 Indonesian migrant workers have returned to Indonesia through various entry points, according to government estimates, with the biggest surge in the last several weeks. Their unexpected appearance in Indonesia is likely to add to the nation's 40 million unemployed, out of a population of 228 million. 
More deeply, the images of the young men, elderly women and distraught families being pushed out of a neighboring country where people speak a similar language, look the same and share the Muslim religion has reawakened an old debate: What is Indonesia? 
"Who are we if all we can export abroad is unskilled workers?" said Adi Sasono, a longtime proponent of social justice and a leader of the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals. "It means we are really a nation of coolies, and a coolie among nations." 
His use of the word "coolie" was deliberate, Mr. Adi said, because it echoed the evocative language of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, the father of the current leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri. In an impassioned speech nearly 40 years ago, Sukarno said that during the colonial period, Indonesia was a "coolie between nations," moored between the continents of Asia and Australia. 
"Sukarno said to stop being a coolie nation was the very reason we had to become independent, rather than become stuck on the lowest rung," Mr. Adi said.
The meek response of Sukarno's daughter to the Malaysian government's expulsion of the Indonesians has infuriated people here. During two days of talks in Bali last week, Mrs. Megawati asked Malaysia's prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, for a reprieve for the workers and an arrangement that would help them obtain legal papers in Malaysia.
The Malaysian leader, facing an economic downturn in his own country and aware that the Indonesians were unlikely to retaliate against the expulsions, refused to yield. 
"The government called the migrant workers the 'heroes' of foreign exchange," said Faiza Mardzoek, an official with Women's Solidarity for Human Rights, a Indonesian nongovernmental organization that is trying to assist the expelled workers. "But there is no real discussion with Malaysia about the workers, and no formal agreements to regulate the situation." 
Ms. Mardzoek, who came to Nunukan to investigate the plight of the workers and distribute leaflets informing workers of their rights, said the migrant workers were the biggest contributors to Indonesia's foreign exchange earnings after oil, gas and wood. In many Indonesian villages, the remittances pay for new schools, roads and housing that the government is unable to finance. 
The flow of Indonesians to Malaysia has a long history, with generations of families in the provinces of Sulawesi and Java sailing to Malaysia to seek their fortunes.
In recent times, labor agents have taken hold of the business of migrant workers, and here in Nunukan, where the local population is only about 80,000, nearly two dozen businesses call themselves "labor suppliers."
They charge Indonesians a fee for the promise of legal work, but in fact when the Indonesians arrive in Malaysia they often lack the correct documentation and are left at the mercy of unscrupulous bosses, said Vincentius Ruing, the director of the Association of the Big Family, a local group that assists migrant workers.
Despite the hardships of their stay here in Nunukan, many of the workers said they were fearful of returning to their home provinces. 
"If I go back to Sulawesi, people will ask for so many things -- clothes, something special from Malaysia, and I don't have them yet," said Sumarti, 23, a cheerful young woman who said she had worked on a plantation and was planning to go back. "Things are not a problem in Malaysia as long as you can do the physical work." 
On an overgrown patch of land on the outskirts of town, where the buildings peter out into tropical jungle, the Roman Catholic cemetery told of the sacrifice of the less fortunate workers. 
Nine fresh graves, with roughly hewn wooden crosses, bore the names of migrant workers originally from the mostly Christian island of Flores, who had died here. Thomas Mambao, 46, had worked in Sandakan, Malaysia, for 12 years, his friends said. Unmarried, he cleaned the Catholic church in his Malaysian village until he was arrested for holding an expired passport and held in prison for two weeks.
He became ill after landing in Nunukan and died three days later, his friends said. Tears in their eyes, they lighted two dozen white candles to commemorate his life.







   
 

August 16, 2002 Friday  
  



 Indonesia Acquits 6 in Rights Case, Upsetting the U.S. 

 
An Indonesian human rights court today acquitted six military and police officials of crimes against humanity in East Timor after a pro-independence vote three years ago, a verdict that did not please the Bush administration as it seeks to rebuild military ties here. 
     Five of the accused were on trial for failing to stop a massacre at the Ave Maria Church in Suai, in which at least 27 people, including three priests, were slain. The massacre was documented afterward as the most cold-blooded killing of the violence that consumed the territory after a vote for independence in September 1999.  
 Among those acquitted was the former regional police commander, Brig. Gen. Timbul Silaen, who was responsible for the security of the balloting, which was sponsored by the United Nations. 
Anxious to renew its relationship with the police and military of Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, the Bush administration announced new aid for the police this month that American officials said was intended to help build a counterterrorism unit. 
Washington also said it would permit Indonesian Army officers to go to the United States for limited training, but underscored that a more robust training program would take place if the military demonstrated some accountability for what happened in East Timor.
Today's verdicts were a "disappointment," an American official said. At a time when the United States is trying to "reach out" to Indonesia, the official said, the court's decision will not be helpful.
American officials had expressed some confidence that the government would live up to reassurances they said were given in private that Indonesia would do the "right thing" in the trials. But Indonesia has been intent on not appearing to allow any interference with its sovereignty, and President Megawati Sukarnoputri has been careful to steer a fairly neutral foreign policy. 
Four of the six defendants today were officers of the Indonesian Army, which has regained some of its lost stature during the yearlong presidency of Mrs. Megawati. 
The Bush administration has managed to overcome much of the resistance in Congress to renewing military ties with Indonesia. American military aid was severed by the Clinton administration after the East Timor bloodletting.
Today's verdicts could slow what the administration hoped would be a fairly smooth course to the resumption of healthy military relations. 
The commander of United States forces in the Pacific, Adm. Thomas Fargo, who was in Jakarta today, suggested the need for the Indonesian military to face up to the past. Speaking just before the verdicts were announced, the admiral said, "It would be inappropriate for me to comment on the legal proceedings, but obviously a large part of our effort is to encourage accountability and reform."
On Wednesday, a civilian, the former governor of East Timor, Abilio Soares, was found guilty of crimes against humanity for failing to control subordinates. He was sentenced to three years in prison. 
After today's verdicts, human rights experts said that the prosecutors had failed to bring effective cases. They said that important evidence gathered by Indonesia's own Commission of Inquiry on human rights violations in East Timor, and the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry, was ignored. Several witnesses from East Timor refused to appear before the court because the Indonesian government would not guarantee their security, they said.






   


August 15, 2002 Thursday



 AP Photos NY453-457

 
Prayers, cold baths offer hope for drug addicts
By CHRIS BRUMMITTAssociated Press
CIBEUREUM, Indonesia - Shivering in the early morning mist, recovering heroin addict Slamet prepares to start another day of Islamic prayer and meditation.
The 28-year-old man used to spend most of his time stealing and shooting up. Now, after eight months in an Islamic drug rehabilitation center high in the hills of west Java, he is becoming a rare success story in Indonesia's often feeble war on drugs.
"Before, people used to look at me like I was trash. All I could think about was heroin. Now, I can eat, sleep and pray like a normal person. I feel good,' he said. 
Indonesia is undergoing an explosion of illicit drug use and some social activists believe the solution lies in Islam, a faith which some 90 percent of Indonesia's 210 million people adhere to.
Slamet, along with 30 other ex-addicts, receives no specialized counseling or detoxification treatment at the center - just a steady diet of religious devotion. In the end, the center claims a higher success rate than conventional clinics trying to combat the drug crisis.
The center is run by a nearby Islamic boarding school, or pesantren. The school, named Suryalaya, is home to about 3,000 students, from kindergarten to university level.
There are hundreds of thousands of similar schools across Indonesia. Most teach a mixture of religious and secular subjects and are rarely inspected by state officials.
Fears that Indonesia is leaning toward Islamic extremism have been fanned by reports of pesantren where students are indoctrinated with hard-line anti-Western teachings. Some pesantren have been accused of having links to regional terrorists groups.
But Suryalaya is different. It specializes in the study of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam that stresses devotion to God and religious tolerance. Its 90-year-old leader is revered as a holy man who, according to tradition, can trace his teaching in a direct line back to Islam's prophet, Muhammad.
Suryalaya's 30 drug rehab centers are called Inabah, or "returning to the correct path.' They revolve around three Islamic principles: communal prayer, the chanting of God's name and ritual bathing.
Each of the complexes, of which one is reserved for females, is run by a husband and wife team. There are also branches in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.
The day starts at 2 a.m. with a cold shower.
The first prayer of the day is then performed in the mosque followed by Arabic chanting of the phrase "There is no god but God' - part of the Muslim profession of faith - at least 700 times.
The recovering addicts then drink a cup of coffee before saying the dawn prayer, followed by more chanting. Apart from meal breaks and a couple of hours of rest or sport in the midmorning and afternoon, this combination is continued until bedtime early in the evening.
Anang Syah, the religious teacher who leads the complex in Cibeureum, says faith alone is enough to break an addict's habit.
"We don't heal them, we don't even treat them. All we do is make them aware that they belong to God,' he said.
The clinic's founders say that about 40 percent of the addicts they treat go back to drugs when they leave, normally after about a year. No statistics are available to back up their contention.
Skeptics doubt the claim, and point out that conventional detoxification and counseling centers admit to relapse rates of about 85 percent.
The centers' wealthy clients, who have included the children of high-ranking politicians and police and army officers, subsidize those from poorer families. No one is turned away, Syah said.
Indonesia has approximately 4 million addicts.
Cheap heroin accounts for many of them, though the country has been awash with cheap ecstasy and amphetamines since the 1990s. Thousands of nightclubs function as little more than drug dens, allegedly with the backing of corrupt security forces.
Critics say the Islamic clinics' lack of AIDS and HIV policies - there is no routine testing or special counseling for those found out to be infected - is irresponsible. Up to 40 percent of injecting users in some parts of Indonesia are infected with the virus, health workers say.
Drug activists also say the clinics should introduce programs to support former addicts once they return to society.
"The idea of religious-based treatment is a good one ... but for them not to deal with [AIDS] is negligent,' said David Gordon, a Californian who runs two detoxification centers on the southern outskirts of Jakarta.
For the young addicts, getting clean is a lot easier than staying clean. But hope is in ample supply at the Inabah complexes.
Says 22-year-old Novi, two months into her stint at the female center: "There was before and there was after. I feel like I've been reborn.'






  


August 14, 2002 Wednesday Three Star Edition



 WAR DIGEST

 
WASHINGTON
ABA assails detention of immigrants since 9-11
The American Bar Association condemned the government's secret detention of immigrants arrested after Sept. 11, asking for information Tuesday on who is being held and why.The Justice Department has appealed a ruling that it must release the names of more than 1,000 people picked up since the jetliner attacks. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler has said there was no justification for a blanket secrecy policy.
The 408,000-member ABA said the department should do even more, disclosing the facilities where detainees are being held, giving them access to attorneys and family members and scheduling prompt and open hearings when possible. 
WASHINGTON
U.S. focus in Philippines will shift, general says
U.S. military aid to the Philippines in coming months will focus less on supporting direct anti-terrorism missions and more on training "so the Americans don't have to be there forever," the nation's defense secretary said Tuesday.
Gen. Angelo Reyes also said his government was holding "backroom negotiations" with Indonesia over the fate of several Indonesian members of an al-Qaida-linked Muslim separatist group jailed in the Philippines on terrorism charges.
Early this year, several hundred American troops arrived to help in the fight against the extremist group Abu Sayyaf. That organization - which both countries say has links to al-Qaida - had kidnapped Americans and Filipinos and fought with government forces in the predominantly Muslim southern Philippines.
PRINCETON, N.J.
FBI canvasses area near anthrax discovery
Federal agents canvassed on Tuesday the business district near where the latest anthrax spores were found, showing merchants a photograph of a man who may have been in the area last fall.
An FBI spokesman would not give details about the investigation but said it was related to Monday's announcement that a mailbox in the area had tested positive for anthrax exposure.
Several merchants said agents spent two days circulating the man's picture and asking employees if they recall seeing him in the area last September and October - the height of the nation's anthrax attacks-by-mail.
WASHINGTON
Bush blocks $5.1 billion for homeland security
President George W. Bush blocked $5.1 billion that Congress had approved for homeland security, including millions of dollars for the nation's firefighters, and scolded lawmakers on Tuesday for lumping in unrelated projects he didn't want.
"A limited and focused government is essential to a growing economy and if the Congress won't show spending restraint, I intend to enforce spending restraint," Bush said.
Democrats representing New York and the site of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center expressed strong disagreement with his action. Included in the $5.1 billion that Bush rejected was $90 million for long-term health monitoring of emergency workers at ground zero and $150 million for equipment and training grants to some of the nation's 18,000 fire departments with requests pending.
NEW YORK
Experts urge changes in high-rise building codes
Drawing on lessons from Sept. 11, experts said Tuesday that high-rise building codes should be revised to require wider emergency stairways and stricter protections against collapse and heavy fires.
"Your code is 30 or 40 years out of date," consultant Jake Pauls told a city panel. "I encourage you to put a lot of effort into changing that."
Pauls spoke at a daylong forum held by the city's World Trade Center Buildings Codes Task Force. The 11-member committee is reviewing building design, construction and operating requirements to decide if changes are needed.







  



August 14, 2002 Wednesday  




 The Answer to Hate-America TV

 
 Arab information ministers announced recently that they have begun a $ 22 million media campaign to denounce what they call Israel's racist policy toward Palestinians and to counter Western accusations of terrorism by Arabs. Arab League governments plan to launch a satellite television channel with English- and Hebrew-speaking services that they hope will change public opinion in America and the West about the Arab world. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher denounced the proposal because it explicitly precluded Israeli spokesmen from being interviewed. 
 The Arab initiative came partly in response to the imminent launch of the state-run Israel Broadcasting Authority's own Arab-language international television channel. The Israeli broadcasts will be available throughout the Middle East and Europe on the same French satellite that broadcasts al-Jazeera and other top Arabic networks.  
Ever since the Qatar-based independent satellite channel, al-Jazeera, burst into the West's living rooms, the U.S. government has been frantic to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. Satellite television appeared to be the ballistic missile of the information age, able to breach the geographic and ideological boundaries that distance the West from Islamic society. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently held hearings on the issue, and there is serious talk on the Hill of an expensive American Arab-language satellite television channel. 
This rush for a quick technological fix should be reconsidered before we end up wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on a project that is more likely to reinforce the negative image of America as a hegemonic, propagandistic, anti-Islamic power. Overseas broadcasting is the wrong answer to the wrong question. 
The problem isn't that people in the Muslim world aren't getting enough information about America. In fact, one of the most compelling arguments of Islamic fundamentalists is their complaint about the invasion of American culture and its effects on traditional values. A U.S. government-sponsored satellite television channel is likely to be seen as a crude attempt to propagandize Muslim audiences and expand American cultural imperialism. As long as U.S. foreign policy is seen as favoring Israel, threatening to invade Iraq and propping up repressive Arab governments, the impact of a satellite channel will be more negative than positive. Besides, U.S. commercial satellite news channels are already ubiquitous. The U.S. government is unlikely to improve on their programming. 
The real problem with the media within the Muslim world lies with their local news, which is obsessively anti-American. Countries that are counted among America's allies, including those, such as Egypt, that receive huge amounts of U.S. economic and military assistance, use their state-controlled media as a safety valve to divert popular discontent into anger against America. The State Department has been complicit in turning a blind eye to the racist and anti-Semitic propaganda that regularly flows over government-run media in these countries. 
There are three steps we can take that will be far more effective than any programming we might send over foreign satellite channels. One is to begin to insist that governments in countries with majority Muslim populations prohibit this kind of hate propaganda. U.S. foreign assistance should be made conditional on recipients' meeting a set of basic journalistic standards that we apply to our own society. 
Second, the U.S. Agency for International Development should significantly increase its support for moderate, independent media in the Middle East and Central Asia, just as it did so successfully in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and, more recently, Muslim Indonesia. Like people everywhere, most citizens in the Islamic world want free and open media, as is evidenced in Iran, where demands for a free press have become the rallying cry of the reform-minded majority. 
Third, we should begin a series of broadcast dialogues with the Arab states, which are as frustrated getting their message across to us as we are in getting ours to them. Here is where the technology of satellite television can be extraordinarily effective. In the waning years of the Soviet Union, so-called "citizen diplomats" began a series of interactive satellite television "space-bridges" between Russian and American audiences. The first of these to be broadcast live, the Seattle-Leningrad spacebridge moderated by Phil Donahue and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Posner, came on the eve of the 27th Party Congress in 1986 , at which Mikhail Gorbachev consolidated his power. The uncensored criticism and open dialogue with Americans on Soviet state television signaled the radical shift to the open-media policy known as glasnost. 
The Agency for International Development's substantial support for independent television broadcasters in the former Soviet Union helped spawn vibrant, pluralistic media, reshaping the Russian political landscape. More than 2,000 nongovernmental local television broadcasters operate in the former Soviet Union today. 
It is time to put aside fantasies of marketing American-made Arab-language news programs that will win over the hearts and minds of Islamic societies. Better to demand an end to state-sponsored hate propaganda from our Arab allies, give aid to independent moderate voices in the Muslim world and begin a dialogue in which both sides learn to listen as well as talk. 
The writer is president of Internews Network, a nonprofit organization that supports independent media worldwide. 






   


August 12, 2002 Monday



 
BC-News Advisory,0809 EDITORS:
Among other stories for Tuesday AMs from The Associated Press:
WASHINGTON:
ATTACKS-FAA-MILITARY:
HERNDON, Va. The Federal Aviation Administration is in closer contact with the military since Sept. 11 to ensure fighter jets can be scrambled more quickly in an emergency. BC-Attacks-FAA-Military.
CHILD SMUGGLING:
WASHINGTON The Immigration and Naturalization Service has broken up an international ring that smuggled hundreds of children into the United States from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, agency officials said Monday. BC-Child Smuggling. 
ABA-JUDGES:
WASHINGTON The American Bar Association is looking for ways to make judicial elections less expensive and more civil. BC-ABA-Judges.
TEXAS EXECUTION-MEXICO:
WASHINGTON Mexican government officials say they are prepared to file a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court should Texas refuse to spare the life of a condemned Mexican citizen, Javier Suarez Medina, 33, who was convicted in 1989 of killing an undercover Dallas narcotics agent. He is scheduled to die Wednesday. BC-Texas Execution-Mexico.
NATIONAL:
SLAVE REPARATIONS:
UNDATED Gaining momentum this year, the slavery reparations movement is now working its way into radio and print advertising, and supporters are preparing for a rally in the nation's capital a city activists note was built with slaves hauling sandstone blocks and sawing lumber. BC-Slave Reparations.
MINE SAFETY:
PHILADELPHIA Two weeks before nine miners were rescued from a flooded Pennsylvania mine, nine miners were carried out of a mine in China after more than a week underground a rare save in a particularly deadly profession. BC-Mine Safety.
NASA'S NEW CRACKS:
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Just as NASA was fixing fuel-line cracks inside space shuttle Atlantis, more fractures popped up, this time in the massive crawlers used to haul the spaceships to the launch pad. BC-Space Shuttle.
CENSUS-INCOME:
NARRAGANSETT, R.I. Census data shows that the gap between the rich and poor has grown in Rhode Island over the last decade, led by tourist hotspots like Newport and Narragansett. BC-Census-Rhode Island, HFR. Eds: Hold for release at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. AP Graphic CENSUS RI INCOME.
BREAST CANCER:
NEW YORK Three months after announcing it would no longer sponsor popular but controversial three-day breast cancer walks, Avon Products says it will launch a series of shorter walkathons next year. Avon is among several clients abandoning Pallotta TeamWorks, a for-profit fund-raising firm. BC-Breast Cancer Walks.
INTERNATIONAL:
COLOMBIA:
BOGOTA, Colombia Only five days after taking office amid a rebel mortar attack, President Alvaro Uribe authorizes the government to take special measures to crush the insurgents. Starting immediately, taxes will be raised to pay for a wider war, more police and army troops will be recruited, and some civil liberties may be restricted. BC-Colombia.
KOREAS-TALKS:
SEOUL, South Korea Resuming high-level talks after a nine-month hiatus, South and North Korean negotiators discuss sports exchanges, the reopening of a cross-border railway and more reunions of family members who were separated by the 1950-53 Korean War. BC-Koreas-Talks.
ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS:
JERUSALEM Palestinian factions endorse continuing the uprising and reject language to end attacks on civilians inside Israel. The declaration comes in a meeting in Gaza to try to create a "national unity leadership' to include all major groups including militant ones such as Hamas. BC-Israel-Palestinians.
ISRAEL-POLITICS:
JERUSALEM Israel's despondent peace camp sees a potential new savior Amram Mitzna, a dovish ex-general and popular mayor who this weekend announced his candidacy to lead the Labor Party into the next elections and is flying high in the polls. BC-Israel-Politics.
PAKISTAN-POLITICS:
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Opposition parties accuse President Gen. Pervez Musharraf of trying to rig parliamentary elections set for October. BC-Pakistan-Politics.
RUSSIA-KURSK:
MOSCOW Weeping relatives gather in churches and cemeteries across Russia while officials in Moscow unveil a bronze monument to the crew of the Kursk nuclear submarine two years after an explosion sank the vessel and killed all 118 men aboard. BC-Russia-Kursk.
INDONESIA-ISLAMIC MILITANTS:
JAKARTA, Indonesia Despite a $50 million U.S. aid package and a push by Washington to renew military ties to the world's largest Muslim nation, a new report suggests Indonesia's military created the network now said to be Southeast Asia's most serious terrorist threat. BC-Indonesia-Islamic Militants.
AP-WS-08-12-02 1406EDT




9


   
 

August 12, 2002 Monday  
  



 Jakarta Rejects Muslim Law And Alters Presidential Voting 

 
Indonesia's highest legislative body, after rebuffing calls to impose Islamic law here in the world's largest Muslim country, closed its annual session today with constitutional changes aimed at enhancing the democratic nature of the state.
     The rejection of a proposal to introduce Islamic Shariah law came even before it was put to a vote by the 700-member People's Consultative Assembly. The party of Vice President Hamzah Haz, the United Development Party, one of the main proponents of Shariah law, and two of its coalition partners withdrew the Shariah amendment when it became clear that it would lose.  
 Indonesia has a history, dating to the turbulent politics of independence in the mid-1940's, of resisting Shariah as the law of the land. In 1945, the architects of the Constitution specifically dropped a push for an Islamic state, and insisted that the new nation be secular. 
There was little doubt that the effort by high-volume but relatively weak Islamic parties would fail again this time. The country's two main Muslim organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, both preach a tolerant form of Islam and oppose the establishment of a theocracy.
But in the context of heightened anxiety in Southeast Asia about the country becoming a center of Islamic militants, the latest rejection of Islamic law sent a reassuring signal.
After their defeat, the proponents of an Islamic state vowed to keep up their campaign. "This time, we're in front of a great wall that can't be penetrated but we won't surrender," said Najih Ahjad, a member of the Crescent Star Party. "We vow before God and the Muslim society that we'll keep on fighting." 
The most fundamental changes decided at the assembly's two-week session were the abolition of parliamentary seats reserved for the military and provisions for the direct election of the president. 
The absence of the armed forces from the Parliament would at least symbolize a reduced role for the institution that ran the authoritarian state from the mid-1960's until the fall of Gen. Suharto in 1998.
Under constitutional amendments approved by the consultative assembly, the military and the police would have until 2004 to give up the 38 seats they now hold.
There appeared to be little opposition from military leaders to the move. The military still retains huge influence in the country, and its senior members remain heavily involved in businesses, including logging, hotels and general trading. President Megawati Sukarnoputri pays more attention to and enjoys more support from the military than did her predecessor, the Muslim cleric Wahid Abdurrahman. 
The session also approved constitutional amendments calling for direct presidential elections. Up to now, the president and vice president have been chosen by the consultative assembly, which consists of 500 legislators from the national Parliament and 200 nonelected representatives. The next presidential elections are to be held in 2004. 
Parliament must enact supporting legislation of the assembly's decisions on changing the Constitution.
Indonesia held its first free general election in four decades in 1999, a year after President Suharto was ousted from office. The consultative assembly chose Mr. Wahid as president even though Mrs. Megawati's party was a big winner in the election. The party fell short of an absolute majority, however. 
In July 2001, the assembly removed the erratic Mr. Wahid from the presidency and elevated Mrs. Megawati, his vice president and the popular daughter of the nation's founding leader, Sukarno.      







   
 

August 11, 2002 Sunday  
  



 Indonesian Preacher Is Behind Radical Network, Report Says 

 
A militant preacher, who returned to Indonesia after years in exile, became the fulcrum for an even more radical network that wanted to establish a pan-Islamic state of several countries across Southeast Asia, according to a new report.
     The preacher, Akbar Bashir, increased his contacts with Al Qaeda and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood while he was in Malaysia and had a hand in recruiting men for training in Afghanistan, the account says. Mr. Bashir, an Indonesian of Yemeni descent, remains the head of a boarding school here although the United States has asked Indonesia to arrest him.  
 The International Crisis Group, a private research group based in Brussels, released the report by its director here, an American, Sidney Jones. An expert on Indonesian Islam, Ms. Jones was until recently the Asia director of Human Rights Watch. Her report covers 30 years of activities by Islamic radicals. 
The network of Islamic teachers, businessmen and militiamen was born of a rebellion by Islamic militants against the rule of President Suharto, who came to power in the 1960's, the report found. The group coalesced in the 1970's and was given fresh impetus when Mr. Bashir, imprisoned by President Suharto, was released and then fled to Malaysia in the 1980's. He returned after the fall of President Suharto in 1998. 
Because Indonesia remains a secular state, which the Bush administration is trying to exhibit as a model moderate Muslim country, the new information has attracted attention, Western diplomats said. 
"Indonesia is the big prize for the militants in the Middle East," said an experienced diplomat here. "We know the militants here want to ultimately establish a pan-Islamic state of Indonesia, Malaysia and the southern part of the Philippines."
Other than Mr. Bashir, the central players in Ms. Jones's report are a confidant, Hambali, alias Riduan Isamuddin, who is thought to be Al Qaeda's main Indonesian contact; another colleague, Abu Jibril, who has been described as a financial conduit for Al Qaeda in the region; and Abdul Wahid Kadunnga, who looked after Mr. Bashir when he went into exile.
Of these four, the whereabouts of Mr. Kadunnga and Mr. Hambali remain a mystery. Mr. Jibril was arrested in Malaysia in January on charges of being part of a plot to blow up the American Embassy in Singapore.
Washington has urged Indonesia to arrest Mr. Bashir, but the government says it cannot find anything that he has done to violate Indonesian law. 
Mr. Bashir attracted like-minded militant teachers and students to the school he founded in the 1970's in central Java. He established Jemaah Islamiyah, the precursor to a group of the same name that, according to Singapore's government, he recalibrated in Malaysia. 
Thirteen members of that organization were arrested in January on charges of plotting to blow up the American Embassy in Singapore. 
While Ms. Jones presents many details on the Islamic network, much of it garnered from Islamic publications and sources, as well as Indonesian court records, she counsels care in dealing with Indonesia. 
For now, she writes: "Indonesia is not a terrorist hotbed. Proponents of radical Islam remain a small minority." The challenge, she concluded, is for Indonesia and its allies to "be alert to the possibility of individuals making common cause with international criminals" without undermining the country's fragile democracy. 







  



August 11, 2002 Sunday  




 The Mideast Threat That's Hard to Define

 
There are people inside the American defense establishment -- the most powerful, technologically sophisticated military in the history of mankind -- who believe that the greatest threat they face today may come from followers of an early 18th century religious extremist who called for a renewal of Islamic spirit, moral cleansing and the stripping away of all innovations to Islam since the seventh century. Those disciples are known as Wahabis.  
Their namesake would have vanished into obscurity but for an act of political savvy that assured his followers influence over what has become one of the world's wealthiest, most pivotal regions. In 1745, the religious leader Mohammad Ibn Abdul Wahab forged an alliance with Mohammad Ibn Saud, the principal tribal leader of a large portion of the Arabian peninsula. Ibn Abdul Wahab wanted to propagate his brand of Islamic orthodoxy. Ibn Saud wanted to unite tribes and secure political command, becoming the founder of the Al Saud dynasty that still rules what is now known as Saudi Arabia.  
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, perpetrated by people who mostly came from Saudi Arabia, "Wahabism" has entered the vocabulary of American policy makers almost as synonymous with death, destruction and terror. Moreover, Wahabi teachings and influence in Riyadh have colored our image of Saudi Arabia, threatening to move it from the category of a friend helping to stabilize oil prices and the region to one of a foe alien to our values and bent on hurting us.  
Less obvious, however, is that the Sept. 11 attacks also have strained ties between the "Wahabis" and Arab governments. The alliance between the House of Saud -- wealthy, cosmopolitan, and increasingly Western in tastes and habits -- and the proponents of an austere form of Islam based on a literal interpretation of the Koran is becoming harder to sustain. An increasing number of newspaper commentators, regional leaders and Saudi officials are daring to speak up against the backwards "Wahabi" vision of society. And Persian Gulf governments are taking a tougher line against extremists once thought to be useful, or at least relatively harmless. Instead of representing growing Wahabi power, the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath in Afghanistan may signal the peak of Wahabi influence, and a turning point in Arab attitudes toward such extremists.  
These nuances are important for the United States as it wages its war against terror and tries to decide, to paraphrase the president, who is with us and who is against us. The Bush administration must better distinguish between Islam and the real enemy -- radical extremists within Islam. Otherwise we risk a collision with 1.2 billion Muslims around the word who do not appreciate being demonized -- as Saudi officials felt they were the other day by a report leaked to this newspaper -- just because they disagree with our policies in the Middle East or our plans to invade Iraq.  
It is true that the links between Saudi rulers and Wahabi followers have been real and durable. The pact of mutual convenience made more than 250 years ago continues. The Saudi minister of religion is always a member of the Al Sheikh family, descendents of Ibn Abdul Wahab. Moreover links between Ibn Abdul Wahab and the house of Saud have been sealed with multiple marriages. The Wahabis' sway over mosques has ebbed and flowed, but they possess their own notorious religious police and have extended their reach via networks of schools throughout the Muslim world.  
It is difficult to pinpoint the boundaries of Wahabism. It is not a religion or an offshoot of Islam. Its followers are not a tribe or ethnic group, and they prefer to identify themselves as muwahiddun, which means "the unifiers." As Abdallah Al Obeid, the former dean of the Islamic University of Medina and member of the Saudi Consultative Council, explains, Wahabism is a political trend within Islam that has been adopted for power-sharing purposes. "It has no special practices, nor special rites, and no special interpretation of religion that differ from the main body of Sunni Islam," he says.  
It is, however, extremely austere and rigid. It tolerates little dialogue and less interpretation. It frowns on idolatry, tombstones or the veneration of statues and artworks. Wahabis forbid smoking, shaving of beards, abusive language, rosaries and many rights for women. They expect their followers to pray five time a day and they regard all those who don't practice their form of Islam, including other Muslims, as heathens and enemies.  
Their prominence is a relatively recent phenomenon. During the 1950s, Cairo, infused with Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalism, was the intellectual center of the Arab world. But the massive Israeli victory over Arab armies in the 1967 Six Day War dealt a blow to Nasser's prestige. Islamic religious leaders stepped into that ideological vacuum. 
When the big oil money of the 1970s started flooding the Persian Gulf region, the balance in religious matters shifted away from the progressive Levantine version of Islam that existed in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Algeria, to the Wahabis' rigid tendencies. As millions of Egyptian, Moroccan, Pakistani and other guest workers poured into Saudi Arabia, they returned home with both money and a new religion. Egypt started to tip over. Anwar Sadat, who had struck his own alliance with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood to fight the remnants of Nasserism, was killed by it. Later there were at least five attempts by Islamic extremists against the life of his successor, Hosni Mubarak.  
The war against the Soviets in Afghanistan gave radical Islam a chance to deploy its military prowess. Wahabis in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt profited, fattening their ranks with new recruits and coffers with new contributions. At that time, the American government considered the Saudis' links with these groups useful. With the encouragement of the Carter and Reagan administrations, the Saudis funded the jihad against the Soviets jointly with the CIA, while Egypt gave the mujaheddin arms from its arsenal and Pakistan provided land and training grounds.  
Ironically, the money that brought Wahabis power throughout the Arab world and financed networks of fundamentalist schools from Sudan to northern Pakistan, has also widened the gap between Wahabis and Arab societies. Increasingly, the Wahabi outlook is detested by the Saudi ruling elite, the growing middle class and the vast powerful business community in Saudi Arabia. Earlier this month at a conference on Islam in Amman, Jordan's Crown Prince Hamzeh urged educational reforms to "prepare our students . . . to integrate into the modern world" and "set them free from their isolated mentality." 
The attack on the United States by al Qaeda may spell the beginning of the end of this brand of radical Islamic extremism, as people in the region deal with the harm Wahabi disciple Osama bin Laden has done to the reputation and welfare of Muslims around the world. The entire Saudi religious establishment is under pressure from both the royal family and the Saudi public. For the first time, artists, politicians and pundits are openly criticizing the clergy in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia and throughout the world of Islam. The historic alliance between the Sauds and Wahabis may be coming apart -- unless we in the United States intervene with unreasonable demands for instant reforms couched in barely disguised racial slurs. Instant anything in Saudi Arabia or the conservative world of Islam is impossible.  
The simple-speak propagated by the Bush White House, has mixed mainstream Islam with Wahabism into a confusing mish-mash. The two are different. True, Arab governments coddled the fundamentalists. But so did we. The United States gave a green card to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in recognition for his service in rounding volunteers in Egypt to fight the Soviets. He ended up with a life sentence for conspiring to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel and the World Trade Center.  
I would argue that just as the 1967 war spelled the end of Nasserism, the Sept. 11 attack will mark the beginning of the end of radical extremist Islam in all its varieties. The money from Islamic charities is drying up. After Sept. 11, the "swamps" that provided recruits are drying up, too, so much so that two Islamic groups in Egypt, Jihad and al Gamaa al-Islamiya, have formally announced they are abandoning the armed struggle. In Saudi Arabia, half the population of 18 million sees Wahabism as oppressive. The same goes for people in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait.  
That does not automatically translate into loving the United States. The bin Laden attacks have given us an opening, though. Millions of Muslims who belong to the secular middle and business classes and the ruling elites also detest Muslim fundamentalists. But they equally detest our Middle East policy. It is time to bond with them on fighting fundamentalism without demanding that they subscribe to every one of our policies. Our friends there, the secularists, need to be offered a way to bond with us instead of being presented with simplistic choices of black and white. 
 </body>Youssef M. Ibrahim is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 







   
 

August 9, 2002 Friday  
  



 Visiting Indonesia, U.S. Envoy Seeks to End Rebel Conflict 

 
Anthony C. Zinni, the retired American general who has worked as the Bush administration's envoy to the Middle East, met in a new role here today with Indonesian officials discussing a solution to the long-running but little publicized guerrilla conflict in the nation's northern province, Aceh.
     The general, who has drunk vodka in Turkmenistan, gone on fishing expeditions in the Arab world and shared meals with Somali warlords -- all in the name of resolving conflict -- had never been to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. He came here in a private capacity, as an unpaid adviser to a Swiss organization, the Henri Dunant Center, which the State Department urged him to join. The group specializes in trying to resolve civil conflicts through negotiation.  
 General Zinni emerged from a meeting with the coordinating minister for security affairs, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to offer an upbeat assessment of the chances for a settlement between separatist guerrillas and the government.
"I think all sides are convinced that the way to peace is through dialogue," he said, "and I'm convinced we have a momentum now."
Diplomats here saw progress in the presence of such a high-profile mediator -- a man commonly viewed as a gifted, if sometimes gruff, persuader. 
Yet the Indonesians are traditionally leery of the perception of outsiders interfering in what they consider their internal affairs. So at the government's insistence, General Zinni's first meeting with Mr. Yudhonyono and the army chief, Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, took place secretly in Singapore last weekend rather than in Indonesia.
Since then, the general's meetings with the guerrillas in Aceh itself were greeted in the press and the national legislature without the usual hostility to foreign negotiators, and the Indonesian government let down its guard.
The war in Aceh has gone on since 1976, when an insurgency led by fighters of the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, demanded independence for the province. The war has little to do with Islam, although the Acehnese are mostly fervent Muslims. Rather it is rooted in the province's anger at not receiving a fair share of its energy and mineral resources from the central government in Jakarta, which is regarded as corrupt. 
Last year, some 2,000 civilians were killed in a war that consists chiefly of arbitrary shootings, kidnappings, torture and disappearances. In the last six months, the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri has dispatched more troops -- which has increased the violence, according to Western officials. 
General Zinni's visit has come at a possible turning point. In a speech to Parliament last week, President Megawati reiterated her determination to crush the rebels. Her ministers have threatened to impose a state of emergency on the province. They are expected to decide whether to send more troops in the coming days.
Diplomats say the general has told the government as well as the guerrillas in Aceh that after more than 25 years of hostilities, a military solution will not work. 
It was the second time in less than a week that the government got this message. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made the same point during a visit last Friday. An official quoted him as saying that as a "military man," he knew the war in Aceh was "not winnable" by force.
Secretary Powell's message was intended partly to persuade Indonesia that a military crackdown in Aceh would jeopardize its chances of increased military assistance, a question that legislators are now considering. To emphasize the Bush administration's interest in stronger military ties with Indonesia, Secretary Powell announced a program for Indonesian officers to attend training courses in the United States.
As for General Zinni, those familiar with his prescription to the Indonesian government on Aceh said he stressed the importance of implementing a peace plan agreed to in May at a negotiating session in Switzerland.
He also told the Indonesians that they should start a "hearts and minds" campaign involving some of the 21,000 Indonesian soldiers in the province, officials said.
He suggested that it would be relatively easy to direct many of the troops now posted on the province's main road -- where they extort money before letting civilians pass. Only about 3,000 of the government's soldiers are involved in actual combat operations, according to Western estimates. 







  



August 9, 2002 Friday  




 WORLD; 
In Brief

 
ASIA AND THE PACIFIC 
 SEOUL -- One day after the opposition took control of parliament in a by-election landslide, President Kim Dae Jung named the head of South Korea's largest business newspaper as prime minister, Kim's secretary said today.  
 The appointment of Chang Dae Whan, president of the Maeil Business Newspaper, followed parliament's rejection last week of Kim's previous nominee, who would have been the country's first female premier.  
 The nomination comes after the main opposition party gained a majority in the National Assembly, a rebuke for Kim's corruption-tinged government during his final months in office. 
 Candidates from the Grand National Party won 11 of the 13 contested parliamentary seats in Seoul and provincial districts, according to final results from the national election committee.  
 News Services 
 BALI, Indonesia -- Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday there are no problems related to terrorism that his country and Indonesia cannot handle. 
 Mahathir spoke after meetings with President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, which has come under fire from officials in some countries in the region and from the United States for not being firm enough with militant Islamic groups accused of having links to international terrorism. 
 "Indonesia is doing very well. I didn't see terrorism when I came here," Mahathir told reporters on this resort island after meeting with Megawati for an hour. "In any country there are places where activities damaging to the country take place. We must not generalize that Indonesia and Malaysia have any problems with terrorism. There is no problem we cannot handle." 
 His words are likely to please Indonesian officials after accusations earlier this year that Indonesia was failing to pursue terrorists vigorously. 
 Indonesia has argued it is doing its best within the limits of its laws and in view of the sensitivities of its Muslim population. 
Reuters 
 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The Pakistani government announced that the brother of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif cannot return to the country to take over the leadership of a major opposition party contesting the October parliamentary election. 
 The government also said former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was free to return to Pakistan but would face arrest on corruption charges if she does. 
 The moves are likely to be seen by critics as further signs that President Pervez Musharraf intends to block any serious challenges to his authority in the elections, which are to restore civilian government after two years of military rule. 
 Shahbaz Sharif, who is in Saudi Arabia, replaced his brother this month as leader of the Pakistan Muslim League to head the party's campaign in elections Oct. 12. 
Associated Press 
 CANBERRA, Australia -- Australia's highest court ruled that Aborigines do not have rights to oil or minerals found under tribal land now being used by mining companies. 
 The ruling was part of a complex decision by the High Court in Canberra on a 1994 claim by the Miriuwung-Gajerrong tribe for a special property right known as native title over 3,050 square miles of land and water. 
 The area in northwestern Australia includes the Argyle diamond mine, the world's largest. 
 Although the ruling covers only a part of Australia, the case is expected to set precedents for dozens of land rights claims by Aborigines throughout the country. 
Associated PressTHE AMERICAS 
 MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- Nicaragua's president, Enrique Bolan os, accused his predecessor, Arnoldo Aleman, of money laundering, fraud and other crimes during his 1997-2002 presidency. 
 Bolan os, who served as vice president during part of Aleman's tenure, addressed the nation Wednesday night after the attorney general charged Aleman and 13 members of his family and former administration with diverting nearly $ 100 million in public funds for personal use. 
 "I am sad, pained and disappointed to see the irrefutable and convincing proofs that point to the ex-president as author and accomplice of such crimes involving the few pennies sweated out by the people," Bolan os said. 
 Aleman, of the ruling Liberal Party, became president of the National Assembly after his presidential term ended in January, but is immune from prosecution. Bolan os has promised to support efforts to have Aleman's immunity revoked. 
 Reuters 







   
 

August 8, 2002 Thursday  
  



 U.S. Backs Oil Giant On Lawsuit In Indonesia 

 
The State Department is urging a United States court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a human rights group against Exxon Mobil over its operations in a war-torn province of Indonesia. In response to a request by the corporation for an opinion, the department declared that pursuit of the case would harm Washington's campaign against terrorism.
     Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, is a focus of the Bush administration's effort to fight terrorists, and any action by the United States that could interrupt the country's revenues would be perceived by the Indonesian government as interference in its internal affairs, the department said. 
 And in a twist, the letter by the department's legal adviser, William H. Taft IV, cited business competition from China in Indonesia as another factor in the case.  
The International Labor Rights Fund, a nonprofit group based in Washington, represents 11 Indonesian villagers who accuse Exxon Mobil of doing nothing to halt the Indonesian military's killing, torture and rape of residents near the company's plant in Aceh Province.
The army is charged under Indonesian law with protecting national security assets, including natural gas fields like the one in Aceh, where it is fighting separatists.
Exxon Mobil, the world's biggest energy company, sought the opinion, arguing that the suit would set back efforts to fight terrorism. 
Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer of the U.S. District Court in Washington agreed to request a nonbinding opinion. The judge's decision on whether to proceed to trial is pending.
The State Department, which had the option of rendering a neutral opinion, sent its reply to the court last week. Copies of Mr. Taft's letter to the judge were released today by the United States Embassy here.
Mr. Taft's letter suggested that Chinese oil companies, which have made significant purchases in Indonesia in the past six months, might try to replace the American energy giant if it were forced to leave. The Bush administration has shown growing concern about China's increasing economic and political interests in Southeast Asia.
The lawsuit is one of a series in which human rights groups have sued multinational companies in American courts in an attempt to hold the corporations more accountable for the repercussions of foreign investment on local populations.
Human rights groups denounced the State Department opinion. "Corporate responsibility shouldn't stop at the water's edge," Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said. He said the Bush administration "shouldn't be trying to stop this court case."
At the same time, Mr. Roth said that Human Rights Watch "takes no position" on claims regarding Exxon Mobil's operations in Indonesia.
At a news conference today at the American Embassy here, Ambassador Ralph Boyce said that the State Department's opinion "expressly reaffirms our human rights concerns in Indonesia."
The letter, which was a matter of contention within the department between those who favored a strong stance protecting human rights in Indonesia and those who wanted a strong commitment to efforts against terrorism, roused considerable interest because of its timing.
The State Department opinion was delivered in the same week as the visit here by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. He told Indonesians last Friday that the United States was prepared to renew military ties, though on a measured basis.
The letter to the judge mentioned the poor human rights record of the Indonesian Army.
"We would like to reiterate that a lasting, peaceful solution to the Aceh conflict that maintains Indonesian sovereignty can only be achieved if the military and police end human rights abuses," Mr. Taft wrote.
In presenting the department's argument that the case should not proceed, Mr. Taft said Indonesia "serves as a focal point U.S. initiatives in the ongoing war against Al Qaeda and other dangerous terrorist organizations." Those efforts, he said, could be "imperiled in numerous ways if Indonesia and its officials curtailed cooperation in response to perceived disrespect for its sovereign interests."
Moreover, because the investment climate was deteriorating in Indonesia, the suit against Exxon Mobil would further scare Western investors, the State Department said. It suggested that Chinese companies were waiting in the wings, saying, "We would expect that foreign companies, such as from the People's Republic of China" would be "far less concerned about human rights abuses, or about upholding best business practices." 






   


August 7, 2002, Wednesday



 THEY WAR ON CHILDREN, AND CALL IT HOLY

 
Radical Islam revealed its murderous nature again this week when four gunmen attacked a Christian school in Murree, Pakistan.
They slaughtered five school employees and a bystander - but failed to reach their main target: the school's children, who took refuge behind stout doors. 
That's right: Children!
The Monday attack echoed the Punjab massacre last October, when 15 Pakistani Christians were butchered inside a church.
And it was immediately followed by an assault that killed nine Hindu pilgrims in Indian Kashmir.
October's massacre was met with silence from Islamic leaders, in America and around the world.
So, too, the latest slaughters.
What do the perfidious princes of Saudi Arabia (who fund extremist Wahabi missions everywhere that Muslims can be found) have to say?
As usual, the silence is deafening.
The plain fact is that fundamentalist Muslim intolerance of other faiths is the deadliest, most destabilizing force in the world today.
Quite apart from the horrors of al Qaeda's attacks on America, it manifests itself in a bloodsoaked pattern of persecution and terror in countries as far apart as Indonesia - where the Laskar Jihad movement has massacred some 5,000 Christians over the last three years - and Sudan, where the (mostly Arab) Muslims of the North enslave women and children from the (mostly black) Christian and animist South.
And though it isn't something you hear about much, Filipino Catholics, Coptic Christians in Egypt, members of the Bahai faith in Iran and even Trappist monks in Algeria have all felt the edge of the Islamic fundamentalist sword.
In Pakistan on Monday, the fanatics who wanted to slaughter more than a hundred Christian schoolchildren escaped to kill another day.
Children!
And the silence maintains.







   
 

August 3, 2002 Saturday  
  



 U.S. to Resume Aid to Train Indonesia's Military Forces 

 
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced on Friday that the Bush administration would resume direct military training aid to Indonesia for the first time in a decade, in a move aimed at bolstering the efforts against terrorism in the world's most populous Muslim nation. 
     Secretary Powell held a daylong series of meetings in Jakarta with President Megawati Sukarnoputri before flying here for consultations with Philippine officials. 
 He said that $4 million would be provided initially to Indonesia and that in all, the administration expected to spend about $50 million over the next two years for counterterrorism programs. Virtually all of it is already appropriated, with most for civilian and police training. 
Still, the announcement was the clearest sign yet of the administration's resolve to restore military cooperation, which was sharply curtailed in the early 1990's and cut off altogether three years ago out of Congressional concern over human rights abuses by Indonesian troops. 
Other Southeast Asian nations have complained that Indonesia has not been aggressive enough in rooting out militant groups and have urged the United States to resume aid, though Secretary Powell acknowledged that the move would prompt criticism.
"We are starting down a path to a more normal relationship with respect to military-to-military," Secretary Powell said at a news conference, adding that American training would help Indonesian forces learn respect for human rights and civilian control of the military. "We not there yet, but we're starting."
Here in the Philippines, 1,000 American troops have just completed a six-month training effort aimed at helping the country's military in its fight against the Abu Sayyaf guerrilla group, an Islamic group that turned to kidnappings for ransom. Secretary Powell was to discuss the next round of expected military training with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. 
Before he arrived, knots of protesters, fearful that the United States wants to re-establish a military presence here, scuffled with police near the United States Embassy, leaving at least a dozen people injured.
Secretary Powell said this morning that he would make "no attempt to roll the clock back" to the days before the United States withdrew its bases from the Philippines. He said the next round of military operations here would be smaller than the one just concluded but added, "We will continue to assist them in training, perhaps at company level," though not in active patrols.
Human rights groups promptly criticized the announcement about Indonesia. "Before giving aid, the U.S. should calculate the impact," said Henardi, director of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association. "No matter how small it is for the military, they could use it to justify past repression."
The initial $4 million is for "counterterrorism fellowships" part of a $17 million fund for such programs in the current Pentagon budget that is just now being allocated worldwide. The administration skirted the Congressional ban that bars contributions to the Indonesian military from the State Department's foreign operations budget by taking the money from a Pentagon account instead.
There is growing support on Capitol Hill for broader aid. Last month the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $400,000 for Indonesian military training for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, lifting a previous provision that had limited such funds to civilian training. Congress is expected to approve that as part of the appropriations process this fall, while keeping in place a ban on arms sales. Indonesian officials have complained that the curbs on American military assistance have hurt their ability to combat terrorism in a nation of 17,000 islands.
State Department officials emphasized that the bulk of the $50 million, about $47 million, would go to train Indonesia's fledgling national police force. The officials said that more direct aid to the Indonesian military would require action by the Indonesian government to hold accountable the officers responsible for violence in East Timor and elsewhere.
The United Nations has estimated that more than 1,000 people died at the hands of pro-Jakarta militias, backed by the Indonesian military, around the 1999 independence vote in East Timor.
The Indonesian Army remains the most powerful national institution as the country weathers the turbulent transition to democracy that began in 1998, and its officers also finance their operations through ownership of businesses, from commercial real estate to a domestic airline.
After a meeting with senior Indonesian military and security officials, Secretary Powell said he had raised some specific cases, though he declined to give details.
Another senior official said, "We made it clear that results on that path were what was going to matter in terms of how far we would be able to move."
But Secretary Powell said that after a somewhat shaky start in the wake of Sept. 11, the administration was "very satisfied and pleased with what Indonesia has been doing," to fight militant groups, though he added, "We think more can be done."
President Megawati's government has moved cautiously against these groups for fear of alienating the country's overwhelmingly Muslim population before elections in 2004. Malaysia and Singapore have accused Indonesia of allowing Abu Bakar Basyir, the leader of a group with links to Al Qaeda, to roam free. The government maintains there is no evidence that he has committed any crime.







  



August 3, 2002 Saturday  




 Powell Says U.S. to Resume Training Indonesia's Forces; 
Terrorism Fears Overtake Concerns About Army Abuses

 
 Three years after the United States severed all ties with Indonesia's tainted armed forces, the Bush administration will resume U.S. military training there as part of a broad program of counterterrorism assistance totaling at least $ 50 million over the next two years, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Friday in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. 
 In the latest example of shifting U.S. foreign policy priorities since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the administration is renewing the military training despite scant evidence that the Indonesian army has substantively investigated and punished the human rights abuses that led to the cutoff. 
 Powell said the United States would be watching to make sure promised military reforms move forward. But, he said, the time is right to "start down a road toward greater military-to-military cooperation and more work with [Indonesia's] police forces."  
 The bulk of the aid will go to counterterrorism training for the Indonesian police. But $ 4 million, from a newly created Defense Department fund unrestricted by a congressional ban on more traditional training programs, will go to the military. The Senate Appropriations Committee last week voted to lift the training restrictions in next year's budget, although laws barring sales of military equipment to Indonesia are expected to remain. 
 The administration has made clear in recent months its belief that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, risks becoming the next haven for international terrorism. This prospect, U.S. officials say, imposes more urgent priorities than the need for the country's fledgling democracy to prove it has taken control of the powerful armed forces. 
 "Indonesia has that threat [from terrorists], the United States has that threat and we all need to work jointly against these kinds of organizations and these sorts of individuals," Powell said after meeting with officials in Jakarta. 
 Powell flew Friday night from Jakarta to Manila, the last stop on an eight-day, eight-nation Asian tour designed to bolster counterterrorism cooperation. He was scheduled to depart for Washington this afternoon. 
 The level of threat by terrorists in the region, and the zeal with which it is being combated, vary widely by country. Singapore and Malaysia received kudos from Powell for their arrests of dozens of individuals with alleged ties to both al Qaeda and radical groups in the region thought to be part of its international network. 
 The Philippines, which also has made arrests, leads the U.S. list of cooperative nations, and Powell's stop here was largely a pat on the back for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's government. On Wednesday, about 1,000 U.S. troops completed a six-month exercise that included counterterrorism training and assistance to Filipino forces pursuing Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in the country's southern jungles. 
 "The United States is not interested in returning to the Philippines with bases or a permanent presence," Powell said this morning, as a small number of demonstrators protested any U.S. troop presence here. "There is no attempt to roll the clock back." 
 Small military exercises in the Philippines are planned, but nothing is contemplated on the level of the recent deployment. The relationship, Powell said, had been restored to a normal military-to-military footing. 
 The Bush administration sees the biggest threat -- and the biggest challenge -- in the growth of radical Islamic groups in Indonesia, where they are powerful political forces. While the administration has communicated its concerns largely in private, Indonesia's neighbors -- who have arrested a number of Indonesians for alleged terrorist ties -- have questioned Jakarta's inaction. 
 Powell chose his words carefully Friday in a news conference with Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, saying, "We admire Indonesia so much as a Muslim nation, which at the same time has great diversity within that nation, and allows that diversity to flower in a way that benefits the whole society." 
 Wirajuda said: "The fact is that Indonesia is not Afghanistan and we do not believe that Indonesia will become the future Afghanistan. . . . Indonesian Muslims are very moderate ones." 
 The Jakarta government sees a larger threat in the communal violence that has plagued Indonesia's sprawling archipelago for decades. A variety of separatist and independence movements were brutally repressed by the armed forces under the authoritarian Suharto regime, leading the U.S. Congress in 1992 to impose a ban on all military training -- provided through the International Military Education and Training program funded and administered by the State Department. Suharto was toppled in 1998. 
 What remained of the military relationship, including equipment sales, was ended in 1999, when militias backed by the Indonesian military killed hundreds of people in East Timor after the territory held a referendum and voted for independence. Congress demanded that all those responsible for the East Timor violence be brought to account before the ties could be reinstated. 
 Powell said Friday that the new U.S. security program would aid Indonesia's counterterrorism effort and that increased contact with the U.S. military would help its armed forces comply with human rights norms. 






 The Evening Sun  
The Evening Sun (Hanover, PA)

August 2, 2002 Friday



 Indonesia is weak link in terror war

 
© BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei [AP] The senior U.S. official winced when he was reminded that Indonesian authorities recently released Jafar Umar Thalib, a Muslim militant leader who has acknowledged meeting Osama bin Laden.
Jafar was told to report at a later date to face charges of inciting religious violence.
The official shook his head, suggesting perhaps the release did nothing to enhance the safety of the Indonesian people. 
Among other activities, Jafar allegedly delivered a speech to thousands of his followers on March 26 calling for war. He also has called for them to reject a February peace deal meant to end fighting between Muslims and Christians in an outlying province.
In Southeast Asia, Indonesia appears to be the most reluctant warrior in the war on terrorism.
It is the world's largest Muslim country and, with some 17,000 islands, there is no shortage of places for militants to hide. To some, its willingness to confront practitioners of violent Islam seems tame next to countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines.
Secretary of State Colin Powell visited the countries earlier this week and was to conclude his tour with visits to Indonesia and the Philippines.
The administration's policy is to give Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri as much encouragement as possible and to find ways around a 1999 law that bars most U.S. military ties with the Indonesian military.
The administration's plan is to provide counterterror training to Indonesian police and civilians while pressuring the Congress to eliminate the 1999 law.
In Singapore on Tuesday, Powell said the Indonesians "have been cooperating more fully with us as time goes by. I'm quite sure that Mrs. Megawati is committed to this cause."
But the task is huge.  reported recently that Indonesia is home to religious schools that, like similar schools in Pakistan, churn out large numbers of radicalized Indonesian Muslims.
The Times found a 16-year old, Muhammad Fadhil, who attended one of these schools, known as pesantrens. He said his main source of information was a current affairs magazine called Sabili. In that publication, he said, it was asserted that 4,000 Jews who worked in the World Trade Center took a holiday on Sept. 11.
The Bush administration has been inviting teachers from these schools to pay two-week visits to the United States in hopes of changing their perceptions about the American way of life.
But what to do over the short term? Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said Tuesday that the United States must move quickly to restore normal military ties with Indonesia.
He said the Indonesian police force is too weak to take on terrorists. Without a strong army, Goh said, the task cannot be completed. Powell agreed.
But many in East Timor have memories of the savage treatment they suffered in 1999 at the hands of the Indonesian military. And it was these abuses that prompted Congress to cut most military ties.
The law halting such aid requires that Indonesia cooperate with investigations and prosecutions of members of the armed forces responsible for the abuses.
But Powell, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believes the stakes in the war on terrorism are too high to allow the suspension of military ties to continue.
George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.




10


  



August 2, 2002 Friday  




 Powell Says U.S. Can Balance Human Rights, War on Terror

 
 Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that terrorists can be attacked only from "the highest moral plane" and that there is no contradiction between the Bush administration's war on terrorism and a continuing U.S. commitment to human rights. 
 "The United States feels strongly about these sorts of issues and believes that if we are really going to prevail -- over this plague on the face of mankind -- then we have to do it in a way that respects human dignity," Powell said at a news conference at the end of a two-day security summit of Asian and Pacific Rim nations. 
 Concerned that Southeast Asia's Muslim-majority nations provide fertile ground for the growth of terrorist organizations, the administration has been eager to establish closer security and intelligence ties, particularly with Malaysia and Indonesia. Yet the United States also has criticized both countries for repressing political dissent and abusing human rights.  
 Powell signed agreements here with the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on increased cooperation and intelligence-sharing with Washington and among ASEAN members, as well as stepped-up diligence against terrorist financial networks. 
 "The goal is to squeeze out the groups that are here and to make sure this area doesn't become a haven for terrorism," said a senior State Department official. 
 Indonesia, where Powell was to arrive tonight on the penultimate stop of an eight-nation Asian tour, is seen as key to that effort. Although it is thought to be the headquarters of various militant groups including the Jemaah Islamiah organization, which has been linked to al Qaeda and is accused of plotting to blow up several Western embassies in Singapore, Indonesia has failed to arrest militant leaders, saying it has no evidence against them. 
 Malaysia and Singapore, which have arrested dozens of alleged Jemaah Islamiah members, including some Indonesians, have urged the United States to resume military assistance to Indonesia to help bolster its anti-terrorist actions. The United States restricted aid in the early 1990s because of human rights abuses, and Congress cut it off altogether in 1999, after the Indonesian military's violent campaign in East Timor. 
 Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, and President Megawati Sukarnoputri faces political constraints in moving against militant Islamic groups. Elections are scheduled for 2004. 
 The Bush administration is eager to restore military ties and stiffen Megawati's spine. Powell said today he expects "to discuss military-to-military cooperation" during a full day of meetings here Friday. 
 Although the U.S. budget for this fiscal year contains $ 400,000 for military training for Indonesia, the funding is restricted to providing instruction for civilians. The emergency counterterrorism fund approved by Congress last month included $ 16 million for Indonesian police training. 
 Late last month, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to lift restrictions on another $ 400,000 in training funds in next year's budget. 
 Congressional sources said the Pentagon intends to make available for Indonesia about $ 4 million out of an unrestricted $ 17 million earmarked for foreign military counterterrorism training in this year's budget. 
 On the issue of human rights, Powell noted that "I always touch on the subject" and that he expected to do so in Indonesia. Powell has said he believes military abuses in such countries as Indonesia can be reduced through increased contact with U.S. forces. 
 Although today's news conference was attended by ASEAN foreign ministers as well as those of a number of Pacific Rim countries who also attended the meeting, nearly all the questions were directed to Powell. 
 Asked whether his brief meeting here Thursday with North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun was inconsistent with President Bush's designation of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," Powell said the session was "quite consistent with U.S. foreign policy." 
 Pyongyang was included on the "axis" list, along with Iran and Iraq, he said, because of North Korea's "involvement in developing weapons of mass destruction and proliferating missiles and other systems that could carry weapons of mass destruction." Bush was also concerned, Powell said, about North Korea's 700,000-member conventional force, much of it massed on the border with South Korea. 
 The January designation, Powell said, did not supersede Bush's call in June 2001 for a new dialogue with North Korea. Recent positive statements from Pyongyang, he said, suggested that a meeting with Paek "would be appropriate for me." Powell said he would consult with Bush and national security officials on the next step with Pyongyang. 
 Although Paek announced after the meeting that Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly was planning a trip to Pyongyang in the near future, a State Department official said that no decision had been made. 
 Powell has been asked repeatedly by reporters in the region whether increased security cooperation indicated the United States planned to station troops in Southeast Asia. 
 He said that the agreement signed today with ASEAN was not a basis "for any increased military presence in the region or any stationing decisions that might be made." 







   
 

July 31, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 Powell Treading a Thin Line In Rallying Antiterror Support 

 
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell arrived here tonight for meetings with fellow foreign ministers aimed at solidifying a second front, in Southeast Asia, in the campaign against global terrorism. But he has had to balance that goal with longstanding concerns about human rights abuses in the region.
     In meetings today in Malaysia and Singapore before touching down in this oil-producing sultanate for two days of talks with members of the Association of South East Asian Nations, Secretary Powell said, he repeatedly raised the issue. "We still believe strongly in human rights, and that everything we do has to be consistent with universal standards of human rights," he said.  
 But at a news conference in Singapore, Secretary Powell hinted that the Bush administration was ready to discuss resuming military cooperation with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and a sometimes reluctant partner in the efforts to crack down on militant Islamic groups. The United States cut virtually all military links with Indonesia in 1999 after its forces were implicated in the violence that swept East Timor after that territory voted for independence.
On Thursday, Secretary Powell and representatives of the 10 nations of the Asian group, including Indonesia, are expected to sign a declaration promising cooperation to prevent terrorism by sharing information, blocking funds, tightening borders and making it hard to use forged travel papers.
"We recognized that terrorism is a global threat and that the disturbing acts of terrorism and transnational crimes, which continue to threaten world peace and stability, must be tackled by the international community," the 10 ministers said in a communique today.
Secretary Powell is among the representatives from 13 nations outside Southeast Asia, including China, Japan and Russia, that are taking part in the annual meeting of the group's regional forum. Terrorism dominates the agenda.
Secretary Powell heads to Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, late Thursday before finishing a weeklong trip through the region in the Philippines on Saturday. He said that when he arrives in Jakarta, he will have "some ideas and some initiatives" to present to President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Indonesia is already receiving $400,000 in the current fiscal year for civilian training programs and is to receive a like amount next year, and the United States expects to provide an additional $16 million this year to train police officers in counterterrorism. At the same time, the Pentagon is reviewing how to allocate another $17 million in "counterterrorism fellowships," some of which could go to Indonesia. 
But a senior State Department official also acknowledged that some in the administration and Congress are pushing for more direct military cooperation, which would require Congressional approval.
"I think they recognize the danger that we all face and I think they have been cooperating more fully with us as time goes by, and I'm quite sure that Mrs. Megawati is committed to this cause," Secretary Powell said in Singapore. He met there with Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, who endorsed the idea of renewed military ties between the United States and Indonesia as an important step in stabilizing that country.
Secretary Powell contended that it was not inconsistent to want to foster cooperation even with an organization like the Indonesian military, which has a history of human rights abuses. "If you get young officers, expose them to a military organization that is within a democratic political institution, such as the United States, then that rubs off on them," he said.
In Malaysia, Secretary Powell met with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has led the country since 1981. The Malaysian foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, later told local reporters that Secretary Powell had proposed that American and Malaysian officials review the idea of forming a regional training center in Malaysia to coordinate antiterrorism activities.
His brief stop in Malaysia also highlighted the moral ambiguities of the effort to prevent terrorism and its emphasis on cooperation with governments that the United States has often criticized.
The United States once distanced itself from Prime Minister Mahathir for strong-arm tactics with political rivals, and human rights groups criticize him for arresting and jailing scores of suspected militants, including some who may be linked to Al Qaeda, without trial.
Secretary Powell said his discussions with Mr. Mahathir "touched on the case" of his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, who is serving a 15-year sentence on charges of sodomy and abuse of power after trials that Secretary Powell said the United States had "always felt" were flawed.
The assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, James Kelly, met this morning with Mr. Anwar's wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, for what she later told Malaysian reporters was a discussion about both the detention of her husband and six supporters, and the campaign against terrorism.







  



July 31, 2002 Wednesday 
  




 Powell and N. Korean Hold Informal Meeting

 
 Secretary of State Colin L. Powell held informal talks with his North Korean counterpart, Paek Nam Sun, here this morning, the Bush administration's first high-level contact with a representative of an "axis of evil" country. 
 Both men came to this regional summit saying they hoped to have what would be a ground-breaking meeting. It was unclear whether the 15-minute chat, held in the delegates' lounge outside the Asian regional security forum the two men are attending here, was substantive enough to constitute that bilateral talk. But there were some indications they might meet again.  
 State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that Powell had "noted the recent statement the North Koreans have made" on their willingness to reopen dialogue that had been frozen since the end of the Clinton administration.  
 Boucher said Powell "reaffirmed the president's policy and said that in any future discussions, we would want to emphasize a variety of matters including proliferation, mutual commitment made under the Agreed Framework and conventional forces." He said other meetings or future travel would be considered. 
 Although described as informal, the meeting today was the first cabinet-level encounter between the two nations since Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright visited North Korea in 2000. 
 Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the United States, Japan and South Korea agreed to construct two light-water nuclear power reactors in North Korea and improve relations with the isolated country in return for Pyongyang's agreement to end its nuclear weapons program and allow international verification. 
 Implementation of the agreement has been stalled because of disputes over which nation should carry out its commitments first. Continuation of construction is awaiting verification inspections of North Korea's dismantled weapons facilities and storage sites, which Pyongyang is delaying pending an improvement in relations. 
 After a four-month policy review early last year, President Bush said in June 2001 that he was ready to continue under the framework, expanded to include talks about North Korea's attempts to develop and export long-range missiles and about conventional forces poised along the demilitarized zone marking the North-South border. 
 Since then, there has been little progress and a number of false starts, followed by angry words between the two countries. The Bush administration extended an offer to talk last spring but withdrew it after a deadly naval clash between North and South Korean ships late last month along a maritime border the North considers illegal. Although Pyongyang blamed both Washington and Seoul for the incident, in which sailors on both sides were killed, it suddenly reversed course late last week, saying it welcomed new meetings with the United States. 
 Powell responded in kind, but as of last night, when the two officials arrived in this oil-rich sultanate, no meeting had been arranged. 
 At a breakfast early this morning with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, Paek told reporters he was "always ready to meet Powell. If they propose first, I will meet them." 
 At around 9:25, Powell sent word from the delegates' lounge that he would be happy to receive Paek, and the two sat down and chatted over coffee for 15 minutes. 
 While overshadowed by the bilateral drama between Washington and Pyongyang, the larger context of the gathering here is two days of regional security talks among 23 Southeast Asian and Pacific Rim leaders who are poised to endorse new agreements on anti-terrorism cooperation. The meeting is the first high-level regional gathering on the subject since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the launch of the global anti-terrorism war. 
 For Powell, the trip is also a hand-holding operation that has allowed him to congratulate friends and allies in Southeast Asia that have participated in the counterterrorism efforts. He arrived here last night after brief stops in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, where he assured each government that the United States valued its friendship, appreciated its efforts and stood ready to provide a range of assistance. 
 With the region's large Muslim population and militant groups with alleged al Qaeda connections, Southeast Asia is considered the second front of the U.S.-declared war on terrorism that began in Afghanistan. 
 The administration's determination to increase its regional presence has already changed the landscape of U.S. bilateral relations. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration has sought close cooperation with both Malaysia and Indonesia, countries long kept at arm's length because of human rights concerns. 
 Asked Tuesday afternoon at a news conference with Singapore's prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, whether an increased U.S. presence would mean a new era of stepped-up military intervention that could become destabilizing, Powell said U.S. troops would go only where invited. He cited the example of recent U.S. operations in the southern Philippines, where about 1,000 U.S. troops have helped train troops in the fight against Abu Sayyaf guerrillas. 
 "President Bush is determined to keep U.S. troops in this region as friends, not as foes, not as aggressors," Powell said, "seeking nothing but to help our friends feel secure in their own countries as part of . . . an alliance or just partners with the United States." 
 Meeting here since Monday, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has developed framework agreements for more intelligence-sharing and counterterrorism cooperation among themselves and with Washington.  
 Fears of U.S. military intervention, expressed most strongly by Indonesia and Vietnam, delayed ASEAN consensus until Tuesday on the agreement to be signed with Powell on Thursday, according to Asian diplomats. The consensus document ensures that increased cooperation does not mean a U.S. troop presence, and it guarantees non-interference in the countries' internal affairs. 
 Today, the Southeast Asian representatives will hold expanded discussions with foreign ministers from 13 other Pacific Rim nations, including Powell and his counterparts from Russia, Japan, China, and North and South Korea. 
 Outside that meeting, Powell is holding bilateral talks with a number of other ministers. He will lunch today with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who visited both Pyongyang and Seoul last weekend. The North Koreans, Ivanov said, were eager for a meeting with Powell in Brunei. Other outstanding issues between Russia and the United States include Russian assistance to Iran's nuclear power program, its disagreement with U.S. plans for a possible attack against Iraq and some aspects of U.S. Middle East policy. 
 Later today, Powell will meet with South Korean Foreign Minister Choi Sung Hong. Seoul announced Tuesday that officials from the North and South would hold meetings late this week to prepare for ministerial talks. North-South dialogue has stalled since a historic summit between South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, in June 2000. 
 Powell's arrival here marked the halfway point in a six-nation swing through Southeast Asia designed largely to reassure countries considered helpful in the anti-terror effort.  
 Three of them -- Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia -- have large Muslim majorities, and Muslims are a significant minority in Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. 

CORRECTION-DATE: August 6, 2002 

 CORRECTION:
A July 31 article misstated the conditions placed on construction of nuclear reactors in North Korea by a consortium of the United States, Japan and South Korea. Consortium countries have said inspections of North Korea's nuclear facilities must take place before sensitive technology is transferred to make the plants operational. Construction of the reactors is continuing.   







   
 

July 28, 2002 Sunday  
  



 Talks on Kashmir Urged by Powell 

 
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell arrived in India today at the start of a weeklong Asian trip to shore up support for the campaign against terrorism, with his first issue the flare-up over Kashmir that has threatened war between India and Pakistan, two nations critical to the campaign. 
     As Secretary Powell landed, for his third visit to India and Pakistan since October, Indian officials promptly raised complaints about what they say is continued cross-border infiltration from Pakistan into Kashmir. 
 Secretary Powell said he would press for talks between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region, but added that the timing would be up to them and that he did not expect a breakthrough on this visit. Instead, he told reporters traveling on his plane from Washington, "I'm going to be talking to both sides about what we can do to keep the momentum going." 
Six weeks ago, Secretary Powell's deputy, Richard L. Armitage, won a pledge from Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for a permanent halt to border crossings into Kashmir by militant groups. These incursions into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir have brought repeated violence and led to a military buildup along the border.
Indian officials, while acknowledging that border crossings are down, maintain that the problem has not stopped altogether and say that they will not open political discussions with Pakistan until the infiltration stops. They also say they will keep their large troop presence along the border through the end of October and scheduled local elections in Kashmir this fall.
"We do not think the necessary conditions exist" for talks, the Indian foreign minister, Yashwant Sinha, said as Secretary Powell arrived for a meeting this evening before conferring with other Indian officials and then heading to Pakistan to meet with General Musharraf on Sunday.
From South Asia, Secretary Powell will travel to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, and to an international conference of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Brunei next week, where he is expected to win a pledge for shared financial and immigration information in the campaign against terrorism.
"All of those nations have increasingly realized that terrorism is a danger to each and every one of us," Secretary Powell said. "It's not just an American agenda. It has to be an international agenda."
In Indonesia, which is the world's most populous Muslim country and has been a somewhat reluctant partner in the effort, Secretary Powell is expected to discuss renewing American assistance after a nearly decade-long suspension over concerns about human rights abuses.
In the Philippines, where 1,000 American troops have ended a six-month stint training local soldiers in counterterrorism tactics, Secretary Powell said he expected to discuss the next round of efforts.
"But the details of that and the sequencing and the timing of all that, I would leave to Don Rumsfeld and his colleagues to work out," Secretary Powell said, referring to the defense secretary.
Secretary Powell has spent scores of hours in telephone diplomacy trying to keep the two nuclear rivals from going to war at a time when the United States is more involved in the region than it has been in decades and badly wants the cooperation of both countries in the campaign against terrorism. He is the latest in a continuing parade of international officials who have come in rotation in an effort to hold down tensions.
Today in Islamabad, the European Union's foreign policy and security chief, Javier Solana, praised General Musharraf's efforts to curtail the infiltration to date but said he hoped Pakistan would do more. "We would like him to continue taking decisions in that direction with the same courage, with the same energy and with the same determination that he has shown," Mr. Solana said. "I am sure he is going to take that."
But in an interview with CNN that was broadcast here this evening, the Indian foreign minister, Mr. Sinha, expressed disappointment at the pace of progress.
"Although there has been some decline in infiltration, infiltration continues at very significant levels," he said. "What had been promised to us was the complete and permanent stop to infiltration. It's almost six weeks now. That's not in evidence at all."
Indian officials say that infiltration by militants from Kashmir has been creeping up since last month, and that infiltrators are now crossing in smaller groups and seem to be based closer to Pakistani troops for better cover and help in crossing.
Asked en route here about the likelihood of Indian complaints about continued infiltration, Secretary Powell smiled and said: "I think I'll wait to respond until after my ear has been filled. There is constant discussion and debate as to the extent of infiltration across the Line of Control. It's not the most, it's not the easiest thing to measure, and it's hard to measure with any precision.
"I have sources of information that I'll review with the Indians," he added. "Then I will discuss all of that, of course, and receive President Musharraf's judgment when I get to Islamabad."
Secretary Powell said he would encourage both sides to back free elections in Kashmir, "and to permit an international presence, people from outside to travel to Kashmir during that period, widely and openly, to help the Indians show the international community, show the world, that it is a free, open, fair election."
Speaking briefly to reporters before his meeting with Secretary Powell, Mr. Sinha said that outsiders would be welcome on an "individual basis" at the time of the elections. But in the CNN interview, he said: "The elections will be held on time. The elections will be free, fair and hopefully peaceful. There is no reason for anyone to question the democratic credentials of India."
Secretary Powell said a resumption of direct dialogue between India and Pakistan "is going to take some additional work." He added, "We're going to have to see some more additional changes on the ground, and I will just do everything I can to begin the talks to begin the talks." 
Secretary Powell said he would also raise with General Musharraf "the continued need to be vigilant with respect to Al Qaeda activities and Taliban activities drifting over the border into Pakistan."







   
 

July 27, 2002 Saturday  
  



 To Keep The Peace, Study Peace 

 
WHEN Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, decided to study ethnic violence, he ended up looking at something that most experts in the field don't: peaceful cities. 
     Mr. Varshney, who is from New Delhi, wanted to find out why some cities in India managed to avoid bloody Hindu-Muslim clashes while others erupted in horrifying violence. 
 "For far too long scholars and policy makers have focused on the state for conflict prevention. My main research finding is that we should instead focus on civil society," Mr. Varshney said. "An integrated society is the best bet for ethnic peace." 
With the increase in ethnic conflicts in recent years, the results of his nine-year project have generated enormous excitement. Scholars have hailed his book, "Ethnic Conflict & Civic Life: Hindus & Muslims in India" (Yale University Press), as a major breakthrough, while the United Nations has already adopted his method to study Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia. The Open Society Institute, part of the Soros Foundations Network, which promotes democratic principles and human rights issues, has distributed 170 copies of the book to staff members around the world. And it has been talking, along with other foundations, with Mr. Varshney about extending his research to other ethnic and religious flashpoints, from Eastern Europe to Nigeria.
"By carefully studying riot-prone and peaceful cities, this new model has a persuasive analysis and explanation of why violence occurs," said Samuel P. Huntington, chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. Most researchers tend to avoid studying regions where no violence exists, Mr. Huntington said, so they have no place to compare their findings to, and their conclusions are based on incomplete evidence. Mr. Varshney avoided this research flaw by leading a team of researchers from Harvard, where he taught for nine years, to explore why some Indian cities were violence-prone, while others with the exact same Hindu-Muslim ratios lived in peace.
What Mr. Varshney found was that ethnically integrated organizations -- including business associations, trade unions, professional groups, political parties, sports clubs -- stand out as the most effective ways of controlling conflict.
These mixed associations proved far more effective than routine but uncoordinated social interactions, like simply allowing children to play together in the neighborhood. While both kinds of activities were important for ethnic harmony, formal organizations become much more important in times of strife, Mr. Varshney said.
Mr. Varshney's team collected information on Hindu-Muslim rioting from 1950 to 1995 and identified eight riot-prone cities, where there had been repeated clashes. The team then picked three riot-prone cities -- Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Aligarh -- and compared them with peaceful cities with equal Hindu-Muslim population ratios: Surat, Lucknow and Calicut.
After analyzing the data, Mr. Varshney found a clear pattern: cities with developed social, political and economic integration were far less vulnerable to conflict.
Calicut's network of associations and peace committees, for example, helped defuse tension during the widespread rioting that broke out after Hindu militants destroyed the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in December 1992. While unfounded rumors that Hindus were desecrating mosques by throwing pigs into them were spurring violence in other cities, Calicut's organizations helped city officials quash the specious reports. 
The riots that whipped across the western Gujarat State in March and April of this year and claimed more than 1,000 lives seemed to provide further evidence for Mr. Varshney's conclusions. The three riot-prone cities he identified were the sources of some of the worst violence, while Surat, which is also in Gujarat, remained peaceful.
"It was with considerable scholarly satisfaction, but also with great emotional and political dismay that I observed the patterns of violence and peace during the recent Gujarat riots," Mr. Varshney said. "As copies of my book were coming into circulation, its predictions and analysis were coming true."
Whether it is India, Indonesia or Palestine, "this is an important breakthrough in understanding the problem of ethnic conflict globally," said Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor whose work on civic participation in American life, detailed in his book "Bowling Alone," has been cited by both President Bill Clinton and President Bush. "Varshney's findings show the crucial mechanism by which societies can manage diversity," he said. "This is not a handbook to pass out in Bosnia, and his book does not tell governments what to do, yet it frames the problem." 
United Nations officials began to talk to Mr. Varshney about his ideas last summer, before his book was published. "We thought his method could also apply to the dynamics of Indonesia," where strained Muslim-Christian relations often break out into violence, said Satish Mishra, head of the United Nations Support Facility for Indonesian Recovery. "Varshney's findings raise the possibilities of future peace."
In April the United Nations office in Jakarta hired Mr. Varshney to oversee the creation of a database that would track incidents of ethnic violence. Mr. Mishra said this would give Indonesian policymakers a map of violent locations, a sense of their duration, intensity and reported causes. This should lead to better ideas of how to combat these conflicts, he said. 
"If policymakers formulate their responses only on the basis of guesses and intuitions, they can go horribly wrong," Mr. Varshney said from his home in Ann Arbor. "A reliable database on violence is critical for policymaking."
Not everyone is sold on Mr. Varshney's theory, however. Some critics argue the problem is perhaps more complex then simply creating integrated associations. David Laitin, a professor of political science at Stanford University, said Mr. Varshney lacked the evidence to show that association members are doing what his theory says they do. Mr. Laitin argued that Mr. Varshney placed too much emphasis on trust among organization members. It may just be that in the cities where there is economic interdependence, both sides have an interest in refraining from riots. Levels of trust would then be unnecessary, Mr. Laitin said.
Mr. Varshney counters that trust is not central to his work. Pitting trust against self-interest is too narrow, he said. There is evidence, he says, of many motivations, which cannot be reduced to mere trust or self-interest.
Aryeh Neier, the president of the Open Society Institute who distributed Mr. Varshney's book to his overseas staff, said: "I am not certain that the same pattern will prevail. However, his model intuitively makes enough sense that it is worth thinking of implementing elsewhere."
That is precisely what Mr. Varshney would like to do and says he plans to seek $750,000 in funds from the Soros Foundations, the Ford Foundation and others in order to test his model in Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia and possibly Eastern Europe within the next three years.
Mr. Varshney is already working with Rajmohan Gandhi, a leading activist of Indian civic engagement and the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, to reduce violence in his birthplace. Their project, primarily financed at this time by the Foundation for Human and Economic Development, a nonprofit organization based in Orlando, Fla., will try to create Hindu-Muslim ties in the eight riot-prone cities that Mr. Varshney identified, by forming a range of nongovernmental organizations and business partnerships.
"Intuitively, his model makes sense -- it is fresh, it is different and it is promising," Mr. Gandhi said in a telephone interview from his home in New Delhi. "Varshney's research shows that work of integration and partnership does help to safeguard against violence. Once people read his book and comprehend the model, it will trigger a lot of constructive thought and action."






  
  

  

July 27, 2002 Saturday 



 Powell flies far for antiterror coalition;
In India, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere, the secretary of state may come up against conflicting goals.

 
Keeping the global coalition against terrorism from going wobbly requires delicate diplomacy, tough choices, and lots and lots of hours in the air.
That's the reality behind Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's latest journey, which began yesterday and will take him from nuclear powers India and Pakistan to Southeast Asia, where counterterrorism experts fear al-Qaeda increasingly is gaining a foothold.
As Powell pushes for ever greater cooperation in fighting terrorism, he will face some vexing questions.
How hard to push Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally, to return to democratic rule? 
To meet, or not to meet, his counterpart from North Korea - part of President Bush's "axis of evil" - on the sidelines of a regional forum in Brunei?
How much does the United States want to do business with Indonesia's military, which Washington needs to fight al-Qaeda but which has been accused in the past of gross human-rights abuses?
Powell's trip to India and Pakistan is his third since Sept. 11 and is aimed at tamping down renewed tensions over the disputed Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.
Visits last month by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage succeeded in averting a march toward war. The two countries deployed one million troops on their border after India accused Islamabad of complicity in an attack by Kashmiri militants on its national parliament that killed 14 people in December.
But tensions have been growing again. Indian officials say infiltration from Pakistan into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir has picked up again. Musharraf insists he has kept his promise to halt the infiltration.
"I will see if there are any other actions that can be taken that will reduce the level of violence or the potential for violence, and I'm sure we will have discussions on the possibility of a dialogue at some point in the future between the two sides that will deal with the question of Kashmir," Powell said Thursday.
Aside from the prospect of war, U.S. officials worry that the frictions could undercut President Bush's war on terrorism by forcing Pakistan to divert its attention from joint efforts to hunt down al-Qaeda members believed to be hiding in Pakistan.
Terrorism will be at the top of the agenda when Powell, after brief stops in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, attends a meeting of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, in Brunei next week.
There are widespread concerns that many members of al-Qaeda who evaded the U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan have dispersed to countries around the world, including Indonesia and Malaysia.
ASEAN officials are working to complete an agreement to boost counterterrorism collaboration between their organization and the United States.
Before his final stop in the Philippines, Powell goes to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
The Bush administration is pressing Congress to reinstate military ties with Jakarta, which were cut in 1999 over human-rights abuses.
"We are reviewing all those programs now, and I may have something to say when I'm in Indonesia," Powell told a group of journalists from Southeast Asia on Thursday.
The nations of Southeast Asia have more to worry about than terrorism, including ethnic conflicts, free trade, and the fast-growing economic influence of Goliaths China and India.
Powell's presence will be reassuring, said Gerrit Gong, an Asia expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's important to these countries to feel that the United States values those relationships," he said.
Finally, Powell must decide whether to talk to his counterpart from North Korea.
The administration shelved plans to send an envoy to Pyongyang after North Korea initiated a deadly clash with South Korea. But North Korea apologized for the incident Thursday and yesterday said it was ready to receive a U.S. diplomat.
On a possible meeting in Brunei, Powell told the journalists: "I have an open mind and nothing has been decided one way or the other."
Contact Warren Strobel at 202-383-6033 or wstrobel@krwashington.com. Contact Jonathan Landay at 202-383-6012 or jlanday@krwashington.com.






  
  


July 27, 2002 Saturday 



 Powell set to make hard choices in Asia;
TRIP TO TEST SECRETARY'S DIPLOMACY ON KASHMIR CONFLICT, N. KOREA

 
Keeping the global coalition against terrorism from going wobbly requires delicate diplomacy, tough choices and lots and lots of hours in the air.
That's the reality behind Secretary of State Colin Powell's latest round-the-world journey, which began Friday and will take him from nuclear powers India and Pakistan to Southeast Asia, where counterterrorism experts fear Al-Qaida increasingly is gaining a foothold.
As Powell pushes for ever greater cooperation in fighting terrorism, he will face some vexing dilemmas.
How hard to push Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally, to return to democratic rule? 
To meet, or not to meet, with his counterpart from North Korea on the sidelines of a regional forum in Brunei?
How much to engage Indonesia's military, which Washington needs to fight Al-Qaida but which has been accused in the past of gross human rights abuses?
Powell's trip to India and Pakistan is his third since Sept. 11 and is aimed at tamping down renewed tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals over the disputed Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.
Visits last month by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage succeeded in averting a march toward war. The two countries deployed one million troops on their border after India accused Islamabad of complicity in an attack by Kashmiri militants on its national parliament that killed 14 people last December.
But tensions have been growing again in recent weeks. Indian officials say infiltration from Pakistan into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir has picked up again after a decline. Musharraf insists he has kept his promise to halt the infiltration.
"I will see if there are any other actions that can be taken that will reduce the level of violence or the potential for violence, and I'm sure we will have discussions on the possibility of a dialogue at some point in the future between the two sides that will deal with the question of Kashmir," Powell said Thursday.
Aside from the prospect of war, U.S. officials worry that the frictions could undercut President Bush's war on terrorism by forcing Pakistan to divert its attention from joint efforts to hunt down Al-Qaida members believed to be hiding in Pakistan.
Terrorism will be at the top of the agenda when Powell, after brief stops in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, attends a meeting of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, in Brunei next week.
There are widespread concerns that many members of Al-Qaida who evaded the U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan have dispersed to countries around the world, including Indonesia and Malaysia.
ASEAN officials are working to complete an agreement to boost counterterrorism collaboration between their organization and the United States.
Before his final stop in the Philippines, Powell will go to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
The Bush administration is pressing Congress to reinstate military ties with Jakarta, which were cut in 1999 over human rights abuses.
"We are reviewing all those programs now, and I may have something to say when I'm in Indonesia," Powell told a group of journalists from Southeast Asia on Thursday.
The nations of Southeast Asia have more to worry about than terrorism, including ethnic conflicts, free trade and the fast-growing economic influence of Goliaths China and India.
Powell's presence will be reassuring, said Gerrit Gong, an Asia expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's important to these countries to feel that the United States values those relationships," he said.
Finally, Powell must decide whether to talk to his counterpart from North Korea, which is on the State Department's terrorism list.
The Bush administration shelved plans to send an envoy to Pyongyang after North Korea initiated a deadly clash with South Korea. But North Korea apologized for the incident Thursday and on Friday said it was ready to receive a U.S. diplomat.
On a possible meeting in Brunei, Powell told the journalists, "I have an open mind and nothing has been decided one way or the other."
Contact Warren P. Strobel at wstrobel@krwashington.com, and Jonathan S. Landay at jlanday@krwashington.com.






   


July 26, 2002 Friday



 
AM-NYT-BUDGET
FOR SATURDAY AMs
Here are today's top news stories from  News Service for AMs of Saturday, July 27.
For the latest photos and graphics from , go to ">www.nytimages.com.
INTERNATIONAL["i' code]
MIDEAST [Jerusalem] Ledeall; At least four Jewish settlers were shot to death in the West Bank on Friday, Israel radio reported. Also, Israeli soldiers pushed into Gaza City on Friday, blowing up buildings where they said Palestinians had been making rockets. Palestinian security officials said four Palestinians were wounded in Israel's first raid in the area since an airstrike there on Tuesday killed a top militant and 14 others. In the West Bank, a Palestinian is killed during an Israeli Army search. Developing. By Joel Greenberg. 
RUSSIA-IRAN [Moscow] Russia says it will build three more nuclear reactors for Iran, all of which will be used for energy, not weapons. By Steven Lee Myers.
AMAZON-RADAR [Dateline TK] A new $1.5 billion radar system installed for the Brazilian military began operating Friday in the Amazon. It will allow the Brazilian authorities for the first time to extend their reach into a vast region they have only nominally controlled and to track everything from the illegal burning of forests to drug trafficking. By Larry Rohter.
MILOSEVIC-WARCRIMES [The Hague, Netherlands] Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic cross-examined his former secret police chief on Friday. By Marlise Simons.
This story, from the Saturday Arts and Ideas Page, is also listed on the Entertainment budget:
ETHNIC-CONFLICT [Undated] When Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, decided to study ethnic violence, he ended up looking at something that most experts in the field overlook: peaceful cities. Varshney, who is from New Delhi, wanted to find out why some cities in India managed to avoid bloody Hindu-Muslim clashes while others erupted in horrifying violence. The results of his nine-year project have generated enormous excitement, and scholars have hailed the work, "Ethnic Conflict & Civic Life: Hindus & Muslims in India,' as a major breakthrough. The United Nations has already adopted his method to study Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia. By Mahvish Khan.
With an "i' code.
WORLD-BRIEFS [Undated] World news in brief.
WASHINGTON["w' code]
TERROR-CONGRESS [Washington] The House will vote Friday to create a Department of Homeland Security, the biggest reorganization of the federal government in six decades. Before the final vote, Republican majorities rejected a series of amendments proposed by Democrats to protect civil service benefits and on other issues. By David Firestone.
NATIONAL GENERAL["a' code]
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NYT-07-26-02 1428EDT






  
 

July 26, 2002, Friday



 WORLD

 
 Air China starts direct N.Y. flight China's flagship airline will commence its first direct flights from Beijing to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport. The thrice-weekly service, using Boeing 747-400s, begins Sept. 27. At present, United Airlines has the only direct service.  INDONESIA: A Muslim militant leader who admitted having met Osama bin Laden was released from custody to await trial on charges of inciting violence.  SOUTH KOREA: After weeks of tension, North Korea expressed regret for a June 29 naval clash with South Korea and proposed a resumption of their dialogue.  UNITED NATIONS: The U.S. failed to block a U.N. vote on a plan to enforce a treaty on torture.






   


July 26, 2002, Friday, 



 Powell to urge steps to defuse Kashmir crisis

 
WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin Powell begins an Asian tour today designed in part to bring India and Pakistan further from the brink of a nuclear exchange over Kashmir.
U.S. officials say Powell will urge Pakistan to start dismantling terrorist camps in the area of Kashmir that it controls. He also is expected to promise U.S. help to restart talks this fall between Pakistan and India. Both nations claim sovereignty over the Himalayan region.
 
Powell, who will visit India and Pakistan this weekend as he begins a weeklong trip to eight countries, hopes to "continue the momentum in a positive direction," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher says.
Intense diplomacy by the United States and Britain reduced tensions between the countries after several terrorist attacks in India by Muslim militants. The militants want either Kashmir's union with Pakistan or independence from predominantly Hindu India. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the disputed region.
Commercial air links have been restored, and India scaled back naval deployments. But a million soldiers remain along the border, and terrorist violence has been on the rise. The recent lull in threats of war may have more to do with the weather than a real reduction in tensions, analysts say.
"This is monsoon season," says Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. "The next fighting season will be in September."
The short-term U.S. goal is to keep things quiet until two sets of October elections. Indian Kashmir is to choose local leaders for the first time since 1996. Pakistan is to elect a parliament for the first time since President Pervez Musharraf staged a coup in 1999.
U.S. officials remain deeply concerned about a possible war. Musharraf pledged in June to stop allowing militants to cross into Indian-controlled Kashmir. But there was an attack July 8 that killed 28 Kashmiris and a bomb blast this week that injured eight. Indians say Musharraf must also keep promises to close training camps in the Pakistani-ruled section of the province.
"With these casualties, how can one believe what the Americans have been saying that cross-border terrorism has declined?" asked Omar Abdullah, an Indian Foreign Ministry official and president of the National Conference, a Kashmiri political party.
Pakistan, in turn, demands an Indian commitment to talks on a political solution to the crisis, which dates to the division of the former British colony of India in 1947.
South Asia experts praise the Bush administration for its management of the crisis but argue that a long-term solution to the Kashmir question must be found. Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign policy association, says the United States must "go beyond crisis management. Until there is a process for talks on Kashmir, the situation will remain tense."
***
Contributing: Elliot Blair Smith in Islamabad and Mannika Chopra in New Delhi, India




11


  



July 26, 2002 Friday  




 WORLD; 
In Brief

 
ASIA 
 MANILA -- The Philippines and the United States could use each other's military bases, buy supplies and exchange services under a proposed 10-year military accord but could not transfer major munitions. 
 A draft of the bilateral Mutual Logistics Support Agreement says its purpose is to make it easier for the two countries' military forces to work together. 
 It says the accord can be implemented "in times of peace or during combined [military] exercises, international tensions and national emergencies." 
 The accord would prohibit transfer of guided missiles, naval mines and torpedoes, guidance kits for bombs and other ammunition, chemical and nuclear ammunition, and other nuclear materials.  
 The accord is expected to be signed this year. Some Philippine nationalist politicians and militant groups have questioned its constitutionality and potential to extend the U.S. war on terrorism around Asia. 
Associated Press 
 JAKARTA, Indonesia -- An Islamic militant leader who has acknowledged meeting Osama bin Laden was released from custody yesterday to await trial on charges of inciting religious violence, police said. 
 Jafar Umar Thalib, head of the paramilitary group Laskar Jihad, was jailed May 4 shortly after returning from the Moluccas, the islands where up to 9,000 people have been killed in Christian-Muslim fighting. 
 Police accuse Thalib of inciting violence in the province by encouraging his followers to ignore a February peace deal with Christians in the Moluccas. Two days after that March speech, unidentified masked men stormed a Christian village in Ambon, capital of the Moluccas, killing 13 people. 
 While in custody, Thalib was visited by Vice President Hamzah Haz and other top officials, showing the degree of support his group has in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. 
 Prosecutor Budi Santoso said Thalib was released because he promised to abide by the law. 
Associated PressEUROPE 
 GIBRALTAR -- Gibraltar's elected chief minister, Peter Caruana, defied the British government and said the British colony on Spain's southern coast would hold its own referendum on sovereignty. 
 London and Madrid have said they would not recognize such a vote, which would imperil advanced bilateral talks aimed at sharing sovereignty and ending their 300-year-old dispute over the tiny but strategically located territory. 
 Caruana called the referendum in response to British Foreign Minister Jack Straw's address to Parliament in London on July 12 in which he said the two sides had reached broad agreement that would include sharing sovereignty. 
 At the time, Caruana branded Straw's comments "a gratuitous betrayal of our political rights and legitimate aspirations as a people." 
Reuters 
 MOSCOW -- A former Russian security agent offered evidence meant to support his claim that a KGB successor organization, not Muslim militants, engineered a series of deadly bombings that thrust Russia into a new war in Chechnya in 1999. 
 In a video link with Britain, where he fled two years ago, Alexander Litvinenko said he received the evidence in a statement from Achimez Gochiyayev, who Russia claims was paid $ 500,000 by a rebel warlord to organize two apartment-building bombings in Moscow. 
 "The material that Gochiyayev gave us is extremely important for establishing the truth," Litvinenko said. 
 The purported evidence includes Gochiyayev's statement that he rented space in the two buildings at the request of a childhood friend he now suspects was a Russian security agent. The friend allegedly told Gochiyayev he needed storage space for goods he was selling. 
 Gochiyayev's whereabouts are unknown, but he is not believed to be in Russia. 
 Litvinenko said he received the statement through intermediaries somewhere in Europe. He presented it in a television hookup with a meeting of an unofficial Russian commission investigating the bombings, which killed about 300 people. 
 A spokesman for the Federal Security Service, the KGB successor organization, declined to comment on Litvinenko's accusations. 
Associated PressFOR THE RECORD 
 The European Court of Human Rights ruled that France had illegally denied Maurice Papon his right to appeal a 1998 conviction for helping deport 1,700 Jews to Nazi camps during World War II. The ruling could give the former Vichy official, who is 91 and ill, a chance for a new trial. . . .  Ukraine's Supreme Court said it ordered a new investigation into the murder of investigative reporter Ihor Oleksandrov a year after he became the 11th journalist to be killed in five years. 
Compiled by Virginia Hamill 







   
 

July 22, 2002 Monday  
  



 Indonesia and Terrorism 

 
To the Editor:
"Indonesia's Unreformed Military" (editorial, July 17) rightly calls for Congress to reject the administration's plan to resume cooperation with the Indonesian military and make it a "partner" in the war on terrorism. 
     The Indonesian military currently collaborates closely with an Islamic fundamentalist organization, the Laskar Jihad, whose armed fighters have significantly exacerbated Christian-Muslim fighting in the Malukus and are now provoking Christian-Muslim tensions in the province of Papua.  
 The Indonesian military's support for this and other militias in Papua, Aceh and Malukus is strongly reminiscent of its creation of and support for militias in East Timor, which, along with Indonesian forces, laid waste to East Timor after East Timorese voted to separate from Indonesia in 1999.
The Indonesian military's continuing record of cooperation with domestic terror groups renders it untrustworthy.

EDMUND MCWILLIAMS
Falls Church, Va., July 17, 2002

The writer, a retired senior Foreign Service officer, was political counselor at the American Embassy in Jakarta, 1996-99.







   
 

July 17, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 Indonesia's Unreformed Military 

 
American military cooperation with Jakarta, suspended during the Suharto dictatorship over the Indonesian Army's human rights abuses, should not be resumed without strict conditions and careful controls. Unfortunately, the Bush administration is in a hurry to restore ties with the Indonesian military and seems willing to overlook misconduct in the name of strengthening the war against terrorism. The Senate Appropriations Committee, which is planning to consider the administration's request tomorrow, should block it, as urged by Senator Patrick Leahy and other critics.  
     Despite the coming of electoral democracy, the Indonesian military remains a law unto itself. Its past crimes remain almost entirely uninvestigated and unpunished. Its current practices in places like Aceh and the Maluku Islands are as brutal as ever. And its extensive business interests make it a major obstacle to needed economic reforms. Nor is it a very promising partner against terror. 
 Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is an important battleground in the struggle against terrorism. Traditionally, the variety of Islam practiced there has been moderate and tolerant. In recent years violent extremist groups have emerged, some with foreign connections. For now, these radicals have only a limited following. 
The best defense against further radicalization is to encourage the transition to civilian democracy that began with the overthrow of the Suharto regime in 1998. Civic groups such as human rights organizations, local development associations and independent trade unions have played a vital role in building democratic institutions. 
The United States needs to strengthen these groups and nudge the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri away from its current dependence on the armed forces. The administration argues that the proposed training program will also help by teaching young Indonesian officers the importance of democracy and human rights. In the context of real military reform, it might. Resuming military cooperation under present conditions would instead signal that Washington no longer cares much about the human rights performance of Indonesia's armed forces. 







   
 

July 14, 2002 Sunday  
  



 Indonesia's Guerrilla War Puts Exxon Under Siege 

 
The silvery pipes that extract hundreds of millions of dollars in natural gas a year for Exxon Mobil glint in the tropical sun here, a glittering contrast to the ramshackle huts and rice fields of the villagers nearby.
     The disparity might spell trouble enough in an era of increasing sensitivity about the gap between the wealth of Western corporations and the foreign workers who labor for them. 
 But adding to the tension, this gas field, protected at its barbed-wire perimeter and well beyond by Indonesian soldiers, sits in the middle of a brutal conflict against separatist rebels here in Indonesia's northern province of Aceh (pronounced ah-CHAY). That leaves the company, the largest long-term foreign investor in Indonesia and one of the world's most profitable businesses, under siege.
Exxon Mobil is also the object of a lawsuit filed on behalf of villagers who accuse the company of turning a blind eye to brutality by Indonesian soldiers, who have a long history of human rights abuses and have been paid to provide the plant's security. 
The company denies the charges. But the suit and Exxon Mobil's travails in Indonesia encapsulate the problems faced by big American companies that do business under the protection of ill-trained foreign armies in places where the United States has strategic interests.
Now, the Indonesian government is considering imposing a military emergency in Aceh, a move that could spell still more trouble for the plant and rankle Congress, where the Bush administration will be pushing soon to renew ties with the Indonesian Army.
Last year, attacks by the separatist guerrillas of the Free Aceh Movement, who argue that the gas revenues belong to the province, forced the plant to shut down for four months, the first closing of its kind for a company that prides itself on toughing it out.
Since the plant reopened a year ago , a beefed-up contingent of more than 3,000 Indonesian troops have patrolled much of the 50-by-10-mile swath of territory here, where the gas operations cut into fertile forest and sit alongside the simple plots of some of the world's poorest people.
At night, the executives sleep in shipping containers inside the plant, having been forced to abandon their ranch-style homes a few miles away.
Villagers are hostile. They say the presence of the oil and gas giant has brought them little but grief: no tangible improvement in their living standard, and the perpetual threat of violence from unwelcome Indonesian soldiers.
On the outskirts of the complex, where generations of fishermen have eked out a living, a 60-year-old villager named Abdullah waded knee-deep in murky water. "I used to own land here," he said with a shrug. "When they built the plant, we had to move. Now I pay rent."
The suit against the company was filed last July in the United States by a workers' rights group, the International Labor Rights Fund, based in Washington, on behalf of 11 villagers, and it is now coming to a critical juncture in the courts. It asserts that the villagers were victims of murder, torture and kidnapping by Indonesian soldiers paid to protect the plant.
The State Department is to deliver an opinion on Aug. 5 on whether the suit interferes with the Bush administration's policy in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country and an uneasy partner in its campaign against terror.
Lawyers for Exxon Mobil asked for the opinion, apparently in the expectation that an administration with a bent toward the energy industry would favor dismissing the suit.
The case has aroused fractious debate at the State Department, pitting officials who view Indonesia as an important nation that needs all the money it can get against those who say America should stand firm on human rights.
It is part of a rash of suits that have been brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, which has been used by foreigners to sue corporations in the United States over charges of human rights abuses abroad.
In the Exxon Mobil case, the judge has said that the State Department's opinion will be nonbinding. But Exxon Mobil's interests and those of the Bush administration are likely to be one and the same, and in the past the department's view has clearly been taken into account.
Earlier this year, the State Department said that pursuit of a lawsuit against Rio Tinto, the international mining company, in Papua New Guinea, would harm American interests, and it was dismissed.
But in another case, this one against Unocal, the California-based oil and gas corporation, involving accusations of abuses committed by the government of Myanmar, formerly Burma, its partner in the development of a gas field, the State Department saw no conflict.
The gas field here, the biggest in the country, holds more than symbolic importance for both Indonesia and Exxon Mobil, which industry analysts say would be reluctant to relinquish the operation. 
The field generates more than $1 billion a year for the government, industry analysts say. When Exxon Mobil shut down operations last year, a senior government minister, apparently angered over the loss of revenues, called the company "cowards."
During its heyday in the early 1990's, when the field was run by Mobil, it produced about one-quarter of the company's worldwide revenue.
For the people of Aceh, who want independence, or at the very least a fair share of the natural gas revenues they send to the central Indonesian authorities, the gas production has been a vast disappointment since it first began in the mid-1970's.
Abdullah, the fisherman, summed up the feelings of many in the area, as he tilted his cap (emblazoned with the logo of the company that has supplanted him) toward the plant. "The poor are getting poorer," he said. "The rich are getting richer."
The fact that the plant employs about 800 local people as permanent staff members and 2,500 more as contract workers is small solace, critics say, for the permanent presence of the military. Unabashedly, villagers describe the Indonesian troops, who they say intrude, often brutally, in their daily lives, as "the Exxon Mobil army."
To bring the suffering home to the company's investors, an Acehnese woman, Cut Zahara Hamzah, addressed Exxon Mobil's annual shareholder's meeting in Dallas in May. "With the pretext of searching for the Free Aceh Movement guerrillas, who are fighting to free Aceh from Indonesia, they arrest, detain, torture and make to disappear innocent villagers," she said of the Indonesian troops.
Among educated Acehnese, hostility to the plant is also widespread. "I was born there, and grew up there, and even I really hate Exxon Mobil," said Yusuf Ismail Pase, a lawyer who heads the Aceh Environmental and Human Rights Defense Institute, a group financed in part by the United States Agency for International Development.
"I'm one of the victims because our land was bought by Mobil very cheaply," he said. "I don't remember the total amount my father got but I know people got nothing."
In the suit, the identities of the villagers alleging abuses have been kept hidden for fear of reprisals, human rights experts said. 
One woman, identified as Jane Doe, says that on Dec. 2, 2000, shortly after hearing cross-fire, she went to a nearby rice field and found her husband dead.
"Three witnesses who were in the fields with my husband said that the soldiers from Unit 113, the Exxon soldiers, arrived in military vehicles and shot at the group of farmers who were working in the fields," she says in the suit. 
Lawyers for Exxon Mobil declined to answer questions about the case.
Ronald I. Wilson, the president and general manager of Exxon Mobil Indonesia Inc., the subsidiary that operates the plant and is 100 percent owned by Exxon Mobil, said the company "doesn't condone human rights violations anywhere in the world, including Indonesia."
"If troops did anything to violate human rights, we did not condone it and we're not party to it," he said.







   
 

July 11, 2002 Thursday  
  



 The Death of bin Ladenism 

 
Osama bin Laden is dead. The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost six months ago: the fugitive died in December and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, echoed the information. The remnants of Osama's gang, however, have mostly stayed silent, either to keep Osama's ghost alive or because they have no means of communication.
     With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive. He always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. Would he remain silent for nine months and not trumpet his own survival?  
 Even if he is still in the world, bin Ladenism has left for good. Mr. bin Laden was the public face of a brand of politics that committed suicide in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, killing thousands of innocent people in the process.
What were the key elements of that politics?
The first was a cynical misinterpretation of Islam that began decades ago with such anti-Western ideologues as Maulana Maudoodi of Pakistan and Sayyid Qutb of Egypt. Although Mr. Maudoodi and Mr. Qutb were not serious thinkers, they could at least offer a coherent ideology based on a narrow reading of Islamic texts. Their ideas about Western barbarism and Muslim revival, distilled down to bin Ladenism, became mere slogans designed to incite zealots to murder. 
People like Mr. Maudoodi and Mr. Qutb could catch the ball and run largely because most Muslim intellectuals of their generation (and later) had no interest in continuing the work of Muslim philosophers. Our intellectuals were too busy learning Western ideologies of one kind or another -- and they left the newly urbanized Muslim masses to the half-baked ideas of men like Mr. Maudoodi and Mr. Qutb and eventually Mr. bin Laden.
Now, however, many Muslim intellectuals are returning home, so to speak. They are rediscovering the philosophical heritage of Islam and the challenges of Muslim political thought. And Maudoodi-Qutbism is now being seen as a pseudo-Islamic version of Western fascism.
The second element that made Mr. bin Laden possible was easy money, largely from wealthy individuals in the Persian Gulf area who believed that they were buying a place in the hereafter while protecting themselves against political opposition in this world. Some paid because they believed they were helping poor and oppressed Muslims. Others paid so militants would go and spend their energies far away from home.
That easy money is no longer available, at least not in large quantities. Many donors have realized they were financing terrorists. Some have been forced to choose between the West, where they have the bulk of their wealth, and the troglodyte mujahedeen of the Hindu Kush.
The third element that made bin Ladenist terror possible was the encouraging, or at least complacent, attitude of several governments. The Taliban in Afghanistan began by hosting Mr. bin Laden and ended up becoming his life-and-death buddies. The Pakistanis were also supportive because they wanted to dominate Afghanistan and make life hard for the Indians by sending holy warriors to Kashmir. The Sudanese government was sympathetic, if not actually supportive, and offered at least a safe haven. This was also the case in Yemen, where in November 2000 I accidentally ran into a crowd of Qaeda militants who had flown in from Pakistan for a gathering.
We now know that Qaeda cells operated, often quite openly, in Muslim countries from Indonesia and Malaysia to Morocco and Tunisia, without being bothered by anyone. The fall of the Taliban means the gang no longer has a secure base. All the other countries are also closed, and in some cases even hostile.
The fourth element was the mistaken practice of many Western powers that sheltered the terrorists in the name of freedom of expression and dissent. We now know that London was a critical haven for Al Qaeda. The murder of the Afghan resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud was planned in London. Qaeda militants operated in Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain and Italy without significant restraint.
The fifth element that made bin Ladenism possible was the West's, especially America's, perceived weakness if not actual cowardice. A joke going around militant Islamist circles until last year was that the only thing the Americans would do if attacked was to sue. That perception no longer exists. The Americans, supported by one of the largest coalitions in history, have shown they will use force against their enemies even if that means a long and difficult war.
The sixth element of bin Ladenism was the illusion in most Western nations that they could somehow remain unaffected by the violence unleashed by fanatical terrorists against so many Muslim nations from Indonesia to Algeria.
Mr. bin Laden could survive and prosper only in a world in which these elements existed. That world is gone. Mr. bin Laden's ghost may linger on -- perhaps because Washington and Islamabad will find it useful. President Bush's party has a crucial election to win and Pervez Musharraf is keen to keep Pakistan in the limelight as long as possible.
But the truth is that Osama bin Laden is dead.






  
  


July 7, 2002 Sunday 



 Much of Mideast still friendly to Americans

 
"Hey, buddy! How you doing? Where you from? America? I got a cousin in Detroit. You want a souvenir? Don't listen to these other guys. Stop a minute. Let me buy you a lemonade. Bedouin hospitality. No? You insult me. Want some perfume? Very cheap."
Americans traveling in the Middle East weren't supposed to be greeted like this after Sept. 11. Jordanians were burning American flags and battling police near the U.S. Embassy. Egyptians were boycotting McDonald's in their anger over U.S. policy toward Israel. And most notoriously, Pakistani extremists murdered the American reporter Daniel Pearl. It's no wonder the Muslim world dropped off travelers' destination lists as Americans feared showing their faces in a vast arc from Morocco to Indonesia. 
But traveling in five Islamic countries since September -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Jordan, Turkey and Egypt -- I have found the street vendors and hustlers are as delighted as ever to corner an American and palm off a genuine Middle Kingdom plaster statuette or try to talk you into a camel tour of the pyramids. More important, I received a friendly welcome in offices and homes, where I have broken bread with Palestinians in Egypt and Chechen refugees in Jordan.
I'm not suggesting that Americans cancel their Hawaii vacation and head for Sudan instead. But those planning to travel to an Islamic nation -- as thousands of businessmen, relief workers, journalists and others still must -- might be surprised at the reception they will receive.
In Egypt, I at first tried to hide my nationality in non-work situations. I brushed off street vendors by saying in Russian, "I don't speak English." But the strategy failed. Perhaps my clothes gave me away, maybe my Nikon Fx-90 looked too fancy.
One hustler heard me speaking to a driver in English as I got out of my taxi at the pyramids. When I tried to brush him off by thumping my chest and declaring, "Russia!" he said, "Your English too well for a Russian. You are German? Dutch? My brother lives in Rotterdam."
Eventually, I gave it up and began introducing myself as an American. And the answer was always the same: "You are welcome to Egypt." (They also wanted me to tell President Bush that he should stop supporting Israel.)
Even in these times, many Muslims around the world genuinely admire America for its freedom, wealth and power. The clash of cultures is real, but the most immediate cause of friction is U.S. policy on the Middle East. Passions are strong on the Palestinian issue -- and, for some, on the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
Sometimes all the hatred expressed toward Israel can get unnerving, and Jewish travelers will certainly feel more threatened. Long-distance buses in Egypt entertain passengers by playing videos such as "48 Hours in Israel," featuring creepy Mossad agents who kidnap Egyptians in Athens. Hitch a ride, and you're likely to be picked up by a truck driver with a dashboard postcard of Jerusalem's gold-topped Dome of the Rock mosque, stabbed with a dagger and dripping blood.
One excitable young man in Cairo followed me for a block denouncing Israel and President Bush. But whatever your views on such subjects, there is nothing wrong with politely saying, "I understand. I can see why you'd be angry about that."
It is worth remembering that the Muslim world is a multifarious place. In the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, teenage girls dress like Russians, in tight jeans and see-through blouses, while Jordanian women often don Islamic headscarves and dresses that resemble raincoats. Impoverished Egypt, with its mud-brick buildings, has little in common with bustling Turkey, which is seeking membership in the European Union.
Turkey, in fact, is atypical of the Middle East. Though 97 percent Muslim, it is a NATO member with a secular constitution, an elected government and a lively press. It maintains military and political ties with Israel. Turks dislike talk of a war against Iraq, as that nation was a major trading partner before the last war. But they remain largely pro-American.
Even in Jordan's Palestinian refugee camps, I found people friendly and willing to tell me their stories. An interview essentially amounts to listening, and everyone likes to be listened to. Palestinians, especially, are eager to have their own point of view reported in the American press.
Admittedly, I haven't visited the Muslim world's most dangerous countries, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. And wherever you go, it pays to be cautious and consult the U.S. State Department Web site http://travel.state.gov for more information and warnings.
But it also is worth considering that my scariest hours in the Middle East were the time a bus driver raced along a Sinai desert road at night with his headlights off. Motorists sometimes do this in Egypt, perhaps thinking they are saving energy. And while it can make for a nail-biting experience, it had nothing to do with threats from Islamists or flag-burning mobs.
As we lurched down the black road, I comforted myself with that thought.
Russell Working, a journalist living in Cyprus, last wrote for Travel about South Korea.






 El Paso Times (El Paso, TX)
  
El Paso Times (El Paso, TX)

July 6, 2002 Saturday



 :LETTERS

 
Suggestions for beating the heat
There have been alarming headlines about heat-related deaths in El Paso. Here are inexpensive suggestions to help people who do not have air conditioning cool down:
If the house is too hot, take the kids or the elderly to the mall. There are food courts and benches where they can sit in the cool air. Also, there are public libraries and movies.
Make sure the elderly have floor fans. Family members can pool a few dollars and buy one. A big floor fan can move a lot of air. 
There are misting bottles, and even ones with a hand fan attached. A little spritz has a cooling effect.
Most importantly, if the house is getting to 98 degrees, take a shower or cool down in a bath tub. Sit in the tub with a glass of ice tea and a good book. We can't all afford a pool, but most of us have a bath tub!
It is sad that there are many elderly who won't put their air conditioners on because the cost of electricity is too high.
A life shouldn't have such a low value!
Suzanne Inserra
Horizon City
Edgren dismays
I was somewhat dismayed by columnist Charles Edgren, on his pick-and-shovel technique regarding the court decision involving the Pledge of Allegiance. Edgren is apparently parroting the all-theist Congress' viewpoint with a smidgen of chosen phrases from Founding Fathers. This tactic is especially effective with the masses.
The Pledge was created by Francis Bellamy in 1892 for the Youths' Companion, a national family magazine. Bellamy was a Baptist preacher and a Christian Socialist. He was ousted for preaching the evils of capitalism. Magazine owner Daniel Ford hired Bellamy to help sell magazines and flags for the 400th anniversary celebration of Columbus' discovery of America.
The original words "my flag" were later changed to "the flag" so as not to confuse immigrants.
The change "under God" was added by President Eisenhower and Congress in 1954, at the behest of the Knights Of Columbus.
Thomas Jefferson found no redeeming feature in orthodox Christianity and in 1814 wrote, " Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of common law."
And James Madison wrote, "Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics and geometry."
Tom McKay
Horizon City
Edgren praised
First, thanks to columnist Charlie Edgren for last Saturday's outstanding history lesson, pointing out just a few of hundreds of examples of the original intent of the Founding Fathers to honor God and recognize God's role in the establishment of this nation.
And second, a June 17 story in the Times about Hispanic Muslims quoted a former altar boy, Juan Galvan, who reacted to the arrest of "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla (aka Abdullah al Muhajir) by saying that "Islam does not condone terrorism."
Not all Muslims condone terrorism, however, Padilla's statement is contrary to the many directives of the "prophet" Mohamed. Mohamed was "inspired" to convert through violence the entire world to the pagan moon-god, Allah. Mohamed said, "Pursue the infidel; whenever you find him, kill him."
Some Muslim fundamentalist groups are responsible for torturing and beheading people in Indonesia, Nigeria, Sudan and in other places where people refuse to pledge, "there is no god but Allah and Mohamed is his prophet."
Thank God for our freedom.
Tom McKee
Upper Valley
Design is ugly
I just wanted to say that as a taxpayer, I am appalled to see the grotesque underpasses that are being completed on Interstate-10 and Lomaland and at Yarbrough and McRae.
The underpasses at Alameda and Loop 375 and the one at Artcraft and Doniphan are much more beautiful.
What the heck was the designer thinking? Brown and green brick blending into gray concrete, smothered on top by red-colored cement? And then the sidewalks are red and blue? What is that?
I hope someone will at least paint the dull-gray concrete with its fake rock-wall slabs. What an eyesore!
Oscar Mu?iz
Lower Valley
Ivins is hateful
Thanks to David Rubio for his well-reasoned letter criticizing Molly Ivins. I, too, wonder what color the sky is in the world she lives in.
It amazes me that anyone could oppose the use of force by the United States or its allies -- no matter how justified or necessary -- and ignore or excuse acts of outright terrorism, believing we can "talk things out" with people who would stop at nothing to destroy us.
Lacking any realistic solution, Ivins' game plan is simple: Attack President Bush at a deeply personal level, imply that he's a well-meaning idiot at best, then suggest that a foreign policy genius like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton be called in to handle things.
Even at this late date, Ivins is still insisting that Bush "stole the election." Let's just forget that he was the one who pulled the country together after Sept. 11 and pushed a successful plan to go after al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
Ivins has the right to be as hateful and bitter as she wants, but no right to be taken seriously.
David Rawlings
West El Paso
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July 5, 2002 Friday  
  



 Some Indonesians Say U.S. Aid Could Promote Army Reforms 

 
The Bush administration's effort to re-establish military ties with Indonesia, which has been curtailed for nearly a decade because of its army's widespread human rights violations, has some unexpected support among Indonesians.
     Many who suffered under the military in the past, and who are still critical of the army for its continuing rights abuses, say that the best hope for eventually developing an army whose conduct is appropriate for a democracy is to send officers to schools in the United States. 
 They add, however, that restoring aid would require a delicate balancing act. Somehow, the United States would have to make clear that it was not condoning past abuses and must keep up pressure on the Indonesian military for fundamental reforms. This would require tight conditions on the aid, they say. 
American officials say they are aware that a resumption of aid would be cited as approval by the Indonesian military. But they say that, on balance, the benefits to the United States and to Indonesia of restoring the military relationship, and of working to create an army with high professional standards, outweigh the disadvantages.
The Bush administration wants to finance a new Indonesian military unit to deal with civil conflict, and to lift the ban on Indonesian soldiers attending American military schools as part of the International Military Education and Training program.
"If 10,000 soldiers were on IMET training every year, we would have a much better democracy," said Bambang Harymurti, editor of the weekly newsmagazine Tempo, which was shut down by the dictator Suharto in 1994 and did not reappear until after he was ousted in 1998.
The United States and Indonesia are not talking of anywhere near that number, but Mr. Harymurti expands on his point by saying that officers' wives and children should go to the United States too to be exposed to how an army functions under civilian control. Mr. Harymurti said that during the Suharto era, military officers who had received training in the United States were the ones who advocated reform and ending the military presence in politics. "We always had clandestine help from them," Mr. Harymurti said.
In Washington, the Heritage Foundation, the conservative research organization, is a strong opponent of resuming military aid to Indonesia, joining Sen. Patrick Leahy, the liberal Democrat from Vermont.
The United States gave military aid to Indonesia for more than 20 years "and it didn't work," said Dana R. Dillon, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Indonesia's military remains corrupt and a persistent violator of human rights, he said. "When they come here, they learn everything," Mr. Dillon said of foreign soldiers who train in the United States. "When they go home they have to operate in the same corrupt system."
The debate over military aid to Indonesia has distinct echoes from the cold war, when thousands of Latin American military officers were trained at the School of the Americas, then went home to support dictatorial generals. One of the most heated debates in that era was over El Salvador in the early 1980's.
The Reagan administration fought with Congress about military assistance to a government whose security forces and death squads were torturing and killing peasants and students suspected of being sympathetic to the Marxist-led rebellion. Training under American tutelage would make the Salvadoran soldiers more respectful of human rights, the administration argued.
Opponents countered that many of the commanders and soldiers in these units had already been trained in the United States.
Many here are acutely aware of that period and that training. "We don't want a School of the Americas," said Mr. Harymurti, the editor of Tempo.
Mr. Harymurti is opposed to short-term programs in which a soldier goes to a United States military camp and learns, as he put it, "how to shoot straight, how to place explosives." But that is precisely the type of training most Indonesian military officers want.
"The highest priority is to support the effort to maintain our operational readiness," said Lt. Gen. Agus Widjojo, the most senior officer in the Indonesian Parliament.
On the other hand, he said, Indonesian officers do not want to go to the United States for courses in human rights and the rules of war. "Ask any Indonesian officer, 'Do you need that kind of training?' and he will say no," General Widjojo said. As a lieutenant, he attended a basic infantry course at Fort Benning, in 1972, and then in 1979, as a captain, he attended an advanced course. Later he went to the National War College, and got a master's degree in public administration from George Washington University.
But General Widjojo, who is considered a reformer and who was one of the generals who argued in 1998 that the military should get out of politics, went on, "Those who see the need to make the military part of a more democratic system, are those who have been exposed to the democratic system."
The debate is captured by one of Indonesia's most respected intellectuals, Goenawan Mohamad, a founder of Tempo and a persistent critic of the Indonesian military. The argument against aid, he said, is that it will be perceived by many Indonesians "as an American ploy to get the military to take part in America's war on terrorism." The American campaign is widely seen by Indonesians as a war against Islam.
He added that a resumption of aid will also be seen by Indonesians as effectively condoning past human rights abuses.
Still, and to the surprise of many who have known him, Mr. Goenawan said that he was not opposed to resuming aid. It is needed, he said, if the military is to become more professional and attuned to democracy.
"I am only opposed to the timing," he said. "Now is not the moment." 






  


July 5, 2002 Friday 



 REP. EMERSON SUGGESTS STRONG LINK BETWEEN HUNGER, TERRORISM;
 FEEDING CHILDREN ABROAD IS GOOD FOR U.S. FARMERS, NATIONAL SECURITY, SHE SAYS

 
Alisha Meyers is evidence that guns and tough-talk diplomacy are not America's only weapons in the war on terrorism.
Meyers returned to the United States this spring after a yearlong fellowship in Sudan and Kenya, where she helped design a five-year food aid plan for poor farmers whose fields were ravaged by a decades-long civil war.
The 26-year-old Fulbright scholar from Ohio is adamant that fighting hunger is a step-by-step effort. UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency, estimates that 828 million people worldwide are chronically undernourished. Every small contribution, Meyers said, makes a difference. 
Those small contributions may also be making a difference in the U.S.-led crusade to end terrorism. Plagued by poverty and political inst ability, Sudan is like so many of the world's trouble spots: The same country where Meyers worked to feed the hungry was once home to one of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist training camps.
U.S. State Department officials have long linked hunger in places like Sudan to internal factionalism and corruption. Now, with homeland security concerns central to politics in Washington, some international relief organizations and members of Congress say that hunger is also at the root of terrorism.
Reps. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, and Jim McGovern, D-Mass., backers of a program that feeds hungry children with surpluses from American farmers, said making the connection was both valid and politically necessary.
"Part of our own domestic security depends on other countries feeling secure in themselves," Emerson said. "There's a clear line we can draw between the two."
The Emerson-McGovern initiative, known as the Global Food for Education Program, reaches 9 million children in 38 countries. Under the guidelines of the program, children only get the food if they attend school; in many communities, the program has more than doubled the number of girls who receive a basic education.
Less hunger and more education lead to more political stability, McG overn said. And that means a less welcoming breeding ground for terrorism.
"What we've been trying to do is make the case ... that (world hunger) is very much about combating terrorism," he said. "If we can be known as the country that is feeding hungry children in many parts of the world, I think that it creates a lot of goodwill."
Of the world's 828 million hungry, UNICEF estimates that 300 million are children.
Sara Piepmeier, a Chicago-based spokeswoman for the World Food Program, views the problem in terms of an equation.
"The more we can do to ... break the cycle of hunger, the more stable the world is," she said.
The World Food Program is fighting hunger epidemics in Southern Africa and Indonesia, which are home to the world's largest number of Muslims. Indonesia also is the target of a $16 million U.S. military aid package that State Department officials say will bolster the nation's domestic anti-terrorism capabilities.
But Emerson and McGovern worry that such increases in defense spending may make it difficult to sustain funding for world hunger aid.
The law behind the Global Food for Education program authorizes Congress to spend up to $1.3 billion over the program's lifetime. In 2000, the administration of President Bill Clinton established a $300 million pilot program.
But in this year's farm bill, legislators only approved $100 million in funding.
Emerson and McGovern said they hoped to add more. The push for more funding, they said, was all the more reason to educate the public.
Since Emerson assumed control this spring of the Congressional Hunger Center - the nonprofit organization that granted Meyers her fellowship - the three-term member of Congress said that had been her goal.
She also hopes to continue the legacy of her late husband, Rep. Bill Emerson, who led the Hunger Center for more than a decade.
In working to educate the public about hunger, Meyers and Emerson share a common frustration.
"Every little bit counts, especially when people have nothing," Meyers said of her experience in Sudan.
But, she added, conveying that sense of accomplishment to people in the United States is often difficult.
As an elected official with an interest in world hunger issues, Emerson said she found ways to make the issue more relevant to the lives of her constituents.
Take, for example, the program she sponsored with McGovern. What is praised for its international humanitarian achievement also makes smart political sense for Emerson: The farmers in her heavily rural district now have an outlet for their unused soybeans and corn.
Emerson says that domestic agriculture and world hunger shared a common fate in the public eye: Both are often overlooked.
"It's kind of like educating the public about agriculture," she said. "We have a huge public relations challenge ahead of us."







   
 

June 29, 2002 Saturday  
  



 NEWS SUMMARY 

 
     INTERNATIONAL   A3-7

Pentagon Pushes to Renew Aid to Indonesia's Army
The Pentagon is pressing hard to resume assistance to the Indonesian military in an effort to re-establish American influence in the world's most populous Muslim nation. Washington has kept its distance from the Indonesian Army for nearly a decade because of human rights abuses.   A1

Israeli Action in Hebron
The Israeli military leveled a Palestinian Authority building in an bid to end a four-day standoff with 15 Palestinian militants thought to be inside. Earlier, a former Palestinian minister went inside to negotiate but emerged saying he had found no one.   A6

Bid to Ease Russian Draft Law
The lower house of Parliament passed legislation that would offer some young Russian men an alternative to the military draft, but only under conditions that liberals and advocates of military reform have called onerous and possibly dangerous.   A7

Firm U.S. Stand Against Court
The United States has refused to budge in its demand to exempt American peacekeepers from the jurisdiction of a new International Criminal Court, raising the possibility that the United Nations mandate for the international forces in Bosnia will expire at midnight tomorrow.   A6

Search for Fighters in Pakistan
Pakistani troops combed the hills near the Afghan border, searching for suspected Qaeda fighters who killed 10 soldiers this week. Residents near the battlefield said the fighters had fled to Afghanistan.   A7

Explosion in Afghanistan
At least 19 people were killed and dozens were injured by an explosion at an ammunition dump in the border town of Spinbaldak. The local Afghan commander said a rocket attack was responsible.   A7

Close of Americas Talks
The presidents of Mexico and Central America reiterated a commitment to Plan Puebla-Panama, a regional plan intended to stimulate their struggling economies, as they ended a two-day meeting in Yucatan.   A3

World Briefing   A6

NATIONAL   A8-13

U.S. Sets New Policy On Using Anthrax Vaccine
The Bush administration announced a new anthrax vaccination policy, including plans to continue vaccinating some military personnel and to stockpile for civilian use a large portion of all the anthrax vaccine being produced for the Pentagon.   A1

Closed Hearings, for Now
The Supreme Court allowed secret deportation hearings for people arrested after Sept. 11 to continue while the government appealed a judge's order to open the hearings.   A10

Weighing Immigrants' Rights
The Supreme Court agreed to decide a question on the rights of immigrants facing deportation proceedings under the strict rules of the 1996 revision of immigration law. The court will also hear arguments on Maine's effort to force drug makers to reduce their prices, and on doctors' access as providers to H.M.O.'s.   A10

Amtrak Agrees to Loan Terms
Amtrak agreed to the Bush administration's terms for a $100 million loan that would avert an immediate shutdown, promising to find $100 million in cuts from next year's budget.   A13

Bush to Step Aside Briefly
President Bush said he would transfer the powers of the presidency to Vice President Dick Cheney for a short time today while Mr. Bush is sedated for a colonoscopy.   A1

Manson Follower Denied Parole
Leslie Van Houten, 52, was denied parole for the 14th time, despite a California judge's admonishment to the parole board that it must consider her 30-year model-prisoner record and not just her role in the Manson family's cult killings of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca in 1969.   A8

A Return to Mormon Roots
Mormon worshipers gathered to dedicate a new limestone temple in Nauvoo, Ill., a river town their ancestors fled 156 years ago under religious persecution, leaving behind their temple, which arsonists later burned.   A8

Religion Journal   A13

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-5

Federal Aid Agency Broadens 9/11 Pool
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was changing eligibility criteria to allow aid to many more people who suffered economic hardship as a result of Sept. 11. The agency has been criticized for missteps and delays in dispensing aid.   A1

Radiation Detectors Deployed
The police commissioner said radiation detectors would be installed outside several city buildings as part of the department's measures to guard against potential terrorism.   B1

City Softens on Recycling Rules
The Bloomberg administration is stepping back from a policy of leaving improperly sorted trash on the streets while people adjust to major changes in recycling that take on Monday.   B1

Guard Rolls Were Inflated
New York State systematically inflated troop strength figures for its Army National Guard in the late 1990's in a bid to make recruitment efforts appear more successful.   B1

ARTS & IDEAS   B7-17

EDUCATION

Vouchers' New York Hurdles
Supporters and opponents say there is strong language in the state Constitution prohibiting government aid -- direct or indirect -- to religious education. And New York City's powerful teachers' union opposes vouchers.   B1

   D1-8

OBITUARIES   C18

I. W. Burnham II
A financier whose surname has been on the front door of a Wall Street firm since the Depression, he was 93.   C18

Choi Hong Hi
The former South Korean general, acknowledged as the founder of the martial art tae kwon do, was 83.   C18

BUSINESS DAY   C1-15

Xerox Restates Its Restatement
Xerox, which had agreed in an S.E.C. settlement to reclassify about $2 billion in revenue, said the figure would be $6.4 billion. The move lowers revenue and profits in 1997, 1998 and 1999 and raises them in 2000 and 2001.   C1

WorldCom May Be on the Block
WorldCom's bankers are said to be contacting investors and competitors to gauge interest in their buying major pieces of the embattled telecommunications company and to assess what those pieces might be worth.   C1

WorldCom's downfall is swelling the exodus of workers from the telecommunications industry, which has accounted for more than one of every 10 jobs lost since March 2001.   C1

Martha Stewart Inquiry's Focus
The S.E.C. inquiry into Martha Stewart's sale of ImClone shares in December centers on what her stockbroker may have told her just before the stock was sold, a lawyer said.   C1

No World Cup Bonanza
The World Cup, the world's most heavily watched sporting event, which concludes in Japan tomorrow, has not helped reinvigorate the Japanese economy, as backers had hoped.   C1

Business Digest   C1

EDITORIAL   A14-15

Editorials: The politics of embarrassment; closing the door to public scrutiny; Enron's Connecticut connection; full justice for Ulster killings.

Column: Bill Keller.

Bridge   B15
TV Listings   B16
Crossword   B15
Weather   D8




12


   
 

June 29, 2002 Saturday  
  



 WHITE HOUSE SEEKS TO RESUME AIDING INDONESIA'S ARMY 

 
The United States is pressing hard to resume assistance to the Indonesian military in an effort to re-establish American influence here in the world's most populous Muslim nation after nearly a decade of keeping its distance from the Indonesian Army because of its human rights abuses.
     The arrest here this month of a suspected operative of Al Qaeda strengthened the Bush administration's determination to re-engage with Indonesia's army, despite its lack of reform. The administration is using the arrest to support its argument that Indonesia, a reluctant partner in the crackdown on terrorism, should be rewarded for its support with military aid. 
 The suspect, Omar al-Faruq, was turned over to the United States and is being held at an undisclosed location. He is a Kuwaiti in his mid-30's who trained at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, American officials said. While living here, he raised money for an Islamic charity, some of which was funneled to Al Qaeda, one official said. 
In 1993 the Clinton administration, concerned about human rights violations, cut off American weapons sales to Indonesia. In 1999, after widespread accusations of involvement by the Indonesian military in violence against civilians during East Timor's struggle for independence, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, amended foreign aid legislation to impose tougher restrictions on military aid. 
But now the Bush administration is pushing Congress to provide financing for a new "command and control" unit for the Indonesian Army. It is intended, administration officials said, for peacekeeping tasks in places like the Maluku islands, where there have been recent accusations that the military is engaged in rights abuses. 
Congressional opposition to the plan has weakened, and a senior administration official said money for nonlethal equipment like radios and computers was likely to be approved in the coming weeks.
The administration and Senator Leahy, who has been the main Congressional opponent to restoring aid to the Indonesian Army, are close to an agreement that would allow some Indonesian officers to receive noncombatant training in the United States, administration officials said. 
Also, they said Congress was likely to approve funds for the creation of an antiterror unit in the Indonesian police force.
The army remains the most powerful national institution in Indonesia as the country weathers a turbulent transition to democracy. Though slightly diminished from its former stature, the military has succeeded in fending off efforts to make it accountable for human rights abuses. 
It has also ben criticized for operating a vast business empire , which includes airlines, hotels, banks and insurance companies, as well as prostitution and illegal logging in tropical forests, Western military officials say.
Accusations that the military engages in rights abuses have continued. In a sectarian conflict between Muslims and Christians in the Maluku islands, the military turned a blind eye to a rampaging Islamic militia, Laskar Jihad, earlier this year, and in the last several years some military officers have been involved in training the group, Western military officials said.
In the province of Aceh, the military was encouraged last week by its new commander, Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, to "crush" separatist rebels. The army has been accused by human rights groups of being involved in widespread killings of civilians in the province.
Although a few officers accused of killing civilians in East Timor in 1999 are now on trial, the most senior generals are not in court, and the military has withheld its full cooperation.
An influential Indonesian intellectual, Jusuf Wanandi, who is close to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, said he had warned the Bush administration not to rush into restoring military assistance and thus give the military its "credibility back." Human rights abuses are as "bad now as they have ever been," and any new assistance should be tied to specific reforms, Mr. Wanandi said in an interview.
The American ambassador, Ralph L. Boyce, expressed some reservations. He said in an interview that until the army showed some accountability for past human rights abuses, military aid should be limited.
"We very much want to have a normal military-to-military relationship," he said, "but we need something serious on the accountability front to indicate that the Indonesian military really is on the road to reform."
General Endriartono, the new armed forces chief, did tell his commanders in his maiden speech that they must "always respect the principles of democracy" and human rights "in our thoughts, our attitudes and our actions."
American officials here said it was the first time they had heard a senior Indonesian military commander speak so directly about human rights. But the Americans said that he was more a realist than a reformer and that fundamental change was unlikely.
The Indonesian military is covetous of its sovereignty and its senior officers resent the United States telling them what to do, said Lt. Gen. Agus Widjojo, the military's senior member of the 500-seat lower house of Parliament, in which the military is guaranteed 38 seats. The United States, he said in an interview, needs Indonesia more than Indonesia needs the United States.
In any case, he added, the Indonesian Army wants weapons and combat equipment, not training in human rights.
The Indonesian military's special role began with its birth as a guerrilla army in the 1940's to fight against Dutch colonial rule. After independence in 1945, its role was enshrined in the policy known as "dual function." The army would not only defend the country, but also play an active role in running it.
Although that was abandoned as official policy after the long-ruling military dictator Suharto was ousted in 1998, the armed forces contend that they remain the guarantors of stability and unity in this country, which is spread out over thousands of miles and islands. Civilian control of the military remains an elusive goal. The defense minister is a civilian, but the armed forces commander is still a member of the cabinet.
The prospects for civilian control in the foreseeable future are "zero," a Western military attache said.
Indonesian military officers are businessmen -- big businessmen -- through hundreds of yayasans, or foundations, originally set up to provide for the soldiers' welfare: scholarships, health care and widow's benefits. But they have broadened into holdings across the business spectrum.
The army special forces, Kopasses, for example, owns a shopping mall near its headquarters, and the reserve, Kostrad, owns Mandala Airline, a domestic airline with a poor safety record.
Military officials contend that the business operations are conducted, at least in part, out of necessity. Only 35 percent of the military's budget comes from the government, and the rest from the business ventures. Local commanders use the money to buy food and shelter for their troops, as well as to enrich themselves.
"The problem isn't that they are in business," said a Western military attache. "The problem is they want to be filthy rich, like the rest of the elites in this country."
A general whose base pay is six million rupiah a month -- roughly $700 -- can easily multiply that fifteenfold from business operations.
The military businesses are largely free from public scrutiny.
In one of the few exceptions, two years ago, as head of the army, General Endriartono, asked for an external audit of its largest foundation, Yayasan Kartika Eka Paksi.
The foundation's net worth of roughly $50 million ranks it with the largest companies in Indonesia, larger than British American Tobacco and nearly five times the size of Proctor & Gamble Indonesia, according to the audit, a copy of which was provided to .
The foundation has 11 subsidiaries and 22 affiliated companies. Those include logging and plywood operations, a major bank, a pharmaceutical company, and a tiny airline, which flies from Jakarta to Sulawesi.
But as for the traditional military role of defense against aggression from outside forces, the Indonesian military is largely focused on enemies within.
"The Indonesian military is more concerned about internal stability than external threats," said General Widjojo, the member of Parliament.
That has given rise to the human rights abuses against civilian populations, which continue, Western military officials say, in Aceh, the Maluku islands and Irian Jaya.
A Western military attache here said he favored sending some Indonesian military officers to the United States for training but at the same time said he did not want to see the Leahy restrictions repealed. "They are going to learn nothing if we don't force them to hold the line on human rights tribunals," he said.







  



June 27, 2002 Thursday  




 Pr. William Teaches Tolerance; 
Arab, Civil Liberties Issues Top Multicultural Institute Talks

 
 The day that children returned to school after Sept. 11, one of Barbara Staubs's fourth-grade students told her: "I'm Indian. I'm not Arab." 
 Another one of her students, a child of Arab descent, was out of school for a week because his mother was afraid for him. 
 Staubs, a teacher at Martin Luther King Elementary in Woodbridge, shared her stories this week with hundreds of her colleagues at a week-long multicultural seminar sponsored by Prince William County Schools. She and her colleagues had just finished watching "In My Own Skin," a documentary that exposed the fear, pride and hopes of five New York women of Arab descent in the days immediately after the terrorist attacks. Amneh, a Palestinian and Egyptian woman profiled in the film, said: "Osama bin Laden said as long as Palestine is unsafe, Americans won't be safe. I thought, oh, man. I'm both Palestinian and an American. I'm never going to be safe."  
 After the documentary, there was a question-and-answer session with the co-directors, Nikki Byrd and Jennifer Jajeh. Staubs told her story. Then she said, simply, "Thank you, on behalf of my students." 
 For the past eight years, Prince William has hosted a multicultural summer institute for teachers, bringing together representatives from a variety of cultures -- African American, Asian, Latino -- for a week-long continuing education program. Unique in the Washington area, the county-sponsored seminars and field trips have drawn teachers from outside Prince William, including Fairfax, Manassas and Manassas Park. No teachers from the District or Maryland attended this year, but they have in the past. 
 Across the country, educators are rethinking multicultural education after the terrorism attacks. In Prince William this year, the seminars devoted to civil liberties and Arab issues were packed. And Sept. 11 was one of the inspirations for this year's programs, said August Bullock, the county's supervisor of multicultural education. 
 "That's certainly part of it," Bullock said. "As people are enlightened, they're more empowered to handle conflict." 
 Anita Al-Haj, who teaches English as a Second Language at Featherstone Elementary School, said she thought the institute "is knocking down a lot of stereotypes." Al-Haj's husband is Palestinian. After the documentary, she spoke of the concerns she had after Sept. 11, when the names of the terrorist hijackers began to be released -- names that are similar to hers. 
 "When you see your name plastered across the television screen saying you're one of the suspected terrorists, you're afraid of what's going to happen to you. . . . It impacts in such a way that it's indescribable," Al-Haj said. 
 Teachers said they also are seeing increased diversity in their classrooms. Census data show that the number of people identifying themselves as Arab increased 54 percent in the Washington area from 1990 to 2000. 
 Prince William keeps student statistics only by race, and Arab Americans can be of many races. However, over the same period, the minority population in county schools rose from 24 percent to 45 percent. 
 Peter Boykin, who taught ninth-grade world history at Woodbridge High School this year, said discussion of Sept. 11 swirled around his classroom for weeks after the attacks. 
 "I saw a lot of stereotyping, that all Arab Americans are the enemy. They felt America wasn't safe anymore," Boykin said. "I told them, one terrorist act is not going to take this country down." 
 Many teachers, the presenters observed, were coming to the seminars already conversant with some aspects of Arab culture. 
 Such as Mary Hutter, a Coles Elementary School teacher assistant. She grew up in Dearborn, Mich., one of the centers of the country's Arab population. She attended a presentation by Helen Hatab Samhan, "Understanding the Arab American Experience." 
 Hutter knew Arabs in her neighborhood. But there still was a divide. 
 "When I grew up with Arab Americans, they were a completely different culture. They were in one world and we were in another," Hutter said. "You would have this prejudice in your mind that they're different, and it's difficult as an adult to change what's in your mind." 
 Samhan peppered her audience with statistics, including the fact that most Arabs in this country are of Lebanese descent, most are Christian, and that many of the most populous Muslim countries, such as Indonesia, are not Arab. 
 "I am impressed that there is a base of knowledge there," said Samhan, executive director of the Washington-based Arab American Institute Foundation. "It's the depth and the detail people want." 
 Vickye Jones, who teaches third-graders at Leesylvania Elementary School in Woodbridge, said she had students of Afghan, Bangladeshi, Iraqi and Pakistani descent in her classroom last year. All shared feelings of sadness and worry after Sept. 11. Some were reluctant to talk about their nationalities in the classroom. 
 "I told them, 'We're all Americans if we live here in America. We're going to love you no matter what,' " Jones said. 







  



June 26, 2002 Wednesday  




 Malaysia Confirms Transfer of Power in 2003; 
A Smooth Transition From Mahathir Era Could Ease Fears in Jittery Region

 
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, one of Asia's longest-serving leaders, plans to hand power to his deputy late next year in a move investors praised as an orderly transition. 
 But politicians in neighboring countries fretted over the potential for instability in Muslim-majority Malaysia and said a smooth succession was paramount in a region coping with political uncertainty in Indonesia and the threat of Islamic extremism. 
 The party said Mahathir, 76, a shrewd politician who has presided over 21 years of immense change, had agreed to postpone his retirement plans to ensure a smooth transfer of power and responsibilities to Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.  
 "All these things about lame duck [are] in your mind. During the transition the status of Dr. Mahathir as prime minister should be preserved," Abdullah said after a party leadership meeting. 
 The departure of Mahathir, who tearfully announced his resignation in an appearance on television on Saturday, was always bound to cause jitters among investors in a region familiar with political upheaval. The reaction of the financial markets, however, was relatively positive. 
 Malaysia remains one of the most prosperous and stable countries in Southeast Asia, and Abdullah is regarded as a mature and pragmatic politician even if he does not possess Mahathir's visionary and steely qualities, analysts said. 
 Speaking after a meeting of leaders of the governing United Malays National Organization, Abdullah said at a televised news conference that the date of the next general election had not been discussed. 
 A national election is not required until 2004, and the ruling National Front coalition appears well set to build on a two-thirds majority; the Islamic opposition has faltered since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. 
 Mahathir's position was in no way diminished and he would head the Finance Ministry for the rest of his tenure, Abdullah said. 
 "There is no question that during the transition I will steal the limelight from him; that should not be the case," said Abdullah, who has a reputation as Malaysian politics' nice guy. 
 The secretary general of Mahathir's party, Khalil Yaakob, said the leadership had accepted the prime minister's offer to defer his resignation, saying Abdullah will take over after a summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in October 2003. 
 Government-run television treated the event as a passing of eras, delivering a poem titled, "Mahathir, We Are With You," and showing every one of the party leaders and their allies in the National Front paying tribute to Mahathir and pledging loyalty to Abdullah. 
 The opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party criticized the transition plan as "the longest resignation notice submitted by any leader in the world," said Kamaruddin Jaafar, a leading member. 







   
 

June 22, 2002 Saturday  
  



 U.S. Tries to Win Over Angry Indonesian Muslims 

 
On the edge of the rich rain forests and gold mines here in the world's most populous Muslim country, students at an Islamic boarding school learn to abhor the United States.
     The anti-American creed is not spelled out in the brochure that beckons students to the Hidayatullah campus in Kalimantan, this mineral-studded province of Indonesia on the island of Borneo. But on the campus, where an imposing mosque with a silvery dome towers over scruffy school buildings, the antagonism toward America permeates every discussion. 
 "From very deep in my heart I think the United States is evil," said Muhammad Fadhil, a feisty 16-year-old, described by his teachers as one of the smartest students. "There are too many interventions by the United States around the world. It exaggerates its military force." 
The Hidayatullah, one of the more extreme of Indonesia's religious boarding schools, known as pesantrens, is the home base for a network of 120 branch schools throughout the country. Like the madrasas in Pakistan, pesantrens are led by charismatic leaders who strive to instill their version of Islamic values.
Now, as the United States scans the world for breeding grounds for Islamic extremists, some Asia experts in the Bush administration say they are worried about the changing face of religious schools in this nation of 220 million people. They express concern about a "lost generation" of young radicalized Indonesian Muslims. There is an urgent need for a soft sell by the United States, to win hearts and minds, to complement the tough administration strategy of throwing support to militaries, including the Indonesian Army, these experts contend.
To try and regain ground in the propaganda war, State Department officials say they have come up with a new strategy: inviting leaders of pesantrens to the United States for a show-and-tell two-week tour this summer, plus participation in a four-week course on religious tolerance at the Institute for Training and Development at Amherst, Mass.
The program is an effort to expose about 80 Islamic educators who might be suspicious of the United States to the American way of life. "We will concentrate on those who are receptive, who have not been to the United States and who have a degree of open-mindedness," an American official said.
But winning people over will not be easy. "The idea is to make other religions recognize Islam as it was in the Middle Ages," said Abdul Qadir Jakani, the chief operating officer of the school here. 
"More than 80 percent of Indonesians are Muslim but most of them only think of themselves as Islamic from their identity card. We want to change that."
The pesantrens have generally been simple places, devoid of much militancy. But at times in Indonesia's history, they have served as cells for mobilizing and indoctrinating young warriors. Today, feelings about America are running high.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the United States support for Israel, figures high in many students' statements. They believe, they said, that there is no tolerance between Muslims and Jews in the United States. In the United States, said Muhammad Sayyaf, 16, "The Muslims are hunted by the non-Muslims."
In their theology classes, the students are taught to defend Islam against the infidels, Jews and Christians, and to strive to convert the infidels to their way of thinking. But the students are also heavily influenced by a cheap and strident anti-American mass-circulation magazine, Sabili, which characterizes Osama bin Laden as a hero.
Television is banned at the school, and computer use is very limited. Some boys said they slipped out to an Internet cafe in the nearby village to look at the Web site of Laskar Jihad, the militant Indonesian Islamic group. The group was involved in the recent killing of Christians in the Molucca Islands. 
Muhammad Fadhil said he devoured issues of Sabili, his main source of current affairs. He learned from the magazine, he said, that George Soros is a Hungarian Jew who runs the American economy; that Bill Clinton was once governor of Arkansas and had an affair with Monica Lewinsky; and that 4,000 Jews who worked in the World Trade Center took a holiday on Sept. 11.
For all their invective, Mr. Fadhil and his classmates were friendly to an outsider and curious about the United States. When asked what they knew about the United States, Muhammad Arifin, 16, shot back: Britney Spears. Another said Clint Mathis, the American soccer star.
Then came the questions. "How come the United States supports Israel?" asked one. "What were people doing in so many floors of the World Trade Center?" asked another. And then: "Why is Milosevic a violator of human rights, but Ariel Sharon is not? Sharon killed a lot of people when he was head of the army."
Several boys said that, if approached, they would join Al Qaeda or Laskar Jihad. Others demurred, saying they did not like violence.
Like many pesantrens, Hidayatullah began as the dream of its founder, Abdullah Said. He believed that the money from the timber and oil companies was ruining both the environment and the moral values of young Muslims in Kalimantan. In the early 1970's, he borrowed a farmer's hut in this village 20 miles from Balikpapan, East Kalimantan's capital, and used it as a sanctuary for study and prayer. In 1976, he opened the school and mosque on a 100-acre site.
Since the founder's death two years ago, this pesantren, and its subsidiaries, have become more strident in its teachings. Its Web site and magazine have lashed out at Indonesia's moderate Muslim leaders. A cover of a recent issue read, "Israel at 54, the savage country."
The more aggressive stance, combined with the conservative interpretation of Islam, has prompted some moderate Muslims to ask whether the Hidayatullah schools receive funds from Saudi Arabia. Photographs of official visitors from Saudi Arabia, including a Saudi Arabian ambassador to Indonesia, are displayed on the school's notice board.
The school's administrators denied they received money from abroad. They survive, they said, on modest fees from parents, about $15 a month, and a modicum of support from the Indonesian government.
The rudimentary facilities suggest that the finances, at least, are limited. The girls and boys are kept separate. The boys sleep in small rooms. One long wooden bench covered with linoleum -- no mattress -- accommodates 10 boys.
The girls wear long veils, though most do not cover their faces. They sleep on hard wood too, though they have individual bunk beds in pleasant light-filled dormitories. (In contrast to the prudish behavior codes, however, a teacher asked a visitor to give an impromptu talk to her English class on AIDS and its causes.)
The school takes seriously what it sees as its obligation to propagate Islam. Graduates are encouraged to marry one another, and to participate in mass weddings. They are then instructed to go out and establish new schools.
In the last several months, Indonesia's Muslim politicians have begun to ramp up their appeal to voters on a religious basis, and the pesantrens are part of the political circuit. The vice president of Indonesia, Hamza Haz, who leads the biggest Muslim-based political party, visited Hidayatullah last month.
Mr. Hamza, who has gone out of his way to support the militant Laskar Jihad, left behind a $2,000 check earmarked for the expansion of the mosque, school officials said.







   
 

June 19, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 Iran and The War Of Ideas 

 
What if a theocracy and a democracy had a baby? What would it look like? It would look like Iran.
     What makes Iran so interesting is that it's not a real democracy, but it's not a real Islamic theocracy either. It is, though, just enough of a democracy for many Iranians to know that they want more of it, and just enough of an Islamic theocracy for many Iranians to know they want less of it. 
 And if you listen to what's going on behind all the noise here, what you find are a lot of thinkers, both democrats and religious conservatives, looking for a way to synthesize these two aspirations. 
You find democratic reformers who have learned from the shah's failed attempt at imposed secularism, and from the past 23 years of Islamic rule, that no democracy will take root in Iran that doesn't find a respected place for Islam.
And you find religious thinkers who have also learned from the last 23 years that Iranians have lived through enough incompetent clerics trying to run a government -- and trying to tell people what they should wear, think and speak -- to know that Islam can't regulate every aspect of a nation's life in the modern age without producing a backlash. Many young Iranians are now running away from the mosques and dislike clerics so much that some mullahs take off their turbans and robes when they walk around certain neighborhoods, to avoid being insulted or harassed.
But precisely because Iran is this crazy semi-democracy (unlike Iraq or Saudi Arabia) -- precisely because people here get arrested every day for speaking out, then go to prison and write books, then get released, then run for Parliament, speak out, start a reformist newspaper and get arrested again -- there is a lively debate about how to find a better balance between state and religion. 
One day I went to see Amir Mohebian, the political editor of Ressalat, a religious conservative newspaper, who told me: "At the time of the revolution we offered certain religious values to the society in a maximalist way. . . . Now we are witnessing a backlash. So I am proposing a new definition for an Islamic society. In this definition we won't try converting people into religious people. We just don't want to have a deviant society. If we go on pressing for maximalist religious values we will increase the gap between the generations. If we articulate a minimalist definition, we can have a lot in common with the new generation."
The same day I visited Mohsen Sazgara, a former aide to Ayatollah Khomeini, now a reformer, who is opening a paper staffed by and directed at Iranian students. He said: "We believed that we would overthrow the shah and establish a new government, an Islamic government, that would show the world a new way. But what we did after the victory of the revolution was not a new way. We did not succeed in marrying democracy and Islam. That led to the reform movement. . . . But it has failed, because it had no constitutional power. In the Constitution there was a religious authority above everything that could always block changes. So now we have to push for real constitutional democracy -- not religious democracy but real democracy, with a respected place for religion under it." 
Such a synthesis will take a long time to play out here. For now, the Islamic regime is still deeply entrenched, thanks to oil money that can buy friends, and an iron fist that can crush all domestic foes. The hard-line clerics will not give way easily, and they are not afraid to make enemies abroad, because tensions help them militarize Iranian society and shut down criticism. Yet even the hard-line clerics seem to realize that they cannot survive indefinitely on coercion alone, which is why they let the debate go on.
It's ironic that the war of ideas that the West hoped would be fought in the Arab Muslim world after Sept. 11 -- a war against the Islamic fascism of Osama bin Laden that would be waged by Arabs offering a democratic, Islamic, progressive alternative -- has not happened, because there is not enough democracy in most places there for that war to even begin. But it is being fought in Iran -- not in response to Sept. 11 but in response to Iran's own bad experiences with secular despotism and religious despotism.
Wish them well. If Iranian thinkers and politicians were ever to blend constitutional democracy with a redefined Islam that limits itself to inspiring social norms, not running a state, it could have a positive impact on the whole Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia, that Iran's Islamic revolution never had. 







   
 

June 17, 2002 Monday  
  



 A Long War Slices Deep In Indonesia 

 
On a Friday just before noon prayers in the simple wooden mosque, soldiers stormed into this village, herded the people together and, according to two residents, marched them toward a neighboring hamlet, setting fire to houses as they went.
     After six weeks, the village elder, Bin Ali, 52, and his neighbor, Agus Salim, 35, summoned the courage to return to the ashes of their life's possessions. In the debris of Mr. Bin's home, only a white porcelain serving dish, a present to his wife, survived intact. 
 Next door, Mr. Agus, choking with emotion, fingered the charred wreckage of his motorcycle. It had been his sole means of livelihood. Empty military ration cans were strewn on the red earth, silvery reminders of who had been here last. 
"I feel hurt, very sad," said Mr. Bin, as he recalled the events of April 26, when he said soldiers accused the people of harboring rebels. The villagers denied the charges, but to no avail. "The military knows who is a rebel and who is not," Mr. Bin said. "Why do we have to be involved?"
This is the dirty war in Aceh, the northernmost province of Indonesia, rich in natural gas, where an insurgency, spearheaded by separatist guerrillas of the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, has ebbed and flowed since 1976.
In its current phase, the guerrillas are on the defensive, pushed back from urban centers now thick with soldiers and police patrols. The military, recently reinforced and deployed in far greater numbers than anywhere else, is under orders from the central government to wrap up the war once and for all.
But civilian killings have also increased in recent months, Western officials say, and rights groups report deaths, torture, disappearances and arbitrary arrests almost daily.
As part of its campaign against terror, the United States is renewing a relationship with Indonesia's military and police forces. Ties were severed in 1999, primarily because of rights abuses in East Timor.
At the Bush administration's request, Congress has approved a plan for the United States to help Indonesia create an elite counterterrorism police unit. Later in the year, the administration is expected to ask for funds to help the Indonesian military create a peacekeeping unit for use in the internal conflicts that rage in several parts of Indonesia.
But some lawmakers, like Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, say that the military, historically one of the most abusive in Asia, must first be held accountable for its past human rights transgressions, and show improvement in places like Aceh.
"The Indonesian military is perceived as not having a very sensible attitude about how to deal with the war," said an administration official. "They are not in full observance of the rules of war or of human rights."
Advocates of the new links with Indonesia's army and police, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, argue that Indonesia can only become a model of a moderate Muslim country if it is fortified by an United States-influenced military that is able to hold the archipelago country together against the forces of extremism.
Aceh, dense with lush palm oil and cocoa trees and towering stands of coconut and rubber, is a province on the northernmost tip of Sumatra. Arab traders arrived in the 15th century, and it remains the most devoutly Muslim region of the world's most populous Muslim nation.
People here describe themselves as fervent adherents of Islam, but they are not fundamentalists.
Religion, in any case, the people say, has little to do with the conflict and nearly everything to do with not wanting to share their rich energy, mineral and food resources with what they call a corrupt central government in Jakarta.
The government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri has offered special autonomy for Aceh that would allow the province to keep a greater percentage of the revenues from its natural resources. In a nod to the feelings about Islam, the government has also allowed provincial authorities to introduce Shariah, or Islamic law.
Those gestures have proved insufficient, and the war bleeds on. Successive American administrations have opposed independence for Aceh. No other major government supports independence, either, a stance that means the province is unlikely to ever separate from Indonesia as East Timor recently did.
Intermittent meetings between the two sides, sponsored by the Henry Dunant Center in Switzerland, a human rights group, have provided little movement toward a solution.
In instructing the military to prosecute the war in Aceh more vigorously, President Megawati installed Brig. Gen. Yusuf Djali, 52, in February as the new military commander of Aceh. The general has received some positive notices from Western military officials for trying a new tactic: winning the hearts and minds of the ordinary people.
During an interview at his headquarters, General Djali said, "I keep telling my soldiers that the indicator of your success in the field is that when you leave, the villagers will cry for you."
But the army's burning of villages like Butit Meranti continues with only slightly less intensity than before the general's arrival, the Western military officials said.
Often, villagers suspected of having helped the rebels are shot. Here in Butit Meranti, a deaf plantation worker, Abdul Wahab, 35, was gunned down by soldiers as he emerged from the forest, because, unlike some other villagers, he was confused and unable to run away quickly enough, Mr. Bin said.
Almost every day in Lhokseumawe, the city closest to the natural gas fields, workers of the Indonesian Red Cross said they pick up bodies shot at close range and dumped on the street. The cause of death is usually listed as "O.T.K." for "orang tak kenal" or "persons unknown."
The day before Mr. Bin went back to Butit Meranti, one such body lay in the Lhokseumawe hospital morgue, the neck and ankles wrapped with wire, a bullet hole in the back of the skull and streaks of dried blood down the torso.
A Red Cross worker, Faisal, said he had received a phone call at dawn requesting that he come to pick up the body near the Customs Office. "It was an 'O.T.K.,' " he said. "It happens frequently."
While the GAM guerrillas are under pressure, they are still operating in the interior. 
In January, the army killed the rebels' long-time military leader, the Libyan-trained Tengku Abdullah Syafei. Another Libyan-trained fighter, Muzakkir Abdul Manaf, who claims to have been a bodyguard for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, quickly replaced him.
The rebels generally garner more sympathy than the military, but their popularity has ebbed as they have turned increasingly to crime and extortion.
To emphasize the Bush administration's opposition to independence for Aceh, Matt Daley, deputy assistant secretary of state, recently visited Hasan di Tiro, the titular head of GAM who lives in exile in Sweden, and told him that Washington wanted him to accept the Indonesian government's offer of special autonomy.
In April, the administration also sent Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a special adviser to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, to the talks at the Henry Dunant Center. General Zinni told the Indonesian government that it could no longer keep the conflict hidden from outside observers and that the government had to accept international monitors.
The former commander of United Nation peacekeeping troops in Bosnia, Gen. Sir Rupert Smith, is scheduled to visit Aceh soon to explain to the Indonesian military that accepting international monitors would enhance their tattered reputation.
Whether the Indonesian government will agree to such openness is far from certain. Diplomats said Ms. Megawati's government appears to feel little pressure from Washington on the issue of international monitors, and it taking substantial comfort from Washington's opposition to an independent Aceh. "The United States support for Indonesia's integrity -- that is big support for us," General Djali said.
The burning of Butit Meranti is one example where outside monitors could cause problems for the military.
In the days after the April 26 raid on Butit Meranti, General Djali acknowledged in a local newspaper that his soldiers had burned houses -- he put the number at seven -- and apologized to the villagers.
But later, when a reporter who had visited Butit Meranti called the general to say that in fact 36 houses were burned, and 29 were left standing, he changed his story.
After the newspaper report appeared, General Djali said, he had sent his investigators to the village. "This team found that GAM had burned the villagers' houses, not our soldiers," he said.






 Dolan Media Newswires
      
New Orleans CityBusiness (New Orleans, LA)

June 17, 2002 Monday



 Freeport-McMoRan mining company has banner year

 
Freeport-McMoRan managed to shave the cost of extracting copper out of a mountain in Indonesia down to 7 cents a pound this year.
The New Orleans-based mining company has long held the title of the world's lowest cost copper producer, but this year it has broken its own records. It beat a banner year in 1999 when its average copper production cost was 9 cents a pound. 
One of the major reasons Freeport-McMoRan is able to produce such low cost copper is that its mines in the Papua region of Indonesia are also rich in gold. The company credits the gold it finds in the mines as a credit against the cost to produce copper.
This year the company mined 1.4 billion pounds of copper and 2.6 million ounces of gold -- the most gold Freeport has mined during a fiscal year.
"We have some wonderful ore deposits in both copper and gold," says Bill Collier, Freeport's spokesman.
As Freeport-McMoRan digs into the Grasberg mine in Papua, it encounters copper and gold veins of varying richness. Generally, Freeport has better results during quarters and years where the company hits a fertile pocket of ore. It reported net income of $76.5 million in 2001, which is nearly double its results for 2000 when it temporarily shut down part of its operation after an avalanche of waste rock killed four Freeport contractors.
In fiscal 2001, Freeport hit a rich stratum of ore. So far in 2002, the company has seen the quality of its ore drop, but it expects its ore grades to return to normal by fiscal year end.
Shortly after Sept. 11, there was some isolated anti-American protests in Jakarta, the capital of Muslim-dominated Indonesia. But Collier points out that those protests were 2,500 miles away from Freeport's mine in Papua. Indonesia, which has witnessed its share of political instability, had a peaceful transition at the top of its government last year. Newly installed President Megawati Sukarnoputri traveled to Washington in late September to voice her support for the U.S. war on terrorism.
The tribal people who live near Freeport's mine are usually not Muslim, but through the years, relations with them have sometimes been strained. Collier says Freeport is doing its part to improve the lot of the tribal people who live around the mine, many of whom are employed by Freeport.
Last year, the company established trusts for the Amungme and Komoro tribes. The company also established a hospital in Banti. "It brings high quality medical care to the people in the highlands. We have already made that care available to the people in the lowlands," says Collier.
Meanwhile, Freeport has consolidated its two classes of stock into one. Collier says analysts have been recommending that change for years. The company says the move will simplify Freeport's accounting, reduce administrative expenses and improve the company's flexibility to structure financial transactions.
 --C.B.







   
 

June 11, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 Jakarta Journal; 
Boy Kisses Girl: That's Sweet, and Sensational!

 
It was the kiss. Lips to lips. Not a deep Hollywood smooch, but not a light brush either.
     An attractive 16-year-old Indonesian girl and her handsome boyfriend kissing on screen in the Indonesian-made movie "What's With Love?" helped create the box office sensation of the year in this predominantly Muslim country.  
 Teenage audiences cheered: the boys whistled, the girls murmured. Even adults, who had been expected to disapprove, liked it.
The slick American-style movie shot in the streets of this hyperactive city and in the corridors of a well-to-do high school has outgrossed "Titanic" and "Lord of the Rings," two of the most successful Hollywood imports here.
"We felt we had to show something that's real," said Mira Lesmana, the movie's very hip, very expansive 37-year-old producer and screenwriter.
"There's been too much self-censorship among the older generation. They are so used to Hollywood kissing, but as soon as they see Indonesians kissing they think it will give a bad image. We, the new generation, don't feel that way."
After all, she said, "Indonesians do kiss."
The success of "What's With Love?" says more about Indonesia today than the flutter about one scene. Until now, most Indonesian movies centered on the eternal struggle of rural life. Ms. Lesmana's movie, and a precursor she made a few years ago, "Kuldesak," are urban dramas.
"What's With Love?" is about students from the middle class or above who face quandaries similar to those of their peers in the West. For the first time, broken homes and domestic violence appear in a modern Indonesian movie.
American icons are everywhere in the film. The school cafeteria serves burgers and fries; a Coca-Cola machine seems to appear in every other scene. Many of the students drive their parents' latest-model pastel colored cars to school. Ms. Lesmana and her crew got some of their film training directing commercials in Jakarta for Western products, and the film has some of the fresh look of American television advertising.
With production costs totaling $400,000, however, the movie cost less than one commercial in the United States. "We joke that it wouldn't even cover the catering costs for one Hollywood movie," she said.
The characters in the movie are Cinta -- the word also happens to mean love in Indonesian -- and Rangga, the boy with whom she falls in love. She is quite rich; he is not. He is bookish; she is not. She is gregarious, the girl of the moment; he is a loner. She comes from a stable family. His parents are divorced because his mother could not cope when her husband became a political dissident.
They meet in the school library, and a book he is reading, "Aku," about an Indonesian poet, serves as the initial connection. After Cinta falls for Rangga, he tells her that he is going with his father to live abroad, to escape the constraints of Indonesia. The closing airport scene features the kiss.
Ms. Lesmana is unabashed in her admiration for American movies. "Star Wars" and "E.T." were significant influences, she said over a coffee and cigarette at the Coffee Bean, a sparkling meeting place in an upscale shopping mall here where she usually starts her mornings with her husband, Mathias Muchus, an actor. 
She knows "Pulp Fiction" scene by scene. "Clueless," the Beverly Hills high-school movie of the late 1990's, provided some of the inspiration for her current hit. She is eagerly awaiting the arrival of "Spiderman." 
Some of the tensions in the movie evolved from her own experiences.
In 1979, her father, Jack, a jazz musician, decided to take the family to Sydney, Australia, so that her brother could study music at a conservatory there. Ms. Lesmana, then 16 and looking forward to the clubby high-school atmosphere in Jakarta, found that she had to adapt to the entirely different culture of Strathfield Girls High School. The serge uniform, heavy duty stockings and single-sex education were too much.
"I had spent most of my time with boys, who were good friends," she said. "You go to a girls' school and they talk about boys as though they are a different species. I thought, 'What is this?' "
To make things worse, Ms. Lesmana, who was very proud of her fluent English, could not understand the Australian drawl. She soon transferred to an international coeducational school.
With her passion for film, she decided she wanted to attend the Australian Film and Television School in Sydney, the training ground for Peter Weir, the Hollywood director. But Ms. Lesmana was told she had too little experience to enroll. She decided to return home, and entered the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. 
"I liked being home," she said. "I liked the school, I learned a lot."
She graduated in 1988. With the Indonesian film industry under the thumb of the Suharto dictatorship, she made soap, shampoo and food commercials for the next decade.
By the time the Suharto restrictions were lifted four years ago, she was ready. Her first major success came last year with a children's musical movie, "Sherina's Adventure," starring a popular child singer, Sherina Munaf." While there are no current plans to show "What's With Love?" in the United States, an aide to Ms. Lesmana said they planned to submit it to the New York Film Festival.
The measure of Cinta's wholesome appeal came home to Ms. Lesmana in a recent encounter in a shopping mall.
"A young mother, who was wearing a jilbab, approached me," she said, referring to the head covering often worn by Indonesia's Muslim women. "She said: 'You're Mira Lesmana? I'm very happy you made the film. Not only were my children entertained, they learned a lot about poetry. Don't worry about the kissing scene. It was very daring but very important that our children learn how to express love.' "
Ms. Lesmana added, "And I thought she was going to scream at me."







  



June 8, 2002 Saturday  




 Puppets for the People; 
Indonesian Art Form Gleefully Breaches Time and Cultures

 
 Tizar Purbaya, one of the most celebrated puppet masters of Indonesia, has a fair command of English, but it doesn't hurt to have a translator to help with the occasional hard-to-place word. When he starts telling a story, however, he doesn't need any assistance. There's a visible change in him, a kind of expansion and animation, so much so that even the room -- a formal hall in the palatial Indonesian Embassy -- seems transformed. He begins to take up more space, and a big room suddenly feels quite small. 
 Tizar is a dalang, or puppet master, not of the more famous (at least in this country) Indonesian shadow puppet theater, but of an earthier, more populist form known as wayang golek. Unlike flat leather shadow puppets, the puppets of the wayang golek are fully three-dimensional, controlled by a central rod and two sticks for the arms.  
 They are extraordinary works of art even when inanimate; in the hands of a dalang, their rudimentary motions take on exceptional subtlety. They strut and mope, bean each other on the head a lot, and enact complex stories while all the time swaying just a little bit, rather like people on the edge of a dance floor can't resist the compulsion to let the music move through their extremities. 
 Before his first public performances in this country (this weekend in Virginia and Monday at the Corcoran), Tizar performed Thursday night for an invitation-only audience at his country's embassy. It was a French-cuff and wool suit crowd; if there was something pinned on a lapel, it probably wasn't there just to look pretty. 
 In between episodes of a story (so Byzantine as to defy any summary) taken from the epic poem the Mahabharata, Tizar brought forth one of his clown puppets -- smoking a cigarette. Red-faced, flatulent and with an enormous rump that moved independently, the clown addressed His Excellency the Ambassador of Indonesia, and the assembled dignitaries. 
 The clown's message: I know there's no smoking here, but this is a good cigarette and I'm going to enjoy it. He then proceeded to (how to put this delicately?) smoke it more than one way. This talent may contribute to his unique powers with windiness. One got the sense that this is the kind of clown who hits the sauce at 5 o'clock and starts telling the truth. 
 "Politicians love to have dalangs on their side," says Mimi Herbert, a resident of Loudoun County and author of "Voices of the Puppet Masters," a recently published book of interviews with masters of wayang golek. The dalang is a revered figure, but by no means a remote or sanctimonious one. He is a moralist and a jester, an artist and pundit. He directs the gamelan orchestra that accompanies the action, manipulates the puppets, channels their voices and, according to believers, infuses them with a deep, mystical spirituality.  
 The political commentary can be quite sharp. In the late 1960s, when the Sukarno government fell to Suharto, Tizar and other dalangs found themselves blacklisted, while others were co-opted to support state programs. In the late 1940s, when the country was repulsing Dutch colonial rule, puppet theater evolved to include overtly political, anti-colonial stories and messages. 
 Even today, the form is evolving in response to new pressures and social changes, including urbanization. Tizar has created what he calls wayang betawi, a style based on stories familiar to the people of Jakarta -- a major new development for the traditionally rural form. 
 Tizar is a populist. When other dalangs were performing in Sundanese, the traditional language of wayang golek, he started performing in Indonesian to reach a wider public. He is designing his new puppets to be more sophisticated, to do more tricks. One can stick out its tongue. He still performs the traditional stories, most drawn from the Mahabharata or the Ramayana, but he invents new ones as well. He also seeks out audiences of children. 
 The wayang golek shows the classic signs of an art form under pressure: A handful of superstar dalangs have emerged, while many others toil in the shadows and have difficulty making money; commercialization and mass production of the puppets threaten the livelihood of traditional craftsmen; and then there are all those "entertainment options" that come with television, pop music and film. 
 But it's still popular. Master dalangs pop up on television talk shows and the radio. Tizar, a veteran actor in the theater and movies, has just signed on to act in 16 episodes of an Indonesian television program. The downside of acting, he says, is that he is somebody else's puppet. 
 "When I was born, I was named Tizar Muhammad," he says. He changed his name to Tizar Purbaya (borrowing a name for one of the most popular Mahabharata heroes) because, "Muhammad was too clean for me. I am not like that." 
 It's a remark that says a lot about Tizar, and about the apparent contradictions of the form, contradictions that may be its best hope for survival. Wayang golek, often based on stories from Hindu tradition, was used to spread Islam in Indonesia; it remains a form dedicated to Islamic values (with a lot of Sufi mysticism blended in). 
 In other forms of Islam, there are prohibitions against making representations of the human figure, hence the development of particularly rich ornamental and calligraphic arts in many Islamic countries. And despite the suppression of music in some Islamic countries (the Taliban devastated Afghan musical culture), wayang golek is accompanied by a gamelan orchestra -- a relatively quiet and stately gamelan as opposed to the Balinese gamelan known in the West. 
 It is a splendidly heterogenous theatrical form: sacred but ribald, highly structured but wildly digressive and improvisational, with Hindu stories but Islamic spirituality. It is musical and theatrical. It is sometimes very realistic, at other times highly stylized. And so on. In his brief demonstration at the Indonesian Embassy, Tizar incorporated a riff on Mike Tyson's taste for ear nibbling into the story of Gatotkaca, a warrior prince transformed by volcanic fire into a kind of superhero. 
 "Just like Spider-Man," says Tizar, whose mood fluctuates between the droll and the riotous. It's not clear if he's serious. 
 Asked whether the form, in which a full play can last from early evening till dawn, can survive the distractions of mass entertainment, Tizar responds with an apple and a banana. The apple is a fruit from northern and wealthier climes; the banana is a poor man's fruit, he says. He holds an imaginary banana and an imaginary apple in the air. 
 "Will the apple eat the banana?" he asks. No. The dalang eats them both. 
 Performances at the Reston Regional Library, today at 3 p.m.; the Rust Library in Leesburg, tomorrow at 2 p.m.; and at the Corcoran, Monday at 7 p.m. 







   
 

June 2, 2002 Sunday  
  



 Pentagon Official Seeks Support for Moderate Muslim Nations 

 
The Pentagon's second-in-command sought to rally support in Asia today for moderate Muslim nations and their people who find themselves "on the front lines of the struggle against terrorism."
     Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, said the United States and its allies in the region "have an obligation" and "a self-interest" to support tolerant Muslims who champion democratic practices. "When we help give them moral and material support against the opposition they encounter, we are indeed helping lay the foundation for peace," he said.  
 Speaking at the three-day Asia Security Conference here, Mr. Wolfowitz said the region's long-term stability rested on several pillars, including continued American engagement.
But Mr. Wolfowitz, a former ambassador to Indonesia, put special emphasis on strengthening ties with certain Muslim nations, including many in Asia, because "they represent some of the most moderate and tolerant traditions in Islam.
"These voices are essential to bridging the dangerous gap that now exists between the West and the Muslim world," said Mr. Wolfowitz, reprising a theme he first voiced publicly last month in Monterey, Calif.
But here on the other side of the Pacific, where nearly half of the world's one billion Muslims live, Mr. Wolfowitz's remarks carried added resonance. This tiny city-state has Malaysia and Indonesia as neighbors, two countries with huge Muslim populations that are both in the throes of combating terrorist cells.
As he did in the Monterey speech, Mr. Wolfowitz paid tribute to moderate Islamic countries like Turkey, Morocco and Jordan.
His speech today, delivered to more than 150 defense officials, legislators, academics, industry executives and journalists gathered by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, carried the cold-war echo of an ideological battle. "This larger war is a struggle against the enemies of tolerance and freedom, against the enemies of modernity and secularism, of pluralism and democracy, and real economic development," he said.
In the campaign against terror, many Asian allies have helped, he said. Japan has provided transport planes and has led the effort to mobilize reconstruction aid for Afghanistan. Australian commandos have fought in eastern Afghanistan. New Zealand has provided logistical support. The region has overcome historical animosities and complex territorial disputes, he said.
While Mr. Wolfowitz did not lay out the detailed, long-term American strategy for Asia that some experts had hoped for, he offered suggestions of how some areas might evolve.
For example, Mr. Wolfowitz provided a relatively upbeat assessment of how an increasingly powerful China could play a positive role in the region. "We can be much more hopeful of a positive outcome in China's case because all of the countries of the region are prepared to welcome a strong Chinese role in a constructive regional order," he said.
Mr. Wolfowitz said that he and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had discussed several defense-related issues with Vice President Hu Jintao of China at the Pentagon recently. Those talks produced an agreement to send Peter W. Rodman, an assistant secretary of defense, to Beijing this month to discuss increased military-to-military contacts. 




13


   
 

June 1, 2002 Saturday  
  



 Pentagon Official Warns Asians to Guard Against Terror 

 
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz warned America's allies in Asia today to keep their guard up against terrorist activities within their borders, cautioning that even nations with large Muslim populations remain targets for attack by Islamic extremists.
      "I still think the terrorism problem is felt as a little bit remote, as a little bit America's problem," Mr. Wolfowitz told reporters traveling with him to a three-day regional security conference here that ends on Sunday. "It's not just America's problem. The targets also very explicitly include the 500 million Muslims who live in the Pacific Rim."  
 Mr. Wolfowitz, a former ambassador to Indonesia, said he intended to use his stature as the highest-ranking Pentagon official to visit Southeast Asia since the Sept. 11 attacks to underscore that the Bush administration's long-term goals in the capaign against terror extended well beyond Afghanistan.
 "Perhaps, they may not realize quite how committed the United States is or quite how long we expect this to take," Mr. Wolfowitz said, referring to Asian allies, a few hours before separate meetings with military officials from Indonesia, Singapore and India.
 On Monday, Mr. Wolfowitz is to fly to the southern Philippines to meet with American troops who are helping Philippine soldiers hunt down a small band of Muslim extremists, known as Abu Sayyaf, who are holding two American hostages, Martin and Gracia Burnham.
 Bush administration officials have generally praised the help they are receiving from Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines in rooting out terrorists and their training grounds. But Mr. Wolfowitz and other top American officials are gently prodding Indonesia to step up its efforts.
 "Could they do more? Probably," Mr. Wolfowitz said before his meeting with Matori Abdul Djalil, Indonesia's defense minister.
 After the meeting, Mr. Matori said his government was committed to combating terrorists throughout the archipelago's 13,000 islands, but ruled out sending American troops to Indonesia to assist, a step that officials in both countries have concluded would stir anti-American sentiment.
 Administration officials have long worried that Al Qaeda could intensify its focus on Asia.
 "The Southeast Asians, in particular, have had the experience of some very serious bad actors connected to Al Qaeda planning and conducting terrorist activities in their countries," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
 As members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network have fled Afghanistan, "their main refuge so far has not been Southeast Asia," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "But every time you cut them off in one place, they're going to look for other places. Southeast Asian countries remain vulnerable for that reason."
 Earlier this year, the F.B.I. said Malaysia was a staging area for the Sept. 11 attacks and a base for Al Qaeda. Malaysian officials have rejected that assessment, saying it was unfair to describe Malaysia as anything more than a "transit point" for Qaeda operatives.
 But American investigators say that Muslim extremists in Malaysia appear to have organized "sleeper cells" of Islamic militants throughout Southeast Asia, and that they may have given direction to a network based here in neighboring Singapore, which had planned to blow up the embassies here of the United States, Israel, Australia and Britain.
 The plot was apparently foiled when 13 terror suspects were arrested in Singapore, a tiny, tightly policed city-state, late last year. During interrogations, officials here said, the suspects described a well-organized terror network stretching across several nations in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, which has a large Muslim population, and Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation.
 Indonesia faces increasing breakdowns in law and order, as well as separatist movements in two major provinces, and Mr. Wolfowitz today reaffirmed the Pentagon's call to resume relations with the Indonesian military.
 The United States severed military ties three years ago in response to atrocities the Indonesian Army committed in East Timor. Mr. Matori, the defense minister, told Mr. Wolfowitz and a Congressional delegation attending the conference here that the Indonesia military had made several important changes, including putting the armed forces under civilian control and establishing tribunals for human rights violators.
 Critics, including the author of the sanctions, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, have expressed skepticism about the changes. But two senators influential in foreign affairs, Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, and Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, voiced confidence today that Congress would approve some conditional assistance by this summer.
 The Pentagon wants Congress to help finance a plan for training and equipping a domestic peacekeeping force to help Indonesia quell sectarian violence. It also wants lawmakers to approve money to assist the Indonesians to establish their own counterterrorism unit.
 "Democracy in Indonesia is not going to survive without an effective and reformed military," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "There's no question about the need for reforming the Indonesian military. They've made some steps. They still have more they need to do. We want to give some carrot as well as some stick. So far, it's been pretty much all stick."







   
 

May 26, 2002 Sunday  
  



 Romance, in Cosmo's World, Is Translated in Many Ways 

 
Forty magazine editors came from all over the world to a conference room in the TriBeCa Grand Hotel in Lower Manhattan last week searching for thoroughly American alchemy. They sat quietly, even reverently, waiting for that one white-hot piece of the puzzle that would put their magazine over the top. Before them stood Kate White, the editor in chief of the American version of Cosmopolitan. In their world, she is a demigoddess, the editor of a mothership with a circulation of 2.76 million.
     Power Point slide No. 9 clicked into place: "What's Hot Now: Beefcake." 
 Ms. White paused so that the women, all of whom edit international versions of Cosmo, could absorb the deep implications of the trend, along with the impressive nearly naked male on the screen. 
"You need portfolios that show hunky-looking guys," Ms. White said finally.
Ferocious scribbling ensued.
And no wonder. Each of the editors is intent on bringing Cosmo's tangy fusion of sex and empowerment to their homelands, and Hearst Magazines International is, more than ever, happy to help.
Despite abundant resentment abroad about United States cultural hegemony, Hearst is charging ahead with plans to expand overseas. Hemmed in by soaring costs and declining readership domestically, American publishers like Hearst are feeling a growing urgency to tap into the aspirations of women all over the world to conquer unanticipated markets. With a formula almost as closely guarded as Coca-Cola's -- there is a secret 50-page instruction manual -- Cosmopolitan, Hearst's naughty girlfriend of a magazine, has increased its circulation to 8.2 million worldwide, even extending its brand to places where readers have to hide the magazine from their husbands.
After adding nine editions in the last two years, Cosmo will soon publish in 50 countries, including the recently opened Latvian edition and a Kazakhstan Cosmo that makes its debut in September.
A product that seems as American as "Sex and the City" now flirts with newsstand shoppers on six of the seven continents and produces hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Hearst, suggesting that deep cleavage and thinner thighs have global legs.
"Things American are not viewed as negatively as we might read about," said George J. Green, president of Hearst Magazines International. "There's a huge appetite for these magazines out there."
The universal dialect in the world of Cosmo is romance followed very closely by overheated pillow talk. Cosmo appeals to women who are coming of age because they can sample adult pleasures without becoming enmeshed in adult worries.
These feelings are evidently transferable. "Underneath the veil or shmatte, every woman wants to be loved and cherished," said Helen Gurley Brown, who reinvented Cosmo in in 1965 and still wears a micro-miniskirt at 80.
Or as Grazyna Olbrych, the editor of Polish Cosmo, put it: "Cosmo is not about culture. When you are young, you want to have a young man who loves you and have great sex with him."
For Hearst and its Cosmo importers, the trick is to navigate Cosmo's universal message around a variety of political, social and linguistic obstacles. For example, replicating Cosmo's slightly depraved cover presentation in 28 languages can be difficult.
"In Finland, the words for 'sexy' have about 35 letters and 15 umlauts," said Tina Totterman, editor of Finnish Cosmo, standing near the piano at an opening cocktail party.
The Cosmo mantra of "Fun, Fearless Female" requires a bit of a makeover to resonate with other far-flung audiences. In India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, there are no Cosmo articles about sexual positions. The mammoth Chinese version never mentions sex because it is forbidden, said the editor, Vera Xu. Instead, articles about uplifting cleavage are replaced by uplifting stories about youthful dedication, although there is still plenty of advice on how to look your best. Sex also gets less attention in the Swedish version, but for precisely the opposite reason: In a wide-open culture, the word has little of the sizzle that it has here.
In France, the editor, Anne Chabrol, also confronts a readership very comfortable -- even bored, she says -- with sexual matters. She has responded by running a contest asking in French "Does he cheat on you?" and the winner is awarded the services of a private detective to find out for sure.
Honoring local idiosyncrasy is critical, said Mr. Green and the editors. Ms. Totterman, the Finnish editor, said putting Britney Spears on the local cover of the "Fun, Fearless Female" issue, a special issue all the magazines publish, would not work in her market. It has to be someone Finnish, someone local readers can identify with. Similarly, the Hong Kong edition uses mostly Asian faces with pictures of local celebrities. But in China, there is still a hunger for Western images. "We are a developing country and just opening up to the West, so people are very interested in seeing what is going on in other places," Ms. Xu said.
Still, certain standards must be observed. The woman on the Cosmo cover -- it is always a woman -- should have large hair, remarkable features and not too much clothing.
"Hearst is a great partner, as long as you don't put a guy on the cover," said Ellen Verbeek, co-editor of Russian Cosmo along with Elena Myasnikova. Ms. Verbeek said that Cosmo fills a need for the young Russian woman. (Before Cosmo arrived in 1994, young Russian women had to choose generally between magazine titles that Hearst officials roughly translate as Factory Woman and Farming Woman.)
But those needs may be a bit different from those of the American Cosmo reader.
"We did an article about how to have sex when you live with your parents because so many young Russian couples can't afford to move out," Ms. Verbeek said.
In some places, business can get rough. Publishing glossy magazines in third world countries or crippled post-industrial economies goes beyond picking out chic clothes and riffing on the importance of good hair.
"I have no connections and in Hungary everyone has to deal with what is like the Mafia," said Anita Pocsik, the editor of Cosmo in Hungary. "They say I have to hire this person, and go to this printer. I give them nothing. I worked two years straight, standing at the printer and signing pages, because without that, nothing would get done."
Reda Gaudiamo, whose magazine has a circulation of 127,000 in Indonesia, the largest Islamic nation in the world, said she had received letters from Muslim groups saying she is "helping Indonesian women love sex too much." 
She said, "I wrote to them and said this is what Indonesia needs." She added, "For a long time, we never talked about sex."
Still, she said, she does "tone down the sex articles."
The magazine is not welcome everywhere. Mr. Green said some conservative markets will remain unconquered. In 1984, the government of Singapore banned versions of the magazine that had been produced elsewhere. (It has subsequently authorized local production of Harper's Bazaar, a Hearst fashion magazine, but not Cosmo.) In general, Mr. Green said that the company emphasizes indigenous partnerships and locally produced content, which keep its products from becoming a focus of anti-Americanism.
"Nobody has ever tossed us," Mr. Green said. "That doesn't mean it couldn't happen, but we are not a political magazine." Indeed, any hint that a satellite magazine is forgoing articles about the "yummiest underthings" for issues of local moment will bring a stern letter from Hearst.
Last week, the Cosmo editors, who seemed like a novel flock of rare birds confined to a hotel conference room in New York, went on a shopping trip and melted completely into the trendy diversified crowd a few blocks north in SoHo. That day, a terrorist alert was issued for New York City, a reminder that the global footprint of the United States has many ramifications.
For the women touring New York, there was no shock of the new. American fashion, music, and now magazines have created Westernized outposts in countries all over the world. When the editors went out to the Park, a Chelsea nightclub, for an evening of dancing, they were struck by its resemblance to the clubs they left behind.
"This is just like the clubs back home," Ms. Olbrych, the editor from Poland, said with noticeable disappointment. "It's the same music and everybody just stands around looking at each other."
Of course, some differences do exist. Priya Ramani, the editor of Cosmo in India, fingered a $208 price tag on an obviously Indian garment at a boutique named Scoop in SoHo.
"This would cost $5 or $6 where I am from," she said.
That evening, the women piled into City Hall, a restaurant on Duane Street, for the closing event: a minipep rally on the brand called Cosmo. Cathleen P. Black, the president of Hearst Magazines, a unit of the Hearst Corporation, reminded them that in returning home, they would be returning to increasingly competitive markets.
Some will be fighting a familiar enemy. A small-format edition of Conde Nast's Glamour, another magazine with American DNA, is gaining some ground on Cosmo in Europe. That fact left Ms. Black feeling a little riled, and she tried to export a common all-American business philosophy.
"I want you to go back charged up to squash Glamour, completely obliterate them, make them like a little armadillo on the road," she said, using a cultural motif that has a bit more resonance in Texas than Taiwan. But that may change soon enough.






  
  


May 14, 2002 Tuesday 



 U.S. wants Indonesia ties;
BUSH SEEKS TO RENEW MILITARY CONTACT CUT IN '99

 
The Bush administration believes the time has come to lift restrictions on military contacts with Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday.
The United States cut military assistance to protest human rights abuses in 1999 against independence supporters in the disputed territory of East Timor.
"The president and the secretary of state and I have all been interested in finding ways to work with the Congress to re-establish the kind of military-to-military relationships which we believe are appropriate," Rumsfeld said. "We are hopeful that we will be able to find support in the Congress to move in the right direction." 
Indonesian Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil, who met Monday with Rumsfeld, said Indonesia was committed to President Bush's war on terrorism, but would not allow U.S. troops on its soil to root out suspected terrorists.
"That is not our foreign policy, and we remain confident in the ability of our national police and the military to deal with these efforts," he said.
U.S. officials are eager to re-establish military contact with Indonesia because the Al-Qaida terrorist network and other Islamist extremist groups are believed to be operating there, drawing recruits from the country's religious schools.
"When you have a large and diverse nation such as Indonesia where you have areas that could become havens for terrorism, you want to have engagement with their military," a senior defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There has to be engagement, or you let what happened in Pakistan happen again, where you have a whole generation of the younger officer corps influenced by radicalism."
Some observers say the Indonesian military strengthens secular political parties, which face a growth of Islamic political power.
The Indonesian defense minister said his country had achieved substantial reforms in the past three years. It established the principle of civilian supremacy over the armed forces, and 18 high-ranking officials, including three army generals suspected of human rights abuses in East Timor, have been put on trial.
"We are determined to build a professional military in Indonesia," Matori said.
More than 1,000 people were killed in East Timor when the former Portuguese colony voted for independence from Indonesia. The Indonesian army was blamed for most of the violence, and Congress cut off military aid. Legislation prohibits the United States from resuming aid and military training until Indonesia demonstrates that it is committed to reform and to bringing those responsible for the massacres to justice.
Rumsfeld said the Pentagon planned to argue on Capitol Hill that those steps had been taken.
"They are addressing the human rights issues in an orderly, democratic way," Rumsfeld said.
An aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who sponsored the 1999 ban on military aid, expressed doubts about Indonesia's commitment to reform.







  



May 14, 2002 Tuesday  




 Concerned by Indonesia's Voice of Caution; 
U.S., Asian Diplomats Say Vice President Preventing More Forceful War on Terror

 
 Vexed by assertions that international terrorists may have burrowed into Indonesia, Vice President Hamzah Haz decided to find out for himself -- by hosting a dinner at his house for the country's Islamic extremist A-list. 
 Among those invited was Abubakar Baasyir, a cleric alleged to be the ideological leader of an al Qaeda-linked organization that plotted to blow up several Western embassies in Singapore with truck bombs. 
 Jafar Umar Thalib, whose Laskar Jihad militia has fought to evict Christians and implement Islamic law in the Moluccas islands, also was in attendance. So was Al-Habib Muhammad Rizieq bin Hussein Syihab, the leader of a group that threatened to forcibly expel Americans from Indonesia after the United States started bombing Afghanistan last year. 
 Haz, who leads Indonesia's largest Muslim political party, said the four-hour discussion over dinner in late March reinforced what he suspected, leaving him "certain that there are no terrorists in Indonesia."  
 "They only want to see that Indonesia has a religious society," Haz said in a recent interview. "None of them have an extreme character." 
 Although the vice presidency is a largely ceremonial office in Indonesia, Haz's opinions about Islamic radicalism are politically significant. Since Sept. 11, he has emerged as one of the most influential architects of the government's approach to dealing with terrorism, a role that has troubled the United States and some of Indonesia's neighbors. 
 Indonesian officials and Western diplomats said Haz has counseled President Megawati Sukarnoputri to move cautiously in rounding up alleged terrorists and clamping down on extremist groups, arguing that such actions require not just suspicions but incontrovertible proof of wrongdoing, which the country's intelligence service lacks. 
 Thus far, Megawati appears to be heeding that message. Despite requests from the governments of Singapore and Malaysia, Indonesian authorities have opted not to arrest Baasyir, who runs a large religious school where he lionizes Osama bin Laden and preaches about the importance of fighting holy wars. Government officials said they do not have evidence indicating he has broken Indonesian laws. 
 "There are some in the government who want to take firm steps against some of these groups," said a senior Indonesian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But there are others, including the vice president, who are telling the president to be careful, not to go too fast." 
 Indonesia's reluctance to rein in extremists and detain suspected terrorists has prompted concern in Washington and neighboring Asian capitals that the world's most populous Muslim country could become a base from which to plot new attacks. Although Western diplomats here said they respected Indonesia's insistence on having evidence before making arrests, they question whether authorities have been looking hard enough. 
 "They're not really at the point where they see international terrorism as a big problem for them," a senior U.S. official said. 
 Political analysts said that despite preaching prudence to Megawati, Haz, 62, a career politician from the Indonesian half of the island of Borneo, has shaped anti-terror policy more by what he has not said than by what he has. 
 Because Megawati is not regarded as sufficiently devout by conservative Muslims, she views Haz's support as crucial to neutralize the backlash from a crackdown on hard-line groups, the analysts said. "But he's refused to give her the green light, and she's uncomfortable to proceed without that backing," said Jusuf Wanandi, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group in Jakarta. 
 "He's the ballast in Indonesia's fight against terror," said a Western diplomat here. "He's not playing a helpful role." 
Since taking office last July, Megawati has spent relatively little time reaching out to conservative Muslim groups, leaving that task to Haz, Wanandi said. "She's let him set the agenda with the Muslims," he said. "She hasn't reined him in." 
 Haz said he does not condone terrorism, but added that he does not regard radical groups as worthy of automatic suspicion. Among senior government officials, he has some of the most sympathetic attitudes toward the activities of Baasyir and other hard-line Muslim figures. 
 Haz said his stance was shaped by 32 years of dictatorship under former president Suharto, when scores of Muslim leaders were jailed on trumped-up subversion charges. 
 "We are living in an era of human rights and supremacy of the law," he said. "In the past, you could arrest people just like that. Now we can't do that anymore." 
 Haz said there are "probably only one or two" hard-line Islamic leaders in Indonesia. "But none of them has an organized network with a power to create chaos and cause instability," he said. "There is no such thing." 
 Jafar, the Laskar Jihad leader, said he appreciated the opportunity to talk to the vice president. "He asked us directly whether we were terrorists," Jafar said. "Then, he discussed the issue with us." 
 Police arrested Jafar earlier this month on charges that he ordered an attack on a Christian village in the Moluccas in which 12 people were killed. Haz visited Jafar in his jail cell to "offer sympathy" as a "Muslim brother." 
 Haz first riled U.S. officials a few days after Sept. 11, when he told worshipers at a Jakarta mosque that the attacks in New York and Washington "will cleanse the sins of the United States." In the interview, he insisted the quote was taken out of context. He said he was not condoning terrorism but simply looking at the tragedy as a devout Muslim would. 
 "As a Muslim, if we face a misfortune or we are in an accident, we still have to thank God," he said. "The misfortune will cleanse our sins. That is the context of the quote." 
 Haz, who wears a fez-like prayer hat made of black felt, prays several times a day. He has two wives who have official security details and attend government functions. Local media organizations have reported that he also has two other wives, a subject upon which he would not comment. "It's between me and God," he said. 
 Haz is widely expected to vie for the presidency during the country's next general elections, in 2004. Analysts said that although they do not think he will get a majority, he could emerge as a strong contender to represent a coalition of Muslim parties. 
 In 1999, he lost the vice presidency to Megawati when she lost the presidency to Abdurraham Wahid. Her party had received the most votes, but Haz and other Muslim leaders opposed her becoming president because they did not believe a woman should serve in that role. After parliament dismissed Wahid last year, a decision that improved Haz's chances of gaining the vice presidency, he dropped his opposition to Megawati's ascension. 
 Haz's rise to power illustrates the growing clout of Muslim-oriented political parties since Suharto stepped down in 1998. Although the platforms of the Muslim parties, which collectively control about one-fourth of the seats in parliament, are in many ways identical to those of their secular rivals, particularly on economic and security issues, they have a markedly different social agenda. Several of them want to transform Indonesia into a strict Islamic nation, replacing the country's secular legal system with Islamic sharia law. 
 Several radical Islamic leaders have been critical of Haz, saying he has not pushed forcefully enough for sharia since becoming vice president, a shift that appears to have been calculated to improve his popularity. 
 Haz denied backing down from his support for sharia, but he said he wants it implemented not by vigilantes but by parliament. "It is the obligation of Muslim parties to struggle for matters related to Islamic laws and values," he said. "Of course we want to implement Islamic regulations. But in our struggle we have to be realistic. We have to see whether the struggle is possible constitutionally and democratically. We don't want to create any instability." 







   
 

May 12, 2002 Sunday  
  



 The World: Indonesia's Military; 
Will It Help to Help This Army?

 
WHEN the United States recast the Central Asian states from dubious dictatorships to necessary allies in the war on terrorism, Indonesia's generals took heart. Having enjoyed American aid during the cold war and then lost it when American policy stressed human rights in the 1990's, the top military officers in the world's largest Muslim nation began to hope that the United States would soon come calling again.
     This week, in fact, Indonesia's defense minister, Matori Abdul Djalil, will be in Washington to talk up the need for reviving military relations. But he will be entering a tricky debate, in which Washington is unsure which way to step.  
 Should the United States back a military with a history that includes deep corruption and atrocities committed in East Timor three years ago? Some in the Bush administration argue that, whatever the history, the army is the only institution that can keep Indonesia together during the messy transition to democracy.
Or should the United States keep its distance, demanding that Indonesia's military show accountability for its past? According to this argument, popular in Congress and the State Department, only an army leadership that showed contrition could be trusted to strengthen, not weaken, democratic gains.
The sudden interest in the Indonesian military stems, of course, from the war on terrorism. Indonesians in general practice a moderate version of Islam, but a growing number of extremist Islamic groups have emerged in the last few years. Their activities, including the massacre of 14 Christians on the Molucca islands 10 days ago, appear to be tolerated by the military; some American officials point out that the army leadership has not condemned the groups.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was ambassador here during the Reagan administration, is likely to give Mr. Matori the most sympathetic hearing. He has said the best way to promote Indonesia as a model moderate Muslim country is for the United States to have influence over the military and help it hold the center together. 
"I think it is unfortunate that the U.S. does not today have military-to-military relationships with Indonesia," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week. 
Those who disagree say that the Indonesian military shows few signs of reform. Dana Dillon, a retired American army officer and a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, notes that the violence in East Timor three years ago stopped only when the Indonesian Army left. 
"They had 20 years to reform," said Mr. Dillon. "It didn't work with American military assistance then. Why now?"
Others, like Robert B. Oakley, a former ambassador to Zaire and Pakistan, harbor few illusions about how far American training and money can push Indonesia on the path of reform. But Mr. Oakley takes the pragmatist's view that the United States cannot afford to keep itself shut out of the military. "We can influence them a bit," he said. "we can't revolutionize them."
The history of American involvement with the Indonesian military is one of steady contraction after a high point in the 1970's and 80's. 
During the cold war, Indonesian officers trained in the United States. When Indonesian troops fired in 1991 on marchers in East Timor, which was then an occupied territory of Indonesia, Congress placed human rights conditions on training. In 1994, the Clinton administration stopped the sale of small arms, and in 1998, Congress ended all American training of Indonesian soldiers after it learned that a special forces organization whose units had fired on student demonstrators had had American training. 
More restrictions were added after army-backed militiamen rampaged through East Timor in 1999 after the area voted for independence. Over 1,000 East Timorese were killed, according to United Nations estimates. This week, after three years of United Nations tutelage, East Timor will gain its formal independence.
The most recent restrictions, which basically outlaw contact with the Indonesian army, are at the heart of the debate in Washington.
Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, has insisted that the military be held accountable for atrocities in East Timor. The trial of four mid-level army officers, under way now, is the most significant government effort to meet the demand. 
But American officials who oppose the renewal of military ties dismiss it as a sham. Most of the defense lawyers also represent the family of Indonesia's deposed dictator, Gen. Suharto. And generals sit in the spectators' gallery, with their presence seen as an effort to intimidate the judges and prosecutors.
IN the very short term, the Pentagon may be satisfied with restoring only modest ties. It plans to push Congress for $8 million to equip and train a counterterrorism unit in the Indonesian police force and $8 million to train a peacekeeping force. The members would be vetted by the F.B.I. to weed out human-rights violators. 
Gonawan Mohamad, an Indonesian weekly columnist and respected commentator, believes that in the long run the United States should try to work with the army, especially to train young officers. Now, he says, is not the moment to start because the military still needs to acknowledge its mistakes in East Timor. 
But the army cannot be left to its own devices forever, he said. If that happens, he predicts, the result will be a rotten army that would only suffocate a nascent democracy. 







   
 

May 12, 2002 Sunday  
  



 Global Village Idiocy 

 
During a dinner with Indonesian journalists in Jakarta, I was taken aback when Dini Djalal, a reporter for The Far Eastern Economic Review, suddenly launched into a blistering criticism of the Fox News Channel and Bill O'Reilly. "They say on Fox , 'We report, you decide,' but it's biased -- they decide before us," she said. "They say there is no spin, but I get dizzy looking at it. I also get upset when they invite on Muslims and just insult them."
     Why didn't she just not watch Fox when she came to America, I wondered? No, no, no, explained Ms. Djalal: The Fox Channel is now part of her Jakarta cable package. The conservative Bill O'Reilly is in her face every night.  
 On my way to Jakarta I stopped in Dubai, where I watched the Arab News Network at 2 a.m. ANN broadcasts from Europe, outside the control of any Arab government, but is seen all over the Middle East. It was running what I'd call the "greatest hits" from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: nonstop film of Israelis hitting, beating, dragging, clubbing and shooting Palestinians. I would like to say the footage was out of context, but there was no context. There were no words. It was just pictures and martial music designed to inflame passions.
An Indonesian working for the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, who had just visited the Islamic fundamentalist stronghold of Jogjakarta, told me this story: "For the first time I saw signs on the streets there saying things like, 'The only solution to the Arab-Israel conflict is jihad -- if you are true Muslim, register yourself to be a volunteer.' I heard people saying, 'We have to do something, otherwise the Christians or Jewish will kill us.' When we talked to people to find out where they got these ideas , they said from the Internet. They took for granted that anything they learned from the Internet is true. They believed in a Jewish conspiracy and that 4,000 Jews were warned not to come to work at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 . It was on the Internet."
What's frightening him, he added, is that there is an insidious digital divide in Jogjakarta: "Internet users are only 5 percent of the population -- but these 5 percent spread rumors to everyone else. They say, 'He got it from the Internet.' They think it's the Bible."
If there's one thing I learned from this trip to Israel, Jordan, Dubai and Indonesia, it's this: thanks to the Internet and satellite TV, the world is being wired together technologically, but not socially, politically or culturally. We are now seeing and hearing one another faster and better, but with no corresponding improvement in our ability to learn from, or understand, one another. So integration, at this stage, is producing more anger than anything else. As the writer George Packer recently noted in The Times Magazine, "In some ways, global satellite TV and Internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, less tolerant place."
At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media tool we've ever had. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool we've ever had. The lie that 4,000 Jews were warned not to go into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was spread entirely over the Internet and is now thoroughly believed in the Muslim world. Because the Internet has an aura of "technology" surrounding it, the uneducated believe information from it even more. They don't realize that the Internet, at its ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information.
Worse, just when you might have thought you were all alone with your extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. And you can scrap the BBC and just get your news from those Web sites that reinforce your own stereotypes.
A couple of years ago, two Filipino college graduates spread the "I Love You" virus over the Internet, causing billion of dollars in damage to computers and software. But at least that virus was curable with the right software. There is another virus going around today, though, that's much more serious. I call it the "I Hate You" virus. It's spread on the Internet and by satellite TV. It infects people's minds with the most vile ideas, and it can't be combated by just downloading a software program. It can be reversed only with education, exchanges, diplomacy and human interaction -- stuff you have to upload the old-fashioned way, one on one. Let's hope it's not too late. 







   
 

May 10, 2002 Friday  
  



 Indonesia's Example 

 
To the Editor:
Re "The War on What?," by Thomas L. Friedman (column, May 8): 
     Even if Indonesia succeeds in forming and maintaining a Muslim democracy, I doubt that this will have a positive effect on Arab Muslim states. The majority of people here do not identify with non-Arab Muslims. They will just brush Indonesia off as being un-Muslim. 
 Reinterpreting Islam in a light more compatible with modern ideals is the first step toward real democracy. The Arab Muslim states can start by ending the fanaticism taught in their schools. What the United States should be pressing for is a reform of the education system.

EDWARD MANSOUR
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, May 8, 2002






   


May 10, 2002, Friday



 DEADLY TOLERANCE

 
FOR an illustration of the absurdities of political correctness and the dishonesty of multiculturalism you can't do much better than the reaction of much of the world's press to the killing of the Dutch politician and supposed "extremist" Pim Fortuyn - by a genuinely extremist ecofanatic. Murdered on Monday, this much-maligned maverick was not - contrary to countless newspaper reports - Holland's equivalent of France's Jean-Marie Le Pen or Austria's Jorg Haider. He was in no sense a "fascist" or even an "extreme rightist."
Of course, he was bald, as are many neo-Nazi skinheads. He was also flamboyantly gay, as were some of the early Nazis. And, like Adolf Hitler, he adored dogs (though unlike the most powerful vegetarian who ever lived, Fortuyn ate meat). 
But that's about it for Pim Fortuyn's "Nazi," "fascist" or "extreme rightist" credentials.
Famous for cruising Rotterdam in his chauffeur-driven Daimler, this ex-Marxist former professor who employed a butler was certainly an eccentric. But his politics were hardly extremist by American standards: He favored cuts in Holland's bloated welfare state, better law enforcement and more accountable local government (Dutch mayors are state-appointed, not elected). He was also an enthusiast for drug legalization and lower taxes.
And it's safe to say that no "fascist" or "extreme right" movement in history was as fundamentally libertarian, pro-homosexual or pro-woman as Pim Fortuyn.
Even Fortuyn's hostility to further mass immigration into the Netherlands - especially by rural, conservative Muslims from countries like Morocco, Turkey and Indonesia - was based entirely on that libertarianism. It had nothing whatsoever to do with race and everything to do with the protection of the freedoms he loved, freedoms that Fortuyn believed were a natural emanation of Dutch culture.
That Fortuyn's condemnation of Islamic fundamentalist sexism and homophobia was itself attacked as "intolerant" is an example of cultural relativism at its most bizarre and counterintuitive. Fortuyn's reservations about multiculturalism, failed assimilation and Islam's political effects on his country were not only not fascist, they could well have been shared by Thomas Jefferson.
His opponents, on the other hand - beginning with his assassin, but including those who demonized and delegitimized him as a beyond-the-pale extremist - demonstrated a close acquaintance with truly fascist means, if not ends.
If you're looking for contempt for democracy and the rule of law, a moral preference for violent direct action over the slow mechanics of the ballot - the hallmarks of fascist political style - you won't find it in Pim Fortuyn's speeches and writings.
But you will find it in the "anti-racist" and anti-globalization wings of Europe's youthful new New Left. And as well as this enthusiasm for political violence and the silencing of "unacceptable" views, you'll also find other fascist or Nazi enthusiasms, like ecological fetishism and a preference for economic autarky.
Even when I was in college in Europe a decade and a half ago, it was common for "anti-racist" activists to shout down professors deemed unacceptable for something they'd said or written. Things are clearly worse in Europe today, when people who worry about the way multiculturalism can be a conduit for anti-Semitism or homophobia can be called "fascists," while North African thugs who firebomb synagogues are considered nothing of the kind.
In America, political correctness is mainly a mere irritation. But in Europe, it justifies political violence by young extremists, while at the same time inspiring the continent's political elites to avoid discussion of issues like immigration or the transfer of power from national governments to the European Union bureaucracy.
Anyone who dares bring up these issues then risks the kind of demonization that Fortuyn suffered, and that may well have played a role in his murder by an environmentalist fanatic. The "multiculturalism" that was abused to slander Pim Fortuyn is a term with many possible meanings. At its most kind, it means tolerance of cultural difference. But there's clearly a problem when it tolerates cultures that pride themselves on their violent, even murderous intolerance.
Pim Fortuyn understood that truth. Tragically, it's now been illustrated by his death.







  



May 9, 2002 Thursday  




 Indonesian Arrested in Manila Had Ties to Al Qaeda; 
Capture of Muslim Militia Leader Reveals Radical Groups' Links in Southeast Asia, Investigators Say

 
 Philippine and Western intelligence officials have identified an Indonesian man apprehended at Manila's international airport with bomb-making equipment as a leader of a Muslim extremist group that helped train al Qaeda operatives, sources familiar with the investigation said. 
 The arrest of Agus Dwikarna, a commander of the Laskar Jundullah militia, has provided intelligence officials with important new evidence about connections between Southeast Asian radical groups, particularly those in Indonesia, and al Qaeda, the sources said. 
 The intelligence officials say they believe that Laskar Jundullah, a small group that is part of a network of extremist organizations fighting to evict Christians from several central Indonesian islands, set up a secret paramilitary training camp on Sulawesi island, in central Indonesia, in late 2000.  
The camp, located in dense jungle near the port city of Poso, attracted at least two dozen militants from the Philippines, several from Malaysia and scores from other parts of the world, including the Middle East, Europe and North Africa, a senior intelligence official involved in the case said.  
 The Filipinos were part of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country's largest Muslim separatist group, the official said. He said they traveled to Indonesia after their main base was overrun by the Philippine military in 2000. 
 The Malaysians were members of the Malaysian Mujaheddin Group, which is affiliated with Jemaah Islamiah, an al Qaeda-linked organization that plotted to blow up several Western embassies in Singapore, the official said. 
 "Dwikarna was a very important player," the senior official said. "He helped bring together al Qaeda members from around the world to train in Indonesia." 
 A senior Western diplomat in Southeast Asia called the arrest of Dwikarna "a very key building block in trying to find out the terrorist networks and connections in the region." 
 Dwikarna, 36, a businessman who is active in several radical groups, was arrested at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in mid-March after security personnel discovered what they said were plastic explosives and detonation cable in his suitcase. 
 He denied any wrongdoing in a recent telephone interview with the Indonesian newsmagazine Tempo, asserting that he was set up by Indonesia's intelligence service. He and two traveling companions, who were also arrested, insisted they were on a business trip. 
 Indonesian police and military officials have disputed the existence of a training camp near Poso, saying their searches of the area have turned up nothing. 
 But a senior Indonesian intelligence official confirmed that a camp did exist, although it was a well-kept secret among Islamic radicals. He said the ramshackle facility, where recruits were taught how to use automatic weapons and make bombs, was dismantled shortly after Sept. 11. 
 The camp was an attractive training ground for terrorists from Europe and elsewhere because it offered the opportunity to participate in a jihad, or holy war, the official said.  
He said many of the pupils joined in raids on Christian villages near Poso and in the nearby Moluccas islands. 
 The senior intelligence official said Dwikarna also provided alibis to several hundred foreigners traveling there. The official said Dwikarna gave documents to many of the foreigners written on the letterhead of a Muslim charity for which he worked, the Committee to Overcome Crisis, stating that they were humanitarian aid workers. 
 Indonesian officials said police officers in the Poso area briefly detained several non-Indonesians who were traveling to the camp in August and again in October, but released them after they produced letters from the charity signed by Dwikarna. 
 The senior official said Dwikarna likely worked with Parlindungan Siregar, an Indonesian living in Spain who is alleged by Spanish authorities to have helped arrange for several hundred al Qaeda operatives from Europe to travel to Indonesia for training. 
 Dwikarna is active in a host of hard-line Muslim groups in Indonesia, including the Indonesian Mujaheddin Council, which wants to turn the country into an Islamic state. The group is led by Abubakar Baasyir, a cleric who is accused by the governments of Singapore and Malaysia of being the ideological leader of Jemaah Islamiah. 
 Dwikarna's traveling companions were released last month because Philippine prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to charge them, a decision made after intense lobbying by Indonesia's Foreign Ministry and political leaders. 
 One of the two, Tamsil Linrung, served as the treasurer of one of Indonesia's largest Muslim political parties, which accused the government of orchestrating the arrests as a political attack. To defuse the allegations, officials close to President Megawati Sukarnoputri joined in calls for the pair's release. 
 Indonesian intelligence officials said the person in whom they are most interested is Dwikarna. But even though they have secretly shared information about him with their Philippine counterparts and have urged them to pursue their investigation, many Indonesian politicians and diplomats continue to push for his release. 
 "This is an individual with extremely questionable and troubling connections, many of which still need to be investigated," the senior Western diplomat said. "It would be a real travesty if that opportunity was forgone." 







   
 

May 8, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 The War on What? 

 
Spend a few days in Indonesia and you'll find many people asking you a question you weren't prepared for: Is America's war on terrorism going to become a war against democracy? 
     As Indonesians see it, for decades after World War II America sided with dictators, like their own President Suharto, because of its war on Communism. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, America began to press more vigorously for democracy and human rights in countries like Indonesia, as the U.S. shifted from containing Communism to enlarging the sphere of democratic states. Indonesians were listening, and in 1998 they toppled Mr. Suharto and erected their first electoral democracy.  
 Today Indonesians are still listening, and they're worried they're hearing America shift again -- from a war for democracy to a war on terrorism, in which the U.S. will judge which nations are with it or against it not by the integrity of their elections or the justice of their courts, but by the vigor with which their army and police combat Al Qaeda. For Indonesia, where democracy is still a fragile flower, anything that encourages a comeback by the long-feared, but now slightly defanged, army and police -- the tools of Mr. Suharto's long repression -- is not good news.
"Indonesian democrats have always depended on America as a point of reference that we could count on to support us," said the prominent Indonesian commentator Wimar Witoelar. "If we see you waffling, whom do we turn to? It is like the sun disappearing from the sky and everything starts to freeze here again." 
There is a broad feeling among Indonesian elites that while some of their more authoritarian neighbors, like Malaysia or Pakistan, have suddenly become the new darlings of Washington as a result of the war on terrorism, Indonesia is being orphaned because it is a messy, but real, democracy.
"We sometimes fear that America's democratization agenda also got blown up with the World Trade Center," says the Indonesian writer Andreas Harsono. "Since Sept. 11 there have been so many free riders on this American antiterrorism campaign, countries that want to use it to suppress their media and press freedom and turn back the clock. Indonesia, instead of being seen as a weak democracy that needs support, gets looked at as a weak country that protects terrorists, and Malaysia is seen as superior because it arrests more terrorists than we do." 
Indeed, many people here believe that retrograde elements in the army and police have helped stir up recent sectarian clashes in Aceh and the Maluku islands to spur Parliament to give the security services some of their old powers back.
Says Jusuf Wanandi, who heads a key strategic studies center here: "I just spoke with some senior military people who said to me: 'Why doesn't the government give up all this human rights stuff and leave the problem to us?' They said the Americans should normalize relations again with the Indonesian Army 'and we'll do the job for them.' That is not the right approach, because we do not trust yet that the reforms of the military here have been adequate."
In fairness, the Bush team has kept aid for Indonesia at $130 million and made it the official policy in all diplomatic contacts that Indonesia should continue fighting its war for democracy, while contributing what it can to the war on terrorism. (It's not clear if there are any Qaeda cells here.)
Nevertheless, some top Pentagon officials are definitely pushing to let the Indonesian military make a comeback and to restore ties with the Indonesian military that were suspended after the army ran amok in East Timor in 1999. Indonesia is just beginning to try military officers involved in those killings. If there is any hope of senior army officers being held accountable for East Timor, it will certainly be lost if America signals that all it cares about now is that the new antiterrorism laws being debated by the Indonesian Parliament give the army anything it wants. 
America needs to be aware of how its war on terrorism is read in other countries, especially those in transition. Indonesia is the world's biggest Muslim country. Its greatest contribution to us would be to show the Arab Muslim states that it is possible to develop a successful Muslim democracy, with a modern economy and a moderate religious outlook. Setting that example is a lot more in America's long-term interest than arresting a few stray Qaeda fighters in the jungles of Borneo. 




14


   
 

May 7, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 Indonesia: Old Temples, Few Tourists 

 
BEFORE Sept. 11, Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, was barely on the horizon as a tourist destination for Americans. Distance, coupled with arduous airline connections and a general lack of knowledge, meant that the most frequent visitors were aficionados of wildlife in Kalimantan, the beaches of Bali and the grand temples of Java. Now, even these hardy travelers have disappeared. There has not been such a downturn since Indonesia developed a tourism industry in the 1980's, according to hoteliers and travel agents.  
     Last November, the State Department issued a travel warning, advising against nonessential travel to Indonesia, citing separatist violence in several provinces, none of which are considered tourist areas. But the country remains a relatively safe place to visit, especially Java and Bali, and it is now extraordinarily inexpensive. For example, in Java, at the Hyatt Regency Yogyakarta, set in grand tropical gardens with a golf course, tennis courts and a magnificent swimming pool, I recently paid $50 a night for a room on a high floor with beautiful views. The occupancy was well below 50 percent, with an attentive staff. The vermilion and purple sunsets over the golf course can be admired from terraces in which few other guests are cluttering the view. Borobudur, a series of stone temples set in a volcanic rock landscape and the world's largest Buddhist monument, is less than an hour's drive from the hotel. 
 In Indonesia's most famous resort, the island of Bali, American tourists are rare indeed. The Japanese come, as do some Australians. But even the Australians, who tend to consider Bali part of their own country, have stopped visiting in large numbers. This means the beaches and hotels are pleasantly uncrowded. The most hostile action you are likely to encounter on a Bali beach are the hustlers, eager to sell cheap watches and handicrafts. 
People who are contemplating a visit to Indonesia should remember the obvious. It is not wise to walk down the streets with an American flag plastered across your T-shirt. Most Indonesians are not anti-American. Those who do not admire the United States are unlikely to say so. Anti-American demonstrations in Jakarta are not everyday events. When they happen, they often evaporate quickly. If you act in a low-key manner and show interest in the local culture, you will be treated with civility and hospitality.







   
 

May 7, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 Indonesia Arrests Leader Of Militants In Islam Group 

 
The Indonesian government has arrested a prominent Islamic militant, the first such move here since the United States declared its war on terror. 
     Jaffar Umar Thalib, the leader of a paramilitary group called Laskar Jihad, was arrested over the weekend on charges of inciting Muslims to attack Christians near Ambon, the capital of the Maluku Islands. 
 The Bush administration has repeatedly urged President Megawati Sukarnoputri to take bolder steps against Islamic extremists here in the world's most populous Islamic country. Ms. Megawati had refrained from doing so, apparently out of fear of upsetting Islamic groups.  
Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil is scheduled to visit Washington next week. Bush administration officials are weighing how to renew ties with the Indonesian military in the face of Congressional restrictions, which were imposed after human rights abuses by the army in East Timor as that territory moved to become independent of Indonesia three years ago.
Aside from wanting to please Washington, Western diplomats said, the Indonesian government was probably motivated by embarrassment over the ability of Laskar Jihad to shatter a peace accord the government had helped arrange between Christians and Muslims in the Malukus, an important province east of the capital, Jakarta.
Mr. Jaffar was arrested a year ago on charges of inciting hatred but was freed three weeks later, after a court ruled that his detention was unlawful. The government has shown a pattern in recent corruption cases of arresting suspects and then releasing them. 
Earlier this year, the police questioned another prominent Islamic radical, Akbar Bashir, and then freed him after a day. 
Some Western diplomats expressed concern today that the government might release Mr. Jaffar again.
There has been considerable speculation since Sept. 11 that Mr. Jaffar might have connections to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's organization, though there is little hard evidence. Western intelligence agencies have disagreed on how close Mr. Jaffar has been to the group.
But they do agree that he has accumulated arms, amassed a following of somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 supporters and operated with the blessing of powerful elements in the Indonesian military. 
The major concern of the United States, as well as countries in Southeast Asia, is that Laskar Jihad, in conjunction with other militant groups, has the potential to turn Indonesia from a moderate Muslim nation to an extremist one.
Mr. Jaffar, who is of Yemeni descent and fought in Afghanistan with the mujahedeen against the Soviets, has been instrumental in stirring the fighting between Christians and Muslims on the Malukus.
He publicly initiated his group in 1999 by sending his followers to the Malukus, with the backing of several mainstream politicians, to battle a separatist Christian group. Last year, he was photographed hugging Vice President Hamzah Haz, the leader of an Islamic party, at an official reception.
Mr. Jaffar implored Muslims during a speech in late April at Al Fatah mosque in the capital to "prepare our bombs, and ready our guns," according to a part of a transcript published in the press here. 
Two days later, on April 28, a dozen masked men with guns, grenades and daggers attacked the village of Soya, near Ambon, torching about 30 homes and a church and killing 14 Christians. Some reports said the attackers were armed with M-16 assault rifle, an American-made weapon used by the Indonesian military. 
A senior government minister, Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono, had helped negotiate a peace accord for the Malukus two months ago. He was reported today to be heading back there to try to patch up the accord, which calls for the departure of outside groups like Laskar Jihad.
The governor of the Malukus, Sale Lutconsina, was reported to have said over the weekend that the Indonesian military had sabotaged his efforts to stop the conflict. 
Defense Minister Matori went out of his way today to stress that senior levels of the government backed Mr. Jaffar's arrest. The cabinet discussed the matter beforehand, he said. 
Islamic groups were quick to denounce the arrest. The leader of the Justice Party, Nur Wahid, said the government had no proof that Mr. Jaffar was "guilty under the law" and said the arrest was motivated by a desire to please Washington. 
Others said the arrest was long overdue, and asserted that Mr. Jaffar had received protection from the military for too long.      







   
 

May 7, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 NEWS SUMMARY 

 
     INTERNATIONAL   A3-18

Israeli Leader Presses U.S. To Marginalize Arafat
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in talks with top Bush administration officials in Washington, outlined a vision for the next phase in Middle East peacemaking that he said should bypass Yasir Arafat and offer only interim steps toward a Palestinian state. King Abdullah II of Jordan and the Saudi foreign minister, who are also in Washington, sought backing for Mr. Arafat in meetings with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.   A1

The release of more than 100 people from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was delayed by snags.   A18

Dutch Candidate Is Slain
Pim Fortuyn, a right-wing politician with aspirations of becoming prime minister, was shot to death. The police said a suspect had confessed, but they offered no motive.   A1

New French Prime Minister
President Jacques Chirac chose Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a little-known center-right junior minister, after Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a Socialist, submitted his resignation.   A16

Cuba Accused of Germ Research
The Bush administration accused Cuba of producing small quantities of germs that could be used in biological warfare and said Libya and Syria were also violating treaties by making unconventional weapons.   A6

Indonesia Arrests Militant
The government arrested a prominent Islamic militant, Jaffar Umar Thalib, the leader of the paramilitary group Laskar Jihad, on charges of inciting Muslims to attack Christians, the first such arrest in Indonesia since the United States declared its war on terror.   A7

Burmese Rights Leader Freed
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar, was freed after 19 months of house arrest.   A3

World Briefing   A14

NATIONAL   A20-28

Anthrax Got More Potent With Each Letter Sent
Federal investigators have discovered that the anthrax sent through the mail, in general grew more potent from one letter to the next, with the deadliest spores in the final letter, to Senator Patrick J. Leahy.   A1

More Pipe Bombs Discovered
Two pipe bombs were found in mailboxes in Nebraska and Colorado, bringing to 17 the total of bombs that have been found since Friday.   A22

Rumsfeld Cuts Howitzer System
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has decided to cancel the Army's $11 billion Crusader artillery system, a weapons program that has influential supporters in Congress.   A1

Cardinal Ordered to Testify
A judge told Boston's archbishop, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, to give a deposition tomorrow in the case of 86 people who say the pedophile priest John J. Geoghan abused them.   A20

Dispute Over F.B.I. Turncoat
A feud has erupted among counterintelligence officials over whether the former F.B.I. agent Robert P. Hanssen told the whole truth about his spying for Moscow.   A25

Judge Says Agency Lied
The juvenile court judge in Miami assigned to oversee the case of a missing 5-year-old girl, Rilya Wilson, criticized the Florida Department of Children and Families in a hearing and said the agency had misled the court about the girl's welfare.   A24

EDUCATION

A Medical Tradition Challenged
A class-action lawsuit citing antitrust law is to be filed in Washington today challenging a program that assigns medical school graduates to teaching hospitals as residents who often make less than $40,000 a year and work 100-hour weeks.   A1

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-7

Judge Orders Raise For Lawyers Who Aid Poor
A state judge issued an order more than doubling the hourly rate, to $90, paid to private lawyers assigned to represent the poor in city courts. The judge, as well as the lawyers, who are known as assigned counselors, said the current scale jeopardized the right of indigent clients to have effective legal representation.   B1

Suspect Strolls to Freedom
A suspect in 16 sexual attacks walked out of a police interrogation room in the Bronx, the latest in a series of prisoner escapes in the city.   B1

Skakel Trial to Open
Opening arguments begin today in the murder trial of Michael C. Skakel, 41, who is accused of killing a 15-year-old neighbor, Martha Moxley, in Greenwich, Conn., in 1975.   B1

OBITUARIES   A29

FASHION   B8

ARTS   E1-12

'Millie' Leads Tony Nominees
"Thoroughly Modern Millie" was nominated in 11 categories.   E1

   D1-7

SCIENCE TIMES   F1-8

Einstein Files Opened Wider
New details are emerging about F.B.I. surveillance of the scientist as a result of an author's suit to obtain material withheld from previous releases of government files.   F1

Health & Fitness   F5

BUSINESS DAY   C1-18

Enron's Price Practices
Electricity traders at Enron drove up prices during the California power crisis with questionable techniques that company lawyers said "may have contributed" to severe power shortages, documents show.   A1

Analysts' Missing E-Mails
Some Wall Street firms are said to have told securities regulators investigating possible conflicts of interest among stock analysts that they have not retained e-mail messages as required by law.   C1

Andersen to Pay $217 Million
Arthur Andersen reached a new settlement calling for it to pay $217 million to compensate investors in a fraudulent charity, the Arizona Baptist Foundation, whose financial statements Andersen had certified.   C1

Business Digest   C1

World Business   W1

EDITORIAL   A30-31

Editorials: How the towers collapsed; ending repression in Myanmar; Christie Whitman holds her ground; Spider-Man's summer comes early.
Columns: Paul Krugman, Nicholas D. Kristof.

Crossword   E10
TV Listings   E11
Public Lives   B2
Weather   D8







   
 

May 5, 2002 Sunday  
  



 Listening To the Future? 

 
Last Thursday, I sat in the garden of the Pesantren Darunnajah, one of Jakarta's finest Islamic boarding schools, with 20 thoughtful young Indonesians to ask them for their views of America. I wanted to understand how the world's largest Muslim nation was reacting to Sept. 11 and the Middle East crisis. I could tell you in my own words, but let me instead run the tape of my chat with the most articulate student: 18-year-old Wisam Rochalina.
     "Most Muslims are afraid of America because they think America is against Islam," she began. "You can see that America is backing the Israelians, and the enmity between Islam and Israel, the Jews and Judaism, is obvious. It is not that Americans are afraid of Muslims, but that Muslims are afraid of Americans. As for the Sept. 11 tragedy, we can't prove that Muslims did it. Because up to now they have not found evidence to prove that bin Laden is the one who did it. Also I read in some newspaper that the real people who did that tragedy are Americans. . . . I don't know what percent of the Congress are Jewish, but America is backing Israel, and I think therein lies the feeling of enmity toward America."  
 Where do you get your news?
"I get most information from the TV, from the Internet, too. . . . I really like to read the online Arabic magazines because they give a different point of view. If I read Indonesian magazines, they don't have a lot of information about Muslims and Islam."
Why are so many Muslims so angry with America and Israel now?
"I think it is because Israel has gone beyond limits and Muslims just got fed up and decided they have to do something about it. I think it has something to do with Muslims feeling like they are being called murderers and they are being treated in the U.S. like they are terrorists -- they are being blamed for something they haven't done. . . . And I think that's why they hate America -- it's not hate, it's this feeling that the American media is spreading everywhere, so I think it has something to do with spreading the image of Islam and distorting that image."
What do you think of President Bush?
"At the beginning, when George Bush became president, some people thought he is only going to be like his father and he's not going to make anything new -- and also people did not want Al Gore to win because he was Jewish. So people said, 'O.K., George Bush is better . . .' He promised a lot of really good things but has not realized them up to now."
Would you like to study in America? 
"Of course I would! Because if I go there, I can understand how that world really thinks. Because until now I only read about it in newspapers and only see it in TV."
Wisam's views are widely shared by millions of Muslim youth. They are a product of many things: a reaction to America's war on terrorism and Ariel Sharon's war on Yasir Arafat, the failure of Muslim states to master modernity, Muslim resentment at being blamed for 9/11, unquestioning Congressional support for Israel and outright incitement against Israel and Jews in Arab and European media and Web sites. Stir it all together, and what comes out is a single big idea melding in the minds of many young Muslims: America, Israel and the Jews are working together to undermine Islam and dominate the world.
This is not good. But how does one reverse it? Spreading democracy in the Muslim world would help enormously, but that's not going to happen soon. In the near term, Israel has got to get out of the West Bank and Gaza any way it can -- just get out -- and get this war with Palestinians off TV. It will not end Muslim hostility to the Jewish state, but it will eliminate a good chunk of raw material.
At the same time, America needs to make a much bigger investment in public diplomacy in the Muslim world, and vigorously challenge what is published there. In an era when blind rage can become a weapon of mass destruction, this is as important as any missile shield. We can make a difference with young people. Their views are easily acquired and easily shed. The one time Wisam's eyes lit up was when she talked about studying in America.
A U.S. diplomat in Jakarta told me she had just visited the town of Malang, in East Java, and had seen an Indonesian boy there wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt and a New York Yankees cap. So all isn't lost. But we must make sure that he grows into the hat, not the T-shirt. 






   


May 4, 2002 Saturday



 Author examines growth of Pentacostalism in Third World countries

 
Did journalists, pundits and historians miss one of the 20th century's biggest social trends in writing all those backward looks at New Year's 2000? Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University, thinks so.
While Fascism and Nazism have vanished and Communism is dying, he observes, "perhaps the most successful social movement of the past century" is Pentecostalism, which started with a handful of believers and now encompasses hundreds of millions. And that's only part of the picture, since there are far more Roman Catholics than Pentecostals.
What many have missed, Jenkins says, is Christianity's strong expansion in the "South" - Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia - while in the "North" it holds steady in the United States and shrinks in western Europe. 
That scenario is spelled out in Jenkins' book "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" (Oxford University Press). There's statistical support in the two-volume World Christian Encyclopedia from the same publisher.
Jenkins says southern Christians read the Bible quite differently from western liberals. The rising Christendom is drenched in supernaturalism, both biblical and present-day, he reports. So it resonates with the world of the literal New Testament as a faith for the poor, despised, diseased and persecuted.
Unlike declining liberal churches to the north, Jenkins says, southern Christianity gives the Bible "authenticity and immediacy." Scriptural messages to the oppressed are drenched with meaning, and pessimism about the secular world is widespread. Churches preach evangelism, moral conservatism, mysticism, miracles of healing, exorcism and strength under persecution.
Westerners can understand the sufferings of God's people in the Bible as "an intellectual exercise." But in many lands, martyrdom and oppression are current realities.
and churches cherish "visions of a coming world in which God will rule, persecutors will perish and the righteous be vindicated."
Jenkins believes communism's death and the declining credibility of many nation-states makes religious identity perhaps the most powerful force in global affairs. This has a potential nightmare aspect, since Christianity and Islam are the two main competitors and each is massive and expansion-minded.
That differs from Samuel Huntington's much-mulled "Clash of Civilizations" (1996), which depicted Islam's growth and militancy but downplayed Christian expansion. Jenkins is convinced that into the foreseeable future, Christianity will maintain its numerical "massive lead" over Islam.
At one time Islam was largely tolerant and Christianity was often oppressive, Jenkins observes, but in recent years "there is no question that the threat of intolerance and persecution chiefly comes from the Islamic side." He cites numerous examples.
By 2050, many major nations "could be profoundly divided between Islam and Christianity and, judging by present trends, any or all of them could be the scene of serious interfaith conflict," he writes. Dangerous types of countries:
-Predominantly Muslim with significant Christian minority (for example, Indonesia, Egypt, Sudan).
-Predominantly Christian with significant Muslim minority (Philippines, Congo, Germany, Uganda).
-Muslims and Christians roughly equal (Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania).
Though Christianity usually "atrophies among the rich and secure," he says, the United States is a huge exception. So are professional and high-tech groups within Pacific Rim nations.
Regarding the United States, he notes an amazingly daft 2000 piece by a New York Times editorial writer that described emptying pews and aging memberships, as though American Christianity were dying. That's true in some situations. But overall, the numbers remain constant, and churches are growing among Pentecostals, Charismatics, evangelicals, Roman Catholics, blacks and immigrants.
By Jenkins' projections, the United States will still have the world's biggest Christian population in 2050, and by then will be the only nation in the "North" with more than 100 million Christians.







  



May 4, 2002 Saturday  




 Indonesian-Style Taliban Fights for Islamic Law; 
Radical Groups Challenge Secular Traditions

 
 The Taliban Brigade stormed into the hotel lounge shortly before midnight, wielding rattan canes and screaming "God is great!" 
 As patrons cowered under the rickety wooden tables, and the leather-clad singer bolted off the stage, witnesses said, three dozen young men in flowing white robes swung their sticks at beer mugs and highball glasses. Then they charged into the kitchen to seize the hotel's liquor supply, carting off several cases of beer and two bottles of whiskey. 
 "This is a Muslim country," the leader of the mob shouted as his minions smashed everything in sight, according to a hotel employee. "We forbid you to drink alcohol."  
 The Taliban Brigade, whose connection with Afghanistan's erstwhile rulers is in ideology only, regards itself as a vanquisher of vice in this small city near the southern coast of Java island. Members raid nightclubs and cafes to stamp out drinking and gambling. They ransack shops suspected of selling pornographic video discs. And they sweep through hotels, rounding up prostitutes and shaving their heads. 
 The Taliban Brigade is part of a growing network of groups seeking to turn socially moderate Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago that is home to more Muslims than any other country, into a strict Islamic nation. Its members -- students and teachers from Islamic boarding schools -- want to abolish the country's secular legal system and replace it with a version of sharia, the Islamic law that would ban the sale of alcohol, require women to wear head scarves and permit courts to order the amputation of thieves' hands. 
 Although efforts to enact sharia nationwide remain the subject of much dispute and little progress, its advocates have become some of the most vocal players in Indonesia's nascent democracy. They also have employed stealth. Using a new law that gives localities more autonomy, they have quietly enacted parts of their agenda in cities and jurisdictions similar to counties without approval from the central government. 
 In Tasikmalaya, the Taliban and a coalition of conservative Muslim organizations have persuaded the district governor to issue a host of edicts, from barring vehicular traffic near the main mosque during midday prayers on Friday to requiring that elementary and high school students, no matter what religion, receive a certificate of proficiency in Islamic studies. The governor also has urged women to cover their hair, and he has called for public swimming pools to be segregated by. 
 The Taliban, whose weekly raids are condoned by the police, also has imposed and enforced local sharia regulations, declaring a zero-tolerance policy toward alcohol, gambling, pornography and prostitution. 
 "If we see it, we will destroy it or we will confiscate it," insisted Mohammed Zainal Mutaqqien Aziz, a religious teacher who heads the Taliban Brigade, which was formed in 1998 and takes its name from the Arabic word for student. "These sorts of sinful things are not fit for Tasikmalaya." 
 Unlike in much of the Muslim world, the growth of religious extremism in Indonesia has largely been an indigenous phenomenon, owing more to the country's helter-skelter transition to democracy than to funding from outside groups. With rising poverty and lawlessness, fueled by economic stagnation and political infighting, an increasing slice of the population has started to view radical Islam as a panacea. 
 Conservative Muslim leaders said they have been aided by the U.S. campaign against terrorism, which is seen by many in Indonesia as a fight against Islam. Membership in their groups has swelled in recent months, they said. 
 "America's actions have united Muslims," said Jafar Umar Thalib, the leader of Laskar Jihad, a hard-line militia that has fought to evict Christians and implement sharia elsewhere in Indonesia, primarily in the former Spice Islands. 
 Although the Taliban, the Laskar Jihad and other groups are on the fringes of politics and society, government officials and mainstream Muslim leaders worry that extremists are nudging the world's fourth-most-populous country away from its moderate traditions and secular roots. 
 "The radical groups may be small in number, but they're very strong in influence," said Ulil Abshar-Abdullah, director of the Liberal Islam Network, a coalition of moderate Muslim leaders. "They have enormous power to shape the agenda." 
 Diplomats said they believe fears of a backlash from fundamentalist organizations -- which make little secret of their admiration for Osama bin Laden and their abhorrence for America -- have stalled the government's pursuit of suspected terrorists. In the most notable example, Indonesian police recently opted not to arrest a prominent cleric alleged to be the ideological leader of an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group that plotted to blow up several Western embassies in Singapore. Indonesian officials contend that attempting to do so without incontrovertible evidence, which they said they do not possess, would spark massive protests. 
 "The government is being held hostage by the extremists," said an Asian diplomat in Jakarta, the capital. "Nobody wants to take them on." 
 The rise of conservative Islam seems a clear trend in a country that has long prided itself in having the world's most liberal Muslims. In Jakarta, where billboards tout Bintang beer and feature scantily clad models, more young women are opting to wear head scarves, more men show up at mosques for Friday prayers and more families are fasting during Ramadan, according to Muslim leaders. 
 In a recent survey conducted by the State University of Islamic Studies, 58 percent of respondents across the country said they supported the idea of transforming Indonesia into an Islamic state run by Muslim clerics. More than 60 percent said the government should implement some form of sharia. But the survey also found that a sizable majority are opposed to other changes sought by suchgroups as the Taliban Brigade, including arresting Muslims who do not fast during Ramadan and having police ensure that Muslims pray five times a day. 
 Although President Megawati Sukarnoputri and most of parliament remain opposed to imposing sharia nationwide, the government has permitted local officials in Aceh, a province on the northern tip of Sumatra island, to adopt a limited form of sharia in an effort to wrest popular support from separatist rebels. As a first step, they ordered residents last month to follow a new dress code -- women have to cover all parts of their body except their face, hands and the soles of their feet. The officials said they were forming a religious police force to enforce the rules. 
 The question of how much sharia is enough, and how much is too much, is emerging as one of the most contentious issues in this young democracy of more than 220 million people. 
 Tasikmalaya, located about 150 miles southeast of Jakarta, provides a preview of the broader fight. Here, the debate over sharia already is wrenching politicians, religious leaders, business owners and ordinary people. 
 "This is the most important test for the future of this country," said Abshar-Abdullah lam Network. "It's a test of whether moderate or conservative Islam will prevail." 
 Islam arrived in the islands that now Indonesia about 700 years ago, with traders from India and the Middle East schooled in the moderate Sufi branch of the religion. Because it was not imposed by conquerors, the new adherents were not compelled to renounce their Buddhist, Hindu and indigenous religious practices. The result was a hybrid form of Islam that coexisted with local traditions. 
 But by the end of the 19th century, as more Indonesian Muslims traveled to Arab countries and interacted with orthodox Muslims, a more conservative variety of Islam began to take hold. By 1945, when Indonesia won its independence from the Netherlands, liberal and conservative Muslims struggled for dominance. The conservatives demanded that the new constitution include a clause requiring Muslims to practice sharia. But moderate Muslim nationalists, led by the founding president, Sukarno, instead enacted an anti-sharia ideology called pancasila that accommodated five state-recognized religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism and Buddhism. 
 Sukarno's successor, Suharto, was more aggressive in suppressing Muslim groups that were seen threatening the state. Advocacy of an Islamic state was deemed subversion. Hundreds of Muslim leaders were jailed and publications were banned. Muslim political parties had to pledge fealty to the government. 
 But when the Suharto dictatorship ended in 1998 after 32 years, and Indonesia embarked on a turbulent democratic transition, all those restrictions evaporated. Suddenly, clerics and political parties were free to renew their calls for sharia. 
 "Pancasila has been a disaster for our country," said Irfan S. Awwas, the leader of the Indonesian Mujahadeen Council. "We are the world's biggest Muslim country. It is our right to be governed by sharia." 
 Awwas spent 13 years in prison on subversion charges during Suharto's reign for promoting sharia. Now he holds pro-sharia rallies across the country. 
 The growth of the Mujahadeen Council and other conservative groups has been fueled in part by a feeling that radical Islam is the prescription to quell the poverty, crime and other social problems that have wracked Indonesia since Suharto's downfall. 
 "With him gone, we are supposedly in a period of reform, but it's not changing people's lives," said Ubaydillah Salman, the managing editor of Sabili, a Muslim magazine that has written glowing stories about the Taliban Brigade. "People are frustrated, and they see Islam as the answer to all their problems." 
 The Laskar Jihad, like fundamentalist Islamic groups in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the Arab world, has won new members because it has set up health clinics and schools in poor communities. Sharia supporters also say strict Islamic punishments will combat crime. 
 Political parties that support the implementation of sharia have made headway. The leader of the largest such party was elected vice president last year, and collectively, the parties control 24 percent of the seats in parliament. Still, most political leaders and the country's largest Muslim groups have refused to bend to demands to impose sharia. 
 "It's a simple-minded solution for our very complicated problems," said Ahmad Syafii Maarif, the chairman of Muhammadiyah, a Muslim social organization with 10 million members. "Adopting sharia will just divide our society further." 
 Activists promoting sharia have set their sights not on the national parliament in Jakarta but on smaller cities such as Tasikmalaya, which have recently been given expanded lawmaking powers by the central government. Last year, after being lobbied by a coalition of pro-sharia groups, the local legislature passed a five-year plan that calls for Tasikmalaya to develop as a center of Islamic values. 
 "Religious preaching and government policies should go hand in hand," said the governor of Tasikmalaya, Tatang F. Hakim. "It is our responsibility to follow the demands of the people." 
 But Abdul Fatah Syamsuddin, leader of the pro-sharia Islamic Youth Forum, said local police have been slow to enforce laws against prostitution and pornography. And, he said, the police have not cracked down on alcohol sales because a law banning liquor is still being debated by the legislature. 
 "That's why the Taliban Brigade is important," he said. "They are taking matters into their own hands." 
 After expounding on the benefits of sharia for an hour in his living room, Zainal Mutaqqien, the Taliban Brigade leader, jumped out of his chair and unlocked a large wooden cabinet to the right of a poster of bin Laden. 
 Out came a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch whisky, followed by a jug of Burgundy, a flask of creme de cacao, some creme de menthe and a liter of Cointreau. 
 "This is what we've seized," he gushed. "This shouldn't be allowed in Tasikmalaya." 
 Sensing his boss's excitement, an aide rushed off to retrieve a plastic bag containing dozens of pornographic video discs, including volumes one through six of a compilation titled "American Hard-Core." 
 "Nobody should be watching this filth," he said. 
 The governor's edicts and exhortations, as well as the Taliban Brigade's raids, have transformed this city and the surrounding district, a lush farming region that is home to 2 million people. Women who used to walk through the market with their long hair waving in the wind now wear scarves. Karaoke parlors, theaters and cafes have shut down. The restaurant at the Mahkota Hotel, like almost every eatery here, has stopped offering liquor. 
 At the Sinta Cafe, only one table was occupied on a recent Friday night. The management stopped serving liquor six months ago after two Taliban Brigade warnings. Beer, said entertainment manager Deni Wardiana, was still available but was not on the menu. 
 "What's wrong with a drink?" he said. "It should be up to people to choose." 
 But several residents and business owners said they were unwilling to confront the Taliban Brigade or even talk to government officials. 
 "People are too scared," said Reni, a secretary who was sipping a beer with her daughter and son-in-law at the Sinta Cafe. "The Taliban have connections with the police." 
 During the day, Reni said, she wears loose clothes and a head scarf. At the cafe, however, she was dressed in a tight pink top, her coifed bob uncovered. "Not wearing a head scarf doesn't mean I don't love Allah," she noted. 






   


May 3, 2002 Friday



 AHMADABAD, India [AP] Mohandas Gandhi's wooden spinning wheel still stands among the simple throw pillows where he once sat cross-legged, threading cotton, receiving world leaders and promoting his vision of a unified, secular India.

 
Today, just beyond the whitewashed cottages of the independence leader's ashram, across a dry riverbed where sacred cows graze under the searing subcontinent sun, Muslims and Hindus have turned on one another with a ferocity not seen in a decade.
The handful of elderly men who live among the lush gardens at Gandhi Ashram can see the smoke from burning homes and stores. Police sirens disturb their daily prayers.
The violence in Gujarat, Gandhi's home state where he founded his ashram, has claimed more than 900 lives statewide in the last two months, mostly Muslims beaten or burned to death, or killed in police firing. Human rights activists say the death toll may come closer to 2,000 when one counts the missing in the western state. 
Gandhi, revered by his followers as mahatma or "great soul,' the man who led his people to independence from the British Empire, once wrote that "Hindu-Muslim cooperation is our inevitable condition for Indian freedom,' and several times he threatened to starve himself to shame his people into halting their feuds.
"Gandhi would have been very sad, he would have fasted to his death to stop all this,' said Chunibhai Vaidya, an 84-year-old Gandhi disciple who lives at the ashram.
"But we have failed Gandhi, we have forgotten him, we have betrayed him.'
And yet, in many ways, the vision that Gandhi promoted until his assassination by a Hindu fanatic in 1948 is still alive.
A vibrant if sometimes messy democracy, a federal system and a constitution steeped in secular values allow India's 120 million Muslims to live in relative peace among nearly 1 billion Hindus.
There are many more examples of harmony than hatred among those Hindus and Muslims who live side by side in thousands of villages throughout rural India and in its massive metropolises.
Muslims serve as judges and lawmakers. India's richest man, Aziz Premji, chairman of the software giant, Wipro, is Muslim. Two of India's presidents have been Muslims. One, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, was a Muslim from the northeastern state of Assam.
Assam, 30 percent of whose 26 million people are Muslim, is an example of the coexistence that is the norm for much of India. It is symbolized by the door on a Hindu temple in Gauhati, the capital, on which is a plaque commemorating Usman Ali, the Muslim who donated the land for the temple.
"We all believe that God is one. When Usman Ali donated the plot of land, I'm sure he had no idea of the significance of his gesture,' said Manmohan Das, the Hindu secretary of the temple. "Here, we are all living together in spite of the communal upsurge elsewhere in India.'
Most Muslims in India think of themselves as Indians first, Muslims second. Muslims and Hindus marry each other, go into business together, play together for India's national cricket team.
India's most popular movie stars are Muslims: Aamir Khan, whose colonial cricket epic "Lagaan' was nominated for an Academy Award this year, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan. They're known as the "the Khan Brigade.'
Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan are married to Hindu women. And Hindu heartthrob Hrithik Roshan's wife is Muslim.
When Virsing Rathod heard the screams of his Muslim neighbors being burned alive during the first night of the riots in Ahmadabad, the burly Hindu and his two sons jumped in a truck, rammed their way through a Hindu mob and began pulling Muslims from the flames. They saved 25 Muslims that night and sheltered dozens more in safe houses.
"I did it out of humanity, because in my heart I knew it was the right thing to do,' said Rathod.
Across the country in Calcutta live Srabani Das, a Hindu, and her Muslim husband, Naseer Khan.
"Never for a moment in our nine years of married life was there any tension because of religion,' said Das.
"Naseer never asked me to change my religion. I still write my Hindu surname and he never interferes with my Hindu way of life,' she said. "We have friendly tiffs and we try to find the loopholes in each other's religion and even cut jokes.'
Das said their 7-year-old daughter, Karishma a neutral name that could be either Hindu or Muslim helps put things in perspective.
"Our daughter is the binding glue. She has a Muslim father, a Hindu mother and a Christian-English schooling,' Das said. "I think when my daughter Karishma grows up, she will be a truly secular person.'
That sort of talk disgusts Hindu-fundamentalist "kar sevaks,' religious volunteers who dedicate themselves to promoting Hindu purity and preventing Hindu-Muslim marriages or conversions.
"Everyone living in India is a Hindu,' says K.C. Sudarshan, head of the hard-line National Volunteer Corps. "It's not a religion, but a way of life.'
The religious divide dates back to the Muslim Moguls who invaded in the eighth century. Independence was born in the blood of 1 million killed when the subcontinent was partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947. Frequent spasms of communal violence have followed, India and Pakistan have fought three wars and, now nuclear-armed, are spoiling for a fourth.
As more countries in the region took on a deeper Islamic hue, Hindu fundamentalism began to well up in India. The religious friction was hugely exacerbated in 1992, when Hindus tore down a 16th-century mosque at Ayodhya, claiming it was built on the birthplace of their supreme god Rama. Subsequent rioting left more than 2,000 people dead nationwide.
By the late 1990s the Congress party, standard-bearer of the Gandhi ethos and the ruling party for much of India's post-independence history, was out of office and a coalition led by the Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was in.
The Gujarat debacle has undone much of the headway Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party has made in promoting itself as a reform-minded party with moderate views.
The fighting in Gujarat was ignited by a Muslim mob that set fire to a train carrying Hindus returning from a pilgrimage to the Ayodhya shrine, killing 60 of them. Since then more than 1,000 Muslim-owned businesses have been destroyed in retaliatory attacks. Fliers circulating in Ahmadabad, the state's commercial capital, have called on Hindus to boycott Muslim establishments in an effort to "break their backbones.'
Gruesome accounts of babies being doused in kerosene and set on fire, and orphaned children left alone to die of their burns, have provoked much soul-searching among Indians.
Mahesh Bhatt, a leading Indian filmmaker whose mother was Muslim and father Hindu, says the violence is a reminder that religious intolerance in India runs deep.
"Whenever you have deluded yourself that you have been freed of the religious biases your forefathers lived with, the poison that flowed in their veins, comes a fierce reminder like this,' Bhatt said. "The Indian mind is still shackled to its religious prejudices. Incidents like these just mirror the real soul of India.'
Vajpayee has had to walk a thin line between moderates in his 19-member ruling coalition and those who insist "Hindutva,' or Hindu-ness, should be a national political platform.
He headed off a potentially deadly showdown last month by deploying police and troops to stop Hindu fundamentalists from flocking to Ayodhya and laying the first stones for a temple on the site of the razed mosque.
Yet most Muslims, as well as many moderate Hindus, believe the revenge rampages after the train fire were orchestrated by powerful Hindu nationalist groups and sanctioned by Gujarat's governor, Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Gujarat happens to be the only state run outright by Vajpayee's party and Modi is a longtime proponent of Hindu supremacy.
Hindus comprise 82 percent of India's people, but the Muslim population is still the world's largest after Indonesia. The higher Muslim birthrate alarms Hindu fundamentalists, even though Ashish Bose, a leading Hindu demographer, believes their fears of one day being outnumbered are groundless, since the Muslim population has expanded by only 1 percent every 10 years.
The Hindu nationalists accuse the Muslims of looking to Islamic Pakistan as their ideal, and the government is quick to blame Pakistan for everything from the Islamic insurgency in Kashmir to the drought that plagues northern India.
Any spectacular crime in India is typically linked to Pakistan or Islamic militants. Church bombings two years ago were blamed on Pakistani agents. When the arrests were made, they were all Indian citizens.
"This obsession with Pakistan, the relentless anti-Pakistan talk, has created a lot of hatred in this society and then that gets extended to the minorities here, and that's the Muslims,' said Zoya Hasan, a Muslim professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
She said the carving up of the subcontinent is yet another thorn, 50 years later.
"A major grievance is the Hindu conception of sacred land, and partition of the sacred geography was the biggest sin,' Hasan said.
That sacred territory extends to India's only Muslim majority state, Jammu-Kashmir, the cause of two wars between India and Pakistan. Both sides claim the territory.
Tens of thousands mostly Muslims have been killed in a 12-year insurgency by Islamic militants fighting for Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan. Many of the fighters come from Pakistan and Islamabad offers them moral support.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, followed by a suicide assault on India's Parliament building that killed 14 people, have heightened fears that Islamic fundamentalists in India may be sympathetic to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorism network.
A new law passed by Parliament in March gives authorities sweeping powers to detain suspects without charges and try anyone suspected of supporting terrorists. Hindu fundamentalists applaud it; Muslims are fearful the law will only target them.
"The Muslims of this country won't allow any outsiders to come in and terrorize India,' said Munir Sheikh, a Muslim state insurance worker in Gujarat who is helping coordinate relief for some 150,000 Muslims made homeless by the violence.
"We love this country and would give our lives for it.'
AP-WS-04-29-02 1450EDT






    
  


May 3, 2002, Friday



 A JIHAD ELSEWHERE







   
 

May 2, 2002 Thursday  
  



 Indonesian Official Urges U.S. to Resume Military Assistance 

 
A senior civilian official here has said that the United States should drop restrictions imposed almost three years ago on assistance to the Indonesian military and help restore what he called the "tarnished reputation" of this nation's army.
     Laksamana Sukardi, a close adviser to President Megawati Sukarnoputri, said in an interview that members of the United States Congress who wanted to continue curbs on military aid should come to Indonesia to understand why it was important to resume training and to send nonlethal equipment. Mr. Sukardi stopped short of advocating that the United States help supply the military with weapons.  
 In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Washington has repeatedly pressed Indonesia, where a shaky economic and democratic transition is under way, to take firmer action against groups and individuals suspected of having ties to Osama bin Laden and his terrorism network, Al Qaeda.
The Bush administration, Mr. Sukardi said, expects Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, to "push the button on terror." But if the military remains discredited in the eyes of the public, he said, that will be an impossible task for a democratic government. 
Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush administration has pondered how to deal with the Indonesian military, traditionally the institution that has kept this archipelago together as a nation. The Pentagon would like to resume military relations; the State Department is more reluctant. In Congress, backing for the restrictions remains, though Pentagon officials have said they believe that this Congressional support is eroding.
Mr. Sukardi said he originally supported the Congressional restrictions on American aid, imposed after the Indonesian military's involvement in killing civilians in East Timor as that region sought independence from Indonesia. The United Nations has helped administer East Timor since its residents voted for independence in August 1999, and the nation will officially gain independence on May 20. Secretary General Kofi Annan is expected to attend a ceremony in East Timor on that day.
The events in East Timor are now in the past, Mr. Sukardi said.
Under a law authored by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, Indonesia must bring the military officers thought to be responsible for the deaths in East Timor to account before it can again qualify for American military assistance. 
A trial of a handful of midlevel military officers on charges relating to East Timor is in progress but it appears unlikely that the trial will meet the Congressional test. Mr. Sukardi suggested that it was unreasonable to expect a free and fair trial when almost all the judges were holdovers from the authoritarian government of General Suharto, which ended with his ouster in 1998.
"I supported Leahy," said Mr. Sukardi, an economist, who was a prominent member of the democratic opposition during General Suharto's last years in power. "But Leahy has to change his mind. He has to come here and see common sense." In March, the Bush administration sent Congress proposals to help Indonesia form a domestic peacekeeping force and to provide the police with counterterrorism training. 
Both measures fall short of the kind of assistance that the government here seeks and that Pentagon officials would like to offer. In particular, the Indonesian government would like a resumption of military training in the United States for its officers. 







   
 

April 30, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 With Indonesia Politics Up for Grabs, Islam's Role Grows 

 
During his five years in Britain as a doctoral student in accounting, Zul Zulkieflimansyh remembers thinking that his homeland, the largest Muslim country in the world, should be doing better by its 220 million people.
     A veteran of the tough world of Indonesian student politics, Dr. Zulkieflimansyh, 29, decided that Islam was the answer, and the newly formed Justice Party the perfect vehicle. He returned home several years ago determined to do something to bring about change.  
 Now, as the government here struggles to hold the amorphous center together, this astute accountant and a group of like-minded colleagues in the Justice Party are meticulously organizing for the next elections and hoping to establish an Indonesian version of an Islamic state.
The party's goal is nothing less than to impose the traditional Shariah, or Koranic law, on this secular nation. Justice Party supporters contend that such a change would instill a sense of purpose, pride and self-confidence in Indonesians and restore a moral focus in a country that has fallen into chaos and widespread corruption. 
With the devastating effects of the Asian economic crisis five years ago, and the downfall of General Suharto a year later, Indonesia's political landscape is up for grabs as never before. 
About 90 percent of Indonesians are Muslims, though most of them practice a more relaxed, less politically motivated form of their religion than can be found in some other countries with large Muslim populations.
But now Muslim political parties, including the Justice Party, control about 24 percent of Parliament. With elections coming up in 2004, President Megawati Sukarnoputri has been behaving cautiously on many issues, including Washington's war on terror, for fear of destabilizing a delicate equilibrium.
She will have to tread carefully with the Justice Party. Its top echelon -- the party leader, Hidayat Nur Wahid; Annis Matta, the secretary general; and Lutsi Ishak, the treasurer -- are all graduates of Saudi Arabian universities.
Many of the members join after passing through the strident Islamic student organization, the Indonesian Muslim Student Action Union, known for its aggressive street protests in favor of an Islamic state.
But the party believes in the soft-gloved approach. No militant jihad jargon issues from Dr. Zulkieflimansyh's lips. Instead, he speaks of empowering villagers, setting a clean moral example, and spreading a pure vision of Islam.
"We don't like the idea of forcing people to join Islam," Dr. Zulkieflimansyh said during a meeting at the party headquarters. "We like to invite them." Literature asserting that Jews organized the attack on the World Trade Center is on sale at the front counter.
A slogan on the office door says, "Expand recruitment, strengthen education and then gain victory." Dr. Zulkieflimansyh says, "We want people to understand Islam in a nice way."
With its young, motivated leadership -- Mr. Hidayat is one of the older leaders at 42 -- and spirited organization, the Justice Party has put its secular opponents on high alert.
When Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch a half-century ago, the new leaders chose to eliminate a proposal for a system based on Shariah from their Constitution. During the more than 30 years of the dictatorship of General Suharto, many Muslim leaders agreed with his insistence on keeping Islam out of politics, even if they disagreed with his authoritarianism.
Now, in a political atmosphere of new openness, a race is on for the hearts and minds of Indonesians. Leaders from the moderate form of Islam have delineated what they call the battle between Liberal Islam and Literal Islam, in whose corner they place the Justice Party. 
The liberals, suddenly galvanized by the inroads of the Justice Party and more militant groups, deem the Justice Party as dangerous as easy-to-see Islamic militants. 
The Justice Party remains small, with only seven parliamentary seats right now, but it is expected to at least triple its presence in Parliament in the next elections. More important, it has already set a trend, increasing the volume of the debate on adopting Shariah. 
The party, the liberals say, has been clever in not overly emphasizing its goal of creating an Islamic state. In this way, it has avoided creating unified opposition among those who consider the issue the flash point of Indonesian politics.
The Justice Party's soft style of recruitment is clearly on display in the low-income village of Sukamekar, about a 90-minute drive from the capital. The party has provided a mill for the peasants' rice and donated a tractor and is in the process of setting up some classrooms. At the same time, it has introduced study of the Koran twice a week for a women's group, and a party activist, responsible for the economic progress, visits once a week.
The activist, Nur Syamsudin Buchori, the operations manager of Kosindo, an Islamic cooperative established to help finance village projects for the Justice Party, says the rice mill has brought higher prices for the village rice.
Mr. Buchori's boss in the party, Didik Ahkmadi, leader of the "empowerment" division, views the rice mill in sheer political terms.
"This is a very strategic way to improve the conditions of the people," Mr. Ahkmadi said, standing beside the noisy machine as it churned out clean white rice. "If the government established a rice mill, there would be much corruption. If for example one million rupiah was allotted from the bank, 500,000 rupiah would come to the village."
In the nearby village of Babelan Kota, the party has helped organize a local industry. With financing from the party, families buy discarded imperfect socks from textile factories and mend them for resale.
The women's religious study group was a quid pro quo for the economic help in Sukamekar. Marhani Maruf, 38, who takes part in the group, said that economic conditions had improved only marginally but that at least the party representatives were consistent.
"They come all the time," she said. "The others only come when they want something."
The party's senior leaders insist that they are not interested in establishing in Indonesia all aspects of Wahhabism, the conservative form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. 
But the introduction of Shariah is a basic goal. "The implementation of Shariah would mean justice would be upheld," Mr. Zulkieflimansyh told a recent seminar where everyone in the room knew that a series of high-profile corruption trials under way in Jakarta were unlikely to result in severe sentences. 
Under Shariah, he said, "There is no privilege for Muslims if you do something wrong."
Outwardly the party appears to be tolerant of educated women, and one of its most fervent organizers is Nursanita Nasution, a lecturer in accounting at the University of Indonesia and the mother of seven children.
Ms. Nasution, dressed the other day from head to toe in pink, including her head covering, says she is ready for the fight with the secularists. She has long disagreed with Indonesia's leading Islamic moderate voice, Nurcholish Madjid.
"He said, 'Islam yes, politics no,' " she explained. "But Islam teaches us how to wake up in the morning, how to marry, how to educate and how to do the government. It's all in Islam."




15

  


April 29, 2002 Monday



 U.S., Pakistani forces seek terrorist disciples

 
PESHAWAR, Pakistan
U.S. forces joined Pakistani paramilitary troops in searching an Islamic school near the Afghan border for adherents of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, tribal elders and Muslim clerics said Saturday.
Both U.S. and Pakistani officials have recently said that a small U.S. force is operating in the wild tribal region, but the comments Saturday were the first reliable reports of American troops by people in the area.
"The Pakistani forces with the help of American soldiers on Friday stormed a religious school at Darpa Khel to search for al-Qaida men," said Maulvi Abdul Hafeez, a prominent cleric in Mir Ali, about 200 miles southwest of Peshawar. "We condemn this Pakistan-U.S. operation." 
Detainees may moveto new security site
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba
Hundreds of detainees in the war on terrorism may soon be moved from their makeshift prison to a new $16.4 million facility, but the U.S. military, citing security concerns, does not want the outside world to see.
Military spokesman Maj. James Bell confirmed Saturday that construction has finished on the new 408-cell seaside detention center, Camp Delta, but the military has denied media requests to view the transfer of 300 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fighters over a distance of a few miles to the new camp.
"The policy is that we will not comment on the movement of detainees period until any movement has taken place," Maj. Lee Reynolds said Friday without elaborating.
Another base spokesman, Navy Lt. William Breyfogle said the policy is "based on guidance from higher command," but he did not elaborate.
Suspected bin Ladenfinancier files appeal
MADRID, Spain
A Syrian-born real-estate developer jailed for allegedly helping finance Osama bin Laden's terrorist network actually was making legitimate business transactions, including trying to buy a used Mercedes-Benz car, his lawyer said Saturday.
Attorney Maria Angeles Ruiz Martinez said the money transfers by her client, Muhammed Galeb Kalaje Zouaydi, were "all perfectly clear." Ruiz Martinez said she will appeal Judge Baltasar Garzon's Friday order that Zouaydi be jailed indefinitely without bail.
The appeal will be filed Monday at the National Court, Ruiz Martinez said.
Al-Qaida said eyeingnew training locations
MANILA, Philippines
Terrorists may be looking at Southeast Asia as a site for training camps and bases after the devastation of their infrastructure in Afghanistan, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said Saturday.
There are several Muslim radical groups in the region that could serve as hosts, and recent reports have quoted U.S. officials as saying that some camps linked to Osama bin Laden's al- Qaida network may already exist in Indonesia.
The joint chiefs chairman, Gen. Richard Myers, would not comment specifically on Indonesia but said it was clear that al- Qaida, which U.S. officials say has a presence in at least 60 countries, needs new bases.
Fire chiefs rethinkhigh-rise rescues
JERSEY CITY, N.J.
Because of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, fire chiefs around the world will be less likely to send firefighters to the upper floors of burning skyscrapers, the former fire commissioner of New York City said Saturday.
Otherwise, strategies for battling such fires are unlikely to change much in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the twin towers, said Thomas Van Essen, who retired in January.
"If there was a fire today in a high-rise in New York City, we would respond in the way we have for the last 30 years," he said before addressing a New Jersey City University forum on the trade center disaster.
"This tragedy was so overwhelming that no one could have predicted that, within an hour and a half, both these buildings would collapse," he said. "No one prepares for jet planes crashing into their buildings."
: From wire reports







  



April 28, 2002 Sunday  




 WORLD; 
In Brief

 
ASIA 
 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The Pakistani Supreme Court ruled legal a referendum planned by President Pervez Musharraf to extend his term of office by five years. 
 The referendum, scheduled to be held Tuesday, is seen as an attempt by Musharraf to cement his grip before October's parliamentary elections. Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999. 
 Opposition parties and Islamic groups had challenged the referendum as unconstitutional because the president usually is elected by parliament.  
Associated Press 
 BEIJING -- Exiled dissident Yang Jianli said he was detained by police after he entered China on a false passport days before Vice President Hu Jintao's planned trip to the United States. 
 Yang said he was stopped Friday afternoon trying to board a plane in the southern city of Kunming and taken to a hotel where he was ordered to remain. 
 The 38-year-old, U.S.-educated democracy activist said he returned to China 10 days ago for the first time since the 1989 democracy demonstrations to observe the labor unrest that has simmered in the country's northeastern rust belt since March. 
 His detention comes during sensitive preparations for a shuffle of China's top leaders this year in which Hu is expected to take over as head of the Communist Party and as president. 
 Yang, who holds a green card as a resident of the United States, was traveling in China on a close friend's passport after China had refused to extend his passport, his wife said. 
ReutersTHE MIDDLE EAST 
 ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey's president vetoed an amnesty bill yesterday that could have given the gunman who shot Pope John Paul II an early release from prison. 
 The gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, spent nearly 20 years in an Italian prison after shooting the pope in 1981. He is now serving 17 years for the 1979 murder of Turkish newspaper editor Abdi Ipekci and the robbery of an Istanbul factory that year. 
 Parliament approved the amnesty bill Thursday, but President Ahmet Sezer said that it had serious flaws, including a provision reducing the sentences regardless of a prisoner's behavior. 
 Associated Press 
 CAIRO -- Egypt began the retrial of an Egyptian American sociologist convicted of harming Egypt's image, with the human rights activist saying he expected to have an opportunity to clear his name. 
 Saad Eddin Ibrahim, 63, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo, was sentenced last year to seven years' imprisonment.  
The Appeal Court freed him in February, after he had spent eight months in jail, and granted a retrial to him and to the staff at his think tank, the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Social and Developmental Studies. 
 The decision came after human rights groups such as Amnesty International and major Western newspapers had criticized his trial as unfair and politically inspired. 
 Ibrahim and his colleagues were detained in 2000 as they were organizing a campaign to monitor Egypt's parliamentary elections that year. Ibrahim had previously published a study that said the 1995 elections were rigged. 
Associated Press 
AFRICA 
 TUNIS -- Tunisian President Zine Abidine Ben Ali fired his interior minister and the chief of national security, the North African nation's official news agency reported. 
 The TAP news agency gave no reason for the dismissals of Interior Minister Abdallah Kaabi and Mohamed Ali Ganzoui, the national security official, but observers had suggested there might be a government fallout after an attack that killed 16 people at a synagogue two weeks ago. 
Associated PressTHE AMERICAS 
 BOGOTA, Colombia -- Two people were killed and four others wounded when an abandoned van packed with explosives blew up inside a tunnel in northwestern Colombia, in a blast the army blamed on leftist rebels. 
 "All indications are that the FARC were carrying explosives in the vehicle," an army spokesman said, referring to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. 
 It was not clear whether perpetrators intentionally detonated the van or if went off by accident. 
ReutersFOR THE RECORD 
 South Africa's security minister, Steve Tshwete, a leading figure in the fight against apartheid, died after contracting pneumonia and experiencing gradual kidney failure, the ruling party said. . . . Space tourist Mark Shuttleworth, a South African millionaire, boarded the International Space Station after a two-day trip through space on a Russian craft. . . . A Muslim mob attacked and razed a Christian area in Indonesia's ravaged city of Ambon early today, killing at least 11 people, a witness said, in a fresh blow to hopes of peace in the troubled Moluccas region. . . . Two North Korean defectors arrived in Seoul from Singapore early today, two days after seeking asylum at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. 
"I've always thought that something like in America can't happen here. Now it has." 
 -- Manfred Ruge, mayor of Erfurt, Germany, where a gunman killed 16 people in a school before shooting himself. -- Page A23 
 Compiled by Leslie Shepherd 







  



April 24, 2002 Wednesday  




 Chicken Big

 
Parts Is Parts, Part I. 
 The following cable from the embassy in Jakarta arrived Monday at the State Department. It's about Indonesian concerns that imported U.S. chicken was not certified halal, or in conformity with Muslim dietary restrictions. 
 On Monday, April 22, 2002, 50 members of the National Movement of Anti-U.S. Chicken Legs (GRANTAS) staged a peaceful demonstration at the American embassy in Jakarta. The demonstrators arrived in front of the embassy via bus at 13:45, waving banners and singing songs directed against the importation of U.S. chicken leg quarters. The highlight of the demonstration was the burning of a 10-foot chicken leg (we are not making this up). No fowl incidents were reported (okay, we made this one up). The protest ended approximately 45 minutes later.  
 Must be one very large and very angry chicken hopping around Jakarta. 
 Parts Is Parts, Part II. 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied there was a chicken war with the United States, according to Agence France-Presse. "There was never a war," he said Monday. "There was a problem with the quality of meat imported from the United States." 
 Russia, which imports $ 600 million to $ 800 million a year in U.S. poultry, imposed a ban March 10, citing concerns over salmonella and the use of antibiotics and additives. 
 Oh yeah? Have they tried to raise a chicken with 10-foot legs without using additives? 
 Talk grows at the Pentagon that the top brass may be in for another Rumsfeld Shock: the selection of an aviator to lead the Marines for the first time. Gen. James Jones, the current commandant, is slated to step down later this year to become the first-ever Marine to be the top U.S. military officer in Europe, a job that carries the awesome title "Supreme Allied Commander, Europe." 
 Now being eyed to succeed Jones is the assistant commandant, Baltimore-born Gen. Michael Williams, who enlisted in the Navy in 1960 and became a Marine officer in 1967. Picking Williams, a veteran helicopter pilot, would shatter tradition in the infantry-oriented Marines. 
 But Pentagon insiders say it also would be a way of forcing the Corps to focus on its mounting aviation problems, which are led by the V-22 Osprey and the Marine variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, both being eyed by Rumsfeld aides for possible cuts. Another big Marine aircraft issue is a creaky helicopter fleet. 
 But Williams doesn't have a lock on the job. Other candidates include Gen. Carlton Fulford, Gen. Peter Pace and Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, three Marines who have done well in the defense world outside the Corps. A dark horse also being considered is Lt. Gen. Wallace "Chip" Gregson, now the top Marine in Japan. 
 The Senate Judiciary Committee will be taking up the nominations of six judicial candidates on Thursday, but Washington lawyer John G. Roberts Jr., President Bush's nominee for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, won't be one of them. 
 But maybe if committee members want to see Roberts in action, they could wander across the street today and watch him argue his 37th case before the Supreme Court. That puts Roberts, a former deputy solicitor general, easily in the top 10, maybe the top five, among active private practitioners in terms of number of appearances before the justices. 
 Roberts has been waiting a year for Senate action on his nomination. Actually, it was more than 10 years ago, January 1992, that Bush I nominated him to sit on the appeals court. 
 Meanwhile, remember that case Roberts argued a few months back on behalf of enviros fighting development around Lake Tahoe? He won it yesterday, 6 to 3, with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in dissent. 
 A February memo from Employment and Training Administration chief Emily Stover DeRocco to "all ETA employees" has hiked some eyebrows at the AFL-CIO. 
 "A key priority for ETA in the coming year will be to firmly and clearly establish business as the primary customer," DeRocco wrote, and to "improve our responsiveness to business throughout the workforce system." The plan is about "responding to business' needs for skilled workers in the 21st century," she said, and "to ensure the most complete services for business customers." 
 What's this all about? AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney asked in a letter to Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao a couple weeks ago. It's fine "to work with business to find ways to create good jobs," Sweeney said, but the directive "seems an affront" to workers. 
 Tell DeRocco, he wrote Chao, that, by law, her primary "customer . . . is the American worker -- not American business." Business already has the Commerce Department to take care of employers' needs, he added. 
 No, no, no, DeRocco wrote back last week. "I am sorry that my choice of words left the wrong impression." The goal is to help workers, she said, by asking business what its labor needs will be. 
 Sweeney's folks, criticizing anti-labor moves on ergonomics and worker protection, take solace that at least there's no formal plan to merge the Labor Department with Commerce. (That would be in 2005.) 






  


April 21, 2002 Sunday



 Sacramento state students arrested in terrorism ring;
Malaysian police say they aided Sept. 11 attack

 
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Two former California State University, Sacramento, students have been arrested by Malaysian police on allegations they aided members of the al-Qaida terrorist network that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
Sejarahtul Dursina was arrested because she was a partner in the computer firm that gave terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui a job to facilitate his entry into the United States, the national police chief said in Malaysian newspapers Friday.
Moussaoui is awaiting trial in the United States on charges of conspiracy in the Sept. 11 attacks. The French citizen of Moroccan origin is alleged to be the so-called missing hijacker who failed to make the jetliner that crashed into a Pennsylvania field after passengers charged the four terrorists who had seized their plane. 
Sejarahtul's husband, Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian army officer, was taken into custody earlier this year for allegedly allowing two other Sept. 11 hijackers, Saudi nationals Khalid al-Midhar and Nawa al-Hazmi, to meet at an apartment the couple owned near Kuala Lumpur in 2000.
Sufaat also is alleged to have signed a letter on the stationery of the computer company naming Moussaoui the firm's sales representative so he would have an excuse to do business in the United States.
Yazid was among 24 people arrested by Malaysian police in December and January for their alleged involvement in a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy and other Western targets in Singapore.
Yazid was arrested Dec. 9 after returning from serving in a Taliban medical brigade in Afghanistan, police said previously.
Both Sejarahtul, 37, and Yazid, 38, attended the Sacramento school in the mid-1980s, police said.
Yazid graduated in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in biological sciences, said Sacramento State spokeswoman Ann Reed. His studies in biotechnology, now called clinical laboratory technology, would have included inorganic chemistry, human blood, human parasites, and pathogenic bacteria, she said.
Yazid transferred to Sacramento State in the fall of 1983 from Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif. Reed said there is no indication he lived on the Sacramento State campus, and little else is known about him. He attended the winter and spring 1983 quarters at Humboldt State after apparently arriving from Malaysia.
Sejarahtul, also known as Chomel Sufaat, 37, did not immediately show up in campus records, Reed said. However, Malaysian police said she studied civil engineering at Sacramento State in 1984-85.
The pair are the second and third former Sacramento State students authorities said are linked to al-Qaida.
Raed Hijazi was convicted by a Jordanian military court and sentenced to death in February for plotting terrorist attacks against American and Israeli tourists in Jordan during millennium celebrations. However, the judge cleared Hijazi of belonging to al-Qaida, saying there was no evidence the terrorist organization had a formal structure or membership in Jordan.
Jordanian officials say Hijazi confessed to planning to use deadly gas against American and Israeli tourists and to receiving bomb-making training in Afghan guerrilla camps run by al-Qaida. However, Hijazi pleaded innocent, telling the court his confession was coerced and that he had no links to al-Qaida.
Prosecutors say the targeted sites included Mount Nebo, where tradition says Moses saw the Promised Land, and a Christian settlement along the Jordan River said to be where St. John the Baptist baptized Jesus Christ.
"Their paths did not cross on campus, in the sense that they were not here at the same time...they were not in the same program," said Reed.
Hijazi was born in San Jose, attended Sacramento City College, and took classes at Sacramento State in the spring of 1988, and the January and fall terms in 1989. He studied business marketing, but did not graduate.
Sejarahtul was among 14 Malaysians whose arrests were announced Thursday by Police Inspector General Norian Mai.
He told Malaysian media at a news conference Thursday that the 14 arrests marked the destruction of one cell of an Islamic militant group linked to al-Qaida, but that 100 members remained at large, including three university lecturers who have gone underground.
Norian said that most of the 14 arrested had received guerrilla training in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Philippines.
The sweep brings the number of suspected extremists picked up by Malaysian authorities to 62 since last May, when the government said that an organization called the Malaysian Mujahideen Group was planning a violent revolt financed by bank robberies.
The group is alleged to be part of Jemaah Islamiya, a network of Southeast Asian militants with links to al-Qaida that hopes to install a hardcore Islamic state across Malaysia, Indonesia and the predominantly Muslim southern Philippines.
The detainees are being held under the Internal Security Act, which allows for indefinite detention without charge or trial.






  
  
 

April 14, 2002 Sunday 



 CHEVRONTEXACO STILL DRILLING FOR GROWTH;
NOW A "SUPERMAJOR," THE SAN RAMON-BOUND OIL GIANT IS STRUGGLING TO SATISFY SHAREHOLDERS' PROFIT THIRST

 
Among global oil companies, the race belongs to the large.
At least, that's been the conventional wisdom in recent years on Wall Street, where investors favored and rewarded a series of mergers that created a new breed of oil company: the supermajor.
Six months ago, Chevron Corp., the blueblood of the California energy sector, became a supermajor with its $38 billion purchase of Texaco Inc., concluding an on-and-off-again courtship that lasted for 2 years. The deal added ChevronTexaco to the list of oil companies not owned by governments that meet the informal supermajor benchmark: combined oil and gas production of at least 2 million barrels a day and 10 billion barrels of reserves. The others are Exxon Mobil, Royal/Dutch Shell, BP and TotalFinaElf. 
Mergers aren't always good deals for shareholders. ChevronTexaco tackled that issue head-on, setting a goal "to achieve the highest total stockholder return in its peer group for the five-year period 2000-2004."
ChevronTexaco Chief Executive Dave O'Reilly, a former distance runner, seems to relish the challenge. "We've hit the ground running for a rapid and smooth integration as a world-class global energy company," he told financial analysts in November.
But since then, ChevronTexaco's stock has actually lost some ground to the other supermajors. So far this year, ChevronTexaco's stock is down 6 percent, while shares in the other supermajors are all up at least 2 percent.
Still, races between giant oil companies usually aren't decided in the first lap. Investors are still waiting to see whether ChevronTexaco can hold its own against the other giants.
Questions about the future of ChevronTexaco, with 55,000 employees, command attention in the East Bay, because several thousand of those employees work at an administrative campus in San Ramon, a financial center in Concord and a laboratory and refinery in Richmond. The company has also announced plans to shut its San Francisco corporate headquarters before the end of this year, and move the offices of O'Reilly and other top execs to San Ramon, where it also plans to hold its May 15 annual meeting of shareholders.
At the November analysts meeting, O'Reilly offered some clear criteria by which to measure the merged company's progress. He promised that ChevronTexaco would coax enough discoveries and production from the ground to achieve at least 2.5 percent annual growth rates in oil reserves and output, and find enough "synergy" to trim $1.8 billion annually from the company's operating costs.
Keeping those promises will be a challenge. In the 21st century, most big oil discoveries come from risky deep-water projects on the high seas or from politically unstable areas of the Third World. And cost-cutting requires a deft touch to avoid demoralizing the remaining employees or trimming any corporate muscle along with undesirable fat.
While "supermajor" connotes invincibility, that belies the origins of the term. Matthew Simmons, a Houston investment banker, said that it came into vogue in the late 1990s after oil prices fell "so low that if they had stayed there a year or two I don't think anybody would have survived." Investors concluded "the bigger the company, the longer you can postpone insolvency" and rewarded the supermajors with higher price-to-earnings ratios than other energy producers.
But Simmons cautioned that size isn't a panacea. "There's a risk of being so big," he said. "The bigger you get, the more likely it is that the majority of your production base is real old-in-the-tooth assets." Owners may already have skimmed the cream out of deposits, leaving in the ground oil that is less desirable to end users and more expensive to extract.
That's what faces ChevronTexaco in Indonesia. Peter Robertson, the company's vice chairman, noted that production in its Duri field fell to 260,000 barrels a day in 2001 from 300,000 in 1995. If the company hadn't invested $800 million to upgrade the field, the output would have plummeted to 100,000 barrels a day, he said.
Huge production and reserve numbers also raise the size of new discoveries and developments needed to achieve the high growth rates -- 3, 5, even 7 percent -- needed to satisfy investors. That can put more uncertainty in the path of ChevronTexaco and the other supermajors. "The most attractive economics increasingly are being found in regions of high political risk," said Bruce Schwartz, a Standard and Poor's bond analyst. "This is especially true for large, integrated oil companies that need to find billions of barrels of new reserves each year to replace production."
Taking risks
Robertson acknowledged the risks. "Working in partnership with host countries, our industry has kept oil and gas flowing despite civil wars in Africa, terrorist incidents in the Middle East and prolonged civil unrest in Southeast Asia," he said in February at an industry conference in Houston.
But such risks are worth taking, he added: "Our greatest new risk could be failing to take the old risks (which) include doing major capital projects in unsettled regions and within complex partnerships -- as well as investing within countries that need to develop their resources even as they struggle to achieve internal stability."
That's crucial to ChevronTexaco, because finding and lifting oil from the ground generates a majority of its profits. Exploration and production activities accounted for $4.31 billion in net income in 2001, a down year throughout the industry, and $7.15 billion in the boom year of 2000.
For decades, Chevron's crown jewel was its stake in the vast oil fields of Saudi Arabia, where the company pioneered exploration and development in the 1930s. But after Saudi Arabia moved to nationalize those fields in the 1970s, Chevron and Texaco -- which was a partner in that venture -- had to scramble to replace that treasure.
To a large extent, both succeeded. ChevronTexaco's 8.5 billion-barrel worldwide reservoir of petroleum now includes 1.5 billion barrels each in Kazakhstan and West Africa, 1.1 billion barrels in Indonesia, and nearly 500 million barrels in Venezuela.
But with about two-thirds of its reserves located in the Asia-Pacific region, Africa and Latin America, ChevronTexaco's new axis of oil includes plenty of uncertainty. Kazakhstan, a former Soviet Republic separated by mountains from the militant Islamic movements of Central Asia, is ruled by an autocratic former party apparatchik. Regional and global powers -- the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, China and Pakistan -- continue jockeying over control of pipelines needed to carry Kazakh oil to markets.
Indonesia, with the world's largest Muslim population, suffered "disruptive and costly" problems at key energy facilities in 2001, Robertson noted. Currently, another U.S. energy firm's fight for compensation for a canceled geothermal project has sparked a multi-million-dollar dispute with Pertamina, the national oil company that partners in ChevronTexaco's projects.
Other areas aren't immune. Last week, strikes toppled the president and slowed oil exports from Venezuela, and the uncertainties of civil war and corrupt government loom over energy projects in Nigeria and Angola.
Matthew Warburton, a UBS Warburg analyst, in a bearish report last week predicted that ChevronTexaco could seek to buy another oil company to meet its production growth target.
Some analysts see in the Chevron-Texaco merger a desire to hedge bets. By assembling "a more diversified basket" of exploration and production assets, the deal sought "to mitigate economic and political risks by geographical diversification of assets," said Tina Vital, a stock analyst for Standard and Poor's.
The volatility of the exploration and production business has prompted the supermajors to keep their stakes in the refining and retail portions of the oil business that, while less lucrative than exploration and production, are more stable, Vital said.
Excess costs
For immediate gains from its last deal, analysts look for ChevronTexaco to deliver on its promise to wring excess costs out of its consolidated operations. O'Reilly initially promised to cut $1.2 billion from an operating expense line that totaled $12.8 billion in 2001. In November, he upped that goal to $1.8 billion.
Of course, one man's cost saving is another man's pink slip. About 4,500 jobs were slated to get the ax after the October merger, to reduce the newly combined company's worldwide work force to about 52,500. The post-merger consolidation followed a decade of belt-tightening at both Chevron -- which alone employed 54,000 in 1990 -- and Texaco. Chevron's slimming regimen included the elimination of 3,500 jobs in a round of cutting that ended in December 2000.
Fred Gorrell, a ChevronTexaco spokesman, acknowledged that "in times of uncertainty there is, no doubt, some adverse effect on the morale of some employees." But, he said, a post-merger survey of employee sentiment found a "high level of morale of employees" and an understanding of the company's need to act to remain competitive.
Wall Street would like to see more. Tyler Dann, an analyst with Banc of America Securities, thinks ChevronTexaco can accumulate as much as $2.1 billion in annual cost savings by 2005. But Dann recently decried ChevronTexaco's "slow start to the merger savings," citing asset write-downs and higher-than-expected merger expenses included in the company's earnings report for the fourth quarter of 2001.
Vital, the S&P analyst, criticized the company for not warning investors that those charges were on the way. "Last quarter, they had a lot of adjustments that surprised the market," she said. A penalty imposed by disappointed investors contributed to the failure of ChevronTexaco's stock to match the year-to-date returns of other supermajors, she said.
Some skeptical analysts have cut their ratings on the stock in recent weeks, but the company will have a chance to cheer the skeptics April 25, when it is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings. Fifteen analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call estimate that ChevronTexaco will post net income of 70 cents a share. Recent oil price hikes could give the company a boost toward meeting or beating that target.
Rick Jurgens covers the energy industry. Reach him at 925-943-8088 or at rjurgens@cctimes.com.






    


April 14, 2002, Sunday, 



 The New Fronts

 
 
The U.S. war against terrorism has spread far beyond Afghanistan. And several countries are quite willing to accept American help with their problems - and the money, weapons and military training that come with it.
YEMEN
Yemen has long been viewed as a center of support for Osama bin Laden, whose father was born there, and as a haven for al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists connected to embassy bombings and kidnappings of Westerners.
TARGETS: Existing al-Qaida members, those who are thought to have arrived recently from Afghanistan and the tribes that shelter them. 
DEPLOYMENT: The United States has already sent about two dozen advisers to begin training security forces to help patrol Yemen's 1,500-mile coastline. The Associated Press recently cited an adviser to the Yemini government as saying teams of military advisers were expected to start arriving in the country soon to train Yemeni military and police. There will initially be three teams, with 20 to 30 advisers each. Each team would spend several months in Yemen. Yemeni officials say they also want boats and help building a new naval training facility.
LOCAL REACTION: President Ali Abdullah Saleh is eager for trade and investment for his poor, arid nation. The United States cut Yemen off after Saleh supported Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War. Ties improved when Saleh demonstrated his resolve to rein in Yemeni violence. Relations were strained again when terrorists bombed the USS Cole and killed 17 American sailors in October 2000, while the destroyer was being refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden. But many in the government are anti-American.
GEORGIA
The threat in Georgia is murkier. U.S. officials say Arab terrorists and possibly some Afghans have taken refuge in the Pankisi Gorge, a remote strip next to the Russian republic of Chechnya. The terrorists are mixed in among thousands of civilian refugees from Chechnya, Chechen fighters and local bandits.
TARGETS: A dozen or so al-Qaida terrorists and Chechen rebels with ties to al-Qaida.
DEPLOYMENT: U.S. forces, 100 to 200 advisers, are there to train and equip elite Georgian battalions, but not participate in their operations. Georgia also bought 8 U.S. helicopters last year.
LOCAL REACTION: Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze hopes the U.S. help will stabilize his troubled nation, where three regions are seeking to secede. Georgia also wants the drug dealers, gun runners, kidnappers and Chechen fighters who come and go freely through the Pankisi Gorge driven out. If the U.S. mission succeeds, not only will another, potentially important, al-Qaida refuge be eliminated but Russia will also be prevented from using the trouble as an excuse to bomb and bully Georgia, whose sovereignty Moscow has never fully accepted.
THE PHILIPPINES
In January, the United States began sending troops to train Philippine soldiers to hunt down members of Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group that claims to be fighting for an Islamic state. Analysts and diplomats, however, say the group's primary motivation is the money it obtains from kidnappings. Last May 2001, the group abducted 20 people from a resort. Some hostages paid large ransoms, but others, including an American couple, are still being held.
TARGETS: Analysts say Abu Sayyaf, whose name means "Father of the Sword," has received funding from al-Qaida, and several members trained in bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Bin Laden's brother-in-law has been a frequent visitor to the Islamic hotbed in the southern province of Mindanao. He also is suspected of funneling money to the rebels.
The largest Philippine Islamist guerrilla group, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, has more than 12,500 members. MILF has launched attacks and bombings for four years. Analysts think al-Qaida now has links to MILF.
Jemaah Islamia is a growing al-Qaida group that has working contacts with MILF. Analysts also think it has cells in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
DEPLOYMENT: There are 80 U.S. Special Forces troops on the southern Philippine island of Basilan, where Abu Sayyaf is holding hostages. The U.S. military presence there is projected to peak at 660 troops in coming months. Officials say the U.S. troops are not involved in fighting and will only use force in self-defense. The United States has also supplied the Philippines with $ 92-million worth of military equipment.
LOCAL REACTION: President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo calls Basilan Island her "little Afghanistan." While most Filipinos seem to support the U.S. operation and the money in brings in, some Muslim residents want the United States out. President Bush has pledged $ 100-million in security assistance this year.
WHAT COULD BE NEXT?
INDONESIA: Senior military officials say they are also looking to build stronger military ties to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, in the hope of encouraging that country to root out terrorist cells. Congress late last year eased restrictions on the training of Indonesian military officers in the United States that had been imposed in 1999 after human rights abuses by government troops in East Timor. Many military and congressional officials say they expect the Pentagon to propose sending Special Operations troops to Indonesia next to train military units in counterterrorism tactics.
MALAYSIA: Adm. Dennis Blair, the head of Pacific Command, has said the United States will look for ways to focus ongoing exercises, such as those each year with Malaysia, on scenarios to fight terrorism.
SOMALIA: Somalia is seen as a hub for terrorist operations against U.S. interests in East Africa. The U.S. government has increased surveillance flights in recent months, and intelligence officers have also made contact with clan leaders as potential allies. U.S. officials say Somalia is a possible destination for Osama bin Laden or other al-Qaida leaders who might flee Afghanistan.
SUDAN: This was bin Laden's home until he was kicked out in 1996. A chaotic climate that has arisen from 19 years of civil war has made Sudan appealing as a haven for terrorists. A deal is in the works to allow 30 to 40 international monitors into the country to oversee a cease-fire.
SOURCES: Time, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Scripps Howard






   

 

April 12, 2002 Friday, 



 It's Mideast policy that's unpopular;
Poll finds support for U.S. culture

 
Washington --- "They don't hate us."
A recent survey of eight Arab and Muslim nations found that attitude toward the American people and culture, pollster John Zogby said Thursday.
Zogby International released survey results showing that the Arab and Muslim respondents had high regard for American science, technology, education, products, television and movies. 
However, they had scant support for the war on terrorism and gave "incredibly low marks" for U.S. policy toward Arab nations and in dealing with the "Palestinian issue."
"They believe our policy is one-sided toward Israel," said John Zogby, president of the international polling firm.
"It's not our values," said James Zogby, brother of the pollster and president of the Arab American Institute. "It's not our democracy. It's not our freedom. It's the policy that they don't like."
Indeed, the survey showed "a natural affinity for things American" --- especially among young Arabs and Muslims and among those with access to satellite TV and the Internet, said John Zogby.
"The attitudes are more multidimensional than we had thought," he said. "It's difficult to paint with broad strokes. 'They love us' --- we're not saying that. 'They hate us' --- we're certainly not saying that."
The Zogby poll was taken after a Gallup survey showed mostly negative attitudes toward America and American values in the Arab and Muslim world.
Disputing the notion that anti-American passions are stirred by Arab stations, James Zogby said: "Satellite TV is not our enemy."
Views were mixed on American democracy and freedom. Only Iran and Indonesia expressed majority disapproval, although substantial minorities of 38 percent to 44 percent came from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.
The conclusions are the result of about 6,400 face-to-face interviews in five Arab nations --- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates --- and in three non-Arab Muslim countries --- Pakistan, Iran and Indonesia.
To establish context, the same questions were asked in face-to-face interviews in France and Venezuela.
Among the Arab and Muslim countries, disapproval of U.S. policy toward the Arab world and Palestinians ranged from 88 percent in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to 75 percent in Pakistan. Likewise, more than nine out of 10 respondents in Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon and Iran disapproved of U.S. policy toward the Palestinians







   
 

April 10, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 MIDEAST TURMOIL: WORLD REACTION; 
As Israel Lags In Pulling Out, Critics at U.N. Turn Up Heat

 
The longer it takes Israel to begin a significant withdrawal from Palestinian towns overrun by troops and tanks since the end of March, the more broadly the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is coming under attack in the Security Council and behind the scenes throughout the United Nations. 
     As Israel's military push continues, there are other concerns about the opening for mischief being created for regional nations like Iraq and Syria.
 Iraq, which on Monday announced a 30-day oil sales moratorium to disrupt world energy supplies and prices, today proposed a war crimes tribunal to try Mr. Sharon for genocide and crimes against humanity. Syria, United Nations officials fear, has the capacity to reopen fighting along the border of Lebanon and Israel, where several United Nations peacekeepers were attacked last week. 
The credibility of the Security Council is also being thrown into question, as frustration grows over Israel's refusal to heed recent resolutions calling for a withdrawal. 
Today, Arabs stepped up demands for a punitive resolution against Israel that could authorize sanctions and the dispatch of an international monitoring force, essentially to protect the Palestinians. Such a resolution would never be allowed by the United States, which holds a veto.
But an American veto, several diplomats suggested, would only make the United States seem like an accomplice the Israeli campaign and set back efforts American diplomats have made here to be evenhanded in casting blame.
European and American diplomats were working today to have the Arab-sponsored resolution modified. Nevertheless a vote, or a showdown, could come on Wednesday, the Palestinians said.
American diplomats say the Council is suffering "resolution fatigue." On Monday, Ambassador John D. Negroponte, the United States representative, said, "We do not need any more resolutions." 
The darkening mood surrounding the Israelis marks a reversal of a more moderate attitude that had been developing toward Israel in an organization that has been traditionally hostile. Moves to end Israeli isolation had been growing steadily over the 1990's, after the end of the cold war. 
Now, inescapable television pictures of the damage Israeli attacks are inflicting on people and places -- often playing on screens around the building -- are fodder for expressions of disbelief and condemnation from around the world. Today, in the latest of what has become an almost daily Security Council debate on the Israeli-Palestinian fighting, Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, took the floor to call the Israeli tactics "carnage," and Turkey, once one of the region's friendliest nations toward Israel, demanded that "the tanks should turn back now." 
On Monday, Ireland's envoy, Richard Ryan, said: "Making a desert and calling it peace is hardly a wise policy." Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British representative, said that while he recognized that Israel had been the target of "appalling acts of terrorism," the Sharon government should consider the futility of trying to defeat terror "by the disproportionate use of military violence." 
All but gone now in the debate -- as the Israeli ambassador, Yehuda Lancry, noted today -- are condemnations of Palestinian suicide bombings.
After another round of debate ended this afternoon, the Palestinian observer, Nasser al-Kidwa, was asked if the latest proposed resolution would not complicate the work of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other envoys from Europe working toward a cease-fire and negotiations.
"Some people also raised the argument that you can't do that while Powell is conducting an important mission in the region," he said. "Our response is simple. We, in this resolution, are not dealing with the mission. We are basically dealing with the Israeli withdrawal, something which should have been achieved Thursday, on the basis of the U.S. position. The U.S. position, as we understand it, is that the withdrawal should take place before the arrival of Secretary Powell." 







   
 

April 8, 2002 Monday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN ARENA; 
Trade Envoy Urges Bolder Moves by Indonesia Against Terror, and Vows U.S. Backing

 
The United States trade representative, trying to embolden President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia to take steps against terrorism, promised in talks here today to cooperate with her government against the "dangers" in her society. 
     Robert B. Zoellick, the trade representative, held talks with Mrs. Megawati and several of her ministers that were broader than his usual trade brief. He said that Indonesia's success in dealing with terrorism was extremely important to the United States.  
 This nation of more than 220 million people, most of them Muslim, has been a model of "tolerant Islam," and Washington would like it to remain that way, Mr. Zoellick said after the talks and dinner in Mrs. Megawati's official residence. 
The subtle public message was that the Bush administration was anxious to help Indonesia, but that the nation must begin to reform its army to receive the military assistance that it wants. 
The Pentagon wants to provide training to the Indonesian military but has been stalled by an American law that forbids such assistance until the army shows some accountability for the deaths of civilians in East Timor in 1999.
A prolonged debate within the administration has centered on how to get Mrs. Megawati to be more vigorous in stemming trends toward Islamic extremism here.
Indonesia, which rejected the idea of becoming an Islamic state after independence from the Dutch more than 50 years ago, has traditionally been one of the most open-minded Muslim countries. 
But there have been recent signs -- including the arrests of suspected Islamic militants from Indonesia in the Philippines -- that Indonesians are involved in militant groups with suspected links to Al Qaeda. 
Administration officials also have urged the Indonesian government to search for an Indonesian Islamic cleric, Riudan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, who is believed by American officials to have been the operational director in a plot to blow up the American Embassy in Singapore. 
In talks with the foreign minister, Hassan Wirayudha, Mr. Zoellick suggested that the government halt the activities of Abu Bakar Baasyir, an Islamic cleric and school principal in central Java who is said to have links to Al Qaeda. 
In recent months, administration officials have expressed frustration with what they consider Mrs. Megawati's slow pace in acting against the Islamic militants who they say are recruiting cadres in her country. 
But the more administration officials hear the outspoken anti-Israeli sentiments of two other potential leaders -- Vice President Hamzah Haz and the speaker of the Parliament, Armen Rais -- the more senior officials in Washington say they appreciate Mrs. Megawati. 
Mr. Zoellick is the second senior Bush administration official to visit Indonesia within a month, a reflection of the frustration with the leadership here. 
The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, was here several weeks ago. But Mr. Zoellick knows the president better than his colleagues and gets along well with her.
Mrs. Megawati, the daughter of Indonesia's post-independence leader, Sukarno, is a mystery to most officials in Washington, who find her sphinxlike public posture bewildering. Judging from Mr. Zoellick's public comments today, the trade negotiator turned diplomat-for-a-day apparently tried to play to the Indonesian president's own recent self-assessment. She described herself as "soft on the outside, but hard as rock on the inside."
So Mr. Zoellick suggested to her that as the carrier of her father's torch, it was her destiny to help Washington deal with its overriding concern: terrorism. Or as he put it more euphemistically on the doorstep of her home after dinner, she should deal with "the dangers" in Indonesia -- phraseology apparently intended to offend as little as possible and to encourage action.      







  



April 8, 2002 Monday  




 Rallies in Arab Countries Denounce Israel

 
 Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in the Muslim world today to protest against Israel's 10-day-old offensive in the West Bank and against U.S. support for the Jewish state. 
 The biggest rally filled the main boulevards of this city, a few hours before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was scheduled to arrive in the North African country on the first stop of his Middle East peace mission. 
 "Sharon assassin! Bush his dog!" chanted protesters, many brandishing Palestinian flags and images of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. "God is great! . . . We want jihad [holy war]!"  
 A senior government official said at least a half-million people participated in the five-hour demonstration, the first pro-Palestinian protest Moroccan authorities have allowed since October 2000, one month after the start of the current uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Political groups who organized the march said as many as a million took part, including Socialist Party Prime Minister Abderrahmane Youssoufi and other government members. 
 "This is the largest protest in the Arab world. . . . It shows that Moroccan people firmly support the Palestinian intifada against the Zionist aggression," said Ahmed Benjelloun, head of the leftist Avant-Garde Democratic and Socialist Party. 
 In Bahrain, home of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, thousands of people chanting "Death to America! Death to Israel!" joined a funeral procession for a 24-year-old man who died of injuries suffered during a violent pro-Palestinian rally at the U.S. Embassy on Friday. 
 "We call on the government to kick out the American ambassador," Abdul-Amir Jamri, an influential Shiite Muslim cleric, told mourners setting off from Manama, the capital, to the dead man's village. Hamad bin Isa Khalifa, Bahrain's king, ordered an investigation into the embassy riot and the subsequent casualties, the Bahrain News Agency said. 
 Thousands of demonstrators, many of them Palestinian, marched throughout Lebanon. In the center of Beirut, the capital, 3,000 supporters of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, gathered in front of a U.N. regional headquarters, chanting slogans demanding that Israel's neighbors allow exiled Palestinian groups to attack the Jewish state from across their borders and accusing Egypt and Jordan of treason for maintaining diplomatic ties with Israel. 
 Children wore outfits honoring the Hamas suicide bombers who have mounted dozens of attacks against Israeli civilians. 
 A similar demonstration organized by pro-Syrian Lebanese groups took place in Tripoli, the Lebanon's second-largest city, while 3,000 supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organization marched in Tyre, to the south. 
 The Lebanese government said it would not tolerate attacks on Israeli targets from its territory and arrested several Palestinians who allegedly fired rockets over the border at Israeli positions last week. 
 Between 3,000 and 5,000 Indonesians, mostly from the Muslim-oriented National Justice Party, defied scorching heat to gather near the presidential palace in central Jakarta and burned an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country. 
 In France, where anti-Semitic attacks have been linked to the latest fighting in the Middle East, police used tear gas to break up clashes in Paris between pro-Israeli demonstrators and peace activists. 
 About 10,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets of Brussels. Some hurled stones at the U.S. Embassy, but the march from the city's commercial district to an area of European Union institutions was mostly peaceful. Many marchers demanded that the EU do more to force Israel to comply with the U.N. resolution calling for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories. 
 Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique, whose country currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, earlier said the EU would discuss sanctions against Israel if it continued to reject calls for a cease-fire. 




16


   
 

April 7, 2002 Sunday  
  



 U.S. Envoy Campaigns For Trade Pacts On Asian Trip 

 
The United States trade representative, Robert B. Zoellick, toured high-tech plants on two tiny Indonesian islands just south of Singapore today to show that the countries of Southeast Asia could stand up to the looming economic force of China through trade cooperation. 
     Mr. Zoellick peered into microscopes used for checking for imperfections in plastic contact lens and chatted with Indonesian workers on an assembly line of memory chips designed for digital cameras. 
 The point of the exotic locale -- the islands of Batam and Bintan on the northern edge of the Indonesian archipelago -- demonstrated, he said, that if countries like Indonesia and Singapore worked together on trade arrangements, both would benefit from foreign investment. The contact lens plant that Mr. Zoellick toured is owned by an American company, Ciba Vision, that is headquartered in Atlanta.  
The visit today was part of an Asian trip by Mr. Zoellick intended to give confidence to Southeast Asian countries that were battered by the region's financial crisis five years ago and that now fear China's strengthening economic shadow. 
In less than a decade, according to Singapore government figures, China has managed to attract much of the foreign direct investment that poured into the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean, during their years of expansion in the 1980's and 1990's. In the early 1990's, China received about 30 percent of the foreign investment in the region and the then-booming economies of Southeast Asia received about 60 percent.
Now, China is receiving about 60 percent of the foreign investment, Singapore says, and the investment has accelerated most markedly in the last several years as China's membership in the World Trade Organization became more certain. 
To help offset what the United States views as an unhealthy imbalance between China and the smaller countries to the south, Mr. Zoellick urged these countries to reduce trade barriers among themselves to attract more outside investment. 
Mr. Zoellick attended a meeting of Southeast Asian trade ministers in Bangkok on Friday, where the idea of an overall Asean free trade agreement with the United States was discussed. Because the countries of the region are in such varied economic stages, such a pact is a long way off, Mr. Zoellick said. 
A free trade agreement between the United States and Singapore, in the final stages of preparation, probably will be signed by the end of this year, he said. It will include a feature intended to benefit businesses in Indonesia, where the economy is limping after the 1997 Asian meltdown and from security concerns after Sept. 11 in this, the world's most populous Muslim nation. 
Within the free trade agreement, the United States and Singapore have decided that more than 100 information technology items manufactured in the industrial parks would be granted the same free trade agreement status as if they came from Singapore. 
The plants on the tiny Indonesian islands that Mr. Zoellick visited today are located in secure, clean industrial parks only an hour by ferry from Singapore. For American and other foreign companies, these islands provide the benefit of lower wages than Singapore but easy access to Singapore's air and shipping hub, Mr. Zoellick said. 
The Indonesian minister for trade and industry, Rini Soewandi, said her government would try to reproduce nationwide the conditions that made the two industrial parks attractive to outside investors. Indonesia provides speedy custom clearance, tax incentives and other advantages for businesses on the island, she said. 
For the Indonesian workers, most of them women aged 18 to 21, the jobs on the islands are highly prized. A starting salary at one of the plants is $60 a month, about twice the amount the women said they would earn in their home provinces. 







   
 

April 7, 2002 Sunday  
  



 The World; 
The Helping Hand Gets Limp Shakes

 
IT should have been easy. The Bush administration wanted to expand its war on terror to Asia, to places on whose soil bad guys with links to Al Qaeda might be operating. Indonesia and the Philippines were considered the two obvious targets: countries friendly to the United States that needed help. Since to Washington's way of thinking this is war, the recipe called for American military assistance.
     But extending a friendly hand has raised suspicions, rekindled old debates about colonization in the Philippines and set off accusations of meddling in Indonesia.  
That the leaders of both countries are new to power and are strongly backed by their military forces has presented its own set of problems.
But there is also a cautionary lesson for the United States: American military power isn't always greeted with a welcome mat, even in nations that the United States believes want to do the right thing. In many places history is freighted with bad memories of what American military power can bring.
The Philippines is a treaty ally of the United States and is now led by a pro-American president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a graduate of Georgetown University. But even there, the politics of putting American boots on the ground has proven delicate and divisive. In the closing years of the cold war, American bases were widely resented; America had, after all, been close to the corrupt dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Even today, the departure of the American military from Subic Bay in 1991 remains a scar on the Filipino psyche, and the "Yankee go home" cries from back then have not been transformed into "Yankee hurry back."
Mrs. Arroyo, the only leader in Asia to invite American troops since Sept. 11, argues that she took political risks in accepting President Bush's offer of training for her army and help in hunting a gang of Muslim kidnappers, known as the Abu Sayyaf, on the southern island of Basilan. (Mrs. Arroyo had to curb President Bush's enthusiasm for American combat troops, pointing out that the Filipino constitution forbade such intervention.)
Since arriving in the Philippines in February, 600 American troops -- 160 of them Special Operations forces based on Basilan -- have dealt as much with political fears about their presence as with military matters. When two American soldiers with M-16 rifles were photographed outside a bank while their compatriots withdrew money, screaming headlines demanded to know: What were armed American soldiers in civilian clothes doing on a Filipino city street? 
So far, the American soldiers have been passive as the Filipino army continues its effort, now six years old, to stamp out the Abu Sayyaf.
Mrs. Arroyo, it turns out, wants it both ways. While she is happy to have the Americans on her territory, she doesn't want them to upstage the Philippines' soldiers. And the American troops go along, knowing they could harm Mrs. Arroyo's political fortunes -- for example, if a Filipino child were killed accidentally by an American soldier, or if there were a public spat with the Filipino military. 
Political considerations aside, the American troops do not have a lot of choice. The Philippine military is insisting that it is in charge of the efforts to defeat the Abu Sayyaf, and that the American military stay in the background during operations. So the Americans have yet to go deep into the jungles of Basilan with Filipino troops.
But the Filipino military suffers from chronic divisions among its services. When the army and the Marines compete to claim victory over the Abu Sayyaf, it hampers the ability of both to stage successful maneuvers, American officials say. 
DESPITE the frustration, in private the Americans are not complaining too much. They are discouraged that an American missionary couple, Martin and Gracia Burnham, who have been in the hands of the Abu Sayyaf for 10 months, have not been rescued. But, they say, the United States needs the Philippines for the long haul. If the southern Philippines, where Muslim separatists have long operated, can be stabilized, the islands there could make a perfect future listening post, and good jumping off point, for guarding the whole range of American interests in the Pacific. 
Indonesia presents a different picture. President Megawati Sukarnoputri, like Mrs. Arroyo, has been in office since last year and she too visited President Bush after Sept. 11.
But she is a far more reluctant suitor when military aid is concerned. She leads a country -- the world's most populous Muslim nation -- that prides itself on neutrality these days. American assistance is looked upon with such distrust that the Indonesian military turned down an offer from the Pentagon to deliver aid during floods in Jakarta in February. The Pentagon had a major training role in Indonesia during the cold war, but became estranged in the 1990's over the question of Indonesian human rights abuses. 
Any hint of an American presence in Indonesia today would probably end Mrs. Megawati's young presidency, and for that reason Washington officials say they would not consider barging in. In the last month, in fact, the Bush administration has tempered its description of the threat in Indonesia, asserting that it is a potential, rather than a current, haven.
Nevertheless, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was ambassador in Indonesia for three years, has made no secret of his desire to help the armed forces against what he sees as a burgeoning band of Islamic extremists. Mr. Wolfowitz has spoken of helping the Indonesians to form an internal peacekeeping force. He is not contemplating the presence of American combat troops, but rather training for the army and the police, he said.
BUT the army's human rights record presents a significant stumbling block. A 1999 law whose author was Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, forbids American assistance to the Indonesian army until it brings to account officers responsible for more than 100 civilian deaths during a rampage of military-backed militia in East Timor that year.
Many in the Bush administration would like to get around this restriction, arguing that reform is not possible unless the United States guides it by renewing ties with the military. American officials have tried to encourage Mrs. Megawati to be more open-minded by asserting that Congress is not demanding the wholesale prosecution of the Indonesian Army but, simply, a serious effort toward reform. Still, a trial here involving human rights in East Timor, which the Indonesian government has billed as its answer to Washington's concerns, shows little sign of satisfying Congress. 
In a show of sympathy for Mrs. Megawati, Senators Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, and Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, told her during a visit last week that they agreed with her that the military was the most important institution in the country. They told her they opposed the Congressional restrictions at the time of their passage but warned her that as much as they wanted to provide training, they could not encourage policies that flouted the law. President Megawati listened politely, but made no promises.







   
 

April 5, 2002 Friday  
  



 Indonesia General Denies Responsibility for East Timor Killings 

 
The commander of the Indonesian Army when militias backed by the military rampaged through East Timor nearly three years ago testified today that he was not responsible for what he called the "incident."
     Gen. Wiranto, the former commander, blamed the United Nations and the East Timorese police for the deaths of more than 100 people in violence that followed a referendum in which the people of East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence. An independent commission in Indonesia and a United Nations panel concluded two years ago that the military, which opposed independence, had supported the militias.  
 The general was appearing as a witness, not a defendant, at a trial on human rights abuses by the military in the former Portuguese colony, which Indonesia annexed in 1976.
After two years of hesitation over whether to hold a trial, the government opened one last month. Senior military officers, including General Wiranto, who were named by the commission two years ago, have not been charged.
Instead, five mid-level military officers, as well as police officers and civilian leaders, are defendants.
The trial and General Wiranto's appearance have a direct bearing on Indonesia's relations with the United States.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the Bush administration would like to renew ties with the Indonesian military, which has historically played a vital role in keeping the country together. The administration views Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, as an incubator of Islamic extremism and has urged the government, so far unsuccessfully, to take a firmer stand against it.
The hands of the administration are tied by Congressional restrictions placed on American aid to the military because of the human rights abuses in East Timor. A law stipulates that before the United States can give assistance to the Indonesian military, the government must bring to justice those responsible for the killings.
General Wiranto, who was forced out of office in 2000, strolled into the courtroom today wearing a loose fitting batik shirt and bearing a smile of supreme confidence. The general, an amateur crooner, has released a CD of love songs called "For You My Indonesia." 
Scores of supporters, many wearing black garb and bandanas of an Islamic militant group, clapped during his testimony. In the corridor outside the courtroom, young men carried placards, among them: "Kofi Annan, impotent."
The general said that the violence erupted in East Timor after the referendum in August 1999 because people were dissatisfied with the way the United Nations had conducted the poll.
"The chaos happened because of dissatisfaction over the irregularities in the vote," he said.
Neither the judges nor the prosecution asked him specifically about the military's role in organizing and directing the militias.
General Wiranto said the East Timorese police were responsible for security matters, not the army. The military, he asserted, was responsible for overall national security.
Two years ago, a government human rights commission recommended the prosecution of the general and 32 other military and civilian officials after concluding that they were responsible for the killing of more than 100 people, with many others wounded and raped. 
The United Nations panel made a similar finding. 






  


April 5, 2002 Friday 



 PUBLIC ANGER THREATENS COALITION, OFFICIALS FEAR

 
The mass protests that U.S. officials feared would rock Arab nations after the American-led attack on Afghanistan last fall didn't materialize -- but they are erupting now as a result of the Palestinian-Israeli fighting.
A rising tide of public anger, from Egypt to Jordan to Saudi Arabia and beyond, threatens regional stability and also jeopardizes the broad cooperation Washington needs to wage the war on terrorism, the Bush administration says.
Those threats were among the key factors behind President George W. Bush's decision Thursday to send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region.
"There was a real concern that we were at a tipping point beyond which some of the most fundamental pillars of stability in the region would be at risk, including relations between Jordan and Israel and the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel," a White House official said. 
The administration also feared that growing domestic discontent within Arab regimes would make it harder for those countries to pressure the Palestinians to end terrorism as a way to restore the peace process, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon's Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said defense officials are keeping a close eye for signs of a "degradation of support" from key Arab countries in the U.S. campaign against terrorism.
"So far, we haven't seen any evidence that the support is being downgraded," he said. "It's something we need to keep a watch on, because the war on terrorism is going to be a long one. At this point, it's wait and see. We realize there is the potential that these things may be affected by popular sentiment and what's happening in those countries."
There are clear-cut reasons why the war in Afghanistan didn't spark an outpouring of Arab anger while the current crisis has, analysts say.
One factor is that Palestinians are Arabs and Afghans aren't. Another is that the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan were widely perceived as a radical regime. "The conflict in Israel is a conflict that's deeply emotional on the Arab street, in a way the U.S. conflict with al-Qaida and Afghanistan was not," said Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, and a former official with the departments of State and Defense.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a "very exposed nerve ending for most Arabs; it has a lot more resonance than other conflicts do," said James Phillips, an expert in the Middle East and terrorism with the Heritage Foundation, another Washington think tank.
Millions of protesters in Arab countries in recent days have decried what they regard as a lack of Arab support for Palestinians facing an Israeli military incursion. Many have demanded that their regimes do more to help, including boycotts, oil embargoes and open borders so volunteers can help the Palestinians. In response, Egypt has downgraded its diplomatic ties with Israel, and Oman delivered a message of displeasure to the American embassy.
A major American concern is that the protests could undermine the stability of key Arab countries.
"The demonstrations, their scope and intensity, and the fact that they 're growing day by day, may bring down governments whose stability has been very important to America," said Harry Siegman, director of the Council on Foreign Relations' U.S.-Middle East Project.
"These governments are experiencing street demonstrations and riots they are not able to control, and they can easily spill over from accepted grievances against Israel to demonstrations against the governments themselves."
Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are most threatened by the rising anger aimed by protesters at Israel, the United States and at their own leaders, Siegman said.
Unlike the "carefully choreographed" protests the region has seen in the past, leaders can't control the current ones, he said.
"They are too widespread, and the intensity of the anger is too real," Siegman said. "If the governments attempt to repress them, it will only increase the impression of the protesters that their governments are selling out to the United States and to Israel."
Jordan is particularly at risk because of its large Palestinian population, said Jean-Robert Leguey-Feilleux, a Middle Eastern expert at St. Louis University.
"About 75 percent of their population is Palestinian. But Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel, and I'm sure it doesn't want to jeopardize that treaty - so the young king is over a barrel," he said.
Threats to U.S. terror war
The "growing rage" in the region threatens the cooperation critical to the campaign against terrorism, said Radha Kumar of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
"Some of that cooperation is intangible, including intelligence cooperation that takes place behind the scenes and briefings on where the likely threats may be," she said. "All that would come under jeopardy. That creates the potential for trouble later on, because we still don't know exactly how the war on terrorism is going to develop, or even where the leads we get in the arrest of people in Pakistan or Afghanistan are going to take us."
And if the current anger in Arab nations continues, she added, any hope of gaining their support for action against Iraq "would disappear."
Another danger of the rise in anti-American sentiment is that it "makes it easier for groups like al-Qaida to get people to sign up," said Lawrence Korb, who served as assistant defense secretary under President Ronald Reagan. "It confirms what people believe about the United States and enables these terrorist groups to get more converts."
Some analysts suggest that vulnerable regimes will remain in power by following popular sentiment if it continues to rise, which might preserve stability but would also work against U.S. interests.
"There is a mounting rage, but I don't think it is actually going to threaten them, because they are going to share in the rage," Kumar said.
Other analysts who have been supportive of the Bush administration think it's a mistake to send Powell to the region because it appears to reward Palestinian terrorism.
"Conditions are not ripe for an agreement," said the Heritage Foundation's Phillips, "and Powell really has a major uphill climb to put anything together. It's really a high-stakes effort, because he's risking his personal prestige. The key to the success of Powell's mission is going to be in (Yasser) Arafat's hand, and he has squandered so many opportunities to reach peace with the Israelis."







   
 

April 4, 2002 Thursday  
  



 In Southeast Asia, a Wary Optimism 

 
The waves of America's apparent economic recovery are poised to break over Southeast Asia, many economists say. But despite the rosiest economic forecasts in years, skepticism abounds in the region.
     Michael D. Ruslim, a director at PT Astra International, is among those not holding his breath. 
 Astra manufactures and distributes the best-selling cars and motorcycles in Indonesia, the region's largest economy. Its vehicles are everywhere, from Toyota minivans grinding through city traffic jams to Honda motorcycles crisscrossing rural rice paddies. Even so, the company has found the going tough, its struggles emblematic of the region's post-1997 travails. 
Mired in debt, Astra survived the region's financial crisis only by laying off thousands of workers, selling some assets and taking on a foreign company, Cycle and Carriage of Singapore, as its largest shareholder.
Now, despite signs of recovery across the Pacific, Astra predicts that sales this year and next will be flat. Business prospects are drying up for the small enterprises and families that make up the bulk of the company's customers, Mr. Ruslim said.
After weathering the global recession in better shape than many economists had expected, Southeast Asia's economies are being fueled by heavy government spending, low interest rates and buoyant consumer spending. A recovery in exports to the United States will round out the picture, they say, providing a gentler rebound than the V-shaped recovery Southeast Asia experienced in 1999 after its financial crisis, but a rebound nonetheless.
"We are entering a period of sustained but gradual growth for the next two years," said William C. Belchere, head of economics and fixed-income strategy at Merrill Lynch in Singapore.
The question hounding skeptics is one shared by policy makers hoping to curb the kind of poverty that helps drive young people in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, and the Philippines into the arms of religious extremists: Will the rebound be strong enough to replace the thousands of jobs lost during the downturn and create enough new ones for the legions of young job seekers?
According to Mr. Ruslim and others, that depends in part on whether the rebound brings foreign investment with it and whether the economic woes of Japan, once Southeast Asia's biggest investor, and the increasing economic competition from China extend the decline. The biggest investment banks clearly are not optimistic: Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch have all pared back their Southeast Asian operations.
Southeast Asia's stock markets are jumping as they expect a rebound, but the signs of the incipient rebound are subtle. Exports are still falling, but more slowly than before. Industrial production figures indicate that this trend may soon be reversed, economists say, and it is just a matter of time before American managers regain the confidence to start placing orders with Southeast Asian factories.
"You won't actually see the export numbers themselves look all that impressive until midyear," said David G. Fernandez, head of Asian sovereign research at J. P. Morgan in Singapore.
The signs can vary even within a single company. Hewlett-Packard, for example, says there is robust demand for its customer resource management and other systems from mobile phone operators and banks that are competing to offer new services. But from the region's export manufacturers, said Leong Han Kong, Hewlett-Packard's general manager for sales and marketing in Southeast Asia, "we're still not seeing a strong signal yet." He added, "Corporations are very cautious about spending."
Nowhere is that split truer than in Thailand, the region's second-largest economy. Though Thai banks and telecommunications operators are still spending, Mr. Leong said electronics manufacturers were cutting back as they lost business to China.
Though foreign investment in Thailand jumped last year, it has yet to recover to precrisis levels. Instead, Thailand's economy has been held above water by consumers, who have responded to record lows in interest rates by buying computers, cars and new homes.
Tiny, affluent Singapore is Southeast Asia's third-largest economy, and it is more dependent on demand in the United States for high-technology products than any of its neighbors. Because of that dependence, it was the only Southeast Asian nation to slip into recession as the American bubble burst. But it also means that Singapore has the most to gain from a recovery. Even so, the government is trying to steer Singapore into areas, like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, where it has an edge over cheaper competitors.
"We know we've got to reposition ourselves," said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the senior minister of state for trade and industry. "China has basically changed the equation."
Indonesia remains Southeast Asia's biggest question mark. It is more than just the region's biggest economy.
Indonesia's troubles reverberate throughout the region. Its forest fires obscure its neighbors' skies. Its migrant workers seek jobs abroad, filling detention centers and putting pressure on other labor markets. And its pirates menace the region's shipping lanes.
Rising oil prices augur well for Indonesian exports. Moreover, Indonesia is less reliant than its neighbors on exports and large enough to survive on domestic consumption, provided that there is sufficient investment and growth to raise real wages. According to the World Bank's Indonesia economist, Vikram Nehru, "sufficient" means growth of 5 percent to 6 percent.
But real wages have stagnated, according to Mr. Nehru. And rural unrest, labor strife and bureaucratic intransigence combine to hinder investment, both foreign and domestic.
Mr. Ruslim knows this firsthand. A strike last year at one of Astra's suppliers halted sales for two months. And plans to sell its oil-palm plantations to foreign investors fell apart after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Some economists say investors can take comfort in what is bound to be a more lenient, post-Sept. 11 stance by Indonesia's official creditors, including the World Bank.
But Mr. Nehru said the onus was more than ever on the administration of President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Rekindling investment, he said, "depends on the government's ability to maintain steady reforms and bring back confidence in the economy."







   
 

April 4, 2002 Thursday  
  



 World Briefing Asia: Indonesia: Bombing In Christian Area 

 
     A bomb killed 4 people and wounded 55 in a Christian district in eastern Indonesia where a peace pact was signed in February by Christians and Muslims after three years of clashes. Witnesses said the blast, outside a karaoke bar in the center of the city of Ambon in the Maluku islands, littered the street with hands, arms and legs and set off violent protests by thousands of Christians. The islands, one of several flashpoints where separatist or religion-based violence threatens central government control, have been fairly calm since the pact took effect.







   
 

April 1, 2002 Monday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: THE OUTLOOK; 
Pakistan's Bold Alliance: U.S. Ties Holding Firm

 
President Bush has said repeatedly that in waging war on terrorism, the United States will work with countries that want to cooperate, but is prepared to act on its own.
     The Pakistani government has demonstrated how firmly it is in the camp of cooperation, most lately in allowing the F.B.I. and C.I.A. to conduct a raid with Pakistani police here last week that rounded up more than 30 men with suspected links to Al Qaeda. The raid also demonstrated how valuable that cooperation can be: one of those apprehended, Abu Zubaydah, is suspected of being a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden. 
 Today, Pakistani officials said the men had been turned over to the United States.  
That action will surely bring some protest from nationalists and Islamists. But defying predictions that there would be huge street protests like those that roiled tribal areas in the days after the United States began bombing Afghanistan, most protests have been moderate, suggesting that the Pakistani leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has some political space to carry out his pro-American, antiterrorism policies.
"In general, his policies of supporting the campaign against terrorism have not been challenged, except by religious groups," said a senior Western diplomat. The mainstream political parties "recognize he has handled the situation well," he said, "but there are limits to this support."
Perhaps recognizing those limits, General Musharraf has not given the Bush administration everything it wants. On Saturday evening, he made that clear once again. 
In spite of pressure from Washington, he told a meeting of Pakistani newspaper editors that he would not hand over Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the chief suspect in the murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl. Mr. Sheikh has been indicted in the United States, which fervently wants his extradition. But the case is sensitive to Pakistan. 
"I am going to hold his trial inside the country and punish him for the crime he has committed in the country," General Musharraf said. 
Few countries have done as much for Washington in the war. Pakistan's willingness to take on strident nationalists and Islamic extremists is in marked contrast to Indonesia, for instance, also a Muslim country, but one whose president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, would be most unlikely to ever permit the F.B.I. to carry out a joint raid like the one here. Today, senior officials in Indonesia were again quoted as saying they had no evidence that a radical cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, had been involved in terrorist activities, a conclusion at odds with that reached by other countries in the region, notably Singapore.
The Bush administration has recognized the contributions of General Musharraf, inviting him to Washington and commending his courage. 
But the administration has been slow to deliver on promises of police assistance, and has not removed duties and quotas on Pakistani textiles, a move that would give a vital lift to the economy of this impoverished country. 
Without some tangible benefits like those, there is a question of how long the Musharraf government can continue to mobilize public opinion behind its antiterrorism policies.
Washington has also at times taken actions that seem to undercut General Musharraf. Ten days ago, for example, it ordered all dependents of embassy employees to leave the country, out of concerns about security. "This is certainly not a good sign," said the interior minister, Moinhuddin Haider. "If everybody starts packing up and going home, it doesn't make a very good impression," he added. "We have to show some courage."
That General Musharraf has survived this close alliance is a lesson that Washington hopes other leaders can learn, particularly President Megawati in Indonesia. 
Most recently there has been a noticeable absence of protest in Pakistan over the role of agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the raid. No major newspapers have editorialized against it, and General Musharraf's mainstream political opponents have not criticized it.
There is certainly a radical element opposed to General Musharraf's policies. It is loud and violent and it has allies among Pakistan's military and intelligence corps. But for the moment the key military officers have stayed in line, and the Islamic political parties and radical leaders have failed to turn out anything but paltry crowds for anti-Musharraf or anti-American rallies.
This is not to deny the existence of a deep current of anti-Americanism in this Muslim country of 140 million. The hostile sentiment arises not only because of America's policy in Israel, but much closer to home because of American policies in the region.
After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States arrived in force, training, arming and equipping guerrilla groups, including the mujahedeen. When that war was over, the United States basically abandoned the region. "Pakistan was left with drugs and Kalashnikovs," a Western diplomat said here. "Pakistan felt betrayed."
In now siding with the United States, General Musharraf and his advisers have not erased this resentment, but in the main, Pakistanis appear to put national interest over past grudges. Religious extremism and sectarian violence have rent this nation.
"We have taken a very strong stand, because we believe that to have security in Pakistan we cannot have extremism here," said Mr. Haider, the interior minister.
It is not a risk-free policy, as Mr. Haider knows personally. His older brother was assassinated in Karachi last December. That attack was widely seen here as a retaliation against the government's policy of siding with the United States and cracking down on extremist groups in Pakistan. 
But the government vows to carry on. "Our resolve to continue this policy remains firm and strong, because it is good for Pakistan," Mr. Haider said.
Still, he would like to see a little more cooperation from the United States. The Musharraf government has given Washington a list of what it needs for its war against terrorists, starting with simple things like computers and printers for the provincial police, who are in the front line. 
The government has also asked the United States to install a computer system for the immigration service at the country's 18 land, air and sea ports of entry. Mr. Haider said that only the airport in Islamabad had a computerized system. He said he thought the new equipment would arrive within two to three months, but American officials are now saying that it would be at least a year before everything was delivered. 
Ticking off the other help that Pakistan would like from its more powerful partner in the war on terrorism, Mr. Haider referred to lifting the duties on textiles, but also called for foreign investment and relief from the country's $38 billion debt. "We need help quickly," he said. "These are very critical times." 






 The State Journal-Register  
The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)

April 1, 2002 Monday



 LETTERS, FAXES & E-MAIL

 
Ryan critic commends him for death penalty stance
Dear Editor, I have been an outspoken critic of Gov. George Ryan since the beginning of his administration. From his increases in license and other fees to his current round of facility closures and employee layoffs there seems to be a culture of mismanagement.
The only, and I emphasize only, bright spot of his administration for me is Gov. Ryan's moratorium on the death penalty. For most of my 50 odd years, I have been a supporter of capital punishment; however, in the last few years I have rethought my position.
The very thought that the government I have helped to elect and support through my taxes could execute an innocent person is unconscionable. I cannot support a system in which that could happen. The state of Illinois has released 13 death row inmates because new information came out that proved their innocence. Had, as many propose, the appeals process been shortened, some if not all of these men would be dead by my government's hand. That would put innocent blood on my hands. I don't want to live with that. None of us should. 
Gov. Ryan, you did one thing right. Thank you. I am not sorry to see you leave office. I think four years was too long. But I fear when you leave, executions will begin again and at some point innocent blood will be on all of our hands.
Eddie J. Ward
Alexander
Thanks to all who made Rutledge dinner a success
Dear Editor,
The volunteers and supporters of the Rutledge Youth Foundation and its recent Spaghetti Dinner deserve a big thank you for a job well done. The money that was raised for Sangamon County teens at this dinner has broken our past record and made everyone involved really proud of the role they played in it.
First, I'd like to recognize the Roman Cultural Society for once again dishing up the best spaghetti and meatballs to our many friends and supporters. Tony Libri, Pete Cimarossa and Tony Mattera are among the many in the crew who worked especially hard to make this year's dinner bigger and better.
The Knights of Columbus Council No. 364 were gracious hosts. Larry Davis and Jeff Boyer couldn't have been more supportive of the event. I'd also like to recognize another special supporter, a board member and the sponsor of the dinner, Beverly Collins with ReMax Professionals.
On behalf of the board of directors and Rutledge staff, I'd like to share our gratitude for the assistance and selfless giving we've received from the community for our special group of kids.
John Fleischacker
Board president
Rutledge Youth Foundation
Keep checking IDs in effort to fight underage drinking
Dear Editor,
According to a new survey, 68 percent of Americans have been carded, and the vast majority (93 percent) believe that ID checking is a good or excellent way to reduce underage drinking.
This survey shows how serious Americans take the issue of underage drinking, and we at House of Brews Inc., the local distributor of Anheuser-Busch products, are committed to helping retailers and servers in our area prevent sales to those under the legal drinking age.
In 2001 alone, we distributed a variety of ID checking materials, including booklets with color photographs of driver's licenses from all 50 states and Canada, to assist servers and sellers of alcohol beverages effectively identify those patrons of legal drinking age and stop sales to minors.
The Check ID nationwide poll, conducted for Anheuser-Busch by the Data Development Corp., reveals that Americans have witnessed efforts firsthand to combat underage drinking. In fact, 65 percent of those polled have seen someone getting carded. Further, 93 percent of American adults agree that alcohol retailers should be trained to spot fake IDs and 95 percent believe that Anheuser-Busch and its wholesalers should be involved.
Here in Springfield, we are involved and committed to being part of the solution in the fight against underage drinking. Working together, we all make a difference.
Jack B. Howard
House of Brews Inc.
Springfield
Surely, Madigan paid bonus money from his own pocket
Dear Editor,
I am at a loss to understand the flap about Speaker of the House Michael Madigan's largess in regard to his employees. If he wishes to make a $35,000 gift, it is his prerogative. Unfortunately, he can only take $10,000 of that off his personal income tax return. I'm sure he is well aware of this.
Of course, I am confident the bonus came out of his own pocket and was not meant to be paid from taxpayer funds. His aide probably did a fine job, but is that not why his salary is so generous? I pray I am not laboring under a misconception.
F.W. Dodd
Springfield
Wishes the state would outlaw telemarketing
Dear Editor,
I'm wondering when the legislators will get off their duffs and pass a law outlawing telemarketers.
Several states have had the wisdom to do so. I have to keep my portable phone by my side or I would be jumping up 20 times a day to answer my phone. I'm tempted to cancel my phone and use my cell phone.
I can't take a nap anymore for the ringing of my phone. Also my cats don't appreciate it either.
Ray Landholt
Mount Pulaski
Could you say Islam is a friend of America?
Dear Editor,
Clarence Page in his column recited a familiar theme with his headline: "Islam is not the enemy." Could he also write a column that says: "Islam is a friend of America"? I doubt it. Islam is not the friend of freedom.
Whatever apologists for Islam might say, the face of Islam is not a peaceful one for non-Muslims where Islam is in control.
The face of Islam is in Saudi Arabia, where a Muslim is subject to death if he becomes a Christian and Christians are jailed for openly speaking about their faith. The face of Islam is in the Sudan, where Islamic slavery is practiced and apparently approved by the Islamic world. The face of Islam is in Indonesia, where Jihad warriors are moving island to island in an attempt to wipe out Christianity. All this is in application of Sharia - Islamic Law - not by a few radicals, but by standing Islamic governments.
An article in The State Journal-Register not long ago quoted a Muslim, who said, "Every Muslim is for Sharia." I would like to hear Muslim citizens and guests in this country assure us they do not want Sharia for America - even Muslim Americans.
I have had contact with Muslim people. They have always been most kind and helpful, and appear to be very hard-working folks. I have always been treated with the utmost courtesy and respect. But I don't want to imagine an America with a Muslim majority.
Eddie Bratton
Petersburg
Blessed Sacrament team had two great seasons
Dear Editor,
As a proud grandmother, I enjoyed the article and photo "Two Winning Years" in The Voice on Feb. 26 about the eighth-grade girls basketball team at Blessed Sacrament School.
However, I was disappointed that you didn't list all the girls' names, which are as follows: Katie Korza, Emily Boll, Jacki Alexander, Hailee Elmore, Karli Adams, Anna Newell and Alecia Evans.
Great job, girls, and thanks to the coaches Todd Boll and Stan Korza.
Barb Korza
Springfield
Response for 'Titanic' cast was disappointing
Dear Editor,
I have just returned from what may be the greatest musical production of all time, especially considering it's based on an actual tragedy. I'm referring to "Titanic" (the musical). I am still in awe of the incredible talent and beauty that went into this Broadway performance. The purpose of this letter, though, is not to applaud them, but rather to point my finger at the city of Springfield and say for shame!
As soon as the last note was sung, yes, there was an outpouring of applause, but there was no standing ovation! No one stood up to give those talented performers and their breath-taking performance the respect they so richly deserved. The lights went on and off for three times, and finally a handful of people stood up.
I guess if it would've been a grade school play with someone's kid in it, well, that would've received a standing O right away. But a Broadway production, with I'm sure many of the original actors/actresses, no, that apparently doesn't merit a standing ovation.
We don't deserve to have shows like "Titanic." So again I say, for shame Springfield, for shame.
Laura Bledsoe
Springfield







   
 

March 31, 2002 Sunday  
  



 Corrections 

 
     An article on March 10 about Jaffar Umar Thalib, a militant Muslim cleric in Indonesia, referred incorrectly to the number of Muslims killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. It was not 800. There has so far been no official count of Muslims who were among the 2,830 dead or missing confirmed as of March 21. 







   
 

March 29, 2002 Friday  
  



 The True Arab Leaders 

 
India's national tumult produced Gandhi and Nehru. America's nurtured Jefferson and Madison.
     So why does the decades-long Arab crisis spawn the likes of Yasir Arafat and Saddam Hussein? 
 At a time when Arab countries face far-reaching choices -- about economics, democracy, Israel, religion -- the region needs most what it lacks most: great leaders. Most of those in power seem to "lead" by staying in the crowd, distracting it when possible, and running around in front of it when necessary. 
The sad reality is that real moral and political leadership -- an effort to articulate a vision and take risks to persuade people to share it -- comes mostly from Osama bin Laden and other Islamists. Their vision may be harmful, frightening and deceitful, but they have one, and struggle to persuade people to follow them. 
I've just returned from Yemen, where a militant Islamist, Abdelmeguid al-Zindani, started his own university (where John Walker Lindh studied). Cassette tapes of his fiery sermons suggest that President Bush conspired with Jews to destroy the World Trade Center.
The government of Yemen has clamped down on Mr. Zindani lately. But Yemen's president and other prominent pro-Western figures have mostly avoided publicly denouncing him for distorting Islam.
In the last few years, one of the few public figures with the courage to take on Mr. Zindani publicly is another crackpot, Sheik Muqbel bin Hadi al-Wadie. Until his death last year, Sheik Muqbel spewed fury at the West and ran what Western spooks said was a training camp for holy warriors.
But Sheik Muqbel also believed that religious figures should stay out of politics. And so he blasted Mr. Zindani for accumulating political influence -- with the result that the public battle of ideas here was between two backyard bullies.
Likewise, terrorist leaders like Mr. bin Laden gain legitimacy by their commitment to a cause, their willingness even to die for it. In contrast, what are most Arab presidents, ensconced in their palaces and limousines, committed to besides power for themselves?
Some Arab thinkers, like Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel-Prize-winning writer and conscience of Egypt, have had the courage to stand up for their beliefs and against the militants. But Mr. Mahfouz was stabbed for his troubles, and so the educated often seethe in their salons rather than over the airwaves.
I began my career by learning Arabic in Cairo and thought I would focus on the Arab world. Instead, happenstance (a.k.a. editors) diverted me to East Asia, where I worked for most of the last 15 years. In retrospect, I feel lucky: the Arab world remains in the political and economic stasis in which I left it, while Asia has become one of the most vibrant places in the world.
In 1957 Sir Isaiah Berlin wrote a brilliant critique (the only kind he ever wrote) of the Soviet Union, titled: "The Silence in Russian Culture." It is striking how much of what he wrote applies to the Arab world as well, how much of the Middle East's problem arises from a "silence in Arab culture."
The problem is not Islam, for other Muslim nations (like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia) have vigorous debates and genuine leaders. Part of the responsibility is the West's, for backing its own pet rulers. But ultimately it is Arabs themselves who must break their silence. 
One evening, while chewing qat with a handful of Western-educated Yemenis gathered in a lovely private home in the capital, Sana, I asked them why they did not speak out against crazies like Mr. Zindani.
There was a long silence. Then one man, whom I admire for his intelligence and open-mindedness, spoke with resignation.
"My word against Zindani," he said, "is hopeless."
That defeatism hangs like a pall over the best and brightest of the Arab world. There are hints in the Arab press that 9/11 is beginning to prompt a greater reflectiveness, and it was encouraging that this week's Arab summit meeting included a parallel meeting of nongovernmental organizations. 
As the Iraqi-born scholar Kanan Makiya writes in his book "Cruelty and Silence": "Change for the better will only come in the Arab world when a new generation of young Arabs become incensed at the unacceptably cruel state of their world." 
Let's hope they get incensed soon. 




17


  



March 24, 2002 Sunday  




 Indonesia a 'Big Disappointment' in Terror War; 
Neighbors, U.S. Say Jakarta Has Failed to Arrest Key Suspects

 
 In Singapore and Malaysia, Abubakar Baasyir is a most-wanted criminal. Law enforcement authorities in those two countries believe he is the ideological leader of a terrorist organization linked to al Qaeda that plotted to blow up several Western embassies in Singapore with fertilizer-laden truck bombs. 
 In Indonesia, however, Baasyir is a free man. Wearing flowing white robes that match his pointy beard, he runs an Islamic school where nearly 2,000 pupils hear him regularly idolize Osama bin Laden, condone the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and lecture about the importance of fighting holy wars. 
 Singaporean and Malaysian diplomats have given Indonesian officials interrogation transcripts and intelligence reports about Baasyir's alleged activities. The Singaporeans also have handed over evidence suggesting that the terrorist organization, Jemaah Islamiah, has operational cells in Indonesia. But Indonesian authorities have opted not to arrest him or any other suspected members of the group.  
 Washington and other Asian countries say that Indonesia's unwillingness to make arrests and its failure to mount an aggressive search for another Muslim cleric believed to be al Qaeda's operations leader in Southeast Asia raise concern about the country's commitment to combating terrorism. 
 "Indonesia has been a big disappointment," said a senior U.S. official. "There is a lot of basic stuff they should be doing, that they've promised to do, but they're not." 
 A Malaysian official called Indonesia "the weakest link" in addressing terrorism in Southeast Asia. "They're not doing their part," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We're sharing everything with them, but we're not getting a lot of information back." 
 Indonesian officials maintain that Western governments have hyped reports of terrorist activity in their country. "We have already used intelligence and other methods to trace the existence of terrorism that people say is present in Indonesia, but we have not found any," the country's top security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, told the state-run Antara news service recently after meeting with FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to discuss joint efforts to combat terrorism. 
 Indonesian officials also contend that aggressive moves against clerics such as Baasyir would spark a backlash from his followers and other extremist groups and could lead to widespread public unrest in a country where more than 90 percent of the population is Muslim. 
 "The United States and Indonesia have a common enemy," said a senior government official. "But it's not as easy for us as it is for the Philippines or Singapore. There, Muslims are in the minority. Here, most of our people are Muslims. We can't just go about detaining people. The people wouldn't stand for it." 
 According to her advisers, President Megawati Sukarnoputri fears that a crackdown could also alienate Muslim political parties that are part of her coalition government. 
 Congress cut U.S. military cooperation with Indonesia following the violence surrounding the 1999 referendum on independence in East Timor, then an Indonesian territory. Now the Bush administration is seeking a resumption to bolster the anti-terrorism effort here. Given the objections to a full resumption of military aid, U.S. officials are exploring ways to provide training and assistance to the Indonesian police -- cooperation that the Bush administration would not be prohibited by congressional restrictions from offering, a U.S. official said. 
 In public, U.S. officials have been conciliatory toward Indonesia's approach to fighting terrorism. "We understand the difficulties that the Indonesian government faces," Mueller said in a speech in Singapore this month. Different nations' law enforcement agencies, he said, "work within a different judicial system, legal system, have different constraints on them, and it is not helpful for the United States . . . to preach to other countries." 
 But in private, U.S. officials have been seething. "It's hard to think of another country in the world that has such a potentially big terrorism problem and has done so little to deal with it," one U.S. diplomat said. 
 At the top of the list of U.S. concerns is Indonesia's failure to arrest Baasyir and search more actively for one of his close friends, Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, who is believed to be al Qaeda's operations chief in Southeast Asia. Malaysian officials said Hambali played host to two men in Malaysia in January 2000 who later helped hijack the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Later that year, the officials said, Hambali helped provide accommodations and a letter of reference to Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person the United States has charged with conspiring to commit the Sept. 11 hijackings. 
 Malaysian and Singaporean intelligence officials believe Hambali is hiding in Indonesia. Although Indonesian officials said they have ordered a manhunt, several Western diplomats said it has not been very intense. 
 Since December, authorities in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have arrested more than 40 alleged members of Jemaah Islamiah. Indonesia has not arrested a single member, even though the group is believed to have based its operations on Java, the country's main island. 
 "The masterminds are still at large in Indonesia," Singapore's senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew, said in a recent speech. "The danger will go away only when these nests of al Qaeda-trained operatives around us are broken up." 
 Western diplomats in Jakarta also contend that Indonesian authorities have not done enough to investigate other extremist organizations, some of which are allowed to operate openly. One such group is the Laskar Jihad, which has been waging a three-year-long jihad, or holy war, against Christian villagers in Indonesia's Moluccas islands. 
 In some cases, key suspects have been allowed to slip away, either because of inept police work or because they were tipped off by sympathizers in the security forces, according to U.S. officials and Western diplomats. Last summer, the CIA asked Indonesian authorities to arrest a small group of al Qaeda operatives who had arrived from Yemen to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, a senior U.S. official said. But Indonesia's intelligence agency sat on the information for more than two weeks before handing the matter over to the police, who have far less counterterrorism experience, the official said. By the time the police got around to dealing with the matter, he said, the group had fled. 
 "They delayed on telephone taps, and eventually they made enough noise so these people would leave," he said. 
 Late last year, intelligence agents lost track of Parlindungan Siregar, an aeronautical engineer who is believed to have arranged for scores of al Qaeda operatives from Europe to train in Indonesia, a Western diplomat here said. Siregar had been under surveillance after returning to Indonesia from Spain in late 2000, the diplomat said. 
 U.S. officials said Indonesia has not responded as quickly or as thoroughly as other countries in addressing U.S. requests for assistance. "There has been solid evidence that we've asked them to investigate, to confirm or deny, and we haven't gotten satisfaction," a senior U.S. defense official said. 
 U.S. officials said perceptions that Indonesia is soft on terrorism and the fact that it has highly porous borders -- the archipelago has more than 17,000 islands -- have made it an attractive outpost for terror groups. The CIA, in a recent assessment of potential problem spots around the world, concluded that there was a significant threat of al Qaeda basing further operations in Indonesia, a U.S. diplomat said. 
 Diplomats, analysts and officials in neighboring countries acknowledge that Indonesia is hindered by poorly trained and equipped security forces, but they contend that Indonesia's leaders have been too timid in rooting out terrorists. Because of fears that a crackdown would spark opposition from Muslim groups and political parties, Megawati has asked the police, the military and the national intelligence agency to be discreet in pursuing suspected terrorists, a senior Indonesian official said. 
 "She worries that if it is done in the wrong way, it will create more problems for her," the senior official said. 
 Megawati was one of the first foreign leaders to visit the United States after Sept. 11, pledging at the White House that she would participate in the global fight against terrorism. But when she returned to Indonesia and was briefed about domestic opposition to the U.S. campaign, she refused to endorse military strikes against the Taliban. Her government also declined to give the U.S. military permission to fly through Indonesian airspace. 
 Yudhoyono, the chief security minister, vowed that Indonesia would "wage war on international terrorism, but in our own way." 
 Indonesian officials emphasize that they arrested and handed over to the CIA a suspected al Qaeda operative allegedly connected to Richard C. Reid, the British citizen charged with trying to detonate explosives in his shoes on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December. Although Western diplomats lauded Indonesia for taking that step, they said intelligence agents have not fully pursued other elements of the case, including tracking down people the operative, Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, met while he was in the country. 
 Indonesian officials maintain that they are still investigating Baasyir and Jemaah Islamiah but say they do not have enough evidence to make arrests. 
 "We cannot arrest people without evidence," Foreign Minister Noer Hassan Wirajuda said. 
 Baasyir has denied any connections to Jemaah Islamiah. He has filed a $ 100 million defamation suit against Singapore's government for alleging that he is a terrorist. 
 U.S. officials said they hope Indonesia will intensify its anti-terror efforts. "They've said all the right things to us in meetings," one official said. "Now we're just waiting for the action." 
 Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report. 







  



March 23, 2002 Saturday  




 The Poll That Didn't Add Up; 
Spin on Data Blurs Findings From Gallup's Muslim Survey

 
 Finally, or so the world thought, a definitive answer to the question that has haunted Americans since Sept. 11: How much do Muslims abroad really hate us? 
 Quite a bit, according to surveys in nine predominantly Muslim countries by the Gallup Organization, whose findings were first reported last month by CNN and USA Today and subsequently by news organization around the world. 
 "In poll, Islamic world says Arabs not involved in 9/11," read the front-page headline on Feb. 27 in USA Today. The scary statistics cited in the article included the fact that 53 percent of respondents said they had an unfavorable view of the United States. Nine percent thought the U.S. military action in Afghanistan was justified. Fewer than one in five -- 18 percent -- in six of the nine countries believe Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. (Three countries wouldn't let Gallup poll-takers ask the question.)  
 One big problem: Those numbers were the product of Enron-like arithmetic -- sensational but meaningless amalgamations of results from nine separate surveys. 
 Another problem: Fewer than half of the world's Muslims live in the nine countries included in the Gallup study. 
 Still another: You didn't have to be a citizen of the country in which you were interviewed -- or even a Muslim -- to be included in the Gallup sample. 
 Of course it's true that lots of Muslims in other countries don't like the United States. But it's equally true that the reported summaries of opinion in the "Muslim world" are so suspect that even Gallup itself doesn't mention them on its Web site. 
 It's also apparent that the hype was unnecessary, tainting the otherwise important results obtained from the individual countries, survey experts say. 
 The National Council on Public Polls (NCCP), a leading professional watchdog organization, recently posted on its Web site a stinging rebuke of CNN and USA Today for the way they reported the results of the project.  
 As it turns out, the council could just as easily have spanked Gallup. As Gallup now acknowledges, it initially provided reporters with the sensational characterizations that were the primary target of NCPP criticism. 
 The polling watchdogs were most critical of the numbers purporting to represent the overall opinion of Muslims surveyed, such as the finding that 53 percent of all Muslims had an unfavorable view of the United States. 
 These eye-opening results were "actually the average for the countries surveyed regardless of the size of their populations," the NCPP noted. "Kuwait, with less than 2 million Muslims, was treated the same as Indonesia, which has over 200 million Muslims." 
 It's as if California and South Dakota each were allocated the same number of electoral votes in presidential elections. 
 The problem would be particularly worrisome if there were big differences in the results across the nine countries. And there were, at least on some key questions. For example, 36 percent of those interviewed in Kuwait said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were morally justifiable, compared to only 4 percent in Indonesia. 
 If the results of the two countries were averaged, the result suggests that about 20 percent of these Muslims seemed to view the attack as justified. But that figure falls to about 5 percent if the results were properly adjusted to account for population. 
 So where did reporters get those bogus aggregate numbers? 
 From the Gallup Organization, said Andrea Stone, the reporter who wrote USA Today's front page story. The aggregates were clearly noted in the first fax sent by Gallup to USA Today and CNN, which also included the country-by-country results. "I didn't do the arithmetic," Stone said.  
 Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, acknowledged that the aggregates were included in the material supplied to news organizations.  
 Newport said Gallup analysts cautioned against using the aggregated numbers when the results were released at a seminar in Washington. But no such warning appeared on Gallup's first release to Stone or to reporters at CNN. And it was this release that reporters used to prepare their stories. 
 Newport is the vice president of NCPP, whose members include many of the nation's most respected and influential pollsters. He declined to say whether he endorsed NCPP's statement. Gallup is partners with CNN and USA Today on national surveys, but the news organizations did not collaborate on the Islamic poll. 
 None of this should suggest that the conclusions would have been dramatically different if only the country-by-country figures had been used. 
 "That story could have been told without the overall averages," said Warren Mitofsky, an NCPP review board member and former head of Voter News Service, the consortium run by the television networks to provide election data. 
 It's also fair to say that the Gallup Poll of Islamic Countries, despite its flaws, ranks as a singularly ambitious, thoughtful and thought-provoking project. The NCPP called it an "important and fascinating study." 
 In its release, the NCPP review board also faulted CNN and USA Today for repeatedly claiming the poll was a survey of "the Muslim world," a reference that appears in stories by other news organizations. 
 Turns out it's a small world -- much too small. The nine countries in which the survey was conducted are home to about 40 percent of all Muslims, the NCPP noted. Included in the study were Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Conspicuously absent were the views of Muslims living in India, Egypt, Bangladesh and Nigeria. (Gallup never claimed its findings represented the views of all Muslims.) 
 While too few countries were sampled, too many interviews came from just two countries. A total of 9,924 adults were interviewed, but "two-thirds of the Muslims in the nine countries Gallup studied live in Indonesia and Pakistan," the NCPP reported. 
 In fact, you didn't need to be a citizen of the country where the interviews were conducted. For example, fewer than half of the individuals in the Kuwait sample were citizens of that nation. 
 Newport declined to criticize USA Today or CNN for the way they used the results. "The thrust of what they suggested was an accurate indication of what the data showed," he said. 
 Meanwhile, those screwy aggregates continue to circulate freely, overshadowing the country-by-country findings. They were cited by Tim Russert on last Sunday's "Meet the Press" and in recent days on the BBC, in stories by Agence France-Presse and appearing in England's Manchester Guardian as well as other newspapers. 







  



March 23, 2002 Saturday  




 WORLD; 
In Brief

 
AFRICA 
 HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe announced plans yesterday to import huge amounts of food to stave off starvation caused by drought and the agricultural chaos following the occupation of white-owned farms by ruling party militants. 
 Agriculture Minister Joseph Made said the government was seeking 200,000 tons of corn, the staple food, from Kenya, Brazil and Argentina. Over the next 18 months, the country will need to import 1.5 million tons of corn, state radio reported. 
 The fertile southern African nation was once considered the breadbasket of the region.  
 Now Zimbabweans wait in lines in hopes of getting bags of increasingly rare corn meal. In November, the government ordered 200,000 tons of corn valued at $ 25 million from neighboring South Africa. 
 Meanwhile, the government earmarked more white-owned farms for seizure in defiance of rising international pressure against President Robert Mugabe after his controversial reelection victory. 
News ServicesEUROPE 
 LONDON -- Margaret Thatcher, the indomitable "Iron Lady" who led Britain through 11 tumultuous years, is retiring from the public stage after a series of small strokes. 
 Her decision came after a fresh blast at the European Union -- and the continent in general -- put her back on the front pages this week and caused some members of her Conservative Party to wish their 76-year-old former leader would quietly leave the limelight. 
 Thatcher was resting at home in London, her office said. 
 Thatcher had canceled a speaking engagement on Tuesday, and her office confirmed yesterday that she did so because of another small stroke. 
Associated Press 
 MOSCOW -- The first attempt by Russian authorities to address the problem of "friendly fire" in the separatist republic of Chechnya fizzled when a court acquitted two paramilitary police commanders of criminal negligence charges in the deaths of 22 troops. 
 In March 2000, a unit of Russia's OMON special police guarding the Chechen capital, Grozny, opened fire on a unit sent to replace it, believing the other troops were rebels in disguise. The incident is considered the worst friendly-fire incident in Russia's two wars in Chechnya. 
 The trial has been watched closely in Russia as a measure of the government's ability to hold police and military officers accountable for mistakes under their command. Soldiers and police troops say that poor battlefield organization and friendly-fire incidents lead to unnecessary deaths and low morale. 
News ServicesASIA 
 BEIJING -- China has carried out extensive arrests since Sept. 11, detaining possibly thousands of people in a crackdown on opponents of Chinese rule in its restive Muslim northwest, Amnesty International said. 
 Many of those who have been detained in Xinjiang province and accused of terrorism or separatism may have done "little more than practice their religion or defend their culture," the organization said in a 33-page report. 
 A Chinese government spokeswoman, Zhang Qiyue, would not comment on specific cases cited by Amnesty but accused the London-based rights group of using "fabricated information to accuse China on a groundless basis." 
Associated Press 
 JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A key terrorism suspect has fled Indonesia for Pakistan, according to police in Jakarta, who did not know his whereabouts until Malaysian officials told them. 
 Saleh Saaf, Indonesia's national police spokesman, said officials in Jakarta had to rely on Malaysian authorities to alert them that the suspect, Hambali, had left the country. The Malaysian officials said they would do all they could to track him down. 
 Authorities had previously said that they would detain Hambali in Indonesia if they could find him there. 
 Malaysia and Singapore have named Hambali and Abu Bakar Bashir, an Indonesian Muslim cleric, as suspected leaders of the clandestine Jemaah Islamiah group. 
 Singapore suspects the Indonesian-born Hambali was behind a plot to bomb U.S. targets in the city-state last year. 
ReutersFOR THE RECORD 
 The U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia, shut down all operations, two days after closing to the public, citing unspecified security threats, an embassy official said. 
Compiled by Virginia Hamill 







   
 

March 22, 2002 Friday  
  



 NEWS SUMMARY 

 
     INTERNATIONAL   A3-10

Jerusalem Bombing Kills 3, Shaking U.S. Peace Effort
A Palestinian suicide bomber killed three Israelis in Jerusalem, prompting Israel to cancel truce talks. The Bush administration added the group that took responsibility, the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, to its list of terror groups, and officials said it was unlikely that Vice President Dick Cheney would meet with Yasir Arafat next week. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded that Mr. Arafat condemn the bombing publicly both in English and Arabic.   A1

Peru Blast Won't Deter Bush
President Bush said that he intended to visit Peru tomorrow despite a car bombing outside the American Embassy on Wednesday that killed 9 Peruvians and injured 30.   A3

Italian Terrorists Claim Attack
An offshoot of the Red Brigades said it was responsible for the killing of an Italian economist working on changes to national labor law.   A4

U.N. Inspectors See Fast Work
The chief United Nations arms inspector, Hans Blix, has told the Security Council that his inspectors can accomplish their tasks in less than a year once Baghdad allows their return, if the Iraqis cooperate.   A9

China Gives American 5 Years
A naturalized American electric-power consultant, Fong Fuming, 67, was declared guilty of bribery and obtaining secret documents.   A5

NATION CHALLENGED   A12-13

Pakistan to Charge Suspect In Killing of U.S. Journalist
Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a 28-year-old Muslim militant, will be formally charged today with the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the prosecutor said. The move is likely to complicate and possibly thwart American efforts to have Mr. Sheikh handed over to the United States.   A12

No U.S. Forces to Indonesia
The Bush administration, which has decided to send American soldiers to train antiterrorism forces in the Philippines, Yemen and Georgia, believes it would be "counterproductive" to deploy troops in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, because of concern about anti-American backlash, officials said.   A12

Student Faces 9/11 Questions
A Bradley University graduate student from Qatar, arrested last December, may have links through telephone records to three men named by federal official as conspirators in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to court documents.   A12

Surveillance in Washington
The National Park Service plans to begin round-the-clock closed-circuit video surveillance of public areas at major Washington landmarks.   A13

NATIONAL   A14-22

U.S. Moves to Loosen Medical Record Privacy
The Bush administration proposed dropping a requirement that doctors and hospitals must obtain a patient's consent before using or disclosing medical information for treatment or reimbursement.   A1

U.S.-Mexico Border Accord
The White House announced a border security plan to weed out terrorists and smugglers but speed up legitimate goods and travelers.   A18

Legal Team for Soft-Money Law
Kenneth W. Starr, the former independent counsel, and Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment lawyer, will lead the legal challenge to the campaign finance law passed by Congress.   A22

Democratic officials said they had received a $7 million check from Haim Saban, who created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to use in building a new party headquarters. Such donations will be illegal after Nov. 6.   A1

Couple Guilty in Dog Mauling
Marjorie Knoller, 46, and Robert Noel, 60, were convicted in California of all charges in the fatal mauling of a neighbor by their dog, including second-degree murder for Ms. Knoller, who faces 15 years to life in prison. Mr. Noel faces up to four years.   A1

Pope Addresses Sex Scandal
Pope John Paul II, in a letter partly devoted to the pedophile scandal, said "a dark shadow of suspicion" had been cast over all priests by "some of our brothers who have betrayed the grace of ordination" and succumbed to evil.   A1

Cardinal Edward M. Egan limited discussion of sexual abuse by priests in a private gathering of priests of the New York Archdiocese yesterday, telling them that a letter to parishioners would speak for itself.   A18

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-8

City Jobless Rate Rises While Nationally It Falls
New York City lost about 14,000 private-sector jobs last month, more than in January, and unemployment edged up, to 7.2 percent from 7.1 percent, even as the national rate edged down, to 5.5 percent from 5.6 percent. Two areas that economists consider bellwethers for the local economy -- Wall Street and temporary help agencies -- were hit hardest.   B1

2nd G.I. Dies of Wounds
A second soldier died from injuries sustained on Wednesday when two artillery shells fell short in exercises at Ft. Drum, N.Y.; 13 have injuries not considered life-threatening.   B1

WEEKEND   E1-30; E31-42

SCIENCE/HEALTH

Malpractice Premiums Surge
Doctors in the New York area face sharp rises in malpractice insurance costs, already among the highest. Increases, mostly ranging from 20 to 40 percent, are already taking effect in New Jersey and Connecticut.   B1

Changes After Transplant Death
Mount Sinai Hospital, responding to criticism over the death of a healthy liver donor, said it would no longer let residents and summer interns work in the transplant ward.   B3

EDUCATION

New York Applications Wane
N.Y.U., Columbia and Barnard College have all experienced declines in applications, with some admissions officials blaming Sept. 11 jitters by families uneasy about sending their children to New York City.   B6

   D1-8

OBITUARIES   B9

Herman E. Talmadge
A former Democratic senator from Georgia who built schools as governor and then called for closing them to halt desegregation, he was 88.   B9

BUSINESS DAY   C1-12

Predatory-Lending Settlement
A home equity lender, First Alliance Mortgage, agreed to pay as much as $60 million in compensation to 18,000 people whom it is accused of deceiving by concealing extremely high fees and escalating interest rates.   A1

S.E.C. Chief Fires Back
Harvey L. Pitt lashed out at critics who say the securities regulatory agency's response to the Enron case has been weak and that the accounting industry has more influence in shaping policy than do consumer and investor groups.   C1

Anger at Bermuda Tax Loophole
Senators from both parties denounced companies that use Bermuda as a mail drop to reduce their American income taxes by millions of dollars, calling them "greedy" and "unpatriotic" tax evaders whose actions could not be tolerated "in a time of war."   C1

Ovitz Unit Expenses Questioned
Artists Production Group, the film unit of Michael Ovitz's Hollywood management company, is facing a potential financial crisis amid growing concerns by a major investor, Canal Plus Group of France. An audit begun last month has raised questions about $1 million to $2 million that was allocated for films but may have been used for other expenses.   C1

Business Digest   C1

World Business   W1

EDITORIAL   A24-25

Editorials: Refining military tribunals; the art of banality; high schools that work; subtle racism in medicine.

Column: Nicholas D. Kristof.

Crossword   E30
TV Listings   E28
Public Lives   B2
Weather   D8







   
 

March 22, 2002 Friday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: TERRORISM; 
U.S. Rules Out Training Indonesia Army, but Will Aid Its Antiterror Police

 
After deciding to send American soldiers to train antiterrorism forces in the Philippines, Yemen and Georgia, the Bush administration has decided it would be "counterproductive" to deploy troops in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, because of concerns about an anti-American backlash, senior administration officials said today.
     Instead, White House and Pentagon officials have determined that the best way to pursue terrorists operating from Indonesia is to work through law enforcement agencies. To underscore that policy, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, quietly visited Indonesia last Friday to develop contacts with his counterparts there. 
 The decision to rely more on law enforcement efforts and less on military action is significant because American intelligence officials believe Indonesia to be a fertile breeding ground for Al Qaeda. They also believe that the country is the center of operations for a group that has planned attacks on American targets throughout Southeast Asia. Three Indonesians were arrested in the Philippines last week, officials said, and while interrogations are still under way, the men are thought to be linked to suspected terrorists now in detention in Malaysia and Singapore. 
Policy toward Indonesia has been closely watched around the world and has been the subject of intense debate within the White House. The country presents a test case of how the administration handles the presence of terrorist cells in a nation opposed to American military intervention. While the Bush administration has identified a strong Qaeda-linked terrorist presence in Indonesia, the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri has made it clear to Washington that American troops could destabilize her fragile hold on power.
"I can think of all the ways that it can be counterproductive, and I can't see how it would be necessary," Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, said in an interview today. Mr. Wolfowitz, who served for three years as ambassador to Indonesia and is considered among the administration's experts on the country, added: "There is a deep sense of national pride and independence on the part of the Indonesians. If we want their cooperation, and their cooperation is essential to our success, we can't look like we are interfering in their internal affairs."
Aside from the Philippines and Singapore, both of them longtime allies, another senior administration official said, "I don't think there is a chance of us having a deployment in Indonesia, or perhaps anywhere else in Southeast Asia." The official said that while the White House often talks about how nations are "with us or against us" in the fight against terrorism, "Indonesia is infinite shades of gray right now, and you need a more nuanced approach."
But Mr. Wolfowitz did say that the administration was working with Congress in hopes of loosening legislative restrictions on American military contacts with Indonesia, which were severely curtailed in 1999 after the Indonesian Army was accused of atrocities in the now-independent East Timor.
Military contacts might resume for relief operations, Mr. Wolfowitz said, and he did not exclude the possibility that the two militaries could, over time, train together for counterterrorism and counternarcotics operations -- though he stressed that there was no such planning now under way.
"We really are moving very carefully," Mr. Wolfowitz said. 
Indonesia has been coaxed along by Mr. Wolfowitz and others. For two months after the Sept. 11 attacks the country's central bank officials refused to help track or freeze terrorist finances, and the Jakarta government denied there was any terrorism problem in the country. But that attitude has changed. In recent months, Mr. Wolfowitz said, Indonesia has provided "significant cooperation," even handing over a Pakistani terror suspect seized on its territory. He is now in detention in Egypt.
Still, the F.B.I. director's visit was kept deliberately low key. He met with Indonesia's chief security minister and the national police chief, but the sessions took place far from Jakarta, where anti-American protests were common even before Sept. 11. The meetings occurred a week ago in Bali, a predominantly Hindu area of an overwhelmingly Muslim nation.
Mr. Wolfowitz distinguished Indonesia's situation sharply from the problems in the Philippines, where the Abu Sayyaf and other Muslim separatist groups occupy significant territory. Indonesia, he said, is more like "the United States, and most European countries," with suspected Qaeda cells present within the society -- a situation that creates "much more of a law enforcement challenge."
At the same time, American intelligence about the Qaeda presence in Indonesia has been poor at best, American officials acknowledge. Two senior American officials have said that before Sept. 11, American intelligence was wholly unaware of one of the main Islamic radical groups in Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiyah, which they now suspect has Al Qaeda ties.
Mr. Wolfowitz said there was little indication that Qaeda members fleeing the American offensive in Afghanistan were heading toward Indonesia; instead, he said, they appear to be seeking safe passage to Iran, Pakistan, Yemen or the Caucasus republics.
On dealings with the Indonesian military, he said, "the trick is to find ways to move forward that encourage reform in the Indonesian military rather than turn a blind eye to some of the past problems."
But any significantly increased contacts with the Indonesian military will draw careful scrutiny -- most likely opposition -- from critics in Congress, led by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations.
"Some of their top military officers, including some still serving, planned, orchestrated and then covered up the attacks in East Timor," Senator Leahy said today of the Indonesians. "As long as they are running things, with nothing done to hold them accountable, it would be premature for us to launch joint operations."      







  



March 22, 2002 Friday  




 Facing Indonesia

 
AFTER A slow start, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri has recently taken some positive steps toward addressing the enormous problems confronting her democratic government. Prosecutors have finally begun to take on major corruption cases dating from the Suharto dictatorship, which ended almost four years ago; Mr. Suharto's son this week went on trial for murder. Economic reform has advanced with the privatization of a big bank and other state assets. And the government has at last begun to address one of the key conditions for better relations with the United States and other Western countries by beginning the prosecution of 18 officials, including three army generals, for crimes committed in East Timor during its 1999 move to independence. Considering that she replaced an incompetent president who paralyzed the country before being impeached eight months ago, Mrs. Megawati is making progress. And yet the troubling truth is that her government is falling far short of stabilizing Indonesia, even as a new threat appears: that extremists from al Qaeda will use this huge and predominately Muslim country as a new haven.  
 The good news for the Bush administration is that Mrs. Megawati, unlike her erratic predecessor, has been willing to take some action. The problem is that the prevailing weakness of her government has produced a series of half-measures. The East Timor trials are a good example: Though any effort to hold members of the still-powerful Indonesian military and security establishment accountable for human rights crimes represents something of a breakthrough, the scope and terms of the current prosecutions fall well short of what the United Nations and Congress have demanded. Senior officers have so far escaped prosecution, and there are signs that many of those now charged may be let off too easily. Unless the scope and rigor of the trials are expanded, Indonesia may find it difficult to solve its problems with Congress, which has required "effective measures" to prosecute the army's crimes before U.S. military sales and training can resume. 
 Yet the Indonesian debate in Washington now is being overtaken by another concern, as reports multiply of al Qaeda's penetration of the country. Despite considerable prodding, Mrs. Megawati's government has been slow to act; police have failed to find key suspects, and at least one Islamic militant believed to be closely tied to the terrorists continues to operate openly. U.S. analysts believe Mrs. Megawati hesitates to take more decisive steps for fear of undermining her own government, which depends on the support of Islamic political movements. The same concerns make her reluctant to accept the sort of direct U.S. military support now going to the neighboring Philippines. 
 The Bush administration's effort to address this complex situation has appeared to bog down in an internal debate over whether to step up direct U.S. contacts and cooperation with the Indonesian army, either by trying to set aside the congressional restrictions or going around them. Though the war against al Qaeda certainly casts the sanctions in a different light, the debate seems a distraction; considerable military-to-military contacts are already permitted and underway, and the Indonesian army and police already have sufficient resources to take on the terrorists. The real challenge is how to induce the action now needed to protect U.S. security, without undermining a democratic government that is at least trying to move in the right direction. That means engaging in the appropriate ways with the Indonesian military; it also means doing as much as possible to strengthen Mrs. Megawati and Indonesia's democracy. 






   


March 20, 2002, Wednesday, 



 Pentagon wants to send troops to Indonesia

 
WASHINGTON -- Armed with evidence that al-Qaeda members have fled from Afghanistan to Indonesia, Bush administration officials are pressing to get U.S. forces into the giant archipelago.
But the administration faces opposition from an Indonesian government fearful of rising anger among its 200 million Muslims, and a U.S. Congress that severed ties to the Indonesian military in 1999.
Intelligence sources say dozens of al-Qaeda operatives have found safe haven in the world's most populous Muslim nation, which consists of 17,000 islands and 34,000 miles of coastline. Some have come by air, but most have sneaked into Pakistan, then traveled several thousand miles in fishing boats from Arabian Sea ports, the sources say.
 
U.S. allies are patrolling the waters off Pakistan and Iran to catch escaping members of the terrorist network, but searches of many ships have failed to turn up al-Qaeda members. U.S. intelligence and congressional sources say it's impossible to monitor all the sea traffic in the region.
Some Defense Department officials say they want to restart military training missions that were halted in 1999 after hundreds of civilians were slaughtered in separatist East Timor. Congressional sources say the Pentagon wants to get forces on the ground to assess the strength of al-Qaeda.
But a Pentagon official says that plan faces resistance from President Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose hold on power is weak and who fears that the presence of U.S. forces could inflame Islamic extremists, many of whom have close links to Indonesia's military and police. Almost 90% of Indonesia's 228 million people are Muslim.
Indonesia is an excellent hiding place for al-Qaeda. The government has weak control over its far-flung islands. Al-Qaeda also had a presence in the country before Sept. 11. It trained a local Islamic militant group called Laskar Jihad.
Another obstacle for the Pentagon is Congress. It has barred funds for military contacts until Indonesia improves the military's human rights record and brings to justice military officers responsible for the slaughter in 1999.
This month, the State Department accused Indonesia's military of murders, rapes, beatings and torture.
"We would certainly like the handcuffs removed," a senior Pentagon official says.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who placed $ 18 million into the 2002 Defense budget for counterterrorism in the Pacific, hinted Tuesday that more money may be on the way for U.S. operations in Indonesia.
U.S. forces are aiding anti-terror missions in Georgia, the Philippines and Yemen, in addition to Afghanistan.







   
 

March 16, 2002 Saturday  
  



NAME: Nurcholish Madjid 

 THE SATURDAY PROFILE; 
An Islamic Scholar's Lifelong Lesson: Tolerance

 
NURCHOLISH MADJID, the most prominent Muslim scholar in Indonesia, had no qualms when his daughter announced she planned to wed a New York Jew, a union beyond the imagination of most Indonesians. In fact, this genial man, known as the conscience of his nation, insisted on conducting an Islamic marriage service in the couple's Washington apartment last fall.
     Has his son-in-law converted? "We don't ask," he said. "We understand that religion is a very individual thing." But one thing is for sure. When his portly son-in-law tries to prostrate himself for Islamic prayers, "he falls all over everyone," Mr. Madjid said, a generous smile creasing his broad face.  
 The inclusive brand of Islam that Mr. Madjid has preached for decades is coming under pressure from more militant quarters in the world's most populous Muslim country. But this tolerant man is unbowed, arguing that the idea of an Islamic state is at odds with the teachings of the Koran, that religion should remain in the realm of the transcendental, and that understanding should prevail.
This has been Mr. Madjid's theme since he first appeared on the national stage, shocking his fellow Muslims with a speech that gave a favorable interpretation of "secularization" at the moment that the new military dictator, General Suharto, was consolidating power. "Islam yes, Islamic party no," was Mr. Madjid's watchword. Many Muslims thought Mr. Madjid was buying into the general's agenda.
But just as fiercely, he argued for democracy, and he stayed out of politics. Until the last hours of the general's more than 30 years in power, the dictator and the scholar never met. When they did it was quite dramatic.
In a face-to-face encounter as the streets of Jakarta were convulsed with gunfire and demonstrations in 1998, Mr. Madjid told the dictator his time was up. One day later, he was proved right.
Mr. Madjid remembers the confrontation this way: "Suharto said, 'I'm tired of being president.' He used a term in Indonesian cukup. I said, 'No, you are tuwuk,' which means you are fed up to here, meaning up to your neck, that you are about to vomit." Mr. Madjid swiftly drew his hand across his throat, and contorted his face. "This was rough language but I didn't care."
The general laughed at this bit of banter, Mr. Madjid recalled. "Then suddenly, he said, 'I want to announce my intention tomorrow.' " After some discussion over the terms of his departure text, General Suharto announced the end of his rule on television.
Like many Indonesians, Mr. Madjid looks deceptively young -- his 62 could pass for 50 -- and his serene manner belies the seriousness with which his words are taken here.
Mr. Madjid talked in the office of his education foundation before leading Friday Prayers in a classroom downstairs. When he preaches, shopkeepers, stall vendors and taxi drivers overflow into the parking lot. Many, unable to afford a prayer rug, kneel on a sheet of newspaper spread out on the asphalt.
It is an honor, these people say, to listen to Mr. Madjid, who during his sermon wears his signature open-neck shirt and roomy suit with pens jabbing out of the suit pocket.
He has written voluminously on Islam, including a book, "Doors to God," where the emphasis in the first word of the title is on the plural. He is a regular on the international lecture circuit, talking on Islam from the United States to Egypt to Australia. 
At a discussion panel at a salon of Jakarta intellectuals the other night, he sat next to the enfant terrible of Indonesian Islam, Jaffar Umar Thalib, the head of an extremist group, Laskar Jihad, that is fighting Christians in some of Indonesia's most brutal conflicts.
The two men represent the polar ends of Islam in Indonesia. Perhaps because of Mr. Madjid's stature, perhaps because of the intellectual audience, Mr. Thalib, dressed in white robes and turban, showed restraint.
"It was the first time I had met him," Mr. Madjid said of the notorious Mr. Thalib. "Fortunately he spoke in a very general way."
The topic of the night was "Clash of Civilizations?" In his polite way, Mr. Madjid skewered not only Mr. Thalib, but also, Samuel Huntington, the Harvard academic, who coined the phrase.
For Mr. Madjid, the professor's argument was "absurd." "Huntington does not understand Islam," he said flatly. Anyway, he added: "The important thing is to try and bridge the differences as much as possible."
In his office the next day, he said that Mr. Huntington had it all wrong because the major religions of the world have more in common than not. "It's a family quarrel. We all come from the same fountain of wisdom, God."
MR. MADJID grew up in a pious family in central Java. He was sent to Gontor, one of the academically distinguished Islamic boarding schools known as pesantren, where he excelled as a student.
After graduation, he was resolutely anti-Communist, and in the 1970's, he argued that working for change within the authoritarian system was preferable to agitating from the outside. He was often attacked as a lackey of the West, and for espousing a Western interpretation of Islam.
But his themes boiled down, he said, to the need for pluralism and democratic values. Unlike those in Western capitals who fret that Islamic militancy will also engulf Indonesia, Mr. Madjid clings to his optimism.
"Thanks to the civil liberties we have, and because we have a chance of open discourse, radicalism has a chance to be tamed," he said. In contrast to Saudi Arabia, Indonesia enjoys many freedoms, he said. (Although increasing numbers of women cover their heads, most women, including Mr. Madjid's wife, Omikomaria, does not).
Mr. Madjid refined his taste for democratic values at the University of Chicago in the late 1970's and early 1980's, where he mixed his Islamic studies with courses in political science. Hardly surprising, then, that some of his friends thought he would make a good president in the aftermath of Suharto.
AT Chicago, he had learned the seven essential qualities for leadership. He ticked them off, pausing for effect after each one: "Vision. Aggressive activism. Pragmatism. Trust. Consensus building (like Roosevelt in World War II). Charisma. Luck (optional)."
He gave himself a positive score on the first tier. Then he stopped. The real reason he could not be president, he said, was that he had never developed a legitimate base.
"When I was asked in 1999 to be a candidate, I refused. We had just learned to be democratic. Democracy means that to be president you have to have a political party. If I were to be president, it would be a disruption of democracy."
Why would the elevation of one of the most eloquent proponents of democracy be anti-democratic? "Because I didn't sweat, I didn't organize a campaign. I was afraid people would say, 'He is president free of charge.' "







  



March 15, 2002 Friday  




 WORLD; 
In Brief

 
ASIA 
 BEIJING -- China warned yesterday that the recent visit of Taiwan's defense minister to the United States threatens to halt progress in U.S.-China ties. 
 The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Zhang Qiyue, said the U.S. visit of Tang Yiau-ming "would bring about negative effects on Sino-U.S. relations." Tang became the first Taiwanese defense minister to make other than a transit stop in the United States for at least 22 years.  
 Following Tang's attendance at what was billed as a private conference Sunday through Tuesday in Florida, China issued a protest here to the U.S. ambassador, Clark Randt. U.S. officials met with China's ambassador in Washington, Yang Jiechi, and told him Tang's visit did not constitute a change in U.S. policy. 
 But behind the diplomatic steps, China appeared to be biting its tongue. Unlike its reaction to similar incidents in the past, Beijing has not called off an upcoming U.S. trip by Vice President Hu Jintao. Other lower-level meetings have proceeded without a hitch. 
John Pomfret 
 ZAMBOANGA, Philippines -- A senior Abu Sayyaf guerrilla has been arrested in the southern Philippines, where a Philippines-U.S. military operation is stepping up pressure on Muslim militants holding an American couple, military officials said. 
 Munib Assa, accused of kidnapping students and beheading two teachers two years ago, was arrested Tuesday in the southern port city of Zamboanga, Brig. Gen. Rodolfo Diaz said. 
 Diaz said Assa worked under Abu Sabaya, the leader and spokesman for the Abu Sayyaf, the group that is holding Martin and Gracia Burnham of Wichita and Ediborah Yap, a nurse from the Philippines. 
Associated PressAFRICA 
 LUANDA, Angola -- Angola has extended an olive branch to the UNITA rebels it has fought for decades, offering an immediate cease-fire, a blanket amnesty and a plan to rebuild lives of ex-soldiers and displaced people. 
 Hoping to capitalize on the death of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, the driving force behind UNITA's fight against the government, Luanda said it would cease military activity at midnight Wednesday. 
 It was impossible to verify independently whether the cease-fire was being observed in its first hours. 
 The announcement, however, raised fresh hopes for peace in the southwest African nation following the death of Savimbi, UNITA's founder, who was killed last month in a clash with government troops. 
ReutersFOR THE RECORD 
 A Scottish appeals court upheld the murder conviction of Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent, for bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The ruling increases pressure on Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to admit responsibility and compensate the victims' families. . . . India's prime minister appealed for peace following Hindu-Muslim violence that has killed more than 700 people, and thousands of police and troops sealed off the tense northern city of Ayodhya ahead of a disputed prayer ceremony scheduled for today. . . . Indonesia opened the first trials of senior officials accused of crimes against humanity during East Timor's drive for independence in 1999. 






  
 

March 12, 2002, Tuesday



 Disinformation? U.S. Viewpoints Need Promotion In Islamic World

 
 If the stakes were not so high, the absurd coincidence would be laughable. On Feb. 26, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said his department's recently established Office of Strategic Influence, or OSI, an organization intended to help win foreign "hearts and minds" for the U.S.-led war on terrorism, was being closed down.  Rumsfeld said he had regretfully concluded that the OSI "has clearly been so damaged that . it's pretty clear to me that it could not function effectively." On the same day, the Gallup Organization released a poll of nearly 10,000 Muslims in nine countries from Morocco to Indonesia. USA Today noted the opinion survey found that "most Muslims don't believe Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and disapprove of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan." Gallup's editor in chief, Frank Newport, interpreted the data to mean: "Respondents overwhelmingly describe the United States as 'ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked, biased.' The people of Islamic countries have significant grievances with the West in general and with the United States in particular." This poll simply serves to underscore a point Rumsfeld and his colleagues appreciate: Now is the time to be mounting a major and sustained effort to strengthen U.S. "strategic influence" among Islamic and other foreign audiences.  It is certainly not a moment when the U.S. ought to be dismantling any asset at its disposal to accomplish such objectives. Yet the Pentagon is engaging in an act that is to information warfare what unilateral disarmament would be to more traditional combat arms. Ironically, the OSI was a victim of disinformation.  Unnamed Pentagon sources told  that the OSI was "developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones" to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy-makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries. In front-page news accounts and an editorial, the Times repeatedly charged that this organization would, under its director, Brig. Gen. Simon "Pete" Worden, pursue "a broad mission ranging from 'black' campaigns that use disinformation and other covert activities to 'white' public affairs that rely on truthful news releases." Predictably, these reports unleashed a firestorm of criticism. Media at home and abroad pounced on the reported Pentagon "plans" to challenge the authority and accuracy of past official statements.  Foreign governments gave vent to new spasms of anti-American vitriol. And a few members of Congress wanted to know what was going on.  Never mind that Rumsfeld categorically denied his department had engaged in disinformation since Sept. 11, was doing so today or would do so in the future. No evidence to support the original charge ever materialized. Not a single source came forward to substantiate what was being whispered to favored journalists.  The original story was repeated every day. Editorial cartoons and the pundits piled on. Even the president felt obliged to convey his displeasure with an official pronouncement.  Within a week of the original report, the OSI was toast.  To his credit, Rumsfeld from the first has never wavered from his contention that the U.S. needed this office and its mission. As he has repeatedly made clear, this is not about lying to foreign audiences, but ensuring that they get the truth - the truth about America, its values and its war on terrorism, truths that are otherwise too often denied people of the Islamic world. He defended the OSI's mission and made clear it would continue to be performed under the auspices of "a different office." We can only hope that whatever new arrangement is found for pursuing the mission of strategic influence, it will be as successful as the OSI promised to be. Given the evidence that our enemies are way ahead of us in this hearts-and-minds business, we can afford to do no less.  In that light, we must also hope that those unnamed Defense Department sources who set about to destroy the Office of Strategic Influence will not be allowed to do a similar disservice in the future.  Frank J. Gaffney Jr. held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department. He is the president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.




18


  



March 11, 2002 Monday  




 U.S. Behind Secret Transfer of Terror Suspects

 
Arriving here from Pakistan in mid-November, Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni told acquaintances that he had come to Indonesia to disburse an inheritance to his late father's second wife. But instead of writing a check and leaving, he settled into a small boarding house in a crowded, lower-middle-class neighborhood, where he visited the local mosque and spent hours on end watching television at a friend's house. 
 Stocky and bearded, Iqbal, 24, betrayed little about his life in Pakistan, except to hand out business cards identifying him as a Koran reader for an Islamic radio station. In early January, however, the CIA informed Indonesia's State Intelligence Agency that Iqbal had another occupation, according to Indonesian officials and foreign diplomats. Iqbal, they said, was an al Qaeda operative who had worked with Richard C. Reid, the Briton charged with trying to detonate explosives in his shoes on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22. 
 The officials and diplomats said the CIA provided information about Iqbal's whereabouts and urged Indonesia to apprehend him. A few days later, the Egyptian government formally asked Indonesia to extradite Iqbal, who carried an Egyptian as well as a Pakistani passport, a senior Indonesian official said. The Egyptian request alleged Iqbal was wanted in connection with terrorism, he said. It did not specify the crime, he said, but Indonesian officials were told the charges were unrelated to the Reid case.  
 By Jan. 9, Iqbal was in the hands of Indonesian intelligence agents. Two days later -- without a court hearing or a lawyer -- he was hustled aboard an unmarked, U.S.-registered Gulfstream V jet parked at a military airport in Jakarta and flown to Egypt, the Indonesian officials said. 
 Since Sept. 11, the U.S. government has secretly transported dozens of people suspected of links to terrorists to countries other than the United States, bypassing extradition procedures and legal formalities, according to Western diplomats and intelligence sources. The suspects have been taken to countries, including Egypt and Jordan, whose intelligence services have close ties to the CIA and where they can be subjected to interrogation tactics -- including torture and threats to families -- that are illegal in the United States, the sources said. In some cases, U.S. intelligence agents remain closely involved in the interrogation, the sources said. 
 "After September 11, these sorts of movements have been occurring all the time," a U.S. diplomat said. "It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can't do on U.S. soil." 
 U.S. officials would not comment on evidence linking Iqbal to Reid, but Western diplomats in Jakarta said Iqbal's name appeared on al Qaeda documents discovered by U.S. intelligence agents in Afghanistan. Indonesian officials said U.S. officials did not detail Iqbal's alleged involvement with terrorism other than to say he was connected to Reid, and as a consequence, he was highly sought by the U.S. government. 
 Iqbal remains in custody in Egypt, intelligence sources said. The sources said he has been questioned by U.S. agents but there was no word on his legal status, a situation that resembles that of other Islamic activists taken into custody in cooperation with the CIA. 
 In October, for instance, a Yemeni microbiology student wanted in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole was flown from Pakistan to Jordan on a U.S.-registered Gulfstream jet after Pakistan's intelligence agency surrendered him to U.S. authorities at the Karachi airport, Pakistani government sources said. The hand-over of the shackled and blindfolded student, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, who was alleged to be an al Qaeda operative, occurred in the middle of the night at a remote corner of the airport without extradition or deportation procedures, the sources said. 
 U.S. forces seized five Algerians and a Yemeni in Bosnia on Jan. 19 and flew them to a detention camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after they were ordered released by the Bosnian Supreme Court for lack of evidence -- and despite an injunction from the Bosnian Human Rights Chamber that four of them be allowed to remain in the country pending further proceedings. The Human Rights Chamber, created under the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-95 war, was designed to protect human rights and due process. 
 U.S. involvement in seizing terrorism suspects in third countries and shipping them with few or no legal proceedings to the United States or other countries -- known as "rendition" -- is not new. In recent years, U.S. agents, working with Egyptian intelligence and local authorities in Africa, Central Asia and the Balkans, have sent dozens of suspected Islamic extremists to Cairo or taken them to the United States, according to U.S. officials, Egyptian lawyers and human rights groups. U.S. authorities are urging Pakistan to take the same step with the chief suspect in the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. 
 In 1998, U.S. agents spirited Talaat Fouad Qassem, 38, a reputed leader of the Islamic Group, an Egyptian extremist organization, to Egypt after he was picked up in Croatia while traveling to Bosnia from Denmark, where he had been granted political asylum. Qassem was allegedly an associate of Ayman Zawahiri, the number-two man in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Egyptian lawyers said he was questioned aboard a U.S. ship off the Croatian coast before being taken to Cairo, where a military tribunal had already sentenced him to death in absentia. Egyptian officials have refused to discuss his case. 
 U.S. intelligence officers are also believed to have participated in the 1998 seizure in Azerbaijan of three members of Egypt's other main underground group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, according to testimony provided to their attorneys in Cairo. 
 Also in 1998, CIA officers working with Albanian police seized five members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad who were allegedly planning to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Tirana, Albania's capital. 
 After three days of interrogation, the five men were flown to Egypt aboard a plane that was chartered by the CIA; two were put to death. The five were among 13 suspects known to have been picked up in the Balkans with U.S. involvement and taken to Egypt for trial. 
 Between 1993 and 1999, terrorism suspects also were rendered to the United States from Nigeria, the Philippines, Kenya and South Africa in operations acknowledged by U.S. officials. Dozens of other covert renditions, often with Egyptian cooperation, were also conducted, U.S. officials said. The details of most of these operations, which often ignored local and international extradition laws, remain closely guarded. 
 Even when local intelligence agents are involved, diplomats said it is preferable to render a suspect secretly because it prevents lengthy court battles and minimizes publicity that could tip off the detainee's associates. Rendering suspects to a third country, particularly Muslim nations such as Egypt or Jordan, also helps to defuse domestic political concerns in predominantly Muslim nations such as Indonesia, the diplomats said. 
 Sending a suspect directly to the United States, the diplomats said, could prompt objections from government officials who fear that any publicity of such an action would lead to a backlash from fundamentalist Islamic groups. 
 In Iqbal's case, Indonesian government officials told local media that he had been sent to Egypt because of visa violations. A spokesman for the immigration department said Iqbal failed to identify a sponsor for his visit to Indonesia on his visa application form, which was submitted in Islamabad, Pakistan. 
 A senior Indonesian government official said disclosing the U.S. role would have exposed President Megawati Sukarnoputri to criticism from Muslim-oriented political parties in her governing coalition. "We can't be seen to be cooperating too closely with the United States," the official said. 
 The official said an extradition request from Egypt and the discovery of Iqbal's visa infraction provided political cover to comply with the CIA's request. "This was a U.S. deal all along," the senior official said. "Egypt just provided the formalities." 
 Indonesian officials believe Iqbal, who arrived in Jakarta on Nov. 17, came to the vast Southeast Asian archipelago not to plan an attack but to seek refuge as the Taliban neared collapse and al Qaeda leaders sought to flee Afghanistan. Western officials said they do not have a full picture of what Iqbal was doing in Indonesia and they cannot rule out the possibility that he was engaged in terrorist activities here. 
 Iqbal had lived in Jakarta as a teenager while his father, who also was an expert Koran reader, taught at the Arab Language Institute. Shortly after Iqbal arrived in November, he returned to his old neighborhood, a district in east Jakarta with narrow, winding streets and open sewers. There he met up with one of his father's former students, Mohammed Rizard, who helped him get a room at a nearby boarding house. 
 Rizard, a printer, said Iqbal often would spend afternoons at his house, watching television and singing Indian karaoke tunes. Although Iqbal said he came to Indonesia to distribute an inheritance to his father's second wife, he appeared to be in no hurry to perform the task, Rizard said. 
 "He was taking it easy," Rizard said. "He was more interested in talking about girls and singing karaoke." 
 Just before his arrest, Iqbal visited Solo, a city in central Java, Indonesia's main island, saying he was going to see his stepmother. The city is regarded by Western and Asian intelligence officials as a base for Jemaah Islamiah, a militant Muslim group with bases in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia that is alleged to be affiliated with al Qaeda. The group is accused of plotting to blow up Western embassies and U.S. naval vessels in Singapore and of aiding two of the Sept. 11 hijackers during a trip they made to Malaysia in 2000. 
 Rizard said he never discussed politics with Iqbal or inquired about his life in Pakistan. "He never talked about jihad or America," Rizard said. Rizard also said he rifled through Iqbal's suitcase and "found nothing suspicious." 
 In December, Iqbal sent several letters to friends in Pakistan, Rizard said. Three replies arrived at Rizard's house, which Iqbal used as a return address, after he had been seized and sent to Egypt. Rizard gave the unopened letters to correspondents for  and the Weekend Australian newspaper. 
 The handwritten letters, in the Urdu language, contain no incriminating details but do suggest that Iqbal's missives had expressed deep frustration and despair. 
 "Why have you lost all hope?" one of his friends, Hafiz Mohammad Riazuddin, wrote. "Please keep your head and spirits up." 
 "Surprisingly you have asked about the Taliban," Riazuddin continued. "How did you become interested in politics? Anyway, by the time you sent this letter, Taliban rule has ended in Afghanistan. U.S. and British troops have landed in Afghanistan. The U.S. has taken bases in Pakistan and Pakistan's nuclear program is in danger." 
 A lengthy letter from a woman who appears to be his girlfriend suggested Iqbal had left Pakistan suddenly and had not told those close to him where he was going. "It gives great pleasure to know that you are alive," she wrote. 
 Another letter, from a man named Shahid, refers to plans to visit an "uncle in America" and talk to an "Uncle Babar" in Malaysia. 
 Despite criticism from some U.S. officials as well as from neighboring Singapore and Malaysia that Indonesia is not moving aggressively enough against suspected terrorists, particularly members of Jemaah Islamiah, officials here quickly point to Iqbal's rendition as proof they are cooperating, albeit quietly, in the global fight against terrorism. 
 "The CIA asked us to find this guy and hand him over," the senior Indonesian official said. "We did what they wanted." 
Finn reported from Berlin. Correspondent Howard Schneider in Cairo, special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, and staff writers Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus in Washington contributed to this report. 







March 10, 2002 Sunday 
  
 



 The Threat of Jaffar 

 
Late last summer, Indonesia's newly elected vice president, Hamzah Haz, welcomed a string of guests into his official residence, only a short walk from the sprawling American Embassy compound in downtown Jakarta. Among the academics and politicos he greeted was a 40-year-old Muslim cleric named Jaffar Umar Thalib. A photograph in a local newspaper the next day showed him and the vice president locked in a warm embrace. Outside Indonesia, however, this visit by Jaffar -- who was, even then, arguably the most feared Islamic militant in the most populous Muslim nation on earth and who would soon be mentioned in the same breath as Osama bin Laden -- went largely unreported.
     In fact, Jaffar Umar Thalib didn't really blip on Washington radar screens until after the terror attacks. Only then did global attention focus upon the potential threat posed by Muslim extremists in Indonesia -- a sprawling and practically lawless country with porous borders and a thriving black market in weapons and explosives - and upon what role they might play in Al Qaeda's network in Southeast Asia. 
 Jaffar is the commander of Laskar Jihad, a Muslim paramilitary group renowned for its fanaticism and brutality. His followers, who number between 3,000 and 10,000, are well drilled, heavily armed and ferociously loyal. Among the plethora of radical Islamic groups that have formed in Indonesia since the three-decade dictatorship of Suharto collapsed in 1998, Laskar Jihad stands out. 
"They've got real organization and they've got reasonably capable people," says Harold Crouch, an Indonesia expert with the Australian National University. "You might find an airline pilot or two in Laskar Jihad, but in the others, I doubt it very much." According to persistent reports, hundreds of non-Indonesian Muslims -- including, it is believed, Al Qaeda operatives -- have trained at camps run by Laskar Jihad in the jungles of Sulawesi, and American officials are convinced that Al Qaeda "sleeper cells" still exist there.
Jaffar got his start in jihad fighting alongside the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the late 1980's; around the same time, he met Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. While Jaffar now openly scorns bin Laden as a misguided lightweight, experts say there is little difference between the two. "He claims to be ideologically opposed to Osama, but his ideology is parallel," says Rohan Gunaratna, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. "They both believe in using violence to achieve their political goals."
In late December, in an effort to gauge the threat posed by Jaffar, I traveled to Java and made the hour's drive north from Jogjakarta, Indonesia's cultural capital, to Laskar Jihad's headquarters. What I found was less than reassuring. Sounding very much like bin Laden, Jaffar -- who elsewhere has described the United States as "the biggest enemy of the Islamic people" -- said that he is convinced there is a global conspiracy of American-led Jews and Christians to destroy Islam and all Muslims. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, which he publicly cheered, he had threatened to declare war on all American facilities in Indonesia. 
Jaffar, who oversees a network of pesantren -- Koranic schools that, like the madrassas of Pakistan, produce countless young militants schooled in jihad -- preaches that democracy is "incompatible with Islam" and that Indonesia's 210 million people should be governed under strict Islamic law. He practices what he preaches too: last year, he presided over a makeshift Islamic court in Maluku that passed judgment on an adulterer. The 30-year-old man was buried up to his waist in the ground and stoned to death by a mob. Jaffar was arrested but never prosecuted for the murder.
"All of these factors have led U.S. policy makers to conclude that Jaffar is a radical demagogue infused with a worldwide Islamic credo," says Peter Chalk, an analyst with the RAND Corporation in Washington. Furthermore, he adds, Laskar Jihad is seen as one group that might be prepared to aid "the logistical relocation of Al Qaeda forces, post-Taliban." Even the name his father bestowed on him seems custom-made to jangle Western nerves: Jaffar, the evil sorcerer who deceived Aladdin; Thalib, as in "Taliban," from the Arabic for "religious student."
Jaffar is by no means the only worrisome figure in Indonesia. For example, the police there recently questioned Abu Bakar Baasyir, another well-known Muslim cleric. Baasyir, who has hailed Osama bin Laden as "a true Islamic warrior," is suspected of leading Jemaah Islamiyah, a Qaeda-linked terror group in Southeast Asia. (Baasyir denies any links to terrorism.) While his group is smaller and more secretive than Laskar Jihad, it apparently has stronger ties to the global jihad movement.
But Jaffar, whose violent activities have so far been confined to the domestic sphere, heads a much larger organization whose members operate openly and with virtual impunity. "It's about potential," says Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism official. "If these groups are allowed to grow, unchecked by local authorities, they could pose a threat." 
Laskar Jihad's headquarters are located in a pesantren, a huddle of ramshackle buildings reached by a rutted back road and guarded by sentries in black commando outfits.
I am met there by Eri Ziyad Abu Zaki, the group's public-relations officer, a shyly grinning young man in a knee-length tunic. The holy warriors are part of the "human resources division," Eri Ziyad tells me, and all new recruits are expected to undergo military training at several "secret places" in Java. He also shows me the group's twice-monthly tabloid, called Bulletin Laskar Jihad. It is well written, slickly produced and venomously anti-American. "America Starts Digging Its Own Grave," screams one front-page headline (in Indonesian), referring to the Afghan campaign. "You're Dead, America," howls another.
Laskar Jihad also runs a Web site, in both Indonesian and English, that makes pleas for donations and describes its work in sometimes erratic English ("Jihad Troopers at Glance"). The tabloid publishes no pictures of humans or animals. Like the Taliban, Laskar Jihad considers recreating images of living beings a blasphemy against God. Flipping through back issues, the only human form I could find was a picture of the Statue of Liberty -- decapitated, naturally. 
About 400 men, women and children stay on the compound, where the usual vices -- alcohol, gambling -- are banned. So are television and music. "Music is a distraction from God," Eri Ziyad says. The group imposes Taliban-like restrictions on its women, who must cover their faces with Saudi-style veils and remain largely housebound. Jaffar himself has four wives -- the maximum Islam allows -- and 11 children.
Eri Ziyad leads the way to a modest house near the mosque and knocks on the door. We are ushered into a sparsely furnished anteroom by a beaming Jaffar Umar Thalib himself.
He is tall and certainly plumper than his reputation as an ascetic would suggest. He wears a white skullcap, a crisp, checked sarong and a long, diaphanous cream shirt with embroidered pink trim. Beneath it is a white T-shirt bearing what looks like Laskar Jihad's clashing scimitars logo. He is pale-skinned, with dark brown eyes, and when he smiles (which is often), he is disarmingly handsome. His mustache is neatly trimmed, and he has a straggly, graying beard, which he constantly combs between his thumb and forefinger, like a pantomime villain.
Jaffar is tired. He returned late the previous evening from the eastern Javanese city of Surabaya, where the police arrested 102 Laskar Jihad members for trashing gambling clubs in December. Squads of Jaffar's long-robed followers regularly patrol Indonesian cities, raiding liquor stores and suspected brothels. "The idea behind this action is to clear up all the vice, especially during Ramadan -- the gambling, the prostitution, the drinking," he says. "We are not the only group doing this. But when we do it, the authorities always overreact. It is one of the many attempts being made to discredit us."
Also out to discredit Laskar Jihad is the international media, which Jaffar says he believes is "controlled by Jews and Christians." But he obviously enjoys the attention he has received since Sept. 11. "We heard that when Megawati visited the U.S., George Walker Bush warned her to be careful of Laskar Jihad," he says, referring to the Indonesian president, Megawati Sukarnoputri. "He called us 'jihad forces.' Also, Colin Powell called us an organ of the Qaeda network. And then Robert Gelbard, the U.S. ambassador in Indonesia, made a statement saying that Jaffar Umar Thalib was" -- and here Jaffar speaks mockingly in English -- "a quite dangerous man." Eri Ziyad, who is sitting nearby taking notes, guffaws dutifully.
Our meeting took place the day after Afghanistan's interim government was sworn in. Jaffar has a predictably low opinion of it. "It is a puppet government established to abolish so-called Islamic radicalism," he says. "It will only prolong the suffering of the Afghan people. I believe the war will continue. All the anti-American powers are still united, are still strong. They are rebuilding their power outside Afghanistan, particularly along the Pakistani border."
"So the Taliban aren't finished yet?"
"No, in my opinion they are still a big threat to the U.S.," he replies. "George Walker Bush said it himself after Sept. 11: this is a crusade. The U.S. has since tried to withdraw this statement and express friendship to Muslim people. But it has not been forgotten by the mujahedeen."
He leans back and interlocks his fingers, then cracks them extravagantly. "I hope the Americans share the same fate as the Soviets."
Afghanistan is very close to Jaffar's heart. He earned his warrior credentials there along with hundreds of other Indonesian Muslims who fought with the mujahedeen. According to Laskar Jihad lore, Jaffar once shot down five Soviet helicopters in the Lowgar valley south of Kabul with a single rocket-propelled grenade. "With the help of God, I got one of the helicopters from quite close range, and it exploded. At the same time, the other four tried to escape and in their panic crashed into each other." He throws up his hands in mock incredulity. "All of them -- destroyed!"
For Jaffar, then in his mid-20's, Afghanistan was a liberation. To that point, he had spent his entire life in the suffocating environs of various Islamic schools. He was born in 1961, the seventh of eight children, in east Java. His formidable father, Umar Thalib, was a veteran of Indonesia's independence war who later ran a pesantren with the same martial ferocity, beating a religious education into his son with a rattan stick. "Learning Arabic from my father was like learning boxing," Jaffar has said.
At age 19, in an apparent act of filial rebellion, he left his father's pesantren to study Arabic at a Jakarta institute but failed to complete the course because of a disagreement with a teacher. In 1987, for similar reasons, he dropped out of another Islamic college in Lahore, Pakistan. He spent the next two years with Afghan mujahedeen and recalls the period with obvious affection.
"We were not there to learn," he says, "but to fight." But actually he did learn: he learned how nasty little wars are waged and he learned that superpowers could be vulnerable. "From my two-year experience in Afghanistan, I concluded that the whole concept of a superpower was only created by the mass media," he says. "It did not fit with reality at all."
Another Muslim who was reaching much the same conclusion was Osama bin Laden. Jaffar met him in 1987 in Peshawar, the Pakistani town near the Afghan border. His recollection of the encounter is prefaced by a deep, resonant belch. "At that time, he still shaved his beard," Jaffar says. "He was a spiritually empty man. He had no religious knowledge at all." He adds that bin Laden was an arrogant fellow who poured scorn on Saudi Arabia, which Jaffar regards as a model Islamic state. "Because of this, we distanced ourselves from him," Jaffar says. "We only knew of the Qaeda network after the Sept. 11 attack."
Is this true? While it is hard to find concrete proof of meaningful collaboration between Laskar Jihad and Al Qaeda, either before or after Sept. 11, strong suspicions linger. Apparent confirmation of a link came in mid-December, when the head of Indonesia's National Intelligence Agency publicly acknowledged that Al Qaeda members had probably trained in Poso, a district in central Sulawesi. But a few days later he retracted this statement, almost certainly under pressure from Indonesia's radical Muslim lobby. Then there is Laskar Jihad's Web site, which once featured links to Web sites of other radical organizations. These included Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based outfit accused by India of participating in the assault on the New Delhi Parliament, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas and groups in Bosnia and Chechnya. These links no longer appear on Laskar Jihad's Web site.
Still, none of this adds up to an indictment, and Jaffar knows it. He happily admits that in the weeks preceding Sept. 11, "someone close to Osama bin Laden" visited Laskar Jihad's offices in Maluku to offer financial help. Bin Laden's offer was not only rejected, Jaffar insists, but his emissary was threatened with death should he ever set foot on Maluku again.
Gunaratna, the terrorism expert, says he believes Jaffar's open contempt for bin Laden is disingenuous. "Publicly, he's against Osama," Gunaratna says, "but privately he has told Muslim leaders that he's willing to send fighters to Afghanistan if Osama requested." Jaffar told me that a unit of 10 Laskar Jihad "observers" was currently stationed in Afghanistan, although he wouldn't elaborate on their activities there.
Even if Jaffar's contempt for Al Qaeda's mastermind is genuine, how reassuring is that? If the world's most wanted man is, as Jaffar suggests, a lightweight -- at one point in our interview he even questions whether Osama bin Laden is "truly anti-American" -- what does this say about the quality of Jaffar's radicalism?
His views on the Sept. 11 terror attacks provide a clue. While refusing to name suspects (he is clearly reluctant to feed the Osama legend), Jaffar heaps praise upon the perpetrators.
"Of course, I feel sad that there were so many Muslim victims," he says. (An estimated 800 Muslims died in the World Trade Center.) But he is heartened that the anti-Islamic stance of America got a "hard slap." 
"When we see the global impact of the attack, of course we support it." Jaffar chuckles to himself. "In fact, we offer our applause."
A red curtain in the corner of the room parts slightly and a disembodied female hand extends a tray of glasses filled with a sweet cordial. Jaffar takes a glass and with an expansive gesture encourages his guests to do the same. I ask him if the killing of innocents is ever justified, and Jaffar responds with another question: were the victims of Sept. 11 really innocent to begin with?
"The policy of any government," he explains, "especially a democratically elected government like the U.S., is also the responsibility of all the people who supported it. The people run the risk of the results of those policies." Furthermore, he says, "economic facilities" like the World Trade Center are legitimate targets according to the Koran and the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammed.
And if there are civilians in those facilities? "If there are civilians," Jaffar says, "even Muslim civilians . . . well, that is the risk of war."
And yet for all his talk about America's "parasitic" Jewish lobby and Washington's support of "Zionist terrorism" and his labeling of Americans as "belligerent infidels" whose deaths are justified by divine imperative, Jaffar may not be quite the threat he cracks himself up to be. Harold Crouch insists that the dangers posed by Laskar Jihad beyond Indonesia's borders is overblown.
"They've got no interest internationally," he says. "They're certainly anti-American, but that's the rhetoric of all radical Muslim groups." Jaffar is a vocal opponent of his country's various armed separatist movements. Recent reports suggest that he is training about 100 fighters in Papua, an independence-minded province in easternmost Indonesia.
Jaffar's avowed goal is the establishment of an Islamic government in Indonesia, although many believe his true agenda is more personal. "Part of him wants fame, respect and influence," says Jacqui Baker of the Australian National University, who spent three months studying Jaffar and his followers. "Although Jaffar rejects overt politics, he still wants to be a prominent figure on the Indonesian political landscape."
Since December, Singapore and Malaysia have arrested dozens of Muslim radicals with apparent links to Al Qaeda, while the Philippines has invited American troops to come in and help wipe out Abu Sayyaf, another militant outfit with possible Al Qaeda ties. So far, Indonesia has done little, apart from question Abu Bakar Baasyir, the cleric suspected of running a Qaeda-linked terror group.
Meanwhile, Jaffar and his ultraviolent followers continue to operate with impunity. Jaffar, unlike Baasyir, "is not an international jihadist, but could graduate into one," Gunaratna says. "There is a pattern with these groups. They start nationally, go regional, then go international, which is precisely why they must be stopped while they're still small." Laskar Jihad has already rapidly grown into what Gunaratna believes is a military outfit with definite capability to conduct terrorist activities. "If the Indonesians don't crack down, it will become a large group with real political force," he predicts.
Washington has warned that Indonesia could become a target in the war on terror, a prospect that "scares the heck out of the Indonesian government," as a Western diplomat puts it. For now, however, it seems that Jaffar scares the Indonesian government more. Buoyed by a resurgence of popular fundamentalism and protected by sympathetic political and military figures, he has become a striking symbol of Indonesia's inability to confront the threat from home-grown militancy. No one, apparently, has the power or inclination to rid Indonesia of its most turbulent priest.
Jaffar glances at his gold wristwatch and makes apologies. It is almost time for prayers at the compound's mosque, and Jaffar plans to deliver the sermon. The amplified drone of a muezzin's call soon fills the room.
"I don't want to get carried away with this issue of anti-Americanism," he says, almost as an afterthought. "That would be wrong. We oppose the policies of the U.S. government, not the people themselves." He thinks for a moment. "Because some Americans are Muslims, too."
Then he stands up and stretches, and for the first time the logo on his undershirt is clearly visible. It is not, as I had initially thought, the clashing sabers of Laskar Jihad. It is a Playboy bunny.

CORRECTION-DATE: March 31, 2002

 CORRECTION:
An article on March 10 about Jaffar Umar Thalib, a militant Muslim cleric in Indonesia, referred incorrectly to the number of Muslims killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. It was not 800. There has so far been no official count of Muslims who were among the 2,830 dead or missing confirmed as of March 21.






  
  

  

March 10, 2002 Sunday



 As war widens, new perils;
President Bush aims to root out terrorist networks everywhere. Officials don't know when, where or how the struggle will end.

 
WASHINGTON - As U.S. troops wage their fiercest battles yet in Afghanistan, President Bush's war on terrorism is spreading to other battlefronts in a global campaign with no apparent end or boundaries.
In a strategy reminiscent of the Cold War, U.S. trainers, advisers, and special-forces troops are offering their expertise to virtually any potential ally. More than 600 U.S. military personnel already are in the Philippines. Others soon will head to Yemen and Georgia, formerly part of the Soviet Union.
Pentagon planners are exploring possible missions in Somalia and Sudan. In addition, Iraq, Iran and North Korea - the countries Bush branded the "axis of evil" - remain top targets. The Bush administration also is looking for ways to provide military assistance to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. 
The war's expansion has taken the antiterrorism campaign to a second phase, with a host of new risks. In nearly every theater of operations, U.S. military advisers will have to deal with fanatical enemies, unreliable allies and complex local rivalries. The spreading war also will put new strains on the Defense Department, the intelligence community, and the international coalition that found common cause in Afghanistan.
White House and Defense Department officials say they have no idea where, when or how the antiterrorism campaign will end. Members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network are believed to have cells in more than 60 countries.
"We're in for a long struggle," Bush told a group of Iowa Republicans recently, reiterating what he has said since September. "It's going to require patience of the American people."
Six months after the terrorist attacks, public and congressional support for that strategy remains strong. But voices of dissent - or at least caution - are emerging as the scope of the effort comes into focus.
For some, the escalating effort stirs uncomfortable memories of Vietnam, where U.S. involvement began with a few advisers and ended with 58,000 American soldiers dead.
"This makes Vietnam look like a piece of cake," said Stanley Karnow, a Vietnam War historian. "My apocalyptic view is that World War III began on Sept. 11. Afghanistan may turn out to be the easiest battlefield of all."
Pentagon officials say they are fully aware of the difficulty and risks of global engagement.
The strains already are starting to show. More than 70,000 reservists have been called up, stocks of precision-guided munitions are low, and the war is costing $1.8 billion a month.
"The endgame? I don't know," said one senior Defense Department official, requesting anonymity. "This is a long-term thing. How can you ever count on having shut down every terrorist cell? The hope is to defeat al-Qaeda and to demoralize the terrorists and Islamic extremists to the point that it subsides."
In a worst-case scenario, the United States could find itself at war with Iraq and North Korea while dealing with a handful of smaller regional conflicts. That seems unlikely, but other, more plausible dangers loom.
Most of the new or contemplated battlegrounds in the expanded war on terrorism are in unstable countries embroiled in complex ethnic, tribal or religious conflicts. Each presents challenges, and would force U.S. officials to adjust strategies and tactics.
"I don't think you can fit any of these countries into prefabricated bottles," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.), a Vietnam veteran and a leading voice on foreign policy. "That's why it's so difficult for us. There is no one standard model or blueprint you can play across the board."
Some of the most likely trouble spots:
The Philippines. Some 160 U.S. Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, Marine and Air Force special-operations troops, backed by 500 support and technical troops, are engaged in a six-month effort to help the Filipino government crush the Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic criminal organization that specializes in kidnapping.
The group is holding American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham. It demonstrated its brutality last year by decapitating hostage Guillermo Sobero of Corona, Calif.
Although Abu Sayyaf has previous ties to bin Laden, most experts think it is more interested in banditry than Islamic extremism or terrorism.
The U.S. troops are supposed to provide technical support, training and advice, but some will accompany Filipino soldiers into combat and are authorized to defend themselves if attacked. The advisers will have to deal with a host army that has a history of human-rights abuses and a well-equipped enemy that zips among the Philippines' 7,000 islands in high-powered speedboats.
Filipino nationalists and opposition politicians worry that the U.S. role will escalate if there are American casualties - and Filipino support could erode if the U.S. role grows.
American troops also face the risk of conflict with other Islamic militias in the Philippines, especially the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a separatist group that poses a far greater threat to the country's stability than Abu Sayyaf does.
Yemen. The details of American involvement are still under negotiation, but the Yemeni government has asked for military assistance, helicopters, and communications equipment to root out al-Qaeda elements.
The terrorist threat in Yemen, a country of about 18 million people on the Arabian Peninsula, became obvious in October 2000 when suicide bombers drove a boat loaded with explosives into the USS Cole in Aden. The explosion killed 17 sailors and wounded more than 35.
Although Yemen requested U.S. help and a plan to dispatch troops to help hunt al-Qaeda has been approved, it may prove an unreliable ally. The overwhelmingly Muslim country borders Saudi Arabia, a center of extremist Islamic ideology, and its network of local warlords resembles Afghanistan's.
The Yemenis "don't want to go out and put a stick in a hornet's nest. They don't want to do anything more than they have to do," said Charles Dunbar, a former ambassador to Yemen and the head of the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. "Yemen is, in many ways, a carbon copy of Afghanistan. It could get very bad."
Georgia. The Pentagon is expected this week to detail plans to provide training and hardware to help the former Soviet republic go after al-Qaeda fighters hunkered down in a lawless northern valley known as the Pankisi Gorge.
The gorge, which borders Russia's strife-torn republic of Chechnya, is also a base for Chechen rebels, whose fight for an independent Muslim country was aided by money, arms and personnel sent by bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban.
Officials of both governments say the Americans will not participate in combat operations. But the planned U.S. presence has angered some senior Russian officials, who view the region as their traditional sphere of influence.
A major risk of American involvement is the possibility that a crackdown on al-Qaeda fighters could claim casualties among Chechen rebels and refugees who are living in Georgia, inviting retaliation by the battle-hardened Chechen forces.
Indonesia. Islamic militants who trained in bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan are believed to be scattered around the country in cells that are part of al-Qaeda.
Current U.S. law prohibits military training and equipment for Indonesia because of its brutality against pro-independence voters in East Timor in 1999.
Congress in December approved a measure that would allow Indonesian officers to receive "nonlethal training," but even so, the cooperation may amount to little. The government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, struggling to contain ethnic and religious unrest, fears that participation could provoke a backlash by Indonesia's 170 million Muslims, many of whom oppose the U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan.
Ron Hutcheson's e-mail address is rhutcheson@krwashington.com.






  
  
 

March 8, 2002 Friday 



 DISTURBING RESULTS

 
A SERIES OF GALLUP POLLS that measured sentiment toward the United States in the Muslim world didn't get much ink when Gallup released the results last week. But they should have. If they were even half accurate, they hold profound implications for the direction American foreign policy should take in the months and years ahead.
The pollsters interviewed nearly 10,000 people in nine predominantly Muslim countries - Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They found that Muslims overseas view the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath in starkly different terms than Americans view them. 
The chief area of agreement was the belief in these countries that the attacks on the United States Sept. 11 were unconscionable. The most startling result, however, was a widespread belief that Arabs were not involved in the attacks.
To those of us in America, who have seen incontrovertible evidence of who masterminded and carried out the murders, that perspective is dumbfounding. Yet it is relatively widespread: from 89 percent in Kuwait to 43 percent in Turkey.
Less surprising is the belief that U.S. military action in Afghanistan was unjustified, an overreaction. Ninety percent of Indonesians interviewed feel that way, for example, and 60 percent in Turkey. Again, however, the view is at odds with the majority view of Americans, who, like their president, consider the war on terrorism as an either-or, good-versus-evil affair.
How to explain these results? Some observers are questioning the validity of the poll. But Gallup is a respected organization, one of the world's oldest polling groups, and its workers interviewed 9,924 adults in the nine countries. By contrast, California newspapers splashed front-page stories last week about the gubernatorial race based on fewer than 300 respondents.
Are the citizens of these countries misinformed? They certainly are about the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks here in the United States. But their view that America overreacted is, from their perspective, understandable.
To them, the United States has gone too far in its extension of the war on terrorism to numerous nations around the globe. In some cases, foreign observers feel, we are propping up dictators and putting down legitimate rebel movements.
The bombing in Afghanistan in particular sticks in numerous overseas craws. From our perspective, it has been an overwhelming success militarily, despite the heavy fighting this week in what is largely a mop-up operation. Only a few Americans have died at enemy hands and the al-Qaida and Taliban are in full retreat. Yet the "collateral damage" - the deaths of civilians - has been downplayed or overlooked altogether by the United States and its leaders, and gone largely unreported by the U.S. press. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has routinely denied or minimized such deaths and has steadfastly refused to show any regret.
People overseas notice this insensitivity. We may feel morally justified in what we do, but it is important to note that, as this poll shows, many in other nations see our sense of rightness as the arrogance of power.
What's important here is not whether they are right. What is important is that this is the way too much of the world sees us. The lesson is clear: We must show them that we are not the world's bully they believe us to be. We must show them while we remain angry and grief-stricken about our own tragedies stemming from Sept. 11, we care as well about the death and injustices they face.
How do we do this? Diplomacy. But we can't even begin that until we show some sense of compassion for the situation the people of Afghanistan now find themselves in, or the poverty-struck and hopeless populations of many other parts of the Middle East.
We must turn our attention as a nation to that task. We have all but won the war, at least in its initial phase. Now we must begin to try to win some sort of peace in the troubled Middle East. If we don't, we truly will have war without end. We are the world's only superpower; it is up to us to lead the way.






    
  


March 5, 2002, Tuesday



 TIMOR VEXES U.S. AIM TO ENGAGE JAKARTA IN TERROR WAR







   
 

March 2, 2002 Saturday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: THE MILITARY; 
U.S. Broadens Terror Fight, Readying Troops for Yemen

 
President Bush has approved plans to send as many as 100 troops to Yemen to help train that nation's military to fight terrorists, senior administration officials said today.
     While American officials said the details were still being worked out, they said the troops could leave as early as next week. They would consist predominantly of Special Forces, but could also include intelligence experts and other specialists. The main target would be Al Qaeda fighters who are hiding in Yemen. 
 Yemen is just the latest partner in an increasingly broad campaign that has expanded well beyond Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf, the Philippines and potentially to Georgia and Indonesia as well. 
It comes as Democrats have become increasingly restless about the military moves, complaining that the administration has demanded virtually unlimited funds without providing a clear road map of the worldwide military effort. 
"If this administration believes as strongly as I know it does about its conduct in the war thus far, I would think they'd look forward to answering the questions that the Congress necessarily must ask," Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota and the majority leader, told reporters today. 
Administration officials have rejected the charge, saying it does not take account of the scope of Al Qaeda's operations and the need to combat the terror network on a global basis.
The military campaign appears to be expanding by the week. While Washington has been rife with speculation about a major military campaign against Iraq, the operations being planned are very different.
They involve military training by American Special Forces and donations of arms and military equipment to nations struggling to crush isolated but potent Islamic insurgencies that have possible links to Al Qaeda.
Special Operations forces played a central role in Afghanistan, where they called in air strikes and sometimes fought alongside anti-Taliban Afghans. In this next phase of the war on terrorism, the Special Forces' role is largely limited to training and equipping nations that have asked for American assistance, not calling in air strikes. Indeed, American commandos will be discouraged from even firing their weapons, except in self-defense, military officials said. The missions vary from nation to nation.
In the former Soviet republic of Georgia, for instance, Washington is considering sending about 200 Special Forces soldiers and more than $50 million in equipment to aid the feeble Georgian military, which has been unable to establish control over the Pankisi Gorge near Chechnya.
A senior American official said that several dozen Qaeda extremists may be hiding in the Pankisi Gorge and that most, if not all of them, had been there for months and had not fled from Afghanistan. 
The American official said there was no current plan for United Statessoldiers to go into the gorge on combat operations with the Georgians.
Officials say there is now only one American soldier in Georgia, where he was sent to help the Georgians operate 10 UH-1 transport helicopters the United States is providing. 
Other training efforts are under discussion as well. Senior military officials are pushing Congress to allow a resumption of military to military relations with Indonesia to help its armed forces root out Islamic extremists with possible ties to Al Qaeda. 
Algeria has also asked the United States for night-vision goggles and other military assistance so that it can fight extremists there. 
Of the new operations, the one in the Philippines is the most ambitious. About 600 American troops, including 160 Special Forces soldiers, are already in the Philippines advising and training local troops that are trying to surround a Muslim separatist group called Abu Sayyaf on the southern island of Basilan.
The Pentagon has long viewed Yemen as a center of support for Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader. His father was born there. Yemen was also the site of the terrorist attack on the destroyer Cole, which killed 17 American sailors in October 2000.
Western investigators have said Yemen, where well-armed tribal militias are more powerful than the government along parts of the Saudi border, is home to at least 20 senior Qaeda officials and scores of fighters trained in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Brig. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr., deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today that it was likely that some Qaeda fighters slipped back into Yemen from Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. "I think it would be common knowledge that that would be a refuge that one might expect them to go to," he told reporters. 
While the government in Yemen has said it wants to work with Washington to track down Qaeda units, it has also expressed concerns about having American troops on its soil.
In an interview today, the Yemeni ambassador to the United States, Abdulwahab Alhajjri, said one solution would be to have Yemeni soldiers come to the United States for training, and to keep the number of American soldiers in Yemen to a minimum.
"We need to examine the whole issue and whether we need to bring people to Yemen or to be trained in the United States," he said. "We're more in need of equipment and financial help."
Asked what kind of equipment Yemen was seeking, the ambassador said: "We are asking the U.S. to assist us in any way they can. We're in need of everything, anything. You name it, we want it."
A senior administration official said the type of equipment being discussed included helicopters, night-vision goggles and other kinds of sensors, and small arms.
Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of American forces in Afghanistan and Central Asia, told Congress this week that Yemen had worked "hand in glove" with the United States to help fight terrorism since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. He also mentioned Sudan and Somalia as countries where terrorism has been allowed to breed. 
"I think the approach that our government may take in any one of these countries will not be like what we have seen," General Franks told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. "We will not use the Afghanistan model."
Senior military officials say they are also looking to build stronger military ties to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, in the hope of encouraging that country to root out terrorist cells. For the last two years, Mr. bin Laden has been working to establish a foothold there, American and Asian officials contend, using the archipelago as a base for training, fund-raising and recruiting.
In the view of the Pentagon, Indonesia has been slow to crack down on terrorists, declining to search hard for the cleric Riudan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who is thought to be the mastermind of a plot to blow up the American Embassy in Singapore. But many senior Pentagon officials contend that closer military ties to Indonesia would strengthen that nation's ability to track down terrorists. 
"We are looking for ways to cooperate with Indonesia against this common enemy," Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the head of the United States Pacific Command, said in an interview this week. 
At the Pentagon's behest, Congress late last year eased restrictions on the training of Indonesian military officers in the United States that had been imposed in 1999 after human rights abuses by government troops in East Timor. Many military and Congressional officials say they expect the Pentagon to propose sending Special Operations troops to Indonesia next to train military units in counterterrorism tactics.
The training is likely to draw opposition from critics of Indonesia in Congress, led by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations. Admiral Blair met with Mr. Leahy this week in an effort to ease some of his concerns that the Indonesian military had done little to reform itself. 






    


February 28, 2002, Thursday, 



 $ 5-million reward offered in Pearl case

 
 
U.S. officials on Wednesday announced a $ 5-million reward for information in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Meanwhile, Mariane Pearl, the reporter's widow, thanked Pakistan's president during a face-to-face meeting Wednesday for his efforts to try to save her husband.
President Pervez Musharraf expressed his "heartfelt grief" and told Mrs. Pearl that her husband's murder was a "most barbaric" act of terrorism. 
Resentment in Islam
Residents of Islamic countries harbor deep resentment toward the United States and believe the military action in Afghanistan is not morally justified, Gallup polls conducted in nine countries find.
The polls were taken in nine predominantly Muslim countries - Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in December and January.
People in those countries had widespread doubts that Arabs were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The percentage that believed Arabs were not involved ranged from 89 percent in Kuwait, which was liberated by U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf war a decade ago, to 43 percent in Turkey, a NATO ally.
President Bush is almost as unpopular in those countries as he is popular in his own country. One-fifth or less of the populations in most of those countries liked Bush, while the number who disliked him was as high as two-thirds in Lebanon and Morocco.
Other news
MOVES HINTED IN IRAQ: A CIA team visited northern Iraq last month for meetings over three days with Kurdish officials opposed to President Saddam Hussein, U.S.-backed Iraqi dissidents in Washington said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat reported Wednesday that another team of seven CIA officers and military intelligence staff in northern Iraq is scouting three bases that could land aircraft in Kurdish-controlled territory with an eye toward creating a staging point for future U.S. opposition to the Iraqi leader.
SECURITY GUARD LIED: A New York hotel security guard pleaded guilty Wednesday to lying about the location of a pilot radio in the room of an Egyptian student imprisoned for a month after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The student, Abdallah Higazy, 30, was released in January, insisting he knew nothing about the handheld transceiver, which enables pilots to communicate with other pilots or to monitor pilot conversations.







   
 

February 27, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 1 Country, 2 Futures 

 
An acquaintance here in Saudi Arabia told me this story: He was touring the countryside by car and got slightly lost. He saw a car down the road and approached it to ask directions, but each time he drew near, the car sped away. Eventually he caught up to it, the car pulled over, and a terrified driver jumped out to flee: it was a Saudi woman dressed like a man. In a country where it is illegal for women to drive, that's the only way for a lady to get behind the wheel.
     This story is a good reminder that not everything here operates in real life as it appears on paper -- which is what makes predicting Saudi Arabia's future a very inexact science. As such, I've concluded that there are two possible models for Saudi Arabia's future. I call them the "Soviet school" and the "China school."  
 The Soviet school argues that Saudi Arabia is an Islamic version of the Soviet Union: an absolute monarchy that is, like the Soviet Union, ultimately unreformable. The core of this regime is an alliance between a modernizing, but corrupt, theocracy, led by the al-Saud family, and the ultraconservative Wahhabi religious establishment, which provides the al-Sauds with legitimacy, and the minute you try to reform it, the whole system will come unglued.
This is how the Soviet school sees it: The ruling al-Saud brothers are like the old Soviet Politburo; the 50,000 al-Saud princes and relatives are the equivalent of the Communist Party. Wahhabism, the puritanical Saudi Arabian brand of Islam, is used by the al-Sauds to unite the 40 fractious tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, just as Communism was used by Lenin to unite the 100 fractious nationalities of Russia and its neighboring republics. Osama bin Laden is just the evil version of Andrei Sakharov -- the insider who steps outside the system to declare that the king has no clothes. Sakharov was exiled to Gorky for that and bin Laden to Kabul. And ultimately, both systems went into decline after unhappy encounters where? In Afghanistan.
The intense Saudi competition with Iran for dominance over the Muslim world -- which involves financing competing conservative Muslim schools and mosques from Pakistan to Indonesia -- is identical to the Soviet competition with China for influence over the Communist world.
The Soviet school concludes that Saudi Arabia has about five more years before its population boom, declining per capita income, need for education reform to create skilled workers and attract foreign investors, excessive defense spending, and influx of satellite TV and the Internet combine to explode the Saudi system, just as they did the Soviet one.
The China school, by contrast, begins with the assumption that Saudi Arabia is a country that makes no sense on paper but in real life has a lot more cushions and ballast, which enable it, like China, to pursue two seemingly contradictory policies at once. In China it's Communism and capitalism, and in Saudi Arabia it's Wahhabism and rapid modernization. Oil is to Saudi Arabia what huge direct foreign investment is to China -- a natural resource that allows the system to buy off a lot of discontent and enables people to cheat on the system, and thereby let off steam, behind closed doors.
In the China school, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah is the equivalent of China's reformist prime minister, Zhu Rongji. In particular, like Zhu, Abdullah is trying to push Saudi Arabia into the World Trade Organization to create external pressure for more rule of law and transparency -- but this move is resisted by more corrupt elements of the elite who benefit from the status quo.
Finally, like China's rulers, the Saudi ruling elite knows how to stay in power and will do whatever it takes to do so. In China's case that meant bringing capitalists into the Communist Party and crushing students at Tiananmen, and in Saudi Arabia's case it will mean confronting the radical Islamists -- just as the al-Sauds did before when they wanted to introduce radio, television and women's education. Like China's leaders, the Saudi monarchy can garner support from members of the middle class -- not only by buying them off, but also by arguing that the alternative to its rule would be chaos or extremists.
The China school dismisses the idea that Saudi Arabia will collapse in five years. It notes, instead, that for 50 years, someone has come out with a study every five years that says Saudi Arabia has only five more years.
Which school would I bet on? Ask me in five years. 






   


February 27, 2002, Wednesday, 



 In poll, Islamic world says Arabs not involved in 9/11

 
A sweeping poll of attitudes in the Islamic world shows that most Muslims don't believe Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and disapprove of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.
The Gallup Organization poll, released Tuesday, is the most comprehensive survey of Muslim countries taken since Sept. 11. It confirms anecdotal evidence of a huge gulf between the West and Muslim nations that existed before the attacks and remains deep.
 
Although most Muslims condemn the terrorist attacks that sparked the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the poll shows a majority believe the campaign is morally unjustified and express a breathtaking depth of anti-U.S. sentiment.
Respondents overwhelmingly describe the United States as "ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked, biased," says Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport. "The people of Islamic countries have significant grievances with the West in general and with the United States in particular."
Gallup conducted in-person interviews during December and January of 9,924 residents in nine Muslim countries: Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Key findings:
 * Although U.S. officials say all 19 of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Arab men, only 18% of those polled in six Islamic countries say they believe Arabs carried out the attacks; 61% say Arabs were not responsible; and 21% say they don't know.
 * Just 9% say they think U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justified. The least supportive: people in Morocco, Indonesia and Pakistan.
 * Two-thirds say the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were morally unjustifiable, but significant minorities disagree. In Kuwait, which U.S. troops liberated from Iraq in 1991, 36% say the attacks were justifiable, the highest percentage of any country polled.
 * A slight majority, 53%, view the United States unfavorably. Residents in Pakistan -- a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism -- Iran and Saudi Arabia are the most negative.
 * Muslims dislike President Bush; 58% view him unfavorably.
 * Only 12% say the West respects Arab or Islamic values. Just 7% say Western nations are fair in their perceptions of Muslim countries.
The key finding is "the strong feeling of resentment that emanates that the United States doesn't care about them," says Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland.
The poll results are not statistically adjusted to reflect the populations of the countries surveyed. Margins of sampling error range from 2 percentage points in Pakistan to 4 points in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait.
The poll had about 120 questions, but not all were asked in every country because of censorship. For instance, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco did not allow the question about Arab responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks.
TEXT WITHIN GRAPHIC BEGINS HERE
Islamic views
Sixty-one percent of Muslims polled say Arabs were not involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Breakdown by country:
Kuwait: 89%
Pakistan: 86%
Indonesia: 74%
Iran: 59%
Lebanon: 58%
Turkey: 43%






   


February 27, 2002, Wednesday, 



 Kuwaitis share distrust toward USA, poll indicates

 
The United States rescued Kuwait in 1991 by ousting Iraqi troops from the tiny Persian Gulf nation, but a new Gallup Poll out Tuesday suggests many there now feel little gratitude.
A sizable minority -- 36% -- of Kuwaitis surveyed in the nine-nation poll of Muslim countries say the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were "morally justifiable." That compares with 15% overall.
Just 17% of Kuwaitis say they approve of the U.S. military action in Afghanistan. And although Kuwaitis applauded the first President Bush when he vowed that Saddam Hussein's invasion of their country in August 1990 would not stand, they are not enamored of his son. Only 18% say they like the current President Bush.
 
The Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington was closed Tuesday for a national holiday. No official comment was available.
"Kuwaitis are not very different in their attitudes toward the United States than other Arabs," says Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland who helped Gallup analyze the results of nearly 10,000 interviews.
Because U.S. troops remain in Kuwait, "there may be an overcompensation factor, a feeling that they have to show their relationship with the United States has not undermined their Arab credentials," Telhami said.
But James Zogby of the Arab American Institute says the 790 Kuwaiti respondents are "out of sync" and don't "compute anecdotally with Kuwaitis I speak to."
Besides, if there is a chasm between Arab and American opinion, Zogby says, "the gap exists on both sides. These numbers are not that much different than when we ask Americans what they think about Arab and Muslim countries."
If the poll accurately reflects Muslim views, there is a deep distrust of the West in Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The countries polled represent about half the world's Muslims.
Some of the ill feelings might be attributable to how the West is portrayed by government-run TV stations and newspapers and how much or little access people have to foreign media. Large percentages in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Kuwait say they trust their national media, even though censorship is common in those countries.
Half the survey respondents say they pay attention to current affairs, but only 8% have Internet access at home. Kuwaiti homes are the most wired, at 28%.
Most do have access to American TV and say they don't like its sex and violence. Only 20% say adopting Western values will help their own culture's progress, and many consider the United States "immoral and irreligious," says Frank Newport, the Gallup Poll editor-in-chief. Not surprisingly, 37% in secular Turkey say they favor adopting Western ways. Only 5% in more conservative Morocco do.
"These respondents have deep-seated disrespect for what they see as the undisciplined and immoral lifestyles of people in Western nations," Newport said.
As for the aspects of U.S. culture that Muslims admire, such as economic success, technology and personal freedoms, few believe the West wants to share the wealth. Only 16% say Western nations care about poorer countries.
But if Muslims in the Middle East dislike the United States, so do sizable percentages of Catholics in Latin America, Protestants in Europe and Buddhists in Asia.
Many people all over the world "have bad attitudes about America. They view us as arrogant," Zogby says. "We have not projected a good image to the world."

Islamic countries' views on Bush, U.S., Sept. 11 and war on terrorism
The Gallup Organization conducted in-person interviews of nearly 10,000 residents of nine Muslim countries -- Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- in December and January. The questions addressed attitudes about the attacks on Sept. 11 and the U.S. response to them. Not all questions were asked in every country. Here are poll results:
Country: Lebanon
Have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the United States:
Favorable: 41%
Unfavorable: 40%
Neither: 19%
Say U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justifiable:
Justifiable: 20%
Unjustifiable: 69%
Neither: 11%
Believe news reports that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks:
True: 42%
Not true: 58%
Neither: 0%
Like or dislike President Bush:
Like: 16%
Dislike: 68%
Don't know: 14%
Country: Turkey
Have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the United States:
Favorable: 40%
Unfavorable: 33%
Neither: 25%
Say U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justifiable:
Justifiable: 19%
Unjustifiable: 59%
Neither: 20%
Believe news reports that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks:
True: 46%
Not true: 43%
Neither: 11%
Like or dislike President Bush:
Like: 21%
Dislike: 45%
Don't know: 22%
Country: Kuwait
Have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the United States:
Favorable: 28%
Unfavorable: 41%
Neither: 31%
Say U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justifiable:
Justifiable: 17%
Unjustifiable: 69%
Neither: 14%
Believe news reports that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks:
True: 11%
Not true: 89%
Neither: 0%
Like or dislike President Bush:
Like: 18%
Dislike: 63%
Don't know: 17%
Country: Indonesia
Have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the United States:
Favorable: 27%
Unfavorable: 30%
Neither: 43%
Say U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justifiable:
Justifiable: 2%
Unjustifiable: 89%
Neither: 9%
Believe news reports that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks:
True: 20%
Not true: 74%
Neither: 6%
Like or dislike President Bush:
Like: 17%
Dislike: 39%
Don't know: 40%
Country: Jordan
Have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the United States:
Favorable: 22%
Unfavorable: 62%
Neither: 16%
Say U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justifiable:
Justifiable: NA
Unjustifiable: NA
Neither: NA
Believe news reports that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks:
True: NA
Not true: NA
Neither: NA
Like or dislike President Bush:
Like: NA
Dislike: NA
Don't know: NA
Country: Morocco
Have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the United States:
Favorable: 22%
Unfavorable: 41%
Neither: 19%
Say U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justifiable:
Justifiable: 2%
Unjustifiable: 86%
Neither: 4%
Believe news reports that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks:
True: NA
Not true: NA
Neither: NA
Like or dislike President Bush:
Like: 2%
Dislike: 71%
Don't know: 4%
Country: Saudi Arabia
Have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the United States:
Favorable: 16%
Unfavorable: 64%
Neither: 19%
Say U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justifiable:
Justifiable: NA
Unjustifiable: NA
Neither: NA
Believe news reports that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks:
True: NA
Not true: NA
Neither: NA
Like or dislike President Bush:
Like: NA
Dislike: NA
Don't know: NA
Country: Iran
Have a favorable of unfavorable opinion of the United States:
Favorable: 14%
Unfavorable: 63%
Neither: 14%
Say U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justifiable:
Justifiable: 9%
Unjustifiable: 78%
Neither: 8%
Believe news reports that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks:
True: 15%
Not true: 59%
Neither: 26%
Like or dislike President Bush:
Like: 5%
Dislike: 63%
Don't know: 5%
Country: Pakistan
Have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the United States:
Favorable: 9%
Unfavorable: 68%
Neither: 23%
Say U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justifiable:
Justifiable: 4%
Unjustifiable: 80%
Neither: 13%
Believe news reports that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks:
True: 4%
Not true: 86%
Neither: 10%
Like or dislike President Bush:
Like: 4%
Dislike: 58%
Don't know: 7%
Total
Have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the United States:
Favorable: 22%
Unfavorable: 53%
Neither: 23%
Say U.S. military action in Afghanistan is morally justifiable:
Justifiable: 9%
Unjustifiable: 77%
Neither: 11%
Believe news reports that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks:
True: 18%
Not true: 61%
Neither: 21%
Like or dislike President Bush:
Like: 11%
Dislike: 58%
Don't know: 14%
Source: The Gallup Poll of 9,924 adults in nine Islamic countries. Number sampled in each country: Pakistan 2,043; Iran 1,501; Indonesia 1,050; Turkey 1,019; Lebanon 1,010; Morocco 1,000; Kuwait 790; Jordan 757; Saudi Arabia 754. Margin of error: +/-2 percentage points in Pakistan, +/-4 percentage points in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait; +/-3 percentage points in all other countries. Totals might not add up to 100% because of rounding or other responses not shown.




19

  
  


February 24, 2002 Sunday 



 On the trail of terrorists

 
The world's most populous Muslim nation and fourth most populous  overall, Indonesia is home to multiplying Islamist groups.
U.S. authorities suspect that the Islamic Defenders' Front and  Laskar Jihad received funds from al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's  network. After the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan, the Islamic  Youth Movement claimed it sent 300 men to Afghanistan to support  the Taliban. 
In January, however, the security minister said there was no  evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and Indonesia.
If links are established, officials promised action.
Still, Indonesia has been buffeted by anti-Americanism and a  series of internal conflicts. Clashes between Muslim militants and  Christians became common this past decade.
U.S. officials want more of a crackdown in this fledgling  democracy.
During a visit to Washington after the Sept. 11 attacks,  President Megawati Sukarnoputri vowed support for an  anti-terrorist coalition. But after she returned home she  backpedaled in the face of anti-American sentiments, U.S.  diplomats say.
A crackdown could threaten stability in a riot-prone nation  where moderate Islamist parties dominate a newly elected  government.
Ever since 1949, when Indonesia gained independence from the  Netherlands, military and elected rulers have struggled to forge a  nation.
Indonesia is made up of hundreds of tribes ranging from  stone-age hunter-gatherers to urban computer programmers. People  scattered across thousands of islands spanning an area as wide as  the United States speak more than 300 languages. Only 10 percent  of the land can be farmed.
Economically, Indonesia has relied on natural resources  including oil and gold to boost development. Western companies  such as Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp. invested heavily and  launched vast projects.
And during the 1990s, global corporations began harnessing  Indonesia's low-cost labor for the assembly of shoes, clothing and  electronics, giving some upward mobility to impoverished masses.  Then Asia's economic collapse hit, contributing to the fall of  military ruler Gen. Suharto in 1998 after widespread rioting.
Suharto had ruled since taking over in 1965 from  independence-era ruler Sukarno. Now Sukarnoputri, Sukarno's  daughter, is hard-pressed to maintain order. Cronyism and  corruption eat away at public confidence in government institutions.
East Timor's successful bid for independence in 1999 encourages  other movements on Aceh, Irian Jaya and Kalimantan.
Indonesia increasingly deploys military forces to keep order.  Military practices in the country regularly prompt criticism from  international human-rights groups. For the United States, delicate  diplomacy is seen as crucial to maintain Indonesia's general  support for the West and the United States - and to deny  terrorists a haven.







   
 

February 23, 2002 Saturday  
  



 National Briefing South: Florida: Judge Lets Princess Fly Home 

 
     A judge let a Saudi princess accused of beating her Indonesian maid in Orlando to fly home to be with her family for a Muslim holiday.  
The ruling by Judge Richard Conrad of Circuit Court was opposed by the prosecutor, Bill Vose. The princess, Buniah al-Saud, 41, is a niece of King Fahd. She faces a charge of attempted aggravated battery, a third-degree felony. A student at the University of Central Florida, the princess has been free on $5,000 bail since December, after Orange County deputies had arrested her in the beating of the maid, Memet Ismiyati.







  



February 20, 2002 Wednesday  




 WORLD; 
In Brief

 
THE MIDDLE EAST 
 MECCA, Saudi Arabia -- About 2 million Muslims thronged Saudi Arabia's holiest city yesterday for the annual hajj, or pilgrimage, amid tight security at the largest Muslim gathering since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. 
 Tens of thousands of men in seamless white clothes and modestly dressed women in veils circled the cube-shaped Kaaba at the heart of Mecca's Grand Mosque in the prelude to a journey in the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad. 
 "God is greatest, God is greatest, this is the happiest day of my life," Ahmed, an Indonesian pilgrim, said after circling the black structure, which Muslims throughout the world face at prayer. 
Reuters 
 ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkish police captured two Palestinians and a Jordanian suspected of heading from Iran to Israel to carry out a suicide bombing at the request of a militant cleric with ties to al Qaeda, officials announced.  
 The three were arrested Friday. According to police spokesman Feyzullah Arslan, one confessed to plans to launch an attack in a crowded area of Tel Aviv or its suburb of Ramat Gan. 
 The arrests were the first in Turkey of suspects linked to al Qaeda, the terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden. Turkey, a secular Muslim nation and NATO member that has voiced strong support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism, has 267 troops. 
 The suspects were arrested in the eastern Turkish province of Van after crossing the Iranian border. 
Associated PressEUROPE 
 FREISING, Germany -- A man who had recently lost his job shot and killed two former bosses, then took a taxi to his old high school and killed the principal and himself as hundreds of students ran for cover. 
 The man, believed to be 22, wore army camouflage and carried two pistols and two pipe bombs. None of the more than 400 students was injured. 
 Police said the violence began about 8 a.m. when the man, who was not identified, walked into a packaging company in Eching and shot his former boss, 38, and a foreman, 40. Both died at the scene. 
 The assailant went 12 miles back to Freising, where he walked into the school and began shooting, then set off a pipe bomb. 
 Witnesses said he asked for a former teacher, who was not at school, then fatally shot the principal and wounded another teacher before killing himself. 
Associated PressTHE AMERICAS 
 LIMA, Peru -- Peru's justice minister ruled out a presidential pardon for Lori Berenson after the Supreme Court confirmed the American woman's 20-year sentence for aiding leftist rebels. 
 "She is a proven terrorist, sentenced by the Supreme Court. . . . There is simply nothing more to discuss about the matter," Fernando Olivera said. "A presidential pardon is not under consideration." 
ASIA 
 MANILA -- Philippine prosecutors, citing lack of evidence, dismissed police charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives against an Indonesian linked to al Qaeda. 
 But they recommended that charges be filed in court against Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi -- believed to be linked to a plot by Islamic militants to attack U.S. and other Western targets in Southeast Asia -- for violating Philippine passport law. 
 Police said they confiscated explosive components and passports from al-Ghozi when he was arrested in Manila last month. 
 But according to a document issued by justice officials Feb. 11 and released to reporters yesterday, "The law enforcement authorities merely presented photographs of the alleged explosive components and failed to present the physical evidence." 
 The Indonesian denied he had explosive components with him at the time of his arrest but admitted applying for Philippine passports using different names, court documents said. 
ReutersAFRICA 
 LILONGWE, Malawi -- Catholic priests issued a plea for food aid, saying Africans are dying from hunger after last year's poor corn harvest. 
 Throughout southern Africa, the harvest of the region's staple crop was down a quarter from the previous year because of bad weather, the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization said. Worst-hit were Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia, the agency said. 
Associated Press 







   
 

February 18, 2002 Monday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN ARENA; 
Finding a Tepid Ally in the War on Terror, U.S. Presses Indonesia to Arrest 2 Clerics

 
The Bush administration, frustrated that the Indonesian government has failed to crack down against the threat of terrorism, has urged officials here to begin a search for an Indonesian cleric believed to be the point man for Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia, American officials said.
     The officials contrast the help in fighting terrorism that they are receiving from Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines with what they characterize as a lack of energetic cooperation from Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. The C.I.A. said last week that Indonesia was a likely place for Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's organization, to base further operations. 
 The government has declined to look seriously for the cleric, Riudan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, even though United States officials say he was the likely operational director for a plot to blow up the American Embassy in Singapore.  The Indonesians have also said they do not have enough evidence to arrest another cleric, Abu Bakar Baasyir, who an American official said this week has been a conduit of money to militant Islamic organizations. 
The deputy chief of staff of the Indonesian Army, Gen. Kiki Siyahnakri, said in an interview here last week that the authorities were looking for Mr. Hambali and were committed to fighting terrorism. 
The American dissatisfaction comes during a vigorous debate within the Bush administration over military aid to Indonesia, which was curtailed by Congress because of human rights violations by the Indonesian military. To get around the restrictions, the Pentagon wants to spend nearly all of the $21 million recently allocated in a defense bill for worldwide counterterrorism on Indonesia, officials said.
General Siyahnakri said the Indonesian military did not need combat training. "We need assistance in how to shape military ethics in accord with international human rights law," he said. But he added that Indonesia had its own conditions for new military aid. "The relationship must be of equal partners," he said, "not as one acting as the superpower, as the world's police officer, and the other one is ordered around."
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. examined possible trouble spots around the world and concluded that Indonesia was "potentially a big threat," said an official who has read the report. The report said that many Indonesian Muslims had gone to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet invasion in the 1980's and that those people could readily be activated by Al Qaeda.
American officials said they had tried to impress on Indonesia's president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, that the potential for a terrorism is a "cancer in her country." She has declined to make any commitments, saying that Indonesia is a democracy and cannot arrest people on the mere suspicion of terrorist intentions. She also appears to be constrained by her reading of domestic politics. She is worried that the country's Islamic political parties, particularly those allied with the vice president, Hamzah Haz, would vigorously oppose any crackdown. 
American officials have told Indonesia that Mr. Hambali is their first priority. During those conversations, Indonesian officials have said that he has been in and out of Indonesia several times in the last year, including at least once since Sept. 11. 
Mr. Hambali has lived most of the last decade on the coast of Malaysia, an easy boat ride across the Strait of Malacca. Further, with the widespread corruption in Indonesia, Mr. Hambali, like anyone else on a watch list, could have easily entered the country by simply inserting a $50 bill between the pages of his passport, a Western diplomat said. 
The United States would also like Indonesia to arrest Mr. Baasyir, an Islamic cleric who lived in Malaysia with Mr. Hambali for many years and now lives openly in central Java.  Singapore and Malaysia say that he is a leader of Jemaah Islamiah, a group they describe as a terrorist organization and to which Mr. Hambali has been linked. Mr. Baasyir denies any links to terrorism.
An American official described Mr. Baasyir as the ideological godfather of the organization, and said that he had funneled money from Saudi Arabia to Islamic terrorist groups. Another official said he was "intimately intertwined" with the aborted attack on the embassy in Singapore.
General Siyahnakri said officials were aggressively looking for Mr. Hambali. That assessment was not shared by other governments.  "They're not looking very hard," a senior American military officer said.      






  
  


February 17, 2002 Sunday  



 INDONESIA COOL TO MILITANT ISLAM;
COUNTRY, DESPITE SOME ZEALOTS, EMBRACES RELIGIOUS MODERATION

 
Painting a picture that is seemingly at odds with the placid scene in West Sumatra, CIA Director George Tenet earlier this month told a Senate committee that Indonesia should be placed high on the list of new hot spots in the war against terrorism. Tenet described the sprawling Southeast Asian nation as a place where "political instability, separatist and ethnic tensions, and protracted violence are hampering economic recovery and fueling Islamic extremism."
But to Indonesians themselves, and to many experts who have studied this land, that assessment distorts the country's history and ignores its strong traditions of religious moderation.
Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, certainly has religious dissidents who would like to impose Islamic law on its stubbornly secular society. And it's true that local separatist insurgencies and sectarian clashes bear the fingerprints of militant Islamic movements. In conversation, many Indonesians express revulsion over the deaths of innocent Muslim civilians in Afghanistan. Hawkers sell Osama bin Laden T-shirts on the streets of Jakarta without raising too many eyebrows. 
Zealots head abroad
But Indonesia's most notorious Islamist zealots, including several individuals accused by Singapore and Malaysia of having links to the Al-Qaida terror network, have found more fertile ground for activities outside their own country.
The mix of cultures that has shaped Islamic life in Indonesia has created a "reservoir of moderation and tolerance that even now acts as a buffer to the radical Islamic groups who want to rouse the rabble," said Donald Emmerson, a Southeast Asia expert at Stanford University.
Nowhere is that more evident than on the volcanic highlands and coastal towns in the western part of Sumatra, one of Indonesia's main islands. West Sumatra is home to the Minangkabau, an ethnic group estimated to be at least 8 million strong who regard themselves as devout Muslims but also proudly practice traditions that are alien to the beliefs of the Koran.
The Minangkabau have a matrilineal culture in which ancestral property -- from rice paddies to homes -- passes exclusively to women. Despite the contrary teachings of Islam, they trace their lineage through their mothers.
Compromises typical
This compromise with Islam, while unique in certain regards, is typical of the way Islamic belief is practiced in Indonesia. Islam came to Indonesia bypeaceful means, layering itself gently over a hodgepodge of different cultures along the vast archipelago. Puritanical strains of Wahhabi Islam, the kind enforced by the Taliban, and jihad-preaching demagogues haven't established deep roots, even as the country has gone through political and economic convulsions.
Even the dramatic rise in poverty after the crash of Indonesia's currency during the 1997 regional economic crisis has shown few signs of making Indonesia significantly more susceptible to the social injustice rhetoric of radical Islam, said Emil Salim, a prominent international economist at Jakarta's Indonesia University.
Consider Saprizal, a 40-year-old Minangkabau fisherman who lives in a seaside slum in Padang. He's out of work and destitute because rising fuel prices and recent bad weather have combined to make it unprofitable for him to ply the coastal waters. But this dilemma hasn't changed his mind about religion.
"I don't like the Islamic extremists. They're just making cults, and nobody's going to follow them around here," said the gaunt-faced Saprizal, the father of four children who has never earned more than $2.50 a day. Like many Indonesians, Saprizal goes by only one name.
"The general consensus is that the Islamic state does not suit our country," said Salim, a former Cabinet minister. He noted that radical Islamic parties fared poorly in the 1999 elections, the first free elections in three decades. The majority of the Indonesian people support "nationalism-democratic principles and moderate Islam," he said.
Brutal suppression of militant Islamic leaders by Suharto, the long-reigning dictator who was deposed amid violent street protests in 1998, has had lasting influence on mainstream religious attitudes. That could change in the confusion of fledgling democracy, some analysts warn, as radicals are free to speak out in the newly unfettered media.
"The message is out there, whether people accept it now or not," said Abdul Aziz Saleh, a sociologist at Padang's Andalas University. "There's a lot of frustration under the surface in the lower end of society. They're getting poorer while their access to information is increasing."
Islam was imported to Indonesia by merchants in the 14th century, after first stewing in the cultural kaleidoscope of the Indian subcontinent. It won converts through accommodation as much as persuasion, tolerating entrenched pantheistic Hinduism and other beliefs.
The Minang, as the Sumatran tribe is also known, illustrate this flexible brand of Islam. More than a 100 years ago, after much heated discourse, they came to terms with the clash between traditional culture and their new religion. The compact decreed that "you cannot be a Minangkabau without being a Muslim," said Mansur Malik, 66, an Islamic scholar who heads the local branch of the Indonesian Ulamas Council.
Female inheritance
The structure of society would remain organized along female lines of descent. Ancestral assets -- village homes and farmland -- would continue to be passed on as communal property to daughters. But Koranic law would be applied to the earned income of the fathers and any newly acquired assets: Sons inherited a larger share than their sisters.
Obeisance to Islamic strictures didn't stop Minang women from playing a strong role in society. Zikra, 42, the head of a conservative Islamic boarding school for girls in the highland town of Padangpanjang, said her gutsy great-aunt founded the school 75 years ago in defiance of her elder brother, who refused to enroll girls in his school. She had no problem getting start-up funds from their wealthy family, since she was the heir.
The Diniyyah Puteri school broke ground as Indonesia's first Islamic school for girls. Today, students from as far away as Malaysia attend, all piously dressed in head scarves and simple tunics. The girls don't have televisions or radios in their austere dormitory rooms, but have little trouble naming their favorite Western pop stars. "I want to go to college in Jakarta to study psychology," said Fauza Nofira, 18, a senior who shrugged when asked if she would continue to veil her head.
Family business
Haji Sanuar is a successful businesswoman in a nearby village who sells traditional hand-woven Minang fabric made by women in her network of home workshops in the area. Her business has thrived despite years of recession, she explained, because the large numbers of migrant Minang from outside West Sumatra hold weddings in their ancestral homeland and buy her gold-laced material for ceremonial robes.
Her two sons are traditional craftsmen and help their elderly mother run the business, but they won't inherit the business when Sanuar, 76, dies.
The legacy will go to their younger sister, who lives in Jakarta and has shown little interest in business. Her brothers probably will run the enterprise.
"In Minang country, the woman is king, but she is the king without any formal power," said Sanuar, who lives alone in a spacious house with a traditional peaked gable roof.
The moderate Islam of the Minang remains the dominant strain in this country of 228 million. But Indonesia's potential role in international terrorism remains an open question. "If you're talking about conspirators planning to bomb the U.S. Embassy who work underground, that's another matter," Stanford's Emmerson said. "But that doesn't mean it's happening."






  
  

  

February 13, 2002 Wednesday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Senate to take up fast-track trade bill
* Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) said yesterday that he expected the Senate to begin long-awaited action in March on a bill to give President Bush authority to strike major trade deals. The House approved so-called fast-track trade legislation, 215-214, in December. It would allow Bush to make trade deals Congress could approve or reject but not amend.
Hall to quit House seat to be ambassador
* Rep. Tony P. Hall (D., Ohio) agreed yesterday to give up his House seat to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations' food and agriculture agencies, based in Rome. Hall, 60, has been an outspoken campaigner against hunger and human-rights abuses. He has represented part of southwestern Ohio since 1978. The job has been unfilled since former South Dakota Sen. George McGovern left in October. 
Bomb threat hits N.Y. bus terminal
* The south wing of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York was temporarily evacuated yesterday morning after a man allegedly placed a bag in front of a police desk at the terminal and told a bus company supervisor that it contained a bomb, police said. Police arrested Eduard Poplawski, 56, of Queens, who was sent for a psychiatric evaluation and later charged. The bag contained a cell phone with wires coming out of it and attached to batteries, police said.
Man held without bail in incident on jet
* A passenger accused of trying to storm the cockpit of a United Airlines flight was ordered held without bail yesterday in Miami. A lawyer for Uruguayan banker Pablo Moreira Mosca, 29, said Moreira had a "complete mental breakdown" on the Miami-to-Argentina flight Thursday.
Jewell to take libel case to high court
* Richard Jewell, who was falsely suspected of planting a bomb at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to quash a lower-court ruling that made it more difficult for him to win a libel suit against the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, his lawyer said yesterday. The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled last year that Jewell became a public figure when interviewed by the media after the bombing, thus making it harder for him to prove libel.
OshKosh B'Gosh baby clothes recalled
* OshKosh B'Gosh Inc. is recalling about 21,800 garments for baby girls because fabric flowers on the clothing can detach and potentially pose a choking hazard. Jumpsuits with style numbers 516-8240 and 516-8340 and top and bottom sets with style numbers 516-8241 and 516-8341 are involved in the recall. They were sold from August through December for about $38 and in sizes 0-3 months, 3-6 months and 6-9 months. Consumers can contact OshKosh at 1-800-282-4674.
In the World
Algerian pilot held in terror probe is freed
* An Algerian pilot once described as the trainer of some of the Sept. 11 hijackers was freed on bail yesterday by a British court after the United States conceded it could not link him to terrorism. Lotfi Raissi, 27, was released on $14,300 bond and ordered to surrender his passport as proceedings continued. Magistrate Timothy Workman said last month that U.S. authorities, who seek Raissi's extradition, must either bring terror charges against him soon or proceed with a relatively minor aviation offense, the only one with which he is formally charged.
China expels American and Canadian
* China expelled two foreign followers of the banned Falun Gong movement yesterday, a day after they launched a protest in Beijing. Police detained Canadian Jason Loftus and American Levi Browde in Tiananmen Square Monday after they unfurled a banner saying self-immolations a year ago by alleged followers of Falun Gong had been staged by Chinese authorities.
N. Korea frees Japanese journalist
* North Korea yesterday freed a Japanese man it had held for more than two years on spying charges. Takashi Sugishima, a former reporter for the Japanese economic daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, returned home after being freed in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said. They declined to give an explanation for his release.
Princess Margaret's body to be cremated
* In a departure from British royal tradition, Princess Margaret's body will be cremated, Buckingham Palace said yesterday. Royal family members traditionally are buried, but cremation reportedly was requested by Margaret, who died Saturday. The palace said cremation would follow Friday's funeral in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. Margaret's ashes will then rest in the royal vault at the chapel.
Peace pact reached in Indonesian war
* Rival Christian and Muslim factions from Indonesia's Maluku province agreed yesterday to end a three-year war that has devastated the area and killed 10,000 people, said Welfare Minister Yusuf Kalla, who hosted talks between the two sides. The accord calls for the disarming of militias, the establishment of joint security patrols, and the return of refugees to their homes.
In Japan rape case, airman goes to court
* Japanese prosecutors yesterday demanded a three-year prison term for a U.S. airman charged with raping a Japanese woman on the island of Okinawa last summer. Air Force Staff Sgt. Timothy Woodland, 25, on trial in District Court in Naha, Okinawa's capital, has pleaded not guilty.







  



February 13, 2002 Wednesday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
THE MIDDLE EAST 
 BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The United States is on a path that will lead to its destruction by using force instead of reason in its war on terrorism, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq said yesterday. 
 Hussein, whose country, according to some U.S. officials, could be the next target in the U.S. campaign, said European countries must help the United States see reason. 
 The official Iraqi News Agency said Hussein made his comments at a meeting in Baghdad with Joerg Haider, the former leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party.  
 "Europe should shoulder the responsibility of restoring reason to America so it does not destroy itself. America does not only want to destroy the world, but rather as a result destroy itself, too," Hussein said. 
 "When the Americans reach the position of power they suffer from power dizziness, and instead of ruling on the basis of wisdom they use force . . . against peoples," he said. 
 "Instead of following the path of wisdom, which is the path that leads to a deeply stabilized world, America adopts the method of force," he added. 
 The White House said no military action was imminent against Iraq despite a report in USA Today saying President Bush was preparing for armed strikes. 
ReutersASIA 
 JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Rival Christian and Muslim factions from Indonesia's Maluku province agreed to end a three-year war that has devastated the province and killed 10,000 people, a top cabinet minister said. 
 The government is hoping the accord will emulate the success of a recent truce between Christians and Muslims from Sulawesi island that succeeded in ending a similar, though smaller, sectarian conflict. 
 "Both sides have agreed to end all conflicts and hostilities," said Welfare Minister Yusuf Kalla, who hosted the talks in the hill town of Malino in southern Sulawesi, 1,000 miles northeast of Jakarta. 
 The agreement calls for the establishment of commissions for security and for social and economic affairs to monitor the truce in the province known as the Spice Islands during Dutch colonial rule. 
 It also provides for the disarming and banning of militias and the establishment of joint security patrols, and calls for the return of refugees to their homes, the return of their property and the reconstruction of the province. 
Associated PressFOR THE RECORD 
 Japanese prosecutors demanded a three-year prison sentence for U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Timothy B. Woodland, who is on trial for allegedly raping a Japanese woman in a parking lot on the island of Okinawa last summer. 
 North Korea unexpectedly freed a Japanese man it had held for more than two years on spying charges in a move that offers hope of a thaw in strained ties between the two Asian foes. Takashi Sugishima, a former reporter for the Japanese financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, returned home after being freed in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. 





  


February 12, 2002 Tuesday 



 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: MISINFORMATION ABOUT MUSLIMS

 
In her Feb. 8 article, "Islamic group urges women to be suicide bombers," reporter Lisa Hoffman of Scripps-Howard News Service succumbs to generalizations and innuendo.
Islam is not a monolithic entity. Contrary to popular belief, only 18 percent of Muslims in the world are of Arab descent, and Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. 
However, Hoffman says that "by custom, Islamic women live restricted lives, often covered head-to-toe in public and forbidden from working or even driving. Women have played no apparent visible role so far, except for that of mother and wife, in bin Laden's al-Qaida global terror network." Since there is no monolithic Islam, whose "custom" does she speak of?
Her uninformed, alarmist attitude continues when she says, "Not only would they blow a hole in the male-based terrorist profiles investigators and screeners now depend on, but their loose-fitting garments would also be perfect for hiding explosives. Even women in Western dress could disguise a bomb as a pregnant belly." This is ignorant sensationalism.
I also wonder how long it took her to dig up this so-called "fatwa." Although Hoffman freely admits that the Palestinian woman she cites in the article had absolutely no connection to this decree, she makes it seem that every Muslim woman is going to go out tomorrow and strap some weapon to her stomach.
The generalizations in this article about Islam are completely inaccurate.
Arsalan T. Iftikhar
Midwest Communications Director
Council on American-Islamic Relations
University City
===
Islam and democracy
In his Jan. 30 commentary, Thomas F. Eagleton wrote: "Afghanistan as a democracy? Forget it. The inherent incompatibility of Islam and democracy makes that almost impossible." This shocked me, coming as it does from a well-read and well-known politician like Eagleton.
To refresh his memory, Islam, among the three Abrahamic faiths, is the only one that has successfully not separated religion and politics because of its belief that no country can be governed morally and ethically unless its politics are dictated by the religion of its people.
Islam's democracy is defined by the consensus of a body of people called "Shura" that came into operation 1,422 years back. Prophet Mohammed as a head of the state used to consult in war and peace beside social matters within the perimeter of Islam.
Be it a dictator like Moammar Ghadafi or Saddam Hussein or a monarch like the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan and Malaysia, or a president, as in Pakistan, Syria and Indonesia -- to name a few of the Muslim countries -- "democracy" compromises religion and politics. It is not necessarily of the American, English or Indian type, with corrupted electioneering methods.
Afghanistan had a democracy of its own, suitable for its people, however incomplete or defective it was from our point of view.
A country that has a democratically elected president or is governed through a coup is as good or bad as its people are.
Politics and religion are necessary to govern a country with morality and justice, provided the infusion can be achieved in a balanced way. Secularism in government policies is a misnomer.
Shahinshah N. Ahmed
Islamic Information Center
Ballwin





    
  


February 11, 2002, Monday



 WORLD WATCH -- ASIA/PACIFIC: BRIEFLY






   

 

February 10, 2002 Sunday, 



 FUTURE FLASHPOINTS: ASIA: Tense climate makes for unstable future

 
Tokyo --- Global terrorism visited the United States in September, but it may be putting down permanent and poisonous roots in Asia.
From radicalized Muslims in Indonesia to Japan's most significant military deployment since World War II to a near-war over Kashmir, the fallout from Sept. 11 will ripple for years to come.
Combined with the political and social tensions brought on by rapid industrialization, as well as longstanding historical enmities, instability in Asia will not go away anytime soon.
Tensions are exacerbated further by the rise of China, seen by some as hungering for superpower status, and what is regarded as Washington's uneven and unilateralist approach to the region. 
"Many claim as the locus of global activity will shift from Europe to Asia Pacific, so it can be said the locus of terror may be shifting from the Middle East to Asia," said See Seng Tan, a professor of political science at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies. "It is linked. As globalization takes place in Asia, it will affect not only political stability but will provoke certain political and social reactions."
While the middle class in Asia is certainly growing, the losers in the race to globalize are numerous.
"You could argue many of these [terrorist] groups are reacting to the negative aspects of globalization . . . the haves vs. the have-nots," said Tan. "Certainly in Southeast Asia, many of the Muslim communities are being left out."
Masashi Nishihara, a political scientist who now heads Japan's National Defense Academy, agrees that the growing gap between rich and poor countries is one of Asia's most troubling trends.
"It creates tensions," he said. "Educational standards become lower, environmental hazards become more serious. It's a big worry."
As certain areas attract foreign investment and tourists, other areas are being left behind. It is those neglected corners of Asia, where the central government has very little control --- such as Afghanistan, the southern Philippines and parts of Indonesia --- that give the most cause for alarm to Akihiko Tanaka, professor of international relations at the University of Tokyo.
"The biggest worry for Asia is some portions of Indonesia," said Tanaka. "If Indonesia can't manage these areas wisely, certain portions will be untouchable.
Same with some islands of Mindanao [in the southern Philippines] --- there may be no government that can control it. Some terrorists or pirates or religious extremists might use them as platforms."
 U.S. seen as inconsistent, pushy
While America's economic and military presence is generally seen as a stabilizing force in Asia, it must develop a more consistent and culturally sensitive policy in the region if it hopes to alleviate tensions, analysts said.
When Abu Sayyaf, the rebel Muslim group in the southern Philippines, kidnapped 21 mostly European vacationers two years ago, Washington barely reacted. But since launching its global war on terrorism, the United States has made the elimination of Abu Sayyaf one of its top priorities.
"This on-again, off-again approach doesn't work," said Tanaka. "What is needed is close cooperation with regional countries and persistent efforts at information gathering."
Many see America as going too far in imposing its political and economic agenda, which breeds resentment and creates domestic problems for Asian leaders who may want to cooperate more with Washington.
"American unilateralism in the 1990s was perceived in terms of Washington's moralistic and hypocritical proselytizing [on values]," said Tan. "The Bush administration solidified this trend. In the eyes of many people here, there is the concern that the United States may be pushing a little too much."
 
China as an economic superpower
Relations between Washington and Beijing are watched closely.
"There was a major sigh of relief in the region when the United States and China seemed to be moving towards better ties" after Sept. 11, said Tan.
Many countries in Asia are also warily eyeing the rise of China. Although few are calling it a threat, they view with concern China's continual increases in its defense budgets, its territorial claims in the South China Sea and its seemingly insatiable appetite for foreign investment and economic growth.
"China is the hegemon in this part of the world," said Tan. "There is a very clear-cut concern that China is a major strategic economic competitor."
It is that "zero sum" mentality --- the notion that if one country gains another must lose --- that is Asia's biggest weakness and prevents better regional cooperation, said Shen Dingli, a professor at the Center for American Studies at Shanghai's Fudan University.
The United States, Shen said, while enjoying good ties with many Asian countries, is not above taking advantage of this mutual suspicion and distrust in the region.
"Some U.S. policy-makers may design policy that has an interest in seeing that Asian countries are not harmonious," Shen said. "It is interested in achieving its own influence . . . to use one player to check against another player, to have all players work with the U.S."
 
New threats, old conflicts
Amid the regional security issues is the problem of internal decay, or as Tanaka put it, "problems facing humans in a post-modern world."
As Asian societies rapidly industrialize and "modern- ize" in a race to catch up with the West, those unable to adjust may resort to extreme measures.
A doomsday cult released sarin gas on a Tokyo subway seven years ago, killing 12 people and hospitalizing thousands.
"In this city in 1995 terrorism came from within," Tanaka said. "Those are symptoms of the threat. Maybe Japan is only the tip."
On top of that, issues left over from half a century or more ago still have the potential to spark conflict.
The threat of conventional war exists in several hot spots around Asia: between China and Taiwan and on the Korean peninsula.
In battling elusive terrorist networks around the world, Tanaka sounded one warning: "You should not forget about the importance of conventional threats."
 
Julie Chao, based in Beijing, joined Cox Newspapers as Asia correspondent in March 2000 after four years at the San Francisco Examiner. Before that she worked in Beijing for The Associated Press and the German news agency. Chao has traveled recently to the Philippines, Indonesia and Japan, in addition to China.




  
 

February 7, 2002 Thursday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN ARENA; 
How Qaeda Linked Up With Malaysian Groups

 
Once a month, starting in mid-1999, a group of Muslim men, mostly in their 20's, gathered in a whitewashed bungalow in a suburb of the capital here to discuss religion and world affairs.
     They were guided by three exiled Indonesian clerics who delivered a similar message: "The West and capitalism are enemies of Islam, and you have to do everything you can to fight them," recalled Muhammad Sobri, the owner of the house, who also attended the meetings. 
 Osama bin Laden was held up as a role model, a man who had given up his wealth and comfortable life in Saudi Arabia to live in poverty and fight in Afghanistan, Mr. Sobri, a roadside food vendor, said today. His wife tended to their 6-month-old son in a stroller. 
Mr. Sobri, 43, said the group's political interests were primarily local: support for armed Muslim militants in Indonesia and the Philippines. But recent investigations suggest that Al Qaeda may have been using the young Malaysians for broader purposes.
Some of the men attending the meetings were later arrested last year after a botched bank robbery that was intended to raise money for Islamic militants abroad. Their interrogations led to a larger network and a plot to blow up the American and Israeli embassies in Singapore, the authorities say.
One of the Indonesian clerics who lectured at Mr. Sobri's house, Riudan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, called Mr. bin Laden a friend, according to Mr. Sobri. 
But Mr. Hambali did not say that he was Al Qaeda's point man in the region, according to American and Asian intelligence officials. Mr. Hambali has links to terrorists, including Wali Khan and Ramzi Yousef, who are now in prison in the United States after being convicted on terrorism charges including the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center, American and Malaysian officials said.
Mr. Hambali set up at least three other groups here like Mr. Sobri's. One was headed by Yazid Sufaat and met at a mosque in a nearby suburb. 
The other group met at the home of Muhammad Iqbal A. Rahman, another Indonesian cleric in exile living in the Malay village of Sungai Manggis, 90 minutes south of the capital.
The meeting at Mr. Sobri's house began when a neighbor asked him if three clerics could use his house to preach, Mr. Sobri said. Next to him was a van that he uses to supplement his income by driving children to and from school .
Mr. Sobri's path to Islamic fundamentalism began in the mid-1980's, he said. When he was a soldier in the Malaysian Army, the police attacked a commune where a group of Muslim fundamentalists lived, killing more than a dozen, an incident that many people here now compare to what the United States government did to the Branch Davidians near Waco, Tex., in 1993.
After leaving the army, Mr. Sobri said, he visited the site of of the commune. "The question that consumed me was, why were these Muslims killed? I felt a great injustice had been done."
When the meetings began at his house in 1999, only 10 men showed up at first, and Abu Bakar Baasyir, an exiled Indonesian cleric, was the first preacher. More and more men began attending, from as far as 30 miles away, until there was a regular group of about 30, Mr. Sobri said.
Five men from the group eventually went off to fight in Afghanistan, Mr. Sobri said; they have not returned, he said. Other men went to fight in Indonesia and the Philippines.
Mr. Hambali, who has not been seen here for more than a year, ended every evening with a lecture about security, about how the men should blend in with society and keep secrets, Mr. Sobi recalled today. "He told us if you are caught by the police," Mr. Sobri said, "hang on as long as you can without saying anything."
He laughed nervously. "What was the point of all the lectures?" he said.
The police arrested the first members of Mr. Sobri's group last May. They talked, leading to the arrest of more men, including Mr. Iqbal, one of the three preachers. That lead to further arrests, including that of Mr. Sufaat in December. Altogether, 37 men have been arrested.
Mr. Baasyir was the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, or the Islamic Group, a terrorist organization with cells throughout the region, according to the authorities in Singapore and Malaysia, and Mr. Iqbal and Mr. Hambali were members of the group's regional council. 
Mr. Baasyir was questioned recently by the Indonesian police, under pressure from the Malaysian and Singaporean governments, and released because the authorities in Indonesia say they have no evidence that he committed any crimes.
The Malaysian authorities have said Mr. Sobri, Mr. Sufaat and the others were members of a group that the police have called the Malaysian Mujahedeen Group and, later, the Malaysia Militant Group. But Mr. Sobri said that for security reasons, the group did not have any name.
One of the obligations of each group was to raise money for the Islamic fighters in Indonesia and the Philippines, Mr. Sobri said. The money was given to Mr. Hambali or Mr. Baasyir when they preached.
But Mr. Sobri's group was not very successful in raising money from followers. They asked the Islamic Party of Malaysia, an opposition political party, for money, but it turned them down, Mr. Sobri said.
So a small cell within his group decided to rob a bank. He was not part of this smaller cell.
"They failed," he said with a laugh. One man was killed, one was injured and two were caught.
Mr. Sobri was held for 73 days, during which he was beaten, he said. He was released because he had never been to Afghanistan, Pakistan or any of the other places to fight, said Badaruddin Ismail, who works with political detainees as a member of Malaysian People's Voice, a human rights organization here.
But if it had not been for the botched bank robbery, he might have gone to Afghanistan, he said.
As for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, he said, "I am very happy" with them.
Would he have signed on to a similar suicide mission, leaving his wife and five children? He paused for a long time. "I am really not sure what I would have done," he said. 





  



February 7, 2002 Thursday  




 Clerics Groomed Students for Terrorism; 
Malaysian Police Say Indonesians Quietly Recruited for Al Qaeda-Linked Group

 
 Drawn together by political disaffection and a desire to lead more pious lives, 25 to 30 middle-aged men converged upon Mohamed Sobri's modest house once a month, sitting cross-legged on pink straw mats to listen to a rotating group of three Islamic clerics from Indonesia. 
 Although the gatherings, infused with prayer and cups of sweet tea, would start around 8 p.m. and last well past midnight, the subject was always the same. "They kept talking about jihad," or holy war, said Sobri, a former private in the Malaysian army who is now a street vendor. "They would talk about the need to fight against the sinful things in the world." 
 By early 2000, after a year of lectures, the clerics urged their followers to travel to the Moluccas in eastern Indonesia to fight in a long-running war between Muslim and Christian villagers on the islands, Sobri said. Later, when the group was sufficiently advanced, Sobri said, the trio encouraged their disciples to go on their own to Afghanistan, Kashmir and the southern Philippines to "assist Muslims in other turbulent areas."  
 Law enforcement authorities in Malaysia contend that the three clerics -- Abubakar Baasyir, Riduan Isamuddin and Mohamad Iqbal -- had further plans for the men in Sobri's house. The men, officials said, were being groomed for the clerics' own clandestine Southeast Asian terrorist organization affiliated with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. 
 Officials allege that the clerics' organization, called Jemaah Islamiah, had planned to blow up Western embassies and U.S. naval vessels in Singapore in retaliation for the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan, where bin Laden was based. But the plot was discovered and the cell broken up by police in Singapore and Malaysia in December. 
 Although officials and diplomats have been startled at the extensive roots the clerics allegedly established in Malaysia and Singapore -- two of the world's most tightly controlled societies -- the monthly meetings in Sobri's house provide a rare glimpse into how the trio spent years quietly transforming small groups of religious students into terrorist cells. 
 Sobri's account of the gatherings, in an interview this week that was partly corroborated by a Malaysian government official, suggests that al Qaeda's cells in Southeast Asia were formed differently than those elsewhere. 
 In Europe, many al Qaeda operatives were relatively autonomous. In Pakistan, fervent young men needed little encouragement to travel to training camps in Afghanistan. But in Southeast Asia, the clerics gradually cultivated their recruits, many of whom had families and steady jobs. And even when the recruits crossed over into the world of terrorism, the clerics kept close tabs on their training and operations, officials said. 
 Sobri, who was detained by police for 73 days because of his involvement with the clerics, said it was only after a year and a half of lectures that a secret subgroup was formed to focus on "hard-core activities." Malaysian officials contend the group tried to rob a bank last May to finance attacks against the government. 
 Sobri said he was not a member of the subgroup and that his role with the clerics was confined to hosting the meetings at his home. 
 The robbery attempt, at a bank near the capital, Kuala Lumpur, was a spectacular failure. Two members of the cell were killed in a shootout with police and six others were captured. 
 A subsequent investigation led police to conclude the cell also was responsible for the assassination of a politician, an attack on a police station, the bombing of a Hindu temple and another bank robbery. 
 At the time of the robbery attempt, Malaysian authorities said it was the work of the Malaysian Mujaheddin Group, an outfit led by the clerics, whose aim was to topple the governments of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines and create an Islamic republic spanning Southeast Asia. 
 Of the three clerics, police were able to capture only Iqbal. Baasyir had moved back to his native Indonesia, where he lives openly. Isamuddin, who uses the alias Hambali, is the subject of an international manhunt. 
 Now, however, officials in Malaysia and Singapore say they believe the mujaheddin group was just one part of the clerics' vast terrorist organization in Southeast Asia. The officials said the trio set up several other cells in both nations. In Singapore, officials said one of the cells planned to blow up the U.S. Embassy and four other diplomatic missions with fertilizer-laden truck bombs. In Malaysia, officials said a member of one of the cells helped host two of the Sept. 11 hijackers as well as an alleged accomplice during their trips there in 2000. 
 Hambali, Baasyir and Iqbal arrived in Malaysia in the 1980s, fleeing a crackdown on Islamic extremists ordered by Indonesia's then-dictator, Suharto. The three ran afoul of authorities by advocating that Indonesia, which is home to more Muslims than any other nation, abandon a secular government and adopt Islamic law. 
 Although the circumstances of their departure were well known to the Malaysian government, they received residency permits and were free to travel in the country, rallying people to their radical brand of Islam. The trio initially settled in different parts of Malaysia, but by 1992, Hambali and Iqbal had moved into ramshackle wooden houses next to each other in the town of Sungai Manggis, about 50 miles southwest of Kuala Lumpur, according to their landlord. The town is less than 10 miles from the Strait of Malacca, where boats regularly spirit people into Indonesia without immigration formalities. 
 In 1997, Baasyir moved into Iqbal's house after Iqbal relocated to another property nearby, the landlord said. 
 From their base in Sungai Manggis, the three fanned out across western Malaysia. They avoided large mosques or public rallies, opting instead to speak in private homes of people such as Sobri, who gave them a forum. And they never told their followers in what other places they were operating. 
 Sobri said Iqbal was the first to lecture in his house, starting in January 1999. Sobri, 40, who wears a goatee and now sells fried bananas in front of a BP gas station near his house, said those who came to listen were a diverse lot -- businessmen, laborers and taxi drivers -- who heard about the gatherings by word of mouth. 
 Many of the attendees, he said, were former members of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, or PAS, the country's largest opposition party. Many of them had been involved with providing security for party events. 
 "We had stopped believing in the democratic process," Sobri said. "So we felt that jihad was the only way to change the government." 
 The government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has alleged that the mujaheddin group was affiliated with PAS, a charge the party denies. In recent years PAS has gained strength, eroding the parliamentary majority of Mahathir's long-ruling coalition. 
 After a few lectures by Iqbal, Baasyir and Hambali started showing up, Sobri said. "Abubakar Baasyir was the most aggressive," Sobri said. "He kept talking about how we needed to participate in the jihad." 
 Hambali, on the other hand, spoke less about religion and more about strategy, Sobri said. "He talked about how to keep secrets, how to not just talk to anybody, how to be careful. He was preparing us for battle. 
 "When Hambali and Abubakar Baasyir spoke, it had authenticity and immediacy," Sobri said. "When they talked about Afghanistan, we knew they had been there. They were very convincing." 
 Urged on by the clerics, most of the group traveled to the Moluccas, according to Sobri, who said he did not make the trip himself. 
 Later that year, Hambali announced that the group was "advanced enough to start going to other places," including the southern Philippines, Afghanistan and Kashmir. "Hambali wanted us to get experience," Sobri said. "He wanted us to learn how to fight." 
 Despite his exhortation to battle, Sobri said, Hambali was generally a soft-spoken man who rarely talked about bin Laden or the United States. 
 "He spoke about things that mattered to us, like the importance of making Malaysia a Muslim state and the persecution of Muslims in the Philippines and Indonesia," he said. 
 A Malaysian government official said the three clerics adopted the same tactics with their other cells in Malaysia and Singapore. "This was a very sophisticated effort to co-opt their followers into a bunch of like-minded loonies," the official said. 




  
  


February 4, 2002 Monday  



 RELIGIOUS WAR TEARS INDONESIANS APART

 
Three years ago, Kadir Faizal commanded great respect on the waterfront. Nobody cared that the Muslim leader of the dockworker's union was married to a Christian and lived in her neighborhood. But now, Faizal is an infidel in the eyes of his Muslim colleagues at the harbor.
"They told me that if I didn't move to the Muslim side of the city that they'd kill me when I showed up for work," said Faizal. 
Faizal is among the innocent bystanders trapped in a religious war that ignited on this island in 1999 and has since raged across eastern Indonesia, leaving thousands of dead. Now the conflict has come under intense scrutiny in the war against global terrorism. U.S authorities are investigating possible links between the global Al-Qaida network and Laskar Jihad, an Indonesian Islamic militant group that has fanned the flames in Ambon.
The Bush administration believes the Indonesian archipelago's porous border could be easily penetrated by terrorist cells. That concern was heightened last month when authorities in Singapore and Malaysia rounded up two rings of suspected terrorists who were planning to bomb U.S. embassies in the region. Last week, U.S. troops began to assist the Philippine military in operations against Muslim guerrillas linked to Al-Qaida.
Poverty-stricken Indonesia is fertile ground for groups like Laskar Jihad, whose appeal comes not from its radical religious views but from its fight against social injustice. Jafar Umar Thalib, an Indonesian of Yemenite ancestry who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, started the group in central Java in January 2000, aiming to defend Muslims in the Moluccas from Christian attacks. The Moluccas are a group of islands and a province of the same name in eastern Indonesia.
Filling a vacuum
Laskar Jihad has won Indonesian hearts and minds by offering social welfare to poor Muslims, operating a medical clinic and a school. Critics, however, say the charity work is but a front for a militant effort to turn secular Indonesia into an Islamic state.
There is only sketchy evidence of an international terrorism connection in the Moluccas. Thalib had contact with Osama bin Laden while in Afghanistan, but he has repudiated the Al-Qaida terror network and ridiculed its leader for his interpretation of Islam. Seven long-bearded men, presumed to be Afghans, landed at Ambon airport in July 2001, eyewitnesses said. Christian sources suspect that members of the Taliban have been involved in a training camp atLaskar Jihad's base outside the city.
Ayip Syarifuddin, Laskar Jihad's spokesman in Jakarta, said the group filled a vacuum when the government failed to protect Muslims in the Moluccas from Christian attack. "If there was justice and law enforcement in Indonesia," he said, "Laskar Jihad would not need to exist."
Regional security officials have also pointed to Indonesian-born cleric Riduan Isamuddin as the leader of a Malaysian-based Al-Qaida network operating throughout Southeast Asia. Better known as Hambali, the cleric recruited and trained Muslims to fight in the Moluccas, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.
Whether or not the suspicions of Al-Qaida involvement bear out, Ambon is a test for Indonesia's timid cooperation in the war on terror. The city has become a tropical Belfast, where a zigzag line divides the downtown area along streets pocked with burned-out buildings. Occasional bombs explode, and snipers make the road from the airport so dangerous that visitors must cross the bay by speedboat to reach the city safely.
Jakarta has been a reluctant partner in the war against terrorism, fearing a destabilizing backlash if its predominantly Muslim population perceives the government as anti-Muslim. After three years of central government indifference, the administration of President Megawati Sukarnoputri last week dispatched a Cabinet-level task force to Ambon to try to start peace negotiations.
Ambon residents are skeptical that there can be a negotiated peace in the Molucca Islands, where the Dutch made Ambon's deep water port the center of the global spice trade in the 17th century. The length and intensity of the violence and the astonishing death toll have created a lust for vengeance.
"This is a political game, not just a religious conflict" Faizal, the 51-year-old dockworker, said at his modest home in a warren of narrow alleyways. "We're being manipulated by outsiders, who know that Ambonese are hot tempered emotionally and easily aroused by baseless rumors. They've come to destroy this community."
Estimates of the death toll range from 6,000 to 13,000. Out of some 2 million people, the estimates of refugees driven out of their villages range as high as 330,000.
Violence began in 1999
It all started with a mundane altercation between a minibus driver and a passenger on Jan. 19, 1999. It was an Islamic holy day, and crowds quickly gathered and a melee broke out. False rumors began to swirl that Silo, Ambon's oldest church, was under Muslim attack and that the landmark Al-Fatah Mosque was being torched by Christians.
Faizal was at the port that afternoon and knew there would be serious trouble, so he quickly rounded up Christian dockworkers and told them to evacuate the Muslim area. Angry throngs at the edge of the predominantly Christian district allowed him to pass safely as he rode home nervously on his motorbike.
"The Christians of this city know me and like me," he said. "I went to school with them. My Christian neighbors gave my wife and me land to build our house."
Family targeted
Faizal's family migrated from South Sulawesi to Christian-dominated Ambon in 1957. Faizal and his wife, Christina Renawarin, decided to marry in 1977 against the wishes of her Catholic family and his devout Muslim parents. Christina converted to Islam, but the couple's three grown children chose to become Christians.
Faizal's younger brother Uchu converted to Christianity when he married a Protestant and his home was burned by a Muslim. Another brother, Azis, remains Muslim and lives on the other side of town; his house was burned by Christians.
"It's nothing personal," said Faizal, with a shrug. "It was just because they were living in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Azis, 32, the youngest of the Faizal brothers, cares for their widowed mother in a new home on the Muslim side of town. He makes a living sellingproduce from the Muslim village to Christian shoppers in the city's blighted neutral zone.
"I'm not afraid of the Christians who come here, because they know I'm doing them a service," he said. "But there are a lot of people around here with hatred in their hearts, because they have suffered for so long."




 
  


February 4, 2002 Monday  



 RELIGIOUS WAR TEARS INDONESIANS APART

 
Three years ago, Kadir Faizal commanded great respect on the waterfront. Nobody cared that the Muslim leader of the dockworker's union was married to a Christian and lived in her neighborhood. But now, Faizal is an infidel in the eyes of his Muslim colleagues at the harbor.
"They told me that if I didn't move to the Muslim side of the city that they'd kill me when I showed up for work," said Faizal. 
Faizal is among the innocent bystanders trapped in a religious war that ignited on this island in 1999 and has since raged across eastern Indonesia, leaving thousands of dead. Now the conflict has come under intense scrutiny in the war against global terrorism. U.S authorities are investigating possible links between the global Al-Qaida network and Laskar Jihad, an Indonesian Islamic militant group that has fanned the flames in Ambon.
The Bush administration believes the Indonesian archipelago's porous border could be easily penetrated by terrorist cells. That concern was heightened last month when authorities in Singapore and Malaysia rounded up two rings of suspected terrorists who were planning to bomb U.S. embassies in the region. Last week, U.S. troops began to assist the Philippine military in operations against Muslim guerrillas linked to Al-Qaida.
Poverty-stricken Indonesia is fertile ground for groups like Laskar Jihad, whose appeal comes not from its radical religious views but from its fight against social injustice. Jafar Umar Thalib, an Indonesian of Yemenite ancestry who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, started the group in central Java in January 2000, aiming to defend Muslims in the Moluccas from Christian attacks. The Moluccas are a group of islands and a province of the same name in eastern Indonesia.
Filling a vacuum
Laskar Jihad has won Indonesian hearts and minds by offering social welfare to poor Muslims, operating a medical clinic and a school. Critics, however, say the charity work is but a front for a militant effort to turn secular Indonesia into an Islamic state.
There is only sketchy evidence of an international terrorism connection in the Moluccas. Thalib had contact with Osama bin Laden while in Afghanistan, but he has repudiated the Al-Qaida terror network and ridiculed its leader for his interpretation of Islam. Seven long-bearded men, presumed to be Afghans, landed at Ambon airport in July 2001, eyewitnesses said. Christian sources suspect that members of the Taliban have been involved in a training camp atLaskar Jihad's base outside the city.
Ayip Syarifuddin, Laskar Jihad's spokesman in Jakarta, said the group filled a vacuum when the government failed to protect Muslims in the Moluccas from Christian attack. "If there was justice and law enforcement in Indonesia," he said, "Laskar Jihad would not need to exist."
Regional security officials have also pointed to Indonesian-born cleric Riduan Isamuddin as the leader of a Malaysian-based Al-Qaida network operating throughout Southeast Asia. Better known as Hambali, the cleric recruited and trained Muslims to fight in the Moluccas, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.
Whether or not the suspicions of Al-Qaida involvement bear out, Ambon is a test for Indonesia's timid cooperation in the war on terror. The city has become a tropical Belfast, where a zigzag line divides the downtown area along streets pocked with burned-out buildings. Occasional bombs explode, and snipers make the road from the airport so dangerous that visitors must cross the bay by speedboat to reach the city safely.
Jakarta has been a reluctant partner in the war against terrorism, fearing a destabilizing backlash if its predominantly Muslim population perceives the government as anti-Muslim. After three years of central government indifference, the administration of President Megawati Sukarnoputri last week dispatched a Cabinet-level task force to Ambon to try to start peace negotiations.
Ambon residents are skeptical that there can be a negotiated peace in the Molucca Islands, where the Dutch made Ambon's deep water port the center of the global spice trade in the 17th century. The length and intensity of the violence and the astonishing death toll have created a lust for vengeance.
"This is a political game, not just a religious conflict" Faizal, the 51-year-old dockworker, said at his modest home in a warren of narrow alleyways. "We're being manipulated by outsiders, who know that Ambonese are hot tempered emotionally and easily aroused by baseless rumors. They've come to destroy this community."
Estimates of the death toll range from 6,000 to 13,000. Out of some 2 million people, the estimates of refugees driven out of their villages range as high as 330,000.
Violence began in 1999
It all started with a mundane altercation between a minibus driver and a passenger on Jan. 19, 1999. It was an Islamic holy day, and crowds quickly gathered and a melee broke out. False rumors began to swirl that Silo, Ambon's oldest church, was under Muslim attack and that the landmark Al-Fatah Mosque was being torched by Christians.
Faizal was at the port that afternoon and knew there would be serious trouble, so he quickly rounded up Christian dockworkers and told them to evacuate the Muslim area. Angry throngs at the edge of the predominantly Christian district allowed him to pass safely as he rode home nervously on his motorbike.
"The Christians of this city know me and like me," he said. "I went to school with them. My Christian neighbors gave my wife and me land to build our house."
Family targeted
Faizal's family migrated from South Sulawesi to Christian-dominated Ambon in 1957. Faizal and his wife, Christina Renawarin, decided to marry in 1977 against the wishes of her Catholic family and his devout Muslim parents. Christina converted to Islam, but the couple's three grown children chose to become Christians.
Faizal's younger brother Uchu converted to Christianity when he married a Protestant and his home was burned by a Muslim. Another brother, Azis, remains Muslim and lives on the other side of town; his house was burned by Christians.
"It's nothing personal," said Faizal, with a shrug. "It was just because they were living in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Azis, 32, the youngest of the Faizal brothers, cares for their widowed mother in a new home on the Muslim side of town. He makes a living sellingproduce from the Muslim village to Christian shoppers in the city's blighted neutral zone.
"I'm not afraid of the Christians who come here, because they know I'm doing them a service," he said. "But there are a lot of people around here with hatred in their hearts, because they have suffered for so long."




  
 

February 3, 2002 Sunday 
  
 



 A NATION CHALLENGED: MILITANTS' NETWORK; 
Indonesian Cleric Is Suspected of Being a Terrorist Leader

 
The biography of Riduan Isamuddin, 36, is not unlike that of hundreds of other men his age in this region. He attended an Islamic boarding school in his home country of Indonesia, left when the government cracked down on his brand of Islam, went off to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, then became an itinerant preacher here, espousing a Muslim state from here to the Philippines.
     But now as the investigation into the activities of Al Qaeda advances, a darker portrait is emerging of the round-faced, bearded and bespectacled Mr. Isamuddin, widely known as Hambali.  
 "The picture we are getting, which is becoming clearer and clearer, is that Hambali was the point man for Al Qaeda in this region," a senior Malaysian official said this evening. 
An American official agreed: "All signs point to his being a major figure."
One of Mr. Isamuddin's recruits and lieutenants was Yazid Sufaat, an American-educated biochemist who has been in jail here since December on terrorism charges.
Among other things, officials said, Mr. Isamuddin arranged for two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to visit here and stay in Mr. Sufaat's apartment. He also had Mr. Sufaat play host to Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been charged in the United States in connection with the attacks. Moreover, Mr. Isamuddin had Mr. Sufaat use his company to purchase four tons of explosives for a planned attack after Sept. 11 on the United States Embassy in Singapore, officials said.
The senior Malaysian official described Mr. Isamuddin as the travel agent for Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia and Mr. Sufaat as the equivalent of the person who goes to the airport with a card carrying the name of the passenger he is to meet.
This week, the F.B.I. said Malaysia was a staging area for the Sept. 11 attacks and an Al Qaeda base.
Malaysian officials have strongly rejected that. The senior official said that it was unfair to describe Malaysia as anything more than a "transit point" for Al Qaeda operatives.
An easy transit point, it might be said. Although the government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad does not brook much internal dissent, it has had a liberal policy toward residents of other Muslim countries: they are not required to have visas to enter the country.
In an interview here, the Malaysian official provided details from an interrogation of Mr. Sufaat, who was arrested here in a roundup of men with suspected links to Jemaah Islamiah, or the Islamic Group.
Acting on orders from Mr. Isamuddin, the Malaysian official said, Mr. Sufaat used his clinical pathology company, Green Laboratory Medicine, to purchase four tons of explosives that were to be detonated in front of the American, Australian, British and Israeli Embassies in Singapore. The plot was apparently thwarted by Singapore officials when they arrested 13 men in December.
Mr. Sufaat went to Afghanistan last June and was there on Sept. 11. He was arrested trying to return to Malaysia.
The Bush administration would like to extradite him, but has not made a formal request. The Malaysians have shared the information from his interrogation with the United States, the official said, but the F.B.I. has not interviewed him.
Mr. Sufaat lived in Sacramento in the 1980's, according to public records, and attended California State University there, the official said.
His wife also attended college in the United States, the official said, but he said he did not know the name of the school.
After Mr. Sufaat returned to Malaysia in 1987, his in-laws urged him to practice his religion more diligently, saying he had neglected it while abroad, he told investigators, and it was then that he came into Mr. Isamuddin's circle.
Two of the suspected Sept. 11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, stayed in Mr. Sufaat's apartment for three days in January 2000; Mr. Isamuddin had a key to the apartment, the Malaysian official said.
While here, Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi were followed by Malaysian intelligence agents and were videotaped shopping, making a call from a public phone and surfing Arabic-language Web sites at an Internet cafe, the official said.
The official said the tapes were given to American intelligence officials, but the men were not arrested because there was no evidence they had committed any crime.
Again acting on orders from Mr. Isamuddin, Mr. Sufaat played host to Mr. Moussaoui when he came in 2000. Mr. Moussaoui inquired about flight schools here and discovered that there was one, but he decided against attending because it was more than two hours from the capital and did not provide training on jumbo jets, Mr. Sufaat told investigators.
Mr. Sufaat provided Mr. Moussaoui with the letter that he used to enroll in a flight school in the United States. Mr. Moussaoui has pleaded not guilty to charges that he was part of the Sept. 11 conspiracy.
Mr. Sufaat's wife has denied that her husband had any connections with Al Qaeda or any terrorist organization. She has called the charges "baseless, wrong and outrageous."
Malaysian and Singaporean officials say that Mr. Isamuddin ran the operations for the Islamic Group. The group's spiritual leader, they say, is another Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Baasyir. The organization had cells in Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia, according to the Singaporean government.
Mr. Isamuddin arranged for men to go to Afghanistan for training, according to a statement from the Singaporean government. He gave them false documents saying they were going to school in Pakistan, which gave the recruits the cover they needed to explain why they would be away from home for six months.
Mr. Isamuddin has not been seen since Sept. 11 and is believed to be hiding in Indonesia, Malaysian and Singaporean authorities said.
They have asked the Indonesian government to search for him and say they are not satisfied that the Indonesians are looking very hard. 

CORRECTION-DATE: February 4, 2002

 CORRECTION:
A headline yesterday about an itinerant Muslim preacher suspected of a leadership role for Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia misstated his nationality in some copies. He is Indonesian, as the article said, not Malaysian.






   
 

February 3, 2002 Sunday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN MILITANTS; 
School in Indonesia Urges 'Personal Jihad' In Steps of bin Laden

 
Among the nearly 2,000 students crammed into Al Mukmin boarding school, Osama bin Laden is a hero. His photo, in full color and poster size, is plastered on the walls of the dormitories much as rock stars decorate teenagers' bedrooms in America. His face peers out from the inside of locker doors and appears on T-shirts worn under the preppy blazers of senior prefects.
     The lionization comes from the top: the principal, a fiery preacher, Abu Bakar Baasyir, champions Mr. bin Laden and exhorts Muslims to follow his example. More important, say American and Asian officials, he has recruited operatives for Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia. According to the government of Singapore he is the leader of Jemaah Islamiah, or the Islamic Group, which officials say is a terrorist organization with cells throughout the region. 
 Mr. Baasyir, 64, a vision in white with his Muslim cap, long gown, scarf, toothy smile and snowy beard, denies any involvement in terrorist activities. But under questioning by the Indonesian police last week, he acknowledged that he had taught 13 of the people arrested in Malaysia and Singapore in connection with a plot to blow up the American Embassy in Singapore. 
In an interview at the school, Mr. Baasyir declared that the United States was "the terrorist nation." It was not Mr. bin Laden who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks. Americans organized the attacks on the World Trade Center, probably with the help of Israel, he said.
"I rejoiced because it seemed Allah punished the United States for its arrogant behavior," he said of his reaction to the attacks.
Some of the preacher's statements appear to be more emphatic expressions of popular ideas in the mainstream news media here.
There are plenty of people in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, who say they feel more sympathy toward Mr. bin Laden and his cause than toward the United States. It is not unusual to hear that Jews were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Many agree with Mr. Baasyir, including those who wrote an editorial this week in the newsmagazine Tempo, that the United States should produce any evidence against Mr. bin Laden in an international court.
Still, given Indonesia's history, it is striking that a boarding school -- one of the thousands that specialize in Islamic curricula and are known as pesantren -- would breed such a politicized interpretation of Islam.
For hundreds of years, Indonesia has prided itself on a system of religious schools where students, mostly from poor backgrounds, learned a laissez-faire form of Islam and acquired a sense of self-sufficiency and initiative. Though somewhat feudal in nature because they tended to be closed societies led by a charismatic preacher, the pesantren were regarded as the incubators of democracy, institutions that tried to instill justice and moral values. During the authoritarian era of General Suharto, the schools were thought to be crucibles of tolerance set against an unyielding secular state.
In contrast, Mr. Baasyir founded Al Mukmin in 1972 as a standard-bearer for an Islamic state, a place where the curriculum emphasizes carrying out a "personal jihad" to defend Islam.
The school is largely a collection of shabby one-story classrooms and offices. The one exception to the general air of decay is a new three-story dormitory financed by friends of the school in Saudi Arabia.
One man arrested in the Philippines, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, who was arrested on suspicion of being a crucial figure in the plot by Al Qaeda to blow up the American Embassy in Singapore, spent four years studying at Al Mukmin.
During a visit to the campus, it was easy to see how young boys, some as young as 5, could become foot soldiers in an anti-American campaign organized in the name of Islam.
"Jihad is the way of Allah," said Dwi Purwanto, 19, one of the boys sporting the image of Mr. bin Laden across his chest. "We will attack the enemy who attacks Muslims." 
With barely any exception, boys from junior high school to the final year seniors, said their goal in life was to ensure that Islam was applied "correctly." On further probing this meant that Indonesia should become an Islamic state, and that "anti-Islamic forces" -- usually described as the United States -- must be destroyed. They were proud of their alumnus, Mr. Ghozi, saying he had glorified Islam.
The students are awakened at 3:30 for first morning prayers, followed by study groups on particular topics of the Koran. Sixty percent of the curriculum is devoted to the study of Islam: how to read the Koran; the speeches of the Prophet Muhammad; and the interpretation of Islamic law. "We try to emphasize Islamic law," said Sarid Maruf, the director of the school. 
Arabic is a compulsory subject, and is another opportunity for teaching Islam. Nurul Hidayap, a young Arabic teacher, showed the day's lesson: questions and answers about the Prophet Muhammad's life that had to be written down in Arabic script. Question: When did Muhammad set aside the most time for contemplation? Answer: When he was 46.
With lights out at 10 p.m., the boys get little sleep. There is no television, no radio. The students are allowed out of the school one Friday a month from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Life is spartan.
In one cluster of buildings, the school caters to girls; some had hidden makeup in their dorms, and many seemed to have more varied professional aspirations than the boys. For the most part, boys said they wanted to go back to their villages and preach, or further their Islamic studies. Several girls said they wanted to become doctors, social workers or psychiatrists. 
Mr. Baasyir founded Al Mukmin after graduating from Gontor, a distinguished religious school in East Java, sometimes referred to in Indonesia as the Harvard of pesantren. His aim, he said, was to create a different kind of religious school, one that produced students who "if and when they become leaders of the nation they would abide by Islam." 
His fealty to the idea of Indonesia as an Islamic state brought him into open hostility with Mr. Suharto. Mr. Baasyir was jailed and subsequently fled to Malaysia, where he said he had founded another pesantren, Lukmanal Halium. "I was received warmly in Malaysia, especially by the youth," he said. In Malaysia, he read all of Mr. bin Laden's books, he said. "He published various books about why he's against the United States," Mr. Baasyir said. "I absorbed that into my preaching." 
The Singapore authorities contended that Mr. Baasyir was involved in more than that. They said he was a central figure in setting up the network in the region.
On his return to Indonesia in 2000, Mr. Baasyir took up the cause of an Islamic state again, addressing a gathering at the stadium in Solo on the theme of women not being suitable to serve as president. (The current leader, President Megawati Sukarnoputri, became the first female president of Indonesia six months ago.)
In some ways, the fact that Al Mukmin operates in Solo, a commercial city known as a bastion of conservative Islam, is not surprising. According to one count, more than 70 Islamic organizations exist here, many of them new and radical. Among them is the Solo Islamic Youth Front whose militia accompanied Mr. Baasyir to his police questioning. Others include Laskar Jundullah (Army of God) and Laskar Hizbullah (Army of the Party of God).
Are members of the major Muslim organizations in Indonesia worried about Mr. Baasyir, his school, and the surge in radical Islamic groups here? Yes and no.
Dahlan Rais, the regional leader of Muhammadiyah, one of the two largest national Muslim groups, put it this way: "To some Muslims, Baasyir is a symbol of truth and courage. In the current circumstances, people are alienated from their surroundings, economically and socially. It doesn't take much to incite the masses."




   


February 03, 2002, Sunday, 



 Militant group linked to attacks

 
 
Asian law enforcement officials investigating an alleged plot by Muslim extremists to blow up Western embassies and U.S. naval vessels in Singapore have uncovered a sophisticated underground group affiliated with the al-Qaida terrorist network in Southeast Asia that aided participants in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The group, known as Jemaah Islamiah, or Islamic Group, had cells in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia and also operated in the Philippines, the Washington Post and New York Times reported. They said the militant group was directed by a radical Indonesian cleric who served as a conduit between his eager followers in Asia and al-Qaida leaders in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
The cleric, Riduan Isamuddin, who uses the alias Hambali, played host to two men in Malaysia in January 2000 who later went on to hijack the American Airlines Flight 77 plane that crashed into the Pentagon, a Malaysian government official told the newspapers. Later that year, the official said, Hambali ordered a member of the Malaysian cell to provide accommodations and a letter of reference to another visitor to Malaysia, Zacarias Moussaoui, a man now in U.S. custody, charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. 
Hambali, who is on the run, has emerged at the center of a global investigation into Jemaah Islamiah, an organization whose scope and complexity appears to have been similar to the operations of Osama bin Laden's followers in Europe and the United States.
Government officials said the overriding aim of the group, which was created in Malaysia in the mid-1990s by Hambali and a fellow Indonesian cleric, Abubakar Baasyir, was to overthrow secular governments in the region and create an Islamic state linking Malaysia, Indonesia and the Muslim-dominated southern Philippines.
Tribal fighters regroup, prepare for assault
KABUL, Afghanistan - After burying their dead, tribal fighters with fresh stocks of guns and ammunition prepared Saturday for a second assault on an eastern Afghan provincial capital, where fighting this past week killed at least 61 people.
Warlord Bacha Khan's last attempt to take Gardez ended with his fighters retreating to the hills after two days of bloody fighting. But they planned to attack the dilapidated town again today, having been rearmed with 10 truckloads of weapons and ammunition, Khan's brother, Wazir Khan, told the Associated Press.
"They killed 11 of our people, we buried them, and tomorrow we will begin fighting again," Wazir Khan said by telephone.
In other developments:
 Mullah Muhammad Abbas, a former Taliban government minister and sometime commander, was reported to have recently visited the town that U.S. commandos hit a week ago, when they killed or seized dozens of people in what Afghan officials are calling a tragic mistake. The reported presence of Abbas in his hometown, Oruzgan, may partly explain why the Americans struck two compounds there, killing 21 soldiers.
 Three days after President Bush said North Korea was part of an "axis of evil," leader Kim Jong Il said his regime may increase the capabilities of the world's fifth-largest army to prevent an invasion. "No force on earth can overpower these great forces firmly determined not to allow any aggressors to dare invade the inviolable territory of our country but wipe them out to the last one at the risk of their lives," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim as saying.
 Authorities in Yemen have detained 115 foreign students for illegal residence and questioned them about links to radical Islamic groups, an Interior Ministry official.
 A Chinese wildlife park offered Kabul's decimated zoo a lion to replace Marjan, the grenade-blinded big cat who died last month, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported.
- Information from the Washington Post and New York Times was used in this report.




  



February 3, 2002 Sunday  




 Al Qaeda's Southeast Asian Reach; 
Group Operating in 4 Nations Believed Tied to Sept. 11 Hijackers

 
 Asian law enforcement officials investigating an alleged plot by Muslim extremists to blow up Western embassies and U.S. naval vessels here have uncovered a sophisticated underground group affiliated with the al Qaeda terrorist network in Southeast Asia that aided participants in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. 
 The group, known as Jemaah Islamiah, or Islamic Group, had cells in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia and also operated in the Philippines, officials said. They said the militant group was directed by a radical Indonesian cleric who served as a conduit between his eager followers in Asia and al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and the Middle East. 
 The cleric, Riduan Isamuddin, who uses the alias Hambali, played host to two men in Malaysia in January 2000 who later went on to hijack the American Airlines Flight 77 plane that crashed into the Pentagon, a Malaysian government official said. Later that year, the official said, Hambali ordered a member of the Malaysian cell to provide accommodations and a letter of reference to another visitor to Malaysia, Zacarias Moussaoui, a man now in U.S. custody, charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.  
 Hambali, who is on the run, has emerged at the center of a global investigation into Jemaah Islamiah, an organization whose scope and complexity appears to have been similar to the operations of Osama bin Laden's followers in Europe and the United States. 
 Government officials said the overriding aim of the group, which was created in Malaysia in the mid-1990s by Hambali and a fellow Indonesian cleric, Abubakar Baasyir, was to overthrow secular governments in the region and create an Islamic state linking Malaysia, Indonesia and the Muslim-dominated southern Philippines. But along the way, Hambali and Baasyir transformed the group into "a part of the broader al Qaeda syndicate," an official in Singapore said. 
 "Hambali was al Qaeda's point man in Southeast Asia," the Malaysian official said. 
 Government officials in the Philippines and Malaysia are investigating whether the bearded and bespectacled Hambali, 36, was involved in a 1994 plot to bomb 12 U.S. passenger jets in Asia. The Malaysian official said Hambali had spent time in the Philippines with two of the men convicted in the case, Ramzi Yousef and Wali Khan Amin Shah. The official said Hambali also assisted a Malaysian trading company partly owned by Shah that was used to raise funds for the bombings. 
 Authorities also believe that Jemaah Islamiah was responsible for unsolved bombings in Indonesia and the Philippines over the past few years, including a series of explosions in Jakarta and Manila in December 2000 that killed 35 people. 
 Asian and Western officials said that details emerging about Jemaah Islamiah's operations have provided a startling warning about the development of Islamic militant activities in Southeast Asia. For years, governments assumed such groups had exclusively domestic agendas -- the creation of independent Islamic states or the imposition of Islamic law. While some groups have enjoyed a popular following in recent years, Jemaah Islamiah was relatively obscure. 
 Foreign terrorists, particularly those belonging to al Qaeda, were regarded as short-term visitors who wanted to take advantage of lax immigration rules and reduced scrutiny from Western intelligence agencies. But disclosures about Jemaah Islamiah, the officials said, reveal the degree to which bin Laden's organization has burrowed into the region and dispersed local militants around the globe. 
 "What's alarming are the regional links," a senior U.S. official said. "It's not just one country that they've infiltrated. It's at least four." 
 Authorities in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have arrested 37 suspected Jemaah Islamiah members since early December, but they are still searching for Hambali. Officials in Singapore and Malaysia said he traveled to Afghanistan in October, but they believe he has returned to the region and is hiding in Indonesia. 
 After the United States began its military campaign in Afghanistan, authorities in Singapore said Hambali approved plans for another al Qaeda attack: Members of a Jemaah Islamiah cell here were to drive trucks packed with powerful fertilizer bombs into the embassies of the United States, Britain, Israel and Australia. Before they were arrested in December, cell members had completed a detailed reconnaissance of the embassies and had acquired four tons of ammonium nitrate -- twice the amount that Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. 
 "There was an imminent danger," a senior Western diplomat here said. "Their plans could have been operational in a week." 
 Officials in Singapore and Malaysia said the arrests have largely destroyed Jemaah Islamiah, although they acknowledge there may be several members still at large, particularly in Indonesia. Of greater concern, they said, is the ammonium nitrate, which is still missing. 
 The officials said the material, a fertilizer widely used to make bombs, was delivered to the Malaysian town of Muar, which sits on the Straits of Malacca, just across from Indonesia. They said the ammonium nitrate was packed into 80-kilogram (176-pound) bags and sent to Indonesia's Batam island, just south of Singapore. 
 "They may have broken up the group, but there's still an enormous amount of explosive out there somewhere," a diplomat in Singapore said. 
 Officials said that the Singaporean militants were bankrolled by bin Laden's network and that at least eight of the 13 members were trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. 
 Another cell in Singapore, which also was under Hambali's command, was allegedly plotting to blow up U.S. warships docking here, attack a shuttle bus used by American military personnel and target the offices of major U.S. companies. 
 Officials in Singapore said the leader of that cell briefed al Qaeda leaders about the proposed attack on the shuttle bus when he traveled to Afghanistan for training between August 1999 and April 2000, showing them a grainy videotape of a subway station near the shuttle-bus stop that he recommended bombing. But the Singapore authorities said they believe the al Qaeda leadership eventually nixed the attack because the target was not large enough. The cell subsequently focused on attacking a U.S. naval vessel and American corporations, officials said. 
 Intelligence sources said the videotape was discovered by the CIA in an al Qaeda leader's house in Afghanistan along with briefing notes written in Arabic. Although U.S. officials initially claimed that the arrests were the result of the videotape, Singapore officials said they were not provided with a copy of it until late December, four days after police made the last arrest. 
 A senior Singapore government official said the security officers began investigating the group shortly after Sept. 11 when a resident told police one of the members might have links to al Qaeda. Authorities rounded up all 13 suspects in December. 
 "The tape offered very useful corroboration," the official said. "But by then we had it all wrapped up." 
 Singapore officials and Western diplomats portray the investigation as a race against emboldened terrorists who were bent on extracting revenge for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. 
 In October, a few days after the U.S. airstrikes began, a Kuwaiti using the code name "Sammy" and an Indonesian using the name "Mike" slipped into Singapore to help Jemaah Islamiah members prepare for the truck bombings. 
 The cell members took the visitors to Napier Road, just off the city's main commercial boulevard, where they videotaped the U.S. Embassy, a hulking, gray stone edifice atop a grassy hill. Sammy and Mike advised the cell that they would need 17 tons of ammonium nitrate in addition to the four tons they already had. 
 Although the cell was broken up by police before they could carry out the attack, the dragnet was too slow to nab Sammy and Mike before they fled Singapore. Under interrogation, members of the cell claimed they did not know Sammy's and Mike's real names, but they provided enough details to investigators for them to focus on the Philippines, officials said. 
 Two weeks ago, Philippine police, acting on information from Singapore, arrested the man believed to be Mike, a boyish 30-year-old named Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi, a former student at an Islamic school in Indonesia run by Baasyir, the co-founder of Jemaah Islamiah. 
 Philippine authorities now believe al-Ghozi -- who traveled between Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines -- was a key Jemaah Islamiah operative who also knew Hambali and was responsible for a series of bombings in Manila on Dec. 30, 2000, that killed 22 people and injured more than 100. Some intelligence officials believe the Manila bombings, as well as a raft of church bombings on Christmas Eve that year in Indonesia, may have been a test run for the planned attacks in Singapore. 
 Fluent in several languages, al-Ghozi moved effortlessly through Southeast Asia, using five passports and always staying in Muslim neighborhoods. He often traveled on small fishing boats to avoid detection, spending days at a time at sea. 
 After the Manila bombings, al-Ghozi repeatedly met or made contact with one of Hambali's key lieutenants, Faiz Abu Bakar Bafana, intelligence sources said. In one meeting, al-Ghozi has told investigators, Bafana ordered him to procure five to seven tons of explosives for use in Singapore and later gave him $ 18,000 as a down payment on the purchases, the sources said. 
 Officials in Singapore and Malaysia said the four tons of ammonium nitrate likely was purchased by Yazid Sufaat, 37, a Malaysian chemist who studied in California and owns a medical testing laboratory. Sufaat, a former Malaysian army captain, used his laboratory in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, to order the material in October 2000, the officials said. 
 U.S. and Malaysian officials said Sufaat is a Jemaah Islamiah leader in Malaysia and a close associate of Hambali's. A square-faced man with thick black hair, Sufaat was the person Hambali asked to host Moussaoui at his three-bedroom condominium in a suburban Kuala Lumpur high-rise in September and October 2000, the officials said. 
 Sufaat was arrested in December after returning from Afghanistan, where Malaysian officials say he served in a Taliban medical brigade. 
 The two Sept. 11 hijackers who visited Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 also stayed in Sufaat's condo for three days, although a Malaysian government official said intelligence agents photographing the building saw no evidence that Sufaat met with the men. The hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, were followed by Malaysian agents, who were tipped off by the CIA. 
 The official said Hambali, who had a set of keys to the condo, knew of the presence of Almihdhar and Alhazmi, and he likely met the men. 
 U.S. law enforcement officials believe the rough outlines of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington were likely discussed during the visit to Kuala Lumpur. The U.S. officials also believe the two men may have been involved during this time in the planning of the bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden nine months later, in October 2000. 
 Although Malaysian officials said they immediately passed along the information to the U.S. government, the CIA did not conclude the meeting was significant until after the Cole bombing, when one of the people in the photos was identified, in the summer of 2001, as a possible suspect in the Cole attack. The CIA subsequently warned U.S. immigration officials, to be on the lookout for Almihdhar and Alhazmi, but by then, the men had already entered the United States. 
 Moussaoui, a French citizen who has been charged in federal court with involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, had traveled to Malaysia for flying lessons, a Malaysian official said. Moussaoui opted not to take the lessons in Malaysia after learning there were no flight schools in the Kuala Lumpur area, the official said. 
 Before Moussaoui left for the United States, Sufaat gave him phony business credentials written on stationery pilfered from a computer company his wife co-owned, officials said. The credentials were discovered by FBI agents when they raided Moussaoui's apartment in Minneapolis. 
 U.S. officials have alleged that Sufaat also gave Moussaoui at least $ 35,000, but the Malaysian official said Sufaat has denied in interrogations that money changed hands. 
 "We have found no evidence of it," the official said. 
 U.S. and Malaysian sources said the U.S. government has asked Malaysia to extradite Sufaat. But the Malaysian official disputed characterizations by U.S. officials that Sufaat played a crucial role in hosting Moussaoui or with anything else having to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. "If Hambali was the travel agent, then Sufaat was the guy at the airport holding the sign," the official said. 
 Sufaat initially appeared an unlikely candidate to join a militant group. He spent four years in the United States, studying biochemistry at California State University's Sacramento campus. After graduating in 1987, he returned to Malaysia and joined the army, where he served as a lab technician in a medical brigade. 
 But shortly after he came back with his wife, a Malaysian he met in California, his mother-in-law felt he was not religious enough and asked him to study with a Muslim teacher, the official said. The teacher, the official said, was part of an informal network of radical clerics that included Hambali. 
 "After a while, Sufaat meets up with Hambali and he's slowly inducted into the network," the official said. That was in the mid-1990s. By the end of the decade, Sufaat rose to become a trusted lieutenant of Hambali's. 
 Sufaat's wife, Sejahratul Dursina, told a Malaysian Internet news service Friday night that her husband, who earlier in the day was ordered detained for two years, was innocent. "I strongly deny these allegations against him," she said. "They are baseless, wrong and outrageous." 
 Little is known conclusively about Hambali. He was born and educated in Indonesia. In the mid-1980s, he and other radical Muslims, including Baasyir, the co-founder of Jemaah Islamiah, fled to Malaysia to escape a crackdown on Islamic militancy ordered by Indonesia's then-dictator, Suharto. In the late 1980s, Hambali traveled to Afghanistan to fight against Soviet occupation forces. When he returned, infused with a desire to continue an armed struggle to promote Islam, he began preaching at mosques around Malaysia that advocated a holy war against the United States. Officials said he developed a friendship with Baasyir in the early 1990s, and they jointly set up the Jemaah Islamiah. 
 The Malaysian official characterized Baasyir as the group's "godfather" and Hambali as the "consigliere." 
 Under pressure from its neighbors, Indonesian police summoned Baasyir for questioning in late January. But police did not arrest him, saying they needed to further investigate his alleged connections to al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah. 
Correspondent Philip P. Pan in Manila and staff writer Dan Eggen in Washington contributed to this report. 






  



February 3, 2002 Sunday  




 We Will Do The Fighting

 
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines has allowed U.S. forces to reenter her country for six months to help train the Philippine military in its fight against the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, a band of Muslim rebels that allegedly has ties to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Arroyo says, however, that she told President Bush that six months is the limit for the training, which began Thursday. The American presence is controversial; a decade ago, U.S. troops withdrew from bases there after Philippine voters approved a referendum asking them to leave. Washington Post-Newsweek's Lally Weymouth interviewed Arroyo, 54, on Friday in New York, where she was attending the World Economic Forum. Excerpts: 
Is terrorism a threat to your region? 
 In our region there are terrorist cells all over. When we met at ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] and at APEC [the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum], Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines decided we would help one another fight terrorism and other transnational crimes that occur in our common seas with joint patrols. We decided to do interdictions and exchange intelligence information.  
 It has worked out very well. When Nur Misuari, leader of the Moro National Liberation Front [known as the MNLF], had his short-lived rebellion in the Philippines in November and then escaped to Malaysia, he didn't find a safe haven. He was put in jail. They waited for us to pick him up and bring him back home for a trial. 
 Recently, Indonesia's President Megawati [Sukarnoputri] has been complaining about arms being smuggled into Indonesia from her neighbors. We were able recently to capture an Indonesian who had been shipping explosives out of our southernmost city into Indonesia. So we've been helping one another. Megawati has recommended that we should also include Singapore and Thailand in our cooperation. 
 How active has al Qaeda been in the Philippines? 
 We have evidence of their active presence in the Philippines up until 1995, when we came across evidence about the perpetrators of the [1993] World Trade Center bombing. We were able to help the U.S. convict them. 
 Are you talking about the arrest of Ramzi Yousef in 1995? [He was apprehended in Pakistan after fleeing Manila, the Philippine capital, and is now serving a life sentence for masterminding the World Trade Center bombing.] 
 Yes, and Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, who was living in the Philippines until 1995. They had front organizations here but after we assisted the U.S. in convicting the World Trade Center bombers, bin Laden's brother-in-law left and those organizations closed up shop. Some of the literature about their activities said they did not find the Philippines a hospitable place for international terrorism. 
 Long before Sept. 11, we were already fighting terrorists. We have been able to confine them to one small island. After Sept. 11, we felt that terrorism should not spread. That is why I was one of the first to respond. To be successful against the terrorists in the Southwest Philippines, we have American military trainers there to improve the capability of our forces to fight terrorists. 
 Isn't the allegation that Abu Sayyaf has links with al Qaeda? 
 I have just told you that our evidence goes up to 1995. 
 So you're saying that it doesn't have any links? 
 I am not saying that. I am saying that the evidence we have is up to 1995. 
 How long do you think U.S. troops should stay on the ground? 
 We have an agreement. They will stay six months. 
 I know that you have encountered some opposition. 
 Some, but the latest survey says 83 percent of our people approve. 
 So you don't feel any pressure from the opposition? 
 Now, let me talk about the opposition. I called a meeting of the National Security Council, including opposition leaders, and they supported my position. 
 Here we have read that the opposition is giving you a hard time. 
 I am not having a hard time. It's not opposition to my administration but to the American presence in the Philippines. 
 President Bush, in his State of the Union address, mentioned that al Qaeda would be fought in countries such as Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines. 
 Terrorism is not a franchise of al Qaeda alone. That is the essence of the operational agreement between my country, Malaysia and Indonesia. 
 What did you think about the president's idea about moving against Iraq and Iran? 
 I can see that President Bush has found his mission. He feels that his destiny is to wage a successful war against terrorism, which has reared its ugly head and has made life difficult for many countries. I can say this because we have suffered in the Southwest Philippines and where you have terrorism, it is difficult to fight poverty. 
 You mean poverty is the breeding ground? 
 Where you have poverty, it's easier for the evil of terrorism to spread. 
 Do you need both a military and a political approach? 
 Yes, because terrorism and poverty are linked. We have to look at new ways poverty can be fought -- not the old traditional massive handouts. I like to call it a hand up for the self-reliant. The beneficiaries must be accountable. In the Philippines, we have tried our best to be self-reliant. That's why we are going to be doing the fighting. As for the economy, we were able to achieve [a] 3.7 percent [growth in] GNP [gross national product] in a sea of recessions and 3.4 percent in GDP [gross domestic product], even though we lost our export markets. We achieved this very healthy growth rate because we built up our domestic market. We got the budget deficit under control and were able to supply domestic demand to make up for the loss in the export markets. 
 Terrorism has been going on for a long time in the south. 
 The MNLF rebellion was settled in 1996 with a peace agreement. The MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation Front] is there, but we are having very successful peace talks. The MILF has publicly distanced itself from bin Laden and al Qaeda. I think that is the fruit of our interfaith dialogue. The terrorists want to make this a religious war, but we want to foster religious understanding. 
 They want to make it a religious war between the Christians and the Muslims in the south? 
 They are trying to bill it that way, but we are not fighting Muslims. We are not fighting Islam. We are fighting terrorism. On the one hand we fight terrorism, and on the other we seek to understand Islam and the Islamic people. 
 What do you think that you can achieve with these U.S. military trainers in six months? Can you defeat the terrorists, or merely put pressure on them? 
 The terms of the training order are very clear. They will stay six months and enhance the capability of our soldiers to fight terrorism with training, intelligence and equipment from the U.S. 
 How do you feel about President Bush saying he will extend the fight to North Korea although there is no evidence that it was involved in the Sept. 11 attack? 
 He has evidence that I don't have. I work with him. When the U.N. called for a coalition to fight terror in Afghanistan, we let our airspace be used. We let our bases be used. 
 How would you feel if the U.S. goes ahead and attacks Iraq? Would you support us? 
 It hasn't happened yet. I don't want to pass judgment on hypothetical situations. 
 Do you find the United States a new country after Sept. 11? 
 Oh, yes. It is a new country. 
 Do you talk to President Bush often? 
 The last time we talked, I reiterated that the U.S. troops must not engage in combat [in the Philippines]. We have to keep pushing. After the military victory, this coalition might drift apart. But we should keep it together and form a world coalition against poverty.   



   
 

January 31, 2002 Thursday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: THE INVESTIGATION; 
Suspect Calls Malaysia a Staging Area for Terror Attacks

 
An operative of Al Qaeda arrested in Malaysia has begun cooperating with investigators and provided new evidence to show that the Southeast Asian nation was a major staging area for the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States, Bush administration officials said today.
     The operative, a former Malaysian Army captain, has acknowledged meeting in Malaysia with at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, as well as with Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French citizen who is now in a Virginia jail cell and is the only person charged so far with involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said. 
 They said the United States was negotiating with the Malaysian government in hopes that the retired Malaysian soldier, Yazid Sufaat, 37, could be extradited here to face charges.
The negotiations have been difficult, officials said, because of repeated public statements by the Malaysian government insisting that the predominantly Muslim nation could not have been a staging ground for the Sept. 11 attacks. 
American and Malaysian officials say they believe that Mr. Sufaat was a crucial organizer of a gang of Muslim extremists known as the Malaysian Militant Group, or Jemaah Islamiah, that is part of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, Al Qaeda. Mr. Sufaat was one of 23 people believed to be extremists detained by the Malaysia police in the last two months.
Officials said Mr. Sufaat appeared to have operated as a paymaster for Mr. Moussaoui, who was arrested in the United States last August after he raised suspicions among his instructors at a Minneapolis flight school and to have provided him with bogus business credentials from a Malaysian technology company.
Officials said they had found evidence that Mr. Sufaat provided Mr. Moussaoui with at least $35,000 in meetings near Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, in September and October of 2000. American investigators say Mr. Moussaoui deposited about $32,000 a few months later in a bank account in Norman, Okla., where he first attended flight school in the United States.
Lawyers for Mr. Moussaoui, who is of Moroccan descent and who has been linked by French intelligence agencies to Al Qaeda, have entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf on charges that he conspired in the Sept. 11 attacks. One of the defense lawyers, Edward B. MacMahon, had no comment tonight when asked about Mr. Sufaat.
American officials said the evidence showed that Mr. Sufaat had met in January 2000 with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, at his condominium outside Kuala Lumpur. 
Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi subsequently traveled to the United States for flight training, and they were among the suicidal hijackers who commandeered the American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
Officials had previously acknowledged that Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi were under surveillance on their trip to Malaysia, and that as a result of their meetings in Kuala Lumpur with Al Qaeda operatives, they were placed on an immigration watchlist in the United States. By the time their names were added to the list, however, the two men had already entered the United States.
Investigators say that Muslim extremists in Malaysia appear to have organized "sleeper cells" of Islamic militants throughout Southeast Asia, and that they may have given direction to a network based in neighboring Singapore, which had planned to blow up the embassies there of the United States, Israel, Australia and Britain.
The plot was apparently foiled when 13 terror suspects were arrested in the tiny, tightly policed city-state in recent weeks. During questioning, officials there said, the suspects described a well-organized terror network stretching across several nations in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, which has a large Muslim population, and Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Investigators say they believe they have established a link between Mr. Sufaat and Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi, a 30-year-old Indonesian living in the Philippines who is suspected of organizing the embassy attacks in Singapore. 
Mr. Ghozi was arrested this month in the Philippines, where the authorities said they seized a cache of rifles, explosives and bomb-making equipment believed to have been part of the plot. Officials said the evidence suggested that Mr. Ghozi had separately ordered Mr. Sufaat to purchase tons of explosives for use in the attacks.
The arrest in Malaysian of Mr. Sufaat and the others accused of being Islamic extremists had created a problem for the government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has rejected the suggestion that his country could have been used as a staging area for the Sept. 11 attacks. 
"As far as we know, there is no Malaysian connection in the attacks in the U.S.," Mr. Mohamad said earlier this week.
Asked specifically about the possible role of Mr. Sufaat in the terrorist strikes, the prime minister replied, "Let's see the evidence -- it's very easy to say." He continued: "Did he plan everything? I doubt it. It is too sophisticated an operation."      





   

 

January 29, 2002 Tuesday, 



 WAR ON TERRORISM: CRISIS AT A GLANCE;
Latest developments at home and abroad

 
BUSH PROMISES AID TO KARZAI: The United States will play a leading role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, including helping the nation build its own military, President Bush said, standing with Afghan leader Hamid Karzai at the White House. Bush also announced $50 million in U.S. loan aid to help rebuild the war-battered nation. Karzai thanked the United States for its help in driving the Taliban from power and wiping out al-Qaida forces in his country. 14 SOLDIERS INJURED: An Army helicopter made a hard landing in eastern Afghanistan. Army Col. Frank Wiercinski said 24 soldiers were aboard the helicopter, 14 of whom were hurt. None of the injuries was considered to be life-threatening. MANY SAUDIS AMONG DETAINEES: Saudi Arabia said more than 100 of its citizens are in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, making Saudis by far the largest group of terrorist suspects detained on the U.S. naval base. Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef urged the United States to turn over the Saudi detainees for interrogation at home. President Bush said "we'll make a decision on a case-by-case basis as to whether they go back to Saudi Arabia or not." PENTAGON DENIES ERROR: U.S. officials disputed claims that American soldiers mistakenly killed innocents during a midnight raid on two compounds in Afghanistan last week. Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem said intelligence clues indicated that the compounds were being used by the al-Qaida terrorist network or their Taliban supporters. Local Afghans have protested that no al-Qaida or Taliban fighters were in the area. GRENADES KILL HOLDOUTS: Afghan troops backed by U.S. Special Forces lobbed grenades into a burning hospital, ending a nearly two-month standoff with six al-Qaida gunmen. The attack was ordered after the holdouts repeatedly refused to surrender. They had threatened to blow themselves up if anyone tried to take them prisoner. VICTIM ID'S STILL DIFFICULT: Medical examiners don't have enough DNA from toothbrushes, hairbrushes and other items submitted by victims' families to identify remains of some people killed at the World Trade Center. Of the 2,876 people reported missing at the trade center, the remains of 685 had been identified. SUBWAY STOP REOPENS: The World Trade Center station of New York's E subway line opened for the first time since Sept. 11. The station was not damaged Sept. 11 but was closed as part of the "frozen zone" during the recovery effort. Planning is under way to change the station's name. COASTAL PATROLS WANE: With the Coast Guard pressed into anti-terrorism work, traditional ocean patrols to catch poachers and rescue boaters are being cut back. The Coast Guard boarded fewer than half as many fishing boats in the last three months of 2001 as it did in the last quarter of 2000. APOLOGY OVER WIRED MONEY DELAY: Western Union has apologized for freezing funds wired from Virginia to Georgia by an Islamic family, according to The Council on American-Islamic Relations. In his letter to the Muslim advocacy group, Western Union President Michael C. Yerington said the delay was the result of a federal requirement that blocks funds of "specially designated nationals." He said the Muslim recipient's name was similar to several on the government's list. AID FOR INDONESIA: The United States has offered $10 million for police training to help Indonesia crack down on potential terrorists within its borders, Indonesia's foreign minister told a state-run press outlet. U.S. officials are concerned that the al-Qaida network may have established cells in Indonesia.






   
 

January 27, 2002 Sunday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: A FIGHTER'S TALE; 
Bin Laden Stirs Struggle on Meaning of Jihad

 
Little in the manner of Ijaz Khan Hussein betrays the miseries he saw as a volunteer in the war in Afghanistan.
     Mr. Khan, a college-trained pharmacist, joined the jihad, or holy war, like thousands of other Pakistanis who crossed over into Afghanistan. 
 He worked as a medical orderly near Kabul, shuttling to the front lines, picking up bodies and parts of bodies. Of 43 men who traveled with him to Afghanistan by truck in October, he says, 41 were killed. 
Now with the Taliban and Al Qaeda routed, have Mr. Khan and other militants finished with holy war?
Mr. Khan, at least, said he had not.
"We went to the jihad filled with joy, and I would go again tomorrow," he said. "If Allah had chosen me to die, I would have been in paradise, eating honey and watermelons and grapes, and resting with beautiful virgins, just as it is promised in the Koran. Instead, my fate was to remain amid the unhappiness here on earth." 
Jihad literally means striving. The Prophet Muhammad gave Muslims the task of striving in the path of God. Whether that striving is armed or a personal duty of conscience is a question causing consternation in the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, and that question goes to the heart of President Bush's war on terrorism.
In the Muslim world, it seems that Osama bin Laden is now a fractured idol, and many Muslim scholars criticize him. Yet he also remains appealing to others, almost as a political Robin Hood.
"Osama bin Laden is not a theologian, or a jihadist in the traditional sense of the term; he's a political activist," said one critic, Olivier Roy, a French scholar who has written several books about Afghanistan. "He has Islamized the traditional discourse of Western anti-imperialism. So a lot of Muslims support him, not because they see him as a true warrior for Islam, but because they hate America, and he's the only man in the Islamic world that they see fighting the Americans. He's like Carlos the Jackal converted to Islam."
In mosques and Islamic seminaries from Morocco to Indonesia, moderate Muslims have been scouring the Koran to demonstrate that a true vision of jihad can never be squared with Sept. 11, even while expressing how aggrieved Muslims may be with America over issues Mr. bin Laden has identified in his videotapes, like Israel's treatment of Palestinians, the presence of American troops in the Arabian peninsula and the United States' role in maintaining sanctions against Iraq.
"Don't make the mistake of thinking that Osama bin Laden is the true face of a billion Muslims, or the true voice of the Koran," said Dr. Safir Akhtar, a research scholar at the Islamic University in Islamabad, a Saudi-financed institution that has long been a magnet for young militants from around the Islamic world. 
"He may have a special appeal through his religiosity," Dr. Akhtar said, "and his spartan way of life, and he has certainly drawn deeply from Muslims' deep sense of frustration, but people think of him more as an adventurer than as an Islamic leader, and they know from their own studies that his sense of jihad is deeply flawed."
Conversations with ordinary Muslims in Pakistan tend quickly to turn to their disillusionment with the inglorious figure Mr. bin Laden has cut since Sept. 11 -- as he counseled future jihadis that "this world is an illusion," valueless beside paradise, and posed for the videotapes with a Kalashnikov and a camouflage jacket, while avoiding the hazards of combat himself. Moreover, many of Islam's most militant theologians now rebuke Mr. bin Laden, who suggested in the videotapes that he cast himself in the mold of Saladin, who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in the 12th century. 
From Cairo, Beirut and Tehran, and a dozen other centers of fervent Islamic belief, pioneers of Mr. bin Laden's kind of jihad -- violent, anti-Western, above all anti-American and anti-Israeli -- have called him a coward and an enemy of Islam.
No example is starker than that of Sheik Muhammad Hussain Fadlallah, spiritual leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Party of God, for 25 years a scourge of Israel and the United States with its suicide bombings and other terror attacks in Lebanon and Israel. After a 1983 truck bombing of a United States Marine barracks near the Beirut airport killed 241 servicemen, American officials accused Sheik Fadlallah of having ordered the attack, an allegation he returned when he blamed the Central Intelligence Agency for a 1985 car bombing outside his Beirut home that killed 75 people.
But Sheik Fadlallah, now 66, has been relentless in his condemnation of the attacks in America.
He preaches that they were "not compatible with Shariah law," the Koranic legal code, nor with the Islamic concept of jihad, and that the perpetrators were not martyrs as Mr. bin Laden has claimed, but "merely suicides," because they killed innocent civilians, and in a distant land, America. In an interview with a Beirut newspaper, Al Safir, Sheik Fadlallah again accused Mr. bin Laden of having ignored Koranic texts.
"There is no concept of jihad as aggressive combat," he said, quoting verses of the Koran that Islamic theologians have argued over for centuries. In misreading these texts, he said, Mr. bin Laden had relied on "personal psychological needs," including a "tribal urge for revenge."
An Egyptian-born theologian, Sheik Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi, with a history of anti-American militancy even longer than Sheik Fadlallah's, expresses a similar view. From his base in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, the 75-year-old sheik has issued Islamic fatwas, or decrees, on issues like the need for Muslims to boycott McDonald's restaurants, and on husbands' right to beat their wives as long as they do not draw blood.
But on the Sept. 11 attacks, he has used language similar to that of Mr. Bush and other American politicians.
"Islam, the religion of tolerance, holds the human soul in high esteem, and considers the attack on innocent human beings a grave sin," said. "Even in times of war, Muslims are not allowed to kill anybody save the one who is engaged in face-to-face confrontation with them.
"Killing hundreds of helpless civilians," he added, "is a heinous crime in Islam."
To many Western scholars, Mr. bin Laden stands out not for the liturgical context, but for drawing on the wellspring of anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world. 
Another French scholar, Gilles Kepel, said Mr. bin Laden drew his views from a deadly mixture of the fundamentalist, aggressive form of Islam known as Salafism that he knew as a student in Saudi Arabia and the heady, but misleading, experience he had when he arrived in Afghanistan in the 1980's to join the last stages of the jihad against Soviet occupation troops.
"By 1989, the jihadists thought that they had destroyed the Soviet Union, and that militant Islam was a force that could prevail against any enemy, forgetting that what really drove the Russians out of Afghanistan was the Stinger antiaircraft missiles given to them by the United States, which neutralized Soviet air power," Dr. Kepel said. "This led them to believe that they could triumph everywhere."
That has not been the case. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan for just five years. Islamic militancy has been violently suppressed in Egypt and Algeria, has crested as an influence in Sudan, and has achieved little in Chechnya and Kashmir.
In Pakistan, clerics who saw the country as following in the Taliban's rise have instead witnessed the nation's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, starting a broad-based crackdown on Islamic militancy.
Yet there are legions of young men who seethe with resentment at America and its power, and long after Mr. bin Laden and Al Qaeda have faded into history, they seem likely to form a ready pool of recruits for messianic leaders.
In Pakistan, that is evident in any one of the hundreds of Islamic schools and seminaries that flourished around Peshawar, the frontier city, in the wake of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. Although they are under notice now from General Musharraf that they will no longer be allowed to operate as thinly disguised recruiting camps for holy war, their courtyards still teem with angry young men who say they will one day find a way to strike back at America for all it has done in Afghanistan, and for America's "crimes" against Muslims.
At one such institution, the Markaz-e-Islami seminary near Peshawar, a visitor stopped recently to read a painted signboard inscribed with 140 names of Pakistanis who have died as "holy warriors" in Afghanistan and Kashmir since 1993. 
A bearded young man named Nurullah, introducing himself as a student, pointed to a fresh board nearby that has been prepared for the names of the latest martyrs, men who died fighting with the Taliban after Sept. 11, and said, "Jihad will continue until doomsday, or until America is defeated, either way."

The Force of Islam
This is the last in a series of articles examining the growth in the influence of Islam. Previous articles focused on Islam and women, the devout rulers of Saudi Arabia, and Muslim influence in Indonesia, Russia, Nigeria and Turkey. Articles in the series and related coverage are available on the Web:
nytimes.com/world 





  



January 27, 2002 Sunday  




 The Asian Front

 
THE FIGHT against al Qaeda terrorists has now spread to Southeast Asia, where the threat is more serious than was understood until recently. The arrest of a large al Qaeda cell in Singapore has revealed the outlines of a terrorist network stretching through Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, along with detailed plans for the mass murder of Americans. Officials say that hundreds of foreigners may have visited an al Qaeda training camp in the Indonesian jungles last year. Al Qaeda and its allies seem to retain breathing space in this region that no longer exists in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Some Indonesian militant leaders believed to be connected to Osama bin Laden are still operating openly; one recently granted an interview to The Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran in which he defended suicide attacks against Americans. Though most of the governments in the region are friendly to the United States, it's not clear that the Bush administration has yet found the means to adequately answer the threat.  
 A contingent of some 600 U.S. special forces trainers and support troops has begun arriving in the Philippines to help Manila's army wipe out a small Muslim insurgent organization in the southern islands of Basilan and Jolo. The deployment seemed to risk destabilizing the government of pro-American President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo; there has been a nationalist backlash in the Philippine Congress. Ms. Arroyo will likely overcome the protests, because polls show an overwhelming majority welcome the U.S. aid. But the fight against the Abu Sayyaf group, though worthy of U.S. support, may prove to be a noisy sideshow: The group probably has fewer than 500 members, and its ties to al Qaeda are tenuous. 
 A more menacing threat seems to be emerging in a network known as Jemaah Islamiah, an al Qaeda branch that authorities say has cells in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. Two Indonesian militant groups, Laskar Jihad and Laskar Mujaheddin, may also have ties to al Qaeda, and one may have cooperated in the operation of an al Qaeda camp. But the Bush team appears unsure how to handle Indonesia, where a fragile democratic government has been reluctant to move against the Muslim militants for fear of provoking a domestic backlash. While the State Department recently backed the continuation of congressional restrictions on aid to the Indonesian military, the Pentagon separately sought and won an appropriation for a new counterterrorism training program including Indonesia. 
 Such mixed signals are no longer affordable; the Bush administration needs a strategy and a message for Southeast Asia. That strategy must support the preservation of democratic governments in the Philippines and Indonesia, reform of the Indonesian military and greater respect for human rights in Malaysia and Singapore. But it must also insist on action against al Qaeda networks and the indigenous Muslim movements that may be supporting them, and be willing to provide support for specific military operations. These networks are aggressively plotting to kill Americans; no less than in Afghanistan, the United States must act urgently in its own defense. 





   

 

January 25, 2002 Friday, 



 CRISIS AT A GLANCE;
Latest developments at home and abroad

 
Clean-shaven Lindh: The American who fought alongside the Taliban made his first appearance in federal court Thursday, with his hair cut and beard shaved. John Walker Lindh is charged with conspiring to kill other Americans. Access to lawyer: Attorney General John Ashcroft said John Walker Lindh signed a statement waiving his right to a lawyer before he was questioned by the FBI in December. Defense lawyers want to keep his statement out of court because a lawyer wasn't present. Talk show braggart: Bond has been set at $500,000 for an Ohio man who boarded a plane with a knife in his belt. Robert Hedrick called a radio talk show during a layover in Pittsburgh to talk about it --- and was arrested after landing in Columbus. Guard off airport duty? The Army's top civilian wants the Army National Guard relieved of its security duties at the nation's airports within the coming months. $38 billion to fight terror: President Bush asked Congress for $38 billion to strengthen America's defenses against terrorism, a doubling of spending for intelligence, border security and other measures to thwart enemies who "still want to come after us." Bin Laden link denied: A Muslim cleric being questioned by police in Indonesia denied any links with international terrorism but said he respects the "struggle of Osama bin Laden." More Taliban captives: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said another 27 detainees were captured in a raid on Taliban leaders in the mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan. One U.S. Special Forces soldier was wounded. Hart cleanup criticized: An Environmental Protection Agency official told The Washington Times the anthrax cleanup at the Hart Senate Office Building could have been cheaper and safer. Clerics in united front: Denouncing violence --- especially when committed in the name of religion --- Pope John Paul II led 200 clerics from a dozen religions in prayers for peace. Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christian leaders were joined by Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Shintoists, Sikhs, Jainists, and followers of Tenrikyo, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism and tribal religions. Pope at ground zero: Cardinal Edward Egan of New York was asked about Italian press reports that the pope would like to visit the ruins of the World Trade Center in July in conjunction with a visit to Canada. Egan replied, "I'm sure they'll tell me sometime soon if it is true." Georgia won't block Web access: Contrary to a previous announcement, Georgia state government computers won't block Internet access by countries that could be harboring terrorist plotters. The announcement was a mistake, said Joyce Goldberg, director of communications for the Georgia Technology Authority. Last week, some of the authority's managers were discussing how to protect the state's computer systems, she said. Two managers misunderstood the tenor of the meeting and sent out a high-priority alert, listing countries whose Internet access would be blocked. Private security experts say blocking access by particular countries would thwart only the most unsophisticated hackers. Those with the knowledge to break into the state's protected networks would know how to mask their location. Goldberg said there were no specific plans to block electronic traffic from any countries.
--- Maurice Tamman and news services




   

 

January 25, 2002 Friday, 



 CRISIS AT A GLANCE;
Latest developments at home and abroad

 
Clean-shaven Lindh: The American who fought alongside the Taliban made his first appearance in federal court Thursday, with his hair cut and beard shaved. John Walker Lindh is charged with conspiring to kill other Americans. Access to lawyer: Attorney General John Ashcroft said John Walker Lindh signed a statement waiving his right to a lawyer before he was questioned by the FBI in December. Defense lawyers want to keep his statement out of court because a lawyer wasn't present. Talk-show braggart: Bond has been set at $500,000 for an Ohio man who boarded a plane with a knife in his belt. Robert Hedrick called a radio talk show during a layover in Pittsburgh to talk about it --- and was arrested after landing in Columbus. Airport breach: A man carrying a computer bag bolted through a Lambert Airport security checkpoint in St. Louis, prompting officials to evacuate the concourse for about two hours as the man remained at large. American Airlines removed passengers from about a dozen flights and had them rescreened, a spokeswoman said. Ten flights were delayed. Guard off airport duty? The Army's top civilian wants the Army National Guard relieved of its security duties at the nation's airports within the coming months. $38 billion to fight terror: President Bush asked Congress for $38 billion to strengthen America's defenses against terrorism, a doubling of spending for intelligence, border security and other measures to thwart enemies who "still want to come after us." Bin Laden link denied: A Muslim cleric being questioned by police in Indonesia denied any links with international terrorism but said he respects the "struggle of Osama bin Laden." More Taliban captives: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said another 27 detainees were captured in a raid on Taliban leaders in the mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan. One U.S. Special Forces soldier was wounded. Hart cleanup criticized: An Environmental Protection Agency official told The Washington Times the anthrax cleanup at the Hart Senate Office Building could have been cheaper and safer. Clerics form united front: Denouncing violence --- especially when committed in the name of religion --- Pope John Paul II led 200 clerics from a dozen religions in prayers for peace. Reporter missing: Daniel Pearl, 38, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was in Karachi, Pakistan, reporting on al-Qaida, has been reported missing since Wednesday. Georgia won't block Web access: Contrary to a previous announcement, Georgia state government computers won't block Internet access by countries that could be harboring terrorist plotters. The announcement was a mistake, said Joyce Goldberg, director of communications for the Georgia Technology Authority. Last week, some of the authority's managers were discussing how to protect the state's computer systems, she said. Two of those managers misunderstood the tenor of the meeting and sent out a high-priority alert, listing countries whose Internet access would be blocked. Private security experts say blocking access by particular countries would thwart only the most unsophisticated hackers. Goldberg said there were no specific plans to block electronic traffic from any countries.
--- Maurice Tamman and news services




   
 

January 25, 2002 Friday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN ARENA; 
Indonesian in Terror Inquiry Lauds bin Laden

 
An Islamic cleric who was questioned here today by the police after Singapore and Malaysia demanded his arrest lauded Osama bin Laden as "a true Islamic warrior" who had shown the courage and skill to fight the United States. 
     The cleric, Abu Bakar Baasyir, 64, appeared at police headquarters flanked by lawyers and bodyguards in black vests with the word mujahedeen written in yellow letters. 
 The summons of Mr. Baasyir followed the disclosure this month of a plan for Islamic militants to to blow up the American Embassy and other American installations in Singapore. 
Mr. Baasyir is accused by Singapore of leading a regionwide Southeast Asia terror network, Jemaah Islamiah, or Islamic Group, that is suspected of having ties to Mr. bin Laden's network, Al Qaeda.
Mr. Baasyir told reporters that he had no formal affiliation with Al Qaeda. His lawyers insisted that their client was being smeared.
But Mr. Baasyir issued a statement praising Mr. bin Laden.
"I am not a member of Al Qaeda," the statement said, "but I really respect the struggle of Osama bin Laden, who has bravely represented the world's Muslims in their fight against the arrogant United States of America and their allies." 
The emerging portrait of his activities as the founder of a radical Islamic boys' boarding school in Java sets Mr. Baasyir apart from the mainstream of moderate Islam in Indonesia.
One of his graduates, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, has been charged in the Philippines with being the chief bomb maker in the plot to attack the United States Embassy in Singapore. Other former students from the school were among 13 Islamic militants arrested by the Malaysian government last month on charges of being linked to Al Qaeda. 
The school established by Mr. Baasyir in the central Java town of Solo, Al Mukmin, is known in Indonesia as a pesantran, or Koranic school. Thousands of such schools exist in Indonesia, a secular state where more than 90 percent of the 220 million people are Muslims.
Like the madrasas of Pakistan, the pesantran of Indonesia are operated by charismatic religious leaders. But for the most part, the religious instruction is more relaxed than the militant teaching in Pakistan.
Mr. Baasyir and his school are widely known as an exception to the rule. So much so, said his brother-in-law, Umar Baraja, that Mr. Baasyir was imprisoned in the early 1980's by the Suharto government after calling for an Islamic state in Indonesia. Mr. Baasyir served three years of a nine-year sentence, then fled to Malaysia, Mr. Baraja said.
After Suharto was ousted in 1998, the cleric returned to the school, where about 1,600 boys are enrolled. The school became a funnel for radical Islamic groups in Java, including Lasker Jihad, the most prominent of a cluster of such groups that have sprung up in the last several years, said Robert W. Hefner, a professor of anthropology at Boston University and an expert on Islam in Indonesia. 
Mr. Baraja himself has set up a group known as the Surakarta Islamic Youth Front. After Sept. 11, the group was reported to be involved in scouring hotels in central Java for American tourists. Mr. Baraja said today that the group had been trying to protect Americans.
Mr. Baraja said there was no proof that Mr. bin Laden was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and added: "The United States accuses Baasyir of knowing Osama bin Laden because he taught Indonesians about a holy death. There is a similarity between them. But if there is any network it is one of faith."
The police plan to question Mr. Baasyir again on Friday. His lawyers said the police were "gentle" in their treatment of the cleric today, calling the sessions "clarification" of his past activities and his relationship to the men arrested in Malaysia and Singapore. 
In the southern Philippines, 23 American soldiers arrived today to train Filipino troops involved in hunting down armed rebels of the Abu Sayyaf group that is holding two Americans and a Filipina nurse hostage on Basilan Island.
In Manila today, the Filipino coordinator of the military training exercise, Brig. Gen. Emmanuel Teodosio, said the six-month operation with the Americans would start in early February with a 12-man American team assigned to each of the eight Philippine combat battalions on Basilan. The Americans will be present, he said, "not to fight but rather to be observers."




   


January 25, 2002, Friday, 



 U.S. robe policy sits poorly with Saudis

 
 
Saudi officials warned Thursday they would not allow U.S. servicewomen to go around without a head-to-toe robe, and criticized Washington for lifting the requirement that its female troops wear the garment.
A member of the Committee for the Preservation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, a government agency for enforcing Islamic law, said all women must wear the robe, or abaya in Arabic, irrespective of religion, nationality or profession.
Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, issued an order last week saying the abaya is no longer required for U.S. servicewomen in Saudi Arabia "but is strongly encouraged." The requirement dates from the 1990-91 Gulf crisis when U.S. forces were first stationed in Saudi Arabia. 
A Saudi military official on Thursday criticized Franks' move, saying the United States should have consulted the kingdom beforehand.
The U.S. decision is a violation of Saudi sovereignty and of Islamic law, the official said.
The highest-ranking female pilot in the U.S. Air Force has challenged the rule in a Washington court. Lt. Col. Martha McSally argued the policy was unconstitutional and said it improperly forced American women to conform to others' customs.
Congressional fact team
heading to Guantanamo
About two dozen members of Congress were to go to Cuba today for a tour of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay holding captured al-Qaida and Taliban fighters from Afghanistan.
The visit's primary purpose is to see whether useful intelligence is being gleaned from the captives, said some lawmakers. The recent spate of international criticism about the treatment of the prisoners was not high on their priority list.
"This has nothing to do whatsoever with treatment of prisoners," said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "I am not going to get into the debate about the size of holding cells," or other such matters. "I'm not interested in any of that."
Among those going was Senate Armed Services Committee members Bill Nelson, D-Fla. Staffers from that committee and its House counterpart were to go as well.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla., canceled his Guantanamo plans when Majority Leader Tom Daschle scheduled a vote for today on a GOP amendment to the Democratic economic stimulus package.
"My interest is to find out if we are getting information from these terrorist prisoners that will help us prevent further terrorist acts," Nelson said.
But he said he also would take note of the treatment of prisoners.
"There's been a lot of commentary," he said. "I don't have any reason to believe that there is not humane treatment, but I'll be observing everything."
Indonesian cleric denies
affiliation with al-Qaida
A Muslim cleric accused of heading a Southeast Asian terrorist network was called in to the Jakarta, Indonesia, police headquarters here Thursday to explain his activities and used the occasion to applaud Osama bin Laden.
Mobbed by reporters as he arrived at the police station, the white-robed Abu Bakar Bashir denied allegations that he is affiliated with bin Laden's al-Qaida network and accused the United States of being the world's real terrorist.
In a statement to the media, the 63-year-old Indonesian called bin Laden "a true Muslim fighter" and said al-Qaida had been active in promoting Muslims' rights.
Bashir, who spent four years in custody in the early 1980s for alleged antigovernment activity, has been named by Singapore and Malaysia as a top leader of a regional terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah that allegedly planned to attack American targets in Singapore, including the U.S. Embassy and sailors on leave.
Other developments
ANTIABORTIONIST FACES MORE CHARGES: A man who allegedly mailed fake anthrax letters to abortion clinics nationwide was indicted Thursday in Ohio on firearms and stolen-car charges.
Clayton Lee Waagner, 45, is behind bars in Urbana, Ill., where he is to be sentenced today on other federal convictions.
Waagner had been awaiting sentencing for vehicle theft and a firearm conviction when he escaped Feb. 22 from jail in Clinton, Ill., and became one of the FBI's 10 most-wanted fugitives.
Thursday's six-count indictment charges Waagner with illegally possessing a handgun and a rifle as a fugitive and convicted felon; possessing a stolen handgun; and possessing a stolen car.
BUSH, PAKISTAN LEADER TO MEET: President Bush will meet next month with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
Bush and Musharraf will meet at the White House on Feb. 13. The two leaders last saw each other in November, when they met in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly.




 
 

January 24, 2002 Thursday  
  



 Indonesian Troops Kill Leader of a Province's Separatist Group 

 
Indonesian troops shot and killed the commander of the separatist Aceh Liberation Movement in a raid on his jungle headquarters in Aceh, a rebellious province on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, the military announced today.
     The death of the commander, Tengku Abdullah Syafei, in a firefight with the Indonesian soldiers on Tuesday is expected to be cited by the army as an important victory, coming fast on the order by President Megawati Sukarnoputri to take bolder measures to stamp out Aceh's 25-year-old independence movement. 
 But the increasingly violent fighting in the province, where an estimated 1,500 people were killed last year, has alienated ordinary Acehnese from the Indonesian armed forces. A study last year by the nonpartisan International Crisis Group reported that if the Acehnese were asked to choose between autonomy from the central government and outright independence, they would choose independence. 
According to accounts by the Indonesian military today, Mr. Syafei, 46, was shot in the thigh and chest Tuesday morning during a 30-minute battle with soldiers in Pidie about 80 miles east of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. His body and that of one of his wives, Aisyah Umar, were identified by relatives at a hospital on Wednesday afternoon, the accounts said.
A spokesman for the liberation movement, commonly known by its Indonesian acronym, GAM, confirmed that Mr. Syafei had been killed. Other members of the movement vowed that his death would inspire Acehnese to join its armed wing, which was run by Mr. Syafei.
The movement is considered to hold sway over large areas of Aceh's territory, which contain much of Indonesia's oil and natural gas exports. ExxonMobil, which runs oil fields in Aceh, had to close operations last year because of the unrest, and only recently resumed.
The Indonesian military has been accused of serious human rights abuses in quashing the rebels. The Bush administration, like its predecessors, has opposed the breakup of Indonesia and has discouraged independence movements in Aceh and in the eastern most area of Irian Jaya. But late last year, the United States Embassy here released a statement urging Mrs. Megawati's government to embrace the people of Aceh by protecting their human rights.
The statement was interpreted as an effort to warn the Indonesian military that it would be difficult for the Bush administration to persuade Congress to provide money for training for the army if human rights abuses continued in Aceh.
The military wing of the liberation movement has been shrouded in mystery. Mr. Syafei was known as a charismatic figure but he rarely granted interviews and was hardly ever seen. His troops are said to number between 15,000 and 27,000, but only a few thousand are said to have modern firearms.
In an effort to quell the violence, the prior Indonesian president, Abdurrahman Wahid, offered broad autonomy to Aceh, saying this would alleviate the political and economic exploitation of the province by the central government. But the gesture was interpreted in Aceh as halfhearted. Peace talks broke down and the fighting increased. 
The issue of Islam versus Christianity, which is at the center of other conflicts in Indonesia, has not played a major role in Aceh. The province embraced Islam in the 16th century and has practiced a conservative brand of the religion ever since.      




January 24, 2002 Thursday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: PACIFIC BATTLEFRONT; 
Opposition to U.S. Forces Is Fading in the Philippines

 
A government split was averted today when the vice president, long an opponent of the American military presence here, endorsed the impending arrival of American soldiers who will advise Filipino troops battling armed Muslims in the southern Philippines.
     In general, protests over the American military's plans have seemed to gradually fade this week. In this city of 600,000, which will serve as the staging area for the American soldiers, the Muslim Students' Association called a protest rally today. The number of protesters peaked at six.  
 In Manila, Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr. resisted intense lobbying from leaders of nationalist groups and backed President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in accepting the troops.
Opposition to the arrival of some 660 American soldiers over the next six months has stirred memories of almost a century of American military presence in the Philippines. In 1991, after the overthrow of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the country's Senate voted not to allow the Americans to remain, and the military bases were closed.
Mr. Guingona, who is also foreign secretary in Mrs. Arroyo's cabinet, was among those who voted against the American bases a decade ago. So it was significant when he said today that he accepted a Justice Department position that the Philippine president had "valid authority" to proceed with the American deployment.
"Regardless of any feelings that I have, we have to respect the official stand of the Department of Justice," Mr. Guingona, a former justice secretary, said after an emergency National Security Council meeting. Government Senate leaders said after the meeting that there was an emerging bipartisan consensus. The minority leader, Aquilino Pimentel Jr., said some senators still had qualms about the American military presence, "although, in general we support it." The Senate was to begin a scheduled hearing Thursday on the military training. 
In Manila's main newspapers, meanwhile, editorial comment on the arrival of the Americans has waned. The Philippine Daily Inquirer, an influential English language newspaper, instead published front-page photographs of the two American missionaries, Martin and Gracia Burnham, who were kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf, the rebel group that the Americans will help to battle.
Although the press here has covered this and other Abu Sayyaf kidnapping cases closely, these images were particularly stark. Compared to a photograph taken before the couple was kidnapped last May, this picture showed a gaunt and tense Mr. Burnham, while Mrs. Burnham, draped in a Muslim head covering, was tearful.
The photographs were taken from a television report made last month by Arlyn de la Cruz, a Manila-based reporter. Parts of her interview were broadcast Monday night in the United States by "48 Hours," a CBS News program. After a prearranged meeting, the reporter was led to where the hostages are being held on Basilan Island, about 25 miles west of here.
The Burnhams told Ms. de la Cruz that they had survived 12 firefights. "Our opportunity for escape is nil," Mrs. Burnham said.
"It's very difficult when you're lying on the ground and you drop and you run and you drop," Mrs. Burnham said. "And bullets are whizzing past your head. And we always look at each other and I tell Martin: 'I love you. I want you to know it before I die.' " 
Last July, a third American hostage, Guillermo Sobero, was beheaded by the group. Several other hostages were released after ransoms were paid. The group is currently thought to number around 500 gunmen, and the Philippine Army says that only 80 remain in the mountainous area of Basilan. 
Some American officials are worried that Abu Sayyaf has links to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Five Islamic extremists have been arrested this month and a ton of explosives found. 
With the Americans scheduled to start advising Filipino troops in early February, the Philippine Army has mounted an intensive campaign on Basilan, hoping to win credit for finding the two missionaries and a third hostage, a Filipino Christian nurse.
Today, in the first fighting in more than a month, two rebels were killed and one soldier was wounded in a firefight involving 140 soldiers and an estimated 40 rebels. Gen. Roy Cimatu, the Philippine Army officer in charge of the operation has estimated that there are only 80 Abu Sayyaf guerrillas left on the island.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Japan's NHK television that the United States is sending "American trainers to work alongside the Philippine Army and to see if we can help them do a better job of dealing with their problem."
"We are missing two citizens at the moment, and we want to get our citizens back," Secretary Powell said. --------------------

Indonesia Defends Antiterror Effort
(By )
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan. 23 -- Indonesia's chief security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said today that his country was working effectively to combat terrorism and that the world would soon learn about "concrete results" of the effort.
His comments came after Singapore and Malaysia called on Indonesia to arrest a Muslim cleric, Abu Bakar Baasyir, who they said heads a clandestine organization, Jemaah Islamiah, or the Islamic Group. Officials said the organization was associated with Al Qaeda. Singapore recently arrested 13 members of the group on charges of plotting to blow up the United States Embassy there.
Mr. Baasyir, who is from central Java, has been summoned by the police in Jakarta for questioning on Thursday. At a news conference today, he denied having any connection to Al Qaeda.




 



January 24, 2002 Thursday  




 Indonesia: 'Unity in Diversity'

 
 The Post's story line on Indonesia appears to be that it is a nation on the edge of violent religious extremism [front page, Jan. 11].  
But the Islamic community in Indonesia is, on the whole, remarkably tolerant.  
Islam in Indonesia is practiced in an exceedingly complex cultural and social context. Indonesian Muslims have pre-Islamic ethnic identities, and many of the most dearly held cultural traditions have religious origins that predate the arrival of Islam.  
 The national motto is "Unity in Diversity." Indonesia is a nation of 336 ethnic groups that are mostly Islamic, but there are also Christians, Buddhists and Hindus.  
 More than 50 million Indonesians belong to two centrist indigenous Muslim associations, Nadhlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah. Both groups recently declared their solidarity in the fight against extremism -- a development that went unreported in The Post.  
 Indonesia faces many challenges. At the least, it deserves a balanced portrayal of its society. 
 WALTER LOHMAN 
 Director 
 US-Indonesia Business Committee 
US-ASEAN Business Council 
 Washington 




  
 

January 23, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN TERROR; 
Qaeda Moving Into Indonesia, Officials Fear

 
For the last two years, Osama bin Laden has been working to establish a beachhead here in the world's most-populous Muslim nation, say American and Asian officials. Members of his organization Al Qaeda have slipped in and out of the archipelago, bringing millions of dollars in cash for radical Islamic organizations, recruiting members, and providing military training, those officials say.
     As the Bush administration pushes its war on terror beyond Afghanistan, Southeast Asia has become a new focus, a place where a senior Pentagon official said the United States was looking for "bad guys to chase." Of all the countries in the region, Indonesia is the most worrisome for Washington, yet it is the place where the United States has the least clout. 
 One of the operatives in Indonesia, a Pakistani, was deported 10 days ago by Indonesian authorities to Egypt, where he is wanted for immigration violations and is also being questioned by American law enforcement officials, a senior Bush administration official said. The man, Hafiz Mohammed Sasa Iqbal, has been linked by American intelligence to the attempt by the so-called shoe bomber to blow up the American Airlines jet from Paris to Miami. 
In addition, a Qaeda group carried out surveillance of the American Embassy here, in late 2000, and last summer a group came from Yemen to blow up the embassy in downtown Jakarta, a senior American official said.
The men fled before they could be arrested, either because of inept work by the authorities, or possibly because they were tipped off by powerful sympathizers within the Indonesian military, he said.
In the region, Singapore announced this month that it had arrested 13 men who had plotted to blow up the American Embassy there. Authorities said the men were members of a clandestine organization, Jemaah Islamiah, or Islamic Group, which they said was associated with Al Qaeda and had cells in Malaysia and Indonesia. It is a new group in the panoply of international terrorist organizations, and the Singapore police say that it is headed by an Indonesian cleric.
If a terrorist cell could operate in rigidly controlled Singapore, American officials say they shudder at what Al Qaeda may have achieved in the disarray of Indonesia, considered one of the most fertile havens in the world for international terrorists. It has a weak central government, rampant corruption, porous borders and 220 million people, most of them Muslims, stretched over a vast archipelago of tropical islands.
Yet, though neither an American enemy nor an ally, Indonesia has been less cooperative with the Bush administration's terror campaign than other countries in Asia, its leadership wary of arousing anti-American sentiment. Its military contains officers who support the hard-line Islamic cause, which is gaining ground among the country's traditionally moderate Muslims.
Indonesia has also declined to look for bank accounts of many of the organizations on the Bush administration's terrorist list, and it has not granted blanket overflight authority to American warplanes.
What it has done is issue varying public statements about the presence of Al Qaeda. After long denying any links between local groups and Al Qaeda, last month the director of the country's intelligence agency, Gen. Hendropriono, said Al Qaeda had set up training camps here. He made the public statement -- after consultation with President Megawati Sukarnoputri -- in an effort to persuade his government to become more active in the war on terrorism.
Several Islamic groups immediately attacked General Hendropriono for raising the temperature, and he swiftly backed down. "There is a lot of nervousness here that the opposition to a crackdown on Islamic groups could be 100 times more than in the Philippines" where President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo faces a parliamentary revolt for inviting American military trainers, a Western diplomat said.
On Monday, the Indonesian foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, said the government did not have any evidence that Muslim organizations here were part of an international terrorist network. 
The Bush administration is pushing the Indonesians to do far more. In essence, the administration wants the Indonesians to do what the Philippines have done: recognize the seriousness of the terrorist presence in their country and ask for help. But it is unlikely that the government here will agree to an American military presence on Indonesian soil.
While Indonesia does not want an American presence, it favors resuming training of Indonesian military officials in the United States. Congress has barred that because of human rights abuses by the Indonesian military. The Bush administration has, however, invited the Indonesian government to submit a list of equipment it needs for an antiterror campaign, like helicopters and communications gear. The Indonesians have not responded. "We sure would like to help them, but the key is what are they willing to do?" a Pentagon official said. 
American officials acknowledge they lack extensive information about a Qaeda network here, and how it might operate. One senior American official in Washington said the United States knew that two years ago Al Qaeda had established at least five cells, as well as a travel agency, several charitable foundations and training camps.
So far most of the focus has been on a group called Laskar Jihad, the most visible and violent of the radical Muslim organizations. Founded in early 2000 in Central Java, the group has an avowed agenda of wiping out Christians in the Moluccas and central Sulawesi, and establishing an Islamic state. It has a well-designed Web site, which an American official noted is similar to those of the Chechnyan rebels and several radical Islamic groups in the Middle East, one suggestion that Laskar Jihad receives help from outsiders.
The organization is headed by Jaffar Umar Thalib, a religious leader of Yemenese ancestry, who fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980's, when he met Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Thalib has said that Al Qaeda offered his organization money, but that he rejected it, and he has been critical of Mr. bin Laden.
But an American specialist on Indonesian Islam, Robert W. Hefner of Boston University, told the House International Relations Committee that in recent years members of Laskar Jihad have had contacts with Mr. bin Laden, and a few dozen Arab fighters are reported to have traveled to Indonesia to aid in the battle against Christians. Mr. Thalib's recent statements that he disagreed with Mr. bin Laden were probably revisionism, Mr. Hefner suggested.
Still, in recent interviews, several American and foreign officials said there was no hard evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Laskar Jihad, and it was not placed on the Bush administration's list of terrorist organizations. 
With the arrests in Singapore, attention has now turned to Jemaah Islamiah. According to Singaporean authorities, it is run by Abu Bakar Baasyir, an Indonesian cleric. Like Mr. Thalib, Mr. Baasyir has denied any links to Al Qaeda or Mr. bin Laden, but has said he supports their goals "because they are enemies of the United States."
Singapore and Malaysia have asked Indonesia to arrest Mr. Baasyir, but the Indonesian government has said it has no evidence that he has committed any crimes. Under pressure from its neighbors, however, the government called Mr. Baasyir in for a two-hour interrogation last weekend, and his lawyer said today that he had been summoned for another round on Thursday.
Despite its irritation with the Megawati government's reluctance to embrace the antiterror effort fully, the Bush administration has gone along with the Indonesian government's domestic need to distance itself from Washington. In the case of Mr. Iqbal, whom the Americans wanted to interrogate in the shoe bomber case, he was deported to Egypt rather than arrested to avoid having him interrogated by American officials here. The Indonesian government has said he was deported for visa violations, and it has declined to say publicly where he was sent. 
But the Indonesians did allow agents from the F.B.I. to visit this month to pursue the shoe bomber case. The agents were on the trail of the Indonesian sneakers in which Richard C. Reid is accused of stashing explosives for use against an airliner. But just as the United States has been frustrated with President Megawati, so were the F.B.I. agents thwarted. It turned out that the sneakers were a pirated version of the real thing, and that the Indonesian manufacturer was of little help in the quest for evidence.




  
 

January 23, 2002 Wednesday  
  



 NEWS SUMMARY 

 
     INTERNATIONAL   A3-7

22 Wounded in Jerusalem By Palestinian Gunman
A Palestinian policeman on leave who was dressed as an Israeli soldier opened fire in Jerusalem's crowded shopping district, wounding 22 people before the police killed him. Earlier, in the West Bank, Israeli forces killed four militants in Nablus.   A1

Aftermath of Attack in India
Senior Indian officials suggested that a Pakistan-based Islamic group was behind the attack on an American diplomatic outpost in Calcutta that left four Indian police officers dead. But the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, who is visiting New Delhi, said it was too early to say who was responsible and whether it really was a terror attack on American interests.   A6

China Downplays Bugging
A Chinese government spokesman offered a muted reaction to reports that a presidential jet outfitted in the United States had been crammed with listening devices, suggesting that China did not want to risk upsetting plans for the first state visit by President Bush to Beijing next month.   A5

Conviction in Ireland Bombing
An antiterrorism court in Dublin convicted Colm Murphy of aiding conspirators behind the bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland, in 1998 that killed 29 people. Sentencing is Friday.   A7

World Briefing   A7

NATION CHALLENGED   A8-9

Rumsfeld Rejects Criticism On Treatment of Prisoners
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended the government's handling of Afghan war prisoners in Cuba and dismissed criticism both from abroad and at home as breathless armchair hyperbole.   A1

Bin Laden Link to Indonesia
American and Asian officials say Osama bin Laden has been working to establish a beachhead in Indonesia, the world's most-populous Muslim nation.   A1

U.S. Targets in Balkans
A terror suspect given to Americans last week by Bosnia and Herzegovina is a European lieutenant in Al Qaeda who was ordered to mount attacks on American targets in the Balkans after Sept. 11, officials said.   A8

Weapons Plant Concerns
Some nuclear security experts are concerned that intruders can break into American weapons plants, assemble a nuclear bomb from materials there and explode it on the spot.   A9

The Bush administration will announce a plan today to dispose of surplus nuclear weapons fuel.   A15

American Captive Heads Home
John Walker, accused of fighting in Afghanistan against his own countrymen, is expected back on American soil today for eventual trial.   A9

Seeking an Accounting
Advocacy groups are increasing efforts to find out the number, names and locations of Muslim detainees being held in New Jersey.   A9

At least 58,000 men from Middle Eastern nations are in the United States illegally, nearly 10 times the number that the government seeks to deport, census data shows.   A10

NATIONAL   A10-16

Limits Placed on Holding Sex Offenders After Jail
The Supreme Court ruled, 7 to 2, that states may not keep sexual predators in civil custody beyond their criminal sentences unless a "serious difficulty in controlling behavior" is part of the psychiatric diagnoses.   A1

Talks on Patients' Rights
Senator Edward M. Kennedy and the White House are holding intensive discussions on patients' rights legislation, with the focus on the ability of patients to enforce their rights by suing health plans, insurance companies and employers who have promised various health benefits.   A12

New Case of Borrowed Phrases
The historian Doris Kearns Goodwin acknowledged that her 1987 book, "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys," contained sentences that closely echoed passages in three other authors' works. She said a settlement had been reached with one author.   A10

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-10

Port Authority Finishing Plan for a New Underground
Port Authority architects will soon begin showing developers and city and state officials a plan for rebuilding the transit network beneath Lower Manhattan that was severely damaged in the Sept. 11 attack.   A1

Pataki Budget Taps Reserves
Governor Pataki proposed an $88.6 billion budget that avoided deep cuts by spending reserve funds and coaxing more money from Washington.   B1

Bribery Charges for Judge
A State Supreme Court justice, Victor I. Barron, was arrested on charges that he solicited and took an $18,000 bribe from a lawyer.   B1

Twist in Stolen Painting Case
A postal worker in Kansas who opened a package that had been deemed undeliverable found what appeared to be a painting by Marc Chagall, valued at $1 million, that was stolen in Manhattan last June.   B1

Uproar at Exclusive Club
A proposal to add 15 guest bedrooms at the Century Association -- by adding a floor to its five-story Beaux-Arts building -- has provoked debate among members of one of Manhattan's most prestigious clubs.   B1

Neediest Cases   B7

FASHION   B10

EDUCATION   B9

   D1-7

OBITUARIES   A16-17

Peggy Lee
The singer whose sultry style defined pop jazz sophistication for more than half a century was 81.   A17

Stanley Marcus
One of the world's best-known retailers, the former president of Neiman Marcus was 96.   A16

BUSINESS DAY   C1-16

Bush Assails Enron
President Bush said he was outraged that Enron had misled employees and investors and he called for government action to force greater corporate disclosure of financial data.   A1

Enron won a legal exemption in the 1990's that allowed the kind of financial engineering that figured in its sharp rise and ultimate collapse.   A1

Kmart Files Chapter 11
The third-largest discount retailer sought bankruptcy protection.   C1

Netscape Sues Microsoft
Netscape, a pioneer in Web browsing software, said in an antitrust suit that its decline was a result of illegal tactics by Microsoft.   C1

Business Digest   C1

World Business   W1

ARTS   E1-10

DINING   F1-14

EDITORIAL   A18-19

Editorials: The governor's monsoon budget; silencing critics of the Kremlin; topics.

Columns: Thomas L. Friedman, Maureen Dowd.

Crossword   E6
TV Listings   E9
Public Lives   B2
Weather   D8






January 22, 2002, Tuesday



 INDONESIAN POLICE PREPARE TO CALL MUSLIM CLERIC IN FOR QUESTIONING



Indonesian police prepare to question Islamic cleric accused by Singapore and Malaysia of heading terror network with ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group (S)
  
 

January 20, 2002 Sunday  
  



 The Widows' Battalion 

 
Cut Intan is 23 years old, five-feet-nothing tall and -- like the 24 young women under her command -- trained to kill. She belongs to the elusive "widows' battalion" of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), a 15,000-strong rebel army fighting for independence in Aceh, a rugged, jungly province on the northernmost tip of Indonesia's vast archipelago. "We all feel a duty to fight for our land and for our ancestors," says Cut Intan.  
     Once a powerful sultanate and a center of Muslim learning, Aceh was colonized in the 1870's by the Dutch, who suffered thousands of casualties. The ferocity of Acehnese warriors -- women included -- was legendary. The wives of two Acehnese sultans led men into battle, and a female admiral once set sail with 500 warships and 40,000 men under her command. Today, GAM is vastly outgunned by the Indonesian military, which has razed countless Acehnese villages as collective punishment for rebel attacks. The fact that Acehnese women feel compelled to take up arms indicates how bitter the conflict has become. Most of the female guerrillas are in their early 20's. Like the great majority of Acehnese women, the widows wear head scarves that leave their faces exposed. (The women pictured here pulled their scarves over their noses to protect their identities.) 
 Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country, and its recently elected president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, quickly pledged support for the American-led war on terrorism. At the same time, however, her Indonesian troops were conducting their own campaign of terror in Aceh, massacring more than 30 plantation workers. A few days later, a mass grave containing 48 badly decomposed bodies was unearthed. While its people are devout Muslims -- Islam arrived in Aceh about a thousand years ago -- GAM insists that its struggle is political, not religious. Western analysts agree and suggest that Jakarta labels the Acehnese Islamic "fundamentalists" only to justify its brutal tactics. The generals who helped bring President Megawati to power consider it a sacred duty to keep Aceh part of Indonesia. With the cover provided by the war on terrorism, Indonesia is now widely expected to try to crush all resistance in its most turbulent province. 




   
 

January 20, 2002 Sunday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: ADVISERS; 
U.S. Mission Lifts Filipino Hopes for Peace

 
At a rural Philippine Army base here, beyond a grove of tamarind trees shading a turkey pen and a cow pasture, construction teams are working around the clock, preparing for a new step by the United States in the global war on terrorism.
     Racing a deadline of Jan. 25, workers are bolting together prefabricated steel dormitories, classrooms and a mess hall to house 160 of the American troops who are to come here. They are to train and advise Filipino soldiers in their war against Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, who hold an American couple hostage on the nearby island of Basilan. 
 The American military mission is the talk of this southern city of 500,000 people, about three-quarters Christian and one-quarter Muslim. Weary after a decade of political violence, most people interviewed today, Christians and Muslims alike, gave at least qualified support to the American trainers, who are expected to start work here the first week in February. 
"It's good the Americans are coming, they may bring peace to Basilan," said Abdullah Sadalani, pausing from an afternoon Koran discussion group at Al Monsour, a mosque built on concrete stilts in a wooden-stilt shantytown over the wash of the harbor here.
His older brother, Taha, who trades dried coconuts with people from Basilan, said: "They are scared of those Americans. Will these troops exercise human rights? When they pass by civilian areas, will they not harm people?"
Across town, Larna Llanes, the owner of a small stationery store, said a rash of terrorism-related kidnappings, bombings and bomb threats, now forced her to scurry home every day at 5 p.m., cutting two hours off her shop hours. As two sales assistants nodded in agreement, she said: "For me, I am in favor of the Americans. They are coming to prevent people like Abu Sayyaf from doing bad things."
Ever since the Spanish built Fort Pilar in 1635 to guard the harbor here against the "moros" or Muslims, Christian-Muslim coexistence has blown hot and cold in this part of the Philippines. This southernmost tip is closer geographically to Indonesia, the world's most populous majority-Muslim country, than to Manila, the Philippine capital, in a nation that is about 95 percent Christian.
While the moros were never defeated, the Spanish left a lasting Roman Catholic stamp on this city. Today, one can move from Baby Jesus Avenue to Holy Cross Market, to the neighborhoods of St. Barbara, St. Joseph and Holy Mary.
But only three blocks from the manicured campus of the Immaculate Conception Archdiocesan School, a new Islamic school stood by a street sign marked: "Welcome to the Taliban." Poorer than their Christian neighbors and apparently losing the demographic race, some Muslims turned to armed rebellion over the last 30 years. To some, the Abu Sayyaf is a politically vague, criminal kidnapping gang. To others, it is the most recent manifestation of a 400-year-old struggle for moro autonomy.
"Historically, the moro people have never been subjugated by foreign peoples," said Eddie Ladja, a professor of Islamic law, at Western Mindanao State University.
"We don't want American forces on our land because we may become targets," he said, voicing the only outright opposition heard in a dozen interviews here today. Although he said he rejected Abu Sayyaf as a kidnapping gang that violates Koranic principles, he asked, "If this is a military training exercise, why is this done in the battle zone?"
But the professor seemed to have failed to transmit his rejection to two of his favorite pupils, both from Jolo, an island that is 90 percent Muslim and has been plagued by violence.
"It's O.K. for me," Muammar Y. Arbason, a 24-year-old who was working on growing a goatee, the sign here of an observant Muslim man. Asked about the opinions of fellow students in the university's Institute of Asian and Islamic Studies, he said, "We want the Americans here."
Aldrin O. Usman, a 25-year-old goateed friend, agreed saying: "With this, maybe our relationship with the U.S. will bloom. We dream of the U.S. so much."
With SouthCom -- the Philippine Army's Southern Command -- playing the 21st-century role of Fort Pilar, workers in Zamboanga's dying tourism industry are openly rooting for the destruction of the Abu Sayyaf.
With a terrace of empty tables and neatly stacked chairs facing his aviary stocked with expensive tropical birds, Leo M. Alfaro, manager of the Alavar Restaurant, said of the American military aid: "I'm for it because it could wash down the Abu Sayyaf." 
Down by the beach this evening, visitors seated around a rattan-and-mangrove table at the Vista del Mar Beach Resort watched fishermen in outrigger canoes plying a placid sea as a sunset gradually turned the western sky pink. 
Only 15 miles across the strait, silhouettes of the dark mountains of Basilan loomed. 
Only 12 chairs were filled in a restaurant with a capacity of 500 guests.
"Tourism is very low," said Dionisio Timoteo, the 50-year-old manager. "We are very glad you Americans have come to help."



  



January 19, 2002 Saturday  



 AL-QAIDA LACKING KINDRED SPIRITS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA;
ISLAMISTS STICK TO LOCAL AIMS

 
The war on terrorism expanded its focus to Southeast Asia this week, as U.S. troops landed in the Philippines to help suppress Muslim rebels linked to Al-Qaida. Authorities in Singapore and Malaysia also arrested suspected terrorists connected to Osama bin Laden's terror network.
But analysts say it's premature to talk about a new front in the war on terror in this region, where extremist groups share some of bin Laden's radical Islamist views but not his global aims. Critics accuse Southeast Asian governments of using the American anti-terrorism campaign as a pretext to crack down on domestic unrest. 
"The regional Islamic movements have their own agendas," said Hadi Soesastro, executive director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Jakarta. "These groups might have links to Al-Qaida, but they have different objectives. They may want the money, but they're independent and don't want to be part of the network."
The arrival of about 660 U.S. soldiers in the southern Philippines was greeted with vociferous protest by the political opposition in Manila. Former Sen. Francisco Tatad issued a statement denouncing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for "making the Philippines a virtual extension of Afghanistan" and saying she was committing treason by asking a foreign military to solve a domestic problem.
Philippine officials denied that their country was the next locus of the global war on terrorism. "We are not the next, because we have long been fighting terrorists," Arroyo told reporters in Manila on Friday.
The central government in Manila has been fighting Muslim separatists in the southern Mindanao region for decades, but the smoldering guerrilla war took on new significance after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and clues pointed to a link between the rebel group Abu Sayyaf, based on the island of Basilan, and Al-Qaida. The group has kidnapped, and continues to hold, two American missionaries.
The potential for cross-border terrorist links between Islamists in Southeast Asia cannot be dismissed, Donald Emmerson, a scholar at Stanford University's Asia/Pacific Research Center, told a recent congressional committee hearing.
In December, Singapore arrested 13 alleged Islamist militants for plotting terror attacks on U.S. companies and other Westerners in the region. The suspects were linked to militant groups in Malaysia and Indonesia, authorities said.
Malaysian police earlier arrested 15 people on suspicion of being members of an extremist group with possible ties to the Sept. 11 attacks. Philippine police said Friday they were holding an Indonesian believed to be a member of Al-Qaida linked to the Singapore arrests.
The Philippines is an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country, and Singapore and Malaysia are stable secular states that run little risk of Islamist insurgency. But Indonesia is a vast country of 220 million mostly Muslim people with porous borders on its 17,500 islands, and has very little in the way of law and order outside Java and the major cities. "It's a potentially fertile breeding ground for international terrorists," Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has warned.
But there is no basis yet, Emmerson cautioned, to "open a second, Southeast Asian front in the war on terror. Nor should the presence of a few American advisers in the Philippines be construed as the first step in such a direction, at least not without a significant escalation in the scope of terrorist activity there."
Despite the controversy over American troops in the Philippines -- where the U.S. military was ejected from major bases a decade ago in a wave of anti-colonial passion -- Arroyo and other leaders in Southeast Asia have much to gain from cooperating with the United States as strategic allies in an anti-terrorism campaign, analysts say.
In Indonesia, home to more Muslims than any other nation, the fledgling democratic government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri hopes to gain stability with closer economic and diplomatic ties to Washington. Its military would like to restore its legitimacy and evade sanctions imposed by Congress in response to human rights violations it perpetrated in East Timor and in the rebellious provinces of Aceh and Irian Jaya.
Indonesia's intelligence chief, A.M. Hendropriono, was quick to jump on the global terror bandwagon and announced that he had evidence that one of Indonesia's most violent Islamist groups, Laskar Jihad, had links to Al-Qaida. Facing internal criticism from local experts, however, Hendropriono later retracted his claim, saying there was no hard evidence of the connection.
Laskar Jihad's commander, Jafar Umar Thalib, had indeed met bin Laden in the late 1980s at the time he was fighting with the mujahedeen against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. But Laskar Jihad has publicly repudiated -- even ridiculed -- the fugitive Saudi terrorist leader for his radical religious beliefs. "Osama bin Laden has a totally different vision than Laskar Jihad," said Ayip Syarifuddin, a portly man with a wispy beard dressed in a white gown and skullcap, who speaks for the group.
Laskar Jihad, which formed at the beginning of 2000 to join violent clashes between Christians and Muslims in the country's outlying islands, sees itself as a vigilante force to defend Muslim populations against alleged Christian attacks and enforce conservative Islamic values. "We have nothing to do with terrorism," Syarifuddin said. "If there was justice and law enforcement in Indonesia, Laskar Jihad wouldn't need to exist."
Rumors abound in Indonesia about foreign involvement in the activities of the radical Islamist groups that provoke and feed on sectarian violence in outlying islands. Intelligence sources have leaked information about foreigners helping operate a jihad training camp in the Poso area of central Sulawesi, where bloody sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims has claimed hundreds of lives.
Hamid Awaludin, a lawyer who helped negotiate a peace agreement in Posolast year, said both sides accused each other of having international connections in their protracted conflict. "I'm not going to touch this," he said. "There's no proof at all, just a lot of rumors."
Juwono Sudarsono, a political-science professor at the University of Indonesia who served briefly as Indonesia's fist civilian defense minister after the fall of the Suharto regime, said many of the radical Islamist groups are creatures of rogue factions in the military and police and serve as proxies in rural turf wars over the protection rackets that afflict many Indonesians in areas where law and order has broken down.
Sudarsono said that in the 1960s and 1970s it was common knowledge that Libyan agents were involved in a previous generation of radical Islamist groups in Indonesia.
A spirited theological debate between traditionalists and reformers has gone on for decades, but the Islamists never broke much ground in Indonesia, which prides itself on secularism and for the most part practices a moderate form of Islam, Sudarsono said. While Singaporean authorities may have a strong case for their terrorist suspects, the story in Indonesia is different, he said.
"Thus far, there is no credible evidence of foreign elements involved in Indonesia's jihadi groups," Sudarsono said. "About 50 Afghanis and Pakistanis and maybe Arabs have been observed in Java and in outlying islands, but there's no reason to believe there's an active link."





   


January 17, 2002, Thursday



 THE WAR IN THE PHILIPPINES

 
The 600 U.S. Special Forces advisers en route to the Philippines are about to drop into a strange little war.
The organization they'll help fight, a small but exceedingly nasty rebel group called Abu Sayyaf, has ties with al Qaeda - but also much in common with the Muslim Barbary pirates who terrorized the Southern Mediterranean nearly two centuries ago.
Until the U.S. Navy put an end to their activities. 
Abu Sayyaf first came to notice with a massacre of 50 civilians in 1995, but it specializes in kidnapping: It raised some $425 million in ransom from a single raid on a Malaysian diving resort last year.
And it's currently holding two Americans - having already beheaded a third, Guillermo Sobero, last year.
Founded in the early '90s, Abu Sayyaf is the smallest and most mysterious of several Muslim rebel groups based in the south of the Philippine archipelago.
The area was never fully colonized by Spain or America; its 350 small, jungle-covered and often lawless islands have a long tradition of piracy and rebellion.
To say nothing of strong cultural and ethnic links to nearby Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia.
At least one of Abu Sayyaf's founders trained in Afghanistan with the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law had contacts with the group when he lived in the Philippines in the mid '90s.
Manila can plainly use U.S. help: Despite the commitment of President Gloria Arroyo, its war against Abu Sayyaf has not gone well.
There have been allegations of government officials taking payoffs from the rebels, who (thanks to their kidnapping operations) are at least as well funded as the forces they face.
Only last June, a Philippine army force had some 200 of the 500 or so bandit-terrorists of Abu Sayyaf cornered in a hospital compound, but somehow allowed them to escape.
The United States needs to put some backbone into the campaign against Abu Sayyaf, partly because no group that kidnaps and murders Americans should go unpunished. And partly because the southern Philippines must not be allowed to become a post-Afghanistan refuge for the radical Islamicists of al Qaeda.
Hence Washington's dispatch of special operations troops.
We wish them good hunting.




   
  


January 17, 2002, Thursday



 BEWARE THE JIHAD IN SOUTHEAST ASIA


Commentary by Dana Dillon and Paolo Pasicolan expresses concern about potential for creation of radical Muslim state that would take in renegade regions of Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines, as envisioned by group Jemaah Islamia; recommends US encourage Southeast Asian governments to seek local solutions first but assure them of US help to plug security holes; map (M)


   
 

January 12, 2002 Saturday  
  



 Jihad in Indonesia 

 
To the Editor:
     "Jihad Seethes, and Grows, on Indonesian Island" (news article, Jan. 10) described the cycle of violence between Muslims and Christians on Sulawesi, but had few details on the role played by the Indonesian military. The military failed to intervene between the warring parties, and some elements of the military have fomented tensions by joining in the fighting and selling weapons to both factions.  
 With the Bush administration planning to resume some assistance to Indonesia as part of its antiterrorism efforts, it is important to again raise questions about the Indonesian military's legacy of human rights abuses and the role American weapons and training have played throughout Indonesia's history.

FRIDA BERRIGAN
New York, Jan. 10, 2002

The writer is a research associate at the World Policy Institute.





 

January 12, 2002 Saturday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: HUNTING TERRORISTS; 
Suspects in Singapore Are Linked to Al Qaeda and Plans for Anti-U.S. Attacks

 
Terrorist suspects arrested last month in Singapore were linked with Al Qaeda and planned bomb attacks against Western embassies, American naval vessels, American companies and a shuttle bus carrying American troops, the Singapore government said today.
     It said that the 13 suspects were members of a clandestine organization called the Islamic Group, and that 8 had received training in Afghanistan from Al Qaeda, the network led by Osama bin Laden. 
 "The plan was apparently developed and ready for activation," Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement. "Al Qaeda leaders showed interest in the plan, but for reasons not known, they did not subsequently pursue it." 
Those allegations, along with the arrests of 13 terrorism suspects last month in Malaysia, shift the focus of concern in the region to those two nations with significant Muslim populations. Evidence released by both governments in the last week suggests significant cooperation among radical groups in the region, as well as active links with Muslim terrorist groups elsewhere.
In a statement today, the United States Embassy in Singapore said it was confident of the government's ability to protect American citizens and interests there. "Singapore remains a safe place to live or do business," the embassy said.
About 6,000 multinational companies, many of them American, have regional offices in Singapore, and about 17,000 Americans live there.
Some of the evidence released today was said to have been gathered in Afghanistan as Al Qaeda operatives fled their homes and offices.
Singapore television broadcast a blurry videotape tonight that the government said had been found in Afghanistan and apparently showed possible targets in Singapore, accompanied by narration from one of the men in custody.
The tape showed boxes secured to bicycles as a man identified as Hashim bin Abas says that "these are the same boxes which we intend to use," apparently to hide explosives.
"It will not be suspicious to have a motorcycle or bicycle there," the narrator says, apparently referring to the route taken by a regular shuttle bus moving American troops from a naval base to a subway station.
In addition, the government said, the tape showed residential areas and recreational centers used by American troops and an officers' mess owned by the United States government.
In a news release, the Singapore government said the tape was discovered recently in the ruins of a house belonging to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It said that a list of more than 200 American companies in Singapore had also been found, and that three companies had been identified as potential targets, "apparently because the office-bearers were regarded as fairly prominent members of the American community in Singapore."
Other targets shown on the videotape appeared to include the British High Commission, the Israeli Embassy and the Australian High Commission, the government said.
A separate plan had been developed to bomb United States Navy vessels in a special "kill zone" along the northeastern shores of Singapore, the government said. A third plan targeted an air base in Singapore and American planes that use the base. One of the detained men, a technician with a government-owned company called Singapore Technologies Aerospace, was reported to have taken more than 50 pictures of the air base and aircraft and recorded information on its installations and movement of people.
Last Saturday the government announced that it had detained 15 suspected Islamic militants during December and recovered evidence that they had planned attacks on Western interests. It said material linked to Al Qaeda had been found in their homes and offices, along with fake passports and forged immigration stamps.
Two of those suspects, who apparently contributed money to front organizations but were not directly involved in the plots, have been released, the government said. It said it was holding the other 13 under the Internal Security Act, which allows detention without trial for up to two years.
The Islamic Group in Singapore was part of a network with cells in Malaysia and Indonesia, the region's most heavily Muslim nations, the government said.
"The Singapore network reports to a Malaysia-based leadership structure called a regional shura," the government said. It said foreigners visited in September and October to assist the Singaporean group.
Two of the foreigners, known by their code names, Sammy and Mike, told the cell that they needed 21 tons of ammonium nitrate to make truck bombs. The cell had four tons in Malaysia, and had made plans to purchase the remainder.
Sammy is believed to be linked to Al Qaeda, while Mike was described as a trainer and bomb-maker with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Philippine Muslim separatist group.
But the Singapore government said the Islamic Group had begun its activities well before the attacks on Sept. 11. It said that one cell had started surveying targets as early as 1997 and that the group's leader, Ibrahim Maiden, a 51-year-old condominium manager, had received military training in Afghanistan in 1993.
"Investigations are continuing," the government statement said. "Several suspect cell members have fled the country, and efforts are being made in cooperation with the authorities of neighboring countries to locate them."




 



January 11, 2002 Friday  




 Al Qaeda Feared To Be Lurking In Indonesia

 
 In August last year, U.S. intelligence agents learned that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network had obtained a highly detailed, hand-drawn map of the U.S. diplomatic compound here. 
 The discovery stoked immediate fears of a U.S. Embassy bombing akin to those in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. But it also provided one of the first indications that al Qaeda was focusing attention on Indonesia, the Southeast Asian country that is home to more Muslims than any other nation. 
 Since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, signs of al Qaeda activity in Indonesia have multiplied. U.S. and Indonesian intelligence officials say they believe that hundreds of foreigners who may be linked to al Qaeda and coming from as far away as Europe visited a secret training camp last year in the jungles of Sulawesi, an island in central Indonesia. 
 The leader of the country's largest and most-violent Muslim militia has acknowledged to police that he was offered financial backing by a bin Laden aide. And intelligence officials said they have identified links between bin Laden and a prominent Muslim cleric who heads a paramilitary group.  
 U.S. officials also have become increasingly concerned that some al Qaeda members may have established "sleeper cells" in Indonesia that could become operational now that many of the group's leaders in Afghanistan have been forced into hiding, captured or killed. 
 But despite such clues, U.S. and Indonesian officials said they still are struggling to ascertain the scope of al Qaeda's operations in Indonesia and the network's connections with indigenous extremist groups. "We know they're here," a senior Indonesian intelligence official said. "We just haven't found them." 
 The prospect of significant al Qaeda activity in Indonesia has prompted the Bush administration to put Indonesia on a short list of nations to focus on as the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism expands beyond Afghanistan. "Going after al Qaeda in Indonesia," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said recently, "is not something that should wait until after al Qaeda has been uprooted from Afghanistan." 
 In many ways, Indonesia is an easy place for terrorist groups to operate. Composed of more than 17,000 islands, it has some of the world's most porous borders. Law enforcement and banking regulations are lax. Guns and explosives are easy to purchase. 
 Indonesia also is home to several radical Muslim groups, which want the officially secular nation to adopt rigid Islamic laws. Although most Indonesians do not support the local militants, the strength of the groups has mushroomed in recent years, fueled in part by increasing poverty and a surging interest in fundamentalist Islamic theology. 
 The local groups "have created a very conducive host environment for foreign terrorists," a U.S. official said. "There is already an infrastructure here for them to plug into." 
 A sectarian conflict in the Moluccas islands, where for three years Muslim militants have been waging a jihad, or holy war, against Christian villagers, provides foreign trainees exposure to fighting. "Indonesia offers practical jihad experience you can't get in too many other places," a senior U.S. official said. 
 Indonesian police and military officials have publicly denied that foreign terrorist groups have set up training camps in the country. But privately, intelligence and government officials said they believe al Qaeda operatives ran a makeshift training facility on Sulawesi last year. The camp, officials said, was located in dense jungle near the port city of Poso, which has been riven by religious fighting. 
 The officials said the camp, a collection of ramshackle huts where recruits were taught how to use automatic weapons and build bombs, was operated by al Qaeda members with the assistance of local Muslim militants. Unlike other paramilitary training facilities in Indonesia, a country where political groups often have armed wings, this camp was a well-kept secret, officials said. 
 "This one was different," one official said. "It was by foreigners, for foreigners." 
 Indonesian intelligence officials estimated that over the past year several hundred people, many of them from Europe, Pakistan and the Middle East, entered the country posing as aid workers to reach the camp. 
 The officials said that in August and October, police officers briefly detained several non-Indonesians traveling in the Poso area, but they were released after showing local officials a letter from a Muslim charity based in southern Sulawesi stating they were going to Poso to help rebuild mosques. 
 A senior Indonesian intelligence official said investigators subsequently discovered that the charity, known as the Crisis Prevention Committee, had "connections to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda." Police have concluded the foreigners were probably going to or from the camp when they were detained. 
 The senior official said intelligence agents began looking for the camp after authorities in Spain passed along evidence that had been obtained in the investigation of eight suspected al Qaeda members arrested in November. The evidence indicated that hundreds of foreign fighters had traveled to the Poso area for training last year. 
 A Spanish court indictment identified a 34-year-old Indonesian man, Parlindungan Siregar, who studied aeronautical engineering in Spain in the 1990s, as a key organizer of the training missions. Spanish authorities have alleged that he is affiliated with the Laskar Jihad, the Muslim militia leading the fight in the Moluccas and in Poso to evict Christians and implement Islamic law. 
 The indictment called Siregar, whose phone number was found in address books belonging to two of the eight suspects, a "leader of one of the camps in that country in service to Osama bin Laden." 
 The senior Indonesian intelligence official said agents have not yet found Siregar or others allegedly involved in conducting the training, but they have identified the location of the camp, which they said is no longer operational. "They probably closed it down after the arrests in Spain," the official said. "We're keeping a watch on it. If they come back, we will go in and arrest them." 
 A Laskar spokesman said the group has not trained non-Indonesian fighters, but he acknowledged that some "foreign volunteers have helped with humanitarian work." 
 The leader of the Laskar Jihad, Jaffar Umar Thalib, has denied that his organization has links to al Qaeda. 
 Jaffar has told police and local journalists that he met bin Laden in Pakistan in 1987 as they both were preparing to enter Afghanistan to fight against invading Soviet forces. Jaffar said he was quickly turned off by bin Laden's wealth and what he thought was bin Laden's poor grasp of Islam. Jaffar said he opposes bin Laden's use of suicide bombers. 
 In July, bin Laden sent an emissary to the Moluccas to offer financial support to the Laskar Jihad and to urge the group to join the al Qaeda network, Jaffar said. He said he refused. 
 The envoy, Jaffar said, was accompanied by members of another group, Laskar Mujaheddin, which also is attacking Christian villagers in the Moluccas and on Sulawesi. Indonesian intelligence officials said the leader of the Laskar Mujaheddin, a prominent Muslim cleric named Abubakar Baasyir, has long-standing ties to bin Laden. 
 Officials said he sent a letter to dozens of hard-line Muslim clerics in Indonesia and Malaysia in 1998, after the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, saying that bin Laden wanted them "to prepare for a jihad against Americans." The letter concluded by offering the clerics a chance to meet bin Laden "through the safest way." 
 Baasyir denies he has connections to bin Laden, but he does not condemn the tactics the Saudi-born fugitive employs. "America has declared war on Islam," he said during an interview at a large religious school that he runs on the main Indonesian island of Java. "Planting bombs, suicide attacks, that's part of war." 
 U.S. and Indonesian officials said they suspect al Qaeda is associated with both Laskar Jihad and Laskar Mujaheddin, but they lack evidence to make a conclusive link. 
 A U.S. official said it remains unclear whether significant numbers of al Qaeda operatives remain in Indonesia. "We know they have come and gone, and it seems clear they'll be back again," the official said. "But are they here now? Have they set up sleeper cells here? We still are not sure." 
 Discovery of the hand-drawn map of the U.S. diplomatic compound was confirmed by U.S. officials, who declined to give a full account of the incident, citing national security concerns. After the map was found, already-tight security at the embassy was increased and U.S. counterterrorism experts mounted an intense investigation into who might be planning an attack, but their efforts yielded no definitive suspects, officials said. 
 The map's existence added to fears for the compound's security in October, after the United States began its bombing campaign in Afghanistan. Thousands of protesters besieged the embassy, causing the State Department to evacuate nonessential diplomatic personnel from the country. 
 "The map really freaked people out," said a U.S. official. "It made people recognize, for the first time, that al Qaeda was serious about Indonesia." 
 The lack of firm intelligence about al Qaeda is one of the key challenges facing the United States as it attempts to broaden its campaign against terrorism. 
 For years, Western spy agencies paid little attention to Indonesia as a potential base for international terrorists. The country's intelligence services also failed to collect information, because they were distracted by separatist rebellions and almost four years of political turmoil in the capital, Jakarta. 
 Indonesia's economic woes hampered what little intelligence-gathering was attempted. The government cannot afford equipment that is standard in many countries, including devices to tap mobile phones, the senior Indonesian intelligence official said. "How can we pursue these guys if we can't even listen to their phone calls?" the official said. 
 Even if details of al Qaeda's operations in Indonesia become clearer, pursuing terrorists in this conflict-racked country of 220 million could prove vexing. 
 Unlike Somalia or Iraq, Indonesia has a friendly relationship with the United States, making unilateral military action by Washington highly unlikely. Cooperating with local forces, as the United States is doing in the Philippines, also is doubtful because of a U.S. law, passed in the wake of the Indonesian army's human-rights abuses in East Timor, that prevents military assistance to Indonesia. 
 U.S. military officials have said the law should be rescinded in the interest of the war on terrorism. Efforts to overturn the amendment failed last month, but the Pentagon did win the right to provide anti-terrorist training to the Indonesian military this year. 
 U.S. officials also have quietly expanded the scope of intelligence about terrorist-related issues that is shared with Indonesia, with the hope that it might spur police and military leaders to take more aggressive steps to crack down on extremist groups. But the effort has received a mixed reception. 
 Although some officials in Jakarta want to rein in such groups as Laskar Jihad, many others are reluctant, fearing a crackdown could spark retaliation by the groups and alienate conservative Muslim political parties that are part of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's ruling coalition. 
 "Our American friends need to understand that we are in a very difficult position," the senior Indonesian intelligence official said. "These groups are our enemy. They are hurting us and we want to hurt them back. But we need to take careful steps. If we approach it the wrong way, our government can be toppled." 




  
 

January 10, 2002 Thursday  
  



 Jihad Seethes, and Grows, on Indonesian Island 

 
This lovely seaside town is the sort of place the Bush administration is talking about when it warns of places that could nurture new terrorist cells that could be possible targets of United States action.
     For the past three years, Muslims and Christians -- once friendly neighbors who shared their religious holidays -- have been massacring, torturing and beheading one another in the most recent and worrying of Indonesia's communal conflicts. 
 Among the fighters is Noko, a sweet-faced Muslim boy of 20 with floppy black hair, who is an enthusiastic front-line soldier. He recalled the recent destruction of eight Christian villages. "We did it to restore our dignity after being oppressed and toyed with," he said. 
In battle, he dresses for death and heaven in a white Arab-style robe, wielding a cutlass and heavy homemade pistol. His own troops invoke Allah; the enemy, he says, shouts "Hallelujah."
In this district of Poso, on Sulawesi island, more than 10,000 buildings have been destroyed. About 80,000 people have been forced to flee. An estimated 500 or more people have been killed.
The Muslim side has been reinforced by a contingent of perhaps 500 members of a group called Laskar Jihad, holy warriors from Indonesia's main island, Java, who are present also in the country's other intractable communal war, in the Maluki islands.
The local wars are a sign of the turbulence and lawlessness that have swept Indonesia since Suharto, the former strongman, was deposed in 1998. A weak and divided central government, a restive and demoralized military, a welter of overlapping power struggles and a rise in militant Islam have made Indonesia, a largely Muslim nation of 210 million, a more dangerous place than ever.
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, the context has suddenly broadened as the United States seeks to root out a worldwide terror network and to neutralize sites of conflict like this one that could serve as refuges and staging grounds for terrorists.
 "We see a potential for Muslim extremists and Muslim terrorists to link up with those Muslim groups in Indonesia and find a little corner for themselves in a country that is otherwise quite unfriendly to terrorism," the deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, said in an interview on Monday.
 Of Sulawesi island, he added, "The concern is that there isn't enough military to protect the local population or to create the kind of stable conditions that keep terrorism down." 
A local representative of Laskar Jihad named Roni described his group's mission here as threefold: social work, Muslim education and defense -- by which he meant battle.
Indeed, Laskar Jihad is a full-service religious army, providing medicine, food and help to refugees, teaching the Koran and giving focus and purpose to the Muslim side.
"I think for Muslims the desire to be peaceful is equal with their desire to go to war," said Yahya Almari, an influential Muslim cleric who has served as a peace negotiator. "In Islam, jihad on the peaceful side is to restrain yourself and not create enemies. But in a war zone, jihad means to take up arms and kill your enemies."
Mr. Roni denied widespread reports that Laskar Jihad has military training camps here, although he said it does conduct physical training including calisthenics.
The unchecked fighting here in Poso, and the growing presence of Laskar Jihad, show how difficult such conflicts are to manage, even when they are blanketed, as here, by a huge deployment of national police and soldiers.
As the early morning sun grows hot in this small city, columns of bare-chested police officers jog down the nearly empty main street, chanting in cadence. Gutted buildings and shuttered shops surround them. In the jungles beyond, the fighting continues.
Since it first broke out following a drunken fight in the marketplace on Christmas Eve, 1998, the violence has continued to flare, subside, then flare again despite five peace agreements, the latest of them in December.
Almost all the noncombatants here, both Muslims and Christians, nonetheless assert that this is more complex than a religious war.
It is a local power struggle with clear demographic roots, they say, in which religious fervor has been turned into a weapon of war. And once that fervor has been unleashed -- once poorly educated young men like Mr. Noko are ready to die for their faith -- it becomes a conflict that could continue for years.
"In Suharto's time, people who act like this would be arrested right away and matters resolved," said S. Pelima, a Christian community leader who has acted as a peace negotiator. "Now we are in a transitional period from concentrated power to autonomy, and there is not good rule from the center. So a fight can grow into a brawl and a brawl can grow into a massacre."
At the heart of the war is a demographic shift in which Muslim settlers from southern Sulawesi and Java changed the balance in Poso and its surrounding villages, which had been largely Christian.
In the newly open politics that followed the tight control of Mr. Suharto, Muslims were elected to fill the top three political positions here, replacing Christians. Disenfranchisement led to resentment and then violence.
As in other conflicts around the country, broad national themes are played out in complex, specific local dynamics.
The recent history of Poso is the history of the "three incidents," each about a year apart and interspersed with what one police captain called "bubbles" of violence that have ranged from the slaying of nine Muslims to the razing, just last month, of eight Christian villages.
Both Christians and Muslims recount the same two instances of provocation, each of which led to a new massacre. In one, a Muslim man slashed himself and said he was attacked by Christians. In the other, a body was dumped in a Muslim area and Christian attackers were blamed for the killing.
Although both sides suspect provocateurs, with either a local or national agenda, no one seems to be able to say who is stoking the conflict.
The government's intelligence chief, A. M. Hendropriyono, recently said foreign terrorists had engineered the clashes here, but he offered no evidence and his statement was largely dismissed by analysts and other government figures.
Local officials and fighters on both sides also dispute a widespread view that Laskar Jihad is leading the Muslim side of the conflict. Mr. Noko, the young Muslim fighter, seemed affronted at the suggestion that outsiders were leading the attacks.
"They do fight when they are needed," he said. "But the initiative is our own local initiative." 
Local fighters could easily be mistaken for Laskar Jihad, he said, in their Arab-style outfits -- white robes by day, black by night.
"I dress like this because according to Muslim teachings, we want to be prepared to die a holy death," he said. Then he smiled an engaging smile. "I think I have already saved up many good deeds."
In the Christian enclave of Tentena, Rhenaldi Damanik, a Protestant pastor and fighter, said the Christians had identified at least three training camps run by Laskar Jihad, although it was not clear what kind of training might go on there.
At the same time, some Muslim leaders say the Christians are running their own training camps.
One thing on which both sides seem to be able to agree: the other side started it.
"I want to emphasize that we Muslims are the ones who have been attacked," said Adnan Arsal, 53, a Muslim community leader in Poso who said he keeps an arsenal at home and always joins the battles "to encourage the young ones."
On the other side of town, Ronald Hanny Ticoalu, a Pentecostal pastor, echoed his words as chickens pecked and clucked around his feet. "Christians never attack first," he asserted. "They only fight in self defense."
Today, Poso presents a demoralizing landscape of hatred and destruction in which both sides have retreated into armed and terrified enclaves.
Country roads lined with gently bending palm trees are scenes of devastation, mile after mile of burned and empty villages marked only by crumbling walls and gutted churches and mosques.
The town of Poso itself, once home to about 40,000 people, is now a place of fear and furtiveness where only about 5,000 people remain, along with an occupying force of hundreds of heavily armed police.
Christian refugees have fled mostly to the nearby town of Tentena. Muslims have fled as far away as Palu, the mostly Muslim provincial capital, where bombs exploded recently at three churches.
The countryside presents a chronology of the destruction. Lush foliage already covers the houses that were burned in the early attacks. In the Christian villages that were most recently attacked, only dogs wander among the charred and broken walls.
The hatred is explicit here. As the houses burned, attackers seized chunks of charcoal and left their mark.
"God has no son. Jesus could not help you," they wrote.
"Until doomsday, Muslims will not make peace with Christians."
"Death to all Christians."
And, tauntingly, "See you in Tentena."




January 8, 2002 Tuesday 
  
 



 Turkey, Well Along Road to Secularism, Fears Detour to Islamism 

 
Nowhere does the war against Islamic extremism have more resonance than in Turkey: for eight decades, the country has used draconian laws and the threat of force to crush pro-Islamic politicians and protect secular ideals.
     But with Turkey haunted by economic stagnation, scandals and weak leadership, the generals, who wield the real power, have had their hands full containing the popularity of a former Istanbul mayor who is trying to shed his fundamentalist background and wrap himself in a cloak of moderation. 
 The government's problems are giving the ex-mayor, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a chance at a national electoral victory in 2004 that no aggressively Islamic politician has ever achieved.
Mr. Erdogan was a rising star in Turkey's Islamic political movement as Istanbul's mayor in the 1990's; even critics acknowledge that he cleaned up the streets, improved public services and reduced the endemic corruption. 
But his insistence that religion play a greater role in political life collided with secular Turkey's unbending prohibition against mixing religion and politics. He was forced out of office and jailed for publicly reciting a poem that was deemed seditious.
Today Mr. Erdogan (pronounced ehr-doh-han) is making a strong comeback at the helm of a new party, aided by public disenchantment with the three-party governing coalition and its inability to halt inflation and curb rising unemployment. 
"The world is a different place and I am a different person," Mr. Erdogan, 47, said in an interview at the sleek headquarters of his Justice and Development Party in Ankara. "Turkey should become a model for the Muslim world in terms of science, lifestyle, international relations and economics."

The Nation
The Tug of War Between Old and New
Mr. Erdogan's popularity suggests that he could become the next prime minister, but the prospect of an Islamic politician, however reformed, leading Turkey sends shudders through secular-minded Turks and Western allies, particularly the United States. 
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Turkey gained new importance to the coalition against Osama bin Laden, and for all its flaws on human rights, Turkey is a stable synthesis of democracy and Islam in a volatile Islamic world. Many regard it as a model for moderate Muslims and a counterweight to the angry voices of radicals.
With Muslims worldwide rejecting the secular values of the United States and Europe, Turkey reflects the faith's less ferocious and more tolerant face. Even its most ardent religious leaders and Islamic-oriented politicians do not advocate violence or oppressive orthodoxy.
On a practical level, Turkey, the only predominantly Muslim member of NATO and an ally of Israel, is also an essential American friend: It granted access to its airspace and provided bases to American warplanes, and has promised to send troops to Afghanistan. If the United States attacks neighboring Iraq, Turkey will be even more vital, and the inherent tensions between its religion and its Western orientation will become more acute.
To many, Mr. Erdogan represents a threat to the rigid safeguards that have held religion in check and maintained Turkey's status as the most moderate and Western-oriented Muslim country.
But Mr. Erdogan is trying to shift his image. The religious rhetoric has been scrubbed away and his old opposition to NATO and the European Union set aside. That way he hopes to avoid any retribution by the generals, who could come back at him if he proves too religious for them. Elections are set for 2004; pollsters say his party would win handily if the vote was held now.
The country he may lead is complex. Western ways, embodied by television, films and tourism, are widely embraced. In Istanbul, short skirts are as common as religious head scarves, and alcohol flows freely.
"Turkey is not Iran," Meltem Eke, a stylish woman in her 30's, said at her bagel shop in the upscale Nisantasi district. "I am from a neighborhood that values the woman no less than the man."
But Turkey is at once modern and backward, democratic and repressive. The differences are sharp between the urban bustle and the sense that time stands still in the villages. There is a divide between the secular generals and business leaders, and those like Mr. Erdogan, who would like to see more religion in the mix of governing.
Within those contradictions lies a tension that is always just below the surface and always the object of careful monitoring by the generals. A further tightening of measures to control Islamic movements and businesses is now under review by the National Security Council.

The History
From Broad Tolerance To Rigid Secularism
Turkey's singular position among Muslim nations is rooted in history. 
The Ottoman sultans brought Islam to what is now Turkey by defeating the Byzantine emperor Constantine XI in 1453. In time, the Ottomans ruled an empire stretching from southern Europe to northern Africa and the Arabian peninsula.
The sultans were simultaneously political leaders and supreme rulers of the Muslim world. Rather than a strict religious government, however, they kept state and religion separate and demonstrated tolerance for other religions and customs.
"From the Ottoman period to today, our experience and traditions have made Turkish Islam more open to secular development than was the case in other Islamic societies," the foreign minister, Ismail Cem, said in an interview.
After the Ottoman empire shriveled in the late 19th and early 20th century, the sultans were followed by Ataturk, the general and determined secularist who founded the Turkish republic in 1923. For Ataturk, religion was the greatest threat to his dream of a European republic at the gateway to Asia.
Ataturk's insistence on secularism was ruthless. Control over education was taken away from religious leaders, Islamic courts were closed, equal rights for women were championed. The Islamic calendar was scrapped in favor of the Gregorian calendar used in the West; Arabic script was replaced by the Roman alphabet. 
Those who opposed Ataturk were hanged. 
His methods persist in moderated form. When the country's first pro-Islamic prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, was deemed to have detoured too far from the secular path in 1997, generals directed his ouster.
Turkey practices its own brand of secularism: The government builds the mosques, employs those who preach in them and dictates sermons.
Still, political figures and parties have risen beneath an Islamic banner to challenge the militant secularism. Each time, they have fallen victim to laws that prohibit advocating alternatives to the secular state.

The Heartland
Exporting Rebellion To the Uneasy Cities
The resentments on which Mr. Erdogan builds his support are most evident in the heartland, where religious fervor lingers, polygamy is still practiced and illiteracy is high among women because families often do not send girls to school.
Konya is one of Anatolia's oldest cities, the place where Jalaluddin Rumi, the founder of the Islamic Sufi sect of Whirling Dervishes, gathered his disciples in the 13th century to preach his mystical message. His tomb rests inside the domed Mevlana Tekke, and every day dozens of women, their covered heads bowed, pray there.
But Konya is also a bustling city of nearly a million, with high-rise buildings and large agriculture businesses, many financed by devout bankers who observe the Koran's prohibition on interest.
"Traditions have been preserved here because there has not been much internal migration," said Osman Okka, an economics professor at Selcuk University in Konya. "Still, the Turkish people have lost a lot of their religious identity. We know God. We know the prophet. We know Ramadan. But we are illiterate beyond that because of the secular policies of the state." 
But a quiet rebellion against secularism has been brewing among business executives in places like Konya and their counterparts who migrated to Istanbul and other cities to form a new urban middle class during the past 15 years.
Its leader is Ali Bayramoglu, an industrialist who founded the Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association to fight what he sees as government-backed discrimination against devout Muslims.
"We don't categorize a government as Islamic or secular," he said in the Istanbul office of the group, which represents 2,200 business owners and 10,000 businesses nationwide. "We have the idea that if we have a government with just and equal attitudes, that would be enough."
Mr. Erdogan wants to transform this disenchantment into a political mandate, but he must broaden his appeal beyond the devout, who have never mustered the political muscle to elect a national government. As a result, his speeches emphasize the economic failures and corruption of the current governing parties.
The message strikes home among the vast urban poor, particularly young men. Many arrived from rural areas during the past 20 years, bringing conservative values but few skills and little education.
One recent afternoon, several young men lounged outside a teahouse in Kasimpasa, a rough Istanbul neighborhood. None had a job, none supported the government.
"Maybe it's time for someone like Erdogan to shake things up," said Mehmet Osman, 22, who has never worked full time. "He knows what life is like for us."

The Islamist
A New Message Draws Skepticism
Mr. Erdogan grew up in Kasimpasa, selling lemonade and sesame bagels on the street to help support his family, which had migrated from the Black Sea region. He was so pious at a school for preachers that friends referred to him as hodja, or spiritual leader. He joined the Islamic political movement at 15 and got a degree in management at Marmara University.
He was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994 on the ticket of the Islamic-oriented Welfare Party. Along with improving life in the city, Mr. Erdogan followed the tenets of political Islam. He banned alcohol in restaurants owned by the municipality, opposed the country's bid to join the European Union and advocated withdrawal from NATO. 
His language was blunt. In a 1995 speech, he said: "You cannot be secular and a Muslim at the same time. The world's 1.5 billion Muslims are waiting for the Turkish people to rise up. We will rise up. With Allah's permission, the rebellion will start."
Two years later, in an speech in Siirt, Mr. Erdogan recited a poem that included the line, "The mosques are our barracks, the minarets our bayonets, the domes our helmets and the believers soldiers."
That kind of talk gives the generals chills. Mr. Erdogan was arrested and convicted of "inciting public enmity and hatred." He was sentenced to 10 months in prison, stripped of his office and barred from politics for life.
He served four months in prison, and last year the political ban seemed to be lifted in a general amnesty. But prosecutors claim that the amnesty did not apply to him. A court decision is expected this month. 
Mr. Erdogan knows this is the time for moderation. In the interview, he exhibited none of the fire of earlier speeches. Those old words, he said, were misinterpreted. "This was not a statement in terms of war," he said, recounting his call for rebellion in 1995. "It is for modernizing the Muslim world."
He rejected the Taliban's brand of Islam, saying: "We never supported the Taliban rule. They represent blood and death."
When asked about the role of religion in government, he advocated freedom and tolerance, saying: "Islam is not an obstacle for democracy. Democracy includes Turks who are devout and those who are not."
It is impossible, say his secular-minded critics, to tell whether Mr. Erdogan has changed his mind or changed his message.

The Force of Islam
Articles in this series are examining growth in the influence of Islam. Previous articles have included Islam and women, the devout rulers of Saudi Arabia and Muslim influence in Indonesia, Russia and Nigeria. Later articles will examine the Taliban and the concept of jihad, or holy war. Articles in this series and related coverage are available on the Web:
nytimes.com/world

CORRECTION-DATE: March 8, 2002

 CORRECTION:
An article on Jan. 8 about Turks' concerns that an Islamic political movement could undercut their long commitment to a secular government misstated the century in which the religion arrived. Islam began to spread in the 11th century in what is now Turkey -- not in 1453, when the Ottoman sultans conquered the area. A reader reported the error in January; this correction was delayed by an editing lapse.




 

January 8, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: STRATEGY; 
U.S. SEES BATTLES IN LAWLESS AREAS AFTER AFGHAN WAR

 
The war on terrorism after Afghanistan could focus on denying terrorist groups sanctuary in places like Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia and the Philippines, countries where they have sometimes operated freely, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz said today.
     Mr. Wolfowitz's remarks, in an interview, provided one of the clearest outlines of the military's strategy for destroying terrorist networks. 
 While Mr. Wolfowitz has a reputation as one of the more aggressive members of President Bush's war council, his statements suggested that the Pentagon could opt to put off the bigger and politically more difficult targets in the war on terrorism like Iraq, and therefore avoid conflict with some of its most important Arab and European allies, which have been leery about taking on Baghdad. 
Instead, Mr. Wolfowitz said, the military is now engaged with friendly countries like the Philippines that would welcome American help in ridding themselves of terrorist networks. The Pentagon is also looking hard at possible terror bases in countries like Somalia and Yemen that are weakly governed and ill equipped to uproot them.
Mr. Wolfowitz stressed that he was not providing an explicit forecast for the next step in the war on terrorism and that the Pentagon had not ruled out imminent military action against any country.
But he has been one of the leading advocates in the Bush administration for ousting President Saddam Hussein. And he seemed to signal to Iraq and other state sponsors of terrorism that unless they stopped harboring terrorists, they could face increased diplomatic, financial and, if necessary, military pressure from the United States.
He asserted that America's devastating air campaign in Afghanistan had already induced many nations that have supported terrorism to change their ways, and that it would serve as a powerful deterrent against future acts of terrorism.
"I'd say almost everywhere one has seen progress," he said. "A lot of that progress is motivated by the sense of American seriousness and the fear of getting on the wrong side of us."
"To the extent that's the motivation," Mr. Wolfowitz continued, "then obviously you don't want to issue a report card on those people and have them let up, because they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart."
Iraq, however, has shown no signs of opposing terrorism, Mr. Wolfowitz said. While President Saddam Hussein "is keeping his head down these days," Mr. Wolfowitz said, "that should not leave the impression that he doesn't continue to do a bunch of things that concern us." Those things include firing at American warplanes patrolling the no-flight zones in southern and northern Iraq.
He also asserted that the Pentagon's main focus remained Afghanistan, which he described as being "at least as treacherous and dangerous now as it was a month or two ago." Last week, a Special Forces soldier was killed in an ambush near the Pakistan border, an attack that a Pentagon spokesman today called "a setup." Remnants of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces continue to operate in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
Pentagon officials said today that American B-52 and B-1 bombers had continued attacking one terrorist enclave near the Pakistan border in an attempt to destroy heavily armed Al Qaeda forces that have been trying to regroup. The bombers struck the base at Zawar Kili, near the town of Khost, on Sunday for the third time in a week, destroying tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and other heavy weapons that had been piled up there by American troops who searched the compound, officials said. 
"One of the most difficult things in the next few months is going to be establishing which of our allies of convenience in the early stages of this war can become real allies over the longer term, and which ones are going to be major troublemakers, and which ones are going to just switch sides," Mr. Wolfowitz said in the interview. 
So far, Hamid Karzai, the leader of the interim government in Kabul, has "proven to be an impressive man," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "Whether he's up to the formidable job he has is a different question."
While careful not to identify countries where America might next aim its military might, Mr. Wolfowitz said Somalia, perhaps more than any other place, fitted the bill of a lawless state that draws terrorists like a magnet. The administration has identified Al Itihaad, a militant religious group based in Somalia, as a terrorist organization with ties to Al Qaeda. The United States has also shut down Somalia's major money-transfer company and stepped up reconnaissance flights off its coast.
"Obviously Somalia comes up as a possible candidate for Al Qaeda people to flee to precisely because the government is weak or nonexistent," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
But he acknowledged that American options were limited in Somalia, where, he said, "by definition you don't have a government you can work with." The Central Intelligence Agency, he added, is "looking for exactly those sorts of people" that the United States can use as proxy forces, as it did with anti-Taliban groups in Afghanistan.
In the Philippines, he said the government was eager to quell a rebellion by hundreds of Muslim militants from the Abu Sayyaf group who have been linked to Al Qaeda and have been battling government forces on Basilan Island, in the southern part of the country. American officials have already begun training the country's forces in counterterrorist and Special Operations activities.
American involvement "might include direct support of Philippine military operations," he said. "There's no question that we believe that if they could clear the Abu Sayyaf group out of Basilan Island, that would be a small blow against the extended Al Qaeda network."
But he added that the Manila government was "very anxious to do it themselves," adding: "That's the crucial standard for them. They're very willing to take help within the framework of helping them help themselves."
In Indonesia, Islamic militants have fought with Christians on Sulawesi Island and in Maluku Province, areas where the government "is extremely weak," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
"You see the potential for Muslim extremists and Muslim terrorists to link up with those Muslim groups in Indonesia and find a little corner for themselves in a country that's otherwise quite unfriendly to terrorism," he said. "In the case of Sulawesi, the concern is there isn't enough military to protect the local population or to create the kinds of stable conditions that keep terrorism down."
He said that while Indonesia had expressed a willingness to crack down on terrorists, the government there was fearful of causing a violent backlash among its large Muslim population. He also said the United States was prepared to provide assistance, though the Pentagon was under restrictions about conducting certain joint exercises with the Indonesian military, which has been accused of human rights abuses. Those restrictions, Mr. Wolfowitz said, "really need to be reviewed in the light of Sept. 11."
He said it was unlikely, however, that the United States would consider direct military action in Indonesia, "because it's such a big and disparate place."
Yemen also has pockets or regions of lawlessness that lie outside the control of the central government, he said. "There are very significant back regions of Yemen," he said. "That's a case of an ungoverned piece of a country."
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States put pressure on Yemen to crack down on suspected Al Qaeda cells in the country. Three months later, Yemeni special operations troops exchanged fire with tribesmen in remote parts of the country's central region, as the troops tried to capture suspected members of the terrorist network.
 --------------------

Canada to Send Troops
 OTTAWA, Jan. 7 (AP) -- Canada will send 750 troops to Afghanistan, where they will join United States forces in the Kandahar region, Canada's defense minister said today.
The minister, Art Eggleton, said the troops would head to Afghanistan in mid-February. The Canadians will be under the command of American forces and will work with an American battalion. 
"They will carry out a range of activities including potential combat to destroy residual and combative Al Qaeda pockets," Mr. Eggleton said. "This mission is not without risks."




January 8, 2002 Tuesday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: TERRORIST SUSPECTS; 
15 Held in Singapore Said to Have Al Qaeda Ties

 
A group of men arrested in Singapore on suspicion of being terrorists had been planning to bomb the American Embassy and American businesses in that small city-state, an official said today.
     The Singaporean government described the suspected plot over the weekend, saying that the 15 men, arrested in December, had links to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's network. 
 Bomb-making instructions and photographs and videotape of apparent targets were reported to have been found in their homes and offices, with material that seemed to link them to Al Qaeda. Early reports said only that they had scouted unidentified foreign embassies and military installations as targets. 
In neighboring Malaysia, where authorities announced the arrests of 13 terrorism suspects at the end of last week, Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak said Al Qaeda did not have cells there.
But he said Malaysian militant groups might have contacts with Al Qaeda "at the international level."
Concern has grown that Al Qaeda could be shifting its focus to Asia, where experts say its network has been less disrupted than in Europe, the United States and Africa.
In the region, Malaysia and Indonesia are Muslim nations, and there are restive militant Muslim groups in the southern Philippines and southern Thailand. But it remains unclear the extent to which Al Qaeda may have a direct presence here.
The police chief in Malaysia, Norian Mai, said investigators were pursuing the possibility that at least some of the arrested men had met with members of Al Qaeda.
Two of the men who were identified as hijackers of airplanes used on Sept. 11 are believed to have visited Malaysia in 2000, along with Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been arrested in the United States on a charge of conspiracy in connection with the attacks.
Malaysia's foreign minister, Syed Albar, met today with 12 American Congressional staff members and said he assured them of his country's support for the war on terrorism.      





January 08, 2002, Tuesday, 



 War disrupts terrorists far beyond Afghanistan

 
 
For all the focus on Afghanistan, the U.S.-led war on terrorism quietly has picked up pace worldwide, with increasing results even in problem areas ranging from Sudan in Africa and Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula to the Philippines in Southeast Asia, according to U.S. officials.
The United States has evidence that terrorist attacks outside Afghanistan have been disrupted, delayed or prevented by the four-month global effort, those officials say.
Although not always with U.S. assistance, the campaign has made significant inroads in breaking up cells and operations, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a senior Bush administration official.
The growing number of arrests and the freezing of financial assets are beginning to impair al-Qaida operations and the group's ability to launch terrorist actions, this official said, referring to Osama bin Laden's far-flung terrorism network. 
As the fighting winds down in Afghanistan, the focus increasingly will be on this largely invisible half of the war and expanding it deeper into areas including Somalia, an unruly country on the Horn of Africa where al-Qaida has been active in training and operations in the past - and still has ties, U.S. officials say.
Progress is reflected in the new numbers. Worldwide, between 800 and 1,000 terrorism suspects have been arrested or detained in more than 50 countries - not including the more than 640 suspects held in the United States - according to U.S. officials. Many of the foreign arrests have not been made public, and the total is almost double the last published figure.
More than 140 countries have frozen funds in 270 accounts with assets of $ 65-million.
Most of the arrests and frozen assets are linked to al-Qaida, but other extremist groups also have been affected.
In contrast to the Afghan operation, the other half of the war so far involves limited or no military use of U.S. troops. Covert intelligence operations or operations involving local militias or military are more likely to be used, U.S. officials say. Each operation has been tailored to local circumstances.
In the war outside Afghanistan, countries fall into one of three tiers, according to administration officials. The first consists of countries, notably in Europe, that have the will and means to act on their own against terrorism. The U.S. role on the first tier usually has been limited to sharing intelligence.
The second tier includes countries that have the will but need active support from U.S. law enforcement, intelligence or counterterrorism or military advisers - everything short of putting U.S. soldiers on the ground.
The third tier consists of countries that remain questionable regarding their desire or ability to deal with terrorism.
The five countries that have been under the most intense scrutiny in the invisible war, because of their political environments or past links to al-Qaida, are Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines and Indonesia, according to U.S. officials. Four are unstable Muslim countries, while the Philippines has a militant separatist movement within its Muslim minority.
Somalia has long been the biggest concern because conditions there are even worse than in Afghanistan. Somalia is a largely destitute Muslim country with a power vacuum and a highly armed population prone to internal clashes.
After Sept. 11, the Bush administration put the Somali movement Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya on its terrorist list and froze the assets of Al Barakaat, Somalia's largest remittance bank, on charges that it was being used by al-Qaida. Bin Laden has a track record in Somalia; he says his followers were behind the 1993 attack that killed 18 U.S. troops deployed on a humanitarian mission to distribute food to starving Somalis.
The United States is particularly interested in Ras Komboni, an area near the border with Kenya where al-Qaida cells have operated in the past, U.S. officials say. U.S. intelligence is closely monitoring the coastline for suspicious shipping traffic that might infiltrate al-Qaida forces back into Somalia.
U.S. diplomat Glenn Warren went to Somalia last month on the first visit by a U.S. official to the capital, Mogadishu, since 1995, to talk with the 18-month-old transitional government of President Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, who vowed to support U.S. efforts. A five-man military mission also reportedly met last month with Somali militiamen to discuss possible al-Qaida locations.
A day after Warren's visit, Somalia arrested eight Iraqis and a Palestinian on suspicion of ties to al-Qaida. But the Bush administration remains skeptical about the government's ability to follow through on those arrests, as it barely controls only half the capital.
One of the most interesting breakthroughs has been in Sudan, a war-torn nation where bin Laden lived, ran terrorist training camps and set up multinational business interests and a bank between 1991 and 1996. Sudan remains on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.
But the country, which is ruled by an Islamic government, is cooperating closely with Washington, most notably by arresting about two dozen al-Qaida operatives and making them fully available to U.S. investigators for interrogation, U.S. officials say. Sudan also has provided extensive intelligence data about bin Laden's activities, allies and financial network.
In the Philippines, U.S. troops have trained local forces, who have carried out a series of raids on Muslim militants. Among them is the Abu Sayyaf group, which is thought to have long-standing ties to al-Qaida.
After 18 months of tension with Yemen over the slow investigation into the al-Qaida attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in October 2000, the United States turned a corner with Yemen after a visit to Washington last month by President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Guided by U.S. intelligence on individuals and locations, Yemeni forces launched raids in search of militants in the Marib area in mid December.
Bin Laden's father came from Yemen, and al-Qaida reportedly has had operatives and allies in Hadramaut province. After Somalia, the United States has the greatest concern about al-Qaida operatives infiltrating into poor, overpopulated Yemen, which shares a long border with Saudi Arabia.
Of the five, the biggest unknown is Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, which is undergoing a troubled political period. Indonesia will soon take part in a U.S.-sponsored counterterrorism training program.
While the United States may have intelligence agents scoping potential terrorism operations in other nations, Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. war commander, said American forces have yet to put any "boots on the ground" outside Afghanistan.
"We have a great many activities going on in several countries in the region," he said, "but we're not involved in this kinetic activity, such as we've been involved in in Afghanistan."
- Information from the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press was used in this report.




January 8, 2002, Tuesday



 MOSQUE AND STATE: TWO MODELS OF ISLAM VIE FOR SHOT AT CURING INDONESIA'S MANY ILLS




  
 

January 7, 2002 Monday  
  



 A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIA; 
Singapore Accuses Islamists of Bomb Plan

 
Singapore has arrested 15 Muslims and accused them of planning to blow up military targets and embassies in the small city-state. The government said at least some of them might have received training from Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, Al Qaeda.
     Announcing the arrests on Saturday, the Singaporean government said the men -- detained between Dec. 9 and Dec. 24 -- had been found with bomb-making instructions and with photographs and videotape of buildings apparently being considered as targets. 
 The government said it had also found falsified passports and forged immigration stamps as well as material linking the men to Al Qaeda. 
The government statement said 13 of the men were members of a clandestine group called Jemaah Islamiah.
"The activities of this group included fund collection for terrorist groups, active surveillance of establishments in Singapore targeted for terrorist bombing, as well as attempts to procure materials for bomb construction, including large quantities of ammonium nitrate," the statement said.
Interviewed today by a local radio station, Defense Minister Tony Tan said Singapore could be a terrorist target because of its close ties to the United States and its support of the American military campaign in Afghanistan.
The government said the arrested men had ties to Muslim militant groups in Malaysia and Indonesia. All but one of the suspects is reported to be Singaporean; the other is a Malaysian citizen who was formerly a citizen of Singapore.
Over the last month, the Malaysian police have arrested 13 people suspected of being members of an extremist group that may have had contact with terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
A hard-line Muslim group in Indonesia was reported today to have said that three of its members were on a list of people arrested in Malaysia that was released Friday. The group, Indonesian Mujahedeen Council, formed in August 2000, says it is dedicated to creating Islamic states through peaceful means.
Diplomats in Indonesia and Malaysia say they are aware that Islamic radicals in several Southeast Asian nations cooperate across national borders. But the diplomats say it is not yet clear whether Al Qaeda has formed active cells or a formal network in the region.
Asked on Saturday whether he was concerned that Malaysia was being used as a base by terrorists, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said, "It is not just Malaysia, but all countries are at risk of being used."
He said it was difficult to filter out possible terrorists from ordinary travelers. Malaysia allows citizens of a number of Muslim nations to enter without visas.
In recent months there have been reports of possible terrorist groups operating in Indonesia and Malaysia, both Muslim nations, as well as in Muslim areas of the southern Philippines and southern Thailand.
Singapore's population of four million is largely Chinese, with about 15 percent ethnically Malay Muslims.
In its January issue, Jane's Intelligence Review, a military journal, said members of Al Qaeda had been "about to launch an operation" in Singapore but had called it off for unknown reasons.
It said that while Al Qaeda's operations had been disrupted in other parts of the world, its network of cells and support structures in Asia remained mostly intact.
In Malaysia, a number of people have been arrested in recent months and accused of being terrorists. Some of these are members of an opposition political party, raising questions among some analysts about the reasons for their arrests.
In the Philippines, the government has given mixed signals over whether it believes that the Abu Sayyaf group of kidnappers on its southern islands is connected with Al Qaeda.
 --------------------

German Suspect Not in Al Qaeda
 MOENCHENGLADBACH, Germany, Jan 6 (Reuters) -- German police said today that a man arrested overnight on suspicion of belonging to Al Qaeda turned out to have a criminal record but no links to Osama bin Laden's network.
In an operation involving more than 100 officials, the police seized the man in the raid at a four-star hotel here in western Germany. But today the police established that the man was a German resident from Lebanon who had no links to Al Qaeda, the head of the investigation, Georg Schubert, said. 




  


January 3, 2002 Thursday 



 EDITORIAL A step back from the brink

 
The world can stop holdings its breath: India and Pakistan have  retreated from the brink of a war that could have gone nuclear.  However, tensions could again edge the world near the unthinkable.  Given the huge stakes, India and Pakistan must negotiate  agreements and protocols to stabilize the situation and avoid  military confrontation. The international community must mediate,  as New Delhi and Islamabad have cornered themselves with reckless  rhetoric and pandering to nationalist passions. 
 In 1947, India  and Pakistan gained independence from imperial Britain but almost  immediately started shooting at each other. The Kashmir Valley had  been a small 'princely state' inside the larger British India.  During the bloody 'partition' period that separated Pakistan from  India, Pakistan tried to infiltrate Kashmir, and Kashmir's  then-monarch begged India for help. The international community  granted India legal claim to a large part of Kashmir. India today  administers two-thirds of Kashmir and Pakistan one-third. But the  arrangement never satisfied Pakistan, whose leaders believed that,  because of Kashmir's ethnic and religious majorities, the valley  should belong to Pakistan.
Since the two countries can't even agree on how to frame the  dispute - as a legal matter or a cultural clash - they never made  much progress on settling the feud.
Matters weren't helped in 1971 when India backed then-East  Pakistan's bid for independence. (Ironically, the little nation  that emerged from East Pakistan's ashes - Bangladesh - has been  more politically stable and enjoyed more human rights than  Pakistan in recent decades.)
Tragically, politicians in India and Pakistan still use  Kashmir to prop up their own partisan positions at home. Pakistan  particularly played a terribly dangerous game by giving refuge,  financial and military support to terrorists waging guerrilla war  against India. But India's extremist Hindu parties worsened  matters by nearly declaring their own version of holy war against  India's huge Muslim population (second in size only to  Indonesia's).  Since both countries have nuclear warheads and  missiles capable of launching them, it's unacceptable for either  to pretend that skirmishes in Kashmir are a matter of local  concern only. In reality, the simmering feud threatens not only  their immediate neighborhood - China, Nepal, Tajikistan and Bhutan  - but the entire south Asia subcontinent.
If a lasting peace is impossible, at least the dispute must  be made manageable. The only way to make it so is for the  international community to cajole India and Pakistan into  negotiating a non-violent framework for dealing with crises.
The latest stand-off should rattle Pakistan President Pervez  Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee enough  for them to seek international mediation in creating protocols  that make Kashmir less threatening to world peace.







  
 

December 29, 2006 Friday  




 THE DISMAL DOLLAR; 
FOREIGN COUNTRIES LOSE FAITH IN OUR CURRENCY

 
Anyone who has stepped up to an ATM in Europe, made a withdrawal from his American account and then checked what the euros or pounds cost him in dollars, doesn't need to be told that the dollar is in something like free fall. 
But the central bank of the United Arab Emirates made it official this week when its governor announced that the Emirates would be reducing their holdings of dollars over the next eight months by 8 percent, shifting to euros. The U.A.E.'s reserves stand at about $25 billion, so that constitutes about a $2 billion flight from the dollar.
The U.A.E. thus joins other oil-producing states -- Indonesia, Iran, Venezuela and Russia -- along with Switzerland and New Zealand in seeking to shift their currency reserves and use euros in trade rather than dollars. For Iran and Venezuela, the move is partly political in motivation, reflecting their governments' mighty distrust of the Bush administration.
For Indonesia and the U.A.E., even though both are largely Muslim states, the shift from dollars to euros is more a savvy economic choice. The U.A.E.'s approach to free market capitalism makes the Bush administration's concept of it look like 5-year-plan-style Stalinism by comparison.
So why are these countries -- and perhaps others who hold information about their currency holdings closer to their chests -- edging away from the dollar?
The reasons are obvious.
The first is the level of American economic growth. It will likely be around 3 percent this year, as opposed to China's 10 percent plus and India's likely 8 percent plus.
The second is the horrendous level of American government debt, now exceeding $9 trillion, half of which is held by foreign entities. Worse, likely budget deficits stretch into the distant future at $400-$500 billion per year, worsened by the Iraq war, which the Bush administration continues to insist on waging in spite of a shortage of military manpower, cash and national will.
The United States has to borrow $2 billion per day, much of it from China, India and the Arab oil states, simply to stay afloat. In the meantime, what the U.S. government pays in debt service, the interest on the $9 trillion national debt, continues to grow steadily, eating away at U.S. government disposable income.
The U.S. Federal Reserve Board does not inspire confidence either, dithering between reducing interest rates to stimulate a lagging real estate and construction market and increasing interest rates to stifle inflation.
So if you were the head of the central bank of an economically soaring state, in which currency would you hold your reserves? The Bush dollar or something more reliable? The dollar fell 10 percent last year against the euro.

        







 



December 26, 2006 Tuesday  




 Travesty Of Justice

 
Terror On Trial: The world is rightly outraged by an Indonesian court's exoneration of Abu Bakar Bashir, who was implicated in the Bali terror attacks. But the biggest victim of this travesty will likely be Indonesia itself. Bashir is a militant Islamofascist cleric who gave Java-based terrorists his blessing to detonate the huge bombs that killed 202 people on Bali in 2002. He also is a master manipulator of Indonesia's court system. Despite his role in the attacks, he got his already pathetic 2 1/2-year prison sentence overturned.
In a further travesty, the malevolently grinning cleric now demands compensation from the Indonesian state. He basically is asking to get paid for killing 38 of his fellow Indonesians on Bali, along with 88 Australians and 76 other foreigners, including seven Americans. We'd like to know if Bashir's take matches the compensation his victims got in the attacks. 
Bashir, who has openly praised the 9/11 terror attacks, says he didn't do it. The court reasoned that because at least two of the convicted bombers retracted their confessions about Bashir's role, it must mean Bashir somehow is innocent.
There wasn't a shred of recognition that all of them, being Islamofascists in the same tightknit terror circle, might have had a motive for keeping their main mullah alive and preaching.
It does little good to blame the entire Indonesian state for this judicial sham because there are plenty of decent cops and bureaucrats who have been fighting the war on terror with grit and bravery.
Indonesia's voters shouldn't be blamed, either. They elected a secular general, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, by a wide margin as their president in 2004, largely because he successfully led the investigation into the bombing.
No, the blame falls on a minority of subversives inside Indonesia's lousy judicial system, and its Supreme Court in particular, which has converted judicial independence into a lack of accountability.
Either out of fearful weakness of street mobs or association with the local intelligentsia's hostility to the West, this court bowed to the loudest mob voices braying for this terrorist's freedom. In doing so, it showed no regard either for justice or the will of the people.
The hypocrisy and incoherence of the court's decision to let Bashir free becomes clear when contrasted with the draconian 20-year prison sentences meted out to shaggy Australian tourists who get caught hiding marijuana in their surfboard bags. While they go to the can, truly dangerous threats to the state, like Bashir, get off with no punishment at all.
That's why this ruling is more than just a slap at Australia. It also is a sort of betrayal of the foundations of the state. Giving legal credence to Bashir's phony claims will have big consequences.
He claims his conviction was nothing but a U.S. and Australian attack on Islam and his advocacy for sharia law. What's significant about that is Indonesia's fragile legal and political system is, in fact, held together by its lack of sharia law. Its national secular creed, called "pancasila," in place since its 1945 independence, is the state's foundation.
The country has two main political leanings: the secularist one, called "abangan," which includes Indonesia's tolerant strains of Islam; and the one followed by urban Islamic militants, who historically have been shut out of power for their extremism and political overreach.
Bashir still demands sharia now. With his release, he has announced he will push even harder for it. He already is touring to whip up support. If he succeeds, Indonesia will suffer.
By freeing this Islamist terrorist, Indonesia's Supreme Court has handed the nation's worst enemy not only a license to preach new terror, but also a weapon to challenge the state's very existence.
Either one has explosive potential -- the kind that can bring nations down.

   







  



December 23, 2006 Saturday  




 In Brief

 
Military chaplains in Iraq are preparing for Christmas holiday services, although it won't be a holiday for the troops. 
  Army Col. Michael Hoyt, command chaplain for U.S. and allied forces in Iraq, said there is some added anxiety this Christmas season as President Bush considers a change in strategy in the war. He said the troops are wondering how it will affect them. 
  Hoyt said that troops who arrive in Iraq as believers generally leave with a deepened faith. Others seek a relationship with God for the first time, he said, although others remain indifferent.  
    --  Associated Press 
 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints removed the name of Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal from a list of those to be posthumously baptized, after the organization bearing his name issued a statement calling for the removal. 
  On Monday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, issued a statement asking the church to remove Wiesenthal's name from its list of those to receive posthumous ordinances, which include baptism. Later in the day, the church said his name had been removed. 
  "In response to a request by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and in accordance with the commitments the church made in 1995, no church ordinance was performed for Simon Wiesenthal, and his name was immediately removed from the International Genealogical Index," said Bruce Olsen, a spokesman for the church. 
  In 1995, the Mormon Church agreed to remove the names of Holocaust victims and Jews from the list of those to be posthumously baptized, unless they were direct ancestors of current church members or there was written permission from all living members of the deceased's family. Wiesenthal died last year at the age of 96. 
  "It was astonishing to us that they went against the agreement," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal center. "We understand that from their point of view, they think they're doing Simon Wiesenthal a good deed. From the Jewish point of view, it's rather an insult because it suggests that there's no other way to get to heaven except through the Mormon Church. We believe that Simon Wiesenthal, who lived a full life with great deeds on behalf of mankind, can get to heaven on his own and doesn't need any assistance." 
   --  Religion News Service 
Indonesian officials said police will guard Christian churches across the world's most populous Muslim country during the Christmas holidays. 
  The announcement came as the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, warned that terrorists might target Americans during the holidays. 
  On Christmas Eve in 2000, coordinated blasts killed 19 people, and a strike on a Christian market last New Year's Eve left seven dead. An Indonesian police spokesman said more than 18,000 officers will be posted at thousands of churches and other religious sites in Jakarta. 
   --  Associated Press 
The State Department has condemned an Egyptian court ruling that denies Bahais the right to have their faith recognized on official identification documents. 
  Rejecting a lower court decision favorable to Bahais, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the Egyptian constitution recognizes only Islam, Christianity and Judaism. 
  "It is certainly a ruling that flies in the face of stated Egyptian commitments to freedom of expression, freedom of religion," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Monday. "We would hope that the Egyptian government would take steps that would allow people of the Bahai faith to obtain these identification cards." 
  The cards of Bahais have a line through the section for the person's religion. 
  The dispute directly affects only the country's Bahais, 2,000 or so of the more than 72 million Egyptians. Civil rights advocates in Egypt, however, said it's evidence that the court ignores existing protections of religious freedom. 
  The Bahai faith is a monotheistic religion founded in the 1860s by Baha' Allah, a Persian nobleman who the Bahais consider a prophet. Baha' Allah taught that all religions represent progressive stages in the revelation of God's will, leading to the unity of all peoples and faiths. 
   --  Associated Press 

   






 
 


December 22, 2006 Friday



 2006: The year of perpetual outrage

 
It began with the Danish cartoons. It ended with the flying imams. Two thousand six was a banner year for the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. Twelve turbulent months of fist-waving, embassy-burning, fatwa-issuing mayhem, intimidation, and murder resounded with the ululations of the aggrieved. All this in the name of defending Islam from "insult." Let's review.
In late January, masked Palestinian gunmen took over a European Union office in Gaza City to protest the publication of a dozen cartoons about Islam, Mohammed, and self-censorship in the Danish newspaper the Jyllands-Posten. They stormed the building, burned Danish flags, and spearheaded an international boycott of Denmark's products across the Muslim world. 
The rage was manufactured pretext. The cartoons had been published four months earlier with little fanfare. It wasn't until a delegation of instigating Danish imams toured Egypt with the cartoons -- plus a few inflammatory fake ones, including an old image of a French hog-calling contest participant deceptively portrayed as "anti-Muslim" -- that the fire started burning. Think the mainstream media will remember that? Not likely.
What was really behind Cartoon Rage? Muslim bullies were attempting to pressure Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. The chairmanship of the council was passing to Denmark at the time.
Alas, Western journalists, analysts and apologists were too clouded by their cowardice and conciliation to see through the smoke. More than 800 were injured in the ensuing riots, and 130 people paid with their lives. The innocents included Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro, who was shot to death in Turkey on Feb. 5, by a teenage boy enraged by the illustrations. Several brave moderate Muslim editors who stood up to the madness were jailed, fined, and convicted of crimes related to insulting Islam. The Danish cartoonists remain in hiding.
The world soon tired of Cartoon Rage, but the "peaceful" Muslim ragers were just warming up. They found excuses large and small to riot and threaten Western infidels. In India, they protested the magazine publication of a picture of a playing card showing an image of Mecca and also burned Valentine's Day cards. An insult to Islam, they screamed. In Spain, they protested a Madrid store for selling a postcard with a mosque on it with the words "We slept here." An insult to Islam, they protested. In Pakistan, they burned down a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, a Pizza Hut, and toppled Ronald McDonald. In Jakarta, they smashed the offices of Playboy magazine. You know why. 
In June, the trial against lioness journalist Oriana Fallaci for insulting Islam commenced in Bergamo, Italy. She had been charged by professional Muslim rager Adel Smith of the Muslim Union of Italy of "vilipendio" -- vilifying Islam -- in her post-9/11 books slamming jihad. A judge had refused to throw out the case. She faced a pile of death threats and accusations of "Islamophobia" for speaking truth to Islamo-power.
Fallaci's death from cancer during the fifth anniversary week of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks preempted the trial in Italy, but her passing did nothing to preempt the eternal rage of the perpetually outraged. The day she died, the grievance-mongers were shaking their fists and calling for the head of Pope Benedict XVI for his speech that made reference to a 14th-Century conversation touching on holy war and jihad. For engaging in open, honest intellectual and spiritual debate, he was condemned, lit afire in effigy, and targeted anew. The ragers bombed Christian churches in Gaza City and Nablus. They murdered Italian Sister Leonella Sgorbati, an elderly Catholic nun shot in the back by a Somalian jihadist stoked by Pope Rage. "Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim," a Somalian cleric had declared. The Vatican made nice with Muslim leaders.
New outrages are always in bloom. In late September, it was a Berlin production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" that featured the decapitated head of Mohammed. A week later, it was a banyan tree attacked by Indonesian Muslims who wanted to disprove its mystical powers. A few days after that, it was former British foreign secretary Jack Straw, who had the audacity to make the very obvious observation that full Muslim veils impede communications between women and Westerners. An insult to Islam!
Not to be outdone, a delegation of extortionist imams boarded a U.S. Airways flight in Minneapolis in November and tried to manufacture an international human-rights incident. They clamored for a boycott and threatened to sue.
The good news: The fire did not catch here this time. The bad news: As Oriana Fallaci warned before her death: "The hate for the West swells like a fire fed by the wind. The clash between us and them is not a military one. It is a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come."
E-mail syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin at writemalkin@gmail.com .

     






 
 


December 20, 2006, Wednesday



 Humanitarian aid: winning the terror war

 
The flagship for the war on terror could well be the US Navy ship Mercy. But this Navy vessel is not armed for battle. Just the opposite: It is fitted for peace.
The Mercy is a fully equipped, 1,000-bed floating hospital, which returned in September from giving medical care and training to the people of Indonesia, Bangladesh, East Timor, and the Philippines. The US Navy, Project HOPE, and other volunteer medical personnel provided free medical care, including major surgeries, for nearly 61,000 needy patients.
Amid the uncertainty about the best strategy in Iraq and how to answer the growing threat of terrorism and extremism in the world, there is one American policy of the past two years that has proven successful time and again: humanitarian missions by the US military. This policy is pro-military, pro-American, pro-humanitarian, and antiterrorist. Most important, it is actually curbing anti-American feelings in Muslim countries.
In global public-opinion surveys, Terror Free Tomorrow, the nonprofit organization I lead, found that the US military's humanitarian missions to the broader Muslim world have directly caused a dramatic drop in popular support of terrorism and extremism.
The surveys also showed a corresponding rise in favorable public opinion of the United States.
Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of Naval Operations, recently announced that because of the overwhelmingly favorable public reaction to the Mercy's visit in Indonesia and Bangladesh - the world's most and third-most populous Muslim countries - the Navy is planning to continue and expand humanitarian missions by the Mercy and other hospital ships around the globe.
The American response to the devastating 2004 tsunami in Indonesia - led by the US Navy - resulted in favorable attitudes not only toward the US, but also concomitant declines in support for Osama bin Laden and suicide attacks. Similarly, American aid to Pakistani earthquake survivors, this time led by the US Army, caused overall support for the US to double in Pakistan, a critical ally in the war on terror.
According to Admiral Mullen, the desire to sustain this change of public opinion, as revealed by the surveys, was a critical factor in the Navy launching this most recent mission of the US Navy ship.
The Mercy's trip paid off and provided more than vital medical care and training. Terror Free Tomorrow's latest nationwide public opinion surveys in Indonesia and Bangladesh confirm the findings of its previous surveys in Indonesia after the tsunami and in Pakistan following the earthquake: Humanitarian missions by the US military continue to reap demonstrable and measurable gains in popular esteem.
These nationwide polls of Indonesia and Bangladesh conducted in August 2006, following the Mercy's visit, suggest that a remarkable 85 percent of Indonesians and 95 percent of the people of Bangladesh were favorable to the Mercy's mission.
The consensus approval of the Mercy mission by the people of both Indonesia and Bangladesh bridges political views. Whether they were anti- American and opposed to the US war on terrorism, or whether they supported Mr. Bin Laden and approved of suicide terrorist attacks, people were overwhelmingly favorable toward Mercy's mission. Indeed, 87 percent of those surveyed in Bangladesh said that the activities of the Mercy made their overall opinion of the US more positive.
The near-universal approval of the Mercy is a striking testament that tangible humanitarian aid from the US military can continue to improve public opinion of the US in Muslim countries.
In fact, Indonesians and Bangladeshis ranked additional visits by the Mercy as a higher priority for the US than stronger involvement in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Navy has heard the voice of the people in the world's largest Muslim countries and will launch additional humanitarian operations.
Congress and the American people must also listen. The US must support new and expanded humanitarian missions by the military. By demonstrating our common humanity and a benevolent side to American power, these missions have proved to be America's most successful weapon against extremism in the Muslim world.
* Kenneth Ballen is founder and president of Terror Free Tomorrow, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to finding effective policies that win popular support away from global terrorists.
(c) . The 

 


   


December 17, 2006 Sunday 
  




 For Congress: Telling Sunni From Shiite

 
SURPRISE quiz: Is Al Qaeda Sunni or Shiite? Which sect dominates Hezbollah? 
  Silvestre Reyes, the Democratic nominee to head the House Intelligence Committee, failed to answer both questions correctly last week when put to the test by Congressional Quarterly. He mislabeled Al Qaeda as predominantly Shiite, and on Hezbollah, which is mostly Shiite, he drew a blank.
''Speaking only for myself,'' he told reporters, ''it's hard to keep things in perspective and in the categories.''  
  Not that he's alone. Other members of Congress from both parties have also flunked on-the-spot inquiries. Indeed, some of the smartest Western statesmen of the last century have found themselves flummoxed by Islam. Winston Churchill -- in 1921, while busy drawing razor-straight borders across a mercurial Middle East -- asked an aide for a three-line note explaining the ''religious character'' of the Hashemite leader he planned to install in Baghdad.
  ''Is he a Sunni with Shaih sympathies or a Shaih with Sunni sympathies?'' Mr. Churchill wrote, using an antiquated spelling. (''I always get mixed up between these two,'' he added.)
  And maybe religious memorization should not be required for policymaking. Gen. William Odom, who directed the National Security Agency under President Ronald Reagan, said that Mr. Reyes mainly needs to know ''how the intelligence community works.''
  Yet, improving American intelligence, according to General Odom and others with close ties to the Middle East and the American intelligence community, requires more than just a organization chart. 
  A cheat sheet is in order. 
  The Review asked nearly a dozen experts, from William R. Polk, author of ''Understanding Iraq,'' to Paul R. Pillar, the C.I.A. official who coordinated intelligence on the Middle East until he retired last year, to explain the region. Here, a quick distillation.

What caused the original divide?

  The groups first diverged after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632, and his followers could not agree on whether to choose bloodline successors or leaders most likely to follow the tenets of the faith. 
  The group now known as Sunnis chose Abu Bakr, the prophet's adviser, to become the first successor, or caliph, to lead the Muslim state. Shiites favored Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law. Ali and his successors are called imams, who not only lead the Shiites but are considered to be descendants of Muhammad. After the 11th imam died in 874, and his young son was said to have disappeared from the funeral, Shiites in particular came to see the child as a Messiah who had been hidden from the public by God. 
  The largest sect of Shiites, known as ''twelvers,'' have been preparing for his return ever since. 

How did the violence start?

  In 656, Ali's supporters killed the third caliph. Soon after, the Sunnis killed Ali's son Husain. 
  Fighting continued but Sunnis emerged victorious over the Shiites and came to revere the caliphate for its strength and piety.
  Shiites focused on developing their religious beliefs, through their imams.

Is one group dominant today?

  Surveys have shown that Sunnis represent about 85 percent of the Muslim world, with the largest populations in Indonesia and other Asian countries, including Pakistan. 
  In the Middle East, the lines blur. Sunnis have clear majorities in Egypt, Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia. But in Iraq and Iran, Shiites are the largest sect. Yemen meanwhile is both Sunni and Shiite.

Are there divides within each sect?

  In nearly every country of the Middle East, Shiite and Sunni are simply umbrella terms. Islam, like Christianity, continued to split over the years based on divisions over interpretations of sacred texts, the role of mysticism, and whether old tenets of the faith should be updated. 
  Among Shiites, there are ''twelvers'' but also the Ismailis, who recognize only seven imams, the Zaydis, who differ over the identity of the fifth, and a handful of smaller offshoots. 
  Sunnis, while generally more unified, nonetheless count among their faithful both secular groups and the orthodox, including the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, who interpret the Koran with puritanical zeal. 
  There are also non-Arab Muslims like the Kurds, who are majority Sunni, and Iranians, who are mainly Shiite, plus members of other religions. In Lebanon, for example, there are no fewer than 17 different Muslim and Christian sects. 

How does this divide play out in the region?

  Depends on the country. Iraq's Shiites resent centuries of Sunni rule, while in Syria, the chessboard flips: the Alawites, a minority Shiite sect, rules over a Sunni majority. 
  Saudi Arabia has a Sunni ruling class that is allied with the United States, and helped produce a Sunni insurgency, Al Qaeda, which aims to topple the country's leadership.
  As for Iraq, both sects contribute to the violence. Members of Shiite militias loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr have been accused of shooting their way indiscriminately through crowds believed to be drinking alcohol. Sunni extremists justify mass car bombings against Shiites because they are acting as takfiris, or ''excommunicators,'' who have ruled by fiat that Shiites are not Muslims.

Is it just about religion? Are there any circumstances in which Sunnis and Shiites get along?

  Religious fervor may be an exaggerated indicator of whether any individual will turn to violence. A recent Gallup poll of nine Muslim countries found that radicals are no more likely to attend religious services than moderates.
  Specific local circumstances, down to the clan, tribal and neighborhood level, can spark or contribute to the friction. Sometimes disagreements between the faiths, however sincerely felt, can be a stand in for greed, fear or humiliation. Iraqis of both sects who fled to Syria and Jordan generally get along, said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East Project Director of the International Crisis Group. 
  ''All these differences are meaningless,'' Mr. Hiltermann said, ''until they are exploited for political ends by actors seeking to mobilize support for their cause, whatever it may be.''
  In Iraq, the split between Shiites and Sunnis seems to be growing more irrational. And as the conflicts worsen, there's no telling how vicious the divide may become.


CORRECTION-DATE: December 31, 2006

 CORRECTION:
An article on Dec. 17 about the Sunni-Shiite divide in Islamic history referred imprecisely to the killing of the third caliph, who is regarded by Sunni Muslims as a legitimate successor to Muhammad. Although some historical accounts do indeed contend that the third caliph's death was orchestrated by supporters of Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Ali, most scholars and sources contend that the third caliph was killed by Egyptian rebels with unrelated motives. The partisans of Ali later became known as Shiites.

 MIDDLE EAST (93%);  IRAQ (92%)







 
 


December 17, 2006 Sunday  




 Some things I didn't know about Islam's Quran

 
I did an unusual thing this Christmas season. I read the Quran from cover to cover. Why? Well, I'm supposed to be a student of history, yet I had never read the Quran, which is the spiritual guide for a billion or so people on the face of the Earth, and also a powerful political guide. Yet, as with most Americans, the Quran was as much of a mystery to me as the Jewish kabala.
I had read a lot about the Quran, especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. So have many non-Muslim Americans. But that's not the same as actually reading it. So when my wife and I had an opportunity to study it under professional guidance, we took it. The course was given by professor Marc LePain for the Worcester Institute for Senior Education (WISE) at Assumption College. Dr. LePain is an expert in the three world religions that came out of the Middle East - that is, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Under his skilled guidance, we learned more than I thought possible. 
The Quran was written sometime in the first half of the seventh century (circa 620-650) in Arabic script that has been widely admired as classic. In fact, true believers hold that the authentic Quran is in Arabic only, and that all translations are only approximations. We used the N.J. Dawood translation, reputed to be one of the best.
The Quran is divided into chapters, called surahs, of varying lengths, some long and complicated, others brief and simple. They retell many of the stories that are chronicled in the Bible, but with different details and interpretations. Thus, the story of Adam in the garden has no mention of a serpent. Satan alone is responsible for man's fall. The story of Noah and the Flood is similar, with one extra fillip: In the Quran version Noah begs one of his sons to come aboard the ark, but the son refuses and is drowned. Jonah in the biblical version survives being swallowed by the whale without ill effects. But in the Quran version he is left gravely ill on the shore until revived by God. In the Quran Lot's wife is not turned into a pillar of salt.
The Quran warmly honors the whole line of Jewish prophets - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Ishmael and all the rest. It quotes God in saying that these were "men of might and vision whom We made pure with the thought of the hereafter." But it also criticizes Jews and Christians of the seventh century for straying from the path that those righteous leaders laid out. These erring ones were warned that, if they did not repent and mend their ways, they would face the eternal "Fire" on the day of resurrection.
The Quran repeatedly emphasizes that God is merciful and forgiving. But it also is filled with fearsome warnings of terrible punishments for those who do not believe, and graphic descriptions of the eternal sufferings of those who failed the test. In this it resembles the wrathful Jehovah of the Old Testament who helped the Israelites slaughter the Hittites and Canaanites by the thousands.
When the Quran was written in the seventh century, the Christian Gospel had been around for hundreds of years, and the Jewish Old Testament for thousands of years. So those holy writings were familiar to the author of the Quran, generally believed to be Muhammad.
Most interesting is the special status given to Jesus. The Quran follows the New Testament in stating that Jesus was born of a virgin by divine intercession, a distinction not given anyone else, even Muhammad. Mary is the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran. The Quran declares "we made the son of Mary and his mother a sign to mankind and gave them shelter ..."
However, it adamantly denies that Jesus is the son of God in the Christian meaning of the term. God is indivisible. There is no such thing as the Trinity. Despite the special circumstances of his birth, Jesus does not outrank Muhammad, who is known as the Messenger, the man whose message is the word of God, the final authority on things divine.
The Quran is repetitious. It has hundreds of identical passages that declare the glory of God and list the rewards and punishments meted out to men according to their deserts. Although it lays out various rules and admonitions for humans to follow, it does not have them all codified in one place, as is the case of Leviticus in the Old Testament.
One of our class members noted that it seems to pay little attention to the status of women. The female sex is mentioned only in regard to women's relationship to men. Perhaps that is a reflection of conditions in the desert in pre-Muhammad times. Muhammad had several wives, and Muslim men are permitted to have as many as four. But the Quran enjoins men to treat their wives with respect and to do them justice in the case of divorce.
Although the Quran stresses the obligation of the faithful to combat the unbelievers, I found nothing in it to justify suicide bombings or the killing of innocent people. Many of the more stringent passages have to do with Muhammad's battles with his enemies among the idolatrous desert Arabs. Those battles went on until 628, when he finally secured the right to proselytize Islam. During the next thousand years, Islam spread halfway around the world, from Spain to Indonesia.
Islam is one of the three "desert religions" - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - that originated in the Middle East. All are monotheistic. They all look forward to a day of judgment, when the world ends and God rewards and punishes human beings according to their deserts. In the Islamic Paradise, the faithful go to a place of running streams (much valued in the desert) and "bashful virgins." But nowhere did I find that virgins are the reward of terrorist acts.
Judaism and Christianity talk of a Messiah who arrives on Judgment Day. Islam does not. God alone presides over the Islamic Judgment Day. Muhammad is a messenger or prophet of God's will, like other prophets in the Bible. Some of the passages of the Quran echo the Psalms of the Old Testament. But despite the well-meaning efforts of those, like Pope Benedict, who yearn for some kind of ecumenism, Islam is different from either Judaism or Christianity. It seems to have a different world outlook, a different rhythm that does not easily jibe with the beliefs and attitudes of the West.
And yet, although it seems to stand aloof, Islam can point to a remarkable history, one rich in achievements from philosophy to science and invention. It need not stand as an enemy to the West, either from the standpoint of religion or politics. Although many Quranic passages about "unbelievers" seem harsh to modern Westerners, other passages speak kindly of both Jews and Christians who faithfully follow their respective doctrines.
One notable verse puts it plainly: "We believe in that which has been revealed to us and which was revealed to you. Our God and your God is one. To him we submit."
I think we can live with that.
Albert B. Southwick's column appears regularly in the Sunday Telegram.







 

December 11, 2006, Monday



 The political world has gone Barack; 
Whatever it is, Democrat Obama; 
clearly possesses it

 
COLUMBIA, S.C. - The holiday season is upon us and the word is Barack. Everywhere I go, I get the same question: "What about Barack Obama?"
The Illinois senator has penetrated the American psyche in a big way.
He's the season's meme, a love virus that's infecting the nation - even south of the Mason-Dixon, and especially among the maidens. 
Women listen rapturously when I describe meeting Obama after the 2004 Democratic convention keynote speech that tattooed his name on the nation's brain. You'd think by their laser focus that I was disclosing the secret to reversing gravity.
Men are curious, but more skeptical. "What about his Muslim connections?" one fellow asked at a recent holiday party. A woman standing next to me answered first.
"His father was a Muslim, but he was raised a Christian," she asserted with authority. "But I don't really care what he is."
The woman said she's read both of his books and has an "Obama '08" bumper sticker on her car. "I never do that," she said, as though confessing to a sudden and inexplicable urge to smoke crack.
Obama's father, in fact, was a Muslim in his native Kenya, where he was also an economist. But Obama hardly knew his father, who, upon completion of his studies at Harvard, returned to Kenya without his wife and son, then 2.
Afterward, Obama saw his father only once - for a month when he was 10 - and otherwise was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia by his mother and grandparents.
He was not raised a Muslim. But, yes, his middle name is Hussein, as Republicans can't stop mentioning. And, yes, his first name rhymes with Iraq. And, yes, his last name rhymes with Osama.
Somewhere in there is a thread of poetic destiny.
Or not.
In any case, everybody's talking about Obama. In South Carolina, the fourth state in the Democratic Party's nominating schedule after the Iowa and Nevada caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, he would be a serious player.
Presidential primaries here are open. Thirty percent of the population is black and women love him.
Pundits describe Obama with words such as: authentic, intelligent, educated, friendly, eloquent, honest, compelling, transcendent, rock star.
I'm weary of Obama-the-rock-star. In 24/7 celebrity America, everybody's a rock star. Rudy Giuliani is one. So is John McCain. But Obama does have that thing that comes along only rarely:
It.
Whatever it is, you know it when you feel it.
He's the melting pot's pajamas. With roots in Africa, Indonesia and the Midwest, he's half-black, half-white; half-Muslim, half-Christian, by birth if not in practice.
Part Horatio Alger, Bobby Kennedy and Harry Belafonte, he's an American deus ex machine.
Black enough for blacks - white enough for whites - he's the bowl of porridge that's juuuuuuust right.
But does he habla espanol?
Even his approach to issues is neither black nor white, but something in between. He's a Democrat, of course, and, as U.S. senator, has voted 97 percent of the time with his party. At some point his worshipers will have to apply objective standards to his positions.
But he's also an implementarian. When it comes to policy, his central question seems to be: Does it work?
While speaking recently to an evangelical audience gathered in Pastor Rick "The Purpose Driven Life" Warren's megachurch - a water-parting event in itself - Obama said that "abstinence and fidelity, although the ideal, may not always be the reality. ... If condoms and potentially things like microbicides can prevent millions of deaths, then they should be made more widely available."
He received a standing ovation.
If Obama seems too good to be true, he can't be blamed. He has been fashioned by the people's wishes into something of a savior.
Like the face of Jesus that appears in a slice of pizza, he's in part an invention of need, his immense popularity testament to the despair many feel from years of bitter partisanship and a war without end.
Can he be the one to salvage this wreck?
The world is a dangerous place for those in whom much hope is invested, and that's a heap of expectation piled on Obama's plate. If he decides to make a run, he will have his spirit tested.
May the force be with him.
Parker may be reached by e-mail at kparker@kparker.com.




   


December 10, 2006 Sunday  




 The Muslim Stereotype

 
Whatever happens in Iraq, we may be inching closer to a ''clash of civilizations'' between Islam and the West.
  There's a fatigue in the West with an Arab world that sometimes seems to put its creative juices mostly into building better bombs. Even open-minded people in the West sometimes feel a sense of resignation that maybe the bigots are right: maybe Islam just is intrinsically backward, misogynistic and violent.
After I wrote recently about reform elements in Islam, I received a long note from a 24-year-old Chicagoan, Paul Williams, who ventured what many people feel: ''I went to school in Macalester College and the whole time there I wrote paper after paper defending Islam,'' he told me. Now, he says, after reading the Koran cover to cover and living in Turkey, he has lapsed into political incorrectness: ''The more I'm here the more I'm beginning to think that there's just something wrong with Islam.''  
  That's a common view, shaped partly by the way we in the news business focus on violence in the Islamic world. So let me step up and say that I find the common American stereotypes of Islam profoundly warped. 
  Those stereotypes are largely derived from the less than 20 percent of Muslims who are Arabs, with Persians and Pashtuns thrown in as well. But the great majority of the world's Muslims live not in the Middle East but here in Asia, where religion has mostly been milder. 
  At the moment I'm in Brunei, a Muslim country nestled in Southeast Asia. At the University of Brunei, women outnumber men. Women here drive, fill senior offices in government and the private sector, serve as ambassadors and are pilots for the national airline. ''Young women have equal opportunities now -- it's up to your capability,'' said Lisa Ibrahim, president of the Young Entrepreneurs Association of Brunei. 
  Brunei has gold-domed mosques in its skyline, and the sultan has two wives. But Brunei is also home to churches and Hindu temples serving a multiethnic society. Young people flirt together in the cafes, and non-Muslims are allowed to drink alcohol.
  Anwar Ibrahim, the former Malaysian deputy prime minister, says he reminds Americans that the most populous Muslim country (Indonesia) is a democracy whose elections run more smoothly than Florida's.
  Yes, Islamists are a threat in Asia, and many imams are more scandalized by female flesh than by honor killings or illiteracy. Indonesia has tried the editor of the local edition of Playboy magazine, and a state in Malaysia has threatened to fine women who wear miniskirts. But Indonesia has had a woman as president, while Bangladesh has had two female prime ministers and has more girls in high school than boys.
  ''We tend to be more tolerant,'' Yusof Halim, a prominent lawyer in Brunei, said of Asian Muslims. He then confided: ''My honest opinion is that Arabs are male chauvinists.''
  Meanwhile, many Muslims are as disenchanted with us as we are with them. They complain about hypocritical Americans who parrot slogans about human rights but brutalize Muslims at Guantanamo and supply the weaponry that kills Muslim children in Gaza and Lebanon. 
  The Koran and Bible alike have passages that make 21st-century readers flinch; most Christians just ignore sections on slavery or admonitions to kill a disobedient child. Likewise, some Muslims are reinterpreting Koranic passages on polygamy and amputations, saying they were restricted to particular circumstances that no longer apply. 
  Frankly, I don't see that any religion's influence is intrinsically peaceful or violent. Christianity inspired both Mother Teresa and pogroms. Hinduism nurtured Gandhi and also the pioneers of suicide bombings. 
  These days, ferocious anti-Semitism thrives in some Muslim countries, but in the Dreyfus affair a century ago Muslims sided with a Jew persecuted by anti-Semitic Christians. And the biggest sectarian slaughter in Europe in modern times involved Christians massacring Muslims at Srebrenica.
  The plain fact is that some Muslim societies do have a real problem with violence, with the subjugation of women, with tolerance. But the mosaic of Islam is vast and contains many more hopeful glimpses of the future.
  There is a historic dichotomy between desert Islam -- the austere fundamentalism of countries like Saudi Arabia -- and riverine or coastal Islam, more outward-looking, flexible and tolerant. Desert Muslims grab the headlines, but my bet is that in the struggle for the soul of Islam, maritime Muslims have the edge.

 
December 9, 2006 Saturday  




 Q & A with head of ELCA; 
Bishop Mark Hanson is optimistic that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America can overcome declining numbers, other challenges.

 
If challenging times give leaders a shot at greatness, then Mark Hanson's world is brimming with opportunity.
Hanson, bishop of the 4.85-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), is up against some daunting issues.
Membership numbers at ELCA, the nation's seventh-largest denomination, are slipping. Nationwide, membership fell by about 80,000 from 2004 to 2005, the steepest drop in 15 years. In Minnesota, Hanson's native state, the 2005 denomination population of 830,000 was about 7,300 fewer than the year before. 
There are controversies bred by Hanson's outspokenness on such topics as the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon, and the denomination's struggle with sexuality issues. At the 2005 assembly, delegates clung to a middle ground of welcoming gays without sanctioning same-sex unions or relationships for gay clergy. That pleased nobody.
Hanson, based at ELCA headquarters in Chicago, expects to run for a second six-year term next year. He was in Minneapolis last week. Excerpts from a conversation:
Q - You've been speaking out on many global issues, ranging from wars to World AIDS Day, and traveling a lot overseas. Why?
A - I speak out on the basis of my baptismal calling and because we must see life globally. Twenty, 30 years ago, we were sending missionaries to other countries; now those churches have matured and we accompany them as partners. Our young people go overseas during college and come back transformed. There's no turning back. We are an interconnected world.
I've gone to Hungary and Romania to encourage church folks there, and to Indonesia and India after the tsunami to facilitate a significant, difficult Muslim-Christian dialogue.
Some people haven't cared for the social statements. I tell them that though we may disagree on details, we all look for justice and peace.
Q - What is the ELCA doing to shore up its numbers?
A - The best way is not savvy marketing, but something simpler. Eighty percent of those who come to church for the first time come because someone invited them. It usually takes three invites. Think about who you know, what it will take - three invitations, maybe the offer of a ride? Second, we're reaching out to communities of color and immigrants. But congregations have to be willing to be transformed by these new members rather than simply expecting to assimilate them. We've done a good job of supporting new ministries in our churches, but not of being cross-cultural.
Q - What's being done to keep young people in the ELCA?
A - Young adults seek authenticity. One way of being in faith doesn't fit all. We're working hard on college campuses. And I see promise in the edgy starts, the experimental ELCA churches, some of them right here in Minnesota [such as Mercy Seat and Jacob's Well].
Q - What else lies ahead for the ELCA?
A - We're going to focus more on the scriptures and how they help us know what God is up to today. We're seeing renewed interest in the meaning of evangelism and in prayer. And we're renewing commitment to the message put forth so well by [St. Paul Area Synod Bishop] Peter Rogness and [Archbishop] Harry Flynn, that faith should be lived in solidarity with the poor.
Q - And the sexuality issue?
A - I hope we can expand the discussion. My fear is that we who are heterosexual will find it easier to talk about how gays and lesbians should live than about how all of us are sexual creatures. We must take the discussion of sexuality back from the culture, from media and marketing that make it an exploitative tool.
In this broader context, we could talk more easily about homosexuality, a divisive issue some people are weary of and others believe must stay at the fore. Sex should not define or divide the church.
Q - What would a division over the gospel look like?
A - Well, for instance, in Africa we often work hard to build our church communities, then suddenly lose them as people flock to churches that preach a prosperity or self-help gospel. In Africa, which is so poor, those messages have a powerful appeal. But they're not about the message of Jesus Christ.
Q - Ten years from now, what should the ELCA look like?
A - I would hope that all of our congregations, diverse in size and makeup, would have worship at the center of their life. It's very difficult to sustain a vibrant faith if one is not fed weekly by the sacraments and prayer.
Q - Anything you'd like to say specifically to Minnesota Lutherans?
A - I think the larger ELCA looks to Minnesota with a sense of expectation, that it asks what Minnesotans can do to lead and teach by virtue of their numerical strength. They're looked to for new ways to preserve small-town and rural churches that go beyond preservation and nostalgia.
Pamela Miller - 612-673-4290

   


December 8, 2006 Friday  




 

Honors for Eastwood Film
  Clint Eastwood's ''Letters From Iwo Jima'' was named the year's best film, as accolades from the National Board of Review opened the annual motion picture awards season on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported. The second part of Mr. Eastwood's examination of World War II, ''Letters From Iwo Jima,'' in contrast to the first, ''Flags of Our Fathers,'' depicts the battle for the island from a Japanese perspective. Martin Scorsese was named best director for ''The Departed.'' Forest Whitaker's portrayal of Idi Amin in ''The Last King of Scotland,'' above, won him the best-actor designation, and Helen Mirren was chosen best actress for her depiction of Queen Elizabeth II in ''The Queen.'' Pedro Almodovar's ''Volver'' was named best foreign film. The National Board of Review consists of film historians, students and educators.

Gibson Movie Draws Protests in Guatemala
 
  Some Guatemalans are voicing anger at Mel Gibson's new movie, ''Apocalypto,'' Reuters reported. In an echo of the protests that greeted Mr. Gibson's bloody ''Passion of the Christ,'' native activists in Guatemala, which was once home to a large part of the Maya empire depicted in ''Apocalypto,'' say the film is racist. Their leaders say scenes of scary-looking Mayas with bone piercings and scarred faces hurling spears and sacrificing humans promote stereotypes about their culture. Mr. Gibson's representative was not immediately available for comment. Only trailers for the film have been shown in Guatemala, but Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation, which promotes Maya culture, said, ''Gibson replays, in glorious big-budget Technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact needed, rescue.''

A Playboy Editor on Trial
  The editor in chief of Playboy Indonesia went on trial yesterday on charges of publishing indecent material, The Associated Press reported. If convicted, the editor, Erwin Arnada, could face a maximum prison term of more than two and a half years. A prosecutor, Resni Muchtar, told the South Jakarta District Court that Mr. Arnada had overseen photo shoots and published revealing pictures of female models in underwear, some showing partly exposed breasts. ''The models also had inviting expressions on their faces,'' he said, adding that the magazine included lascivious and lustful comments. The defense, not required to enter a plea, said it would respond at a later hearing. The Indonesian version of Playboy was first published in April, provoking protests in that Muslim nation. The magazine's offices have been moved to Bali, a Hindu island.

British Performers Protest Copyright Limit
  Paul McCartney, below, lent his name yesterday to an appeal by thousands of performers and record companies for an extension of the 50-year British limit on copyright of sound recordings and performers' rights, Reuters reported. Calling for ''fair play for musicians,'' a full-page advertisement in The Financial Times carried 4,000 names protesting a government-sponsored review, released on Wednesday, that rejected copyright extension. The ad was said to have been placed on behalf of more than 40,000 performers and 3,500 record companies. The British Phonographic Industry, maintaining that the final decision lies with the European Commission, said it would continue to lobby for a copyright extension to 95 years, the term in the United States.

Met and English Opera Team Up for Glass
  The English National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera have announced plans to collaborate on a new production of Philip Glass's ''Satyagraha.'' Written in 1980, ''Satyagraha'' is based on Gandhi's formative years in South Africa, as he developed his philosophy of nonviolent protest as a powerful force for change. It is the second work in the ''portrait'' trilogy by Mr. Glass, above, which also includes ''Einstein on the Beach'' (1975) and ''Akhnaten'' (1983-84). The two opera companies previously collaborated on a new production of Puccini's ''Madama Butterfly,'' which opened in London in 2005 and in New York in September. ''Satyagraha,'' involving the director Phelim McDermott and the designer Julian Crouch, two of the three artistic directors of the visionary British theater company Improbable, is to open in April at the English National Opera and a year later at the Met.  After a $180 million makeover, the Royal Festival Hall in London will reopen in June with a concert featuring all four resident orchestras: the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

  


December 6, 2006 Wednesday  




 THE OPEN FORUM - Letters to the editor

 
Criticism and misconceptions about Muslims
Re: "Suthers' trip for naught," Nov. 30 Pius Kamau column.
Pius Kamau's anti-Arab/Muslim tirade crosses the line between legitimate criticism of a nation or religion to ethnic and religious bigotry. Blanketing other Arab countries in his criticism of Saudi Arabia and his attribution of an individual's criminal behavior to his religion are an excessive abuse of editorial license.
Connecting the United Arab Emirates with Saudi Arabia is an example of his apparent ignorance of the different social climate which sets these two countries apart. The UAE has made incredible progress during the 34 years of its existence and emergence from its primitive Third World status, and continues to address the flaws that remain. They are an open and tolerant society compared with Saudi policies. Kamau reveals the depths of his religious intolerance when he says that "\ Al-Turki, wearing the mantle of Islam, felt no qualms raping the Indonesian nanny." It is understandable why the many Muslims in our community are deeply offended by such columns that feed the widespread anti-Muslim prejudice that prevails in our society.
Ray Nelson, Denver 
...
The leaders in the Muslim community have made numerous statements regarding the misinformation being circulated by this newspaper as well as other sources in the community who are constantly bombarded with negative or misinformation regarding Islam. Letter-writer Mark Jensen's comments (Dec. 5 Open Forum) confirm this phenomenon.
The truth is that there is only one Islam. There are those who strive to practice the religion according to the teachings, and there are those who don't. The events in the Middle East are no more reflective of Islamic values and beliefs than murder, rape, child molestations and other heinous crimes committed daily in the West reflect Christian values.
At some point, intelligent people realize there is a difference between the behaviors of an individual and the philosophy of a religion. The two often don't coincide. For example, nowhere in the Bible does it teach that a priest should molest a child, yet we find countless Catholic and Christian leaders can't keep their hands off the children.
Do we really believe we, as Americans, have a moral "high ground"?
Should we discount the thousands of innocent lives destroyed by our so-called weapons of peace? I think not.
Malik Taylor, Denver
----------------------------------------
Is Denver's recycling program worth the cost?
Re: "The waste debate: Does recycling pay? Denver says per-ton cost is half that of using landfills," Dec. 3 news story.
Thank you so much for highlighting Denver's recycling program. I applaud the city of Denver's efforts. Jeremy P. Meyer did an excellent job in bringing out several pertinent issues on both sides.
There are, however, two other points that I would like to add. First, it is crucial for us to become consumers of products that are made from at least a certain percentage of post-consumer waste. Yes, purchasing products made from recycled materials right now costs more. One reason for that is that not enough of us purchase the items, so the market is not strong yet.
Once the demand equals the supply, the prices will drop.
Secondly, we cannot ever forget that recycling is more than a surface choice between products made from post-consumer waste and virgin sources. This is a social justice issue. We in the West, in particular, currently use more than our fair share of the world's resources. Recycling is one way we can help restore the balance. Reusing items and reducing our use are the other pillars of the three R's - recycle, reduce, re-use. Along with this point is the reminder that these resources are nonrenewable, so we absolutely must do all we can so that our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren have a planet with basic resources.
Tisa M. Anders, Lakewood
...
I'm not all that good at math, but if landfill disposal costs $50 per ton and recycling costs $25 per ton, I'm pretty sure that recycling pays.
Steve Read, Denver
----------------------------------------
Grad requirements
Re: "Tougher route to diploma," Dec. 1 news story.
It's really amazing there is any discussion about the high school graduation requirements recommended by the Colorado Education Alignment Council, particularly in view of Colorado's anxiety about having a world-class competitive workforce in the future. The requirements are pretty much the minimum level of high school education needed for getting around in the 21st century, whether the graduate is headed for a four-year university or right into an entry- level job. The only relevant discussion is: Are the standards tough enough? Not really. Four years of science and one year of economics should also be required. Science and economic illiteracy of many U.S. citizens contributes to most of our current problems. Smooth- talking pundits and ideologues frequently fool these unaware citizens.
Local school district control is great - up to a point. That point is where the local school boards start making decisions that damage the education of their students.
Jim Leonard, Evergreen
----------------------------------------
Oil and gas industry
I'm getting a bit tired of seeing America's oil and natural gas industry taking out full-page ads week after week with titles like "A balanced energy approach." Their idea of a "balance" is drilling more in America. I have an idea for America's oil and natural gas industry: Quit spending money on full- page ads and use the money to come up with an entirely new business plan. We need alternatives to oil, and we need them fast.
Emily Frazee, Colorado Springs
----------------------------------------
Wreaths for the fallen
Re: "One man's gift touches nation's heart; Wreaths honor fallen warriors," Dec. 3 news story.
This was a very nice article, regarding the Maine man who organized to bring and place Christmas wreaths on gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. Just wondering what they do when they reach my uncle's grave with the star of David on it.
Do they:
A) Disrespect him by leaving the wreath; or
B) Ignore him by leaving the grave empty?
Mike Fishelman, Arvada
----------------------------------------
Sen. Wayne Allard's environmental record Re: "If lured to '08 race, Allard likely to face roughest road yet," Dec. 3 news story.
Sen. Wayne Allard, according to his profile in Sunday's Denver Post, wants to be remembered for his efforts to protect Colorado's endangered fish. While it's true that the senator has helped bring to Colorado funding for our endangered fish recovery programs, on the whole his conservation record has been abysmal. He earned only 17 percent on the League of Conservation Voters scorecard during the last Congress; he consistently votes to roll back clean air and clean water protections; is against critical conservation issues like protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; and he has actively promoted weakening the Endangered Species Act.
In fact, if the Endangered Species Act "reforms" that he promoted had been adopted by Congress, the endangered fish recovery programs he touted would have likely ended, with severe consequences for these four native Colorado fish species.
Sen. Allard won his last two Senate races in part by claiming to support conservation, but he'll have a much tougher time making that claim in 2008 against Congressman Mark Udall, one of Colorado's true conservation champions.
Jacob Smith, Golden

 December 4, 2006 Monday  




 Lincoln group celebrates 25 years of friendship

 
It was in Russia that Cece Hunt learned that people will always find a way to communicate.
Years ago, when Hunt and her husband, Bill, were touring a Russian school during a Friendship Force travel exchange, Bill Hunt went out to the balcony, where he was approached by a man who started speaking Russian to him. 
"Bill didn't speak Russian,"Hunt recalled. "Then all of a sudden (the man) had a bright idea - he started singing 'Home, home on the Range.'"
The Hunts have been part of  The Friendship Force of Lincoln since its inception in 1981.
On Sunday evening the group celebrated its 25th anniversary with a banquet at the Country Club of Lincoln.
Members have visited and hosted visitors from countries all over the world.
Visiting a different country through a Friendship Force exchange is different from merely visiting as a tourist, said member Larry Kluck.
The exchanges show members how people live in different countries, he said.
"You learn the most about the country when you sit across the breakfast table from your host and hostess,"he said.
During the first couple of years they were in the group, the Hunts would travel to a new country and stay with a host family twice a year, Cece Hunt said.
"I think it's good to know the average person instead of the politicians, which is what you usually hear of," Hunt said.
George Brown, president of Friendship Force International and featured speaker, said Friendship Force sponsored many exchanges with countries of the former Soviet Union during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Recently, the organization has been sponsoring exchanges with Muslim countries including Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and Indonesia, Brown said.
"How do we as Americans learn to deal in a positive way with the Muslim world and help them understand us?" he said.
Lincoln has one of Friendship Force's strongest and most active clubs, Brown said.
"Lincoln, if you go outside the U.S., is not a really well-known city like Chicago," Brown said. "But in Friendship Force - (Lincoln is) well-known in that community."
"You get a sense of America that is much more real than if you go to New York or San Francisco,"he said.
Reach Hilary Kindschuh at 473-7120 or hkindschuh@journalstar.com
AROUND THE WORLD
The Friendship Force of Lincoln has conducted 67 exchanges involving 2,535 participants over the past 25 years in locations including: England, Korea, Germany, USSR, Colombia, New Zealand, Israel, Japan, Sweden, Republic of Ireland, Mexico, Indonesia, China, Portugal, Egypt, Tajikistan, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Kenya, Australia, Brazil, Taiwan, Wales, Italy, Costa Rica, Belgium, Syria/Jordan, The Philippines, South Africa, Hungary, Cuba, Canada, Peru, Russia, Vietnam, New Caledonia, Singapore, Slovakia, Estonia, Slovenia and Tanzania.
The group has hosted 995 visitors on 38 weeklong visits, as well as seven Open World Programs of Potential Russian Leaders.
Source: Mary Bryant, communications chairwoman, The Friendship Force of Lincoln








 


November 30, 2006 Thursday  




 Suthers' trip for naught

 
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers went to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to soothe ruffled royal nerves resulting from a jail sentence passed by an Arapahoe County jury on the son of a prominent Saudi family. For six years, Homaidan Al-Turki withheld the salary of an Indonesian woman he'd brought to Colorado as a nanny and kept her from the outside world. He also raped her.
In essence, she was enslaved. 
I was gratified that Al-Turki was sentenced to 20 years to life; he deserved it. But I also was disappointed that Suthers had, at the behest of the U.S. State Department, gone to Riyadh to explain the sentence to King Abdullah and his minions. Suthers didn't change any minds, nor breach any cultural differences. The trip demonstrated our continuing ignorance of Arab culture.
Our cultural differences are deep and wide. For instance, there are few human rights for the women in Saudi Arabia and some other Muslim countries, and few for minorities and foreign workers.
Sultans, emirates, kings and Arab dictators refuse to emerge from history's dark corridors into the 21st century enlightenment. The tragedy is that in the century America has had extensive dealings with such nations as Saudi Arabia and the UAE and has made few attempts to influence Arab leaders to modify the most egregious human-rights abuses. We have thirsted for little more than their oil and their petrodollars for our arms and fighter planes.
The Suthers trip reinforced the fact that Saudis must be catered to, even when one of theirs broke U.S. laws.
For me, New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof is a hero of the tortured and downtrodden of the world. His outrage at the rapes, mutilations and killings of blacks by Arabs in Darfur won him the 2006 Pulitzer Prize (his second). Since 2004, he has reported on Mukhtaran Bibi, who was sentenced to be gang-raped as punishment for a trumped-up charge against her brother.
She was later forced to walk home naked as 300 jeering villagers looked on. Because of the dishonor associated with rape, Mukhtaran might have committed suicide, but the courageous Pakistani girl did nothing of the sort. Kristof has continued to report on Mukhtaran, who has distinguished herself by building a school for other girls in her village. She has shamed her rapists, the village elders and Pervez Musharraf's government.
Kristof and others have shown the world an evil underbelly of the Sharia practiced in some Muslim states. To prove rape, a woman must produce four male witnesses. Raped girls are "damaged," and many commit suicide or are killed by family members for "dishonoring" the family. Adultery is punishable by death either by beheading or stoning - this in the 21st century.
Unlike Kristof, Suthers expresses no outrage about the inhumanity of Muslim practices, nor does he lament that all the attention is heaped upon the Arab enslaver-rapist. How about the victim of Al-Turki's crime? Surely she matters. In Saudi practice, women are often objects for male dominance. Additionally, this victim, an Indonesian maid, already dishonored by rape, could never be "a competent" witness in Saudi courts.
Al-Turki, wearing the mantle of Islam, felt no qualms raping the Indonesian nanny. Hence the attempt by Suthers to explain to the Saudi king the workings and values of the Western legal system was doomed to failure from the outset.
Pius Kamau of Aurora is a thoracic and general surgeon. He was born and raised in Kenya and immigrated to the U.S. in 1971.

 



 
November 26, 2006 Sunday



 Molly Ivins: Giving thanks for Election Day shake-up

 
IT'S time to give thanks, and I want to start off with a great, big thank you for the top American movement conservatives and all the fun we've had since Election Day. I know I promised not to gloat after this election was over, but I'm not talking unseemly gloating - I'm talking about moments so brilliantly hilarious the only option is to put your head down on the desk and howl.
First in line is the wit of The National Review's Kate O'Beirne, who clearly teamed up with Borat to explain the great conservative win. Her explanation is that this is a win for conservatism because a great many of the Ds elected are so conservative themselves. She says half of them are conservatives. 
She is indeed right. If only twice as many Democrats had been elected, it would have proved that there are twice as many conservatives in the country, and this is clear to any thinking person. We might challenge Ms. O'Beirne to explain how the next Republican win is a victory for liberalism.
The reason that O'Beirne and others are able to accept such an absurdity is because they've been listening to George W. Bush for six years and are thus able to believe six impossible things before breakfast.
Speaking of "thinking," another great moment for conservatives this year was highlighted on the Nov. 16 edition of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." Host Jon Stewart addressed a recent remark that CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck made to Representative-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim ever elected to Congress.
Beck said, "I have been nervous about this interview with you because what I feel like saying is, `Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."' After airing Beck's comment, Stewart declared, "Finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking."
While the Washington press corps worried its pretty little head to a frazzle over Nancy Pelosi's Armani suits and terrible start as speaker of the House (except she hasn't started as speaker), they forgot to fret over Trent Lott, who had previously been bounced unceremoniously from the Senate leadership team to which the Republicans just re-elected him. They seem to have forgotten that he had expressed the wish that Strom Thurmond, the segregationist candidate for president, had won in 1948.
Thanks for the late Johnny Apple and the now retired Adam Clymer (who predicted a 28-seat sweep and the possibility of taking the Senate) for reminding us that  used to know how to cover politics. So, for that matter, did , now graced only by E.J. Dionne.
Thanks for Cokie Roberts, who was the only alert citizen on television on election night. The others were either stalwart Republicans or John McCain worshipers.
Thanks from a grateful nation for an obedient press corps that failed during Bush's six-hour, carefully orchestrated visit to Indonesia to register the fact that there were massive demonstrations against his administration and its policies toward Muslims. The demonstrators during his short visit forced him to stay behind the presidential palace wall all day and - due to concerns for his safety - not spend the night.
So many of our media mavens have been so wrong for so long that we may yet see a mere modicum of becoming self-doubt from our professional pontificators. And think how thankful we'd all be for that. Their sources, led by Karl Rove, have had them eating Pablum out of their hands for years now.
Nope. No hope.
Molly Ivins is a columnist with Creators Syndicate.






 
 

 

November 21, 2006 Tuesday



 Indonesian president says U.S. needs international aid in Iraq; 
During Bush's visit, Muslim country's leader calls for exit timetable, discourages quick withdrawal of troops

 
With President Bush beside him, the president of the world's most populous Muslim nation called Monday for other countries to help stabilize Iraq and for developing a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. 
At a joint news conference, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono did not specify which countries should be brought in to help, but he emphasized that "the global community must be also responsible in solving the problems in Iraq."
While he mentioned that the U.S. should work toward "a proper timetable" for "the disengagement of U.S. military forces and other coalition forces from Iraq," he implicitly rejected calls for an abrupt pullout, and Bush said Yudhoyono had not urged him to do that.
Bush defended his Iraq policy and did not rule out sending more U.S. troops to join the approximately 140,000 currently in Iraq.
"I haven't made any decisions about troop increases or troop decreases and won't until I hear from a variety of sources, including our own United States military," he said. He said he hopes to get recommendations from the Pentagon "as quickly as possible."
Of the three obvious options -- sending significantly more U.S. troops to Iraq, staying the course or withdrawing immediately -- only one has much support, however.
The United States does not have enough troops to increase its presence significantly, and there is wide agreement that a hasty retreat would only leave a bigger mess.
Support is coalescing around alterations to the current strategy, perhaps adding 20,000 to 50,000 more troops for a limited time, then beginning a drawdown.
Bush's visit to Indonesia on the final leg of a six-day Asia tour sparked days of protests that continued as he met with Yudhoyono behind the heavily guarded gates of a presidential palace. Bush said he was not bothered by protests against him.
"It's to Indonesia's credit that it's a society where people are able to protest and say what they think," he said. "It's not the first time, by the way, where people have showed up and expressed their opinion about my policies. But that's what happens when you make hard decisions."
Helmeted police stood shoulder to shoulder to block off streets near the meeting site in Bogor, about 45 miles south of Jakarta. Nearby businesses were forced to close for the day.
The protesters did not get near the sprawling country estate, and Bush avoided any encounters by traveling by helicopter from the Jakarta airport. The chopper landed at the colonial-era palace in a driving rainstorm, punctuated by at least one lightning strike.
Both leaders seemed eager to avoid any friction during the seven-hour visit, which was intended to strengthen relations and showcase Indonesia as a model Muslim democracy.

    


November 21, 2006 Tuesday  




 Bush Ends Trip at Careful Stop in Indonesia

 
President Bush made a six-hour, carefully orchestrated visit to Indonesia on Monday, praising the country's first directly elected president and seeking to defuse the widespread anger here, in the most populous Islamic country, over the continued American presence in Iraq.
  Mr. Bush, whose visit to Indonesia three years ago was consumed with talk of counterterrorism, this time appeared focused on fighting bird flu, bolstering a small program to aid Indonesian schools and promoting growth. 
And in an afternoon of meetings at an ornate presidential palace that is a legacy of Dutch colonial rule, Mr. Bush held a closed-door session with what the White House called ''civic leaders'' of Indonesia. 
  Protesters and their ''Stop Bush Now'' placards could get no place near the Bogor Palace, which is an hour outside of Jakarta and heavily protected by troops and fences. But Mr. Bush turned the Jakarta protests into a example of how far Indonesia has come in allowing free expression.
  ''It's not the first time, by the way, where people have showed up and expressed their opinion about my policies,'' Mr. Bush, looking tired at the end of a grueling trip, said with a smile. ''But that's what happens when you make hard decisions.''
  State Department surveys show that the percentage of Indonesians who say they have a favorable view of the United States has declined to 30 percent, from 75 percent six years ago. 
  The Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, gave only the most gentle prod to Mr. Bush, talking about a ''proper timetable'' for withdrawal from Iraq, but then echoing Mr. Bush's view that the timetable had to be linked to national reconciliation there and the training of new security forces. 
  When a reporter asked Mr. Yudhoyono whether he had urged Mr. Bush to begin a withdrawal of forces from Iraq, Mr. Bush interjected: ''I'll be glad to answer it for him -- no, no he didn't. But he can answer it for himself.'' 
  In Mr. Bush's struggle to demonstrate that he can still achieve his initial objective in Iraq -- a stable, democratic government in a demographically diverse Islamic nation -- he often holds up Indonesia as an example, proof that Islam and democracy are compatible. 
  Since Suharto's departure from power in 1998, a real democracy has begun to take root. In its recent report card on the country, Freedom House judged that ''the political system is open and democratic in its basic structures,'' even while some of its institutions still ''function poorly or are sanctuaries of undemocratic and abusive behavior.'' 
  But to Mr. Bush, Indonesia's greatest accomplishment has been to suppress extremist groups, especially Jemaah Islamiyah, considered an affiliate of Al Qaeda. 
  ''I believe the vast majority of people want to live in moderation and not have extremists kill innocent people,'' he said at a news conference in the ornate receiving rooms of the palace. 
  Despite the country's recent progress, however, Mr. Bush once again did not stay the night in Indonesia, at the insistence of the Secret Service. On his previous visit, he stopped in Bali, a Hindu island of resorts in a nation of Muslims, and held what turned out to be a contentious session with Indonesian scholars and religious scholars. He was criticized after that visit for failing to come to the heart of Indonesia.
  So on Monday he flew into the airport in Jakarta, the capital. But he never ventured into the city. Instead, he stayed behind the fenced wall of the palace compound, save for his helicopter ride from and to the airport, where Air Force One was standing by for the trip onward to Hawaii. 
  Protesters were kept away by troops and rolls of barbed wire. In Jakarta, the authorities appeared to have jammed some cellular telephone networks.
  At one point during the news conference, Mr. Bush was asked to describe the risks of adding more forces to Iraq, a step that Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, is pressing for. 
  Mr. Bush, who has described in detail the risks of pulling out of Iraq too soon, sidestepped the question. ''I haven't made any decisions about troop increases or troop decreases, and won't until I hear from a variety of sources, including our own United States military,'' he replied. 
  Among the groups expected to present their recommendations to the president are the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a bipartisan study group led by a former secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and a former congressman, Lee H. Hamilton.
  So far, Mr. Bush has used those groups' continuing studies to justify declining to talk about his plans for the Iraq mission. ''There's no need to comment on something that may not happen,'' he said. ''But if it were to happen, I will tell you the upsides and the downsides.''


 INDONESIA (96%);  UNITED STATES (93%)







   


November 21, 2006 Tuesday  
 on the Web



 Bush Tries to Defuse Indonesian Anger Over Iraq

 
BOGOR, Indonesia, Nov. 20 -- President Bush made a six-hour, carefully orchestrated visit to Indonesia on Monday, where he praised the country's first directly elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and tried to defuse the widespread anger in the world's most populous Islamic country over the continued American presence in Iraq.
  In an afternoon of meetings at an ornate presidential palace that is a legacy of Dutch colonial rule, Mr. Bush held a closed-door session with what the White House called ''civic leaders'' of Indonesia, his second in three years here. But officials gave no account of that discussion, and Mr. Bush, whose previous visit to Indonesia three years ago was consumed with talk of counterterrorism, this time appeared focused on fighting Avian flu, bolstering a small American program to aid Indonesian schools and promoting growth. 
Protesters and their ''Stop Bush Now'' placards could get no place near the Bogor palace, which is an hour outside of Jakarta and heavily protected by troops and fences. But Mr. Bush, reflecting State Department surveys showing that only 30 percent of Indonesians now have a favorable view of the United States compared with 75 percent six years ago, turned the Jakarta protests into a example of how far Indonesia has come in allowing free expression
  ''It's not the first time, by the way, where people have showed up and expressed their opinion about my policies,'' Mr. Bush, looking tired at the end of a grueling trip, said with a smile. ''But that's what happens when you makes hard decisions.''
  Mr. Yudhoyono gave only the most gentle prod to Mr. Bush, talking about a ''triple track solution'' to Iraq that included a ''proper timetable'' for withdrawal from Iraq. But when pressed, he adopted Mr. Bush's view that the timetable had to be linked to national reconciliation in Iraq and the training of new security forces. 
  When Mr. Yudhoyono was asked specifically whether he had urged Mr. Bush to begin a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, Mr. Bush interjected: ''I'll be glad to answer it for him -- no, no he didn't. But he can answer it for himself.''
  In Mr. Bush's struggle to demonstrate that he can still achieve his initial objective in Iraq -- a stable, democratic government in a demographically diverse Islamic nation -- Indonesia plays a critical role as his prime example. Since the 1998 fall of ex-President Suharto, a dictator, a real democracy has begun to take root in Indonesia, and Mr. Bush often cites the country to back up his argument that Islam and democracy are compatible.
  In its recent report card on Indonesia, Freedom House judged that ''the political system is open and democratic in its basic structures,'' even while some of its institutions still ''function poorly or are sanctuaries of undemocratic and abusive behavior.'' 
  But to Mr. Bush, Indonesia's greatest accomplishment has been to suppress extremist groups, especially Jemaah Islamiyah, considered an affiliate of Al Qaeda. ''I believe the vast majority of people want to live in moderation and not have extremists kill innocent people,'' the president said at a news conference on Monday in the ornate receiving rooms of the palace. ''And so, therefore, our policies are to promote that kind of form of government. It's not going to look like America.''
  For all the progress in recent times, however, Mr. Bush did not stay the night in Indonesia, for the second trip in a row, at the insistence of the Secret Service, which was concerned about his security. Instead, after his dinner with Mr. Yudhoyono, Mr. Bush boarded Air Force One for a 12-hour flight to Hawaii.
  In his previous visit to Indonesia, Mr. Bush stopped in Bali -- the Hindu resort island in a nation of Muslims -- and held what turned out to be a contentious session with Indonesian scholars and religious scholars. He was criticized after that visit for failing to come to the heart of Indonesia.
  So on Monday's visit to Indonesia, Mr. Bush flew right into Jakarta airport, but never ventured into the city, where protests involving several thousand people were on the way. Instead, he stayed behind the fenced wall of the palace compound all day, save for his helicopter ride from and to the airport where Air Force One was standing by. Protesters were kept well away by troops and rolls of barbed wire. In Jakarta, the authorities appeared to have jammed some cellular telephone lines.
  At one point during Monday's news conference, Mr. Bush was asked to describe the risks of adding more forces to Iraq, a step that Senator John McCain of Arizona is pressing. Mr. Bush, who has described in detail the risks of pulling out of Iraq too soon, refused to be drawn into a discussion of what could go wrong if he decided to add more troops to secure Baghdad, an option called ''the big push.''
  Mr. Bush sidestepped the question. ''I haven't made any decisions about troop increases or troop decreases, and won't until I hear from a variety of sources, including our own United States military,'' the president replied. 
  He appeared to be discussing recommendations under way from the joint chiefs of staff, the National Security Council and a bipartisan study group that is headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and a former Democratic congressman, Lee Hamilton.
  So far, Mr. Bush has used those studies to justify declining to talk about his plans for trying, again, to resuscitate the Iraq mission. ''There's no need to comment on something that may not happen,'' he said. ''But if it were to happen, I will tell you the upsides and the downsides.''


 INDONESIA (97%); UNITED STATES (95%); 







 Star Tribune
 
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

November 21, 2006 Tuesday  




 BUSH IN SOUTHEAST ASIA; 
THE TRIP'S LAST LEG; 
Indonesian leader urges global effort to help Iraq

 
With President Bush beside him, the president of the world's most populous Muslim nation called Monday for other countries to help stabilize Iraq and for developing a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. 
At a joint news conference, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono didn't specify which countries should be brought in to help, but he emphasized that "the global community must be also responsible in solving the problems in Iraq."
He mentioned that the United States should work toward "a proper timetable" for "the disengagement of U.S. military forces and other coalition forces from Iraq," but he implicitly rejected calls for an abrupt pullout.
Bush defended his Iraq policy and didn't rule out sending more U.S. troops to join the about 140,000 now in Iraq.
"I haven't made any decisions about troop increases or troop decreases and won't until I hear from a variety of sources, including our own United States military," he said.
About those protests
Bush's visit to Indonesia on the final leg of a six-day Asia tour sparked days of protests that continued as he met with Yudhoyono behind the guarded gates of a presidential palace. Bush said he wasn't bothered by protests against him.
"It's to Indonesia's credit that it's a society where people are able to protest and say what they think," Bush said. "It's not the first time, by the way, where people have showed up and expressed their opinion about my policies. But that's what happens when you make hard decisions."
Bush avoided any encounters by traveling by helicopter from the Jakarta airport.
Both leaders seemed eager to avoid any friction during the seven-hour visit, which was intended to showcase Indonesia as a model Muslim democracy.
Earlier, White House aides scrambled to come up with alternative arrangements after Air Force One suffered six flat tires upon Bush's arrival.
A malfunction in the aircraft's braking system overheated the tires, causing their valves to blow out. The feature is intended to prevent a more dangerous tire blowout. Air Force mechanics fixed the problem in time for Bush's departure.
What's next: Heading home
The president arrived in Hawaii on Monday night and will have breakfast with U.S. troops before returning to Washington later today.

 INDONESIA (97%); UNITED STATES (95%);  ASIA (93%); SOUTH EAST ASIA (92%)







 
 


November 21, 2006 Tuesday  




 Bush back in USA after 5-day Asian excursion; 
Says Indonesian protests are positive signs of democracy

 
BOGOR, Indonesia -- President Bush arrived in Hawaii today, ending a five-day trip during which he talked with world leaders about stopping North Korea's nuclear weapon's program.
In Indonesia, the last stop on the trip, several thousand anti-American protesters that included hard-line Islamists staged demonstrations Monday against U.S. policy in Iraq. Bush said the protests were symbolic of the kind of free expression the United States is trying to establish in Iraq. 
"Indonesia is an example of how democracy and modernization can present an alternative to extremism," Bush said after meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a 19th-century palace built by the nation's Dutch former colonial rulers.
"To say spreading democracy is anti-religious -- it's the opposite of that. Democracy means you can worship any way you choose, freely," he said.
Before Indonesia, Bush visited Singapore and Vietnam, where he discussed free trade and measures aimed at reining in North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Bush spent a little more than six hours here amid tight security before flying to Hawaii, where he is to have breakfast with U.S. troops.
In a meeting with reporters in Indonesia, Bush said he has not decided about future troop levels in Iraq and is still consulting with advisers. The administration is also awaiting the report from a special committee on Iraq led by former secretary of State James Baker and former U.S. representative Lee Hamilton.
Indonesia replaced a dictatorship on its own in the late 1990s, so it's not a good example for Iraq, said William Liddle, an Ohio State University specialist on Indonesia.
"The Indonesians created this for themselves; they weren't occupied by somebody," said Liddle of the country that consists of more than 17,000 islands.
Derek Mitchell, an Asia specialist with the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, said the Islamic Middle East doesn't consider Indonesia as a model. "They see them as outliers," he said.
Indonesia has 190 million people and 87% are Muslim, the State Department said. The country is having troubles with militant Islam. The State Department says the Indonesian Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiyah has been behind four terror attacks that killed more than 240 people since 2002.
On Iraq, Yudhoyono said the "global community" needs to help strengthen the Baghdad government before the United States can leave.
Indonesian attitudes toward the United States have gone up and down during Bush's presidency, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project.
In 2002, a year after the 9/11 attacks, 61% of Indonesians held a favorable view of the United States, according to Pew. That dropped to 15% in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and then rose to 38% in 2005 after the United States helped Indonesia recover from the December 2004 tsunami that killed 167,000 Indonesians. 

  INDONESIA (98%);  KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (93%); ASIA (92%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); SINGAPORE (79%)







 
 


November 20, 2006 Monday  




 At summit, criticism of North Korea

 
HANOI, Vietnam - President Bush and other leaders wrapped up an annual meeting Sunday by denouncing North Korea's nuclear weapons program and calling for an expansion of free trade. 
At the end of the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet read a group statement calling North Korea's nuclear program ''a clear threat to our shared interest of peace and security'' and expressing solidarity in the desire for a ''nuclear weapons-free Korean Peninsula.''
U.S. deputy national security adviser David McCormick said the United States had wanted the statement included in a formal declaration released at the end of the summit. But he called the wording ''very firm'' and added that ''what was important was that the members of APEC kind of came together on a common statement.''
Bush left the Vietnamese capital late Sunday and traveled south to Ho Chi Minh City, where residents waved and cheered his motorcade.
He will leave Asia after making a stop in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, where demonstrators in Jakarta on Sunday denounced him as a ''war criminal'' and ''terrorist.''
The final APEC declaration, endorsed by all the attending heads of state, called for increased efforts to ''break the current deadlocks'' in the Doha round of the World Trade Organization talks.
The trade talks, largely aimed at stimulating growth in some of the world's poorest economies, collapsed in July amid disputes among some of the largest economies, including the United States and European Union.
Although the APEC member states offered few details about how they would reinvigorate the talks, the U.S. and Russia signed a bilateral trade agreement Sunday that paves the way for Russia to join the WTO.

 KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (94%); VIET NAM (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); ASIA (93%); INDONESIA (92%); VIETNAM (90%); NORTHERN ASIA (79%); EUROPE (79%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (74%)







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

November 20, 2006, Monday



 Bush draws mass protest in Indonesia

 
The Associated Press
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam - President Bush paid tribute to new symbols of capitalism in this struggling communist country Monday and offered encouragement for Vietnam's battle against bird flu and other public health challenges.
The president was quickly touring this city, once known as Saigon, before flying to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, where thousands angrily protested America's policy in the Middle East and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
The White House said it was confident about security precautions for Bush's visit despite police warnings of an increased threat of attack by al-Qaida-linked groups.
The president was to spend just six hours in Indonesia, most of it at Bogor Palace, a presidential retreat outside the capital of Jakarta and far from the scene of protests where Bush was denounced as a "war criminal" and "terrorist."
While President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is a close U.S. ally in the war on terror, Bush is highly unpopular in Indonesia where security forces were probing unconfirmed reports that a suicide bomber was planning to attack during Bush's visit today. Bogor Police Chief Col. Sukrawardi Dahlan said authorities were investigating a report that a man wearing a suicide vest would infiltrate the protests.
Initially, the White House thought Bush would have to fly to Indonesia on a backup Air Force One. There was a problem with a tire upon landing in Ho Chi Minh City, said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. But a replacement tire was found, and the president is scheduled to fly his regular Boeing 747 to Indonesia.
In Ho Chi Minh City, Bush visited the Vietnam stock exchange, where trading began in 2000 and expanded to Hanoi last year. The exchange initially listed two companies and two bonds. Now, there is trading in 56 stocks and funds on the combined exchanges with total capitalization of $3.5 billion.
The president, wielding a red-handled mallet, struck a gong to open the day's trading. Bush hit it three times, shook hands with traders on the floor and met with a group of American and Vietnamese business leaders.
"I am very interested in hearing what the opportunities are like and the obstacles you face," the president told them. "Perhaps the United States can help foster the market economy that is growing here."
"When I read about the recent economic history of Vietnam," he said, "I am amazed at the size of the growth and the fact that people are beginning to realize dreams." Last year, Vietnam's economy grew by a robust 8.4 percent.
He also was visiting the Pasteur Institute for a briefing on its research on HIV/AIDs and other public health problems.
Bush's trip to Asia was his first appearance on the world stage since his Republican Party lost control of Congress and was rebuked for the unpopular war in Iraq.
To Bush's dismay, he was unable to deliver a promised agreement on normal trade relations with Vietnam. It was snarled in Congress but the administration expressed confidence it eventually would be approved.
Vietnam's economy is booming, the fastest growing in Asia, and the country is the world's second-largest exporter of rice. But the benefits have not reached most people. The per capita income is less than $700 a year.
In a city usually teeming with motorcycle traffic, streets were cleared for Bush's motorcade. As he rode by, people waved, laughed and cheered. It was a contrast to the subdued reaction of residents in Hanoi, where Bush participated in the summit and conferred with the leaders of China, Russia, South Korea and Japan.
Bush was in Hanoi to attend the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
The White House supported the summit's closing statement prodding North Korea to return to nuclear disarmament talks and urging nations to keep the pressure on by enforcing U.N. Security Council sanctions.
But the administration was at a loss to explain why the statement was simply read as part of the chairman's wrap-up statement, and not issued as a written document. Another oddity was that the section about North Vietnam was not translated into English when the statement was read.
U.S. officials later said that the reason the North Korea statement was delivered orally, rather than written, was because China did not want to sign a document with Taiwan. Beijing regards Taiwan as a breakaway colony and did not want to put it on equal footing, the U.S. officials said.
At the summit, Bush met separately with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao to discuss strategy for yet-to-be-scheduled talks with North Korea. The administration sent U.S. envoy Christopher Hill to Beijing for further consultations.
In their public remarks, Bush and Putin celebrated a U.S.-Russia agreement for Moscow's entry into the World Trade Organization. Bush said Russia's admission to the group was "good for the United States and good for Russia."
With Putin and Hu, Bush also pressed for a U.N. Security Council resolution to pressure Iran to abandon nuclear weapons. It was unclear whether Bush made any headway in persuading China and Russia to drop their reluctance to go along.
Describing Bush's discussions with Putin, White House press secretary Tony Snow said the leaders did not discuss specifics "but they understand that you need a strong resolution that will send the Iranians the clear message that we're not only united, but serious, and at the same time are going to offer them the opportunity to have civil nuclear power, which is of some importance to the Iranian people."

 VIET NAM (97%); VIETNAM (95%); UNITED STATES (94%);  MIDDLE EAST (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%);  ASIA (79%)







  
 

November 20, 2006 Monday  




 BUSH TO FACE CHILLY INDONESIA WELCOME; 
ON A MISSION TO QUELL ANTI-AMERICAN SENTIMENT

 
President Bush travels to Indonesia today on a mission to tamp down anti-American sentiment in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
He has his work cut out for him. Thousands of protesters gathered even before his arrival, a local shaman put a curse on him and Indonesian officials went on alert for possible terrorist activity. 
More than 20,000 police and security agents have been mobilized to help protect the president during his seven-hour stopover. Mr. Bush will meet with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Bogor, about 45 miles south of Jakarta, after wrapping up a weekend trip to Vietnam.
"My curse will make him bloat like broccoli. Bush will feel unease during the visit," Ki Gendeng Pamungkas told The Jakarta Post after performing a black magic ritual at a busy Bogor traffic circle last week. His curse required the blood of a snake, a goat and a crow.
Mr. Bush may feel a bit uneasy even without the sorcerer's spell. The American president is widely unpopular in Indonesia, largely because of the war in Iraq and U.S. support for Israel. During Mr. Bush's last visit, in 2003, he was peppered with criticism during a closed-door meeting with religious leaders.
"I think he's going to hear it again," said Zachary Abuza, an Indonesia expert and an international relations professor at Simmons College in Boston. "They are very angry about Iraq. As far as they're concerned, it is patently anti-Muslim -- and that's the moderates."
The Jakarta Post urged stringent security during Mr. Bush's visit, noting in an editorial that the president is "very unpopular" and "little better than Public Enemy No. 1" in some Indonesian circles.
Protests against the visit broke out across Indonesia yesterday. In Jakarta, the capital, thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets carrying placards calling Mr. Bush a "war criminal" and a "master terrorist."
The vast majority of Indonesia's 224 million residents reject extremism, but terrorist groups have killed more than 240 people in the past four years. The carnage started with a devastating 2002 bombing at two Bali nightclubs by a group that is believed to have links to the al-Qaida network.
The State Department advises Americans to avoid non-essential travel to the island nation. Security concerns prevented Mr. Bush from staying overnight, a scheduling decision that Mr. Abuza predicted would not sit well with most Indonesians.
On his last trip, Mr. Bush ventured just a few miles from the Bali airport and stayed about five hours.
U.S. officials said the visit is intended as a show of support for moderate Muslims. Mr. Bush will spend the day at Bogor Palace, a holdover from Indonesia's Dutch colonial past that is used for ceremonial events.
Between meetings and meals, the two presidents will attend an event with their wives that will highlight a U.S. commitment to provide $157 million in education assistance over five years. In a nod to domestic sensibilities, Mr. Yudhoyono said he would press his guest to do more for the creation of a Palestinian state.
Before leaving for Indonesia today, Mr. Bush planned to end his Vietnam visit with a trip to the stock market in Ho Chi Minh City -- an excursion symbolizing Vietnam's embrace of capitalism despite having a communist government.

  INDONESIA (95%); IRAQ (92%); VIET NAM (90%); KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (79%); VIETNAM (79%); ISRAEL (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%); CHINA (79%); ASIA (79%)







 Star Tribune
 
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

November 20, 2006 Monday  




 BUSH IN SOUTHEAST ASIA; 
APEC SUMMIT WINDS DOWN; 
President faces tough critics in Indonesia

 
President Bush travels to Indonesia today on a mission to tamp down anti-American sentiment in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
In a visit intended to show support for moderate Muslims, Bush will meet with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Bogor, about 45 miles south of Jakarta. Between meetings, they will attend an education event with their wives that will highlight a U.S. commitment to provide $157 million in education aid over five years. Yudhoyono said he would press Bush to do more for the creation of a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, Indonesian officials went on alert for possible terrorist activity. Thousands of protesters gathered before his arrival and more than 20,000 police and security agents have been mobilized to help protect Bush during his seven-hour stop. 
The Jakarta Post urged stringent security during Bush's visit, noting in an editorial that the president is "little better than Public Enemy No. 1" in some Indonesian circles.
Before leaving for Indonesia, Bush wrapped up the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hanoi. Here are some highlights:
Wrapping up Vietnam trip
Bush ended his Vietnam visit with a trip to the stock market in Ho Chi Minh City, an excursion symbolizing Vietnam's embrace of capitalism despite having a Communist government.
WTO deal with Russia
Russia and the United States signed a key trade agreement Sunday, removing the last major obstacle in Moscow's 13-year journey to join the World Trade Organization. The deal, inked on the sidelines of the APEC summit, is a powerful vote of confidence in Russia - the largest economy still outside the 149-member WTO - and signals its integration into the global trading system.
Russia's Trade and Economic Development Minister German Gref called the deal a "historic step - the last step - that signifies the return of Russia to the market principles of the world economy."
As part of the deal, Gref said Russia pledged to cut import tariffs on a range of goods, including aircraft, computer technology, agriculture and machinery.
Before it can join the WTO, Russia must consolidate bilateral deals it has with 57 countries. Gref said he expected that to be completed by the middle of next year.
And before the United States can trade with Russia under a WTO agreement, Washington must establish normal trade relations with Moscow. That matter will go to the new Democratic-controlled Congress, which convenes in January. Democrats are less receptive to free-trade agreements than Republicans.
`Strong concern' on N. Korea
Bush achieved mixed results in his effort to persuade APEC members to press North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.
Bush had hoped for a more formal, written declaration urging North Korea to follow through on pledges to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, but was forced to settle for an oral statement.
The APEC statement expressed "strong concern" about North Korea's nuclear test in October and missile launches in July, and called on the country to take "concrete and effective" steps toward abandoning its nuclear weapons as called for in a U.N. resolution.
Bush pressed leaders, including Chinese President Hu Jintao in talks Sunday, to implement a coordinated effort on North Korea. Bush restated his willingness to offer North Korea incentives, including security guarantees and economic help, if it agrees to disarm, but has promised further isolation if the country refuses.
Next stop: Hawaii, then home
After Indonesia, Bush heads to Honolulu, where he plans to have breakfast with U.S. troops before returning to Washington.
 and Associated Press contributed to this report.

 INDONESIA (98%); RUSSIA (97%); VIETNAM (94%); UNITED STATES (94%); ASIA (93%); NORTH KOREA (93%); SOUTH EAST ASIA (92%); GERMANY (79%); NORTHERN ASIA (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY (79%)




2


 The Topeka Capital-Journal
 
Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas)

November 20, 2006 Monday



 Casino crusade DeathsToday in historyBirthdaysNever againnews in briefDeaths

 
NEW YORK - Several Fox affiliates have chosen not to broadcast "If I Did It," the two-part special where O.J. Simpson talks in hypothetical terms about his role in the 1994 killing of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
Lin Broadcasting and Pappas Broadcasting, which own a combined nine Fox affiliates, have said they won't televise it. Fox has scheduled the Simpson interview for Nov. 27 and 29.
The television special precedes the Nov. 30 publication of a book in which Simpson talks about how he would have committed the murders "if he were the one responsible." 
The Pappas stations said they were uninterested in helping Simpson profit from the project. Pappas owns Fox stations in Omaha and Lincoln, Neb.; Fresno, Calif.; and Dakota Dunes, S.D.
NATION
INDIANA HOUSE BLAZE KILLS AT LEAST FOUR: Fire swept through a southern Indiana home Sunday morning, killing three adults and a baby and producing smoke so thick it drove back a would-be rescuer, fire officials said.
The one-story, ranch-style house in North Vernon was already fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived, state Fire Marshal Roger Johnson said. He said the bodies of the three adults and the baby were found in a front room. The deaths boosted Indiana's fire fatalities in house fires this year to more than 80.
The identifies of the four victims wouldn't be released until after autopsies today, Jennings County Coroner Gene Rudicel said.
MASS. GOVERNOR SEEKS TO FORCE VOTE: Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said Sunday he would ask the state's highest court to order an anti-gay marriage amendment question onto the ballot if legislators fail to vote on the matter when they reconvene in January.
Romney said he would file a legal action this week asking a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court to direct the secretary of state to place the question on the ballot if lawmakers don't vote directly on the question Jan. 2, the final day of the session.
Romney, an opponent of gay marriage who decided not to seek re-election as he considers running for president, made his announcement to the cheers of hundreds of gay marriage opponents at a rally on the Statehouse steps.
People in favor of gay marriage staged a protest across the street.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in November 2003 that such marriages were legal. Since then, more than 8,000 same-sex couples have tied the knot in the state.
THOUSANDS DEMAND CLOSURE OF MILITARY SCHOOL: Thousands of demonstrators paraded, chanted and raised white crosses Sunday in Columbus, Ga., outside the Army's Fort Benning as they continued a 17-year-long effort to close a military school they blame for human rights abuses in Latin America.
"This is about men with guns," said the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest who spent five years as a missionary in Bolivia and founded the group SOA Watch in 1990 in an effort to close the school.
The Army's School of the Americas moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984 and was replaced in 2001 by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, under the Defense Department.
The school trains Latin American soldiers, police and government officials.
WORLD
INDONESIA GIVING BUSH COLD SHOULDER: Warmly greeted by world leaders in Vietnam, President Bush drew a different reaction Sunday at his upcoming stop in Indonesia, where thousands angrily protested America's policy in the Middle East and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The White House said it was confident about security precautions for Bush's visit today despite police warnings of an increased threat of attack by al-Qaida-linked groups.
The president was to spend six hours in Indonesia, most of it at Bogor Palace, a presidential retreat outside the capital of Jakarta and far from the scene of protests Sunday where Bush was denounced as a "war criminal' and "terrorist." Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation.
STAMPEDE AT CHINA SCHOOL KILLS AT LEAST SIX: A stampede on a stairwell at a school in eastern China killed six children and injured 11, state media said today.
The stampede occurred Saturday night when hundreds of students at Tutang Middle School in Jiangxi province's Duchang County swarmed out of their evening classes, the China Daily newspaper said.
Hundreds of students fell over each other in the stairwell between the first and second floors of the three-story building. Five girls and one boy died on their way to a hospital, the newspaper said. The victims were between the ages of 12 and 13.
ATTORNEY SAYS GITMO DETAINEE REFUSES SURGERY: A 59-year-old Guantanamo Bay detainee has refused to have a required heart procedure at the U.S. military base in Cuba, one of his attorneys said Sunday in Puerto Rico.
Saifullah A. Paracha, a Pakistani multimillionaire, won't agree to have a cardiac catheterization done at the base because he thinks its medical facilities and backups are inadequate, said Zachary Katznelson, of the London-based human rights group Reprieve.
"This is a completely new procedure for Guantanamo," Katznelson said.
Paracha, who is accused of laundering money for al-Qaida and plotting to smuggle explosives into the United States, already had one heart attack while in U.S. custody and has recently suffered chest pains, according to his attorneys.
Compiled by Jim Luksic from wire reportsHARRISBURG, Pa. - Sylvester Stallone winked and brought his fist to his chest as if to say, "I know you'll do the right thing."
Who could say no to that?
Appearing in a recorded video message, Stallone, famous for his movie role as hard-luck Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa, was part of a parade of celebrities and gambling executives who asked Pennsylvania state regulators last week for a casino license in Rocky's hometown.
For three days last week, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board heard testimony from the applicants in advance of a Dec. 20 licensing vote.
Most of the testimony revolved around topics like business plans, financial backing and traffic studies, leavened by occasional celebrity cameos.1789 - New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
1910 - Revolution broke out in Mexico, led by Francisco I. Madero.
1925 - Robert F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass.
1945 - Nazi leaders went on trial before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.
1959 - The United Nations issued its "Declaration of the Rights of the Child."
1967 - The Census Clock at the Commerce Department ticked past 200 million.
The following is a list of deaths in the area. Obituaries are on Page 3B.
Louis Bierbaum/Linn
Clyde Bracken/Topeka
Frieda Cox/Natchez, Miss.
Davie Lynne Harris/Topeka
Dale Hazlett/Topeka
Lester Hirsch/Wamego
Reva May/Topeka
Joellen Stell/Topeka
Ruth Stewart/Phoenix, Ariz.
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. 89
Actress-comedian Kaye Ballard 81
Actress Estelle Parsons 79
TV personality Richard Dawson 74
Comedian Dick Smothers 68
Actress Veronica Hamel 63
Actor Samuel E. Wright 60
Singer Joe Walsh 59
Actress Bo Derek 50
Actress Sean Young 47
Country singer Dierks Bentley 31LOS ANGELES - Heather Mills McCartney says rumors that she has a romantic relationship with her personal trainer are false, and that she will never remarry after her four-year union with Paul McCartney fell apart.
Mills McCartney, 38, and ex-Beatle McCartney, 64, announced their separation in May and began divorce proceedings in July. They have a 3-year-old daughter, Beatrice.
"I haven't got a lover," Mills McCartney told "Extra" in an interview to be aired today and Tuesday.
Tabloid newspapers and celebrity-gossip Web sites have speculated that Mills McCartney had become romantic with trainer Ben Amigoni.
Mills McCartney says she has received much public support since the separation, with some people hugging her in the street.WANT TO SUBSCRIBE?
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*Weekend/holiday subscribers will receive delivery of The Topeka Capital-Journal on the following days: New Year's Day: Sunday, Jan. 1, 2006; Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Monday, Jan. 16, 2006; Presidents Day: Monday, Feb. 20, 2006; Memorial Day: Monday, May 29, 2006; Independence Day: Tuesday, July 4, 2006; Labor Day: Monday, Sept. 4, 2006; Columbus Day: Monday, Oct. 9, 2006; Veterans Day: Friday, Nov. 10, 2006; Thanksgiving Day: Thursday, Nov. 23, 2006; Christmas: Monday, Dec. 25, 2006.
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 UNITED STATES (93%); LATIN AMERICA (50%)






  

 


November 20, 2006 Monday



 INDONESIA'S PROMISE

 
Sadanand Dhume commentary lauds Indonesia as only major Muslim country where modernity stands chance; Indonesia's advantages include native tolerance and non-sectarian national ideology; Islamists and wealthy Arab patrons have spent decades pushing gentle folk Islam into approximation of its desert variant; Indonesia needs help of US and like-minded allies, largely non-sectarian army and genuine Muslim moderates lest it go down path of political mayhem and economic stagnation

  







  



November 20, 2006 Monday  




 Thanks for Leaving!

 
 Give thanks this week for the lull. After two weeks that saw control of Congress change hands, the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and a fierce battle in the new majority party, Congress is in recess until Dec. 5.   
 President Bush finishes his visits in Asia. He is in Vietnam today, exploring the former foe's bustling economy and cultural institutions, then he is off to Indonesia, home to more Muslims than any other nation, to meet with the country's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. 
 Back home, Bush will have chow with the troops and meet with military leaders in Honolulu. On Wednesday, the president plans to pardon the White House turkey, and on Thursday he goes to Camp David for Thanksgiving weekend. 
 GLOBAL EXCHANGE, SANS U.S.: As Bush shares pleasantries with East Asian leaders and then enjoys a very American holiday, two meetings of potentially huge international significance will occur. Today, Chinese President Hu Jintao, who presides over the most populous country, travels to India, the second most populous country, to discuss trade and financial cooperation, especially on energy and agriculture. On Friday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani goes to Iran to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 
 FACING THE PAST: Even as most lawmakers and their staffs skedaddle, it will not be all quiet in the Capitol. Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and House Majority Leader-elect Steny H. Hoyer (Md.)  --  whom she opposed for the leadership position  --  try to put the past behind them and start crafting the Democratic legislative agenda today.  
 Former CIA director Robert M. Gates, Bush's choice to replace Rumsfeld, is also on the Hill today to talk with Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Levin, who voted against Gates years ago when he was up for CIA director, has said he has concerns about the new nomination. 
 GRAY WEEK, GREEN WEEKEND: The nation slows down in anticipation of Thanksgiving weekend, but come Friday, the economy might wake up. "Black Friday" is one of the most important days of the year for the U.S. economy, as department stores open early to welcome the hordes who want to get started on holiday shopping.  
   --  Zachary A. Goldfarb 

  





  



November 20, 2006 Monday  




 Pacific Rim Statement On N. Korea Falls Short Of What Bush Sought

 
President Bush arrived in this bustling financial center Sunday after achieving mixed results in his effort to persuade Pacific Rim countries to press North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons. 
 The two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Hanoi concluded with its members agreeing to an oral statement urging North Korea to follow through on pledges to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. 
 Bush pressed the leaders at the summit, including Chinese President Hu Jintao in meetings Sunday, to implement a coordinated effort on North Korea. Bush has restated his willingness to offer North Korea incentives, including security guarantees and economic help, if it agrees to disarm, but has promised further isolation if the country refuses.  
 Bush had hoped for a formal, written declaration from APEC members on the issue but was forced to settle for the statement read aloud by Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet at the summit's closing session. 
 The statement expressed "strong concern" about North Korea's first nuclear test, which took place in October, and missile launches in July, and called on the country to take "concrete and effective" steps toward abandoning its nuclear weapons as called for in a U.N. resolution. 
 David McCormick, a deputy national security adviser, called the statement a step forward and said it reflected a "common view on the importance of successful implementation of the resolution." 
 Weeks after the nuclear test, North Korea agreed to resume negotiations with the United States, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea on ending its program. No date has been set to restart the so-called six-party talks, but Bush administration officials say they want to be certain that North Korea will not use a continuation of the talks to ward off international pressure while it continues to develop weapons. 
 Bush also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the signing of an agreement between the two countries supporting Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization. 
 "This is a good agreement for the United States," Bush said. "And it's an equally important agreement for Russia."  
 Bush and Putin discussed the North Korean nuclear question and a proposal for U.N. sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program. 
 Though the North Korea issue dominated Bush's agenda at the summit, APEC leaders agreed to explore several trade issues, including the possibility of establishing a free-trade zone that would span the Pacific Rim. The leaders also endorsed a plan aimed at preventing the spread of avian flu and AIDS. 
 APEC, which brings together the leaders of its 21 member nations, also serves as a meeting place for hundreds of leading business executives from around the globe who travel to its annual conferences in search of new opportunities and markets. 
 The event has served as an opportunity for Vietnam, a one-party Communist state, to showcase its dramatic economic growth and vast economic potential since embracing private enterprise over the past two decades. 
 During his brief visit to Ho Chi Minh City, Bush was scheduled to attend a meeting of business leaders and visit the stock market. 
 Three decades after this city, formerly known as Saigon, fell to Communist forces, ending the Vietnam War, its business center is bursting with activity. Gleaming hotels, chic coffee bars and neon-lit karaoke joints increasingly attract an international clientele to the high-paced hub of commerce. 
 Bush was set to travel next to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. He is scheduled to meet with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and attend a dinner, but not spend the night. Word of Bush's visit has sparked large protests in Indonesia, as well as threats against Bush from Islamic radicals. 
 After leaving Indonesia, Bush will fly to Honolulu, where he plans to have breakfast with U.S. troops and meet with military commanders before returning to Washington. 

 






 
 


November 19, 2006 Sunday



 
When historians assess the Bush administration's efforts to win friends and influence in the Islamic world, the State Department decision to woo Muslims with television ads may well become a forgotten footnote.
The campaign, featuring TV spots in which Muslim-Americans talked positively of life in the United States, aired only in a few countries and lasted but a few weeks. It was widely panned, and its developer, Texas-born advertising executive Charlotte Beers, soon left her post. Future efforts went in a different direction.
But a new study by professors from Dallas' Southern Methodist University and Oklahoma State concludes that the program, officially called the Shared Values Initiative, "may have worked" and that, at the least, the ads "were capable of improving attitudes toward America" among youths abroad. 
In their book "Advertising's War on Terrorism," SMU's Alice Kendrick and Oklahoma State's Jami Fullerton say a follow-up study by the agency that developed the ads found they had a positive impact in Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic country and one of a handful in which they were shown.
A separate study among college students in Cairo, London and Singapore found that "viewing the commercials improved students' attitudes toward the United States, especially in terms of perceptions of how Muslims are treated."
Added Kendrick: "The program was more successful and had a greater impact than anyone has suggested."
But they concede that the ad campaign was not nearly extensive enough to counter anti-American feeling in the Islamic world, which intensified after the U.S. attack on Iraq. Their study suggests that such ads would primarily have influence at the margins rather than in transforming broader attitudes.
Beers rose in the advertising world to head two global firms, Ogilvy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson. Secretary of State Colin Powell hired her to improve the U.S. image abroad, a job whose importance grew after the 9/11 attacks.
Her program included speeches by diplomats and prominent American Muslims to international audiences, a color magazine on Muslim life in America, a series of newspaper ads, and the five television ads produced by the firm McCann-Erickson.
The ads went on the air in October 2002 in Indonesia; the other countries refused to run them for free. The State Department bought time on state-owned systems in Pakistan, Malaysia and Kuwait, and they also ran in Kenya and Tanzania. But state-owned systems in Egypt and Jordan refused to air them.
The $5 million campaign lasted for a relatively short five weeks. Beers is quoted in the book as saying the campaign would resume, but it never did. The following March, she resigned for health reasons. By then, the impending U.S. attack on Iraq was dominating attention in the Islamic world.
Most news accounts portrayed the campaign as a flop, declaring that it achieved no measurable results. A Dallas Morning News story on administration public diplomacy efforts referred to "what proved to be a not-so-hot 'Shared Values' ad campaign." Criticism abroad was even harsher. Singapore's The Straits Times called the effort in Malaysia "a waste of time."
Other critics said it failed to address the fact that the main U.S. problem in the Muslim world was its policies toward Israel and Iraq.
But the follow-up study by McCann-Erickson showed a more positive impact. In Indonesia, the book says, focus groups viewed the ads positively and a survey showed that the campaign achieved the kinds of results for which it was meant, including widespread awareness of the ads and their positive message about Muslims in America.
The authors, Kendrick and Fullerton, concluded that future public diplomacy campaigns in the war on terrorism shouldn't exclude the option of advertising.
"We're not suggesting this is a cure-all," Kendrick said.
"But we think that advertising could be one tool in a successful public diplomacy campaign."
(Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.)
Winning over Muslims by TV ads may work

  IRAQ (92%); INDONESIA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); TANZANIA, UNITED REPUBLIC OF (79%); EGYPT (79%); KENYA (79%); SINGAPORE (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); KUWAIT (79%)








 


November 19, 2006 Sunday  
FOURTH EDITION



 DIGEST

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia
Bush visit brings greater threat of attacks
Indonesian police warned Saturday that the threat of an attack by al-Qaida-linked militants has increased sharply ahead of President George W. Bush's visit there.
Bush arrives Monday in Indonesia for talks with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that will touch on the Middle East crisis and the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan - the cause of mounting anger among Indonesia's 190 million Muslims.
Jakarta's police chief, Maj. Gen. Adang Firman, told reporters that the threat of an attack by militants had "escalated sharply" in recent days. 
He did not elaborate or say whether a plot by the Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah had been uncovered.
KHARTOUM, Sudan
Violence in Darfur reaches higher level
The Sudanese army and government-backed militias are committing acts of "inexplicable terror" against civilians, including children, in Darfur, the U.N.'s top humanitarian official said Saturday.
Jan Egeland, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said spiraling violence in the conflict-wracked region of western Sudan is reaching its worst level since fighting erupted more than three years ago.
More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced since rebels from ethnic African tribes rose up against the Arab-led central government in the vast arid area of western Sudan that is about the size of Texas. Khartoum is accused of using the janjaweed militias of Arab nomads to retaliate, but the government denies backing or arming the janjaweed.
MOSCOW
Former leader of Chechen force is killed
The former head of one of Chechnya's shadowy security forces was fatally shot in Moscow on Saturday by law enforcement officers who were trying to detain him on suspicion of abductions and killings in the violence-plagued southern region, officials said.
Movladi Baisarov was shot when he resisted officers on a main avenue in the capital, said Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman for the Moscow prosecutor's office. A prosecutor at the scene, Irina Bobinova, said he pulled a grenade when police tried to arrest him after he got out of a car.
According to the weekly newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti, Baisarov's force in recent years was under the control of the Federal Security Service, which is the main successor of the KGB and was formerly headed by President Vladimir Putin.
However, the newspaper said, the unit the force was attached to was dissolved early this year, and last month police and prosecutors said they were seeking to detain Baisarov on suspicion of involvement in the killing of 10 people.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
Protesters want release of man convicted in U.S.
About 2,000 people demonstrated on Saturday to demand the release of an Ethiopian immigrant sentenced to 10 years in prison in the United States for mutilating the genitals of his 2-year-old daughter.
Khalid Adem, 30, was convicted on Nov. 1 of aggravated battery and cruelty to children by a court outside Atlanta.
The protesters marched peacefully around one of the squares in the Ethiopian capital, chanting, "Free Khalid."
During the trial, prosecutors said Khalid used scissors to remove his daughter's clitoris in his family's Atlanta-area apartment in 2001. The girl's mother, Fortunate Adem, said she did not discover it until more than a year later.
Adem testified he never circumcised his daughter or asked anyone else to do so. His attorney acknowledged that the girl had been cut but implied that the family of the girl's mother, might have been responsible.

 SUDAN (95%); UNITED STATES (94%);  ETHIOPIA (92%); AFGHANISTAN (92%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); IRAQ (92%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (91%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)







  



November 19, 2006 Sunday  




 Visit to Mark Closer Ties With Jakarta; 
Military Cooperation Grows as U.S. Concerns on Rights Issues Recede

 
 In the run-up to President Bush's visit to Indonesia this week, two dozen members of a fundamentalist Islamic group raided and occupied a historic botanical garden in the mountain town of Bogor, outside Jakarta. Their target was the site where a construction crew was building a landing pad for Bush's helicopter. Their message was simple: Bush was not welcome in the world's largest Muslim-majority country. 
  Within 30 minutes, hammers were pounding again and the cement mixer had resumed turning, but as a media event, the gimmick briefly worked. Other, little-known Muslim groups began protesting Bush's visit and were given blanket coverage by local news outlets. Senior members of Indonesia's parliament accused Bush of slaughtering Muslims worldwide and claimed his half-day visit to Bogor was part of a plot to control Indonesia's economy.  
  The Jakarta government barely responded to the protests, and didn't need to. Relations between Indonesia and the United States are their warmest in decades, evidenced by the growing friendship between Bush and his counterpart, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. 
  "These clowns are just making noises," Juwono Sudarsono, the Indonesian defense minister, said of the protesters. "Anti-Americanism is a high-tech industry." 
  Although the Indonesian government and most of the country's 230 million people are against the U.S. presence in Iraq, many are thrilled that Bush is coming to talk about American funding for education, anti-poverty and anti-corruption programs. 
  And in a marked turnaround in the relationship, the two countries have grown closer because of common military and security concerns, issues that Indonesian officials say are not on the official agenda for Bush's brief visit.  
  The Indonesian armed forces, known as the TNI, have long been seen as the only institution capable of preventing the country of 7,000 disparate islands from fragmenting along geographical and ethnic lines. But the United States had imposed sanctions on the military for most of the 1990s because of repeated reports of human rights violations, including rapes, kidnappings, murders of political activists and the widespread killing of civilians in such outlying provinces as Aceh and Papua. 
  The United States severed most ties with the Indonesian military after its rampage in the territory of East Timor in 1999. To date, no senior officer has been held accountable for any crimes. In 2002, East Timor was internationally recognized as an independent state.  
  After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, U.S. officials publicly criticized then-President Megawati Sukarnoputri for not doing enough to combat terrorism and for not arresting militants allegedly linked to al-Qaeda. 
  The Bush administration informed Congress early last year that it was fully restoring military training programs with Indonesia. Last November, the White House lifted a ban on selling military hardware to the TNI despite concerns from some lawmakers and outrage from Indonesian human rights activists and victim-advocacy groups. 
  The two countries now conduct joint military exercises and closely cooperate on counterterrorism. This month, an advance team of Indonesian soldiers arrived in Beirut aboard a U.S. military transport plane to join a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.  
  "In the post-9/11 era, many people recognized that Indonesia is important not only because of its geographically strategic importance, but its position in the Islamic world," said Paul Rowland, director of the National Democratic Institute in Jakarta, a U.S.-funded democracy-building organization. "Plus, there's a huge acceptance and support of democracy here." 
  After the confrontation between the United States and Indonesia in the 1990s over human rights, the Bush administration opted for a pragmatic approach. It saw Indonesia as an example of a country trying to move toward democracy after decades of authoritarianism under strongman Suharto, who ruled from 1966 to 1998.  
  And there were fears the country could break apart amid widespread religious and ethnic violence, terrorist attacks and a prolonged economic crisis. 
 Sudarsono, the defense minister, said in an interview that the U.S. ban on weapons sales and training programs for Indonesian military officers was counterproductive "not only for the development of the TNI, but it went against the grain of helping the only institution capable of holding the country together." 
  "The Americans see that they need the military in the fight against terrorism," said Jusuf Wanandi, chairman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. "Secondly, this has been the group they trusted for so long during the Suharto time because they're anti-communist and anti-China." 
  The restoration of ties was welcomed by reformers among former and current top Indonesian officers, who have said sanctions played into the hands of army officers who wanted the military to continue playing a leading role in politics as they did during Suharto's "New Order" regime. 
  "The gap of several years created the perception that we didn't need foreign military education," said Agus Widjojo, a retired army general, "and that such foreign programs only spurred reform ideas rather than traditional military thoughts." 
  The Indonesian military has taken some reform initiatives since the 1999 East Timor crisis, including giving up its appointed seats in parliament, selling off its business interests and putting its chain of command under a civilian defense minister. These moves won over skeptics in the U.S. Congress, which also has followed the White House in taking a softer approach toward the Indonesian military. 
  But analysts and some retired generals said they feared the reform drive had stalled. More input is needed now from political leaders, they said, but the country's civilian leadership is still too weak to confront obstructionist generals in the ranks. 

   TIMOR-LESTE (92%); IRAQ (79%)








 



November 16, 2006 Thursday  




 WORLD

 
Man apologizes for beheadings
The suspected Islamic militant told judges he took part in cutting off the heads of 3 Christian girls on Oct. 29, 2005, on an Indonesian island wracked by religious violence to avenge the deaths of Muslims, but apologized to their families. "We are not coldblooded killers," Hasanuddin, 34, told the court. "We just wanted revenge." 
JAPAN: An undersea earthquake prompted tsunami warnings for Japan, Russia and Alaska, but the danger passed after tiny waves hit the northern Japanese coast.
ISRAEL: A Palestinian rocket fired from Gaza exploded near the Israeli defense minister's home in Sderot, killing a woman.
CHINA: President Hu Jintao's refusal to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit this weekend in Vietnam could be due to Harper's human rights criticism of Hu's regime, plus delays in the deportation of an alleged Chinese crime boss who fled to Vancouver.

 JAPAN (94%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (92%); ISRAEL (92%); INDONESIA (92%); VIET NAM (79%); CHINA (79%); ASIA (79%); CANADA (79%)







  
 

November 16, 2006 Thursday  




 ROAD TRIP; 
PRESIDENT BUSH TAKES HIS CASE TO WORLD LEADERS

 
George W. Bush is on the road, which offers timely relief from his domestic worries and a chance to advance America's interests overseas. His itinerary, set before the Democratic takeover of Congress in the midterm elections, takes him to important international capitals where he can remind his hosts that his administration is still in charge. 
For Mr. Bush, international affairs have largely defined his years in office ever since 9/11. With his domestic agenda threatened with a Democratic roadblock, it remains the one area where his influence will be most felt over the next two years.
He went out of his way to make his first stop a brief luncheon meeting at the airport with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The usual way of flying to Asia -- Mr. Bush's principal destination -- is not via Moscow, but Mr. Bush wisely wanted to further cultivate his friendly relationship with Mr. Putin.
Russia, which supported the U.S. effort at the United Nations to impose sanctions on North Korea, is in a position to be helpful in dealing with Iran. The two leaders reportedly also discussed the situation in the Middle East and the issue of nuclear nonproliferation. Mr. Bush will see Mr. Putin again in Hanoi this weekend, where both will be among the leaders attending the 14th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting.
Today Mr. Bush will make a speech in Singapore, a small but muscular city-state that has long been friendly to the United States and commands an excellent strategic position on one of the world's most important straits. Mr. Bush also will visit neighboring Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Both tiny Singapore and giant Indonesia have had problems with al-Qaida members in their midst, although the terrorists' shadow has fallen much more on the Indonesian archipelago, which has also been wracked by sectarian violence. For a president seeking allies in the war on terror, these two countries are well worth visiting.
Mr. Bush's big chance to impress will come at the APEC meeting, which is significant not only for what it is but for where it is being held. Mr. Bush is following in the steps of President Bill Clinton, who also visited Vietnam near the end of his second term. That both presidents should journey to a country where Americans fought and died, unsuccessfully as it turned out, is another proof how the world has moved on.
Today the United States and much of Asia are worried about the rise of China, Vietnam's traditional rival and sometime enemy. Although Vietnam remains communist, it has a booming economy fed by liberal doses of free enterprise. Not only is it an important trade partner of the United States, but it is also potentially a strategic check on the Chinese.
Unfortunately, Congress is still living in the past. The House failed earlier this week to normalize trade relations with Vietnam, letting concerns about foreign competition trump the interests of U.S. businesses to fully take advantage of an economic opportunity. The bill is likely to be reintroduced after Thanksgiving and is expected to pass then -- as it should.
Although Mr. Bush was denied this legislation by Congress at a timely juncture, it is hardly fatal to his mission. In listening to and being heard by world leaders, Mr. Bush has an opportunity to find a better path.








  



November 16, 2006 Thursday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
ANKARA, Turkey  --  Turkey has suspended military relations with France in a dispute over whether the mass killings of Armenians early in the last century amounted to genocide, a top army commander said. 
  The move was the latest backlash against French legislation that, if approved by France's Senate and president, would criminalize denial that the killings of Armenians in Turkey were genocide. 
  The two NATO allies have had close military ties and Turkey has purchased French-made weaponry, but the Turkish military has in the past blacklisted several French firms in similar disputes over the deaths of the Armenians starting in 1915.  
 Asked whether any military missions between the two nations had been canceled, Turkey's commander of land forces, Gen. Ilker Basbug, said, "There are no high-level visits between the two countries." 
  Turkish officials see the French bill as hostile and have warned that it has already damaged relations. 
  Turkey vehemently denies that it committed genocide against Armenians, though many nations have classified the killings as such. Armenians and many nations say that about 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a campaign devised and executed by Turkish leaders. 
  The European Union and European commentators have criticized the French bill, saying it does not respect the principle of free expression and does not promote dialogue with Turkey, an E.U. candidate. 
 EUROPE 
*  THE HAGUE  --  Fighters for a Congolese rebel leader charged with war crimes executed a 14-year-old girl who tried to flee a training camp for child soldiers, an expert testified at a pretrial hearing. 
  Other children were forced to sing songs praising Thomas Lubanga Dyilo and were beaten if they got the words wrong, said Kristine Peduto, a children's rights expert from France who worked for the United Nations in Congo documenting child abuse. 
  Peduto testified to a three-judge panel at the International Criminal Court in a hearing to determine whether Lubanga should stand trial on charges he recruited child soldiers for a conflict in Congo's lawless Ituri region that lingered after the country's 1998-2002 war. 
 THE AMERICAS 
*  BUENOS AIRES  --  A DNA test done on the remains of former Argentine president Juan Perón shows he was not the father of a woman claiming to be his out-of-wedlock daughter, a health official said. 
  The test effectively ends a lengthy legal battle by Martha Holgado, 72, who bears a striking resemblance to the former army colonel who served as Argentina's president three times.  
*  MANAGUA, Nicaragua  --  A complete count of the Nov. 5 presidential election has confirmed that Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega won by a sufficient margin to avoid a runoff, the Supreme Electoral Council announced. With 100 percent of the votes counted, Ortega won with 37.9 percent, the council said late Tuesday.  
*  CARACAS, Venezuela  --  Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said Wednesday that Cuban leader Fidel Castro is no longer bedridden and is well enough to walk around. 
  Chávez said that the 80-year-old leader still faces a long convalescence with risks due to his age, but that his recovery "is going well." After nearly a half-century in office, Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother Raúl in July after undergoing intestinal surgery. 
  The Cuban government has treated his ailment as a state secret, fueling speculation about prospects for recovery. 
 ASIA 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  A suspected Islamic militant told judges that he took part in the beheadings of three Christian girls on an Indonesian island racked by religious violence to avenge the deaths of Muslims, but apologized to their families.  
 Prosecutors allege that Hasanuddin, 34, and two other defendants ordered the 2005 murders of the girls as they walked to school on Sulawesi, the scene of religious clashes that left at least 1,000 people dead from 1998 to 2002. 
*  COLOMBO, Sri Lanka  --  A former British cabinet minister, Paul Murphy, will hold talks with Sri Lanka's Tamil rebels in the guerrillas' northern stronghold in a bid to support the faltering peace process, a British High Commission official and a rebel spokesman said. 
  Meanwhile, armed men abducted four Tamil teenagers working on tsunami reconstruction projects, police said, and the town of Chavakachcheri was all but shut down as the body of a slain pro-rebel lawmaker, Nadaraja Raviraj, was cremated. 
 africa 
*  NAIROBI  --  Six international agencies will combine efforts to try to win more so-called carbon credit projects for Africa under the Kyoto Protocol, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said at the annual global conference on climate change. The mechanism allows industrial countries, obliged by Kyoto to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, to get credit for reductions achieved in developing countries, which are not required by the 1997 pact to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming. 
  --  From News Services 

 TURKEY (98%); FRANCE (95%); ARMENIA (94%); EUROPE (93%); ARGENTINA (92%); NICARAGUA (92%); VENEZUELA, BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF (92%); CONGO, THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE (79%); NETHERLANDS (79%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (79%); VENEZUELA (76%); NORTH & SOUTH AMERICAS (53%)




3


 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


November 14, 2006 Tuesday



 World datelines

 
Britain
LONDON -- Islamic extremists, including members of al-Qaida, have tried to acquire chemical or radiological weapons to use in attacks against Britain and other Western targets, a senior British diplomat said Monday. 
China
BEIJING -- The commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Adm. Gary Roughead, began a visit to China on Monday in a trip aimed at strengthening ties between the two navies and gaining insight into the Asian power's military buildup.
Congo
KINSHASA -- Scores of homeless children and others living on the streets of this capital city have been rounded up and accused of starting a protest that led to violence as an increasingly tense nation awaits presidential election results.
Georgia
TSKHINVALI -- South Ossetians voted overwhelmingly for independence in their second referendum since breaking away from Georgia in the 1990s, officials in the tiny mountainous region said Monday, in balloting that neither the United States nor Europe intends to recognize.
India
MUMBAI -- Police with dogs searched hundreds of thousands of Mumbai train commuters during the evening rush hour Monday as part of a security drill to monitor the city's ability to deal with terror threats.
Indonesia
JAKARTA -- Protesters called Monday for the Indonesian government to cancel a Nov. 20 visit by President Bush because of the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are widely unpopular in this Muslim nation.
Lebanon
BEIRUT -- A weakened Lebanese government Monday approved a U.N. plan for an international tribunal for suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri -- despite the resignation of six ministers and objections of the president.
Norway
OSLO -- Norwegian hunters killed 546 minke whales this year, falling far short of their commercial whaling quota because bad weather spoiled much of the season, government and industry officials said Monday.
Poland
WARSAW -- Poland's ruling socially conservative Law and Justice party suffered losses in big cities and at the regional level in weekend local elections but maintained a strong hold in rural districts, according to preliminary returns released Monday.
Serbia
BELGRADE -- Two former Serb commandos pleaded not guilty Monday to aiding in the 1999 murders of three Albanian-American brothers captured as volunteer fighters during the Kosovo conflict.
Sri Lanka
COLOMBO -- A U.N. representative Monday accused the Sri Lankan military of helping an armed group to recruit children as fighters against separatist Tamil Tiger rebels. Although child rights groups and the United Nations have long accused the Tigers of recruiting children during their separatist campaign, it was the first such allegation against the government by a high-profile representative.
South Africa
CAPE TOWN -- More than 235,000 South Africans with AIDS are receiving anti-retroviral medicines in the public health sector, up 55,000 from the end of June, the government said Monday, saying this proved its commitment to giving free drugs to all those in need.
South Korea
SEOUL-- South Korea Monday turned down a U.S. request for help intercepting North Korean ships suspected of carrying supplies for the Communist regime's programs to build weapons of mass destruction.
Sudan
The United Nations said Monday it has pledged about $77 million in personnel and equipment to help the overwhelmed African Union force in Darfur as Sudan blocks the world body from sending its own peacekeepers to the war-torn region.

 UNITED STATES (94%); CHINA (94%); SRI LANKA (92%); LEBANON (92%); SOUTH AFRICA (92%); POLAND (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (92%); SERBIA (92%); NORWAY (92%); INDONESIA (92%); INDIA (91%); GEORGIA (90%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); KOSOVO (79%); ALBANIA (79%); EUROPE (79%); IRAQ (79%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


November 14, 2006 Tuesday



 Trip to Asia will test Bush's global stature

 
   WASHINGTON -- A politically wounded President Bush heads to Asia on today to reassert American leadership in a region grappling with the rise of China and the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Foreign policy issues will top the agenda during Bush's swing through Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, but domestic politics have added a new dimension to the trip. His return to the world stage comes a week after voters handed control of Congress to Democrats in an election that was widely viewed as a rebuke to Bush.
Former White House adviser Mike Green said Asian leaders will be looking for signs of weakness in the American president. 
"The Asian leaders will be looking at President Bush's body language," said Green, now an Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They know he has two years left, but they're going to be all looking to see how he plays the game after this political setback."
Perceptions about Bush's clout could come into play as he tries to bolster a somewhat shaky international coalition that's working to stifle North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Russia, China, South Korea and Japan share Bush's desire to keep nuclear weapons out of the Korean peninsula, but they don't always agree with his tactics.
Bush will get a chance to shore up support for his approach during a 21-nation summit in Vietnam this weekend.
A show of solidarity against North Korea at the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, commonly known as APEC, could help persuade the reclusive regime in Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions in exchange for economic benefits.
North Korea has agreed to resume six-way talks over its nuclear program with its Asian neighbors and the United States, but no date has been set. North Korea's Oct. 9 test of a nuclear device underscored the futility of previous negotiations.
Bush will meet briefly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a key player in the standoff with North Korea, on his way to Asia. Bush and his wife, Laura, will spend about 45 minutes with Putin and his wife, Ludmila, during a refueling stop in Moscow.
The president's first Asia stop is Singapore, an international trading center with strong ties to the United States.
He'll arrive in Vietnam on Friday facing a schedule packed with meetings and social events. In addition to attending APEC forums and dinners, Bush will hold a series of one-on-one meetings in Hanoi with leaders from Australia, Vietnam, South Korea, China and Japan. He'll also get together again with Putin.
China's fast economic growth and its place as the world's fourth-largest economy give it increasing importance in the Asia-Pacific region.
"In many respects, the larger story line that's playing out at APEC is China's rise," said Kurt Campbell, the director of international studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "What China has accomplished over a shorter period of time is much more dramatic than even America's entry into global politics."
Bush will stop in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, on his return trip to Washington, via Hawaii, next week.
Bush's visit to Vietnam, the centerpiece of his Asian tour, is rife with symbolism and historical baggage.
The APEC meeting is a coming-out party for a communist nation that's reaping the fruits of capitalism after a devastating war with the United States.
Like China, Vietnam has embraced free-market principles while clinging to authoritarian one-party rule. Vietnam's economy grew by 8.4 percent last year, a rate exceeded only by China.
"A lot has changed. They've joined the world," said Frederick Brown, a former diplomat and an Asia expert at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.
As a measure of how much things have changed, Bush's trip will include a stop at Vietnam's stock market in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. At times it's hard to remember that North Vietnam won a conflict that was billed at the time as a key battle in the global struggle between communism and capitalism.
"We'll accomplish more with books and ideas than we ever could with bombs," said Clifford Schultz, a business professor at Arizona State University who also teaches marketing classes in Ho Chi Minh City. "Well over half the population is under 25. They want their blue jeans. They want their iPods. They want their Internet cafes."
But the war that claimed more than 58,000 American lives and about 2 million Vietnamese casualties cannot be forgotten.
Bush will get a briefing Saturday on efforts to find the remains of American military personnel. The remains of more than 800 American war dead have been returned in recent years, but about 1,800 remain unaccounted for.

 ASIA (97%); UNITED STATES (96%); KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (94%); VIET NAM (94%); CHINA (94%); SINGAPORE (93%); JAPAN (92%); KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (92%); INDONESIA (92%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (87%); NORTHERN ASIA (79%); VIETNAM (79%); AUSTRALIA (79%)







  



November 14, 2006 Tuesday  




 Southeast Asia Trip to Test Bush's Stature; 
Election Results May Hinder International Trade and North Korea Talks, Analysts Say

 
 President Bush leaves tonight for a week-long visit to Southeast Asia that may offer an early indication of how the political "thumping" he took a week ago will affect his standing on the world stage. 
  Bush leaves Washington for a series of summits and an economic conference in Vietnam one week after elections in which Democrats won control of both houses of Congress, in what was widely interpreted as an expression of voter unhappiness over the Iraq war. 
  But just as Iraq poses a long-term challenge for the U.S. policymakers, so, too, do the forces shaping Southeast Asia, a region of booming economies that has its own festering pockets of terrorism. The area also is important to solving another major item on the U.S. foreign policy agenda: the long-standing problem of North Korea's nuclear weapons program.  
 Bush's visit to Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia is intended to focus heavily on trade issues, global health concerns such as AIDS and avian flu, as well as the North Korea question. But just as important may be how Bush is perceived by the other leaders at the meeting in the aftermath of his recent political setback. 
 Our "Asian friends will be watching initially President Bush and his team in terms of his body language, his statements to see whether he will be weakened or committed to going forward with a broad and purposeful agenda in Asia as a whole," said Kurt Campbell, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 
  One thing Asian leaders will be watching for is whether Bush can still deliver on trade-liberalization legislation, given his weakened political state and the populist opposition to many free-trade agreements, according to some analysts.  
 The Bush administration is pressing Congress to pass a bill granting Vietnam permanent normal trade relations before the president arrives in Hanoi on Friday, a step that is needed for U.S. firms to take advantage of the low tariffs that nation will enact as a newly minted member of the World Trade Organization.  
 Vietnam, which boasts the fastest-growing economy in Asia, is also one of the world's fastest-growing markets for U.S. goods. 
 But the House failed to pass the legislation last night. The vote of 228 to 161 in favor of the bill fell short of the two-thirds majority required by a procedure that limited debate.  
 Republicans planned to bring up the measure again tomorrow under normal procedures, requiring only a majority for passage, House aides said. The Senate is expected to take up the issue later in the week. 
  Passing the legislation ahead of the meeting "would be useful for President Bush," said Grant Aldonas, a former undersecretary of commerce for international trade in the Bush administration. "It would be useful, certainly, for the United States to ensure that our trading partners in Asia know that we're prepared to be at the table  --  both Congress and the president  --  and contributing to an aggressive trade policy." 
  Yesterday, the United States removed Vietnam from its list of nations that do not allow religious freedom, citing what it called Vietnam's greater tolerance for religious expression. 
  While trade will take center stage during his trip, Bush also is expected to use the opportunity to meet with partners in an effort to continue pressing North Korea to give up  --  or at least limit  --  its nuclear weapons program. North Korea agreed to return to six-party nuclear-disarmament talks late last month, just weeks after it conducted its first test of a nuclear device. As a result of that test, the United Nations swiftly imposed sanctions on goods flowing in and out of North Korea. 
  "It's . . . not always helpful, to answer the question, you know, can we live with or not live with a nuclear North Korea?" said Michael Green, former senior director for Asia at the National Security Council under Bush. "What does that mean? Does it mean we're going to attack North Korea because of the nuclear weapons program? I think the answer is no. Does it mean we go on with business as usual? Of course not." 
  While the U.N. sanctions have clearly exacted a toll on North Korea, Bush is expected to use the visit and a meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun to pressure him to do more to enforce the U.N. sanctions. Yesterday, South Korea said it will not take part in a U.S.-led plan to intercept shipments of weapons of mass destruction that may have involved the South Korean military stopping North Korean ships. 
 "The Republic of Korea is doing virtually nothing to impose a cost on the north," Green said. "That will be a difficult discussion." 
  The first stop on the president's trip will be Singapore, the booming city-state where on Thursday he is scheduled to give the major speech of his trip on the cooperation between the United States and Asia to combat poverty, disease and terrorism. On Friday, he will become the second U.S. president to visit Vietnam since the fall of Saigon when he travels to Hanoi. 
  In Vietnam, Bush will take part in a series of meetings with other world leaders and visit a program working to learn the fate of soldiers still missing in action from the Vietnam War. He also will take part in meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, an organization that includes 21 nations that together account for half the world's trade and 57 percent of the global economic output. 
 Later, the president will travel to Ho Chi Minh City. There the president will tour a medical institute that focuses on AIDS and avian flu research, before taking part in events showcasing Vietnam's fast-growing economy. 
 On Monday, he will travel to Indonesia, the world's largest majority-Muslim nation, where he is scheduled to visit an educational program and hold a news conference with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, before going to Hawaii. Next Tuesday, he will have breakfast with U.S. troops in Honolulu before returning to Washington. 

  ASIA (97%); KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (94%); VIET NAM (94%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (94%); IRAQ (92%); VIETNAM (79%); SINGAPORE (79%); 







 Dolan Media Newswires
 
Michigan Lawyers Weekly

November 13, 2006



 U.S. Court of Appeals 6th Circuit Case Summaries: November 13, 2006

 
Bankruptcy
Fraudulent Transfer - Solvency
Where the bankruptcy estate trustee seeks to set aside the debtor's transfer of property to Cumberland Casualty & Surety Co. as a fraudulent transfer under MCL Sect. 566.35, he may not prevail because the debtor was solvent at the time of the transfer.
"The debtor's solvency in this case turns on the enforceability of a claim for attorney's fees from a prior bankruptcy case that was dismissed. The bankruptcy court in the instant case held that the claim for fees from the prior case was unenforceable because the debtor's attorney never sought bankruptcy court approval of those fees under 11 U.S.C. Sect. 330(a). The district court affirmed. We agree that 11 U.S.C. Sect. 330 establishes the exclusive means of allowing a claim for professional fees in a bankruptcy proceeding. ... 
"'Because Sect. 330(a) requires court approval to create the obligation to pay the attorney's fees, absent court approval neither the debtor nor the estate is ever liable. Court approval under Sect. 330(a) is what creates the liability, not the performance of the services. ' (citations omitted) .... ('There is no other way for an attorney to be paid! An attorney who extracts payments from debtors other than pursuant to proper disclosure, or to allowance under section 330, stands in violation of the provisions of the bankruptcy Code, and may properly be stripped of all fees. ') (emphasis original). As an attorney appointed under 11 U.S.C. Sect. 327, Halbert was required to seek approval of his fees from the court under 11 U.S.C. Sect. 330. Because he did not do so, his fees are unenforceable, and the bankruptcy court did not err when determining that the debtor was solvent at the time of the transfer to Cumberland. We therefore affirm the decision of the bankruptcy court. "
Affirmed.
In re 5900 Associates. (6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-60900) (4 pages) (Batchelder, J., joined by Keith, J., and Aldrich, J., sitting by designation). On appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Criminal Law
Bias - Not Established
Defendant-police officer, who was convicted for removing seized drugs from the Evidence and Property Room at the Detroit Police Department and selling those drugs for profit, has not established that the district court exhibited impermissible bias or otherwise deprived him of his right to a fair trial.
"After the district court had read the indictment and just prior to commencing voir dire, it made the following statement to the prospective jurors: 'Now, a criminal defendant who does not acknowledge his culpability must be tried and found to be guilty or not guilty. ' Hynes contends that 'this statement alone ... extinguished the presumption of innocence and put in its place a finding of guilt. ' We respectfully disagree. The statement, especially when considered in its context, did nothing of the kind. At the time, the district court was explaining to potential jurors the essential role of the jury in the criminal justice system and was preparing them for the types of questions that they would be asked during voir dire. Neither the statement cited by Hynes nor the remainder of the judge's introductory comments indicates 'that the judge had found or thought that the defendant was guilty,' as Hynes contends, or that Hynes, rather than the government, bore the burden of proving the charges against him. The district court's statement, in other words, was not in any way improper.
"But even if the isolated statement could be interpreted as improper, the district court avoided any prejudice to Hynes by twice instructing the jury on the presumption of innocence. "
Affirmed.
United States v. Hynes. (6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-60901) (16 pages) (Gilman, J., joined by Clay, J., and Oberdorfer, J., sitting by designation). On appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
'Booker' Remand - Limited Scope
On remand from the United States Supreme Court to review sentencing "drug amount" issues under Booker v. United States, we conclude that 1) this court's remand was limited to resentencing, not jury instructions which affect conviction; and 2) this court has previously heard and rejected defendant's jury instruction argument regarding a specific drug quantity; therefore, her argument as to the propriety of the jury instructions is precluded by the law-of-the-case doctrine.
Affirmed.
United States v. Haynes. (6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-60898) (5 pages) (Hood, C.J., joined by Rogers and Griffin, JJ.). On appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.
Death Penalty - No En Banc Rehearing
"The court having received a petition for rehearing en banc, and the petition having been circulated not only to the original panel members but also to all other active judges of this court, and less than a majority of the judges having favored the suggestion, the petition for rehearing has been referred to the original panel.
"The panel has further reviewed the petition for rehearing and concludes that the issues raised in the petition were fully considered upon the original submission and decision of the cases. Accordingly, the petition is denied. "
Denied.
Dissent
Cole, J. "We are uneasy about executing anyone sentenced to die by a jury who knows nearly nothing about that person. But we have allowed it. We are also uneasy about executing those who commit their crime at a young age. But we have allowed that as well. We are particularly troubled about executing someone who likely suffers brain damage. We rarely, if ever, allow that - especially when the jury is not afforded the opportunity to even consider that evidence. Jeffrey Leonard, known to the jury only as 'James Slaughter,' approaches the execution chamber with all of these characteristics. Reaching this new chapter in our death-penalty history, the majority decision cannot be reconciled with established precedent. It certainly fails the Constitution. This Court's seven to seven stalemate regarding the en banc petition, however, leaves this precarious decision intact. Accordingly, I dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc. ...
"It is no surprise that the jury sentencing 'James Earl Slaughter' - an apparent menace with no redeeming qualities and not even a single family member to suggest his life should be spared - felt compelled to sentence him to death. Although we cannot be absolutely certain that a single juror sentencing Jeffrey Leonard - a likely brain-damaged man whose family would corroborate his testimony and plead for his life - would come to a different conclusion, this Court's decision leaves one aspect of this case indisputable: We will never know. I respectfully dissent. "
Slaughter v. Parker. (6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) (Order) (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-60881) (4 pages) (Boggs, Chief Judge and Batchelder, JJ.) (Cole, J., joined by Martin, Daughtrey, Moore, and Clay, Circuit Judges, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc).
Sentencing - 'Booker'
We affirm defendant's convictions for conspiracy to defraud Medicare and Medicaid programs and various related charges, but after concluding that defendant "preserved" his Booker objection at trial, we remand for resentencing under United States v. Booker.
"[T]he Sixth Circuit has yet to address the issue of what constitutes 'preservation' of a Booker objection at trial ....
"The Court finds United States v. Candelario, 240 F.3d 1300, 1303-04 (11th Cir. 2001) to be instructive on the issue of the requisites for a constitutional objection, although it is a pre-Booker decision. ... Applying Candelario's reasoning to the instant case, the Court finds that Triana's objection to the 'harshness' of the Guidelines during his sentencing hearing constitutes a timely constitutional objection. ... Additionally, this Court finds Triana's objections to the district court's sentencing calculation of the amount of loss caused by his fraudulent activity sufficient to constitute a constitutional objection. ...
"In cases applying preserved error review, this Court applies a de novo standard of review to determine whether the district court, viewing the Guidelines as mandatory rather than advisory, sentenced a defendant in violation of Booker. ... Although the constitutional infirmity of the Guidelines was not settled at the time Triana was sentenced, both parties agree that in light of Booker, the district court erred by adopting the Guidelines as mandatory. "
Affirmed, vacated and remanded.
Concurring
Ryan, J. "I concur in my brother's opinion, except with respect to part II.C. The government concedes that, even under plain error review, this case should be remanded for resentencing pursuant to United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), and we agree. Therefore, I do not think it is necessary to address whether Triana's objections at sentencing preserved his claim that the district court's fact finding, which resulted in an enhanced sentence under the mandatory guidelines, violated Triana's constitutional rights under the Sixth Amendment. "
United States v. Triana. (6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-60883) (16 pages) (Marbley, J., sitting by designation, joined by Martin, J.) Ryan, J., concurring). On appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
Sentencing - Crime Of Violence
We affirm defendant's convictions for felon in possession of a firearm but we vacate the sentence and remand for further proceedings and resentencing because the present record does not justify the district court's conclusion that defendant's prior conviction for attempted child abuse was for a crime of violence within the meaning of Sect. 4B1.2 of the United States Sentencing Guidelines.
The district court imposed a sentence of 66 months in prison, two years supervised release, and a $100 fine.
"The district court looked at the state court indictments charging 'aggravated child abuse' as evidence that Armstead's conviction of the lesser-included offense of 'attempted child abuse' on his plea of guilty was a conviction for a crime of violence. The question presented is whether such reliance was appropriate. ...
"[D]efendant here was charged with a more serious crime, aggravated child abuse, than the one to which he pled guilty, attempted child abuse. " However, we must "limit our examination of the original indictments to the elements of the charges that are essential to defendant's plea of guilty to attempted child abuse.
"The final clause of the indictments, alleging 'serious bodily injury, to wit: burns to the body, to the said [child],' applies to aggravated child abuse as defined by Tennessee Code Sect. 39-15-402, and is not essential to the crime of child abuse as defined by Tennessee Code Sect. 39-15-401. Arnold precludes consideration of this clause. Because no other evidence of violent conduct was before the district court, we conclude that the finding of a crime of violence based on the indictments alone was error. As this court has stated, where '[a defendant] did not plead guilty to, and therefore was not actually convicted of, the aggravated burglary charge contained in the indictment, the indictment alone is insufficient to meet the government's burden of proving that [he] was previously convicted of a "crime of violence. "'"
Affirmed in part, vacated in part and remanded.
United States v. Armstead. (6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-60899) (7 pages) (Oberdorfer, J., sitting by designation, joined by Rogers and Griffin, JJ.). On appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.
Appeal Limitations Statute - Equitable Tolling
The trial court in this drug case erred by dismissing petitioner's Sect. 2255 motion as untimely because we conclude that petitioner was entitled to equitable tolling.
"There was no statute of limitations governing the filing of habeas petitions when Petitioner's conviction and sentence became final. While Petitioner was serving his sentence, however, Congress enacted the AEDPA [Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996], which added a one-year limitations period for motions filed pursuant to Section 2255, as well as petitions for a writ of habeas corpus filed pursuant to Section 2254. 28 U.S.C. Sects. 2244(d)(1) & 2255. The AEDPA became effective on April 24, 1996. Petitioners whose convictions became final before the enactment of the AEDPA were provided a one-year grace period until April 24, 1997, to file motions seeking habeas corpus relief. ") (n. 2).
The record shows that once petitioner became aware of the AEDPA's statute of limitations, he "diligently pursued his rights. ...
"We do not fault Petitioner for any delay in pursuing his rights based on his efforts - or lack thereof - before the one-year limitations period was enacted. As the magistrate judge noted in his R&R, prior to the enactment of the AEDPA, 'a habeas petitioner could file at any time. ' In fact, before the one-year statute of limitations was adopted, even a twenty-five year delay in filing a habeas petition did not bar its consideration, provided there was no prejudice to the government from the delay. "
Therefore, after applying the factors relevant to determining the appropriateness of equitable tolling set forth in Dunlap v. United States, 250 F.3d 1001, 1008 (6th Cir. 2001), "we conclude that this is an appropriate case to equitably toll the AEDPA's statute of limitations. Petitioner's Section 2255 motion therefore is not time-barred and should be reviewed on its merits. Accordingly, the case will be remanded to the district court. "
Remanded.
Dissent
Griffin, J. "Were it not for Dunlap v. United States, 250 F.3d 1001 (6th Cir. 2001), and our subsequent published decisions that have followed Dunlap, I would give effect to the plain language of 28 U.S.C. Sect. 2255 and hold that Solomon's petition for habeas corpus relief is barred by the one-year statute of limitations. Furthermore, I would hold that the plain wording of 28 U.S.C. Sect. 2255 does not provide for judicially-created 'equitable tolling. '"
Solomon v. United States. (6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-60882) (15 pages) (Duggan, J., sitting by designation, joined by Gilman, J.) (Griffin, J., dissenting). On appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
Immigration And Naturalization
Torture - Remanded
Although we deny the Indonesian petitioner's petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeal's (BIA's) decision with respect to his Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) based claims for asylum and withholding of removal, the immigration judge's reliance on a BIA decision which is manifestly contrary to law requires us to vacate the judgment of the BIA with respect to petitioner's Convention Against Torture (CAT) claim and remand.
"In the case at bar, the IJ applied In Re S-V-, 22 I. & N. Dec. 1306 (2000), to Amir's CAT claim. In S-V, the BIA held that a petitioner 'must do more than show that the officials are aware of the activity but are powerless to stop it. He must demonstrate that ... officials are willfully accepting of the guerillas' torturous activities. ' ... (emphasis supplied). Because Amir did not show that the Indonesian government was willfully accepting of the fanatical Muslim activity, the IJ dismissed the CAT claim without further analysis.
"We join the Ninth and Second Circuits in holding that In Re S-V- directly conflicts with Congress's clear intent to include 'willful blindness' in the definition of 'acquiescence. ' ... Although we have not previously had occasion expressly to disapprove the standard for 'acquiescence' set forth in S-V-, ... [t]oday we explicitly hold that the IJ's reliance on In Re S-V- was manifestly contrary to the law. "
Therefore, "we remand Amir's CAT claim to the BIA for a decision consistent with this opinion. "
Denied, vacated and remanded.
Amir v. Gonzales. (6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-60884) (6 pages) (Moore, J., joined by Merritt, J., and Collier, J., sitting by designation). On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals.

 







 
 


November 13, 2006 Monday  




 As Vietnam trip nears, Bush rejects Iraq link; 
2 wars more different than alike, he says

 
WASHINGTON -- President Bush travels this week to the site of an old military conflict casting a shadow over the United States and Iraq: Vietnam.
Bush's trip, including stops in Singapore and Indonesia, is mainly to promote trade at a conference in Hanoi and discuss ways to combat terrorism in the region. But the eight-day journey also includes reminders of how the Vietnam War roiled U.S. politics and society and raises questions about whether the same thing is happening with Iraq.
"The few similarities dwarf all the differences," said historian Robert Brigham, author of the book Is Iraq Another Vietnam?
Among them, Brigham said: an inability to transform military strength into political influence in the region, a steady drain of public support for the war, and harsh lessons about the limits of U.S.  power. 
Bush stressed what he said were the differences with reporters last week. He said Iraqis overthrew Saddam Hussein with U.S. help, approved a new constitution and formed a government that is trying to move forward despite sectarian violence.
Vietnam endured a civil war in which the communist North, backed by China and the Soviet Union, defeated a U.S.-supported government in the South.
The Iraq war is also being fought with a volunteer army, Bush said, without the compulsory draft that inspired protests in the 1960s and early '70s. The president also said U.S. troops in Iraq are receiving more support from the American people than those in Vietnam did.
"I see the differences," he said, "I really do."
Bush leaves Tuesday for Singapore, where he will deliver a speech on U.S.-Asian relations, the prospects for trade and North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Then he goes to Vietnam and Indonesia, and makes a quick stop in Hawaii before returning to Washington.
The Asia trip comes a week after Republicans lost control of Congress in an election in which, Bush said, voters expressed "displeasure" with the Iraq war. Some members of the new Democratic majority in Congress want U.S. troops out of Iraq, and some, such as Ohio Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown, campaigned against free trade as a threat to Americans' jobs.
National security adviser Stephen Hadley said that unlike in Vietnam, a loss in Iraq would pose a direct threat to the United States because Iraq would become a "safe haven for terrorists." He said another key difference is that U.S. servicemembers support the mission in Iraq and the war on terrorism.
Historian Robert Dallek, who chronicled the Vietnam War in biographies of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy, said a loss in Iraq would not be fatal to the United States.
"We lost in Vietnam, and we won the larger Cold War," he pointed out.
Among other differences: The opposition in Iraq lacks a single, charismatic leader in the mold of Ho Chi Minh, former president of North Vietnam. Brigham pointed out that the Vietnam conflict began as an insurgency and ended as a conventional war; the opposite happened in Iraq.
More than 2,800 U.S. troops have lost their lives in Iraq, compared with more than 58,000 in Vietnam.
The Vietnam conflict continues to exert a powerful hold on U.S. politics. Bill Clinton and Bush, who served in the Texas Air National Guard, each spent part of their presidential campaigns explaining how they avoided being sent to the war zone. The attacks on 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry by fellow swift boat veterans revived the ghosts of the Vietnam War.
Historian Douglas Brinkley, who wrote a book about Kerry and Vietnam, said that the war occurred at a tumultuous time in American history, amid the civil rights and women's movements, the emergence of the counterculture, and the assassinations of political leaders such as President Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King Jr.
Today, life in the USA isn't as tumultuous, though similar political divisions are emerging over Iraq, Brinkley said. Because there is no military draft, few Americans are touched directly by the Iraq war unless family or friends are serving there, he said.
For that reason, Brinkley called Iraq more of a "low-grade" Vietnam. "Even today," he said, "you say the word Vietnam and it brings out polar reactions."
After the Persian Gulf War, the first President Bush said, "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all."
Historians such as Stanley Karnow said that statement is questionable because of Iraq. Karnow, author of a history of Vietnam, said the USA can't escape the shadow of Vietnam any more than the Civil War or any other "seminal experience."
"People will go on talking about it and debating it forever," he said. 

Highlights of president's 8-day trip to Southeast Asia
President Bush travels to Asia this week for a trade conference and meetings with allies about North Korea's nuclear program. Another agenda item: infectious diseases, including avian flu. The centerpiece of the trip is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Vietnam.
Meetings
*In Singapore: President S.R. Nathan and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Singapore is one of the closest U.S. allies in Asia, and Bush is delivering a speech on U.S.-Asian relations. Bush described Lee as a "strategic thinker" after the two countries reached a security agreement in July 2005.
*In Vietnam: President Nguyen Minh Triet and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
Although Vietnam is a communist nation, its increasingly commercial relationship with the United States has warmed relations.
Vietnam won formal approval last week to join the World Trade Organization. Triet is known as an economic reformer loyal to the Communist Party.
During the APEC forum, Bush plans one-on-one meetings with many leaders, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and Russian President Vladimir Putin. They are partners in six-party talks designed to pressure North Korea into giving up nuclear weapons.
*In Indonesia: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Bush plans to stress that Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim democracy.
*In Hawaii: Breakfast with U.S. troops and a meeting at the U.S. Pacific Command.
About APEC
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation is a group of 21 Pacific Rim countries, including the United States and Canada. It was formed in 1989 to improve economic and political ties among the nations.
About ASEAN
Bush plans to meet with the leaders of seven countries in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a group that has common political and economic interests: Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ASEAN was formed in 1967 to display unity against communist expansion in the region.
Source: The White House.
Reported by David Jackson and Bruce Rosenstein.
Bush cultural stops
*Istana in Singapore: Official residence of the president. The palace, built in 1869, is on Orchard Road near the country's busy shopping and commercial center.
*Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hanoi: Headquarters for the work of the United States, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, China and Russia to obtain a full accounting of Americans who did not return from Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era.
*Ho Chi Minh City Securities Trading Center: Established in 2000 as Vietnam's stock market.
*History Museum in Ho Chi Minh City: Houses artifacts detailing the former Saigon's recorded history.
*Bogor Palace: One of six Indonesian presidential palaces. 

 UNITED STATES (98%); VIET NAM (96%);  SINGAPORE (93%);  VIETNAM (92%); KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (79%); ASIA (79%)







  



November 12, 2006 Sunday  
Main Edition



 SPOTLIGHT ON: INDONESIA

 
Thousands of Indonesians have already begun protesting the upcoming visit of President Bush, who is scheduled to arrive Nov. 20 after attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam. Among the topics to be discussed: how the United States could assist the Southeast Asian nation in fighting bird flu. Nearly five dozen people have died from the virus, the highest toll of any country, according to Reuters.
Bush is to meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the summer palace in Bogor, south of the capital, Jakarta. The meeting will take place inside the historic Bogor Botanical Gardens where a helipad has been built specifically for the occasion, Reuters said. The environmental impact and the cost of the construction have drawn harsh cricitism. 
At a glance
* Size: 741,099 square miles, slightly less than three times the size of Texas
* Capital: Jakarta
* Population: 245,452,739 (July 2006 estimate)
* Population growth rate: 1.41 percent (2006 estimate)
* Infant mortality: 34.39 deaths/1,000 live births
* Life expectancy: 69.87 years (2006 estimate)
* Ethnic groups: Javanese, 45 percent; Sundanese, 14 percent; Madurese, 7.5 percent; coastal Malays, 7.5 percent; other, 26 percent
* Religious groups: Muslim, 88 percent; Protestant, 5 percent; Roman Catholic, 3 percent; Hindu, 2 percent; Buddhist, 1 percent; other, 1 percent (1998)
* Principal languages: Bahasa Indonesia (official, modified form of Malay); English; Dutch; local dialects, the most widely spoken of which is Javanese
* Government: Republic
* Head of government: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (since Oct. 20, 2004)
* Economy: Major industries include petroleum and natural gas, textiles, apparel, footwear, mining, cement, chemical fertilizers, plywood, rubber, food and tourism. Development is crippled by natural disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes and mud volcanoes. Other problems are unequal resource distribution among regions, endemic corruption, a lack of reliable legal recourse in contract disputes, weaknesses in the banking system and a generally poor climate for foreign investment.
* Labor force by occupation: Agriculture, 47 percent; industry, 12 percent; services, 42 percent (1999 estimate)
* Gross domestic product per capita: $3,600 (2005 estimate)
* Unemployment rate: 11.8 percent (2005 estimate)
* Currency exchange rate: 1 Indonesian rupiah (IDR) = $0.0001097 U.S.
* Popular foods: Rice is Indonesia's main staple. Also popular are sago palm flour, sweet potatoes, maize and cassava. Indonesian food is usually hot and spicy and most dishes are served with a red chili paste called sambal. A spicy peanut sauce may be used as a dressing for salads, satay (skewered strips of grilled meat) or gado gado (cold vegetable salad).
Atlanta connection
* Atlanta is 10,399 miles from Jakarta as the crow flies.
* If it's noon in Atlanta, it's midnight in Jakarta.
History
Hindu and Buddhist civilization from India reached Indonesia nearly 2,000 years ago. The country occupies a strategic location astride or along major sea lanes, and Islam spread along those routes in the 15th century. Indonesia is now home to the world's largest Muslim population.
The country is the world's largest archipelago, consisting of more than 17,000 islands --- 6,000 of which are inhabited.
The Dutch became the area's most important European trading partners in the mid-1700s and colonized the area, but the outer islands were not fully subdued until early last century, when present-day Indonesia was united under one rule for the first time.
The islands were occupied by Japan during World War II, but nationalists led by Sukarno and Hatta (many Indonesians use only one name) declared independence. After four years of fighting and U.N. mediation, the Netherlands finally agreed to relinquish its colony in 1949. Indonesia declared itself a republic, and Sukarno became the first president in 1950.
Sukarno suspended parliament 10 years later, was declared president for life in 1963 and allied himself with Communist governments. An attempted coup was quashed in 1965, but Sukarno was forced to cede power to the army, led by Suharto, who became acting president in 1967 and ruled Indonesia for the next 31 years.
Amid mob violence spurred by a deteriorating economy, Suharto was forced to step down in 1998. The late Sukarno's daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri, became Indonesia's first woman president three years later. In 2004, in a direct presidential runoff, she was defeated by a retired general, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
East Timor, a former Portuguese colony that Indonesia seized in 1975, became an independent country in 2002 after years of violence and accusations of human rights violations. Separatists in Aceh province on Sumatra have fought repeatedly against Indonesian government troops, but a historic peace agreement was announced in 2005.
Islamic terrorists affiliated with al-Qaida were blamed for terrorist bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, at nightclubs in Bali in October 2002.
Indonesia was the nation worst hit by the December 2004 tsunami, which particularly affected Aceh and caused more than 100,000 deaths. An earthquake in March 2005 created heavy destruction on the island of Nias.
Reconstruction in these areas may take up to a decade. In addition, Indonesia struggles with alleviating widespread poverty, preventing terrorism, effecting a transition to a popularly elected government after decades of authoritarianism and holding the military and police accountable for human rights violations.
Indonesia also faces environmental problems. Wildfires since mid-September have choked the country in a thick haze and driven dozens of endangered orangutans from their jungle habitat. Fewer than 60,000 orangutans remain in the wild in Indonesia and the International Fund for Animal Welfare estimates that they could face extinction within 10 years.
Indonesia has the highest number of threatened species of mammals in the world --- nearly 150, according to the World Conservation Union. Only an estimated 50,000 Asian elephants remain in the wild, with 10,000 more in captivity.
Sources: CIA World Factbook, World Almanac
--- Compiled by news researcher Joni Zeccola

 INDONESIA (96%); ASIA (94%);  VIET NAM (92%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); INDIA (79%)








 
San Gabriel Valley Tribune 

November 12, 2006 Sunday



 Religious persecution

 
Americans went to the polls thinking about many different factors: the war in Iraq, the economy and, perhaps, some recent revelations about former Congressman Mark Foley, R-Fla. 
But there's another issue we should be talking about - religious freedom, at home and abroad.
Religious freedom is something that nearly all Americans, including Christians, take for granted. Unfortunately, many of our brethren around the world know better.
A recent article in Time magazine described the precarious relationship of Chinese Christians to their government. As Time put it, "openly religious" Chinese, by which Time meant Christians, live under the "constant threat" of a "brutal government response" to the practice of their faith.
The situation is even worse in the Islamic world: From Indonesia to Nigeria, the rise of radical Islam has been accompanied by the end of any pretense of tolerance towards Christians. 
In Iraq, just about the only thing the Sunni, Shiites and Kurds can agree on is their dislike for the Assyrians, Iraq's indigenous Christian population.
As a result, many members of what is arguably the oldest Christian community in the world are leaving their ancient homeland. A similar exodus is underway among Christian Palestinians.
In Egypt, the Copts, while nominally allowed to practice their faith, must overcome legalized harassment almost every step of the way. Sometimes, the harassment turns to murder. Last year, three Copts were killed, and a nun was stabbed in anti-Copts riots.
It isn't only one-party states and Islamic countries that violate religious freedom. On Oct. 4, Hindu extremists kidnapped and tortured a Christian convert. This is part of a larger pattern that includes forced "re-conversions" to Hinduism. What's even more outrageous is that perpetrators include members of India's former ruling party, the BJP.
Here in the United States, infringement of religious freedom takes many forms. The attempt to remove the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, launched by Prison Fellowship from prisons because they are, in effect, "too Christian," is one example.
Other ministries are experiencing similar difficulties: For instance, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has been banned from several campuses while other, shall we say, less wholesome groups are fully allowed to operate.
You need to understand now that we can no longer take religious freedom for granted, at home or abroad.
Public officials need to be informed and accountable on this issue, for us and for everyone around the world.
We need to let them know that they are hardly alone in their hour of trial.
Manuel A. Mejia Sr.
Pico Rivera
All in same boat 
The time has come for fairness when it comes to determining whose vehicles must have a smog check every other year.
Yes, the time has come to remove the "exemptions" (from smog checks) that have been enjoyed by people who have older, polluting vehicles!
It's time to be fair - to help clean up California's air.
James M. Ammann
Whittier

 UNITED STATES (94%);  PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); INDIA (79%); EGYPT (79%); NIGERIA (79%); 







 
 



November 4, 2006 Saturday



 In the World

 
Tehran test-fires
3 antiship missiles
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran test-fired three new antiship missiles in the Persian Gulf yesterday, indicating that the maneuvers should send a clear message to the United States not to conduct any more military exercises in the area. 
Iranian state television broadcast footage of the Revolutionary Guards firing naval-warfare missiles with a range of about 100 miles. It was the second day in a row that Iran had announced the development and testing of missiles in the maneuvers.
Iranian TV said the new naval missiles - named Noor, Kowsar and Nasr - had a range 30 miles greater than its existing antiship rockets. The tests and exercises came only days after the United States conducted naval maneuvers in the gulf.
"Our enemies should keep their hostility out of the Persian Gulf," said Adm. Sardar Fadavi, the deputy chief of the Revolutionary Guards navy.- AP
50 civilians killed in Darfur attack
GENEVA, Switzerland - Sudan government-allied militia fighters killed about 50 civilians this week during an attack in Darfur, and witnesses reported seeing men clad in Sudanese military officers' garb with the horse-mounted attackers, the United Nations said yesterday.
Citing witnesses, the United Nations said young boys and elderly men made up the majority of the victims in the Oct. 29 attack by 300 to 500 janjaweed attackers who rampaged through seven villages and a relief camp in western Darfur.
"At the very least, the attacks demonstrated the government of Sudan's continued failure to disarm militia in Darfur, and at worst its use of militia forces that target civilian populations," said the report released in Geneva.- AP
3 Muslims charged in girls' beheading
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Three Muslim men have been charged in the beheadings of three Christian girls in an Indonesian province fraught with sectarian tension, and the suspects could face death sentences if convicted, lawyers said yesterday.
The three men - Hasanuddin, Lilik Purnomo and Irwanto Irano - are being charged under Indonesia's harsh antiterrorism law for their roles in the girls' deaths and the wounding of a fourth in Central Sulawesi province in 2005, a statement from the Attorney General's Office said.
Gun battles between Christians and Muslims from 1998 to 2002 killed at least 1,000 people from both faiths. - AP
Elsewhere:
Italian photographer Gabriele Torsello, kidnapped in Afghanistan on Oct. 12, was freed yesterday in good health. He said he was kept in chains and never saw daylight during his three weeks in captivity.
Prosecutors in Taiwan yesterday said they had enough evidence to indict President Chen Shui-bian on corruption charges in connection with his handling of a secret diplomatic fund, adding to pressures on him to resign.
Spanish police yesterday arrested two suspected members of an Islamic extremist group, a Moroccan and a Spaniard, who are believed to have had a role in the Casablanca bombings in 2003 that killed 45 people.

 

  
 

November 4, 2006 Saturday  




 IRAN TEST FIRES MORE MISSILES

 
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran test-fired three new sea missiles in the Persian Gulf yesterday, indicating that the maneuvers should send a clear message to the U.S. not to conduct any more military exercises in the area. 
Iranian state television broadcast footage of the Revolutionary Guards firing naval-warfare missiles with a range of about 106 miles. It was the second day in a row that Iran had announced the development and testing of missiles in the maneuvers.
The tests and exercises came only days after the U.S. conducted naval maneuvers in the Gulf, and as U.N. Security Council members wrangle over what steps to take against Iran for ignoring its call to cease uranium enrichment -- a key step in making nuclear bombs.
In an apparent reference to the United States, Adm. Sardar Fadavi, the deputy chief of the Revolutionary Guards navy, said, "Our enemies should keep their hostility out of the Persian Gulf. They should not initiate any move that would make the region tense."
Warnings issued
LAGOS, Nigeria -- Militants in Nigeria are planning a major wave of attacks and kidnappings in the next few days that could include up to 20 simultaneous bombings across the petroleum-rich south, U.S. diplomats warned yesterday.
The warning came in an e-mailed statement sent to American citizens from the U.S. Consulate in Nigeria's main city, Lagos, and a U.S. diplomat confirmed plans for new attacks were believed to be under way.
The news helped push oil prices higher.
Kidnapped reporter freed
KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Italian photographer kidnapped in Afghanistan was freed yesterday in good health and said he was kept in chains and never saw daylight during his three weeks in captivity.
Gabriele Torsello was kidnapped by unknown assailants Oct. 12 while traveling by bus from Lashkar Gah, the capital of the southern Helmand province, to neighboring Kandahar, said Ettore Francesco Sequi, Italy's ambassador to Afghanistan.
Elsewhere, suspected militants ambushed a police patrol, killing six policemen and wounding three in western Afghanistan, while a think tank warned that more foreign troops are needed to secure the country.
U.S. protests whale hunt
WASHINGTON -- The United States and two dozen other countries are protesting Iceland's resumption of whaling.
A ban on whaling was instituted in 1986 because the giant marine mammals had become depleted.
However, on Oct. 17, Iceland announced its was resuming commercial whaling. Since then Icelandic whalers have killed seven fin whales and one minke whale, U.S. officials said.
3 charged in beheadings
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Three Muslim men have been charged in the beheadings of three Christian girls in an Indonesian province fraught with sectarian tension, and the suspects could face death sentences if convicted, lawyers said yesterday.
The three men -- Hasanuddin, Lilik Purnomo and Irwanto Irano -- are being charged under Indonesia's harsh anti-terrorism law for their roles in the girls' deaths and wounding of a fourth in Central Sulawesi province in 2005.
Fierce gun battles between Christians and Muslims from 1998 to 2002 left at least 1,000 people from both faiths dead in the region. A peace agreement ended the worst of the violence, but tensions flared anew after the execution last month of three Roman Catholic militants convicted of leading a 2000 attack on an Islamic school that killed at least 70 people.

 




  



November 2, 2006 Thursday  




 Clifford Geertz; 
Altered Foundation of Anthropology

 
Clifford Geertz, an anthropologist whose imaginative studies of cultural groups from other countries changed the intellectual underpinnings of anthropology and other social sciences, died Oct. 30 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia from complications of heart surgery. He was 80.  
 Since 1970, he had been a resident scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.  
 With early ambitions of being a novelist, Dr. Geertz brought a distinctly literary sensibility to the study of anthropology with his sophisticated prose and vivid descriptions of social customs abroad. While at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, Dr. Geertz (pronounced "Gurts") was the leader of the "symbolic anthropology" movement, which departed from the idea of relying on established, hard-and-fast facts. 
 He saw anthropology as more of an imaginative undertaking than a science. All an anthropologist could hope to do, he believed, was to understand the rituals, myths, language and art that govern a society's day-to-day actions. 
 In his most influential book, "The Interpretation of Cultures" (1973), Dr. Geertz described culture as "a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which people communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life."  
 This aesthetic understanding of culture gained currency across various disciplines, including sociology, political science, history and literary studies. Dr. Geertz's ornate, allusive accounts of other cultures came to define a new field of study called ethnography. He deliberately chose not to expound grand, universal theories, seeking instead to find meaning in small-scale observations of simple human interaction  --  what he called "local knowledge," which was the title of one of his 17 books. 
 Unlike most other anthropologists of his time, Dr. Geertz did not focus on isolated, culturally primitive groups. Instead, he studied complex societies, first in Indonesia and later in Morocco, that had maintained their traditions for centuries. In his 1968 book, "Islam Observed," he described the cultural influences of Islam on economics, shopping, politics and family structures in those cultures. 
 He might be best known for the essay "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," which appeared in "The Interpretation of Cultures." More than a description of a cockfight and the betting that accompanied it, "Deep Play" was a wide-ranging metaphorical interpretation of how the people of Bali saw themselves in relation to violence, social status, morality and belief. 
 "Every people, the proverb has it, loves its own form of violence," Dr. Geertz wrote. "The cockfight is the Balinese reflection on theirs: on its look, its uses, its force, its fascination." 
 Clifford James Geertz was born Aug. 23, 1926, in San Francisco and served in the Navy during World War II. He graduated from Antioch College in Ohio with a bachelor's degree in English in 1950, then went to Harvard University, where he received a PhD in anthropology in 1956. 
 After first visiting Indonesia in 1952, he and his wife were caught on Sumatra during a political uprising in 1958. Sick with malaria, they fled through a jungle until they were rescued by paratroopers "dropping soundlessly from the morning sky," as Dr. Geertz wrote in his autobiographical "After the Fact" in 1995. 
 In his early jobs in the 1950s at Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Geertz began to borrow from the study of literature, philosophy and history. By the time he was at the University of Chicago, from 1960 to 1970, he no longer saw anthropology as an objective, measurable science. His ideas have been linked to the notion of cultural relativism, which has become a point of contention in recent battles over the direction of the nation's universities. 
 Other critics took exception to the literary license Dr. Geertz used in his first-person anthropological studies. As one opponent wrote, "Cockfights are surely cockfights for the Balinese  --  and not images, fictions, models and metaphors." 
  In addition to his influential books, which have been translated into 21 languages, Dr. Geertz often wrote for the New York Review of Books and the New Republic. His 1988 book, "Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author," won first prize in criticism from the National Book Critics Circle. 
 His marriage to Hildred Storey ended in divorce. 
 Survivors include his wife of 19 years, Karen Blu of Princeton; two children from his first marriage, Erika Reading of Princeton and Benjamin Geertz of Kirkland, Wash.; and two grandchildren. 

 UNITED STATES (90%);  MOROCCO (79%)




4


   


November 1, 2006 Wednesday  




 Trading Recipes on the Rim of the South China Sea

 
''I NEVER thought of myself as Southeast Asian,'' Amy Besa said last week as she pounded garlic and peppercorns for a batch of adobo, the vinegar-laced national dish of the Philippines. Ms. Besa, who grew up in Manila, and her husband, Romy Dorotan, are the authors of the newly published Memories of Philippine Kitchens: Stories and Recipes from Far and Near (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $35), the most comprehensive book in English on her country's rich and complex food culture. 
  ''We spent our time looking across the Pacific to the United States, instead of turning around and seeing Vietnam and Indonesia right next door,'' she said.
As her book and two other new ones eloquently describe, geopolitics, history and geography are inextricable in Southeast Asian cooking. Each of them -- the two others are Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking From the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia by James Oseland (W. W. Norton, $35) and Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors by Andrea Nguyen (Ten Speed Press, $35) -- decisively upgrades the reader's access to the region's lively, aromatic food, offering deeper research, more context and better writing than any predecessor in the field.  
  The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia form a rough circle around the South China Sea, and their cuisines have much in common: the rich tastes of coconut, mangoes, fish sauce, spices and fresh herbs, layered on top of staples like rice, ginger, chilies and soy sauce that dominate Japan, Korea and China to the north. These tropical lands are hot, humid and fertile; they are rich in fruit, seafood and spices; and they are deeply influenced by their thousands of miles of coastline, which stimulated a centuries-old culinary interchange with ships from China, India and Europe. 
  According to this crop of authors, previous cookbooks about the region have overestimated the culinary influence of the Dutch colonizers of Indonesia, the French in Vietnam and the Americans in the Philippines. The new books take readers far outside the urban capitals and market streets, into remote home kitchens where cooking traditions seem soothingly intact despite decades of instability -- political, religious, and climatic.
  In ''Into the Vietnamese Kitchen'' the story of Andrea Nguyen, a writer and cooking teacher, begins like those of many previous Vietnamese-American cookbook writers, with an upheaval: the author's childhood flight from wartime Saigon. But no other author has presented such a detailed account of the culinary abilities of Vietnamese home cooks, and subjects like the role of pickled vegetables and the techniques of charcuterie have never been so clearly explained for a wide audience. 
  ''I tried to write not only what we do, but why and how,'' Ms. Nguyen said.
  In ''Cradle of Flavor'' Mr. Oseland -- the editor of Saveur magazine and a frequent traveler in the region over 20 years -- is enthusiastic and rigorous about tracing food all the way to its roots in earth and sea, with scores of pages on ingredients alone. 
  Mr. Oseland's vivid, immediate writing lets the reader virtually inhale the perfumes of aromatics like nutmeg, lemon grass, cinnamon and galangal, and taste the influences of Indonesia's Muslim population, the largest of any country in the world. ''Satays are originally Indonesian, adapted from Arab traders who brought kebabs there over the centuries along with Islam,'' he said. 
  ''Memories of Philippine Kitchens'' is especially revelatory, because Philippine restaurants in the United States are few and far between (one of them, Cendrillon in SoHo, is owned by the authors) and what they serve only scratches the surface of what's in this book. It evokes not only the sour spark of the citrus kalamansi, the crunch of green mango and the tang of vinegar, but a crazy profusion of unfamiliar fruits and vegetables, gourds, tubers, leaves, flowers, sea vegetables, salted eggs and pickled fish. 
  To put the books through their paces in the kitchen, I chose one recipe from each, identified by the author in each case as an example of delicious everyday home cooking: the kind of recipe a new bride might master first. (Women do the overwhelming majority of the cooking throughout the region.) 
  For each one, I did have to buy or make some elusive ingredient. But each also taught me something entirely new: in the case of Ms. Besa's adobo, that a good-tasting fruit vinegar can be the cooking medium for an entire dish; in Mr. Oseland's Javanese chicken curry, that tying a bruised stalk of lemon grass in a knot releases flavor without dispersing tough bits of stalk through the dish; in Ms. Nguyen's shrimp in caramel sauce, that it's possible to cook shrimp for as long as 15 minutes without toughening or loss of flavor. 
  Taken together these books are an exciting, appetizing and sometimes daunting reminder of how much even food-crazed Americans still have to learn about the vast realm of Asian cooking. 
  ''It's more than a world,'' Mr. Oseland said. ''It's a whole universe of food to discover.'' One dish at a time. 

Javanese Chicken Curry (Opor Ayam)
Adapted from ''Cradle of Flavor'' by James Oseland (W. W. Norton)
Time: 1 hour

1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 fresh red Holland or Fresno chili, stemmed and cut into chunks
6 shallots, peeled and cut into chunks
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 piece galangal, about 1 1/2 inches long, peeled and roughly sliced (optional)
1 piece ginger, 2 inches long, peeled and roughly sliced
3 tablespoons peanut oil
1 thick stalk lemon grass, stem end and brittle top cut off
2 pieces cinnamon stick
5 kaffir lime leaves
2 1/2 to 3 pounds skin-on chicken legs, thighs or both (if possible, have thighs cut in half and knuckle cut off legs), patted dry
2 cups unsweetened coconut milk
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste.

1.  In a small food processor, whirl coriander seeds until finely ground. Add chili, shallots, garlic, galangal and ginger and process to a smooth paste, adding a tablespoon or so of water if needed. (Ingredients can also be chopped finely, then pounded together in mortar and pestle.)
2.  Heat oil in a large heavy pot over medium heat. When oil is hot enough to gently sizzle a pinch of paste, add all the paste and cook, stirring often, until golden, 5 to 7 minutes. Reduce heat as needed to prevent browning.
3.  Using a heavy object like a glass measuring cup, smash lemon grass stalk, crushing lightly just until bendable. Tie in a knot, pulling gently on both ends. Add to pot with cinnamon and lime leaves. Cook 1 minute more, until cinnamon is fragrant.
4.  Scrape paste to one side and add chicken to pot. Raise heat and brown chicken lightly on both sides, about 10 minutes total. Add 1 cup coconut milk, 1 1/4 cups water and salt, stirring well and scraping up browned bits from bottom of pot. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook uncovered 40 to 50 minutes, until chicken is cooked through and sauce is thickened. Do not boil.
5.  Add remaining coconut milk and heat through. Taste for salt. Let cool slightly and serve.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

Note: Ingredients for this recipe can be found at Asian markets or online at importfood.com.

Pork Ribs Adobo
Adapted from ''Memories of Philippine Kitchens'' by Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan (Stewart, Tabori & Chang)
Time: 1 1/2 hours

1 cup apple cider vinegar, preferably organic and unfiltered
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 small bay leaves
1 large jalapeno chili, stemmed and roughly chopped
1 side baby-back pork ribs (about 2 pounds), cut into individual ribs
2 teaspoons sea salt
6 garlic cloves, peeled
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
Cooked rice.

1.  In a bowl, combine vinegar, soy sauce, bay leaves and chili and set aside.
2.  Season ribs with 1 teaspoon salt. Using a mortar and pestle or small food processor, grind remaining teaspoon salt, garlic and peppercorns to a rough paste. Rub paste into ribs and transfer to resealable plastic bag. Pour in vinegar mixture, seal and refrigerate at least 1 hour or overnight, turning occasionally.
3.  Transfer ribs and marinade to a pot, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, 1 hour, until meat is tender. Remove ribs to a baking sheet and simmer sauce until thick.
4.  Meanwhile, preheat broiler. Pour  1/4 cup of thickened sauce over ribs, turn to coat, and broil until nicely browned, about 7 minutes, turning once. Serve with remaining sauce and rice.

Yield: 4 servings.

Shrimp and Onion Simmered in Caramel Sauce (Tom Kho)
Adapted from ''Into the Vietnamese Kitchen'' by Andrea Nguyen (Ten Speed Press)
Time: 45 minutes

1 cup sugar
2 pounds medium or large shrimp, peeled and deveined
Salt
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 scallions, thinly sliced
Cooked rice for serving
1 lime, cut into wedges, for serving.

1. Make caramel sauce: Choose a small, heavy saucepan and fill sink with enough cold water to come halfway up the sides of pan. Dry pan. Combine  1/4 cup water and the sugar in pan and heat to bubbling over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally with a metal spoon. After 2 minutes, stop stirring and let cook undisturbed. Bubbles will form over surface and mixture will become clear.
2.  After about 15 minutes' cooking, mixture will begin to turn golden and then quickly darken; watch closely. When reddish on top and inky dark brown (like black coffee) underneath, quickly stop cooking by placing saucepan in cold water. Add  1/2 cup water; mixture will bubble furiously and seize up (it will dissolve again). Return saucepan to medium heat and stir until smooth. Pour into heatproof container such as a glass jar and let cool at least 10 minutes before using.
3.  Place shrimp in colander and toss with 1 tablespoon salt. Rinse immediately with lots of cold water and drain well.
4.  In medium pot, combine shrimp,  1/8 teaspoon salt, fish sauce and 3 tablespoons caramel sauce (remainder can be tightly covered and refrigerated indefinitely) and bring to a simmer over high heat. Add onion and pepper, stir, and boil uncovered 10 to 14 minutes more, until sauce is thick. Shrimp and onions will give off lots of liquid; cook at a strong boil to concentrate flavors (add a little water if sauce seems to thicken too quickly).
5.  Turn off heat, stir in oil, and taste for salt and pepper. Transfer to serving bowl, scatter with scallions, and serve over plain rice, with lime wedges.

Yield: 4 servings.


 PHILIPPINES (95%);  UNITED STATES (93%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (93%); MALAYSIA (92%); VIET NAM (91%); ASIA (91%); CHINA (90%); JAPAN (79%); VIETNAM (79%); NORTHERN ASIA (79%); INDIA (79%); EUROPE (79%); SINGAPORE (73%)







   


November 1, 2006 Wednesday  




 MacNeil Named Host Of Documentary Project

 
Public television's ''America at a Crossroads'' project -- a $20 million series of programs examining challenges confronting the United States after Sept. 11 -- was engulfed in controversy over political balance almost from the moment it was unveiled in early 2004, and was slow to get under way. But the initiative appears to be putting its inauspicious beginnings behind it, and this week officials will announce that the journalist Robert MacNeil, former co-anchor of PBS's ''MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,'' has agreed to be the host. 
  After seeing early versions of some of the commissioned documentaries that were starting to roll in, PBS officials last week decided to expand the series to 12 hours over six nights in April, up from eight hours. Although the 11 individual documentaries that will be shown that week have not been finalized -- some are still being reported -- executives said that, broadly, the series would look at the war on terrorism and the balance between liberty and security; the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the experience of American troops; and conflicting currents in the Muslim world. A history of Islamism, which Mr. MacNeil called ''very eye-opening,'' is likely to open the series. 
Mr. MacNeil, who will put the films in context each night and go live should news events warrant, said that when he was approached this summer to be the host, ''I wanted to be sure that we were going to be in control of the material.'' That concern being answered, he said: ''It seems to me extraordinary, at this time, that public television, whatever the genesis, is devoting a huge block of time and a large amount of money to a series of independently made films about all these issues.''
  ''America at a Crossroads'' began at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which administers the federal funds that support public radio and television and also awards financial grants for programming. Production money went to 20 of the 440 proposals submitted, but critics complained about the way that corporation officials, who at the time were intent on adding more conservative voices to public television, were trying to achieve political balance. 
  In particular, critics raised questions about a commissioned profile of Richard N. Perle, the former Bush administration adviser and Iraq war advocate, to be produced by a close friend. The corporation said that to add balance, it was also commissioning a program critical of White House foreign policy. 
  But in January, editorial control of ''America at a Crossroads'' was handed over to WETA, the Washington public television station. The films have now been winnowed to 18 (including a film about Indonesia's Muslim population, which is being produced by ), plus another film looking at the Muslim experience in America, which is about to be commissioned. An outside advisory panel assembled by the corporation was disbanded and replaced by new experts on the military, foreign policy and Islam. 
  ''It was important for us to start fresh,'' said Jeff Bieber, a WETA programming executive who is one of the executive producers of the series.
  With WETA in charge and Mr. MacNeil also adding editorial oversight, some of the documentaries have evolved. The Perle film is still told with a sharp point of view: it will be narrated by Mr. Perle himself. But at WETA's urging, producers focused in on scenes where Mr. Perle is in direct debate with forceful, articulate and sometimes anguished critics of his policies. The counterbalancing film has been dropped. 
  ''Anybody who thinks that this is a piece of pro-Perle propaganda will be quite surprised,'' Mr. MacNeil said in an interview at his Upper West Side office.
  The extra hours were added in an effort to incorporate more viewpoints. ''The whole phenomenon of Islam today and our sort of Western awakening to it is a very complex business,'' Mr. MacNeil said. 
  The series will require viewers to make an extraordinary commitment. It will run from 9 to 11 p.m. from Sunday, April 15, through Friday, April 20. The eight films that do not make the cut for the weeklong marathon are likely to be shown later as specials.


  IRAQ (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); 







   


November 1, 2006 Wednesday 
  




NAME: Clifford Geertz

 Clifford Geertz, Cultural Anthropologist, Is Dead at 80

 
Clifford Geertz, the eminent cultural anthropologist whose work focused on interpreting the symbols he believed give meaning and order to people's lives, died on Monday in Philadelphia. He was 80 and lived in Princeton, N.J. 
  The cause was complications after heart surgery, according to an announcement by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he had been on the faculty since 1970.
 Best known for his theories of culture and cultural interpretation, Mr. Geertz was considered a founder of interpretive, or symbolic, anthropology. But his influence extended far beyond anthropology to many of the social sciences, and his writing had a literary flair that distinguished him from most theorists and ethnographers.
  He won a National Book Critics Circle Award for ''Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author'' (1988), which examined four of his discipline's forebears: Bronislaw Malinowski, Ruth Benedict, E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Claude Levi-Strauss. 
  Drawing on history, psychology, philosophy and literary criticism, Mr. Geertz analyzed and decoded the meanings of rituals, art, belief systems, institutions and other ''symbols,'' as he defined them.
  ''Believing with Max Weber that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning,'' he wrote in his 1973 book, ''The Interpretation of Cultures'' (Basic Books). The Times Literary Supplement called the book one of the 100 most important since World War II.
  Mr. Geertz also wrote voluminously on his fieldwork in Indonesia and Morocco. In one of his most widely cited essays, ''Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,'' included in ''The Interpretation of Cultures,'' he analyzed the kinship and social ties that are constructed, emphasized and maintained in this form of ritual ''deep play'' as if they were ''an assemblage of texts.'' 
  In his writings, Mr. Geertz drew a careful distinction between culture and social structure, differentiating himself from functionalists like Levi-Strauss, who believed that rituals, institutions and other aspects of a culture could be best understood by the purposes they serve. 
  Whereas social structure embraces economic, political and social life and its institutional forms, Mr. Geertz said, culture is ''a system of meanings embodied in symbols'' that provide people with a frame of reference to understand reality and animate their behavior. Culture, he argued, fills the gap between those things that are biological givens for our species and those we need to function in a complex, interdependent and changing world. 
  In short, in the Geertz formulation, the question to ask about cultural phenomena is not what they do, but what they mean. Mr. Geertz also argued against the idea that one could define the essence of humanity across all cultures. 
  ''The notion that the essence of what it means to be human is most clearly revealed in those features of human culture that are universal rather than in those that are distinctive to this people or that is a prejudice that we are not obliged to share,'' he wrote in 1966. ''It may be in the cultural particularities of people -- in their oddities -- that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.''
  Mr. Geertz was also deeply concerned about the anthropologist's role and the discipline's methodology. Recognizing the colonialist and Western heritage of anthropology, he believed that it was difficult for anyone from one culture to represent another accurately and meaningfully. He noted that anthropologists were hardly passive, objective observers, but rather individual creators of narratives, with their own voice. 
  Arguing that ethnographic reality does not exist apart from anthropologists' written versions of it, he said that cultures and peoples should speak for themselves, with anthropologists learning to ''converse with them'' and interpret them.
  In his book ''Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology'' (Basic Books, 1983), Mr. Geertz also addressed the question of whether someone from one culture can objectively understand another.
  For him, the anthropologist's task is to use what he called thick description to interpret symbols by observing them in use. Therefore the anthropologist must be both empirically rigorous and a savvy interpreter, akin to a psychoanalyst. In 1972 he wrote that ''cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses.''
  Mr. Geertz's elaborate theorizing and his later doubts about the limits of anthropological knowledge left some scholars nonplussed. As Jonathan Benthall, writing in The New Statesman in 1995, said: ''He disappoints some colleagues because he comes up with no overarching theories.''
  Clifford Geertz was born on Aug. 23, 1926, in San Francisco, the son of Clifford and Lois Geertz. During World War II, he served in the Navy.
  He received a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1950 from Antioch College, where a professor urged him to pursue his interests in values by studying anthropology. He went on to the social relations department at Harvard, where he studied with the anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn and the sociologist Talcott Parsons, receiving his Ph.D. in 1956.
  Around this time, he did the first of a half dozen fieldwork stints in Indonesia, spending 1952 to 1954 in the central Javanese village of Pare. His early work on Indonesia combined aspects of more conventional ethnography and history with concerns about economic and political development in the wake of decolonization.
  ''The Religion of Java'' (1960), his first major work, is an ethnographic description of Javanese religion. ''Agricultural Involution'' (1963) takes a big-picture view of modernization and economic development in the wake of Indonesian independence, while ''Peddlers and Princes'' (1963) focuses on development from the more microscopic level of the towns of Modjokuto in Java and Tabanan in Bali. A century of social development in Modjokuto is the subject of ''The Social History of an Indonesian Town'' (1965).
  ''Kinship in Bali'' (1975), written with his first wife, the anthropologist Hildred Storey, posited ''an underlying order in Balinese kinship practices'' in the cultural realm of symbols, patterns and ideas, despite differences in practices, or social structure, in different parts of the island. 
  ''Negara: The Theater State in 19th Century Bali'' (1981) examined the nature of royal families in tiny pre-colonial south Balinese kingdoms, while challenging the ''power-centered tradition of political theory from Machiavelli and Hobbes to Marx.
  Mr. Geertz's marriage to Ms. Storey, who accompanied him on some of his early fieldwork, ended in divorce in 1982. She is a professor emeritus in the department of anthropology at Princeton. He is survived by his wife, Karen Blu, an anthropologist whom he married in 1987; his children from his first marriage, Erika Reading of Princeton, and Benjamin, of Kirkland, Wash.; and two grandchildren. 
  After beginning his academic career as a research associate and instructor at Harvard, Mr. Geertz spent two years in California. From 1958 to 1959, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto; he was later an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1960 until 1970, Mr. Geertz taught at the University of Chicago, becoming a full professor in 1964. He joined the Institute for Advanced Study in 1970 as its first Professor of the Social Sciences and from 1978 to '79 taught at Oxford University. 
  Because of political turmoil in Indonesia, Mr. Geertz later turned his attention to Morocco, where he began doing fieldwork in the ancient village of Sefrou in 1963, returning five more times over the course of his career. 
  Profoundly influenced by his fieldwork there, he honed his comparative and historical approach in ''Islam Observed'' (1968), which the anthropologist Edmund Leach praised as ''a highly insightful comparison between Islam as interpreted by Indonesians and Islam interpreted by Moroccans.'' 
  By the end of his career, Mr. Geertz had grown discouraged about the ability of social science to generalize or develop sweeping theories, concluding that circumstances are too different among cultures, across time, and within societies. At the same time, he was heartened by the what he called the deprovincialization of anthropology, as the profession came to embrace ever more Asian, Middle Eastern and other non-Western scholars.
  In his 1995 memoir, ''After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist,'' Mr. Geertz eloquently meditated on his field work and academic career, concluding that anthropology is ''an excellent way, interesting, dismaying, useful and amusing, to expend a life.''


CORRECTION-DATE: November 2, 2006

 CORRECTION:
Because of an editing error, an obituary yesterday about the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz referred incorrectly in some copies to the Institute for Advanced Study, where he was on the faculty. While it is in Princeton, N.J., it is not at Princeton University or part of it.

 UNITED STATES (88%);  MOROCCO (78%)







  
 (Oklahoma City, OK)

October 29, 2006 Sunday  




 Infantile campaign quibbling

 
Thank goodness most Oklahoma voters aren't submissive sheep and have an inborn measure of common sense that allows them to easily withstand the recent political poppycock intended to brand all Republicans as pedophiles based on the Mark Foley fiasco. 
It's equally wrong to characterize all Democrats as pedophiles, adulterers and drunkards based on the actions of Gerry Studds, Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy. All people are equally liable to temptation and individually responsible for their actions and the consequences that ensue. Sadly, politics is never an even-handed endeavor; advantage at any cost is sought by both sides. Gov. Brad Henry uses his campaign war chest for commercials taking credit for legislation he neither proposed nor supported; his opponent attempts to brand the governor as being "weak on crime."  
Such infantile quibbling mustn't divert us from the first defining moment of this century. Will we elect politically correct, shell-dwelling appeasers who ignore the growing power of radical Islam until they come and pry us open for a delicious bowl of American turtle soup? Or will we save future lives by supporting leaders who will confront them today where they're found -- the Middle East, Europe, Indonesia, Dearborn, Mich., and New York City -- instead of fighting them tomorrow in our streets?  Ron Taffe  Shawnee 
Do your homework 
We urge our children to study, do their homework, ask questions, use their heads and make us proud of their ability to make good grades and good decisions. Now we need to practice what we preach. We need to think, pro and con, and elect the best leaders for the betterment of our city, county and state. None of us is 100 percent happy with all our present officials and for sure we'll not be 100 percent happy with whoever is elected. Each has his good and bad points, but which one is qualified for the office? 
Make a pro/con list for each candidate. Get busy, do your homework, do some serious thinking, be fair, use your head, ask questions and discuss this with your voting age children. Encourage them to vote! Whether a Democrat or a Republican, vote for the most qualified person. I have split the ticket several times in my many years of voting and have usually been satisfied with my decisions. 
Get out there and vote! Let's show the world that Americans are proud of the privilege to vote. And may the best-qualified person win.  Hazel Craddock  Midwest City 
The law is king 
While Bill Rupert (Your Views, Oct. 12) has an ally in George Washington, he also has an ally in me. What happens if one of our two major parties suddenly loses its power? Are we left with only one choice? Many argue that in a democracy there will always be a majority and a minority. However, the U.S. is not a democracy. It's a constitutional republic, meaning that the law is king. Without another constitutional convention or significant change to the original Constitution, we aren't ruled by the majority. Hopefully this will give Joe Freeh (Your Views, Oct. 18) some food for thought. 
We've already given away so many of our rights, such as the Fourth Amendment to be secure in our persons, houses, papers and effects. If that's what Freeh would call "prospering under the two-party system," I'll have to decline the invitation. By continuing to allow only two parties we give them power. Instead of giving up our freedoms in exchange for the "stability" of the two-party system, let's try obtaining stability by exercising more freedom. 
Why do we limit ourselves to only two choices? Why is three too many? When power is widely distributed, our individual freedoms are more easily preserved.  Jamie Lopp  Spencer  

 UNITED STATES (93%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); EUROPE (79%);  EASTERN EUROPE (55%)







  



October 28, 2006 Saturday  




 Veils as a Matter of Choice

 
Regarding the Oct. 22 Outlook articles on Muslim customs: 
 Veils have been and continue to be a Christian tradition for women. 
  Wearing a lace veil in church was standard practice when I was growing up Catholic. Young girls still wear one for First Communion, usually with much excitement. Brides put much careful thought into selecting their wedding veils. And throughout the Christian world women who have chosen to take special vows dedicating their lives to God often wear veils. 
 Are we really so different?  
 The point is not the veil. The point is choice. To mandate either way, that I must or must not wear a veil, robs a  woman of her inherent freedom. I may choose to wear a swimsuit in a pageant, if it's meaningful to me. I may choose to wear a habit, a veil, a chador, a niqab.  I have that freedom, as well as the freedom to respect another person's choice. 
 I recall liking those elegant lace veils as a child. Maybe I'll wear one Sunday. 
  --  Joanne Ugolini 
 Derwood 
 *  
 Regarding Yvonne Ridley's article about Islam's virtues ["How I Came to Love the Veil," Outlook, Oct. 22]: 
 While I find the custom of Scottish men wearing skirts strange and Pat Robertson's 1992 remarks about feminism repugnant, I do not remember any Scots or followers of Robertson's beheading a principal because he was educating girls, as The Post reported last month ["Afghan Girls, Back in the Shadows," news story, Sept. 23]. 
 When the Islamic radical right can behave as well as the Christian radical right, I might believe Ridley's story. 
  --  Brad Piepmeier 
 Bethesda 
 *  
 Bravo to Anne Applebaum for her Oct. 24 op-ed column, "Veiled Insult."  
 Finally someone has had the courage to say out loud what is in many people's minds: I never understood why Westerners put up with what are to us rude and disrespectful customs. We just cowardly tiptoe around the issue.  
 If a woman of Western society wants to live in a Muslim country, she has to obey the laws of that country. Why can't we expect the same courtesy and respect for our customs? 
  --  Birgitt Wolf 
 Springfield 
  *  
  Having taught in both Turkey, a secular Muslim state, and the United Arab Emirates, a religious one, I believe, contrary to your opinion [editorial, Oct. 16], that the veil is a barrier to Muslims getting educations and jobs. Some students in Turkey who forsake the hijab expressed to me their fear of women who wear the hijab  --  not even the more extreme veil  --  because both are often worn as a political statement. The statement is frequently that women should take traditional roles in the workplace and society, roles that limit their educational and economic opportunities. 
 In Dubai, the students who wore the veil also practiced separation of the sexes, a barrier to education and employment. Those who wore the hijab and mingled with men in classes were often not Emiratis and were subjected to rude comments from Emirati men who considered even this modest dress "provocative." A climate in which men and women do not respect each other is not conducive to equal education or employment opportunities for women. 
  --  Mara Alexander 
 Alexandria 
 *  
 Anne Applebaum contrasted a Muslim woman wearing a veil in the West with herself donning a sarong while touring Indonesia. However, to a Muslim woman, going unveiled is both improper and immoral.  
 I agree that a Muslim woman who feels she must wear a veil should not take a job that requires a bare face  --  say, modeling  --  or safety equipment that her veil cannot accommodate.  
 But saying that a veiled woman cannot teach is wrong. Blind teachers don't make eye contact with students. Similarly, Stephen Hawking's lectures are widely attended, although he can barely speak. To say that a veil automatically devalues a teacher's work reveals a cultural bias against a different standard of modesty. I believe that a veiled teacher could instead help children learn about different cultures, what they value and why. Freedom of religious expression is more American than an unveiled face.  
  --  Rebecca Simmons 
 Hampton, Va.  

 TURKEY (92%); UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (91%); SCOTLAND (79%)







 
 

 (California)

October 26, 2006 Thursday



 Foreign policy expert on Islamic world to speak; 
Dr. Vali Nasr will highlight conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims

 
A major player in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic world will speak Monday in Monterey.
Dr. Vali Nasr, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, teaches comparative Islam at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and is the author of the recently published "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future," as well as other works on the Middle East and Islam. 
He will speak at 7 p.m. in the Steinbeck Forum of Monterey Conference Center on Islam and the conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
In "The Shia Revival," Nasr examines Operation Iraqi Freedom and concludes that the future of the Middle East will be defined by the re-emergence of an age-old animosity between Islam's two major sects, the Sunnis and Shiites.
Nasr notes that Shiite Muslims have increased their influence throughout the Middle East. He also views the escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict as part of a Shia strategy to gain the support of Sunni Arabs.
Nasr has written several books in addition to "The Shia Revival" that have been translated into Arabic, Indonesian, Turkish, Persian, Chinese, and Urdu, including "Democracy in Iran" (Oxford University Press, 2006); "Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power" (Oxford University Press, 2001); "Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism" (Oxford University Press, 1996); and "The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jamaat-i Islami of Pakistan" (University of California Press, 1994).
He has served as an adviser to senior leaders in government and provided commentary to national and international media, notably, CNN, the BBC, National Public Radio, Public Radio International, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, CBS News, CBS "60 Minutes," the NBC Nightly News, NBC's "Meet the Press" and C-SPAN.
Nasr earned his doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master's degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and his bachelor's degree from Tufts.
Monday's program, co-sponsored by the city of Monterey and Monterey Institute of International Studies, will be his first public presentation for area residents and is free and open to the public. A reception and book signing will follow.

 







   


October 24, 2006 Tuesday  


 For Some Muslims In Indonesia, An End to Fasting

 

 







  



October 19, 2006 Thursday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia  --  Thailand's new prime minister said Wednesday that he will try to peacefully resolve the Muslim insurgency in the kingdom's southern provinces  --  a reversal of the previous government's iron-fisted strategy. 
  Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, on a one-day visit to Malaysia, said he will reach out to all minority Muslims in the predominantly Buddhist country to end the separatist insurgency, which has claimed more than 1,700 lives since January 2004.  
  "We will try to talk to a lot of people," said Surayud, a former army general who was named Thailand's interim prime minister after a Sept. 19 bloodless military coup that ousted the elected government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. 
  Surayud made the comments after talks with his Malaysian counterpart, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. 
  "I told the Malaysian prime minister that I would talk to the Muslim leaders in the south, to the kids in schools. That's the way I am trying to present myself  --  by way of talking," he said. 
 The comments mark a turnaround from the hard-nosed approach adopted by Thaksin, who sent thousands of troops to the south to crush the insurgency, a strategy that achieved little success. 
 Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad is trying to mediate between the Thai government and Islamic separatists who operate in the three Muslim-dominated provinces bordering Malaysia. 
 ASIA 
*  COLOMBO, Sri Lanka  --  Fifteen Tamil Tiger rebels were killed when they attacked a naval base in an apparent suicide mission in southern Sri Lanka, triggering brief looting of minority Tamil shops in the area and further dimming hopes ahead of planned peace talks in Geneva on Oct. 28-29. 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  Authorities closed several Indonesian airports shrouded in smoke from land-clearing fires, threatening chaos for about 14.5 million people expected to travel by road, air and sea during an annual exodus from major cities to rural villages to mark the end of the Muslim holy month Ramadan, expected within days. 
 A meeting of leaders from five Southeast Asian countries last week urged Jakarta to ratify a regional treaty on cross-border haze and said financial assistance would be withheld until it did. 
 AFRICA 
*  HARARE, Zimbabwe  --  The economic chaos engulfing Zimbabwe is decimating the country's once teeming wildlife, according to the independent Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, which painted a grim picture of nature reserves staffed by poorly trained rangers who kill the animals they are meant to protect. 
 THE AMERICAS 
*  MANAGUA, Nicaragua  --  Nicaraguan left-wing Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, making his third bid to return to power, has a 17-point lead before November's presidential election and could win without a runoff, a poll showed. 
  The survey gave 37.5 percent support to Ortega, a U.S. Cold War foe and ally of Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez. It was the first to indicate that Ortega, 61, could take the presidency in the first round. Ortega's closest rival in the poll was conservative former vice president and coffee farmer Jose Rizo of the ruling Liberal Party, with 20.1 percent. 
*  SANTIAGO, Chile  --  Police used water cannons to disperse 2,000 high school students who took to the streets in a one-day national strike demanding that President Michelle Bachelet speed up promised reforms of Chile's dictatorship-era education law. 
 THE MIDDLE EAST 
*  GAZA CITY  --  For the first time since Israel's pullout from Gaza a year ago, Israeli tanks and infantry took up positions on the Egypt-Gaza border, killing two Palestinian gunmen as the army broadened its search for arms-smuggling tunnels. 
  Palestinian security officials said Israeli troops and tanks moved into the border town of Rafah early Wednesday and took over a section of the frontier. 
  The army said that Israeli forces were pressing an operation aimed at uncovering tunnels used by Palestinian gunmen to smuggle weapons from Egypt. The army said it has uncovered five tunnels.  
*  CAIRO  --  The nephew of President Anwar Sadat, on trial for accusing Egyptian generals of organizing his uncle's 1981 assassination, said he was being prosecuted because of his vocal opposition to the ruling party. 
 "This is a dictatorial regime that is consolidating itself in power against people's will," said Talaat Sadat, a 52-year-old opposition lawmaker and outspoken critic of President Hosni Mubarak. "There is political enmity between me and the minister of interior because this man is terrorizing the people of Egypt." 
  --  From News Services 

 MALAYSIA (96%); THAILAND (94%); ZIMBABWE (93%); NICARAGUA (93%); SRI LANKA (92%); INDONESIA (92%); ASIA (92%);  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); AFRICA (79%); VENEZUELA, BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF (79%); NORTH & SOUTH AMERICAS (50%)







 
 


October 18, 2006 Wednesday 




 The Weight of the World on Israel

 
Since Israel's establishment in May 1948, the world's preoccupation with the country has been far greater than its size, influence, or global role would merit. For decades now, hardly a day has passed without some mention in the international press of this tiny nation, the size of Vermont, whose seven-million-strong population is smaller than the Middle Eastern cities of Cairo, Tehran, and Istanbul. How many people outside their particular countries know the identity of the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Brazilian, Spanish, or even German heads of state? How about the premier of Indonesia, who is, after all, the leader of the most populous Muslim country in the world? By contrast, virtually all Israeli prime ministers have been household names throughout the world during the past 60 years, from the state's founding father David Ben-Gurion, to Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and more recently Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ehud Olmert. 
What is the source of this extraordinary attention? Not empathy with the Palestinians; Israel attracted huge international interest well before it conquered the territories in the June 1967 war, indeed well before the "Palestinian problem" gained international prominence. In fact, there has never been a genuine international interest in the "Palestine question," especially by the Arab states, whose decades of mistreatment of the Palestinians has gone virtually unnoticed. It is only when they interact with Israel, the only Jewish state to exist since biblical times, that the Palestinians win the world's attention - not on their own merit but as a corollary of the millenarian obsession with the Jews in the Christian and Muslim worlds.
On occasion, notably among devout and/or born-again evangelical Christians, this obsession has manifested itself in admiration and support for the national Jewish resurrection in the Holy Land. In most instances, however, anti-Jewish prejudice and animosity, or anti-Semitism as it is commonly known, has served rather to exacerbate distrust and hatred of Israel. Indeed, the international coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the libels of Zionism and Israel (such as the despicable comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa) have invariably reflected a degree of intensity and emotional involvement well beyond the normal level to be expected of impartial observers. Rather than being a response to concrete Israeli activities, it seems a manifestation of longstanding prejudice.
In "The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred, and the Jews" (Schocken, 208 pages, $19.95), the distinguished playwright, filmmaker, essayist, and novelist David Mamet doesn't pull his punches about the direct link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. "The outright denunciation of Israel as 'acquisitionist, bloodthirsty, colonial, et cetera' is to me simply a modern instance of the blood libel," he writes. "The world was told Jews used this blood in the performance of religious ceremonies ... Now, it seems, Jews do not require the blood for baking purposes, they merely delight to spill it on the ground."
It has long been a staple of Israel bashers to argue that they have never had anything against Judaism or Jews but only against Zionism and Zionists. Yet for all their protestations to the contrary, opponents of Zionism and Israel have never really distinguished among Zionists, Israelis, and Jews, and often use these terms interchangeably. When, in June 1967, the Israeli government ignored a French warning against breaking the tightening Arab siege by force of arms, President de Gaulle lambasted the Jews - not the Israelis - as "an elite people, self-assured and domineering."
The truth of the matter is that since Israel is the world's only Jewish state and since Zionism is the Jewish people's national liberation movement, anti-Zionism - as opposed to criticism of specific Israeli policies or actions ("a salient fact of life in Israel, as abroad" in Mamet's words) - means denial of the Jewish right to national self-determination. Needless to say, such a discriminatory denial of this basic right to only one nation (and one of the few that can trace its corporate identity and territorial attachment to biblical times) while allowing it to all other groups and communities, however new and tenuous their claim to nationhood, is pure and unadulterated racism.
Yet it is precisely because it has been tacitly construed as epitomizing the worst characteristics traditionally associated with Jews that Israel is the only case where one party to a territorial dispute - Israelis and their supporters across the world - is collectively stigmatized for government actions and targeted for political, economic, and academic boycotts.
"Imagine the anti-Israel propaganda currently engaged in on college campuses and other institutions of enlightenment - imagine it directed against Canadians," Mamet writes, "not that Canadians are misguided, indeed wrong, but that they are 'bad' - devoid of the capacity for goodwill, duplicitous, inspired by some nefarious and implacable power to wrong those around them; possessed of a power so diabolical it induces their neighbors to strap bombs on their young and send them into the marketplace to slaughter women and their babies."
A saddening thought, indeed. But is there any other explanation for why, 60 years after its establishment, Israel remains the only state in the world whose citizens are presented as the heirs to the Nazi mantle; whose economy faces relentless calls for sanctions, boycotts, and divestment; whose policies and actions year in and year out are condemned by the international community, and whose right to exist is constantly debated and challenged? As the poet Heinrich Heine, himself a convert from Judaism, once wrote, Judaism is "the family curse that lasts a thousand years." No matter how much it has tried, Israel has never been able to escape this disturbing reality.
Mr. Karsh is head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London, and author, most recently, of "Islamic Imperialism: A History," available from Yale University Press.

CORRECTION-DATE: October 27, 2006

 CORRECTION:
Foreign minister was the highest title held by Moshe Dayan, who was also a defense minister of Israel. His title was incorrectly reported in a book review on page 16 of the October 18 Sun.

 ISRAEL (97%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%); MIDDLE EAST (92%);  EGYPT (90%); GERMANY (88%); INDONESIA (79%)







 
 



October 13, 2006 Friday



 In the World

 
Governments to offer
plan for N. Ireland
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland - Britain and Ireland announced yesterday that they would present a plan to Northern Ireland's rival leaders spelling out how to resurrect a Catholic-Protestant administration, as the province's peace accord intended. 
The two governments said that, barring a breakthrough, they would publish their blueprint for compromise today, at the end of three days of multiparty negotiations at a hotel outside this seaside university town.
Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said the two governments planned to publish proposals that represent "our best estimate" of the grounds for compromise. He said the governments stood by their ultimatum to abolish the Northern Ireland Assembly, which has the power to elect an administration, if the rival parties fail to strike a power-sharing deal by Nov. 24. - AP
Benedict XVI meets
with Jewish group
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI met yesterday with representatives of a Jewish group and said that religion should never be used to justify hatred and violence.
"May the Eternal One, our Father in heaven, bless every effort to eliminate from our world any misuse of religion as an excuse for hatred or violence," Benedict told a delegation of the Anti-Defamation League, a U.S. group that fights racism and anti-Semitism.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said his group supported Benedict's desire for honest interfaith dialogue. - AP
Ceremony marks
'02 Bali bombings
BALI, Indonesia - Relatives of those killed in the 2002 nightclub bombings on the island of Bali wept and prayed yesterday at a simple ceremony marking the fourth anniversary of the attack.
The attack by the al-Qaeda-linked extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists, and thrust Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, into the spotlight amid Washington's proclaimed war on terrorism. The dead and injured came from more than 20 countries.
Three men have been convicted and await execution. Several other suspects remain at large. - AP
Elsewhere:
A U.S. soldier died after falling from a helicopter during a landing approach in southern Afghanistan, NATO said yesterday. The soldier, who name was not released, died in a military hospital where he was taken after falling from the UH-60 in Helmand province Wednesday, the alliance said.
Hundreds of Bari Indians, most clad in loincloths and carrying bows and arrows, came down from Colombia's hills yesterday to demand that the state-owned oil company stop drilling on sacred land abutting their reservation. The 700 protesters rallied on Columbus Day, commemorated as "Dia de la Raza" or "Indigenous People's Day" in much of Latin America.

 NORTHERN IRELAND (94%);  SCOTLAND (92%); AFGHANISTAN (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (92%); IRELAND (90%);  LATIN AMERICA (79%); COLOMBIA (79%); HOLY SEE (79%)




5


 
 

 

October 12, 2006 Thursday



  stages artistic response to conflict

 
When a radical Islamist group set off a series of devastating bombs outside a nightclub in the Indonesian resort town of Kuta four years ago, the attack did far more than kill and maim hundreds of people and devastate the tourism-dependent economy of Bali, a Hindu island in the midst of the world's most populous Muslim nation.
The bombing also set off cultural shock waves that continue to reverberate. 
For Gamelan Sekar Jaya, the unprecedented attack couldn't be ignored, as the El Cerrito-based music and dance ensemble has forged deep and enduring ties with the Balinese people and many of the island's leading artists, becoming the first foreign group ever to receive a Dharma Kusuma award, Bali's highest honor for artistic achievement.
The company has responded to the violence with an ambitious new multimedia production, "Kali Yuga," that seeks to address the conflict in Indonesia through gamelan music, dance, poetry, song, video installation and sound design.
The company presented a brief excerpt of the work last year at the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, and the full production premieres for Cal Performances on Saturday at Zellerbach Hall with afternoon and evening performances. There's also a free talk with Gamelan Sekar Jaya director Wayne Vitale and visiting artists before the evening performance.
The work is dedicated to the 202 victims of the Oct. 12, 2002, Kuta attack, and the 23 people killed in a second wave of bombings that hit the southern Bali towns of Kuta and Jimbaran last year.
"It's really the first time we've confronted something very serious about today's world, rather than pulling themes out of Balinese mythology and history," said Vitale during an interview at a West Oakland rehearsal space, where the company was gathering to refine the production. "It's definitely out of our comfort zone."
Not that Sekar Jaya has abandoned traditional sources. While "Kali Yuga" includes a brief, direct reference to the Kuta nightclub attack, one of its central story lines is drawn from the Mahabharata, the epic poem central to Hindu philosophy and religion. The concept of Kali Yuga itself is an apt metaphor for exploring a cataclysmic event. Many scholars of Hindu scriptures believe that the Earth is in the midst of Kali Yuga, the millennia-long "end times" in the Hindu calendar characterized by chaos and spiritual decline.
But one needn't be familiar with Sanskrit scripture to be swept up in the drama and exquisite craft of Sekar Jaya's performance. The result of nearly three years of collaboration between an international creative team, "Kali Yuga" features 50 artists, including a full traditional Balinese bronze percussion orchestra, or gamelan, playing a new score by Vitale and Balinese composer I Made Arnawa, as well as choreography by Bali's I Wayan Dibia, and poetry by Java's renowned writer, journalist and intellectual Goenawan Mohamed.
The production stars leading Balinese dancers I Ketut Rina and Tjokorda Istri Putra Padmini. The set and sound design are by Elaine Buckholtz, Jack Carpenter and Jay Cloidt. The elaborate production was made possible by support from the National Dance Project and the National Endowment for the Arts.
"What's been fun and challenging is the wonderful clash of tradition and how you break tradition, but not for the sake of breaking tradition, but to evolve," said "Kali Yuga" director Ellen Sebastian Chang, who also directed "Kawit Legong: Prince Karna's Dream," Sekar Jaya's last Cal Performances production. "That to me has been the most interesting and sometimes frustrating challenge of this process. Maybe it's a very American perspective: 'Let's mix it up like this. Why do we have to keep doing it like this?'"
The collaborative process has led to a highly theatrical work which maintains a steady tension between classical Balinese influences and the shattering violence of the bombings. The piece opens with a solo dancer gracefully gliding through a traditional choreography, representing Bali's pristine state before the colonial period. Signs and portents of the coming disaster start to manifest themselves, most clearly by a precariously balanced gong, an instrument laden with symbolism throughout Indonesia. The production is marked by innovative uses of traditional forms, such as masks and decor, to state-of-the-art sound design and abstract video images.
"A lot of musicians in the group aren't accustomed to this, and they weren't sure that it's going to work," Vitale said. "It's such a dark, serious piece. But slowly through the resonance of all these different artists working together, everyone's being won over. We sweat over every detail of the production. Everything you see happening is the result of us trying something, undoing it, trying it again, throwing it out, and trying something different."
The process is so painstaking that at a rehearsal two weeks before show time, the piece's conclusion was still in doubt. It's asking a lot from any work of art to suggest a path away from the growing confrontation with militant Islamists who have found an unlikely target in Bali.
"I have no idea what the ending is," Chang said. "I said to Wayne, 'I don't know if I'm too cynical or just realistic.' Yes, there's always hope, there's always been prayer, but every ending we come up with it, I think, 'That's not it.' I don't want to have children come out and they're singing and laughing."
WHAT: Gamelan Sekar Jaya, performing "Kali Yuga" WHEN: 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday WHERE: Zellerbach Hall, Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue, UC Berkeley HOW MUCH: $20-$32 CONTACT: 510-642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu

  







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


October 11, 2006 Wednesday



 Faiths must interact, Muslim says

 
   PROVO -- Tolerance is not enough to ease the tension between Islam and the West, Indonesia's minister of foreign affairs says.
"To tolerate something is to learn to live with it, even when you think it is wrong and evil," Alwi Shihab said Tuesday at Brigham Young University. 
Shihab, who received a standing ovation following his address, suggested instead that religious people work to promote multi-faith and pluralist societies, which requires interfaith dialogue to understand each other's religions, as well as dialogue on common values such as human rights.
Shihab, who delivered his address in English while quoting the Quran in Arabic, is a scholar who has taught Islamic studies at Harvard University.
In addition to working as Indonesia's minister of foreign affairs, he is an official in the country's National Awakening Party, a moderate Islamic party.
Shihab acknowledged that Muslims and Christians have been at odds for more than 14 centuries.
Some Muslims see the lax values of the West as a threat. And many Westerners see fundamentalist Islamic-inspired terrorism as a threat to their lives.
A remedy to the problem, Shihab said, is for religious leaders to discuss correct theology with members of their faiths to encourage moral behavior.
Three of the world's major religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, have similar roots and much in common, Shihab said.
They believe in one God, descend from Adam and Eve. They share the tradition of faith begun by Abraham and continued by Moses. They respect the Virgin Mary, admire her son Jesus and want to promote good and prevent evil, he said.
Shihab was introduced by President Boyd K. Packer, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon).
The two have been friends for years, and Packer recalled their telephone conversation in 2004, when Shihab arrived in Aceh province after the devastating tsunami. Shihab asked for 20,000 body bags. LDS Church leaders found them in China and shipped them to Indonesia.
That was the beginning of the church's humanitarian efforts in the wake of the tsunami, Elder Packer said.
"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) expresses a special concern for the eternal welfare for all ... knowing we're brothers and sisters of the same eternal father," he said.
"You have to be proud to be members of this church," Shihab said to almost-full Marriott Center, adding that he feels he is part of the LDS community. E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com

   CHINA (79%)








 
Inside Bay Area 

October 11, 2006 Wednesday



 Muslim community opens doors

 
Like a flock of tropical birds, the bowed heads glittered red, purple, turquoise and gold. Only upon closer inspection did the scarves reveal the wearers' Muslim devotion - or the outsiders' respect for the Ramadan observance.
The Jewish and Christian visitors to the Muslim Community Association of the Peninsula's Yaseen Foundation open house Saturday let their head coverings slip while intently following the speakers and prayers at the Belmont event.
Ramadan, the holy Islamic month that requires followers to fast from dawn to dusk, began Oct. 5 and will end with the sighting of the new moon in November. The Yaseen Foundation's open house was one of five sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, inviting interfaith groups and community members into Bay Area mosques last weekend. 
"Interfaith is important these days, especially for Muslims, because the news isn't always so good about Muslims," said Mounzer Arslan, Yaseen Foundation vice president, known as "Monty" among non-Muslims. "It gives a wrong name to all of us."
About 50 people attended the Belmont open house, including supportive clergy from Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, San Bruno's Church of the Nazarene and San Mateo's Temple Beth El. A handful of visitors, including San Mateo retired dentist Jack Prost, came to satisfy their curiosity about Islam.
"We just finished celebrating Yom Kippur and we had a notice in our synagogue that this was going on all over the Bay Area," Prost said, eyeing the paper plates of plump dates awaiting the sunset break-fast portion of the event.
The event opened and closed with two of the five daily Muslim prayers. As the fascinated guests watched, men lined up in front and women in back, both facing east towards Mecca throughout the devotions.
Between speakers, the audience applauded 9-year-old Sarah Nofal's rousing song about the Prophet Muhammad's revelation, set to the tune of "Oh Susannah." Too young for the veil, the Belmont girl stood out in a bright red coat with a leopard-pattern trim.
The role of women in Islam came up several times during the question-and-answer session, with the speakers defending their religion's emphasis on modesty - a view that is supposed to apply to both sexes, explained Imam Zaid Shakir, of Berkeley.
"If you see a Muslim man with tight jeans on, you should tell him, 'Go back to your religious teacher,'" he told the audience.
Samina Sundas, chair of the Newark-based American Muslim Voice, offered that she had been raised in Pakistan "like a princess," and agreed with Shakir that Westerners overlook positive examples of women's rights in the Muslim world - including female presidents elected in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey - in favor of stereotypes.
Authoritarian governments, not Islamic tenets, are to blame for oppression of women in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, they agreed. In Afghanistan, the Taliban had also oppressed men - forcing them to grow beards and fight in their wars - but Americans only know about the women, Shakir added.
The Rev. Catherine Costas, deacon at Good Shepherd Church, found herself nodding along with the speeches.
"The fundamentalism that we see in the media is not the true Islam, just like the fundamentalism of Christianity is not the true Christianity," she said.
After sunset, the guests and hosts broke the daily fast over a hearty Middle Eastern meal of split-pea soup, lentils, humus and falafel. By breaking pita together, Yaseen Foundation members said, the groups had a more informal opportunity to forge interfaith bonds.
These bonds must be strengthened so that non-Muslims will support Muslims in their times of need, ranging from post-9/11 discrimination to the South Asian earthquake victims, Sundas said. The relationship works both ways; Muslims around the world have donated millions of dollars to Hurricane Katrina victims, she noted.
"If one of us gets hurt, we should all hurt, just like a body," she said.
October 20, 2005

  PAKISTAN (92%); BANGLADESH (79%); 







 The Topeka Capital-Journal
 
Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas)

October 10, 2006 Tuesday



 State of the unionDeathsToday in historyBirthdaysTogether again?

 
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gen. Amir al-Hashimi, the brother of Iraq's Sunni Arab vice president, was assassinated Monday by gunmen who broke into his home, the third of the politician's four siblings to be slain this year. Sunnis blamed Shiite militias and demanded a crackdown to stop the capital's raging sectarian violence.
Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, arrested the head of the mess hall at a base where up to 400 mainly Shiite policemen suffered food poisoning during a Ramadan meal amid concerns it may have been the first known attempt by insurgents to carry out a mass poisoning against police.
A military spokesman, Brig. Qassim al-Moussawi, said the poisoning likely was intentional, though he didn't rule out that spoiled food was used in the meal as part of a scheme by contractors or officers to skim money from food funds .NEW YORK - Those people wearing "Stewart/Colbert '08" T-shirts can stop hoping - Comedy Central's fake news stars have no intention of making a run for the White House. 
Jon Stewart said the T-shirts promoting him and Stephen Colbert "are a real sign of how sad people are" with the state of affairs in the country.
"Nothing says 'I am ashamed of you my government' more than 'Stewart/Colbert '08,' Stewart told an audience Sunday at the New Yorker Festival. He was interviewed by the magazine's editor, David Remnick.
Stewart, who recently hosted Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on "The Daily Show," said he has been trying to get top Bush administration officials to appear. "We have requests in there to everyone including Barney," Stewart said. "Only Barney replies."
Barney is the president's Scottish terrier.
Stewart scoffed at suggestions that some people actually get their news from "The Daily Show."
"There's no way you could get the news from us," he said. "I've seen the show. It couldn't happen."1813 - Composer Giuseppe Verdi was born in Le Roncole, Italy.
1911 - Revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen launched their overthrow of China's Manchu dynasty.
1935 - George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess" opened on Broadway.
1943 - Chiang Kai-shek took the oath of office as president of China.
1956 - The New York Yankees won the World Series, defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers, 9-0, in Game 7 at Ebbets Field.
1973 - Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion, and resigned his office.
1981 - Funeral services were held in Cairo for Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, who had been assassinated by Muslim extremists.
1996 - President Clinton joined Vice President Gore in Knoxville, Tenn., where the president moved to broaden the sweep of the Internet at 100 universities, national labs and other federal institutions. Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole hosted a rally in Cincinnati that featured his running mate, Jack Kemp, and retired Gen. Colin Powell.
2001 - U.S. jets pounded the Afghan capital of Kabul. President Bush unveiled a list of 22 most-wanted terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and associates.
2005 - Angela Merkel struck a power-sharing deal that made her the first woman and politician from the ex-communist east to serve as Germany's chancellor.
The following is a list of deaths in the area. Obituaries are on Page 3B.
L. Maxine Benander/Overbrook
Virginia Derrick/
Normandy Park, Wash.
Ruth Dowling/Topeka
Leona "Poochie" Green/Topeka
Kathryn Harlow/Holton
Clarence "Chub" Hendrix/Topeka
Robert Kent/Topeka
Shirley Lowry/Wetmore
Jarris Morgan/Topeka
Joyce Neben/Brewster, Neb.
Betty O'Donnell/Manhattan
Ronald Pawley/Topeka
Rev. John Pledger Sr./Topeka
M.B. "Merrill" Schlegel/Onaga
Ruth Swindale/
Colorado Springs, Colo.
Playwright Harold Pinter 76
Entertainer Ben Vereen 60
Actor Charles Dance 60
Country singer Tanya Tucker 48
Actress Julia Sweeney 47
Actor Bradley Whitford 47
Actor Mario Lopez 33
Singer Mya 27
NEW YORK - Have public enemies Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie buried the hatchet?
Maybe, maybe not. But the "Simple Life" stars, who have been feuding since last year, appeared together in a video posted on the entertainment Web site TMZ.com.
In the video, taped Sunday night, the two arrived together at Dan Tana's Steakhouse in Los Angeles. After dinner, they text-messaged while waiting for their car on a bench in front of the restaurant. At one point, they looked at each other and smiled when an unseen observer said, "I always knew you'd be friends again, Paris."
Hilton and Richie, both 25, recently starred in the E! reality-style series "The Simple Life - 'til Death Do Us Part." A new format allowed them to have nothing to do with each other.
In July, E! announced that it will air a fifth season of "The Simple Life," which shows the tabloid-ready celebutantes thrown into everyday situations with real people.
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NATION
SOUTH KOREAN FOREIGN MINISTER NOMINATED: The U.N. Security Council on Monday formally nominated South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon to succeed Kofi Annan as United Nations secretary-general, all but assuring that the quiet diplomat will become the eighth chief in the world body's 61-year history.
What would have been an event of major significance - Ban will become one of the world's best-known and most influential diplomats over his five-year term - was overshadowed by North Korea's claim that it had conducted a nuclear test.
"This should be a moment of joy. But instead, I stand here with a very heavy heart," Ban said at a news conference in Seoul. "Despite the concerted warning from the international community, North Korea has gone ahead with a nuclear test."
KATIE COURIC HAS HER WORST WEEK SO FAR IN RATINGS: The fifth week was the toughest for Katie Couric, whose viewership on the "CBS Evening News" has dropped each week since her debut the day after Labor Day.
Her broadcast averaged 7.04 million viewers last week, third to NBC's "Nightly News" (8.56 million) and ABC's "World News" (7.97 million), according to Nielsen Media Research.
CBS points out that the "CBS Evening News" is the only one of the three network newscasts with more viewers last week than the same week a year earlier. NBC's margin of victory last year was 2.2 million.
LAWMAKERS CONTACTING EX-PAGES:Lawmakers, following a request from the House ethics committee, are surveying aides and former House pages to find out if any of them had knowledge of ex-Rep. Mark Foley's inappropriate conduct toward male pages.
Charlie Keller, spokesman for Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., said she contacted two pages before receiving the committee request and asked if they were aware of inappropriate behavior from Foley, any other lawmaker or staff members. Both said they weren't.
Aides for other House members reported similar results Monday.
The ethics committee leaders, in a letter to all House members, asked them to contact current and former pages they sponsored to learn whether any of them had "inappropriate communications or interactions" with Foley or any other House member.
WORLD
DANISH WEB SITES REMOVE VIDEO MOCKING PROPHET MUHAMMAD: Videos showing anti-immigrant party members mocking the Prophet Muhammad were pulled from Web sites Monday as two youths seen in the clips were reported in hiding and the Foreign Ministry warned Danes against traveling to much of the Middle East.
Muslim clerics from Egypt and Indonesia condemned the video broadcast in Denmark last week showing members of the Danish People's Party youth wing with cartoons of a camel wearing the head of Muhammad and beer cans for humps. A second drawing placed a turbaned, bearded man next to a plus sign and a bomb, all equaling a mushroom cloud.
In a move aimed at defusing tension, the Danish Foreign Ministry met ambassadors from Muslim countries to discuss the video Monday. It was unclear how many diplomats took part in the meeting hosted by Foreign Ministry director Ulrik Federspiel or which countries they represented.
THAILAND'S KING SWEARS IN CABINET: Thailand's king swore in post-coup Cabinet ministers on Monday, urging them to work honestly as the country tries to move beyond its political crisis.
The top jobs of the interim government - announced early in the day in a television broadcast while most Thais slept - were given to economists, high-profile civil servants and two retired military officers, all of whom are expected to govern until elections in October 2007.
Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, who was appointed by the military after the Sept. 19 coup that ousted former Premier Thaksin Shinawatra, led his Cabinet at the ceremony. Donning white official uniforms, they stood in rows before King Bhumibol Adulyadej as he delivered a speech at Chitlada Palace in Bangkok.
Bhumibol urged the ministers to "act honestly as you have sworn to do," and to work hard with good intentions "because the country has just passed a moment of crisis."
COLORFUL NEW BIRD DISCOVERED IN COLOMBIA FOREST: A colorful new bird has been discovered in a previously unexplored Andean cloud forest, spurring efforts to protect the area, conservation groups said Monday.
The bright yellow and red-crowned Yariguies brush-finch was named for the indigenous tribe that once inhabited the mountainous area where it was discovered.
For conservationists the discovery of the species came at a crucial time - the government has decided to set aside 500 acres of the pristine cloud forest where the bird lives to create a national park.
Compiled by Kelly Adams from wire reports

  UNITED STATES (93%);  EGYPT (79%); PAKISTAN (79%)







 Cheyenne Newspapers, Inc.
 
Wyoming Tribune-Eagle (Cheyenne)

October 10, 2006 Tuesday



 
Elk illness found A3
Food-safety series slated this month
CHEYENNE - "Going for the Gold" food safety classes and "ServSafe Program" Food Service Managers Certification courses will be held in Cheyenne in the coming week and month.
They are intended for anyone in food service seeking further training or certification in food safety.
The intermediate "Going for the Gold class will be held today, and the advanced class will take place Thursday. ServSafe will be held on Nov. 8 and 9. Both classes will take place at the Cheyenne-Laramie County Health Department and require registration. For more information, call 633-4090.
Today marks start of Deming Drive closure 
CHEYENNE - Deming Drive will be closed from Reed Avenue to Dillon Avenue starting today. The closure is for approximately four weeks, and although a temporary detour route will be posted, the city's Traffic Division advises using alternate routes.
Drivers are advised to use the Interstate 180 overpass as an alternate route around this construction. The closure is for sewer rehabilitation work.
Presentation to focus on art, environment link
CHEYENNE - Two undergraduate scholars, Jenelle Marie Clark of Cheyenne and Karissa McNiven of Riverton, will present their independent research during the Keith and Thyra Thomson honors convocation at 3 p.m. Friday in the University of Wyoming College of Arts and Sciences auditorium in Laramie.
A student in both the Department of Art and the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, Clark researches how the disciplines are interrelated.
The convocation is open to the public and free. For more information, call (307) 766-2755.
Candidates for LCSD2 trustees hold forum
CHEYENNE - A candidates' forum for Laramie County School District 2 trustees will begin at 7 tonight at the Pine Bluffs Community Center in Pine Bluffs.
The Eastern Laramie County Education Association and the Mayor's Youth Council are sponsoring the forum.
For more, call 245-3776.
Region
White House goal haunts N.M. race
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - When Republican gubernatorial challenger John Dendahl traveled to sparsely populated Catron County recently to drum up support in the cattle-ranching country of far western New Mexico, Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson was campaigning more than 2,000 miles away - in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Richardson was there in his role as chairman of the Democratic Governors' Association. But critics, and Dendahl is among the most vocal, say Richardson is laying the groundwork for a run for president in 2008. And they are trying to use that as a weapon against him.
"Substantially every official act of Richardson's is calculated in some way or other toward self-advancement with an eye to higher public office," says Dendahl, a former state GOP chairman.
Historic mining town sees modern-day boom
FAIRPLAY, Colo. (AP) - A Denver developer is planning a $100 million project that will nearly double the number of houses in this historic mining town.
Frontier Development Cos. plans to build 300 homes on 78 acres along the South Platte River, southwest of downtown Fairplay. The town had an estimated 385 houses in 2004, according to the State Demography Office.
Nation
King papers back home in Atlanta
ATLANTA (AP) - The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 78th birthday in January will feature a gift to the city: the first public viewing of more than 10,000 of his documents, notes and other personal items.
Pieces of the King Collection - from a term paper he wrote as a student at Atlanta's Morehouse College to a draft of his "I Have A Dream" speech - will be on display at the Atlanta History Center.
This summer, Mayor Shirley Franklin led the effort to acquire the papers from the New York offices of Sotheby's auction house, which had planned a public sale.
"The Martin Luther King Jr. Collection is home," a beaming Franklin said Monday.
The collection includes handwritten versions of King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered at the 1963 March on Washington.
'Gateway to America' at LAX set for renovation
LOS ANGELES (AP) - It's been more than 20 years since the last major construction project at Los Angeles International Airport, the world's fifth busiest for passenger traffic.
A $575 million contract being considered Tuesday by the City Council would hire general contractor Clark/McCarthy to revamp the airport's Tom Bradley terminal, home to 33 international carriers and a key juncture for 10 million passengers a year.
"It's a gateway to Los Angeles, a gateway to America for a lot of people," said Councilman Bill Rosendahl, whose district includes LAX. "There are a lot of people committed to making it happen."
world
Report cites trees for chopper crash
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A helicopter crash that killed 10 U.S. troops last May was caused by a series of mishaps, a new report concluded. Problems included a nighttime landing on a small mountaintop zone, trees that were too close to the runway and soldiers who lacked axes to cut them down.
Maj. Matt Hackathorn, a military spokesman at the U.S. base at Bagram, north of Kabul, said on Monday that the May crash came "as a very hard lesson" in the difficulties of flying in Afghanistan.
Saddam's genocide trial resumes after break
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein's trial on genocide charges against the Kurds resumed Monday after a 12-day break with the former Iraqi leader and his co-defendants in the courtroom, but their lawyers absent.
Chief Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa had declared a recess in the trial after a stormy session Sept. 26 during which Saddam and his six co-defendants were thrown out of court.
Man allegedly kidnapped by CIA testifies in court
MADRID, Spain (AP) - A German citizen testified Monday in a Spanish court that he was kidnapped and tortured by U.S. intelligence agents in 2003, then flown by the CIA to Afghanistan where he was imprisoned and abused for five months.
Khaled al-Masri, 43, broke down in tears several times during testimony before National Court Judge Ismael Moreno, who is investigating reports that the CIA used a Spanish airport to secretly transfer suspected terrorists to countries where they were tortured.
Danish Web sites remove video mocking prophet
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - Videos showing anti-immigrant party members mocking the Prophet Muhammad were pulled from Web sites Monday as two youths seen in the clips were reported in hiding and the Foreign Ministry warned Danes against travel to much of the Middle East.
Muslim clerics from Egypt and Indonesia condemned the video broadcast in Denmark last week showing members of the Danish People's Party youth wing with cartoons of a camel wearing the head of Muhammad and beer cans for humps. A second drawing placed a turbaned, bearded man next to a plus sign and a bomb, all equaling a mushroom cloud.
South Korean nominated as next U.N. point man
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - South Korea's foreign minister was officially nominated Monday as the next U.N. secretary-general, and he pledged to work to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis hours after the communist regime announced it had tested a nuclear weapon.
"This should be a moment of joy. But instead, I stand here with a very heavy heart," Ban Ki-Moon told reporters in Seoul, South Korea. "Despite the concerted warning from the international community, North Korea has gone ahead with a nuclear test."
Putin vows investigation into reporter's murder
MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin pledged to President Bush on Monday that authorities would do everything they could to find the killers of an investigative journalist who was a fierce critic of Kremlin policy toward Chechnya.
In a phone conversation with Bush, Putin said "all necessary efforts will be made for an objective investigation into the tragic death" of Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down in an apparent contract killing in her apartment building Saturday.
American lawyers begin probe into Brazil crash
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - American attorneys representing families of victims in Brazil's worst air disaster said Monday they were conducting their own investigation to determine responsibility for the crash that killed 154 people and seek compensation.
Lexi Hazam, an attorney with the San Francisco law firm Leiff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, said the probe, parallel to a separate government inquiry, would be supervised by Hans-Peter Graf, a former head investigator for the Swiss Aviation Authority.
Jenna Bush in Paraguay for UNICEF program
ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) - President Bush's daughter Jenna came to this poor, landlocked South American country to take part in a UNICEF program for young professionals volunteers, the U.N. children's fund said Monday.
UNICEF released few details about the program involving the 24-year-old, citing security concerns. She is planning to stay in the country for 10 days.
"The visit is strictly private in nature," UNICEF said in a statement. "She will get to know the UNICEF activities in Paraguay and some of the programs it cooperates in."

 UNITED STATES (94%)








 
The York Dispatch 

October 10, 2006 Tuesday



 Web brief exclusives

 
UNICEF PROGRAM
Jenna Bush in Paraguay
ASUNCION, Paraguay -- President Bush's daughter Jenna came to this poor, landlocked South American country to take part in a UNICEF program for young professionals volunteers, the U.N. children's fund said yesterday.
UNICEF released few details about the program involving the 24-year-old, citing security concerns. She is planning to stay in the country for 10 days.
"The visit is strictly private in nature," UNICEF said in a one-page statement released by spokeswoman Natalie Echague. "She will get to know the UNICEF activities in Paraguay and some of the programs it cooperates in."
Local news media reported that Jenna Bush arrived Saturday in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion on a commercial flight, then dined Sunday evening with Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte and his family at their official residence. She also met with U.S. Ambassador James Cason. Officials did not confirm those accounts. 
Jenna Bush planned no news conferences and no interviews, according to UNICEF.
She and sister Barbara are the twin daughters of Bush and his wife, Laura.
Paraguay, with 6 million people, is one of the poorest countries in South America.
The United Nations Children's Fund and other aid groups have sought to extend basic services such as potable water, health care, education and better housing to the least developed areas.
PUBLIC VIEWING
King's papers
ATLANTA -- The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 78th birthday in January will feature a gift to the city: the first public viewing of more than 10,000 of his documents, notes and other personal items.
Pieces of the King Collection -- from a term paper he wrote as a student at Atlanta's Morehouse College to a draft of his "I Have A Dream" speech -- will be on display at the Atlanta History Center.
This summer, Mayor Shirley Franklin led the effort to acquire the papers from the New York offices of Sotheby's auction house, which had planned a public sale.
"The Martin Luther King Jr. Collection is home," a beaming Franklin said yesterday.
The collection includes handwritten versions of King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered at the 1963 March on Washington, and his acceptance speech for the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.
After years in the basement of the King family home, the documents, books, and other items in the collection were moved to Sotheby's nearly a decade ago. Sotheby's tried to sell the collection, but previous negotiations fell through. It put them back on the market after King's widow, Coretta Scott King, died in February.
The mayor pulled off the 11th-hour deal to buy the papers in June for $32 million with the help of more than 50 corporate, government and private donors.
Morehouse College owns the papers. Archivists have been organizing the collection, including hundreds of books with scribble-filled margins and numerous sermons and writings.
ON RESERVATION
Serial rapist
FORT APACHE INDIAN RESERVATION, Ariz. -- A man in a dark shirt and hat emblazoned POLICE has raped 10 girls and a young woman after "arresting" them -- a string of attacks that has made people on the reservation suspicious of even the real officers investigating the case.
Residents of the tribal capital of Whiteriver are bolting their doors, walking in pairs and demanding their children are inside by sundown.
"It's unsettling," said Gwendena Real Bird, who has a 5-year-old daughter. "It makes you very uneasy. I just can't fathom the trauma those girls experienced."
The phony police officer has been attacking victims since March on a dusty trail that winds behind more than 100 homes in Whiteriver. He tells his victims they are under arrest, then handcuffs and rapes them.
At first, nine of the 11 victims did not report that they had been attacked because they thought a police officer raped them. Eight came forward only when investigators canvassed the neighborhood recently to tell residents what was happening. Police found another victim after receiving an anonymous call.
"It has created an atmosphere of fear," said Warren Youngman, assistant agent in charge at the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. "When we did our neighborhood canvassing, we had people afraid of our officers."
Whiteriver, population 5,220, is the headquarters of the White Mountain Apache Tribe. It is the largest community on the Fort Apache Reservation, which covers more than 1.5 million acres in Arizona.
Investigators have described the rapist only as an American Indian of medium build, 20 to 40 years old. As far as investigators know, he last struck on Sept. 6.
The BIA, which is leading the investigation, has put together a 10-agent task force to investigate the crimes, drawing officers come from Arizona, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Nevada and New Mexico. A $10,000 reward has been posted.
MOCKED PROPHET
Video off Web sites
COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- A video showing anti-immigrant party members mocking the Prophet Muhammad was pulled from Web sites yesterday as two youths seen in the clips were reported in hiding and the Foreign Ministry warned Danes against traveling to much of the Middle East.
Muslim clerics from Egypt and Indonesia condemned the video broadcast in Denmark last week showing members of the Danish People's Party youth wing with cartoons of a camel wearing the head of Muhammad and beer cans for humps. A second drawing placed a turbaned, bearded man next to a plus sign and a bomb, all equaling a mushroom cloud.
In a move aimed at defusing tension, the Danish Foreign Ministry met ambassadors from Muslim countries to discuss the video yesterday. It was unclear how many diplomats took part in the meeting hosted by Foreign Ministry director Ulrik Federspiel or which countries they represented.
Foreign Ministry officials explained to the ambassadors that the government had denounced the drawings and that the footage had been removed from the two Web sites that had posted it, the ministry said.
Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen condemned the youth in the video Sunday, saying "their tasteless behavior does in no way represent the way the Danish people or young Danish people view Muslims or Islam."
Citing critical media reports from many Muslim regions, the Foreign Ministry cautioned against travel to Gaza, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
"Against that background, we urge Danes to use caution as the matter could possibly lead to negative reactions. The atmosphere and reactions can vary dependent on time and place. Danes should be aware of the local mood," the ministry said.
The episode comes in the aftermath of an outcry across the Muslim world after the original September 2005 printing in Danish newspapers of 12 cartoons portraying Muhammad -- considered taboo for most Muslims.
Four months later, the images were reprinted in a range of Western media, triggering massive protests from Morocco to Indonesia.
The video was produced by an artists group, Defending Denmark. In a message posted along with the video, the group said it had infiltrated the Danish People's Party Youth, known as DFU, for 18 months "to document (their) extreme right-wing associations."
"This is not an example of something that is meant to provoke. This is an example to show how things are in Danish politics," artist Martin Rosengaard Knudsen told Danish public radio.
NEW ORLEANS 
Guard shooting
NEW ORLEANS -- Two Louisiana National Guard soldiers shot at a man suspected of wielding a weapon yesterday, the first time any guard member patrolling the city has opened fire, officials said.
The shooting occurred when the man, whom police didn't identify, refused an order to drop an object in his hand as he approached the soldiers.
The man was wounded in the upper torso near his back, and his injury was not considered life-threatening, police said.
In June, 300 National Guard members were sent to the city to patrol areas largely abandoned since Hurricane Katrina, said Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, a Louisiana National Guard spokesman.
Sgt. Robert Lawrence, 21, an Iraq war veteran, and his patrol partner, Pfc. James Neely, were called over by people who pointed out a vehicle, saying its driver "was involved either in a dispute or a hit-and-run," he said.
The man's driving was erratic, so the soldiers pulled him over and ordered him out, Schneider said.
"When the suspect got out of the vehicle, he had something in his hand that our soldiers perceived to be a weapon," Schneider said. "So our soldiers took defensive positions, and ordered him to stop and drop what he had. He continued on."
Schneider said the soldiers fired twice; a shot fired by Lawrence hit the man.
Schneider said the object the man carried was possibly a cell phone.
Nobody was arrested but the investigation is incomplete, police said.
The shooting occurred on a block where most houses had been or were being repaired, although some still had boarded or shuttered windows.
The Associated Press

 PARAGUAY (97%); SOUTH AMERICA (92%); 







   


October 9, 2006 Monday  




 After Tsunami, Intentions To Build but No Road Yet

 
A $245 million stretch of blacktop intended to be the signature good-will gesture from the American people to the Indonesian survivors of the 2004 tsunami has instead become a parable of the problems of Aceh Province's recovery. 
  Construction of the 150-mile road along the devastated coast has yet to start, stalled by a host of obstacles like acquiring right of way through residential and farm land, and, particularly, through several hundred graves of mystical and religious significance.
 Though villagers welcome the idea, some have reservations about an American-style thoroughfare with a wide shoulder on either side that will replace the existing ribbon of mostly churned dirt and mud. 
  Villagers say they fear speeding traffic -- they have thrown rocks at fast-traveling cars of foreign aid workers -- and want to be able to sell snacks and tea from stalls snug by the roadside, as they have always done.  
  The difficulties of getting started on the road, one of the largest infrastructure projects in Indonesia, reflects the weariness among tsunami survivors with the long return to normality.
  A demonstration outside the main Indonesian reconstruction agency turned violent last month when protesters complained that they still lacked basic services and demanded more financing for education. 
  The patience of American officials is wearing thin, too. They complain that the government has been too slow in buying up the land and resolving the fraught issue of the graves. 
  Lately, the Americans have become so disconcerted about delays that they have tried to pry more action from the Indonesians by suggesting that the money for the road would be diverted to the reconstruction efforts in Lebanon. 
  ''It was threatened they would take the money away,'' said Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the director of the Indonesian rehabilitation and reconstruction agency in Aceh. ''That's standard,'' he added with a shrug. 
  The Indonesians say the Americans are imposing first-world standards of efficiency on a poor region that was pounded by civil war and then swamped by the tsunami, which killed more than 100,000 Indonesians. Records of land titles were washed away, and questions of inheritance among devastated families take a while to decide, they say. 
  The idea for the road evolved soon after the tsunami when the Bush administration wanted to show that the United States cared about Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, in its moment of need.
  It was decided early on to finance one substantial American project that would make a splash, rather than a number of smaller ones. At first, rebuilding a significant portion of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, into a kind of ''signature city'' was discussed. 
  Instead, a well-engineered road from the capital to Meulaboh, the southernmost coastal town, which was nearly completely wiped out, was considered a more fruitful project that played to the American strength of fast and modern construction. 
  But the Americans did not anticipate the long negotiations over compensation for land or the strong local feelings about the graves. 
  Tucked under a grove of coconut trees, a pale-hued boulder and an ancient tree trunk represent this village's most mystical grave, the place where a white tiger is believed to stand guard. Nearby, red and yellow flags left by surveyors indicated the American road was set to plow right through the sacred spot. 
  A local elder, Mohammad Noor, 60, who forded a river and clambered over fences to show off the grave, says he cannot imagine that it could ever be moved. 
  The problems with the road also involve more than Indonesian sensibilities. An audit by the Inspector General of the United States Agency for International Development last March said that the design of the road was delayed because the development agency requested the contractor to modify the design plan at least four times. It also noted that when the contract for the engineering work was awarded to the American firm Parsons, it was awarded in November, four months late. 
  By May, when the process was bogged down, a veteran of building big American projects abroad, Roy R. Ventura Jr., was brought in to expedite things. 
  On June 29, Mr. Ventura said he presented the Indonesians with the final plan for where the road would run. He was told by Indonesian government officials, he said, that right of way would be ready so construction could begin for the first portion of the road to the village of Lhong by July 25, and by Oct. 3 in the area farther south to the town of Calang. 
  According to that schedule, American officials said they expected the first five miles of the road to be completed by Aug. 23, and that new sections of the road would continue to unfold after that. 
  But instead, the American aid agency is paying the Indonesian road contractor, Wijaya Karya, about $100,000 a month to maintain the old road, money that should be going toward the new construction, American officials say. 
  ''The Americans are arguing that there should have been land acquisition a year ago,'' Mr. Kuntoro said. ''But how could that happen when we did not know from the Americans where the road was running until June 29?''
  Mr. Kuntoro, a graduate in engineering from Stanford University, has become the point man for many of the problems. 
  He has been visited in his office in Banda Aceh by the American ambassador to Indonesia, B. Lynn Pascoe; by Mr. Ventura; and this week by investigators from the Government Accountability Office in Washington. They all ask the same thing: When will enough continuous land be ready so that bulldozers can begin clearing the way? 
  In fact, Mr. Kuntoro said in an interview on Tuesday that he had just written a letter to Mr. Pascoe saying that his agency had gained title to about 3.5 miles worth of continuous land and that major construction could start. 
  But on Thursday, Mr. Ventura said that he was not satisfied that the titles were transferred and that work could begin only on a bridge involving a sliver of land. 
  ''The road itself is no different to anyplace in the world,'' said Mr. Ventura, who was with the Montana Highway Department for 10 years and has managed construction sites in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Philippines. ''The process of getting right to the land to get the road built is very different.'' 
  In an exchange with the governor of Banda Aceh, Mustafa Abu Bakar, the frustrated Americans suggested that the governor should consider using eminent domain procedures for speedy possession of the land. In reply, the governor said in a letter that in order to keep community support for the road he would use eminent domain only as a last resort. 
  ''The government sees the people here as victims of the tsunami and very vulnerable,'' said Eddy Siregar, a construction manager for Wijaya Karya, the contractor, as he sat on the side of the old road in the village of Pasi. ''It would be a big trauma if their land was taken. So they want to try the soft way.'' 
  Late Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Noor, the local elder, received word that his village leaders had agreed with the provincial authorities to move the grave the white tiger is believed to guard. 
  ''I can't imagine how they will do it,'' a crestfallen Mr. Noor said. ''Will they do it nicely, or will they do it roughly?''


  INDONESIA (98%); LEBANON (79%)







  



October 7, 2006 Saturday  




 Rock Star Rattles Radical Islam; 
Popular Indonesian Singer Woos Youths With Songs of Peace and Romance

 
 To the millions of Indonesian youths who sell out his concerts, Ahmad Dhani is a superstar who has commanded the nation's rock scene for more than a decade. 
  But the charismatic leader of Dewa, one of Indonesia's top bands, isn't just any entertainer crooning about the heartaches of romantic love. Dhani is an ambassador for peace, using his music to lead Indonesia's youth away from radical Islam. 
  This week, the Muslim rocker was in the United States to share his message of religious tolerance with an entirely different audience: top U.S. government and military leaders at a national conference on homeland defense.  
  Dhani, 34, says attacking the ideology that motivates terrorists is the key to suppressing radical Islam. 
  With a longtime acquaintance, former Indonesian president Abdurraham Wahid, Dhani spoke to the group on Tuesday about a long-term strategy to combat religious extremism. 
  "The countries in the West cannot be disengaged from the Muslim world," Dhani said in an interview before his speech. "Building up the values of tolerance is critical in Indonesia and the Muslim world in order to defeat terrorism." 
  The 2006 National Homeland Defense Foundation Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., ran through Thursday. Other speakers at the conference included Frances Fragos Townsend, homeland security adviser to President Bush, and George W. Foresman, undersecretary for preparedness at the Department of Homeland Security. 
  Dhani says Dewa appeals to a broad fan base not only because of the band's catchy melodies and energetic onstage performances, but also because its music reaches out to the people of Indonesia on a spiritual level. At the heart of Dewa's songs is a message of peace among all religions that promotes a harmonious, moderate Islam. 
  Also, of course, "we're handsome guys," Dhani joked through a translator during a phone interview from his home in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. 
  References to the Koran are woven into one of Dewa's most popular songs, "Laskar Cinta," or "Warriors of Love." Dahni said he wrote the lyrics to beckon his fans into a loving Islam. 
  "Hey there, all you lovers of peace," the song goes. "Watch out, watch out and be on guard  --  for lost souls, anger twisting their hearts, for lost souls, poisoned by ignorance and hate. . . . Warriors of Love, teach the mystical science of love, for only love is the eternal truth and the shining path for all God's children everywhere in the world." 
  As a teenager, Dhani dropped out of a school that embraced Wahhabism, a strictly traditional Islamic sect, to begin Dewa. The group quickly became one of the most popular rock bands in Indonesia. 
  The November 2004 release of the album "Laskar Cinta" marked a turn in Dhani's music from love songs toward direct denunciation of radical Islam and its spread in Indonesia. Dhani said he credits the change to his spiritual journey in Sufism, a mystical, moderate form of Islam. 
  The album's title was a play on Laskar Jihad, or Holy War Warriors, an Indonesian militant group possibly linked to al-Qaeda. Dhani's outspoken campaign to fight militant ideologies drew the attention of Islamic radicals. After some extremist groups started calling him an enemy of Islam, Dhani went into hiding with his wife, Indonesian pop star Maia, and their children. 
  Despite the furor created by their music, Dhani and his group emerged in December with a new song, also with the title "Laskar Cinta," that soared to No. 1 on Indonesian radio and MTV Asia. "Laskar Cinta" is the first track in Dewa's latest album, "Republic of Love." 
  Dewa's first English-language version of its music is set for international release in 2007.  

 INDONESIA (98%); UNITED STATES (93%)








 


October 4, 2006 Wednesday  




 Muslim rocker: Bonds trump bombs The former fundamentalist tells a U.S. defense forum that military force alone won't change hearts or deter terrorists.

 
Colorado Springs - A famous visitor from the Muslim world - Indonesian rock star Ahmad Dhani, formerly a fundamentalist - dropped into one of the U.S. defense industry's main deal-making forums Tuesday with a challenge. 
The military-led war on terrorism will not defeat emerging enemies, said Dhani, 34, his long hair and untucked shirt reminiscent of singer-activist Bono. "You cannot defeat the ideology of religious hatred and terrorism with weapons alone," Dhani said.
Instead of war, Dhani advocated promoting "good aspects of Western culture," such as "love for knowledge," free speech, religious tolerance and the rule of law. He told of how he uses his Western-inspired music to question extremism at home.
Dhani spoke at the opening of the three-day Homeland Defense Symposium at the Broadmoor hotel, with several hundred contractors and military officials listening intently. This annual event traditionally brings together military officials and weapons contractors.
The 650 or so registered participants include executives from 98 companies and senior Bush administration officials. Frances Townsend, the president's top assistant for counterterrorism and homeland security, is scheduled to speak today.
Some speakers Tuesday warned that the U.S. military capacity to carry out operations in Iraq and elsewhere is strained to the limit. Some advocate an increasingly collaborative approach to new threats.
The approach of "building a new international defense alliance" and talking with other countries, including a potentially nuclear-armed Iran, holds greater promise than military action today, retired U.S. Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, now a network news analyst and professor, said in an interview.
"We've been threatening the Iranians in public with the potential for military action," McCaffrey said, calling this "an insane option" that would "outrage the entire face of the Earth" and hurt U.S. energy supplies.
And, he said, "we've executed this war on terrorism badly."
A leading musician in Indonesia, Dhani has faced threats at home after playing ideological jujitsu with resurgent fundamentalist groups. In one hit song, he warns against "lost souls poisoned by ignorance and hate."
As a boy, he loved Western music by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and others, much to the consternation of his father, who ran a fundamentalist political group.
Dhani attended a fundamentalist school. Preachers instilled a sense that non-Muslims were infidels who would suffer in hell. When a cousin converted to Christianity, he refused to talk to him for a year.
But as a young man, he broke with fundamentalists, including his father, he said. Now he's trying to convince Americans that reaching moderate Muslims through popular culture can turn potential enemies into friends.
``If the radical Indonesians feel they have a duty to do some assignment for Allah, I feel like I have a duty to my Allah to spread some peace and love,'' he said.

    IRAQ (79%)







 
 

 (California)

October 4, 2006 Wednesday



 World jihad and beyond; 
OTHER VIEWS

 
An old joke holds that Karl Marx wrote hundreds of pages about society's evolution from capitalism to communism, but not one word about how a nation might move in the opposite direction -- a path now taken by one-fourth of the world's population. 
Marx's blind spot comes to mind if you read an article in the Sept. 11 New Yorker magazine chronicling the al-Qaida brain trust that surrounded Osama bin Laden. These jihadist intellectuals wrote voluminously about defining the infidel enemy, when to use violence to torment the United States. But they seem to have scarcely considered the endgame of jihad -- how they would actually govern the Islamic state they hoped to create.
Who cares? Anyone who has read portions of the controversial National Intelligence Estimate that President Bush declassified last week. The document has many depressing passages, including the observation that the war in Iraq has "become the cause celebre for jihadists... cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
But it includes one encouraging observation: "The jihadists' greatest vulnerability is that their ultimate political solution -- an ultra-conservative interpretation of sharia-based governance spanning the Muslim world -- is unpopular with the vast majority of Muslims."
This conclusion might come as a shock to Americans who carelessly equate the words "Muslim" and "extremist." But it will be no surprise to anyone who has visited big Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia or Egypt, where most people say they want no part of religious extremism.
"Al-Qaida's vision, a return to the golden age of the great caliphate -- I just don't think there are a lot of Muslims in the world who want that," says Daniel Benjamin, a former member of the National Security Council.
In other words, the National Intelligence Estimate offers the president a valuable new direction for the war on terror: Helping the world's moderate Muslim movements in their own struggles to fend off radicals and establish workable democracies.
Of course, jihadists can inflict grievous damage on the West without actually establishing their desired Islamist state. But that project becomes hugely more difficult when they have no sympathetic host country, as the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan has made plain. And the task of recruiting future jihadists becomes more difficult when moderate Muslims unambiguously count the United States as their friend.
To his credit, Bush has mentioned such an effort in recent speeches, and his administration has sponsored important democracy-building programs in Asia and North Africa.
But these are ruinously sabotaged by the conduct of the war in Iraq and the rhetoric of crusade that often emanates from Washington. If the president cannot accept unflattering advice from his top intelligence experts, there is little hope that he'll embrace advice when it is promising.
|-- Minneapolis Tribune

 UNITED STATES (94%); IRAQ (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); NORTHERN AFRICA (79%); EGYPT (79%); AFRICA (79%);  ASIA (79%)




6


 Tribune Review Publishing 
 


October 3, 2006 Tuesday



 Islamism, not Islam, is the real foe

 
Ever since 9/11, a dark view of Islam has been gaining currency on what might be called the Western street. This view holds that, contrary to the protestations of our political leaders -- who claim that acts of terrorism are being carried out by a minority of extremists -- the real problem lies with Islam itself. In this interpretation, Islam is not a religion of peace but of war, and its 1.2 billion adherents will never rest until all of humanity is either converted, subjugated or simply annihilated. 
Is the war on terrorism really a "clash of civilizations"? The overreaction to Pope Benedict XVI's relatively innocuous remarks at the University of Regensburg on Sept. 12 would seem to lend weight to this notion.  
As part of a plea for combining reason with religion, the pope cited a 14th century Byzantine emperor who condemned Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman" because of "his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." 
The pope subsequently made clear that these were not his own views. But this did not stop an explosion of animosity across the Muslim world. Amid calls from angry clerics to "hunt down" the holy father (aka, "the dog of Rome" and the "worshiper of the cross"), various hotheads have taken to the streets and attacked Christian churches. 
This recalls the over-the-top outcry this year after a Danish newspaper dared to print cartoons depicting Muhammad as an instigator of violence. 
Muslim spokesmen claim these are unconscionable slurs. Yet, while demanding respect for their own religion, too many Muslims accord too little respect to competing faiths or even to competing brands of their own faith. 
Where are the demonstrations in the Muslim street when the president of Iran denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of Israel? 
Or when Palestinian kidnappers force two Western journalists to convert to Islam at gunpoint? 
Or when Sunni terrorists in Iraq bomb Shiite mosques and slaughter hundreds of worshipers? 
All too many Islamic leaders prefer to harp on the supposed sins of the "infidels," however exaggerated or even fictionalized (no, the CIA didn't bomb the World Trade Center to create an excuse for invading Afghanistan), rather than focusing on the problems within their own umma (community). 
And yet it would be a mistake to conclude that the woes of Islamic society today, serious as they are, are endemic to the religion itself. 
It is true that, alone of the world's major faiths, Islam was founded by a prophet who used force to win converts. "I was ordered to fight all men until they say, 'There is no god but Allah,' " Muhammad proclaimed in his farewell address to his followers in A.D. 632. 
Countless Muslims since then have followed the path of jihad -- literally "exertion in the path of Allah" but usually taken as an injunction for waging holy war. But countless Muslims also have been willing to trade with unbelievers, to live peaceably alongside them, to learn from them and even to enter into military alliances with them against Muslim rivals. 
Religions are not monolithic. They have no fixed, eternal identity. Until the 18th century, Christianity was a militant faith whose adherents did not hesitate to kill "heathens." 
Throughout the Middle Ages, Islamic states usually offered greater tolerance to religious minorities and were more open to secular learning than their Christian neighbors. 
Even now, most Muslim countries -- from Senegal to Indonesia -- are far more pluralistic and much less fundamentalist than Iran or Saudi Arabia. And even in the most militant Muslim societies, clerics are able to maintain a rigid orthodoxy only by force. Left to their own devices, the Saudi or Iranian people would opt for a less monastic existence -- a danger that the guardians of official morality are keenly aware of. 
The real enemy we face is not Islam per se but a violent offshoot known as Islamism, which is rooted, to be sure, in the Quran but which also finds inspiration in such modern Western ideologies as fascism, Nazism and communism. 
Its most successful exponents -- from Hassan Banna and Sayyid Qutb to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden -- are hardly orthodox interpreters of Islam. They are power-mad intellectuals in the mold of a Lenin or a Hitler. 
The problem is that the rest of the Muslim world, by not doing more to curb the radicals -- whether out of fear or sympathy -- lends credence to the most objectionable caricatures of their faith. 
Max Boot is a senior fellow a the Council on Foreign Relations. 







 Star Tribune
 
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

October 2, 2006 Monday  




 War on terror needs a new direction; 
NIE contains a valuable but neglected piece of advice.

 
An old joke holds that Karl Marx wrote hundreds of pages about society's evolution from capitalism to communism, but not one word about how a nation might move in the opposite direction - a path now taken by one-fourth of the world's population. 
Marx's blind spot comes to mind if you read an article in the Sept. 11 New Yorker magazine chronicling the Al-Qaida brain trust that surrounded Osama bin Laden. These jihadist intellectuals wrote voluminously about defining the infidel enemy, when to use violence and how best to torment the United States. But they seem to have scarcely considered the endgame of jihad - how they would actually govern the Islamic state they hoped to create.
Who cares? Anyone who has read portions of the controversial National Intelligence Estimate that President Bush declassified last week. The document has many depressing passages, including the observation that the war in Iraq has "become the cause celebre for jihadists ... cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.''
But it also includes one remarkable and encouraging observation: "The jihadists' greatest vulnerability is that their ultimate political solution - an ultra-conservative interpretation of sharia-based governance spanning the Muslim world - is unpopular with the vast majority of Muslims.''
This conclusion might come as a shock to Americans who carelessly equate the words "Muslim'' and "extremist.'' But it will be no surprise to anyone who has visited big Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia or Egypt, where most people say they want no part of religious extremism.
"Al-Qaida's vision, a return to the golden age of the great caliphate - I just don't think there are a lot of Muslims in the world who want that,'' says Daniel Benjamin, a former member of the National Security Council and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
In other words, the National Intelligence Estimate offers the president a valuable new direction for the war on terror: Helping the world's moderate Muslim movements - in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Morocco, Palestine, Jordan and other places - in their own struggles to fend off the radicals and establish workable democracies.
Of course jihadists can still inflict grievous damage on the West without actually establishing their desired Islamist state. But that project becomes hugely more difficult when they have no sympathetic host country, as the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan has made plain. And the task of recruiting future jihadists becomes more difficult when moderate Muslims unambiguously count the United States as their friend.
To his credit, Bush has mentioned such an effort in recent speeches, and his administration has sponsored important democracy-building programs in Asia and North Africa.
But these are ruinously sabotaged by the conduct of the war in Iraq and the rhetoric of crusade that often emanates from Washington. If the president cannot accept unflattering advice from his top intelligence experts, there is little hope that he'll embrace advice when it is promising.
MAKING ALLIES
"To combat radicalization in Middle Eastern states, the United States should make every effort to work with Islamic governments, including fundamentalists, as long as they disavow terrorism and other forms of civic violence.''
The Princeton Project on National Security.

 UNITED STATES (93%); IRAQ (92%); INDONESIA (92%); EGYPT (79%); NORTH AFRICA (79%); MOROCCO (79%); AFRICA (79%); ASIA (79%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY (79%)







 
 


September 27, 2006 Wednesday



 The Verse of the Sword

 
"Islam, as portrayed in the encyclopedia of Islam, in the Koran, and the Hadith, was spread by means of the sword. The sword played a major role in spreading Islam in the past, and it is the sword that preserves Islam today. Islam relies upon jihad in spreading the religion. ... Spreading Islam by means of the sword is a duty incumbent upon all Muslims."
- Coptic priest Zakariya Boutrus, Al-Hayat TV, June 16, 2005 
The Austrian-Iraqi Association for Development held its first conference on extremism and terrorism in January. In attendance were Arab, Muslim, and European researchers, intellectuals, and diplomats, including Kamel Al-Najjar.
Mr. Najjar authored an article for the reformist Web site Elaph.com on February 3 in which he expressed reservations about the validity of recommendations from such conferences. He wrote: "If the Muslims are serious about presenting the radiant face of Islam, they must drop this false, hollow arrogance and acknowledge their dark past and their even darker present. ...They must also reinterpret the Koran, putting the warlike verses - the verse of the sword and similar hadiths - in historical perspective as verses that are no longer valid."
The issue of Koranic verses supporting the spread of Islam by the sword has been making headlines since Pope Benedict XVI's contentious speech on September 12.
As examples from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, and Iran highlight, figures within the Muslim world have debated this subject, with some calling for such verses to be invalidated and others explaining why they are relevant and to be used.
In April 2004, representatives of 65 countries convened in Egypt for the 16th International Islamic Conference, which was dedicated to "Tolerance in the Islamic Culture." Leading religious figures participated in the conference, including the then-Palestinian Authority mufti, Sheik Ikrima Sabri, who stressed that Islamic history is full of examples of tolerance toward other religions.
In an article in the London Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat on May 2, 2004, Mr. Najjar, who was also in attendance, reported that at this and other conferences, leading Islamic figures often quote peaceful Koranic verses, such as "There shall be no compulsion in religion."
He noted, however, that many of the same imams who participated in the Egyptian conference had in the past "insisted that these [peaceful] verses are abrogated by the 'verse of the sword.'"
One such figure is the influential Saudi cleric Musa Al-Qarni, who once was considered Osama bin Laden's mufti. During the Saudi royal family's counterterrorism conference in February 2005, in which he was a participant, he appeared on Saudi IQRA TV to discuss the spread of Islam by the sword.
"We must realize that Allah obligated us to disseminate this religion all over the globe," he said. "And first, it should be spread through outreach and calling people to Allah's word, through pleasing words. ... However, if we run up against someone who opposes this path and attempts to obstruct the spread of the upright religion, and to obstruct their reaching others, in this case it is a duty to fight such a person."
Mr. Qarni, who frequently appears in the Saudi press, added, "We don't agree with those ... who say that the religion [of Islam] doesn't use the sword. No. Islam uses the sword when there is no other alternative. ... If there is need for the sword, then it is wise to use the sword."
"Islam is in two parts, the Koran and the sword," an Indonesian Islamist cleric with a considerable following, Abu Bakar Bashir, said August 21 in an interview posted on Al-Jazeera's English-language Web site. "The Koran has all the guidelines, rules, norms, laws, and punishments we need. The enforcement of the Shariah is the sword we are talking about."
Praise of the sword within Islam is not new, however. In June, an influential Web log, Little Green Footballs, posted excerpts from a 1942 speech by Ayatollah Khomeini in which he stated: "Islam says: Kill the [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword, and scatter [their armies]. ... People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! ... There are hundreds of other [Koranic] ... and hadiths ... urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim."
On Monday, Pope Benedict met with Muslim diplomats at the Vatican to try to ease the tensions that ensued after his mid-September speech.
As the meeting took place, calls continued for the pope to convert to Islam and for crosses to be broken, and Jesus was taunted as "the slave of Allah."
Those denouncing such statements in the Muslim world have been few and far between.
Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

 







 
 


September 26, 2006 Tuesday  




 Pope calls for dialogue with Muslims; 
Pontiff meets with 20 ambassadors of Islamic populations

 
ROME -- In a meeting the Vatican says was unprecedented in its scope, Pope BenedictXVI told 20 Muslim ambassadors Monday that he is committed to a positive dialogue with Islamic leaders and "our future" depends on the development of strong relations between the two faiths.
The meeting, held at the pope's summer residence just south of Rome, came nearly two weeks after Benedict sparked worldwide protests by quoting a 14th-century letter that said the prophet Mohammed "spread by the sword the faith he preached"' and his teachings brought things "evil and inhuman."
The pontiff had twice attempted to quell the controversy in public remarks before Monday's meeting. Each time, he stressed that the quote was not an expression of his personal opinion, but he stopped short of the full apology demanded by many Muslims. 
In a statement, the Vatican called Monday's meeting at Castel Gandolfo with ambassadors of Muslim nations and the Arab League, plus representatives of Italy's Muslim community, unprecedented. The statement said the meeting was the largest between a sitting pope and Islamic leaders.
The pontiff spoke briefly in French before greeting and speaking to each representative. Benedict did not specifically mention his controversial statements Sept. 12 at Germany's Regensburg University.
He alluded to the speech when he began his remarks by saying, "The circumstances which have given rise to our gathering are well-known."
This time, Benedict quoted himself. He referred to a speech he gave last year at World Youth Day in Germany in which he told Muslim leaders that dialogue between the two faiths cannot be "reduced to an optional extra."
That dialogue "is, in fact, a vital necessity on which in large measure our future depends," Benedict said.
In his call for "reciprocity in all fields," including religious freedom, Benedict was quoting his predecessor, John Paul II, who was known for his efforts to increase interfaith dialogue. Before the controversy surrounding Benedict's remarks erupted, that topic had been a plank of the Holy See's dialogue with some Muslim states such as Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslims cannot worship freely.
Saudi Arabia was not represented at Monday's meeting. Leaders from many other Muslim states were on hand. Among them: Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Turkey.
Iraqi representative Albert Edward Ismail Yelda said the pope's new gesture would be enough to put the issue to rest. "The Holy Father indicated a profound respect for Islam," Ismail Yelda said in televised remarks after the 35-minute session with Benedict. "It is now the time to put what happened behind all of us and to begin building a bridge" between the two faiths.

 SAUDI ARABIA (92%); IRAQ (92%); ITALY (90%); HOLY SEE (90%); LEBANON (79%); EGYPT (79%); TURKEY (79%);  GERMANY (69%); CENTRAL EUROPE (54%)







 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation
 


September 25, 2006 Monday  




 CONVERSIONS ARE CURIOUSLY HUSHED

 
On Aug. 14, Steve Centanni, a Fox News reporter, and Olaf Wiig, his cameraman, were traveling in Gaza City. A Mitsubishi stopped in front of them. A pickup truck boxed them in from behind. Four men, three of them masked, emerged from the Mitsubishi wielding pistols and Kalashnikov rifles. They put guns to the journalists' heads, pulled them out of their SUV and shoved them into the pickup's back seat. When Wiig asked where they were going, he was told: "You're going to hell."
Centanni and Wiig were brought to a tent where their hands were painfully bound behind them with plastic ties. They were hooded, blindfolded and transferred to a dark garage. Whenever they tried to talk, they were butted with guns. Eventually they were transferred to a house, stripped of all possessions and given ill-fitting track suits. Wiig was told Centanni was to be executed. Then, abruptly, on Aug. 23, they were taken to the Gaza City Beach Hotel and set free. 
YOU MAY BE less familiar with the video released just before Centanni and Wiig were let go. Five minutes and 23 seconds long, it featured the two reading from scripts. They condemned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Centanni said the West "should turn to the purifying power of Islam" and asked that George Bush and Tony Blair "open your minds to Islam."
Standard hostage fare. Less standard is when Centanni says: "My name is Steve. I'm an American. After I entered Islam, I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah, and my leader is the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him." Wiig makes a similar declaration. Both had been converted. After his release, Centanni said: "We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. ... It was something we felt we had to do because they had guns."
There are many parts of the world where Islam has a conversion problem. Freedom House's Paul Marshall reports that non-Muslims in Sudan, Iran and Nigeria are commonly forced to choose between conversion or death. Writing in National Review Online in 2002, Julia Duin noted the horrific forced conversions in Indonesia: "Christians who refused to convert were killed; those who did convert were then separated from the families, given Muslim names, and forcibly circumcised - without anesthetic, and with dirty instruments. Scissors were used on adults. ... The women underwent female genital circumcision."
Sharia - Islamic law based on the Koran and on practices approved by Muhammad and taken as legally binding - frowns on the notion of Muslims converting from Islam. Breakaway Muslims can face severe reprisals. The most famous case is Salman Rushdie, but Marshall notes that Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Mauritania, and the Comoros Islands all have laws that carry the death penalty for Muslim apostates. Egypt, Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, Turkey, Nigeria, Indonesia, Somalia and Kenya either have laws with loopholes allowing the killing of apostates or rely on seldom-prosecuted vigilante groups to mete out their bloody brand of enforcement.
Religious conversion has an unpleasant history. People have been conquering and converting one another for as long as they've been believing. Romans told early Christians to convert or be fed to the lions; Christians had their Inquisition(s). Ibn Warraq, author of Leaving Islam, notes that Muslims had their own serious inquisition, the minha, in the 8th century.
But while many parts of the Muslim world still take conversion quite seriously, other major religions have largely left the issue behind. A double standard therefore exists, a gap between cultures. Imagine the furor that would - rightfully - erupt if a video emerged from Abu Ghraib showing a Muslim forced to convert at gunpoint. The Council on American-Islamic Relations did not mention the Centanni-Wiig videotape (but it did issue a call for their release soon after their abduction). When called for comment, CAIR's communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, declined to condemn the incident; instead, he said: "I don't think you can consider them 'conversions.' There's no legitimate conversion at the point of a gun."
 reported on the release of Centanni and Wiig without a word about their conversions. Instead, the Times noted that the two men "were released unharmed." The assumption: The whole thing wasn't serious; the men wanted to live and said anything their captors required.
THIS ATTITUDE exists because the West has become so secularized that few people see the idea of a forced conversion as the savagery it is. In our culture, religion is seen as an expression of personal choice, not as part of a living, communal whole - a matter of self-fulfillment, not eternal and literal truth. Hey - professing to an alien faith might be unpleasant, but it's certainly not worth losing your head over.
We find it hard to believe that some cultures could regard religion as the most important of all issues. That's why, when we see foreign cultural conflicts from afar, we impute them not to culture or religion but to other issues. Why are they acting like that?, we wonder. Couldn't be just religion. Must be income inequality or postcolonial grievances.
This attitude is a mistake. You cannot effectively engage on any level - culturally, diplomatically, or militarily - if you don't understand the world-view with which you're dealing. And to some people, the question of faith is still a matter of life and death.
(Editor's note: The writer is a columnist for .)
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%); ISRAEL (92%);  AFGHANISTAN (87%); SUDAN (86%);  COMOROS (79%); EGYPT (79%);  NIGERIA (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (68%)







 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation
 


September 24, 2006 Sunday  




 THE WORLD 

 
Protests grow urging premier to step down
BUDAPEST, Hungary - A square in front of Hungary's parliament overflowed Saturday with demonstrators demanding the prime minister quit in the largest protest yet since a recording was leaked on which he admitted lying to the people.
About 20,000 people filled Kossuth Square by midevening Saturday - doublethe size of the crowds seen earlier in the week. 
The larger turnout had been expected. Some turned out who had planned to join a political rally by Fidesz, the main opposition party, before it was postponed because of security concerns.
The crowd diminished to less than 1,000 shortly before 2 a.m. today.
Still, the turnout of 20,000 reflected continued support for those demanding Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany resign for acknowledging his government lied about the dire economic state of the economy.
Minister detained, Chavez says
CARACAS, VENEZUELA - President Hugo Chavez said his foreign minister was detained by U.S. authorities at a New Yorkairport Saturday for more than hour as he tried to return to the South American country.
Mr. Chavez told Venezuela's state TV broadcaster that U.S. officials alleged that Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro had links to a failed coup that Mr. Chavez led in Venezuela in 1992.
But a U.N. diplomat said Mr. Maduro's passage was delayed at John F. Kennedy International Airport because he had showed up late without a ticket.
The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly, said that under U.S. government regulations, anyone who shows up late and buys a ticket in cash has to be put through secondary screening at the airport.
Human error probed in crash
LATHEN, GERMANY - Investigators sought Saturday to determine why safety rules didn't prevent a high-speed magnetic train from powering up and speeding into a maintenance vehicle still on the elevated test track, killing 23 people.
Alexander Retemeyer, a prosecutor speaking for investigators, said they were focusing on what happened in the 20-mile track's control center, where the required two employees were on duty.
In other news
A HELICOPTER WITH 24 PEOPLE aboard, including an American aid worker and foreign conservationists, went missing Saturday in Nepal's mountainous east, officials said. The World Wildlife Fund said the 20 passengers were on their way back from a conservation site and seven staff members from the organization were among the missing.
HUNDREDS OF ISLAMIC MILITIAMEN in heavily armed trucks headed Saturday to the strategic town of Kismayo in what appeared to be an imminent takeover attempt of one of the last seaports outside their control in Somalia, witnesses said.
INDONESIA'S FOREIGN MINISTER said Saturday that the execution a day earlier of three Roman Catholic militants for bloody attacks on Muslims six years ago was a matter of justice, not religion.
NORTH KOREA IS PLANNING to remove fuel rods at a nuclear reactor within the next three months in what would be a significant boost to its nuclear weapons capability, an American expert said Saturday.
Police have recovered a revered religious icon that was stolen from a monastery in southern Greece, after an intense five-week investigation, authorities said Saturday. The 700-year-old icon of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus, credited with having healing powers and performing miracles, was stolen Aug. 18. The 28-year-old suspect was arrested after he attempted, through a telephone call, to sell the 14th-century icon to a local bishop for $1.28 million.
CZARINA MARIA FEODOROVNA'S descendants joined Danish royals, officials and dignitaries Saturday to bid farewell to the mother of Russia's last emperor, 78 years after she died in exile in Denmark. The casket of the Danish-born Feodorovna - who was Princess Dagmar before marrying Czar Alexander III - was then paraded through the Danish capital before being put on a ship to St. Petersburg.
- Edited from wire reportsby Jennifer Bishop

 HUNGARY (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); VENEZUELA, BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF (93%); SOUTH AMERICA (79%); NEPAL (79%); KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (79%); SOMALIA (79%);  GERMANY (79%); VENEZUELA (78%)







 
 


September 24, 2006 Sunday



 Executions were law, official says

 
SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - Yemen's president was re-elected with more than 77 percent of votes in the face of the strongest challenge since he came to power 28 years ago from an opponent with a substantial popular following, officials said Saturday. 
But the opposition alleged fraud and immediately rejected the result.
Elections commission chief Khaled Sharif said the final tally showed President Ali Abdullah Saleh received 4.1 million votes, or 77.17 percent of 5.3 million valid votes, while challenger Faisal bin Shamlan won 1.1 million votes, or 21.82 percent.
More than 6 million of Yemen's 9.2 million registered voters cast ballots on Wednesday, putting turnout at 65 percent. Tens of thousands of ballots were discarded because of voter error, he told a news conference.
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - A square in front of Hungary's parliament overflowed Saturday with demonstrators demanding the prime minister quit in the largest protest yet since a recording was leaked on which he admitted lying to the people.
About 20,000 people filled Kossuth Square by mid-evening Saturday - double the size of the crowds seen earlier in the week.
The larger turnout had been expected. Some turned out who had planned to join a political rally by Fidesz, the main opposition party, before it was postponed due to security concerns.
NEW YORK (AP) - Indonesia's foreign minister said Saturday that the execution a day earlier of three Roman Catholic militants for bloody attacks on Muslims six years ago was a matter of justice not religion.
The comments by Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda came as thousands of security forces in parts of central and eastern Indonesia stood watch around churches and markets to guard against a repeat of the violence Friday, carried about by Christian mobs who torched cars and looted stores in anger over the executions.

 YEMEN (94%); HUNGARY (92%); INDONESIA (92%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


September 24, 2006 Sunday



 World datelines

 
England
LONDON -- Sir Malcolm Arnold, the first British composer to win an Academy Award, died Saturday at the age of 84 after a short illness, his companion said. Arnold, who won an Oscar for the music to "Bridge on the River Kwai" in 1958, died in the hospital in Norfolk county, eastern England, after suffering from a chest infection, said Anthony Day, Arnold's companion for 23 years.
MANCHESTER -- Thousands of anti-war demonstrators marched Saturday against the presence of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan on the eve of the governing Labour Party's annual gathering. Protesters packed Manchester's central Albert Square before setting off on a march around the conference center where delegates will hold their five-day meeting, starting today. Germany 
LATHEN -- Investigators sought Saturday to determine why safety rules didn't prevent a high-speed magnetic train from powering up and speeding into a maintenance vehicle still on the elevated test track, killing 23 people. Alexander Retemeyer, a prosecutor speaking for investigators, said they were focusing on what happened in the 20-mile track's control center, where the required two employees were on duty. Greece
ATHENS -- Police have recovered a revered religious icon that was stolen from a monastery in southern Greece, after an intense five-week investigation, authorities said Saturday. The 700-year-old icon of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus was stolen Aug. 18 from a cliff-top convent near the town of Leonidio. On Friday, police announced the arrest in Athens of a Romanian man, who they said confessed to the theft. Hungary
BUDAPEST -- A square in front of Hungary's parliament overflowed Saturday with demonstrators demanding the prime minister quit in the largest protest yet since a recording was leaked on which he admitted lying to the people. About 20,000 people filled Kossuth Square by mid-evening Saturday -- double the size of the crowds seen earlier in the week. Indonesia
PALU -- Indonesia's foreign minister said Saturday that the execution a day earlier of three Roman Catholic militants for bloody attacks on Muslims six years ago was a matter of justice not religion. "The case was a pure enforcement of law. It has nothing to do with the questions of tolerance between Islam and other religions," Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said. Nepal
KATMANDU -- A helicopter chartered by conservation group World Wildlife Fund with 24 people aboard including an American aid worker, a Finnish diplomat and a Nepalese minister went missing Saturday in Nepal's mountainous east, officials said. Civilian and army helicopters had been searching the area in eastern Taplejung district where the Russian-built MI-17 helicopter disappeared early Saturday. Somalia
MOGADISHU -- Hundreds of Islamic militiamen in heavily armed trucks headed Saturday to the strategic town of Kismayo in what appeared to be an imminent takeover attempt of one of the last seaports outside their control in Somalia, witnesses said. Key leaders of the Islamic militia -- which controls the capital, Mogadishu, along with much of southern Somalia -- have been in Kismayo for several days in direct challenge to the warlords who are in control there. Turkey
ANKARA -- Suspected Kurdish guerrillas set off an explosive-laden minibus across from a police guest house in eastern Turkey Saturday, injuring 17 people, the governor's office said. The Ford minibus parked across from the police guest house went off in eastern city of Igdir on the Armenian border. The blast shattered the windows of the guest house and other buildings in the area. Venezuela
CARACAS -- Venezuela's foreign minister said he was illegally detained for 90 minutes at a New York airport Saturday by U.S. authorities whom he accused of treating him abusively and attempting to frisk him. U.S. and U.N. officials called the incident regrettable but said Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro had been identified for "secondary screening" -- an added security check that can kick in for a variety of reasons.

 ENGLAND (94%); NEPAL (93%); GREECE (92%); HUNGARY (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); SOMALIA (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%);   GERMANY (79%)







 
 


September 23, 2006 Saturday



 Indian court ends ban on colas

 
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Thailand's new military rulers got their first taste of popular dissent Friday when about 100 protesters defied a ban on public gatherings to denounce the army's coup this week as undemocratic. 
The military leaders, meanwhile, appointed nine people to investigate corruption under ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and announced plans to write a new constitution to hold future leaders more accountable.
There was no violence or arrests, according to a protest leader and police.
PALU, Indonesia (AP) - Christians angered by Friday's executions of three Roman Catholic militants in the world's most populous Muslim country torched cars and government buildings, looted shops and attacked a jail, freeing hundreds.
The executions of the men, who faced a firing squad at 1:45 a.m. in Palu for a massacre at an Islamic school six years ago, appeared to smooth the way for the executions of three Muslims convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings. Some analysts said the government would be unwilling to spark public anger by executing the Muslims first.
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI has invited Muslim envoys to meet with him at his summer residence Monday for what the Holy See says is urgently needed dialogue following the crisis ignited by his remarks on Islam and violence. Turkey and Iran immediately said their representatives would attend.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian police guarding a Roman Catholic church exchanged fire for 20 minutes with would-be assailants and chased them away, residents said. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage to the shrine.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski shook up his Cabinet on Friday, dumping his coalition partner and bringing back his pro-market finance chief in a move that could lead to new elections.
President Lech Kaczynski - the prime minister's identical twin brother - granted his request to dismiss Andrzej Lepper from his two posts of deputy prime minister and agriculture minister.
COCHIN, India (AP) - The High Court on Friday overturned a ban on the production and sale of Coca-Cola and Pepsi soft drinks in the southern Indian state of Kerala, but state officials said they would seek ways to challenge the decision.
Kerala's government imposed the statewide ban after a New Delhi-based private research group alleged the soft drinks contain high levels of pesticides.

 






 
 


September 23, 2006 Saturday



 Indian court ends ban on colas

 
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Thailand's new military rulers got their first taste of popular dissent Friday when about 100 protesters defied a ban on public gatherings to denounce the army's coup this week as undemocratic. 
The military leaders, meanwhile, appointed nine people to investigate corruption under ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and announced plans to write a new constitution to hold future leaders more accountable.
There was no violence or arrests, according to a protest leader and police.
PALU, Indonesia (AP) - Christians angered by Friday's executions of three Roman Catholic militants in the world's most populous Muslim country torched cars and government buildings, looted shops and attacked a jail, freeing hundreds.
The executions of the men, who faced a firing squad at 1:45 a.m. in Palu for a massacre at an Islamic school six years ago, appeared to smooth the way for the executions of three Muslims convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings. Some analysts said the government would be unwilling to spark public anger by executing the Muslims first.
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI has invited Muslim envoys to meet with him at his summer residence Monday for what the Holy See says is urgently needed dialogue following the crisis ignited by his remarks on Islam and violence.
Turkey and Iran immediately said their representatives would attend.
Thousands of Muslim worshippers staged marches against Benedict in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and the Sudanese capital on Friday.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski shook up his Cabinet on Friday, dumping his coalition partner and bringing back his pro-market finance chief in a move that could lead to new elections.
President Lech Kaczynski - the prime minister's identical twin brother - granted his request to dismiss Andrzej Lepper from his two posts of deputy prime minister and agriculture minister.
COCHIN, India (AP) - The High Court on Friday overturned a ban on the production and sale of Coca-Cola and Pepsi soft drinks in the southern Indian state of Kerala, but state officials said they would seek ways to challenge the decision.
Kerala's government imposed the statewide ban after a New Delhi-based private research group alleged the soft drinks contain high levels of pesticides.

 
7


  
 (Oklahoma City, OK)

September 23, 2006 Saturday  




 Pope's message lost amid fury

 
 On Sept. 12, Pope Benedict XVI quoted words spoken by Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus in 1391. Manuel II said to an unidentified Persian scholar: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Thanks to the Internet, news of the pope's reference spread instantaneously around the world, resulting in violent reaction throughout the Muslim world and confusion throughout the West. 
 A Catholic nun has since been murdered in Somalia, al-Qaida has declared war against the Vatican in an Italian newspaper, followers of a British Muslim extremist have demanded that "the pope must die," Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused the pope of being in cahoots with President Bush and his "crusade against Islam," large groups of demonstrators burned effigies of the pope in Pakistan, India, and Indonesia, Christian churches in Egypt, Gaza, and the West Bank have been firebombed. College professors, political pundits and radio talk show hosts have all weighed in, either siding with the pope or opposing and criticizing him.
 But how many people -- Muslim, Christian, or otherwise -- have actually read the speech and know what the pope was saying?
 The full text of his speech is available to anyone with Internet access and the ability to read English, German, or Italian on the Vatican's Web site ( http://www.vatican.va/). In this seven-page lecture, titled "Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections," the pope uses Manuel II's conversation regarding the concept of Holy War as part of a larger theological reflection on the Catholic interpretation of the Greek concept of logos, that is the interplay of faith and reason.
 Benedict makes the case that true inter-cultural and interfaith dialogue cannot take place unless both sides fully acknowledge their particular logos. He argues that in the Christian West the pendulum has swung largely to the side of scientific reason without faith, and in the Islamic world the pendulum is on the side of faith without reason. His implied conclusion is that for any sort of meaningful dialogue to take place that could result in peaceful coexistence among Christians and Muslims, the pendulum must rest somewhere in the middle in an area that brings logos, the biblical Greek concept of the rational co-existence of faith and reason, to the forefront of the debate.
 Pope Benedict was not lambasting Islam any more than he was lambasting the secularist tendencies of the West. His speech is rich in theological theory, and intriguing in its analysis of how the "de-Hellenization" of current Christian interpretations of the New Testament has led to an unhealthy interpretation of the Bible. Ultimately he calls for both sides, but especially Christians, to reconnect with the Greek spirit of logos that he sees as essential to the successful coexistence of the world's two most influential religious traditions.
 I encourage anyone, Christian, Muslim, or other, to read the pope's speech before getting too worked up over a quote that actually plays a very small role in his overall argument.
 Kerr is a professor in the Department of History and Geography at the University of Central Oklahoma. 

 HOLY SEE (90%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); SOMALIA (79%); ISRAEL (79%); INDIA (79%); EGYPT (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%)







 
 



September 23, 2006 Saturday



 In the World

 
Attack on bus kills 19 in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan - Militants ambushed a bus carrying construction workers in the country's south yesterday, killing 19 of the laborers, and Afghan and NATO forces said they killed 35 Taliban fighters in two separate firefights. 
The attack on the bus in Kandahar province began when a roadside bomb exploded near the vehicle, said Zemeri Bashary, an Interior Ministry spokesman. Some laborers may have been killed by the bomb, while others were shot by militants who attacked the panicked workers with gunfire, he said.
In Oruzgan province, about 200 miles southwest of Kabul, police killed 25 Taliban fighters in a battle Thursday, said the provincial police chief, Gen. Kasam Khan. One policeman was killed and five were wounded, he said.
NATO forces and Afghan police also fought Taliban fighters in nearby Helmand province, killing 10 of the fighters, NATO said. One Afghan officer was reported killed.- AP
Iraqi leader: U.S. forces should stay
UNITED NATIONS - Iraq's president said yesterday that terrorist forces were using his country as "a steppingstone" for spreading violence and that military action alone would not stop them.
President Jalal Talabani also told the General Assembly that the government would not talk about a timetable for withdrawing U.S.-led forces until the Iraqi armed forces were capable of ending the insurgency and maintaining security.
He said the government was committed to a national reconciliation plan that it hopes will provide the protection and conditions needed to ensure security for the Iraqi people. At the same time, he said, efforts to build the Iraqi armed forces were making progress, but U.S.-led coalition troops were still needed.- APChristians riot
in Indonesia
PALU, Indonesia - Christians angered by yesterday's executions of three Roman Catholic militants in the world's most populous Muslim country torched cars and government buildings, looted shops, and attacked a jail, freeing hundreds of inmates.
The executions of the men in Palu for a massacre at an Islamic school six years ago appeared to smooth the way for the executions of three Muslims convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings.
Fabianus Tibo, 60, Marinus Riwu, 48, and Dominggus da Silva, 42, all executed yesterday, were convicted of leading a Christian militia that launched a series of attacks in May 2000 - including a machete and gun assault on an Islamic school that left at least 70 people dead. Muslim groups put the death toll at 191.- AP
Elsewhere:
Peru's former spymasterwas sentenced to 20 years in prison for engineering a deal that sent 10,000 assault rifles to Colombian guerrillas, the harshest verdict yet against the powerbroker behind former President Alberto Fujimori's autocratic regime. Vladimiro Montesinos, 61, is already serving a 15-year term on about a dozen corruption convictions.

 AFGHANISTAN (99%);  INDONESIA (92%); PERU (79%)







  
 

September 23, 2006 Saturday  




 U.S. DEATHS IN WAR MATCH 9; 
11

 
WASHINGTON -- U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now match those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America's history, the trigger for what came next. Add casualties from chasing terrorists elsewhere in the world, and the total has passed the Sept. 11 figure.
It may never be known with precision who was the 2,973rd man or woman of arms to die in conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, or just when it happened. The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. 
Not for the first time, a war that was started to answer death has resulted in at least as much death for the country that was first attacked, quite apart from the higher numbers of enemy and civilians killed, too.
The body count from World War II was far higher for Allied troops than for the crushed Axis. Americans lost more men in each of a succession of Pacific battles than the 2,390 people who died at Pearl Harbor in the attack that made the U.S. declare war on Japan. The U.S. lost 405,399 in the theaters of World War II.
Hamas Rejects Abbas Pledge
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- President Mahmoud Abbas' bumpy efforts to set up a Palestinian government acceptable to the West suffered a new setback yesterday when the prime minister from the Islamic militant Hamas group said he would not lead a coalition that recognizes Israel.
Hamas has ruled alone since March, but this month agreed to share power with Mr. Abbas' Fatah Party in hopes of ending a crippling international aid boycott of the Palestinian Authority.
The Hamas-Fatah coalition deal sidestepped recognition of Israel.
However, at the United Nations on Thursday, Mr. Abbas indicated a national unity government would recognize the Jewish state.
Pope Invites Muslim Envoys
VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI has invited Muslim envoys to meet with him at his summer residence Monday for what the Holy See says is urgently needed dialogue following the crisis ignited by his remarks on Islam and violence.
Turkey and Iran immediately said their representatives would attend.
Thousands of Muslim worshippers staged marches against Benedict in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and the Sudanese capital yesterday.
Executions Spark Violence
PALU, Indonesia -- Christians angered by yesterday's executions of three Roman Catholic militants in the world's most populous Muslim country torched cars and government buildings, looted shops and attacked a jail, freeing hundreds of inmates.
The executions of the men, who faced a firing squad at 1:45 a.m. in Palu for a massacre at an Islamic school six years ago, appeared to smooth the way for the executions of three Muslims convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla appealed for calm following yesterday's sectarian violence, which left at least five people injured.
2 Synagogues Vandalized
MOSCOW -- Two synagogues were vandalized in attacks nearly at the start of the Jewish New Year yesterday, highlighting rising xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Russia. No one was reported injured.
"If those who attacked the synagogues expected to scare Jews on those holy days, they have been mistaken," Russia's chief rabbi Berel Lazar said.
Unknown assailants threw a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in the Volga River city of Astrakhan in southern Russia, setting its door ablaze.
And in a pre-dawn attack on the synagogue in Khabarovsk, a city of 580,000 on the border with China, attackers shattered windows in the empty building.

  







 The Salt Lake Tribune
 
The Salt Lake Tribune

September 23, 2006 Saturday



 Keep an eye on Indonesia

 
The following editorial appeared Friday in The Dallas Morning News:
Remember the names Fabianus Tibo, Marianus Riwu and Dominggus Silva. They were Christian farmers from Indonesia executed by firing squad Thursday for purportedly instigating deadly Christian-Muslim violence in 2000. 
They went to their deaths proclaiming their innocence. Amnesty International and other human rights groups condemned their trial as a travesty of justice. Many call it an apparent sop by the government of the world's most populous Muslim nation to radicals who are angry over the imminent execution of three jihadists convicted of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings.
The march of jihad continues apace in Indonesia, a fragile Muslim democracy of 240 million people and a strategically vital American ally. For years, Laskar Jihad - one of several terror groups active in Indonesia - has been running a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the native Christian population - burning villages, bombing churches, slaughtering thousands and turning 100,000 Christians into refugees.
Last year, the U.S. State Department placed Indonesia on a "watch list" because of the increase in religious violence targeting Christians and other religious minorities, as well as against moderate Muslims - violence the Jakarta government is unable or unwilling to stop.
Radical Muslim groups are tightening the noose on Indonesia's fragile democracy, using violence and demagoguery to erode the secular constitution in favor of theocracy. The country's moderate Muslim majority is under increased pressure from the hard-liners.
Jakarta cracked down on terror groups after the Bali bombings but has been less effective in publicizing the wider threat. And it has been too tolerant of jihadist attacks on Christians and other religious minorities, which terror groups use as a means of recruitment in their long-term struggle to establish a hard-line state.
Far from defusing conflict with extremists, Jakarta only strengthened the jihadists by allowing Thursday's unjust executions.

  UNITED STATES (92%)







  



September 23, 2006 Saturday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
PALU, Indonesia  --  Thousands of Christians angered by Friday's executions of three Roman Catholic militants in the world's most populous Muslim country torched cars and government buildings, looted shops and attacked a jail, freeing hundreds of inmates. 
  The executions of the men, who faced a firing squad at 1:45 a.m. in Palu for their role in a massacre at an Islamic school six years ago, appeared to smooth the way for the executions of three Muslims convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings.   
 Vice President Jusuf Kalla appealed for calm. He said the executions had nothing to do with religion in this secular nation, which has about 190 million Muslims. 
 Fabianus Tibo, 60, Marinus Riwu, 48, and Dominggus da Silva, 42, were convicted of leading a Christian militia that launched a series of attacks in May 2000  --  including a machete and gun assault on an Islamic school that left at least 70 people dead. Muslim groups put the death toll at 191. 
 AFRICA 
*  KINSHASA, Congo  --  Congo's first freely elected parliament in more than 40 years convened, with President Joseph Kabila's coalition poised to appoint a prime minister. 
*  MOGADISHU, Somalia  --  A convicted murderer was executed by firing squad as thousands of people watched, the first public execution since Islamic fundamentalists seized control of the capital and much of southern Somalia in June.  
 EUROPE 
*  VATICAN CITY  --  Pope Benedict XVI has invited Muslim envoys to meet with him Monday for a dialogue after the crisis ignited by his remarks on Islam and violence. Turkey and Iran said their representatives would attend. 
 Thousands of Muslim worshipers staged marches against Benedict in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and the Sudanese capital. The Palestinian protesters waved green Hamas banners and denounced the pontiff as a "coward" and an "agent of the Americans." 
*  BUDAPEST  --  Opponents of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany vowed to stage the biggest anti-government demonstration yet in Budapest on Saturday after a fifth night of protests over his taped admission that he lied to win April's election. 
*  MOSCOW  --  Two synagogues were vandalized as the Jewish New Year neared, highlighting rising xenophobia and anti-Semitism. 
*  SARAJEVO, Bosnia  --  The United States will pull its last 150 soldiers out of Bosnia by December, a U.S. general said. The troops of Eagle Base near Tuzla are all that remain of the 38,000 troops that deployed as part of a NATO-led peace mission in 1995 after the Dayton Accords to end Bosnia's 1992-95 war.  
 THE MIDDLE EAST 
*  SANAA, Yemen  --  Yemeni opposition parties threatened to call a massive street protest to dispute partial election results that show their candidate losing by a wider margin than expected. The threat came after more allegations of fraud in Wednesday's elections, in which President Ali Abdullah Saleh faced Faisal bin Shamlan, his most serious challenger since he came to power in 1978.  
*  ANKARA, Turkey  --  Media outlets called on the government to scrap a law making it a crime to "insult Turkishness," saying it tarnished the image of a country seeking European Union membership. Novelist Elif Shafak was acquitted Thursday of charges that fictional characters in her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul" had insulted Turkey's identity by referring to a massacre of Armenians during Ottoman rule in 1915. 
*  BEIRUT  --  About 300 homeless dogs and cats left by owners who fled Lebanon during the Hezbollah-Israel war will head to the United States for adoption, an official said.  
 ASIA 
*  BANGKOK  --  Chatu Mongol Sonakul, a former central bank chief, has been tipped to become Thailand's interim civilian leader after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted in a military coup, the Bangkok Post reported Saturday. 
 On Friday, protesters defied a ban on public gatherings and denounced the overthrow, in the first anti-coup rally since Thaksin was deposed three days ago. The new military rulers appointed nine people to investigate corruption under Thaksin and announced plans to write a new constitution to hold leaders more accountable. 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  An 11-year-old Indonesian boy has died of bird flu, the Health Ministry said, increasing the country's death toll from the disease to 50. 
*  MUMBAI  --  An Indian court convicted an 82-year-old man for his role in 1993 bombings in Mumbai, the 12th guilty verdict in 10 days. 
*  TOKYO  --  Tokyo's nationalist governor said he plans to appeal a court ruling that allows teachers to defy orders to stand for the national flag and anthem, which are associated with Japan's past militarism. 
*  COCHIN, India  --  The High Court overturned a ban on the production and sale of Coca-Cola and Pepsi soft drinks in the Indian state of Kerala, but state officials said they would seek to challenge the decision. A New Delhi-based private research group alleged that the soft drinks contained high levels of pesticides. 
  --  From News Services 

 

 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation
 


September 22, 2006 Friday  




 THE WORLD

 
Palestinian regime to recognize Israel
UNITED NATIONS - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday that the planned national unity government will recognize Israel and renounce violence.
The Hamas-led Palestinian government has refused to recognize Israel, end violence and honor past agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.
"I would like to reaffirm that any future Palestinian government will commit to all the agreements that the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian National Authority have committed to," he said. 
Palestinians agreed last week to replace the Hamas-led government with a unity government of Hamas and Mr. Abbas' more moderate Fatah faction.
Pakistan leader tells of threat
WASHINGTON - President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan says the United States threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age after the 9-11 attacks if he did not help in America's war on terrorism.
Mr. Musharraf says the threat was delivered by Richard Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, to Mr. Musharraf's intelligence director, the Pakistani leader told CBS-TV's 60 Minutes.
"The intelligence director told me that (Mr. Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,'" Mr. Musharraf said in the interview to be shown Sunday.
"I think it was a very rude remark," he told reporter Steve Kroft.
But, Mr. Musharraf said, he reacted responsibly. "One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation and that is what I did," he said.
The White House and State Department declined to comment on the conversation.
Female bomber to be executed
AMMAN, JORDAN - A court sentenced an Iraqi woman to death by hanging Thursday for her role in an al-Qaida-led triple hotel bombing that killed 60 people in Jordan's worst terrorist attack.
Sajida al-Rishawi, 35, was intended to be one of the suicide bombers in the Nov. 9 attack. She entered a hotel ballroom with her husband, both strapped with explosives belts. He set off his belt, but she did not.
Death led to abuse, court told
BULFORD, ENGLAND - Mistreatment of Iraqis in custody was likely fueled by the death of a British army officer who was blown up by a bomb, according to testimony Thursday in the court-martial of seven soldiers charged with abusing detainees.
The death of Capt. Dai Jones, who was killed in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, and the fact that the Iraqi detainees were suspected of involvement in a second attack on members of the Royal Military Police, engendered feelings of hostility, prosecutor Julian Bevan told a military jury.
In other news
ABOUT 1,000 MUSLIM CLERICS and religious scholars meeting Thursday in eastern Pakistan demanded the removal of Pope Benedict XVI for making what they called "insulting remarks" against Islam.
CHILE'S PRESIDENT MICHELLE BACHELET said Thursday her decision to allow the government to distribute free morning-after contraception pills to girls as young as 14 was a matter of "equality" within Chilean society.
THREE CHRISTIAN MILITANTS were executed in Indonesia today for leading attacks on Muslims six years ago that left 70 people dead. The executions sparked clashes on Sulawesi island. Mobs torched cars and police posts, officials said.
NATO ALLIES ARE ANSWERING the call for more forces to battle the Taliban in Afghanistan, the alliance's leader said Thursday. U.S. troop levels will stay where they are, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan said.
HENRI JAYER, A MASTER OF supremely concentrated, immaculately balanced pinot noir who was viewed by connoisseurs to be the finest Burgundy winemaker of his generation, has died in Dijon, France. He was 84.
BRITAIN IS RELAXING RESTRICTIONS on carry-on baggage today, allowing musical instruments and larger bags to be taken aboard aircraft, the government said.
- Edited from wire reports by James Folker

 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (99%); ISRAEL (96%);  PAKISTAN (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); JORDAN (92%); ENGLAND (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%)







 The Durham Herald Co. 
Chapel Hill Herald (Durham, NC)

September 22, 2006 Friday  




 Generosity, not war, is the answer

 
The president's address on 9/11 was a disappointment. He missed a good opportunity to pull the nation together. Instead, he divided us further by once again associating the tragedy of the twin towers with the war in Iraq.
Following the attack, a strong sense of national unity spontaneously emerged as the whole country grieved, and the entire world reached out to us with expressions of heart-felt sympathy and outrage, even Arab nations. 
Now, five years later, America is bitterly divided, and our standing in the eyes of the international community is lower than it has ever been in our history.
I wish our president might have had the courage and humility to admit that the Iraq war has been a devastating mistake.
We know now that Iraq was never a threat to us and had no association with the terrorists who plotted against us.
We also know that the president's closest advisers had been looking for an excuse to invade Iraq for several years prior to 9/11.
The number of Americans killed in Iraq is almost equal to the number of people who died on 9/11, and Iraq has suffered incredible suffering by our being unable to stabilize the country. I would not be surprised if many Iraqis feel they would have been better off to have remained under Saddam.
Looking for yet another reason to justify our invasion, Bush insisted that the war was the centerpiece of the worldwide fight against terrorism. He argues that we are safer now because of it.
Just imagine how much safer we would be today had we kept our primary focus on Afghanistan. Imagine what we could have accomplished there had we invested the billions we have spent in Iraq constructing the infrastructure of the country that gave cover to Osama Bin Laden. Afghanistan might have emerged as an example of what American goodwill could accomplish. Instead, the Taliban has regrouped and the future of that country is threatened once more.
I wish our president had soft-pedaled the fear tactics and reminded us of that splendid statement by Franklin Roosevelt, that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." For it is fear that has prompted not only a failed foreign policy. It has also led to an eroding of our democracy here at home.
Indeed, I am convinced that the most dangerous threat to our nation is not the possibility of another terrorist attack but the attack upon our freedoms and our Constitution.
We are now a nation that spies on its citizens, that tries to justify torture, that keeps people in prison indefinitely without being charged, and now our president is insisting that he is above the law because of the terrorist crisis. He even wants to change the Geneva Conventions to permit more aggressive interrogations, a euphemism for tolerating torture!
And in so doing, we have lost the moral high ground in the eyes of the world.
There may be more danger of our democracy being destroyed from within than from terrorists attacking it from without.
Yet anyone who dares to criticize what is happening is seen as being unpatriotic.
Demonizing war critics reached a new low when the majority leader, Rep. John Boehner, accused those opposing the president's policies as being "more interested in protecting the terrorists than in protecting the American people." Freedom of speech carries with it a penalty of being called an appeaser.
The president insisted in his 9/11 address that we should be "resolute" in staying the course. Yet he has encouraged most of us to go about our daily lives as if the war does not exist. Despite the spiraling deficit from the Iraq invasion, huge tax cuts have been given to those who need it least.
And the burden of the fighting falls on volunteer recruits whose tours of duty get extended and repeated. Half of them are from low-income minority families. If we were "resolute," surely the draft would be reinstated so that all of us would feel the painful burden now imposed upon the willing few.
Our president keeps saying, "They hate us for our freedoms." In Iraq, most of the hatred is not toward us but Iraqi religious groups hating one another. And in the Arab world the hatred is not about our freedoms but about our hypocrisy, especially our refusal to have an even-handed policy with Israel and the Palestinians.
It is highly significant that two Muslim countries recently expressed more positive feelings toward America: Indonesia and Pakistan. Why? Because of our merciful response to the tsunami in Indonesia and the earthquake in Pakistan.
War is not the answer. You don't change ideas or establish democracy with guns.
Fear is more likely to be dissipated whenever generosity and goodwill trump the military.
Robert Seymour is the Minister Emeritus of the Binkley Memorial Baptist Church. Readers can contact him at RobertSeymour@Compuserve.com or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

  UNITED STATES (93%); AFGHANISTAN (92%)







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia)

September 22, 2006, Friday



 Nation & world

 
Hungarian prime minister denies he lied to voters
BUDAPEST, Hungary - With protesters massed outside the gates of the stately Hungarian parliament for a fourth straight day, Prime Minister Ferencz Gyurcsany sat in his wood-paneled office inside and tried to explain why he had admitted on tape that his party had done a "boneheaded" job of running the country and that he had lied to voters to win re-election. 
Looking weary and with his legs crossed, Gyurcsany said he was merely exaggerating for dramatic effect when he told a private meeting of party loyalists in May that "we lied in the morning, the night and the evening" to the public.
"It's important to emphasize that I did not lie," he said in an interview.
Christians executed
for attacks on Muslims
PALU, Indonesia - Christian mobs torched cars, looted Muslim-owned shops and burned a prison, freeing hundreds of inmates, in violence touched off by today's executions of three Roman Catholics convicted of instigating attacks on Muslims.
On the island of Flores, the executed men's birthplace, machete-wielding mobs ran through the streets today, sending women and children running in panic, police and witnesses said.
Fabianus Tibo, 60, Marinus Riwu, 48, and Dominggus da Silva, 42, were found guilty of leading a Christian militia that launched a series of attacks on Muslims in May 2000 that left at least 70 people dead.
Recognition of Israel
an obstacle for coalition
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The Palestinians' ruling Hamas group will not enter into a coalition government if recognizing Israel is a condition, a top Hamas political adviser said today, raising new doubts about President Mahmoud Abbas' ability to bring a more moderate government to power.
At the United Nations on Thursday, Abbas indicated that the planned national unity government between Hamas and his Fatah Party would recognize the Jewish state.
But the Hamas political adviser, Ahmed Yousef said today that "there won't be a national unity government if Hamas is asked to recognize Israel." Instead, he reiterated Hamas' offer of a long-term truce.
College cancels plans for Iranian leader's speech
UNITED NATIONS - Columbia University scrapped plans for a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, citing security and logistical problems.
Thursday's cancellation came after a Jewish activist group expressed outrage that the hard-line leader had been invited to speak.
Ahmadinejad, who was in New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly, drew widespread condemnation last year for calling the Holocaust a "myth" and saying Israel should be wiped off the map.
Bush to meet with leaders
of Pakistan, Afghanistan
WASHINGTON - President Bush is trying to settle troubles that have bubbled up between two U.S. allies in the war on terrorism who accuse each other of failing to crack down on extremists.
Bush was to meet today with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. He's following up that meeting with talks on Tuesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Then, they'll have a three-way sit down on Wednesday.
COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS
Bush is working to find a way to defuse the dispute between Pakistan, which is helping the United States track Osama bin Laden and restrain bin Laden's al-Qaida organization, and the struggling democratic government in Afghanistan.

 HUNGARY (95%); ISRAEL (94%);   AFGHANISTAN (79%);   PAKISTAN (79%)







 
 
 (Minnesota)

September 22, 2006 Friday



 Briefing: U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan will stay steady

 
NEW YORK -- Although NATO allies are answering the call for additional forces to battle the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, American troop levels probably will stay where they are for now, the top U.S. general there said Thursday. About 21,000 U.S. troops will remain at least until February, said Gen. James Jones. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was not precise Thursday about which nations have agreed to add forces, beyond a previously known commitment from Poland. He said several other countries wanted to keep their pledges quiet until their parliaments review them.

Thai coup leaders impose new rules
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's new military rulers tightened their grip Thursday, restricting political activities, assuming legislative powers and detaining some allies of the deposed prime minister. In announcements broadcast on all television stations, the military said it was banning all meetings by political parties and the creation of any new parties in the country. It said it was taking over the duties and responsibilities of parliament, which was dissolved when the coup leaders threw out the 1997 constitution. The Thai ruling council has also imposed media restrictions. 

3 Christian militants are executed
PALU, Indonesia -- Three Christian militants were executed by firing squad early today for leading attacks on Muslims six years ago that left at least 70 people dead, sparking fresh sectarian clashes on restive Sulawesi island, authorities reported. Mobs torched cars and police posts in several villages before security forces restored order, said Poso police chief Maj. Rudy Sufahriyadi. Elsewhere they blockaded roads and threw stones at houses and government offices. At least three people were reportedly injured. The men were taken before the firing squad at 12:15 a.m. (1:15 p.m. CDT Thursday), said a senior police officer who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Family members later said they had received confirmation of the deaths of the men.

Muslim clerics call for pope's removal
LAHORE, Pakistan -- About 1,000 Muslim clerics and religious scholars meeting Thursday in eastern Pakistan demanded the removal of Pope Benedict XVI for making what they called "insulting remarks" against Islam. Benedict "should be removed from his position immediately for encouraging war and fanning hostility between various faiths" and "making insulting remarks" against Islam, said a joint statement issued by the clerics and scholars at the end of their one-day convention. The meeting was organized by the radical Islamic group Jamaat al-Dawat. In April, Washington put the group on a list of terrorist organizations for its alleged links with militants.

Japan court voids patriotism measure
TOKYO -- A court ruled Thursday that an order forcing Tokyo teachers to stand before Japan's flag and sing an anthem to the emperor violated the constitution, a rare victory for the country's waning pacifist movement, plaintiffs' lawyers said. The decision bolstered opponents of Japan's growing emphasis on patriotism. The "Hinomaru" flag -- a red disc on a white field -- and the "Kimigayo" hymn to the emperor were made Japan's official symbols in 1999. Supporters of the symbols say Japanese children should be taught national pride, but opponents argue the flag and anthem are remnants of Japan's militarist period in the early 20th century and should be replaced.

Commerce agency loses 1,137 laptops
WASHINGTON -- The Commerce Department has lost 1,137 laptop computers since 2001, most of them assigned to the Census Bureau, officials said Thursday night. The Census Bureau, the main collector of information about Americans, lost 672 computers. Of those, 246 contained some personal data, the department said in a statement. However, no personal information from any of the missing computers has been known to have been improperly used, the department said. The number of people affected by the equipment losses could not be determined, the department said. "The amount of missing computers is high, but fortunately, the vulnerability for data misuse is low," Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in a statement.

Episcopal church to buck the IRS
PASADENA, Calif. -- An Episcopal church in Pasadena parish Thursday declared that it will refuse to comply with an Internal Revenue Service investigation into its tax-exempt status launched after a guest speaker chided President Bush in a sermon. At a news conference at All Saints Episcopal Church, the Rev. Ed Bacon said his 3,500-member congregation did not violate tax regulations when a former rector, George Regas, criticized the Bush administration two days before the 2004 presidential election. The All Saints case escalated a week ago when the IRS slapped the 80-year-old parish with a summons demanding that it turn over all materials, such as newsletters and sermons, produced during the 2004 election year with political references.

Democrats criticize Chavez's remarks
WASHINGTON -- Congressional Democrats who usually hurl fire-and-brimstone criticism at President Bush came to his defense on Thursday as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez again branded Bush as "the devil." Chavez, said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, is an "everyday thug." Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., another frequent Bush critic, said bad-mouthing the president is a privilege reserved for Americans, "whether they voted for him or not." During a speech Wednesday at the United Nations, Chavez -- a longtime Bush critic -- said, referring to Bush, "The devil himself is right in the house.''

 UNITED STATES (96%); AFGHANISTAN (94%); JAPAN (92%); INDONESIA (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); THAILAND (90%); POLAND (79%)







  



September 22, 2006 Friday  




 Coup Leaders Restrict Politi ...

 
 BANGKOK  --  Thailand's new military rulers tightened their grip Thursday, restricting political activities, assuming legislative powers and detaining some allies of the deposed prime minister. 
  In announcements broadcast on all television stations, the military said it was banning all meetings by political parties and the creation of new parties. It said it was taking over the duties and responsibilities of parliament, which was dissolved when the coup leaders threw out the 1997 constitution. 
  The Thai ruling council has also imposed media restrictions and ordered the Information Ministry to stop the distribution of information "deemed harmful" to its agenda.  
  There was no challenge to the Thai military's authority from the ousted prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who issued his first statement since the coup. The billionaire said from London that he planned to take a "deserved rest" from politics and hoped to carry out "possible charitable work for Thailand." 
  The coup group empowered an auditor to investigate government corruption, which could lead to the confiscation of Thaksin's wealth. Analysts said that proving allegations of corruption by Thaksin was necessary to legitimize the coup. 
 ASIA 
*  PALU, Indonesia  --  Three Christian militants were executed by firing squad Friday for leading attacks on Muslims six years ago that left at least 70 people dead, sparking fresh sectarian clashes on restive Sulawesi island, police said. 
  Mobs torched cars and police posts in several villages before order was restored, said the police chief in the town of Poso. Elsewhere they blockaded roads and threw stones at houses and government offices. At least three people were hurt. 
  The three men executed were convicted of leading a militia that launched a series of attacks in May 2000  --  including an assault on an Islamic school. Human rights workers called their 2001 trial a sham. 
*  LAHORE, Pakistan  --  About 1,000 Muslim clerics and religious scholars meeting Thursday in eastern Pakistan demanded the removal of Pope Benedict XVI for making what they called "insulting remarks" against Islam. The meeting was organized by the radical Jamaat al-Dawat, which the United States considers a terrorist group. 
  Meanwhile in Nairobi, Sister Leonella Sgorbati, who was slain outside a hospital where she worked as a missionary in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, was remembered as a devoted nun who was willing to die to help starving and sick Africans. 
  The 65-year-old nun was shot in the back four times Sunday in an attack possibly linked to Muslim anger toward the pope, hours after a top Somali cleric condemned the pope's Sept. 12 remarks.  
 EUROPE 
*  WARSAW  --  Poland's conservatives abruptly ended their rocky coalition with the leftist Self-Defense party after bitter rows over next year's budget and plans to send more troops to Afghanistan. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said he would try to assemble another majority in parliament but said early elections were possible. 
*  THE HAGUE  --  The justice and housing ministers resigned after accepting blame for safety lapses in a fire that killed 11 illegal immigrants in an airport jail last year. 
*  OSLO  --  Four men charged with firing shots at an Oslo synagogue  last weekend have also been accused of plotting to blow up the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Oslo, an attorney for one of the accused men said. 
 THE AMERICAS 
*  CALLAO, Peru  --   Former Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos was found guilty after a nearly three-year trial and sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of organizing a deal that parachute-dropped 10,000 assault rifles to Colombian leftist guerrillas seven years ago.  
 Montesinos, 61, and five co-defendants were also fined $3.1 million. The latest sentence adds five years to Montesinos's 15-year term for previous corruption convictions.  
   --  From News Services 

 SOMALIA (92%); THAILAND (92%); INDONESIA (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%);  POLAND (79%); KENYA (79%); EUROPE (79%); AFRICA (79%); ASIA (79%)




8


 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation
 


September 21, 2006 Thursday  




 THE WORLD

 
Iran is biggest threat, Israeli minister says
UNITED NATIONS - The Israeli foreign minister on Wednesday warned that Iranian leaders pose the biggest threat to international values as they "speak proudly" of their wish to destroy Israel and pursue weapons to achieve that objective. 
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the annual U.N. General Assembly session that the international community must stand up against Iran, which she claimed is pursuing the weapons to destroy Israel, a reference to its suspect nuclear program.
"There is no greater challenge to our values than that posed by the leaders of Iran," Ms. Livni said. "They deny and mock the Holocaust. They speak proudly and openly of their desire to wipe Israel off the map. And now, by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective, to imperil the region and to threaten the world."
U.S. denounces Thailand coup
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Wednesday denounced the military coup that seized control of Thailand and hinted that U.S. aid, military cooperation and improved trade relations might be in jeopardy.
"There is no justification for it," State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said, adding, "It is a step backward for democracy."
Mr. Casey said U.S. assistance programs for Thailand had been put under review. At the White House, spokesman Tony Snow said negotiations on a free trade agreement with Thailand depended on restoration of democracy.
The coup leaders Tuesday seized control from a government headed by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, suspended the Constitution and declared martial law.
Protests grow in Hungary
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY - Thousands of protesters demonstrated outside parliament for a fourth day Wednesday, demanding Hungary's prime minister resign over a leaked recording in which he admitted his government lied about the the economy.
Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany stood his ground, insisting his government intended to press ahead with economic reforms.
Storms lash India, Bangladesh
DHAKA, BANGLADESH - Storms in Bangladesh and India left at least 65 people dead and hundreds missing as they capsized boats, toppled houses and washed away roads.
Rescuers recovered at least 19 bodies Wednesday along the Bay of Bengal after sudden storms hit Bangladesh's southern coast, the reports said.
Hundreds of people, including a naval commander, were missing after the storms started late Tuesday, the United News of Bangladesh said.
In India, torrential rains and floods killed at least 31 people over the past two days in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, officials said. The people died when their houses collapsed or were swept away by floodwaters, said G.T. Priyadarshini, a relief official.
In other news
THE AFRICAN UNION announced Wednesday it will extend the mandate of a peacekeeping force in Darfur through Dec. 31, avoiding a showdown for now over Sudan's refusal to permit the United Nations to take over the mission and triple its size.
JAPAN'S LIKELY NEXT PREMIER, outspoken conservative Shinzo Abe, pressed for summits with China and South Korea on Wednesday after being tapped to head the country's ruling party in a vote heralding a swing to the right.
INDONESIAN OFFICIALS SAID Wednesday that they had deployed thousands of police on Sulawesi island ahead of this week's planned executions of three Christian men found guilty of leading deadly attacks on Muslims six years ago.
CLASHES AND BOMBINGS left up to 34 Taliban fighters and one policeman dead in Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.
- Edited from wire reports by James Folker

 







 


September 21, 2006 Thursday  




 EDITORIAL Pope's sensible effort for calm

 
Pope Benedict XVI set off quite a firestorm last week by quoting a late-14th century description of Islam as "evil and inhumane." When parts of the Islamic world responded with anti-Christian violence, he said he was "deeply sorry" over any hurt caused by his remarks. 
That should be the end of this episode, but instead an Islamic group wants more of an apology and threatens to target all Christians living in the Gaza Strip, including attacks on churches and Christian-owned institutions and homes. Al-Qaeda in Iraq warned that its war against Christianity and the West will go on until Islam takes over the world.
Protests took place in South Asia and Indonesia. Demonstrators in southern Iraq burned an effigy of the Pope. And this week, an Italian nun was murdered in Somalia - an attack possibly linked to anger over the Pope's remarks.
In its proper context, Benedict's speech at the University of Regensberg in Germany actually denounced religious violence and suggested that reason should be a common ground for a "genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today." He spoke of how Western science and philosophy had separated themselves from faith, leading to an increasing secularization of Europe.
But much of the Islamic world only heard him quoting Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus as saying: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
One columnist wrote that the uproar was "to some extent a case of 'German professor meets sound-bite culture,' with a phrase from a tightly wrapped academic argument shot into global circulation, provoking an unintended firestorm."
The Pope, just 18 months into his papacy, should know that he needs to choose his words carefully. Wednesday, he said the emperor's words don't reflect his own views and he expressed "profound respect" for Muslims.
The uproar over his comments is reminiscent of the furor stoked earlier this year by Danish cartoons showing Muhammad as a suicide bomber. Radicals rushed to turn criticism to violence before moderate voices could prevail. They have stepped forward again. Hasyim Muzadi, head of Indonesia's largest Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, had it right: ``The Pope has apologized, and that's enough, so let's calm down,'' he said. ``If we remain furious, then the Pope will be proved correct.''

 IRAQ (92%); INDONESIA (90%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); ASIA (77%); EUROPE (76%); SOMALIA (71%); GERMANY (70%); SOUTHERN ASIA (56%); CENTRAL EUROPE (55%); DENMARK (54%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


September 21, 2006 Thursday



 World datelines

 
Afghanistan
KABUL -- Clashes and bombings killed 34 Taliban fighters and one policeman in Afghanistan, while President Hamid Karzai told the U.N. Wednesday that terrorist sanctuaries elsewhere must be destroyed to eliminate the violence engulfing his country. 
Britain
LONDON -- Shouting protesters interrupted Home Secretary John Reid, Britain's top law official, during a speech Wednesday in which he urged Muslim parents to watch their children closely for signs of extremism.
China
BEIJING -- The United States and China are launching a new high-level economic dialogue meant to repair relations soured by trade tensions, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and a Chinese leader said Wednesday.
Egypt
CAIRO -- Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egypt's president, urged the nation to consider developing nuclear energy, a proposal that could help establish his own credentials as a serious politician and publicly distance him from the United States.
Ethiopia
ADDIS ABABA -- Severe diarrhea has killed nearly 200 people in Ethiopia and another 19,000 have fallen ill since April, according to the United Nations.
Germany
FRANKFURT -- A U.S. attack helicopter crashed on a training mission in southern Germany, killing two American soldiers, the U.S. military said Wednesday.
Hungary
BUDAPEST -- Hundreds of police fired water cannon and tear gas at demonstrators seeking to force the prime minister from office in a second day of protests, but he stood his ground Wednesday and said his government intended to carry out his reforms.
Indonesia
PALU -- Indonesian officials said Wednesday they had deployed thousands of police on Sulawesi island ahead of this week's planned executions of three Christian men found guilty of leading deadly attacks on Muslims six years ago.
Kazakhstan
ALMATY -- Coal mining accidents Wednesday in Kazakhstan and Ukraine killed at least 45 workers and left eight missing and presumed dead, raising concerns about mine safety in the former Soviet republics.
Latvia
RIGA -- Latvia's former prime minister, Einars Repse, said Wednesday he accidentally killed a pedestrian while driving on a remote road and would stop campaigning for parliament, although he will remain a candidate.
Saudi Arabia
DHAHRAN -- A fire erupted Wednesday at an oil refinery in eastern Saudi Arabia, killing one employee before it was extinguished, said Saudi Aramco, the company that owns the complex.
South Africa
PIETERMARITZBURG -- In a boost to his presidential hopes, a judge on Wednesday dismissed a corruption indictment against Jacob Zuma, who walked from court and broke into a Zulu song, "Bring me my machine gun." Jubilant supporters sang along, convinced the populist politician's quest to lead South Africa has gained momentum.
Sudan
The African Union said Wednesday it will extend the mandate of peacekeeping forces in Darfur through the end of the year, ensuring that international troops will remain in the war-torn Sudanese province for now.
Ukraine
KIEV -- A methane blast ripped through a coal mine in eastern Ukraine early Wednesday, killing 13 miners and injuring 36 others, rescuers said.
Vietnam
HANOI -- Pham Xuan An, who led a remarkable and perilous double life as a communist spy and a respected reporter for Western news organizations during the Vietnam War, died Wednesday at age 79 at a military hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

 AFGHANISTAN (95%); UNITED STATES (94%); CHINA (94%); SAUDI ARABIA (93%); SUDAN (93%);  ETHIOPIA (92%); UKRAINE (92%); SOUTH AFRICA (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (92%); KAZAKHSTAN (92%); EGYPT (92%); GERMANY (91%); LATVIA (90%); AFRICA (79%); HUNGARY (79%)








 


September 21, 2006 Thursday  
THIRD EDITION



 DIGEST

 
UNITED NATIONS
Destroy terrorist havens elsewhere, Karzai urges
President Hamid Karzai told the United Nations on Wednesday that terrorist sanctuaries elsewhere must be destroyed to eliminate the violence engulfing his country. 
In a clear reference to Pakistan, Karzai told the United Nation's General Assembly in New York that "terrorism does not emanate from within Afghanistan" but that his country "is its worst victim."
In Washington, NATO's top commander, U.S. Gen. James L. Jones, said that after weeks of prodding, European nations have agreed to provide more troops for the alliance in Afghanistan.
UNITED NATIONS
African Union extends mission in Darfur
The African Union said Wednesday that it would extend the mandate of peacekeeping forces in Darfur through the end of the year, ensuring that international troops will remain in the Sudanese province for now.
An underfunded African Union force in Darfur has been largely unable to stop violence in Darfur. Both the African Union and the U.N. Security Council have called for the United Nations to run the mission.
NASSAU, BAHAMAS
Smith autopsy brings complaints of favoritism
Authorities said Monday they have overhauled their system for medical inquests and reassigned the coroner handling the death of celebrity Anna Nicole Smith's son following complaints that she had received special treatment.
Chief Magistrate Roger Gomez said judicial officials decided to change the system so that more judges can preside over inquests in part because of complaints that head coroner Linda Virgill scheduled an inquest just three days after the death of Daniel Smith, 20.
PALU, INDONESIA
Executions are set; Christians call for calm
Indonesian officials said Wednesday that they had sent thousands of police to Sulawesi Island ahead of this week's planned executions of three Christian men found guilty of killing at least 70 Muslims six years ago.
Amid complaints that the men did not receive a fair trial, a top Christian leader urged his community not to resort to violence.
Government officials, lawyers and priests said the convicts would face a firing squad today or early Friday.

 SUDAN (94%); AFRICA (94%); AFGHANISTAN (93%);   PAKISTAN (92%); BAHAMAS (79%); EUROPE (79%)







 Lincoln Journal Star,
 


September 20, 2006 Wednesday  




 The greatest Nebraskan you may never have heard of

 
He was born in Waverly in 1906. Theodore Roosevelt was president, and Nebraska had been a state for less than 40 years.
His name was Henry Beachell, but everyone called him Hank. Raised on a wheat farm in western Nebraska, he obtained his bachelor's degree in agronomy at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1930. Shortly thereafter, he accepted a position at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Although his desire was to work on wheat, the only position open was one dealing with rice. Beachell reluctantly accepted it. The decision no doubt seemed less than ideal at the time, but it would have momentous consequences for hundreds of millions of people. 
By any measure, Beachell had a successful career at USDA during his 32 years of service. But it was after retiring in 1963, when he took a position at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, that he made his "Eureka!" discovery that would change the world.
At IRRI, Beachell worked assiduously to find a new, high-yielding rice. While walking among his test crops one day in 1963, he noticed the third plant in row 288 on IRRI's experimental field. It was short but exceptionally sturdy, the progeny of a marriage between a thick-stalked variety from Taiwan and a taller, more supple pest-resistant plant from Indonesia. Beachell was intrigued. His further tests showed it would respond very effectively to the application of fertilizer, mature early, and yield significantly more grain than traditional varieties.
Beachell named this variety IR-8, but it would soon become famous all over Asia and around the world as "miracle rice."
Ambassador Kenneth Quinn was a young development officer in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam when IR-8 arrived in 1968. He recalls that its impact was stunning and immediate. In the villages where the new rice was cultivated, life was transformed dramatically.
Suddenly, farmers could plant two or even three crops of rice a year, whereas only one smaller harvest had previously been possible. This greatly increased grain production provided farm families with additional income that translated into improved housing, more nutritious food and healthier children.
The ambassador noted an additional indirect - but very important - effect: the Viet Cong guerrillas now had a much harder time recruiting young men for their movement, since improved economic prospects reduced willingness on the part of young men to leave home. Security was thus greatly enhanced in a way that not even previous bombing or large-scale military operations could match. A lesson with potential relevance today as we confront terrorism that is rooted in remote, undeveloped areas of countries of the Middle East.
Beachell went off to Indonesia in 1970, where he helped spread his new "miracle rice" across that huge Muslim archipelago. There and throughout Southeast Asia, the new rice took hold and uplifted the livelihoods and well-being of hundreds of millions of people. It was a true "Green Revolution."
In 1996, Beachell and another research scientist from India who worked with him at IRRI received the $250,000 World Food Prize, known informally as the "Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture." It was presented to him in a ceremony in Des Moines by another agricultural hero of the Midwest - Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, the Iowa native and World Food Prize founder who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for perfecting "miracle wheat."
To help ensure that Beachell's enormous contributions are not lost on history, we have worked closely with Ambassador Quinn to establish six Hank Beachell Scholarships for Nebraska high school students to attend the World Food Prize's annual Youth Institute beginning in October.
The students will interact with World Food Prize laureates and other experts from around the world and present their own papers on a topic in global food security. Our goal is to use this program to encourage the study of science in high school by selecting the top students in Nebraska to participate in this prestigious gathering.
On Sept. 21, Beachell will turn 100. He probably cannot come back home to celebrate his birthday, however. He is blind, in poor health and living in Texas. Yet he deserves a special place in the pantheon of Nebraska heroes for all he has done to feed the world. It would therefore be marvelous if there were a way for all of Nebraska to remember and recognize his achievements.
Oct. 16 is World Food Day around the world. In Iowa, Oct. 16 is Dr. Norman Borlaug/World Food Prize Day.
We hope the governor and the state Legislature will proclaim Oct. 16 as Dr. Hank Beachell/World Food Prize Day in Nebraska. There could not be a better birthday present for Hank. And who knows? Maybe one of those Nebraska high school students attending the World Food Prize Youth Institute in his name will be inspired to become the next Hank Beachell.
Waller is dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Kostelnik is dean of UNL's College of Education and Human Sciences.

  INDONESIA (92%); ASIA (91%); VIET NAM (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); TAIWAN (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%)







 Tribune Review Publishing 
 


September 20, 2006 Wednesday



 The pope on God & the Prophet

 
WASHINGTON 
 To bank the firestorm ignited by his address in Regensburg, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI declared himself "deeply sorry" for the effect his remarks have had on the Muslim world. The words of the Byzantine emperor he quoted, Benedict explained, were "from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thoughts." 
 The pope's subject was the "profound harmony" of biblical truth and Greek thought. No conflict exists, he argued, between true faith and right reason. Contending violence is the antithesis of reason, he cited the "erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus," during a siege of Constantinople, between A.D. 1394 and 1402.  
 Benedict's words merit being put into context. 
 "I would like to discuss one point -- itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole -- which ... can serve as the starting point for my reflections on this issue. 
 "In the seventh conversation ... the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 (of the Quran) reads, 'There is no compulsion in religion.' 
 "According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions developed later and recorded in the Quran concerning holy war. ... 
 "(The emperor) addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence ... saying, 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'" 
 The explosion followed. For it was reported that Pope Benedict had endorsed the view that the only innovations the Prophet made to the monotheistic faiths were "evil and inhuman." The pope did not say this and has denied that he believes this. 
 Yet the issues he raised, that true faith and right reason are never in conflict, that force is intolerable in advancing God's word, merit discussion. 
 How did the Christians conquer the Roman Empire after 300 years of persecution? By living the Gospel, preaching the Word and dying for the faith. But Islam came out of the desert to conquer the Holy Land, North Africa and Spain in a single century by the sword. Islam is a fighting faith. 
 In 1095, Urban II preached the First Crusade to end the abuse of Christian pilgrims and recapture the Holy City and Holy Sepulcher. Moslems view these Crusades as Christian wars of aggression. Yet the martial means the Crusaders used to recapture Jerusalem were the same as those the Caliph Umar had used to conquer the Holy City. 
 For centuries, European Christians fought the Islamic world. In 1492, Muslims were expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. In the early 16th century, Suleiman the Magnificent invaded the Balkans, defeated the Hungarians at Bohacs and besieged Vienna. The Balkan wars of Suleiman bear little resemblance to the Christian crusades of Dr. Billy Graham. 
 In our own time, however, the issues Pope Benedict addressed -- the harmony between faith and reason, and the disharmony between force and faith -- have re-arisen. 
 In Afghanistan this year, a Christian convert was threatened with beheading for apostasy. In Indonesia, Nigeria and Sudan, Muslims are at war with Christians, in the Middle East with Israelis, in Chechnya with Russians, in India with Hindus, in Thailand with Buddhists. 
 In the West, a militant secularism has seized state power and the de-Christianization of America is well advanced. In the East, we had best recognize that the rage, militancy and intolerance so often on display are the unmistakable marks of a rising, not a dying, faith. 
 Pat Buchanan edits The American Conservative magazine. 

 GERMANY (73%)







 
 
 (Minnesota)

September 20, 2006 Wednesday



 Critics say pope failed test of diplomatic skills; 
Comment on Islam may hurt interfaith relations

 
This is exactly what Pope Benedict's critics feared.
After he was selected last year to replace John Paul II, they worried the conservative, erudite pontiff would be too polarizing to push interfaith dialogue forward as his popular predecessor had for 26 years.
The uneventful start to Benedict's papacy seemed to refute those concerns. But now, Vatican observers worry his Sept. 12 word choice about Islam will hinder efforts on two crucial Vatican interests: securing religious rights of Catholics in Muslim countries, and prodding Islamic leaders to more forcefully condemn Muslim terrorists. 
"Anytime a ... speech like this gets distorted a bit, lifted up and made an international cause celebre, it can't help, and it certainly hurts any other efforts to engage in dialogue," said Scott Appleby, director of the Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. "It's a setback for more discreet, behind-the-scenes, day-to-day dialogue."
None of the experts interviewed for this story felt Benedict's words -- quoting a 14th-century emperor that the teachings of Islam's founder were "evil and inhuman" -- justified violent reactions like those unfolding in many parts of the world. And they were confident his attempts to apologize Sunday would reduce long-term fallout.
But most echoed concerns raised in 2005 that Benedict, with his background as a theologian and professor, lacks the diplomacy skills expected in the modern age from the head of a religion with more than a billion adherents.
The uproar also has reignited criticism that Benedict should not have transferred Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, a top Vatican expert on Islam, to a posting in Egypt in February.
Over the weekend, the British Broadcasting Corp. posted on its Web site a 4-month-old interview with the Rev. Thomas Reese, former editor of the religiously progressive, Jesuit-run magazine America, in which Reese warned of consequences from Fitzgerald's transfer.
"He was the smartest guy in the Vatican on relations with Muslims. You don't exile someone like that, you listen to them," the interview read, continuing:
"If the Vatican says something dumb about Muslims, people will die in parts of Africa and churches will be burned in Indonesia, let alone what happens in the Middle East," said Reese, who is said to have lost his editor's job, shortly after Benedict became pope, because of Vatican pressure on the Jesuits.
Even before he became pope in April 2005 and took the name Benedict, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had agitated many Muslims as chief of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
A document he co-wrote in 2000, reflecting Catholic orthodoxy, said non-Christians are "in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation." And in 2004 he publicly opposed the European Union membership of Turkey, a secular Muslim nation, telling the French magazine Le Figaro that "Europe is a cultural continent, not a geographical one," and that "the roots that have formed it" are Christian.
Now, in the days after the controversial "evil and inhuman" comments made in a university setting in Regensburg, Germany, in a broader lecture on the faith and reason, multiple churches in Palestinian areas have been attacked, a nun in Somalia was shot to death, and a group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq predicted "doom" for him and the West.
Many influential Muslim clerics have criticized Benedict's words nonviolently. Others have accepted his apology and called for calm.
"The pope probably did not anticipate the depth and scope of the reaction, and he should and will learn a lesson from that," Appleby said. "It's partly the pope's fault, the media's fault, and the climate today -- the eagerness to jump on something and to be offended."
To some, including the line at all reflected an innate lack of diplomatic skills, and confirmed the oft-voiced view that Benedict cares less about harmonious interfaith relations than John Paul.
John Allen Jr., author of a biography of the pope, said Benedict might never have made the speech had it been properly reviewed. But Fitzgerald was in Egypt, and the Vatican was in a transition period between secretaries of state.
Online: Text of the pope's speech is at www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_ university-regensburg_en.html.

 HOLY SEE (93%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); EGYPT (79%);  AFRICA (72%)







 
 


September 19, 2006 Tuesday



 Pope's words continue to inflame

 
n Baghdad, Iraq
U.S. soldiers trying to win back Baghdad's streets say they have been surprised by the power and popularity of Shiite militias, whose presence they view as a major obstacle to curbing violence in the city. 
Some soldiers, interviewed during operations in recent days in eastern Baghdad, said they believe the militias outnumber and outgun Iraqi forces. That is troubling because Iraqi forces are supposed to maintain order once the Americans are gone.
Even more troubling, the soldiers suspect that militia leaders, most notably radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, enjoy greater support among the Shiite residents of the capital than do Iraqi security forces.
"If the Iraqi police and Iraqi army had a guy like (al-Sadr) - someone people believe in - maybe they'd be a little stronger," said Capt. Dwayne Waits, 30, of Little Rock, Ark.
See story on Page 1A
* Cairo, Egypt
Al-Qaida in Iraq warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that its war against Christianity and the West will go on until Islam takes over the world, and Iran's supreme leader called for more protests over the pontiff's remarks on Islam.
Protests broke out in South Asia and Indonesia, with angry Muslims saying Benedict's statement of regret a day earlier did not go far enough. In southern Iraq, demonstrators carrying black flags burned an effigy of the pope.
Islamic leaders around the world issued more condemnations of the pope's comments, but some moderates in the Middle East appeared to be trying to put a damper on the outrage, fearing it could spiral into attacks on Christians in the region.
See story on Page 2A






 
 

September 19, 2006 Tuesday



 -QAEDA'S PAPAL PREYERS DECLARE AN UNHOLY WAR (S) -'WORLD CONQUER' QAEDA MAKES PONTIFF'S CASE (LCF)

 
Muslim terrorists proved Pope Benedict XVI's point yesterday - vowing to fight Christianity and spill blood until Islam conquers the world.  
"You infidels and despots, we will continue our jihad and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism, when God's rule is established governing all people and nations," an Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq-led umbrella group of extremists said.  
Another Iraqi terrorist group, Ansar al-Sunna, challenged "sleeping Muslims" to prove their manhood by doing something other than "issuing statements or holding demonstrations." It called the pope "the stupid pig . . . prancing with his blasphemies in his house."   
"Let him wait for the day coming soon when the armies of the religion of right knock on the walls of Rome," the group said in a Web statement.  
The declarations of religious war came despite the pope's second expression of regret over the worldwide fury that greeted a speech he made last Tuesday.  
In it, he quoted a medieval text that said Islam is spread by the sword and called some of the Prophet Mohammed's teaching "evil and inhuman."  
President Bush said yesterday that Pope Benedict was sincere in his apology for his comments, a U.S. official said.  
Bush gave his assessment in bilateral talks with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in New York ahead of a U.N. General Assembly session today.  
"The president noted that the pope had made some apologies for his remarks. The president believed the pope was sincere in those remarks," Dennis Wilder, White House senior director for East Asian affairs, told reporters.  
Yesterday, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the speech was "the latest chain of the crusade against Islam started by America's [President] Bush."  
"The Great Satan [United States] is playing its role in this issue," he said, and added:  
"Those who benefit from the pope's comments and drive their own arrogant policies should be targeted with attacks and protests."  
In London, Anjem Choudary, a militant Muslim lawyer, said during a protest outside Westminster Cathedral that those who insulted Islam should be killed. But the pope was defended by the European Union and the archbishop of Canterbury, who said his words were taken out of context.  
That did little to stem the escalating protests from Indonesia to the Mideast yesterday:  
* In Iraq's southern city of Basra, up to 150 demonstrators chanted slogans and burned a white effigy of the pope.  
* In Egypt, a parliamentary committee called for the expulsion of the Vatican envoy if the pope did not apologize more forcefully.  
* In Jakarta, Indonesia, more than 100 people rallied in front of the heavily guarded Vatican Embassy waving banners that said the "pope is building religion on hatred."  
On Sunday, the pope said he was "deeply sorry" about the angry reaction to his speech in which he cited the words of a Byzantine emperor.  
But the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, which represents 400,000 Muslims, said it "does not appear the pope is distancing himself from his Tuesday statement."         
With Post Wire Services    
--- 
Fire & brimstone  
Muslim protests against Pope Benedict yesterday: 
* BASRA, IRAQ - 150 demonstrators chanted slogans, burned effigy of the pope. 
* JAKARTA, INDONESIA - 100 people waved signs outside the Vatican Embassy. 
* DAMASCUS, SYRIA - 200 Muslims staged a sit-in at an Islamic shrine. 
* MUZAFFARARAD, KASHMIR - 150 protesters marched and chanted, "Death to the pope!"  

  

 
 

Philadelphia Daily News

September 19, 2006 Tuesday



 Briefly... NATION/WORLD

 
Motive? Capitol invader
high on crack, cops say
A man with a gun in his pocket who was high on crack crashed a stolen SUV onto the U.S. Capitol grounds yesterday and ran past security, charging all the way to the basement before he was nabbed, police said.
Capitol Police said the man drove over a barrier and through a construction zone for a new visitor center before crashing and sprinting inside. 
The suspect was identified as 20-year-old Carlos Greene of Silver Spring, Md. He was tackled by police and congressional aides, and apparently suffered a seizure. Greene was charged with weapons possession and assault of a police officer.
In Iraq, 41 people killed,
dozens are wounded
Bombers and gunmen killed at least 41 people and wounded dozens across Iraq yesterday.
The U.S. military relinquished control of a second Iraqi army division as Iraqi officials prepared to further tighten security ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when insurgent attacks tend to spike.
Al Qaeda in Iraq to Pope:
Islam will rule the world
Al Qaeda in Iraq warned Pope Benedict XVI yesterday that its war against Christianity and the West will go on until Islam takes over the world, and Iran's supreme leader called for more protests over the pontiff's remarks on Islam.
Protests broke out in South Asia and Indonesia, with angry Muslims saying Benedict's statement of regret a day earlier did not go far enough. But some moderates in the Middle East appeared to be trying to put a damper on the outrage, fearing it could spiral into attacks on Christians in the region.
A smoke-detector scare
on orbiting space station
An oxygen generator on the international space station overheated and spilled a toxic irritant yesterday, forcing the three-man crew to don masks and gloves in the first emergency ever declared aboard the 8-year-old orbiting outpost.
NASA said the crew members' lives were never in any danger. They cleaned up the spill with towels. A charcoal filter scrubbed the irritant out of the air. And within a couple of hours life, aboard the station 220 miles above Earth was nearly back to normal.
NASA never came close to ordering the crew to leave the station, space station program manager Mike Suffredini said. But astronauts did reveal they were worried.
Bush: If you can't read,
you can't enjoy freedom
President Bush yesterday linked his push for democratic reform across the world with first lady Laura Bush's call for governments to embrace literacy programs to improve lives.
"The simple act of teaching a child to read or an adult to read has the capacity to transform nations and yield the peace we all want," the president said at the White House Conference on Global Literacy being hosted in New York by the first lady. "You can't realize the blessings of liberty if you can't read a ballot."
The event was being held on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly sessions this week. Later Bush had talks scheduled with several foreign leaders to kick off his attendance at the world body's annual meetings.
N.Y. Mayor: Uplift poor
with $ for good decisions
Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested yesterday that poor New Yorkers who make healthy choices - like staying in school and regularly seeing the doctor - should be rewarded with cash as one approach to helping them break free from poverty's grasp.
The idea developed out of an anti-poverty commission's report released yesterday. The commission didn't specifically propose using rewards, known as conditional cash transfers, but did suggest the city should find innovative ways to help its 1.5 million poor lift themselves out of poverty.
The commission said many New Yorkers are locked in a cycle of poverty. For example, those who fall behind on vaccinations and doctor checkups may then suffer from poor health and thus struggle to hold down jobs.
Paying modest rewards for good decisions might help break those patterns, the mayor said.
Daily News wire services

 


9


  
 

September 19, 2006 Tuesday  




 IRAQ BOMBS KILL 40

 
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Bombers and gunmen killed more than 40 people and injured dozens across Iraq yesterday as the government prepared to further tighten security ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, when violence traditionally spikes in the country.
Two suicide car bombers attacked a police station in Ramadi yesterday, killing at least two police officers and injuring 26 people, the Interior Ministry said. 
Elsewhere, a suicide bomber killed at least 20 people and wounded 17 others in an open-air market in the northwestern city of Tal Afar, police chief Brig. Sabah Hamidi said. There were no Iraqi or U.S.-led security forces in the area at the time, he said.
In another development yesterday, the Iraqi army's 4th division came under Iraqi control in central Salahuddin province.
Vatican opens archives
VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican opened part of its secret archives yesterday to let historians review millions of diplomatic letters, private correspondence and other church documents to gain insight into how the Holy See dealt with the growing persecution of Jews before World War II.
Researchers said it could take months or years to study the contents of some 30,000 bundles of documents from the 1922-39 papacy of Pius XI, a span when the rise of Nazism, Fascism and Soviet-bloc communism gripped Europe.
The opening is part of the Vatican's efforts to defend Pius' successor, the wartime Pope Pius XII, against claims he did not do enough to save Jews from the Holocaust during the wars.
Protests against pope
CAIRO, Egypt -- Al-Qaida in Iraq warned Pope Benedict XVI yesterday that its war against Christianity and the West will go on until Islam takes over the world, and Iran's supreme leader called for more protests over the pontiff's remarks on Islam.
Protests broke out in South Asia and Indonesia, with angry Muslims saying Benedict's statement of regret a day earlier did not go far enough. In southern Iraq, demonstrators carrying black flags burned an effigy of the pope.
Islamic leaders around the world issued more condemnations of the pope's comments, but some moderates in the Middle East appeared to be trying to put a damper on the outrage, fearing it could spiral into attacks on Christians in the region.
Son took medication
NASSAU, Bahamas -- Anna Nicole Smith's son was on prescription anti-depression medication when he died at the hospital bedside of the former reality TV star, a pathologist who did a second autopsy on 20-year-old Daniel Smith said yesterday.
Pittsburgh forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht said Daniel Smith was being treated for depression that began about four to six weeks earlier, but he did not know whether the medication played any role in his death, which came three days after his celebrity mother gave birth in the Bahamas.
Mr. Wecht, speaking by phone from Miami a day after conducting the autopsy in the Bahamas, said he's still awaiting toxicology tests to determine the cause of death.
Rwanda singer
ARUSHA, Tanzania -- A renowned Rwandan singer went on trial yesterday before a U.N. tribunal, accused of writing lyrics that incited murders during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Simon Bikindi "chose to use his fame to incite hatred," prosecutor Hassan Jallow said during opening statements before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
The organizers of the genocide that killed more than 500,000 people in 100 days used radio as a means of urging Hutu civilians to kill their Tutsi neighbors and direct the slaughter.

 







 The Topeka Capital-Journal
 
Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas)

September 19, 2006 Tuesday



 Willie Nelson citedDeathsToday in historyBirthdaysCase to grand jury

 
WASHINGTON - Federal health officials told California farmers to improve produce safety in a pointed warning letter last November, nearly a year before the multistate E. coli outbreak linked to spinach.
In fact, the current food-poisoning episode is the 20th since 1995 linked to spinach or lettuce, the Food and Drug Administration said.
Though state and federal officials have traced the current outbreak to a California company's fresh spinach, they haven't pinpointed the source of the bacteria that have killed one person and sickened at least 113 others. A second death was being investigated in the outbreak, which involves 21 states.
The FDA is still warning consumers not to eat fresh spinach. 
The regulatory agency doesn't consider the contamination deliberate.
"Currently, there is nothing in the epidemiology to consider this deliberate," said Dr. David Acheson, of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
That leaves a broad range of other possible sources, including contaminated irrigation water that's been a problem in California's Salinas Valley. The area on California's central coast produces much of the U.S. spinach crop.
NATION
BUSH CHANGES PROPOSAL: The White House said Monday it was revising its proposal for dealing with terrorism suspects as indications grew that President Bush's plan was meeting increased resistance among Republicans in both chambers of Congress.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino said the administration was sending the new language in hopes of reaching an agreement. A revolt by GOP senators, who have written their own proposal giving terror detainees more rights than the administration wants, has embarrassed the White House at a time when Republicans want to use their security policies as a main platform in November's congressional elections.
A week after a Republican-led Senate committee defied Bush and approved terror-detainee legislation that the president vowed to block, three more GOP senators said they now opposed the administration's version, joining the four Republicans who had already come out against it.
MAN ARRESTED AT CAPITOL: An armed man ran through the U.S. Capitol after crashing his vehicle on the Capitol grounds Monday in the worst breach of security since a gunman killed two police officers in 1998.
Acting Capitol Police Chief Christopher McGaffin identified the intruder as Carlos Greene, 20, of Silver Spring, Md. He said Greene, tackled after a foot chase through the Capitol, was armed with a loaded handgun and had crack cocaine in his possession.
Greene appeared to be under the influence of a controlled substance and "exhibited signs of seizure," McGaffin said. He was taken to Greater Southeast Community Hospital.
Police planned to charge Greene with federal felony possession and assault of a police officer, McGaffin said.
LEAK CAUSES SPACE STATION SCARE: An oxygen generator on the international space station overheated and spilled a toxic irritant Monday, forcing the three-man crew to don masks and gloves in the first emergency ever declared aboard the 8-year-old orbiting outpost.
NASA said the crew members' lives were never in any danger. They cleaned up the spill with towels. A charcoal filter scrubbed the irritant out of the air. And within a couple of hours, life aboard the station 220 miles above Earth was nearly back to normal.
But it was the biggest scare this smooth-running space station has had.
ANTI-DRUG VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE: The Bush administration is taking its fight against illegal drugs to YouTube, the Internet video service that already features clips of wacky, drug-induced behavior and step-by-step instructions for growing marijuana.
The decision to distribute anti-drug, public service announcements and other videos over YouTube represents the first concerted effort by the government to influence customers of the popular service, which shows more than 100 million videos per day.
"If just one teen sees this and decides illegal drug use is not the path for them, it will be a success," said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for the drug office.
WORLD
AL-QAIDA WARNING ON POPE SPEECH: Al-Qaida in Iraq warned Pope Benedict XVI that its war against Christianity and the West will go on until Islam takes over the world, and Iran's supreme leader called for more protests over the pontiff's remarks on Islam.
Protests broke out in South Asia and Indonesia, with angry Muslims saying Benedict's statement of regret Sunday didn't go far enough. In southern Iraq, demonstrators carrying black flags burned an effigy of the pope.
"The pope's words have caused a deep wound in the hearts of Muslims that won't heal for a long time, and then only after a clear apology to Muslims," Egypt's religious affairs minister, Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq, wrote in a column in the government daily Al-Ahram on Monday.
U.N. TROOPS WON'T DISARM HEZBOLLAH: The French general commanding U.N. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon said his troops wouldn't intervene to disarm Hezbollah, even as French President Jacques Chirac said Hezbollah shouldn't keep a military wing.
Maj. Gen. Alain Pelligrini told reporters the main task of his U.N. force is to ensure southern Lebanon can't be used as a base for attacks on Israel.
"The disarmament of Hezbollah is not the business of UNIFIL," he said.
Compiled by Ian Cahir from wire reportsLAFAYETTE, La. - Willie Nelson and four others were issued misdemeanor citations for possession of narcotic mushrooms and marijuana after a traffic stop Monday morning on a Louisiana highway, state police said.
The citations were issued after a commercial vehicle inspection of the country music star's tour bus, state police said in a news release.
"When the door was opened and the trooper began to speak to the driver, he smelled the strong odor of marijuana," the news release said.
A search of the bus produced 1½ pounds of marijuana and 0.2 pounds of narcotic mushrooms, according to state police.
A call to Nelson's publicist wasn't immediately returned.
Also cited were Tony Sizemore, 59, of St. Cloud, Fla.; Bobbie Nelson, 75, of Briarcliff, Texas; Gates Moore, 54, of Austin, Texas; and David Anderson, 50, of Dallas. Each was released after being issued a citation.1783 - Jacques Etienne Montgolfier launched a duck aboard a hot-air balloon at Versailles, France.
1796 - President Washington's farewell address was published. In it, the said, "Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all."
1934 - Bruno Hauptmann was arrested in New York and charged with the kidnapping and murder of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr.
1959 - Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev reacted angrily during a visit to Los Angeles upon being told that he couldn't visit Disneyland.
1986 - Federal health officials announced that the experimental drug AZT would be made available to thousands of AIDS patients.
1996 - IBM announced it would extend health benefits to the partners of its homosexual employees.
2001 - The Pentagon ordered dozens of advanced aircraft to the Persian Gulf region as the hour of military retaliation for deadly terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 drew closer. The following is a list of deaths in the area. Obituaries are on Page 3B.
Mabel L. Aguirre/Topeka
Robert J. Bacon/Lawrence
John William Baer Jr./Topeka
Joseph E. Bame Jr./Topeka
Grace S. Cox/Kansas City, Kan.
Daniel Edelman/Sabetha
Clifton A. "Tip" Holland/Topeka
Florence E. Jennings/Topeka
Philip C. McCain/Topeka
Leonard E. Pittman/Manhattan
Shirley Williams/Riverside, Calif.
Actor Adam West 76
Singer Bill Medley 66
Actor Jeremy Irons 58
Actress Twiggy Lawson 57
TV personality Joan Lunden 56
Country singer Trisha Yearwood 42
Actress-comedian Cheri Oteri 41
Comedian Jimmy Fallon 32
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A grand jury will decide whether country singer Hank Williams Jr. will stand trial on misdemeanor assault charges filed after a cocktail waitress said he yelled obscenities and choked her.
Criminal Court Judge Gwen Rooks bound the case over to a Shelby County grand jury.
The waitress, Holly Hornbeak, testified that she had red marks and bruising on her neck.
A private attorney hired by her parents demanded $250,000 from Williams two days later, but Hornbeak denied that the case was being driven by money.WANT TO SUBSCRIBE?
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September 17, 2006 Sunday



 One Last Thing | 'Conversions' curiously hushed; 
When two kidnapped journalists were forced to embrace Islam, many should have protested.

 
On Aug. 14, Steve Centanni, a Fox News reporter, and Olaf Wiig, his cameraman, were traveling in Gaza City. A Mitsubishi stopped in front of them. A pickup truck boxed them in from behind. Four men, three of them masked, emerged from the Mitsubishi wielding pistols and Kalashnikov rifles. They put guns to the journalists' heads, pulled them out of their SUV and shoved them into the pickup's back seat. When Wiig asked where they were going, he was told: "You're going to hell."
Centanni and Wiig were brought to a tent where their hands were painfully bound behind them with plastic ties. They were hooded, blindfolded, and transferred to a dark garage. Whenever they tried to talk, they were butted with guns. Eventually they were transferred to a house, stripped of all possessions and given ill-fitting track suits. Wiig was told Centanni was to be executed. Then, abruptly, on Aug. 23, they were taken to the Gaza City Beach Hotel and set free. 
You may be less familiar with the video released shortly before Centanni and Wiig were let go. Five minutes and 23 seconds long, it featured the two reading from scripts. They condemned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Centanni said the West "should turn to the purifying power of Islam" and asked that George Bush and Tony Blair "open your minds to Islam."
Standard hostage fare. Less standard is when Centanni says: "My name is Steve. I'm an American. After I entered Islam, I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah, and my leader is the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him." Wiig makes a similar declaration. Both had been converted. After his release, Centanni said: "We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint... . It was something we felt we had to do because they had guns."
There are many parts of the world where Islam has a conversion problem. Freedom House's Paul Marshall reports that non-Muslims in Sudan, Iran and Nigeria are commonly forced to choose between conversion or death. Writing in National Review Online in 2002, Julia Duin noted the horrific forced conversions in Indonesia: "Christians who refused to convert were killed; those who did convert were then separated from the families, given Muslim names, and forcibly circumcised - without anesthetic, and with dirty instruments. Scissors were used on adults... . The women underwent female genital circumcision."
Sharia - Islamic law based on the Koran and on practices approved by Muhammad and taken as legally binding - frowns on the notion of Muslims converting from Islam. Breakaway Muslims can face severe reprisals. The most famous case is Salman Rushdie's, but Marshall notes that Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Mauritania, and the Comoros Islands all have laws that carry the death penalty for Muslim apostates. Egypt, Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, Turkey, Nigeria, Indonesia, Somalia and Kenya either have laws with loopholes allowing the killing of apostates or rely on seldom-prosecuted vigilante groups to mete out their bloody brand of enforcement.
Religious conversion has an unpleasant history. People have been conquering and converting one another for as long as they've been believing. Romans told early Christians to convert or be fed to the lions; Christians had their Inquisition(s). Ibn Warraq, author of Leaving Islam, notes that Muslims had their own serious inquisition, the minha, in the eighth century.
But while many parts of the Muslim world still take conversion quite seriously, other major religions have largely left the issue behind. A double standard therefore exists, a gap between cultures. Imagine the furor that would - rightfully - erupt if a video emerged from Abu Ghraib showing a Muslim forced to convert at gunpoint. The Council on American-Islamic Relations did not mention the Centanni-Wiig videotape (but it did issue a call for their release soon after their abduction). When called for comment, CAIR's communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, declined to condemn the incident; instead, he said: "I don't think you can consider them 'conversions.' There's no legitimate conversion at the point of a gun."  reported on the release of Centanni and Wiig without a word about their conversions. Instead, the Times noted that the two men "were released unharmed." The assumption: The whole thing wasn't serious; the men wanted to live and said anything their captors required.
This attitude exists because the West has become so secularized that few people see the idea of a forced conversion as the savagery it is. In our culture, religion is seen as an expression of personal choice, not as part of a living, communal whole - a matter of self-fulfillment, not eternal and literal truth. Hey - professing to an alien faith might be unpleasant, but it's certainly not worth losing your head over.
We find it hard to believe that some cultures could regard religion as the most important of all issues. That's why, when we see foreign cultural conflicts from afar, we impute them not to culture or religion but to other issues. Why are they acting like that?, we wonder. Couldn't be just religion.Must be income inequality or postcolonial grievances.
This attitude is a mistake. You cannot effectively engage on any level - culturally, diplomatically, or militarily - if you don't understand the worldview with which you're dealing. And to some people, the question of faith is still a matter of life and death.

One Last Thing |
For the video showing the "conversion" of Olaf Wiig and Steve Centanni, go to
http://go.philly.com/conversion
For Paul Marshall's article "Apostates From Islam," in the March 4, 2006, issue of the Weekly Standard, go to http://go.philly.com/apostates
For Julia Duin's article "Christians in Indonesia," in the Jan. 2, 2002, issue of the National Review, go to
http://go.philly.com/duin
Contact Jonathan V. Last at jlast@phillynews.com.

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September 16, 2006 Saturday  




 Some Muslim Leaders Want Pope to Apologize for Remarks

 
Pope Benedict XVI drew rising anger on Friday over comments he made Tuesday about Islam, as Muslim leaders around the world accused him of dividing religions and demanded an apology. 
  In Britain, Gaza, Iraq, Syria and Indonesia, Muslim leaders registered their protest. The Parliament in Pakistan passed a resolution against the pope's statements, and the government later summoned the Vatican envoy to express official displeasure. In Lebanon, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the most senior Shiite cleric, demanded ''a personal apology -- not through his envoys.''
And emotion spilled over in Turkey, which Benedict is scheduled to visit in November, as a top official in the Islamic-rooted ruling party said that the pope was ''going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.'' 
  ''He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages,'' the official, Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of Turkey's governing party, was quoted as saying on the state-owned Anatolia news agency. ''It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.''
  Reaction to the pope's remarks -- in which he quoted a description of Islam in the 14th century as ''evil and inhuman'' -- has presented Benedict with the first full-blown crisis of his papacy. 
  Some in Turkey have questioned whether he should make the visit, the pope's first to a Muslim country. Many Muslims are also comparing his comments to the unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that had stoked deep anger among Muslims earlier this year. 
  The Vatican did not release an official comment on Friday. On Thursday, as Benedict returned from a six-day trip to Germany, his chief spokesman said that he had not intended to ''offend the sensibility of Muslim believers.'' 
  Other top Vatican officials also sought to tamp down the anger. 
  ''I am convinced the pope did not mean to assume a position against Islam,'' a top German cardinal, Walter Kasper, told the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica. 
  Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, a French prelate with experience in the Islamic world, was appointed on Friday as the Vatican's new foreign minister. He told Agence France-Press: ''The dialogue between different civilizations, cultures and religions -- which nobody can hide from -- will be one of the great questions which I will tackle in my new job.''
  In a major speech on Tuesday at Regensburg University, Benedict delivered a long, scholarly address on reason and faith in the West. But he began his speech by recounting a conversation on the truths of Christianity and Islam that took place between a 14th-century Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, and a Persian scholar. 
  ''The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,'' the pope said.
  ''He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,' '' the pope said.
  While making clear that he was quoting someone else, Benedict did not say whether he agreed or not. He also briefly discussed the Islamic concept of jihad, which he defined as ''holy war,'' and said that violence in the name of religion is contrary to God's nature and to reason.
  He also suggested reason as the basis for ''that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.''
  Benedict, a respected theologian, is said to write many speeches himself, and some in the Italian news media speculated that the Vatican would be forced into a more stringent review of his statements. 
  The controversy came as a new Vatican hierarchy was being put in place. In addition to appointing a foreign minister, the pope installed as secretary of state -- the highest position after the pope -- Cardinal Tarcisco Bertone, 71, an Italian and longtime colleague of the pope's. 

 HOLY SEE (93%); TURKEY (93%); UNITED KINGDOM (92%); LEBANON (92%); IRAQ (92%); INDONESIA (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); SYRIA (92%); GERMANY (86%); ITALY (79%); FRANCE (78%)







Copyright  2006 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp.
 
The Hill

September 12, 2006 Tuesday



 Editorial: Remembering

 
From the windows of The Hill's newsroom the Stars and Stripes can be seen fluttering from 10 masts along the length of K Street. All over the city and all over the country, there are a thousand more. And yesterday, they were flying at half-mast except where, presumably, someone had inadvertently neglected to do what is customary to mark the gravity of what happened five years ago on Sept. 11. 
It is worth mentioning the small minority of flags that have not been lowered, so as to point out that it is almost certainly forgetfulness rather than contrariness that produced the omission. There is a small minority of Americans who do not believe that the war against Islamist terrorism is real, or who blame the U.S. for the catastrophe that befell it from the sparkling blue sky five years ago.
But the two main political parties, like the vast majority of Americans, know that the war is terribly real. There is a national understanding that this country suffered a terrible and unprecedented blow that declared the fact that this country and the advanced, international, liberal democratic civilization it leads had been plunged into an existential struggle. We have an enemy that really does want to murder us in pursuit first of a totalitarian caliphate from Morocco to Indonesia and second of global supremacy for Islam.
However much the two parties may disagree about the strategy and tactics of this war, and however much both sides are tempted to exploit it for electoral advantage on Nov. 7, midterm Election Day, this newspaper hopes that neither will put party before country. There are temptations on the left to downplay the war and its importance, just as on the right there is a temptation to dismiss criticism of war policy out of hand as a sign of weakness.
But both of these temptations must be resisted. They do a profound disservice to the citizenry that lawmakers are here to represent in the most exalted legislature in the land.
As they approach the elections it would be well to remember that the terrorists' targets five years ago were not only the World Trade Center's twin towers, which they destroyed, and the Pentagon, which they damaged badly. Flight 93, in which brave passengers took on the hijackers in a mortal fight and forced them to fail, was heading for another iconic building in the nation's capital, either the White House or the Capitol.
The Islamists wanted, and still want, to destroy democracy. Lawmakers must not lose sight of the real enemy as they campaign this fall.

 UNITED STATES (93%);  MOROCCO (79%)







 
 


September 12, 2006 Tuesday  




 Where's the outrage?; 
A united world must resolutely condemn terror

 
Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, one essential ingredient is still lacking in our international response to terrorism: the concerted moral outrage of everyday citizens of every faith and country.
The victims, citizens of more than 90 countries, included a young Muslim woman, seven months pregnant, on her way to attend a friend's wedding; an Iranian grandmother who had overcome her fear of flying to visit her grandsons in Boston; a German businessman in New York to attend a meeting. His son, 4 at the time, said, "If the terrorists knew how much we love Papa, they wouldn't have flown the plane into the tower."
Unfortunately, the extremists we face don't care. Since that fateful day, hundreds of others have been torn from their families,  murdered as terrorists targeted morning commuters in London, Madrid and India, wedding guests at a hotel in Jordan, children in school in Russia and lining up for candy in Iraq, tourists in Egypt and Bali, Indonesia. 
Out of the norm
This is not right, or normal, or acceptable, and a much louder chorus of voices needs to join in condemning it. Terrorism threatens all of us. It targets the very foundations of a free society. Yet where are the mothers organizing against terrorism as American mothers did against drunken driving? Where are the  fathers promising to teach their sons to choose to live rather than choose to die? Where are the religious clerics and congregations of all faiths arguing that no just and loving God would call on young men and women to kill themselves and others in the name of religion?
The international outcry was immediate when civilians were killed in the recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Yet we have seen no similar mass condemnation of terrorist violence and murder, and no hint of remorse from those engaged in these acts. As I have traveled the world, I have met those who try to justify the violence based on policy differences, long-held grievances or a perceived threat from the West.
Those who speak of a clash of civilizations seem to forget that Islam is part of America, that an estimated six to seven million Muslims live and worship freely in America. America and our international partners went to war to protect Muslims in the Balkans and  gave generously to help Muslims rebuild their lives after the tsunami in Indonesia and the earthquake in Pakistan, just as many Muslim-majority countries reached out generously to help Americans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
We do this because we believe in the dignity and value of every person. The fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 is both a reminder of the inhumanity of the extremists we are up against and the humanity shared by most citizens of the world. The color of our skin, the language we speak and the way we worship may be different, but much more unites us  than divides us.
So why aren't more of us doing more to stop the terror?
First, I believe most of us hope that terrorism is an aberration. Unfortunately, I do not believe it is true. Part of my job is to look at the propaganda being spread on Internet sites and TV sets around the world. It is chilling. Bombings are depicted as acts of glory. Children are being taught the language of hate. Thousands of people have been trained in terror training camps, convinced the only way to defend their faith is to kill all others who have a different  point of view.
Second, the presence of religion in this debate makes governments and individuals nervous. We are unsure how to engage; we hesitate to offend. Yet all major faiths -- including Christianity, Islam and Judaism -- teach that life is precious. We cannot allow what is essentially a death cult to get away with murder in the name of religion.
History's model
It is in the best interest of all the civilized people that the terror stop. And we have a model. Slavery's path from international norm to  pariah began with moral outrage. In 1833, one of every seven adults in Britain signed a petition against slavery. That was twice the number of people eligible to vote at the time and the largest public petitioning of Parliament to that date. The grassroots petition drive was born of the conviction that every person has value -- a conviction that should guide us today.
Our challenge is to launch a new grassroots movement across all faiths and continents, a movement that clearly states that no grievance, no complaint, no matter how legitimate, can ever justify the targeting and killing of innocent civilians. A movement that commits to teach our children that life is precious, diversity should be celebrated, and hope can conquer hate.
I have read many stories of lives cut short by acts of terrorism. Almost all the victims' families speak of the joy their loved ones brought to those around them. They didn't deserve to die. And those who killed them earned only shame, not glory. The least the rest of us can do is say so loudly and in concert.
Karen Hughes is under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department.

 UNITED STATES (94%); INDONESIA (92%); ISRAEL (79%); SPAIN (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%); EGYPT (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


September 10, 2006 Sunday



 What caused the attacks on 9/11?

 
   No event in recent times has produced as many explanations as the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago. Within the space of an hour, al-Qaida inflicted more direct damage on the United States than the Soviet Union had done throughout the Cold War. It took only 19 men armed with small knives to destroy the World Trade Center, demolish a wing of the Pentagon and kill 3,000 people.
This mismatch has led some -- especially in the Muslim world -- to seek a deus ex machina to explain what otherwise appears inexplicable. The Jews were behind the attacks; the "Cheney-Bush energy junta" planned them so that they could grab the oil fields of Central A, and so on.
Osama bin Laden himself claims that al-Qaida was solely responsible for Sept. 11. In 2004, he released a video in which he explained his dealings with lead hijacker Mohammed Atta. After the largest criminal investigation in history, the U.S. government's 9/11 Commission also concluded that al-Qaida was solely responsible for the attacks. 
This then brings us to the larger question: What caused al-Qaida to launch the attacks? The most credible explanations
None of the following explanations is alone sufficient to explain the attacks, but together they do help us to understand Sept. 11.
1. The Sept. 11 attacks were the fruit of bin Laden's flawed strategic reasoning
Bin Laden's total dominance of al-Qaida meant the organization was hostage to his strategic vision. Bin Laden considered the United States a paper tiger, capable of withstanding only a few strikes before it would withdraw, leaving client regimes in the Middle East vulnerable. But the U.S. response to Sept. 11 was to destroy the Taliban regime and decimate al-Qaida. Although Sept. 11 was a tactical success for al-Qaida, it actually threatened the organization's future.
To conclude, Sept. 11 was collateral damage in a civil war within the world of political Islam. On one side there are those, like bin Laden, who want to install Taliban-style theocracies from Indonesia to Morocco. On the other side, there is a silent majority of Muslims who are prepared to deal with the West, who do not see the Taliban as a workable model for modern Islamic states, and who reject violence.
Yet bin Laden and his attacks on the United States have shaped an ideological movement that will outlive him. Binladenism has drawn tremendous energy from the war in Iraq and will probably gain further adherents from the conflict in Lebanon. Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was prescient when he warned in 2003 that the Iraq war would spawn "100 new bin Ladens." It is that new generation of militants that is bin Laden's legacy.
2. Sept. 11 was the collateral damage of a clash within Islam
The view that Sept. 11 was the result of a conflict within the Muslim world was brilliantly articulated in early 2002 by Middle East scholar Michael Scott Doran in a Foreign Affairs essay, "Somebody Else's Civil War." Doran argued that bin Laden's followers "consider themselves an island of true believers surrounded by a sea of iniquity and think that the future of religion itself, and therefore the world, depends on them and their battle."
Egyptians in al-Qaida believed that they should overthrow the "near enemy" -- Middle East regimes run by "apostate" rulers. Bin Laden took the next step, urging that the root of the problem was the "far enemy," the United States, which propped up the status quo in the Middle East.
3. Bin Laden is an astute tactical leader and rational political actor fighting a deeply felt religious war against the West
Like others before him, bin Laden has made a rational choice to adopt terrorism as a shortcut to transforming the political landscape. It is clear from the 9/11 Commission report that bin Laden intervened to make two key decisions that ensured the success of the attacks. The first was to appoint Mohammed Atta to be the lead hijacker; the second was to rein in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's plans for 10 planes to crash into targets in Asia and on the East Coast of America simultaneously. That number of attacks would have been hard to synchronize and might not have succeeded.
4. U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East, in particular its support of Israel
By bin Laden's own account, this is why al-Qaida is attacking America. His critique has never been cultural; he never mentions Hollywood, homosexuality or drugs in his diatribes.
5. The alienation of Muslim immigrants in the West
Three of the four Sept. 11 pilots and two key planners, Ramzi bin al Shibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, became more militant while living in the West. Perceived discrimination, alienation and homesickness seem to have turned them all in a more radical direction. Researcher Swati Pandey and I have examined the biographies of 79 terrorists responsible for five of the worst recent anti-Western terrorist attacks. We found that one in four of these terrorists had attended colleges in the West.
6. Authoritarian Middle East regimes helped incubate the militants
Sayyid Qutb, the Lenin of the militant jihadist movement, and later Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's No. 2, were radicalized by their time in the jails of Cairo. It is no accident that so many members of al-Qaida have been Egyptians and Saudis.
7. The spread of communications technology
The global community of Muslims is far more aware of conflicts around the Islamic world -- and the role of the West in some of those conflicts -- than was the case a decade ago. Over the past decade, Arabic satellite channels and jihadist Web sites have proliferated, sensitizing Muslims to the oppression of their co-religionists in Kashmir, Palestine, the Balkans and so on. These grievances have fueled the spread of al-Qaida's ideology.
8. Decline and stagnation in the Middle East and the "humiliation" of the Islamic world
Bernard Lewis is the best-known exponent of the idea that the Muslim world is in a crisis largely attributable to centuries of decline, symbolized by the fate of the once-powerful Ottoman Empire and its ignominious carve-up by the British and French after World War I.
Three weeks after Sept. 11, as the United States began launching airstrikes against Taliban positions, a video of bin Laden was broadcast on Al-Jazeera. On the tape, bin Laden said, "What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. ... Neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live in it in Palestine, and not before the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad." For bin Laden, the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement that carved up the Ottoman Empire between the French and British has the same resonance that the 1919 treaty of Versailles did for Hitler.
9. A particular reading of Islamic texts
If you were to ask bin Laden, he would say that his war is about the defense of Islam. He bases justification of his war on a corpus of Muslim beliefs and often invokes the "sword" verses of the Quran, which urge unprovoked attacks on infidels. That is a selective reading of the Quran and does not mean Islam is an inherently violent faith.
10. Radicalization caused by the Afghan jihad
The Afghan war against the Soviet Union radicalized a generation of Arab militants. They swapped business cards and came to believe that they had played a big role in the destruction of the Soviet Union. These factors would lead to the founding of al-Qaida in 1988.
To conclude, Sept. 11 was collateral damage in a civil war within the world of political Islam. On one side there are those, like bin Laden, who want to install Taliban-style theocracies from Indonesia to Morocco. On the other side there is a silent majority of Muslims who are prepared to deal with the West, who do not see the Taliban as a workable model for modern Islamic states and who reject violence.
Yet bin Laden and his attacks on the United States have shaped an ideological movement that will outlive him. Binladenism has drawn tremendous energy from the war in Iraq and will probably gain further adherents from the conflict in Lebanon. Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was prescient when he warned in 2003 that the Iraq war would spawn "100 new bin Ladens." It is that new generation of militants that is bin Laden's legacy. Peter Bergen is author of "The Osama bin Laden I Know," which was published by Simon & Schuster. Distributed by  Syndicate

 UNITED STATES (95%); IRAQ (92%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); LEBANON (79%); EGYPT (79%);  MOROCCO (79%)







 
 


September 8, 2006 Friday



 Al Qaeda Is a Shadow of Its Former Self

 
One wonders what it is the second in command of Al Qaeda, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, is smoking in his cave nowadays.
In a surreal videotape released last week, the Egyptian doctor turned assassin trotted out an American convert to jihad whom he called "Azzam the American." Azzam came on screen and called upon all Americans and Christians to convert to Islam immediately, or else.
If that is the best Al Qaeda can do, we should take a measure of the group. 
Indeed, Mr. Zawahiri's toothless message - and the videotape Al-Jazeera broadcast yesterday showing Osama bin Laden before September 11, 2001, meeting with some of the terrorist attacks' planners - was just the latest indication that Al Qaeda's better days are behind it, as most Arab and American security officials will readily concede.
Five years after it burst onto the scene with the grandiose attacks of September 11, the terror group is a shadow of its former self. Its chief architects, Messrs. bin Laden and Zawahiri, and their so-called consultative council are on the run; its top field commanders are decimated, and its hundreds of foot soldiers are in jail, being hounded or singing like canaries under torture, or bribery.
To be sure, copycats are popping up here and there, but the West can certainly claim it has demolished the infrastructure of the original group. It is time for plan B: moving up the food chain toward those who have funded and fed this hapless mob since the mid-'80s.
Before September 11, Al Qaeda blew up two American embassies in Africa, as well as the USS Cole, and attacked Americans in 1993 at the World Trade Center and again in Saudi Arabia in the late '90s.
But when they are examined in the harsh light of day, these assaults were more pugnacious than crippling. What Al Qaeda got in return was a world-class war on terror that is gathering momentum daily with all the muscle, talent, and intelligence only the West can muster.
Liberals, appeasers, and peace mongers say the West must try to "understand" the gripes of Muslims worldwide, placate the Palestinian Arabs, and replace Arab and Muslim dictators with so-called Muslim moderates.
But the truth is that the West, and especially America, can do virtually nothing to prevent the inevitable bloodbaths inherent in the skewed Islamic cultures and failed governments that characterize virtually all Muslim societies today, from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia. Nor can any amount of indulgence heal the deep gashes that Muslim dictatorships, corruption, and cultural hypocrisies inflict upon the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. Their bleeding is a product of what ails profoundly failed nations - compounded, of course, by gravely distorted Islamic precepts and a sea of illiteracy.
Al Qaeda has "grafted" itself onto these malfunctions, projecting a bigger image like a shadow growing onto a distant wall. But a shadow it is, as we are finding out five years later.
In his illuminating account, "The Looming Tower, Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11," Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker documents in amazing detail how vacuous Mr. bin Laden and his cohorts were. They lost every battle they ever engaged in against the Soviets in Afghanistan, were hugely despised by their fellow Afghan fighters, lied about their mythical achievements, and gathered the largest bunch of losers they could find under their tent.
But Mr. Wright also documents how this bunch of clowns became recklessly dangerous after they were recruited, guided, and manipulated by a variety of competing Arab regimes. They received hundreds of millions of dollars from none other than the Saudi royal family and were granted sanctuary by the genocidal Sudanese government and the profoundly fanatical Pakistani army and intelligence systems, as well as numerous Arab regimes and thousands of freelance preachers in madrassas, mosques, and theocratic institutes peppered across the Muslim landscape.
Still, looking at the British Pakistanis being arrested daily and the other failed terrorists dropping like flies into the police nets of European, Arab and American security networks is enough to put the "danger" in perspective.
True, they only have to succeed once in a while to make their point, whereas the policemen have to be on the dot every single time, but Islamic jihadists should be eradicated more as an affront to Western civilization - or any civilization - rather than as an existential danger to the world.

  SAUDI ARABIA (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%);  AFRICA (78%)







 
 



September 8, 2006 Friday



 Experts fail to explain the 'why' of terrorism

 
Froma Harrop
is a columnist for the Providence Journal
In Oliver Stone's movie World Trade Center, the people who know least about the Sept. 11 horror are the two Port Authority cops closest to it. Asian peasants follow the awful events on television, but the men buried under smashed iron and concrete don't know the "who" or the "why," or even that the towers have collapsed.
Through their own courage and that of their rescuers, the officers live to learn what happened. But five years later, neither they, nor anyone else, fully understand "why." 
That Islamic terrorists hate the United States is an all-purpose explanation. Dig deeper into the reasons for that hatred, though, and the confident answers of "expert opinion" don't quite satisfy.
Since that gruesome blue-sky day, Islamic radicals have staged more attacks and have been foiled in others. But try to find a connecting theme, other than psychosis. There's only a pile of shifting motives.
Denmark just arrested nine Muslim men preparing explosives for some new outrage. Why, no one knows. Could be the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. Could be because Denmark has troops in Iraq. Could be something else.
When German authorities caught two Lebanese men planting bombs on trains, they assumed the motive was the war in Lebanon. Turns out it was the cartoons. The suspects did tack Lebanon onto their grievance list, but actually, the attack had been planned before the war began.
The 2004 bombing of commuter trains in Madrid took place in the days preceding a Spanish election. Its goal, the thinking went, was to scare voters into replacing a government that had sent troops to Iraq. They did, but three weeks later, a bomb similar to the ones used in the March massacre was found on a track near Madrid.
Why did Islamic terrorists bomb nightclubs in Bali? Were they aiming at Bali itself, a Hindu island in mostly Muslim Indonesia? Was the target Australia because it sent troops to Iraq - or Australia because it helped liberate East Timor from Indonesia? (Nearly half the people killed were Australian tourists.) Was it an objection to bikinis?
The attacks on Bombay commuter trains have been linked to Pakistani anger at India's control over much of (Muslim) Kashmir. The bombings on London subways were traced to sons of Pakistani immigrants supposedly unhappy over how they're treated in Britain. Intelligence officials say at least one had trained with al-Qaeda in Pakistan, where the terrorist group was also prepping suicide bombers to blow up 10 airliners flying from London to the United States.
Terrorists vowed massive attacks against France over its ban on Islamic head scarves in public schools. And a Muslim gang murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in the streets of Amsterdam over a movie he made.
Given this Wal-Martian selection of motives, one must smile at the five-years-after editorial in the Economist, which states that the number of jihadis has multiplied since Sept. 11, "partly as a result of the way America responded." By that, the British magazine means the war in Iraq.
We can agree that the war was based on trumped-up evidence, that it was poorly planned, and that it is going badly. But Islamic terrorists are attacking people on nearly every continent - many who have little or nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy. Multicultural, we're-not-in-Iraq Canada has uncovered a plot by 17 Muslims to invade its Parliament and chop off the prime minister's head.
Perhaps terrorists see countries that make sensitive analyses of their complaints as easy marks. If so, then the eagerness to prettify mass murder with "root causes" could itself be a root cause.
Contact Froma Harrop at fharrop@projo.com.

 LEBANON (93%); IRAQ (93%);   INDONESIA (92%); SPAIN (86%); TIMOR-LESTE (79%); ASIA (79%); INDIA (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%); NETHERLANDS (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); GERMANY (74%); FRANCE (68%)







 
 


September 8, 2006 Friday  




 Five years later, no attacks but focus blurs, unity fades

 
At times in American history, presidents have given speeches so perfectly fitting the nation's needs that the words came to capture and define the era. Think of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Or John F. Kennedy's "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
Nine days after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., President Bush delivered one of those speeches. Standing before Congress, and with a stunned nation and much of a sympathetic world watching on television, Bush outlined what would become a new "war on terror."
That night, the president pitched it just right. He outlined a five-pronged approach the United States would employ to hunt down the terrorist leaders directly responsible for the attacks and destroy their al-Qaeda organization. It would, he said, use "every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war." 
He told Americans that "we're in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them." He said America's future would not be one of fear because "this country will define our times, not be defined by them." And he went out of his way to assure Muslims that "we respect your faith" and to note that "the terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism."
Within weeks, the United States attacked Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime was harboring al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The regime was toppled, and the al-Qaeda training camps were destroyed. The war on terror was on the right track.
Five years later, it is painfully clear that the war has lost the focus it had in those months after 9/11. Bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, escaped at the battle of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in late 2001. They are in hiding but remain at large. Al-Qaeda's centralized structure has been degraded, but homegrown cells are springing up around the world. The Taliban is attempting a comeback in Afghanistan.
Most disturbingly, the mishandled war in Iraq -- which had nothing to with the 9/11 attacks -- has proved to be a devastating blunder. Lawrence Wright, author of a new book on al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower, says internal al-Qaeda documents show that after its rout from Afghanistan, the organization was in despair and on the ropes. But Iraq gave al-Qaeda a new lease on life, providing a place where extremists could go and fight -- and helping prove their contention that the United States wants to attack Muslims and occupy Muslim lands.
The Iraq war has undermined U.S. efforts to win hearts and minds in the moderate Muslim world. In the five predominantly Muslim countries surveyed earlier this year by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, support for the U.S.-led war on terror was 10% in Egypt, 14% in Turkey, 16% in Jordan, 30% in Pakistan and 39% in Indonesia.
The past cannot be undone. But ways exist to regain the focus that the war on terror had in the early months after 9/11.
Capturing bin Laden and Zawahri remains a priority. Even though they are severely hampered -- they can't organize attacks, train recruits, communicate by cellphone or transfer money as they used to -- getting them would be an important victory for justice and help undermine their appeal. It wouldn't spell the end of al-Qaeda, but it would deprive the movement of its charismatic leaders, who are still churning out audio and video tapes with irritating frequency.
Domestically, nearly five years have passed without a follow-on attack. Security and public awareness are better than they were before Sept. 11. But Americans are still more vulnerable than they should be after so calamitous an event. The 9/11 Commission and others have spelled out glaring vulnerabilities and remaining priorities. Now it's a question of competence to address them.
Internationally, the United States squandered the post-9/11 goodwill it reaped. The administration's questionable approaches have ranged from a tolerance for torture to a "my way or the highway" attitude to much of the world. That has to change, and alliances must be rebuilt
"
something that has been handled better in Bush's second term. An even greater challenge is to develop policies that lead moderate Muslims -- particularly in the Middle East -- to see the United States as an asset, or at least reverse the trend toward increasing radicalization.
In the run-up to this anniversary, Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have delivered a series of speeches about the war on terror. But rather than the inclusive tone of the address on Sept. 20, 2001, they have had a divisive, partisan edge -- portraying any who disagree with the administration's policies as appeasers oblivious to the severity of the threat.
Never mind that the administration has made far too many mistakes to claim unique wisdom in the ways of waging war on terrorism. This is a destructive course, essentially the opposite of FDR's call to turn fear aside.
When American presidents inspire the nation to its best, they candidly appeal not to fear but to the country's natural optimism and can-do spirit. Bush did that five years ago. It's time for an encore.
Mixed results
After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush announced a five-pronged war on terror. A scorecard:
*Diplomacy. Working with allies, particularly Pakistan, helped apprehend key al-Qaeda operatives. But the rush to war in Iraq, with few allies and without United Nations approval, turned admiration and sympathy for America into its opposite in much of the world. The scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and long detention without trial of suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, further eroded U.S. standing. The administration belatedly began a public-diplomacy effort aimed at building bridges to the moderate Muslim world.
*Intelligence. U.S. intelligence failed to connect available dots and stop the 9/11 attacks. It also erroneously concluded that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. An overhaul has been aimed at fighting a new kind of war that includes infiltrating and tracking Islamic and other terror groups. Britain and some other foreign countries have provided and used intelligence to foil new attacks. Tips from moderate Muslims are a vital part of the intelligence effort -- and that requires better outreach to Muslim communities.
*Law enforcement. Despite the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help coordinate anti-terrorism measures, the 9/11 Commission said there has been little progress in forcing federal agencies to share intelligence and terrorism information. Inadequate computer or communications systems continue to plague the FBI and first responders. Several terrorism-related arrests in the USA have turned out to be flimsy.
*Financial networks. This might be the brightest spot in the U.S. war on terror. Globalization and computerization of banking mean that money transfers and patterns can be identified and tracked. In an example of international cooperation at its best, they have helped identify, catch and shut down financial transactions that help terrorists. Some nations' cooperation -- the 9/11 Commission singled out the Gulf States and some in South Asia -- could be better. But Bin Laden and others now avoid official routes for sending money.
*Military. After an effective campaign to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan, the United States turned its military might on Saddam's regime in Iraq. Though Saddam fell quickly, a vicious insurgency turned Iraq into a central front in the war on terror and has left the country on the verge of a sectarian civil war. Iraq has taught the hard lesson that military might alone cannot win wars -- and could have unintended consequences.

 UNITED STATES (96%); AFGHANISTAN (94%); IRAQ (93%)




10


   


September 7, 2006 Thursday  




 Monitors Ready, Israel Will Ease Grip on Lebanon

 
Israel announced Wednesday that it would lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon on Thursday evening, three weeks after the cessation of hostilities, because international forces were ready to move into place to impose an arms embargo on the Hezbollah militia.
  Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would yield its ''control positions over Lebanon's seaports and airports'' at 6 p.m. Thursday to international supervision. 
 French, Greek, British and Italian ships will patrol Lebanon's coast until German ships arrive in two weeks. The Germans will also help patrol Lebanon's airport to prevent the resupply of rockets, launchers and heavy arms to Hezbollah from its main supporters, Syria and Iran.
  Preventing arms from moving across the land border from Syria remains the main issue. A senior Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the subject, said Israel had ''an understanding'' that international forces would deploy alongside the Lebanese Army to monitor that border.
  But Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Mr. Olmert, said the land border ''is still an open issue -- it's not resolved so far as Israel is concerned.'' Mr. Olmert wants Lebanese forces with United Nations forces at each of the nine crossing points along the mountainous 205-mile border with Syria, Ms. Eisin said. While the border is unfenced and largely unmarked, large rockets and truck-based launchers cannot be brought overland by donkeys, she said, so the crossings are crucial.
  ''The land border with Syria is the wild card and the real test of the arms embargo,'' said the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Mark Regev. ''We're hopeful we'll see Lebanese forces augmented by international forces there on the border enforcing the arms embargo. It would be very nice to believe Syria would change its policies, but we'd like a verification process.''
  Israeli military officials have said that if they have evidence of continuing supplies of rockets and launchers to Hezbollah on trucks from Syria, Israel will feel justified in bombing those trucks.
  Israel has been pressed hard to lift its air and sea embargos by the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, who had suggested it might be lifted within 48 hours.
  In Cairo, the Lebanese foreign minister, Fawzi Salloukh, said Lebanon ''would wait for the 48 hours given by Kofi Annan, and if the situation is resolved, we will thank him.''
  ''If it is not,'' Mr. Salloukh added, ''the Lebanese government will take the necessary measures and break the blockade with all our might.''
  Mr. Annan, on his arrival in Madrid on Wednesday at the end of his Middle East tour, said he had worked on the plan during his flight from Turkey and was pleased with the results. ''The lifting of the blockade will enable Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and his government to accelerate their economic recovery and reconstruction program,'' he said in a statement.
  Israel is depending on Lebanon to help bring about the return of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah on July 12; those seizures led to the war. And with various Arab airlines vowing to land in Beirut anyway, Israel decided that it was time to lift its restrictions. Israel has already granted permission for most civilian aircraft and aid shipments to land.
  ''We have to play our cards right and know when we have enough,'' said the senior Israeli official. ''It's the big stuff, the larger rockets and launchers, that we have to worry about.'' 
  European navies will monitor the coast, and the airport is a relatively small area that will be easy to monitor, the official said. As for the difficult issue of the Syrian border, ''we have an understanding'' that international forces will be there to help Lebanese forces, the official said, even though Syria had warned Lebanon that any international presence on its border would cause Syria to close the border.
  Under the resolution that ended the fighting, the Lebanese government must request the help of the United Nations force to monitor the border, and the Israeli official insisted that Israel had been told that Lebanon would make the request.
  Mr. Annan has met with all sides in an attempt to push along efforts to carry out the Security Council resolution, 1701, which went into effect Aug. 14 and largely stopped the fighting. He has said he will appoint a special envoy to work on the return of the Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah, presumably in exchange for a few Lebanese prisoners held by Israel for years, and for Hezbollah fighters captured during the war.
  Mr. Annan has pressed European nations and nations like Turkey and Indonesia with large Muslim populations to provide troops for the expanded United Nations force.
  About 3,250 international troops are now in Lebanon, but Mr. Annan expects the figure to reach 5,000 by the end of next week. The resolution calls for a maximum of 15,000 troops, but a senior European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of customary diplomatic anonymity, said that even 12,000 would be ''a good showing.''
  Elsewhere, in Gaza, some staff members from the Palestinian prime minister's office joined a strike by civil servants demanding salaries from the Hamas government, which has been unable to pay them in full for six months. 
  The strikes have been pressed by Fatah, Hamas's political rival, but also reflect popular unhappiness with the inability of the government to secure enough funds, in the face of a Western aid cutoff and an Israeli refusal to hand over tax and customs receipts, to pay 165,000 civil servants more than small, intermittent stipends.
  Israel, the United States and Europe want Hamas to recognize the right of Israel to exist, forswear violence and recognize previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Some Europeans are now suggesting, according to a senior French diplomat, that those restrictions be eased if the Palestinians come up with a national-unity government that at least forswears violence and terrorism. The United States and Britain are against weakening the terms demanded of Hamas.
 
 


September 6, 2006 Wednesday



 Terrorists Promise More Attacks Like 9/11

 
Last year, to mark the fourth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, this column included translated proclamations by Al Qaeda leaders promising the future killing of millions of Americans and the collapse of America, as well as statements by Arab writers calling the war on terror "a chapter in World War III."
Some pundits have chosen to reject such analogies. But, as Osama bin Laden wrote in his "Letter to the Muslims of Iraq and [Islamic] Nation" on December 27, 2004: "The conflict in the West is a fateful war between unbelief and Islam, between the army of Muhammad, the army of belief, and the people of the cross. ... The important, tremendous, and dangerous issue today in the entire world is this Third World War." 
Much has happened in the war on terror over the past year. The Arab press has been full of articles on the end of America. Walid Nouhad wrote in the Bahrain daily Al-Wasat on June 20 on the coming "breakup of the United States ... in the same fashion as those empires that came before it." America's "destiny" is to be "just like the Soviet Union" when "it falls apart," Saud Mokhtar wrote in the Saudi daily Al-Madinah on July 10.
Other articles in the Arab press have featured interviews with religious and Islamist figures making crude calls for the West to convert to Islam.
"Our aim is to put down roots in the European continent, and to act quietly and in accordance with the laws, so that one day we may see all of Europe Muslim!" the Turkish fundamentalist leader Nijmuddin Erbakan, a former Turkish prime minister who headed the Islamic Welfare Party, said, according to an April piece on the Arabic reformist Web site Elaph.com by a Germany-based Kurdish journalist, Tarek Hamo.
Previous statements like "Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror" and take over Rome - by one of the most influential clerics in Sunni Islam, Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi - are well-known.
In another headline-making instance, Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris said on Palestinian Authority TV on May 13, 2005: "The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world."
The Ayatollah Ahmad Husseini Al-Baghdadi gave a series of statements from April through May to Al-Jazeera, Syrian TV, and ANB TV, in which he said, "We [Muslims] will conquer the world, so that 'There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah' will be triumphant over the domes of Moscow, Washington, and Paris."
He added, "We will annihilate America."
The Internet edition of the Norwegian daily Dagbladet interviewed a Kurdish Iraqi Islamist, Mullah Krekar, on March 13. "Look at the development of the population in Europe, where the number of Muslims increases like mosquitoes. ... By 2050, 30% of the European population will be Muslim," he said.
In a speech that aired April 10 on Al-Jazeera, the Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi similarly stated, "We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe - without swords, without guns, without conquests ... [they will] turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades. ... Europe is in a predicament, and so is America. They should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims."
Sheik Omar bin Bakri, a Beirut-based, Syrian-born British Islamist and former leader of Al-Muhajirun, an organization in Britain, gave an interview to the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on July 7. "What is today called 'Londonistan' is in fact 'Heretistan,' that is, dar al-kufr [the abode of heresy]," he said. "I think that loyal Muslims in Britain will one day turn it, with Allah's help, into 'Islamistan,' that is, dar al-islam [the abode of Islam]. ... Then the great Islamic dream will be fulfilled - that we will see the banner [proclaiming] 'There is no God but Allah' flying over Big Ben and the British Parliament."
Ahmad Abu Matar, a Palestinian Arab academic who lives in Oslo, criticized such statements in an article on Elaph.com on April 30, 2005. He also criticized Muslim groups in Europe, including the Islamic Liberation Party, which announced "from London its political platform - to establish the Islamic caliphate over all corners of the earth - and declares that the party will suggest to the queen of England that she convert to Islam."
This year also saw calls for other world leaders to convert to Islam. On June 15, the Indonesian militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir called on Prime Minister Howard of Australia and President Bush to convert, saying it was "the only way to save their souls." Iran's Ayatollah Jannati called for Fidel Castro to convert this year, and President Ahmadinejad of Iran invited Mr. Bush to embrace Islam in a now infamous May letter.
Al Qaeda leaders also continued their threats against the West and invited Westerners to convert to Islam. Deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri's speech of July 27 called for all "former Muslims countries," including Spain, to be liberated. This followed an interview on the fourth anniversary of September 11 in which he said, "We invite the Americans to join Islam ... and to realize that their current faith ... will only lead them to destruction."
This past week, Mr. Zawahiri appeared on another video with Al Qaeda's Adam Gadahn, aka Azzam the American, who stated: "The truth of Islam is sweeping across America and constitutes a fearsome challenge to ... the survival of the crusader state [America]."
As the war on terror continues, it is worth quoting a line from Mr. Bush's speech yesterday: "We know what the terrorists intend to do because they've told us - and we need to take their words seriously."
Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

 UNITED STATES (98%); EUROPE (93%); IRAQ (92%); TURKEY (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); NORWAY (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%); SYRIA (79%); FRANCE (75%); GERMANY (68%)







   


September 5, 2006 Tuesday  




 U.N. Expects to Mediate Talks on Captured Israelis

 
Secretary General Kofi Annan said Monday that the United Nations would mediate talks on the release of Israeli and Hezbollah prisoners.
  It was unclear, however, what form such talks, or any resulting agreement, would take. Israel insists it will never talk directly with Hezbollah.
Even though the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has been under increasing domestic pressure to win the release of three captured soldiers, there has been no official confirmation from the government that it would negotiate on the issue. Israel has maintained that its soldiers should be returned unconditionally as part of the Security Council resolution that ended the fighting.  
  But in past cases, Israel has released prisoners in exchange for captives and, in a deal with Hezbollah in 2004, for the return of the bodies of soldiers killed in battle. And Hezbollah has made clear from the start that it was interested in swapping prisoners. 
  Mr. Annan made his statement in an interview on his flight here from Doha, Qatar, where the government announced it would contribute 200 to 300 troops to the expanded United Nations force set up to keep the peace between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon.
  Mr. Annan also said he had received a call on Sunday from Walid al-Moalem, Syria's foreign minister, saying his country would send a battalion of troops to guard the border with Lebanon. In Damascus last week, Mr. Annan had asked Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to help enforce the arms embargo called for in the Security Council cease-fire resolution. 
  On the possible talks on prisoner release, Mr. Annan said that he had chosen his representative to act as mediator, that Israel had chosen its representative, and that what he called ''Lebanon Hezbollah'' was in the process of selecting someone.
  Mr. Annan said the talks would be conducted discreetly, with the goal of setting up the ''mechanism'' to effect the release of prisoners from both sides, which he said he hoped would be the first step in more thorough-going talks involving Israel and Lebanon. He also said he would insist on control of the negotiations and no interference from outside.
  ''Everywhere you go, you hear rumors that this country is doing it, or the other,'' he said. ''If I'm going to take it on, my mediator should be the sole mediator.'' He added, ''If others get in, we will pull out.''
  Mr. Annan arrived Monday in Saudi Arabia, his eighth stop on a Middle East trip intended to shore up support for the resolution, which ended the 34-day war and plotted a path to a longer-term peace. Two critical elements of that measure were a call for dismantling and disarming the Hezbollah militia and imposing an arms embargo to prevent its rearmament.
  Mr. Annan seemed eager to discuss the encouraging developments after receiving a bruising reception this weekend in talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the tough-talking Iranian president, and other leaders in Tehran.
  Iran expressed general support for the resolution, he said, but the government was vague about disarming Hezbollah, which it has financed and armed in the past. And it stuck to its insistence that it would not bow to the demands of the Security Council that it cease uranium enrichment before entering negotiations with the Council's five permanent members on a package of incentives. 
  Discussing the prisoner release, Mr. Annan said talks would focus primarily on the two Israelis captured by Hezbollah but might include a third Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit. He was taken prisoner in a raid in Gaza by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas. Mr. Annan said there had been no progress in gaining his freedom.
  Qatar, a political maverick in the conservative Persian Gulf, maintains low-level ties with Israel. It is also an ally of the United States and is home to a major American military base.
  ''Qatar has relations with Israel, and as a result Israel has no objection to its participation in the force,'' said Mark Regev, the Foreign Ministry spokesman. 
  Sheik Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, Qatar's foreign minister, said his country's troop contribution was an attempt ''to tell the world of the Arab presence, even modestly, in this force and to tell Israel that we believe in this decision, and so we want to contribute in implementing it.''
  Qatar, the lone Arab country on the Security Council, is the only Arab country to have joined the force.
  Mr. Annan said other Muslim peacekeepers would come from Indonesia and Malaysia, though Israel is objecting to Malaysian soldiers in Lebanon. The backbone of the force, expected to reach 15,000 eventually, is European, with Italian troops making up the largest single contingent. They are to be joined by 15,000 Lebanese Army troops. 
  Speaking to reporters at the Doha airport, Mr. Annan said the United Nations hoped the expanded force would be a ''manifestation of international solidarity'' with Lebanon. He also urged Israel to lift its siege of the country, saying it was ''unsustainable.''
  ''We are using the U.N. influence to lift the embargo, especially as Lebanon is trying to rebuild,'' he said. ''It has to be allowed to rebuild. I urge Israel to cooperate.''
  Israel has kept an air and sea embargo on Lebanon since July 13, saying it was aimed at preventing Hezbollah from rearming. But it has recently granted permission for more commercial flights to land in Beirut.
  On Monday a Qatar Airways passenger jet was allowed to land, widening service to Beirut. Lebanon's Middle East Airlines and Royal Jordanian Airline have been conducting limited service. 

 ISRAEL (98%); LEBANON (94%); SAUDI ARABIA (92%); SYRIA (92%); QATAR (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%)







   


September 4, 2006 Monday  




 First Large Foreign Unit Arrives for Lebanon-Israel Buffer Zone 

 
Hundreds of Italian marines, and their armored vehicles, landed in southern Lebanon on Sunday, the first large foreign contingent of what is to become a reinforced United Nations buffer force on the border with Israel.
  A spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping force said that about 1,000 Italian troops were expected to be ashore by nightfall, including the small vanguard that arrived Saturday in choppy seas on rubber dinghies and helicopters.
The arrival of the Italians increases the number of troops on the ground to roughly 3,250 out of a projected goal of 15,000. A 250-member French contingent arrived late last week, mainly engineering troops who set to work repairing bombed-out bridges and roads. And 2,000 troops were already in place from the previous peacekeeping contingent, known as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.  
  The United Nations had hoped to have at least 3,500 troops by Saturday. The full international force is supposed to complement a similar size deployment of the Lebanese Army in securing an uneasy cease-fire after a monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
  But under a kind of ''don't flaunt, don't search'' arrangement between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, the army apparently does not intend to try to disarm Hezbollah. 
  Neither do the United Nations forces, officials have said, although they will have a tougher mandate -- enabling them to use force if threatened -- than did the generally ineffective force in place since an Israeli incursion in 1978.
  In Israel on Sunday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that he had tried to contact Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon to raise the possibility of peace talks.
  ''How natural it would be if the Lebanese prime minister replied to the many requests I conveyed to him, through different people, to sit down together, shake hands, make peace and end once and for all the hostility, fanaticism and hatred that part of his country feels toward us,'' Mr. Olmert said at a school in Maalot-Tarshiha, in northern Israel. The town was a frequent target of Hezbollah rockets during the fighting in July and August.
  ''I hope this day comes soon,'' he said, adding, ''I'm sure all of Israel yearns for it.'' 
  At a news conference last week in Beirut, Mr. Siniora said that Lebanon would be the ''last Arab country that could sign a peace agreement with Israel.'' 
  On Sunday, Italian soldiers wearing blue berets on armored personnel carriers newly painted with white U.N. initials drove through wrecked Lebanese villages decked with yellow Hezbollah flags, drawing waves and V-for-victory signs.
  Italy intends to deploy 2,450 ground troops in four phases over two months -- the largest contingent -- and assume command of the force early next year. 
  The current commander of the peacekeeping force, Maj. Gen. Alain Pellegrini of France, told reporters in Tyre that the new version of the United Nations force ''is strengthened with stronger rules of engagement.''
  ''We have more people, more equipment, and we will have more possibility to use force to implement our mission,'' he said.
  But the effort to fill the complete 15,000-troop deployment is still troubled by the reluctance of many countries to join what could be a dangerous mission -- particularly if their troops become combatants.
  Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country, announced that it would send 1,000 troops after Israel eased off its objections to Indonesia's participation. Turkey is weighing participation, although Lebanon's tiny Armenian minority has objected because of the Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915.
  Israel has announced that its troops, still on the fringes of Lebanese territory, have found and blown up several Hezbollah arms caches. The United Nations has said that the Israeli forces should fully withdraw over the border as soon as the number of soldiers in the international force reaches 5,000.
  ''The cease-fire is holding for the moment,'' General Pellegrini said. ''But it's fragile. Any incident can escalate.''


 ISRAEL (99%); LEBANON (95%); FRANCE (79%)







  



September 3, 2006 Sunday  




 Italian Troops Land In Southern Lebanon

 
Led by commandos who splashed ashore in black dinghies, a contingent of Italian soldiers landed in southern Lebanon on Saturday in the first substantial strengthening of the U.N. force assigned to guarantee a fragile truce along the border between Israel and Lebanon. 
  The Italian troops, numbering 880 with 150 trucks and other vehicles, represented a down payment on the 6,900 soldiers that Italy, France and several other European nations have promised to send to create a reinforced version of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, that repeatedly has been denounced by Israel as feckless in the 28 years since it was first deployed.  
 "This is a new UNIFIL," said Gen. Alain Pellegrini, the French commander of the force. 
 Reinforcing UNIFIL from its present strength of 2,000 to about 15,000 was a key part of the U.N. cease-fire resolution that stopped a 33-day war between Israel and the Hezbollah militia on Aug. 14. The resolution ordered the strengthened UNIFIL force, armed with tougher rules of engagement,  to help a 15,000-strong deployment of Lebanese army troops establish government authority in the Lebanese border hills for the first time in a generation. 
 The Lebanese Defense Ministry said more than 8,000 Lebanese soldiers have deployed between the Litani River and the border with Israel. By the time the full contingent of 15,000 foreign peacekeepers reaches Lebanon toward the end of this month, a spokesman said, the army's deployment will also have reached full strength. Separately, controls along the border with Syria have been tightened with the dispatch of about 8,500 Lebanese soldiers and Internal Security Forces personnel, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said. 
 Israeli officials have insisted the deployments must be in place before they will lift an air, land and sea blockade that remains in force nearly three weeks after the fighting stopped, despite repeated appeals from the Lebanese government and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. With the country's war-shattered economy strangled, enraged Lebanese have charged that the blockade violates the cease-fire accord and is a continuation of Israeli aggression. 
  Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said foreign peacekeepers must be assigned to control border crossings as well to prevent resupply of Hezbollah forces through Syria. But Pellegrini, the French commander, said is not part of UNIFIL's mission, raising the prospect of further delay in lifting the blockade. 
 In a reflection of the outrage at the Israeli blockade, the Lebanese parliament began a round-the-clock sit-in Saturday.  The speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, said that the legislative body would be in session every day between 11 a.m. and 1 a.m. and that 10 members would sleep in the chambers every night until the blockade is lifted. 
 "This is a national operation," he told a full chamber, emphasizing that all of Lebanon's many political parties were part of the protest. 
  Berri, who heads the mainstream Shiite Amal party, has been the main conduit for indirect negotiations between Siniora and Hasan Nasrallah, general secretary of Hezbollah. The militant Shiite movement, which has grown from a heavily armed militia to also become  a political party and social works organization, has a dozen  elected members of parliament who also participated in the sit-in. 
 The entire Italian contingent had been set to land on the beaches of Tyre, about 60 miles south of Beirut, in a TV-friendly display of European solidarity with Lebanon. Heavy surf led commanders to change their plans, however, and about 150 soldiers arrived on CH-3 helicopters. 
  The trucks and other equipment were rerouted to nearby Naqourah, the site of UNIFIL headquarters. The rest of the soldiers were to be brought ashore later, landing on beaches when possible or in the port if the surf remained rough, according to navy Lt. Frederico Mariani, an aide to the Italian admiral who commanded the operation. 
 Jean-Marie Guehenno, chief of U.N. peacekeeping operations, said UNIFIL participation by Italian, French and other European militaries demonstrated the commitment of their governments to stabilizing the cease-fire and aiding Lebanon's recovery. 
 Annan has sought to include Muslim troops as well, and Indonesia announced Saturday that it would send about 1,000 soldiers to take part. Israel had voiced objections to the participation of Indonesia because it does not have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Turkey, a Muslim nation that maintains friendly ties with Jerusalem, also has decided in principle to send troops. 
 Guehenno said the large European commitment also could help Lebanon make the sensitive political changes outlined in the U.N. resolution, including Hezbollah's eventual disarmament and evolution into a mainstream political party. While Israel and the United States have insisted on this point, Lebanese officials have expressed doubt it will happen anytime soon, citing Hezbollah's place on the political landscape and its enhanced status after the month-long war with Israel. 
 Pellegrini made it clear, however, that UNIFIL's mission,  even with the new rules of engagement, does not include disarming Hezbollah. "It's not my job," he said. UNIFIL's role, he said, is to assist the Lebanese army in guaranteeing state authority over all Lebanese territory. 
 The mission of Lebanon's army  was defined in an ambiguous compromise. After long negotiations, Hezbollah agreed to put down its weapons and embrace the deployment of the army in the border region it has long controlled, while, in return, the army pledged not to seek out the weapons.  

 ISRAEL (98%); LEBANON (95%); FRANCE (92%);  SYRIA (92%)







  



September 3, 2006 Sunday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka  --  Sri Lanka's navy said Saturday it sank 12 Tamil rebel boats, including five suicide craft, and killed as many as 100 rebel fighters during a six-hour sea battle off the country's northern coast. 
  The fighting broke out late Friday when about 20 boats belonging to the rebel Tamil Tigers' sea wing attacked a navy patrol near Kankesanturai harbor,  on  the northern Jaffna peninsula.  The Tigers have been battling the government for more than 20 years for a separate homeland for the country's ethnic Tamil minority, claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. In recent months the fighting has escalated, endangering a 2002 cease-fire.  
  About 220,000 people have fled their homes because of near-daily shelling, airstrikes and artillery fire since April, according to the United Nations. Aid workers warned of a humanitarian catastrophe if the United Nations and Red Cross pull out of Sri Lanka, where agency staff are facing mounting threats. 
 ASIA 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  Western media apply double standards when reporting on Muslims and are often ignorant about sensitive issues for the religion, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said. 
*  SEOUL --  North Korea accused the United States of provoking war by carrying out an anti-missile test over the Pacific and holding military drills with South Korean forces on the divided peninsula. South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities have detected suspicious vehicle movements in and out of North Korea's major missile test site, a news report said Sunday. 
*  MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan  --  Pro-Taliban militants encouraged by tribal elders signed an agreement Saturday with Pakistan's government to ensure "permanent peace" in North Waziristan, a tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said.  
 AFRICA 
*  KAMPALA, Uganda  --  Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni pledged to intervene to prevent notorious guerrilla leader Joseph Kony from facing international war crimes charges if his group agreed to end one of Africa's longest insurgencies. 
  Under a truce agreed to a week ago, Lord's Resistance Army fighters and leader Kony have three weeks to move to two camps in southern Sudan while talks continue. Kony and his top deputies are wanted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court.  
*  MILE REFUGEE CAMP, Chad  --  Thousands of Sudanese refugees crowded Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as he visited their camp in eastern Chad and delivered a single message: Bring in the United Nations. The refugees told Obama an international peacekeeping force is the only hope they have of returning to their normal lives in Darfur.  
 THE AMERICAS 
*  MEXICO CITY  --  Hurricane John was downgraded to a tropical storm over Baja California,  the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. 
*  LA PAZ, Bolivia  --  President Evo Morales sent troops for the second time in a week to break up a protest by Guarani Indians who threatened to shut the valves at one of Bolivia's largest natural gas pipelines.  
 tHE MIDDLE EAST 
*  BEIRUT  --  Lebanese authorities have arrested a fourth suspect in connection with a plan to bomb two trains in Germany and have filed charges against five Lebanese and a Syrian, judicial sources said. 
*  GAZA CITY  --  Israeli forces shot and killed a father and his son when they raided a house in the Gaza Strip, and a third Palestinian was killed by troops near a Gaza border crossing, medics and witnesses said. 
*  TEHRAN  --  U.N. Secretary of State Kofi Annan, visiting Iran, raised concerns with officials over an exhibition of cartoons about the Holocaust that opened in response to Muslim outrage over the prophet Muhammad caricatures.  
*  ANKARA, Turkey  --   Separatist Kurdish guerrillas killed seven Turkish soldiers and wounded two in attacks against the military in southeastern Turkey, officials said.  
 EUROPE 
*  MOSCOW  --  Right-wing nationalists and residents in Kondopoga, about 450 miles north of Moscow, clashed with riot police, activists said. Thousands of people demanded police expel Chechens and people from  Northern Caucasus or investigate them for criminal ties. 
  -- From News Services 

 SRI LANKA (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); SUDAN (93%); UGANDA (92%); KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (92%); KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (92%); INDONESIA (92%); AFRICA (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); BOLIVIA (79%); CHAD (79%); SOUTH SUDAN (79%); ASIA (79%); MEXICO (79%)







   


September 2, 2006 Saturday  




 Indonesia to Send Soldiers For U.N.'s Force in Lebanon

 
Indonesia said Friday that it expected to send a contingent of 1,000 soldiers to join the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, even though Israel had earlier objected to its participation. 
  Israel's opposition to Indonesian troops has softened, said Dino Djalal, the foreign policy adviser to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
''My latest information is that Israel has or will state or indicate they do not object to their participation,'' he said.  
  In early discussions about a peacekeeping force, Israel said it would oppose the participation of soldiers from Muslim countries that did not have diplomatic relations with Israel, a position that appeared to bar soldiers from Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh. 
  In Tel Aviv, Mark Regev, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, couched Israel's position in a way that fell short of outright rejection. ''We think all countries who want to contribute should have relations with both sides, with us and with Lebanon,'' he said. 
  An Israeli Foreign Ministry official said Friday evening that while there might yet be an agreement with Indonesia on sending troops, ''matters are still not finalized.''
  In voicing their concerns, Israeli officials have said that countries that do not formally recognize Israel would have difficulty in dispatching soldiers who would be even-handed. 
  But in talking about the participation of Muslim countries, Israeli officials have said they regard some Muslim countries in a more positive light than others. 
  They noted that the former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin visited Indonesia in 1992 and that Israel sent relief aid to Indonesia after the tsunami in December 2004. Wahid Abdurrahman, the former Indonesian president, visited Israel twice in the 1990's when he was the leader of one of Indonesia's largest Muslim organizations.
  At the United Nations, peacekeeping officials said they regarded Indonesia and Malaysia as strong participants in past peacekeeping missions and were moving ahead with plans to incorporate soldiers from both countries. Malaysia has also offered 1,000 troops for the force. 
  The world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia is considered moderate in its religious outlook, and its soldiers have served in 30 United Nations peacekeeping operations, including two in the Middle East.
  For the Indonesians, the dispatch of troops to the high-profile peacekeeping assignment in Lebanon is seen as a prestigious role, particularly as the military adjusts to a less powerful role at home after the collapse in 1998 of the authoritarian regime of Gen. Suharto. 
  Mr. Yudhoyono has promoted Indonesia's participation as part of an effort to promote himself as a leader with a presence in international affairs, a position that past Indonesian presidents, including General Suharto, avoided. 
  Indonesia plans to send one battalion and one engineering platoon, Mr. Djalal said. Final details of the deployment were being worked out at the United Nations headquarters in New York. ''Once that's done, they are ready to go,'' he said. 
  Israel has voiced harsher reservations about troops from Malaysia, which it regards as less friendly toward it than Indonesia is. 

Spain to Send 1,100 Troops
  MADRID, Sept. 1 (AP) -- The Spanish government agreed Friday to contribute up to 1,100 troops to the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon and to lead one of its multinational brigades.
  The decision, made at a weekly cabinet meeting, is expected to be approved by Spain's Parliament in a vote next Thursday.
  Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said that, if the mission is approved, Spain will immediately send marines to Lebanon. They would be replaced in November by other Spanish troops, who will take command of a multinational brigade, she said.

 ISRAEL (99%); INDONESIA (95%); LEBANON (94%); MALAYSIA (93%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); 








 
 

September 2, 2006 Saturday



 ISRAEL TALKS SWAP WITH HAMAS - ABDUCTED SOLDIER EXCHANGE EYED

 
A secret Hamas-Israel deal is in the works to exchange a kidnapped Israeli corporal for more than 1,000 imprisoned Palestinians, Saudi and Israeli media reported yesterday.  
A delegation of Israeli security officials is in Cairo to work out details with Egyptian mediators, the Saudi newspaper Okaz reported yesterday.   
The outlines for the proposed swap call for it to take part in four stages, beginning with Hamas' freeing of Cpl. Gilad Shalit.  
Shalit has not been seen since June 25, when he was kidnapped inside Israel by Hamas and brought to an undisclosed location in the Gaza Strip. That triggered a ferocious anti-terror sweep by Israeli forces in Gaza.  
Under the proposal, Israel would spring 350 Palestinian prisoners serving short terms three days after Shalit's release, according to Okaz.  
The remaining Palestinians would be let go in the final two stages of the swap.  
The Jerusalem Post said Egypt is waiting for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to give final approval.  
"The plan is in place. All Israel needs to do is answer the request," it reported.  
Two Egyptian intelligence officers are reportedly in Gaza and in contact with the kidnappers.  
The Saudi paper said a wide range of prisoners would be freed, including Palestinian legislators captured during the last two months. But the fiery West Bank militant Marwan Barghouti would not be freed, it said.  
Meanwhile, Italian soldiers began arriving in Lebanon this morning - part of the first large contingent of international troops dispatched to boost the U.N. force keeping the peace between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.  
The soldiers, wearing blue berets, arrived by helicopter in the Mediterranean port city of Tyre to secure two beaches where the remainder of an 880-strong battalion of Italian soldiers will land through the day.  
International troops have been slow to arrive in Lebanon since the Aug. 14 cease-fire brought an end to 34 days of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, in part because it took time to hammer out details over the troops' mandate.  
Early today, Indonesia's Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda announced his country will send up to 1,000 troops to southern Lebanon by the month's end, after Israel dropped objections to its participation in the force. Israel had said it did not want Indonesia to take part because the Muslim nation did not have relations with the Jewish state.  
"So, probably our troops will be deployed this month, by the latest the end of this month," the foreign minister said on the resort island of Bali in comments aired on El Shinta radio.           
With Post Wire Services 
---- 
Proposed deal  
* Hamas would free kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit (left). 
* Three days later, Israel would release 350 Palestinians serving short terms. 
* Another 350, serving mediumlength terms, would be freed in the next stage. 
* A final group of 350 inmates serving longer terms would be the last let go. 
* The swap would not affect two other Israeli soldiers, abducted last month by Hezbollah. 

 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (97%); ISRAEL (96%); EGYPT (94%); LEBANON (93%);  MEDITERRANEAN (79%)







 
 


September 1, 2006 Friday



 The West Needs To Fight Islamofascists With Big Ideas

 
The West's war on terror is going tactically well enough, with its mission to put out fires here and there before they start. But it sorely misses the larger strategy that must be implemented. The concept is this: It isn't enough to get the guys with the bombs or beards but to alter the environment that produces them.
Just like the war on communism, the war on terror must combine the force of arms with the power of ideas, a higher moral purpose with a mechanism of action. In other words, the West, along with Russia and China - which have no interest in jihadist uprisings within their own territories, needs a roadmap for its war on terror, clearly detailing its ultimate goals and how it will achieve them. 
Such a strategy must be forged in G-8 Summit Meetings as well as the manuals of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the parliaments of the European Union. It must be defined unambiguously as the obliteration of an ideology that reduces Islam to a cult of mass murder and suicide.
Here is a blueprint:
1.The West needs strategies conveying to the vast majority of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims that acquiescence to jihadists and their ideologies means a rupture with Western civilization. The consequences for this should be spelled out by withholding Western commerce, the Internet, arms, machinery, and know-how - all of which still represent the bulk of progress as we define it in today's world. Imagine a ban on weapons and technology, on Microsoft and IBM, on Boeing, Ilyushin transport planes, and Airbus spares.
2. Draconian sanctions such as these should be applied in unison with Russia and China and clearly framed within the U.N. code. Islamic so-called moderate or client states including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Indonesia, among others, as well as enemies such as Iran, should be provided with a yardstick to define the dismantling of the infrastructure and software of terror at home - in mosques, in schools, in theocratic institutions, and inside government itself.
That will demand total elimination of the madrassa rote systems, the restructuring of religious teachings, and the outlawing of political groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood, which adopt religion as political vehicles.
3. In the West itself, the last vestiges of tolerance toward Islamic fundamentalism must be removed. Laws targeting extremist speech, Islamic dress, storefront unregulated mosques, and the traffic of immigrant Muslims who do not speak the language nor share the values of freedom must surface in the legal codes of America, Europe, and Australia. The West must clearly process the fact that it is facing an existential threat to its core values, and it cannot be shy about installing tools of war in its democratic practices.
Lest anyone think this is much ado about little, five years ago on one of America's darkest days when airplanes were crashed into the World Trade Center, it seemed that only a few hundred jihadists were aiming to make a point.
Now, it is clear that the people responsible for those burning towers in Manhattan were only small filaments of a spider's web encompassing millions of Muslims. Beyond towers, their aim is a freeze on freedom, democracy, and secularism - foundations that took centuries to develop, requiring the defeat of communism in order to prevail. The new plan is tyrannical rule by another name - jihad. But jihadists and secular tyrants are quite willing to join hands on this one.
Long before 9/11, jihadist adherents and sponsoring secular states, even communist states, had been stretching cobwebs into the suburbs of London and Islamabad, the streets of Baghdad and Kabul, the valleys between Syria and Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, and inside Western Europe and across Africa.
Enablers include our closest allies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, tribal leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the merchants of Dubai and Kuwait, all the way into the Indian Ocean, Indonesia, and Asia.
So, just imagine a world where the likes of Muammar Gadhafi of Libya, President Chavez of Venezuela, Bashar Al-Assad of Syria, Fidel Castro of Cuba, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, along with Hosni Mubarak and his sons in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood movements of Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and carbon copies in Indonesia, Pakistan, and across Asia all join hands.
This is the perspective that the larger strategy requires. It's the big picture.

    



September 1, 2006 Friday  




 As Lebanon's Troops Deploy, Hezbollah Stays Put in South; 
Across the Region, Militia and Army Operate in Parallel

 
ALBacked by an M113 armored personnel carrier, Lebanese soldiers wearing flak vests and carrying M16 automatic rifles manned a checkpoint at the little crossroads marking the entrance to Al Ghandouriyeh. 
  On a decorative archway nearby, the Lebanese flag with its distinctive green cedar flapped proudly, proclaiming restored national authority. Just above it on the pole, however, another flag flew: the yellow and green banner of Hezbollah, with an AK-47 assault rifle depicted atop the word "God." The arrangement seemed to illustrate popular sentiment in this heavily damaged village in southern Lebanon. 
  Heeding the U.N. cease-fire resolution that stopped the 33-day war between Israel and Hezbollah 2 1/2 weeks ago, the Lebanese army has deployed across the rocky hillsides and stone villages between the Litani River and the Israeli border. But to all appearances, the deployment has not displaced Hezbollah, the militant Islamic movement that Israel and the United States say must be destroyed as an armed force if peace is to return to this tortured land.  
  In Al Ghandouriyeh and a number of other villages seen during a drive through the border region, Hezbollah flags flew high and wide, often alongside Lebanese flags. Hezbollah members staffed reconstruction offices, held town council meetings and stood at their own checkpoints in what seemed to be cordial coexistence with the recently arrived army troops. 
  No weapons were visible except those carried by the soldiers. But many of the young Hezbollah supporters were of fighting age and seemed ready for another call-up if the need arose. In the agreement that led to the army's deployment, Hezbollah pledged that its fighters would put away their weapons. But the Lebanese government promised Hezbollah in return that its soldiers would not try to find out where the arms were stored. 
  The deal seemed to be working Thursday in Al Ghandouriyeh, which lies about 20 miles inland from Tyre and six miles northwest of the Israeli border. Heavy fighting raged here in the final days of the war as Israeli troops who had been helicoptered in encountered unexpectedly stiff resistance from Hezbollah defenders. The men of Al Ghandouriyeh openly displayed pride in what they had accomplished on the battlefield and seemed to have nothing to fear from the army troops lounging nearby. 
  "Do you think the Israelis are afraid of us now?" asked a middle-aged resident. "When they came, they thought they were heading for just more Arabs. But they found out. We are poor around here, but now we are strong." 
  Before the war, Hezbollah members were notorious for secrecy, hiding their weapons underground and concealing their association with the organization from even their closest friends and relatives. But since the Hezbollah militia held its own against the vaunted Israeli army for more than a month, membership has become a point of pride,  to be flaunted with fatigues or a yellow-and-green flag. 
  Ali Kandouh, an emigrant to Kuwait who returned to Al Ghandouriyeh to bury a brother killed in the fighting, said he and the rest of the village welcome the army's deployment, which amounts to about 50 soldiers and several armored vehicles headquartered in the heavily damaged local schoolhouse. Hezbollah's emergence was largely due in the first place to the government's absence over the last three decades, he said. 
  "I'm glad the army is here," he said, drinking coffee as a group of villagers sat nearby under Hezbollah banners. "It's good. Now I can sleep at night. Before they came, the Israelis could come in the night and take someone away. But now maybe the soldiers will protect us." 
  Hassan Deeb, a 17-year-old in fatigues and a T-shirt, also applauded the army's arrival, saying it was the duty of the government to protect the southern border villages. "The trouble with the army," he said, smiling, "is that they came only after the fighting stopped. 
  "They had to have a decision by the government to come," he added. "All the while the war was on, there was no decision. And now that it's over, they get their decision and they come." 
  The Lebanese government has pledged to send 15,000 soldiers to the area and to reinstate government authority after two decades during which many of the tasks of local administration  --  and military preparations  --  were left to Hezbollah. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, which has patrolled the border for 28 years, estimated that three battalions amounting to about 5,000 soldiers have arrived so far. 
  Jeeps with camouflage netting were seen Thursday purring down the region's narrow roads, pockmarked by four weeks of Israeli pummeling. Schools, factories and bombed-out homes have been requisitioned as temporary quarters for the thinly equipped troops. Heavy trucks snorted up and down the hills, bringing in supplies from Beirut. 
  Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Wednesday he will send 8,000 more soldiers to reinforce the border with Syria. The announcement appeared designed to meet another Israeli demand  --  preventing Hezbollah from replenishing its weapons stores with Iranian-supplied arms sent through Syria. 
  The extent of army deployment here has been a contentious issue between Israel and Lebanon. The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has made it clear he will lift the seven-week-old air and sea blockade of Lebanon only after all 15,000 Lebanese troops are deployed and are joined by a 15,000-member reinforced UNIFIL as outlined in the cease-fire resolution. 
  The current UNIFIL strength stands at 2,000. About 900 Italian troops sailed out Tuesday on their way to southern Lebanon as the first major UNIFIL reinforcement, a down payment on a pledge of 2,500 Italian troops on the ground and hundreds more for logistics. They were expected to arrive in Tyre on Friday, according to a UNIFIL spokesman, Milos Strugar. 
  France has promised 2,000 troops as well, with the first contingent to arrive in the middle of September. A 200-man French engineering unit has been in Lebanon for the past two weeks preparing the way. 
  Several other European nations have promised to send smaller contingents. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he is eager to get Muslim troops into the UNIFIL mix as well, noting that Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia have volunteered to dispatch substantial numbers of soldiers. Israel has objected to the presence of those countries in the force, however, because they do not have relations with the Jewish state. 
  Turkey, which maintains active economic and diplomatic relations with Israel, has decided in principle to volunteer some troops. The decision remains sensitive, however, because of the long Ottoman role in Lebanon and, internally, because of objections from Lebanon's Armenian community over the Turkish slaughter of Armenians in 1915. 

 ISRAEL (96%); LEBANON (96%); 




11


 
 


August 30, 2006 Wednesday



 Arab Press Says Jews Perpetrated 9/11 Attacks

 
"Is it conceivable that Muslims did the killing on 9/11? Yes, they did. They killed 3,000 people." - Ahmad Al-Rub'i, a former Kuwaiti minister of education, Al-Rai TV, March 27
Twelve days from now will mark the fifth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Since the attacks, the Middle East Media Research Institute has documented what the Arab and Iranian press has said about that day. 
Its response to the attacks was immediate. "When the towers collapsed ... my lungs filled with air. I breathed in relief, as I'd never breathed before,"a missive from the chairman of the Syrian Arab Writers Association read. "Millions across the world shouted in joy: America was hit," the independent Egyptian weekly Al-Maydan wrote. "I have a sneaking suspicion that George W. Bush was involved in the operations of September 11, as was Colin Powell," a columnist for the Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Samir Atallah, said.
Prominent journalists, members of academia, and leading religious figures shaped such conspiracy theories. Furthermore, Arab government officials were responsible in part for creating and spreading conspiracies about what "really" happened.
"I find it hard to believe that people who were learning to fly in Florida could, within a year and a half, fly large commercial airlines and hit with accuracy the towers of the World Trade Center, which would appear, to the pilot from the air, the size of a pencil," President Mubarak of Egypt told Al-Ahram Weekly on October 25, 2001. "Only a professional pilot could carry out this mission, not someone who learned to fly for 18 months in Florida."
Two weeks after the attacks, Sheik Muhammad al-Gameia - an Egyptian imam at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York and the American representative to Al-Azhar University, the highest religious authority in Sunni Islam - gave an interview to one of the school's Web sites. He said, among other things, "If the Americans knew that the Jews carried out the September 11 attacks, they would do to them what Hitler did."
More recently, an American Muslim scholar who is active in prominent American Muslim organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Salah Sultan, gave an interview to Saudi Al-Resala TV. "September 11 could not have been carried out entirely from outside [America] - by Muslims or others.... The entire thing was of a large scale and was planned within America in order to enable America to control and terrorize the entire world," he said on May 17.
Notable conspiracy theories from the Arab world and Iran between 2001 and 2004 put the blame for the attacks on Jews, Zionists, Christian Zionists, born again Christians, the Vatican, Mossad, CIA, National Security Council, white supremacist groups, Britain, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Benjamin Netanyahu, and many others.
These conspiracies have continued over the past year. "The 9/11 story is, in fact, a Zionist conspiracy," an Egyptian cleric, Abd Al-Sabur Shaheen, said on Al-Nas TV on July 10.
Writing in the Oman daily Al-Watan on June 26, Abdallah Hammouda discussed the possibility that neoconservative Christians and Zionists planned and implemented the attacks.
The "real facts are not available"to explain what really happened on September 11, but besides Al Qaeda, it is possible Jews or even the "Americans themselves were behind it," the chairman of the Somali Islamic Courts Union, Sheik Sherif Sheik Ahmed, told the Somaliland Times on June 9.
"I said that 9/11 was carried out by American agents," the deputy chairman of the Egyptian Parliamentary Committee for Defense and National Security, Muhammad Abd Al-Fattah, told Ein TV on May 2.
"I am one of the those who believe these events"of September 11 "were fabricated from the outset," an Egyptian cleric who once lectured in America, Hazem Sallah Abu Ismail, said on Saudi Al-Resala TV on April 14.
Throughout September 2005, Al-Jazeera aired a special titled "The Truth Behind 9/11." Part IV, which aired September 30, was devoted to the Mossad's involvement, including "agents ... dancing and cheering in front of the World Trade Center."
On September 13, 2005, Iran's Jaame Jam 1 TV aired a program on September 11 conspiracies, including the "true" passengers on the planes that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and why 4,000 Jews did not show up to work that day. An Iranian TV documentary on Sahar 1 TV on September 11, 2005, suggested that the American government attacked its own people.
A retired Egyptian general, Muhammed Khalef, said on Al-Mihwar TV on September 11, 2005, that the planning for September 11, 2001, began in 1999 at the National Defense University. He claimed that Mr. Cheney told Mr. Bush, "It was an inside the White House job."
In November 2002, Ain Al-Yaqeen quoted the powerful Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef, as saying: "It is impossible that 19 youths carried out the operation of September 11, or that bin Laden or Al Qaeda did that alone. ... I think [the Zionists] are behind these events." Prince Nayef's statement was considered shocking and was immediately condemned. As NBC reported, it completely undercut a $10 million Saudi public relations campaign.
Unfortunately, as we approach the fifth anniversary of the attacks, statements such as Prince Nayef's are now readily accepted in the Middle East.On June 22, Pew released the results of a survey that asked Muslims if they thought Arabs carried out the September 11 attacks. Only 17% of British Muslims; 48% of French Muslims; 16% of Indonesians; 32% of Egyptians; 16% of Turks; 39% of Jordanians, and 15% of Pakistanis answered "yes."
Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute. A documentary about the results of MEMRI's survey of the Arab and Iranian press over the last five years, narrated by Ron Silver and produced by Interface Media Group, will air on www.memri.org next week.

 



  

 


August 30, 2006 Wednesday



 INDONESIA NEARS DEAL TO DEPLOY FORCES TO LEBANON

 
Indonesia is near deal with United Nations to send 1,000 peacekeepers to Lebanon despite Israel's objections to participation of Muslim countries that do not have diplomatic relations with it; Malaysia is also likely to send troops, and Bangladesh and Nepal may take part (M)

 LEBANON (94%); ISRAEL (93%); MALAYSIA (93%); INDONESIA (92%)







 Paddock Publications, Inc. 
Chicago Daily Herald

August 27, 2006 Sunday  
Cook Edition



 
Why U.S. strategy is doomed to failure
The common sentiment among Americans is that "Israel has a right to defend itself' against terrorism." Sounds good on paper; the problem is, after 60 years, it doesn't seem to be working. The terrorists are becoming more numerous, more persistent, and have increasingly better arms.
Meanwhile, America's misadventure in Iraq grows worse, and things are slipping in Afghanistan. It seems that our "get tough on terrorists" stance isn't playing real well in the Muslim world. It just may have to do with sending armies into civilian populations, which causes death and destruction among the innocent and generates more terrorists. 
Meanwhile, there is only one single Muslim country in the world where we currently have a favorable image - Indonesia.
What happened there?
The tsunami, followed by vast amounts of American assistance.
Let's see: armies produce death, destruction and more terrorism. Good works produce favorable opinions in the Arab world. What a concept!
Just think what might have happened if instead of spending billions to attack Iraq, we had spent that money to fully rebuild Afghanistan with a "Marshall Plan" involving new highways, schools, hospitals, and the production of jobs. Would the Taliban be gaining power right now? Similarly, if Israel were helping to support the people of Lebanon instead of killing them, would the Lebanese still be inclined to support Hezbollah?
Yes, true terrorists must be hunted down - but only with relentless intelligence and covert operations. Sending armies in to find them inevitably makes things worse.
All of this seems pretty plain to me. But then, for political leaders, it feels so good to act tough and wave the flag. It gets them plenty of votes as well. And that's why things never seem to change.
Jeff Kressmann
Palatine
Lombardi's actual words were different
The coverage for the opening of the 88th PGA Championship at Medinah Country Club in the sports section was great. Photos by Ed Lee and Bev Horne were informative. However, the statement printed next to a picture of a golfer taking a swing "practice makes perfect" is not correct according to the late Vince Lombardi. He always said "perfect practice makes perfect."
Dan Mateja
Mount Prospect
Raise the minimum wage, sans strings
Senators. Richard Durbin and Barack Obama made the right decision recently when they voted against efforts by Senate Republican leaders to pass an $800 billion inheritance tax giveaway for the super wealthy by tying it to a proposed increase in the minimum wage. This was a transparent attempt to dangle a minimum wage increase for families struggling to make ends meet to secure yet another Texas-size tax handout for millionaires.
It is reprehensible that Republican leaders sought to use relief for low-wage workers as cover in order to sneak through yet another tax break for their rich friends. Funding a minimum-wage hike by draining $800 billion from public budgets used to fund health care, education and other critical programs wasn't a solution for low- income Americans. It was a new problem.
Members of Congress raised their own pay with no strings attached. Surely, Congress owes it to all low-wage workers to raise the minimum wage with no strings attached. Kudos to our Illinois senators for taking a stand against this reckless attempt to give billions more to the wealthiest Americans.
Ryan Canney
Organizing Director
Citizen Action/Illinois
Chicago

 UNITED STATES (94%); AFGHANISTAN (93%); ISRAEL (93%); IRAQ (93%); LEBANON (92%); 







  



August 27, 2006 Sunday  




 Question Celebrity; 
Explore the World of Fame

 
Reilly Capps, a Washington Post intern from a few years back who seems to be on an endless journey to see the world, caught this item in the Jakarta Post a few weeks ago (he's traveling all over Asia lately  --  "I figure 3 billion people can't be wrong," he says) and knew we'd dig this news: Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, has issued a fatwa against reporting, watching, reading and spreading celebrity gossip.  
 "This fatwa will be issued because ulema are concerned gossip shows will destroy young people and because the Koran strictly forbids spreading gossip," the group's leader, Said Agil Siradj, said. There are some 40 infotainment shows on 11 stations in Jakarta, which are quite popular, the newspaper reported. Siradj said that the people who produce these shows are sinners and that the audience is made up of " 'gossip addicts,' who lap up juicy celebrity tidbits without bearing in mind the humiliation they cause." (TV executives said they would wait until the edict was officially issued before they considered programming changes. "We are going to examine the edict thoroughly and seriously, to find out which part is considered haram," said one.) 
 I knew it would be only a matter of time before jihad collided with the world of Ryan Seacrest et al. My infidelness (my infidelity? my infidelitude?) is helpfully pointed out to me all the time. One of Question Celebrity's e-mailers, in response to the July 30 Kathy Griffin column, suggested doing something extremely unpleasant and Taliban-like to me with Griffin's ex-husband's curling iron  --  the same day the Indonesian clerics issued their ban. I can only respond to the fatwa with hurt feelings, typical Western-values disconnect and . . . a smidge of recognition. Indeed, Siradj's ravings against celebreculture sound much like every ninth or 10th e-mail I get here at Question Celebrity, from people who simply can't abide (or, apparently, avert) the column's ruminative, insipidly sinful obsessions on matters of fame and foible. Gossip doesn't only offend Islamic fundamentalists. It gets under the skin of Takoma Park liberals, suburban conservatives and uppity Washington wonks who insist there must be something more worthy for this space. It also aggravates my mother, who skips this column altogether. Gossip is a sin the world over. We'll all recognize one another, dodging rocks at the public stoning. 
 {gt}{gt}E-mail: celebrity@washpost.com 

 INDONESIA (91%); ASIA (73%)







   


August 26, 2006 Saturday  




 EUROPE PLEDGES A LARGER FORCE INSIDE LEBANON 

 
After a week of confusion and missteps, Europe pledged to add up to 6,900 troops to the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, officials said at an emergency meeting of European Union foreign ministers here on Friday. 
  But the officials cautioned that the force would not be used to disarm Hezbollah. That job, if it is done at all, will be left to the Lebanese government and army.
The international force, joined by Lebanese national soldiers, is the solution that world powers agreed to after a month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, an Islamist militia that dominates southern Lebanon. Israel, in particular, wanted a strong European contingent in the force.
  But after the force was agreed to, a number of countries said that the rules of engagement were unclear, and that they feared their troops would end up fighting with either Israel or Hezbollah. Their conflict is partly a local one, over prisoners that each side holds, and the history of Israel's occupation of the region.  
  But it is also a result of Hezbollah's refusal to recognize Israel's legitimacy, and it is widely viewed as a proxy conflict between the United States and Iran. 
  The largest contribution to the expanded force came from Italy, which confirmed that it would contribute 3,000 troops and was asked by Secretary General Kofi Annan to succeed France in command of the force in February. The force seemed unlikely to reach the 15,000-troop level authorized under United Nations Resolution 1701, which ended the fighting in Lebanon. President Jacques Chirac of France on Friday called the 15,000 figure ''totally excessive.'' Currently, there are more than 2,000 United Nations troops in Lebanon.
  ''Europe has lived up to its responsibility,'' said Mr. Annan, who attended the emergency session of European Union foreign ministers here. He called the commitments the ''credible core'' called for by Resolution 1701. 
  He said that he hoped several thousand of the additional troops would deploy ''within the next few days, not the next few weeks,'' and that the total force would arrive in three waves extending over several months.
  Mr. Annan said agreement was reached on new rules of engagement that authorize the peacekeepers to use deadly force against those preventing them from doing their job.
  ''If, for example, combatants, or those illicitly moving weapons, forcibly resist a demand from them, or from the Lebanese Army, to disarm,'' then armed force could be used, he said. He added, however, that disarming Hezbollah -- a central goal of two United Nations resolutions on Lebanon -- ''is not going to be done by force.''
  The expanded peacekeeping force's mandate is to support the Lebanese Army in enforcing the resolutions. But disarmament of Hezbollah ''has to be achieved through negotiation, and an internal Lebanese consensus, a political process, for which the new Unifil is not, and cannot be, a substitute,'' Mr. Annan said. Unifil is the acronym for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.
  Mr. Annan also said the peacekeepers would not be deployed along the Lebanese border with Syria unless the Lebanese government expressly requested them. Syria has said that it would regard such a deployment as a ''hostile act'' and Lebanon has already said it did not want United Nations support in policing the border.
  Mr. Annan's presence at the ministers' meeting today underscored the urgency of getting additional peacekeepers on the ground in Lebanon to cement a fragile cease-fire. But given the limits on the peacekeepers' mandate, it is unlikely that the expanded international force will resolve the central issue of Hezbollah's armed presence in southern Lebanon -- a fact that Mr. Annan and European officials alluded to.
  ''Our main concerns now relate to the political context in which the U.N. force will operate,'' Mr. Annan said. ''The U.N. -- Security Council and Secretariat alike -- is fully seized of the need to move the political process forward, to stabilize the situation and secure a durable cease-fire.''
  He said he would visit Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories next week and then make recommendations to the Security Council on ways to resolve the political situation that led to the crisis.
  Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim organization that is supported financially, politically and militarily by Syria and Iran. The Lebanese Army, which will be responsible for stopping the flow of weapons from those two countries to Hezbollah, is largely made up of Shiite soldiers.
  With Hezbollah represented in the Lebanese government, few people expect the Lebanese government or its army to be capable of disarming the powerful militia or moving it out of southern Lebanon without the cooperation of Syria and Iran.
  Still, Mr. Annan gave a positive assessment of the situation on the ground.
  ''The cessation of hostilities has, on the whole, held remarkably well,'' he said. ''Israeli forces are withdrawing progressively from south Lebanon, and the Lebanese armed forces are moving in.''
  Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, called on Israel to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon to ease tensions and to allow reconstruction to go forward.
  The French are contributing the largest number of troops after Italy, though it is not entirely clear how many. Mr. Chirac said Thursday that France would send a total of 2,000 troops. But the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, told the meeting on Friday that France would contribute 2,000 in addition to those already on the ground in Lebanon, which number 400. Spain promised a battalion of 1,000 to 1,200 troops and Poland, which already has some soldiers in Unifil, said it would add 500 soldiers now and possibly more later, depending on the force's needs.
  Belgium said that it would send 300 soldiers and that the number could rise to 400. Finland pledged 250 soldiers.
  Germany, Sweden, Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark all offered ships and other naval assets. Britain said it would send Jaguar ground attack aircraft and Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft, known as Awacs, in addition to a navy frigate. It also offered to help train and equip the Lebanese military and support enhanced command and control technology for the force.
  Mr. Annan said that the United Nations had received serious offers of troops from countries outside Europe as well, including Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh, and that he was consulting with Turkey about whether it would contribute. Israel has previously expressed opposition to Muslim countries that it has no diplomatic relations with, like Malaysia and Indonesia, joining the peacekeeping force. But Mr. Annan said he thought there were ways to use the troops while dealing with Israel's concerns.
  In addition to succeeding the French command in February, Italy will lead a strategic office at United Nations headquarters in New York that will provide military guidance to the force, Mr. Annan said.
  The decision on a joint command rewards Italy for leaping into the diplomatic breach in recent days with bold promises of troops and leadership while other European countries hesitated. And it avoids embarrassment for France, which was initially expected to take the lead but soon drew criticism for being slow to commit more troops.
  In an important concession to France, which had worried about bureaucratic meddling in the force's chain of command -- a problem with past United Nations peacekeeping forces -- there will be no civilian special representatives of the secretary general on the ground to share the command, which will report instead to the military officers at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
  Russia was reported to be considering sending troops to Lebanon, but Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov said no decision had been made. ''It is not yet clear what the status of the peacekeeping force is, what their rights are, what they should do there, and what mandate they have,'' he told reporters during a visit to the country's far east, Interfax reported.
  It is unlikely that Russia's military, whose manpower and budget are already stretched thin, would be able to send a significant force.








  



August 26, 2006 Saturday  




 Europe Offering Bulk of U.N. Force; 
Big Hurdles Remain For Lebanon Mission

 
 European countries agreed Friday to provide about half the troops for a new 15,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, with a significant contingent expected to arrive within a week, officials announced after an emergency meeting here. 
  "Europe is providing the backbone of the force," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told reporters after the session with European foreign ministers. "We can now begin to put together a credible force."  
  The commitments from reluctant European governments followed nearly two weeks of intense prodding and pleading by Annan. There have been concerns that the tenuous cease-fire between Lebanon's Hezbollah militia and Israel could unravel without the rapid intervention of an international peacekeeping force. 
  The majority of the European troops will be supplied by Italy, which has offered as many as 3,000 soldiers, and France, which Thursday promised a total of 2,000. An advance group of about 185 French troops, from engineering units, arrived in Lebanon on Friday, joining a small group already in the country. 
  Even with the total European commitment of between 5,600 and 6,900 troops, Annan conceded that major obstacles remain for deploying the international force alongside Lebanese army units in southern Lebanon and Israeli units on the border. 
  Annan, who is eager to include Muslims in the peacekeeping force, said he is prepared to accept offers of troops from predominantly Muslim Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia, despite insistence from Israel that it will not accept the presence of peacekeepers from the three countries, which do not recognize the Jewish state. 
  The U.N. leader said that in light of the "struggle" in obtaining troop commitments from European countries, he could not afford to turn down governments that were willing to fill the remaining ranks of the planned force. 
  "We will take the best peacekeepers where we can find them," Annan said. "We don't have pools sitting in barracks you can choose and pick from." 
  He said all three countries' armies had extensive experience in international peacekeeping missions, and that those forces could be deployed in areas where they would not come into contact with Israeli soldiers. Annan also said he is discussing troop deployments with Turkey, a Muslim nation and member of the NATO alliance. Turkey has diplomatic and economic relations with Israel. 
  The French, who Annan said will lead the force until next February, have  openly disagreed with the U.N. chief on the proper size of the force. 
  French President Jacques Chirac said at a Paris news conference Friday that he believes 15,000 troops is "a totally excessive figure" because of the relatively small patch of territory where soldiers will operate, suggesting instead a maximum of 6,000 troops. 
  "How can we have 15,000 Lebanese troops being deployed as well as 15,000  UNIFIL forces?" Chirac said, referring to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.  "I'm not sure there's room for both." 
  "We're putting in the assets required to get the job done  --  no more and no less," Annan told reporters here in response to questions about Chirac's statement. He added that "15,000 are going to deploy." 
  U.N. plans call for the first 3,500 troops to reach Lebanon in about a week, but Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said Friday that the remaining European forces are unlikely to reach the country for another two to three months.  
 It could be several more months after that before the entire force is fully operational, according to U.N. officials. 
  In addition to Italy and France, Spain has offered about 1,000 troops, and Poland said it will send 500. Finland, Denmark, Germany, Hungary and Greece each have promised small numbers of personnel.  
  Approximately 2,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops are in southern Lebanon and along the Israeli border as part of UNIFIL, which was created in 1978. 
  The United States and Britain have refused to provide ground troops, saying theirs are already overtaxed in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush has said the U.S. military will provide communications, logistics and intelligence assistance.  
  Britain is offering two AWACS communications and surveillance planes, six Jaguar combat jets, a frigate and use of a British base in Cyprus for staging, according to the country's U.N. ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry. 
  Chirac on Friday continued to defend the delay in his decision to make a significant contribution to the peacekeeping force. While France was instrumental in writing the U.N. cease-fire resolution and initially said it would send 2,000 troops to southern Lebanon, Chirac drew domestic and international criticism when he then offered only about 400 soldiers. 
  "It would have been utterly irresponsible to take a decision that would jeopardize the lives of French troops without having the guarantee that they would be deployed under optimal conditions from the point of view of their safety," Chirac told reporters during a joint appearance at the Elysee Palace with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "I don't know how I would have been judged if I had decided irrationally without thinking about a minimum of guarantees." 
  Annan said the United Nations has adjusted some of its rules of engagement for the peacekeepers to meet concerns that the troops be authorized to shoot to defend themselves and civilian populations under what could be murky circumstances. 
 "Troops are not going in there to disarm  --  let's be clear," he said. "Disarming Hezbollah cannot be done by force. It has to be political agreements among the Lebanese." 
  At the same time, Annan warned during the closed meeting with the European foreign ministers that peacekeepers "may well find themselves engaged in military action at the tactical level," according to a copy of his address. He cited as an example a hypothetical situation in which "combatants, or those illicitly moving weapons, forcibly resist a demand from them, or from the Lebanese army, to disarm."  
  Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations and researcher Corinne Gavard in Paris contributed to this report. 

 EUROPE (97%); LEBANON (95%); ISRAEL (94%); FRANCE (93%); TURKEY (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); BELGIUM (79%); 







   


August 25, 2006 Friday  




 France Offers Many More Troops for Lebanon

 
France pledged Thursday to send a total of 2,000 troops to the United Nations multinational peacekeeping force for Lebanon, in a last-minute effort to salvage its flagging reputation and hold on to its leadership role in the face of Italian competition.
  President Jacques Chirac made the announcement in a televised address to the nation after his country had come under widespread criticism for initially offering just 200 new soldiers to the force, which already includes 200 French soldiers. 
That offer, coming after France took a leading role in writing the United Nations resolution that authorized the force and ended more than a month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, undermined efforts to raise peacekeeping troops from other nations, officials say. It also won France widespread scorn.
  In the meantime, Italy stepped forward with an offer of up to 3,000 soldiers, and Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, placed a call to his Italian counterpart, Romano Prodi, urging him to assume leadership of the force. A French general leads the current international force in Lebanon, which will be reinforced and given a broader mandate under the new resolution.
  Mr. Chirac made his announcement a day before a special meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, at which other European countries are expected to make firm commitments to the force. France's sizable commitment is likely to lend momentum to the meeting and encourage other European countries to make significant contributions of their own.
  While Europe has been criticized for moving slowly, European and United Nations diplomats emphasize that the multinational force, which the resolution says can be as large as 15,000 troops, was never intended to be entirely European. The resolution says only that Europe must form a ''credible core'' of the force, and Europeans say they expect their troops to make up about a third of the total.
  United Nations officials say that for all the complaints, this peacekeeping force is being assembled faster than any in history. The normal process can take as long as three months, they say. But that is being waived to be able to put 3,000 fresh soldiers on the ground in Lebanon as early as the end of the month. The hope is to have the rest of the force in place by November.
  French officials defended their response to the crisis. ''France has been criticized for being too slow, but in fact it has been the fastest-moving nation in providing not only humanitarian help to Lebanon but also ground troops to the field,'' said Philippe Le Corre, an adviser to Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie.
  In mid-July, France sent 1,700 marines to help evacuate civilians trapped in Lebanon, and that force has remained to help supply the existing United Nations International Force in Lebanon, known as Unifil. Mr. Chirac said the marines would stay in place.
  In addition, the country's earlier offer of 200 troops, while ridiculed, was fulfilled immediately -- they were the first fresh troops to arrive in Lebanon to reinforce the existing 2,000-member United Nations force.
  Nonetheless, the country's generals were mindful of the casualties suffered as part of the peacekeeping forces in the early 1990's in Bosnia, where France lost more troops than any other contributor, and in southern Lebanon in 1983. So they resisted a strong commitment until they obtained certain guarantees from the parties to the conflict and from the United Nations. In making his announcement, Mr. Chirac said those guarantees had been given.
  ''From Lebanon and Israel we have obtained assurances that the force will be allowed to fulfill its mission on the ground,'' Mr. Chirac said. ''We have obtained from the United Nations the necessary clarifications on the chain of command, which must be simple, coherent and reactive; on the rules of engagement, which must guarantee the force's freedom of movement and capacity for action in the face of any hostile situations.''
  People familiar with those clarifications, who could not be identified because they were not authorized to talk on the subject, said they included stronger than usual rules of engagement that would permit the peacekeepers to use ''deadly force'' against anyone interfering with their mandate.
  Also, the force's chain of command will answer to military officers based at United Nations headquarters in New York rather than to civilian United Nations officials. The United Nations said Thursday that it planned to create a ''military cell'' in New York to act as the peacekeeping force's command center. 
  Mr. Chirac said he had lobbied other heads of state to follow his country's example in committing troops, and he said several European countries would do so, together with ''important Muslim countries in Asia.'' 
  The latter was a reference to Malaysia and Indonesia, which have both offered significant contributions to the force. But neither has diplomatic relations with Israel, which has previously expressed opposition to the inclusion of such countries in the force. 
  Mr. Chirac said the additional French troops would consist of two battalions, or 1,600, bringing the total number of French troops to 2,000. ''France is ready, if the U.N. wishes it, to continue to assume the command of the force,'' he said. 
  Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan, said Thursday that the current United Nations commander in Lebanon, Gen. Alain Pellegrini of France, was expected to keep his post.
  Italy is expected to confirm its offer on Friday; United Nations officials said talk of 2,000 to 3,000 troops was not yet official. Other European Union members are also expected to give a clearer indication of what they will contribute. Mr. Prodi informed President Bush on Thursday of his country's readiness to lead the peacekeeping force, a statement from the Italian president said.
  One official said the United Nations hoped that the peacekeeping force would eventually include Muslim troops from Malaysia, Indonesia, Nepal and perhaps Morocco.

 FRANCE (96%); EUROPE (95%); LEBANON (94%); ISRAEL (93%); ITALY (92%); BELGIUM (79%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (79%)







 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
 
Palm Beach Post (Florida)

August 24, 2006 Thursday  




 GET HELP TO LEBANON

 
Israel didn't do a very good job running the war against Hezbollah, but the United Nations is doing a worse job running the cease-fire.
In a sad parallel, the U.N. doesn't have any more direct control over the nations it needs than Lebanon has over Hezbollah. That inherent weakness has crippled the proposed joint U.N.-Lebanese peace force that was supposed to separate Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. 
The United States, which couldn't commit troops for geopolitical reasons even if the armed forces weren't bogged down in Iraq, also is in a weak position. President Bush has been reduced to stating the obvious. "The need is urgent," he said Monday. "The international community must now designate the leadership of this new international force, give it robust rules of engagement and deploy it as quickly as possible to secure the peace."
Primary blame for the U.N.'s failure to move belongs to France, which brokered the deal and then refused to provide more than a few hundred troops instead of the promised several thousand. Italy has offered to lead in place of France and has offered 3,000 soldiers. But very few countries are eager to participate, making it unlikely that the U.N. can muster the 15,000 peacekeepers that were supposed to match the 15,000 Lebanese troops separating the combatants.
The longer the cease-fire goes without the intervening troops taking up their positions, the more likely it is the cease-fire will collapse. The truce already has been strained, with Israel carrying out raids it says were necessary to prevent Hezbollah from being rearmed. The clashes give further pause to European countries that don't want their peacekeeping troops stuck in the middle of a fresh war.
Raising the necessary number of troops quickly is further complicated by Israel's objection to including troops from willing countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh, which have large Muslim populations and no diplomatic ties with Israel. Israel doesn't want to rely on troops that might collude with Hezbollah. On the other hand, in Israel's state of internal turmoil - there are serious calls for the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government - a cease-fire may be preferable to a war, as long as the U.N resolution is enforced.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is trying to salvage the deal she brokered. Foreign ministers will meet in Brussels on Friday, but a breakthrough is doubtful. The United Nations needs to be running the cease-fire, but the parties seem to be running from a cease-fire.

 ISRAEL (95%); LEBANON (94%); FRANCE (90%); MALAYSIA (79%);  EUROPE (79%);   BELGIUM (67%)








 



August 23, 2006 Wednesday  




 IBD'S TOP 10

 
Iran Offers Talks, "New Formula'
1 Iran claimed it's open to "serious" talks on its nuke program but gave no sign it's willing to freeze uranium enrichment. In its official reply to a U.N. Security Council demand that it halt enrichment or face sanctions, Iran rejected a freeze but suggested a "new formula" to resolve the standoff, its semiofficial news agency reported. Details weren't given. The U.S. said it will study the response.
Fed Officials Stress Inflation Risk 
2 Chicago Fed President Michael Moskow said "the risk of inflation remaining too high is greater than the risk of growth being too low," so more rate hikes could be needed. Moskow will be a voting member of the FOMC next year. Meanwhile, Atlanta Fed President Jack Guynn, who is retiring, expects U.S. growth to remain strong, while inflation "can get out of hand quickly."
Stocks Recover After Fed Fright
3 The S&P 500 erased a 0.2% loss to close with a 0.1% gain. Fed warnings over inflation and interest rates sparked the early slump. The Nasdaq also rose 0.1%, while the Dow fell fractionally. Positive news on Iran lent a hand. Some Internets rose after eBay hiked fees for retailers at its stores, a move to favor its auctions. The 10-year Treasury yield held at 4.82%. See Vital Signs on A2
No End Yet To Lebanon Blockade
4 Israel's PM said it'll continue its air and sea blockade until U.N. peacekeepers reach Lebanon, which is urging int'l pressure on Israel to let up. The EU meets Wed. on manning the U.N. force. Italy, expected to lead the force after France backed off, said it will send 2,000-3,000 troops. Israel is objecting to troops from mostly Muslim Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh.
Gen. Calls Iraq Mini-"Civil War'
5 A British general in Iraq described the sectarian violence there as a "civil war in miniature." But Royal Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Fry said outside Baghdad, many areas of Iraq are relatively peaceful. Meanwhile, the U.S. Marines said they've been authorized to recall thousands of soldiers to active duty. Since the Iraq War began, the Army has called back 14,000 troops.
Quattrone Can Be Banker Again
6 Prosecutors will dismiss charges vs. the ex-star tech investment banker for Credit Suisse if he avoids trouble for a year. Frank Quattrone will also be able to return to his old profession. At one point, he was sentenced to 18 months for allegedly encouraging workers to destroy records amid a gov't IPO probe. But that verdict was overturned.
Toll Bros. Beats Lowered Views
7 The luxury home builder's Q3 profit fell 9% to $1.16 a share ex items, 12 cents over forecasts. Revenue declined slightly to $1.53 bil. Toll Bros. cited an oversupply of homes and a drop in confidence. Contracts dived 45% to $1.05 bil as backlog fell 13% to $5.59 bil. Toll cut its Q4 EPS outlook, but it's still better than Wall St.'s lowered expectations. Toll shares rose nearly 2%. More on A5
Bush Pushes Medical Cost Info
8 President Bush signed an executive order requiring 4 federal agencies to compile data about the quality and price of care they pay for and to share that info with their customers and each other. The idea is to help people -- especially those with health savings accounts -- make more informed decisions about doctors and hospitals.
Retail Sales Mixed Last Week
9 Same-store sales rose 3.3% in the Aug. 19 week vs. the prior week's 3.2% gain, said Redbook Research. Back-to-school sales were offset by the end of sales tax breaks. Aug. same-store sales are up 0.3% so far vs. July. Also, the Int'l Council of Shopping Centers said comps fell 0.2% vs. the prior week but rose 2.7% vs. a year ago.
German Investors Sour On Future
10 The ZEW institute's investor economic outlook index fell to a 5-year low of -5.6 in Aug. from 15.1 in July and 71 in Jan. The current conditions index hit a 5 1/2-year peak after a strong Q2. But a slowdown is expected in the 2 nd half and '07. German investors also are gloomy about the overall euro zone and the U.S. See Vital Signs on A2

  


  
 (Oklahoma City, OK)

August 23, 2006 Wednesday  




 Pastor views Indonesia's strength, work ethic

 
NORMAN -- The impression most Americans have about Indonesia is that it is a predominantly Muslim nation that stands in the way of earthquakes and tsunamis and has no tolerance for other religions. 
 Bob Rice, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, 333 University Blvd., can offer a somewhat different view. He and his wife Beverly recently returned from a visit there under a grant by the College of Pastoral Leaders of Austin Theological Seminary.
 They visited what Rice described as Protestant Christian churches in Bali and Java. Indonesia's 200 million people constitute the fourth largest population in the world, he said, and 88 percent of them are Muslims. Christians account for only 8 percent.
 "The churches there tend to be small, but the ones we visited were strong," he said. "They do a lot of social outreach. They provide schools and clinics, and they offer training for folks to learn better agricultural techniques."
 Before they left Indonesia, the Rices saw some of the damage resulting from a 7.7-magnitude earthquake that triggered a tsunami that destroyed hotels, restaurants and houses along a 190-mile stretch of Java island's southern coast. News reports said it killed more than 500 people. The southern part of Bali island was hit, too. Not only did the visitors see the storm damage, they also got a look at the work ethic.
 "A lot of the people were working with their hands," Rice said. "The people there were extremely industrious."
 Rice described the trip as "very full." It was "very worthwhile, very educational and very busy," he said. 

 INDONESIA (96%); 




12


 
 

 

August 22, 2006 Tuesday



 Bush implores nations to send peacekeepers to Lebanon

 
President Bush issued an urgent call Monday for nations to join an international peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, and he pledged $230 million to help rebuild the war-ravaged country. 
The president emphasized that establishing the peacekeeping operation in Lebanon is critical to maintaining the fragile week-old cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah militants. The 34 days of war between them raised fears that the violence might spread throughout the volatile Middle East, alarming financial markets sensitive to threats to the global oil trade.
The need is urgent," Bush said, calling for deployment "as quickly as possible."
The president's appeal for help in Lebanon came as diplomats at the United Nations struggled to assemble a peacekeeping force and define its rules of engagement. The first 3,500 members of a proposed 15,000-member force are supposed to arrive in Lebanon by Aug. 28, but volunteers have been slow in coming.
Italy offered 2,000 troops Monday, but other European countries -- mindful that previous peacekeeping missions got trapped in shooting war zones -- have been reluctant to commit until diplomats provide clear rules of engagement. Especially worrisome is who will have responsibility for disarming Hezbollah and under what terms.
"Why would any sane person want to put their peacekeepers in this kind of situation?" asked Aaron Miller, a Middle East expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a foreign-policy institute in Washington, and a former adviser to six secretaries of state. "Lebanon has proven to be the graveyard so many times of best intentions and committed efforts to do this sort of thing."
Although France had been expected to lead the peacekeeping operation, it pledged just 200 troops and declined to take charge. Israel has objected to the participation of Muslim troops from Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries that do not recognize Israel.
Bush seemed to concede that disarming Hezbollah would not happen anytime soon. Israel agreed to the cease-fire Aug. 12 with the understanding that Hezbollah would give up its weapons.
The cease-fire went into effect Aug. 14, but it threatened to break down Saturday when Israeli commandos struck in Lebanon in a raid said to be aimed at blocking a resupply of weapons to Hezbollah fighters.
Bush said the immediate goal is to establish a security buffer and prevent Hezbollah from replenishing its supply of rockets and other weapons.
At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton echoed Bush on the need for fast action on a peacekeeping force, but he declined to rate chances for success.
"It's still a work in progress. I think that's the best I can say," he said. "The timing here remains critical. There's no question about it."
As for the $230 million in U.S. aid, Bush said it would be used to rebuild homes, roads, bridges, schools and other infrastructure that was destroyed by Israeli bombing raids. The figure includes $50 million in humanitarian aid that has already been delivered and $42 million to help train and equip the Lebanese army.
Independent analysts agreed that additional aid would make little difference if the peacekeeping mission fails.
"As long as there is no Lebanese national consensus and no international force, the situation will be very, very precarious," said Emile El-Hokayem, a Middle East expert at the Henry Stimson Center, a nonpartisan foreign-policy think tank in Washington.

 ISRAEL (94%); LEBANON (94%); MIDDLE EAST (93%);  MALAYSIA (79%); EUROPE (79%); 







 
 
The Evening Sun (Hanover, Pennsylvania)

August 22, 2006 Tuesday



 War against terrorism is everyone's job

 
Editor:
The mayor of Philadelphia, John Street, held a live TV broadcast July 27 in which he said to the city's youth, "You are the future of this city. Lay down your weapons. Do it now. Choose education over violence." This was a five minute plea for the end to a surge in the city's homicide rate. The mayor also used the standard "it takes a village to raise a child" liberal mantra. He urged residents to lobby lawmakers to institute tougher gun restrictions. At about 6 p.m. the night of the broadcast, the 226th victim was killed in the "city of brotherly love" this year. By 8 p.m. three others were seriously wounded, at least one critically. But, as the mayor said, this is only "a 7 percent increase over last year's homicides," and not quite as bad as a decade ago. 
This same liberal nonsense is what is being used to prolong the wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. The very idea that we can expect those who profess to follow the true religion of peace (as described by most mainstream media) to have any regard for life, liberty, freedom, and democracy is sheer lunacy. Then again, crazy is defined as "doing the same things, the same way, over and over again and expecting a different result." When you look at the number of U.N. resolutions and U.S. sanctions coupled with the end results, lunacy could well be defined as a diplomatic maneuver. Failure can become habit. As everyone knows, it's always easy to say, "It's not my job" or "It's not my responsibility." The war against terror and the Islamic threat to annihilate all people and things Jewish and Christian is everybody's job and responsibility.
Look at the Philippines, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Nigeria, Sudan, Chechnya, Indonesia, all religious wars involving Muslims fighting their neighbors. Appeasement, cease-fires only convince them of our weakness. These fanatics use the so-called cease-fire to stockpile weapons to resume the attack where they left off. The only road to lasting peace is with a strong no-nonsense absolute victory. Anything less and we will continue to waste lives and resources forever. Perhaps it is time to give some thought to the way WWII was brought to an end. Sometimes drastic situations call for drastic response.
David Wheeler
Littlestown

 AFGHANISTAN (79%); KOSOVO (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); NIGERIA (79%);  PHILIPPINES (79%)







 
 


August 22, 2006 Tuesday



 Rome Agrees To Lead U.N. Force

 
Officials in Lebanon, Israel, Washington, and at the United Nations who were expecting to turn to Paris to make up the "backbone" of a U.N. force that is expected to be deployed in Lebanon have shifted their sights to Rome.
But even as Prime Minister Olmert said Italy should "lead the international force," and as Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon also welcomed Italy, the definition of the force's mission was not clear enough to persuade many in Europe to agree to send troops to Lebanon. 
President Bush said yesterday that the Security Council might need to pass a new resolution to make the need to disarm Hezbollah clearer. "There will be another resolution coming out of the United Nations, giving further instructions to the international force," he told reporters at the White House.
"We've always contemplated the disarming of Hezbollah, which was not specifically addressed in 1701, would have to be addressed, and that should be coming shortly," the American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, added, referring to the council resolution that led to the lull in Israel's war against Hezbollah.
But after the long, bruising diplomatic fight over that resolution, no one seemed in a rush to begin a new round of discussions over a new resolution. "I don't think we have a particular view on time," Mr. Bolton said, and added, "There's no reason that it should hold up the deployment" of troops.
Prime Minister Prodi of Italy called Secretary-General Annan yesterday, and, separately, Mr. Olmert. According to Italian press reports, Mr. Prodi offered between 2,500 and 3,000 troops for the new force, including some to be deployed in the first wave.
It is "important that the force arrive as soon as possible," Mr. Olmert said, according the prime minister's Web site. Italy, he added, should "lead the international force, as well as send troops to oversee the border crossings between Syria and Lebanon."
So far, the U.N. peacekeeping department has concentrated on trying to assemble a force of 3,500 troops to be deployed by September 2 exclusively in southern Lebanon. But Jerusalem insists that to stop the rearming of Hezbollah, the international force should also deploy on the Syrian border.
Lebanon's defense minister, Elias Murr, said yesterday that his army would prevent Hezbollah from launching any further cross border attacks. "Any rocket that is fired from Lebanese territory would be considered collaboration with Israel," he said. Israel, however, called on the international force to back up the weak Lebanese army.
U.N. planners were stunned when, after statements made by leaders in Damascus and Tehran, the French Defense Ministry last week announced it would contribute no more than 200 engineers in the first phase.
To save face, France convened a European Union meeting, scheduled for tomorrow in Brussels, to discuss the Continent's contribution to the new force, which is hoped will reach its full capacity of 15,000 troops in 90 days.
Unlike the timid participation offered by Europe so far, Muslim countries that maintain no relations with Israel, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh, have offered troops. However, Mr. Olmert said countries that maintain no diplomatic relations with Israel should not participate in the force.
"It's a long-standing custom in U.N. peacekeeping that the parties have to agree on who the troop contributors will be," Mr. Bolton said, calling Mr. Olmert's position "pretty straightforward." Countries that "don't even recognize the state of Israel can't be counted upon to fulfill the impartial role that we look for in the enhanced UNIFIL," he said.
U.N. officials, however, maintain that Mr. Annan is responsible for composing the new force, and that since it will be deployed on Lebanese soil, Israel should have no say in the participants.

 LEBANON (96%); ISRAEL (94%); ITALY (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); FRANCE (92%);  SYRIA (92%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (78%)







 Tribune Review Publishing 
 


August 22, 2006 Tuesday



 Profiles in terror

 
Your editorial making the case for profiling Muslim terrorists is getting worldwide attention ("The case for profiling: It's a slam-dunk," Aug. 17 and PghTrib.com). 
Nothing like pure and unadulterated hate propaganda, U.S.-style.  
I would like to know what a Muslim young man looks like. Can you tell the difference between a Filipino Muslim and a Filipino Christian?  
What about the different between an Indonesian or a Malayan and a Filipino? What about the difference between an Arab Christian and an Arab Muslim? 
It may be true that to white Americans all Muslims look the same. This, of course, is hilarious stupidity, but for a supposedly major city newspaper to flaunt such stupidity only proves that our national government truly represents the elite newspaper corps. 
Bruce J. Malina 
Omaha, Neb. 
The writer is a professor of theology at Creighton University. 

 







  
 

August 22, 2006 Tuesday  




 SHAKY CEASE-FIRE; 
THE WORLD MUST ACT TO KEEP THE PEACE IN LEBANON

 
To no one's surprise, the cease-fire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah is presenting problems already.
There is no argument that the cease-fire that followed a United Nations Security Council resolution just over a week ago was long overdue. Bloody and destructive fighting had gone on for more than a month, with damage and casualties to Lebanese and Israelis alike. On that basis it was welcomed by virtually all parties. 
There were also problems inherent in it. The first of these is the ambiguity that surrounds the disarmament of Hezbollah. In principle, this was to be achieved by the presence in south Lebanon of 15,000 members of the Lebanese Armed Forces and 15,000 foreign U.N. peacekeepers. Some of the LAF have been deployed even up to the Israeli border, Hezbollah have pretty much kept out of sight, but there is no reason to believe they do not remain ready to fight again when they wish.
The U.N. forces are presenting another, serious problem. Although President Bush yesterday called for the immediate deployment of peacekeepers, no European countries other than France, which apparently intends to send only a small force to southern Lebanon, had made any concrete offers. Predominantly Muslim countries like Bangladesh and Indonesia have volunteered forces, which, given the need for interaction with Hezbollah, should be ideal. Israel, however, has categorically refused forces from any countries with which it has no diplomatic relations -- like Bangladesh and Indonesia.
European countries such as Finland (home of the European Union president), Spain and Italy are dragging their feet, claiming an unclear U.N. mandate which would make the task difficult, reminiscent of problems encountered in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The United States clearly cannot send forces, since its neutrality is compromised by its close association with Israel, to whom it continued to deliver high-impact and cluster bombs even during the conflict. U.S. forces are also tied down by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Israel carried out a raid into Lebanon on Saturday, which U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a violation of the truce. The raid complicated implementation of the cease-fire further by the fact that the Israeli commandoes who were involved wore uniforms that resembled those of the Lebanese armed forces, who are supposed to be overseeing the cease-fire.
It would be easy to say that everyone knew the cease-fire would be difficult to implement, that it would take time and that there has been no resumption of full-scale fighting so far. At the same time, both sides remain armed to the teeth, there is no international force standing between them and it would take little to launch a resumption of war.
U.S. and other negotiators need to take urgent, vigorous action this week to see that the killing and destruction in Lebanon and Israel do not recommence. The area is dry brush awaiting only a match to set off a renewal of deadly conflagration.

 ISRAEL (97%); LEBANON (96%); EUROPE (93%); INDONESIA (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%);  BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA (79%); SPAIN (79%);  EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (79%); FINLAND (70%)







 
 


August 22, 2006 Tuesday  




 How to counter terrorists who also pass out cash

 
Imagine you're in a financial bind. You can't pay your electricity bill. Or your child wants to go to college but family finances don't stretch that far. Some men turn up at your apartment, pay your bills and negotiate future reductions with the power company. They foot the college tuition. They ask for nothing in return but gratitude. 
Welcome to the way Hezbollah has been operating in poor, Shiite southern Lebanon since the group was created, with Iran's help, in the early 1980s. In recent days, it has been handing out wads of cash to people whose homes were destroyed in the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah. Just business as usual.
Therein lies a challenge for the United States: how to counter terrorist groups that double as popular, effective social service organizations.
On Monday, President Bush boosted an American aid offer to Lebanon from $50 million to $230 million. After Hezbollah's well-publicized generosity, it looked like belated catch-up. And the U.S. offer carries credibility problems, given that some Israeli bombs were made in the USA, sparking a fierce anti-American outburst among the Lebanese.
Even so, the enhanced aid effort in Lebanon can be a first step toward recognizing something long lost in the Bush administration's approach to the world: that military might can't solve every crisis.
The United States can't hope to match the laser-targeted aid given by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Both have networks of informants who know everyone's business. But showing understanding and respect of other people, as well as a willingness to help, is key to winning hearts and minds -- as that Dale Carnegie classic How to Win Friends and Influence People preaches.
The Bush administration's post-9/11 approach to the world -- dividing it into friends and enemies and relying on bullying rhetoric and military might -- has stirred so much anti-Americanism that it could be called How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.
To be sure, terrorism and anti-Americanism aren't going to be solved by niceness or naive PR. But recent history provides a solid example of success. During the Cold War, the United States ran programs to reach out to people under communist dictatorships. Many an Eastern European fell in love with America and what it stood for by hearing a visiting jazz musician, stopping by a U.S. library, studying at a U.S. college or developing a friendship with an exchange student. Solid relationships develop over time and at a very personal level. That's something Hezbollah understands -- and the United States needs to relearn.
The world, and the enemies, are different today. Religious fanatics are harder to convert than godless communists. Satellite TV and the Internet have changed communications. But reaching out is still possible. Major aid efforts after Indonesia's tsunami and Pakistan's earthquake, for example, boosted the U.S. image in those Muslim nations.
In 2000, when Bush was a candidate for president, he defined his future foreign policy: "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us," he said. "If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us." It's not too late to start acting on those forgotten, pre-9/11 words of wisdom.

  







   


August 21, 2006 Monday  




 Indonesian Filmmaker's Personal Take on Polygamy

 
Nia Dinata is, without much doubt, Indonesia's most in-demand new filmmaker: packed screenings of her latest movie at the Tribeca and Cannes film festivals attest to that. 
  Her movies are more art house than Hollywood, and her success springs from a fearless drive to address issues of the day with poignancy and touches of humor. In her newest film, ''Love for Share,'' which portrays the behind-the-scenes anguish of polygamous marriages, viewers can also detect something else: an authenticity bred of experience.
When she was 18, just starting her freshman year at college in the United States, she was unexpectedly called home, where she learned that her father was taking a second wife. 
  Now, beyond even her personal experience, Ms. Dinata, 36, a graduate of the one-year course at New York University's film school, said she saw the film as a statement about contemporary Indonesian society. As more conservative strands of Islam take hold in Indonesia, polygamy is on the rise, flaunted in public by princesses and politicians.
  Ms. Dinata, who has a monogamous marriage, has grasped the moment to show what she has called the sadness and denials behind the smiles of wives who say they accept being one of a crowd. 
  ''When my mother broke the news, I was shocked,'' Ms. Dinata said, sitting at an outdoor cafe here, a cigarette in hand, at the end of a long day of shooting her fourth movie, which is about the aftermath of a terrorist attack. ''I asked them to get a divorce.'' 
  The parents, in turn, were shocked at her reaction, she recalled, because they assumed that all children wanted their mothers and fathers to stay together, even under difficult circumstances. 
  ''Unlike most families in Indonesia where they try to cope, I was trying to say what I felt,'' Ms. Dinata said. 
  Ms. Dinata's father, who worked for Citibank and had taken the family to Saudi Arabia on a work assignment when Ms. Dinata was in primary school, married the second woman anyway. Her mother, a doctor, adopted an outward facade of calm. 
  Most telling for Ms. Dinata was not only her mother's inner turmoil and outward bravery, but also the brevity of her father's second marriage. It lasted four years. ''For men,'' she said, ''they have to divide their time, they lose all the fun.'' 
  Many of the second and third marriages, torn by the tensions of the husband trying to accommodate all wives, do not last, and those that do often result in domestic abuse, she said.
  The underlying threads and emotions of her mother and father's relationship, combined with two years of research around Indonesia -- spent interviewing women from different social classes and visiting women's shelters -- was the backbone of ''Love for Share.'' The movie, divided into three parts, deals with three polygamous marriages in three families with different backgrounds.
  Some of the scenes that are loosely based on the Dinata family background reveal raw emotions. The first wife in the movie, Salma, a gynecologist, is humiliated early on when she meets her husband's second wife at a public function. ''Why did I have to meet her in front of so many people?'' Salma asks her husband when the couple gets home. 
  Her husband, a politician with all the trappings of an observant Muslim -- he is referred to in the movie as Pak Hajji, a title used to indicate he has been to Mecca -- says quite blandly: ''You're perfect. I just wanted to avoid adultery.'' 
  Salma stoically goes about her life as a busy doctor, designing a new clinic, attending to women in childbirth. ''I try to act as though nothing has changed,'' she says. 
  But 10 years on, plenty has changed. Salma has adapted by wearing a Muslim head scarf, and by the end of the movie, Pak Hajji has a third and younger wife. 
  When he suffers a stroke all three wives turn up at the hospital. The disapproving teenage son (Ms. Dinata has a younger brother) says scornfully, ''Dad got his wish, all three wives are together.'' 
  But, to drive her point home, Ms. Dinata portrays Pak Hajji as remorseful on his deathbed. ''It's a terrible mess,'' he tells his son. ''When you marry, promise, only one wife.'' 
  As an irresistible finale, Ms. Dinata has a fourth wife turn up at the funeral, bearing a small child. 
  The backdrop to ''Love for Share'' is far broader than a personal tale of torment and sorrow.
  President Suharto, swayed at least in part by his wife, who was opposed to polygamy, ruled in 1974 that civil servants could not take extra wives without permission from the government, consent that was rarely granted. 
  But as Islam became a more powerful force here after Suharto's fall in 1998, and the number of polygamous marriages increased, Ms. Dinata said the government was too afraid of the growing power of religious leaders to do anything about it.
  A recent vice president, Hamzah Haz, bragged about his polygamy, taking his three wives on trips to Mecca. A well-known entrepreneur, Puspo Wardoyo, called polygamy an obligation of wealthy Muslim men, who, he argues, have enough money to spread around multiple women. He has four wives -- the limit imposed by the Koran -- and serves ''polygamy juice,'' a mixture of four tropical fruits at his chain of chicken restaurants. The four juices, he said, represent the ideal number of wives.
  A princess in the royal house of Yogyakarta, Sitoresmi Trabuningrat, who is also a businesswoman, spoke recently about how being a member of a ''team'' of wives gave her more independence because the women could share the chores. 
  ''Love for Share'' was well-attended in Jakarta, and in Bandung, a nearby city, although many in the audience were foreigners living in Indonesia. 
  In the rest of the country, the audiences were small. ''They don't want to know,'' Ms. Dinata said. ''Women came with women in the middle of the day. They didn't want their husbands to know.'' 
  During her promotional tour of Indonesia, the calls to radio talk shows were maddeningly predictable, she said. ''The men were so rude. They said: 'How dare you criticize us? We are doing good for women by marrying more than one.' '' 
  Few women called in, however, a fact Ms. Dinata attributed to their fear of discussing the subject.


  UNITED STATES (76%); SAUDI ARABIA (71%)








 
 

August 21, 2006 Monday



 OLMERT'S NEW TRUCE HURDLE

 
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday threw a monkey wrench into the truce effort in Lebanon, saying that his nation would not accept peacekeepers from countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Jerusalem.   
The impact of Olmert's statement is unclear.  
The U.N. cease-fire agreement does not give Israel veto power over which countries participate in enforcing the truce, although it says the force must "coordinate its activities" with Israel and Lebanon.  
But the decision, revealed by a participant at an inner Israeli Security Cabinet meeting, would severely complicate U.N. efforts to cobble together a 15,000-man peacekeeping force.       
Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh - Muslim nations lacking diplomatic ties with Israel - are among the only countries to have offered troops.  
Olmert's decision came as he takes intense criticism inside Israel for the outcome of the 34-day battle with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.  
Israel's top commander, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, yesterday admitted his military's bid to destroy Hezbollah had been a failure.  
"The feeling of the public is that it was not a knockout blow," Halutz told the Cabinet, according to a government source.  
"Alongside the successes, there are issues that have to be investigated," Halutz said. "Just as medals will be handed out, we will also have to investigate the opposite."  
The peacekeeping force has been slow to assemble.  
The United States and the United Nations had expected it to be led by European nations, with France expected to send 2,500 to 4,000 soldiers. But so far, France has offered only 400 engineers.  
Italy may now end up leading the force.  
Olmert and his Lebanese counterpart, Fuad Siniora, both told Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi they now appreciated that Italy would "assume a role of primary importance" in the mission.  
Germany is offering a naval contingent to help ensure Hezbollah doesn't get any arms by sea, but will not send ground troops.  
Finland has promised troops, and Spain and Turkey could also participate.  
Also yesterday, the brother of a Fox News reporter kidnapped by gunmen in the Gaza Strip appealed on the Arab Al-Jazeera TV network for his release.  
Steve Centanni was seized along with his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, Aug. 14 in Gaza City.  
"I want his kidnappers to know that Steve is an honorable man who . . . respects Palestinian people," said a man identified as Centanni's brother.  
With Post Wire Services    

 ISRAEL (98%); LEBANON (94%);  FRANCE (91%); ITALY (90%); MALAYSIA (79%);  SPAIN (79%); EUROPE (79%); TURKEY (79%);  FINLAND (79%); GERMANY (79%)







 
 
 (Minnesota)

August 21, 2006 Monday



 Israel warns about U.N. force; 
Objection puts pressure on peacekeeping plan

 
JERUSALEM -- Israel on Sunday objected to including countries that do not have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state in the nascent peacekeeping force for Lebanon, even as a U.N. envoy said the Lebanese army had fielded only 3,000 troops, about one-fifth of the force it plans to enforce the cease-fire in the south. 
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert raised his opposition to the participation of such countries at a Cabinet meeting, a government official confirmed. The list would include the Muslim countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh.
"Israel has raised our concerns about having participants in the force that we cannot talk to," a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said Sunday evening. "The idea that you could have forces on our border from countries that we could not talk to, that we couldn't coordinate with, would cause problems."
Israeli officials acknowledged the country does not have veto power over the composition of the force. But its objections will complicate the U.N. effort to gather 15,000 peacekeeping soldiers from other countries to work with an equivalent force from the Lebanese army to separate Hezbollah and Israeli combatants.
Israel continued overflights of Lebanon on Sunday, despite Lebanese protests. Israel also has not yet fully withdrawn its forces from southern Lebanon or lifted its sea blockade.
Israel insisted Sunday that it has the right to attack Hezbollah forces, as it did in a raid Saturday, to prevent the militia from rearming.
Lebanon's defense minister said Sunday he is certain Hezbollah will not break the cease-fire but warned all militant groups of harsh measures and a traitor's fate if they incite Israeli retaliation by firing rockets into Israel.
Defense Minister Elias Murr's strong remarks indicated concern that Syrian-backed Palestinian militants might try to restart the fighting by drawing retaliation from Israel.
In other developments Sunday:
o France called for a meeting of European Union countries this week to determine the number of troops they are prepared to contribute to the expanded U.N. peacekeeping force. Europe has been slow to make any firm troop commitments, and U.N. officials have called on the Europeans to offer more troops to balance pledges from Muslim countries.
oOlmert, in a phone conversation with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, suggested Italy lead the international force, Olmert's office said in a statement. Prodi said Italy intends to send a "significant" force and that he would take up the matter with his parliament as soon as possible, the statement said.
This report includes information from the Associated Press and Washington Post.

 ISRAEL (95%); LEBANON (95%); EUROPE (93%); ITALY (91%); MALAYSIA (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); FRANCE (79%);  SYRIA (79%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (72%)







  



August 21, 2006 Monday  




 Plans for Lebanon Force Faulted; 
Israel Objects to Use of Troops From Several Muslim Countries

 
 Israel on Sunday objected to including countries that do not have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state in the nascent peacekeeping force for Lebanon, even as a U.N. envoy said the Lebanese army had fielded only 3,000 troops, about one-fifth of the force it plans to enforce the cease-fire in the south. 
  Prime Minister Ehud Olmert raised his opposition to the participation of such countries at a cabinet meeting, a government official said.  The list would include the Muslim countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh, which are among the few nations that have pledged troops to the international force that is supposed to work with the Lebanese army to enforce the truce put in place after the five-week war.  
  "Israel has raised our concerns about having participants in the force that we cannot talk to," a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said Sunday evening. "The idea that you could have forces on our border from countries that we could not talk to, that we couldn't coordinate with, would cause problems." 
  In addition, Regev said, Malaysia recently hosted an Islamic conference that included calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map."  
 "We didn't hear any word on that from the hosts, Malaysia," he said. "How can they be a peacekeeper if they do not disavow those comments?" 
  Israeli officials acknowledged that the country does not have veto power over the composition of the force. But its objections will complicate the U.N. effort to gather 15,000 peacekeeping soldiers from other countries to work with an equivalent force from the Lebanese army to separate Hezbollah and Israeli combatants.  
 The forces are the central mechanism in the agreement that ended 33 days of fighting in which more than 1,000 civilians were killed. France, which vigorously advocated creation of the force,  has offered fewer than 400 troops. Other countries, too, have been wary of pledging soldiers. [France called for a meeting of European Union countries this week to determine the number of troops they are prepared to contribute to the expanded U.N. peacekeeping force, the Associated Press reported Sunday night.] 
  U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, speaking Sunday in Beirut before traveling to Israel, sought to put a positive light on the Lebanese army's move into southern Lebanon while waiting for international reinforcements. The Lebanese were taking control of southern Lebanon "in a forceful and massive way," he said. "Lebanon is now forcefully establishing its authority." 
  But Roed-Larsen  said that only 3,000 Lebanese troops have been deployed in the south. About 2,000 Lebanese troops are now at the Syrian border, and another 1,000 are on the Mediterranean coast, he said. He warned that the cease-fire "can easily start sliding again and lead us quickly into the abyss of violence and bloodshed." 
   Israel continued overflights of Lebanon Sunday, despite Lebanese protests. Israel also has not  fully withdrawn its forces from southern Lebanon  or lifted its sea blockade. 
  Israel insisted Sunday that it has the right to attack Hezbollah forces, as it did in a raid Saturday morning, to prevent the militia from rearming in violation of the cease-fire. Lebanese officials condemned the raid and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said it "endangers the fragile calm" in the region. 
  "The Lebanese are yet to carry out the resolution and are saying that Hezbollah will not be disarmed and that it can hide its weapons," the Israeli housing and construction minister, Meir Sheetrit, said after the cabinet met in Jerusalem. "What are we supposed to do? Sit idly and wait for Hezbollah to rearm?" 
  More than 100 Israeli commandos landed by helicopter in the Bekaa Valley early Saturday, wearing Lebanese army uniforms. Hezbollah discovered the group in a field, and a firefight broke out. One Israeli officer was killed and another was seriously wounded. 
  Israeli defense officials said the raid was an effort to intercept shipments to Hezbollah from Syria. Some Lebanese  have said the commandos may have been sent to try to abduct a Hezbollah official. 
  Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr warned that no group should give Israel a pretext to strike again. He said that any faction, including Hezbollah and Palestinian groups, "would be considered collaborating with Israel" if it fired rockets into Israel, prompting another strike. 
  Murr insisted that Hezbollah was committed to the cease-fire that ended the fighting in southern Lebanon, despite the Israeli raid. There was no public statement from Hezbollah. 
  Meanwhile, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, inspecting the war damage in Beirut,  called the devastation "a crime against humanity committed by Israel." 

 ISRAEL (97%); LEBANON (94%); MALAYSIA (93%); FRANCE (91%); EUROPE (79%);  SYRIA (79%); MEDITERRANEAN (79%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (53%)




13


  



August 20, 2006 Sunday  
Main Edition



 Muslim man hopes to educate about faith

 
Chris Yusof Burke has gray hair and hazel eyes. He's white. He's also Muslim.
The New York native wasn't searching for a new religion when he converted in 1996. He was raised a Catholic and attended Catholic schools his entire life. He didn't practice his faith, yet he still had a deep belief in God.
Burke fell in love with a Muslim woman while working in Indonesia as an engineer with General Electric. To marry a Muslim woman, you have to be a Muslim man. 
Burke switched. 
"It had to be fate," the 41-year-old Lilburn man said. "She showed up at the work site looking for a friend. That's how we met."
Burke attends the Masjid Omar Bin Abdul Aziz mosque in Norcross. He prays five times a day. He observes Ramadan, the month in which Muslims abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex.
A white Muslim --- talk about a minority. Burke mentioned a study which found that white converts to the fast-growing religion account for about 2 percent of the billion-plus Muslims in the world.
Gwinnett County has at least seven mosques and Islamic centers, three of which have opened since 2002. Nearly 20,000 Muslims call this county home, and I'd imagine the majority of them have nothing to do with terrorism. They're just like you and me, family folk trying to live peaceful lives with as little drama as possible.
Given the intense international times, though, local Muslims could offer some assurances when terrorists strike. They could stand up emphatically and say that it's wrong, that they share the anger and outrage of their non-Muslim neighbors.
Yet, unless I've missed something, we seldom see it. If such public declarations are indeed taking place, then maybe they get muted, as Burke suggested to me in an e-mail and sit-down interview.
"American Muslims have condemned the actions of terrorists on numerous occasions," said Burke, who oversees the Northeast Georgia chapter of CAIR --- the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"We must do this, but we feel our voices do not carry [in the media], so the impact is not as great as it could be. We also need to find better ways to make Muslims and non-Muslims understand that the actions of terrorists are wrong, and are un-Islamic."
Last week, Burke spent three days at a conference of state law enforcement officers in Savannah. He and other CAIR personnel led sessions in which they schooled authorities on how to interact with the Muslim community.
Burke says he's in a good position to make a difference. His Western background, coupled with his study of Islam, gives him broader insight.
He wants to disconnect the word Islamic with terrorists who hijack it, who claim to act in accord with Islamic values. He doesn't want Muslims, here or abroad, to view Americans as evil, either.
"People don't know I'm Muslim by looking at me, but when they find out, they tell me I am easier to approach and ask questions because I have a similar upbringing and culture," he said.
"I want to educate the Muslims, and I want to educate Americans. That's why I joined CAIR. There's a lot of misunderstanding."
Amen.
* Rick Badie's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875. Or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.

 INDONESIA (92%); 







   


August 19, 2006 Saturday  




 Villagers Cheer as Lebanese Army Marches Into the South

 
Villagers danced in the streets and threw rice on Friday as the Lebanese Army's soldiers reached the southern border with Israel for the first time in decades, and Hezbollah volunteers handed out grants of $12,000 -- in stacks of American dollars -- as part of its vigorous campaign to help families whose houses were destroyed over the past month.
  Mass funerals were held across southern Lebanon for hundreds of people killed in the bombings, including scores of Hezbollah fighters who were hailed as heroes and martyrs. Ambulances, sirens wailing, made way for funeral processions, and the stench of death pervaded the streets. In Tyre, almost 200 bodies were dug up from a temporary mass grave and reburied individually. 
The funerals, mostly arranged by Hezbollah, illustrated the group's near-total power over southern Lebanon and underscored the uncertainty of the Lebanese Army's new mission there. Israel and the United States have said they expect the Lebanese Army to disarm Hezbollah under the terms of a United Nations Security Council resolution.
  But even as southern residents cheered the arriving soldiers, Hezbollah banners waved nearby. The group's members have said they have no intention of giving up their weapons for now. Government officials have made clear that the 15,000 soldiers being sent to southern Lebanon will not search for weapons. The United Nations peacekeepers expected to join the Lebanese Army will not do any disarming either, United Nations officials say.
  [On Saturday morning, Israeli warplanes crisscrossed the skies above Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley, near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek, security officials told The Associated Press. Reuters quoted a security source and Hezbollah radio as saying there had been an airstrike, but those reports were not confirmed and the Israeli Army had no immediate comment.[Such an assault would be the first aerial attack since a cease-fire took effect on Monday.]
  At the United Nations on Friday, diplomats scrambled to meet a deadline to get the first 3,500-troop detachment of that force on the ground in 10 days, and Mark Malloch Brown, the deputy secretary general, appealed for more input from Europe.
  On Thursday, France committed 200 soldiers, far fewer than expected, while the countries offering frontline mechanized units were Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia, all Muslim, and Nepal, which is largely Hindu.
  ''That is enormously helpful and a major contribution,'' Mr. Malloch Brown said, ''but we want this force that we deploy to have a kind of multinational, multilateral character so that it enjoys the confidence of both sides.''
  Whatever the fate of its weapons, Hezbollah has already asserted itself across the south with aid ahead of international agencies. It took its program a step further on Friday, making good on a pledge of cash for displaced families. With more than 200,000 residents of the capital's Shiite southern suburbs already back in the area, the group began giving out the grants of $12,000 -- a huge sum in Lebanon, where an apartment big enough for a small family can be rented for $300 a month.
  Lebanese political figures have begun reacting to Hezbollah's new popularity, breaking the facade of national unity that largely held during the month of war with Israel. On Thursday, the Druse leader Walid Jumblatt, told reporters, ''Hezbollah must decide once and for all whether it is a Lebanese organization or a tool of Syria and Iran.''
  Mr. Jumblatt, a leader of the fragile secular coalition that holds a narrow majority in the Lebanese Parliament, ridiculed the new arrangement in the south, saying it had not changed Hezbollah's role. ''At any time Israel can launch a pre-emptive attack, and now, as the Lebanese state, we are responsible for the south,'' he said. ''And the Lebanese Army in such a case will just vanish in a couple of hours.''
  But Mr. Jumblatt stopped short of forcefully calling for Hezbollah's disarmament, saying instead that he favored ''dialogue.'' That hesitation appeared to reflect the weakness of the secular majority and its vulnerability to accusations that it is too close to Israel and the United States.
  Instead, Mr. Jumblatt reserved his harshest words for Syria, as did Saad Hariri, the leader of the secular parliamentary majority. In a speech this week, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria suggested that Lebanon's secular leaders favored Israel.
  In his own speech, to hundreds of supporters, Mr. Hariri, ''The regime in Syria is trading in the blood of the children of Qana, the children of Gaza, and the children of Baghdad.'' 
  In a sense, the recriminations were among the signs that life was edging back toward normality, at least in the capital. A few civilian flights resumed Thursday at Beirut's international airport for the first time since July 13, when Israeli bombs punched holes in the runways. 
  Beirut's downtown, largely vacant over the past month, now has a trickle of pedestrians during the day, and shops and restaurants are reopening.
  ''Everything is coming back to life,'' said Farah Ambriss, 24, as she walked to meet friends for lunch at an outdoor table on al Maarad Street. ''But we are still afraid because Israeli troops are still in the south.''
  Nearby, the owner of Duo, a restaurant, stood outside its glass doors and sandstone pillars, greeting customers. The interior was almost full, but the outdoor tables were empty. ''I've had 100 people a day for lunch since the cease-fire, said the owner, who gave only his first name, Pierre. ''Usually we get 500.''
  Most people are pessimistic, he said. ''The fighting could start again any time,'' he said. ''There's no clear solution; it's still gray, neither white nor black.''

Israel Arrests Hamas Politician
  RAMALLAH, West Bank, Saturday, Aug. 19 (Reuters) -- Israel seized the Palestinian deputy prime minister, Naser al-Shaer, a top official of the Hamas militant group, at his home on Saturday, the Israeli Army and his wife said.
  Dozens of Hamas lawmakers have been in custody since late June.


 ISRAEL (96%); LEBANON (96%); UNITED STATES (93%); MALAYSIA (79%); EUROPE (79%);  FRANCE (52%)







 
 


August 18, 2006, Friday



 UN to the rescue in Lebanon?

 
United Nations peacekeepers may have a checkered record, but the world keeps turning to them for ever bigger missions. They rank second to the US in troop deployments and are now supposed to come to the rescue in Lebanon. Can they? 
The performance of "blue helmets," as UN forces are sometimes called, is mixed.
They assist with voting and referendums in war-torn nations (Democratic Republic of Congo); stabilize trouble spots (East Timor and Sierra Leone); turn warring parties into political ones (Mozambique, El Salvador), and serve as an animosity buffer (Cyprus). And they do it cheaply. Last year, 18 UN peacekeeping missions cost $5 billion - one-twentieth of what Iraq cost the US in 2005.
But they've also had some colossal failures, most notably in Rwanda, where they were undermanned, underequipped, and underauthorized to counter genocide. And UN peacekeepers have been camped out in Lebanon since 1978 - a witness to violence but not a deterrent.
The world hopes that will change by upping the number of blue helmets in Lebanon to a maximum of 15,000 from 2,000 and strengthening their authority and mandate. According to the UN resolution that ushered in this week's fragile cease-fire, the peacekeepers will support 15,000 Lebanese Army troops in securing a southern buffer zone free of an armed Hizbullah, which started the five-week war with Israel.
As envisioned, the peacekeeping force has some distinct advantages over other UN missions.
For the first time since the early 1990s, key European nations - notably France and Italy - could play a major role in a UN mission. That's critical, because only well-equipped countries such as these can deploy rapidly without outside assistance. With Lebanese troops already moving south and Israelis withdrawing, speed is of the essence.
The size of the force, if achieved, would be impressive. Response to a UN call for Darfur peacekeepers has been as empty as the Sudanese desert. But dozens of countries have expressed at least initial interest in Lebanon, including Muslim nations such as Turkey, Malaysia, and Indonesia, whose presence would add credibility to the mix.
These peacekeepers will also have the authority to use force if needed. "We're very satisfied with the composition ... and powers" of the envisioned force, Meir Shlomo, Israeli consul general for New England, told the Monitor earlier this week.
But if the peacekeeping architecture looks fairly solid, what about the land it's built on? France has complained that the UN resolution's peacekeeping mandate is "fuzzy." Most important, the cease-fire's geopolitical foundation - the very basis for peace - is exceptionally weak.
The UN can keep Turks and Greeks at bay in Cyprus because that's a contained dispute between two groups who have agreed not to shoot at each other. The conflict in Lebanon stems from many regional players whose interests have not changed with this war. And a key question hangs in the air: Will Hizbullah ever be disarmed?
These underlying issues must be resolved for the peacekeepers to be effective.
(c) . The 

 LEBANON (94%); ISRAEL (93%); UNITED STATES (93%); CONGO, THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE (92%); CYPRUS (92%); TURKEY (92%); FRANCE (86%); RWANDA (79%); MALAYSIA (79%); TIMOR-LESTE (79%); SUDAN (79%); EUROPE (79%);   ITALY (77%)







 
 



August 18, 2006 Friday



 Reveal secret that is ZeroOne festival

 
Thanks to the Mercury News for pushing an event that lured me down to the epicenter of technology. At the Museum of Art, (my only ZeroOne stop on Saturday afternoon), I was totally engaged by cutting-edge work that references realities I can relate to, as opposed to all the contemporary abstract clutter that has turned modern art museums into boring walk-throughs. However, I was just as surprised by what I did not find on my way to San Jose from Caltrain to the city center: No banners, no visual sense of a festival, no special structure to point the spectator from one venue to another. And, sadly, no crowds. A brilliant secret, I'm afraid. Next time, try adding a little more hoopla to the chips.
David LewisOakland 

Anti-war, but not anti-democracy
Les Francis has fallen for the line that those who opposed invading Iraq are against promoting democracy in the world (Opinion, Aug. 15). Wrong. The Democrats we know want very much to replace autocracies with democracies, but recognize the ironic futility of trying to do this by invading with massive military force. They want to do it through activities that influence, such as exchanges of students and experts, grants and loans for infrastructure development, technical assistance, sharing musical and art performances and the like. Sen. Joe Lieberman is still uncritically supportive of the administration's marred policies.
Patricia MannLivermore

Prop. 89 makes campaigns fairer
Thank you for your excellent article ``Campaign funding gets look'' (Page 1B, Aug. 15). Getting elected or re-elected almost always requires raising large amounts of money. Doing and saying what big contributors want is the easiest way to raise it. Public campaign financing largely eliminates this by providing adequate ``clean'' public campaign funding to qualified candidates who take no private campaign contributions. This frees them to support what they and their constituents want. Yes on Proposition 89 and public campaign financing for San Jose!
Brian DavisPalo Alto

Electoral College robs voting power
Brian Darling (Opinion, Aug. 15) reminds us of the problems during the 2000 presidential election, when ballots from troops overseas had to run a gantlet to be counted in Florida. Even a few extra votes on one side or the other could decide the race. The irony is, of course, that a serviceman from Miami had a vote that was very important, but his partner from Salinas cast a vote which counted almost not at all. The Electoral College has the perverse effect of counting some votes more equally than others, and our votes from California (because we are a big and ``decided'' state) are disenfranchised in this way. Some day I hope that we will all have an equal say in selecting our commander in chief.
Craig MartinMenlo Park

Cease-fire leaves Israel vulnerable
Wow. This is some kind of ``cease-fire'' deal. Hezbollah vows never to give up its weapons or its mission to annihilate Israel. Iran and Syria promise to replenish their rockets. The Lebanese leaders say their army will never disarm Hezbollah as the cease-fire calls for them to do, and Kofi Anan says it will take up to a year to bring in U.N. forces, made up primarily of troops from Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, all Muslim countries. Las Vegas is laying odds on which numbered day of the month the bombs will fall again upon Israel. It's not a matter of ``if,'' but ``when.''
Scott AbramsonSan Mateo

Defending Demos on redistricting
Your recent article on redistricting reform developments in Sacramento indicated that incumbent members of Congress were opposed to reform (Page 14A, Aug. 16). I am the chair of the California Democratic Congressional Delegation and we favor these reforms by a wide margin. In fact, 25 of the 33 California Democrats are co-sponsors of my bill (HR 4094), which would require similar redistricting reform for every state. I have also communicated our interest in the California proposal to the speaker of the California Assembly on several occasions.
In last year's special election, there was a flawed redistricting measure, but the versions considered by the Legislature this year avoided the pitfalls of Proposition 77. California's efforts to prepare a measure for voter approval may not be completed in time for this November's ballot, yet I remain hopeful that a sound reform measure can be presented to voters either this year or in 2008 -- which will still leave sufficient time for implementation after the next census in 2010.
Zoe LofgrenSan Jose/Washington, D.C.

Big oil manipulates market, big time
I guess Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's investigators need to be whacked between the eyes before they can see the difference between ``market forces'' and manipulation by the oil companies (Page 1A, Aug. 16). In the past several decades the oil industry has closed refinery after refinery while the demand for refined oil products has steadily grown. The Western states' populations are the fastest growing in the nation, but capacity at the refineries in California and Texas has not kept pace with this growth. If this isn't manipulation driving the market, I don't know what is.
Bruce OnkenFremont

  IRAQ (79%)







   


August 17, 2006 Thursday  




 Is Hamas Ready To Deal?

 
WHATEVER the endgame between Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas, one thing is certain: Israel's hopes of ensuring its security by walling itself off from resentful neighbors are dead. One lesson from Israel's assault on Lebanon and its military operation in Gaza is that the missiles blow back. 
  We can hope that multinational cooperation will help to secure Israel's border with Lebanon. But what about the Palestinian issue, which has been seemingly pushed to the back burner by the war in Lebanon?
A bold gesture now by Israel would surprise its adversaries, convey strength, and even catch domestic political opposition off guard. And as strange as it may seem, were the United States able to help Israel help Hamas, it might turn the rising tide of global Muslim resentment.  
  Recent discussions I've had with Hamas leaders and their supporters around the globe indicate that Israel might just find a reasonable and influential bargaining partner. 
  Hamas's top elected official, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, now accepts that to stop his people's suffering, his government must forsake its all-or-nothing call for Israel's destruction. ''We have no problem with a sovereign Palestinian state over all our lands within the 1967 borders, living in calm,'' Mr. Haniya told me in his Gaza City office in late June, shortly before an Israeli missile destroyed it. ''But we need the West as a partner to help us through.'' 
  Mr. Haniya's government had just agreed to a historic compromise with Fatah and its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, forming a national coalition that implicitly accepts the coexistence alongside Israel. But this breakthrough was quickly overshadowed by Israel's offensive into Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas's military wing. 
  Many Israelis consider the rescue of a soldier a ''sacred value,'' worth almost any cost, including military action leading to other Israeli soldiers dying. But the Israeli offensive also had a larger strategic goal: to destroy whatever potential the Hamas government had to prevent Israel from unilaterally redrawing its boundaries to include some West Bank settlements. Doing so was something that Israel had intended as soon as it could convince the United States that with Hamas having defeated Fatah at the polls, there was no legitimate Palestinian partner to negotiate with. 
  Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based head of the Hamas politburo, refused to release Corporal Shalit unless Israel freed hundreds of prisoners. While it is true that Israel has shown willingness to release hundreds of Palestinian detainees in return for a single Israeli in the past, Mr. Meshal's stand might have been part of a larger political game. 
  As a senior adviser to President Abbas told me of Mr. Meshal: ''He has tried to undermine the Haniya government's authority by presenting himself as Hamas's true decision maker, and he will not be remembered as the person who legitimized Israel and sacrificed sacred land.''
  Prime Minster Haniya and many of Hamas's other Sunni leaders are known to be uncomfortable with the loose coalition that Mr. Meshal has been forging with Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. Hasan Yusuf, a Hamas official held in Israel's Ketziot prison, doesn't think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran's declaration that the main solution to the Middle East crisis is for the elimination of the ''Zionist regime'' is practical or wise. ''The outcome in Lebanon doesn't change our view,'' Mr. Yusuf informed me last weekend. ''We believe in two states living side by side.''
  He also said that ''all Hamas factions have agreed to a unilateral cease-fire, including halting Qassam rockets; the movement is ready to go farther if it receives any encouraging responses from Israel and the West.''
  But even moderate Hamas figures feel that as long as Israel, the United States and Europe boycott the elected government in Gaza and the West Bank, there is little choice but to accept whatever help comes along. 
  This is doubly unfortunate. While Mr. Meshal says Islam allows only a long-term truce with Israel, Hamas officials closer to Prime Minister Haniya believe that a formal peace deal is possible, especially if negotiations can begin out of the spotlight and proceed by degrees. 
  ''You can't expect us to take off all of our clothes at once,'' one Hamas leader told me, ''or we'll be naked in the cold, like Arafat in his last years.'' This official said that if Hamas moved too fast, it would alienate its base, but if his government continued to be isolated, the base would radicalize. ''Either way, you could wind up with a bunch of little Al Qaedas.'' 
  Although Prime Minister Haniya has more popular support, Mr. Meshal controls the militias and the money. If financing -- perhaps from moderate Arab states -- could be channeled to Mr. Haniya's government for social services like salaries, fuel, food, building repairs, garbage collection and so forth, then Mr. Meshal's (mostly Iranian) bankroll would be less of a factor, and popular pressure could help rein in Hamas's military wing. 
  Prime Minister Haniya's position comes down to this: ''We need you, as you need us.'' For the United States and Europe, the stakes are also high. Mr. Haniya wants Americans and Europeans to recognize that the region has welcomed Hamas's election to power as a genuine exercise in democracy. 
  If America were to engage his government, he believes, it would be the West's best opportunity to reverse its steep decline in the esteem of Arabs and Muslims everywhere. ''We need a dialogue of civilizations,'' he said, ''not a clash of civilizations.'' 
  A survey by the Pew Center's Global Attitudes Project released in June found that Muslim opinions about the West had worsened drastically over the past year. 
  This month President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, warned that continued Middle East hostilities involving Israel ''will radicalize the Muslim world, even those of us who are moderate today. From there, it will be just one step away to that ultimate nightmare: a clash of civilizations.'' 
  But Khurshid Ahmad, a senator in Pakistan and leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the world's oldest and most important Islamist movements, recently told me that if Hamas accepted a two-state solution, ''with both Palestine and Israel having full economic, political and military sovereignty over their pre-1967 territories, and with Palestinians allowed into Palestine and Jews into Israel, then I would recommend this solution to the entire Muslim community.'' 
  Tangible results, like prisoner exchanges, are important. However, so are symbolic actions. Hamas officials have stressed the importance of Israel's recognizing their suffering from the original loss of Palestinian land. And survey research of Palestinian refugees and Hamas by my colleagues and I, supported by the National Science Foundation, reliably finds that violent opposition to peace decreases if the adversary is seen to compromise its own moral position, even if the compromise has no material value. 
  ''Israel freeing some of our prisoners will help us to stop others from attacking it,'' said the Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad. ''But Israel must apologize for our tragedy in 1948 before we can talk about negotiating over our right of return to historic Palestine.'' 
  As the Pew survey made clear, the Israel-Palestinian issue has become the principal fault line in world conflict. There would be some sad satisfaction if the bloodshed in Gaza and at the Lebanon border served as a starting point for bringing the larger conflict to an end.


 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (97%); ISRAEL (95%); LEBANON (94%);  SYRIA (79%)







  
 

August 16, 2006 Wednesday  




 THE ESSENTIAL U.N.; 
FOCUS CENTERS ON NEXT SECRETARY-GENERAL

 
The United Nations once more demonstrated the essential role that it plays as the world groped for an end to the bloody, monthlong Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah conflict.
At times it has been fashionable, especially for some of the neoconservatives who form part of the support of President Bush, to deride the United Nations as useless and expensive and somehow a constraint on the ability of the United States to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. 
When, however, it came time to try to bring to a close Israel's relatively unsuccessful incursion into Lebanon to seek to exterminate Hezbollah, there was nowhere to go except the United Nations. On Saturday a U.N. Security Council resolution was finally agreed upon after enormous diplomatic wrangling, that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could be seen voting for.
Israel subsequently agreed; Hezbollah through the Lebanese government in which it is represented agreed; and a collection of European and Asian countries, including predominantly Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to put up an eventual peacekeeping force. There is considerable remaining unease about the precariousness of the agreement, and the substantial danger in trying to implement the resolution. Echoing in the background is the maxim that in the Middle East, a cease-fire can be simply a chance to reload. But the conflict is probably over, at least for now.
The United Nations once again provided the forum to work out a solution. The U.N. role even provided hope that the agreement arrived at could serve as a basis for a longer-lasting solution to the basic problem hovering along the Israel-Lebanon border and across the Middle East.
As all of this went on, also hovering in the background was a process of positioning within the United Nations to choose a successor to current Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who will arrive at the end of his second five-year term Dec. 31. That process in principle includes the five U.N. Security Council permanent members, who recommend to the 15-member council a candidate. The council will then pass that recommendation along to the 191-member U.N. General Assembly, which meets next month. The assembly will then vote its choice, either by a two-thirds vote or by acclamation.
It has been agreed, including by Mr. Bush, that the next secretary-general should be an Asian. All of the declared candidates are men, even though there had been a previous flurry of interest in electing the first woman to that post. Also fallen by the wayside were ideas of choosing former President Bill Clinton or British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the job. Possible current candidates are South Korean, Indian, Thai and Sri Lankan, although surprises are never ruled out.
The vital role of the secretary-general in leading the United Nations in such work as making peace between Israel and Hezbollah means that the choice of a successor to Mr. Annan is very serious work indeed, demanding high-level U.S. attention.

 ISRAEL (95%); LEBANON (94%);  MIDDLE EAST (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (92%); MALAYSIA (79%);  ASIA (79%)







 
 


August 15, 2006 Tuesday



 Winning the War

 
As I write these words, several hours after its onset, the ceasefire in Lebanon is holding. Another hour or day from now, thus may or may not still be the case.
But let's assume that the ceasefire does hold - or that if it doesn't, it will eventually be restored.What happens now?
This depends of course on Israel.And on Hezbollah.And on the Lebanese government. And on Syria. And on Iran. And on Europe. And on America. In short, it's going to be very complicated. 
A best-case scenario would go as follows:
As the Israeli army withdraws from the positions it now holds, well-armed units of the Lebanese army and the expanded UNIFIL force mandated by the ceasefire resolution move immediately in on its heels and demand that Hezbollah forces remaining in the area vacate it and move north of the Litani River. Hezbollah - licking its wounds, loathe militarily to confront an international force, and not wishing to be accused of plunging Lebanon into more chaos - complies. Syria and Iran have no choice but to make their peace with this. The Lebanese-Israeli border is pacified and long-term quiet reigns there for the first time in decades. Hezbollah, no longer able to claim that it needs to muster a fighting force to defend Lebanon against Israel, lays down its arms and begins to function as a purely political party.
In a word, Israel has won the war.
But there is a worst-case scenario, too. It goes like this:
Israel withdraws rapidly from southern Lebanon, leaving behind hundreds of Hezbollah soldiers who have survived the fighting. Hundreds or thousands more join them immediately, many pretending to be returning refugees from the towns and villages of southern Lebanon attacked by Israel. Syria and Iran quickly re-arm them. By the time the Lebanese army and the UNIFIL contingents arrive on the scene in any force, Hezbollah is entrenched again all across the Lebanese south and refuses to leave. Only massive force can dislodge it, and neither the Lebanese army or UNIFIL is willing to contemplate its use.The situation has returned to what it was before the fighting broke out, and Hezbollah - still in command of the south and its reputation at a new height in the Arab world - is as dangerous to Israel as ever.
Which is to say: Israel has lost the war.
These are of course the two extreme possibilities. There are all kinds of intermediate variations.These too would involve a complex interplay of forces, of which Israel is only one - and far from the most dominant.
And yet if Israel does not play its cards well, the outcome is far less likely to be a good one. And the initial signs are not encouraging.Before the last shot had even been fired, the Israeli army was telling journalists that it intended to withdraw from southern Lebanon as quickly as possible, turning over responsibility to whatever international representative "arrived with a flag" to plant there. And to make matters worse, Foreign Minister of Israel, Tsipi Livni, has been telling other journalists that Israel will accept as part of the international force troops from both Malaysia and Indonesia, two hostile countries that do not recognize the Jewish state and have no diplomatic relations with it.
If this is what Israel intends to do, the war indeed has been lost.
One can well understand Israel's anxiety not to get stuck with its troops on the ground in Lebanon forever, as happened after its 1982 invasion of that country, which it did not entirely leave until 18 years and hundreds of dead later, long after it should have.
But leaving too early can have, this time, even worse consequences. If Israel does not insist on pulling out of southern Lebanon slowly and carefully, and on first making sure that each town and sector that it leaves is under the firm control, and not just the theoretical jurisdiction, of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL, it will have accomplished nothing. Once more the dead and wounded will have been in vain.
And there are also, of course, good reasons for Israel's seeking to improve relations with Muslim states like Malaysia and Indonesia. If either wants to send its badminton or water polo teams to Tel Aviv, they should be welcomed. But soldiers to Lebanon to guard Israel's border against a radical Muslim terrorist organization? If this is the degree of seriousness with which Israel takes the international force, the latter may as well stay home.
Many criticisms have been made of the way Israel fought the war that has just - let's hope permanently - ended. At least some of them are justified. But it is one thing to make mistakes on the battlefield or in the war room, when the bullets are flying and it is difficult to think clearly - especially when some of these mistakes may be caused by the praiseworthy desire to safeguard the lives of one's own soldiers. It is another to make them in relative calm on the day after the war is over, thereby jeopardizing all its gains.
Security Council resolution 1701 is not perfect, but it is, from an Israeli perspective, a good one. If it is carried out in full, the 33-day war in Lebanon will have been worth fighting.But it can only be carried out if Israel makes it clear that it will not tolerate anything less. This is not the message that it is sending out in the first hours of the ceasefire.
Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of .

 ISRAEL (98%); LEBANON (94%); SYRIA (94%); IRAN,  (93%)






  

 


August 15, 2006 Tuesday



 THIS MUSLIM ROCKER PREACHES TOLERANCE TO A STRONG DRUMBEAT

 
Mary Kissel commentary discusses the work of Indonesian rock star Dhani, whose band, Dewa, promotes a moderation vision of Islam; photo (M)








 



August 14, 2006 Monday  




 
Embassy warns of India attacks
An e-mail sent to Americans registered with the U.S. Embassy in India said New Delhi and Bombay were targeted for attacks around India's Independence Day celebrations on Tues. The embassy warned that foreign militants, possibly from al-Qaida, may be planning to bomb airports, key gov't offices and major gathering places. The embassy urged Americans to maintain a low profile and be alert. 
INDONESIA: Officials issued a last-minute stay of execution for 3 Christian militiamen found guilty of killing Muslims in religious clashes, hours after an appeal by Pope Benedict XVI to spare them.
CHINA: Typhoon Saomai weakened to a tropical depression Fri. after killing at least 104 people and wrecking over 50,000 homes. Also, 190 were missing in areas where more than 1.6 mil were evacuated.
IRAQ: The bodies of 2 U.S. soldiers missing since a helicopter crash several days earlier were found near Baghdad. At least 19 American troops have died in Iraq this month.

 INDIA (97%); UNITED STATES (95%); IRAQ (92%); 







   


August 13, 2006 Sunday  




 Does Calling It Jihad Make It So?

 
SOON after the British police announced last week that they had broken up a plot to blow up aircraft across the Atlantic, President Bush declared the affair ''a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists.''
  British officials, on the other hand, referred to the men in custody as ''main players,'' and declined to discuss either their motives or ideology so that they would not jeopardize ''criminal proceedings.''
The difference in these initial public characterizations was revealing: The American president summoned up language reaffirming that the United States is locked in a global war in which its enemies are bound together by a common ideology, and a common hatred of democracy. For the moment, the British carefully stuck to the toned-down language of law enforcement. 
  A critical debate in America today -- among political candidates and among national security experts -- is whether five years of war declarations and war-making have helped to make the United States more secure. Or, even in the absence of a major attack on American soil since 9/11, has this strategy created greater danger by providing terror groups with exactly what they crave: the sense that they are a unified army of jihadists? And has the strategy radicalized large swaths of the Muslim world in ways that were not imaginable as recently as 2003?
  For the White House, the bomb plot last week was Exhibit A in defense of the war strategy: the plotters would go after Americans, war or no war in Iraq. But critics argue that merging the global war on terror and Iraq was creating new jihadists, from Indonesia to Walthamstow, the East London area where much of the plot was hatched. 
  Few questioned whether the war-on-terror strategy made sense right after 9/11. The war in Afghanistan greatly degraded Al Qaeda's organizational ability, although there were indications last week that the terror network had links to the homegrown suspects in the London plot.
  President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney derided what they saw as the law enforcement approach of the Clinton years. As Mr. Cheney told visiting diplomats recently, ''There was a war on in the 1990's, but we didn't know it.''
  He routinely recites a history of terror plots against Americans over the past two decades, from the destruction of a Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 -- all of which, he said, were treated like police investigations, emboldening the plotters of 9/11. 
  ''You'll see case after case of terrorists hitting America or American targets -- and America failing to hit back hard enough,'' Mr. Cheney said in a recent speech. 
  The test of American willpower, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush have insisted, is in Baghdad, which explains why they stick to the language that it is the ''central front'' in the war on terrorism and domino that America cannot let fall. Defeat there, they warn, would give the jihadists a victory and empower them to move on to the next country -- maybe Pakistan, maybe Saudi Arabia, maybe Lebanon. 
  The question is whether that approach -- and the language that goes with it -- creates a trap for the administration.
  ''I think that what is happening is that everything is getting magnified,'' said Stephen Cohen, a Mideast scholar at the Israel Policy Forum. ''Just like every small crisis around the world was part of the cold war, every one is now part of the struggle between militant Islam and the United States. And that makes individual conflicts harder to solve,'' and an inspiration for jihad.
  Mr. Cohen cited the American approach to the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. If that conflict were once again regarded as just another chapter in a long-running regional dispute, the stakes would be lower in Washington, making it easier for the United States to play a more traditional peace-making role. 
  The administration response is that it describes the world the way it is -- rather than ducking the realities of the Mideast.
  Although she worries that the language of ''Islamic fascism'' risks alienating Muslim communities, Farhana Ali, a political analyst at the RAND Corporation, said: ''I don't blame the administration for treating this as a war, because it is one in many ways. It's a political war.'' 
  She points to the video released last month, exactly a year after the London subway bombings. In it, one plotter who died in the attacks, seeming to speak from the grave, warned that the explosions were just the beginning of bigger attacks.
  Daniel Benjamin, author of ''The Next Attack,'' a book about the future of terrorism, said: ''The tube bombers in Britain were clearly motivated in large measure by Iraq. They were obsessed about it. ''
  Washington has tried, at times, to soften its message. Mr. Bush has launched diplomatic efforts to convince the Muslim world that the battle is with terrorists, not with ''a great religion.'' The administration provided aid to the tsunami victims in Indonesia, partly also to remind the world's largest Muslim nation that American goals go beyond counterinsurgency operations.
  But those military operations are what most of the world watches each night. A mystery of the London plot is whether Al Qaeda incited it -- as its surviving leadership seeks to prove it can still pack a punch -- and whether the suspects were prompted by televised military imagery. 
  Jon B. Wolfsthal, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on Friday: ''If I could ask one question as an interrogator to the guys they just arrested, I'd want to find out who they were and what they were thinking about this kind of attack before Iraq, or after. I'd want to know whether they have longstanding anger at the U.S., or are we adding fuel to the fire, and making new extremists. I don't mean that Iraq was right or wrong, but every action has consequences.''
  In the current issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows argues that the imagery of the ''long war'' -- one that has already lasted longer than the Korean conflict -- is self-defeating. ''An open-ended war is an open-ended invitation to defeat,'' he wrote. ''Sometime there will be more bombings, shootings, poisonings and other disruptions in the United States.'' Some will be the work of Islamic extremists, some not. He added: ''If they occur while the war is still on, they are enemy 'victories,' not misfortunes of the sort that great nations suffer.'' 
  For Mr. Bush, however, dropping the talk of a ''long war'' would be to send a message that America can go back to sleep. Thus, each terrorist attack or threat is woven into the bigger picture of a global struggle. 
  It helps explain the recent redeployment of American troops to the streets of Baghdad: to pull out early would be a return to the failed approach of the 1990's. It would be another Somalia, another Beirut. The problem is whether staying may give the jihadists something else: A narrative of never-ending conflict, in a war to be fought in Baghdad, in Lebanon and in economy class over the wing of a 747.


  UNITED KINGDOM (94%); IRAQ (93%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); LEBANON (79%); INDONESIA (79%)




14


 The New Mexican 


August 13, 2006 Sunday



 UNDERSTANDING YOUR WORLD: ECHOES OF ISLAM'S CONTENTIOUS INFANCY RESONATE TODAY

 
The rockets still fall on Israel, and the bombs still pound Lebanon. The extent of the war has taken everyone by surprise. Hezbollah battles Israel in the name of Islam, while its rival, al Qaida, battles the world in the name of God. What, if anything, do they have in common?
Islam burst upon the world in the seventh century, when the Prophet Muhammad received the first revelation of the Koran in Mecca. The year was 610. His converts were the world's first Muslims, and they acted with amazing energy. By 638, only 28 years after Muhammad received the first revelations, the Muslims had invaded Syria, Palestine and Egypt to spread the word; they defeated the Persian Empire, occupying parts of present-day Iraq. Jerusalem became the third holiest city in Islam after Mecca and Medina. By 650, they had conquered Cyprus, Tripoli in North Africa and had established Muslim rule in Iran, Afghanistan and part of present day Pakistan. 
By 715, little more than
100 years after Muhammad had his first revelations, the Muslims had conquered most of North Africa and had established a Muslim kingdom in Spain. The Arabic word for southern Spain was Andalus, from which we get the word Andalusia. The Moors, as they were called, remained in Spain for more than 700 years, gradually losing ground until they were finally expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. But who has not listened to traditional Spanish music and not heard echoes of the Middle East? The Mughals carried Islam from Afghanistan to India, and still later Islam spread to modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia, the world's biggest Muslim country.
In other words, the world has seen a lot of Islam and Muslims in the past 1,400 years. Some of it has been good -- witness the brilliant Arab-Jewish-Christian civilization in Spain and the great Muslim/Arab capitals in Damascus and Baghdad, where the Greek classics were preserved for us by the Arabs and medicine was at its best.
But there is a darker side to Islam as well, which has not only divided the Muslims but troubled and sometimes endangered the West. Muslim armies were at the gates of Vienna in 1529 and 1683. In part, it is because Islam is still struggling to come to terms with the modern world, meaning the liberal world of the West, with its celebration of religious, social and even sexual diversity. Conservative Muslims see themselves and their religion as under permanent threat, and their reaction is sometimes violent. Fundamentalist and evangelical Christians will sympathize with the Muslim dilemma, though not with the violence.
We need to remember that much of North Africa and the Middle East was part of Western colonial empires, especially those of the British and the French. Religious sensitivities in these areas became entangled with emerging nationalism, so much so that at times they became almost indistinguishable.
And in part, too, because Islam is divided between mainstream Sunnis, who make up some 80 percent of the world's Muslims, and the minority Shia who are dominant in places such as Iran and Iraq and influential in others. Sunnis follow the sunna, ("tradition") a code of practice that means whatever Muhammad, by example or implicit approval, demonstrated as ideal behavior for Muslims to follow is what Muslims should follow.
The Sunnis recognize the order of succession of the first four Caliphs following Muhammad. Caliph means "deputy of God," or "successor of the Prophet." The Caliphate, originally, was the ruling office for all Muslims, and though it eventually declined until it remained only a name, the title Caliph lasted until 1924, when it was abolished by Kemal Attaturk's Turkish government.
The Shia, or Shiites, (meaning "sectarians") originated in the early years of Islam as the Shiat Ali, the "party of Ali," who was the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad. Shiites believe that Ali and his descendants are the only true heirs of Muhammad as leaders of the faithful, placing great importance on the authority of the imams to interpret the Koran and Islamic traditions.
During the quarrelsome early years of Islam, not unlike the contentious early years of Christianity, Ali was murdered and later so was his son Husayn, in what is now Iraq. This is why Iraq became so important for Shiites.
It also profoundly affected the partisans of Ali, whose beliefs began to reflect a great sense of injustice and oppression. Betrayed by friends and enemies alike, Ali became a symbol of life's inherent injustice.
Shiites developed a "millenarian" expectation of the return of a future and final imam, or Mahdi, currently hidden from the world, but who will appear one day to establish a righteous order. Sound familiar?
Shiites developed a love affair with pain and suffering in which self-sacrifice plays a prominent role, but so does a search for a socially just world. This is why they are always in turmoil, and why Sunni Muslims are so apprehensive about a world in which the Shiites play the major role. Iraq has the first Shiite government in the Arab world for hundreds of years, and Sunni Muslims from Morocco to Jordan are not happy. Part of the turmoil in Iraq has to be understood in this context, as militant Sunnis regard Shiites as heretical. There is no love lost between Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni al Qaida.
In Lebanon, the majority of Muslims are Shiite, which is unusual in that part of the Arab world. They were the poor, the Li'l Abners of Lebanon, largely disenfranchised.
In that deeply confessional society, filled with history's bitter endings, Christians, Muslims and Druze had their armed militia groups. The militias were what made the 1975-90 civil war so deadly. But the Shiites suddenly found themselves at last enfranchised through Amal, their original militia group, and now Hezbollah. And they aren't going away.
William M. Stewart, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer and Time magazine correspondent, lives in Tesuque. He writes weekly on foreign affairs.

 ISRAEL (94%); NORTHERN AFRICA (93%); LEBANON (92%); SPAIN (91%); AFRICA (91%); MIDDLE EAST (90%); AFGHANISTAN (90%); MALAYSIA (79%); INDIA (79%); CYPRUS (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%);  IRAN,  (79%); SYRIA (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); EGYPT (79%)







 Star Tribune
 
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

August 13, 2006 Sunday  




 Lieberman, Cheney and the war in Iraq; 
The White House recognizes a vote of no confidence.

 
Someday Americans will know for sure whether Sen. Joseph Lieberman's primary defeat last week was a turning point in American attitudes toward Iraq or just a footnote in Connecticut history. But it's plain that the Bush administration has drawn its own conclusions and regards the election as an important and worrisome vote of no-confidence in its own foreign policy. 
Exhibit A is the astonishing behavior of Dick Cheney. The normally reclusive vice president took time off from vacation in Wyoming to conduct a conference call with reporters on Wednesday and accuse Connecticut Democrats of subverting national security and giving comfort to "Al-Qaida types.''
It's bizarre enough that a sitting vice president would decide to meddle in the politics of the opposition party and try to tell Democrats how to choose their own candidate for U.S. Senate. But it's downright outrageous that Cheney would yet again try to draw misleading parallels between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaida. Time and again White House officials have backed off that assertion when challenged frontally - only to find some new way to insinuate it again a day or a week later. For the record, one investigation after another has shown that Saddam regarded Osama bin Laden as a rival, not an ally, and that Al-Qaida took root in Iraq only after the U.S. invasion created fertile soil for terrorists there.
If Ned Lamont's victory does have any lasting significance - and the Karl Rove operation plainly believes it does - it's precisely because it was a referendum on the Bush policy toward Iraq.
Americans now understand that the invasion of Iraq was not crucial to the fight against Al-Qaida; it was a terrible and costly distraction from it. They understand that the Bush administration has made a gross miscalculation about the way to advance democracy and stability in the Middle East - just ask the Lebanese and the Israelis, or the Egyptians or Iraqis, for that matter. They understand that U.S. policy in the Middle East is not sidelining radical Islam; it is driving the world's moderate Muslims away from the American sphere of influence. In a remarkable June survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, majorities in 10 out of 14 foreign countries - including Great Britain - said the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. In moderate Muslim-majority nations such as Indonesia, Jordan and Turkey, favorable opinion toward the United States has dropped precipitously in the last five years.
Despite the fear-mongering of the Rove operation, no thinking American is calling for the United States to "cut and run'' from Iraq - not Ned Lamont, not Rep. John Murtha, not Tom Friedman. Instead they are trying hard to find a safe and honorable solution to the Iraq catastrophe - something the administration seems incapable of.
WORLDVIEW
The Pew Global Attitudes Project found that between 2002 and 2006, favorable attitudes toward the United States have fallen from 75 percent to 56 in Great Britain, from 61 percent to 37 percent in Germany and from 72 percent to 63 percent in Japan. Respondents in Great Britain, Spain, France, China and Indonesia said the war in Iraq is a greater danger to world peace than the new regime in Iran.

   MIDDLE EAST (92%); TURKEY (79%); EGYPT (79%); JORDAN (79%); ISRAEL (79%); LEBANON (79%);  UNITED KINGDOM (79%)







 
 



August 12, 2006 Saturday



 In the World

 
Fighting expands
in Sri Lanka
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Sri Lankan troops battled Tamil Tiger rebels in the northern Jaffna peninsula, and the air force bombed rebel camps in the east yesterday in expanded fighting that threatened a return to full-scale war on the island.
Two clashes were taking place on the peninsula, the traditional home of Sri Lanka's 3.2 million Tamils, a rebel spokesman said. Separately, the air force targeted an area in the Batticaloa district in the east, about 50 miles south of a waterway where the two sides have fought for two weeks. 
A military spokesman, Maj. Upali Rajapakse, said the attack in Batticaloa was to neutralize "terrorist camps." An air force official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of air force regulations, said the strike was carried out to stop Tamil rebels from moving to the waterway to support rebels already there.
Battles on Thursday left 61 combatants dead at the waterway, according to the two sides.- AP
NATO soldier dies
in Afghan attack
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber plowed his explosive-laden car into a NATO-led force's convoy in southern Afghanistan yesterday, killing one soldier, force officials said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack.
U.S.-led coalition troops and Afghan forces, meanwhile, raided a building in southeastern Afghanistan, killing three suspected al-Qaeda members, officials said.
The suicide attack took place on the highway in the Spin Boldak district of the southern Kandahar province, the NATO-led force said. The nationality of the killed soldier was not released; most of the NATO troops in the area are Canadian. - APFires scar ancient
Spanish artworks
MADRID, Spain - Priceless art dating from the Stone Age has been damaged in forest fires - some deliberately set - in northwestern Spain, officials said yesterday.
Color paintings and carvings on rocks - known as petroglyphs - of wildlife and geometric patterns dating back about 4,000 years, have been charred and blackened in fires in Campo Lameiro and Cotobade in northwestern Galicia, government spokeswoman Iria Mendez said.
It is too early to say whether the art, considered national treasures, has been damaged beyond repair, Mendez said.- AP
Castro's 80th likely
to pass quietly
HAVANA - It was supposed to be a splashy national tribute, several days of parties and concerts to mark Fidel Castro's 80th birthday.
But instead of listening to folk music and attending conferences on his legacy, Castro, recovering from surgery for intestinal bleeding, is expected to spend his birthday tomorrow in bed.
Castro was last seen in public July 26, five days before his surgery. Details on his whereabouts and medical condition are a mystery. It was unknown yesterday whether any birthday celebrations would take place this weekend.- AP
Elsewhere:
Islamic extremists fired dozens of rockets at two military posts in northwestern Pakistan, an official said yesterday. No injuries were reported in the renewed violence in South Waziristan, a tribal region along the border with Afghanistan.
Indonesian officials issued a last-minute stay of execution last night for three Christian militiamen on death row, but they added that the sentences would still be carried out. The delay came hours after an appeal by Pope Benedict XVI to spare the men, who were found guilty of killing Muslims in religious clashes in 2000 on Sulawesi island.
A moderate earthquake rocked Mexico City on Friday, causing skyscrapers to sway and frightening residents, but no major damage or injuries were reported.

 SRI LANKA (96%); AFGHANISTAN (95%); SPAIN (90%); PAKISTAN (79%); CANADA (79%)







  



August 12, 2006 Saturday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
BEIJING  --  The most powerful typhoon to hit China in half a century killed 105 people and left at least 190 missing Friday after it blacked out cities and smashed more than 50,000 houses in the southeast part of the country. 
  More than 1.6 million people were evacuated from the path of Typhoon Saomai before it struck late Thursday with winds gusting up to 170 mph, the official New China News Agency said.  
  But the typhoon weakened to a tropical storm Friday morning and by midday, the Hong Kong Observatory said, its winds had fallen, dropping it to tropical depression status. 
  Hardest-hit was Wenzhou, a coastal city where at least 81 people were killed and 11 were missing, the news agency said. 
 On Wenzhou's outskirts, 43 bodies, including those of eight children, were reported found in the debris of collapsed houses. News photos showed relatives weeping over bodies covered in sheets and quilts. 
 Wenzhou was reported to have suffered $560 million in damage, including more than 18,000 flattened houses. Torrential rains were forecast over the weekend in a swath of China's south stretching from coastal Zhejiang and Fujian inland to the poor rural provinces of Jiangxi and Anhui. 
  Much of that region was still recovering from Tropical Storm Bilis, which killed more than 600 people last month, many of them in mountain villages and other inland areas. 
  Saomai, the Vietnamese name for the planet Venus, was the eighth major storm to hit China during an unusually violent typhoon season. It killed at least two people in the Philippines and dumped rain on Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Airlines canceled hundreds of flights. 
  Saomai was the most powerful typhoon to hit China since a storm on Aug. 1, 1956, that had winds up to 145 mph and killed 4,900 people, the official news agency said.  
 asia 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  Indonesian officials issued a last-minute stay of execution for three Christian militiamen on death row, but said the sentences would still be carried out. 
  The delay came hours after an appeal by Pope Benedict XVI to Indonesia's president to spare the men, who were found guilty of killing Muslims in religious clashes in 2000 on Sulawesi island. Speaking minutes before the men were scheduled to be killed by firing squad, national police chief Gen. Sutanto said the executions would be carried out after Aug. 20, but gave no date. 
  He said Sulawesi officials had told him the execution was delayed because they were too busy preparing for celebrations to mark Indonesia's independence on Aug. 17. 
*  SAN FRANCISCO  --  A 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia early Saturday, according to preliminary reports from the U.S. Geological Survey. 
 africa 
*  NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania  --  At least 17 more African migrants have died trying to reach Spain after a gas bottle exploded on their boat, aid workers said Friday, as European and African governments struggled to stem the exodus. 
  Migrants aboard a fishing boat that left Senegal bound for Spain's Canary Islands had to throw the bodies of 11 fellow passengers overboard after they died in the blast or from their injuries, said a senior Red Crescent official in Mauritania. 
  The boat, which had been at sea for a fortnight, was intercepted on Wednesday by a naval patrol before being brought to the northern Mauritanian port of Nouadhibou. 
  About 15,000 illegal migrants have landed on the Canary Islands this year, double the number recorded last year. A further 10,000 have arrived at other Spanish ports, according to official figures. 
*  MALABO, Equatorial Guinea  --  President Teodoro Obiang Nguema has forced his prime minister and ministers to resign, opening the way for a reshuffle in sub-Saharan Africa's third largest oil producer. 
 europe 
*  MADRID  --  Priceless art dating from the Stone Age has been damaged in forest fires  --  some deliberately set  --  in northwest Spain, officials said. 
  Color paintings and carvings on rocks of wildlife and geometric patterns dating about 4,000 years have been charred and blackened in fires in Galicia, a local government spokeswoman said, but it is too early to determine whether the art, considered national treasures, has been damaged beyond repair, she said. 
  Police arrested 19 people Friday suspected of setting the forest fires, the Interior Ministry said. Police investigations suggested organized gangs may be behind the fires, a ministry spokeswoman said.  
*  MOSCOW  --  Europe's largest rights and security body, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, urged Russia not to extradite 13 people wanted by Uzbekistan on charges of involvement in the 2005 Andijan uprising in the Central Asian state. 
  The call from the OSCE came two days after Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan's neighbor, extradited five refugees who fled Andijan, scene of what human rights groups call a massacre by government troops. 
  Last week, the Russian prosecutor general's office said it was "satisfied" with Uzbekistan's request to extradite 13 Uzbek citizens in detention in Russia, giving the green light for the start of procedures to send them home. 
 the americas 
*  MEXICO CITY  --  A 6.0-magnitude earthquake rattled Mexico City with a force that sent people fleeing into the streets in panic and revived memories of a devastating 1985 quake that killed thousands. No casualties or major damage were reported after the quake, which struck during the morning rush hour. 
  The quake rattled leftist protesters who had blocked access to Mexico's main tax office downtown, but they pressed on with demonstrations against what they say was fraud in the July 2 presidential election. 
*  RIO DE JANEIRO  --  Police arrested 30 businessmen, government officials and soldiers accused of taking part in a scheme to net millions of dollars by overbilling for meals in the military and at schools, officials said. 
*  KOUROU, French Guiana  --  An Ariane-5 rocket lifted off from French Guiana, putting into orbit a Japanese civilian communications satellite and a French military communications satellite, officials said. 
  --  From News Services 

 INDONESIA (95%); CHINA (94%); HONG KONG (92%); JAPAN (79%); MAURITANIA (79%); TAIWAN (79%); SPAIN (79%); AFRICA (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%); ASIA (78%)







 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation
 


August 11, 2006 Friday  




 THE WORLD

 
Chavez tells of faith in Castro's health
MUNICIPIO INDEPENDENCIA, VENEZUELA -President Hugo Chavez said Thursday his close friend and ally Fidel Castro is in a "great battle for life," but he also expressed optimism about Mr. Castro's recovery.
"From here, let's pray to God for Fidel and his recovery, and he's fighting a great battle," Mr. Chavez said in a televised speech from the eastern state of Anzoategui. 
His statement was the most serious yet from a close ally in describing the 79-year-old Cuban leader's condition. But Mr. Chavez predicted, with a laugh, that Mr. Castro would defy the U.S. government's plans for a transition in Cuba and emerge from a hospital to reassume the presidency.
Mr. Chavez said he had received a message from Mr. Castro on Wednesday "that filled me with more optimism."
Mr. Castro said July 31 he was stepping aside temporarily, granting his powers to his brother Raul so he could recover from intestinal surgery. Details of Mr. Castro's condition are being treated as a "state secret."
Putin calls for art inventory
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin ordered top officials to conduct a nationwide inventory of 50 million artworks at Russian museums, concerned that other treasures might be missing after the theft of $5 million in valuables from the famed Hermitage.
Mr. Putin on Thursday told Cabinet officials to set up a commission by Sept. 1 to conduct the inventory, his office said. Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev and Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev were among the officials tapped for the commission.
Russian authorities say that only a quarter of the country's artworks have been inventoried since a check began six years ago, the first such survey since the closing years of the Soviet Union.
Authorities so far have recovered 16 items stolen from the Hermitage.
Fighting continues in Sri Lanka
COLOMBO, SRI LANKA - The military attacked Tamil rebels from land and air Thursday, and they retaliated with artillery and small arms fire in fighting that left 13 people dead, officials said. A cease-fire monitor warned that the situation was worsening.
Senior rebel official Seevarathnam Puleedevan said at least 50 civilians were killed and 200 injured in the government military operation near a key waterway, but a military spokesman said he was unaware of any civilian casualties.
"The peace process is in grave danger," Mr. Puleedevan said.
He appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross to help evacuate civilian casualties. But Red Cross official Davide Vignati said the organization had not received an official request from either side.
In other news
THE DEATH TOLL FROM Ethiopia's worst flash floods climbed to 250 on Thursday and was expected to rise, authorities said. More than 300 people are still missing.
OUTGOING MEXICAN PRESIDENT Vicente Fox said Thursday he is confident the country's disputed presidential election will be resolved peacefully and the country's young democracy will emerge stronger.
HUNDREDS OF INDONESIAN CHRISTIANS rallied Thursday against plans to execute three Christians convicted of leading attacks on Muslims. They were scheduled to die Saturday for their roles in inciting attacks on Sula-wesi in 2000 that left about 1,000 people dead from both faiths.
A MAN ACCUSED OF PARTICIPATING in a 2002 rebel attack that killed more than 100 civilians was captured Thursday, Colombian authorities said. Hector Orlando Martinez Quinto, 38, is a suspected member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
TWO HOMEMADE BOMBS and a grenade exploded in attacks Thursday in the Philippines, killing a police officer and wounding five others, officials said. Involvement by al-Qaida-linked groups Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah was suspected.
- Edited from wire reportsby Amanda Holahan

 SRI LANKA (92%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (92%); VENEZUELA, BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF (92%); CUBA (79%);  MEXICO (79%)







 
 

 

August 11, 2006 Friday



 U.S. needs a political revolution

 
Probably few saved the combined edition of the Times of Sept. 12, 2001, which headlined the quote of President Bush, "Freedom will be defended," or remember the verbatim text of the president's brief address the evening after the attacks, which used the word freedom three times, the words peace and justice twice, and devoted two paragraphs to "finding those responsible."
It's thus ironic that we've today less freedom, peace, and justice in the United States than on Sept. 11, 2001, despite no further domestic terrorist attacks. Osama bin Laden is still at-large, and our policy on violence merely produced more violence in the Middle East.
The Democratic Party is aching to take over Congress so it can bring charges and successfully try Bush for impeachment. Ridiculous. To impeach a lame-duck is a waste of time. 
Bush would likely plead innocent by reason of insanity, popular in Texas lately. Virtually the entire Congress should impeach itself for gerrymandering, pork-barreling and log-rolling in record amounts.
Of course, Congress won't do that, as members are guaranteed re-election regardless of party.
We need a revolution, like the Industrial Revolution, abolishing the Democratic and Republican parties, just as we kicked out King George III of England. Our constitutional republic (not a democracy) demands, restoring liberty (freedom) and justice for all.
We must change from the most warlike country, able to destroy civilization many times over, to a country like Switzerland, wealthy because it has defended itself against invasion since the Romans, but does not invades others.
Ralph Hoffmann
Danville
Inaccurate letters
In the Aug. 5 Forum on stem cell research, the letters supporting President Bush's veto were filled with inaccuracies.
One writer asserted that a fertilized embryo's unique DNA proves that it is a human being and that successful adult stem cell research precludes a need for embryonic research.
Truth: A fertilized embryo can't become a human being without a host, and none of the critics expressed a willingness to adopt or contribute to their preservation.
Adult stem cells (somatic) provide only limited value because they are programmed to perform certain functions. Embryonic stem cells are believed pluripotent for their ability to replace or repair all cells.
Another writer stated that embryonic stem cells must be harvested from aborted fetuses -- "fields of fetuses grown only to be killed."
Truth: Embryonic stem cells come from very early embryos of 150 cells left-over from the in vitro fertilization process. Cells derived from aborted fetuses are embryonic germ cells, a primitive cell with, perhaps, limited research value and another topic.
One writer made the accusation of "killing fetuses." When most people think of a fetus, they think of a developing child in mother's womb and not a five-day old embryo of 150 cells.
That writer and others argued that public funds should not be used for private research and that there are existing cell lines, but they ignored the immense amount of money required and that existing cell lines are degrading. Also, there are many critical research areas that do not contribute directly to a profit motive. No profit incentive -- no corporate investment.
Mel Boss
Danville
Tribal myopia
What a surprise to see Kathleen Parker sally forth once more in explaining the Middle East to us plebeian ignoramuses (Perspective Aug. 6) I thought Parker was so thoroughly chagrined by the failure of the Iraq war enterprise she campaigned so hard for that she would never offer up another opinion on that part of the world. Maybe she feels there's no way to look stupid interpreting the Israel-Lebanon war to us.
On the other hand, Tom Ricks, in his new book, "Fiasco," has admitted the enterprise is a failure, and he points fingers at those he thinks are responsible (Book Review Aug. 6). From the book review, it appears Ricks feels the war was an outstanding idea but poorly executed by incompetent men. I say both are myopic and they would readily lead us into the next international fiasco.
Both Parker and Ricks still don't understand the extent to which tribalism still blinds our leaders and our citizens to understanding the world around us. Too many of us are able to see the blind spots inherent in the ideas that other tribes (nations) hold dear without understanding that our own tribe can be just as blind. How else can the U.S. misadventure in Iraq (wasting of lives and treasure) be explained? It's just tribal myopia!
I fear there's no near-term cure for this problem. National machismo and an inability to foresee likely outcomes are probably going to lead us into more Vietnam and Iraq-like mistakes. The question is whether our nation will be able to learn this before the lost lives, wasted national treasure and loss of American credibility internationally have become costs too intolerable to bear.
Michael Kelly
Livermore
Many rotten apples
U Zair, Omar Qureshi, Faisal Khan and Shahryar Abbadi, each of whose letters to the editor appeared in the Aug. 4 Times, have an uphill battle to fight in persuading the vast majority of Americans that there are just a few rotten apples in the Muslim barrel.
American TV, radio and print media report every day in the most graphic terms demonstrations against America and Israel by millions of Muslims, both Shia and Sunni, of Arab, Iranian, Pakistani, and (can you believe it), Indonesian ethnicities.
The demonstrators howl their support for Hezbollah, which, since its murder of 241 American Marines by one of their suicide bombers in 1983, is designated a terrorist organization by America. Hezbollah sits on Lebanon's parliament, enjoying a Lebanese cabinet post. Hamas, voted into power in Gaza by Palestinian Muslims, is another entity classified as "terrorist" by America.
The case that "Islam is a great, peaceful religion," lost ground when TV caught Muslims rejoicing unashamedly when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked. Nor is that concept advanced when every day we see the American flag and pictures of our President trampled, spat upon, and burned by Muslims of every denomination and most Muslim nationalities.
Ahmajinedad, bin Sadr, Nasrallah, not to mention bin Laden, and their minions have removed all doubt that many Muslims seek death and destruction to America. Muslims' actions speak louder than words.
Howard T. Goodman
Danville
Slow down for day
Can you imagine the amount of gasoline that could be saved if drivers would commit not to exceed the speed limit just for one day?
The governor or the president should set just one day to give drivers the opportunity to be responsible.
Just for one day ...
Umberto Bellini
Danville
No laughing matter
The facts speak for themselves: President Bush is a clown; his communication skills are laughable. The Department of Homeland Security is a laughingstock.
The war Iraq is a comedy of errors. Our border security is a farce. Control of the U.S. interior is a joke.
So, I ask you, "Why aren't we laughing?"
H.E. Carter
Walnut Creek
Where's Molly?
Columnist Molly Ivins will reappear in her normal Thursday space when she writes new columns. Her distributor announced Thursday that she was on vacation.
Times opinion staff

  MIDDLE EAST (79%); SWITZERLAND (73%); ENGLAND (69%)







   


August 11, 2006 Friday  




 Indonesia to Execute 3 for Roles in Riots That Killed Hundreds 

 
Three men convicted in connection with riots that killed more than 200 people are to be executed Saturday, Indonesian officials said Thursday, in a case that has been marred by questions about their trial and has become embroiled in the country's sectarian politics. 
  The men are all Christians, which has raised questions about the role their religion may have played in scheduling them for execution, as well as broader questions about the fairness of their trial. 
The men, two farmers and a mechanic, were convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad on charges of leading a Christian militia in Poso, in central Sulawesi, that killed more than 200 Muslims in May 2000. From 1998 to 2001, several hundred Christians and Muslims were killed in sectarian violence. 
  After wending through the Indonesian judicial system for five years, the men have run out of appeals, though some Muslim leaders have called for the government to do a more thorough investigation, which it has not done, and for postponing the executions. Previously, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono denied a request for a pardon. 
  The case has also become entangled with that of three Muslim men sentenced to death for their involvement in the bombings of two Bali nightclubs in October 2002. The Bali bombers are scheduled to be executed this month.
  In interviews on Thursday, two government officials said that, for political reasons, it would be very difficult for the government to execute the Bali bombers if it did not first execute the Christians from Poso. 
  The officials spoke on the condition that they not be identified because they were expressing views contrary to the official government position, which is that the Poso men had been fairly tried and had their appeals denied. Indonesia's population of more than 240 million is overwhelmingly Muslim. Though most are moderate and Indonesia is a secular state, politicians are wary of offending conservative Muslims, whose numbers and influence appear to be growing.
  As events unfolded Thursday, it was not at all clear, however, that the government would in any case be able to proceed with the execution of the Bali bombers. 
  Mahendra Datta, a lawyer for the men, said in an interview that he planned an appeal on their behalf. Under Indonesian law, if he does appeal -- he has sent mixed messages in recent weeks -- the executions would be automatically stayed.
  He also questioned why the government was proceeding so rapidly to execute his clients, who were convicted in 2003, while the Poso defendants were convicted in 2001.
  The condemned men from Poso are Fabianus Tibo, 60, Marinus Riwu, 48, and Dominggus da Silva, 42. 
  In 2001, a three-judge court, after hearing testimony from 28 witnesses, found that Mr. Tibo was the leader of a Christian militia, called the Red Group, that Mr. da Silva was one of his commanders and that Mr. Riwu took part in the killings.
  On one day during the May 2000 riots, the Christian gang members, with guns and machetes, killed scores of Muslim men, women and children who had sought protection in a religious school. 
  The trial was marked by troubling ''irregularities,'' said David McRae, a specialist in the Poso violence at the Australian National University.
  One prosecution witness, for instance, slapped the defendants before taking the stand, Mr. McRae said by telephone from Canberra.
  The trial was also affected by the atmosphere at the time, Mr. McRae said. Crowds of angry Muslims gathered outside the courthouse, sometimes throwing rocks. Specific questions have been raised about the role of Mr. Tibo. He has not denied involvement in the riots, but he has vigorously disputed that he was the mastermind. 
  During his trial, Mr. Tibo gave the court the names of 16 people who he said were the coordinators. Several were senior Christian church leaders.
  ''There is a very strong sense that whatever Tibo's role might have been -- and it's fairly unclear -- he certainly was not the mastermind,'' said Sidney Jones, director of the International Crisis Group office in Jakarta. ''So it seems giving the death penalty in this case is just extraordinarily over the top.''


 INDONESIA (95%); AUSTRALIA (79%)








 
San Gabriel Valley Tribune 

August 9, 2006 Wednesday



 Struggling with the Islamic paradox

 
FROM Taliban thugs in Afghanistan to religious police in Saudi Arabia, the rise of puritanical Islam in recent decades has produced some ugly bullies. In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, this trend gave birth to the Islamic Defenders Front, a splinter party whose youthful members periodically rampage through the streets of Jakarta smashing nightclubs, bars and other symbols of Western decadence. 
What's interesting about Indonesia, however, is that most Muslims want nothing to do with the group. The same reaction is echoing across Muslim Asia - from Bangladesh to Indonesia to Malaysia - as religious moderates confront a rising tide of Islamic militance. South Asia, home to two-thirds of the world's Muslims, has spawned some truly frightening terrorist groups. But on balance it harbors a durable and moderate stream of Muslim thinking that has produced novel experiments combining Islam with secular government, democratic capitalism and religious tolerance.
The result is a lively and important debate over the role of Islam in society and public life. If the United States hopes to lead an international struggle against violence perpetrated in the name of religion, Americans must understand this debate, for in the long run Muslim moderates will be the best check on Muslim extremists.
Five years into the so-called war on terrorism, the world has learned a good deal about the limits of military power. In Afghanistan, bullets and bombs succeeded in removing the Taliban and, so far, crippling al-Qaida. In Iraq and Lebanon, however, it has become clear that military force alone cannot snuff out indigenous extremist groups.
In some instances, the Bush administration seems to have absorbed this lesson. In Indonesia it is sponsoring a program to support progressive Islamic education, which should counteract the growing appeal of Islamist boarding schools. Across South Asia it is supporting the Asia Foundation's efforts to promote clean elections and transparent democracy.
Too often, however, the White House has fallen back on diplomacy that is polarizing and strident. "When I hear President Bush say he was instructed by God to invade Iraq and I hear a bearded mullah say he was instructed by God to conduct jihad, how am I to differentiate?" says Mahfuz Anam, editor of the Daily Star, a respected newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Moderate Muslims across Asia are struggling with the same paradox.
Robin Bush, director of the Asia Foundation's Islam and Development programs in Indonesia, says one problem is that Americans have confused two different trends - the rise in religious piety among millions of ordinary Muslims, and the birth of violent splinter groups in pockets of Muslim society. The challenge for American diplomacy will be to honor the former while fighting the latter.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

 UNITED STATES (94%);  ASIA (94%); AFGHANISTAN (93%); BANGLADESH (93%); SAUDI ARABIA (92%); IRAQ (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); LEBANON (79%); SOUTHERN ASIA (73%)






 IBJ Corporation  
Indianapolis Business Journal

August 7, 2006



 Restaurant at Canterbury takes new dining direction;
Hotel hires food veteran Emerson to lead expansion

 
The historic Canterbury Hotel has hosted its share of celebrities. Robert Duvall, Michael Jackson and Mike Tyson are among the most famous or, in some instances, infamous.
But the downtown hotel may be more elated to welcome back Daniel Emerson, a veteran of the local hospitality industry who is a star in his own right to the guests he pampers with his trademark flair.
Emerson, 50, returned to the Canterbury on South Illinois Street July 24 as its food and beverage director. This time, however, the stakes are higher. His task is to reinvigorate a restaurant that is striving to remain relevant among stiff competition in the crowded upscale dining market downtown. 
McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant Emerson's last stop the Restaurant du Soleil in the Conrad of Indianapolis and St. Elmo Steak House, whose owners will open a second restaurant this winter, are contributing to the crush.
Also within blocks of the Canterbury are chic restaurants the Oceanaire Seafood Room, Dunaway's Palazzo Ossigeno, 14 West, Palomino and Mikado Japanese Restaurant & Sushi Bar, as well as high-end beef eateries Morton's The Steakhouse, Shula's Steak House, Ruth's Chris Steak House and Mo's A Place For Steaks.
We want to separate ourselves from all the steakhouses that are downtown and to restore some of the history of the restaurant, said Mark McClure, general manager of the Canterbury. We're trying to get someone who can take care of that and promote it better than what we have.
Indeed, there may be no candidate more qualified than Emerson, who some say has made pleasing the most demanding guests an art form.
Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to parents who operated a resort on the tourist bastion of Bali, he received an early introduction to the world of hospitality.
As a seasoned professional, his confidence could be mistaken for brashness, if not for his ability to back up his statements.
The reputation is here and the tradition is here, he said. But you need to have someone who knows how to please the people of Indianapolis. I've earned my respect by delivering, and by knowing each individual's name who comes through the door.
Emerson approaches his job similar to how an attentive bartender would when recalling a patron's preferred libation. A certain state official, for instance, never needs to pester him for a side of broccoli.
Changes afoot
At the Canterbury, for which he worked upon arriving in Indianapolis in 1998, Emerson will oversee changes designed to resuscitate and revitalize the hotel's restaurant.
Renaming the venue, now known simply as The Restaurant at the Canterbury, tops the list. A few of the names under consideration include the Legend, Landmark and Crown Room. The idea is to create a new identity and renewed interest in the hotel and restaurant.
With a limited seating capacity of 34 and no room to expand, the object is to offer something unique, McClure said. To that end, the dining area will double as an art gallery by displaying the work of local artisans and offering shows during certain dinner times.
Seats will be placed in the parlor area as an extension to the restaurant, which should bring additional revenue, Emerson said. Sidewalk dining could be in place, as well, by spring.
And perhaps most important, he intends to make the afternoon atmosphere less formal to attract larger lunchtime crowds. With room rates starting at $ 229 a night among the city's priciest the hotel can seem a bit stuffy to some.
Count Carolene Mays, publisher of the Indianapolis Recorder and a Democratic state representative, among them. She frequented McCormick & Schmick's during the last Legislative session and came to know Emerson, who was serving as director of catering. His influence, she said, may be enough to lure her to the hotel.
I see the Canterbury as highly regarded, but it seems pretty exclusive, Mays said. I know that I would patronize it more often, just because I know he will do a great job.
The objectives Emerson outlined in a strategic document he submitted to McClure also include his supervision of the hotel's banquet hall and catering department.
Renovations to the hall that should be finished by the end of October will feature new chandeliers, paint, carpet and room for about 10 more tables, boosting its current 150-person capacity above 200. Off-site catering should be available sometime next year, he said.
The document says the hotel's effort must be a systematic, continuous chain of events that will keep fresh eyes focused on the Canterbury's renewal and re-emergence onto Indiana's dining and hospitality scene.
Political interests
The accolades from Mays are the type Emerson has earned since arriving in Indianapolis eight years ago. In that time, he has catered to the top dogs of both political parties at the city and state levels, as well as international dignitaries.
I love this hotel. This hotel has a special place in my heart, he lamented. It needs a person like me to go out and get the politicians using our venue again.
Emerson first met Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson when he hosted a fund-raiser at the hotel during his first run at the office. During his re-election bid, Emerson sported a Republican for Peterson bumper sticker on his vehicle.
Had national Republicans chosen Indianapolis to host the party's convention in 2000, former Mayor Steve Goldsmith had hand-picked Emerson to entertain delegates at the Canterbury.
He actually did do that for a contingent that arrived years ago from Cologne, Germany, sister city to Indianapolis.
I vividly recall the excellence that Daniel helped make happen in terms of the attention to detail and the quality of experience, said Caterina Cregor Blitzer, executive director of the International Center of Indianapolis. It is indeed a premier location in Indianapolis, and I can well imagine with his leadership and international flair, the Canterbury should be well-considered.
Emerson's interest in business and politics led him and his partner, Douglas Emerson Jr., to found the Indonesia-Indiana Alliance in 2002.
The alliance and the U.S. committee of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce signed an agreement then to promote exporting opportunities for smaller enterprises, notably in agribusiness. Heavyweights such as Dow AgroSciences LLC and Eli Lilly and Co. were among the corporate supporters.
While corporations still support the mission, Emerson's travels to Indonesia have nearly ceased due to the growing influence Muslim militants exert there. In Bali, where his parents owned a resort, a terrorist bombing killed 202 people in October 2002.
Emerson left there as a young man to study first in England before arriving in the United States and later earning a degree in international business from Cornell University. He speaks four languages Dutch, Indonesian, Spanish and English.
He worked at the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta and owned a restaurant with Douglas in Anaheim, Calif., called the Restaurant Indonesia. Eventually, a position at the Radisson Hotel brought him to Indianapolis.
He arrived at McCormick & Schmick's from the Five Seasons Country Club after he, the chef and the restaurant manager were recruited last year to get the Oregon-based restaurant chain's Indianapolis location off the ground. While Emerson has bounced around a bit during his time in Indianapolis, he said he plans to stay at the Canterbury a while.
An unlikely Hoosier, to be sure. But his travels as a youngster have helped him adjust to life in Indiana, he said. Now if he can only help the Canterbury do the same in the ever-changing downtown dining scene.
It's easy to get people in the door the first time, but how are you going to get them to come back? he asks. You have to make that first and last impression. It is one guest at a time.
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@headline 1:School races past capital campaign goal
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@drop head:University of Indianapolis raised $ 76 millionin first-ever comprehensive funding drive
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@Byline/Reporter Name:<a$ $ >By<@$ p> Jennifer Whitson
@Byline/e-mail:jwhitsonibj.com
@$ :<@$ p><*J*ra0*rb0*p(0,9,0,11.5,0,0,g,"U.S. English")>When Michael Ferin took over the University of Indianapolis' fundraising operations in 1997, he inherited a limp effort ill-equipped to support exponential enrollment growth
The institution did not have a very strong record of reaching out to the community or keeping in touch with their alumni, Ferin said. This place was behind by a number of years.
No one could say that now. The private college affiliated with the United Methodist Church has just wrapped up a six-year capital campaign that raised $ 76 million, exceeding the original goal of $ 50 million.
The kind of success we had bodes very well for the future of the university, said trustee Bill Kiesel, a graduate of the university and a senior vice president of Smith Barney in Indianapolis.
Added board Chairwoman Christel DeHaan, co-founder of Resort Condominiums International: The whole institution got very, very involved in wanting to meet [fund-raising] goals.
The south-side university, founded in 1902 as Indiana Central, has grown explosively in recent decades. Since 1990, full-time, undergraduate day student enrollment has jumped 83 percent, to 2,304.
<t$ >Total enrollment, which includes part-time, evening and graduate students, climbed 63 percent, to 4,324. That includes 550 students enrolled at the Athens, Greece, campus the university purchased in 2004.
In the late 1990s, with the expansion in full gear, Ferin and other university leaders began plotting a fund-raising plan to support that growth. That blossomed into the campaign that's just wrapped up. It was the school's first-ever comprehensive campaign.
Back then, annual giving was about $ 3 million and had been flat for decades. University officials brought in consultants who said a realistic goal for its six-year campaign would be $ 50 million. After early success, the university extended the campaign by six months, to the end of June of this year, and bumped the target to $ 65 million, hoping to average $ 10 million per year.
The $ 76 million ultimately raised doesn't even include $ 15 million that the Lilly Endowment has earmarked for the school's education center.
<t$ >Most of the money$ 30 millioncame from grants from foundations, such as the Lilly Endowment and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Alumni pitched in $ 26 million and other individuals gave another $ 15 million. Total giving from the 36 trustees, who fall in both the alumni and other-individual categories, was nearly $ 20 million.
The largest chunk of donations went to a flexible fund that university officials can tap as needs arise. Such needs might include building maintenance or finding matching funds to secure a grant.
That's the ultimate vote of confidence gift where a donor understands the need for flexibility and trusts the university, Ferin said.
More than $ 10 million was given to the university's endowment, which will bump its size to $ 75 million. Some funds have already been spent to start new academic programs and add buildings.
Trustees gave most of the credit for the campaign's success to Ferin and his staff, which has grown from 8 to 12 members since Ferin's arrival. The fund-raising veteran came from Siena Heights University, a small, private Catholic institution in Adrian, Mich.
Last year the university selected a new president, Beverly J. Pitts, who replaced retiring Jerry Israel. Under her leadership, the university is drawing up a five-year strategic plan.
Ferin said his group will get a breather while officials evaluate buildings and campus space. The board is scheduled to review the final version of the strategic plan this month.
Then the quiet phase of the next fund-raising campaign will begin, leading to the kickoff of another public campaign in two to three years, Ferin said.
Donors want their gift to make a difference, Ferin said. That's what we're selling thema guarantee that they're not throwing their money into a mediocre effort. And we are making a difference in a lot of lives.
 


August 7, 2006 Monday  




 Livening Up Today's Lesson, Courtesy of Uncle Sam

 
In the first-grade classroom of Wening Sripeni, a diminutive teacher in head scarf and neck-to-ankle dress, the 6-year-olds bubble over with answers, a show of hands at every question about an Indonesian family.
  ''That's Grandpa,'' said a voice from the back. 
What does he like to do? ''He likes to read,'' said another.
  Who is this? Ms. Sripeni asked, pointing to a baby with a book in a bathtub. There were a lot of giggles at the juxtaposition of a baby and a book. 
  ''So you can see the baby likes to do the same thing as Grandpa,'' Ms. Sripeni said. ''Reading is very important.'' 
  Such back and forth, and especially mirth, are unusual in Indonesia's schools, where rows of desks, a blackboard and chalk, and a stern teacher dispensing strict discipline are the norm. 
  But it is different at this elementary school tucked among the rice fields here in Java, the most-populous island of the world's most populous Muslim nation. This school is participating in a drive by the United States to energize primary education here, starting with 1,000 schools and eventually increasing to more than 2,500, still a tiny percentage of the tens of thousands of elementary schools in Indonesia. 
  Contending that lively lessons, engaged teachers and interested parents can promote tolerance and counteract extreme Islamic views, the Bush administration has made promoting education a focus of assistance to friendly Muslim countries through the United States Agency for International Development. 
  Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iraq have all received increased American funds in the last several years for building schools and training teachers and administrators. 
  Indonesia, a moderate Muslim country, was added to the list, American officials said, because of concerns about a growing streak of fundamentalism among graduates of privately run Islamic religious schools, known as pesantren. 
  The effort in Indonesia is different from that in the other countries, American officials said. The money is spent chiefly on training, not bricks and mortar, believing that encouraging good teaching strikes at a more fundamental issue.
  Nearly $9 million has been set aside for creating a version of ''Sesame Street'' with Indonesian characters and situations. It is scheduled to make its debut next year. 
  President Bush personally announced the $157 million, five-year program during a visit to Bali in 2003. There was initial skepticism over whether the money would mean much in the country's famously corrupt education bureaucracy. There was also some concern over the prospect of American meddling in the country's schools. 
  To discourage corruption, no money is provided directly to schools.
  At the outset, the very schools that the United States were most concerned about -- the privately run religious schools that teach about 20 percent of the students -- were declared off limits. The government also said that the Americans were not to change the curriculum. 
  But the government has allowed the Americans to offer their training in state-run religious schools, like the Tegalasri madrasa near here, which receives funds from the Education Ministry as well as the Religious Affairs Department. 
  For the first time, the madrasa, which teaches children from a poor farming community about six miles from Ms. Sripeni's school, got higher scores on the national exam, said Syaiful Ridwan, the principal.
  ''We've gone up from 7.18 to 7.63,'' out of a possible score of 10, he said. Enrollment at the madrasa was increasing, he said, as parents heard about the good results. 
  He said, though, that the American help was not the only factor in the turnaround. The teachers, he said, had also acquired a greater variety of teaching skills by attending training courses. 
  But teachers were motivated by better salaries, he said, made possible by an increase in national school financing. The extra money from the national government had allowed him to increase the lowest salaries from $15 a month to $30, which is still very low.
  Because of the parents' low incomes, lesson materials were sparse at the madrasa, and it was difficult to pay the extra electricity bill to operate five computers daily for one-hour after-school classes. 
  In first grade, Dwi Ernawati, a new teacher struggled to keep the attention of students, who were working in groups of four and five. They were supposed to make simple sentences by gluing tiny letters to a piece of paper.
  Two grandfathers of her students stood at the back of the class as parent helpers, but they seemed not to be of much assistance. 
  In contrast, in Ms. Sripeni's classroom -- in an economically better-off part of the school district and where the Religious Affairs Department is not involved in the school -- two young mothers were on hand. They efficiently passed around paper and kept an eye on the rowdier children. 
  To organize the training of the Indonesian teachers, the United States hired a Washington consulting firm, Research Triangle Institute, which specializes in running American education programs abroad.
  The company hired an American with Indonesian experience to run the teacher training, and he in turn hired a small army of Indonesian educators in the provinces to conduct the training workshops. 
  The training manuals deal with such basics as how to organize a classroom -- in small friendly groups of tables rather than rows -- to how to stimulate classroom discussion to how to study nature. 
  Ms. Sripeni, a 17-year veteran teacher who seemed to have a special vitality all her own, said she liked the ideas sprinkled through the manuals. 
  Her classroom had no blackboard. Instead she had arranged a pastiche of posters: a chart of the professions of the parents; a list of the five religions of Indonesia; the praying times for Muslims; the class attendance record; the ''magic tree'' of family connections. 
  ''The children are very creative,'' Ms. Sripeni said. ''I'm just reacting to their demands. Now their development is very fast. It used to take a long time to get the children to read one sentence. Now they can read a page quite quickly.'' 
  The final test of whether the $157 million has been well invested, educators say, will be whether the new ideas endure. Once the five-year grant is spent, local educators are supposed to be familiar enough with the techniques to continue promoting them, but the outcome is still open to question. 
  Mr. Syaiful, the madrasa principal, has been chosen by the American Embassy in Jakarta to visit the United States, as a reward for his good work. But with reviews of the participating schools not yet complete, there was no decision yet on whether the school would continue to get the teacher training next year.


 UNITED STATES (98%); INDONESIA (97%);  PAKISTAN (79%); AFGHANISTAN (53%)




15


 Star Tribune
 
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

August 7, 2006 Monday  




 ISLAM IN ASIA; 
PART TWO OF TWO; 
An election where stakes seem higher; 
Bangladesh, which achieved independence from Pakistan in 1971, sits at the eastern edge of India on the Bay of Bengal. Its population of 147 million is about 85 percent Muslim, which makes it the world's third-largest Muslim-majority nation. After 20 years under military rulers, it restored democracy in 1991 and will hold its fourth parliamentary election in January 2007.

 
In "The Year of Living Dangerously,'' a political thriller set in 1960s Indonesia, Mel Gibson plays an Australian reporter who arrives in a developing South Asian country just as the nation slips into a violent political crisis.
That harrowing yarn occurred to more than one of us - six American journalists on a reporting trip to South Asia last month - as our plane touched down in Bangladesh one sultry Sunday night. 
That afternoon political demonstrators had rampaged through the streets of the capital city, Dhaka, and police had responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. We woke up Monday morning to read that two people had died in the clashes. The leading opposition political party had called a general strike to shut down the country on Tuesday.
In short, we had landed in the middle of a remarkable political experiment that will test the sinews of a shaky young democracy. The discouraging aspect of Bangladesh's upcoming election is that the two dominant parties, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and the Awami League, seem less interested in genuine reform than in jockeying for power, even if that means making alliances with radical Islamists. The inspiring aspect is that a brave civil society of intellectuals, human-rights lawyers and journalists seems intent on maintaining a secular, transparent democracy.
At an informal lunch Monday afternoon, some of Bangladesh's leading reporters and editors urged us not to take alarm. Strikes and demonstrations, they said, have played a recurring role in Bangladesh politics ever since the nation threw off military rule in 1991 and began conducting parliamentary elections every five years.
"Two deaths are unusual and very sad,'' said Monjural Ahsan Bulbul, executive editor of the Daily Sangbad newspaper. "But confrontations - they are not entirely unexpected.''
In this election, however, the stakes somehow seem higher. In 1991 Bangladesh adopted a novel electoral structure designed to protect its fragile democracy from the abuses of incumbency. Three months before a national election, the party in power steps down and turns the reins over to a caretaker government. The caretaker government, headed by the last retired chief justice of the Bangladesh Supreme Court, runs the nation's day-to-day business and conducts the election.
But when the BNP came to power in 2001 it changed government retirement rules so that one of its allies, a familiar jurist and a cofounder of the party, would wind up running the caretaker government in 2006. Worse, its elections commissioner has broken from tradition, discarded the existing list of eligible voters, and chosen to compile a new voter list from scratch - a procedure ripe for manipulation. Hence the street demonstrations.
What alarms outside observers - and many mainstream Bangladeshis - is that this time the political turmoil takes place against a backdrop of rising Islamist political agitation.
On its independence from Pakistan in 1971 Bangladesh declared itself a secular state - even though some 85 percent of its people are Muslims - and adopted a series of civil and economic reforms.
The strategy has mostly paid off. Food production has doubled since 1971, the poverty rate has plummeted, literacy has risen - especially among young women - and economic growth has been exemplary.
That progress has not, however, eradicated Bangladesh's social problems. Some 44 percent of its people still live on less than $1 a day, impoverished families still live under tarps on the sidewalks of Dhaka, and government corruption is so brazen that even cabinet ministers make jokes about it.
These social ills give traction to Islamist leaders who argue that Western practices have failed Bangladesh and that a more puritanical form of Islam could finally excise government corruption and improve the general social order.
Today a rising number of Bangladeshis are practicing a strict form of Islam, and a growing number of families send their children to madrassas that emphasize religious instruction over a liberal education. In 2001 the BNP forged a political alliance with the nation's biggest Islamic party, Jamaat-i-Islami, which makes no secret of aspiring to create an Islamic state. In 2005, religious extremists detonated some 500 bombs at various locations around the country as a sort of warning of their power.
"We fought to create a secular society,'' said one of our journalist acquaintances. "And now we are losing it.''
For now, most diplomats and analysts in Dhaka are optimistic that the violence will subside before next January's national election. They say the BNP and its rival, the Awami League, will decide they have too much at stake in democracy to let it fail.
"If our democracy delivers, then I don't think that radical Islam will gain much ground,'' Mahfuz Anam, editor of the influential Daily Star in Dhaka, told us.
"But,'' he added, "if democracy is not made to work in this country, then there is serious danger from Islamic militancy.''
ABOUT THIS SERIES
Editorial writer Dave Hage visited Indonesia and Bangladesh recently with a group of American and Asian journalists under the auspices of the East-West Center, a nonpartisan education organization based in Honolulu, Hawaii. His piece on Indonesia appeared in Sunday's Opinion Exchange section. Both pieces can be read online at www. startribune.com/opinion

 BANGLADESH (99%); ASIA (95%); AUSTRALIA (92%);   INDONESIA (92%); SOUTH ASIA (77%)







 Star Tribune
 
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

August 6, 2006 Sunday  




 ISLAM IN ASIA; 
Hearing the moderate voices of Islam; 
Muslims, too, are offended by the extremists.

 
From Taliban thugs in Afghanistan to religious police in Saudi Arabia, the rise of puritanical Islam in recent decades has produced some ugly bullies. In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, this trend gave birth to the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a splinter party whose youthful members periodically rampage through the streets of Jakarta smashing nightclubs, bars and other symbols of Western decadence.
What's interesting about Indonesia, however, is that most Muslims want nothing to do with the group. "They are destructive, not constructive. They produce anger and hatred,'' Andreas Harsono, a journalist and foundation executive, told visiting American journalists recently. "They bring anarchy and discredit to Islam,'' said Amir Ma'ruf, a cleric on Indonesia's national council of Muslim scholars. 
The same reaction is echoing across Muslim Asia - from Bangladesh to Indonesia to Malaysia - as religious moderates confront a rising tide of Islamic militance. Americans should listen in on the conversation, for the moderates respect U.S. opinion and deserve U.S. support.
South Asia, home to two-thirds of the world's Muslims, has spawned some truly frightening terrorist groups, including the Jemaah Islamiyah organization in Indonesia. But on balance it harbors a durable and moderate stream of Muslim thinking that has produced novel experiments combining Islam with secular government, democratic capitalism and religious tolerance.
The result is a lively and important debate over the role of Islam in society and public life. Sometimes the topic is as simple as personal piety. At a recent colloquium organized by the East-West Center in Honolulu, two Asian journalists - both women and both devout Muslims - argued earnestly over whether female broadcasters should appear on television without hijab, the Muslim head scarf that signifies faith and modesty. In several South Asian nations the debate is playing out on a much larger stage, with fierce national struggles over the role of Islam in commerce, the courts, politics and public education.
If the United States hopes to lead an international struggle against violence perpetrated in the name of religion, Americans must understand this debate, for in the long run Muslim moderates will be the best check on Muslim extremists.
Five years into the so-called war on terrorism, the world has learned a good deal about the limits of military power. In Afghanistan, bullets and bombs succeeded in removing the Taliban and, so far, crippling Al-Qaida. In Iraq and Lebanon, however, it has become clear that military force alone cannot snuff out indigenous extremist groups.
In some instances, the Bush administration seems to have absorbed this lesson. In Indonesia it is sponsoring a generous and important program to support progressive Islamic education, which should counteract the growing appeal of Islamist boarding schools. Across South Asia it is supporting the Asia Foundation's efforts to promote clean elections and transparent democracy, which will take away government corruption as an issue for radical Islamist parties.
Too often, however, the White House has fallen back on diplomacy that is polarizing and strident. "When I hear President Bush say he was instructed by God to invade Iraq and I hear a bearded mullah say he was instructed by God to conduct jihad, how am I to differentiate?'' says Mahfuz Anam, editor of the Daily Star, a respected newspaper in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Moderate Muslims across Asia are struggling with the same paradox.
Robin Bush, director of the Asia Foundation's Islam and Development programs in Indonesia, says one problem is that Americans have confused two different trends - the rise in religious piety among millions of ordinary Muslims, and the birth of violent splinter groups in pockets of Muslim society. "The increasing Islamization of South Asia is a long-term phenomenon, and part of a larger, global rise in piety,'' she says. "It needs to be separated in our thinking from violence and militancy.''
The challenge for American diplomacy will be to honor the former while fighting the latter.
MUSLIM DEMOCRACIES
The great majority of Bangladeshis are Muslims, but they wanted a secular state when they broke from Pakistan in 1971. Indonesia's two largest Muslim political organizations support its constitutional guarantee of religious pluralism.

 INDONESIA (97%); ASIA (96%); UNITED STATES (94%); AFGHANISTAN (93%); SAUDI ARABIA (92%);  MALAYSIA (79%); LEBANON (79%); BANGLADESH (79%); SOUTH ASIA (78%)







 Star Tribune
 
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

August 6, 2006 Sunday  




 ISLAM IN ASIA; 
A friend at arm's length; 
Indonesia, an archipelago that sprawls from the Indian Ocean almost to Australia, is the world's largest Muslim-majority nation and, since the authoritarian leader Suharto stepped down in 1998, the world's third-largest democracy. The ambivalence of its people toward the U.S.-directed war on terror should be weighed in the context of a long struggle of moderate clerics and politicians against radical Islamists.

 
PART ONE OF TWO
If you were an American president scanning the map for allies in the war on terror, sooner or later your finger would surely fall on Indonesia.
It has more Muslims than any other nation - some 200 million in an overall population of 240 million. Yet it is also a parliamentary republic with a free press, a constitution that guarantees religious pluralism and, since the authoritarian leader Suharto stepped down in 1998, an increasingly vibrant democracy. And as Indonesians will proudly tell you, it has a long tradition of moderate clerics and politicians who battled against radical Islamists.
Indonesia, however, has pointedly declined to join President Bush's "coalition of the willing.'' It sent no troops to Afghanistan, opposes the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and just two months ago rebuffed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when he asked for help with a naval interdiction program to catch rogue vessels at sea. 
"Your country is so powerful that it tends to create anxiety and resentment, especially among Islamic peoples,'' Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono told a group of visiting journalists in late June. "It's better that anti-terror measures be left to local authorities than be orchestrated by the United States.''
Indonesia's ambivalence is echoed across South Asia, home to two-thirds of the world's Muslims. It's a region where religious moderates, intellectuals and veteran politicians are engaged in a delicate balancing act - marginalizing the extremists and prosecuting terrorists while honoring a religion that, to most Muslims, stands for social justice, national liberation and personal rectitude. Westerners who have stigmatized Islam since 9/11 do no favors to these moderates, and the United States cannot make lasting progress against Islamic extremism until Americans understand this struggle.
To be sure, Indonesia does not come to this debate with clean hands.
Its military committed grave human rights abuses against separatist activists in Aceh and East Timor, and its corrupt police have largely looked the other way in recent years when Islamic extremists attacked Christians and rival Muslim sects. The current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is regarded as a reformer but gets only lukewarm praise from human-rights advocates.
Yet its perspective is important, for it embodies a series of challenges that face devout but moderate Muslims across the world today.
Spend a day in Jakarta, a smoggy metropolis of 9 million people, and you will understand that Indonesians are not anti-American. They drink Starbucks coffee, watch NASCAR on TV and, when possible, send their children to the United States for college.
The nation's founding leaders turned to America's Federalist Papers when they were drafting their own constitution on independence from the Dutch after 1945.
Nor is Indonesia naive about terrorism. It is home to Jemaah Islamiyah, one of the world's most violent and notorious Islamist groups, and it has been the victim of three major terror bombings since 2002. Today there are bomb barriers, metal detectors and uniformed guards at most of Jakarta's big hotels and shopping malls.
Instead, Indonesians' reluctance stems from a belief that the United States has chosen the wrong strategy in combating Islamic extremists.
Their ambivalence dates back to President Bush's opening manifesto after 9/11, that "you are either with us or against us in the war on terror.'' That played poorly in a country where the Christian West is associated with 300 years of brutal colonialism and where leaders rapidly lose credibility if they are seen as mere extensions of American diplomacy.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq only hardened this skepticism. Indonesian Muslims are no fans of Saddam Hussein, whom they regard as a secular fascist who persecuted his own people. But they also understand that he was no ally of Osama bin Laden, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq now looks like a military blunder that is costing rising numbers of civilian lives - Muslim civilian lives.
"I had a meeting with President Bush, and I told him that what you are doing in Iraq is taking the law into your own hands,'' Azyumardi Azra, rector of the prestigious State Islamic University, said in an interview. "By doing that you have undercut the idea of democracy in Indonesian minds.''
Indonesia's own democracy, of course, is young and imperfect. But there is no question about the country's commitment to fighting terrorism. Since 2002, when a blast killed more than 200 tourists in Bali, the government has arrested and tried hundreds of bomb conspirators, and today many face sentences of death or life in prison. This year the government introduced legislation to prosecute Islamist splinter groups guilty of violent civil disobedience.
In the long run, Indonesia possesses something even more powerful - a tradition of pluralism and political discourse that provides a model for reconciling the finest traditions of Islam with the principles of liberal democracy to advance the interests of Muslims in the developing world. The future of democracy in Indonesia is not guaranteed, but on election day in 2004 the country staged the largest one-day voter turnout in world history.
Anyone who visits the Muslim societies of Asia today will find that the anti-American rhetoric of Osama bin Laden and other radicals obscures an important truth. America's highest ideals - the rule of law, religious tolerance, freedom of speech and government transparency - still have immense appeal to most of the world's Muslims. They are struggling to put those ideals into practice in the face of corruption and poverty, but they understand something that Americans are just learning - that extremism can be defeated only by taking Islam back from the extremists.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
Editorial writer Dave Hage visited Indonesia and Bangladesh recently with a group of American and Asian journalists under the auspices of the East-West Center, a nonpartisan education organization based in Honolulu, Hawaii. His piece on Bangladesh will appear on Monday's Opinion Exchange page. Both pieces will be available online at www. startribune.com/opinion

  INDONESIA (97%); ASIA (93%); AUSTRALIA (92%); EAST TIMOR (79%);  AFGHANISTAN (79%); SOUTH ASIA (53%)







 Star Tribune
 
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

August 6, 2006 Sunday  




 ISLAM IN ASIA; 
the street

 
PART ONE OF TWO
Indonesia has more than three decades' experience battling radical Islamists and terrorist groups. We asked three prominent people there: How well do you think the U.S. government is handling the war on terror?
Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono: "It's very hard to say. Some have criticized President Bush for acting in a unilateral fashion. But even if George Bush were not president, the challenge your country would face is that you are simply too powerful. Your defense budget is more than the next 20 countries combined. Your pervasiveness in the world economy and in popular culture tends to be misperceived as an intrusion into our affairs. The world will always have an instinct to be against Rome. So anything you do runs the risk of creating a backlash. Your power creates a sense of uneasiness, not just in governments but among the people as well. What I have asked from the United States is anti-terror assistance on an on-call basis. That is, give us the tools to investigate terrorist acts, but do not be too insistent about the agenda. It is better that we succeed or fail on our own terms rather than at the behest of a foreign power.'' 
Azyumardi Azra, rector of the State Islamic University: "The best thing you could do would be to empower moderate Muslims. In Indonesia we have the two largest Muslim organizations in the world, the Muhammadiyah and the Nahdatul Ulama. They are voices for moderation and democracy, yet the news media always focus on the extremists instead. You should help the moderates make their voices heard. Now, we have been critical of certain policies, but I want to make clear that this is not the same as being anti-American. I met President Bush in Bali last year, and I told him what you are doing in Iraq amounts to taking the law into your own hands, and this undercuts the idea of democracy in Indonesian minds. People say, `This is democracy?' I also complained about your immigration crackdown. It is now very difficult for our brightest scholars, even Fulbright scholars, to get student visas. This is not good for mutual exchanges. University-to-university exchanges, people-to-people exchanges - these should be maintained if we are to build understanding.''
Bambang Harymurti, editor of the newsweekly magazine Tempo: "It's an uphill battle, because the United States has been meddling in Indonesian politics since the 1950s. In fact, if you go north of Jakarta you will see a beautiful bypass road built by American Seabees, because we captured one CIA pilot who was spying on us and they built that road in exchange for his release. Our president at that time, Sukarno, jokingly said we should catch another pilot so we can get another road. Since then, I think it's a sort of mixed feeling. If you go to Aceh, you will find that the U.S. military is very popular because of the tsunami relief. On the other hand, there is great cynicism because of a perception that the United States does not treat other people the way it treats its own citizens. You wouldn't put American citizens in Guantanamo, would you? You wouldn't bomb a certain place with two terrorists if there were a possibility of killing 40 American citizens with that bomb. As long as you don't treat other human beings the way you treat U.S. citizens, you will bear the price of being the sole superpower.''

 UNITED STATES (95%);  ASIA (92%); IRAQ (79%)







   


August 4, 2006 Friday  




 Muslims Warn of Surge in Terrorism 

 
Muslim leaders meeting for the first time since the start of the crisis in Lebanon warned Thursday that the fighting could spawn further acts of terrorism, while Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, suggested that the solution to the crisis was to eliminate Israel. 
  ''This war must stop or it will radicalize the Muslim world, even those of us who are moderate today,'' news agencies quoted Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the president of Indonesia, as saying at an emergency meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
''From there, it will be just one step away to that ultimate nightmare: a clash of civilizations,'' he said.
  Leaders from 17 Muslim nations issued a joint statement calling for an immediate cease-fire and an investigation by the United Nations into what they called ''criminal acts perpetrated by Israel.'' 
  Several also said they would be willing to contribute peacekeepers if they were placed under the control of the United Nations.
  The meeting was called last week by Malaysia, which holds the rotating chairmanship of the 57-nation organization. The session was in turn both strident and moderate in tone. 
  ''Though elimination of the Zionist regime is the main solution to the current crisis, at this stage a cease-fire should be immediately established,'' Mr. Ahmadinejad said, in remarks translated by Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency. 
  Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain later called the comment ''deeply unhelpful.''

 ISRAEL (94%); IRAN,  (94%); LEBANON (93%); MALAYSIA (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (90%); 







   


August 1, 2006 Tuesday  




 Indonesian Province Embraces Islamic Law, and Canings

 
Across this most religious of Indonesia's provinces, brown uniformed policemen in black wagons enforce Shariah, or Islamic law. They haul unmarried couples into precincts and arrest people for drinking or gambling. Increasingly, many of the cases are pushed to the ultimate conclusion, public canings at mosques in front of pumped-up crowds. 
  In mid-July, a 27-year-old man sentenced to 40 lashes fainted on the seventh stroke of a rattan cane from a hooded man in the yard of a mosque here in the provincial capital.
The caning was televised nationally, with an announcer reporting that the man, who had been arrested for drinking at a beachside stall, would receive the remainder of his punishment once he had recovered.  
  Battered by the Asian tsunami 19 months ago, Aceh is undergoing a profound transformation that is likely to have considerable impact on the nature of Islam in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country. 
  For centuries Indonesia has been known for the open-minded, sometimes freewheeling, interpretation of its dominant religion. That is changing as moderate Muslims find themselves under siege from more orthodox proponents, and as the moderates are hesitant to push back. 
  Aceh, where Islam has always been more rigorously observed, is the first of Indonesia's 33 provinces to put Shariah law onto the books. Special Shariah courts established to mete out punishments have been operating for a year. 
  Now, some of Indonesia's other provincial governments are looking to Aceh as a model for how they might more formalize Shariah laws already on the books. More than a score of townships across Indonesia have introduced Shariah-like laws that fall short of the precision of the religious laws here. 
  The 1945 Indonesian Constitution is generally considered a secular document. But in a signal of the current mood in Indonesia, leading politicians have recently refrained from criticizing Aceh's new laws. Indeed, the laws were written in 2003, and had been made possible by the national government as a special gesture to the province, which for years suffered through separatist unrest. 
  In Aceh itself, though, the way the new laws are being enforced has aroused some opposition, especially among women. Often, they say, an arrest by overeager Shariah police officers, many of them men in their 20's and 30's, seems orchestrated as a punishment unto itself. 
  When three activists, all women, chatting in the seclusion of a hotel corridor after a long day of meetings, were shoved into an open police van in February for not wearing their head scarves, the police paraded them before a throng of men. 
  ''We believed we were in our personal space, and they broke into our personal space,'' said Nursyamsiah, 41, the head of the Acehnese Women's Empowerment Group, who recounted sitting on a sofa in the hotel where they had been staying after a United Nations-sponsored seminar on women's rights. 
  About 11 p.m. the Shariah police burst in, demanding to know why they were in a hotel at such an hour. ''They made sure people were laughing and booing at us as they took us to the mayor's office,'' she said. 
  In a ruling that has enraged women's groups, an elementary school teacher, a married woman in her 30's, was sentenced on July 21 to caning for working in the headquarters of a political party on a Sunday afternoon at the same time as the party leader, who was not her husband. 
  ''They were two people working in different rooms. How can she get punished?'' asked Fatimahsyam, the head of the women's branch of the legal aid society in Lhoksemawe, Aceh's second biggest city. 
  It is not easy, the women's groups say, to question the Shariah laws for fear of being considered an unfaithful Muslim. The women's groups are careful not to criticize the existence of the laws themselves, but rather the method of enforcement. 
  Curiously, Mrs. Nursyamsiah, who was arrested here, is a civil servant assigned to the Shariah offices in Lhangsia, in southern Aceh. There she has watched the introduction of the new laws up close. A new force of 75 Shariah police officers -- 70 men, 5 women -- is being trained, she said. 
  The system of Shariah laws, she said, represents a form of politics as usual, a way of fattening the payroll. 
  ''By applying Shariah law, the governor, the political elites, get more money for police, more courts,'' she said. ''We've opened a new section of government to look after Shariah.'' 
  What also rankled her, she said, was the fact that the laws on drinking, gambling and relations between men and women tended to affect poor people the most. ''Why,'' she asked, ''have they not introduced the Shariah laws on corruption? Stealing in Islam is a bigger sin than these small sins.'' 
  At the municipal office of the Shariah police in Banda Aceh, Nasir Illyas, the director of administration, defended the style of punishment, proudly showing off the nearly three-foot-long rattan rod -- with a curved handle for a better grip -- that he keeps near his desk. 
  The rules are fair, he said as he itemized the following particulars from a manual: a minimum of about two and half feet between the person who canes and the defendant; the cane is applied from the left side; onlookers are at least 10 yards away. 
  Mr. Illyas, who sits under a portrait of the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said the Shariah laws were the ''wish'' of the people. The laws should be extended to non-Muslims, too, he said, a move that would place Aceh in the same ranks as Saudi Arabia. 
  Such a broad application, now under discussion among Aceh's officials, could have ramifications for the economic future here. Foreign aid workers, overseeing billions of dollars of international reconstruction aid, say they are finding the province less welcoming. 
  In mid-July, an Italian aid worker was arrested by the Shariah police for being with an Acehnese woman late at night. It was the second arrest of a foreign aid worker and an Acehnese person of the opposite sex in the last several months. 
  For some, the enforcement of Shariah laws is upsetting the ideal of a new Aceh as an open society. 
  The director of the agency responsible for rebuilding the tsunami-ravaged province, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, is a graduate of Stanford University, and a well-traveled government official from the capital, Jakarta. But to remind visitors that Aceh was once a bustling entrepot, he keeps a turn-of-the-20th-century photograph of Sabang port, the main entry point to Aceh, on his wall. 
  It would be impolitic for Mr. Kuntoro to speak out against the Shariah laws, but the message of the photo, and a remark to a visitor that Sabang once rivaled Hong Kong, is clear.


 






 IBJ Corporation  
Indianapolis Business Journal

July 31, 2006



 Restaurant at Canterbury takes new dining direction;
Hotel hires food veteran Emerson to lead expansion

 
The historic Canterbury Hotel has hosted its share of celebrities. Robert Duvall, Michael Jackson and Mike Tyson are among the most famous or, in some instances, infamous.
But the downtown hotel may be more elated to welcome back Daniel Emerson, a veteran of the local hospitality industry who is a star in his own right to the guests he pampers with his trademark flair.
Emerson, 50, returned to the Canterbury on South Illinois Street July 24 as its food and beverage director. This time, however, the stakes are higher. His task is to reinvigorate a restaurant that is striving to remain relevant among stiff competition in the crowded upscale dining market downtown. 
McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant Emerson's last stop the Restaurant du Soleil in the Conrad of Indianapolis and St. Elmo Steak House, whose owners will open a second restaurant this winter, are contributing to the crush.
Also within blocks of the Canterbury are chic restaurants the Oceanaire Seafood Room, Dunaway's Palazzo Ossigeno, 14 West, Palomino and Mikado Japanese Restaurant & Sushi Bar, as well as high-end beef eateries Morton's The Steakhouse, Shula's Steak House, Ruth's Chris Steak House and Mo's A Place For Steaks.
We want to separate ourselves from all the steakhouses that are downtown and to restore some of the history of the restaurant, said Mark McClure, general manager of the Canterbury. We're trying to get someone who can take care of that and promote it better than what we have.
Indeed, there may be no candidate more qualified than Emerson, who some say has made pleasing the most demanding guests an art form.
Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to parents who operated a resort on the tourist bastion of Bali, he received an early introduction to the world of hospitality.
As a seasoned professional, his confidence could be mistaken for brashness, if not for his ability to back up his statements.
The reputation is here and the tradition is here, he said. But you need to have someone who knows how to please the people of Indianapolis. I've earned my respect by delivering, and by knowing each individual's name who comes through the door.
Emerson approaches his job similar to how an attentive bartender would when recalling a patron's preferred libation. A certain state official, for instance, never needs to pester him for a side of broccoli.
Changes afoot
At the Canterbury, for which he worked upon arriving in Indianapolis in 1998, Emerson will oversee changes designed to resuscitate and revitalize the hotel's restaurant.
Renaming the venue, now known simply as The Restaurant at the Canterbury, tops the list. A few of the names under consideration include the Legend, Landmark and Crown Room. The idea is to create a new identity and renewed interest in the hotel and restaurant.
With a limited seating capacity of 34 and no room to expand, the object is to offer something unique, McClure said. To that end, the dining area will double as an art gallery by displaying the work of local artisans and offering shows during certain dinner times.
Seats will be placed in the parlor area as an extension to the restaurant, which should bring additional revenue, Emerson said. Sidewalk dining could be in place, as well, by spring.
And perhaps most important, he intends to make the afternoon atmosphere less formal to attract larger lunchtime crowds. With room rates starting at $ 229 a night among the city's priciest the hotel can seem a bit stuffy to some.
Count Carolene Mays, publisher of the Indianapolis Recorder and a Democratic state representative, among them. She frequented McCormick & Schmick's during the last Legislative session and came to know Emerson, who was serving as director of catering. His influence, she said, may be enough to lure her to the hotel.
I see the Canterbury as highly regarded, but it seems pretty exclusive, Mays said. I know that I would patronize it more often, just because I know he will do a great job.
The objectives Emerson outlined in a strategic document he submitted to McClure also include his supervision of the hotel's banquet hall and catering department.
Renovations to the hall that should be finished by the end of October will feature new chandeliers, paint, carpet and room for about 10 more tables, boosting its current 150-person capacity above 200. Off-site catering should be available sometime next year, he said.
The document says the hotel's effort must be a systematic, continuous chain of events that will keep fresh eyes focused on the Canterbury's renewal and re-emergence onto Indiana's dining and hospitality scene.
Political interests
The accolades from Mays are the type Emerson has earned since arriving in Indianapolis eight years ago. In that time, he has catered to the top dogs of both political parties at the city and state levels, as well as international dignitaries.
I love this hotel. This hotel has a special place in my heart, he lamented. It needs a person like me to go out and get the politicians using our venue again.
Emerson first met Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson when he hosted a fund-raiser at the hotel during his first run at the office. During his re-election bid, Emerson sported a Republican for Peterson bumper sticker on his vehicle.
Had national Republicans chosen Indianapolis to host the party's convention in 2000, former Mayor Steve Goldsmith had hand-picked Emerson to entertain delegates at the Canterbury.
He actually did do that for a contingent that arrived years ago from Cologne, Germany, sister city to Indianapolis.
I vividly recall the excellence that Daniel helped make happen in terms of the attention to detail and the quality of experience, said Caterina Cregor Blitzer, executive director of the International Center of Indianapolis. It is indeed a premier location in Indianapolis, and I can well imagine with his leadership and international flair, the Canterbury should be well-considered.
Emerson's interest in business and politics led him and his partner, Douglas Emerson Jr., to found the Indonesia-Indiana Alliance in 2002.
The alliance and the U.S. committee of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce signed an agreement then to promote exporting opportunities for smaller enterprises, notably in agribusiness. Heavyweights such as Dow AgroSciences LLC and Eli Lilly and Co. were among the corporate supporters.
While corporations still support the mission, Emerson's travels to Indonesia have nearly ceased due to the growing influence Muslim militants exert there. In Bali, where his parents owned a resort, a terrorist bombing killed 202 people in October 2002.
Emerson left there as a young man to study first in England before arriving in the United States and later earning a degree in international business from Cornell University. He speaks four languages Dutch, Indonesian, Spanish and English.
He worked at the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta and owned a restaurant with Douglas in Anaheim, Calif., called the Restaurant Indonesia. Eventually, a position at the Radisson Hotel brought him to Indianapolis.
He arrived at McCormick & Schmick's from the Five Seasons Country Club after he, the chef and the restaurant manager were recruited last year to get the Oregon-based restaurant chain's Indianapolis location off the ground. While Emerson has bounced around a bit during his time in Indianapolis, he said he plans to stay at the Canterbury a while.
An unlikely Hoosier, to be sure. But his travels as a youngster have helped him adjust to life in Indiana, he said. Now if he can only help the Canterbury do the same in the ever-changing downtown dining scene.
It's easy to get people in the door the first time, but how are you going to get them to come back? he asks. You have to make that first and last impression. It is one guest at a time.

 
 INDONESIA (88%); UNITED STATES (87%); 







   


July 30, 2006 Sunday  




 Iran Hangs in Suspense as War Offers New Strength, and Sudden Weakness

 
These should be heady days for Iran's leaders. Hezbollah, widely regarded as its proxy force in Lebanon, continues to rain down rockets on Israel despite 17 days of punishing airstrikes. Hezbollah's leader is a hero of the Arab world, and Iran is basking in the reflected glory. 
  Yet this capital is unusually tense. Officials, former officials and analysts say that it is too dangerous even to discuss the crisis. In newspapers, the slightest questioning of support for Hezbollah has been attacked as unpatriotic, pro-Zionist and anti-Islamic.
As the war in Lebanon grinds on, Iranian officials cannot seem to decide whether Iran will emerge stronger -- or unexpectedly weakened.  
  They are increasingly confident of an ideological triumph. But they also believe the war itself has already harmed Hezbollah's strength as a military deterrent for Iran on the Israeli border. 
  And foreign policy experts and former government officials said that Iran had come to view Israel's attack on Lebanon as a proxy offensive. They now view the war as the new front line in the decades-old conflict with Washington.
  ''They are worried that what's happened in Lebanon to Hezbollah is the United States' revenge against Iran,'' said Hamidreza Jalaipour, a sociologist and former government official. ''The way they are attacking them and fighting against them is like waging a war against Iran.'' 
  Iran's relationship to Hezbollah is both strategic and ideological. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 was viewed by its clerical leaders as a part of a pan-Muslim movement. Linking up with the Shiite Muslims of southern Lebanon was part of Iran's efforts to spread its ideological influence. But in building up Hezbollah, the ideological motivation fused with a practical desire to put a force on Israel's northern border.
  No matter how this conflict is resolved, Iranian officials already see their strategic military strength diminished, said the policy experts, former officials and one official with close ties to the highest levels of government. Even if a cease-fire takes hold, and Hezbollah retains some military ability, a Lebanese public eager for peace may act as a serious check. 
  In the past, Iran believed that Israel might pause before attacking it because they would assume Hezbollah would assault the northern border. If Hezbollah emerges weaker, or restrained militarily because of domestic politics, Iran feels it may be more vulnerable. 
  ''This was God's gift to Israel,'' said Nasser Hadian, a political science professor at Tehran University and an expert in Iranian foreign policy. ''Hezbollah gave them the golden opportunity to attack.''
  He said that Iran does not have the military ability at home to fight an aggressive offensive war against Israel from so far away. He said its only offensive tool would be a missile, which he said would be of limited effect and accuracy.
  ''If Israel attacked us tomorrow, what are we going to do?'' he said.
  Analysts and former government officials said Iran has focused on trying to preserve Hezbollah's influence and deterrence capability. They said Iran has counseled Hezbollah not to show its full military ability to preserve Israeli uncertainty. That may prove difficult for Hezbollah to agree to, given that it is in the midst of a war, and may lead to a divergence of agendas, analysts and former government officials said.
  Iran has also worked hard to convince the Lebanese, and Muslims around the world, that Hezbollah is not to blame for the destruction in Lebanon and that it is a legitimate resistance force. That is viewed here as essential to preserve Hezbollah's influence in Lebanon after the war, and with it Iran's in the region. 
  Even as Iranian officials fret about the potential risks, they are savoring the ideological boost. If Hezbollah emerges as the primary political force in Lebanon, Arab governments, which have not pressed hard for a cease-fire, may find that in order to deal with Hezbollah they will have to work through Iran.
  One foreign policy expert who is a sometime consultant to the government said that if Hezbollah continued to lob missiles into Israel for another six months to a year, the resulting turmoil in the region could make Iran a power to reckon with in Lebanon as it is in Iraq. 
  The expert, a professor of international relations at a university in Tehran who is an occasional consultant to the foreign ministry, spoke on the condition he not be identified because he was afraid of retribution. 
  On the domestic front, the war has promoted officials here to begin to assess how the outcome might require that they retool policies and strategies involving everything from the nuclear issue to diplomatic relations with Arab countries. 
  Power in Iran is not concentrated in any one hand, not even that of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but is spread out among many levels. Major decisions, like the nuclear policy, are often a result of consultation and compromise among many forces among Iran's clerical and political elite. 
  Confidence in Iran's ideological gains since the war broke out has buoyed Iran's hard-liners, and has influenced an internal debate that has been running since the revolution, over whether Iran should focus on domestic economic and political development or on its role as a pan-Islamic leader hoping to spread its revolutionary ideas, political analysts here said.
  Even before the war, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was trying to position Iran as the leader of the pan-Muslim world, to unite all Muslims, whether Arabs or Indonesians or Indians, behind the leadership of Tehran. The analysts said that Mr. Ahmadinejad, who was elected on a populist economic message, is the most ideologically driven of Iran's presidents since the revolution. 
  ''Iran is now playing to its strength,'' said a foreign policy expert affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who like many people here said he was afraid to be identified for fear of retribution.
  Iran is the only nation in the Muslim world controlled by members of the Shiite sect of Islam, and its push to be a regional leader had raised concerns among the area's Sunni leadership.
  Iran has used the war in Lebanon to try to prove that talk of a Shiite threat is a fiction created by Arab leaders and Americans seeking to maintain power in the hands of American friends in Cairo, Amman and Riyadh. 
  It has pointed to Israel's destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure to promote the idea that this war is not against Hezbollah but against all Muslims. And Iran's leaders have sought to burnish their own image, at the expense of their Sunni rivals.
  ''It is inconceivable for anyone who calls himself a Muslim and who heads an Islamic state to maintain relations under the table with the regime that occupied Jerusalem,'' said President Ahmadinejad in an interview on Iranian television this week, in a clear dig against governments like Egypt's. ''He cannot take pleasure in the killing of Muslims yet present himself as a Muslim. This is inconceivable, and must be exposed. Allah willing, it will.''
  He posed an even more direct challenge in comments broadcast last week on Iranian television: ''A bunch of people with no honor rule some countries in the region. People are being killed before their eyes, while they play games, giving compliments to one another. They think they can let time go by until this issue is forgotten, and then return to the scene. No, they are mistaken.''
  The moment Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, the United States and Israel complained that Iran and its ally, Syria, played a role in sparking the crisis. 
  Both have denied any advance knowledge of Hezbollah's raid on July 12. It is hard to know here if analysts and former officials say they accept that notion because they believe it -- or because they are afraid to contradict the government. 
  Only one influential person, Muhammad Atrianfar, publisher of the newspaper Shargh, said in an interview that Hezbollah would never stage such a significant operation without at least notifying Tehran.
  ''Officially, Iran is not aware of what Hezbollah does,'' he said. ''Logically and unofficially Iran is always aware. The reason is clear, because of all that Iran has done for Hezbollah. Hezbollah is Iran in Lebanon. When Iran looks at Hezbollah, it sees Iran.''
  In fact, the accepted wisdom here is that the Israeli assault was pre-planned, and that the capture of the two soldiers was simply its excuse. Further, people here believe that the true target was Tehran, and that Israel, the United States and Arab governments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are hoping to roll back Iran's influence in the region. 
  ''They want to cut one of Iran's arms,'' said the Iranian official with close personal ties to the highest levels of government.
  ''Israel and the U.S. knew that as long as Hamas and Hezbollah were there, confronting Iran would be costly,'' said Mohsen Rezai, former head of the Revolutionary Guards, said in an interview with the Baztab website. ''So, to deal with Iran, they first want to eliminate forces close to Iran that are in Lebanon and Palestine.''


 ISRAEL (98%); IRAN,  (97%); LEBANON (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); IRAN (73%)








 


July 28, 2006



 As Parents Mourn in Thai Hotel, Muslims Recruit Outside

 
- Tsion and Michal Sa'adia were vacationing in this Southeast Asian city last week when an official from the Israeli Embassy in Thailand tracked them down in room 1243 of the Bangkok Palace Hotel. 
Before Israeli envoy Idit Shamir, first secretary deputy chief of mission, could deliver the message, Michal was fearing the worst about her son, Liran, a staff sergeant in a special Israeli army unit. "Just tell me he was only injured," the mother said as she ran out of her room toward the embassy staffer.
Her son, in fact, was dead, killed in Lebanon during the fighting with Hezbollah.
In sharp juxtaposition to the tragic scene, a local activist named Mustafa Chigag showed up in the street out front of the hotel where the couple was staying, accompanied by Muslim volunteers. He and his companions addressed the many Muslim guests of the hotel, inviting them to a lecture justifying the fight against Israel in Gaza and in Lebanon, raising donations for the Jihadists and telling all Muslims to join the holy war.
Suaib Dido, one of the leaders of the Indonesian Islamic Youth Movement, announced last week that more than 200 Islamic militants - including 43 Thais, one Singaporean, 57 Filipinos, 36 Malaysians and 72 Indonesians - already had signed up to fly to the Middle East to fight Israel.
"This is purely a fight to help our brothers in Palestine and Lebanon," Dido said.
The Thais and Malaysians already had started their journey to the Middle East, according to Dido's announcement published by news agencies in Indonesia. Earlier this month, Abu Bakar Bashir, the Indonesian-based spiritual leader, also issued a call for Muslims to head to the Middle East. His call followed Israeli operations in Gaza.
As Muslims in the region recruited militants to fight, the Sa'adias were mourning the death of their son.
After receiving the terrible news, the parents stayed in their room accompanied by friends from their city who had joined them on their tour. The hotel room door was kept open, in accordance with the Jewish mourning tradition. Tsion, the father, started crying first and later supported Michal, the mother, whose tears did not stop. The Sa'adias said that Liran recently had the option to change units, but insisted on being posted with his old team.
According to his loved ones, Liran may have felt that something bad was going to happen, as he recently had called many family members as if to say goodbye.
As for his parents, they said that they had a bad feeling since the first day of their vacation. Liran told them at that time that he was being sent to Lebanon. Tsion started sitting on the floor like a traditional Jewish mourner some time before Liran's death, without even knowing why.
The fastest way home was a Royal Jordanian flight Friday night, July 21. They arrived the next morning at 4 a.m. in Amman, where a representative of the Israeli Embassy in Jordan accompanied them on a plane back home. The Israeli government paid all expenses.

 ISRAEL (99%); THAILAND (94%); LEBANON (94%);   MALAYSIA (92%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); ASIA (92%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (91%); JORDAN (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%)







Copyright  2006 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp.
 
The Hill

July 25, 2006 Tuesday



 Is Israel a mistake?

 
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who traces his roots to Polish Jews, wrote last week that "the greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now."
Cohen's comments, while timely, were heard before the current fighting began. Both the Hezbollah and Hamas hierarchy view Israel as a foreign anti-body, injected after World War II into Muslim lifelines that run from Morocco to Indonesia. 
In revolutionary Iran, which has shipped tens of thousands of rockets to the Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, Israel remains off the map. Television viewers there only see a Farsi translation of the "Zionist entity."
Muslims are not alone in holding that a succession of U.S. presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to George W. Bush, bowing to pressure from the "Jewish lobby," are responsible for the founding of the Jewish state and for keeping it viable through a series of wars.
This version of history glides over recognition of Israeli independence by Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union on May 17, 1948, three days after the British mandate over Palestine expired and three days after President Harry Truman, acting against the advice of most of his Cabinet, signed a paper stating that the "United States recognizes the government as the de facto authority of the State of Israel," after inserting the word "provisional."
Before the Soviet orbit changed sides in the mid-1950s, the Soviet bloc, along with the French, was a major arms suppliers to the beleaguered Jewish state. Without Czech weapons, it is possible that the 1948 war of independence against seven Arab armies may have ended differently.
Roosevelt, in his only meeting with King Ibn Saud, the first monarch and founder of Saudi Arabia, pledged that he would "do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people."
Ibn Saud took FDR's promise - aboard the USS Quincy on Feb. 14, 1945 in Egypt's Great Bitter Lake - as a commitment from the United States, and not just from Roosevelt personally. He was furious when on Oct. 28, 1946, he got a letter from Truman saying "that a national home for the Jewish people" should be established in Palestine.
Ibn Saud never saw a future for Jews in Palestine, a view that his royal descendants have yet to disavow. When FDR cited the Holocaust, the king said that if the Jews had suffered at the hands of the Germans, then the Germans should pay the price: Let the Jews build their homeland on the best lands in Germany, not on the territory of Arabs who had nothing to do with what happened to them.
As it happens, I am one of about 250,000 Polish Jews - out of some 3 million - who survived the Holocaust. On Nov. 3, 1979, I visited the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem with President Jimmy Carter and saw the names of my murdered family members inscribed on its walls. It was a terrible moment, one, at least for me, when Cohen's notions about the "mistake" that had been made about where we stood were best left unsaid.
Glass is a former managing editor of The Hill. E-mail: aglass@thehill.com

 ISRAEL (96%);  UNITED STATES (93%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%); LEBANON (79%); EGYPT (79%); IRAN,  (79%);  MOROCCO (79%); CZECH REPUBLIC (79%); GERMANY (72%)




16


  
 

July 25, 2006 Tuesday  




 ATTACK THEATRE FINDS INDONESIA RECEPTIVE

 
Despite the recent tsunami, earthquake and volcano warnings and a heightened terrorism threat, Attack Theatre's recent tour to Indonesia proved to be a slice of paradise.
"It was a culture shock to say the least," company co-founder Peter Kope says, but he could find "no negatives." 
"Everyone was very gracious," although some citizens questioned why people don't pay more attention to Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, with more than 200 million people, 88 percent of them Muslim.
Kope found it fascinating, from Jakarta's "nutty traffic" to the monkey forest, where company co-founder and wife Michele de la Reza was playfully "attack"-ed by one of the inhabitants. He loved it all in this country of more than 17,000 islands, each seeming to have its own movement style and language (if you want to express a plural, just say it twice).
The audience was hanging from the rafters in Jakarta, where the 21/2-hour performance left people still wanting more, Kope said. Attack was the first American company in 25 years to play Suribaya, the next stop on the tour, after which the eight-member ensemble got to fly over Mount Merapi, the volcano that is making global news with its eruptions. At the finale in Bali, which started 45 minutes late to await the arrival of the governor's wife, fruit bats began dropping pits onto the stage.
"It was a complex culture that was so into our movement and physicality," says Kope, who also noted that question-and-answer sessions following performances stretched on for 45 minutes or more.
In between were university workshops. At one event, a group of Muslim women dressed in blue jeans, long-sleeved shirts and head scarves enthusiastically responded afterward by practicing counterbalancing moves that the group had introduced.
"That's why we went," Kope says, recalling the sights.
But there were other reasons. Since "you couldn't throw a tennis ball without running into a gamelan" (an Indonesian music ensemble), musicians Dave Eggar, Dina Fanai and Tom Pirozzi were often "treated like rock stars" and found themselves improvising with local artists.
"The country-western thing was huge," says Kope, who lost count of the times he heard "Achy Breaky Heart." And the food, amplified by meaty watermelons and snake fruit, was "fantastic."
Attack brought back plenty of memories, even a movie it calls "The Terminal," made with a camera phone. It also has hundreds of photographs and an Indonesian poster advertising the performances. Below a photo of de la Reza and Kope, it reads in bold lettering, "A cultural presentation of the United States of America."
Kope says that he felt boldly patriotic about it all.

 INDONESIA (96%); UNITED STATES (93%)







 
 


July 24, 2006, Monday



 Indonesians ask if calamities are a divine rebuke

 
Shockwaves from the string of natural disasters over the past 19 months, including numerous earthquakes, two tsunamis, and an imminent volcanic eruption, have reached even Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the state palace.
Irked by nationwide whisperings that the calamities were a divine statement against his rule, Mr. Yudhoyono told state meteorologists Thursday to explain the science behind the disasters on radio and television.
"Superstition and mysticism is a factor in Indonesia," says Dino Patti Djalal, a presidential spokesman. "But it's the last thing we need when facing natural disasters." 
The giant Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 that struck 11 countries seemed to leave in its wake a series of natural disasters. Since then, Indonesia has faced deadly floods, landslides, and parching droughts. One week ago Monday an earthquake struck off the coast of Java island, leaving at least 668 dead. Sunday, a 6.1 magnitude quake off Sulawesi island sent coastal residents fleeing inland - but no tsunami materialized.
In the scramble to explain the apparent wrath of nature, science is jostling against religion and even supernatural beliefs. National newspapers have carried full front-page color diagrams of the crashing tectonic plates beneath the 17,000-island Indonesian archipelago. On the editorial pages, writers have called for "national introspection," quoting religious leaders calling for repentance.
The president's political opponents, such as the well-known soothsayer Permadi, have eagerly spread the notion of a divine warning. Speaking on Metro-TV Wednesday, he warned that the president was angering nature. "He [the president] has 'hot hands' which are causing these calamities," said Permadi, a legislator in the national parliament. In the late 1990s, Permadi, of Yudhoyono's rival political party the PDI-P, also foretold that aliens in UFOs would arrive to save Earth.
According to the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI), a national polling agency, the president has reason to be worried. The LSI released a survey in July based on a sample of 440 people in earthquake-afflicted Yogyakarta concluding that the public had begun to interpret the natural disasters "mystically, irrationally, or spiritually."
The survey concluded that 78.1 percent of those polled believed the disasters were a "warning from nature to Indonesia." The LSI's executive director, Denny Ali, said to reporters that the president's political opponents were indeed pushing the idea that he had helped trigger the disasters.
"In Indonesia, people believe in the supernatural," says Muhammad Qodary, an LSI researcher. "And the more people believe [the disasters] don't come from scientific explanations, the more they'll look to the supernatural."
Mr. Qodary says that those polled tended to explain the natural disasters based on either religious or pantheistic beliefs.
Divine warning for sins?
Gendut Irianto, a Muslim and car salesman in Jakarta, is turning to his faith for explanations. "I think the earthquake was definitely a warning from God to all Indonesians so we should chant and pray for forgiveness." He adding that "although Java supposedly has mystical protection from Nyi Roro Kidul, [the spirit-queen of the South Seas], nothing could protect us from the holy wrath for our sins."
Henri Siregar, a Catholic business executive in his 30s, says, "The earthquake is a warning to the central government." Decrying Indonesia's widespread corruption, Mr. Siregar says: "I think a lot of people are screwed up. Of course we'll get a slap on the wrist [from God]."
Not all are convinced. "The earthquake was just a natural phenomena, not a sign that nature or God was angry," says Tonie Tanu, a music producer in Jakarta. Among the skeptics is the president himself, who aides say described predictions of omens of his downfalls as "rubbish."
President: It's a sign ... of tectonics
Palace officials said that Yudhoyono, himself a devout Muslim, confirmed that the May 27 earthquake in Yogyakarta was indeed a sign, but "of Indonesia sitting on top of unstable tectonic plates."
Dr. Fauzi, a US trained geophysicist who monitors earthquakes for the Indonesian government, says that science and religion did not necessarily contradict each other. "You can see it purely on a scientific level. We rest on tectonic plates," he says, "but God created them. We can study nature and understand it, but if we misuse it, the Koran - and the Bible - can tell us the consequences."
In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, all citizens by law must subscribe to at least one of five state-sanctioned religions.
Pantheism endures in Indonesia
Aside from the 88 percent Muslim majority, Indonesia has Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists. But religions imported in the past 1,000 years have in many places blended with pantheistic beliefs and nature worship. Qodari, who helped research the LSI survey, believes pantheism may be strongest on the most populous island of Java.
The spiritual caretaker of the Merapi volcano in central Java, an octogenarian known as M'bah Maridjan, showed the strength of such beliefs in May when he chose to defy orders from the government - and warnings from seismologists - and remain in his house on the mountain's smoldering slopes.
Hundreds of villagers chose to follow Mr. Maridjan's example, angering some scientists who warned of an imminent eruption. Maridjan, instead, chose to pray and lead a procession up the mountain, claiming that he was told by a nearby sultan, the late Hamengkubuwono IX, to guard the volcano and take care of the villagers.
Maridjan's credibility jumped after the government relaxed its alert warning in June, allowing thousands of villagers to return to their homes.
(c) . The 

 INDONESIA (96%)








 



July 24, 2006 Monday  




 The Week That Was In World War III

 
Global War On Terrorism: The epicenter may be Israel, but this isn't Israel's war. Islamist violence and menace are going full blast around the world, showing radical Islam's sustained aim at civilization itself.
Many Islamofascist activities get lost in the welter of 24/7 news. But when viewed together in one place, the threats, intercepted attacks, real attacks, diplomatic maneuvers or inaction all confirm radical Islam's unity of intent. 
Here, in no particular order and excluding the war in Lebanon, is a sampling from the densely packed events of last week:
Somalia: The transitional government sought troops from Ethiopia to deter Islamist militia encircling the provisional capital, Baidoa. Ethiopia sent hundreds of armored carriers 100 miles into Somalia. In Mogadishu, Islamists in a machine-gun-mounted pickup "arrested" 20 men watching an allegedly pornographic video.
Iran: A U.S. official told Congress that Iranians may have paid for and observed North Korea's seven long-range and medium-range missile test launches directed at the U.S. on July 4 and 5.
U.S.: The Homeland Security Department is investigating a pipe bomb found in Lake Pontchartrain, La. Officials fear it could be part of a practice run for a future attack that could shut down all commerce on a critical U.S. waterway.
Meanwhile, two students in Georgia with terror contacts in Canada were indicted for allegedly plotting jihad after preparing for it through paramilitary training in north Georgia.
Separately, customs officials said religious visas were being abused by radical clerics from Syria, Algeria, Pakistan and Egypt.
In addition, experts said an analysis of the suicide plot that was revealed on July 7 to blow up the PATH trains of lower Manhattan and flood the financial district had a good chance of success.
Romania: Prosecutors prepared a case against Florian Lesch, 29, a convert to militant Islam, who was arrested after trying to detonate two gas cylinders in Timisoara to punish Romania for its good relations with the U.S. Police tied him to the Muslim Brothers.
Afghanistan: Taliban fighters ambushed Canadian troops near Kandahar after the Taliban announced a new campaign of violence against allied troops and anyone cooperating with them. Taliban also set a high school on fire in Paktika province, gutting it.
Syria: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with Hezbollah leaders in Damascus, prompting fears of more coordinated terrorist attacks.
United Kingdom: Two more Islamist organizations -- Al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect -- were banned as terrorist. They split off from the group founded by terror cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, now in Lebanon. Meanwhile, militants on paltalk.com called for the destruction of Israel and all Jews worldwide.
India: Three men affiliated with terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba were apprehended in a string of bombings on Bombay's transit system July 11 that killed 208 and injured 800. India's army reported new al-Qaida terror camps on the Pakistani border specializing in unconventional training, such as the use of female recruits.
Thailand: Six people were killed by Islamist militants in drive-by motorcycle shootings around Pattani. Victims included an assistant village chief. Police reported growing numbers of terror suspects with ties so strong to Indonesian terror group Barisan Revolusi Nasional, they suspect BRN and Thailand's own RKK terrorists may now be the same organization.
Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez, an Iran ally, moved to build diplomatic support for his bid for a United Nations Security Council seat, claiming he won pledges of votes from the Arab League and some African states. Chavez condemned Israel's self-defense efforts and explicitly vowed to thwart the U.S. if he won the U.N. seat.
Bosnia: Three men accused of plotting a terror attack on Sarajevo or another European capital went to trial. Meanwhile, local experts said they feared Bosnia would become a new Iranian front as a diversion if the war goes badly for Iran in Lebanon. They cited longstanding Hezbollah ties to Bosnia dating from the wars around the breakup of Yugoslavia a decade ago.
Canada: The Canadian Council on American Islamic Relations urged Muslims not to apologize for the activities of terrorists or cooperate with security in terrorist investigations.
Kashmir: Six Lashkar-e-Tayyaba terrorists were killed in two gunbattles with security forces that came looking for them and were ambushed. In a third village, a 26-year-old woman's throat was slit by terrorists who accused her of collaborating with police.
Indonesia: A total of 217 jihadis -- 72 Indonesians, 57 Filipinos, 36 Malaysians, 45 Thais, three Bengals, three Bruneians and one Singaporean -- embarked to fight Israel in south Lebanon, according to an Islamic Youth Movement leader. Meanwhile, 90 militants from Aceh province's Islamist separatist movement also declared their intent to fight in south Lebanon.
Argentina: Known Hezbollah operatives in Iran remained at large for their 1994 terrorist attack on a Jewish center in Buenos Aires. Jewish groups protested its 12 th anniversary, pointing out that it was Hezbollah's first on foreign soil and "a forerunner of all other attacks," one Jewish leader said.
Sweden: A top-secret trial of three terror suspects continued in Malmo. British intelligence reportedly supplied the tip-off.
Russia: Chechen terrorists put new threats of attacks on their Web site. Two other Web sites published hagiographic videos extolling the life of Shamil Basayev, the terrorist mastermind of the Beslan massacre, who was killed July 10 by Russian troops.

 ISRAEL (94%); SOMALIA (93%); IRAN,  (93%); AFGHANISTAN (92%); ROMANIA (92%);  LEBANON (92%); SYRIA (92%); ETHIOPIA (92%); CANADA (90%); KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (79%); INDIA (79%); EGYPT (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (71%)







   


July 24, 2006 Monday  




 Playboy Indonesia: Modest Flesh Meets Muslim Faith 

 
When Erwin Arnada, editor in chief of Playboy magazine in Indonesia, answered a summons at police headquarters in the national capital, Jakarta, he turned up smiling, behaved like a good citizen and, in turn, was treated politely during nearly six hours of questioning. 
  The parrying, he recalled, went something like this: 
 ''When did you first meet Kartika Oktavina Gunawan?'' the police asked, referring knowledgeably to the model who appeared in the first centerfold of the Indonesian edition wearing a modest blue negligee that made lingerie advertisements in Western newspapers seem decidedly lewd. 
  ''How can you not remember?'' the policeman asked, according to the editor's account of the recent good-natured encounter. 
  ''Because I meet many beautiful people every day,'' Mr. Arnada said he replied. 
  The questioners chuckled enviously, he said. They charged him, and Ms. Gunawan, with violating the indecency provisions of the criminal code, then let them go. 
  Playboy arrived in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, three months ago with an edition specially created to take account of local customs -- no photographs of nude women, no nudity at all. 
  Playboy is published under license in 20 countries, mostly in Europe. Indonesia is the first Muslim country for the magazine since a Turkish edition folded in the mid-1990's. 
  Fairly predictably, an Indonesian group, the Islamic Defenders Front, which specializes in attacks on nightclubs and gambling dens, threw rocks at the Playboy office in Jakarta, causing so much physical -- and psychological -- damage, Mr. Arnada said, that it was impossible for the staff to continue publishing there. 
  The magazine decamped here to the capital of Bali, a Hindu island, where foreign tourists parade in skimpy swimsuits and frolic in alcohol-suffused nightclubs. 
  The second and third issues were produced from the magazine's new headquarters, a floor of a house belonging to a Hindu spiritual leader, a friend of Mr. Arnada, who is a Muslim. The latest layouts of the magazine are fashioned among Balinese wall hangings and religious offerings to the Hindu gods. 
  While the reaction of the Islamic groups in the capital was not surprising, the magazine was also caught in a parliamentary debate over an antipornography bill that is testing the heart of Indonesia's tolerance. 
  The Indonesian Society Against Piracy and Pornography, which is pushing the bill, filed suit against the magazine, prompting the police investigation. 
  Goenawan Mohamad, the founder of Tempo, an Indonesian newsweekly, and a distinguished columnist, says Mr. Arnada has fashioned a magazine so tame that it would be absurd to ban it. 
  Although he supported the right of Playboy to publish, Mr. Mohamad said he found it difficult to be really enthusiastic about the magazine's cause. ''Playboy is a well-known magazine because of women's lack of dress,'' he said. ''What's the fuss?'' 
  In an effort to make the Indonesian edition palatable to local sensibilities, the first issue's interview of the month was with the nation's most famous author and dissident novelist, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. He died April 30 at the age of 81, soon after the issue appeared.
  Most of the articles in the first three issues were the run-of-the-mill fare of any general interest magazine in Asia, an account of amputees from Cambodia's civil war, the stories of Indonesian mail-order brides, a photo essay about domestic violence against children and a long article on East Timor. 
  The photographs of the centerfold Playmate in sparse though hardly salacious clothing (the second playmate was a Bali-based Frenchwoman, Doriane Amar -- the attacks had temporarily frightened off Indonesian models) and a lonely hearts column geared to men were about the strongest suggestion that Indonesia's Playboy was actually aimed at male readers. 
  The cover of the third issue was certainly fleshier, though still demure compared with other men's glossies on the newsstands here: an Indonesian model dressed in a long mohair sweater and a pair of briefs shows cleavage and the suggestion -- though only a suggestion -- of her navel. 
  For Mr. Arnada, 41, who has a background in publishing entertainment tabloids and producing horror movies, all the fuss reflects fears about the intrusion of Western culture. ''Why else do they keep shouting about Playboy?'' he asked. 
  A widely distributed publication in Indonesia, Red Light, which is owned by one of the biggest Indonesian media conglomerates, Jawa Pos, is far more provocative, Mr. Arnada said. 
  Printed on crude newsprint and sold on the street by hawkers for the equivalent of 20 cents, Red Light carries advertisements for prostitutes and their phone numbers, features photos of naked men and women and is festooned with sexually provocative headlines. 
  The Indonesian Press Council, a government body, in fact has supported publication of Playboy, saying the country now has freedom of the press. So for the moment, Mr. Arnada and Ponti Corolus, who looks after the financial side of their publishing company, Velvet Silver Media, appear to have prevailed. 
  Mr. Arnada's case on a charge of purveying indecency remained with the police, but had not been sent to the prosecutors. Before that happened, he said, ''I hope they drop the charges.'' 
  The first two issues of 100,000 copies each sold out briskly, even at the relatively steep price of $3.80. The third is doing nicely. 
  Some of the major advertisers -- cigarette and cellphone companies, and brands of perfume, sunglasses and watches -- who fled the second issue, afraid of threats from the Islamic Defenders Front, returned for the third issue. 
  Mr. Arnada, a self-described party boy, said a prominent Balinese nightclub owner had agreed to hold a Playmate event. 
  But ever the businessman, Mr. Arnada remains cautious. ''I don't say I win,'' he said. ''I don't know where the ball is going. Suddenly I'm a suspect, and other publications with nude pictures are having a good life.''


 INDONESIA (99%); TURKEY (79%); EUROPE (75%)







 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. 
Palm Beach Post (Florida)

July 24, 2006 Monday  




 1,700 RALLY AT 2 SITES IN SOLIDARITY WITH ISRAEL

 
From half a world away, Sharon Levin told Palm Beach County Jews Sunday about the terrifying wail of air raid sirens that has become commonplace in northern Israel.
The sirens are followed by an eerie silence, then the deafening boom of rockets, she said.
Levin joined Jews across Palm Beach County Sunday as they demonstrated their support for Israel and their loathing for Hezbollah. In separate gatherings - one charged with condemnations of terrorists, the other with concern for Israeli residents - they rallied for a nation battling with Hezbollah to the north and Hamas to the south. 
About 1,200 people gathered in suburban Boca Raton and another 500 in West Palm Beach to hear speeches, wave Israeli flags, offer donations and express their grief about the loss of life in Israel - and Lebanon.
"We gather here to send a powerful and unified message. We condemn Hezbollah's unprovoked attack on Israel. And we unconditionally support Israel in its fight against them," U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw, R-Fort Lauderdale, said at the event near Boca Raton.
Peter Eckstein, who attended the West Palm Beach rally, said, "Whether I agree with specific policies or not has nothing to do with my support for Israel."
His wife, Carol Safran, said, "I don't think there's anyone in this audience who doesn't want peace."
The local rallies were organized not only to boost morale but also to raise money for humanitarian aid. Similar events have taken place in the past week in Washington D.C.; Detroit; St. Louis; Sacramento, Calif.; and West Hartford, Conn. On Sunday, other rallies took place in Cincinnati, Seattle and Naples.
The Boca-area gathering, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, included a parade of politicians besides Shaw: state Sen. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton; U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar; and County Commissioner Burt Aaronson. State Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, and U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, sent statements of support.
The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County, which sponsored the West Palm Beach event, has been connected with a part of northern Israel called the Tzahar region for about 10 years. The collaboration has fostered student exchanges, economic development and educational programs. Organizers said the connection means more now than ever.
Levin, the federation's representative in Tzahar, spoke to the crowd by telephone, her voice broadcast through the room. Although violence in northern Israel is not new, the breadth of the area under attack is larger than ever, she said.
"Normal daily life no longer exists," Levin said. "Unfortunately, Palm Beach's partnered region has taken a battering."
Listeners were told of the brutal heat inside bomb shelters, the efforts to shuttle children from the shelters to safer summer camps in central Israel and the need for diapers and baby food.
At the rally, supporters waved Israeli flags, handmade posters and sported T-shirts that read "Got hope?" Some wore earrings with tiny, dangling Israeli flags.
While organized Jewish gatherings are taking place nationwide, the response from Muslim communities hasn't been as organized for a reason, said Murtaza Kakli of Palm Beach Gardens, former president of the Muslim Community of Palm Beach County. The world's 1.2 billion Muslims have allegiance to many nations: Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, as well as the Middle East, he said.
"We don't have a same country like Israel," said Kakli, a native of Pakistan.
Many at the West Palm Beach rally recently visited Israel, including 40 Palm Beach County teenagers. Others are planning trips to the beleaguered region, undeterred by the latest violence. Joel Passick bought a plane ticket Friday for his cousin's wedding in a few weeks.
"It's the least that we can do as Americans to show our support by going over there," Passick said. "I would go sooner if I could get away."
Local Jews can make a smaller but still powerful contribution, said Arlene Kaufman, president of the Jewish Federation. She asked for donations, as little or as much as families could give, noting Israel's support to the United States after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"We're only being asked to write a check," Kaufman said. "Think about what our lives would be as Jews here and all over the world if there was no Israel. And then give more."
Staff writer Tania Valdemoro contributed to this story.
nirvi_shah@pbpost.com

 ISRAEL (99%);  MIDDLE EAST (79%); LEBANON (79%)







 
 



July 24, 2006 Monday



 Let us launch our mission for peace

 
Kenneth Ballen,
a former prosecutor and congressional counsel, is president of Terror Free Tomorrow (www.terrorfreetomorrow.org).
Almost 100 years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt sent 16 battleships on a historic mission around the globe: to impress the world with U.S. naval power and the nation's coming of age.
In the beginning of the 21st century, it is time that the United States launched a similar mission, only this time to impress the world not with our power to wage war, but our power to bring peace. 
The model for this new mission is the American armed forces' humanitarian assistance to the tsunami victims in Indonesia and those of the earthquake in Pakistan.
As Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, said in the Navy journal Proceedings: "We literally built a city at sea for no other purpose than to serve the needs of other people. Aside from the lives we - along with our international partners - helped to save, we started changing hearts and minds. We started showing a side of American power that wasn't perceived as frightening, monolithic or arrogant."
According to Mullen, the change of Muslim public opinion that resulted from American aid is nothing less than "one of the defining moments of this new century." He concludes, "Shame on us if, even through benign neglect, we allow those same opinions to turn against our best intentions again."
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has recognized no less. Citing the "lessons learned from tsunami relief," Pace recently announced the Navy's launch of the hospital ship USNS Mercy to the Philippines, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
Mercy will operate as a free medical clinic, helping to sustain the favorable impression that resulted from tsunami aid more than a year ago. In fact, a recent poll by my group, Terror Free Tomorrow, earlier this year shows that 63 percent of Indonesians are favorable to the United States because of the aid. That same aid has turned all but a handful of diehards away from support for Osama bin Laden and terrorist attacks.
The military's leadership points to concrete actions the United States can take to erode popular support of global terrorists. Consistent with security and national sovereignty, modest and relatively inexpensive steps to earn vital goodwill in the war on terror could include:
The Navy launching additional humanitarian missions throughout the world, such as the current mission of the Mercy, and commissioning other hospital ships to provide medical care, training and supplies in ports such as Beirut, Alexandria and Karachi.
The Army complementing the Navy's sea-based program by establishing mobile hospitals and medical clinics in land-locked regions of the West Bank, Egypt, northern Nigeria, etc.
Congress, through the Peace Corps and the Department of Education, funding 10,000 English-language teachers in the madrassahs of Indonesia (as called for by the leader of the majority of those madrassahs), and establishing similar programs in other Muslim countries.
Congress, through America's universities, creating an Institute of English Teacher Education, to train local teachers from Muslim countries in the United States in English-language instruction.
America's technology companies beginning an "Internet Empowerment Program" to deliver sorely lacking Internet access to large stretches of the Muslim world.
There are certainly many other practical measures the United States can take. The point is that after a century of launching our military might, the changed circumstances of the latest conflict against terror requires, as our military leaders recognize, a different and imaginative use of our military and civilian resources to prevail.
Contact Ken Ballen at Kballen@terrorfreetomorrow.org.

   EGYPT (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); NIGERIA (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%)







 
 



July 20, 2006 Thursday



 Ban of blogs stirs outrage from India to Silicon Valley

 
Outraged Internet users from New Delhi to Silicon Valley are blasting India's government for shutting off access to millions of blogs, drawing comparisons of the world's largest democracy to the authoritarian censorship of China and Iran.
``A lot of people are saying, `Wait a minute. This can't be happening in India. China, yes. Pakistan, understandable','' said Fremont blogger Sabahat Ashraf, who has several blogs that attract readers from India but now can't be read in India. ``People are startled and distressed.'' 
Other Silicon Valley bloggers are baffled and angry over India's ban in recent days of blogs hosted by popular services used by Americans. The ban of 17 blogs and Web sites, which the government claimed fanned religious hatred, was unintentionally extended to millions of blogs when some of India's Internet service providers blocked entire domain names, instead of just the specific sites. Banned domains include Google's Blogger, Yahoo's GeoCities and Six Apart's TypePad services.

Limited readership
Surprisingly, almost half of the original sites the Indian government ordered blocked are operated by conservative American bloggers who write about the Mideast and the Iraq war but who don't get much readership in India.
Banned site Pirate's Cove (http://thepiratescove.us/) written by Porter Good from Raleigh, N.C., doesn't feature any entries about Hindus or India, Good said. He mostly blogs about American politics, while about 10 percent of his postings are commentary on Muslim extremists. His blog is visited by 400 viewers a day at most.
``I find it amusing they're blocking my site,'' he said. ``If anything, they've probably bumped my readership.''
The editor of OpiniPundit (http://exposingtheleft.blogspot.com) another banned site, said his only mention of India was a tongue-in-cheek comment about the Mumbai bombings. He supported and blogged about Bush's nuclear deal with India, but now says his perception of India has changed.
``From what you've heard and read, it's the largest democracy in the world and they're a lot like us,'' said the Illinois blogger, who wanted to stay anonymous. ``This can't do any good to their image. Anybody who comes in contact with the story will have a diminished opinion of India after this.''
The ban affects nearly 38 million Internet users in India, as well as potentially millions of bloggers abroad, including many Indo-Americans in Silicon Valley.
``Galileo, Copernicus and others have been censored in the past by ignorant governments,'' wrote Venky Nakhate, a Santa Clara software engineer on his blog at http://www.jiyocricket.com. ``Let's not make India the laughingstock of the world.''
Nakhate, who joined the Blogger Collective chat forum to discuss the censorship, wrote an e-mail petition addressed to the Indian President Abdul Kalam protesting the ban.
Nakhate and others are aggravated that the Indian government banned the sites without much explanation. ``They're clueless about the implications,'' he said. ``They probably think they're clamping down on terrorism, but this is obviously not the way to do it.''
Internet discussion forums and mailing lists have sprouted to protest the ban. Bloggers are also dispensing online advice to circumvent the ban, using tools employed by Internet surfers in China.
Many speculated the ban was prompted by last week's bombings of Mumbai's train network, which killed more than 200 people.
But the Indian government is saying very little. Gulshan Rai, director of the Ministry of Communication's Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, said that the ban was not a response to the attack and that sites were targeted because ``the blogs are pitting Muslim against non-Muslim,'' Reuters reported. India has more Muslim citizens than any nation other than Indonesia.
The Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C., said it did not have details of the ban, while Dayanidhi Maran, India's minister for communications and information technology, traveling in Silicon Valley, did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Within the law
Though India prides itself in a constitution that guarantees freedom of expression and speech, the country has a track record of censorship in the name of national security and in attempts to control religious tensions between its Hindu majority and Muslim minority communities. India's constitution, as well as its Information Technology Act of 2000, allows restrictions on speech and expression in the interest of national security, said Anu Peshawaria, an Indian Supreme Court attorney in Fremont who still practices in India.
In 2003, the Indian government temporarily shut down access to Yahoo groups discussion forums because it wanted to stifle a separatist group that uses the service. The government also banned Salman Rushdie's ``The Satanic Verses.'' Routinely, it censors and bans movies that it deems might enflame ethnic or religious tensions.
Peshawaria thinks the Indian government is justified in shutting down the sites. ``The terrorism has gone too far,'' she said. ``If the government feels this needs to be done in the interest of national security, then it needs to be done.''

Widespread effect
But Peshawaria, like many indignant bloggers, called on the government to be more transparent and communicative about the ban. Some critics were pleased that millions of blogs were inadvertently blocked because it forced discussion of the issue.
``No one would have known about it if they just blocked just the 17 sites,'' said Suriya Subramanian, a 24-year-old tech intern in Santa Clara who's been e-mailing friends and family in India about the ban. He wants to join a public lawsuit that many Indians have signed on to. ``The discussion about censorship has always been there, but it has been muffled. This puts it out into the open.''
Staff Writer Julie Patel contributed to this report. Contact K. Oanh Ha at kha@mercurynews.com or (408) 278-3457.

 INDIA (99%); UNITED STATES (94%); CHINA (94%);  PAKISTAN (92%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); IRAQ (79%)







 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


July 18, 2006 Tuesday  




 ISLAM HAS VIOLENT ANTI-CHRISTIAN HISTORY

 
In response to I.A. Jilani's letter ("Writers strive to understand Islam," June 25), I would like to point out that the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem was the beginning of many centuries of Islamic aggression. 
From 638 through the 1100s, there were many instances of Christian pilgrims being seized and executed as spies. Others were crucified. Christians were forbidden to give religious instruction to anyone, not even to family members. Christians' jizya (poll) and kharaj (land) taxes were increased. The Church of Cavalry, the Church of the Resurrection and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher were plundered, burned and/or destroyed on several occasions. The First Crusade came about in response to the Byzantine emperor's request for assistance to liberate former Christian lands from Islamic rule.
Contrary to Mr. Jilani's assertions, Islam does not hold Jews or Christians in high regard, because they rejected Muhammad and his teachings. According to Islamic law, they are considered to be dhimmis, or second-class citizens. Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab made a pact with Christians that they could not erect or restore any place of worship, nor use them for the purpose of enmity against Muslims. Thus, Christians could practice their religion only under very difficult conditions.
In the Sahih al-Bukhari hadith, Muhammad said, "The best day will not come until Muslims fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!"
In Indonesia, Muslims practice their religious tolerance by killing Christians and burning their churches on a regular basis. Although this is in contravention of secular law, it is in perfect conformance with Sharia law.
Roger L. Eden
Grovetown

 ISRAEL (92%); 







   


July 16, 2006 Sunday  




 An American Foreign Policy That Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With

 
AS liberals try to articulate a post-Bush foreign policy, some are feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance. 
  They have always thought of themselves as idealistic, concerned with the welfare of humankind. Not for them the ruthlessly narrow focus on national self-interest of the ''realist'' foreign policy school. That school's most famous practitioner, Henry Kissinger, is for many liberals a reminder of how easily the ostensible amorality of classic realism slides into immorality.
Yet idealism has lost some of its luster. Neoconservatism, whose ascendancy has scared liberals into a new round of soul-searching, seems plenty idealistic, bent on spreading democracy and human rights. Indeed, a shared idealism is what led many liberals to join neocons in supporting the Iraq war, which hasn't turned out ideally. In retrospect, realists who were skeptical of the invasion, like Brent Scowcroft and Samuel Huntington, are looking pretty wise.  
  It's an unappealing choice: chillingly clinical self-interest or dangerously naive altruism? Fortunately, it's a false choice. During the post-cold-war era, the security landscape has changed a lot, in some ways for the worse; witness the role of ''nonstate actors'' last week in India, Israel and Iraq. But this changing environment has a rarely noted upside: It's now possible to build a foreign policy paradigm that comes close to squaring the circle -- reconciling the humanitarian aims of idealists with the powerful logic of realists. And adopting this paradigm could make the chaos of the last week less common in the future.
  Every paradigm needs a name, and the best name for this one is progressive realism. The label has a nice ring (Who is against progress?) and it aptly suggests bipartisan appeal. This is a realism that could attract many liberals and a progressivism that could attract some conservatives.
  With such crossover potential, this paradigm might even help Democrats win a presidential election. But Democrats can embrace it only if they're willing to annoy an interest group or two and also reject a premise common in Democratic policy circles lately: that the key to a winning foreign policy is to recalibrate the party's manhood -- just take boilerplate liberal foreign policy and add a testosterone patch. Even if that prescription did help win an election, it wouldn't succeed in protecting America.
  I.
  Progressive realism begins with a cardinal doctrine of traditional realism: the purpose of American foreign policy is to serve American interests. 
  But these days serving American interests means abandoning another traditional belief of realists -- that so long as foreign governments don't endanger American interests on the geopolitical chess board, their domestic affairs don't concern us. In an age when Americans are threatened by overseas bioweapons labs and outbreaks of flu, by Chinese pollution that enters lungs in Oregon, by imploding African states that could turn into terrorist havens, by authoritarian Arab governments that push young men toward radicalism, the classic realist indifference to the interiors of nations is untenable.
  In that sense progressive realists look a lot like neoconservatives and traditional liberals: concerned about the well-being of foreigners, albeit out of strict national interest. But progressive realism has two core themes that make it clearly distinctive, and they're reflected in two different meanings of the word ''progressive.''
  First, the word signifies a belief in, well, progress. Free markets are spreading across the world on the strength of their productivity, and economic liberty tends to foster political liberty. Yes, the Chinese government could probably reverse the growth in popular expression of the past two decades, but only by severely restricting information technologies that are prerequisites for prosperity. Meanwhile, notwithstanding dogged efforts at repression, political pluralism in China is growing.
  Oddly, this progressive realist faith in markets seems to be stronger than the vaunted neoconservative faith in markets. After all, if you believe that history is on the side of political freedom -- and that this technological era is giving freedom an especially strong push -- your approach to fostering democracy isn't to invade countries and impose it. And if you believe that the tentacles of capitalism help spread freedom, you don't threaten to disrupt economic engagement with China for such small gains as the release of a few political prisoners. 
  A strong Democratic emphasis on economic engagement always threatens to alienate liberal human rights activists, as well as union leaders concerned about cheap labor abroad. But the losses can be minimized, thanks to the second meaning of the word ''progressive.''
  II.
  The American progressives of a century ago saw that as economic activity moved from a regional to a national level, some parts of governance needed to reside at the national level as well. Hence federal antitrust enforcement and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Analogously, problems that today accompany globalization call for institutionalized international responses. 
  In the economic realm, progressivism means continuing to support the World Trade Organization as a bulwark against protectionism -- but also giving it the authority to address labor issues, as union leaders have long advocated. Environmental issues, too, should be addressed at the W.T.O. and through other bodies of regional and global governance. 
  Nowhere does this emphasis on international governance contrast more clearly with recent Republican ideology than in arms control. The default neoconservative approach to weapons of mass destruction seems to be that when you suspect a nation has them, you invade it. The Iraq experience suggests that repeated reliance on this policy could grow wearying. The president, to judge by his late-May overture toward Iran and his subdued tone toward North Korea, may be sensing as much. 
  Still, he is nowhere near embracing the necessary alternative: arms control accords that would impose highly intrusive inspections on all parties. Neoconservatives, along with the Buchananite nationalist right, see in this approach an unacceptable sacrifice of national sovereignty. 
  But such ''sacrifices'' can strengthen America. One reason international weapons inspectors haven't gotten a good fix on Iran's nuclear program is that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty gives them access only to ''declared'' sites. Wouldn't Americans be willing to change that and let inspectors examine America more broadly -- we have nothing to hide, after all -- if that made it harder for other nations to cheat on the treaty? 
  There is a principle here that goes beyond arms control: the national interest can be served by constraints on America's behavior when they constrain other nations as well. This logic covers the spectrum of international governance, from global warming (we'll cut carbon dioxide emissions if you will) to war (we'll refrain from it if you will). 
  This doesn't mean joining the deepest devotees of international law and vowing never to fight a war that lacks backing by the United Nations Security Council. But it does mean that, in the case of Iraq, ignoring the Security Council and international opinion had excessive costs: (1) eroding the norm against invasions not justified by self-defense or imminent threat; (2) throwing away a golden post-9/11 opportunity to strengthen the United Nations' power as a weapons inspector. The last message we needed to send is the one President Bush sent: countries that succumb to pressure to admit weapons inspectors will be invaded anyway. Peacefully blunting the threats posed by nuclear technologies in North Korea and Iran would be tricky in any event, but this message has made it trickier. (Ever wonder why Iran wants ''security guarantees''?) 
  The administration's misjudgment in Iraq highlights the distinction -- sometimes glossed over by neoconservatives -- between transparency and regime change. Had we held off on invasion, demanding in return that United Nations inspections be expanded and extended, we could have rendered Iraq transparent, confirming that it posed no near-term threat. Regime change wasn't essential. 
  To be sure, authoritarianism's demise is a key long-term goal. Authoritarian states never have the natural transparency of free-market democracies, and the evolution of biotechnology will make an increasingly fine-grained transparency vital to security. But this degree of transparency will only slowly become a strict prerequisite for national security, because the bioweapons most plausibly available to terrorists in the near term aren't effective weapons of truly mass destruction. (Anthrax isn't contagious, for example, and there is a vaccine for smallpox.) For now we can be patient and nurture regime change through economic engagement and other forms of peaceful, above-board influence. 
  The result will be more indigenous, more culturally authentic paths to democracy than flow from invasion or American-backed coups d'etat -- and more conducive to America's security than, say, the current situation in Iraq. Democrats can join President Bush in proclaiming that ''freedom is on the march'' without buying his formula for assisting it.
  III.
  When expressing disdain for international governance, the Bush administration morphs from visionary neocon idealist into coolly rational realist. Foreign policy, we're told, is not for naive, ''Kumbaya''-singing liberals who are seduced by illusions of international cooperation. 
  Yet the president, in his aversion to multilateralism, flunks Realism 101. He has let America fall prey to what economists call the ''free rider'' problem. Even if we grant the mistaken premise that the Iraq war would make the whole world safer from terrorism, why should America pay so much blood and treasure? Why let the rest of civilization be a free rider? 
  The high cost of free riders matters all the more in light of how many problems beyond America's borders threaten America's interests. The slaughter in Darfur, though a humanitarian crisis, is also a security issue, given how hospitable collapsed states can be to terrorists. But if addressing the Darfur problem will indeed help thwart terrorism internationally, then the costs of the mission should be shared. 
  President Bush's belated diplomatic involvement in Darfur suggests growing enlightenment, but sluggish ad hoc multilateralism isn't enough. We need multilateral structures capable of decisively forceful intervention and nation building -- ideally under the auspices of the United Nations, which has more global legitimacy than other candidates. America should lead in building these structures and thereafter contribute its share, but only its share. To some extent, the nurturing of international institutions and solid international law is simple thrift.
  And the accounting rules are subtle. As we've seen lately, the cost of military action can go not just beyond dollars and cents, but beyond the immediate toll of dead and wounded. In an age when cellphones can take pictures and videos of collateral damage and then e-mail them, and terrorists recruit via Web site imagery, intervention abroad can bring long-term blowback. 
  Further, when you consider the various ways information technology helps terrorists -- not just to recruit more fighters to the cause, but to orchestrate attacks and spread recipes for munitions -- and you throw in advances in munitions technology, an alarming principle suggests itself: In coming years, grass-roots hatred and resentment of America may be converted into the death of Americans with growing efficiency.
  That domestic security depends increasingly on popular sentiment abroad makes it important for America to be seen as a good global citizen -- respecting international laws and norms and sensing the needs of neighbors. One of President Bush's most effective uses of power was the tsunami relief effort of 2004, which raised regard for Americans in the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia. Much of the war on terror isn't military.
  Of course, some of it is, and we'll need the capacity to project force anywhere, anytime. Still, a full accounting of the costs of intervention makes it clear that we can't afford to be the world's army.
  Fortunately, globalization has made the peaceful suppression of at least some forms of disorder easier. Economic interdependence makes war among nations less attractive, and never before has this interdependence brought so much transborder contact among businesspeople and politicians. 
  So it's not shocking that India and China, which clashed repeatedly over disputed borders during the cold war, have kept things cool since becoming enmeshed in the global economy. Or that the most worrisome nation of the moment, North Korea, is about the most isolated from the global economy; or that its rival for worrisomeness, Iran, is far from full immersion.
  Obviously, wars can happen even when they're irrational. Still, their growing irrationality is a progressive force worth honoring. It strengthens the case for economic engagement and for regional and other international bodies that help cement commercial entanglement with political cooperation. 
  IV.
  The excesses of neoconservative idealism have prompted various scholars to adapt realist principles to a changing world. The political scientists John Ikenberry and Charles Kupchan outlined a ''liberal realism'' two years ago, and Mr. Ikenberry's book, ''After Victory,'' showed how international governance can serve the interests of hegemonic powers. This fall the historians Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman will publish a foreign policy manifesto called ''Ethical Realism.'' 
  Such works are true to the spirit of Hans Morgenthau, chief architect of realism. Writing in the mid-20th century, he emphasized that realism's implications would change as the world changed. World peace could require radical constraints on national sovereignty, he said, and the nation-state might drop in significance as ''larger units'' rose. 
  Morgenthau seems to have sensed something that later political scientists dwelt on: technology has been making the world's nations more interdependent -- or, as game theorists put it, more non-zero-sum. That is, America's fortunes are growing more closely correlated with the fortunes of people far away; fewer games have simple win-lose outcomes, and more have either win-win or lose-lose outcomes. 
  This principle lies at the heart of progressive realism. A correlation of fortunes -- being in the same boat with other nations in matters of economics, environment, security -- is what makes international governance serve national interest. It is also what makes enlightened self-interest de facto humanitarian. Progressive realists see that America can best flourish if others flourish -- if African states cohere, if the world's Muslims feel they benefit from the world order, if personal and environmental health are nurtured, if economic inequities abroad are muted so that young democracies can be stable and strong. More and more, doing well means doing good. 
  Of course, resources aren't infinite, and the world has lots of problems. But focusing on national interest helps focus resources. Notwithstanding last week's carnage in the Middle East, more people have been dying in Sri Lanka's civil war than in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But given the threat of anti-American Islamist terrorism, forging a lasting two-state solution in the Middle East is a higher priority than bringing lasting peace to Sri Lanka. 
  This sounds harsh, but it is only acknowledgment of something often left unsaid: a nation's foreign policy will always favor the interests of its citizens and so fall short of moral perfection. We can at least be thankful that history, by intertwining the fates of peoples, is bringing national interest closer to moral ideals. 
  Harnessing this benign dynamic isn't the only redemptive feature of progressive realism. Morgenthau emphasized that sound strategy requires a ''respectful understanding'' of all players in the game. ''The political actor,'' he wrote, ''must put himself into the other man's shoes, look at the world and judge it as he does.'' 
  This immersion in the perspective of the other is sometimes called ''moral imagination,'' and it is hard. Understanding why some people hate America, and why terrorists kill, is challenging not just intellectually but emotionally. Yet it is crucial and has been lacking in President Bush, who saves time by ascribing behavior that threatens America to the hatred of freedom or (and this is a real time saver) to evil. As Morgenthau saw, exploring the root causes of bad behavior, far from being a sentimentalist weakness, informs the deft use of power. Realpolitik is reality-based. 
  Is progressive realism salable? The administration's post-9/11 message may be more viscerally appealing: Rid the world of evil, and do so with bravado and intimidating strength. But this approach has gotten some negative feedback from the real world, and there is a growing desire for America to regain the respect President Bush has squandered. Maybe Americans are ready to meet reality on its own terms.


 UNITED STATES (95%); IRAQ (92%); INDIA (79%)







  



July 16, 2006 Sunday 
  




 A Beautiful Friendship?; 
In search of the truth about the Israel lobby's influence on Washington

 
All David Ben-Gurion wanted was 15 minutes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's time. 
 Israel's founding father, one of the indomitable political leaders of the 20th century, came to Washington in December 1941 yearning to present the case for a Jewish state directly to the American president. He took a two-room suite at the old Ambassador Hotel at 14th and K for $1,000 a month and cooled his heels for 10 weeks, writing letters and reports and making passes at Miriam Cohen, his attractive American secretary. But Ben-Gurion didn't get the meeting. Not then, not ever. Not even a pair of presidential cuff links.  
 Now let's fast-forward 64 years to late May and a news conference in the East Room of the White House. That tall, freckled, slightly nervous-looking man with the rust-colored hair standing alongside President Bush at matching lecterns is Ehud Olmert, 12th prime minister of Israel. The two leaders and their advisers have just spent two hours together in the Oval Office. Bush is reaffirming the "deep and abiding ties between Israel and the United States" and praising Olmert's "bold ideas" and commitment to peace. Afterward, they'll adjourn for a private session without aides or note-takers and then go to dinner together. And the next day Olmert will address a joint session of Congress, whose members will interrupt his speech with 16 standing ovations. Ben-Gurion, whose remains rest in a simple grave overlooking the Negev Desert, would be stunned. 
 It's not that Olmert is a more commanding figure than Ben-Gurion. Far from it. No, it's about power. And not just Israeli power. It's really about the perceived power of the Israel lobby, a collection of American Jewish organizations, campaign contributors and think tanks  --  aided by Christian conservatives and other non-Jewish supporters  --  that arose over the second half of the 20th century and that sees as a principle goal the support and promotion of the interests of the state of Israel. 
 Thanks to the work of the lobby and its allies, Israel gets more direct foreign aid  --  about $3 billion a year  --  than any other nation. There's a file cabinet somewhere in the State Department full of memoranda of understanding on military, diplomatic and economic affairs. Israel gets treated like a NATO member when it comes to military matters and like Canada or Mexico when it comes to free trade. There's an annual calendar full of meetings of joint strategic task forces and other collaborative sessions. And there's a presidential pledge, re-avowed by Bush in the East Room, that the United States will come to Israel's aid in the event of attack. 
 On Capitol Hill the Israel lobby commands large majorities in both the House and Senate. Polls show strong public support for Israel  --  a connection that has grown even deeper after the September 11 attacks. The popular equation goes like this: Israelis equal good guys, Arabs equal terrorists. Working the Hill these days, says Josh Block, spokesman for the premier Israeli lobbying group known as AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "is like pushing at an open door." 
 Not everyone believes this is a good thing. In March two distinguished political scientists  --  Stephen Walt from Harvard and John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago  --  published a 42-page, heavily footnoted essay arguing that the Bush administration's support for Israel and its related effort to spread democracy throughout the Middle East have "inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security." 
 The professors claim that our intimate partnership with Israel is both dangerous and unprecedented. "Other special interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest," they argue. They go on to say that the war in Iraq "was due in large part to the Lobby's influence," and that the same combine is "using all of the strategies in its playbook" to pressure the administration into being aggressive and belligerent with Iran. The bottom line: "Israel's enemies get weakened or overthrown, Israel gets a free hand with the Palestinians, and the United States does most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding and paying." 
 A sweet deal for Israel, in other words, but a very bad one for America. 
 Some of the lobby's critics hailed the essay as a much-needed breath of fresh air and praised Walt and Mearsheimer for their courage and  --  dare we say it  --  chutzpah. Their paper, wrote antiwar activist and media critic Norman Solomon in the Baltimore Sun, "is prying the lid off a debate that has been bottled up for decades." 
 But the two professors knew they were treading on delicate ground. For generations, the idea of a cabal of powerful Jews hijacking the national interest for its own purposes has fueled anti-Semitism around the world. Supporters of Israel argued that the essay echoed those claims. 
 Alan Dershowitz, author, lawyer, celebrity and Harvard professor, said the essay is rife with "bigoted comments" and "the smell of singling out Jews and singling out Israel." Abraham Foxman, longtime director of the Anti-Defamation League, told me the paper  
 essentially, and erroneously, blames the Jews for the war in Iraq. Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to the United States, who hadn't commented publicly until our interview, called it "tainted, shallow and sloppy . . . just a compilation of old nonsense and garbage that should be rendered into oblivion, where it belongs." 
 Walt and Mearsheimer in response insist their facts and arguments remain valid and say the vituperative critical reaction merely affirms one of their key points: that the Israel lobby is a sacred cow and anyone who dares criticize it runs the risk of being branded an anti-Semite. "In effect, the Lobby boasts of its own power and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it," they complain in the essay. 
 We'll get back to the angry volleyball match between the professors and their critics a bit later. But, flaws and all, the essay has raised some compelling questions. Such as: Just how powerful is the Israel lobby? What was its role in engineering the Iraq war, and is it pushing for a repeat performance in Iran? Is it really all that nefarious? And whose lobby is it anyway? 
 MORRIS AMITAY IS A DAPPER MAN with a ready smile and a self-deprecatory manner. He works out of a small corner office on North Capitol Street in a building that houses lobbyists from three dozen state governments, assorted defense contractors and the American Gas Association, all of them seeking to spread knowledge and enlightenment among members of Congress and their staffs. Amitay, who operates a small lobbying law firm, blends right in. Yet even among his peers his success is something of a legend. 
 Educated at Columbia and Harvard Law, Amitay had spent seven years as a diplomat in the State Department and six more as a legislative aide on the Hill when friends approached him in 1974 about becoming executive director of AIPAC. The organization was founded in the early 1950s by a Canadian-born former journalist named I.L. Kenen with funding from various Jewish groups. Kenen was a tireless advocate for Israel in the 1950s and early '60s, when it had to claw for dollars and votes against a powerful and determined lobby of oil interests, Arab-oriented diplomats and lawmakers such as J. William Fulbright, the legendary chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who saw U.S. support of the fledgling Jewish state as a serious mistake that threatened regional stability. 
 The 1967 Six-Day War marked a turning point. Arab leaders talked confidently of driving the Jews into the sea, igniting fears of a new Holocaust, but Israel launched preemptive airstrikes on Egypt and Syria and won a smashing victory. Many American Jews rallied around their scrappy Middle Eastern cousin, as did non-Jews who saw Israel as a powerful little island of democracy in a sea of hostile Arab dictatorships. 
 Initially, Amitay was reluctant to take over an organization purporting to represent the forever bickering factions of organized American Jewry. "It was like herding cats," he recalls. "I took the job against my better judgment." 
 He eventually tripled AIPAC's staff size and budget, but his most strategic decision was to move the office from 13th and G, four blocks from the White House, to the foot of Capitol Hill. Amitay saw the State Department and the rest of the executive branch as hostile territory for Israel and Congress as a natural ally. For one thing, he could do the math: There were only two elected officials in the executive branch  --  the president and vice president  --  but 535 in Congress. Lots more targets and opportunities for persuasion. 
 Amitay had a couple of things going for him: his own experience and relationships on the Hill; a small but hard-working staff, which at one time included CNN's Wolf Blitzer; and Kenneth Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute. But his biggest asset was several thousand affluent grass-roots members for whom Israel was not just a cause but a sacred mission. "The big reason why AIPAC is so effective is the enthusiasm of our people, and that's because of their affinity for Israel, the knowledge they have and the willingness to get involved politically, write a letter, send an e-mail, send a contribution and get to know their members of Congress," Amitay says. 
 AIPAC is the best-known of a handful of groups that have made support for Israel a centerpiece of their agendas, including the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. But when it comes to Washington, AIPAC wields the real clout. 
 In its early days, Israel was almost exclusively the foster child of liberal Democrats, the affiliation of most American Jews. That began to change in the late 1970s after Menachem Begin became the country's first right-of-center prime minister. He forged a practical alliance with the Rev. Jerry Falwell and other Christian conservatives who saw Jewish rule over the Holy Land as the divinely ordained prelude to the Second Coming of Christ. The Reagan administration saw in Israel a strategic Cold War ally, a balance against Soviet client-states such as Syria and Iraq. Israelis relied on the political support and financial donations that the American Jewish community provided. Still, they were ambivalent and at times contemptuous of their more affluent brethren, who were willing to give money but not willing to move to Israel or send their children there. Ben-Gurion's stated goal had been to bring Jews home from 2,000 years of exile. But the existence of Israel and its pressing needs gave American Jews a rallying cry and sense of cohesion that enhanced their political stature in American society. The late Arthur Hertzberg, a rabbi, historian and president of the American Jewish Congress, once told me that before Israel's existence Jews attended White House dinners as individuals. Afterward, they came as Jews. "In a real sense, being involved with Israel made Jewish leaders more truly American than they had ever dreamt of being," he said. 
 For some American Jews, the passion for Israel was born partly out of guilt: During World War II, the Jewish establishment, like the U.S. government, had been slow to respond to reports that Jews were being systematically slaughtered in Hitler's Europe. Many Jewish leaders swore they would never let such a crime happen again. They rallied around Israel, which had risen out of the ashes of the Holocaust, to protect it  --  and themselves. 
 And that's the interesting psychological part: While American Jews may have become powerful, they don't feel powerful. A new set of pogroms or a new Holocaust? It could happen, even in America. "There's a certain dynamic to organized Jewish life as to all so-called defense organizations created to protect a supposedly vulnerable group," says Henry Siegman, who once served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress and now directs the U.S./Middle East project at the Council of Foreign Relations. "It creates a culture of victimhood, and it often attracts people who feel like they're victims as well." 
 AMITAY QUIT AIPAC IN 1980 TO OPEN A LAW PRACTICE that lobbies for defense contractors. But he didn't give up working for Israeli interests, forming his own pro-Israel PAC, the Washington Public Affairs Council. And AIPAC continued to grow under his successor, Thomas Dine, who presided over a massive increase in the group's size and influence during the 1980s, a decade in which the lobby claimed some significant political scalps. Pro-Israel money helped defeat Republican Reps. Paul Findley of Illinois and Pete McCloskey of California and Sen. Charles Percy of Illinois, all of whom were deemed too sympathetic to Arab causes and too critical of Israel. 
 Findley says he had always voted for aid to Israel even while criticizing Israeli policy. But his real sin was meeting periodically with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom he once praised as "a great champion of human rights." Findley was targeted in the election of 1982: He had served 11 terms; he didn't get a 12th. Two years after that, Percy lost to Paul Simon in a bitter contest in which supporters of Israel poured an estimated $1.8 million into direct contributions and an independent anti-Percy ad campaign. The message to incumbents was clear: Oppose Israel at your peril. 
 "After that," says Findley, "I really feel the cloak of intimidation was pretty secure." 
 Percy told colleagues he blamed Amitay personally for his defeat. "Frankly, I didn't know I was that powerful," says Amitay. "We just did what every lobbying group in this town does: It supports its friends and tries to defeat its enemies. So I don't see what the big deal was." 
 Nevertheless, the Israel lobby, and AIPAC in particular, gained a reputation as the National Rifle Association of foreign policy: a hard-edged, pugnacious bunch that took names and kept score. But in some ways it was even stronger. The NRA's support was largely confined to right-wing Republicans and rural Democrats. But AIPAC made inroads in both parties and both ends of the ideological spectrum. 
 Then one day it went too far. 
 THE YEAR WAS 1991, AND PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH WAS ON A ROLL. Having defeated the Iraqi army and driven it out of Kuwait, Bush and his wheeler-dealer secretary of state, James Baker, turned their attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict. They were pushing both sides toward a historic peace conference in Madrid, but first faced an issue that they feared could torpedo the session before it started. 
 The prime minister of Israel was a hard-liner named Yitzhak Shamir, who in pre-independence days was the gun-wielding leader of the smallest and most extreme of militant Zionist factions. Faced with a wave of Jewish immigrants from the collapsing Soviet Union, Shamir's government was throwing up new housing as fast as possible. To ease the costs of massive borrowing, it was seeking $10 billion in loan guarantees from Washington. Bush and Baker wanted Shamir's pledge that he wouldn't use the loan guarantees toward expanding controversial Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was a promise Shamir didn't want to make. He instructed AIPAC to get the guarantees through Congress over the administration's objections. 
 The crunch came one day that September when AIPAC dispatched more than 1,000 members to Capitol Hill to lobby members of Congress. Bush retaliated at a news conference when he took direct aim at the Israel lobby, saying he was "up against some powerful political forces . . . I heard today there was something like 1,000 lobbyists on the Hill working on the other side of the question. We've got one lonely little guy down here doing it." 
 AIPAC's leaders had told Shamir they had enough votes to easily override the president in both the House and Senate, but Bush's remarks punctured their balloon like a blowtorch. Within days, leaders of both houses advised AIPAC to back down. Its support had melted away. 
 But what shocked Shamir even more was the rapid defection of his American Jewish allies. They didn't like being portrayed by the president as a shadowy but powerful force serving the interests of a foreign power. "It clobbered the Jewish community, left us in a state of shock," one American Jewish leader told me later. 
 Shamir and his aides derided American Jews as timid, even gutless. But Israeli voters blamed him for overplaying his hand. The following year he lost his bid for reelection to the more dovish Yitzhak Rabin. Bush paid a price as well. He got crushed in a small group of heavily Jewish precincts in states such as New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Florida in his November 1992 election loss to Bill Clinton. 
 When Rabin came to Washington for the first time as prime minister, he summoned AIPAC's leaders to a closed-door meeting at the Madison Hotel in which he accused them of steering Israel into a needless confrontation with the White House. From now on, he told them, Israel would drive its own relations with Washington, and AIPAC would be consigned to a back seat. 
 The organization's leaders learned an important lesson. "After that they adopted the Colin Powell doctrine," says Ori Nir, a veteran journalist for the Jewish Forward. "They only fought the battles that they knew they could win." 
 "WELCOME TO THE HEART OF THE EMPIRE," DECLARES JOSH BLOCK, director of media affairs, rolling his eyes as he ushers me into AIPAC's bustling and disheveled headquarters on First Street NW. 
 There's nothing very imperial about Block, a cheerful thirtysomething veteran of Democratic Party election campaigns whose wife has just given birth to their first child. Nor about his office, whose window overlooks the Washington Monument  --  but also a parking lot dominated by a refuse container crammed with discarded sofas outside the D.C. Central Kitchen, a feeding center for the homeless. 
 The place is a typical Washington-style lobbying and public affairs shop, a warren of small offices and windowless conference rooms spread over two floors, with photocopiers, industrial-type metal bookshelves, sagging gray sofas, institutional brown carpet and drab yellow walls. The air-conditioning system seems less than robust on a steamy June afternoon. AIPAC has plans to move to a slightly grander building up the street next year. 
 A delegation of Japanese businessmen once took a tour, says Block, and at the end one of them turned to his guide with a polite smile and asked, "Okay, could you now show us where the real headquarters are?" 
 There's nothing to hide. AIPAC's size, strength and agenda are all public information, much of it displayed on its Web site: the staff of 200 lobbyists, researchers and organizers; the $47 million annual budget; the 100,000 grass-roots members, almost double the number of five years ago; and the recruitment drive on 300 college campuses. 
 AIPAC in recent years has parted with some of the staff members who gave it a harder edge, foremost among them Steve Rosen, its former director of foreign policy issues. Rosen and a fellow staff member, Keith Weissman, were fired last year after they were indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act for allegedly receiving classified information about administration strategy on Iran from Lawrence Franklin, the Pentagon's Iran desk officer. Their trial is scheduled for later this summer. 
 Lawyers for Rosen and Weissman contend their clients did only what journalists and analysts do every day in Washington  --  gather information. Maybe so, but what's really intriguing for our purposes is how this little scandal came about. It wasn't Rosen and Weissman pursuing Franklin; it was Franklin seeking them out to make an end run around his superiors, who didn't share Franklin's view that the White House should crack down harder on Iran's developing nuclear program. Franklin believed enlisting AIPAC's help was the best way to ensure that his message got delivered to the White House. 
 These days AIPAC's staff is a mix of hired guns and true believers known for their expertise. Take Brad Gordon, co-director of policy and government affairs. Gordon, among other things a former congressional aide and CIA analyst, is a compact man with a clipped mustache, graying hair and a résumé longer than the menu at the Bombay Club, where we meet for lunch. At AIPAC he's in charge of overseeing all legislation. He appears to be careful, modest, self-confident and authoritative about the system and his role. "We have a fairly sophisticated understanding of what's doable and what's not," he tells me. "And we work in the world of the doable." 
 For overstretched members of Congress and their staffs, who don't have the time or resources to master every subject in their domain, AIPAC makes itself an essential tool. It briefs. It lobbies. It organizes frequent seminars on subjects such as terrorism, Islamic militarism and nuclear proliferation. It brings experts to the Hill from think tanks in Washington and Tel Aviv. It provides research papers and offers advice on drafting legislation on foreign affairs, including the annual foreign aid bill. And behind it is a vast network of grass-roots activists in each House district who make a point of visiting individual members of Congress, inviting them to social events and contributing to their reelection campaigns. 
 Money is an important part of the equation. AIPAC is not a political action committee, and the organization itself doesn't give a dime in campaign contributions. But its Web site, which details how members of Congress voted on AIPAC's key issues, and the AIPAC Insider, a glossy periodical that handicaps close political races, are scrutinized by thousands of potential donors. Pro-Israel interests have contributed $56.8 million in individual, group and soft money donations to federal candidates and party committees since 1990, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. (By contrast, the center says, pro-Arab and pro-Muslim groups donated $297,000 during the same period.) Between the 2000 and the 2004 elections, the 50 members of AIPAC's board donated an average of $72,000 each to campaigns and political action committees. One in every five board members was a top fundraiser for President Bush or John Kerry. 
 AIPAC's members often overlap with those of other pro-Israel organizations, some of which are renowned for playing hardball. In 2002, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield, a military campaign that laid siege to cities in the West Bank to counter a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Pro-Israel activists here organized letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts against media organizations for purportedly distorted reporting of Palestinian casualties. One group, the Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America, demonstrated outside National Public Radio stations in 33 cities and cost WBUR in Boston more than $1 million in contributions. 
 AIPAC organizes annual trips to Israel where dozens of members of Congress and their staffs often get their first taste of the Holy Land. Rep. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican who is House majority whip, has taken four AIPAC-sponsored trips to Israel over the years. "The bonding that happens, the understanding of the importance of democracy, the understanding of this miracle in Israel . . . is an incredible thing to watch," he told the organization's annual conference. 
 The entire AIPAC package has impressed other ethnic groups. Most recently, Indian Americans have sought to forge a network of organizations, think tanks and PACs patterned after the American Jewish model. Lewis Roth of Americans for Peace Now, a left-of-center lobbying group, says, "AIPAC has a trifecta of power on the Hill  --  direct lobbying, tremendous grass-roots support and money from contributors who look to them for guidance." 
 It also helps to have the right enemies. 
 BRAD GORDON RECALLS WALKING THROUGH THE CORRIDORS OF CAPITOL HILL in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. "More than one member came up to me and said, 'You know, Brad, I always understood intellectually what you were talking about, but now I really get it.'" 
 Since 9/11, Americans have increasingly come to accept the idea that Israel and the United States share not just values but enemies. A Gallup Poll in February reported 68 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Israel with 23 percent unfavorable, and that Americans support Israelis over Palestinians by 59 percent to 15 percent. 
 Recent electoral victories by Islamic radicals in Iran and the Palestinian territories have only heightened the sense of us vs. them. With his sweeping condemnations and threats against the United States and Israel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's radical new president, has quickly joined the pantheon of bad guys, alongside Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. "Ahmadinejad is worth every penny," says Morris Amitay. "He says amazing things, and the scary part is he really means it." 
 This year, AIPAC's two-pronged legislative agenda focuses on these enemies. The first is the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, a bill placing tough new restrictions on aid to the Palestinian Authority since the electoral victory of the militant Islamic group Hamas. Its charter calls for Israel's destruction, and its operatives are responsible for many of the suicide bombings of Israeli civilian targets. Then there is the Iran Freedom Support Act, designed to dry up foreign funds Iran can use to develop a nuclear bomb and to supply aid to anti-government groups there. No one at AIPAC, Gordon insists, is pressing for military action against Iran. Their goal is a strong diplomatic and economic response coordinated among the United States, its European allies, Russia and China. 
 Nonetheless, not everyone supports AIPAC's approach. The Conference of Catholic Bishops and several other charitable groups opposed the House-sponsored version of the Hamas bill, as did three liberal pro-Israel groups  --  Americans for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace. Opponents argued that the bill would isolate and punish Palestinian moderates and restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Bush administration issued talking points contending that the bill would tie its hands and that, in any case, it already had all the power it needed to restrict aid that might be channeled to Hamas. 
 At its annual conference in March, AIPAC dispatched hundreds of activists to more than 450 congressional offices to lobby for the measure. One of those targeted was Rep. Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat with a solid pro-Israel voting record who had opposed the bill in committee, citing the Catholic bishops' concerns. McCollum took offense after an AIPAC representative from Minneapolis confronted Bill Harper, her chief of staff, over her vote. Harper said the AIPAC rep told him that "McCollum's support for terrorists would not be tolerated." 
 "Never has my name and reputation been maligned or smeared as it was last week by a representative of AIPAC," McCollum complained in a letter to Howard Kohr, AIPAC's executive director. She called the remarks "hateful, vile and offensive," demanded that Kohr apologize and banned AIPAC representatives from her office until he did. 
 Kohr requested a meeting to talk it over. The AIPAC rep denied making the remarks. No one apologized, but McCollum eventually declared the incident over. 
 The bill passed the House, on the day before Olmert addressed Congress, by 361 to 37. A milder version of the bill unanimously passed the Senate late last month. 
 Like Congress, the Bush administration has also been an easy sell. Ever since George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, took a helicopter ride over the Israeli countryside with Sharon, Bush has felt a sense of kinship and concern. When Ambassador Ayalon phones the White House, he deals with Elliott Abrams, a longtime supporter of Israel who is deputy national security adviser. Ayalon, who used to be Sharon's foreign affairs adviser, has been to dinner at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's home and is on a first-name basis with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, presidential political strategist Karl Rove and the new White House chief of staff, Josh Bolten. Both sides say relations have never been closer. 
 There was a glitch in 2002 when Bush declared "enough is enough" and demanded that Sharon pull back Israeli forces from their siege of the West Bank, dispatching Colin Powell, then secretary of state, to negotiate a withdrawal. AIPAC helped organize congressional resolutions reaffirming solidarity with Israel that passed the Senate by 94 to 2 and the House by 352 to 21. Supporters organized a "Stand Up for Israel" rally in Washington in April that drew tens of thousands. The crowd booed senior Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's representative to the rally, when he told them "innocent Palestinians are suffering and dying in great numbers." And they cheered Janet Parshall, host of an evangelical Christian talk show, who declared: "We will never limp, we will never wimp, we will never vacillate in our support of Israel." 
 Bush stopped making his plea for withdrawal, and four days after the rally hailed Sharon as a "man of peace." Powell came home empty-handed. 
 Some people are not happy about the close ties between the Israel lobby and the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan. They complain that AIPAC and its sister groups have moved too far to the right and grown overly cozy with former House majority leader Tom DeLay and a Republican leadership now mired in scandal epitomized by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, once a big donor to Jewish causes. These groups, it is said, have lost touch with a majority of American Jews, who still skew liberal, vote Democratic and view Christian conservatives with abiding suspicion. 
 But the real deal-breaker for many  --  including a pair of respected political scientists at two leading universities  --  was the war in Iraq. 
 STEPHEN WALT'S OFFICE IN THE KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT IS COZY AND SEDATE, with a large desk and a set of sofas around a coffee table. There's even a fireplace in one wall, all rust-colored bricks and polished brass. Walt says he's never actually used it. Nowadays he wouldn't need to  --  the essay he co-authored with fellow political scientist John Mearsheimer has created enough heat to keep the entire building at a swelter. 
 Tall, rangy and soft-spoken, Walt's the kind of multidimensional scholar who's as comfortable talking about the creative impulses of the Beatles as he is about American foreign policy. He's a man of gold-plated academic credentials: PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, teaching positions at Princeton University and the University of Chicago before joining the Kennedy School at Harvard as professor in international relations and academic dean. He and Mearsheimer, who were fellow academics at Chicago, are leading members of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, a Washington-based group of academics and former policymakers who believe the Bush administration's primary achievement has been to convince friend and foe alike that untrammeled American power poses one of the greatest threats to world peace and stability. 
 In the prelude to the invasion of Iraq, Walt and Mearsheimer published an article in Foreign Policy magazine in January 2003, titled "An Unnecessary War." It concluded that Iraqi leader Hussein was weak and eminently deterrable without resorting to force. They also organized a full-page ad in the New York Times in which they and 31 other scholars declared the impending conflict "a profound and costly mistake." 
 We went to war anyway, and many of Walt and Mearsheimer's most dire predictions came to pass. No one in government had listened to them. So what went wrong? 
 In previous works Walt had written about the role of ethnic lobbies in the making of foreign policy. His view: They tend to gum up the works. Israel and its lobby, he and Mearsheimer conclude, was the main factor that had sent American policy off the rails when it came to Iraq. 
 Their essay  --  published in the London Review of Books and, in an extended version, on the Kennedy School's Web site  --  thoroughly condemns the U.S.-Israel relationship. Since the Cold War ended, they contend, Israel has become a strategic liability that ignites terrorism against the West and serves as a rallying cry and recruitment poster for bin Laden and al-Qaeda. What's more, there's no particular moral reason for the United States to support Israel. Despite a well-cultivated myth, Israel has always been stronger militarily than neighboring Arab states, racist and discriminatory in treating its own non-Jewish citizens and brutal when it comes to the Palestinians. "The creation of Israel entailed a moral crime against the Palestinian people," the essay states baldly. 
 As for the United States, it is the "de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the occupied territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians." 
 Why does Israel enjoy such uncritical American support? The lobby, say Walt and Mearsheimer. Nothing conspiratorial or improper, mind you. "For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise the Lobby are doing what other special interest groups do, just much better." 
 The lobby, according to Walt and Mearsheimer, has a free run in Congress. The media also play a role because they generally demur from criticizing Israeli policy. But the essay saves its hardest shot for the neoconservatives  --  that group of pro-Israel ideologues, many of them Jewish, who steered the Bush administration toward the Iraq war. The neocons sought to transform the Middle East by overthrowing Hussein and spreading their brand of democracy to the region. They may have mistakenly believed they were furthering U.S. interests, the essay contends, but they were actually implementing an Israeli agenda. "Given the neoconservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it is not surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interest." 
 Listening to Walt, you get the sense that he believes there is one correct and objective foreign policy that an enlightened elite would be able to agree upon if only those grubby ethnic interest groups were not out there playing politics. When I ask him about this, he denies holding such an ivory tower view. For him it's a simple issue: "Absent the pressure from the Israel lobby, I don't think we would have gone to war with Iraq. We don't use the word 'hijack' because that's not the way policy gets done. But it wouldn't have happened without that set of institutions and individuals who had been pushing it for some time." 
 Still, he doesn't seem to allow for the possibility that foreign policy in a pluralistic democracy is inevitably the product of a noisy clash of interests, or that the success of Israel's supporters may stem from the country's popularity here or from American revulsion over Palestinian suicide bombings. Or for that matter that American opposition to the prospect of Iran achieving a nuclear bomb has little to do with Israel and more to do with American fears of ayatollahs with nukes. 
 Iran may be worrisome, says Walt, but no more so than previous threats. "My belief is we would not be contemplating preventive war if we did not have a powerful domestic interest group pushing this issue. We have lived with a number of really odious regimes having nuclear weapons, because we understood that we could deter them effectively with the weapons at our disposal." 
 When Walt and Mearsheimer published their essay, they were deluged with hundreds of e-mails and phone calls. Walt says the reactions he's received to the essay have been positive by a ratio of 4 to 1. Some were unwelcome: White supremacist David Duke said the essay vindicated his views, and other fringe commentators have invoked the paper to justify their claims of an American Jewish conspiracy. 
 Walt strongly disavows these claims. "There's a long and despicable historical tradition in the Christian West that when bad things happen, you blame the Jews, and I understand why some Jewish Americans are very sensitive on this point because I know it has a historical basis. We did our best to make it clear that is not what we were saying, that we were not accusing people of disloyalty or being part of any kind of conspiracy, that we reject those sorts of arguments and find them reprehensible. 
 "But I still believe that these are issues we have to be able to talk about in a calm and serious way even when there are strong passions involved. This was an issue that had been the elephant in the room for a long time, and it needed to be discussed openly." 
 "OKAY, SO TWO JEWS ARE ABOUT TO BE SHOT BY A NAZI SS OFFICER, and he asks if they have any final remarks. One Jew raises his hand to speak, but the other one says to him, 'Stop it  --  aren't we in enough trouble already?' Well I'm not afraid of raising my hand." 
 The man raising his hand is Michael Oren, an American-born Israeli historian. He moved from New Jersey to Jerusalem in the late 1970s, served in the Israeli army, got his PhD from Hebrew University. He has written a bestseller, Six Days of War, is completing a history of U.S. engagement with the Holy Land and is spending the semester teaching at Harvard and Yale. He was also one of the first to condemn the Israel lobby essay in a piece published in the New Republic. Across the table at Bartley's, a Cambridge hamburger haven, is Shai Feldman, a fifth-generation Israeli who was head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, Israel's premier strategic think tank, before taking over as director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Feldman has known Walt and Mearsheimer for more than two decades  --  Walt helped hold up the ceremonial chuppah at Feldman's wedding  --  and he has shied away from publicly attacking the essay, even though he finds it misguided and misinformed. 
 Oren's a bit to the right of center, and Feldman's a bit to the left, but they're both snugly in the Israeli mainstream. Which means they love to argue. 
 Feldman says he speaks more out of sorrow than anger about where his two friends may have gone wrong in their essay. 
 "Look, Israel didn't mobilize anybody over Iraq, and associating Israel with the neocons on this issue is preposterous," he says, helping himself to a french fry. "Israel didn't see Iraq as a danger, and, what's more, it had no interest in pushing the Bush administration's democracy agenda." The only prominent Israeli to champion that idea, says Feldman, is former cabinet minister Natan Sharansky, author of The Case for Democracy, a book that President Bush read and honored by inviting Sharansky to the White House to talk about it. But Sharansky's a lone wolf, says Feldman. "Believe me, that book has more readers in Washington than in Jerusalem." 
 So if Israel wasn't pushing directly for an invasion of Iraq, what about its American lobbyists? 
 AIPAC took no official position on the merits of going to war in Iraq, and staff members insist they did not lobby in favor of the 2002 war resolution. But, like the Israeli government, once it was clear that the Bush administration was determined to go to war, AIPAC cheered from the sidelines, bestowing sustained ovations on an array of administration officials at its April 2003 annual conference and on Bush himself when he attended the following year. 
 Oren, who has studied the subject for years, believes the animosity toward the Israel lobby goes deeper than policy. He even raises the possibility that Walt and Mearsheimer are anti-Semites. 
 "You have to differentiate between them and their argument," Feldman replies. "They're not anti-Semites even if they have slid into an anti-Semitic argument. I think it all comes from their failure to prevent the war on Iraq." 
 Oren: "So they come up with this truly unique notion of blaming the Jews!" 
 Oren sees the essay as an evil that needs to be condemned. But Feldman argues that "the ties between Israel and the United States are so robust this essay won't damage them. And to make into martyrs a couple of academics with a lousy paper would only prove their point." 
 What becomes clear after a while is that the differences between Feldman and Oren aren't between left and right, but between a longtime Israeli and a newcomer. "In the '50s when Israel was precarious, things might have looked different," says Feldman. "But today Israel is strong, and people can ask questions that are considered heretical here. To portray Israel as a leaf hanging in the wind is almost to say it has not succeeded." 
 Oren on the other hand is a first-generation immigrant who used to get chased home from school in West Orange, N.J., because he was Jewish. His Israel is more  
 slender and endangered and needs to be constantly vigilant, despite having one of the world's strongest armies. 
 "All these tanks and planes  --  you couldn't use them against suicide bombers," says Oren. "Even now the president of Iran talks about wiping Israel off the map. We're still vulnerable." 
 SOME OF THE ANGRIEST RESPONSES TO WALT AND MEARSHEIMER COME FROM AMERICAN JEWS who are singled out in the essay as members of the lobby. Douglas Feith, a former Pentagon official and neoconservative thinker who was a strong advocate for the Iraq war, says he's furious that the essay suggests he supported the war because it helped Israel's interests rather than those of the United States. 
 Then there is Dennis Ross, chief Middle East peace negotiator in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, an American Jew who is deeply committed to Israel's survival yet also believes in the legitimacy of a Palestinian state. Ross was the point man for the ill-fated Camp David peace summit in July 2000, in which Clinton failed to achieve a breakthrough with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Arafat. These days he's counselor and distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, one of the think tanks Walt and Mearsheimer describe as part of the Israel lobby. 
 Echoing Feldman and Oren, Ross insists that the essay is wrong to claim Israel had pushed for war in Iraq. If anything, the Israelis feared such a war would divert attention and resources from the Middle East's real danger  --  Iran. Some Israelis even warned that toppling Hussein would lead to chaos in Iraq that would make the neighboring Iranians stronger. Which is, more or less, what has happened. 
 "It might have been better if they had gotten their facts straight," says Ross of Walt and Mearsheimer. "I don't say they're anti-Semitic, just that they're ignorant." 
 But it's more than that. Ross devoted a large chunk of his career to trying to broker peace in the Middle East. He doesn't like being branded as part of anyone's lobby and resents being lumped together with neocons like Feith, a longtime critic. "I would be dishonest if I said it didn't make me angry," Ross says. "It's so fallacious, and it will be used by those who want to say that American policy is somehow distorted and perverted." 
 IT'S A TUESDAY IN EARLY MARCH, and there are 5,000 people jammed at dining tables in the Washington Convention Center for AIPAC's annual gathering, including more than 50 senators and 100 House members and dozens of administration officials. Vice President Cheney gives a keynote address, as does John Bolton, the administration's fire-breathing ambassador to the United Nations. The Israeli election is coming up in a few days, and the leaders of the three major parties all appear via satellite hookup, including Ehud Olmert, who begins with a politician's prayer of thanksgiving: "Thank God we have you; thank God we have AIPAC." 
 The opening video montage begins with Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip; then shows angry crowds of Palestinians burning and looting the abandoned settlements; then the electoral triumph of the radical Islamist group Hamas; then mayhem in Iraq; images of bin Laden; a parade of terror bombings in London, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and, finally, Israel; then a reference to the stroke that felled prime minister Sharon; then the harangue of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who cries that "Israel must be wiped off the map!" Violence, flames, angry dark-skinned young Muslims. 
 The message seems to be: A new Holocaust? It could happen. 
 DAVID BEN-GURION NEVER GOT TO SEE ROOSEVELT, but that didn't stop him from pressing ahead with his lifelong mission. After he left the United States in 1942, he returned to Palestine and oversaw the creation of the Jewish state. He became its first prime minister in 1948. Ben-Gurion declared Israel's independence at 6 p.m. Washington time on May 14. Eleven minutes later, the United States became the first nation to recognize the new state. 
 Ben-Gurion oversaw the building of Israel's powerful defense establishment, mixed economy and quarrelsome political system. But, for all his achievements, he suggested one simple way to measure a country's success that might be instructive to Walt and Mearsheimer, as well as to their critics. "The test of democracy," he wrote, "is freedom of criticism." 
 Or, as Morris Amitay put it when our interview ended: "It's been nice talking to you, and I look forward to sending a very critical letter to the editor after your article appears." 
 Glenn Frankel is a staff writer for the Magazine and The Post's former Jerusalem bureau chief. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon at washingtonpost.com/liveonline. 

CORRECTION-DATE: July 19, 2006

 CORRECTION:
 The July 16 Magazine cover story about U.S.-Israeli relations misstated the names of two organizations: The PAC founded by Morris Amitay is the Washington Political Action Committee, and CAMERA stands for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. The article also incorrectly said that historian Michael Oren received his PhD from Hebrew University in Jerusalem; it was actually Princeton University in New Jersey.  

 ISRAEL (96%); UNITED STATES (96%); CANADA (79%); MEXICO (79%)




17


 
 


July 12, 2006 Wednesday



 N.Y.C., India Are Joined In the War

 
The deadly bomb blasts during the evening rush hours in Mumbai yesterday targeted innocent commuters in India's clangorous commercial capital at a time when it had been rapidly evolving into a regional financial hub with deepening ties to American companies.
But the bombs were most certainly aimed at undermining America's confidence in the Bush administration's newest - and arguably most robust - ally in the campaign against global Islamic terrorism. 
The blasts also demonstrated the special vulnerability of democratic and open societies such as India, home to 1.2 billion people of a hundred ethnicities who live in relative harmony under the rubric of a secular state. Even if it somehow transformed itself into a heavily policed state - an impossibility, given the sheer size of the subcontinent - the Indian ethos of languor and societal congeniality would mitigate against raising the kind of technological and systemic barriers needed to completely insulate the culture against terrorism.
Those who planned yesterday's blasts surely knew that. They also knew that there was another factor that militates against secular societies such as India when it comes to self-policing: How do you distinguish bad citizens from good? India houses nearly 250 million Muslims, the largest Islamic cohort after Indonesia. They are spread over 1.2 million square miles - a territory half the size of the continental United States. In India, Muslims do not look different from non-Muslims; they are not "The Other." Indeed, Muslims and Hindus sprang from the same cultural womb.
Shared pigmentation and common cultural antecedents may explain why terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jaishe-Mohammed have been able to operate with relative ease from their base in neighboring Pakistan, and why Taliban-supported Islamic marauders have made incursions into India. It may well be that there's an Islamic Fifth Column among India's Muslims - and it may well be that such conspirators set off bombs in years gone by and then sought succor and anonymity among domestic supporters.
There's an irony in all this. While India continues to be vulnerable within its borders to terrorist acts, it has proven a capable ally in President Bush's campaign against global terrorism. The Indian intelligence service, Research and Analysis Wing - better known by its acronym RAW - has provided useful information to American authorities about terrorist activities in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and even Europe.
But at home, RAW and other assorted security agencies have often been stymied in their efforts at penetrating domestic terrorist rings. To be sure, the fact that India has porous borders with Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh doesn't help.
India's secularism, democratic traditions and commitment to free markets make it a favorite of President Bush, who, more than any American president in modern history, has advanced bilateral diplomacy and strengthened the economic corridor between the two countries. His advocacy of India as a democratic counterweight to Asia's other giant, China, and to India's military rival and theocratic Islamic state Pakistan, has invited implacable opprobrium from America's enemies.
They most certainly acted out their fury yesterday - and they planned well. More than 145 commuters were reportedly killed, and hundreds were injured as seven bombs went off in a synchronized fashion along a major artery of Mumbai's suburban trains, which carry more than 6 million passengers daily. At about the same time, bombs went off the northern state of Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and its long time rival Pakistan, home to several Islamic terrorist groups.
The alliance against terrorism between the administration in Washington and the 14-party coalition national government in New Delhi is the result of an unlikely partnership of two very different men - Mr. Bush, a skilled politician determined to root out terrorism, assert American leadership in a geopolitically unipolar world, and promote democracy and free markets; and Prime Minister Singh, a low key professional economist who has dismantled a legacy of crippling socialism and set about liberalizing the economy in order to alleviate India's crushing poverty and expand its middle class - already the world's biggest at 450 million.
Mr. Singh knows how important it is for India to be perceived by foreign investors as possessing political and economic stability, and social cohesion.
Investors have indeed regarded India's economy as promising, with Americans leading the global march into India. Of more than $20 billion that foreign companies invested in Mumbai's stock market in 2005, at least half came from American sources. Americans also accounted for more than 75% of the $5 billion in foreign direct investment that rolled in last year. American companies opened a record number of branches and subsidiaries in Mumbai last year.
Such confidence in India has been predicated not only on favorable perceptions of Mr. Singh's efforts to liberalize the economy, often in the face of resistance from supporters of the ruling coalition such as the country's two communist parties.
Investor confidence has also flowed from perceptions about Mumbai's special status in the urban pantheon of Asia.
Mumbai has traditionally prided itself on being the most secular city in Asia - and arguably in the world as well - with Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Parsees, Buddhists, animists and scores of other ethnic groups living side by side in relative congeniality despite extraordinarily crowded conditions.
It is a city like no other in Asia - and perhaps even the world - at once clangorous and businesslike, maddeningly congested because of a plethora of automobiles and ugly skyscrapers but nevertheless architecturally appealing on account of quaint, dowager-like British colonial buildings.
It is, most of all, an open city. More than half its population of 15 million is under 25 years of age, reflecting the national demographic divide. It is a lively city where disparate cultures co-exist and also congeal. Its port, airports and railways stations are so arranged that Mumbai never sleeps.
With its drive, dynamism and endless motion, it is a city that reminds many American visitors of New York.
And when the bombs went off yesterday in Mumbai just a few weeks away from the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, Mumbaikars and New Yorkers seemed suddenly joined as common victims of the relentless assault of those who would destroy secular societies.

 INDIA (99%);  PAKISTAN (92%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); EUROPE (79%);  ASIA (79%)







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

July 8, 2006, Saturday



 American Muslims heeding call to volunteer

 
WASHINGTON - More Muslims are volunteering this summer - and not just for traditional Muslim charities.
They're responding to a national Islamic group's appeal to get more involved in community social services and thereby turn back anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. 
"You can talk about the beauty of Islam until the end of time, but if you're not doing something tangible, then people will always say, 'Where are the Muslims?''' explained Dian Alyan, an outreach coordinator for the Muslim Community Association in the San Francisco Bay area. "We need to change the rules of the game ... to concrete action.''
To that end, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a leading advocacy group, recently launched a three-month nationwide initiative called Muslims Care, which focuses on community health awareness, helping the needy and youth services. Like many people of other faiths, Muslims have focused charitable efforts largely on their own faith communities.
"We want to encourage them to go to beyond their mosques and their comfort levels and truly practice the religion,'' said Rabiah Ahmed, CAIR communications coordinator. "It also helps with the image issue. We find that Americans tend to change their attitude when they see Muslims engaged in service work and not just foreign policy.''
In Sacramento, Calif., CAIR organized four visits to homeless shelters this month to provide food and supplies. In Orlando, Fla., volunteers are hosting a communitywide picnic. In Columbus, Ohio, Muslims are coordinating a school supplies drive for underprivileged children. In Cincinnati, they're hosting a public health fair that includes physician counseling and screenings for cholesterol and high blood pressure.
"We have a lot of doctors in our community, so in terms of providing a much needed service, it's something we need to be doing,'' CAIR-Cincinnati Director Karen Dabdoub said.
Charity is integral to the Islamic faith, one of the five pillars that all Muslims must live by.
"It's very important for us to let our American neighbors and coworkers see that giving back to our communities is an important part of our religion and is something that we're eager to do,'' Dabdoub said.
Alyan, a founder of the GiveLight Foundation, which aids orphans in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, said she's optimistic that the good works will gain non-Muslim attention.
"Over time when you start building credibility, people will start noticing,'' she said.

  INDONESIA (92%)







 VNU Business Media, Inc.
 

The Hollywood Reporter

July 6, 2006 Thursday



 Out on a Limb- Outfest Film Festival

 
Hollywood denizens like to talk about taking creative risks. But for a growing number of boundary-breaking filmmakers around the world -- those bringing gay and lesbian stories to the screen -- risk is a reality that involves far more than career or reputation. Self-expression might be its own reward, but the price can be steep: arrest, government censorship or -- as one notorious case has made brutally apparent -- violent retaliation for perceived sins. 
"Submission: Part I," the 10-minute film that cost gadfly director Theo van Gogh his life, did not address gay issues, but its screenwriter is defiantly working on a sequel that does. Having looked at Muslim-sanctioned violence against women in the earlier film, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somalia-born "lapsed Muslim" and former Dutch parliamentarian, will explore Islam's intolerance of gays in "Submission: Part II." And though van Gogh's grisly murder by a radical Islamist in November 2004, just months after the stylized but pointed short aired on Dutch television, has not silenced Hirsi Ali, it has brought home certain grim necessities. This time, well aware of the danger involved, she's making a film that will show no faces or onscreen end credits: Everyone involved except Hirsi Ali will remain anonymous. 
In negotiating the troubled and potentially explosive terrain between Islam and the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender culture, not everyone is taking such precautions. Work-in-progress documentary "In the Name of Allah" from helmer Parvez Sharma is about gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans- gender Muslims around the world. The film promises to be up-to-the-minute -- the filmmakers recently captured footage of Shiite death squads that are targeting gay and transgender people in Iraq -- as well as personal; Sharma is a gay Muslim. Producer Sandi Simcha Dubowski, who stirred up controversy and faced a few bans with 2001's "Trembling Before G-d," his documentary portrait of gay Orthodox Jews, plans an early-2007 bow for "Allah" and vows to do whatever it takes to screen it in every Muslim nation.
That's likely to involve underground showings. But the good news for makers of gay-themed films is that both underground and legitimate festivals that are devoted to such fare provide a growing platform for their work, cropping up in places as unlikely as Southeast Asia. The films, too, increasingly reflect far-flung origins. When Outfest: The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival unspools its 24th edition, set to begin tomorrow and conclude July 17, the program will include groundbreaking work from Bosnia, Romania and Indonesia.
"There's always been a fair amount of high-quality (gay) films coming from European countries -- as far back as the '70s," says Kirsten Schaffer, Outfest's senior director, programming and operations. "But in the last few years, we've definitely seen more films coming out of places that have never made gay films before. I think it's due to two things: The film industry in general in some countries is blossoming; I think also that as the gay pride movement has spread internationally, there's more acceptance and tolerance, or more people trying to push that envelope."
While Outfest's 2006 trio of envelope-pushing titles are not films that deal specifically with matters of religion, they are remarkable for having been made in countries where traditional faith prevails. "In any strong religious culture, it's hard to make a gay-themed movie," Schaffer says.
Tudor Giurgiu's directorial debut, Outfest selection "Legaturi bolnavicioase" (Love Sick), is notable for its matter-of-fact treatment of a lesbian love story and brother-sister incest -- all unfolding in a country whose Orthodox Church has actively fought decriminal- ization of homosexuality. Director Giurgiu says Romania's first lesbian drama -- a film that "would've been impossible to be funded or to be shot 10 years ago" -- has outperformed "X-Men: The Last Stand" and "The Legend of Zorro" at the Romanian boxoffice.
Another debut feature, "Go West" sets its gay couple against the 1992-95 Bosnian war. In a country where religion -- Islam, Serbian Orthodoxy and Catholicism -- plays a powerful role, the dark comedy ignited fierce debate even before it was released. Co-writer/helmer Ahmed Imamovic, who tackles one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's greatest taboos with the tale of a Serb and a Muslim who are lovers, received death threats. But since its warm reception at the 2005 Sarajevo Film Festival, "Go West" has had a successful run on the festival circuit.
The third groundbreaking feature on Outfest's program this year is Nanang Istiabudi's "Detik Terakhir" (The Last Second), Indonesia's first lesbian film. Schaffer learned of the film, yet another first-time feature, from John Badalu, founder of the Q! Film Festival. Begun in 2002 as a two-weekend event, the fest is entering its fifth edition as a year-round touring festival that takes international gay films to towns and cities throughout Indonesia. Attendance has doubled almost every year, with about 4,500 people attending Q! screenings in 2005.
"We started very small," Jakarta-based Badalu says of the initial program, which included 1988's "Torch Song Trilogy," 1996's "I Shot Andy Warhol," 1998's "Wilde" and Hong Kong filmmaker Stanley Kwan's 2002 drama "Lan Yu." "We tried not to promote it too big because we knew the reaction would be quite strong."
Even so, hard-line religious groups showed up to demonstrate against the minifest, and Front Pembela Islam, aka the Islamic Defender Front, threatened to kill Badalu. In 2003, Forum Rembug Betawi, or the Batavia Discussion Forum, a conservative group concerned with preserving Jakartan culture, threatened him on live television. 
He speaks of the threats with striking equanimity. "Once you want to do it, you have to do it. So, you are prepared for whatever risk comes up. I'm gay, and we've only got Hollywood films over here. I would like to show something different to the public. ... We don't really produce that many gay films," Badalu says of the Indonesian industry. "Basically, it's only very subtle, or there is a gay character, but we cannot say really it's a gay film."
With its frank depiction of a lesbian relationship, "Last Second" is an exception. "They dared to show a little bit of the sex scene -- even if it's behind the curtain," Badalu says. "For Indonesia, it's something quite shocking."
Actress Sausan Machari says she had no hesitation in choosing "Last Second" as her first feature film. Despite the protests and naysayers, Machari has found being part of "an inspiring movie, saying people have a choice" to be a gratifying experience, "especially in a country where religious fanaticism is very prevalent."
While Indonesia's population is about 85% Muslim, it's a republic whose laws are not based on Islamic tradition. But that doesn't necessarily make it progressive. Since Badalu began the Q! Film Festival, laws criminalizing homosexuality have been enacted in West Java, and he is involved in an advocacy group that aims to challenge those laws in the courts.
Fighting the good fight on the political front is one thing, but in many countries, getting gay films in front of audiences requires a less direct approach. From low-key marketing -- a strange notion to Western ears -- to underground screenings, filmmakers and distributors are getting creative. Even the matter of festival submissions can necessitate a bit of subterfuge: Rather than risk censorship or arrest when films arrive through customs, some fest organizers have had to rely on videos passed quietly across borders from person to person.
In China, which tightly controls homegrown fare as well as imports, some filmmakers are adopting a guerrilla approach, as demonstrated by two 2001 productions: "Fish and Elephant," the first lesbian film from mainland China, was made with nonprofessional actors and bypassed Film Bureau approval; "Shanghai Panic" was shot illegally on that city's streets with cheap digital-video cameras. Although they've both enjoyed international fest slots, they cannot screen legally on home turf.
But some gay-themed independent films have found success through conventional channels. Another Outfest title, Spanish documentarian Chema Rodríguez's "Estrellas de la Línea" (The Railroad All-Stars), centers on a team of soccer-playing sex workers in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Buena Vista International released the film in Spain with 35 copies, unprecedented there for a documentary.
"This is a story about human beings who live on the border of the abyss and are fighting for survival," Rodríguez says. "It doesn't matter if they are prostitutes, transsexuals or lesbians." The film, set to open in Guatemala in July, received an unusually high level of media attention in Spain. "The main characters of a documentary were on TV, in every newspaper, on every radio station," Rodríguez says. "We broke a frontier and had the opportunity to reach a majority audience."
"Last Second," meanwhile, benefited in part from the drug angle of its based-on-real-events story and had a two-month run across Indonesia. Director Istiabudi says that while the film's focus on lesbian characters "became a selling point" when trying to secure financing, its endorsement by local police and antidrug organizations helped to silence protests. "My wish is to have the movie shown in major theaters around the world," Istiabudi says.
With a growing fest circuit for gay cinema, such films have an increasingly good chance of connecting with international audiences. "There are a lot of subcommunities of people who really are craving representations of their lives in the movies," Schaffer says of Outfest's constituency. "They don't get them on TV; they're not seeing them in mainstream films. And so they come to independent festivals and LGBT festivals to see a reflection of their own stories."
That sense of purpose drives Badalu as he organizes a fifth installment of Q! -- even while his country's parliament considers an antipornography bill that would shut down the fest and could cost him his freedom. But for Badalu, the reward overrides the risk. "Just a few months ago, somebody came to me and said, 'I'm making a documentary on transvestites because I'm thinking maybe I can show it in the Q! Film Festival.' I said, 'Just do it. We'll screen it.'"

 SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);   ASIA (79%);  EUROPE (77%)







  
 

July 5, 2006 Wednesday  




 INDONESIA PULLS OUT OF FED CUP

 
Indonesia pulled out of a planned Fed Cup tennis match in Israel to protest that country's actions in the Gaza Strip, a foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday.
"We are witnessing a military invasion by Israel and the arrest of scores of Palestinian officials," Desra Percaya said. "It is now impossible to play there."
Moshe Haviv, director of the Israeli Tennis Federation, said Indonesia would be fined if it doesn't attend the match. 
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, had earlier asked that the venue be changed to a neutral country because it has no diplomatic relations with Israel. But in May, the government said it would allow the team to travel to Israel for the matches which were scheduled for July 15-16 in Tel Aviv.
More tennis
The Spanish government says no tennis or soccer players are involved in the doping investigation that already has forced several top cyclists to withdraw from the Tour de France.
The Higher Sports Council, which oversees sports in Spain, said Tuesday it "categorically denies involvement by players, either Spanish or foreign" in the Civil Guard investigation.
The French newspaper Journal du Dimanche ran a story Sunday loosely linking Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal to the investigation and said athletes from other sports could be involved. Nadal, the French Open champion who has advanced to the Wimbledon quarterfinals, derided the report.
Cycling
The T-Mobile team is investigating allegations German cyclist Joerg Ludewig requested performance-enhancing substances in 1998.
Ludewig, 30, joined T-Mobile this year. Eight years ago, he was riding for Team Bayer Worringen.
Ludewig is not part of T-Mobile's Tour de France squad, which lost leader Jan Ullrich to unrelated doping allegations before the race began.
Soccer
A prosecutor asked a sports tribunal in Rome to demote Juventus to Italy's lowest professional division, relegate other top soccer clubs and dock points from each as punishment for a "malicious" and "sophisticated" system of match-fixing.
The requests sparked an angry reaction from AC Milan owner and former Italy Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who called them "absurd and out of proportion."
Prosecutor Stefano Palazzi asked the sports tribunal at the Olympic stadium to demote Juventus to Serie C or lower; strip the team of the Serie A titles it won in the past two seasons; and to relegate AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio to Serie B.
Along with the demotions, Palazzi requested the teams be docked points next season: six for Juventus, three for AC Milan, and 15 for Lazio and Fiorentina. He also requested bans for several officials.
Juventus' coach, Fabio Capello, resigned and was expected to be named coach of Real Madrid.
* Giuseppe Rossi, an Italian-born American forward with Manchester United, signed a two-year contract extension that runs through 2010.
Horse racing
Some owners may pull their thoroughbreds from Arlington Park Racecourse in Illinois after the fatal breakdowns of two more horses. Seventeen horses have been euthanized this season. With two months left in the season, the total destroyed has surpassed last year's 12 deaths.
Wild Things
The Washington-Chillicothe Frontier League game at Falconi Field was stopped in the third inning because of rain with the score tied, 1-1. The game will be resumed Aug. 11 at Chillicothe. Washington left fielder Jason Boyd homered in the second.
Swimming
Kaitlyn Orstein of Mt. Lebanon, a junior at Washington & Jefferson College, won the gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke at the Maccab Games in Sydney, Australia.
Outdoors
James Mandera of Wexford and a member of the North Side Sportsman's Club won the Pennsylvania State Trap Shooting championship in Elysburg, Pa. He had a perfect score of 200 among the 1,600 competitors.

 ISRAEL (96%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%);  SPAIN (92%); ITALY (90%); 








 
The York Dispatch 

July 5, 2006 Wednesday



 The highlights

 
PRO BASKETBALL
BULLS MASCOT CHARGED WITH ATTACKING OFFICER: A Chicago Bulls mascot dressed in a bright red costume was charged with attacking an off-duty officer after driving a mini-motorcycle through an outdoor festival. Barry Anderson, the Benny the Bull mascot, was charged with misdemeanor battery and driving within a parkway. The 26-year-old man is accused of throwing a punch at the sheriff's deputy, knocking off his glasses and breaking his watch. Anderson was riding the motorcycle through the festival without a permit Sunday, Police Capt. James Knightly said. When the off-duty officer, who was working security, tried to stop him, Anderson ran, police said. The officer chased and caught him. 
PISTONS REPLACE WAL LACE WITH MOHAMMED: The Detroit Pistons are already moving on without Ben Wallace. A day after losing Wallace to the Chicago Bulls, the Pistons reached an agreement with free-agent center Nazr Mohammed yesterday, a person within the NBA told The Associated Press. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because NBA free agents can't officially sign contracts until July 12, said the team and Mohammed made an oral pact on a five-year contract -- with the final year being an option -- that will pay him about $5 million next season. Mohammed (6-10, 250) averaged 6.2 points and 5.2 rebounds last season with San Antonio.
HARPRING TO STAY WITH JAZZ: Matt Harpring is staying with the Utah Jazz, agreeing to a multiyear deal with the team yesterday. Terms of the deal, which can't be formally completed until July 12, were not announced. Harpring, 30, has averaged 14.9 points with the Jazz since joining the team in 2002.
PRO HOCKEY 
COYOTES SIGN ROENICK: Jeremy Roenick is coming back to the Phoenix Coyotes. The team said yesterday it had signed the free-agent center to a one-year contract, bringing the nine-time All-Star back to Phoenix. Roenick, 36, was an original member of the Coyotes, playing with the club for five years through the 2000-01 season. Roenick was limited by injuries to 58 games for the Los Angeles Kings last season. The Boston native has 484 goals and 1,142 assists in 17 NHL seasons.
WILLSIE JOINS KINGS: The Los Angeles Kings agreed to terms yesterday on a two-year contract with unrestricted free agent forward Brian Willsie. He set career highs for goals (19), assists (22), points (41) and penalty minutes (77) in 82 regular-season games for the Washington Capitals last season. Willsie was the only player on the Capitals to appear in every game.
PENS GET RUUTU: The Pittsburgh Penguins signed free-agent forward Jarkko Ruutu yesterday. Ruutu, 30, played last season with the Vancouver Canucks, recording 10 goals, seven assists and 142 penalty minutes.
PRO TENNIS
INDONESIA PULLS OUT OF FED CUP TO PROTEST AGAINST ISRAEL: Indonesia pulled out of a planned Fed Cup tennis match in Israel to protest that country's actions in the Gaza Strip, a foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday. Moshe Haviv, the director of the Israeli Tennis Federation, said Indonesia would be fined if it doesn't attend its scheduled match. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, had earlier asked that the venue be changed to a neutral country because it has no diplomatic relations with Israel. But in May, the government said it would allow the team to travel to Israel for the matches which were scheduled for July 15-16 in Tel Aviv.
PRO SOCCER
GOMEZ LEADS D.C. UNITED: Christian Gomez scored in the 34th minute to lead visiting D.C. United to a 1-0 victory over FC Dallas last night. With the victory, United (11-1-5) extended its unbeaten streak to 11 games. FC Dallas (8-5-3) has lost three straight games and has failed to score a goal during the skid.

  CANADA (73%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


June 30, 2006 Friday



 World datelines

 
Afghanistan
KANDAHAR -- British troops hunting pro-Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan killed 12 militants after repelling a fierce attack on their base, the military said Thursday.
Bolivia 
LA PAZ -- President Evo Morales hopes to travel to Washington to ask Congress to extend trade preferences set to expire at the end of the year, an official said.
Honduras
TEGUCIGALPA -- Floods caused by heavy rains have left four people dead, forced 1,500 others from their homes and caused more than $8 million in damage to Honduran croplands, officials said Thursday.
Indonesia
JAKARTA -- A Playboy magazine editor and a centerfold model who appeared in the first edition in Indonesia were named by police Thursday as suspects in an indecency case, a move praised by religious hard-liners in the predominantly Muslim country.
Mexico
MEXICO CITY -- Western Mexico's Volcano of Fire sent a towering column of ash and gas more than a mile into the air Thursday, authorities said.
Netherlands
AMSTERDAM -- Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Thursday his government will resign after his coalition split over the citizenship case of a Somali-born lawmaker.
Northern Ireland
BELFAST -- Britain will shut down Northern Ireland's legislature and forge a stronger partnership with the Irish government if the province's Catholic and Protestant politicians fail to reach a power-sharing deal by Nov. 24, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday.
BELFAST -- British doctors gathered here voted Thursday to restore their long-standing policy of opposing euthanasia, but advocates of medically assisted suicide accused religious pressure groups of exerting undue influence over the vote.
Romania
BUCHAREST -- Romania's prime minister on Thursday proposed withdrawing his country's 890 troops from Iraq, citing security concerns and the operation's cost, but the president called the idea "unacceptable."
Russia
MOSCOW -- Chechnya's new separatist leader, Doku Umarov, has named warlord Shamil Basayev, wanted by Russia for a string of shocking terrorist attacks, as his vice president in a move that could signal a radicalization of the Chechen rebel movement.
Serbia
BELGRADE -- Serbia said Thursday it is drafting a plan to locate and arrest top war crimes suspect Gen. Ratko Mladic, whose capture has become the key condition for the Balkan nation to move closer to the European Union and NATO.
Somalia
MOGADISHU -- The hard-line Muslim leaders who have seized control of much of southern Somalia claimed authority throughout the country Thursday in yet another blow to the largely powerless but internationally recognized interim government.
Sudan
KHARTOUM -- Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Thursday deploying United Nations peacekeepers in the conflict-wracked Darfur region would be the same as allowing foreign forces to occupy his country.
Ukraine
KIEV -- Ukraine's opposition party prevented members of a newly formed ruling coalition from taking their seats in parliament Thursday, stopping a vote on returning ousted Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to her former job.
Venezuela
CARACAS -- President Hugo Chavez vowed Thursday that Venezuela would win a seat on the U.N. Security Council despite U.S. opposition. Washington officials have encouraged Latin American and Caribbean nations to vote instead for Guatemala's bid to hold the region's rotating seat on the 15-member Security Council.

 AFGHANISTAN (94%); SOMALIA (93%); SUDAN (93%); HONDURAS (93%); UNITED KINGDOM (93%); MEXICO (93%); NORTHERN IRELAND (92%); ROMANIA (92%);  RUSSIAN FEDERATION (92%); BOLIVIA (92%); SERBIA (92%); NETHERLANDS (92%); INDONESIA (92%); UKRAINE (91%); EUROPE (79%);  EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (79%); IRELAND (79%); SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE (68%)








 


June 30, 2006



 NEWSDESK

 
Culture Group Taps Chief
The National Foundation for Jewish Culture named a new executive director. Elise Bernhardt, a curator, producer and adviser on arts programming and development, will take over the New York-based foundation from Richard Siegel, who resigned after 27 years.
Senate Passes Hamas Bill
The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation that would end direct aid to and contact with the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority. The Senate passed the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act by voice vote last Friday, reflecting the bill's broad bipartisan support. According to the legislation, which still allows humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, aid to the P.A. could be resumed if Hamas renounces violence, recognizes Israel's right to exist and abides by previous diplomatic agreements.
Museums Join Forces
A New York Holocaust museum plans to merge with a Jewish center near Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Board of Trustees of the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust voted last week to enter into final negotiations with the Auschwitz Jewish Center, located in Poland. The center memorializes victims of the Holocaust and celebrates Jewish life in the area prior to World War II. Once the agreement is finalized, the New York museum will operate the center in Poland and will have overall responsibility for the combined institution. 
JNF Tensions Ease
Jewish National Fund's Israeli and American branches reached an agreement aimed at easing tensions between them. The agreement, finalized Sunday, "will pave the way to new levels of cooperation in the coming years," according to a statement released by Keren Kayemet, as the Israeli branch is known. Observers said that the tensions stemmed from a belief among fund officials in Israel that their American counterparts were bypassing them on certain projects. Yehiel Leket, Keren Kayemet's world chairman, and Ronald Lauder, president of JNF-USA, expressed satisfaction with the understanding. They said they hoped that from now on, the groups would intensify their joint activities, especially in the Negev.
Court Shields Farmers
Israel's top court ordered the army to boost protection for Palestinian farmers harassed by settlers. The High Court of Justice on Monday found in favor of a petition filed by civil rights groups. The groups are opposed to the recent military practice of preventing Palestinians in the West Bank from accessing their farmland for fear that they could be attacked by settler vigilantes.
Israel Eyes Extremists
Israel is limiting the movements of far-right activists ahead of an expected crackdown on illegal West Bank outposts. The Defense Ministry issued restraining orders over the weekend against at least a dozen Israelis affiliated with extreme pro-settlement movements, security sources said. The orders are designed to keep the activists away from West Bank outposts as they are evacuated and to limit confrontations with security forces. Defense Minister Amir Peretz has vowed to crack down on dozens of the outposts in compliance with the road map peace plan. The first evacuations are expected as early as this week.
Israeli Elected to U.N. Post
An Israeli expert was elected to a United Nations committee on women's rights.
Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, director of Bar-Ilan University's Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women and author of "Women in Israel: A State of Their Own," was named to the 23-member committee.
Tribute for Rebbe in D.C.
Leaders of both parties in Congress, as well as top Bush administration officials, attended a two-day tribute to Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Lubavitcher rebbe, who died June 12, 1994. Speakers included Elie Wiesel, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Australia's defense minister. Some 30 foreign diplomats met with Lubavitch emissaries to their countries.
Europe Urges Vigilance
The European Parliament demanded that E.U. leaders step up the fight against homophobia, anti-Muslim sentiment and antisemitism. Specific incidents mentioned in the June 19 resolution included the murder of French Jew Ilan Halimi and an attack on Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich. In response, the Polish Parliament passed a counter-resolution last Friday that said, "Singular occurrences of intolerance in Poland are very scarce, and are severely criticized by the Polish authorities and therefore are not grounds for generalizations about Polish society," according to the Warsaw daily Gazeta Wyborcza.
Bias up in Manchester
Antisemitic incidents in Manchester, England, increased by 40% from 2004 to 2005, said Leor Giladi, the city's police superintendent. In an address to a synagogue in Manchester last week, Giladi said that the increase came even as there was a 30% drop over the same period in the Greater London area. The superintendent revealed that two or three incidents were reported weekly - mostly anti-social behaviors such as throwing water balloons or eggs as people walked to synagogue, though some incidents involved physical attacks.
Polish Official Under Fire
The deputy chief of Polish state television is the former editor of a neo-Nazi magazine, according to press reports. The country's leading daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, accused Piotr Farfal of editing and writing articles in the neo-Nazi magazine The Front when he was 18. The articles included such phrases as "We do not accept cowards, collaborators or Jews." Farfal, now 28, denies knowing about the magazine's content, telling newspapers that he merely lent The Front his name and should not be held accountable for acts committed during his teenage years. He also says he resigned from the magazine after two years, because of its neo-Nazi leanings. Farfal is a supporter of Education Minister Roman Giertych, whose League of Polish Families has a history of antisemitism, according to several anti-racist organizations. Pawel Kowal, a lawmaker from the Law and Justice Party that leads Poland's coalition government, said that Farfal should lose his post if the report is accurate.
Poll: Arabs Dislike Jews
Anti-Jewish sentiment is nearly universal in Jordan and Egypt, a new survey has found. Some 98% of respondents in Jordan and 97% in Egypt - two Arab countries that have made peace with Israel - harbored anti-Jewish feelings, while negative feelings about Jews were found to be "overwhelming" in other Muslim countries surveyed as part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project for 2006,  reported. Other Muslim nations surveyed included Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey.
In follow-up interviews, Muslims said that the primary cause of poor relations with the Western world is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Rumsfeld To Visit Israel
Donald Rumsfeld is expected to visit Israel in the coming weeks. The visit, Rumsfeld's first since becoming defense secretary in 2001, is part of a regional tour that will include stops in Jordan and Egypt. In Israel, he is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and with senior defense and security officials. Rumsfeld visited Israel in the early 1980s as a Reagan administration special representative to the Middle East. Last month, during Olmert's visit to Washington, the two agreed to work toward a closer defense and security relationship. The security relationship suffered setbacks following a dispute over Israeli arms sales to China.

 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (96%); ISRAEL (95%); UNITED STATES (94%); POLAND (92%)







  
 

June 30, 2006 Friday  




 BIN LADEN TAPE ON ZARQAWI

 
CAIRO, Egypt -- Osama bin Laden praised slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the "lion of holy war" in a new videotape posted on the Web yesterday. 
"Our Islamic nation was surprised to find its knight, the lion of jihad, the man of determination and will, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in a shameful American raid," he said.
It was the fourth message put out this year by al-Qaida leader bin Laden. All have featured his voice in audiotapes. New video images of him have not appeared since October 2004.
Islamists claim Somalia
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- The hard-line Muslim leaders who have seized control of much of southern Somalia claimed authority throughout the country yesterday in yet another blow to the largely powerless but internationally recognized government.
Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, leader of the militia's executive council, made the claim while officially announcing a restructuring of the powerful Islamic Courts Union. The group has changed its name to the Supreme Islamic Courts Council and added dozens of new members who lead Islamic courts throughout Somalia.
The restructuring also saw Mr. Ahmed replaced as the group's overall leader by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is on the U.S. terrorist watch list as a suspected collaborator with al-Qaida.
Many of the capital's residents applauded the group for ridding Mogadishu of the widely despised warlords.
Chechen warlord
MOSCOW -- Chechnya's new separatist leader has named warlord Shamil Basayev, wanted by Russia for a string of shocking terrorist attacks, as his vice president in a move that could signal a radicalization of the Chechen rebel movement.
The move by Doku Umarov -- announced in a statement dated Tuesday and posted on a Web site linked to Mr. Umarov -- comes amid speculation that the two militants might be jockeying for authority over the rebel movement.
Playboy in Indonesia
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A Playboy magazine editor and a centerfold model who appeared in the first edition in Indonesia were named by police yesterday as suspects in an indecency case, a move praised by religious hard-liners in the predominantly Muslim country.
The magazine launched a toned-down version in Indonesia in April to protests from rock-throwing conservatives demanding it be closed. It kept publishing, but moved its editorial offices to mostly Hindu Bali island.
Unlike its American version and editions in dozens of other countries, Indonesian Playboy contains no nudity.
Basque peace talks
MADRID, Spain -- Spain's government announced the start of historic peace talks with the Basque separatist group ETA, and the prime minister warned yesterday negotiations to end nearly four decades of bloodshed will be long and difficult.
As if to underscore that point, the leader of the opposition conservative party denounced the move, saying the talks rewarded terrorism.
Peace talks had been widely expected since ETA declared a permanent cease-fire on March 22.
Bolivian gas deal
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- President Nestor Kirchner met Bolivian counterpart Evo Morales with a bear hug yesterday and then agreed to a 47 percent price hike for the Bolivian natural gas Argentina needs.
Argentina has struggled to meet demand for compressed natural gas that power ever-increasing numbers of taxis, cars and official vehicles.

 SOMALIA (94%);  SPAIN (93%); EGYPT (92%); IRAQ (92%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%)







   


June 27, 2006 Tuesday  




 Spread of Islamic Law in Indonesia Takes Toll on Women

 
To a passer-by, the dress and demeanor of Lilis Lindawati would have attracted little attention as she waited in the dark in this busy industrial city for a ride home.
  She wore green pants, a denim jacket, beige sandals with modest heels, burgundy lipstick and penciled eyebrows. Her black hair flowed freely, unencumbered by a head scarf, the sign of a religious Muslim woman that is increasingly prevalent in Indonesia but not mandatory.
In a now widely recounted incident, Mrs. Lindawati, 36, was hustled into a government van that clammy February evening by brown-uniformed police, known as tranquillity and public order officers. 
  ''They put about 20 of us in the police station and then went out again to target the hotels,'' she said, telling the story as she sat on the floor of her family's two-room, $12-a-month rental, her husband beside her.
  She was charged with being a prostitute under a new local law forbidding lewd behavior, and in an unusual public hearing attended by local dignitaries and residents, she was sentenced with some of the other women to three days in jail.
  Mrs. Lindawati insists she is not a prostitute. 
  Her case has become a symbol of an increasingly impassioned tussle in Indonesia between those who favor the introduction of Shariah, or Islamic law -- sometimes called Islamic-like laws -- by local governments, and those that assert that this large Muslim country, recognized for its moderation and diversity, must hold firm to its secular Constitution of 1945.
  Nearly 30 local governments have introduced Shariah laws or Shariah-inspired legislation, from Aceh in the far north where Shariah laws have lain quiescent on the books for several years but are now being carried out by special Shariah courts, to southern Sulawesi and to small islands farther west.
  In Aceh, the province devastated by the tsunami, officers belonging to a special Shariah police unit stop women on the street who do not have their head scarves properly adjusted and often impose fines. In some instances, women have been publicly whipped for being caught in public with men who are not their husbands, said Suraiya Kamaruzzaman, a founder of Flower Aceh, a women's rights group.
  In Sulawesi, one of Indonesia's main islands, three southern districts have passed Shariah legislation and are establishing Shariah courts to enforce the laws. Schoolgirls have been sent home for wearing clothes considered insufficiently modest. In some places, women who are government officials must wear a head scarf to work.
  To many, the new laws represent stealthy movement toward excessive intrusion of Islam into Indonesia's political process, often with the backing of the Justice and Prosperity Party, a fast-rising Islamic party.
  Moderates are battling an anti-pornography bill, backed in the national Parliament by the Justice Party, that would impose a one-year prison sentence for women wearing miniskirts and five years for couples caught kissing in public. In another incident that is interpreted as a sign of growing grass-roots intolerance, a convert to Islam was jailed in a municipality in east Java earlier this year for leading prayers in a national language rather than in Arabic. 
  Some leading moderates say they worry that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the first directly elected leader of Indonesia and to many the personification of a tolerant Islam, has been too slow to react.
  In a speech in early June, Mr. Yudhoyono revived the notion of a state ideology, known as Pancasila, which is generally seen as Indonesia's commitment to secular government and of unity in diversity.
  But Pancasila, created by Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno, came into its own as an ideology under General Suharto, the long-ruling authoritarian leader who was toppled in 1998. By the end of General Suharto's rule, Pancasila had fallen in esteem, too, leaving some moderates wondering whether the doctrine remained the best vehicle for reining in the new trend.
  ''It was a good speech reaffirming Pancasila and condemning Shariah,'' said T. Mulya Lubis, a prominent lawyer and chairman of the Society for Democracy and Education, ''but it was not enough.''
  More than 50 members of Parliament recently signed a letter urging the president to abolish the Shariah-inspired local laws.
  The president, Mr. Lubis said, is overly concerned about offending some of the Islamic parties, particularly the Justice and Prosperity Party, which has supported him in Parliament. ''The president believes his persona alone can defeat the Islamists'' but that wasn't necessarily the case, the lawyer said.
  Mr. Lubis said he planned to take a roadshow of speakers to universities and schools across the country in the coming months to emphasize the moderate traditions of Indonesia.
  Not all of the new local laws are enforced by special Islamic courts. The mayor of Tangerang, Wahidin Halim, who initiated the regulation under which Mrs. Lindawati was charged, said he is trying to clean up public morals, not impose Islam.
  The Tangerang law that came into force last November banned passionate hugging or kissing, and bans the sale or consumption of alcohol except in upscale hotels. One result, many women say, is that they must be off the streets by dusk.
  ''The idea is to develop good morality, good behavior, to be a more civilized society,'' Mr. Wahidin said in an interview in his home garden. ''The Islamic parties love my programs, but that doesn't mean we have the same ideology.''
  Supporters of Mrs. Lindawati are fighting her case on the legal, not ideological or religious grounds. Like most of the new local laws that are intended to govern people's personal behavior, the Tangerang regulation is unconstitutional, said Dedi Ali Ahmad, chairman of the Indonesian Legal and Aid and Human Rights Association in Jakarta. 
  ''Charging someone on the suspicion of prostitution is not enough under the national law,'' he said. ''You cannot arrest someone for just being in a vicinity. They have to have attempted a crime.'' 
  The Legal Aid Association was seeking a judicial review of the Tangerang regulation in the Supreme Court, Mr. Dedi said. At the same time, Mrs. Lindawati has filed a defamation suit against the mayor.
  In the suit, Mrs. Lindawati contends she was on the street waiting for a bus after coming into the center of town to claim back wages from a restaurant where she worked as a waitress. She said she is so poor -- her husband holds a low-paying job as a gym teacher at an elementary school -- that she had sold her mobile phone just before her arrest to feed her two teenage children.
  ''I have done nothing wrong,'' she said.

 INDONESIA (95%)







 
 


June 27, 2006 Tuesday



 Survey of World's Muslims Yields Dismaying Results

 
How do Muslims worldwide think?
To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other," it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Britain, and Spain).
The survey, which also looks at Western views of Muslims, yielded some dismaying but not altogether surprising results. Its themes can be grouped under three rubrics. 
A proclivity to conspiracy theories: In not one Muslim population polled does a majority believe that Arabs carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001, on America. The proportions range from a mere 15% in Pakistan holding Arabs responsible, to 48% among French Muslims. Confirming recent negative trends in Turkey, the number of Turks who point the finger at Arabs has declined to 16% today from 46% in 2002. In other words, in every one of these 10 Muslim communities, a majority views September 11 as a hoax perpetrated by the American government, Israel, or some other agency.
Likewise, Muslims are widely prejudiced against Jews, ranging from 28% unfavorable ratings among French Muslims to 98% in Jordan (which, despite the monarchy's moderation, has a majority Palestinian Arab population). Further, Muslims in certain countries (especially Egypt and Jordan) see Jews conspiratorially, as being responsible for bad relations between Muslims and Westerners.
Conspiracy theories also pertain to larger topics. Asked, "What is most responsible for Muslim nations' lack of prosperity?" between 14% (in Pakistan) and 43% (in Jordan) blame the policies of America and other Western states, as opposed to indigenous problems, such as a lack of democracy or education, or the presence of corruption or radical Islam.
This conspiracism points to a widespread unwillingness in the umma to deal with realities, preferring the safer bromides of plots, schemes, and intrigues. It also exposes major problems adjusting to modernity.
Support for terrorism: All the Muslim populations polled display a solid majority of support for Osama bin Laden. Asked whether they have confidence in him, Muslims replied positively, ranging between 8% (in Turkey) and 72% (in Nigeria). Likewise, suicide bombing is popular. Muslims who call it justified range from 13% (in Germany) to 69% (in Nigeria). These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come.
British and Nigerian Muslims are most alienated: Britain stands out as a paradoxical country. Non-Muslims there have strikingly more favorable views of Islam and Muslims than elsewhere in the West; for example, only 32% of the British sample view Muslims as violent, significantly less than their counterparts in France (41%), Germany (52%), or Spain (60%). In the Muhammad cartoon dispute, Britons showed more sympathy for the Muslim outlook than did other Europeans. More broadly, Britons blame Muslims less for the poor state of Western-Muslim relations.
But British Muslims return the favor with the most malign anti-Western attitudes found in Europe. Many more of them regard Westerners as violent, greedy, immoral, and arrogant than do their counterparts in France, Germany, and Spain. In addition, whether asked about their attitudes toward Jews, responsibility for September 11, or the place of women in Western societies, their views are notably more extreme.
The situation in Britain reflects the "Londonistan" phenomenon, whereby Britons pre-emptively cringe and Muslims respond to this weakness with aggression.
Nigerian Muslims generally have the most belligerent views on such issues as the state of Western-Muslim relations, the supposed immorality and arrogance of Westerners, and support for Mr. bin Laden and suicide terrorism. This extremism results, no doubt, from the violent state of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria.
Ironically, most Muslim alienation is found in those countries where Muslims are either the most or the least accommodated, suggesting that a middle path is best - where Muslims do not win special privileges, as in Britain, nor are they in an advanced state of hostility, as in Nigeria.
Overall, the Pew survey sends an undeniable message of crisis from one end to the other of the Muslim world.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of "Miniatures" (Transaction Publishers).

 JORDAN (94%); NIGERIA (94%); TURKEY (94%); PAKISTAN (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); EGYPT (93%); INDONESIA (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); WESTERN EUROPE (79%); ISRAEL (79%); FRANCE (79%); SPAIN (79%); EUROPE (79%); GERMANY (72%); CENTRAL EUROPE (57%)




18


 
 


June 26, 2006, Monday



 How to end beheadings in Iraq

 
What Iraqis need is an Ida Wells-Barnett. She is the American black woman, born into slavery in 1862, who led a movement that helped end mob lynchings in the US. Iraq could use someone with her moral leadership as a voice to turn public opinion against a similar barbaric practice: beheadings. 
Lynching, beheading, and other gruesome types of killing do more than just kill. They are spectacles meant to instill fear - if one chooses to react that way. Such terrorism explains why it is often used against the innocent for political purposes, much the way black men were lynched by white, mainly Southern, racists well into the 20th century. Last week, two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in Iraq were beheaded and left for public viewing.
Killing by decapitation has a long history. Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen still have beheadings for some crimes. In the West, the use of the guillotine during the French Reign of Terror is a notorious example. These days, violent Islamists are the world's serial beheaders, unmoved by how it degrades them and their cause.
In broadcasting beheadings on the Internet, Al Qaeda and other such groups had hoped to rally the faithful. (Many people who watch the videos later regret it. American TV stations refuse to show them in part to avoid playing the terrorist's game.)
But there's also a long history of revulsion against such forms of cruelty. Look at how the West turned against slavery, chemical weapons, execution by hanging, and, to some degree, land mines. And a recent survey finds support for suicide bombings has dropped substantially in three Muslim countries: Jordan, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
The possibility of Iraqis creating a culture of shame against beheadings arose last year when a top Al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, rebuked the group's leader in Iraq, the recently killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, for the beheading of hostages. He hinted that it repulses potential Muslim supporters. High-profile beheadings quickly declined, although many Iraqis still die this way.
Clearly Iraqis are open to forming a consensus against beheadings, even as the conflict continues. Such a moral stance taken by many Iraqis could be the kernel for widespread rejection of the entire insurgency in Iraq.
Which brings us back to Ida Wells-Barnett. She helped found the NAACP in 1909 but is best known as a journalist-crusader against mob lynching. At its peak, in 1892, this type of public vigilantism claimed the lives of some 162 black people. She compiled data and eyewitness accounts, often in disguise, to help generate outrage. Her stories resulted in her Tennessee newspaper, Free Speech, being ransacked. To save her life, she had to flee the South.
Her persistence made it difficult for whites to remain silent. Many Southern women declared lynching un-Christian. A few years after Wells-Barnett's passing in 1931, lynching was headed for the history books, helping the civil rights movement to blossom with less fear.
For Iraqis, standing up to the fear of beheadings is a first step. Wells-Barnett showed how the courageous activism of one person against a form of barbarity can help end it.
Will Iraqis now do the same?
(c) . The 

 UNITED STATES (94%);  JORDAN (79%); IRAN,  (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (72%)







 
 


June 23, 2006, Friday



 Madeleine Albright, John Danforth, and Andrew Kohut

 
As the war in Iraq rages, it is not surprising that there is ill will between Muslims and Westerners. Bridging that divide requires understanding its scope and causes. A new study by the Pew Global Attitudes Project contributes to that understanding. 
The survey, conducted among some 14,000 people in 13 nations between March 31 and May 14, is available at http://pewglobal.org. Key players in the Pew project discussed their findings at a Monitor-sponsored breakfast for reporters on Thursday morning.
"A real divide does exist between peoples," said Andrew Kohut, President of the Pew Research Center and Director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project. "Muslims and Westerners are generally convinced that relationships are not good these days. Westerners see Muslims as fanatical, violent and not tolerant. Muslims see Westerners as selfish, immoral and greedy.... One of the most startling findings here, most Muslims remain unconvinced that Arabs carried out the September 11 attacks...."
Religious leaders should take a more active role in bridging the divide, argued former Missouri Senator John Danforth. Danforth, a divinity school grad and ordained Episcopal priest, served as President Bush's special envoy to Sudan, and also as US ambassador to the United Nations.
"I think that it would be a very important thing and very constructive to have not just a one-shot meeting but a persistent interreligious dialog," Danforth said. "And I think one of the subjects that would be [an] interesting start to such a dialog is the principle of noncombatant immunity ... it is central in the concept of just-war doctrine."
Danforth continued, "The leaders of Islam have been less than forthcoming in expressing strong views on matters of terrorism.... [Western religious leaders] have not been strong in any respect about how their religion relates to the world beyond themselves.... We are so focused on our own navels and on inside battles about who should be a bishop here or there which nobody really cares about.... We have not been sufficiently focused on the relationship of religion to the rest of the world.... What you see here in the survey is that religion itself is the problem. And if religion is the problem then religion should address the problem."
In terms of governmental policy, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, co-chair of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, said that the US government should be more active in explaining itself.
"We have not fully engaged, or have not engaged enough, in what I consider the battle of ideas," Albright said. "We have not explained ourselves well enough, we don't talk enough about who we are, what we really believe in and therefore are in a position of being categorized ... we have to engage better in the battle of ideas, that is the policy thing out of that... If there is going to be change ... in the Muslim world, or within the Muslim religion, it has to come from inside and ... one of the best vehicles for this might be some of the European Muslims."
Why focus on a dialog with European Muslims? Because the new Pew survey reports that, "While Europe's Muslim minorities are about as likely as Muslims elsewhere to see relations between Westerners and Muslims as generally bad, they more often associate positive attributes to Westerners - including tolerance, generosity, and respect for women. European Muslims also are less likely than non-Muslims in Europe to believe that there is a conflict between modernity and being a devout Muslim."
The war in Iraq has had a pronounced effect on anti-Americanism in the Muslim world, survey director Kohut said. "Anti-Americanism in the Muslim world prior to Iraq was mostly concentrated in the Mideast and in central Asia. After Iraq, Indonesia went from 55 or 60 percent favorable view of the United States to 15 percent and Muslims in Nigeria went to a very low number from a reasonably high number." The survey found that among Nigeria's population, 46 percent feel that suicide bombings can be justified often or sometimes in defense of Islam.
In the search for solutions to the Muslim/Western divide, Senator Danforth counseled focusing on, "What in this survey can be changed? Wherein is the possibility? And it seems to me that the possibility is to focus on that part of the survey which could be possibly improved, and that is the perception that we are violent, we are greedy, and all of the negatives that are said about Westerners.... There is a lot to be said for intercultural and interreligious dialog."
(c) . The 

 UNITED STATES (95%); IRAQ (92%)







   


June 23, 2006 Friday  




 Poll Finds Discord Between the Muslim and Western Worlds

 
Non-Muslim Westerners and Muslims around the world have widely different views of world events, and each group tends to view the other as violent, intolerant and lacking in respect for women, a new international survey of more than 14,000 people in 13 nations indicates.
  In what the survey, part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project for 2006, called one of its most striking findings, majorities in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Turkey -- Muslim countries with fairly strong ties to the United States -- said, for example, that they did not believe that Arabs had carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. 
The findings illustrating the chasm in beliefs follow another year of violence and tension centered on that divide. In the last 12 months there have been terrorist bombings in London; riots in France by unemployed youths, many of them Muslim; a global uproar over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad; and no letup in the war in Iraq.
  This led majorities in the United States and in countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East to describe relations between Muslims and people in Western countries as generally bad, Pew found.
  Over all, Muslims in the survey, including the large Islamic populations in Britain, France, Germany and Spain, broadly blamed the West for the bad relations, while Westerners tended to blame Muslims. 
  Muslims in the Middle East and Asia depicted Westerners as immoral and selfish, while Westerners saw Muslims as fanatical.
  The results were not uniform, and delivered some surprises. Support for terrorism declined in some of the Muslim countries surveyed, dropping sharply in Jordan, where terrorist bombings killed more than 50 people in Amman in November.
  Two-thirds of the French people surveyed expressed positive views of Muslims, and even larger majorities of French Muslims felt favorable toward Christians and Jews. Muslims surveyed in Europe were less inclined to see a ''clash of civilizations'' than were general publics in Europe or Muslims elsewhere.
  Pew found sharp divergences regarding respect for women: non-Muslims in the West view Muslims as lacking respect, the survey indicated, while Muslims outside Europe say the same of Westerners.
  In the West, where many see Islamic customs like mandatory veils for women and regulations barring them from working outside the home or driving as discriminatory, big majorities saw Muslims as not respectful of women. 
  In contrast, fewer than half of the Muslims asked in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey said they associated Westerners with respect for women. European Muslims surveyed were more likely to view Westerners as respectful of women, in some places by wide margins. 
  Pew, which interviewed Muslims in Europe as a group for the first time this year, said their views represented ''a bridge'' between the widely divergent views of other Europeans and of Muslims in Asia and the Middle East.
  The overall results, said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, show that ''even though relations are not good, there hasn't been a spike in outright hostility between the two groups over the past year.'' 
  Nonetheless, majorities in every country surveyed except Pakistan expressed pessimism about Muslim-Western relations, with Germany most strongly viewing the situation as bad (70 percent), followed by France (66 percent), Turkey (64 percent), Spain and Britain (61 percent), and Egypt (58 percent).
  Pew surveyed 14,030 people from March 31 to May 14 in Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the United States. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus two to four percentage points, except in Britain and Germany, where it was six points. 
  For analytical purposes, Muslims were oversampled in Britain, France, Germany and Spain, and the margin of sampling error for their responses is plus or minus five or six points. Interviews were conducted face to face, except in the United States, Britain, France and Germany, where they were done by phone. The poll was conducted nationwide except in India and Pakistan, where it mostly covered only urban areas. 
  In follow-up interviews in countries surveyed about the results, Muslims attributed poor relations with the West to a variety of causes. But many pointed to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as the main cause and accused the West of double standards on terrorism.
  Pew asked respondents to give their opinions of Christians, Muslims and Jews, and it found anti-Jewish sentiment to be ''overwhelming'' in the Muslim countries surveyed. It reached 98 percent in Jordan and 97 percent in Egypt.
  Majorities in the Muslim world, Pew said, also expressed the opinion that the victory of the militant group Hamas in Palestinian elections in January would ''be helpful to a fair settlement between Israel and the Palestinians'' -- a view that was roundly rejected by non-Muslim publics.


 EUROPE (95%); JORDAN (94%); FRANCE (94%); EGYPT (94%); TURKEY (94%);  UNITED STATES (93%); MIDDLE EAST (93%); UNITED KINGDOM (93%); SPAIN (93%); PAKISTAN (93%); ASIA (93%); NIGERIA (79%);  AFRICA (79%); DENMARK (56%); GERMANY (55%)







 


June 23, 2006 Friday  
THIRD EDITION



 CULTURE CLASH Westerners see Muslims as: Intolerant and violent. Muslims see Westerners as: Greedy and selfish. Survey of people in 15 nations shows deteriorating relations.

 
Muslim attitudes toward the West have hardened in the past year amid global conflict, with people of the Muslim faith likely to view Americans and Europeans as selfish, immoral and greedy, a new global poll shows.
Similarly, people in the United States and other Western nations regard Muslims as arrogant, violent, intolerant and disrespectful of women.
Proof of the deep divide between Westerners and Muslims showed up in a massive poll of 14,000 people, the latest installment of the Pew Global Attitudes Project to take stock of opinions of the world and the big issues of the day. 
Former Sen. John C. Danforth of St. Louis is co-chair of the project, along with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
"It seems to me that where they (Muslims) really tilt against the West has to do with values or with lifestyle or with perceptions that the West is a place of selfishness and arrogance and violence," Danforth said at a meeting with reporters to announce the survey results. "Where do they get that idea? Maybe on television, I don't know."
While a solid majority of people in the 15 countries that were polled viewed relations between Muslims and Westerners as bad, there were a few bright spots in the results.
In several Muslim countries -- Jordan, Pakistan and Indonesia among them -- fewer believe now that suicide bombings and other violence against civilians can be justified to defend Islam against enemies.
Also, confidence in al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is dropping. In Jordan -- where terrorist attacks killed dozens in Amman last November -- confidence in bin Laden plummeted from 60 percent to 29 percent.
But there were troubling findings, too. In Pakistan, a country of 162 million people, 38 percent told pollsters that they had at least some confidence in bin Laden to do the right thing in world affairs. Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In a finding pollsters found difficult to explain, confidence in bin Laden among Nigerian Muslims leapt from 44 percent to 61 percent. Also striking was that majorities in Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan said they do not believe that Arabs carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States.
Among other findings:
- Anti-Jewish sentiments remain strong throughout the Muslim world. - Majorities of Muslims responded positively toward the victory by Hamas in the Palestinian legislative council elections in January. Western nations reject the radical party. - Majorities of Muslims believe that disrespect of their religion lay behind the controversial cartoons about the Islamic prophet Muhammad first published in a Danish newspaper last September. - In rare agreement, Muslims and Westerners said that Muslim nations need to become more prosperous.
The poll found that, in many respects, Muslims hold their anti-Western views more strongly than Westerners embrace anti-Muslim sentiments.
"Muslims are more discomforted with Westerners than Westerners are with Muslims," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, the nonpartisan organization that is sponsoring the global surveys.
Kohut added that anti-Western sentiments are the strongest among younger Muslims "growing up on stories of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib" -- U.S.-run prisons holding many Muslims.
Albright observed that extremists on each side of the divide feed the negative sentiments. She referred to unnamed radio commentators in the United States who have asserted that "Islam is a terrorist religion."
Albright, who now runs a business consulting firm in Washington, said the United States and other Western nations need to wage what she called "a battle of ideas. We have not explained ourselves well enough; we don't talk enough about who we are."
Danforth, an Episcopal priest as well as a lawyer, said religious leaders need to assume a more robust role in attempting to bridge a global gulf that is rooted
fundamentally in religion, not politics.
He said religious leaders often concern themselves intensely with their own internal issues but "have not been strong in any respect about how their religion relates to the world beyond them. We have not been sufficiently focused on the relationship of religion and the rest of the world.
". . . If it is religion that is the problem, then religion needs to address the problem."
---
The poll
Read the full report from the Pew Center at STLtoday.com/links
What do you think? Is there a great divide between Muslims and Westerners? Discuss in the Talk of the Day blog at STLtoday.com/talk

 UNITED STATES (95%); JORDAN (93%); PAKISTAN (93%);  INDONESIA (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); EGYPT (79%); NIGERIA (79%); TURKEY (79%); AFGHANISTAN (74%)







 
 


June 23, 2006 Friday  




 Survey: Suspicion separates Westerners, Muslims; 
Poll of several countries finds 'complete misperceptions'

 
WASHINGTON -- Westerners and Muslims around the globe view one another across a chasm of suspicion and hostility, according to a 13-nation survey released Thursday. Each side blames the other for the friction.
The poll by the Pew Research Center found that many Americans and Europeans view Muslims as fanatical and violent. By wider margins, most Muslims in the Middle East and Asia see Westerners as selfish, arrogant and violent. 
"There is a very serious divide and ... complete misperceptions of each other," says former secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who co-chairs the survey project with former United Nations ambassador John Danforth. She says that split has "a real effect" in making it more difficult for the United States to carry out its foreign policy goals.
In an example of conflicting views, about six of 10 of those surveyed in the USA and Western Europe blame "Muslim intolerance" for the protests and violence this year that followed publication of Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.
Nearly nine of 10 of those surveyed in Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia and Turkey blame the furor on "Western disrespect" of Islam. Islam forbids the depiction of Mohammed's image.
Muslims living in European countries have a more temperate view of Westerners than those who live in predominantly Muslim countries, the poll found. Even so, one of seven Muslims in France, Spain and Britain say suicide bombings against civilian targets can be justified at times to defend Islam.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed 14,000 people in the USA, five European countries, five Muslim countries, Nigeria and India from April 1 to May 14. The margins of error range from +/{ndash}2 to +/{ndash}6 percentage points.
Among the findings:
*A majority of those surveyed in Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey and Jordan say Arabs didn't carry out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, says those attitudes reflect "strong emotions (that) get in the way of rationality."
*Those in the West overwhelmingly say Muslims aren't "respectful of women." Half or more of those surveyed in four of the five Muslim countries say the same thing about Westerners.
*Most Muslims blame Western policies for a lack of prosperity in Muslim countries. Most Westerners cite government corruption, lack of education and Islamic fundamentalism as the chief reasons.
*Support for suicide bombings has declined sharply in Jordan, which suffered a terrorist attack last year. Twenty-nine percent of Jordanians say suicide attacks often or sometimes are justified, compared with 57% in 2005. Support for suicide attacks also declined in Pakistan and Indonesia.
Even so, 17% of Turks, 14% of Pakistanis and 28% of Egyptians say suicide bombings against civilian targets are justified sometimes.
Muslim attitudes toward the West had improved in the wake of international aid for tsunami victims in Indonesia and elsewhere. Those gains have been wiped away by concern about the deaths of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, says Muqtedar Khan of the University of Delaware, who studies U.S. policy toward the Muslim world.
Khan says many Muslims also see the U.S. focus on Iran's nuclear threat and the lack of attention toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as examples of "anti-Muslim, anti-Islam prejudice."

 UNITED STATES (98%); JORDAN (94%); EUROPE (94%); TURKEY (93%);  MIDDLE EAST (92%); EGYPT (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); ASIA (92%); WESTERN EUROPE (79%); FRANCE (79%); SPAIN (79%); NIGERIA (79%); DENMARK (71%)







  



June 23, 2006 Friday  




 Survey Details 'Deep' Divide Between Muslims, Westerners

 
A "deep attitudinal divide" exists between Western and Muslim publics, with Muslims in the Middle East, Asia and Africa more critical of Westerners than vice versa, according to a survey released today. But attitudes are not monolithic, the study found, and a "middle ground" is particularly apparent among European Muslims.  
 Muslims and non-Muslims interviewed in 13 countries converge on few issues, but they agree that relations between Muslims and Westerners are bad, according to the survey by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization.   
 "The most salient findings include the extent to which Muslims have an aggrieved view of the West, and Westerners are skeptical and wary of Muslim values," said Andrew Kohut, the center's president.  
 People polled in six predominantly Muslim countries  --  Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria  --  blame Westerners for the strain in ties and mostly see Americans and Europeans as selfish, arrogant, immoral and greedy, with opinions of the West and its people worsening over the last year, the survey found. In turn, majorities among non-Muslims polled in most Western countries see Muslims as fanatical and lacking in tolerance.  
 But non-Muslim Westerners interviewed were more divided in their attitudes toward Muslims than vice versa, poll results show. About 60 percent of non-Muslims questioned in France, Britain and Russia, as well as more than half of Americans interviewed, maintain favorable opinions of Muslims overall. On the other hand, 36 percent of non-Muslims surveyed in Germany and 29 percent in Spain view Muslims favorably.  
 About 27 percent of Pakistanis and 16 percent of Turks see Christians favorably; about 6 percent and 15 percent, respectively, have favorable views of Jews. 
 The survey was conducted as part of the Pew Center's Global Attitudes Project (pewglobal.org) from March 31 to May 14. More than 14,000 people in 13 countries were interviewed by phone or in person. The study has a margin of error of between 2 and 6 percent, depending on the country.  
 Overall, Kohut said, Westerners are less optimistic than Muslims in Europe or Muslim-majority countries about the viability of democracy in Muslim-majority countries and think more Muslims support suicide bombings and other violence against civilians than is actually the case. 
 Indeed, for the second year running, the survey shows increasing opposition among Muslim populations to violence targeting civilians in the name of Islam. About 71 percent of polled Muslim Indonesians said such violence is never justified, compared with 66 percent last year; in Pakistan, the figure was 69 percent, up from 46 percent; Jordan has had the steepest rise in the proportion of people opposed to extremist violence, up from 11 percent last year to 46 percent. Osama bin Laden's standing has also continued to decline since polling last year, most significantly in Jordan, followed by Pakistan.  
 But "a sizeable number of adherents," particularly among sampled Nigerian Muslims, still believe that violence against civilians is justifiable in defense of Islam, the survey found. 
 The poll attributes the trend against violence to Muslim countries' own experiences with terrorism, including a triple suicide bombing in Amman, Jordan, last November that killed 60 people. Moreover, with the exception of Turkey (at 39 percent), well over half of Westerners and Muslims interviewed expressed concern over the global rise of Islamic extremism. 
 There is, however, no obvious correlation between diminishing support for terrorism and more positive perceptions of the West. Muslims in four of five Muslim-majority countries believe Westerners are not "respectful of women." Muslims also blame Western policies for their countries' lack of economic prosperity. Meanwhile, people in Western countries blame Muslim countries for what they perceive to be government corruption, lack of education and Islamic fundamentalism.  
 But "nothing highlights the divide between Muslims and the West more clearly," the survey found, than clashing views over the controversy about cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. First published last September in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and reprinted in several European publications, they provoked riots and protests throughout the Muslim world. Depending on the country, from over half to two-thirds of Westerners surveyed blamed the controversy on Muslim intolerance, while well over two-thirds of Muslims questioned blamed Western disrespect.  
 Moreover, in what Kohut called a "gee-whiz" finding, solid majorities of Muslims living in Muslim countries and in Britain said they did not believe that Arabs carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the United States. 
 "It's one of the finds that makes you realize that deep emotional feelings get in the way of facts," Kohut said. 
 European Muslims, polled separately for the first time, represent a "bright spot," the survey says. Muslims in Spain, Germany and France, which was the scene of riots in predominantly North African and Muslim suburbs last fall, are more inclined than Muslims elsewhere, including Britain, to view non-Muslim Westerners as tolerant, generous and respectful of women. They also see less of a clash of civilizations than non-Muslims and, like Muslims polled in Indonesia, Jordan, Turkey and Egypt, are far more inclined to see being a devout Muslim and "living in a modern society" as compatible.  

 PAKISTAN (94%); JORDAN (93%);  MIDDLE EAST (92%);  AFRICA (92%); TURKEY (92%); INDONESIA (92%); ASIA (92%); FRANCE (79%); SPAIN (79%); EGYPT (79%); NIGERIA (79%); CENTRAL EUROPE (58%); GERMANY (58%)







 
 



June 20, 2006 Tuesday



 Full appeals court will hear S.J. refugee's asylum case

 
A federal appeals court Monday voted to reconsider an asylum case involving a refugee living in the South Bay who maintains that ethnic Chinese Christian women in Indonesia face the threat of rape and violence in the world's largest Muslim nation. 
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to reconsider a March 2005 ruling that found Marjorie Lolong eligible for asylum because of the potential for persecution if forced to return to Indonesia. A three-judge 9th Circuit panel ruled in Lolong's favor, but a majority of the court's members has now voted to rehear the case with 15 judges.
The San Francisco-based court broke new ground last year by concluding that ethnic Chinese Christian women are particularly at risk for persecution in Indonesia, opening the door for asylum claims. The decision to rehear the case with a larger panel is generally a signal that the judges believe the issues have broad importance.
Lolong, 36, left Indonesia after high school and enrolled at Golden Gate University in San Francisco at a time when anti-Chinese rioting broke out in Indonesia in 1998. According to court papers, she applied for asylum after hearing that Chinese women were being raped during the rioting.
Lolong has lived on the Peninsula and with an aunt in San Jose in recent years. Robert Jobe, her attorney, could not be reached for comment.
Contact Howard Mintz at hmintz@mercurynews.com or (408) 286-0236.

  UNITED STATES (92%)








 


June 16, 2006



 Finding Kinship in Muslim Senegal

 
It was a moment of mutual discovery.
There I was, an American rabbi in a business suit and yarmulke, standing in a tropical garden in the African nation of Senegal, shaking hands with a dozen-odd colorfully dressed imams and sheiks and wondering what they would say next. I was in Dakar, the capital, for meetings of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations High-Level Group, which was working to close the gap between the West and the Muslim world. The American ambassador, Janice Jacobs, had arranged a reception in my honor at her residence. When the first of the invitees, a youngish man in Western dress, was introduced to me as an Islamic leader who heads a political party dedicated to increasing the role of Islam in Senegalese political life, I braced myself. Reconciliation, I remembered, is an uphill struggle. 
But Cheik Bamba Dieye addressed me warmly. "This is a very special day for us, the first time we have met a Jewish leader in Senegal," he declared in a heartfelt tone. "This is a great opportunity to learn something about Judaism. It is important to explore our differences and accept them without resorting to violence." Dieye, who is expected to run for president next year, explained that, if elected, he and his party will not impose Islamic law on Senegal or force women to adopt Islamic dress. Rather, he hopes to bring the moral voice of Islam to help wean young people from such social evils as drugs and sexual promiscuity. The major religious leaders in Senegal, he emphasized, are committed to preventing the importation of militant Islamism. Acts of violence against adherents of other religions, as propounded by the likes of Osama bin Laden, represent "a lack of respect for God," he said.
Dieye was followed by a white-bearded imam, dressed in robes and leaning on a cane, named Thierno Racine Dia, who had journeyed from the provincial city of Mbouna for the reception. Gazing intensely into my eyes, he stated: "I am convinced that this meeting was arranged by God. All religions in our world share the same sky, and all prophets come from the same source. Building alliances across religious lines is a very important and worthy cause, and we are committed to working with you to achieve it."
As president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, I have traveled the globe for 40 years in the pursuit of religious liberty and human rights. I have met and dialogued over the years with tolerant and erudite imams and sheiks in places like Sarajevo, Istanbul, Almaty and Tashkent. Until then, however, I had been unaware of the Sufi-influenced brand of moderate Islam that is the faith of Senegalese Muslims. The Senegalese clerics I met impressed me with their spontaneity, kindness and respect.
There was another bond between us, as well: the bond between an Austrian-born Jew who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, and black Africans whose nation was the debarkation point for millions of slaves brutally shipped across the ocean to the New World. Senegal's best-known symbol, Gorée Island, just offshore, has been turned into a museum of the Middle Passage and the slave trade. Standing in Dakar, knowing its place in history, I could not help but feel a deep kinship.
Responding to the imams' greetings, I told them I believe that Jews, Muslims and Christians are all children of Abraham, and that even though there is no Jewish community in Senegal, I hoped to work with them "to help build a bond between Senegalese Muslims and Jewish communities. After all, in this world we are all interconnected." I could have talked with them for hours, but the Sabbath was approaching and I had to return to the hotel with my wife, Elisabeth. I gave them a brief overview of the rituals of the Sabbath, explaining the candles that Elisabeth would be lighting in accordance with our tradition. My words appeared to fascinate them.
I had come to Dakar for a meeting of the High-level Group of the United Nations' Alliance of Civilizations, created late last year by Secretary General Kofi Annan. Our mission is to draft recommendations to the secretary general on narrowing the gap between Islam and the West. Our group includes a former Senegalese prime minister, former foreign ministers from France and from Indonesia, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and a renowned American writer on religion, Karen Armstrong.
During our deliberations, I urged my colleagues to ensure that our final report be balanced in its treatment of Iran, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while acknowledging that failure to resolve these conflicts increases the burdens on Islamic-Western relations. I asked that the Alliance of Civilizations call for an international conference of education ministers from Islamic and Western nations, with the mission of rewriting textbooks to remove language that appeals to chauvinism, xenophobia, antisemitism, and ethnic or religious hatred. The group was receptive on both counts.
While in Dakar, I was invited to the presidential palace for a 50-minute meeting with President Abdoulaye Wade, an 80-year-old pro-Western moderate, to discuss ways to increase inter-religious dialogue, including that between Muslims and Jews. The president appeared ready to go further; as a leader of the African Union, he could play a constructive role in building bridges between Israel and the Arab world. We also discussed the war in Darfur, where Senegal maintains a military peacekeeping contingent. Before meeting with the president, I spent two hours with Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio, discussing a wide variety of issues.
The reception given to me, an American rabbi, left me with a strong sense that Senegal could play a significant role in building bridges between Islam and the West on one hand, and between Israel and the Arab world on the other. This is a Muslim country that has something to teach about tolerance; while 95% Muslim, it honors a Catholic, Léopold Sédar Senghor, as its founding father - and has elected him president five times.
Senegalese Islam is dominated by Sufi religious brotherhoods that began in the countryside but now function in Dakar and other cities, providing a network of social services that has been vital in preventing Senegal from dissolving into religious or tribal strife like so many other African nations. The Israeli ambassador, Daniel Pinhasi, is well respected and has high visibility in the capital - though Senegal does not maintain an ambassador in Israel, contrary to diplomatic reciprocity.
Above all, Senegal is a nation that symbolizes humanity's ability to transcend the worst of inhumanity. Gorée Island, a mere 15-minute boat ride from the frenetic pace of Dakar, is today a tranquil island of white sand beaches. It was not always so. Its centerpiece is Slave House - constructed, ironically, in 1776 - with its notorious door of no return, through which slaves passed onto the ships bound for America. As I crouched in a tiny punishment cell that was hewn from stone, the same cell into which Nelson Mandela had climbed during his visit a decade ago, I felt a rush of searing memories. I was taken back to the final months of 1944, when I miraculously escaped deportation from Budapest to Auschwitz but saw many members of my family shipped to the crematorium. Gorée Island reminded me of the Nazi selection methods and of humankind's enormous capacity for evil.
Yet modern-day Senegal comes across as a hopeful place. It is an open and tolerant African society that, despite poverty and a multitude of other problems, holds regular democratic elections. I left Dakar with the conviction that the United States, Europe and world Jewry have a considerable stake in the flourishing of the Senegalese model of tolerance and coexistence.

 SENEGAL (99%); UNITED STATES (93%)








 



June 16, 2006 Friday  




 
Sri Lanka strikes at rebel targets
The airstrikes followed a claymore mine attack on a civilian bus that killed at least 64 and wounded more than 70. The government blamed Tamil rebels, but the group denied it. The attack was the worst violence since a '02 cease-fire and brings the nation closer to civil war. 
CHINA: Crews rushed to clean 61 tons of toxic coal tar from a river spill before it reaches Baoding, a northern city of 10 million.
INDONESIA: The U.N. canceled an aid contract with a militant Muslim group led by Abu Bakar Bashir, who was released from prison this week. The group was delivering U.N. food aid to Java earthquake victims.
LIBERIA/U.K.: Britain agreed to jail ex-Liberian leader Charles Taylor if he is convicted of war crimes.
THAILAND: At least 41 small bombs exploded in the south, killing 2 and injuring 16. Police expected more.

 SRI LANKA (92%);  LIBERIA (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%);  THAILAND (51%)








 



June 15, 2006 Thursday  




 The Pacific's Osama

 
Terrorism: After a slap on the wrist, Indonesia has released the suspected mastermind behind the Bali bombings and a series of other attacks. That's a victory for Islamo-fascists in the Asian theater of the war on terror.
With President Bush reminding reporters Wednesday that Iraq is only one part - albeit a vital one - of the struggle to defeat terrorism, the news that Abu Bakar Bashir was set free from Cipinang Prison in Jakarta amid a cheering mob should remind us all that the war America is engaged in to protect freedom is indeed global. 
Bashir, 68, could be called the Osama bin Laden of Muslim East Asia. "I support Osama bin Laden's struggle," Bashir has stated, "because his is the true struggle to uphold Islam, not terror -- the terrorists are America and Israel ."
Bashir's suspected high-level involvement in terrorism is extensive. He is believed to be the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, a terrorism network that demands Islamic rule in Southeast Asia. It has killed hundreds of people in the course of dozens of bombings in Indonesia and the Philippines, and is closely tied to al-Qaida.
In addition, Bashir was:
** Convicted on conspiracy charges in the suicide bombings of two Bali nightclubs in October 2002 that killed more than 200 and injured more than 200, and which al-Qaida helped finance.
** Charged in relation to the bombings of churches in Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000, in which 18 were killed.
** Charged with involvement in the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003, killing 14.
** Accused of planning the assassination of Megawati Sukarnoputri, a Muslim who was Indonesia's first woman president and a democratic reformer.
** Believed to have given his blessing to bombings carried out by Riduan Islamuddin, also known as Hambali, a top al-Qaida operative wanted in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, who's been in U.S. custody since 2003 in a secret location.
Despite all this, Bashir was sentenced to a mere 30 months in jail in Indonesia, with five months lopped off that sentence, supposedly for good behavior. Although found guilty in 2003 of treason, Bashir won a reversal in an appeals court. The Marriott charges were dropped, and technically he was serving time for immigration violations.
According to Bashir, Jemaah Islamiah doesn't exist -- and apparently the Indonesian legal system agrees with him if its incompetence in dealing with his case is any indication.
Establishing the rule of law is crucial if democracy is to take strong root in a country threatened by fanatics. And if Indonesia -- the most populous Muslim-majority nation on earth -- can't succeed in sending high-profile terrorist leaders to prison for their crimes, and keeping them there, the consequences are grave.
The signal received by terrorists is that democratic rule is inherently weak. It tells them they can get away with their crimes and that their enemies don't have the stomach for a fight against them.
So it's not because of American interests that Indonesia should get serious about punishing terrorists. It's for the sake of Indonesia's own survival. The terrorists are very serious about the kind of violent regimes they want to see set up in Southeast Asia.
Many Americans are all too eager to finish the job in Iraq as soon as possible. But they should consider that Bashir believes that Muslims who don't hate America are committing a sin.
The real sin would be to downplay the significance of Bashir's outrageous release from jail or to forget that the mortal enemies of freedom aren't based just in the Middle East.

 INDONESIA (95%);  IRAQ (92%); ASIA (92%); PHILIPPINES (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); ISRAEL (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); SINGAPORE (79%); EASTERN ASIA (79%)




19


   


June 15, 2006 Thursday  




 Freed Cleric Is Hailed by Students, but Support Could Be Waning

 
Hundreds of Muslim students, thrusting their fists toward the night sky and chanting ''God is great'' in Arabic, welcomed their revered spiritual leader, the militant Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, home from prison on Wednesday night.
  Mr. Bashir was escorted here from prison by police officers, after serving 26 months for immigration violations and criminal conspiracy. 
 He arrived late at night at Al Mukmin, the Islamic boarding school that he helped to found in this central Javanese city, and gave a fiery speech calling on Muslims to fight for Islam, which he called ''the only truth,'' and for the formation of an Islamic state in Indonesia.
  With a broad smile, Mr. Bashir condemned Western governments that have lobbied Indonesia for years to keep him locked up. ''I need to say to the infidels that your efforts to destroy Islam will be in vain,'' he said to the raucous supporters gathered in the main courtyard of the school's heavily secured compound. ''Someday you will pay the price.''
  A frail man at 68, Mr. Bashir still commands a powerful voice.
  Students guarded the approach to the school's front gates before their teacher's arrival and ran through the streets with banners as local residents looked on. ''He is the most Islamic man I know,'' said a 17-year-old student who said his name was Abdul. ''I am very happy about his being released. He is one of our founding fathers.''
  The crowd, however, did not number in the thousands as many had expected. Mr. Bashir had said he did not want to make too much of his release, and school officials said they had planned only a simple ceremony. 
  But the low turnout may also indicate that Mr. Bashir no longer enjoys the support he once did. He has been criticized by a number of former followers for his links to terrorist activities.
  In March 2005 an Indonesian court acquitted Mr. Bashir of seven terrorism charges involving the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali that killed more than 200 people and the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2003. He was convicted only of conspiracy in the bombings.
  During his speech, Mr. Bashir, who is also the spiritual leader of the militant group Jemaah Islamiyah and who the Bush administration believes was a central operative for Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia, said the suicide bombers who blew up the Bali nightclub were heroes in the fight for Islam. But he added that their methods were wrong, indicating that he would no longer support terrorist activities here.
  ''The Bali bombers are Islamic heroes,'' he said. ''But they chose the wrong way to fight. They should not have bombed a peaceful area, they should have preached the truth instead.'' 
  The bulwark of the membership of Jemaah Islamiyah, which advocates an Islamic state in Indonesia, and a number of people convicted for their involvement in terrorist bombings, are graduates of Al Mukmin. The school has about 1,600 students, mostly young men, from all over Indonesia.
  Jemaah Islamiyah's terrorist network has been weakened in recent years as the Indonesian government has prosecuted, killed or sentenced to death most of its top military leaders. 
  Banners and painted signs adorn the school's walls, promoting an Islamic religious war. A sign near the entrance to the main class building reads, ''Be a good Muslim or die.''
  Mr. Bashir, together with several other Indonesian Muslim leaders, founded Al Mukmin in 1972. Its students receive a general education similar to any public school in Indonesia, but Islamic principles are heavily promoted. 
  Ibnu Hanifah, vice director of Al Mukmin, said Mr. Bashir would return to the school as a teacher and counselor but would probably spend the majority of his time touring the country and preaching his support for an Islamic state.

   SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (71%)








 
 

June 15, 2006 Thursday



 HAMAS BIG A $20 MIL SMUGGLER

 
The new Palestinian foreign minister arrived home with 12 suitcases packed with $20 million yesterday - hours after desperate civil servants stormed his parliament building to demand months of missing paychecks.  
Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official, was stopped by Egyptian officials at their Gaza Strip border when he told them of the cash but refused to let anyone open his bags. 
Zahar had been touring the Arab and Muslim world seeking urgent donations - from Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, China, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt - to keep the bankrupt Hamas-led government afloat. 
Border officials said Zahar left the Rafah border terminal without the suitcases. The money was turned over to the Palestinian treasury. 
"This is terrorist money," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in Paris. He charged that Palestinians had rejected legitimate offers of support, including $12 million in humanitarian aid from Israel.  

 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (95%); EGYPT (93%); ISRAEL (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); FRANCE (79%); BRUNEI DARUSSALAM (79%); CHINA (79%); IRAN,  (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%)







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia)

June 14, 2006, Wednesday



 Nation &world

 
Bush says violence in Iraq won't be totally eliminated
WASHINGTON - President Bush, freshly home from a visit to Iraq, acknowledged today that violence in Iraq would never be completely eliminated. 
"That's not going to happen," he said at a Rose Garden news conference.
But Bush also said that Iraqi and coalition forces were stepping up their activities against insurgents, in part by using new intelligence gathered in raids following the killing of top Iraqi terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week.
He said an expectation of "zero violence" was unreasonable.
Pentagon to disclose
interrogation tactics
WASHINGTON - In the face of growing criticism over the treatment of detainees, Pentagon officials have decided to make public all of the military's interrogation techniques.
The decision, which comes after months of internal debate and pressure from members of Congress, would reveal interrogation tactics in a long-awaited revision of the Army Field Manual, despite arguments that it could allow enemy prisoners to better resist questioning.
Defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision is not public yet, said Tuesday that the Pentagon had dropped plans to keep some interrogation techniques secret by putting them in a classified section of the military manual.
Coalition troops prepare
for Afghan offensive
MUSA QALA, Afghanistan - More than 11,000 coalition troops were preparing today for their biggest offensive since the fall of the Taliban five years ago with an attack on militants responsible for a deadly upsurge in violence across southern Afghanistan.
The push starting Thursday by U.S., British, Canadian and Afghan troops aims to squeeze Taliban fighters in four volatile provinces. It will focus on southern Uruzgan and northeastern Helmand, where the military says most of the forces are massed.
The offensive, called Operation Mountain Thrust, comes amid Afghan and coalition efforts to curb the fiercest Taliban-led violence since the hard-line Islamic government was toppled for harboring Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Islamic cleric blamed for
Bali bombings released
JAKARTA, Indonesia - A reputed top leader of an al-Qaida-linked group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings and other deadly attacks walked free from prison today to cries of "God is great" from cheering supporters.
Abu Bakar Bashir, 68, had served 26 months for conspiracy in the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people and thrust Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, onto the front lines of the war on terror.
Australia and the United States, which have accused Bashir of being a key member of Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, said they were disappointed at his release.
May inflation rate rises
with soaring gas prices
WASHINGTON - Consumer inflation registered another sizable increase in May, pushed higher by soaring gasoline prices. And most worrisome, there was further evidence that the jump in energy costs is beginning to cause more widespread inflation troubles.
The Labor Department reported today that its Consumer Price Index posted a 0.4 percent increase in May after an even bigger 0.6 percent rise in April. Gas prices jumped by 4.9 percent as motorists contend with pump prices above $3 per gallon in many parts of the country.
COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS

 IRAQ (97%); UNITED STATES (95%); AFGHANISTAN (93%); INDONESIA (92%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); CANADA (79%); AUSTRALIA (79%); ASIA (79%)







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia)

June 14, 2006, Wednesday



 Yourviews

 
Drug companies frown on excesses
In his column in the Daily Mail on June 2, "Drug companies should explain costs," Dave Peyton unfairly suggests that doctors are overly influenced by what he called, "lavish" educational efforts by pharmaceutical companies to the point that their medical judgment and independence may be compromised.
This suggestion is offensive and, considering the strict code adopted by the member companies of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, it is inaccurate. 
The Code on Interactions with Healthcare Professionals states that expensive meals and lavish gifts are never appropriate.
Furthermore, it states that the primary goal of all activities should be rooted in educating physicians and patients on medicines in an effort to further patient treatment.
The code's goal is to prevent the types of allegations Peyton describes.
Clearly, medicines are an important part of modern health care. Studies show they can help lower the cost of care and often prevent needless surgeries or in-patient treatments. This is good for patient health and far less expensive, too.
America's pharmaceutical research companies are committed to patients.
In an effort to help low-income or uninsured patients better afford their medicines, we created the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, which has helped to match more than 2.3 million people to programs offering free or discounted medicines.
Companies have also provided $55 million worth of products to West Virginia's free clinics.
Addressing health care policy matters and the best ways to meet the needs of patients is important, and it is the responsibility of opinion writers like Peyton to spark a dialogue.
But that dialogue should not be premised on an outdated stereotype that does not accurately reflect the companies that work each day to educate physicians about the risks and benefits of the medicines they discover, which ultimately save countless lives.
Ken Johnson
Washington, D.C.
Johnson is senior vice president of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association.
Couldn't deputies
help police ATVs?
As a member of the Tyler Mountain Neighborhood Watch, (not affiliated in any way with Tyler Mountain Community Association), I respond to the comments from Kanawha County Commissioners Kent Carper and Dave Hardy.
I do agree that something should be done about ATV riding on streets and highways, but I disagree with Hardy that a study should be done.
These vehicles are not intended for street and highway use. As Carper stated, they should not be operated on any street or highway, with or without a center stripe.
The answer to this problem is law enforcement. The sheriff's office has hired deputies, painted the cars and bought new ones, yet no patrols are taking place on Tyler Mountain.
Yes, we get a cursory drive-through in the middle of the day once or twice a month, but requests for patrols in the evening hours go unheeded.
The answer I get mostly is that one deputy has to cover over half the county. On Woodrum Lane the problem continues to go unheeded on a daily basis.
I submit respectfully that the answer to illegal ATV use lies squarely in the area of responsibility of the sheriff's department.
If we see more deputies in our area, who knows, the speeding problem may even get better.
Rather than a study to find a way to enact more legislation, why not first try enforcing the ones we already have?
Eddie E. Tucker
Charleston
U.S. seniors
are coming in last
It is a sad day when our senators and congressman represent all other countries with disaster aid, while they treat its senior citizens like they don't really exist.
Our Medicare benefits have dropped, the costs have risen, and the Medicare prescription benefits are a joke.
It was supposed to be something wonderful for senior citizens, yet they told us if we don't sign up before a certain time we would have to pay a penalty of 1 percent a month.
We have spent billions helping the people of Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq and even the Palestinian Muslim terrorists who constantly kill our people and Israelis.
The sad thing is our government even builds schools and many other projects to enrich their lives while our people suffer.
The feminists stand up and they listen. The gay group stands up and they listen.
Illegal immigrants stand up and they listen.
If you like what they are doing to us, maybe you should thank the New World Order.
Rex Bartholomew
Milton

 UNITED STATES (93%)







 
 


June 14, 2006, Wednesday



 Once free, Indonesian cleric could 'revitalize' radicals

 
A forthcoming prison diary by Islamist preacher Abu Bakar Bashir, who is due to be released Wednesday, shows his 25-month sentence has not tamed his jihadist fire. In the diary, he calls US President George Bush "evil" and claims the "infidel" Australian Prime Minster John Howard bullied a weak Indonesia to imprison him on trumped-up charges pertaining to the Bali bombings in 2002.
Upon release, Mr. Bashir is expected to return home to his Islamist boarding school, Ngruki, which schooled dozens of Indonesia's most prominent terrorists. 
Yet analysts are downplaying fears that Bashir, accused of being the "emir" or leader of the militant group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), will begin ordering bombings. Rather, Bashir is more likely to use his celebrity to preach fire and brimstone and bolster the cause of hard-line Islam.
Sidney Jones, a leading JI analyst with the International Crisis Group in Jakarta, argues that dozens of arrests have left the organization fragmented and damaged but still dangerous. Ms. Jones says that Bashir is likely to be become a "media star" and rallying symbol of Indonesia's Islamist fringe.
Indeed, the cleric plans to travel across Indonesia speaking of his experiences, says Muhyidin Djunaedi, a Bashir aide. On the itinerary are religious flashpoints such as Sulawesi and Ambon island, where Christian and Muslim groups have clashed in recent years.
Australia, a country that has suffered heavily from JI attacks, expressed concern last week that Bashir's release could "revitalize" JI. "We would have liked to have see him spend more time in jail," said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. The US and the UN have listed JI as a terrorist organization and both Singapore and Malaysia have banned it. Indonesian officials say there is little they can do as he has served his sentence.
Bashir was sentenced in March last year to two-and-a-half years in jail on charges of conspiracy in JI-linked bomb attacks in Jakarta, but saw his sentence reduced. Bashir continues to deny his guilt and dismiss claims he was involved in terrorism.
Despite the denials, Bashir and his school are likely to be tightly monitored. Syamsir Siregar, Indonesia's intelligence chief, told Parliament on Monday that he "hoped Bashir would come to his senses and work with us."
Indonesian intelligence officials say that JI has evolved since Bashir's imprisonment, led by different men and with a more decentralized structure. Nasir Abbas, a former JI operative now working with police, says that the loose, cell-based structure meant that operatives were often working independently and may not be in touch with one another. He says Bashir played more of an "inspirational" than "operational" role.
"He will help boost the spirit of the faithful," says Habib Rizieq, head of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a hard-line vigilante group known for its violent street rallies. Mr. Rizieq, who founded a school with Bashir, pledged to welcome him upon his release.
Bashir's freedom comes at a time of rising tensions between hard-line and moderate Islam. Leaders from Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, the 40-million strong Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), in June called for the banning of the FPI and of Bashir's official organization, the Indonesian Mujahidin Council.
The NU has long championed a secular over an Islamic state and defended the rights of Christian minorities. In recent months, the NU has opposed the FPI's attempts to support a radical anti-porn bill that would outlaw kissing in public and women exposing their navels. Verbal clashes between the groups escalated after FPI gangs forced former President Abdurrahman Wahid to leave a stage. Parliament and the government agreed last week to change a 1985 freedom of assembly law to allow them to disband groups deemed to be a threat to public order.
(c) . The 

 INDONESIA (98%); UNITED STATES (93%);  MALAYSIA (79%); SINGAPORE (79%)








 
The York Dispatch 

June 14, 2006 Wednesday



 World dispatches

 
INDONESIA
Reputed terror leader freed
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A reputed top leader of an al-Qaida-linked terror group that has been blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings and other deadly attacks walked free from prison today to cries of "God is great" from cheering supporters. 
Abu Bakar Bashir, 68, had served 26 months for conspiracy in the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people and thrust Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, onto the front lines of the war on terror.
Officials in Australia and the United States, which have accused Bashir of being a key member of Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, said they were disappointed at his release, as did Australian victims of the Bali blasts.
"It's hard to imagine how a leader of a gang ... can get only two years for orchestrating to kill 200 people and injuring many more," said Peter Hughes, 46, who suffered burns to 56 percent of his body in the attack. "It doesn't make sense."
Eighty-eight of the Bali bombing fatalities were from Australia.
DEADLY BLAST
Israel rejects responsibility
JERUSALEM -- Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Israel was not responsible for a blast that killed eight Gaza beachgoers, rebuffing Palestinian accusations that blamed an Israeli artillery round.
An Israeli inquiry concluded the blast was caused by an explosive buried in the sand, not from Israeli shelling on the afternoon of the Palestinian family's beach picnic.
It was not clear how the explosive got there or whether it might have been an unexploded Israeli shell from an earlier military barrage. Peretz did not address that issue. Israel has been claiming that Hamas militants planted a device to set off against Israeli commandos.
Maher Makdad of the Palestinians' Fatah movement rejected the Israeli claims. "I only heard lies," he said. "I also heard an insistence on continuing these practices, because if they admitted their mistake, we could understand that they are ready to change their policies."
The bloody images of dead Palestinian civilians and wailing survivors on the beach kindled anger against Israel around the world.

 ISRAEL (96%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%);    SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


June 12, 2006 Monday



 Comeuppance for Rummy

 
   Comedian Jon Stewart can be ruthless. He doesn't just needle people, he harpoons them. When Donald Rumsfeld appeared at a press briefing after the death of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the secretary of defense  seemed almost humbled by the news. Without missing a beat Stewart said Rumsfeld appeared that way because it was the first thing Rumsfeld has done right. 
Last week Rumsfeld took it on the chin again. Then it was Indonesia's defense minister scolding him for being "overbearing" and throwing his weight around when it comes to fighting terrorism. Indonesia is in the crosshairs of terrorism and, as a Muslim nation, has the right to bristle at Rumsfeld's approach. But that Kodak moment was just one more in a long line of potshots the defense secretary has been forced to weather.
In fact, given the slings and arrows of outrageous commentary that have been hurled Rumsfeld's way, one must admire the fact he hasn't wilted. He stands his ground. He bears up. For good or ill. In fact, most Americans would like to like the guy, if he didn't always come across as a hedgehog on a bad day.
Nobody wants a secretary of defense who sends hearts and flowers. And certainly the last thing the United States can show at this juncture in the war on terror is weakness. But a dollop of humanity would go a long way to salve some of the ruffled feathers and anxiety that are cropping up in the nation.
Vice President Dick Cheney learned the lesson after his shotgun escapade. Steeling himself against criticism only made things worse. Giving Americans a quick peek into his heart did more to help him over the fallout from the incident than all the press secretaries in the administration spinning faster than Rapunzel.
Donald Rumsfeld might take a page out of Cheney's book.
No one expects him to be warm and cuddly. In fact, for Rumsfeld, just smiling with both sides of his mouth may feel, to him, like being gooey all over. On the other hand, America needs to know that the people running the war have warm blood flowing through their veins; that behind the iciness of public policy and military tactics, there still beats a living heart.
That's not too much to ask. When Americans have gotten a peek behind the president's stern countenance it has produced encouragement, not concern.
Rumsfeld could benefit from similar moments of candor.

 UNITED STATES (94%); INDONESIA (92%)







   


June 11, 2006 Sunday  




 A Walk Across Afghanistan

 
THE PLACES 
  IN BETWEEN
  By Rory Stewart.
  Illustrated. 299 pp. Harvest/Harcourt. 
  Paper, $14.
PITY the contemporary travel writer: routinely viewed as a kind of overstuffed guidebook author, struggling to explain exactly what he or she does. Specialists pounce on the tiniest ''mistakes,'' and ideologues condemn the whole enterprise as colonialism with a thesaurus. Meanwhile, there's no single go-to word for what this most curious and searching of writers seeks to produce. Travel narrative? Peripatetic memoir? Adventure yarn? Not that this even matters, since -- or so the prevailing wisdom goes -- the best journeys have already been made. All that's left is a specious sort of experiential plagiarism.
  Not quite. Rory Stewart's first book, ''The Places in Between,'' recounts his journey across Afghanistan in January 2002. Even in mild weather in an Abrams tank, such a trip would be mane-whitening. But Stewart goes in the middle of winter, crossing through some territory still shakily held by the Taliban -- and entirely on foot. There are some Medusa-slayingly gutsy travel writers out there -- Redmond O'Hanlon, Jeffrey Tayler, Robert Young Pelton -- but Stewart makes them look like Hilton sisters. 
  Paul Theroux once described a certain kind of travel book as having mainly ''human sacrifice'' allure, and how close Stewart comes to being killed on his journey won't be disclosed here. He is, however, sternly warned before he begins his walk. ''You are the first tourist in Afghanistan,'' observes an Afghan from the country's recently resurrected Security Service. ''It is mid-winter,'' he adds. ''There are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee.'' For perhaps the first time in the history of travel writing, a secret-police goon emerges as the voice of sobriety and reason.
  Recalling an American journalist who wondered if Stewart thought what he was doing was dangerous, he writes, ''I had never found a way to answer that question without sounding awkward, insincere or ridiculous.'' He's then asked if he has read ''Into the Wild,'' Jon Krakauer's account of a well-meaning young man's doomed trek into the Alaskan wilderness. It is, Stewart is told, more than a little pointedly, ''a great piece of journalism.''
  So is ''The Places in Between'' -- a pipsqueak title for what is otherwise a striding, glorious book. But it's more than great journalism. It's a great travel narrative. Learned but gentle, tough but humane, Stewart -- a Scottish journalist who has served in both the British Army and the Foreign Office -- seems hewn from 19th-century DNA, yet he's also blessed with a 21st-century motherboard. He writes with a mystic's appreciation of the natural world, a novelist's sense of character and a comedian's sense of timing.
  Stewart's travels in Afghanistan were part of a much longer journey, a walk across Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal. The author and book to which he's doomed to suffer comparison is Robert Byron, whose ''Road to Oxiana'' details a journey across Persia and Afghanistan in the 1930's. (No doubt mindful of this, Stewart name-checks Byron twice.) But Stewart has little to worry about. In literary terms, he's Byron's equal, and in matters of temperament and compassion, he's arguably Byron's better. While Stewart's chapters are typically short and episodic, every one has a haiku-like intensity.
  Stewart is a rarity among travel writers: he's not much interested in telling us about himself. He says he promised his mother this would be his last journey and he'd come home if he didn't get killed, and that's about as confessional as he gets. (You have to suspect that he wasn't entirely straight with his mother: his second book, ''The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq'' will be published in August.)
  Stewart clearly loves the people of Afghanistan, to whom he has partly dedicated this book. Despite sometimes being ''greedy, idle, stupid, hypocritical, insensitive, mendacious, ignorant and cruel,'' he explains, these people never attempted ''to kidnap or kill me'' -- even though Stewart ''represented a culture that many of them hated.'' Thanking people for not killing you: this is defining deviancy down.
  But Stewart, who speaks Persian, has no orientalist illusions; he romanticizes nothing and no one. Rather, he has written a kind of tonic to mindless Taliban-hating. He doesn't pardon the Mullah Omars who replicated seventh-century conditions at the end of a weapon the prophet could scarcely have dreamed of, and he's rightfully devastating on the remnants of the hard-core Taliban, describing them as ''bullies with a strangled and dangerous view of God and a stupid obsession with death.'' But the average citizens of Afghanistan, some of whom found themselves working for or aiding the Taliban, he beholds with admirable calm.
  When Stewart meets one former Taliban commander, the man is living in comparatively high style, which amounts to owning a water pump, a wood-burning stove and an outhouse. Is this man worth hating? Is he someone who imperils Western freedom? What about his countrymen who have never seen a television or wandered very far from their villages? Can they really be expected to understand why two collapsed buildings in Manhattan have resulted in a sky prowled by American jets?
  This is more political than Stewart allows himself to be. Ideologically, he's well behaved. At worst, he's agnostic on the question of the American-led invasion, though a late passage in the book offers a blistering, if mostly forgiving, critique of the foreign workers and diplomats, some of them Stewart's friends, who work ''12- or 14-hour days drafting documents for heavily funded initiatives'' on ''democratization'' and ''sustainable development.'' Stewart's most moving achievement is his determination to empathize with men -- the book is, unavoidably, a Turkish bath house of masculinity -- few have made any effort to understand.
  Early in his trip, thanks to a noncommittal blessing from the warlord Ismail Khan (''A big journey,'' Khan adjudges his mission, ''which I would like to support''), Stewart picks up three Afghan traveling partners with predictably tangled loyalties. He grows to like these men, despite their fondness for threatening to shoot children, even as they cause him almost as much trouble as their protective presence otherwise curtails. During a hilarious dinner with a village headman, one of his companions confidently announces that Stewart is from Ukraine, speaks Russian, is a doctor and works for the United Nations. Later, a radio station in Herat announces that ''Agha Rory'' will be awarded $2 million once he reaches his destination. By this time, Agha Rory has become his mendicant protectors' bipedal A.T.M. Stewart resentfully walks them all into the ground, and they take their exhausted leave of him.
  Armed only with a wooden staff tipped with a metal nub scavenged from an old Soviet armored personnel carrier, Stewart meets a new friend who will help him complete his journey -- a retired fighting dog ''the size of a small pony'' whose teeth have been knocked out and whose ears and tail have been snipped off. Stewart names him Babur, in honor of the descendant of Tamerlane who retreated from modern-day Uzbekistan across Afghanistan on his way to found India's Mogul dynasty. Babur's 16th-century autobiography, the ''Baburnama,'' is among the books Stewart packs, and ''The Places in Between'' details the haunting continuities between Babur's meticulous impressions and what Stewart experiences. 
  The inclusion of a canine companion threatens to transform Stewart's journey into ''Travels With Charley While Dodging Kalashnikov Fire,'' but Stewart is admirably allergic to sentiment. At one point, about to collapse from cold and exhaustion, ''half buried in deep powder,'' he looks up to see Babur barking at him. ''His matter-of-factness made me feel that I was being melodramatic. If he was going to continue, so would I.''
  The book is replete with fascinating, if fearfully context-dependent, travel tips. If you are forced to lie about being a Muslim, claim you're from Indonesia, a Muslim nation few non-Indonesian Muslims know much about. Open land undefiled by sheep droppings has most likely been mined. If you're taking your donkey to high altitudes, slice open its nostrils to allow greater oxygen flow. Don't carry detailed maps, since they tend to suggest 007 affinities. If, finally, you're determined to do something as recklessly stupid as walk across a war zone, your surest bet to quash all the inevitable criticism is to write a flat-out masterpiece. Stewart did. Stewart has. ''The Places in Between'' is, in very nearly every sense, too good to be true.


 AFGHANISTAN (90%); 







   


June 8, 2006 Thursday  




 

Dixie Chicks Rule the Roost
  The Dixie Chicks, right, have extended their reign atop the Billboard album chart to a second week, with sales of 271,000 copies of ''Taking the Long Way'' (Columbia), which also occupies the No. 1 slot on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. The irrepressible ''High School Musical'' soundtrack (Disney) held the No. 2 spot again, in its 21st week on the chart, with sales of 103,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' ''Stadium Arcadium'' (Warner Brothers) rebounded to third place from fifth, selling 87,000 copies. Fourth place was occupied by the Rascal Flatts album ''Me and My Gang'' (Lyric Street/Hollywood), with sales of 79,000, and ''American Idol Season 5: Encores'' (RCA), featuring songs from each of the competition's 12 finalists, dipped to fifth place from third, with sales of 68,000. 

Brangelina: Day in the Life
 
  Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt made their first public appearance yesterday since the birth last month of their daughter Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, announcing that they have no plans to marry and thanking Namibia for affording them privacy and peace, The Associated Press reported. They have sold exclusive rights to images of the baby and have said the money will be used to help African children, but two gossip Web sites posted a picture of the couple with their daughter. In London, People and Hello! magazines began legal action against the sites. People was reported to have paid $4 million for North American rights to the photos, and Hello! acquired British rights. As for marriage, Ms. Jolie, referring to her two adopted children, Zahara, 16 months, and Maddox, 4 years, said: ''There is nothing in the air. The focus is the kids, and we are obviously extremely committed to the children and as parents together. So that kind of says it for us, and to have a ceremony on top of it is nothing.''

Jerry Lewis Plans Broadway Musical
  Is Jerry Lewis, below, Broadway bound? No, not as a performer. And not as a producer, like, say, Max Bialystock. But as the director of a musical version of his 1963 film ''The Nutty Professor,'' in which he starred as the bucktoothed Julius Kelp, inventor of a potion that transforms him into the suave Buddy Love. The star of the show will be Michael Andrew, a crooner and comedian who fronts the Atomic Big and whose Michael Andrew  will produce it. Rights to the musical version of ''The Nutty Professor,'' remade as an Eddie Murphy film in 1996, were bought by the company in March. Referring to Mr. Andrew, 41, Mr. Lewis, 80, said: ''I saw this kid perform, and he wanted very much to do that, and he had money. I said, 'With those pockets, we'll give it a shot.' '' Mr. Lewis said he hoped to have the show on Broadway by October 2008.

Jackman Replaces Crowe In Luhrmann Epic
  Weeks after Russell Crowe dropped out as Nicole Kidman's co-star in an untitled Australian epic planned by Baz Luhrmann (''Moulin Rouge''), Hugh Jackman (''X-Men''), right, has entered the cast, Reuters reported. Set in northern Australia, the film, described by Mr. Luhrmann as a sweeping romance in the vein of ''Gone With the Wind'' and ''Lawrence of Arabia,'' deals with a British aristocrat (Ms. Kidman) who inherits a cattle ranch the size of Maryland but is soon threatened by cattle barons. So she teams up with a tough cowpuncher (Mr. Jackman) to herd cattle across an unforgiving landscape, only to encounter the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese. Filming is to begin in February.

A Recording Deal For 'Idol' Runner-Up
  Katharine McPhee, below, may have lost out to Taylor Hicks in the finals of the latest ''American Idol'' competition on Fox, but she, too, has a contract with Clive Davis, the music magnate who has shaped the careers of previous winners, The Associated Press reported. Her agreement links her to 19 Recordings Unlimited, a label managed by Simon Fuller, an executive producer of ''Idol.'' Ms. McPhee's recordings of ''Over the Rainbow'' and ''My Destiny'' are to be released in stores and through digital outlets on June 27. The Grammy Award-winning hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas are to perform in China next month. Their Monkey Business tour will take them to the Exhibition Center Theater in Beijing on July 18 and the Grand Stage in Shanghai on July 20, The Associated Press reported. 

Karaoke? Part of the Job
  Corporate executives who find themselves invited to sing karaoke while on business in Vietnam might want to think twice before declining the offer. The newspaper Tien Phong (Pioneer) reported yesterday that 21 officials of P.V.F.C., the financial arm of the state oil monopoly PetroVietnam, had been ordered to make ''self-criticism'' reports after they opted not to sing at a contract-signing ceremony near Hanoi on Saturday, Reuters reported. The newspaper said that at least eight department heads were facing suspension. Tien Phong also published a letter from a group of officials who protested the penalty as unlawful. ''We all thought we had completed our company obligation and contributed to the success of the ceremony,'' it said. ''We were only thinking of our family back in Hanoi, the kids and the wives waiting.'' A company official said, ''No one has been laid off yet, but they have to criticize themselves for not participating in collective activities.''

Playboy Returns
  A second issue of the Indonesian edition of Playboy has been released, weeks after the publishers halted operations in the face of violent protests by Muslim militants, Agence France-Presse reported. In the interim the publishers transferred operations from Jakarta to Bali, the mainly Hindu resort island. 

Footnote
  The New Group's 2006-7 season will open with a revival of Jay Presson Allen's ''Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,'' starring Cynthia Nixon and directed by Scott Elliott. Performances will begin in late September.

  NAMIBIA (79%); NORTH AMERICA (79%)







 
 


June 7, 2006 Wednesday  




 LETTERS

 
Re: March 31 letter to the editor, "Satanism over truth?":
The letter writer said that musician Avril Lavigne was showing the sign of Satan. It was the Hook 'em Horns sign.
That doesn't really bother me too much because both Mack Brown and I went to Florida State University.
What does bother me, though, is that some editor at the American-Statesman read this letter and decided to share these thoughts with Austin and the rest of the state. 
I read the opinion page in the hopes that I will read something written by someone smarter than myself. To publish that letter saying the Catholic Church is synonymous with murder, torture, pedophilia and lies was the caliber of discussion I would expect on a bathroom wall, not the home newspaper of the University of Texas.
To allow a letter writer to describe your hometown team's fan symbol as the "sign of Satan" makes me wonder who is running the editorial board at the Statesman. Is it some Aggie?
JOE REINSEL
Cedar Park
Pollan is a nice guy?
Re: March 31 Food & Life article, "The opining omnivore":
American-Statesman writer Pat Beach wrote, "Pollan is not about to apologize for being a nice guy." In my opinion, nice guys don't attack a reputable company such as Whole Foods, which does more for the environment than any other chain of stores out there. And nice guys would at least go to the source - in this case, Whole Foods' founder and CEO John Mackey - before dragging someone's name through the mud in a book. And nice guys don't read Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" and come away supporting a meat-based diet, regardless of whether the cattle are fed corn or grass. Well, I guess nice guys do finish last, as Pollan has proved.
TIMOTHY VERRET
Austin
A corny, but good idea
Was the American-Statesman being corny by printing an article on ethanol pumps coming to H-E-B in the Business section ("H-E-B to add ethanol pumps") and an article on author Michael Pollan's quest to get us to eat less corn and corn-fed beef in the Food & Life section of the same edition? The symbiosis was undeniable.
I never would have equated dependence on foreign oil with healthy eating before. After reading both articles, the solution became perfectly clear: We can decrease our reliance on Middle Eastern oil by expanding the development and use of corn-based fuel. But to keep it affordable, we need a larger corn supply. If we do as Pollan suggested and eat fewer corn-based products to improve our health, we all win. As for the cows - let them eat grass!
KERRI GALVIN
Austin
A sign of things to come?
The opponents of Propositions 1 and 2 have taken down their signs, but they have left the metal fence posts that they stuck in the ground all over town.
How does this reflect on developers and their supporters if we leave these unsightly posts all over town? It certainly doesn't seem to be in line with their promises of responsible development.
BOB GRIFFITH
Austin
A simple, effective honor
I served my country for 24 years, and I earned medals, ribbons and citations for service in World War II and Korea, as many others did.
But recently, I received the best honor - an e-mail from my daughter Terri that said, "Thanks, Dad, for your military service."
Thanks for remembering those of us who are still here, lest we forget. Our ranks are getting thinner.
ALBERT DETJEN
Austin
Outraged by free tickets
The article about state legislators receiving free tickets to University of Texas football games was positively obscene (May 29, "Lawmakers get UT ticket perk").
One state legislator received 84 tickets, and more than 130 legislators received free tickets to UT games.
Not only should state legislators not get free tickets to games, but some of the other perks they get should be eliminated.
GARY DAVIDSON
Round Rock
The rest of the story
Re: May 29 editorial, "The story of war - and all of its valor and horror":
The other story is that the survivors of the Texan 36th Infantry Division who were captured by the Germans at Rapido River were later rescued by the 442nd Infantry Battalion, which consisted of second-generation Japanese Americans.
The 442nd rescued the surviving 211 Texan soldiers in a battle lasting five days of night-and-day fighting that resulted in more than 800 casualties to the 442nd. Many of these Japanese Americans had volunteered from internment camps, where most of them still had imprisoned parents and other family members.
The 36th Division would later publicly thank the 442nd with a silver plaque declaring them to be "Honorary Texans."
After the war, the Texan speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, soon dropped his explicitly racist resistance to granting statehood to Hawaii.
ARTHUR SAKAMOTO
Associate professor
Center for Asian American Studies
and Department of Sociology
University of Texas
Austin
Gonzales' shortcomings
Alberto Gonzales is far worse as U.S. attorney general than the "disappointment" described in the American-Statesman's May 26 editorial, "Total disappointment."
He is a total disaster and a constitutional abuser.
The GOP leadership is "livid" over Gonzales' authorization to search a U.S. representative's congressional office, according to the editorial. Will the GOP whine and stomp its feet as usual or stand up and act to defend constitutional principles?
KAREN SUFFIAN-FROST
Austin
The importance of aid
The earthquake in Indonesia reminded me that I traveled to Yogyakarta in 1967. My Indonesian host, who was a Muslim, told me that they had recently defeated communists who tried to take over Indonesia. He loved America and wanted education and prosperity for his nieces and nephews. But Indonesian children were often sick because nutritious food was not readily available.
The pro-Western dictator, Suharto, was corrupt, so Indonesians did not fully enjoy prosperity.
We need to remember history in our fight against terrorism, and send as much aid as we can.
BARBARA BREWER
bjbrew@earthlink.net
Austin

 UNITED STATES (94%); MIDDLE EAST (79%)







 
 


June 7, 2006, Wednesday



 US military personnel do more good than harm

 
The headlines last week were front page and stark. US Marines had apparently gone on a murderous rampage months earlier in the Iraqi insurgent stronghold of Haditha, killing as many as 24 civilians, including women and children. They did so after one of their Humvees in which they were patrolling was blown up by a roadside bomb, killing one marine and wounding two others. There was no evidence that the civilians they massacred were culpable.
There are grounds for belief that after the deadly action, the marines and some of their superiors tried to cover it up. The tragedy was uncovered by reporters for Time magazine. Senior US military officers launched investigations into the event itself and the coverup. President Bush said that those who are guilty must be punished. Though the investigations are proceeding, Pentagon sources say that charges of murder could be brought against some of the marines involved. 
If the charges are true, the killings at Haditha could become as shameful a chapter in the Iraq war as was the Vietnam War's My Lai - where US soldiers massacred a whole village. Following the scandal of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib, such actions sully and undermine the selfless efforts by many other US military men and women to rebuild Iraq and bring it some semblance of democracy.
Also in the news last week, but generally not making the front pages, was the relief effort by US Marines and US personnel, along with other international donors, on Indonesia's big island of Java, which was hit by a devastating earthquake. Thousands of Indonesians were killed, thousands more injured, and perhaps as many as 200,000 left homeless.
Marine cargo planes flew a mobile field hospital into the city of Yogyakarta, closest to the quake area. Other marines started distributing emergency supplies to the needy. The amphibious assault ship USS Essex, which has extensive medical facilities, was routed to the area.
The two contrasting stories, one of senseless murder in Iraq, and the other of humanitarian aid to save life in Indonesia, underline for Americans both the agonies and the triumphs of being the most powerful nation in the world with sweeping international responsibilities.
This is not the first time the US has offered an outstretched hand to Indonesia in its time of need. After a giant tsunami hit Indonesia in 2004, the US mounted a massive relief operation, sending aircraft and ships with supplies and manpower to the scene. Some 15,000 American servicemen took part, flying hundreds of helicopter missions to deliver food, water, and medical aid to the victims.
The reaction in Indonesia to the visible American effort was very positive. A poll by the respected Indonesian Survey Institute found a threefold increase in the favorable view of the United States. In 2003, after the American military invasion of Iraq, the favorable view of America was a lowly 15 percent. After the American aid effort to refugees from the tsunami, the favorable view of the US rocketed to 44 percent.
There was a similar rise of approval for the US in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake there. The US was swift to offer relief. In four months, the US flew more than 4,000 sorties with Chinook helicopters delivering more than 11,000 tons of relief supplies. Nearly 32,000 patients received medical attention and a US Navy construction battalion cleared more than 50,000 tons of debris.
A subsequent poll by the nonprofit Terror Free Tomorrow organization showed that, as a result of the relief operation, favorable opinion of the US in Pakistan jumped from 23 percent in 2005 to more than 46 percent by the end of that year.
Both Indonesia and Pakistan are Muslim, but non-Arab, countries. Their direction could offer a meaningful example to other Arab countries in the Islamic world.
The US has a long history of aiding countries around the world after catastrophic events. The motivation is humanitarian. With typical American generosity, churches, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals have worked alongside the US government in bringing aid to human beings in distress, whatever their politics and whether the relationship of their governments with the US is friendly or not. North Korea and Iran are just as likely to be offered aid as are longtime allies of the US.
This is just as it should be. But when the US is engaged in a critical war of words with terrorists and would-be terrorists in the Islamic world, such no-strings humanitarian aid plays a role in generating a more positive image of Americans and their government.
* John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News.
(c) . The 

  IRAQ (95%); INDONESIA (95%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


June 7, 2006 Wednesday



 Relief efforts build positive image for U.S.

 
   The headlines last week were front page and stark. U.S. Marines had apparently gone on a murderous rampage months earlier in the insurgent Iraqi stronghold of Haditha, killing as many as 24 civilians, including women and children. They did so after one of their Humvees in which they were patrolling was blown up by a roadside bomb, killing one Marine and wounding two others. There was no evidence that the civilians they massacred were culpable.
There are grounds for belief that after the deadly action the Marines and some of their superiors tried to cover it up. The tragedy was uncovered by reporters for Time magazine. Senior U.S. military officers launched investigations into the event itself and the cover-up. President Bush said those guilty must be punished. Though the investigations are proceeding, Pentagon sources say that charges of murder could be brought against some of the Marines involved. 
If the charges are true, the killings at Haditha could become as shameful a chapter in the Iraq war as was My Lai, where U.S. soldiers massacred a whole village in the Vietnam War. Following on the scandal of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib, such actions sully and undermine the selfless efforts by many other U.S. military men to rebuild Iraq and bring it some semblance of democracy.
Also in the news last week, but generally not making the front pages, was the relief effort by U.S. Marines and U.S. personnel, along with other international donors, on Indonesia's big island of Java, which was stricken by a devastating earthquake. Thousands of Indonesians were killed, thousands more injured, and perhaps as many as 200,000 left homeless.
Marine cargo planes flew a mobile field hospital into the city of Yogjakarta, closest to the quake area. Other Marines started distributing emergency supplies to the needy. The amphibious assault ship USS Essex, which has extensive medical facilities, was routed to the area.
The two contrasting stories, one of senseless murder in Iraq and the other of humanitarian aid to save life in Indonesia, underline for Americans both the agonies and the triumphs of being the most powerful nation in the world with sweeping international responsibilities.
This is not the first time the United States has offered an outstretched hand to Indonesia in its time of need. After a giant tsunami hit Indonesia in 2004, the United States mounted a massive relief operation, sending aircraft and ships with supplies and manpower to the scene. Some 15,000 American servicemen took part, flying hundreds of helicopter missions to deliver food, water and medical aid to the victims.
The reaction in Indonesia to the visible American effort was very positive. A poll by the respected Indonesian Survey Institute found a threefold increase in the favorable view of the United States. In 2003, after the American military invasion of Iraq, the favorable view of America was a lowly 15 percent. After the American aid effort to refugees from the tsunami, the favorable view of the United States rocketed to 44 percent.
There was a similar rise of approval for the United States in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake there. The United States was swift to offer relief. In four months the United States flew more than 4,000 sorties with Chinook helicopters delivering more than 11,000 tons of relief supplies. Nearly 32,000 patients received medical attention, and a U.S. Navy construction battalion cleared more than 50,000 tons of debris.
A subsequent poll by the nonprofit Terror Free Tomorrow organization showed that as a result of the relief operation, favorable opinion of the United States in Pakistan jumped from 23 percent in 2005 to more than 46 percent by 2006.
Both Indonesia and Pakistan are Muslim, but non-Arab, countries. Their direction could offer a meaningful example to Arab countries in the Islamic world.
The United States has a long history of aiding countries around the world after catastrophic events. The motivation is humanitarian. With typical American generosity, churches and nongovernmental organizations and individuals have worked alongside the U.S. government in bringing aid to human beings in distress, whatever their politics and whether the relationship of their governments with the United States is friendly or not. North Korea and Iran are just as likely to be offered aid as longtime allies of the United States.
This is just as it should be. But when the United States is engaged in a critical war of words with terrorists and would-be terrorists in the Islamic world, such no-strings humanitarian aid plays a role in generating a more positive image of Americans and their government. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He is a former editor of the , which syndicates this column. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com

 UNITED STATES (98%); IRAQ (95%); INDONESIA (95%)







 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. 
Palm Beach Post (Florida)

June 7, 2006 Wednesday  




 KAZAKHSTAN TRIP VITAL, WEXLER SAYS

 
A report itemizing the cost of Rep. Robert Wexler's 2002 trip to Kazakhstan may have over-estimated some of the costs, he said Tuesday.
Wexler's five-day trip, sponsored by the Jewish Congress of Kazakhstan, was listed as costing $29,951. Most of that cost, nearly $27,000, was for commercial flights by Wexler and his wife, Laurie. But he said meals listed as costing $1,500 were for large groups of people. He said he did not ask the sponsors to itemize his share of the costs. 
The trip was highlighted Monday in a report that focused on privately financed congressional trips.
Wexler, who serves on the House International Relations Committee, said the trip helped foster close ties with Kazakhstan, a moderate Muslim country, and boosted the standing of its large Jewish community.
"We're going to win the war on terrorism in moderate Muslim countries . . . in places like Kazakhstan and Turkey and Indonesia," Wexler said. "I think more members of Congress should devote themselves to travel and establishing bilateral relationships" with those parts of the world.
During the trip, Wexler met with President Nursultan Nazarbayev and other high-ranking officials, helped lay the cornerstone of a new synagogue and participated in the opening of a Jewish Community Center.
Wexler also visited an orphanage in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, from which several South Florida families have adopted children.
After returning, Wexler organized the U.S.-Kazakhstan InterParliamentary Friendship Group.
Meanwhile, Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., R-Fort Lauderdale, challenged the report's assertion that Shaw did not properly disclose some of the costs associated with seven of his 14 privately sponsored trips.
House rules do not require members to list a dollar amount on their lodging expenses and exempt them from listing the cost of meals that are privately financed and widely attended, Gitcho said. The House Ethics Committee, which checks Shaw's travel forms routinely never has indicated he was filling them out improperly, she said.
- larryl@coxnews.com

 KAZAKHSTAN (94%); UNITED STATES (90%); 







 
 



June 7, 2006 Wednesday



 Asia news in brief

 

INDONESIA

Rumsfeld, counterpart meet to improve ties
The United States needs to let other countries decide for themselves how to fight terrorism to counter perceptions that Washington is overbearing, Indonesia's defense minister told visiting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday. 
In turn, Rumsfeld talked to Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono about a need for their nation to continue efforts to ensure that human rights abuses are no longer a problem with its military.
After more than seven years of estrangement, the United States is working to improve its military relationship with Indonesia in the face of growing disenchantment over the Iraq war among the people in this Muslim nation.

AFGHANISTAN

Two coalition soldiers killed in bomb attack
Bomb attacks on U.S.-led forces killed two coalition soldiers and wounded four in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday. An Afghan interpreter was also injured.
Afghanistan has suffered a spate of suicide bombings in the past 10 months, but most have been in southern provinces, where remnants of the former Taliban rule are strongest. More than 400 people, mostly militants, died in fighting last month as more NATO forces prepared to deploy to the south.
Tuesday, a roadside bomb struck a military vehicle conducting security operations in Nangarhar province, killing two coalition soldiers, said Lt. Khrysten Darm, a U.S. military news officer. She said one soldier and one Afghan interpreter were wounded.

CHINA

Crashed plane carried electronics experts
A Chinese military plane that crashed, killing all 40 people aboard, was a surveillance aircraft carrying nearly three dozen electronics experts, two Beijing-backed newspapers reported.
A Defense Ministry official said Tuesday that he had no new information on Sunday's crash, which the government says is being investigated under direct orders from Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Hu's order and the dispatch of a top general to head the investigation have prompted speculation the crashed plane was of special significance to Beijing.
An official with the local government in Guangde County where the plane went down refused to give any details on the crash or recovery efforts. Neither official would give his name, as is common among Chinese bureaucrats.
From Mercury News wire services

 UNITED STATES (95%); AFGHANISTAN (94%);  CHINA (93%); ASIA (92%); IRAQ (79%)







 
 
 (Minnesota)

June 7, 2006 Wednesday



 Briefing: Indonesian peer lectures Rumsfeld on U.S. role

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The United States needs to let other countries decide for themselves how to fight terrorism to counter perceptions the U.S. is overbearing, Indonesia's defense minister lectured visiting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday. In turn, Rumsfeld talked to Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono and Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono about a need for their nation to continue efforts to ensure that human rights abuses are no longer a problem with its military. After more than seven years of estrangement, the United States is working to improve its military relationship with Indonesia in the face of growing disenchantment over the Iraq war among the people in this Muslim nation.

2.2 million troops' data compromised
 
WASHINGTON -- Personal data on more than 2.2 million military troops -- not just 50,000 as initially believed -- were among the material stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee last month, the Pentagon said Tuesday. In a briefing paper to Congress, the Defense Department said the VA understated figures when it said up to 50,000 Navy and National Guard troops -- and no other active-duty personnel -- were affected by the May 3 burglary. In fact, names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of more than 1.1 million active-duty troops from all the armed forces, along with more than 1 million National Guard and Reserve personnel, were also stolen. The disclosure is the latest in a series of revisions by the government as to who was affected since publicizing the burglary on May 22. At the time, the VA said the stolen data involved up to 26.5 million veterans discharged since 1975.

Human embryo cloning attempted
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Stepping into a research area marked by controversy and fraud, Harvard University scientists said Tuesday they are trying to clone human embryos to create stem cells they hope can be used one day to help conquer a host of diseases. The privately funded work is aimed at devising treatments for such ailments as diabetes, Lou Gehrig's disease, sickle-cell anemia and leukemia. Harvard is only the second American university to announce its venture into the challenging, politically charged research field. The University of California-San Francisco began efforts at embryo cloning a few years ago, only to lose a top scientist to England. It has since resumed its work but is not as far along as experiments under way by the Harvard group.

11,000 evacuated from volcano zone
MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia -- Officials evacuated 11,000 villagers from around Mount Merapi volcano as it shot out lava and superheated clouds of gas, authorities said Tuesday. The mountain's lava dome has swelled in recent weeks, raising fears that it could suddenly collapse and send scalding clouds of fast-moving gas and debris into populated areas.

Afghan attack kills 2 coalition soldiers
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Bomb attacks on U.S.-led forces killed two coalition soldiers and wounded four in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday. An Afghan interpreter was also injured. Afghanistan has suffered a spate of suicide bombings in the past 10 months, but most have been in southern provinces, where remnants of the former Taliban regime are strongest. More than 400 people, mostly militants, died in fighting last month as more NATO forces prepared to deploy to the south. On Tuesday, a roadside bomb struck a military vehicle conducting security operations in Nangarhar province, killing two coalition soldiers. One soldier and one Afghan interpreter were wounded.

Boosted 'indecency' fines nearing OK
WASHINGTON -- The government's power to punish broadcasters for indecent programming such as the 2004 Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" would increase tenfold under legislation Congress is ready to approve. The House on Tuesday began debating the Senate-passed bill that would boost the top fines the Federal Communications Commission could impose on broadcasters from the current $32,500 to $325,000 for each violation. A vote was scheduled for this afternoon.

Weld drops out of governor's race
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld dropped out of the race for governor of New York on Tuesday, averting a potentially bruising and expensive primary for the Republican nomination. "I do think there's a time to look beyond your aspirations for the bigger picture," Weld said. "This is not a time for a contested primary." The move came days after the state GOP establishment threw its support to Weld's rival, former state Assembly Minority Leader John Faso. If Weld had stayed in the race, he would have faced Faso in a primary in September. Faso is an anti-abortion fiscal conservative; Weld campaigned as a social moderate. The Democratic candidate, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, holds a strong lead in the polls over both candidates.

Abbas bides time on Hamas demand
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stepped back from a political showdown with his Hamas rivals, giving the Islamic militants several days to recognize Israel or face the voters in a referendum on the idea. Abbas, a moderate, has been pushing the Hamas-led government to accept a proposal that calls for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, implicitly recognizing the Jewish state. Abbas believes the plan will help lift the economic pressure on the Palestinians and allow him to pursue peace talks with Israel. Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, has balked at the plan, demanding changes in the language, calling for more time to discuss it and saying it won't give in to deadlines.

Veterans mark 62nd D-Day anniversary
ASNELLES-SUR-MER, France -- American and British veterans marked the 62nd anniversary of the D-Day landings Tuesday with ceremonies and talks to schoolchildren about the invasion that changed the course of World War II. Hundreds of relatives and others joined at least two dozen veterans to remember the June 6, 1944, invasion on Normandy's beaches that helped free France -- and much of Europe -- from Nazi Germany's grip. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and the U.S. ambassador to France laid a wreath at the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, where thousands of crosses and Stars of David mark soldiers' graves on a finely groomed lawn.

 UNITED STATES (96%); INDONESIA (96%); ENGLAND (79%); IRAQ (79%)







  



June 6, 2006 Tuesday  
Main Edition



 Lawmakers travel globe as special interests pick up the tab

 
Washington --- Members of Congress and their aides took 23,000 trips financed by corporations, trade associations and other private groups over 5 1/2 years, an extensive new computerized study concludes.
Congressional travelers often accepted trips to popular destinations, including 200 to Paris, 150 to Hawaii and 140 to Italy, said Wendell "Sonny" Rawls Jr., acting executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a private watchdog group that led the study.
The price tag totaled at least $50 million from January 2000 through June 2005, with much of the travel financed by businesses and trade associations that have agendas on Capitol Hill, said Rawls, who was assistant managing editor of  from 1986-89.
"This is just another way for special interests to gain access and the private ear of someone who is an influential member of Congress, whether it's the Senate or the House," he said. 
U.S. Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.) --- who was 43rd among the top 100 traveling lawmakers in a ranking by American Public Media, a partner in the survey --- said he thinks members of Congress are justified in accepting privately paid trips to get firsthand perspective on the issues.
"I don't think they travel enough, to be honest," said the Duluth Republican.
For the study, which was also conducted by Northwestern University's Medill News Service, researchers gathered information from 25,000 disclosure forms, which are required for lawmakers and their staff when taking trips.
The priciest was a trip to London in 2000 for then-Rep. Thomas Bliley Jr. (R-Va.) and his wife shortly before Bliley retired. The $31,171 trip was sponsored by Brown & Williamson Tobacco.
The Blileys' four nights at the Savoy Hotel cost more than $1,000 a night, reported American Public Media.
The second-most-expensive trip cited was taken by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), whose five-day visit to Kazakhstan in 2002 cost $29,951. The sponsor was the Jewish Congress of Kazakhstan.
"We're going to win the war on terrorism in moderate Muslim countries --- it's not just in Saudi Arabia, it's in places like Kazakhstan and Turkey and Indonesia," Wexler said. "I think more members of Congress should devote themselves to travel and establishing bilateral relationships" with those parts of the world.
Paul A. Miller, chief lobbyist for the American League of Lobbyists, discounted the revelations of congressional trips.
"Nobody's advocating for all these fancy trips to Scotland," he said of the now infamous golf junkets arranged by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. "But those are very few, and I think everyone agrees we can do away with those."
He added that bills passed by the House and Senate would tighten rules for private trips and require more disclosure.
Georgia's congressional delegation lagged behind the most-traveled members of the House and Senate. Linder racked up the biggest travel bill in the delegation: $91,198 on 17 trips, according to America Public Media.
He has accepted a number of trips to promote his Fair Tax proposal, including several paid for by state Farm Bureau organizations, which he said are "keen" on his proposal for a federal sales tax to replace most other forms of taxation.
"If people are willing to pay for it then I'll go and talk about Fair Tax anywhere," said Linder, who co-authored a best-selling book on the subject.
Linder said he also has made trips to participate as a moderator and panelist at seminars in Europe sponsored by the Ripon Society, a nonprofit group that describes itself as promoting "moderate Republican principles."
Linder recalled voting against Puerto Rican statehood after returning from a fact-finding trip to Puerto Rico, paid for by interests promoting statehood for the territory.
"I don't need this job. I've got a lot of money," he said. "[Taking a trip] doesn't influence me one way or another."
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican from Moultrie and chairman of the Senate agriculture committee, is the only other Georgian to make American Public Media's top 100. He ranked 69th with 31 trips costing $77,853.
Rep. Cynthia McKinney, a Democrat from DeKalb County, ranked 620th out of 638 current and former lawmakers covered by the study. McKinney had a single listing: a 2001 trip to Los Angeles to deliver the keynote address for the Council on America Islamic Relations.
In 14 years in Congress, Rep. Nathan Deal, a Hall County Republican, has accepted only one trip funded by a private group: a seven-day trip to Turkey and Cyprus last year, sponsored by the U.S. Association for Former Members of Congress. The tab, for Deal and his wife, was $11,458.04.
Chris Riley, Deal's chief of staff, said the purpose of the trip was to discuss the issue of Cyprus joining the European Union. Deal made an exception because he felt the issue was important and the invitation came from "a recognized and respectable organization," Riley said.
Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat, was listed as taking 18 trips in 2004 and 2005, but the costs of the trip weren't listed.
Brenda Jones, communications director for Lewis, said she didn't know what data source the survey used and could not explain why no costs were listed. While she didn't have cost totals for all the trips, Jones provided sample expenses for two of them: $207 for a New York trip paid for by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and $575 for a two-day trip to Little Rock sponsored by the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas.
Most of the trips were related to activities by civil rights groups or speaking appearances at colleges.
"We're not talking about golf trips," Jones said. "These are not luxury trips."
Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Marietta Republican, took a $14,500 trip to Taiwan in 2003 that was paid for by the Chinese International Economic and Cooperation Association. Gingrey was a member of the House Armed Services committee at the time and went to meet with top Taiwanese officials about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, said Becky Rudy, his spokeswoman.
Many of the Georgia lawmakers' trips were underwritten by Georgia groups and corporations. Amelia Island, Fla., a resort just across the Georgia line, was among the most popular meeting spots for Georgia's textile and consumer products manufacturing association, the Georgia Bankers Association and others.
Chambliss in 2001 spoke to the Georgia Bankers Association --- not in Atlanta, but in the heart of California wine country. Chambliss has also taken four trips paid for by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which does business before the agriculture committee and employs his son, Bo, as a lobbyist.
Chambliss has previously denied any conflict of interest in traveling on corporate aircraft.
Staff writers Bob Kemper and Larry Lipman in Washington and Tom Baxter in Atlanta contributed to this article.
GEORGIA DELEGATION'S TRAVEL RANKINGS
Privately sponsored trips by Georgia representatives 2000-2005 (ranked from most to least spent): 
* John Linder (R) 17 trips/$91,198
* Jim Marshall (D) 5 trips/$33,659
* David Scott (D) 7 trips/$32,249
* Phil Gingrey (R) 11 trips/$32,331
* Charlie Norwood (R) 12 trips/$25,943
* Sanford Bishop (D) 8 trips/$19,561
* Tom Price (R) 2 trips/$10,708
* Nathan Deal (R) 1 trip/$11,458
* John Barrow (D) 3 trips/$11,275
* Jack Kingston (R) 3 trips/$2,343
* Lynn Westmoreland (R) 2 trips/$1,903
* Cynthia McKinney (D) 1 trip/$460
NOT RANKED 
* John Lewis (D) 18 trips/amounts not given
Source: America Public Media

 UNITED STATES (94%); KAZAKHSTAN (90%);  SAUDI ARABIA (66%)







 
 
 (Minnesota)

June 6, 2006 Tuesday



 Thousands of lawmakers' trips found to be free; 
Study reveals much of overseas travel privately funded

 
WASHINGTON -- Join Congress, see the world. Join a congressman's staff, see more of it.
Private groups, corporations and trade associations -- many with legislation that could affect them pending before Congress -- paid nearly $50 million since 2000 to send members of Congress and their staff on at least 23,000 trips overseas and within the United States, according to a study released Monday. 
The trips included at least 200 journeys to Paris and 150 to Hawaii, room rates of up to $500 a night and some high-flying on corporate jets that cost up to $25,000 a trip, according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, American Public Media and Northwestern University's Medill News Service.
"Some trips seem to have been little more than pricey vacations -- often taken in the company of spouses or other relatives -- wrapped around speeches or seminars," the report said. "In many instances, trip sponsors appeared to be buying access to elected officials or their advisers."
Congressional aides took more than 70 percent of the trips, the study found. But lawmaker trips accounted for nine of the 10 most expensive privately funded trips cited.
The priciest was a trip to London in 2000 for then-Rep. Thomas Bliley Jr., R-Va., and his wife shortly before Bliley retired. The $31,171 trip was sponsored by Brown & Williamson Tobacco.
The couple's four nights at the posh Savoy Hotel cost more than $1,000 a night, reported American Public Media.
The second-most expensive trip cited was taken by Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., whose five-day visit to Kazakhstan in 2002 cost $29,951. The sponsor was the Jewish Congress of Kazakhstan.
Wexler said $27,000 of the cost was for a flight for him and his wife. He said that fighting terrorism extends to moderate Muslim countries "like Kazakhstan and Turkey and Indonesia."
"I think more members of Congress should devote themselves to travel and establishing bilateral relationships," with those parts of the world, he said.
Wexler was among the top 10 current lawmakers whose offices accepted more than $350,000 in privately financed travel.
Others who made the top 10 include House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
While the travel isn't illegal, the report shines a light on how business often is done in Washington. Also, it comes in a congressional election year when one of the biggest issues is corruption.
The findings emerged as Congress remains deadlocked on legislation that would restrict contacts with lobbyists and impose new ethics standards on members. As scandals have emerged in the past two years, lawmakers moved to ban privately financed travel and do away with meals and gifts from lobbyists. Eventually, both the House of Representatives and Senate passed versions of ethics legislation, though neither banned privately financed travel. Negotiations to reconcile differences in the bills haven't begun.
Under current law, lobbyists are prohibited from paying for congressional travel. But a federal investigation into former lobbyist Jack Abramoff uncovered a scheme in which Abramoff used nonprofit groups to pay for extravagant Scottish golf outings for members and staffers.
This report includes information from Cox News Service.

 UNITED STATES (96%); KAZAKHSTAN (91%); 







 
 
 (Minnesota)

June 6, 2006 Tuesday



 Lawmaker trips pricey, free, and most are legal; 
Staff hop aboard too. Tab hits $50 million in five years

 
WASHINGTON -- Join Congress, see the world. Join a congressman's staff, see more of it.
Private groups, corporations and trade associations -- many with legislation that could affect them pending before Congress -- paid nearly $50 million since 2000 to send members of Congress and their staff members on at least 23,000 trips overseas and within the United States, according to a study released Monday. 
The trips included at least 200 journeys to Paris and 150 to Hawaii, room rates of up to $500 a night and some high flying on corporate jets that cost up to $25,000 a trip, according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, American Public Media and Northwestern University's Medill News Service.
"Some trips seem to have been little more than pricey vacations -- often taken in the company of spouses or other relatives -- wrapped around speeches or seminars," the report said. "In many instances, trip sponsors appeared to be buying access to elected officials or their advisers."
Congressional aides took more than 70 percent of the trips, the study found. But lawmaker trips accounted for nine of the 10 most expensive privately funded trips cited.
The priciest was a trip to London in 2000 for then-Rep. Thomas Bliley Jr., R-Va., and his wife shortly before Bliley retired. The $31,171 trip was sponsored by Brown & Williamson Tobacco.
The couple's four nights at the posh Savoy Hotel cost more than $1,000 a night, reported American Public Media.
The second-most expensive trip cited was taken by Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., whose five-day visit to Kazakh-stan in 2002 cost $29,951. The sponsor was the Jewish Congress of Kazakh-stan.
Wexler said $27,000 of the cost was for a flight for him and his wife. He said that fighting terrorism extends to moderate Muslim countries "like Kazakh-stan and Turkey and Indonesia."
Wexler was among the top 10 current lawmakers whose offices accepted more than $350,000 in privately financed travel. Others who made the top 10 include House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and his aides accepted about $500,000 in trips since 2000. DeLay is resigning from Congress on Friday under a cloud cast by the investigation into former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who arranged trips for him.
While most congressional travel isn't illegal, the report shines a light on how business often is done in Washington. Also, it comes in a congressional election year when one of the biggest issues is corruption.
Congress remains deadlocked on legislation that would restrict contacts with lobbyists and impose new ethics standards on members. Under current law, lobbyists are prohibited from paying for congressional travel. But a federal investigation into Abramoff uncovered a scheme in which he used nonprofit groups to pay for extravagant Scottish golf outings for members and staffers.
According to the study, among the top corporate sponsors of travel was General Atomic, a San Diego-based high-tech firm that has developed surveillance aircraft as well as wireless and laser technologies. The company spent $660,000 on 86 trips for lawmakers, staff members and spouses from 2000 to mid-2005, the study said.
This report includes information from Cox News Service.

 UNITED STATES (96%); KAZAKHSTAN (91%); 







 
 


June 4, 2006 Sunday  
1 Edition



 Militant Islam, without blinders

 
I'm a big believer in figuring out the unvarnished truth, as best as one can, before developing solutions to any problem. Sometimes that truth can be hard to take. Sometimes that truth can go against the grain so strongly that its mere mention can unleash a torrent of anger from those who have a vested interested in suppressing it.
For those trying to figure out the impetus behind the 9/11 attacks on American soil, and who want to get an honest appraisal of what the Western world is up against in terms of radical Islam, it would be foolish to accept the Official Sanitized Politically Correct line that holds that Islam is peaceful, but it has been hijacked by a few fanatics. 
We would all like that to be true. European scholar Serge Trifkovic writes a calm and thoughtful tome that researches the teachings of Islam from the start, and traces the life of Muhammad and the history of the religious movement he started. It's not an assault on Islam, and it certainly is not an attack on the Muslim people.
But the book does wrestle with the actual sayings of the Koran and other official Muslim documents. It doesn't sugarcoat the lack of freedoms in Muslim lands, or the Islamic teachings that relegate women to second-class citizens. It grapples directly with many Koranic admonitions that are distinctly non-peaceful, such as those that call for permanent war with non-Muslims. He looks at Islamic history, and describes the lack of acceptance of any separation of church and state, the brutal treatment of present and past Islamic regimes against those who do not follow Islamic religious practices. It points out the Islamic tradition of viewing non-Muslims as enemies that are to be treated without any rights once Islam is ascendant in a particular society.
"The Sword of the Prophet" argues that much of what is done in the world in the name of Islam -- 9/11, the Iranian theocracy, enslaving of black animists and Christians by Muslims in the Sudan, attacks by Muslims against Christians in Nigeria and Indonesia, the Hamas suicide bombers, etc. -- is part of a continuum.
The book is not advocating war on the Muslim world; quite the opposite. Trifkovic blames some of the problem on misguided U.S. foreign policy over past decades. But he does argue that militant Islam, popular throughout the world, is not compatible with Western society given that Islam demands total allegiance to its worldview, a view that -- as we saw during the riots following the publishing of the Danish cartoons -- has very different ideas than ours with regard to tolerance and the rule of law. Trifkovic details the dismal fate of Christian and Jewish communities in every place where Islam has prevailed. "It is remarkable that in this age of rampant victimology, the persecution of Christians by Muslims has become a taboo subject in the Western academy," he wrote.
Trifkovic compares militant Islam to other totalitarian movements that demand total obedience to the state. Of course, like with these other totalitarian ideologies, there is no room for freedom of expression or even freedom of thought. One is either a Muslim or an infidel, who enjoys few rights or legal protections.
Trifkovic isn't suggesting that most Muslims are threats to the West. But he is arguing that a significant number of people subscribe to militant Islam, and that such militancy is a natural result of following the actual teachings of Muhammad and the Koran. Until Islam undergoes a period of reformation or secularization, Westerners need to face the unvarnished truth about this ideology. It's a compelling, albeit frightening argument. If you want to wrestle with harsh truths rather than PC fiction, this book is a good place to start.

  SUDAN (79%); NIGERIA (79%);  DENMARK (56%)







 
 

 (Pennsylvania)

June 3, 2006 Saturday



 In brief

 



Can't say it's not in good taste A model dressed in an outfit made of real and imitation vegetables waits backstage before taking part in a summer salad fashion show Friday at New York's Grand Central Terminal. The show featured fashion made of real and imitation fruits and vegetables.

LOS ANGELES

Woman accused of kidnap
Police say a wealthy woman kidnapped a 7-week-old baby after the infant's teenage mother refused a $6,000 offer for the child.
Annette Pinkard, a 47-year-old real estate professional from the Dallas area, was being held in Texas with her cousin, Sylvia Nunn, 53.
Authorities say the women saw the baby, Devon Calloway, with his 17-year-old mother at a store last month and offered to buy the child. Dominique Calloway said she refused their offer but let the women drive her home.
Two days later, the women returned, and when Calloway allowed them to hold Devon, they took the baby a drove off, authorities said.

MOGADISHU, Somalia

Thousands denounce U.S.
Thousands of Somalis denounced the United States and called for Islamic law at a protest Friday in the war-torn capital, where Islamic militias have been battling a secular alliance.
Eleven people were killed in fighting in the capital's northern suburbs and four people died in the city when a booby-trapped bicycle exploded.
A Muslim leader at the rally called the U.S. an enemy of Islam and said Washington had been supporting the secular warlords, whose battle with Islamist fighters has spawned some of Somalia's worst fighting in 15 years of anarchy.
"We know the enemy of Islam, particularly the U.S. government, is funding the evil alliance," Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Courts Union, told a crowd of roughly 5,000 demonstrators guarded by nearly 200 armed militiamen.

DAMASCUS, Syria

Cops, radicals in shootout
Syrian anti-terrorism police fought Islamic militants near the Defense Ministry on Friday in a gunbattle that killed five people and wounded four, the government said.
The shootout came after the police heard an "extremist terrorist unit" was in the area and engaged it, the Interior Ministry said. One police officer was killed and two were wounded, it said.
The director-general of state broadcasting, Fayez Sayegh, said police killed four militants and detained six, two of them wounded.
The Interior Ministry said the captured militants were being interrogated about their motives.

BANTUL, Indonesia

U.N. seeking quake aid
The United Nations said Friday $100 million was urgently needed to help Indonesia earthquake survivors as the injured and bereaved marked the Islamic day of prayer amid the rubble of their homes.
"We should not cry or stay in mourning," one preacher told worshippers outside a damaged mosque in the center of destroyed Bawuran village. "We should thank God that we are still alive."
Adding to the concerns, nearby Mount Merapi volcano shot out large plumes of ash and sent lava down its slopes 35 times Friday.
The magnitude-6.3 earthquake that struck before dawn nearly a week ago killed more than 6,200 people and injured 30,000 more across a large part of Java Island. Officials estimate it destroyed 135,000 houses.
From Times Leader wire services

 UNITED STATES (94%); SOMALIA (93%); SYRIA (92%); INDONESIA (92%)




1


 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

May 31, 2006, Wednesday



 East Timor; 
Violence in the streets

 
IT WAS upsetting to watch the planet's newest nation descend into lawlessness, and appeal to outsiders to restore order. Australian troops, invited by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, arrived in East Timor over the weekend and began to bring roaming gangs under control. But trouble had been simmering for a long time, and although Australia is playing rescuer now, it is not entirely blameless in this regional drama. 
East Timor's troubles began back in 1975 after its former colonial ruler, Portugal, pulled out. Indonesia, armed with U.S. weapons as an American ally, invaded. Both Australia and the United States stood by while the Indonesian occupation claimed around 200,000 lives. The conflict had a religio-ethnic facet, because Indonesia is mostly Muslim and the Timorese are mostly Catholic.
In 1999 an international peacekeeping force was introduced, and then-President Bill Clinton cut off U.S. military aid to Indonesia. Finally, after East Timor's people voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum, the tiny nation won independence in 2001.
But new democracies - especially those born amid poverty and violence - are fragile. They need nurturing. And Australia, East Timor's closest neighbor, should have done more. Instead, it has often seemed more focused on hanging onto revenues from rich petroleum reserves under the Timor Sea, while the East Timorese struggle to emerge from terrible poverty.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard worries that a failed state could become a nursery for terrorists. He may be right, but that's hardly the point. Both Canberra and Washington bear some responsibility for the chaos in the streets of Dili, East Timor's capital.
The current rescue mission should not have been necessary. Once the violence is quelled, there will be a temptation to forget about this struggling nation again - until the next time. That would be irresponsible.
It wouldn't take much to boost East Timor into stability. Its rich natural resources will one day provide its economy with fuel. Meanwhile wealthy nations, aided by the United Nations, need to help build rational democratic institutions in a country that - unlike others we could name - would welcome the help.

 AUSTRALIA (96%); TIMOR-LESTE (95%); UNITED STATES (94%);  PORTUGAL (79%)







  



May 24, 2006 Wednesday  
Main Edition



 Building on faith; 
Muslims will worship, grow in new mosques

 
As the sun beats down through the trees, the adhan, or Muslim call to prayer, wafts through the nondescript house on Centerville Highway in Snellville.
Upstairs, about 18 men and women, Bosnians who resettled in metro Atlanta after the Balkan Wars, begin the Friday prayers and weekly congregational service.
Their first place of worship was in Clarkston --- the first stop for many refugees who move to Georgia --- in a former crack house. Then last year, members of the community bought 8.3 acres of land in Gwinnett County. They converted the house into a community center, Sunday school or mekteb and central masjid in an effort to better serve the large number of Bosnians who had settled in the area.
Now the Islamic Community of Bosniaks hopes to raise enough money to build a gym and eventually a cultural center and new masjid on the Gwinnett County site.
Although both places (the Clarkston site is a musallah or prayer center) are used for worship and other activities, they are now too small to handle the growing congregation, said Abdullah Kapic, one of the founders of the Islamic Community of Bosniaks, who moved to Georgia with his family in the late 1990s. 
"The community has become very large and we want to accommodate everyone," said Kapic, who estimates about 5,000 Bosnians live in the immediate area. During a recent fund-raiser to build the gym, members had to erect a huge white tent in the front yard of the Gwinnett site to handle overflow. Sometimes they have to rent space.
The Bosnians are among several Muslim congregations renovating, expanding or building new places of worship in metro Atlanta. In addition to the Al-Farooq Masjid of Atlanta under construction in Midtown, there are many more springing up in the suburbs. By one count, metro Atlanta is home to 30 to 40 mosques or places of worship.
Long-term plans
Last weekend alone there were fund-raisers for at least two building and renovation projects. One was by the congregation at Masjid Al-Qur'an, on Metropolitan Avenue, which hopes to raise enough funds to renovate its mosque and eventually build a new one, with a school and housing.
Another was held in Norcross for the Masjid Omar Bin Abdul Aziz. About nine years ago, that congregation bought a vacant tract of land in Lilburn and assembled prefabricated buildings on the site, which have been used for worship and community activities. The long-term plan is to raise enough money to build a mosque.
Masjid Omar now draws about 300 worshippers. The new mosque will hold more than 500, said Aziz Dhanani, director of the mosque.
In Marietta, Masjid Al-Hedaya recently bought additional property near its Powder Springs Road location. Amjad Taufique, a member of the board of directors, said the community hopes to eventually build a new masjid and school.
He said the plan is to "build a mosque that looks like a mosque." Currently, the congregation uses two former houses for prayer services and educational and community programs. Like the Bosnian community in Gwinnett County, Taufique said the Muslim community in Cobb and surrounding counties has simply outgrown its space.
Exponential growth
That's a far cry from the situation Soumaya Khalifa, executive director of the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta, encountered when she moved to Georgia years ago. Then you could count the number of mosques on one hand.
"It's grown tremendously," Khalifa said. "Muslims are now anywhere and everywhere."
As the population has grown, she said, so has the need for Muslims to be able to worship close to home or work. When there were few mosques, she said, some Muslims had to take a few hours of vacation each Friday to travel from their jobs to one of the largest masjids in Midtown.
Jabril Alexander, a member of the board of Masjid Ammar on Shallowford Road in Chamblee, said he wasn't surprised by the growth of the Muslim community.
"Islam is the fastest-growing religion," he said. Alexander said Masjid Ammar intends to expand its prayer area and start a day care center that would be open to Muslims and non-Muslims.
The numbers
Mohamed Nimer, research director at the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, estimated there are 5 million to 7 million Muslims in the United States and more than a billion worldwide.
He also estimated there were about 1,300 mosques and places of worship in the United States as of 2003.
But Omar Khalidi, who specializes in Islamic architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, puts the estimate much higher. He estimates there are about 2,500 mosques, Islamic centers or prayer rooms of which fewer than 125 were built up as mosques.
Variety of designs
Most people tend to think every mosque must have domes, archways and a minaret, but they can also be relatively simple structures or very innovative or traditional, Khalidi said.
The only requirement is that the main place of prayer allows worshippers to face the holy city of Mecca (qiblah wall) when they're praying and that the site is clean and has a place for the ritual washing or wudu.
The exclamation point in Atlanta's mosque growth is the new Al-Farooq Masjid of Atlanta, under construction on 14th Street in Midtown near Georgia Tech. It is expected to be completed next year.
The finely designed mosque, when finished, will be the largest in Georgia and one of the largest in the Southeast. Its bronze-colored fiberglass domes and minaret can be seen from blocks away in all directions.
It will have three levels, including a ground floor that will contain the main prayer hall, a mehrab, which will represent the direction of the holy city of Mecca, and from which the imam will lead prayers; a library/dawa center which provides information on Islam and outreach; a men's ablution area for ritual washing and a gathering place.
The upper level will have a women's prayer hall, women's lounge and study room, the second floor of the library/dawa center and a women's ablution area. The basement will have large meeting rooms, a kitchen and restrooms. Florida architect Medhat Elmesky of Design Arts Studio designed the 46,000-square-foot mosque.
"I wanted to really come up with a design that would reflect Islamic architecture but also reflect on the attitude of the people in the community, their background and tradition," said Elmesky, an urban designer who once worked in the architectural department of the Egyptian ministry of religion, where he designed mosques and housing projects. Elmesky also has designed mosques in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
"For Muslims this is something they can identify with and it can accommodate the growth of the community," said Dr. Khalid Siddiq, a member of the Al-Farooq board. Also, as importantly, "we will have space to interact with the community at large."

  BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA (94%); NORTH AMERICA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); KOSOVO (79%); INDIA (79%);  PHILIPPINES (79%)







 
 



May 22, 2006 Monday



 In the World

 
Israel: Iran nears know-how on bomb
JERUSALEM - Iran is just a few months away from acquiring the technological know-how that will allow it to build an atomic bomb, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview broadcast yesterday. 
Olmert flew to Washington yesterday for his first meeting as prime minister with President Bush. The two leaders were expected to discuss Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Olmert told CNN's Late Edition that the key issue regarding Iran was not when it built a nuclear bomb, but rather when it acquired the knowledge needed to manufacture such a weapon.
"This technological threshold is nearer than we anticipated before," he said. "This is because they are already engaged very seriously in enrichment." - AP
Greek Cypriots back president
NICOSIA, Cyprus - Greek Cypriot voters put their weight behind parties in President Tassos Papadopoulos' governing coalition in parliamentary elections yesterday, a result likely to be seen as an endorsement of his rejection of a U.N. plan to reunify the war-divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
The president's centrist DIKO party got nearly 18 percent of the votes, while the allied communist AKEL party led with 31 percent. The right-wing DISY, the main opposition party, finished with 30 percent.
It was the first election since Greek Cypriots rejected a U.N. peace plan in a 2004 vote held simultaneously with the island's Turkish-run region, which backed reunification. - AP
Dutch arrest man in Halloway case
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Dutch police have detained a man on suspicion of participating in the abduction and killing of Natalee Holloway last year in Aruba, the suspect's lawyer said yesterday.
Gerard Spong said his client, whose name was not disclosed, was accused of "assisting in the murder, heavy battery and kidnapping" of Holloway. He said the suspect was a croupier at the casino in the hotel where Holloway was staying.
The Mountain Brook, Ala., woman was 18 when she went missing in May 2005 during a high school graduation trip to the Dutch Caribbean island with classmates. - AP
Elsewhere:
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said yesterday that he would seek to open peace talks with the Basque separatist group ETA, which declared a cease-fire in March. ETA has killed more than 800 people since the late 1960s in its battle for an independent Basque homeland.
Tens of thousands of conservative Muslims rallied yesterday in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, in support of a proposed antipornography legislation that critics say would chip away at the country's secular traditions. One provision of the bill would ban kissing in public.
Kuwait's ruler, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, dissolved parliament yesterday and called early elections for June 29 amid a dispute between the government and lawmakers over electoral reform.

 ISRAEL (94%); CYPRUS (94%); IRAN,  (94%); SPAIN (93%); GREECE (93%); NETHERLANDS (90%); INDONESIA (90%); ARUBA (79%); CARIBBEAN ISLANDS (79%); TURKEY (79%);  KUWAIT (79%); MEDITERRANEAN (79%)







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

May 19, 2006, Friday



 U.S., toadies careless about allies

 
Bet you didn't know the Australian prime minister has been in Washington all week. Bet you don't know his name (it's John Howard). Funny - because Howard and his family have been all over Page 1 of the Australian papers, especially after Tuesday's state dinner where Howard's 25-year-old son (who works for a big K Street lobbying firm) showed up with a glamorous blond Texan at his side. The couple had taken Washington by storm, if you believed the hype at home.
Howard rated a few mentions on the inside pages of the Washington Post over the week, including a comment by Post writer Peter Baker that it was no wonder the Australian leader got special attention from the White House since "When it comes to Bush's 'coalition of the willing' partners, Howard is virtually the last man standing." 
Baker went on to name a long list of world leaders who started out supporting the Iraq war and ended up losing their jobs. Howard, by contrast, looks pretty secure. Many Australians are uncomfortable with his support of the Iraq adventure, but even more, it seems, are fairly apathetic about it. Times are pretty good; the economy is chugging along, fueled by healthy commodity prices. The opposition Labor Party is in disarray. That leaves Howard free to indulge in a favorite pastime of conservative Australian leaders: making nice with Washington.
A major theme of this love fest is the two leaders' shared view about the importance of fighting terror and upholding shared values. And it's true: Howard shares much with Bush - including the uncanny ability to miss the point about the real struggle of values that's going on in the world.
Australia is in a unique position as a bastion of Western pluralism sitting smack underneath East Asia. Its easygoing multiculturalism has taken a bashing in recent times, with anti-Asian riots in Sydney early this year and tensions with Indonesia, its enormous neighbor to the north.
The Indonesian government is not known for tolerance of dissent or a light touch in dealing with its far-flung provinces. Jakarta has been fighting running battles with separatists in places like Aceh and West Papua, and Howard's government has been under huge pressure since refugees from these places keep showing up on Australian shores, seeking political asylum.
Australians are generally sympathetic to these people; their plight is regularly reported in the media here. But when Howard's government recently granted asylum to some Papuan refugees, Jakarta was incensed, recalling the Indonesian ambassador.
When the Papuan flag was flown at a couple of Australian universities, Indonesia promptly blacklisted them, declaring it wouldn't allow academic contacts with them because "their academics, their lecturers and their campuses are used for supporting separatists," according to an Indonesian Education Ministry spokeswoman.
Here is a real clash of values, one not often felt in Europe or America. Australia depends on trade with Indonesia. But rather than helping Australia assert the intellectual values both societies supposedly hold dear, Washington helps it instead to support Indonesia's rapacious military - the same people who are creating the flow of desperate refugees.
None of this came up, of course, in the chummy talks in Washington this week. Instead Howard portrayed Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's "moderate Islamic leadership" as an ally in the war on terror.
It's true that Jakarta is not run by Islamic fundamentalists. But the military leaders who murdered hundreds of thousands in East Timor are still in place and have continued to commit grave human rights abuses in Papua and elsewhere. Now these are the people both Bush and Howard want to strengthen as allies in the war on terror.
When will Washington and its toadies learn? A couple of decades ago it seemed like a good idea to strengthen a bunch of fighters in Afghanistan as allies against the Soviet Union. Among them was Osama bin Laden.
Indonesia is an important country and it does represent a key alternative to fanatical, fundamentalist Islam. But it is far from a paragon of democratic, pluralist values. Seeing it only through the lens of the war on terror will not serve our most important values - or Australia's - in the long run.
Rodell, Gazette editorial page editor, is teaching for a semester in Tasmania. She can be reached at surodell @aol.com.

 AUSTRALIA (98%); UNITED STATES (94%);  IRAQ (92%); EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)







 
 
 (Minnesota)

May 19, 2006 Friday



 Briefing: Hoffa search intensifies

 
MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- In one of the most intensive searches for Jimmy Hoffa in decades, the FBI summoned archaeologists and anthropologists and brought in heavy equipment to scour a horse farm Thursday for the body of the former Teamsters boss who vanished in 1975. Daniel Roberts, agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office, would not disclose what led agents to the farm, but said, "This is probably a fairly credible lead. You can gather that from the number of people out here." No trace of Hoffa has ever been found, and no one has ever been charged. But investigators believe he was killed by the mob to keep him from reclaiming the Teamsters presidency after he got out of prison for corruption. The farm, just outside Detroit, used to be owned by a Teamsters official.

Teen killer returns to cell for 30 years
 
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Lionel Tate, the teenager who got a second chance after he beat a 6-year-old girl to death, was sent back to prison for 30 years Thursday for gun possession. Tate, now 19, was convicted in the death of Tiffany Eunick in 1999, when he was 12. He claimed he accidentally killed her while imitating pro wrestling moves he had seen on TV. He became the youngest person in modern U.S. history to receive a life sentence. His conviction was overturned in 2004 by an appeals court that said it was not clear Tate understood the charges. He was freed under a deal in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years' probation. The gun possession charge resulted from the holdup of a pizza deliveryman last May.

Judge tosses out sex-abuse settlement
SPOKANE, Wash. -- A federal judge rejected a $45.7-million settlement Thursday for 75 people who have filed sex-abuse claims against the bankrupt Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Patricia Williams threw out the agreement during a telephone-conference, lawyers said. The judge urged the lawyers to enter into mediation. Noting that bankruptcy law calls for settlements to be "fair and equitable" for all parties, she decided the deal favored the 75 people over other alleged victims, lawyers for both sides said. The settlement was controversial because it covered a fraction of those who had filed lawsuits contending they were abused. The diocese filed for bankruptcy in 2004, citing abuse claims of about $81.3 million against assets of about $11 million.

Questions raised about Vioxx data
TRENTON, N.J. -- Unpublished data from the Merck & Co. study that led the drugmaker to halt sales of Vioxx appear to show the blockbuster painkiller raised the risk of heart attack and stroke within just a few months -- not after at least 18 months' use, as Merck has consistently argued. The company disputed that Thursday, saying it is "not scientifically appropriate" to draw conclusions based on a key graph in a 108-page report on the data. The news, first reported by National Public Radio, comes after prominent doctors said Merck misrepresented other data.

Hamas, Fatah forces engage in gunbattle
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The new Hamas security force clashed with fighters loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas late Thursday, culminating a day of tense standoffs as Palestinian rivals competed for control of the Gaza Strip. Two policemen were shot in the legs in the clash near the parliament building and police headquarters. A Hamas gunman was wounded. Khaled Abu Hilal, spokesman of the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry, said gunmen opened fire on the police headquarters from a moving car. Police apparently thought the Hamas forces nearby were responsible and fired at them. A police spokesman rejected that version and blamed the Hamas-led force for starting the gunfight.

Fujimori allowed to post bail, exit jail
SANTIAGO, Chile -- A smiling Alberto Fujimori left jail Thursday after almost seven months when Chile's Supreme Court granted the former Peruvian president bail as he fights extradition to face corruption and human rights charges. "I feel confident and I am going to be patient," Fujimori, 67, said as he left the detention center where he was held under arrest since his surprise arrival here from Japan in November. He had said he was ending five years of exile in order to run in Peru's presidential elections.

Flu deaths unlikely from mutated virus
YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia -- World Health Organization officials said Thursday that the five avian flu deaths confirmed this week on Sumatra were probably not a result of human-to-human infection and did not suggest that the virus had mutated into a more deadly form. Five family members were confirmed dead from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza by the WHO on Wednesday, the largest such cluster yet recorded. Clusters worry health officials because they indicate that the virus may have been transmitted between humans. Indonesia's avian flu death toll has now reached 30, second only to Vietnam, which has recorded 42 deaths.

Lawmakers aim to undermine king
KATMANDU, Nepal -- Lawmakers moved Thursday to dramatically reduce the powers of Nepal's king, calling for him to be stripped of his legal immunity, authority over the army and exemption from paying taxes. The sweeping resolution also called for King Gyanendra to lose his symbolic position as the head of the Himalayan nation, changing traditional references to "His Majesty's government" to simply the "Nepal government."

U.S. welcomes critic of militant Islam
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The Somali-born critic of fundamentalist Islam who said she was leaving the Netherlands after her citizenship was declared invalid is welcome in the United States, a top U.S. official said Thursday. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a campaigner for the rights of Muslim women, said Tuesday she was leaving the Netherlands after her citizenship was declared invalid because she had lied in an asylum application 14 years ago.

 







 
 


May 16, 2006 Tuesday



 How the world sees us

 
Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts sig
Americans are the most optimistic people in the world. On the eve of the new millennium, 4 out of 5 described themselves as hopeful about the future, and large majorities predicted that the new century would bring cures for cancer, and that we would see humans land on Mars. Almost half thought Jesus Christ would re-appear on earth.
But even the sunniest citizen has to be sobered by a new book, America Against the World, co-authored by pollster Andrew Kohut and journalist Bruce Stokes. Based on more than 90,000 interviews in 50 countries, it comes to a brutal conclusion: Everybody dislikes America these days, even our postwar allies in Western Europe. 
"Anti-Americanism runs deeper and is qualitatively different than in the past," they write. Resentment of the American nation has turned into resentment of the American people, and that's never happened before.
Until 2004, foreigners blamed President Bush for what they viewed as America's misguided policies, but once American voters gave him a second term, they became co-conspirators in the eyes of the world. Kohut and Stokes quote a headline in a British tabloid after the election: "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?"
The single biggest reason for this sentiment is the invasion of Iraq. President Bush has said repeatedly that his response to Sept. 11 would define his presidency. He's right: It united the world against him. In Germany and France, four out of five respondents consider American leaders "less trustworthy" since the Iraq war, and in Britain, it's three out of five.
"Among our country's greatest assets on the world stage are its good name and the public's faith in its motivations," write Kohut and Stokes. "America's reputation was badly soiled by the Iraq war."
Actually, this sharp shift against the president abroad parallels his plunging popularity at home. In the latest CNN poll, 53 percent said the Iraq war had made the United States less safe. It's almost as if Americans were saying, "Hey, we know we re-elected him, but we made a mistake!"
But these numbers, bad as they are, are only snapshots in time. They don't tell the whole story. Other images are required to fill out the picture.
The first image is the fall of the Berlin wall. It was American power and persistence that undermined the Soviet Union and freed Eastern Europe from generations of tyranny. But here's the paradox: Washington's victory in the Cold War fueled sentiment against the winners because it left the United States as the world's only superpower and removed a critical check on American aspirations and appetites.
The second image is Mickey Mouse and Britney Spears dancing under the Golden Arches. Just as anti-Americanism is rising, American culture is selling better than ever, but here, too, there's a paradox. As Kohut points out, while foreigners flock to McDonald's for lunch, they mourn the loss of their own cultural traditions. Folks don't take "two-hour siestas" after a Big Mac and fries, and they blame America.
The third image is of thousands of immigrants, legal and illegal, filling American streets and demanding the right to stay. If America is as bad the rest of the world seems to think, why do so many risk so much to cross our borders? Why are green cards, let alone citizenship papers, among the most valuable documents in the entire world?
The fourth image is really a series. True, Americans kill Muslims everyday in Iraq, but they also open schools and soccer fields. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, they protect villages in Bosnia, build houses on the tsunami-swamped beaches of Indonesia, and treat wounds in the earthquake zone of Pakistan.
That's why reading this book is so frustrating. All the good America does in the world has been overshadowed by the disaster in Iraq, and this explosion of anti-Americanism comes just as the United States is more deeply involved with the rest of the world than ever.
The events of Sept. 11 proved that we are vulnerable to terrorism and need allies to fight it. The nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran demonstrate the essential role of diplomatic partners. American businesses and workers are increasingly dependent on foreign markets. Soaring budget deficits can only be financed with foreign investments. Diseases and pollutants sweep easily across frontiers.
Of course, the president and his supporters will brush this book aside. We don't read polls, they'll say, we have our principles and don't care what others think of us. But they would be wrong. They should care. America's national interest demands it.
Syndicated columnists Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by e-mail at stevecokie@gmail.com .

    GERMANY (79%); FRANCE (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%); WESTERN EUROPE (77%); CENTRAL EUROPE (56%); EASTERN EUROPE (56%)







 Capital Gazette Communications, Inc.
 
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)

May 15, 2006 Monday



 How the world sees America

 
Americans are the most optimistic people in the world. But even the sunniest citizen has to be sobered by a new book, "America Against the World," by pollster Andrew Kohut and journalist Bruce Stokes. Based on more than 90,000 interviews in 50 countries, it comes to a brutal conclusion: Everybody dislikes America these days, even our postwar allies in Western Europe.
"Anti-Americanism runs deeper and is qualitatively different than in the past," they write. Resentment of the American nation has turned into resentment of the American people, and that's never happened before. 
Until 2004, foreigners blamed President Bush for what they viewed as America's misguided policies, but once American voters gave him a second term, they became co-conspirators in the eyes of the world. Kohut and Stokes quote a headline in a British tabloid after the election: "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?"
The single biggest reason for this sentiment is the invasion of Iraq. Bush has said repeatedly that his response to Sept. 11 would define his presidency. He's right: it united the world against him. In Germany and France, four of five respondents consider American leaders "less trustworthy" since the Iraq war, and in Britain, it's three of five.
"Among our country's greatest assets on the world stage are its good name and the public's faith in its motivations," write Kohut and Stokes. "America's reputation was badly soiled by the Iraq war."
Actually, this sharp shift against the president abroad parallels his plunging popularity at home. In the latest CNN poll, 53 percent said the Iraq war had made the United States less safe. It's almost as if Americans were saying, "Hey, we know we re-elected him, but we made a mistake!"
But these numbers, bad as they are, are only snapshots in time. They don't tell the whole story. Other images are required to fill out the picture.
The first image is the fall of the Berlin wall. It was American power and persistence that undermined the Soviet Union and freed Eastern Europe from generations of tyranny. But here's the paradox: Washington's victory in the Cold War fueled sentiment against the winners because it left the United States as the world's only superpower and removed a critical check on American appetites.
The second image is Mickey Mouse and Britney Spears dancing under the Golden Arches. Just as anti-Americanism is rising, American culture is selling better than ever, but here, too, there's a paradox. As Kohut points out, while foreigners flock to McDonald's for lunch, they mourn the loss of their own cultural traditions. Folks don't take "two-hour siestas" after a Big Mac and fries, and they blame America.
The third image is of thousands of immigrants, legal and illegal, filling American streets and demanding the right to stay. If America is as bad the rest of the world seems to think, why do so many risk so much to cross our borders? Why are green cards among the most valuable documents in the entire world?
The fourth image is really a series. True, Americans kill Muslims everyday in Iraq, but they also open schools and soccer fields. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, they protect villages in Bosnia, build houses on the tsunami-swamped beaches of Indonesia, and treat wounds in the earthquake zone of Pakistan.
That's why reading this book is so frustrating. All the good America does in the world has been overshadowed by the disaster in Iraq, and this explosion of anti-Americanism comes just as the United States is more deeply involved with the rest of the world than ever.
Of course, the president and his supporters will brush this book aside. We don't read polls, they'll say; we have our principles and don't care what others think of us. But they should care. Our national interest depends on it.

   EUROPE (93%); WESTERN EUROPE (90%); GERMANY (79%); FRANCE (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%); EASTERN EUROPE (57%); CENTRAL EUROPE (57%)







 
 


May 14, 2006 Sunday



 
Associated Press Writer
MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia - Thousands of people fled the fertile slopes of Indonesia's most dangerous volcano Saturday as glowing lava oozed down the side and ash and rock spewed from the mountaintop, leading authorities to warn that an eruption could come soon.
Villages on Mount Merapi were left virtually empty. Women, children and the elderly filled buses and trucks to be driven to shelters set up at government buildings and schools in nearby towns on the island of Java. 
Throughout the day, volcanic tremors shook the ground, some strong enough to send people running in fear. After nightfall, fiery magma from the volcano's cauldron lit up the bottoms of clouds above the nearly 9,700-foot peak, and cascades of bright red stones tumbled down the mountainside.
Many people already had evacuated from homes closest to Merapi's crater after the volanco recently emerged from several years of relative quiet, but authorities said as many as 7,000 living farther down the slopes had refused to go and leave behind precious livestock and crops.
It wasn't clear how many of those obeyed the government's evacuation order Saturday. Groups of men who sent their families away were seen chatting around fires to keep warm during the night, guarding their homes against looters.
Edi, a 30-year-old villager, said he would stay unless he received a clear signal from the mountain's spirits that an eruption was at hand.
"People around here believe that if Merapi is going to explode there will be a sign, a magical sign," he said, sitting on a mat sipping coffee. "Either it comes in a dream, or in the form of a hallucination."
Although most Indonesians are Muslim, many also follow animist beliefs and worship ancient spirits. Often at full moons, they trek to crater rims and throw in rice, jewelry and live animals to appease the volcanoes.
Merapi, about 250 miles east of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, is one of at least 129 active volcanoes in the country, which lies along the Pacific "Ring of Fire" - a series of fault lines that feed volcanoes stretching from the Western Hemisphere through Japan and into Southeast Asia.
Merapi last erupted in 1994, sending out a cloud of searing gas that burned 60 people to death. About 1,300 people were killed when it erupted in 1930.
One man who defied the order to evacuate, Baijo, 30, said he was not worried about the risks of staying behind.
"I am not afraid. This is normal. We are looking after the village. If not, thieves will come," he said.
Some farmers said they had not seen any volcanic activity themselves so decided to remain on their land despite being urged to leave by the revered Sultan Sri Hamengkubuwono, who is also the regional governor in Yogyakarta, a city of 1 million people just 11 miles from Merapi.
"We will not leave soon because of our livestock," said one cattle raiser, who declined to give his name.
All roads leading up the mountain were closed as chunks of glowing pumice blew from Merapi's depths into the sky and burning gas fumes wafted through the air.
Authorities put the area on highest alert after observing two days of steady lava flow from the volcano.
"Because there have been constant lava flows that cause hot gases, we have raised the status to the highest level," said Bambang Dwiyanto, head of the region's volcanology center.
Experts recorded 27 volcanic tremors and eruptions of at least 14 plumes of hot ash Saturday, said Dr. Ratdomo Purbo, who heads an observation post at Merapi. He said a stream of lava extended nearly a mile down the mountain's side.

  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)








 
 

May 14, 2006 Sunday



 IRAN LOON IN DUBIOUS 'TALK' OFFER

 
BALI, Indonesia - Iran's America-hating leader, emboldened by the support of Muslim nations, said yesterday he was willing to hold talks over his pursuit of a nuclear program - but not with Israel or countries that hold "bombs over our head."   
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he has cooperated fully with the U.N. nuclear agency and the world has nothing to fear from his program to enrich uranium, which can be used for making atomic weapons.  
Ahmadinejad spoke after meeting with heads of state from Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Turkey and Malaysia and government ministers from Egypt and Bangladesh.  
The eight Islamic leaders released a statement after their summit supporting the rights of countries to develop nuclear energy for "peaceful" purposes.  
On Friday, U.N. inspectors found traces of enriched uranium in Iran.  Post Wire Services 

 IRAN,  (94%);  ISRAEL (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); EGYPT (79%); NIGERIA (79%); TURKEY (79%); PAKISTAN (79%)







 
 



May 14, 2006 Sunday



 In the World

 
Iranian president gains support
BALI, Indonesia - Iran's president, emboldened by the support of Muslim nations, said yesterday that he was willing to hold talks over Tehran's disputed nuclear agenda but not with Israel or countries that hold "bombs over our head." 
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he had cooperated fully with the U.N. nuclear agency and the world has nothing to fear from his program to enrich uranium, which can be used for generating electricity or, at much higher levels of enrichment, in making atomic weapons.
He spoke after meeting with heads of state and prime ministers from Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Turkey and Malaysia and government ministers from Egypt and Bangladesh. After their summit, the eight Islamic leaders released a statement supporting the rights of countries to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.- AP
Dozens of attacks hit Brazilian police
SAO PAULO, Brazil - One of Brazil's most notorious gangs staged dozens of attacks on police before dawn yesterday, setting off gun battles in three cities that killed at least 30 people, officials said. Twenty-four prison uprisings also were reported across Sao Paulo state.
The attacks that began late Friday "were obviously the work" of the First Capital Command gang, said Enio Lucciola, press spokesman for the Sao Paulo State Public Safety Department.
Public Safety Secretary Saulo de Castro Abreu said police stations, patrol cars and bars frequented by off-duty officers were attacked in Sao Paulo and three suburbs. Stations in the coastal cities of Cubatao and Guaruja, 50 miles to the southeast, also were attacked. - AP
Spain captures
boats of migrants
TENERIFE, Spain - Spanish police and rescue vessels yesterday intercepted six boats carrying 456 illegal migrants off the coast of the Canary Island of Tenerife.
Yesterday's figures elevate the total number of illegal immigrant arrivals to the Canary Islands this year to 5,984, the Interior Ministry said.
Thousands of people try to reach Europe through Spain each year, an increasing number of them setting off into the Atlantic Ocean from Mauritania and Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara for Spain's Canary Islands. - AP
Elsewhere:
Islamic militiamenand secular fighters pounded each other with heavy artillery and mortar fire in Mogadishu, Somalia, yesterday, as the death toll rose to 142 in seven days of fighting for control of a neighborhood north of the capital.
Nigerian PresidentOlusegun Obasanjo ordered stepped-up protection for pipelines after a gasoline blast killed up to 200 people. Police said there was no sign that the fire at a ruptured pipeline was sabotage and they assumed villagers had punctured it to steal fuel.
A small boat sankduring a tropical storm Friday in the central Philippines, killing at least 21 people, the coast guard reported yesterday. The Mae An capsized off Masbate island.

 BRAZIL (96%); SPAIN (96%); IRAN,  (95%); CANARY ISLANDS (94%);  ISRAEL (92%); NIGERIA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); MAURITANIA (79%); SOMALIA (79%); WESTERN SAHARA (79%); EUROPE (79%); EGYPT (79%); TURKEY (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%); IRAN (74%)




2


 The Topeka Capital-Journal 
Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas)

May 14, 2006 Sunday



 Presidents encourage Tulane grads to thrive

 
NEW ORLEANS -- In a ceremony filled with jazz music and images of Hurricane Katrina, former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton urged graduating students at Tulane University to remember the anguish of the last year and make time to serve others.
The joint commencement addresses were delivered during an often-emotional event, where students wore Mardi Gras beads and waved handkerchiefs imprinted with the words, "Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?" 
"Floodwaters couldn't break the spirit of the people who call this remarkable, improbable city home," Bush said.
He urged students to "get off the sidelines" and "find a way to be of service to others."
Clinton asked students to fight acts of terror and the "dramatic change in climate which has given us a decade of Katrinas and tsunamis."
He likened life to a jazz funeral, where slow, mournful music is followed by a joyful celebration.
"Life is always about new beginnings. I wish you new beginnings," he said.
Saturday's ceremony was Tulane's first universitywide graduation since last August's storm flooded the school and forced it to close for the fall semester. Students scattered to 593 universities around the country but 93 percent of full-time students returned for the spring semester, school officials said.
NATION
KILLER ALLIGATOR LIKELY CAUGHT: Wildlife officers captured an alligator Saturday they believe was responsible for fatally attacking a woman while she was jogging in Sunrise, Fla.
The 9-foot, 6-inch alligator was trapped just under the bridge where Yovy Suarez Jimenez, 28, was last seen, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Dani Moschella said.
Two human arms were found inside the alligator's belly, she said.
Suarez's death is the 18th confirmed fatal alligator attack in Florida since 1948, Moschella said. Nine other deaths are unconfirmed.
TEENS ARRESTED AFTER BRAGGING ONLINE: Two teenagers were charged with setting fires in suburban Washington after they bragged about the blazes on MySpace.com, authorities in Rockville, Md., said.
The 17-year-old schoolmates were involved in 17 fires in Montgomery County, fire officials said Friday. The teens face 22 charges, including two counts each of first-degree arson and four counts of second-degree arson. Their names weren't released because they were charged as juveniles.
"The significant thing is they posted on the Internet, and bragged about the fires, and that certainly allowed us to break the case," county Fire Chief Thomas W. Carr Jr. said. "They posted photos of these fires."
LIBBY CASE FILING FOCUSES ON CHENEY: In a new court filing, the prosecutor in the CIA leak case revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney made handwritten references to CIA officer Valerie Plame -- albeit not by name -- eight days before her identity was publicly exposed.
The new court filing is the second in little more than a month by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald mentioning Cheney as being closely focused with his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, on Plame's CIA identity and on her husband, Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. With the two court filings, Fitzgerald has pointed to an important role for the vice president in the weeks leading up to the leaking of Plame's identity.
WORLD
SHIITE MOSQUE BOMBED IN IRAQ: A series of roadside bombs and explosions damaged a Shiite shrine east of the volatile city of Baqouba late Saturday -- the second time this year that a site sacred to Iraq's Shiite majority has been targeted.
In Baghdad, gunmen killed the son of Iraq's top judge as the country's prime minister-designate struggled to form a national unity government that could eventually open the way to stability.
The bombing at the Imam Abdullah Ali al-Hadi shrine, which caused no injuries, could have significant repercussions -- particularly in the Baqouba area, a mixed Sunni Arab-Shiite region where sectarian tensions are running high.
IRANIAN PRESIDENT LAYS OUT RULES: Iran's president, emboldened by the support of Muslim nations, said Saturday in Bali, Indonesia, that he was willing to hold talks over Tehran's disputed nuclear agenda but not with Israel or countries that hold "bombs over our head."
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he has cooperated fully with the U.N. nuclear agency and the world has nothing to fear from his program to enrich uranium, which can be used for generating electricity or in making atomic weapons.
DARFUR TREATY JUST ONE STEP, ENVOY SAYS: It took six months of wrangling and a last-minute push by a top U.S. diplomat to negotiate a Darfur peace agreement -- and it was signed only by Sudan's government and the largest rebel group in the arid region.
In the week since the deal aimed at ending a conflict that has killed more than 180,000 people and displaced 2 million, the shaky underpinnings of the agreement show themselves in new attacks by pro-government militias and second-guessing by some rebel leaders.
"That peace has been signed in Abuja (Nigeria) doesn't mean everything is fine or that there will immediately be peace on the ground," Jan Pronk, the United Nations' chief envoy to Sudan, said by telephone from Sudan's capital, Khartoum.
While pro-government militias are blamed for most of the killing, rape and arson in what U.N. officials call the world's worst humanitarian crisis, Pronk said the top priority for now is to broaden "the circle of support for the agreement" by reaching out to splinter rebel groups.
PIPELINE SECURITY TO BE STEPPED UP: Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered stepped-up protection for pipelines after a gasoline blast killed up to 200 people, but Nigerians said Saturday that impoverished villagers would keep tapping the pipes to pilfer fuel.
Rescue workers tried to finish collecting the dead for burial in mass graves by sundown. But at least 22 charred bodies floated in the tidal mangrove swamps east of the main city of Lagos -- miles from the site of Friday's disaster in Ilado village.
Police said there was no sign that the fire at a ruptured pipeline was sabotage and they assumed villagers had punctured it to steal fuel. They said 150 to 200 people died in the flames when it ignited.
More than 1,000 people in Nigeria have died in recent years when fuel they were pilfering from pipelines caught fire.
Compiled by Dana Carlson from wire reports

 UNITED STATES (93%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


May 13, 2006 Saturday



 Aceh lawmakers may expand Islamic law

 
   JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- A bill proposed by lawmakers on the tsunami-ravaged Indonesian province of Aceh would impose Shariah, or Islamic law, on all non-Muslims, the military and police, a local law enforcement official said. 
Sharia took effect last year in Aceh, a predominantly Muslim region on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island. It banned drinking, gambling, adultery and other behavior deemed immoral under Islam. But it had only applied to Muslims.
The latest bill, submitted to the national parliament for debate, is expected to be adopted by the 550-seat house by the summer after facing initial resistance.
"Based on the equality in law, Acehnese people have formally proposed . . . to apply the Islamic Shariah Law to all those residing in Aceh, including military, police and non-Muslims," said Alyasa Abubakar, head of a local government office that enforces the Shariah on Aceh.
"We leave it to the parliament whether to accept or reject the Acehnese people's proposal," Abubakar said last week. "I personally feel that it is not fair to apply the Islamic Sharia only to Muslims."
Abdullah Saleh, deputy chairman of the parliamentary commission handling the draft, said the change still "protects the non-Muslims' freedom to perform their religious duties."
With 220 million inhabitants, Indonesia is home to more Muslims than any other nation, but is a secular state where people follow a moderate form of the faith.
The draft will almost certainly harm delicate relations with other religions, in a country where Christian-Muslim violence has claimed the lives of thousands in recent years.
Although around 97 percent of the population is Muslim, Aceh is also home to Hindus, Buddhists and Christians.
Aceh was the single worst-hit Asian coastline in the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami which claimed the lives of some 130,000.

 INDONESIA (96%)








 
 

May 12, 2006 Friday



 ROCK-A-TOLLAH - IRAN NUT'S HATE TALK WOWS 'EM IN INDONESIA

 
Iran's fanatical president was treated like a rock star by hundreds of cheering students in Indonesia yesterday, as he took his hate-America and hate-Israel tour on the road.   
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad laughed off the possibility of a military confrontation with the United States - and repeated his denunciation of Israel as "a tyrannical regime that one day will be destroyed."  
Ahmadinejad was wildly cheered by students who packed auditoriums and held signs reading "Iran in Our Hearts" at Islamic University in Jakarta., where he delivered 60- to 90-minute speeches.  
"I loved him. He was very charismatic," said a first-year economics student who identified herself as Deslina. "If it comes to that, they should go to war. If I could, I would fight the United States."  
Ahmadinejad is on a five-day visit to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation (population 200 million), while the Bush administration continued to press for U.N. sanctions intended to halt Iran's nuclear program.  
On Jakarta TV, Ahmadinejad claimed a military move against Iran would end in disaster.  
"First of all, actually, the idea of going to war is a joke," he said.  
"They do know that any mistreatment of the Iranian people will actually cause more losses to them than for us . . . This is just rhetoric."  
He spoke two days after key U.N. Security Council members agreed to give Tehran another two weeks to reconsider its uranium enrichment program - thereby delaying any sanction resolution.  
Ahmadinejad told students that it was the right of every country - not just the United States - to use new technology to meet energy needs.  
"We are not only defending our rights, we are defending the rights of many other countries," he added. "By maintaining our position, we are defending our independence."  
Ahmadinejad also said Western nations with large stocks of nuclear weapons were practicing "double standards" in pressing Iran to stop its nuclear program.  
"The big powers . . . have a lot of nuclear weapons in their warehouse," he said.  
"We want to use technology for peace and the welfare of the Muslim people around the world," he said. "But they want to use it to invade other countries. This is the difference between us and them." 
With Post Wire Services 

  IRAN,  (95%);  IRAN (74%)







 
 



May 12, 2006 Friday



 In the World

 
Sri Lanka: Sea fight kills 50 insurgents
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - At least 50 insurgents were killed and 17 Sri Lankan sailors were missing after a sea battle instigated yesterday by Tamil Tiger rebels, a spokesman for the South Asian nation's navy said. 
The rebels sank a navy patrol boat off the country's northern coast as it escorted a troop transport carrying 710 soldiers. In retaliation, the navy struck five rebel vessels, and the air force launched air strikes on guerrilla-held territory.
A search was under way for the missing sailors, said the navy spokesman, Cmdr. D.K.P. Dassanayake. He said at least 50 Tiger guerrillas were on the sunken rebel boats and all were believed dead. No independent verification was immediately possible.
- AP
Colombia legalizes
some abortions
BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's top court has voted to legalize abortion in specific cases, easing a complete ban on the procedure in the majority Roman Catholic nation.
Under Wednesday's 5-3 decision by the Constitutional Court, abortions will be permitted in cases of rape and incest and when the life of a mother is in danger. Abortion under all other circumstances will remain illegal, punishable by up to three years in jail for the woman and the doctor performing the procedure.
Before the ruling, Colombia, El Salvador and Chile were the only countries in Latin America where abortion was illegal under any circumstances. - AP
Suharto will face corruption charges
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said today that he would not drop corruption charges against ailing former dictator Suharto, citing public anger over the proposal.
Yesterday, State Secretary Yusril Ihza Mahendra - appointed by Yudhoyono to investigate the case - said the government intended to drop charges against Suharto, 84, who is in a hospital recovering from colon surgery.
Suharto was ousted in 1998 amid nationwide riots. In 2000, prosecutors charged him with embezzling $600 million, but he has yet to appear in court. His attorneys have argued a series of strokes left him with irreparable brain damage. - AP
Elsewhere:
Iranian PresidentMahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that he was ready to hold talks on his country's nuclear program, but he warned that efforts to force Iran to the negotiating table with threats could backfire. He told Muslim students in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he was visiting, that the West was being hypocritical in pressing Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment program.
Five bombs ripped through a firing range at a police training school in southwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing six members of an antiterrorism unit and wounding nine, police said.
A gas blast at a coal mine in southern China's Sichuan province killed 11 people and injured nine, the government said yesterday.

 SRI LANKA (94%); COLOMBIA (94%);  IRAN,  (93%);  ASIA (92%); EL SALVADOR (79%); CHILE (79%); LATIN AMERICA (79%); PAKISTAN (79%)







 
 
 (Minnesota)

May 12, 2006 Friday



 Iranian leader pledges talks

 
NATION & WORLD BRIEFING
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Iran's president said Thursday he was ready to hold talks over his country's nuclear program, but he warned that efforts to force Tehran to the negotiating table with threats could backfire. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also launched a scathing attack on Israel and told more than 1,000 cheering Muslim students in the Indonesian capital that the West was being hypocritical in pressing Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program. "The big powers ... have a lot of nuclear weapons in their warehouse," Ahmadinejad said during a visit to the world's largest Muslim majority nation amid a deepening international standoff over Tehran's nuclear program and suspicions it is seeking atomic weapons. "We want to use technology for peace and the welfare of the Muslim people around the world," he told students who gathered at Islamic University. "But they want to use it to invade other countries. This is the difference between us and them."
Priest convicted
in nun's 1980 killing 
TOLEDO, Ohio -- A priest was convicted Thursday of murder in the slaying of a nun who was found stabbed 26 years ago in a hospital chapel, her forehead "anointed" with a smudge of blood, her wounds forming an upside-down cross on her chest. The Rev. Gerald Robinson, 68, was immediately sentenced to the mandatory term of 15 years to life in prison after a trial in which forensic experts matched the victim's wounds to a distinctive, sword-shaped letter opener found in the priest's room. Robinson, who had worked closely with Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, 71, as the hospital chaplain and presided at her funeral, was a suspect early on but was not charged in the 1980 case until two years ago. Prosecutors took a closer look at the slaying after he was anonymously accused of molestation. Those allegations have not been substantiated. Prosecutors suggested that Robinson's relationship with the nun was strained and had finally reached a breaking point.
Bushes urge grads
to help Gulf Coast
BILOXI, Miss. -- President Bush on Thursday urged graduates of a Mississippi community college to use the resolve they showed in restarting their lives after Hurricane Katrina to help improve schools and fight poverty. In an arena still under repair, Bush quoted Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who said: "People aren't leaving. They're hitching up their britches and rebuilding Mississippi." About 660 graduates at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College warmly applauded Bush's message about post-Katrina recovery. Meanwhile, first lady Laura Bush told the graduating class at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., Thursday that helping others can bring happiness. She urged them to "dedicate a vacation to recovery" by participating in Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts -- or to volunteer their talents anywhere they might be needed in the world.
Dean errs on party's
gay marriage stance
WASHINGTON -- Democratic chairman Howard Dean mischaracterized his party's platform on gay rights in an interview courting evangelicals, then set the record straight Thursday when an advocacy group called him on it. Dean told Christian Broadcasting Network News that the 2004 Democratic platform declares "marriage is between a man and a woman" -- just one of the points he made in reaching out to religious conservatives who are largely hostile to the party. But the platform does not define marriage that way, and his remarks prompted the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to return a $5,000 donation from the Democratic National Committee. Dean later acknowledged his misstatement, but the group sent back the money anyway.
Bush judicial
nominee advances
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's nomination of White House aide Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia moved a step closer to confirmation Thursday even as Democrats raised objections to two other judicial picks. After Democrats cleared the way, the Judiciary Committee approved Kavanaugh in a 10-8 party-line vote, and the Democrats moved on to questions about the other nominees' conflicts and qualifications. "They'd be an embarrassment to even be debated on the floor," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., referring to the nominations of Terrence Boyle to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and Michael Wallace to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Smoking-cessation
drug wins approval
WASHINGTON -- A Pfizer drug shown to help more than one in five smokers quit the habit received federal approval Thursday, adding another option to the limited pool of effective stop-smoking prescription medicines. Varenicline is only the second nicotine-free smoking cessation drug to gain Food and Drug Administration approval. Pfizer Inc. plans to market the twice-daily tablet as Chantix. Varenicline works in two ways, by cutting the pleasure of smoking and reducing the withdrawal symptoms that lead smokers to light up again and again. Most other stop-smoking drugs are various nicotine-replacement therapies.
N. Korea still faces
food crisis, U.N. says
BEIJING -- Millions of needy North Koreans will continue to face a "very difficult situation" under a scaled-back resumption of World Food Program deliveries of food to the hunger-stricken nation, the U.N. agency said Thursday. North Korea on Wednesday agreed to allow the WFP to resume food shipments to 1.9 million North Koreans -- down sharply from the 6.5 million people the agency was feeding in past years, the agency's Asia regional director Tony Banbury said at a news conference. Those other 4 million people, many of them elderly, will be fed through a state grain distribution system that is known to be unreliable and understocked, Banbury said.
Disabled face limits,
despite employment
WASHINGTON -- More than half the nation's disabled people hold jobs, but they often have lower incomes and less education and are less likely to have health insurance than people without disabilities, the government said Friday. Nearly one in five Americans -- about 51 million people -- had physical or mental disabilities in 2002, according to the Census Bureau. About 33 million of them had severe disabilities. About 56 percent of disabled adults, ages 21 to 64, had jobs in 2002. Among those with severe disabilities, 43 percent had jobs.
Jailed Palestinians
soften Israeli stance
JERUSALEM -- Senior Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israeli jails hammered out a proposal softening Hamas' rejection of Israel's right to exist in what could be a first step toward moderation for the Islamic militant group, Palestinian officials said Thursday. The proposal, accepting a Palestinian state alongside Israel, was signed by a well-known Hamas militant, but it's far from clear if it will be accepted by the group's hard-line leaders abroad, who have resisted international demands to recognize Israel and renounce violence.
Islamic, secular
forces still fighting
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- A radical Islamic force battled for a strategic road Thursday in a continuing struggle with secular warlords for control of the northern half of Somalia's capital, which has left at least 130 people dead. Most of the victims have been civilians.

 IRAN,  (97%); UNITED STATES (94%);  IRAN (88%)







 
 
 (Minnesota)

May 12, 2006 Friday



 Iranian leader pledges talks

 
NATION & WORLD BRIEFING
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Iran's president said Thursday he was ready to hold talks over his country's nuclear program, but he warned that efforts to force Tehran to the negotiating table with threats could backfire. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also launched a scathing attack on Israel and told more than 1,000 cheering Muslim students in the Indonesian capital that the West was being hypocritical in pressing Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program. "The big powers ... have a lot of nuclear weapons in their warehouse," Ahmadinejad said during a visit to the world's largest Muslim majority nation amid a deepening international standoff over Tehran's nuclear program and suspicions it is seeking atomic weapons. "We want to use technology for peace and the welfare of the Muslim people around the world," he told students who gathered at Islamic University. "But they want to use it to invade other countries. This is the difference between us and them."
Priest convicted
in nun's 1980 killing 
TOLEDO, Ohio -- A priest was convicted Thursday of murder in the slaying of a nun who was found stabbed 26 years ago in a hospital chapel, her forehead "anointed" with a smudge of blood, her wounds forming an upside-down cross on her chest. The Rev. Gerald Robinson, 68, was immediately sentenced to the mandatory term of 15 years to life in prison after a trial in which forensic experts matched the victim's wounds to a distinctive, sword-shaped letter opener found in the priest's room. Robinson, who had worked closely with Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, 71, as the hospital chaplain and presided at her funeral, was an early suspect but was not charged in the 1980 case until two years ago. Prosecutors took a closer look at the slaying after he was anonymously accused of molestation. Those allegations have not been substantiated. Prosecutors suggested that Robinson's relationship with the nun was strained and had reached a breaking point.
Bushes urge grads
to help Gulf Coast
BILOXI, Miss. -- President Bush on Thursday urged graduates of a Mississippi community college to use the resolve they showed in restarting their lives after Hurricane Katrina to help improve schools and fight poverty. In an arena still under repair, Bush quoted Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who said: "People aren't leaving. They're hitching up their britches and rebuilding Mississippi." About 660 graduates at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College warmly applauded Bush's message. Meanwhile, first lady Laura Bush told the graduating class at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., Thursday that helping others can bring happiness. She urged them to "dedicate a vacation to recovery" by participating in Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts.
Dean errs on party's
gay marriage stance
WASHINGTON -- Democratic chairman Howard Dean mischaracterized his party's platform on gay rights in an interview courting evangelicals, then set the record straight Thursday when an advocacy group called him on it. Dean told Christian Broadcasting Network News that the 2004 Democratic platform declares "marriage is between a man and a woman" -- one of several points he made in reaching out to religious conservatives. But the platform does not define marriage that way, and his remarks prompted the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to return a $5,000 donation from the Democratic National Committee. Dean later acknowledged his misstatement, but the group sent back the money anyway.
Bush judicial
nominee advances
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's nomination of White House aide Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia moved a step closer to confirmation Thursday even as Democrats raised objections to two other judicial picks. After Democrats cleared the way, the Judiciary Committee approved Kavanaugh in a 10-8 party-line vote and the Democrats moved on to other nominees. "They'd be an embarrassment to even be debated on the floor," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., referring to the nominations of Terrence Boyle to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and Michael Wallace to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Paxil maker warns of suicide risk
After analyzing data from clinical trials, GlaxoSmithKline has sent letters to doctors warning that its antidepressant drug Paxil appears to increase the risk of suicide attempts in some young adults. The company said it changed labeling on the drug to reflect the finding of the study, which analyzed clinical trial data involving 15,000 people. The study found that reported suicide attempts were rare but significantly more common in adults who took the drug for depression than in those who received placebo pills. In 2004 the Food and Drug Administration ordered drug companies to place a warning on antidepressant labels after studies suggested that some drugs increased suicidal thinking or behavior in children and adolescents. The Glaxo study is the first by a drug company to find a link between antidepressants and suicidal behavior in adults.
South Korean scientist indicted
SEOUL, South Korea -- Prosecutors indicted disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk today on fraud and bioethics law violations linked to faked stem cell research, officials said. Five members of Hwang's research team were indicted on the same charges, prosecution official Lee In-kyu said. Hwang was hailed worldwide as a stem cell pioneer until investigations late last year showed he had fabricated key data in two papers he published in the journal Science in 2004 and 2005. The scientist had claimed that he created the world's first cloned human embryos and extracted stem cells from them. The journal has since retracted both articles.
Disabled face limits,
despite employment
WASHINGTON -- More than half the nation's disabled people hold jobs, but they often have lower incomes and less education and are less likely to have health insurance than people without disabilities, the government said Friday. Nearly one in five Americans -- about 51 million people -- had physical or mental disabilities in 2002, according to the Census Bureau. About 33 million of them had severe disabilities. About 56 percent of disabled adults, ages 21 to 64, had jobs in 2002. Among those with severe disabilities, 43 percent had jobs.
Jailed Palestinians
soften Israeli stance
JERUSALEM -- Senior Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israeli jails hammered out a proposal softening Hamas' rejection of Israel's right to exist in what could be a first step toward moderation for the Islamic militant group, Palestinian officials said Thursday. The proposal, accepting a Palestinian state alongside Israel, was signed by a well-known Hamas militant, but it's far from clear if it will be accepted by the group's hard-line leaders abroad, who have resisted international demands to recognize Israel and renounce violence.
Islamic, secular
forces still fighting
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- A radical Islamic force battled for a strategic road Thursday in a continuing struggle with secular warlords for control of the northern half of Somalia's capital, which has left at least 130 people dead. Most of the victims have been civilians.

 IRAN,  (97%); UNITED STATES (94%);  IRAN (88%)







 
 
 (Minnesota)

May 12, 2006 Friday



 Iranian leader pledges talks

 
NATION & WORLD BRIEFING
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Iran's president said Thursday he was ready to hold talks over his country's nuclear program, but he warned that efforts to force Tehran to the negotiating table with threats could backfire. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also launched a scathing attack on Israel and told more than 1,000 cheering Muslim students in the Indonesian capital that the West was being hypocritical in pressing Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program. "The big powers ... have a lot of nuclear weapons in their warehouse," Ahmadinejad said during a visit to the world's largest Muslim majority nation amid a deepening international standoff over Tehran's nuclear program and suspicions it is seeking atomic weapons. "We want to use technology for peace and the welfare of the Muslim people around the world," he told students who gathered at Islamic University. "But they want to use it to invade other countries. This is the difference between us and them."
Priest convicted
in nun's 1980 killing 
TOLEDO, Ohio -- A priest was convicted Thursday of murder in the slaying of a nun who was found stabbed 26 years ago in a hospital chapel, her forehead "anointed" with a smudge of blood, her wounds forming an upside-down cross on her chest. The Rev. Gerald Robinson, 68, was immediately sentenced to the mandatory term of 15 years to life in prison after a trial in which forensic experts matched the victim's wounds to a distinctive, sword-shaped letter opener found in the priest's room. Robinson, who had worked closely with Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, 71, as the hospital chaplain and presided at her funeral, was a suspect early on but was not charged in the 1980 case until two years ago. Prosecutors took a closer look at the slaying after he was anonymously accused of molestation. Those allegations have not been substantiated. Prosecutors suggested that Robinson's relationship with the nun was strained and had finally reached a breaking point.
Bushes urge grads
to help Gulf Coast
BILOXI, Miss. -- President Bush on Thursday urged graduates of a Mississippi community college to use the resolve they showed in restarting their lives after Hurricane Katrina to help improve schools and fight poverty. In an arena still under repair, Bush quoted Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who said: "People aren't leaving. They're hitching up their britches and rebuilding Mississippi." About 660 graduates at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College warmly applauded Bush's message about post-Katrina recovery. Meanwhile, first lady Laura Bush told the graduating class at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., Thursday that helping others can bring happiness. She urged them to "dedicate a vacation to recovery" by participating in Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts -- or to volunteer their talents anywhere they might be needed in the world.
Dean errs on party's
gay marriage stance
WASHINGTON -- Democratic chairman Howard Dean mischaracterized his party's platform on gay rights in an interview courting evangelicals, then set the record straight Thursday when an advocacy group called him on it. Dean told Christian Broadcasting Network News that the 2004 Democratic platform declares "marriage is between a man and a woman" -- just one of the points he made in reaching out to religious conservatives who are largely hostile to the party. But the platform does not define marriage that way, and his remarks prompted the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to return a $5,000 donation from the Democratic National Committee. Dean later acknowledged his misstatement, but the group sent back the money anyway.
Bush judicial
nominee advances
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's nomination of White House aide Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia moved a step closer to confirmation Thursday even as Democrats raised objections to two other judicial picks. After Democrats cleared the way, the Judiciary Committee approved Kavanaugh in a 10-8 party-line vote, and the Democrats moved on to questions about the other nominees' conflicts and qualifications. "They'd be an embarrassment to even be debated on the floor," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., referring to the nominations of Terrence Boyle to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and Michael Wallace to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Smoking-cessation
drug wins approval
WASHINGTON -- A Pfizer drug shown to help more than one in five smokers quit the habit received federal approval Thursday, adding another option to the limited pool of effective stop-smoking prescription medicines. Varenicline is only the second nicotine-free smoking cessation drug to gain Food and Drug Administration approval. Pfizer Inc. plans to market the twice-daily tablet as Chantix. Varenicline works in two ways, by cutting the pleasure of smoking and reducing the withdrawal symptoms that lead smokers to light up again and again. Most other stop-smoking drugs are various nicotine-replacement therapies.
N. Korea still faces
food crisis, U.N. says
BEIJING -- Millions of needy North Koreans will continue to face a "very difficult situation" under a scaled-back resumption of World Food Program deliveries of food to the hunger-stricken nation, the U.N. agency said Thursday. North Korea on Wednesday agreed to allow the WFP to resume food shipments to 1.9 million North Koreans -- down sharply from the 6.5 million people the agency was feeding in past years, the agency's Asia regional director Tony Banbury said at a news conference. Those other 4 million people, many of them elderly, will be fed through a state grain distribution system that is known to be unreliable and understocked, Banbury said.
Disabled face limits,
despite employment
WASHINGTON -- More than half the nation's disabled people hold jobs, but they often have lower incomes and less education and are less likely to have health insurance than people without disabilities, the government said Friday. Nearly one in five Americans -- about 51 million people -- had physical or mental disabilities in 2002, according to the Census Bureau. About 33 million of them had severe disabilities. About 56 percent of disabled adults, ages 21 to 64, had jobs in 2002. Among those with severe disabilities, 43 percent had jobs.
Jailed Palestinians
soften Israeli stance
JERUSALEM -- Senior Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israeli jails hammered out a proposal softening Hamas' rejection of Israel's right to exist in what could be a first step toward moderation for the Islamic militant group, Palestinian officials said Thursday. The proposal, accepting a Palestinian state alongside Israel, was signed by a well-known Hamas militant, but it's far from clear if it will be accepted by the group's hard-line leaders abroad, who have resisted international demands to recognize Israel and renounce violence.
Islamic, secular
forces still fighting
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- A radical Islamic force battled for a strategic road Thursday in a continuing struggle with secular warlords for control of the northern half of Somalia's capital, which has left at least 130 people dead. Most of the victims have been civilians.

 IRAN,  (97%); UNITED STATES (94%);  IRAN (88%)







 
 

 (Pennsylvania)

May 12, 2006 Friday



 In brief

 



San Diego mayor defends cross San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders speaks in front of the Mount Soledad Cross on Thursday in San Diego. Sanders said he wants the city to continue to fight for the cross, dedicated as a memorial on Easter Sunday in 1954 to Korean War veterans, despite a judge's order to remove the monument. The city was ordered to take down the 20-ton cross or face $5,000 in daily fines.

JAKARTA, Indonesia

Iran leader ready to talk
Iran's president said Thursday he was ready to hold talks over his country's nuclear program, but he warned that efforts to force Tehran to the negotiating table with threats could backfire.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also launched a scathing attack on Israel and told more than 1,000 cheering Muslim students in the Indonesian capital that the West was being hypocritical in pressing Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program.
"The big powers   have a lot of nuclear weapons in their warehouse," Ahmadinejad said during a visit to the world's largest Muslim majority nation amid a deepening international standoff over Tehran's nuclear program.

CAIRO, Egypt

Riot police beat activists
Thousands of Egyptian riot police beat pro-democracy activists Thursday, chasing and dragging them through the streets to break up a demonstration in support of judges who blew the whistle on election fraud.
The Bush administration expressed deep concern and said it would continue to press for political reforms and freedom of speech and the media in Egypt, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East.
The violence appeared to signal a tough new zero tolerance stance by the government toward protests demanding reform and expressing discontent that President Hosni Mubarak has backed off promises of democratic change.
The protests were called to support two judges from Egypt's highest court who have become heroes of the democracy movement after they went public with allegations of fraud during parliamentary elections last year.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka

Rebels sink navy boat
Tamil Tiger rebels sank a navy patrol boat off the northern coast of Sri Lanka Thursday, leaving at least 17 Sri Lankan sailors missing and prompting a retaliatory attack that sank five rebel vessels, the navy said.
Air force planes also bombed areas near the Tigers' northern headquarters, a rebel spokesman said.
The sharp escalation of violence between the two sides began when a boat convoy escorting a troop carrier was attacked by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels, navy spokesman Commander D.K.P. Dassanayake said.
"About 15 LTTE boats including suicide boats attacked one of our vessels transporting 710 soldiers," Dassanayake said.

FRANKFORT, Ky.

Grand jury indicts governor
A grand jury indicted Gov. Ernie Fletcher on misdemeanor charges Thursday, accusing him of illegally rewarding political supporters with state jobs since taking office two years ago.
Fletcher was charged with conspiracy, official misconduct and violating a prohibition against political discrimination. His spokesman Troy Body said the governor's office would release a statement later Thursday.
For nearly a year, the special grand jury has been investigating whether the Fletcher administration broke state law by basing personnel decisions on political considerations.
From Times Leader wire services

 UNITED STATES (94%); EGYPT (94%); IRAN,  (94%); SRI LANKA (93%); INDONESIA (92%); IRAN (88%); ISRAEL (79%); MIDDLE EAST (77%)







 
 

 

May 11, 2006 Thursday



 RELIGION DIGEST

 
Armagh, Northern Ireland
MODERATING BISHOP TO RETIRE: Archbishop Robin Eames, who has worked to guide the global Anglican Communion through disputes over the roles of women and gays, announced Tuesday that he plans to retire as Irish primate at the end of the year.
Eames, 69, was appointed in 1986 as archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, the senior position in the Irish church. He is the longest-serving primate in the Anglican Communion, an association of 38 national churches that claims 77 million members worldwide. 
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tapped Eames to head a commission to develop recommendations to hold the Anglican Communion together following the election of an openly gay priest, Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire in the U.S. Episcopal Church.
The commission's findings, published as the 2004 Windsor Report, called for apologies from the U.S. church for acting without consulting the broader communion, and for some African leaders to apologize for meddling in the affairs of the American church.
From 1988-90, Eames led another commission, which sought to resolve differences over the appointment of women as bishops.
-- Associated Press
Washington
VATICAN BACKS U.S. CHURCH ABUSE RULES: Vatican officials have approved revisions to the U.S. bishops' discipline plan for clergy who molest children, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said Tuesday.
The nation's Roman Catholic bishops had finalized the changes in June, leaving intact the main points of the plan they had adopted in 2002 at the height of the abuse crisis.
The policy dictates how bishops should investigate molestation claims and requires American bishops to bar guilty priests from church work.
The Vatican's Congregation for Bishops announced its authorization of the amendments in April to visiting leaders of the U.S. bishops' conference. The Vatican approval makes the revised policy church law for the United States.
-- Associated Press
Jakarta, Indonesia
PROVINCE SEEKS ISLAMIC LAW FOR ALL: A bill proposed by lawmakers on the tsunami-ravaged Indonesian province of Aceh would impose Shariah, or Islamic law, on all non-Muslims, the military and police, a local law enforcement official said.
Sharia took effect last year in Aceh, a predominantly Muslim region on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island. It banned drinking, gambling, adultery and other behavior deemed immoral under Islam. But it had applied only to Muslims.
The latest bill, submitted to the national parliament for debate, is expected to be adopted by the 550-seat house by the summer after facing initial resistance.
"Based on the equality in law, Acehnese people have formally proposed ... to apply the Islamic Shariah Law to all those residing in Aceh, including military, police and non-Muslims," said Alyasa Abubakar, head of a local government office that enforces the Shariah on Aceh.
"We leave it to the parliament whether to accept or reject the Acehnese people's proposal," Abubakar said last week.
-- Associated Press
Hartford, Conn.
STUDY FINDS MORE INTERFAITH WORSHIP: Interfaith worship and community service have increased in the nearly five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a new survey.
About 22 percent of congregations reported participating in interfaith worship in the past year, compared with 7 percent in a Faith Communities Today 2000 Survey.
And nearly 38 percent of congregations reported participating in interfaith community service work, compared with 8 percent in the 2000 poll.
Faith Communities Today is a project of the Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership at Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
Minority faiths, such as Islam, are the most active in interfaith work, the survey found. David Roozen, director of the partnership and a professor at the seminary, said the survey shows that interfaith outreach has broadened beyond ecumenical Christian.
-- Associated Press

 UNITED STATES (96%);  NORTHERN IRELAND (92%); IRELAND (92%); HOLY SEE (91%); AFRICA (79%)







   


May 11, 2006 Thursday  




 Bush Says Iran Leader's Letter Fails to Address Nuclear Issue

 
President Bush suggested yesterday that a letter from Iran's president to him failed to address the most important issue in the international community: when Iran would ''get rid of'' its nuclear program. 
  In an interview with seven Florida newspapers, Mr. Bush made his first public comments on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter, which was 18 pages in its translated version and dwelt on topics including religion, economics and politics.
While the letter is believed to be the first direct communication from an Iranian president to an American president since ties between the countries were severed in 1979, Bush administration officials have said it is not a serious diplomatic overture. 
  ''It looks like it did not answer the main question that the world is asking, and that is, 'When will you get rid of your nuclear program?' '' Mr. Bush said, according to an article written from the interview and posted on The St. Petersburg Times Web site.
  Iran says that its nuclear program is only for electricity generation and that it will continue with its uranium enrichment program, while the United States and its allies believe it is a cover for developing a nuclear weapons capacity.
  Mr. Bush said his administration was trying to find a diplomatic solution to the Iran standoff. He said Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Russia and China had agreed that the Iranians should not have a weapon or the capacity to make one.
  ''There is a universal agreement toward that goal, and the letter didn't address that question,'' he said. ''Diplomacy takes a while when you are dealing with different nations like those that sat around the table with Condi Rice the other night.''
  Mr. Bush was referring to a meeting between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the other envoys of the United Nations Security Council countries, as well as Germany, this week in New York to forge a common position on Iran. It came in response to a report last month by the United Nations nuclear monitoring agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that declared that Iran had failed to meet a deadline to halt the program.
  Ms. Rice said yesterday that there were ''tactical differences'' over what to do about Iran's nuclear activities and that negotiators would take several weeks to fashion an offer that would allow the Iranians to have a civil nuclear program.
  ''We agreed that we will continue to seek a Security Council resolution, but that we would wait for a couple of weeks while the Europeans design an offer to the Iranians that would make clear that they have a choice that would allow them to have a civil nuclear program -- if that is indeed what they want,'' Ms. Rice said in an interview on ABC's ''Good Morning America'' after the talks. 
  American officials say the discussions in New York failed to break an impasse over their drive with the British and French for a United Nations Security Council resolution that would make it mandatory for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, stop construction of a heavy-water nuclear reactor and resume talks with the West. Russia and China oppose such a resolution as too threatening and say it could provoke Iran to abandon all cooperation with international nuclear inspections.
  Yesterday, Mr. Ahmadinejad reiterated that Iran would reject any Security Council decision that restricted the country's nuclear activities, which he said his country, like others, had the right to pursue.
  ''The Iranian nation has decided,'' he said at a news briefing in Indonesia that was carried by the Iranian news agency IRNA. ''It will defend and never renounce its rights.'' Mr. Ahmadinejad also cast the tensions over Iran's nuclear program as an unfair struggle against technological advancement in Muslim countries.
  ''Iranians are strong enough to defend their rights,'' he said. ''But it should also be stressed here that resistance of the Iranian nation will not only be for Iran but for all independent-minded states including Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Egypt and other Muslim countries.'' 

 IRAN,  (97%); UNITED STATES (94%);  GERMANY (90%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (88%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%); EUROPE (79%); FRANCE (69%)




3


 
 



May 11, 2006 Thursday



 Additional `Letters to the Editor'

 
NOTE: The following letters are unedited and reflect only the views of the author.
I need to respond to Eddie Garcia's "Another View" of My 5th. I am not a xenophobe, and as the great-grandchild of immigrants I appreciate the many plusses immigration has brought to this great country. However, never have we seen such numbers, and I worry about our ability to assimilate so many so fast. There is certainly an optimum number of immigrants per year (a number that would fluctuate with economic conditions): What is that number is a question that needs to be asked and answered, and soon. Unfortunately, in today's politically correct climate, you can't even raise the question without being labeled a racist. Hopefully, we have this debate and reach consensus before the day comes (already here in many western states) when a citizen of this great land is denied a job because he/she doesn't speak Spanish.
Austin J. Goodrich, Sunnyvale 
It is with great frustration that I hear and read such statements as the one I heard yesterday on the radio made by Cindy Sheehan to the effect that this war is "Bush's war" and we need to immediately withdraw our troops from Iraq and then we will have peace. If this naive statement weren't so dangerous it would be ridiculous. This war is about the threat of an ideology called radical Islam and it started long before Bush became our president. During the past 20 years, during the administration of 4 presidents, there have been Islamic attacks against Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and moderate Muslims and they have occurred not only in Iraq or Afganistan but also in the Phillipines, Somalia, Darfur, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, the USA, Argentina, Lebanon, Israel, Chechna, England, Spain, India, Indonesia, France and they have been against anyone who is not a radical Muslim-especially all westerners. This is not our battle alone and this is no more Bush's war than WW 2 was President Roosevelt's war. Iraq is only one small faction of the war and we are fighting there because there was a dictator there who sponsored terrorism, who murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people, who produced and used chemical weapons on his own people and who invaded and threatened the entire region and the world. Our withdrawal from Iraq now would only embolden the radical Muslims and cause a civil war between those who want democracy in Iraq(over 70 %) and these radical insurgents. You can be anti-war and hate Bush but you cannot wish away or pray away the radical Muslim "jihad." Their set course is to "kill the infidels and bring Islam(Allah) to the entire world." We can either lay down our arms and wait for this to happen or we can fight back to try and prevent it from happening. Politics aside, this is a threat that we must unite against if we are to prevail. We need our greatest leaders and minds to win-from the left, middle and the right. Our children and grandchildren's future depends on it.
Nancy Deussen, Palo Alto
Catherine Christeller, of the Chicago Woman's AIDS Project, was recently quoted in an article saying that HIV-positive undocumented immigrants will be deported if their status is discovered through routine testing. This is inaccurate.
The U.S. does have an immigration ban for HIV-positive people, which applies to all immigrants regardless of status. The ban works by denying entry into the country at a port of entry, such as an airport. For those already in the U.S., the ban works by denying HIV-positive people their application for permanent residency, but they are certainly not deported because of this.
Christeller's assertion is troubling because research shows that people who are aware of their HIV status and receive treatment are much less likely to put others at risk of infection. Now we fear that people will shy away from doctors' offices and not get tested, and go untreated due to fear of deportation. At The Health Trust AIDS Services we provide assistance to all HIV-positive individuals in Santa Clara County and will continue to do so to ensure that the health of people in Santa Clara County is the best it can be.
Marta Donayre, San Jose
Regarding the issue of railroad track fatalities, the essence of the problem seems to be summed up in the MN's use of the term "trespasser." Fatalities are the simple result of people being stupid/irresponsible and no matter how much money is spent to address the issue, a given number will continue to improperly cross tracks with a corresponding level of fatalities as the inevitable result. The problem isn't the railroad; the problem is the irresponsible trespassers.
Lawrence Pratt, San Jose
Asking 12th graders to minimally have 8th grade math and 10th grade English knowledge is NOT unreasonable. Judge Freedman is concern about the fairness that not all students have access to the same quality of education. There is and will never be a perfect scenario. Not all students have the same quality of parenting, neighborhoods or IQ either. Does that make it right to give diplomas to kids who can't read or write at the 12th grade level? By granting diplomas to kids who can't make this minimal standard, the school system is equating the valedictorian's achievements to Johnny-can't-read--same diploma, vastly different performances. How fair is that now?
Peggy Toye, Foster City
I recently began searching for employment, and am outraged to find that it is now common practice to require applicants to authorize a consumer credit check as a condition of employment. Apparently, employers are under the misconcepcion that a credit report is an accurate portrayal of a person's character, integrity and responsibility. To call that a misconcepcion is an understatement! People suffer from credit problems for a multitude of reasons, including identity theft, sudden loss of income, and unexpected expenses. Every branch of our government has "bad credit" based on deficits due to lack of revenue and unexpected expenses, so our government officials, of all people, should understand this.
While a credit report is in no way an indicator of a person's ability to perform job tasks, it IS a perfect way for employers to bypass the Equal Opportunity Employment Act, by giving preferential treatment to financially well-off applicants, and deeming the economically disadvantaged, who are disadvantaged because they NEED better employment, as unqualified.
This, in my opinion, is as appalling as discrimination based on color, marital status or religion.
Employers should not have access to our personal, financial information. Credit reports should be used to determine eligibility for CREDIT, while job qualifications should be used to determine eligibilty for employment.
Anna Hernandez, San Jose
President Bush said in response to the Rwandan Genocide, "Not on my watch." Yet he stands idly by while a genocide is happening in the Darfur region of Sudan today. It sickens me to think that we are spending billions of dollars on a war in Iraq that, according to polls, no one wants; while thousands of people are being killed and driven out of their homes in Darfur.
The UN has called the genocide in Darfur the greatest humanitarian issue in the world today, yet not enough is being done to help these people. Demonstrations such as the Million Voices for Darfur have shown that this is obviously a global issue and that people want the US to get involved.
President Bush recently said he will be bringing food and troops this summer, but it is not soon enough. Especially, since the food being provided is being cut in half. Are these people supposed to just wait for months to receive food, are they supposed to continue to die. President Bush needs to make this a top priority, for the sake of these people, and for the sake of humanity.
Michael Flores, San Ramon
It is unfortunate that a majority of people in our nation didn't quite see the "writing on the wall." When Mr. Bush referred to the Mr. Gore's arguments as "Fuzzy Math" with derision during presidential debate, it was painfully obvious he just didn't have a good grasp of the problem.
Now we have further evidence with his handling of almost every, if not all, issues and policies. Since it is not just "writing on the wall" anymore, people are beginning to feel the effects. The poll numbers appear to reflect this fact ("Pollsters find dismay over U.S. direction deepening," SJ Mercury News, May 9, pp. 1A). Perhaps the only thing Mr. Bush is good at, and probably enjoys is fishing (Letters, SJ Mercury News, May 9, pp. 21A).
Raghavendra Rao Loka, Palo Alto
When the sun goes down and the Mother's Day parties are over, we might do well to pause a little longer for some serious reflection. Perhaps it is time to put mothers back where they belong... high on a pedestal, at the center of our existence.
The fantasy of "Mother At Home" spending hours nurturing her children appears no longer to be The American Dream. Yet a reemphasis on Motherhood in our endangered culture could be the cure for many of our ills. Glancing at the simple, unrushed, more "backwards" cultures, where motherhood is revered, children and mothers spend quality and quantity time together. Mothers and children, alike, have fewer expectations, feel less pressured, and generally enjoy life more.
Endowed by nature with unique instincts, it is a woman's privileged role "to mother." Mothers are the prime instrument children need for unconditional love, attention, and recognition. With good mothering and nurturing, children become whole, mature, healthy adults who influence the course of society. Machines, TV's, teachers, nannies, and police officers are poor substitutes.
It is high-time we reconsider the role of mothers in our high-tech society. It could, indeed, be the answer to our society's need for refinement. Let us neither underestimate motherhood; nor fail to hail it as our society's most noble job; nor fail to give mothers what they need to do their job well. Rest; protection; financial support; education; high esteem...are a good beginning.
Sitting on Mother's lap may well be the answer to our aches and pains.
Pamela Delaney, Los Gatos
Voters frequently feel powerless against City officials' decisions, especially when those decisions directly affect their lives and/or those of their community.
On June 6, Saratoga voters will have the opportunity to demonstrate their power over elected officials' decisions. Several months ago, a majority of their City Council voted to sell a valuable piece of property so that 9 new homes could be built. The problem is that Saratoga doesn't need any more luxury homes.
Saratoga does, however, need more open space and rooms for community and civic activities. The existing Community and Senior Centers are inadequate and cannot meet current requests and certainly cannot provide for future community needs.
Under residents' pressure, the Saratoga City Council agreed to place the issue of retaining or selling the former church property (known the North Campus) on the Primary Ballot so that residents can voice their wishes regarding it's fate.
It simply makes sense to keep the North Campus. It's potential use for community and civic activities cannot be over estimated. It is in the City's best interests to provide additional open space, class and meeting rooms to better serve its children, youth, seniors and families. Voting "No on J" will go a long way in accomplishing that goal
Marcia Fariss, Saratoga
Professor Joel Beinin claims that he "never, in any way, supported terrorism." Beinin's statement is hard to square with his backing of Sami Al-Arian, a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terror group responsible for many suicide bombings. When Al-Arian was fired from his job at a Florida university for his links to terrorism, Beinin and the Middle East Studies Association he headed loudly supported Al-Arian, denouncing the serious charges against him as `old and never-proven accusations`. Al-Arian was subsequently tried on -- and pled guilty to -- terror-related charges. If Beinin's championing a Palestinian terrorist king-pin isn't supporting terrorism, I don't know what is.
Sam Cramer, Sunnyvale
I couldn't believe my eyes when I read the article by Andrew Klavan in the SJM April 10th. And I was even more surprised that your paper would print it. I wonder if Mr. Klavan has any idea what war really means: Legions of blinds, amputees, paraplegics, wasted lives, grieving relatives, destruction of livelihoods, waste of immense resources, etc. Do we really need to glorify war? Isn't our society brutalized enough? Whom does Mr. Klavan think we should attack next? Iran must be high on his list, or China? Or India? They are, after all, our greatest economic competitors. I also wonder whose interest Mr. Klavan has in mind with his pep-talk for more war? It saddens me, one who caught a glimpse of what war is really like, to see such blatant jingoism printed in one of what I considered up to now, one of the better newspapers around.
Waldemar Huala, Santa Cruz
On May 10, 2006 Don Wolfe has a very articulate story on why people should be more anxious to serve as jurors. He is right. Some of the reasons may however be that jurors are often not treated properly, are expected to donate a lot of time, and get a miserable reimbursement for their effort. Some comments follow.
Lawyers for indigent defendants get from $100 to $200 per hour, and, as one can read in the papers, often even continue to get paid when they fall asleep in court. Their indigent client can sometimes get convicted, sentenced to death, and executed even though nobody denied that the lawyer was sleeping in court.
Jurors almost get paid nothing even for expenses, and the courts in California still have the gall to put a paper in front of them to sign so as to waive the right to these minimal payments.
For many people, especially (but not limited to) the self employed, jury duty represents a major sacrifice. On one occasion I spent days clearing up my schedule so that I could be on the jury for a murder case, and the very moment I sat down in the jury chair I was kicked out on a Peremptory Challenge. It was all so ridiculous that I burst out in loud laughter, and I walked out of the courtroom shaking with laughter. The Judge at least had enough sense not to charge me with contempt of court.
Francis de Winter, Santa Cruz
It isn't often that Russia can help America with solving one of our most vexing problems. And, peculiarly, we can help them with one of theirs.
Putin, we are told, seeks incentives to increase Russia's birthrate. We have millions of Latino immigrants. Is it beyond the realm of possibility to peacefully send the illegals to Russia? And even the cost of assisting Russia with their resettlement would be less costly than barbed wire, fences and walls and border patrols. This splendid opportunity should not be missed.
S.L. Chandler, San Francisco
Barbara Feder Ostrov's article on the Medicare Part D "doughnut hole" [Gap in Medicare coverage mean some pay thousands, May 9] had a few holes of its own.
According to the article, once a Medicare Part D beneficiary reaches the coverage gap or "doughnut hole," the person is then obligated to pay $3,600 in out-of-pocket expenses toward prescription medication. In fact, that number is not $3,600, but $2,850.
The person portrayed in the article, Karen Giovannetti, is quoted as saying that she is being strained financially as the result of the "doughnut hole" and that next year it will be the same thing all over again.
Next year could be different for Ms. Giovannetti. Here's why: Until May 15, she is allowed to switch plans one time. And when the next open-enrollment period begins November 15, she has another opportunity to sign up for a new plan, which would go into effect on January 1, 2007. She can, if she wishes, get a plan that fills in the "doughnut hole."
There are plans available in the state of California that fill in the coverage gap, either partially or in full. Ms. Giovannetti, with the help of a Medicare specialist, should be able to find such a plan. This could ease her financial worries significantly. But even if someone chooses to enroll in a plan that has the coverage gap, they are still saving money on the price of their prescription drugs when they are in the "doughnut hole" because they pay the plan's discounted prices. 13 percent to 23 percent below the price that a cash-paying customer would pay, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
That's the purpose of Medicare Part D - to ease the financial burden for seniors who require prescription medication.
Stewart Ferry, Multiple Sclerosis California Action Network, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Oakland
If you think knowing who you call and when you call is not important, try this scenario; a good friend calls you from work, you idly chat about an upcoming barbecue. You then call your broker to buy or sell shares in that friend's company. The shares go down two days later and you and your friend become part of an SEC fishing expedition. Could it happen? Yes and it has often enough.
Within ten minutes of downloading information about anthrax you decide that you want to have a party with a whole bunch of your wilder friends, some of them are out there in organizations being watched by the NSA, FBI, CIA and Dick Cheney. That lists includes vegetarians and dog lovers, by the way. Now we have a conspiracy to create a bioweapon because you call your friends one after another.They do it in China and they do it here.
Peter W. Brown, San Jose

  ARGENTINA (79%); ISRAEL (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); INDIA (79%); SPAIN (79%); LEBANON (79%); EGYPT (79%); NIGERIA (79%); TURKEY (79%);  FRANCE (77%); UNITED STATES (77%); ENGLAND (53%)







  



May 11, 2006 Thursday  




 Indonesia Offers to Mediate Talks With Iran

 
The president of Indonesia, hosting his Iranian counterpart on a state visit, offered Wednesday to mediate the Islamic republic's deadlock with the United States and European Union over its nuclear program.  
 "We can cooperate well in reducing the tension and move toward continuing talks and negotiations," Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said after a 90-minute meeting with the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yudhoyono told reporters he believed that Iran was open to negotiating a peaceful resolution to the dispute. 
  Ahmadinejad was welcomed to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, with a 21-gun salute. Officials said his main aim was to develop economic ties. 
  Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Ahmadinejad complained that the United States and other Western nations have developed nuclear technology but want to prevent other countries from doing so. "They pretend that they are concerned about the nature of the nuclear program of the  Iran," he said. "This is a big lie." 
  He said that the Iranian people "are not just defending their own rights, but also those of other nations." The Western nations, he said, want to prevent other countries from "reaching the pinnacle of science and technology." 
 Iran says that its program is devoted exclusively to generating electricity, but the United States and European countries have said they believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon. 
  The United States wants the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution with an implicit threat of sanctions against Iran. But Russia and China have opposed such a move. On Tuesday, Britain, France and Germany, backed by the United States, said they were preparing a package of incentives and sanctions aimed at persuading Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program. 
  Ahmadinejad told reporters here that he was not "disquieted" by Washington's dismissal of an 18-page letter that he sent to President Bush outlining grievances against the United States and urging a turn toward religion. "If they choose not to answer our question, it depends on them," Ahmadinejad said. 
 The letter was the first personal communication from an Iranian president to his American counterpart since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The Bush administration said the letter failed to address the nuclear issue in a substantive way.  
  On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Noer Hassan Wirajuda, referring to Iran's nuclear program, told reporters that Indonesia wanted Iran "to be more transparent" and added that the program should fulfill the standards of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. He also said that developing nuclear energy was "a basic right for every country." 
 [In a stop Thursday in Jakarta, Ahmadinejad lashed out again at Israel, calling it a "regime based on evil," the Associated Press reported. He told a crowd of students that the Jewish state "cannot continue and one day will vanish."] 

 UNITED STATES (96%);  IRAN,  (94%); EUROPE (93%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (88%); FRANCE (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%); CHINA (79%); GERMANY (78%)







 
 


May 10, 2006, Wednesday



 The Caliphate: One nation, under Allah, with 1.5 billion Muslims

 
The three middle-aged men sitting in an Indian restaurant in Jordan's capital scarcely look like Islamic revolutionaries. They are smartly dressed in Western-style suits and sip thoughtfully from cans of Pepsi as they share their plan to reshape the Muslim world.
"[President] Bush says that we want to enslave people and oppress their freedom of speech," says Abu Abdullah, a senior member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Party of Liberation. "But we want to free all people from being slaves of men and make them slaves of Allah." 
Hizb ut-Tahrir says that Muslims should abolish national boundaries within the Islamic world and return to a single Islamic state, known as "the Caliphate," that would stretch from Indonesia to Morocco and contain more than 1.5 billion people.
It's a simple and seductive idea that analysts believe may someday allow the group to rival existing Islamic movements, topple the rulers of Middle Eastern nations, and undermine those seeking to reconcile democracy and Islam and build bridges between East and West.
"A few years ago people laughed at them," says Zeyno Baran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the leading expert on Hizb ut-Tahrir. "But now that [Osama] bin Laden, [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi, and other Islamic groups are saying they want to recreate the Caliphate, people are taking them seriously."
Even more moderate Muslim groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt pay lip-service to the ideal of reestablishing the Caliphate, leaving less ideological space for Muslims who want to move toward Western models of democracy.
"The Caliphate is a rallying point between the radicals and the more moderate Islamists," says Stephen Ulph, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. "The idea of a government based on the Caliphate has a historical pedigree and Islamic legitimacy that Western systems of government by their very nature do not have."
But unlike Al Qaeda, Hizb ut-Tahrir believes it can recreate the Caliphate peacefully. Its activists aim to pursuade Muslim political and military leaders that reestablishing the Caliphate is their Islamic duty. Once these leaders invite Hizb ut-Tahrir to take power - effectively staging a military coup - the party would then repeat the process in other countries before linking them up to form a revived Caliphate.
"We spread our ideas by addressing people directly," says Abdullah Shakr, a fluent English-speaker, who, like all three men, spent time in Jordanian jails for membership in the party. "We don't care if the government knows about us, but ... we try not to catch their attention."
The party was founded in Jerusalem in 1953 by a Palestinian judge, Sheikh Taqiuddin Al-Nabhani. He taught that the Muslim world had grown poor and weak ever since the Caliphate was abolished by Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk in 1924.
The Caliphate was created after the death of Islam's founder Muhammad in 632 AD. During the following centuries the Caliphate expanded Islam's territories by conquest and treaty to cover most of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa. As the Ottoman Turks lost ground to the West, they increasingly donned the cloak of the Caliphate. In the 1920s, Muslims throughout the British empire, particularly in India, used the restoration of the Caliphate as an anti-colonial rallying point. "People look back on the Caliphate and see its success as a poor reflection on the condition of the Muslim world today," says Mr. Ulph.
Hizb ut-Tahrir promises that a revived Caliphate will end corruption and bring prosperity - though the group doesn't say how. It will let Muslims challenge, and ultimately conquer, the West, its followers say.
"The Muslim world has resources like oil but it lacks the leadership that will rule us by Islamic law and make this jihad that the whole world is afraid of," says Shakr, a Jordanian member of the group, who says the success of the Caliphate will also encourage more converts to Islam - eventually making the whole world Islamic.
Hizb ut-Tahrir's modern leader is a Jordanian known as Emir Atta Abu Rashta. He lives in a secret location in the Middle East and communicates mainly through the Internet. The party is illegal in all Arab countries as well as Germany. Britain mooted banning the group after last year's London bombings were carried out by members of a Hizb ut-Tahrir splinter group.
Hizb ut-Tahrir's critics rarely see the organization as a direct threat, however.
"Many people see Hizb ut-Tahrir's aims as utterly unrealistic," says Nadim Shehadi, a Middle East analyst at Chatham House. "Even their understanding of the Caliphate as a strong, powerful state is questionable. Historically the Caliphate only worked because it was very loose and extremely decentralized."
Many analysts say that real danger is that the group radicalizes its followers who may subsequently graduate into militancy.
"People who join won't necessarily end up as violent jihadists," says Shiv Malik, a journalist. "But Hizb ut-Tahrir can provide [them with an] ideological backbone."
Hizb ut-Tahrir is not a mass movement yet, but analysts warn the group has a growing prominence among educated professionals in Europe and the Middle East.
"In Europe they tell Muslims that they have to create parallel societies and that they should not follow European laws," says Ms. Baran. "If this happens it will impossible for people like me to argue that Islam can be democratic."
Baran estimates the group has tens of thousands of followers in Central Asia. "They're stronger in places where people know less about Islam and can't read the Koran in Arabic," she says. "They're not as popular in the Middle East because they don't get involved in the Palestinian cause."
Hizb ut-Tahrir takes a more gradual, long-term strategy for spreading the territory under Muslim rule.
"Islam obliges Muslims to possess power so that they can intimidate - I would not say terrorize - the enemies of Islam," says Abu Mohammed, a Hizb ut-Tahrir activist. "In the beginning, the Caliphate would strengthen itself internally and it wouldn't initiate jihad."
"But after that we would carry Islam as an intellectual call to all the world," says Abu Mohammed, a pseudonym. "And we will make people bordering the Caliphate believe in Islam. Or if they refuse then we'll ask them to be ruled by Islam."
And after that? Abu Mohammed pauses and fiddles with his Pepsi before replying.
"And if after all discussions and negotiations they still refuse, then the last resort will be a jihad to spread the spirit of Islam and the rule of Islam," he says, smiling. "This is done in the interests of all people to get them out of darkness and into light."
(c) . The 

 JORDAN (94%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); ISRAEL (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); EGYPT (79%); TURKEY (79%);  MOROCCO (79%)







 Editorial Projects in Education, Inc
 
Education Week

May 10, 2006



 Young Adults Don't Think World Knowledge Is Vital

 
If you have trouble identifying Iraq on an unlabeled map of the Middle East, or are unaware that the population of China is more than four times that of the United States, you are not alone. Most young adults in the United States have difficulty answering such questions, a new survey finds.
But their lack of geographic literacy goes beyond simple gaps in knowledge and skills: Most don't believe it is essential to know more about the world. 
"Americans are far from alone in the world, but from the perspective of many young Americans, we might as well be," says the report on the findings, released here last week by the National Geographic Education Foundation. "Most young [American] adults between the ages of 18 and 24 demonstrate a limited understanding of the world beyond their country's borders, and they place insufficient importance on the basic geographic skills that might enhance their knowledge."
Even with ongoing news coverage of the war in Iraq, the aftermath of natural disasters in far-flung regions, and the globalization of the marketplace, young adults in the United States appear isolated, uninformed, and indifferent when it comes to the world's people, places, and cultures, according to the "National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs 2006 Geographic Literacy Study."
Too many young adults "appear in some way unprepared for an increasingly global future," said Annie Weber, a senior vice president for Roper, the New York City-based market-research company that conducted the survey.

Where's New York?
Six in 10 respondents, for example, could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East, most did not know that Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim nation, and not quite one-fourth knew that Mandarin Chinese--not English--is the most widely spoken native language in the world.
Less than six months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, a third of those polled could not find Louisiana on a map. About half could not locate New York state.
While some 60 percent of respondents viewed use of a computer and the Internet as "absolutely necessary" in today's world, only a third thought it absolutely necessary to know where other countries are located. And at a time when national business leaders and policymakers are promoting improved foreign-language instruction in the public schools, about half of those surveyed thought that speaking another language is "important but not absolutely necessary." Another 38 percent of respondents deemed the ability to speak a foreign language "not too important."
The survey was conducted in person late last year and early this year with a nationally representative sample of 510 adults, 18 to 24. Participants were asked to locate specific countries on a map, to identify important issues in current events, and to describe political and economic concerns in other regions of the world.
They were also asked about their own Internet use, map-reading skills, foreign-language proficiency, and international travel.

`An Antidote'
Young adults' knowledge of the world, based on the survey results, was not significantly better, overall, than the previous survey conducted by the National Geographic Education Foundation in 2002.
Although the findings are worrisome, some observers say they do not necessarily reflect the potential for engaging young Americans in international culture and issues.
"Kids are bored in school, and international education can be an antidote to that," said Michael Levine, who oversees the international education program for the New York City-based Asia Society. He pointed to Americans' seemingly growing interest in foreign music, fashion, and languages.
"There is certainly a lot globally that interests them," he said.
To draw attention to the need for geographic literacy, the foundation, which is the educational arm of the National Geographic Society, along with two dozen other education and advocacy organizations, launched a campaign last week to boost Americans' knowledge of the world.
MyWonderfulWorld.org, an Internet resource with facts and quizzes, curriculum materials, blogs, and advocacy strategies, will accompany print and broadcast ads to raise awareness of international issues and their connection to the United States.

 UNITED STATES (96%);  MIDDLE EAST (93%); 







 
 



May 9, 2006 Tuesday



 A last plea for clemency for a young, deaf immigrant

 
Lost in the current debate over illegal immigration is the story of Joshua Tantoro, a 9-year-old severely deaf boy, who after two years in this country has finally begun to communicate. Now he and his family may be forced to return to Indonesia, where once his condition became apparent he faced shunning and worse.
His father, Beni Tan, 40, was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last month and now is at York County Prison awaiting deportation. The rest of the family - Tan's wife, and Joshua, and younger brother Jeremy, 7 - have moved out of South Philadelphia for fear of being arrested. 
If Joshua - an eager student with bright eyes - returns to Indonesia, said the family's attorney, Joseph Hohenstein, he will be persecuted simply for being deaf.
Tan and his wife, Kiem Kartadjaja, 33, have been trying to get political asylum in the United States since 2003 on the grounds that as ethnic Chinese Christians they face persecution in predominantly Muslim Indonesia - where riots against ethnic Chinese have been recorded.
A Philadelphia immigration judge denied the parents asylum in 2004, and the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va., upheld that ruling last December.
Last month, the board refused to reopen the parents' case, when presented with additional grounds, Hohenstein said.
Ernestine Fobbs, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Washington, said Tan "has been afforded due process of the law."
Hohenstein disagrees.
"The most recent element of the case - the son's deafness - has not been fully developed," he said. "They deserve a chance to at least make that claim."
In Indonesia, Hohenstein said, Joshua was "getting no education" and was mistreated, though it's unclear how.
"Joshua, himself, from what I understood, is only now beginning to communicate it," Hohenstein said recently.
Life in Indonesia was dangerous and difficult for the entire family, but Joshua had extra burdens.
After Tan and Kartadjaja married in 1996, they lived above his parents' general-goods store in the town of Bima, Nusu Tenggara Barat province. During the 1998 riots, which led to President Suharto's downfall, Indonesians looted the family's store, and threw stones at her husband, his parents and his sister, Kartadjaja said, speaking through a translator.
As for Joshua, when he began attending preschool in the city of Surabaya at age 2, he was shunned by the other children, whose parents refused to allow them to play with the deaf boy, she said. The family had moved to Surabaya, on Java island, because of the 1998 attacks in Bima. The preschool told Kartadjaja to send Joshua to another city school for children with disabilities, where he was lumped together with kids who were blind, mute and mentally ill. The instruction was frustrating.
"The teachers forced him to read their lips, never teach him sign language," she said.
In 2000, Joshua's parents came to the United States on a visitor's visa, leaving their boys in the care of Kartadjaja's parents. They wanted to see if life would be better here.
"Is it true in the United States, in a free country, if everyone can have their own religion without discrimination?" Kartadjaja asked. "And is it true that people like Joshua can grow up normal, even though he has a disability?"
The parents found out that life was better here.
Tan worked various odd jobs as a laborer, most recently at a mailing company, Kartadjaja said. They bought a house. And they became part of Philadelphia's small Indonesian community.
Back in Indonesia, however, Joshua was having a hard time. He was not learning, and his grandparents had sent him to live with his teacher because they were ashamed of him, Kartadjaja said.
In 2004, Kartadjaja's parents brought the two boys to Philadelphia, and Joshua began attending Archbishop Ryan School for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children in Norwood.
Judy Collier, his teacher for kindergarten and first grade, says he's been flourishing.
When Joshua first came to Archbishop Ryan, "he almost didn't communicate at all," not even in his native language, Collier said.
Now, Joshua is an engaged student, eager to show his teacher that he can use American Sign Language to say "bat," "owl," and "fish."
On Wednesday, it was his 9th birthday. He brought a large vanilla cake with white icing to school, and shared it with the whole school.
All this could change for Joshua.
Hohenstein, the parents' attorney, recently took the family's asylum case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. On April 27, he filed a petition for review of the case, and an emergency stay of removal for Tan. Hohenstein wants the federal court to order the case to be reheard by an immigration judge.
Asian Americans United, a local advocacy group, has been helping the family.
Helen Gym, a board member, said the group wants to bring attention to cases like Joshua's that will pull families apart.
Gym pointed to a 2005 case in California, Tchoukhrova v. Gonzales, that could be critical. In Tchoukhrova, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a Russian mother could claim asylum in the United States based on the harms her son, who was born with cerebral palsy, had suffered in Russia because of his disability.
While the Ninth Circuit decision does not have jurisdiction in Philadelphia, Hohenstein said the case is significant because it allowed a parent to gain asylum based on a child's persecution. That is new ground in asylum law, he said.
Meanwhile, Joshua's mother anxiously hopes the federal court will allow her family to continue living here, and her son to continue thriving.
"He's not shy; he can be himself," Kartadjaja said. "In Indonesia, if he see someone else he don't know, he'll run and hide. Now, instead of running, he'll introduce himself.
"He's not ashamed anymore of who he is."
Contact staff writer Julie Shaw at 215-854-2917 or jshaw@phillynews.com.

 INDONESIA (97%); 







 
 



May 8, 2006 Monday



 The danger in Israel's success; 
With more Jews there than anyplace else, it is a convenient target for Hitler's successors.

 
Charles Krauthammer
is a Washington Post columnist
When something happens for the first time in 1,871 years, it is worth noting. In A.D. 70, and again in 135, the Roman empire brutally put down Jewish revolts in Judea, destroying Jerusalem, killing hundreds of thousands of Jews, and sending hundreds of thousands more into slavery and exile. For nearly two millennia, the Jews wandered the world. And now, in 2006, for the first time since then, there are once again more Jews living in Israel - the successor state to Judea - than in any other place on Earth.
Israel's Jewish population has just passed 5.6 million. America's Jewish population was about 5.5 million in 1990, dropped to about 5.2 million 10 years later and is in a precipitous decline that, because of low fertility rates and high levels of assimilation, will cut that number in half by mid-century. 
When 6 million European Jews were killed in the Holocaust, only two main centers of Jewish life remained: America and Israel. That binary star system remains today, but a tipping point has just been reached. With every year, as the Jewish population continues to rise in Israel and decline in America, Israel increasingly becomes, as it was at the time of Jesus, the center of the Jewish world.
An epic restoration, and one of the most improbable. To take just one of the remarkable achievements of the return: Hebrew is the only "dead" language in recorded history to have been brought back to daily use as the living language of a nation. But there is a price and a danger to this transformation. It radically alters the prospects for Jewish survival.
For 2,000 years, Jews found protection in dispersion - protection not for individual communities, which were routinely persecuted and massacred, but protection for the Jewish people as a whole. Decimated here, they could survive there. They could be persecuted in Spain and find refuge in Constantinople. They could be massacred in the Rhineland during the Crusades or in the Ukraine during the Khmelnytsky Insurrection of 1648-49, and yet survive in the rest of Europe.
Hitler put an end to that illusion. He demonstrated that modern anti-Semitism married to modern technology - railroads, disciplined bureaucracies, gas chambers - could take a scattered people and "concentrate" them for complete annihilation.
The establishment of Israel was a Jewish declaration to a world that had allowed the Holocaust to happen - after Hitler had made his intentions perfectly clear - that the Jews would henceforth resort to self-protection and self-reliance. And so they have, building a Jewish army, the first in 2,000 years, that prevailed in three great wars of survival (1948-49, 1967 and 1973).
But, in a cruel historical irony, doing so required concentration - putting all the eggs back in one basket, a tiny territory hard by the Mediterranean, eight miles wide at its waist. A tempting target for those who would finish Hitler's work.
His successors now reside in Tehran. The world has paid ample attention to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declaration that Israel must be destroyed. Less attention has been paid to Iranian leaders' pronouncements on exactly how Israel would be destroyed "by a single storm," as Ahmadinejad has promised.
Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, the presumed moderate of this gang, has explained that "the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam." The logic is impeccable, the intention clear: A nuclear attack would effectively destroy tiny Israel, while any retaliation launched by a dying Israel would have no major effect on an Islamic civilization of a billion people stretching from Mauritania to Indonesia.
As it races to acquire nuclear weapons, Iran makes clear that if there is any trouble, the Jews will be the first to suffer. "We have announced that wherever [in Iran] America does make any mischief, the first place we target will be Israel," said Gen. Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani, a top Revolutionary Guards commander. Hitler was only slightly more direct when he announced seven months before invading Poland that, if there was another war, "the result will be... the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."
Last week, Bernard Lewis, America's dean of Islamic studies, who just turned 90 and remembers the 20th century well, confessed that for the first time he felt it was 1938 again. He did not need to add that in 1938, in the face of the gathering storm - a fanatical, aggressive, openly declared enemy of the West and most determinedly of the Jews - the world did nothing.
When Iran acquires its coveted nukes in the next few years, the number of Jews in Israel will just be reaching 6 million. Never again?
Contact Charles Krauthammer letters@charleskrauthammer.com.

 ISRAEL (96%); UNITED STATES (93%); SPAIN (79%); EUROPE (79%); GERMANY (56%); UKRAINE (52%)







 
 


May 3, 2006 Wednesday



 Three Myths About Islam

 
Many people know many things about Islam and its history. Unfortunately, much of what they know happens to be untrue. The great Jewish Orientalists of the 19th century, such as Gustav Weil and Ignaz Goldziher, can be blamed for myth no. 1: that Islam is especially tolerant of other religions. Their scholarship was immense but they were too eager to praise Islam to remain objective.
Christians and Jews ("Peoples of the Book") are exempted from the death-or-conversion choice imposed on pagans (the Zoroastrians of Iran were later added to the list), but under all known schools of Muslim law, Christians and Jews are only allowed to survive as dhimmis, of protected subjects, under a long list of deliberately humiliating restrictions, obligations, and prohibitions. Some are obsolete - they had to pay a head tax, they were not allowed to ride horses as opposed to humble donkeys, and many more - but others remain in force. 
In Egypt, for example, there are at least 10 million Christians, but under the constitution, only a Muslim can be president - and there are similar provisions in other Muslim republics. In Saudi Arabia - where no one can be elected president, since the entire state and all its oil are claimed as private property by the ruling family - there are millions of Christians, but they are not allowed to have a single church, and it is a criminal offense to hold a prayer service, however informal, anywhere else. In all Muslim lands, the penalty for assisting a Muslim to convert was and is death for all concerned - no small matter for believing Christians whose highest duty is to save other souls by conversion.
Nevertheless, sections on Islam in American college texts are full of fantasies about Islamic tolerance, often featuring a mythic Andalusia where all was wonderfully multicultural until the wicked Christians arrived. Absurdly, some of those same texts celebrate, as yet another example of tolerance, the welcome that the fleeing Maimonides received in Fatimid Egypt: He had fled from Andalusia, of course, then the scene of one of Islam's recurrent outbursts of murderous fanaticism; we are living through another.
It is perfectly true that until quite recently, Christians were even more intolerant than Muslims, exempting only Jews from the prohibition of all other religions, and persecuting even the Jews at times. But Muslims are only slightly less culpable when compared to the greater part of humanity: serenely indifferent Hindus and Jains, agnostic Confucians, aesthetic Shinto devotees, cheerfully pluralist Buddhists, and more.
Myth no. 2 is that Muslim extremists are not attacking us, but only counterattacking, so that if non-Muslims would only stop provoking them, all would be well. It is perfectly true that in recent decades Muslims of one kind or another have suffered decisive defeats in the Indian subcontinent, in Iraq, Israel, and Timor-Leste, among other places. Westerners easily empathize with people under attack, so many in the West readily accept the claim that Muslim violence is just a defensive reaction. That is Osama bin Laden's version, too, when addressing non-Muslims: He talks about the sufferings of the Muslims of Chechnya, Palestine (a Muslim land for him, whose Christians and Jews are irrelevant), Kashmir, Andalusia, and Timor-Leste.
But when Mr. bin Laden talks to his fellow Muslims, he says something else entirely: "I was ordered to fight [non-Muslims] until they say that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet." That is a trifle pretentious in echoing the exact words that Muhammad himself supposedly declaimed, but it is certainly orthodox Islam: Muslims must convert non-Muslims by force, if necessary, or otherwise kill them, unless they are exempted Christians or Jews. That is why Islam has been on the attack from its birth in the seventh century. Muhammad started fighting to force conversions and his followers continued fighting in all directions, successfully spreading Islam by force from Arabia to the wider Middle East, and across Asia.
The only reason the continuity of Muslim aggression is news to some is because until recently almost all Muslim countries were under European colonial rule or subjected to European protectorates. Under Christian rule, Muslims could hardly continue to attack. With de-colonialization, the violence resumed. It has now reached virtually all places where Muslims are in contact with non-Muslims, so that there are almost daily reports of outrages from Nigeria, Sudan, and Egypt in Africa; from Iraq (Christians are fleeing the country), Israel, and Lebanon in the Middle East; from India, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
Timor-Leste, by the way, happens to be mostly Christian, but because it was liberated from the domination of Muslim-ruled Indonesia, it is now on the list of Islamic grievances under the Muslim doctrine that any land once ruled by Muslims belongs to Islam forever, even if the population is mostly non-Muslim. That is the doctrine cited by Hamas to claim the whole of Israel, and which other fundamentalists do not hesitate to apply to southern Spain, southeast Europe, and much of southern Ukraine and southeast Russia, among other places.
But Muslims certainly cannot be faulted for Myth no. 3: that Islam is a religion of peace. That myth is strictly the creation of Western liberals and especially American educational administrators, librarians, and academics determined to invent their own peaceful Islam, in which even Jihad is always or at least mostly an entirely nonviolent spiritual struggle.
That reflects the very American belief that all religions are equally good, when in the harsh reality of history they are not even equally bad. How many Buddhist attacks upon Muslims were recorded around the world in retaliation for the destruction of the colossal Buddhist rock carvings at Bamyan in Afghanistan? Zero, in spite of the fact that the destruction was not the spontaneous misdeed of a few hotheads but rather an organized attack with artillery, formally authorized by Muslim clerics of the vast Deobandi movement (headquartered in secular India, where it enjoys tax-exempt status). What would happen to Buddhists in Muslim lands if a comparable mosque - if any such exists - were deliberately destroyed by the formal order of assembled Buddhist priests? One could go down the list of other religions to construct an infinity of examples showing that they are not all the same when it comes to violence, but it is hardly necessary to expose the fraud perpetrated in many texts on Islam now being taught in American schools and universities.
None of the three myths can survive the light of competent scholarship, and the author of "Islamic Imperialism: A History" (Yale University Press, 288 pages, $30), Efraim Karsh, of King's College, London, is much more than merely competent. He starts at the beginning, with the missionary preaching of Muhammad in the seventh century, and almost reaches the present. In just 234 pages of text, Mr. Karsh recounts and analyzes the different forms of Islamic imperialism, starting with the first Muslim conquests of the Arabs, which were astonishingly successful because of an extraordinary coincidence: They attacked out of the desert just when the Byzantine and Sassanid Persian empires had fought each other to exhaustion in the last, longest, and by far most destructive of their many wars. Muhammad's promise of victory was thus validated in a way that evidently seemed miraculous to his followers.
The Arab ascendancy lasted more than two centuries, but then it was the Turkic converts to Islam who became the warriors, and then inevitably the rulers. This process started with the appearance of Turkic raiders on the Christian borderlands of the Byzan tine Empire, and with the Turkic palace guards of Arab potentates, and culminated in the Ottoman Empire, which conquered Constantinople in 1453 and survived largely intact for more than 400 years.
Mr. Karsh does not explore all the many and varied Muslim polities of Asia, Africa, and Europe (Spain, Sicily, the Crimea): some brilliantly successful and tolerant also (up to a point), such as the Mughal empire at its best; some murderously intolerant, such as the Mughal empire at its worst, but all of them necessarily imperialist. Mr. Karsh is not a Leninist who falls for the canard that imperialism is merely aggravated capitalism, and he is not a political primitive for whom the word is a species of wickedness, so his account is far from hostile. Yes, there was loot to be had when attacking the infidel successfully, but down the centuries the motivation was primarily, or largely, or at least significantly idealistic.
Believing Muslims, like Christians, believe that only their faith (or rather their own version of it) can provide salvation from an eternity of suffering after death. It follows that it is wicked for a Muslim (or Christian) not to do his best to convert as many as possible, which can best be done under a Muslim rule, as the Muslims rightly believe (there are very few converts in non-Muslim lands). Muslim imperialism is therefore a religious duty, motivated by an altruistic love of humanity.
Even a suicide bomber who kills only innocent babies can rightly claim that insofar as he contributes to the ultimate victory of Islam, he will ultimately save many more babies from eternal suffering, giving them paradise instead, complete with virginal black-eyed beauties, if they are males. It is enough to make one nostalgic for the imperialist freebooters of the West, down to King Leopold I of Belgium: They only wanted loot, not to force salvation on their victims.
Mr. Luttwak is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

 EGYPT (92%);  ISRAEL (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); TIMOR-LESTE (79%); INDIA (79%);  IRAN,  (79%)







   


April 30, 2006 Sunday  




 Ministering To the Upwardly Mobile Muslim

 
Early one gray Friday morning in late December, Mona K. left her parents' house in a residential neighborhood in Alexandria, Egypt, and headed downtown to Al Amirat, a wedding hall facing the Mediterranean Sea. She was going to see Amr Khaled, a Muslim TV preacher. Khaled's devotional programs are broadcast on Iqraa, a Saudi-owned religious satellite channel, and together with millions of other mostly young Muslims in the Middle East and Europe, Mona is a loyal viewer. 
I traveled with Khaled in Egypt, England and Germany last winter, listening to him speak to large crowds and small groups. Many of his followers had stories much like Mona's. Her family, as she was growing up, was traditional -- she prayed fairly regularly, and she always fasted during Ramadan -- but not extremely religious. She had been listening to Khaled's sermons and watching him on television since a friend took her to one of his talks when she was a teenager. She was blown away. Khaled was different from any religious speaker she had ever heard. He wasn't an imam; in fact, he didn't have any official religious credentials at all. He was young, just 38, and like Mona he'd had a secular education. He had worked as an accountant for Cairo's most prestigious firm. On TV, he dressed in stylish European suits or jaunty sweaters and polo shirts -- no long robes -- and he spoke not in classical Arabic but the way she did, peppering his sermons with Egyptian slang. He told emotional stories about the Prophet Muhammad that often concluded with simple, satisfying morals and a list of practical lessons to apply in the week ahead. He used modern Western terms, saying that Islam ''empowers'' women and that the Prophet Muhammad was ''the first manager'' and held ''press conferences.'' Unlike traditional Muslim religious leaders, Khaled didn't parse the finer points of Islamic law or get too deeply into political questions -- he emphasized that he wasn't qualified to speak on either. He talked instead about how to be successful and happy and how to enjoy life while avoiding sin. 
  On his TV show and in his frequent public appearances, he told his audiences how much Allah loved people, how merciful Allah was and how easy it was to earn his forgiveness. Khaled was tall and athletic and masculine, but he had a gentle demeanor, and when he prayed with his audience, he often broke down in tears. Khaled is especially popular among women, who are drawn in part by the fact that he addresses them directly in his sermons and emphasizes their central role in Islam -- he has pointed out that the first convert to Islam and the first martyr to die in jihad were both women. He compares women's bodies to pearls, so precious that they require a thick shell of covering. He once told his followers that when the Prophet's wife Aisha had her menstrual period and was moody, Muhammad always made extra efforts to ''display love and compassion.''
  As she watched and listened to Khaled's sermons, Mona grew more excited about Islam. She began praying more often. She tried fasting on Mondays and Thursdays, which the Koran recommends. Once, Mona wrote a letter to Khaled asking for ''Islamic guidance'' concerning a personal problem. Khaled receives thousands of letters and phone calls a week from young people asking for his advice on everything from whom to marry to how to pray to what to do if they think they might be gay. ''He replied back with the most tender words,'' Mona recalled when I met her. (She asked that I not use her full name.) ''He sent a card, and it said, 'If you want to ask me anything else, consider me like your elder brother!' It wasn't copied and pasted -- he really reads your letters and gives you his thoughts, and he is so tender and most adorable.''
  When Mona arrived at Al Amirat that morning, a few bubbly young volunteers stood at the entrance with clipboards. One of them checked Mona's name off the list, and then Mona headed upstairs to a ballroom painted maroon and gold and hung with chandeliers. It was crowded; about 250 middle- and upper-class young professionals and university students were milling around. There was a stage at the far end of the room, where men in suits who looked to be management consultants were setting up projection screens for a PowerPoint presentation. None of the men in the room wore traditional beards, which Khaled says are optional -- he himself has no beard at all, just a neatly trimmed mustache. All but one of the women in the room were wearing hijabs, or head scarves, which Khaled says is a requirement of Islam. Some women were fully covered by what amounted to burkas: in addition to robes and head scarves, they were wearing veils that cover the face and eyes, and gloves to cover their hands. Other women had negotiated a compromise between piety and fashion; they wore hijabs trimmed with pink lace around their faces, or they wore them with jeans or electric blue eye shadow. 
  The young people in the ballroom were the elite of Egypt, educated, often fluent in English, well-off and worldly, but they were from a generation raised during a period of Islamic revival in the country, and many had become more religious than their parents. The women and men had for the most part seated themselves separately; they would divide completely later, when they prayed. From a small booth next to Mona's table, a teenage D.J. was playing the music of Sami Yusuf, a shaggy-haired 25-year-old religious singer from London who performs ballads in a mix of Arabic and English -- songs about his mother, the greater Muslim nation and the importance of wearing the hijab. In Egypt, Khaled has been called, derisively, the Sheik of the Rawshana, a term that roughly translates as ''hip'' or ''misplaced'' and refers to that class of Egyptians who feel caught between Western and traditional culture. Khaled offers them an Islam that doesn't require a complete withdrawal from the modern world. 
  Though Khaled built his ministry in Egypt, he moved with his wife and young son to Birmingham, England, two years ago and began to turn his attention toward a new audience: second-generation Muslims in Europe. He continues to travel and speak in Arab countries, but his viewership now extends as far as Romania and Dublin, and his programs reach millions of viewers each week. His Web site, where followers can chat with one another, download his sermons and purchase hooded sweatshirts branded with the logo of Khaled's organization, received 26 million hits last year, more than Oprah's; it is the third-most-popular Arabic Web site in the world, behind Al Jazeera and an e-mail portal. When Khaled gives lectures in Jordan or Yemen or Germany, he fills stadiums. He is a regular columnist in Arabic women's magazines, and more than five million cassettes of his sermons have been sold in stalls and markets throughout the Middle East. Earlier this year in Egypt, readers of Al Shabab (''Youth'') magazine chose him as the second-most-popular figure in the country, after President Hosni Mubarak. 
  Khaled's unique blend of conservative Islamic belief and Western style has become popular at a moment when governments and scholars from Washington to Cairo are wrestling with the question of whether religious Islam is compatible with democracy and Western culture. The question is perhaps most urgent in Western Europe, where in February a series of cartoons of Muhammad that first appeared in a Danish newspaper sparked worldwide protests, some of which turned violent, even deadly. Muslim scholars and thinkers talk about a dangerous divide within the faith; Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor at the U.C.L.A. School of Law and the author of a new book on Islam, describes a ''fundamental schism'' in the religion today between ''Puritans'' and ''moderates.'' 
  When you listen to Amr Khaled, it is often hard to tell which side of that split he belongs on. He speaks frequently about the importance of women's rights, but he insists that every woman should wear the hijab. He says that Palestine has been ''captured by the disbelievers,'' by which he means Israeli Jews, but he says that the best way for Muslims to liberate it is not through violence but ''to succeed in your studies, to succeed in your life in general and to help others become religious.'' Khaled's version of Islam may be less exacting than the one promoted by fundamentalists, but like them, he wants an essentially traditional Islam to play a bigger role in people's lives. The path that Mona is on -- toward more religion, more time at prayer, more of the body covered -- is, in Khaled's view, a necessary part of the solution to almost every one of the Middle East's ills.
  In effect, Khaled does an end run around the current schism in Islam. As a result, he tends to drive those on either side of the divide a bit nuts. When Khaled organized a reconciliation conference in Denmark in March to try to bridge the gap between Muslims and the West, he was pilloried by conservative religious leaders and newspaper columnists in the Middle East for cozying up to the enemy. But Khaled makes liberals and moderates uneasy too. Wael Lofty, a columnist for Rose al-Youssef, an Egyptian newspaper, says that Khaled's Western touches are just a way to reassure liberals about Islamism and make it palatable to the West. Lofty, who has written a book about Khaled, laments that Khaled attracts educated, largely secular elites and pulls them toward Islamism. When I was in Egypt, I frequently heard rumors that Khaled was secretly allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, the longstanding religious movement that is today the largest opposition political party in the country. Although the Brotherhood's political activities are still largely restricted by the government, its leaders have said that if the party should someday win a parliamentary majority, they will govern the world's largest Arab nation according to the principles of Islam. (Khaled says that he currently has no affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.) In Europe, Islamic intellectuals like Tariq Ramadan, who has called for Muslims in the West to integrate fully into the secular societies in which they live, say that Khaled glosses over the hard questions of contemporary Islam. Fadl told me that he is ''unhappy'' with Khaled's ''lack of critical approach or introspective approach to the tradition.''
  But Mona and other young people who follow Khaled didn't seem to me to be particularly eager for a critical approach to Islam. More than anything, they were drawn by Khaled's charisma and oratorical style. In the ballroom in Alexandria, I was chatting with Mona at our table when Khaled appeared at the doorway in the middle of a clutch of fans. She stopped speaking midsentence, her eyes fixed on the preacher -- his huge, soulful brown eyes, dark mustache, tailored khaki suit. I started to ask her something, and she shushed me. She grabbed my arm and the arm of the woman sitting next to her and shook us giddily. ''See how he is dealing with the child?'' she asked me. Khaled was beatifically caressing the face of a young boy, the son of an attendee. ''He is such an adorable person!'' 
  Khaled took the stage and grasped a hand-held microphone. I had been with him for several days at this point, and each time he walked onto a stage he delivered the same welcome with the same starry-eyed wonderment, as if he had never stood in front of an audience before. Khaled prepares meticulously before he speaks, rehearsing, asking questions about the acoustics of a room and the feel of the audience. He also writes careful notes for each sermon, though he doesn't use them once he's onstage. He told me that this is so he can look into as many people's eyes as possible. 
  ''Assalamu alaikum,'' he said humbly, a traditional Muslim greeting. He waited for the applause to die down. ''Let me tell you something,'' he began, speaking in Arabic, and then he paused. He looked around the room slowly, as if overcome with emotion, and said, ''You don't know how honored I am to be here.''
  Khaled didn't set out to be a preacher. He grew up in a traditional household, but not a religious one. One summer while he was in high school in Alexandria, he told me, he was seized by a feeling that the sports and girlfriends and studies that dominated his life were somehow not enough. He began reading the Koran and visiting different mosques. His approach was eclectic: he picked up different ideas and styles he liked from each tradition -- something from the Sufis, a bit from the Wahhabis. Before long, he was talking to everyone around him about religion, and they were listening. He was aided by a photographic memory that seemed to allow him to download Koranic verses straight into his brain.
  He majored in accounting at Cairo University, and while he didn't enjoy his studies very much, he did take on various positions in student government and soon found that he had a gift for public speaking. More important, he explained to me, ''I discovered that I can make people like me.'' After he graduated, he worked at the Cairo office of KPMG, the accounting firm, but he was not a very good accountant. (After I traveled with Khaled for three weeks, the fact that he worked as an accountant for a decade began to seem like the most amazing detail of his life. He had trouble keeping track of things. He went missing in airports, wandering off to examine sweaters at duty-free shops or to find Boss shirts, his favorites. He told me he ''lost'' an oversize suitcase with 25 expensive European suits on his way back from Saudi Arabia after Ramadan, and I watched him lose his 4-year-old-son, Aley, in Heathrow Airport during the only 10-minute interval he was responsible for watching him.)
  While he was in his 20's, Khaled, like many middle- and upper-class Egyptians, belonged to a shooting club, a sprawling walled complex where members exercised and socialized over frothy drinks made from honeydew melons and watermelons. Khaled's club was the Egyptian Shooting Club in Cairo, which extends for many blocks and counts tens of thousands of families as members. It is not a religious place -- men and women swim in the same pool -- but it has a mosque. One day in 1997, when the mosque's regularly scheduled Friday-afternoon speaker was unavailable, the shooting club's administrator asked Khaled to fill the role. He liked Khaled's talk, about the importance of having good manners, and he soon asked Khaled to speak every week.
  As Khaled told me, so many people -- more women than men -- began to attend the shooting club's Friday sermons that soon there wasn't space in the hall for all of them. Khaled was shocked at the influence he seemed to have on his audiences. ''When I suggest people do a practical thing,'' he told me, ''they come back and tell me they did it.'' Well-to-do members of the club invited Khaled to speak in their homes; by age 30, he was hitting as many as three houses a night, every day of the week. He was not getting paid for any of his talks, and, Khaled says, they had a casual, friendly feel; after they were over, he would often play soccer and eat dinner with his audience. The retired singer Yasmeen al-Khayam, daughter of a well-known Koran reciter, Sheik el-Hossari, frequently invited him to speak at her home and later asked Khaled to be the main preacher at her father's mosque.
  As his popularity grew, Khaled began to get visits from the Egyptian police; as he pointed out to me, authoritarian regimes are often wary of charismatic leaders with large, young audiences that fill the streets. He says that the police put new conditions on his lectures -- they had to be held on Thursday, for instance, the night couples usually go out -- and that officers sometimes followed him and slashed his tires just to put him in his place. The secret police told him he couldn't preach at Hossari's mosque in Cairo any longer, Khaled says, but instead had to relocate to another one, 20 miles outside the city, that had a broken roof and bad plumbing. This didn't stop buses packed with thousands of young people from arriving every Thursday, not just from Cairo but also from Alexandria and Port Said. Khaled's fans filled the streets and rooftops around the mosque. 
  Although Evangelical Christian preachers in the United States have for years blended self-help, management-training jargon and religion into a crowd-pleasing performance, it is a new phenomenon in the Muslim world. When I spoke last month to Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he explained to me how Khaled's style is different from what came before. He ''doesn't give you chapter and verse on the rules,'' Alterman said. ''He talks about meaning and beauty and fulfillment. While Christian evangelists have done that for more than a century, you haven't really had Muslim evangelists.'' Khaled stands in stark contrast to the most respected and popular Muslim religious figure on television, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who appears on Al Jazeera and is widely considered to be the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi, 79 years old, fully bearded and cloaked in robes, hands down opinions on, for example, whether viewers should or should not join the resistance in Iraq or Palestine. 
  If you listen to Khaled's sermons, you won't detect any significant theological disagreement with Qaradawi. But unlike Qaradawi, Khaled doesn't present Muslim law, or Shariah, as something to be imposed by an authority; rather, he says, it is something to be discovered on a journey of personal growth and awareness. Olivier Roy, a leading French scholar of Islam and the author of ''Globalized Islam: The Search for the New Ummah,'' told me that Khaled ''has recast the idea of living according to Shariah in different terms for a new generation. He presents it as a matter of values, laws and norms, something much closer to evangelical Christianity in America. It is not about getting your hands cut off if you steal; it's about spiritual achievement.'' 
  Like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes and other American preachers, Khaled encourages his followers to enjoy material wealth and the physical world while still maintaining a conservative religious life. (Unlike many American televangelists, Khaled doesn't ask for donations from his viewers; most of his income comes from Iqraa. He seems well-off but not superwealthy.) On one of his most famous cassettes, a lecture titled ''Youth and the Summer Time,'' Khaled explains how to go to a beach resort and stay free of sin. ''We want you to have a good time during the summer,'' Khaled advises. ''This idea in itself is religious. We do not want you to spend the whole year studying, attending religious lectures, memorizing Koran and guiding your friends without having any fun. Does Islam allow having fun? Yes! The Prophet, all prayers and blessings of Allah be upon him, used to compete in races with his wife Aisha every week. On one occasion, the companions were gathered together, eating watermelon, when they started to throw the seeds at each other and to laugh. Can you imagine the Prophet's companions doing that?. . .We sometimes imagine them as if they were always frowning!'' 
  Khaled is not the only contemporary Muslim preacher to blend Islam with the feel-good optimism of Western management literature. Abdullah Gymnastiar of Indonesia and the Turkish Sufi master Fethullah Gulen preach that the way to be a good Muslim is to be wealthy and industrious. These clerics are part of a new trend of religious leaders who want a conservative religion that can function in harmony with a globalized world. 
  Tariq Ramadan is part of this trend, too. He says he believes that traditional Shariah needs to be reimagined to accommodate the circumstances of Muslims in the West. Khaled, by contrast, doesn't talk about reforming Shariah. He is more concerned with softening the edges of Islamic tradition that might bump up against the West. He tells men that polygamy should be practiced only in very special cases, and he tells women that they should not cover their entire faces because it makes it too hard to communicate with non-Muslims. It is better for a Muslim in the West to postpone a prayer, he says, than to perform ablutions in a public bathroom, where splashing water up to his knees and elbows would be seen as rude. 
  In many ways, Ramadan's message is similar to Khaled's, but when I spoke to him earlier this month, as he awaited word of whether the United States government would allow him into the country to speak, he told me that Khaled's approach leaves unanswered specific questions about how coexistence should work. Should Muslims start their own schools or go to public schools? How should they treat homosexuals? Can they take out interest-bearing loans, which many Muslims say are forbidden by the Koran? 
  Olivier Roy and other scholars connect Khaled's popularity with global religious trends. ''The people who have an audience right now in Christianity and Islam are not liberals but revivalists and born-agains,'' Roy told me recently. ''What is working now with the youth is not liberal religion. We have books about 'Is Islam Able to Reform?' The problem is readership. We invite liberal Muslim reformers to conferences and colloquiums, but they have no large constituency.'' 
  Around the same time Khaled was becoming a celebrity in Egypt, his friend Ahmed Abu Haiba was starting his own television production company, with a lofty goal: to create a brand-new style of Islamic TV. Khaled and Abu Haiba, 37, first met at a mosque in 1983; they were teenagers at the time, and as they grew up, they became more religious together. After college, Abu Haiba worked as a producer in the Middle East and Africa for a Japanese news network. He was exposed to a variety of Western media, and as he watched TV signals from around the globe, he started to think about the idea of Islamic entertainment. He says he believed strongly in the totalizing philosophy of Islam held by the Muslim Brotherhood -- that all aspects of life should be infused with Islam. He didn't believe in a television schedule divided into religious shows and nonreligious shows; he thought every show should be religious in its own way. But Islamic TV at the time was boring, he told me when I spoke with him in Cairo in December. Television preachers like Sheik Muhammad Shaarawi of Egypt, who was popular in the 1980's and 1990's, never tried to be TV stars. In his weekly show, the wizened Shaarawi, who died in 1998, used to address his audience in classical Arabic from atop an ornate thronelike chair in his mosque. The camera would shakily focus on him for most of the talk, occasionally cutting away to shots of old men sitting on carpets on the floor of the mosque. ''A person can't listen to a recitation of the Koran for more than hour,'' Abu Haiba explained to me. When he watched Christian TV programs, by contrast, he admired the way they wove together proselytizing and entertainment with state-of-the-art production values. ''I was affected by it,'' he said. ''I felt it fulfilled the vision for what I want from religious programming.''
  When Abu Haiba talked to Khaled about his notion for a new kind of religious TV program, his friend not only liked the idea, he also volunteered to be the host of the first show. And so in 1999, Abu Haiba and Khaled produced four episodes of a religious talk show called ''Words From the Heart.'' Each episode opened with a slow-motion, soft-focus montage: women praying; Amr Khaled emoting; a beloved Egyptian actress, Soheir el-Babli, who had left the theater to become religious, crying; and young members of a studio audience offering spirited testimonials into a hand-held microphone. Sentimental music played, and the show's logo appeared in puffy Arabic letters inside two hearts. Khaled addressed the camera from behind a silver desk shaped like the Islamic crescent. The studio's backdrop was ultramodern aluminum panels illuminated by purple and blue lights. 
  For part of the show, Khaled would speak from behind the desk on a topic like patience or modesty. Then audience members would offer relevant stories from their own lives. Each episode also featured interviews with athletes or actresses who were newly religious, along with prerecorded clips of ordinary Muslims describing adverse circumstances or testifying to amazing miracles. Khaled ended each program with an emotional, spontaneous, open-ended prayer. Everyone in the audience held his or her hands open, palms facing up, and Khaled would pray, sometimes squealing with emotion, as the audience chanted rhythmically or sobbed. Muslims sometimes offer prayers like this in private or at a family meal or a baby-naming ceremony, but, Abu Haiba told me, no one had ever televised such an intimate, personal prayer before. 
  Abu Haiba circulated tapes of the episodes to dozens of Egyptian broadcast and satellite TV networks, looking for a buyer, but no one was interested. So he ordered 2,000 copies of the tapes himself and distributed them to Cairo street vendors, who sold them in stalls alongside fuzzy slippers and posters of the pop star Amr Diab or outside mosques, where men lay prayer beads and Korans in zippered leather cases on top of old cars or rugs. The first 2,000 copies sold quickly; so did the next 2,000. When sales hit 50,000, an executive at Dream TV, a satellite network in Egypt, changed his mind about Abu Haiba's offer. He bought the four episodes that were offered to him earlier. (Dream TV has since broadcast them hundreds of times.) Around the same time, Yasmeen al-Khayam, the singer who had invited Khaled to speak at her father's mosque, got in touch with a friend at Iqraa, the satellite channel, and urged him to consider putting Khaled on the air. 
  Iqraa, which means ''Recite,'' is the pet project of Sheik Salah Kamal, a Saudi who is an owner of the Arab Radio and Television Network, a media conglomerate. He started Iqraa in 1998 to reflect his idea of what a good religious station should broadcast: respected scholars, staid programming, prayer breaks between shows. He didn't plan to make a profit, and the channel didn't draw many viewers. Programs were often political and reflected conservative Wahhabi opinions, condemning idolators and attacking Israel, Jews and Americans.
  Nabeel Hammad, the general manager of Iqraa at the time, told me that when he arrived at the channel in 2000, he wanted to make it more competitive and to attract a younger demographic. He said that executives at the channel were divided about Khaled's show, which was mostly devoid of talk of law or politics; some were excited by it, but others felt it wasn't scholarly enough. Hammad decided to take a chance on it, and he said he was shocked by the response when it was broadcast. ''All of a sudden, we were getting tons of calls,'' he told me. ''There was a woman in Jordan who said she had a wild teenage son, and lately he had been staying in on Tuesday nights to watch Iqraa. She said she couldn't believe it. She thought Amr Khaled was saving her son's life.'' Khaled quickly became the biggest thing on Iqraa. Hammad estimates that for a time, about 80 percent of the channel's advertising revenue came from Khaled's shows.
  In October 2002, Khaled says, the Egyptian secret service called him to the office of the interior ministry, and a deputy minister told him he had to stop speaking in Egypt. Khaled says that he was warned, ''If you talk to even two people, you do not know what will happen.'' That night, he told me, he decided, based on tips from friends close to the government, that if he didn't leave Egypt right then, he might not be able to later. He flew to Beirut, which became his base for the next two years. He says he headed for the airport with only his gym bag. 
  Over the following few weeks, his Web site became a clearinghouse for protests over his self-imposed exile. Khaled posted a statement titled ''The Real Reasons Behind Amr Khaled's Departure From Egypt'' on the site, with a picture of himself in a polo shirt and jeans rushing somewhere. Thousands of supporters signed a petition asking the minister of religion to lift the ban on Khaled's preaching. 
  One night in Khaled's Cairo office, I asked one of his assistants, Amira Hegazy, to tell me what the Arabic statement said. Hegazy, 27, is, like most of Khaled's employees, a former fan; she became so devoted to Khaled that she left her job to work for him. She loaded up the stored Web page on her laptop for me and began reading the statement aloud. Her eyes turned red. Two paragraphs in, tears started streaming down her face. She stopped. ''I am sorry,'' she said. ''It was just such an awful time, to think the Thursday lectures and all they brought -- the feeling in the crowd -- would be over. It is like it just happened yesterday. I still miss them so much.'' 
  An official in the Egyptian State Information Service, who would agree to speak only on condition of anonymity, disputed Khaled's version of events. According to what this official has heard from people in the government, Khaled was never asked to stop speaking in Egypt. ''Khaled represents in Egypt what those evangelical preachers are in the United States, the ones who get people to pledge $5 million in two hours,'' the official said. ''He represents a new type of preaching in Egypt -- modern and slick. But does he represent a political threat to the state? No.''
  As the first contemporary Muslim televangelist, Khaled often seems to be making it up as he goes along. His international organization is mostly run by old friends or newly religious men and women in their 20's who left their jobs to be close to him. (''Before he came to work for me, he was crazy,'' Khaled told me about one of his employees. ''Driving his car into the wall! High on drugs!'') Khaled gives his phone number to anyone who asks, and he regularly takes calls from complete strangers. During a dinner I attended in the front room of a Turkish restaurant in Germany, Khaled's dining companions, eight wealthy leaders of Germany's Muslim community, all of them men, rolled up their sleeves and dove into platters of kebabs while Khaled chatted, completely engaged, with a teenage girl in Lebanon who had just called him out of the blue. ''I am so proud of you!'' he shouted into his satellite phone. (One of his colleagues, Mohamed Yehia, told me that during Ramadan, Khaled ran up an $8,000 phone bill talking to fans until Yehia had Khaled's phone temporarily disabled.)
  In the last two years, since arriving in England, Khaled has embarked on two separate but related outreach missions. The first outreach is to Muslims in the Arab world, and for them, the message is: Shape up. In 2004, Khaled began a new program on Iqraa called ''Life Makers,'' more than 50 episodes that ran over a year and a half and consisted of exhortations to his followers in the Middle East especially to form groups and take action to improve the world around them -- to teach illiterate Arabs to read, to fix potholes in the streets, to buy new prayer mats for the local mosque -- to do anything and everything that might help to create an Arab revival. At one point, he told his followers to walk the length of a marathon before the next broadcast. Thousands took him up on the challenge.
  The second mission is to Muslims in Europe. For them, Khaled's message is about the importance of coexistence. He tells his followers that if they are soccer fans and they live in England, their home team is Arsenal or Tottenham, not Pakistan; and if they live in France, they are to lobby for the right of their daughters to wear head scarves to school -- but in the meantime to make do with designer hats. 
  In 2004, Khaled delivered a lecture in Germany titled ''Between Integration and Introversion,'' and in it he described two categories of Muslims in the West, neither of which, he said, was following the Prophet's path. The first type, he said, ''has lived confined within themselves in a completely introverted way.'' These devout immigrants ''bring up their children apart from this sinful society. They stay apart from society in every possible way.'' The second type has assimilated so thoroughly that they have ''dissolved'' into materialism or sensuality. Both approaches, Khaled said, are mistaken. The correct path is to integrate, and in a positive way: to learn the language of your new home, to interact with your fellow citizens, to volunteer for the fire department, to live such an upstanding life that the common perception most Europeans share about Muslim immigrants -- ''that we came here to live, enjoy the freedom, enjoy the financial aid and support, have children and in the end insult them'' -- will be turned on its head, replaced by a new and widespread respect for Islam. (Khaled's coexistence apparently has its limits; in a sermon a few years ago, Khaled said the Koran teaches that many Jews ''are the most envious, especially toward Muslims, and they are the keenest in spreading lusts, the seduction of women and the advocacy of various sins.'')
  Last fall, Khaled was the host of ''In the Footsteps of the Beloved,'' a series that was broadcast on Iqraa every night of Ramadan from a different holy location in Saudi Arabia. For the entire month, Khaled hammered his new message of integration. Nearly every story of Muhammad that Khaled told was used to demonstrate that the Prophet favored coexistence, valued the idea of a Muslim being a full citizen of whatever nation he lived in and opposed having Muslims leave their country to fight battles in other countries. The Prophet, he said, ''respected the right of citizenship.. . .Muslims living in the West should similarly respect the rights and duties of citizenship.'' 
  When government-sponsored satellite stations in Egypt began broadcasting music videos and Middle Eastern versions of ''American Idol'' and ''Big Brother'' a few years ago, they provoked popular boycotts, which Khaled enthusiastically endorsed. But Khaled also makes it clear that music and movies are not always haram, or ''forbidden,'' as many conservative Muslims believe. They are permissible, Khaled says, as long as they aren't about sex or another inappropriate subject. Khaled gave an early boost to the career of Sami Yusuf, the religious British-born Muslim singer whose songs are played over loudspeakers before most of Khaled's events. Yusuf's is the prototype for a fledgling genre of popular Islamic entertainment. His latest CD, ''My Ummah,'' comes in both a ''music version,'' with full instrumentation, and an edition with only traditional percussion instruments, for more religious listeners. On one song, ''Free,'' Yusuf sings about the hypocrisy of European countries that preach freedom and democracy and yet bar Muslim girls from wearing the hijab to school:
  ''Why can't I just be me?'' she says
  Time and time again
  You speak of democracy
  Yet you rob me of my liberty
  All I want is equality
  Why can't you just let me be free?
  Yusuf's success has given other young musicians the idea that working with Khaled might be a ticket to fame. One day when I was at Khaled's Cairo office, an underground Egyptian rapper named Raquib al-Nacina arrived wearing an Enyce jersey and nervously clutching a small portable hard drive containing three songs he had written. Nacina told me that he thought if Khaled would just put his demos up on his Web site for a few weeks, he'd get a record deal, just as Yusuf had. Nacina admired Khaled's style. ''I am not so religious myself,'' he said. ''I pray, but I go to parties.'' Still, he said, ''I really like Khaled's attitude.'' 
  In Mansoura, Egypt, Khaled's Life Makers have set up a ''cultural committee,'' headed by a young man named Ahmed Emara, who until last year produced secular music videos for Egyptian stations like Nile Variety, the kind Khaled preaches against. Watching Khaled's TV show persuaded Emara to leave his job, and he now recruits pop stars to record professional-quality religious songs for Khaled's shows. A rap song for an anti-obesity campaign was a big hit, but some Life Makers I spoke to thought a techno song Emara arranged for the Life Makers' antismoking campaign was inappropriate because the fast tempo suggested dancing, which is forbidden. 
  The idea of Islamic entertainment, which Abu Haiba and Khaled first started talking about in the late 1990's, has developed its own momentum. In last year's Egyptian elections, Abu Haiba did media consulting for a Muslim Brotherhood candidate, urging him to emphasize a message beyond ideology, one that also had entertainment value. And this year, Abu Haiba helped start up an entire satellite network, Al-Resalah, or ''the Message,'' that conforms to his dream of television that is infused with Islam; the network will create Islamic facsimiles of reality shows, soap operas and music videos. 
  In December, I went with Khaled to Leverkusen, Germany, where he was the keynote speaker at a conference organized by the Islamic Community in Germany, an organization affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Five thousand Muslims gathered in a slightly rundown soccer stadium, mostly from Germany but some from other parts of Europe, to hear Khaled speak on ''Working Together for a Better Future: Muslim Women's Empowerment.'' The day after the lecture, Khaled met in the V.I.P. room of the stadium with about 40 young people from Life Makers groups in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne and other German cities. They were excited about meeting Khaled in person; when he arrived, many of them snapped his photo with their cellphone cameras. There were more women than men, and all of the women wore hijabs. 
  The meeting was part of Khaled's campaign toward a more integrated Muslim population in Europe, and it gave me a sense of some of the obstacles in his way. ''Many of you were born here,'' he said. He spoke in Arabic, and a German woman translated intermittently. ''Your parents came here a long time ago, and they had other priorities. That is fine, but your priority is to make sure we are a part of this society. We need for other people to see we are not selfish -- that we don't just come to the West to take and not participate. And there cannot be a renaissance in the Arab world without coexistence. Development can't happen without transfer of know-how and technology.'' 
  Khaled said he hoped that the German Life Makers would present him with projects that reflected this idea of working together with the West. He introduced a representative from Life Makers Tunisia who had flown in just for this meeting. The Tunisian Life Makers group was significant, Khaled said, because it includes non-Muslims who work with Muslims on charitable projects. (There are Christians and Jews in the group.)
  The German Life Makers seemed startled by this idea, and Khaled could tell. ''I know people are wondering about it,'' he said gently. ''I know some people may not like it, but it's worth it to talk about it.''
  When Khaled opened the floor for questions, it was clear that there was a gap between his agenda and that of the Life Makers around the table. Though Khaled says that Arab immigrants in Germany should learn German, one attendee proposed that German Life Makers should teach Arabic to other Muslim immigrants. ''It is a big problem that Muslims here in Germany who don't speak Arabic can't understand what is said in the mosque,'' she said. Another woman said she was already teaching Arabic to Muslims, but she had heard that it was inappropriate to offer such lessons without also teaching the Koran. 
  Khaled began to spin his wheels a bit. ''I am wondering if there are any ideas about integration to benefit us and serve our goal in some way,'' he said. ''Is anyone working on projects supported by city councils, cooperating with different groups? One example of this is the World Cup; the idea is not to play football but to bring people together from all over the world.'' Khaled picked up speed: ''If God wanted, he could have created all mankind as one religion. He created many different ways so we will cooperate.''
  Chaimaa Mousa, a 28-year-old mother from Cologne wearing a mauve hijab, floor-length robe and white high heels, raised her hand. She said she wasn't comfortable with Khaled's theme. ''There is danger in this point you are making about working with the other,'' she said. ''Before you deal with the non-Muslims, you have to make some rules.'' There were nods around the room. To Mousa, the real concern was that assimilation could lead Muslims to neglect or compromise their religious observances. ''I am afraid if we work together we might dispense with some of our important values,'' she said. ''What can we do not to do so?''
  Khaled said he agreed with Mousa that it was important to set boundaries, but he said it was also possible to be flexible on some issues that made integration easier. For instance, Khaled said, he had decided to shake hands with Western women, a decision he acknowledged might not be right for everyone. Khaled quoted a hadith, a commentary on a Koranic verse, that he said showed that a Muslim who works with non-Muslims and is patient with their bad attributes is better than a Muslim who isolates herself. 
  After the session, I spoke with Mousa. ''I was born here,'' she explained, ''and I have seen many girls and boys who live here, and they see it as normal to live one way with Muslims and another with non-Muslims -- maybe they do all five prayers only at night, or they will sit with non-Muslims when they drink at bars.'' She said she found Khaled's new message about integration refreshing and challenging, but she worried that he wasn't emphasizing the importance of being a better Muslim first, before engaging with the outside world. ''He is saying, 'Go meet the other,' when some Muslims in Germany don't even know how to pray correctly.'' 
  As Khaled was driven away from the Life Makers meeting in a Mercedes, he leaned his head against a hanging bag of new tailored suits he picked up earlier in Frankfurt to replace the ones he lost in Saudi Arabia. ''Do you think they understood what I was saying?'' he asked me. He said he didn't think they did. ''A project about teaching Arabic to Muslims -- this isn't integration,'' Khaled said quietly. ''They accept my message, but they haven't internalized it.''
  In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Madrid train bombings, the London tube bombings and the cartoon riots, many European governments and philanthropic groups have been looking for a point of communication with Muslims, and a few are beginning to come to the conclusion that they have found it in Amr Khaled. 
  In 2005, The Sunday Times of London leaked a 100-page memo, code-named Operation Contest, that was compiled by the British government as a plan to combat domestic Islamic extremism. The memo suggested setting up Muslim-friendly workplaces, taking a more aggressive line against radical imams and promoting the work of those whose messages were more palatable. The memo named Khaled as one of the Muslim leaders the government should support. This year, the Foreign Office of the British government has financed a series of religious lectures being held around the country aimed at combating extremism among young British Muslims. Khaled has been invited to speak. 
  Khaled has also attracted the attention of a number of multinational corporations that have financed individual conferences and projects his nonprofit organization has set up. Rick Little, a devout Christian, runs a foundation based in Maryland called the ImagineNations Group, which works with the World Bank and philanthropic organizations to promote entrepreneurship in the Middle East. Little learned about Khaled recently and has helped arrange financing for some of his projects, and later this year, Little says, he hopes to introduce Khaled to a wider audience of potential benefactors when Khaled makes his first trip to the United States. 
  A State Department official who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity told me that he hoped someone within the department would be able to meet with Khaled when he came to the United States. Khaled's message, he said, is ''very much in sync with what we want to say to the Muslim world, which is that we have no problem with Islam and no problem with conservative Islam. We have a problem with criminality called terrorism.''
  When the controversy erupted in February over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper, Khaled found it more difficult than usual to find a place to stand between the West and the Muslim world. He delivered dozens of lectures on the topic on Iqraa, at first merely condemning the cartoons and the violence that accompanied some protests. Later he urged conversation with the West, in addition to boycotts and protests. Khaled asked his young fans to send letters to his Web site explaining Islam, which he would then forward to Danish young people. He organized a conference in Copenhagen to bring together young Muslims and young Christian Danes to discuss Islam, press freedom and religious tolerance. 
  Khaled's televised lectures on the topic became longer, more involved and more personal in the days leading up to the conference. He told his viewers that Muslims living in Europe could be forcibly removed from Europe, or even slaughtered. ''You might think I am exaggerating,'' he said. But he reminded his viewers about the Spanish Inquisition. ''Have you forgotten what happened to us after 800 years in Spain? We were kicked out, and Muslims were burned. A great number were killed or tortured.. . . Not just that, many of them were forced into Christianity once more.''
  On the same program, Khaled said he wanted to give ''eyewitness'' testimony to what life was really like in Europe for Muslims. Khaled told dozens of stories of situations he had encountered in Europe. He told a story about his wife, who rode the bus in her hijab on the day of last summer's bombings in London. Other passengers, Khaled said, wanted to search her, but she refused, and the bus driver wouldn't move the bus. Eventually she got off the bus, crying, and an Englishwoman followed her out of the bus and said to her, ''Forgive us, but we are afraid and we do not want to die.'' He described how his son's school sent the family a card for a Muslim holiday. He told a story about a Muslim man who was caught on camera ripping the seats of the Underground with a knife and another about an Englishman who had converted to Islam when he saw his Muslim friend pick up someone else's litter.
  Khaled received the endorsements of some Egyptian and Saudi clerics in organizing the conference in Denmark, but he was also condemned harshly by a number of imams, newspaper columnists and, most significant, by Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Al Jazeera preacher and head of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, one of the most influential mainstream voices of Islam. Qaradawi criticized Khaled's calls for dialogue, and Al Jazeera broadcast Qaradawi's criticism over and over again. Qaradawi said that there should be no dialogue unless Denmark issued a formal apology. 
  The controversy about Khaled's conference continued for weeks after it took place. Egyptian Islamists who had formerly praised Khaled in the press now criticized him. Fahmi Howeidy, a prominent columnist for the Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, said Khaled was weakening the position of the Islamic world by going to Denmark. But Khaled was convinced that he was doing the right thing. When I spoke to him by phone earlier this month, he told me that the controversy over the cartoons was just the beginning. ''It is a practical test for Arab countries: a clash between my ideology of dialogue and the ideology of a clash of civilizations,'' he said. ''This is one of many events that will make this point over time.'' 
  It became clear to me in the time I spent with Khaled that he sees himself as much more than a motivational speaker in the tradition of Dr. Phil. In one conversation, he compared himself to world leaders who had been persecuted or had met tragic ends. ''If you follow the end of life of most reforming people -- Kennedy, Gandhi, most of the prophets, Nelson Mandela -- you find the end is not sweet,'' he said. ''I think we are going in the same way.'' 
  I was surprised that Khaled thought he might suffer for his work. The Arab world has its share of dissidents and intellectuals who must travel with police protection; Khaled hardly seemed in that league. He was a devout Muslim who never strayed from conservative interpretations of the religion. He didn't challenge any tenets of mainstream Islam or any Middle Eastern government. But Khaled seemed certain that trying to hold the middle ground would grow only more treacherous.


 EGYPT (94%); MEDITERRANEAN (92%); SAUDI ARABIA (90%); MIDDLE EAST (90%); EUROPE (90%); ENGLAND (57%); GERMANY (57%)







 Lincoln Journal Star,
 


April 29, 2006 Saturday  




 Photos show spirituality from around the world

 
Photos show spirituality around the world
Dean Jacobs  worked for 10 years as a dairy specialist for Pfizer American Health.  He achieved material success, but began to ask himself, "How many cell phones, how many Game Boys, how much stuff to you have to have to be happy?"
He thought about what he wanted to do with his life and realized that "in my heart of hearts I wanted to take a trip around the world," he said. 
Jacobs sold his house in San Diego in the fall of 2000 and the next spring started off on a two-year jaunt that took him to 28 countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
"I got by on $15 to $20 a day," he said.  "Each day I'd ask my heart, 'What do you want to do?' and I'd do it."
Everywhere he went, he found himself being drawn to religious sites.  He visited many of the world's centers of faith and faith leaders.  He joined ordinary people in their prayers and other spiritual practices.
And everywhere he went he took photographs, many of which will be shown in a special program, "Many Paths - One Journey," at 7:30 p.m. May 11 at Christ United Methodist Church, 4530 A St.
His presentation is one of four events in May sponsored by the Lincoln Interfaith Council designed to promote interfaith understanding.
Jacobs was in Australia on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, D.C.  Immediately afterwards, he went to Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, and was welcomed with open arms.
"Three million people canceled their holiday travel after 9/11 because they were afraid to go," he said.  "But everywhere I went people would watch out for me and take care of me in ways that were very humbling."
In Indonesia he visited the largest pyramid in the world that is not a tomb, a Buddhist site on the island of Java in which the life and teachings of Buddha are inscribed on the huge structure.  He also visited the birthplace of Buddha in Nepal and the site of Buddha's enlightenment.  In Bali, he dressed up as a Hindu and prayed in a Hindu temple.  In Amritsar, India, he visited the Golden Temple in  the holy site of the Sikh religion, where he bathed in the pool that is said to cleanse one's soul for seven years.
In Jerusalem he visited holy sites of Jews, Muslims and Christians. In Damascus he spent a day in a mosque that is considered the third most holy place for Muslims.  As he watched people at prayer, "one woman said, 'Maybe you can go back and share the beautiful scene you see before you with people in America.'"
And that's just what he's done.
Jacobs now lives in Fremont, where he's a photographer for the Fremont Tribune, but in his spare time he gives talks to school classes and other groups about his travels.  He's written a book, "The Wondrous Journey," available on his Web site, travel4life.org.
In the Interfaith Council-sponsored event he'll focus primarily on the spiritual aspects of his trip.
Tickets are $5 for adults (children under 12 free) and may be purchased in advance from the Interfaith Council, 474-3017, or at the door.
Other events in the "Four Days in May" series include:
* The Mayor's Interfaith Prayer Breakfast, beginning at 7 a.m. Thursday at the Cornhusker Marriott Hotel.  The Rev. Otis Young of First-Plymouth Congregational Church will speak.
* Celebration of Interfaith Understanding and Trust, a free panel discussion featuring people of many faiths reading from their scriptures and talking about their faith's understanding of peace.  A question and answer session will follow.  This event is at 7:30 p.m. May 18 at the Unitarian Church, 6300 A St.
* Music concert, featuring religious music from many traditions, including the men's choir of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, the choirs of congregation B'nai Jeshurun (South Street Temple), First Christian Church and Unitarian Church, a young B'hai soloist, a Hindu dancer, Lakota singers, recorded Islamic music with commentary, Dulces Voces early music vocal ensemble and more.  The free concert will be at 7:30 p.m, May 25 at First Christian Church, 430 S. 16th St.
Reach Bob Reeves at 473-7212 or at breeves@journalstar.com.

 UNITED STATES (94%); ISRAEL (92%);  INDONESIA (92%); NEPAL (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); SYRIA (79%); ASIA (79%); AUSTRALIA (74%); VIETNAM (69%)







  



April 28, 2006 Friday  
Main Edition



 BRIEFLY

 
Slater joins U.S. team
Thrashers rookie forward Jim Slater was selected to the U.S. team competing at the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championships next month in Latvia. 
Two of his Thrashers teammates also will represent their native countries in the event.
Center Patrik Stefan will play for the Czech Republic, and right wing Marian Hossa will play for Slovakia.
--- John Manasso
TENNIS: Costa retires after defeat
Former French Open champion Albert Costa's career ended with a 6-1, 5-7, 7-5 loss to fellow Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero in the third round of the Open Seat Godo in Barcelona, Spain. Top-seeded Rafael Nadal, the defending champion, defeated fellow Spaniard Ivan Navarro Pastor 6-4, 6-2. He advanced to play Finland's Jarkko Nieminen, who beat Spain's Albert Portas 6-3, 6-2. The 30-year-old Costa said last week he would retire after this tournament. He won 12 ATP titles, including the 2002 French Open. ... Indonesia refused to play a Fed Cup series in Israel in July and wants the women's tennis matches switched to a neutral country. Indonesia, home to about 190 million Muslims, has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has long supported Palestinian independence.
 AND THE LAW: 6 Miss. State players admit assault
Six Mississippi State football players pleaded guilty to reduced charges of misdemeanor simple assault. The players, all freshmen, were accused of assaulting an off-duty police officer during a fight earlier this month at a downtown Starkville, Miss., business. Cornerback Derek Pegues, safety Keith Fitzhugh, offensive tackle Michael Gates, quarterback Tray Rutland and defensive ends Charles Burnes and Quinton Wesley were each fined $500 and received six-month suspended sentences. "We are extremely pleased with the outcome," said attorney Jay Perry, who represents the players.

 SPAIN (93%); ISRAEL (92%);  SLOVAKIA (92%); INDONESIA (90%); CZECH REPUBLIC (88%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); LATVIA (73%)




4


 
 

Philadelphia Daily News

April 28, 2006 Friday



 Duke accuser claimed rape in '96

 
The woman who says she was raped by three members of Duke's lacrosse team also told police 10 years ago she was raped by three men, filing a 1996 complaint claiming she had been assaulted 3 years earlier when she was 14.
Authorities in nearby Granville County, N.C., said yesterday that none of the men named in the decade-old report was ever charged with sexual assault there, but they didn't have details why. 
A phone number for the accuser has been disconnected and her family declined to comment to the Associated Press. But relatives told Essence magazine in an online story this week that the woman declined to pursue the case out of fear for her safety.
The existence of the report surprised defense attorneys, one of whom has sought information about the accuser's past for use in attacking her credibility.
"That's the very first I've heard of that," said Bill Cotter, the attorney for indicted lacrosse player Collin Finnerty, who along with fellow Duke sophomore Reade Seligmann is charged with first-degree rape, kidnapping and sexual assault. He declined additional comment.
The accuser, a 27-year-old student at North Carolina Central University in Durham, told police she was hired to perform as a stripper at a March 13 party, where she was raped by three men.
According to the Creedmoor police report in August 1996, when the woman was 18, she told officers she was raped and beaten by three men "for a continual time" in 1993, when she was 14. She told police she was attacked at an "unspecified location" on a street in Creedmoor, a town 15 miles northeast of Durham.
When asked about the accuser's previous report of rape, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong declined to comment.
In other college news:
 The NCAA approved four new bowls, including a fifth Bowl Championship Series game in Glendale, Ariz., which will host the national championship Jan. 8. The BCS added the fifth game more than a year ago and the NCAA's approval was a formality. The other new games are the International Bowl, which will be played in Toronto, the Birmingham Bowl, and the New Mexico Bowl.
 Pittsburgh's Aaron Gray, Arkansas' Ronnie Brewerand South Carolina's Renaldo Balkman said they would make themselves available for the NBA draft, but have not hired agents in case they want to return to school. Arizona freshmanMarcus Williams announced he will return to school.
 Six Mississippi State football players accused of assaulting an off-duty police officer pleaded guilty to reduced charges. They each were fined $500 and received 6-month suspended sentences for misdemeanor simple assault.

Sport Stops
Patrick Arnold, a noted scientist in the sports nutritional supplement world accused of supplying the Bay Area Laboratory-Cooperative with the performance-enhancing drug known as "the clear," has reached a deal to plead guilty in federal court.
Nikki Ziegelmeyer, a former Olympic short-track speedskater who sustained a career-ending injury in Lake Placid, had her lawsuit against the U.S. Olympic Committee dismissed by an appeals court.
David Garber is leaving after 21 years as the head of the U.S. Curling Association, and will be replaced by communications director Rick Patzke.
 Indonesia refused to play a Fed Cup series in Israel in July and wants the women's tennis matches switched to a neutral country. Indonesia, home to about 190 million Muslims, has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has long supported Palestinian independence.
 The European Union is taking steps to fight racism and forced prostitution during the World Cup, which begins June 9. The EU fears some 40,000 women from poorer Eastern European countries will go to Germany, some against their will.
 The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency released statistics showing it performed 2,259 doping-control tests in the first quarter of 2006, resulting in six violations.
Graeme McDowell shot 64 for a one-shot lead over Stuart Appleby in the PGA Tour's Zurich Classic in New Orleans.
Shane Mosley and Fernando Vargaswill meet July 15 in Las Vegas in a rematch of their Feb. 25 bout, when Mosley stopped Vargas in the 10th round.

 







 


April 28, 2006 Friday  
THIRD EDITION



 TOP NEWS

 
TOP NEWS
SALE HITCH?
Sources say that one of the three investors in Dave Checketts' purchase of the Blues and Savvis Center lease has backed out. But Checketts' purchase is expected to proceed. D4 
LOCAL NEWS
RAM VISITS
Veteran defensive tackles Grady Jackson and Jason Fisk paid free-agent visits to Rams Park this week. D5
TRUCKIN'
Brendan Gaughan hopes to recapture the magic this weekend in the NASCAR trucks race at Gateway, where he won in 2003. D3
ELSEWHERE
WINGS WIN
Nicklas Listrom scores the winning goal on a two-man advantage as Detroit evens its series with Edmonton. D4
IN BRIEF
NO PARTY
FOR BARRY
Major League Baseball is not planning any celebration for Barry Bonds if and when he tops Babe Ruth's mark of 714 home runs, Commissioner Bud Selig says.
NEW NCAA POWERS
High schools and prep schools with questionable academic standards will now have to prove their legitimacy to the NCAA if they want their student-athletes to be eligible when they enter college. The board of directors gave the NCAA unprecedented authority to investigate so-called "diploma mills" and the ability to question individual transcripts. The penalties take effect this fall.
INDONESIA OUT?
Indonesia refused to play a Fed Cup series in Israel in July and wants the women's tennis matches switched to a neutral country. Home to about 190 million Muslims, Indonesia has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has long supported Palestinian independence. If the request for a venue change is denied, the Indonesian team will have to forfeit.
ONLINE
STLtoday.com
NFL draft weekend is upon us. Look for updates and breakdowns on the Rams' Class of 2006 from online columnist Jeff Gordon STLtoday.com/rams
COME BACK SUNDAY
Meet the newest Rams

 ISRAEL (91%); INDONESIA (91%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%)







  



April 28, 2006 Friday  




 Prospect Throws Bat At Ump, Is Suspended

 
 Top Tampa Bay Devil Rays prospect Delmon Young was suspended indefinitely by the Class AAA International League yesterday, a day after throwing a bat that hit a replacement umpire in the chest.  
  "The Devil Rays organization supports the decision," said Andrew Friedman, Tampa Bay's executive vice president of baseball operations. 
  The 20-year-old Young, brother of the Detroit Tigers' Dmitri Young and considered one of the best players in the minors, was ejected in the first inning following a called third strike in a game against the Durham Bulls in Pawtucket, R.I. 
  When Young took his time leaving the batter's box, the umpire tossed him. Young then flipped his bat underhand and it sailed end over end, striking the umpire. The umpire, whose name was not released, did not appear injured. 
  "I sincerely regret my actions in the game yesterday," Young said in a statement released by the office of his agent, Arn Tellem. "Regrettably, in the heat of the competition my emotions got the better of me." 
 Regular minor league umpires are on strike this season. Fill-in umps have been working in their place. 
*  COURTS: A noted scientist accused of supplying the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative with the performance-enhancing drug known as "the Clear" has reached a deal to plead guilty today in federal court. 
  A San Francisco federal grand jury indicted Patrick Arnold in November of conspiring with BALCO founder Victor Conte to distribute the once-undetectable substance tetrahydragestrinone. A source said Arnold will plead guilty to at least one charge in exchange for the others being dropped. 
*  COLLEGE BASKETBALL: Maryland guard D.J. Strawberry will not declare for the NBA draft, a school official said. Teammate Ekene Ibekwe still plans to declare but could pull out before the June 18 deadline if he doesn't hire an agent. . . .  
 Former California coach Todd Bozeman was named the head coach at Morgan State. 
*  TRACK AND FIELD: Maryland's Kierra Foster won the college women's long jump at the 111th Penn Relays in Philadelphia. Foster jumped 20 feet 10 inches, three inches better than Jovanee Jarrett of Auburn. 
*  TENNIS: Indonesia refused to play a Fed Cup series in Israel in July and wants the women's tennis matches switched to a neutral country. Indonesia, home to about 190 million Muslims, has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has long supported Palestinian independence. 
*  VOLLEYBALL: The 12th-ranked George Mason men's volleyball team lost its Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association semifinal to St. Francis (Pa.) in four games. The Patriots, who finished with a 22-6 record, had beaten St. Francis three times this season. 
  --  From News Services and Staff Reports 

 UNITED STATES (94%); ISRAEL (92%); INDONESIA (90%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%)








 
The York Dispatch 

April 28, 2006 Friday



 The highlights

 
LOCAL 
HODNETT EARNS SUSQUE HANNA WIN: Greg Hodnett raced to his second straight Susquehanna Speedway Park sprint-car win last night. 
Hodnett's $3,500 win was his 12th career victory at SSP.
Hodnett started fourth and trailed Chad Layton until the 17th lap. Layton then edged Lance Dewease for second, with Fred Rahmer and Mark Smith in the top five.
Rounding out the top 10 were Blane Heimbach, Craig Keel, Donnie Kreitz Jr., Glenndon Forsythe and Mark Coldren.
In other action, Jason Rochelle passed Josh Morrow on the final turn to win the Legends feature, with Ronnie Dunstan, Geremy Scheaffer and Randy Kissinger in the top five. 
Dover's Gene Knaub won the Xtreme stock-car feature over fellow York countians Rick Reinoehl, Larry Hughes Jr. and Sam Rial.
Brent Fogelsanger won the Xtreme stock-car rookie rumble.
BORNT-DAVIS HONORED: York Catholic High School graduate Lisa Bornt-Davis was recently honored by the Southern Conference for her efforts for the Furman University women's tennis team.
Bornt-Davis, a junior, was named to the All-Conference Second Team at No. 3 doubles, along with her partner, Shannon Moore. Together, Bornt-Davis and Moore teamed for a 12-1 record at No. 3 doubles. Bornt-Davis was also 1-0 at No. 6 singles.
Those two recently helped the Lady Paladins win their 14th Southern Conference Women's Tournament title. It was Furman's third-straight conference title and it earned the Lady Paladins a berth in the NCAA Women's Tennis Championship, which will begin May 12.
Bornt-Davis, who is a Dean's List student, also earned all-conference honors as a freshman before suffering a back injury as a sophomore.
YORK COLLEGE FALLS IN WOMEN'S LACROSSE: The York College women's lacrosse team fell to the College of Notre Dame yesterday in Baltimore, 11-9.
The Lady Spartans dropped to 5-10 on the season, while Notre Dame improved to 10-4.
Jaclyn Girsh and Lindsay Nixon had three goals each for York, while Sara Hester added two. Colleen Kazar had York's other goal. Girsh, Hester and Carla Thomas had assists for the Spartans.
WIBLE SETS RECORD: Dover High School graduate Lauren Wible recently broke the Bucknell University softball record for career RBIs.
Wible went 3-for-4 with three walks and four runs batted in during a doubleheader sweep of Holy Cross (8-0 and 7-5). Wible now has 96 career RBIs, breaking the previous record of 94.
For the season, Wible is hitting .296 with 26 RBIs, good for second-best on the team.
CORRECTION: Because of incorrect information provided to the Dispatch, Kori Haines' name was misspelled in yesterday's sports section. Haines was a member of the York Raiders' under-12 Red Team that won the North American Youth Sports Basketball Tournament at Kutztown University.
OMISSION: Because of incorrect information provided to the Dispatch, Hanover's Prajay Patel was missing from the PSU-AC All-Conference Award listing for Penn State York in yesterday's sports section.
LACROSSE
ACCUSER IN DUKE CASE PREVIOUSLY REPORTED RAPE: The woman who says she was raped by three members of Duke's lacrosse team also told police 10 years ago she was raped by three men, filing a 1996 complaint claiming she had been assaulted three years earlier when she was 14.
Authorities in nearby Creedmoor said yesterday that none of the men named in the decade-old report was ever charged but they didn't have details why.
A phone number for the accuser has been disconnected and her family declined to comment to The Associated Press. But relatives told Essence magazine in an online story this week that the woman declined to pursue the case out of fear for her safety.
COLLEGE
NCAA READY TO TAKE ON 'DIPLOMA MILLS:' High schools and prep schools with questionable academic standards will now have to prove their legitimacy to the NCAA if they want their student-athletes to be eligible when they enter college.
Yesterday, the board of directors gave the NCAA unprecedented authority to investigate so-called "diploma mills" and the ability to question individual transcripts that could lead to freshman ineligibility. The penalties take effect this fall.
BASKETBALL
VILLANOVA'S LOWRY OPTS FOR DRAFT, WON'T HIRE AGENT: Villanova point guard Kyle Lowry will make himself eligible for the NBA draft, but will retain the option of returning to school by not hiring an agent.
Lowry, a sophomore, had until Saturday to declare for the June 28 draft. The deadline to withdraw is June 18.
The speedy 6-foot guard was third on the Wildcats in scoring (11 points per game) and rebounding (4.3) this season, and first in assists (3.7). His 2.3 steals per game led the Big East.
PITT'S GRAY DECLARES FOR DRAFT, DOESN'T HIRE AGENT: Pitt's Aaron Gray, a 7-footer chosen All-Big East in his first season as a starter, plans to skip his senior year and enter the NBA draft.
The center has not signed with an agent, allowing him to withdraw from the June 28 draft and return for another season.
Gray averaged 13.9 points and led the conference in rebounding with a 10.5 average, helping Pitt (25-8) reach the second round of the NCAA tournament.
WILLIAMS TO RETURN TO ARIZONA: Marcus Williams, one of the top freshmen in the Pac-10 last season, has decided to stay at Arizona for another year rather than make himself available for the NBA draft.
The 6-foot-7 forward had strongly considered testing the NBA waters but said at a news conference yesterday that he decided he needed another season of college basketball to boost his chance of being a high draft pick. Williams was Arizona's second-leading scorer at 13 points per game.
FOOTBALL
NCAA APPROVES 31 BOWL GAMES FOR 2006: The NCAA approved four new bowls yesterday, including a fifth Bowl Championship Series game in Glendale, Ariz., which will host the national championship Jan. 8.
The BCS added the fifth game more than a year ago and the NCAA's approval was a formality.
The other new games are the International Bowl, which will be played in Toronto; the Birmingham Bowl, and the New Mexico Bowl.
The NCAA board of directors also approved a proposal allowing teams with .500 records to qualify for bowl games if the conference has a contract with a bowl game. Also, teams with .500 records could earn bowl bids if all other Division I-A teams with winning records have been taken and postseason spots still remain vacant.
The postseason football licensing subcommittee approved 31 games and the number could grow to 32 by the start of the 2006 season. A decision on the Houston Bowl, which was one of 28 bowl games last season, was delayed until June.
EAGLES RE-SIGN PUNTER, ADD KICKER: Restricted free agent punter Dirk Johnson signed a one-year contract with the Philadelphia Eagles yesterday.
Johnson, 30, played in seven games for the Eagles last year before being put on injured reserve for a sports hernia. Johnson had surgery for the injury in the offseason -- missing the entire preseason -- but the injury never healed.
Johnson had a net average of 38.4 yards per punt last year with 11 kicks inside the 20. He was the Eagles' everyday punter in 2003 and 2004.
The Eagles also signed kicker E.J. Cochrane to a one-year deal yesterday. Cochrane led the Big Sky Conference in scoring as a senior in 2004 at Montana State. The left-footer attended Pennsbury High School in suburban Philadelphia.
TENNIS
COSTA'S CAREER ENDS: Former French Open champion Albert Costa's career ended yesterday with a 6-1, 5-7, 7-5 loss to fellow Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero in the third round of the Open Seat Godo in Barcelona, Spain.
Top-seeded Rafael Nadal, the defending champion, defeated fellow Spaniard Ivan Navarro Pastor 6-4, 6-2.
The 30-year-old Costa said last week he would retire after this tournament. He won 12 ATP titles, including the 2002 French Open, and in July 2002 reached his highest ranking of sixth.
INDONESIA REFUSES TO PLAY FED CUP IN ISRAEL: Indonesia refused to play a Fed Cup series in Israel in July and wants the women's tennis matches switched to a neutral country.
Indonesia, home to about 190 million Muslims, has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has long supported Palestinian independence.
If the request for a venue change is denied, the Indonesian team will have to forfeit.

 UNITED STATES (90%)







  



April 23, 2006 Sunday  




 New Plans Foresee Fighting Terrorism Beyond War Zones; 
Pentagon to Rely on Special Operations

 
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has approved the military's most ambitious plan yet to fight terrorism around the world and retaliate more rapidly and decisively in the case of another major terrorist attack on the United States, according to defense officials. 
 The long-awaited campaign plan for the global war on terrorism, as well as two subordinate plans also approved within the past month by Rumsfeld, are considered the Pentagon's highest priority, according to officials familiar with the three documents who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about them publicly. 
  Details of the plans are secret, but in general they envision a significantly expanded role for the military  --  and, in particular, a growing force of elite Special Operations troops  --  in continuous operations to combat terrorism outside of war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Developed over about three years by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa,  the plans reflect a beefing up of the Pentagon's involvement in domains traditionally handled by the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department.  
  For example, SOCOM has dispatched small teams of Army Green Berets and other Special Operations troops to U.S. embassies in  about 20 countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America, where they do operational planning and intelligence gathering to enhance the ability to conduct military operations where the United States is not at war. 
 And in a subtle but important shift contained in a classified order last year, the Pentagon gained the leeway to inform  --  rather than gain the approval of  --  the U.S. ambassador before conducting military operations in a foreign country, according to several administration officials. "We do not need ambassador-level approval," said one defense official familiar with the order. 
 Overall, the plans underscore Rumsfeld's conviction since the September 2001 terrorist attacks that the U.S. military must expand its mission beyond 20th-century conventional warfare by infantry, tanks, ships and fighter jets to fighting  non-state groups that  are, above all, difficult to find.  
 The plans each run more than 100 pages and cover a wide range of overt and clandestine military activities  --  such as  man-hunting and intelligence gathering on terrorist networks;  attacks on terrorist training camps and recruiting efforts;  and partnering with foreign militaries to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries. Together, they amount to an assignment of   responsibilities to different military commands to conduct what the Pentagon  envisions as a "long war" against terrorism. 
  The main campaign plan sets priorities, allocates resources such as manpower and funding, and coordinates operations  among regional military commands to implement the Pentagon's broader National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism, published in unclassified form in February. It lays out nine key goals, such as targeting terrorist leaders, safe havens, communications and other logistical support, and countering extremist ideology. 
  A second  detailed plan is focused specifically on al-Qaeda and associated movements, including more than a dozen groups spread across the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. Such groups  include the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Ansar al-Islam in the Middle East,  Jemaah Islamiya in Indonesia, and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Saharan Africa. 
  A third plan sets out how the military can both disrupt and respond to another major terrorist strike on the United States. It includes lengthy annexes that offer a menu of options for the military to retaliate quickly against specific terrorist groups, individuals or state sponsors depending on who is believed to be behind an attack. Another attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets, according to current and former defense officials familiar with the plan.  
 This plan details "what terrorists or bad guys we would hit if the gloves came off. The gloves are not off," said one official, who asked not to be  identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. 
  The Pentagon declined to comment on the counterterrorism plans or their approval, citing longstanding policy. "We do not discuss contingency plans or future operations," said Cmdr. Greg Hicks, a Defense Department spokesman. SOCOM's deputy commander, Vice Adm. Eric T. Olson, said earlier this month in Senate testimony that the plans had been approved. 
  Special Operations Command, led by Gen. Doug Brown, has been  building up its headquarters and writing the plans since 2003, when Rumsfeld first designated it as the lead command for the war on terrorism. Its budget has grown 60 percent since 2003 to $8 billion in fiscal 2007. President Bush  empowered the 53,000-strong command with coordinating the entire military's efforts in counterterrorism in 2004. 
  "SOCOM is, in fact, in charge of the global war on terror," Brown said in testimony before the House last month. In this role, SOCOM directs and coordinates actions by the military's regional combatant commands. SOCOM, if directed, can also command its own counterterrorist operations  --  such as when a threat spans regional boundaries or the mission is highly sensitive  --  but it has not done so yet, according to Olson, and other officials say that is likely to be the exception to the rule. 
  To extend its reach to more countries, SOCOM is increasing by 13,000 the number of Special Operations troops, including Special Forces soldiers skilled in language and working with indigenous militaries, and Delta Force operatives and Navy SEAL teams that form clandestine "special mission units" engaged in reconnaissance, intelligence gathering and man-hunting. Already, SOCOM is seeing its biggest deployments in history, with   7,000 troops  overseas today, but the  majority have been concentrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, with 85 percent last year in the Middle East, Central Asia or the Horn of Africa. 
  But SOCOM's more robust role  --  while adding manpower, specialized skills and organization to the fight against terrorism  --  has also led to some bureaucratic tensions, both inside the military with the joint staff and regional commands, as well as with the CIA and State Department. Such tensions are one reason SOCOM's  plan took years.  
   When SOCOM first dispatched  military liaison teams abroad starting in 2003, they were called "Operational Control Elements," a term changed last year because "it raised the hackles of regional commanders and ambassadors. It was a bad choice of language," said one defense official, adding: "Who can pick on Military Liaison Elements?" 
  State Department officials, meanwhile,  said that although, for the most part, cooperation with the military teams has been good, they remain concerned over continued "gray areas" regarding their status. "Special Ops wants the flexibility and speed to go in there. . . . but there's understandably questions of how you do that and how you have clear lines of authority,"  one U.S. official said. There remains "continuing discussion, to put it politely, in terms of how this is going to work," the official said. SOCOM says the teams work for the regional commanders. 

 UNITED STATES (94%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); LATIN AMERICA (79%);  ASIA (79%)







 
 
TELEGRAM & GAZETTE (Massachusetts)

April 21, 2006 Friday  




 Building bridges to Islam's world; 
Visiting Indonesian scholar seeks to dispel myths

 
It took no time at all for the question to pop up: What's the story with Muslim women and equality?
The young man who posed it, a student in Leontina Hormel's international development class at Worcester State College, went on to remark on the perception of a sizable gap between the way Muslim men and women are treated. "What's actually going on?" he asked.
The student addressed his query to Masykuri Abdillah, an Indonesian scholar. Mr. Abdillah is one of 24 Fulbright Visiting Specialists who have come from Muslim countries to the United States this spring to enhance understanding between America and the Muslim world. The program combines teaching, lecturing and community outreach. Mr. Abdillah will be at Worcester State until the end of the month, working, he said, to build mutual understanding while also acknowledging cultural differences. 
"Some students have an image that the Islam religion backs violence," Mr. Abdillah said in an interview shortly before Ms. Hormel's class. "One student asked, `Is it safe to go to Muslim countries?' He imagined that for non-Muslims, especially U.S. citizens, it is not safe.
"Violence is not a natural extension of the religion," he continued. "It is a misinterpretation of the religion. A small group in Muslim countries have radical elements, not because of Islamic teachings, but because of external factors. A precept of Islam is, `Attack, if they attack you.' This is defensive, not offensive. It is clear in the Koran. Jihad only has a defensive purpose."
On the matter of women, Mr. Abdillah drew a picture of contrasts.
He explained that a Muslim woman is expected to wear clothing that covers everything except her face and the palms of her hands to ward off sexual harassment and prevent adultery, which Islam strictly forbids.
At the same time, Mr. Abdillah said, Indonesia, a nascent democracy, has set a quota requiring that 30 percent of the seats in Parliament are to be held by women. At Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, where Mr. Abdillah teaches, 50 percent of the students are women. They dominate the departments of psychology, education, languages and medicine and health sciences, he said. Seventy-five percent of the dentists in Indonesia are women.
"The policy is to mainstream women," Mr. Abdillah said. "In selecting new government officials, women must be considered."
He expressed dismay at the Taliban, the Sunni Islamist movement that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and did not permit women to go to school. "That is very strange," Mr. Abdillah said. "In Islam, every woman should go to school and have equal opportunity for education."
Mr. Abdillah's description of affirmative action in his homeland came as a surprise to Kristen Birch, 20, a Worcester State junior who is majoring in sociology. She said she found the similarities between the U.S. and Indonesia interesting, especially "that the cultures are different, but our lives can be so similar."
Mr. Abdillah, who is 47, earned his doctorate in Islamic studies and political science in 1995 from Hamburg University in Germany. He spent several months at Boston University on a Fulbright scholarship in 2002, studying Indonesian civil society. Indonesia is the fourth most-populous country in the world, with a population of 222 million; 87 percent of the residents are Muslim.
Mr. Abdillah is married and has two daughters, 13 and 9 years old, and a son, who is 5. His children often watch CNN, and his intention is that they develop a world view. His older daughter was born in Germany. She now studies English, both in school and three times a week in afternoon classes.
In the future, he said, she can study in the United States or go abroad. "It is important for the children to have a broad mind," he said.
At Mr. Abdillah's university, there are collections of materials from countries around the world. A section devoted to the United States has videos, books and hundreds of electronic journals. "There also is an Iran corner," Mr. Abdillah said. "We like to introduce the students to all kinds of people." 
Barbara Zang, who spearheaded the effort to bring a Muslim scholar to Worcester State, said Mr. Abdillah has just the sort of background she and her colleagues were seeking.
"We wanted someone to talk about media, culture and democracy," Ms. Zang, an associate professor in the communications department, said. "He had that set of interests, so they matched him with us."
Ms. Zang noted that media coverage of Islam tends to provide an extreme view of the religion. Mr. Abdillah "talks about the moderate Islam, which is Indonesia," she said. "He shows the overlap between them and us."
Indeed, Mr. Abdillah said, Indonesia has a free press - with the exception of certain situations, among them publication of pornography or insults aimed at other religious groups. 
"It is not possible for Muslims in Indonesia to insult Christian groups," he said. "In the case of government corruption, it is the obligation of the press to expose it."
Two weeks ago, the first issue of Playboy was published in Indonesia - without photographs of nude women. "It is considered pornography, and it is not allowed," Mr. Abdillah said. Three hundred extremists protested the magazine's arrival by going to the headquarters of the publisher. "They want it out of circulation," Mr. Abdillah said. "It's part of freedom of expression."
Along with what he had to say about Muslim women, Mr. Abdillah offered the international relations class other pieces of unexpected information.
Recently, his university, in cooperation with the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, conducted a poll on attitudes toward the U.S. The purpose was to see how views stood, given the war in Iraq. About 20 percent of respondents had an unfavorable impression of the U.S.; 60 percent were neutral; and 20 percent had a positive impression. The percentages were exactly the same as they had been before the war.
"Indonesians admire the U.S. socially and culturally," Mr. Abdillah said, "but not politically."
"Islam in Indonesia,"
a lecture by scholar Masykuri Abdillah 
When: 2:30-3:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Worcester Public Library, 1 Salem Square, Worcester

 INDONESIA (96%); UNITED STATES (93%); AFGHANISTAN (74%)







   


April 17, 2006 Monday  




 A Non-Swinging Playboy Sets Off a Frenzy in Indonesia

 
Ponti Carolus, the publisher of the Indonesian edition of Playboy magazine that stirred Islamic militants into a rock-throwing protest during the past week, has one thing in common with many Western men: he says he reads Playboy for the articles.
  ''The first time I read Playboy was when I was in the U.S.,'' said Mr. Carolus, a clean-cut, 34-year-old Muslim and a graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism, in a recent interview in Jakarta. ''I remember I bought it because it had a nice interview with a Nobel Prize winner.'' 
 He began publishing in Jakarta a week ago, absent Playboy's iconic nude centerfold or anything else remotely provocative except its famous name. The magazine quickly sold out. Then, on Wednesday, about 300 men from the Islamic Defenders Front -- a self-appointed moral police force known for violent attacks on bars -- turned up at the magazine's offices, in a neighborhood where many foreign companies have local headquarters. Stones were thrown and windows smashed. Two police officers received minor injuries.
  Playboy moved out of its office. But the Jakarta police chief said the only course was for the offending magazine to suspend publication of a second issue to avoid further public disturbance.
  The dispute could be cast as a classic battle over freedom of the press, in a country where the number of publications has exploded since the end of the 32-year reign of Suharto in 1998. But not even Mr. Carolus saw the attackers' target that way.
  ''It's not about freedom of the press,'' he said. ''It's about freedom of pornography.''
  He insists that he opposes pornography and that he agrees with the militant Muslims who attacked his office that it should be banned. His publication would feature only fully clothed women, he said.
  In truth, the uproar seemed to be a minor, confused skirmish in a new, broad battle over moral standards in Indonesia, an enormous, mostly Muslim, ethnically mixed nation made up of more than 18,000 islands. Conflicts focus on what the public should be exposed to in the media, what kind of clothing women should wear and how much affection couples should display in public.
  A draft law before the Indonesian Parliament would impose Islamic strictures. It mandates large fines and jail terms for buying and distributing pornography, and makes homosexuality an offense. It also prohibits provocative dancing and requires women to cover pretty much every part of their bodies below the neck.
  In a country that boasts of its embrace of moderate Islam and cultural diversity, many analysts and politicians say the attempt to establish a strict Islamic standard of behavior is at odds with the thinking of a vast majority of the people. They give little chance of Parliament passing such an extreme law. Opponents of the law argue that trying to legislate morality is like trying to protect matrimony by abolishing divorce.
  But in the years since the fall of President Suharto, hard-line Islamic groups have grown in strength and organizational ability and are now a formidable social force. They often get what they want through social pressure alone.
  Wies Budiman is a grandmother in her 50's who owns and edits Male Emporium, in which the photo spreads limit the exposure of flesh to a woman in a bra, baring her midriff. In the glossy 145-page February issue, there is an ad inviting phone calls to a girl who looks as if she is in a school uniform for ''hot'' conversation, as well as a review of the latest film work of a porn queen.
  Copies of Male Emporium were seized by the police recently in a general crackdown on the men's magazine market, although it is not clear what law the police were acting on. Distribution resumed, but after the crackdown, street vendors told Ms. Budiman, ''I won't sell it if the pictures are too open or revealing.''
  ''I have to adjust to the situation,'' Ms. Budiman said.
  Muhyiddin Junadi, a scholar from the Indonesian Ulama Council and Muhammadiyah, the second-largest Muslim organization in Indonesia, acknowledged an agenda to sharply alter the moral character of Indonesia, where it is still possible to buy alcohol, even in the middle of Ramadan.
  ''We don't want to make Indonesia an Islamic country, but what we demand is that Muslims must apply Islamic teaching and Islamic principles to their lives,'' Mr. Junadi said in an interview. To him, Playboy is ''very dangerous'' because it risks spoiling ''the morality of Indonesian society as a whole, especially the young generation.''
  Mr. Carolus, however, takes the position that it is other media, not his magazine, that offer the moral danger. ''If I want to see naked pictures,'' he said, ''I go to the Internet. It costs nothing. U.S. Playboy costs me about $12.''
  Indeed, a Web site with explicit sexual content that claims to have received more than 46 million hits last month lists Indonesia as its No. 1 source of viewers. Malaysia, another majority Muslim country, was listed at No. 4.


 INDONESIA (97%); 







 
 



April 16, 2006 Sunday



 On Movies | Embodying Bettie - and her paradoxes

 
What do actors do in their downtime, between scenes, holed up in their trailers while the crew pushes lights, cables and props around?
Well, Gretchen Mol watched porn. Sort of.
As the title character in The Notorious Bettie Page - a breezy look back at the heyday of the 1950s pinup queen - Mol ran and reran the '50s footage of Bettie Page posing in (and out of) black torpedo bras, merrily snapping a whip, standing on platform spike heels, and strategically jutting her garter-belted backside to the camera.
"Even on my lunch breaks, I would be watching those old loops," says the actress of the Page flicks. "I just had Bettie surrounding me all the time."
Mol, 33, is a willowy blond who was pronounced the new "It" girl in a 1998 Vanity Fair cover story - a piece of publicity-machine hype she's had to live down ever since. She's worked steadily, if not starringly, in films such as Rounders, The Shape of Things, and Sweet and Lowdown. And if she seems an unlikely choice to play the buxom, raven-haired Nashville sexpot whose bondage poses caused a furor - and a Senate hearing - back in the Ike era, Mol would be the first to agree. 
When she went up for the role, reading scenes for director Mary Harron, the New York-trained actress didn't think she had a shot.
"Nobody's ever going to cast me as Bettie Page," Mol recalls thinking. Until then, Mol's knowledge of the voluptuous vixen and Playboy model extended only to seeing her image on kitschy clothes and posters, and catching an E! True Hollywood Storybio when she was channel-surfing one night.
"But that turned out to be kind of a liberating thing, actually, because I felt like I had nothing to lose," she explains. "So I went in and did some scenes for Mary, and she was receptive right away. Then we met up again and she said, 'I think you can do this.'
"I hadn't even put a wig on at that point. Mary was able to take a leap of faith as far as the physicality was concerned. She had seen a lot of actresses that were more physically right for the role, but I think she was looking for something else as well... .
"Once I put on the wig, though, we were both sort of shocked at how much, suddenly, it was a possibility."
Mol is quite simply terrific in Bettie Page, which opens Friday at the Ritz Theaters. Harron, who cowrote the screenplay with Guinevere Turner (the L Word actress once considered playing Page herself), pushes things just to the edge of camp, but never over. And Mol projects the same sense of larky fun that Page displayed in her nude pictorials and Super-8 reels. Page may have been looming imposingly over a trussed-up subject, she may have been leering wickedly, but her eyes were glinting with carefree mischief.
"There was a real dichotomy about Bettie Page," says Mol of the peep-show icon who went on to become a Christian missionary. (Page, who did not cooperate with the film but still collects money from the licensing of her image, turns 83 on Saturday.)
"There are so many contrasting elements, and that's what makes her so fascinating and what keeps us looking at the photographs today," Mol says. "She stands for so many things, whether it be feminism, or sexual freedom, or pushing sexual mores, and at the same time there's a girl there that doesn't want to have anything to do with that. She didn't really care and wasn't invested in that in any way... . There were so many contradictions."
Festival wrap.As 66,300 ticket buyers can attest (an attendance record, by the way) the 15th Philadelphia Film Festival came to a close Tuesday, having unspooled 229 films from 45 countries over its 13-day run.
Jury prizes and audience awards were announced at the closing-night ceremonies.
Jury Prizes included:
Best feature film: Off Screen (Pieter Kuijpers, director; Belgium); best American independent film: The King (James Marsh, director); best first film: Wristcutters: A Love Story (Goran Dukic, director; United States); best director: Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson; United States); and best documentary: The Camden 28(Anthony Giacchino, director; United States).
Audience Awards were:
Best Danger After Dark: The Descent (Neil Marshall, director; U.K.); best feature film: Elsa & Fred(Marcos Carnevale, director; Spain/Argentina); and best documentary: The Camden 28.
The Vietnam-era protest documentary Camden 28 marks the first time since the festival started handing out awards that a film captured both the juried and audience-polled citations.
Festival on wheels.Although the above-mentioned winners aren't included, a dozen festival favorites will be screened tomorrow through Wednesday nights at the County Theater in Doylestown, the Ambler Theater in Ambler, and the Bryn Mawr Film Institute in Bryn Mawr.
Called "Reels on Wheels," the tour extends the Philadelphia Film Festival by a few days and a few counties, offering suburban audiences a chance to catch up on titles such as the romantic comedy David & Layla(Jewish man falls in love with Muslim woman) and the film-biz doc This Film Is Not Yet Rated; the dizzying crossword-puzzle nonfiction gem Wordplay and the Spanish psychological thriller The Uncertain Guest; the Canadian comedy-drama These Girlsand the Indonesian bike-messenger comedy Joni's Promise; the Marcus Hook-made One Last Thing... and the B-horror (as in British) Danger After Dark crowd-pleaser Evil Aliens.
Each of the three theaters has a two-night program of four films (got that?). For details contact the Ambler (215-345-7855), the Bryn Mawr (610-527-9898), and the County (215-345-6789).
Art of producing. A three-night workshop on the "Art of Producing" gets under way Tuesday at the Scribe Video Center in University City. Award-winning indie producers Doug Block, Judith Helfand and Lisa Cortés will explain the ins and outs of pitching, deal-making, casting, crewing, organizing and selling during the sessions, which begin at 7 p.m. The second and third sessions are on Tuesday, April 25 and Tuesday, May 2.
The $75 fee is good for all three sessions, and preregistration is required. Call 215-222-4201 or e-mail: inquiry@scribe.org.
Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/stevenrea.







   


April 15, 2006 Saturday  




 Long Trip by Sea and Into a Political Maze for Papuans Seeking Independence

 
From one of the most remote places on earth, Herman Wanggai stepped into a 75-foot motorized outrigger last November and pushed off for a calculated and clandestine journey. 
  Along with one of his twin 2-year-old sons and more than 30 other people, he set off from the northern coast of Papua, the Indonesian province once called Irian Jaya, on New Guinea. After six weeks, under a blistering equatorial sun and with Pacific waves sloshing on board, they made it thousands of miles to Merauke, on the southern shore. There, they picked up his wife and other son and set out once again, in the dead of night, with little food and no compass.
Four days later, on Jan. 13, the group hit a reef near Mapoon, on the northwest coast of Cape York peninsula, clambered ashore, and found that they had miraculously reached their destination, Australia, where a new drama began.
  Several weeks later, Australia, acting with surprising speed, granted Mr. Wanggai, 32, and all his passengers, save one, political asylum. The decision set off a diplomatic firestorm that has brought the issue of Papuan independence to international attention, which is just what Mr. Wanggai and his wife, Ferra Kambu, wanted.  
  In response, Indonesia recalled its ambassador and Indonesian politicians have called for trade sanctions. 
  For Indonesia, the issue could not be more serious. An archipelago stretching thousands of miles, the country has already faced two secessionist wars in recent years, in Aceh and East Timor. The latter succeeded in breaking away. 
  Indonesian leaders do not want to repeat the episode with Papua, which holds the biggest source of income for the government: the world's richest gold reserve.
  As conflicts on Papua have flared -- four people were killed in protests last month -- more and more churches and human rights groups in Australia, the United States and Europe have lined up behind the cause of Papuan independence. 
  Though Australia does not support independence, the decision to grant asylum meant that authorities had concluded the Papuans faced a ''well-founded fear of persecution'' if they were returned to Indonesia.
  [In an effort to soothe relations with Indonesia, the government announced April 13 that from now on Papuan refugees would be deported to places like the desolate island of Nauru while their asylum claims were processed, which can take several years.] 
  The Indonesian government does not permit journalists to visit Papua without special permission, which is rarely granted. Even diplomats are closely watched when they visit the province, a European ambassador said recently.
  Without access to Papua, it is almost impossible to assess the human rights situation. The Indonesian police and military deny there are any abuses; the Papuan refugees here speak of systematic persecution. 
  The United States government does not support independence, either. But in its annual country-by-country human rights report, released last month, the State Department cited incidents in which Indonesian soldiers had beaten, tortured and killed suspected promoters of independence. 
  In one case, the report said, soldiers tortured a suspected secessionist ''by slashing his face and body with a knife and razor and then pouring petrol over his head and setting his hair on fire.''
  The report also noted that the Indonesian government had made only ''limited progress in establishing accountability'' for past human rights abuses committed by the military and police.
  It was because of persecution for their support of independence, Mr. Wanggai said, that he had risked all and braved what his wife described as waves ''as high as mountains.'' 
  They also wanted to make a point, they said: that Papua, a wild, mountainous and heavily forested land roughly the size of California and rich in natural resources, does not rightfully belong to Indonesia. 
  Papua's population of some 2.5 million people are mostly Melanesian, and many are Christian, converted after years of missionary work. Most Indonesians are Javanese and Muslim. 
  ''We are activists,'' said Mr. Wanggai, a one-time law student who has been active in the independence movement for more than a decade. He has been jailed twice, once for two years for flying the West Papuan independence flag. 
  Ms. Kambu, 36, the daughter of a tribal chief, has a bachelor's degree in sociology and has been part of the movement since her university days. She described the independence cause as a ''nonviolent struggle.'' 
  Most of the others who fled with the couple were university students and were also active in the independence movement.
  West Papuans' claims for independence reach back half a century. After World War II, the Dutch gave Indonesia its independence, but because of its vast riches kept Papua. 
  In 1963, to appease Indonesia's left-leaning dictator Sukarno, who was demanding West Papua as part of Indonesia, President Kennedy persuaded the Dutch to agree to a United Nations sponsored plebiscite, which was held in 1969. 
  The Papuan leaders voted to join Indonesia, but by nearly all accounts, including by people who do not support Papuan independence, the vote was manipulated by Jakarta.
  Indonesia has made some concessions in recent years, agreeing to change the name of the province from Irian Jaya to Papua, and to grant more autonomy, including a greater share of the revenues from the province's riches, like a huge copper and gold mine run by the American mining company Freeport-McMoRan.
  But little of the promised autonomy has been delivered. The central government has done little to improve the lives of Papuans, and health care and schooling remain rudimentary. 
  For President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is highly regarded by the American and Australian governments for bringing stability to Indonesia, Papua is a critical test. 
  On the one hand, he faces rising protests in Papua by an alienated and increasingly organized independence movement that, as the Australian asylum decision shows, is drawing greater international support. 
  On the other, he must satisfy strident nationalists at home, including senior military commanders who are angry over a deal he made last year with secessionists in Aceh Province that brought peace but gave the Acehnese considerable autonomy. 
  The commanders, who hold great sway in Indonesia, will not give the president much room to maneuver on the Papuan issue, and some even favor a military solution, which they pursued for years in Aceh at the cost of many lives. 
  The refugees in Mr. Wanggai's party, who attended St. Andrew's Anglican Church here, about 40 miles south of Melbourne, on Palm Sunday, said they had talked with their relatives back in Papua and had been told that the Indonesian police had been questioning the relatives to determine exactly who fled and why. 
  The ''why'' is clear to the refugees and those who support them, including Peter Woods, the pastor of St. Andrew's, who was a missionary in Papua from 1978 to 1983. ''The Papuans are treated as slaves of the Javanese,'' he said.
  As the refugees and other worshippers walked out of St. Andrew's, they passed a bulletin board with a poster on it that read, ''West Papua: An Issue Whose Time Has Come.''
  That is precisely what the Papuan refugees here hope, and what the Indonesian government fears.


 AUSTRALIA (97%); INDONESIA (95%);  TIMOR-LESTE (79%); NAURU (79%); EUROPE (79%)







   


April 14, 2006 Friday  




 

Taking the Beatles Online
  Coming to a computer near you: the Beatles. The question is when. A spokeswoman for Apple Corps, the Beatles' record company, confirmed yesterday that it was preparing to make the group's catalog available online, Reuters reported. ''There's no firm date on any of this at the moment,'' she said. ''There are a lot of projects that Apple are working on at the moment.'' The Beatles have been high-profile holdouts from Internet music, where soaring sales lifted revenue to $1.1 billion last year. Plans by Apple Corps -- owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and the estate of George Harrison -- to make the Beatles' catalog available online emerged in testimony by Neil Aspinall, the managing director of Apple Corps and a former Beatles road manager, during a trademark lawsuit against Apple Computer. He said Apple Corps was digitally remastering the entire catalog, an enterprise that would pave the way for selling the songs online. ''I think it would be wrong to offer downloads of the old masters when I am making new masters,'' Mr. Aspinall said in a statement to the High Court in London.

Rapper Who Was Killed Fired First Shot, Police Say
 
  Police officers investigating the fatal shooting of the rapper Proof say he fired the first shot at the CCC nightclub in Detroit before dawn on Tuesday, wounding a man who was in critical condition yesterday, The Associated Press reported. The officers also said that they had questioned a bouncer, Mario Ethridge, a cousin of the wounded man, Keith Bender. ''He came in because the Detroit Police Department asked him to,'' Mr. Ethridge's lawyer, Randall Upshaw, told WXYZ-TV. ''Does that sound like a murder?'' Mr. Upshaw declined to say if his client had shot Proof, 32, left, whose real name was Deshaun Holton, but said whoever did had acted in self-defense. ''The understanding of every witness we've spoken to is that Proof pulled out a weapon,'' Mr. Upshaw said. ''Proof shot Keith in the face, and Keith was unarmed.'' Sgt. Eren Stephens of the Detroit Police Department said that if the person who shot Proof was protecting himself or someone else, he would not be charged. Proof, a member of the rap group D12 and best man at Eminem's wedding in January, was shot three times in the head and chest, according to the Wayne County medical examiner's office.

Indonesian Police to Ask Playboy for Postponement
  The chief of police in Jakarta, Indonesia, said yesterday that he planned to ask the publishers of the local edition of Playboy to postpone its second issue, Reuters reported. If they do not comply voluntarily, the police chief, Firman Gani, said he would appeal to higher authorities for support. He said a postponement would enable the police to determine if the first issue, which prompted a violent demonstration by male Islamists on Wednesday at the Playboy offices, had violated any laws in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. A nonviolent protest, including women and children, took place at the offices yesterday. A building manager said Playboy had moved out overnight.

Spacey Replies to Critics
  Kevin Spacey defended his stewardship of the Old Vic Theater in London yesterday after the early closing of its latest production, Arthur Miller's ''Resurrection Blues,'' directed by Robert Altman. Mr. Spacey, above, told BBC Radio that it was ''not unusual for a show to come off early'' and said it was ''not a disaster'' that the theater would now be dark all summer. An Academy Award winner for his performances in ''The Usual Suspects'' and ''American Beauty,'' Mr. Spacey has been the artistic director of the theater since 2003, under a 10-year contract he said he was ''more determined than ever'' to complete. ''This is the middle of our second season,'' he said. ''It's very early going; nothing has put me off from our goal and our plan.'' 

Museum Renovation Is Set
  The 42-year-old National Museum of American History, an arm of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, is to close to the public on Sept. 5, the day after Labor Day, for major renovation. It is scheduled to reopen by summer 2008, according to an announcement on its Web site. Plans call for a new skylighted central-core atrium and grand staircase; a new gallery for the Star-Spangled Banner, the flag that inspired the national anthem; and an updating of the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, lighting and other systems.

Mormon Texts Stolen
  Two first editions were among 11 copies of the Book of Mormon stolen from the Pioneer Memorial Museum on Capitol Hill in Salt Lake City, The Associated Press reported. The books, a Tibetan wood printing block and another religious text could be worth more than $300,000, the authorities said. The theft was discovered early Wednesday, and investigators said that a hammer had been used to shatter a glass case where the books were stored. Two of the books, the central text of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were published in 1830, when the church was founded by Joseph Smith, said Lt. Tony Garcia of the Utah Department of Public Safety. 

Footnotes
  The title is ''Sphinx.'' The life-size painted bronze statue made public by the BBC yesterday actually depicts Kate Moss in a yoga pose, her ankles behind her ears. The sculptor, Marc Quinn, says Ms. Moss and the Sphinx share ''mystery.'' The work, the first of five statues of Ms. Moss by Mr. Quinn, is to be seen in Groningen, the Netherlands, this month. All five are to be shown later in New York.  After three nights in jail as part of a five-year sentence for killing an endangered antelope, the Indian film star Salman Khan, above, was released on bail yesterday in Jodhpur, Reuters reported. An appeal of his conviction is planned.  ''All the King's Men,'' a remake of the Academy Award winner for best picture of 1949, is to be released by Sony Pictures on Sept. 22, Reuters reported. Starring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini and Anthony Hopkins, the film was to have come out last December. It was postponed because editing and music were incomplete.

 UNITED STATES (93%); INDONESIA (84%)




5


   


April 13, 2006 Thursday  




 

'Survivor' Winner in Protective Custody
  Richard Hatch, below, who won $1 million in the inaugural ''Survivor'' competition on CBS only to be found guilty in January of failing to pay taxes on his prize and other income, is being held in protective custody pending sentencing on April 25, The Associated Press reported. His lawyer, Michael Mimms, said Mr. Hatch, 45, asked to be placed in protective custody at a jail in Plymouth, Mass., and Charles Wyant, a deputy United States marshal, said the request had been granted because Mr. Hatch is a celebrity. ''The situation he's in is the best possible position for him to be in at this point in time, the safest and most secure,'' Mr. Wyant said. Mr. Hatch was put in custody immediately after he was found guilty of tax evasion because Federal District Court Judge Ernest Torres said he posed a flight risk. 

Indonesian Muslims Protest Playboy
 
  Hurling stones, shattering windows and tearing up magazines, hundreds of Muslims attacked the offices of Playboy in Jakarta, Indonesia, yesterday after the magazine was published in the country for the first time, Agence France-Presse reported. About 300 members of the Islamic Defenders' Front massed outside the building to demand that the local version of Playboy, which does not publish nude photographs, cease publication. One of approximately 90 police officers guarding the building was injured, but most of the magazine's employees had left when the demonstration took place. Salim Al Hamid, a leader of the group, told Radio Elshinta, ''We will carry out more attacks if Playboy refuses to stop publishing.'' The Indonesian edition of the magazine was quickly sold out when it appeared on Friday, and copies later changed hands at more than three times the cover price, $4.33. It features pictures of women in underwear but is regarded as no racier than Indonesian editions of the men's magazines FHM and Maxim. Muslims make up about 88 percent of Indonesia's population of 220 million. 

Crime Takes a Holiday
  It's Easter in Norway, and crime is booming. As Norwegians rush off to their mountain cabins for a final feast of skiing before the snow melts, they take with them a supply of mysteries, Reuters reported, and in keeping with a tradition known as Easter Crime, television and radio stations schedule thrillers back to back. ''People sit inside their cabins, watch crime on television and then read crime books at night,'' said Ane Farsethaas, a book reviewer. ''It's a very Norwegian thing to do.'' The bookshop chain Tanum estimates that sales of crime books soar about 500 percent in the week leading to Easter, and this week, its top 10 best-sellers are all crime novels, led by the Swedish writer Stieg Larsson's ''Men Who Hate Women.'' No one seems to know how the Easter Crime tradition began, although the ancient Norsemen who returned from raids on the British Isles were fond of settling down with flasks of mead and recounting tales of murder and pillage to their women and children.

Footnotes
  The bad-boy rocker Pete Doherty didn't keep his date to appear in a London court yesterday for a review of his progress in drug rehabilitation, The Associated Press reported. Told that he had been unable to return from Paris after a performance by his group, Babyshambles, Thames Magistrates' Court adjourned the case until May 12. He is to appear in the same court in a separate drug case next Thursday.  The Australian pop star Kylie Minogue, below, has been invited to headline the 2007 Glastonbury Festival, a highlight of the British summer music calendar, The Associated Press reported. In London for the premiere of ''Glastonbury,'' a documentary about the festival's 35 years, Michael Eavis, a working farmer who stages the event in his fields, said: ''Kylie is coming back, hopefully. Her people are quite confident; she wants to do it.'' Last year, she canceled her performance after learning she had breast cancer. No festival will be held this year, to allow Mr. Eavis's cows to graze without interruption.  A film school named for the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (''Rashomon,'' ''The Seven Samurai,'' ''Yojimbo'') has been established in Tokyo by his son, Hisao Kurosawa, and an associate, Tatsuya Nakadai, an actor long linked with the filmmaker, The Associated Press reported. Beginning in September, the two-year school will hold classes for 30 aspiring actors and 80 students of production.  The perennial question of the authorship William Shakespeare's plays will be explored once more in an exhibition beginning in November at Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London. The roundup of suspects like Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere and Henry Neville will include an examination of their lives, schooling, careers and opportunities and a look at what some see as clues hidden within the plays.

 INDONESIA (95%); NORWAY (93%); 







  



April 13, 2006 Thursday  




 For Clinton, a Chance to Evoke Better Days

 
 With President Bush wallowing in low public esteem, his predecessor came to town yesterday for a bit of gloating. 
 It wasn't the overt, I-told-you-so gloat; that would be unseemly for a former president. But as Bill Clinton accepted an award for "international understanding" and addressed a group of nonprofits yesterday, his words carried the subtle but unmistakable pleasure of sua culpa. 
 Noting the plummeting image of the United States in the Muslim world  --  except in Indonesia, where Clinton himself has been helping with tsunami relief  --  he said that "it's a big argument for doing things in a cooperative way rather than in a unilateral way."  
 Mocking the Bush administration policy of "cooperate when there's no other alternative," he added: "We should still have a preference for peace over war, a preference for cooperation over unilateralism, a preference for investing more to build a world with more partners and fewer terrorists." 
 The 43rd president is a fairly easy target for the 42nd at the moment. At 38 percent support in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, Bush has been lower longer than Clinton ever was.  
 But Clinton is also auditioning for two quite different honors: following Jimmy Carter to Stockholm as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and following Hillary Clinton to the White House as the first first gentleman. 
 In pursuit of the former, he has been a paragon of good works. "I believe there will be less corruption as there is more capacity in the developing world," he found himself telling the nonprofits yesterday in a speech steeped in the vocabulary of nongovernmental organizations. "It's not a particularly sexy topic," he admitted, "but I've already had enough headlines to last me." When the laughter quieted, he added: "I like boring. Boring is good." 
 His wife was not in the audience for either event, but he mentioned the potential political balance he offers her at the state fair. "I know one end of a cow from another," he boasted. 
 The Clinton style of old was in evidence yesterday. He carried a text to both appearances but barely glanced at either, at times meandering on tangents that diluted his points. And he was hopelessly late. He was 22 minutes late to the International Monetary Fund, where he was the guest of honor at the Fulbright Association's award ceremony. "Good morning, I think," joked former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, when she finally got to give her speech. 
 Next, he was an hour late to speak to the charity officials at InterAction, giving his luncheon speech long after the last apple pie was consumed. After half an hour of waiting, former UNICEF director Carol Bellamy headed for the exits. "It was a great speech," she deadpanned at the press table. 
 No matter: Clinton was among friends.  "We miss you!" an audience member cried out after a boisterous reception at InterAction.  At the IMF, staffers waited outside the room and leaned over balconies to get a glimpse of him.  
 The Fulbright itself, honoring international understanding, had many components Bush might find distasteful. Past recipients include Carter, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, two other U.N. officials and Bush's loyal first-term dissenter, Colin Powell. A videotaped greeting to "Bill" from Annan  --  no friend of the current president  --   called him "a true visionary." 
 Clinton did not level criticism directly; he merely suggested what he thought the legendary  J. William Fulbright, the former senator from Arkansas and a Clinton mentor, would have thought of the current situation. Fulbright, who died in 1995, was in no position to argue. 
 Fulbright, Clinton said, "essentially thought that a country had to have a military but there were limits to what you could achieve militarily. And he believed that over the long run the gains we achieved through reasonable conversation . . . are those that are the most lasting." 
 The former president offered Indonesia as proof of this conviction, and, in true Clinton fashion, he cited opinion polls. "Approval of bin Laden had gone from 58 percent to 28 percent," he said. Why? "They saw the military dropping food instead of bombs." 
 Clinton said Fulbright would side with him (against Bush) in support of the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto accord and the use of "soft power." He derided criticism, frequently voiced by the current administration, that "if I didn't take military action this very day, people would look down their nose at America and think we were weak." To that, Clinton said, he always posed a question: "Can we kill him tomorrow? If we can kill him tomorrow, then we're not weak." 
   Clinton knew there was a danger of getting carried away.  "When I left the White House, I was determined that I would not spend the rest of my life wishing I was still president," he recalled. But he didn't rule out the possibility of an occasional gloat.  

 UNITED STATES (93%); 








 



April 10, 2006 Monday  




 
Bombs target buses in Colombia
Two dozen passengers were injured -- including 3 children with burns over half their bodies -- in the Bogota explosions. Authorities said the near simultaneous blasts were likely the work of leftist rebels. 
TURKEY: A woman blew herself up in front of a mosque in a Black Sea city, injuring 1. Another bomb exploded in the southeast, injuring 2. The explosions followed street rioting that has left 16 people dead, mostly Kurds.
AFGHANISTAN: Two suicide attackers exploded car bombs that slightly wounded 2 U.S. soldiers and 1 American contractor.
INDONESIA: Playboy magazine's first edition in the world's most populous Muslim nation caused a stir. Although the pictures inside showed less skin than U.S. issues 50 years ago, demand was high. But a militant group threatened to use force to get the magazine pulled.

 COLOMBIA (92%);   AFGHANISTAN (73%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


April 9, 2006 Sunday



 Muslims and Christians must engage in dialogue

 
   As a Muslim, I feel I must inform the readership that there are two sources of recognized doctrine in Islam: the Quran, which is the revealed word of God, and the Hadith, which is man's commentary and collected observations of Mohammed's teachings. The Quran is the supreme authority in Islam, and all followers, Shia or Sunni, are considered Muslims. 
"There is no coercion in religion," the Quran emphatically teaches, and -- following this decree -- throughout history Islam has been the most tolerant of the three great monotheistic religions. In their schools, Americans have been taught that Islam was "spread by the sword," but that is a misnomer insomuch that Islam did spread as a result of being taken into conquered territories and then spread even farther through merchants from the Far East who took this wonderful new religion home to Indonesia, the Philippines and other Eastern nations.
That's where the majority of the world's Muslims now reside because they were impressed with its teachings, but the conquered peoples were not forced to convert to Islam. Unlike Christians, Muslims do not proselytize but do welcome those who wish to join them.
The question at hand is the tradition that has developed over the centuries of taking the life of one who chooses to leave Islam. This is when we must realize that in the history of the world, culture and tradition have many times trumped God's word. In many Muslim countries such laws are on the books but very rarely are they enforced. Muslim countries vary widely, and many have no such law.
I know of a number of conversions to other religions, principally Christianity, that have gone unchallenged, although the families involved may have expressed their disapproval or even shunned the offending family member as a result. We need to understand that Islam is not an organized religion, therefore the responsibility for enforcing laws of morality has fallen on society itself.
One can find other examples of some societies enacting laws or traditions that are directly contrary to the teaching of the Quran, such as denying women the inheritance the Quran guarantees them. Mankind is imperfect, particularly when it relies on the wisdom of the time instead of on the word of God.
Muslims do not believe that they are the only ones who will make it to heaven. The Quran also states that there are very pious Jews and Christians who will make it to heaven ahead of some Muslims.
I feel that it is essential that Muslims and Christians engage in a dialogue so that we can better understand one another. I thank you for the opportunity to offer to you my humble opinion. Omar Barrani lives in Salt Lake City. 

   PHILIPPINES (79%)







 Bangor Daily News 
Bangor Daily News (Maine)

April 8, 2006 Saturday  
All Editions



 Common ground; 
Muslim teen at home with Jewish family in Brewer

 
Back home in Egypt, 17-year-old Mahmoud Mohammed Ali speaks Arabic, goes to mosque and has trouble getting up before noon.
"Teenagers are teenagers no matter where they come from," said Bonnie Green, the Brewer woman whose family is serving as host for Ali.
He is spending the school year in Maine through American Field Service, a cultural exchange program, under the U.S. Department of State's Youth Exchange and Study scholarship program. Each year, scores of students use the program to give up their familiar surroundings for something different. Ali is one of 40 AFS students in Maine, and one of three YES students in Penobscot County. This year, Ali's experience is a first for AFS in Maine: he is Muslim and his host family is Jewish. 
"I don't know any Jews in Egypt," he said, wearing bluejeans and a sweater while sitting in the Greens' living room during a recent interview. "I didn't know a lot about the Jews, so I was very happy to come to a Jewish family. I didn't know anything."
He arrived in Brewer in August, and he will remain until June.
Ali isn't the only person who is learning a few things, according to the Greens, who attend Congregation Beth El, the Reform synagogue in Bangor.
"Right off the bat, we were dealing with cultural differences," said Bonnie Green.
She noticed that he disappeared after dinner, and her first thought was that he was trying to get out of washing the dishes.
"He actually was praying," something he does five times a day, she discovered.
And when Ali was observing Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, which this year occurred while he was playing soccer for Brewer High School, he gave up food and water from sunrise to sunset, but unknowingly she asked him what he wanted for dinner.
"That part was a little challenging," Bonnie Green said.
The Greens have four children, with Rebekah, 17, Nathaniel, 12, and Eliana, 8, living at home.
The family voted to select Ali from 11 applicants because they all wanted to learn more about Muslims, Jim Green said.
"It was more out of curiosity," he said. "We were looking at different things - not only what they can learn from us, but what we could learn from them. We didn't even know there was a mosque" in Orono, he said.
And the family has learned through experience as well as long and heated - but friendly - discussions.
TV programs have often led to discussions, "sometimes well into the night," Bonnie Green said. "I think [the differences have] made a lot of our discussion very enriching."
For Rebekah Green, a junior at John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, who along with her father gave Ali a crash course in sometimes revealing teenage clothing styles, the numerous conversations have opened her eyes to how people from other countries and religions view the United States.
"To talk with someone or hear someone who has a totally different viewpoint that is not necessarily wrong - it's really neat to watch," she said.
With negative stereotypes of Muslims in the U.S. and vice versa, the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs created the YES program in 2002 to "promote mutual understanding and respect."
The program is run in partnership with AFS, which stresses intercultural learning and offers international exchange programs in more than 50 countries around the world through independent, not-for-profit AFS organizations, each with a network of volunteers, a professionally staffed office, and a volunteer board.
YES students come to the U.S. from countries with mostly Muslim populations, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.
"What makes this special is that he is Muslim and he's living with a Jewish family," said Nancy Grant, American Field Service hosting coordinator for the Bangor region.
"AFS exists to get people with different backgrounds together. Basically, when you get to know somebody, you don't go to war with them," Grant said.
When Ali first applied for the program, he was in a group of 2,500, and his mother didn't believe that he would make the cut. "She wanted me to get out of my room," he said. "[But] when she found out I passed the test, she didn't want me to go."
Ice fishing, snow, spicy foods and coed schools are new to Ali, who attends military school in Egypt.
He also has been exposed to a variety of winter holidays.
"We did the Christmas tree with my mom, who is Catholic, and when we got back we did Hanukkah," Bonnie Green said. Ali was given a troll doll as a Christmas gift.
While there are huge cultural differences that stand out, Ali said, the biggest is the lack of communication bonds between families and communities.
"I think my town is like my big house," he said of his home village in Egypt, population 500. "We have the same religion and we all go to mosque together. Very rich, very poor - you stand together. In America, it's separate."
Beth El Rabbi Darah Lerner said Ali has visited the synagogue on French Street several times and even participated in the Purim celebration, which commemorates Esther's deliverance of the Jews in Persia from a massacre.
Ali has spoken with Lerner about making presentations at Beth El, one for youth and one for adults.
The idea is to help educate people about the differences - and similarities - between the two religions and cultures.
Lerner said the joining of Ali and the Greens is especially interesting because of the "Abraham link" with both faiths.
Muslims trace their spiritual ancestry to Abraham's son Ishmael. Beth El includes families with some Jewish and non-Jewish members.
"We're always getting our information through some lens," Lerner said. "Here he is, live and in person. It makes it real."
Lerner said people often base their feelings about a specific religion on what has happened in the past or from what they see through TV or other media.
She said Ali's talks would be a good way to give her congregation a different, firsthand viewpoint.
"It helps us respect other religions, like we would like to be treated," Jim Green said.
Even with all the differences, Ali is a "perfect fit" for her family, Bonnie Green added.
A date for the talks at Beth El has not been set.

 EGYPT (93%); 







 Lakeland Ledger Publishing Corporation
 
The Ledger (Lakeland, FL)

April 08, 2006 Saturday



 APOSTASY AND THE QUALITY OF MERCY; 
BELIEFS

 
Grazie, Italy.
Last week the Italian government did the right and humane thing and gave asylum to Abdul Rahman, then the world's most famous Christian convert and among its most imperiled. In doing so, the Italians bailed out not only Rahman but the administration of George W. Bush, who did not offer asylum to Rahman, apparently because it did not want to embarrass its ally, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, by implying he presides over a repressive country.
Too late for that. 
True, Karzai's government, responding to pressure from Bush and other Western leaders, apparently persuaded the country's Supreme Court to release Rahman. He had been charged with apostasy, abandoning Islam, which according to Afghanistan's constitution, based on a version of Shariah, Islamic law, is a capital crime.
Rahman reportedly had converted many years ago while living outside Afghanistan and had been quietly practicing his faith ever since. He could have been executed, and would have been if the prosecutor and a few hundred Muslim clerics in Afghanistan had their way.
After his release, Rahman immediately went into hiding and then had to be spirited out of the country after Italy said it would extend asylum to him.
All this is deeply troubling, on many levels. People of all persuasions are asking the Bush administration, as Nina Shea wrote in the National Review Online, ''Is this what we 'liberated' Afghanistan for?'' It does not make Afghanistan look any better for releasing Rahman when he never should have been arrested in the first place and subsequently had to leave the country for practicing freedom of religion.
As a matter of law and religion, it raises the question whether there can be such a thing as true freedom of religion in countries in which Shariah dominates the legal system.
Muslims in the United States have been vocal in their insistence that the case of Rahman does not reflect the teaching of the Quran. Apostasy is considered an offense, said Asma Afsaruddin of the University of Notre Dame in a news report, but one in which the punishment is left to God. He pointed to a verse in the Quran: ''There is no compulsion in religion.''
It may surprise many to learn that although the record is mixed, it is possible for predominantly Muslim nations to hold relatively tolerant attitudes, but what happened in Afghanistan is part of an alarming trend.
That is the view of Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom, a private foundation in Washington, and the editor of a recent book, ''Radical Islam's Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Shari'a Law'' (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). In a February interview posted on the Web site of Christianity Today magazine, Marshall said there are two kinds of Shariah, broad and extreme.
Extreme Shariah, Marshall said, gets a lot of attention -- imposing punishments such as stoning for adultery, amputation of a hand for theft and death for apostasy -- but it is mostly confined to places such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan.
''In Indonesia, if you ask people, 'Do you think women should be stoned to death for adultery?' more than 80 percent of the population says no. ... So they have something very different in mind from the Taliban. ... The vast majority of Muslims in the world live in Africa and Asia, not in the Middle East. Their views on Islam are not very precise,'' Marshall said.
Thirty years ago, he said, only Saudi Arabia practiced extreme Shariah. Since then, radical Islamic preachers, mostly from the Middle East, have been traveling extensively, trying to institute it elsewhere. In some places, such as Malaysia and Bangladesh, he said, there has been government resistance to these efforts, but in poor and rural areas it has gained a foothold.
The places where it is gaining acceptance, Marshall said, are places where there is a lot of poverty and corruption. He estimates that as much as 15 percent of the worldwide Muslim population subscribes to an extreme form of Shariah.
For now, Afghanistan should be added to the list of problem countries. Unless Karzai and Afghan leaders can move the country away from extreme Shariah, freedom of religion there will remain only a gloomy prospect.
The big question is whether the same will happen in Iraq. The answer is not clear. Marshall said that although 80 percent of Iraqis say the country should be governed by Islamic law, an equal percentage say there should be legal equality between men and women.
''For many Muslims, the term Shariah has a very broad sense that the country should be governed in a way that God wants,'' he said.
Cary McMullen is religion editor for The Ledger. He can be reached via e-mail at cary.mcmullen@theledger.com or by calling 863-802-7509.

 AFGHANISTAN (93%); UNITED STATES (93%); ITALY (92%)







 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


April 7, 2006 Friday  




 MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUND ON ISLAM

 
With all respect to Roger L. Eden's views of March 28 ("Islam abandons peace, tolerance"), I'd like to correct some misconceptions.
All Quranic verses are still in force, and none have been abrogated. These verses are contained in every Quran. Islam means peace that comes with our submission to God. The Muslim greeting a salaam aleichem means "peace be upon you." Thus, Muslims practice peace and harmony, taught by the Quran every day. 
The Quran teaches that killing one man may be like killing the whole of mankind, and saving a man may be equivalent to saving humanity. Islam has been a religion of peace, and fighting is allowed for self-protection and defense. The spread of Islam to Indonesia, Malaysia and China did not take place by warfare but showing honesty, love and care by visiting Muslim merchants. Please read the book The Spread of Islam in the World, A History of Peaceful Preaching, by Prof. Thomas Arnold.
Muhammad came as a mercy and blessing to mankind. He was so kind and merciful that he stood up in respect of a Jewish funeral in the face of a Jewish community trying to kill him in Medina. No other man's life has been written in this detail. He even forgave his bitter enemies, who tormented him after he became a prophet. He has left a legacy of love and tolerance that is not available from anywhere and it is an example for mankind.
The best of men are the prophets and messengers of God, such as Jesus, Moses, Abraham and Muhammad, but only Muhammad's life is available in detail because paper was invented and the details were written down authentically and diligently with great research. The life of other prophets and messengers are not available in such detail. But one can get a very good idea of how other prophets worshipped God and how they spend their life by reading the life of the Prophet Muhammad.
I.A. Jilani
Martinez

 MALAYSIA (79%); 







  



March 28, 2006 Tuesday  




 JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Rahma ...

 
 JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  Rahmat Riski is 9 years old and lives with his younger sister, mother and father in a tiny, three-room home off an alley in the crowded, bustling  city of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. Everyone calls him "Kiki."  
  His sister, Nuraini, or "Ani," is 8, but she and Kiki are both in second grade  because Kiki repeated a year to catch up in reading. Both children like math  the best. "Because it's easy," said Kiki with a grin.  
  Every weekday morning, their father, Abdul, walks them to their Islamic school, called a madrassah, about 10 minutes away. They walk through  a series of narrow alleys, passing small, cinderblock houses with roofs of red brick and corrugated (wavy) tin. Then, holding hands, they cross a busy, four-lane highway full of smoke-belching buses and zippy motorbikes.  
 Though they live in one of Asia's largest cities, their neighborhood is peaceful. The alleys by Kiki's house are too narrow for cars, so there are only bicycles, a few motorbikes and vendors pushing carts laden with steaming noodle soup or crispy shrimp crackers. Roosters roam freely, as do stray cats.  
  Kiki's father is an ironsmith who makes  bed frames and fences in a small shop run by Kiki's grandfather. Kiki's uncle works there, too. But business has been slow, so his grandmother helps  by selling fruit and snacks from a wooden cart in front of the  shop. Kiki's mother, Tarmi, stays at home. She sometimes washes clothes for other people to earn money. 
  Kiki's family, like many people in Indonesia, has very little money. Their home has no running water, and Kiki bathes by pouring cold water over himself with a ladle. Kiki and Ani carry buckets of water from a pump about 100 yards away. Kiki's mother cooks on a kerosene stove in a tiny kitchen, lit by a single light bulb. 
  But Kiki and Ani are happy. They have many friends in their neighborhood, including their cousin, Widhiyana, who is 4. Their grandparents, uncle and aunt live nearby. Their family has a color television in the living room, which the children can watch after they have done their homework. 
  Kiki and Ani sleep with their mother in a bed in the only  bedroom. Their father, because there is no room in the bed, sleeps on a mat in the living room.  
  The family, like most in Indonesia, is Muslim. The men and boys pray at a nearby mosque every day just before the sun sets. Kiki's grandfather sometimes performs the Muslim call to prayer, a sad, musical chant that tells people it is time to pray. The most faithful pray five times a day. Because Kiki is still a child, he prays twice a day. (Ani doesn't go to the mosque because she is a girl; sometimes she prays at home.)   
 At school, besides math and reading, Kiki studies the Koran, the Muslim holy book, and the Arabic alphabet. Classes begin at 9 a.m. and end at noon. Then the children have lunch. Kiki likes fried chicken and rice. Ani would rather eat chocolate cookies and bananas.  
  "Like Grandpa," Kiki would like to be a muezzin (pronounced moo-EZZ-in), who does the call to prayer. And most of all, he wants to be a policeman when he grows up. "They wear nice uniforms," he said. "And they carry a gun and a whistle." 
   --  Ellen Nakashima 

 INDONESIA (92%); ASIA (58%)







  



March 28, 2006 Tuesday  




 Inside Indonesia

 
 How many people: More than 240 million, making Indonesia the world's fourth-biggest country, by population. (It's behind China, India and the United States.)  
 How many kids: About 70 million. About 29 percent of Indonesia's population is younger than 15. 
 How big is it: More than 705,000 square miles, about 21/2 times the size of Texas. 
 Capital: Jakarta, where Kiki and his family live. 
 Geography: Indonesia is a string of more than 17,500 islands. About 6,000 of them have people living there. 
 Languages: Bahasa Indonesian is the official language. English and Dutch are also widely spoken. 
 Religion: About 88 percent of Indonesians are Muslim. 
 School: Kids ages 7 to 15 have to go to school.  
 Television: There are 14 televisions for every 100 people in Indonesia, compared with 84 for every 100 people in the United States.  
 Fun facts:  
*  There are more than 400 volcanoes on Indonesia's islands, and about 100 of them are still active. 
*  Indonesia's islands cover about 3,200 miles  --  about the distance from San Francisco, California, to Boston, Massachusetts. 
*  Indonesia is home to some of the world's most amazing animals and plants, including the Komodo dragon. (You can see a Komodo at the National Zoo.) 

 INDONESIA (95%);  UNITED STATES (90%); CHINA (90%)







  



March 27, 2006 Monday  
Main Edition



 Persecution calls for outcry; 
Muslims mum on Afghan case

 
Like most Americans, I was shocked by news that an Afghan citizen who has converted to Christianity faces the death penalty under the new Afghan constitution. As a Muslim, I was also very disturbed by the fact that so many American Muslims have been silent on this subject. 
As far as I know, the degree of intolerance displayed by the action of the Afghan authorities who arrested Abdul Rahman for changing his religion has no basis in the Quran.
Here are some verses from the Quran related to the subject at hand:
2:256: "Let there be no compulsion in religion."
18:29: "Say, the Truth is from your Lord. Let him who will believe and let him who will reject [it]."
If there is an article in the Afghan constitution that would allow the Afghan authority to prosecute Rahman, it is most likely based on the phobia of Afghans toward Christian missionary objectives, rather than the Quran or Islam.
After Afghanistan was liberated by U.S. forces from the grip of the Taliban, there was a significant influx of Christians from non-governmental organizations to take part in the reconstruction.
It is understandable that the Afghan leaders feel vulnerable and perhaps fear large-scale conversion of its Muslim citizens, given the poverty, lack of security and years of abuse at the hands of the warlords and the Taliban.
However, even if their fear is justified, they cannot justify prosecution of anyone because of religious conversion. In fact, this action is more an act of religious persecution rather than prosecution under the law.
Most Muslims are aware of the fact that the religion of Islam spread from Mecca to as far as China and Indonesia mostly through Daawa, or invitation, which is not very different from Christian missionary work.
Furthermore, the Muslims in the West, particularly in America, take pride in the fact that Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the United States.
To have an exaggerated fear of Christian missionaries and show such intolerance to Muslims converting to Christianity is very hypocritical.
I sincerely hope that the Islamic community in America raises its voice loudly and clearly in protest and lets the Afghan authorities know that this is a disgraceful act in the name of Islam and as horrific as the Sept. 11 attacks.
* Born in Afghanistan, Daud Azizi is a physician living in Lawrenceville.

 UNITED STATES (96%); AFGHANISTAN (93%); 




6


 
 

 (Pennsylvania)

March 26, 2006 Sunday



 Where is Muslim outrage in reaction to radical violence?

 
Recently, I read a letter from Stephen M. Lawrence of Forty Fort. The letter voiced his opinion of the Muslim attitude, and his reaction to it. It made me think. I wake up in the morning and see videos of rampaging Muslims around the world. Muslim mobs spreading mayhem. They are outraged because of a cartoon that has appeared in some newspapers in Denmark and Norway. 
I did a little research and have come up with these facts, when there was no Muslim outrage:
  Muslims hijack commercial airplanes in the United State and fly them into buildings killing thousands of innocent people.
  Muslims block off the exit to a school where schoolgirls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces are exposed.
  Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to a Christian school in Indonesia.
  Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq.
  Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel.
  Muslims massacre dozens of innocent vacationers in Bali.
  Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes. Then hang them from a bridge.
  Muslims gleefully show videos of Westerners being beheaded.
  Dead children, Dead tourists, dead doctors and nurses. Death and destruction and mayhem around the world at the hands of the Muslims.
But newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed.   Muslims are outraged.
I am told, and expected to believe, that these Muslims do not represent the majority of the world's Muslims. If that is so, when do these peace-loving Muslims become outraged? When do they take to the streets to express their outrage at the radicals who are making their religion the object of world-wide hatred and ridicule?
An Islamic writer wrote of these silent Muslims in an article three years ago. "As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists and fanatics. Why are they not screaming?"
Jack Pahl Hughestown

 NORWAY (90%); NORDIC COUNTRIES (88%); ISRAEL (79%);  INDONESIA (79%)







   


March 24, 2006 Friday  




 Young Americans, Doing Good

 

To the Editor:
  Nicholas D. Kristof's column reminded me of my experience as a foreign exchange student to Bandung, Indonesia, during the summer of 1974, after 11th grade. 
I grew up in a Long Island suburb and was looking for adventure and a chance to test myself. 
  I lived with a local family without running water, refrigeration or toilets, and the bugs were fierce. I went to school with my Indonesian sister, traveled throughout Java and Bali and became familiar with Muslim traditions. 
  Many locals had never seen a Westerner before, and they would chase me in the street to touch my blond hair. 
  It was a challenging experience for a typical American teenager, but it changed my life forever and influenced my attitudes and values about the world and my place in it.
  It may be a bit masochistic to opt out of the typical foreign study or summer travel option in countries like Italy or France, but the benefits of living with local families in developing countries are enormous. 
  Currently, my 11th-grade son is looking for community service opportunities in a foreign country. The brochures look more like travelogues. 
  I will try to encourage him to enter the contest to win a trip with Mr. Kristof, but I don't think that it's his cup of tea. It's hard to describe what he will be missing.

Mindy Utay
New York, March 21, 2006

  UNITED STATES (86%); AFRICA (72%); FRANCE (53%)







 
 


March 23, 2006, Thursday



 Letters

 
The Guard is not responsible for fighting wars overseas
Regarding the March 22 article, "Guard's balancing act: Should it change?": Our current National Guard was born of a compromise in the early 1900s, which developed two reserve systems. The Guard was modified in the post-Vietnam era: Critical wartime functions were moved to its purview to force our leaders not to repeat the mistakes of going to war without a national consensus.
This military stepchild certainly needs respect. But the National Guard also needs the nation to have a thoughtful discussion about its future. State governors should take an active role in this discussion. The Guard makes up each state's militia, and governors need to be sure that the Guard is available and ready to serve the people of their state when needed. Backing up the national defense is an important role for the Guard; wearing out troops in wars of choice is a luxury we cannot afford. 
Kevin Fitzpatrick
Florissant, Mo.
Turmoil in Middle East was predictable
I think the March 21 article, "Iraqi turmoil puts Mideast on edge," is a valuable reminder that the Iraq war occurred in large measure because of the exaggerated hopes of a narrow clique of policymakers with little understanding of the Middle East region.
In my State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research Assessment of Feb. 26, 2003, "Iraq, the Middle East, and Change: No Dominoes," I warned that even if the US met with success in Iraq, ethnosectarian friction, the rise of Islamic militancy, and the creative countermeasures of the region's veteran autocrats would make democracy a tough slog in the region.
I also pointed out that any new democratic regimes would likely be more anti- American, anti-Israeli, and militantly Islamic than regimes currently in power - hardly the vision of those in the administration who launched this war. My warning to the government, however, like so many others, was shoved aside in the march to war.
Wayne White
Canadensis, Pa.
Adjunct scholar, Middle East Institute
Indonesia isn't a model for nonviolence
Regarding John Hughes's March 22 Opinion column, "Fostering global friendship is part of new US security strategy": I must protest the assertion that Indonesia is one Muslim nation pursuing a nonviolent path. While I mostly agree with what the column says about the revised US Security Strategy, I hardly think the behavior of the Indonesian government and its military can be termed nonviolent. And I believe the people of Aceh, West Papua, and East Timor would agree with me. 
The Indonesian military has pursued repression in these regions varying from oppression in Aceh to genocide in East Timor.
Regardless of the religion of the country (whether it constitutes the oppressor or the oppressed), in the area of human rights, I think governments have a tendency to ignore their allies' failures, and a compulsion to ignore their own.
Mansoor Riaz
Mississauga, Ontario
Property taxes imperil homeowners
The March 21 article, "Homeowners stretched perilously," doesn't focus on the point. As some troubled homeowners clearly stated in the article, it is the soaring property taxes factored into the monthly note that are crushing homeowners.
Outrageous taxes truly make homeownership an illusion. We all, in effect, must "rent" from the government, which consists of agencies driven largely by politics and runaway spending.
Karen Kennedy
Chicago
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(c) . The 

 INDONESIA (95%); MIDDLE EAST (94%);   TIMOR-LESTE (92%)







 
 


March 21, 2006 Tuesday



 Clues To Reading Bush's Mind

 
Expect the Bush administration to continue to make the Middle East the center of American foreign policy. Also expect its strategies to remain basically unchanged - despite their mixed record so far.
That's the message in a major foreign policy document issued last week by the White House, "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America." Mandated by law to appear every four years, the NSS,49 pages long, was written by the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, and his team.
The Middle East's outsized role comes across in various ways. In a cover letter, President Bush opens the report by stating, "America is at war," and describing the enemy as "terrorism fueled by an aggressive ideology of hatred and murder, fully revealed to the American people on September 11, 2001." The report singles out the Middle East as the region that "continues to command the world's attention" because for too long, many of its countries "have suffered from a freedom deficit. Repression has fostered corruption, imbalanced or stagnant economies, political resentments, regional conflicts, and religious extremism." 
Other indications point to the centrality of the Middle East and Gulf states. Iraq is mentioned by name 57 times, while China is named just 28 times and Russia 17. The most dangerous state? "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," asserts the report. And the Syrian regime, which "has chosen to be an enemy of freedom, justice, and peace," will be held to account.
This focus on the Middle East makes sense, given the region's many urgent threats to America. Unfortunately, the NSS then insists on a rosy-tinted outlook, either understating the region's problems or approaching them too optimistically.
Circumstances in Iraq are presented as a mere challenge to be overcome. "We will work with the freely elected, democratic government of Iraq - our new partner in the War on Terror - to consolidate and expand freedom, and to build security and lasting stability" - as though the specter of civil war were not looming.
That "every time an American goes to a gas station," as Gal Luft puts it," he is sending money to America's enemies," is a rude problem absent from the NSS, other than a vague acknowledgment that "oil revenues fund activities that destabilize [the producers'] regions or advance violent ideologies."
The report minimizes the threat of radical Islam via the fiction that a "proud religion" has been "twisted and made to serve an evil." Not so: Islamism is a deeply grounded and widely popular version of Islam, as shown by election results from Afghanistan to Algeria. Reliable opinion polls are lacking from majority-Muslim countries but repeated surveys in Britain give some idea of the harrowingly extremist attitudes of its Muslim population: 5% of them support the July 7, 2005, terrorist attacks in London and say more such attacks are justified; 20% have sympathy with the feelings and motives of the July 7 attackers and believe that suicide attacks against the military in Britain can be justified. These results are probably typical of Muslim populations globally, as recent polls of Indonesians and Palestinian Arabs confirms.
The NSS omits any mention of Turkey and Bangladesh and it refers to Saudi Arabia only in passing, suggesting that the Islamist leadership in these states poses no particular concern. The administration's grievous error in helping a terrorist organization, Hamas, reach power in January 2006 is glossed over with soothing words ("The opportunity for peace and statehood ... is open if Hamas will abandon its terrorist roots and change its relationship with Israel").
Thus does the NSS accurately reflect the yin and yang of the Bush administration's Middle East policy: a much needed, relentless focus on the region's sick political culture and the threats it poses to Americans, mixed with an insouciance that current policies are just fine, thank you, everything is on track, and problems - Iraq, terrorism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular - will soon enough be resolved.
Significantly, only the Iranian drive for nuclear weapons does not inspire that glow of confidence. Here, the administration is frankly worried ("if confrontation is to be avoided," states the NSS, diplomatic efforts must succeed in convincing Tehran to restrict its nuclear program to peaceful purposes). This observer wishes that comparable doubts accompanied other American policies in the region.

  MIDDLE EAST (94%); IRAQ (93%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); IRAN,  (79%); GULF STATES (79%); SYRIA (79%)







  
 

March 20, 2006 Monday  




 ROAD BOMB KILLS POLICE

 
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan -- Suspected Islamic militants set off three bombs yesterday, one of which exploded near a police van and killed seven people in northwestern Pakistan.
The two other bombs damaged walls of a police station and a government building. 
A powerful roadside bomb blew up the police vehicle while it was on patrol in Dera Ismail Khan, a city in northwestern Pakistan about 180 miles southwest of the capital, Islamabad,
Three policemen, three paramilitary police and a passer-by were killed in the explosion.
Christian convert trial
KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said yesterday.
The trial is believed to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam should take here four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.
During the one-day hearing, the defendant confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
Australian storm
SYDNEY, Australia -- A powerful tropical cyclone ripped the roofs off buildings and uprooted trees, tearing across Australia's northeastern coast with powerful winds that pinned emergency workers inside despite pleas from terrified residents.
With winds up to 180 mph, Tropical Cyclone Larry smashed into the coastal community of Innisfail, about 60 miles south of Cairns, a popular jumping-off point for the Great Barrier Reef, sending hundreds of tourists and residents fleeing for higher ground.
Police had not yet been able to venture out and help because the winds were still too strong, a spokeswoman aid.
Papua mine protest
JAYAPURA, Indonesia -- Police special forces pulled people from cars and beat them Saturday, two days after a mob bludgeoned to death four of their security colleagues to demand the shutdown of a U.S-owned gold mine in eastern Indonesia.
Protesters say the mine owned by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. has earned the New Orleans-based company billions of dollars, but the local community has received little benefit.
The killing of the four underscored the hatred many Papuans feel toward Indonesian soldiers and police. A decades-long separatist rebellion in the province has left more than 100,000 dead, many of them civilians.

 AFGHANISTAN (94%); PAKISTAN (94%);   







 
 



March 19, 2006 Sunday



 Letters | Letters

 

Don't blame Islam
In their commentary Thursday, Abdul Aziz Said and Ben Jensen opined that "Islamic democracy is achievable goal."
Unfortunately, I believe they are striking the wrong nail with their hammer. The problem is not Islam. For example, Islamic states such as Turkey and the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, function as democracies.
They, among others, have one prime factor in common. They are not Arab countries. It is the mix of the two that apparently, and statistically, creates the problem. 
There are 22 countries in the Arab League, virtually all Muslim. It is no coincidence that not one of them, throughout their histories, has been able to sustain a viable democratic government.
Ken Davis
Elkins Park

Where's the proof?
I was curious about the research cited by Thomas J. Shaheen (March 14, "Giving marriage a chance") as showing that "legalizing same-sex marriage and civil unions in Scandinavia devalued marriage for all couples, resulting in fewer people getting married, an increase in out-of-wedlock births and greater instability for children."
So I asked for a citation, and Shaheen directed me to a lengthy essay by Stanley Kurtz, a former fellow of the Hoover Institution. The essay expresses lots of opinions, but offers not one shred of proof, numerical or otherwise, that the availability of same-sex unions has resulted in any social consequences at all. Beliefs are one thing, and Shaheen is entitled to his, but in an honest debate, one wouldn't confuse beliefs with scientific findings.
Len Rieser
Philadelphia

A verdict for Faheem
Congratulations to Common Pleas Court Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan for convicting Kareem Johnson and Kennell Spady of murder in the killing of Faheem Thomas-Childs (March 17, "Two Convicted, Face Life in School Killing"). Justice has truly been served in this case, despite the recanted testimonies of the half-dozen or so witnesses for the prosecution who "forgot" everything they originally told law enforcement officers about the shooting.
Witnesses who recanted their statements should be convicted of perjury and should be ordered to serve 500 hours of community service in the city's new Step Up, Speak Up program, a campaign to encourage witnesses to come forward with information about a crime.
Thomas-Childs's death was a tragedy for this city, but unfortunately it is not enough to end the street culture of intimidation and fear that keeps people from telling the truth about crime. Only then can deaths like Thomas-Childs' end.
Barbara J. Isenberg
Philadelphia

Trading addictions
The Bush administration has gotten behind the push for alternative fuels for cars. One of these is cellulosic ethanol, which is obviously derived from an agricultural product.
If we keep devouring farmland for housing developments, there will soon be no land left to grow the huge amount of grain required to make this a realistic alternative to gasoline.
Will we then be required to import the grain from foreign companies, leaving us in the same untenable position we currently occupy with oil?
John Tucker
Chester Heights

Buy America
The March 14 editorial, "Foreign Investors in U.S.: No need for paranoia," cautions Americans not to harm the economy by alienating foreign investors who want to buy U.S. companies and investments. What The Inquirer should be focusing on, however, are an end to America's huge trade imbalances, massive deficits and borrowing, and liberal free-trade policies or, in other words, many of the reasons we find ourselves in such a predicament.
If today brought us the potential for a Dubai port deal, tomorrow will bring us foreign puchases of coal mines in Pennsylvania or water resources in upstate New York or corporate farms in the Midwest or a piece of a national park for mining and timbering. Our major lenders, to whom we owe trillions, are no longer interested in accumulating American dollars, stocks and bonds. They now want to use those dollars to buy up America.
What is happening should be apparent to all. It is a steady and unrelenting transfer of the wealth of America to the world. With this will eventually come third-world wages for American workers, while an oligarchy of special interests, the real power running this country, will enjoy unprecedented prosperity.
Elaine Hughes
Maple Glen

 INDONESIA (92%); 







   


March 16, 2006 Thursday  




 Southeast Asia, Too, Is on Map of Islamic Art 

 
In this sleepy capital, where talk usually centers on domestic politics, the National Gallery of Australia is provoking a more worldly debate: What is Islamic art? Can it embrace art and artifacts from Southeast Asia, where Islam has been a dominant religion since the 15th century but whose lush tropical lands were largely cut off from the inspirations of the Ottoman, Persian and Mughal empires? 
  Absolutely, say the curators of a new exhibition that offers in evidence splendid gold court jewelry; hand-drawn, naturally dyed batiks; illuminated Korans; and blue-and-white Chinese porcelain. Calling the show ''Crescent Moon: Islamic Art and Civilization in Southeast Asia,'' they argue that it is time to recognize that much of the diverse art from Indonesia, Malaysia and parts of the Philippines, Thailand and Myanmar, the world's most populous Islamic region, is indeed Islamic. 
 ''The deliberate thrust is that there is no one Islamic art,'' said Robyn Maxwell, the coordinating curator and an expert on the textiles of Southeast Asia. Ms. Maxwell, who also teaches the history of art at the Australian National University, said she was always astonished when the basic texts on Islamic art cover Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and India, and then abruptly stop, rarely mentioning Southeast Asia. ''That's a completely European outlook,'' she said, ''that's what Western art historians have been interested in.'' 
  In ''Islamic Art,'' published by Harvard University Press, Barbara Brend defines Islamic art as ''the art produced for rulers or populations of Islamic cultures.'' Art from Southeast Asia meets that test, Ms. Maxwell argues, even though Ms. Brend doesn't mention it in her book. Ms. Brend also writes that Islamic art does not necessarily have to be religious, and that the artists and patrons do not necessarily have to be good Muslims, ideas the curators here agree with. 
  Taking advantage of Australia's proximity to Southeast Asia, the National Gallery is venturing into new territory for a museum better known for its holdings of Australian art and its crowd-pleasing shows. (The sweep of English landscapes by John Constable in the neighboring rooms is a prime example.) 
  Ms. Maxwell calls it ''redressing an imbalance.''
  Perhaps the heart of the show, continuing through May 28, is the display of nearly two dozen Indonesian and Malaysian gold illuminated manuscripts, including a prized 19th-century Koran from Aceh, Indonesia's northernmost province, which was devastated by the recent tsunami.
  In the 16th century, Aceh, which never bowed to the colonial Dutch, was regarded as the most powerful Islamic kingdom in Southeast Asia. Paper was not common, and the tropical weather insured that barely any manuscripts or Korans survive from that period.
  But the 1841 Koran borrowed for the show from the National Library of Indonesia is considered a striking example of vigorous calligraphy and high decoration. The catalog notes that Korans in Southeast Asia were generally more austere than those from the Ottoman, Persian or Indian traditions, often having only a few sumptuously decorated pages.
  Yet a 19th-century Koran from the Sultan of Banten, an Indonesian province, belies that argument: it was written on gilded paper imported from India, decorated on every page, and uses the Indian custom of highlighting the word Allah in red ink.
  One of the star textiles is from Cirebon, on the north coast of the main island of Java, which was one of richest and most religious royal courts. An 18th-century dark blue and white royal banner, used by the court on religious occasions, shows the sword Zulfikar, which the archangel Gabriel is believed to have given to the Prophet Muhammad, who passed it to his son-in-law Sayidina Ali. 
  There are also textiles, rich in color and with fabulously intricate design, that bear little relationship to Islam as religion. One of the most graphically interesting, a 19th-century black and red skirt cloth, is animated by mermaids armed with bows and arrows. Their tails resemble shrimp, a reference to the Cirebon court's reliance on maritime trade. 
  A distinguishing theme of the show is the continuity of the Buddhist and Hindu motifs that existed in Indonesia before the Islamization of the courts. Some artistic traditions declined when Islam arrived, particularly the making of figurative stone and bronze pieces. But the famed shadow puppets of Java became a means of preserving the Hindu epic the Ramayana even as Islam had taken hold. 
  Some puppets are included in the show. In the context of controversy over Islam's rules about depictions of the Prophet Muhammad and, more generally, the human figure, Ms. Maxwell said, this was a way to show that the Islamic courts in Southeast Asia sanctioned images of humans, if in distorted form.
  Whether the concept of ''Crescent Moon'' is a bit of a stretch may stimulate discussion. Stefano Carboni, the associate curator of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, said the show was probably more a cultural experience than an artistic one, an effort perhaps to help the audience connect with Southeast Asia. 
  In general, he said, he believes that Islamic art should feature calligraphy in Arabic form, with geometric and arabesque patterns. ''You can argue one way or the other, it's a very thin line,'' he said. At the Met, Indonesian textiles are placed with Oceanic art, and the Chinese export porcelain with Islamic inscriptions that flooded Southeast Asia is shown as Asian art, not Islamic art. 
  At the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Forrest McGill, chief curator and Wattis curator of South and Southeast Asian art, said he liked the inclusive approach. His collection is undergoing considerable relabeling, he said, to address the fact that many Americans do not realize that some Southeast Asian countries have very large Muslim populations. In Indonesia, for example, 90 percent of the 240 million people are Muslims. 
  ''Any artwork can be illuminated by being put in a different context,'' he said.


 SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (96%); AUSTRALIA (95%); ASIA (95%);  MALAYSIA (92%); MYANMAR (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); CENTRAL ASIA (79%); INDIA (79%); EUROPE (79%); THAILAND (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%)







 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


March 15, 2006 Wednesday  




 THE WORLD

 
S. Korea premier quits over golf controversy
SEOUL, South Korea - President Roh Moohyun accepted the resignation of his prime minister Tuesday after the premier set off a scandal by playing golf during a national railway strike.
Lee Haechan came under pressure to leave after his golf outing on a March 1 national holiday that coincided with the start of the walkout. His departure was delayed while Mr. Roh was on a trip to Africa, but he offered to step down Tuesday when the president returned.
Mr. Roh accepted the resignation after ruling party leaders urged him to defuse the scandal before local elections in May. 
One of Mr. Lee's golfing partners was a businessman with a criminal record for rigging stock prices. The game also involved $411 in bets, and one of Mr. Lee's fellow golfers covered the costs of the round - a sizable expense in golf-crazy South Korea, which has astronomical greens fees and mandatory caddy charges in the hundreds of dollars.
The uproar came as the opposition sought to divert attention from a scandal of their own: a senior lawmaker's fondling a female reporter's breasts while drunk.
Rice praises moderate Islam
JAKARTA, INDONESIA - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice courted the moderate brand of Islam that prevails in multiethnic Indonesia on Tuesday but acknowledged U.S. foreign policy is often unpopular in the Muslim world.
Beginning a two-day visit to a key U.S. ally in the struggle against terrorism - and the world's most populous Muslim nation - Ms. Rice said sometimes there is a "lack of understanding about how much the United States respects people of the Islamic faith."
She pointed to the outpouring of support by Americans after the deadly 2004 tsunami.
Syrian leaders will aid inquiry
UNITED NATIONS - Syrian President Bashar Assad and his top deputy have agreed to meet for the first time with the commission investigating last year's assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, the team's chief said in a report released Tuesday.
The meetings, expected later this month, would mark a significant reversal for Mr. Assad and Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa, who have steadfastly refused to heed interview requests from the commission. The probe has repeatedly accused Damascus of not cooperating with the investigation.
In other news
AUTHORITIES ARRESTED nearly two dozen opposition activists and confiscated the entire run of Belarus' largest independent newspaper Tuesday as voters cast early ballots for Sunday's presidential election.
SOME OF FRANCE'S top perfume makers, from Chanel to Yves Saint Laurent, have been fined millions of dollars for allegedly colluding with vendors on prices for three years, the antitrust authority said Tuesday.
AFGHANISTAN WILL ENCOURAGE its powerful drug lords to invest their profits in the war-shattered country, said the governor of the nation's top opium-growing region. The offer comes amid warnings of another bumper poppy crop.
YOUTHS PROTESTING a government jobs plan clashed Tuesday with police in an hours-long melee in the French capital that left nine officers injured, one hit in the face with a paving stone, officials said.
AL-QAIDA IN IRAQ LEADER Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and seven other people were indicted Tuesday in Jordan's worst-ever terrorist bombing, last November's near-simultaneous attacks at three Amman hotels. Only one of the suspects is in custody.
- Edited from wire reports by Jason Harmon

 KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (94%);  NORTHERN ASIA (92%); INDONESIA (92%); SYRIA (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); FRANCE (79%); LEBANON (79%); BELARUS (79%)







   


March 15, 2006 Wednesday  




 Rice, in Indonesia, Supports Renewed Military Assistance

 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought Tuesday to expand a ''strategic partnership'' with Indonesia, including increased military cooperation, after the decision last year to resume military aid that had long been cut off because of Indonesia's poor human rights record.
  In a speech on Wednesday morning, she also sought to assure Indonesia that the United States believed strongly in the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, despite concerns here that the Bush administration had tried to bypass the group and make commercial and trade deals with individual members. 
 The centerpiece of the speech was a defense of the administration's promotion of democracy in troubled regions. She said Indonesia had proved it was possible to overcome sectarian and ethnic differences and forge a democratic system.
  Ms. Rice also said Indonesia had made progress in combating military corruption. ''A reformed and effective Indonesian military is in the interest of everyone in this region, because threats to our common security have not disappeared,'' she said.
  Ms. Rice was well received at her speech, to 500 business, academic and civic leaders at the Indonesia World Affairs Council, but she faced pointed questions about American policies, especially in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many in the audience also appeared to feel the United States was heavy-handed in its approach to Southeast Asia.
  To a questioner demanding to know why the United States uses force to get its way, Ms. Rice said that it was ''rare, very rare, that military power is needed'' to bring about change. On American policies toward Indonesia, she said: ''It's not paternalism, it's a partnership.''
  The session reflected what American officials say is lingering distrust of American intentions. Indonesia, for example, has not backed the United States approach to bring Iran to the United Nations Security Council. Also, Indonesia, and several other nations in the region, oppose the American effort to force a cutoff in ties to Myanmar, formerly Burma.
  On Tuesday, Ms. Rice and the Indonesian foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, used the phrase ''strategic partnership,'' reflecting American interest in building this country into a major commercial and military power in Southeast Asia, in part to help counter the influence of China.
  In the United States, the Defense Department has been pressing for a resumption of military aid to Indonesia, which was gradually phased out after Indonesian security forces fired on civilians protesting Indonesian rule in East Timor in 1991. East Timor's vote for independence in 1999 removed a major obstacle to the resumption, but human rights groups have opposed the idea.
  Ms. Rice stopped here on a swing across the Southern Hemisphere that started in Chile, over the weekend. Next she is going to Australia, another key ally in the South Pacific. State Department officials traveling with her said it was important that she underscore Washington's growing ties with Indonesia since the election of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2004. The officials said Mr. Yudhoyono sought to regain civilian control of Indonesia's military, attack corruption and improve the climate for American investment.
  Another objective of the trip for Ms. Rice was to try to reach out to Indonesia's predominantly Muslim population, which is distrustful of American intentions because of the Iraq war and the incarceration of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Her visit here drew hundreds of Islamic hard-liners to protest outside the American Embassy, The Associated Press reported. 
  Partly because of American help after the tsunami in December 2004, amounting to $400 million in official aid, Indonesian approval ratings for the United States have risen to a high of about 50 percent, American officials said, citing what they said were recent opinion polls. Other polls show the rating to be roughly 40 percent.
  Ms. Rice sought to address the concerns of Muslims by touring a Muslim school that receives American funds. She also announced a new program to bring the characters of the television show ''Sesame Street'' to Indonesian audiences. The United States will provide $135 million this year in assistance to Indonesia.
  ''Sometimes I think there's a lack of understanding of how much the United States respects the people of Islamic faith,'' she said at a news conference with the foreign minister. 
  At the Muslim school, Ms. Rice chatted briefly with several boys and girls in a classroom. Later she said she wished Americans could see that this sort of school was different from the madrasas, seminaries that have a reputation for teaching extremism in many Islamic countries.
  Television cameras recorded the event for Indonesian audiences as she shook hands with an actor in an Elmo costume, though she had to be prompted before saying the name.


  INDONESIA (96%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (95%); ASIA (95%); TIMOR-LESTE (92%); MYANMAR (92%); CHILE (79%); ISRAEL (79%); CHINA (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); IRAN,  (79%);  AUSTRALIA (79%)







 
 



March 15, 2006 Wednesday



 In the World

 
Rice, in Indonesia, offers praise, aid
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began a two-day visit to Indonesia yesterday, praising the moderate brand of Islam that prevails in the multiethnic Southeast Asian nation. 
Rice also acknowledged that U.S. foreign policy is often unpopular in the Muslim world, saying there sometimes was a "lack of understanding about how much the United States respects people of the Islamic faith."
Her visit drew hundreds of Islamic hard-liners to demonstrate outside the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. It included a tour of an Islamic grade school and announcement of an $8.5 million grant to bring Sesame Street education tools to Indonesian schools. - AP
Greenhouse gases
reported at a high
GENEVA - Carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases reached record high levels in the atmosphere in 2004, the World Meteorological Organization said yesterday in a new report aimed at providing an annual measuring system for emissions widely blamed for global warming.
Leonard Barrie, the organization's chief of atmospheric research, said the group's first annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin did not draw conclusions about the impact of the emissions on global warming.
A growing number of scientific studies have bolstered the theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases are accumulating in the atmosphere, where they trap heat and raise Earth's average temperature. - AP
U.N. cites progress on Hariri probe
UNITED NATIONS - U.N. investigators are closer to understanding the circumstances surrounding the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri and believe some of the perpetrators may have been involved in terrorism before, according to a report released yesterday.
Chief investigator Serge Brammertz said his team would meet with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad for the first time in the coming month as part of its probe of the blast that killed Hariri and 22 others in 2005. He said Syria had promised more cooperation.
Brammertz's team said the blast was so meticulously planned that it probably was not the work of an inexperienced group. - AP
Elsewhere:
South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hae Chan resigned yesterday after drawing a firestorm of criticism for playing golf on March 1 rather than overseeing the government's response to the first day of a nationwide rail strike.
Authorities in Belarus arrested more opposition activists yesterday as voters cast early ballots for Sunday's presidential election. Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian incumbent, is seeking a third term as leader of the former Soviet republic.
Tens of thousands of protesters marched yesterday to the offices of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, demanding his resignation over allegations that he improperly enriched himself in a massive telecommunications deal.

 INDONESIA (95%);  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); ASIA (92%); SYRIA (92%); LEBANON (79%); BELARUS (79%); THAILAND (79%)




7


 


March 15, 2006 Wednesday  
THIRD EDITION



 DIGEST

 
PARIS
Jobs plan prompts more violence
Youths protesting a government jobs plan clashed Tuesday with police in an hours-long melee in the French capital that left nine officers injured, officials said.
Police sprayed tear gas and charged the crowd to counter stones, bottles and even metal barricades thrown at security forces in a second night of unrest. The clashes followed a march by an estimated 4,000 students from southern Paris to the Sorbonne University, closed because of the protests.
At least nine people were arrested in five hours of running confrontations in the Latin Quarter, the Left Bank student neighborhood, police said. 
At least 17 of France's 84 universities are on strike to protest a new labor law designed to encourage employers to hire the young by permitting quick firings in the first two years. There were partial disruptions at 28 universities around the country.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin reiterated Tuesday that the new contract would take effect in April.
IRAN
Leader stands firm on nuclear program
Iran's supreme leader issued a tough line Tuesday on his country's suspect nuclear program, calling it "irreversible" and saying any retreat would endanger independence.
The tough tone came from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters. His words set Iran on a collision course with the West as the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council debated how to deal with concern that Iran is seeking to develop atomic weapons.
After meeting Tuesday at the United Nations, the Security Council powers remained divided over how strong a statement to make.
A British-French draft demands that Iran halt all enrichment of uranium, which can be used to make nuclear arms. It also calls for a report within weeks on Iran's progress toward answering questions about its nuclear program.
A contrary view came from Russia and China, which have strong economic ties with Iran. The Russians and Chinese say the draft leaves too little room for diplomacy and focuses too much on action by the council, which could impose sanctions. 
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
Premier resigns after golf scandal
President Roh Moo-hyun accepted the resignation of his prime minister Tuesday after the premier set off a scandal by playing golf during a national railway strike. 
The premier, Lee Hae-chan, came under pressure to leave after his golf outing on a national holiday March 1 that coincided with the start of the walkout. His departure was delayed while Roh was on a trip to Africa, but Lee offered to step down Tuesday when the president returned.
Roh accepted Lee's resignation after ruling party leaders urged him to defuse the scandal ahead of local elections in May.
Lee was golfing with a man convicted of price fixing. The day after the game, the man was reportedly ordered to pay $3.6 million in fines for fixing flour prices.
YANGON, MYANMAR
Bird flu claims 3 in Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan reported three people killed by bird flu, after Myanmar announced its first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain in poultry.
Officials said late Monday that tests conducted by World Health Organization officials had confirmed that the deadly strain of bird flu, H5N1, was the cause. All three were from a district on the country's Caspian Sea coast.
Health officials fear H5N1 could evolve into a virus that can be transmitted easily among people and become global pandemic. So far, human cases generally have been traced to direct contact with sick birds.
On Monday, the military-controlled government in Myanmar announced that the virus has infected poultry in the north of the country but that no people had been sickened.
JAKARTA, INDONESIA
Rice praises nation, defends U.S. policies
Condoleezza Rice, in her first visit to Indonesia as secretary of state, praised its government Tuesday for setting an example of "moderation, tolerance and inclusiveness" and for urging officials in nearby Myanmar to respect human rights.
At a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, Rice defended the United States' anti-terrorism policies, which have aroused criticism and violent protests in many Muslim countries, including Indonesia.
"I understand that the United States has had to do things . . . that are not that popular in much of the world," she said. "We are fighting a very tough enemy, an enemy that has been felt here in Indonesia with bombings in Bali and Jakarta."
Rice also visited an Islamic school, where she announced an $8.5 million grant to develop a version of "Sesame Street" for Indonesia.
AMMAN, JORDAN
Eight are indicted in terrorist bombings
An al-Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and seven other people were indicted Tuesday in Jordan's worst terrorist bombings, the attacks Nov. 9 at three hotels in Amman.
Among those indicted by Jordan's military prosecutor was Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, a woman who was meant to be one of four Iraqi suicide bombers but fled when her explosives belt failed to detonate.
She is the only one of the eight indicted people who is in custody. She will stand trial before Jordan's military State Security Court, the 13-page indictment said.

 FRANCE (95%); IRAN,  (94%); KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (92%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (92%); MYANMAR (79%); CHINA (79%)







  



March 15, 2006 Wednesday  




 Rice Praises Indonesia As Model of 'Tolerance'; 
Some Misunderstand U.S., She Says

 
 Condoleezza Rice, in her first visit to Indonesia as secretary of state, praised its government Tuesday for setting an example of "moderation, tolerance and inclusiveness," and for urging officials in nearby military-ruled Burma to respect human rights. 
 At a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, Rice defended the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies, which have aroused criticism and violent protests in many Muslim countries, including Indonesia.   
 "I understand that the United States has had to do things . . . that are not that popular in much of the world," she said. "We are fighting a very tough enemy, an enemy that has been felt here in Indonesia with bombings in Bali and Jakarta." 
 She also suggested that the United States is sometimes misunderstood, and she stressed "how much the United States respects people who are of Islamic faith." Before the news conference, Rice visited an Islamic school, where she announced an $8.5 million grant to develop a version of "Sesame Street" for Indonesia.  
  Meanwhile, several hundred protesters from a radical Islamic group rallied outside the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, shouting slogans against Rice and the United States.  
  The Bush administration has been eager to demonstrate its support for budding democracies, especially in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country.  
  "I wish Americans could see this Islamic school," Rice told reporters, on the first day of a two-day visit. "Here you have young boys and young girls in their traditions, but learning their national curriculum, working together. . . . I'm sure they're going to be young people who are going to be very capable in the world." 
 The "Sesame Street" grant is part of a $157 million, five-year program to improve Indonesian education. The program, announced by President Bush on his visit to Bali in October 2003, followed terrorist bombings on the island a year earlier and at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003. A number of the bombers convicted in those attacks were graduates of Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia. 
 Some Muslim civic leaders initially were wary that the program might try to change their schools' religious curriculum, but that fear seems to have waned. The program focuses on improving teachers' skills and involving parents, U.S. officials said. 
 In separate meetings with Wirajuda and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Rice discussed the strengthening relationship between Indonesia and the United States. In November, the Bush administration restored full military ties with Indonesia  --  they had been cut in 1999  --  over the objections of human rights activists concerned about alleged abuses by the military.  
  But the Bush administration has great interest in ensuring that Indonesia cooperates with the United States in its battle to suppress militant strains of Islam. About 90 percent of Indonesia's 240 million people are Muslim. The country is often held up as a model of moderate Islam and of Islam's compatibility with democracy. 
 "Indonesia is an inspiration to those around the world who struggle with the many differences" people may have "in terms of race, ethnicity and religion," Rice said. 
 She said she and Indonesian leaders also discussed concerns about Burma, a country that has been under military rule for four decades. In 1990, the National League for Democracy won a landslide election in Burma, but the military did not recognize the results and has continued to suppress political dissidents. 
 "Great democracies, like Indonesia and like the United States, cannot turn a blind eye to those who still live under oppression," Rice said. She praised Yudhoyono and Wirajuda for their efforts "to try to convince the authorities and the junta in Burma that it is time to join the international community and to respect human rights." 
  Yudhoyono, in his hour-long meeting with Rice, stressed the importance of education in fighting radicalism, a senior State Department official said.  
  Rice was originally scheduled to visit in January but postponed the trip, citing what then appeared to be the imminent death of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He remains in a coma. On Wednesday, after making a speech here, Rice will fly to Australia. 

 INDONESIA (95%); UNITED STATES (94%)







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia)

March 14, 2006, Tuesday



 Couple's aid work rewarding; 
Pair spent 7 months; 
in region of Indonesia devastated by tsunami

 
FOR THE DAILY MAIL
They dealt with relentless mosquitoes, the threat of terrorism and regular earthquake aftershocks, but Del and Linda Yoder still want to return to Indonesia to aid tsunami victims.
"We would absolutely do it again," said Del, 73, from the comfort of his cabin home outside Morgantown. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
The couple first talked about relief work when they heard about the tsunami last year. At first, they decided against it. 
"We were just too old," said Linda, 65, who works for West Virginia University's Council of International Programs.
When the Mennonite Central Committee recruited them last March, however, their feelings changed.
"There's a difference between volunteering and being asked," Del said.
With just a month's warning, they left their three grown sons, their strawberry farm and their work to go help people in a country on the other side of the world.
The Yoders traveled to Indonesia in May for what they described as "Peace Corps-style" efforts in Indonesia's tsunami-battered Banda Aceh province. Their seven-month mission was to coordinate distribution of aid with local leaders.
There was a problem right away.
"Most of the leadership had been wiped out," Linda said.
More than 172,000 people were lost in the giant waves that pummeled several Asian countries after a severe earthquake at sea on Dec. 26, 2004.
With the help of the United Nations and other aid organizations, the couple spent their seven months directing funds into local programs, overseeing projects and recruiting Indonesian partners.
Explaining that Indonesians are "very big on grassroots organization," they acted as a central hub for 22 Indonesian aid organizations. Much of their time was spent on computers and paperwork. The Indonesians did most of the work in the field.
"Sometimes we joked that we really wanted to go out and hammer nails," Del said. "Our work kept us in the office more than we would have liked."
Still, the work was not without reward.
The influx of foreigners changed the atmosphere. Del said the months of international scrutiny had made even the most dangerous parts of the war-torn province safe.
The couple explained how dozens of insurgents drove into Banda Aceh without resistance. Where once these fighters - some 16 years old, others 60 - might have had to sneak into town under the cover of night, this group arrived unarmed and undeterred. The mission, however, was not one of war but of peace - to find friends and family missing since the killer waves.
"Critics say that the peace won't last, but there's definitely a sense of optimism and hope this time," Del said.
The relief effort has done more than bring peace to warring parties, however. The work has inspired innovation. One group set out to build prosthetic limbs for those who had been injured during the tsunami. With no records and no way to reach the victims, they coordinated with another group to build radios, which they distributed freely among displaced communities.
"It was really quite amazing - the way all of these projects molded together and coordinated," Linda said.
Radio broadcasters aired their programs in the local Banda Aceh language, giving listeners a sense of identity and pride.
"They would take pride, identify with it, and say, 'That is my language,' " Linda explained.
Del said the programs focused on post-traumatic stress disorder and helping children deal with the tragedy. Some groups put an emphasis on art, music and athletic therapies, while others turned to religion.
Worries and rumors about religious tension proved unfounded. The United Nations warned foreigners to be wary of al-Qaida attacks, but local Islamic groups quelled those fears when they invited visitors into their mosques and schools for organizational meetings.
The Yoders recounted the story of a former terrorist leader who had put down his crusade and devoted his life to the recovery effort. Careful not to reveal his identity, they explained that he had been "visibly moved and brought to tears" as he trained others in electronics.
"He told people in Java that, had he met them earlier in his life, the people that were killed... would never have had to die," Linda said.
The Yoders said the tsunami had a unifying effect on the people of Indonesia, and they delight in telling how Muslims and Christians worked together. They tell stories of how local universities donated student teachers to Banda Aceh to fill in for those lost in the flood, about the new freedoms, and the electrifying effect of visits by former U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
"The Indonesians love Clinton. The fact that he was here was a big deal," Del said.
Of course, they also talk about the frequent aftershocks and the jitters they cause in survivors and visiting relief workers alike.
Linda explained, "It got to the point where you are just waiting for an earthquake to occur, and that's not a comfortable way to live."
More than once Del groused about wanting to wake up in a cool bedroom with no mosquitoes and no aftershocks. Indonesia, with its location near the equator, is one of the warmest places in the world.
Still, he and his wife wonder what has become of their 22 projects and the countless workers they befriended.
"We get email updates, but not as regularly as we'd like, " Linda said.
Asked if they would serve again if asked, they marveled over the courage they had seen, the friendships they had made and the raw humanity of their effort. The response was immediate: "Absolutely."

 INDONESIA (95%); ASIA (79%); UNITED STATES (73%)







 
 


March 14, 2006, Tuesday



 Al Jazeera aims to go global - in English

 
Five years after Al Jazeera shot to public attention during the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Arab broadcaster is preparing to make more waves this spring when it launches a new channel - this time in English.
"A lot of people ask me if we're aiming at English-speaking Muslims," says Steve Clark, the new channel's director of news. "But we actually want to appeal to the whole English-speaking world and those who speak English as a second language."
The new channel, called Al Jazeera International, will begin broadcasting in late spring, offering a mix of hourly news bulletins and longer reports, bankrolled, like the original station, by the emir of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. 
The channel's mainly Western journalists promise to challenge existing stations such as CNN or BBC World.
"I'd like to put more emphasis on the developing world," says Mr. Clark. "For instance I'd like to show that there's more to Africa than war and famine."
But while Al Jazeera promises more news from places like Africa and South America than existing channels, reporting from the Middle East will comprise the core of its coverage from its headquarters in Qatar's capital, Doha.
However the appeal of Al Jazeera International will probably be less about the stories it covers and more about how it reports them.
Some hope the channel will provide global news from the perspective of the "Global South," while others fear that the channel's Arab Muslim backer, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, the ruler of Qatar, may use it to stir up anti-Western sentiment or even to overtly proselytize.
The fact that Sheikh al-Thani is widely seen as a modest reformer within the Middle East doesn't allay concerns among some in the West.
Organizations like the United American Committee, a self-described "movement to promote citizen involvement in national security issues, and to awake Washington on the issue of Islamic extremism," are organizing demonstrations against the new channel's Washington bureau. 
"The reputation can be a double-edged sword in some parts of the world," admits Clark. "Many politicians have criticized Al Jazeera without understanding it."
But while Al Jazeera's prominent critics, like US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have accused the Arabic channel of being little more than a mouthpiece for Al Qaeda, the channel's non-Western outlook guarantees it instant popularity in many parts of the world.
In Pakistan, for instance, media analysts say Al Jazeera's reputation will assure it a wide audience.
"Al Jazeera [Arabic] already has credibility, even if it's not in a language that's understood in Pakistan," says Agha Nasir, an executive director of Geo TV, an Urdu-language private broadcaster in Pakistan. "I'm quite sure it will be watched."
And just as the original channel has been heralded by some as a force for democracy and reform in the Middle East, Mr. Nasir says that competition from Al Jazeera may accelerate innovation among Pakistani broadcasters.
"We try to be the first with breaking news," Nasir says. "But Al Jazeera will affect us because it's coming from an Islamic country, not like BBC or CNN."
Initially Al Jazeera may be less concerned with dramatic scoops. Instead its priority will be to prove that, despite being funded by an Arab dictator, it is a reliable and impartial broadcaster.
"The new channel will strive incredibly hard to prove its credibility," says Hugh Miles, author of 'Al Jazeera: how Arab TV news challenged the world.' "The first year will probably be something of a test period. They'll see what works and then play to that."
In the quest for credibility the channel has signed up well-known presenters such as Riz Khan, formerly of CNN, and veteran British broadcaster Sir David Frost - who has interviewed the last seven US presidents for the BBC.
For younger journalists, Al Jazeera International offers a unique chance to radically reinvent television news. Its employees predict its impact will compare to CNN's live broadcasts from Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War. 
"It's young and vibrant and zippy and there's no sense of the malaise that affects of other larger news organizations," says one BBC journalist who is joining the new channel.
"Before I joined it felt like a big risk but there's actually not a lot of money being thrown about and I've not discerned any possible Qatari influence in terms of the channel's politics."
Some media analysts predict that the channel may increasingly aim at English-speakers in economically booming China and India or the nine-tenths of the Muslim world who do not speak Arabic as a first language.
Media executives in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, say that the English service will definitely make a splash there.
"I'm sure there's going to be a huge following of Al Jazeera [International]," says Endy Bayuni, editor of the Jakarta Post, an English-language daily in Indonesia.
"Not that we will believe everything it says, but it's a different way of presenting the news to the public," he says. "The more sources we get, the more we find out about the truth."
* Simon Montlake in Bangkok provided additional reporting.
(c) . The 

 UNITED STATES (94%); QATAR (93%); UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); AFGHANISTAN (90%); MIDDLE EAST (90%); GULF STATES (79%); SOUTH AMERICA (75%)







   


March 14, 2006 Tuesday  




 China's Role Emerges as Major Issue for Southeast Asia

 
When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits here on Tuesday, she will touch on Washington's main concern about Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country: that it stick to the path of moderation.
  She will visit an Islamic primary school, one of many schools in Indonesia now supported with American aid, where she will try to soften the image of America as anti-Muslim. She will also give a speech praising Indonesia for its rapid switch to democracy.
 But alongside what often seems like a one-note American agenda of fighting terrorism, Ms. Rice is expected to hear about another overriding interest for both Indonesia and Australia, her next stop. It can be summed up in one word: China. 
  For Indonesia and Australia, China is not just a rising power as it is often described in Washington but has already arrived as the regional power that spreads economic benefit. China is driving intra-Asian economic integration through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which excludes the United States, and by 2010 the region's trade with China is likely to outstrip its trade with the United States. 
  To sweeten the economic bonds, China has not been too pushy in other areas, stepping politely to address its strategic and diplomatic goals as it seeks the affections of surrounding countries, many of which have had longstanding relations with the United States. 
  ''China has now established itself as the paramount regional power in Southeast Asia,'' said Milton Osborne, a former Australian diplomat and scholar on the region at the Lowy Institute of International Affairs in Sydney. ''This is widely recognized in Southeast Asia, however people choose to express the idea.'' 
  Before leaving Washington, Ms. Rice sounded a cautionary note about China, with a harder edge than much of what is heard in Southeast Asia.
  She warned of China's military buildup. It has been a favorite topic of the Pentagon lately, in particular the development of Chinese submarines designed to block American military access to Taiwan. She spoke of China's possible long-term ''negative'' role, and she seemed to suggest that the United States might be recruiting partners, particularly Australia and Japan, in an effort to contain China, a notion that analysts in the region say seems passe. 
  ''I think all of us in the region, particularly those of us who are longstanding allies, have a joint responsibility and obligation to try and produce conditions in which the rise of China will be a positive force in international politics, not a negative force,'' Ms. Rice said. 
  In Indonesia, China has turned on the charm, transforming a relationship that was once fraught with suspicion into a blossoming economic partnership. China's state energy companies have bought into Indonesian oil and natural gas fields in Java and Papua and are expected to bid on tenders for new power plants. Indonesian exports to China in 2004 increased by 232 percent from the previous year.
  American oil companies have long held operations in Indonesia, and Exxon Mobil, after a protracted battle with successive Indonesian governments, announced Monday that it will develop the significant Cepu oil field on Java. But in a measure of the sensitivities about American corporate interests in nationalistic Indonesia, American businessmen said they expected Ms. Rice to try to avoid any public comment about the deal.
  ''These are some major new important competitors for business,'' James Castle, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia and a longtime business consultant here, said of the Chinese. ''If America wants to maintain a presence, it's going to have to work a lot harder. The Chinese are a big player.'' 
  In Australia, where until a few years ago China was regarded with distrust, its strides are even more pronounced, especially given the hardy alliance between John Howard, Australia's conservative prime minister, and President Bush. 
  The enduring economic boom in Australia is almost solely a result of exporting natural resources to China: huge amounts of iron ore and alumina, and soon natural gas. Australia, which has 30 percent of the world's uranium deposits, is expected to sign a deal next month to sell uranium to China for its nuclear power plants.
  Australia said it made the agreement because China had signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and talks are under way to produce a guarantee that China will not use the uranium for military purposes. 
  Gilding the hard economic gains from its exports to China, Australia is going through a kind of China fever. Mr. Howard pointed out recently that Chinese has become the most widely spoken foreign language in Australia. More Chinese tourists visit Australia now than Japanese, according to recent figures. 
  All this points to a need for Ms. Rice to address the issue during her first visit to the region, where the United States has been long accustomed to being the sole superpower.
  In an important speech about China's power last month, the veteran Singapore ambassador to the United States, Chan Heng Chee, said of her region, ''Many countries are comfortable with the current status quo of asymmetrical multipolarity with the United States as the dominant pole and are not inclined to sever or change existing alliances.''
  But Ms. Chan, who represents America's most stalwart ally in the Southeast Asia, warned, ''Whether these sentiments are retained in the coming decades depends on what the United States does in alliance maintenance and what the U.S. does in foreign and economic policy internationally.'' 

  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (98%); CHINA (96%); ASIA (96%); AUSTRALIA (95%); INDONESIA (95%); TAIWAN (79%); JAPAN (79%)







 
 


March 13, 2006 Monday



 Gas prices up 11 cents nationally

 
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - The United States hopes to find a way to increase humanitarian donations to the Palestinians following Hamas' election victory, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.
The chief U.S. diplomat also reaffirmed that the Bush administration does not want any further delay before the U.N. Security Council begins reviewing Iran's disputed nuclear program.
"I think the discussions are now in New York" at U.N. headquarters, she said. Rice spoke to reporters on a flight from Santiago, Chile, to Rio, where her plane was refueling for a trip to Jakarta, Indonesia.
Rice said she will ask Indonesia, a moderate Muslim nation, to help press the message that the Palestinians must remain committed to peace with Israel even though Hamas refuses to accept the Jewish state's right to exist.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress will closely watch a Dubai-owned company to be sure it transfers its U.S. port operations to an American company, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday.
But Frist, R-Tenn., acknowledged that if an American buyer is not found, and the Bush administration determines there are no security risks, a deal for DP World to manage and operate major U.S. ports still could go through.
"If everything that the president, the administration has said, and that is that there is absolutely no threatening or jeopardy to our security and safety of the American people ... I don't see how the deal would have to be canceled," Frist said on ABC's "This Week."
DP World pledged last week to fully transfer its U.S. port operations amid growing congressional resistance to its $6.8 billion purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co.
CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP) - Retail gas prices across the country climbed an average of 11 cents in the past two weeks, according to a new survey.
The weighted average price for all three grades increased to $2.38 a gallon by Friday, according to Trilby Lundberg, who publishes the semimonthly Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations around the country.
Self-serve regular averaged $2.35 a gallon nationwide. Mid-grade cost $2.45 a gallon while the price for premium was $2.55.
Gas prices are 38 cents higher than they were a year ago, Lundberg said Sunday.

 UNITED STATES (96%);  INDONESIA (92%);  BRAZIL (91%); ISRAEL (79%); CHILE (79%)






  


March 13, 2006



 Bush Welcomes India
Into the Anglosphere

 
In the midst of the Iraqi civil war that missed happening and the Dubai port takeover that shouldn't happen, the Bush administration helped midwife something very right that will have good effects for many decades. President Bush met with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and welcomed India formally into the nuclear club. India was a nuclear power anyway, whether we welcomed it or not--it exploded its first atom bomb in 1974--but Mr. Bush ratified the obvious as part of a developing "strategic partnership."
America's rapprochement with India began under Bill Clinton, who visited India in 2000. Clinton tirelessly cultivated India and Indian-Americans--you couldn't go to a big-deal Democratic Party fund-raiser in New York in the 90's without seeing at least one sari. He and Mr. Bush each deserve a full share of credit for the ongoing realignment. But their policy transcends individuals. It forecasts the evolution of the Anglosphere, into the 21st century and (perhaps) beyond. 
 
Anglosphere is a word, and a wish, that has been kicking around for a decade or so. It refers to a handful of nations once ruled by Britain--Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Ireland (sorry, Representative King) and Britain itself (so long as it stays out of the E.U.). They share, to some degree, features of the same legal and political systems--common law, democracy, balance of power. They also share the absence of certain other features--men on horseback, putsches. The English language is an unquantifiable accompaniment to the mix. Could the Anglosphere be a force for good in the world, or a force for anything? The special relationship between the United States and Britain that ran through two world wars and two Iraq wars seems to give the Anglosphere idea reality. Does anyone else belong to it?
India's relation to the Anglosphere began in colonialism. The British in India were an alien, self-segregated ruling class. They built railroads, forbade suttee, ate curry and lived in their clubs. Yet British culture percolated to certain Indian elites, especially Bengali intellectuals. In an early Satyajit Ray film, Charulata, one of the characters, urging his friend to study law in London, breaks out into an English-language rapture on the stepmother country: "The land of Burke! Of Macaulay! Of Gladstone!" Britain's legacy to independent India was mixed, for it included both parliamentary democracy and socialism; Jawaharlal Nehru had an opportunity to study both at Harrow and Cambridge. But time has winnowed the wheat from the chaff, for democracy remains, despite the hiatus of Indira Ghandi's emergency rule, while socialism has been consigned to the dunghill.
India now feels a new Anglospheric tug with the blossoming of information technology. The 800 number you dial to order replacement parts or check your bank account connects you to Bangalore, for three reasons. Bangalore has educated, relatively low-wage employees; someone in Bangalore probably wrote the program that makes the system run; and Bangalore, thanks to India's earlier access to the English language, has the jump on tech centers in other developing nations. So Google fortuitously reaps what Cornwallis and Wellesley sowed--and lays in the seed for later harvests.
British India also included Pakistan; hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in that bloody, post-independence partition. Pakistan, however, has not benefited from its Anglosphere connection apart from the cricket pitch--largely, one feels, because of the retarding pull of political Islam. Military dictators, seeking to shore up their sacred flank, have reduced Pakistani higher education to the madrassa level. With the exception of A.Q. Khan, the scientist and atomic Johnny Appleseed, Pakistan produces nothing sophisticated that anyone would want to buy. Thousands of Pakistanis come here to sell newspapers and drive cabs, but they are not on the economic cutting edge. Islamism can stumble along in countries that are awash with oil, but in poor countries it is the mark of intellectual and economic death.
The long-run payoff of Mr. Bush's visit to India is not India's feelings toward us. There will be many wrinkles in the "strategic partnership" of Washington and New Delhi, the main one being that we must continue to work with Pakistani strong man Gen. Pervez Musharraf, not only to find Osama, but to make sure that some Osama clone does not take power, and thereby take over Pakistan's atomic arsenal. India will marginally benefit the world (and us, as part of the world) because of how it relates to its people, and to the future.
The alternative model of Third World development is China, which presents itself, to us and to its people, as the nice Sparta: a strong state that licenses getting and spending, and imposes order, at the cost of tyranny and its attendant corruption and dirigisme. Odd religions, like Falun Gong, disappear into jail; odd nationalities, like the Tibetans and the Uighurs, are stuffed into the jail of forced assimilation. Party rule, meanwhile, is no more to be challenged than it was at Tiananmen Square, or in the darkest days of Mao. And if the big boys make a bad bet on the yuan, or on workers' wages, there is no correcting them, short of spastic riots or flight to the countryside.
India has its own problems. Although it is the third-largest Muslim country on earth (after Indonesia and Pakistan), it has been mostly spared the curse of jihadism, its Muslims having available to them the better alternatives of work and politics. Naturally our enemies (perhaps even wealthy bankrollers in Dubai) will try to make India's Muslims as bloody-minded as they are. Along those lines, a demagogic official in the state government of Uttar Pradesh offered an $11.5 million bounty for the Danish cartoonists who drew Muhammad. His colleagues unhelpfully excused him on the grounds that he had not incited to murder "in his capacity as a minister."
India will have its useful idiots and its angry monsters. Those are the parasites on the host body of a free society. Nevertheless, it will do the world good to have a large, well-armed country touched by the law and language of Gladstone.

 INDIA (99%); UNITED STATES (94%); UNITED KINGDOM (93%); IRAQ (93%); AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND (92%); NEW ZEALAND (79%); CANADA (79%); AUSTRALIA (79%); 







 
 

 (Pennsylvania)

March 13, 2006 Monday



 In brief

 



Even he's Irish A dog dressed up in Irish attire watches the parade move through central London on Sunday in a celebration of St. Patrick's Day. Thousands took to the streets for the parade and festival in central London, marking the contribution of the Irish community.

WASHINGTON

Dubai firm could run ports
Congress will closely watch a Dubai-owned company to be sure it transfers its U.S. port operations to an American company, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday.
But Frist, R-Tenn., acknowledged that if an American buyer is not found, and the Bush administration determines there are no security risks, a deal for DP World to manage and operate major U.S. ports still could go through.

LAHORE, Pakistan

Killer strings spur arrests
Skies normally alive with colorful kites to mark a spring festival were largely empty Sunday after police arrested 1,400 people over three days to enforce a ban imposed because of a series of fatal accidents.
The government of Punjab province banned kite flying during this weekend's annual Basant festival after seven people died from being slashed by kite strings reinforced with wire or glass fiber.
Fliers often strengthen their kite strings before dueling with opponents in a game that is won when one flier cuts another's kite string.

EVENSVILLE, Tenn.

Two fires kill 15, most kids
Rural house fires in Tennessee and Indiana on Saturday killed 15 members of two families, and most of the victims were children, officials said.
In Evensville, six children and three adults from an extended family died on the second floor of a two-story house where they were sleeping early Saturday, officials said.
Some of the victims were staying at the house temporarily as they prepared to move, said Rhea County Sheriff Mike Neal. The six children ranged in age from 17 to 1.
In southwestern Indiana, the charred bodies of a couple and their four children were found early Saturday in the smoldering remains of their home. A relative identified them as Rodney Montgomery, 41; his wife, Beth, 35; and their children, Austin, 11, Ariana, 9, Trenton, 6, and Jackson, 6 months.
Foul play wasn't suspected in either fire.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil

Rice: Palestinians need aid
The United States hopes to find a way to increase humanitarian donations to the Palestinians after Hamas' election victory, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.
Rice said she will ask Indonesia, a moderate Muslim nation, to help press the message that the Palestinians must remain committed to peace with Israel even though Hamas refuses to accept the Jewish state's right to exist.

WASHINGTON

Feingold: Censure Bush
A liberal Democratic senator who is considering a White House bid in 2008 said Sunday he is seeking to censure President Bush over his domestic eavesdropping program.
Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, a longtime critic of the Bush administration, said he hoped a censure would cause Bush to apologize for the warrantless surveillance he put in place after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"A crazy political move" that would weaken the U.S. during wartime was the immediate response from the Senate leader, Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who appeared on ABC right after Feingold.
From Times Leader wire services

   ISRAEL (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); BRAZIL (52%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


March 11, 2006 Saturday



 World datelines

 
Bahrain
MANAMA -- Riot police clashed with demonstrators burning tires and garbage at a suburban shopping center Friday, and at least 11 people were wounded, witnesses said.
Bangladesh
DHAKA -- A top Islamic militant leader who surrendered to authorities last week has confessed to ordering a string of bombings across Bangladesh that killed 26 people and wounded dozens, a government investigator said Friday.
Brazil 
SAO PAULO -- Forty-four inmates escaped early Friday through a 130-foot-long tunnel under a prison in Brazil's remote Amazon jungle state of Rondonia, law enforcement officials said.
Cuba
Cuba will open embassies in four more Caribbean countries -- a move that will give it a diplomatic presence in all 15 Caribbean Community nations, a Cuban official said Friday. The embassies -- in Antigua, St. Vincent, Dominica and Suriname -- will open in about a month.
Denmark
COPENHAGEN -- Muslim and Christian scholars and clerics agreed at a conference Friday that the West and Islam must use dialogue to repair ties frayed by the crisis over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
England
SOUTHAMPTON -- A car ferry collided Friday with a dockside ramp in this coastal city, injuring nine people, police and the coast guard said.
France
PARIS -- Riot police clashed with students at Paris' famed Sorbonne University on Friday, spraying tear gas as protesters occupying the city landmark hurled ladders, chairs and other objects from windows. The students, along with the country's powerful unions and other protesters, are trying to force the government to withdraw an employment measure that would make it easier for companies to fire workers younger than 26.
India
VARANASI -- Investigators believe that Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, one of Kashmir's most notorious Islamic militant groups, planted bombs Tuesday that killed 20 people at a temple and train station in Hinduism's holiest city, police said Friday.
Indonesia
JAKARTA -- Indonesia, which has come under fire for its attempts to prevent the spread of bird flu, said Friday that two children had died of the disease, bringing the country's death toll to 22.
Italy
ROME -- Authorities in Milan said Friday they are seeking the indictment of Premier Silvio Berlusconi on corruption charges, the latest in a series of as-yet unsuccessful attempts to prosecute the conservative Italian leader and media magnate.
Japan
TOKYO -- Six young Japanese were found dead from asphyxiation in a car Friday, charcoal stoves still smoking beside them -- apparently the latest victims of a surge in suicide pacts arranged over the Internet.
Mexico
NUEVO LAREDO -- An anchorman for a Mexican radio station was shot to death early Friday by gunmen waiting for him in the bushes in front of his house in this violent border city.
Netherlands
AMSTERDAM-- Dutch judges convicted nine men Friday of belonging to a terrorist group, a landmark verdict that concludes promoting a violent version of Islam can itself be an act of terrorism.
Pakistan
LAHORE -- The death of a 4-year-old boy whose throat was slit by a low-flying kite string coated with glass has prompted authorities to forbid kite-flying in eastern Pakistan. Shayan Ahmad became the seventh kite-string victim in the nation's cultural capital, Lahore, in the past two weeks.
Russia
MAKHACHKALA -- A bomb exploded Friday outside a government office in the southern Russian city of Makhachkala, killing a top-ranking police official, the regional Interior Ministry said.
Serbia-Montenegro
PRISTINA -- Lt. Gen. Agim Ceku, Kosovo's new prime minister, said Friday that anything short of independence from Serbia was "out of the question," but emphasized after his election that respect for the province's Serb minority would be a priority for his government.

 BRAZIL (94%); BANGLADESH (94%); CARIBBEAN ISLANDS (92%); BAHRAIN (92%); NETHERLANDS (92%); FRANCE (91%); CUBA (90%); JAPAN (79%); ANTIGUA & BARBUDA (79%); ENGLAND (79%); DOMINICA (79%); ASIA (79%); INDIA (79%);  DENMARK (79%); ITALY (74%)







 
 


March 9, 2006 Thursday



 Bush Sets America Right on India

 
In signing a historic and highly lenient nuclear treaty with India last week, but withholding similar concessions from its rival Pakistan, President Bush signaled that "parity" isn't a concept to be applied universally in contemporary diplomacy.
He offered public recognition to the fact that democratic India's value as a political ally and economic partner far exceeded Pakistan's capacity or potential to be a significant player in the Bush administration's global campaign of spreading democracy and the free market. 
In what could be cited as a contrapuntal turnaround, Mr. Bush also underscored an important personal article of faith - that democracies must be strengthened by supporting them, and democracies must be supported by strengthening them.
In doing so, Mr. Bush ended Washington's longstanding practice of treating the world's biggest democracy and one of its most authoritarian military regimes as though they were separate but equal siblings. Almost from the time that the British partitioned the Indian Subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947, successive American administrations have perceived Pakistan as a close ally because of its leaders' willingness to appear politically and diplomatically aligned. India, on the other hand, rode the high moral horse of nonalignment, one that consistently chose to graze in the ideological meadows of the erstwhile Soviet Union.
The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union came at a time when key Indian leaders - among them the man who's now India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh - realized that adherence to socialism had badly affected the country's prospects of alleviating poverty and achieving prosperity. Guided by New York-based economist Jagdish Bhagwati, Mr. Singh and others sought to jettison socialist shibboleths, and to liberalize the economy.
Mr. Bush hailed the yields of their labor last week. He pointed to India's impressive annual economic growth, its burgeoning middle class that had become the free world's biggest market, and to the technical and entrepreneurial talent that is driving sustainable development in a land of 1.2 billion people.
In earlier eras, a visiting American president would have pleased the Indians simply by talking about aid. But last week, Mr. Bush's talk was about enhanced trade. This more than pleased his hosts; they flew into a frenzy of delight that gave a fillip to the pageantry and popular enthusiasm that generally greeted Mr. Bush.
It was striking that the protesters who burned American flags and effigies of Mr. Bush were mostly Muslims: India has the world's second largest cohort of Muslims, after Indonesia. And bringing up the rear flank of the protestors were familiar figures such as Arundhati Roy. The predictably anti-American views of the novelist-agitator would be more credible were she to dispense with the pecuniary and personal tributes she extracts from her friends in the liberal salons of Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Curiously, some of these same liberals seem chagrined that Mr. Bush chose to praise lavishly India's democracy and free-market economy. One would have thought that notions such as democracy and a growing economy that brought prosperity to the proletariat would resonate nicely among liberals. But too many of them still seem to be brooding over the sweeping out of socialism in India's corridors of power.
Other critics charged Mr. Bush with excessively favoring India over a more traditional ally, Pakistan. They suggested that India and Pakistan would now embark on a renewed nuclear militarization.
That's hardly likely to happen. It's inconceivable that Mr. Bush did not obtain binding assurances from both countries that they would contain their nuclear ambitions. India has to do little more than watch Pakistan implode because of its domestic strife; it doesn't need to gird its nuclear loins any more than it already has.
Mr. Bush wasn't entirely dismissive of Pakistan, as some of his liberal critics suggest. It is not that the president has overlooked Pakistan's contribution to the global campaign against Islamic terrorism. Mr. Bush applauded Pakistani President Musharraf's support, even though its depth and diligence could be debated.
But Mr. Bush was also entirely right in pointing out to the Muslim strongman that he hadn't kept his word concerning free elections. Mr. Musharraf promised such elections when he seized power six years ago.
The president's critics have seized on his scolding of Mr. Musharraf. As the New York Times said Tuesday in a pained editorial, "It's just baffling why Mr. Bush traveled halfway around the world to stand right next to one of his most important allies against terrorists - and embarrass him."
It's actually baffling why the Times's editorial board is baffled. Presidential visits often are a mix of political theater and private bargaining. Mr. Bush well knows that Mr. Musharraf cannot afford to act on his pledge. That's because any free and fair election that is now held in Pakistan would result in an overwhelming victory for Islamists. The alliance with America would be the first casualty, and an escalation of state-sponsored terrorism against India would be inevitable. Pakistan's Islamists have never accepted the legitimacy of India's constitutional secularism.
They also haven't accepted India's claims over Kashmir, the mostly Muslim mountainous territory that both India and Pakistan want to integrate into their sovereignty. Mr. Bush knows that most of the terrorists who operate in Kashmir receive their training and funding from Pakistan. He knows, too, that while Mr. Musharraf has vowed to crack down on these terrorists, his intelligence services are among their prime backers.
Mr. Bush surely knows that there is quite possibly no more fragile regime in Asia than that of Mr. Musharraf. In openly embracing India, he is buying insurance for American interests in a geopolitically volatile region where, not the least, China's hegemonistic ambitions are being freshly stoked. He is proclaiming that Indian democracy - like its much older sibling in America - is simply not perishable.
Mr. Bush also seems to be signaling his view that untidy and messy democracies will trump dictatorships every time. While democracy is stable in India, it's scarcely steady - not with a ruling coalition of 14 disputatious parties.
When he landed in Pakistan, Mr. Bush must have surely dreamed of what might be - a tumultuous theocratic society transformed into a spirited democracy, even with an Islamic patina. When he left India, Mr. Bush realized that the vision of freedom and free markets that he has so frequently sketched for developing societies everywhere had, indeed, already long been in place. All he had to do was to give the Indians a much appreciated pat on the back.

 INDIA (99%); UNITED STATES (96%); PAKISTAN (94%); 




8


  



March 9, 2006 Thursday 
  




 Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing; 
Poll Numbers in U.S. Higher Than in 2001

 
As the war in Iraq grinds into its fourth year, a growing proportion of Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam, and a majority now say that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. 
 The poll found that nearly half of Americans  --  46 percent  --  have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after  the Sept. 11, 2001,  attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,  when Muslims were often targeted for violence.  
 The survey comes at a time of increasing tension;  the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq show little sign of ending, and  members of Congress are seeking to block the Bush administration's attempt to hire an Arab company to manage  operations at six  of the nation's ports. Also, Americans are reading news of deadly protests by Muslims  over Danish cartoons depicting  the  prophet Muhammad. 
 Conservative and liberal experts said Americans' attitudes about Islam are fueled in part by political statements and media reports that focus almost solely on the actions of Muslim extremists.   
 According to the poll, the proportion of Americans who believe that Islam helps to stoke violence against non-Muslims has more than doubled since the attacks, from 14 percent in January 2002 to 33 percent today. 
 The survey also found that one in three Americans have heard prejudiced comments about Muslims lately. In a separate question, slightly more (43 percent) reported having heard negative remarks about Arabs. One in four Americans admitted to harboring prejudice toward Muslims, the same proportion that expressed some personal bias against Arabs. 
 Though the two groups are often linked in popular discourse, most of the world's Muslims are not of Arab descent. For example, the country with the  largest Muslim population is Indonesia. 
 As a  school bus driver in Chicago, Gary McCord, 65, dealt with many children of Arab descent. "Some of the best families I've ever had were some of my Muslim families," he said in a follow-up interview. "They were so nice to me." He now works for a Palestinian Christian family, whose members  he says are "really marvelous." 
 But his good feelings do not extend to Islam.  "I don't mean to sound harsh or anything, but I don't like what the Muslim people believe in, according to the Koran. Because I think they preach hate," he said. 
 As for the controversial cartoons of Muhammad, he said Arabs seem hypersensitive about religion. "I think it's been blown out of proportion," he said. 
 Frederick Cole,  a welder in Roosevelt, Utah, acknowledged:  "As far as being prejudiced against them, I'd have to say maybe a little bit. If I were to go through an airport and I saw one out of the corner of my eye, I'd say, 'I wonder what he's thinking.' " Still, Cole, 30, said, "I don't think the religion is based on just wanting to terrorize people." 
 A total of 1,000 randomly selected Americans were interviewed March 2-5  for this Post-ABC News poll. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus three percentage points. 
 Americans who said they understood Islam were more likely to see the religion overall as peaceful and respectful. But they were no less likely to say it harbors harmful extremists, and they were also no less likely to have prejudiced feelings against Muslims.  
 In Gadsden, Ala., Ron Hardy, an auto parts supplier, said Arabs own a lot of stores in his area and "they're okay." But, Hardy, 41, said "I do think" Islam has been "hijacked by some militant-like guys." 
 Edward Rios, 31, an engineer in McHenry, Ill., said he feels that Islam "is as good a religion as any other" yet vengeance seems to be "built into their own set of beliefs: If someone attacks our people, it is your duty to defend them. . . . I don't think Christianity has anything like that." 
 James J. Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, said he is not surprised by the poll's results. Politicians, authors and media commentators have  demonized the Arab world since 2001, he said. 
 "The intensity has not abated and remains a vein that's very near the surface, ready to be tapped at any moment," Zogby said. "Members of Congress have been exploiting this over the ports issue. Radio commentators have been talking about it nonstop." 
 Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan, agreed, saying Americans "have been given the message to respond this way by the American political elite, mass media and by select special interests." 
 Cole said he was shocked when a radio talk show host asked him if Islamic extremists would set off a nuclear bomb in the United States in the next six months. "It was ridiculous. I think anti-Arab racism and profiling has become respectable," he said. 
 Ronald Stockton, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan at Dearborn who helped conduct a study of Arabs in the Detroit area and on views of them held by non-Arabs, said an exceptionally high percentage of non-Muslims feels the media depicts Arabs unfairly, yet still holds negative opinions. 
 "You're getting a constant drumbeat of negative information about Islam," he said. 
 Michael Franc, vice president of government relations for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that the survey responses "seems to me to be a real backlash against Islam" and that congressional leaders do not help the problem by sometimes using language that links all Muslims with extremists. 
  Polling director Richard Morin contributed to this report. 

CORRECTION-DATE: March 10, 2006

 CORRECTION:
 A March 9 article incorrectly said that the Bush administration was attempting to hire an Arab company to manage operations at six of U.S. ports. The issue is the administration's initial approval of an Arab company's purchase of another company that is managing operations at the ports. 

 UNITED STATES (94%); IRAQ (93%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); 







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia)

March 6, 2006, Monday



 Nation & world

 
Thousands of Muslims
rally against cartoons
KARACHI, Pakistan - Tens of thousands of people massed in Pakistan and Turkey to protest cartoons of Islam's Prophet, Muhammad, that have fired anger throughout the Muslim world. 
Denmark reopened its embassy in Indonesia today, more than three weeks after hard-line Muslims stormed the building and it closed amid widespread protests over the caricatures, which were first published in a Danish newspaper.
About 50,000 people, many chanting "Hang those who insulted the prophet," rallied Sunday in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. The protesters burned the Danish flag, hit an effigy of President Bush with a stick and chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Musharraf."
In Turkey, some 20,000 protesters chanting anti-Danish slogans gathered in the eastern city of Erzurum, reports said.
Hindu priests cleanse site after Bush visit
NEW DELHI - Hindu priests who look after the memorial of Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi conducted a purification ceremony at the shrine after a visit from President Bush.
But it wasn't the president who offended them, it was the sniffer-dogs who scoured the area ahead of his visit.
After the dog visit, the memorial was cleansed with water brought from the Ganges river, which Hindus consider holy, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported Sunday.
Bush visited the memorial on Thursday during his three-day visit to India. The site, where pacifist icon Gandhi was cremated, is considered sacred and all visitors, including Bush and his wife Laura, removed their shoes before going in.
The dogs, flown in from the U.S., were part of the intense security surrounding the president, but the Hindu priests believe they tainted the site.
Two children found shot
to death in burning home
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - A 5-year-old boy and his 8-year-old sister were found shot to death in their burning home, and police charged their father with the slayings.
The father was found a couple of miles from the house with critical injuries on Saturday, police Sgt. Lisa Mangum said. She would not describe his injuries.
The case is the third in less than two months in which a Charlotte-area parent has been charged with killing two children.
Shaken and tearful, Olga Miranda picked through the debris of their home in northeast Charlotte and declined to talk about her husband, Gilberto Miranda Cuellar.
Four students killed
in car crash in N.C.
RALEIGH, N.C. - A speeding car went airborne as it crossed a highway exit bridge, crashing to the ground 58 feet below and bursting into flames Four high school students were killed, officials said.
The victims were seniors at Wakefield High School in Raleigh, principal Stephen G. Takacs said.
The car, a 2004 Mazda RX-8, took an exit bridge over Interstate 440 and hit a concrete barrier late Saturday, police said.
The car skidded along the barrier for 410 feet before rising over it, flying 224 feet forward and dropping to the ground, where it rolled and burst into flames, police said.
The victim's identities were not released.

 PAKISTAN (94%); TURKEY (93%);   INDONESIA (92%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


March 6, 2006 Monday



 World datelines

 
 Austria
VIENNA -- With oil prices still above $60 a barrel, OPEC ministers likely will keep output steady when they meet this week to set strategies for the spring and early summer. A warmer-than-usual winter in the United States, the world's largest consumer, has built inventories -- which should drive prices lower. But worries about disruptions to supply from places like Iran or Nigeria are keeping prices high.
Britain 
LONDON -- The Church of England's senior clergyman said in comments broadcast Sunday that he worried that the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay has set a dangerous precedent in international law. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said in a televised interview that the detention camp in Cuba went against existing legal norms. He said Guantanamo created a new category of custody, with prisoners held without proper legal assistance and without being found guilty of specific crimes.
India
NEW DELHI -- Hindu priests who look after the memorial of Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi conducted a purification ceremony at the shrine after a visit Thursday from President Bush. But it wasn't the president who offended them, it was the sniffer-dogs who scoured the area ahead of his visit. After the dog visit, the memorial was cleansed with water brought from the Ganges river, which Hindus consider holy, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported Sunday.
Indonesia
JAKARTA -- Thousands of Muslims rallied in front of the tightly guarded U.S. Embassy in Indonesia on Sunday, demanding American troops leave Iraq and Afghanistan and calling President Bush a terrorist. The protesters, many of whom were from the hardline group Hizbut Tharir, were kept well away from the mission, which is ringed by two concrete walls and barbed wire. Some 2,000 police stood watch and two water cannons stood by, but the rally ended peacefully.
Iran
Iran threatened on Sunday to embark on full-scale uranium enrichment if the U.N. nuclear agency presses for action over its atomic program, and a top U.S. diplomat warned the  possible "painful consequences." The comments came as the International Atomic Energy Agency's board prepared to meet today to discuss referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council, but delegates said whatever step the council might take would stop far short of sanctions.
Nigeria
LAGOS -- Militants threatened more attacks on Nigeria's oil facilities and vowed Sunday to cut daily oil exports by 1 million barrels, adding to concerns for OPEC as it prepares for a strategy meeting this week. Oil is already more than $60 a barrel, and the markets are nervous about potential disruptions to the supply from this OPEC member, which is African's largest producer of crude oil.
Pakistan
KARACHI -- Tens of thousands of people massed in Pakistan and Turkey on Sunday to protest cartoons of Islam's Prophet, Muhammad, that have fired anger throughout the Muslim world. About 50,000 people, many chanting "Hang those who insulted the prophet," rallied Sunday in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. The protesters burned the Danish flag, hit an effigy of President Bush with a stick and chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Musharraf." Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf welcomed Bush to Pakistan on Saturday.
South Korea
SEOUL -- South Korea's No. 2 leader hinted he might resign Sunday for playing golf when he was expected to be working overtime to oversee the government's response to a disruptive rail strike. Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan, a close ally of President Roh Moo-hyun, has been under fire for golfing Wednesday, the first day of a nationwide walkout by railway workers.
Thailand
BANGKOK -- Tens of thousands of protesters demanding the prime minister's resignation marched to his office Sunday night after a boisterous rally accusing Thaksin Shinawatra of corruption and abuse of power. Leaders vowed the crowds would camp out in the streets until Thaksin quit, but on Monday he again dismissed their calls. "I will not resign because my resignation will not resolve anything," Thaksin told reporters.

 UNITED STATES (94%); NIGERIA (94%); IRAN,  (94%); AUSTRIA (92%);  PAKISTAN (92%); INDONESIA (92%); CUBA (90%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); ENGLAND (79%);  TURKEY (79%)







 The Patriot Ledger 
The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA)

March 6, 2006 Monday  
ROP Edition



 Kerry urges: â€˜End the empire of oilâ€[TM];
Says itâ€[TM]s the only way to win the war on terror

 
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland (AP) â€" The United States must rebuild the power of the United Nations and help â€oeend the empire of oilâ€ if it wants to win the war on terror, U.S. Sen. John Kerry said. 
The Massachusetts Democrat avoided explicitly criticizing the Bush administration during a wide-ranging speech yesterday on the global dynamics of terror. But he said President Bushâ€[TM]s policy of imposing democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan risked looking like a crusade.
â€oeIf it is seen as the result of an army marching through Muslim lands, it will fail,â€ Kerry told an audience at the University of Ulster campus in Londonderry.
The â€oewar on terror,â€ Kerry said, was not principally about the U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but was â€oefundamentally a war within Islam for the heart and soul of Islam, stretching from Morocco east to Indonesia.â€
Kerry, who lost to Bush in the 2004 presidential election, said todayâ€[TM]s myriad terrorist threats to security in the West and within Muslim nations themselves exist in part because â€oeno center of moral authority has emerged to stop those who would murder in the name of Islam.â€
But he suggested that the current focus on American-led military interventions is not the way to promote stable democracies in the Middle East, a region of dictatorships underpinned by oil money. Sustainable political change requires concerted international political pressure combined with appropriate development aid, he said.
â€oeGreat American presidents, from Roosevelt to Truman to Kennedy, understood that success requires a community of nations working together, drawing strength from shared sacrifice and steadfast commitment to our shared ideals,â€ Kerry said.
He said the U.N. must play a forceful role in places like Iraq and Darfur, referring to the western region of Sudan where Sudanese Arab militias have been wiping out black African communities with impunity.
â€oeLiterally, the West must reclaim its moral leadership,â€ he said.
Developing effective replacements for oil-based fuels also is key, he said. The Westâ€[TM]s insatiable appetite for petroleum from the Middle East â€oehas frustrated every impulse toward modernization of the region, while giving its regimes the resources to hold onto power. The international community of democratic nations cannot afford to continue funding both sides of the war on terror. We must end the empire of oil.â€

  NORTHERN IRELAND (93%); IRAQ (93%); AFGHANISTAN (92%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); SUDAN (92%); AFRICA (79%);  MOROCCO (79%)







 
 



March 6, 2006 Monday



 Asia news in brief

 

PAKISTAN

Mass cartoon protests continue after Bush's visit
Tens of thousands of people massed in Pakistan and Turkey on Sunday to protest cartoons of Islam's prophet, Muhammad, that have fired anger throughout the Muslim world. 
Denmark reopened its embassy in Indonesia today, more than three weeks after hard-line Muslims stormed the building and it closed amid widespread protests over the caricatures, which were first published in a Danish newspaper.
About 50,000 people, many chanting ``Hang those who insulted the prophet,'' rallied Sunday in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. The protesters burned the Danish flag, hit an effigy of President Bush with a stick and chanted ``Death to America'' and ``Death to Musharraf.'' Bush had visited Pakistan on Saturday.

THAILAND

Boisterous protesters demand resignation of prime minister
Tens of thousands of protesters demanding the prime minister's resignation marched to his office Sunday night after a boisterous rally accusing Thaksin Shinawatra of corruption and abuse of power.
Leaders vowed the crowds would camp out in the streets until Thaksin quit, but today he again dismissed their calls.
``I will not resign because my resignation will not resolve anything,'' Thaksin told reporters.
From Mercury News wire services

 PAKISTAN (94%); INDONESIA (92%); ASIA (92%);  THAILAND (79%)







 
 


March 6, 2006 Monday  




 Democrats see Obama as face of 'reform and change'; 
Junior senator poised to step into national spotlight

 
WASHINGTON -- For most members of Congress, the influence-peddling scandals that have forced one of their colleagues to resign and caught others up in a federal investigation represent a serious election-year problem.
But for one freshman, the scandals are a golden opportunity.
As the Senate begins debate today on a bill to curb the influence of lobbyists on Capitol Hill, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will be serving as a lead spokesman for his party.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid tapped Obama to be the party's point man on congressional ethics reform in January, as the Democrat began his second year in Congress. 
It's testimony to the symbolic appeal of the Senate's only black member, and to his political precociousness. "Our party stands for reform and change and he embodies that," says Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a fellow Chicagoan who heads the House Democratic campaign committee. Reid says, "Barack Obama has a unique ability to walk into a crowd and make people listen."
His party leaders' decision to thrust Obama into the limelight follows a year in which he struggled to avoid it. An overnight sensation after his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama won election to the Senate that year with 70% of the Illinois vote, the most overwhelming victory in the state's history.
During his first year as a U.S. senator, Obama focused on the home front, much as former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton did in New York after she was elected to the Senate in 2000. He has held more than 42 town hall meetings in Illinois. Last year, he turned down all but two national television interviews. "He's not a grandstander," Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., says.
For Obama, 44, his higher-profile role brings risks as well as rewards. It has pushed into the political hot seat a senator who hopes to build bridges across partisan lines.
Last month, Sen. John McCain accused Obama of "self-interested partisan posturing" when the Democrat criticized a Republican proposal to create a task force on lobbying reform. Though quickly smoothed over, the tiff made headlines in Chicago and dramatized the difficulties Obama faces as he tries to maintain his reputation as a political independent while serving as a party spokesman on a controversial issue in an election year.
Crossover appeal
Criticism of Obama is news because there has been so little of it. Since winning election to the Senate, his career has defied political gravity. Even political opponents such as Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman say they admire him.
Obama ranks as one of his party's biggest draws. Spokesman Robert Gibbs says the senator, who receives about 300 speaking invitations a week, helped Democratic candidates raise more than $6.5 million last year. That's on top of $360,000 that Obama took in for his own re-election and more than $1.8 million for a fund that pays for his political activities.
Nor has his success been limited to the political realm: Obama's audio version of his memoir, Dreams from My Father, won a Grammy for best spoken word album.
Obama has demonstrated crossover appeal in several ways. A onetime community organizer in Chicago, he nevertheless attracts support from corporate leaders. He's a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who draws large crowds of white constituents. And he's a Democrat with Republican admirers such as Lugar.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is bullish on Obama's future: He invested $5,000 in the senator's political action committee last year. So is former Black Panther Bobby Rush, a Chicago congressman whom Obama once tried to unseat. "I'd give him an A+ for his first year," says Rush, a Democrat.
Mehlman, a former Harvard Law School classmate, has kind words for Obama. "He's a guy I like and would like to see do well," he says.
Obama's admirers see him capable of making the ultimate political breakthrough for African-Americans. "I hope he runs for president someday," Buffett says. "I'm 75. He's got to hurry if I'm going to be able to vote for him."
Last month in front of the Russell Senate Office Building, Obama posed for the umpteenth photo-op of his fledgling Senate career. He may be too young to appreciate the irony of the location. Obama was two months shy of his third birthday when Sen. Richard Russell, a Georgia Democrat with deft parliamentary skills, saw his filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act collapse. Now, the stately marble columns of a building named after one of the Senate's last segregationists serve as a backdrop for the chamber's new biracial star.
Seeking common ground
In some respects, Obama is an unlikely African-American hero: His mother was white, and he's not a descendant of slaves. His father was an exchange student from Kenya. Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii and later divorced. His mother remarried and moved with her son and new husband to Indonesia, where young Barack attended both Catholic and Muslim schools before returning to Hawaii as a teenager. Both parents are now deceased.
In his memoir, first published in 1995 and reissued after his Democratic convention speech, Obama details his painful struggle to come to grips with his own identity.
It's a struggle, he has written, that led him to experiment with alcohol and drugs, to journey to Africa for a meeting with his half-siblings and finally to move to Chicago where he found a wife, a church and a home.
Last year, Obama made a point of reaching out beyond party lines. He called on the local Republican congressman, Ray LaHood, when he visited Peoria.
"It was a front page story in the local paper," LaHood recalls.
He joined Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., in calling for "realistic" immigration reform to accommodate the estimated 11 million people living and working illegally in the USA -- a debate the Senate will launch this month.
Obama co-sponsored with Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a bill that's still pending to create a "chief financial officer" for the Hurricane Katrina cleanup.
Obama says he wants to keep the bipartisanship going on ethics, but he hasn't hesitated to take some partisan shots.
The senator accused new House Majority Leader John Boehner of "backpedaling on reform" after the Ohio Republican said he opposed proposals to eliminate lawmakers' ability to tack pet projects onto larger bills or to travel on the tab of private interest groups.
Although he says members of his party "are certainly not without sin," Obama rejects the suggestion that Democrats are as tainted by their ties to lobbyists as Republicans. "The notion that this is a bipartisan scandal is wrong," he says.
Overhauled ethics in Illinois
It's not the first time Obama has been involved in changing ethics rules. Emil Jones, the Democratic president of the Illinois state Senate, assigned Obama, a state senator from 1997 to 2004, to help write Illinois' first ethics overhaul in more than two decades.
"There was a lot of opposition," Jones recalls. "In his own caucus, members were jumping all over him."
In the end, Obama prevailed, crafting a landmark bill that won the Illinois General Assembly's near-unanimous approval in 2003.
Obama's Republican partner on the measure, state Sen. Kirk Dillard, still keeps a picture of the Democrat on his office wall.
Though he is the Republican chairman of DuPage County, Dillard recently introduced Obama at a town hall meeting there. "I admire him both as a person and as a legislator," Dillard says.
A onetime smoker who says he's "on the wagon," the self-professed "skinny kid with a funny name" works out regularly to maintain his 6-foot-2, 180-pound frame and 32-inch waist. Obama flies home every weekend to be with his wife and two daughters, who live in Chicago, and spends most of his evenings writing. He has a $1.9 million contract to write three books -- the first of which is due out this fall.
The book will be about his political philosophy, the senator says. Told that it sounds like the kind of book politicians write when they're about to launch a national campaign, Obama smiles.
"I'm always campaigning for the values I believe in," he says.
Contributing: Judy Keen in Chicago; Jim Drinkard in Washington
The Sen. Barack Obama file
Age: 44; born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu.
Education:  Studied for two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles before transferring to Columbia University in New York. He graduated with a degree in political science in 1983, and in 1991 graduated from Harvard Law School.
Idealistic impulses: He quit a financial consulting job to become a community organizer in Chicago.
Mentor: After becoming the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review, Obama met then-Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill. "He probably is as responsible as anybody for me being in the U.S. Senate," Obama says.
Family: Wife Michelle is vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals; two daughters, Malia, 7, and Sasha, 4.
On handling the demands of fame: "It's a high-class problem to have. The only time that I've been frustrated with my quasi-celebrity status is when I'm out with my kids."

 UNITED STATES (94%)







  



March 5, 2006 Sunday  
Main Edition



 Gulf grows between Muslims and West; 
Disparate events add to anger, claims of bias against Islam

 
London --- Muslims around the world have fashioned a series of unconnected events --- the Muhammad cartoons, the U.S. seaports controversy, America's threat to cut off aid to Hamas, even Western resistance to nuclear weapons for Iran --- into a chain of evidence leading to one conclusion: The West despises Islam and scorns its adherents.
And the resulting anger has only made the gulf between the two ever wider and more turbulent.
"When this guy, Samuel Huntington, wrote his famous book 10 years ago, I thought, frankly, it was not a very intelligent book," said Abdul Raouf El-Reedy, a former Egyptian ambassador to the United States and the chairman of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Relations. He referred to Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order." "Now it is as if it is a prophecy which is close to being fulfilled," el-Reedy said. 
Many Muslims of different nationalities see anti-Muslim bias connecting disparate happenings: Danish cartoonists who insulted Islam were defended as exercising free speech while British historian David Irving, who denied the extent of the Holocaust, was sentenced to prison.
Having a British company manage U.S. ports raised no eyebrows, but a proposal to have them managed by a company from the United Arab Emirates created a controversy that still boils. It is apparently acceptable to the West for Israel to have nuclear weapons, but not for Iran to have them.
The events exacerbate feelings already rubbed raw by the invasion of Iraq, by photos and allegations of mistreatment of Muslims at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and, above all, by mistrust of the role the United States has played with regard to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Mistrust spreads
While many observers say that U.S. and British policy plays into the hands of Islamic radicals, deep mistrust of the West is spreading to mainstream Muslims. The Defense Science Board, in a report to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last fall, said as much. On "the war of ideas or the struggle for hearts and minds", the report said, "American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended."
Mohammed Nasser Khan, 46, is a property developer in London who believes that Western values and Islam are compatible. Yet recent events trouble him.
"Even I am confused," he said. "And I don't like to be confused."
Talk of anti-Muslim bias is not restricted to an educated elite. Qaiser Mahmood, 39, and Abdul Choudhary, 53, like to sit in the back of the Pond Halal Meat Shop, which Choudhary owns in the south London neighborhood of Thornton Heath, and chew over the news of the day. They deplore the violence that accompanied protests against the Muhammad cartoons. But in events the world over, they do see a pattern --- "a double standard," said Choudhary.
Why, for example, does President Bush support the spread of democracy, but advocate withdrawing funding when the winner of a democratic election in the Palestinian territories turns out to be the hard-line Islamic group Hamas?
It is a common view.
Perceptions and realities
"The prevailing perception within the Muslim world is that there is no balanced or fair treatment of issues vital to Muslims," Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told a gathering of Western and Muslim opinion-makers in Qatar late last month. "These perceptions become realities when they are routinely exposed to images of maltreatment of Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other places."
Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, a professor of political geography at Tarbiat Modares University of Tehran who lives part-time in London, traces most Muslim resentment to conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
With only one superpower in the world, he said, it is inevitable that this power will act as an arbiter of world affairs. "But in this particular case, this global arbiter has chosen to be a partial arbiter, not an impartial arbiter," he said.
Each time he hears Bush say America is committed to the defense of Israel, Mojtahed-Zadeh said, "Any educated person can understand that the rest of the sentence is, 'willy-nilly, whatever happens.' In other words, whatever Israel does, even under someone like Ariel Sharon, it is defended by America."
Walid Kazziha, a professor of political science at American University in Cairo, agreed.
"The Israelis have a right to security," he said. "The Palestinians --- uh, it's questionable. We are almost living a nightmare, because American policy in the region is utterly un-evenhanded."
Nuclear issue divisive
Perhaps nowhere in the world is the perception of Western unfairness more prevalent than the Persian Gulf. It colors the way many people view anything the United States and other Western governments try to do.
Take nuclear non-proliferation. To many in the West, it might seem obvious that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, but many Arabs look at Israel's nuclear capability and believe the opposite.
"It's very clear to us now that we ought to have a nuclear capability in the region," Kazziha said.
The most commonly used word to describe the perceived prejudice is Islamophobia. But observers say the bias takes in not only Muslims but also Arabs who are not Muslims. And they say the schism may widen as fewer Americans travel to the Middle East, and more Arabs --- unwilling, they say, to be humiliated at U.S. ports of entry --- forgo travel to the United States.
What galls many Muslims in the Middle East is the tendency of Americans and Europeans to ignore deep differences between Muslim societies such as Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey and Egypt. This perception of bias can put U.S. friends and allies in the Muslim world in a difficult position. Last month, even as they stood beside U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the foreign ministers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia publicly dismissed U.S. calls to cut off funding for Hamas.
The pros and cons of each of these events --- from the cartoons to the wisdom of allowing Iran to proceed with its nuclear program --- can be argued separately. But to many Muslims, they form a seamless narrative of prejudice. As it becomes widely accepted, this narrative threatens to undercut support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism even among Washington's allies in the Muslim world.
Mohammed Muhi al-Obeidi, 39, an Iraqi car mechanic, subscribes to the idea that America is engaged in a war with the Muslim world. "They came to Iraq as a liberation army but their idea has changed," he said. "They want to control the Middle East."
Tailor-made for radicals
Massoud Shadjareh, the moderate chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission in London, said the West's perceived lack of evenhandedness plays into the hands of radicals. "In many ways, I think these policies are music to the ears of these people," he said.
What has brought the issue to a head now for many moderate Muslims is the contrast they perceive between the defense of the cartoons satirizing Muhammad, and the penalties imposed on those, such as Irving, who deny or downplay the Holocaust.
The immediate result of what are perceived to be unfair Western policies will be more hard-line Islamic governments, such as Hamas, that will bargain more firmly with Western powers, Kazziha said.
Don Melvin, the European correspondent for Cox Newspapers, is based in London.
* Cox correspondents Margaret Coker in Jerusalem and Larry Kaplow in Baghdad contributed to this report, as did contract freelancer Craig Nelson in Doha, Qatar.

  IRAN,  (93%); ISRAEL (92%); EGYPT (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%);  UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (79%); CUBA (53%)







 
 


March 2, 2006, Thursday



 War on terror needs more humanitarian efforts

 
It is time we heed what America's military leaders are telling us about the war on terror. Pentagon officials involved in writing the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently released counterterrorism strategy have acknowledged that "the American military's efforts to aid [2004] tsunami victims in Indonesia and to assist victims of Pakistan's [2005] earthquake did more to counter terrorist ideology than any attack mission."
Indeed, according to the Navy's commanding officer, Admiral Michael Mullen, the change of Muslim public opinion as a result of American aid is nothing less than "one of the defining moments of this new century." Admiral Mullen concluded: "Shame on us if, even through benign neglect, we allow those same opinions to turn against our best intentions again." 
The statements of our military's leaders point to a dramatic reconsideration of the means necessary to prevail against global terrorists. Fortunately, recent history shows us exactly how we can help people who need help, and just as important, how to change public opinion favorably toward the United States, and against terrorists such as Osama bin Laden.
This means a commitment to following the path the US successfully forged last year in response to the tsunami that struck Indonesia and the earthquake that ravaged Pakistan. American assistance was direct, extensive, effective, and well-publicized on Indonesian and Pakistani TV.
For the first time since 9/11, both the Indonesian and Pakistani people - the largest and second-largest Muslim populations in the world - expressed a favorable opinion of the US, and at the same time, turned against support for Mr. bin Laden and terrorist attacks. It seems that if American efforts are focused on positive rebuilding and vision for the future, the foot soldiers for bin Laden and radical Islam will desert. Islamist extremism can indeed be effectively defeated in Muslim hearts and minds.
In fact, the number of Pakistanis who have a favorable opinion of the US doubled from 23 percent in May 2005 to more than 46 percent after American earthquake aid was received. According to a poll conducted by the nonpartisan not-for-profit, Terror Free Tomorrow, with fieldwork by ACNielsen Pakistan, for the first time since 9/11, more Pakistanis are favorable to the US than unfavorable.
At the same time, the number of Pakistanis who disapproved of bin Laden doubled at almost the exact same percentage as those who became favorable to the US.
The effects of American aid in response to the earthquake were clear: 78 percent of Pakistanis said that American aid to earthquake victims has made them favorable to the US - a figure that held even among bin Laden supporters. 
The data from Pakistan is buttressed by similar findings from Indonesia. After the tsunami, 65 percent of Indonesians had a favorable opinion of the US as a direct result of American assistance, while support for terrorism declined in tandem.
Yet the most surprising finding is that this dramatic shift in Muslim public opinion has been and can be sustained over a long period of time. A nationwide poll by Terror Free Tomorrow just completed in Indonesia shows that one year after American tsunami assistance began, and despite the reports on Koran desecration and the eruption of violence over Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, Muslim public opinion has not only remained favorable to the US, but has increased as a direct result of American humanitarian assistance to the Indonesian people. Indeed, for the first time since 9/11, more Indonesians are favorable to the US than not.
The fact that even a year after receiving American help Indonesians continue to appreciate America's role is stunning proof of the sustained power of positive and substantial assistance to radically change Muslim public opinion.
No wonder "The National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism" released earlier this month by the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that American humanitarian assistance is "often key to ... countering ideological support for terrorism [which is] the enemy's center of gravity."
While disasters on the scale of the tsunami and earthquake create unique problems and solutions, they also suggest a model for future American foreign assistance: aid based on positive humanitarian needs and delivered directly to people in need.
It is time we listen to our foremost military experts on what is truly required to win the war on terror. American humanitarian leadership is the proven path to winning Muslim hearts and minds. As the Navy's top officer Admiral Mullen said, "shame on us" if we fail to heed this message.
* Kenneth Ballen served as counsel to the House Iran-Contra Committee, chief counsel to the Senate Special Committee on Investigations and the Speaker of the House, and is president of Terror Free Tomorrow.
(c) . The 

  PAKISTAN (98%); INDONESIA (96%)








 



March 1, 2006 Wednesday  




 The Indian Example

 
Foreign Affairs: It was scheduled long before the ports deal or the Cheney hunting accident, but President Bush's arrival this week in South Asia mercifully changes the subject. Welcome back, strategic thinking.
South Asia, of course, means India and Pakistan. The former stands as Asia's other ancient giant, a competitor and a counterweight to a China now bidding for regional if not world dominance. The latter remains a troubled ally in the war on terror.
According to various diplomats and pundits, the president would be well-advised not to breathe the word "counterweight," however. "Mr. Bush," warned The Economist, "should . . . be wary of sending the wrong signal about America's intentions towards China." 
The ever-so-erudite British journal should relax. The fact is, however muted, any effort to forge stronger relations with Asia's oldest democracy -- indeed, the world's largest democracy -- puts Beijing on notice.
Just as Richard Nixon's "opening to China" a third of a century ago reminded the Soviet Union there were other Cold War players, a renewed focus on India can check an ambitious China. In an interesting twist of history, China -- largely because of its embrace of market economics -- has far surpassed Russia in global clout.
And India soon will pass China's 1.3 billion population, making it the world's most populous nation. Better yet, the multifaith, self-governing, largely English-speaking country enjoys an Anglo-Saxon legal system bequeathed by its onetime British colonizers. China, however laudable its turn to market economics, remains a contradiction: a capitalistic fig sprouted from a totalitarian thistle.
Politesse does dictate that President Bush, as he visits New Delhi, not trumpet too loudly the favorable realpolitik of his hosts. Our ties with China shouldn't be scuttled over a word misspoken. And India, with its history of making war with China, wants to cultivate its own friendly relations with the Middle Kingdom.
Nevertheless, a look at the Indian subcontinent's place on the map makes Bush's romance with the once backward nation look exciting. Not only does it share a long border with China, but it looms over neighboring Pakistan. Of the two allies in the war on terrorism, India is the more sure-footed.
Jutting into the Indian Ocean, with the Arabian Sea to its west and Bay of Bengal to its east, the land mass extends influence to the world's most troubled regions. It can serve as a stabilizing force in the Middle East, even help contain Burma next door. Like Iran, Burma's paranoid military regime wants nukes.
Officially nonaligned during the Cold War (it actually sided with the USSR on most issues), India has managed to keep its fractious sects participating peacefully in electoral politics. Mostly Hindu, the country is home to the world's largest Muslim population outside Indonesia.
While a democracy, India kept itself shackled in Third World socialism during the Cold War. Over the last dozen years, it moved dramatically through a series of market-oriented reforms. Those reforms, orchestrated by the turbaned Manmohan Singh, the former finance minister who greets Bush as prime minister, have kept India at an 8% growth rate.
The new prosperity, in which high-tech complexes rise above the dusty, squalid streets of the old India, has warmed Indians to the West. Opinion polls keep Americans' favorability rating above 70%. But the same share also want India to remain "independent."
When Singh visited the White House last year, Bush enthusiastically offered to sell India civil nuclear technology. The offer went beyond the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which limits such deals to signatories. India never signed.
Sealing the deal could be tricky, as Singh faces some parliamentary resistance. Likewise, Bush, who expects India to conform to the treaty, faces congressional opposition. Sen. Edward Markey wants to block the deal, the Massachusetts Democrat weirdly reasoning that we can't deny belligerent Iran what we offer a major ally.
Apparently, Markey still thinks this is quail-hunting. Bush's vision is far grander. If his doubters think democracy can't take root in improbable places, indeed serve as a contagious force for good, the president can simply point to India. On to Pakistan.

 INDIA (96%); ASIA (96%); CHINA (95%); PAKISTAN (93%); MYANMAR (92%); SOUTHERN ASIA (92%);  MIDDLE EAST (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%); IRAN,  (79%)







 
 


February 28, 2006, Tuesday



 US tsunami aid still reaps goodwill

 
In one corner of the Islamic world, humanitarian efforts from American marines and civilians dramatically improved Muslims' view of the United States, according to a recent survey from a Washington-based nonprofit group.
The Terror Free Tomorrow organization focused not on a Middle Eastern country, however, but on the world's most populous Muslim nation - Indonesia. Conducted roughly a year after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the poll found that Indonesians "with a favorable opinion of the US" has nearly tripled in the past three years - something experts attribute to American reconstruction efforts in the hardest-hit Aceh Province.
But in order to sustain the feelings of goodwill, the US will need to make broader foreign policy changes, say analysts and Muslim leaders. 
"You don't need to hug Indonesians to death," explains Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a former presidential adviser on foreign affairs. "But the US does need to be more even-handed in its dealings in the Middle East, [and] more sophisticated in its dealings with the Muslim world."
The poll of 1,177 Indonesians in late January found that those "with a favorable opinion of the US" jumped from a low of 15 percent in May 2003 following the US-led invasion of Iraq, to more than 44 percent in January of this year. A similar poll released by the Pew Research Center in June last year also said tsunami aid had changed Indonesian opinions of the US.
"The military aid [after the tsunami], humanitarian help, and private philanthropy ... boosted the image of the US," says Djoko Susilo, a legislator on parliament's security commission, noting that "even rich Indonesians" don't generally give money to such causes.
Terror Free Tomorrow commissioned the poll as a follow-up to a January 2005 survey that found a significant increase in Indonesian support for the US.
"I was very surprised," says the organization's president, Kenneth Ballen. "In a year that's included Koran desecration and the ongoing war in Iraq, you'd think support would have fallen." Instead, the percentage of Indonesians reporting a favorable view of the US was nearly the same a year later.
The 2006 poll, conducted by the respected Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) also said "support for bin Laden and terrorism has dropped to its lowest level since 9/11." In addition, the percentage of Indonesians with very unfavorable views of the United States fell from 48 percent two years ago to just 13 percent in January.
Saiful Mujani, an LSI researcher who supervised the January poll, credits intense media coverage of US humanitarian aid for the shift in opinion. In December 2004, just weeks before the tsunami, Mr. Mujani completed a separate survey finding that "anti-Americanism was still strong. The tsunami changed that."
But not everyone is convinced. "My impression, in discussions with student groups and Muslim leaders, is that feelings towards the United States are overwhelmingly negative," saysSidney Jones, the Jakarta-based director for the International Crisis Group.
To be sure, it's still easy to find signs of anti- American sentiment here. On Feb. 19, hundreds of members of the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front pelted the US Embassy with rocks, eggs, and tomatoes, in protest over alleged US support for the publication of the Muhammad cartoons.
"There's still a lot of lingering resentment over [the war in] Iraq," said Azyumardi Azra, rector of the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta.
Muslim leaders said that Indonesia's historically good relationship with the US was also strained by United States' support for Israel and negative comments over the democratically elected, but hard-line Palestinian group Hamas.
But if the US "wants to support democracy, [it] will have to drop its double standards over the Middle East," says Muhyidin Djunaidi, chairman of the foreign affairs council for the national Islamic scholars' council
Tiffatul Sembiring, president of parliament's Islamist Justice and Prosperity Party explains that "the image of the US is interchangeable with its global chess game," adding that "if the US wants to improve its image, it has to be consistent. Standards over nuclear weapons, for example, have to be the same for all countries."
On a visit to Indonesia in October last year, US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes faced a grilling from students of Mr Azra's university over United States' policy in the Middle East. She later commented that it was similar to questions she got in the Middle East. Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said recently that humanitarian contributions could help change perceptions of the US, referring to improved public views in Pakistan following American aid efforts after the Kashmiri earthquake.
Mr. Susilo,of parliament's security commission, recommends more education - including more Indonesians studying in the US.
"An alliance of civilizations, [rather than a clash] is possible because of a younger generation of Muslim leaders, educated in the States," says Muslim Abdurrahman of the Al-Maun institute, which trains young Muslim leaders.
A case in point is Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who received a US scholarship for officers in the 1980s. He calls the US his "second home."
(c) . The 

  INDONESIA (97%); MIDDLE EAST (93%); IRAQ (92%)




9




February 28, 2006 Tuesday  




 An Assertive India Girds For Negotiations With Bush

 
When President Bush lands in India early Wednesday, he will encounter an ever ambivalent American ally with one important difference from the past: this India has new power to assert its views, some of which align with Mr. Bush's agenda and some of which do not.
  Much has changed, in fact, since the last visit here by an American president, in 2000, when President Clinton's address to the Indian Parliament was received so enthusiastically that lawmakers climbed over benches to shake his hand.
Facing prospects of protests, President Bush is not expected to address Parliament at all. But that is not to say that India has morphed into an anti-American redoubt. There is still in most quarters enthusiasm for relations. 
  But in the past six years, India has also become a more confident partner -- in trade and in America's campaigns against terrorism and nuclear proliferation -- which touch India both obliquely and directly as it looks abroad in pursuit of its own interests like never before. Meanwhile, India's endemic prickliness shows no signs of remission.  
  Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the nonpartisan Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, sees in his country what he calls ''a great admiration for U.S. power,'' a capacity that many Indians find worthy of emulation. ''This is a power that acts independently, acts freely, is not constrained,'' he said. ''It's not so much an anti-American view than wanting to replicate that.'' 
  That fine balance is most visible in talks over whether to reward India with access to American nuclear technology, an issue about which both sides would like to announce a deal this week. They are not there yet, as the talks rub up against the one thing that many Indians, particularly in the political elite, hold dear: the idea of India's independence. 
  Little else may actually unite opinion here. Indeed, the many shades of political opinion found in this feisty country of one billion defy any easy rendering -- of an India as either for or against the United States. India has fundamentalists of the Hindu and Muslim persuasion, Maoist guerrillas, free marketers, newly minted millionaires and Marxist lawmakers with posters of Che Guevara on their office walls.
  The Pew Global Attitudes Project found Indians last year to be among the most cheerful in their appraisal of both the United States and President Bush. In a survey published this week in the Indian newsweekly Outlook, two-thirds of Indians ''strongly'' or ''somewhat'' regarded Mr. Bush as ''a friend of India,'' even as 72 percent called the United States ''a bully.'' 
  In the same survey, conducted by A. C. Nielsen, nearly two-thirds of respondents said India should go its own way and defy American objections on a natural gas pipeline to Iran. Perhaps most striking, fewer than half the Indians surveyed said they would want to ''settle down in the U.S.''
  The conflicting currents come as relations between the countries have undergone a revolution, and are more entwined than ever before, making commonplace today what would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. 
  Indians are buying American arms. The two military powers are conducting joint counterinsurgency exercises. Indians are among the fastest growing immigrant groups in the United States, and charity money from America -- something that would be held in suspicion in the recent past -- is helping to train Indian nurses to care for people with AIDS. 
  But it is the nuclear deal that is potentially most fraught for both sides. In contradiction to its stand against nuclear proliferation with countries like Iran, the White House has promised India access to civilian nuclear technology, provided that New Delhi comes up with a plan to separate its civilian and military programs. 
  As beneficial as such a deal would be to this vast, energy-starved nation, it is this demand that has exposed a deep vein of postcolonial pride in the Indian political culture. Why, even pro-American voices are asking, should Washington be allowed to exert leverage over the contours of the nuclear program in India, long a defiant opponent of the global nonproliferation treaty? 
  ''No matter what your position is on whether you think India should have a big nuclear program or a small nuclear program, a lot of people are saying, 'Hang on, weren't we told this choice is ours?' '' said Mr. Mehta, the political analyst. ''It's an attachment to India's own sovereignty, also to what we think India's own capability is.''
  Even the most avid proponents of the new partnership are circling the sovereignty wagons. A senior Indian government official, who did not want to be quoted for fear of jeopardizing the continuing talks, said the future course of relations might hinge on the tendency of the Bush White House to cast nations as either adversary or ally. 
  India, the official made clear, can be neither. ''This is a very sovereignty-conscious country,'' the official said.
  The nuclear talks are moving neither as swiftly nor as smoothly as either Washington or New Delhi had hoped. India insists that its own strategic interests must be placed before the imperatives of the White House. 
  Nor have the quid pro quo suggestions made by the American ambassador in India, David C. Mulford, gone down particularly well: in exchange for nuclear cooperation, Mr. Mulford suggested in an interview with an Indian news agency earlier this month, India would have to take a stance against Iran's nuclear ambitions, cooperation that Washington clearly cherishes. 
  Such a diplomatic tempest did his remarks cause that the embassy later took pains to say Mr. Mulford's comments had been misinterpreted. 
  As it happened, India voted against Iran at the early February meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Later, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was prompted to reassure Parliament that India's vote was based only on its national interest.
  On Monday, the prime minister again went to Parliament to reassure lawmakers that India's national security would not be compromised, notwithstanding American demands. ''We remain firm in that the decision of what facilities may be identified as civilian will be made by India alone, and not by anyone else,'' he said. More to the point, he maintained that India engaged in negotiations only as ''an equal partner.'' 
  A glimpse of how varied India regards its new suitor is clearly on display in Hyderabad, in the heart of the country, which Mr. Bush will visit on Friday. 
  In the shadow of a four-pillared monument called the Charminar, grape sellers, tailors and college students quietly curse America's treatment of the Muslim world. The Charminar, like Hyderabad itself, was built by the Iranians who conquered this part of the country 500 years ago. It stands as a testament to what the Indian government repeatedly describes as its ''civilizational'' ties to Iran as well as to the political significance of Muslim public opinion in this country. India's Muslim population is second in size only to Indonesia's.
  ''They talk about democracy, but democracy is on their lips,'' a tailor named Abdul Karim said. ''In their heart, it's bullying.'' 
  Kodandaram Reddy, 50, a professor of political science at Osmania University, discerned a certain generational gap, with young Indians less troubled by the prospect of American domination than those of his generation. 
  ''They think one need not be too scared about white people, we can handle them,'' Mr. Reddy offered. ''It's naive to think it's always possible to talk it over. It's not possible. Especially not with the Americans.''
  In fact, in the courtyard of the Cyber Towers building can be found those young men and women who have cashed in, like no other generation of Indians, on the mighty possibilities of American outsourcing. 
  They seemed the most confident that India was capable of splitting the difference, reaping the benefits of its new ties to America while keeping its more powerful ally at a safe distance. 
  Swathi Reddy, 25, said she was swiftly hired by an American company as soon as she graduated from engineering college. Had she graduated even a few years earlier, she would have had to wait for work. ''It's a very good thing,'' she said of the new United States-India partnership. ''We are benefiting the most.''
  Arun Chinnasamy, 28, said that he had no plans to protest the Bush visit but added that he felt no love for Bush administration's policies, like the pressure on India to vote against Iran's nuclear ambitions. ''You can't have someone peering into your own house,'' is how he put it.
  But his colleague, Pranesh Upasi, 26, was not terribly worried. ''India,'' he said, ''can stand up for itself.''


 INDIA (99%); UNITED STATES (98%)







  



February 27, 2006 Monday



 Wheels of justice turning slowly for '02 Indonesian ambush victims

 
Feb. 27--ALAMOSA - It has been more than three years since an Adams State College graduate's husband was killed and she was left for dead in the Indonesian highlands of Papua.
Patsy Spier will never forget that fateful day on Aug. 31, 2002.
It has fueled her reason for living, Spier says. 
Following the attack, "I decided I should not feel sorry for myself," she said last week. She had just shared the horrifying experience with Adams State College students.
The 49-year-old ASC alumna spoke about how the day began with a picnic, which would be cut short by a seasonal rainstorm, and ended with three people, including her husband, dead. She and eight others, including a 6-year-old girl, lay wounded.
The adults on the picnic were all teachers working for an international organization that subcontracts teachers to companies like Freeport, an American copper- and gold-mining company in Indonesia with schools for the children of its miners.
Rick Spier, who was driving one vehicle, died instantly. Patsy Spier, who was riding in the other vehicle, was shot in the back and her right foot. Some of the 70 pieces of shrapnel remain lodged in her body.
By the time rescuers arrived, she was severely bleeding and could barely speak.
She thought about Rick. "I had a feeling in my heart that Rick was gone," she said, "I knew if he wasn't, he'd be trying to get me out."
Patsy Spier says she now focuses on the happy times of the couple's life together.
Rick Spier was a 1988 graduate of ASC. The couple returned to Adams State to earn their master's degrees in 1991.
They spent their marriage teaching elementary school in a variety of places around the globe: six years in Indonesia, three in Peru, one year in Sudan, six months in Brazil and several years in rural U.S. schools like little Dove Creek in Southwestern Colorado.
After her wounds had healed, Patsy sought to find out why the educators and the child had been attacked.
At least 14 people were involved in the attack.
Indonesian officials initially said the ambush was the work of rebels.
A preliminary police investigation later suggested the attack was staged by the military, possibly in retribution for the mine's owners no longer making security payments to the military. The military conducted an investigation, then denied involvement.
The FBI began its own investigation, but Indonesian military officials insisted that FBI agents interview witnesses with military personnel present.
Patsy Spier then sought the help of then Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo. as the United States was re-establishing ties with Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. She went to Washington to urge U.S. officials not re-establish ties because Indonesia was not cooperating with the investigation.
Her persistence paid off. An amendment was introduced to stop military funding until Indonesian authorities cooperated with the investigation.
In July 2003, Colorado Rep. Joel Hefley put an amendment to the appropriations bill to withhold military funding for Indonesia until there was a thorough investigation, and it passed. Sens. Wayne Allard and Russell Feingold later submitted two separate amendments on the floor to withhold funding until there was a thorough investigation. It became law in 2004 that military funds could not be released to the Indonesian military until the secretary of state certified the Indonesian government was cooperating with investigations.
"My issue is not withholding money," Patsy Spier said. "My issue is to have a thorough investigation. I can't get Rick back."
In her travels to Washington, Patsy has told her story to anyone who would listen, even spending 45 minutes in October 2004 with Bambang Yudhoyono, the first democratically elected president of Indonesia. He assured her there would be action.
Eventually the Indonesian government allowed the FBI to investigate what has become known as the Timika ambush.
Recently one of the alleged shooters, Antonius Wamang, was indicted by a federal grand jury, and seven others surrendered to officials in Indonesia. A trial remains to be set and Patsy Spier's attendance will be financed by the FBI.
Today, Patsy Spier lives in Denver where she is a student at University of Denver working on a second master's degree, this one in international studies.
Next week, she will meet with Indonesia's attorney general and minister of justice in Washington, D.C.
Recently, Patsy established the Rick Spier Memorial Endowment at Adams State. This year there is one recipient.
Copyright (c) 2006, , Colo. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

 INDONESIA (98%); UNITED STATES (94%); BRAZIL (79%); SUDAN (79%)






February 25, 2006 Saturday



 Anatomy of conflict

 
Feb. 25--The concerns are coming from people of various faiths and nations worldwide and have taken a dire tone in recent weeks.
For example, those reading Associated Press reports this week might have noticed this quote from Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, prime minister of the predominantly Muslim nation Malaysia:
"There was already lack of trust, and now what has happened has further (exacerbated it). It makes us feel that we are living in a world of fear, and that's no good." 
Meanwhile, People watching C-SPAN2's "Book TV" on Sunday morning heard this observation from National Review Senior Editor Jeffery Hart:
"Never has Islam seemed more alien to us than at this moment."
The two quotes illustrate multiple perspectives on a seemingly ever-expanding cultural rift.
The division between Islamic culture and the West -- whether real or perceived -- has been widely discussed in recent weeks, as the reprinting of controversial cartoon depictions of Muhammad, the prophet and founder of the Islamic religion, by newspapers in Europe and elsewhere touched off violent protests in the Middle East.
But one Islamic scholar contends the primary conflict facing Islam stirs among its own members, not with Western culture.
And he's bringing his message to Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Reza Aslan, the author of the recent book "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam," will present a public lecture called "The Challenges and Reformation of Islam" at 7 p.m. March 9 in King's College's Burke Auditorium, Wilkes-Barre. The event will be his second local speaking engagement that day -- he's scheduled to talk that morning at the Jewish Community Center of Wyoming Valley -- and will come during the Week of Interfaith Harmony, an observance to be proclaimed by Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton, said the Rev. Ann Marie Acacio, president of the Wyoming Valley Interfaith Council.
Aslan's message, discussed in his 2005 book, says Islam will inevitably cleanse itself of its false idols -- bigotry and fanaticism -- as part of an Islamic Reformation, which the author and professor contends is already under way.
"What is taking place now in the Muslim world is an internal conflict between Muslims, not an external battle between Islam and the West," Aslan, 33, argues in what is his first book. "The West is merely a bystander -- an unwary yet complicit casualty of a rivalry that is raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story."
Aslan, a native of Iran, has served as visiting assistant professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Iowa and as president of Harvard University's chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace. The writer, whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, , Slate magazine and The Nation, said the split in thought among members of the Muslim community came during European colonization, when Muslims had to reconcile their own Islamic views and values with the ideals of the modern world.
Aslan believes people in this area will eagerly listen to his message. Even non-Muslims.
"I think people are more than anything really willing and thirsty to talk about ideas that aren't really discussed in an open forum," he said by telephone this week from California, one day before leaving for a speaking engagement in Mississippi.
Aslan said most Americans only have been exposed to the discourse of those at the margins when it comes to Islam, and very few have come to understand what the vast majority of Muslims actually believe.
In his book, Aslan says Muhammad was a man of tolerance, teaching that theological differences between Islam and other "Peoples of the Book" were part of God's divine plan.
Dr. Mahmoud Fahmy, the man responsible for bringing Aslan to this area, characterizes that teaching as important.
"Islam is really a continuation of both Judaism and Christianity," Fahmy said, noting he tells people,
"I could not be a Muslim until I believe in Judaism and Christianity."
Fahmy, a professor emeritus of history and education at Wilkes University, said he met Aslan at a conference in Washington, D.C., and extended the invitation for him to speak here.
"I said, 'You know, I would love for you to come because we are developing a very good inter-religious community in our area,' and he looked at me and said, 'Dr. Fahmy, I would be more than glad to do this.'"
Acacio sees Aslan's presentation as a vital and timely gathering that can forge a bridge of religious and cultural understanding among some.
"It's an opportunity to bring our community together around an issue that many people are uneducated about. With the world affairs as they are," she said, there is "a negative impression in the minds of some people about Islam."
The lecture, sponsored by the Wyoming Valley Interfaith Council in cooperation with King's College, takes place at a time of high tensions between Muslim countries and the West. Recent news reports have detailed: heightened concerns regarding Iran's nuclear intentions; the continuing push by the United States in the war against terror; and the deadly protests in places such as Indonesia and Afghanistan in response to the Muhammad depictions.
In Afghanistan, 11 people were killed in protests earlier this month, the Associated Press reported.
Reza Aslan, author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam," will speak at two local places. His lectures will take place as follows:
--What: "The Challenge and Reformation of Islam"
--When: 7 p.m. March 9
--Where: King's College's Burke Auditorium, William G. McGowan School of Business, North River Street, Wilkes-Barre
--Admission: free to public
--Information: the Rev. Dr. Bob Zanicky, First Presbyterian Church, 824-2478.
--What: "The Iranian Impact on the Jews and Israel"
--When: 10:30 a.m. March 9
--Where: Jewish Community Center of Wyoming Valley, 60 S. River St., Wilkes-Barre.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
To see more of The Times Leader, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesleader.com. Copyright (c) 2006, The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

 MALAYSIA (94%); MIDDLE EAST (92%);  EUROPE (79%); IRAN,  (79%)






    
  


February 25, 2006, Saturday



 DAUGHTER OF ISLAM
Nancy de Wolf Smith The Weekend Interview with Zanuba 'Yenny' Wahid, prominent Muslim who speaks out against terror and hijacking of her religion by ideologues; argues that real strategic plum for terrorists would be her native Indonesia, largest Muslim population on earth; her father Abdurrahman Wahid was first democratic president of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001; drawing








 
 

 

February 25, 2006 Saturday



 Anatomy of conflict; 
Islamic cultural split lecture topic

 
"What is taking place now in the Muslim world is an internal conflict between Muslims, not an external battle between Islam and the West."
Reza Aslan Reza Aslan Author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam"
The concerns are coming from people of various faiths and nations worldwide and have taken a dire tone in recent weeks.
For example, those reading Associated Press reports this week might have noticed this quote from Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, prime minister of the predominantly Muslim nation Malaysia: 


Women protest on Tuesday in Jakarta, Indonesia, carrying signs criticizing, among other things, the publication of cartoon depictions of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. Demonstrations such as this have been widespread in the Muslim world, but author Reza Aslan contends the main conflict facing Islam is not one with the West but a conflict within the religion's own community.
Reza Aslan, author of 'No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam,' will speak March 9 at the Jewish Community Center of Wyoming Valley and King's College.

"  There was already lack of trust, and now what has happened has further (exacerbated it). It makes us feel that we are living in a world of fear, and that's no good."
Meanwhile, People watching C-SPAN2's "Book TV" on Sunday morning heard this observation from National Review Senior Editor Jeffery Hart:
"Never has Islam seemed more alien to us than at this moment."
The two quotes illustrate multiple perspectives on a seemingly ever-expanding cultural rift.
The division between Islamic culture and the West   whether real or perceived   has been widely discussed in recent weeks, as the reprinting of controversial cartoon depictions of Muhammad, the prophet and founder of the Islamic religion, by newspapers in Europe and elsewhere touched off violent protests in the Middle East.
But one Islamic scholar contends the primary conflict facing Islam stirs among its own members, not with Western culture.
And he's bringing his message to Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Reza Aslan, the author of the recent book "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam," will present a public lecture called "The Challenges and Reformation of Islam" at 7 p.m. March 9 in King's College's Burke Auditorium, Wilkes-Barre. The event will be his second local speaking engagement that day   he's scheduled to talk that morning at the Jewish Community Center of Wyoming Valley   and will come during the Week of Interfaith Harmony, an observance to be proclaimed by Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton, said the Rev. Ann Marie Acacio, president of the Wyoming Valley Interfaith Council.
Aslan's message, discussed in his 2005 book, says Islam will inevitably cleanse itself of its false idols   bigotry and fanaticism   as part of an Islamic Reformation, which the author and professor contends is already under way.
"What is taking place now in the Muslim world is an internal conflict between Muslims, not an external battle between Islam and the West," Aslan, 33, argues in what is his first book. "The West is merely a bystander   an unwary yet complicit casualty of a rivalry that is raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story."
Aslan, a native of Iran, has served as visiting assistant professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Iowa and as president of Harvard University's chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace. The writer, whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, , Slate magazine and The Nation, said the split in thought among members of the Muslim community came during European colonization, when Muslims had to reconcile their own Islamic views and values with the ideals of the modern world.
Aslan believes people in this area will eagerly listen to his message. Even non-Muslims.
"I think people are more than anything really willing and thirsty to talk about ideas that aren't really discussed in an open forum," he said by telephone this week from California, one day before leaving for a speaking engagement in Mississippi.
Aslan said most Americans only have been exposed to the discourse of those at the margins when it comes to Islam, and very few have come to understand what the vast majority of Muslims actually believe.
In his book, Aslan says Muhammad was a man of tolerance, teaching that theological differences between Islam and other "Peoples of the Book" were part of God's divine plan.
Dr. Mahmoud Fahmy, the man responsible for bringing Aslan to this area, characterizes that teaching as important.
"Islam is really a continuation of both Judaism and Christianity," Fahmy said, noting he tells people,
"I could not be a Muslim until I believe in Judaism and Christianity."
Fahmy, a professor emeritus of history and education at Wilkes University, said he met Aslan at a conference in Washington, D.C., and extended the invitation for him to speak here.
"I said, 'You know, I would love for you to come because we are developing a very good inter-religious community in our area,' and he looked at me and said, 'Dr. Fahmy, I would be more than glad to do this.'"
Acacio sees Aslan's presentation as a vital and timely gathering that can forge a bridge of religious and cultural understanding among some.
"It's an opportunity to bring our community together around an issue that many people are uneducated about. With the world affairs as they are," she said, there is "a negative impression in the minds of some people about Islam."
The lecture, sponsored by the Wyoming Valley Interfaith Council in cooperation with King's College, takes place at a time of high tensions between Muslim countries and the West. Recent news reports have detailed: heightened concerns regarding Iran's nuclear intentions; the continuing push by the United States in the war against terror; and the deadly protests in places such as Indonesia and Afghanistan in response to the Muhammad depictions.
In Afghanistan, 11 people were killed in protests earlier this month, the Associated Press reported.
Reza Aslan, author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam," will speak at two local places. His lectures will take place as follows:
What: "The Challenge and Reformation of Islam"
When:7 p.m. March 9
Where:King's College's Burke Auditorium, William G. McGowan School of Business, North River Street, Wilkes-Barre
Admission:free to public
Information:the Rev. Dr. Bob Zanicky, First Presbyterian Church, 824-2478.
What:"The Iranian Impact on the Jews and Israel"
When:10:30 a.m. March 9
Where:Jewish Community Center of Wyoming Valley, 60 S. River St., Wilkes-Barre.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.

 MALAYSIA (92%); INDONESIA (92%); EUROPE (79%); MIDDLE EAST (78%); UNITED STATES (52%)







  



February 23, 2006 Thursday  




 Christians Turn on Muslims In Nigeria; 
More Than 30 Die

 
 Christian mobs in this southern city attacked Muslim motorists and traders Wednesday, leaving more than 30 people dead, according to witnesses, as religious riots sparked by the publishing of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad continued into a fifth day in Nigeria. Nationwide, the death toll reached at least 80. 
 Hordes of angry men marauded through Onitsha armed with machetes, guns and boards with nails pounded into their ends, witnesses said. The mobs burned two mosques and looted and destroyed Muslim-owned shops as they sought vengeance for similar attacks against Christians in two predominantly Muslim cities in northern part of the country.  
 "They've been killing our brothers and sisters in the north," men shouted Wednesday morning, according to Afoma Clara Adique, 40, a motorist who had driven through Onitsha. She escaped the mobs, she said, but only after speaking to the men in a regional language used by Christians. 
 Before she could get away, Adique said, she saw burned and dismembered bodies along the side of the road.  
  "Horrible," she said. "I just closed my eyes. It's so horrible." 
 Her traveling companion, Tony Iweka, 45, a magazine editor, said a man in the mob raised his right hand to display what appeared to be a freshly decapitated head.  
 The attacks in Nigeria began this weekend, almost six months after the cartoons were first published in a Danish newspaper and weeks after they ignited a wave of unrest in Muslim countries from Egypt to Indonesia that left about 28 people dead  --  almost all of them shot by security forces  --  in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Libya. But the clashes in Nigeria, this continent's most populous country, have been the deadliest, and the first involving counterattacks by Christians. 
 Religious violence has flared in recent years in this West African nation, which is split roughly in half between a Muslim north and a Christian and animist south, but with most areas containing a mixture of all three religious groups. More than 1,000 people were killed in fighting between Christians and Muslims in 2004. 
 Abdul Arwa, 25, a Muslim from the north, who for the past two years sold tomatoes at a roadside stall in Onitsha, said men stole about $60 from him Wednesday afternoon and tried to stab him before he fled across the Niger River with only the tattered clothes he was wearing. 
 The mob, he said, made clear that the attacks were reprisals for the killings of Muslims in previous days.  
 "They killed our brothers," one attacker said, according to Arwa. "So we are going to kill you." 
 Initial Nigerian news reports put Wednesday's death toll at 22, but witnesses placed the count at more than 30.  
 Truckloads of heavily armed police sought to regain control of the city, but by early afternoon the officers could maintain peace on only part of the roadway into Onitsha, where the massive steel girders of the Head Bridge deliver motorists from the west.  
 At least 19 bodies were visible along that short stretch of road. They appeared to have been beaten, stripped of some of their clothing and, in several cases, burned beyond recognition. 
 Discarded sandals and the round, decorative hats favored by northern Muslims were left behind in the dirt, and the road bore burn marks. 
 Adique and other witnesses said at least 14 other bodies, including several that had been decapitated and mutilated, were visible on the same road but farther from the bridge, in an area where mobs remained in control. Others said there were more bodies in other sections of Onitsha, including near the main bus terminal.  
 Muslim refugees gathered at a police station in the neighboring city of Asaba said they saw dozens of other victims tossed alive into the Niger River, where most were presumed to have drowned.  
 "I saw many people" in the river, said Musa Dayyabu Kumurya, 28, a tailor from the northern state of Kano.  
 Nigeria is home to more than 200 distinct ethnic groups drawn together in a volatile mix by European colonial mapmakers in the 19th century. Onitsha, alongside the historic trading route of the Niger River, has long been a commercial center. Though the city is considered part of the homeland of the heavily Catholic Ibo ethnic group, thousands of northern Muslims, mostly members of the Hausa ethnic group, have moved here in search of work.  
 The recent rioting began when Muslim mobs  --  consisting mostly of Hausa men  --  destroyed 30 Christian churches and killed 18 people Saturday in the northeastern city of Maiduguri. Those attacks were followed on Monday by rioting in Bauchi, another northern and mostly Muslim city, where 25 died over two days. 
 The rioting in Onitsha began Tuesday, according to news reports, after a bus carrying bodies of victims from the Maiduguri riots arrived at the city's main bus terminal. On Wednesday, according to the Reuters news agency, the violence spread to Enugu, a nearby, predominantly Christian city, where seven died.  
 A few miles from Onitsha, in a Asaba, northern Muslim refugees plotted their return home. Few had any money, clothes or other possessions for the journey. Some also had bandages on their heads and legs covering wounds from the attack.  
 Sale Garba, 40, said he was selling kola nuts at a market when the rioting began Tuesday. Attackers stole $23 from him and sliced his chin with a machete before he escaped, he said. On Wednesday, as darkness fell on the crowded grounds of a police station, he wondered how he would return to his northern home of Bauchi. After two years in Onitsha, he said, he was done.  
 "I will not go back," Garba said.  

 NIGERIA (95%); WESTERN AFRICA (79%); EGYPT (79%); NIGER (79%);  LIBYA (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); AFGHANISTAN (68%)






   
 

February 21, 2006 Tuesday



 New Brooks' movie seems worthy to see - [02/21]

 
I haven't seen Albert Brooks' new movie, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, but I will, and hopefully before anyone issues a fatwa against Brooks, theaters showing the film and anyone going to see it. If the past [Salman Rushdiecq] and the present [cartoon riots] are any indication, this may be inevitable.
I've seen a trailer for the film, which Brooks wrote, directed and in which he plays himself, in a story about a "government-sponsored mission to find out what makes Muslims laugh," and it looks hilarious. 
Rarely has a filmmaker been braver.
For anyone just emerging from a deep freeze, you need to know that no sooner had Paris' suburbs begun cooling after weeks of Muslim rioting, than hordes of angry Muslims again took to European and Arab streets to rail against some newspaper comics.
One depicts the Prophet Mohammed, standing on a cloud addressing a long line of charcoal-like figures with wisps of smoke still rising from them.
"Stop," he says, "we've run out of virgins."
Another depicts the Prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban.
Insulted by a cartoon, most of us would write irate letters to the editor or circulate a petition, but not these guys.
In the Gaza Strip, according to Associated Press reports, Islamists were busting into hotels and apartments in search of random Europeans to kidnap.
There's been rioting in Pakistan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon, with chants of "Death to France!" and "Death to Denmark!" Afghani, Indonesian and Iranian officials condemned the drawings, and Iran's called for a Holocaust cartoon contest in response. Why not? Denmark prints offensive cartoons, so attack the Jews.
The Paris daily that reprinted the comics fired its managing editor. A Jordanian newspaper reportedly ran some of the drawings, ostensibly to show how offensive they were, and in an editorial, urged the world's Muslims to "be reasonable." Within hours, the editor was reportedly fired and the issue withdrawn from sale. A Norwegian editor reportedly said he's received thousands of hate e-mails, including 20 death threats, since printing the drawings and was under police protection. Guards reportedly had to escort the Danish Olympic team, comprised mostly of women, into the games.
This insane reaction to the publication of cartoons is especially ironic, considering how rife the Arab press is with highly offensive anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-Christian cartoons.
Amid the furor that has swept the Muslim world from Arabia to Indonesia, the director of media rights group Reporters Without Borders reportedly said, "We need to figure out how to reconcile freedom of expression and respect of faith."
Funny, no one's ever found that necessary when the subject of horribly offensive cartoons are Christians, Jews and/or Israelis.
I've been told, when offended by something published depicting a star of David dripping blood and dollar signs, or a hook-nosed figure labeled "Jew" biting the heads off babies for instance, that I'm over-sensitive. I've yet to burn an embassy or kidnap a foreigner, though.
One might be tempted to conclude that radical Muslims have no sense of humor, but obviously that's not the case. What else can explain the Muslim world rising up to yell, "How dare you call us violent! We'll kill you!"
But, seriously, folks, radical Islam must not be permitted to intimidate everyone else with threats and acts of violence, for obvious reasons.
Besides, as we used to say in college -"[Bleep] em if they can't take a joke."
- E-mail Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at RachelZ@thnewsnet.comor call 553-6824.

 ISRAEL (92%); INDONESIA (92%);  FRANCE (90%); IRAN,  (90%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); JORDAN (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); LEBANON (79%); EGYPT (79%); NORWAY (79%); EUROPE (77%); SYRIA (77%); AFGHANISTAN (72%); 







 
 
 

February 21, 2006 Tuesday



 Brooks' movie seems worthy to see

 
I haven't seen Albert Brooks' new movie, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, but I will, and hopefully before anyone issues a fatwa against Brooks, theaters showing the film and anyone going to see it. If the past (Salman Rushdiecq) and the present (cartoon riots) are any indication, this may be inevitable.
I've seen a trailer for the film, which Brooks wrote, directed and in which he plays himself, in a story about a "government-sponsored mission to find out what makes Muslims laugh," and it looks hilarious. 
Rarely has a filmmaker been braver.
For anyone just emerging from a deep freeze, you need to know that no sooner had Paris' suburbs begun cooling after weeks of Muslim rioting, than hordes of angry Muslims again took to European and Arab streets to rail against some newspaper comics.
One depicts the Prophet Mohammed, standing on a cloud addressing a long line of charcoal-like figures with wisps of smoke still rising from them.
"Stop," he says, "we've run out of virgins."
Another depicts the Prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban.
Insulted by a cartoon, most of us would write irate letters to the editor or circulate a petition, but not these guys.
In the Gaza Strip, according to Associated Press reports, Islamists were busting into hotels and apartments in search of random Europeans to kidnap.
There's been rioting in Pakistan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon, with chants of "Death to France!" and "Death to Denmark!" Afghani, Indonesian and Iranian officials condemned the drawings, and Iran's called for a Holocaust cartoon contest in response. Why not? Denmark prints offensive cartoons, so attack the Jews.
The Paris daily that reprinted the comics fired its managing editor. A Jordanian newspaper reportedly ran some of the drawings, ostensibly to show how offensive they were, and in an editorial, urged the world's Muslims to "be reasonable." Within hours, the editor was reportedly fired and the issue withdrawn from sale. A Norwegian editor reportedly said he's received thousands of hate e-mails, including 20 death threats, since printing the drawings and was under police protection. Guards reportedly had to escort the Danish Olympic team, comprised mostly of women, into the games.
This insane reaction to the publication of cartoons is especially ironic, considering how rife the Arab press is with highly offensive anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-Christian cartoons.
Amid the furor that has swept the Muslim world from Arabia to Indonesia, the director of media rights group Reporters Without Borders reportedly said, "We need to figure out how to reconcile freedom of expression and respect of faith."
Funny, no one's ever found that necessary when the subject of horribly offensive cartoons are Christians, Jews and/or Israelis.
I've been told, when offended by something published depicting a star of David dripping blood and dollar signs, or a hook-nosed figure labeled "Jew" biting the heads off babies for instance, that I'm over-sensitive. I've yet to burn an embassy or kidnap a foreigner, though.
One might be tempted to conclude that radical Muslims have no sense of humor, but obviously that's not the case. What else can explain the Muslim world rising up to yell, "How dare you call us violent! We'll kill you!"
But, seriously, folks, radical Islam must not be permitted to intimidate everyone else with threats and acts of violence, for obvious reasons.
Besides, as we used to say in college - "(Bleep) em if they can't take a joke."
- E-mail Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at RachelZ@thnewsnet.com or call 553-6824.

 ISRAEL (92%); INDONESIA (92%);  FRANCE (90%); IRAN,  (90%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); JORDAN (79%); LEBANON (79%); EGYPT (79%); NORWAY (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); EUROPE (77%); SYRIA (77%); AFGHANISTAN (72%)







 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


February 20, 2006 Monday  




 THE WORLD

 
Pakistan closes city to Muslim protesters
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani security forces arrested hundreds of Islamic hardliners, virtually sealed off the capital and used gunfire and tear gas Sunday to quell protests against caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. 
Pakistan had banned protests after riots killed five people in two cities last week.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world Sunday, demonstrators tried unsuccessfully to storm the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia, and tens of thousands rallied in the Turkish city of Istanbul and complained about negative Western perceptions of Islam.
Troops patrolled the deserted streets of the northern Nigerian town of Maiduguri, where thousands of Muslims attacked Christians and burned churches Saturday, killing at least 15 people during a protest over the cartoons. Most of the victims were beaten to death by rioters.
Protests during the past three weeks have grown into a broader anger against the West in general, and Israel and the United States in particular.
Mine blast traps 65 in Mexico
PIEDRAS NEGRAS, MEXICO - A gas explosion Sunday in a northern Mexico coal mine trapped at least 65 miners below ground with a limited supply of oxygen, government and company officials said.
Eight miners were rescued and were being treated in a hospital with burns and broken bones. The trapped miners were in extreme danger, said Ruben Escudero Chavez, the director of the mine owners Grupo Industrial Minera Mexico, a subsidiary of mining giant Grupo Mexico.
Political talks falter in Iraq
BAGHDAD, IRAQ - Iraqi political parties have run into major obstacles in talks on a new national unity government, officials said Sunday, raising the possibility of a major delay that would be a setback to U.S. hopes for a significant reduction in troop levels this year.
In northeastern Iraq, search parties alerted by a shepherd found the wreckage of a German private plane that went missing in bad weather three days earlier with five Germans and one Iraqi on board. Iraqi and U.S. officials said there was no sign of survivors.
In other news
A CHEMICAL SPILL on a river in southern China has cut water supplies to 20,000 people for at least four days, an official Chinese newspaper said Monday. China Daily reported that water was being trucked in to residents.
MILITANTS WHO KIDNAPPED nine foreign oil workers in a flurry of attacks that forced a 20 percent cut in Nigerian crude exports vowed Sunday to escalate the violence, threatening to fire rockets at international oil tankers.
ISRAEL BRANDED THE PALESTINIAN government a "terrorist authority" Sunday and halted the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money after Hamas took control of the Palestinian parliament.
OSAMA BIN LADEN PROMISED never to be captured alive and declared the U.S. had resorted to the same "barbaric" tactics used by Saddam Hussein, according to an audiotape purportedly by the al-Qaida leader posted today on a militant Web site.
A RIGHT-WING BRITISH HISTORIAN goes on trial today in Austria on charges of denying the Holocaust occurred - a crime punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment.
- Edited from wire reportsby Amber Billings

 IRAQ (95%); UNITED STATES (94%); PAKISTAN (94%); MEXICO (94%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (92%); ISRAEL (92%);  NIGERIA (92%); INDONESIA (92%); TURKEY (79%)







 
 


February 20, 2006 Monday



 
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani security forces arrested hundreds of Islamic hard-liners, virtually sealed off the capital and used gunfire and tear gas Sunday to quell protests against caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Pakistan had banned protests after riots killed five people in two cities last week.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world on Sunday, demonstrators with wooden staves and stones tried unsuccessfully to storm the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia, while tens of thousands rallied in the Turkish city of Istanbul and complained about negative Western perceptions of Islam.
Troops patrolled the deserted streets of the northern Nigerian town of Maiduguri, where thousands of Muslims attacked Christians and burned churches Saturday, killing at least 15 people during a protest over the cartoons. Most of the victims were beaten to death by rioters.
In Saudi Arabia, newspapers ran full-page apologies by Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first ran the caricatures in September. The newspaper's Web site said businesses placed the ad on their own initiative, using an apology issued by the newspaper late last month. It did not identify the companies or say if they were Danish.

 PAKISTAN (94%); INDONESIA (92%); NIGERIA (79%); TURKEY (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (75%)




10


 
 

 

February 20, 2006 Monday



 English skills are as vital as science, math

 
I endorse the views of Kathy Gage in her letter, Feb. 15 regarding better English skills for students.
There is nothing wrong with the president's desire for engineers and physicists in itself, except perhaps that the mechanical sciences were more of the late 19th and the 20th century than the 21st century.
Today's scientific breakthroughs will more likely be in biology and biochemical applications. And any scientists who cannot write cohesive, clear reports are unlikely to be funded or see many applications of their work.
Health practitioners, particularly, already may spend as much as half their workday writing records that can make the difference between life or death for the patient. 
Business, law, ministries, teaching, journalism, think-tanks and researchers all depend on communication skills and verbal reasoning for their livelihoods.
And citizens with good comprehension don't necessarily have to be formally trained in rhetoric to perceive one of its famous logical fallacies when evaluating an argument.
But schools can't do it all. Parents should be shutting off VCRs, TVs, and video games for at least a half an hour of reading to and sounding out letters with preschoolers each night.
Retired grandparents can find inexpensive phonics workbooks in most local drugstores for working with visiting children.
Family dinners that include conversation may not only revive a lost art, but teach listening and reasoning.
A demand that schoolchildren write thank-you notes begins concern for spelling and clarity of penmanship.
Our high school students and workers should not have to depend on word-processing programs to catch run-on or incomplete sentences, or excessive use of passive voice (bureaucratic-speak).
It's embarrassing that the programs exist.
Diane Carpenter
Danville
Presidential snooping
Know that the president will listen to your cell phone, your e-mail, your most intimate personal communications all for the sake of national security.
Say that you cannot abide with this flagrant abuse of power by our President Bush.
Say that your Constitution is more important than that. Say that they may tape and save only that which they know to be terrorist in nature.
And let there be oversight. Let there be light in the midst of darkness.
Bill Carmel
Danville
Muslim cartoons
As Times columnist Kathleen Parker pointed out, actually seeing these cartoons is nearly impossible in the elite media. Where's the sanctimonious "I may disagree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" from many of the First Amendment extremists?
Usually we hear this disingenuous defense when the butt of the joke is some Christian or middle America group.
Where was the reluctance to publish pictures of a crucifix in urine?
However, now that it's Muslims who've been offended and death is actually a remote possibility, these principled newsroom tough guys are MIA.
The Europeans have finally figured out that importing workers to "do the work that Europeans won't do" was bad policy.
Islam commands its adherents to either convert unbelievers, subject them to second-class citizenship -- called dhimmitude, or ultimately kill them if they accept neither of the first two options.
Frank discussion of the threat Islam poses to the West is exactly the sort of issue that the First Amendment is intended to protect.
However, it's also an issue that our elites are afraid to discuss.
Muslims are fighting Jews in Israel, Hindus in Kashmir, Christians in the Philippines and Indonesia and fellow Muslims in Darfur.
But somehow we're asked to believe that the Danes and the Norwegians are the problem?
Jim Hemenway
San Ramon
Appalled
I am thoroughly disgusted and furious with the Salvation Army's decision to sell the piece of property left to them. They were given the property for safekeeping.
They should have been honest with her and told her to donate it to the Nature Conservancy, who would be better apt to keep it the way it is. Where are their brains? The poor woman is not even dead yet and they couldn't wait to get their hands on the $9 million the property is worth.
Shame, shame, shame on you Salvation Army. Oh I hope this makes the national news!
Sheila Mohammed
Livermore
Value humanity
This is about the Linda Davis article on the Weber property.
Thank you for covering this story in all its convolutions. Saddest to me is that a developer, a city and a charitable organization care more about money than the protection of the wishes of a fellow human being.
If we continue to value greed above humane considerations we will lose the planet.
We diminish the human spirit when we diminish other life forms, including the Earth.
Bonnie Epstein
Danville
Betrayal
Congratulations to the Salvation Army on the sale of the Danville land for "luxury" homes. By doing so the 'Army' has accomplished two things:
 They have betrayed the trust of Lucille Weber who wanted her land preserved as recreational open space.
 The Salvation Army has been permanently removed from my donation list.
Jim Duncan
San Ramon
Childish disrespect
Both sides debating these satirical cartoons display childish disrespect and intolerance, ignoring the children's rhyme "sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me." Mohammed condemned killing innocents, yet some Muslims celebrated 9/11, demand Israel's annihilation, encouraged kamikaze Jihad and rioted over cartoons.
Jesus said "love your enemies," yet American bombs killed innocent and guilty Iraqis. Irum Sarfaraz, offering reasoned Muslim viewpoints writes, "Religion is very sacred and ... cannot be ... ridiculed or criticized."
She argued that "freedom of speech ... stops where the border of religion begins." The sensitivity of ... any religion, needs to be respected."
Western freedoms tolerate offensive speech and Sarfaraz's opinions. Mutual respect creates religious freedom. But freedom isn't free when legislated by theocratic decree.
Sarfaraz purports that Muslims "do not accept violence," then contradicts with "violence erupting over these cartoons is justified." Sarfaraz claims widespread Muslim respect for others' beliefs, yet concedes without denunciation that "the fatwa of death (hasn't) been removed" from Salman Rushdie.
If Muslims show no respect for the right to life of Rushdie and Danish cartoonists, how can they seriously expect empathy from the West over cartoons?
Ed Chainey
Richmond
Bush goes too far
President Bush has trampled over the civil rights of all Americans by his use of wiretapping without a warrant. He says that he is empowered to do these acts because he is commander-in-chief. However, just as Nixon did in the times of Watergate, Bush is using the power of the executive branch to run roughshod over the law.
In fact, there are many rumblings in the GOP that say he went too far in this case, especially when a special court was set up in 1978 specifically to handle this kind of situation.
Mr. Bush thinks he can break the law because he can. Americans have to speak up and tell him that he went over the line on this issue.
Mitchell Friedman
Walnut Creek

 







 
 

 

February 20, 2006 Monday



 Violent Muslim protests erupt in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey

 
Hundreds of Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad tried to storm the U.S. Embassy on Sunday, smashing the windows of a guard post but failing to push through the gates. Several people were injured.
Pakistani security forces, meanwhile, sealed off the capital of Islamabad to block a planned mass demonstration and fired tear gas and gunshots to chase off protesters. In Turkey, tens of thousands gathered in Istanbul chanting slogans against Denmark, Israel and the United States.
Protests over the cartoons, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September and have been republished in other European publications and elsewhere, have swept across the Muslim world, growing into mass outlets for rage against the West in general, and Israel and the United States in particular. 
Christians also have become targets. Pakistani Muslims protesting in the southern city of Sukkur ransacked and burned a church Sunday after hearing accusations that a Christian man had burned pages of the Quran, Islam's holy book.
That incident came a day after Muslims protesting in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri attacked Christians and burned 15 churches in a three-hour rampage that killed at least 15 people. Some 30 other people have died during protests over the cartoons that erupted about three weeks ago.
In Jakarta, about 400 people marched to the heavily fortified U.S. mission in the center of the city, behind a banner reading ''We are ready to attack the enemies of the Prophet.''
Protesters throwing stones and brandishing wooden staves tried to break through the gates. They set fire to U.S. flags and a poster of President Bush and smashed the windows of a guard outpost before dispersing after a few minutes.
The U.S. Embassy called the attacks deplorable, describing them as acts of ''thuggery.''
A protest organizer said the West, and particularly the United States, is attacking Islam.
''They want to destroy Islam through the issue of terrorism... and all those things are engineered by the United States,'' said Maksuni, who only uses one name.
''We are fighting America fiercely this time,'' he said. ''And we also are fighting Denmark.''
In Pakistan, where protests last week left five people dead, police put up roadblocks around Islamabad to keep people from entering the capital for a planned mass protest.
Authorities also detained several lawmakers and Islamic leaders during raids in three cities and announced they would arrest anyone joining a gathering of more than five people to prevent the demonstration.
Opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a senior figure in the Islamic coalition, was eventually given permission to lead a small rally through a square in the city center. The protesters chanted ''God is great!'' and ''Any friend of America is a traitor.''
But when about 100 other protesters tried to reach the square, officers fired tear gas and at least one gunshot to chase them off. More gunshots were heard later in the city, but it wasn't clear who fired them. At least two policemen were injured, one bleeding from the head. Several demonstrators also were hurt.
A crowd of 700 people, some throwing stones at police, tried to march toward Islamabad's heavily guarded diplomatic enclave about 1.3 miles from the square but with blocked by troops in armored personnel carriers.
Police also blocked about 1,500 protesters from reaching Islamabad from the city of Peshawar by putting shipping containers and sandbags on a bridge along a highway leading to the capital, said Mohammed Iqbal, a key member of the religious alliance.
Elsewhere in Pakistan, about 600 people staged a protest in Chaman, a town near the Afghan border, burning Danish flags and an effigy of the Danish prime minister.
Such protests prompted Denmark on Sunday to temporarily recall its ambassador to Pakistan, Bent Wigotski, because it was impossible for him ''to perform his job duties during the present circumstances,'' the Danish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

  TURKEY (95%);  PAKISTAN (94%); DENMARK (93%); ISRAEL (92%); NIGERIA (79%)







 
 



February 20, 2006 Monday



 Muslims distance selves from rioting; 
VIOLENCE CONDEMNED IN OPEN FORUM

 
Distancing themselves from the bloody riots that have rocked cities around the Muslim world following the now-infamous Danish cartoon defamation of the Islamic prophet, moderate Muslims from the Bay Area held a forum on Sunday to reaffirm their faith's tenets: love and peace in the name of Allah. 
The open house at the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara was aimed at educating Muslims and non-Muslims alike on ``how Muhammad would have responded through education and rejected violence,'' said Safaa Ibrahim, executive director of the Northern California chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The forum, called ``Explore the Life of Muhammad,'' drew a multiethnic crowd of several hundred people. It was sponsored by CAIR, the Muslim Community Association and American Muslim.
Organizers weren't naive about why their open-house attracted the public and media attention. ``It's not us,'' Ibrahim said. ``It's the controversy.''
The controversy was lit more than six months ago when a Danish newspaper published caricatures of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in derogatory cartoons, with one depicting him wearing a bomb-shaped turban.
Dennis Fox of Willow Glen remembers seeing the images in the fall in the foreign press. Since then, the murder and mayhem that continues to spill forth from certain segments of the Islamic world has troubled him, Fox said.
``I strongly believe in freedom of the press; it's one of the most important tenets of a free society,'' said Fox, who also attended a community meeting sponsored by the Muslim Community Association after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He said he attends the forums ``to try to understand why they're so angry with the West,'' adding that he finds the cartoons ``reprehensible.''
``I understand the anger and the hurt,'' Fox, 43, said. ``But I don't understand the murders and violence.''
Unequivocal condemnation of the violence was the message of the day from Muslim community leaders.
``This is an issue that has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It's a question of intentional provocation,'' said Iman Zaid Shakir, of Hayward's Zaytuna Institute. ``As Muslims, we should understand that and not be provoked to responding. Let us take the high ground as our prophet did.''
Since January's republication of the cartoons by European newspapers, a small Danish political brouhaha escalated into an international crisis that has left at least 45 people dead. Tens of thousands of militant Muslims have taken to the streets of Cape Town, South Africa, Gaza and the West Bank. Last weekend in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, several hundred Islamist activists tried to storm the U.S. embassy.
Rashid Kaddoura, a Muslim from Santa Clara, said such extremist violence is driven by political motivation or ignorance. It is committed only by a small segment of the world's 1 billion Muslims, he said.
``We are a peaceful people; we live peacefully next to our neighbors,'' Kaddoura said. ``But some people try to instigate things. The violent reaction is wrong. We support peaceful protests.''
Contact Truong Phuoc Khánh at tkhanh@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-2729

 UNITED STATES (93%); DENMARK (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); SOUTH AFRICA (79%); 







 
 



February 20, 2006 Monday



 In brief

 



Nightclub fire victims remembered Scott Corneau, right, comforts Jennifer Loring as they pause at a marker for Loring's cousin, Tammy Mattera-Housa, at the site of The Station nightclub fire Sunday in West Warwick, R.I. A memorial service was held at the site, marking the anniversary of the blaze that killed 100 people and injured more than 200 on Feb. 20, 2003.

WASHINGTON

FEMA overhaul urged
The Federal Emergency Management Agency should be dissolved and rebuilt before the upcoming hurricane season, a Democratic senator said Sunday.
"FEMA has become, to many people in America, and particularly the Gulf Coast, a joke, a four-letter word," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
He favored keeping the agency within the Homeland Security Department. FEMA was independent before it was folded into Homeland Security when the department was created after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, in appearances on Sunday morning talk shows, warned against overhauling FEMA with hurricane season only three months away.

ROCHESTER, N.Y.

Cold weather grips nation
A deep freeze stretched from the Rockies to New England on Sunday as workers tried to restore power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses left dark by fierce wind that also was blamed for four deaths.
Rochester had a low of 10 degrees Sunday morning, and winds of up to 17 mph made it feel like almost 10 below zero, the National Weather Service said. In the Upper Midwest, the 8 a.m. reading of 2 below zero at Duluth, Minn., combined with 17 mph wind for a wind chill of 23 below.
As far south as Arkansas, Little Rock had a Sunday morning low of just 18. Farther west, Alliance, Neb., bottomed out at 8 below, the weather service said.

VIENNA, Austria

Holocaust denial trial starts
A right-wing British historian goes on trial today on charges of denying the Holocaust occurred - a crime punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment in this country once run by the Nazis.
The trial of David Irving opens amid fresh - and fierce - debate over freedom of expression in Europe, where the printing and reprinting of unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has triggered violent protests worldwide.
Irving, 67, has been in custody since his arrest in November on charges stemming from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he was accused of denying the Nazis' extermination of 6 million Jews.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

Cartoon violence continues
Pakistani security forces arrested hundreds of Islamic hard-liners, virtually sealed off the capital and used gunfire and tear gas Sunday to quell protests over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons that were banned after a wave of deadly riots.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world, demonstrators with wooden staves and stones tried unsuccessfully to storm the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia, while tens of thousands rallied in the Turkish city of Istanbul and complained about negative Western perceptions of Islam.
Troops patrolled the deserted streets of the northern Nigerian town of Maiduguri, where thousands of Muslims attacked Christians and burned churches Saturday, killing at least 15 people during a protest over the cartoons. Most were beaten to death by rioters.
From Times Leader wire services

 UNITED STATES (94%); PAKISTAN (92%); AUSTRIA (86%);  EUROPE (68%); CENTRAL EUROPE (68%)







   


February 19, 2006 Sunday  




 Within Islam's Embrace, a Voice for Malaysia's Women

 
Sometimes it seems that Zainah Anwar -- articulate, a little brassy, a presence wherever she goes -- single-handedly keeps the flame for women's rights alive in Malaysia, a country that portrays itself as the model of a progressive Muslim society.
  With the acid touch that has made her an accomplished campaigner, Ms. Zainah calls the officials in the government religious departments ''those Taliban-minded bureaucrats.'' Then skittering back from the precipice of real trouble, she notes that nearly 50 percent of Malaysian women work, some in top jobs, including the governor of the Central Bank. 
 Ms. Zainah, one of her nation's best known figures, is a founder of Sisters in Islam, sassily known as SIS, which has for nearly 20 years lobbied for justice for women, always within the framework of Islam and the words of the Koran. 
  In doing so, her group confronts the conundrum that is Malaysia: a relatively prosperous, politically stable nation of 24 million yet one where powerful Islamic Affairs Departments in the 13 states and a federal jurisdiction that includes the capital, Kuala Lumpur, run Shariah courts that administer Islamic affairs, including matters of marriage, divorce and death. 
  ''I want an Islam that upholds the principles of justice, equality, freedom and dignity,'' she said. ''There is nothing contradictory between wanting these principles to guide and govern your life and being a good Muslim.'' 
  In her latest victory, Ms. Zainah forced the government to step back from amendments to the family law that made it easier for men to practice polygamy and to divorce.
  Her group fought the amendments not only because they represented a backward step, but also because the governing party of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi insisted that the women in the Senate who personally opposed the new amendments vote in their favor. 
  ''Senators were told to vote against their conscience,'' said Ms. Zainah, 51, who attended graduate school in the United States. ''Can you imagine, in the debate, one minister apologized to her daughter for having to vote with the party whips. She was in tears.'' 
  The Parliament passed the amendments just before the end of the year, and Ms. Zainah began a strong opposition campaign that was covered in the news media. In mid-January, the government announced that the cabinet would review the measures. Ms. Zainah and members of other women's groups and the bar association were invited to join a broad commission to find a compromise.
  ''The cabinet ordered the attorney general -- and not the religious department -- to find solutions,'' she said triumphantly. ''They recognized that the religious department and its obscurantist apparatchiks are the source of the problem.'' It was the first time, she said, that the forces of progress were sitting in the same room ''on equal terms'' with Islamic clerics and scholars. 
  As satisfying as the win might be, it illustrated the extent of the opposition Ms. Zainah and her supporters still face. 
  The politics of Islam in Malaysia are defined by the hand of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who governed for 22 years before stepping aside in 2004. He left a country that, in contrast to many others in Southeast Asia, gives the impression of actually working -- big roads, new factories -- and that recovered smartly from the regional economic downturn of the late 1990's. 
  In order to keep at bay the leading Islamic party, Parti Islam se-Malaysia, Mr. Mahathir poured resources into the religious bureaucracy, giving it powers in the states and at the federal level on all matters to do with Islam. Malaysia is an Islamic state, unlike neighboring Indonesia, which rejected Islam as part of its Constitution at independence from the Dutch. 
  When Mr. Abdullah took over as Mr. Mahathir's successor in 2004, he was seen as a reformer who would soften the increasingly rigid Islam of the religious courts. But so far, Mr. Abdullah has taken few steps to curb the powers of the religious leaders. 
  Instead, the government closed a provincial newspaper, The Sarawak Tribune, on Feb. 9 after it published the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and made it an offense to own or copy the cartoons.
  But Ms. Zainah said she believed that Mr. Abdullah would be forced to moderate the policies of the religious leaders to save Malaysia's reputation. She also said the prime minister, who is chairman of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, is genuinely progressive.
  In an embarrassing incident last month, Islamic religious authorities insisted on giving a Malaysian celebrity an Islamic burial, even though his family testified that he remained a Hindu until his death. The man, known simply as Moorthy, was the first Malaysian to scale Mount Everest. After Muslim authorities took away his body for burial, his wife appealed to a civil court. Her plea was refused. 
  But soon after, the prime minister announced that the attorney general would consult with a cross section of society to establish a new policy on the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam.
  ''A model progressive Muslim country,'' Ms. Zainah observed, ''cannot show the world that it makes laws that discriminate against women and that allows its religious authorities to snatch away the body of a dead man from his grieving Hindu family.'' 
  As Ms. Zainah, a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, goes into battle, she holds some formidable cards. Chief among them are candor, not caring what others think and a refusal to be intimidated. She has not married, and said, ''I don't want to be a slave to a man.'' 
  Another advantage: Ms. Zainah is close to two progressive women with powerful connections, Marina Mahathir, the daughter of the former prime minister, and Nori Abdullah, the daughter of the current prime minister. ''He gets an earful from her,'' Ms. Zainah said, referring to Mr. Abdullah and his daughter. 
  At the end of a conference here on Islam and the West organized by New York University and the Malaysian government, the former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, asked to see Ms. Zainah and her colleagues. 
  What did she think of Mr. Khatami? ''He failed to deliver,'' she said after their encounter. ''When you govern in the name of Islam and fail to deliver on the aspirations of the people, Islam is seen to have failed. You bring disrepute to the religion. They found out Islam does not, after all, have the answers.''


 MALAYSIA (99%); 







 
 



February 19, 2006 Sunday



 A cartoon contest with Iran as loser

 
Frida Ghitis
writes on world affairs
AMSTERDAM - "The Jews don't care if you make fun of them," my Dutch taxi driver said as we discussed the rage over cartoons depicting Muhammad. He was telling me about a collection of crudely anti-Semitic cartoons he had seen from a variety of Arab newspapers and from a Muslim European Web site. They don't get angry, he explained, because "Jews are the first ones to make fun of themselves."
When Muslims from Europe to Indonesia reacted with fury at the depiction of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper, two groups, in Iran and in Belgium, decided to fight back by making cartoons attacking Jews (and Christians and gays, but mostly Jews). It's not quite clear what they intended to prove. What is clear is that their plan was fatally flawed. 
They forgot that when it comes to laughing at Jews, and at the vicissitudes of their history, nobody outdoes Jewish comics. Over the centuries, Jews have learned that laughing at your difficulties can ease the pain.
It's not quite true that Jews don't bristle at attacks against them, particularly when they come loaded with hatred. European Jews, however, have heard it all before. And claims that freedom of speech in Europe is restricted when it comes to Jews are greatly exaggerated. Granted, denying the Holocaust is a crime in some countries that saw their large Jewish populations exterminated during World War II. But humor is hardly off-limits.
When a Muslim extremist killed and then tried to sever the head of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in an Amsterdam street, he was enraged because van Gogh - an equal opportunity offender - had made a film criticizing the treatment of women in Islam. But Muslims were hardly the first to be dissed by the artist who thrived on crossing the line.
"Hmm, it smells like caramel," he once said. "They must be burning diabetic Jews today." There were no Jewish riots or assassination attempts.
After the Danish cartoons, Belgium's Arab European League launched its "freedom of speech" campaign. A cartoon in their Web site showed a half-naked Hitler in bed with Anne Frank, the child diarist killed in the Holocaust, telling her, "Write this one in your diary." Not particularly funny. But then, let's face it, most cartoons really aren't. No riots followed, by the way.
Then came the idea from Iran's biggest newspaper of holding a competition for the best Holocaust cartoon. They were so proud of their cleverness. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is on record saying he doesn't believe the Holocaust happened. So this brilliant ploy would hit two Western taboos with one Iranian stone.
Iran thought the West would recoil in horror. (Riots, anyone?) But before the contest could get going, an Israeli cartoonist launched his own competition.
"We will show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew-hating cartoons ever published," said Israeli cartoonist Amitai Sandy. He noted a truth well-known to students of humor: When it comes to making fun of the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people, nobody does it better than the Jews. "No Iranian can compete with us on that," he declared.
And what about the publication of Iran's contest winners? Tehran's bet that the cartoons would be shunned apparently was a loser. The Iranian Holocaust cartoons are already appearing in - you guessed it - Israel. The cartoons now appear in the Israel News Agency Web site.
There is a difference, however, between what you see in the Iranian publication and the Israeli one. The Iranian publication is in the best tradition adopted by the Arab and Muslim world from anti-Semitic cartoons in Nazi Germany. They are part of an attempt to demonize, and dehumanize; designed to create hatred, not to entertain. While Iran is questioning the Holocaust ever happened, the INA site posts the caricatures with a line explaining, "Six million Jews were gassed, shot and hung during the Holocaust." The INA did one more thing. Through the use of search-engine-optimization techniques, they made sure that if you try a Google search of "Iran Holocaust Cartoons" the INA site appears at the top of the page, ahead of any Iranian or Muslim extremist site. It conveys a message about the dangers of hatred to anyone who wants to see anti-Semitic cartoons. Pretty funny.
Contact Frida Ghitis at fghitis@gmail.com.

 BELGIUM (92%);  NETHERLANDS (91%); EUROPE (90%);  DENMARK (72%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


February 16, 2006 Thursday



 Y. panel explores Muslim uproar

 
   PROVO -- Brigham Young University geography professor Chad Emmett learned a strong lesson about Muslim sensitivities early in his LDS Church mission to Indonesia.
Emmett used a flip chart provided by his church as he and another missionary taught a Muslim man. The chart included drawings of God, Jesus Christ and LDS prophets Joseph Smith and Moroni.
By the time Emmett flipped to an image of John the Baptist, the Muslim man said, "Stop, this is enough. It is offensive to my religion for you to show me pictures of God and prophets." 
Emmett's experience illustrated why Muslims, including those in BYU's Arabic club who sponsored a panel discussion at the university Wednesday, are deeply offended by 12 cartoons depicting Muhammad published by a Danish newspaper in September.
"We respect all prophets," said Ahmad Salah, president of the Arabic club and a doctoral candidate in environmental engineering. "We do not use prophets in drawings or movies."
The tragedy of the controversy, which has spurred everything from peaceful protests to riots and deaths, is that it damages efforts by moderate Muslims to bridge the gap between Western culture and Islamic culture, said BYU political science professor Donna Lee Bowen.
"I would suggest the victims are the moderate Muslims," Bowen said, "the Muslims who are trying to lay out a very different idea of Islam, who are trying to make themselves at home not just in their home culture but in a foreign culture like the United States or Europe."
Usama Baioumy, a Muslim leader in the Provo/Orem area, said moderates are trying hard to prove that most Muslims are peace-loving people who co-exist well with any culture.
"We're struggling with media and government depictions of Muslims as only terrorists," Baioumy said.
There are LDS parallels to the flap over the cartoons, Bowen said. Four years ago, before outreach efforts spurred in part by BYU religion faculty, some faiths circulated anti-LDS literature that included what some could have considered offensive depictions of LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley.
"I can't repeat what was said," Bowen added, "but it had sexual content, it had scatological content and it was truly disgusting. President Hinckley is a trigger point for many people in the world who don't like what Mormons do, just as the prophet Joseph Smith was. And the prophet Joseph Smith was depicted as a demon and as a devil."
Mormons aren't as offended by demeaning portrayals of their prophets because there is no prohibition against depictions of prophets in LDS scripture, as there is in the Koran, Bowen said.
Other things bother LDS Church members more, Emmett said. In April 2003, two members were arrested near the faith's Salt Lake Temple after they snatched sacred LDS temple garments from street preachers who were desecrating the garments in front of hundreds walking to a session of the church's semiannual General Conference.
"When it comes to religion, we should respect other people's wishes," Emmett said, adding that the prohibition against depicting Muhammad is "something the world needs to respect."
Baioumy, a native Egyptian who is an American citizen, and Bowen said the United States is now a more welcoming place to Muslims than Europe, a development that surprises Muslims.
"I have more freedom for my religion here than in Europe," Baioumy said.
The Arabic club president, Salah, said the gap between the cultures can only be closed by people on both sides educating themselves. He isn't sure if a new law in Europe banning the depiction of Muhammad is the best solution for the current conflagration or if it could be solved by a rule of thumb at newspapers, but he does know what is most important to him.
"I live in Provo and I study at BYU," he said. "I'm a great fan of the Cougs. But Muhammad is more important than that or the national (soccer) team of Egypt. He is more important than my work, more important than my family, more important than myself." E-mail: twalch@desnews.com

 UNITED STATES (93%); INDONESIA (92%); EUROPE (79%); DENMARK (71%)







  



February 16, 2006 Thursday  




 Anatomy of the Cartoon Protest Movement; 
Opposing Certainties Widen Gap Between West and Muslim World

 
It was Oct. 13 when Teguh Santosa, a 30-year-old editor with wire-rim glasses, slicked-back black hair and a stubbly beard, decided to make a point in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. His idea was a small gesture in a broader confrontation, illustrating the power of images in shaping sentiments. He scanned a dozen cartoons published in September by a Danish newspaper that lampooned the prophet Muhammad and chose to publish the one on his news Web site that has proven the most inflammatory: the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse. 
 "I wanted them to know why it was insulting," said the thickset Santosa, a Muslim who runs the widely read Rakyat Merdeka Online. 
 To his surprise, there was almost no reaction. A few e-mailed comments to the Web site, he said. That was all. So he republished the caricature more than a week later, on Oct. 22. Again, nothing.  
 "We were confused," he recalled, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. "Why aren't people reacting to this story?" 
 What followed was a quintessentially 21st-century battle, a conflict steeped in decades, even centuries of grievances, reshaped by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and their aftermath. A digitally interconnected world propelled it forward, as did a series of slights and missteps. And a cultural divide, at times so deep two sides cannot seemingly occupy the same space, transformed an almost incidental decision to publish a dozen cartoons on a page inside a small newspaper in Denmark into a global conflagration.  
 Protests have erupted in an arc stretching from Europe through Africa to East Asia and, at times, the United States. About a dozen people have died in Afghanistan; five have been killed this week in Pakistan. Muslim journalists were arrested for publishing the cartoons in Jordan, Algeria and Yemen. European countries have evacuated the staffs of embassies and nongovernmental organizations, Muslim countries have withdrawn ambassadors, and Danish exports that average more than $1 billion a year have dried up in a span of weeks. 
 But the scope of the fallout tells only one story. The debate over the cartoons is replete with unintended consequences, some still taking shape this week. On one side is a defense of freedom of expression, on the other an unforgivable insult to a sacred figure. In between are potentially longer-lasting repercussions: a rethinking of relations between Europe and the Muslim world, and a rare moment of empowerment among Muslims who have felt besieged. Given the moral certainty pronounced by each party, some in the middle feel forced to take sides, blurring the diversity of religious thought that might offer grounds for compromise. 
 In the United States and Europe, some officials have suggested that the governments of Syria and Iran, isolated abroad, have stoked the protests for internal political reasons. A few Muslim leaders have contended the controversy would have ended quickly with an apology. But the conflict illustrates a broader collision of worldviews, often fueled by feelings of Muslim weakness and injury that date back long before the cartoons were published. 
  "The way I see it, the war has already started," said Daii al-Islam al-Shahal, a Sunni Muslim cleric in the coastal Lebanese town of Tripoli, who helped organize protests this month against the cartoons in his home town and in Beirut. "Will it end soon, or will it come to a close only after it has completely wiped out the two sides? That is up to God." 
 This is the story of how it unfolded. 
Denmark Challenging a Religious Taboo 
 In September, Flemming Rose, a tall, soft-spoken editor for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, had an idea. 
 He had read that museums in Sweden and London had removed artwork that their staff members deemed offensive to Muslims. A comedian told him he would be afraid to desecrate the Koran, a reluctance he did not have about the Bible. Then he read that a Danish children's book author couldn't find illustrators willing to work under their own names to draw illustrations of Muhammad, the 7th-century prophet of Islam, for a new book on the religion. 
 Frustrated, Rose decided to contact 25 Danish newspaper cartoonists with a request to draw Muhammad as they saw him. A dozen responded, and his newspaper published each illustration on Sept. 30. 
  "We have a tradition of satire in Denmark," said Rose, 47, the paper's cultural editor, who saw it as a matter of principle. "We do the same with the royal family, politicians, anyone. In a modern secular society, nobody can impose their religious taboos in the public domain." 
 "We were astonished and extremely shocked," responded Ahmed Abu Laban, a prominent cleric in Denmark. Representations of the prophet are banned by most schools of Islamic thought. For the devout, even his name is rarely uttered without the phrase "Peace and God's blessings upon him." To Abu Laban, it was not just a portrayal: One cartoon pictured Muhammad with the explosive turban. Another depicted him in heaven greeting suicide bombers; in Islamic tradition, martyrs are promised sensual rewards in paradise. "Enough," Muhammad is portrayed as saying. "We've run out of virgins." 
 "Muslims have been stigmatized," Abu Laban said. The cartoons, he added, are "the drop that made the cup overflow." 
 Within a week, Abu Laban and others began organizing. He and leaders of 11 Muslim groups wrote letters to the newspaper and to the Danish culture minister. They received no immediate response. They circulated a petition and submitted 17,000 signatures to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. They met with ambassadors from 11 Muslim countries, who asked Rasmussen for a meeting, which he declined. 
 "After that, we tried to figure out a way to get more voices with us and how to be heard and get respect here in Denmark," said Ahmed Akkari, 28, a Lebanese-born theological student who has emerged as a chief spokesman for the groups. 
Middle East Envoys of Protest 
 They decided to travel to the Middle East, where anti-American sentiment has long festered over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq and a perceived U.S. intention to dominate the region. In recent years, surveys have shown that Muslims in the Arab world and elsewhere overwhelmingly see the U.S.-led war on terrorism as a war on Islam. 
 Akkari carried a 43-page dossier with photocopies of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, along with 10 more illustrations that were published on Nov. 10 in Weekend Avisen, another Danish newspaper. 
 The dossier also included illustrations that depicted Muhammad as a pig and engaged in bestiality. Abu Laban and Akkari said those cartoons, and other obscene drawings of the prophet, had been mailed anonymously to Danish Muslim leaders after the controversy over the cartoons began. Critics have said the delegations deliberately inflamed the situation by passing off those cartoons as the ones published by Jyllands-Posten. Akkari and Abu Laban said those drawings were never represented as having appeared in the newspaper. Rather, they said they were included to illustrate what they called anger and prejudice against Muslims in Denmark. 
 "Freedom of expression without limits is like a car without brakes," Akkari said. 
 A delegation of five Danish Muslims went to Egypt on Dec. 4 and met with Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, head of al-Azhar, one of Sunni Islam's foremost establishments; Ali Juma, the mufti, or top cleric, of Egypt; and Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League. They also met with an assistant to Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister. Akkari said the group stayed in Egypt about a week and gave a news conference that was covered extensively in the Arabic-language media. 
 A second delegation of four Muslims, including Akkari, went to Lebanon on Dec. 17 and met with Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, grand mufti of Lebanon; Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual head of the country's Shiite Muslims; and Nasrallah Sfeir, patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church. The group stayed in Lebanon until Dec. 31. Akkari said he also made a day trip to Syria and gave a copy of the dossier to Sheik Ahmed Badr Eddine Hassoun, the grand mufti of Syria. 
 Among those they met was al-Shahal, the Lebanese cleric in Tripoli, who cringed at the sight of the pictures. 
 "Ugly and repugnant," he recalled thinking. 
Saudi Arabia 'A Revolution Inside Me ' 
  Over the weeks that followed those trips, the conflict germinated, sometimes by the most modern of means. 
 In Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, Hashim Balkhy, a 43-year-old plastic surgeon who would not consider himself unduly conservative by his country's standards, heard about the cartoons on about Jan. 21. He received a text message on his cell phone from a friend in Medina, one of Islam's holiest cities, saying Danish newspapers had been making fun of the prophet for months. 
 We must boycott them, his friend said. 
 That night, after his wife and children had gone to bed, he spent almost four hours online, smoking Carlton cigarettes and reading Web sites. He discovered that within weeks, an entire virtual world had already been dedicated to the subject. He stayed up past dawn. 
 A few days later, he got an e-mail from a Yahoo discussion group called al-Bostan, which published the cartoons. His eyes wandered over the photos until he got to one portraying the prophet wearing a turban as a bomb. He stared at it. 
 "They don't know our prophet," he recalled thinking. "And they can't get away with this." 
 Balkhy was already upset with the West. The photos of torture by members of the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had outraged him. He was bitter at American support for Israel. He had already stopped drinking Pepsi and Coke, as a symbolic gesture. But the victims in those cases were people  --  Palestinians and Iraqis  --  and this was the most pure man we know, Balkhy said. 
 "A revolution inside me started," he said. 
 He found that the most informative Web sites were the most religiously rigid. In the past, he had recoiled at some of their views, but he now came to rely on them for help in what had become a personal campaign. 
 On one Web site, he found the e-mail addresses of Danish embassies overseas, and a form letter to them. He cut and pasted a 27-page letter, written in both Arabic and English, and sent it to the embassies. The following day he sent a shorter version of the letter to the same list as well the Norwegian newspaper Magazinet, which had republished the cartoons in January. This time it was only in English. The third day, he e-mailed the same group a copy of a letter calling for a boycott. 
 He sent a copy of each e-mail to a separate list of 100 people, including colleagues in Egypt and Lebanon. Some he knew from training in Canada, others he met at conferences in the region. In the past, the list was often used to send jokes. This time, his messages encouraged those on the list to boycott Danish goods and, like him, write letters of protest to Danish diplomats, journalists and businessmen. 
 He joined what had become a virtual sphere of activism, with themes repeated from London to Jakarta, Indonesia. Its speed and scope were unprecedented; to him, it was empowering. As Balkhy sent his e-mails, thousands of others were circulating as well. Dozens of Web sites were set up. Among them was www.NO4Denmark.org. Text messages beeped on cell phones: "Danish papers are making fun of our prophet," read one. "Boycott their products." Supermarkets in Saudi Arabia began pulling Danish goods from their shelves, and Saudi companies published advertisements citing their support for the boycott. The kingdom recalled its ambassador to Denmark. 
 "We had accomplished something," Balkhy said. "Our campaign was working." 
 Denmark Stopping Short of an Apology 
 By Jan. 30, intense pressure had built on Rasmussen, a tough-talking farmer's son, and the editors at the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. Protesters in Muslim countries were burning Danish flags. The economic boycott that started in Saudi Arabia had nearly shut down sales of Danish cheese, butter and other products in the Muslim world. On that day, a Monday, Rasmussen expressed his first public criticism of the cartoons. 
 "I personally have such respect for people's religious feelings that I personally would not have depicted Muhammad, Jesus or other religious figures in such a manner that would offend other people," Rasmussen told Danish television. He stopped short of the apology demanded by Muslim leaders, saying he could not apologize for what was printed in a newspaper exercising free speech. 
 At about the same time, Carsten Juste, editor in chief of Jyllands-Posten, posted a similar statement. "In our opinion, the 12 drawings were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance with Danish law, but they have indisputably offended many Muslims, for which we apologize," he wrote. 
 Al-Shahal, the Lebanese cleric, watched Rasmussen's remarks on al-Jazeera satellite television. So did Balkhy, on both al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, another Arabic-language satellite network. Both felt the same way. "Truthfully, it wasn't a real apology, in the precise meaning of the word," al-Shahal said. Balkhy was blunter: Rasmussen had "tried to weasel out of an apology." 
Berlin A Free Expression Paradox 
 In Berlin, Roger Koppel, editor of Die Welt newspaper, saw the apologies by Rasmussen and Juste as an alarming defeat for Europe's tradition of free speech. The next day, Tuesday, Jan. 31, he met with his editorial team and ordered up a front-page story on the issue, including a reproduction of the cartoon of Muhammad with the bomb in his turban positioned at the top of Page One. At least six other European papers did the same, sharply increasing anger in the Muslim world about how the dispute was being handled. 
 "This had now become a huge political story," Koppel said. "In a secular Western society, a prime minister and a newspaper had to issue an apology for exercising their right to satire." 
 Koppel said he found many of the cartoons "ridiculous," but the quality of the images wasn't the point. 
 "You don't deliberately stir up religious hatred, but, sorry, we live in a secular country in the West," he said. "It's part of our culture. It's just not possible that our culture gets somehow penalized by threats." 
 It is illegal in Germany  --  and punishable by prison time  --  to make statements denying or questioning the existence of the Holocaust. It is also a crime to make "patently false statements" about the Holocaust, such as minimizing the number of victims. Some Muslims have argued that such laws constitute a double standard: in the West it's fine, they argue, to denigrate Muslims, but not Jews. 
 "It's not a double standard because it's the right of every culture to have its own taboos," Koppel said. 
 Koppel said that given Germany's painful history with the Nazis and the Holocaust, German society had chosen to establish certain limits on free speech. He said people in Germany must abide by those laws, just as people in Muslim countries must abide by the laws and traditions of those lands. He said a newspaper publishing the Muhammad cartoons in a Muslim country should expect to be punished, while a newspaper publishing them in Germany should expect to be protected by German guarantees of free speech. 
 In Milan, Gianni Riotta, deputy editor of the Corriere della Sera newspaper, was framing it in a different way. 
 While defending Jyllands-Posten's right to publish, he said the Danish newspaper made a mistake in judgment by running all 12 cartoons, which he said carried the implication that "all Muslims are terrorists." Riotta said it reminded him of his days studying at Columbia University in New York under famed American television news producer Fred Friendly. He recalled Friendly telling the class, "Shouting fire in a crowded theater is not freedom of expression, it's being stupid." 
 Riotta had in mind publishing something with what he thought was a clearer perspective. The Corriere, one of Italy's most respected papers, ran a package of nine cartoons: three of the "least offensive" Danish cartoons, along with three anti-Semitic cartoons taken from Arab newspapers and three Nazi-era propaganda posters. 
 "We wanted to publish to show that these cartoons were really offensive and really racist," Riotta said. "We wanted to give our readers some perspective: This was not Salman Rushdie." Riotta said that, as a reporter, he had covered the controversy over Rushdie's novel, "The Satanic Verses," and that he believed the Danish cartoons could not be considered in the same literary league with Rushdie's book. 
 Muslim World Building Solidarity 
 Republishing the cartoons unleashed a torrent of response.  
 Governments were already taking action: Interior ministers from 17 Arab nations called on the Danish government to punish the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. The Saudi interior minister urged the other nations to recall their ambassadors from Denmark. Protesters burned a large photo of Prime Minister Rasmussen outside the U.N. compound in Gaza City, scenes repeated elsewhere in Muslim countries. Algeria and Yemen, among others, were calling for U.N. action against Denmark. 
 In Indonesia, Santosa, the Web site editor, decided to publish one of the cartoons yet again. 
 "But then after I published the picture, a lot of Muslim people got angry at me. Then I said, 'Oh my God, what happened?" He put the cartoon up at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 2. He pulled it down less than 12 hours later. 
 In time, editors in Algeria, Yemen and Jordan were arrested for publishing the cartoons, often to bring attention to the offense. 
 Some of the region's most influential leaders weighed in. 
 Fadlallah, the senior Lebanese Shiite cleric, dismissed defending the cartoons under the principle of freedom of expression. Why, then, were some European networks banning al-Manar, the television station of Lebanon's Hezbollah group, on the grounds that it incited people? Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, a leading Sunni Muslim scholar, called on Muslims to use the dispute to strengthen solidarity. "The whole nation must be angry and rise up to show their anger," he said. "We are not a nation of donkeys. We are a nation of lions." 
 Protests erupted the next day, Feb. 3, after Friday prayers in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Palestinian territories and Iraq. They would be dwarfed by the scenes that unfolded that weekend in Lebanon and Syria. 
Middle East 'Defending the Prophet' 
 For days in Damascus, diplomats had heard about protests planned for Saturday. In the streets, there were posters of a Danish flag with a red X across it. Text messages went out on Friday, their source unclear: "Join us in defending our prophet and what is sacred." It added, "What are you going to do in order to answer to your prophet in the afterlife?" 
 The Norwegian and Danish embassies requested extra security, the diplomats said, but received none. 
 The protesters gathered on Feb. 4 carrying Syrian flags and banners calling on the Danish ambassador to leave the country. They tore down the flags hanging on the building. Soon, people began throwing rocks and gasoline bombs. Diplomats said they saw what appeared to be Syrian intelligence agents in the crowd. Before dusk, the Danish Embassy was ablaze, and other protesters went to the Norwegian Embassy, burning it as well. Another crowd went to the French Embassy, but was driven back by water hoses. 
 Ammar Sahloul, a wealthy businessman, heard about the demonstration through text messages, canceled work on Saturday and went with nearly 60 of his employees. He said he reached the Danish Embassy's doors and tried to calm things down, in vain. 
 "I wanted to express our resentment in the way that the prophet taught us," said Sahloul, 40. "He would not have wanted things to happen the way they happened outside the embassies." 
 That day, typewritten leaflets were circulating in neighboring Lebanon, calling for another demonstration in Beirut on Sunday. "They have declared war," it read. "So for the victory of our Prophet, we must accept the challenge." The 1,000 leaflets were issued by the Salafi Group in Lebanon, headed by al-Shahal, who first met the Danish delegation in December. 
 Hundreds boarded buses in Tripoli, flying green-and-black banners with white Islamic inscriptions from the windows. They passed at least seven army checkpoints on the way to Beirut unhindered. In time, thousands gathered in the Lebanese capital, some rampaging through a Christian neighborhood and setting fire to the building that housed the Danish Embassy. Al-Shahal, carrying a loudspeaker, said he was among the clerics who tried to restrain the crowd. 
 "The truth? I felt sorry when I saw it," he said. "The protest should have demonstrated strength, but with wisdom." 
 A day later, in Afghanistan, protesters chanting anti-American slogans tried to storm the U.S. air base in Bagram. Afghan security forces fired on the crowd, killing at least three people. More protests followed in other Afghan cities, the grievances multiplying and  mixing. In all, about 12 people were killed. Unlike in Lebanon and Syria, calls were passed not by technology, but word of mouth. Few had seen the cartoons, but they had become the topic of Friday sermons there, each retelling tinged with another exaggeration. 
 "I haven't seen the cartoon itself, but I was told that our prophet has a hand grenade on his turban and each of his fingers, too," said Haji Mohammed Rafiq Shahir, head of a council of professionals in the western Afghan city of Herat. 
Beirut Silencing Voices of Moderation 
 Amira el-Solh, 28, is a Lebanese Palestinian who lives in Beirut. She had heard about a text message calling for the protest in Lebanon. She, too, was angry about the caricatures, but recalled thinking that the Lebanese have greater worries today. 
 "Ten minutes of thought," she said she gave it. 
 The next day, as the protests raged in Beirut, she stayed glued to the television: Lebanese channels, CNN and the BBC. She talked to friends  in Beirut, in Europe and the United States. At night, she met with friends, all disgusted with the way things had turned out. 
 But as she looks back at the dispute  --  from the repeated publishing of the cartoons, to the protests, to the violence that pulled at Lebanon's frayed sectarian tapestry, to the moral certainty infusing the debate  --  she sees the controversy as less about a dozen cartoons and more about a sense of siege in the Muslim world that forces everyone to take sides. "It's upsetting that you have to defend your identity as a Muslim constantly," she said. 
 She thought back to other divides in history  --  the Green Line that partitioned civil war-era Beirut, the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall. She resented having to qualify herself as liberal or conservative, secular or religious. She worried that, in time, those definitions might become irrelevant. Perhaps they already have. 
 "These walls weren't so long ago," she said. "It was people who built them, and it will be people who will resurrect them." 
 "Do you want to silence voices of moderation, of coexistence?" she asked this week. "And this is what the generalizations of these cartoons do. It silences any individual as a Muslim and groups me along with everyone else." 

 EUROPE (94%);  DENMARK (92%); INDONESIA (92%); JORDAN (79%); LEBANON (79%); AFRICA (79%); IRAN,  (79%); EASTERN ASIA (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); ASIA (79%); SYRIA (79%); AFGHANISTAN (73%)







   


February 15, 2006 Wednesday  




 The Islam Gap

 
SOUTHEAST Asian Muslims have not been roiled by a clash of civilizations. Rather, people like me -- Western-trained, English-speaking and constantly traveling -- have begun to see the subtle differences that fracture our civilizations from within. 
  Whether we are conservative or liberal, many of us are appalled and angered by the stupidity and insensitivity of the Danish newspaper cartoons. But that doesn't mean we've taken leave of our senses. I, for one, won't be throwing out my Lego set or my Bang & Olufsen sound system, let alone plotting to unveil a Zionist conspiracy. I may be a Muslim, but I can tell the difference between a newspaper and a people, a country and a principle.
Even Din Syamsuddin, the head of Indonesia's 30 million strong Muhammadiyah Muslim association (and a firebrand by most accounts), told his followers to remain calm: ''I urge Muslims not to overreact and act in a violent and anarchist way because those things are completely against Islamic teachings.''
  We generally believe that anger and violence are self-defeating. The region's moderate leaders, like Malaysia's prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, and Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, exemplify this belief. Both men have criticized the cartoons. ''The rights of press freedom are not absolute; whatever the faith, we must respect it,'' President Yudhoyono said. Still, neither he nor Mr. Abdullah has advocated boycotting Danish products or ending relations, although hotheads in both countries have called for such radical steps.
  To be sure, there have been some copycat demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, as well as attacks on the Danish and American consulates in Indonesia's second-largest city, Surabaya. But the extensive violence and ugly rhetoric we are seeing broadcast from elsewhere in the Muslim world point to differences between the Arab-Muslim heartland and the Indo-Malay periphery.
  Yes, we are part of the extended family of believers, the ummah. We cannot help but feel some sense of solidarity with our co-religionists in Damascus, Tehran or Cairo. But the explosiveness of the Arab street doesn't translate, somehow, to the tropics. Many of us have a growing suspicion that we are culturally different from our Arabic- and Urdu-speaking brethren, perhaps more tolerant and less emotional.
  I am reminded of how uncomfortable I felt last year when traveling through Saudi Arabia, surrounded by a people I found disquietingly alien. For all we share as Muslims, we Southeast Asians don't really know what it's like to inhabit the cultures or politics of the Middle East.
  Nor is the West a unitary culture. Europe's fervent secularism reminds me that the nation of the Great Satan, with its crowded churches and Sunday preachers who fill sports stadiums, is actually more like my world than Europe is. 
  Since Sept. 11, I've accepted certain verities that now I have come to question. Europe was supposed to be the neutral bastion of moderation in the face of a belligerent America. But in fact that Europe is godless and alone.

 SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (94%);  MALAYSIA (93%); ASIA (93%); DENMARK (92%); MIDDLE EAST (91%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%);  IRAN,  (79%); SYRIA (79%); EGYPT (79%); EUROPE (79%)







 
 


February 14, 2006 Tuesday



 How the Cartoon Protests Harm Muslims

 
What are the long-term consequences of the Muhammad cartoon furor? I predict it is helping bring on not a clash of civilizations but their mutual pulling apart. This separation, which has been building for years, has dreadful implications.
Signs of disengagement are all around. 
* Trade: Boycotts now exist in both directions. As the American government sanctions Iranian products, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says his government will "revise and cancel economic contracts" with countries where newspapers published the cartoons. Several Muslim countries have suspended trade with Denmark, while Muslim-owned stores in Canada have removed Danish products.The Pakistani medical association even announced a boycott of medicines from five European countries.
* Consumer items: Muslims are increasingly replacing Western consumer items with their own. They purchase the extremely modest Fulla and Razanne dolls rather than the busty Barbie. In France, Beurger King provides halal food, competing with Burger King, just as Mecca Cola takes the place of Coke and Pepsi. Al-Jazeera is starting an English-language channel to go up against CNN and the BBC.
* Financial investments: As a result of freezes on funds and the designation of terrorist entities, Muslims have moved large amounts of capital out of the West and invested it either in their own countries or in other places around the world,such as East Asia. Middle Eastern oil exporters before September 11, 2001, annually put as much as $25 billion into American investments; since then, the amount is about $1 billion a year.
* Emigration: The attacks of September 11 caused a significant increase in obstacles to Muslims traveling to the West, so fewer Muslim business executives, students, hospital patients, conference-goers, and workers are reaching there.
* Tourism: Islamist atrocities such as the murder of 60 Japanese, German, and Swiss tourists in Luxor in 1997 or the abduction of 32 German and other travelers in the Sahara in 2003 led some Westerners to avoid discretionary travel in the Muslim world.Cartoon-related violence has prompted a Danish advisory warning citizens against travel to 14 Muslim countries. Scandinavian tourist companies have canceled 328 2134 442 2145many tours to North Africa.
* Foreign aid: Muslim aggression against aid workers in Indonesia, Lebanon, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Authority have led to the partial or complete withdrawal of European missions. In Chechnya, the Danish aid mission was expelled and the Iraqi Transport Ministry has rejected any future offers of Danish reconstruction money.
* Embassies: From the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran in 1978 to the multiple attacks on Danish and other European embassies this month, the assault on Western diplomatic missions in Muslim countries is causing them to take on the features of armed fortresses, to be removed from the center of towns to the peripheries, and in some cases to be closed down.
* Westerners providing services: Zayed University in Dubai fired an American professor, Claudi Keepoz, for distributing the Muhammad cartoons to her students. Rampaging Palestinian Arabs caused the foreign observers staffing the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, or TIPH, to flee the area.
These developments suggest what the prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has called a "huge chasm" between the Muslim world and the West.Or,in the more bellicose wording of the influential Sunni imam Youssef al-Qaradawi, "We must tell Europeans, we can live without you. But you cannot live without us."
Should the chasm widen,with its concomitant lessening of human interaction, commercial relations, and diplomatic engagement, the Muslim world will likely fall further behind than it already has. As I wrote in 2000, "Whatever index one employs, Muslims can be found clustering toward the bottom - whether measured in terms of their military prowess, political stability, economic development,corruption,human rights, health, longevity, or literacy."
Disengagement will only worsen the Muslim predicament. Reduced contact with the world's most modern,powerful, and advanced countries would likely cause Muslims to do even worse in those indexes and lapse deeper into a condition characterized by self-pity, jealousy, resentment, anger, and aggression.
Especially when contrasted with Muslim successes in pre-modern times, these traumatic circumstances help explain the crisis in identity that often causes Muslims to seek solace in radical Islam. For everyone's sake, it is important that Muslims begin more successfully to negotiate their path to modernity, not to isolation.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of "Miniatures" (Transaction Publishers).

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11


 
 


February 14, 2006 Tuesday  




 One of USA's exports: Love, American style; 
More couples overseas buck arranged-marriage trend

 
America is exporting more jobs, and its companies are selling fewer cars. But if there is a fight for market share in love and marriage, our brand is winning.
When Frank Sinatra sang about love and marriage going together like a horse and carriage, he might not have considered that much of the world puts the cart before the ox. Marriages are arranged by parents in China, India and Indonesia -- three countries with 40% of the world's population -- plus others that practice Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism. Couples don't date. They may get a 15-minute meeting followed in a few months by a wedding.
Love? It evolves over time. 
But sparks are flying, and love marriages are breaking out in India, the world's largest democracy, with 1.1 billion people. Software developers Satya Ravada and Geeta Rani, both 30, were working long hours on a project in Hyderabad, India, three years ago for Sierra Atlantic, a Fremont, Calif., company  that employs 750 of its 900 workers in India.
Friendship blossomed into love, and Ravada and Rani got married last year. Americans would hardly consider that unusual. But to Indians, it's much more typical when people get engaged and married on the basis of a 15-minute meeting, or as little as a photo and a phone conversation.
The couple are part of a growing love-before-marriage trend that began slowly in the 1970s and 1980s, built a little steam with India's economic reforms in 1991 under then-prime minister Narasimha Rao, then took off with the software boom of the late 1990s that brought the global economy into India's insulated society.
The Indian government does not differentiate in its marriage statistics. But young Indians interviewed say their observations suggest that 10% to 20% of their friends are having love marriages, and expert Poonam Barua, director of the Conference Board's India Operations, says that is probably true in most of India's cities.
Several forces are at play, and as the giant exporter of jobs and culture, the USA might be more than a little responsible. Indian TV has been invaded by shows such as Friends and Oprah. Playboy magazine said last month  that it will publish an Indian edition featuring Indian models. Indian soap operas are rife with secret love affairs. Bollywood movies such as Salaam Namaste borrow heavily from the age-old formula in which boy meets girl, they can't stand each other, then they fall in love.
Khushboo, a famous one-name Indian film star and TV game show host, sparked demonstrations last year when she said Indians should no longer expect brides to be virgins. More and more aren't. Twenty-five percent of women ages 18 to 30 in 11 major cities including tech centers Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi have had premarital sex, according to an India Today magazine survey.
As influential, perhaps, is job outsourcing. The number of information-technology jobs U.S. companies outsource to other countries is approaching 500,000, according to outsourcing consultancy neoIT. India aims to challenge China in manufacturing, and General Motors and Dell recently announced they will increase their workforces in India by a third.
U.S. companies bring with them American-style workplace diversity, which puts men and women  in neighboring cubicles. Americans know what that leads to: Half of U.S. workers have dated a co-worker, according to an annual Valentine's Day office romance survey by CareerBuilder.com (which is part-owned by  parent Gannett).
Entry-level IT workers in India often start at more than $6,000 a year, neoIT says. While low by U.S. standards, many Indians in their 20s are out-earning their parents. That chips away at parental influence, which is so important in India that Sierra Atlantic invites Indian parents to job interviews to OK the hiring of their children.
Many of India's financially independent young adults are women. One-third of those Sierra Atlantic hired in 2005 were women, and the company expects women to be half of its new hires within a few years. Still, CEO Raju Reddy, himself in an arranged marriage to childhood friend Neeraja, was surprised to learn at the Sierra Atlantic holiday party in December that about a dozen love marriages have germinated in recent years at the 13-year-old company.
A diverging path
Ravada was on the traditional path. His parents were looking for his bride. But Ravada found himself stuck in indecision as he met and rejected a string of girls after 15-minute meetings. That gave him what he says was a "bad complex," because the girls seemed perfectly fine, and he knew he was hurting their feelings with his rejections. He asked his parents to delay their search while he buried himself in work that kept him in the office until nearly midnight. There, too, was Rani, and the two often waited late for phone calls from project managers waking up in California.
Love is gastronomically blind, and Ravada, whose caste members are strictly vegetarian, fell in love with Rani, whose caste members eat meat. That alone would have made an arranged marriage impossible.
Horoscopes also play a big role, but Rani says her parents are "liberal" and wanted her married to someone who would make her happy. Most Americans would agree, and consider the system of marrying complete strangers to be implausible. But even Indians in love marriages defend arranged marriages as proper and successful. They point to U.S. divorce courts full of head-over-heels lovers who found that courtships proved meaningless in the long run. Three-quarters of a million American children see their parents divorce each year.
Barua said she recently visited a call center in New Delhi where phone calls from U.S. consumers were being answered. Barua sat with a group of young women in the lunchroom. They all worked late and enjoyed being around young men, but had no desire to fall in love before a wedding. "They all wanted an arranged marriage," Barua says.
Indians say parents might not be perfect at selecting mates, but they are better at it than hormone-crazed youths. If divorce is no longer as rare in India, love marriages are largely to blame, they say.
"All my family members had arranged marriages, no complaints," Rani said. "They are very happy. You fall in love and get married, or you get married and fall in love."
It will be decades, if ever, before love marriages dominate worldwide. Even in India, the trend is specific to the middle class of 350 million, not to the 70% of the country that remains rural. But the trend is undeniable, says Barua, whose niece began a love marriage on Feb. 2 with an Indian working for Citibank.
Few Indian families would force a marriage on a child these days, but it is still common that the couple have no more than 15 or 20 minutes together to make the decision. In arranged marriages, the man is usually three to six years older than the woman, but can be decades older if the woman is considered unattractive or has a tarnished reputation. If the woman is good-looking, then the boy had better have promising prospects. Dowries paid by the brides' families are officially illegal in India, but still common, and attractive daughters save their parents a lot of money.
There are no dowries for love marriages, but there is also no parental job more important to Indians than finding their children a life mate. It includes an elaborate vetting process to uncover anything unsavory before it is too late.
Checking things out
Kishor Uprety, a Nepalese senior lawyer at the World Bank who lives near Washington, D.C., has been in an arranged marriage for two decades. He says the entire extended family becomes involved in doing background checks, leaving no stone unturned. He laughingly compares it to how journalists uncover dirt about U.S. presidential candidates.
Crucial are astrology clerics, who must certify compatibility and predict the marriage's future. Deloitte Consulting India analysts Anil Chandra Chambravalli, a Gemini, and Leena Dinesh Mishra, a Capricorn, met on the job in August 2004. They began a love marriage nine months later but say they probably would not have gotten married had their stars been out of alignment.
Even Indians who fall in love first will unlikely get married without parental approval. That can take months of cajoling, especially if the lovers are not of the same caste or of compatible horoscopes.
The parents of Kalyana Chekravarthy Kolouju objected when he told them he wanted to marry senior software engineer Priya Suhani Chinthakayala. The two met at Sierra Atlantic's Global Development Center in Hyderabad and are now working on a project at a Trane site in La Crosse, Wis. Kolouju, 27, and Chinthakayala, 25, are from different castes, the complex societal order that separates families based loosely on the professions of their ancestors. While it's supposed to be a pecking order, no caste admits to being inferior because they all feel superior to the others, Chinthakayala said.
Chinthakayala made a poor impression with Kolouju's parents when they learned that she did not cook, but the marriage was finally approved when she assured them that she would be a proper daughter-in-law and take care of them in their old age.
Nepal, which borders on India, is also seeing more love marriages, Uprety says. He says almost all marriages in Nepal were arranged when he was wed in 1987 to Anita, whom  he had never met before their engagement. He was a law student in Paris; she lived in Katmandu.
As they approach their 20th anniversary, they don't really know when they finally fell in love. The definition of love is different in every society, Anita says, but in all of them, "Love is a work in progress."
Chinthakayala, who had to plead with Kolouju's parents for months before they would agree to a love marriage, will go the traditional route when their 8-month-old son grows into his 20s.
"I wouldn't want him to make a wrong decision," Chinthakayala says, and she would not hesitate to say no to any girl that seemed a mistake. Chinthakayala believes that her son will respect that, a sign, perhaps, that American ways have not taken over entirely.
The Upretys are raising two children in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, 16-year-old son Kshitiz and 9-year-old daughter Aastha. They will likely find someone to marry on their own, but Kishor and Anita say they are ready to help if needed, and they find it sad that many Americans wind up alone. In the USA, 14% of men and 10% of women between the ages of 40 and 54 have never been married, according to Census data.
Likewise, Chambravalli and Mishra say if they have children, they also will be allowed to search for true love. In the meantime, Mom and Dad will be on the lookout.
"Plan A and Plan B," Mishra says.

 INDIA (96%); UNITED STATES (95%);  INDONESIA (92%)







 
 


February 14, 2006 Tuesday  




 Cartoon crisis frames Europe's conflict within; 
Underlying tensions across the continent, over Muslim immigration and fear of terrorism, help feed the furor over papers' publication

 
LONDON -- When an international furor erupted over cartoons depicting Islam's holiest figure, no one was more surprised than Mohamed Farah.
Born in Somalia, raised in Denmark and now living in London, the 21-year-old student was one of many Muslims outraged by cartoons that mocked the prophet Mohammed. And he was shocked to learn the cartoons were first published by a Danish newspaper -- the one he delivered as a boy.
"The Scandinavians are a peaceful people," says a mystified Farah, who wears a New York Yankees jacket even when he visits the London Central Mosque. "Freedom to speak is good," he adds. "But to insult Mohammed is bad." 
Over the past two weeks the cartoons have sparked scores of protests from Morocco to the Philippines. At least 10 people have been killed.
In several countries, crowds have attacked the embassies of Denmark and other European nations. The Danish government has withdrawn diplomats from Indonesia, Iran and Syria. A boycott has virtually halted the export of Danish goods to the Middle East. Danish cheese has been burned in protest.
This week, as the furor continues, people around the world share Mohamed Farah's bewilderment: over the decision to publish the cartoons, or the response they evoked, or both.
Although billed by some as a "clash between civilizations" -- a sort of cold war between fundamentalist Muslims and the secular, democratic West -- the cartoon controversy was really about the clashes within two civilizations: Western Europe and global Islam.
The cartoons' publication was not merely an academic exercise in freedom of speech, but something that reflects underlying tensions racking Europe. Those include Muslim immigration and assimilation, and fear of terrorism -- especially after the bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London last year.
"It's not a conflict of civilizations," says John Esposito, a Georgetown University professor who wrote What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam. "It's a conflict within Europe."
And within the Muslim world, too. Islamic reaction to the cartoons is not entirely a spontaneous cry from the heart, but one manipulated by various Muslim political and religious leaders to advance their agendas by targeting Israel, democracy and rival strains of Islam.
Esposito says the cartoons allow autocrats in Muslim nations such as Syria and Iran to say to their genuinely outraged people, "See what democracy means?"
'Muslims, both secular and devout, have enormous love for the prophet'
Even today, few of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims -- including  protesters -- have seen the images at the center of the controversy.
The affair began last year, when a Danish author working on a children's book on the Quran and the life of Mohammed was unable to find an illustrator. Artists said they feared the wrath of Muslims if they drew images of Mohammed.
Upon learning this, the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest circulation daily, invited cartoonists to submit entries. The editor, Carsten Juste, published 12 drawings on Sept. 30, saying he wanted to challenge the trend toward self-censorship.
One cartoon showed Mohammed with a turban shaped like a bomb.
Another had him telling suicide bombers arriving in heaven that he'd run out of virgins with which to reward them.
The cartoons aroused Muslim protests -- 5,000 demonstrated in Copenhagen -- but little international reaction.
Triggered by three events
Then, three things happened:
*On Oct. 21, the Danish prime minister refused to meet with ambassadors from Muslim nations to discuss the issue, saying the government had no control over, or responsibility for, the newspaper.
*In December, Danish Muslims visited several Middle Eastern nations, including Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, to ask for Muslim support. They showed not only the 12 cartoons, but other images allegedly demeaning to Muslims that were not published. The word spread via satellite TV, the Internet and text messaging.
*On Jan. 10, a Christian newspaper in Norway reprinted the cartoons in what it described as a show of support for press freedom.
By the end of the month, protests had erupted throughout the Muslim world. They continued even after Jyllands-Posten apologized Jan. 30 for causing any offense.
Meanwhile, news media outlets in more than a dozen other European countries reprinted some or all of the cartoons. Few U.S. media outlets ran any of the cartoons; a notable exception, , said it was important for readers to understand both sides of the story.
The incident followed similar clashes in recent years over a French policy of banning Muslim girls from wearing traditional head coverings in school; the murder by Muslim radicals of a Dutch filmmaker who had criticized Muslim treatment of women; and reports, never verified, that U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo threw a copy of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, in a toilet.
Whatever caused the controversy, most students of Islam and Muslim society agree that more friction is likely.
"You have the Western tradition of freedom of expression and you have Muslim religious sensitivities," says Akbar Ahmed, professor of international relations at American University in Washington. "It's the irresistible force and the immovable object."
Why the explosion? Experts identified existing conditions that contributed:
Muslim immigrants in Europe
John Keiger, director of the European Studies Research Institute at the University of Salford in Manchester, England, says many Europeans feel confronted at home by "a Muslim culture that not only is foreign, but which does not want to be integrated."
He says right-wing political parties trade on that worry, at a time when nations in the European Union are struggling with their own identities and values.
Muslims also are afraid, Keiger adds: "They are increasingly being portrayed as violent, as ones who only have violent solutions."
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's center-right government has remained in power partly because of a popular crackdown on immigration.
At the same time, immigration opponents have accused a leading Danish imam, Ahmed Abu Laban, of stoking outrage over the cartoons by spreading anti-Danish propaganda when he went to the Middle East.
Some Muslims accused Europeans of a double standard on freedom of expression. "Would these newspapers draw cartoons presenting the Jewish Holocaust?" asks Mushtaq Yossef, 29, a Baghdad mobile-phone salesman. "Of course not."
Marco Incerti, a research fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, argues that some European newspapers printed the cartoons to show they won't succumb to Muslim intimidation -- saying, in effect, "We like to do things a certain way, and we're going to blow it in your face."
Politicians had their own goals
The protests served different ends in different places, according to Ahmed, the American University professor.
In Afghanistan and Pakistan, they were organized by opponents of U.S.-backed governments. In Syria and Iran, they could not have happened without government approval, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday on the ABC television program This Week. "Iran and Syria bring protesters into the streets when they wish, to make a point," she said.
Mohsen Rezaie, a top official in Iran's hard-line government, was one of several leading officials who blamed Israel for the cartoons -- even though none was published there.
"Do you know of any place that doesn't have Zionists?" Rezaie asked in an interview in Tehran with . "We think this confrontation between Muslims and Christians is a premeditated attack by Zionists." He said the aim was to turn the Christian world against Muslims and build European support against Iran and its nuclear program.
Struggle over Islam's future
The cartoons clearly struck at something sacred. "Muslims, both secular and devout, have enormous love for the prophet," Ahmed says. "They go berserk when he's attacked."
Even so, one of the protesters' central contentions -- that the image of the prophet should never be depicted -- is challenged by many scholars of Islam, including John Woods, a University of Chicago historian. They say such a strict interpretation is not mandated by the Quran or by Mohammed's sayings. Instead, it is a prohibition asserted by modern-day fundamentalists favoring a rigid Islamic doctrine.
Holland Taylor is an American businessman who heads LibForAll Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group based in Winston-Salem, N.C., that supports moderate Islam, especially in Indonesia. He says controversies like the one over the cartoons are opportunities for radicals to try to hijack the religion.
"Something we're doing will always offend (fundamentalist Muslims') sensibilities," he says. "Islamic radicals will always find something that causes an emotional charge. And they will jump on it."
Can anything be done to resolve and to limit future culture clashes?
If many Muslims are outraged by what many Westerners consider free speech, what can be done to resolve and limit these disputes when they arise?
Ahmed says leaders must act quickly when they see a crisis developing to cross the cultural and linguistic chasm.  The United States "can score points simply by saying to Muslims, 'We understand your feelings. We don't approve, either.'"
However shocking the images and rhetoric unleashed by the controversy, violent protest was the exception, not the rule, in the Muslim world.
Consider Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. Residents said that they were offended by the caricatures, but opposed to violence.
Only 14 demonstrators showed up for a protest organized by a student group outside the presidential palace Wednesday. "Most of our members couldn't come because they didn't want to miss classes," explains organizer Muhammad, 22, who like many Indonesians uses one name.
The next day another protest drew less than 50 people.
Asked about the cartoons, Rizan Chandra, 46, a marketing director in Jakarta, says, "I don't give a damn. The caricature won't be able to discredit the prophet. ... Actually, the violence done by Muslims around the world is also quite stupid and will only worsen the perception of Islam."
On the other side of the world, Shazad Shah, a 28-year-old Pakistani studying highway engineering in London, says he wasn't that mad, because the prophet Mohammed "is in my heart. Nobody, no cartoons, can take that away. ..."
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi bemoans the "huge chasm that has emerged between the West and Islam.'' It is, he says, largely because of Muslim frustrations at Western policies on Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinians.
Westerners "think Osama bin Laden speaks for the religion and its followers. Islam and Muslims are linked to all that is negative and backward," he adds.
The impact of the blowup is unclear. Ahmed, of American University, and Zahid Bukhari, director of Georgetown's American-Muslim Studies program, outline two scenarios that could emerge from the crisis.
Westerners could become more aware of what angers Muslims, and thus less provocative; Muslims could become more aware that freedom of speech is a praiseworthy Western tradition, not a weapon against Islam.
But it's also possible, they say, that Westerners -- outraged by having seen their flags shredded, embassies burned and leaders hung in effigy -- will become more determined to confront Islam. And Muslims, who already feel under attack, could become even more sensitive.
Joseph Braude, a Middle Eastern analyst and magazine columnist, says he feared a third possibility: "Legitimate expression (in the West) will be stifled for fear of provoking another response like this."
Nearly every Muslim outside the United States interviewed by  favored some controls on speech, especially when the subject is religion. As Shah, the Pakistani studying in London, puts it: "Freedom is good. But not too much freedom ..."
Stinson reported from London, Hampson from New York. Contributing: Rick Jervis in Baghdad; Barbara Slavin in Tehran; Michael Kuser in Istanbul; Nicholas Blanford in Beirut; Rhonda Roumani in Damascus; Tom McCawley in Jakarta.

 EUROPE (96%); DENMARK (93%); SOMALIA (92%);  SYRIA (92%); WESTERN EUROPE (79%); ISRAEL (79%);  MIDDLE EAST (79%); SPAIN (79%);  MOROCCO (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%)







 Paddock Publications, Inc. 
Chicago Daily Herald

February 13, 2006 Monday  
All Editions



 Dear Catholics: Where is your outrage? Where is your shame?

 
News item No. 1: Top Roman Catholic leaders in metro Chicago allow priests accused of molesting children to stay on the job, but there is no widespread public outrage and no mass protests.
News item No. 2: Cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad trigger a fury of deadly riots by millions of Muslims from the Middle East to European capitals to Africa and Indonesia.
Let's see here, priests whose bosses allow them to get away with sexually abusing children versus satirical sketches from Denmark that really aren't very funny. Which should cause the most rage and indignation? 
While it seems obvious that some foreign governments are using the cartoons to ignite anti-American sentiments, the genesis of the rioting is a dozen cartoons printed in a Denmark newspaper last September.
I certainly do not advocate lawbreaking, mayhem or murder - whether by celebrants of a Chicago Bulls championship or by those who feel insulted by what they consider to be offensive cartoons.
But I also do not understand how those faithful to one religion can act so passionately about an infraction by strangers thousands of miles away, when members of another religion can be so passive about the sexual abuse of their children and abuse of their trust by church leaders right next door.
Sure, there have been some lawsuits by victims and their families. There are news conferences every time a new allegation of abuse by a priest is exposed. And the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests continues to make waves.
But this has been going on for years, and there is no common outrage by Roman Catholics.
For a long time, of course, all complaints were covered up by church officials, and most Catholics didn't know there was a reason to be outraged.
Recently, as the church has paid millions of dollars in settlements to victims of priest sex abuse, the indignity has been out in the open, but there has still been no gnashing of teeth.
Joliet Diocese Bishop Joseph Imesch and Cardinal Francis George, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago, are unscathed by the chunks of the priest sex scandal that continue to fall around them.
Imesch has grown surly and defensive as the accusations have piled up. That seems to be his way of dealing with it.
George has seemed more repentant and publicly sorrowful. In a letter to all Chicago priests last Friday, George acknowledged the buck stops with him, but then admitted, "There is so much I remain unaware of." He then asked priests who are closet pedophiles to step forward and identify themselves for the good of the church.
But there has been no actual accountability, because there has been no pressure brought on them to be accountable.
There are no marches on the cardinal's Gold Coast mansion by thousands of irate Catholics. No tent city has been set up by protesters across from his home overlooking Lincoln Park. You haven't heard of any parish councils resigning en masse in a sign of solidarity against the church's continued ignorance of this festering problem. No hunger strikes; no prominent Catholics teaming up to demand answers; no nothing.
No one has shown up at a public appearance by Bishop Imesch to challenge him to explain why he allowed child-molesting priests to remain in ministry and why he transferred other violating clergymen out of state without any warnings to the dioceses where they would work.
George, Imesch and many others like them have been able to hide behind the cloth because we Roman Catholics have allowed them to. Many Catholics in the Chicago area have continued to give money to the church, knowing full well that it ends up paying lawyers' fees and victims' settlements.
Maybe it is human nature, especially where faith is concerned, to continue going through familiar motions content to wait for an end to the misery. But this decay seems beyond the point where it will simply repair itself.
After last week's column in which I contrasted the approaches of Imesch and George to the latest sex abuse cases, I received several suggestions from readers.
Some wanted to know why church leaders weren't facing criminal conspiracy charges. "If one parent knows the other is hurting their child, isn't that punishable by law?" asked one reader.
Another suggested the cover-up and passing of dirty priests from parish to parish was tantamount to racketeering, a conspiracy to keep the business of the church functional.
Most readers who contacted me were shamed and embarrassed by their church leaders. "They have done what no external enemy of Catholicism could have ever accomplished," one wrote.
Other than suggesting the resignations of George and Imesch, no one offered any concrete ideas for solving the real problem of clergy abuse.
I don't think you can get to a solution unless and until there is public outrage. Right now, the only fury seems to be expressed in newspaper commentaries, by a few victims and the same tired lawyers and advocates.
There's no need for firebombings, angry rampages or even a cartoon of Bishop Imesch with a time bomb on his head. But if people aren't willing to put themselves on the line and test their own faith, they shouldn't expect anything to change.
 - Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached at chuckgoudie@gmail.com.

  MIDDLE EAST (92%); DENMARK (92%); INDONESIA (92%); EUROPE (90%)







  



February 13, 2006 Monday  




 Africa's Polio Efforts Aiding Bird Flu Fight

 
Africa's response to the first appearance of H5N1 bird flu on the continent may be aided by its fight against an entirely unrelated infection  --  polio. 
 Nigeria, where the dangerous flu strain was found in chickens last week, is the focus of a high-stakes endgame effort to eradicate polio from the world. The work is being done by thousands of vaccinators and surveillance officers equipped with maps that record every house in every village and who are able to move diagnostic specimens from patient to laboratory quickly and safely. 
 This extensive public health infrastructure is now mobilizing against avian flu.  
 A four-day campaign, begun over the weekend, to vaccinate 40 million Nigerian children is being used to deliver a message to thousands of village leaders that people should not touch or eat sick chickens. More elaborate activities may begin later. 
 "The polio organization has offered to use all its network to deliver information, and also for surveillance and case detection. We are going to support all kinds of activities to mitigate the impact of avian flu," said Mohammed Belhocine, the World Health Organization's representative in Nigeria. 
 The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has infected 166 people and killed 88 since 2003. Most had direct contact with infected chickens, which have died in the tens of millions. The more people the virus infects, the greater its chance of evolving into a pandemic strain that could spread worldwide rapidly. 
 Should the polio workers become flu fighters, it would not be the first time the eradication campaign paid unexpected dividends. In recent years, polio teams have helped rescue earthquake survivors in Pakistan, investigate a lethal outbreak of Marburg virus in Angola, find victims of the rare Crimean-Congo fever in Afghanistan, and deliver malaria-preventing mosquito nets to mothers in Niger. 
 The versatility of the polio campaign is ironic as well as unanticipated. 
 In the past six years, the eradication initiative has missed two self-imposed deadlines to complete a task begun in 1988. It has suffered setbacks, including a revolt against vaccination in Nigeria's northern states in 2003 that led to a resurgence of polio there and a temporary reappearance of the disease in 18 other countries. It has spent $3.2 billion and is chronically short of money. Until a revised strategy and a new vaccine were introduced last year, the 18-year effort was on the verge of unraveling. 
 Begun by the Rotary International network of clubs, polio eradication has been criticized by some experts as a public health "trophy" that diverts time, money and labor from worse diseases and bigger problems. 
 But on the way to its still-unreached goal, the initiative has put in place an infrastructure of people, skill and equipment that can respond quickly to crises in the poorest, most crowded and inaccessible places on Earth. 
 "It is a network that is in place and that we hope countries will maintain and broaden in scope," said David L. Heymann, director of polio eradication at the WHO headquarters in Geneva. 
 Since the start of 2005, Nigeria has had 770 cases of polio, more than any other country. It is now one of four countries where the virus remains endemic, or freely circulating. The others are Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. 
 Nearly all of Nigeria's polio is in its populous, largely Muslim north, which ceased immunizing children in 2003 because of rumors that the vaccine would sterilize them. After repeatedly testing the vaccine, switching to supplies made in a Muslim country  --  Indonesia  --  and persuading local government and religious leaders to once again support the campaign, mass vaccination resumed last spring. 
 Two of Nigeria's northern states that had been most resistant were Kaduna, where H5N1 was responsible for the death of 40,000 chickens, and Kano state, where other poultry die-offs are under investigation. 
 After H5N1 was detected last week, the plan was to have the thousands of vaccinators who are now going house to house with the oral vaccine deliver the message that people should not touch or eat ailing chickens. However, that plan was rejected when Nigerian health officials concluded that vaccinators would not be able to answer questions about bird flu. Instead, field supervisors are giving the chicken-avoidance message to village leaders and having them decide the best way to disseminate it, Heymann said. 
 In December in the neighboring country of Niger, the polio "platform" was used to fight malaria. 
 After each household's children were vaccinated, the mother was given a voucher for a free insecticide-filled mosquito net. Distribution sites were set up so that no one had to travel more than about three miles to redeem the voucher. Three million children were vaccinated and 2 million nets  --  which reduce malaria mortality when children sleep under them  --  were given away. 
 Along with the vaccine, many polio campaigns deliver a dose of Vitamin A, which cuts a child's risk of dying from various infections. In most of sub-Saharan Africa, polio surveillance officers also collect data on cholera, yellow fever and meningitis, said R. Bruce Aylward, WHO's chief polio strategist. 
 Last October, when an earthquake struck Pakistan, polio vaccinators were working in the remote tribal areas of North-West Frontier province along the Afghan border. Within two hours, 15 teams  --  each with two doctors in a four-wheel-drive vehicle equipped with a radio or satellite phone  --  were dispatched to the devastated area. 
 "Our staff was quite experienced in field work, but it was the first time we were involved in emergency response. It was completely not our mandate," said Mulugeta Abraham Debesay, an Eritrean physician and epidemiologist who is WHO's polio team leader in Pakistan, in a telephone interview from Peshawar. 
 For three weeks, the teams treated and transported the injured, catalogued the damage and estimated the number of dead. The last two tasks were aided by "micromaps" used to estimate the amount of vaccine needed during campaigns. They are hand-drawn maps of every village that show the location of all dwellings and the number of children in each.  

 NIGERIA (94%); AFRICA (94%); ANGOLA (79%); NIGER (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); AFGHANISTAN (68%)







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

February 12, 2006, Sunday



 Bush at war: lightning strike to endless muddle

 
PARIS - The American Defense Department and White House have decided that the United States now conducts "the Long War" rather than what previously was known as the War on Terror, then as the Struggle Against Violent Extremism, and briefly - as one revealing Pentagon study described it - a war against "the Universal Adversary."
President George W. Bush said in his State of the Union message last month that the aim of his administration is to defeat radical Islam. This was a preposterous statement, made shortly before radical Islam began wrecking and burning embassies from Afghanistan and Indonesia to Damascus and Beirut. The United States is not going to defeat that. 
There are a great many dismaying aspects of President Bush's Washington, but nothing more so than this combination of the unachievable with the hortatory in giving a name and purpose to the military campaigns that already have the American Army and Marine Corps near exhaustion, and a major part of the world in turmoil, is evidence of the reigning confusion and manipulation in Washington.
It is customary, politically desirable and morally indispensable to say seriously what a war is about, if only so the public will know when it is over; and when the declared and undeclared measures of exception that have accompanied it, justifying suspension of civil liberties, illegal practices and defiance of international law and convention, will be lifted, and the killing may be expected to stop.
What originally was to be a matter of quick and exemplary revenge, with lightning attacks and acclaimed victories, has now become, we are told, the long war whose end cannot be foreseen. The citizen is implicitly told to expect the current suspension of constitutional norms, disregard for justice, and defiance of presidential power limits as traditionally construed, to continue indefinitely. We are in a new age, America's leaders say. The Democratic opposition seems to agree.
What started as the war against terror, proclaimed by the president to Congress in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, has undergone a metamorphosis. The initial interpretation was that the people responsible for the World Trade Center attacks and other terrorist outrages against Americans and their interests would be discovered, defeated and probably killed, or less likely, brought to justice.
Surely that is what most Americans thought when the search was launched for Osama bin Laden, the Mullah Omar and members of al-Qaida. These previously unknown members of a marginal and sectarian band of politico-religious zealots were made into international celebrity-outlaws, together with their more recent successor, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi - the latest to go on international television to insolently defy and ridicule George Bush.
The idea was that these men would be tracked down and dealt with, even if two countries had to be wrecked to do it - at a cost to the latter's unwitting citizens the Pentagon prefers not to calculate.
Today Osama bin Laden and the Mullah Omar are somewhere in Waziristan, tracked by the CIA and Pakistani soldiers (with different degrees of enthusiasm). There is an insurrection in Iraq, which had nothing to do with al-Qaida when it started, but from which al-Qaida and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi now draw global publicity.
Elsewhere, violent and alienated members of the Muslim diaspora in Europe claim the brand-identification of al-Qaida to dramatize their own exploits, as do discontented sons of the Saudi Arabian and other Middle Eastern elites.
Yet even if you include the 9/11 casualties, the number of Americans killed by international terrorists since the late 1960s (which is when the U.S. State Department began its accounting) is about the same as that killed by lightning - or by accident-causing deer, or by severe allergic reaction to peanuts.
"In almost all years, the total number of people worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States." I quote John Mueller of Ohio State University, writing in last autumn's issue of the authoritative American journal (now in its 17th year) Terrorism and Political Violence.
As Mueller concedes, there is a definitional issue. Few insurgents in Iraq are internationals; most are homegrown. If aspirant terrorists in London or Paris had nuclear bombs, the numbers would become rather different.
Nonetheless, a phenomenon that is scattered, limited and under control, and inevitably transient, has been conflated by Washington and in international discussion with something that is huge and very serious: the upheaval that results from the desperation that exists among the Muslim masses and is directed indiscriminately against the Western nations, held responsible for Islamic society's backwardness, poverty and exploitation.
Al-Qaida and individual international terrorists are the object of worldwide intelligence and police operations. They are a marginal phenomenon. The Bush administration's conflation of them with the social upheaval in their world is exploited to perpetuate changes in American society that provide a much more sinister threat to democracy than anything ever dreamed by Osama bin Laden. The radical threat to the United States is at home.
Pfaff is a columnist for the International Herald Tribune.

  AFGHANISTAN (79%); SYRIA (79%); INDONESIA (79%)








 
 

February 12, 2006 Sunday



 WARY DANISH DIPLOS ON RUN; FLEEING RIOTOUS MUSLIMS

 
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - The Danish government said yesterday its ambassadors and embassy staff had left both Indonesia and Iran because of fears for their safety, while Muslims held more demonstrations in European cities over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that they consider blasphemous.  
The departures followed those of Danish embassy staff in Syria, who left on Friday on the grounds that the security provided by Syrian authorities was inadequate. Enraged protesters set fire to Denmark's embassy in Damascus a week ago. 
The Foreign Ministry said it removed Danish staff from Iran because of "serious and concrete threats" against the ambassador, and threats were also aimed at personnel in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. 
Denmark also temporarily closed its mission in Lebanon last week after protests there. 
Denmark has been a particular target of protests in Islamic countries because cartoons of Mohammed were first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September before they were reprinted last month by other European newspapers. 
Pakistan's opposition Islamist parties called for a nationwide strike on March 3 to protest against the publication of the cartoons, while Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused European countries of being Israeli puppets for publishing the cartoons. 
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's top cleric said it was too late for the world's Muslims to accept apologies for the "slanderous" caricatures of Islam's Prophet Mohammed, and demanded the authors and publishers of the cartoons be tried and punished. 
At his Friday sermon, Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Seedes, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, called on the international community to enact laws that condemn insults against the prophet and holy sites. 
"Where is the world with all its agencies and organizations? Is there only freedom of expression when it involves insults to Muslims? With one voice . . . we will reject the apology and demand a trial," Al Riyad, a Saudi daily newspaper, quoted al-Seedes as saying. 
At the Winter Olympics in Italy, plainclothes guards accompanied the Danish team at the opening ceremony Friday evening. 
Some 7,200 people marched through central Paris, waving banners and chanting in protest, but the atmosphere was peaceful, police said 
At least 11 people have been killed this year in protests over the cartoons, one of which showed the prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Muslims consider any portrayal of the Mohammed blasphemous.  
Post Wire Services  (p. 25 Metro) 

 DENMARK (98%); IRAN,  (94%); SYRIA (94%); SAUDI ARABIA (93%); EUROPE (93%);  ISRAEL (79%); LEBANON (79%); PAKISTAN (79%)







  



February 11, 2006 Saturday  




 Muslims' Fury Rages Unabated Over Cartoons; 
Demonstrators in 13 Countries Ignore Leaders' Appeals, Newspaper's Apology

 
Tens of thousands of Muslims took to the streets across Asia, Africa and the Middle East after weekly prayers on Friday, burning Danish flags and shouting anti-Danish and anti-American slogans in a continuing convulsion of anger over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. 
  Demonstrators marched in at least 13 countries  --  Kenya, Iran, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Egypt, Israel and Jordan  --  as the global wave of protests, spurred by a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting Islam's holiest figure and the reprinting of those cartoons in newspapers in other countries, headed toward a second consecutive weekend.   
 The protesters defied calls for calm from several prominent Muslim leaders and organizations as well as a statement of regret from Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and an apology by editors of the newspaper that originally published the cartoons. "The government has done what can be done," Rasmussen said in an interview Thursday. "Neither the government nor the Danish people can be held responsible for what is published in an independent newspaper. And neither the government nor the Danish people have any intention whatsoever to insult Muslims or any other religious community." 
  In Kenya, police shot and wounded at least one protester Friday as they tried to protect the Danish ambassador's residence. Thousands of demonstrators shouting "Kill Danes! Down with Denmark!" marched from Nairobi's largest mosque following Friday prayers. Riot police fired on a group of at least 200 people who had tried to reach the home of the Danish envoy, Bo Jensen. 
  "We've certainly heard their message and hope they will go home," Jensen told the Reuters news agency. 
  In Pakistan, more than 5,000 people demonstrated peacefully in Islamabad in the largest rally in the country since the controversy began. Another 2,000 protesters fought with police in the northwestern city of Peshawar. 
  In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, several thousand protesters marched from a mosque to the Danish Embassy, shouting, "Destroy Denmark! Destroy Israel! Destroy George Bush! Destroy America!" Others carried placards supporting an economic boycott that has almost halted Danish exports to the Middle East and North Africa. 
  Addressing a large crowd, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi described a "huge chasm that has emerged between the West and Islam," not simply because of the cartoons, he said, but because of Western policies regarding oil, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 
  In India, thousands of angry Muslims kicked, spat on and tore Danish flags and burned effigies in the capital, New Delhi, and in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, the Associated Press reported. In Bangladesh, more than 5,000 Muslims marched on Denmark's embassy in the capital, Dhaka, shouting, "Death to those who degrade our beloved prophet!" 
  In the Middle East, about 2,000 women, young boys and older men marched around the Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem chanting "Bin Laden, strike again!" Large crowds of protesters in Gaza fired gunshots into the air and burned Danish flags. Thousands clashed with police in Egypt. 
 About 2,000 Muslims marched in Jordan. Demonstrators in Tehran threw gasoline bombs at the French Embassy and shouted, "Death to France!" and, "Death to America!" Several French newspapers have reprinted some of the Danish cartoons.  
  The violence came despite calls for calm from Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a senior cleric. 
  "I am calling on all religious men not to attack the embassies of the foreigners," Khatami told worshipers in Tehran in comments broadcast live on state radio. "Chanting slogans, staging protests and condemning such measures are holy . . . but I feel that they want their embassies to be set on fire so they can say that they are innocent. Take this excuse away from them." 
  In Sweden, the government shut down the Web site of a far-right political party's newspaper after it briefly posted a cartoon of Muhammad. It was the first time a Western government has intervened to block a publication in the controversy over the cartoons, the BBC reported. 
  Richard Jomshof, editor of the newspaper, SD-Kuriren, which is published by the anti-immigration Swedish Democrats, said the action was illegal. Jomshof's paper had posted a cartoon showing Muhammad from the rear, looking into a mirror with his eyes blacked out. He said the cartoon was about self-censorship, but Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds called it "a provocation" by "a small group of extremists." 
  In Copenhagen, Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which originally published the cartoons on Sept. 30, was told to take a two-week vacation. "There is no disagreement whatsoever between me and the company," Rose said in an interview. "I'm tired, I have been under huge pressure, and I am grateful to the paper for this time off." 
  Rose said this week that he intended to print cartoons of Jesus Christ and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He said the idea was to show that his newspaper would direct satire against all religions. Rose also said he was considering printing cartoons about the Holocaust that an Iranian newspaper intended to publish. 
  The newspaper's editor in chief, Carsten Juste, later publicly contradicted those statements, and Rose agreed that they represented "an error in judgment." 
  In Norway on Friday, the editor of Magazinet, a Christian newspaper, apologized to Muslims for reprinting the cartoons, which had made Norway a target of Muslim attacks, including the burning of its embassy in Damascus, Syria. Vebjoern Selbekk, who had initially defended the Jan. 10 publication as an expression of press freedom, said at a news conference: "I address myself personally to the Muslim community to say that I am sorry that your religious feelings have been hurt. It was never our intent to hurt anyone." Selbekk, who said he had received more than 20 e-mailed death threats, then shook hands with Mohammed Hamdan, leader of the Islamic Council in Norway, who urged forgiveness and Selbekk's safety. 
  "Anyone who touches him touches us," Hamdan said. "Our prophet, Muhammad, has said that everyone can make mistakes, but the best is the one who expresses regret and asks for forgiveness." 

 DENMARK (97%); MALAYSIA (95%); ISRAEL (94%); MIDDLE EAST (94%); INDIA (94%); KENYA (94%); AFGHANISTAN (93%); UNITED STATES (93%); BANGLADESH (93%); AFRICA (93%); PAKISTAN (93%); JORDAN (92%); ASIA (92%); EGYPT (92%);  INDONESIA (92%); PHILIPPINES (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); NORTHERN AFRICA (79%); IRAQ (79%)







 


February 10, 2006 Friday



 Letters

 
THE DANISH CARTOONS 
Muslims' response 
If the Danish cartoonists' intent was to criticize violence and terrorism as a disturbing trend among many Muslims, this is a fair point. However, a derogatory cartoon about the Prophet Muhammad himself serves no purpose but to inflame. A Muslim cartoonist criticizing Israeli policies, or some evangelical Christian leaders, for example, would never depict Moses or Jesus in a derogatory light because of the respect Muslims are taught to have for all prophets, including Prophet Muhammad. 
Free speech certainly gives the right to say things that others find objectionable. However, with freedom also comes responsibility. Insulting a figure sacred to 20 percent of the world's population shows lack of responsibility and judgment. As the saying goes, free speech does not mean the right to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. 
Austin's Muslims fully condemn senseless acts of violence in response to the cartoons, and we support the freedoms our nation offers. But when a freedom is exercised in a way that is inflammatory and blasphemous to our beliefs, we must exercise our freedom -- and our duty -- to speak out against it.  
ALI A. AKHTAR 
Committee chairman 
Islamic Ahlul Bayt Association of Austin 
Austin 
Importance of free press 
Thank you for publishing the Muslim cartoon and the article on the fallout from it. The American-Statesman has guts for not submitting to a culture that tries to impose its religious standards on the rest of the world. This has nothing to do with having respect for all religions. 
Now, let's try to convince Muslims of the beauty and necessity for a free press, unencumbered by religious, cultural or political constraints. 
JACKIE KNOTT 
Canyon Lake 
Statesman's wrong choice 
I am extremely disappointed that the American-Statesman chose to publish the anti-Islamic Danish cartoon. 
As the associated article clearly indicated, printing the image is offensive to many members of a major religion. Therefore, publishing the image was an insensitive and offensive act. Further, Arab extremists are using the publishing of this image to gain support and as a rallying point in support of terrorism. The written word clearly communicated the nature of the cartoon, so publishing the illustration was unnecessary.  
The Statesman had previously set a high tone against insensitivity toward minority groups. Publishing this image was inconsistent with the Statesman's avoidance of publishing any of the thousands of available anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-feminist, anti-homosexual and anti-other minority cartoons because they are insulting. 
How can the Statesman justify publishing a cartoon image that serves no purpose except to insult innocent people, encourage hatred and fuel terrorism?  
As an American, a Christian and a supporter of our military, I ask that the Statesman publish a page-one apology to all Muslims for this affront and to our troops for encouraging violence against them.       
BYRON HINDERER 
Austin 
Speak out on bombings 
I find it troubling that the world's Muslim population is up in arms over a simple political cartoon depicting their prophet, but they were mum when Muslim extremists killed people in the World Trade Center attacks, the Bali bombing, the London bombings, the USS Cole bombing and many more acts of murder worldwide. There seems to be a disconnect in their thinking, because they look the other way or are quiet when murder is involved against others. 
ERIK McFARLAND 
Austin 
No support for freedom 
Recently a U.S. State Department spokesman weighed in on the turmoil in the Muslim world caused by European cartoons of Muhammad saying, "We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression, but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable."   
Well, I find it unacceptable that a spokesman for the U.S. government would follow an acknowledgment of press and expression freedom with the word "but."   
Since when was a cartoon expressing a controversial opinion, submitted as a subject for civilized debate, "incitement of religious or ethnic hatred?"  
Let's not forget that in this country we see different religions parodied and debated all the time. Often it offends people. But in a free society, where views are open to scrutiny, there is always the risk that someone will be offended.  What is at stake is our dearly paid for and highly cherished freedom to believe what we want and to express those beliefs with freedom from fear.  Without this liberty, everything that we stand for as a society is lost.  
I am ashamed that our government has not underscored this fact, but has rather apologized for those who threaten world peace with views of intolerance. 
SCOTT MUCKLEROY 
Austin 
Why the contradiction? 
Re: Feb. 2 column by James Dee, "The two black holes in Intelligent Design": 
Both the wrong-headed drive to ignore science, advocated by the most ardent Intelligent Design supporters, and the narrow-minded attacks on religion by people such as James Dee should demonstrate the need for us in the middle to agree that there is much we don't know. 
There is no inherent contradiction in the concept that the creation of the universe, and the plan for our role in it, is the act of an all-powerful God who then let his creation take its evolutionary course.  
The fish and the fish with legs should be friends. I think Dee should go ahead and wrestle with, rather than simply dismiss, the operating premise of people of faith that the incorporeal supreme being's ability to make things happen is what makes Him God. 
KEN MILLS 
Austin 
Scientific dishonesty 
In parallel with all the public bashing of Intelligent Design, scientists keep being surprised by evidence that refutes evolution. Phyletic gradualism, a cornerstone of Darwin's theory, fell long ago to evidence of "abrupt global shuffles" in the DNA of living creatures.  
A September 2005 article in the journal Nature that compared chimps to humans admitted evidence of human-specific genetic anomalies that appear "much older than the human-chimpanzee split." 
How does this prove common ancestry asserted as "scientific fact" in the Dover, Pa., trial? Scientists also note that "orthologous proteins (encoded in the DNA) in human and chimpanzee are extremely similar, with 29 percent being identical." This doesn't impress me, nor do many other things I read in the scientific literature. 
What happened to the intelligence of the scientific community? 
MIKE FIELD 
Austin 
Giving terrorists a win 
Re: Feb. 6 article, "Bush's spying draws GOP fire": 
How can the American-Statesman stretch an interview on "Meet the Press," a liberal show, with U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, a RINO (Republican in name only), into a major headline assuming a GOP position? Specter does not speak for Republicans. 
The Statesman and its liberal friends, including , are doing all they can to damage President Bush, even if it means the terrorists will win another victory in the war on terror. 
ARLEN BOOKS  
Kingsland 
Let's get to bottom of it 
I respectfully request a special prosecutor to determine whether the latest wiretaps were indeed legal. This will clear up many issues surrounding them and put the matter to rest. And to state that we are helping the enemy by investigating the wiretaps is simply unpatriotic, untrue and naive. 
DOUG SIMMER 
Austin 

 ISRAEL (92%)








 


February 10, 2006



 Iran, Syria Said To Be Stoking Riots; 
Dictators Seek To Blunt Push Of U.S., Europe

 
As Muslim fury mounted this week over a Danish newspaper's cartoon images of Muhammad, indications were growing that two of America's and Israel's most intractable foes - Iran and Syria - were fueling the controversy in an effort to blunt the growing diplomatic coordination between Europe and the United States.
Protests erupted across the Muslim world this week, from Indonesia to Nigeria, despite appeals for calm by European leaders, the United Nations and the 55-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference. Some of the most violent outbursts, however, were in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut, where mobs stoned and firebombed Danish and other embassies. That led to suspicion in some Western capitals that Iran and Syria were fanning the dispute in order to punish Europe for siding with Washington on several fronts in recent months.
Violence also erupted this week in American-controlled Afghanistan, where at least nine protesters were killed during mob attacks on American and NATO military bases. 
"What is happening in the Middle East is primarily political manipulation - Syria taking revenge for its expulsion from Lebanon, Hamas striking back at the European Union for its rebuff on financial aid, Afghans anticipating the replacement of U.S. troops by European ones, and Iranians lashing back at the E.U. for its stance on the nuclear issue," said Olivier Roy, a leading French expert on Islam.
In recent weeks the European Union has closed ranks with the United States in pushing for the U.N. Security Council to take up Tehran's nuclear program. Europe
has also joined Washington in backing a U.N. investigation into the slaying last year of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, in which Syria's top leadership appears implicated. Both Iran and Syria face possible sanctions, with Europe and the United States leading the charge.
Further fueling resentment, European leaders are supporting Israeli calls to cut financial aid to the Palestinian Authority if Hamas takes control without renouncing its violent ideology.
While political and religious leaders in several Muslim countries sought to dampen the flames this week, Iranian officials openly raised the stakes, seeking to draw Jews and Israel into the center of the controversy. Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, charged February 7 that Israel was behind the caricatures. The same day, Iran's largest daily announced a contest for cartoons on the Holocaust.
The dispute began last September when a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, solicited and ran a dozen cartoon images of the prophet Muhammad. The paper was responding to a complaint by a Danish author who said he could not find an artist willing to illustrate his children's biography of Muhammad.
Following complaints about the cartoons by local Muslims and then by a group of Arab ambassadors, a radical Danish imam began circulating the images, along with several that had not been published, to colleagues and religious and political leaders in Muslim countries. Egyptian officials started raising the issue, but it was only after a Norwegian magazine reprinted the cartoons in January that protests erupted in Saudi Arabia and Gaza, spreading quickly across the Muslim world. Since then a half-dozen nations have cut diplomatic or trade relations with Denmark, leading to threats of countermeasures by the E.U. Further sharpening the dispute, the cartoons have been reprinted in more than a dozen European countries.
Televised images of angry mobs burning European flags in Indonesia, Iraq and elsewhere have greatly strengthened the Western view, previously found mainly on the right, that Islam and the West are engaged in a so-called clash of civilizations.
But knowledgeable observers here and in Europe warned that much of the protest appeared manipulated - arguing, for example, that the torching of European embassies in Damascus could not have happened without at least a tacit nod from the ruling Ba'ath party and that Syria was likely behind similar incidents in Beirut.
In tightly controlled Tehran, protesters pelted the Danish embassy with gasoline bombs and stones for several days running.
Violence also escalated sharply in Afghanistan this week, where clashes between demonstrators and local and international security forces left 11 dead as of Wednesday. On Monday, about 2,000 protesters tried to storm the main American military base at Bagram and police shot dead two protesters. The next day, armed protesters attacked a NATO base in the northern city of Maymana, which is manned by peacekeepers from Norway, Finland, Latvia and Sweden. Four protesters were shot on Wednesday while marching toward a U.S. military base. The attacks on foreign and Afghan government targets have fueled suspicion that opponents to the current pro-American regime were behind the protests.
By contrast, protests in Europe itself have not been violent, and turnout has been low, evenly though European Muslims were ostensibly the ones wounded by the cartoons' presumed bigotry. For that reason, said Roy, the French scholar, some of the protest was best understood as a response to Europe's rapprochement with Washington on several issues that involve the Muslim world, rather than a spontaneous reaction to the cartoons.
Perhaps ironically, the protests appear likely to drive Europe and Washington even closer and to sharpen the divisions between Europe and the Muslim world.
Some observers said that the current furor, coming after terrorist bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, the slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and the riots in suburban Paris last year, is likely to fuel anti-Muslim feelings and thus bolster far-right parties in Europe.
"There is no question the far right is profiting from this," said Charles Kupchan, who was director of European affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.
"Part of their anti-immigration platform is also finding its way into mainstream conservative parties," Kupchan said.
The anger was visible among conservatives in this country, too.
"The notion that the Muslim world should forever remain unaccountable for its actions and be granted an unlimited license to kill, and that the West should forever apologize, has been weakened," said Laurent Murawiec, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute. "The degree of hysteria, hatred and destructiveness displayed in Muslim areas regarding the cartoons, may, it just may, wake up more people in Europe to the present danger."
Already, Murawiec said, he has heard "a great degree of upset amongst European elites" over the reactions to the Muhammad cartoons.
However, most commentators cautioned that despite the convergence in views, traditional differences between the United States and Europe on the Middle East were likely to resurface if America pushes for stiffer measures than Europe will countenance on the Palestinian, Iranian or Syrian issues.
More important, some observers suggested, the reactions in the Muslim world could end up dividing Europe and the United States by reinforcing the common European belief that the effort to impose democracy in the Middle East is a cause of instability at its doorstep. "The Europeans prefer a go-slow approach on democratization, while the Bush administration is quite impatient," said Kupchan, who teaches international affairs at Georgetown University. "The latest events are likely to confirm the Europeans in their view."
By contrast, Iran is seen as unlikely to cause any divergence between Europe and the United States in the near term.
Tehran announced last weekend that it had curtailed cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency after the U.N. nuclear watchdog referred Iran to the Security Council. Impatience with Iran among European and American officials has been heightened by the verbal antics of Iran's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who recently declared that Israel should be wiped off the map and questioned the veracity of the Holocaust.
The accusation that Israel had engineered the publication of the Danish cartoons was voiced this week by Khamenei, Iran's religious leader. He claimed the publication was part of an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over the victory of Hamas in last month's Palestinian legislative elections.
"The West condemns any denial of the Jewish Holocaust, but it permits the insult of Islamic sanctities," Khamenei was quoted as saying.
In fact, the cartoons were first published last September, months before the Palestinian election.
Iran suspended all trade and economic ties with Denmark and the conservative Tehran daily Hamshahri invited artists to enter a Holocaust cartoon contest. The paper said it wanted to see if freedom of expression - the banner under which many Western publications reprinted the prophet drawings - also applied to Holocaust images.
"A serious question for Muslims," the paper wrote, "is this: does Western free speech allow working on issues like America and Israel's crimes or an incident like the Holocaust or is this freedom of speech only good for insulting the holy values of divine religions?"
The Brussels-based Conference of European Rabbis denounced the announcement of a Holocaust cartoon contest and urged the Muslim world to do likewise.
"The Iranian regime has plummeted to new depths if it regards the deaths of 6 million Jews as a matter for humor or to score cheap political points," said the conference president, Chief Rabbi Joseph Sitruk of France. He had condemned the initial publication of the Danish cartoons, saying they were offensive to Muslims.

 EUROPE (99%); UNITED STATES (98%); IRAN,  (97%); ISRAEL (94%); DENMARK (94%); SYRIA (94%); LEBANON (92%); NIGERIA (92%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (92%); SOUTHERN  INDONESIA (92%); AFGHANISTAN (90%); IRAN (88%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%)







 Lincoln Journal Star,
 


February 10, 2006 Friday  




 Depictions of the Prophet nothing new around world

 
He is among the lawgivers shown on a marble frieze in the courtroom where the U.S. justices sit.
When the U.S. Supreme Court convenes in Washington, the justices sit in their grand courtroom beneath a carved marble frieze depicting 18 great lawgivers from the ages.
On the south wall are the ancients - Confucius, Octavian and Moses holding the Ten Commandments. And on the north wall, along with Justice John Marshall and Napoleon Bonaparte, standing between Charlemagne and Justinian, is the prophet Muhammad, cradling a sword and a copy of the Holy Koran. 
In the furor that has erupted since the publication of controversial Danish cartoons of Muhammad, many claims have circulated in the media about Islam's prohibitions about artistic depictions of the prophet, or any human figures.
But Muhammad's image is portrayed far more widely than many believe, and not just in the West, in the highest court in America, where the prophet's likeness was chiseled in stone about 70 years ago.
In Iran, images of Muhammad are widely circulated among the predominantly Shia population. The 1994 book "Arab Comic Strips" shows a modern cartoon image of an infant Muhammad in the arms of his nurse, though his face is obscured in a brilliant halo.
In the 15 centuries since Muhammad lived, Islamic artists have portrayed the prophet heroically in paintings now on display in such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.
Nor does there appear to be any uniform prohibition against portraying the human figure in Islam.
"Right from the beginning of Islamic history, and in a number of periods since, paintings of figures on walls and in art have been practiced in Islam," said Renata Holod, curator of the University of Pennsylvania Museum's Islamic art collection.
Conservative strains of the faith, such as the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, maintain that Islamic law strictly prohibits any portraiture because only God can create human images. The Taliban in Afghanistan took this belief to an extreme when they systematically defaced figurative artwork - including ancient images of Buddha.
But scholars say no clear doctrine defines Islam. Like believers of other global faiths, such as Christianity, the world's 1.3 billion Muslims hold a variety of beliefs about religious imagery.
Experts say human figures have appeared frequently in Islamic art through the ages, particularly in Persia and in Turkey.
"Although there is a widespread misconception to the contrary, there are in fact a great many depictions of human beings in Islamic art, produced by Muslim artists for pious Muslim patrons," Andras J. Riedlmayer, an Islamic scholar at Harvard University's Fine Arts Library, wrote in an Internet posting this week.
The historic portraits of Muhammad have caused a fuss on the Internet, where several commentators have posted collections from the Islamic world and the West that portray Muhammad.
One San Francisco Bay Area site, zombietime.com, posted portraits with the explanation that images of Muhammad are "nothing new." The site's author contends the Danish cartoons have created an uproar only because "no other images of Mohammed have ever been so widely publicized."
But art historians and scholars say there is a dramatic distinction between the respectful way that the prophet has been portrayed in Islamic art against the intentionally provocative depictions in the Danish cartoons, which have triggered protests across the world.
"The real problem with the Danish cartoons, of course, is not just that they purported to be portraits of the Prophet, but that they were openly and deliberately meant to be insulting - while most of the images that have passed without causing similar uproar were not produced with an intent to mock or offend," wrote Harvard's Riedlmayer.
But even the respectful images have proven sensitive in the past.
Nine years ago, the Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded the Supreme Court remove the image of Muhammad from the marble frieze.
"While appreciating the fact that Muhammad was included in the court's pantheon of 18 prominent lawgivers of history, CAIR noted that Islam discouraged its followers from portraying any prophet in paintings, sculptures or other artistic representations," the organization said in a published history. CAIR also objected that the prophet was shown with a sword, "reinforcing long-held stereotypes of Muslims as intolerant conquerors."
THURSDAY'S DEVELOPMENTS
* Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, heading a religious procession by hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Beirut, said President Bush and his secretary of state should "shut up" after accusing Syria and Iran of fueling protests.
* An Islamic procession in the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir turned into a protest; 25 people were arrested, and police beat back angry demonstrators.
* South African President Thabo Mbeki appealed for tolerance and mutual respect as tens of thousands of people staged a peaceful protest. Muslims called for a boycott on products from Denmark, where the cartoons were first published.
* About 2,000 members of a hard-line Muslim group, the Islamic Constitution Movement, rallied and burned a Danish flag in Bangladesh.
* Indonesia canceled badminton games against Denmark because of safety concerns, while visiting Iranian Vice President Isfandiar Rahim Mashaee denied his country was stoking Muslim anger.
* Malaysia's government shut down a newspaper, The Sarawak Tribune, for reprinting a cartoon of Muhammad.
* Academics, media advocates and Muslim leaders met in Paris to discuss the balance between freedom of expression and respect for religious faith. An Arab co-host walked out when the editor of a French newspaper that published the drawings took the floor.
--The Associated Press

 UNITED STATES (95%); IRAN,  (79%); TURKEY (75%); SAUDI ARABIA (70%); AFGHANISTAN (67%)




12


   


February 10, 2006 Friday  




 OFFICIAL RESIGNS PUBLIC TV POST 

 
The top television executive at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced on Thursday that he would be stepping down. This is the latest in a string of departures of officials and consultants who played central roles in an effort by conservatives to bring what they viewed as more balance to public television and radio. 
  The executive, Michael Pack, controlled a $70 million production budget and was described by the official who hired him as a conservative Republican. He chose to resign after Patricia S. Harrison, the corporation's new president, forced him to decide between renewing his employment contract and exercising a soon-to-expire option that gives him $500,000 to produce a documentary. 
Ms. Harrison said the departures of Mr. Pack and a senior consultant, James Denton, were business decisions and were not part of any purge of ideologically driven officials. ''You are connecting dots when there is no connection,'' she said in an interview. ''I have not fired a single person since I came on board here.''
  But other officials in public broadcasting saw political overtones to the moves. Since being named president of the corporation last June, Ms. Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, has attempted to tamp down a debate over balance in programming that has threatened to undermine financial support for public broadcasting from both Congress and private sources. Public broadcasting officials who had been at odds with the corporation said the personnel changes could shore up support among Republican moderates and Democrats, important traditional allies in budget fights.
  ''Pat Harrison appears to be trying to ratchet down some of the ideological orientation of the organization,'' said John Lawson, president of the Association of Public Television Stations. 
  ''The best thing that C.P.B. can do now is stay out of the spotlight,'' Mr. Lawson added. ''If changes in management at C.P.B. signal to Democrats and Republicans alike that C.P.B. will be nonpartisan and programming decisions will be made on a nonideological basis, that's a very positive development as we go about seeking support from Congress.''
  The White House this week proposed a cut of more than $100 million, or more than 25 percent, in the corporation's budget. 
  The corporation has faced tumult since last spring, when it was disclosed that Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who was then its chairman, was pressing public broadcasters to correct what he and other conservatives saw as liberal bias. Mr. Tomlinson was forced to resign in November, after the corporation's inspector general found evidence that he had repeatedly broken federal law and the organization's own regulations. He remains the head of a separate agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees most government broadcasting operations abroad. Mr. Pack's departure followed the recent decision by Ms. Harrison not to renew the contract of Mr. Denton, who oversaw one of the corporation's largest projects: a $20 million documentary series called ''America at a Crossroads'' examining the nation's role in a post-9/11 world. ( has received financing for one program, ''Indonesia: Battleground for the Soul of Islam,'' as part of that series.)
  Mr. Denton, the son of Jeremiah Denton, a conservative Alabama Republican who served in the Senate in the 1980's, was seen by some documentary makers as advancing a conservative political agenda. In an interview, he disputed the complaints that he had sought to bring a conservative bent to programming, calling them ''absurd.''
  Mr. Denton provoked a controversy last year when, at a forum on one of the corporation's largest initiatives, creating projects designed to teach history and civics to teenagers, he suggested to producers that they tell corporate partners the programs could be a ''Trojan horse'' to get their technology into the schools. 
  A third official involved in the effort to change the political direction of public broadcasting, William Schulz, submitted his resignation last month. Mr. Schulz, a conservative who once worked with Mr. Tomlinson at Reader's Digest, was one of the two men hired last year to serve as the corporation's ombudsmen, responsible for monitoring the balance of programs. He said in an interview that he had resigned because he had other projects that were interfering with his obligations to the corporation. 
  In an interview on Thursday afternoon, Ms. Harrison said the personnel moves had ''nothing to do with politics or ideology.''
  ''These are business decisions,'' she said. ''It was not in the best interests of the corporation to extend or enhance Michael Pack's option to produce a program.''
  ''In the case of Jim Denton, he did a great job,'' she added. ''His contract was over in December.''
  Other broadcasting executives said that Ms. Harrison had heard complaints from producers that the ''America at a Crossroads'' and history and civics projects have moved too slowly and been disorganized. 
  Among other programming moves, he helped bring to public television a show featuring The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board and another whose host was Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator.
  Mr. Pack called ''America at a Crossroads'' ''a good example of the way to bring diversity of views to public broadcasting across the political spectrum.'' With new voices and a mix of cultural and political topics, he said, ''I hope it will be a model for how to bring a true diversity of opinion and in some ways get out of the left-right box.''


 







 
 



February 10, 2006 Friday



 What Muhammad means to Muslims

 
The cartoon controversy is spiraling out of control around the world as a fight between freedom of speech vs. derogatory depictions of a prophet. Some Muslims unfortunately have resorted to violence and destruction of property. This is un-Islamic and must be condemned.
While we can argue about the merits of freedom of speech vs. responsible journalism, and peaceful vs. violent protests, lost in this debate is the persona of the individual who has been insulted and depicted in a most vulgar way. What would he have done and why does he evoke passions that we in the West have a hard time understanding? Why is this fury equally intense among disparate people whether they are Arabs, Indonesian, Afghan, European or American Muslims? 
Even after 1,400 years, to the average Muslim, whether Shiite or Sunni, Muhammad continues to be the object of love, respect, reverence and honor. His name means ``the praised one,'' and Muslims send salutations on him as part of their five daily prayers. They will not utter his name without saying, ``On him be peace.'' His name and its variations like Mehmet and Ahmed are the most popular names among Muslims, and they strive to emulate his lifestyle and teachings.
Muslims do not attach divinity to Muhammad, or any other prophet for that matter. To them, his greatness was that he was just another human being. Every step of his life is recorded in great detail from the time he was an orphan who grew up and married a widow 15 years his senior to his prophethood. His recorded actions (called Sunnah) are a how-to addendum to the Koran, and his sayings (Hadith) are referenced in discussions on how to solve daily problems.
The goals in the lives of Muslims are set relative to his actions. To them, his life is a shining example of attainable perfection, whether it be in matters of family, business or the community.
When their ultimate goal becomes an object of vilification and ridicule, some feel that their very existence is being called into question, and to them nothing in life becomes more important than protecting this ideal.
His ability to forgive is much needed today and a reminder especially to our fellow Muslims around the world. For example, when a neighbor who used to throw garbage on his path every day did not do so one day, he went to inquire about her health. Similarly, when visiting a nearby city, he was stoned till he bled severely and was driven out, but when asked to make a wish, he prayed for their salvation, instead of their destruction. He even forgave those who tortured and abused him and those who planned his murder.
We can all benefit from the Koran verse that says: ``Goodness and evil cannot be equal. Repel (evil) with something that is better. Then you will see that he with whom you had enmity will become your close friend. And no one will be granted such goodness except those who exercise patience and self-restraint.'' (Koran 41:34-35)
The vast majority of people understand the deep love Muslims have for their prophet and would not denigrate him even in jest or in a cartoon. Thomas Carlyle in his 150-year-old book ``Heros and Hero Worship and the Heroic History'' reminds us that ``The lies which well-meaning zeal has heaped around this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only.''
We may not agree on whether freedom of speech is absolute or if there are limits of decency. But we can agree on one thing: that we must take all measures to avoid a clash of civilizations. The only way to do this is to learn about each other and build bridges of understanding.
RAZI MOHIUDDIN is the president of the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara, one of the largest mosques in the United States. The association is holding an open house Feb. 19 from 2-4 p.m. to explore the life and teachings of Muhammad and its meaning to Muslims.

 








 


February 9, 2006 Thursday  




 EDITORIAL End violence over cartoons

 
A Danish newspaper's publication of a dozen cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad was a convenient pretext for Islamic extremists to launch a deadly explosion of anti-Western anger. 
For fanatics of any stripe, and their state sponsors, the least excuse will suffice.
World leaders called for the violence to end after rampages from Syria, Lebanon and Turkey to Afghanistan and Indonesia left about a dozen people dead. Incidents included torching of Danish and Norwegian embassies, burning of a church, and the murder of a Roman Catholic priest.
Such outbreaks underscore the wide gulf between Western free-speech concepts and the belief among most (but not all) Muslims that any depiction of the Prophet Muhammad is forbidden. Seen in this light, it's no surprise that a drawing of the prophet in a bomb-shaped turban might be offensive to some readers.
It is reprehensible that Syria's secular Baathist regime, Iran's theocratic thugs (who have organized a Holocaust cartoon contest), and Afghanistan's ousted Taliban have poured gasoline on the controversy. Other Muslims, like the 16-year-old Turkish boy who shot the Rev. Andrea Santoro in the back, acted on their own. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has expressed regret that the drawings were published but made little headway in convincing angry Muslim ambassadors that his government can't control Denmark's free press.
(In the United States, most newspapers, including , have described the cartoons but have not reprinted them. Readers who choose to view the images can follow a link from the DenverPost.com website.)
On Wednesday, President Bush issued a call for calm. "We reject violence as a way to express discontent with what may be printed in a free press," Bush said, even as he asked publiations to act responsibly.Jordan's King Abdullah II said that anything that vilifies the Prophet Muhammad "needs to be condemned," but those who protest "should do it thoughtfully, articulately, express their views peacefully." Top Muslim clerics in Afghanistan and Indonesia also decried the violence.
Wednesday's murder of Rev. Santoro was an especially mindless act because last weekend Pope Benedict XVI denounced the cartoons. Yesterday, reflecting on the priest's death, the pope wrote, ``May the sacrifice of his life contribute to the cause of dialogue among religions and peace among peoples.'' That is the only way to make sense of this episode.

 DENMARK (94%); TURKEY (93%);  SYRIA (93%); AFGHANISTAN (92%); LEBANON (92%); JORDAN (79%);  IRAN,  (79%)







  



February 9, 2006 Thursday  




 Opportunists Make Use of Cartoon Protests; 
Individuals, Groups and Governments Vent Anger Over Issues Unrelated to Defense of Islam

 
 Like tens of thousands of protesters this week, the crowd that gathered Wednesday in the southern Afghan town of Qalat came to speak out against cartoons in European newspapers mocking the prophet Muhammad.  
 But the protest soon took a much different direction. Afghan demonstrators began chanting against the hiring of Pakistanis to do reconstruction work. Pakistanis in the crowd began chanting against the United States and tried to force their way into the local U.S. military base. When the crowd encountered Afghan security forces, a suspected Taliban member fired a weapon. Afghan police returned fire. By the time the smoke cleared, at least three protesters were dead and more than a dozen people were injured.  
 "They forgot all about the cartoons," said Gulab Shah Alikheil, the regional governor's spokesman.   
 Furor over the caricatures of Islam's most revered figure may have triggered the wave of recent demonstrations among Muslims worldwide. But as the protests escalate, they are morphing into an opportunity for individuals, groups and governments to push agendas that often have little or nothing to do with defending Islam. Rallies ostensibly held for religious reasons have become chances to vent economic frustrations, settle local scores or gain political leverage.  
 "We have condemned the cartoons and said those responsible should be brought to justice," said Mulwi Sayed Imam Mutawali, deputy head of a religious council in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. "But there are some enemies of Afghanistan that want to take advantage of this issue. They just want to advance their own aims." 
 Mutawali said his council initially supported the protests but has decided to demand they stop because they have been hijacked by people with ulterior motives. At least 10 people have been killed in Afghan protests over the past three days. 
 "There's a sincere feeling of being wounded" by the cartoons, said Paul Fishstein, director of the nonprofit Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. "But there's also the chance for certain forces to make mischief, to take advantage of a situation where people are upset."  
 The list of suspected ringleaders using the controversy to their own benefit here is a long one, from al Qaeda and the Taliban to local militia commanders and former governors. All are believed to have something to gain by steering otherwise peaceful protests into melees. 
 "Ordinary Afghan citizens who are protesting do not walk around with hand grenades in their pockets," said a U.S. military spokesman, Col. James Yonts, referring to a protest Tuesday in which demonstrators lobbed grenades into a NATO base. "That leads us to believe there is something else behind this."  
 Afghanistan is not the only place where motives are in question. 
 The autocratic Syrian government was widely believed to be behind protests Saturday that resulted in the burning of the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. In Lebanon, where the Danish Embassy burned a day later and Christian landmarks were targeted in violence, local news organizations reported that Syrian agents had protesters bused in to help stir up trouble. 
 Sarkis Naoum, a columnist for the Lebanese newspaper An Nahar, said interest groups in Lebanon also had incentive to see the cartoon protests spiral out of control.  
 "The local ones would like to be back as rulers of the country. And certain regional powers here would like to exert the same influence  --  or more  --  than they had before," he said Tuesday by telephone from Beirut. "It is difficult to convince many Lebanese that people aren't trying to use this for their own purposes." 
 In Indonesia, the Islamic Defenders Front, a radical Muslim organization, said the cartoons have made organizing easier.  
 "The moment has unified us," said the group's East Java chairman, Habib Abdurrahman Bahlaida. "The West had a bad plan to pull Muslims apart. Instead, they are pulling us together." The group, which claims 5 million members, attacked the Danish and U.S. consulates in the city of Surabaya on Monday.  
 But such groups are a tiny minority in Indonesia, where about 90 percent of the 240 million inhabitants are Muslims. Some moderate leaders on Wednesday appealed for calm and said the protests were being exploited by extremist groups. 
 "Do not go overboard and get trapped into a situation that can be used by elements bent on painting an image of Indonesia's Islam as an intolerant, rigid and anarchic society," said Din Syamsuddin, a leader of Muhammadiyah, an Islamic group that claims 30 million members, the Reuters news agency reported. 
 In Pakistan, too, conservative Muslim groups appeared to be using the uproar over the cartoons to gain leverage. In Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier province, several thousand people rallied Tuesday in a protest led by the provincial government, which is headed by an alliance of radical religious parties.  
 "We must at least throw out the ambassador of Denmark," said Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest religious party in Pakistan.  
 Rifaat Hussain, a Pakistani academic who is executive director of the Sri Lanka-based Regional Center for Strategic Studies, said the cartoons were being used as a tool to apply pressure on Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is perceived by many religious elements as being too close to the West.  
 "They want the protests to gain momentum and gain intensity so they can use them to undermine Musharraf," Hussain said from Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital.  
 In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai was among the first to condemn the cartoons. For several days after rallies erupted elsewhere in the world, few other Afghans seemed to notice. But that changed quickly: Each day since Monday, Afghanistan has been the scene of especially violent demonstrations.  
 Experts here say religious motivations have played a key role. But so have local political issues, including personal disputes between factional leaders.  
 Following deadly protests on Monday in Laghman province, in eastern Afghanistan, authorities are looking into the possibility that the protests were instigated by allies of a militia commander killed late last year under mysterious circumstances. In the western city of Herat, where about 8,000 protesters gathered Tuesday, authorities suspect the influential hand of Ismail Khan, a former governor who is still bitter about his removal from office.  
 And in the northern city of  Meymaneh, a local commander who has lost power since NATO troops arrived was believed to be behind protests Tuesday in which three people died as they attempted to storm the alliance's base.  
  "The warlords are looking for opportunities," said Nader Nadery, leader of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kabul. "And this is a good opportunity to motivate people." 
 Correspondent Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta and special correspondents Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, and Javed Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report. 

 AFGHANISTAN (96%); UNITED STATES (94%); PAKISTAN (94%); DENMARK (92%); LEBANON (79%); NORWAY (79%); SYRIA (79%)







  



February 9, 2006 Thursday  




 E-Mail, Blogs, Text Messages Propel Anger Over Images; 
In Hours, Rumors in Denmark Galvanize Opinion Elsewhere

 
 Mohammad Fouad Barazi, a prominent Muslim cleric here, received a text message on his cell phone last week. It was a mass mailing from an anonymous sender, he said, warning that Danish people were planning to burn the Koran that Saturday in Copenhagen's City Hall Square out of anger over Muslim demonstrations against Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. 
 Hundreds of people  --  Muslims and ethnic Danes  --  turned out in response to the messages and the rampant rumors they sparked, and by the end of Saturday, police had arrested 179 people. In the end, no Koran was burned. 
 The messages, which were received as far away as the Gaza Strip and recounted on al-Jazeera satellite television, illustrate how modern digital technology  --  especially cell phones and Internet blogs  --  helped turn an incident in tiny Denmark into a uniting cause for protesters around the world in days or even hours.  
  From London to Kabul, Afghanistan, to Jakarta, Indonesia, the digital revolution has given unprecedented access to information  --  accurate or not  --  to anyone with enough money to buy a secondhand cell phone. Where faxes and coffeehouse leaflets were once the lifelines of protest organizers, a new generation of technology has taken hold, doing for the speed and scope of global communication what airplanes did for travel. 
  Real-world conflicts such as the cartoons controversy almost instantly echo in cyberspace. Radical Islamic Web sites feature photos of beheadings and calls to violence. A posting on one, alghorabaa.net, called for an "embassy-burning day" to protest the Muhammad cartoons and offered wording supporters could use in a text-messaging campaign urging people to throw molotov cocktails and storm embassies, according to the Jamestown Foundation, a U.S. group that monitors such sites. 
 E-mails, blogs and text messages have been used to press a boycott of Danish goods in Arab countries and a "Buy Danish" campaign in the United States. Text messages were used to organize anti-Danish protests in Brussels, while Canada's largest Muslim umbrella group sent e-mails to 300,000 members urging them to avoid such demonstrations. Text messages and blogs were also used to organize protests during violent unrest in Paris last fall. 
  "These messages are now part of the conflict," said Manu Sareen, a member of the Copenhagen City Council. "The problem is that you can't always rely on them. Nobody burned the Koran, but it doesn't matter because the rumor was out there." 
  Barazi, a Syrian-born cleric who came to Denmark 15 years ago, said in an interview that he was inundated with calls last week from followers who had received the same text message on their phones. Later, he received a call from a reporter from al-Jazeera, the world's largest Arabic-language news channel, asking to interview him on the subject. 
  In an on-air telephone interview, with perhaps millions of people watching across the Middle East, Barazi said, he related the threat to burn the Koran. "I said it might happen. I don't think so, but I don't know," said Barazi, who said he urged viewers to remain calm. 
  Barazi strongly disagreed that repeating the message on al-Jazeera made the situation worse. He said he cautioned against violence during the interview, and later told worshipers at Friday prayers that as far as he knew no one actually planned to burn a Koran and to stay away from the square that Saturday. 
  But others, including Naser Khader, a moderate Muslim member of Parliament, said mentioning the rumors on al-Jazeera added to anti-Danish feelings and encouraged attacks on the Danish Embassy in Syria on Saturday. Government officials, who declined to be identified because of the delicate nature of the situation, expressed the same sentiment. Barazi denied that his interview contributed to the Syrian incident. 
 On Saturday, 300 to 400 people showed up in City Hall Square in Copenhagen, largely because of the text messages, said Flemming Munch, a spokesman for the Copenhagen police. The crowd included Muslims and ethnic Danes from the far left, who both clashed with Danish right-wing extremists. In all, 179 people  --  120 ethnic Danes and 59 Muslims  --  were arrested in protests that spilled from Copenhagen into two small suburban towns, Munch said. 
  The episode so unnerved Danish authorities that Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen addressed it at a news conference Tuesday. 
  "We are confronted by misinformation passed on by mobile messages and Web logs at such high speed that it is picked up and acted upon before we have a chance to correct it," Rasmussen said. "So for the record, let me reiterate: There has been no burning of the Koran in Denmark." 
  In London, Azzam Tamimi, a member of the Muslim Association of Britain, said text messages were being used to bring out the vote in opinion polls on the Internet. On Tuesday, he received a group message asking him to respond to a poll that a German newspaper was conducting about whether it should publish the cartoons. Even though the poll was aimed at readers in Germany, Tamimi said, instant global communication means "there are no barriers anymore." 
  His group is helping to stage a rally Saturday in London's Trafalgar Square. Organizers hope to attract thousands of moderate Muslims through mass e-mails and text messaging. 
  Abdul-Rehman Malik, a contributing editor of Q-News, a popular Muslim magazine in Britain, said he had received hundreds of e-mails and dozens of text messages about the cartoons. He said some messages were computer-generated so that thousands of phones could be reached nearly instantly, such as one telling him to reply "no" to a British TV survey about whether to broadcast the cartoons. "It's efficient and immediate  --  the ultimate activists' dream," Malik said. 
  In Saudi Arabia, the Fanan Web site this week included a message urging people to vote on an MSNBC site asking whether Muslims were justified in their anger over the drawings. "A German television Web site is also holding a survey poll on the issue," it said. "Please vote." 
  Several people interviewed in Saudi Arabia said they were getting five or six text messages a day on the cartoon issue. A message widely circulating Wednesday urged people to call the BBC to protest rumored plans to show some of the cartoons on air. 
  Sporadic protests about the cartoons in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were organized mainly by such traditional methods as mosques, word of mouth and Palestinian party organizations. But Arab satellite television, e-mail campaigns and text messages helped drive the protests, too, which appeared to be dwindling Wednesday. 
  In Iraq, demonstrations against the cartoons have occurred in a few large cities but have remained relatively peaceful. Word has spread mainly through more traditional means  --  sometimes coupled with digital technology. When the Internet site run by the Islamic Army in Iraq, an insurgent group, called for attacks on Danish citizens and threatened that anyone captured would be "cut into pieces," the missive was also type-written and posted in a mosque in Ramadi. 
 Muslims in Indonesia are exploring cyberspace, but extremists there have not yet managed to foment mass outrage over the cartoons. A few text messages and e-mails have been circulating, including one that reads: "The Danish cartoons are a design by the Jews and Americans to drive a wedge between Europe and the Islamic world." 
 And in countries unknown, apparent Islamic hackers have been active. The Internet-monitoring Web site Zone-H said this week that nearly 600 Danish sites had been broken into by people who posted threats or protests against the cartoons, the Reuters news agency reported.  
 Correspondents Mary Jordan in London, Scott Wilson in Jerusalem, Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta, Jonathan Finer in Baghdad and Doug Struck in Toronto and special correspondents Yayu Yuniar in Jakarta, Alexandra Topping in London and Faiza Saleh Ambah in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report. 

 DENMARK (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%);   CANADA (79%)







 Digital First Media 
The Daily News of Los Angeles

February 8, 2006 Wednesday  
VALLEY EDITION



 MODERATE MUSLIMS MUST BATTLE EXTREMISM

 
THE BBC and European newspapers display Danish cartoons that depict Islam's prophet as a man of violence. Calling the cartoons intolerable lies, the prophet's loyalists in Palestinian territories wave guns and threaten innocent European civilians.
Who can save us from deadly ironies? For a long time, I was confident that Islam's moderate believers, found by the teeming millions from Indonesia to Pakistan to London to Los Angeles, would dampen the cultural war between East and West. Yet moderates and modernists have been invisible during this dark war's newest battle.
The signs, banners and chants in this city were disorienting: ``Free speech go to hell,'' ``Death to those who insult Islam'' and ``UK, you must pray, 7/7 is on its way'' (a threat to repeat the London bombings of last July). 
While visiting London's Central Mosque in Regent's Park last Friday, I spoke to two moderate young men from Kosovo who said they planned not to attend any protests and that they would not defend the extravagant reactions of militants in the Middle East. ``It is ignorance that causes this,'' one sighed. But their opposition to Islamists' violent threats seemed to end with just a shrug.
Moderates comprise Islam's majority, yet they have been shy about taking command of their congregation. Moderates are by definition unwilling to be martyrs. Extremists are glad martyrs. On the rare occasions that moderates confront martyrs, martyrs scatter them easily.
While sympathizing with the plight of Muslim moderates in the West, we can offer up questions that only they can pose to their extremist kindred who also live in the West:
--Can you, the extremists, embrace Western laws that preserve a variety of viewpoints, including your own? Can you appreciate consistent rules for civil discourse, whether or not you comprise a majority within a nation?
--If you come to the West in search of more money despite the West's moral weakness, has not money become your god? And if so, don't you have to worry more about the destination of your own soul rather than about cartoons drawn by sinful Westerners?
--If you reserve the right to condemn homosexuals or Hindus, can't you accept others' right to question you or your faith?
--Are you willing to trust God to sort out on the Day of Judgment the fates of those who have offended him? Are you not a bit agnostic in taking divine matters into your own hands here in the West?
There are also questions that Muslim moderates in the West must ask of themselves:
--Far-right groups are gaining force: Last week a far-right British pol was acquitted of racial-hate charges for his comments against Islam, and he promised to heat up his rhetoric. Do you see how both Muslim and Western fanatics are seeking to polarize you while destroying the rich soul of your religion? Can you truly stay out of the fray?
--What rights are you willing to demand for yourselves? You shun Taliban reactionary lifestyles. Do you want to be able to take pictures of your children with your new Canon camera, even though fundamentalists claim that orthodox Islam forbids any imagery of humans or animals?
--Are you willing to live in a world of their design, in which you will be persecuted for your relative liberalism?
--Whose side will you choose when extremists continue to force your hand and the hand of Western governments? The Quran is clear that a good Christian or Jew will make it into heaven ahead of a bad professing Muslim. If push comes to shove, will you side with these good Christians and Jews? Your residence in the West seems to imply a ``yes,'' but words and actions must buttress this.
Every battered wife of inner strength at last pushes away the source of tyranny in her life. We can only hope that battered moderates do, too.

 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (92%); INDONESIA (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); UNITED STATES (88%); KOSOVO (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); DENMARK (73%)







  



February 8, 2006 Wednesday  




 Protests Spread in Afghanistan; 
At Least 3 Killed During Clash in North Over Depictions of Muhammad

 
Violent protests spread Tuesday across Afghanistan, where at least three demonstrators died in a clash with NATO soldiers and hundreds rampaged through the capital, trashing U.N. vehicles and throwing stones at buildings used by international agencies, visitors and troops. 
 Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated in parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, continuing to vent their rage over European newspaper cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. Some Muslim clerics and governments called for calm, while others seemed to encourage the vengeful outpouring. 
 In Tehran, crowds attacked the Danish Embassy with gasoline bombs and stones for a second day, while Iran's best-selling newspaper launched a competition to find the best cartoon about the Holocaust. Iran's government said the European cartoons had unleashed an "Islamophobic current which will be answered." 
 The European Union demanded increased security for European citizens and facilities in a number of countries where anti-Western violence has broken out in the past several days, and Denmark urged its citizens to leave Indonesia. Danish flags were burned in several cities Tuesday, and several consulates were attacked Monday.  
  A large Indonesian group, the Islamic Defenders Front, said that more protests were planned for Wednesday and that the issue had unified the country's Muslims. But both President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the chairmen of the two largest  Muslim civic groups appealed for calm. Din Syamsuddin, chairman of one group, said that the anger was natural but that the "violence is against Islam." 
 In Denmark, where the cartoons were first published, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen appealed for "calm steadiness" and dialogue with Muslim countries. He called the controversy "a growing global crisis that has the potential to escalate beyond the control of governments."  
  "I want to appeal and reach out to all people and countries in the Muslim world," Rasmussen said, stressing Denmark's long support of "freedom of religion" and its record as "one of the world's most tolerant and open societies." He said, "Let us work together in the spirit of mutual respect and tolerance." 
 Rasmussen, speaking directly to the public for the first time since attackers began torching Danish diplomatic missions in various countries, blamed the violence on "radicals, extremists and fanatics" and said the vast majority of Denmark's 200,000 Muslims did not support the protesters. 
 He repeated that while he was sorry Muslims had been offended, he could not apologize for a Danish newspaper exercising its right to free speech. He said he had been surprised by how quickly "lies and misinformation" about the Danish situation had spread around the world via cell phones, text messages and Web blogs. 
 The Iranian daily paper Hamshahri said its cartoon contest was designed to test the boundaries of free speech  --  the reason given by many European newspapers for publishing the cartoons that mocked Islam's holiest figure. 
  "Does Western free speech allow working on issues like America and Israel's crimes, or an incident like the Holocaust, or is this freedom of speech only good for insulting the holy values of divine religions?" the paper asked. In some European countries, it is a crime to deny that the Holocaust happened. 
  In London, British news media reported that Omar Khayam, 22, who had caused controversy when he dressed as a suicide bomber during a weekend protest, was arrested for violating parole in a drug case. 
 In Pakistan, thousands of demonstrators marched in the northwest city of Peshawar, burning effigies of Rasmussen and chanting, "Hang the man who insulted the prophet." The rally was led by the entire provincial cabinet. The chief minister, Akram Khan Durrani, said that the cartoonists should be punished "like terrorists" and that "it is our official and religious duty to register our outrage against this blasphemous act." 
 In Afghanistan,  the fresh protests and fatalities came on the same day that a suicide bomber detonated his explosives outside police headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar, killing at least 12 and wounding 14. The Taliban Islamic militia asserted responsibility for the bombing, which was one of a spate of recent suicide attacks in the south and did not appear related to the demonstrations. 
 The most confrontational protest Tuesday occurred in the northern Afghan city of Meymaneh, where protesters threw stones and grenades at a NATO compound that primarily houses Norwegian soldiers doing reconstruction work. That protest and several others occurred in regions not usually associated with religious extremism or violence. 
 At least three protesters  were killed in the Meymaneh clash, but it was unclear how they died. A NATO spokesman said that they had been killed by a grenade thrown by a fellow protester and that "at no stage have NATO forces used lethal force." But there were other reports that NATO troops had fired into the crowd. 
 The spokesman said a crowd of about 300 gathered outside the compound and gradually became more hostile, throwing stones and trying to get inside. He said troops responded with tear gas and warning shots, but the crowd torched nearby vehicles and buildings, fired shots and threw grenades. 
  Afghan officials said the situation remained tense, and British troops were being rushed to Meymaneh to help restore order. International military spokesmen said that Afghan police had helped their forces patrol and secure the area and that the protests were not related to the performance of Norwegian troops.  
 "This was a manifestation of a phenomenon that is taking place beyond Afghanistan as well," a spokesman said. The Afghan deputy provincial governor, Sayed Ahmed Sayed, said the protest began after a local religious council met and condemned the Danish cartoons. 
 Large protests also took place in the far western city of Herat, where 8,000 people marched in the streets, and in the northern city of Pol-e Khomri. There were also reports of protests in half a dozen other towns, with swelling crowds and sporadic stone-throwing but no serious injuries or deaths. 
 But violent demonstrations erupted in Kabul, where a small, angry mob grew quickly and as many as 1,000 men marched through the streets in search of Western targets to attack. During a rampage that lasted several hours, protesters trashed U.N. vehicles and threw stones at U.N. buildings, the U.S. Embassy compound, a NATO headquarters and private homes in a neighborhood popular among Westerners.  
 The protesters tried to gain access to several heavily fortified compounds  --  including the U.S. military base  --  but were pushed back by security forces. They shouted slogans such as "Down with the USA!" "Down with Bush!" "Down with the Jews!" "Down with the Christians!" and "Long live Islam!" 
 At one point, Afghan soldiers fired warning shots into the air. No one was killed, but several security officers were injured by rocks and numerous protesters were hurt when the police began beating them. At least 15 people were arrested. 
 Mohammed Rahim Seddiq, 23, a baker who described himself as a protest organizer and who was later arrested, said it was "the duty of every Muslim" to protest against the United States and Denmark. "We want to teach a lesson to the infidels that they should not repeat this," he said. 
 A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, said U.S. military officials had sent representatives to speak with Afghan leaders in the aftermath of a rally Monday in which protesters tried to force their way onto the American military base in Bagram, north of the capital. Three protesters were killed when Afghan security forces opened fire. 
 "Our message was that they should judge us on what we're doing here, not on what some cartoonist is doing somewhere else," he said. O'Hara repeated that the United States has labeled the cartoons "offensive." 
 Correspondents Kevin Sullivan in Copenhagen and Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta, Indonesia, and special correspondents Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, and Javed Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report. 

 AFGHANISTAN (95%); DENMARK (95%); IRAN,  (93%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); INDONESIA (92%); ASIA (92%); EUROPE (79%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (79%); IRAN (77%)







  



February 8, 2006 Wednesday  




 The Uses of Cartoons

 
 EXTREMISTS AND political opportunists across the Muslim world are rushing to exploit the controversy over the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Late to the game but conspicuous in its crudeness is the Iranian government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which yesterday oversaw a second day of demonstrations outside European embassies while a newspaper it controls announced a contest for Holocaust cartoons. The Taliban is  probably behind violent demonstrations in Afghanistan, including one directed at  the largest U.S. military base in the country. And the Bush administration has rightly fingered the secular but cynical government of Syria for orchestrating the burning of embassies in Damascus and Beirut.   
 A clash of civilizations between Muslims and the West is the fondest ambition of al Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist organizations, from Britain to Indonesia. But it also is a convenient refuge for authoritarian regimes hoping to resist the rising pressure for political liberalization in the Middle East. That explains why Muslim outrage over the original publication of the cartoons in Denmark was patiently cultivated not by Osama bin Laden but by the Egyptian and Saudi governments. According to an account in the Wall Street Journal, Egypt's ambassador in Denmark worked with local Islamic clerics as they prepared an inflammatory propaganda campaign about the cartoons for dissemination through the Middle East last fall. In December a delegation of the Danish militants was received by senior clerics and government officials in Cairo, where the manufactured outrage contrasts with the quotidian persecution of a Christian minority and publication of anti-Semitic libels in the government-controlled press. 
  Europeans, too, have participated in the stoking of passions, if for different reasons. The cartoons, whose vulgarity and offensiveness are beyond question, were published as a calculated insult last  September by a right-wing newspaper in a country where bigotry toward the minority Muslim population is a major, if frequently unacknowledged, problem. The Danish government depends for support in Parliament on a far-right populist party with an anti-immigrant agenda: Maybe that's why Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen arrogantly refused to meet with ambassadors from Muslim countries last fall, when the controversy might have been defused. 
  Last week, as protests escalated in the Middle East, European newspapers in Spain, France and Germany rushed to republish the cartoons, claiming they were defending freedom of speech. But there is no threat to freedom of speech in Europe  --  no newspaper was prevented from publishing the cartoons, and demands by Muslims that European governments impose such censorship were  quickly dismissed. In reprinting the drawings the European papers demonstrated not their love of freedom but their insensitivity  --  or hostility  --  to the growing diversity of their own societies. It is just such attitudes, more than any insult to Islam, that have inspired much of the Muslim resentment toward the West, and the growing anger of Muslims who live in Europe.  
 The few heroes in this sordid episode reside not in continental newsrooms but in the Middle East. In Jordan, where freedom of speech really is at issue, two editors bravely republished the offensive cartoons; they now face prosecution. In Iraq, the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani condemned the Muslim inciters. It's not an accident that these Arab voices of reason are also leading proponents of democracy: They, more than anyone,  are the ones deserving of the West's support.  

 EUROPE (94%); DENMARK (94%); MIDDLE EAST (93%); AFGHANISTAN (92%);  EGYPT (92%);  LEBANON (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); FRANCE (79%); SPAIN (79%); SYRIA (79%);  GERMANY (73%); EASTERN EUROPE (58%)







  



February 8, 2006 Wednesday  




 Saudi Teacher Counsels Calm to Angry Students

 
Samir Barqah, a retired oil company administrator, was having a hard time holding the attention of the 20 or so boys gathered in his home for their Wednesday evening religion lesson. Some were sliding down the sofa. Several had their eyes closed under baseball caps placed low on their foreheads. But when the subject turned to the cartoons lampooning Islam's prophet Muhammad that were recently published in Europe, the group came alive. 
 "I looked over the leaflets you brought in yesterday," Barqah, a father of five with two sons of his own in the class, said about handouts urging Saudis not to buy Danish goods. "We don't have to get angry, or take part in a boycott  -- "  
 "And they should get away with insulting our prophet and make money off of us at the same time?" cut in Abdullah Jifri, a dark, intense 16-year-old with glasses.  
 "We want to teach them a lesson so they'll never do it again," protested Yacoub al-Safi, 17. "The insult we have received is huge." 
 Barqah, who wore a white skullcap and long white robe, gestured with his hand for calm: "It is God who protects the prophet from insult, not us." 
 Outrage over the cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper in September and reprinted in Europe more recently, has sparked demonstrations, economic boycotts and the torching of Danish embassies in Lebanon and Syria. Muslims believe it is blasphemous to create any image of the prophet and have been especially enraged by the insulting nature of some of the cartoons. The anger spread this month across a large swath of the Muslim world, from Indonesia to Turkey, at the doorstep of Europe.  
 The controversy, one of the most intense in the Islamic world since the publication of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" in the 1980s, has provoked varied reactions here in the birthplace of Muhammad. Some Saudis have lauded the widespread reaction as Muslims' first unified stance in decades, a chance to flex their muscle and teach the West not to gratuitously offend their sensibilities. Others, like Barqah, say Muslims are reacting viscerally, not intelligently, and this, they say, goes against the very teachings of the prophet they are trying to defend. 
 Since taking early retirement for medical reasons seven months ago, Barqah, 43, has become a full-time Islamic researcher, student and volunteer teacher. One of the three weekly lessons he hosts in his home is given by Sheik Abdul-Aziz Arafa, a Muslim scholar who teaches in Mecca at the Grand Mosque and at the Sawlatia school, a religious institute that is 125 years old. 
 Arafa is fair and portly and wore the gray overcoat characteristic of the Grand Mosque's teachers. A white scarf with green markings was draped over his turban and across his shoulders. "Imagine the most beautiful man in the world, the most handsome," he said expansively, then waited a few seconds. "He is not 1 percent as beautiful as the prophet, God's prayers and blessings upon him. He was so beautiful because of his closeness to God. He was all light. He had no shadow, according to his companions. How can you take an imprint of that?" 
 And the harm in trying? 
 "It's not possible. It would be inaccurate. So what would be the use?" 
 "What most people don't understand," he said, "is the strong bond, the powerful link that connects Muslims and their prophet, God's prayers and peace upon him. He is sitting with us right now. When we talk about him, he is present, listening, and when we send him greetings, he sends them right back." 
 On Sunday evening, Barqah, who is prematurely gray with a full, short beard and rimless glasses, was sitting with his wife in his home office. Crammed bookshelves lined all four walls.  
 Most of the volumes  --  more than 5,000, he estimates  --  are about Islam and the Hadith, the collected words and deeds of the prophet, which are the foundation of Islamic law and interpretations of the Koran. "During the last 23 years of his life, everything the prophet did, everything he said, was recorded in minute detail," Barqah explained. 
 Part of being a devout Muslim today is following the examples set by the prophet almost a millennium and a half ago, Barqah said, and adapting them where needed. When Barqah gets into his Chevrolet, he said, he repeats the prayers the prophet said when he got on his camel. 
  "When I trim my beard, I start from the right side. When I enter my house, I enter with my right foot. When my son just sneezed, I told him to say, 'God be praised.' That's what the prophet told us to do." 
 Barqah leaned forward and lowered his voice slightly. "He even told us how to get close to our wives. He encouraged us to play and flirt first. He said to . . . even kiss our wives before we get close to them." 
 He looked at his wife. "Right?" 
 She blushed and nodded. 
 Barqah got up to prepare for that evening's Islamic lesson. When eight men straggled in, Barqah offered them tea in clear glasses. Barqah carried in a stack of books and handed them out. 
 The lesson consisted of Barqah reading a line from the study book and Arafa explaining it. With one hand leaning on his cane, Arafa started expounding, by turns frowning, glaring at his students, then a few seconds later, making a different point, smiling sweetly, lovingly at them. He emphasized points with sweeping gestures of his hands, and several times he nearly wept as he recounted how the prophet had suffered and how much he loved the generations of Muslims who were not yet born.  
 Arafa prodded Barqah, busy taking notes in the margins of his book, for the next line. Barqah read, "How does one get closer to God?" 
 "Obedience," exclaimed Arafa. "Obedience of God's word and following in the footsteps of the Pure One, by taking from the example of the life of the Loved One, by loving the person God loved most, the love of His heart, the prophet. . . . " 
 "God's prayers and peace upon him," the men answered in unison. 
 At the end of the lesson, Barqah mentioned the torching of the Danish Embassy in Syria. "Just this week I was telling my young students to take advantage of the situation and educate the West about the prophet, God's prayers and blessings upon him. But now, instead of getting an apology, it is us who are apologizing for the actions of some emotional, inflamed young people."  
 He shook his head in dismay and recounted an anecdote. Muhammad lay bleeding and injured after being stoned by young men in the mountain city of Taif. But he never exacted revenge on them and turned it down when the angels offered it. "We have only to go back to his examples to see that he never returned an insult with an insult. He remained balanced and steady. He would not have been happy about the turn of events," Barqah said wistfully.  

 SAUDI ARABIA (94%); EUROPE (90%); DENMARK (88%); LEBANON (79%); TURKEY (79%);  SYRIA (78%)







 VNU Business Media, Inc.
 

The Hollywood Reporter

February 7, 2006 Tuesday



 
Localized versions of "Fear Factor" have TV audiences gripping their seats and mounting up ratings for broadcasters across Asia. But while the competitors face nail-biting challenges, the real drama is taking place behind the camera as the producers gingerly navigate the sensitivities of Muslim and Hindu religious values. 
Pork and pigs were, for example, kept well away from the Malaysian and Indonesian teams, while no cows or cow parts were used in the stunts for the Indian team, said Leng Lai, group executive director of Malaysian production and media conglomerate Juita Viden Sdn Bhd.
Exacerbating the cultural challenge, teams from those markets were shot simultaneously at the end of last year at the new "Fear Factor" facility in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.
Out, too, were snakes, which can't be on a Muslim menu, said South African stunt consultant Francois Grobbelaar, who worked on the "Fear Factor Malaysia," "Fear Factor Indonesia" and "Fear Factor India" shoots. He has worked on more than 100 "Fear Factor" episodes around the world.
"We also had to be very careful about what we made the contestants wear," Grobbelaar said. "Lots of the stunts were water-based. Because of censorship and the time slot, contestants wore full swimsuits instead of bikinis. And if the girls weren't comfortable, they could wear tracksuit pants as well."
This posed particular problems with the body-contact stunts. "If you are wearing a bikini with 50 rats on you, it's a completely different feeling than wearing a full swimsuit because there is a lot less contact with the body," Grobbelaar said.
Strict programming codes also restricted scenes that would fly in other markets. "It made it a lot more challenging for us," he said.
The solution was to ramp up the fear factor by casting contestants with bigger fears than might otherwise have been cast, Grobbelaar said. In addition, the crew created a more scary atmosphere with lighting and other effects.
The local versions of "Fear Factor" are part of Endemol's rapid ramp-up in Asia. These include "Big Brother" in Thailand and the Philippines, where the series was national network ABS-CBN's highest-rated show last year.
The "Fear Factor" Asia series were the biggest co-productions Endemol had done in the region, said Ed Sharples, Endemol's Bangkok-based managing director for Southeast Asia.
"Fear Factor Indonesia" is broadcast on free-TV network RCTI; "Fear Factor Malaysia" airs on free-tv station ntv7. Sony's pay TV channel, Sony Entertainment Television India, will air "Fear Factor India."
"Fear Factor Indonesia" is atop its Sunday 9 p.m. slot. In Malaysia, where the show airs Fridays from 8:30-9:30 p.m., the series is on average the No. 3 show for the week after Japanese cartoons, though some of the episodes have attracted more than 1 million viewers, according to data from Endemol and Juita Viden.

 MALAYSIA (96%);  INDIA (93%); ASIA (93%); THAILAND (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%)




13


 
 


February 7, 2006 Tuesday



 Buy Danish

 
As Danish embassies come under attack around the world in misplaced retaliation for the four-month old decision by a Danish newspaper to publish satirical cartoons of Islam's prophet, Mohammed, it is a time for choosing.
It is a choice between freedom of speech and violent intimidation. It is a choice between tolerance and intolerance. It is ultimately a choice between civil society and theocracy. Fear is the only argument for neutrality.
But what can the average American do besides shake their head at this sadly absurd new chapter in the clash of civilizations? Vote with your wallet. Buy Danish. 
The Arab boycott of Danish goods is by far the most civilized register of displeasure at the content of the cartoons. It can and should be responded to in kind. Seeking out and supporting Danish industry is a peaceful way to express solidarity with the besieged values of freedom and pluralism.
Denmark is an extraordinary country, simultaneously civilized and libertine, boasting its own aesthetic of high design, Hans Christian Andersen, and a respect for tolerance that borders on the reverential. It is a sad irony that this small country of 5.2 million - which has welcomed over 200,000 Muslim immigrants - should become a flashpoint for intolerant Islam.
So far the violent protests that have set fire to Danish embassies abroad have not yet jumped the ocean to America, though the NYPD has stepped up security at the Danish consulate in New York. I spoke to the Danish consul general in New York, Torben Gettermann, who said, "We've gotten reactions both negatives and positive. We've gotten some expressions of protest, but also a lot of support for the freedom of speech and those people who want to know where to buy Danish products or make donations to Danish charities."
Despite 1.3 million ethnic Danes in the United States, not one of our city's 18,000 restaurants is exclusively dedicated to Danish food, although excellent Scandinavian restaurants such as Aquavit abound. Danish design products are available in the gift shop of the Museum of Modern Art, the company Knoll sells Danish furniture at stores throughout the city, Georg Jensen offers silverware and jewelry, Skagen makes excellent watches, while Bodum sells high-end kitchen-ware. The Danish dairy producer Arla, which has been disproportionately affected by the Arab boycott, owns the Wisconsin cheese company White Clover, while traditional Danish foods such as Carlsberg beer, Danish Ham and Havarti cheese can be found in stores or from importers on the internet. The children's building toys Lego come from "Leg Godt," which means "Play well" in Danish. Supporting Danish goods isn't likely to lead to world peace, but it just might provide a demonstrable counterweight to the chaos going on overseas.
We don't want to fight fire with fire 305 1342 406 1354- literally, as it turns out - in this conflict. But neither should we buy into arguments about unbridgeable cultural differences or moral equivalence. One clarifying example can be found in the extreme double standard of cartoons used in the crisis. CNN caught violent protestors outside the Indonesian embassy brandishing a cartoon drawn on a bedsheet showing Muslim clerics cutting off the head of a generic Danish businessman. This is a great deal more hateful than the instigating cartoons, one of which depicted the prophet Mohammed trying to warn a suicide bomber off from the gates of heaven saying that he was out of virgins. As the world knows after videotaped executions in Iraq, the threat by radical Muslims to cut off someone's head is not empty; a point that was further driven home by a street preacher in Gaza who, according to Reuters, said "we will not accept less than the severing of heads of those responsible."
The Arab street may perhaps be forgiven for conflating the idea of attacking the Danish government for the actions of a free and independent Danish press. After all, in countries that have taken diplomatic action against Denmark - such as Saudi Arabia and Syria - state-controlled newspapers are the rule and not the exception.
In this extremist enabling-environment we should not ignore the lonely but hopeful voices of the more assimilated European Muslims who are quick to say that the spiraling violent street protests do not speak for them. One prominent example is the Palestinian-born Danish Member of Parliament Naser Khader, who said to the offending Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, "To be a practicing Muslim is not the same as being an extremist. I'll fight the people who think they can tell me and others how to be a good Muslim. That is a matter between Allah and individual Muslims." Such voices of moderation need to be given more attention, for it is from them that we might find a way to redeem the promise of peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic society.
Tolerance is a two-way street: it implies not only mutual respect but a live and let live attitude that is absent from Muslims' reaction to these cartoons. The violent protestors that have taken to the streets around the world are providing evidence of mass psychosis rather than being witnesses to one of the world's great faiths.
At protests in London, cameras caught sight of two signs that cut to the heart of why this is a time for choosing. One sign said "Freedom Go to Hell" while another read "Learn from 9/11". By standing up to this controversy in the spirit of civility, in defense of a universal rather than culturally determined right to freedom of speech, we are showing that we have learned the lessons of 9/11. We will not be intimidated by threats of violence. Instead, we will stand up and defend the multicultural civil society.
jpavlon@nysun.com

 UNITED STATES (93%); DENMARK (90%)







  



February 7, 2006 Tuesday  




 Cartoon Protests Stoke Anti-American Mood; 
Three Killed Outside U.S. Base in Bagram

 
Afghan police shot dead three people who stormed the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan Monday to protest caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, as continuing demonstrations in Muslim countries grew more deadly and in places took on a new anti-American tone. 
 In Indonesia, a crowd attempted to force its way into a U.S. consulate. In Iran, police used tear gas to push back firebomb-throwing demonstrators outside the Danish Embassy, while in Somalia a protester was killed when shots fired into the air set off a stampede.  
 Until Monday, Afghanistan had remained largely quiet as other parts of the Muslim world erupted in anger, generally directed toward European countries where newspapers had published the cartoons of Muhammad. 
 Afghan officials suggested that the violence outside Bagram air base indicated that insurgents were trying to capitalize on religious indignation. 
  "The protests started out about the cartoons," said Kabir Ahmed, the Bagram police chief. "But there is the possibility that al Qaeda is motivating these people to use violence against the Americans." Afghanistan's population has generally been supportive of the presence of the 19,000 U.S. troops here. 
 Ahmed said that the protesters outside the base chanted, "Down with U.S. forces! Down with the Afghan government!" and pelted U.S. military vehicles with stones, attacked a guard post manned by Afghan security forces outside the air base and ransacked local shops. "They wanted to enter the base and attack the U.S. forces," Ahmed said. 
 He said that some of them were armed and that Afghan police opened fire when they came under attack with rocks. In addition to the three protesters killed, five were wounded. Eight Afghan police officers were injured, Ahmed said. 
 U.S. soldiers were not involved in the confrontation, a U.S. military spokesman told the Associated Press. 
 In a separate incident in eastern Afghanistan's Laghman province, one protester was killed and four were injured as a crowd of 1,000 people attempted to storm a police headquarters, according to Mohammed Hamraz Nangarhari, the governor's spokesman. 
 Nangarhari said the protesters were injured by gunfire from within the crowd. But demonstrators told a different story. "The people started throwing stones, and after that the police fired on us directly," said Ezat, a shopkeeper who joined the protest. 
 An American soldier was killed Monday in Laghman, but U.S. military spokesman Lt. Mike Cody said there did not appear to be a connection between that incident and the protests. 
 In Kabul, hundreds of demonstrators rallied outside the Danish Embassy, then began throwing rocks as they marched through the streets. Rocks were directed at a U.S. base, but no serious damage was reported. 
 Authorities were bracing for larger demonstrations on Tuesday. 
 Worldwide, the protests are in their second week. They were spurred by the September publication in a Danish newspaper of 12 caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, pictures that have been reprinted in other European papers. Islam forbids any visual depiction of the prophet. Some of the cartoons mocked him, picturing him with a bomb for a turban. 
 In the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, police on Monday fired warning shots to repel a crowd outside the U.S. Consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city. 
 Two police officers were wounded, police said, and at least one protester was injured, according to television footage of the demonstration, which began at the Danish Consulate less than a mile away and moved to the U.S. facility. 
 Police estimated a crowd of 650 and U.S. officials said that as many as 1,000 protesters gathered in front of the consulate at about 3:30 p.m. They threw rocks and bottles and tried to breach a security wall, U.S. and Indonesian officials said. 
 Television footage showed several protesters, in a driving rain, banging on a 12-foot-high iron fence at the U.S. Consulate and trying to pry off a U.S. seal. In a clip broadcast by Metro TV, police beat protesters, many of whom wore white prayer caps. Police also aimed their rifles in the air, and at least 12 warning shots sounded. 
 "This was a precaution," Surabaya's police chief, Anang Iskandar, said in a telephone interview. "We did not ban the demonstration. But when it turned violent, with attempts at destruction, we had to stop it." Iskandar said the protesters charged that the United States also was responsible for the caricatures, but he did not explain how. 
 On Saturday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the images as "an act of blasphemy" and their publication as "clearly insensitive to the views and beliefs of other religions." But he urged the public to remain calm and accepted an apology extended by the Danish Embassy in Jakarta. 
 On Friday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the cartoons were "offensive," but that "we vigorously defend" individuals' right of expression. 
 In a Metro TV interview, an Islamic scholar dismissed the free speech defense. "I see a bigger agenda to discredit Islam," said Umar Shihab, chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulemas. In Iraq, people threw stones and shot at Danish troops in the southern part of the country, where about 500 are based. No one was hurt in the attacks, which took place as the soldiers stopped to help children hurt when a car swerved into a crowd. 
 "All these things add up to the idea that we might not be as popular as we have been, as a result of the prophet Muhammad drawings," Danish Capt. Filip Ulrichsen told the Associated Press. "It is unusual for anyone to shoot at us." 
 Iran, meanwhile, announced it was cutting commercial ties with Denmark, and the pro-Russian government of Chechnya said it would not allow Danish aid groups to work there. 
 Political leaders continued to try to quell the violence. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan co-wrote an article published in Monday's International Herald in which they called for "respect and calm." "We shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation," they wrote, "which can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides in its wake."  
 Nakashima reported from Jakarta. Correspondent Jonathan Finer in Baghdad, special correspondent Yayu Yuniar in Jakarta and researcher Robert Thomason in Washington contributed to this report. 

  AFGHANISTAN (95%); DENMARK (94%);  INDONESIA (92%); SOMALIA (79%); EUROPE (79%)






 The National Underwriter   
National Underwriter,
Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition

February 6, 2006



 Lloyd's Targets Islamic Market;
Creechurch syndicate sees fast growth in untapped regions

 
Lloyd's Creechurch syndicate is set to begin underwriting reinsurance programs tailored for the Islamic marketplace and expects 500 percent growth in five-to-six years.
The new operation, a first for the market, will open up a range of classes, providing "Takaful"-Islamic insurance products-specifically designed to meet the needs of the world's Muslims and abiding by their religious precepts, according to Lloyd's.
Islamic insurance products have strict rules which forbid entering any contract that could be deemed as gambling. Traditional insurance and reinsurance models, where a payment of a smaller premium provides the potential of a larger claims payment, breaches Islamic law, Lloyd's explained. 
The new endeavor "enables the policyholders to share in the ultimate returns on the underwriting," Bruce Graham, CEO of Creechurch in London, told National Underwriter.
The concept of mutuality is "with policyholders, rather than other forms of mutuality," he noted-adding that, similar to a mutual, a mechanism would enable the syndicate's policyholders to share in the ultimate profits derived from the Islamic products.
In the future, after the firm moves into Takaful, it plans to market Takaful reinsurance, he said. "That's a second-phase development as we become established."
Mr. Graham predicted that growth within the primary Takaful market would be "at least 20 percent per annum. So within five-to-six years we'd expect 500 percent growth. We think it's an extremely rapidly developing market, and we know there are a number of initiatives afoot to assist that development-particularly in places like Malaysia."
One of the inhibitors to the development of Takaful, he noted, has been availability of secure reinsurance from compliant carriers. "So, we would hope to assist in that capacity, and the growth should at least match the growth in primary business."
Initially, he said, Creechurch intends to open a service operation within Dubai, with the majority of income derived where Takaful operators are currently established, including Malaysia and Indonesia.
The primary growth is in personal lines, with auto being the key area as coverage becomes compulsory, he noted. This will be followed by personal property and small commercial lines. Large commercial risks are already covered because of "the need to protect the larger marine and energy-type risks," he said.
"We are working very closely with Lloyd's and it is a brand-new initiative, and so we'll be entering it very cautiously," he added. "But we do see there is a very large growth prospect."
The new entity is expected to sit alongside its existing Syndicate 1607.
Theoretically, Takaful is perceived as cooperative insurance, where members contribute a certain sum of money to a common pool. The purpose of this system is not profits but to uphold the principle of "bear ye one another's burden," according to the Web site of the international Cooperative & Mutual Insurance Federation in the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, Allianz Indonesia announced recently that it is introducing insurance products which comply with the rules of the Islamic law, Sharia, and expects to have a market share of 20 percent in 20 years. Allianz Indonesia said it will open a new branch office in Banda Aceh.
Jens Reisch, CEO of PT Asuransi Allianz Life, said in a statement that Allianz Indonesia decided to introduce the products, which comply with the rules of the Islamic law, after listening to customers "who increasingly asked for it. They are attracted by the community principle that Islamic financial products represent. This is why Sharia-compliant financial products have tremendous growth rates in Asia and other parts of the world."
Mr. Reisch noted that although the general market share of Sharia insurance is still below 1 percent, it grew by 28 percent in 2005. "We expect Sharia-compliant insurance to have a market share of 20 percent in 20 years, like today in Malaysia," he added.
He said the company's plan is to sell at least 1,000 Sharia policies and achieve a premium income of more than five billion Indonesia rupiahs, or about $500,000 in U.S. dollars. He projected that in five years, 10 percent of new life insurance business will be Sharia products.
"Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world with an insurance penetration of less than 3 percent," he said. "That means a huge growth potential. We think that about 15 million people, out of some 230 million Indonesians, will soon be able to afford insurance."
He said the life products being offered are unit-linked, and the company will invest in funds accepted by the Board of Sharia. By law, he noted, "we are required to invest more than 80 percent in Indonesia itself."
The main focuses of the company, Mr. Reisch said, are clients open to both types of insurance. "Since the regulation allows it, our agents and other business partners will offer both conventional and Sharia insurance," he said.
"About half of our 6,000 sales agents are Muslims, but non-Muslims are also allowed to sell Sharia insurance," he said, noting that agents must complete a three-day training to receive an internal license.

 MALAYSIA (92%);  







  



February 5, 2006 Sunday 
  




 Area Muslims React With Tempered Anger; 
Some Say Depiction Overstepped Liberties

 
Wearing a brown golf cap against the cold drizzle, Rocky Omary stood outside Walima Cafe in Falls Church, where he and about 50 other men of Middle Eastern descent had just watched the Tunisian soccer team take a drubbing from the Nigerians.  
 That trouncing was bad enough. But Omary had other, more disturbing, insults on his mind: specifically, the recent publication in European newspapers of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.   
 "I've been getting a lot of e-mails about it, and I'm distributing them all," said Omary, a Damascus native who sells real estate in Northern Virginia. "There is a limit to freedom. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. Let's have some respect."  
 A few miles away at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque in Sterling, Zaki Al Barzinji, 16, was equally upset.  
 "Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should say something," the teenager said. "If somebody showed a picture of the pope with a bomb on his head, that would cause a great public outcry. Nobody would be talking about freedom of speech." 
 Washington area Muslims say they are closely following the furor in Europe and other parts of the world sparked by the cartoons, which first appeared in Denmark and Norway. In interviews yesterday, they expressed anger and hurt feelings. And although they said they recognized the value of freedom of speech, they said the freedom must be matched with respect and responsibility. 
 "Technically, you have the right to walk into a crowded theater and yell 'Fire,' " said Uzma Unus, 34, a teacher in Sterling who is also vice president of ADAMS. "But is that responsible?" 
 Several were critical of the violent reactions of some Muslims in Europe and the Middle East. The better way to respond, they added, is through dialogue and peaceful protests, such as the recently launched boycott of Danish dairy products.  
 "We don't want what is happening in Europe . . . to cross over to the United States," ADAMS Deputy Imam Sheikh Rashid Lamptey told about 150 men and women attending midday prayers. "We want to conduct [our protests] in a very orderly way."  
 The cartoons, including one showing Muhammad with a bomb in his head covering, have drawn escalating outrage from Muslims in England, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and in the Palestinian territories.  
 Yesterday, crowds in Syria set fire to the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish embassies. And, according to a wire report, a radical Islamic preacher in Lebanon demanded that the Danish editor who first printed the cartoons be killed. 
 Such reactions are "not warranted," said Robert Marro of Great Falls, who was attending prayers at ADAMS. Europeans could have defused the situation by apologizing instead of staking out a hard-line position of upholding free speech, he said. 
 "Growing up in America, I'm used to political cartoons, but . . . it's clear that this just crossed the line," said Marro, a retired U.S. diplomat. "What would the reaction have been if on Jan. 16,  had published a picture of Martin Luther King with gangsta-rap clothing, a crack pipe and a Saturday night special? . . . It would have provoked a storm of outrage."  
 The cartoons doubly offended Muslims, because in addition to depicting Muhammad in a pejorative manner, they violated Islam's longtime prohibition on any image of the prophet, his family or early companions.  
 ADAMS's imam, Mohamed Magid, explained that the ban stems from early Islam, when Muhammad preached monotheism in a culture steeped in the worship of idols.  
 To discourage such idolatry, he ordered Muslims not to draw, and religious leaders have interpreted this to mean that the prophet was banning images of himself and those close to him so they would never become objects of worship for Muslims, Magid said.  
  "We don't want to attribute divinity to the prophet," he said.  
 Cautioning his congregation not to overreact, Magid urged them to follow the model set by the prophet, who is said to have always forgiven those who insulted him, including the woman who deposited her trash on him as he passed her home.  
 Magid also called for "constructive, civilized dialogue so we avoid a clash of civilizations." As part of that effort, he said he and other area Muslim leaders will meet tomorrow with the Danish ambassador to Washington.  
  At the Falls Church strip mall, where the soccer fans scrunched their shoulders against the damp, cold air, several men voiced appreciation for the U.S. government's criticism of the cartoons. "We salute this position," said a 39-year-old salesman from Tunisia, who declined to give his name. 
 Majdi Omouri, 30, a limousine driver, was philosophical. "If you look at freedom as something really large, without limits, it doesn't make sense," he said. "Freedom has to be united with responsibility. . . . In the name of freedom, I cannot insult your beliefs."  

CORRECTION-DATE: March 3, 2006

 CORRECTION:
A Feb. 5 article on local Muslims' reaction to the controversy over the publication of cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad included this quotation from someone offended by the cartoons: "Technically, you have the right to walk into a crowded theater and yell, 'Fire!' But is that responsible?" The speaker's remark may have left the impression that there are no limits on free speech, but the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment right to free speech does not apply in all situations. A 1919 ruling stated, "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." 

  EUROPE (91%); DENMARK (90%); NORWAY (88%); MALAYSIA (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); ENGLAND (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); LEBANON (79%); SYRIA (79%); TURKEY (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); NORDIC COUNTRIES (54%)







  



February 5, 2006 Sunday  




 The issue wasn't comic last w ...

 
 The issue wasn't comic last week when European newspapers reprinted cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, inflaming a conflict between Islamic religious tenets and Western cultural principles. The controversy began last September, after a Danish author complainedthat he couldn't find artists willing to illustrate a book about Muhammad because Islam forbids any drawing of the prophet.   
  The conservative Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten responded by commissioning 12 artists to caricature Muhammad. Those cartoons  --  one of which showed the prophet with a bomb in his turban  --  were quickly picked up by the Internet, and set off a round of anti-Danish protests, boycotts and threats in the Muslim world.  
 Now, with several newspapers reprinting the drawings to support what the German daily Die Welt called a "right to blasphemy," tension has escalated. From Gaza to Indonesia, Muslims burned Danish flags and staged marches. Governments complained, and Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Denmark. Jyllands-Posten apologized, to little effect. (By coincidence, The Post cartoonist Tom Toles was lambasted by all the Joint Chiefs of Staff last week for a cartoon showing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld describing a bandage-swathed amputee as "battle hardened." The Joint Chiefs' protest, however, was limited to a letter to the newspaper.) 
  Outlook asked the Economist magazine's editorial cartoonist, Kevin Kallaugher ("Kal"), about the European debate. Kallaugher, who is also current artist in residence at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, offered his opinion in the format he knows best. 

 DENMARK (93%);   SAUDI ARABIA (68%); GERMANY (58%)







 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


February 4, 2006 Saturday  




 FREEDOM UNDER ATTACK - AGAIN; 
THIS TIME, ITS THE FREEDOM TO SAY SOMETHING RADICAL MUSLIMS MIGHT DISAGREE WITH

 
Some skirmishes over human freedom take place on the battlefield.
Others take place on newsprint.
That's what we're seeing in the exploding controversy over editorial cartoons in Europe depicting the Muslim Prophet Mohammad. 
Since images of Mohammed are banned in the Muslim world, Muslims opposed to the cartoons have rioted, boycotted and threatened Westerners with kidnapping and murder due to the cartoons - first published in Denmark, then in other European media, partly in defiance of Muslim extremism and partly in brotherhood with fellow journalists.
Hollywood and Democrats against the war on terror, take note: This is the brand of tyranny we're fighting, the kind of totalitarianism that would shut down the movie-making business first. Will you be for fighting back then?
These are more than cartoons. This is a crucial test of human freedom: Will Muslims across the world be allowed to dictate how others live?
We certainly understand the controversy surrounding cartoons depicting Mohammed with a bomb-shaped turban. Christian followers, too, have endured their share of insults from the entertainment media, including the recently canceled NBC show Book of Daniel - in which Jesus was actually portrayed. And after an outcry, NBC now says an upcoming Good Friday-eve episode of Will & Grace will not, as initially announced, include an Easter cooking segment called "Cruci-fixins."
But while registering opposition to such things, Christians have learned tolerance and the value of nonviolent disagreement.
In contrast, the very intolerance that led to the cartoons has reared its ugly head: Palestinian gunmen threatened to shoot up the European Union offices in Gaza; 300 Muslims in Indonesia rampaged through a building where the Danish embassy was housed; and demonstrations and calls to kill Westerners were made across Europe. One Norwegian magazine editor reported 25 death threats and thousands of hate messages.
Of course, radical Muslim intolerance is nothing new. British author Salman Rushdie was once threatened for his writings - and Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was shot eight times, had his throat slit and was stabbed for his filmmaking.
To be truly free, human beings must be free to offend occasionally. "The right to offend within the law remains crucial to our free speech," says London's Daily Telegraph.
That freedom is under attack.

 EUROPE (93%); DENMARK (88%); ISRAEL (79%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (79%);  NORWAY (78%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (76%)








 
 

February 4, 2006 Saturday



 GOING ATOMIC OVER A COMIC - LOONY GOONS IN UN-PROPHET-ABLE RIOT & HATE SPREE

 
The insane fury over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed escalated sharply yesterday as tens of thousands of Muslim protesters vented their rage in more than a dozen countries - chanting Osama bin Laden's name and calling for more 9/11-style terrorism.  
Demonstrators burned European flags and merchandise from Iraq to the Sudan and went on a rampage at a diplomatic compound in Indonesia.  
Fanatical Muslims made clear they want more than an apology from the Danish newspaper that first printed the offending cartoons and the other European papers who reprinted them this week.  
"Europe, your 9/11 will come" and "Exterminate those who insult Islam" read the placards of 300 demonstrators who marched to the Danish Embassy in London.   
"Bin Laden our beloved, Denmark must be blown up!" protesters chanted in the West Bank town of Ramallah.  
In the Gaza Strip, a bloodthirsty cleric told midday worshippers, "We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible."  
Among the new developments yesterday:  
* The United States, Great Britain and the Vatican jumped into the Mohammed cartoon controversy yesterday - on the side of Muslims.  
"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images or any other religious belief," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.  
* Spain's leading newspaper, El Pais, joined ranks with other papers by putting a Mohammed cartoon on its front page.  
* A Jordanian editor who ran one of the cartoons Thursday was fired yesterday.  
* Text messages sent by phone urged Muslims to join the international boycott of Danish goods "in the name of Islam."  
* The editor of a Norwegian magazine that reprinted the Danish cartoons said he had received 25 death threats and thousands of hate messages.  
* Denmark's prime minister pleaded with Muslim diplomats for calm but said he couldn't apologize for the Danish newspaper that started the ruckus.  
The controversy began last September when the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten invited artists to submit drawings of the Muslim prophet to illustrate a story about "self-censorship" in the depiction of Mohammed.  
Islamic law holds that even a positive depiction of the prophet is wrong. The Danish cartoons were satirical, including one that showed Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban.  
Muslim countries complained to Denmark, and some withdrew their ambassadors from Copenhagen in protest.  
But the conflict reached the crisis stage this week when other European papers reprinted the Danish cartoons or created their own - touching off furious demonstrations.  
Some of yesterday's protests turned violent.  
In Jakarta, Indonesia, 300 people shouted, "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), as they rampaged in the lobby of a building that holds the Danish embassy.  
The mob smashed lamps, tore up a Danish flag and threw tomatoes and eggs.  
But there were no major injuries reported there or in Gaza City, where Palestinian militants threw a grenade at a French cultural center.  
The biggest protests occurred in the Gaza Strip and Sudan, where 50,000 demonstrators marched at various sites.  
"Strike, strike, bin Laden!" shouted some in a crowd of 50,000 in Khartoum, Sudan.  
About 10,000 militants, including Hamas gunmen who fired in the air, marched through Gaza City to the Palestinian legislature, where they climbed on the roof, waving green Hamas banners and chanting, "Down, down Denmark!"  
In the West Bank, thousands more demonstrated in Nablus, Jenin and Ramallah.  
"If they want a war of religions, we are ready," Hassan Sharaf, an imam in Nablus, said in his sermon.  
In Lebanon, frenzied fanatics said the anger would only grow. "We will not be satisfied with protests. The solution is the slaughter of those who harmed Islam and the prophet," said Sheik Abu Sharif, spokesman for the Osbet al-Ansar hate group.  
Some of the protests linked the United States or Israel to the controversy.  
In Damascus, Syria, entrances to the Al-Murabit mosque were strewn with Danish, Israeli and American flags so worshippers could trample them as they entered.  
Some of the more than 1,000 Moroccans who demonstrated in the capital city of Rabat said the controversy was a Jewish conspiracy designed to sow discord between Muslims and the West.  
In Iraq, the controversy united Sunni and Shiite clerics - both denounced the drawings in Friday prayers.  
Moderate Muslims also expressed concern. Turkey's pro-Western prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said drawings are an attack on "our spiritual values." He added they had damaged efforts to establish an alliance between the Muslim world and Europe.  
Among those who spoke out against the drawings yesterday was a senior Vatican cardinal, who said secular society had no excuse for insulting deities.  
"One can understand satire about a priest but not about God," Achille Cardinal Silvestrini said. "As far as Islam is concerned, one might be able to understand satire about customs and behavior but not about the Koran, Allah, or the prophet."  
The comments were in sharp contrast with European leaders who pleaded for calm while citing the value of press freedom. "This is basically a dispute between some Muslims and a newspaper," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after a meeting with diplomats from Islamic nations yesterday.  
"Neither the Danish government nor the Danish nation as such can be held responsible for drawings published in a Danish newspaper," he said.  
--- 
Map 
Great Britain (1.1 million Muslims, 2% pop.) 
* Hundreds of worshippers protested outside Danish Embassy in London. 
Spain (480,000, 1.2%) 
* Leading newspaper El Pais printed Mohammed cartoon on front page. 
Lebanon (2.6 million, 70%) 
* Thousands marched, burned Danish and Norwegian flags and called on Osama bin Laden to avenge Mohammed. 
Denmark (100,000, 2%) 
* Prime minister holds crisis meeting with Muslim diplomats 
France (6 million, 10%) 
* Newspaper Liberation printed two cartoons, saying they were "exhibits in the case." 
Gaza Strip (900,000, 98%) 
* 50,000 demonstrators chanted, "Let hands that drew [the cartoon] be cut off." Hand grenade thrown into French cultural center; no one hurt. 
Sudan (26 million, 85%) 
* Hundreds marched in Khartoum after afternoon prayers. 
Jordan (4 million, 95%) 
* Editor of newspaper who printed cartoons fired. 
Saudi Arabia (19 million, 100%) 
* At Grand Mosque in Mecca, senior cleric broke into tears in sermon denouncing drawings. 
Israel (760,000, 14%) 
* Thousands of worshippers at Al Aqsa mosque scuffled with police. 
Norway (46,000, 1%) 
* Magazine that reprinted cartoons received 25 death threats. 
Turkey (66 million, 99%) 
* 100 demonstrators tore down signpost and threw eggs outside Danish Consulate in Istanbul 
Iraq (20 million, 97%) 
* Hundreds burned Danish and Norwegian flags and products, and effigy labeled "Danish Journalist." 
Afghanistan (26 million, 99%) 
* President urged European newspapers to fire or punish editors who published cartoons 
Pakistan (140 million, 97%) 
* Parliament passed resolution denouncing cartoons as "blasphemous and derogatory." 
West Bank (1.5 million, 75%) 
* 10,000 people marched, burning Danish dairy products and Danish flag. 
Indonesia (200 million, 88%) 
* 300 people rampaged in lobby of building housing Danish Embassy in Jakarta. 

  DENMARK (94%); IRAQ (93%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (92%); JORDAN (79%); ISRAEL (79%);  UNITED KINGDOM (79%); SPAIN (79%); EUROPE (79%); NORWAY (79%)







   


February 3, 2006 Friday  




 Hi! My Name's Paul. I'll Be Your U.S. Diplomat Today.

 
Paul S. Berg, America's man in Medan, the sweltering capital of north Sumatra, was making the rounds the other day.
  He dropped in at a New Year's luncheon at the lavish home of a leading Chinese businessman who deals in American auto parts: ''You're the greatest! I love you!'' exclaimed the gregarious Mr. Berg, as he hugged Gunawan Tio, the businessman, munched a sampling of the buffet and then quietly slipped away for the next appointment.
Moments later, he was sitting with two academics specializing in Islamic thought who wanted funds to promote student debates about the concept of holy war. ''This is an interesting proposal,'' Mr. Berg said judiciously, eager to show that the United States likes to promote open debate but perhaps sensing that this particular proposal might not fit the agenda. ''I'm not sure our embassy has the funds, but I will pass it along.''  
  Mr. Berg is in the forefront of a reassessment of American diplomatic strategy. In a speech at Georgetown University this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that she was re-engineering the way the United States practiced its diplomacy. She wanted less emphasis on the settled nations of Europe and more on the unpredictable, important Middle East and Asia, she said. It made little sense, she suggested, to have the same number of diplomats in Germany, a nation of 82 million people, as in India, with a population of one billion. 
  In particular, she described steering diplomats out of big embassies in national capitals and into one-person posts in what were once considered backwaters but no longer are: there were nearly 200 cities with populations of more than one million people in which Washington had no formal diplomatic presence. ''This is where the action is today, and this is where we must be,'' she said. 
  Ms. Rice cited the consulate here in Medan, an outpost of the embassy in Jakarta, and the consulate in Alexandria, Egypt, as examples of what she planned more of. 
  The idea of small diplomatic posts, unencumbered by vast security and stuffy protocol, is not brand new, though. 
  Felix G. Rohatyn, first and foremost a financier but also Bill Clinton's ambassador in Paris, saw the value of spreading American influence around France, and opened posts in five cities -- Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Rennes and Toulouse -- chiefly to foster French-American business.
  Indeed, Medan had served as an adjunct of the embassy from the early 1950's to 1996, when it was shuttered by the State Department because of budget cutbacks. Several years later, funds were found to reopen it. Now, plans are under way for opening essentially one-person posts in China and India. 
  Here in Medan, a boisterous metropolis of more than two million, Mr. Berg, 52, covers a province that bursts with oil, natural gas, timber and palm oil, and is home to rare tigers, rhinoceroses and orangutans as well as 45 million people. His modest Dutch colonial-style house is both home and office, where jazz on the CD player adds to the informal ambience, and meetings with visitors are often held at the dining room table. A Vietnamese cook, known simply as Mr. Hoa, whom Mr. Berg met during his posting in Hanoi, eases social occasions with a continuous stream of fragrant food.
  Mr. Berg's job is not unlike that of any other American diplomat. He tries to make friends for the United States in a vital corner of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, and seeks to protect American commercial and strategic interests. In these environs, those include the operations of three major American energy companies: Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. He also keeps an eye on the $400 million that the United States is contributing for the rebuilding of Aceh, which was hit so hard by the tsunami 13 months ago.
  Mr. Berg was on the front lines when the tsunami struck; for a while, he was the front line. Medan is two and a half hours by road to the border of Aceh and a one-hour flight to Banda Aceh, its capital, where most of the victims died. For the first week of the disaster, when the central government was reluctant to allow foreign aid into Aceh directly, Mr. Berg worked with the more amenable local governor to route aid through Medan. 
  America's image in Indonesia has taken a battering from what many here regard as a heavy hand in the antiterrorism effort. Indonesians, who used to find it easy to get visas to the United States, now find it difficult, sometimes impossible. 
  Mr. Berg's post does not issue visas, but he tries to make sure, he said, that those who deserve visas get them. He has gone out of his way to favor members of the Justice Party for Prosperity, an increasingly popular political party with a strict interpretation of Islam and a no-nonsense approach to corruption, for State Department-sponsored visits to the United States. It was essential, he said, for America to know Indonesia's future leaders, and for them to understand America, even when the two sides may disagree. 
  Sometimes, though, good intentions backfire. For weeks, Mr. Berg and his small staff prepared for a performance on Jan. 31 by the New York City hip-hop artist Toni Blackman and her band, who were playing in Indonesia under the auspices of a State Department program to spread American culture.
  The performance was off to a rollicking start before an outdoor audience of about 2,000 when 10 motorcycles carrying protesters waving anti-American banners roared through the crowd. Some demonstrators clambered on stage, shoved Ms. Blackman, shouted anti-American slogans and grabbed the microphone. The performance ended. 
  Mr. Berg, who has served in Europe, Latin America, India and Vietnam, was philosophical. America's reputation has actually recuperated over the last year, he said, after generosity to the tsunami victims and improved military relations. But as the protesters made plain, enough wrinkles remain to more than justify an American presence in Medan.


 UNITED STATES (98%); INDONESIA (95%);  FRANCE (90%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); CHINA (79%); EGYPT (79%); ASIA (79%); EUROPE (79%); CENTRAL EUROPE (55%); GERMANY (55%)







   


February 3, 2006 Friday  




 Temperatures Rise Over Cartoons Mocking Muhammad

 
An international dispute over European newspaper cartoons deemed blasphemous by some Muslims gained momentum on Thursday when gunmen threatened the European Union offices in Gaza and more European papers pointedly published the drawings as an affirmation of freedom of speech.
  In Gaza, masked gunmen swarmed the European Union offices on Thursday to protest the cartoons, and there were threats to foreigners from European countries where the cartoons have been reprinted. The gunmen stayed about 45 minutes. 
A newly elected legislator from Hamas, the radical Islamic group that swept the Palestinian elections last week, said large rallies were planned in Gaza in the next few days to protest the cartoons, which depict the Prophet Muhammad in an unflattering light. Merely publishing the image of Muhammad is regarded as blasphemous by many Muslims. 
  ''We are angry -- very, very, very angry,'' said the legislator, Jamila al-Shanty. ''No one can say a bad word about our prophet.''
  The conflict is the latest manifestation of growing tensions between Europe and the Muslim world as the Continent struggles to absorb a fast-expanding Muslim population whose customs and values are often at odds with Europe's secular societies. Islam is Europe's fastest growing religion and is now the second largest religion in most European countries. Racial and religious discrimination against Muslims in Europe's weakest economies adds to the strains. 
  The trouble began in September in Denmark, when the daily Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons lampooning intolerance among Muslims and links to terrorism. A Norwegian magazine published the cartoons again last month, and the issue erupted this week after diplomatic efforts failed to resolve demands by several angry Arab countries that the publications be punished.
  The cartoons include one depicting Muhammad with a bomb in place of a turban on his head and another showing him on a cloud in heaven telling an approaching line of smoking suicide bombers, ''Stop, stop, we ran out of virgins!''
  They have since been reprinted in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain and Hungary. The BBC broadcast them on Thursday.
  [On Friday, 300 militant Indonesian Muslims went on a rampage inside the lobby of the Jakarta building housing the Danish Embassy, unable to get past security to the embassy on the 25th floor, Reuters reported. They tossed rotten eggs and made fiery speeches calling on their government to sever diplomatic ties with Denmark and evict its ambassador. The protesters dispersed after an hour. There were no arrests.]
  Most European commentators concede that the cartoons were in poor taste but argue that conservative Muslims must learn to accept Western standards of free speech and the pluralism that those standards protect.
  Several accused Muslims of a double standard, noting that media in several Arab countries continue to broadcast or publish references to ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' a notorious early 20th-century anti-Semitic hoax that presented itself as the Jews' master plan to rule the world. 
  Many Muslims say the Danish cartoons reinforce a dangerous confusion between Islam and the Islamist terrorism that nearly all Muslims abhor. Dalil Boubakeur, head of France's Muslim Council, called the caricatures a new sign of Europe's growing ''Islamophobia.''
  Saudi Arabia and Syria recalled their ambassadors from Denmark, while the Danish government summoned other foreign envoys in Copenhagen to talks on Friday over the issue, having already explained that it does not control the press.
  Jyllands-Posten has received two bomb threats in the past few days, despite having apologized for any hurt feelings about the drawings.
  Thursday morning, about a dozen gunmen appeared at the European Union offices in Gaza, firing automatic weapons and spray-painting a warning on the outside gate. The men handed out a pamphlet warning Denmark, Norway and France that they had 48 hours to apologize.
  The office, staffed then only by Palestinians, reportedly received a warning that the gunmen were coming, and was quickly closed.
  In Nablus, on the West Bank, two masked gunmen kidnapped a German from a hotel, thinking he was French or Danish, Agence France-Presse reported. They turned him over to the police once they realized their mistake.
  Leaders of Fatah and Hamas said they did not endorse harming any foreigners in Gaza. All the same, the threat emptied hotels there of Europeans, most of them journalists. 
  France Soir, the only French daily to reprint the cartoons, fired its managing editor late Wednesday as ''a strong sign of respect for the beliefs and intimate convictions of every individual,'' according to a statement from its owner, Raymond Lakah, an Egyptian-born French businessman.
  In an editorial defending its decision to publish the cartoons, France Soir asked Thursday what would remain of ''the freedom to think, speak, even to come and go,'' if society adhered to all of the prohibitions of the world's various religions. The result, the newspaper said, would be ''the Iran of the mullahs, for example.''
  Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, issued a statement condemning ''in the strongest terms'' France Soir's publication of the cartoons. ''Any insult to the holy prophet (peace be upon him) is an insult to more than one billion Muslims,'' his statement read.
  On Thursday, France's embassy in Algeria, a former colony, issued a statement condemning the publication, saying the French government was ''deeply attached to the spirit of tolerance and to respect of religious belief, as we are to the principle of freedom of the press.''
  ''In this light, France condemns all those who hurt individuals in their beliefs or religious convictions,'' the statement read.
  Still, Europeans showed no signs of backing down. Le Monde ran a sketch of a man, presumably Muhammad, made of sentences reading, ''I must not draw Muhammad.''


 EUROPE (99%); ISRAEL (94%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (94%); FRANCE (92%); SPAIN (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (92%); DENMARK (92%); HUNGARY (92%); SWITZERLAND (92%); BAHRAIN (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); GERMANY (79%); SYRIA (79%); NORWAY (79%)








 
 

February 3, 2006 Friday



 MUSLIM WORLD JUST HYSTERICAL OVER CARTOON

 
Hundreds of Palestinian gunmen seized diplomats' offices in the Gaza Strip yesterday, cops braced for riots in Copenhagen, a terrorist group threatened "bloody war" and supermarket shelves were empty in Cairo.  
All this because of a few cartoons.  
The 12 drawings by Danish artists - one shows the Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb with a lit fuse - have touched off a furious debate about blasphemy and freedom of speech. The hysteria has stretched from Malaysia to Berlin and recalled the "death sentence" imposed on author Salman Rushdie.   
Last month, 17 Muslim countries met in Tunisia for two days and issued a joint statement to "strongly denounce the offense to Islam."  
It's gotten so bad that Denmark's government called foreign envoys to a summit in Copenhagen today to head off an Islamic holy war against Europe.  
It all began last year, when a Danish author complained that he couldn't find an artist who dared to illustrate his book on Mohammed because Muslims regard any depiction of the prophet as sacrilegious.  
The conservative Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten responded by asking 12 artists to do their own caricatures of the founder of Islam. It published their drawings in September to illustrate "an article on the self-censorship that rules large parts of the Western world."  
Muslims were particularly incensed by the drawing of Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb.  
Their fury escalated after a Norwegian publication reprinted the cartoons in October and a group of Danish Muslims visited the Mideast in December to mobilize protests.  
Religious groups organized a boycott of Danish goods that forced supermarkets in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Gulf states to empty some of their shelves.  
On Jan. 20, officials from 17 Muslim countries - including Indonesia, Pakistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina - signed a protest to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.  
Soon after that, Saudi Arabia and Syria yanked their ambassadors from Copenhagen, and Libya said it was closing its embassy.  
The furor quickly spread to the Arab and Muslim street.  
Hundreds of Pakistanis chanted, "Death to Denmark" and burned French and Danish flags this week.  
A German tourist was kidnapped by gunmen in a West Bank hotel yesterday as a protest to the cartoons. He was later released by the terrorist Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade because, the group said, it wanted to abduct only Danish and French citizens.  
There was a bomb threat at the Danish embassy in Damascus and at the Copenhagen office of Jyllands-Posten.  
Two of the cartoonists received death threats. The paper's editor said on Tuesday that the publication was sorry for offending anyone.  
Denmark's Foreign Ministry was deluged with nearly a million e-mails, in an apparent attempt to shut down its computer server.  
But that was only the beginning.   
On Wednesday, Europe's news media fought back as newspapers in Germany, Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands reprinted the cartoons. The BBC showed them on TV yesterday.  
Germany's Die Welt put the drawings on its front page and defend its "right to blasphemy."  
France Soir said it was printing them "because no religious dogma can impose itself on a democratic and secular society." But the French paper's editor was immediately fired by its Egyptian owner, staff members said.  
A Jordanian newspaper, al-Shihan, reprinted three of the cartoons yesterday, explaining that Muslims should know what the dispute is about.  
A hate group called the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades - which previously claimed responsibility for last July's London suicide bombings - threatened Denmark with a "bloody war."  
"This is a message to the Danish government and to everyone who dared to attack the [Prophet] . . . This is a message that you will not have security or stability, to all of those who chose to make a mockery of the Islamic nation," the group said in a message to a Muslim Web site.  
An Iraqi terror group, the Mujahedeen Army, said the 530 Danish troops serving in the U.S.-led coalition could be targeted.  
Danish police said they were investigating reports that right-wing youths were planning to burn copies of the Koran as a counterprotest tomorrow. 
andy.soltis@nypost.com 

 DENMARK (96%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%); ISRAEL (92%); SAUDI ARABIA (92%);  EGYPT (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA (79%); GERMANY (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); NORWAY (79%); SYRIA (79%);  GULF STATES (79%); TUNISIA (79%)




14


  



February 3, 2006 Friday  




 Tension Rises Over Cartoons of Muhammad; 
Publication Widens In Europe as Protests Grow in Islamic World

 
 Protests against European newspapers' publication of cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad gained momentum across the Islamic world Thursday as Pakistani schoolchildren burned French and Danish flags and Muslim presidents denounced the drawings. At the same time, more European news organizations printed or broadcast the caricatures, citing a need to defend freedom of expression. 
  In another day of confrontation between the largely secular nations of Europe and Muslim countries where religion remains a strong force in daily life, Islamic activists threatened more widespread protests and boycotts of European businesses. While some European officials sought to defuse the crisis, many journalists insisted that despite Islamic outrage, religious sensibilities should not result in censorship. 
 "We would have done exactly the same thing if it had been a pope, rabbi or priest caricature," wrote Editor in Chief Serge Faubert in Thursday's editions of France Soir, one of the newspapers that printed the cartoons.  
 Mahmoud A. Hashem, a businessman in Saudi Arabia reflecting broad sentiment in Muslim societies, called the cartoons just another example of a "sport to insult Islam and Muslims" after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 
 Under Islamic teachings, any depiction of Muhammad, the faith's founder and messenger of God, is blasphemy, including depictions that are not negative. The cartoons violated that dictum, and many of them also ridiculed the prophet. In one, he is depicted as a terrorist, with his turban holding a bomb with a burning fuse. 
 Political analysts from both sides described the newspapers' printing of the cartoons as a dangerous incitement in a conflict that has already alienated the growing Muslim populations of West European nations and hardened extremists in both camps.  
 Alexandre Adler, author of "Rendez-vous With Islam," criticized the newspapers. "We're at war," he said, citing the Iraq insurgency and the electoral victories of the radical Palestinian group Hamas and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "And sometimes war demands censorship. In this context, anything that might strengthen the hate of the West is irresponsible." 
 The European Union's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, said the continued printing of the cartoons was "throwing petrol onto the flames." Acknowledging the desire to stand up for press freedom, he said newspapers must understand "the offense that is caused by publishing cartoons of this nature." 
 But more news organizations continued to display the cartoons Thursday, including the BBC, which said it hoped to "give audiences an understanding of the strong feelings evoked by the story." 
  In the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian gunmen kidnapped a German citizen from a hotel restaurant and threatened to seize more foreigners. The German was later released, Palestinian security officials said. 
 Many Europeans left the Gaza Strip as a precaution Thursday. The E.U. shuttered its office there after warnings that staff members would be kidnapped. About a dozen gunmen briefly surrounded the empty building, firing their weapons. Some European countries warned citizens against travel in the Middle East. 
  In the city of Multan in central Pakistan, several hundred students from Islamic schools burned French and Danish flags in protest. Boycotts of Danish grocery products expanded across the Middle East  
  Presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ahmadinejad of Iran issued statements of condemnation, as did King Abdullah of Jordan. In a speech in Washington, the monarch said that while "we respect and revere freedom of speech, we condemn needless desecration and injury of Islamic sensibilities, such as the recent cartoons misrepresenting and vilifying my ancestor, the prophet." 
 Newspapers throughout the Muslim world condemned their European counterparts. Bahrain's Gulf Daily News ran a one-word headline on its front page that summarized sentiment in the region: "Apologize!" 
  The Egyptian publisher of France Soir, which printed the controversial caricatures Wednesday, fired the paper's managing editor, Jacques LeFranc, late Wednesday night, saying, "We present our regrets to the Muslim community and to all people who have been shocked or made indignant by this publication." 
  But the dismissed editor's boss, Faubert, wrote an unrepentant editorial in Thursday's editions: "We had no desire to add oil to the fire as some may think. A fundamental principle of democracy and secularism is being threatened." 
  But critics argued that publishers should be more discerning in the battles they choose over freedom of expression. "This is the sort of thing that will feed into al Qaeda, alienating and angering a lot of educated young people," Najam Sethi, editor of Pakistan's Daily Times and Friday Times, said in a telephone interview from Lahore. 
  Sethi and others see a double standard at work. "People who question some of the facts of the Holocaust are ostracized; most publishers are so sensitive they won't even get into the argument," Sethi said. "A degree of censorship is imposed that is not articulated in this case." 
  International journalist organizations have condemned the threats of violence against the European journalists who published the cartoons. 
  "We defend unpopular speech around the world all the time," said Joel Simon, deputy director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. "We don't make judgments whether we agree or disagree" with the message. "Sometimes we sort of have to hold our nose, but they've got the right to say that, and we defend their right." 
 Europe has roughly 15 million Muslims, who in some countries make up more than 10 percent of the population. Many analysts see growing social divisions between the Muslims and the majority populations of the countries, which are historically Christian but are increasingly secular in outlook. 
 Tensions continue in the Netherlands, where in 2004 Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose work carried strong anti-Islamic messages, was assassinated by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Muslim extremist. In a court appearance Thursday in that city, Bouyeri said that "the fact that you see me as the black standard-bearer of Islam in Europe fills me with honor, pride and joy." 
 Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament who has proposed a law that would ban women from wearing burqas in the Netherlands and has been the target of death threats, posted the cartoons on his Web site Thursday under this explanation: "What is the price of freedom? As a token of support to the Danish cartoonists and to stand up for free speech, we will place their drawings here." 
 The controversy, which has inflamed the Middle Eastern press and Islamic organizations, began when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons in September. The newspaper's editors had asked 12 artists to draw their depictions of Muhammad after an author had complained that he could not find an artist willing, under his or her own name, to illustrate a book about the prophet. 
 The issue received little attention in Europe, however, until this week, when the Danish company Arla Foods  --  the second-largest dairy producer in Europe  --  announced that its Middle Eastern sales had completely dried up as the controversy continued. On Thursday, the company said it was laying off about 125 workers because of those losses. 
 Mahmoud Hashem, 51, who owns a company based in the seaside Saudi city of Jiddah, said he had sent e-mails to more than 500 people urging them to stop buying Danish products. 
  "I think that all Muslims should unite and do something about this," said Hashem, reached on his cell phone as he was leaving prayers at a Jiddah mosque Thursday afternoon. "Anybody who wants to get some press uses Muslims as a punching bag." 
  At Sawari Superstores, one of the largest supermarket chains in Jiddah, signs were posted in the dairy section saying, "We do not sell any Danish products." 
  "I am not willing to buy any product from a country that has insulted my prophet, my religion and my dignity as a Muslim," said Leila Faleh, 42, a hospital administrator shopping at the store. "I would rather go back to drinking milk from a cow and eating dates." 
  Yuri Thamrin, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, called the cartoons' publication an act of insensitivity that has stoked anger across the Muslim world. "We as a democratic country value freedom of expression, but believe freedom of expression has to be conducted wisely and not as a cover to denigrate or insult religious symbols," Thamrin said. 
 "It is nothing new," lamented Mohammed Hussein Mudhaffer, a 33-year-old mechanical engineer in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf. "The publishing of such cartoons showing the prophet Muhammad is part of the savage campaign waged by the West against Islam and Muslims." 
 Special correspondent Ambah reported from Jiddah. Correspondents Alan Sipress in Jakarta, Indonesia, Karl Vick in Istanbul, Scott Wilson in Jerusalem, Griff Witte in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Mary Jordan in London and special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Marie Valla in Paris contributed to this report. 

 EUROPE (97%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%); DENMARK (90%); WESTERN EUROPE (79%); FRANCE (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%);  EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (79%); IRAN,  (79%); GERMANY (73%)







 The Topeka Capital-Journal 
Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas)

February 1, 2006 Wednesday



 
Owners are clear
I have a few thoughts regarding a recent letter pertaining to eminent domain. The writer chastised the land owner for imprudently overdeveloping his property and having emotional ties to it.
I think the key word here would have to be "forced."
Who's looking out for the rights of the people who own property? Some call them holdouts and accuse them of asking way to much for their property. Yes I think $1.8 million is too much for a bike shop. And $300,000 is too much for a small local bar. But it's clear to me their message is simply that they don't want to sell. 
Eminent domain was never meant to work like this. And I don't care who they have backing their project. The fact is we don't need more apartments or condos. We don't need to be forcing people out of their own property against their will.
What we do need right now is for the city council to have the backbone to send Southwind Capital packing. We've gotten along without them all this time and I think we'll do just fine without them in the future.
KEVIN McGINTY,
Topeka
No place for plant
A country neighborhood has only one narrow road for access. The road has many curves and is steeply inclined for much of its length. All along its length, driveways connect from the many homes. Young and old alike walk, ride bicycles and walk their dogs, especially in the summer. At one home where 4 young children live there is a yard with many pieces of play equipment within 10 feet of the road.
A sand company wants to put in an extraction plant at the edge of the neighborhood. Semi trailers will be making trips through the neighborhood every six minutes throughout their hours of operation.
Who believes this neighborhood will be as safe? Who would move into a neighborhood with truck traffic throughout the day? Who would vote to allow this neighborhood to be changed in this way?
I know of three, and I have this to say to them. Shame on you, Marice Kane. These people live in your district. How could you do this to them?
What were you thinking, Ted Ensley? You agreed to accept this damaging change after visiting the area and seeing the beauty and peaceful nature of the neighborhood.
And Vic Miller, how can you say you believe there will be no change in the risk to the residents?
None of it makes good sense. And when a semi on this narrow, winding, steeply inclined road strikes a car or child, you will be responsible for injuring or killing them, even if you weren't
driving.
ANN McMORRIS and FRED STONE
Topeka
It's a world war
The Jan. 14 column by Dr. Bill Roy was a concoction of nonsense as a basis for another attack upon President Bush. He ignored the facts that we are in a world war with tens of millions of radical, suicidal, terrorist Muslims who have conducted bombings and murder on Kuwait, Pakistan, Jordan, Israel, Russia, Spain, Lebanon, England, France, Germany, Norway, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, the United States and many other countries.
In this new world war, we don't have single nations like Germany and Japan to defeat as in World War II. Instead, we are forced to fight the murderers who live in almost every country and want to kill the Christians and Jews in order to impose their religious beliefs and customs.
The liberal Democrats don't comprehend the scope of the worldwide terrorist war we are in and think it can be resolved with immediate troop withdrawals; lawyers and court proceedings for terrorists; allowing international terrorist conspiracies to be implemented via telephone communications without NSA intercepts; and supporting the leaking of top secret information to the liberal media for revelation to the terrorists. These were called "fifth column" activities in WWII.
The U.S. military does have the resources, training and ability to create peaceful democracies, as reflected by the Iraq elections in the face of terrorist bombings, the attestations of our fighting women and men, the vote of the Congress against withdrawal of our troops, and the U.N. acknowledgment of the new Iraq government along with U.N. officials working in Iraq to complete formation of the new Iraq government.
America is fortunate that Dr. Roy and his liberal friends are not leading our country in this war with the radical
terrorists.
J. KEVIN MURPHY,
Topeka
No disrespect here
I am a student at Northern Hills Junior High School. I read a letter from Dana Lang of Hiawatha who said she feels that the duct-taping and pieing of our teachers is "disrespectful." She also said if we promote this in the present, why can we expect anything different for the future?
Well, I hope it's the exact same in the future. What she didn't say was why all this was going on. If you read the first article about us, you know we raised more than $3,000 for charity. We don't act this way on a regular basis. At Northern Hills our motto is: "Respect effort and responsibility." Our activity was only a reward for our hard work.
When I read the letter, I was offended. It bothered me greatly that she would judge us on one event. The teachers volunteered to be pied and duct taped. Writing this letter and debating won't do anything justice. No one deserves to be judged like that.
KRISTEN SUMPTER,
Topeka
Correction
Nicole Corcoran, press secretary to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, stated that an editorial in the Monday newspaper contained an error. Whereas the editorial stated, "that $813 million saving turns into a net saving of $4 million," Corcoran said the $4 million saving should be compared only with the claimed $161 million from refinancing transportation bonds. She stood by the rest of the administration's claims of nearly $1 billion in savings.







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

January 30, 2006, Monday



 Joining the real world; 
Rise of Hamas not a victory for radical Islam

 
No one should be surprised by the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections. Neither should anyone see it as a victory for radical Islam or international terrorism.
People vote the choices available to them. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had good reason to lose faith in Fatah leaders mired in corruption, unable to slow economic collapse, ineffectual when contending with much more powerful states, and stymied by disorder within their own ranks.
This isn't the first time traditional Palestinian leaders lost support as peace prospects worsened and a once-positive future seemed lost. It's a very old rhythm: throughout history, radical collective movements have occurred when bright hopes rose after a long period of despair, but suddenly seemed permanently foreclosed. The lessons for Iraq should be obvious. 
Over the past 15 years, suicide-terror attacks by Hamas and other radical groups became popular only when a once-promising peace process threatened to break down permanently. In the early stages of the Oslo peace talks, support for Hamas attacks declined dramatically. In 1999, as the Clinton administration pushed hard for negotiated withdrawal of Israelis from most of the West Bank and Gaza, 80 percent of Palestinians in opinion polls opposed suicide operations, while 70 percent put their faith in diplomacy. After September 2000 - beginning with Ariel Sharon's provocative walk upon the Haram al-Sharif, stimulating stone-throwing by Palestinian youths who suffered large casualties from Israeli sharpshooters - negotiations broke down and support for suicide-terror went up to two-thirds among Palestinians.
Sharon's unilateral withdrawal of Israeli settlements from Gaza came upon the breakdown of negotiations barely started after Yasser Arafat's death. Refusal of the Bush administration to complete diplomatic efforts that President Clinton pursued simply deepened the stalemate. Claiming he had no one to talk with because of the inability of Palestinian leaders to prevent suicide attacks, Sharon simply promoted his own facts on the ground, beginning with a wall to lock Palestinians into territory he didn't consider strategically valuable.
The rise of Hamas, in short, is not evidence of a victory for radical Islam. Suicide-terrorism has been promoted by many organizations in comparable contexts, most of them having little to do with religion. Political scientist Robert A. Pape has studied every suicide-terror campaign from 1980 (when their most recent wave began) to 2001. Every campaign without exception (e.g., Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Chechnya, Turkey, Israel) "has been waged by terrorist groups whose main goal has been to establish or maintain self-determination for their community's homeland by compelling an enemy to withdraw," Pape wrote.
Many, of course, will draw the "logical" conclusion that the Gaza withdrawal was a mistake because it enabled Hamas to claim that their suicide-terror campaigns worked. It seems doubtful, however, that the reputation of Hamas would have survived a phased withdrawal following negotiations with the Palestinian leadership. As matters stand, Hamas could simply claim the Palestinian Authority had nothing to do with withdrawal, and shouldn't be given credit.
Pape makes the central point that "even if many suicide terrorists are irrational or fanatical, the leadership groups that recruit and direct them are not." It would be pleasant to wish into existence a special hell for such leaders, but it is clear that, once engaged in a political process where they must bring actual benefits to their supporters, they must show they can deliver or lose support. Hamas may well be forced into the mundane politics of ordinary life, like once-radical Muslim parties in Algeria, Turkey, Indonesia, Egypt and Jordan.
In his book, "Globalized Islam," French scholar Olivier Roy suggests that contemporary religious ideologues who separate themselves from the cultures in which they live to assert a universal religious identity lose the social moorings that otherwise guide their ability to use common sense. Such groups can become violent, but they usually are ineffective in the long run if they show no capacity for governance.
Members of al-Qaida were "born again" into a rigidly codified, simplistic Islam while rebelling against parents and/or living far away from the land that once defined their ethnic heritage. Time and again, they adopted the posture of holy warriors in societies that ultimately rejected them because they were strangers and knew little about the societies they purported to "save" (e.g., Bosnia, Afghanistan, Chechnya - and Iraq, according to some recent reports about the insurgency there).
Hamas in power will have to reject religious fantasy. Failure to do so will ensure its demise. Like its Muslim Brotherhood predecessor in Egypt or the Hizbollah in Lebanon, it will find that it is one political party among others, and not exempted from ordinary human expectations. Like some Israeli prime ministers, it will find it has to trade its earlier fanaticism for the real world.
Dr. Beller, a political science professor at West Virginia State University, is a Gazette contributing columnist.

 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (99%); ISRAEL (96%);  LEBANON (79%);  TURKEY (79%)







   


January 30, 2006 Monday 
  




 Body Found in Indonesian Consulate

 
An Indonesian man stranded in New York for the weekend pending a flight home was found dead yesterday, a knife protruding from his chest and one hand nearly severed at the wrist, in a blood-spattered basement room of the Indonesian Consulate on the Upper East Side, the police said.
  The consulate, an elegant 19th-century Beaux-Arts mansion off Fifth Avenue that is Indonesia's home in New York for cultural events, cocktail receptions, economic conferences and aid to travelers, was transformed on a quiet Sunday morning into the setting of a locked-door mystery. It appeared to be a homicide, investigators said, though they did not rule out suicide.
If it was suicide, the victim -- Bambang Wielianto, 35, of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital -- would have had to plunge a butcher knife into his chest before or after cutting his left wrist so deeply that his hand was almost severed. At least three knives, including the one in his chest, were found in the room, but no note, the police said.  
  But if it was murder, the motive was murky and the case swirled with Agatha Christie shadows. Mr. Wielianto, who had been put up at the consulate on Friday, was last seen on Saturday when he told a consulate employee that he was homesick and eager to get back to his wife and two children. He had been alone overnight in the four-story mansion, at 5 East 68th Street, except for a security guard and a visiting Indonesian diplomat.
  Investigators and employees said the diplomat, who was not identified by the authorities, stayed in a top-floor suite Saturday night and flew back yesterday to Los Angeles, where he works. And the security guard, who found the body and called the police just after 9 a.m., was said to have been posted all night at a desk just inside the consulate's locked basement door, about 25 feet from the room where the victim died.
  The virtually severed hand appeared to be a tantalizing clue. A hard-line Muslim group, the Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia, began a campaign in Jakarta last month to demand the enforcement of the hudud, the harsh criminal code in the Muslim law called Shariah, which prescribes punishments like the amputation of hands for theft and stoning for adultery. 
  There were no signs of a break-in, investigators said. And under strict procedures of the security-conscious consulate -- rules sharpened by terrorist attacks in Bali and other parts of the Indonesian archipelago in recent years -- a visitor would have had to phone the guard and ask permission to enter the locked basement door, the only door used overnight. 
  The security guard, identified by fellow employees only as Adi, was one of many consulate workers and officials interviewed by the police yesterday. But there was no immediate word from investigators about what the guard saw or heard Saturday night and yesterday morning -- specifically whether anyone was allowed in or went out -- and the circumstances surrounding his discovery of the body.
  The investigation transformed the consulate into a movielike crime scene yesterday, with detectives and Indonesian and State Department officials scurrying in and out, access to the block cut off for hours and stunned employees and members of a regular Sunday dance class turned away by officers and yellow tape. Because the consulate is sovereign Indonesian territory, the police were there by invitation.
  Jay Suherwanco, on his way to a traditional Balinese dance class at the consulate, was amazed when told that there was a body inside. So was Nyoman Sapta, 42, director of the Gamelan Dharma Swara dance company, which meets there every Sunday for classes. ''No one knew him,'' Mr. Sapta said of the dead man. ''On Friday, people were like, 'Who's this guy?' and today he's dead.'' 
  Residents of the block were less sanguine. ''I thought they were filming for an episode of 'Law and Order,' '' Michelle Brilliant, who lives next door, said as she emerged with her daughter, Aza Hougie, 3, carrying a Snow White umbrella into the light drizzle of an overcast day.
  Little was known of Mr. Wielianto. Acup Setia, 45, who has been the consulate chauffeur for 20 years, said that he saw the victim's passport when the man arrived on Friday seeking accommodations, and that a fellow consulate employee had spoken to the visitor and learned that he had a wife and two children in Jakarta and had arrived in the United States on a tourist visa on Dec. 13.
  It was unclear where Mr. Wielianto had spent the intervening time, but he told the consular worker that he had come to New York from Philadelphia on Friday and needed a room for a couple of days until his departure for home. He said he had a confirmed seat on a Japan Air Lines flight leaving Wednesday, but was wait-listed for a flight departing as early as yesterday.
  While it is rare for Indonesian nationals to seek accommodations at the consulate, it happens two or three times a year and is not regarded as extraordinary, consular employees said. Diplomats and dignitaries are given suites on the consulate's upper floors, while the occasional traveler in need is given a room in the basement, they said.
  The room Mr. Wielianto was given is normally used to store the musical instruments of the Gamelan Dharma Swara company, mostly drums, gongs, brasses and other percussion pieces, according to Mr. Sapta, who said he himself moved the instruments out on Friday so that a bed for Mr. Wielianto could be moved in.
  To reach the room, one enters the basement from the sidewalk down a flight of steps to the right of the portico at the main entrance. Just inside the locked basement door is a large foyer, with the security guard's desk on the right and a reception area with seating for guests on the left. Straight ahead, at the back of the foyer, is a door leading to a hallway.
  Down that hallway, at the far end, is the consulate kitchen, where, one investigator said, the knives may have come from. On the left side of the hallway, between foyer and kitchen, a door leads into the room given to Mr. Wielianto. Among many unanswered questions in the case is what Mr. Wielianto did after getting the room -- whether he went out Saturday or met anyone in or outside the consulate.
  His body, the police said, was found on the floor of his room, shirtless and face up, the long knife protruding from his chest and his nearly severed left hand dangling loose. At least two other knives were found near the body, and blood streaked and spattered the room. It was unclear if the door had a lock.
  Signs of normalcy began returning to the consulate late in the day as a long-scheduled reception began upstairs even as detectives worked around the body in the basement. At 5:45 p.m., as guests in evening dress flowed up the portico into a reception given by the Council of Senior Centers and Services to benefit the New York City Conference on Aging, men carried the body out in a bag. An autopsy was set for today, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner. 
  A curious feature of the consulate, a 50-foot-wide gray stone manse with bay windows that was built in 1894 by the Boston firm of Peabody & Stearns as a residence for the real estate investor John Emery, is that it is a mirror-image, back-to-back twin of a town house at 8 East 69th Street, built by the same firm in 1892 for Charles S. Colby, the railroad magnate who endowed Colby College in Waterville, Me. There is no known passage between the two structures.


CORRECTION-DATE: February 21, 2006

 CORRECTION:
An article on Jan. 30 about the death of an Indonesian man whose body was found at the Indonesian Consulate in New York referred incorrectly to the original owner of an 1892 town house that is a back-to-back twin of the consulate. He was Charles L. Colby, not Charles S. And he was on the board of Colby College in Waterville, Me.; he did not endow it. The college's benefactor was Gardner Colby, his father.

 INDONESIA (97%); UNITED STATES (94%)







  



January 28, 2006 Saturday 
  




 In Brief

 
 Nearly six months after the United Church of Christ voted to support same-sex civil marriages, the fallout predicted by the denomination's conservative minority may not be as pronounced as originally feared. 
  According to statistics released by the Church of Christ, only 49 churches have voted to disaffiliate since the vote in July  --  less than 1 percent of the denomination's 5,725 registered churches. 
  The statistics also cite a "resurgence of interest" in the Church of Christ, with 23 congregations joining the denomination and 42 expressing what the Church of Christ called "a firm interest" in joining.  
  At the same time, conservative groups  cited different numbers, saying the official numbers are low because of the bureaucratic process involved in leaving the denomination. 
 The Rev. Robert Thompson, president of the board of directors of Faithful and Welcoming Churches of the denomination, which dissented  from the "marriage equality" resolution, said he has spoken with leaders of congregations that have voted to disaffiliate but have not completed the process. Thompson cited at least 75 "lost churches," which he tallied through correspondence with pastors and congregants across the country. 
  The Rev. David Runnion-Bareford of the independent and conservative minority Biblical Witness Fellowship agreed. By the time the paperwork has been filed in two to three years, he said the number will have grown to between 200 and 500 disaffiliated congregations. 
  --  Religion News Service 
King Abdullah II of Jordan has accepted an invitation to be the keynote speaker at an evangelical lunch gathering after the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday. 
  The breakfast, luncheon and related events are organized by the Fellowship Foundation, a low-profile evangelical Christian group. In recent years, Republican and Democratic presidents have attended the breakfast at the Hilton Hotel Washington, and President Bush is expected to make an appearance again this year. 
  Some see the invitation of Abdullah, a Muslim head of state, as a small sign of cooperation in the often tense relationship between evangelical Christians and Muslims. 
  "It's in the best interest of evangelicals and Muslims to engage in dialogue and get to know one another better. All too often, we view each other through stereotypes that are unfair," said Richard Cizik, vice president of government affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals in Washington. "If the king is looking for an opportunity to address evangelicals, this is it." 
  Merissa Khurma, a Jordanian Embassy spokeswoman in Washington, said interfaith relations are an "essential theme" for the king. 
  Other Muslim leaders have attended the breakfast in past years, including Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia and Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader. But in 2003, several Muslims invited from Indonesia turned down an invitation  because of the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq. 
  --  Religion News Service 
 "The Chronicles of Narnia," "Cinderella Man" and "Crash" have made the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' list of the 10 best films of 2005. 
  "While much on theater screens is reprehensible, it is important to acknowledge those outstanding pictures from Hollywood and abroad that not only exhibit high artistic merit, but also reflect Gospel values," said Harry Forbes, director of the bishops' office for film and broadcasting. 
  "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," about four siblings' adventures in the fantasy world of Narnia, was an easy choice for the list because of its Christian subtext. 
  The other two big Hollywood films, "Cinderella Man" and "Crash," feature, respectively, a true story about a retired boxer who returns to the sport to support his family and a tale about the co-existence of a racially mixed group of Los Angeles residents. 
  Also on the list were "Dear Frankie," "The Greatest Game Ever Played," "Millions," "The Ninth Day," "North County," "An Unfinished Life" and "The Upside of Anger." 
  Forbes said that the films  had many different messages but that each had a strong moral center. 
  --  Religion News Service 

CORRECTION-DATE: January 31, 2006

 CORRECTION:
On the Jan. 28 Religion Page, a headline and item about the United Church of Christ's vote to support same-sex civil marriages incorrectly shortened the name of the denomination to Church of Christ.

 UNITED STATES (93%); JORDAN (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%);  INDONESIA (79%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


January 27, 2006 Friday



 Al-Qaida losing support in Arab-Muslim world

 
   Reading about the latest tapes by Osama bin Laden and his sidekick Ayman al-Zawahiri, my gut reaction is that they sound like a couple of burned-out rock stars who keep recycling their greatest hits in hopes of catching on one last time as the lounge duo in some Las Vegas hotel. "Now Appearing at Caesars Palace, It's the Monkees! And at the Aladdin, Ayman and Osama!"
I will confess, though, that the fact that bin Laden could recommend a book in his latest video and then watch that book break into the top 10 on Amazon.com within just a few days suggests that while he may not have much of a future as a terrorist, he could do a book club gig. 
When I checked Amazon, two of the top 10 books were recommended by Oprah, and one was recommended by Osama. Now that's juice. I started to imagine bin Laden sitting in his cave in Pakistan and suddenly receiving all these books from publishers and agents.
If I seem to be taking all this a tad lightly, it is because I am certain that bin Laden is hurting right now. What made bin Laden such a unique threat were three things: the fact that he had taken over a whole country, Afghanistan, where he could freely recruit and train forces and move around money; the fact that he controlled a political movement, the Taliban; and, most important, the fact that many Arabs and Muslims looked up to him and al-Qaida as forces who were standing up to America.
But today bin Laden does not have Afghanistan, he does not have the Taliban, and while he still has some following, I don't think so many Arabs and Muslims are naming their sons "Osama" anymore.
Because anyone who has paid attention to recent events in Iraq, Indonesia, Sharm el Sheik, Afghanistan and Jordan knows that al-Qaida has killed many more innocent Muslims than innocent Americans -- and not just Shiite Muslims. And it has killed them at marketplaces, mosques, weddings and funerals. Al-Qaida murders have also exacted a huge toll on tourism in places like Egypt and Indonesia, killing jobs as well.
The best indications of how much this has hurt bin Laden in the Arab-Muslim world are the recent attacks on al-Qaida by important Islamist voices, including some leaders of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. On Jan. 7, after al-Zawahiri lambasted Muslim Brothers as U.S. stooges for taking part in Egypt's parliamentary elections, AFP reported the following from Cairo:
"Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood responded Saturday to al-Qaida's accusations of complicity with Washington by charging that the Islamist violence advocated by Osama bin Laden's network was counterproductive." A Brotherhood spokesman, Issam al-Aryan, asked, "What results have his resort to violence yielded?"
Such open criticism "coming from the Muslim Brotherhood, which has a significant presence in Egypt and beyond, is quite telling," said Ibrahim Karawan, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. "It shows that al-Qaida's actions have cost them. They have created enemies in the West and in the Arab world."
Indeed, Iraqi Sunni nationalists in Ramadi recently declared war on local al-Qaida militants after bin Laden forces killed 80 people in Ramadi Jan. 5.
But while I am certain bin Laden is losing, I still don't feel that we are "winning," that we are really making progress in democratizing political life in the Arab-Muslim world. States and politics there are still dominated by military and intelligence services.
There is still no viable, free space for a vibrant civil society to emerge. Few independent political parties, newspapers or nongovernmental organizations have sprouted. Look at Egypt: President Hosni Mubarak holds elections, the Muslim Brotherhood wins a record number of seats, and the most liberal politician who dared to run against Mubarak gets thrown in jail. It's hard to call that progress.
The other reason it is hard to feel that we are winning is that America, and particularly President Bush, are still radioactive -- in other words, widely disliked. Therefore, there are not a lot of Arab progressives who want to be seen publicly embracing Americans or their agenda.
Iraq and Afghanistan, I still hope, may turn out to be exceptions, but even if they are, it is hard to believe their example will spread at a time when oil is $67 a barrel. The military-intelligence systems that dominate political life in the Arab East are only growing richer, bigger and stronger -- thanks to petrodollars. New York Times News Service 

 EGYPT (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); AFGHANISTAN (92%); INDONESIA (92%);  PAKISTAN (79%)







  
 

January 26, 2006 Thursday  




 A BURNED-OUT ACT; 
OSAMA AND HIS PAL STRUT BEFORE THE WORLD AS YESTERDAY'S MEN

 
Reading about the latest tapes by Osama bin Laden and his sidekick Ayman al-Zawahri, my gut reaction is that they sound like a couple of burned-out rock stars who keep recycling their greatest hits in hopes of catching on one last time as the lounge duo in some Las Vegas hotel. "Now Appearing at Caesars Palace, It's the Monkees! And at the Aladdin, Ayman and Osama!"
I will confess, though, that the fact that bin Laden could recommend a book in his latest video and then watch that book break into the top 10 on Amazon.com within just a few days suggests that while he may not have much of a future as a terrorist, he could do a book club gig. When I checked Amazon, two of the top 10 books were recommended by Oprah, and one was recommended by Osama. Now that's juice. I started to imagine bin Laden sitting in his cave in Pakistan and suddenly receiving all these books from publishers and agents. 
If I seem to be taking all this a tad lightly, it is because I am certain that bin Laden is hurting right now. What made bin Laden such a unique threat were three things: the fact that he had taken over a whole country, Afghanistan, where he could freely recruit and train forces and move around money; the fact that he controlled a political movement, the Taliban; and, most important, the fact that many Arabs and Muslims looked up to him and al-Qaida as forces who were standing up to America.
But today bin Laden does not have Afghanistan, he does not have the Taliban, and while he still has some following, I don't think so many Arabs and Muslims are naming their sons "Osama" anymore.
Because anyone who has paid attention to recent events in Iraq, Indonesia, Sharm el Sheik, Afghanistan and Jordan knows that al-Qaida has killed many more innocent Muslims than innocent Americans -- and not just Shiite Muslims. And it has killed them at marketplaces, mosques, weddings and funerals. Qaida murders have also exacted a huge toll on tourism in places like Egypt and Indonesia, killing jobs as well.
The best indications of how much this has hurt bin Laden in the Arab-Muslim world are the recent attacks on al-Qaida by important Islamist voices, including some leaders of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. On Jan. 7, after al-Zawahri lambasted Muslim Brothers as U.S. stooges for taking part in Egypt's parliamentary elections, AFP reported the following from Cairo:
"Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood responded Saturday to al-Qaida's accusations of complicity with Washington by charging that the Islamist violence advocated by Osama bin Laden's network was counterproductive." A Brotherhood spokesman, Issam al-Aryan, asked, "What results have his resort to violence yielded?"
Such open criticism "coming from the Muslim Brotherhood, which has a significant presence in Egypt and beyond, is quite telling," said Ibrahim Karawan, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. "It shows that al-Qaida's actions have cost them. They have created enemies in the West and in the Arab world." Indeed, Iraqi Sunni nationalists in Ramadi recently declared war on local Qaida militants after bin Laden forces killed 80 people in Ramadi in an attack on police recruits.
But while I am certain bin Laden is losing, I still don't feel that we are "winning," that we are really making progress in democratizing political life in the Arab-Muslim world. States and politics there are still dominated by military and intelligence services.
There is still no viable, free space for a vibrant civil society to emerge. Few independent political parties, newspapers or nongovernmental organizations have sprouted. Look at Egypt: President Hosni Mubarak holds elections, the Muslim Brotherhood wins a record number of seats, and the most liberal politician who dared to run against Mr. Mubarak gets thrown in jail. It's hard to call that progress.
The other reason it is hard to feel that we are winning is that America, and particularly President Bush, are still radioactive -- in other words, widely disliked. Therefore, there are not a lot of Arab progressives who want to be seen publicly embracing Americans or their agenda.
Iraq and Afghanistan, I still hope, may turn out to be exceptions, but even if they are, it is hard to believe their example will spread at a time when oil is $67 a barrel. The military-intelligence systems that dominate political life in the Arab East are only growing richer, bigger and stronger -- thanks to petrodollars.
No, not much grows in a garden watered by oil.

 EGYPT (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); AFGHANISTAN (92%); INDONESIA (92%);  PAKISTAN (79%)







   


January 25, 2006 Wednesday  




 Osama at the Kit Kat Club

 
Reading about the latest tapes by Osama bin Laden and his sidekick Ayman al-Zawahiri, my gut reaction is that they sound like a couple of burned-out rock stars who keep recycling their greatest hits in hopes of catching on one last time as the lounge duo in some Las Vegas hotel. ''Now Appearing at Caesars Palace, It's the Monkees! And at the Aladdin, Ayman and Osama!'' 
  I will confess, though, that the fact that bin Laden could recommend a book in his latest video and then watch that book break into the top 10 on Amazon.com within just a few days suggests that while he may not have much of a future as a terrorist, he could do a book club gig. When I checked Amazon, two of the top 10 books were recommended by Oprah, and one was recommended by Osama. Now that's juice. I started to imagine bin Laden sitting in his cave in Pakistan and suddenly receiving all these books from publishers and agents. 
If I seem to be taking all this a tad lightly, it is because I am certain that bin Laden is hurting right now. What made bin Laden such a unique threat were three things: the fact that he had taken over a whole country, Afghanistan, where he could freely recruit and train forces and move around money; the fact that he controlled a political movement, the Taliban; and, most important, the fact that many Arabs and Muslims looked up to him and Al Qaeda as forces who were standing up to America.
  But today bin Laden does not have Afghanistan, he does not have the Taliban, and while he still has some following, I don't think so many Arabs and Muslims are naming their sons ''Osama'' anymore.
  Because anyone who has paid attention to recent events in Iraq, Indonesia, Sharm el Sheik, Afghanistan and Jordan knows that Al Qaeda has killed many more innocent Muslims than innocent Americans -- and not just Shiite Muslims. And it has killed them at marketplaces, mosques, weddings and funerals. Qaeda murders have also exacted a huge toll on tourism in places like Egypt and Indonesia, killing jobs as well.
  The best indications of how much this has hurt bin Laden in the Arab-Muslim world are the recent attacks on Al Qaeda by important Islamist voices, including some leaders of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. On Jan. 7, after Zawahiri lambasted Muslim Brothers as U.S. stooges for taking part in Egypt's parliamentary elections, A.F.P. reported the following from Cairo:
  ''Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood responded Saturday to Al Qaeda's accusations of complicity with Washington by charging that the Islamist violence advocated by Osama bin Laden's network was counterproductive.'' A Brotherhood spokesman, Issam al-Aryan, asked, ''What results have his resort to violence yielded?'' 
  Such open criticism ''coming from the Muslim Brotherhood, which has a significant presence in Egypt and beyond, is quite telling,'' said Ibrahim Karawan, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. ''It shows that Al Qaeda's actions have cost them. They have created enemies in the West and in the Arab world.'' Indeed, Iraqi Sunni nationalists in Ramadi recently declared war on local Qaeda militants after bin Laden forces killed 80 people in Ramadi in an attack on police recruits on Jan. 5.
  But while I am certain bin Laden is losing, I still don't feel that we are ''winning,'' that we are really making progress in democratizing political life in the Arab-Muslim world. States and politics there are still dominated by military and intelligence services. 
  There is still no viable, free space for a vibrant civil society to emerge. Few independent political parties, newspapers or nongovernmental organizations have sprouted. Look at Egypt: President Hosni Mubarak holds elections, the Muslim Brotherhood wins a record number of seats, and the most liberal politician who dared to run against Mr. Mubarak gets thrown in jail. It's hard to call that progress. 
  The other reason it is hard to feel that we are winning is that America, and particularly President Bush, are still radioactive -- widely disliked. Therefore, there are not a lot of Arab progressives who want to be seen publicly embracing Americans or their agenda.
  Iraq and Afghanistan, I still hope, may turn out to be exceptions, but even if they are, it is hard to believe their example will spread at a time when oil is $67 a barrel. The military-intelligence systems that dominate political life in the Arab East are only growing richer, bigger and stronger -- thanks to petrodollars. 
  No, not much grows in a garden watered by oil. 

 UNITED STATES (94%); EGYPT (94%); AFGHANISTAN (93%); INDONESIA (92%);  PAKISTAN (79%)







  
 

January 25, 2006 Wednesday  




 
There's a school for this?
I realize we're in the Cold War leading up to the Super Bowl, but is it possible we have something to learn from Seattle? Not about football, to be sure, but about meeting that special someone. If you're having trouble, your problem may not be homeliness, bad breath, excessive prattling or waving your Terrible Towel at inappropriate moments in the seduction process. It could be your flirting skills are deficient. If so, Teri Ciacchi's class in Seattle, "Get What You Want! Flirting Skills for Everyone," could be just the ticket, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. 
I hear many of you saying, "What's to learn about flirting? All you have to do is yell, 'How about those Steelers! Woo-woo-wooooo.' " Now, that's an effective wooing strategy, no doubt, but Teri is a professional. She is an "educator, counselor, artist, writer, performance poet, pleasure activist, temple priestess and one hell of a good time!" (No phone number was supplied.) In fact, she teaches out of The Great Goddess Temple and heads the TerraFire Academy of Aphrodisiacal Living, www.terrafire.org, and you would expect nothing less of a pleasure activist. With credentials like these, you could conclude that flirting is too low-level for Teri, but she's willing to help with the basics.
Start taking notes
Teri says most courtship behavior is not what you say, but how you present yourself through body language. Saving you the airfare to Seattle, The Morning File will share Teri's tips and provide color commentary:
To attract attention, widen your eyes and lift your eyebrows, smile, tilt your head, shrug your shoulders and purposely walk in the line of sight of the object of your affection. ("Affection" might be the wrong word, but otherwise this could describe Bill Cowher preparing to drop the hankie on a ref's bad call.)
To continue the connection, bring attention to your face by touching parts of your face (she said face!) and expressing interest. (Do not at any point grab the object of your desire's face mask.)
Know whether you're on the right track by looking for signals the other person is sending through body language, such as pupil dilation, blushing, leaning closer, more hand contact and shared focus. (Just don't share your focus so much that you fumble the football.)
From here on, you're on your own.
Parrots say the darndest things
Suzy Collins, a 25-year-old call center worker from Leeds, England, needs no flirting tips. She shared an apartment with her boyfriend and his parrot, and one night when they were sitting on the sofa, the parrot said, "I love you, Gary." Which would have been cute, except the boyfriend's name is Chris. When Chris noticed Suzy's embarrassed reaction, he realized she'd been fooling around -- in the apartment while Ziggy, apparently a pleasure passivist, looked on. Suzy admitted the affair with a colleague named Gary and moved out, The Guardian reported. Chris Taylor, a 30-year-old computer programmer, then had to show Ziggy the door because Zig continued to call out Gary's name in his ex-girlfriend's voice.
He: "I wasn't sorry to see the back of Suzy after what she did, but it really broke my heart to let Ziggy go."
She: "I am surprised to hear he got rid of that bird. He spent more time talking to it than he did to me."
The wedding kiss was tough
Then there are people who skip the flirting stage before getting married. In fact, Rita Sri Mutiara Dewi and her Indonesian countryman Wiriadi skipped the meeting-each-other stage. In the next week or so, Dewi expects to board a plane in her native Indonesia or perhaps Malaysia -- where she is a teacher -- to eyeball her one-named husband in California for the first time. Dewi, 50, and Wiriadi, 52, were married two weeks ago through the magic of speaker phones and Internet Web cams. A Muslim cleric pronounced it legal. It seemed a natural outcome of their courtship, which began in an Internet chat room and flowered with almost daily e-mails or phone calls. The 25-minute ceremony cost $21.30, The Associated Press reported.
Super Bowl desperation
"For Seattle, going to the Super Bowl is like the guy who asks a girl out for 30 years, and after teasing, titillation and dis upon dis, she finally says 'Yes, hell yes.' "
Robert L. Jamieson Jr., Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist
Detroit loves us
"With the Pittsburgh Steelers getting in, there won't be enough merchandise in the city. The town will be painted black and gold, basically. There will be 100,000-plus Steelers fans coming to town and about 5,000 Seattle fans. Pittsburgh getting in was the best thing for the city of Detroit. Their fans will come to party. They are passionate and they travel. They just love their team."
Steve Sodell, president of Sports Fan Marketing Inc., in the Detroit Free Press on the impact of Steelers fans.

 UNITED STATES (91%); ENGLAND (50%)







 


January 20, 2006 Friday



 HATE, FROM THE ASHES OF GROUND ZERO; 
Marc Levin's 'Protocols of Zion' confronts people who believe in a Jewish conspiracy behind the Sept. 11 attacks

 
In his documentary "Protocols of Zion," Marc Levin jumps headlong into the fires of ideology. Though it is a controlled blaze, sparks fly during the secular Jew's confrontations with neo-Nazi skinheads, Arabs and militantly anti-Semitic African Americans. The encounters can carry a toxic bite, laced as they are with ignorance and belligerence. Voices ascend to shouts, vitriol froths and the semantics of hate and bigotry are accorded equal access. As our intrepid on-camera tour guide, Levin strives to interject a voice of reason. 
Unsettling responses to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, prompted Levin's investigation into anti-Semitic rage. Most alarming were conspiracy theories that Jews were behind the terrorist attacks, and that it was all part of a Jewish master plan to rule the world -- a design laid out in the century-old text "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which has long been debunked as an anti-Semitic forgery.  
"Protocols of Zion," having its local premiere Sunday at the Arbor during the fourth annual Austin Jewish Film Festival, is Levin's survey of the ideological scaffolding of hate. Like Michael Moore without the bumptious sense of mischief, Levin talks to blacks on the streets of New York who discount the Holocaust, professional neo-Nazis who thrive selling hate literature, skinheads in prisons that serve as incubators of intolerance and Arabs who believe every word of the "Protocols." 
Timely as ever, the result is a lively and edgy discourse, as well as a personal journey for Levin, who takes his filmmaker father along with him to some of his meetings. 
Levin has won numerous film awards, including two Emmys for documentaries and top prizes at the Sundance and Cannes film festivals for his dramatic feature "Slam." Levin's segment in Martin Scorsese's PBS series "The Blues," titled "Godfathers and Sons," was a highlight of the series. We spoke to Levin by phone last week from his New York office. 
American-Statesman: What was the starting point of your film? 
Marc Levin: In the days right after 9/11 I was hearing in my own neighborhood parts of these street rumors that the Jews were somehow forewarned about (the attacks) and got out of the buildings. 
And you had a rather strong and active reaction to that, whereas some of us might have dismissed it as crackpot and moved on. 
Well, I live in midtown Manhattan and I get coffee and the newspaper every day at a deli and newsstand run by Arab Americans, so I wasn't totally surprised to hear them talking about this. I had already seen this stuff flying around on the Web. But it wasn't until a few weeks later when I took a cab ride with an Egyptian immigrant who connected those rumors to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." We talked for a while and I learned he'd been persecuted in his homeland of Alexandria, Egypt, for liking Western pop music and movies. He couldn't take it any longer and he left for New York, dreaming to get into the hip-hop business. I thought this was so bizarre. This kid himself is a victim of fanaticism and only 15 minutes ago he was repeating this madness. That really planted the seed. But then I found out that ("Protocols") was being published and serialized in New Jersey, as it had been by Henry Ford in the 1920s. I couldn't believe it. Then when I saw dramatizations of the book on TV, it was beyond belief. 
You've taken a very personal approach to the subject, making it your own journey of enlightenment. 
I've been interested in conspiracy thinking since the Kennedy assassination. I wanted to do something on the street level, gonzo, without experts and historians. I thought this would be my unique perspective, and I really felt the need to try and make sense of this stuff. This was the first time during the trauma of 9/11 that I reacted differently to local fanaticism. When I started, I just wanted to do it in my neighborhood. But then the war broke out in Iraq and "The Passion of the Christ" was released. A number of things happened that inflated the frame and stretched the time span to two years instead of the planned six months. It grew into a bigger journey. 
Were there times that you felt threatened or endangered? 
There were times that were tense. I was always with three or four people. The Nazis in West Virginia guaranteed our safety and said we didn't need bodyguards, but we were uneasy. Psychologically I was in another place. I was ready to walk into all that, because in a certain sense I was numb from the shock of 9/11. It was a certain post-traumatic disorientation, in which I was like, "I don't give a (bleep). I'm from New York, my whole family's from Brooklyn, and I'm walking right up to you. Yeah, we have differences, but let's have it out." 
How hard did you strive for balance and fairness? 
That became the methodology, the MO. Obviously there have been discussions as the film has shown. Some see it as Jewish propaganda. It doesn't pretend to be an objective look at the Arab-Israeli conflict or relations between blacks and Jews. This is one secular Jewish filmmaker trying to make sense, but as a personal film. I wanted to get beyond just a spiel and get some sense of either "know thy enemy" or the confusion that's out there. A very active dialogue might not change ideologies, but it changes how people look at each other. 
How bad is it out there, this culture of hate? The movie provides a great snapshot of it, but you were on the front lines. 
I have mixed feelings. I do see faith-based fanaticism of all kinds, be it Muslim, Jewish, Christian or Pat Robertson. There's always been hate. You marry it to this cycle, which has taken fundamentalism and fanaticism and faith back into the picture. Who would have thought we would wake up in the 21st century and it would be like the Middle Ages, with religious and tribal wars? We have this new technology -- the Web, satellite networks -- so it spreads faster and picks up new kinds of coalitions and mutations. It's very much a part of the spread of these (Jewish conspiracy) rumors. It's old hatred stirred up in new ways. 
Is the resurgence of the book "The Protocols of Zion" a part of this? 
That's a fact, yeah. Most Americans still haven't heard about it, except Nation of Islam, the black militant movement and the Arab American community. Most others, including most Jews, have never heard of it. But in Europe and around the world, especially the Muslim world, they have. The head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia, who wants to show my film, said he thinks 80 percent of the country believes the Jews were behind 9/11. It's just accepted.  
After all the conversations and encounters and reflection, what did you learn? 
The film has no answers. The film itself is a question. If there's a message to the film, it's not conversion. It's conversation. Listening matters. 
cgarcia@statesman.com; 445-3649 
(box) 
'Protocols of Zion,' showing during the Austin Jewish Film Festival 
When: 2 p.m. Sunday 
Where: Arbor Cinema (9828 Great Hills Trail) 
Tickets: $5-$7.50, available on a first-come, first-served basis at the box office 15 minutes before showtime, or at www.austinjff.org 
Information 735-8426, www.austinjff.org  

 UNITED STATES (94%)




15


 
 



January 18, 2006 Wednesday



 Albert Brooks, fighting fear with funny

 
Like many Americans, Albert Brooks spent the months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks living in fear of repeat acts. Around that time, during the anthrax scare, a small film starring Brooks, My First Mister, opened at a theater in Rockefeller Center.
"And I said, oh, that's going to be great," Brooks says dryly. "That's what you want for a good house - tell the people there is anthrax in the theater." 
His response to what he calls the insanity of the time? To make a comedy film. "You want to get back to normalcy," he said in a hotel here last week, "even if there is some impending doom."
Brooks' new film, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, which will open in Philadelphia Friday, is an honest and often hilarious attempt by an American comedian to understand Muslims in South Asia, something few artists have done since 2001.
In the film, Brooks plays himself as an out-of-work actor who takes up a State Department-sponsored assignment to explore what makes Muslims laugh. He's lured by a promise that the 500-page report he'll generate would earn him a presidential medal.
The project requires travels to Pakistan and India - never mind that India is predominantly a Hindu country, and that its 150 million Muslims are its largest minority. They make India the second-largest Muslim country in the world, after Indonesia.
"That is the joke, the point of the movie, that the government would be so ignorant that they would send Albert to India to look for the Muslim world," says Sheetal Sheth, who plays Maya, the Indian woman Brooks hires as his assistant in New Delhi.
Looking for Comedy is a big break for Sheth, 30, an Indian American actress born in Phillipsburg, N.J., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa. She says the role attracted her because it was not the stereotypical image of Indians sometimes seen in Hollywood films and American television, such as the Apu character on The Simpsons.
"It was nice that the role was written in a way that was real, authentic, and the [New Delhi] accent was necessary," Sheth says. The film also stars U.S. senator-turned-actor Fred Thompson as the head of the State Department commission that sends Brooks to India. Thompson, a Republican, set one condition on appearing in the film - that Brooks would not do a Michael Moore on him and make him look foolish.
So why take Looking for Comedy to India?
"Look, there is no Saudi Arabian Film Commission," Brooks says of the choice of where to set the film. "When the president of Iran says he wants to wipe Israel from the map on Wednesday, on Thursday he is not saying, 'Let the Jew filmmaker come in and we will give him free access.'
"I can't get into Syria... . Syriana was filmed in Morocco, which is not interesting for this movie. That's too touristy. Even Egypt is full of people from Florida looking at the pyramids."
In Looking for Comedy Brooks rents a run-down office space in New Delhi's prime shopping district, right next to a call center that processes customer-service phone queries from America.
"I have a fascination with India," Brooks says. "I have never seen India portrayed in the contemporary way in American films. Mostly we see historical India in films such as A Passage to India or Gandhi."
By taking the camera into the heart of New Delhi, Brooks shows India's capital just the way it is - lavish hotels and modern buildings, but traffic out of control, and cows in the streets. People speak fluent English and are eager to follow his American brand of comedy. But while Maya starts to appreciate Brooks' sarcasm, many others he meets, including the sold-out crowd at his stand-up comedy show, do not get his humor.
Brooks admits that he also did not get most of the jokes he heard in India.
"As the crew warmed up to me, I realized that for the Hindus, the butt of their jokes were the Sikhs," he says, remembering a joke he heard about two Sikhs playing chess. "I didn't quite understand it, but I said, 'OK, I get it.' And then we had a Sikh driver who was telling us Muslim jokes. I saw the hierarchy. It seems to me that everywhere on the planet somebody is talking about someone else.
"As I say in the movie, Polish jokes work everywhere."
Brooks' mission is aborted when his actions nearly result in a war between India and Pakistan. He leaves India, and pays a brief, clandestine visit to a Pakistani border outpost, without finding the Muslim funny bone. So Brooks makes himself the butt of the joke, the ugly American who remains clueless even after a month in India.
So is comedy the solution to understanding different cultures? "I don't know what the solution is," Brooks says. "But it couldn't hurt.
"What we really need to have is public relations for this country. That was the whole idea of the movie anyway. They should call it the Schmooze Corp. Put 50,000 people on the ground and have them [talk with people]. There is no interpersonal contact between Americans and the rest of the world anymore.
"Our current leadership doesn't choose to do that. President Kennedy went to Berlin and he said one sentence in German and they loved us for 20 years. There is just no attempt at this, and it blows my mind."

 INDIA (97%); UNITED STATES (95%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); IRAN,  (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); ASIA (71%); SOUTHERN ASIA (56%)







 
 


January 17, 2006, Tuesday



 Indonesia's stature rises

 
A security pact expected to be signed this year between Indonesia and Australia will mark a formal end to a six-year rift over violence in East Timor and signals just how far the world's most populous Muslim nation has come in relations with its southern neighbor as well as the United States.
The pact formalizes greater cooperation between Australia and Indonesia since the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people, the majority of them Australians. Parallel to that process, a chain of events prompted in part by the December 2004 tsunami has resulted in closer links with the US, including the resumption of military ties.
The measures underscore Indonesia's growing stature as an ally in the US battle against Islamist violence and have drawn comparisons with the world's second-largest Muslim nation: Pakistan. 
"After 9/11, security cooperation with Australia became essential - it's part of the grand defense strategy of the US," said Kusnanto Anggoro, a military analyst with Jakarta's Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In both Indonesia and Pakistan, the US now enjoys friendly ties to presidents seen as sympathetic to US interests. Both Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan support a moderate Islam and are seen as bulwarks against violent fringe groups. Together, they preside over about 356 million Muslims, about a quarter of the Islamic world.
Critics such as Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, argue that Indonesia has made progress in stemming the human rights violations that first chilled ties with the West. But, they say, it has not done enough to bring the military to account for alleged abuses in East Timor.
Others, however, point to Indonesia's political reforms. Unlike President Musharraf, President Yudhoyono can boast a strong popular mandate and vibrant democracy. And in November, for example, Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla took the bold step of showing a video of suicide bombers to powerful Islamic scholars, triggering a sea change in public opinion.
Mr. Anggoro says the Australia pact would "revive the old security agreement [of 1995]" between the two countries. Australia has recently resumed military exercises with Indonesia's Special Forces Kopassus unit, and Australian police have shared intelligence and resources to help Indonesia's police track down suspected terrorists.
In the case of the US, the tsunami spurred unprecedented cooperation with Indonesia's military, says analyst Greg Fealy, a lecturer at the Australian National University.
US aid to Muslims affected by the tsunami and by Pakistan's October 2005 earthquake also dramatically improved attitudes toward the US, according to polls sponsored by the Washington-based bipartisan nonprofit group Terror-Free-Tomorrow.
The Indonesia poll, conducted by the Indonesian Survey Institute in February last year, concluded that 65 percent of Indonesians had a more favorable view of the US. A November 2005 poll in Pakistan found similar results, noting that 79 percent of those with confidence in Osama bin Laden had a more favorable view of the US after the earthquake.
As a result, analysts say, the Bush administration was able to parlay the goodwill into lifting an embargo on military exports and foreign military financing ties with Indonesia on Nov. 22. 
A modest $1 million in foreign military financing has been approved for the Indonesian navy in 2006, compared with $30 million in military grants for the Philippines. Indonesia's Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono said priority would be given to buying spare parts for C-130 transport planes.
Earlier in the year, Washington had been moving toward repairing military ties. In February, two months after the tsunami, the US resumed IMET, an education program for Indonesian soldiers, and the sale of nonlethal military equipment. Later, in May, "the resumption of normal military relations," said President Bush, "would be in the interest of both countries."
But a waiver in the State Department's authorization bill to override many of the restrictions on restoring military ties angered critics.
The State Department cited the "national security interests" as a reason for the waiver, noting Indonesia plays a strategic role as a "voice of moderation in the Islamic world." Indonesia also received critical support from then-Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a former ambassador to Indonesia.
Another factor holding back military ties, the fate of two American teachers murdered in Papua Province in 2002, also saw progress. On Jan. 11, police acted on leads from FBI investigators and arrested 12 suspects.
But much of the source of improvement lies in perceptions of Yudhoyono himself. A graduate of the IMET program, he has called the US his "second home." Yudhoyono has supported increased civilian control over the military, which has dominated Indonesian politics for 40 years. Perhaps most significant, some 88 percent of Indonesia's electorate voted for him in the nation's first-ever direct presidential election.
Washington's about face on military ties with Indonesia follows that of Pakistan in 2001. Soon after 9/11, Musharraf agreed to allow Pakistan to be used as a base in attacks against Afghanistan's Taliban regime. But where Yudhoyono has a direct popular mandate, Musharraf rose to power in a bloodless coup in 1999.
Some of Yudhoyono's domestic political allies warn that the US cannot take its political support - or popularity within Indonesia - for granted. Hilman Rasyad, a member of parliament's security and foreign affairs commission, said that an alliance with the US would be "difficult, even impossible."
Mr. Rasyad's conservative Islamist Justice and Prosperity (PKS) party controls only about 8 percent of the vote in the 550-seat parliament, but stepped in to bolster Yudhoyono. A critical ally, the PKS is one of several Islam-linked parties in parliament. But even it is ambivalent about US ties. "Anti-US feeling is spreading for us, even in this party," Rasyad says.
(c) . The 

 AUSTRALIA (98%);  INDONESIA (96%); PAKISTAN (94%); TIMOR-LESTE (93%)







 The Pantagraph 
The Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois)

January 15, 2006 Sunday



 Dhul-Hijjah is the 'Season of Sacrifice' for Muslims

 
Whether you celebrate Christmas or Hanukah, you know the familiar feelings of the feelings of sacrifice, goodwill and sharing during the holiday season.  
Even amid the frenzy of shopping trips to the mall and the non-stop gift-wrapping, there is a certain peace in your heart - the tranquility that descends when you "give" for it is said that "giving is more divine than receiving."  
You give up counting pennies and spend freely on gifts for family and friends. You spend your time cooking sumptuous meals, often for those who are not-so-blessed, or ringing the bell outside stores to raise money for the needy. You reach out and bring warmth and joy to everyone around you. This to me is not just the holiday season; it is the season of sacrifice.   
Although the holiday decorations have been taken down this time of the year, the season is not yet over. The month of January coincides with the month Dhul-Hijjah of the Islamic calendar. This is the season of sacrifice to the 1.2 billion Muslims around the world. Much bounty is bestowed on those who worship and sacrifice during this holy month especially the first 10 days.  
The month of Dhul-Hijjah marks the annual ritual of Hajj, or pilgrimage to the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina. This pilgrimage, as you might know, is a lifetime experience for every Muslim and one of the five pillars of Islam.  
On the ninth day of Dhul-Hijjah also known as the day of Arafath, Hajj pilgrims gather at the Mount and Plain of Arafath near Mecca to offer prayers of forgiveness. This is a very special place to Muslims. Among other historical reasons, it was at this place that Prophet Mohamed (Peace be upon him) gave his last "farewell" sermon. Pilgrims who pray for forgiveness at Mount Arafath are thus cleansed and blessed with peace and purity. Muslims around the world not partaking in the holy pilgrimage of Hajj of that year, fast on this day. The reward for this fast is forgiveness of sins of the past year as well as those of the next year.  
The 10th day of Dhul-Hijjah (around the 10th of January, this year) is celebrated as Eid-ul-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice. Muslims offer sacrifice, to commemorate the noble gesture of Prophet Abraham when he was tested by God. In this landmark incident, Prophet Abraham had a vision that God wanted him to sacrifice his son Ishmael. Ishmael was not just Abraham's son - he was his only child (at that time) born to Abraham when he was quite old and had given up hopes of having an heir.  
Ishmael was, therefore, the apple of Abraham's eye. You can very well imagine what a difficult and trying situation it must have been for Abraham to have to sacrifice his beloved offspring. Yet, Abraham chose to honor prophethood over fatherhood and shared this vision with his son. Amazingly enough Ishmael agreed to his father's request and promised to be "patient and constant." At the crucial juncture, when Abraham put a knife to Ishmael's throat, God changed the scene and there in the place of Ishmael appeared a sheep.  
In keeping with this tradition of Prophet Abraham's, Muslims sacrifice a livestock of some kind and distribute a third each to the needy and relatives and retain the last third for themselves. On this day, we remember the pure selflessness and sincerity of Prophet Abraham to God, when he was willing to surrender the greatest happiness of his life to fulfill the order of his master. In following the footsteps of Prophet Abraham, Muslims strive to emulate the strength of his faith and his magnanimity.  
Last Tuesday on Eid-ul-Adha, the nearly 500 (yes 500) Muslims of the greater Bloomington-Normal area offered prayers in one of two masjids (mosques) and shared in the festivities with their families and friends. The day was marked by prayer and sharing of food, gifts and the warmth of brotherhood.  
Eid festivities are even more vibrant here in Bloomington-Normal because of the diversity in our community with Muslims from all over the world. We have Muslims from Egypt, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Jordan, Indonesia and Tunisia among many other countries besides our American brethren. In this diversity, we find unity through prayer and camaraderie.  
So while the holiday season may be officially over, the Muslim festival of sacrifice is going on. And with it comes a time to again rekindle the spirit of sacrifice and sharing. If you happen to know of someone who celebrates Eid-ul-Adha, then go forth and wish them 'Eid Mubarak' (greetings) and certainly you will be invited to partake in the celebrations and merriment of this Muslim season of sacrifice.  
Reshma Khan, a native of India, moved to Bloomington from New Jersey three years ago.  







  



January 14, 2006 Saturday  




 Reunified Islam: Unlikely but Not Entirely Radical; 
Restoration of Caliphate, Attacked by Bush, Resonates With Mainstream Muslims

 
The plan was to fly a hijacked plane into a national landmark on live television. The year was 1998, the country was Turkey, and the rented plane ended up grounded by weather. Court records show the Islamic extremist who planned to commandeer the cockpit did not actually know how to fly. 
 But if the audacious scheme prefigured Sept. 11, 2001, it also highlighted a cause that, seven years later, President Bush has used to define the war against terrorism. What the ill-prepared Turkish plotters told investigators they aimed to do was strike a dramatic blow toward reviving Islam's caliphate, the institution that had nominally governed the world's Muslims for nearly all of the almost 1,400 years since the death of the prophet Muhammad. 
 The goal of reuniting Muslims under a single flag stands at the heart of the radical Islamic ideology Bush has warned of repeatedly in recent major speeches on terrorism. In language evoking the Cold War, Bush has cast the conflict in Iraq as the pivotal battleground in a larger contest between advocates of freedom and those who seek to establish "a totalitarian Islamic empire reaching from Spain to Indonesia."  
 The enthusiasm of the extremists for that vision is not disputed. However unlikely its realization, the ambition may help explain terrorist acts that often appear beyond understanding. When Osama bin Laden called the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "a very small thing compared to this humiliation and contempt for more than 80 years," the reference was to the aftermath of World War I, when the last caliphate was suspended as European powers divided up the Middle East. Al Qaeda named its Internet newscast, which debuted in September, "The Voice of the Caliphate." 
  Yet the caliphate is also esteemed by many ordinary Muslims. For most, its revival is not an urgent concern. Public opinion polls show immediate issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and discrimination rank as more pressing. But Muslims regard themselves as members of the umma, or community of believers, that forms the heart of Islam. And as earthly head of that community, the caliph is cherished both as memory and ideal, interviews indicate. 
  That reservoir of respect represents a risk for the Bush administration as it addresses an issue closely watched by a global Islamic population estimated at 1.2 billion. Already, many surveys show that since the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Muslims almost universally have seen the war against terrorism as a war on Islam. 
  "Why do you keep invading Muslim countries?" asked Kerem Acar, a tailor in central Istanbul. "I won't live to see it, and my children won't, but one day maybe my children's children will see someone declare himself the caliph, like the pope, and have an impact." 
  The issue comes into sharp relief in Turkey, which is often held up as a democratic model for other Muslim nations but where empathy with fellow believers runs deep  --  as Karen Hughes, a presidential adviser and undersecretary of state, was reminded in September when angry complaints about civilian casualties in Iraq dominated a public appearance in Ankara, the capital. 
  Here, the last caliph, an urbane scholar, Abdulmecid Efendi, was unseated in March 1924 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the charismatic military officer who conceived modern Turkey as an exemplar of the system that places sovereignty in the nation-state rather than faith. Importing from France the notion that religion had no place in public life, Ataturk decreed that Islamic religious law was second to "the rule of law" by the state. 
 Ataturk's mausoleum, on a hilltop where Turkish officials had gathered to honor his memory, was ground zero for the 1998 plot. Its ringleader, Metin Kaplan, was imprisoned in Turkey after being extradited from Germany, where he was known as the "Caliph of Cologne." Many Turks found the grandiloquent title less than amusing, said Husnu Tuna, his attorney. 
  "People called me when I took this case and asked, 'Why are you defending a person who lowers the value of an Islamic concept?' " Tuna said. "I heard that both from individuals and from officials, including police and security." 
  Caliph, from the Arabic word khalifa, means successor to the prophet Muhammad. Competition for the title caused the schism between Shiite and Sunni lines of the faith, and the Shiites soon stopped selecting caliphs. But in the dominant Sunni tradition, the office embodied the ultimate religious and political authority, enabling Ottoman sultans to hold together an empire across three continents for more than 500 years. Ataturk appealed to Muslim solidarity in the battle to drive European powers off the Anatolian peninsula after World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire.  
  But while Turks won self-rule, most of the former caliphate was divided among European colonial powers. One Arab scholar called it "the division of Muslim lands into measly pieces which call themselves nations."  
 This is what inspired the group most directly focused on the push for a new caliphate, Hizb ut-Tahrir, or Party of Liberation. The group, which claims to be active in 40 countries, began in 1953 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. But while the Brotherhood, which also favors a caliphate, embraced realpolitik, growing into a potent opposition force in Syria and Egypt, Hizb ut-Tahrir charted a more subversive path. 
 "For a long time nobody heard of HT. They were underground," said Kian Schmucker, a Copenhagen city council candidate passing out leaflets outside a rare public meeting of Hizb ut-Tahrir. On a cloudy Sunday in November, about 800 young Danes, mostly the children of Muslim immigrants, were crowding into a civic sports hall. The first presentation: graphic images of dead Iraqi children. 
  "No one can doubt that the declared war on terrorism is a war on Islam," Fadi Abdullatif, a local Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman, declared from the podium as the videotape ended. "This Islamic state is the only protection, the only shield for the Muslims." 
  The chorus of "Allahu akbar!"  --  God is great  --  was led by ardent young Europeans, a handful of converts in an attentive audience segregated by gender: fashionably dressed young men on the right, women in head scarves on the left. 
 For four hours they heard Hizb ut-Tahrir's disciplined, intensely argued belief that the Muslim world lost its moorings when it imported not only scientific advances from the West, but also systems such as nationalism and democracy that emerged at the same time. In a series of 22 volumes on sale beside the podium, and in weekly discussions, the group sketches an alternative governing system it believes lies embedded in the Koran and the teachings of the prophet. 
  The system includes a caliphate, revived after national governments are subverted by Hizb ut-Tahrir members working in their highest levels, according to the plan. Hizb ut-Tahrir members have been charged with planning such coups in Jordan and Egypt. Zeyno Baran, an analyst at the Washington-based Nixon Center who has written extensively on the group, said it could "usefully be thought of as a conveyor belt for terrorists." 
  The group has a rigid, cellular, secretive structure and a bookish set of beliefs describing its utopian vision for a future caliphate. Hizb ut-Tahrir insists it has renounced violence, a policy that differentiates it from groups such as Kaplan's motley band or the Chechen guerrillas who carried out the deadly 2004 siege at a primary school in Beslan, in southern Russia  --  and who would seat a caliph in the northern Caucasus, according to Chechen guerrilla groups' Web sites. 
  Al Qaeda thrived in Afghanistan when the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar, was called "Commander of the Faithful," a caliphic title. In his book published online shortly after Sept. 11, bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, declared that terror attacks would "be nothing more than disturbing acts, regardless of their magnitude" unless they led to a caliphate in the "heart of the Islamic world." 
  The American-led invasion of Iraq provided an opportunity to do just that, Zawahiri apparently wrote last year to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who heads the insurgent group al Qaeda in Iraq. In the version of the letter posted on a U.S. government Web site, Zawahiri said only the presence of foreign occupiers had stirred "the Muslim masses" to action. He advised Zarqawi to use Iraq's Sunni areas as the base for "an Islamic authority or emirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate." 
  The letter, which Bush has paraphrased at length, also calls for attacking Israel "because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity." 
  "This is something that is characteristic of our time, to reestablish an ideological empire," said Serif Mardin, a leading Turkish scholar on political Islam. "A sweet caliph of ancient times is overwhelmed by this modern military idea. I mean, the caliph is supposed to be a nice guy. 
  "These are the terrible simplifiers of Islam," Mardin added, "and I'm not sure this simplification of Islam really 'takes' on all social levels." 
 The notion of caliphate as coalescing institution endures even here in secular Turkey. 
  "I wish there was a caliphate again, because if there was a caliphate all the Muslims would unite," said Ertugul Orel, in a sweater and tie at the sidewalk cafe he owns outside Istanbul's vast Hagia Sophia, an iconic building to both Christians and Muslims. "There would be one voice. But I know neither the American nor the Europeans will ever allow it." 
  From the next chair, gift shop owner Atacan Cinar added, "Before the end of the Ottoman Empire, there was no problem in the Islamic countries." 
  Ataturk's vision of national identity overtaking religion appears to have been only partially realized. Schoolchildren are assembled each morning to chant slogans concluding, "My existence should be a gift to the Turkish existence. How happy is a man who says 'I am a Turk.' " But the first words whispered in the ears of newborns are prayers. When the Pew Global Attitudes Survey asked Turks last spring which they considered themselves "first," 43 percent said Muslim while 29 percent answered Turk.  
  "The concept of the caliphate is very much alive in the collective memory of society," said Ali Bulac, a columnist and author of several books on Islam and Turkey. "There is absolutely nothing to keep Muslim society together at the moment." 
  Fatih Alev, imam of a moderate mosque in Copenhagen, said Hizb ut-Tahrir was "very unwise" to say that no other Muslim groups were working toward a caliphate. "As of now, the caliphate is totally irrelevant. As of tomorrow, it could be relevant. I would not exclude it." 
  Some experts warn that such a reservoir of feeling illustrates the risk of framing the Iraq war as a contest of ideologies. 
  "I think the smart thing to do if you're the president of the United States is to sort of de-Islamicize the problem," said Kirstine Sinclair, a University of Southern Denmark researcher who co-wrote a book on Hizb ut-Tahrir. "Talk about security risks instead. When you talk about expanding the war on terror to talk about states with an Islamist agenda or even the caliphate, you stir up emotions and you're actually creating the clash of civilizations." 
 Numerous polls show the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have sharpened solidarity among Muslims and antipathy toward Americans. "To tell you the truth, I don't see even see them as humans anymore. America is a pig," said Orel, who is in his eighties. The trend appears greatest among the very people whom the radicals aim to mobilize. 
  When young Muslims raised largely without religious instruction in European cities begin asking questions, radical groups stand ready with answers. Hizb ut-Tahrir, which promotes conspiracy theories and a potent anti-Semitism, is toward the moderate end of a spectrum of groups promoting unnuanced interpretations of Islam calling for confrontation. 
  "An ideology must perpetuate itself," said Ahmet Arslankaya, an Hizb ut-Tahrir member in Turkey, where the organization faces harassment by security services. "Our final strategic aim will be to expand the Islamic thought to the world and carry the Islamic banner to the White House, of course." 
  If membership is up  --  and Alev and others say they keep seeing new faces  --  Hizb ut-Tahrir organizers say it is because more Muslims see events unfolding as the groups predicted. 
  "Bush is saying they would establish a caliphate from Spain to Indonesia," said Abdullatif, the group's spokesman in Copenhagen. "The establishment of the caliphate will come by those who work hard." He said Hizb ut-Tahrir members in Iraq were working to coax a united front with insurgent groups.  
  As the Hizb ut-Tahrir meeting in Copenhagen broke for evening prayers, Muziz Abdullah, an affable native of Lebanon, surveyed a hall still with standing-room only. "Ten years ago, when I started, it was totally unrealistic to think there could be a caliphate," he said. "But now, people believe it could happen in a few years." 

 TURKEY (94%);  IRAQ (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); ISRAEL (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); 







 Lakeland Ledger Publishing Corporation
 
The Ledger (Lakeland, FL)

January 07, 2006 Saturday



 TSUNAMI TURNED ENEMIES TO FRIENDS; 
BELIEFS

 
Regular readers of this column know that from time to time I get reports from my brother-in-law, David Worth, about overseas relief and development efforts. Dave works for the Mennonite Church's North American Central Committee, and occasionally he makes tours of places where the Mennonites have operations.
On a visit at Christmas, Dave told some fascinating stories about his trip to the tsunami-affected areas of Indonesia in September. He traveled to Aceh, one of the hardest-hit spots. 
The Acehnese are Muslims. Dave said everywhere he went, when he was introduced to a local clan leader or dignitary, he got a lengthy handshake and a similar speech. It went something like this: ''You are an American. We are very glad you're here. Please stay and help us. But when you go back, tell the people of America who were in the hurricane we are praying for them. We would like to help, but now this is all we can do. We know what it is like to have the sea turn against you.''
For years, Acehnese insurgents have carried out a low-level fight against the Javanese-led central government, but in the wake of the tsunami there has been a ''peace dividend.'' According to an agreement, for every 200 weapons turned in by the Achenese resistance movement, known as GAM, the Indonesian army withdraws 2,000 soldiers from the area.
One day, Dave was touring the area with representatives of an Indonesian Protestant relief organization, the YEU. The YEU -- who are mostly Javanese -- had come in after the tsunami and established a boat-building operation, employing local labor, to replace the fishing boats lost in the wave. Dave and his group were approached by a couple of fellows wearing civilian clothes. They were GAM commanders.
The senior GAM officer asked the YEU representatives if their workers had ever been stopped by his troops. Once, they replied, but we didn't have the proper signs on our vehicle. Have we tried to take money from you, asked the officer? No, replied the YEU.
We have been watching you, said the officer. (It turns out the man who runs the boat-building operation is a former GAM fighter, who gave reports to the rebels.) At one time, he said, you would have been my enemy, but now I know you are a righteous man of God.
The officer turned to Dave. He said, you are an American and a Christian. At one time, you would have been my enemy, but if you are helping these people, then you, too, are a righteous man.
Dave told one other extraordinary story. He met a man whom the YEU had asked to run a shop, employing mostly local handicapped people. The man told Dave, ''Last year if we had met, I would have sworn to kill you.''
The man, who asked Dave not to divulge his name, was a former Hezbollah operative in Java who recruited and sent mujahedin to fight against Christians in the strife-torn province of Ambon. He had a change of heart when he witnessed an interfaith worship service.
Leaders of the five official religions of Indonesia -- Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism and other Christians -- had started such services after the bombing in Bali a few years ago. There were constant riots, and the leaders began going to one another's houses of worship in an effort to quell the violence. It worked.
The ex-Hezbollah man went unwillingly to one of these services and realized that while they were working for peace, he was sending people to kill and be killed. He approached a Protestant leader and said he wanted to do something to help. The man was put in touch with the YEU, and they said come to Aceh. His knowledge of electronics -- a skill formerly used to make bombs -- is now being put to more peaceful purposes.
Listening to Dave, I was struck by how the Indonesians were managing to work this out without the benefit of Western interference. We often delude ourselves that we are the sole guardians of peace, when in fact people of good will everywhere are capable of resolving their differences, or living peaceably with them.
Those who think there can be no peace between Christians and Muslims or that Islamic extremists can only be opposed by force should follow the example of the YEU and try charity instead. As Abraham Lincoln said, when I make my enemy into my friend, do I not destroy the enemy?
Cary McMullen is religion editor for The Ledger. He can be reached at cary.mcmullen@theledger.com or 863-802-7509.

  UNITED STATES (93%); NORTH AMERICA (92%)






 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
    
 (California)

January 5, 2006, Thursday



 Pondering The Ways And Whys Of Islam: Speaker compares Muslim, Christian extremists

 
 
Would David Koresh be considered a representative Christian? Are members of the IRA Christian terrorists?
These comparisons are worth pondering when looking at how Islam is often portrayed by the news media, according to John Provost, philosophy instructor for Monterey Peninsula College's Gentrain program, who spoke Wednesday at MPC on "Entering the Muslim Mind."
News reports of the fiery deaths that culminated in the FBI siege of Koresh's Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993, and the ongoing war between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, didn't link Christianity and terrorism, he noted, but the actions of Muslim fanatics, and conflicts between Shia and Sunni Muslims, are joined in the phrase "Islamic terrorism."
That's a mistaken view, Provost said, and holding it won't help get a clear view of the problem or work toward a resolution of the conflict between Islam and western secularism. 
The fact that a suicide bomber believes that his act makes him a martyr bound for heaven doesn't make that belief true, Provost said, and most Muslim scholars reject that doctrine as "a gross distortion of the Quran."
Martyrdom isn't foreign to Christianity either, he said, and suicide bombers represent "a dark side of Islam that is hard to explain."
But it is the hallmark of the fanatic to seize on a particular aspect of doctrine and apply a literal interpretation that justifies such an action, he said.
"We need to be careful how we speak about religion and politics," he said.
Islam, Judaism and Christianity all sprung out of the Middle East and all trace their lineage to Abraham, but as they have spread to other areas of the world, all three changed as they assimilated into other cultures, Provost said.
Islam began in Arab culture, and its sacred language is Arabic, but a Muslim in Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan or Afghanistan is not like a Muslim from Arabia, Iraq, Syria or Egypt. All adhere to the "Five Pillars of Islam" -- the fast of Ramadan, recitation of the creed that "There is no God but God and Mohammed is His prophet," prayer fives times a day, the giving of alms and making the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Islam does not recognize a separation of church and state, he said. Islam is society and culture, and therein lies the root of conflict and misunderstanding between Muslim and Westerner.
"How can you be Muslim in a modern, secular society?" Provost asked rhetorically. "It isn't easy. It's not easy to be Christian or Jewish either."
He noted that Islam enjoyed its Golden Age under the Caliphate, advancing in art, literature, philosophy, science, mathematics and medicine, while Europe floundered in the Dark Ages.
Islam then entered its own dark age as Europe became resurgent after the Renaissance, and by the 1800s, nearly all Muslim nations had been colonized by Europeans, Provost said. Now they are independent and trying to find their own way.
Europe's example, he noted, isn't particularly admired by Muslims, who cite the 100 million killed in the wars of the 20th century as a path they don't want to follow.
Muslims feel threatened by Western capitalism and culture, the flood of goods and ideas that they feel undermine their own civilization.
"You don't need troops to invade a country," Provost said. "You can do it with MTV, advertising, Marlboros, Levis, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's."
Muslims find this cultural imperialism "very offensive. It destroys their culture and what they feel is important. It's why they feel attacked. There's a reason why they call us the Great Satan."
A strong belief system with rules and laws can be a source of comfort and support to those caught up in the rapid changes of modern life, he said.
While liberal westerners decry the status and treatment of women in Muslim countries, Provost said a study of Mohammed's writings shows a relatively progressive view of women for his time. It was he who first preached their rights to education, inheritance, property, a dowry as a hedge against divorce, and he limited marriage to four wives in a highly polygamous culture, and then only "if the husband could treat each wife the same."
The practical result, he said, is that 95 percent of Muslim marriages are monogamous.
While news media portray women clad in burqas, Muslim women in many countries dress as stylishly as any westerner. The Quran only requires "modesty," Provost said, not the complete cover-up that some adherents of Islam demand. Cultures change the observance of all religions.
It has been less than 100 years since American women got the vote, he noted, and Christianity allowed slavery for 1,900 years before it was abolished.
"To live up to the founders of your religion, you have to be changed. You have to walk the talk."
Kevin Howe can be reached at 646-4416 or khowe@montereyherald.com.
-----
Copyright (c) 2006, The , Calif.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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 (California)

January 5, 2006 Thursday



 Pondering the ways and whys of Islam; 
Speaker compares Muslim, Christian extremists

 
Would David Koresh be considered a representative Christian? Are members of the IRA Christian terrorists?
These comparisons are worth pondering when looking at how Islam is often portrayed by the news media, according to John Provost, philosophy instructor for Monterey Peninsula College's Gentrain program, who spoke Wednesday at MPC on "Entering the Muslim Mind."
News reports of the fiery deaths that culminated in the FBI siege of Koresh's Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993, and the ongoing war between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, didn't link Christianity and terrorism, he noted, but the actions of Muslim fanatics, and conflicts between Shia and Sunni Muslims, are joined in the phrase "Islamic terrorism." 
That's a mistaken view, Provost said, and holding it won't help get a clear view of the problem or work toward a resolution of the conflict between Islam and western secularism.
The fact that a suicide bomber believes that his act makes him a martyr bound for heaven doesn't make that belief true, Provost said, and most Muslim scholars reject that doctrine as "a gross distortion of the Quran."
Martyrdom isn't foreign to Christianity either, he said, and suicide bombers represent "a dark side of Islam that is hard to explain."
But it is the hallmark of the fanatic to seize on a particular aspect of doctrine and apply a literal interpretation that justifies such an action, he said.
"We need to be careful how we speak about religion and politics," he said.
Islam, Judaism and Christianity all sprung out of the Middle East and all trace their lineage to Abraham, but as they have spread to other areas of the world, all three changed as they assimilated into other cultures, Provost said.
Islam began in Arab culture, and its sacred language is Arabic, but a Muslim in Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan or Afghanistan is not like a Muslim from Arabia, Iraq, Syria or Egypt. All adhere to the "Five Pillars of Islam" -- the fast of Ramadan, recitation of the creed that "There is no God but God and Mohammed is His prophet," prayer fives times a day, the giving of alms and making the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Islam does not recognize a separation of church and state, he said. Islam is society and culture, and therein lies the root of conflict and misunderstanding between Muslim and Westerner.
"How can you be Muslim in a modern, secular society?" Provost asked rhetorically. "It isn't easy. It's not easy to be Christian or Jewish either."
He noted that Islam enjoyed its Golden Age under the Caliphate, advancing in art, literature, philosophy, science, mathematics and medicine, while Europe floundered in the Dark Ages.
Islam then entered its own dark age as Europe became resurgent after the Renaissance, and by the 1800s, nearly all Muslim nations had been colonized by Europeans, Provost said. Now they are independent and trying to find their own way.
Europe's example, he noted, isn't particularly admired by Muslims, who cite the 100 million killed in the wars of the 20th century as a path they don't want to follow.
Muslims feel threatened by Western capitalism and culture, the flood of goods and ideas that they feel undermine their own civilization.
"You don't need troops to invade a country," Provost said. "You can do it with MTV, advertising, Marlboros, Levis, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's."
Muslims find this cultural imperialism "very offensive. It destroys their culture and what they feel is important. It's why they feel attacked. There's a reason why they call us the Great Satan."
A strong belief system with rules and laws can be a source of comfort and support to those caught up in the rapid changes of modern life, he said.
While liberal westerners decry the status and treatment of women in Muslim countries, Provost said a study of Mohammed's writings shows a relatively progressive view of women for his time. It was he who first preached their rights to education, inheritance, property, a dowry as a hedge against divorce, and he limited marriage to four wives in a highly polygamous culture, and then only "if the husband could treat each wife the same."
The practical result, he said, is that 95 percent of Muslim marriages are monogamous.
While news media portray women clad in burqas, Muslim women in many countries dress as stylishly as any westerner. The Quran only requires "modesty," Provost said, not the complete cover-up that some adherents of Islam demand. Cultures change the observance of all religions.
It has been less than 100 years since American women got the vote, he noted, and Christianity allowed slavery for 1,900 years before it was abolished.
"To live up to the founders of your religion, you have to be changed. You have to walk the talk."
Kevin Howe can be reached at 646-4416 or khowe@montereyherald.com.

 EUROPE (91%); UNITED STATES (91%); NORTHERN IRELAND (79%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); EGYPT (79%);  IRAN,  (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); SYRIA (79%)







  



January 4, 2006 Wednesday  




 SPOTLIGHT ON AUSTRALIA

 
Australia recently experienced serious ethnic fighting, exposing racial division, tarnishing its self-image as an easygoing nation and causing a lot of soul-searching.
The rioting began in the suburbs of Sydney among white Australians angered over reports that youths of Lebanese descent had beaten two lifeguards at a beach. The motive for that attack was unclear.
Racial tension in Australia has been rising in recent years, largely because of anti-Muslim sentiment fueled by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States and the October 2002 bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. 
Historical background
Australia, in the Southern Hemisphere between the Indian and Pacific oceans, is the only country that covers a continent. Although it is the smallest continent, Australia is the world's sixth-largest country in area. It is also one of the most sparsely populated. Most of the people live in cities, mainly along the coasts. Only 10 percent of the country is cultivated because more than two-thirds of it is desert or semi-desert.
Aboriginal settlers arrived on the continent from Southeast Asia about 40,000 years before the first Europeans began exploring it in the 1600s. No formal territorial claims were made until 1770, when Capt. James Cook took possession in the name of Britain. Six British colonies were set up in the late 18th and the 19th centuries. They federated and became the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.
The new country took advantage of its natural resources to rapidly develop its agriculture and manufacturing and to make a major contribution to the British effort in World Wars I and II. In recent decades, Australia has transformed itself into an internationally competitive, advanced market economy.
Australia at a glance
* Area: 2,967,909 square miles, slightly smaller than the contiguous 48 states of the United States.
* Capital: Canberra.
* Population: 20,090,437 (July 2005 estimate).
* Life expectancy: 80.39 years. 
* Ethnic groups: Caucasian, 92 percent; Asian, 7 percent; Aboriginal and other, 1 percent.
* Religious affiliations: Catholic, 26.4 percent; Anglican, 20.5 percent; other Christian, 20.5 percent; Buddhist, 1.9 percent; Muslim, 1.5 percent; other, 1.2 percent; none, 15.3 percent; unspecified, 12.7 percent (2001 census).
* Principal languages: English, 79.1 percent; Chinese, 2.1 percent; Italian, 1.9 percent; other, 11.1 percent; unspecified, 5.8 percent (2001 census).
* Government: Democratic, federal-state system with the British monarch as sovereign.
* Head of government: Prime Minister John Winston Howard (since March 11, 1996).
* Economy: A Western-style capitalist economy, with a per capita gross domestic product on par with the four dominant West European economies. Rising output in the domestic economy, robust business and consumer confidence, and rising exports of raw materials and agricultural products are fueling the economy. Australia's emphasis on reforms, low inflation and growing ties with China are other key factors behind the economy's strength.
* Gross domestic product per capita: $30,700 (2004 estimate).
* Labor force, by occupation: Agriculture, 3.6 percent; industry, 26.4 percent; services, 70 percent (2004 estimate).
* Unemployment rate: 5.1 percent (December 2004 estimate).
* Currency: One U.S. dollar equals $1.37 in Australian dollars.
* Famous people of Australian origin:
Nicole Kidman, actress
Russell Crowe, actor
Germaine Greer, author
Joan Sutherland, opera singer 
Ian Thorpe, athlete
Atlanta's Australian connection
* Distance between Atlanta and Canberra: 9,423 miles, as the crow flies.
* Time difference between Atlanta and Canberra: 16 hours. If it's noon Tuesday in Atlanta, it's 4 a.m. Wednesday in Canberra.
* Metro Atlantans of Australian heritage: About 800, according to the 2004 American Community Survey.
* Consul general of Australia:
Amanda Hodges, consul general & trade commissioner
3353 Peachtree Road, Suite 1140
Atlanta, GA 30326
www.austrade.gov.au
404-760-3400
Sources: CIA World Factbook, Encyclopedia Britannica, Gale Biography Resources, Associated Press, Washington Post and AJC staff research by Alice Wertheim

 AUSTRALIA (99%); UNITED KINGDOM (93%);  WESTERN EUROPE (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);  ASIA (79%)







 
 



January 4, 2006 Wednesday



 Gail Shister | Nervous to be replacing Peter Jennings? But of course

 
Nervous? Who's nervous?
Elizabeth Vargas had the jitters - in a good way - just hours before she and colleague Bob Woodruff debuted yesterday as the new faces of ABC World News Tonight.
Any anchor who denies being nervous "is either lying or needs to resign," she says. "It's an enormous responsibility... . We all should be on our toes, alert, ready. If that translates to nervous, fine."
Vargas, 43, and Woodruff, 44, have every reason to be jumpy. They're replacing a legend: Peter Jennings, who died of lung cancer in August at age 67. He had anchored the newscast since 1983. 
Both Vargas, also coanchor of 20/20, and Woodruff, formerly WNT's weekend anchor, had subbed frequently for Jennings since he announced his condition April 5.
"To a great extent, we've been in the trenches for nine months," she says. "It's not like a brand-new, never-before test run of a vehicle." (Just for fun, what's the vehicle? "A Rolls-Royce.")
Vargas and Woodruff will rarely appear on set together, freeing them to do stories from the field. Last night, Woodruff reported from Iran, with Vargas in New York.
Earlier in the day, Vargas and Woodruff launched ABC's new Webcast, World News Now. It's streamed live from 3 to 3:15 p.m., with original content, on wnt.abcnews.com.
Now marks the first time an evening newscast has produced a unique program for the Net, ABC says.
Now came off without a hitch, says executive producer Jon Banner. Woodruff did a taped piece and live phone interview.
"I loved it," Vargas says. "It was less formal than WNT. I get to roll up my sleeves and ask reporters a lot of questions that we rarely have time for on the broadcast."
Meanwhile, Woodruff, formerly a household name only in his own household, experienced his first brush with celebrity in Tehran last week.
"There was a front-page article in the Tehran News that ABC would be reporting from here," he says from Iran's capital. "I've never been on the front page of a newspaper before."
After almost a decade at ABC, Woodruff says his sudden fame "is a little uncomfortable. I also understand that it comes with the territory."
It doesn't bother him that most Americans couldn't pick him out of a lineup, he insists.
"Personally, I don't think this job is about how well known you are. That's something that just happens. Whether you're well received is another story."
A former lawyer who speaks Mandarin, Woodruff decided to change careers in 1989 when he was hired by CBS as a translator during the Tiananmen Square uprising. He was teaching law in Beijing at the time.
Speaking of translation, Woodruff says it's time to invent a new word for anchor.
"It connotes someone staying in one place, like the anchor of a ship. The metaphor doesn't seem appropriate when the ship moves around a lot."
Woodruff's family moves around a lot, too. Nine times in 17 years of marriage, according to his wife, Lee, a freelance writer. They have four kids.
The couple left for China "immediately" after their wedding, she says. "That pretty much set the tone for the rest of our life."
Woodruff spent New Year's Eve in Tehran "looking for champagne in a strict Muslim country." Last New Year's Eve, he was en route to Indonesia to cover the tsunami.
"I'm not a big New Year's Eve guy. It seems like you wait up really late, and then it's over. There's no real climax."
Lee Woodruff is used to solo celebrations. In August '01, when they lived in London, she had invited 100 people to his 40th-birthday party when he was sent to Jerusalem.
She held the party anyway.
Happy returns. ABC received "overwhelmingly positive" calls after Dick Clark's return to his New Year's Eve special from New York's Times Square, the network says.
Clark, 76, who suffered a stroke in December '04, appeared frail and slurred some of his words while hosting the 11:35 p.m.-to-1:05 a.m. segment of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 2006.
"Viewers think it was very courageous of him to return," an ABC rep says. The number of calls "was on par for what we get for a lot of live programming."
It was Clark's 33d New Year's Eve show for ABC. Regis Philbin hosted in '05.
ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas talks about her new webcast at http://go.philly.com/tvtalk
Contact TV columnist Gail Shister at 215-854-2224 or gshister@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/gailshister.

 IRAN,  (90%); IRAN (69%); UNITED STATES (55%)







 
 

 (California)

January 1, 2006 Sunday



 Subway strike snarls London celebration

 
Partygoers scrambled to get around London on Saturday night thanks to a New Year's Eve strike by subway workers, while French authorities worried a youthful tradition of burning cars could get out of hand just weeks after widespread urban riots.
In parts of Asia, the threat of terrorism loomed large, and a bombing at a market in Indonesia killed eight people and wounded 45. 
But celebrations worldwide were generally jubilant, in contrast with last year when the devastation of the Indian Ocean tsunami led many countries and people to cancel festivities.
More than 2 million Brazilians were expected at jam Rio de Janeiro's famed Copacabana Beach for the largest fireworks extravaganza in the city's history. Officials planned to set off nearly 25 tons of fireworks.
London saw many subway workers walk out just hours before a huge open-air celebration in Trafalgar Square and other parties around the capital.
''I am not worried about the strike; I'm just going to take a cab or use the buses,'' said Matthew Lapalus, a 22-year-old Frenchman who came to London to celebrate New Year's Eve.
London Underground said it hoped workers not affiliated with the striking RMT union would keep much of the network running. By early evening, only about 30 of the Tube's 275 stations were closed as managers sought to keep some trains going.
In France, 25,000 police were on alert, fearing a repeat of arson attacks and rioting that swept the country for three weeks starting in late October.
''The orders I have given are very strict,'' said French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. ''When there are delinquent acts there will be arrests. Those guilty must be accountable for their acts.''
Burning cars is common in troubled French neighborhoods -- dozens of vehicles are set afire on an average night and in recent years the figure has risen to about 300 on New Year's Eve. But police were especially cautious this year and a state of emergency imposed during the rioting was still in effect.
The mood was more festive elsewhere.
Four months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans residents prepared to ring in 2006 with fireworks and concerts.
''New Orleans is back open, so come on down and start visiting. That's the word to get out,'' said Brian Kern, an organizer of the festivities, which were paid for by businesses because the city's tax income was wiped out by the storm.
In Australia, revelers jostled for vantage points around Sydney's harbor to watch a spectacular fireworks show at midnight.
''You can't beat the setting,'' said Andrew Coomer, a 21-year-old English tourist who camped with his family outside the Sydney Opera House for 12 hours to catch the fireworks.
More than 1,700 police officers were on duty for the night and police helicopters and boats buzzed across the harbor -- a huge presence aimed at preventing a repeat of racial violence that broke out in the city's southern beachside suburbs earlier this month.
A bomb thought to be the work of Islamic extremists ripped through a crowded market frequented by Christians in Palu on Indonesia's Sulawesi Island, killing eight people and wounding 45. The island has been plagued by religious violence and terrorism by radical Muslims.
In Bangladesh, 5,000 security officers searched cars and patrolled the streets of the capital to thwart possible violence in the wake of a series of bombings blamed on Islamic extremists that have killed at least 26 people.

 FRANCE (94%); BRAZIL (92%);  AUSTRALIA (92%); INDONESIA (92%); ASIA (91%)




16



 
 

January 1, 2006 Sunday



 FREEDOM ON THE MARCH

 
With Democrats vainly searching for an "exit plan" from a war they don't want to fight, Muslims in the Middle East are offering them one.  
Onward. To victory. For only in victory does withdrawal make sense.  
While the nabobs negatively natter, good news about what oft seems their chief concern - America's image abroad - is pouring in. Muslims the world over are embracing America.   
This, of course, has always been the "exit plan." When we no longer have to worry about Islamist assembly lines of terror, America will have won.  
On this, President Bush has taken a two-pronged approach: Help the good guys and kill the bad guys - and sometimes help the good guys to kill the bad guys.  
It's working.  
According to a new poll by an organization called Terror Free Tomorrow and ACNielsen Pakistan, Pakistani opinion of America is at its most favorable since 9/11. Meanwhile, support for Osama bin Laden and his suicide-bombing ilk is at an all-time low.  
Forty-six percent of Pakistanis are favorable to the United States, up from 23 percent in May. Much of this improvement is related to U.S. aid in the aftermath of their devastating earthquake.  
However, 73 percent of Pakistanis now believe that suicide bombings are never justified; that's up from 46 percent in May. America is now more positively received than radical Islamist groups and other Western countries.  
In the most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, America's war against terrorism is now - in a first for a Muslim nation - supported by more than oppose it, 40 to 36 percent, respectively.  
Two years ago, 72 percent of Indonesians were opposed. And like in Pakistan, support for bin Laden is at an all time low, dropping to 23 percent from 58 percent. (Also like Pakistan, much of this newfound support is attributable to our tsunami relief.)  
The critical implications of Muslims turning away from terrorists in favor of America are already apparent. According to the recently released 2005 edition of Freedom House's annual report, "Freedom in the World," the world's most repressive region is undergoing rapid change:  
"The steady record of progress observed represents a powerful argument against the proposition that Islam is incompatible with democracy or is an impediment to the spread of freedom."  
Indeed, there has been a striking improvement in the level of freedom in majority Muslim countries over the past ten years.  
In 1995, a single majority Muslim country was "free," 13 were "partly free" and 32, or 70 percent, were "not free."  
For 2005, the figures are three free countries, 20 partly free, and 23 not free.  
These positive changes are largely owed to increased democratic reforms in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Lebanon's rejection of Syrian occupation was also pivotal. In Kuwait, women's suffrage was introduced. And even Saudi Arabia is seen to be liberalizing.  
No doubt, the nabobs are right: Violence has plagued our attempts to end terror and spread liberty.  
But breaking the grip of tyranny has never been easy. "We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed," is how Thomas Jefferson ably put it.  
Sticking to the game plan may not make for exciting sound bites whenever a car bomb goes off. But at this critical juncture, when the institutions that will ground a civil, free Iraq are coming into being, it's important to see this endeavor through.  

 UNITED STATES (98%); PAKISTAN (94%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); INDONESIA (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); LEBANON (79%); EGYPT (79%);  SYRIA (79%)







 Lincoln Journal Star,
 


December 31, 2005 Saturday  




 Diverse celebrations

 
Omaha offers a rich mix of religious worship
Keith Ellison and Liz Hruska come from different backgrounds and different walks of life, but they have something very important in common.
Nearly every Sunday morning you can find them on the highway, driving from Lincoln to Omaha to attend church.
Ellison, who works Saturday nights at a grocery store, leaves right after getting off work at 6 a.m. to make the trip to Trinity Church, a large nondenominational church in west Omaha. The informal, contemporary worship service with high-decibel music is the high point of his week.
"I just want to be there and be open to what God wants to do in the service," he said.
Worshipping at Trinity, he said, gives him "a personal experience of God." 
Hruska, who works for the state Legislature, has a less hectic weekend schedule but still is on the road each Sunday, headed to an old stone building in north Omaha. Her destination is Sacred Heart Catholic Church, which is noted for its African American-style gospel music and family atmosphere.
"It's a very special and unique parish," said Hruska, who is originally from Omaha and has many friends there. It's not just the music, but the closeness of the church members and their commitment to help each other and the community, she said. "It's a very spirited service, but we keep that spirit after we come out the door."
Those are just two examples of people from Lincoln and other communities in Southeast Nebraska who travel to the state's largest city each weekend to worship. Many families from all around the state attend the Hindu Temple, also in west Omaha. Some Orthodox Christians from the Lincoln area travel to Omaha's St. Nicholas Serbian Orthodox Church or St. Mary's Antiochian Orthodox Church, two kinds of Orthodoxy not found elsewhere in the state.
Lincoln has a wide variety of religions, which have proliferated with the influx of immigrants from around the world in recent decades. But Omaha seems to have an even wider range, including several Buddhist groups, five different Jewish congregations, a number of Spanish-speaking churches and a large and active Muslim community.
The largest single religious group (25 percent to 30 percent of the population) in Omaha is the Roman Catholic Church, which has 57 congregations in the Omaha metro area, including seven offering Mass in Spanish. There's also a Vietnamese parish and a ministry to Omaha's large Sudanese population.
Among Protestant Christians, Lutherans (both the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) comprise close to 10 percent of the population, followed by United Methodists at about 3 percent. Many other denominations are represented, including a wide range of evangelical and charismatic churches. There's a Chinese Christian Church and a Korean Assembly of God.
The Mormons figured prominently in Omaha's early history and have been a significant part of the city's religious mix ever since. The Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple, completed in 2001, is the only Mormon temple in the state.
The variety of religious traditions in Omaha is like a living textbook to Paul Williams, associate professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He assigns students in his comparative religion classes to visit the temples, synagogues, mosques and churches of many faiths to broaden their understanding of cultures and beliefs.
Williams said he's been impressed with the interest that not only the students but members of various faith communities in the city have in learning about other religions. He participates in many interfaith dialogues hosted by local churches, synagogues and civic groups. "I'm convinced that dialogue with people of various faiths is the best way to break down stereotypes" and avoid ethnic conflicts, he said.
Ahmad al-Zaree, imam of the Islamic Center of Omaha, spends much of his time speaking to non-Muslim groups to help them better understand the world's fastest-growing faith. Omaha has some 4,000 Muslims, including immigrants from Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Arab countries, plus a number of American-born converts, he said.
Al-Zaree is the only fully trained and credentialed imam in the state, so he's in high demand to lead prayers and other services. His mosque is Sunni, as is another smaller mosque downtown. Omaha also has a Shiite mosque serving primarily immigrants from Iraq.
Jewish congregations in Omaha represent all varieties of Judaism, including Beth El Synagogue (Conservative), Temple Israel (Reform), Chabad House (Lubavitch), Beyt Shalom (Reconstructionist) and Beth Israel (Orthodox), which has a new synagogue in West Omaha.
All the Jewish congregations support the Jewish Community Center, which has its own elementary school, fitness center and swimming pool, classes, library and exhibits, and is the location for the Jewish Federation of Omaha, which works together on projects and issues affecting the approximately 6,000 Jewish people in the metro area. Jewish groups also are involved in interfaith activities and projects, such as Together Inc., a multi-faith emergency relief service that provides food, clothing, shelter, medical and other assistance to people in need.
Buddhist worship in the city ranges from a Vietnamese temple to Japanese and Tibetan Buddhism.
But the largest and most rapidly growing congregations in the Omaha area are evangelical Christians, represented by several large churches in West Omaha.
Worship at Trinity, where attendance averages more than 3,000 each Sunday, features a praise band with guitars and drums, a state-of-the-art sound system and a video system that projects closeups of musicians and speakers. At a recent service, pastor Les Beauchamp asked the band and congregation to repeat a praise song and "worship Jesus with reckless abandon." The room rocked as the youngish crowd, dressed mostly in jeans and sweatshirts, clapped and stomped to the music.
That impromptu atmosphere is part of the church's philosophy of "embracing the gifts of the spirit," said Deacon Godsey, executive director for communication at the church.
"We have everything from ex-Catholics and ex-Mormons to people who were totally unchurched before they came here," said Eric Bents, assistant pastor. "They're attracted to the life-filled worship and preaching that's hope-filled and practical in its application."
The church offers a wide range of classes and small groups, a coffeehouse, support groups and one-on-one ministries to help people with personal problems and an extensive outreach ministry that stretches from Omaha to Pakistan.
Beauchamp said he encourages people to "live the testimony of a life in friendship with Christ," not only on Sunday, but every day of their lives. "I want people to say, 'I don't just go to that church; I am that church,'" he said.
Other West Omaha churches, such as Westside Community Church (Southern Baptist), Brookside Church (Evangelical Free), King of Kings Lutheran (Missouri Synod), Faith-Westwood United Methodist Church and Christ Community Church (Christian and Missionary Alliance) also draw worshippers from throughout the metro area and beyond. None has reached the critical mass of the 10,000-plus member mega-churches in major cities, but they all have seen rapid growth and expansion of buildings, ministries and outreach programs in recent years.
Sacred Heart Catholic Church, by contrast, is located in a predominantly black neighborhood of north Omaha but has a mostly white congregation that comes from throughout the city and beyond. One big attraction is the gospel-style music, led by the popular Freedom Choir under the direction of Jim Boggess, who also is music director for the Omaha Community Playhouse.
The music features piano, drums and a wailing saxophone. Worshippers clap and sway to the music, link hands while singing a jazzy version of the Lord's Prayer, and hug when Father Tom Fangman tells them to give each other a sign of peace.
The vibrancy of Sacred Heart, with about 800 member families, isn't just the worship but its ministries to the surrounding neighborhood, Fangman said. "We've been a presence here for 115 years."
The church's elementary school, which serves mainly black children, celebrated its 100th birthday last year. The Heart Center, adjacent to the church, offers food, counseling, health care, classes and other assistance to low-income families.
Many families drive from Lincoln or elsewhere in Southeast Nebraska to attend Sacred Heart, Fangman said. "They usually make a day of it, have lunch with friends and spend the afternoon in Omaha."
The Christian Evangelical Leaders Network (CELNET) brings evangelical congregations together for joint mission and outreach projects. One of the biggest is Embrace Teachers, a city-wide project in which churches adopt public schools and do special things for teachers throughout the year, such as bringing them breakfast or buying extra items for their classrooms. At the end of the year the program hosts a huge thank-you party (last spring it was at the Strategic Air and Space Museum near Gretna) with gifts and prizes for teachers.
While the biggest Omaha churches are located in the western suburbs, congregations still care about the inner city and reach out to older neighborhoods, said the Rev. John Schnell, pastor of Faith Bible Church in North Omaha.
Omaha isn't a huge city, but it has many of the same problems as the nation's biggest metropolises, he said, with higher-income people moving to the periphery and abandoning the central city. "The urban churches absolutely have to respond to the changes in our community," he said. It is through organizations like CELNET, he said, that the Omaha churches are responding to the challenge.
One inner-city church that is part of CELNET is Salem Baptist, a predominantly black congregation that has an 84-year history in North Omaha. The church, which has about 2,000 worshippers each weekend, has a large food pantry, emergency assistance and health ministries and works with other churches on relief and outreach, said Roger Sayers, director of staff operations.
Omaha's evangelical churches don't see themselves in competition, but instead work together for the good of the entire city, said Trinity's Bents, a leader of CELNET and an active promoter of urban ministries. "We celebrate the diversity of what God does."
Reach Bob Reeves at 473-7212 or at breeves@journalstar.com.

 UNITED STATES (93%); SUDAN (79%); VIET NAM (65%)







 


December 31, 2005 Saturday  
THIRD EDITION



 DIGEST

 
HAVANA
Castro warmly welcomes Bolivian president-elect
Bolivia's socialist president-elect got a greeting reserved for heads of state when he arrived in communist Cuba on Friday: a red carpet, a military band and a smiling Fidel Castro. 
Stepping off the Cuban plane sent to pick him up in Bolivia, Evo Morales said his trip to the Caribbean island was "a gesture of friendship to the Cuban people."
Castro embraced Morales, who has visited the island in the past as one of Latin America's leading protest organizers. The Cuban government has welcomed the election of the nationalist Indian activist as an important triumph over U.S. influence in the region.
"I think that it has moved the world," Castro told reporters of Morales' electoral victory. "It's something extraordinary, something historic."
Morales, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 22, won the presidency with nearly 54 percent of the vote.
SANTIAGO, CHILE
Former president loses more legal immunity
Chile's former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 90, was stripped of his legal immunity Friday, a move that means he must face charges of diverting public funds to personal bank accounts.
Judge Juan Escobar, president of the Santiago Court of Appeals, said his tribunal voted 21-3 to remove the immunity Pinochet enjoyed as a former president.
Friday's decision is part of a wider corruption-related legal process in which Pinochet also lost immunity against charges of tax evasion and secret overseas bank accounts totaling as much as $28 million.
Under Chile's laws, a person with legal immunity must be stripped of it separately in each case.
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN
Guerrilla attack kills four police officers
Guerrillas detonated a mine near a police checkpoint in southern Afghanistan, killing four Afghan police officers and wounding seven, authorities said Friday.
The attack, thought to be carried out by Taliban forces, occurred late Thursday in Helmand province as the police officers were eating dinner, Nazarjusth district police chief Haji Bahadur Khan said.
He said the mine was buried in the road near the checkpoint.
PALU, INDONESIA
Bomb kills six at crowded market
A bomb killed six people and wounded 45 today at a crowded market in an area that has been dogged by sectarian violence. Many of the victims were believed to be Christians. 
The market was packed with people buying pork for tonight's New Year celebrations, police said.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, and most people practice a moderate form of the faith. But attacks against Christians have increased in recent years amid a global rise in Islamic radicalism.
Central Sulawesi was the scene of fierce battles between Muslims and Christians in 2001 and 2002. About 1,000 people were killed in the fighting.

 AFGHANISTAN (94%); BOLIVIA (94%); CUBA (93%); CHILE (93%);  CARIBBEAN ISLANDS (92%); EGYPT (92%); LATIN AMERICA (79%)






    
  


December 30, 2005, Friday



 RIGHT ISLAM VS. WRONG ISLAM

 INDONESIA (88%); 







  



December 28, 2005 Wednesday  




 Indonesia frowns on ways of the West

 
Indonesians reading The Jakarta Post this month may have found themselves wondering just how spirited the new year would be.
"Jakarta inches toward new 'prohibition era,' " said a headline in the paper, Indonesia's leading English-language daily. Another said supermarkets in the city were "nursing hangovers after booze ban." 
News that the Indonesian capital had outlawed the sale of wine and hard liquor in most stores highlighted the growing polarization of Indonesian society: Even as the nation of 240 million people is importing more Western culture than ever before, many of the country's Muslims, who account for roughly 90 percent of the population, are becoming more socially conservative.
"Over the last 10 years there has been a marked trend towards more assertion of conservative Islam," said Michael Vatikiotis, a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
The shift --- driven partly by a backlash against globalization and a feeling that Islam is under siege worldwide --- is putting pressure on the secular Indonesian government to respond to groups like the Prosperous Justice Party, the nation's biggest Islamic political faction.
For Indonesian politicians, Islamic values are increasingly taking center stage.
Leadership of two of the biggest Muslim organizations in the country, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, which together have a membership of some 70 million, has recently become more conservative, Vatikiotis said.
In August the Indonesian Ulema Council, the top group of clerics in the country, issued fatwas --- religious edicts that have no legal authority but that many Indonesians regard as morally binding --- outlawing mixed-faith marriages and interfaith prayers.
The shift towards conservative values, Vatikiotis said, does not mean that there is likely to be a growth in militant Islamic organizations. But, he added, some Indonesian scholars worry that the tensions could breed violence.
In June, thousands of Indonesian Muslims pillaged the headquarters of an unorthodox Islamic sect in Bogor, a city near Jakarta. Besides breaking windows in the building and injuring several of the group's adherents, rioters pulled books from the library and burned them.
"Compared with a decade ago, the role of religion in Indonesia has strengthened," Sugeng Triutomo, a Jakarta government official said.
Sugeng added that the trend is visible even on Jakarta's traffic-clogged streets.
"When I was growing up," he said, "few young women wore head scarves, but now many do."
Determining what's causing the shift is more complicated. Partly, experts said, the war in Iraq and conflict in the Middle East have led many Muslims to feel that Islam is under siege.
Other people see the conservative trend as an unavoidable backlash to globalization.
Munyra Ira, a 31-year-old financial consultant in Jakarta, said that when she was in high school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, "some students drank alcohol but because of the influence of Western movies and TV and because more students have lived overseas, many more young people drink now."
Demand for American culture is high. Munyra said the television series "Sex in the City" is a particular favorite among young Indonesians, and pirated copies of movies and television shows are on sale throughout the country.
"There's no way to stop the spread of global culture," she said, "but it has created a conservative influence against the West."

 INDONESIA (97%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);  SINGAPORE (79%); ASIA (79%); MIDDLE EAST (76%)







   


December 27, 2005 Tuesday  




 Below a Mountain of Wealth, a River of Waste

 
The closest most people will ever get to remote Papua, or the operations of Freeport-McMoRan, is a computer tour using Google Earth to swoop down over the rain forests and glacier-capped mountains where the American company mines the world's largest gold reserve. 
  With a few taps on a keyboard, satellite images quickly reveal the deepening spiral that Freeport has bored out of its Grasberg mine as it pursues a virtually bottomless store of gold hidden inside. They also show a spreading soot-colored bruise of almost a billion tons of mine waste that the New Orleans-based company has dumped directly into a jungle river of what had been one of the world's last untouched landscapes.
What is far harder to discern is the intricate web of political and military ties that have helped shield Freeport from the rising pressures that other gold miners have faced to clean up their practices. Only lightly touched by a scant regulatory regime, and cloaked in the protection of the military, Freeport has managed to maintain a nearly impenetrable redoubt on the easternmost Indonesian province as it taps one of the country's richest assets. 
  Months of investigation by  revealed a level of contacts and financial support to the military not fully disclosed by Freeport, despite years of requests by shareholders concerned about potential violations of American laws and the company's relations with a military whose human rights record is so blighted that the United States severed ties for a dozen years until November.
   records obtained by The Times show that from 1998 through 2004, Freeport gave military and police generals, colonels, majors and captains, and military units, nearly $20 million. Individual commanders received tens of thousands of dollars, in one case up to $150,000, according to the documents. They were provided by an individual close to Freeport and confirmed as authentic by current and former employees. 
  Freeport said in a written response to The Times that it had ''taken appropriate steps'' in accordance with American and Indonesian laws to provide a secure working environment for its more than 18,000 employees and contract workers. 
  ''There is no alternative to our reliance on the Indonesian military and police in this regard,'' the company said. ''The need for this security, the support provided for such security, and the procedures governing such support, as well as decisions regarding our relationships with the Indonesian government and its security institutions, are ordinary business activities.''
  While mining and natural resource companies sometimes contribute to the costs to foreign governments in securing their operations, payments to individual officers raise questions of bribes, said several people interviewed by The Times, including a former Indonesian attorney general, who said it was illegal under Indonesian law for officers to accept direct payments. 
  The Times's investigation also found that, according to one current and two former company officials who helped set up a covert program, Freeport intercepted e-mail messages to spy on its environmental opponents. Freeport declined to comment.
  More than 30 current and former Freeport employees and consultants were interviewed over the past several months for this article. Very few would speak for attribution, saying they feared the company's retribution. 
  Freeport's support of the military is one measure of its extraordinary working environment. In the 1960's, when Freeport entered Papua, its explorers were among the very first outsiders ever encountered by local tribesmen swathed only in penis gourds and armed with bows and arrows.
  Since then, Freeport has built what amounts to an entirely new society and economy, all of its own making. Where nary a road existed, Freeport, with the help of the San Francisco-based construction company Bechtel, built virtually every stitch of infrastructure over impossible terrain in engineering feats that it boasts are unparalleled on the planet. 
  That history, Papua's extreme remoteness and the company's long ties to the Indonesian government have given Freeport exceptional sway over a 21st-century version of the old company town, built on a scale unique even by the standards of modern mega-mining. 
  ''If any operation like this was put forward now, it wouldn't be allowed,'' said Witoro Soelarno, a senior investigator at the Department of Energy and Mineral Resources, who has visited the mine many times. ''But now the operation exists, and many people depend on it.'' 
  For years, to secure Freeport's domain, James R. Moffett, a Louisiana-born geologist who is the company chairman, assiduously courted Indonesia's longtime dictator, President Suharto, and his cronies, having Freeport pay for their vacations and some of their children's college education, and cutting them in on deals that made them rich, current and former employees said. 
  It was a marriage of mutual convenience. As Freeport prospered into a company with $2.3 billion in revenues, it also became among the biggest -- in some years the biggest -- source of revenue for the government. It remains so. 
  Freeport says that it provided Indonesia with $33 billion in direct and indirect benefits from 1992 to 2004, almost 2 percent of the country's gross domestic product. With gold prices hitting a 25-year high of $540 an ounce this month, the company estimates it will pay the government $1 billion this year. 
  With Suharto's ouster in 1998, after 30 years of unchallenged power, Freeport's special place was left vulnerable. But its importance to Indonesia's treasury and its carefully cultivated cocoon of support have helped secure it against challenges from local people, environmental groups, and even the country's own Environment Ministry. 
  Letters and other documents provided to The Times by government officials showed that the Environment Ministry repeatedly warned the company since 1997 that Freeport was breaching environmental laws. They also reveal the ministry's deep frustration.
  At one point last year, a ministry scientist wrote that the mine's production was so huge, and regulatory tools so weak, that it was like ''painting on clouds'' to persuade Freeport to comply with the ministry's requests to reduce environmental damage.
  That frustration stems from an operation that, by Freeport's own estimates, will generate an estimated six billion tons of waste before it is through -- more than twice as much earth as was excavated for the Panama Canal. 
  Much of that waste has already been dumped in the mountains surrounding the mine or down a system of rivers that descends steeply onto the island's low-lying wetlands, close to Lorentz National Park, a pristine rain forest that has been granted special status by the United Nations. 
  A multimillion-dollar 2002 study by an American consulting company, Parametrix, paid for by Freeport and its joint venture partner, Rio Tinto, and not previously made public, noted that the rivers upstream and the wetlands inundated with waste were now ''unsuitable for aquatic life.'' The report was made available to The Times by the Environment Ministry.
  Freeport says it strives to mitigate the environmental effect of its mine, while also maximizing the benefits to its shareholders. The Times made repeated requests to Freeport and to the Indonesian government to visit the mine and its surrounding area, which requires special permission for journalists. All were turned down. 
  Freeport refused to make any official available for an interview and would respond to questions only in writing. A cover letter signed by its legal counsel, Stanley S. Arkin, said that Grasberg is a copper mine, with the gold retrieved as a byproduct, and that many journalists had visited the mine before the government tightened its rules in the 1990's. ''Freeport has nothing to hide,'' Mr. Arkin wrote. 
  Indeed, at Grasberg, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold mines the world's third-largest copper deposit. The mine also has proven reserves of 46 million ounces of gold, according to the company's 2004 annual report. This year, Mining International, a trade journal, called Freeport's gold mine the biggest in the world.

Social Tensions Erupt
  Since Suharto's ouster, Freeport employees say, Mr. Moffett's motto has been ''no tall trees,'' a call to keep as low a profile as possible, for a company that operates on an almost unimaginable scale. 
  But even before then, the new world that Freeport created was growing smaller. By the mid-1990's, with production in full swing, and the expanding impact of Grasberg's operations ever more apparent, Freeport was beset on all sides. 
  Environmental groups, able to coordinate more effectively with the Internet, made Freeport a target. Local tribes were more and more restless at seeing little benefit for themselves as vast riches were extracted from their lands. And some military commanders in Papua saw Grasberg's increasing value as ripe for the plucking. 
  To fortify itself, Freeport, working hand in hand with Indonesian military intelligence officers, began monitoring the e-mail messages and telephone conversations of its environmental opponents, said an employee who worked on the program and read the e-mail messages. 
  The company also set up its own system to intercept e-mail messages, according to former and current employees, by establishing a bogus environmental group of its own, which asked people to register online with a password. As is often the case, many who registered used the same password for their own messages, which then allowed the company to tap in. 
  Freeport's lawyers were nervous, a person who was at the company at the time said, but decided that nothing prohibited the company legally from reading e-mail messages abroad.
  Social tensions around the mine, meanwhile, were fast growing, as was Papua's population. Papua, mostly animist and Christian after long years of missionary work, is distinct in many ways from the rest of Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. 
  Almost from Indonesia's independence, the province had rumblings of a separatist movement. Throughout Indonesia the military, a deeply nationalist institution, finances itself by setting up legal enterprises like shopping centers and hotels, or illicit ones, like logging. In Papua, the Grasberg mine became a chance for the military not only to profit but also to deepen its presence in a province where it had barely a toehold before Freeport arrived. 
  For many years Freeport maintained its own security force, while the Indonesian military battled a weak, low-level insurgency. But slowly their security needs became entwined.
  ''Where Freeport really took it on the chin is the military who came in had no vehicles, and they would commandeer a Freeport bus or a Freeport driver,'' said the Rev. David B. Lowry, an Episcopalminister hired by Mr. Moffett to oversee social programs. ''We had no policies at that time.''
  No investigation directly linked Freeport to human rights violations, but increasingly Papuans associated it with the abuses of Indonesian military units, in some cases using company facilities. 
  An Australian anthropologist, Chris Ballard, who worked for Freeport, and Abigail Abrash, an American human rights campaigner, estimated that 160 people had been killed by the military between 1975 and 1997 in the mine area and its surroundings. 
  Finally, in March 1996, long-simmering anger at the company erupted in rioting when anti-mine sentiment among different groups coalesced into what was perhaps the biggest threat to the company to this day. 
  The mine and its mill were shut down for three days. Rioters destroyed $3 million of equipment and ransacked offices. 
  The company intercepted e-mail messages that, according to two persons who read them at the time, suggested that certain military units, the community and environmental groups were working together.
  One e-mail exchange, between a community leader and the head of an environmental group, was filled with tactical military intelligence, according to a person who read the messages. In another exchange, an environmental leader urged the group's members to pull out because the demonstrations had turned violent.
  Freeport told The Times that local leaders later met with company officials and said ''they had provoked the disturbances as a means of expressing their aspiration to receive greater benefits from our operations.''
  In recent interviews, current and former Freeport officials recalled how they were stunned when, among those rioting, they saw men with military haircuts, combat boots and walkie-talkies. They seemed to be directing the rioters, at one point, to a Freeport laboratory, which they ransacked. 
  It was not long before a worried Mr. Moffett flew out to Indonesia in the company jet. 
  Freeport refused to comment on the meeting that followed. But a company official who was there recounted that Mr. Moffett met with a group of senior Indonesian military officers at the Sheraton Hotel in the lowland town of Timika, near the mine. The all-powerful Gen. Prabowo Subianto, son-in-law of President Suharto and commander of the Indonesian Special Forces, presided. 
  ''Mr. Moffett, to protect you, to protect your company, you have to help the military here,'' General Prabowo began, according to the company employee who was present. 
  Mr. Moffett is said to have replied: ''Just tell me what I need to do.'' 

The Cost of Security
  Each military service drew up its wish list, current and former company employees said. 
  In short order, Freeport spent $35 million on military infrastructure -- barracks, headquarters, mess halls, roads -- and it also gave the commanders 70 Land Rovers and Land Cruisers, which were replaced every few years. Everybody got something, even the Navy and Air Force.
  The company had already hired a former C.I.A. operative, and on his recommendation, it now approached a military attache at the American Embassy in Jakarta, and persuaded him to join the company, according to former and current employees. Two more former American military officers were hired, and a special department, called the Emergency Planning Operation, was set up to handle the company's new relationship with the Indonesian military.
  The new department began making direct monthly payments to Indonesian military commanders, while the Security Risk Management office handled the payments to the police, according to company documents and current and former employees.
  ''They signed a pact with the devil,'' said an American who was part of Freeport's security operations at the time, and who agreed with the company's decision.
  Freeport gave the military and the police in Papua at least $20 million from 1998 to May 2004, according to company documents. In interviews, current and former employees said that at least an additional $10 million was also paid during those years. 
  Seven years of accounting records were provided to The Times by an individual close to the company. Additional records for three years were provided by Global Witness, a nongovernment organization, which released a report last July, ''Paying for Protection,'' about Freeport's relations with the Indonesian military. 
  Diarmid O'Sullivan, who works for Global Witness in London, criticized the payments. It may be necessary for a company to help governments with security, he said, but ''they should give the money through the proper channels, in a transparent way.'' 
  Freeport told The Times, ''Our books and records are transparent and accurately reflect the support that we provide.'' 
  That support, the company said in its responses, included ''mitigating living costs,'' as well as ''infrastructure, catered food and dining hall costs, housing, fuel, travel, vehicle repairs, allowances to cover incidental and administrative costs, and community assistance programs conducted by the military and police.'' 
  The company said all of its expenditures were subject to a budget review process.
  The records received by The Times showed payments to individual military officers listed under things like ''food cost,'' ''administrative services'' and ''monthly supplement.'' 
  Current and former employees said the accounting categories did not reflect what the money was actually used for, and that it was likely that much of the money went into the officers' pockets. The commanders who received the money did not have to sign receipts, current and former employees said.
  Asked if there was a reason Freeport would give money directly to military officers, Father Lowry, who retired in March 2004, but remained a consultant to Freeport until June, said, ''I can't think of a good one.''
  The records show that the largest recipient was the commander of the troops in the Freeport area, Lt. Col. Togap F. Gultom. 
  During six months in 2001, he was given just under $100,000 for ''food costs,'' according to the company records, and more than $150,000 the following year. Freeport gave at least 10 other commanders a total of more than $350,000 for ''food costs'' in 2002, according to the records. 
  Colonel Gultom declined to be interviewed.
  Those payments were made to individual officers, current and former employees said, even though since the riots Freeport had allowed soldiers to eat in the company's mess and had trucked food to more distant military kitchens. ''Three meals a day, seven days a week,'' a former official said. 
  Freeport also gave commanders commercial airplane tickets for themselves and their wives and children. Generals flew first or business class and lower ranking officers flew economy, said Brig. Gen. Ramizan Tarigan, who received $14,000 worth of tickets in 2002 for himself and his family. 
  General Tarigan, who held a senior police post, said that police officers were allowed to accept airplane tickets because their pay was so low -- as a general, his base salary was roughly $400 a month -- but that it was in violation of police regulations to receive cash payments.
  In April 2002, the company gave the senior commander of forces in Papua, Maj. Gen. Mahidin Simbolon, more than $64,000, for what was described in Freeport's books as ''fund for military project plan 2002.'' Eight months later, in December, he was given more than $67,000 for a ''humanitarian civic action project.'' The payments were first reported by Global Witness. 
  General Simbolon, who is now inspector general of the Indonesian Army, declined requests to be interviewed. 
  A former Freeport employee who was involved in making those payments said the company could not be certain how much of the money General Simbolon actually spent on those projects. 

Unsolved Killings
  By 2003, following the Enron scandal and passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which imposed more rigid accounting practices on companies, Freeport began making payments to military and police units instead of individual officers, according to records and current and former employees. 
  The company paid police units in Papua slightly under $1 million in 2003, according to the records, listed under items like ''monthly supplement payment,'' ''administrative costs'' and ''administrative support.'' 
  Freeport told The Times that ''company policies take into account the potential for human rights abuses in determining what types of assistance to provide.''
  According to the records received by The Times, the police Mobile Brigade, a paramilitary force often cited by the State Department for its brutality, received more than $200,000 in 2003. 
  In its 2003 annual human rights report, the State Department said soldiers from the Mobile Brigade ''continued to commit numerous serious human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, and arbitrary detention.'' It cited no specific incidents from Papua. 
  There was another reason for extra care by the company. 
  In August 2002, three teachers employed by Freeport, including two Americans, were killed in an ambush on a company road patrolled by the military that Freeport had paid to protect its employees. Three years later, the F.B.I. is still investigating and the reasons for the killings have not been determined. Freeport said that it could not comment on the investigation. 
  The United States indicted a Papuan, Anthonius Wamang, in 2004. But it has yet to receive the full cooperation of the military, several American officials said. 
  Freeport employees and American officials said the killings could have been part of a turf war between the military and the police, each of which wanted access to Freeport payments.
  An initial report by the Indonesian police pointed to the Indonesia military, and some Freeport and Bush administration officials have said they suspect some level of military involvement. 
  The police report suggested that the motivation was that Freeport was threatening to cut its support to soldiers. Soldiers assigned to Papua have ''high expectations,'' the report said, but recently, ''their perks, such as vehicles, telephones, etc., were reduced.'' 

Questions of Accountability
  Freeport has resisted nearly any detailed disclosure of its payments to the military, saying they are legal and even required under Indonesian law. 
  Marsillam Simanjuntak, who was minister of justice and later attorney general in one of the first governments after the fall of President Suharto, said it was a violation of Indonesian law for soldiers or police officers to accept payments from a company. ''Of course, it's illegal,'' he said.
  But many companies do it, he said. The better question to ask, he said, was, ''Is it allowed by the laws of the United States?'' 
  This year, the New York City pension funds submitted a shareholder resolution asking Freeport to review its policy on paying the police and military. They argued that it could violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids American companies from paying bribes to foreign officials. Freeport opposed the resolution.
  In 2002, the funds submitted a similar resolution demanding that Freeport disclose how much it was paying to the military. Freeport kept it off the ballot. 
  In later filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freeport reported that it had paid the military a total of $4.7 million in 2001, and $5.6 million in 2002. The company did not indicate whether the money was paid into commanders' personal accounts, or what the money was used for. 
  Freeport, in its responses, said it was complying with the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, a set of guidelines drawn up by the State Department. They recognize that natural resource companies ''may be required or expected to contribute to, or otherwise reimburse, the costs of protecting company facilities.'' 
  The principles do not address the question of direct payments to individual officers. Nor do they require companies to account for the payments.
  Freeport has also said that the payments were required under its Contract of Work, its basic agreement with the government of Indonesia, first signed in 1967 and updated in 1991. 
  The company declined to provide a copy of the contracts to The Times. A copy of each was provided by Denise Leith, author of ''The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto's Indonesia.'' They contained no language requiring payments to the military. 
  S. Prakash Sethi, head of the International Center for Corporate Accountability, which recently concluded a report on Freeport's development policies in Papua, said that the company had told him that it made ''in-kind'' contributions to the military, for housing and food, but that he had not been given access to accounting records.
  Any direct payments to military officers would be illegal, said Mr. Sethi, an expert on business ethics and corporate social responsibility and a professor at Baruch College. ''It's corruption,'' he said. ''It's bribery.'' 

Mine Waste in the Rivers
  All the while Freeport sealed its relations with the military, the country's fledgling environment ministry could do little but watch as waste from the mine piled up. 
  This year Freeport told the Indonesian government that the waste rock in the highlands, 900 feet deep in places, now covers about three square miles. 
  Down below, nearly 90 square miles of wetlands, once one of the richest freshwater habitats in the world, are virtually buried in mine waste, called tailings, with levels of copper and sediment so high that almost all fish have disappeared, according to environment ministry documents. 
  The waste, the consistency and color of wet cement, belts down the rivers, and inundates and smothers all in its path, said Russell Dodt, an Australian civil engineer who managed the waste on the wetlands for 10 years until 2004 for Freeport. 
  About a third of the waste has moved into the coastal estuary, an essential breeding ground for fish, and much of that ''was ripped out to sea by the falling tide that acted like a big vacuum cleaner,'' he said. 
  But no government, even in Indonesia's new democratic era, has dared encroach on Freeport's prerogatives. The strongest challenge came in 2000, when a feisty politician, Sonny Keraf, who was sympathetic to the Papuans, was appointed environment minister. 
  Again, Mr. Moffett flew out to Jakarta. 
  Mr. Keraf initially refused to see the Freeport boss, but eventually agreed, and on the day kept him waiting for an hour and a half. ''He came in so arrogant,'' Mr. Keraf recalled of the meeting in a recent interview, ''sitting with his legs crossed.'' 
  Freeport refused to comment on the meeting. The American ambassador to Indonesia at the time, Robert Gelbard, said in an interview: ''It was a terrible meeting.''
  Mr. Keraf said that Mr. Moffett had said that his company had never polluted. ''I told him that he should spend the money he spent on paying off people not to talk about the mine to properly dispose of the waste,'' Mr. Keraf said. 
  Behind the scenes, Mr. Keraf kept up the pressure, angered that the company was using the rivers, forest and wetlands for its mine waste, a process allowed during the Suharto years. 
  An internal ministry memorandum from 2000 said the mine waste had killed all life in the rivers, and said that this violated the criminal section of the 1997 environmental law.
  In January 2001, Mr. Keraf wrote to the coordinating minister for economic affairs, arguing that Freeport should be forced to pay compensation for the rivers, forests and fish that its operations had destroyed.
  Six months later, one of his deputies, Masnellyarti Hilman, wrote to Freeport, saying a special environmental commission had recommended that the company stop using the river as a waste chute, and instead build a system of pipes. 
  She also told Freeport to build sturdier dam-like walls to replace the less solid levees that it used to contain the waste on the wetlands. That practice has continued. 
  Freeport says that local and regional governments have approved its waste management plans, and that the central government has approved its environmental impact statement and other monitoring plans.
  But in a blistering July 2001 letter, Mr. Keraf took the governor of Papua to task for granting Freeport a permit in 1996 to use the rivers for its waste. The governor, Mr. Keraf said, had no authority to grant permits more lenient than the provisions of national laws. 
  Despite all these efforts, nothing happened. Mr. Keraf was unable to secure the support of other government agencies or his superiors in the cabinet. 
  In August 2001, a new government came to power, and a less aggressive minister, Nabiel Makarim, replaced Mr. Keraf. At first, he, too, talked publicly of setting stricter limits on Freeport. Soon his efforts petered out. 
  The Environment Ministry has begun trying to put teeth into its rules where it can. It brought a criminal suit against the world's largest gold company, Newmont Mining Corporation, for alleged pollution, including a charge of not having a permit for disposing of mine waste into the sea. Newmont has fought the charges vigorously. 
  But in the case of Freeport, the ministry has had no traction. Freeport still does not hold a permit from the national government to dispose of mine waste, as required by the 1999 hazardous waste regulations, according to Rasio Ridho Sani, assistant deputy for toxic waste management at the ministry. Mr. Arkin, Freeport's counsel, said that the company cooperated well with the environment ministry and that Freeport would not otherwise comment. 
  ''Freeport says their waste is not hazardous waste,'' Mr. Rasio said. ''We cannot say it is not hazardous waste.'' He said his division and Freeport were now in negotiations on how to resolve the permit question.

'A Massive Die-Off'
  The environment ministry was not the first to challenge Freeport over how it has disposed of its waste in Papua. 
  The Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a United States government agency that insures American corporations for political risk in uncertain corners of the world, revoked Freeport's insurance policy in October 1995. 
  It was a landmark decision, the first time that the agency had cut off insurance to any American company for environmental or human rights concerns. 
  In doing so, two environmental experts, Harvey Himberg, an official at the agency, and David Nelson, a consultant, after visiting the mine for several days, issued a report critical of Freeport's operations, especially the huge amounts of waste it had sent into rivers, something that would not be allowed in the United States. 
  The company went to court to block the report from being made public, and only a redacted version was later released. A person who thought it should be made public provided an uncensored copy to The Times. 
  Freeport says the report reached ''inaccurate conclusions.'' The company says it has considered a full range of alternatives for managing and disposing of its waste, instead of using the river, and settled on the best one. 
  A storage area would not be large enough and would require a tall dam in a region of heavy rainfalls and earthquakes, it said. A waste pipeline, rather than the river, would be too costly, prone to landslides and floods. 
  To the American auditors, such arguments were not convincing. 
  Freeport ''characterizes engineered alternatives as having the highest potential for catastrophic failure when the project otherwise takes credit for legendary feats,'' the audit noted, like the pipelines more than 60 miles long down the mountains to carry fuel and copper and gold slurry. 
  At the time, the waste was jumping the riverbanks, ''resulting in a massive die-off of vegetation,'' the report said. 
  The company threatened to take the agency to court over the cancellation of its insurance. After protracted negotiations, the policy was reinstated for a few months, as a face-saving gesture to Mr. Moffett, according to the head of the agency then, Ruth Harkin. It was not renewed. 
  Today, many of the same problems persist, but on a much larger scale. A perpetual worry is where to put all the mine's waste -- accumulating at a rate of some 700,000 tons a day. 
  The danger is that the waste rock atop the mountain will trickle out acids into the honeycomb of caverns and caves beneath the mine in a wet climate that gets up to 12 feet of rain a year, say environmental experts who have worked at the mine. 
  Stuart Miller, an Australian geochemist who manages Freeport's waste rock, said at a mining conference in 2003 that the first acid runoffs began in 1993. 
  The company can curb much of it today, he said, by blending in the mountain's abundant limestone with the potentially acid producing rock, which is also plentiful. Freeport also says that the company collects the acid runoff and neutralizes it. 
  But before 2004, the report obtained by The Times by Parametrix, the consulting company who did the study for Freeport, said that the mine had ''an excess of acid-generating material.''
  A geologist who worked at the mine, who declined to be identified because of fear of jeopardizing future employment, said acids were already flowing into the groundwater. Bright green-colored springs could be seen spouting several miles away, he said, a tell-tale sign that the acids had leached out copper. ''That meant the acid water traveled a long way,'' he said. 
  Freeport says that the springs are ''located several miles from our operations in the Lorentz World Heritage site and are not associated with our operations.''
  The geologist agreed that the springs probably were in the Lorentz park, and said this showed that acids and copper from the mine were affecting the park, considered a world treasure for its ecological diversity.
  In the lowlands, the levees needed to contain the waste will eventually reach more than 70 feet high in some places, the company says.
  Freeport says that the tailings are not toxic and that the river it uses for its waste meets Indonesian and American drinking water standards for dissolved metals. The coastal estuary, it says, is a ''functioning ecosystem.''
  The Parametrix report shows copper levels in surface waters high enough to kill sensitive aquatic life in a short time, said Ann Maest, a geochemist who consults on mining issues. The report showed that nearly half of the sediment samples in parts of the coastal estuary were toxic to the sensitive aquatic organisms at the bottom of the food chain, she said. 
  The amount of sediment presents another problem. Too many suspended solids in water can smother aquatic life. Indonesian law says they should not exceed 400 milligrams per liter. 
  Freeport's waste contained 37,500 milligrams as the river entered the lowlands, according to an environment ministry's field report in 2004, and 7,500 milligrams as the river entered the Arafura Sea. 
  Freeport would not comment on the measurements. The company says it spent $30 million on environmental programs in 2004, and planted 50,000 mangrove seedlings last year as part of its reclamation efforts. It says cash crops can be grown on the waste with the addition of nutrients, and has begun demonstration projects. 

An Uneasy Coexistence
  If the accumulating waste is the despair of critics, for Freeport it signals expanding production. To keep its mine running, the company has increasingly had to play caretaker for the world that it has created. 
  After the 1996 riots, Freeport began dedicating 1 percent of revenues annually to a development fund for Papua to pay for schools, medical services, roads -- whatever the people wanted.
  The company built clinics and two hospitals. Other services include programs to control malaria and AIDS and a ''recognition'' fund for the Kamoro and Amungme tribes of several million dollars which, among other things, gives them shares in the company as part of a compensation package for the lands Freeport is using. 
  By the end of 2004, Freeport had spent $152 million on the community development fund, the company said. 
  Mr. Sethi, of the Center for Corporate Accountability, commended Freeport for commissioning the report on the company's development programs, saying that it was the first mining company to do so. 
  The report, which was released in October, concluded that the company had successfully introduced a human rights training program for its employees and had doubled the number of Papuan employees by 2001. The company was poised to double the number of Papuans in the work force again by 2006, the audit said. 
  Still, Thom Beanal, the Amungme tribal leader, says the combined weight of the Indonesian government and Freeport has left his people in bad shape. Yes, he said, the company had provided electricity, schools and hospitals, but the infrastructure was built mainly for the benefit of Freeport. 
  Mr. Beanal, 57, a vocal supporter of independence for Papua, has fought the company from outside and inside. In 2000, he decided that harmony was the better path, and joined the company's advisory board. 
  In November, he and other Amungme and Komoro tribesmen met with Mr. Moffett at the Sheraton Hotel in Timika. In an interview in Jakarta not long afterward, Mr. Beanal said he told Mr. Moffett that the flood of money from the community fund was ruining people's lives. 
  When the company arrived, he noted, there were several hundred people in the lowland village of Timika. Now it is home to more than 100,000 in a Wild West atmosphere of too much alcohol, shootouts between soldiers and the police, AIDS and prostitution, protected by the military. 
  Still more soldiers are on the way. Having negotiated an end to a separatist insurrection this year in another province, Aceh, the government is redeploying soldiers to Papua in a move to defeat the growing enthusiasm for independence, once and for all, and to watch over the province with the world's biggest gold mine. Freeport says its gold ore has 35 years to go.
  Mr. Beanal said he was increasingly impatient with the presence of the soldiers and the mine. ''We never feel secure there,'' he said. ''What are they guarding? We don't know. Ask Moffett, it's his company.'' 

The Cost of Gold
Articles in this series examine gold mining around the world. Previous articles are available on the Web at nytimes.com/world.



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LANCASTER NEW ERA (LANCASTER, PA.)

December 26, 2005, Monday



 Tsunami, one year later: America's most generous gift

 
By DON EBERLY Special to the New Era Today marks the one-year anniversary of the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that left some 230,000 dead or missing and hundreds of thousands more homeless and jobless. The staggering relief-and-reconstruction challenge left by the receding waves is being met with the largest combined response to a natural disaster in world history. Many deserve credit at the one-year mark, including U.N. agencies and dozens of governments, including our own U.S. aid and military, which performed impressively. A fact little known to the American people, however, is that the majority of support from the U.S came from them, the people, working through the private sector.  
Almost immediately following the arrival of the first horrific television images of massive waves wiping out seafront villages, Americans from all walks of life in thousands of locations mobilized. Kids and university students, churches, businesses and service organizations, TV networks and Web-based companies, celebrity entertainers and athletes spontaneously produced the most generous outpouring on American soil ever. Thanks to an unprecedented boost from global TV and Web connections, citizen-based philanthropy and civil society are becoming globally integrated, blurring distinctions of nation and creed. For example, citizens from nations in Europe and Asia, with little prior experience of supporting faith-based organizations, suddenly poured hundreds of millions of dollars into groups, like World Vision, that are both American and faith-based. The earthquake in the Indian Ocean displayed a seismic shift in how emergency relief and development are increasingly being done. The private-sector response of $1.6 billion exceeded the $857 million in public monies appropriated by Congress by a ratio of two-and-a-half to one, and that does not include hundreds of millions that flowed into American NGOs (non-governmental organizations associated with the United Nations) from international donors. Not long ago, governments monopolized international relief and development assistance. Two decades ago, 70 percent of the resource flows to developing countries was official development assistance, whereas today 80 percent of all outflows come in the form of private philanthropy, remittances and foreign direct investment. The non-material aid in response to the tsunami was as impressive as the cash donations. Thousands of volunteers left jobs and journeyed to the region, companies offered technical assistance and product donations and congregations partnered directly with their own contacts on the ground. Like no other event, the tsunami disaster proved that boundaries between government and the private sector are blurring and that future success in all areas of global development will require the use of creative partnerships. Demonstrating just how powerful the trends in corporate citizenship have become today, American businesses donated over $560 million in cash, products and services, with 130 major corporations giving over one million each, an unprecedented sum for a foreign disaster. The nearest earlier record of business support for a disaster outside our borders was $70 million for Hurricane Mitch. Perhaps the greatest discovery of all from the tsunami response is just how powerful the basic compassion of the American people is in the war to win hearts and minds. In a world in which foreign- policy professionals often appear helpless in curbing a virulent anti-Americanism, the tsunami response proved that American citizens, working through their charities, schools and congregations, are their own best ambassadors of goodwill. In Indonesia, the world's most Muslim nation, favorable opinion of America stood at 37 percent in early 2004. One year later, after America's great outpouring of compassion, 66 percent had a favorable opinion of America, and a comfortable margin supported America's leadership in the war on terror. As thoughts during this holiday season turn to peace on earth, goodwill toward men, Americans can feel good about the contribution they are directly making to a better world. Don Eberly, who resides in East Hempfield Township, has held senior positions at USAID and the State Department, working on Iraq and, more recently, as director of private sector outreach and coordination for tsunami reconstruction.

 UNITED STATES (98%); EUROPE (79%); ASIA (79%)







  



December 26, 2005 Monday  




 A Wave of Memories; 
After a Year, People in Nations Hit by the Indian Ocean Tsunami Struggle to Move On, but Thoughts of Those They Lost Intrude

 
Flowerpots have begun to brighten porches here. Fishermen are back at sea. Eighteen people in this seaside village have remarried, and seven women are pregnant. 
  Signs of routine life have returned to this village, once home to 1,350 people but reduced to 257 by the Indian Ocean tsunami a year ago. Most of the survivors were men, fishing or tending crops in the hills while their wives and children close to shore died. 
  Much has been lost in Lamteungoh and all of Aceh province, where an estimated 167,000 people were killed in the area hit hardest by the tsunami, which pummeled coastal communities in a dozen countries. But people here are taking solace from the security that comes with peace. For the first time in a generation, they do not fear military checkpoints or ransom demands by rebels. A 30-year conflict between the government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement ended with a peace accord on Aug. 15, partly as a result of both groups setting aside differences after the tsunami to work on reconstruction.  
  "This is what the Acehnese people have always dreamed of  --  peace," said Marwadi, a fisherman and preacher whose new wife is two months pregnant. Not long ago, he said, soldiers would barge into his house, accusing him of supporting the rebels, demanding to see identification. "Now, there's no one checking our ID," he said. "We are free to go anywhere."  
  On Dec. 26, 2004, a 9.0-magnitude undersea earthquake launched the tsunami that killed an estimated 223,500 people and left 1.8 million others homeless. Today, in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, fewer than one-fourth of the homes that need to be rebuilt are completed or under construction. In Indonesia, by far the worst hit, more than 60,000 people are still in tents during the monsoon season and several hundred thousand more are in barracks or with relatives, waiting for new homes. Pledges of aid reached a record $13.6 billion, but only a fraction has been spent. In Thailand, where lucrative beach coasts were damaged, land disputes have slowed recovery. While peace has been restored in Aceh, a similar move in Sri Lanka to make peace with separatist rebels appears near collapse. 
  A reporter returned to Lamteungoh last week, after having visited in January, a month after the tsunami. Despite the enormous obstacles to rebuilding after the largest disaster relief effort in history, people were trying to recapture the rhythms of life. But it is not easy. Memories intrude, said the survivors, who recalled a child's hand slipping away or a wife falling to her death. 
 The grave where Baharuddin, the village leader of Lamteungoh, buried his 11-year-old daughter a year ago is not far from his temporary wooden home.  
  "Do you remember there used to be dead bodies here?" Baharuddin said, recalling when he and his men buried 300 corpses in three days. He pointed to the foundation of a house being built for a villager. "We moved them and buried them over there." 
  On a recent rainy afternoon, Baharuddin, whose wife and five children were killed by the tsunami, reminisced how he and his son would cut the grass in their field. "On this kind of day, we would go find food for the cow and play around in the barn," he said.  
  All around him, construction workers were hammering roofs and laying bricks. By next spring, he said he expects there will be 180 new houses in the village. But his mind was elsewhere  --  in the field, in the barn, with his family. "I don't want to let go of the memory," said Baharuddin, who, like many people in Indonesia, uses only one name.  
 "What's the point of peace if you don't have a family?" 
  Others are hoping to make new memories. Saleha was married in April and is expecting her first child in February. She is 18, with soft eyes, resting on a bench in comfy teddy bear pajamas. Her new house will not be ready in time for the birth, but she is hopeful that she and her husband, a bus conductor, will build a decent life. "With God's will," she said gently, "it will be better now." 
 As the people of Aceh go about their days, the reminders of the tsunami are always present. A 150-yard-long, four-story-high ship that once generated electricity is now beached amid houses in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, a reminder of the terrifying wall of black, oil-slicked, debris-laden water that swept people to their deaths. 
  Shoulder-high swamp grass has softened what was once an angry wasteland of mud and rubble. Wreckage is slowly being cleared. The U.N. Development Program alone has removed enough waste to fill three football fields 10 yards high with debris. 
  Every day, children in uniforms, the girls in white head scarves, walk to and from school in villages across Aceh. Officials said 335 schools have been or are in the process of being built. More than 1,100 new teachers have been trained. Some people who have new houses ready are waiting for the school year to finish before moving their families, even if it means staying longer in barracks. In Lamteungoh, a new Islamic school, a madrassa, has been built.  
  On a recent afternoon, an economic recovery workshop was being conducted in Lamteungoh's rebuilt open-air mosque. The participants included several former rebel fighters, who watched the workshop leader intently, scribbling notes on "human resources" and "capital availability" in their tablets.  
  "We've now returned to society," said Bustami Ajun, 29, a husky former combatant in a green T-shirt and jeans. "We need capital to start up businesses and a new life. I want to open a construction business." 
 Former rebel fighters are now helping repair the west coast highway, driving for international aid workers and working for the government reconstruction agency. Villagers are beginning again to tend coffee and clove fields in the hills, once the rebels' hideouts. 
 But the peace pact is only four months old and both sides are wary. The rebels, most of whom lack jobs, have turned in 840 weapons, fulfilling their pledge to disarm. The last nonpermanent government soldiers are expected to withdraw by year's end.  
  "The peace deal should help reconstruction," said Wardah Hafidz, coordinator for Uplink, a nongovernmental group helping Lamteungoh and 22 other villages to rebuild. "I hope both sides will be true to their commitment." 
  Lamteungoh is better off than some villages: Its people live in temporary wooden houses, and aid continues to flow. Four permanent homes, built by GTZ, a German nongovernmental group, are nearly finished. The U.S. Agency for International Development has paid villagers to clean their fields. Pugar, an Indonesian relief group, and Al Amin, a Muslim aid group, have given boats. The French group Secours Populaire Francais built an ice factory to keep the fish fresh for market. CARE supplies rice.  
  Baharuddin cites nongovernmental groups and foreign governments first and foremost, not the Indonesian government, for bringing relief aid. 
  The village's good fortune owes partly to Baharuddin's initiative. In the first weeks after the tsunami, while camped in the elementary school that sheltered his villagers, Baharuddin beseeched district officials for help. 
  When the Indonesian government's public works agency insisted earlier this year that people not rebuild within about two miles of the coast, Baharuddin told an official that his village would not move. "Even if a tsunami came twice a week, we will stay here forever," he said he told the official. "This has always been our land." 
  The government Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency, which was established in May, rescinded the policy. 
 A little less than a year ago, Marwadi, the fisherman, saw no hope and no future. He had lost his wife, three young daughters and big house. "It's all gone," he had said then, walking through churned-up, foul-smelling earth.  
  Last week, Marwadi, 40, said in an interview that life was very different now. "At the very least, someone cooks for me," he said, a twinkle in his eye. "My life is better organized. Someone does the laundry." 
  "There is a saying," said Marwadi, seated cross-legged on the floor of his one-bedroom shack elevated by stilts. "Though it be raining gold in another village and raining rocks on your own, there's no place like home."  
  His new wife, Yeni, a thoughtful, bespectacled woman of 32, teaches at the madrassa. She has a college degree. So did her husband, the former village chief, killed by the tsunami. Marwadi has no college education, but Yeni said she was impressed by his intelligence. While other tsunami refugees went out and came back with donated clothes, Marwadi returned with used books  --  often about religion. 
  "My life is calmer now," she said. "For an Acehnese woman, life is not easy when you're a widow. People are always asking questions  --  where you are, where are you going." The many widowers in the area constantly proposed marriage, she said. 
  Now that she's married again, Yeni said, men let her be. "It's somehow liberating," she said. 
  She has even begun to think of the future again. "I feel more optimistic now because I will have children. That's why I chose to be married. That's why I chose Marwadi."  
 Special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report. 

  SRI LANKA (92%); THAILAND (79%)








 
 

December 25, 2005 Sunday



 WEIRD BUT TRUE

 
A poll of Germans found that the Christmas tree, which originated in that country, is more important for a happy holiday than spending time with family.  
The poll found that the traditional tree topped the list of things they couldn't imagine doing without at Christmas.   
Family came in second. Then came singing carols, and fourth was getting presents.  
In Indonesia - the world's largest Muslim nation - hotels and malls are still done up for Christmas, and some Santas are more bent on security than stuffing stockings.  
As machine gun-toting cops watched, men dressed like Santa Claus inspected cars entering a five-star hotel in Jakarta with metal detectors. They also frisked visitors and checked bags.  
"We are doing this to celebrate Christmas," said one security Santa. No ticking Rudolphs have been detected so far. 
Rio de Janeiro police acting on a tip found a cache of two-inch-tall Santa figurines stuffed with cocaine in the one of the city's notorious slums.  
Apparently, local dealers enjoy a little holiday tradition of packing their drugs with small presents to thank clients, cops say.  
Iceland, the home of Bjork, wants to be known for some other exotic elves.  
The far-north nation is claiming that it - not Finland, Norway or any other Scandinavian land - is the real home of Santa Claus and his workshop.  
"Let's all be good and kind to each other," a gentleman identifying himself as Santa wrote in Icelandic to Reuters news service. He insisted that "from time immemorial Santa Claus has lived at Dimmuborgir," a remote area of northern Iceland. 
There is a new crime problem plaguing the streets of the Egyptian capital of Cairo - wedding parties.  
Local cops told the AFP news agency that naughty nuptial celebrators have been riding through the roadways blocking traffic, blaring horns, hanging dangerously off the sides of vehicles and causing general mayhem.  
Police said they have already revoked the licenses of 300 wedding celebrants as part of a crackdown. 

 INDONESIA (90%); ICELAND (90%); EGYPT (79%); BRAZIL (75%)







 
 



December 25, 2005 Sunday



 PAKISTAN

 

U.S. admiral brings holiday spirit to kids
High in the mountains of Kashmir, where few have heard of Christmas, an American admiral Saturday surprised hundreds of child survivors of the massive South Asian quake with gifts of stuffed toys and candies. 
Navy Rear Adm. Michael LeFever, the senior U.S. commander of the humanitarian mission, said in Muzaffarabad that Americans were sharing the joy of Christmas with Pakistani Muslims the same way they shared their Islamic holidays with their foreign guests.
The gifts included a miniature Chinook helicopter, a favorite among Kashmiri children.

THAILAND

Tsunami disaster memorialized
Amid Christmas lights strung along the Phuket beachfront, a cluster of mourners bowed their heads toward the ocean at dusk Saturday and offered prayers for the hundreds of thousands killed a year ago in the Indian Ocean tsunami. On a nearby beach, Thailand's Moken sea gypsy tribe banged drums and chanted as offerings of candles, flowers and incense wrapped in banana leaves were pushed out to a gently lapping sea in a ceremony to ward off evil spirits.
The two commemorations were a somber, low-key start to events marking one year since the Indian Ocean rose up in a massive, earthquake-spawned tsunami that left at least 216,000 people dead or missing in a dozen countries.

In other news
 Bomb squads checked churches Saturday and hotel security guards in Santa Claus suits searched cars after police warned that Al-Qaida-linked militants might be plotting Christmas terror attacks in the predominantly Muslim nation of Indonesia.
 Gunmen shot and killed a pro-rebel legislator during midnight Christmas Mass in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka, the government said today, as escalating violence continued to threaten a shaky cease-fire.
From the Associated Press

 PAKISTAN (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); ASIA (92%); THAILAND (92%); SRI LANKA (79%); 




17


 


December 24, 2005 Saturday



 Expatriates long for Christmases past

 
So it is true. There is no place like home for the holidays. Americans living abroad try to brighten the season with makeshift Christmas trees and unusual substitutions -- curry instead of the holiday ham? -- but it's not the same. 
Christmas far from home brings cravings. Here are a few:  
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- For the thousands of aid workers living in Banda Aceh, the city hit hardest by last December's Asia tsunami, Christmas brings mixed feelings. 
Many volunteers and staff are young and are spending their first Christmas away from home. 
Bonnie Gillespie, a 31-year-old press officer for the American Red Cross, said that this is the first time she hasn't spent part of the holidays with her family in Isola, Miss., a place she affectionately described as a "little rinky-dink town" with 600 people and "beautiful sunsets over the cornfields." 
Helping locals rebuild after the tsunami, which killed 80,000 people in Banda Aceh and left tens of thousands destitute, as well as preparing for memorials on Monday, has kept her busy.  Sharon Zhao, a 26-year-old manager for Bethesda, Md.-based Development Alternatives Inc., a U.S. Agency for International Development contractor in Banda Aceh, is also spending her first holiday season away from her Washington, D.C., home. 
Because Indonesia's Aceh province is "99 percent" Muslim and doesn't celebrate Christmas, she said, "It's very hard to get into the Christmas spirit." 
With a friend from the U.S. coming to visit, she plans to throw a "little party," with at least a little chocolate fondue. 
-- Craig Simons 
vv  
JERUSALEM -- Susan Hundsly, 24, is an American Christian volunteer working in Jerusalem. She moved this summer from Chicago to the Holy Land with her husband, Mike, who is studying Biblical Hebrew at the city's Hebrew University. This is the first Christmas season she has spent outside the United States, and experiencing it in Israel, where Christians are a minority, is unsettling, she said. 
"Here, there is a complete vacuum of all things Christmas. I never liked all the commercialization, but here I often find myself dreaming of seeing a Santa. I'm a faith-based Christian, so it sounds weird for me to say that, but it's true. 
"I miss walking into stores and hearing Christmas tunes in each one. I miss walking down the Miracle Mile in Chicago and seeing the lights. I miss my mother-in-law, who is very craftsy. Together we would make cookies and sew Christmas stockings. Now, my biggest goal is to find a turkey to make for Christmas Day." 
-- Margaret Coker 
vv  
LONDON -- Erin Maury moved to London this year from Raleigh, N.C., with her husband, Jon. They miss lots of things during their first Christmas here. 
"We miss family, football -- the bowl games and NFL playoffs -- snow, the 'Charlie Brown Christmas' TV show, crazy Christmas lights on houses, Christmas cookies, eggnog, year-in-review shows," she said. "I don't miss fruitcake though. That's for sure." 
Other Americans here also longed to see American-style Christmas decorations. 
"I think in the United States, people tend to put lots of lights actually on their houses," said Susan Weeden, who grew up in New York City and moved to London several years ago. "Here, if they have any lights, they are more likely to be in bushes or trees in front of the house or maybe inside on the front window." 
In general, one would be hard-pressed to encounter colored lights, fake icicles or the "Frosty the Snowman" TV classic in London this time of year. 
What is popular? Frank Capra's "It's A Wonderful Life," mulled wine and Nativity plays at all the elementary schools. 
-- Shelley Emling 

   ISRAEL (92%); ASIA (57%)







  
 

December 24, 2005 Saturday  




 LAWYER BACKS SADDAM'S CLAIM

 
AMMAN, Jordan -- Saddam Hussein's chief Iraqi lawyer yesterday echoed charges by the ousted leader that he was beaten and tortured by U.S. troops, saying he had seen the bruises himself.
The United States has strenuously denied American guards harmed Saddam. The Iraqi judge who investigated Saddam said that until this week Saddam had never claimed any mistreatment, even when asked directly if he had been abused.
Attorney Khalil Dulaimi, who still regards Saddam as Iraq's president, said the torture was revealed to him during a brief interview with his client during the leader's trial sessions in Baghdad on Wednesday and Thursday. He did not say where the bruises were on Saddam's body or describe them. 
Poland's new president
WARSAW, Poland -- Conservative Lech Kaczynski took office yesterday as Poland's president with a vow to maintain strong ties with the United States, a few days ahead of an expected decision on whether to keep Polish troops in Iraq.
Mr. Kaczynski inherits a close political alliance with Washington from his predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, who also enjoyed a warm personal relationship with President Bush.
One of his first big decisions will be whether to bring Poland's troops home, as planned by the government ousted in fall elections. The last government had decided to withdraw the force in January, but Poland's new leaders have so far hinted that the mission could be extended.
Indonesia on alert for attack
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesia yesterday deployed thousands of troops to guard churches and places where foreigners gather amid warnings that al-Qaida-linked militants were planning Christmas terror attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Maj. Gen. Firman Gani, the Jakarta police chief, said Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists might use the holidays to retaliate for the death last month of bomb-making expert Azahari bin Husin, who was gunned down in a police raid.
Foreign governments were not taking any chances either. The United States, Australia, Britain, Canada and Denmark warned their citizens that the terrorist threat was very high, and advised against unnecessary travel to Indonesia.
Sharon's medical records
JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 77, who suffered a mild stroke less than a week ago, has cholesterol and blood pressure levels that are astonishingly normal for a man of his weight and age, his doctor said yesterday.
Despite Mr. Sharon's love of fatty foods, tests taken three weeks before Mr. Sharon's stroke showed his blood pressure at 120 over 80, and his overall cholesterol level at 195 -- both completely normal.
Mr. Sharon's doctors and aides will not reveal the 5-foot-7-inch leader's weight. Press reports this week estimated it at 313 pounds.
WHO official faults China
BEIJING -- A senior World Health Organization official complained yesterday that China has not shared with his agency any samples of a deadly bird flu virus strain from its dozens of outbreaks in poultry.
WHO's Asia-Pacific Director Shigeru Omi said that sharing samples of the H5N1 virus is crucial to diagnosing new cases, and to developing a vaccine that could prevent a possible pandemic in humans.
China's Ministry of Agriculture shared five samples collected from infected birds last year but has failed to provide any this year, Mr. Omi said.
Jia Youling, director of the Chinese Agriculture Ministry's veterinary bureau, which has led China's efforts against bird flu, declined to respond to Mr. Omi's remarks.

  IRAQ (95%); POLAND (94%);  JORDAN (92%);  ISRAEL (79%); AUSTRALIA (79%); CANADA (79%)







 
 


December 23, 2005, Friday



 Muslims guard Jakarta's Christians

 
As church congregations offer up Christmas prayers here this weekend, thousands of Muslims will help keep the peace, standing guard outside. 
After warnings of terrorist attacks over Christmas, police stepped up security, deploying over 17,000 officers in Jakarta, two-thirds of the city's force. Joining them in protecting hundreds of churches are some 7,000 guards from 11 different Islam-linked organizations.
Police are hoping "Operation Candle," which will run from Dec. 24 to Jan. 3, will be a symbol of goodwill between Christianity and Islam, ending a year that has seen many tests of Indonesia's religious harmony. It's part of a bid by authorities to move beyond physical security to include an ideological campaign against violent strains of Islam. 
"Having Muslims and Christians work together for security, the authorities are hoping to show that pluralism is still strong," says Sri Yunanto, an Indonesian expert on radical Islamist groups.
Both Muslims leaders and police say they are trying to avoid a repeat of Christmas Eve five years ago, when 29 churches were bombed in an attack blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a group that has been linked to Al Qaeda.
"We want to show we respect Christianity," says Irwan Arsidi, secretary of the Islamic Defender's Front (FPI), a hard-line vigilante group. "Besides," he grumbled, "we don't want to get blamed for any explosions."
The Islamic Defenders are perhaps better known for shutting churches down than defending them. Mr. Arsidi adds that members would make sure they weren't seen to be "participating" in Christmas celebrations. Recently, the FPI was one of several hard-line groups to condemn suicide bombings, distancing themselves from JI.
The government has effected some of this peeling away of support for violence with a deft use of the terrorists' own propaganda. In an attempt to win over 18 prominent Muslim leaders, Vice President Jusuf Kalla showed them suicide messages on Nov. 17 in a video recorded by young men recruited by JI. The message, including quotations from the Koran, was recorded shortly before the Oct. 1 bomb attack in Bali.
Until the video was shown, many leaders were reluctant to admit the existence of JI, or of homegrown terrorism.
The tape then aired on national TV.
Soon afterwards Indonesia's two largest Muslim organizations, the Muhammadiyah and the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), which together claim 70 million members, pledged to spread the meaning of "true" or peaceful jihad in their schools.
As part of its efforts to combat radical ideology, the government also announced an initiative aimed at monitoring Islamic schools throughout the country. However, resistance from religious groups has forced Jakarta to back off from the idea, for now.
Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, has long enjoyed a reputation for religious tolerance. Several events in 2005, however, chipped away at that image.
* In West Java, hard-line Islamist mobs closed down 40 unregistered churches.
* The powerful Islamic scholars' council accused the Islamic sect Ahmadiyah of heresy and issued edicts condemning pluralism and interfaith marriages.
* On the island of Sulawesi, three schoolgirls were beheaded by masked attackers in October, in what observers say was an attempt to reignite a four-year conflict between Christians and Muslims.
Din Syamsuddin, chairman of the 30-million strong Muhammadiyah, the world's second-largest Muslim organization, says that Operation Candle is a chance to help dispel fears of Islam.
On Wednesday, Mr. Syamsuddin invited thousands of Christians affected by forced closure of churches this year to say prayers at the organization's buildings. Syamsuddin called on communities near the closed churches to allow Christians to pray in their homes. He also called on Muhammadiyah youth groups to help guard churches across Indonesia.
The 40-million member NU has been a strong supporter of Indonesia's secular Constitution, which recognizes four religions alongside Islam, including Christianity. The group has been helping to guard churches since 1998, members say.
"We have a tradition of defending the Christians," says Wiro Sugiman, an NU member and security official.
(c) . The 

 INDONESIA (95%)







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

December 19, 2005, Monday



 Readers' voice; 
Call 357-4451 or e-mail readersvoice@wvgazette.com

 
-Christmas does not honor Jesus. There is too much commercialism, greed, alcohol abuse and gluttony. Also, something that has pagan origins and is based on lies certainly dishonors Jesus. So then, should true Christians celebrate it?
-Even in our little Appalachian city we have a lot of Jews, Muslims and persons of other faiths. Why do we Christians insist on trying to force people to say Merry Christmas? It is just plain mean and it is not very smart to alienate customers, so why force a store to do that?
-Wouldn't it be nice if local Christians cared as much about the deaths and wounding of our soldiers in Iraq as we care about the "Happy Holidays" vs. "Merry Christmas" fuss? 
-Last Christmas my wife and I were on Bali, the Hindu island of Indonesia, which is a Muslim country. Everywhere we went people were wishing us a Merry Christmas. I should have corrected them and told them no, it is "Happy Holidays."
-One of my very favorite things about the Christmas season are the Budweiser commercials with the horses.
-To the person that is looking for a place to get their car washed in Charleston, how about your driveway? Quit being lazy.
-Workers' compensation has been sending me letters where they can't afford to pay for my medication, but they have all this money to pay the sick leave time and vacation time for their employees.
-How dare AT&T offer anyone in the Kanawha Valley a universal credit card after they closed their doors and outsourced all their jobs to India.
-Like Marshall University's Heights Field, many of its crowded classrooms and asbestos-laden offices are "universally considered sub-standard, particularly for C-USA." Could the students and faculty move to Charleston like the baseball team?
-Mr. Bush, we have now lost 2,149 precious lives. When is it going to be enough for you? My heart goes out to all of these families. My son is an Apache helicopter pilot and I pray every day that he will not have to go to Iraq. Please bring an end to this and bring our soldiers home.
-I have been reading about people and their hybrid cars getting all of that good gas mileage. My wife has a 1997 Dodge Neon and she gets about 25 miles per gallon in town. My son drove it to Florida one year and got 38 miles per gallon.
-We really don't need two brand new elementary schools on the West Side of Charleston. What needs to be done is an extreme renovation for both the Robins and Watts buildings, with new wiring, new windows and other modern updates.
-After the Kanawha County Board of Education insightfully decided to cancel school for the last hour of the day on the prettiest day of the week I had to stop and thank God for the Catholic schools in the Valley, who chose to finish out the day.
-The state should change the law so that the cities can get some of the gambling money, since people who buy tickets live in the city. They should be allocated, maybe out of every $20, $1 would go to the city. That way the user fee would be taken out of the gambling money, not out of people's pockets trying to make a living.
-If the user fee money is supposed to pave streets, then they need to get started on Bigley and Pennsylvania avenues. Both are an absolute mess.
-A public school coach did not force anybody on his team to attend the fundamentalist church. Thirteen team members accepted an invitation by the church to attend.
-I think the TV channels should go back to using the pretty and young women to read the weather forecast from the National Weather bureau. They weren't wrong any more than these highly paid professionals are now.
-Did you see the size of the hamburger on the Ruby Tuesday commercials? Charleston needs a Ruby Tuesday.
-Our illustrious leader and his great Medicare drug program are really great. I was on Blue Cross Blue Shield and now that I have to go on his Medicare drug program I only have to pay $2,000 more than I did last year. I hope I can afford his next folly.
-To all the very feeble-minded individuals who are having such an uproar over the forecast being wrong, 95 times out of 100, with the weather set up the way it was, it would have done what the forecast said. It is a forecast, a prediction. It is not a plan.
-In regard to using the user fee to pave roads, what were they using to pave roads before they enacted the user fee?
-Congratulations to the No. 1 policeman Malone on his test. He deserved the letter and promotion. He studied for months and it has nothing to do with the Kanawha City wreck. Shame on Jones and hooray to the Charleston Police Department for boycotting the luncheon.
-Why do they allow smoking in public housing? The many non-smokers in Carroll Terrace paid a dear price caused by smokers.
-I think it is very inhumane of people to leave their dogs out in this cold weather, even if they do have a doghouse. Half of them can't even get in the house because they are chained up somewhere and it is caught up on something and all they do is holler and cry. Someone should chain the owner up outside and see how they like it.
-The government isn't taking care of the veterans now, so God help all the veterans that are injured in Iraq when they get home.
-I just want the people to know that the city recorder of Nitro was voted in. There will be another election, and if you don't want the "dream team" vote them out.
-We need to drop the Promise scholarship program, since there are so many whiners, and spend that money on preschool and the first five years of school, concentrating on bringing slower learning children up to educational speed so there will be far less high school dropouts.
-People try to defend Bush by bringing up Clinton's mistakes. There is no comparison. Clinton did make mistakes. The difference is most of us recognized that. You Republicans are looking at Bush through rose-colored glasses. Bush is an idiot.

 UNITED STATES (90%); IRAQ (90%); INDIA (79%); 







 
 



December 19, 2005 Monday



 Extremism a challenge for Muslims

 
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali sat at the defendant's table in a small federal courtroom last month, a youthful man with a sparse beard accused of a serious crime - conspiring to kill President Bush.
Several dozen supporters chanted softly in Arabic, drawing a rebuke from a security officer. A veiled woman explained that they were merely praying for the 24-year-old American student, who had confessed that he aspired to hijack and crash an airliner into "the leader of the infidels."
To Abu Ali and his supporters, the trial that ended a few days later with the young man's conviction was not about terrorism. "It's a Muslim thing," Abu Ali told federal investigators. "You wouldn't understand."
Indeed, Islam is very much on trial - but not in the courtroom. The world's second-largest religion is undergoing a trial by Muslims themselves as they struggle to confront extremist tendencies, such as the ideology that motivated American-born Abu Ali to travel to Saudi Arabia and join al-Qaeda. 
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Muslims are under growing pressure to take action against jihadist strains of the faith.
"The transformation we're going through now, it could take Islam to enlightenment, or it could take Islam to the dark ages for a long time to come," said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an outspoken critic of Islam's extremists.
"We are at a crossroads," he said.
The struggle taking place in America is a microcosm of a worldwide battle over the direction of Islam, which claims up to 1.3 billion followers - approximately six million in the United States. At its core, the confrontation is over the influence of militant, theocratic varieties of Islam, such as Wahhabism, the Saudi Arabian Islamic movement that inspired Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban.
Moderate American Muslims, who had quietly squirmed as militant rhetoric crept into their mosques and discussion groups, are becoming more willing to confront the radical ideology that they say dishonors Islam's core message of compassion and mercy.
"Before 9/11, people were not focused on the struggle against the authoritarianism and the despotism of the Wahhabis," said Abou El Fadl, author of a recently published book, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists.
Radical leaflets, once openly available in Islamic libraries in America, have become more difficult to find. Recruiters for holy wars in Chechnya and Afghanistan, formerly welcomed in many mosques, are now turned away.
"My sense is that people feel the extremist ideology needs to be countered, and we [Muslims] are the only ones who can effectively counter it," said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles.
A big issue facing many mosques is how much to cooperate with authorities. Many Muslims are recent immigrants and believe the worst things they have been told about the government. The clergy are under great pressure not to report suspicious activity.
"Some imams are open about cooperating with the FBI," Abou El Fadl said. "Other imams say, 'This is a religiously inspired administration, and it is immoral to bring attention to fellow Muslims who are entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.' "
Many Muslim advocates say they have repeatedly condemned terrorism since Sept. 11, yet they are still criticized because their denunciations are insufficient or overly qualified.
"We're speaking up, but people aren't hearing us," Al-Marayati said. "The problem is not in the message, but in the reception."
The July suicide bombings in London's transit system shocked many of the faithful because the attacks were carried out by Muslims born in Britain, rather than foreign operatives who infiltrated with the aim of carrying out a strike.
"People here in America realized that anger with the U.S. could translate into something more," said Muqtedar Khan, a political scientist at the University of Delaware.
After the London bombings, the Fiqh Council of North America, an advisory committee on Islamic law, issued a fatwa denouncing violence against civilians. And several advocacy groups stepped up campaigns to urge young people to beware of radical preachers.
But some critics said the fatwa was more show than substance. They say it did not denounce specific extremists and still left room for Muslims to justify attacks, particularly in Israel.
"The condemnations are never fully throated, they're not specific," said Daniel Pipes, executive director of Philadelphia's Middle East Forum and one of the nation's most controversial campaigners against radical Islam.
Muslim advocates express exasperation with Pipes, who has long been at odds with such groups as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization that models itself after the NAACP.
"We have consistently disassociated Islam from terrorism," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the council, which last year organized a yearlong antiterrorism publicity campaign called "Not in the Name of Islam."
Much of the debate centers on who is defined as a moderate and who is an extremist.
UCLA's Abou El Fadl, who calls himself a moderate, says he is unwelcome in many mosques because of his opposition to the Saudis. But Pipes has called him a "stealth Islamicist" because he supports Islamic law.
Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, an Islamic convert and Pipes ally who heads the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, complains that many Muslims judge one another's faith based on political ideology, rather than theological issues. "It's about being an angry, oppressed minority," he said.
In a recent report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office acknowledged the disagreements over terminology. It defined "Islamic extremism" as an ideology that denies the legitimacy of nonbelievers and other forms of Islam and promotes hatred, intolerance and violence.
"There are telltale signs about an extremist," said the University of Delaware's Khan. "When critics start speaking of a Zionist conspiracy, a Christian crusade, and when those things justify violence, that's scary stuff."
For better or worse, the aggressive government prosecutions of Islamic extremists have helped frame the debate. Even unsuccessful cases, such as the acquittal this month of Florida professor Sami al-Arian for supporting Palestinian jihadists, send a message that there is less space in which extremists can maneuver.
But some Muslims say the antiterrorism campaign is only driving extremist sentiments underground and reinforcing Muslims' sense of victimization.
"I don't think government monitoring would change people's ideology," said Khurrum B. Wahid, a civil rights lawyer who worked as Abu Ali's attorney. "It's just suppressing it."
Wahid said Muslims were more wary about expressing even protected free speech because they know their words can haunt them. He complained that the government's surveillance methods were "getting more extreme."
The evidence against Abu Ali included wiretapped phone conversations between the student and his family, as well as e-mail messages recovered from an Internet service provider.
In his research before the trial, Wahid also sought fruitlessly to locate a copy of a book by Ayman al-Zawahiri that prosecutors alleged had influenced Abu Ali. Before 9/11, he said, the book was easy to find.
"This was an impossible book to find nowadays," said Wahid. "Nobody will admit to owning it."
But other Muslims say Abu Ali's trial also demonstrated why they must be careful with whom they associate.
A year ago, Muslim advocacy groups and civil libertarians rallied around the detention of Abu Ali, who contended that he had gone to Saudi Arabia in 2003 to study Islam. Abu Ali's supporters claimed his confession was coerced under torture supervised by American investigators.
But as the trial moved forward, the jury found the claims of torture and American involvement were unsubstantiated. Abu Ali's statements, in which he expressed admiration for the terrorists who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks, were incriminating.
By the time of the verdict, all but his immediate friends and family had become mute.
According to Khan, the lesson most Muslims took away from the trial: "If you say stupid things, then you have to pay the price for your stupidity."

Adherents and Basic Tenets
An Islam Primer
Islam is the world's second-largest religion - and growing fast. The word in Arabic refers to peace through submission to God.
Followers, known as Muslims, believe in one God and that the prophet Muhammad (c. 570-632) is his messenger. The religion's sacred text is the Koran, or Qur'an.
Practitioners must declare their faith, pray five times a day, give to charity, fast from dawn to dusk in the holy month of Ramadan, and, if possible, make a pilgrimage to Mecca during their lifetimes.
Muslims believe that on the Last Day the world will come to an end, and the dead will be resurrected and judged. Salvation will be acquired through good deeds.
Islam has no overarching authority, and the status of a preacher is equal to that of the laity. If one believes and declares oneself to be a Muslim and behaves in a manner befitting a Muslim, one is accepted into the community of believers.
Islam by the Numbers
Estimates of the worldwide Muslim population range from 900 million to 1.3 billion people. In the United States, accurate figures are hard to come by because the U.S. Census does not ask about religious belief.
Only 18 percent of Muslims live in the Arab world. Other large concentrations are in sub-Saharan Africa; Pakistan, India and Bangladesh; China; Europe; Russia; and Central Asia. The largest single Muslim population is in Indonesia.
In the United States, the estimated number of Muslims is six million. As of 2000, there were 1,209 mosques in this country, 62 percent of which had been founded since 1980. Thirty percent of the worshipers are believed to be converts. American Muslims are a diverse group, made up of Asians, African Americans and Arabs. In fact, only 7 percent of U.S. mosques are attended by a single ethnic group.
Sources: U.S. Department of State, U.S. Census Bureau, National Public Radio, Overview of World Religions (philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/islam/)
Contact staff writer Andrew Maykuth at 215-854-2947 or amaykuth@phillynews.com.

 UNITED STATES (96%); AFGHANISTAN (91%); SAUDI ARABIA (91%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (71%)







   


December 18, 2005 Sunday  




 Terror Suspect's Ordeal in U.S. Custody

 
When Muhammad Saad Iqbal finally got a chance to plead his case to a panel of military officers at the American prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he insisted that he had nothing to hide.
  ''If I have committed any crime, I am ready for the punishment,'' Mr. Iqbal told the officers a year ago, according to a transcript of the hearing. ''But I know that I am innocent. That is why I am here.''
When he finished his tale of having fallen in with Muslim radicals during a brief visit to Indonesia in late 2001, and having bragged to them about exploding chewing gum, shoe bombs and Osama bin Laden, one member of the tribunal praised him for being ''very cooperative, very truthful.'' Another member told Mr. Iqbal he seemed to have ''a very big ego.''
  United States officials who dealt with his case in Indonesia said they thought that Mr. Iqbal could well be a braggart rather than a terrorist. He had not trained in a camp run by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, they said. 
  But nearly four years after he was picked up here in the dead of night and flown to Egypt, Mr. Iqbal remains in American custody at Guantanamo. According to his own testimony and that of former detainees, he has become so desperate during his imprisonment that he has tried at least once to commit suicide.
  ''He's gone crazy,'' said Sher Ali Khan, a friend of Mr. Iqbal's in Pakistan who said he was told this by an envoy from the International Committee of the Red Cross after the representatives visited Mr. Iqbal at Guantanamo Bay.
  Mr. Iqbal told the military tribunal that he tried to commit suicide on his 191st day at Guantanamo. This followed 92 days of detention in Egypt and a year at the American detention center at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, he said.
  Mr. Iqbal's experiences shed some light on the plight of terrorism suspects who are arrested and thrown into the shadowy world of secret prisons and no legal rights and held there -- even those who, like Mr. Iqbal, are not considered serious threats. 
  Born in Pakistan in 1977 and considered by friends and relatives to be a moderate Muslim, Mr. Iqbal was one of the first suspects to be seized by the Central Intelligence Agency overseas after Sept. 11, 2001 and transferred to another country for questioning -- a process known as ''rendition'' that human rights groups say has led to the use of coercion and torture against detainees. According to the transcript and American officials, he was seized in Jakarta in January 2002 and subsequently transferred to Egypt, where he underwent interrogation. 
  Mr. Iqbal's story, from honored Koran reader to terrorism suspect, was pieced together from the transcript of his hearing, interviews in Pakistan and Indonesia and the accounts of four American officials who worked on the Iqbal case and agreed to talk about it only on condition of anonymity, because information in the case is classified. 
  The Pentagon declined to answer any questions about Mr. Iqbal, in line with its policy on detainees.
  The basis for Mr. Iqbal's continued detention remains largely secret. United States officials would say only that as with 520 of 558 prisoners that passed through the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Guantanamo, his designation as an ''enemy combatant'' had been upheld. And Mr. Iqbal, like countless others here, remains in a legal netherworld that lawyers and human rights advocates say is increasingly leading to suicide attempts and hunger strikes among inmates. 
  Military officials contend that the detainees are treated humanely and that hunger strikes and suicide attempts are largely theatrical events staged to draw attention to their complaints. The officials discount the idea that the inmates are reacting to the harsh conditions or the open-ended nature of the men's detention. 
  In January, for example, after 23 Guantanamo detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves, the Pentagon said that only two were ''suicide attempts.'' It called the others ''self-injurious behavior incidents.'' Military officials said there were only four suicide attempts this year, though they did not say how many ''self-injurious'' incidents had occurred.
  But lawyers for some of the detainees say their clients are driven to suicide and hunger strikes by the very conditions the prison has sought to create to force them to talk.
  ''It's an environment that subjects the prisoner to overwhelming levels of psychological anxiety, isolation, abandonment, terror, despair,'' said Joseph Margulies, a lawyer who has represented several Guantanamo detainees, but not Mr. Iqbal, who has no lawyer. ''That sense of gnawing uncertainty, either it drives the prisoner mad, or it robs him of the most precious commodity, and that is hope.''
  [On Saturday,  quoted government lawyers as saying that the military had moved a prisoner out of his isolation cell at Guantanamo after he said he was trying to kill himself because of ''intolerable'' conditions. A lawyer for the prisoner, Jumah Dossari, 32, of Bahrain, said Mr. Dossari had tried to kill himself nine times, including an incident in October in which he deeply slashed his arm and tried to hang himself.]
  Friends and family members describe Mr. Iqbal as a friendly, somewhat insecure man who had little interest in politics and a habit of making up stories. ''He had a childish habit of trying to portray himself as important,'' said an uncle in Lahore, Pakistan, Muhammad Farooq Said. American intelligence officers who interviewed Mr. Iqbal in Indonesia after his detention concluded that he was a ''blowhard,'' as one senior American official put it. Another said, ''He wanted us to believe he was more important than he was.'' 
  The oldest son of an Islamic scholar who was an adherent of the severe, ultraconservative Wahhabi branch of Islam, Mr. Iqbal spent his earliest years in Saudi Arabia where his father studied and taught. The family moved to Indonesia where, by the age of 7, one of his boyhood friends said, Mr. Iqbal had memorized the entire Koran.
  As a teenager back in Pakistan, he won many awards for reciting the Koran. But he regularly went to Western movies, wore blue jeans and other Western clothes and did not think women should have to cover themselves, said Mr. Khan, who was one of Mr. Iqbal's closest friends. Mr. Khan said his friend condemned the Sept. 11 attacks. ''He said that the prophet would not approve,'' Mr. Khan said. 
  More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Iqbal began planning to go to Indonesia, Mr. Farooq said. After his father's death in Pakistan, he wanted to travel to Jakarta to inform his stepmother in person that her husband had died. Mr. Farooq gave him $1,000 and a return ticket.
  What happened next is known from United States officials who dealt with Mr. Iqbal and from his own statements to the tribunal at Guantanamo. 
  In Jakarta, he fell in with ''some people who were not good,'' Mr. Iqbal told the tribunal. ''Maybe I can say they were terrorists.'' They were members of the Islamic Defender Front, he said, and he gave the tribunal their names, including that of the organization's president.
  He said the men talked about plans to blow up the American Embassy and other terrorist acts. The organization is not banned in Indonesia, nor is it connected to any terrorist attacks. What got Mr. Iqbal into trouble, American officials said, was that he told the Indonesian radicals that bombs could be hidden in shoes. His comments were picked up by Indonesian intelligence, which shared them with the Central Intelligence Agency here. 
  At first, the C.I.A. did not take Mr. Iqbal's comments seriously enough to ask the Indonesians to pick him up. Then, on Dec. 22, 2001, Richard C. Reid tried to blow up a jetliner with a bomb hidden in his shoes. With that, American officials concluded, ''Maybe we ought to talk to this guy,'' as one of them put it in an interview. It would still be three weeks before he was picked up.
  After questioning Mr. Iqbal, the intelligence officers were still not convinced he posed a threat. They thought he would be held for a few days, ''then booted out of jail,'' said an American official. The official said they did not even think it would be necessary to deport him. But the Indonesians did not want him, the official said, so he was sent to Egypt. 
  At Guantanamo, Mr. Iqbal appears to have been unusually isolated. Other inmates distrusted him because he had not trained in Afghanistan, said Mamdouh Habib, a fellow inmate. Mr. Habib said that at Guantanamo, Mr. Iqbal pleaded, '' 'Talk to me, please talk to me.' ''
  '' 'I feel depressed,' '' Mr. Habib, who was in Egypt with Mr. Iqbal, said he recalled him saying. '' 'I want to talk to somebody. Nobody trusts me.' ''
  ''He was fully crazy,'' Mr. Habib said. ''He doesn't know where he is anymore.''

 CUBA (94%); UNITED STATES (94%); EGYPT (94%);  AFGHANISTAN (93%); PAKISTAN (93%)







 The Chronicle of Higher Education
 
The Chronicle of Higher Education

December 16, 2005 Friday



 Post-Tsunami Aid Fails to Reach Universities in Banda Aceh

 
A LOPSIDED RECOVERY: A year after the tsunamis, universities in Banda Aceha, Indonesia, are stagnating while their professors and students see some improvements. 
The telephone on Abdi Abdul Wahab's desk has not rung in nearly a year. And Mr. Wahab, rector of one of Indonesia's largest universities, does not expect it to start ringing anytime soon.
Actually, none of the phones on the Syiah Kuala University campus work. Neither do the fax machines, which is still the way most business in this part of the world is conducted. To submit a purchase order or convene a meeting, Mr. Wahab's secretary drives into downtown Banda Aceh to use the fax machine at a tiny photocopy shop.
The phone lines have been out since a massive earthquake, and the tsunami it spawned, leveled much of the Acehnese coast early on the morning of December 26, 2004. Despite the devastation that left Aceh's provincial capital pulverized and more than 175,000 people dead, the silence seems odd. Because apart from a few collapsed ceilings and some damaged equipment, the university was relatively unscathed. 
Curiously, while the campus remains cut off, the rest of Aceh is racing to connect with the world   in some ways for the first time.
In the wake of the tsunami, billions of dollars have poured in to rebuild this impoverished region that has been ravaged by a long-running war between government troops and separatist rebels. Before the disaster, travel was severely restricted and most foreigners were barred from entering Aceh. Today international experts and technical teams are upgrading power grids, laying fiber-optic cables, and building new roads to connect Aceh to the outside world.
Aceh's universities, isolated from the rest of the world by geography and frequent crackdowns by the Indonesian army, could only dream of having all that then, and that remains true today.While Syiah Kuala, one of two state universities, has participated in a few big projects, such as the government's post-tsunami planning blueprint, for the most part, the universities have been passed by.
"Institutionally we have not benefited," says Mr. Wahab, "but individually, yes."
Since their arrival in the weeks following the disaster, international humanitarian agencies have been hiring faculty members and students to help administer local programs, assess recovery efforts, and write reports. Because outsiders have been barred from Aceh for long periods, they need people with local knowledge and local language skills. Yet instead of collaborating with the university or employing departments to conduct surveys or design statistical models, for example, nongovernmental organizations have gone out and directly hired faculty, siphoning off the best and brightest.
The dean of economics, Said Muhammad, says 10 out of the 100 professors in his department are now working for Aceh's Reconstruction and Recovery Agency, which is overseeing the mammoth job of spending more than $5-billion donated by governments and individuals. His department is still reeling from the deaths of 14 faculty members.
"This is hard on [the other] teachers," says Mr. Muhammad. "They have gone from teaching three or four classes to five or six. And remember some of them have no houses, no car, and they've all lost family members."
The university's rector concedes that moonlighting professors make it difficult to run the university, but he doesn't blame his faculty.
Professors earn about $250 a month, which is not much money, even here. Senior teaching staff cannot even afford to buy books. The rector confesses that sometimes when a new text is published he reads it in the bookstore, putting it back on the shelf before he leaves.
Faculty members working as consultants, however, earn more in several days working for an international agency than they do in a month. And even if the university were hired to do the work, they would not receive one rupiah.
"Whatever projects the staff brings into their departments, the money goes to Jakarta," says Mr. Wahab, referring to Indonesia's central budget, which is often described as a black hole. Though he doesn't say it, it is wellknown that because of rampant corruption the university will never see any money they earn.
"We can't use the money ourselves to improve programs or even buy books," he says. "Right now there is no creative vision because there is no incentive."
Silver Lining
As clichéd as it may sound, with the disaster have come new opportunities. Perhaps the most positive development in the life of the Acehnese people, and for the university in particular, has been a cessation of hostilities between the Indonesian military and Aceh rebels.
In the past, academics who spoke out against the military's tightfisted control of the region or those who criticized the rebels' brutal attacks on civilians sometimes became victims themselves. Students who had organized a mass rally calling for a referendum on independence in 1999 were arrested and tortured by the Indonesian army. Several student leaders were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen; weeks later their mutilated bodies were discovered dumped by the roadside.
Dayan Dawood, the widely admired rector of Syiah Kuala University, was assassinated in September 2001, just days after he suggested the university help mediate a cease-fire between the two sides. Safwan Idris, rector of Ar-Raniry Islamic State University, who likewise called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, had been gunned down a year before. Both sides were accused of the murders.
At one point more than 40,000 Indonesian troops were stationed in the province. During a major crackdown in 2003, martial law was declared and most international aid groups and foreign journalists were ordered to leave. Students were urged to keep a low profile and stay off the roads after dark. Most of Aceh lived in equal fear of the rebels and the army.
Then came the terrible morning of December 26.
"During the tsunami, the military and the rebels were the farthest thing from anyone's minds," says Mawardi Ismail, dean of the faculty of law. "Suddenly foreigners were allowed in. The world was paying attention. Everything changed."
In August, after rebels agreed to set aside their demand for a separate state in exchange for limited self-government, the two sides signed a peace agreement aimed at ending a conflict that has left more than 15,000 people dead. Under the deal thousands of Indonesian troops have already pulled out of Aceh, and rebels have started handing in their weapons. Observers say that, unlike in previous cease-fires, there are signs that this one will hold.
Life After Dark
Gone are the military police checkpoints on campus. Student protests are no longer likely to be met with rifles and tear gas. The curfew has been lifted, so getting home before dark is no longer a matter of life or death.
These days, coffee bars with trendy English names are packed with students who linger after the sun goes down over the city and the calls to evening prayers rise up. Young women in jilbabs, or head scarves, sip Fantas, chatting with young men chain-smoking clove cigarettes.
While each has his or her own tsunami story, all of them say life has improved since the peace agreement was signed and the civilian emergency decree was lifted.
"I remember being afraid of getting shot coming home," says Teuku Putra Lazuardi, an economics student at Syiah Kuala University, who lives in a neighborhood considered to be a rebel stronghold. "We often heard gunfire. I worried about getting caught in the cross-fire between the army and the rebels."
On the campus or off, there is little talk of politics. Students have never known anything but war so it seems the last thing on their minds.
"They don't want to talk about democracy and politics," says H. Aslam Nur, assistant rector of Muhammadiyah University, the largest private higher-education institution in Aceh. "They care more about getting an education. Right now they really just want to study."
After so many years of living in fear, students are grateful for a bit of normalcy, says Intan, an English major, who like many Indonesians has just one name. The lifting of the emergency means that she and her friends can now go out in the evenings. But like nearly all young women in Aceh   Indonesia's most conservative Muslim province   this 21-year-old still has a curfew.
"These days we are much more worried about our parents than the military," Intan jokes, before apologizing and hurrying out of the restaurant a few minutes before 9 p.m.
A University on Hold
At the moment Syiah Kuala University's mission is to get its academic house in order. This once-premier institution has suffered from decades of conflict and financial neglect. Over the years it has been practically impossible to attract faculty from outside Aceh. Virtually no research is conducted there. Its libraries are not up to international standards.Today only 60 percent of the faculty hold advanced degrees.
"We don't have research facilities, we don't have lab equipment, we don't have a research library," says Mr. Wahab. "For a school of our [supposed] stature the conditions are not good enough."
Since the tsunami only a trickling of aid has come in to this university, compared with the rest of Aceh. The Japanese government has offered to repair the collapsed ceilings in the architecture department. Turkey is building dormitories to house those left homeless by the tsunami.
Indonesian universities offered to send temporary faculty members to replace those who had been killed, but there was no place for them to stay. In the end, concerns about food, housing, and security kept most of them away.
Foreign universities offered full scholarships to Acehnese students. Britain even waived its visa fees. But few students could take advantage of the offer: Fewer than 10 scored high enough on the English-proficiency test needed to qualify.
"I think we can make this university one of the best in Southeast Asia," says Mr. Wahab, who struggles to remain optimistic while watching the flurry of activity happening just outside the university gates. "But we still need to replace our lecturers [who were killed]. We still need books. And we are waiting to see if the peace holds."
And, of course, he is still waiting for the phone to ring.

 INDONESIA (95%)







 


December 16, 2005 Friday



 ASIAN PERSPECTIVE; 
Every season is a season for giving

 
In the holiday season it may seem like a struggle searching for that perfect present, but for Asians that mission continues throughout the year.
There's Suzanne Kai, who says ``it's always wise'' to have something on hand. The businesswoman suggests ``discreetly'' tucking something nifty in your briefcase, ``or if it's a large gift, have your staff available to run to retrieve it for you.''
There's my mother, whose kitchen brims with a bounty of wine and chocolate so she's never caught without for the unexpected visitor or unexpected birthday. 
And there's me -- who schedules one outing a month to stock up on goodies for the next two months. I'm rarely short of tea, books, movie tickets and candles for my treasure chest -- what I call half a closet packed with bags, cards, ribbons and bows. I fish these out, item after item, making baskets for my friends and their children week after week.
Why so many gifts?
It's a ``sign of respect, regard, affection and tradition,'' according to Angi Ma Wong, a cultural consultant who can dish on everything from shopping to feng shui. We're obsessed with paying tribute to those we value and to relationships we value.
The Chinese, she notes, even offer a small token after a funeral service in the form of a coin rolled in a piece of white paper, this being the color appropriate for the occasion. It's called bak gum, literally ``white gold,'' and is packaged with a piece of hard candy to be ``distributed to all departing guests because the sweet is meant to counter the sadness and pain of loss.''
The money should be ``spent right away to bring a little joy'' into a person's life and to shed the negativity associated with a burial.
I asked Wong, author of ``Target: the U.S. Asian Market, A Practical Guide to Doing Business,'' what to do when it comes to colleagues, including selecting for somebody in Asia vs. an Asian-American:
Choose the ``safe'' stuff, she says, such as travel tomes, leather desk supplies, pens and fresh fruit, especially oranges or tangerines, as they are linked to gold and prosperity.
Buy coffee, jams and cookies. But don't buy cheese as many Asians are lactose-intolerant.
Also, avoid clocks, which symbolize the passing of time and death. And stay away from knives, which symbolize the severance of a bond. And keep unlucky numbers in mind, such as four for Koreans.
``Don't laugh,'' she adds, but ``do not give anything made in Asia. This may sound obvious, but something made in the U.S.A. of excellent craftsmanship is a good choice,'' particularly if it's from a recognized designer or is a name brand.
While it is common for Westerners to open a gift in the presence of the giver, Wong advises not to be surprised if Asians set a present aside to enjoy in private.
And when an Asian receives a gift, how does he judge it?
Wong cites the order: Status, price, presentation, practicality.
But Asian customs vary. A bottle of premium liquor that would be appreciated in Vietnam or Thailand might not find favor where Muslim religions flourish, including Malaysia or Indonesia, because liquor is not allowed.
The best advice ``is to ask friends who are of that specific Asian ancestry,'' urged Kai, president and CEO of CSI International, an investment company based in Newport Beach.
Another thing you might want to remember is something I've learned since childhood.
Given the formality of Asian cultures, don't give up if the individual a gift is intended for declines it. It's custom for the giver to persist. Acceptance follows.
This column on Asian cultures and communities appears every other Friday in Local. Please contact Do at nvdailynews@gmail.com.

 ASIA (91%); UNITED STATES (90%)







 
 


December 14, 2005 Wednesday



 Christmas Battle Of Global Import Erupts in Capital

 
As the hype over secularists' "War Against Christmas" reaches fever pitch, a Christmas battle of sorts will be fought today on Capitol Hill between Senators Santorum and Kennedy over the holiday's meaning. The Pennsylvania Republican will frame Christmas in terms of worldwide religious freedom, part of a "Christmas Under Siege Around the World" conference highlighting Christian persecution in oppressive regimes. The Massachusetts Democrat, meanwhile, will headline an event defining "the true meaning of Christmas" as the need to raise the federal minimum wage.
Mr. Santorum, who founded and serves as co-sponsor of the Congressional Working Group on Religious Freedom, will be joined by several Christian leaders and religious-freedom activists at an event sponsored by Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, to be held at the Capitol this afternoon. The conference will address increasing oppression of Christians in North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, and the countries of the former Soviet Union. 
The director of the Center for Religious Freedom and the vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Nina Shea, said that part of the purpose of the conference was to call attention to the fact that Christian persecution is more prevalent now than at any point in the past two millennia. "There's monumental levels of unspeakable suffering for faith by Christians," Ms. Shea said. While "Christian persecution" is usually associated with Christianity's first two centuries, it is more widespread now than ever, Ms. Shea said, because of the increasing numbers of Christians around the world who live in regimes hostile to their faith.
The persecution, Ms. Shea said yesterday, is happening in Vietnam, "where Vietnamese were beaten in order to recant their faith. In Iran, where a Christian convert was just stabbed to death and another is in prison for apostasy. In Saudi Arabia, where foreign workers who were Christian were subject to police raids and imprisonment this year. ... These are the kinds of cases we're going to be talking about tomorrow."
Another USCIRF commissioner and the Roman Catholic archbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, will also be participating in the conference, and will highlight recent acts of Christian persecution in Indonesia. In prepared remarks that Archbishop Chaput will deliver tomorrow obtained by , he will discuss the murders this fall of Christian children in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
In October, according to press accounts, three teenage schoolgirls - all cousins - were beheaded by six male assailants in black shirts and masks as they walked through a cocoa plantation on their way to a private Christian high school. Their heads were left outside a church. A fourth cousin survived, but was hospitalized after receiving deep machete wounds to her face and neck.
"Those murders were not isolated or random incidents," Archbishop Chaput wrote. "They were part of a brutal, ongoing war by Islamic militants against the country's Christian minority. Three more Christian girls and a Christian couple were shot in separate attacks in November." Unlike many other Muslim countries, the archbishop wrote, Indonesia is a democracy with a constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion - yet violence against its Christian minority has increased over the last decade.
Anti-Christian persecution and discrimination worldwide, the archbishop wrote, are "ugly" and "growing," adding, "the mass media generally ignore or downplay its gravity."
Focusing more of the press attention consumed by the "Christmas wars" on those being slain for their faith is an important benefit of conferences like today's, the chairman of the North Korea Freedom Day and a leading North Korea freedom activist, Suzanne Scholte, said yesterday.
Little press attention was given to a recent USCIRF report documenting atrocities against North Korean Christians, even as the church in North Korea grows in the shadows, Ms. Scholte said. "I know, for example, that a lot of believers don't have Bibles, but they've memorized whole passages and sections of the Bible because they're afraid to have a Bible," Ms. Scholte said.
"There are more martyrs today than there have been in the history of Christianity," Ms. Scholte said. "We kind of take for granted the freedoms we have here."
Mr. Santorum, in an e-mail to the Sun, said of today's conference: "As millions of Christians around the world are prohibited in the coming weeks from celebrating or observing one of their most important holy days, that of Christmas, it is an appropriate time for us to remember their suffering and to work to advance religious freedom for all."
His Senate colleague, Mr. Kennedy, however, will spend his holiday energies highlighting "the 'true meaning of Christmas' and the minimum wage," and demanding that Republicans eliminate the "silent slavery of poverty" by rescinding their "tax breaks for the rich" and increasing the federal minimum wage.
At a press conference this morning in front of the Capitol Christmas tree, Mr. Kennedy, joined by Democratic members of Congress, will kick off a campaign to frame Republican budget cuts as antithetical to the spirit of Christmas that will continue through the rest of the congressional session, a spokeswoman for the senator, Laura Capps, said.
In response to a request for further comment on Mr. Kennedy's campaign, Ms. Capps directed the Sun to statements made by Mr. Kennedy on the floor of the Senate Monday.
After criticizing proposed reductions in a variety of welfare programs including Medicaid, food stamps, and Head Start, Mr. Kennedy denounced Republicans by saying: "Are these actions consistent with the spirit of this holiday season?"
"Rather than debate whether the word 'Christmas' should appear in our stores and on our greeting cards," Mr. Kennedy said, "shouldn't we be living out the hope that came from the first Christmas and do more for our fellow citizens than greater tax breaks for the rich and greater hardship for the poor and everyone else?"
According to Mr. Kennedy's speech, the senator's Christmas gifts to America would include redistributing banks' profits to college students to pay for their education, providing federal assistance for home-heating costs, and raising the minimum wage.

  SAUDI ARABIA (92%);  INDONESIA (91%); VIET NAM (90%); KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (79%); CHINA (79%); EGYPT (79%); NIGERIA (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); INDIA (76%)






   


December 12, 2005 Monday



 BC-Australia-Racial Unrest, 1st Ld-Writethru,1002

 
Thousands riot at Australia beach in one of country's worst outbursts of racial violence @pCRED:Associated Press @pCUT:A man threatens police Sunday at Cronulla Beach in Sydney, Australia, after ethnic tensions erupted into running battles between police and a mob of young people, many chanting racial slurs. @BY1:By Mike Corder @BY2:Associated Press
@SYDNEY, Australia Young people riding in vehicles smashed cars and store windows in suburban Sydney late Monday, a day after thousands of drunken white youths attacked people they believed were of Arab descent at a beach in the same area in one of Australia's worst outbursts of racial violence.
Sunday's attack apparently prompted by reports that Lebanese youths had assaulted two lifeguards sparked retaliation by young men of Arab descent in several Sydney suburbs, fighting with police and smashing 40 cars with sticks and bats, police said. Thirty-one people were injured and 16 were arrested in hours of violence. 
The rampage on Monday broke out in Cronulla, the same coastal suburb where the violence began, and in neighboring Carringbah, said Paul Bugden, spokesman for New South Wales police. Calm was restored by early Tuesday.
Bugden said six people were arrested and one person apparently was hit by a rock in Monday's violence. He did not have descriptions of those involved in the rampage, but he said it "obviously stems from the last 24-48 hours."
Australian Associated Press, citing a resident who declined to be named, said men riding in up to 50 cars and wielding baseball bats converged on Cronulla, smashing cars. Ambulances were called to help at least one injured man seen lying on the side of the road.
Steven Dawson said a bottle thrown through his apartment window in the suburb of Brighton-Le-Sands showered his 5-month-old son Caleb with glass, but did not hurt the child.
Horst Dreizner said a car had rammed into his denture store and he feared the violence would escalate. "Personally, I think it is only the beginning," he said in a telephone interview.
Elsewhere, about 300 people of Arab descent demonstrated against Sunday's attack outside one of Sydney's largest mosques, amid tight security.
The riots began Sunday after rumors circulated that youths of Lebanese descent were responsible for an attack last weekend on two lifeguards at Cronulla Beach. Police said the assault was not believed to be racially motivated.
Police, meanwhile, formed a strike force to track down the instigators of the attack, some of whom were believed to be from white supremacist groups. Police said they were also seeking an Arab man who allegedly stabbed a white man in the back.
Morris Iemma, the premier of New South Wales state, said police would use video images and photographs to track down the instigators. "Let's be very clear, the police will be unrelenting in their fight against these thugs and hooligans," he said.
Prime Minister John Howard condemned the violence, but said he did not believe racism was widespread in Australia.
"Attacking people on the basis of their race, their appearance, their ethnicity, is totally unacceptable and should be repudiated by all Australians irrespective of their own background and their politics," Howard said.
But he added: "I'm not going to put a general tag [of] racism on the Australian community."
Australia has long prided itself on accepting immigrants from Italians and Greeks after World War II to families fleeing political strife in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. In the last census in 2001, nearly a quarter of Australia's 20 million people said they were born overseas.
However, tensions between youths of Arabic descent and white Australians have been rising in recent years, largely because of anti-Muslim sentiment fueled by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States and deadly bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, in October 2002.
About 300,000 Muslims live in Australia, the majority in large cities.
"Arab Australians have had to cope with vilification, racism, abuse and fear of a racial backlash for a number of years, but these riots will take that fear to a new level," said Roland Jabbour, chairman of the Australian Arabic Council.
Police had increased the number of officers patrolling the beach in the Sydney suburb on Sunday after cell phone text messages urged people to gather there to retaliate for the attack on the lifeguards.
Police said more than 5,000 white youths, some wrapped in Australian flags and chanting racist slurs, fought with police, attacked people they believed to be of Arab descent and assaulted a pair of paramedics trying to help people escape the riot.
Police fought back with batons and pepper spray.
Many of the youths had been drinking heavily, police said. One white teenager had the words "We grew here, you flew here" painted on his back. Someone had written "100 percent Aussie pride" in the sand. TV broadcasts showed a group of young women attacking another woman, whose ethnicity was not clear.
The violence shocked this city of 4 million that considers itself a cultural melting pot.
"What we have seen yesterday is something I thought I would never see in Australia and perhaps we have not seen in Australia in any of our lifetimes and that is a mass call to violence based on race," Community Relations Commission chairman Stepan Kerkyasharian told Sky News.
Cronulla Beach, which is easily accessible by train but is not a popular destination for foreign tourists, is often visited by youngsters from poorer suburbs, many of them of Arab descent. Residents accuse the youths of traveling in gangs and sometimes intimidating other beachgoers.
Aborigines rioted in the Sydney neighborhood of Redfern in February 2004 after blaming police for the death of a 17-year-old boy. Forty police were wounded.

 AUSTRALIA (96%); 




18


 
 


December 9, 2005, Friday



 In tsunami relief camps, kids sing their hearts out

 
Zulkiran Minrukom bounds to the stage at Blang Krueng relief camp, grabs a microphone like a Vegas lounge singer, and then turns to face the formidable crowd ... and freezes.
Blink, blink. He just needs to start singing and he'll warm up.
Blink, blink. Any song will do. "Old MacDonald." "Smoke on the Water." 
Blink, blink. Perhaps we should give him some time. After all, Zulkiran is only 5 years old and this is probably his first singing contest. Blink. Deep breath, and finally, he warbles a love song about a girl named Zahra. The crowd breathes a sigh of relief.
Welcome to PM Idol, a contest run by the Indonesian Red Cross and modeled loosely on the "American Idol" television show. It's part of a psychological support program offered to children, like Zulkiran, who are survivors of last year's Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed 200,000 and left more than 500,000 homeless. Organizers say giving children a chance to express themselves through song or poetry allows them to draw on inner strengths that every child has, and is a crucial step toward normalcy.
"We always work with teaching the idea that 'I have something, I can do something, and I am something,' " says Amin Khoja, a psycho-social programs specialist for the American Red Cross, which helped the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) to develop the PM Idol program. "Children can perform something, and when they build their internal resources, they can do something more. Because of this disaster, children have lost parents or teachers, they have lost their inner resources. So we hope this helps them to rebuild their own resources."
Participants in the contest become stars not just in their relief camp, in front of other children and parents, but also on weekly radio talk shows, hosted by PMI psychiatrists or counselors every Friday night. The top three winners for each category - singing for boys, singing for girls, and poetry reading - are recorded and replayed across the province.
The idea for the contest was serendipitous, but sprung from the Indonesian culture's profound love of music. A few months back, the Red Cross had been showing cartoons at a relief camp on hygiene and other issues when the projector broke down. While technicians struggled to get the projector working, two little girls took a microphone and began singing popular Indonesian songs. The crowd went wild.
Now, for the month of December, Red Cross workers are fanning out to relief camps in Banda Aceh and surrounding villages, conducting two local contests per week. Winners from each local contest will then perform in a final round on Dec. 23.
At Blang Krueng, an energetic master of ceremonies fires up the children. "Are you ready?" Yes, the children shout. "Have you had lunch?" Yes! The M.C. then calls the children on stage one by one.
A surprising number of songs are about the tsunami itself, an indication that the children are eager to make sense of a disaster that stunned much of the world, but which many Indonesians today view as a message from God to become better Muslims.
"At 8 a.m., there was an earthquake shaking the earth," sings Fajar Arif Mumandar, a 7-year-old from the camp. "Houses and hills were brought down. Everything is flattened. There are bodies everywhere. Allah, Allah, is this your will? We didn't believe in you before."
Other children sing traditional songs about orphaned children, songs that have suddenly become relevant to many of these children who have lost parents, brothers, and sisters.
While young Zulkiran's love song to Zahra warms the crowd's hearts, 7-year-old Mohammad Safrijal quickly becomes the favorite to win. Mohammad has a strong, clear voice honed by listening to the radio, and he sings a popular Indonesian song that warns that the end of the world is coming, because the content of popular movies have become worse and worse.
Mohammad says he finds comfort in singing, and he sings both at home and at Koran school.
Among the girls, it's clearly Yeni Zahra who has the edge. She reads a poem composed by her teenage sister Munira, who was killed by the tsunami. Yeni's family had found the poem among the rubble while they were searching for Munira.
"This poem is about life," begins Yeni, who seems wise for her seven years. "My older sister wrote this; she's not here anymore." She straightens her back. "She was taken by the tsunami. She's dead. This is a good way to remember her."
In the end, Yeni and Mohammad do take the first prizes, and Yeni's mom says she's proud of her brave little girl.
"I have never heard this poem before," she says, holding a small transistor radio that is Yeni's PM Idol prize. "Munira had written it for a school activity." Four of the five pages of the poem were lost in the tsunami. This is the only one that remains.
Mohammad's mom, Yulida, is also exudes a parent's joy and wonder for a homegrown talent. "I don't sing, so he learned this on the radio and at school," she says. "Of course, I'm proud of him."
(c) . The 

 INDONESIA (95%)







 
 


December 9, 2005, Friday



 Reporters on the Job

 
* Muslim Country and Western: Staff writer Scott Baldauf and staff photographer Andy Nelson did not arrive in Indonesia expecting to capture the images and ideas found in today's story about a singing contest among tsunami refugee children. But Scott says this Muslim country has a profound obsession with music. 
"You really can't help but notice the love of singing here. Turn on the TV, and you will find multiple singing contests, including 'Indonesian Idol,' and even ... I'm not making this up ... an American country and Western music show called 'Goin' Country.' "
All the songs are sung in Bahasa Indonesian. But, says Scott, as a native of Texas, he can vouch for the veracity of the melodies: "They're pure country. And there are dancers in the background, with cowboy hats, doing the boot-scootin' boogie."
So, when Scott heard about the refugee singing contest, it made sense within the context of the society, and he had to go see what it was all about.
Online extras
* Tehran Plane Crash: Staff writer Scott Peterson did not know any of the 68 Iranian journalists who died in a military plane crash Tuesday. But he attended the funeral Thursday in Tehran. For his Iranian colleagues also covering the event, says Scott, it was an emotional day full of long hugs, tears, and condolences.
* Muslim Brotherhood: Staff writer Dan Murphy has been following the Egyptian elections closely during the past month. Wednesday was the final round of voting, and the most violent.
David Clark Scott
World editor
Let us hear from you.
Mail to: One Norway Street, Boston, MA 02115 via e-mail: world(at)csmonitor.com
(c) . The 

  IRAN,  (90%);  IRAN (68%)







 The Chronicle of Philanthropy
 
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

December 8, 2005 Thursday



 Indonesians' Hopes for Rebuilding Recede

 
Nearly a year after the tsunamis flattened Indonesia's Sumatra coast, the only reminder that one Muslim neighborhood ever existed are the hundreds of little wooden crosses that dot the bare landscape. Hand-painted signs nailed to the stakes read: "The owner of this house is still alive" and "This land belongs to HJ Nur Azizah."
Most of the houses that once stood here were leveled in every direction for miles. Though all the bodies have been found and removed, and the land has been cleared of splintered wood, twisted cars, and uprooted trees, what remains is a muddy graveyard. In some places all that is left are concrete foundations that rise out of the ground like headstones.
Many of the people whose homes were destroyed in the tsunamis now live in tents or makeshift wooden barracks. Some of the luckier ones have found relatives to take them in. All of them are desperate to return to their land and restart their lives. But only a fraction of the houses that were here have been rebuilt, so most survivors live like refugees in their own country. 
"Many organizations and agencies thought once they were able to provide emergency shelter and tents in January and February, it would be possible to provide permanent housing," says Jan Egeland, the U.N. under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, during a tour of Aceh, the province in northernmost Sumatra. "That was a miscalculation."
Despite governments and individuals pledging billions of dollars to help rebuild Aceh, and the presence of hundreds of international NGO's, fewer than 10,000 permanent houses have been built out of the estimated 125,000 homes needed. Difficulties securing land titles, shortages of wood and concrete, and vexing building codes have all delayed reconstruction efforts. Even groups experienced in building houses have been slow off the mark. Habitat for Humanity is just now putting the finishing touches on 800 of the 10,000 houses it has set as its target.
With living conditions in the camps deteriorating and the monsoon rains making life miserable for the estimated 65,000 people still in tents, frustration levels are rising. Residents of one refugee camp tore down a billboard erected by a nonprofit group that boasted about the number of houses it is building. In several towns, residents have complained that humanitarian groups are using shoddy building materials, and have asked them to leave.
Charity Accused of Lying
Inside the wooden barracks where people from the village of Dayah Mamplam have sought refuge, patience is wearing thin. Mohamed Bukhari,who has no job and who has been living in the crowded camp for months, vacillates between despair and anger.
"World Vision said they would build us houses, but they lie," says Mr. Bukhari. He and his sister were the only members of their family to survive. "In May they came and promised us 260 permanent houses. They showed us photos. So we cleared the land, and waited and waited. Now the vegetation has grown back. And until now they have not built a single house."
The villagers in this camp, who live on canned fish and rice distributed by international charities working here, say they understand that delays are inevitable. But they believed World Vision's promises and even turned down a subsequent offer from Oxfam to build them houses. Mariani, who like many Indonesians has only one name, says the villagers haven't heard a word from anyone in months.
"When the head of the village went to World Vision's office in Aceh they were told that the person who handled this had left the country," says Mariani, who tries to quiet her 10-month-old baby. "We can only live in the barracks for two years. I'm scared where we will go after this."
The magnitude of the disaster brought unexpected challenges, concedes Geno Teofilo, World Vision's communications manager in Aceh. Building materials are often in short supply. Land titles were washed away. Village leaders were killed, leaving behind no one who can make decisions for their communities. As a result, internal power struggles plague many neighborhoods, he says, and different factions play the nonprofit groups off one another.
Although World Vision has been lauded for its feeding programs and its community planning, Mr. Teofilo acknowledges that actual housing construction has been slower than he would like.
Even though World Vision is one of the best-financed humanitarian organizations in the tsunami region   it has raised more than $246-million   it has continually revised downward the number of houses it intends to build. Instead of 15,000 houses, its original estimate, the group now plans to build 4,000. To date, only two have been completed.
"Permanent housing takes a long time to build correctly," says Mr. Teofilo. Communities must be consulted, and it is vital that there is proper planning. He says one aid group rushed to build, only to find its houses swamped by a high tide. "It's rather unreasonable that everyone will have a house one year after the tsunami."
'Logistical Nightmare'
World Vision is by no means the only group facing unexpected difficulties. The most experienced and well-financed organizations were stymied by the scale of the disaster that hit a region where few had experience working. Because of a long-running separatist movement and a state of martial law, Aceh had been closed to most outsiders.
"It's a logistical nightmare," says Kris Wangsadiputra, Habitat for Humanity's program manager. "It's hard to get wood. The price of bricks has gone up as all the NGO's start to build. It's hard to find workers because so many died."
Nearly every organization building homes is experiencing delays after fuel prices more than doubled in October. Suppliers and transport companies are asking to renegotiate their contracts because they cannot absorb the sharp increase.
Sara Lumsdon, Oxfam's program coordinator in Aceh, says concrete is now in short supply. "Because of the recent rains the river is too high," she says, "and they can't get the sand."
Charities are also having trouble getting wood that is from environmentally acceptable sources.
Soon after the tsunamis, environmental groups warned that a housing boom could fuel even more illegal logging in Indonesia. They feared that Aceh's remaining rainforests would be cut down, resulting in yet another environmental disaster. Deforestation is already being blamed for landslides and flooding that have killed hundreds this year.
Attilio Lenzi, a structural engineer and head of construction at Save the Children, is acutely aware of the need to ensure that the wood is from environmentally friendly sources. His organization is one of the few building traditional Indonesian houses, which are wood, as opposed to houses primarily made of brick and cement.
"I put a strict condition that contractors must provide us with the wood's origin," Mr. Lenzi says. "If they violate this, we'll rip up the contract. I don't know what else we can do."
Mark Infield, director of Fauna & Flora International in Aceh, says that nonprofit groups are in a real bind. Few, if any, have the capacity to tell if wood is actually from legal sources. Timber merchants are getting better at concealing the true source of the wood, he says. Even his organization, which has been working in Aceh for more than 10 years, is sometimes hard-pressed to prove the wood has not been illegally logged.
To guarantee the source of the wood, some nonprofit groups are now importing their timber, shipping it in from as far away as Australia, but that inevitably means more time and money.
The greatest challenge, however, is land. The tsunamis rewrote the coastal map. Large tracts of land, including farming plots, are now underwater. In some cases new land must be purchased and entire communities have to be relocated.
Buying Property
The government is working with communities to help them buy property, though not all villagers want to move. Fishermen fear they will lose their livelihoods if they go too far inland. Others worry they will have to settle for plots smaller than they had before. Those who rented their homes are anxious that they won't receive anything. As of yet there has been no policy adopted to reassure them otherwise.
The survivors from the village of Meunasah Bak U, however, can hardly wait to leave their makeshift camp alongside the single-lane road running down the coast. For nearly a year they have lived in tents and in huts they built with scraps of wood scavenged from the beach. They live along the sea, which appears as calm as it did in the minutes before the tsunamis literally wiped their village off the map. Because all they have now is each other, they don't care where they go, as long as they go together.
"We have all agreed to leave," says Zakaria Yusef, the village secretary, who like the others living here survived only because he wasn't home the morning the waves hit. "We want to be away as far as possible from the sea."
In areas where the waters have receded, and the land has been cleared, issues of land ownership are complicating reconstruction efforts.
Aceh's public-works department was swamped by the waves, and many documents were lost. Nearly a third of its employees were killed.
According to a joint report prepared by Oxfam and the United Nations Development Program, 300,000 parcels of land were affected; only 25 percent of them had proper titles. Other estimates put this number as low as 5 percent. Mapping the land, conferring with survivors, and issuing titles have added weeks, if not months, to the process.
Nevertheless, Catholic Relief Services is one of many international charities that say they won't build on land where ownership is unclear.
"We don't want to create problems in the future," says Scott P. Campbell, director of the charity's Aceh division. "We are not just building houses, we are rebuilding communities."
"But we also don't promise what we can't deliver," Mr. Campbell adds. "We want a longer-term relationship for a longer-term impact."
Speeding Up Construction
The Indonesian government has tried to speed up construction efforts that had initially been bogged down by what critics called impractical and confusing building codes.
In April the government's Recovery and Reconstruction Agency was created to coordinate disaster work and streamline the delivery of aid. The agency was granted unprecedented cabinet-level powers and headed by a former minister who is being given high marks by aid groups working on housing.
Where there is no dispute over land ownership, the reconstruction agency says it is willing to issue temporary permission to build so construction can get started.
"If you start to build, I'll come in and make it happen," says the agency's housing deputy, Eddy Purwanto. "To claim that you have to wait for the proper papers is only an excuse for delays."
Mr. Purwanto says he is disappointed by the pace of reconstruction being done by the larger and more well-known humanitarian organizations working in Aceh.
He believes that it is the small groups that have come, seen what was needed, and just started building. Still, it is the small organizations that have often skirted the reconstruction agency's regulations and oversight processes.
Mr. Purwanto is particularly critical of international groups that raise money in the United States based on the number of houses they tell donors they will build. But when they submit their plans to his agency, he has seen the final number fall by more than half.
Compounding the problem is that once a nonprofit group has signed a memorandum of understanding with a village, no other group will go in and build.
Groups like Catholic Relief Services have the capacity and the money to erect 18,000 houses but can't find communities to build in.
"We can't wait for these people and their promises," says Mr. Purwanto. "We are going to be evaluating all the NGO's and donors and making some decisions. We will soon be announcing who is performing and who is not, and recommend that some of them leave Aceh."
John Long, a housing adviser at the Office of the United Nations Recovery Coordinator for Aceh and Nias, says that can't happen soon enough.
"A lot of people are building who have no track record constructing houses," says Mr. Long. He estimates that half the houses being built do not meet the minimum size and safety standards. Some groups build only houses but no bathrooms. Or they build enough houses for only half the community so the people living there have to choose who gets a house.
"People made promises they can't keep," says Mr. Long. "We are going to lose the faith of the community. The international community is responsible for that."
"If we can't do this right," he asks, "how can we do anything else right?"

 ASIA (94%); 







 
 

 (California)

December 6, 2005 Tuesday



 Rumsfeld sees global threat if U.S. quits Iraq too soon

 
If U.S. forces leave too soon, Iraq will become a haven for terrorists and the base of a spreading Islamic superstate that would threaten the rest of the world, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.
Speaking at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Rumsfeld warned that al-Qaida leaders such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden would seize power in the wake of an American withdrawal and turn Iraq into the kind of terrorist safe haven that Afghanistan was before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Moreover, Rumsfeld said: "Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East, and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia. This is their plan. They have said so. We make a terrible mistake if we fail to listen and learn." 
"The message that retreat would send to the free people of Iraq and to moderate Muslim reformers throughout the region and the world would be that they cannot count on America," Rumsfeld said. "The message it would send to our enemies would be that America will not defend itself against terrorists in Iraq, and it will not defend itself against terrorists anywhere."
The Bush administration has been warning of the dangers of a new caliphate -- an Islamic superstate based on Islamic laws with religious and political authority over much of the Muslim world -- to bolster waning support for its policy in Iraq.
The message is similar to the domino theory that U.S. officials used 40 years ago to muster support for the Vietnam War by arguing that abandoning South Vietnam would allow the communists to conquer neighboring countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Much as the original domino theory overlooked the tensions between the Soviet Union and China, the power of nationalism and the appeal of prosperity, Rumsfeld's remarks neglected the deep animosity between Sunni Muslim extremists such as bin Laden and Iraq's Shiite majority. It also discounts the differences among predominately Muslim countries from Morocco to Indonesia.
A Sunni-dominated caliphate is unlikely in Iraq, where Shiites make up 60 percent of the population, said Akbar Ahmed, the chair of Islamic Studies at American University, and a former Pakistani ambassador to the United Kingdom. While fundamentalists on both sides say they like the idea of clerical government, Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting one another.
"It's like saying the Christians will be united under one banner," said Ahmed. "It sounds nice, but whose banner will it be?"
Ahmed said he believes that U.S. troops should stay in Iraq, but should pull out of most cities and towns.
If U.S. troops leave Iraq to its fate, the biggest beneficiary of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion could be Iran, Iraq's Shiite neighbor to the east, whose fundamentalist regime Bush four years ago branded as part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea, he said.
"In the present situation, I don't see a caliphate at all. What I do see is a strong Islamic Shiite government in Iraq making overtures to Iran, and that will have long-term implications for U.S. interests in the Middle East," Ahmed said.
Rumsfeld also blamed allegations of paid-for news in Iraq on a private contractor who's "alleged to have written accurate stories, but paid someone in the media in Iraq to carry the story." He didn't address the fact that U.S. military officials in Iraq themselves paid Iraqi journalists to write favorable stories, as Knight Ridder has reported.
In addition, Rumsfeld said that Iraqi security forces were improving. He said that 214,000 Iraqis were "trained and equipped," acknowledging that they have "varying degrees of experience." He added: "Each day and each week and each month that goes by, they gain more experience and more capability."
Iraqi Vice President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Muslim, however, told The Associated Press on Monday that the training of the Iraqi security forces, which are dominated by Shiite Muslims, has suffered a big setback in the past six months, and that the security forces increasingly are being used to settle old scores and make political gains.
The original caliphate was a period of centralized rule over much of the Muslim world in the early period of Islam. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Arab political and religious leaders in Damascus, then Baghdad, ruled an empire that stretched from Spain to Central Asia.
Establishing a caliphate is al-Qaida's stated purpose, but it's "highly unlikely" that the group will succeed anywhere, said Emily Hunt, a terrorism analyst and a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But it's possible that if the U.S. forces withdrew before Iraqi security forces could stand on their own, al-Zarqawi could use a destabilized Iraq to launch more attacks, she said.
Iraqi security forces and Iraq's fledging government, both dominated by majority Shiites, aren't yet capable of fighting insurgents and terrorist groups on their own, said Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert at the United States Institute for Peace.
"The Shiites aren't strong enough to stop this," said Marr, who's been watching Iraq for more than 50 years. "Iraq's government is fragile. Iraq has no police force or military force that can stop this insurgency. So, if you have a failed state, where people have no control, then (terrorists) can operate there."
The United States must stay to train Iraqi security forces and turn control over to them gradually, a process that "is going to take years," Marr said.
------
(c) 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. ----------

 UNITED STATES (98%); IRAQ (95%); VIET NAM (92%); INDONESIA (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); MALAYSIA (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%); EUROPE (79%); AFRICA (79%); THAILAND (79%); IRAN,  (79%); MOROCCO (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); ASIA (79%)







 
 
 (Minnesota)

December 6, 2005 Tuesday



 Rumsfeld warns of Islamic superstate; 
Talk of 'caliphate' reminds some of Cold War 'domino' image

 
WASHINGTON -- If U.S. forces leave too soon, Iraq will become a haven for terrorists and the base of a spreading Islamic superstate that would threaten the rest of the world, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Monday.
Speaking at John Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Rumsfeld warned that al-Qaida leaders such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden would seize power in the wake of an American withdrawal and turn Iraq into the kind of terrorist safe haven that Afghanistan was before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Moreover, Rumsfeld said, "Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East, and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia. This is their plan. They have said so. We make a terrible mistake if we fail to listen and learn. 
"The message that retreat would send to the free people of Iraq and to moderate Muslim reformers throughout the region and the world would be that they cannot count on America," Rumsfeld said. "The message it would send to our enemies would be that America will not defend itself against terrorists in Iraq, and it will not defend itself against terrorists anywhere."
The Bush administration has been warning of the dangers of a new caliphate -- an Islamic superstate based on Islamic laws with religious and political authority over much of the Muslim world -- to bolster waning support for its policy in Iraq.
The message is similar to the domino theory U.S. officials used 40 years ago to muster support for the Vietnam War by arguing that abandoning South Vietnam would allow the communists to conquer neighboring countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Much as the original domino theory overlooked the tensions between the Soviet Union and China, the power of nationalism and the appeal of prosperity, Rumsfeld's remarks neglected the deep animosity between Sunni Muslim extremists such as bin Laden and Iraq's Shiite majority. It also discounts the differences among predominantly Muslim countries from Morocco to Indonesia.
A Sunni-dominated caliphate is unlikely in Iraq, where Shiites make up 60 percent of the population, said Akbar Ahmed, the chair of Islamic Studies at American University and a former Pakistani ambassador to the United Kingdom. While fundamentalists on both sides say they like the idea of clerical government, Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting one another.
"It's like saying the Christians will be united under one banner," Ahmed said. "It sounds nice, but whose banner will it be?"
If U.S. troops leave Iraq to its fate, the biggest beneficiary of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion could be Iran, Iraq's Shiite neighbor to the east, whose fundamentalist regime Bush four years ago branded as part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea, he said.
"In the present situation, I don't see a caliphate at all. What I do see is a strong Islamic Shiite government in Iraq making overtures to Iran, and that will have long-term implications for U.S. interests in the Middle East," Ahmed said.
Rumsfeld also blamed allegations of paid-for news in Iraq on a private contractor who's "alleged to have written accurate stories, but paid someone in the media in Iraq to carry the story." He didn't address the fact that U.S. military officials in Iraq themselves paid Iraqi journalists to write favorable stories, as Knight Ridder has reported.
In addition, Rumsfeld said Iraqi security forces were improving.
But Iraqi Vice President Ghazi al Yawer, a Sunni Muslim, told the Associated Press on Monday that the training of the Iraqi security forces, which are dominated by Shiite Muslims, has suffered a big setback in the past six months and that the security forces increasingly are being used to settle old scores and make political gains.
The original caliphate was a period of centralized rule over much of the Muslim world in the early period of Islam. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Arab political and religious leaders in Damascus, then Baghdad, ruled an empire that stretched from Spain to Central Asia.
Establishing a caliphate is al-Qaida's stated purpose, but it's "highly unlikely" the group will succeed anywhere, said Emily Hunt, a terrorism analyst and visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But it's possible that if the U.S. forces withdrew before Iraqi security forces could stand on their own, al-Zarqawi could use a destabilized Iraq to launch more attacks, she said.

  IRAQ (95%); VIET NAM (92%); INDONESIA (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); MALAYSIA (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%); EUROPE (79%); AFRICA (79%); THAILAND (79%); IRAN,  (79%); MOROCCO (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); ASIA (79%)







 
 

 (Pennsylvania)

December 6, 2005 Tuesday



 Rumsfeld: Early exit may spur superstate; 
Official warns Iraq would become Islamic giant that would endanger rest of world.

 
WASHINGTON - If U.S. forces leave too soon, Iraq will become a haven for terrorists and the base of a spreading Islamic superstate that would threaten the rest of the world, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday. 
Speaking at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Rumsfeld warned that al-Qaida leaders such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden would seize power in the wake of an American withdrawal and turn Iraq into the kind of terrorist safe haven that Afghanistan was before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Moreover, Rumsfeld said: "Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East, and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia. This is their plan. They have said so. We make a terrible mistake if we fail to listen and learn."
"The message that retreat would send to the free people of Iraq and to moderate Muslim reformers throughout the region and the world would be that they cannot count on America," Rumsfeld said. "The message it would send to our enemies would be that America will not defend itself against terrorists in Iraq, and it will not defend itself against terrorists anywhere."
The Bush administration has been warning of the dangers of a new caliphate - an Islamic superstate based on Islamic laws with religious and political authority over much of the Muslim world - to bolster waning support for its policy in Iraq.
The message is similar to the domino theory that U.S. officials used 40 years ago to muster support for the Vietnam War by arguing that abandoning South Vietnam would allow the communists to conquer neighboring countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
As the original domino theory overlooked the tensions between the Soviet Union and China, the power of nationalism and the appeal of prosperity, so Rumsfeld's remarks neglected the animosity between Sunni Muslim extremists such as bin Laden and Iraq's Shiite majority. It also discounts differences among predominately Muslim countries from Morocco to Indonesia.
A Sunni-dominated caliphate is unlikely in Iraq, where Shiites make up 60 percent of the population, said Akbar Ahmed, the chair of Islamic Studies at American University, and a former Pakistani ambassador to the United Kingdom.

 UNITED STATES (96%);  INDONESIA (92%); VIET NAM (91%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); MALAYSIA (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); EUROPE (79%); AFRICA (79%); THAILAND (79%); MOROCCO (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); ASIA (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (75%)






   


December 5, 2005, Monday, 



 Tsunami survivors rebuild lives by remarrying

 
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- The killer tsunami that wiped out entire villages and killed tens of thousands of people here on Dec. 26 also shifted the marital landscape.
A year ago, single women found eligible men in short supply. Now, the tables have turned. Thousands of men widowed by the disaster are looking for brides.
 
"I am still on my honeymoon," says Nurdin, 45, drawing amused hoots from his neighbors in a fishing village just east of Aceh's regional capital on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Nurdin, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, lost his first wife and three of his four children to the waves. A week ago, he married Nilwati, 30, whose first husband and two children died in the tsunami.
Their wedding is unusual only because they are from the same village. More frequently, widowers in fishing villages around hard-hit Banda Aceh have found virgin brides from areas the tsunami spared. Before Dec. 26, these women might have struggled to find husbands because a long-running separatist rebellion here against the government in Jakarta thinned the population of potential grooms.
Now, Aceh's 400-year-old fishermen's cooperative, Panglima Laot, has been forced to mediate disputes in which too many suitors are vying for too few women, says Panglima Laot's secretary-general, Adli Abdullah.
The tsunami, generated Dec. 26 by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake, killed about 130,000 people on Indonesia's Sumatra island -- many in the northern region of Aceh.
A report released in March by the British relief group Oxfam said up to 80% of the tsunami victims were women. Among the explanations, according to Oxfam's report:
*Women stayed behind to look for their children.
*Women were less likely to know how to swim or were not able to climb to safety in palm trees.
*The waves struck on a Sunday, when men were out running errands, at sea -- where the waves were less ferocious -- or working inland in the fields.
When the men returned to their villages, they found devastation -- and loneliness.
"What do fishermen need? Wives," says Miftahudin, a Panglima Laot cooperative official.
While widows must complete two menstrual cycles before remarriage, Islamic widowers do not have to wait to remarry, says village leader Chairul Amri, who teaches at an Islamic school in Banda Aceh. Regardless, local custom -- if not religion -- has traditionally required a grieving man to wait 44 days before taking a new wife.
Some fishermen, desperate for companionship and help running households devastated by the tsunami, jumped the gun: "They would not wait 44 days," says Nurmawati, 44, a woman who lives in Krueng Raya, a fishing town 20 miles east of Banda Aceh.
Nurdin, the newlywed, lives in Lambada Lhok, which lost virtually all its women and children to the tsunami. An exception: Karmila, 25, whose friends rushed her to dry land and a hospital because she was nine months pregnant; she gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Nabila Siva, late Dec. 26.
Most of the village's men were spared because they were out fishing when the waves struck the land. When visitors from Lambada Lhok visit other villages these days, they often are asked to "bring handsome husbands," says Lambada Lhok fisherman Adnan, 40.
Far-flung family networks have gone to work connecting widowers with single women. Fifty brides already have arrived from Pidie district. The village has clan ties to Lambada Lhok. Because it is farther along Sumatra's east coast, it escaped the worst of the tsunami.
Mohammed Husen, 40, lost his wife and three children in the tsunami. He married a 25-year-old woman from Pidie district three months ago; she was a family friend he had known since the day she was born.
Azizah, 20, is one of the recent arrivals from Pidie. She gives her new husband a thumbs-up: "He's very handsome."
Another Pidie bride, Nuraini, 20, says: "We are very happy to marry. But we are bored because there is nothing to do here."
Lambada Lhok is a village of tents. Most people are still waiting for permanent housing. When they aren't washing dishes, cleaning clothes or cooking, the new brides sit in the shade chatting and waiting for their fishermen husbands to return from the sea.
It's not always so easy for the widowers to find brides. Some men struggle to raise the dowry -- typically 15 grams of gold in fishing communities -- necessary to seal an arranged marriage.
And when the deal is finalized, the widowers' marriages typically are held with little fanfare. Nurdin's wedding was held in a village office. "When an old man marries," he says, "there's no party anymore."

 INDONESIA (96%); 







  



December 5, 2005 Monday  




 Breakfast of DeLay Champions

 
 SAVE THE DATE! The "Defense Industry Reelection Event" for former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) is at 8:30 a.m. Thursday at the Capitol Hill Club. 
 Join Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, House Armed Services  Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and many of their colleagues who are getting together to help the embattled DeLay, who may actually have a competitive race next year.  
 The sponsors are a half-dozen defense lobby heavyweights: Greg Dahlberg, a former Army undersecretary and former aide to Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), now with Lockheed Martin;  Northrop Grumman's Diane Harper; American Defense International's Michael H. Herson; Letitia White of Copeland Lowery & Jacquez; defense consultant Al Jackson; and Doug Ritter of General Dynamics.  
 This is not a coffee and doughnuts affair. We're talking a sit-down with maybe some bacon and eggs, possibly even a pancake or two. Better yet, you can rub shoulders and set up golf outings with key GOP members of the two powerful House committees, including Henry Bonilla (Tex.), Ken Calvert (Calif.), Rodney P. Frelinghuysen (N.J.), Kay Granger (Tex.), Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (Calif.), Todd Tiahrt (Kan.), Roger Wicker (Miss.) and Joe Wilson (S.C.). 
 As would be expected, attending this event is an honor, albeit an expensive one. A "Host" PAC runs you $5,000  --  though maybe you can take home leftover bagels. You can be honored as a sponsoring PAC for $2,500, or you can make your individual donation for only $1,000. Please make checks payable to the Tom DeLay Congressional Committee. 
 Don't let your organization miss this opportunity to help DeLay. He'll thank you for it. 
Speaking of DeLay, here's how the Cape Gazette in Lewes, Del., handled recent news about legal problems affecting P.R. executive Michael Scanlon, his former press secretary: 
 "Sean Scanlon, a Rehoboth Beach lifeguard, pleaded guilty to federal charges that he conspired to defraud American Indian tribes." The paper noted that he's "better known in Washington, D.C., circles as Michael." 
 "While Scanlon was known as ruthless in Washington," the paper said, "he was also a generous friend to many Rehoboth Beach lifeguards," let folks use his house and took some of them to Daytona Beach, Fla., for a lifesaving competition "aboard Scanlon's private jet." Those days are probably over, since he must pay $19 million in restitution. 
 "Rehoboth Beach officials took Scanlon's plea in stride," the article noted, "saying the case does not reflect negatively on the resort town." But Rehoboth Beach Mayor Sam Cooper said he doesn't think Scanlon will still be allowed to work as a lifeguard. 
 Standards there are higher than they are here. 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a record-setting globetrotter, has made it clear she travels for strategic reasons, not to attend boring annual talkfests. 
 So first she blew off the ministerial meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in July in Laos, an event that every secretary of state since George P. Schultz has attended. Then she took a pass on the Australian-U.S. ministerial meeting last month in Adelaide. 
 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld went to that one, but not Rice, though she was in the area, in China, with President Bush. 
 And now she's headed off to Europe but skipping the ministerial conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a human rights organization that has played a key role in the New Europe and the Balkans. This even though she's going to be  within an hour or so by air of the meeting in Slovenia when she flies from Berlin to Romania. 
 Worse yet, those guys don't even rate Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, who covered for Rice at the first two gatherings. The OSCE gets Undersecretary R. Nicholas Burns, who, an announcement said, will "deliver a message of strong U.S. support for the OSCE." 
 Really, really strong support. 
Speaking of travels, public diplomacy czar Karen Hughes is now off to Central America with several business executives to "encourage private-sector assistance" for hurricane relief in the area. 
 Since taking the job in August, she has been to a half-dozen Muslim countries, including one trip to Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia and other visits to Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan. 
 This trip, to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, promises not to be a hard sell. If there's any region in the world outside maybe Eastern Europe where people like us, it's Central America. A recent poll showed between 70 and 87 percent have a favorable view of the United States, with Honduras, Panama and El Salvador leading the way. 
The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to make certain that Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. knows what he's getting into. The second question on the panel's  required questionnaire is: "State the position for which you have been nominated." "Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States" Alito guessed. So far so good. (He has already gotten further than White House counsel Harriet Miers did.) 

 UNITED STATES (94%)







 Lincoln Journal Star,
 


December 4, 2005 Sunday  




 Letters

 
KINDNESS OF A STRANGER
I have had two minor operations for bites that become infected, causing my skin to abscess, eventually needing to be lanced. Thanksgiving Day, my third was forming.
Angry and tearful, I had called the hospital and had decided to purchase antibiotics in hopes that the infection would be controlled without another lancing. I have no insurance, the medication was $91.39.
An angel in the form of a gentleman happened to overhear my mother and I at the 17th and South Walgreen's location. He paid for my medication with his credit card and walked away quietly. I hope God blesses him the way he has blessed me.
I was so caught up with finances and how my life seems to be spinning out of control with once-a-month operations and packing my skin, that I forgot that Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful, and that gentleman made me remember the true meaning of the holiday. 
May God bless him and his loved ones for his kindness.
Shadlee J. Schmid, Lincoln
SHAME AS PUNISHMENT
Recently I was watching the news and saw a story about a girl holding a sign on the side of the road that said, "I don't work hard in school. I get C's and D's so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."
The girl's parents had decided it was time to do something about their daughter's grades, so they created the sign and stood next to her while she held it up beside a busy street.
I think this was a great idea. This treatment caused no mental anguish or physical harm to the girl, but it motivated her to get her grades up. The motivation was shame.
If other parents used shame as a punishment I think fewer children would be problematic in school and at home. Speaking as a teenager, I would much rather be grounded for a week than have to hold that sign for an hour.
I don't suggest we put people in stocks again, but perhaps inducing some shame to society wouldn't hurt. I feel shame would be a much greater deterrent not only for children, but for adult criminals as well.
Bring back shame, for the sake of us all.
Suzy Hammons, Weeping Water
SHAME AS ABUSE
No matter how you analyze it, a civilized human being must ultimately come to the conclusion that using public humiliation as a means to "teach responsibility" to a child is first and foremost child abuse. I am referring, of course, to the column written by Rochelle Riley (LJS, Nov. 26) in which she supports placing signs on children and standing them on public corners to teach them a lesson.
A parent or educator or leader who can't think of a better way to discipline children proves to all of us that they are cruel, simple-minded, and barbaric. This is not the kind of person I want setting an example for America. Condoning this method sets us back a century or so.
I suggest we stand the mother on the corner with a sign that says, "I need to learn effective and compassionate parenting skills."
Cindy Olson, Lincoln
LINCOLN STICKING IT TO US
In my recent adventures to Grand Island and Kearney areas, I noticed something wrong. Gas prices in Grand Island were $1.91 a gallon and the gas prices in York were $1.99 a gallon. Why is the gas price in Lincoln still $2.06 a gallon?
You can't blame the pipelines. Grand Island and Lincoln both have pipelines within five miles of the city. So transportation isn't the issue. Why is Lincoln 15 cents higher in gas prices and also they charge us $11 a wheel for wheel tax?
To me I am just thinking, when is the city of Lincoln going to give us a break?!
Ron Glinsmann, Lincoln
WAR BRINGS SAFETY
I would like to answer the question posed by Daniel Hodges in his letter (LJS, Nov. 26).
Yes, I honestly can say I feel safer and better off now that President Bush decided to wage the global war on terrorism in Iraq. I most definitely feel safer than those in nations that continue to endure terrorist attacks on innocent civilians and children, nations Christian and Muslim alike such as Spain, Britain, Indonesia and Jordan.
It appears that Hodges has bought into the liberal myth that Bush linked Iraq to 9/11. I have heard no quote from Bush on making that point but I have heard him say quite the contrary, that there was no linkage between Iraq and 9/11. I do feel safer that war is being fought in Iraq and other places and not in the U.S.A.
I do agree with Hodges that it is time we step up and demand change. The only way we will win the global war on terrorism is if we unite and support the required efforts. Demand that those who demagogue the issue for political and financial gain cease. Demand that people become more informed and stop propagating the myths of the demagogues on the left.
Thankfully for Hodges and all of us, there are those who are informed enough to understand the facts versus the myths. My son is one of those individuals. He has enlisted and departs for boot camp Jan. 3. After boot camp, he hopes to continue to make us all safer and better off.
Ken Garvey, Lincoln
UNDERSTANDING HISTORY
The recent flap over Lincoln East teacher Mike Baker's conceptual approach to teaching history reveals an odd lack of district understanding of both pedagogy and learner characteristics that must be jointly considered in the creation of engaging instruction that leads to learning. Or the disquieting need for control.
Citing the need for uniformity of approach in order to accommodate mobile students is hardly a basis for sound pedagogy; in fact, it is unrelated to pedagogy.  The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard argued that life must be understood backward, though lived forward. And surely understanding is the essence of every classroom.
History, unlike mathematics, is not a discipline that is sequence-dependent in building understanding. Discovering a conceptual basis that prods students to wonder why things are as they are, while building from the immediacy of the present, rests within every creative educator who is well versed in subject matter and determined to impart passion and understanding of a subject. Baker has hit upon an organizing method for teaching for understanding, without which a history course - and most courses, for that matter - might easily become an endless procession of factoids.
During school year 2003-04 Baker submitted his professional practices and beliefs to rigorous examination as a candidate for National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification. This 400-hour process of compiled writings, detail-analyzed lesson plans, unedited videos, student artifacts, case studies, and a half-day written examination lend considerable credence to this professional's ability to merge national teaching standards, relevant pedagogy and practice in serving students and the patrons of Lincoln.
The district protests too much, me thinks.
Gerry Larson, Lincoln
THE MYTHS OF HUNTING
With hunting season here, we are again treated to the graphic trophy-photos in our newspapers. In past letters, those who object to these images have been attacked by hunting advocates who use words like "conservation" and "stewardship" to defend their activities.
Hunting today has evolved into an economy-driven, recreational industry. It is self-evident to the objective investigator that hunting no longer serves a positive function. Being a former hunter myself, I know how seductive the conservation/stewardship argument can be. However, those defenses evaporate upon close examination.
The hard fact is that the hunting industry manipulates animal populations to provide targets and sell permits. Deer have been manipulated to the point of overpopulation in some areas. Current hunting practices routinely kill large numbers of bucks, thus critically reducing the herd and causing compensatory rebound - a population explosion which would not have otherwise happened. This means no improvement regarding auto/deer accidents, damage to property, and starvation of animals.
Hunters stock millions of pheasants, quail, ducks, foxes, raccoons and turkeys each year on private property expressly for hunting. Many game birds such as ring-necked pheasant, gray partridges and chukar were imported from Asia and China for hunting. Game commissions use careful science each year to make sure there are enough animals to keep hunters happy and spending money.
Neither the intent nor the results in these practices can be confused with "conservation" or "stewardship."
Larry Claassen, Lincoln
WEEKLY LETTERS TALLY
The Journal Star received 79 letters to the editor last week. Thirty-four were published. Sixteen writers addressed term limits for elected officials, making that the most popular topic. Ranking second with eight letters was the proposal for a third Wal-Mart in Lincoln.

 UNITED STATES (75%)








 


December 2, 2005



 Muslims Come to Israel's Defense at Asian Parley

 
When Israeli officials showed up in Thailand last week to participate for the first time in the annual meeting of the Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace, they received a hostile welcome from several Muslim nations. But in a sharp turnaround from other international parleys, Israel found itself being defended by representatives of Indonesia, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
This year's conference was held in the Thai city of Pattaya. Throughout the gathering, Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese officials tried to have the Israeli delegation expelled - and to pass an array of anti-Israel condemnations that had been approved in previous years. 
But the president of the sixth annual conference, Thai parliament chairman Dr. Bhukin Balaklava, refused to expel the Israeli delegation. The committee enjoyed observer status at the parley and was headed by Chemi Doron, vice chairman of the Knesset. Balaklava said that countries with serious disputes should take part in the conference with the hopes of settling their disagreements. Still, the Iranians sent out a false news release claiming that Israel was expelled from the conference.
In another diplomatic victory for Jerusalem, for the first time the participating nations did not include a condemnation of Israeli policy toward Palestinians in their closing statement. They did vote to condemn terrorism in all its forms, arguing that such acts never could be justified.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, was the first country to oppose the attempts to pass the anti-Israel resolutions, though it refuses to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state as long as the conflict with the Palestinians remains unsettled. Members of the Jordanian and Palestinian delegations joined the Indonesians in support of Israel. The Jordanian and the Palestinian delegates also showed support for their Israeli counterparts outside the official conference meetings, sitting side by side with them during breakfast each day.
The groundbreaking gestures in Thailand come as the P.A. and several Arab leaders appear to be taking steps to reach out to Israel. This past Monday, Israeli and Palestinian ambulance services signed an agreement they hope will ease Israel's accession to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Under the pact signed in Geneva between Magen David Adom and the Palestinian Red Crescent, Palestinian ambulances are guaranteed speedier passage through West Bank checkpoints. The move is seen as a key to mollifying Arab signatories to the 1949 Geneva Conventions who otherwise might have voted against a resolution. The resolution, which will be discussed next week, introduces a nondenominational red diamond emblem to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, as Muslim states refuse to recognize the red Star of David.
Also this week, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak praised Prime Minister Sharon as the only Israeli leader who could bring peace and the king of Saudi Arabia hailed Amir Peretz's elevation to Labor Party leader as a development that could unite the Israeli peace camp.
At the conference in Thailand, Jerusalem's opponents took several steps to protest the newfound friendliness toward Israel. Representatives of Iran, Syria and Lebanon boycotted a lunch with Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra over the presence of the Israeli delegation.
Just before the close of the conference November 23, the three countries made a last attempt to isolate Israel. Their representatives threatened not to join a meeting with the king of Thailand if the Israeli delegates attended. The three Muslim nations argued that since Israel only enjoyed observer status at the gathering, under conference rules, Jerusalem's representatives should not be allowed to take part in the meeting with the king.
Balaklava, the president of this year's conference, informed the head of the Israeli delegation about the ultimatum. In order to avoid forcing their Thai hosts into a difficult decision, the Israeli Foreign Ministry decided to have its delegation skip the meeting with the king.
It seems unlikely that Israel will be allowed to take part in next year's conference, as Iran is the scheduled locale. The 2007 conference is set to take place in Indonesia.

 ISRAEL (97%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%); JORDAN (94%); THAILAND (94%);   SAUDI ARABIA (79%); LEBANON (79%); EGYPT (79%); IRAN,  (79%); SYRIA (79%)




19


  



November 29, 2005 Tuesday  




 Sharing Their Hopes With a Muslim Pioneer

 
The ancient gravestones were casting the first, long shadows of daybreak, but Rudianto had already been awake for two hours. It was 5:50 a.m. and the scruffy, bleary-eyed pilgrim was seated cross-legged on the tile floor near the central tomb where he had spent the last two nights. 
  For six weeks, he had been trekking along the sultry northern rim of Indonesia's Java island, visiting the graves of the wali songo, the nine Muslim saints who first introduced Islam here more than five centuries ago.  
  "When you walk, you feel closer to God," said the 26-year-old cowherd, pulling his ratty brown scarf tighter against the dawn breeze. "When you suffer, you feel close to Him." 
  His newfound companion, Muhammed Ardi, 30, nodded in agreement. Then Ardi took a sip from the communal coffee cup, a used plastic bottle with the final dregs of the morning brew. A religion student, he had sailed three days from one of the outer islands to reach the town of Demak. 
 Birds chirped unseen in the mango and frangipani trees around the cemetery. Several laborers swept aside the leaves that had fallen overnight among the hundreds of gravestones. Outside the locked, ornately carved mahogany doors of the mausoleum rose the soft voices, alto and soprano, of two women reciting passages from the Koran and seeking blessings from Sunan Kalijaga, Demak's founding saint entombed within. 
  By 7 a.m., deep male voices from the far side of the tomb joined in, raising a single steady hum of supplication. 
  "This is the place where you come to pour out your heart and share the pain in your life," said Suratman Tirto Suharjo, 55, seated on the mustard-tiled veranda. 
  A faith healer with thick lips and a knit skullcap perched atop a bare pate, Suharjo travels to Demak once a month, trying to enlist Sunan Kalijaga's help in sorting out cases of illness, poverty and workplace woes he cannot resolve by himself. On this morning, he explained, he was praying for a police official who had been jailed as part of an internal dispute. 
  "Thank God, because of my prayers, he'll be released tomorrow," Suharjo confided. 
  The veneration of saints and graveside worship are anathema to Muslim puritans, especially Indonesia's Islamic radicals, who are battling to strip away what they consider superstition and corrupt influences, both foreign and local. But on the three Fridays each month when the mausoleum doors are unlocked, crowds of people are drawn here by emotion and faith. Demak alone can attract more than 10,000 pilgrims every month, far outstripping the ranks of Indonesia's militant underground. 
  Even on ordinary days like this, hundreds of visitors claim places among the tombstones. 
  A busload of rice and tobacco farmers had traveled through the night from their village in easternmost Java, and they were now pressing into the cemetery, feet bare, shoes left at the gate. They filed up to a well at the edge of the mausoleum and scooped out holy water with plastic cups. They drank for their health. Then they filled their jugs and old mineral water bottles with the blessed liquid to lug home for ailing relatives and to sprinkle on sickly paddies to make them fertile. 
  They sat beside the front door of the mausoleum and broke into chant. Men in black Muslim caps, women in flowing dresses and brilliantly colored head scarves, giggling children with wide eyes. 
  As the hands of the clock on the mausoleum wall approached 9:30 a.m., a stream of devotees flowed along the cobblestone alley leading to the cemetery, past dozens of stalls where merchants peddled Muslim caps, head scarves and prayer beads, children's clothing embroidered with pictures of the tomb, ashtrays embossed with the names of the saints, and Coca-Cola. 
  Scattered among the large groups were lone petitioners. The melancholy security guard on the verge of being fired who prayed for his post. A merchant bound for Borneo praying to land a shipment of beans. 
  At the wooden gate appeared a pair of schoolgirls in their white uniform blouses and dark skirts. Wati, 19, and her friend Sari, 15, had skipped class, coming more than an hour by bus so they could pray to pass their final exams, still seven months away. 
  "I'd better start praying now," Wati offered anxiously. 
  By 11:30 a.m., the amplified call to midday prayers at a neighborhood mosque was echoing across the graves. The crowds were thinning, the chants receding to a hum, then just a few solitary voices. 
  A final group pressed up against the mahogany doors.  Several people snapped souvenir photos. One videotaped the ritual. Then they departed, bare feet on a stone path scorching under the sun. "Hot! Hot!" the children complained. 
  The worshipers melted away with the shadows. 
  But already, more pilgrims were coming past the stalls hawking trinkets and memories. 

 







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


November 26, 2005 Saturday



 Christian pair attacked in Indonesian province

 
   PALU, Indonesia -- Unidentified gunmen shot a Christian couple, seriously wounding both, in an Indonesian province already on edge following a series of attacks including the beheadings of three Christian students.
Police said it was too soon to say whether the attacks were linked to the simmering sectarian conflict in the Indonesian province, where open battles between Muslims and Christians killed about 1,000 people in 2001 and 2002.
Pudji Laksono, a lecturer at Tadulako University, and his wife were shot by gunmen on a motorbike on their way home from a Saturday night worship service, local police said. As with previous attacks, the motive was not clear. 

 INDONESIA (92%)







  
 

November 24, 2005 Thursday  




 U.S. RESUMING MILITARY TIES

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesia welcomed a U.S. decision to lift a six-year arms embargo to help the mostly Muslim nation fight terrorism, but human rights groups said yesterday it betrayed victims of military brutality. 
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a U.S.-educated former general, said the move represented "a new chapter" in relations between the two countries, and would enable Indonesia to modernize its aging military inventory.
The Bush administration had long wanted to lift the arms embargo, imposed in 1999 after troops ravaged East Timor during the territory's break from Jakarta, but was stymied by U.S. lawmakers demanding the military undertake meaningful reform.
Citing national security concerns, the State Department used recently granted powers to waive the restrictions.
11 held on al-Qaida ties
MADRID, Spain -- Police yesterday arrested 11 people suspected of financing and giving logistical support to an Islamic extremist group linked to al-Qaida, Spain's interior minister said.
Heavily armed police detained the suspects in and around three Spanish cities, seizing computer equipment, drugs and $41,200 in cash during morning raids on homes and businesses in largely immigrant neighborhoods, officials said.
The 11 arrested in Alicante, Murcia and Granada were suspected of having ties to the Algeria-based Salafist Group for Call and Combat, which has declared allegiance to al-Qaida.
Worker incentives added
HAVANA -- Cuba announced a major increase in government salaries yesterday, saying days after President Fidel Castro declared war on the nation's "new rich" that it wanted to reward workers with high productivity and advanced university degrees.
The Communist Party daily Granma said on its front page that higher-level workers unaffected by a minimum wage increase in May would be eligible for productivity payments and bonuses for having a master's or doctorate.
The announcement appeared aimed easing state workers' lives in a country where many have been engaging in illegal side activities to make ends meet.
Uzbekistan shuns NATO
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Uzbekistan has told NATO allies they can no longer use its territory or airspace to support peacekeeping missions in neighboring Afghanistan -- an apparent retaliatory move against a West critical of the former Soviet republic's human rights record, alliance officials said yesterday.
Uzbekistan's shift away from once-warm relations with the West has been matched by closer ties with Russia, ever wary of Western influence in its former Soviet satellites.
Border fighting resumes
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Israeli soldiers clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas yesterday to cover the escape of an Israeli hang glider who had inadvertently floated into Lebanon and landed across the border, security officials said.
The clash occurred hours after Israel dropped thousands of anti-Hezbollah leaflets over Lebanon, and two days after a cross-border shootout that saw some of the heaviest fighting in years.
Also in the world . . .
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was confirmed yesterday as the winner of Liberia's first postwar elections, becoming the nation's first female president ... China yesterday reported its second confirmed death from a strain of bird flu that has claimed more than 60 lives in Asia ... French rail services were expected to return to normal today after strikers accepted management concessions, the national rail operator said. Rail unions said members voted yesterday to resume work, ending a strike that started Monday evening.

  UNITED STATES (93%); ISRAEL (93%); LEBANON (93%); UZBEKISTAN (93%); CUBA (92%); SPAIN (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); TIMOR-LESTE (79%); BELGIUM (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%)







  



November 23, 2005 Wednesday  




 Military Ties to Indonesia Resume Too Soon for Some

 
 Acting swiftly with new congressional authority, the Bush administration said yesterday that it has restored military ties with Indonesia, formally ending the last of the restrictions imposed after violence in East Timor in 1999.  
  The Bush administration has taken a number of steps this year to reward Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, for its cooperation in the battle against Islamic extremists. The United States resumed military training in February and sales of "nonlethal" equipment in May. President Bush also issued a statement with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in May that "normal military relations would be in the interest of both countries." 
  But lawmakers and congressional aides said yesterday they were surprised the State Department eliminated the remaining restrictions barely a week after Congress approved an appropriations bill that gave Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice the authority to waive them. One Senate staff member  said lawmakers had anticipated a six-to-nine-month deliberative process, during which the administration would use the possibility of a waiver as leverage to extract concessions from Indonesia. 
  The State Department cited the "national security interests" of the United States as the reason for waiver, noting that Indonesia plays a strategic role in Southeast Asia and is a "voice of moderation in the Islamic world." 
  "This is an abuse of discretion and an affront to the Congress," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the author of legislation tying military aid to human rights conditions. "To waive on national security grounds a law that seeks justice for crimes against humanity  --  without even obtaining the Indonesian government's assurance that it will address these concerns  --  makes a mockery of the process and sends a terrible message. The Indonesians will see it as a clean bill of health." 
 The restrictions, which affect foreign military financing and sales of lethal items, are largely symbolic; Indonesia currently receives $1 million in military financing for its navy and appears to have no plans to obtain lethal items. State Department officials stressed that the decision does not trigger new assistance and the quality and quantity of any sales will be guided by Indonesia's willingness to address rights concerns. 
 Human rights experts and congressional aides said the Indian Ocean tsunami, which devastated Indonesia's Aceh region, had helped lessen objections to restoring military ties. Other factors included the government's peace pact with Aceh rebels, counterterrorism cooperation and the fact that the FBI has received renewed cooperation in investigating an ambush in Timika, in Papua, where two Americans were killed. 

 UNITED STATES (94%);  TIMOR-LESTE (92%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)







 Charleston Newspapers 
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

November 20, 2005, Sunday



 A Muslim responds to 'five questions'; 
Assumptions about Muslims are off the mark

 
In a recent commentary, radio talk show host Dennis Prager posed five questions "that law-abiding Muslims need to answer for Islam's sake, as well as for the sake of worried non-Muslims."
Prager said his questions were prompted in part by recent rioting in France "by primarily Muslim youths," despite the fact that neutral experts say the violence had little to do with Islam and it was Muslim leaders who ultimately helped quell the violence.
Faulty premise aside, here are answers to Prager's questions: 
Q: Why are you so quiet [about terrorism carried out in the name of Islam]?
A: One might argue that Muslims could do more to get their anti-terror message out. But to say Muslims have been quiet about their unequivocal condemnation of terrorism is a gross misrepresentation of the facts and reeks of Islamophobia.
It was, after all, a coalition of American Muslim groups that issued what was perhaps the first condemnation of the 9/11 attacks. The Council on American-Islamic Relations also published a full-page advertisement condemning the attacks.
Muslims have consistently condemned suicide bombings in the Middle East, attacks on the London transportation system, the bombing of hotels in Jordan, and many similar outrages.
Muslim scholars recently issued a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, condemning terrorism and religious extremism. (See: www.cair.com) Muslim groups in Texas and Arizona held anti-terror rallies. In Jordan, huge demonstrations were held against the recent terror attacks. Muslims in Lebanon demonstrated against the terrorist assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Harriri.
Outrage can be expressed in many ways. Public demonstrations are merely one of many different methods available to oppose terrorism.
Q: Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?
A: Robert Pape in his book, "Dying to Win - The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," shows that between 1982 and 1986, 71 percent of the Lebanese suicide attackers were Christians and 21 percent Communists/Socialists. Pape states, "Of the 384 attackers for whom we have data, 166 or 43 percent were religious, while 218 or 57 percent were secular. Suicide terrorism is not overwhelmingly a religious phenomenon." It is a response to occupation.
Inquiring minds might also consider the suicide bombings carried out by non-Muslim groups such as the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the religious orientation of the abortion clinic bomber or the depredations of Serbian forces during the Bosnian conflict.
Q: Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?
A: Muslim majority countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Turkey among many others having held free elections and being governed by popularly elected governments will dispute the charge that they are not "free."
Moreover, only in the past 50 years, have more than half of the Muslim-majority nations been freed from their European colonizers. Despite winning this freedom, most continued to be client states of their former colonizers who, through the imposition of dictatorial regimes, maintained control, some even to this day.
Opposition to such lack of freedom is generally Islamically oriented. Lack of freedom in Muslim nations is in spite of Islam, not because of it.
Q: Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?
A: All major faiths have people who commit, or have committed atrocities in the name of their religion. But no faith should be held responsible for the crimes of a few individuals. It seems Prager believes that any act by Muslims should be blamed on Islam. Just as we do not blame the Crusades or the Israeli atrocities on the faiths of Christianity and Judaism, we ask others to offer the same respect for our faith.
Again quoting Pape, "The world's leading practitioners of suicide terrorism are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka - a secular, Marxist-Leninist group drawn from Hindu families."
Q: Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions?
A: While there are areas of the Muslim world in which religious freedom is not granted to all citizens, it is unfair to claim that this phenomenon is a problem unique to Islam. Blaming persecution of minorities on Islam is akin to blaming slavery and segregation on Christianity. Choosing the Taliban as an example of religious intolerance in Islam is disingenuous, because the Taliban's religious perspective has been rejected by mainstream Muslim scholars and Muslims worldwide.
Every religious group has a responsibility to challenge hate by their fringe groups. It is unproductive to single out Muslims while remaining silent about the extremists of other faiths who vilify the faith of Islam without similar repudiation from Prager and others.
Dealing with the impact of war, poverty, racism, and injustice is our collective duty. To achieve solutions to these real problems we need voices that accentuate our common humanity, not use opportunistic smears of an entire faith to further their parochial agenda.
I would offer a challenge to Mr. Prager: Are you willing to enter into a real dialogue, not an exercise in one-upmanship, with mainstream Muslims? If so, the Council on American-Islamic Relations stands ready to facilitate that dialogue, just as I did when I appeared recently on your program.
We await your response.

 JORDAN (92%); LEBANON (92%); FRANCE (90%); MALAYSIA (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); SRI LANKA (79%); BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%);  TURKEY (79%); 







  



November 18, 2005 Friday  




 Foreign Network at Front of CIA's Terror Fight; 
Joint Facilities in Two Dozen Countries Account for Bulk of Agency's Post-9/11 Successes

 
The CIA has established joint operation centers in more than two dozen countries where U.S. and foreign intelligence officers work side by side to track and capture suspected terrorists and to destroy or penetrate their networks, according to current and former American and foreign intelligence officials. 
  The secret Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers are financed mostly by the agency and employ some of the best espionage technology the CIA has to offer, including secure communications gear, computers linked to the CIA's central databases, and access to highly classified intercepts once shared only with the nation's closest Western allies.  
 The Americans and their counterparts at the centers, known as CTICs, make daily decisions on when and how to apprehend suspects, whether to whisk them off to other countries for interrogation and detention, and how to disrupt al Qaeda's logistical and financial support.  
 The network of centers reflects what has become the CIA's central and most successful strategy in combating terrorism abroad: persuading and empowering foreign security services to help. Virtually every capture or killing of a suspected terrorist outside Iraq since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks  --  more than 3,000 in all  --  was a result of foreign intelligence services' work alongside the agency, the CIA deputy director of operations told a congressional committee in a closed-door session earlier this year.  
  The initial tip about where an al Qaeda figure is hiding may come from the CIA, but the actual operation to pick him up is usually organized by one of the joint centers and conducted by a local security service, with the CIA nowhere in sight. "The vast majority of successes involved our CTICs," one former counterterrorism official said. "The boot that went through the door was foreign." 
 The centers are also part of a fundamental, continuing shift in the CIA's mission that began shortly after the 2001 attacks. No longer is the agency's primary goal to recruit military attaches, diplomats and intelligence operatives to steal secrets from their own countries. Today's CIA is desperately seeking ways to join forces with other governments it once reproached or ignored to undo a common enemy.  
 George J. Tenet orchestrated the shift during his tenure as CIA director, working with the agency's station chiefs abroad and officers in the Counterterrorist Center at headquarters to bring about an exponential deepening of intelligence ties worldwide after Sept. 11. 
 Beneath the surface of visible diplomacy, the cooperative efforts, known as liaison relationships, are recasting U.S. dealings abroad. 
 The White House has stepped up its criticism of Uzbek President Islam Karimov in the past year for his authoritarian rule and repression of dissidents. But joint counterterrorism efforts with Tashkent continued until recently. In Indonesia, as the State Department doled out tiny amounts of assistance to the military when it made progress on corruption and human rights, the CIA was pouring money into Jakarta and developing intelligence ties there after years of tension. In Paris, as U.S.-French acrimony peaked over the Iraq invasion in 2003, the CIA and French intelligence services were creating the agency's only multinational operations center and executing worldwide sting operations. 
 The CIA has operated the joint intelligence centers in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, according to current and former intelligence officials. In addition, the multinational center in Paris, codenamed Alliance Base, includes representatives from Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Australia. 
 "CTICs were a step forward in codifying, organizing liaison relationships that elsewhere would be more ad hoc," a former CIA counterterrorism official said. "It's one tool in the liaison tool kit." 
 The CIA declined to comment for this article.  interviewed more than two dozen current and former intelligence officials and more than a dozen senior foreign intelligence officials as well as diplomatic and congressional sources. Most of them spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly or because of the sensitive nature of the subject. 
 The CTICs are entirely separate from the covert prisons, known in classified documents as "black sites," that the CIA has run at various times in eight countries. Legal experts and intelligence officials have said that the prisons  --  whose existence was disclosed in a Washington Post report earlier this month  --  would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries. The CTICs, by contrast, are an expansion of the hidden intelligence cooperation that has been a staple of foreign policy for decades. 
The intelligence centers were modeled on the CIA's counternarcotics centers in Latin America and Asia. Faced with corrupt local police and intelligence services, in the 1980s the CIA persuaded the leaders of these countries to let it select individuals for the assignment, pay them and keep them physically separate from their own institutions. 
 Officers from the host nations serving in the newer CTICs are vetted through background checks and polygraphs. They are usually supervised by the CIA's chief of station and augmented by officers sent from the Counterterrorist Center at Langley. Such daily interaction with U.S. personnel, say intelligence officials, helps keep the foreign service focused. 
 The first two CTICs were established in the late 1990s to watch and capture Islamic militants traveling from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Chechnya to join the fighting in Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, two former intelligence officers said.  
 Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Tenet outlined a global campaign against terrorism to President Bush. It included invading Afghanistan to wipe out al Qaeda's main base of operations as well as a "Worldwide Attack Matrix" detailing operations against terrorists in 80 countries. The matrix also listed priority countries where al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan were likely to flee during a U.S. invasion.  
 "If you brought a big hammer down on Afghanistan," as a former CIA official described it, "there weren't too many areas where people could squirt out" and hide. The most likely were Yemen, Saudi Arabia, urban areas of Pakistan, and Indonesia.  
 On Sept. 17, 2001, Bush signed a classified Presidential Finding that authorized an unprecedented range of covert operations. The overall counterterrorism program included authorization of lethal measures against terrorists and the expenditure of vast funds to coax foreign intelligence services into a new era of cooperation with the CIA, current and former intelligence officials said. 
 To beef up operations in the priority countries and elsewhere, the agency dispatched officers from its proliferation, counternarcotics, Europe, Africa, Asia and Middle East divisions, said several current and former intelligence officials. It sent paramilitary teams from its tiny Special Activities Division and enlisted the military's Special Operations Forces to augment the teams. 
 But agency officials knew that a surge of hundreds of CIA officers would not be adequate to solidify the new worldwide infrastructure that Tenet and his top aides envisioned. The agency quickly turned to dozens of sometimes reluctant foreign intelligence services, which had much more intimate knowledge of local terrorist groups and their supporters. 
 The agency had extensive inducements to offer foreign services once Congress opened the spigot, which it quickly did. "The money was just flowing," said one CIA case officer. In fact, the budget for the CIA's operations increased in the first two years by 21/2 times what it had been before Sept. 11, according to two government experts.  
  The Counterterrorist Center at CIA headquarters, which manages the CTICs and all other counterterrorism efforts, bought its friends SUVs, night-vision equipment, automatic weapons and push-to-talk radios for countries where intelligence services were starved for even basic material. It sent instructors in surveillance, data analysis and military Special Forces tactics to teach hostage rescue, VIP protection and counterterrorist assault. Foreign countries sent officers to the CIA's training school for weeks-long courses in counterterrorism operations and analysis.  
 The new cooperative ventures depended as well on loosening U.S. rules for sharing electronic eavesdropping and other precious "signals intelligence," which experts estimate provides 80 to 90 percent of the information the United States gathers about terrorist networks. Tenet ordered streamlined regulations.  
 The National Security Agency, which manages, analyzes and distributes electronic intercepts, quickly became a new partner in the joint centers, and established a Foreign Affairs Directorate that now handles sharing information and equipment with 40 countries. 
Persuading foreign presidents and intelligence chiefs to begin or deepen relationships with the CIA often took the personal intervention of Bush, Vice President Cheney and the secretary of state. But closing a deal was left to the CIA's chiefs of station, other top officials, and foremost, Tenet, "the master of liaison," as one longtime intelligence officer dubbed him. 
 Gregarious and comfortable in foreign settings, Tenet by Sept. 11 had earned a reputation among Muslim countries as an honest broker in the Arab-Israeli dispute and for his role in training Palestinian security forces.  
 He was a natural at bonding with foreign chiefs of service, current and former intelligence officials said. Once, during a dinner for a foreign service chief, the guests asked Tenet about Bush, whom Tenet briefed every morning. "He would tell them what time he gets up. He'd say, 'The president calls me Jorge.' It was really human-being-to-human-being," said a former intelligence official. "He didn't give away anything classified, but they felt important and could go back to their president and say, 'The president calls him Jorge.' " 
 "George Tenet is a charming man, but also a very tough cookie," said a senior French official. 
  Yemen, with its terrorist training camps and al Qaeda presence, was one of Tenet's most significant successes. Its president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, had little control over the northern border with Saudi Arabia, which had turned into a haven for extremists, and even less over his violent rivals. 
 Faris Sanabani, a Yemeni presidential adviser, said Tenet's trips to Yemen after Sept. 11 helped persuade Saleh to work with the CIA in a way that would have been unthinkable before. "He made an effort to reach out when people were really scared of Yemen," said Sanabani, who sat in on meetings between Tenet and Saleh. "He's the kind of person who doesn't work from a report or from behind the office desk." 
 In the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Saleh thought Yemen was next on the target list, said one current and one former intelligence official. Tenet did not disabuse him of this idea, they said. "You don't take anything off the table," one said.  
  At the same time, Tenet "listened to him, took his views seriously and did not rebuke him. He sought to meet Saleh's needs," he said. 
 Tenet provided millions of dollars for Yemen's cooperation. He gave helicopters, eavesdropping equipment, weapons and bulletproof vests. He brought in 100 Army Special Forces trainers to help Yemen create an antiterrorism unit.  
  Tenet also won Saleh's approval to fly Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles over the country to hunt and kill al Qaeda figures. In November 2002, the CIA killed six al Qaeda operatives driving in the desert, including Abu Ali al-Harithi, suspected mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.  
  "All of the sudden our enemy became common," Sanabani said. "That's why Yemen and the United States reached out to one other." 
Countering terrorism has overshadowed just about all other foreign policy concerns, including "making friends with the sorts of characters you would not have been in the same room with before," one former foreign intelligence official said. 
  In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country and the center of gravity for an al Qaeda affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah, that meant befriending Lt. Gen. Abdullah Hendropriyono, then head of the intelligence service. 
 Sporting black hair lacquered with hairspray and colorful jackets with matching ties and socks, Hendropriyono was more flamboyant than most chiefs. A former Indonesian special forces commander trained at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Hendropriyono was accused by human rights activists of ordering attacks that killed more than 100 unarmed villagers in 1989, according to Associated Press and other published reports. In 2004, he threatened action against foreign humanitarian groups monitoring human rights issues, published reports said. 
 Hendropriyono replaced an intelligence chief who had conducted surveillance against U.S. and Australian officials, according to U.S. and Australian sources. Al Qaeda leader Omar Farouq had the U.S. Embassy under surveillance and U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Gelbard believed that the Indonesians had purposely blown an operation meant to capture a bombing team targeting the U.S. compound in Jakarta. 
 In August 2001, Hendropriyono was "a breath of fresh air," said one CIA officer who worked with him. "He was focused, very controversial, but very dynamic." Unlike his predecessor, he was willing to work with the Americans, at a price. 
  Besides phone calls and office visits, Tenet worked hard on Hendropriyono's requests for goods and services. "These guys had 1970s technology," the CIA officer said. "They were dying for equipment, surveillance, wiretaps." 
  Tenet came through on two of Hendropriyono's personal requests as well: to provide seed money for a regional intelligence school, the International Institute of Intelligence on Batam Island, and to get a relative of Hendropriyono's into a top-rated American university. When his grades proved an obstacle, the CIA director arranged for him to attend the National War College at Fort McNair, four sources said. 
  Hendropriyono proved his willingness to cooperate by arresting Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, a Egyptian who the CIA believed was linked to British failed shoe bomber Richard C. Reid. He also agreed to allow the CIA to take Madni to Egypt for interrogation under a process known as "rendition." 
 Hendropriyono agreed to expand the cooperation, and officers arrested a few dozen Indonesians suspected of links to terrorism. He began efforts to close down terrorist financing. 
 Then he secured the approval of his political leadership to apprehend Farouq, believed to be a top al Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia. "He forced [the Indonesian security services ] to work with us and we started picking up the bigger fish," Gelbard said. Attempts to reach Hendropriyono were unsuccessful. 
 Porter J. Goss, who succeeded Tenet as CIA director just over a year ago, could hardly be more different. For all of Tenet's gregariousness, Goss is the picture of reserve. And there are indications that Goss may not place as much emphasis on combining forces with others overseas. 
 When Goss took over, he said he valued these partnerships but announced a goal of improving what he called "unilateral" intelligence collection and operations. "We have gotten more unilateral, though still not as much as I'd like," he told employees in a staff meeting. "It's getting the right kind of people trained in the right places under the right cover against the right targets." 
  There are plans to send more case officers into the field and to increase deep-cover positions that would require officers to spend longer periods, and perhaps their careers, in one country, integrated into the culture and, in some cases, cut off from the traditional embassy-based CIA station. 
  Stories about Goss's reluctance to meet with his foreign counterparts are rife, fueled in part by a cable from headquarters to overseas station chiefs, saying appointments with foreign services should be arranged for Tuesdays or Thursdays. The memo, CIA officials have said, was not meant to discourage such meetings but to assure officers that Goss would set aside time for such important visitors. 
 During a recent trip to the U.S. Special Operations Command base in Qatar, Goss did not meet with the head of the country or Qatar's intelligence chief. Intelligence officials say that is because Goss had met with them recently. Others say Tenet would never had flown so far and missed a chance to schmooze. 
 In any case, current and former intelligence officials predicted that the new, deeper relationships with foreign intelligence agencies will endure because the countries involved have a strong, common interest in confronting terrorism. And they said CIA station chiefs will continue to cultivate and encourage the ties, given the success they've yielded thus far. 
 "Most of these relationships are built on the ground," said a former intelligence official who spent most of his career overseas. 
 Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report. 

 UNITED STATES (93%); UZBEKISTAN (79%);  INDONESIA (79%)







 Digital First Media 
The Daily News of Los Angeles

November 17, 2005 Thursday  
VALLEY EDITION



 PUBLIC FORUM

 
Political payback
Re ``Teachers say 'Y' not us?'' (Nov. 15):
I voted against Measure Y because it was apparent that, as always, the money for the schools would be wasted with no accountability. Now United Teachers Los Angeles boss A.J. Duffy merely confirms my suspicions that it's not about the kids, but rather about political payback.
He threatens a variety of ``activities'' if his union isn't rewarded. As a homeowner, I and others like me will once again pay more than our fair share with increased property taxes. OK, fine, but why should my hard- earned dollars also be used to pay for Duffy's extortion demands?
- Randy Schultz 
Sherman Oaks
Didn't take long
It didn't take long. In ``Teachers say 'Y' not us?'' (Nov. 15), the UTLA only took one week to demand its payoff for getting California voters to vote for yet another school bond issue. Turning two pages in the same paper ``Probing CalPERS pensions'' tells us we have an unfunded mandate of up to $110 billion, an amount equal to this year's state budget, for public retirees' pensions.
Any of you voters that believed the lies from the unions who voted down Proposition 76 wish to take a guess where this money will come from? Come on, people, it's not rocket science: higher taxes.
- Robert Gardner
Sylmar
Caring for the zoo
Re ``Zoo leaders trumpeting dismay'' (Nov. 14):
Elephants are dying in zoos at half their natural life span, and the two leading reasons for euthanizing elephants are foot problems and arthritis. If the officials' main concern is the elephants, then why is Gita suffering from a foot problem that has plagued her since the 1980s?
How long does Gita have to suffer before these concerned experts will acknowledge that zoos are too small for elephants? Evidently till she dies, since her foot problem has been diagnosed as terminal. Let's be honest here: Spending millions of tax dollars on a shiny new exhibit is for the zoo, not the elephants.
- Rene Succa
Sherman Oaks
Speaking of lies
Re ``Special election yields some invaluable lessons'' (Their Opinions, Nov. 15):
Richard Riordan is right when he says, ``If you tell the same lies long enough, people will believe them,'' but the lies I'm talking about are the self-righteous rhetoric that he and the ``Governator'' keep spewing about fixing state government and helping the people. Proposition 75 wasn't about helping union members; it was about reducing the financial ability of unions to back Schwarzenneger's political opponents.
The governor's agenda with this year's special election was painfully obvious: Gain more power, weaken his opposition, and appear to be doing something, but actually do nothing. He only wants to skim along the surface of our state's issues, blame and bully others, and try to look good. And Riordan - he is nothing more than the governor's lackey, telling lies that the governor can no longer afford to say publicly.
- Jim Kilroy
West Hills
Exemplary shelter
Re ``Mayor's animal problems'' (Nov. 8):
There is an exemplary animal shelter in L.A. County - the Agoura Hills county shelter. The director, Gail Miley, and the workers genuinely care about the animals, but don't have time to give each animal individual attention. Hence, the Volunteer Corps. After shadowing an experienced volunteer, a prospective helper completes a three-hour course, then commits to 12 hours a month.
Youth volunteers (age 16-plus) also get community service points so important for college applications. We clean kennels, check the condition of the animals and give them love. We bathe, brush, trim nails. Some volunteers foster kittens. And we find homes for 96 percent of the animals.
- Joyce-Lynn Martin
Westlake Village
Still a rip-off
Re ``Gas prices falling sharply'' (Nov. 12):
Wow! What a headline. We're all jumping up and clicking our heels. What makes you think this merits a headline? Isn't it obvious how the gas companies mold public opinion? Now we drive up to stations and can't believe our eyes. Lower prices?
And it happens just after Congress got the gas moguls on the carpet for their obscene profits. You should have added on to your headline the following: ``And it's still a rip-off!''
- Earl D. Horwitz
North Hills
Pick and choose
Re ``Nonprofit groups find themselves ... ALL IN ... as state officials pursue ways to legalize poker fundraisers'' (Nov. 14):
The law is very rigid and inflexible concerning poker playing for fundraisers and could result in a $5,000 fine and jail time, but the illegal immigrants can overrun the state and run California into the ground and that's OK. Very interesting that the Attorney General's Office can pick and choose which laws to enforce.
- Martha Ballardo
Montrose
Immigration issue
Re ``Special Order 40'' (Your Opinion, Nov. 13):
Claire Magid speaks of the ``horrendous situation'' of illegal immigration. If she really wants to know what a horrendous situation looks like, she should check out the conditions that these people are trying to escape. To say that these people should be denied entry because they were unfortunate enough to be born into those circumstances is to condemn them to live in economic (and, in many cases, political) deprivation much greater than they are likely to face here.
Those who demonize the undocumented workers maintain a fiction that these foreigners should go through legal channels to come here. The obvious truth is that only a small fraction of those wishing to come to the United States would ever be permitted immigration status. The question we should all ask is, ``What would I do if I were in their shoes?''
- David Holland
Northridge
Convenient excuse
Re ``Rioting in France'' (Your Opinions, Nov. 9):
What on earth does Israel (or the U.S., for that matter) have to do with Muslims rioting in France? Only one thing: to continue to serve as a convenient excuse for the Jihadists' real goals. While simultaneously blaming the world's ills on America and Israel, Muslim terrorism has afflicted Armenia, Serbia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, East Timor, Chad, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Nigeria, Belsan, Bali, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Spain, England, France, Holland and probably some I have omitted.
And what are the real goals of Muslim fundamentalists? They are threefold: That a world dominant caliphate be established. That said caliphate govern the world according to Sharia Law. That the Jihadists succeed or die trying.
- Michael G. Miller
Los Angeles
Twisted logic
I found the president's speech on Veterans Day irrational, irrelevant and immaterial. Not just because he used the day we set aside to honor those brave individuals who defend our country as a political platform to spread the guilt for leading this country into a needless war, but because the premise of his argument goes beyond the plausible.
Can ``I led the perpetration of a criminal act, and since others followed, I'm innocent'' be an acceptable and rational defense? If we are to let this stand, then we should free Saddam? He had followers, too. Our justice system didn't let the Abu Ghraib guards use the ``I was just following orders'' defense and we shouldn't let Bush get away with an ``I'm innocent because others followed my lead'' defense.
- Richard G. O'Dea
Moorpark
Do your job
If someone is hired to do a job, and they don't do the job, they should be fired. I think that makes perfect sense. I think we should fire the teachers who are not doing their jobs.
I think we should also fire the people who hire the teachers for not firing the teachers who are not doing their jobs. That also makes sense. If everyone did their jobs, we would have a first-class school system.
- Stan Niedwicki
Woodland Hills

 







  
 

November 17, 2005 Thursday  




 A SOCIETY'S COLLECTIVE SUICIDE; 
SUNNI ARABS NEED TO ASK WHY THE BOMBERS HAVE TO KILL ANYONE

 
We are so bombarded with news of terrorism lately that we don't even notice anymore when a fundamental line has been crossed. The last few weeks was one of those times.
At the start of the Muslim holy month, Ramadan, a Sunni Muslim suicide bomber walked into a mosque in Hilla, Iraq, and blew himself up in the middle of a funeral.
Just after the close of Ramadan, a Sunni Muslim suicide bomber walked into the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, Jordan, and blew himself up in the middle of a wedding reception. 
Terrorists willing to blow themselves up at funerals and weddings of their own faith are individuals who have become completely disconnected from humanity. They feel no moral restraints.
And this is the real problem in the Sunni Muslim world today: There is no controlling moral authority. Any event can be a target: funerals, weddings, anything. Maybe next week the jihadists will blow up a maternity ward.
Yes, there is a civil war going on in the Sunni Muslim world today, a civil war between jihadist fundamentalists on one side and a generally moderate majority on the other. There's just one problem -- only one side is really fighting this civil war: the jihadists.
The Sunni Muslim majority has been largely passive. Oh, yes, the Sunni Arab regimes arrest these jihadists when they can, but the Sunni regimes and the religious establishments they control rarely attack the underlying intolerant Islamist ideas these jihadists propagate, namely that Christians, Jews, Shiites and Hindus are inferior to Sunni Muslims and can be attacked.
How many fatwas -- religious edicts -- have been issued condemning the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has already murdered hundreds of Shiite Muslims and others? Not many.
It was heartening to see Jordanians take to the streets to condemn the triple suicide bombings in their capital by the al-Zarqawi terrorists. That's rare. And King Abdullah of Jordan has been one of the few Arab leaders actually willing to take on the jihadists on the ideological-religious level, sponsoring an intra-Muslim dialogue for just that purpose.
But it was also dispiriting to listen to other Jordanian and Arab voices saying they believe Israelis were behind the attacks in Amman, or telling the bombers: If you want to bomb someone, bomb the "occupiers" -- code for Americans and Israelis. Why us?
But here's the protest call the world needs to hear from the Sunni Arab street: "Why anyone?"
Suicide bombing is an abomination. It is sick. You cannot build a healthy state from suicide bombers. Imagine what your national museum would look like: "Here's Ahmed -- he blew up 52 Muslims at a wedding." "Here's Muhammad -- he blew up 25 Shiites at a funeral."
So why don't more people in the Sunni world speak out against the Sunni Arabs doing this? In part, it's because feelings of powerlessness and humiliation are rife in Sunni Arab society, so there is some grudging respect for suicide bombers who are ready to give their lives to resist outsiders or the authoritarian regimes that Arabs blame for keeping them down.
It's also because the Sunni silent majority isn't all that upset when suicide bombers blow up Jews, Christians or Shiite civilians. The Saudi press often extols such suicide bombers as "martyrs" or "the resistance."
Since their societies tolerated such barbarism against civilians when it was used against others, the Sunni terrorists apparently figured it was just fine to use such tactics against their Sunni foes, too.
I am sure al-Zarqawi is mystified today by the protests against him in Jordan. He must be asking, What's the fuss? After all, no one protested recently when Muslim suicide bombers butchered Shiites in Iraq or Ahmedis in Pakistan or Christian tourists in Indonesia or Jews in Israel or Hindus in New Delhi.
The Sunni world would do well to reread the famous poem by the Rev. Martin Niemoeller, a German pastor imprisoned in World War II: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
A civilization that does not delegitimize suicide bombing against any innocent civilian is itself committing suicide. And that is exactly what the Sunni Muslim world is doing when it does not consistently teach its children that suicide bombing against civilians is always wrong -- and that all who engage in it do not go to heaven, but straight to hell.

 JORDAN (94%); ISRAEL (92%); IRAQ (92%); 








 


November 11, 2005



 Misplaced Pessimism Toward Pakistan

 
There is a small but vocal chorus of critics busy writing off Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's opening to Jews and Israel as a "feint."
The latest piece of evidence they have mobilized is the delay of six days between receiving an offer of Israeli aid to victims of last month's earthquake and Pakistan's conditional acceptance of it, and the conditions imposed, namely that aid from Israel could not be delivered directly by Israel. Under titillating headlines like "Pakistan's Dirty Laundering," Islamabad's steps over the past few months are being described as little more than a Washington-pleasing trick.
I am afraid that these critics are missing the forest for the trees. The main point is that Pakistan has publicly acknowledged that it is accepting Israeli aid, and is now openly engaging the Jewish world. I saw as much this week in Pakistan, during a meeting with Musharraf and while inspecting the areas hit hardest by the earthquake. 
No one expected that Pakistani-Israeli relations would reach full maturity overnight. We are witnessing a change, as complex and difficult a process as every major diplomatic volte-face - so the inescapable implication of such criticisms is that, as it has not reached its final destination, the process should be shut down.
This all-or-nothing approach rarely yields significant positive results. It does not, in this case, allow for drawing and taking advantage of distinctions between Musharraf's position and that of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has infamously called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and who dismissed Israel's withdrawal from Gaza as a "trick" aimed at luring Islamic states - read: Pakistan - into acknowledging Israel.
During the past two months, Pakistan's president has met with representatives of American Jewry, publicly shaken hands with Prime Minister Sharon, acknowledged the Holocaust and affirmed eventual full diplomatic relations with Israel. Islamabad has also given notice that it considers Israel a normal state, first by sending its foreign minister to publicly meet with his Israeli counterpart and later by accepting Israeli aid after the earthquake. It is hard to see the benefit in dismissing these steps.
One recent critic of Musharraf, Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, cites a leading Pakistani journalist to support his claim that Islamabad's intentions are not sincere. Musharraf, writes Pakistan Today editor Tashbih Sayyed, "has done nothing to challenge the way Jews and Israel are portrayed by the Islamists - as demons, as an evil force."
In fact, Musharraf himself assured me during a telephone conversation several weeks ago that he would inform his countrymen that American Jews were making donations to help Pakistanis afflicted by the terrible earthquake. These developments have a great potential significance for the Jewish community, and should not go unnoticed. Motivated by humanitarian feelings, Jewish assistance to Pakistanis may have a welcome secondary effect of improving Muslim attitudes toward Jews.
American relief efforts following the tsunami are acknowledged to have improved views of America and its policies in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. The same opportunity now presents itself in Pakistan. In doing the right thing by helping the millions of homeless people in Pakistani Kashmir, we can also begin disabusing Muslims of the negative attitudes about Jews that prevail in too many quarters.
But let us be clear: In charting a course for policy toward Pakistan, including our rallying to its aid after the recent horrific earthquake, my colleagues and I have kept our eyes wide open to the problems, as well as the possibilities. At no point have we given Pakistan a free pass on those matters that trouble Jews: relations with Israel, antisemitism and anti-Westernism in the madrassas and even in the public schools, the influence of the same Wahhabi extremism that infects so many imams and mosques in this country and makes the soil fertile for Islamic terrorism - and of course the presence of terrorists.
On the Pakistani side, we have found willing interlocutors, not dissemblers, including many whose vision of the future is directly at odds with the reactionary and extremist forces in their society. Indeed, the heart of Musharraf's doctrine is an attack on Muslim extremism, fanaticism and terrorism.
We have taken pains to get as well as to give. While Pakistan gained much credibility, it gave in the coin of normalization with Israel and of the American Jewish community. Our judgment is that the Jewish cause has been buttressed through the very act of having the Pakistani leader enter into dialogue with the leadership of the American Jewish community - before television cameras capturing the event for tens of millions of viewers throughout the Muslim world.
At the root of much of the distrust of Pakistan's intentions are serious doubts about the Sunni Muslim world's ability to undergo positive change. Pakistan enjoys close ties with Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan therefore not only imports Wahhabi Islam but is also a hotbed of extremism and, especially on the Afghan border and in Kashmir, terrorism. These issues are worthy of continued discussion with our Pakistani friends. They have a large stake in the outcome of the struggle within Pakistan and the wider Islamic world over whether the future will be held hostage to a falsified vainglorious past.
If the jury is still out on these matters, we may yet influence the verdict. We must not allow pessimism about our relations with the Muslim world to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Jack Rosen is chairman of the American Jewish Congress-Council for World Jewry.

 PAKISTAN (96%); ISRAEL (94%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); IRAN,  (79%)







 
 
 (Boston, MA)

November 7, 2005, Monday



 Escape spotlights troubled US detention efforts

 
For years now, the US has been able to count on countries like Indonesia, Pakistan, and Egypt to abduct alleged Al Qaeda operatives and deliver them extralegally into American hands.
The argument for the controversial practice has been that US interrogators are better, and that keeping the men in partly secret US custody would prevent trial details that could help other alleged terrorists from emerging.
That logic was knocked hard last week by the US military's revelation that four detainees, including Omar al-Faruq - the most senior Al Qaeda operative ever arrested in Southeast Asia - escaped from Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan last July.
His escape, and the fact it came to light in the context of an abuse trial, puts yet another spotlight on the US military's troubled detention programs. 
Human Rights Watch, which is campaigning against abusive interrogation in US prisons, says techniques like those used against Mr. Faruq violate the Geneva Conventions. "Torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading practices should be as unthinkable as slavery,'' the group says.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and top counterterrorist official Maj. Gen. Ansyaad Mbai complained they were kept in the dark about Faruq's escape. General Mbai scrambled to tighten security, saying the break could "energize terrorists in Southeast Asia."
The US announced the escapes in July - but gave an unfamiliar alias for Faruq and perhaps the other three. The truth came out because Faruq was to testify by video against Sgt. Alan Driver, who is accused of repeatedly striking Faruq and others.
"I don't think they intentionally hid this from the Indonesians. I think they were very confident they'd be able to apprehend him and didn't want to give anything away,'' says Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Singapore's Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies. "In hindsight, it was a mistake, but mistakes are always made in counterterrorism."
In a video claimed to have been made in a Afghan Taliban camp and aired Oct. 18 by the Arab network Al Arabiya, the four gloated about their escape from the heavily guarded prison. They showed maps of the compound and explained how they picked cell locks, hid on the base for a few days, and then made their way out with Taliban assistance.
Faruq had admitted earlier in detention that he served for years in Southeast Asia, mostly in Indonesia, as the link between Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and militant groups like Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which emerged as the area's most dangerous terrorists. 
After what regional intelligence officials say were weeks of sleep deprivation and other "soft torture" in 2002, like fluctuating temperatures in his cell, Faruq talked, claiming there were pending attacks in Southeast Asia targeting US embassies and other facilities. That led to the first US "orange alert" since Sept. 11.
After training at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1991 and 1992, the Kuwaiti national went to the Philippines and then Indonesia to contact alumni of the Afghan jihad. In addition to JI, he worked with Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines, which has carried out attacks on Americans.
He brought funds and motivation to the men behind the bombing of dozens of Christian churches in Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000; helped fuel the Christian-Muslim war in Indonesia's Maluku Provinces that killed thousands; and had close ties to the Bali nightclub attacks in 2002 that killed more than 200 people.
"He's a very committed, very intelligent man," says Mr. Gunaratna, "and I expect him to be deeply involved with Al Qaeda again now that he's free."
US allies say the US hasn't shared what it gleaned. Indonesian prosecutors said they failed to convict JI spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir on more serious terrorism charges earlier this year because the US refused to allow Faruq and Riduan Issamudin, the Indonesian operations head of JI, to testify.
(c) . The 

 UNITED STATES (94%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (94%);  ASIA (94%); AFGHANISTAN (93%); PAKISTAN (92%); SINGAPORE (79%)







 
 

 (Pennsylvania)

November 7, 2005 Monday



 Earthquake relief offers chance to change minds WORLD OPINION

 
NATURAL DISASTERS ARE remembered first, for the suffering they cause, second, for the suffering that might have been avoided had relief efforts been more generous and timely. Earthquake-ravaged Pakistan has already suffered terribly on both counts. But a rapid increase in aid could still prevent many deaths and win hearts and minds in a strategically vital corner of the Islamic world. 
With winter imminent and much essential infrastructure destroyed, a second wave of deaths could double the current count of at least 54,000. The United Nations now says that $550 million is needed to fund lifesaving programs for the 3 million displaced people. This is a big increase on the U.N.'s previous request for $312 million, and far from the $67 million in contributions and $28 million in pledges it has so far received.
The international community must give more aid -- and quickly. Inaction will mean not only many avoidable deaths. It will also fuel mounting resentment against the West in Pakistan as, inevitably, the inadequate response to the earthquake is compared with generous response to the December tsunami. That relief effort was more than 80 percent funded within 10 days of the disaster.
Although it killed fewer people, the earthquake displaced and injured more than the tsunami. The relief effort faces greater logistical challenges.
Many of the homeless are in high Himalayan villages where they risk freezing to death without tents. These are in short supply and have been distributed to only a fraction of those who need them, with just a few weeks left before temperatures fall steeply.
Compounding the problem is poor accessibility, as most of the few roads have been blocked by landslides. Helicopters are essential to the relief effort, and they are in scarce supply.
When Pakistan effectively declined India's offer of helicopters it lost an opportunity to ease long-standing tensions in Kashmir. But the real concern is growing support for jihad groups, who are helping displaced people and garnering sympathy for their cause.
Al-Qaeda understands what is at stake. Last week Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden's deputy, called on Muslims to help earthquake victims.
If western countries fill the vacuum left by the inadequate national relief effort they, rather than extremists, can hope to win the hearts and minds of the Pakistani people.
In Indonesia, support for violence against civilians in defense of Islam fell from 27 to 15 per cent between 2002 and 2005 -- a decline attributed partly to the U.S. tsunami relief effort.
In an interview ... Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, suggested waiting "for a while" before accusing countries of not doing enough. But the situation is worsening daily. Immediate action is needed to avert a second disaster that could have far-reaching consequences.
Financial Times, London

 PAKISTAN (94%); ASIA (79%); INDIA (79%); 







  
 
The Tampa Tribune (Florida)

November 4, 2005 Friday  




 Breaking Fast

 
Muslims in the Tampa Bay area celebrate the end of Ramadan with a prayer service, a carnival and hope for the future.
BY CHRIS ECHEGARAY
cechegaray@tampatrib.com
TAMPA -- A month of self-restraint, fasting and spiritual cleansing ended with thousands of Muslims flocking to the mosque of the Islamic Society of Tampa Bay Area on Thursday morning.
It marked the end of Ramadan and the beginning of a three-day holiday called Eid al-Fitr, or feast of fast breaking. During the three-day holiday, Muslims exchange gifts and social visits. 
It was an international meeting of Muslims who live in the Tampa Bay area. Algerians, Egyptians, Indonesians, Pakistanis and many others filed into the large rooms.
The men gathered and prayed in the main room, bowing and kneeling in unison. Women were in a separate room upstairs, praying in intervals as they also listened to an hour-long sermon.
Ghiath Mahmaljy, the imam and physician from Brooksville, told the congregation to be steadfast and persistent on their path to righteousness.
"It's like starting a new chapter for the whole year," Mohammed Farooqui, a native of Pakistan, said after the sermon. "This feels really good. The fasting and the prayers are a tuneup."
Ahmed Bedier, Florida spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, took the opportunity to raise money for the Oct. 5 earthquake victims in Pakistan, where an estimated 80,000 people perished.
Boys carried collection boxes through the mosque, and containers for donations were placed outside. Bedier's goal is to raise $25,000 in relief funds.
"There are people who are not as fortunate," Bedier said. "There are people suffering. We are one body. And if anyone in any part of the world is hurting, it hurts us all. Open up your hearts and your pockets."
Outside the mosque, carnival rides, food and vendors selling Middle East garments and jewelry were awaiting the crush of people after the sermon. Muslims socialized, parents watched their children play and newcomers introduced themselves.
Area Muslims approached the Hillsborough County School Board last year asking the first day of Eid al-Fitr be a day off school each year. Ultimately, the board voted to eliminate days off corresponding with Good Friday, Easter Monday and Yom Kippur, keeping Christmas as the only religious holiday off. Muslims now are asking those days be restored, even if Eid al-Fitr isn't yet recognized.
The vote attracted national attention, and Hillsborough County Commissioner Brian Blair on Tuesday plans to ask the school board to reconsider eliminating the specified Christian and Jewish holidays.
No one at the mosque discussed the issue Thursday, which marked Sobia Maqsoob's first time there. The 20-year-old, a native of Pakistan, is a photography student from Virginia. She asked a stranger to take a picture of her and a friend, Ane Hollett.
Hollett, 26, is from Indonesia, where the majority of the population is Muslim. She has lived in Tampa for more than two years.
The two women spoke about the difficulty of fasting, but the body gets used to it, they said. They eat before dawn and eat again after sunset. It's done to teach them discipline and restraint.
"It is hard to continue the day with your daily activities," Hollett said. "You eat well before sunrise and do as much as you can."
Reporter Chris Echegaray can be reached at (813) 259-7920.
Copyright © 2005, The Tampa Tribune and may not be republished without permission. E-mail library@tampatrib.com

  PAKISTAN (94%); EGYPT (79%);  MIDDLE EAST (55%)








 
 

November 2, 2005 Wednesday



 HOLOCAUST DAY OK'D

 
The 191-member U.N. General Assembly yesterday established Jan. 27 as an annual commemoration day for the 6 million Jews and countless other victims murdered in the Nazi Holocaust during World War II.  
The watershed resolution, approved by acclamation after two days of speeches, is aimed at making the new "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust"  a symbol against genocide for future generations.  
"I feel moved and privileged to present this historic resolution today, as an Israeli, a Jew, a human being and the child of Holocaust victims,"  Israel's U.N. ambassador, Dan Gillerman, said in introducing the resolution. 
The assembly has often been accused of anti-Semitism and persistent concentration on the plight of Palestinians. It largely ignored the Holocaust until last January, when the assembly held a session to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Russia's liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. 
A total of 104 nations from around the world sponsored the measure. Exceptions included nations in the Arab Middle East. 
Several Islamic nations, including Egypt, Indonesia and Malaysia, said they supported the resolution but atrocities against Christians and Muslims deserved equal attention.   Post Wire Services 

 ISRAEL (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); EGYPT (79%); INDONESIA (65%)






    
  


November 2, 2005, Wednesday



 CLEANING UP: AFTER THE TSUNAMI, AN ACEH SURPRISE: GOOD GOVERNMENT

  






  and New England Newspaper Group Inc.  
Brattleboro Reformer (Vermont)

November 1, 2005 Tuesday



 No U.S. troops in these trouble spots...

 
Editor of the Reformer:
A bombing in New Delhi, India, kills 58 people. Three school girls abducted and beheaded in Indonesia -- both acts apparently done by Muslim "Freedom Fighters." The presence of American troops in those countries are the cause, and we must bring them home now!
What? We don't have troops in those places? I thought the presence of the United States military caused these things to happen. I guess not.
Mark Sniatkowski
East Dover, Oct. 30

 UNITED STATES (95%); INDIA (91%); INDONESIA (91%); 







  



October 31, 2005 Monday  




 Security Tight After Beheading of 3 Indonesian Girls

 
 Indonesian police increased patrols Sunday in the tense province of Central Sulawesi a day after assailants beheaded three Christian schoolgirls. 
  A police official, Made Rai, said about 1,000 police officers, including reinforcements from other parts of the country, were securing the remote area of Poso where the girls were killed.  
 "So far no witness has been questioned and no suspect arrested," Rai said from Poso, about 900 miles northeast of Jakarta, the capital. 
  The bodies of the girls, dressed in brown school uniforms, were left at the site of the attack. Their heads were found at separate locations two hours later. One student survived the attack, which police said was carried out by six men wielding machetes.  
 President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono described the killings as "sadist and inhuman crimes." 
 At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI offered his deepest sympathies to the families of the students. 
  Reports on the killings were featured across the front pages of nearly all Indonesian newspapers Sunday. 
  Media Indonesia, a leading daily, splashed a headline across its front page saying "Barbaric!" The Republika, another large newspaper, devoted its entire front page to the incident. 
 Central Sulawesi province has experienced bouts of sectarian violence over the years. About 2,000 people were killed in clashes between Muslims and Christians from 1998 through 2001, when a peace deal was reached. The worst violence abated after the deal, but there have been sporadic outbreaks since. Bombings in May in the Christian town of Tentena killed 22 people. 
  About 85 percent of Indonesia's 240 million people are Muslim. But in some eastern parts of the country, the Christian and Muslim populations are about equal. 
 Religious and communal tensions in many areas, including Poso, have been aggravated by a migration policy under which, for decades, large numbers of Muslims from Indonesia's most crowded areas moved to places that had been largely Christian. 
  In addition to religion, the newcomers often have cultural and language differences with locals. Politicians and security forces have sometimes been charged with exploiting the differences for their own ends, adding to the potential for violence. 

 INDONESIA (99%); HOLY SEE (79%)







   


October 30, 2005 Sunday  




 Masked Men Decapitate 3 Schoolgirls In Indonesia

 
Men in black clothes and masks beheaded three teenage Christian girls on Saturday in eastern Indonesia as they walked to school near Poso, a Muslim town, officials said.
  President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the killings, which he described as ''sadist and inhuman crimes,'' and he called an emergency security meeting with his vice president, military officials and the police. 
 A spokesman for the national police, Aryanto Budiharjo, said that as many as six men in black clothes and masks attacked the students in Bukit Bambu, a village on the eastern island of Sulawesi.
  ''The perpetrators wore black attire and veils, and they used machetes to slash,'' he told reporters in Jakarta.
  The three bodies of the high school students, dressed in brown uniforms, were left at the site of the attack. Three heads were found at separate locations two hours later by residents.
  Earlier, a police official in Poso gave a different account, saying two men wearing helmets and riding a motorcycle had attacked the 16-year-old students. He said the student who had escaped said the attackers wore helmets and carried a two-way radio.
  Poso, which is about 900 miles northeast of the capital, Jakarta, is in an area where Muslim-Christian clashes killed 2,000 people until a peace deal was agreed in 2001.
  Although religious fighting has largely subsided, tension is still high in the region after bombings in Tentena, a neighboring Christian town, killed 22 people in May.
  Security specialists have said local Islamic radicals may have been responsible for the bombings in Tentena.
  Mr. Budiharjo said that about 400 policemen would be sent to reinforce security in Poso.
  In Jakarta, President Yudhoyono also called for calm and pledged to hunt down the attackers. ''I want to tell all my brothers and sisters in Poso that such violence cannot be tolerated,'' he said, ''and the police with the military will make sure that it will not happen again.'' 

 INDONESIA (95%)







  
 

October 30, 2005 Sunday  
TWO STAR EDITION



 U.S. CUTS FORCES ON OKINAWA

 
WASHINGTON -- A U.S.-Japanese agreement announced yesterday is intended to strengthen military cooperation, draw down U.S. Marines from Okinawa and give Tokyo greater responsibility for security in the Pacific.
The decisions were part of an American effort to streamline its military overseas and create a leaner, more flexible fighting force.
The accord says that 7,000 U.S. Marines will leave strategically located Okinawa for the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, a move that is expected to take six years. 
Okinawans have long complained of crime, noise and over crowding associated with the American bases.
Syria to probe Hariri slaying
DAMASCUS, Syria -- Syrian President Bashar Assad ordered the creation of a judicial committee yesterday to investigate the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister, as Damascus continued its scramble to ease intense and growing international pressure.
The U.N. investigation into the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has linked top Syrian and Lebanese security officials to the killing and said that Damascus had been uncooperative in the probe.
Syria also said yesterday that the offices of Islamic Jihad, one of a number of militant anti-Israeli groups that formerly operated out of Damascus, had been closed years ago.
Vatican beatifies 8 martyrs
VATICAN CITY -- Seven priests and a nun who were killed during the Spanish Civil War were beatified as martyrs yesterday at a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, praised for having refused to betray their faith when faced with death.
All eight were killed in 1936, in the opening days of Spain's civil war. The Catholic Church claims 4,184 clergy were killed during the war by the government, or Republican, side, which accused the church of backing fascist Gen. Francisco Franco.
Pope John Paul II honored several clergy killed in the war during his 26-year pontificate and had approved the beatification of the eight honored yesterday before he died.
Saddam accepted exile?
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Saddam Hussein accepted an 11th-hour offer to flee into exile weeks ahead of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion, but Arab League officials scuttled the proposal, officials in this Gulf state claimed.
The exile initiative was spearheaded by the late president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, at an emergency Arab summit held in Egypt in February 2003, Sheik Zayed's son said in an interview aired by Al-Arabiya TV during a documentary. The U.S.-led coalition invaded on March 19 that year.
Saddam allegedly accepted the offer to try halt the invasion and bring elections to Iraq within six months, claimed the official and Sheik Zayed's son.
3 school girls beheaded
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Unidentified assailants attacked a group of high school girls yesterday in Indonesia's tense province of Central Sulawesi, beheading three and seriously wounding another, police said.
The students from a private Christian high school were ambushed while walking through a cocoa plantation in Poso Kota subdistrict on their way to class. The area is close to the provincial capital of Palu, about 1,000 miles northeast of Jakarta.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but Central Sulawesi, where the slayings occurred, has a roughly equal number of Muslims and Christians. The province was the scene of a bloody sectarian war in 2001-2002 that killed around 1,000 people from both communities.

 UNITED STATES (94%); SYRIA (94%); UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (93%);  GUAM (92%); LEBANON (92%); HOLY SEE (91%); JAPAN (88%); SPAIN (79%); EGYPT (79%);  GULF STATES (79%)







  



October 30, 2005 Sunday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
ROME  --  Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a close ally of President Bush, said in a television interview that he tried repeatedly to dissuade the American leader from going to war in Iraq and was never convinced military force was the best way to achieve democracy there.  
  Berlusconi, who is facing a tough reelection battle next year and whose popularity has fallen in part over Italians' opposition to the war, made the comments on the eve of a trip to Washington.  
 The prime minister was one of Bush's strongest supporters in the run-up to the Iraq war. Italy now has about 2,900 troops in Iraq. 
 EUROPE 
*  PARIS  --  Hundreds of French youths rioted for a second night in a Paris suburb, setting fire to cars and throwing rocks at police to protest the deaths of two compatriots who were electrocuted while trying to evade police, officials said. 
  Fifteen officers and a journalist were injured in the disturbances Friday night and Saturday morning in Clichy-sous-Bois, north of the capital, officials said. Police firing tear gas restored order around 2 a.m. Saturday and detained 14 people, officials said. 
  The two boys, 15 and 17, died near an electrical transformer where they sought cover while fleeing from police Thursday evening. A third youth suffered serious burns. 
 THE AMERICAS 
*  PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua  --  Hurricane Beta gained strength and lashed Nicaragua's jungle coast, forcing thousands of Miskito Indians and other residents to race for shelter. With winds of 105 mph, Beta was upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane and forecasters warned it could strengthen more before hitting land. 
 As Beta, the 23rd named storm of a record-breaking Atlantic-Caribbean season, battered the small fishing town, officials tried to find solid buildings to shelter its 50,000 inhabitants and evacuees from the area. 
  AFRICA 
*  ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast  --  Government troops in armored vehicles staged maneuvers in Abidjan to dispel fears of unrest ahead of a Sunday deadline set by rebels for President Laurent Gbagbo to step down. 
 Gbagbo's five-year term ends Sunday in the West African nation, which has been split in two since a 2002 civil war. Anti-French riots also swept Abidjan, the main commercial city, last November. 
 Rebels holding the northern half of the country have demanded that Gbagbo step down at midnight on Sunday, and opposition youth leaders have threatened street protests if he does not. Gbagbo has said he will stay in office for up to 12 months under a U.N.-backed peace plan that envisions eventual elections. 
 ASIA 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  Masked men in black clothes wielding machetes beheaded three teenage Christian girls in eastern Indonesia as the girls walked to school near the Muslim town of Poso, officials said. 
  The headless bodies of the high school students were left at the site of the attack.  
 Their heads were found by residents two hours later at separate locations. 
 Muslim-Christian clashes in the area, about 900 miles northeast of Jakarta, killed about 2,000 people before a peace deal was reached in 2001. Although religious fighting has largely subsided, tension is still high following bombings in May in the neighboring Christian town of Tentena, in which 22 people were killed. 
*  QUETTA, Pakistan  --  Pakistani border guards arrested a man who claimed to be an American citizen for entering Pakistan illegally from neighboring Iran, an official said. 
  The man, identified as Essa Jesus, 56, was arrested late Friday in Taftan, a southwestern town near the border with Iran, said Akbar Lashari, a senior border police official. He said the man could speak Urdu, Pashtu and Persian. 
 The man said he was a former waiter in Alabama and left the United States 40 years ago, going first to London, then India, and then traveling in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. 
 The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said it had no information about the arrest. 
   --  From News Services 

  COTE D'IVOIRE (93%); ITALY (93%); NICARAGUA (92%); INDONESIA (92%); FRANCE (91%); CARIBBEAN ISLANDS (79%); WESTERN AFRICA (79%); EUROPE (79%); AFRICA (79%); ASIA (79%)







 The Topeka Capital-Journal 
Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas)

October 29, 2005 Saturday



 Blind faith can lead world to destruction

 
Dad, a veteran of World War I, told me German troops hoisted a sign above their nearby trenches proclaiming "Gott mit uns."
American troops, not to be outdone, responded with a sign declaring "We got mittens, too." A homey little joke, that made me, a grade-schooler, wonder how God could be on both sides of that horrible war.
Whatever, God could not, or at least did not, protect somewhere around 150 million 200 million Christians and non-Christians from dying. Zbigniew Brzezinski calls these "lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage." 
But many thoughtful people believe deliberate extinguishment of human lives by other humans can get worse, to the point of extinction of the human race. This is the warning of Sam Harris in his book, "The End of Faith, Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason."
Harris observes that today's wars are religious wars.
He doesn't buy the reassuring and diplomatic observation that peace-loving, good-neighbor Muslims will end suicidal acts of destruction by those who choose to believe that religious martyrdom is the one sure route to immortality in super-pleasant surroundings. And he quotes the verses of the Koran the suicidal ones choose to believe.
Nor does he believe "moderate" religionists of other religions will deter those who believe in the exclusivity of their own religion and when push comes to shove will attempt to exterminate non-believers. He sees moderate Christians as enablers of radical Christians who accept --- and probably accept we must, if we read the Bible literally --- that the Christian God is the only God and the only means for ever-lasting life.
Harris bolsters his arguments by observing "religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jew versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians, Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Budhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few."
He emphasizes, "In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years."
And concludes, "Give people divergent, irreconcilable and untestable notions about what happens after death, and then oblige them to live together with limited resources. ... The result is just what we see: an unending cycle of murder and cease-fire. If history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an insufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us."
And, "Add weapons of mass destruction to this diabolical clockwork, and you have a recipe for the fall of civilization."
Or, put this in the context of Osama bin Laden's vow to kill all infidels and President Bush's alleged statement to Palestinian leaders at a June 2003 meeting in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Eygpt: "I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me 'George go end the tyranny in Iraq.' And I did." (Source: BBC documentary, October 2005)
Let's give credence to White House press secretary Scott McClellan's denial the president said those words.
But just imagine having a leader of a nuclear-armed nation following orders directly from God --- unequivocal orders based on untestable belief. Such religious absolutism inevitably would lead to an all-out war that could end only with extermination of the human race, much as Harris warns --- and some say the Bible predicts.
Bill Roy is a retired physician and former Member of Congress. He has a law degree and lives in Topeka. He may be reached at wirroy@aol.com.

 SERBIA (92%); GERMANY (88%); ARMENIA (79%); NORTHERN IRELAND (79%); SRI LANKA (79%); BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA (79%); ERITREA (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%); NIGERIA (79%);  ETHIOPIA (79%); CROATIA (52%)




1


 
 
 (Boston, MA)

October 28, 2005, Friday



 For postquake Pakistanis, a greater need

 
Try explaining "donor fatigue" to the earthquake survivors in Pakistan - up to 3 million of whom need food and shelter as winter blows into the Himalayas. Or, explain it to hard-line Muslim groups providing humanitarian assistance while the West responds with far less magnanimity than it did after Asia's tsunami.
Perhaps because the Oct. 8 quake came in the wake of other large-scale disasters, perhaps because nations' aid budgets are stretched, or because the 7.6 temblor hasn't received 24/7 media coverage - whatever the reasons, the relief effort in mountainous northern Pakistan is in a cash crisis, and requires urgent response. 
"We needed the money yesterday," United Nations emergency relief chief Jan Egeland said this week when the UN increased its request for aid from $312 million to $550 million. Before the appeal, the international community had delivered less than 30 percent of the original goal.
Unless the response is lightning quick, the UN warns, more people could die from hunger, cold, and disease than did in the initial quake, which killed 54,000 to 78,000 people, depending on the estimate. More than 224,000 people perished in the Pacific Ocean tsunami, but swift international intervention prevented more deaths from the aftermath.
UN officials say aid workers have only five weeks left to get six months' worth of food supplies and shelter to millions of survivors before winter cuts off accessibility. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for a "Berlin airlift," but already this week helicopters were grounded due to bad weather in the mountains.
The world hastened to respond to the Asian tsunami, with the UN receiving 80 percent of its aid request in a mere 10 days. It was the holiday season, and Westerners were home watching gripping footage on TV. The media saturation, the rarity and geographic spread of the tragedy, and the fact that wealthy countries had tourists in the stricken areas, combined to produce an outpouring of generosity, both private and official.
This time, other news has pushed quake coverage from the headlines. And Americans are still processing hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Oxfam International describes 2005 as a year of "some of the worst natural disasters ever," with severe draught and hunger in Africa also unable to generate the donations needed there.
A humanitarian crisis compounded by winter in Pakistan should serve as ample impetus for giving, but the politics of the situation adds to the urgency. Obvious and full US assistance after the tsunami improved America's standing in the Muslim country of Indonesia, for instance. Swift aid to Pakistan could change "the climate and the dynamic of how the United States is viewed," and that's important for combating terrorism, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at a Monitor breakfast this week.
On Wednesday, the State Department responded to the UN's call by raising its earthquake commitment by just over $100 million. So far, it's actually spent nearly $25 million, and hopefully, it will quickly follow through on this new pledge.
Tragedy has a way of uniting the world in generous giving, when people are informed of the need and when they feel they can do something to alleviate it.
(c) . The 

 PAKISTAN (96%); UNITED STATES (93%); ASIA (92%); AFRICA (79%); 







   


October 27, 2005 Thursday  




 Rerun Our Cold War Cultural Diplomacy 

 
Who can doubt the appeal of American popular culture? If it dominates much of the world, it is because much of the world consumes it with relish. Indeed, while rejecting United States foreign policy, people in many countries happily embrace America's movies, television programs and pop music. Even Iranians lap up ''Baywatch'' via satellite.
  This also represents good business, something that the Bush administration is eager to defend. At the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization last week, Washington was almost alone in opposing a new convention on cultural diversity designed to promote alternatives to American-style cultural globalization. 
The convention, of course, was adopted anyway, but it poses no real threat to Hollywood. For just about everyone outside, say, Himalayan villages and Amazonian settlements, popular culture will continue to define what's right and what's wrong with American society. 
  Yet almost out of earshot, questions are being asked about whether it is wise for the United States's cultural image to be shaped exclusively by the marketplace. More specifically, with Washington now dusting off public diplomacy as a strategy to combat rampant anti-Americanism, is it time to revive cultural diplomacy?
  The purpose would not be to mute American popular culture. Instead, rather than trying to compete for the attention of the masses, cultural diplomacy would aim to persuade political and intellectual elites of the virtues of American civilization.
  This approach is now being quietly promoted by several arts lobbies in the United States. In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in July, a group called Americans for International Arts and Cultural Exchange wrote: ''Our coalition believes America has many cultural capabilities and talents that remain underutilized in the international arena and which can be effective in reaching out and telling our story to the world.''
  The administration official charged with repairing America's image is Karen P. Hughes, the newly named undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs. In an address to her staff last month, she acknowledged that popular culture can be a two-edged sword. ''Our music and film industries, our artists and entertainers create very powerful impressions, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but they're always, always powerful,'' Ms. Hughes said.
  At the same time, the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is giving some of its cultural programming a sharper political focus. For instance, working with Jazz at Lincoln Center, it has arranged for musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina, including the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, to visit countries that provided help to disaster victims. Such cultural diplomacy, though, still lacks the financing and political backing needed to be more than symbolic.
  It is hardly a radical idea. France, Britain, Germany, Japan and many other American allies have long used culture -- libraries, art galleries, orchestras, theater groups, lecture tours and the like -- to show their best face to the world. For this very purpose, for instance, France is currently sponsoring a theater festival called Act French in New York.
  It is also easily forgotten that the United States pioneered cultural diplomacy to combat Nazi propaganda before World War II. Later, on a larger scale, it used artistic and intellectual freedom as a weapon against Communism, both inside the Soviet bloc through radio broadcasts and cultural exchanges and across Western Europe through, say, sponsorship of literary magazines.
  What distinguished this cultural diplomacy from traditional cultural exports was that it engaged principally in the battle of ideas. Intellectuals from the former Soviet bloc have often underlined the importance of these programs.
  But with the collapse of Soviet Communism, the battle of ideas was declared won. And soon budgetary support for cultural diplomacy evaporated. By the late 1990's, when the United States Information Agency was folded into the State Department, Congress forced the cancellation of most cultural exchanges and the closing of American libraries and cultural centers worldwide.
  Then came 9/11 and the Iraq war and the abrupt realization that the United States needed soft power as well as military might. Washington's first response was to adapt the cold war model of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe: it created Radio Sawa and al-Hurra satellite television for Arab audiences and Radio Farda for Farsi speakers in Iran and Afghanistan.
  Ms. Hughes also sees a role for propaganda -- she did not, of course, use the word -- on the frontline of global politics. ''We can't expect people to give a fair hearing to our ideas if we don't advocate them very aggressively,'' she noted last month. On recent ''listening tours'' of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Indonesia, though, she had a chance to measure the cultural gap separating the United States and the Muslim world.
  Clearly, just as Islamic fundamentalism poses a threat different from Communist totalitarianism, the cold war model of cultural diplomacy -- designed essentially for Europe -- needs revising if it is to win over key opinionmakers in the Middle East and Muslim Asia.
  ''The new situation is much more multipolar,'' said Frank Hodsoll, who led the National Endowment for the Arts under the Reagan administration and is now chairman of the Center for Arts and Culture in Washington. ''There's a need for more effort in a lot more places where cultures are much more different.''
  In a joint study last year, Mr. Hodsoll's center and the Coalition for American Leadership Abroad offered suggestions: increasing cultural exchanges, facilitating visits to the United States by foreign artists and scholars, sponsoring trips abroad by American artists, reopening libraries and cultural centers and expanding English-language programs and cultural workshops.
  It also proposed adding $10 million to cultural financing by the State Department (which stands, this year, at a modest $4.05 million) and called for greater involvement by the private sector. ''Corporations could be doing much more,'' said Stefan Toepler, director of the Center for Arts and Culture. ''They have a big stake in this. They have markets to protect.''
  Still, more than money will be necessary for cultural diplomacy to be effective; entrenched anti-Americanism will take years of persuasion -- and, in some cases, policy changes by Washington -- to be reversed. And here experts add a caveat: for cultural diplomacy to be effective, it must emphasize broader American values over the specific interests of any administration. In the cold war, at least, patience was rewarded.

 NORTH AMERICA (99%);  EUROPE (50%); FRANCE (50%)






  
  


October 23, 2005 Sunday



 Israeli exit from Gaza brings political rewards;
Some Muslim countries accepting overtures

 
JERUSALEM -- When a devastating earthquake rattled Iran two years ago and killed tens of thousands of people, the Islamic nation welcomed aid offered by every country -- even the United States -- except Israel.
After another temblor decimated parts of Pakistan earlier this month, the second-largest Muslim nation in the world agreed to accept help from the Jewish nation, setting the stage for boxes marked with the Star of David to begin heading east.
In a region where small gestures can mark the start of something much larger, Pakistan's decision to take Israel's aid is a political tremor that could shake up the Middle East landscape. 
"I think more and more Muslim countries realize that Israel is no longer a pariah, and they have to grow up and accept the fact that it may be beneficial to have relations with Israel at various levels," said Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Israel.
In the weeks since Israel ended 38 years of military rule over the Gaza Strip by forcibly removing thousands of Jewish settlers who had lived amid 1.3 million Palestinians, it has racked up significant political rewards.
First came a long-planned public handshake in Istanbul, Turkey, between the foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan, marking the first official contacts between the Jewish and Muslim nations. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom hailed the moment as the beginning of the end for the "iron wall" that has long separated Israel from most of its Arab neighbors.
"Israel has no conflict with the Arab and Muslim world," the Tunisian-born Shalom said in an interview. "Just the opposite is true. We share many common interests and values. ... I always believed that the Arab and Muslim world has a critical role to play in advancing peace and stability."
That worldview seems to be making inroads across the Middle East. While Israel has established informal relations with its neighbors, the Gaza Strip gambit has given Arab and Muslim nations an excuse to acknowledge those ties publicly.
Indonesia's foreign minister met with Shalom at the United Nations, and a prominent newspaper in the world's largest Muslim nation cautiously welcomed the talks by saying that "Israel, unlike what Arabs often said in the past, indeed cannot be 'thrown into the sea.' " The Jakarta Post weighed in by suggesting that Indonesia's "opening some form of relationship with Israel is a prerequisite" to playing a larger political role in the region. And Shalom himself published a landmark opinion piece in an Indonesian newspaper.
After Shalom met with his Pakistani counterpart, President Pervez Musharraf told the American Jewish Congress that he could envision a day when there were more formal ties between the nations.
"What better signal for peace could there be than opening embassies in Israel by Islamic countries like Pakistan?" he asked.
The vehement opposition from the general public could make it difficult for leaders across the Middle East to go much farther in building ties with Israel until more progress is made with the Palestinians, said Mouin Rabbani, a Jordan-based senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
"At the end of the day, these states and governments in principle don't have any objection to going farther than they have already gone, but are being held back by their public opinion, which is opposed to such relations," Rabbani said.

 ISRAEL (97%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%); PAKISTAN (94%); UNITED STATES (93%);  MIDDLE EAST (92%);  TURKEY (92%); 







   


October 22, 2005 Saturday  




 Indonesian Students Skeptical About U.S. Policy, but Not America

 
President Bush's designated hitter for America's image in the Muslim world, Karen P. Hughes, and 16 students from Indonesia's largest Islamic university shared a stage here on Friday morning. But that was about all they shared.
  Ms. Hughes, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, began by inviting the students to tell her what they were studying and what their hopes were. 
The students wanted no such small talk. They wanted to talk about Iraq and America's role in the world, offering comments, opinions and questions marked by charges that the United States was ''two-faced'' and ''unfair.''
  ''Why does America always act as if they are the policeman of the world?'' asked 20-year-old Barikatul Hikmah, wearing a black-and-white-striped head scarf, bright yellow pumps and blue jeans.
  The question was met with applause from the 100 or so students in the audience. 
  ''America feels an obligation to stand up for our founding values,'' Ms. Hughes answered. She quickly added that the United States was not trying to impose its system on any country, and that the values of human rights and freedom were not only American, but universal.
  This is the second major foray into Islamic territory for Ms. Hughes. Last month, she met with groups in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. 
  Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population, and by and large, Islam here is moderate and tolerant. Indonesians bristle at the oft-held view from abroad that it is a country of Islamic extremists. To be sure, there is a fundamentalist element that would like to impose Islamic law, but it is small and, Indonesians argue, not unlike evangelical Christians in the United States.
  The students who shared the stage with Ms. Hughes were told they could ask any questions, ''even tough questions,'' said 20-year old Supenih, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. She was carrying a translated copy of ''Power and Terror'' by Noam Chomsky, the fierce critic of American foreign policy, which she politely tucked away before taking a seat near Ms. Hughes. 
  ''Stop the war in Iraq,'' Ms. Supenih said when she got a chance to speak on the stage. ''Who are the terrorists?'' she asked, suggesting Mr. Bush was, because of the war. There was applause in the audience.
  But Ms. Hughes said there was a difference between terrorists who have vowed to kill all Americans, Jews and even moderate Muslims, and the democratically elected leader of a country who goes to war to protect his country's Constitution.
  ''I want you all to come to America,'' Ms. Hughes said, ending the dialogue to applause that was almost too brief even to be called polite.
  Meeting with foreign correspondents afterward, Ms. Hughes said she was not surprised by the students' views. In their strong opposition to the war in Iraq, they were much like university students in the United States, she said.
  The students made clear that they distinguish between Americans as individuals, whom they like, and America as a country, where they want to go, as opposed to American foreign policy, which they abhor.
  Ms. Supenih, the Chomsky reader, said she wanted to become an English teacher. Why English? ''I care for my brothers and sisters in Indonesia,'' she said. Most reference books are in English, she said, and ''America is the center for study.''
  Would she like to go to America? ''Of course,'' she said, her eyes brightening. ''That's my dream.''

  INDONESIA (96%); IRAQ (92%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); TURKEY (79%); EGYPT (79%)






  
  

  Philadelphia Inquirer

October 22, 2005 Saturday 



 Political jolt: Muslim Pakistan accepts Israeli quake aid

 
When a devastating earthquake rattled Iran two years ago and killed tens of thousands of people, the Islamic nation welcomed aid offered by every country - even the United States - except Israel.
This month, after a temblor decimated parts of another Islamic country, Pakistan agreed to accept help from Israel, setting the stage for boxes marked with the Star of David to head east.
In a region where small gestures can mark the start of something much larger, Pakistan's decision to take Israel's aid is a political tremor that could shake up the Middle East landscape.
"I think more and more Muslim countries realize that Israel is no longer a pariah, and they have to grow up and accept the fact that it may be beneficial to have relations with Israel at various levels," said Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Israel. 
In the weeks since Israel ended 38 years of military rule over the Gaza Strip by forcibly removing thousands of Jewish settlers who had lived amid 1.3 million Palestinians, the country has received significant political rewards.
First came a long-planned public handshake in Istanbul, Turkey, between the foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan, marking the first official contact between the Jewish and Muslim nations. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom hailed the moment as the beginning of the end for the "iron wall" that long has separated Israel from most of its Arab neighbors.
"Israel has no conflict with the Arab and Muslim world," the Tunisian-born Shalom said in an interview. "Just the opposite is true. We share many common interests and values... . I always believed that the Arab and Muslim world has a critical role to play in advancing peace and stability."
That worldview seems to be making inroads across the Middle East. In cases where Israel has established informal relations with its neighbors, the Gaza Strip pullout has given Arab and Muslim nations an excuse to acknowledge those ties publicly.
Indonesia's foreign minister met with Shalom at the United Nations, and a prominent newspaper in the world's largest Muslim nation cautiously welcomed the talks by saying that "Israel, unlike what Arabs often said in the past, indeed cannot be 'thrown into the sea.' "
The Jakarta Post weighed in by suggesting that Indonesia's "opening some form of relationship with Israel is a prerequisite" to playing a larger political role in the region.
After Shalom met with his Pakistani counterpart, President Pervez Musharraf told the American Jewish Congress that he could envision a day when there were more formal ties between the nations.
"What better signal for peace could there be than opening embassies in Israel by Islamic countries like Pakistan?" he asked.
The thaw may be reaping benefits for Israel, but it is not without risks for the Arab and Muslim leaders who have been buffeted by criticism in their own countries. Hard-line Pakistani lawmakers walked out of a session of parliament to protest the meeting with Israel, a nation that Pakistan does not officially recognize.
When an Afghan newspaper recently reported that plans were under way for Afghanistan to officially recognize Israel, President Hamid Karzai's office quickly rebuffed the idea and said it would never do so until there was an independent Palestinian state.
Vehement opposition from the general public could make it difficult for leaders across the Middle East to go much further in building ties with Israel until more progress is made with the Palestinians, said Mouin Rabbani, a Jordan-based senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
"At the end of the day," Rabbani said, "these states and governments in principle don't have any objection to going further than they have already gone but are being held back by their public opinion, which is opposed to such relations."
Contact reporter Dion Nissenbaum at dnissenbaum@krwashington.com

 ISRAEL (99%); PAKISTAN (94%);  UNITED STATES (93%); MIDDLE EAST (92%);  TURKEY (92%); INDONESIA (92%); 







  



October 22, 2005 Saturday  




 Hughes Misreports Iraqi History; 
Envoy Vastly Overstates Fact in Justifying War to Indonesian Students

 
  Bush administration envoy Karen Hughes visited Indonesia on Friday as part of her campaign to repair U.S. standing with the world's Muslims and defended the invasion of Iraq by telling skeptical students that deposed president Saddam Hussein had gassed hundreds of thousands of his own people. 
  Her remark was an impassioned answer to familiar criticisms of U.S. policy raised by her audience at one of Indonesia's leading Islamic universities. But it was also wrong. 
  State Department officials later acknowledged that Hughes, tapped by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to set the record straight on U.S. policies in the Muslim world, had misreported history.  
  Although at least 300,000 Iraqis are reported to have died during Hussein's 24 years in office, his government's use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds cost the lives of only a small proportion, most notoriously an estimated 5,000 people who died in a 1988 military campaign in the northern town of Halabja.  
  Hughes, who is undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, made her remarks at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, south of Jakarta, one of several stops during her three-day visit to the world's most populous Muslim country. The students at the prestigious institution confronted her with emotional objections about the U.S. rationale for war in Iraq, similar to those she faced last month in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. 
  "The consensus of the world intelligence community was that Saddam was a very dangerous threat," she said. "After all, he used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He had murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people using poison gas." 
  Hours later, Hughes was asked twice for the basis for her numbers during a meeting with journalists from foreign news organizations. 
  "It's something that our U.S. government has said a number of times in the past. It's information that was used very widely after his attack on the Kurds. I believe it was close to 300,000," Hughes said when questioned the first time. She added, "That's something I said every day in the course of the campaign. That's information that we talked about a great deal in America." 
  When asked again several minutes later, she said, "I think it was almost 300,000. It's my recollection. They were put in mass graves." 
  By late in the day, Hughes's aide, Gordon D. Johndroe, offered a correction. 
  "She was referring to Saddam Hussein having killed hundreds of thousands of people. The gassing part of that was a fraction," said Johndroe, director of strategic communications and planning in the State Department's public affairs bureau. "She was combining two numbers and two situations. She wasn't trying to rewrite the story or make a new claim." 
  Though a longtime political adviser and confidante of Bush, Hughes is a relative newcomer to international affairs. She was appointed this year to energize the State Department's public affairs efforts and burnish the U.S. image, which has been badly tarnished in the Muslim world by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. 
  The students Friday repeatedly challenged her on all three fronts. But Iraq  --  and, in particular, unproven U.S. claims about Iraq stockpiling weapons of mass destruction  --  drew the most ire. 
  Hughes later told reporters she recognized that those issues resonate in Muslim countries, especially with the young. 
  "I'm not questioning at all that the views are deeply held. I understand they're deeply held," she said. "In the case of Iraq, I've both heard people around the world express concern. I've also been in the room and watched as our policymakers made the decision that they felt as a matter of very deep conviction was exactly the right thing that we needed to do." 
  Hughes was scheduled to leave Jakarta on Saturday for the Indonesian province of Aceh, devastated in the massive tsunami late last year, before visiting Malaysia, another predominantly Muslim country. 

 INDONESIA (96%); IRAQ (96%); UNITED STATES (95%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); EGYPT (79%); TURKEY (79%)







 
 


October 20, 2005 Thursday



 'Why Do They Hate Us?'

 
Is it possible to improve the image of America in the Muslim world? A panel tackled that question at New York University on Tuesday evening at a program called, "'Why Do They Hate Us? They Used To Love Us!' U.S.Public Diplomacy and Its Challenges in the Muslim World." The panel was moderated by Mustapha Tlilli, founder of NYU's "Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West."
Relying on focus group research from Egypt, Morocco, and Indonesia, Charney Research president Craig Charney spoke about how little is known in Muslim countries about American aid programs. Cairo residents are relatively unaware that America has provided low-pollution buses, but it is widely known that the Japanese funded the Cairo opera house. 
Mr. Charney next turned to the issue of misinformation. In Morocco and elsewhere, estimates of how many Jews live in America ranged from 10% to 80% of the population (the actual percentage is closer to 2%).
Mr. Charney said that in Muslim countries, resentment of President Bush and American power is strong. But he found ambiguity and ambivalence in their attitudes toward America. Muslims still have respect for America's educational and legal system, its scientific research and technology, and its work ethic, he said, and "these happen to be the areas" where they believe their own societies need most to develop.
Farhad Kazemi, an NYU professor of politics and Middle Eastern Studies, said the U.S. Information Agency merger with the State Department in 1999 had pushed public diplomacy "backstage." He said, however, that Karen Hughes's recent efforts to reinvigorate public diplomacy were a correct move, because the Muslim world has a "deep feeling of cultural invasion" in relation to America. "Envy, resentment, frustration, anger" are among the reaction to American power and policies. Moreover, America's "style, tone, and attitude" is perceived as arrogant.
Andras Szanto, a research affiliate at the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton, spoke about cultural diplomacy, which is a subset of public diplomacy. He spoke of research investigating how many foundation grants were designed for cultural exchange; i.e. artists, art objects, or art experts crossing American borders and going to other countries. The top 50 foundations commanded assets of around $163 billion in 2001, and dispensed grants totaling $7.8 billion that year. Of that, 7% (or about $545 million) went to arts and culture. Of the 7%, less than 10% ($46 million) was international. "The thin sliver of the pie" dedicated to international arts exchanges ($15.4 million) is less than .02% of overall foundation giving. Mr. Szanto said that in 2001, the sum of all arts exchange grants that went to the Middle East ($317,000) was less than the cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Members of the audience laughed when he noted that, today, he'd have to say "less than a studio apartment." Mr. Szanto said there appeared to be a tremendous mismatch between priorities of our cultural funding system and the reality of a global world.
***
GREEN DAY "I begin - like a good Irishman - with an apology," the consul general of Ireland, Tim O'Connor, said. He went on to say he'd only been in New York seven weeks as a "freshly minted" consul general. He was giving welcoming remarks last week at the launch of the Institute for American Irish Studies at Pace University. Advisory board members present included David Caputo, who gave remarks; Eduardo Castell; Edward Conlin; Jane Crotty; John Patrick Diggins, who is at work on a book about Ronald Reagan; Michael McGuire; and Jennifer Sullivan. Tenor Michael Londra sang and executive director Chris Cahill introduced Stanley Crouch, who spoke about film director John Ford.
Mr. O'Connor spoke of a golden period of relations between America and Ireland. He offered some intriguing statistics: American investment in Ireland is five times American investment in China. There are about 270 Irish companies operating inside America employing 65,000 people. Finally, he said, there are now more American citizens applying for permits to work in Ireland than vice versa. "There's a richness of material, shall we say, for an institute to study the changing nature" of the relationship between Ireland and America.
Speaking of Ireland's economic boom, Mr. O'Connor noted that New York's attorney general, Elliot Spitzer, upon visiting Ireland, remarked that aspects of its economic resurgence could be a model for upstate New York.
gshapiro@nysun.com

 UNITED STATES (98%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); EGYPT (90%); MOROCCO (88%); 






  
  


October 20, 2005 Thursday 



 Pakistan takes Israel's aid, in possible thaw

 
When a devastating earthquake rattled Iran two years ago and killed tens of thousands of people, the Islamic nation welcomed aid offered by every country -- even the United States -- except Israel.
After another temblor decimated parts of Pakistan earlier this month, the second-largest Muslim nation in the world agreed to accept help from the Jewish nation, setting the stage for boxes marked with the Star of David to begin heading east as soon as this week.
In a region where small gestures can mark the start of something much larger, Pakistan's decision to take Israel's aid is a political tremor that could shake up the Middle East landscape. 
''I think more and more Muslim countries realize that Israel is no longer a pariah, and they have to grow up and accept the fact that it may be beneficial to have relations with Israel at various levels,'' said Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Israel.
In the weeks since Israel ended 38 years of military rule over the Gaza Strip by forcibly removing thousands of Jewish settlers who had lived amid 1.3 million Palestinians, it has racked up significant political rewards.
First came a long-planned public handshake in Istanbul, Turkey, between the foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan, marking the first official contacts between the Jewish and Muslim nations. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom hailed the moment as the beginning of the end for the ''iron wall'' that has long separated Israel from most of its Arab and Muslim neighbors.
''Israel has no conflict with the Arab and Muslim world,'' the Tunisian-born Shalom said in an interview. ''Just the opposite is true. We share many common interests and values. . . . I always believed that the Arab and Muslim world has a critical role to play in advancing peace and stability.''
That view seems to be making inroads across the Middle East. While Israel has established informal relations with its neighbors, the Gaza Strip gambit has given Arab and Muslim nations an excuse to acknowledge those ties publicly.
Indonesia's foreign minister met with Shalom at the United Nations, and a prominent newspaper in the world's largest Muslim nation cautiously welcomed the talks by saying that ''Israel, unlike what Arabs often said in the past, indeed cannot be 'thrown into the sea.' ''
After Shalom met with his Pakistani counterpart, President Pervez Musharraf, he told the American Jewish Congress that he could envision a day when there were more formal ties between the nations.
''What better signal for peace could there be than opening embassies in Israel by Islamic countries like Pakistan?'' he asked.

 ISRAEL (97%); PAKISTAN (94%);  UNITED STATES (93%); MIDDLE EAST (92%);  TURKEY (92%);  







 Paddock Publications, Inc. 
Chicago Daily Herald

October 17, 2005 Monday  
DuPage Edition



 
Congress, Bush are hurting our veterans
At a time when our country is at war on two fronts, Afghanistan and Iraq, who would have thought that many in our Congress and in this administration would shortchange our veterans using the Veterans Administration system. They have under-funded the VA budget by $2.5 billion this year, along with cutting funding for prosthetic and burn research between $8 million and $9 million. With the 2007 budget proposal, our new veterans will be forced to pay a $250 enrollment fee for receiving VA benefits and their drug co-pay will double. 
Illinois ranks 25th out of 50 states on VA disability pay-outs. The average wait to see a VA doctor is between 60 and 95 days.
They have even started to reexamine thousands of disability claims to downsize the dollar amount being paid out.
We are constantly hearing this administration say "Support our troops", yet this is how they are supporting the troops. My question is this, "When is our government going to truly support our troops with a mandated VA budget and not a discretionary VA budget where our veterans have to beg for every dollar?
This Congress and administration have continuously under-funded the VA for 5 years. We pay Halliburton $12 million a day to feed our 128,000 troops, yet we let 300,000 veterans remain homeless nationwide (20,000 in Illinois). Many of these veterans are amputees and they receive no help or little help in finding a place to live.
Our organization, The Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans, receives phone calls from these veterans daily begging for a place to sleep because they are tired of sleeping on the cold ground. They are just asking for a chance to get back on their feet. Isn't this the least owed to them?
This is not about politics, it is about morals and humanity, and simply giving these men and women what was promised to them. I urge you to contact your members of Congress and tell them to fulfill their promise and their obligation to our veterans. These veterans fulfilled their contract with honor and pride. Don't shame them - especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom by giving their life in combat.
Our veteran organizations are being tapped out on funds to try and make up for VA budget shortfalls. If you could contribute to those veterans organizations in your area, it would truly be supporting our troops and would be greatly appreciated.
Dirk Enger
Co-Chair Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans
Desert Shield/Desert Storm Veteran, USMC
Wheaton
Hanania speaks eloquently for Israel
In a revealing moment of introspection, Ray Hanania, Daily Herald resident Palestinian pundit, opines in his Oct. 3 column that "as a Christian Arab he is discriminated against more these days by Muslims than by Jews." It is as if he has had blinders on all these years and has just awakened to the fact that Muslim extremists not only seek to evict every Jew from the Middle East, but are well on their way to achieving religious cleansing of all Christians and other "infidels" in Arab countries, Indonesia, and those parts of Asia and Africa where Muslims have the majority.
Since the Palestinian Authority has taken over the administration of Bethlehem, record numbers of Christians have fled Christ's birthplace, and the news is no better for Christian Arabs throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The fact is that the only place where Christians can openly, and without fear, practice their religion is in what the Palestinian apologists like to refer to as the "Apartheid State of Israel."
It is not hard to imagine the fate of Jews in a "secular state" imagined by dreamers, like Hanania, after the four million descendants of the "Palestinian refugees" return to their imagined former homes in a new Palestinian state: The Islamic paradise of Iran or the former reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan comes to mind.
The state of Israel was founded by survivors of the Holocaust and Jewish refugees from the Arab countries. It has welcomed persecuted Jews from the former Soviet Union, Latin America, Ethiopia, and wherever Jewish lives are threatened or made miserable.
Ray Hanania knows first hand exactly what the Israelis are up against. It is rare that anyone has ever made such an eloquent statement for the continued existence and prosperity of a Jewish state in Israel as Mr. Hanania.
Edward Margolis
Chicago

 AFGHANISTAN (92%); IRAQ (92%); UNITED STATES (91%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); ISRAEL (79%)







  



October 16, 2005 Sunday  




 BOOKS: Geological tale puts notion of terra firma on shaky ground

 
NONFICTION
A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. By Simon Winchester. HarperCollins. $27.95. 462 pages.
Verdict: A timely lesson in geology, told with a keen wit.
Those debating the role human activity plays in the frequency and ferocity of Gulf Coast storms might take a moment to reflect on the Earth's contribution to the dispute. As the nation digested the latest tales of rescue and relief after Hurricane Rita, news intruded of a "minor" earthquake in Maine --- which, as it turns out, happened hours after an earthquake on the other side of the world, in Indonesia. 
This should have resonated richly with Simon Winchester, who concludes his latest book, "A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906," with "a reminder that it is only by the planet's consent that places like the mountains of Montana and Wyoming exist, and only by the planet's consent that all towns and all cities ... survive for as long as they do."
Spit all the greenhouse gases we can into the sky, toss up towns on fault lines, it's all the same to the Earth. The planet's molten mantle roils below us, shoving against one other the thin plates of rock to which we cling. Now and then they slip and slide, and we learn who's really in charge.
This is decidedly a less sanguine note than the one with which Winchester concluded 2003's "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883." A narrative similarly laden with geology --- Winchester's field of study at Oxford in the 1960s --- "Krakatoa" likewise chronicled events, geological and human, before and after a cataclysm. But Winchester left us on the island's remnants, contemplating how life forever reasserts itself.
Concluding "A Crack in the Edge of the World," Winchester observes not only that another earthquake looms in the near future for Northern California, but that the entire western United States faces destruction by a volcanic eruption of titanic proportions in Yellowstone National Park.
Prepare for that, FEMA.
The Yellowstone eruption is due in the near term in geologic time, meaning, possibly, in thousands of years --- although it is unsettling to learn that the park's famed geysers, indexes of turmoil under the Earth's crust, seem to be spurting at an increased pace lately. The San Andreas fault, which threads its way along the California coast, is expected to shift again before 2032, Winchester reports. It will not come as a surprise to locals, whose officials have prepared all sorts of contingency plans, unlike their unwitting forebears a century ago.
With his usual keen wit and fluid prose, Winchester recounts the follies of San Franciscans before, during and after the April 18, 1906, earthquake, describing the city's origins in the gold rush, its fevered and frantic growth, and its sometimes tawdry boosterism.
In one of history's cruel twists, printers delivered an ambitious master plan for the city by Chicagoan Daniel Burnham the day before the quake. But the haste to rebuild, born of the same greed that had built the brittle tinderbox of a city, stanched any thought of following the celebrated architect's plan. (Take note, those of you in the "Gulf Opportunity Zone.")
San Francisco's business community launched a campaign of what later generations would call "spin," blaming the destruction not on the earthquake but the fire it spawned.
To little avail, however. Winchester observes, "San Francisco's crown began to slip immediately after the disaster of 1906. And the city has never regained its status, nor will it ever." Living on the tectonic edge has its price, clearly. Among other likely effects, Winchester lists the rise of fundamentalism, which saw the divine hand at work. In "Krakatoa," he speculated, too, about militant Islam and Indonesian independence.
These conjectures constitute a corollary, of sorts, to the Gaia hypothesis, which Winchester outlines in the prologue --- British scientist James Lovelock's theory that the world is a living entity and everything about it is interrelated. Like the New Geology, which yielded the notion of mobile tectonic plates, Gaia arose with the "Whole Earth" view, literal and figurative, made possible by space travel.
This perspective informs Winchester's journey from the eastern brink of the North American plate in Iceland to its western limit along the California coast. Along the way, he unfolds a geology lesson that might wear a little on nonscientific types, but the reward is his textured account of that awful day and its aftermath.
To carry the geological tale forward, Winchester drives on to Alaska and then to Yellowstone, and these would seem anticlimactic adventures were it not for those connections among natural events. Vesuvius erupted in Naples at the same time San Francisco crumbled and burned.
Last year's Iranian and Sumatran earthquakes, therefore, should give pause. Next spring's centenary of the San Francisco earthquake is not the only reason "A Crack in the Edge of the World" makes for timely reading.
Chuck Twardy is a writer in Las Vegas.

 UNITED STATES (94%); 




2

  
  


October 14, 2005 Friday 



 Donors focus on quake relief;
SOUTH ASIAN, MUSLIM AGENCIES FAVORED

 
With American generosity being tapped for a third unfathomable disaster in less than a year, traditional organizations such as the Red Cross are seeing a drop in donations, but Muslim and South Asian charities are seeing an outpouring of help.
The Red Cross of Santa Clara Valley couldn't provide exact numbers, but spokeswoman Cynthia Shaw said donations to help victims of the 7.6 earthquake in Kashmir are far behind the $500,000 collected locally in the first five days after Hurricane Katrina.
Only one person has called about holding a fundraiser for the Saturday earthquake, which is believed to have killed 25,000 people and displaced millions, compared with dozens of calls for Katrina fundraisers almost immediately after the Aug. 29 hurricane hit the U.S. Gulf Coast. 
''Normally things pick up by this time, and they haven't,'' Shaw said. ''Donor fatigue is something we're very concerned about. We've even seen it with Katrina. Already people are getting Katrina'd out and getting on with their lives.''
But the news is much better for the local Hidaya Foundation and Southern California-based Islamic Relief, both of which are reporting a dramatic response.
''The whole community has been very supportive,'' said Nabil Sheikh, office manager at the Hidaya Foundation, a Santa Clara-based non-profit supporting educational and social welfare projects in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. ''People of all walks of life are there, giving their own clothing and their own blankets.''
Islamic Relief online donations were expected to top $1 million Thursday, said spokesman Aris Shaikh, compared with $1.5 million more than 2 1/2 weeks after the tsunami hit Southeast Asia last December.
''We're definitely above that pace,'' Shaikh said, adding that the group has also received about $2.6 million so far of in-kind donations of medical kits, tents, jackets and blankets. ''It's been a year of disasters, but the sensitivity toward victims of these crises really has increased in donors. No matter how many times we call on donors, they respond. It's really encouraging.''
While the American Red Cross didn't provide updated earthquake donation figures Thursday, the World Food Program and CARE said donations are lagging, according to the Associated Press. UNICEF said donations have been generous so far, reaching $1 million by Wednesday.
But some donors may be intentionally choosing relief organizations with ties to the region over the large, all-purpose charities.
For the first time, following the devastation left behind by the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami, Shaikh said he saw non-Muslim donors seeking out Islamic Relief, knowing that the vast majority of victims were in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country.
''A lot of people called us looking for Muslim charity to give to. It happened during the tsunami and has continued since then,'' he said.
But while initial giving may be down, some officials say it's too early to tell if donor fatigue will ultimately have a major impact.
IF YOU'RE INTERESTED
Islamic Relief, the Muslim-American Society and a coalition of Muslim groups will have a fundraiser for earthquake victims at 5 p.m. Saturday at Chandhni Restaurant, 5748 Mowry School Road in Newark. Cost is $20 for adults or $200 per table. For information call Chandhni at (510) 668-1051 or Islamic Relief at (888) 479-4968.
Contact Katherine Corcoran at kcorcoran@mercurynews.com

 ASIA (92%);  INDIA (79%); BANGLADESH (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); 







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


October 13, 2005 Thursday



 Plate tectonics reveal earth's precarious state

 
   WASHINGTON -- Earth, that living, seething, often inhospitable and not altogether intelligently designed thing, has again shrugged, and tens of thousands of Pakistanis are dead. That earthquake struck 10 months after the undersea quake that caused the December 2004 tsunami that killed 285,000 in Asia. Americans reeling from Katrina, and warned of scores of millions of potential deaths from avian flu, have a vague feeling -- never mind the disturbing rest of the news -- of pervasive menace from things out of control. Too vague, according to Simon Winchester.
His timely new book, "A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906," teaches -- reminds, really -- that we should have quite precise worries about the incurably unstable ground on which scores of millions of Americans live. This almost certainly will result in a huge calamity, probably in the lifetime of most people now living. 
Before the study of plate tectonics revolutionized geology just 40 years ago, that science, Winchester writes, was concerned with "rocks, fossils, faults and minerals that were scattered around simply and solely on the surface of the earth." But the surface consists of between -- depending how they are defined -- six and 36 floating plates, which Winchester calls "rafts of solid rock," forming a band 1,800 miles thick. The plates' slow movements are powered by earth's molten innards, the boiling and bubbling radioactive residue of the planet's formation 4.5 billion years ago.
The plates grind against -- and slide up on, or plunge below -- one another. But not smoothly, which is the lethal problem. When friction freezes them for a while, stupendous kinetic energy builds up until, suddenly, plates unlock and the energy is released, sometimes in ways that seem to involve related spasms around the world.
On the last day of January 1906, that seismically dangerous year, an earthquake in Ecuador and Colombia of perhaps 8.8 magnitude on the Richter Scale killed about 2,000. Sixteen days later there was a large Caribbean quake, followed five days later by one in the Caucuses, and on March 17 by one that killed 1,228 on the island of Formosa. On April 6 a 10-day eruption of the volcano Vesuvius began with rocks blown 40,000 feet into the air over Naples. Two days after Vesuvius subsided, San Francisco was knocked down, and 2,600 acres of it were then devoured by three days of fires. About 3,000 San Franciscans died then, four months before a Chilean quake killed 20,000.
San Francisco's quake was smaller than the series of shocks around New Madrid, Mo., over a few winter weeks in 1811-12. They were strong enough to ring the bells in a Charleston, S.C., church that was later destroyed in that city's 1886 quake. Scores of millions of Americans now live on the unstable faults that shook mid-America 1811-12.
For San Francisco, the bad news is that the quake that killed 63 in 1989 (6.9 magnitude, compared to 8.3 in 1906) was caused not by the San Andreas fault but by a neighboring one. So the big menace, the San Andreas, has not recently lurched, as it surely will because it is moving, sporadically, in grinding concert with the Pacific Plate. Since 1906 there have been only five major earthquakes along the 750 miles of the San Andreas, and none in northern California. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates a 62 percent probability of a quake in that area of at least 6.7 magnitude before 2032. Pondering the prosperous town of Portola Valley, south of San Francisco, exactly astride two of the most active strands of the San Andreas, Winchester, like many geologists who have warned the town, is fascinated by "humankind's insistent folly in living in places where they shouldn't."
After earth's heavings subside, they reverberate in peoples' minds. Winchester says that when the 1755 Lisbon earthquake killed 60,000, "priests roved around the ruins, selecting at random those they believed guilty of heresy and thus to blame for annoying the Divine, who in turn had ordered up the disaster. The priests had them hanged on the spot."
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in what is now Indonesia fueled the growth of an extremist strain of Islam, bent on purging society of impurities displeasing to God. That strain has twice recently been heard from in Bali.
San Francisco's 1906 disaster prompted the explosive growth of a Pentecostal movement based in Los Angeles, a movement then embryonic but now mighty. Yet when A.P. Hotaling's whiskey warehouse survived San Francisco's post-quake inferno, a wit wondered:
If, as some say, God spanked the town
For being over frisky,
Why did He burn the churches down
And save Hotaling's whiskey?
Good question. George Will's e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com.

 UNITED STATES (95%); PAKISTAN (90%); ASIA (88%); CARIBBEAN ISLANDS (79%); ECUADOR (77%)






  
   


October 13, 2005 Thursday



 No More Vietnams

 
War On Terror: The deal on a new constitution struck by Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites has been described by parties on all sides as a "breakthrough" and underscores a key point about our presence in Iraq: It is not Vietnam.
Calls for the U.S. to exit Iraq as disgracefully as it abandoned Vietnam entirely miss what's taking place. Slowly, painfully, democracy is grinding out victories, while Islamofascism -- President Bush's new term -- is losing. 
On the very day a deal on the new Iraqi Constitution was announced, the good news was forced to share media attention with a suicide bomber who killed 30 young men lining up for jobs as policemen in the new Iraq.
That bloody act of terror underscores the depths of desperation to which "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia" has sunk. Knowing full well it has lost the war on the ground, it seeks instead to sow chaos in the new Iraq and control the world's headlines. Only in that latter battle, however, has it enjoyed any success.
This was driven home this week by the release of an extraordinary 6,000-word letter dated July 9 from Osama bin Laden's No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri, to al-Qaida's Iraqi leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi. The letter, captured by U.S. intelligence, makes clear al-Qaida's main audience:
"(W)e are in a battle," he writes. "And . . . more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media."
That's an unbelievably revealing statement -- even moreso because of the way the media, here and abroad, seem so willing to serve as stooges for one of Western civilization's greatest threats.
But Zawahiri goes further, puncturing a much-cherished view of the left that if the U.S. never entered Iraq in the first place, we wouldn't face a terrorist threat today. (Never mind that the U.S. was not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001.)
The letter proves al-Qaida isn't just an opportunistic insurgency that has sprung up in the middle of Iraq's postwar chaos. Rather, it's a global organization with long-term aims. These include establishment of a worldwide Muslim "caliphate" -- an Islamic empire stretching from Indonesia to the Mideast and on to North Africa.
This nuclear-armed caliphate would contend with the U.S. -- Europe being too feckless to defend itself -- for world dominance. The Zawahiri letter further makes clear that in al-Qaida's quest for world control, Iraq isn't peripheral -- it's central.
Which brings us back to the tired "Vietnam" metaphor, so favored by the angry left and American journalists of a certain vintage. Turns out that al-Qaida's terrorist leaders are convinced that a weak and decadent U.S. doesn't have the stomach for a fight.
"The aftermath of American power in Vietnam -- and how they ran and left their agents -- is noteworthy," Zawahiri writes.
Critics of our war on terror must get this straight: This cannot become "another Vietnam," no matter how much they might wish it. Deep down, those who use that fatuous phrase know this. And a viable constitution, which Iraq will vote on this Saturday, will help ensure that. So will national elections, now set for Dec. 15.
We've sacrificed too much, and Iraq has come too far, to stop now. Mideast democracy is at stake. So, perhaps, is Western civilization.

 UNITED STATES (95%);  INDONESIA (77%); MIDDLE EAST (73%); 







  



October 13, 2005 Thursday  




 Earthquake Aid for Pakistan Might Help U.S. Image

 
The influx of U.S. aid to earthquake-ravaged Pakistan  --  signified by yesterday's unscheduled stop in Islamabad by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice  --  could have an important side benefit: improving the battered U.S. image in a critical Muslim country. 
 U.S. officials are quick to say that the rapid reaction to the earthquake that has killed 20,000 to 40,000 people is largely due to humanitarian considerations  --  as well as to a desire to reward the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for his support of U.S. interests despite two assassination attempts. 
 "Musharraf is a friend and hero in our eyes," said one senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the issue more freely. "There is a clear and unmistakable signal being sent that we help our friends."  
 Stability in Pakistan, the only Islamic country with a nuclear weapon and the most crucial ally in tracking the elusive al Qaeda leadership, is critical to U.S. interests in South Asia. 
 The official, noting that U.S. aid is also flowing to Central America after the devastating floods there, said that the administration is not acting to "curry favor with hostile Muslim populations." But, he added, "if there is a positive impact for the United States, so much the better." 
 As another U.S. official put it: "If this helps us show that Abu Ghraib is not reflective of the American character, that would be good." 
  Rice, who is on a tour of Central Asia and Afghanistan, held talks with Musharraf and Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz during her two-hour stop. The Bush administration is assembling a  task force to examine what more can be done to stabilize Pakistan down the road, she told reporters traveling with her. 
  "The devastation is quite extraordinary," Rice said, adding that the initial  $50 million in U.S. aid will be followed by more assistance in the coming months. "The international community will have to be mobilized to help with ongoing rescue efforts, as well as the long-term recovery and reconstruction." 
 The model for using a humanitarian disaster to leverage public opinion is the Indian Ocean tsunami relief effort earlier this year. Though the administration was criticized for an initially slow response to that disaster  --  which killed more than 200,000 people  --  the U.S. government has now committed nearly $1 billion, with private donations topping that. 
 Polling has indicated that the U.S. tsunami effort  --  which included sending a fleet of ships and providing round-the-clock helicopter rescues  --  has paid dividends to the United States' image in Indonesia, the world's most populous  Muslim country. 
 A survey of 1,200 Indonesians one month after the tsunami, sponsored by Terror Free Tomorrow and conducted by a leading Indonesian pollster, found that, for the first time, more Indonesians (40 percent) supported the U.S. terrorism fight than opposed it (36 percent). Sixty-five percent of those surveyed had a more favorable impression of the United States, with support strongest among those younger than 30, while support for Osama bin Laden dropped from 58 percent before the tsunami to 23 percent. Terror Free Tomorrow is a nonpartisan group that studies popular support for global terrorism. 
 Husain Haqqani, director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University and an adviser to Terror Free Tomorrow, said the experience in Indonesia could easily be replicated in Pakistan. Haqqani, a former adviser to several Pakistani political leaders, said that anti-American Islamic groups have begun to realize this and have opposed the U.S. aid because "this may take the wind out of their sails." 
 But Haqqani said the U.S. effort to prop up Musharraf with the relief effort is unlikely to succeed. He said hard questions are already being asked about the faltering response of the Pakistani military, which Musharraf controls. Moreover, he said, much of the $1 billion in annual U.S. aid that Pakistan receives is perceived as going toward buying F-16 fighter planes and toward supporting the state, not the common people. 
 "The man in the street has not been the beneficiary of the U.S. aid" in the past, so credit for the disaster relief will flow to the United States, not to Musharraf for fostering good relations with Washington,  Haqqani said. 
  The U.S. government has so far provided eight helicopters  --  and appears on track to provide 30 more  --  and three field hospitals, one official said. Rice said she will take Pakistan's earthquake assistance requests to Europe at week's end to help coordinate Western relief. She will hold talks with the British and French governments between Friday and Sunday. Britain holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. 
 Wright reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. 

 UNITED STATES (96%); PAKISTAN (94%); INDONESIA (92%); ASIA (90%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); CENTRAL ASIA (79%); CENTRAL AMERICA (79%); SOUTHERN ASIA (58%)






  
   


October 12, 2005 Wednesday



 "The Great Challenge Of Our New Century'

 
Because of the breadth and detail of President Bush's address last week to the National Endowment for Democracy, and the scant and quarrelsome coverage that followed, we're reprinting the full speech here.
President Bush: Thank you all. I'm honored once again to be with the supporters of the National Endowment for Democracy. Since the day President Ronald Reagan set out the vision for this Endowment, the world has seen the swiftest advance of democratic institutions in history. And Americans are proud to have played our role in this great story.
Our nation stood guard on tense borders; we spoke for the rights of dissidents and the hopes of exiles; we aided the rise of new democracies on the ruins of tyranny. And all the cost and sacrifice of that struggle has been worth it, because, from Latin America to Europe to Asia, we've gained the peace that freedom brings. 
In this new century, freedom is once again assaulted by enemies determined to roll back generations of democratic progress. Once again, we're responding to a global campaign of fear with a global campaign of freedom. And once again, we will see freedom's victory.
Recently our country observed the fourth anniversary of a great evil, and looked back on a great turning point in our history. We still remember a proud city covered in smoke and ashes, a fire across the Potomac, and passengers who spent their final moments on Earth fighting the enemy. We still remember the men who rejoiced in every death, and Americans in uniform rising to duty. And we remember the calling that came to us on that day, and continues to this hour: We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire, or rest, until the war on terror is won.
The images and experience of September the 11th are unique for Americans. Yet the evil of that morning has reappeared on other days, in other places -- in Mombasa, and Casablanca, and Riyadh, and Jakarta, and Istanbul, and Madrid, and Beslan, and Taba, and Netanya, and Baghdad, and elsewhere. In the past few months, we've seen a new terror offensive with attacks on London, and Sharm el-Sheikh, and a deadly bombing in Bali once again.
All these separate images of destruction and suffering that we see on the news can seem like random and isolated acts of madness; innocent men and women and children have died simply because they boarded the wrong train, or worked in the wrong building, or checked into the wrong hotel. Yet while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane.
Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism. Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom. These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus -- and also against Muslims from other traditions, who they regard as heretics.
Many militants are part of global, borderless terrorist organizations like al-Qaida, which spreads propaganda, and provides financing and technical assistance to local extremists, and conducts dramatic and brutal operations like September the 11th. Other militants are found in regional groups, often associated with al-Qaida -- paramilitary insurgencies and separatist movements in places like Somalia, and the Philippines, and Pakistan, and Chechnya, and Kashmir, and Algeria.
Still others spring up in local cells, inspired by Islamic radicalism, but not centrally directed. Islamic radicalism is more like a loose network with many branches than an army under a single command. Yet these operatives, fighting on scattered battlefields, share a similar ideology and vision for our world. We know the vision of the radicals because they've openly stated it -- in videos, and audiotapes, and letters, and declarations, and Web sites.
First, these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions. Al-Qaida's leader, Osama bin Laden, has called on Muslims to dedicate, quote, their "resources, sons and money to driving the infidels out of their lands." Their tactic to meet this goal has been consistent for a quarter-century: They hit us, and expect us to run. They want us to repeat the sad history of Beirut in 1983 and Mogadishu in 1993 -- only this time on a larger scale, with greater consequences.
Second, the militant network wants to use the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against nonradical Muslim governments. Over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and Jordan for potential takeover. They achieved their goal, for a time, in Afghanistan. Now they've set their sights on Iraq.
Bin Laden has stated: "The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries. It's either victory and glory, or misery and humiliation." The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. And we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.
Third, the militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.
Some might be tempted to dismiss these goals as fanatical or extreme. Well, they are fanatical and extreme -- and they should not be dismissed. Our enemy is utterly committed. As Zarqawi has vowed, "We will either achieve victory over the human race or we will pass to the eternal life." And the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history. Evil men, obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience, must be taken very seriously -- and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.
Defeating the militant network is difficult, because it thrives, like a parasite, on the suffering and frustration of others. The radicals exploit local conflicts to build a culture of victimization, in which someone else is always to blame and violence is always the solution. They exploit resentful and disillusioned young men and women, recruiting them through radical mosques as the pawns of terror. And they exploit modern technology to multiply their destructive power. Instead of attending faraway training camps, recruits can now access online training libraries to learn how to build a roadside bomb or fire a rocket-propelled grenade -- and this further spreads the threat of violence, even within peaceful democratic societies.
The influence of Islamic radicalism is also magnified by helpers and enablers. They have been sheltered by authoritarian regimes, allies of convenience like Syria and Iran, that share the goal of hurting America and moderate Muslim governments, and use terrorist propaganda to blame their own failures on the West and America, and on the Jews. These radicals depend on front operations, such as corrupted charities, which direct money to terrorist activity. They're strengthened by those who aggressively fund the spread of radical, intolerant versions of Islam in unstable parts of the world.
The militants are aided, as well, by elements of the Arab news media that incite hatred and anti-Semitism, that feed conspiracy theories and speak of a so-called American "war on Islam" -- with seldom a word about American action to protect Muslims in Afghanistan, and Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, Kuwait and Iraq.
Some have also argued that extremism has been strengthened by the actions of our coalition in Iraq, claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals. I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001 -- and al-Qaida attacked us anyway. The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse. The government of Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and yet the militants killed more than 180 Russian schoolchildren in Beslan.
Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence -- the Israeli presence on the West Bank, or the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, or the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago. In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers -- and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.
On the contrary: They target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory.
The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet, in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses.
Bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, quote, "what is good for them and what is not." And what this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor Muslims is that they become killers and suicide bombers. He assures them that this is the road to paradise -- though he never offers to go along for the ride.
Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life. We've seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg and Margaret Hassan, and many others. In a courtroom in the Netherlands, the killer of Theo Van Gogh turned to the victim's grieving mother and said, "I do not feel your pain -- because I believe you are an infidel." And in spite of this veneer of religious rhetoric, most of the victims claimed by the militants are fellow Muslims.
When 25 Iraqi children are killed in a bombing, or Iraqi teachers are executed at their school, or hospital workers are killed caring for the wounded, this is murder, pure and simple -- the total rejection of justice and honor and morality and religion. These militants are not just the enemies of America, or the enemies of Iraq; they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity. (Applause.) We have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before, in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags, and the Cultural Revolution, and the killing fields.
Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims. Its leaders pretend to be an aggrieved party, representing the powerless against imperial enemies. In truth they have endless ambitions of imperial domination, and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves.
Under their rule, they have banned books, and desecrated historical monuments, and brutalized women. They seek to end dissent in every form, and to control every aspect of life, and to rule the soul itself. While promising a future of justice and holiness, the terrorists are preparing for a future of oppression and misery.
Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is dismissive of free peoples, claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and decadent. Zarqawi has said that Americans are, quote, "the most cowardly of God's creatures." But let's be clear: It is cowardice that seeks to kill children and the elderly with car bombs, and cuts the throat of a bound captive, and targets worshipers leaving a mosque. It is courage that liberated more than 50 million people. It is courage that keeps an untiring vigil against the enemies of a rising democracy. And it is courage in the cause of freedom that once again will destroy the enemies of freedom.
And Islamic radicalism, like the ideology of communism, contains inherent contradictions that doom it to failure. By fearing freedom -- by distrusting human creativity, and punishing change, and limiting the contributions of half the population -- this ideology undermines the very qualities that make human progress possible, and human societies successful. The only thing modern about the militants' vision is the weapons they want to use against us.
The rest of their grim vision is defined by a warped image of the past -- a declaration of war on the idea of progress itself. And whatever lies ahead in the war against this ideology, the outcome is not in doubt: Those who despise freedom and progress have condemned themselves to isolation, decline and collapse. Because free peoples believe in the future, free peoples will own the future.
We didn't ask for this global struggle, but we're answering history's call with confidence, and a comprehensive strategy. Defeating a broad and adaptive network requires patience, constant pressure, and strong partners in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and beyond. Working with these partners, we're disrupting militant conspiracies, destroying their ability to make war and working to give millions in a troubled region of the world a hopeful alternative to resentment and violence.
First, we're determined to prevent the attacks of terrorist networks before they occur. We're reorganizing our government to give this nation a broad and coordinated homeland defense. We're reforming our intelligence agencies for the incredibly difficult task of tracking enemy activity, based on information that often comes in small fragments from widely scattered sources, here and abroad. We're acting, along with the governments from many countries, to destroy the terrorist networks and incapacitate their leaders.
Together, we've killed or captured nearly all of those directly responsible for the September the 11th attacks, as well as some of bin Laden's most senior deputies; al- Qaida managers and operatives in more than 24 countries; the mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, who was chief of al-Qaida operations in the Persian Gulf; the mastermind of the Jakarta and the first Bali bombings; a senior Zarqawi terrorist planner, who was planning attacks in Turkey; and many of al-Qaida's senior leaders in Saudi Arabia.
Overall, the United States and our partners have disrupted at least 10 serious al-Qaida terrorist plots since September the 11th, including three al-Qaida plots to attack inside the United States. We've stopped at least five more al-Qaida efforts to case targets in the United States or infiltrate operatives into our country. Because of this steady progress, the enemy is wounded -- but the enemy is still capable of global operations. Our commitment is clear: We will not relent until the organized international terror networks are exposed and broken, and their leaders held to account for their acts of murder.
Second, we're determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes, and to their terrorist allies who would use them without hesitation. The United States, working with Great Britain, Pakistan, and other nations, has exposed and disrupted a major black-market operation in nuclear technology led by A.Q. Khan. Libya has abandoned its chemical and nuclear weapons programs, as well as long-range ballistic missiles. And in the last year, America and our partners in the Proliferation Security Initiative have stopped more than a dozen shipments of suspected weapons technology, including equipment for Iran's ballistic missile program.
This progress has reduced the danger to free nations, but has not removed it. Evil men who want to use horrendous weapons against us are working in deadly earnest to gain them. And we're working urgently to keep weapons of mass destruction out of their hands.
Third, we're determined to deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw regimes. State sponsors like Syria and Iran have a long history of collaboration with terrorists, and they deserve no patience from the victims of terror. The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, because they're equally as guilty of murder. Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization. And the civilized world must hold those regimes to account.
Fourth, we're determined to deny the militants control of any nation, which they would use as a home base and a launching pad for terror. For this reason, we're fighting beside our Afghan partners against remnants of the Taliban and their al-Qaida allies. For this reason, we're working with President Musharraf to oppose and isolate the militants in Pakistan. And for this reason, we're fighting the regime remnants and terrorists in Iraq.
The terrorist goal is to overthrow a rising democracy, claim a strategic country as a haven for terror, destabilize the Middle East, and strike America and other free nations with ever-increasing violence. Our goal is to defeat the terrorists and their allies at the heart of their power -- and so we will defeat the enemy in Iraq.
Our coalition, along with our Iraqi allies, is moving forward with a comprehensive, specific military plan. Area by area, city by city, we're conducting offensive operations to clear out enemy forces, and leaving behind Iraqi units to prevent the enemy from returning.
Within these areas, we're working for tangible improvements in the lives of Iraqi citizens. And we're aiding the rise of an elected government that unites the Iraqi people against extremism and violence. This work involves great risk for Iraqis, and for Americans and coalition forces. Wars are not won without sacrifice -- and this war will require more sacrifice, more time and more resolve.
The terrorists are as brutal an enemy as we've ever faced. They're unconstrained by any notion of our common humanity or by the rules of warfare. No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead, nor should they overlook the advantages we bring to this fight.
Some observers look at the job ahead and adopt a self-defeating pessimism. It is not justified. With every random bombing and with every funeral of a child, it becomes more clear that the extremists are not patriots, or resistance fighters -- they are murderers at war with the Iraqi people.
In contrast, the elected leaders of Iraq are proving to be strong and steadfast. By any standard or precedent of history, Iraq has made incredible political progress -- from tyranny, to liberation, to national elections, to the writing of a constitution, in the space of two-and-a-half years.
With our help, the Iraqi military is gaining new capabilities and new confidence with every passing month. At the time of our Fallujah operations 11 months ago, there were only a few Iraqi army battalions in combat. Today there are more than 80 Iraqi army battalions fighting the insurgency alongside our forces. Progress isn't easy, but it is steady. And no fair-minded person should ignore, deny, or dismiss the achievements of the Iraqi people.
Some observers question the durability of democracy in Iraq. They underestimate the power and appeal of freedom. We've heard it suggested that Iraq's democracy must be on shaky ground because Iraqis are arguing with each other. But that's the essence of democracy: making your case, debating with those who disagree, building consensus by persuasion, and answering to the will of the people.
We've heard it said that the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds of Iraq are too divided to form a lasting democracy. In fact, democratic federalism is the best hope for unifying a diverse population, because a federal constitutional system respects the rights and religious traditions of all citizens, while giving all minorities, including the Sunnis, a stake and a voice in the future of their country. It is true that the seeds of freedom have only recently been planted in Iraq -- but democracy, when it grows, is not a fragile flower; it is a healthy, sturdy tree.
As Americans, we believe that people everywhere -- everywhere -- prefer freedom to slavery, and that liberty, once chosen, improves the lives of all. And so we're confident, as our coalition and the Iraqi people each do their part, Iraqi democracy will succeed.
Some observers also claim that America would be better off by cutting our losses and leaving Iraq now. This is a dangerous illusion, refuted with a simple question: Would the United States and other free nations be more safe, or less safe, with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people, and its resources? Having removed a dictator who hated free peoples, we will not stand by as a new set of killers, dedicated to the destruction of our own country, seizes control of Iraq by violence.
There's always a temptation, in the middle of a long struggle, to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world, and to hope the enemy grows weary of fanaticism and tired of murder. This would be a pleasant world, but it's not the world we live in. The enemy is never tired, never sated, never content with yesterday's brutality. This enemy considers every retreat of the civilized world as an invitation to greater violence. In Iraq, there is no peace without victory. We will keep our nerve and we will win that victory.
The fifth element of our strategy in the war on terror is to deny the militants future recruits by replacing hatred and resentment with democracy and hope across the broader Middle East. This is a difficult and long-term project, yet there's no alternative to it. Our future and the future of that region are linked.
If the broader Middle East is left to grow in bitterness, if countries remain in misery, while radicals stir the resentments of millions, then that part of the world will be a source of endless conflict and mounting danger, and for our generation and the next. If the peoples of that region are permitted to choose their own destiny, and advance by their own energy and by their participation as free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized, and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow, and eventually end. By standing for the hope and freedom of others, we make our own freedom more secure.
America is making this stand in practical ways. We're encouraging our friends in the Middle East, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to take the path of reform, to strengthen their own societies in the fight against terror by respecting the rights and choices of their own people. We're standing with dissidents and exiles against oppressive regimes, because we know that the dissidents of today will be the democratic leaders of tomorrow. We're making our case through public diplomacy, stating clearly and confidently our belief in self-determination, and the rule of law, and religious freedom, and equal rights for women, beliefs that are right and true in every land and in every culture.
As we do our part to confront radicalism, we know that the most vital work will be done within the Islamic world itself. And this work has begun. Many Muslim scholars have already publicly condemned terrorism, often citing Chapter 5, Verse 32 of the Quran, which states that killing an innocent human being is like killing all humanity, and saving the life of one person is like saving all of humanity.
After the attacks in London on July the 7th, an imam in the United Arab Emirates declared, "Whoever does such a thing is not a Muslim, nor a religious person." The time has come for all responsible Islamic leaders to join in denouncing an ideology that exploits Islam for political ends, and defiles a noble faith.
Many people of the Muslim faith are proving their commitment at great personal risk. Everywhere we have engaged the fight against extremism, Muslim allies have stood up and joined the fight, becoming partners in a vital cause. Afghan troops are in combat against Taliban remnants. Iraqi soldiers are sacrificing to defeat al-Qaida in their own country. These brave citizens know the stakes -- the survival of their own liberty, the future of their own region, the justice and humanity of their own tradition -- and that the United States of America is proud to stand beside them.
With the rise of a deadly enemy and the unfolding of a global ideological struggle, our time in history will be remembered for new challenges and unprecedented dangers. And yet the fight we have joined is also the current expression of an ancient struggle, between those who put their faith in dictators and those who put their faith in the people.
Throughout history, tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that murder is justified to serve their grand vision -- and they end up alienating decent people across the globe. Tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that regimented societies are strong and pure -- until those societies collapse in corruption and decay. Tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that free men and women are weak and decadent -- until the day that free men and women defeat them.
We don't know the course our own struggle will take -- or the sacrifices that might lie ahead. We do know, however, that the defense of freedom is worth our sacrifice. We do know the love of freedom is the mightiest force of history. And we do know the cause of freedom will once again prevail.
May God bless you.

 UNITED STATES (93%); EUROPE (79%); LATIN AMERICA (77%); ASIA (71%); 







 
 


October 11, 2005 Tuesday



 President Bush Declares War On Radical Islam

 
A courageous speech by President Bush last week began a new era in what he calls the "war on terror."
To comprehend its full significance requires some background. Islamists (supporters of radical Islam) began their war on America in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeinei took power in Iran and later that year his supporters seized the American Embassy in Tehran.
For the next 22 years, however, Americans thought they faced merely a criminal problem and failed to see that war had been declared on them. For example, in 1998, when Islamists attacked two American embassies in East Africa, Washington responded by unleashing detectives, arresting the perpetrators, taking them to New York, assigning them defense lawyers, then convicting and jailing them. 
The second era began on September 11, 2001. That evening, Mr. Bush declared a "war against terrorism" and the American government promptly went into war mode, for example, by passing the Patriot Act. Though welcoming this shift, I criticized the notion of making war on a military tactic, finding this euphemistic, inaccurate, and obstructive. Instead, I repeatedly called on the president to start a third era by acknowledging that the war is against radical Islam.
Mr. Bush did occasionally mention radical Islam - in fact, as early as nine days after September 11, 2001 - but not with enough frequency or detail to change perceptions. The British prime minister, Tony Blair, also advanced the discussion in July, when, after the London transport bombings, he focused on "a religious ideology, a strain within the worldwide religion of Islam."
But the third era truly began on October 6 with Mr. Bush's speech to the National Endowment for Democracy. He not only gave several names to the force behind terrorism ("Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism"), but he provided ample details. In particular, he:
* Presented this "murderous ideology" of Islamic radicals "the great challenge of our new century."
* Distinguished it from the religion of Islam.
* Drew parallels between radical Islam and communism (both are elitist, cold-blooded, totalitarian, disdainful of free peoples, and fatefully contradictory), then noted in how many ways the U.S. war on radical Islam "resembles the struggle against communism in the last century."
* Pointed out the three-step Islamist drive to power: ending Western influence in the Muslim world, gaining control of Muslim governments, and establishing "a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."
* Explained the "violent, political vision" of radical Islam as comprising an agenda "to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation."
* Defined its ultimate goal: "to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world."
* Observed that Muslims themselves have the burden of doing the "most vital work" to fight Islamism.
* Called on "all responsible Islamic leaders to join in denouncing" this ideology and taking steps against it.
The detailed texture of Mr. Bush's speech transforms the official American understanding of who the enemy is, moving it from the superficial and inadequate notion of "terrorism" to the far deeper concept of "Islamic radicalism." This change has potentially enduring importance if finally, 26 years later, it convinces polite society to name the enemy.
Doing so means, for example, that immigration authorities and law enforcement can take Islam into account when deciding whom to let into the country or whom to investigate for terrorism offenses. Focusing on Muslims as the exclusive source of Islamists permits them finally to do their job adequately.
Despite these many advances, Mr. Bush's speech was far from perfect. His quoting the Koran harks back to 2001, when he instructed Muslims about the true nature of their faith; his comment about extremists distorting "the idea of jihad," unfortunately, implies that jihad is a good thing.
Most serious, though, is his limiting the "radical Islamic empire" (or caliphate) to just the Spain-to-Indonesia region, for Islamists have a global vision that requires control over non-Muslim countries, too - and specifically America. Their universal ambitions certainly can be stopped, but first they must be understood and resisted. Only when Americans realize that the Islamists intend to replace the U.S. Constitution with Shariah will they enter the fourth and final era of this war.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of "Miniatures" (Transaction Publishers).

  IRAN,  (94%); UNITED KINGDOM (92%); SPAIN (79%); EUROPE (79%); AFRICA (79%); EASTERN AFRICA (79%);  IRAN (73%)







 Tribune Review Publishing 
 


October 11, 2005 Tuesday



 Earth's quaky design

 
WASHINGTON -- Earth, that living, seething, often inhospitable and not altogether intelligently designed thing, has again shrugged, and tens of thousands of Pakistanis are dead. That earthquake struck 10 months after the undersea quake that caused the December 2004 tsunami that killed 285,000 in Asia. 
Americans reeling from Katrina, and warned of scores of millions of potential deaths from avian flu, have a vague feeling -- never mind the disturbing rest of the news -- of pervasive menace from things out of control. Too vague, according to Simon Winchester.  
His timely new book, "A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906," teaches -- reminds, really -- that we should have quite precise worries about the incurably unstable ground on which scores of millions of Americans live. This almost certainly will result in a huge calamity, probably in the lifetime of most people now living. 
Before the study of plate tectonics revolutionized geology just 40 years ago, that science, Winchester writes, was concerned with "rocks, fossils, faults and minerals that were scattered around simply and solely on the surface of the earth."  
But the surface consists of between -- depending how they are defined -- six and 36 floating plates, which Winchester calls "rafts of solid rock." The plates' slow movements are powered by Earth's molten innards, the boiling and bubbling radioactive residue of the planet's formation 4.5 billion years ago. 
The plates grind against -- and slide up on, or plunge below -- one another. But not smoothly, which is the lethal problem. When friction freezes them for a while, stupendous energy builds up until, suddenly, plates unlock and the energy is released, sometimes in ways that seem to involve related spasms around the world. 
On the last day of January 1906, that seismically dangerous year, an earthquake in Ecuador and Colombia of perhaps 8.8 magnitude on the Richter Scale killed about 2,000. Sixteen days later there was a large Caribbean quake, followed five days later by one in the Caucasus, and on March 17 by one that killed 1,228 on the island of Formosa.  
On April 6, a 10-day eruption of the volcano Vesuvius began with rocks blown 40,000 feet into the air over Naples. Two days after Vesuvius subsided, San Francisco was knocked down, and 2,600 acres of it were then devoured by three days of fires. About 3,000 San Franciscans died then, four months before a Chilean quake killed 20,000. 
San Francisco's quake was smaller than the series of shocks around New Madrid, Mo., over a few winter weeks in 1811-12. They were strong enough to ring the bells in a Charleston, S.C., church that was later destroyed in that city's 1886 quake. Scores of millions of Americans now live on the unstable faults that shook mid-America in 1811-12. 
For San Francisco, the bad news is that the quake that killed 63 in 1989 (6.9 magnitude, compared to 8.3 in 1906) was caused not by the San Andreas fault, but by a neighboring one. So the big menace, the San Andreas, has not recently lurched, as it surely will because it is moving, sporadically, in grinding concert with the Pacific Plate. 
Since 1906 there have been only five major earthquakes along the 750 miles of the San Andreas, and none in Northern California. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates a 62 percent probability of a quake in that area of at least 6.7 magnitude before 2032. Pondering the prosperous town of Portola Valley, south of San Francisco, exactly astride two of the most active strands of the San Andreas, Winchester, like many geologists who have warned the town, is fascinated by "humankind's insistent folly in living in places where they shouldn't." 
After Earth's heavings subside, they reverberate in people's minds. Winchester says that when the 1755 Lisbon earthquake killed 60,000, "priests roved around the ruins, selecting at random those they believed guilty of heresy and thus to blame for annoying the Divine, who in turn had ordered up the disaster. The priests had them hanged on the spot." 
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in what is now Indonesia fueled the growth of an extremist strain of Islam, bent on purging society of impurities displeasing to God. That strain has twice recently been heard from in Bali. 
San Francisco's 1906 disaster prompted the explosive growth of a Pentecostal movement based in Los Angeles, a movement then embryonic but now mighty. Yet when A.P. Hotaling's whiskey warehouse survived San Francisco's post-quake inferno, a wit wondered: 
If, as some say, God spanked the town 
For being over frisky, 
Why did He burn the churches down 
And save Hotaling's whiskey? 
Good question. 

 UNITED STATES (94%); PAKISTAN (90%); ASIA (88%); CARIBBEAN ISLANDS (79%); ECUADOR (67%)






   

 

October 10, 2005 Monday 



 READERS WRITE

 
Iraq: Responses to "Bush rallies faith in war," Page One, Oct. 7
Slim support for Bush war
George W. Bush is the most incompetent and disingenuous president of my 60-plus years on this Earth.
Each time he attempts to rally the nation behind the Iraq war, he provides a different rationale. Most recently, it's the old Cold War "domino theory" that fostered the Vietnam War.
The fact remains that Iraq was a war of choice, unnecessary and opposed by nearly all senior military officials and former administration officials. The invasion caused the United States to pull the majority of our troops from Afghanistan, leaving that job unfinished and allowing Osama bin Laden to remain free. 
No matter how Bush tries to dress that pig in Iraq, it will not deceive those who are not members of his choir. Congress needs to investigate our rush to war in Iraq to determine the real reasons for it. It has caused a near-paralysis in this nation's ability to address other issues.
CLARENCE McKINNEY, College Park
Rationale needed to be restated
I'm glad President Bush reiterated why we're in Iraq. If you don't understand, consider that:
 
* The civilized world cannot countenance the deliberate killing of innocents (children, women and the elderly), especially for a political goal.
 
* After Sept. 11, 2001, the United States launched a war on terror, not limited to al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden (remember the "axis of evil"?).
 
* Even the 9/11 commission verified that Iraq was a terrorist state that trained, encouraged and financed terrorism.
Ask Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, if he would like to return to the good old days. He understands why we're there.
BARRY DARNELL, East Point
Invasion inflamed anti-U.S. hatred
President Bush sounds like a broken record. His attempt to conflate the war on terrorism with the war on Iraq shows how out of touch he is with the realities in the Middle East.
Instead of helping push the Middle East toward peace and democracy, the invasion of Iraq has inflamed hatred of the United States and has served as a rallying point for al-Qaida.
According to Bush's circular reasoning, the war on Iraq has created terrorists in Iraq, which he then uses to justify war on Iraq. It appears he was out partying during logic class at Yale.
JOE PARKO, Atlanta
President should get facts straight
President Bush keeps saying that the goal of al-Qaida is to establish a Taliban-style government everywhere. He also says that if the terrorists come to power, there will be more mass graves. Neither is historically or factually correct.
Al-Qaida did not create the Taliban. If anything, it was Pakistan that encouraged the Taliban. Osama bin Laden, who was chucked out of Africa and took refuge in Afghanistan, has said nothing about creating Islamic governments in non-Muslim countries. And in the history of al-Qaida terrorism, there has not been a single mention of any secret mass graves.
RAMAKRISHN RAMAN, Tucker
Taxes
All should chip in for education
What we are talking about here is our values as a community ("Idea doesn't register," Editorial, Oct. 7). How important is education? Our tax system reflects our view of a civil society. How do we pay for what we value?
For the most part, education has been viewed as critical to our form of government: A democratic republic depends on a literate, educated, informed citizenry. In economic terms, today's students are the ones who fuel tomorrow's economy and who keep the Social Security system going for tomorrow's senior citizens.
Although Georgia appears to have come to universal education later than many states, efforts to create a good statewide educational system have been made. The current effort to move to a sales tax in place of property tax to fund the system is a move in a dangerous direction, as your editorial points out.
Education needs to be funded by a means that is fair, consistent and reliable. All citizens should chip in because we all benefit. Property appears to be a basis for taxation that meets these criteria. (There are ways of dealing with differences in property between various districts.) As fundamental, of course, is our getting our money's worth.
ALIDA C. SILVERMAN, Atlanta
GOP can't shirk responsibilities
Melody Harrison says some people believe that Georgians who don't own property are getting a "near-free pass" on schools by not paying property taxes ("Small business backs sales tax," Equal Time, Oct. 7). Surely she doesn't believe that herself, or give any credence to those who do.
Obviously, people who rent instead of own their residence pay the property taxes for their residence in their rent. Georgia landlords are not dumb enough to omit property taxes in their cash-flow analyses.
It seems that Republicans are more concerned with reducing their tax burden than acting fiscally responsible. Deficits are at record levels with no plans to pay for them; talk is afoot to replace income taxes with a huge sales tax, which would reduce the wealthy's portion of the tax burden; and now elimination of property taxes, to be replaced by yet another increase in the sales tax, further reducing the wealthy's portion of the tax burden and shifting it to the middle and lower classes.
Sooner or later, the GOP is going to have to realize that paying for police and firefighters, schools, wars, disaster recovery, homeland security and the thousands of other programs government provides cannot be done without taxes. They need to quit trying to weasel out of their responsibilities and pay their share.
CLARE DUCEY, Atlanta
Murderer a more apt title for Guevara
I take exception to Phil Kloer's breezy little bio on Che Guevara (" 'Che chic' gets burst of pop culture cool," Living, Oct. 7).
While Kloer mentions that Guevara is politically controversial, he omits --- through ignorance or agenda --- that the romantic revolutionary was one of history's cruelest serial killers, viciously murdering hundreds of innocent people in order to promote his Marxist goals and support Fidel Castro.
, along with many worldwide news agencies, represents Guevara as a sexy, edgy rebel. No wonder people think it is cool to sport this murderer's likeness on a T-shirt.
MICHAEL B. FLEMING, Atlanta
Let each state decide on assisted suicide
Chief Justice John Roberts is no federalist ("Roberts tough on assisted suicide," Page One, Oct. 6). He ruminates that laws such as Oregon's right-to-die law would "undermine the uniformity of federal law."
I had hoped that Roberts had read the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
It is clear that each state, including Georgia, should make its own laws about assisted suicide. Federalism means that most laws should not be dictated to us by power grabbers in Washington.
BERT A. LOFTMAN, Big Canoe
Keep child molesters off streets, in jail
I am disappointed by the proposal to make things easier for child molesters ("Board sets new rules for parole," Metro, Oct. 5).
With all the attention to the rate of recidivism among molesters, Georgia proposes to allow them back on the street earlier, so long as the crime involved no physical injury to the child and no sodomy. Child molestation is always injurious to the child, no matter the circumstance.
The board should keep child molesters in jail where they belong --- away from our children.
JACKSON E. COX
Cox, of Waynesboro, is solicitor-general of Burke County.

  UNITED STATES (93%); MIDDLE EAST (92%);  AFGHANISTAN (79%); PAKISTAN (79%);   SPAIN (79%); 







 Paddock Publications, Inc. 
Chicago Daily Herald

October 10, 2005 Monday  
F1 Edition; F2 Edition; McHenry Edition; F3 Edition



 
Rebuild these cities on higher ground
Many Americans don't want to rebuild homes and businesses in the same Gulf Coast hurricane zones. It's a waste! There must be much building on higher ground. For New Orleans, particularly, to deny this, is unacceptable. They can't punish the people and their money for what others did or for recurring natural disasters. 
Nancy Watt
Barrington
Expedient change a truly sad suggestion
So Hermann Faubl believes smart Democrats should turn pro-life! I don't think anyone doubts many or most politicians have viewpoints aligned with their major supporters or, in essence, they prostitute themselves to keep their positions and benefits of office.
First of all, being pro-choice isn't the same as being anti-life or pro-death. How do pro-life supporters reconcile their beliefs with the pro-death Iraqi war or the arbitrarily applied death penalty for certain crimes? If killing is wrong, then how is killing in self-defense acceptable? Why does someone who kills under the influence of drugs or alcohol get a lesser penalty?
Where does the right to die or assisted suicide fit in when all that's left is misery or suffering for someone who is terminally ill? Should someone be forced to live in misery as long as modern medicine can sustain them?
It is absurd that a disinterested third party should be able to make such an important decision for persons so affected.
If I follow Faubl's thought process, slavery might still be legal. All of our manufacturing would be shifted to Third World countries to avoid paying taxes, benefits or a living wage, or conforming to any environmental protections.
We might be embroiled in a war based on lies and false pretense. Food programs for the poor might be slashed by a half billion dollars while big oil companies receive a multibillion dollar windfall.
Not funny, but most of this is already history. This is the real agenda of the self-proclaimed moral majority: "What's mine is mine and what's yours belongs to me and my friends. Do as I say and not as I do."
Rational and truly moral people don't spend their lives putting on a show, telling others how to live while feathering their nests privately in greed and debauchery.
Moral people don't have to proclaim their morality because they live it quietly as an example. Moral people also know life is often a struggle and some people face choices that many others will never have to make.
Moral choices don't require a majority vote. They are made quietly and sometimes desperately by most of us each and every day.
A vote for a candidate or political party based purely on the issue of abortion is a vote based on ignorance. There are some people in public office who actually are there for the right reasons. They deserve our support regardless of party or religious affiliation.
Robert Morgan
Elburn
Ray Hanania speaks eloquently for Israel
In a revealing moment of introspection, Ray Hanania, Daily Herald resident Palestinian pundit, opines in his Oct. 3 column that "as a Christian Arab he is discriminated against more these days by Muslims than by Jews." It is as if he has had blinders on all these years and has just awakened to the fact that Muslim extremists not only seek to evict every Jew from the Middle East, but are well on their way to achieving religious cleansing of all Christians and other "infidels" in Arab countries, Indonesia, and those parts of Asia and Africa where Muslims have the majority.
Since the Palestinian Authority has taken over the administration of Bethlehem, record numbers of Christians have fled Christ's birthplace, and the news is no better for Christian Arabs throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The fact is that the only place where Christians can openly, and without fear, practice their religion is in what the Palestinian apologists like to refer to as the "Apartheid State of Israel."
It is not hard to imagine the fate of Jews in a "secular state" like the Islamic paradise of Iran or the Taliban's Afghanistan.
The state of Israel was founded by survivors of the Holocaust and Jewish refugees from the Arab countries. It has welcomed persecuted Jews from the former Soviet Union, Latin America, Ethiopia and wherever Jewish lives are threatened or made miserable.
Ray Hanania knows first-hand exactly what the Israelis are up against. It is rare that anyone has ever made such an eloquent statement for the continued existence and prosperity of a Jewish state in Israel as Hanania.
Edward Margolis
Chicago

 






  
   


October 10, 2005 Monday



 Defining The Enemy

 
War On Terror: Understanding what motivates the enemy is essential to defeating it. The commander in chief took a major step in that direction with last week's speech tying terrorism to "Islamic radicalism."
Over and over, President Bush called the terrorists "Islamic radicals." It was a stunning departure from his usual rhetoric marginalizing the religious aspect of the long-term threat America faces. In past speeches, Bush has described an otherwise amorphous enemy of "evil-doers" motivated by a rather nebulous thing called "evil ideology." 
With Thursday's speech, he also abandoned his mantra that Islam is a "religion of peace." He called it a "noble faith," and left it at that.
The president could have gone even further to explain what motivates the terrorists. He left the impression they are all heretics distorting the idea of jihad and defiling their scripture. He said they were "driven by ambition."
Yet self-immolation is the antithesis of earthly ambition. Suicide bombers are inspired not by earthly gain, but by the Quranic promise of endless carnal delights in paradise -- rewards that are reserved for jihadists who "slay and are slain" battling the infidels in the name of Allah. No fewer than 26 chapters of the Quran deal with holy war and the rewards for martyrs, or shaheeds.
The unpleasant truth is, Muslim terrorists are getting all these terrible ideas -- from violent jihad to self-immolation to even the beheadings we've seen in Pakistan and Iraq -- straight out of the text of their holy book.
The president, however, may be relying too much on scholars to tell him what the Quran does and does not say, and does and does not promote. One of his top advisers on the subject -- religious pluralist David Forte of Cleveland State University -- believes nothing as evil as 9-11 could come from a religion. It's from Forte that Bush got his lines about Osama bin Laden "hijacking" and "perverting" a "peaceful religion."
The influence of such apologists for Islam can be seen in Bush's closing remarks defending Islam in an effort to draw a distinction between mainstream Muslim beliefs and the distorted beliefs of those who kill in the name of their faith: "Many Muslim scholars have already publicly condemned terrorism, often citing Chapter 5, Verse 32, of the Quran, which states that killing an innocent human being is like killing all humanity."
Beautiful. Except a key part is missing that gives terrorists a lot of wiggle room to murder. Here's the full text of the verse Bush cited (according to the version of the Quran approved by the Council on American-Islamic Relations): "We ordained for the children of Israel that if anyone slew a person -- unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land -- it would be as if he slew the whole people."
In the footnotes, widely revered translator Abdullah Yusuf Ali interprets "mischief" as "treason against Allah." And the very next verse calls for guilty infidels to be beheaded. Sadly, the clause starting with "unless" can be cited by terrorists to fuel their jihads -- and it is, along with countless others far more direct in the Quran.
Continuing to pretend that terrorism is a distortion of Islam's supposedly "peaceful" and "tolerant" nature -- and not a predictable outcome of jihad, its 6th pillar -- may soothe the savage beast of political correctness. But it's no way to win a war against real savages.That can only come from frank national discourse over what is motivating them, where they are getting that motivation, and how to implement effective methods to disrupt it.
The president is right that this enemy is "utterly committed" to the cause of world domination, and no less so than the Nazis and communists.
In fact, this enemy is even more committed, because unlike the atheists and statists, it is driven by a religion -- a fact we can no longer ignore, much as it pains us. Those who follow bin Laden want to purify Islam, and that means building an Islamic empire "from Spain to Indonesia," and beyond, in Allah's name.
We must test the pleasant platitudes of political correctness against the evidence, and that evidence is in their holy book. As Ronald Reagan warned regarding the Soviets and their goal of contructing an evil empire, we mustn't be afraid to see what we see. And we must not hesitate to call things by their proper names.

 UNITED STATES (93%); PAKISTAN (79%);  




3


 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


October 8, 2005 Saturday  




 BUSH STOPS PUSSYFOOTING IN STRONGEST RHETORIC YET, PRESIDENT SPELLS OUT JUST WHO AMERICA'S ENEMIES ARE

 
The speech President Bush gave Thursday to boost public support for the Iraq war should have been given a couple of years ago. And the themes should have been repeated time and again since then.
Had he done that, Thursday's speech might not have been necessary. We just hope it didn't come too late. 
Instead of talking vaguely about fighting the "war on terrorism" and "extremists," he made clear exactly who the enemy is - radical Islam, which seeks to establish an "empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia" with Iraq as the main front.
"The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century," he said. "Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision."
He rejected the notion that the U.S. military in Iraq is fueling radicalism throughout the region. There were no U.S. troops in Iraq on 9-11. Also, nations that do not support the U.S.-led coalition have also been attacked by Islamic radicals - such as in Beslan, Russia, in 2004, when more than 300 school children were killed.
If the United States bailed out of Iraq, said the president, radical Islam would use it as a staging area to overthrow all other regimes in the region, including those of moderate Muslims. "Against such an enemy there's only one effective response," continued the president. "We never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory."
Hopefully, his frank talk will stiffen the resolve of many Americans who were beginning to waver in their support of the war. Bush has reminded them that the cost in lives and treasure has been high, but it will become a lot higher - and the world a much more dangerous place - if Americans cut and run from Iraq.
Democrats, many of them anyhow, would have none of it. Rather than rally behind the troops and their commander in chief, the left played partisan politics designed to polarize the country - thus undercutting and prolonging the war.
Such dissent would be justified if Democrats had a plan of their own to get out of Iraq without leaving a power vacuum for radical Islam to fill, but they do not. The most widely quoted comment on Bush's speech by a leading Democrat was Senate minority whip Dick Durbin of Illinois:
"I believe the president has offered America a false choice between resolve and retreat," he said. "The real choice is between a strategy of accountability and more vague generalities. We must move beyond policies of fear to a forceful commitment to protect the United States and its values."
Is there anyone out there who understands what he said?

   SPAIN (79%); 







 The Florida Times-Union 
Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville)

October 8, 2005 Saturday



 Chaplain's new book is a kids' flight of fancy

 
As a Navy chaplain, Randy Mortenson has taken many flights.
Deployed in 1999 to the Persian Gulf, he flew by helicopter ("holy helo") from the carrier USS Constellation to other ships in its battle group, conducting worship services and offering evening prayers at sea. In Okinawa, Japan, serving with the Third Marine Division in 2002, Mortenson flew to eight ports in Southeast Asia, leading community relations projects and teaming up with a Muslim Navy chaplain for special visits to mosques and schools in Malaysia and Indonesia.
A seasoned Navy chaplain who is now serving at Mayport Naval Station's Chapel by the Sea, Mortenson recently embarked on another flight, a flight of fantasy and imagination that may take him farther than he's ever traveled. As author of Landon Snow and the Auctor's Riddle, a Christian-themed fantasy/adventure book for 8- to 12-year-olds, Mortenson envisions flying into the hearts and minds of children around the world with a message of faith and hope. 
Mortenson's protagonist, Landon Snow, is an inquisitive 11-year-old boy who insists that there must be a reason for everything. When he awakens in the middle of the night and sets out on an adventure that takes him to a truly magnificent place called the Button Up Library, Landon Snow finds himself on an exciting literary quest for the answer to the Auctor's Riddle. Swallowed by a book, falling from the sky on horseback, fleeing from piercing arrows and making his way bravely through myriad obstacles with his magical dream stone in hand, the boy experiences an adventure equivalent to that of Alice in Wonderland.
"It's a whimsical adventure that challenges the intelligence and imagination of children," said D.H. Eaton, a Beaches-area novelist and author of The Osceola Community Club, as well as Mortenson's fellow member of the Florida Writer's Association. "Landon Snow and the Auctor's Riddle is a delightful quest set in the library, a marvelous place of discovery that all children can access and enjoy." The book, with the Auctor's Riddle in rhyme, "Could it be chance, mere circumstance . . . " ultimately leads to some insights into the Christian theme of creation.
"It was a dark and stormy night when I wrote the poem that would become the Auctor's Riddle," Mortenson said with a mischievous grin. A poet and prose writer since childhood, Mortenson remembers being paid $5 by the Minneapolis Star for publication of his poem, At the Doctor's Office, when he was in fifth grade. "That set me on the dream path to fame and fortune as a writer," he joked.
Mortenson's big break came when he met a representative of Barbour Publishing in August 2004 at the Billy Graham Training Center's Writing for the Soul Seminar.
"It's exciting to have my first book accepted by a prestigious traditional publisher like Barbour," he said. "And this is just the first in a series of Landon Snow adventures that we hope will capture the imagination of kids and lead them to seek the true adventure that awaits them in libraries around the country."
In the meantime, with his wife, Betsy, and his daughter, Kyra, 2, the chaplain stays busy by day leading his small congregation at Mayport's Chapel by the Sea and, by night, putting his flights of fantasy, combined with Biblical truths, into words.
"Who put where they are, the earth, moon and star, And Landon Snow, to wonder . . . in awe?" riddles the Auctor, and the author.
BOOK LAUNCH
Author and chaplain Randy Mortenson will host a book launch celebration from 1 to 3 p.m. today for Landon Snow and the Auctor's Riddle at Barnes & Noble bookstore at St. Johns Town Center. He'll do readings at 1 and 2 p.m. and there will be a drawing for a free book.

 UNITED STATES (93%); JAPAN (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); INDONESIA (77%); ASIA (73%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (72%)






   

 

October 7, 2005 



 Bush rallies faith in war;
President hails foiled terror plots, reaffirms Iraq's link to 9/11, amid growing political and public unease.

 
Washington --- President Bush said Thursday that the war in Iraq is a crucial front in a battle against Muslim extremists seeking "a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."
"Some might be tempted to dismiss these goals as fanatical or extreme," Bush said. "Well, they are fanatical and extreme and they should not be dismissed."
In making his case during what the White House billed as a major speech, Bush said the United States and other nations had "disrupted" at least 10 "serious al-Qaida terrorist plots" since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including three aimed at the United States. 
Bush also mentioned at least five al-Qaida efforts to "case targets in the United States or infiltrate operatives into our country."
"Because of this steady progress, the enemy is wounded," Bush told the National Endowment for Democracy, "but the enemy is still capable of global operations."
Bush also used the speech to renew his effort to link the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, a connection top Democrats said does not exist.
"I believe the president has offered America a false choice between resolve and retreat," said Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).
In addition to keeping the heat on Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaida leaders, Bush branded Syria and Iran as "helpers and enablers" and "allies of convenience" aiding Islamic radicalism. Those two nations, Bush said, "share the goal of hurting America and moderate Muslim governments."
Bush's comments came as polls indicate dwindling support for the war in Iraq and growing skepticism of Iraq's links to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bush used rich imagery to remind people of the attacks.
"We still remember a proud city covered in smoke and ashes, a fire across the Potomac, and passengers who spent their final moments on Earth fighting the enemy," he said. "We still remember the men who rejoice in every death, and Americans in uniform rising to duty."
He said radicals had targeted Iraq for takeover, much as they had once taken over Afghanistan.
"The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity," Bush said, "and we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror."
As he has for years, Bush portrayed Islam as a great religion under attack from radicals who profess to live by its teachings.
"This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision --- the establishment by terrorism and subversion and insurgency of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom," Bush said.
The goal, he said, is an agenda that includes the ability "to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people and to blackmail our government into isolation."
Ali Khan, executive director of the American Muslim Council, said he appreciates Bush's ongoing effort to avoid the impression of a war on Islam.
"I don't think it's a war against a religion," said Khan, who remains skeptical about the war in Iraq. "There is no concrete plan as to how to bring peace into the country."
Democratic leaders said Bush's speech did nothing to assuage their doubts.
"The president continued to falsely assert there is a link between the war in Iraq and the tragedy of Sept. 11, a link that did not and does not exist," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Reid charged that Bush's "mishandling of the war in Iraq has made us less safe, and Iraq risks becoming what it was not before the war: a training ground for terrorists."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Bush is wrong in portraying the war in Iraq as a central front in the war on terrorism.
"The president went into Iraq on the basis of a false premise, without a plan, and has totally mismanaged the war in Iraq. And now he's trying to justify his actions with a series of excuses that are not reasons for us to be there," Pelosi said.
She also chided Bush for his "bravado" about capturing al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.
"He has said that Osama bin Laden can run, but he can't hide," she said. "He's hiding, Mr. President. It's four years later."
Bush challenged those who claim the war in Iraq has increased extremism in that nation.
"I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001, and al-Qaida attacked us anyway. The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse," Bush said.

   INDONESIA (92%); SPAIN (92%); IRAN,  (79%); ISRAEL (79%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); SYRIA (79%); 







 


October 7, 2005 Friday



 As Bali shows, terrorists are losing ground

 
On Oct. 12, 2002, terror bombers murdered 202 people on the Indonesian island of Bali. The terrorists belonged to Jemaah Islamiya (JI), al Qaeda's nom de guerre in Southeast Asia. Eighty-eight Australians died in that attack. 
Two months later, in Singapore, I interviewed an American law enforcement official who had been advising Southeast Asian nations on security operations and investigation techniques.  
"Bali's a Hindu island with Australian tourists," the officer told me. "Australia is an active U.S. ally (in the war on terror). That blast was an economic shot at Indonesia. New York Times Sunday travel section readers know where Bali is." He also added: "The religious dimension (Hindu Bali in Muslim Indonesia) is there, and the tourists, but JI wants to shake up Indonesia. Test its response." 
He meant that strategically the October 2002 attack would test Indonesia and other Southeast Asian nations' ability to respond in terms of judicial and governmental action, as well as police security measures. 
This Oct. 1, suicide terrorists struck Bali, leaving 26 dead. No one missed the attack's economic dimension -- Bali's tourist industry had begun to recover from the 2002 massacre. 
Stopping a self-immolating fanatic as he walks from the beach into a restaurant is a tough challenge, particularly on a resort island with a laissez-faire ambience. Suicide bombers still penetrate Israel, which arguably possesses the planet's best counter-terror police policy. Nevertheless, the attack embarrassed Indonesian officials who claim security on Bali has improved since 2002. After the attack, hotels emptied, as tourists returned home. 
Based on the public outrage in Indonesia, however, in Southeast Asia and internationally, JI's latest murder binge is anything but a victory for jihadist terror. These reactions suggest that, since 2002, "something has changed" -- and the change has not been in al   Qaeda's strategic favor. 
For one thing, the death toll is far smaller. The Indonesian government has also attempted to co-opt JI. Jakarta convicted JI's "spiritual leader," Abu Bakar Bashir, for conspiracy in the 2002 bombings, but has since treated him with deference. This has led to a diplomatic contretemps with Australia. However, the jailed Bashir said he disagreed with the latest attack, since it "sacrificed innocent people." 
But something larger seems to be at work. One indication is the overall tone of news coverage and public reaction -- call it anger with a shrug. While terrorist apologist and British MP George Galloway may yet sally forth with "root causes" rhetoric and anti-American agitprop, at the moment, the latest Bali blast has not produced demands that the world "understand what the terrorists want." Everyone knows the jihadists want to sow fear. 
Fear, however, doesn't seem to sell as easily as it did. 
In retrospect, the Madrid strike in March 2004 might prove to be the high point of terror's fear offensive. Spain left the Iraq coalition. Since then, the jihadists have had many headlines, but no victories. 
London's bulldog response to attacks in July 2005 was a distinct rejection of fear, but it is one of many. Arguably, Afghanistan began the trend with its successful October 2004 presidential election, conducted despite al Qaeda's sworn vow to stop it. Arab media have noticed the Iraqi people's grit and guts. The Iraqis have not buckled despite "al Qaeda in Mesopotamia's" daily massacres. These are massacres in a Muslim land launched by jihadist extremists -- a point that no one misses. 
Al Qaeda also is dogged by an extraordinary "policy failure." In the wake of 9-11, al Qaeda proclaimed a new "global caliphate." Jemaah Islamiya's sole policy goal remains the creation of a grand "Islamic state" stretching from southern Thailand through Malaysia, and the Philippine and Indonesian archipelagoes. 
Three years after Bali, four years after 9/11, the jihadists "God-ordained empire" hasn't materialized. 
We might also consider the possibility of "media saturation." Terrorists don't simply target Bali and Baghdad, they target the news media. A bomb produces searing, gripping TV footage. But over time, sensational violence becomes, well, less sensational. The latest attack on Bali is being treated as a heinous echo of 2002, not the harbinger of jihadist revolution. When al Qaeda's explosions lose their media sizzle, al Qaeda will have lost completely. 
Bay, a nationally syndicated columnist and author based in Austin, specializes in military and foreign affairs. Contact him at www.creators.com. 

 ASIA (95%); AUSTRALIA (95%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (94%);  UNITED STATES (93%); SINGAPORE (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (67%)







 Paddock Publications, Inc. 
Chicago Daily Herald

October 7, 2005 Friday  
Cook Edition



 
Hanania speaks eloquently for Israel
In a revealing moment of introspection, Ray Hanania, Daily Herald resident Palestinian pundit, opines that "as a Christian Arab he is discriminated against more these days by Muslims than by Jews." It is as if he has had blinders on all these years and has just awakened to the fact that Muslim extremists not only seek to evict every Jew from the Middle East, but are well on their way to achieving religious cleansing of all Christians and other "infidels" in Arab countries, Indonesia, and those parts of Asia and Africa where Muslims have the majority.
Since the Palestinian Authority has taken over the administration of Bethlehem, record numbers of Christians have fled Christ's birthplace, and the news is no better for Christian Arabs throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The fact is that the only place where Christians can openly, and without fear, practice their religion is in what the Palestinian apologists like to refer to as the "Apartheid State of Israel." 
It is not hard to imagine the fate of Jews in a "secular state" imagined by dreamers, like Hanania, after the four million descendants of the "Palestinian refugees" return to their imagined former homes in a new Palestinian state: The Islamic paradise of Iran or the former reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan comes to mind.
The state of Israel was founded by survivors of the Holocaust and Jewish refugees from the Arab countries. It has welcomed persecuted Jews from the former Soviet Union, Latin America, Ethiopia, and wherever Jewish lives are threatened or made miserable.
Ray Hanania knows first hand exactly what the Israelis are up against. It is rare that anyone has ever made such an eloquent statement for the continued existence and prosperity of a Jewish state in Israel as Mr. Hanania.
Edward Margolis
Chicago
Theory of evolution crumbles easily
This letter is in response to Phil Boyce of Elk Grove Village, who wrote in response to a letter regarding evolution. Mr. Boyce writes: "Scientists at present haven't figured out everything, but that is irrelevant. What they have determined, using sound scientific methods, are the processes that result in the evolution of species. These have been tested and confirmed to an extraordinary degree."
Oh yeah? Furthermore, Mr. Boyce suggests those that oppose evolutionary theory oppose science. Mr. Boyce, I love science as it only goes to prove the theory of evolution is not feasible.
The two central theories that proponents of evolution rely on are mutations and natural selection. Natural selection favors organisms with traits that best enable them to cope with pressures exerted by the environment. At the end of this struggle, the strongest ones, the ones most suited to natural conditions, survive. For example, in a herd of deer under threat from predators, those individuals that can run fastest will naturally survive. As a consequence, the herd of deer will eventually consist of only fast-running deer.
However, no matter how long this process goes on, it will not transform those deer into another species. The weak deer are eliminated, the strong survive, but, since no alteration in their genetic data takes place, no transformation of a species occurs. Despite the continuous processes of selection, deer continue to exist as deer. Thus, mutations are a must given this scenario and mutations, as proven over and over again by science, are very rare in nature and almost always harmful, destructive and deforming.
I could write at length about this but I've got to keep it short within this forum. I challenge readers to get online and get educated about mutations. You will see evolutionary theory crumble before your very eyes.
Sandy Werner
Elk Grove Village

 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (96%); ISRAEL (96%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); AFRICA (79%); IRAN,  (79%);  ETHIOPIA (79%); ASIA (79%); LATIN AMERICA (77%); AFGHANISTAN (75%)







 



October 7, 2005 Friday  
 



 W SEES ISLAMIC 'EMPIRE'. So U.S. can't quit Iraq

 
WASHINGTON - President Bush warned yesterday that Al Qaeda and its terrorist allies hope to control Iraq as a first step in building a "radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."
The presidential speech was the latest in a series of White House efforts to bolster support for the war in Iraq and the war on terror, a battle he cautions could last for decades.
"There's always a temptation in the middle of a long struggle to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world and to hope the enemy grows weary of fanaticism and tired of murder," Bush said. 
He vowed America would not lose its stomach for the fight.
"We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory," he said.
While calling Al Qaeda "wounded," he said it was a tireless and ambitious foe "still capable of global operations."
Bush pictured the struggle against the terrorists as a world war, and he warned of the dangers if Al Qaeda were to prevail in Iraq:
"Controlling one country [Iraq] will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia," Bush said.
Islamic terrorists, he said, are trying to "enslave whole nations and intimidate the world."
Bush blamed countries like Syria and Iran for harboring terrorists and supporting their activities, but gave no specifics.
Referring specifically to Iraq, he said, "Having removed a dictator and aided free peoples, we will not stand by as a new set of killers dedicated to the destruction of our own country seizes control of Iraq by violence."
Some critics contend Bush is being unrealistic and has failed to listen to the military advisers who say there will never be a complete military victory in Iraq and a political and diplomatic solution is required.
"I don't think this is going to change his political problem on Iraq," said national security expert P.J. Crowley of the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. "He didn't really lay out where we go from here . . . and he really gave a false choice: 'Stay the course or cut and run.' "
Democrats challenged Bush's arguments on the Iraq mission.
"The President went into Iraq under a false premise, without a plan, and has totally mismanaged our involvement," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "Now he is trying to justify his actions with a series of excuses."
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Bush "continues to invent a false link between the war in Iraq and the tragedy of Sept. 11." kbazinet@nydailynews.com

 UNITED STATES (94%);  SPAIN (93%);  IRAN,  (79%); SYRIA (79%)






   


October 7, 2005 Friday



 BC-Indonesia-Bali Bombings, 3rd Ld-Writethru,0982

 
Indonesian police: Bali bombing mastermind narrowly escapedpre-dawn raid @BY1:By Irwan Firdaus @BY2:Associated Press
@BALI, Indonesia Indonesian police raided a house Friday where one of the suspected masterminds of last week's Bali bombings was believed to be hiding out, but the Malaysian fugitive fled three hours earlier, officials said.
The pre-dawn raid occurred at a house in central Java province used by Noordin Mohamed Top, one of the most-wanted men in Southeast Asia, police said. Acting on a tip, about 20 officers moved in on a house in Purwantoro at about 4 a.m., only to learn that Noordin fled hours before, said Abdul Madjid, a police chief in the city of Solo.
"We can confirm it was him," Madjid said, adding that police delayed the raid by several hours because they were concerned Noordin was armed with explosives. By the time reinforcements arrived, "it was too late," he said. 
Noordin, 35, is one of two Malaysians accused of planning last Saturday's near-simultaneous suicide bombings on three crowded restaurants on the Indonesian resort island that killed 23, including the bombers. More than 100 people were wounded.
The other suspected mastermind is Azahari bin Husin. Both are believed to be key leaders of the regional al-Qaida-linked group Jemaah Islamiyah.
Both men also were allegedly behind the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, which killed 202 people, and suicide attacks in Jakarta in 2004 and 2003 that killed at least 22.
The pair has eluded capture for years by renting cheap houses in densely populated areas, with nearby back alleys for quick escapes. Police have claimed several times in the last few years to have narrowly captured the Malaysian fugitives, most recently in the West Javanese city of Bandung almost exactly two years ago.
There was no way to confirm if the man who escaped Friday was in fact Noordin.
"The people living there did not know it was him," said Madjid, adding that the suspect shaved his mustache.
Azahari is known as "Demolition Man" for his knowledge of explosives, while Noordin has been dubbed "Moneyman" for his ability to raise money and recruit bombers.
They are said to be motivated by anger at U.S foreign policy toward the Muslim world, but most of the victims in last Saturday night's attacks were Indonesians. Jemaah Islamiyah wants to establish an Islamic state across Southeast Asia.
Authorities said Friday they were making progress in other areas of the investigation. Maj. Gen. Chairul Rasyid, central Java's police chief, said authorities were close to identifying two of the suspected three suicide bombers.
Photographs of the suspects' severed heads, found yards from the blast sites, have been circulated in the media and shown to several jailed Jemaah Islamiyah members. None claim to recognize them.
Police said Thursday that investigators have taken DNA samples from several relatives of the suspected bombers.
Rasyid also said the wife of another top terror suspect made phone calls to the island days before the attacks. The calls were made by the wife of Zulkarnaen, an Indonesian believed to be Jemaah Islamiyah's operations chief.
"We have given the phone numbers that she contacted to the Bali police for them to trace them," Madjid told The Associated Press.
Indonesia's vice president said Friday that religious leaders must condemn terrorism in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
"Suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq are perhaps understandable because there is an 'opponent' there," Yusuf Kalla said after prayers in the capital Jakarta on the Muslim holy day.
"But here in Indonesia, it makes no sense. Why do they kill their own people, who have done nothing wrong?" he asked, calling on Islamic leaders to condemn the practice as being "not in line with the religion we hold."
Bali police chief Maj. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika said the bombers likely were recruited recently to carry out the weekend attacks.
"There is an indication they are a new generation," he said Friday.
Ali Imron, imprisoned for his role in the 2002 bombings, told the Jawa Pos newspaper they could be "freshly recruited." Nasir Abbas, who trained scores of militants in the 1990s, told The Associated Press he had never seen them.
Identifying the bombers could help police track down the masterminds.
Police said they intended to boost security on the island already high in the aftermath of the weekend blasts for a memorial service next Wednesday to mark the third anniversary of the 2002 nightclub bombings. Eighty-eight of the victims were Australians.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer is due to attend the event, details of which have not been released. In previous years, many relatives of those killed and survivors returned to the island for the memorial.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for Saturday night's coordinated attacks, but suspicion immediately fell on Jemaah Islamiyah. If proven, the strikes show how dangerous the group remains despite a regional security crackdown that has arrested hundreds of alleged group members.
It also would show that the group apparently has changed tactics, switching to softer targets, smaller bombs and cruder methods.
Most previous Jemaah Islamiyah attacks were carried out with car bombs, but last Saturday's bombers wore belts or backpacks laden with explosives.

 INDONESIA (98%); MALAYSIA (94%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); ASIA (92%); 








 
 

October 7, 2005 Friday



 NAMING THE ENEMY - THE PRESIDENT'S WAR SPEECH

 
THE War on Terror has always been an imprecise term, a vague placeholder for the real name of the conflict into which we have been unwillingly plunged. In a landmark speech he delivered yesterday, President Bush made it plain for the first time, really, that our enemy is not "terror" per se but something far more complex and therefore far more difficult to defeat.  
"Some call this evil Islamic radicalism, others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamofascism," he said.  
And while he quickly followed that ground-breaking sentence with one assuring his listeners that "this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam," there's no mistaking that, four years into the War on Terror, the president and his people have finally decided that the use of euphemism is counterproductive.   
This was a necessary change in emphasis, because the arguments in favor of the broader War on Terror have been obscured by the failure to make reference to the specifically Islamist nature of the existential threat posed to the United States, the West and the world.  
"This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom," he said. "These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus - and also against Muslims from other traditions, whom they regard as heretics."  
The glue that binds religious Islamic extremists like bin Laden and Zarqawi to the pan-nationalist Sunni Arab extremists in Palestine, Iraq and Syria is their shared struggle in the name of the Islamic nation. It is the reason that the war on al Qaeda and the Taliban is the same struggle as the war against Saddam Hussein and Palestinian terror groups - and because Bush has been unwilling to say so openly for so long, he has only been able to make the case glancingly.  
Now he has presented the argument in full. Secular Islamic radicals and militant Islamic theocrats are united in their determination to confront and destroy liberal democracy - whether the liberal democracy is the United States, Spain, Britain or Israel. These are the twin faces of the evil confronting us, the Janus-head of the threat.  
And if early reports are accurate that a source arrested in a sweep of Iraqi terrorists is responsible for informing us of the unnerving threat to New York subways, you can see how Islamists of different stripes are gathering and planning the mass murder of Americans.  
"These extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions," said the president. "The militant network wants to use the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against non-radical Muslim governments. Over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and Jordan for potential takeover. They achieved their goal, for a time, in Afghanistan. Now they've set their sights on Iraq."  
Bush went on to explain that the goals are "fanatical and extreme - and they should not be dismissed. Our enemy is utterly committed."  
To what, exactly? He elaborated: "The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation."   
It isn't difficult to see how this design might come to fruition if the United States is forced to retreat in Iraq and is followed in its retreat by other nations. "The civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history," Bush said. "Evil men, obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience, must be taken very seriously - and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply."  
This speech, one of the longest and most detailed of his presidency, is so rich and nuanced that it can't be done justice in this space. Do yourself a favor and go to whitehouse.gov and read the whole thing.  
It is the signal rhetorical accomplishment of his second term, and unmistakable evidence that despite its recent political troubles, the Bush administration remains steadfast and implacable on the need to secure victory in Iraq for the sake of the security of the United States and the West. 

 UNITED STATES (94%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (92%); IRAQ (92%); ISRAEL (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); SYRIA (79%)








 
 

October 7, 2005 Friday



 BUSH SPELLS IT OUT: WHY 'TOTAL VICTORY' IS CRUCIAL

 
WASHINGTON - President Bush yesterday said Americans must "keep our nerve" and win the war in Iraq to keep terrorists from creating a radical Islamic empire that would try to blackmail America into retreat.  
"In Iraq, there is no peace without victory. We will keep our nerve and we will win that victory," Bush said in a speech that sought to revive support for the war on the eve of Oct. 15 Iraqi elections.  
As a sign that the war on terror is making progress, Bush said America and its allies have foiled at least 10 al Qaeda plots since 9/11 - three of them in the United States.   
He pointedly singled out Syria and Iran as "allies of convenience" who are helping the terrorists and warned that they will be held to account.  
But Bush also addressed those seeking a withdrawal of U.S. troops, warning that would pose a far greater threat because it would send a signal of weakness.  
"There's always a temptation, in the middle of a long struggle, to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world, and to hope the enemy grows weary of fanaticism and tired of murder," he said.  
"This would be a pleasant world, but it's not the world we live in. The enemy is never tired . . . This enemy considers every retreat of the civilized world as an invitation to greater violence."  
Asked about the president's reference to 10 foiled attacks, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said some were still classified but pointed to the conviction of Ohio truck driver Iyman Faris, who plotted to bomb the Brooklyn Bridge.  
Bush said Islamic terrorists are fanatics like Hitler and Stalin who hope to use "the vacuum created by an American retreat" to grab control of Iraq and use it - as they once used Afghanistan - as a base for terror.  
"The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision," he said.  
"The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."  
Echoing a theme first used by his close ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush rejected claims that the Iraq war has fueled anti-U.S. terror, noting that the 9/11 attacks came before that war.  
"We're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world," Bush said.  
"No act of ours invited the rage of the killers - and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder. Against such an enemy there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than total victory." 
Speech highlights    
*  America has stopped three al Qaeda plots to attack and five attempts to case targets or infiltrate operatives inside the United States since 9/11.  
*  America and its allies have stopped more than a dozen shipments of suspected weapons technology to Iran over the past year.  
*  "State sponsors" like Iran and Syria are collaborating with terrorists and must be held to account.  
*  Terrorists are "as brutal an enemy as we've ever faced."  
*  "Elements of the Arab news media" help the terrorists by inciting hatred and anti-Semitism.  
*  Terrorists can't be appeased or bargained with because their goal is "to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world."  

 UNITED STATES (98%);  UNITED KINGDOM (91%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); SPAIN (79%); IRAN,  (79%);  SYRIA (79%)








 
 

October 7, 2005 Friday



 DUBYA DEFINES THE WAR

 
President Bush's War on Terror speech yesterday may have sounded like old news, but in key ways, he pushed the envelope. And - with New York going on high alert over a subway bomb threat - he couldn't have picked a better time to do it.  
There's no question that support for the war (not to mention for Bush himself) has fallen, particularly since summer. Reportedly, yesterday's address was originally slated for summer, but delayed because of the Gulf Coast storms.   
Now Iraq is to vote on a constitution - just a week from tomorrow. The terrorists there are sure to step up the violence. And the number of U.S. casualties in Iraq is nearing a symbolic 2,000. Even some U.S. military leaders and formerly supportive elected officials have expressed concern about the war's course.  
So Bush's words were a timely and needed reiteration of the war's purpose, and America's resolve: "We will not tire, or rest, until the War on Terror is won."  
One of the most commendable things about this president is his unflappability, even when faced with enormous political heat. Three cheers for that.  
There was more: He subtly began to lay the groundwork for the next phase in the War on Terror. As John Podhoretz notes on the preceding page, the president re-named the enemy: It isn't merely terrorism that the world must fight, but "Islamic radicalism," "militant Jihadism" and "Islamo-fascism" - and their self-appointed practitioners.  
The war's link to Iraq? The terrorists, he said, regard Iraq as "the central front in their war against humanity" and Americans "must recognize Iraq as the central front in our War on Terror."  
Their strategy: To take control of a country and "rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."  
"With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people and to blackmail our government into isolation." Scary stuff, indeed.  
Which is why U.S. troops can't just quit Iraq. "There's always a temptation, in . . . a long struggle, to seek the quiet life," Bush said. "But it's not the world we live in . . . The enemy considers every retreat . . . an invitation to greater violence."  
Prepare, in other words, for "more sacrifice, more time and more resolve."  
Bush also issued new warnings to Syria, Iran and other "enablers" of terror. As he did after 9/11, Bush said the United States would not distinguish "between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them . . . Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization. And the civilized world must hold those regimes to account."  
No, that doesn't mean to expect daisy-cutters over Tehran next week. But Bush did offer support to rebels in those nations: "We're standing with dissidents . . . against oppressive regimes, because we know that the dissidents of today will be the democratic leaders of tomorrow."  
This war's course, as Bush noted, is far from clear. But there's certainly no question that America cannot simply give up.  
Fortunately, Bush understands that. 

 UNITED STATES (94%);  ISRAEL (79%); SPAIN (79%); EUROPE (79%); IRAN,  (79%);  SYRIA (79%)




4


  



October 7, 2005 Friday  




 In Indonesia, Songs Against Terrorism

 
 The latest suicide bombings on the resort island of Bali appear to have been carried out by young Indonesian Muslims indoctrinated in an ideology of hatred. Once again the cult of death has proved its ability to recruit misguided fanatics and incite them to violate Islam's most sacred teachings in the very name of God. The only way to break this vicious cycle is by discrediting the perverse ideology that underlies and motivates such brutal acts of terrorism. 
  One of us, Abdurrahman Wahid, was Indonesia's president when tragic violence inundated the eastern region of Ambon and the Malukus six years ago. A seemingly trivial argument between a Christian bus driver and a Muslim passenger in early 1999 triggered a bloody religious war that eventually claimed 10,000 lives and drove a half-million Christian and Muslim inhabitants from their homes. Radical Muslims from throughout Indonesia flocked to the region to wage jihad on Indonesian Christians, backed by powerful Islamist generals and plenty of money.  
  The largest such group was Laskar Jihad ("Warriors of Jihad"), led by an Indonesian of Arab descent whose ancestors came from the same province in Yemen as those of Osama bin Laden.  Jafar Umar Thalib is a veteran of the Afghan jihad and knows bin Laden personally. Backed by spiteful generals close to the disgraced Suharto regime, Thalib sounded the call to jihad, and thousands of young Muslims flocked to his green banner to slaughter Indonesian Christians in the name of God. 
  Enjoying powerful clandestine support, Laskar Jihad had actually established a military training camp less than 60 miles from the capital, Jakarta. When national police broke up the camp, Thalib promptly announced that Laskar Jihad would sail for Ambon and wage jihad there. I (Wahid) ordered the army generals in East Java to prevent them from sailing and ordered the navy to intercept them if they did. I also ordered the governor of East Java to guard the docks and prevent Laskar Jihad from boarding. But these presidential orders were ignored by a military that refused to accept civilian control in the newly democratic Indonesia. An unholy alliance of fundamentalist jihadists,  Islamist generals and people close to the Suharto family ensured that thousands of Laskar Jihadists poured into Ambon and the Malukus. 
  Once there, they spread out in the Muslim communities and launched devastating raids on neighboring Christian enclaves, burning and desecrating churches; destroying homes; and slaughtering thousands of men, women and children. 
  All of Indonesia knew what was happening. It was in the news day and night. Laskar Jihad became a symbol and a byword for the suffering inflicted upon that region. The goal of its clandestine backers  --  and those in parliament itself  --  was to create chaos and block the reform that desperately needed to occur in the Indonesian government. They succeeded; the process of reform ground to a halt. 
  Then came the first Bali bombing in 2002, with jihadists incinerating a popular club and more than 200 people, mostly foreign tourists. Although that attack was the work of a different jihadist group, Jemaah Islamiah, it was obvious that the military  --  by then in the hands of "red," or nationalist, generals allied to my successor, Megawati Sukarnoputri  --  would crack down on all active jihadist groups. Immediately afterward, Thalib announced that Laskar Jihad had served its purpose, and he recalled its warriors to Java. Thousands of battle-hardened jihadists returned to Java's towns and villages to await his further call. 
  One of the people watching this tragedy unfold was a brilliant young musician named Ahmad Dhani. Leader of the immensely popular rock band Dewa, Dhani began to use his musical platform to influence millions of fans in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia to resist the tide of religious extremism. 
  In response to Laskar Jihad's atrocities, and to discredit the appeal of fundamentalist ideology, Dhani composed  the best-selling album  "Laskar Cinta" ("Warriors of Love"). Released in November  2004, it quickly rose to the top of the charts as millions of young Indonesians embraced its message of love, peace and tolerance. 
 Dhani and the other members of Dewa have presented Indonesia's youth with a stark choice, and one easy for the vast majority to answer: Do they want to join the army of jihad, or the army of love? In response, numerous radical Muslim groups have accused Dhani  --  who is a devout Sufi, or mystically inclined Muslim  --  of being an infidel, an apostate (code words inciting violence) and a Zionist agent. They have hauled him into court on charges of defaming Islam and seek to ban his use of rock music to promote a spiritual and progressive interpretation of Islam that threatens the appeal of their own Wahhabi-inspired extremism. 
  Yet rather than be intimidated, Dhani recently announced to the Indonesian press his plan to launch another "ideological smart bomb"  --  in the form of a song that uses the revelatory tone of the Koran to  declare: "Truth dwells in the hearts of those who love and are free of hatred; the hearts of those who hate . . . are possessed by Satan." 
   Dhani and his group are on the front lines of a  global conflict, defending Islam from its fanatical hijackers. In a world all too often marred by hatred and violence committed in the name of religion, they seek to rescue an entire generation from Wahhabi-financed extremists whose goal is to transform Muslim youth into holy warriors and suicide bombers. For every young Indonesian seduced by the ideology of hatred and fanaticism  --  including those responsible for the recent, awful attacks in Bali  --   countless others see through the extremists' web of lies and hatred, in no small part thanks to the visionary courage of people like Ahmad Dhani. For as they listen to Dewa's music, the hearts of millions of young Indonesians have been inspired to declare: "No to the warriors of jihad! Yes to the warriors of love!" 
 Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid is  a former president of Indonesia.  From 1984 to 1999 he headed Nadhlatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim organization, with nearly 40 million members. C. Holland Taylor is chairman and  chief executive of Libforall Foundation, a nonprofit that works to reduce religious extremism and discredit the use of terrorism. Dhani serves on the foundation's board. The authors can be reached at media@libforall.org. 

 INDONESIA (99%); YEMEN (79%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


October 5, 2005 Wednesday



 Caption only: Muslims offer prayers on eve of holy month

 
Muslims pray Tuesday, the night before the holy fasting month of Ramadan begins, at Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia. Muslims believe Ramadan was the month when God began to reveal the holy book, the Quran, to the Prophet Muhammad 1,400 years ago. Aside from fasting, the month also is marked with special prayers, nighttime feasts and family get-togethers.

 







   


October 5, 2005 Wednesday  




 In Indonesia, Democracy Isn't Enough

 
THE coordinated bombings of popular tourist areas in Bali, almost exactly three years after similar attacks there, signal that an outbreak of democracy in the Muslim world will not necessarily be enough to destroy Al Qaeda's viral movement or even to diminish its reach. 
  If anything, the entrenchment of democracy has weakened Indonesia's willingness to fight terrorism. The country's minority-led democratic government, whose very survival requires the support of Islamic parties that range from the militant to the mainstream, has spent the period between the two Bali attacks waffling in its response to terrorism for fear of alienating these Muslim parties and a largely anti-American populace. Such lack of resolve augurs ill for American efforts to promote democracy as an antidote to terrorism elsewhere in the Muslim world. 
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono insists that the terrorists responsible for Saturday's bombings will be hunted down. The previous president made similar protestations following the 2002 bombings. But only six weeks ago, an Indonesian court reduced the jail time of Abu Bakar Bashir -- allegedly the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, Al Qaeda's main ally in the region -- and those of 18 others convicted for their roles in the 2002 bombings. Although Bashir was implicated in a Jemaah Islamiyah plot to overthrow Indonesia's previous government, and despite independent testimonies from senior Jemaah Islamiyah operatives in American and Indonesian custody that he approved the Bali bombings and other terrorist operations, he will soon walk free after just 26 months in custody.
  The day of the court's decision, I conducted an interview with Bashir at Jakarta's Cipinang prison. He was surrounded by acolytes, including the bombers who struck a Jakarta shopping mall and the Philippine ambassador's residence. The speaker of Indonesia's parliament, along with many Muslim leaders, including moderates, had previously visited Bashir to show solidarity with this victim of pressure and interference by the United States and Australia. But there can be no doubt that Bashir is a very extreme thinker who inspires deadly actions. 
  At 66, Bashir is lanky and bespectacled, with a strong voice, an easy laugh, and an air of vulpine gentility. His family, like Osama Bin Laden's, traces its roots to the Hadramawt region of Yemen. He explained that it was America and Australia, in collaboration with Israel, that actually planted the big bomb that killed so many people. Those Indonesians convicted of the earlier Bali bombings had in fact used only small bombs to warn that drugs and other Western excesses wouldn't be tolerated. ''Nevertheless, I call those who carried out such actions all mujahid,'' or holy warriors, Bashir said. Their attacks, he insisted, were ''self-defense'' against Western predations in the Muslim world. 
  Bashir expounded a radically new interpretation of Islam: ''No deed is nobler than jihad. None. If we commit to jihad, we can neglect other deeds.'' Nor is there any end in sight to what Bashir sees as an intractable ''clash of civilizations.'' According to the Koran, he explained, it is destiny for Muslims to fight Jews and Christians until the end of time: Westerners must be destroyed unless they accept Islamic government. He claimed he had recently sent a letter to President Bush pointing out that because of this destiny, the West's battle is pointless and unwinnable.
  Asked if he were the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, Bashir smiled. ''That wasn't proven at my trial,'' he replied. 
  In fact, Indonesian intelligence has authenticated a 1998 letter to regional jihadi leaders, in which Bashir and another figure associated with Jemaah Islamiyah claimed to be acting on Bin Laden's behalf to advance a global jihad against Jews and Christians. Nonetheless, President Yudhoyono has said that he cannot submit legislation to parliament proscribing Jemaah Islamiyah because there is insufficient proof that the group exists. At the same time, he warns that more terrorist attacks may come. 
  That seems more than likely, to judge from the accounts I received from self-proclaimed mujahedin in Java and Sulawesi. They report that Jemaah Islamiyah has set up a suicide squad to conduct large actions against Western interests, over the objections of some group members who reprehend killing civilians.
  IT cannot possibly be in the Indonesian government's interest to continue to shelter an organization with such violent intentions. But the country's officials may have concluded that it is even riskier to support American policies. According to the latest survey conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, Indonesian views of the United States, which were largely favorable before the invasion of Iraq, plummeted to 15 percent favorable right after. In Pew's June 2005 survey, 80 percent of Indonesians feared that the United States would attack their country. 
  Fortunately, the Pew figures also reveal positive trends that suggest another way forward for the United States and its allies. In three years, Indonesians' support for suicide bombing has declined from 27 percent to 15 percent, and confidence in Osama bin Laden is down from 58 percent to 35 percent. I
  If one American policy can be correlated with improvements in Indonesian attitudes toward the United States, it is aid for tsunami victims in Aceh. The Pew polls suggest that, largely because of the American role in tsunami rescue and relief, Indonesia is now one of the few nations where a majority believes that American actions sometimes consider other nations' interests. Since that time, support for combating terrorism has doubled to 50 percent, as Indonesians focus on the dangers they face rather than on distaste for American policies.
  These polls indicate that popular sentiment remains volatile, and that the anti-Americanism that helps drive jihadism is not necessarily permanent. But it would be a mistake to presume that the tide of history will simply carry countries like Indonesia toward democratization and away from militant Islam. Groups like Jemaah Islamiyah, which promote equal economic opportunity, as well as social and political advancement through educational achievement and personal piety, hold real appeal for citizens in this part of the world. To compete with that appeal, Muslim governments must address the often frustrated aspirations of their bulging youth populations.
  As for the West, in order to win its conflict with jihadism, its leaders must creatively endeavor to buck the tide of history rather than simply pretend to ride it. After all, that is the way our own democracy was born. 

 UNITED STATES (95%); INDONESIA (95%); AUSTRALIA (92%); YEMEN (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%)








 
 

October 5, 2005 Wednesday



 TERROR IN BALI, AGAIN

 
Islamist terrorism has again brought death and destruction to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. The tourist paradise of Bali was hit again last weekend, with attacks at three restaurants that killed at least 26 people and injured 122 others.  
There are obvious reasons why Indonesia in general, and Bali in particular, are such tempting targets for Jemaah Islamiyah, al Qaeda's Southeast Asian "branch."   
For one thing, Bali is a favorite of Australian tourists, and few nations have been as staunch and resolute in their support for the U.S.-led War on Terror as has Australia. That also lets the terrorists claim as many foreign casualties as possible - more than 200 died in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings - without risking Muslim lives as "collateral damage."  
For another, terrorists and their sympathizers plainly believe Indonesia should be "theirs."  
As columnist Ralph Peters noted on these pages in 2003, Saudi clerics have pumped billions of dollars into the country to spread their extremist Wahhabism. Yet the fundamentalists have made little progress; the nation practices a relatively moderate form of Islam and none of the country's major religious organizations has established ties to terrorism.  
Though the government had long resisted cracking down on Islamist militants, that has changed in the past year, when a new president took office by defeating fundamentalist candidates in Indonesia's first direct national elections.  
The very fact of Indonesia's democratic instincts - and its resistance to theocratic government - sticks in the collective craw of the fundamentalists, who want to establish an Islamic state across South Asia.  
Clearly, Indonesians learned a bitter lesson from the earlier attacks: Distancing themselves from the War on Terror, in hopes of sparing the geographically strategic archipelago from the terrorists' wrath, did not succeed. Thus, Indonesia now finds itself a member of the Coalition of the Willing.  
Yet the fundamentalists still hope to radicalize the Muslim population by terrorizing them into support for, or at least frightened acquiescence with, extremism.  
As such, the weekend attacks were a sign of al Qaeda's weakness, not its strength. The terrorists want to destroy any semblance of democracy in the Muslim world - and Indonesia's continued movement to full democracy demonstrates that, though they can still strike, they will not succeed. 

  ASIA (93%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); AUSTRALIA (92%);  SOUTHERN ASIA (52%)







   


October 4, 2005 Tuesday  




 This Bali Bombing Seen as Having Less Economic Effect 

 
Even after Saturday's bombings, which killed 22 people on the Indonesian island of Bali, analysts say it is harder to terrorize Southeast Asia and the tourists who visit the region than it once was.
  The attacks are likely to have an immediate impact on Bali's tourism, analysts predicted. But Indonesia is likely to bounce back sooner than it did after the much deadlier attacks there in 2002. The latest attacks are also unlikely to damage the regional economy as much as the 2002 bombing, which killed 202 people, they said. 
''The first one had an impact precisely because it was the first one,'' said Manu Bhaskaran, head of economic research at the Centennial Group in Singapore. The second attack could hurt confidence in Bali, he said, but ''the psychological impact is much less.''
  Analysts said the weekend attacks were likely to fade in significance next to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's move the night before to raise prices for fuel as much as 100 percent. That his decision has yet to produce any significant public unrest, they said, appeared to signal victory in a gamble that he could persuade the public to tolerate higher inflation to put the nation on a firmer path toward economic growth.
  Analysts and economists acknowledged that it was still too early to judge the long-term impact of either the bombing or the fuel price increases. Indonesia's coordinating minister for economic affairs, Aburizal Bakrie, said Monday that a 20 percent decline in tourist arrivals for the rest of the year was likely to shave as much as three-tenths of a percentage point off the government's projection of 6 percent economic growth this year. Tourism accounts for roughly 5 percent of Indonesia's gross domestic product.
  Southeast Asia's tourism industry is still trying to recover from the tsunami in December. Tourist arrivals remain below the level before the tsunami, and fears of a possible avian flu pandemic now pose a serious risk, economists say.
  Tourism in Southeast Asia has suffered a series of calamities since the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and 1998, including sectarian violence in Indonesia; the 2002 Bali bombing; the impact of the war in Iraq on Muslim countries; the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003; and most recently, surging global prices for oil.
  The economic backdrop this time, however, is much brighter. ''The global economy is on much firmer ground,'' said Fong Cheng Hong, head of economic and market research at DBS Bank in Singapore. On Monday, the benchmark stock index in Jakarta rose 0.38 percent.
  Indonesian financial markets have been roiled recently by the costs of fuel and President Yudhoyono's attempts to cut fuel subsidies while avoiding the kind of oil price shock that has led to rioting in the past.
  So far, analysts say, the president has proved far more politically adroit than his predecessors, coupling the price increases with a stipend for the poorest Indonesians and a public awareness campaign that included religious leaders explaining the need for lower subsidies.
  ''He's not putting through a Mickey Mouse increase,'' said Robert Adair, head of research at CIMB-G.K. Goh, a unit of an investment bank, in Jakarta. ''He's putting through a substantial increase that people will recognize is tackling the problem.''
  Some analysts predicted over the weekend that the bombings might remind the world that Muslim insurgencies continue in Southeast Asia. Security experts said the bombings suggested a possible new tactic by terrorists here: the suicide satchel bomber. 
  Most embassies, hotels and office buildings in Indonesia have prepared defenses against the kind of car bombs used in Bali in 2002 and again at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2003. But the three men suspected in Saturday's attacks, like those responsible for subway bombings in London, appear to have been suicide bombers carrying explosives in backpacks. 
  ''What they have to do now is re-examine their defenses in light of the new threat from suicide bombers with a small backpack bomb,'' said Brian Watters, a security consultant at Assessments Group Indonesia in Jakarta. ''But does it make Indonesia any more dangerous than it was last week? The answer is really no.''

 SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (94%);  ASIA (94%); SINGAPORE (93%); IRAQ (79%)






    
  


October 3, 2005, Monday



 REVIEW & OUTLOOK: BALI, AGAIN

  







  



October 3, 2005 Monday  




 Police Say Attacks in Bali Were Suicide Bombings; 
Amateur Video Recorded One Suspect; 
Death Toll Is Put at 22

 
 Investigators stepped up their efforts Sunday to determine the identity of suicide bombers who attacked three tourist restaurants a day earlier, saying they were looking for clues among tiny pieces of human flesh stuck to explosive material and scattered about the blast sites. 
  Bali's police chief, I Made Pastika, displayed pictures of the heads of the three suspected suicide bombers at a news conference. He said the men were responsible for the near-simultaneous blasts that killed 22 people, including several foreigners. Estimates of the death toll have varied, with some accounts reporting that 26 or more people were killed.  
 Pastika also showed an amateur video obtained by police that recorded one bomber, wearing a black shirt, walking into the Raja restaurant in Kuta Square, a popular shopping and dining spot. Seconds later, at 7:45 p.m., the man was obscured by a flash of light and an explosion. 
 As the police try to identify those responsible for the attacks, some Balinese said they wondered whether any amount of police effort would restore confidence in their island, whose tourism-dependent economy had just begun to rebound after terrorist bombings three years ago that killed 202 people.  
  "Of course what happened last night will hurt our income, just like the previous bombings," said Yani Kareng, as she waited for customers at her modest food stall on Jimbaran Beach, less than 50 yards from the site of the blast at Cafe Nyoman, a beachfront seafood restaurant. Business dropped by half at her fried rice stand after the 2002 bombings, she said. 
  "It started to get better only in the last couple of months," she said. "Then this happened." 
  Many of her customers are local Balinese who work as drivers and tour guides for the foreign tourists patronizing the five-star hotels and restaurants in the area, she said. On this day, her customers included police officers and soldiers who milled around the crime scene, defined by yellow police tape around a strip of outdoor restaurants with dozens of overturned wooden tables and chairs. Half-eaten plates of fish and crab and half-empty mugs of beer still sat on the tables that were left standing. 
  Hundreds of Balinese, dressed in sarongs and shorts, watched investigators comb the sand for evidence left by the bombers. Some wore white T-shirts inscribed, "[Expletive] Terrorist." 
 President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made a quick trip to Bali on Sunday. He said at a news conference that authorities were trying to determine "the people, the cells and the clues supporting this incident to bring them to justice." 
  Investigators have not established who planned the attacks, but security analysts based in Jakarta said they were probably carried out by Muslim extremists associated with two Malaysian bomb-making experts, Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammed Top. 
  "They've got to be at the top of the list of suspects," said Sidney Jones, the Southeast Asia director for the International Crisis Group. "The question is who they would have ended up with as partners." 
  Jones said her group had received credible information in the last two months that the two Malaysians had formed an armed group, Thoifah Muqatilah, or Combat Unit. But it remained unclear whether this was a new armed wing of Jemaah Islamiah, the underground militant group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings and two subsequent bombings in Jakarta that killed 23 people, or a separate organization. 
  The two Malaysians have been working largely outside the Jemaah Islamiah command structure since at least August 2003, when their followers bombed the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Jones said. Many members of the radical Indonesian group believe attacks on civilians represent a misreading of Islam, she said. 
  Thoifah Muqatilah has been recruiting young Indonesians from outside the Jemaah Islamiah network, Jones said, adding that some were veterans of recent Muslim-Christian conflicts in other parts of the country. 
  In August, Yudhoyono called on Indonesians to heighten their vigilance because it was suspected that militants were preparing to strike again. But security analysts suggested his remarks were based less on specific intelligence than on the long period of relative calm since the September 2004 bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. 
  "It was just a gut feeling they were overdue," said Ken Conboy, country director for Risk Management Advisory Indonesia. "Azahari and Noordin Top would not be biding their time just waiting to get caught." 
 Pastika, the police chief, said that unlike in the 2002 Bali attacks or the Marriott and embassy bombings, the bombers did not use a car or van to transport explosives. He said police were still investigating what triggered the explosions.  
  In Jimbaran, a head had been thrown 25 yards from the site of the blast, he said. "We found pieces of torso with explosive material stuck to them, evidence that the explosives had blown the torso apart," he said. 
  The pictures of the suspected bombers showed that all three were young men. The one who died at the Raja Restaurant was thin, his face clean-shaven with high cheekbones.  
 I Made Bona, the owner of an art shop, worried about the blasts' impact on business. Bona, 60, who opened his store in 1968, said oil paintings of Balinese landscapes that once went for more than $1,000 sold for $500 after the 2002 attack. Today, he said, "Even if you offer only $300, I'll say, 'Okay!' " 
  Down the street, Prastyawan Satriawibowo crouched on the sidewalk glumly smoking a cigarette in front of his tour package kiosk. The 33-year-old entrepreneur was forced to close his leather jacket business six months after the 2002 bombings. The tourism kiosk had been bringing him as many as 10 customers a day. But now, he said, business will be "very slow." 
 Some experts contend that Bali's economy will recover. The attacks Sunday were smaller than last time, said I Gede Pitana, a professor of tourism at Udayana University here and a former chairman of Bali's tourism board. And today, he said, people realize that terrorism can strike anywhere. 
 Sipress reported from Jakarta. Special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report. 

 INDONESIA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%)






  (Walnut Creek, CA) 
  

   

October 2, 2005 Sunday



 Series of blasts hit tourist spots in Bali

 
Terrorists struck the resort island of Bali once again Saturday night, setting off a string of explosions in crowded tourist areas that left at least 25 people dead and about 51 others wounded, including many foreigners, according to hospital and police officials.
Two explosions tore through a crowded shopping center in Kuta Beach, while another explosion hit a seaside restaurant in the fishing village of Jimbaran Bay, a short walk from a Four Seasons resort hotel, witnesses said.
Agus Mustofa, a paramedic at Jimbaran Medical Clinic, recounted hearing the blasts about a mile away and thinking they were a car crash.
He said he realized it was more serious when a man was brought in with a bloodied head. 
By 10:30 p.m., he said the clinic had treated 20 people, including eight Koreans and an Australian.
"Everything was in chaos," he said. "They were in shock, holding their heads."
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa blamed the attacks on two fugitive kingpins of a Southeast Asian militant group, Jemaah Islamiah, seen as al-Qaida's regional arm.
The attacks hit Bali just as its tourist industry was getting back on its feet from devastating bombings three years ago that left 202 people dead, including 80 Australians.
The latest bombings occurred nearly simultaneously just before 7 p.m. local time (5 a.m. PDT) at Kuta Town Square shopping center in the island's most urban area and at the seaside stalls in Jimbaran Bay, about 20 miles away.
Indonesian television carried chaotic images of rescuers pulling bleeding victims from the smoldering ruins of the shopping center, which housed restaurants, surfer shops and clothing stores.
The blasts struck the three-story Raja cafe and steakhouse and the Matahari department store.
"I helped lift up the bodies; there was blood everywhere," Wayan Kresna told Jakarta-based El Shinta radio station.
Daniel Martin, a tourist in Bali, told a British Broadcasting Corp. reporter that chaos ensued following the simultaneous thunderous blasts.
"There was thick smoke for a few minutes afterward, but there didn't seem to be any fire," Martin said.
"People were clambering onto the roof of the restaurant. It's about a three-story building, so people were climbing out and screaming and jumping down to the street.
"I saw some horrific injuries, people coming out ... covered in blood."
In Jimbaran Bay, a third blast hit a seafood restaurant that is a popular gathering place at sundown.
A former fishing village, Jimbaran Bay now is a posh resort area with Ritz-Carlton, Intercontinental and Four Seasons hotels.
Jakarta's Metro TV said police found another three bombs in Bali and were working to deactivate them.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who said he would go to Bali early Sunday, told Indonesian journalists that the blasts were "clearly an act of terrorism."
He added that extremists "are targeting indiscriminately."
The Associated Press cited hospital and police officials saying that at least 25 people were killed and 51 wounded, including eight Australians and two Americans.
The latest bombings seemed designed to send a message that the Jemaah Islamiah group can strike Indonesia's most popular tourist destination at any moment.
The group chose to strike during a high tourist-season weekend, as Indonesians prepare for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins early next week.
The bombings brought images that immediately harkened back to the 2002 explosions at Bali nightclubs.
The Kuta shopping center is a 15-minute walk from the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar, scenes of the devastating 2002 blasts.
The island of Bali is a predominately Hindu enclave within the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Viewed as a sanctuary from Indonesia's social turmoil, Bali draws 1 million tourists a year and is home to thousands of resident foreigners.
The new blasts are likely to increase pressure on Yudhoyono to outlaw Jemaah Islamiah and increase the manhunt for Malaysian fugitives Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Top, who are accused of a number of bombings in recent years.
Some Muslim leaders in Indonesia deny the group even exists.
Jemaah Islamiah is still not proscribed.
"It's still an open organization," terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna of Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies said.
Gunaratna said heightened Indonesian security efforts were unable to thwart the attacks even though the group's bombings have occurred so often at this time of year that it is known as "JI bombing season."
The radical group is blamed for a bomb attack on the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003 that left 12 people dead, and an attack outside the Australian embassy in September 2004 that killed 11 people and injured about 180 others.
Islamic radicals have targeted Australian interests because of that nation's deployment of troops alongside U.S. forces in Iraq.
Both U.S. and Australian officials have warned in recent days that terrorist cells remain active in Indonesia.
Just on Friday, the U.S. embassy issued a new warden's message that noted that "attacks could occur at any time and could be directed against any location, including those frequented by foreigners and identifiably American or other Western facilities or businesses in Indonesia."
Sayid Hasan, a taxi driver in Kuta, said he was furious that terrorist attacks, which devastated Bali's tourism-dependent economy three years ago, had returned to his island.
"Bali has not done anything wrong. Why is Bali always the target?" Hasan asked.
"I can't understand how a bomb could happen again in Bali. The security is tight. Police are everywhere. How could they do it?"
Hasan said he initially mistook the Kuta blast for an accidental explosion at a nearby power plant.
He began to worry when the electricity stayed on. "This is evil," he said. "How come these people keep bombing Bali?"
Yudhoyono, who in late August called for heightened vigilance amid concerns that militants were in the final stage of plotting a strike in Indonesia, labeled the bombings acts of indiscriminate terrorism.
"We will hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice," he said in televised remarks.
The president dispatched top security officials to Bali and said he would travel there himself today.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined other international leaders in condemning the attacks in Jimbaran and Kuta.
"The United States stands with the people and government of Indonesia as they work to bring to justice those responsible for these acts of terrorism.
"We will continue to work together in our common fight against terror," she said in an e-mailed statement.
Washington Post contributed to this story.

 INDONESIA (96%); AUSTRALIA (92%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%); 






  
  

  Philadelphia Inquirer

October 2, 2005 Sunday 



 Bombings rock Bali again; at least 25 killed, 100 hurt

 
Terrorists struck the resort island of Bali once again yesterday, setting off a string of explosions in crowded tourist areas that left at least 25 people dead and more than 100 others wounded, including many foreigners.
An explosion tore through a crowded shopping center in the city of Kuta, while two other explosions hit seaside restaurants in the beach resort of Jimbaran, a short walk from a Four Seasons resort hotel, witnesses said.
Officials at Sanglah Hospital, near Bali's capital of Denpasar, told the Associated Press that 25 people were killed and 101 others were treated at six hospitals.
The wounded included 49 Indonesians, 17 Australians, six Koreans, three Japanese and two Americans, Sanglah officials said. 
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa blamed the attacks on two fugitive leaders of a Southeast Asian Islamist group, Jemaah Islamiyah, often described as al-Qaeda's regional arm.
The attacks hit Bali just as its tourist industry was getting back on its feet from devastating bombings three years ago in Kuta that left 202 people dead, including 88 Australians and seven Americans.
The latest bombings occurred nearly simultaneously just before 7 p.m. local time at Kuta Town Square shopping center in the island's most urban area and at the seaside stalls in Jimbaran, about 20 miles away.
Indonesian television carried chaotic images of rescuers pulling bleeding tourists from the smoldering ruins of the shopping center, which housed restaurants, surf shops and clothing stores. The blast struck the three-story Raja cafe and steak house and the Matahari department store.
Tourist Daniel Martin told a British Broadcasting Corp. newscast that chaos followed the blast.
"There was thick smoke for a few minutes afterwards, but there didn't seem to be any fire," Martin said. "People were clambering onto the roof of the restaurant. It's about a three-story building, so people were climbing out and screaming and jumping down to the street... . I saw some horrific injuries, people coming out and they were covered in blood."
In Jimbaran, near-simultaneous explosions hit a seafood restaurant and a noodle house, popular gathering places at sundown. A former fishing village, Jimbaran now is a posh resort area with Ritz-Carlton, InterContinental and Four Seasons hotels.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who said he would go to Bali early today, told Indonesian journalists that the blasts were "clearly an act of terrorism." He added that extremists "are targeting indiscriminately."
The latest bombings seemed designed to send a message that Jemaah Islamiyah can strike Indonesia's most popular tourist destination at will. The bombings came during a high tourist-season weekend, as Indonesians prepared for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins this week.
Images of these bombings immediately harked back to the devastating 2002 nightclub explosions. The Kuta shopping center blast occurred a 15-minute walk away from the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar, scenes of the 2002 blasts.
The island of Bali is a predominantly Hindu enclave within the world's most populous Muslim nation. Viewed as a sanctuary from Indonesia's social turmoil, Bali draws one million tourists a year and is home to thousands of resident foreigners.
The new blasts are likely to increase pressure on Yudhoyono to outlaw Jemaah Islamiyah and increase the manhunt for Malaysian fugitives Azahari bin Husin and Noordin M. Top, who are accused of a number of bombings in recent years. Some Muslim leaders in Indonesia deny the group even exists.
Jemaah Islamiyah, which wants to establish an Islamic state across Southeast Asia, is still not proscribed.
"It's still an open organization," said terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna, of Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies.
Gunaratna said heightened Indonesian security efforts were unable to thwart the attacks even though the group's bombings have occurred so often at this time of year that it is known as "JI bombing season."
The radical group is blamed for a bombing at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003 that killed 12 people and a bombing outside the Australian Embassy in September 2004 that killed 11 people.
The Islamists have targeted Australian interests because of that nation's deployment of troops alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The United States and Australia contend that militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, 67, is the group's spiritual leader. Bashir, serving a two-year sentence for conspiracy in the 2002 attacks, is known for strong anti-Western and anti-Semitic views but has always maintained his innocence.
Courts on Bali have convicted dozens of militants for the 2002 blasts, and three suspects were sentenced to death.
Both U.S. and Australian officials have warned in recent days that terrorist cells remain active in Indonesia. Just on Friday, the U.S. Embassy issued a message saying "attacks could occur at any time and could be directed against any location, including those frequented by foreigners and identifiably American or other Western facilities or businesses in Indonesia."
The White House condemned the "attack aimed at innocent people taking their evening meal."
"We also express our solidarity with the government of Indonesia and convey our readiness to assist in any way," spokeswoman Erin Healy said.
 
Bombings in Indonesia
Recent bombings in Indonesia:
Yesterday.Bombs explode almost simultaneously in two tourist areas of the resort island of Bali, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100.
May 28.Two bombs explode in a crowded market in the predominantly Christian town of Tenteno, killing at least 22 people and wounding 40.
Sept. 9, 2004.A suicide car bomb explodes outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, killing 11 people and wounding 200.
Aug. 5, 2003.A car bomb in front of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in central Jakarta kills 12 people and wounds 150.
Dec. 5, 2002.A bomb explodes outside a McDonald's restaurant on Sulawesi island, killing three people and injuring 11.
Oct. 12, 2002.Two near simultaneous bombs explode in a nightclub district on Bali just before midnight, killing 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.
Dec. 25, 2000.Bombs explode at 11 churches across the country on Christmas Eve, killing 19 people and injuring about 100.
Sept. 13, 2000.A car bomb explodes inside the garage of the Jakarta Stock Exchange building, killing 10 people and injuring 16.
Source: Associated Press
Contact reporter Tim Johnson at tjohnson@krwashington.com

 INDONESIA (97%);  AUSTRALIA (92%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%); 






  
  


October 2, 2005 Sunday 



 Terrorists strike Bali again; three blasts kill at least 25;
SUICIDE BOMBERS POSSIBLE IN WORST ATTACK SINCE 2002

 
Terrorists struck the resort island of Bali for the second time in three years Saturday night with a trio of explosions in crowded restaurants that left at least 25 people dead and some 100 others wounded, many of them Western tourists.
The explosions appeared timed for maximum carnage, ripping through a steakhouse in bustling Kuta and a packed open-air seafront restaurant in Jimbaran Bay at sunset as crowds poured in.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry official Marty Natalegawa blamed the attacks on an Islamist militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah. 
The explosions appeared aimed at devastating Bali's tourist-based economy. The attacks hit Bali just as its tourist industry was getting back on its feet from horrific bombings three years ago that left 202 people dead, including 80 Australians.
Indonesian hospital officials said today that at least 25 people, including an Australian and a Japanese woman, were killed in Jimbaran and Kuta, but the death count seemed likely to rise. At least 101 others were injured, including two Americans, 17 Australians, six Koreans and three Japanese, the Sanglah Hospital in Denpasar said in a statement.
Bali Police Chief I Made Pastika said authorities were investigating whether the blasts were the work of suicide bombers or explosives left at the restaurants. The explosions went off nearly simultaneously just before 7 p.m. local time (5 a.m. PDT) at Kuta Town Square shopping center in an area of heavy tourist traffic and at beachside restaurants in Jimbaran Bay, about 20 miles away.
Indonesian television carried chaotic images of rescuers pulling bleeding tourists from the smoldering open-air shopping center of restaurants, surfer shops and knickknack stores. Two blasts struck the three-story Raja cafe and steakhouse and the Matahari department store.
''I helped lift up the bodies, there was blood everywhere,'' Wayan Kresna told Jakarta-based El Shinta radio station.
In Jimbaran Bay, a onetime fishing village that is now home to upscale resorts, two blasts ripped through the outdoor dining area of the Nyoman seafood restaurant, a popular gathering place to watch the sunset.
The cafe sits at the end of a dozen thatched-roof restaurants on the beach, wedged between a Four Seasons resort on the south and an Intercontinental Hotel on the north.
Police sealed the beach with yellow tape early today as throngs of onlookers gathered. A police officer said searchers had found three unexploded bombs.
Beachside tables still contained dinner from the night before, abandoned by diners as the two bombs went off.
''There was an enormous explosion that shook the room, actually shook the whole building,'' said Mark Roderick, an Australian accountant staying at a resort next door.
Before traveling to Bali early today, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he had received intelligence reports in July that new bombings were likely in Jakarta, the capital, and that ''the explosives were ready.'' He issued a public warning last month of possible new bombings.
The attacks occurred during a high tourist-season weekend, as Indonesians prepare for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins early next week.
The bombings brought images that immediately harked back to the 2002 explosions at Bali nightclubs. The Kuta shopping center is a 15-minute walk from the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar, where the devastating 2002 blasts occurred.
Saturday's blasts are likely to increase pressure on President Yudhoyono to outlaw Jemaah Islamiyah and increase the hunt for Malaysian fugitives Azahari bin Husin and Noordin M. Top, accused of being masterminds of earlier bombings. Some Muslim leaders in Indonesia deny the group even exists.

 INDONESIA (96%); AUSTRALIA (94%);  




5


  



October 2, 2005 Sunday  




 25 Killed In Three Blasts In Bali; 
Bombings Recall Massive '02 Attack

 
  Three bomb blasts ripped through restaurants on the resort island of Bali during the dinner rush Saturday night, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100 others, officials said. 
  Two of the nearly simultaneous attacks, which some investigators blamed on a group linked to al Qaeda, targeted a long row of popular seafood eateries along the white sand beach of Jimbaran. 
  A third explosion rocked the main tourist hub of Kuta, nearly 20 miles away, blowing out the second floor of a steakhouse and bar popular with foreigners, overturning furniture and spattering the floor with blood. The blast shattered the window of an adjacent clothing store in a crowded market of surfer shops, film processing outlets and boutiques peddling Polo and Versace fashion to a stream of foreign visitors. 
  "There was one big blast. Boom. There was a flash. There was a lot of flying glass," said Duke Ly, 47, a mechanic from San Francisco, whose family had just ordered steak and French fries at the Raja restaurant when the bomb exploded. "It's terrible. You don't think it would happen."  
  Though badly shaken, Ly escaped uninjured. But his six-year-old son, Jeremy, suffered gashes to his head and arm. 
  The blasts marked the return of extremist violence to Bali almost three years after explosions devastated a pair of Kuta nightclubs on another sultry Saturday night, killing 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. Those attacks, on Oct. 12, 2002, were the worst acts of terrorism in the country's history and roused the government out of its denial that Muslim militants with global connections were plotting to make Indonesia a major battlefront. 
  Since then, Indonesian security forces have moved aggressively against Jemaah Islamiah, a regional network implicated in other terrorist bombings. Dozens of members have been jailed in connection with the nightclub bombings, and four suspected ringleaders have been sentenced to death. 
 But those intelligence and law enforcement efforts, which have received substantial U.S. and Australian assistance, have failed to stem attacks on Western targets that have come steadily once a year. 
  Most fatalities appeared to be Indonesian. Sanglah hospital,  in Denpasar, the provincial capital, listed 25 dead, including one Japanese, one Australian and two other foreigners with no nationality given. Two Americans were among those wounded. 
 As dawn broke Sunday over Bali, a largely Hindu outpost in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, investigators were picking through the wreckage while other police held back a small crowd of Indonesians and foreigners. Capt. Sunarta, a member of the local bomb squad, said bits of detonated explosive retrieved from the ground floor of the three-story restaurants were being analyzed at a police laboratory. 
 Sayid Hasan, a taxi driver in Kuta, said he was furious that terrorist attacks, which devastated Bali's tourism-dependent economy three years ago, had returned to his island. 
  "Bali has not done anything wrong. Why is Bali always the target?" Hasan asked. "I can't understand how a bomb could happen again in Bali. The security is tight. Police are everywhere. How could they do it?" 
 Hasan said he initially mistook the 8 p.m. blast in Kuta for an accidental explosion at a nearby power plant. He began to worry when the electricity stayed on. "This is evil," he said. "How come these people keep bombing Bali?" 
  President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who in late August called for heightened vigilance amid concerns that militants were in the final stage of plotting a strike in Indonesia, labeled the bombings acts of indiscriminate terrorism. 
  "We will hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice," he said in televised remarks. The president dispatched top security officials to Bali and said he would travel there himself Sunday. 
  Yudhoyono and other top officials said it was too early to assign blame for the attacks. But investigators said they suspected the involvement of Jemaah Islamiah. 
  In 2003, militants belonging to Jemaah Islamiah detonated a car bomb in front of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta and then carried out a similar attack a year later at the gate of the nearby Australian Embassy. A total of 23 people, mainly Indonesians, died in the two attacks. 
  The suspected masterminds of those bombings, Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammed Top, both Malaysians, have eluded an extensive dragnet. Indonesian intelligence officials say they believe the two are still in Indonesia. 
  Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla acknowledged that Jemaah Islamiah remained active in Indonesia but said the group's strength was not known. "We are seeing many terrorist attacks. It means they are networking. They are there, networking in this country," Kalla said in an interview with the BBC. 
  U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined other international leaders in condemning the attacks in Jimbaran and Kuta. 
  "The United States stands with the people and government of Indonesia as they work to bring to justice those responsible for these acts of terrorism. We will continue to work together in our common fight against terror," she said in an e-mailed statement. 
  In Jimbaran, the explosions struck a row of more than a dozen casual waterfront restaurants, which are popular with both foreign and Indonesian tourists, who choose their own seafood and then eat under the night sky while serenade by strolling musicians playing Western standards. It is now high season and the restaurants are usually packed at dinnertime. 
  Suartana Katut, 33, who had worked at Menaga Cafe for six years, had just taken an order of lobster and fish for a foreign couple and their young children when a blast of hot air and sand suddenly knocked him to the beach, he recalled from a metal cot in Sanglah hospital. 
  "I thought my foot had stepped on the bomb because I felt my foot flying," recounted Katut, his face, arms and stocky torso pocked by red wounds, his lower body still wrapped in his waiter's blue-batik sarong. "The first thing I thought of was God. When the bomb hit me, I fell to the ground and I called God's name twice. Then I tried to find some light." 
  But the outdoor restaurant was dark, he recalled, with no moonlight and no torches. The tabletop candles had tumbled to the beach. The customers, including many visitors from Taiwan, Japan and Korea, were disoriented and screaming. 
  "They were trying to run away but they couldn't because they couldn't see where they were going," he continued, his dark brown eyes filling with tears. 
  Two times, Katut struggled to sit up but fell over. Just as he succeeded on the third try, he said a second blast erupted in another cafe several yards down the beach. A fellow waiter, who had escaped injury, hustled Katut onto a motorbike and rushed him to a medical clinic. 
  Agus Mustofa, a paramedic at Jimbaran Medical Clinic, recounted hearing the blasts about a mile away and thinking it was a car crash. He said he realized it was more serious when a man was brought in with a bloodied head. By 10:30 p.m., he said the clinic had treated 20 people, including eight Koreans and an Australian. 
  "Everything was in chaos," he said. "They were in shock, holding their heads." 
  The Graha Asri Hospital morgue near Kuta Square received 11 fatalities: one Korean, one Australian and the rest Indonesian, according to Anto, a paramedic. They sent 23 wounded to Sanglah Hospital and were treating 17 others, he said. 
  Special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report. 

 INDONESIA (96%); AUSTRALIA (92%); 







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


October 1, 2005 Saturday



 Topic: Joseph Smith

 
   During his lifetime, LDS Church founder Joseph Smith was considered by skeptics to be a charismatic, but little more.
They dismissed his claims of visions, revelation and translation of an ancient record as the fanciful fabrications of a man who said he spoke to God but couldn't prove it.
Yet more than 160 years after his martyrdom on a sultry summer afternoon in 1844, scholars who see a growing academic interest in Smith's life and work are less likely to dismiss him than to study him, looking for clues to the wellspring of what many now consider to be his religious genius.
Twelve million people worldwide now belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), which Smith founded in 1830 with a handful of members. The 175th anniversary of the church, and more especially, the 200th anniversary of Smith's birth, will likely be highlighted in several sermons during the faith's 175th Semiannual General Conference, which opens at 10 a.m. today in the Conference Center. 
While those remarks will center on the gospel that Latter-day Saints believe Smith restored to Earth under the direction of Jesus Christ, it is the daring of Smith's claims of truth, the scrutiny of his texts, his novel religious thought and the examination of his place in the religious revivalism of the early 19th century that continue to attract scholarly attention.
Several conferences featuring papers on everything from the influence Smith's father had on his worldview to detailed examinations of his DNA have already taken place this year, including one highly publicized event held at the Library of Congress last spring and others in such far-flung places as New Zealand, Australia and Taiwan.
Additional forums are scheduled at a variety of locales before year's end, including Claremont Graduate University's School of Religion, in Claremont, Calif.; Centenary College in Shreveport, La.; Brigham Young University; and a venue in Korea, according to Robert Millet, the Richard L. Evans professor of religious understanding at BYU.
While the church-owned school has long hosted such events, the broad interest Millet has seen in Smith this year has been unprecedented, he said.
Part of the curiosity was generated by the Library of Congress event, he said, adding there's also "a recognition of something significant happening on the American scene. I think, as some honest historians would agree, Joseph Smith may finally be getting his due in terms of recognition and acknowledgment, even if they don't believe what he taught.
"There is a growing curiosity and desire to participate in rational discourse with us, and also a greater interest in inviting (LDS scholars) into broadening religious conversations."
For example, Millet was contacted several months ago by a professor of religion at Centenary College of Louisiana, a private, Methodist-funded school. The two men had never met, but the professor asked Millet to help him organize a three-day conference on Joseph Smith later this month.
"It's one thing for us to mount that kind of event, but another thing entirely for someone else to do so. His specialty is religion in America, and he said he felt Joseph Smith hadn't been given his due. . . . I was shocked," but pleasantly so, he said. Widespread phenomenon
Such meetings at home and abroad have featured both LDS and other Christian scholars, some of whom have researched Smith in their native countries and want to share their views. "This is not just an American phenomenon. Latter-day Saints in other lands have a similar desire to do this," Millet said, and they're being joined by those who have become curious about the man who founded what historians often refer to as the "quintessentially American religion" that now counts members in more than 100 nations.
Terryl Givens, professor of religion and literature at the University of Richmond, said while the church is "clearly behind most of these efforts," he believes a "receptiveness by other scholars and institutions to host them is an indication we may be turning the corner. It would be nice if we were at a moment in history where (non-Mormon) scholars were taking the lead, but they're clearly participating. That's significant progress."
Givens just returned from Taiwan, where a major university hosted one such event. He listened to a non-LDS journalist from India present a paper on what he thought was "the relevance Joseph Smith had to solving inter-ethnic conflicts in both the Middle East and Kashmir. It was quite a striking paper to hear from an Indian journalist."
The presenter said Smith "demonstrated a sincerity in his religious quest that many people in the midst of religious conflict today would do well to imitate . . . because religion is often the excuse for conflict." He also used Joseph Smith's history as "an example of how much can be accomplished by a person with a nuclear family. That's an important part of the (public) dialogue going on there."
The mayor of Taipei addressed the gathering, he said, speaking favorably of the church and noting the government there has put templates and formats for weekly Family Home Evenings on their Web site, attributing them to the church.
Another paper was presented by a scholar from mainland China named Qi Duan, a researcher at Beijing's Institute for the Study of World Religions. "She has made herself a student of Mormonism," Givens said, coming to Hong Kong where he met with her for almost an hour and "fielded a number of perceptive and very informed questions."
She made a presentation that was videotaped for the conference in Taipei, discussing her reasons for the success of Mormonism. Her reasons "weren't groundbreaking or novel, but it's significant to have a researcher from mainland China making this her focus." Academic interest
Givens said scholars from Bangladesh and Indonesia participated in a late-spring conference on Smith in Australia, both of them Muslims "who had very positive things to say about Mormons. I was surprised to find familiarity and insight from nations so disparate as those."
Jan Shipps, a professor emeritus of history and religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University, has studied Mormonism for 45 years. She said that while the Library of Congress symposium on Smith attracted a lot of attention, "it was of interest to many more LDS than people who were not LDS. It turned out to be . . . triumphalist in nature. Don't think that will be as important as Richard Bushman's new book in the academic community."
Bushman, a professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, has just completed "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling," a biography many believe will be the most definitive look at the church's founding prophet to date.
"It has become a reason for us in the academic community to pay more attention to Joseph Smith, and that's for people outside the church," she said.
Shipps and Bushman are both presenting papers this weekend at yet another conference focused on Smith, this one the annual meeting of the John Whitmer Historical Association in Springfield, Ill. Bushman's topic will be "Joseph Smith and Abraham Lincoln," while Shipps will focus on "Prophets and Prophecy in the Mormon Tradition," as a way for scholars outside the church to understand why his followers believed him.
Shipps said a careful study of the revelations Smith said he received before the LDS Church was organized shows "these revelations have predictive value in that they are fulfilled. . . . There were rational reasons, not just spiritual reasons, to accept Joseph Smith as a prophet."
Other presentations at the conference place Smith alongside Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science) and Ellen G. White (a founder of Seventh Day Adventist theology), examine his personality as well as his family, his associates and the doctrines he taught.
Observing the variety of scholarly presentations on Smith and the LDS Church ever since Yale University hosted a conference in 2003, Givens believes the church "has a reputation and Joseph Smith has an influence that, in some ways, exceed the recognition of many church members." E-mail: carrie@desnews.com

 UNITED STATES (91%); AUSTRALIA (73%); AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND (68%); NEW ZEALAND (53%); NORTHERN ASIA (53%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


September 30, 2005 Friday



 World datelines

 
Belgium
BRUSSELS -- Belgium has issued an international arrest warrant for Chad's former leader Hissene Habre, charging him with atrocities during his 1982-90 rule, the Justice Ministry said Thursday. Human-rights campaigners said the decision would serve as a precedent for prosecution of other exiled leaders accused of abuses. 
Britain
BRIGHTON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized Thursday to an 82-year-old activist ejected from the governing Labour Party's conference for heckling a Cabinet minister over the Iraq war -- an issue that overshadowed the end of the annual convention.
Canada
TORONTO -- Canada's military is "wounded" and the country's defense severely underfunded, according to a Senate report released Thursday, which laments the lack of resources and coordinated manpower to deal with a terrorist attack or natural disaster. The report notes Canada -- named by al-Qaida as one of five target nations deserving of an attack -- has done little since the Sept. 11 attacks to invest in anti-terrorism prevention.
Egypt
EL-ARISH -- Two militants who tried to run a checkpoint in the Sinai mountains were shot and killed by police, and the government said Thursday they were the mastermind of the July terrorist attacks on Sharm el-Sheik and one of his bombmakers.
India
NEW DELHI -- Thousands of airport workers backed by civil servants and state-run bank and insurance company employees held a one-day nationwide strike Thursday to protest government privatization plans they fear will affect their jobs.
Kazakhstan
ALMATY -- Editors of five Kazakh opposition newspapers ended a hunger strike Thursday after reaching a deal with a new printing house that would allow them to return to business after being forced to shut down.
Netherlands
AMSTERDAM -- The Dutch government intends to expand its current euthanasia policy, setting guidelines for when doctors may end the lives of terminally ill newborns with the parents' consent.
Pakistan
ISLAMABAD -- Pakistani security officials said Thursday they have foiled new terrorist attacks with the arrest of the reputed head of an al-Qaida-linked extremist group accused of killing scores of minority Shiite Muslims.
South Korea
SEOUL -- South Korea will keep sending food aid to the rival North despite the communist regime's demand that international donors halt emergency food shipments and provide development aid instead, an official said Thursday.
Thailand
BANGKOK -- A security adviser to the prime minister said Thursday that Indonesian fighters are involved in Thailand's Muslim insurgency, contradicting government insistence the bloody separatist movement is a homegrown affair unconnected to Southeast Asia's al-Qaida-linked terror network.
Turkey
ANKARA -- A Washington-based human rights group has accused Turkey of subjecting mental-health patients to serious abuses, including electric-shock treatment without anesthesia, and is urging the European Union to demand an end to the practices.
Ukraine
KIEV -- Weeping survivors clutching red carnations paid tribute Thursday to tens of thousands of Jews massacred by the Nazis 64 years ago at the ravine known as Babi Yar.
Venezuela
CARACAS -- President Hugo Chavez said Thursday he wants to share his country's oil wealth with every nation in South America, in a move that aims to strengthen alliances in the region on the back of surging energy prices.
Vietnam
HANOI -- Disaster relief officials said Thursday they have recovered at least 38 bodies from flash flooding and landslides spawned by Typhoon Damrey, and the death toll is expected to rise as the search goes on in northern Vietnam. Typhoon Damrey, which came ashore early Tuesday with winds of up to 63 mph, was the worst storm to hit Vietnam in a decade, leaving at least 41 people dead.

 CANADA (93%); BELGIUM (93%); NETHERLANDS (93%); KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (92%); KAZAKHSTAN (92%); TURKEY (92%); THAILAND (90%);  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); EGYPT (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%);  ASIA (79%); INDIA (79%)







   


September 25, 2005 Sunday  




 Taking Stock of the Forever War

 
Danner's fundamental premise -- that the Bush administration's war on terror has only provided a huge public-relations-cum-recruiting bonanza for Islamic terrorists -- is contradicted by a recently released Pew Global Attitudes Projectsurvey that found that ''support for terrorism, including suicide bombings, has declined substantially in several Muslim countries in the past two years. . .including Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan and Morocco'' (, July 15, 2005).

Renard C. Strautman
  New York

  PAKISTAN (92%); MOROCCO (91%); INDONESIA (90%)








 


September 23, 2005



 Israel Basks in New Warmth As Muslim States Hail Gaza Pullout; 
But Jerusalem Is Torn Over Demands for New Steps

 
Meeting their warmest reception here in a generation, most notably from Muslim nations, Israeli leaders responded this week with a mixture of elation at their new standing in the world community and impatience at its limits.
In a whirlwind week of diplomatic breakthroughs, the United Nations General Assembly Hall - not known to Israelis as friendly territory - gave warm applause to a speech by Israel's prime minister, the once-reviled Ariel Sharon. Days later, the assembly hall was gaveled to order by Israel's own ambassador to hear a speech by Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
In between, leaders from dozens of nations lined up to meet the two Israelis. Among them were the foreign ministers of a dozen Arab and Muslim nations, including several that had not agreed previously to open contact with Israelis. This group was led by the most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia.
But Israeli leaders expressed thinly veiled irritation that their contacts with most Muslim states remained informal and often semi-secret. There were repeated reminders during the week that their newfound acceptance was largely a response to last month's withdrawal from Gaza, and that additional warming appeared dependent on further Israeli concessions toward the Palestinians - something Israelis say is not likely in the near future. 
"These are optimistic times in the Middle East," Shalom told the General Assembly in a speech this past Tuesday. "The iron curtain that has defined Israel's relations with most of the Arab and Muslim world for generations is coming down."
But not fast enough, he continued. "I call on my Arab and Muslim colleagues to bring our contacts out into the light of day so that our peoples may understand our shared desire to work with each other, to bring peace and prosperity to our region."
Speaking to reporters a day earlier, Shalom insisted that the Muslim nations could and should move toward full relations at once. He acknowledged that the Gaza withdrawal - which he had opposed - had "made some contribution" to the current thaw. However, he said other factors loomed larger, the first two being the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the death of Yasser Arafat.
Later Shalom declared on Israeli television that Israel had "succeeded in breaking the absolute linkage" between "progress on the Palestinian track and progress on the Arab-Israeli track."
But there were numerous reminders throughout the week, both public and private, that the linkage was alive and well. The president of Pakistan, the second-largest Muslim nation and the only one with nuclear weapons, made the linkage explicit during an unprecedented speech at a dinner arranged in the president's honor by the American Jewish Congress. The dinner followed the historic handshake between Pakistan's leader, Pervez Musharraf, and Sharon at the U.N.
Musharraf said that the diplomatic overture was "in response to the bold step taken by Prime Minister Sharon to withdraw from Gaza," and that Pakistan had "decided to initiate an official contact with Israel," beginning two weeks earlier with a meeting between the Israeli and Pakistani foreign ministers. And Musharaff said that additional warming depended on further Israeli-Palestinian progress.
"As the peace process progresses towards the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, we will take further steps toward normalization and cooperation, looking to full diplomatic relations," he said.
Musharraf's AJCongress appearance was seen widely in itself as a historic gesture toward improving Muslim-Jewish ties. In his speech, broadcast live on Pakistani and Arab television, he condemned antisemitism and terrorism, acknowledged Israel's right to live in security, quoted approvingly from the Talmud and praised the humanitarian record of America's Jewish community.
"This is a courageous and a historic step," said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
In response to a question, however, Musharraf insisted the time was "not ripe" for full diplomatic relations. He said that his own population was too "emotionally" involved in support for the Palestinians.
Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the U.N., sat on the dais between Pakistan's U.N. and Washington ambassadors. Gillerman said that while Musharraf had made an important gesture by appearing at the dinner there still was a regret: "We are sorry he did not go further on the normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel."
"Pakistan should be a pioneer on this issue," Gillerman told the Forward.
Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress-Council for World Jewry, was the event's main organizer. He warned against drawing hasty conclusions from Musharraf's reticence on Israel. "There's more to it than meets the eye," he said.
Several Pakistani and American Jewish sources said that a low-level Pakistani delegation was scheduled to visit Jerusalem and Ramallah in coming weeks, and that Israel and Pakistan have decided to create a joint diplomatic task force to discuss further steps to be taken. The sources also revealed that there is serious talk of a visit to Israel by a Pakistani Cabinet minister.
In addition to improving Jewish-Muslim and Pakistani-Israeli relations, the aim of Musharraf's diplomatic initiative is believed to be the neutralization of Israel's growing links with India, Pakistan's archenemy, and the smoothing of relations with Washington.
There were many other signs this week of a warming between Israel and the Arab and Muslim world.
Sharon met on Friday with Jordan's King Abdullah II for the first time in months. Additional meetings included sessions with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco and, for the first time publicly, Qatar and Indonesia.
There were other meetings that were too sensitive to discuss, Shalom said at a press briefing.
Sknja Panegabaen, a spokesman for the Indonesian mission to the U.N., said the Israeli-Indonesian meeting was an exchange of views about the Middle East, but it did not touch upon diplomatic relations despite reports that Israel had asked formally for the establishment of diplomatic missions.
Mark Regev, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, stressed that Israel was willing to move forward with Indonesia. He mentioned a senior ministry official's visit to Indonesia several months ago in the aftermath of the tsunami.
Currently Israel has full diplomatic relations with Egypt, Jordan, Mauritania, Turkey and several former Soviet republics in Central Asia. It also has lower forms of diplomatic relations, including liaison offices, interest sections and trade offices, in Morocco, Tunisia, Oman and Qatar. Most of those diplomatic links were curtailed after the intifada broke out in 2000, but some were re-established in recent months following the announcement of the Gaza withdrawal. Israeli officials are now hoping to seize the momentum to improve ties with large, non-Arab Muslim states that have no direct conflicts with Israel.
Tunisian native Shalom is scheduled in November to be in his home country, attending the World Summit on the Information Society. Also, Bahrain announced it would end its economic boycott of Israel.
"We're at a tipping point because of Gaza," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. He added that European foreign ministers visiting the U.N. last week also had conveyed to him their view that the atmosphere had improved for Israel.
But the week's biggest buzz was prompted by Libyan press reports that leader Muammar Gadhafi was planning to visit Israel and that both sides had agreed to such a trip. Some Libyan news sources said that Gadhafi had expressed his wish to visit Israel to an American delegation, and that the agreement on the visit was reached after a failed attempt to organize a Sharon trip to Libya.
Asked about the report, Regev declined to comment directly. He only offered that whenever an Arab leader visits Israel, it bolsters peace efforts.

 ISRAEL (97%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (92%); PAKISTAN (92%);  MIDDLE EAST (79%); 








 


September 23, 2005



 What They're Waiting For

 
Israel's leaders seemed to respond with gratification and discomfort in almost equal measures to the outpouring of warmth they received at the United Nations this month during the opening ceremonies of the world body's 60th anniversary summit. It was a welcome they'd longed for, but it came with conditions.
Prime Minister Sharon, whose very name was for decades anathema in the glass tower on the East River, found himself wined, dined and hailed for his courage and vision. His foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, delivered his annual General Assembly address to a gathering that was chaired - for the first time since 1963 - by Israel's own ambassador. European and Arab leaders were friendlier toward the Israelis than they have been in years. 
More substantively, Israeli officials described breakthrough contacts with Muslim nations, including Indonesia and Pakistan, the two largest, that had refused for 57 years to have any dealings with the Jewish state.
Israelis pronounced themselves pleased at their unaccustomed acceptance, but they couldn't help asking, like the demanding Jewish parent of lore: What happened to the rest of it? In one forum after another, officials from the foreign minister down to the lowliest diplomatic aide wondered aloud why the Muslim states couldn't simply finish the job and establish full diplomatic relations with Israel. What, they asked repeatedly, are you waiting for?
In fact, the answer to the question was no secret. As one world leader after another declared this week, the Muslim world was granting Israel partial recognition in return for its partial withdrawal from the territories. Further steps toward Israel-Palestinian peace will lead to further Israeli-Muslim reconciliation. The message couldn't have been more blunt.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who heads the world's second-largest Muslim nation - and the only one with nuclear weapons - said it flat out last weekend in his address to the American Jewish Congress. His decision to open an informal dialogue with Israel came directly "in response to the bold step taken by Prime Minister Sharon to withdraw from Gaza," he said. "As the peace process progresses toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, we will take further steps toward normalization and cooperation, looking to full diplomatic relations." In other words, the more you give, the more you get.
That wasn't a message the Israelis at the U.N. this week wanted to hear. As Shalom and his allies made plain at every opportunity, they regard recognition and equal standing in the world community as a matter of simple justice. Addressing Palestinian complaints, by contrast, they view as a political matter, and a complicated one at that. Give us now what is ours by right, they say to their diplomatic interlocutors, and leave us alone to solve our local problems with our neighbors. Not surprisingly, their interlocutors aren't biting. If we pay everything in advance, they say, what's to guarantee you'll keep up your end? It's hard not to suspect that in the minds of a few Israelis, that's just the idea.
In fact, most Israelis understand that they need to separate themselves from the Palestinians, for the sake of both nations. They recognize that the stakes aren't merely local; moving toward coexistence results in greater world acceptance, and increased tension moves them backward. That's why Sharon did what he did in Gaza. It's why pressure is now mounting for a new Israeli political alignment that will continue the process of reconciliation. It was the spokesmen at the U.N. this week who were out of touch.

 ISRAEL (96%);  PAKISTAN (92%);  






  
  

  Philadelphia Inquirer

September 23, 2005 Friday 



 News in Brief

 

 
In the Nation
Driver kills two, hurts 12
on Las Vegas sidewalk

 
 The driver of a stolen car who authorities say deliberately plowed into pedestrians on the Las Vegas Strip, killing two and injuring a dozen others, will face charges of murder and attempted murder. Witnesses said the driver, Stephen M. Ressa, 27, of Rialto, Calif., accelerated as he drove along the crowded casino sidewalk Wednesday, Deputy Police Chief Greg McCurdy said. - AP
Freedom museum appeals to remain at WTC site

 
 Founders of a museum devoted to freedom asked yesterday in New York to stay in a proposed cultural building at the World Trade Center site, saying the center would explore the core American values that were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. The International Freedom Center "will help the world understand and appreciate the sacrifices made on Sept. 11," the group said a report to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. Relatives of victims oppose the center, saying it would overshadow a museum devoted to the dead. - AP 
Jewish activist sentenced
to prison for bombing plot

 
 A member of the Jewish Defense League was sentenced yesterday in Los Angeles to 20 years in prison for his role in a plot to bomb a mosque and a Lebanese American congressman's office in 2001. During the hearing, Earl Krugel, 62, apologized and said he was a changed man. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of worshipers at Culver City's King Fahd Mosque and one count of carrying an explosive device in connection with a conspiracy to impede or injure Republican Rep. Darrell E. Issa. - AP
 
In the World
Rival German politicians
still talking on coalition

 
 Conservative leader Angela Merkel and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder failed yesterday to resolve their battle over who should lead Germany's new government but agreed to meet again to explore forming a right-left coalition to steer efforts to revive Europe's largest economy. Both Merkel and Schroeder have laid claim to building Germany's next government after neither party won a clear majority in parliamentary elections Sunday. - AP
Ukraine parliament OKs
new prime minister

 
 Ukraine's parliament yesterday approved Yuriy Yekhanurov as the country's new prime minister, endorsing President Viktor Yushchenko's choice on the second try. Yekhanurov received 289 votes from lawmakers, well above the 226 needed. Yushchenko ousted Yulia Tymoshenko from the prime minister's post on Sept. 8, but had failed on Tuesday to win approval for Yekhanurov. - AP
Weather blamed for crash
that killed Mexican official

 
 A helicopter crash that killed a Mexican cabinet minister and his deputy appears to have been caused by bad weather, a spokesman for President Vicente Fox said yesterday. While one official aboard the craft had received death threats from a drug trafficker, authorities said poor visibility probably was to blame for the crash Wednesday that killed Public Safety Secretary Ramon Martin Huerta, Federal Preventive Police Commissioner Tomas Valencia, five other passengers and two crew members. - AP
Muslim extremist gets
10 years for bombing role

 
 An Indonesian court yesterday sentenced the last of six Muslim extremists accused in the 2004 suicide bombing at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta to 10 years in prison. Judge Sucahyo Padmo said Syaiful Bahri was guilty of "providing assistance" to the alleged masterminds of the attack, which killed 10 people and wounded about 200. - AP

 UNITED STATES (94%); GERMANY (93%); MEXICO (92%); UKRAINE (90%); LEBANON (79%); EUROPE (79%); 







  



September 23, 2005 Friday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
BERLIN  --  Gerhard Schroeder and Angela Merkel met Thursday but showed no signs of settling a bitter standoff over who won Sunday's German elections and who should lead the country if their parties are forced into a coalition. 
  With the future of Europe's largest economy at stake, conservative leader Merkel and incumbent Schroeder held exploratory talks for the first time since the vote, weighing with party allies the prospects for sharing power. They agreed to meet again Wednesday.  
  "The personal question has to be cleared up relatively quickly, and it has to be accepted . . . that Angela Merkel will be chancellor," Edmund Stoiber, head of the Christian Social Union, said after the talks as he stood with Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union. 
  A few minutes later, Franz Muentefering, head of Schroeder's Social Democrats, said, "We focused on issues but made it clear that we . . . want to govern this nation with Gerhard Schroeder as chancellor." 
  Merkel's party, coupled with the Christian Social Union, received 35.2 percent of the vote, just edging Schroeder's party, which won 34.3 percent. 
 ASIA 
*  LAHORE, Pakistan  --  Two bombs exploded about 90 minutes apart in this eastern Pakistan city, killing six people and wounding two dozen, police said. There was no immediate assertion of responsibility. 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  The number of Indonesians under observation for bird flu symptoms has risen to 16, the Health Ministry said Friday, but added that tests confirmed that a 5-year-old girl who died this week did not have the virus. 
  Four Indonesians are confirmed to have died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu since July. Of the 16 people under observation, one has been confirmed to have the virus. 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  A court on Thursday sentenced the last of six Muslim extremists convicted in the 2004 suicide bombing at the Australian Embassy. Syaiful Bahri, 36, was given 10 years in prison for "providing assistance" to two Malaysians, Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top, the alleged organizers of the attack. Both are fugitives. 
 The bombing killed 10 people and wounded about 200. 
 THE MIDDLE eAST 
*  TULKARM, West Bank  --  Israeli troops shot dead three Palestinian militants in the West Bank on Friday, Israeli military sources said. 
  The sources said two militants were shot after they opened fire on troops while trying to flee arrest in a village near Tulkarm. A third, who escaped to another village, was killed later. The sources said the raid was aimed at arresting senior members of Islamic Jihad. 
  --  From News Services 

  ISRAEL (92%); GERMANY (92%);  PAKISTAN (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); AUSTRALIA (79%); ASIA (79%)






  
   


September 19, 2005 Monday



 
Sharon meets with Jordan's king
Jordan's King Abdullah II urged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to initiate further pullouts from the West Bank. The talk was their first in months and a further sign of warming relations between the Jewish state and the Arab world after Israel's Gaza withdrawal. In just two weeks, Qatar, Pakistan and Indonesia have held meetings with Israel, a rarity for Muslim nations.
GAZA: Palestinians pelted their own security forces with stones, then crossed the border and swept past overwhelmed Egyptian police who tried to beat them back with sticks. About 5,000 people crossed.
IRAN: Tehran officials told the Financial Times that Iran has proposed a compromise involving international supervision of its nuclear activities.
CANADA: Representatives from 30 nations will meet in Ottawa in October to forge a strategy against a likely pandemic of avian flu.
VENEZUELA: President Hugo Chavez called on the U.N. to leave the U.S. and move to an international city in the Southern Hemisphere.

 ISRAEL (95%); JORDAN (94%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%); IRAN,  (93%); PAKISTAN (92%); INDONESIA (92%); EGYPT (79%); IRAN (53%); CANADA (52%); 






   
Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA)

September 18, 2005 Sunday



 MCC gets grant to offer Islam-culture coursework

 
Middlesex Community College has been awarded a two-year, $145,000 federal grant that will allow it to begin providing coursework focusing on the Arabic language and the Islamic religion.
The "Pluralism in Islam Project" involves a series of faculty seminars over the next four semesters -- starting Sept. 28 -- which will examine Islamic societies in four countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India and Indonesia.
Kent Mitchell, MCC dean of international arts, said in the short-term, faculty will take content from the seminars and infuse it in their coursework. 
Starting in fall 2006, the school also plans to begin offering an introduction to Islam course and possibly offer an Arabic language course as well, either that semester or in spring 2007, he said.
"We are trying to show that Islam is not monolithic," he said. "It is every bit as diverse as Christianity. We're de-stereotyping Islam."
Saudi Arabia was chosen as the first subject because it is the most fundamentalist Islamic society, Mitchell said. Egypt is the religion's intellectual center. India has 120 million Muslims, but they are a minority religion in that country. Indonesia is the largest Islamic country in the world, but the beliefs of Muslims there are affected by Buddhism imported from India and the indigenous religions of the small islands in that part of the world.
Seminars will be taught by Boston University professors Herb Mason and Shakir Mustafa, as well as Herman Eilts, former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The grant also will fund "chat times in which native speakers of the various languages in which MCC offers courses --such as English-as-a-Second-Language, French, Portuguese, Spanish and ultimately, Arabic -- will offer conversation time with students in those courses.
Mitchell said all of the grant-funded efforts are important "because we're at war, and the war was first sold to us as a kind of religious crusade. That's an either/or idea of human cultures which breeds confrontation and confrontation is not the future of the planet," he said.
Michael Lafleur's e-mail address is mlafleur@lowellsun.com.

 INDIA (94%); EGYPT (94%);  SAUDI ARABIA (92%);  




6


 



September 16, 2005 Friday  
 



 SHARON THE UN-LIKELY HERO

 
POSING FOR PICTURES with Israeli diplomats, shaking hands with Ariel Sharon - suddenly the Muslim world is making nice with the Jewish state.
There was even polite applause when the Israeli Prime Minister challenged the Palestinians to "prove their desire for peace" in a speech to the UN General Assembly.
"The most important test the Palestinian leadership will face is in fullfilling their commitment to put an end to terror," Sharon said yesterday. 
Sharon's words did not appear to impress Palestinian Foreign Minister Nasser al-Kidwa, who was seen sitting through the speech with his arms folded over his chest.
But there were tangible signs that Sharon's bold decision to remove Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip was paying off with a UN constituency that has
historically been hostile to the Jewish state.
Instead of skulking in the shadows, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom met openly with his counterpart from oil-rich Qatar - and both sides smiled for the cameras. "There's no reason to continue with secrecy," Shalom said.
The Qataris even held out the possibility of full diplomatic relations with Israel - a step that only Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania have taken among the
Islamic nations.
Shalom also met for the first time with the foreign minister of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Earlier, Sharon shook hands with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. "He asked me how I was," Musharraf said. "I asked him, 'How are you?' And that's very good."
Israel and Pakistan have no formal diplomatic ties, but Musharraf has praised the Gaza withdrawal and will meet with the American Jewish Congress tomorrow.
"This is clearly a positive development," said Henry Seigman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
But he warned that warming spell could cool off fast if the peace process stalls. "People have forgotten that following the Oslo Agreement there was a similar response from parts of the Arab world," he said. csiemasko@nydailynews.com

 ISRAEL (98%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (96%); QATAR (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); JORDAN (79%);  MIDDLE EAST (79%); EGYPT (79%); 







 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


September 14, 2005 Wednesday  




 THE IMPOSSIBLE JOB OF KAREN HUGHES

 
President Bush might as well have asked Karen Hughes - his friend and longtime political adviser - to hold back Hurricane Katrina, because he has assigned her an equally impossible task. In naming Hughes undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, the president wants her to improve America's image abroad and specifically in the Muslim world.
The Bush administration believes that image has been distorted and the message concerning what America stands for is not getting out. The problem with this thinking is that the Muslim world's position regarding the United States is rooted in fundamental political and most especially religious doctrines that will not be changed by people many of them regard as "infidels" and worthy of death. 
TAKE INDONESIA, which has the world's largest Muslim population. Three Christian women were given three-year prison sentences in West Java earlier this month after they were convicted of "enticing" Muslim school children to become Christians. The parents of the Muslim children had given permission for them to attend Sunday school classes in private homes.
None of them converted, but the hosts are going to prison for speaking of their faith in front of Muslim kids. How does America combat such a mentality through political "missionary trips" and television commercials? Asked another way, has the public relations campaign by some Muslim organizations in America converted us to the belief that they and Islam are mainly peaceful and interested in religious and political co-existence?
Some Muslim clerics and Web bloggers have been gloating over the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. They say it is Allah's judgment on wicked America. It is unlikely people of such persuasion can be convinced of America's goodness.
Here are two of many examples of this line of thinking. In a Sept. 2 sermon on the hurricane that was broadcast on Sudan TV (transcribed and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute), Sheik Al-Karouri said, "If America wants to maintain what is left of its civilization, it must free itself, as we say in Sudan, from the curse of the Jews. ... The curse of Israel has affected America. ... The state (sic) called New Orleans is no longer `new' at all. ... If people want their countries to prosper, they must make peace with Allah and avoid disputing Allah and His prophet."
"Al-Qaida in The Land of the Two Rivers" issued a statement that declared, "Congratulations to the nation of Islam on what befell the worshippers of the cross."
HOW DOES one counter this? How can an "infidel" like Karen Hughes or any other American say or do anything (short of removing U.S. support for Israel and converting en masse to Islam) that will change these minds?
After receiving $50 million in aid from the United States, Palestinian Authority religious officials continue to openly promote vicious anti-American hatred. According to a Sept. 6 Palestinian Media Watch bulletin, one religious leader, in the presence of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, called for Iraqis to intensify terrorist uprisings against American soldiers.
In a June 24 letter to Philip J. Perry, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, Barry Sabin, chief of the counterterrorism section for the Department of Justice, described The Muslim Brotherhood organization (which claims chapters in 70 nations, including America) as "committed to the globalization of Islam through social engineering and violent jihad." How does Karen Hughes, or anyone else, reprogram such people?
HUGHES RECENTLY spoke at a gathering of American Muslims in Rosemont, Ill. She told a news conference, "We need to foster a sense of common interest and common values among Americans and peoples of different faiths and different cultures." That sounds good to Western ears, but where are such values shared in the Muslim world? What if the strategy of our enemies is to take advantage of the kindness, understanding and pluralistic intentions of the United States in order to further infiltrate and undermine this country?
This is the plot line of the chilling 1995 novel by Peter De Rosa called "Pope Patrick." A fictional "Federation of Islamic Republics" weakens the resolve of the United States government by using America's good motives against the president with disastrous results.
Before President Bush and Karen Hughes proceed with their attempts to win the hearts and minds of Muslims, they should read this novel, which sounds more like current events than fiction.
Tribune Media Services

  ISRAEL (92%); SUDAN (92%); INDONESIA (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%)







 


September 13, 2005 Tuesday  
MISSOURI THIRD EDITION



 Webster U. honors Indonesian president

 
The first directly elected Indonesian president offered prayers and sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and reflected on the role of democracy in the largest Muslim nation in the world at an honorary degree ceremony Monday at Webster University.
"I bring the enormous sympathies and prayers from the Indonesian people for the plight of our brothers and sisters in the south who are suffering from the shock of Hurricane Katrina," said Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Last year's tsunami engulfed much of Indonesia's Northern Sumatra island, killing 128,000 and leaving half a million people homeless. Under Yudhoyono's leadership, $1.2 billion was distributed to victims and spent on the affected area. 
At the Webster Groves campus, Yudhoyono received an honorary doctor of laws degree, awarded to those who do public service. After about two and a half hours here Monday, he flew to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., to be inducted into the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame. By Monday night he was in New York City for meetings at the United Nations.
Yudhoyono graduated from Webster University's Kansas City campus in 1991 with a master of arts in management.
"I have learned that policy making and academic analysis are two sides of the same coin. And I am grateful to Webster University for the invaluable academic training they gave me," Yudhoyono said.
"So if anyone asks me what hat I will be wearing today: whether a president's hat, academic hat or military hat? Well, none of those. This is the hat I'm wearing today -- a Webster hat," he said, pointing to his mortarboard.
More than 600 people attended the ceremony in the Loretto-Hilton Center, including elected officials from Missouri and from the Indonesian embassy, as well as about two dozen members of the Asian press.
"There are those who argue that Islam is incompatible with democracy. Well, what we see in Indonesia is just the opposite," Yudhoyono said. "Since the gates for electoral competition were opened wide, we have seen the proliferation of political parties, including Islamic political parties.
"However, the results of the elections show that the Indonesian voters did not vote based on religious consideration. In fact, the final two presidential candidates at last year's elections, which was won by a Webster graduate, carried a nationalist, rather that religious, platform."
Neil George, Webster's executive vice president and vice president of academic affairs, said he was impressed that Yudhoyono "hadn't forgotten his roots and came to the university on his way to the U.N."

 INDONESIA (96%); 







 Dolan Media Newswires
 
Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly

September 12, 2005



 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Case Summaries: September 12, 2005

 
Bankruptcy
Public access - Examiner's report
Where appellants claim that a bankruptcy examiner's report should be redacted or sealed, their assertion must be rejected on the ground that the report does not contain "scandalous or defamatory" material and thus is subject to public disclosure.
"This case presents a matter of first impression in our circuit, requiring us to interpret 11 U.S.C. Sect. 107(b)(2), which provides an exception to the rule of public access to papers filed in a bankruptcy case for material that is 'scandalous or defamatory. ' Appellants Charles and Gary Gitto, who were formerly associated with a company that has since filed for bankruptcy protection, assert that an investigative report compiled by a court-appointed bankruptcy examiner falls within the Sect. 107(b)(2) exception and that it must therefore be redacted or sealed. The bankruptcy court rejected this contention, finding that the appellants had not demonstrated that the material at issue was scandalous or defamatory and that it therefore must be publicly available under 11 U.S.C. Sect. 107(a). The district court affirmed, although it applied a different interpretation of Sect. 107(b)(2) than the one adopted by the bankruptcy court. 
"On appeal, the Gittos advance a reading of Sect. 107(b)(2) that is broader than the one used by either the bankruptcy court or the district court, and assert that they are entitled to protection under that exception. The appellees, two media organizations - Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp. and  - and the Examiner, urge us to reject the Gittos' interpretation of Sect. 107(b)(2) and to find that the public has a right of access to the Report. ...
"To qualify for protection under the Sect. 107(b)(2) exception for defamatory material, an interested party must show (1) that the material at issue would alter his reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person, and (2) that the material is untrue or that it is potentially untrue and irrelevant or included for an improper end. The Gittos cannot make such a showing with regard to the Report. Therefore, upon issuance of the mandate, and once the Examiner deletes all bank account numbers included in the Report and its exhibits pursuant to the unchallenged ruling of the bankruptcy court regarding the redaction of confidential information, the Report shall be filed publicly. "
In Re: Gitto Global Corp. (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-276-05) (33 pages) (Lipez, J.) (1st Circuit) Appealed from a decision by Woodlock, J., in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Max Stern, with whom Lillian Hirales was on brief, for appellant Gary Gitto; Juliane Balliro, with whom Paul Leoni and Christine M. Griffin were on brief, for appellant Charles Gitto; Jonathan M. Albano, with whom Aaron Wais and David McCraw were on brief, for appellee Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.; Peter J. Caruso, with whom Peter J. Caruso II was on brief, for appellee MediaNews Group, Inc.; Robert M. Buchanan Jr., with whom Charles L. Glerum and Joseph M. Downes III were on brief, for appellee Charles Glerum, Examiner (Docket Nos. 05-1658 and 05-1666) (Aug. 31, 2005).
Civil rights
Wrongful arrest - Qualified immunity
Where a plaintiff, who was not the subject of an arrest warrant, filed a civil rights suit after being detained in a sweep of others who were subject to such warrants, a judgment for a defendant police captain should be affirmed on the basis of qualified immunity.
1st Circuit's analysis
"This appeal stems from a mass arrest sting designed to capture a large number of persons with outstanding arrest warrants. Plaintiff-appellant Niquicia Wilson, who had no criminal record and was never subject to an arrest warrant, was mistakenly swept up in the arrest. As a result of this experience, she sued various arresting officers and the City of Boston under 42 U.S.C. Sect. 1983 and state law. The district court granted summary judgment to the City, but the rest of the case went to trial. Wilson prevailed at trial against Captain Robert Dunford, who planned and commanded the operation and was the arresting officer. However, the court granted judgment notwithstanding the verdict for Dunford on the basis of qualified immunity. That ruling is the principal subject of this appeal.
"We hold that the jury was entitled to conclude that Wilson's arrest was an unreasonable seizure prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. Nevertheless, we find that Dunford was entitled to qualified immunity because an objectively reasonable officer in his position could have believed that his conduct would not violate the Fourth Amendment. We also agree with the district court's resolution of other issues presented on appeal. Consequently, we affirm. ...
"In short, the ultimate question for determining whether an arrest violates the Fourth Amendment is, in this context as in any other, whether there was probable cause to believe that the arrestee had committed or was committing a crime. Under this analysis, Wilson's arrest violated the Fourth Amendment. ...
"If it was clearly established that the Fourth Amendment proscribes an arrest based on a warrant that was once valid but has since been cleared, then a fortiori it was clearly established that the amendment proscribes an arrest based on a warrant that never existed in the first place. Taken together, ... two principles cited ... - that an arrest based on a request by another officer is lawful only if the first officer had probable cause, and that an arrest based on a facially valid, but actually recalled, warrant violates the Fourth Amendment - gave unmistakable warning to Massachusetts police that the Fourth Amendment prohibits arresting someone solely on the basis of a nonexistent warrant. ...
"... To be sure, the objective reasonableness of Wilson's detention deteriorated as events unfolded. At the beginning of the encounter, when she was simply one of a hundred people in a convention hall that was supposedly carefully screened to contain only police officers and persons with outstanding arrest warrants, the odds were extremely high that there was a warrant for Wilson's arrest. That fact made it objectively reasonable for an officer in Dunford's position to believe that arresting Wilson would not violate the Fourth Amendment.
"Later, when the police became aware that the carefully prepared processing table contained no folder or photograph for her, the reasonableness of her continued detention diminished. Nevertheless, the police could have hypothesized that her folder had been misplaced, and it was not objectively unreasonable to delay releasing her from custody pending final verification of her status. ...
"There remains the approximately thirty minutes during which the police completed routine paperwork and awaited a cuff cutter after they had reached the inescapable conclusion that there had never been a warrant for Wilson's arrest. Although the issue is close, we conclude that Dunford continued to enjoy qualified immunity during this final thirty minutes of detention. ... After confirming Wilson's identity and her lack of a warrant, Dunford ordered the officers to release her; subsequent delay arose from routine paperwork and time waiting for a 'cuff cutter' to arrive. Qualified immunity protects 'all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law. ' ... The delay in effecting Wilson's release, while undoubtedly exasperating to her, was due to simple administrative inefficiency, not plain incompetence or knowing violation of the law. Consequently, we affirm the district court's judgment in favor of Dunford. ...
"We now address the City's liability. The district court granted summary judgment for the City because there was insufficient evidence that Operation Goodwin was a City policy. ...
"Not every police operation is a municipal policy; Wilson has the burden of establishing that this particular operation was City policy. She argues that Operation Goodwin was City policy because it was (1) a large operation involving arrest warrants from all over Boston, (2) commanded by a high-ranking officer, and (3) videotaped for national distribution. Those facts, however, do not make it an official City policy. Wilson offers no evidence that Dunford - then a captain assigned to a station in Dorchester, subject to the hierarchical supervision of a Deputy Superintendent, Superintendent, and Police Commissioner - had the authority to set municipal policy for the City of Boston. We therefore affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment for the City. "
Wilson v. City of Boston, et al. (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-279-05) (32 pages) (Lipez, J.) (1st Circuit) Appealed from a decision by O'Toole, J., in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Andrew M. Fischer for the plaintiff-appellant; Amy E. Ambarik, with whom Stephen G. Cox and Merita A. Hopkins were on brief, for the defendants-appellees (Docket No. 04-1310) (Aug. 31, 2005).
Undercover witness - 'Bivens' action
Where a civil suit was brought on behalf of an undercover cooperating witness who was murdered while assisting the FBI in a criminal investigation into drug trafficking in Puerto Rico, a claim pursuant to Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), should have been dismissed based on the defendant law enforcement officers' qualified immunity.
Further, the United States should have been substituted as party defendant as to claims brought under Puerto Rico law.
Immunity analysis
"Outside contexts in which the action of government officials (or their joint tortfeasors) injure citizens, this court has been careful to limit substantive due process to the parameters articulated by the Supreme Court in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 197 (1989). There, the Supreme Court stated that '[a]s a general matter ... a State's failure to protect an individual against private violence simply does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause. ' ...
"The DeShaney Court also recognized a limited exception to this rule which applies to circumstances in which the government has a 'special relationship' with the individual because government action has deprived that individual of the liberty needed to protect himself. ...
"Plaintiffs in this case, however, have not identified a custodial relationship between [Antonio] Vélez [García] and the agents that constitutes a 'special relationship' creating an affirmative constitutional duty to protect. Vélez was not in custody or involuntarily committed while he was acting as an informant for the federal agents, but rather was free to decline to cooperate further with the agents at any point.
"In addition to the special 'custodial' relationships, the DeShaney Court suggested, but never expressly recognized, the possibility that liability might arise where the state creates or substantially contributes to the creation of a danger. ...
"We hold that plaintiffs have not alleged facts to support a claim based on the state created danger theory. Plaintiffs' theory may be that the government owes a duty to all cooperating witnesses to protect them from harm. There are risks inherent in being a cooperating witness, but the state does not create those dangers, others do, and the witness voluntarily assumes those risks. ...
"We leave open the question whether, nonetheless, the state may violate substantive due process as to cooperating witnesses if it takes certain actions, such as sending a cooperating witness to what the state knows would be his certain death. Such action may shock the conscience by demonstrating 'deliberate indifference. ' ... This case does not come close. There is no allegation the government knew Vélez would be murdered. At most, the allegation is that Vélez said that he was tired, not that he said he was under imminent risk. The attempt to show a substantive due process violation based on a claim that some yet unknown regulation required the state to promptly remove 'tired' cooperating witnesses fails. "
Vélez-Díaz, et al. v. Vega-Irizarry, et al. (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-281-05) (22 pages) (Torruella, J.) (1st Circuit) Appealed from the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico (Docket No. 04-1773) (Sept. 2, 2005).
Habeas corpus
First-degree felony murder
Where an individual, who was convicted of first-degree felony murder and other crimes, filed a habeas corpus petition in the U.S. District Court for the District Court of Massachusetts, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel during pretrial proceedings, a federal judge acted permissibly in rejecting the petition, as evidence indicated that the state court decision upholding the petitioner's conviction was neither contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law.
Affirmed.
Smiley v. Maloney (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-282-05) (10 pages) (Torruella, J.) (1st Circuit) Appealed from a judgment issued by O'Toole, J., in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. John M. Thompson for the petitioner-appellant; Maura D. McLaughlin, with whom Thomas F. Reilly was on brief, for the respondent-appellee (Docket No. 04-1488) (Sept. 2, 2005).
Immigration
Asylum - Cambodian native
Where the Board of Immigration Appeals denied asylum to a plaintiff Cambodian native, the Board acted permissibly based on findings that the plaintiff was not credible and that he had failed to establish past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution.
Affirmed.
Long v. Gonzales (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-284-05) (8 pages) (Lynch, J.) (1st Circuit) Heard on petition for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order (Docket No. 04-2174) (Sept. 6, 2005).
Habeas corpus - 'Real ID Act'
Where a native of Egypt has filed a petition seeking review of the Board of Immigration Appeals' denial of his motion to reconsider its decision refusing him asylum and ordering his removal, the petition must be denied on the ground that the petitioner has not shown any abuse of discretion on the part of the BIA.
We go on to affirm a U.S. District Court judge's dismissal, for lack of personal jurisdiction, of the petitioner's habeas corpus petition.
A new petition for review established by operation of the "Real ID Act" must be denied based on the petitioner's failure to establish a due process violation.
Ishak v. Gonzales (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-283-05) (23 pages) (Campbell, Sr. Cir. J.) (1st Circuit) Appealed from decisions by Young, J., and Collings, U.S.M.J., in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Anthony Drago Jr. for the petitioner-appellant; Ernesto H. Molina Jr., with Peter D. Keisler and David V. Bernal on brief, for the respondent-appellee (Docket Nos. 03-2736 and 04-1138) (Sept. 6, 2005).
Removal proceedings - Motion to reopen
Where the plaintiff, a native of Grenada, has petitioned for judicial review of a Board of Immigration Appeals decision affirming a denial of his motion to reopen removal proceedings, we conclude that the present petition must be denied because the BIA did not abuse its discretion in deeming the petitioner's motion untimely.
Discussion
"We begin with bedrock: 'motions to reopen are disfavored in immigration practice because of the compelling public interests in finality and the expeditious processing of proceedings. ' ... Consequently, we review the BIA's denial of a motion to reopen based on timeliness grounds under a highly deferential abuse of discretion standard. ... In order to prevail under this standard, the movant must carry the heavy burden of establishing that the BIA made an error of law or acted in a manifestly arbitrary or capricious manner. ...
"The regulations applicable to immigration cases, which have the force of law, stipulate that motions to reopen removal proceedings must be filed within ninety days of the final administrative order of removal. ... The petitioner's motion was filed well outside this ninety-day window and the BIA denied the motion because it had not been timely filed. The petitioner counters that it was impossible for him to file a timely motion to reopen because his request for reopening stemmed from nuptials that did not occur until after the ninety-day window had closed. To this, he adds that he was forced to postpone the filing of his motion further because of (i) the bureaucratic delay in the approval of his I-130 immediate relative application and (ii) the statutory limitation applicable to persons who flout voluntary departure orders.
"We digress for a moment because the second half of that argument requires an explanation. Once the petitioner did not depart voluntarily by the imposed deadline - February 27, 1998 - he became ineligible for certain immigration benefits, including adjustment of status, for a period of five years. ... Since he waited for the passage of that five-year period before moving to reopen the removal proceedings, the petitioner's motion was four years and 275 days late. ...
"Moving to the substance of the petitioner's arguments, we disagree that the BIA abused its discretion in denying the motion to reopen. Although the time limits for filing motions to reopen may be relaxed upon a showing of exceptional circumstances, ... the mere fact that a petitioner makes out a prima facie case for relief does not ensure the favorable exercise of that discretion by the BIA. ...The BIA still possesses the right (indeed, the duty) to weigh the equities of the case.
"In this instance the equities are mixed. On the one hand, the petitioner's marriage is bona fide, his character is unblemished, and his removal apparently will result in hardship for his wife and children. On the other hand, the petitioner's case does not fall within the categorical exceptions to the temporal deadline prescribed by the applicable regulation. ... Moreover, the petitioner thrice flouted the immigration laws - by overstaying his original visa, by working without a 'green card,' and by disregarding his court-ordered voluntary departure deadline. His current eligibility for an adjustment of status is a direct result of those misdeeds.
"Within broad limits, reconciling such competing centrifugal and centripetal forces is for the BIA, not for the court of appeals. ... On this scumbled record, we cannot say that the BIA's resolution of this mix of mitigating and aggravating circumstances was in any way arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law.
"We add only that we fully understand the BIA's reluctance to reward the petitioner's intransigence by granting his motion to reopen. Taking a different tack would have served to encourage, rather than deter, disobedience of the federal immigration laws. We conclude, therefore, that the BIA acted within the realm of its discretion in denying the motion to reopen as untimely.
"We now turn to the petitioner's challenge to the BIA's refusal to use its sua sponte power as a vehicle for granting his motion to reopen. Federal regulations state that the BIA 'may at any time reopen or reconsider on its own motion any case in which it has rendered a decision. ' ... This provision is inapplicable here because the BIA had never rendered a decision in the petitioner's case (he did not appeal from the Immigration Judge's original order). Its first and only involvement was when it denied the petitioner's motion to reopen. The plain meaning of 8 C.F.R. Sect. 1003.2(a) is to the effect that the BIA cannot invoke its sua sponte authority in a matter if it had not rendered any decisions in the matter prior to the time when it rejected the petitioner's appeal from a denial of a motion to reopen. ...
"There is a possible loophole. Like the BIA, the IJ enjoys authority to reopen proceedings sua sponte ... and unlike the BIA, the IJ did issue a decision in the original removal proceedings. Theoretically, then, the petitioner might have contended that the BIA should have compelled the IJ to reopen based on the IJ's sua sponte authority. ...
"With the facts of this case as they are, however, any such effort would have been procedurally barred. By statute, a court may review a final order of removal only if 'the alien has exhausted all administrative remedies available to [him] as of right. ' ... Courts must take that exhaustion requirement very seriously. ... If an appeal to the BIA does not explicitly request that the BIA set aside the IJ's refusal to invoke her sua sponte authority under 8 C.F.R. Sect. 1003.23(b)(1), the petitioner has not preserved the issue for judicial review. ...
"This line of authority is dispositive here. The petitioner did not ask the BIA to compel the IJ to reopen the proceedings based on the latter's sua sponte authority to do so. We thus would lack jurisdiction to review any such claim even if we were to impute one to the petitioner.
"We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above, the petition for judicial review is denied. "
Roberts v. Gonzales (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-285-05) (9 pages) (Selya, J.) (1st Circuit) Heard on petition for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order (Docket No. 04-2261) (Sept. 6, 2005).
Asylum request - Armenian native
Where the Board of Immigration Appeals has denied the asylum request of a plaintiff Armenian native, we conclude that the Board acted permissibly based on findings that the plaintiff did not demonstrate past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution should he return to Armenia.
Affirmed.
Harutyunyan v. Gonzales (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-280-05) (15 pages) (Selya, J.) (1st Circuit) Heard on petition for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order (Docket No. 04-2207) (Sept. 2, 2005).
Motion to reopen proceedings
Where two individuals moved to reopen proceedings to apply for asylum, withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture, the Board of Immigration Appeals committed no abuse of discretion in denying that motion after finding that the individuals had not demonstrated a material change in circumstances establishing prima facie evidence of persecution on the basis of religious beliefs.
Accordingly, the present petition for review will be denied.
Discussion
"The BIA thoroughly reviewed the evidence offered to show persecution and carefully - and correctly - explained how this evidence failed to show a 'material change in circumstances which establishes prima facie evidence of persecution ... on account of a protected ground. ' Contrary to petitioners' suggestions, the BIA did not fail to discuss 'background evidence that post-dated the petitioners' hearing'; rather, it acknowledged this evidence but found it insufficient to support their claim that they would be persecuted on the basis of their religious beliefs should they return to Indonesia.
"The BIA reasonably found that the record contained essentially no direct evidence of persecution of moderate Muslims, and that any indirect evidence, based on persecution of Christians, was too attenuated to be the basis of relief. In petitioners' own summary of the evidence in their brief to this court, virtually all of the even arguably state-sanctioned violence is targeted at Christians. Although this violence may well be 'a matter of growing concern to ... Muslim moderates,' the BIA was hardly compelled to find that this concern stemmed from a risk of actual persecution of moderate Muslims themselves. The 'growing concern' of moderate Muslims could be attributable to humanitarian values, the desire to avoid becoming the accidental victim of an attack on Christians, or any number of other causes. At least in the absence of more evidence on this point, it is simply not evident how any escalation of violence against Christians could be material to a claim of persecution raised by moderate Muslims. To the extent that Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise in Indonesia, it is likewise not obvious how, if at all, moderate Muslims are likely to be persecuted. At best, petitioners have shown religious intolerance against non-Muslims - intolerance that, as the BIA noted, the Indonesian government is taking steps to counteract.
"Lastly, the BIA correctly noted that petitioners' showing of generalized disorder and even terrorist violence in Indonesia is insufficient to make them eligible for relief. As this court has stated, '[g]enerally, evidence of widespread violence and human rights violations affecting all citizens is insufficient to establish persecution. ' ... It is clear that the BIA's well-reasoned decision was anything but arbitrary and capricious. ...
"Because the BIA's denial of petitioners' motion to reopen was not an abuse of discretion, the petition for review is denied. "
Maryam, et al. v. Gonzales (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-278-05) (8 pages) (Lynch, J.) (1st Circuit) Heard on petition for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order (Docket No. 05-1264) (Aug. 31, 2005).
Asylum
Where the petitioner, a native of China, argues that the Board of Immigration Appeals erred in denying his asylum request, we hold that his claim must fail because (1) the Board acted permissibly in finding the petitioner's allegations of past persecution not to be credible and (2) the Board acted within its authority in not considering the petitioner's "ineffective assistance of counsel" claim where the petitioner did not meet any of the Board's threshold procedural requirements for the presentation of such a claim.
Having said this, and finding that the petitioner has waived related claims regarding the Board's rejection of his requests for withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture, we today deny his petition for review.
Tai v. Gonzales (Lawyers Weekly No. 01-277-05) (13 pages) (Lynch, J.) (1st Circuit) Heard on petition for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order (Docket No. 04-2567) (Aug. 31, 2005).

 UNITED STATES (93%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


September 10, 2005 Saturday



 Indonesias v.p. asking militants to stop attacks

 
   JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Vice President Jusuf Kalla asked Muslim militants to stop closing Christian churches after Christians complained that militants had shut 23 churches in recent weeks on the island of Java.
"It is the responsibility of all of us to stop such kind of violence," he told a gathering of Muslim leaders, urging them to promote tolerance.

 INDONESIA (92%)







 The Durham Herald Co. 


September 10, 2005 Saturday  




 Briefs

 
Diocese makes parishes nonprofit
TUCSON, Ariz. -- The Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson, which filed for bankruptcy last year due to potentially costly lawsuits over priestly molestation, will make its 74 parishes separate nonprofit corporations.
The move would protect them from being sold off to pay diocesan debt, the Arizona Daily Star reported. 
Bishop Gerald Kicanas said he doesn't expect the action to affect parishioners.
Separate parish corporations have previously been created by dioceses in Baker, Ore.; Davenport, Iowa; Lincoln, Neb.; Milwaukee; New York; Providence, R.I., and Stockton, Calif.
The Tucson Diocese last year filed for bankruptcy protection in the face of potentially expensive lawsuits alleging clergy sexual abuse of minors.
Incorporation of parishes was part of a bankruptcy plan recently approved by a federal bankruptcy judge.
In the two other U.S. dioceses that have filed for bankruptcy -- Spokane, Wash., and Portland, Ore. -- lawyers for creditors have raised the parish ownership issue.
A federal bankruptcy judge in Spokane ruled last month that all the parish churches, parochial schools and other properties in the diocese could be liquidated to pay victims. The judge in Portland has yet to rule.
Kenya bishop loses adviser role
BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- The Lutheran World Federation council terminated Kenya's Bishop Walter Obare Omwanza as an official adviser because he consecrated Arne Olsson as a missionary bishop in Sweden on Feb. 5 without agreement from that nation's church.
Ecumenical News International, sponsored by several international church organizations including the Lutheran federation, said Olsson opposes Church of Sweden policies that allow female and gay clergy, and Obare protests Sweden's refusal to ordain clergy who dissent on the women's issue.
The federation said Obare's "inappropriate action of interfering in the life of a member church" disrupted Lutheran unity.
Obare's Lutheran Church in Kenya retains full membership in the federation.
Bishop Zephania Kameeta of Namibia, federation vice president for Africa, said African Lutheran leaders had met Obare last year to hear his concerns and advised him against consecrating a bishop in Sweden.
Church to tackle AIDS epidemic
MOSCOW -- The Russian Orthodox Church launched a new program Tuesday to help stem Russia's snowballing HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Government and U.N. experts officials praised the initiative while others criticized the church, saying action was long overdue.
The church prevention program calls for teaching to discourage sex with multiple partners and gay sex, practices the church regards as sinful and that may lead to infection.
In addition, priests and other church workers are instructed to treat people infected with HIV/AIDS "as any other person suffering from some serious illness" and are encouraged to promote tolerance.
Also, church hot lines will help those with the diseases.
The Rev. Vladimir Shmal said the program was not limited to Orthodox Christians.
Since the Soviet collapse, HIV/AIDS has been spreading at an alarming pace in Russia due to weak anti-drug and prevention programs. Experts say those infected exceed 1 million, three times the official total.
Indonesian VP asks for tolerance 
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Vice President Jusuf Kalla asked Muslim militants to stop closing Christian churches after Christians complained that militants had shut 23 churches in recent weeks on the island of Java.
"It is the responsibility of all of us to stop such kind of violence," he told a gathering of Muslim leaders, urging them to promote tolerance. Moderate Muslim leaders like former President Abdurrahman Wahid have urged the government to take stern action against militants involved in the incidents.
However, Security Minister Widodo Adisucipto denied that churches had been closed, saying only Christian congregations worshipping in private homes or halls without permits were affected.
Religious Minister Muhammad Maftuh Basyuni called on all faiths to honor a 1969 government decree requiring religious groups to get permission from local governments and residents before establishing places of worship.
Vietnam releases Mennonite leader
HANOI, Vietnam -- A leader in a banned Mennonite church was among 10,400 inmates released from prison last week under a presidential amnesty marking the 60th National Day, an official said Monday.
Nguyen Hong Quang, general secretary of the Mennonite Church in Vietnam, which is banned by the communist government, returned to his home in Ho Chi Minh City on Aug. 30, said a religious affairs official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Quang was arrested last year with five other church members after urging release of four fellow church members who had been arrested.
He was sentenced to three years for "obstructing people from doing their official duty."
Meanwhile, police in communist China detained a priest and his assistant last week for working with Catholic churches that lack government approval, a monitoring group reported Monday.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation of Stamford, Conn., said the Rev. Pang Yongxing and aide Ma Yongjiang were arrested in Hebei province south of Beijing, an underground church stronghold. No details were available.
Tribune's Mormon count challenged
SALT LAKE CITY -- A leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disputed The Salt Lake Tribune's calculation on how many Utah residents are Mormon.
Merrill Bateman of the First Quorum of the Seventy said on radio station KUER that the newspaper's calculations were drawn from county-by-county membership data the church provides state government, which did not include one in 10 Mormons who changed residences.
The Tribune figured the Mormon share of Utah's population declined from 70.4 percent in 1989 to 62.4 percent in 2004, and if the trend continued Mormons would be a minority group by 2030. Bateman said church tabulations showed 70.5 percent of Utahns were Mormons in 2003.
Figures on baptized members include people who may be inactive or no longer consider themselves Mormon.
Bateman agreed with the Tribune's report on slowing international growth, which he tied mainly to fewer U.S. Mormons of young adult age, when many volunteer as missionaries.
-- From staff reports 

 UNITED STATES (94%); KENYA (93%); SWEDEN (92%);  AFRICA (79%); NAMIBIA (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (67%)







 The Topeka Capital-Journal 
Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas)

September 10, 2005 Saturday



 
Compiled by Amy Bauer from wire reports
Bush honors heroism of Sept. 11 rescuers
President Bush honored 442 firefighters, police officers, and rescuers who died Sept. 11, awarding posthumous Medals of Valor to their families at a White House ceremony Friday.
''A proud America will always stand in the shadow of their service and sacrifice,'' Bush told a crowd of about 1,200 friends and family, who wore cards with the names of their lost loved ones. 
The 9/11 Heroes Medal of Valor were created by Congress. For the Sept. 11 families, the ceremony was an emotional and inspiring reminder of their loved ones' final moments helping others.
Arlene Howard, mother of Port Authority police officer George Howard, said she was ''very honored, because my son saved a lot of lives, and he wasn't even working that day. He was off, and he rushed in from home to help.''
NATION
COURT: SUSPECT CAN BE HELD WITHOUT CHARGE: In a victory for the Bush administration, a federal appeals court in Virginia ruled Friday that the government can continue to hold indefinitely an American accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive ''dirty bomb.''
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously to reverse a judge's order that the government either charge or free Jose Padilla, who has been in custody for more than three years.
CONGRESS TO INVESTIGATE 9/11 LOANS: Congress will investigate the ''flagrant abuse'' of a federal loan program designed to help businesses recover from the Sept. 11 attacks and make sure such problems don't occur with Hurricane Katrina relief, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, announced Friday.
According to an AP analysis, of 19,000 loans, fewer than 11 percent went to companies in New York City and Washington. The review showed that 86 Kansas companies received $27 million in loans under the Sept. 11 recovery programs from late November 2001 to mid-January 2003.
JUDGE ORDERS KILLEN BACK TO PRISON: A Mississippi judge sent Edgar Ray Killen back to prison Friday after finding that the former Ku Klux Klan leader, convicted for the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers, was in better health than the court had been told.
Four law enforcement officers and a convenience store owner testified they had seen Killen, 80, driving during the past two weeks.
Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon decided to revoke the $600,000 bond that had allowed Killen to remain free while appealing his manslaughter convictions in the 1964 slayings of three voter registration workers.
PANEL QUESTIONS SAVINGS IN BASE-CLOSING PLAN: A federal commission approved all but 14 percent of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recommendations for closing or consolidating U.S. military bases --- but it also took issue with the Pentagon in a final report sent to President Bush.
The nine-member panel said the Defense Department overestimated savings by $30 billion and that some of the proposals for streamlining the Army, Navy and Air Force might have made the services less efficient.
OPHELIA STILL CHURNING: Ophelia regained hurricane strength Friday on a course that could take it into the U.S. coast, and forecasters urged residents of northern Florida and the Carolinas to keep close watch on its path over the next few days.
Forecasters said Ophelia has been difficult to predict. It could go out to sea, but it may also head anywhere from north Florida to North Carolina, said Robbie Berg, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center.
Two other tropical storms, Nate and Maria, posed no threat to land as they weakened moving into cooler Atlantic waters.
COUPLE PLEADS GUILTY IN WENDY'S FINGER CASE: A Nevada couple pleaded guilty Friday to all charges related to planting a human finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili at a San Jose, Calif., restaurant in a scheme to extort money from the fast-food chain.
Anna Ayala, 39, and Jaime Placencia, 43, pleaded guilty to conspiring to file a false claim and attempted grand theft in a scheme that the Dublin, Ohio-based Wendy's International Inc. claimed cost it $2.5 million in lost sales because of bad publicity.
Ayala faces up to nearly 10 years in state prison when sentenced Nov. 2. Her husband faces up to 13 years behind bars.
WORLD
IRAQI PRESIDENT ALLUDES TO U.S. WITHDRAWAL: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Friday that if Iraqis can control the country's main cities and roads, there would be no need for American forces to remain for more than two more years.
Talabani stressed, however, that Iraq still needs U.S. forces to fight against terrorism. He warned that a quick withdrawal ''could lead to the victory of the terrorists in Iraq and create grave threats to the region, the United States and the civilized world.''
MILITARY TUBE-FEEDING SOME HUNGER STRIKERS: The U.S. military is tube-feeding more than a dozen of the 89 terror suspects on hunger strike at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, a spokesman said Friday.
Some haven't eaten for a month, and 15 have been hospitalized and 13 of those were being fed through tubes, Guantanamo detention mission spokesman Sgt. Justin Behrens said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press.
FRENCH PRESIDENT LEAVES HOSPITAL: President Jacques Chirac emerged from the hospital Friday, declaring himself in fine shape but walking with a slight hesitation and saying nothing about the illness that kept him there a week. The 72-year-old leader said doctors advised him to limit his activities for another week, and he canceled plans to attend next week's U.N. summit in New York.
REPORTS DETAIL TERROR TIES: Muslim militants in the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines and their Indonesian allies have been trying to solicit money from unidentified Middle Eastern financiers to buy weapons and fund new terror attacks, according to government reports.

 UNITED STATES (96%)






   


September 9, 2005 Friday



 Place blame later

 
There have been several letters in the Tribune regarding this devastating hurricane, many of them critical of President Bush [as if he went out and dragged it into the Gulf Coast].
Mostly, I believe these are people who hate and distrust this president. That's fine. However, there will be a lot of time and effort later, after we help these people, to put the blame on someone. Congress will see to that.
I wonder how many of the complainants have taken a look at the possibility of what could happen here if we had a major earthquake? They should all take a look at what preparedness they need to take. Do they have water, food, a barbecue and coals to cook meals, first aid kits? 
There are books on what we need for this type of disaster; this should be a wake-up call for all Californians. We have small earthquakes every day in some part of this state; one could be an 8-pointer and kill many people.
Right now, instead of trying to blame someone, get out your wallets and give money to the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, many of the radio stations that are collecting money, or whomever you prefer. But just do it and stop whining. Pray for all of the people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Shirley Morse
Diamond Bar
Racism and relief
Last Friday morning the president's public relations team was in full force. The president and first lady visited carefully managed sites.
Tens of thousands of primarily African American citizens remained trapped in New Orleans, but the president visited Biloxi and the first lady landed in Lafayette, communities that are 70 percent white and comparatively more affluent.
Their efforts were extolled. At the same time, people at the Superdome were still hungry, without water and some were victims of violence by others there.
The population in New Orleans is 72 percent African American and very poor. The president did stop at a Salvation Army station in the Northern, dry area of New Orleans. They had started receiving supplies several days prior.
This country should be profoundly ashamed that the federal government acted so slowly to help the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. We provided the first help to the Tsunami victims within 48 hours. The problem for New Orleans is that they weren't 9,000 miles away, and they were areas dominated by poor Black Americans in an area that voted for the wrong party in the last election.
The Pacific nations were areas like Muslim Indonesia and at that time the administration was seeking to improve relations with non-terrorist Islamic countries.
When will the Republican administration and Congress stop attempting to cover their failed foreign and domestic accomplishments with transparent public-relations events? I will do all I can to aid the recovery efforts, but the racist stain on the American flag will not be washed away with as the water recedes from New Orleans.
Robert L. Charles
Glendora
Prefers short retort
In light of the politically motivated finger pointing coming from the Senate and House of Representatives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it has dawned on me that the most honest sentiments I've heard expressed over the past year from those twin dens of hypocrisy are when Vice President Cheney said to Sen. Patrick Leahy "Go [expletive deleted] yourself!'.
Ryal Haakenson
Covina
Change in Covina
Covina's city manager has visions of changing the downtown into an urban village "where people can live, work, shop, and play without needing their cars.'
The "Transit Village Development Planning Act of 1994' indicates that such development is best anchored by a mixed-use transit village that extends not more than a quarter mile from the exterior boundaries of the transit station site.
There are numerous underutilized properties both adjacent to and close by [especially to the east] of the Metrolink Station that could be revitalized to accommodate mixed-use development.
However, instead of implementing that approach, Covina wants to stuff up to 800 additional high-density housing units into the downtown area,
One major problem associated with the revitalization of the downtown is parking. The consultant hired by Covina estimated that the minimum parking needed for commercial usage alone would be 1,250 spaces. This does not reflect the requirements associated with the 800 residential units, Park-N- Ride, overflow parking from the Metrolink, and hospital.
This project, which will cost taxpayers tens of millions, will affect the entire city. However, a return-on-investment analysis has never been prepared to determine whether or not it is economically feasible. That failure indicates the city is not using sound business practices, common sense or proper planning
Covina needs a city manager that understands professional management practices and has integrity. If the City Council won't make the necessary change, the residents should get a new council that will.
Stephen Millard
Covina
Fairly reported
Thank you for the outstanding reporting of the Wells Fargo bank protest rally opposing their acceptance of the Matricula ID card.
The Tribune is one of the very few newspapers that does fair and accurate reporting. Thank you.
Marci Dy
San Bernardino
Out of focus
It is amazing how the focus in Rosemead is on the recall efforts, while the Boys & Girls Club of Rosemead is closing.
The main group in the recall has made mention of the harm the Wal-Mart will do to the youth in the area by the increase in traffic. Yet an organization like the Boys & Girls Club of Rosemead has been forced to close.
I find that they are putting the agenda of the unions that back them in front of the needs of the city. They have focused too much on this recall and fighting the big, bad Wal-Mart, rather than what they should be concerned with, the youth in the city. Keep up the good work Rosemead Councilmen John Tran and John Nunez. Good job.
Roger Pritchard
San Dimas
Improve La Puente
In downtown La Puente, there are very old buildings. Yes, I do understand the landmark aspect, but abandoned buildings or unattractive establishments such as auto-repair, auto re-upholstery, furniture and antique shops [most of the time are closed], plus family billiards [with alcohol sales], and income tax offices doesn't seem to be good landmark appreciation.
I always visualized downtown La Puente with a landmark that is an attracting location that people would want to come to and meet for dining, shopping, nice hotels, etc.
One good example would be like Monrovia, Covina, or better yet, downtown San Diego. I understand that area at one time it used to be nothing but liquor stores, bars etc.
I went to San Deigo for a convention in June, and it just amazed me to see all the good restaurants, shops and how people were looking forward to the walk on Gaslamp Street.
Could you imagine all the tourism we could have if we were to have a nice downtown La Puente? We are just in the middle of an Industry Hills, a city that has visitors all the time.
After having to come and visit their mills, companies etc., visitors have to look for places out of our City of La Puente for nice dining, eating, entertaining, and shopping places.
La Puente could be a place that people from other cities would want to come and visit instead of having to choose other cities.
Rosie Rodriguez
La Puente <!-- -->

 UNITED STATES (94%);  






   


September 7, 2005 Wednesday



 
Indonesian jetliner wreckage probed
Unidentified to be buried in mass grave
@BY1:By Irwan Firdaus @BY2:Associated Press @MEDAN, Indonesia Investigators tried to determine Tuesday why an Indonesian jetliner crashed into a neighborhood seconds after takeoff, killing at least 149 people. Weeping families looked for loved ones at a morgue, and authorities readied a mass grave for the unidentified.
Remains not identified by early today will be buried next to a mass grave for victims of a 1997 Garuda Indonesia plane crash that killed more than 200, said Dr. Suprato, the assistant director of the Adam Malik Hospital in Medan, who was helping with recovery efforts. 
Those killed when the Mandala Airlines Boeing 737-200 crashed Monday in Indonesia's third-largest city included 47 people on the ground. Fifteen people aboard the flight survived, including an 18-month-old boy who was sitting on his mother's lap and a 5-year-old boy who was separated from his father after the crash.
The 5-year-old, whose parents feared he was dead, was found after being taken to a different hospital than his father.
Transport Minister Hatta Rajasa said it would be several weeks before the cause of Monday's crash was known, but investigators were looking at what happened during takeoff. Survivors said the plane shook violently right after takeoff and veered left before crashing.
Both flight data recorders have been found, officials said, and will be sent abroad for analysis.
Indonesia officials ruled out terrorism a constant fear in the world's most populous Muslim nation, which is home to the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group.
Soon after dawn Tuesday, investigators arrived at the massive crash site yards from the runway. The area was taped off, but police were unable to keep people from the scene. Hundreds milled about, covering their noses with handkerchiefs as they pointed at the plane's tail, a piece of the wing and twisted knots of blackened metal.
Indonesian Air Force Lt. Andri, who goes by a single name, said searchers recovered body parts from the debris.
Setio Raharjo, head of the National Transportation Safety Board and the lead investigator, said the curious onlookers could be hampering efforts to get to the bottom of the crash.
"No cockpit or flight instruments have been discovered," he told El-Shinta radio, calling on local authorities and residents to return anything taken from the scene.
late Tuesday, 64 bodies had yet to be claimed, the hospital said.

 INDONESIA (98%); 







   


September 2, 2005 Friday 
  




 'Historic' Meeting for Israel and Pakistan 

 
The foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan met publicly for the first time on Thursday, a diplomatic breakthrough brokered by Turkey that appeared to be the first payoff for the Israeli pullout from the occupied Gaza Strip.
  A jubilant Silvan Shalom, the Israeli foreign minister, called the meeting at an Istanbul hotel ''historic'' and ''a huge breakthrough.''
Mr. Shalom said: ''This is the time for all Muslim and Arab countries to reconsider their relations with Israel. We think it will be a very positive signal to Israeli and Palestinian public opinion that there are some fruits from this withdrawal from Gaza.'' 
  The Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, said that Pakistan had decided ''to engage'' with Israel and called the meeting ''a gesture to underscore the importance we in Pakistan attach to Israel ending its occupation of Gaza.''
  The gesture from Pakistan has special symbolic importance, given that Pakistan was founded as a Muslim state at the end of British rule over India, which already has full diplomatic relations with Israel.
  The move is bound to be welcomed in Washington, where Pakistan represents a crucial but troublesome ally in the campaigns against Islamic terrorism and nuclear proliferation. The Bush administration, which is Israel's closest friend and which strongly supported the Gaza pullout as an important step in the efforts to achieve peace, is likely to have encouraged Pakistan to step forward, Israeli officials said. 
  The Gaza pullout received enormous coverage on Arabic news and cable channels like Al Jazeera, which also lavishly covered the meeting on Thursday, said Mark Regev, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. ''It made a strong impression in the Arab world,'' that Israel was pulling out of territory it conquered in 1967 and leaving it to the Palestinians, he said.
  But Mr. Kasuri and other Pakistani officials made it clear that full diplomatic relations with Israel would have to wait for a peace settlement in the Middle East and an independent Palestinian state.
  ''The meeting today does not mean recognition,'' Mr. Kasuri said. ''That stage will come following progress toward the solution of the Palestinian problem.''
  Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the spokesman for Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was more explicit in an interview in English with Israel radio. General Musharraf ''said yes, we can have the diplomatic relations after the sovereign state of Palestine comes into being and after Palestine has consultations with the other Muslim countries,'' General Sultan said. 
  Visiting Quetta, General Musharraf said he had first sought the advise of Saudi Arabia and of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, Pakistan's state-run television reported. He confirmed that he would soon send a delegation to visit Jerusalem and Gaza, and that he had accepted an invitation to speak this month to an interfaith conference organized by the American Jewish Congress in New York, where he would emphasize the need for a just settlement of the Palestinian question, General Sultan said.
  ''We will not talk about recognition of Israel until a Palestinian state is established and then we will think about it,'' General Musharraf said in Quetta. ''We will take people along. This is indirect contact.'' But a joint news conference and a joint photo opportunity would appear direct enough to satisfy the Israelis. 
  The move brought immediate criticism from Pakistan's main Islamic opposition party, Jamaat-e-Islami, whose secretary general, Syed Munawar Hasan, called the Gaza pullout a farce and said that Friday would be a day of protest and black flags in the streets.
  Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of Islamist clerics, denounced the meeting. ''We have a direct conflict with Israel,'' he told GEO, a private television channel.
  But it was an important day for Israel, which has full relations with only four Muslim countries: Egypt, Jordan, Mauritania and Turkey, which leaked the news of the meeting.
  Mr. Shalom praised General Musharraf for initiating the process through the Turks, who contacted Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. Mr. Shalom and Mr. Kasuri also had dinner together on Wednesday ''with a very good atmosphere,'' Mr. Shalom told Israel radio, and he praised Pakistan for being willing to meet openly, ''with joint photos and a joint press conference.'' 
  ''Pakistan, as the second-largest Muslim country, after Indonesia, has great weight,'' Mr. Shalom said. ''They themselves took a very brave step. We know they were under harsh attack, from the clergy and from others.''
  Mr. Shalom said he hoped the relationship with Pakistan would blossom and help other Muslim and Arab nations to open ties to Israel. ''I hope Pakistan won't be the last stop,'' he said. ''One has to remember that until 2000 there were representations here in Israel from Morocco, Tunisia, Qatar and Oman. There is no reason that they, and other countries, will not take positive steps.''
  Mr. Regev, of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said of Thursday's meeting, ''Though it was a significant Israeli-Pakistani event, it's a larger event, the sort of phenomenon we'll see increasing, of people in the Muslim world who want to engage with Israel and see that's the way toward peace.'' 
  The Musharraf speech to the interfaith group in New York has been criticized because he has not been clearer in his denunciation of anti-Semitism, said Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in New York. ''But there is a lot more interest from Arab and Muslim countries in private and public meetings'' with Israeli officials in the United Nations General Assembly session in New York, he said in a telephone interview. ''Sharon is in great demand.''

CORRECTION-DATE: September 5, 2005

 CORRECTION:
An article on Friday about a meeting between the foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan described incompletely the state of diplomatic relations between Israel and predominantly Muslim states. It has full diplomatic relations with 10 of the states -- including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan -- not just Jordan, Egypt, Mauritania and Turkey.

 ISRAEL (99%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (99%); PAKISTAN (94%); TURKEY (93%); MIDDLE EAST (92%);  SAUDI ARABIA (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%)




7


   


September 1, 2005 Thursday  




NAME: Nurcholish Madjid

 Nurcholish Madjid, 66; Advocate of Moderate Islam 

 
Nurcholish Madjid, a prominent Muslim scholar in Indonesia who was instrumental in persuading President Suharto to step down, died here on Monday. He was 66. The cause was liver and kidney failure, according to Pondok Hospital in Jakarta. 
  Mr. Madjid, known as the conscience of his nation, preached a moderate form of Islam that has come under increasing pressure in the last few years. Soft-spoken but steadfast in his belief that Indonesia must remain a secular state, Mr. Madjid flirted with running for the presidency last year.
 In 1998, when Jakarta was rocked by anti-Suharto demonstrations, Mr. Madjid visited the general at the presidential palace and told him it was time to leave. The next day, President Suharto announced his resignation. 
  Mr. Madjid grew up on the main Indonesian island of Java. He attended a rural Islamic boarding school and an Islamic university in Jakarta where he was a prominent student leader. He emerged as a strong anti-Communist who tried to work within President Suharto's authoritarian system to achieve democratic change.
  In 1968, one of his early writings, ''Modernization Is Rationalization, Not Westernization,'' stated his theme that Islam could thrive in a modern democratic society. In 1984, he received a doctorate from the University of Chicago; his dissertation was on reason and revelation in Islam. 
  Even within the broadly tolerant strain of Islam in Indonesia, Mr. Madjid was frequently attacked at home for what was perceived as his liberal interpretation of Islam. He traveled often to Europe and the Middle East to speak on the compatibility of democracy and Islam. He was an Eisenhower Fellow in the United States in 1990.
  After the collapse of President Suharto's government, Mr. Madjid was often asked to run for president but demurred, preferring to play a behind-the-scenes role. Last year, he staged a brief candidacy but dropped out after a poor showing in opinion polls. 
  He is survived by his wife, Omi Komaria; a daughter, Nadya Madjid; and a son, Ahmad Mikail Madjid. 
  Mr. Madjid wrote frequently on Islam and on the common threads of the major religions. 
  One of his most popular books was ''Doors to God,'' and he often said the emphasis in the first word of the title was on the plural.


   MIDDLE EAST (79%); EUROPE (79%)







 


August 31, 2005 Wednesday  




 WORLD DIGEST

 
INDONESIA
Turnout may be high for polio vaccinations
Parents with children lined up Tuesday across Indonesia in a polio vaccination drive targeting 24 million youngsters. But health workers said some could be missed amid unfounded fears that the vaccine is unsafe or violates Islamic law. 
Polio has stricken 225 children since the virus reappeared in mostly Muslim Indonesia in March for the first time in 10 years. Tuesday's drive was the latest in a six-month campaign to stamp it out.
Scattered reports from Jakarta showed that turnout was high but UNICEF's David Hipgrave said the actual level of participation nationwide won't be known for days.
FRANCE
Fatal fires prompt evictions of squatters
French President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday promised "strong initiatives" to help families in inadequate housing. Officials ordered all havens for squatters shut down in Paris after a second deadly fire in a week at an apartment house for immigrants. 
The fire late Monday struck a dilapidated apartment building in the heart of historic Paris, killing seven African immigrants, firefighters said. Four children were among the dead, including a 6-year-old thrown by his pregnant mother from a fifth-floor window in an effort to save him.
It was the second deadly fire in a week at buildings housing immigrants in France's capital and the third since April -- bringing the death toll to 48 and focusing new criticism on immigrant housing.
PAKISTAN
Alleged kidnapping by police draws inquiry
The prime minister ordered an investigation Tuesday into a woman's claim that police kidnapped and raped her because she was trying to lobby lawmakers about alleged police corruption.
The 23-year-old mother of two came to national attention in April when she was briefly detained for mistakenly trespassing inside Parliament. She wandered through a security cordon seeking to contact lawmakers to help her husband, whom she alleges police framed to extort money.
The woman claims that after her detention, she was abducted by armed men in Lahore, blindfolded, handcuffed, and driven to an unknown location, The woman said she was held for 15 days and raped by a police inspector in retribution for her efforts to publicized her complaints.
UKRAINE
Beating of Jewish student is condemned
President Viktor Yushchenko condemned the beating of a Jewish student in the capital and ordered senior officials to take personal control of the case Tuesday.
The student remained in a coma after seven young men attacked him Sunday night near the Central Synagogue School in Kiev, where the student studied. Another student was also beaten, but did not suffer serious injuries, police said.
Jewish leaders said the attack was motivated by religious bias and called it a disturbing example of growing anti-Semitism in this ex-Soviet republic, home to 100,000 Jews. Authorities said they believed the attackers were members of a skinhead nationalist group.
BOSNIA
Victims of attack by Serbs are exhumed
The bodies of 19 Muslim victims of a Serb attack have been exhumed from a mass grave in southern Bosnia, forensics experts said Tuesday.
The grave contained the bodies of victims of an attack on the village of Ciser at the beginning of Bosnia's 1992-95 war. The forensic team began the exhumations Friday and finished on Sunday. Among the 19 bodies, the team found 12 women, said Sanja Mulac, head of the forensic team.
Mulac said documents were found on most of the bodies but the remains will still undergo DNA analysis for further identification. Documents found indicated nine members of a single family were among the victims, she said.
INDIA
India, Pakistan agree to release of civilians
India and Pakistan agreed Tuesday to release hundreds of fishermen and other civilians being held in each other's jails -- a goodwill measure that comes as part of a peace process between the two countries.
Both sides also agreed to provide better consular access to prisoners, notify each other of arrests and join forces to stamp out terrorism, according to a joint statement. The announcements came after two-day talks between home secretaries from both sides.
These decisions came ahead of a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in New York on Sept. 14 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly session.
ARUBA
Ruling may come in missing girl case
A judge will decide today whether to release a Dutch suspect held for nearly three months in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, a defense lawyer said Tuesday.
Joran van der Sloot, 18, was arrested June 9 along with two friends, Surinamese nationals Satish Kalpoe, 18, and Deepak Kalpoe, 21, on suspicion of involvement in her disappearance. The Kalpoe brothers were released July 4, when van der Sloot's detention was prolonged until Sept. 4, and re-arrested last week.
Van der Sloot's lawyer, Richie Kock, said that judicial authorities informed him a judge would decide on the detention of his client in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island where suspects may be held for up to 116 days without charge.

  FRANCE (92%); UKRAINE (90%); CHINA (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); HONG KONG (79%)







  



August 31, 2005 Wednesday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  Parents and children lined up Tuesday across Indonesia in a national polio vaccination drive targeting 24 million youngsters, but health workers said some could be missed because of widespread rumors that the vaccine is unsafe or violates Islamic law. 
 Polio has sickened 225 children since the virus reappeared in predominantly Muslim Indonesia in March for the first time in 10 years. Tuesday's operation was the latest effort in a six-month campaign to stamp it out. 
 "The preparation was good, and certainly at this stage, there are encouraging signs that the first national immunization day was a success," said David Hipgrave, UNICEF's chief for health and nutrition in Indonesia.  
 Scattered reports from Jakarta showed that turnout was high, but Hipgrave said the actual level of participation nationwide would not be known for days. 
 The Americas 
*  RIO DE JANEIRO  --  Brazil's military continued work on an atomic bomb after it was ordered to scrap the program in 1985 and, by 1990, had nearly finished building one, a leading nuclear scientist said. 
  Jose Luiz Santana, former president of Brazil's nuclear energy commission, said the military was preparing a test explosion when the program was ultimately dismantled in August 1990. 
*  LIMA, Peru  --  The missing flight data recorder from a Peruvian airliner that crashed last week has been recovered, turned in by a man who scavenged it from the wreckage, a prosecutor said. 
  Cesar Cabello had taken the data recorder home but handed it over to civil aviation investigators Monday in exchange for a $500 reward posted by TANS Peru airline, prosecutor Cesar Arroyo said. 
 Asia 
*  MANILA  --  Impeachment proceedings against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo fell into chaos as opposition lawmakers walked out of a committee hearing and claimed that her backers were unjustly trying to quash the case. 
 Some members of the House Justice Committee threw papers into the air as they stormed from their seats when the chairman, Rep. Simeon Datumanong, tried to cut off debate for a vote on which one of the three impeachment complaints against Arroyo should be considered. The Philippine constitution allows only one impeachment proceeding against an official within a year. 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  The president signed a decree granting amnesty to about 2,000 jailed members of the Free Aceh Movement as well as leaders of the group living in exile. The amnesty was part of an Aug. 15 peace pact for Aceh province. 
   --  From News Services 

  BRAZIL (93%); PERU (93%); PHILIPPINES (79%); ASIA (79%)







 


August 30, 2005 Tuesday



 NATION/WORLD DEATHS

 
MADJID, Nurcholis, 66, Indonesia's foremost liberal Muslim thinker, died of liver cancer Monday in Jakarta. 
Madjid, better known as Cak Nur, was an advocate of pluralism and tolerance in the world's most populous Muslim nation, which in recent years has struggled against an increasingly vocal hard-line fringe.  
Though his liberal views were criticized by hard-line Muslims, he was well-respected by ordinary Indonesians and members of the country's intellectual, political and religious elite. 
Several political parties tried to court him as their presidential candidate in the 2004 elections. He said yes to Golkar, the former political vehicle of Gen. Suharto, but pulled out after concluding that the party remained as corrupt as it was under the former dictator. 
TAPPE, Horst, 67, a photographer whose portraits of literary and artistic luminaries included Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Vladimir Nabokov and Alfred Hitchcock, died of cancer Aug. 21 in Vevey, Switzerland. 
His most widely reproduced portraits included Picasso half in shadow and staring sideways, a 1970 shot of the Russian novelist Nabokov wearing knee pants and holding a butterfly net and a wide-eyed Dali in a Western shirt with his arms crossed. 

  SWITZERLAND (74%)






   


August 30, 2005 Tuesday



 
Philippine capital braces for major attack
Ferry blast injures 30; officials suspect al-Qaida-linked group
@BY1:By Teresa Cerojano @BY2:Associated Press @MANILA, Philippines Police installed more closed-circuit cameras in Manila malls, sent out guards with dogs and set up road checkpoints Monday as a senior official warned of a possible major attack in the capital following a ferry bombing that injured 30 people.
The military said an initial investigation concluded that Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaida linked terrorist group, was behind Sunday's attack. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo promised to hunt down "and cripple, if not decimate," those responsible. 
The ferry was docked at a wharf in the southern Philippines and preparing to depart with more than 300 passengers when the bomb, hidden in a cardboard box filled with old clothes, went off.
"Terrorist attacks ... normally come in cycles, and it's unfortunate that we are in that cycle again," National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales said on TV. "Sometime this month and next month, we are anticipating a major terrorist attack and most likely in Manila."
Gonzales cited a pattern where terrorists carry out attacks every six months. He said the last major attack was Feb. 14, when Manila and two southern cities were hit by deadly bombs.
The reported entry of 10 suicide bombers from Indonesia, an influx of foreign funds for a terrorist action and the discovery of 1,322 pounds of explosives this year point to another attack, he said.
National Police Chief Arturo Lomibao has put the police on heightened alert after intelligence reports that terrorists may be targeting metropolitan Manila.
"We have elevated our vigilance," said Manila's police chief, Director Vidal Querol.
Metropolitan Manila is composed of Manila and outlying cities.
Querol said he has sent out more railway police with dogs, installed more closed-circuit TV cameras in malls and other public places and set up checkpoints along approaches to the city.
In Indonesia, the president also warned Monday that terrorists could launch an attack in the mostly Muslim nation in the next two months and ordered security forces to step up surveillance.
"We know the terrorists cells are still active; they are still hiding, recruiting, networking, trying to find new funding and even planning ... for another strike," Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at a seminar in Jakarta.
He warned of possible attacks in September or October, calling them "special months for terrorism." Yudhoyono did not elaborate, but the al-Qaida linked Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for the 2002 bombings on Bali island, the 2003 J.W. Marriott hotel attack and the 2004 Australian Embassy blast that together killed 225. All occurred between August and October.
Abu Sayyaf, which is on U.S. and European lists of terrorist organizations, has been blamed for a number of other bombings. Philippine security officials say the group also has ties with the Jemaah Islamiyah network. <!-- -->

 PHILIPPINES (98%);  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%); AUSTRALIA (79%); 






  
  

  Philadelphia Inquirer

August 30, 2005 Tuesday 



 Obituaries

 

 
Clifford WilliamsStage director, 78
Clifford Williams, 78, an associate director of London's Royal Shakespeare Theater who directed several Broadway productions, including Sleuthand Breaking the Code,died Aug. 20 in London.
Mr. Williams attracted attention in 1963 with a production of William Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors that critics described as a joyous extravaganza. It opened at Stratford-on-Avon, Britain, and toured in Europe and the United States. 
Two of his most successful works, Sleuth(1970) and Breaking the Code(1987), opened in London and later moved to New York City. Both earned Mr. Williams Tony nominations.
He traveled the world to direct Shakespeare, staging productions in Mexico, Spain, Scandinavia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. He also staged a number of modern classics that traveled to several cities, including August Strindberg's The Father.- Los Angeles Times
 
Rev. Katrina SwansonEpiscopal priest, 70
The Rev. Katrina Swanson, 70, one of the first women to be ordained as an Episcopal priest, died Saturday in Manset, Maine.
The fourth generation of her family to enter the ministry, Ms. Swanson was one of the "Philadelphia 11," a group of women ordained in the city at a ceremony July 29, 1974.
Her status as a priest became official after the Episcopal Church approved the ordination of women in 1976. Two years later, she became a rector of St. John's Parish in Union City, N.J., where she instituted bilingual Spanish and English services and established an after-school program.
Ms. Swanson retired to Manset in 1996. - AP
 
Nurcholis MadjidMuslim scholar, 66
Nurcholis Madjid, 66, an Indonesian Muslim scholar who was an advocate of pluralism and tolerance in the world's most populous Islamic nation, died yesterday of liver cancer.
Mr. Madjid, better known as Cak Nur, was born in east Java to a preacher's family in 1939 and spent most of his early years at Islamic boarding schools. In 1984, he received a doctorate in Islamic studies from the University of Chicago before returning to teach at Indonesia's Islamic Institute.
He taught an inclusive brand of Islam, emphasizing its oneness with other faiths and its traditions of tolerance and diversity.
"Cak Nur was the man that brought enlightenment to Islamic thought in Indonesia," said Ulil Abshor Abdala, chairman of the Islamic Liberal Network, a nongovernmental organization in Indonesia that supports religious moderation. "He created a solid base" for religious harmony. - AP

  INDONESIA (92%); EUROPE (90%); SPAIN (79%); BULGARIA (53%); 







  



August 27, 2005 Saturday  




 In Indonesia, Rumors Imperil Anti-Polio Bid; 
24 Million Children Set to Be Immunized Tuesday

 
 As a longtime health volunteer in the narrow alleys of her hillside neighborhood, Ebon Sunarti has focused on corralling other women into the local clinic so their toddlers could be vaccinated against a range of childhood diseases. 
  But when polio broke out in her province this year and the government launched a regional campaign to immunize all children under 5, this tough-minded mother held her own 3-year-old daughter back after seeing spurious television reports that the vaccine had made many youngsters sick, even killing a few. 
  "This is my mother's heart. I have to be so careful," explained Sunarti, 35, her brown eyes warm but adamant.  
  With polio now spreading faster in Indonesia than anywhere else, U.N. health experts and local officials are struggling to counter rumors that the vaccine is harmful, and to contain the outbreak before the coming rainy season turns it into a full-blown epidemic. 
  The next test comes Tuesday when Indonesia plans to immunize 24 million children under 5. If the nationwide drive succeeds, it could turn back polio at its farthest frontier since the disease erupted in Nigeria two years ago. But if it fails, international health experts warn, the outbreak could spill over Indonesia's borders to other East Asian countries, dealing a setback to global efforts to eradicate the illness. 
  "What we have now is a looming crisis," said David Hipgrave, UNICEF's chief for health and nutrition in Indonesia. 
  The country had been polio-free for a decade until a traveler from the Middle East brought it to Indonesia's main island of Java early this year. The disease has now spread from the Java mountains to the nearby island of Sumatra and north to the capital, Jakarta, infecting at least 226 people. 
  In May, Indonesia launched a drive to vaccinate children in Jakarta and two neighboring provinces, dispatching health workers into jungles, slums and remote ridgeline villages. The effort exceeded expectations, with more than 6.5 million immunized. 
  But accounts of four children who died shortly afterward were reported at length in the national media. Though the World Health Organization determined that the deaths were unrelated to the vaccine, Indonesian health officials initially did little to debunk the rumors. So in a second round of vaccinations in June, intended to give the same children another crucial dose, many parents turned the health workers away, and about 725,000 fewer children got the vaccine. 
  "There were so many cases in the media from every place about children getting fever or getting diarrhea after the first vaccine," Sunarti said. "Many people were afraid the same thing would happen to their child." 
  In May, Sunarti had taken her daughter, Balqis, to the local clinic to be immunized. But she balked in June because the girl had a cough. Recounting this, Sunarti repeated the common refrain that the polio vaccine can be deadly for children if they are at all unwell. 
  Her neighbor, Cholifah, also turned away the health volunteers, claiming her son had mild diarrhea. "I learned from the television reports that it is best not to give a vaccine to a baby who is not fit," said Cholifah, 27, furrowing her brow and cradling the boy close. 
  Hipgrave stressed that the vaccine was safe, even for children who are sick. The four youngsters who died were among the 2,000 children who die every day in Indonesia from dengue, malaria and other ailments, he added. 
  But now, on the eve of the country's first nationwide vaccination drive, U.N. officials acknowledge that their message has been drowned out by the negative reports on television and in newspapers. 
 The dramatic decline in vaccinations two months ago, coupled with the spreading outbreak, sounded alarms at the far-off headquarters of U.N. agencies. Last week, WHO sent David L. Heymann, the chief of its global polio eradication program, to Jakarta to secure senior government officials' support for next week's vaccination drive. 
  Heymann said he was particularly troubled by the spread of the disease to Sumatra, which was battered by the Dec. 26 tsunami. If the virus reaches the western end of the island, where the health care system was destroyed, containment could prove almost impossible, he said. The eradication effort would also become more daunting if polio spread to densely populated Jakarta. 
  Heymann added that the arrival of the rainy season next month could accelerate the transmission of the disease, which is spread through contaminated water, as streets flood and children play in the mud. 
 Winning public support now is crucial, he said: "What we don't want to see is rumors get out of control and stop progress like in Nigeria." 
  The strain of polio now circulating in Indonesia originated in northern Nigeria, where the overwhelmingly Muslim population turned against vaccinators after rumors spread that immunization was a Western plot to weaken Islam by causing sterility or AIDS. 
  But in Indonesia, the resistance has no religious overtones. In fact, the country's most popular Muslim televangelist, Abdullah Gymnastiar, has been enlisted to publicize next week's drive. The Indonesian Council of Ulemas, or Muslim scholars, has issued a fatwa, or edict, endorsing the vaccine. 
  Some of the deepest skepticism is in Depok, the sprawling town south of Jakarta where more than a fifth of the children vaccinated in May were kept home a month later. Last week, medical officers called together three dozen volunteers, all middle-age women wearing conservative Muslim head scarves, to rally them for the drive. 
  "Why did so many parents keep their children home last time?" asked Deksiana Farida, the stout, dark-haired woman in charge of immunization at the local clinic. 
  "Takut!" the women answered in unison from the rows of plastic chairs. "Afraid!" 
  "Do not be fooled by the parents," Farida continued, speaking into a microphone over the whir of a single ceiling fan. "You have to be smart about this. You have to make them come to the clinic." 
  Health workers in Depok have recruited respected community figures, in particular Muslim clerics who run Koran reading groups for women, to preach the virtues of vaccination. But Komora Mingsih, 52, one of the volunteers, lamented it might be too late to save this drive. 
  "I don't think it will succeed," she added, out of earshot of the other volunteers. "Most likely, people are still afraid." 
 Special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report. 

 INDONESIA (96%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); NIGERIA (79%); EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)







 


August 21, 2005 Sunday  
FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION



 New gloryfor Old Glory Author calls for a new global strategy of exporting our own revolutions

 
"Gamaliel believes, most of the time, that a word has a shadow that accompanies and stretches out from it; and the pain he suffers is inflicted by that shadow."
Reading Ralph Peters' "New Glory" -- subtitled "Expanding America's Global Supremacy" -- may remind you of standing outdoors in a Midwestern thunderstorm. Lightning bolts of anger flash. Thunderous judgments boom. You may fear on some pages that you're trapped in an outburst of conservative wrath. Then the sun returns, the water soaks in -- and a crop of fascinating ideas pops up. Peters long traveled the world as an Army intelligence officer. Now, he's a military writer and occasional novelist. In "New Glory," he uses his real-world experience (and his way with words) to deliver a State-of-the-World message. Among his points: 
* "Old Europe" is failing fast, and the Middle East has already failed. The United States ought to concentrate on the Southern Hemisphere (which Peters extends northward to the Tropic of Cancer). Peters dumps France, Germany and even Russia into the past. He sees the future in places like India, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico.
* To guide the future, he says, the United States should export its own revolutions to these regions -- its revolutionary approaches to religious tolerance, human rights and especially women's rights. "If we could summon any dead and buried 'strategist' to help us understand the Middle East's dysfunction," he writes, "we wouldn't want to conjure Carl von Clausewitz. We'd need to revive the spirit of Sigmund Freud. The War of Terror is a global struggle to decide the fate of women. . . . Islam's great weakness is that it's afraid of the girls."
* Until the United States gets cracking on a substitute for oil, Americans will be tied to the dead horse of the Middle East. Peters sees hope for Islam on the perimeter, in places like Indonesia. True, he hopes that things work out in Iraq and then in neighboring states. But if not, he's willing to write the region off, once we no longer need its oil.
* To exert its influence in these southern regions, the United States needs to rediscover Alfred Thayer Mahan, the naval thinker who voiced what had been obvious for centuries: He who controls the sea controls the world. And while Peters is going about reshaping the Navy, he'd break up the Air Force, which he calls "miserably corrupt."
* Like many conservatives, Peters has no use for the United Nations. But like most liberals, he has little use for unilateralism. His solution: Subvert the United Nations by strengthening other institutions, or even building new ones -- say, an Alliance of Democratic Nations.
Not that liberals will nod at everything in this book. Peters thinks that freedom of speech has gone too far on the Internet. He says that, at some point, U.S. soldiers are going to have to pop off a few rounds at Al-Jazeera film crews. And he makes no bones about his feeling that the only way to deal with Islamist terrorists is to kill them.
Still, it's hard to set aside a book with a chapter that opens this way: "Whenever the State Department issues a travel warning for any location in Southeast Asia I know exactly what I'll find when I get there: Australians drinking beer around the pool."
As Peters' novels have shown, he has an ear for the wonderful rhythm of iambic pentameter. In this book, he calls Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe "a president for life who deals in death." In describing technology, he says, "The Internet creates reality." Of the challenge from Islamist terrorism, he says, "We will not lose our souls by fighting back." That 10-part rhythm pops up on page after page, and it's pleasing.
Peters is at his best when he's specific, as with the Aussies at the pool. For some stretches, "New Glory" wanders off into several pages of abstraction. And Peters has little to say about two challenges that many Americans see looming: China and the outsourcing of labor that stems from globalization.
But maybe that figures. For all of its thunder and lightning, "New Glory" is a work of optimism, written by an author steeped in history -- and theology and geopolitics and even fine art. Academics will dismiss this book. Then again, Peters has little use for academics, and says so. Tartly, if not always in iambic pentameter.
---
"New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy"
By Ralph Peters Published by Sentinel, 304 pages, $24.95
On sale Monday

 UNITED STATES (94%); MIDDLE EAST (93%); INDONESIA (92%); BRAZIL (79%); FRANCE (79%); INDIA (79%); EUROPE (79%);  GERMANY (56%)







  



August 19, 2005 Friday  




 Bombings Force Bangladesh Envoy Home

 
 Amb. Shamsher M. Chowdhury of Bangladesh cut short a working visit to Iowa yesterday to confer with officials from his government and the United States about the detonation of at least 200 homemade bombs in 60 cities and towns across Bangladesh Wednesday. Miraculously, only two people were killed, but more than 100 were injured. 
 "Though there has been more loss of life before, the scale of these attacks, the number of explosions occurring in such a short time we have not seen before," he said in a telephone interview on his way to the airport yesterday.  
  The bombings, which targeted busy streets, courthouses and other government buildings, erupted just after Prime Minister Khaleda Zia left Dhaka, the capital, to begin a five-day visit to China. 
 Chowdhury, whose government has sought U.S. assistance in combating terrorism, said his country was given "assurances in the wake of the bombings that Washington would stand by the people of Bangladesh at this hour."  
 Bangladesh, a poor country prone to typhoons and flooding, has a history of intense rivalry between the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the main opposition party, the Awami League, marred by assassinations and other political violence over the years.  
 Leaflets found at the bombing sites carrying the name of Jumatul Mujaheddin, a banned Islamic group, called for Islamic rule in Bangladesh and warned the United States and Britain against the occupation of Muslim countries, the Reuters news agency reported. 
  Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the Awami League, demanded an international probe into the blasts. 
  Chowdhury cautioned: "The authorities in the districts are still investigating, a number of people have been rounded up and they are being questioned. It is still too early to start drawing any conclusions." 
  Chowdhury was one of nearly 70 ambassadors and attaches visiting Iowa for a five-day tour hosted by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The dignitaries visited industrial sites and universities across the state. 
 "We each stayed with a different family every night," Chowdhury said. "Over dinner, we told them about our countries, our issues, and they talked to us about their home regions and lives. That was a very rewarding experience." 
Three and a half years and a tsunami later, Indonesia's ambassador, Soemadi D. M. Brotodiningrat, is returning home. His counterpart from Singapore, Heng Chee Chan, who gave a welcome dinner for Brotodiningrat when he arrived, hosted his farewell dinner Monday evening. 
 Brotodiningrat's golf buddies, companions in antique browsing, and senior officials, academics and media types toasted him.  
 "No diplomat dies, he just fades away," Brotodiningrat quipped, making Gen. Douglas MacArthur's famous phrase about soldiers his own.  
 Brotodiningrat, who will take over his country's free trade portfolio with Japan, will be remembered for his candor. Chan recalled an incident at a seminar at a research organization in Washington in which Brotodiningrat, a "sincere, open and serious" man, told U.S. officials and academics that the United States had made life difficult for its friends by failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  
 Dinner conversation, around a feast of green papaya and shrimp salad, asparagus and crab soup, and sweet and sour fish, inevitably veered toward how the United States perceives the world and how other countries perceive the United States  --  and what the role of emerging Muslim democracies such as Indonesia are in that debate. 
 Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs; Peter W. Rodman, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs; and other guests, including Karl Jackson, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, joined the conversation. The group also mentioned the termination of the United States Information Service and the diminishing number of visas for exchange students as reasons for the gap in understanding and acceptance between East and West.  
 The pearl of wisdom of the evening, however, came from the Japanese ambassador, Ryozo Kato, who said that nurturing understanding "is like gardening. It takes effort on both sides." 
  Kato told a story about a capable Japanese interpreter who had accompanied senior Japanese officials to Indonesia, gaining the trust of Indonesian leaders and interpreting for American visitors as well. When complimented, the interpreter credited his success and expertise to a two-year, U.S.-sponsored course in Japan, Kato recalled. 
As Senate and House negotiators prepare to reconcile different versions of the foreign operations appropriations bill, 54 U.S. representatives have written a letter to President Bush urging him to reconsider strengthening ties with the Indonesian military because of the "persistence of obvious human rights, accountability, and security reform problems in Indonesia." 

 BANGLADESH (96%); UNITED STATES (94%); CHINA (79%); SINGAPORE (79%); 







 Dayton Newspapers, Inc. 
Dayton Daily News (Ohio)

August 17, 2005 Wednesday



 Dyer takes easy way out by blaming U.S.

 
Columnist Gwynne Dyer is just an anti-American leftist who wrongly manipulates data. He indicates that U.S. policy in Iraq has caused a wave of Islamic terror throughout the world.  
It's like saying because I washed my car, it rained.
Perhaps he can explain why most of the Islamic terrorist cells were in place well before the Iraq war and 9/11.
Perhaps Dyer can cite the cause and effect of the United States saving tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia. Or saving Kuwait and possibly Saudi Arabia from the butcher of Baghdad.
What about the cause and effect of providing humanitarian aid to Indonesian Muslims during the tsunami last year, or trying to prevent starvation of Muslims in Somalia? As far as I can tell, those acts have not slowed the murderous terrorist activities.
Dyer cites U.S. influence on Middle East politics as a cause, but ignores that in Afghanistan, Islamic fascists were in charge and were a disaster to the modern world and most of their own people, and were an affront to peaceful Muslims.
The Iraq war is just an excuse the left uses to justify the terrorists' activities. It's easier to blame the United States than to confront the enemy. 
BELINDA AND ROBERT HILL
CENTERVILLE

 UNITED STATES (95%);  AFGHANISTAN (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); SOMALIA (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); KUWAIT (79%)




8

  
  


August 14, 2005 Sunday 



 SAFAA IBRAHIM

 
Born:March 29, 1975, in Cairo, Egypt. Immigrated with family to the United States in 1981. 
Education:Bachelor's degree in international business, Strayer University, Virginia.
Professional: Project management, operations and promotions, Registration Unlimited; volunteer with the Muslim Community Association, and the GiveLight Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps children orphaned by the tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia. Also served on the board and executive committee of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Personal:Married to Hisham Ibrahim, software engineer. No children.
Source: Mercury News reporting

  UNITED STATES (90%); EGYPT (90%); 






  
  


August 14, 2005 Sunday 



 SPREADING NEWS OF ISLAM'S PEACE

 
When the former executive director of the Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations retired this year, a committee embarked on a search for a replacement, fielding local and national candidates.
But the committee members needn't have looked farther than their own boardroom to find Safaa Ibrahim, a volunteer who drove three times a week from her home in Aptos to Santa Clara, well-known to other volunteers and the search committee for her tireless, passionate work.
With her background in project management, she multi-tasked like a paid professional, planning logistics for a fundraising banquet, setting up Web conferences and establishing a system for managing civil rights cases. She also served on CAIR's executive committee and board of directors. 
''Sometimes you take for granted the resources you have,'' said Athar Siddiquee, vice president of the executive committee that was conducting the search. ''One day, we said, 'What about Safaa?' ''
Ibrahim, 30, was recently named executive director of the Bay Area chapter of CAIR, taking the reins of an organization that has become a major voice for Muslims in the region.
Misconceptions about Islam have persisted and grown insidious since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ibrahim said, and she views her task of ''projecting the moderate, peaceful voice of Islam'' with urgency.
Ibrahim said she will stress outreach to other faiths and communities to promote ''Not in the name of Islam,'' a campaign denouncing terrorism.
''I felt it's important to take part and be more active and educate everyone,'' Ibrahim said, recalling her reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks. ''These terrorists are speaking louder than me. I think I need to speak louder about my peaceful views.''
Born in Cairo, Egypt, Ibrahim immigrated to the United States with her family when she was 6. She grew up in Silver Spring, Md., a suburb of Washington. She received her degree in international business from Strayer University, near Washington.
Ibrahim moved to California five years ago to start a job at a high-technology company, but had no intention of settling in California or the Bay Area.
Then she married two years ago, left her job and began volunteering at the Muslim Community Association, the mosque across the street from CAIR in Santa Clara.
''In the back of my mind, I've always had this need to volunteer,'' Ibrahim explained. ''After I got married, it afforded me the time.''
The work at MCA, and later more volunteer work at CAIR, opened Ibrahim's eyes to the struggles of Muslims in America, and qualified many of her own feelings about being a Muslim after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
''I started seeing statistics about hate crimes, incidences of discrimination, what the Muslim community at large is experiencing post-9/11,'' she said. ''That really empowered me. I couldn't stand for it.
''I wanted to build a bridge of understanding,'' she said. ''I wanted to say, 'Hey, this is not what I was taught to believe.' ''
Ibrahim, who began wearing a hijab recently, said Sept. 11 awakened her to her faith. Prompted by questions from people who wanted to know more about Islam, Ibrahim set out to educate herself. She read books about her faith, read the Koran and began going to the mosque to pray.
Her devotion to her faith translates into passion for her work at CAIR. It hasn't been lost on people who know her and have worked with her.
''She connects well with people,'' said Dian Alyan, Ibrahim's friend, who is outreach director at MCA. ''She brings passion to her work.''
But for Alyan, a Muslim immigrant from Indonesia, Ibrahim's appointment is important for another reason: her gender.
''I'm glad to see another Muslim woman at the forefront of this work,'' said Alyan. ''There's a common stereotype that Muslim women are oppressed. I think Safaa in her role can educate America about this.''
Shafath Sayed, a CAIR board member, said Ibrahim had proven her leadership mettle on the board.
''Whenever you're working with a non-profit, you have to have real strong dedication to the cause,'' Sayed said. ''Safaa's volunteer work really shows her dedication.''
At the leadership helm, Sayed said of Ibrahim: ''I've full confidence she'll make CAIR a recognized name within this area, and leveraging what the organization is doing.''
Contact Jessie Mangaliman at jmangaliman@mercurynews. com or (408) 920-5794.

 UNITED STATES (95%); EGYPT (79%); 







   


August 7, 2005 Sunday  




 The Irascible Prophet: V. S. Naipaul at Home

 
Two monuments rise like emblems from the green countryside of Wiltshire, England, not far from the secluded house of V. S. Naipaul: Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral. They are signposts in a landscape Naipaul has been traversing for more than half a century, one in which the impulses of culture, civilization and progress have always existed in close and uneasy proximity to the impulses of paganism, religion and disorder.
 A prophet of our world-historical moment, in his more than 25 works of fiction and nonfiction, Naipaul has examined the clash between belief and unbelief, the unraveling of the British Empire, the migrations of peoples. They are natural subjects for a writer who, as he has recorded in his many fully, semi- and quasi-autobiographical books, was born in Trinidad, where his grandfather had emigrated from India as an indentured servant. His father, a newspaper reporter and aspiring fiction writer, was the model for what is arguably Naipaul's finest novel, ''A House for Mr. Biswas'' (1961). At 18, Naipaul left Trinidad on a scholarship to University College, Oxford, and has lived in England ever since. Alfred Kazin once described him as ''a colonial brought up in English schools, on English ways and the pretended reasonableness of the English mind.'' 
  Knighted in 1990, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul is Britain's only living Nobel laureate in literature, having been awarded the prize in October 2001, a season when many were just awakening to realities Naipaul had been writing about for more than 20 years. Also significant is that he had explored Islamic fundamentalism and other issues of global import not through fiction, but through nonfiction reportage. The novel's time was over, he had said. Others had made the claim before, but it resonated more deeply coming from a contemporary giant. What is more, Naipaul said, only nonfiction could capture the complexities of today's world. It was a profound observation. But did it speak to a larger cultural situation, or was it simply the personal judgment of one cantankerous writer, who in fact continued to publish a novel every few years even after declaring the form dead? 
 Naipaul recently offered some thoughts on the matter, in an interview in the cozy sitting room of his cottage in Wiltshire. Photograph portraits were on the mantle. French novels lined one bookshelf. The sounds of the outside world could be heard: a lawnmower, the buzzing of a fighter jet from a nearby airbase. A compact man of 72, Naipaul has been ill in recent months, and said he is not working on a book at the moment. Although it was unseasonably hot on the splendid sunny afternoon of the longest day of the year, he wore a tweed jacket and corduroy pants. Unsmiling, he settled somewhat stiffly onto a straight-backed armchair and began to chart the trajectory of his thinking.
 ''What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material,'' he said. ''And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn't know fully.'' Naipaul's voice is rich and deep and mellowed by tobacco, and when he pronounced the word ''world,'' he savored it, drawing it out to almost three syllables. ''I thought if I didn't have this resource of nonfiction I would have dried up perhaps. I'd have come to the end of my material, and would have done what a writer like Graham Greene did. You know, he took the Graham Greene figure to the Congo, took him to Argentina, took him to Haiti, for no rhyme or reason.''
 Naipaul has said he wrote the novel ''Half a Life'' (2001) only to fulfill a publisher's contract, and that ''Magic Seeds'' (2004) would be his last novel. (Over the years, he has often hinted at retirement, only to publish another book soon after.) Yet the fact that Naipaul has continued to write novels does not undercut his acute awareness of the form's limitations; indeed, it amplifies it. His is the lament of a writer who, through a life devoted to his craft, has discovered that the tools at his disposal are no longer adequate. ''If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account,'' Naipaul said. ''If you're a romantic writer, you write novels about men and women falling in love, etc., give a little narrative here and there. But again, it's of no account.''
 What is of account, in Naipaul's view, is the larger global political situation -- in particular, the clash between belief and unbelief in postcolonial societies. ''I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery,'' he said. To what extent, he wondered, had ''people who lock themselves away in belief . . . shut themselves away from the active busy world''? ''To what extent without knowing it'' were they ''parasitic on that world''? And why did they have ''no thinkers to point out to them where their thoughts and their passion had led them''? Far from simple, the questions brought a laserlike focus to a central paradox of today's situation: that some who have benefited from the blessings of the West now seek to destroy it. 
 In November 2001 Naipaul told an audience of anxious New Yorkers still reeling from the attack on the World Trade Center that they were facing ''a war declared on you by people who passionately want one thing: a green card.'' What happened on Sept. 11 ''was too astonishing. It's one of its kind. It can't happen again,'' he said in our conversation. ''But in the end it has had no effect on the world. It has just been a spectacle, like a bank raid in a western film. They will be caught by the sheriff eventually.'' The bigger issue, he said, is that Western Europe, while built on tolerance, today lacks ''a strong cultural life,'' making it vulnerable to Islamicization. He even went so far as to say that Muslim women shouldn't wear headscarves in the West. ''If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don't express your disregard for the essence of the culture,'' he said. ''It's a form of aggression.''
 No matter how uncomfortable or debatable, there is a painful prescience to Naipaul's observations on Islam and the West. That prescience was in evidence once again when, just two weeks after our meeting, bombers struck the London Underground and a city bus, killing more than 50 people. Naipaul was at home in Wiltshire that day, and professed no surprise that the attacks appeared to have been carried out by British citizens. ''We must stop fooling ourselves about what we are witnessing,'' he said in a telephone conversation a week after the July 7 attacks. The debate in Britain about British detainees held at Guantanamo Bay was evidence of the foolishness. ''People here talk about those people who were picked up by the Americans as 'lads,' 'our lads,' as though they were people playing cricket or marbles,'' Naipaul said. ''It's glib, nonsensical talk from people who don't understand that holy war for Muslims is a religious war, and a religious war is something you never stop fighting.''
 These remarks, like so many of Naipaul's utterances over the years, seem calculated to provoke. In his interviews as in his life, Naipaul is famously irascible, difficult, contradictory, an ideological lightning rod. Yet in his writing, he is an artist on whom nothing is lost. Naipaul addressed this split in his Nobel acceptance speech, in which he seconded Proust's argument that ''a book is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life, in our vices.'' Naipaul's work is as subtle as his interviews are clamorous. In ''Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey,'' his 1981 travelogue through the ironies and intricacies of non-Arab Islamic countries, and in its 1998 follow-up, ''Beyond Belief,'' Naipaul listened seriously and empathetically to people in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia: countries that were converted to Islam over the course of centuries and, in the late 70's, witnessed a rise in both power and Islamic fundamentalism. The books raise but don't necessarily answer deep and vexing questions: Is secularism a precondition of tolerance? Does one necessarily have to abandon one's individual cultural and religious identity to become part of the West? Why do people willingly choose lives that restrict their intellectual freedom? What becomes of modern societies founded on Islam, whose strictest aherents long for a return to the time of Muhammad?
 Like Salim, the protagonist of his classic novel ''A Bend in the River,'' who describes himself as ''a man without a side,'' Naipaul has cultivated political detachment. In his Nobel acceptance speech, he said: ''I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.'' This is both true and incomplete. Naipaul's cold, unsparing look at the corruption and disarray of the postcolonial world, his disdain for Marxist liberation movements and his view that Islamic society leads to tyranny are implicitly political positions, and have made him the object of much political criticism. He has been sharply criticized by, among others, Derek Walcott, the Caribbean poet and Nobel laureate, and Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist, who said ''although Naipaul was writing about Africa, he was not writing for Africans.'' The scholar and critic Edward Said, who died in 2003, called ''Beyond Belief'' ''an intellectual catastrophe.'' Naipaul, he added, thinks ''Islam is the worst disaster that ever happened to India, and the book reveals a pathology.'' 
 But what spares Naipaul's work from the ideology of critics who would dismiss him as anti-Muslim and admirers who would laud him for essentially the same thing is its unsentimental, often heartbreaking detail. In ''Among the Believers,'' Naipaul speaks with Mr. Jaffrey, a newspaper journalist and British-Indian-educated Shiite in Tehran who supported Khomeini as a way of bringing about the Islamic dream of a ''society of believers.'' Mr. Jaffrey ate a plate of fried eggs as he spoke. In ''Beyond Belief,'' Naipaul revisits one of the journalist's colleagues, who also relishes his lunch. Ideology is abstract; fried eggs are not. Naipaul's nonfiction has the force, the almost unbearable density of detail and the moral vision of great fiction. It comes as no surprise that Dickens and Tolstoy are his heroes. For all Naipaul's talk about the limitations of the novel, the power of his work is ultimately rooted in a novelist's preternatural attentiveness to individual human lives and triumphs, to the daily things we do that make us who we are, and are the key to our survival. 
 A breakthrough in Naipaul's own understanding of himself as a writer and his turning away from the novel toward nonfiction came in a remarkable essay he wrote on Joseph Conrad. First published in The New York Review of Books in 1974, it appears in his 2003 collection, ''Literary Occasions.'' It is not entirely surprising that Naipaul would turn to the work of the Polish emigre; both were raised in one world and willed themselves into becoming artists in another, England. ''I suppose that in my fantasy I had seen myself coming to England as to some purely literary region, where, untrammeled by the accidents of history or background, I could make a romantic career for myself as a writer,'' Naipaul wrote in that essay. 
 ''It came to me that the great novelists wrote about highly organized societies,'' he wrote. ''I had no such society; I couldn't share the assumptions of the writers; I didn't see my world reflected in theirs. My colonial world was more mixed and secondhand, and more restricted. The time came when I began to ponder the mystery -- Conradian word -+of my own background.'' Along the way, Naipaul kept coming up against Conrad. ''I found that Conrad -- 60 years before, in the time of a great peace -+had been everywhere before me,'' he wrote. ''Not as a man with a cause, but a man offering . . . a vision of the world's half-made societies as places which continuously made and unmade themselves, where there was no goal, and where always 'something inherent in the necessities of successful action . . . carried with it the moral degradation of the idea.' Dismal, but deeply felt: a kind of truth and half a consolation.''
 Yet in our conversation, although Naipaul said he thought Conrad was ''great'' because he ''wished to look very, very hard at the world,'' he also insisted that Conrad ''had no influence on me.'' ''Actually, I think 'A Bend in the River' is much, much better than Conrad,'' he said. ''I think the best part of Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' is the reportage part. The fictional part is excessive and feeble. And there is no reportage in my thing. I was looking and creating that world. I actually think the work I've done in that way is better than Conrad.'' Naipaul also dismissed the idea there might be a direct link between his Conrad essay and subsequent works in which he explored some of the same places and themes. ''These things might appear like that. But that's only for a person on the outside,'' he said. 
 A different picture emerges from Naipaul's bibliography. After the Conrad essay, Naipaul in fact followed Conrad's itinerary to the Congo -- the subject of his nonfiction essay on Mobutu, ''A New King for the Congo''(1975), and of ''A Bend in the River'' (1979); and to Aceh, Indonesia, for ''Among the Believers'' and ''Beyond Belief.'' Naipaul has also gone where Conrad went as a narrator, cultivating a kind of finely wrought ambiguity and moving toward reportage. ''To understand Conrad,'' as he wrote in his essay, ''it was necessary to begin to match his experience. It was also necessary to lose one's preconceptions of what the novel should do and, above all, to rid oneself of the subtle corruptions of the novel or comedy of manners.''
 In conversation, another dynamic becomes apparent, in which the more dismissive Naipaul is of a writer, the more likely it is that he has engaged deeply with that writer's work. Sitting a few feet away from a bookshelf of French novels, Naipaul called Proust ''tedious,'' ''repetitive,'' ''self-indulgent,'' concerned only with a character's social status. ''What is missing in Proust is this idea of a moral center,'' he said. Naipaul also had little respect for Joyce's ''Ulysses'' -- ''the Irish book,'' he sniffily called it -- and other works ''that have to lean on borrowed stories.'' Lately, he has found Stendhal ''repetitive, tedious, infuriating,'' while ''the greatest disappointment was Flaubert.''
 All this points to another idea: Modernism is over. ''We are all overwhelmed by the idea of French 19th-century culture. Everybody wanted to go to Paris to paint or to write. And of course that's a dead idea these days,'' Naipaul said. ''We've changed. The world has changed. The world has grown bigger.'' Which brings us back to the limitations of the novel. The writer must leave the sitting room and travel abroad into the active, busy world. It is the tragic vision only a novelist can reach: that the world cannot be contained in the novel. 
 And yet, for all his laments, Naipaul is not invested in the notion that Western civilization is in decline. ''That's a romantic idea,'' he said brusquely. ''A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying. . . . It's a university idea. People cook it up at universities and do a lot of lectures about it. It has no substance.'' The ''philosophical diffidence'' of the West, he maintains, will prevail over the ''philosophical shriek'' of those who intend to destroy it. Naipaul formulated those terms in a lecture he delivered in 1992 at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank in New York. (Called ''Our Universal Civilization,'' it appears in his 2002 essay collection, ''The Writer and the World.'') In it, he cites a remarkable passage from Conrad: ''A half-naked, betel-chewing pessimist stood upon the bank of the tropical river, on the edge of the still and immense forests; a man angry, powerless, empty-handed, with a cry of bitter discontent ready on his lips; a cry that, had it come out, would have rung through the virgin solitudes of the woods as true, as great, as profound, as any philosophical shriek that ever came from the depths of an easy chair to disturb the impure wilderness of chimneys and roofs.''
 As for evidence of the diffidence: ''I think it actually is all around us. It's all around us,'' Naipaul said. But where, exactly? ''There are millions and millions of people all around us,'' was all he would say. In ''India: A Million Mutinies Now'' (1990), his third nonfiction book about India, Naipaul celebrated the million manifestations of daily life, of lives undefeated by the chaos, disarray and poverty of the larger society. A Hindu by birth, though not observant, Naipaul finds India a place of great hope. It is, he says, the country where belief and unbelief coexist most peaceably. The economic development of India -- and China -- he said, will ''completely alter the world,'' and ''nothing that's happening in the Arab world has that capacity.'' Yet Naipaul called it ''a calamity'' that, even with its billion people, ''there are no thinkers in India'' today. India is also where he turns for a theory of history. ''The only theory is that everything is in a state of flux,'' he said. This is his own ''personal idea,'' he said, but one linked to a philosophical concept in Indian religion.
 ''I find it impossible to contain the history of Europe in my head. It's so much movement, so much movement,'' he said. ''Even when you go back to the Roman times there are these tribal groups pressing all the time, pressing and pressing and pressing,'' he continued, pushing his fists together for emphasis and fixing his gaze intently at the near distance. He has recently been reading the letters of Mary Wortley Montagu, an Englishwoman who traveled across the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century. The chaos of history pressed in on the Wiltshire sitting room. ''You have this picture of the devastation the Turks had created in Hungary,'' he said. ''Who ever thought that world would have changed if you were living at that time? But it has changed. And what we're living in will of course change again.''
 Dismal, but deeply felt: a kind of truth and half a consolation.


 ENGLAND (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (73%); INDIA (71%)







   


August 5, 2005 Friday  




 Pollution Trial of Mining  to Begin in Indonesia

 
In a rare case against an American business giant operating in the developing world, the Newmont Mining Corporation and its chief executive in Indonesia go on trial here Friday on criminal charges of pollution at its gold mine near this remote city.
  The Indonesian government contends that Newmont, which is based in Denver and is the world's biggest gold producer, contaminated the equatorial waters of Buyat Bay with mine waste containing arsenic and mercury. It wants to hold the president of Newmont in Indonesia, Richard B. Ness, 55, responsible.
 In a vigorous pretrial response, Newmont said it would prove that its operations had not harmed the water, the fish or the local people, many of whom moved from Buyat Bay in June after complaining of illnesses. No definitive cause for their ailments has been found. 
  ''Everyone involved in this firmly believes we have not done anything wrong,'' Mr. Ness said Tuesday at a briefing in the capital, Jakarta. ''There is not pollution. I am very confident about what the evidence shows. We will be exonerated.''
  That the head of operations for a major American company is being criminally prosecuted abroad is exceptional enough. But the case has also become a test both of the Indonesia's legal system and of the conduct of international corporations that operate in far-off lands, where local people often feel that foreign businesses keep laxer standards than at home. 
  The verdict may prove a bellwether for Indonesia's other foreign investors with far greater stakes and potential liabilities, especially in extraction industries like mining and petroleum. If convicted, Mr. Ness could face up to 10 years in jail and a $50,000 fine; the company could have to pay for the costs of cleaning up any environmental damage.
  ''We will pursue the criminal case as hard as we can,'' the environment minister, Rachmat Witolear, said in an interview. ''We will produce the best professional experts in the field.''
  Even so, the Indonesian government, which depends heavily on foreign investment, has pushed the case ambivalently. On the one hand, its anemic regulatory agencies would like to put teeth into their still-evolving environmental laws; on the other, high-ranking and local officials alike fear driving off the corporate money that is their biggest source of tax revenue.
  Western business executives and analysts said the onus was on Indonesia, with its poorly paid judges and prosecutors and its history of corruption, to run a transparent and fair trial.
  ''The Indonesian institutions involved in the case had better prove it, because it's not only the reputation of Newmont that is at stake but the reputation of the government as well,'' said Robert Broadfoot, the managing director of Political and Economic Risk Consultancy in Hong Kong, who often visits Indonesia.
  For Newmont, five of whose employees were jailed in Jakarta last year, the trial has been a major irritant, not least because of what it sees as the Indonesian legal system's arbitrariness, as well as its potential unpreparedness for a case layered with environmental science.
  The nearly yearlong events over the modest-size gold mine on a hill above Buyat Bay, on the northeastern tip of the island of Sulawesi, have become at once an emotional drama and a bare-knuckle legal fight.
  Newmont has brought defamation suits against its outspoken critics and says it has refused to take part in court-ordered negotiations for settlement of a $133 million civil suit. 
  At the same time, Newmont has distributed gold pins, designed in the style of AIDS ribbons, so its 14,000 employees worldwide can show solidarity. They were worn at the annual general meeting in Denver in May as symbols of desire to ''free the five.''
  In June, after intense lobbying by the company, the Indonesian prosecutor dropped the five employees from the 72-page indictment, choosing instead to focus on Mr. Ness, the company's public face here. 
  In an expression of its outrage at what it considered unfair treatment, Newmont publicly highlighted the fact that Mr. Ness, a native of Minnesota, was barred from leaving Indonesia and could not attend the funeral of his granddaughter in the United States earlier this year.
  As the trial has approached, the company has also tried to build a sympathetic portrait of Mr. Ness, a longtime resident who is married to an Indonesian, and let it be known in this overwhelmingly Muslim country that he is a convert to Islam who has been to Mecca three times. 
  Manado, the scene of the trial and the capital of the province where the mine is located, is a familiar arena for Newmont. The company has been the biggest taxpayer to the provincial capital and has worked at playing the responsible corporate citizen. It has supported the local Sam Ratulangi University with grants and has been rewarded with stalwart support from its scientists. 
  During an interview in her chambers last week, the chief justice for the Manado provincial court, Juliana Wullur, 56, acknowledged that she was worried about understanding the scientific testimony. ''I'll have to be told what CN is,'' Ms. Wullur said, referring to the chemical formula for cyanide, which is commonly used in gold mining.
  A few days later, the Supreme Court in Jakarta requested that she and another judge be removed from the case because of its scientific complexity. Two new judges who attended special courses on the law and the environment replaced them.
  The choice of judges is especially important. Under Indonesian laws, which are based on Dutch jurisprudence, judges have exceptional authority over witnesses and evidence. 
  In many instances, according to Western lawyers, Indonesia's written laws are commendable but are often disregarded. Often cases are decided in the privacy of a judge's chambers, they said. There is no trial by jury.
  The prosecutor here in Manado, Robert Ilat, said in an interview last week that among the government's 34 witnesses would be 11 villagers from Buyat Bay who have complained of skin rashes, tumors and dizziness in the years after the mine began operations in 1996. 
  Newmont, which finished mining operations last year, said the diseases were common in coastal areas with poor sanitation.
  Mr. Ilat said he would also argue that after 2000 the company did not have a permit from the Environment Ministry to deposit the mine waste, known as tailings, into the sea. The waste contains among other things mercury, arsenic, cyanide compounds, copper and iron. 
  The company says that it had the permits and that the tailings are nothing more than ground-up rock and sand. Newmont pumped more than 2,000 tons of it daily into the warm bay waters during the eight-year life of the mine at a depth of about 270 feet.
  The heart of the trial, both sides say, will be the expert testimony and scientific evidence, where there is likely to be sharply differing interpretations.
  As evidence, the company said it would include studies done last year by the World Health Organization and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, a government- and industry-financed group in Australia.
  The health organization said the villagers at Buyat Bay did not suffer from Minamata disease, an acute form of methyl mercury poisoning. It did not address other diseases.
  The Australian study said heavy-metal concentrations in the bay waters were below international standards, although it found elevated levels of arsenic, mercury and antimony in sediment in parts of the bay. The company argues that those elements cannot enter the food chain.
  Mr. Ilat, the prosecutor, said he would rely on a separate Environment Ministry report from last November. It found that the bay waters were clean but that the sediment was polluted with mercury and arsenic, which it said had entered the food chain after being ingested by microorganisms that are food for fish.
  The ministry's report said the fish in the bay were high in arsenic and recommended that villagers curtail their consumption. Newmont officials rejected the conclusions.
  Within Newmont itself, the mine was the subject of dispute when an internal company audit in 2001 showed that from 1997 to 2001 the managers had allowed 33 tons of mercury to escape into the air and the bay waters.
  The audit, which cited a number of infractions of Indonesian regulations and company policies, said the mine had failed to operate a pollution control device to collect the mercury for disposal. The company did not inform the Indonesian government of the releases.
  Asked about the emission, Glenn C. Miller, a professor of environmental science at the University of Nevada, who is an expert in the mining industry, said that it ''was one of the largest amounts of mercury released in to the atmosphere for any gold mine in modern times.''
  Newmont said that the releases were not harmful and that when Indonesia gave its initial approval for the mine there was no standard for mercury in the air.
  After the findings concerning mercury were published in  last December, the company hired four consultants to review the audit. The review found that the emissions did not violate Indonesian or American air standards. 
  In an interview, Robert Gallagher, vice president of Newmont's Indonesian operations, described the audit as a draft and said that ''the areas of concern were addressed.''


 INDONESIA (95%); UNITED STATES (93%); HONG KONG (79%)






   

 

August 3, 2005 Wednesday 



 Persecuted Muslim sect finds home in Norcross

 
As members of a little-known Muslim sect trickled out of a Norcross mosque last month, an ominous-looking silver Mercedes circled in the parking lot.
Scrawled across the windshield in Urdu and English was a string of insults, including the word "kafir," or infidel.
"He was parading around the mosque, four or five times," said Ghayyur Khan, president of the Bait-ul-Baqi mosque. "Thanks to God he hasn't returned again."
It was an all-too-familiar scene for the Pakistan-born Khan and others in the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, a persecuted sect whose members are known as "Ahmadis." Orthodox Muslims consider Ahmadis heretics for believing Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908) was a prophet foretold by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. Most of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims believe Muhammad was the last prophet. 
Ahmadis can be thrown in jail for claiming to be Muslim in Pakistan and have faced violence in other countries with large Muslim populations. A mob armed with batons and stones pummeled the Ahmadiyya headquarters in Indonesia last month, forcing 700 Ahmadis to flee under police protection.
Attacks on Ahmadis are relatively rare in the United States, however. And aside from the Mercedes incident, the Norcross mosque has had a peaceful existence since it opened three years ago.
Bait-ul-Baqi, which means "House of the Everlasting God," is the only Ahmadi mosque in Georgia and one of 39 Ahmadi institutions in the United States listed on the movement's Web site.
Nearly 50 families worship there, including some who live as far away as Valdosta and Albany. Most of the worshippers are Pakistani-Americans, though the congregation also has African-American, Canadian-American and Indian-American members.
Their religious customs largely mirror those of mainstream Muslims. They observe the same holidays, make a pilgrimage to Mecca, refrain from drinking alcohol and pray five times a day.
And as was evident last Saturday, men and women are separated during prayer at the mosque. The men, most donning traditional Muslim kufis on their heads, sat in the front section of the aqua-carpeted suite off Oakbrook Parkway that used to house a Japanese travel agency. The walls held large banners with messages such as, "The best of you are those who treat their wives best" and the sect's credo: "Love for All, Hatred for None." News updates flashed across a television tuned to the Ahmadi-owned 24-hour satellite station.
The proceedings were piped into a back room where women gathered. They covered their heads with silky hijabs. A curtain in the hallway separated the men from the women, allowing only young children to scamper back and forth.
The congregation would pray, hold elections, listen to a poem in Urdu and hear a plea for support from a fellow Ahmadi who heads up the Humanity First international relief organization. But the first order or business was an update on the still-unfolding situation in Indonesia, where 10,000 members of a Muslim solidarity group attacked an Ahmadi compound.
The president and vice president of Indonesia issued strong statements condemning the attack, said Quamar Ahmad, the mosque's general secretary. Several newspapers had editorialized against the violence as well, he told the congregation. But concerns remain about the increasingly hostile atmosphere in Indonesia, Ahmad said.
"We are writing to the Indonesian president," he said.
Assaults and arrests involving Ahmadis are so regular that the sect keeps running tallies at www.thepersecution.org. Although they haven't faced persecution in Atlanta, Ahmadis are still very much outsiders in the metro area's Muslim community.
Hafiz A. Ghaffar Khan, director of the Georgia Islamic Institute of Religious & Social Sciences in Lawrenceville, said that's because Ahmadis simply aren't Muslims. Khan argues Mirza Ghulam Ahmad wasn't a prophet, but rather a British plant designed to cause a rift among Muslims. People who believe Ahmad's messianic claim are free to call themselves what they want, but it shouldn't be Muslim, Khan said.
"If we put up a Church of God sign, the Christian community would say, 'What are you doing?' " Khan said. "It's the same thing here."
Ahmadis counter that Ahmad created their movement under divine guidance to rejuvenate Islamic teachings. They claim a membership of more than 200 million Ahmadis globally, though mainstream Muslims say that figure is inflated.
Ahmad founded the Ahmadiyya movement in a remote part of Punjab, India, in 1889. He claimed to be the Messiah promised in the scriptures of Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Jews. Ahmadis say he was the first to interpret the concept of jihad as a personal struggle for spiritual discipline. Ahmad dismissed extremism and taught followers to fight with the pen rather than the sword, they say. Since Ahmad died, the sect has been headed by successors called khalifas. The current khalifa, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, was elected in 2003 and lives in London.
Bait-ul-Baqi president Khan said it hurts not to be accepted by other Muslims, but at least in America they can agree to disagree.
That's not the case in his native Pakistan, where officials amended the constitution in 1974 to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims. The laws that followed forbid the sect from sounding the call for prayer or displaying the Kalima, a declaration of faith among Muslims.
"If we call our mosque a mosque [in Pakistan], we can be taken to jail," Khan said. "They think that by quote-unquote 'pretending' to be Muslim, we are hurting the Muslim majority."
Though traditionally more tolerant, Bangladesh is growing more hostile to the Ahmadiyya movement as well. The country outlawed books published by the sect last year. And orthodox Muslims have held rallies this year in support of a law declaring Ahmadis non-Muslim.
Shuaib Mahmud, a software engineer from Snellville who worships at Bait-ul-Baqi, said such laws miss a fundamental teaching of Islam. "To you, your religion. To me, my religion," he said. "There is no compulsion in religion."
Mahmud, 38, said his was one of three Ahmadi families in the Atlanta area when he moved here 17 years ago. With no mosque, they would pray in each other's living rooms.
Now, the Ahmadis have plenty of space as they gather for the congregational prayer each Friday. That's where Khan, the mosque's president, delivered a sermon last month. The Powder Springs resident focused on the peaceful nature of Islam and how it has been lost to much of the world in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Khan, who owns a dry cleaners in Austell, read from "Murder in the Name of Allah," a book by Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad, a former spiritual leader of the Ahmadis.
"Islam is as closely related to terrorism as light is to darkness or life is to death or peace is to war," he said. ". . . I am fully convinced that almost every form of communal violence in the world today, whatever that is and whatever cloak it wears, is essentially political in nature.
"Religion is not the exploiter; it is itself exploited by internal or external political interests."
It's a lesson Khan learned growing up in the northern Pakistani city of Mardan. His uncle's pharmacy was burned to the ground. And townspeople tore down his family's mosque, brick by brick, he said. Later, when Khan was praying at another Ahmadi mosque, authorities covered up the Kalima with a wooden bracket.
So it was with great satisfaction that Khan and the other Pakistani natives opened Bait-ul-Baqi three years ago.
In front, across the tinted glass, they painted the Kalima: "There is none worthy of worship except Allah. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah."
They are 14 words all Muslims live by.
 
* A version of this article may appear in today's Atlanta & the World section.

 UNITED STATES (95%); PAKISTAN (93%); CANADA (79%);  






   

 

August 3, 2005 Wednesday 



 Are the Ahmadis Muslim?;
Sect members say yes; others in Islam say no

 
As members of a little-known Muslim sect trickled out of a Norcross mosque last month, an ominous-looking silver Mercedes circled in the parking lot.
Scrawled across the windshield, in Urdu and English, was a string of insults, including the word kafir --- infidel.
"He was parading around the mosque, four or five times," said Ghayyur Khan, president of the Bait-ul-Baqi mosque. "Thanks to God he hasn't returned again." 
It was an all-too-familiar scene for the Pakistan-born Khan and others in the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, a persecuted sect whose members are known as Ahmadis. Orthodox Muslims consider Ahmadis heretics for believing that Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908) was a prophet foretold by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. Most of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims believe Muhammad was the last prophet.
In Pakistan, Ahmadis can be thrown in jail for claiming to be Muslim, and they have faced violence in other countries with large Muslim populations. A mob armed with batons and stones pummeled the Ahmadiyya headquarters in Indonesia last month, forcing 700 Ahmadis to flee under police protection.
Attacks on Ahmadis are relatively rare in the United States. And aside from the Mercedes incident, the Norcross mosque has had a peaceful existence since it opened in the back of an office park near I-85 and Jimmy Carter Boulevard three years ago.
Bait-ul-Baqi, which means "House of the Everlasting God," is the only Ahmadi mosque in Georgia and one of 39 Ahmadi institutions in the United States listed on the community's Web site. Nearly 50 families worship there, including some from as far away as Valdosta and Albany. Most of the worshippers are Pakistani-American, though the congregation also has African-American, Canadian-American and Indian- American members.
Their religious customs largely mirror those of mainstream Muslims. They observe the same holidays, make a pilgrimage to Mecca, refrain from drinking alcohol and pray five times a day.
And as was evident on a recent Saturday, men and women are separated during prayer at the mosque. The men, most with traditional Muslim kufis on their heads, sat in the front section of the aqua-carpeted suite that once housed a Japanese travel agency. The walls held large banners with messages such as "The best of you are those who treat their wives best" and the sect's credo: "Love for All, Hatred for None." News updates flashed across a television tuned to the Ahmadi-owned 24-hour satellite station.
The proceedings were piped into a back room where women, their heads covered with silky hijabs, were gathered. A curtain in the hallway separated the two groups, allowing only young children to scamper back and forth.
The first order of business was an update on the still unfolding situation in Indonesia, where 10,000 members of a Muslim solidarity group attacked an Ahmadi compound.
The Messiah?
Assaults and arrests involving Ahmadis in Indonesia are so regular that the sect keeps running tallies at www.thepersecution.org. Although they haven't faced persecution in Atlanta, Ahmadis are very much outsiders in the metro area's Muslim community.
That's because Ahmadis simply aren't Muslim, said Hafiz A. Ghaffar Khan, director of the Georgia Islamic Institute of Religious & Social Sciences in Lawrenceville. Khan said Mirza Ghulam Ahmad wasn't a prophet but a British plant meant to cause a rift among Muslims. People who believe Ahmad's messianic claim are free to call themselves what they want, but it shouldn't be Muslim, Khan said.
Ahmad founded the Ahmadiyya movement in a remote part of Punjab, India, in 1889. He claimed to be the Messiah promised in the sacred writings of Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Jews. Ahmadis say he was the first to interpret the concept of jihad as a personal struggle. Ahmad dismissed extremism and taught followers to fight with the pen rather than the sword, they say.
Since Ahmad died, the sect has been headed by successors called khalifas. The present khalifa, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, was elected in 2003 and lives in London.
Khan, the mosque president, who owns a dry cleaner in Austell, said it hurts not to be accepted by other Muslims, but at least in America they can agree to disagree. That's not the case in his native Pakistan, where officials amended the constitution in 1974 to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims. The laws that followed forbid the sect from sounding the call for prayer or displaying the Kalima, a declaration of faith among Muslims.
"If we call our mosque a mosque [in Pakistan], we can be taken to jail," Khan said.
Though traditionally more tolerant, Bangladesh is growing more hostile to the Ahmadiyya movement as well. The country outlawed books published by the sect last year. And orthodox Muslims have held rallies this year in support of a law declaring Ahmadis to be non-Muslim.
Shuaib Mahmud, a software engineer in Snellville who worships at Bait-ul-Baqi, said such laws miss a fundamental teaching of Islam.
"To you, your religion. To me, my religion," he said. "There is no compulsion in religion."
Mahmud, 38, said his was one of three Ahmadi families in the Atlanta area when he moved here 17 years ago. With no mosque, they would pray in one another's living rooms.
Now the Ahmadis have plenty of space as they gather for the congregational prayer every Friday at Bait-ul-Baqi. In front, across the tinted glass, they painted the Kalima: "There is none worthy of worship except Allah. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah."
They are words all Muslims live by.
This article also appeared in the AJC Gwinnett News.

 UNITED STATES (95%); PAKISTAN (92%);  CANADA (74%); 







 
 


August 2, 2005 Tuesday



 Squandered Decade

 
Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud succeeded himself yesterday, bringing to Saudi Arabia's throne his baggage of a decade's worth of squandered opportunities to defang Islam, make peace with Israel, and improve the lot of his mostly poor people.
Technically, of course, the 81-year-old Abdullah became Saudi Arabia's monarch after the expected death of his half brother Fahd bin Abdulaziz. In truth, as crown prince he'd been ruling the oil-rich kingdom since a stroke transformed Fahd into a vegetable a decade ago.
If that decade is any indication of Abdullah's capacity to govern, then it could surely be said that he squandered numerous opportunities in the last decade to curb the growth of virulent Wahhabi Islam that is now threatening neighboring Arab states and many developing nations, not to mention America and Europe. 
He also squandered several timely opportunities to build bridges with Israel. He squandered opportunities to extend friendship to the global Jewish community, instead standing mute while some of his courtiers and countrymen uttered chilling phrases like "Kill the Jews."
Abdullah squandered opportunities to use Saudi Arabia's annual oil revenues of $95 billion to alleviate the widening poverty in his desert kingdom of 26.5 million people. Only 100,000 of them are members of an uber-privileged community on account of their descent from the royal family.
The supply of Saudi oil is seemingly endless: With 261 billion barrels, the kingdom has a fourth of the world's proven oil reserves. At the current production rate of between 7 million and 9 million barrels a day, the Saudis can expect revenues pouring in for another century. If oil prices continue to remain in the vicinity of $50 a barrel, they are assured of anywhere up to $100 billion annually.
Because this sort of money is guaranteed to keep every Saudi aristocrat a Croesus, and because only so much can be channeled into pursuits of the flesh - or, at a stretch, the mind - it's got to go somewhere.
That somewhere, during the decade that Abdullah has been in power, included preaching halls dominated by mullahs of Wahhabism, a particularly stern, unforgiving, and anti-Semitic sect of Islam.
The paradox of profligate Saudi pleasure seekers contributing to the charity coffers of radical mosques is explained by the fact that the very notion of Saudi Arabia came into existence in the 18th century through a pact between a desert brigand, Mohammed bin Saud, and a Wahhabi proselytizer, Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab. The Saudis - the tribe affiliated with bin Saud - and the Wahhabis captured the Muslim holy city of Mecca in 1802, thereby establishing their legitimacy as guardians of the religion.
It would be another 134 years before various tribal territories were consolidated, and the state of Saudi Arabia was formally named and born. Abdullah's father, Abdul Aziz bin Saud, unilaterally gave himself the title of king.
The title did not necessarily confer legitimacy. And that has long been at the root of Arab skepticism about the Saudi "royals."
The royals smothered such skepticism by lavishly underwriting white-camel projects in the Middle East. At home, they strengthened their nexus with the Wahhabi clergy. And, spurred by medieval-minded mullahs, they started exporting Wahhabism to parts of Africa and Asia.
They made financial gifts that enabled Third World leaders to build mosques, many of which began to incubate a new class of Muslims, the fanatics who were willing to become suicide bombers.
Abdullah may not have necessarily wanted such an outcome, of course, not the least because he was cozying up to the West - his rescuer of last resort in the event of a crisis, such as the 1979 takeover of the holy mosque in Mecca, and Saddam Hussein's threat to destroy Saudi Arabia's 300 oil fields.
And all the while, he and his fellow royals pledged allegiance to America's efforts to crack down on global terrorism.
The threat of that terrorism, and the expansion of Wahhabism, is now generating anxiety among Saudi Arabia's neighbors, and even beyond them. Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population (242 million) and India, which has the second biggest (nearly 200 million), are both concerned that Saudifinanced Wahhabi mosques are breeding new radicals intent on spreading Islam, destroying Western influence, and imposing a global caliphate.
These countries aren't likely to be especially encouraged by Abdullah's accession to the Saudi throne yesterday. Neither should America be. If Abdullah failed to stanch the flow of funds to sources that were openly hostile to free societies, if his kingdom nurtured the murderers of September 11, 2001, on his watch, if Saudi money spread radicalism among the Muslims of the Philippines while he was crown prince and de facto ruler, why would things be any different now that he wields the "royal" scepter?

 SAUDI ARABIA (98%); ISRAEL (93%); EUROPE (79%)








 


July 31, 2005 Sunday  




 Muslim groups not satisfied with apology from Tancredo

 
U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo's remarks about bombing Islamic holy sites, including Mecca, were so inflammatory and insensitive that a simple apology is not enough, Muslim officials said Saturday at a Denver rally. 
"He needs to be removed from office," said Gerald Muhammad, a Nation of Islam minister from Denver. "We're not going to stop pushing until he is censored. We can't afford to have a man like that in office."
Muhammad, who said Tancredo's comments were racist, was one of several Muslim leaders who spoke to a crowd of about 200 people at Civic Center on Saturday afternoon for the "With Justice Comes Peace" rally.
The controversy began July 15 when the Republican congressman, asked on a Florida talk-radio show how the United States might respond to a nuclear strike by Islamic terrorists, said, "You could take out their holy sites."
When host Pat Campbell replied, "You're talking about bombing Mecca," Tancredo answered, "Yeah."
Tancredo told a Muslim group Wednesday that he was sorry if anyone was offended by his comments. But his spokesman, Will Adams, stressed that Tancredo stands by his initial remarks and would not apologize for what was said.
Israr Haq, 42, of Northglenn said he came to the rally because he worries that Tancredo's comments could encourage prejudice.
"He should be bringing people together, not dividing them," Haq said. "The congressman went overboard."
Saadah Sahlan, an Indonesian Muslim who brought her three daughters to the rally, said she worries that Tancredo's remarks will cause people to be more hostile to Muslims.
"He shouldn't say something that will cause more violence," Sahlan said.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.

 







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


July 30, 2005 Saturday



 People of all faiths pray for end to terrorism

 
   BOROBUDUR, Indonesia (AP) -- One million candles lit up the ancient Borobudur Buddhist temple in predominantly Muslim Indonesia as people of all faiths prayed for an end to acts of terrorism, such as the deadly bombings that have rocked Egypt and Britain.
"Terrorism must be regarded as the enemy of all religions," said Dr.  
Syafii Maarif, a past leader of the nation's largest Islamic group, Muhammadiyah. "In the end, the forces of light, reason and hope must overpower the forces of darkness, despair and violence."
More than 5,000 people turned out for the event this past Saturday at Borobudur, a massive Buddhist temple built more than 1,100 years ago -- about three centuries before the arrival of Islam. Indonesia is now the world's most populous Muslim nation.

 INDONESIA (93%)







 The Florida Times-Union 
Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville)

July 30, 2005 Saturday



 BEACH SHORTS

 
APARTMENTS ARE CONDEMNED
An Atlantic Beach apartment complex has been condemned by the city.
City Manager Jim Hanson announced at Monday's City Commission meeting that the Palms Apartments were condemned because of "horrible" conditions such as electrical, plumbing, heating and other functional problems at the complex in the 100 block of Atlantic Gardens Circle.
About 40 people live in the 100-unit apartment complex. They have until Aug. 31 to relocate. 
The condemnation came after repeated warnings and inspections by city code enforcers.
Hanson said he expects the apartment complex to be torn down.
FREE BREAST CANCER EXAMS
Women may get free breast cancer exams during a screening program Tuesday at the St. Johns County Health Department.
The walk-in clinic will run from 9 to 11 a.m. at the health center at 1955 U.S. 1 S., Suite 100, in St. Augustine. An appointment is not required.
A gynecologist will provide clinical breast exams, education in self-exams procedures and referrals to Flagler Hospital Imaging Center for mammograms. The Breast Cancer Education and Screening Program will cover the cost of mammograms for women who are uninsured or under-insured.
For more information on the program, call (904) 825-5055, extension 1112.
NEW PARKS AND REC BUILDING?
The Jacksonville Beach City Council will consider a proposal to build a new parks and recreation building at South Beach Park when it meets Monday.
The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at City Hall at 11 Third St. N.
The current parks and recreation center, at 321 Penman Road, was built in the 1950s for the Boys & Girls Club. But the building has required, or will require, repairs to its air conditioning system, roof and ceiling, officials said. City officials also said the recreation department needs more space for staff.
Putting the building at the park on South Beach Parkway would provide a visible presence at one of the city's busiest parks, said Gary Meadors, the city's grounds maintenance director.
Meadors recommends that the city seek bids for a firm to handle the building's design and construction. City staff will also ask the city's Community Redevelopment Agency to approve funding for the proposed center. The council agenda documents didn't specify how much the new center would cost.
ST. JOHNS SCHOOL SCHEDULE SET
The St. Johns County school district has announced its starting and ending times for the 2005-06 school year. Most times are similar to last year's schedule.
Elementary schools will continue to have early dismissal at 1 p.m. Wednesdays. Elementary schools will be in session from 8 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. on all other days. Middle school starting and ending times will stay the same, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. All five high schools will begin around 8:30 a.m. and end about 3 p.m. Bartram Trail High seniors have additional class options beginning at 7:40 a.m.
Friday is the first day for students. On Thursday, all schools in the district will hold open houses from 8 a.m. to noon.
STEP TOWARD SENIOR CENTER
St. Johns County is one step closer to building a new senior citizens center in Palm Valley.
On Tuesday, county commissioners approved changing one of the three parcels where the senior center will be built, at Landrum Lane and Palm Valley Road, from a designation of commercial to government.
The main access to the center will be from Landrum Lane. A second access will be available on the east side via Palm Valley Road.
NEPTUNE ANIMAL ORDINANCE
The Neptune Beach City Council will consider a revised ordinance regarding nuisance animals Monday evening.
The ordinance will address modifications in the city's law on nuisances caused by animals, dogs on the beach and registration and licensing of animals.
The council meeting begins at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 116 First St.
MSD MEETING IS MONDAY
Ponte Vedra Beach's Municipal Service District board will select and new chairman and hear from St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar on Monday.
The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the Ponte Vedra Beach branch library.
Shoar will give a brief presentation about district fees for the next year. The board pays the Sheriff's Office for supplemental police coverage in the district, in northeast Ponte Vedra Beach.
There will also be a brief presentation about the cost and benefits of glass recycling.
NEW DESTROYER TO COME
The Navy's 49th guided-missile destroyer, USS Farragut, will be based at Mayport Naval Station after it is commissioned.
The ship, named for Adm. David Glasgow Farragut, was christened this month at the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine.
Cmdr. Deidre L. McLay of Boulder City, Nev., will be its first commanding officer. Her crew will have 383 officers and enlisted personnel. The 510-foot ship will have four gas turbine engines to power it to speeds in excess of 30 knots.
The date and location of the 9,200-ton ship's commissioning ceremony has not been determined, but it is tentatively planned for late May or June.
FULBRIGHT GRANT
Ronald Lukens-Bull, a University of North Florida assistant professor and Jacksonville Beach resident, was selected for a Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Grant. The program matches U.S. scholars with international institutions to work on a particular short-term project.
"Dr. Lukens-Bull has done a number of innovative things in teaching the past few years, drawing specifically on his research interest in exploring the Islamic world," said Michael Hallett, Department of Criminal Justice chairman.
Lukens-Bull, who teaches anthropology, sociology and criminal justice, will work for six weeks with faculty at the Walailak University in Southern Thailand. As a Fulbright senior specialist, he will contribute his knowledge on Islam in Southeast Asia toward developing courses, assisting with research and other projects.
Lukens-Bull's research agenda centers on Islamic religion, education, politics and globalization in Indonesia. He recently wrote his third book, A Peaceful Jihad: Negotiating Identity and Modernity in Muslim Java. To gather research, he immersed himself in the Islamic community of Java, Indonesia.
MEMORIAL PLANNED
The family of the late Jane Cates, who worked at the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club for about 30 years, will hold a memorial service for her.
The service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Grand Ballroom of the Inn & Club, 200 Ponte Vedra Blvd.
Cates also kept minutes for the Municipal Service District and the Ponte Vedra Community Association for those 30 years.
FISHING, A FAMILY AFFAIR

 




9

   


July 30, 2005 Saturday



 Religion Briefs

 
Sherrill church will celebrate 150th
St. Matthew Lutheran Church, Sherrill, Iowa, will celebrate its 150th anniversary on Aug. 14 beginning with a 10:30 a.m. worship service.
Guest homilist will be the Rev. Christian Kincaid from Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Dubuque.
The public is invited to attend the service, a noon meal (reservations required), and the afternoon program featuring special music and a guest speaker. Homemade ice cream will be served after the program. 
Retreat planned by Church Women United
Church Women United presents "The Media and Our Faith," a partial day retreat on Sept. 9, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Joanie McKeown, a pastoral minister in the Diocese of Superior, Wis., will speak on the impact the media has made and how it affects faith. It is a day designed for women of all ages and faiths.
Fee (including dinner) is $30. Call 608/748-4411, ext. 804 for information and reservations.
Report: Utah's Mormon population shrinking
SALT LAKE CITY - Mormons comprise a substantial majority of Utah residents, but their share of the state's population has been declining and will continue to do so in the years ahead, according to projections in a published report.
Within three years, the state will have its lowest share of Mormons since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began tallying its membership decades ago, according to estimates by The Salt Lake Tribune. If the trend persists, Mormons will no longer be a Utah majority by 2030, the paper said in a recent copyrighted story.
Indonesian people pray for end to terrorism
BOROBUDUR, Indonesia - One million candles lit up the ancient Borobudur Buddhist temple in predominantly Muslim Indonesia as people of all faiths prayed for an end to acts of terrorism, such as the deadly bombings that have rocked Egypt and Britain.
More than 5,000 people turned out for the event recently in Borobudur, a massive Buddhist temple built more than 1,100 years ago - about three centuries before the arrival of Islam. Indonesia is now the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Worshippers prayed for victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed more than 170,000 people across Asia, and an end to suffering of all kinds worldwide, from poverty to war.
Islamic museum, mosque to open
BALTIMORE - Maryland Muslims plan to open a museum in downtown Baltimore to counter stereotypes of Muslims that emerged after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Last week, two Muslim groups dedicated a mosque and community center in a former bank. By December, they plan to open the museum there, featuring thousands of pieces donated by private citizens or loaned from other institutions.
Eventually, the center will open a free health care clinic and a shelter for battered women, said Ghazal Chughtai, executive director of the center.

 UNITED STATES (94%);  ASIA (79%); 







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


July 26, 2005 Tuesday



 World datelines

 
Afghanistan
KABUL -- Two separate assaults on U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan killed 11 rebels, a U.S. service member and an Afghan soldier, the U.S. military said Monday. The latest violence comes amid fears that crucial legislative elections in September may be threatened by an upsurge in militant attacks, which have left more than 750 people dead since March. Aruba 
ORANJESTAD -- Aruban authorities have dispatched a prosecutor to consult with the FBI and brought in experts from the Netherlands as they investigate the disappearance of an Alabama teenager, the Aruban prosecutor's office said Monday. Aruba has agreed to show transcripts of interrogations to the FBI, which is acting in an advisory role in disappearance of Natalee Holloway, in a sign of increased cooperation that drew praise from the family of the teen who vanished on the last night of a high school graduation trip to the Dutch Caribbean island. Brazil
GONZAGA -- Hundreds of relatives and friends of a Brazilian shot to death in London after being mistaken for a terrorist marched along the cobblestone streets of his hometown Monday, demanding the arrest of the British police who fired the fatal shots. Some of the protesters held banners denouncing British police as the real terrorists; other placards were adorned with snapshots of Jean Charles de Menezes, urging British Prime Minister Tony Blair to send his body home so it can be buried. All said Blair's apology did not go far enough.
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Heroin flowing out of Afghanistan is creating a new AIDS epidemic among drug addicts in Eurasia, where the disease once had been rare, scientists said Monday. Dr. Christopher Beyrer said a rising number of HIV infections had been detected in Belarus, Iran, Moldavia, Tajikistan, the Ukraine and other countries along the route traffickers use to smuggle Afghan heroin into Eastern Europe. HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, is often spread among intravenous drug users who share needles. Indonesia
BIREUN -- Islamic authorities in Indonesia's Aceh province arrested 36 men and women for violating laws prohibiting unmarried couples from spending time alone together after dark, officials said Monday. The laws prohibiting young couples from being alone together are aimed at preventing premarital sex, considered sinful in Islam. Aceh is one of the most intensely Islamic areas in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Israel
JERUSALEM -- A top army general and Israel's vice premier said Monday that next month's evacuation of Gaza's 21 Jewish settlements should be sped up to impede violent resistance. Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the Israeli army commander for the Gaza area, said the military is prepared to empty out the settlements in three weeks if there is no significant resistance or Palestinian fire. Vice Premier Ehud Olmert, who is close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said a speedup would limit opposition. Mexico
MEXICO CITY -- The government and private companies launched a project Monday to map the genes of Mexicans, in hopes of developing treatments for health problems such as diabetes, asthma and hypertension. Based on the Human Genome Project, the effort is the largest study of Latin American genes and could usher in a new medical era for the region, authorities said. Philippines
MANILA -- President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo shrugged off an impeachment complaint filed hours before her state of the nation address Monday, declining to even mention the crisis as she called for overhauling the Philippines' unstable democracy. With opposition lawmakers boycotting her speech and 25,000 protesters outside demanding her resignation, Arroyo said Congress should amend the constitution to end the U.S.-style presidency and switch to a parliamentary form of government. Zimbabwe
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday he wants to go to Zimbabwe to see firsthand the effects of a much-condemned, government-led clearance of urban slums and insisted those made homeless must be given new homes. He announced his desire to go to Zimbabwe three days after the release of a devastating report by a U.N. envoy that the slum clearances have left an estimated 700,000 people without their homes and livelihoods or both.

 AFGHANISTAN (96%); ARUBA (96%); NETHERLANDS (94%);  ISRAEL (93%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (92%);  UNITED KINGDOM (92%); MEXICO (92%); UKRAINE (79%); CARIBBEAN ISLANDS (79%); MOLDOVA, REPUBLIC OF (79%); EUROPE (79%); BELARUS (79%); TAJIKISTAN (79%); IRAN,  (79%); BRAZIL (56%); EASTERN EUROPE (53%)







   


July 25, 2005 Monday  




 Editors Tackle Taboos With Girlish Glee

 
''I'm sorry, but I just can't control those girls.'' That is how one of this country's tycoons is said to deflect complaints about articles in Newsbreak, a magazine he founded. 
 ''Those girls'' are the women who edit and manage the magazine, which, with its spunk and spice, has more than demonstrated its independence from the privileged and powerful. Newsbreak has brought down a senator, set off an investigation into corruption in the military, and -- most daring of all -- exposed the fault lines inside this country's most influential institution: the Roman Catholic Church.  
  This month, with the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on the brink, ''those girls'' put out a special edition: an account of a meeting of the council of bishops, during which the papal nuncio told them -- ''scolded them,'' the magazine said -- to stay out of politics. 
 What stunned most Filipinos, accustomed to the past involvement in politics by the church, was that the bishops neither endorsed Mrs. Arroyo, nor called for her resignation.
 ''Those girls'' are the editor, Marites Danguilan Vitug, a 50-year-old with an infectious laugh that punctuates every conversation, and the managing editor, Glenda M. Gloria, just turned 40, a former senior editor at one of the country's major daily newspapers. Ten of Newsbreak's 14 senior editors and writers are women.
 Since the end of Ferdinand E. Marcos' dictatorial rule in 1986, the Philippine press has been free. But being free doesn't necessarily mean being responsible, and the newspapers in this archipelago of 87 million people are as raucous as the politics. 
 Businesses in the region still pay journalists under the table, and powerful people routinely file libel suits that get favorable hearings. Such suits have nearly destroyed the high quality Indonesian magazine Tempo, which has worked with Newsbreak to report on Islam in Southeast Asia.
 In Newsbreak's first issue -- Jan. 24, 2001 -- the editors advised readers: ''The magazine's staff is composed of journalists who believe in honest, incisive, and spunky reportage.'' Few would doubt it has succeeded in that. The editors added, ''We like to believe that good journalism sells.'' That is questionable here.
 Newsbreak has barely 1,000 paid subscribers, and about 2,000 newsstand sales. But the subscriber list includes more than half of the Philippine Congress, and just about every embassy in Manila.
 The magazine was conceived in 2000, when two venture capitalists, members of the country's elite, unhappy with the superficiality, sensationalism and lack of balance in the coverage of the country's mainstream dailies, approached Ms. Vitug and Ms. Gloria.
 The two women, both of whom studied at the London School of Economics, had just finished a book, ''Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao,'' about the rise of the Islamic movement, including the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, on the southern island of Mindanao.
 It is a book that foreign diplomats here have on the shelf as essential reading about a region where the United States has had a military presence since 2002.
 The men were thinking of a Web site. The women thought a weekly magazine would be better. (It is now biweekly, for lack of money, and many of the articles appear on the Web site of The Philippine Daily Inquirer -- www.inq7.net.) The men insist on remaining behind the scenes and the episode about ''those girls'' was related by the women themselves. 
 The magazine's first major challenge to entrenched power was almost its demise.
 In February 2003, the cover story was about a Catholic bishop, one of the country's most powerful, who had carried on an affair with a married woman and had fathered a child by her. 
 The magazine found the woman and interviewed her for three hours, unearthing details about the affair and documents in which the bishop, Crisostomo Yalung had acknowledged paternity. 
 In a country that is 80 percent Catholic, ''un-Christian'' was among the nicer epithets thrown at the editors. Ms. Gloria's mother, a staunch Catholic, told her daughter she disapproved.
 Church leaders were furious, and under pressure, one member of the magazine's board resigned.
 ''We thought we wouldn't survive,'' Ms. Vitug recalled.
 Instead, it was a turning point. ''It put us on the map,'' Ms. Vitug said, with her laugh.
 (The bishop left the country, and is believed to be in the United States, Ms. Gloria said.)
 Four months later, the magazine ran another cover story about a bishop accused of out-of-town trysts and sexual harassment. 
 It has been equally uncompromising in looking at corruption in the military. One cover had the photograph of a general superimposed over a $100 bill. Using various property search services they found on the Internet, the reporters had discovered that the general owned a condominium in Trump Tower and other property in the United States. (The general is under house arrest as authorities investigate.) 
 The property searches cost $100, Ms. Gloria said -- a not insignificant sum for the magazine, whose offices are four small rooms on the fifth floor of an apartment building. 
 It still gets some money from its wealthy founders, but as venture capitalists they had intended for the publication to support itself eventually rather than to continue to be subsidized.
 Asked what magazines are the models for Newsbreak, Ms. Vitug said, ''Vanity Fair'' and ''Mother Jones'' -- the former for covers that sell, and the latter because it raises money from foundations and even other governments. 
 For more reporting in Mindanao, the magazine has received $42,000 from the United States Institute of Peace, a Congressionally funded nonpartisan organization based in Washington that promotes the prevention and resolution of conflicts.
 For a story about how federalism might work in the Philippines -- currently, virtually all power in the sprawling archipelago resides in Manila, with little authority in the provinces -- the editors approached the Swiss Embassy, which gave them $10,000. 
 The editors know they must pay more attention to getting subscribers and selling advertising. 
 But they don't want to stop being reporters themselves.
 ''When you're small, you have fun,'' Ms. Gloria said. ''That's why we don't want to get too big.''


 PHILIPPINES (94%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);  ASIA (79%)






   

 

July 24, 2005 



 Female circumcision has defenders, more critics

 
About 2 million girls worldwide have their genitals cut each year, ranging from removal of the skin around the clitoris --- the female organ corresponding to the penis --- to the total cutting away of the clitoris and vaginal lips. Often the external genitalia are stitched together in a procedure called infibulation. 
Infibulation seeks to ensure that a girl will not have sex before marriage; if she does, a prospective husband will know because the stitching is gone.
Most of the affected girls are from Africa, where the practice remains widespread in 28 countries. But it is also found in some Middle Eastern countries and among some Muslim groups in Indonesia, Pakistan and India.
Various sects of Christians, Jews and Muslims have at times embraced the custom. Today, some Muslim religious leaders continue to support the practice, saying it honors Muslim women. Others condemn it, arguing that it has no religious foundation.
"It's not the religion telling them to do this, it's custom," Imam Plemon El-Amin, leader of one of Atlanta's largest mosques, told the Journal-Constitution in March. "I see nothing within the Quran or within the practices of Prophet Muhammad whatsoever that supports female circumcision."
The millennium-old practice has been performed for a variety of reasons: to stem female sexual desire, preserve virginity or rid the body of the clitoris, believed by some to be an unhealthy organ.
The cutting ritual remains a prerequisite for marriage in many cultures.
Typically girls are between 4 and 12 when they are cut, often by laypeople, usually women, who frequently use unsterilized instruments and no anesthesia. The painful procedure can cause infection, bleeding and even death. Long-term physical and psychological effects can include complications in childbirth, chronic pelvic pain, scar tissue and retention of urine and menstrual blood.

 PAKISTAN (79%);  INDIA (79%); MIDDLE EAST (76%); 






  
  


July 24, 2005 Sunday 



 Asian news in brief

 

 
JAPAN
 
Nuclear conference set in city hit by bomb
Scientists and academics from 40 countries gathered in Hiroshima for an anti-nuclear-weapon conference Saturday, ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Japanese city's destruction by a U.S. atomic bomb in World War II.
The annual Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, which will feature workshops on security in East Asia, terrorism and nuclear proliferation, will probably issue a declaration urging governments to strive harder for nuclear disarmament when the meeting concludes July 27, said Pugwash representative Takao Takahara.
Among the speakers opening the conference was Akihiro Takahashi, a former director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and a survivor of the city's Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing, which killed or wounded 160,000 people. 
 
CHINA
 
Zimbabwe leader visits, may ask for food, oil
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe began a weeklong visit to China on today that is expected to include a plea for oil and food to aid his state's failing economy.
Mugabe, who arrived Saturday, will meet his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, as well as Premier Wen Jiabao and Wu Bangguo, chairman of China's legislature, the official Xinhua News Agency said. No details of what the two sides would discuss were released.
Zimbabwe has suffered five years of steep decline since the government started seizing some 5,000 white-owned farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans. The agriculture-based economy also has been hit by years of drought, leaving an estimated 4 million people in need of food relief.
 
THAILAND
 
Program aims to boost newborns' brainpower
The government will soon present Thai couples having their first baby with gifts designed to boost the youngster's brainpower, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Saturday.
''The brain is like the CPU in a computer. . . . The practice of thinking will develop different parts of the brain to work together and to boost the power of thinking,'' he said in his weekly radio address.
The gift sets, to be distributed by the Health Ministry, will include a parenting handbook, children's story books, and items to help develop child's cognitive and artistic abilities, Thaksin said.
Distribution will begin Thursday to mark the 53rd birthday of Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. The prince's wife, Princess Srirasmi, gave birth to a son in April this year.
 
In other news

 
 A magnitude-6 earthquake shook the Tokyo area Saturday, injuring at least 27 people, rattling buildings across the sprawling capital and temporarily suspending flights and train services.

 
 One million candles lit up the ancient Borobudur temple in mostly Muslim Indonesia on Saturday as people of all faiths prayed for an end to acts of terrorism, such as the deadly bombings that have rocked Egypt and Britain.

 
 C.R. Irani, chairman and editor of India's Statesman newspaper, died in a hospital Saturday of multiple organ failure, a news report said. He was 75.
From the Associated Press

 JAPAN (94%); CHINA (93%); EASTERN ASIA (92%); ASIA (92%); INDIA (79%); THAILAND (79%);  






  


July 18, 2005 Monday, 



 If Muslim countries reject terror, the tide may turn;
A poll on global attitudes finds violent tactics are losing favor while democracy is gaining.

 

News reports about the war on terror, and global attitudes about the U.S.-led effort to establish a democratic government in a self-ruled Iraq, have been relentlessly pessimistic.
Continued attacks by al-Qaida insurgents have surely caused many to question if the scourge of terror will ever subside. Terrorists have managed to clamp the world in a morbid grip. Where and when will its people make a unified stand and stamp out this cancerous force?
A new poll finally offers some hope. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, support or acceptance of terrorism has "declined dramatically" in some key Muslim countries.
Predominantly Muslim countries, of course, are the breeding grounds for insurgent violence. Experience has shown that it is an impossible task to defeat militants with just soldiers, guns and security barricades. Only a groundswell of anti-terror support around the globe will root the militants from hiding places and training areas.
Likewise, a widespread commitment to reject the tenets of violence is essential to stanch the flow of insurgent volunteers. If terrorist leaders can no longer summon new recruits, the tide will turn.
According to the Pew poll, growing numbers of Muslims say democracy can work in their country, fewer believe suicide bombings targeting civilians are justified in the defense of Islam and a number of Islamic countries are now as alarmed by extremists as Western countries are. Indonesia, victimized by several deadly bombings, showed the greatest reduction in support of suicide bombings.
It appears the violent insurgent tactics may finally be backfiring. A worldwide rejection of terrorist violence can not come a moment too soon.

  IRAQ (92%);  







   


July 17, 2005 Sunday  




 Blowing Up in the West

 
THE young man was poor and without prospects, but that was not why he carried the bomb. He had not been recruited and was not out for revenge, he said, but simply longed to fulfill ''the love of martyrdom.'' As he lugged his heavy black bag toward an Israeli bus stop, his main worry was not moral but practical. The bomb, evidently derived from fertilizer, smelled terrible, and might give him away. He bought a $3 bottle of perfume and doused it. 
  He was a figure out of a nightmare scenario of cultish, facile killing and self-destruction. But he was real enough, a Palestinian named Zaydan Zaydan, 18. He was interviewed in an Israeli hospital three years ago after the bomb went off, wounding only him.
 
  The nightmare assumed a new form last week when British authorities revealed that four British men were suspected of detonating the explosions that killed at least 54 people and injured hundreds in downtown London on July 7. Framed by new suicide attacks in Israel and Iraq, the news suggested the European breakout of suicide violence that many had feared since the Sept. 11 attacks. The British authorities were initially careful not to call the men suicide bombers, though they said all four died in the bombings.
  If the attacks were Islamist suicide bombings, they were the first such strikes in Western Europe, terrorism experts said. This was once a freakish phenomenon, and then a more frequent but concentrated one, confined to battlegrounds like Lebanon and Chechnya. But a ''love of martyrdom,'' with its paired desire to kill indiscriminately, may now have taken hold in Leeds, England, just as it did for Zaydan Zaydan in his hometown, Jenin, on the West Bank. 
  With the successful deployment of a human delivery system, terrorists in Europe appeared to have at hand the same arsenal -- hardware-store ingredients, some secrecy and cunning, and a lethal ideology -- that they have used to torment Middle Eastern societies. 
  Yet while there was new cause for fear, there was also reason for hope. Experts on terrorism said the danger of suicide attack was rising, but that outside of areas embroiled in conflict it was still partly contained by a firewall of social condemnation. ''One should not draw too many parallels between what is happening in the Middle East and what is happening elsewhere,'' said Efraim Halevy, a former chief of Mossad, Israel's spy agency. ''It's not the same balance of power within the community,'' he said. ''That's No.1. That's very important.''
  Still, Mr. Halevy added, while the parallels might be limited, some did exist. ''The threat is such that a very small number of people can bring about an act of such devastating consequences,'' he said.
  Several experts on terrorism said they would not be surprised if suicide had indeed emerged as a weapon in the hands of native Muslim terrorists in Western Europe. ''What I'm most surprised about is that it hasn't happened before now,'' said Lance Emory, who served with the F.B.I. in Britain from 1998 to 2003. 
  Mr. Emory said the British had ''done a pretty good job'' and had ''had successes'' disrupting attacks in the past. But suicide bombing is ''just the most difficult thing to try to ferret out,'' he said, ''because you've got someone who's totally committed.''
  Several terrorism experts said that with extremist preaching preparing the way, little sophisticated infrastructure is needed to conduct bombings like those in London.
  ''I don't think it needs a recruiting system at all,'' Mr. Halevy said. ''All it needs is that there should be in place a very small capacity which would enable young people who wish to follow this path to find their way to Afghanistan and Pakistan, to get training.'' He added, ''The masterminds, they're not looking for multitudes of people.'' Out of 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, he said, there was bound to be ''a small nucleus of people who were extreme.'' 
  Fighting in Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza appears to be further fanning the desire -- or supplying the rationale -- for violence, increasing estrangement from the surrounding non-Muslim community. Some terrorist experts also warned that European jihadists who went to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan were returning with new skills. 
  This does not mean, however, that counterterrorist experts anticipate a wave of suicide bombings in Europe, like what Israel experienced in 2002. '' There is no general support for this kind of militancy in the communities from which the suicides -- the Muslim militants in Europe -- come,'' said Ariel Merari, a professor at Tel Aviv University and an Israeli authority on terrorism. ''If you look at the history and geography of suicide attacks worldwide, you will find that the great, great majority of them took place in places and at times where there was an acute conflict.'' He listed Israel, Iraq, Chechnya and Lebanon in the 1980's. 
  Even in Muslim countries like Morocco, Tunisia and Indonesia -- subjected to suicide attacks on a Bali nightclub in 2002 and a Jakarta hotel in 2003 -- episodic terrorism has not developed into a sustained suicide campaign. 
  Britain has begun a painful inquiry into the priming of its bombers. Politics tends to constrict serious discussion of the influences driving suicide bombers, with Islam's defenders reluctant to explore its role and its critics reluctant to explore the effects of misery and conflict.
  Yet Palestinian suicide bombers -- maybe the most closely studied sample -- defy simple categorization. All have been Muslim, but not all have been deeply devout; some were impoverished, others relatively affluent and educated; some had lost loved ones to the conflict, while others had not; some were manipulated by recruiters; others seemed to recruit themselves. 
  In the West Bank and Gaza in the peak years of the second Palestinian intifada, suicidal killing achieved first a heroic or celebrity status, then a self-reinforcing normalcy. Posters and music videos celebrated ''martyrs.'' Where once a suicide attacker underwent weeks of indoctrination and preparation, including prayer and fasting, young men like Zaydan Zaydan -- and young women -- received little more instruction than how to press a button. It became a cliche of both Palestinian militant leaders and Israeli security officials that the terrorist bottleneck was the bomb, not the bomber. 
  While some voices were raised in criticism of suicide bombing, far more praised or at least accepted it. Iyad Sarraj, a Palestinian psychiatrist in Gaza City, said early this year that glorifying death gave Palestinians a way out of despair and that killing allowed some to feel powerful rather than helpless, as they saw their fathers. Though he opposed suicide bombing, he said he could not criticize martyrs. ''They are untouchable people -- they are prophets, they are saints,'' he said. ''This is what the culture believes.''
  Some social science studies have found that suicide can move through a population like an epidemic, with the transgressive act of one young person lowering the threshold for others to follow. Michael Clarke, a professor of defense studies at King's College in London, expressed the fear that others who want to be famous might now emulate the British bombers. 
  ''The people who have to address this are our own Muslim community,'' Mr. Clarke said. ''We all know that there are corners in this Muslim society where they tolerate rabble-rousing preachers and they tolerate anti-Semitism, and that is what they havegot to address.''
  At least one of the young men from Leeds was from an affluent family, and none were particularly poor or unhappy, according to press reports. At least two had become devout. At least two had traveled to Pakistan. At least some of their parents clearly opposed such violence. A breakthrough for the police came when the mother of one, fearing her son was a victim of the bombings, informed police he was missing.
  Jessica Stern, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the author of ''Terror in the Name of God,'' spent part of the spring in the Netherlands investigating the attitudes of young Muslims there. She said she feared that for some of them, violent Islamism had become a fad. 
  For some, she said, ''To be angry and rebellious these days is to be angry, rebellious and Islamist, and, unfortunately, to be violent.'' In a previous era, she observed, they might have embraced Marxism. She said that while these young people experienced some prejudice and economic hardship, their grievances were reinforced by ''a feeling of vicarious humiliation'' of Muslims elsewhere. The radicalism of some appeared driven less by contact with a charismatic cleric than by what they found for themselves on the Internet. 
  ''They self-recruit, self-radicalize, and they go and find their own imam,'' Ms. Stern said. ''So the picture that we have, that all we have to do is watch those fiery imams, or go into the mosques -- well, those days are over.''


 ISRAEL (95%); MIDDLE EAST (93%); LEBANON (92%); IRAQ (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (90%); EUROPE (90%); ENGLAND (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%);  WESTERN EUROPE (70%)







   


July 15, 2005 Friday  




 Muslim Approval of Terrorism Declines, a Global Poll Finds

 
Support for terrorism, including suicide bombings, has declined substantially in several Muslim countries in the past two years, according to a survey conducted earlier this year.
  The survey, commissioned by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, found that in almost all of the Muslim countries where the poll was taken, including Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan and Morocco, there was less support for suicide bombing as a means to defend Islam against its enemies than there had been in past years. The only exception was Jordan.
  The survey also shows that the public in several Muslim countries share the widespread belief in Europe and North America that Islamic extremism is a threat. In Morocco, 73 percent of respondents expressed a worry about Islamic extremism, while roughly half of the respondents in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia, three of the world's most populous Muslim countries, shared that concern. 
  While generally the Pew survey indicated a reduction of support for terrorism among Muslims, it showed majorities or near majorities in several Muslim countries believing suicide bombings against Americans or other Westerners in Iraq to be justified.
  The survey also showed sharply negative views of Jews in most Islamic countries, with virtually all of those polled in Jordan and Lebanon holding unfavorable opinions. In Pakistan, Indonesia, Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco, more than 70 percent of respondents said they had unfavorable opinions of Jews.
  The survey also measured feelings in several non-Muslim countries about Muslim immigration. It found large majorities in Europe and North America looking unfavorably at what they see as the wish of Muslim immigrants to maintain a separate identity from the non-Muslim majorities there.
  The poll was conducted in 17 countries using a total sample of more than 17,000 people, who were interviewed by telephone or in person mostly in April and May, before the London terror bombings last week.
  The margin of sampling error ranged from two to four percentage points. 
  The survey is one of a series that the Pew Global Attitudes Project has conducted in recent years. 
  The most important finding, emphasized in the summary report, is the shared sense in the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds that Islamic extremism represents a threat. 
  But there were sharp differences among Muslim countries in this regard, with only 10 percent of the respondents in Jordan seeing Islamic extremism as a threat.
  The survey showed that in Turkey, Morocco and Indonesia, approval of terrorism had fallen to 15 percent or less. 
  Asked specifically whether they believed that suicide bombings and violence against civilians was justified to defend Islam against its enemies, 13 percent of Moroccan respondents replied yes, compared with 40 percent just a year ago.
  In Indonesia that percentage fell from 27 percent in 2002 to 15 percent in this year's study. In Pakistan 25 percent responded yes to that question, down from 41 percent last year.
  But the percentage of people in Muslim countries saying that suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq were justified was far higher, with 24 percent in Turkey, 29 percent in Pakistan, 49 percent in Jordan and 56 percent in Morocco approving of such methods. Even so, those figures represented declines in most of the countries surveyed.
  Perhaps not surprisingly, large majorities in countries outside the Middle East said they were concerned about Islamic extremism in their own countries and in the world. In Russia, which has been fighting a Muslim separatist movement in Chechnya for a decade, 84 percent of respondents said they were very or somewhat concerned about Islamic extremism in their country.
  The figures for other countries were similar: 84 percent in India, 73 percent in France and 70 percent in Britain and the United States.
  The survey found widely differing views of Osama bin Laden in Muslim countries, with the proportion of people feeling confidence in him as a world leader ranging from 7 percent in Turkey (compared with 15 percent two years ago) to 60 percent in Jordan (an increase of five percentage points since 2003).
  In Pakistan the numbers showing confidence in Mr. bin Laden increased to 51 percent from 45 percent in recent years, but in Indonesia and Morocco the numbers declined substantially.                                                                    

 TURKEY (94%);  PAKISTAN (94%);  LEBANON (92%);  IRAQ (92%); NORTH AMERICA (92%); MOROCCO (90%); GERMANY (57%)






   


July 15, 2005, Friday, 



 Muslim support of terror wanes

 
WASHINGTON -- Support for suicide bombings has dropped significantly in several predominantly Muslim nations, a worldwide public-opinion survey has found -- a positive note at a time concerns have been heightened by terrorist attacks in London, Iraq and Israel.
The report by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, released Thursday, also found substantial concern about Islamic extremism not only among Westerners but also in Muslim nations. Three-quarters of those in Morocco and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia said Islamic extremism posed a threat to their countries.
 
A chasm continues to exist between the Muslim world and the West in attitudes toward the appropriate role of Islam in government and the roots of Islamic radicalism. But the survey showed ebbing support among Muslims for the terrorism that has defined global relations since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington nearly four years ago.
One possible reason: Some of the countries involved -- Morocco, Indonesia and Turkey -- have suffered devastating attacks on civilians within their borders, and Lebanon has been hit by political assassinations.
The findings are "good news because it means attitudes can change," says Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "But we have to put this in perspective. There still are very large percentages of people in the Muslim world who support suicide bombings ... and say they have a high regard for Osama bin Laden."
More than 17,000 people in 17 nations were interviewed from April to June for the survey, the sixth multination poll by the non-partisan group since 2002. Some results were released last month.
Among the new findings:
*Support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has dropped since 2002 by 34 percentage points in Lebanon, 12 points in Indonesia and 8 points in Pakistan. The exception to the trend is Jordan, where support is up 14 points, to 57%.
There are higher levels of support in several countriesfor suicide bombings that target Americans and their allies in Iraq, though they also have dropped. About half of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco said those attacks were justified.
*Confidence in bin Laden has fallen by double-digit margins in Indonesia, Morocco and Lebanon since 2003. In Lebanon, only 2% now express confidence in him.
The al-Qaeda leader is viewed most positively in Jordan and Pakistan, where more than half say they have confidence in him.
*Most Muslims believe Islam is playing a larger role in their national politics and see that as a positive development.
In nine Western nations polled, fears about radical Islam were tied to perceptions of Muslim communities within those countries. Resident Muslims were seen as having a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity, a situation most of those surveyed saw as a bad thing.
Even so, in the USA and most Western nations, majorities said they had favorable views of Muslims. Those in predominantly Muslim countries had mixed views of Christians and very negative views of Jews.

 UNITED STATES (95%); LEBANON (94%);  IRAQ (93%); MOROCCO (93%); PAKISTAN (93%); ISRAEL (92%); TURKEY (92%); 







  



July 15, 2005 Friday  




 Support for Bin Laden, Violence Down Among Muslims, Poll Says

 
 Osama bin Laden's standing has dropped significantly in some pivotal Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has "declined dramatically," according to a new survey released yesterday. 
  Predominantly Muslim populations in a sampling of six North African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries share to a "considerable degree" Western concerns about Islamic extremism, according to the poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization. 
 "Most Muslim publics are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries, and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defense of Islam," the poll concluded.  
 The one exception is attitudes toward suicide bombings of U.S and Western targets in Iraq, a subject on which Muslims were divided. Roughly half of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco said such attacks are justifiable, while sizable majorities in Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia disagreed. Yet, support for suicide bombings in Iraq still declined by as much as 20 percent compared with a poll taken last year. 
 The results, which also reveal widespread support for democracy, show how profoundly opinions have changed in parts of the Muslim world since Pew took similar surveys in recent years. The poll attributed the difference in attitudes toward extremism to both the terrorist attacks in Muslim nations and the passage of time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. 
 In May 2003, many Muslims "saw a worldwide threat to Islam and [bin Laden] represented opposition to the West and the United States," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center and project director. "Tempers have since cooled." 
 The poll results are a rare piece of good news for the Bush administration, which has faced difficulties seeing gains in its two top foreign policy goals  --  combating terrorism and promoting democracy in the Islamic world. 
  "These are eye-catching results, but not surprising," said Augustus Richard Norton, a Middle East specialist at Boston University. "Muslims, like non-Muslims, are plugged into the world. . . . It is one thing to be caught up in the supposed glamour of attacking the superpower or global bully, but it is quite another to have to pay the consequences economically, politically  --  not to mention personally. This is what has happened in places like Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, where many people now see extremist Islam as a threat to their lives, not a fantasy game of kick Uncle Sam." 
 The survey, conducted from April through mid-June, before the London bombings, polled 17,000 people in the six Muslim-dominated countries and in 11 major Western and Asian nations, including the United States. They were asked about their attitudes toward Islam, Muslim nations and extremist violence. More than 6,200 interviews in Muslim countries were conducted in person, while interviews in the West and in Asia were done by telephone and in person. 
 The new poll also found that growing majorities or pluralities of Muslims now say that democracy can work in their countries and is not just a Western ideology. Support for democracy was in the 80 percent range in Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco. It was selected by 43 percent in Pakistan and 48 percent in Turkey  --  the largest blocks of respondents in both countries because significant numbers were unsure. 
 "They are not just paying lip service. They are saying they specifically want a fair judiciary, freedom of expression and more than one party in elections. It wasn't just a vague concept," Kohut said. "U.S. and Western ideas about democracy have been globalized and are in the Muslim world." 
 At the same time,  most Muslims surveyed said they think Islam is playing an increasing role in their politics, a development they view as a positive shift in response to economic problems, growing immorality and concern about Western influence. Jordan was the only exception. 
 The survey results indicate that growing numbers of Muslims differentiate between what they consider the peaceful influence of Islamic values in politics and the use of religion to justify attacks. "The people who see Islam playing an important role in political life are the ones most worried about extremism," Kohut said. 
 Yet solid majorities in five of the six Muslim countries surveyed  --  Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan and Turkey  --  also now have unfavorable views of the United States. In the sixth, Morocco, views are divided. The governments in all six countries are U.S. allies and receive U.S. aid. 
  The survey found only 2 percent of the people polled in Lebanon and 7 percent in Turkey expressing confidence that bin Laden would "do the right thing regarding world affairs." The proportion that expressed confidence in the al Qaeda leader dropped from almost half to about a quarter in Morocco, and from 58 percent to 37 percent in Indonesia. Bin Laden's standing went up slightly in Pakistan, to 51 percent, and in Jordan, to 60 percent. 
 Three factors, Kohut said, contributed to the notable shift in views on bin Laden and suicide bombings: incidents of terrorism in Muslim countries, an increase in positive feelings about events at home, and the passage of time since the 2003 survey conducted after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  
 The decline in support for suicide bombings was largest in Indonesia, which has witnessed deadly bombings at a Marriott hotel in Jakarta and at a Bali tourist hotel  --  attacks that seriously affected tourism and foreign investment. Jordan was the only country where the majority surveyed  --  57 percent  --  still support terrorist acts in defense of Islam, possibly because the majority Palestinian population is tied to the conflict with Israel, Kohut said. 
 But Norton also noted: "As the events in London show, it does not take too many people to cause big problems. If only 1/10,000 of 1 percent [of the Muslim world] is inclined to terrorism, that is still 1,200 potential mass killers." 
 One of the starkest findings was the divide in views on religion. Most of those surveyed in nine Western countries  --  including the United States, Britain, Canada, France and Russia  --  said they have favorable views of Muslims, although the non-Muslims surveyed were more likely to say Islam is more violent than Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism. 
 The Muslims surveyed had mixed views on Christians, and anti-Jewish sentiment was "endemic," the survey reported. 

 UNITED STATES (94%); MIDDLE EAST (93%); IRAQ (93%); ASIA (93%); NORTHERN AFRICA (92%); TURKEY (92%); INDONESIA (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); JORDAN (79%); LEBANON (79%); MOROCCO (73%)




10



 
 

July 14, 2005 Thursday



 THAILAND'S REBUILDING EFFORT OFFERS LESSONS

 
PHI PHI ISLAND, Thailand - The developed world could learn a lesson from a place like this. And, in fact, it may have to.  
Six months ago this tourist destination and others like it throughout Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand were hit by a terrorist act of sorts - the tsunami, a force of nature that made even angry Muslims look gentle in comparison.  
The 22-foot waves caught natives and tourists alike by surprise and ended in one of the largest destructions of human life in modern times.   
Some 750 people died on Phi Phi (pronounced Pee Pee) and more than 1,300 people still can't be accounted for.  
Since there were only 8,000 or so regular inhabitants of this island at the time, this spot - an hour by boat from Thailand's southern Phuket province - has to have had the biggest per capita loss of any place.  
Among the dead on Phi Phi was Simon Atlee, the British photographer who was vacationing with his girlfriend, Sports Illustrated model Petra Nemcova. She was seriously injured.  
Indonesia suffered the greatest loss of life, with over 100,000 people killed. Thailand had 6,000 dead and many more missing. Estimates put the death toll at 200,000 or more.  
Today Phi Phi is still a mess, with signs of the destructive waves everywhere. But if the Buddhist culture in Thailand teaches its followers one thing it is: Life must go on.  
And that's what the people are trying to do - more unemotionally than anyone could possibly expect. And in a poor country like Thailand, where $100 a month would be considered a good wage and office workers are known to supplement their income by prostitution, getting on with life means rebuilding quickly so the tourists will come back.  
I spent some time in Phi Phi last week as part of a tour of Thailand.  
While I was in the country, Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State, toured the destruction with Prime Minister Thaksin Chinnawat.  
Ironically, this was just days after terrorists hit their targets in London, killing more than 50 people and injuring scores more.  
And just this morning Thailand's King Rama IX sent condolences to the people of Britain.  
So what can Phi Phi Island and Phuket and Indonesia teach the rest of the world about surviving? "Buddhists are not attached to material things the way Westerners are," says Teddy Fagerstrom, a Swedish doctor who moved to Phuket well before the tsunami struck, and who is helping to organize support groups in the area.  
So as the final bodies are still being identified (and probably won't be because so many people were here illegally), the main goal, says Fagerstrom, is to get the country's economy back on its feet.  
"Everyone wants to get back to normal," says the doctor, who adds that Buddhism teaches its followers to deal with life's problems as unemotionally as possible.  
The tsunami, of course, is different from an act of human terrorism. In London and New York and Baghdad, there is always someone to blame.  
In Thailand, the only fingers that can be pointed are at those who are perceived to be slowing down progress. Westerners won't be able to suppress their emotions like the Buddhists of Thailand.  
But the economic aggressiveness that Thailand has taken may be the best role for dealing with human terrorism.  
Just the other day Prime Minister Thaksin announced a series of economic reforms that included increasing civil servant salaries and pensions by 5 percent and giving other workers a hike in the minimum wage.  
Ironically, Thailand is worried these days about human terrorism.  
About 98 percent of the people in Thailand are Buddhist but there is an increasing flow of Muslims into the southern part of the country from India and Malaysia.  
The King and the Thaksin government have picked up security throughout the country and warned the Muslim minority that it had better behave.  
But you get the feeling that the warnings here aren't just hollow threats.        

 THAILAND (94%);   UNITED KINGDOM (91%); 








 


July 12, 2005 Tuesday  




 Indonesia charges Newmont, mine boss BAY DUMPING ALLEGED The indictment naming the Denver firm and mine manager Richard Ness was expected. A trial may start in a few weeks.

 
Indonesian prosecutors charged Newmont Mining Corp. and a mine manager on Monday with dumping heavy metals into a fishing bay, moving the closely watched case toward trial.
The Denver- based company and Richard Ness, 55, manager of the Minahasa gold mine, face criminal charges in an indictment filed in Indonesian court on Monday, Newmont spokeswoman Heatheryn Higgins said.
The international business community views the case as a key test of the political and investment climate in Indonesia.
Newmont officials in Denver had not yet seen the indictment but deny the company or Ness did anything wrong, Higgins said. 
The action against Ness had been expected since last week, when prosecutors said he would be charged but not five other Newmont officials accused in the pollution probe. Criminal charges against Newmont had been anticipated for months, and the company also has been negotiating with the government to settle its civil case against the company.
"The charges were filed on Monday, but we haven't been officially notified," Higgins said. "There is no pollution in our operations in Indonesia, and we have committed no crime. We will defend ourselves and Richard Ness vigorously in court."
A Newmont lawyer in Indonesia told the Associated Press that the company and Ness were charged with polluting and damaging the environment, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $78,000.
Ness' attorney in Denver, Richard Kornfeld, also has not seen the indictment. Kornfeld planned to depart for Indonesia today to discuss the charges with Ness and lawyers representing him and Newmont.
Kornfeld said he expects a trial to begin in as little as four weeks in the northeast Indonesian city of Manado. The mine and Manado are on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
In the interim, Newmont and Ness will file responses to the charges. A panel of three judges is expected to have a hearing within two to three weeks to consider the charges and the responses, and to set a trial date, Kornfeld said.
"He's very concerned," Kornfeld said of Ness. "He takes some comfort in the fact that he knows he's done nothing wrong.
"All you can do is hope and pray they will follow their own procedures and afford you whatever rights you have under the law," he said.
Ness' wife is Indonesian, and they have five children. He has lived in Indonesia for about 20 years and is a convert to Islam, Kornfeld said.
The other men - an American, an Australian and three Indonesians - remain under travel restrictions that keep them primarily in Indonesia, Kornfeld said.
The government has been investigating Newmont on pollution charges for about a year. Villagers in the Buyat Bay near the Minahasa mine complained of mercury poison last summer, though no evidence of that has been found.
Several scientific studies have indicated the bay's water and fish are not contaminated by heavy metals. But those studies have found high levels of arsenic in the bay where Newmont dumped millions of tons of mine waste between 1996 and 2004.
Newmont, which operates a larger gold and copper mine on the island of Sumbawa in the south-central portion of the Indonesian archipelago, says it is not responsible for contamination of the bay.
Last month, 68 families in the village relocated to a new village about four hours away. The move and purchase of new land was paid for by a group of nonprofit organizations.
Staff writer Greg Griffin can be reached at 303-820-1241 or ggriffin@denverpost.com. Environmental cases
Indonesian prosecutors indicted Newmont Mining Corp. and a mine manager Monday for allegedly dumping heavy metals into a fishing bay. Below are some companies indicted in the U.S. for environmental pollution and the outcomes of their cases.
Atlantic States Cast Iron Pipe
A 35-count federal indictment from the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division charged the Phillipsburg, N.J., cast-iron pipe maker with discharging chemicals into the Delaware River and maintaining a dangerous workplace contributing to the death and maiming of employees. The firm avoided fines in May by making $9.3 million in plant improvements.
Central Industries
A rendering plant jointly owned by several Mississippi-based poultry processors was fined $14 million by the U.S. Justice Department in November 2000 for repeatedly dumping poorly treated wastewater into Shockaloe Creek, a Pearl River tributary.
Koch Industries
Koch was indicted by a federal grand jury in September 2000 for 97 counts of environmental crimes at a Corpus Christi, Texas, oil refinery. It pleaded guilty and paid a $20 million penalty.
Louisiana-Pacific Corp.
The nation's biggest manufacturer of a plywood substitute pleaded guilty in Colorado in May 1998 to pollution violations and agreed to pay $37 million in penalties. The Portland, Ore.-based company was fined $5.5 million under the Clean Air Act for high emissions at a plant that makes floorboards and siding in Olathe.
Summitville mine
Industrial Constructors Corp. paid $20 million to the Environmental Protection Agency and Colorado's Summitville cleanup fund in February 2002 for violating the Clean Water Act and other federal statues at the mine.
Source: Denver Post research

 INDONESIA (98%);  AUSTRALIA (79%)







   


July 9, 2005 Saturday  




 Al Qaeda's Smart Bombs

 
WHILE we don't yet know who organized the terrorist attacks in London on Thursday, it seems likely that they were the latest in a series of bombings, most of them suicide attacks, over the past several years by Al Qaeda and its supporters. Although many Americans had hoped that Al Qaeda has been badly weakened by American counterterrorism efforts since Sept. 11, 2001, the facts indicate otherwise. Since 2002, Al Qaeda has been involved in at least 17 bombings that killed more than 700 people -- more attacks and victims than in all the years before 9/11 combined. 
 To make sense of this campaign, I compiled data on the 71 terrorists who killed themselves between 1995 and 2004 in carrying out attacks sponsored by Osama bin Laden's network. I was able to collect the names, nationalities and detailed demographic information on 67 of these bombers, data that provides insight into the underlying causes of Al Qaeda's suicide terrorism and how the group's strategy has evolved since 2001.  
 Most important, the figures show that Al Qaeda is today less a product of Islamic fundamentalism than of a simple strategic goal: to compel the United States and its Western allies to withdraw combat forces from the Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim countries. 
 As the chart at the upper right shows, the overwhelming majority of attackers are citizens of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries in which the United States has stationed combat troops since 1990. Of the other suicide terrorists, most came from America's closest allies in the Muslim world -- Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and Morocco -- rather than from those the State Department considers ''state sponsors of terrorism'' like Iran, Libya, Sudan and Iraq. Afghanistan produced Qaeda suicide terrorists only after the American-led invasion of the country in 2001. The clear implication is that if Al Qaeda was no longer able to draw recruits from the Muslim countries where there is a heavy American combat presence, it might well collapse. 
 As the large chart at the center of the page shows, what is common among the attacks is not their location but the identity of the victims killed. Since 2002, the group has killed citizens from 18 of the 20 countries that Osama bin Laden has cited as supporting the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
 There is good evidence that this shift in Al Qaeda's scheme was the product of deliberate choice. In December 2003, the Norwegian intelligence service found a lengthy Qaeda planning document on a radical Islamic Web site that described a coherent strategy for compelling the United States and its allies to leave Iraq. It made clear that more spectacular attacks against the United States like those of 9/11 would be insufficient, and that it would be more effective to attack America's European allies, thus coercing them to withdraw their forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and increasing the economic and military burdens that the United States would have to bear. 
 In particular, the document weighed the advantages of attacking Britain, Poland and Spain, and concluded that Spain in particular, because of the high level of domestic opposition to the Iraq war, was the most vulnerable.
 ''It is necessary to make utmost use of the upcoming general election in Spain in March next year,'' the document stated. ''We think that the Spanish government could not tolerate more than two, maximum three, blows, after which it will have to withdraw as a result of popular pressure. If its troops still remain in Iraq after these blows, then the victory of the Socialist Party is almost secured, and the withdrawal of the Spanish forces will be on its electoral program.'' 
 That prediction, of course, proved murderously prescient. Yet it was only one step in the plan: ''Lastly, we emphasize that a withdrawal of the Spanish or Italian forces from Iraq would put huge pressure on the British presence, a pressure that Tony Blair might not be able to withstand, and hence the domino tiles would fall quickly.'' 
 No matter who took the bombs onto those buses and subways in London, the attacks are clearly of a piece with Al Qaeda's post-9/11 strategy. And while we don't know if the claim of responsibility from a group calling itself the Secret Organization of Al Qaeda in Europe was legitimate, an understanding of Al Qaeda's strategic logic may help explain why that message included a threat of further attacks against Italy and Denmark, both of which contributed troops in Iraq.
 The bottom line, then, is that the terrorists have not been fundamentally weakened but have changed course and achieved significant success. The London attacks will only encourage Osama bin Laden and other Qaeda leaders in the belief that they will succeed in their ultimate aim: causing America and its allies to withdraw forces from the Muslim world.


   AFGHANISTAN (93%); GULF STATES (93%); SAUDI ARABIA (92%); EGYPT (79%); EUROPE (79%); NORWAY (79%); IRAN,  (79%); TURKEY (79%);  LIBYA (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); MOROCCO (74%)







   


June 29, 2005 Wednesday  




 Public Broadcasting and Political Balance: A New Twist

 
Richard Perle, the former Bush administration adviser and Iraq war advocate, would make a ripe subject for many filmmakers. But when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting awarded a preliminary grant for a film on Mr. Perle's neoconservative worldview, it gave the money to the British producer Brian Lapping, Mr. Perle's friend of four decades. 
  Not surprisingly, Mr. Lapping, an award-winning filmmaker, is sympathetic to Mr. Perle's outlook. ''Quite a lot of the preconceptions about the neocons are just wrong,'' he said in an interview.
So the corporation took another unusual step. Seeking political balance on a charged topic, in late April it asked a half-dozen filmmakers to submit proposals for a separate film critical of White House foreign policy.  
  Sherry Jones, who has won awards for her work on the public television series ''Frontline,'' was chosen, with an associate. They will examine ''how the implementation of the so-called Bush doctrine has alienated traditional American allies, tarnished America's image abroad and possibly made the world more dangerous,'' the corporation said in a news release.
  The grants to both Mr. Lapping and Ms. Jones, announced Monday, are part of the corporation's ambitious ''America at a Crossroads'' project, which will devote $20 million over three years to films examining America's role in the post-Sept. 11 world. The project, controversial from the start, comes even as the corporation, charged with overseeing public broadcasting, is embroiled in a debate over how to achieve balance and objectivity. Its chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, has pushed for more programs reflecting conservative viewpoints, to balance what he says is public television's liberal bias.
  The corporation funnels most federal funds directly to local stations, but keeps $65 million a year for program grants. Along with a $20 million program to teach history and civics to teenagers, ''Crossroads'' was designed to impress Congressional patrons. 
  ''I felt that we had to do something that would demonstrate to the people trying to make difficult decisions about the appropriation that it was still worth investing big bucks in public television,'' Robert T. Coonrod, who was the corporation's president when ''Crossroads'' began in March 2004, said in an interview. 
  Michael Pack, the corporation's senior vice president for television programming, said, ''We want this initiative to make clear to both Congress and the public that we are fulfilling the mission of public television to raise the level of debate on public affairs issues.'' 
  Last month, the Public Television Programmers Association argued in a sharply worded letter to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that the topics chosen for ''Crossroads'' appear to be ''rehashing'' those covered by other PBS programs, including ''Frontline'' and ''Wide Angle.'' They suggested that the money would be better spent shoring up PBS's core series. 
  ''As public television professionals, we must ask whether it will be money well spent,'' Garry Denny, associate director of programming at Wisconsin Public Television, wrote for the programmers' board. 
  PBS executives raised similar concerns. ''It's always a matter of money,'' said Jacoba Atlas, PBS's co-chief programmer. ''We did feel that there were already programs in place that could address many of these issues.'' 
  In response to the criticism, Mr. Pack said, ''The need is ongoing.'' 
  With public television facing severe funding challenges, the corporation received 440 ''Crossroads'' applications, which it says was a record. They were subjected to detailed screening by, among others, a bipartisan panel of policy experts. 
  The chosen films, Mr. Pack said, will cross party lines. It has not yet been decided how and when they will be shown. One option is to group them as a PBS series tied to the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, in 2006. ''I believe it will spark a national debate,'' he said of the series.
  But first the programs must be made. Months behind schedule, partly because of the search for a piece to counter the Perle film, the corporation has just announced the last of 34 research and development grants for proposed films. (The New York Times's television unit was given a grant to examine Islam in Indonesia.) 
  A range of projects received seed money, but just 10 to 15 will get a final go-ahead. Many of the 34 proposals deal with tensions between Islam's moderate and radical strains, democracy in Arab countries and the fight against terrorism. There is satire on European concerns over United States foreign policy, a profile of the all-volunteer Army and a look at Arab-American teenagers. Media and cultural topics are also represented. The producer Carl Colby will examine United States counterinsurgency policy, as developed by his father, the late director of central intelligence William Colby. 
  Stephen Segaller, the executive producer of ''Wide Angle,'' said that he would love to have ''Crossroads'' money, but that his series was more timely. He endorsed the ''Crossroads'' concept, however. ''You'd have to be crazy to argue the 9/11 attack and America's relationship to the rest of the world is not a valid topic to look at,'' he said.
  PBS has aired opinionated films, under the rubric of personal essays, in its ''P.O.V.'' series and elsewhere. Mr. Pack said that the Perle film will make the case at length for an assertive United States foreign policy, and that ''we also want to make sure the American people have the chance to hear at length that policy criticized.'' He emphasized that the ''Crossroads'' producers must adhere to PBS's journalistic standards.
  Just how the concept of dueling films fits those standards is unclear. ''What the new policies say now is that producers should enter into any work of journalism with an open mind and not a predetermined view about where the piece should come out,'' said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, who helped PBS update its editorial guidelines.
  ''I think the American tradition of journalism is that if something is controversial, the initial treatment of it would provide sufficient balance,'' he said.
  PBS's Ms. Atlas said the guidelines also emphasized transparency. ''Under our expanded definition of objectivity, the viewer will understand the process by which the filmmaker will come to his or her conclusions,'' she said.
  Ms. Jones, whose film is examining the Bush doctrine, said she considered herself a broadcast journalist. ''I don't come to things with a predetermined point of view,'' she said. ''I think the record of our bazillion awards suggests that we spend a lot of time in research and reporting and then we present programs that are based on facts, often based on documents and on getting people who have been involved in decision-making to talk to us on camera.''
  Given the debate over Republican pressure on public television, Ms. Jones said she had reservations before agreeing to make her film, worrying that ''instead of being allowed to do what I do, which is to report, there would be some other agenda.'' But, she said, she has not seen one.
  Mr. Lapping's work has been shown on PBS and the Discovery Times Channel (part-owned by the New York Times). He said his ''very longstanding friendship'' with Mr. Perle, an assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, dated to the early 1960's. 
  The film, Mr. Lapping said, will be ''mostly a journey, through his life and experiences,'' and will show Mr. Perle interacting with his critics, who say he was overly optimistic about American prospects in Iraq. Mr. Perle was also investigated, and later cleared, for potential financial conflicts of interest while chairman of the Defense Policy Board advisory committee.
  Mr. Lapping said the film originated at a dinner party in Provence, where he and Mr. Perle have neighboring homes. Among the guests was a former Clinton administration State Department official. ''I could see they were distinctly suspicious of this right-wing hawk,'' Mr. Lapping said, but added that Mr. Perle won them over. ''He's a very gentle performer, a very persuasive performer.'' 
  Of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's decision to commission a counterfilm, Mr. Lapping said, ''I can understand the pressure for an opposite point of view, but I didn't see the need for it.''


  IRAQ (93%)







  



June 26, 2005 Sunday  




 Schooled For Jihad; 
They Turned to Terrorism. I Wanted to Know Why.

 
 It is visiting hour at Jakarta's Cipinang Prison and its most famous inmate, the Muslim preacher Abubakar Baasyir, sits on a wooden bench surrounded by a dozen acolytes, assistants and lawyers. Several prisoners attend to him, including a confessed terrorist who has become the cleric's servant and coordinates a team of six to wash his clothes and cook his meals without pay. Prison officials allow Baasyir to teach a class on Islam to fellow inmates four times a week; about 100 prisoners attend each session. 
 Hasyim Abdullah, Baasyir's right-hand man, is posted outside the prison to run errands for the cleric, buy his food and help the friends, family members and supporters who visit nearly every day. They give messages to the cleric and take directions from him to his followers on the outside.  
 Baasyir is holding court in prison instead of his home or office because Indonesian prosecutors have accused him of being the emir of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. In a 65-page indictment, they alleged that he was involved in "planning and/or encouraging other people to commit terrorism" including the 2003 bombing of the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, where 12 people were killed, and the 2002 bombing of a resort in Bali, where 202 people were killed. A court cleared Baasyir in the Marriott attack and found him guilty of approving of (but not of ordering) the Bali bombings.   
 For the international community, the case is a litmus test of the Indonesian government's resolve in the war on terrorism. Despite the severity of the charges against him, Baasyir received only a 30-month sentence. His lawyers say the sentence ran out on June 4 and they are suing the government for his release.  
 But for me, Baasyir's case poses a different question. That's because he was a co-founder of the Islamic boarding school, Al Mukmin Ngruki, where I spent six years studying in sweltering classrooms. While I chose a career in journalism, many of my fellow students made a different choice. Dozens of Ngruki's alumni have been accused of taking part in a wave of terrorist attacks against Westerners in Indonesia. Security analysts and police investigators believe that the link is no coincidence. Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group has called my alma mater an "Ivy League" for Jemaah Islamiyah recruits.  
 All of which makes me wonder: Why did so many of my fellow students end up choosing terrorism while I ended up writing about them?  
  To begin to answer that question, I decided to meet Abubakar Baasyir in jail. I contacted Hasyim, his soft-spoken liaison man, whose cell phone is constantly on. "Please come in," he said when I arrived. Using the word for teacher, he added, "Ustadz is ready." 
 After 10 minutes, the white bearded cleric entered. In his mid-sixties, he appeared in a white shirt and worn eyeglasses; a white box cap was perched on his head. Abdul Jabar, a JI member who admitted to blowing up an explosives-laden van at the house of the Philippine ambassador in 2000, accompanied him.  
 Baasyir, who proclaims himself an admirer of Osama bin Laden but still denies that he is a terrorist leader, said that he is just a victim of "the infidel Bush's America." Then he quoted a verse from the Koran: "The infidels will never stop fighting us until we follow their way." I know that verse by heart. We learned it in school.  
 I was never the typical Ngruki student, so in some ways it's no surprise that I didn't follow a path toward Islamic extremism. My father, who is a parole officer, sent me there in 1985 when I was 12. Only later did he tell me that he did so in order to get an inside look at the place because so many of his cases were Islamic militants who had studied there before landing in prison. "It made it easy for me to come and observe the school," my father later explained.  
 Moreover, I came from a secular family with a diverse background. My father is a Muslim who was just 9 when his father died. Afterward my father's eldest brother, who married into a Catholic family in central Java, looked after him and sent my father to school. My mother came from a strong Javanese family. Her grandfather was a dalang  --  a puppet master.  
 Yet it was still hard to avoid being swept up in the spirit of Ngruki. The only music we heard was nasyid, Arabic religious songs, from loudspeakers in the corners of the school buildings. On the dormitory wall hung Arabic calligraphies. One said: "Die as a noble man or die as a martyr." 
 The school's facilities were spartan. I slept on the floor with a simple plastic mattress and pillow in a dingy dormitory with 20 other students. The dorm's head boy was only three years older than I. He introduced himself as Fadlullah Hasan. He had straight black hair, brown skin and a blue bruise on his forehead from bowing to pray five times a day. Like me, he came from the city of Yogyakarta and because of this bond, we grew quite close. 
 Even at age 15, he was zealous. He always got up earlier than the rest of us and would carry out his duty of waking up all the students in our dorm. After prayers in the mosque, he would lead us in reading the Koran and then encourage us further back in our rooms. In his speeches, he said that we were there to study Islam and that when we graduated we would have to do dakwah  --  proselytize  --  to bring other people to "true" Islam. Hasan was gregarious and smart. His classmates would come to ask him questions. Among them were Fathur Rohman Al Ghozie, a JI member who later died in the Philippines, and Aris Munandar, who was later alleged to be a JI fundraiser and who is still at large. 
 After two months in the school, I realized that Hasan hadn't introduced himself with his real name. He had used an alias. His real name is Utomo Pamungkas. It is a tradition in the school to change the names of students if their names are not considered Islamic. It is up to the student to choose, usually the name of one of the prophet's friends or one of God's 99 names. 
 In many ways, Ngruki, founded in 1972, is not unusual. For years there have been thousands of Islamic boarding schools around the country. But only in the past two years, since the bombs exploded on Indonesia's resort island of Bali have these schools come under close scrutiny.  
 Ngruki encouraged anti-Semitism. On Thursday nights when I was there, students practiced public speaking. Their favorite topic would be "Islam under threat." Their speeches typically quoted the verse of the Koran that says that the infidels and Jews will never stop fighting us until we follow their religion. When I was 15, it was my favorite topic too. 
 The teachers were campaigners for an Islamic state and the implementation of Islamic law. "Indonesia is still under secular law," they would say. "Therefore there is no obligation for us to obey Indonesian law." To back up their arguments, they quoted the Koran: "Whoever does not follow God's law is an infidel." 
 They lacked national spirit. They refused to fly the national flag or to accept Pancasila, the Indonesian national philosophy. Shortly before I enrolled, two of the school's founders, Baasyir and Abdullah Sungkar, had gone into exile to avoid being imprisoned for subversion under the Suharto regime.  They didn't return until the late 1990s.  
 During my final year at the school, one of the teachers, an expert in Chinese martial arts named Abdurrohim (alias Abu Husna), explained to a group of graduating students, including me, about the importance of togetherness among Muslims. "A Muslim must be in an Islamic group called Darul Islam," he said. He stressed to all of us that this organization was a clandestine movement devoted to establishing an Islamic state. Later, sitting on a green carpet in his poorly lit house, he recited an oath, which I repeated. I was only 18. After graduation, some Darul members asked me to donate 2.5 percent of my earnings and to attend meetings to deepen my knowledge of Islam, but I drifted away. 
 Given this background, it's a wonder that more of us didn't turn to extremism. Despite my mixed family background, I remain a Muslim who prays five times a day, reads the Koran and hopes to visit Mecca. But at the same time, I have worked for the American media, hosted Jewish American friends in my home and spent Friday nights in bars having drinks. Recently I won a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom.  
 The majority of my fellow alumni are more or less like me. They are successful in the secular world. They must realize that some of the school's teachings are unrealistic. To survive in the real world, we have to work and interact with people who don't share our ideas. We have to acknowledge a pluralism in our daily lives that is not consistent with a strict interpretation of Islam. Of the 88 percent of Indonesians who are Muslim, most lead secular lives.  
 In my case, I had to get a personal ID card from the same government with which we were taught not to cooperate. I continued my studies at two government colleges where I had to sing the national anthem and fly the national flag, which I never did during my years at Ngruki. 
 But some of my fellow alumni, according to recent interviews I conducted with those detained by the Jakarta police, had a different sort of post-graduate education. They went to military training camps, either Dar Al Ittihad Al Islamy in Afghanistan or Camp Hudaibiyah in the Moro region of the Philippines, as part of a Jemaah Islamiyah program to prepare as many young people as possible for jihadi operations. In their daily lives, they didn't mingle with people who didn't share their ideas and they believed that they were on "the proper path." To earn a living, most worked for themselves as entrepreneurs selling sandals or clothes, or running small cafeterias. 
 Fifteen years after I graduated from Ngruki, I met again with my dorm mate Hasan  --  this time in the Jakarta police jail in 2004. I was working for the media that he considers an extension of the infidels, while he was, and remains, behind bars because of his alleged involvement in the Bali blast. According to police, Hasan was the moneyman for the Bali bombers. Gold stolen from a bank was converted to cash that was deposited in Hasan's bank account before being used by terrorists.  
 At first, Hasan was surprised to see me and didn't know how to react. I could tell that he wanted to embrace me, but he hesitated after learning that I was working for . I spoke to him in Arabic, asking how he was. He was still uncomfortable. Only after a number of meetings could we communicate normally. 
 Hasan is the fifth of seven children from a simple peasant family in a remote village in the Yogyakarta area. His father sent him to Ngruki expecting him to become a religious teacher in the village. "I have disappointed him," Hasan said during one of my visits. "Instead of being a religious teacher, I'm being a terrorist. Now I'm locked in here."  
 After graduating from Ngruki, he taught for a year. But soon he fell under the spell of the Jemaah Islamiyah emir, Sungkar, whom he had met at Ngruki. "He was like father to me," he said of Sungkar. Starting in 1990, Hasan traveled to Malaysia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Philippines to study, wage jihad and do missionary work. Hasan quickly became a senior member of Jemaah Islamiyah.  
 In 2000, Hasan moved to an Islamic boarding school in East Java, where, he told me, he had met all the perpetrators of the Bali bombings. Later he went into hiding in Kalimantan, where the police caught up with him. Sitting cross-legged on his reasonably clean black plastic mattress, Hasan talked about his wife and two children who still live at the school. "Each time I remember them, I feel so sad," he said.  
  Hasan isn't alone in police detention. He is with other Ngruki alumni, including Muhammad Saefudin and Muhammad Rais. Saefudin and Rais met bin Laden in Afghanistan several times in 2001. Rais, who allegedly conveyed a bin Laden message to Baasyir, was arrested for storing explosive materials for the Marriott hotel bombing; Saefudin was allegedly being groomed as the future JI leader.  
 For them, the world is divided clearly between good and evil, victim and oppressor. They believe God is on their side. "We saw many of my brothers in Islam killed brutally in Afghanistan and Moro, so it is our calling to destroy the enemy of Islam, all the infidels," Hasan said.  
 It was a calling some of us never heard.  
Author's e-mail: 
noorhudaismail@yahoo.com 
 Noor Huda Ismail was a research assistant for The Post's Jakarta bureau from 2003 to 2004. He is a research analyst at the Institute of Defence and Security Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. 
 </body> 

 INDONESIA (95%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


June 25, 2005 Saturday



 World datelines

 
Afghanistan
KABUL -- Fighting in the high mountains of southern Afghanistan waned Friday, but Afghan troops kept up their pursuit of rebels fleeing one of the deadliest barrages since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, officials said.
India
SRINAGAR -- Islamic militants triggered a car bomb by remote control as an army convoy drove past a popular park in India's portion of Kashmir on Friday, killing nine soldiers and wounding 22 other people, an army official said. 
Indonesia
BIREUN -- Fifteen convicted gamblers were flogged Friday for illegal gaming in Indonesia -- the first time caning was used as punishment in the world's most populous Muslim country.
Iraq
Saddam Hussein's family will publish a novel next week written by the ousted Iraqi leader before the U.S.-led war, his daughter said Friday. "Get Out, Damned One" tells the story of a man called Ezekiel who plots to overthrow a town's sheik but is defeated in his quest by the sheik's daughter and an Arab warrior.
Italy
ROME -- Pope Benedict XVI made an official visit to the Italian president on Friday, just two weeks after the Roman Catholic Church was accused by some of interfering in a national referendum on assisted fertility. Both the pope and President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi agreed that Italy and the Vatican must be autonomous. But Ciampi said he took pride in the fact that Italy was a secular state, while the pope said the church reserved the right to speak out on ethical matters.
Lebanon
BEIRUT -- Leftist comrades in revolutionary berets marched along with Christian clergy in black robes Friday in a funeral procession for George Hawi, a former Communist boss and critic of Syria killed in a car bombing this week.
Northern Ireland
BELFAST -- The Irish Republican Army apologized Friday for shooting to death a Catholic girl in 1973 during a botched ambush on a British army patrol. The IRA had long insisted that British soldiers killed 14-year-old Kathleen Feeney in Londonderry, Northern Ireland's predominantly Catholic second-largest city. But in a statement published in the Derry Journal newspaper, the outlawed group said a new internal investigation had confirmed what the public had long believed -- the IRA did it.
North Korea
Top North Korean envoys declined to set a date for returning to international nuclear disarmament talks but returned home Friday with a pledge of food aid from Seoul and accords on resuming family reunions and other cooperation across their tense border.
Norway
OSLO -- A Norwegian court sentenced the pilot of a British Airways jet to six months in prison Friday for preparing to fly even though members of his crew were drunk. The flight's purser was sentenced to 45 days in prison for being drunk on duty.
Russia
MOSCOW -- Lawmakers are considering an electoral amendment next week that could open the way for President Vladimir Putin to run for a third term, prompting the opposition to accuse his supporters of trying to cling to power.
Sweden
STOCKHOLM -- A Swedish man who was injured in a helicopter crash on his 100th birthday has died, a hospital said Friday. Carl Zetterlund had been treated at Uppsala University Hospital since Tuesday when the helicopter crashed shortly after takeoff from a nursing home in Heby, about 60 miles northwest of Stockholm.
Thailand
BANGKOK -- Attackers in southern Thailand slashed the necks of a couple, almost severing their heads in the latest killings attributed to Islamic separatists in the region, police said Friday.
Zimbabwe
HARARE -- The African Union on Friday sidestepped international demands to act against a so-called urban renewal campaign in Zimbabwe that has left as many as 1.5 million people homeless, while President Robert Mugabe defiantly congratulated police on the operation. Police have torched and bulldozed tens of thousands of homes in the monthlong drive to destroy shantytowns.

 AFGHANISTAN (96%); INDIA (94%); NORTHERN IRELAND (92%); KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (92%); ASIA (92%); NORWAY (92%); IRAQ (92%); INDONESIA (92%); ITALY (90%); UNITED KINGDOM (90%);  LEBANON (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%); HOLY SEE (79%); SYRIA (79%); KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (51%)







 The Durham Herald Co. 


June 25, 2005 Saturday 
  




 Briefs

 
Receptions honor McBriar
Father David McBriar, pastor of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, will leave his post there on June 30.
There will be receptions in his honor after today's 5:30 p.m. service and each of Sunday's services: 7:45 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 11:15 a.m. and the two Spanish services at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Durham Congregations in Action recently passed a resolution praising McBriar's leadership in both his parish and the greater community. It called him a "man of deep faith and compassion" and a "prophet, rallying for justice and peace in a time of war."  
During his nine years at Immaculate Conception, McBriar was instrumental in the capital campaign for the new church; started a Hispanic ministry; and cultivated relationships with the area's non-Catholic Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders.
McBriar will move to Raleigh and live with another Franciscan friar. He plans to do part-time work in an as-yet undetermined parish.
He will be succeeded as pastor by Father Dan McLellan, a Boston native and former head of Washington Theological Union, a Roman Catholic theology graduate school in the nation's capital. McLellan will begin work in August.
Immaculate Conception is located at 810 W. Chapel Hill St.
First Baptist sets patriotic event
First Baptist Church of Durham invites the community to its annual "Let's Celebrate America" program at 7:30 p.m. Sunday.
The event offers thanks to God for the freedom Americans enjoy, according to a church news release. The event also will recognize members of the armed services.
Special patriotic music will be presented by the First Baptist choir and orchestra. The guest speaker is Scott T. Brown, a businessperson and elder at Trinity Baptist Church in Wake Forest.
First Baptist is located at 414 Cleveland St. in Durham.
Peacock to talk at Unity Center
UNC Chapel Hill anthropology and comparative literature professor James L. Peacock will speak at the Unity Center of Peace Church in Chapel Hill Sunday at 11 p.m.
Peacock's topic will be "Culture and Christianity: Insights from Anthropology" during the service. He has studied working-class culture in Indonesia, Muslim movements in Southeast Asia and Primitive Baptist worship in Appalachia, among other subjects.
The public is invited to the service.
Unity Center of Peace Church is located at 8800 Seawell School Road.
For more information, call the church at 968-1854.
Ind. choir to sing at Duke Chapel
The Choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, Ind., will perform a free concert at 8 p.m. July 12 in Duke Chapel.
The concert will feature music of Charles Wood, Joel Martinson, Franz Joseph Haydn, Gerre Hancock, Frank Boles, Barry Rose, Stephen Paulus, and Kenneth Leighton.
The concert is part of the choir's 2005 East Coast Tour, which runs July 7-18. Fifty singers from St. Paul's Choir have been preparing all year for the singing tour, according to a news release. Among the other places of worship the choir will perform are: University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn.; The Cathedral of St. Phillips, Atlanta, Ga.; and First United Methodist Church of Charlotte. The choir will culminate their tour with five days at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Tyson to discuss his new novel (CORRECTION NOTE: is a true story)
Tim Tyson will discuss his novel (CORRECTION NOTE: is a true story), "Blood Done Sign My Name," at 9:45 a.m. on Sunday at First Presbyterian Church in Durham. The novel has received numerous awards including Book of the Year by the North Carolina Society.
Tyson is a native of North Carolina, the son of a Methodist pastor, Vernon Tyson, who served churches in Sanford, Wilmington, and Oxford. The story is about a murder in Oxford on May 11, 1970, of Henry Marrow, a 23-year old black veteran, who was shot by a man with ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
Entering freshman at UNC Chapel Hill are reading the novel this summer.
"Everywhere I go people are talking about Tim's book," the Rev. Joe Harvard, said in a news release. Harvard, a friend of Tyson for 20 years, added, "It is a well-written story that helps us understand our history and the faith that promises to move us towards a better future."
The public is invited to attend. First Presbyterian Church is located at 305 E. Main St.
Church salutes new sanctuary
Lattisville Grove Missionary Baptist Church will celebrate the construction of its new sanctuary this weekend.
The church will hold an open house from 6 to 9 p.m. tonight.
On Sunday, the church will have a dedication service at 5 p.m. 
The new building is located across the street from the former sanctuary, which will still be used by the church.
Lattisville Grove Missionary Baptist Church is located at 1701 Jimmy Road in Hurdle Mills. For more information, call 732-0994.
-- From staff reports

CORRECTION-DATE: June 27, 2005

 CORRECTION:
In the Monday, June 27, 2005 edition of The Herald-Sun, the follpwing printed correction appeared:
A religion news brief Saturday mischaracterized Timothy Tyson's book, "Blood Done Sign My Name." The book, about the killing of a 23-year-old black man in public view in Oxford and the subsequent violent uprising in the black community, is a true story. The Herald-Sun regrets the error. See correction notes in body of text.

 UNITED STATES (93%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);  ASIA (79%)







 


June 24, 2005 Friday  




 U.S. is still unpopular in much of the world, poll says Especially in Europe, anti-Americanism is called "entrenched"

 
Anti-Americanism has become entrenched in much of the world, so much so that in 14 of 16 countries polled in a new survey, China now rates more favorably than the United States -- even among traditional U.S. allies in Europe.
The U.S.-led war in Iraq remains widely and deeply unpopular. In none of the countries surveyed, including the United States, is there a majority view that the war has made the world safer.
Broad appreciation for specific U.S. policies, among them support for Middle East democracy and relief for the victims of last December's tsunami, has not translated, at least so far, into support more generally for the United States. 
President George W. Bush remains extraordinarily unpopular abroad, with approval ratings that range as low as 1 percent (in Jordan). In every country except Poland, pluralities of those surveyed said Bush's re-election had led them to have less favorable views of America.
Those are among the findings of the new survey, taken in April and May by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. It also reports an increasingly pronounced disconnect between Americans' view of themselves and how the United States is viewed abroad.
The poll indicates the obstacles the United States faces in winning international support for its diplomatic goals, including thwarting the spread of terrorism.
"Clearly, with or without this poll, we know we have a public diplomacy challenge, and that challenge is not lessening by the day," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told The Associated Press.
He said the United States is trying to combat that image problem, citing the frequent travels of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was ending a six-day swing through the Middle East and Europe on Thursday.
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, noted that this was the fourth such survey conducted since 2002. The key finding, he said, is that anti-Americanism is now "entrenched around the world, especially in Europe."
Kohut noted positive trends as well, among them a surge in favorable views of the United States (from 15 percent in 2003 to 38 percent now) in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country and one that received large amounts of U.S. aid after the tsunami.
Surveys in Russia and India also reported increasingly favorable views of the U.S. -- 52 percent in Russia and 71 percent in India, a country that also was among the few where a majority said they believe the interests of their country are taken into account in the making of U.S. foreign policy.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans surveyed said they would trust the United States most to take the lead in stopping genocide. Among the 15 other countries surveyed there was none where more than 39 percent cited the United States as likely to take the lead. On protecting the environment the divide was even greater: 59 percent of Americans said the United States would take the lead, compared to less than 10 percent in 11 of the 15 other countries surveyed.
The survey reports that those who rate the United States unfavorably, especially in Europe, mostly put the blame on Bush.
"Throughout Europe, those who say the problem is 'mostly' Bush outnumber those who say it is a 'more general problem with America' by margins of about two-to-one," the survey states.
Danforth takes lead
Former Sen. John C. Danforth, R-Mo., was introduced at a news conference Thursday as co-chairman of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, along with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. He said the animosity voiced toward Bush was really a proxy for broader concerns about how to wage the war on terrorism.
He said he didn't think that those surveyed "wake up every morning and say 'Gee, we really don't like President Bush.' I don't think there's anything personal in it."
"It's the view that President Bush is the stand-in for something," Danforth added. "He's the stand-in for the strongest country in the world, that has taken an assertive position, and the rest of the world is unsure whether an assertive position is in their best interests -- or whether they'll be even more vulnerable because of the activities of the United States."
Kohut said the more favorable rankings for China, while an extraordinary indication of distress with America, had limits as well.
"The Europeans are angry," he said. "It's a pretty deep anger, not just pouting. But the real push-comes-to-shove question in Europe was: Do you want to see the Chinese become as powerful militarily as the United States?"
On that question, he noted, fewer than one-quarter of those surveyed in any of the European countries said such a development would be "a good thing."
The survey also probed global opinion as to specific American attributes. One of the more striking findings was on religion: Most Europeans considered Americans too religious, while most Americans thought Americans weren't religious enough. A majority of respondents in predominantly Muslim countries agreed with the latter view.
Majorities in most of the countries considered Americans "greedy" (so did 70 percent of the Americans polled) and "violent." Smaller but still significant percentages rated Americans as "rude" and "immoral."
Americans rated highly on positive characteristics too, among them "inventive" and "honest." In France, home of the 35-hour workweek, 89 percent of those surveyed said they considered Americans "hard-working."
The countries surveyed were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, Poland, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Lebanon, Jordan, China and Indonesia.
---
STLTODAY.COM Link to more about the attitude survey online at STLtoday.com/links, and talk about the results in our Current Affairs forum at STLtoday.com/current.

  EUROPE (94%); MIDDLE EAST (92%);  IRAQ (92%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (86%); JORDAN (79%); INDONESIA (79%)






   


June 20, 2005, Monday, 



 Muslim world isn't big with U.S. students

 
WASHINGTON -- Despite an expansion of federal efforts to promote learning Arabic and other languages of the Islamic world, there has been no dramatic increase in Americans studying in countries where such languages are spoken, according to the latest statistics on overseas study. That's the case even though the number of Americans studying abroad has more than doubled since the mid-1990s.
There are some signs of growing interest among American students in learning Arabic, which the U.S. intelligence community hopes will help bolster its ranks with specialists for the war on terrorism.
But as Karin Ryding, a professor of Arabic at Georgetown University, points out, U.S. intelligence can't get by with "hothouse" Arabic speakers who have learned the language sitting in American classrooms. They must travel to the region and immerse themselves to become fluent.
 
Overall interest in foreign languages hasn't surged either since the Sept. 11 attacks. The difficulty of learning Arabic and other Middle East languages means it will be years before academia can produce significantly more graduates fluent in languages important to U.S. national security.
"It's going to take a good, long while. It's going to be a lot more expensive. And it's a question of whether you can afford to wait," says Andrew Krepinevich, head of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based defense think tank.
Numbers aren't good
For 2002-03, the first full academic year after 9/11, 1,293 Americans studied in predominantly Muslim countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. That's a 4.5% increase over the yearly average of 1,237 for the five years leading up to Sept. 11, according to an analysis of figures compiled by the Institute of International Education, which administers several federal study-abroad scholarship programs. The figures cover students who financed their own education as well as those who received private and public scholarships.
The list of majority-Muslim countries in which students studied is not identical from year to year but typically includes countries in the Middle East and North Africa such as Senegal, Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon and Turkey; and nations in Asia such as Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia.
The institute's figures show that more Americans are studying abroad: 174,629 in 2002-03, up from 84,403 in 1994-95. Yet fewer are focusing on foreign languages: Two decades ago, 16.7% of Americans studying abroad listed foreign languages as their primary field of study, according to the institute's figures. A decade ago, it was down to 11.3%; for 2002-03, 7.9%.
"Despite our growing needs, the number of undergraduate foreign language degrees conferred is only 1% of all degrees," Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said last month. Dodd is sponsoring legislation that would increase federal spending on language and foreign study and create a "national language director" to coordinate language programs.
The stakes are high, according to a January Pentagon report: "Conflict against enemies speaking less-commonly taught languages and thus the need for foreign language capability will not abate."
Language ability is critical not just for fighting wars or spying, says Thomas Farrell, deputy assistant secretary of State for academic programs. It also means having a better knowledge of "regions of the world that are important to the United States," Farrell says. "We're seeking to demonstrate, especially to countries with Islamic populations, that people in the United States have respect for their societies and want to learn about them."
Uptick in Arabic studies
For years, U.S. students didn't learn much about Arabic. In 2002, the latest nationwide figures available, 10,584 students were studying Arabic, whether as a major or an elective. That was a 92% increase from 1998 but still amounted to fewer than 1% of all students enrolled in foreign language courses in 2002, according to a report by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages.
The Department of Education is spending about $10 million this year for language study centers based in the Middle East, U.S. language development centers and scholarships for study abroad. The Pentagon is spending $3.6 million for Middle East language scholarships and other language programs. Some of the money is tied to promises that students will commit to jobs in national security.
The State Department handles the bulk of federal money for language scholarships through its Fulbright programs for undergraduates and scholars. Last year, the department spent $86 million on Fulbright and other programs out of a total education and cultural exchange budget of $231 million. Not all of that $86 million was focused on Muslim countries, however.
Concerned that no one coordinates the federal programs, a group of senators -- including Dodd, Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii -- wants to start a National Foreign Language Coordination Council.
For now, U.S. military and intelligence agencies compete with one another for a small pool of qualified candidates. Arabic professor John Walbridge of the University of Indiana is worried about the push to fill hiring quotas.
"They're desperate for people," Walbridge says. "They're recruiting people who by no reasonable standard are ready to do intelligence work using Arabic."

  MIDDLE EAST (93%); AFRICA (92%); ASIA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); JORDAN (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); NORTHERN AFRICA (79%); LEBANON (79%); EGYPT (79%); TURKEY (79%);  SENEGAL (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); KUWAIT (79%); MOROCCO (77%); 







 
 


June 16, 2005 Thursday



 The Problem Of Saudi Slavery

 
Homaidan Ali Al-Turki,36,and his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, 35, appear to be a model immigrant couple. They arrived in America in 2000 and now live with their four children in an upscale Denver suburb. Mr. Al Turki is a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Colorado, specializing in Arabic intonation and focus prosody. He donates money to the Linguistic Society of America and is chief executive of a bookstore specializing in titles about Islam, Al-Basheer Publications and Translations.
Last week, however, the FBI accused the couple of enslaving an Indonesian woman who is in her early 20s. For four years, reads the indictment, they created "a climate of fear and intimidation through rape and other means." The slave woman cooked, cleaned, took care of the children, and performed other tasks for little or no pay, fearing that if she did not obey, "she would suffer serious harm." 
The two Saudis face charges of forced labor, aggravated sexual abuse, document servitude, and harboring an alien. If found guilty, they could spend the rest of their lives in prison. The government also wants to seize the couple's Al-Basheer bank account to pay their former slave $92,700 in back wages.
It's shocking, especially for a graduate student and owner of a religious bookstore - but not particularly rare. Here are other examples of enslavement, all involving Saudi royals or diplomats living in America.
* In 1982, a Miami judge issued a warrant to search Prince Turki Bin Abdul Aziz's 24th-floor penthouse to determine if he was holding an Egyptian woman, Nadia Lutefi Mustafa, against her will. Mr. Turki and his French bodyguards prevented a search from taking place, then won retroactive diplomatic immunity to forestall any legal unpleasantness.
* In 1988, the Saudi defense attache in Washington, Colonel Abdulrahman S. Al Banyan, employed a Thai domestic worker, Mariam Roungprach, until she escaped his house by crawling out a window. She later said that she had been imprisoned there, did not get enough food, and was not paid. Interestingly, her work contract specified that she could not leave the house or make telephone calls without her employer's permission.
* In 1991, Prince Saad bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud and his wife, Princess Noora, lived on two floors of the Ritz-Carlton in Houston. Two of their servants, Josephine Alicog of the Philippines and Sriyani Marian Fernando of Sri Lanka, filed a lawsuit against the prince, alleging they were held for five months against their will, "by means of unlawful threats, intimidation, and physical force." They say they were only partially paid, were denied medical treatment, and suffered mental and physical abuse.
* In March 2005, a wife of Saudi Prince Mohamed bin Turki Al Saud, Hana Al Jader, 39, was arrested at her home near Boston on charges of forced labor, domestic servitude, falsifying records, visa fraud, and harboring aliens. Ms. Al Jader stands accused of forcing two Indonesian women to work for her by making them believe "that if they did not perform such labor, they would suffer serious harm." If convicted, Ms. Al Jader faces up to 140 years in jail and $2.5 million in fines.
There are many other similar instances: For example, the Orlando escapades of the Saudi princesses Maha Al Sudairi and Buniah Al Saud. The conservative writer Joel Mowbray told of 12 female domestic workers "trapped and abused" in the households of Saudi dignitaries or diplomats. Why is this problem so acute for affluent Saudis? Four reasons come to mind. Although slavery was abolished in the kingdom in 1962,the practice still flourishes there. Ranking Saudi religious authorities endorse slavery; Sheik Saleh Al Fawzan said recently that "slavery is a part of Islam" and whoever wants it abolished is "an infidel."
The U.S. State Department knows about the forced servitude in Saudi households, and laws exist to combat this scourge but, as Mr. Mowbray argues, it "refuses to take measures to combat it." Finally, Saudis know they can get away with misbehavior. Their embassy provides money, letters of support, lawyers, retroactive diplomatic immunity, former American ambassadors as troubleshooters, and even aircraft out of the country - it also keeps pesky witnesses away.
Given the American government's lax attitude toward the Saudis, slavery in Denver, Miami, Washington, Houston, Boston, and Orlando hardly comes as a surprise. Only when Washington more robustly represents American interests will Saudi behavior improve.

 UNITED STATES (95%); SAUDI ARABIA (95%); PHILIPPINES (79%)




11

   

 

June 12, 2005 



 THE POLIO EPIDEMIC: Dreaded disease has new life

 
On Thursday, the world's count of known polio cases jumped 20 percent overnight.
Earlier, the World Health Organization's tally of the paralyzing disease had reached 386 in 10 countries. But as national ministries of health made their weekly reports, it spiked to 462, with new cases in Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Yemen.
Fewer than 500 cases of disease in countries with hundreds of millions of residents does not sound like cause for alarm --- but the WHO estimates that for every known case, there are 150 to 200 people who show no symptoms but still transmit the virus. The world's total tally of polio could be more than 90,000 cases and rising. 
If things had gone as planned, 2005 would be the year in which international health authorities declared there were no new polio cases worldwide. Instead, the campaign to eradicate the disease faces at least another year of intense effort --- and influential scientists are beginning to ask openly whether it can ever succeed.
The questions are being raised reluctantly and sympathetically. No one has yet recommended abandoning an effort that has taken 17 years, cost almost $4 billion and deployed an estimated 20 million volunteers.
But prominent infectious disease specialists --- including the chief of the 1970s campaign to end smallpox, the only disease eradicated by man so far --- say the polio effort has encountered political, cultural and scientific complexities that could not have been foreseen and may be insuperable.
"There is truly a formidable challenge here," said Dr. D. A. Henderson, who led the global smallpox campaign and is now a senior scientist at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity.
"I am very pessimistic at the moment," said Dr. Samuel Katz, one of the developers of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and a professor emeritus at Duke University Medical Center. "There is such a thing as volunteer and worker fatigue, and donor fatigue."
The heads of the campaign, however, remain --- guardedly --- upbeat.
"We are feeling optimistic --- really," said Dr. David Heymann of the World Health Organization, named chief of the global polio effort in 2003 by incoming WHO president Dr. J.W. Lee. "There is a real feeling of momentum, though everyone expresses concern that the momentum cannot be sustained."
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a coalition of the WHO, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United Nations Children's Fund, Rotary International and private donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, dates to 1988.
It was inspired by the smallpox campaign, which reduced cases of the world's worst infectious killer to zero within 10 years, and modeled on the Pan-American Health Organization's 1980s campaign to eliminate polio in the Americas, which succeeded in less than six years.
In 1988, polio --- a viral disease that usually attacks children and destroys the nerves that control movement --- circulated freely in 125 countries and paralyzed about 350,000 children each year. The coalition initially thought disease transmission could be stopped within 12 years, by 2000, but the target date has been pushed back twice, to 2002 and then to 2005.
By the end of 2003, there were only 784 cases left in the world, in six countries: Nigeria and Niger, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Part of power struggle
Planners expected India and Pakistan would be the most difficult. They did not expect that three Muslim provinces in northern Nigeria, locked in a political struggle with the largely Christian federal government, would suspend polio vaccination as a bargaining chip.
Two of the provinces capitulated within months, but the third, Kano, held out for almost a year while its religious leaders claimed the vaccine had been deliberately contaminated in a plot to sterilize Muslim children. Kano's leadership boycotted a 2004 summit meeting at WHO headquarters, and turned away reports by two commissions that found the vaccine ---made in Indonesia, a majority-Muslim nation --- to be free of contamination.
Cases within Nigeria began to climb: There were 793 in 2004, more than 2003's world total. And the disease began to cross borders. By the end of 2003, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Ghana and Togo had been reinfected; by the end of 2004, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Guinea, Botswana and Saudi Arabia.
This year, polio reached not only Indonesia, but also Yemen, which now has 220 known cases, most in the Red Sea port of Al Hudaydah.
"That clearly is very intense transmission," said Mark Pallansch, chief of the CDC's enterovirus lab, who performs genetic fingerprinting of polio strains to track the virus' movement. "If you assume there are 200 infections for every paralysis case, then this is to the point of saying one-half of all the children in the area have been exposed to the virus in a short period of time."
Polio's rapid resurgence has revealed inherent problems in the eradication campaign.
Some stem from the disease's own inescapable characteristics. Because polio produces symptomless infections --- and because other infections mimic its fast-moving floppy paralysis --- doing lab analysis on every case is essential for defining how far the disease has spread. Smallpox was much easier to find: It caused a unique, easily identifiable rash.
Vaccination problems
Smallpox was easier to prevent, too: A single dose of vaccine produced lifelong immunity. Protection against polio takes at least three doses of vaccine. In tropical areas, for reasons that are not clear despite years of study, full immunity requires eight doses or more.
Children in some of the reinfected countries had not been vaccinated enough: In Yemen, Pallansch said, surveys show an average vaccination rate of 65 percent of toddlers, "but it is safe to say there were significant areas where coverage was below 50 percent." And those that had been inoculated had received only one or two doses of vaccine.
In other countries, children had not been vaccinated at all: They were born after national governments, seeing the disease eliminated within their borders, halted the expensive, complicated vaccination campaigns and redirected money and effort to other health problems.
That strategy was implicitly backed by the coalition, which in 2003 withdrew vaccination funding from almost 100 countries that had vanquished polio to concentrate its limited money on the six most seriously affected nations.
Massive emergency campaigns inoculating more than 100 million children have been staged in the reinfected countries, but polio has nevertheless become locally re-established in six. Those campaigns have come at a cost: "There is a $50 million shortfall for the second half of this year, and an additional $200 million needed for next year," said Dr. Hamid Jafari, chief of the CDC's global immunization program. "That might increase if we have additional importations into other polio-free countries."
Flawed surveillance
In canceling vaccination funding for polio-free countries, the coalition bargained that governments would keep close watch to catch importations before the disease could regain a foothold in places where it had been wiped out.
But findings in the CDC's polio lab throw doubt on the strength of the countries' disease-surveillance programs.
Pallansch and longtime research partner Olen Kew have developed a "molecular clock" --- based on the rate the polio virus changes over time --- that lets them infer how long a virus has been circulating in an area even without a sample to prove its presence. Recently they dated three sets of viruses from Sudan and Chad, and found them most closely related to viruses last seen up to five years ago.
Two were of a type that is known to stay in one area, but the countries' surveillance programs had never picked them up.
The implications have left the coalition apprehensive. The eradication plan's last phase requires that surveillance for polio be excellent, because the weakened live virus in the oral polio vaccine --- which typically spreads from recipients to others close to them and circulates for months or years --- can unpredictably mutate into a form that causes paralysis instead of protecting against it.
With vaccinations ended, the only protection against a devastating outbreak of vaccine-caused polio would be keeping close watch to recognize the mutated virus as soon as it erupted. Some believe that may not be achievable.
"Once you stop transmission and are not finding cases, it is very difficult to keep governments interested and spending money," Henderson said.
As a result, Katz said, polio vaccination may never stop --- at least not in industrialized countries that can afford to keep vaccinating. Most of the West, including the United States, already uses an injectable polio vaccine that carries no risk of mutation because it contains a killed virus, but is not practical for the developing world because it costs several dollars per dose instead of the oral version's several cents.
Projections revised
Absent good surveillance, the only way to protect against an outbreak of mutated vaccine virus is to keep vaccinating --- which makes moot one of the chief rationales for the eradication campaign, that millions of dollars would become available for other health problems once polio ends.
Given the mounting obstacles, observers say it is reasonable to expect the eradication program to take even longer --- "I would like to say it is going to make it," Katz said, "but maybe 2010 is a better goal than 2006" --- or to be transformed, perhaps into a permanent immunization program that administers vaccines for multiple diseases at once.
The latter choice carries the moral freight of consigning the developing world to being at permanent risk of polio, as well as invalidating almost 20 years of work.
"So many people have been so devoted to eradicating polio, and have worked so damn hard on it, that it is very hard to say, 'Maybe we ought to alter our goals to something more appropriate to the resources available and to the prospects of the future,'" Henderson said.
Publicly, the coalition partners remain committed. At Rotary International, which launched its PolioPlus effort three years before the WHO targeted the disease and has raised almost $600 million, "we are in it until the end," said PolioPlus manager Carol Pandak.
The CDC and the WHO continue to express confidence that cases in India and Pakistan can end this year. Regarding Africa, they are much less sure.
"Whether Africa will see success or not this year, we won't even forecast until August or September, when the season of high transmission has begun again," Heymann said. "When that occurs, we'll take another look and see where we stand."

  NIGERIA (94%); AFRICA (92%); AFGHANISTAN (91%); EUROPE (79%);  NORTH & SOUTH AMERICAS (57%); 







 
 


June 9, 2005 Thursday



 Distant Islands

 
My favorite picture in "Shadow Play" at the Asia Society is "Village of Sayan" (1949), by Henri Cartier-Bresson. It is a picture of three Balinese dancers: two women and, in the middle, a man. The three are in close proximity; in fact, they have their arms around one another. The women are seen in profile and the man full face. His expression of dreamy sensuality is the center of focus, even more than the exotic dance costumes and makeup. The picture has a visual rhythm analogous to the rhythms of the music and dance. Cartier-Bresson's first wife, Ratna Mohini, was a Javanese dancer; maybe that accounts for some of the intimacy - both with the dancers and the dance - that the great French photographer is able to convey.
My second favorite photograph here is Burt Glinn's "Yogyakarta" (1969), a picture of a puppet master preparing for a wayang kulit (shadow) puppet show. Two elaborate paper puppets form a screen, through which we see their operator getting them ready. This traditional art form provides the exhibition with its title, and "Shadow Play" is an appropriate one for its intentions. 
I was visiting my native Providence, R.I., 20 or 30 years ago, when an Indonesian puppet master was in residence in the drama department of Brown University. There I saw a performance he staged. In Indonesia the performances can go on for the better part of a day and a night, retelling familiar episodes drawn from long mythic cycles. Interwoven in the traditional texts, however, are comic and satiric commentaries on contemporary events in the village where the play is being presented. In Providence the traditional material was done in its original tongue, and the funny bits in English: It worked very well.
"Shadow Play" wants to show us a classical Indonesia set against a modern, or at least modernizing, Indonesia. An example of the former is "Ubud, Bali, Indonesia" (1997) by the Japanese photographer Hiroji Kubota. It is a color work in the National Geographic magazine style of untrammeled Edenic loveliness. From a height we look across at an exquisitely terraced hillside, each flooded rice paddy edged in green, we see occasional palm trees, and in one terrace two peasants with their oxen. This is the timeless Asia we are familiar with from innumerable Chinese and Japanese paintings and drawings, agricultural and traditional. The black-and-white "Balinese Market at Noon" (1953) by George Rodger (like Cartier-Bresson, one of the founders of Magnum), with its unselfconsciously bare-breasted woman, is also reminiscent of the National Geographic of yore.
But the same year Kubota shot "Ubud" he took "Jakarta," a color picture presented of Jalan Jedral Sudirman, a main boulevard in the capital of Indonesia. It is night, and we see an endless ribbon of bumper-to-bumper traffic, a sidewalk dense with pedestrians, a curtain of high-rise buildings of no discernable national style. In the upper-right-hand corner, crowning the skyline, is half of an illuminated golden-arches McDonald's sign. This is Indonesia, but it is also both anywhere and nowhere. Rodger's native market contrasts with "Surabaya" (2004), by the Iranian Abbas, a black-and-white picture in which three women wearing the Islamic jilbab (religious scarf) keep their heads down as they pass by upscale stores with ads for western female underwear and hair styling. The three models in bras and panties, standing in one life-sized ad, have the modern stance of Helmut Newton's aggressive, square-shouldered Aryan bitches.
Indonesia is made up of more than 17,000 islands and is the world's fourth most populous country. It has substantial Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian minorities, but it is more than 80% Muslim. None of the pictures in "Shadow Play" gives any indication of sectarian conflict, but the bombing by Islamic jihadists of a tourist disco on the idyllic island of Bali a few years ago was only the most egregious example of simmering violence. The Christians of East Timor fought for independence to escape harassment, and there is much evidence of radical Islamists pressuring more moderate Muslims to adopt their fundamentalist beliefs. This background complicated my reaction to the many pictures in the exhibition of specifically Muslim activities.
Again, to contrast two pictures, "Banda Aceh, Sumatra" (1989) is a black-and-white photograph by Abbas of the Dar El Maaref pesantren,a boarding school where female students devote their time to the study of the Koran, prayer, and work. Five women in their late teens or early 20s crowd against a window, barred as if it were a prison. They are all dressed indifferently, and three have their heads covered, but none of them looks happy. Their expressions are angry, apprehensive, and uncomprehending. There is little evidence, other than the wall text, that they are students.
Last year Abbas took "Yogyakarta," a color picture of girls in high school uniforms - including the jilbab scarf - marching military style in a drill to promote discipline among the students. The print is about 48-by-60 inches, as if it were an art photo,
and the vivid red of the uniforms makes it seem that it might be. The girls wear their red pants and jackets with white gloves, and red caps over their jilbabs. They stand in a smart formation, but the large format of the print lets us see each face and the expressions all seem purposefully blank. The outfits these girls wear are more modern than those in the pesantren, and they are better organized, but to what purpose?
Abbas has taken many pictures of Muslims in Indonesia, from "Gresik, Java" (1989), a black-and-white picture of three young boys memorizing the Koran in Arabic, their sweet faces illuminated by light reflected from the pages of the open books in front of them, to "Jakarta, Java" (1989), a color picture of the enormous Istiqlal ("Independence") mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia. A vast sea of worshipers facing Mecca recedes, wave by wave, from the bottom to the top of the photograph. We will probably be seeing more pictures of Indonesia.
Until August 21 (725 Park Avenue, between 70th and 71st Streets, 212-288-6400).

  UNITED STATES (87%); ASIA (78%)






   

 

June 5, 2005 



 THE SUNNIS vs. THE SHIITES: The Muslim divide;
Shiites' control of Iraq worries majority Sunni Muslim world

 
Baghdad, Iraq --- Ahmed al-Dulaimi is from a prominent Sunni Muslim tribe. His wife, Iman al-Husseini, comes from a family of clerics in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Karbala.
Such mixed marriages are common enough that some Iraqis joke that sectarian strife will result in a "war in the bedroom."
The joke is wearing a little thin, however, as Shiites and Sunnis, who have intermingled in Iraq for centuries, find themselves navigating a post-Saddam Hussein era in which fears of civil war are rising.
Al-Dulaimi, an engineer, said that nowadays even the cut of the traditional Arab dishdasha over-shirt worn by men can get one accused of being a Wahhabi --- a Sunni sect that emanated from Saudi Arabia and which is seen as extremist and violent by many Iraqi Shiites. 
He sees politicians bickering in sectarian terms never heard so openly before in Baghdad, where once talk of sectarianism was practically taboo. Iraqis used to pride themselves in claiming that "there is no difference" between the sects. But political analyst Ghassan al-Atiyyah says Iraqis shouldn't fool themselves. "Civil wars are not planned," he said. "You drift into civil war."
The ascension to power by Iraq's Shiites, long an oppressed majority, marks a historic shift not just in Iraq but in the larger Muslim world. Shiites represent only about 10 to 15 percent of the world's 1 billion Muslims. But they now hold political power in the Middle East's two largest overtly Islamic nations --- Iraq and Iran. That's causing some consternation in a region whose Sunni-dominated elites still have vivid memories of how the Iranian theocrats sought to "export" their Islamic revolution --- and who view with alarm Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
Many Sunnis outside Iraq, and even some extremist ones within it, do not even regard Shiites as fellow Muslims. In southern Pakistan and parts of India, where Shiites form a substantial percentage of the Muslim community, sectarian clashes are common. In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, Shiite sects are overwhelmingly rejected by the Sunni majority. And even in traditionally tolerant Malaysia, Shiites are frequently arrested under laws that provide for detention without trial.
Among Arabs outside Iraq, there is also tension as the dominant Sunnis fret that the Shiite emergence could tip the balance of regional power to non-Arab, Shiite Iran. The elites in Sunni Arab autocracies worry that the empowered Iraqi Shiites could challenge their grip on leadership in religion and politics, inspiring minority Shiite communities in the region.
Inside Iraq, the rise to power by Shiites is viewed as a threat by the minority Sunnis who grew accustomed to their elite status before and during Saddam's era. Iraqis who dare to speak openly about it say they fear their country could become like Lebanon or the former Yugoslavia, where people who once intermarried and intermingled turned to killing each other.
Saddam's regime, determined to secure his Baath party's power, enforced a veneer of unity even as he kindled divisions among the sects, suppressing Shiite rituals, crushing Shiite uprisings and giving Sunnis a disproportionate share of top jobs in the government and army.
Shiites comprise about 60 percent of the Iraqi population and Sunni Arabs, ethnic Kurds and Christians make up nearly all the rest.
Historical context
Iraq was the battleground where Shiite Islam was forged in the 7th century. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, his cousin and son-in-law Ali was passed over twice as the prophet's successor as head of the religion and the state. Ali's followers, the Shia Ali, or party of Ali, eventually installed him as the Muslim world's fourth caliph, or leader, in the year 656 only to see him assassinated five years later in the Iraqi city of Kufa.
He was buried in nearby Najaf, where his shrine is the destination for millions of Shiite pilgrims annually and the seat of the religious network that leads the Shiite masses --- at least those in Iraq.
Close by, in the city of Karbala, lies the tomb of Ali's son --- and the prophet's grandson --- Hussein, who was slaughtered together with his family and followers by the then-reigning caliph to prevent a challenge to political power. Hussein's martyrdom is marked by Shiite Muslims every year in the week-long ritual of Ashoura.
The split in the Muslim ummah (or community) was in essence a political rather than religious dispute. Though the two sects have now developed often divergent doctrines and practices, both have their share of "liberals" and "fundamentalists." The Ottomans, Sunnis from today's Turkey, ran Iraq for nearly 400 years until the British took over in 1918 after World War I. The Shiites rebelled against the British, who turned to the more cooperative Sunnis to run the country.
Shiites still point to that rebellion as a mistake that cost them what they say was their rightful role in the country's leadership and they cite it when explaining why, for the most part, they have cooperated with the U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq.
Sunnis, on the other hand, have formed the backbone of the anti-American insurgency, often attacking Shiites as collaborators.
In the Jan. 30 elections, a Shiite-led party endorsed by the clergy in Najaf won a majority in the assembly. The Sunnis find themselves now outside the corridors of power, facing newly assertive Shiite militias in the streets and worrying about payback in a region where forgiveness is rare.
Conflicting views
Sunnis speak of Iranian infiltration in Iraq's new government and in their neighborhoods --- which Shiites perceive as a slight toward them even when it sometimes is not intended as such.
In turn, Shiites talk about needing to purge "Baathists" from the government, which many Sunnis hear as code for all Sunnis --- even when it is not.
"I ask you why there are some conflicts between blacks and whites in America? We have some conflicting views," said Naji Mohammed al-Ithawa, spokesman for the foundation that oversees Sunni mosques. He said Shiites have taken over some 40 mosques formerly used by Sunnis. The Shiites claim it's just two or three.
Sunni and Shiite mosque leaders have split into different offices. In Saddam's time, they worked in the same government ministry building as he tried to enforce the appearance of non-sectarianism.
With Saddam's dictatorship gone, "it is normal for these conflicts to be stirred up," al-Ithawa said.
A muezzin, a man who chants the call to prayer at a Sunni mosque, recently came to al-Ithawa's office quivering in obvious pain. The man showed his legs and back, beaten to a dark purple, by six men he said abducted him outside the mosque and tortured him for four hours because his mosque was the only one for Sunnis in a Shiite area.
Many Iraqis fear such violence by groups seeking to drive out the local minority will spread. Ten Shiite pilgrims were recently massacred while passing through a Sunni area during their return from a Shiite shrine.
Shiite leaders have been meticulous in stressing co-existence. From Najaf, Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite in Iraq, repeatedly tells his followers to refrain from seeking revenge for the bombings and slaughter they have suffered at the hands of Sunni insurgents.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, promises to include Sunnis in the new government. He also seeks to assure Iraqis that, though he and other Shiite leaders were supported by Iran during their opposition to Saddam, his government will be independent from the mullahs in Tehran.
Concerns about Iran
While that message is aimed at calming fears in Iraq, it is often deciphered differently outside the country, in the larger Muslim world dominated by Sunnis.
Iran, which has grown in wealth and weaponry since the Arab world helped Saddam when he launched his war against the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic republic in the 1980s, pre-occupies the Sunni Muslim leadership in the region.
In December, Jordan's King Abdullah II warned that Iraq was part of Iran's plan to create a "Shiite crescent" in the Middle East.
"The change took place as soon as the [U.S.] occupation took place, it created a strategic fundamental change in the region," said Mohamed Sayed Said, deputy director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "Arab regimes deep down are against the presence of a Shiite government [in Iraq] but they [tolerate] it because of the presence of the Americans. They have to as a courtesy to the Americans, but they are not happy about it."
For Egypt and Jordan, the concern is strategic. They worry their regional influence will be usurped by Iran.
Jordanian political analyst Radwan Abdullah said many Arab elites suspect the United States and Israel are seeking to inflame sectarian tensions so as to keep the Muslim world divided. It is one reason, he said, that Syria may be assisting the Iraqi Sunni insurgents.
In other countries, the worry centers on internal concerns.
Saudi Arabia has a large Shiite minority that is becoming more assertive in the Sunni kingdom. Bahrain, headed by a Sunni ruling family, has a restive Shiite majority. Kuwait also has a significant Shiite minority.
No deal with Lebanon
Shiites are a plurality of the population in Lebanon where, according to American University of Beirut political scientist Nizar Hamzeh, the Shiite triumph in Iraq has some Shiites wondering if they should become more cooperative with Washington. However, he said, America's close ties with Israel are a deal breaker for Lebanon's strongest Shiite party, Hezbollah --- the Iranian- and Syrian-backed group that the State Department once described as the "A team" of terrorism.
But Iraq's neighbors might prefer a Shiite government in Iraq to no government at all. Chaos could make the country a base for violence and terrorism throughout the region.
"They're terribly afraid this thing is going to fail. Much worse for them than a Shiite government in Iraq is civil war in Iraq," said Wayne White, a former State Department Iraq specialist and now an analyst at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
The future may lie in the families of Iraqis like the Sunni-and-Shiite couple al-Dulaimi and al-Husseini.
They recalled the sometimes-difficult times that they had gone through when their communities were divided by politics: Al-Husseini lost two cousins, missing and presumed dead, when Shiites revolted against the Saddam regime in 1991. Al-Dulaimi's brother fought with the government to quell the uprising.
But they said that their 12-year-old son is growing up knowing the ways of both sects.
"All these statements come through politicians," al-Dulaimi said. "All Shiite and Sunni politicians create problems and keep the simple people occupied in order to get power."
--- News researcher Mandi Mourad contributed to this report from Cairo, Egypt.

 IRAQ (97%); IRAN,  (94%); INDIA (93%); PAKISTAN (93%); SAUDI ARABIA (92%); AZERBAIJAN (79%); MALAYSIA (79%);  UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (79%); BAHRAIN (79%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); IRAN (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); LEBANON (79%); SYRIA (79%); KUWAIT (79%); 







 Tribune Review Publishing 
 


June 5, 2005 Sunday



 Terror on trial

 
Editors note: To find out what governments and courts are doing to stop the growing threat of Islamic terrorist groups in Europe, reporter Mark Houser  
visited Europe in March and April on a journalism fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Today's stories are the last in a series of reports. 
MADRID, Spain -- Two dozen men sit behind bulletproof glass in a new courtroom built to hold the biggest al-Qaida trial Europe has yet seen. 
In proceedings that began in April, the Spanish National Court is considering whether the accused men belonged to a terrorist cell that helped kill nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. 
Key testimony hinges on whether central figures in the alleged Madrid cell arranged a meeting in Spain two months before the attacks between hijacker Mohammed Atta and planner Ramzi Binalshibh.  
Prosecutors also claim the group's leaders funneled money to the hijackers and to other terrorists in Europe, and that one man made videotapes of the World Trade Center and passed them to other al-Qaida members to plan the attacks. 
Prosecutors have asked for 62,000-year sentences for the group's three central figures. But in reality, the three could face no more than 30 each. That's the longest anyone can be jailed in Spain. In addition, the country has no death penalty. 
Accused cell member Yusuf Galan is not one of the major players. Galan, a Spaniard who converted to Islam, faces only 18 years for being part of the cell, visiting an Islamic militant training camp in Indonesia in 2001, and having illegal guns and knives in his home when he was arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks. 
He also had militant literature, a map of London with a church and synagogue circled, and a map of Hannover, Germany. 
And he had a map of Pittsburgh. 
The map is a mystery. It is at least 40 years old. The Point Bridge, closed in 1959 and demolished thereafter, is still shown as a traffic artery across the Monongahela River, while the "proposed" Fort Duquesne Bridge, built in the 1960s, is just dotted lines. 
A sequence of numbers -- 71, 73, 75, 76, 5, 64, 67, 68 -- is scrawled in one margin. Crestview Road, a hilly residential street in Banksville, is circled. 
Residents of Crestview Road say they have not noticed any suspicious behavior on their small street, which is lined with middle-class brick houses in a neighborhood popular with city workers. Pittsburgh FBI special agent in charge Chris Briese declined to comment on the map. 
The map raises the question: Why was Pittsburgh on the radar of an alleged Islamic terrorist in Spain? 
One possibility: In the 1990s, a group of Saudi students in Pittsburgh published an Arabic-language magazine, Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, that often featured jihadist rhetoric. For example, one 1998 editorial called the United States a "strategic target" and wished for its destruction. The magazine was distributed to hard-line mosques in Europe and elsewhere until it ceased publication in 2000. 
The magazine's publisher, Bandar Al-Mashary, and editor, Mohsen Al-Mohsen, headed an Islamic foundation based in Banksville and prayed at a temporary mosque in a Banksville hotel, both about a mile from Crestview Road. Both men returned to Saudi Arabia after getting doctorates at the University of Pittsburgh. 
The lead prosecutor in the Spanish case, Pedro Rubiro, said the map is of little interest to his case. Galan has not been asked about it, and the government barred a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter from interviewing him. 
Spanish authorities do not say Galan or any of the others on trial visited Pittsburgh. 
A bigger trial  
While observers on both sides of the Atlantic are watching the trial closely, a future Spanish courtroom battle looms larger -- that of the Madrid train bombers. 
Cell phone-triggered backpack bombs exploded in Madrid's main train station and two other stops on March 11, 2004, killing 191 people. The political aftermath of those bombings ultimately toppled Spain's conservative government. 
More than two dozen suspects, mostly Moroccan, have been jailed in the investigation, and dozens more have been released but are considered suspects. Authorities say at least one of the alleged al-Qaida ringleaders now on trial in Madrid also helped plan the train bombings. 
In Spain, accused terrorists can wait up to four years in jail while the case against them is assembled, but a top official in the Spanish prosecutor's office said he expects the bomb trial to begin next year. 
Jail time can be cut short, as prosecutor Rubiro knows well. 
His boss, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Jesus Santos, boasted that Rubiro was the first person in Spain to win a conviction against an Islamic terrorist group. That was in 1997. 
One man Santos put away, an Algerian named Allekema Lamari, was released after an appeal.  
Weeks after the Madrid attack, police tracked seven suspects to an apartment in the suburbs and surrounded it. The men inside chanted prayers, then blew themselves up. 
DNA tests of the remains showed Lamari was one of them. 
Asked how he felt when he heard the news that a man he had once put away might well have been one of the train bombers, Rubiro looked at the floor. 
"I can't answer that," he said. 
What went wrong? 
Spain's legislature has created a 3/11 commission to examine what went wrong and to look for ways to improve security. It plans to publish its findings this month. Meanwhile, the government has added 300 intelligence personnel to handle terrorism and has tightened regulations on mining explosives, which were used in the bombings. 
But the commission is frequently bogged down in strident partisanship, said Josep Guinart, a commission member and legislator who is aligned with the ruling socialist coalition. 
"One of the problems of this commission is we are only politicians, so sometimes it means the commission is less a place for investigating what happened on the 11th of March, and more a place where the (political) parties have a fight," Guinart said. 
The bombings took place three days before national elections. In the immediate aftermath, former President Jose Maria Aznar and other leaders from the then-ruling conservative party announced Basque terrorists were the likely culprits. 
As facts emerged pointing to Islamic terrorism, protesters massed in the streets of Madrid to accuse the government of lying. Aznar, they said, was trying to obscure the real reason Spain was targeted -- its participation in the war in Iraq. The conservatives lost, and the troops were withdrawn soon after. 
Conservative Senator Ignacio Cosido said blaming ETA, the Basque terrorist group, for 3/11 was a mistake. But he said ETA has killed more than 800 Spaniards in hundreds of attacks -- an ETA car bomb in Madrid injured five last month -- so investigators had good reason for their suspicions. 
Cosido said his biggest worry is that the Spanish public will assume it is no longer targeted by Islamic terrorists now that its soldiers have left Iraq. 
"My perception is that Spanish society doesn't have an understanding of the magnitude of this threat. They do not understand that we are not free of this threat," he said. 
Spanish investigators announced last fall they had broken up a new Madrid bomb plot, this time with multiple targets, including a skyscraper, a soccer stadium and the Atocha train station again. 
But some are skeptical, such as documentary filmmaker Miguel Angel Nieto, of Madrid. 
"The police need to (prove) to public opinion that 3/11 was not because of the war in Iraq. So I think there were no plans to attack anything more," he said. 
Nieto is one of a group of filmmakers who produced a collection of documentary short features called "Todos Ibamos en Ese Tren" ("We Were All on That Train") after the attacks. Proceeds went to the victims' families. The documentary has been shown in several film festivals, including Chicago. 
Angel Nieto's segment is called "Victim Zero." In it, a wife, a mother, a friend and a daughter talk about the man they thought they had lost in the explosion, until someone spotted him on the news carrying a wounded man. 
The man himself refused to talk -- many of the victims of the train attacks have asked for privacy -- but Angel Nieto says in the end it was better that way. 
"My idea was there were a lot of anonymous people who were helping at that moment. This is one of them. It's not important, his identity. He is one of many," he said. 
The piles of candles, floral bouquets and handwritten notes that once cluttered the floor of Atocha station have been cleaned up. In their place are two computer terminals where a passersby can scan a handprint -- a frequent image in anti-terror protests here -- and type testimonials to victims. Loudspeakers play a short loop of somber piano music. 
"Life has to go on, but this is one way we can always remember that day," said Susana Calzado, 31, an accountant from Madrid who paused at the memorial for a quiet moment before walking to her train. 

 EUROPE (95%); SPAIN (94%); UNITED STATES (94%); GERMANY (88%); 







  



June 4, 2005 Saturday  




 Drug Case Renews Rancor in Pacific; 
Australians in Uproar After Indonesia Gives Beauty School Student 20-Year Sentence

 
 She was a working-class Australian vacationer pleading for mercy, asking judges to believe her: Someone had hidden nine pounds of marijuana in her body-board bag during a trip to Bali. 
  But the Indonesian court, treating her as just another player in the country's growing drug trade, sentenced Schapelle Leigh Corby, 27, a beauty school student, to 20 years in prison last week for drug trafficking. 
 Protests erupted in Australia after the verdict, and the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra was threatened on Wednesday by a biological warfare attack that appears to have been a hoax. The woman's plight now threatens relations between the two countries.   
  Australian Prime Minister John Howard offered a rare and immediate apology for the embassy scare, and his foreign minister called his Indonesian counterpart to ease tensions. 
  But these gestures have not stilled the demand from some Indonesians that the government issue a formal travel warning for Australia, which has repeatedly cautioned its citizens about visiting Indonesia because of possible attacks by Islamic militants. 
  "There is a kind of superiority complex in Australia and a bit of racism," said Djoko Susilo, a member of the Indonesian parliament's foreign affairs committee. "It is ironic that someone who has been convicted of smuggling drugs like that becomes a celebrity and heroine in Australian public opinion." 
  The sudden chill comes at a time when relations between the two countries had been their warmest in a decade. Indonesian bitterness had been easing over the role of Australian peacekeepers in helping East Timor secure its independence after the former Indonesian province voted to break away in 1999. 
  And many in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country, had chafed at Australia's close relations with the United States, including involvement in the Iraq invasion and permission for a U.S. military training facility in northern Australia. Moreover, Howard pledged during his election campaign last year to strike preemptively against Islamic terrorists elsewhere in the region  --  an apparent reference to Indonesia.  
  But the tsunami that devastated Indonesia's Aceh province late last year brought an outpouring of support from Australia, whose forces were among the first on the ground with assistance. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited Canberra two months ago and gave a moving tribute to nine Australian navy and air force members killed in a helicopter crash while providing aid to the Indonesian island of Nias. 
  Last October, however, even before Yudhoyono took office, the seeds of renewed rancor were already hidden in Corby's bags. 
  Corby maintained during a trial on the Indonesian island of Bali that she was the unwitting victim of an Australian drug ring. Her defense team told the court that unidentified baggage handlers had tucked the plastic, vacuum-sealed packet of marijuana into her luggage sometime during the trip from her home in Brisbane to Sydney. For some reason, her team said, the drug ring had not retrieved the package before she transferred to an international flight to Bali. 
  Though no evidence was mustered in court supporting her account, a subsequent newspaper poll showed 90 percent of Australians believed her. 
  As the trial proceeded, Australian tabloids and talk radio shows fanned a solidarity campaign, often xenophobic and sometimes racist in character. One popular Sydney radio host derided Yudhoyono as "Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am Yiddiyono" and likened the Bali judges to monkeys. 
  "The judges don't even speak English, mate. They're straight out of the trees," said host Malcolm T. Elliott in one exchange last month. He continued, "I have total disrespect for our neighboring nation, my friend. Total disrespect."  
  Signs went up along Australian roads and on car windows calling on vacationers to boycott Bali. Corby partisans urged Australia to dispatch special forces to free her and demanded the government take back the $750 million in aid pledged to Indonesia to help tsunami victims. 
  Citing this financial assistance, Australian actor Russell Crowe urged a local radio station, "How can we as a country stand by and let a young lady, as an Australian, rot away in a foreign prison?" 
 Such reaction has been criticized in Australian news media. "All of this anger is misplaced," the Sydney Morning Herald said in an editorial Thursday. "Much of it has shown Australia and Australians in a very poor light  --  boorish, ill-informed, often racist." 
  Greg Fealy, an expert in Indonesian-Australian relations at Australian National University, said the blanket television coverage of the trial became a compelling reality show for an audience that did not understand the Indonesian justice system. Many Australians mistook the standard workings of the court, including the right of judges to question witnesses, for ill will. 
  "There was a feeling that the judges had it in for Schapelle Corby," Fealy said. "Bubbling beneath the surface is a sense that Indonesia is less advanced and less civilized than Australia." 
  Rarely noted in the media was that the same Bali court that tried Corby won praise in Australia for convicting three dozen Muslim militants of involvement in the 2002 Bali nightclub attacks, which killed 202 people, many of them Australian tourists. The prosecutor in the Corby case won a death sentence for one of the bombing ringleaders, and the chief judge in the Corby case sentenced another ringleader to die.  
  On May 27, three Australian television stations broadcast the Corby verdict live. Media Web sites registered record hits as Australians flooded online to see if Corby's Silent Agony  --  as the Sydney Daily Telegraph headlined it  --  would end. 
  Corby stood before the judges with tears in her eyes. When they pronounced her guilty, saying she had been caught red-handed by customs officials, and sentenced her to prison, the courtroom full of relatives, supporters and Australian journalists erupted in pandemonium. Corby slapped her forehead. 
  "Liar! Liar!" her mother, Rosleigh Rose, shouted from behind. "Honey, we are going to take you home." 
  Indonesian and Australian legal experts said Corby got off lightly. In several neighboring countries, capital punishment would have been all but mandatory, and her lawyers, now weighing an appeal, must consider that a higher court could still amend the sentence to death. 
  Still, Australia's press responded with fury. "Judges Show Corby No Mercy," trumpeted the Australian newspaper. Officials at Australian charities helping tsunami victims said some donors have asked for their money back. 
  Indonesia and Australia are jointly investigating the incident at the Canberra embassy. Police said they believed the white powder, which authorities said was accompanied by a letter referring to the Corby case, had tested as harmless. The embassy has reopened. 
  Howard has appealed for restraint while warning about a possible anti-Australian backlash in Indonesia, where Vice President Jusuf Kalla has also advocated calm, telling Elshinta radio in Jakarta that he understood Australian sympathy for Corby. 
  "If it's a guy with a tattoo, people wouldn't care," Kalla said. "If you imagine your daughter in an Indonesian jail, coming from a simple family and having to sit among the criminals, of course you'd worry." 

 AUSTRALIA (99%); INDONESIA (96%);  TIMOR-LESTE (79%); IRAQ (79%)






   


May 31, 2005 Tuesday



 BC-News Advisory,0677

 
Editors:
Among other stories for Tuesday AMs from The Associated Press:
HEALTH
HEART DISEASE:
SAN FRANCISCO A class of cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins that can help prevent heart disease are still underprescribed for many at-risk patients, according to a new study. BC-Heart Disease Study-HFR. Hold for release at 8 p.m. EDT. 
NATIONAL
BOX OFFICE:
LOS ANGELES Payback for the Sith has meant a real payday at the box office. "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith" beat two strong newcomers to remain the top movie with $70.75 million over the long Memorial Day weekend, though Hollywood again failed to climb out of a prolonged revenue decline. BC-Box Office.
CIGARETTE TAX:
FRANKFORT, Ky. Frank Hinton's four Discount Tobacco City & Lottery outlets near the Tennessee line are bracing for the worst as Kentucky prepares to raise its cigarette tax for the first time in 30 years on Wednesday. But an American Cancer Society official calls the move "a monumental leap" for the state. BC-Cigarette Tax.
MICHAEL JACKSON:
SANTA MARIA, Calif. As the Michael Jackson child molestation trial moves into its final stages, closing arguments could prove even more decisive here than in many other trials, an expert says. BC-Michael Jackson.
INTERNATIONAL
RUSSIA-GEORGIA:
MOSCOW Russia agrees to begin withdrawing its forces from two Soviet-era bases in Georgia this year, resolving one of the most serious disputes between Moscow and its pro-Western neighbor. BC-Russia-Georgia.
UZBEKISTAN:
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan Police detain dozens of opposition activists in a new crackdown on dissent after this month's uprising in eastern Uzbekistan, an opposition party leader says. BC-Uzbekistan.
TSUNAMI-CLINTON:
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia Former President Clinton says he favors easing restrictions on sales of military equipment to tsunami-devastated Indonesia, saying America has a "huge stake" in improving relations with the world's most populous Muslim country and should do all it can to help them rebuild. BC-Tsunami-Clinton.
VATICAN-ASSISTED FERTILITY:
VATICAN CITY Pope Benedict XVI endorses efforts by Italian bishops to restrict assisted fertility, contending that a referendum next month threatens life and the family. BC-Vatican-Assisted Fertility.
POPE-SAINTHOOD:
VATICAN CITY The process of beatifying Pope John Paul II has officially begun with an edict inviting witnesses to testify about his saintliness and asking anyone with his manuscripts, letters or other documents to give them to the Vatican. BC-Pope-Sainthood
ZIMBABWE:
HARARE, Zimbabwe Police demolish thousands of shacks and vendors' kiosks in a sweep through Zimbabwe's capital that the opposition says is aimed at weakening it politically and making street traders the scapegoats for the country's economic crisis. BC-Zimbabwe.
GERMANY-SCHROEDER'S CHALLENGER:
BERLIN Germany's conservative opposition nominates Angela Merkel, a Protestant minister's daughter from the former East Germany, as its challenger to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, making her the first female candidate for the country's leadership. BC-Germany-Schroeder's Challenger.
BOSNIA-WAR BABIES:
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina As Bosnian war babies conceived out of rape reach adolescence, they are beginning to ask questions about their past and those with the answers are faced with the choice of keeping them in the dark or telling them the agonizing truth. BC-Bosnia-War Babies. Also moved in advance.
PACIFIST-OKINAWA:
HENOKO, Japan Forged in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan's defeat in World War II 60 years ago this August, the pacifist movement has long pushed for a nonaligned, internationalist Japan that would stand forever for world peace. BC-Pacifist Okinawa. Also moved in advance.
The AP
AP-WS-05-30-05 1329EDT

 UZBEKISTAN (94%); ZIMBABWE (94%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (93%);  HOLY SEE (92%); INDONESIA (92%); GEORGIA (90%); GERMANY (73%); 






  
  

  

MAY 30, 2005 Monday 



 Indonesia: Bombings similar to Bali blasts;
Attacks Saturday killed 22. Leaders suspect links to an al-Qaeda ally.

 
Twin bomb blasts that killed 22 people in a Christian town in eastern Indonesia bore the hallmarks of a regional group linked to al-Qaeda, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said yesterday.
About 50 people were wounded in Saturday's blasts, which ripped through a busy market in the lakeside town of Tentena on the eastern island of Sulawesi. The blasts were among the worst bombings in Indonesia since the Bali attacks that killed 202 people in 2002. There was no claim of responsibility. 
Tentena is part of an area where as many as 1,000 people were killed in three years of Muslim-Christian fighting until a peace deal was reached in late 2001. In Saturday's bombings, at least 19 of the dead were Christians, hospital officials in Tentena reported.
Kalla said the bombings were similar to those carried out by Jemaah Islamiyah, a shadowy group seen as the regional arm of al-Qaeda. He singled out Malaysian Noordin M. Top, one of the most-wanted men in the region and a key Jemaah Islamiyah operative.
"The pattern is at least like that carried out by Noordin M. Top," Kalla said in Jakarta, without giving details.
Top and another suspected member of Jemaah Islamiyah, Azahari bin Husin of Malaysia, are accused of masterminding a spate of blasts in Indonesia including the 2002 attacks on the resort island of Bali.
The nearby town of Poso was the focus of much of the past Sulawesi violence, which drew extremists from groups like Jemaah Islamiyah.
There has been some violence since the peace deal, but Saturday's bombings, less than 15 minutes apart, were among the worst cases and raised fears sectarian strife would reignite.
Tentena was tense yesterday, but community leaders were trying to keep a lid on passions, residents said.
Of Indonesia's 220 million people, 85 percent are Muslim. But in some eastern parts, Christian and Muslim populations are about equal in size.
Chief security minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto said after a ministerial crisis meeting in Jakarta that the government would step up intelligence operations.
Last week, Western governments had warned about extremist attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
On Thursday, the United States closed its four diplomatic missions in Indonesia because of a security threat, though no officials have linked the Tentena attacks and the mission closures.

 INDONESIA (97%); MALAYSIA (92%);  






   


May 29, 2005 Sunday



 
Death toll at 22 in Indonesia blasts
Explosions wound 40 and damage bank, church
@BY1:By Chris Brummitt @BY2:Associated Press
@PALU, Indonesia Two bombs exploded in a crowded market in a Christian-dominated town in central Indonesia on Saturday, killing at least 22 people and wounding 40, police said. The blasts came two days after unspecified security threats prompted the United States to close its diplomatic offices.
The explosions within 15 minutes of each other flattened food stands in the Sulawesi island town of Tentena. Witnesses said many of the victims had come to help those injured in the first blast, only to be killed by a second, larger explosion that left a 3-foot-deep crater. The blasts also damaged a bank, a church and a police station. 
"The latest report says 22 people were killed," Vice President Jusuf Kalla told a news conference in Makassar, provincial capital of South Sulawesi.
A Christian clergyman and a 3-year-old boy were among the dead, police said.
No one claimed responsibility for the bombings at the meat and produce market, but Kalla said without offering proof that they were not connected with ongoing sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians.
"It was carried out by the terrorists instead of warring Muslim and Christian factions," he said. "The motive of the perpetrators is to disturb the security situation in Poso."
More than 90 percent of Indonesia's 210 million people are Muslims. It is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but central Sulawesi has roughly equal Muslim and Christian populations.
Tentena, site of the market bombings, is 35 miles from Poso, where fighting between Muslims and Christians claimed at least 1,000 lives in 2000-2002. Palu is 74 miles from Poso.
Rinaldy Damanik, a Christian clergyman and leader of the Synod Churches of Central Sulawesi, also ruled out the involvement of local groups.
"The blasts were different with what happened here in the past," he said. "This has nothing to do with the sectarian conflict. This is the work of uncivilized terrorists who just don't want to see peace in this region."
Police later discovered an unexploded bomb outside a nearby church, said Poso district chief Andi Asikin Suyuti.
In January, police found 60 homemade bombs in an abandoned house in Poso, and security officials last year blamed the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group for attacks that killed at least 12 Christians.

 INDONESIA (97%);  







   


May 29, 2005 Sunday  
National Edition



 Bombings in Indonesia Raise Fears of New Religious Strife

 
Two bombs tore through a busy market in a predominantly Christian town in eastern Indonesia on Saturday, killing up to 21 people in an attack that raised fears that sectarian bloodshed could again break out in the region.
 The explosions, 15 minutes apart, took place in the lakeside town of Tentena, on the eastern island of Sulawesi, part of an area where three years of Muslim-Christian clashes killed 2,000 people until a peace agreement was reached in 2001. 
  Periodic unrest has flared since then, but Saturday's attack was among the worst. Tensions rose after the bombings as hundreds of residents converged on the local hospital and the destroyed market, demanding that the police find the bombers.
 The official Antara news agency, quoting local government officials, said the death toll was 21. The police said earlier that it was 19. A local hospital official said 32 people were wounded, many seriously. 
 People in a crowd banged their hands on the local police chief's car when he arrived on the scene soon after the attacks, but there was no further violence. ''The situation is getting tense,'' said Andi Asikin, the mayor of Poso, a town near Tentena. 
 The roofs of shops near the market were torn off and food and goods scattered over a wide area in Tentena, 900 miles northeast of Jakarta. 
 Much of the past violence in Sulawesi grew from a conflict involving Muslim militants from groups like Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian network accused of many bombing attacks across Indonesia.             

 INDONESIA (96%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)






   


May 28, 2005 Saturday



 Twin explosions kill 19 in central Indonesia

 
Two bombs exploded Saturday at a busy market in central Indonesia, killing at least 19 people and wounding 20 in a volatile region marred for years by religious fighting, a police official said.
The twin blasts occurred in the morning in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena, said Police Maj. Riky Naldo, deputy chief of police in nearby Poso, the coastal town where fighting between Muslims and Christians has claimed hundreds of lives since 2000.
He said two policemen were among the wounded.
Police in January discovered 60 homemade bombs stashed in an abandoned house in Poso, about 35 miles from Tentena. 
Poso, about 1,000 miles northeast of the capital, was a major battleground in fighting between Christians and Muslims four years ago on Sulawesi, where about 1,000 people were killed and thousands of others displaced.
Large scale clashes have died down, but over the last year the island has seen an increase in attacks and bomb blasts.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but central Sulawesi has roughly equal Muslim and Christian populations.
China faces dual animal epidemics
BEIJING After stonewalling for weeks, China acknowledged Friday that two epidemics had spread among its animal and bird populations, renewing questions about its readiness to provide prompt information about infectious disease.
The belated announcement came amid fresh criticism that China's disease-surveillance system is inadequate to deal with an avian flu virus that scientists say may turn into a global pandemic among humans.
An outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease, which causes livestock to waste away, was detected in cattle in five regions of China, leading animal-health experts to slaughter 4,383 head, the nation's chief veterinarian, Jia Youling, said at a news conference.
Rumors had spread in rural areas about the outbreak as animal-health agents began culling cattle and spreading disinfectant along roads. But the matter was subject to a news blackout, and journalists were barred from affected regions. As recently as this week, officials said they knew nothing about a hoof-and-mouth contagion.
Jia defended the belated announcement about the epidemic among dairy and beef cattle.
"There is nothing strange about the delay of 20 days," Jia said. "It takes quite a while after discovering a disease to confirm it. ... We have controlled the epidemic."
Highly contagious hoof-and-mouth disease affects cloven-hoofed animals, such as pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and deer. It doesn't affect humans.
Suspect maintains Atlanta crane standoff
ATLANTA -A homicide suspect remained perched on an 18-story construction crane for a third day Friday, holding police at bay and causing a spectacle in the heart of the city's entertainment district.
A plea from his sister, offers of food and a plan to have him jump onto air bags hadn't resolved the standoff.
The man, identified as Carl Edward Roland, got onto the crane around 5 p.m. Wednesday and told police he was thinking of killing himself by jumping, police spokesman Sgt. John Quigley said.
"When he's ready to come down, he'll come down one way or the other," Quigley said. "The protocol for them is to let him make the decisions."
Roland is wanted by the Pinellas County, Fla., sheriff's department in the death of ex-girlfriend Jennifer L. Gonzalez, 36. Her body was found Tuesday in a pond behind the apartment complex where she lived.
Authorities had said Thursday that Roland had talked to negotiators but refused food and water. Quigley said he didn't know if he had accepted anything since then.
Since March, the 41-year-old Clearwater, Fla., man had quit his job as a computer software salesman, filed for bankruptcy with just $40 in the bank and talked about moving to Las Vegas, the St. Petersburg [Fla.] Times reported Friday. He had also talked about getting back together with Gonzalez.
The standoff was unfolding high above Atlanta's busy Buckhead neighborhood, an area filled with clubs and restaurants. Lunch and dinner crowds, taking advantage of summer-like weather, have packed restaurant patios with clear views of the standoff.

 INDONESIA (96%); CHINA (94%); 




12


   


May 28, 2005 Saturday  




 NEWS SUMMARY

 

INTERNATIONAL   A3-6

U.N. Nonproliferation Talks Fail After One Month
A monthlong conference to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ended at the United Nations in failure, with its chairman saying the disagreements between nuclear-armed and non-nuclear states ran so deep that ''very little has been accomplished.''   A1

Saudi King Hospitalized
Saudi Arabia's ailing King Fahd was hospitalized in Riyadh, the kingdom's official news agency reported, and a Saudi official said the king was in stable but serious condition.   A2

McCain Supports Compromise
Senator John McCain of Arizona signaled his support for a compromise in which the White House might allow Senate leaders access to highly classified documents in return for a final vote on Mr. Bolton's nomination.   A3

Militant's Condition Revised
A posting on the Internet site for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said he was ''in good health and runs the jihad operation by himself.''   A6

Muslims Protest America
Denouncing reports of Americans desecrating the Koran, thousands of protesters chanted anti-American slogans and burned American flags at rallies in Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Middle East.   A5

Pakistan Shrine Attacked
An explosion ripped through the Bari Imam shrine in Pakistan, described by some witnesses as a suicide bombing, killing at least 19 people and wounding nearly 70.   A5

Putin Promises Change
President Vladimir V. Putin acknowledged Russia had lingering problems with human rights, and said his administration would work actively in the next two years to make improvements.   A3

NATIONAL   A7-9;12

Major G.O.P. Fund-Raiser Is Now an Outcast in Ohio
Thomas Noe has been a confidant of just about every Republican official elected statewide in Ohio. But Republicans are distancing themselves after his lawyers said they could not account for $13 million the state invested in a fund he managed.   A1

34 States Support Reporters
Two reporters facing up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify about their sources gained some unlikely allies as the attorneys general of 34 states filed a brief in the Supreme Court supporting the reporters.   A8

No Sex Drugs for Offenders
Some states have begun banning Medicaid coverage for erectile dysfunction drugs for sexual offenders following a federal warning.   A8

Suit Over Governor Survives
A Superior Court judge in Washington State declined to dismiss a Republican lawsuit aimed at removing Gov. Christine Gregoire from office because of accusations of fraud and illegal votes in her election.   A8

Rector to Leave Elite School
Under investigation by tax authorities and falling short of its fund-raising goals, the elite New Hampshire boarding school St. Paul's said its rector will retire at the end of the school year, two years ahead of schedule.   A7

Both Sides Rest in Jackson Trial
The defense and the prosecution rested in the sexual molesting trial of Michael Jackson.   A7

SCIENCE/HEALTH

Anti-Darwin Film at Smithsonian
Fossils at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have been used to prove Darwin's theory of evolution, but a movie to be shown at the institution aims to debunk it.   A8

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-7

Third-Party Outsiders Are Now Power Brokers
The Independence Party of New York has emerged as the third most powerful vote-getter in many state and local races and is expected to endorse the re-election bid of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. A decade ago, some politicians distanced themselves from Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani, the party's leaders, but recently political leaders have been eager to court them.   B4

Ex-Clinton Aide Acquitted
A federal jury acquitted David F. Rosen, left, the chief fund-raiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2000 United States Senate campaign, of charges that he had caused false filings to be made to the Federal Election Commission.   B1

A Showpiece Subway Stop
The spectacular European-style train terminal at Coney Island reaches a milestone this weekend. The restoration of full subway service to southern Brooklyn will be completed after more than three years.   B1

Religion Journal   B7

SPORTSSATURDAY   D1-7

Venus Williams Loses
Venus Williams lost to Sesil Karatantcheva, 6-3, 1-6, 6-1, in the third round of the French Open.   D1

ARTS   B9-20

OBITUARIES   C14

Eddie Albert
A film and television actor best known for his role on ''Green Acres,'' he was 99.   B21

BUSINESS DAY   C1-13

Are Homes Overvalued?
Housing is not nearly as overpriced as stocks were in the late 1990's, but many areas of the country are indeed showing signs of irrational exuberance, according to an analysis by Economy.com.   C1

F.D.A. Requests Viagra Note
The Food and Drug Administration has asked Pfizer, the maker of Viagra, to add a note to the drug's label to make patients aware of a possible link to partial vision loss, which was reported by 38 men taking Viagra.   C1

Barclays Pay Package
The English bank Barclays' compensation package for its new president, up to $28 million, may prompt analysts and shareholders to bristle against what they see as a trend toward American-style pay packages.   C1

Business Digest   C2

EDITORIAL   A22-23

Editorials: The Senate in blinders; local wine tasting; China honors a friend; Carolyn Curiel on the new Los Angeles mayor.

Columns: Matt Miller, John Tierney.

Bridge   B15
Crossword   B17
TV Listings   B202
Weather   D8


 UNITED STATES (94%); SAUDI ARABIA (94%); PAKISTAN (93%); MALAYSIA (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); EGYPT (79%);  RUSSIAN FEDERATION (72%)








 
 

May 28, 2005 Saturday



 19 KILLED IN INDONESIA MARKET BOMBINGS

 
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Two bombs exploded early today at a busy market in central Indonesia, killing at least 19 people and wounding 20 others in a volatile region marred for years by religious fighting, officials said. 
The twin blasts occurred in the morning in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena, said Police Maj.  
Riky Naldo, deputy chief of police in nearby Poso, the coastal town where fighting between Muslims and Christians has claimed hundreds of lives over the past five years. 
Two police officers were among the injured, Naldo said. 
Police in January discovered 60 homemade bombs stashed in an abandoned house in Poso, about 35 miles from Tentena. 
Poso, about 1,000 miles northeast of the capital Jakarta, was a battleground in fighting between Christians and Muslims in 2001 on Sulawesi, where about 1,000 people were killed and thousands of others displaced. 
Large clashes have died down, but over the last year the island has seen an increase in attacks and bomb blasts. 
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but central Sulawesi has roughly equal Muslim and Christian populations.   Post Wire Services 

 INDONESIA (96%)






  
  

  

MAY 28, 2005 Saturday 



 News in Brief

 
In the Nation
Murder suspect spends
3d day atop 18-story crane
* A homicide suspect remained perched on an 18-story construction crane for a third day yesterday, holding police at bay and causing a spectacle in the heart of Atlanta's Buckhead entertainment district. Carl E. Roland, 41, got onto the crane Wednesday and told police he was thinking of jumping. He is wanted by police in Pinellas County, Fla., in the death of his ex-girlfriend Jennifer L. Gonzalez, 36, whose body was found Tuesday. - AP
U.S. rebuffs Venezuela
on extraditing Cuban exile
* The United States yesterday rejected Venezuela's initial efforts to extradite a Cuban exile wanted for a 1976 airliner bombing that killed 73 people. The Bush administration told Venezuela its request that Luis Posada Carriles be arrested with a view to extradition was "clearly inadequate" because it lacked supporting evidence, the State Department said. - Reuters 
Chief of Head Start
resigns amid probe
* Windy Hill, leader of the Head Start preschool program, resigned yesterday. Hill has been under review by the Health and Human Services Department's inspector general over accusations of financial abuses at the Head Start center she ran in Bastrop, Texas, before joining the federal program in 2002. An announcement of Hill's resignation, released by the department late yesterday afternoon, made no mention of the investigation and offered no reason for her departure. - AP
Judge declines to dismiss complaint on Wash. vote
* A Washington state judge yesterday refused to throw out a Republican challenge to the election of Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire, saying voters deserved a full accounting of how the balloting was conducted. The Democrats asked for a dismissal after the Republicans rested their case following four days of testimony aimed at proving that errors, illegal votes and fraud combined to deprive GOP candidate Dino Rossi of victory last fall. - AP
Colo. governor vetoes bill
on job bias for gays
* Colorado Gov. Bill Owens yesterday vetoed a bill that would have outlawed workplace discrimination against gays. Owens, a Republican, said the measure was unnecessary and could force employers to spend a lot of money defending lawsuits. He allowed a measure to take effect extending protection to gays under the hate-crimes law. - AP
In the World
Bomb kills at least 20
at shrine in Pakistan
* A suspected suicide bomber struck yesterday at a Muslim shrine close to the Pakistani prime minister's official residence in Islamabad, killing at least 20 worshipers. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. President Pervez Musharraf called for Pakistanis to unite against "religious terrorism, sectarianism and extremism." - AP
2 bombs kill 15 at market in Indonesian town
* Two bombs exploded today at a market in central Indonesia, killing at least 15 and wounding 20, a police official said. The blasts were in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena, near Poso, where fighting between Muslims and Christians has claimed thousands of lives since 2000. The United States had closed diplomatic offices in Indonesia on Thursday because of an unspecified threat.-AP
Chechen warlord claims responsibility for outage
* Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility for a power outage that struck Moscow on Wednesday, plunging neighborhoods into darkness and stranding subway passengers, a rebel-linked Web site said yesterday. Russian officials have insisted that worn-out equipment caused the power failure, which began with an explosion and fire at a substation. - AP
Angry viewers spur BBC
to drop new weather map
* Irate viewers forced the BBC to abandon a new TV weather map that made the south of Britain look bigger than the north. The BBC said yesterday that it would change the "tilt" of the map to allow viewers to see more of northern England and Scotland, beginning today. A BBC official said the change showed that the broadcaster was listening to viewers. - Reuters
King Fahd hospitalized
in Saudi Arabia
* King Fahd, the Saudi ruler whose actions to strengthen the kingdom's ties with the United States provoked wrath of Islamic extremists, was hospitalized in Riyadh yesterday, apparently suffering from pneumonia. Fahd, believed to be 82, has ruled in name only since he had a stroke in '95. His half-brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, is de facto ruler. - AP

  UNITED STATES (93%); PAKISTAN (93%); VENEZUELA, BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF (93%); SINGAPORE (79%); 






   


May 28, 2005 Saturday



 Quran mistreatment sparks protests

 
Muslims spat on the American flag, threw tomatoes at a picture of President Bush and burned the U.S. Constitution in protests Friday from Iraq to Indonesia over the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book at Guantanamo Bay prison.
American slogans and demanded an apology from the United States, as well as punishment for those who treated the book with disrespect at the U.S. lockup.
U.S. investigators admitted Thursday there was mishandling of the Quran but contend it was mostly inadvertent and deny that one had been put in a toilet. Friday's protests were organized before the officials' comments in Washington. 
Many Muslims were outraged earlier this month when Newsweek reported interrogators at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, flushed a Quran down the toilet to get inmates to talk. The story later retracted sparked deadly riots in Afghanistan.
SEAL found not guilty in prisoner's death
SAN DIEGO
A military jury acquitted a Navy SEAL lieutenant Friday of beating an Iraqi prisoner who later died and of lying about what happened.
Jurors deliberated about three hours before finding Lt. Andrew K. Ledford not guilty of all charges. The 32-year-old SEAL had faced up to 11 years in military prison if he had been convicted of assault, dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming an officer and making false statements.
Ledford, who had stood at attention for the verdict's reading, burst into a huge smile and embraced his attorney upon hearing he was acquitted.
"I think that's what makes this country great is that there is a system in place and it works,' he said outside court.
Head Start executive abruptly resigns post
WASHINGTON
Windy Hill, the leader of the Head Start preschool program, resigned abruptly Friday.
Hill has been under review by the Health and Human Services Department's inspector general over accusations of financial abuses at the Head Start center she ran in Bastrop, Texas, before becoming associate commissioner of the federal program in 2002. Hill has said she asked for the review to clear her name of the charges, which were raised by the National Head Start Association, a lobbying group that has clashed with the Bush administration.
An announcement of Hill's resignation, released by the department late Friday afternoon, made no mention of the investigation and offered no reason for Hill's immediate departure.
But in a statement to staff, Hill said she was leaving for family reasons, to pursue other opportunities and to perhaps advance her education, said department spokesman Chris Downing.
Alleged Lindbergh kids to release book
BERLIN
Three siblings who claim they are Charles Lindbergh's out-of-wedlock children are releasing a book next week that alleges the famous flier had seven illegitimate children in all from relationships with their mother, her sister and his German private secretary.
"The Double Life of Charles A. Lindbergh' alleges that Lindbergh had three children with Munich hatmaker Brigitte Hesshaimer, two children with her sister Marietta, and another two children with his German private secretary, identified only as Valeska, the publishing company said.
Brigitte Hesshaimer's children, Dyrk and David Hesshaimer and Astrid Bouteuil, said in 2003 a DNA test proved they were the U.S. aviator's children, adding that they had met their American half-siblings in the United States.
They also offered as evidence a bundle of 112 letters they said Lindbergh wrote to their mother.
-- From wire reports

  IRAQ (93%); INDONESIA (92%); CUBA (90%); GERMANY (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); AFGHANISTAN (78%); ASIA (78%); 







  



May 28, 2005 Saturday  




 Muslims Rally Over Koran Report; 
Alleged Desecration Leads to Protests In Several Countries

 
Muslims in several countries demonstrated Friday in resurgent anti-American anger over reported desecration of the Islamic holy book, the Koran, and some protesters called on their leaders to demand an apology from the United States. 
 The Muslim Brotherhood held rallies in the Egyptian cities of Cairo and Alexandria, where worshipers and protesters wiped their feet with paper replicas of the U.S. and Israeli flags on their demonstration route. 
 At the Lawyers Club compound on Alexandria's waterfront, about 5,000 demonstrators held up signs asking, "What next after the Koran?" while the crowd chanted, "We have to hate them like they hate the Koran." 
 Riot police on side streets blocked hundreds of other demonstrators from reaching the shoreline. Sheikh Mahaldaway, the preacher at the demonstration, assailed President Hosni Mubarak, saying his government failed to speak up following reports that the Koran was defiled by guards at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "I would have expected the political and security leaders to take a stand," he said.  
 This month, Newsweek magazine published, then retracted, a report that interrogators had put a Koran in a toilet in an attempt to intimidate a prisoner. The report of the desecration of a book that religious Muslims revere as the literal word of God touched off rioting that killed at least 16 people in Afghanistan. 
 On Thursday, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp said the U.S. military had identified five incidents of "mishandling of a Koran" by U.S. personnel there. But Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood said investigators had found no credible evidence that a copy had been flushed down a toilet, as detainees alleged. 
 In Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, a religious political party, led thousands of Muslims in a march through the city's boulevards. The U.S. admission "that its soldiers were disrespectful of the Koran is a much more serious offense than its invasion of Iraq," Qazi Hussain Ahman, the leader, said in a phone interview.  
 Maulana Fazlur Rahman, leader of the opposition in parliament, said in a telephone interview that Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, should respond to the U.S. admission about the Koran by expelling the American ambassador "as a first sign of protest." 
 "How can a country whose soldiers have no respect for the holy Koran be the most important ally of the  Pakistan," Rahman said. 
 In the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, news service reports said about 300 people rallied outside the U.S. Embassy after prayers in a nearby mosque. The demonstration, organized by Malaysia's largest Islamic opposition party, was loud but largely peaceful. Protesters listened to speeches condemning the incident, waved banners with anti-American slogans and burned cardboard replicas of U.S. and Israeli flags. 
  The crowd dispersed after several demonstrators were allowed to hand a protest letter to embassy officials. "We sent a memo to express our outrage at the desecration of the Koran," Hassan Ali of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party told reporters.  
  In Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, about 50 people rallied outside the U.S. Embassy and pelted pictures of President Bush with tomatoes. The demonstration ended without serious incident. 
 At a rally in Beirut organized by the Islamic group Hezbollah, thousands of Lebanese chanted, "America, listen, listen, with my blood I will protect my Koran," according to news reports. Similar protests swept the country's Palestinian refugee camps, where men hoisted pictures of Osama bin Laden and his ally Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is leading the insurgency in Iraq. 
  Hundreds of Jordanians protested after noon prayers and marched on a main square in Amman, the capital of Jordan, the Reuters news agency reported. "Americans, your battle with the youths of the Koran will only bring you death," the crowd chanted. 
  Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan. Correspondent Alan Sipress in Jakarta contributed to this report. 

 UNITED STATES (96%); EGYPT (93%); PAKISTAN (93%); MALAYSIA (92%); CUBA (87%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); IRAQ (79%)








 


May 27, 2005



 Congress Mulls Conditions for Aid to P.A.

 
Congressmen are deciding whether to demand that the Palestinian Authority take concrete steps to stop anti-Israeli incitement as a condition for American aid to the territories.
Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives are considering attaching such conditions to the additional financial aid that President Bush intends to grant the P.A. in his 2006 budget, congressional sources said. Lawmakers are alarmed over reports from pro-Israel organizations documenting a proliferation of anti-Israeli and antisemitic statements in the Palestinian media, schools and mosques.
Palestinian incitement "is going to be a very big issue for Congress as we move ahead to the next few years," said Ester Kurz, director for legislative strategy and policy at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobby. Several members of Congress, she said, may demand "some kind of linkage" between additional aid and stopping incitement.
"We are still several weeks away from considering the 2006 budget on foreign aid," Kurz said, "so a lot will depend on [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's] visit to Washington [this week], and on what the administration will request" in terms of aid to the Palestinians. 
Senator Hillary Clinton zeroed in on the incitement issue during her speech Tuesday in Washington at Aipac's annual policy conference.
"We must continue to be vigilant about monitoring hate and incitement and antisemitism not only by the Palestinian Authority but throughout the Arab world," said Clinton, a New York Democrat. "We must continue to shine a bright spotlight on these messages of hatred and these enticements for martyrdom in these textbooks and on the media that take young minds and twist and pervert them and create a new generation of terrorists and insurgents."
 has learned that two lawmakers, Republican Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire and Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California, are demanding that the U.S. Agency for International Development explain the anti-Israeli and antisemitic content in the textbooks. Money from USAID, which is the vehicle for allocating American aid to the Palestinians, does not pay for the production or printing of the textbooks, but it does fund construction of schools in the West Bank and Gaza. An aid to Sherman, Don McDonald, confirmed that Sherman is sending letters on the issue to USAID and the State Department.
The demands for stronger Palestinian action to curtail hate-filled rhetoric come at a time when incitement in the P.A.-controlled media has actually dropped. Several Israeli officials recently said that Abbas, also known by his nom-de-guerre Abu Mazen, is taking significant action to curb such expressions of hatred.
"Since Abu Mazen [became] chairman, I think there [has been] a decrease in the incitement in the [Palestinian] media," said Major General Amos Gilad, who directs the Israeli military's political department. But, Gilad added, incitement in Palestinian schools and mosques is still plentiful and "the minds are poisoned on a daily basis."
In elementary-school Palestinian textbooks, Gilad said, "there is no Israel. Terrorists are heroes. Their portraits look at you from any wall. There is an industry of glorification" of terrorists.
"That's why," he said, stopping the incitement should be a "precondition" of any future agreement with the Palestinians.
Members of Congress are particularly concerned about disturbing content in Palestinian textbooks. They have been receiving a steady flow of information on the topic from one Israeli organization in particular, the Israel Resource News Agency. The agency regularly provides congressmen with controversial selections from Palestinian textbooks. One 10th-grade textbook cited by the agency identified the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' - the century-old antisemitic forgery alleging a worldwide Jewish conspiracy - as the manifest of the Zionist movement. Textbooks still feature maps that do not identify Israel.
The agency's director, David Bedein, said that he and his colleagues recently briefed senior officials in the White House on Palestinian incitement and have held five sessions on Capitol Hill during the past two years.
In preparation for Abbas's Washington visit, Bedein said, his organization has been sending out a daily update, instead of its usual weekly report, to American lawmakers on anti-Israeli incitement in the territories.
"Of course we are doing it because of the Abu Mazen visit," Bedein said.
Several other recent developments have focused attention in Washington on inflammatory public rhetoric in the Palestinian territories. One was the appearance of a link to the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" on an official Web site of the P.A. The link was removed from the site after it was harshly condemned by American Jewish organizations.
On May 13 Palestinian national television carried a sermon delivered by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiras of Gaza City, a cleric known for his fiery speeches, in which he called Jews "a virus resembling AIDS." He accused Jews of committing bigger crimes against Palestinians than the Nazis committed against Jews, contended that the Nazis were only reacting to crimes that the Jews committed against Germans, and yearned for the day when everything in the world "will rid itself of Jews."
Following outraged reactions from across the world, Palestinian leaders denounced Mudeiras. Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Shaath called for the sheik's dismissal and promised to prevent the future broadcast of similar sermons on Palestinian television. Commentaries in the Palestinian press also condemned Mudeiras.
Some experts say that even if Abbas and other Arab leaders take decisive steps to fight incitement, it will take time to undue the damage of earlier propaganda. "You are talking about a long-term endeavor," said Yonah Alexander, a veteran terrorism expert who co-directs the International Law Institute in Washington.
"These are societies that have been conditioned for generations to believe conspiracy theories and lies," Alexander said. "What you need is no less than a cultural transformation."
The point seemed to be hammered home by a recent study on Arab perceptions of the United States conducted for the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential think tank. The study was based on a series of focus groups with university graduates in three Muslim countries: Egypt, Morocco and Indonesia. The findings stunned the report's co-author, Craig Charney.
Among many of the respondents, Charney said, anti-Americanism was fed by antisemitic stereotypes. "We did not plan to write about this subject. we didn't even have any questions in our questionnaire about it. But it kept coming up spontaneously," Charney said.
Many Arabs spoke of Jewish omnipotence in the United States. When asked about the proportion of Jews in American society, respondents' estimates ranged between 10% and 85%, though studies repeatedly put the figure at under 2%. Some participants in the focus groups thought that as many as 80% of American lawmakers and 90% of people in the media are Jewish.
"Even people who are better informed than others in their societies held such views," Charney said. "They truly believe it."

 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (96%); ISRAEL (96%); UNITED STATES (94%)







 


May 27, 2005 Friday  




 WORLD DIGEST

 
INDONESIA
American offices close amid security threat
The United States closed all its diplomatic offices in Indonesia on Thursday because of an unspecified security threat, and it issued fresh warnings of potential terrorist attacks in the world's most populous Muslim country. 
 reported that a Western counterterrorism official and a private security analyst said the decision was made after a diagram of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and details of how best to carry out an attack were posted on a Web site.
Police also said two of the country's most-wanted terrorism suspects may be planning more attacks. The two Malaysian suspects -- Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top -- are believed to have masterminded attacks on the Australian Embassy last year and a Jakarta hotel in 2003.
CONGO
26 are feared dead after plane crash
Twenty-six people were missing and feared dead after a plane crashed in eastern Congo, an aviation official said Thursday.
The plane disappeared shortly after takeoff Wednesday. It was found Thursday by a government-led search team flying near Bunyakiri, a village in dense forests and mountains, said Raymond Sangara, coordinator of Congo's civil aviation authority.
The missing Antonov-12 crashed into the side of a cliff, with pieces of the plane and clothing scattered in the valley below, Sangara said.
All 21 passengers aboard were Congolese, Sangara said. The pilot was Russian, and the four crew members were Ukrainian, he said. 
FRANCE
Chirac makes pitch for EU constitution
President Jacques Chirac made a dramatic last-ditch appeal Thursday for French voters to ratify the European Union's first constitution, saying the choice is "about your future and that of your children."
Chirac warned of dire consequences if Sunday's referendum produces a French "no" to the treaty -- planned as the next big step in a 50-year process of European integration.
A "no" could, at least temporarily, kill off the proposed constitution and its stated goal of closer integration among the EU's 25 member states. Each state must approve the text by referendum or parliamentary vote for it to take effect next year.
EGYPT
New election rules get voter approval
Voters overwhelmingly cleared the way for Egypt's first contested presidential election, according to referendum returns released Thursday. 
Six opposition groups had called for a boycott of the referendum, but the Interior Ministry said 54 percent of the 32 million registered voters participated. Of that, 83 percent approved the referendum.
Abdel-Halim Qandil, a spokesman of the largely secular reform group Kifaya, or Enough, characterized the results as "black humor," saying all the returns were fabricated, including some "no" votes created for show.
The new rules require independent candidates to get 250 recommendations from elected members of parliament and local councils before being allowed to enter the presidential race.
UKRAINE
Deal with U.S. aims to secure nuclear waste
The United States and Ukraine signed an agreement Thursday to safeguard nuclear waste in the former Soviet republic that could be used by terrorists to make a dirty bomb. The nations pledged to work together to upgrade security at storage facilities.
The deal was signed by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman during a two-day visit in which the United States is expected to press for improved nuclear security and cash-strapped Ukraine is expected to push for more funding.
The Office of Global Radiological Threat Reduction of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration will work with local officials to upgrade security at the six Ukrainian nuclear waste facilities.

 UNITED STATES (95%);  EUROPE (93%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (93%); FRANCE (92%); EGYPT (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); UKRAINE (79%); AUSTRALIA (79%)








 


May 24, 2005 Tuesday  




 Bush's gravitational sling

 
It was Colorado's own Congresswoman Pat Schroeder who coined the term "Teflon President" for Ronald Reagan, because no allegation ever stuck to him, whether it was swapping arms for hostages or influence-peddling by Cabinet members.
President George W. Bush seems to have gone one better - call him the Boomerang President, because whatever is thrown his way seems to come back. And it comes back so hard that we might borrow a term from rocket scientists and call him the Gravitational Sling President.
The sling effect is used by space probes; if one approaches Jupiter on the right track, the probe does not fall to the planet, but instead picks up speed so that when it leaves Jupiter's gravitational field, it's going faster than it was before. And that's how things seem to work with this president. 
For instance, there's his military record. But when that became an issue again last year, the allegations whirled around him and came back to smite others. CBS and Dan Rather, not George W. Bush, ended up in disrepute over the documents that allegedly showed favoritism toward Bush in his National Guard days. And when John Kerry, who actually went to Vietnam and got shot at, tried to make that an issue, it was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who were all over the news, not Bush's safe stateside service.
Most recently, we have Newsweek magazine. In its May 9 issue, there was a brief item about U.S. interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison with mention of flushing a copy of the Koran down a toilet. Riots broke out in some Muslim countries, starting in Afghanistan and spreading from Gaza to Indonesia. At least 16 people died.
Let's start with whether the Koran episode happened. Released detainees have made such charges, and the International Committee of the Red Cross sent "credible information" about Koran mishandling to the Pentagon in 2002 and 2003.
It seems believable to me, for I know that if I were conducting such interrogations, I wouldn't have any trouble saying "Achmed, you're not leaving me any choice here. You need to tell me who you met on the road to Damascus in February of 1999, and what you talked about, or else your holy book could fall into this bucket of \[fecal matter\]. I'd rather not have that happen, but this is out of my hands. It's up to you now."
Assume, though, that Newsweek fabricated the item. What would it have to gain? Nothing comes to mind.
No, wait, it's part of the Evil Liberal Media Conspiracy, and Newsweek wanted to start anti-American riots, even though the Koran-abuse allegations had been made public before without starting riots.
And if the magazine meant to start riots, it didn't do the job, according to the U.S. commander on the ground in Afghanistan, Gen. Carl Eichenberry, who reported to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the rioting was "more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his cabinet is conducting in Afghanistan," and Eichenberry "thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine."
Despite all that, people write letters to the editor denouncing Newsweek for deliberately harming America's image in the Muslim world, and they attack the magazine's credibility.
But did Newsweek order the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan? Wouldn't a military invasion be more likely to anger people than a sentence in a magazine? Or is that question too difficult for Bushites to answer?
Did Newsweek claim that Iraq had to be invaded in order to remove the weapons of mass destruction that were never found? Or that Saddam Hussein was working with Al-Qaeda? Or, to move on, that federal tax rates could be cut and the budget would still remain in surplus?
It is George W. Bush who has often told us things that are not so, and who does far more to make the United States unpopular abroad than any magazine item ever could.
But look at the commentary and criticism. It's all about Newsweek, not Bush. This is beyond the boomerang, perhaps even greater than the gravitational sling. Black holes, anybody?
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.

 UNITED STATES (94%);  SYRIA (74%); AFGHANISTAN (71%); CUBA (68%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


May 23, 2005 Monday



 World datelines

 
Afghanistan
KABUL -- U.S. airstrikes and ground troops killed 12 insurgents who had attacked a coalition patrol in eastern Afghanistan's border region in the latest wave of fighting with Taliban-led rebels, the U.S. military said Sunday. The United Nations called for Afghan human rights investigators to be allowed into Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, after the New York Times reported poorly trained U.S. soldiers there had repeatedly abused prisoners. China 
BEIJING -- A gas blast at a coal mine in northern China killed 20 people, the government said Sunday, just shortly after an unrelated mine explosion left 30 dead and 20 missing in the country's notoriously dangerous coal shafts. Germany
BERLIN -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called Sunday for early elections this fall -- a year ahead of time -- after his party suffered a crushing defeat in Germany's most populous region, saying he lost the mandate he needs to fix the country's struggling economy. A somber Schroeder made the announcement after his Social Democrats did far worse than expected in local elections in their former stronghold of North Rhine-Westphalia, which they had governed since 1966. India
NEW DELHI -- Bombs exploded inside two movie theaters showing a controversial Hindi-language film in the Indian capital on Sunday, killing at least one person and injuring dozens, officials said. Both theaters are in the western Karol Bagh neighborhood and the explosions occurred 15 minutes apart, junior Home Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said. At the time of the explosions, both theaters were showing the movie "Jo Bole So Nihal," a Hindi-language film that has been condemned by Sikh religious leaders for denigrating their faith by depicting a Sikh character being chased by scantily clad women. Indonesia
JAKARTA -- Thousands of Indonesian Muslims protested Sunday outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta over a now retracted report that American prison guards had flushed a Quran down a toilet, in the latest mass protest in a Muslim country over the issue in spite of the retraction. About 7,000 activists held anti-American banners and posters while chanting "Allahu Akbar!" or "God is great!" along an about mile-long march from the capital city's Welcome Monument to the embassy. Kyrgyzstan
OSH -- Hundreds of Uzbeks who fled into neighboring Kyrgyzstan to escape violence in their Central Asian country are not refugees and must return home, a senior Kyrgyz official said Sunday. International pressure has been mounting on Kyrgyzstan to grant political asylum to the Uzbeks, who fled the May 13 violence in the eastern city of Andijan. Mexico
MEXICO CITY -- President Vicente Fox on Sunday defended his commitment to minorities and human rights on a U.S. radio program, in his first public response to his controversial comment that Mexicans take the U.S. jobs that "not even" blacks want. U.S. civil rights activist Jesse Jackson pressed the Mexican president for an apology for the remark that has strained already tense relations between U.S. blacks and Hispanics, during an interview on a Chicago gospel station. "I very much regret the misinterpretation," said Fox, touting laws created under his administration that outlaw discrimination and protect minorities. Mongolia
ULAN BATOR -- Nomadic herders arrived on horses at polling stations on Mongolia's vast steppe to vote Sunday for a new president, with the candidate from the former Communist party leading the polls. The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, the former Communist party now known as MRRP, was voted out in 1996 but re-elected in 2000, and now appears to be riding new popularity. Polls show its candidate Nambariin Enkhbayar leading three rivals amid nostalgia for the stability of one-party rule and Soviet subsidies that halted in 1990. South Africa
JOHANNESBURG -- Seven teenage girls drowned Sunday in a rip tide off South Africa's east coast and a boy was missing after a beach outing turned tragic when the swimmers ventured out before lifeguards were on duty. The swimmers went to the beach at the town of Richards Bay on South Africa's east coast about 7 a.m. and went into the water before lifeguards were on duty.

 AFGHANISTAN (96%); UNITED STATES (94%); KYRGYZSTAN (94%); GERMANY (93%); MEXICO (93%);   CENTRAL ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%); INDIA (79%); CENTRAL EUROPE (56%)






   


May 23, 2005 Monday



 
Quran story riles Muslims in Indonesia
@BYWIRE:Associated Press
@JAKARTA, Indonesia Thousands of Indonesian Muslims protested Sunday outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta over a now retracted report that American prison guards had flushed a Quran down a toilet, in the latest mass protest in a Muslim country over the issue in spite of the retraction.
About 7,000 activists held anti-American banners and posters while chanting "Allahu Akbar!" or "God is great!" along an about mile-long march from the capital city's Welcome Monument to the embassy. 
"As Muslims, we unite here to warn the U.S. that the bad behavior of its soldiers has humiliated all Islamic followers around the world," said protest leader Ridwan Saidi.
In a short item published in its May 9 editions, Newsweek magazine reported that interrogators at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, placed copies of the Quran in washrooms to unsettle suspects, and in one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet."
Newsweek has since retracted the report based on an anonymous source, which sparked three days of violent anti-U.S. protests in Afghanistan that killed at least 15 people. Protests also broke out in Pakistan.
In a protest Friday in India that came after the retraction, hundreds of Muslims staged an angry rally against the United States in the eastern city of Calcutta, spitting and having a boy urinate on a U.S. flag before burning it on a main thoroughfare in the city's business district.
Indonesia, site of Sunday's protest, is the world's most populous Muslim country. More than 90 percent of its 210 million people are Muslims.

 INDONESIA (96%); UNITED STATES (95%); INDIA (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); AFGHANISTAN (75%); CUBA (69%); 




13


   


May 21, 2005 Saturday  




 Islam Can Vote, if We Let It

 
IN last month's Saudi Arabian municipal elections, the nation's first experiment in real democracy, many were worried because Islamic activists dominated their secular rivals. Indeed, we have seen a similar trend in Turkey, Morocco and Iraq in the last few years; and we can expect it in the coming Lebanese, Palestinian and Egyptian elections. Yet, while this Islamic trend can no longer be ignored, neither should it be a source of panic to Western policy makers and pundits. 
 Based on my 30 years of empirical investigation into these parties -- including my observations of fellow inmates during the 14 months I spent in an Egyptian prison -- I can testify to a significant evolution on the part of political Islam. In fact, I believe we may be witnessing the emergence of Muslim parties that are truly democratic, akin to the Christian Democrats in Western Europe after World War II.
 To understand this evolution, one must look at how the Islamists rose to such prominence. Autocratic regimes in the Middle East have for decades allowed little public space to those who would build civil societies; no freedom of speech, assembly or association. The only space for people to congregate without harassment by the secret police was the mosque. Thus, unwittingly, the autocrats contributed to the growth of the theocrats, who became their mirror images. 
 Taking advantage of the rulers' economic and political failures at home and their setbacks on battlefields, the theocrats made compelling cases for their own visions. And through their great efforts in providing services to the poor, they evolved first into de facto social workers and then into local politicians, eventually taking control of cities like Algiers and Oran in Algeria, and Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey.
 Seen as efficient and uncorrupt, these Islamists began to gain in popularity even among secularists and won parliamentary pluralities in Algeria in 1991 and in Turkey 11 years later. (In Algeria the Islamists were not allowed to enjoy the fruits of their victory thanks to a Western-condoned military coup.) Today, some two-thirds of the estimated 1.4 billion Muslims in the world live under democratically elected governments in which Islamists are major players -- with Indonesia, Bangladesh and Morocco joining Turkey as bright spots. 
 Clearly, on grounds of principle and pragmatism, Westerners should not be dismayed at the thought of allowing religious parties a role in the emerging political structures of the Arab world. For one thing, as citizens, Islamists are entitled to the same basic rights as others. It would therefore be hypocritical to call for democracy in these countries and at the same time to deny any groups wanting to peacefully contend for office.
 Second, Islamists tend to be fairly well organized and popular. Yes, some have created armed wings to their movements, ostensibly to resist foreign occupation (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad in Palestine) or in response to authoritarian regimes. But in all cases, a moderate, less-violent Islamist core exists. Excluding the religious parties from the political mainstream risks giving the upper hand to the armed factions at the expense of their more moderate centers.
 Repression has had high costs. Where Islamist groups are denied access to political space, their cause takes on an aura of mythical martyrdom, and their abstract calls for a return to Islamic principles of governance are not put to the test. A phrase like ''the meek are the inheritors of the earth'' resonates with the masses, though it is empty of any practical content. As long as these groups don't have to deal with the complicated business of forging actual political policies, their popularity remains untested. The challenge, therefore, is to find a formula that includes them in the system, but that prevents a ''one man, one vote, one time'' situation. 
 One fairly successful attempt at such a formula was coordinated by King Hussein of Jordan, after widespread riots in 1989 over food shortages in his traditional stronghold in the south. Needing to engage the people more directly in the tough economic decisions that had to be made, he opted for a new constitutional monarchy. He brought all the political forces in the country together in a national congress, in which the rules of the democratic game were enshrined in a national charter. The Islamists signed on.
 Since then, there have been several elections to this body in which Jordan's Islamists have participated, but in only the first did they gain a plurality. Once in power, their sloganeering was put to the test, and voters were not terribly impressed. In the four ministries they held, the Islamists imposed heavy-handed restrictions on female staff members, setting off protests that eventually forced the cabinet members to resign. 
 Shortly after the Jordanian experiment, King Hassan II of Morocco followed suit with a similar revision of his nation's Constitution, and despite recent terrorist attacks the country seems set on an increasingly democratic path. In 2002, the Turkish Justice and Development Party won the parliamentary elections and formed a government and -- to the surprise of many -- it wasn't the end of the world. In fact, the Islamists emerged as more pragmatic than their secular predecessors in tackling some of Turkey's chronic problems: they softened restrictions on the Kurds, looked to make compromises over Cyprus and began a successful campaign to make Turkey eligible for eventual membership in the European Union.
 And consider what has happened in Iraq. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, has been the savior of President Bush's policy in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Without his unwavering backing of the January elections, the Arab world would not have seen the stirring images of millions of men and women braving their way out to vote despite threats and suicide bombers.
 Of course, this is not to say that we should expect Hezbollah or Hamas to turn into Western-style democratic parties overnight. While countries opening themselves to democracy should work to bring Islamists into the system, they should not -- and the West should not pressure them to -- allow those groups unwilling to abide by certain rules into the game. 
 These principles would include: strict respect for constitutions and the rule of law, including full independence of the judiciary; recognition of the principle of the rotation of power based on free and fair elections with international observers; pledges that elections be held on a schedule that is not subject to tampering by whatever group comes to power; agreement that non-Muslim minorities must be guaranteed full citizenship and cultural rights, including the right to compete for any elected office, to freely exercise their religion rights and to speak their chosen language; and agreement that women must be assured full and equal participation in public life.
 When all parties agree to such conditions, they will have gone a long way toward reducing apprehensions at home and abroad about their participation in politics. This does raise questions about who would guarantee that all parties abide by these rules of the game. Each country, of course, would have to decide for itself; Turkey made its armed forces a guardian of the Constitution, and other places it might be high courts. In any case, there must be faith in the system.
 So what should be the role of the external actors -- the Western powers, the United Nations, the World Bank and other international organizations -- in promoting democratic reform? Much has been said in the Muslim world about President Bush's ''crusade'' after the 9/11 attacks. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were predicated, among other things, on spreading freedom and democracy in the Middle East. More peaceful approaches toward that end also include the Bush administration's Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Greater Middle East and North Africa Initiative that was endorsed last year at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Sea Island, Ga. 
 In addition, an earlier, overlooked initiative by the Europeans is worth studying, the Barcelona Accord of 1995. Under this agreement, several Arab states, including Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, pledged to take specific steps for enhancing civil society, human rights and democratic reforms. In return, the Europeans were to offer economic aid, favorable terms of trade and security guarantees. Unfortunately, the governments of the Arab states, with the partial exception of Morocco, enjoyed the benefits of the economic protocols but failed entirely to make the required domestic reforms.
PERHAPS the most important role foreign powers can play today is in withholding their aid, trade and technology from despotic regimes. The model is the Helsinki Accord of 1975, which set up a monitoring system of Soviet-bloc states and mandated sanctions for human rights violations, and which ultimately played a major role in bringing down Communist regimes.
 Whether we are in fact seeing an ''Arab spring'' or a mirage depends on where you stand. Many in the Middle East, having been betrayed in the past, cannot be blamed for fearing that this is an illusion, and remembering other spring stirrings of democracy -- like Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968 and Tiananmen Square in 1989 -- that were brutally crushed while the world looked on. 
 For me, however, something about events of the past few months feels new and irreversible. Too many people in too many places -- Egypt, Iran, Lebanon and elsewhere -- are defying their oppressors and taking risks for freedom. Across the region the shouts of ''Kifiya!'' -- ''Enough!'' -- have become a rallying cry against dictators. 
 With luck, the Middle East may catch the so-called third wave of democracy, which has rolled through some 100 countries since the fall of the dictatorship in Portugal in 1974. But whether it will be a spring wind or a sandstorm will depend in great part on how the Islamists are accommodated in Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine in the months ahead. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have hinted recently that the United States would accept the outcome of any fair and free elections, even if it brings Islamists to power. That hint should be explicated in a clear doctrine. A government open to all and serving all is our best weapon against both autocracy and theocracy.


 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%); LEBANON (94%); EGYPT (94%); TURKEY (94%); SAUDI ARABIA (93%); MIDDLE EAST (93%); ALGERIA (93%); MOROCCO (93%); IRAQ (92%); WESTERN EUROPE (79%); EUROPE (79%); 







 Editorial Projects in Education, Inc
 
Education Week

May 18, 2005



 Civics Lesson; 
Phila. Students Press Cause of Student's Family

 
Students from a Philadelphia charter school traveled to Washington last week to lobby members of Congress for help for a 1st grader whose Indonesian family faces deportation.
Angelina Lusaka Sugianto--friends call her Tasha-- arrived in Philadelphia six years ago, at the age of 1, with her family. Her Catholic parents fled Indonesia, according to their lawyer and the school's principal, after Muslim extremists attacked their home with large firecrackers, and a mob stormed a church where they worshipped. The family argues it would face similar harassment if forced to return to Indonesia. 
Immigrants seeking asylum in the United States must file a request within one year of arrival. But an initial request was mishandled by someone helping the family, and the deadline was missed. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' asylum office in Lyndhurst, N.J., and the Executive Office for Immigration Review in Philadelphia both turned down the family's application because of the missed deadline.
The case is now pending before the federal Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va.
Jurate Krokys, the principal of the 500-student Independence Charter School, said students have written more than 1,000 letters in support of the Sugianto family.
"We wanted to do something to help," said Ms. Krokys, who in the 1980s was a political activist supporting an independent Lithuania. "It seemed natural for us because our school is about preparing students to become citizens of the world."
On May 12, Ms. Krokys traveled to Capitol Hill with seven 6th graders to hand-deliver 500 student letters each to Pennsylvania's U.S. senators, Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum, both Republicans.
"We want human rights for [Tasha]," a 4th grader named Kaitlyn wrote to Sen. Santorum. "They want to stay in Philadelphia and not go back to a place where they know they will be harassed. They came all the way here for freedom."
Judith Bernstein-Baker, the family's lawyer, said it's hard to know whether the lobbying effort will help.
"Legally, it's a tough case," she said. "But these kids really believe in America, and all the good things about our country."

 UNITED STATES (95%);  LITHUANIA (53%)







  



May 18, 2005 Wednesday  




 Koran Allegation May Long Resonate; 
Anger Over Reported Desecration Persists Despite Retraction

 
 In markets and tea shops, the news bulletin flashed from transistor radios in Arabic and Urdu, Dari and Pashto. In universities and business offices, it raced across the Internet. In mosques and religious schools, it was repeated from pulpits and loudspeakers. 
 The report last week that U.S. military interrogators had desecrated the Koran has now been retracted by Newsweek magazine after five days of violent protests in Afghanistan that left 15 dead, peaceful protests in other Muslim countries and horrified reactions from governments across the Middle East. But the controversy has highlighted the extreme sensitivity of religious symbols, especially the Koran, to Muslims at a time when some feel their faith is under attack by the West and when their fervor is easily susceptible to manipulation.  
  The torrent of anger over the Newsweek report was exploited by some religious and political groups, speeded by improved communications in the Muslim world and mingled with other sources of resentment against the United States. Rapidly improving technology played a role in spreading the allegation of Koran abuse to places it would not previously have penetrated  --  even as recently as two years ago, when similar accounts from the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were first reported.  
 Mosques and Islamic groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan are no longer cloistered from the world. Some have Web sites, their leaders have satellite phones and governments have urged them to use computers to modernize their teachings. Kabul, the war-torn Afghan capital, had no phone service for years, but there are now a dozen Internet cafes; one was the target of a suicide bomber on May 7.  
 The anger unleashed by the story appears unlikely to subside quickly, said analysts and leaders in several countries. 
 "The damage cannot be controlled by the belated retraction from Newsweek under U.S. government pressure," said Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of the major Islamic party alliance in Pakistan, who spoke by telephone from Islamabad. "The desecration of the Holy Koran by U.S. soldiers shows that the United States is on a path of clashing with Islam." 
 Ahmad said that his alliance, the Muttahida Majlis Amal, was planning nationwide protests May 27 and that it had "coordinated with Islamic organizations all over the world to join us in this day of condemnation." 
 Although reaction in Pakistan was relatively tame, the report that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet has dominated political discourse. Parliament passed a resolution calling on the United States to punish those behind the alleged abuse. Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president and a key ally in the U.S. war on terrorism, urged the United States to "carry out a thorough investigation."  
 "Koranic desecration is an emotional and combustible issue, which historically has had great public resonance," said Rifaat Hussain, a scholar of security studies in Islamabad. "In the current polarized climate . . . with the Abu Ghraib incidents and the mindset that the Bush administration is capable of doing anything, it is easy for anti-U.S. forces to join hands with extremists to whip up a popular frenzy." 
 In Afghanistan, where reaction was the most severe, religious and political activists said crowds were easily goaded to violence because of other festering grudges, including complaints of prisoners being abused and civilians killed in U.S. military actions since late 2001. In four days of protests in a half-dozen locations, at least 15 people died in clashes with police, mostly from bullet wounds. 
 The protests were also fueled by the antipathy of some groups toward the government of President Hamid Karzai, which is closely allied with the Bush administration. In the view of some, the government has allowed vulgarity to creep into public life in a conservative Muslim society. Karzai is due to visit Washington later this month.  
 "People are full of resentment and this was their chance to show it," said Hafiz Mansour, a conservative Muslim intellectual, who spoke by telephone from Kabul. "Afghans do not forget the past; they still remember the bombing of the wedding party," he said, referring to a U.S. air assault on a village in 2002. "Our constitution says Islam should be respected, but in our capital, people are drinking liquor and half-naked girls are dancing on TV." 
 Karzai and his aides have said the controversy was deliberately inflamed by "enemies of the government," who include the revived radical Islamic Taliban militia and other former militia factions from several ethnic groups that have hostile relations with Karzai. 
 "The opposition exploited this opportunity to damage the name of Karzai," said Sayed Amin Mujahid, a political activist and scholar in Kabul. "They are against him allowing American military bases here, so they used the [Koran] issue as an excuse to cause violence and make him look weak." 
 The reports of Koranic vandalism also reached other Muslim  regions, sparking smaller demonstrations in Indonesia and in the Palestinian territories. Analysts in both places said Tuesday that even if relatively few people took to the streets, the allegation had a powerful negative impact. 
 "The holy book is the word of God, and when the soldiers in Guantanamo did this act . . . it was a provocation for every Muslim," said Adnan Husseini, director of the Islamic Trust in East Jerusalem, which oversees Muslim holy places. "We don't expect this from a civilized country," he added. "This adds another difficult factor before people who believe there is a war against Islam." 
  In Indonesia, Islamic militants protested Friday and Tuesday in Jakarta and students burned an American flag. Observers said a badminton match with China drew more public attention, but a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said that if the reports of Koranic desecration were proved true, "that would be an insulting and immoral act." 
 The Koran has such exalted status among Muslims that is it never allowed to touch the ground. It is placed on a high shelf and kissed each time it is opened. Desecrating the Koran is punishable by death in Pakistan, Afghanistan and many other Islamic countries. 
 "The Koran is supposed to be more important than a life," said one Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "If there is any disrespect for the Koran, whether true or not, people will believe it and feel it very badly." 
 Because of such feelings, many analysts said that although the initial protests had died down, they doubted the anger over the Guantanamo report would dissipate entirely, even if the allegation was proved untrue.  
 Pakistan's foreign minister, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, said during a visit to New Zealand on Tuesday that Newsweek's retraction would "definitely help" prevent further protests. But in Islamabad, the information minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, said the retraction was "not enough," adding that the report "insulted the feelings of all Muslims." 
 The groundswell of anger has posed a new challenge to Musharraf, who already was under attack from religious hard-liners for his ties to Washington. Pakistani officials were stung last week when a cartoon in the Washington Times depicted a U.S. soldier patting an obedient dog labeled "Pakistan" after the capture of a senior al Qaeda leader. Dogs are considered unclean by many Muslims.  
 Constable reported from Washington. Correspondents John Ward Anderson in Jerusalem, Alan Sipress in Jakarta and John Lancaster in New Delhi contributed to this report. 

 UNITED STATES (96%); AFGHANISTAN (94%); PAKISTAN (94%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); CUBA (70%)






 Reed Elsevier Inc.


 Daily Variety

May 16, 2005, Monday



 'Kingdom' comes to rule o'seas B.O.

 
"Kingdom of Heaven" remained a dominant ruler internationally with a solid but not spectacular $ 27.2 million at 6,700 playdates in 98 territories during the Friday-Sunday frame.
In a performance that resembled the launch weekend, offshore performance for Ridley Scott's Crusades spectacle again nearly tripled the domestic gross. "Kingdom" saw its soph sesh offshore grosses decline by 49% from its opening weekend.
Fox's medieval epic has taken in $ 88.9 million in foreign coin in its first 10 days, pushing worldwide gross to $ 124 million. 
Rival distribs again held off on launching new entries, shying away from both "Kingdom" and the prospect of going up against what's expected to be a massive opening this week for Fox's "Star Wars: Episode III --- Revenge of the Sith." Belgium and France will see the first "Star Wars" showings with their traditional Wednesday openings; other markets will launch Thursday, Friday and Saturday, except for South Korea (May 26) and Japan (July 9).
"Kingdom of Heaven" generated decent results from its sole launch in Japan with $ 2.4 million at 492 playdates. It posted acceptable holds in most key markets, indicating it's likely to retain respectable traction in coming weeks, even amid the "Star Wars" frenzy. However, it's unlikely to finish anywhere near $ 200 million in foreign gross by the end of its run.
In its biggest foreign market, "Kingdom" declined 46% in Germany to $ 3.4 million at 848 engagements, pushing that market's cume to $ 11.3 million.
U.K. biz declined 40% to $ 2.9 million at 446 for a $ 10 million Blighty total. "Kingdom" was in a close race for first place with the Jane Fonda-Jennifer Lopez comedy "Monster-in-Law," which staged its only overseas launch in the U.K.
Spanish moviegoers showed solid support for "Kingdom" with a 33% drop to $ 3.3 million at 435 screens for a $ 9.5 million cume, while South Korean biz slid only 3% to $ 1.5 million at 289 to push that territory's total to $ 6.4 million. Mexican takings declined 30% to $ 1.5 million at 602 for a $ 5.3 million cume; Australia was off 32% to $ 1.4 million at 362 to a $ 4.1 million total.
"Kingdom" topped $ 1 million in Brazil, France, Italy and Russia and led in nearly all markets. The pic has generated noticeable biz in markets with Muslim populations such as Indonesia, with $ 110,000 at 45 sites for a $ 373,000 total, and in the United Arab Emirates, which saw a 55% slide to $ 345,000 at 33 engagements for a two-week cume of $ 1.2 million.
Though the "Kingdom" worldwide takings were solid, exhibitors clearly are counting on "Star Wars" to kickstart business in light of potential for early summer biz. Overall foreign box office badly trailed the same weekend last year, when "Troy" launched with $ 54.7 million at 6,722 playdates in 47 markets and the second frame of "Van Helsing" took in $ 23 million at 4,876 screens in 38 countries.
Holdover "XXX: State of the Union" faded fast in its third weekend, with $ 3.5 million at 3,650 engagements in 64 markets for a $ 36.6 million foreign cume. The sequel slid 51% in the U.K. to $ 515,000 at 355 for a $ 4.6 million Blighty take; it plunged 67% in Germany to $ 340,000 at 574 sites for a $ 3.1 million cume.
By contrast, BVI's limited launch of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" remained impressive with $ 3.1 million at 740 playdates. The three-week cume has hit $ 23 million in five territories; $ 16.7 million of that has come from U.K. audiences, thanks to the popularity of Douglas Adams' comic sci-fi novel in that market.
BVI's "The Pacifier" continued to play out with $ 3.3 million at 2,472 engagements in 31 markets for a foreign total of $ 53.5 million, with the U.K., France and Japan yet to open. The Vin Diesel comedy launched in Brazil with $ 260,000 at 135 sites.
UIP's "The Interpreter," which has been in lockstep with "The Pacifier" in terms of foreign performance, took in $ 3 million at 1,950 playdates in 30 territories, lifting total foreign takings to $ 54.5 million. Best performance has come in the U.K. with $ 600,000 at 300 sites, down 37%, for a $ 12.4 million cume after 31 days that matches "The Bourne Identity."
Germany, which has cumed $ 7.3 million, posted a 48% decline to $ 852,000 to 378 due to holidays in the previous frame. Spanish results for "The Interpreter" declined 23% to $ 370,000 at 193 for a 31-day cume of $ 6.3 million, which has surpassed both "Bourne" pics. Australia saw a 26% decline to $ 300,000 at 178 for a $ 4.9 million cume.
UIP reported "Unleashed" opened in Germany in second with a moderate $ 1.1 million at 346 playdates.

 ASIA (70%); JAPAN (70%); BELGIUM (56%); EUROPE (56%); SOUTH KOREA (55%); GERMANY (54%); 







 



May 14, 2005 Saturday  
 



 PROBE VOWED IN KORAN FLAP

 
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Rice's vow to investigate whether a copy of the Koran got flushed down a toilet to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay didn't calm outraged Muslims yesterday who said heads should roll.
The allegations triggered protests in which at least 16 people have died during clashes with cops.  
The dead include 11 yesterday in the biggest anti-American demonstrations in Afghanistan since the Taliban was toppled.
The protests spread to Pakistan, Indonesia and the Palestinian territories as Muslims took to the streets to protest reports that their holy book had been desecrated by American interrogators allegedly trying to provoke Islamic prisoners held at the U.S. base in Cuba.
Rabiah Ahmed, spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Rice's statements "were encouraging, but the administration has to do more than just use words."
"There has to be some action behind the words, and if this turns out to be true, then the people who did this should be held accountable," Ahmed said.
"If it's true, then President Bush and the administration will take steps to remedy the situation because it doesn't do our reputation any good overseas," she predicted.
The White House appealed for calm again yesterday and repeated promises to get to the bottom of the allegations, first reported by Newsweek.
Interrogators "placed Korans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet," the mag reported.kbazinet@nydailynews.com

 UNITED STATES (94%); CUBA (90%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); AFGHANISTAN (71%)







   


May 14, 2005 Saturday  




 Muslims' Anti-American Protests Spread From Afghanistan

 
Thousands of Muslims, from Gaza to Pakistan to Indonesia, emerged from prayer services on Friday to join Afghans in rapidly spreading protests over the reported desecration of a Koran by American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 
 In Afghanistan, at least 8 people were killed and more than 40 injured in clashes, bringing the death toll over four days of anti-American rioting to at least 16, with more than 100 injured. For the first time a policeman was killed in the violence.
 Three protesters were killed and 23 people wounded as the police grappled with a crowd of more than 1,500 in Baharak, in far northeastern Badakhstan, the police chief of the province, Gen. Shah Jehan Nuri, said in a telephone interview. Ten police officers and members of the border police, who are based in the town, were among the injured, he said.  
 In three Pakistan cities, Peshawar, Quetta and Multan, hundreds of protesters led largely by religious parties burned American flags and chanted anti-American slogans after Friday Prayer. The protests were peaceful, though, thanks in large part to the large numbers of police officers deployed outside mosques and official buildings.
 Hundreds of people gathered peacefully outside a mosque in Jakarta on Friday while a statement was read condemning the United States for the reported abuses. In Gaza, about 1,500 members of the radical Islamic group Hamas marched through the Jabaliya refugee camp as outrage spread over the reports, including a brief item in Newsweek, that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet in an effort to upset detainees. 
 Protesters carrying the green banners of Islam and Hamas shouted, ''Protect our holy book!'' Some burned American and Israeli flags. Anti-American protests are rare among militant Palestinians, who decry American support for Israel but emphasize that their struggle is with Israel, not the United States.
 The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Friday that officials at the Department of Defense were investigating reports of the desecration, and that ''they take such allegations very seriously,'' but he did not indicate when the investigation would be completed, Reuters reported. ''We will not tolerate any disrespect for the holy Koran,'' he added. 
 In Afghanistan, where the protests began Wednesday, the violence seemed to be spreading, with demonstrations in several provincial towns. Police officers and Afghan National Army troops were prepared in many places but still had trouble quelling the violence, which was directed at the government and international organizations. 
 The protest in Baharak formed as men emerged from the mosque after Friday Prayer and moved on the offices of three international aid organizations. They looted and burned the office of Focus Humanitarian Assistance, which is financed by the Agha Khan, and broke into offices of a British organization, Afghanaid. Some in the crowd were armed and masked, General Nuri said.
 The fighting lasted for two hours. ''The main issue was the insulting of the Koran, but unfortunately among the protesters there were some anti-government people, and criminals and robbers, who don't want peace and stability,'' the commander said. 
 Violent clashes were also reported in Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, where hundreds of protesters tried to storm the governor's office. Officials told The Associated Press that two protesters and a policeman were killed. Twenty people were injured as police officers and Afghan National Army troops opened fire to quell the riot, according to Bakhtar, the government news agency. Residents said three civilians were killed as well, but that account could not be confirmed. Local officials refused to comment on the situation.
 The Bakhtar agency said that several people were arrested, and that the violence had been organized by extremist groups. Some of the armed people were from outside the province, it said.
 One protester was killed and one wounded in Qala-i-Nau, in Badghis Province, where a crowd of some 1,000 people gathered outside the offices of the United States-based aid group, World Vision, and of Malteser. a German group backed by the Knights of Malta. 
 ''Police fired in the air to disperse the crowd, and as a result one man was killed and one injured,'' the local police chief, Amir Shah Nayebzada, said in a telephone interview.
 Four protesters were wounded, one seriously, in Gardez, southeast of the capital, Bakhtar reported. Other news agencies reported that one protester was killed and that American forces were deployed to protect the United Nations mission in the town. 
 Small gatherings took place in Kabul but remained peaceful. One of the most eminent religious leaders and loyal supporters of the government, Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi, led prayers at Kabul's main mosque, Hajji Yaqub. ''We respect the Koran and support those who demonstrate,'' he said in his remarks. ''But we want peaceful demonstrations.'' 
 Across town in Wazir Akbar Khan, an affluent residential area, Mullah Mohammad Ayaz Niazi, 39, called on people not to turn to violence, and for the police and security forces also to show restraint. ''When our brothers are losing control, they should treat them very carefully,'' he said. ''They should not punish them by bullet or sword, because that will be more dangerous.''


 AFGHANISTAN (99%); UNITED STATES (96%); ISRAEL (94%);  PAKISTAN (94%); CUBA (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%)







  



May 14, 2005 Saturday  




 U.N. to Immunize Millions Across Africa Against Polio

 
U.N. agencies on Saturday will begin immunizing 77 million children against polio in 10 African countries in an effort to stop an epidemic of the crippling disease, which in recent weeks has spread to Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Indonesia. 
  "The stakes are high," the U.N. Children's Fund said in a statement. "Stopping the virus in Africa, particularly in Niger and Nigeria, is critical to protect children across the region and in polio-free countries around the world."  
 Indonesia on Saturday confirmed two more cases of polio, including the first in Jakarta, the capital, as it struggled to contain the first outbreak of the disease in 10 years, the Associated Press reported. 
 The Indonesian Health Ministry earlier reported four confirmed cases of polio in the West Java town of Sukabumi, and 11 suspected cases among children. 
  UNICEF and the World Health Organization, working with national governments, plan to administer oral drops to children in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan. The effort will span three to five days and is the third of the three rounds of vaccine since February needed for full protection. 
  About 155 cases of polio have been confirmed in nine countries this year, according to WHO. Recent polio outbreaks, such as the 22 cases in Yemen, are endangering a global effort to wipe out the disease this year, a program that has cost $3.1 billion since 1998. The U.N. health agency is struggling to come up with an additional $50 million this year to fund vaccination programs in Africa and needs $200 million next year. 
  Countries that were previously free of the disease are now seeing new cases, in part because not all children have received the required doses of the vaccine. The disease causes paralysis and sometimes death. 
 The disease probably traveled to Indonesia from Saudi Arabia, carried by migrant workers or Muslim pilgrims visiting the Islamic holy city of Mecca, according to WHO. 
  Global eradication efforts reduced the number of polio cases to about 1,266 in 2004 from 350,000 in 1988. 
  Nigeria has found 77 polio cases this year, compared with 119 at the same time in 2004, UNICEF said. 

 AFRICA (96%); INDONESIA (95%); NIGERIA (94%); SAUDI ARABIA (93%); YEMEN (93%); NIGER (93%); BURKINA FASO (79%); SUDAN (79%); COTE D'IVOIRE (79%); CHAD (79%); MALI (79%); CAMEROON (79%); ETHIOPIA (79%)







 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


May 12, 2005 Thursday  




 REALISM UNDERPINS WOLFOWITZ'S CAREER

 
"I can't tell you," Paul Wolfowitz says with justifiable asperity, "how much I resent being called a Wilsonian." As he retires as deputy secretary of defense and becomes head of the World Bank, the man most responsible for the doctrinal justification of the Iraq war - and who has been characterized as representing Woodrow Wilson's utopian, rather than the realist, strain in American foreign policy - begs to differ. The question, he says, is who has been realistic for almost four decades.
The sprouting of freedom through the fissures in the concrete of dictatorships began, he recalls, in Greece, Spain and Portugal in the mid-1970s. This, he believes, disturbed Soviet leaders, and should have: It called into question the realism of "realists" who, he says, "were factually wrong" in dismissing the possibility of undermining the Soviet regime with pressures short of force. 
THOSE INCLUDE pressures for human rights and on economies. In the early 1980s, Wolfowitz was part of the successful resistance to abolishing the State Department's Bureau of Human Rights. This was more than a decade after he worked with Sen. Henry Jackson, the Washington Democrat, in preparing for Jackson's extraordinary debate with Stuart Symington, the Missouri Democrat, about ballistic missile defenses.
The debate occurred in an almost unprecedented closed session of the Senate in the summer of 1969. Symington argued that offensive weapons can always overwhelm defenses. Jackson, Wolfowitz recalls, said yes, but the side building the offensive systems can bankrupt itself in the process, as the Soviet Union came to understand in its death throes.
In the early 1980s, Wolfowitz says, when he was Secretary of State George Shultz's assistant secretary for East Asia, it was the so-called realists who said Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines was a thug, but our thug. But the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino in 1983 showed, Wolfowitz says, the limited ability of brutal power to sustain a regime. There in 1986, and the following year in South Korea, U.S. involvement helped enlarge freedom.
ASKED HOW he could have taken the Cold War fetish of arms control seriously enough to serve in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Ford, Wolfowitz says, "I thought it" - the fetish - "could be a serious threat to national security." When it threatened to cripple deployment of Tomahawk cruise missiles, Wolfowitz and others, including the then- and future secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, successfully resisted. Says Wolfowitz, "When I saw cruise missiles making right-angle turns in 1991 (in Iraq), I felt some satisfaction."
Although Wolfowitz has been accused of being irrationally preoccupied with Saddam Hussein, he says he actually consistently underestimated Hussein's malevolence. "I did not think he would invade Kuwait; or that when he did he would take all of it; or that when driven out he would not say enough is enough; or that he would try to kill President (George H.W.) Bush." But, he says, it is an unusual man who tortures children to intimidate parents.
Today, he says, the most dangerous Iraqi insurgents are from the tens of thousands - still only a fraction of a percent of the population - of "hard-core killers" who ran Hussein's regime. From his visits to Turkey, a secular Muslim democracy, and from his service as ambassador to Indonesia, with the world's largest Muslim population, he has acquired considered confidence in the capacity of what he calls "mainstream Muslims" for freedom. Note well: He says his confidence derives from experience, not theory.
BECAUSE HE was a graduate student at the University of Chicago during the ascendancy of political philosophers Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom - a thinly disguised Wolfowitz appears in Ravelstein, Saul Bellow's novel about Bloom - many attempts have been made to trace to them the pedigree of his thinking. He says, however, that to the very limited extent that "academic things" shaped him, they were classes on America's Constitutional Convention and Lincoln's political thought, classes stressing that "the foundations of liberal democracy are about a helluva lot more than elections."
They are also about private property as a bulwark of the individual's zone of sovereignty, and about the hopefulness that depends on the reality of material progress. Therefore, leading the World Bank will tidily close the circle of a remarkable Washington career that began in the summer of 1966, when as a 22-year-old graduate student he was an intern in the Bureau of the Budget, precursor of the Office of Management and Budget, working on problems of economic development. He has never been elected to office or served in a president's Cabinet, but he has mattered much more than most who have.
Washington Post Writers Group

 UNITED STATES (93%); IRAQ (93%); PORTUGAL (79%); KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (79%); SPAIN (79%); EASTERN ASIA (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%); ASIA (79%); KUWAIT (79%)






   


May 12, 2005 Thursday



 Wolfowitz's new job closes circle on remarkable career

 
"I can't tell you,' Paul Wolfowitz says with justifiable asperity, "how much I resent being called a Wilsonian.'
As he retires as deputy secretary of defense and becomes head of the World Bank, the man most responsible for the doctrinal justification of the Iraq War, and who has been characterized as representing Woodrow Wilson's utopian, rather than the realist, strain in American foreign policy, begs to differ. The question, he says, is who has been realistic for almost four decades.
The sprouting of freedom through the fissures in the concrete of dictatorships began, he recalls, in Greece, Spain and Portugal in the mid-1970s. This, he believes, disturbed Soviet leaders, and should have: It called into question the realism of "realists' who, he says, "were factually wrong' in dismissing the possibility of undermining the Soviet regime with pressures short of force. 
Those include pressures for human rights and on economies. In the early 1980s, Wolfowitz was part of the successful resistance to abolishing the State Department's Bureau of Human Rights. This was more than a decade after he worked with Sen. Henry Jackson, the Washington Democrat, in preparing for Jackson's extraordinary debate with Stuart Symington, the Missouri Democrat, about ballistic missile defenses.
The debate occurred in an almost unprecedented closed session of the Senate in the summer of 1969. Symington argued that offensive weapons can always overwhelm defenses. Jackson, Wolfowitz recalls, said yes, but the side building the offensive systems can bankrupt itself in the process, as the Soviet Union came to understand in its death throes.
In the early 1980s, Wolfowitz says, when he was Secretary of State George Shultz's assistant secretary for East Asia, it was the so-called realists who said Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines was a thug, but our thug. But the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino in 1983 showed, Wolfowitz says, the limited ability of brutal power to sustain a regime. There in 1986, and the following year in South Korea, U.S. involvement helped enlarge freedom.
Asked how he could have taken the Cold War fetish of arms control seriously enough to serve in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Ford, Wolfowitz says, "I thought it' the fetish "could be a serious threat to national security.'
When it threatened to cripple deployment of Tomahawk cruise missiles, Wolfowitz and others, including the then and future secretary of defense, Don Rumsfeld, successfully resisted. Says Wolfowitz, "When I saw cruise missiles making right-angle turns in 1991 [in Iraq], I felt some satisfaction.'
Although Wolfowitz has been accused of being irrationally preoccupied with Saddam Hussein, he says he actually consistently underestimated Hussein's malevolence.
"I did not think he would invade Kuwait; or that when he did he would take all of it; or that when driven out he would not say enough is enough; or that he would try to kill President [George H.W.] Bush.' But, he says, it is an unusual man who tortures children to intimidate parents.
Today, he says, the most dangerous Iraqi insurgents are from the tens of thousands still only a fraction of a percent of the population of "hard- core killers' who ran Hussein's regime. From his visits to Turkey, a secular Muslim democracy, and from his service as ambassador to Indonesia, with the world's largest Muslim population, he has acquired considered confidence in the capacity of what he calls "mainstream Muslims' for freedom. Note well: he says his confidence derives from experience, not theory.
Because he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago during the ascendancy of political philosophers Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom a thinly disguised Wolfowitz appears in "Ravelstein,' Saul Bellow's novel about Bloom many attempts have been made to trace to them the pedigree of his thinking. He says, however, that to the very limited extent that "academic things' shaped him, they were classes on America's Constitutional Convention and Lincoln's political thought, classes stressing that "the foundations of liberal democracy are about a helluva lot more than elections.'
They are also about private property as a bulwark of the individual's zone of sovereignty, and about the hopefulness that depends on the reality of material progress. Therefore leading the World Bank will tidily close the circle of a remarkable Washington career that began in the summer of 1966, when as a 22-year-old graduate student he was an intern in the Bureau of the Budget, precursor of the Office of Management and Budget, working on problems of economic development. He has never been elected to office or served in a president's Cabinet, but he has mattered much more than most who have.
Contact George Will of the Washington Post at georgewill@washpost.com.

 UNITED STATES (94%); IRAQ (93%); PORTUGAL (79%); KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (79%); SPAIN (79%); EASTERN ASIA (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%); ASIA (79%); KUWAIT (79%); 







   


May 11, 2005 Wednesday  




 Rotary's Big Boots

 
Next month Rotary International turns 100. Rotary clubs, a staple of small-town life, are celebrating the construction of innumerable parks, the holding of myriad blood drives, the awarding of countless college scholarships -- and the imminent global eradication of polio.
 Twenty years ago, there were a thousand new cases of polio every day. Now polio strikes only about a thousand children a year. By next year, that number should be zero. People who think of Rotary as a congregation of service-minded dentists and funeral directors may not have noticed, but the dentists and funeral directors have created the largest, most successful private health initiative ever. 
 When Rotary celebrated its 75th birthday, its leaders decided to find a project that all its clubs -- now in 168 countries -- could work on together. A Rotarian ophthalmologist in the Philippines, where polio was rampant, asked Rotary to vaccinate Filipino children. It vaccinated six million, then made similar efforts in five other nations. In 1985, Rotary decided to wipe out polio completely.
 By the time polio is eradicated, Rotary clubs will have directly contributed at least $600 million, more than any other organization except the United States government. And they offer more than cash.
 ''We realized the task of getting vaccines to children, persuading mothers and fathers of the value of immunization, was a problem of distribution, logistics and social mobilization,'' said Herb Pigman, an American who was one of the campaign's early leaders. ''And here's an organization with boots on the ground in hundreds of thousands of communities.''
 Big boots, too. ''Every polio meeting you go to, you see them,'' said Rima Salah, deputy executive director of Unicef. ''They have commitment, credibility and influence with leaders.'' This is crucial, as the challenge today is political. In August 2003, Muslim clerics from the northern Nigerian state of Kano charged that America had laced the polio vaccine with drugs to render African girls infertile. Kano stopped vaccinating. Kano's cases doubled, and Nigerian strains of polio have spread to 16 other nations that had beaten the virus.
 Coincidentally, the president of Rotary International that year, Jonathan Majiyagbe, was from Kano. He helped broker a compromise: Kano would use vaccine made in Indonesia, a Muslim country. In August 2004, Kano's governor publicly vaccinated his infant daughter.
 Although the countries Kano infected will have to spend millions on emergency vaccination campaigns, they will probably be successful. The real challenge is to eliminate polio at its epicenter, Nigeria. If Kano does not bolt again, this will probably happen in a year. ''We would not be here without Rotary International,'' Dr. Salah said. ''Rotary is the heart and soul of polio eradication.''   TINA ROSENBERG


 UNITED STATES (93%); NIGERIA (93%); PHILIPPINES (92%); 




14


  



May 11, 2005 Wednesday  




 'They Came Here to Die'; 
Insurgents Hiding Under House in Western Iraq Prove Fierce in Hours-Long Fight With Marines

 
Screaming "Allahu Akbar'' to the end, the foreign fighters lay on their backs in a narrow crawl space under a house and blasted their machine guns up through the concrete floor with bullets designed to penetrate tanks. They fired at U.S. Marines, driving back wave after wave as the Americans tried to retrieve a fallen comrade. 
 Through Sunday night and into Monday morning, the foreign fighters battled on, their screaming voices gradually fading to just one. In the end, it took five Marine assaults, grenades, a tank firing bunker-busting artillery rounds, 500-pound bombs unleashed by an F/A-18 attack plane and a point-blank attack by a rocket launcher to quell them. 
 The Marines got their fallen man, suffering one more dead and at least five wounded in the process. And according to survivors of the battle, the foreign fighters near the Syrian border proved to be everything their reputation had suggested: fierce, determined and lethal to the last.  
  "They came here to die," said Gunnery Sgt. Chuck Hurley, commander of the team from the 1st Platoon, Lima , of the Marines' 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, that battled the insurgents in the one-story house in Ubaydi, about 15 miles east of the Syrian border. 
 "They were willing to stay in place and die with no hope," Hurley said Tuesday. "All they wanted was to take us with them.'' 
 The fighting that began Sunday in Ubaydi was an unplanned opening phase of a massive Marine offensive in Iraq's far northwest against the foreign fighters who U.S. and Iraqi commanders say are crossing the Syrian border to join the Iraqi insurgency. By Monday, more than 1,000 Marines backed by Cobra helicopters and Hornet warplanes were pouring into an area north of the Euphrates River where few American troops and no Iraqi forces have been for at least a year.  
 U.S. commanders say they believe that foreigner leaders of the insurgency have established a refuge north of the Euphrates they use to channel incoming fighters, arms and support to insurgents in the rest of Iraq. 
 "We're taking down an enemy safe haven," said Lt. Col. Tim Mundy, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Regiment, which along with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, did the bulk of the fighting at Ubaydi. 
 U.S. officers say the most-wanted insurgent leader in Iraq, the Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, is being sheltered among tribal leaders in Haditha and Hit, two towns 80 and 110 miles downriver. The Americans say Zarqawi was almost caught in February at a checkpoint between the towns. Other sightings since have placed him in other towns on the south side of the Euphrates. In Haqlaniyah, Zarqawi felt bold enough to preach a sermon at a mosque, according to at least one report to U.S. forces. 
 U.S. and Iraqi officials blame Zarqawi and other foreign fighters for many of the insurgency's bloodiest attacks, including suicide bombings that are claiming dozens of lives almost daily in Iraq. 
 Fighting continued Tuesday north of the Euphrates, where the Marines' heavy-caliber weapons, mortars and artillery could be heard booming across the green river at dusk.  
 At least three Marines have been killed in the offensive. Marine Col. Stephen Davis, commander of Marine Regimental Combat Team 2, said he believed at least 75 foreign fighters were killed Sunday, after the offensive opened prematurely with the clash at Ubaydi. 
At noon Sunday, Marines were waiting on the bank of the Euphrates for U.S. Army engineers to finish erecting a temporary bridge when insurgents opened fire from Ubaydi, less than a mile away. They fired AK-47 assault rifles at helicopter gunships overhead and pounded the waiting Marines with mortar rounds  --  including one that landed yards from a Humvee carrying the operation's commanding officers. 
 The Marines pressed against the walls of a ruined home for protection and waited for the mortars to stop. When they did, one officer said: "Let's go to Ubaydi." 
 Lima  and a company from the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Regiment, entered the town. Insurgents  --  dozens of them, Marines said later  --  met them with AK-47 fire and rocket-propelled grenades. In the first hours, one Marine was killed and at least seven were wounded. 
 Lima  battled its way through town, at one point exchanging fire with fighters on the roof of a mosque and forcing them down. The mosque's loudspeakers screamed Arabic that the Marines could not understand, but they said that since it was past time for prayers, they assumed the loudspeakers were rallying forces for attack. 
 According to Hurley and others who recounted the fighting that followed, Lima Company's Marines searched each house they passed. They turned up weapons cache after weapons cache: bombs made to be dropped from airplanes, a bicycle with a seat made of explosives and an antenna for remote-control triggering, a vest rigged with explosives, a car rigged with bombs, mortar tubes, rocket launchers with new backpacks full of rockets, artillery shells.  
 The costly equipment, as well as body armor later recovered from the bodies of dead insurgents, suggested that the fighters were foreigners, the military said. Though the level of foreigners' involvement in the insurgency has been disputed for nearly two years, Muslim men have come to Iraq from neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia and from as far away as Chechnya and Indonesia to fight the United States and its allies.  
 The Marines also found Soviet-designed PKM machine guns and belts of armor-piercing ammunition. In contrast, Lima  was armed with M-16 assault rifles and carried nothing comparable  --  nothing that could penetrate walls and floors and still pack enough force to kill. 
 That was what awaited the Marines on the last block they cleared, at the last house. The first Marine there found the gate in the high walls around the house open; the front door was locked. 
 "As soon as he kicks the door, the machine-gun fire cuts him down," said Hurley, a Dayton, Ohio, police officer serving in the Marine Reserves. The Marine survived, but a second fell as well, fatally wounded. From inside, a foreign fighter fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the door. 
 At some point, the screamed prayers began: "Allahu Akbar"  --  "God is great."  
 Marines fell, unable to tell the source of the screams or the shots. They fired blindly, as machine-gun rounds cratered the walls and floors around them. 
 "Our rounds couldn't get through the walls," Hurley said. 
 Survivors crawled out of the house under fire, unable to take the fatally wounded Marine with them. In the back of the house, Marines spotted two men running out. They fired. The two  --  whose thick curly hair, olive skin and delicate features indicated they were not Iraqis, Marines said  --  died at the back door, still holding their weapons. 
 Thinking the barrage had come from the two men they had just killed, the Marines reentered the walled compound. Sgt. Dennis Woullard, a Marine reservist on the Biloxi, Miss., police force, dragged out the first fallen Marine.  
 Farther inside, other Marines searched the house. One reached for the door of a storage closet under a stairwell. "As soon as he touches the door, the machine gun fires and cuts him down," Hurley said.  
 The Marines retreated, unable to bring their wounded colleague with them. Another wave went in to try to retrieve him, not realizing he was already beyond help. Machine-gun fire drove them out.  
 The Marines began to suspect that the insurgents were firing from a bunker somewhere in the house, Hurley said. They called in a tank, as other armored vehicles ferried the wounded away for evacuation by helicopter.  
 The tank fired, one round hitting a propane tank inside the compound and engulfing part of the house in a ball of orange flame. Tank cannon fired seven rounds in all, some of them meant to destroy bunkers.  
The Marines went in a fourth time. Bullets, and one chanting voice, met them. 
 "Nobody should have survived" the tank assault, Hurley later said in amazement. 
 "The whole scene, it was just pure evil inside the house," said Woullard, who came out of the first foray into the house with a frayed helmet and bruised temple from one machine-gun round and a pierced water bag on his back from another. 
 "I've never seen anything like this in my life," said Woullard, who fought at Nasiriyah in the first days of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. "It was an all-out ambush." 
 The insurgents' armor-piercing bullets were penetrating the house's interior and external walls and the outer walls of the compound, some smacking into walls across the street. 
 Hurley and other Marines, still under fire, were able to get to the body of the second fallen Marine through the holes that the tank had blown in the house but could not pull it past steel reinforcing bars that jutted from the collapsed walls. 
 "Not a way I'd want to treat a Marine's body. But I know [the second fallen Marine] well enough to know no way he'd want a Marine to die to get his body," Hurley said. 
 Reluctantly, Marines called in an F/A-18 attack plane, which dropped two bombs at midnight. One failed to explode. The second missed the house. 
 Still under fire, the Marines holed up for the night in Ubaydi. 
 At daylight Monday, a staff sergeant skilled in rocketry set up a launcher in the street across from the house. Fired from a dozen or so yards, the rockets collapsed the walls over the fighters' hiding place  --  a crawl space behind the door under the stairwell. 
 When the Marines entered a final time, the daylight finally showed them where the bullets had come from: the floor beneath their feet. The insurgents had lain faceup on the ground below, with barely enough room to point their weapons upward, Marines said. They simply blasted through the floor. 
 The Marines found the last foreign fighters there, dead. There were at least two, and it was unclear whether they had bled to death overnight or been killed in the morning's rocket volley, Hurley and other Marines said. 
 Suspecting explosives might be in the crawl space, the Marines didn't try to count the bodies closely or retrieve them, they said. But they dropped a grenade into the crawl space, just to make sure.  
 The ambush at Ubaydi was a new tactic, carried out lethally, Marines said.  
 "No one's ever seen or heard of guys getting attacked from under a house," Hurley said Tuesday, as the exhausted young men under his command slept in other rooms of a house in Jarami. "And just the idea of a machine gun being able to fire through concrete, to get to us," Hurley said, without finishing his sentence. 

 IRAQ (96%); UNITED STATES (94%); SYRIA (93%); JORDAN (79%)







  



May 10, 2005 Tuesday  




 A Blow to Anti-Polio Campaign; 
Virus's Return to Indonesia Makes Year-End Goal Unlikely

 
The historic effort to eradicate polio was jolted last week when the disease reappeared in Indonesia for the first time in a decade, but leaders of the global campaign said they are still confident they will succeed  --  and might even make the long-shot target of halting transmission of the virus by year's end. 
 Since 2003, polio has reappeared in 16 countries that had been free of the paralytic disease for at least a few years, all of it traceable to a strain of the virus that began spreading in northern Nigeria when public fears about the vaccine temporarily stopped  immunizations. 
 Despite the latest bad news, health officials said last week that Indonesia, which reported five cases on the island of Java,  is moving quickly to suppress transmission of the virus. Polio continues to decline rapidly in the half-dozen countries where person-to-person transmission has never been stopped, and immunization efforts will be bolstered by a new formulation of the vaccine that became available this year. 
 "I can't tell you that we can't make the target," said David L. Heymann, a physician and epidemiologist with the World Health Organization. "We won't be able to say until August, when the high-transmission season resumes. Then we'll know how many countries still have polio."  
 Indonesia has "done just about everything right in how they are responding to this outbreak," said Christopher Maher, who heads the WHO office coordinating national polio-eradication efforts. 
 Late this month, Indonesia plans to begin house-to-house vaccination in three provinces, with a goal of giving two drops of oral polio vaccine to 5 million children younger than 5. The campaign is to be repeated six weeks later. In the meantime, public health officers in West Java are redoubling efforts to look for more cases, he said. 
 The Polio Eradication Initiative has run into repeated obstacles since it was started  in 1988 by the service club Rotary International. It originally hoped to stop polio transmission by 2000. That target moved to the end of 2005, but that date, too, increasingly looks out of reach. The program is now run jointly by Rotary, WHO, the U.N. Children's Fund, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
 The biggest setback by far was the cessation of polio vaccination in several states of northern Nigeria in mid-2003. The country, Africa's most populous, was one of six where the virus was endemic  --  freely circulating in human-to-human transmission. The others were Niger, Egypt, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. 
 Immunization was stopped in Kano and other Muslim-dominated northern states of Nigeria amid rumors that the eradication campaign was an anti-Muslim plot and that the vaccine would make people sterile or cause AIDS. Among the measures taken to restore confidence was an agreement to use vaccine made in predominantly Muslim Indonesia. 
 During the 16-month suspension, however, polio flared up and was carried unwittingly by Nigerians to neighboring countries. It ultimately hopscotched across Africa, into the Middle East and most recently into Asia. The latest countries to be hit include Saudi Arabia, which had two cases in late 2004; Yemen, which has had 22 this year; and Indonesia. In six of the reinfected countries  --  Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Chad, Mali and Sudan  --  the virus is circulating again, with multiple outbreaks. 
 For every case that causes muscle weakness or paralysis, experts say, there are 100 to 200 infections that produce only fever and mild illness, or no symptoms. Consequently, when epidemiologists find a few cases, they assume that hundreds of people are carrying the virus and can pass it to others who are not immune through vaccination or prior infection. 
 Immunization resumed in northern Nigeria last fall and is achieving greater population coverage than before, said R. Bruce Aylward of WHO, who heads the eradication initiative. The effort now has the support of many religious and traditional leaders. 
 "Now the low-performing areas are getting around 75 percent coverage, and the high-performing areas about 90," Aylward said. "If they can sustain that for four or five rounds [of immunization campaign], they have a real shot at stopping transmission fast." 
 In 1994, Nigeria recorded 792 cases of polio. This year it has had 54, about half the number at the same time a year ago. 
 Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors last Thursday, did not respond directly when asked about his country's commitment to polio eradication. But he said the recent experience showed that when issues of health and religion are mixed, "you are dealing with fire." 
 How polio reached Indonesia is unclear. While the virus in all 16 reinfected countries has been traced to Nigeria, genetic analysis suggests the microbes in Yemen and Indonesia did not get there directly. Instead, they are descendants of the strain that was carried out of northern Nigeria more than a year ago and reappeared across Africa. 
 "This didn't walk out of Kano last week," Aylward said. 
 Although initial reports suggested the virus was brought to Indonesia by someone returning from the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, investigators have not found a direct link to a pilgrim, Maher said. The first case was in an unimmunized 18-month-old. 
 Among the new tools of the eradication endgame is a slightly different formulation of vaccine that the campaigners hope will boost immunity. 
 The oral vaccine contains live, weakened versions of all three distinct types of polio virus. Each type has a slightly different ability to bind to receptors on the surface of immune-system cells  --  the first step in the cascade of events that results in protection. Type 2 virus binds the most strongly and tends to "outcompete" the other two. Type 2 disappeared in 2000, probably because people had more protection against it. 
 The dominant remaining strain in the world is Type 1, which is responsible for all the cases traceable to Nigeria. Last year, WHO asked the French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Pasteur to make a vaccine containing only Type 1. The new vaccine, licensed in March, will help achieve more rapid immunity against Type 1 virus during the mop-up campaigns that follow outbreaks. (Sanofi Pasteur has donated about 120 million doses of vaccine for use in Africa.)  
 The experts said the ultimate timing of eradication hinges on more than progress in Nigeria. It also depends on whether vaccination campaigns in Ethiopia have prevented further spread of the virus in the Horn of Africa, particularly into the "failed state" of Somalia. It also depends on how quickly the disease can be eliminated from India and Pakistan, which once had the highest rates of transmission. 
 No cases have been found in Afghanistan this year  --  "a major achievement," said Peter Salama, UNICEF's chief of immunization. 
 William T. Sergeant, 85, a Rotarian from Tennessee who heads the club's polio efforts, called the Indonesia outbreak "not a terrible challenge." He added: "But it is disappointing, I certainly have to say that." Since 1988, Rotary International has spent about $575 million on efforts to eliminate the disease. 
 The global campaign needs about $50 million more this year than it has available, Heymann said last week. By the end of the year, the 17-year project will have cost about $4 billion.  

 INDONESIA (95%); NIGERIA (93%); INDIA (79%); EGYPT (79%); AFRICA (79%); NIGER (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); AFGHANISTAN (68%)






   


May 9, 2005 Monday



 Indonesia vows not to squander

 
tsunami relief funds from U.S.
@BY1:By Constant Brand @BY2:Associated Press @BANDA ACEH, Indonesia Indonesian officials have assured the United States that they will not allow billions of dollars pledged for tsunami relief to be squandered through corruption, a senior U.S. diplomat said Sunday.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick spoke during a visit to Aceh province, the area hardest hit by the Dec. 26 tragedy. His trip was aimed at publicizing the U.S. role in rebuilding the region, an undertaking Washington hopes will boost its battered image in the world's most populous Muslim nation. 
"The world's eyes will be on Indonesia," Zoellick told The Associated Press after touring devastated parts of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. In one struggling coastal community, he was hugged by a tearful survivor.
Corruption is rife in Indonesia, and there have been concerns that much of the aid money could be siphoned off. Aceh, which is also beset by a separatist conflict that has simmered for nearly three decades, is regarded as one of the country's most graft-ridden regions.
Zoellick said he had assurances from local officials that they would be extremely careful with the money. "It's important to have auditing and balances," he said.
The earthquake-triggered waves on Dec. 26 killed at least 126,000 people in Aceh province and other parts of Indonesia's Sumatra island and left almost half a million people homeless. The U.S. military arrived on the scene within days, flying dozens of helicopter missions to distribute medicines and food.
The United States has since pledged nearly $1 billion in public and private funds for relief efforts for tsunami-hit countries. Most of the funds are earmarked for Aceh.
Zoellick witnessed the signing of an agreement between U.S. aid officials and the local administration committing Washington to spend $245 million to rebuild a 149-mile coastal highway washed away by the tsunami.
Still many Acehnese have expressed anger at the slow pace of the reconstruction effort. The province is awash with foreign aid groups living in luxury houses, but hundreds of thousands of survivors remain in squalid camps or temporary accommodations.
"There is a tremendous amount to do. This place got hammered," Zoellick said. "The question is how to do the coordination properly. People want to make sure some of the money starts to flow to the projects."
The massive U.S. aid effort comes as anti-American sentiment in Indonesia remains high after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which many perceived as attacks on Islam. The U.S. help has been welcomed in Aceh, where distrust of the Jakarta government is high.
Zoellick, on 10-day tour of Southeast Asia, heads to Singapore after leaving Aceh.

  INDONESIA (95%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);  SINGAPORE (79%); ASIA (79%); 






  
  

  

May 8, 2005 Sunday 



 REBELS BLAMED IN DEATHS OF 11 IN MYANMAR

 
YANGON, Myanmar -- Three explosions rocked Myanmar's capital Saturday, killing 11 people and wounding 162 others in the latest bombings blamed on ethnic rebels in the military-ruled country.
The blasts occurred in rapid succession at a convention center and two bustling supermarkets in neighborhoods across the city of 5 million people starting around mid-afternoon. It was not immediately known how many people died at each site. 
State television said several ethnic rebel groups, including the Karen National Union and the Shan State Army, were behind the attacks.
The military has ruled Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, since 1962.
Nepal
Climbers evacuated following avalanche
KATMANDU -- Two Americans, two Canadians and a Sherpa climber were evacuated from Mount Everest on Saturday, two days after they were hit by an avalanche on the world's highest peak and then stranded because of treacherous weather.
Snow and high winds abated sufficiently for a rescue helicopter to land at the base camp, where it picked up American climbers James Bach and Jason Barilla and Canadians Jowan Gauthier and Pierre Bourdeau. They were brought to Katmandu and hospitalized for treatment of injuries.
No one was killed early Thursday when the avalanche swept through the first of four camps between the base and the mountain's 29,035-foot summit. The Nepalese Sherpa suffered a broken back but the four other climbers were less badly injured.
Indonesia
Pursuit of justice said to be key in fixing ties
JAKARTA -- Indonesia must do more to pursue justice in the shooting deaths of two American schoolteachers three years ago before Washington can agree to restore military ties with Indonesia, a senior U.S. diplomat said Saturday.
Washington banned military ties with Indonesia in 1999 after Indonesian troops devastated the province of East Timor following a U.N.-organized independence referendum. But the Bush administration now wants to resume full ties with Indonesia's military, which it views as a bulwark against Islamic militancy in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono agreed to cooperate fully in the investigation of the ambush in which eight other Americans were injured.
-- Associated Press

 MYANMAR (96%); UNITED STATES (96%);  NEPAL (92%); CANADA (92%); TIMOR-LESTE (79%); 






  
  


May 6, 2005 Friday  



 3 NEW CASES FOUND IN POLIO OUTBREAK

 
Indonesia's first outbreak of polio in a decade has infected at least four toddlers, the World Health Organization said today. 
The agency confirmed three new cases, saying two were in the same village in West Java where the first infection, of an 18-month-old boy, was announced Tuesday, and that an additional case was confirmed in a neighboring village. It could not say whether the new cases include one announced by Indonesian officials Wednesday.
Indonesia is the 16th country reinfected with polio since 2003, when cases flared up in Nigeria after some Muslims refused to immunize their children at the urging of hard-line clerics in a boycott that lasted nearly a year.

  NIGERIA (79%); 







   


May 5, 2005 Thursday  




 World Briefing  Asia: Indonesia: Second Case Of Polio Confirmed

 
A second case of polio was confirmed in Indonesia and more are expected, the Health Ministry said. About a half-dozen children with paralysis are being investigated in western Java, and the authorities are planning a vaccination drive to reach five million children in that region.  
Genetic tracing has shown that the strain of the polio virus found in the country this week originated in northern Nigeria and was probably picked up in Saudi Arabia by an Indonesian worker or a pilgrim returning from Mecca. Polio began spreading from northern Nigeria in 2003, after Muslims there refused the vaccine, fearing a plot to render Muslim girls infertile or spread AIDS. There has been no widespread resistance to the vaccine in Indonesia.   Donald G. McNeil Jr. (NYT)

 INDONESIA (95%); NIGERIA (94%); SAUDI ARABIA (92%); ASIA (92%)







 


May 5, 2005 Thursday  




 Chaminade graduate wins Luce scholarship Sam Bazzi of Chesterfield will study in Asia, focusing on economic policy and ways to alleviate poverty.

 
Sam Bazzi was 13 when he first saw children his age begging for money in the crumbling streets of a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon.
When Bazzi returned to the camp as a college student last summer, he saw families crammed into one-room concrete apartment buildings riddled with bullet holes.
"It's awful," said Bazzi, now 21 and a senior at the University of Southern California. "There are signs of war and destruction everywhere." 
Bazzi's memories have inspired him to study ways to alleviate poverty in developing countries.
Bazzi, of Chesterfield, is a 2002 graduate of Chaminade College Preparatory School. He is one of 15 Luce scholars nationwide assigned to live and work for one year in an Asian country.
The Henry Luce Foundation, established in 1974 and based in New York City, provides scholarships to graduating college students and young professionals under 30. That makes Bazzi this year's youngest Luce scholar, said Helene Redell, the foundation's program director. In 1995, two St. Louisans received Luce Scholarships and traveled to Hong Kong to work on legal projects.
Bazzi left Chaminade after his junior year to start a scholarship program at USC, but he returned in 2002 to graduate with his class. This month, Bazzi will graduate from USC with a bachelor's degree in international relations and economics. He also was a finalist for a Rhodes Scholarship.
Although Bazzi hasn't received his official assignment from the Luce Foundation, he expects to be stationed in Jakarta, Indonesia, in September to study economic policy with a research institution there.
He wants to study microfinancing, a practice of providing loans to poor people who want to start or expand small businesses and who lack access to banks. Bazzi chose Indonesia because it has the world's largest Muslim population and will allow him to bolster his knowledge of his ethnic background.
Bazzi's parents are Lebanese and live in Chesterfield. His mother, Carolyn, is Catholic, and his father, Ali, is Muslim. Bazzi says he claims both as his religious heritage.
"He wants to do something for his own ethnic community," said Steven Lamy, Bazzi's college mentor and director of USC's school of international relations. "He looks at the Middle East, and that's where his roots are. . . . Obviously a lot of the cause of all this violence is poverty, and this is his attempt to try to do something about it."
Bazzi hopes studying poverty in Asia will teach him skills he can apply to researching economic development issues in the Middle East. He returned to Lebanon last summer to teach English to children at a youth center in Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut.
"Seeing those things as a young kid, I was just at an age where I started seeing that kind of stuff but not being able to understand or explain it," Bazzi said. "And that's what I think motivated me to try to figure it all out."
After graduate school, Bazzi hopes to teach economics and do research and consulting work with financial institutions, governments and policy-makers. 
For now, Bazzi struggles with wanting to help the poor in foreign countries while so much poverty exists in the United States. 
"It's something that I never looked at while living in St. Louis," he said. "I've been wrestling with this because there is so much that needs to be done in this country."

 LEBANON (94%); ASIA (94%);   MIDDLE EAST (92%); UNITED STATES (91%); HONG KONG (79%)







   


May 3, 2005 Tuesday  




 African Strain of Polio Found To Have Spread to Indonesia

 
A case of polio has been detected in Indonesia, World Health Organization officials said yesterday, indicating that an outbreak spreading from northern Nigeria since 2003 has crossed an ocean and reached the world's fourth most populous country.
 The virus, found in a village on the island of Java, is most closely related to a strain that was found in Saudi Arabia in December, the officials said. The most likely explanations of how it got there are that it either was brought back by an Indonesian working in Saudi Arabia or by a pilgrim who went to Mecca in January.
 Indonesia's last case was in 1995, and it is now the 16th country to be reinfected by a strain of the virus that broke out in northern Nigeria when vaccinations stopped there, then crossed Africa and the Red Sea.  
 Officials recommended that Indonesia immediately vaccinate five million children on the western end of Java, including the capital, Jakarta, to contain the virus. The country began planning such a drive last week, they said. 
 Indonesia has more Muslims than any other nation, and polio is now found almost exclusively in Muslim countries or regions.
 Resistance to polio vaccine has been high from northern Nigeria to the Pakistan frontier because of persistent rumors that it is a Western plot to render Muslim girls infertile or to spread AIDS. Paradoxically, after several states in Muslim northern Nigeria halted vaccinations in 2003, it was purchases of Indonesian vaccine that finally persuaded wary imams and politicians to drop their opposition, because it is a Muslim country. 
 With each new case, the W.H.O.' s goal of eradicating polio by the end of this year slips farther away. With its emergency response fund virtually depleted, the organization is pleading with donors for help with containing new outbreaks in Ethiopia, Yemen and other very poor countries.
 At the disease's low point, in early 2003, it was endemic in only six countries: Nigeria, Niger, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. 
 The current case was found in a village in Sukabumi Province in West Java in an 18-month-old boy who became paralyzed in mid-March, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, coordinator of the polio eradication drive for the health organization. 
 Genetic typing of the virus, completed in India, shows that the original source of the strain was northern Nigeria, said Dr. David L. Heymann, the W.H.O. director general's representative for polio eradication. 
 Comparison with databases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta shows that is about 99.2 percent similar to a strain circulating in Saudi Arabia and 99.1 percent similar to a strain in Sudan, suggesting that it came through Saudi Arabia, ''but they're so close that it's a hard call,'' Dr. Aylward said.
 Dr. Christopher P. Maher, chief of technical support in the health organization's polio division, visited Sukabumi last week and found that no relatives of the child had gone to areas where polio was endemic, but other families in the village had members who had gone recently to Saudi Arabia as workers or pilgrims. 
 There are other cases of paralysis in the village that ''are very hot -- they clinically look like polio,'' Dr. Aylward said. 
 It is unclear how many cases, but their presence suggests widespread circulation of the virus, since only one case in 200 produces paralysis. Confirmation takes time, because each requires two stool samples taken at least 24 hours apart and then shipped to a laboratory and cultured for days or weeks before testing.
 But vaccination should start as soon as possible, the officials said. Reaching five million children ''doesn't sound like 'targeted' vaccination,'' Dr. Aylward conceded, ''but in a country of 250 million, it is.''
 Only 75 percent to 80 percent of Indonesia's children get routine polio vaccinations, he said, and some areas have better coverage than others. Indonesia is a large chain of islands, and parts of it, including northern Sumatra, are in rebellion against Jakarta's rule. When polio gets into war-torn areas, as it has in Sudan and Ivory Coast, it can become much harder to eliminate.
 Many countries stopped vaccinating or cut back substantially when they eliminated polio in the 1990's. ''We're paying a penalty for that now,'' Dr. Aylward said.
 During the 11 months it took until northern Nigeria resumed vaccinations, the disease spread across Africa from Guinea on the Atlantic to Sudan on the Red Sea. One case was found as far south as Botswana. Some outbreaks have been contained quickly, but those in Sudan and Ivory Coast, and a new one in Yemen, all appear to be spreading faster than vaccinators can head them off.
 The disease was found in Jidda and Mecca in Saudi Arabia late last year.
 In 1988, when polio was endemic in 125 countries, the annual world assembly of health ministers in Geneva declared a goal of eradicating it by 2000. That target was missed, but a $3 billion campaign had it contained in six countries by early 2003.         

 INDONESIA (97%); SAUDI ARABIA (94%); NIGERIA (94%);  AFRICA (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); SUDAN (79%); YEMEN (79%); EGYPT (79%); NIGER (79%); ETHIOPIA (79%); AFGHANISTAN (70%)







  



May 3, 2005 Tuesday  




 Case of Polio Is Confirmed In Indonesia

 
Polio has been detected in Indonesia for the first time in 10 years and health investigators have concluded that the strain was carried to the island country by a traveler coming from Saudi Arabia, international health officials said Tuesday. 
  The disease has so far been confirmed in only a single case in West Java province. But the infection, reported in an 18-month-old boy who suffered paralysis in mid-March, demonstrates the challenges public health workers face in stemming a global comeback by the virus. 
  Investigators from Indonesia and the World Health Organization are now examining whether the outbreak has spread beyond the one case in Sukabumi district and are awaiting test results for more than 100 samples taken from the boy's village and surrounding area.  
  "There are a lot of activities," said Georg Petersen, WHO's senior representative in Indonesia. "They have vaccinated all the children in the area." 
  By the end of April, health workers had completed going door to door in the boy's village and three others nearby, vaccinating all children under 5. 
  The Indonesian government is now planning to immunize about 5.2 million children under 5 in West Java and Banten provinces and in the capital, Jakarta. The health directors from all districts in those three areas were scheduled to meet Tuesday to plan the mass vaccination campaign, due to begin later this month, according to Bardan Rana, WHO medical officer for immunization. 
  Though more than 90 percent of Indonesian children have been vaccinated against polio, there remain significant gaps in the coverage, according to WHO officials. 
  The boy who contracted the disease had not been immunized, officials said. His case was discovered during ordinary monitoring of acute paralysis cases in his district and officially reported in late April, Rana said.  
  After polio was initially confirmed by an Indonesian laboratory, the sample was sent to a global laboratory in Bombay for genetic sequencing and then on to another laboratory in Atlanta for further study. That work determined that the strain was not indigenous to Indonesia but had come from Saudi Arabia, Rana said. 
  Health investigators suspect the virus had been carried by an Indonesian who recently returned to West Java. Saudi Arabia is a common destination for Indonesians, who travel there in large numbers for work and for the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, most recently performed in January. 
  "There are so many connections with people coming and going," Rana said. 
  According to the WHO Web site, laboratory results are pending for seven other acute paralysis cases found during the initial investigation. Rana said he suspected that a few other infected children would be found in the Sukabumi area but remained optimistic that the virus could be contained and then again eliminated before spreading too far. 
  "This is an imported case," he said. "If the response is good, the chance is we'll be able to confine it." 
  Though no polio cases had been reported in Indonesia since 1995, the country could not be declared polio free under international standards because the virus was still present in other countries in the region. 
  Indonesia now becomes the 16th country to be infected by polio after the disease reemerged in Africa and crossed into the Middle East.  
  Less than a week before the Indonesian case was detected, an outbreak was discovered in Yemen, where WHO officials report a total of 22 cases. The disease has now spread to governates across Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. Before this outbreak, there had been no reported polio cases in Yemen since 1996. 
  "Until the world eradicates it completely, there is always a threat. So everybody has to be vigilant," Rana said. 

 INDONESIA (99%); SAUDI ARABIA (94%)







 


May 1, 2005 Sunday  
FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION



 Muslims are hopeful despite new pope's past writings

 
In the week between Pope John Paul II's funeral and the conclave to elect a new pope, cardinals and commentators alike listed the Roman Catholic church's relationship with Islam as one of the most important issues the next pope would have to confront.
They said John Paul had laid the necessary groundwork by encouraging dialogue with Muslims around the world, supporting Palestinian rights and becoming the first pope to visit a mosque.
Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, Australia, told Catholic News Service, before the conclave, that John Paul had refused to become a "crusader-in-chief" and that the next pope would have to continue John Paul's work to keep up a dialogue with the Islamic world in order to encourage and strengthen moderate Islam.
"We're going to have to do everything we can to encourage the moderate Muslims and to sustain them in their struggle for political power," the cardinal said.
By naming Islamic relations as one of the main challenges facing the next pope, such cardinals and commentators were, in effect, raising the prospect of a new pontiff who would be intimately familiar with Islam. Cardinals Francis Arinze of Nigeria and Julius Darmaatmadja of Indonesia were mentioned as papal prospects, partly for their experiences with Muslims. 
But in the fastest conclave in nearly a century, the College of Cardinals turned instead to a German intellectual whose theology on interfaith relations seemed clear -- and clearly not what fans of interfaith dialogue were hoping for in a new pope.
"Dominus Iesus"
In 2000, Pope Benedict XVI, who at that time was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, issued a document called Dominus Iesus (The Lord Jesus). The document infuriated the global interfaith movement for Ratzinger's insistence that followers of other religions "are in a gravely deficient situation" compared with Christians.
Dominus Iesus "pulled back from the trajectory of John Paul II's remarkable pushing of the church in the direction of inter-religious dialogue," said John L. Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.
The cardinal also wrote in Dominus Iesus that for the Catholic church, the reason for interfaith dialogue is evangelization. "Inter-religious dialoge," he wrote, is part of the church's "evangelizing mission. The Church, guided by charity and respect for freedom, must be committed primarily to proclaiming to all people the truth definitively revealed by the Lord, and to announcing the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ and of adherence to the Church through Baptism and the other sacraments ..."
Those experienced in interfaith dialogue say that evangelism is inappropriate when representatives of different religions come together to talk.
"Interfaith dialogue cannot be based on evangelizing," said Dr. Ghazala Hayat, a professor of neurology at St. Louis University, head of the Islamic Foundation of St. Louis and new president of the Interfaith Partnership of Metropolitan St. Louis. "You cannot have a dialogue and at the same time be working on converting someone."
But the Rev. Vincent Heier, director of the St. Louis archdiocese's office of ecumenical and interreligious affairs, said when Ratzinger used the word "evangelize" and the concept of evangelization in his writings about interfaith dialogue, he was talking about evangelization in a broader sense.
"Evangelism is not always active witnessing," said Heier. "But there is always that open-ended invitation. I'm uncomfortable sitting down with Muslims and actively trying to convert them -- that's unfair. But, if I share the good news as I understand it and someone accepts it ... that is an unintended consequence."
Benedict's major theological battle is with relativism, or the belief that other denominations or religions lead equally to salvation -- an idea he has called "the central problem for faith in our time."
His antipathy for relativism is important to his relationship with Muslims because, theologically, he can't abide Islam -- or any other faith, or even Christian denomination.
"The pope, or anyone in interfaith dialogue, can't go in and say 'I respect everyone here, but my truth is the truth,'" said Hayat. "Every religion believes it has the whole truth."
Benedict, say scholars, probably will come to the dialogue table with Muslims to talk about everything but one thing: belief in Jesus Christ as the one truth. In Dominus Iesus, Ratzinger wrote that if non-Christians are introduced to Christianity, they must recognize it as truth. He quoted a Vatican II document that says, "If they fail to respond in thought, word, and deed to that grace, not only shall they not be saved, but they shall be more severely judged."
Foe of Turkey's EU bid
In nontheological terms, Benedict has had a mixed record on his relations with Islam.
He opposed Turkey's bid to join the European Union last year, saying the nation's mostly Muslim culture would be incompatible with Europe's Christian history and tradition.
Many of his critics pointed to the episode with Turkey as an illustration of Benedict's fear that Islam is in competition with Christianity, and that to allow a predominantly Muslim nation entree into Europe would be to risk further weakening of Christianity's already weak grasp on the continent.
But the new pope seemed to deflect such criticism in a homily at his installation Mass.
Referring to his reputation as a hard-line theologian, he told the crowd of 350,000, "My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole church, to the word and the will of the Lord."
Building bridges
The following day the pope addressed people from "different religious traditions," saying he was "particularly grateful for the presence in our midst of members of the Muslim community. ... I assure you that the church wants to continue building bridges of friendship with the followers of all religions."
Despite his strong stance on Christianity as the clear path to truth, Ratzinger's view of Islam was amiable before he became Benedict XVI. In 2001, when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Western civilization was superior to Islam, Ratzinger challenged him.
Many say it was Ratzinger, in partnership with John Paul, whose idea it was to push his predecessor's papacy in the direction of dialogue with other religions.
On Monday, he met with Muslim leaders at the Vatican as one of his first official acts as pope.
"I think this pope, in the beginning, was not pro-dialogue," said Muhammad Nur Abdullah, imam of Daar-Ul-Islam mosque in Ballwin. "But recently, it was more reassuring when he met with Muslim leaders and mentioned dialogue between Muslims and Catholics."
Gulten Ilhan, a professor at St. Louis Community College and vice president of the St. Louis chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the pope's actions last week toward Muslims "was not just the right step, but an encouraging start." Reaction from Muslims around the world sounded similar in the days after Benedict's election and installation.
In Pakistan, where Muslims make up about 97 percent of the 150 million population, President Pervez Musharraf said he hoped Benedict could bring Christians and Muslims together.
Ali Machsan Musa, a senior leader of Indonesia's Nahdlatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim movement, said he hoped Benedict would allow "relations between the various religions to become even better." More than 80 percent of Indonesia's 214 million people are Muslims.
Sheikh Fawzi El-Zifzaf, head of one of the interfaith committees at Al-Azhar mosque, said he hoped Benedict would follow the path of "his Holiness John Paul II, who was greatly open to the world and to interfaith dialogue."
Some Muslim leaders are hopeful but cautious.
"In the first few weeks, the whole world is paying attention," said Hayat. "But a few months from now -- will the philosophy of the whole church be to reach out to other faiths? Will he really try to find common ground? I hope so."
---
Tim Townsend covers religion for the Post-Dispatch.

  NIGERIA (75%); AUSTRALIA (72%)




15


  



April 30, 2005 Saturday  




 U.S. Seeks Improved SE Asia Ties; 
Zoellick Trip Is Aimed at Building Economic, Political Links

 
 The United States, building on the massive humanitarian effort after the Indian Ocean tsunami in December, plans an aggressive effort to build economic, political and security links with Southeast Asian nations, Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick said yesterday. 
 Zoellick, who on Monday begins a nine-day trip to the region, said that China had been "very shrewd" in recent years in making clear its "size and weight and influence" in the region. But he said the U.S. response will not be to block China, but to make the case that the U.S. market is critically important to the economies of Southeast Asia, as well.  
  "For me, the theme is not U.S. versus China in Southeast Asia," Zoellick told reporters at a briefing on his trip. "We need a response with an activist set of policies, not by complaining about other people's policies." 
 Separately, Zoellick disclosed that Sudanese officials had told him yesterday that they would welcome an expanded African Union peacekeeping force in Sudan's troubled Darfur region and would accept a NATO role in facilitating that expansion. Zoellick recently returned from a trip to Sudan, where he pressed the government to take steps to demonstrate it was willing to end the suffering in Darfur, where government-armed Arab militia have attacked mostly black African villagers, driving 2 million from their homes into sprawling and decrepit camps. He added that U.S. officials were also making progress in discussions with rebels who have been battling the government. 
 "This is a devil of a difficult problem," he said, saying he did not  want to overstate the results. "But I am pleased we are making some progress on this." 
 The Bush administration, which has spent $95 million to help set up camps for African Union forces, is seeking another $50 million to $60 million to assist with the rapid expansion from about 2,200 troops currently to 7,700 by the end of September, officials said. 
  Zoellick, the number two U.S. diplomat, will visit Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines. "Part of what I will be doing is trying to work, particularly in Indonesia, on the pivot from the immediate humanitarian support to how this fits into the reconstruction effort," he said. 
 Zoellick said Indonesia is the linchpin of the region, given its size and also its status as the world's largest Muslim country. He planned to visit Sumatra's Aceh region, which suffered the greatest loss of life in the tsunami, to assess the pace and needs of the reconstruction effort. 
 On the economic front, Zoellick noted that China, the United States and the region have what he called "triangular trade flows" in which many of the exports from China to the United States are assembled from commodities or parts that originated in Southeast Asia. So he planned to make the case that the U.S. market "is not only important to China's growth, but it is important to Southeast Asia's growth." 
 In Vietnam, Zoellick will mark the 10th anniversary of U.S.-Vietnamese diplomatic relations after the Vietnam War, which ended 30 years ago. Zoellick said a high-level Vietnamese official may soon visit the United States to help strengthen ties. "They want to have a very good and strong relationship because they don't want to be totally dependent on China," he said. 

 UNITED STATES (96%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (96%); ASIA (96%); CHINA (95%); SUDAN (94%);  AFRICA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); THAILAND (79%); SINGAPORE (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%)







  



April 20, 2005 Wednesday  




 Our Limited Study of Islam

 
While I applaud the initiatives laid out by Peter Berkowitz and Michael McFaul in their April 12 op-ed,  "Studying Islam, Strengthening the Nation," I found it curious that they limited their reach to the geographic Middle East with regard to languages  --  Arabic, Persian (or Farsi) and Turkish.  
 More than half  of all Muslims live in South  and Southeast Asia; Indonesia  has the world's largest Muslim population, trailed by India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.  
 Signs of militant extremist Islam have appeared in Indonesia, Thailand and the southern Philippines. And Pakistan is ostensibly the birthplace of the Taliban, with many al  Qaeda terrorists and supporters arrested there. To ignore these areas in this proposal on studying Islam is akin to ignoring Eastern Europe during the Cold War. 
 GREG ROWE 
 Centreville 
 *  
  Peter Berkowitz and Michael McFaul's portrayal of the study of Islam  in our universities was accurate.  
  My interest is the political, religious, cultural and historical climate of the Middle East, and I want to study Arabic. But   while searching for a college, I found that only a few schools   taught Arabic. Many did not offer it as a minor or a major,  only as a language. Even fewer schools offered a major or a minor in Middle Eastern or Islamic studies. I settled for being an international studies major with a minor in Arabic and Arab studies (at American University). 
 In light of recent history, it is unacceptable for our schools to continue to neglect such a fascinating, and important, region and religion. 
 KARA PETERS 
 Washington 

   MIDDLE EAST (92%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); TURKEY (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); ASIA (91%); INDIA (79%); EUROPE (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%); THAILAND (76%); EASTERN EUROPE (54%)







 Tribune Review Publishing 
 


April 17, 2005 Sunday



 Islam presents key challenge for pope, scholars say

 
ROME -- While Catholic faithful speculate on how cardinals will vote in their secretive conclave starting Monday, church scholars ponder the issues facing the next pope.  
A central concern -- how Christians and Muslims deal with each other post-Sept. 11 -- will shape not only the Roman Catholic Church, but also the larger world in the near future.  
Dr. Fransesco Cesareo, dean of McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University, calls it "an issue that the cardinals will be considering."   
"It will be a question of whether they want to keep the dialogue open and keep engaging Islam," he said, "or take a hard-line stance, a line in the sand."  
Nearly half of the 115 cardinals eligible to vote come from Europe, and European issues -- including relations with Islam -- will weigh heavily on them. Europe's birth rates and Mass attendance are falling, and more clergy posts remain open; yet Europe's Muslim population is rising, creating new political forces and social conflicts.  
Christianity in the Holy Land has declined for years, while Christian-Muslim clashes in Indonesia, Nigeria and elsewhere have killed tens of thousands. More than a million have died in a brutal civil war between Sudan's northern Arab Muslims and southern black Christians.  
Meanwhile, Islamic terrorism has raised fear and distrust of Muslims in many nations.  
Experts credit the late Pope John Paul II for opening up to the Muslim world. He visited Syria in 2000, meeting with Islamic leaders inside the 8th-century Umayyad Mosque -- the first pope to take such a step. He visited Lebanon, Egypt and Israel, where he apologized for past misdeeds of the Catholic Church, widely interpreted to mean the Crusades.  
"He was the master of the significant act," said the Rev. Daniel Madigan, who directs the Institute for Religion and Culture at Rome's Pontifical Gregoriana University. "Going to that mosque in Damascus, it was a great photo opportunity and it had an enormous and significant effect."  
"John Paul II brought the papacy on the road, like a caravan," said the Rev. Justo Lacunza-Balda, rector at Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies in Rome. "(He) built bridges across civilizations, across countries."  
According to Madigan, John Paul distanced himself and the Catholic Church from the war in Iraq, and his Vatican was seen as reasonably pro-Palestinian. Madigan himself was a member of the Pontifical Political Council for Religious Dialogue, which met with imams from Cairo's Al-Azhar University, one of Islam's top religious institutions.  
Lacunza-Balda cites Christian-Muslim dialogue as one of the pope's "mega-trends."  
"It is a necessity," he said. "We have no option if we have an interest in trying to live in peace with another religion."  
The success of John Paul's outreach was evident at his funeral Mass. Many Arab and Islamic leaders attended; Arabic satellite television stations, such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, as well as state-owned Arab TV, ran unprecedented coverage of it.  
Nigeria's Cardinal Francis Arinze, 72, is the leading African candidate to become the next pope. As a Roman Catholic in a Muslim-majority country, he is seen by many observers as best-suited to understand Islam. As head of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue for 18 years, he earned a reputation as the Vatican's point-man in engaging Islamic leaders.  
"I think he would be the one to keep the dialogue alive," said Cesareo, Duquesne's papal history expert.  
Some observers favor Angelo Scola, 63, the patriarch of Venice, who recently launched Oasis -- a magazine published in English, Arabic, French and Italian that aims to improve dialogue with Muslims.  
Yet some cardinals and others in the Vatican hierarchy fear Europe, a center of Christianity, is becoming an Islamic outpost. Still others see religious liberty as an issue to be resolved with Muslim religious and political leaders; they point out that Saudi Arabia funded a mosque in Rome, but bans churches within its own borders.  
While some cardinals offer a conciliatory approach to Muslims, others "tend to talk about Islam as though it is a block, and that's a problem," according to Madigan.  
On the fault line of this debate is German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 77, the powerful head of the Council of Cardinals. He directs the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and is one of the Catholic Church's most conservative voices.  
Ratzinger caused a stir during debate over European Union membership, when he declared Muslim Turkey had no place in Christian Europe.  
In a Catholic Church document, "Dominus Jesus," he called for Christian evangelization and said Catholicism is "the one true church of Jesus Christ" -- upsetting other Christian denominations and religions.  
"He would be the cardinal that saw that Pope John Paul's dialogue with Islam went too far," said Cesareo. "He would see the Catholic Church as disarming itself and opening the door to the growth of Islam."  
With more church pews empty, Lacunza-Baldo said he believes it is time for introspection. 
"It forces Church leaders to think about why people are not satisfied," said the rector at Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies in Rome. "There is a need for a profound purification inside the Church, to bring the bare bones of what the Christian faith means.  
"You can only mix with other religions if you know who you are and what you want." 

 EUROPE (93%); EGYPT (92%); ITALY (90%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); ISRAEL (79%); SUDAN (79%); SYRIA (79%); LEBANON (79%); HOLY SEE (79%); NIGERIA (79%);  INDONESIA (79%)







 


April 17, 2005 Sunday  
FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION



 Pope acts as global conscience Over the centuries, pontiffs have used their power to effect change in the church and in the world.

 
On Monday afternoon in Rome, 115 cardinals will enter the conclave -- the secret election that will determine the next leader of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics.
One American cardinal said privately, in the days before John Paul II's funeral, that he was awed, humbled and even a little afraid of the task the cardinals have ahead of them. It is easy to see why.
When white smoke from the Sistine Chapel signifies that the election is complete, the cardinals will have chosen more than just a pope. They also will have set in motion the future of the Roman Catholic Church. 
The first new pope of the 21st century will have a number of challenges ahead of him -- some ancient, others unprecedented. For instance, the cardinals' choice will have to tackle religious rights for Christians living in overwhelmingly Islamic countries, while treading carefully diplomatically to continue the dialogue with Islam begun by John Paul II.
On the other hand, the shortage of priests in North and South America is a relatively new, if growing, problem that many church officials call a crisis.
While the explosion of Catholicism in Africa is heartening for the church, the decline of the faith in Europe and increasing competition from evangelical denominations in Latin America worry the Vatican.
Add to these hurdles the post-John Paul II papal prerequisites of media savvy and charm, plus the administrative skills necessary for the herculean job of running the Catholic church. Then throw in the intellectual gravitas needed to focus the faithful on his own theological priorities, and the crisis-management skills for something like the U.S. clergy abuse scandal.
Not all cardinals are well-suited to become pope as the position has been defined over the last century -- as the moral conscience for a large percentage of the human race. And many of them, maybe most, would not particularly want the job.
That was certainly true of Karol Wojtyla's predecessor, John Paul I, who, in the moments after he was chosen by his fellow cardinals in 1978, addressed them by saying, "May God forgive you for what you have done."
Along with its challenges, the papacy carries with it power. Through the 2,000 years since the first pope, St. Peter, several of history's 264 popes have used that power to effect change in the church and in the world.
John Paul II used the position to do just that during his 26-year papacy.
"This pope was acutely aware of his opportunity to become a moral force for good in the world," said the Rev. C. Eugene Morris, professor of sacramental theology at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary. "For him the focus was on the human person . . . and coming out of the unrest and skepticisms of the 1960s and 1970s, he gave us a healthy reminder of what institutions, especially the church, can do for us."
Popes defined church
By using his position as pope to mold the church and his flock, John Paul II was following in the tradition of great popes through the ages, say religion scholars. The early church, by necessity, was constantly being defined and redefined by its popes.
The fourth-century pope, Damasus I, is not particularly well-known, but he changed the papacy by paying attention to the little things. "He was a detail man," said Anthony J. Blasi, professor of sociology at Tennessee State University who specializes in religion. "He organized a library and started record keeping, really bureaucratizing the church." Damasus also commissioned St. Jerome to translate the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, a translation known as the Vulgate.
Attention to detail was also important to later popes, especially lawyers in the Middle Ages, said Glenn W. Olsen, professor of church history at the University of Utah.
Innocent IV, pope in the 13th century, was trained in law, "which was a very useful kind of education for reorganizing the institution and strengthening church legislation," said Olsen.
Leo I, from the fifth century, was one of Rome's great defenders, keeping away potential invaders, including Atilla the Hun, and also a variety of heresies that threatened orthodox Christian theology at the time. By calling several councils to answer such questions as what is Christ's true nature and through his prolific writing, Leo helped educate followers of the growing religion.
Gregory I was pope at the turn of the sixth century, and did more than anyone before him to spread Christianity north into Europe. "Christianity, prior to Gregory, was a Mediterranean religion, but after Gregory it was more European," said Kenneth B. Steinhauser, professor of early church history at St. Louis University. Gregory also helped make the papacy a political force by having the church care for the poor and sick during years of plague and war.
More modern popes also had great influence on the direction of the church. Pius IX, who was pope in the middle of the 19th century (and the longest reigning pope -- almost 32 years), proclaimed papal infallibility and called the First Vatican Council. Pius also waged an ideological war against modern culture and political thought of his day.
Pius' papacy was so long that in the conclave that followed his death -- in a situation very similar to the conclave that begins Monday -- all but one of the cardinals electing his successor were named by him, said Frank J. Coppa, professor of history at St. John's University in Queens, N.Y. "But then the cardinals picked Leo XIII, a liberal and a champion of social justice who said the church had to address the problems of the working man," said Coppa.
Odds-makers are busy handicapping the field of John Paul's successors, and many Vatican-watchers say the candidates to watch are those who would be bold with their papacy. But first the College of Cardinals has to be bold enough to pick such a man, possibly someone who would make history by being the first Latin American pope, or the first African pope in 1,500 years.
Jacob Olupona, professor of African-American and African studies who specializes in religion at University of California at Davis, said "the nature of African culture -- highly religious, morally very conservative" means a conservative African pope, like Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria, would be ideal if the cardinals wanted to ensure the continuation of recent dramatic Catholic evangelism on that continent.
Arinze, who is considered one of a handful of front-runners going into the conclave, had been scheduled to give the keynote address at the Gateway Liturgical Conference in St. Louis in early April, but had to cancel his trip when John Paul II died.
The papacy has changed over its 2,000-year history, from an evangelical title, to an administrative position, to a political office, and finally, to a global moral pulpit. And the duty and focus of each pope has changed along the way. In the last century the main job of the pope has been to become a champion of the weak, experts say.
"Ever since Leo XIII the papacy has become an important moral force in the world," said Steinhauser. "The pope speaks for those with no voice."
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Some popes who have changed the church
LEO I (THE GREAT) 440-461 Faced down several invaders who threatened Rome, including Attila the Hun. Also fought several heresies threatening the church.
ST. GREGORY I (THE GREAT) 590-604 Benedictine monk who used missionaries to spread Christianity north into Europe and Britain.
LEO III 795-816 Crowned Charlemagne emperor in 800, marking the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire and an official alliance between church and state.
PIUS IX 1846-1878 Longest-serving pope (almost 32 years) waged an ideological war against modern culture. Proclaimed papal infallibility.
LEO XIII 1878-1903 Credited with forcing the church to live in the modern world. Focus was social justice, including fair wages for workers.
JOHN XXIII 1958-1963 A reign of less than five years produced the Second Vatican Council, changing the direction of the church in the last half of the 20th century.
JOHN PAUL II 1978-2005 A 26-year papacy credited with defeating communism in Europe. Also focused the power of the church on what he called "the gospel of life."
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Choosing the next pope
The conclave begins 9:30 a.m. Monday St. Louis time with 115 cardinals in attendance.
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Possible contenders
If the 115 cardinals who are able to vote for John Paul II's successor choose a pope from within their own ranks (technically, they are free to choose any practicing Roman Catholic man), these are some of the possible contenders. But there are no sure bets. In October 1978, almost no one predicted that Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop of Krakow, Poland, would exit the conclave as the new leader of the Catholic world.
The odds are from Paddypower.com, an Irish online betting web site. (As of late Saturday.)
FRONT-RUNNERS
CLAUDIO HUMMES 70, Brazil, cardinal for four years (8-1 odds) As archbishop of Sao Paulo, in the world's most populous Catholic country, Hummes is the most likely Latin American candidate. He is progressive on social issues and would be a voice for the Third World poor, but he is doctrinally conservative.
DIONIGI TETTAMANZI 71, Italy, cardinal for seven years (7-1 odds) Because of his round figure (and his ability to joke about it), Tettamanzi is seen as a good personality pick to succeed the dynamic John Paul II. He is conservative and has close ties to Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic organization.
JOSEPH RATZINGER 78, Germany, cardinal for 27 years (3-1 odds) This conservative intellectual turned 78 Saturday, which could help his prospects if the cardinals are looking for a transitional pope. Many thought his homily at John Paul II's funeral was a not-so-subtle hint that he wants the job.
IN CONTENTION
GODFRIED DANNEELS 71, Belgium, cardinal for 22 years (40-1 odds) Considered a diplomat, intellectual and expert in interfaith relations, Danneels is seen as a progressive and would likely be elected only if he were a compromise between conservative and progressive factions within the conclave.
OSCAR ANDRES RODRIGUEZ MARADIAGA 62, Honduras, cardinal for four years (16-1 odds) The cardinals may not be looking for another long papacy, so at 62 Maradiaga is probably too young to be elected. Nevertheless, he is a rising star in the Latin American church and is a strong supporter of social justice issues.
IVAN DIAS 69, India, cardinal for four years (33-1 odds) A career Vatican diplomat, Dias can get by in at least 15 languages. His conservative views on abortion and homosexuality (which he has called a disease of the soul and an unnatural tendency) set him apart from other progressive Indian bishops.
DARK HORSES
JULIUS RIYADI DARMAATMADJA 70, Indonesia, cardinal for 10 years (no odds) A Jesuit and archbishop of Jakarta, Darmaatmadja may be appealing for his expertise in Islam, something many cardinals have said is nearly a prerequisite for the next pope.
JUSTIN RIGALI 69, United States, cardinal for 18 months (100-1 odds) He turns 70 Tuesday, so he's the perfect age. But he's also American, which virtually shuts him out of the running. Rigali is conservative, was close to John Paul II and hosted the pope's visit to St. Louis in 1999.
WALTER KASPER 72, Germany, cardinal for four years (80-1 odds) Kasper is thought of as one of the most important cardinal theologians and someone who might try to reform the Vatican's government with an eye toward decentralization of power. He is seen as a theological rival to Ratzinger.
SOURCES: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS; "CONCLAVE" BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
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STLToday.com Link to a presentation about possible successors to Pope John Paul II at STLtoday.com/links.

 HOLY SEE (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); ITALY (92%); SOUTH AMERICA (79%); EUROPE (76%); LATIN AMERICA (73%); AFRICA (71%); GERMANY (69%); NORTH & SOUTH AMERICAS (67%)







 


April 16, 2005 Saturday  




 Southeast Asia should be second front in terrorism war, Bond says

 
The United States is missing a key opportunity in the war on terrorism by neglecting the 10 countries and 500 million people of Southeast Asia, where moderate Islam and emerging democracies could provide a counterbalance to Middle East fundamentalism, Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., said Friday. 
"We are not paying attention here in Washington, D.C.," Bond said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation. Too many members of Congress are familiar with Southeast Asia only because of the recent tsunami, said Bond, who has visited the region annually for a dozen years.
Americans have done a good job providing humanitarian aid to the region, and trade relations also run deep -- so much so that Southeast Asia has become the third-largest U.S. trading partner, Bond said. But the United States should also focus on "Southeast Asia, and particularly Indonesia, as the second front in the war on terrorism," Bond said.
Countries such as Indonesia, whose 200 million Muslims give it the world's largest Muslim population, "represent the best hope for fostering a moderate or civilized Islam that recognizes the true peaceful nature of that religion, in opposition to the radical, terrorist-inspiring Islam preached by Saudi-financed Wahabism," said Bond, who mentioned Malaysia and Thailand as two other examples. "In addition, those countries and the Philippines are moving forward on a path of democratic rule," he said.
The region's situation, though, is volatile because terrorist groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah have gained a foothold, Bond said, making U.S. involvement all the more important. 
Increasing U.S. educational assistance and exchanges, promoting moderate Islamic groups, expanding economic investment, working to eliminate funding sources for terrorism and strengthening military ties are among actions the United States should take, Bond said.

 UNITED STATES (95%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (94%); ASIA (94%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); INDONESIA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); THAILAND (79%); PHILIPPINES (79%)






   

 

April 10, 2005 



 No wedded bliss;
Indonesia women seek rights

 
Kalisat, Indonesia --- In this poor village in East Java, electricity came only a decade ago. Most of the residents plant rice or collect scrap metal to earn a meager living.
Some have another business --- contract marriages.
The marriages are common in some parts of Indonesia, especially where men from the Middle East or other parts of Asia are working on short-term assignments. 
They are temporary arrangements lasting from a week to a year or more. They usually involve a girl from a poor family and a man seeking a short-term "wife."
They are performed by a Muslim cleric, who receives a fee and confers a religious authority to the union even though it lacks legal legitimacy.
Indonesian women's rights activist Maria Ulfah Anshor calls such marriages "religiously sanctioned prostitution" and, more provocatively, "a contract for a woman's vagina."
She has called on clerics to denounce the practice. Contract marriages are not sanctioned by Indonesia's religious authorities, nor have they been condemned.
The women's movement in Indonesia has become bolder in recent years, openly confronting male-dominated Islamic organizations and taking on issues once considered untouchable.
In Kalisat, Istiqomah, 22, has been married six or seven times. She's not sure of the exact number. At least, she doesn't want to say.
"I don't remember," she said, fiddling with her 3-year-old daughter in her lap. "A husband is just a husband." As do many Indonesians, Istiqomah goes by only one name.
The effect of her marriages is evident: She lives in a shiny new house with a front porch and white pillars, built with the money she earned from her dowries. It stands in marked contrast to her parents' house, a squat, run-down shack just next door.
But awareness of women's rights has entered even villages like Kalisat, a town of several thousand people an hour outside Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city.
Parents here once were proud if their daughter had a contract marriage. Now fewer families are engaging in the practice.
"More women understand about women's rights than before," said Suwati, the government-sponsored nurse in Kalisat. "They understand contract marriage exploits women. Modernization has entered the village."
Throughout Indonesia, the women's movement is offering counter-interpretations of religious texts and presenting a more liberal Islamic feminist viewpoint.
"It's quite radical," said Susan Blackburn, an expert on women in Indonesia at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. "There's been a lot of change going on . . .  as a result of this."
Women like Anshor have been stirring up controversy with articles on abortion and polygamy, slowly achieving a more gender-balanced interpretation of Islam. Led by Anshor, Fatayat is one of three women's groups under Nahdlatul Ulama, or NU, the country's largest Muslim organization, with 40 million members.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country --- nearly 90 percent of its 225 million people are Muslim. The Islam they practice is considered far more moderate, tolerant and decentralized than in many other countries.
As early as the 1950s, women were admitted as judges to its Islamic sharia courts, which is highly unusual for a Muslim country. Still, the leading Muslim organizations have been reluctant to change.
Politics also created barriers for women. For 33 years, under former President Suharto's repressive and patriarchal regime, women were relegated to domestic roles.
"In Suharto's time, it was taboo to talk about women's rights, such as reproductive rights," Anshor said. "It was all arranged and managed by men."
After his downfall in May 1998, new women's organizations sprang up to join Fatayat.
Some of the interpretations of the Quran, Islam's holy book, that Anshor has been trying to address include those saying a wife must obey her husband and make herself available to her husband anytime.
"Why should we obey a husband if he's not a good example, like if he's a drunk or beats his wife?" she asked.
"On sexuality, many people forget the Quran also says a woman has the right to enjoy intimacy with her husband."
She and other reformists argue that many parts of the Quran have been conveniently ignored by conservative men.
"Men say polygamy is legal [according to the Quran], but if you look, there's a comma, not a period, after that," said Siti Juliani, an independent consultant in Jakarta specializing in women's issues.
"It's allowed only under certain conditions."
The movement has scored some notable recent successes.
It persuaded the largest Muslim organizations to conduct a comprehensive review of the religious texts used in Islamic boarding schools, because of complaints the texts were misogynistic, Blackburn said.
Its biggest legislative victory, after a 15-year fight, was passage in parliament last year of a bill making domestic violence a crime.
The legislation is now awaiting the president's signature.
The next target is the marriage law. Although a 1974 law was considered a major step forward at the time, including provisions making it easier for women to seek divorce, it still allows polygamy.
Polygamy is uncommon in Indonesia among ordinary people.
However, many of those who practice it are in positions of authority in government and the mosques.
According to the marriage law, a man can take an additional wife only if his first wife cannot have children or perform sexually and only if she consents.
"But what if a man can't give kids or perform?" Anshor asks. "According to the marriage law, women can't ask for divorce [in that case]."
Proposals have been put forward to amend the marriage law, but Blackburn says the prospects of success are dim. "I'd say there's absolutely no hope of outlawing polygamy."

 INDONESIA (99%); ASIA (90%); MIDDLE EAST (88%); AUSTRALIA (79%); 







  


April 10, 2005 Sunday  




 Helping others help themselves

 
Bali, Indonesia. The place name conjures up visions of over-sized, brilliantly colored blossoms; the alluring sands of the South Pacific; beautiful, exotic Balinese dancers; and sadly, in recent years, the shocking images of the Bali nightclub bombing and the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami last December.
And here I was, gazing with amazement upon seeing Bali from the air, while circling to land at Denpasar Airport. As the largest Muslim country on earth, Indonesia is a complex nation of 238 million residents who inhabit 6,000 of this vast archipelago's 17,000 islands. 
During my visit to Indonesia last month, I was privileged to visit just three of the islands where World Neighbors partners with local people to improve their living conditions.
I was here to learn, meet with the World Neighbors staff team and partner organizations and, most importantly, visit our programs in the field. World Neighbors has maintained programs in Indonesia since 1981 and is highly regarded by professionals in development work as well as by villagers residing in some of the most remote parts of the country.
The people we partner with are the poorest of the poor people whose lives have been relegated to rocky upland slopes -- a far different reality than the lush green rice fields in the lowlands.
Many World Neighbors donors -- mostly from our home state of Oklahoma -- were generous amidst the outpouring of international compassion that flooded agencies after the Dec. 26 tsunami. Although we do not do relief work, we wanted to help with the aid efforts. So we partnered with an Indonesian organization, IDEP (Indonesian Development of Education and Permaculture).
As a result, my first visit in Indonesia was to IDEP's offices in Ubud, Bali, to meet our IDEP partners and to ensure that our donors' funds had been well used. The executive director greeted us warmly and introduced us to her staff who were incredibly conscientious, showing us careful records of how every World Neighbors dollar had been spent during those early, terrible days and weeks in Banda Aceh, Sumatra.
The IDEP team was one of the first to arrive on the scene by ship, and World Neighbors was the first contributor to this critical work, so I was comforted in knowing that our dollars had been put to good use and in such a speedy and responsive manner. Appreciation was extended to us many times over by the IDEP team -- not just for the $73,000 in contributions we wired, but for the encouragement our support conveyed to them as they carried out heartbreaking work.
From tragedy to hopefulness, my journey then took us to the islands of Lombok and West Timor -- high above the small lowland towns to communities that somehow find ways to survive on the less-than-ideal land. Life in these communities is harsh, with residents experiencing respiratory infections from cooking fires in enclosed places, walks of several kilometers to fetch drinking water and poor and distant access to schools and health services.
Working in partnership with community based organizations and with the local people carrying out the labor themselves, these communities have been transformed in a few short years. A photograph from four years ago showed rocky, barren land. Now, there are hundreds of acres of green crops and trees, with every seedling planted by hand.
Because of World Neighbors training, coaching around community planning and the formation of farmer associations and women's groups, parents are now able to feed their children and have produce left over to take to market. One wonders why anyone has to be hungry when such inexpensive, focused programs can realize such dramatic results.
Of course, communities are about more than just eating to live -- and once the villagers have felt the power of their own success, they move on to other needed projects. They build water systems, advocate for a visiting health clinic in their area, learn about family planning and develop income generation plans.
All of these successes continue, allowing communities to get stronger and increasingly able to solve problems that confront them. This is what we mean by "sustainable."
The people do things for themselves without our assistance over the long term. It was like a miracle to me to know such differences can be made in the poorest places on earth and to feel that World Neighbors and our Oklahoma friends and supporters have been able to help to make this happen.
Macdonald is president and chief executive of World Neighbors, based in Oklahoma City.

 INDONESIA (99%); 







 


April 9, 2005 Saturday



 Women's roles in Indonesia changing; 
Activists challenging traditional notions of marriage, Islam

 
KALISAT, Indonesia -- In this poor village in East Java, electricity came only a decade ago. Most of the residents plant rice or collect scrap metal to earn a meager living. 
But some villagers have another business: contract marriages. 
The marriages are common in some parts of Indonesia, especially where men from the Middle East or other parts of Asia are working on short-term assignments.  
The marriages are temporary, lasting anywhere from a week to a year or more. They usually involve a girl from a poor family and a man seeking a short-term "wife," often because he has another wife. They are performed by a local Islamic cleric, who receives a fee and confers a religious authority to the union, even though it lacks legal legitimacy. 
Indonesian women's rights activist Maria Ulfah Anshor calls such marriages "religiously sanctioned prostitution" and, more provocatively, "a contract for a woman's vagina." She has called on clerics to denounce the practice. 
The women's movement in Indonesia has become bolder in recent years, openly confronting male-dominated Islamic organizations and taking on issues once considered untouchable. 
In Kalisat, Istiqomah, 22, has been married six or seven times. She's not sure of the exact number. At least, she doesn't want to say. 
"I don't remember," she said, her 3-year-old daughter in her lap. "A husband is just a husband." As do many Indonesians, Istiqomah goes by only one name. 
The effect of her marriages is evident: She lives in a shiny new house with a front porch and white pillars, built with the money she earned from her dowries. It stands in marked contrast to her parents' house, a squat, run-down shack next door. 
But awareness of women's rights has entered even villages like Kalisat, a town of several thousand people an hour outside Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city. Parents here once were proud if their daughter had a contract marriage. Now fewer families are engaging in the practice. 
"More women understand about women's rights than before," said Suwati, the government-sponsored nurse in Kalisat. "They understand contract marriage exploits women. Modernization has entered the village." 
Istiqomah, with a copy of a magazine article from several years ago exposing the seedy side of the business, has gotten herself a "real" husband. 
Throughout Indonesia, the women's movement is offering counter-interpretations of canonical religious texts and presenting a more liberal Islamic feminist viewpoint. 
"It's quite radical," said Susan Blackburn, an expert on women in Indonesia at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. "There's been a lot of change going on." 
Women such as Anshor have been stirring up controversy with articles on abortion and polygamy, slowly achieving a more gender-balanced interpretation of Islam. Led by Anshor, Fatayat is one of three women's groups under Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's largest Muslim organization, with 40 million members. 
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country -- nearly 90 percent of its 225 million people are Muslim. Its form of Islam is considered far more moderate, tolerant and decentralized than in other countries. 
As early as the 1950s, women were admitted as judges to its Islamic sharia courts, unusual for a Muslim country. Still, leading Muslim organizations have been reluctant to change. 
Politics also created barriers for women. For 33 years, under former President Suharto's repressive and patriarchal regime, women were relegated to domestic roles. 
"In Suharto's time, it was taboo to talk about women's rights, such as reproductive rights," Anshor said. "It was all arranged and managed by men." 
After his downfall in May 1998, new women's organizations sprang up to join Fatayat. Some of the interpretations of the Quran, Islam's holy book, that Anshor has been trying to address include those saying a wife must obey her husband and make herself available to her husband anytime. 
"Why should we obey a husband if he's not a good example, like if he's a drunk or beats his wife?" she asked. "On sexuality, many people forget the Quran also says a woman has the right to enjoy intimacy with her husband." 
The movement has scored some notable recent successes. 
It persuaded the largest Muslim organizations to conduct a comprehensive review of the religious texts used in Islamic boarding schools, because of complaints the texts were misogynistic, Blackburn said. 
Its biggest legislative victory, after a 15 year fight, was passage in parliament last year of a bill making domestic violence a crime. The legislation is now awaiting the president's signature. 
The next target is the marriage law. Although a 1974 law was considered a major step forward at the time, including provisions making it easier for women to seek divorce, it still allows polygamy. 
Polygamy is uncommon in Indonesia. However, the people who practice it are those in positions of authority in government and the mosques. 
According to the marriage law, a man can take an additional wife only if his first wife cannot have children or perform sexually and only if she consents. 
Proposals have been put forward to amend the marriage law, but Blackburn says the prospects of success are dim. "I'd say there's absolutely no hope of outlawing polygamy," she said. 
Even less likely to be outlawed are contract marriages, said Cassandra Balchin, who works in London for the Women Living Under Muslim Laws network. 
jchao@coxnews.com 

 INDONESIA (97%); AUSTRALIA (92%); MIDDLE EAST (88%); ASIA (88%)







 
 


April 6, 2005 Wednesday



 John Paul's Visits to the Middle East

 
To mark the turn of the century, Pope John Paul II made a historic visit to the Middle East. In Israel he paid homage to the victims of the Holocaust by going to Yad Vashem and also visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. At the time, these gestures enraged many Muslim leaders.
The pope also met with the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrime Sabri, imam of the Al-Asqa mosque and the highest religious authority in Palestinian Islam. On the eve of the pope's visit to the Al-Asqa mosque, the grand mufti gave an extensive interview to the Italian newspaper La Republica, on March 24, 2000. The title of the article was "Too Many Lies About the Holocaust, Wojtyla Free Us From the Jews." 
When asked his thoughts on the pope's visit to Yad Vashem the mufti answered: "Whether I approved of it or not, he would have gone anyway. The Jews have found a formidable way to gather solidarity from the world ... Well, the Crusades lasted 200 years, not five years like World War II, and many more Muslims than Jews were killed under Nazism. But nobody talks about the Crusades or compensation for us." The mufti also said, "Six million Jews dead? No way, they were much fewer. Let's stop with this fairytale ..."
The mufti was also asked if the pope would be allowed to pray in the Al-Aqsa mosque and explained, "It would not be a good idea ... such a gesture could be wrongfully interpreted by Christians in the future ..." In the interview he explained, "I will remind him [the pope] that according to Allah's will, the holy Muslim places belong to us only."
In February 2000, the pope also went to Egypt. His itinerary included a meeting with Sunni Islam's most prominent religious figure, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi. In the past Mr. Tantawi has made statements in support of suicide bombings, killing Jews, as well as more recently support for jihad against American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. During a press conference in Egypt, in what could be implied as a veiled reaction to such sentiment, the pope stated, "To do harm, to promote violence in the name of religion, is a terrible contradiction and a great offense."
In May 2001, the pope also went to Damascus and was greeted by Bashar Assad. The Syrian leader's welcome to the pope was an anti-Semitic diatribe: "They [the Jewish people] try to kill the principle of religions with the same mentality that they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the prophet Mohammad." His Syrian itinerary included a visit to the historic Al-Umawi mosque.
From Mecca, Saudi Sheikh Adnan Ahmad Siyami responded to the pope's visit to Syria and his call for peace between religions: "The pope's recent visit to Syria, to the Al-Umawi mosque is, without a doubt, another manifestation of that call. The call by [the pope] - may Allah punish him as he deserves - to the people of the [different] religions ... is nothing more than an audacious call for the unification of religions. ... This pope, the head of the Catholic Church, and those behind him ... are the descendants of the Spanish inquisitors who tortured the Muslims most abominably. ... They are the descendants of those who led the Crusades to the Islamic East, in which thousands of Muslims were killed ... They are the perpetrators of the massacres in Bosnia-Herzegovina ... in Kosovo, in Indonesia, and in Chechnya ... Can we expect compassion from these murderous wolves?"
The Saudi sheikh added, "There can be neither an agreement nor a meeting point between the people of Islam and the Jewish and Christian People of the Book. ... How can we allow the Catholic pope's talk of a need to find meeting points and agreement between Islam and Christianity... Is it conceivable that there should be agreement and a meeting point with those who fabricate terrible falsehoods about Allah ... claiming that Jesus, peace be upon him, is his son?!"
Many Islamist Web sites have eulogized the pope with messages critical of Arab satellite television for highlighting John Paul II's call for peace and dialogue between all religions.
Next week's column will discuss the challenges the next pope will face in regard to the Muslim world.

 ISRAEL (94%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); EGYPT (92%); SYRIA (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); AFGHANISTAN (79%);  SAUDI ARABIA (79%); IRAQ (79%)







   


April 4, 2005 Monday  




 In Many Lands and Tongues, Remembering Pope as Minister of Peace

 
Bells tolled solemnly across the continents, prayers and hymns filled great cathedrals and modest churches, and around the world mourning multitudes remembered Pope John Paul II yesterday as the torchbearer of peace and human dignity, a tireless traveler whose journey had finally ended.
 In Roman Catholic strongholds of Europe, Africa and South America, in Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, in the Philippines and Indonesia, in the troubled lands of the Middle East and in cities and towns across the United States, houses of worship overflowed and eulogies resounded in praise of a man many called a towering figure of history.
  A day after his death, as the pontiff lay in state at the Vatican, presidents, prime ministers and other world leaders, as well as members of the church hierarchy, the leaders of other faiths and countless ordinary worshipers offered tributes and assessments, often in voices breaking with emotion.
 ''It's a devastating loss,'' Janice Smith, 57, a career counselor at the New York Public Library, said after Mass at the Church of St. Charles Borromeo on 141st Street in Harlem. It was a glowering, chiaroscuro day in New York, a grayish mood to go with sorrow and loss.  
 ''I couldn't sleep last night,'' said Drusilla Marshall, 77, a Harlem resident, who recalled the pope's 1979 visit to New York and her church. ''He was so loved. I took a picture of him when he stood on these steps in 1979. That's how I'll always remember him.''
 At. St. Patrick's Cathedral, a standing-room-only crowd that included the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani heard Cardinal Edward M. Egan celebrate a Mass in memory of a pope whose final days of suffering, he said, were a lesson in humility. ''He was a humble giant who grew to his loftiest stature when he couldn't raise his head, lift his eye or whisper a prayer,'' the cardinal said. 
 Downtown, outside St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr Church in the East Village -- Manhattan's only Polish parish -- flowers and candles adorned a bronze bust of the pope draped with a Polish flag, and parishioners wiped tears from their eyes as Emil Mlynarski, 72, a retired school custodian, spoke of the pope as a national savior. 
 ''Our country was taken by the Russians, by the Nazis, then by communism,'' he said. ''But the pope, he stood up for us. He gave us the respect we longed for.''
 As Americans flocked to services in Boston, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Washington, Miami and other cities, it was not all praise and remembrance, melancholy and nostalgia. There were voices of pride, too, in the life of a pope who seemed at times to represent far more than the interests of his church, reaching out to competing faiths and political systems.
 In Chicago, where special Masses were said for the city's large Polish community, 1,500 mourners filled Holy Name Cathedral as Cardinal Francis E. George recalled the pope as complex and charismatic. ''He was quick to forgive sin in Christ's name, just as he was quick to correct errors,'' the cardinal said. 
 There were voices of discord, many of them in America, as critics of the pope's highly conservative doctrinal views reiterated their displeasure over his stances on homosexuality, gay marriage, priestly celibacy, artificial contraception, the role of women in church life and other issues, including what some characterized as an inadequate response to the priest-pedophile scandals that engulfed the American church in recent years. But for most Americans, it was a day to remember, not to criticize.
 Around the world, praise for the pope ranged from lavish to muted. Millions in overwhelmingly Catholic Poland swarmed to services in Warsaw and Krakow, the pope's hometown, to remember papal visits that sounded the knell for Soviet and European communism. Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, where the pope went on his knees in 1979 to beg for a farewell to arms, also praised him.
 Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other leaders in the Middle East, where nothing is ever unanimous, paid tribute in varying degrees, recalling John Paul's visit to the Holy Land in 2000 and his impassioned appeals for peace and understanding in the region. ''The world has lost one of the great leaders of our time,'' Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel said. 
 In America and Israel, Jewish leaders also praised the pope's efforts to lift relations between Judaism and Roman Catholicism out of the dark ages of centuries, while Palestinians underlined his unwavering support for their cause.
 In Paris, President Jacques Chirac and other dignitaries joined thousands in attending mourning ceremonies for the pope at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. ''I wish to express France's homage to a man who carried with incomparable fervor, conviction and courage a message of hope for all the peoples of the world,'' Mr. Chirac said in his tribute.
 Prayer services across Britain, which counts some five million Catholics, quietly remembered the pope, and Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the world's 70 million Anglicans, hailed John Paul as one of Christianity's greatest leaders. ''Christians everywhere will feel that sense of grief and loss, but also gratitude,'' he declared. 
 Hosts of Catholics across Africa, from Nairobi to Johannesburg, packed churches and cathedrals and mourned the pope in emotional outpourings and remembrances of his numerous visits to the continent.
 At Consolata Shrine in Nairobi, Kenya, Ernestina Owiti, a retiree, heard her pastor say the pope's death should not evoke sorrow alone, but her eyes filled with tears as she spoke of what John Paul had meant to her. ''I knew he would not want us to cry for him, but I feel such a deep loss,'' Ms. Owiti said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. ''He was my father. He cared for the downtrodden. He fought for the good of humanity, no matter who they were.''
 In Colombia, torn for decades by a rebel war, overflow crowds at Bogota's main cathedral celebrated the life and spirit of John Paul, who visited in 1986. ''This is a way to spiritually say goodbye to him and to manifest our feeling that we were always with him in the things that he did,'' said Octaviano Escala, 46, a lithographer. ''The important thing is he always worked for peace, worked to unify the world.''
 India announced a three-day period of mourning and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called John Paul ''the people's pope'' who had ''endeared himself especially to the people of India by initiating the process of granting sainthood to Mother Teresa.''
 Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, said: ''The world has lost a great leader and statesman, but also a great influence in the cause of peace who left an indelible imprint on our times.'' 
 Russia and China, whose strained relationships with the Vatican had been a barrier to papal visits, offered officially respectful but restrained expressions of regret at the death of the pope. Russian Orthodox churches paid homage to John Paul as a historic figure, but noted that there had been no breakthrough at reconciliation. 
 The Chinese government, which insists that Catholics belong to a state-controlled ''patriotic'' church, offered condolences. Many Chinese, meanwhile, attended underground church services. 
 Some non-Christian lands like Egypt ordered national days of mourning. President Fidel Castro of Cuba sent ''heartfelt'' condolences and decreed three days of official mourning. Flags flew at half staff in Cuba, which received a papal visit in 1998, and church bells rang every half-hour throughout the island. In Mexico, churches overflowed with tearful worshipers. 
 The Vatican received a poignant message from the family of Mehmet Ali Agca, the would-be assassin who shot the pope in St. Peter's Square in 1981. ''He is extremely sad,'' the message said. ''He has lost his brother, the pope, and he is in mourning.'' The pope forgave Mr. Agca and visited him in prison.


 UNITED STATES (93%); EUROPE (93%); SOUTH AMERICA (92%); MIDDLE EAST (92%);  HOLY SEE (92%); INDONESIA (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); PHILIPPINES (92%); ITALY (79%)




16

  
  

  

APRIL 4, 2005 Monday 



 Muslims feel loss of a peacemaker

 
Many Muslims around the world praised Pope John Paul II yesterday for having pressed to build bridges with Islam and said his death had cost both faiths a campaigner for peace and justice.
The Pope led a campaign over the last two decades to help turn standoffs between the world's 1.1 billion Catholics and 1.2 billion Muslims into cooperation. He was the first pontiff to officially visit a mosque, which he did during a trip to Syria in 2001. 
Muslims said the Pope's support for the Palestinians and opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 increased their respect for him and helped contain the spread of the idea of a "clash of civilizations" after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas called the Pope "a great religious figure who devoted his life to defending the values of peace, freedom, justice and equality for all races and religions, as well as our people's right to independence."
Grand Sheikh Mohamed Sayed al-Tantawi of Egypt's al-Azhar mosque, which the Pope visited in 2001, said the death of John Paul II was "a big loss for the Catholic Church and the Islamic world."
In Pakistan, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed of the Islamist Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance said the world had lost a man of peace. "George Bush's talk of a crusader war was a clear negation of Pope John Paul's efforts to promote interfaith dialogue and harmony," he said.
The Arab League lowered the flag over its Cairo headquarters to half-staff. League spokesman Hossam Zaki said the Pope had helped avoid "unnecessary misunderstandings" between Christians and Muslims over Western government policies in the region.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said the Islamic Republic had learned with "extreme sadness" of John Paul II's death, saying he commanded "the three paths of religious learning, philosophical thought, and poetical and artistic creativity."
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the Pope's visit to Syria had shown "strong belief in harmony between Christianity and Islam." Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, commended the Pope's support for Afghans' desire for freedom, and clerics in Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh expressed hope his successor would build on efforts to strengthen ties of understanding with Islam.
"We remember that during the years of Afghanistan's occupation by the Soviet Union, the Pope raised his voice of support to the Afghan people," Karzai said.
"This was a good man, a man of peace," said Theirno Habibou Tall, a Muslim leader who met the Pope during his visit to predominantly Muslim Senegal in 1992.
In 1986, the Pope invited Muslims and adherents of other faiths to pray together at Assisi in Italy for world peace.
In Kuala Lumpur, Azizan Razak, a cleric and senior leader of the opposition Parti Islam-se Malaysia, said: "We hope his successor will follow his footsteps to increase understanding between Muslims and Christians."
In Bangladesh, home to nearly 140 million Muslims, Moulana Obaidul Haque of the Baitul Mokarram national mosque said the world had lost a great religious leader. "We hope his successor will also work for world peace," the cleric said.
In the largely Catholic Philippines, one leader of an influential group of Islamic clerics said John Paul II served as a "bridge of understanding" between Christians and Muslims.
"I was touched by his gesture to pardon a Muslim who tried to assassinate him," said Sharif Julabbi of the Ulama League.
The Pope survived the attempt on his life by a Turkish gunman in May 1981.
"We see the Pope's death as a loss in the name of tolerance and peace," Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

 SYRIA (93%); MALAYSIA (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (92%); EGYPT (92%); AFGHANISTAN (91%);   IRAN,  (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); ITALY (68%); 






  
  


April 4, 2005 Monday 



 MOURNING CROSSES BORDERS AND FAITHS
PONTIFF GARNERS PRAISE FROM ALL CORNERS OF THE WORLD

 
Bells tolled solemnly across the continents, prayers and hymns filled great cathedrals and modest churches, and around the world mourning multitudes remembered Pope John Paul II on Sunday as the torchbearer of peace and human dignity, a tireless traveler whose journey had finally ended.
In Roman Catholic strongholds of Europe, Africa and South America, in Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, in the Philippines and Indonesia, in the troubled lands of the Middle East and in cities and towns across the United States, houses of worship overflowed and eulogies resounded in praise of a man many called a towering figure of history.
A day after his death, as the pontiff lay in state at the Vatican, presidents, prime ministers and other world leaders, as well as members of the church hierarchy, the leaders of other faiths, and countless ordinary worshippers offered tributes and assessments, often in voices breaking with emotion.
In John Paul's native Poland, 100,000 people filled a square in Warsaw where the pope celebrated a landmark 1979 Mass credited with contributing to the fall of communism. 
Pilgrims burned candles at the grotto at the healing shrine in Lourdes, France, where the pontiff prayed twice during his last foreign trip in August.
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani joined parishioners who packed St. Patrick's Cathedral for a standing-room-only Mass.
Cardinal Edward Egan said the pope's final days of suffering were a lesson in humility. "He was a humble giant who grew to his loftiest stature when he couldn't raise his head, lift his eye or whisper a prayer," the cardinal said.
Outside the Church of St. Charles Borromeo in Harlem, Drusilla Marshall, 77, recalled the pope's visit to her church. "I took a picture of him when he stood on these steps in 1979," she said. "That's how I'll always remember him."
People from every continent found something in the life of the pope to praise.
"The Jewish people will remember the pope, who bravely put an end to historic injustice by officially rejecting prejudices and accusations against Jews," Israel's President Moshe Katsav told Israel Radio.
During a 2000 visit to the Holy Land, the pope left a note at Jerusalem's Wailing Wall and expressed sorrow for the suffering of Jews at Christian hands, particularly during the Holocaust.
A year later, his visit to the revered Omayyad Mosque in the Syrian capital, Damascus, was the first by a leader of the Roman Catholic church to a Muslim place of worship.
On the Indonesian island of Nias -- devastated by last week's deadly, magnitude-8.7 earthquake -- a priest led special prayers at Santa Maria Cathedral. Nias and other islands off the coast of Sumatra are among the few Christian-majority areas in Indonesia.
In Ethiopia, the patriarch of the African nation's 40 million-strong Orthodox church described the pope as a bold man. "His greatest achievement was his reconciliation with other traditions and religions," Abune Paulos said.
Bells tolled in churches everywhere. In Paris, the great bell of Notre Dame sounded 84 times, once for each year of the pontiff's life. Bells also rang in Monaco, the Mediterranean principality neighboring France.
In China, where worship is allowed only in government-sanctioned churches, believers sang hymns and prayed in Beijing's Southern Cathedral at Xuan Wu Men.
"God has called him to rest in his arms," the Rev. Sun Shangen said.
The Beijing government, which cut off ties with the Vatican shortly after the officially atheist Communist Party took power in 1949, expressed its condolences and said it hoped to improve relations with the pope's successor.
In India's eastern city of Calcutta, nuns of the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, grieved in hushed prayers.
The Dalai Lama, in a message released by the Tibetan spiritual leader's office in exile, said: "Pope John Paul II was a man I held in high regard."
Even Cuban President Fidel Castro offered his condolences.
"Humanity will preserve an emotional memory of the tireless work of His Holiness John Paul II in favor of peace, justice and solidarity among all people," Castro said in a letter published in the Communist Party youth newspaper.
This report includes information from the New York Times and Associated Press.

  ISRAEL (92%); MIDDLE EAST (92%);   NIGERIA (92%); AFRICA (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); PHILIPPINES (92%); SOUTH AMERICA (91%); POLAND (90%);  FRANCE (79%); HOLY SEE (79%); SYRIA (79%); 







  



April 3, 2005 Sunday  




 Quake Forges Friendships That Transcend Religion

 
Night settled like a blanket on Samaria Zaluku's house on a lonely mountain road in this isolated coastal town. 
 But her home was a bright cocoon, kerosene lamps illuminating the nearly 100 people crowding her front porch and spacious living room. Most of the guests were Muslim. Samaria and her relatives are Christian. Children were laughing, babies squealing, women cooking rice and men joking and smoking.   
 Traditionally in this town of 36,000, the two groups have been respectful of each other but have kept to themselves. But a powerful earthquake on Monday jolted this tradition, and these strangers are creating new friendships, bonded by tragedy and fear. The Muslims live in the town below and fled blindly up the mountain road when the quake rocked Nias, an island off Sumatra, a major island in western Indonesia. They feared  --  and still do  --  that a tsunami would follow, so they sought shelter on higher ground. Samaria and her family had run, too  --  farther up the mountain. When they returned Tuesday morning, they found their house brimming with people from the town, many of whose homes had collapsed. 
  "I welcomed them," Samaria said, sitting cross-legged on her porch holding her 7-year-old son, Sona Gea. "I said, 'You can stay here as long as you want, until the danger has passed.'  " Now, four days later, the refugees, as they call themselves, are still waiting out their fear. They have brought blankets, throw rugs and pajamas, whatever they could salvage from their homes in the Muslim neighborhood.  
  "I asked Inasona if we could stay at least two weeks, and she said okay," recounted Masriyani Telambawa, 30, using Samaria's familiar name, which means "Sona's mother."  
 The earthquake killed 32 people in Lahewa and wounded 2,000. Several times a day, aftershocks rattle the house, which was damaged in the quake. Dressers remain overturned in the bedrooms. But the refugees feel safe enough now. "Many people are seeking refuge here," Samaria said. "I can't leave them." 
  Up and down this mountain road, homes are owned by Christians who have taken in dozens of people at a time, mostly Muslims. All told, 600 have taken refuge in the homes and in makeshift shelters made of tarp and sticks along the road. 
  Lahewa is a bucolic, if poor, town of farmers and fishermen, 95 percent of whom are Christian. Most of the rest are  Muslim. That vast imbalance and the town's isolation have created a general tolerance and averted the sectarian strife that has erupted in recent years in other parts of Indonesia, which is 90 percent Muslim. 
  Although Muslims have married Christians in Lahewa and a few Muslims have sent their children to the local Catholic school, rarely have the two groups mixed socially. 
  "Before, when I had a party and invited my Muslim neighbors, they would say no, politely, to me," explained Samaria, 27. "But this," she said, nodding at the crowd on her porch, "is a party to which I can invite everybody and they will come." 
  "For sure," she added, "this tragedy has brought us together. We don't think 'You Muslim and me Christian.' " 
  As she spoke, Sona wriggled away to find Masriyani's son, Andi Susanto Arefa, 4. The two like to play marbles together and sleep near one another on mats on the living room floor. 
  The women initially bonded by sharing their experiences of the disaster. Afnan Warubu, who goes by Inakusna, or "Kusna's mother," told Samaria how her 15-year-old son dragged her out of the house when the quake hit. She, her son, her mother, her sister and her nephew ran as houses built of wood and thatch thundered down around them. 
  As they ran in the dark, the ground heaved and shuddered. They crouched. They crawled. They lay prostrate and prayed to God as bricks and power lines fell. "We thought it was the end of the world," said the stout 40-year-old woman. "We thought it was Doomsday." 
  Today, the women ease their anxiety by laughing about how odd they must have looked squatting and crawling on the ground. "It seemed scary then, but now it seems funny," Masriyani said. 
  Each group has adjusted to the rhythms of the other's day. When Masriyani and Afnan put on their head scarves and kneel to pray, which they do five times a day, they do so on the porch. "I ask my children to be quiet and stay away," Samaria said. "And when we pray, in the morning and at night, they do the same." 
  Food is scarce, and the group said that aid has yet to reach them. So they share what they have: cassava, bananas, some rice. Rainwater slakes their thirst. Chicken? Samaria last cooked one for her family at Christmas. 
  They also share their worries. Though Samaria has a sturdier home than do her Muslim friends, she is poor, too. She and her husband, Sona Gea, 27, got by before the earthquake by picking coconuts and selling them to the local coconut oil factory. In a good month, they might earn $25. The quake damaged the factory and forced it to close, so now they wonder how long they can hold out. 
  Samaria walked through her house, which Sona built eight years ago, with its plaster walls and tile floor. She pointed out the bedroom that had caved in, the gaping hole in the kitchen's cement floor, the clothes that spilled out of the dressers. Afnan, a red kerchief wrapped around her head, carried the kerosene lamp to light Samaria's way. 
  Samaria began to explain when the living room was added. 
  "Six months ago," piped in Afnan, finishing her sentence for her, as if it were natural that she should know. 
  "She's like my sister," Afnan said of Samaria. And she picked up Samaria's hand and held it in her own. 

 







   


April 2, 2005 Saturday  




 Global Flock Braces for the Loss of Its Shepherd

 
From St. Peter's Square in Rome to the churches that remained open into the night in Warsaw to the pews of Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, millions of Roman Catholics interrupted their routine yesterday to stand vigil and offer prayers for Pope John Paul II.
 Leslie Martin, 35, had not been to Mass since her mother died of lung cancer five years ago but came to Holy Name just before noon to offer perhaps a final prayer for the only pope she had ever known, the man whose picture hung next to that of Jesus in the Catholic schools of her youth.
 ''I felt propelled to come here today because my heart felt so heavy,'' Ms. Martin said. ''It just hurts,'' she added. ''He needs all the prayers of his people.'' 
 Around the world millions flocked to churches and special Masses to honor the pope's life and legacy. Some prayed for him to survive his latest downturn. Many more prayed for the grace of an easy passing. They prayed, too, for the next pope, whoever that might be, and for themselves, that they might find a spiritual leader they would love as well.
 Leaders and lay people teetered on the brink of mourning, recalling the pope's global accomplishments as well as the way he had touched their lives individually. 
 The president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, noted on Polish television that John Paul was the first pope in history to visit mosques and synagogues, saying: ''He gave us values. He gave us courage to act more effectively in the world arena.''
 ''The world will be different without John Paul II,'' Mr. Kwasniewski added.
 In Nairobi, Jacinta Mumbi Kariuki, 52, a grandmother in a rear pew at the Consolata Cathedral, said, ''I didn't meet him face to face when he came to Kenya a while back, but I saw him, and I've always felt like I know him so well.''
 Cardinal Francis George, Chicago's archbishop, told an unusually large crowd at Mass that ''the successor to Peter, the fisherman, is dying,'' adding, ''I thank you for being here in his agony.''
 In Warsaw, where the Polish pope is revered as the savior from 40 years of Communism, churches remained open overnight as people in the streets willed him to survive. In Latin America, the region with the world's largest concentration of Roman Catholics and the place the pope had called ''the continent of hope,'' parishioners wept before a bronze statue of John Paul II at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. 
 In Paris, special prayers were announced at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, while Palestinian Christians held vigils in Jerusalem's Old City and in Jesus' birthplace, Bethlehem, and worshipers filled church pews in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation.
 In Washington, President Bush was kept informed of the pope's health. ''The president and Mrs. Bush join people all across the world and are praying for the Holy Father,'' said Scott McClelland, the White House spokesman. ''He is in our thoughts and prayers at this time.''
 The outpouring was, perhaps, most profound in the many places that history's best-traveled pope had visited on his tours of 129 countries over a reign of nearly 27 years. At Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark, where he led evening vespers on Oct. 4, 1995, people hovered in the transept chapel, where a brass kneeler on which the pope took the holy sacrament sits under a large portrait of John Paul II.
 ''If we lose him, we lose a lot,'' said Nancy Volpe, 45, who kissed his portrait, and said she believed the pope's 1995 visit helped heal her broken back, enabling her to walk. ''He's given a lot of people hope. There's no words to say how I feel.''
 Martin Matyj, 20, a waiter at the Polish Village Cafe in Hamtramck, Mich., outside Detroit, said that he walked three hours to see the pope when he was a boy in Poland, and that since coming to the United States three years ago, he had watched the pope's Mass over the Internet whenever he missed church on Sundays.
 ''Every single time, I'd wait until the end, when the pope would say something in Polish,'' Mr. Matyj said. ''It just felt so good to hear him say something in your own language.''
 On the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan, Brian Flanagan paused to recall his days as a Foreign Service officer stationed in Moscow, watching John Paul lend his voice and authority to the Polish Solidarity movement, the first cracks in the Soviet bloc. ''He's a beacon of morality for us, and he has been all along,'' said Mr. Flanagan, who regularly attends early-morning Mass. ''At the time of Solidarity, there was nobody who had a clearer understanding of what was going on. The certitude, the quiet leadership -- you can see it all now.''
 In New Orleans, Dwayne Robinson, 20, who lives in a home for at-risk youth, prostrated himself on the ground before a statue of the Virgin Mary inside a small stone grotto on the border of the French Quarter, while his friend Juliette Wise, also 20 and a Russian immigrant, sobbed and asked, ''Why?'' 
 Bishops led Masses in Los Angeles, Boston, Baltimore and other major cities. As St. Matthew's Cathedral in downtown Washington emptied, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick reminisced.
 Cardinal McCarrick said he first met Karol Wojtyla, the future pope, in 1976 at a breakfast in New York, and jokingly told him he had been called back from vacation for the event and would likely never get the days back. A few years later, when they met again in Rome, the new Pope John Paul II asked then-Bishop McCarrick if he had ever finished that interrupted holiday.
 ''That he remembered me and that conversation is such a sign of his great love for people,'' Cardinal McCarrick said. ''He was a man of so many talents. How miraculous that the church found him at that point in his life.''
 In St. Patrick's Cathedral, Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the leader of the Archdiocese of New York, concelebrated the 7:30 Mass. Among the day's Scripture readings was one describing how Peter, the first pope, spoke of the stone rejected by the builders that had become the cornerstone. These words were particularly appropriate, the cardinal said, ''at this time that Peter's successor is so gravely ill.''
 Just as Peter had endured trials and persecution, the cardinal said, so had John Paul, nearly 2,000 years later in Poland, as that country was gripped by two totalitarian forces for much of the 20th century. The Nazis prohibited the training of priests, Cardinal Egan said, just as the young man who would become Pope John Paul II felt a calling to the priesthood.
 ''When the Nazis left, in came the Communists,'' Cardinal Egan said. ''Again, he stood up to them.''
 Lech Walesa, the former Solidarity leader who later became the Polish president, said, ''He always kept repeating, 'Don't be afraid,' and we in the Solidarity movement trusted him.''
 Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, with the third-largest Catholic population in Latin America, celebrated the ''spiritual strength of a pontiff who often spoke out about his country's violence. ''I feel sad but tranquil,'' Mr. Uribe said, ''because the pope was always an example.''
 Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, of Beth Tfiloh Congregation in Reisterstown, Md., outside Baltimore, who traveled to Rome in January with an international delegation to thank the pope for his work on behalf of Jews, praised his establishment of diplomatic ties between the Vatican and Israel and his visit to the Western Wall, site of the ancient Temple. 
 ''Just as Moses did not retire, but served his people to the very end and continued to teach his people to the very end, I thought the pope was teaching to the very end,'' Rabbi Wohlberg said. John Paul, he added, embodied ''the dignity of life and old age and the sanctity of life from beginning to end.''
 As at churches around the country and, indeed, the world, the regular crowd at noon Mass at the Holy Name Cathedral near Chicago's Miracle Mile swelled with tourists and workers; people in business suits, religious robes or worn jeans; hobbling on canes and walkers or holding the hands of young children; black and white; Asian, Irish, Italian and Polish; Catholic and non-Catholic. 
 ''I'm Presbyterian, but it doesn't matter,'' said Mary Lou Manning, 69, who sat in a back pew. ''I love the pope.''
 Philip Kubala, 42, a maintenance worker who immigrated from Poland 14 years ago, brought his 8-year-old daughter, Michelle. ''My parents passed away -- the pope was like second father to me, grandfather,'' he explained, choking on tears. 
 Susan Tassone, 52, who works in the diocesan mission office, brought a worn photograph of herself meeting the pope in Rome, and a small plastic bag of coins he had blessed. ''He's a giant,'' she said. ''He's going to be a saint. Beyond a saint, they call him The Great.''
 Paula Strobel, visiting Chicago from Normal, Ill., to celebrate her 38th wedding anniversary, said she was praying ''not so much for the pope but for those who will be choosing a new pope, that they have the wisdom.''
 Ms. Martin, the retail clerk who was at her first Mass in five years, moved from a back pew to sit near the front of the cathedral, mouthing the familiar hymns, kneeling with folded hands, joining the long line to take communion.
 She recalled traveling with her entire parish from Mobile, Ala., to see the pope at the Superdome in New Orleans in 1984, and remembered her father, four months younger than the pope and now beginning to show signs of Alzheimer's, saying throughout her childhood, ''as long as the pope lives and does well healthwise, I'll be O.K.''
 ''He's going to be pope until his last breath,'' she said. ''That's what I admire about him, and that's what gives me hope for my own self. No matter what the adversity is, you can find the strength within yourself to go on.''


 POLAND (93%); ITALY (92%); KENYA (92%); HOLY SEE (92%); LATIN AMERICA (91%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); ISRAEL (79%); GUATEMALA (79%); MEXICO (79%); SENEGAL (79%); FRANCE (50%)






 The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, Inc.  
The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel

April, 2005 Northeast Edition



 Canada;
The Canadian Justice Agenda: A Beacon At Home And Abroad

 
Editor: Mr. Cotler, would you tell our readers something about your background?
Cotler: I received both my undergraduate education and my law degree from McGill. I went on to do graduate work as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Yale Law School. In 1968, when my studies at Yale were coming to an end, Pierre Trudeau was elected Prime Minister. He appointed John Turner as Minister of Justice, and I wrote him a letter expressing interest in working at the Ministry of Justice in areas I had been involved with at Yale, which included poverty law, human rights and legal reform. Shortly thereafter I began working as a special assistant in these areas. Today I feel privileged to be sitting in the office that John Turner then occupied.
After my stint at the Ministry of Justice, I was recruited by a former law professor I had had at McGill, Gerald LeDain, to come teach at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. He became Dean at Osgoode Hall and went on to serve on the Supreme Court of Canada. From Osgoode Hall I went to McGill Law School at the invitation of another former law professor of mine, John Durnford. John became Dean of McGill as well. That was in 1973, and I spent the next 26 years as a law professor at McGill. 
Over the course of the years that followed I became involved in the defense of political prisoners, initially in the former Soviet Union. That began with a chance encounter with Avital Sharansky, the wife of then imprisoned Soviet dissident, Anatoly Sharansky, who had been forced to emigrate without him to Israel. There she met friends of mine, and I ended up as her husband's counsel. My defense of one political prisoner led to the defense of others in different places and involving different causes, and, of course, that in turn led to an involvement with the international human rights movement, of which my participation in the work of the Canadian Helsinki Watch Committee was a natural outgrowth. There was a convergence between my defense of political prisoners and my involvement with a variety of NGOs concerned with apartheid in South Africa and prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. While all of this was underway, I was also involved with domestic issues, including poverty law, women's rights and the constitutional legal struggle which resulted in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. This is now firmly entrenched in Canadian law as our version of the American Constitution's Bill of Rights.
The quest for peace in the Middle East has also been part of my career from the very beginning. Between my two years at Yale, I spent a year in Israel and was there at the time of the Six-Day War in 1967. From that time I have never ceased to be concerned for peace and stability in the region.
Editor: Your career as a human rights activist has been extraordinary. How did this concern originate?
Cotler: I would say that it goes back a very long way. My mother was something of a personification of human rights, but she saw it as not so much a question of a grand agenda but rather as a simple and ongoing obligation to help victims of discrimination. My father was a lawyer. At a very early age, he introduced me to ethical principles that have come down to us across millennia and, at the same time, to some of the great jurists and legal scholars of the past, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others. One of Holmes' pronouncements made a very deep impression on me: that a person who has not been actively, and passionately, engaged in the events of his time cannot be said to have really lived. The integration of these two themes - thought and action - underlies my career as an academic lawyer who has also been directly involved with the important human rights issues of our time.
I have been involved in a number of really searing human rights issues - Kosovo and Rwanda, for starters - that have caused me to think through ways to approach the killing fields that have so marred the history of the past century. How can these genocidal exercises be prevented? If they cannot be prevented altogether, how do we go about intervening and averting, at least in part, a human catastrophe? In Rwanda we did not intervene, and in Kosovo we only intervened belatedly. And whatever we learned from these two terrible events we do not appear to be applying to Darfur today. There is, however, an evolving doctrine that concerns the international responsibility to protect the victims of the killing fields. The struggle against impunity is part of this - the need to bring war criminals to justice - and if that struggle is won, I believe we may be on the way to developing a culture of prevention. That, in turn, may make the present century one in which, for the first time in history, those who violate the basic human rights of others are made accountable.
On the domestic side, I have been engaged in human rights activities on behalf of the National Coalition for Japanese-Canadian Redress and the Chinese-Canadian National Council, organizations that reflect some of the darker sides of Canadian history. I have also worked on issues affecting the First Nations, the aboriginal peoples of our country, for a very long time. The Canadian government and people, I am happy to say, have been responsive to the need to address these experiences from our past.
I also have a long-time involvement with women's rights, both domestically and internationally. Over the years I have attempted to develop a 10-point grid to deal with women's rights, including the plight of women caught in the midst of armed conflict.
Editor: You have also had a parallel career as a peace activist, most particularly in the Middle East and on both sides of that divide. Our readers would be most interested in this undertaking, and in your thoughts as to whether there is a real possibility of peace at this point in time.Cotler: I think there is a possibility for peace. In the Middle East, however, one must be careful not to transform a single event - such as the movement toward an independent Lebanon - into an institutionalized dynamic. The Israeli-Palestinian process appears to be in a more hopeful posture than it has been for some time. I do not believe that this conflict - in its present form - is about borders, about resources or land, or even about Jerusalem. I think it is about issues of legitimacy, the legitimacy of a Jewish state and the legitimacy of a Palestinian state, both of which historically have been rejected by the leaders of the Arab world. Indeed, in the past the Palestinian leadership was prepared to reject the legitimacy of an independent Palestinian state if that meant countenancing the existence of Israel. There are signs that we are past this double rejectionism, that we are moving toward a concurrent recognition on the part of both the Israeli leadership and the Palestinians that an independent and democratic Palestinian state is necessary for peace and stability in the region.
Editor: You were elected to the Canadian Parliament in November of 1999. What compelled you to enter elective politics?
Cotler: I began the academic year in 1999 with the same happiness that I have had in every year since I began teaching. At that time Sheila Finestone, the sitting member for Mount Royal, the riding that I now represent, had been appointed to the Senate, which left a vacancy in the House of Commons. I was approached, and, at least initially, I was not interested. Just before the deadline for nomination, one of the other candidates withdrew and announced that he was supporting me. Eventually, the other two candidates also withdrew, and I was nominated as the liberal candidate by acclamation. I sensed an opportunity to accomplish something positive, and, in the end, I was elected with 92 percent of the vote.
Editor: The Prime Minister appointed you Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada a little over a year ago. Would you give us an overview of these positions?
Cotler: This is a dual portfolio. On the one hand, I am the Minister of Justice in the government of the day, which means that I am a sitting member of Parliament with certain executive responsibilities. As a member of the Cabinet, I sit on six standing committees, including the U.S.-Canada Relations Committee, Aboriginal Affairs, Global Affairs and Security and Intelligence. As Minister of Justice, in addition, I must insure that all of the prospective laws and policies of the Canadian government are in compliance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
As Attorney General of Canada, I am the principal legal advisor to all the agencies and departments of government. I am also the chief prosecutor and have oversight responsibility for all prosecutions in this country which are within federal jurisdiction. Anyone who believes he or she has been wrongfully convicted and has exhausted all other remedies is entitled to make application to the Attorney General for a review of the conviction. I also have a special responsibility with respect to requests for extradition from other countries.
Editor: One of the principal themes of our publication concerns progress of the rule of law - and lack of progress - particularly in places where some other structure has been in place. In the eyes of the international community, the Canadian justice system serves as a beacon for people all across the world trying to establish the rule of law.  This did not just happen.
Cotler: No, it did not just happen. The Canadian beacon owes its inspiration to a variety of sources. We have been fortunate in being able to draw upon the best of experiences elsewhere and then adapt those experiences to the reality of Canada. Our parliamentary system derives from Westminster, and over time we have evolved from being solely a parliamentary democracy to being a constitutional democracy. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - a true guarantee of human rights under the rule of law _ benefits from the American experience, and Canadians, since 1982, have been able to enforce those rights in the same way as Americans have since the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Canadian law is, of course, infused with the principles of the rule of law that have evolved over centuries within the Anglo-American legal tradition, and at the same time, draws upon the French experience - as enshrined in the Quebec Civil Code - of the law as a framework for a just society. We are heirs to two great legal traditions, and we have attempted to distill the best of these traditions in designing a legal system for a modern Canada.
Editor: I think it is eminently fitting that the Canadian Minister of Justice is also a leading advocate of human rights in the international arena. Please tell us what role you will play - as I am certain you will - in that arena.
Cotler: We have a number of objectives in that arena. One, as I mentioned, is to combat mass atrocity and the impunity that so often accompanies it. We acknowledge an international duty to protect, and we seek to play a leading role in the development of international criminal and humanitarian law. This involves helping to build national justice systems abroad that will contribute to the construction of an international justice system. In this regard, we have an ongoing human rights dialogue with Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, and we are working with China in the education and training of judges and prosecutors. Just this past December I paid an official visit to Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians to confer with my counterparts and to share with them the Canadian justice agenda. Their responses to that agenda reflect, I believe, a sincere desire to understand what we have been able to do and to adapt and refine our experience to their reality. I am delighted to say that each of the ministers with whom I discussed this agenda has agreed to make this an annual event. I think this is a very positive step forward in our journey toward a truly meaningful rule of law in the international context.
Our international undertakings are anchored in our national justice agenda. With respect to the latter, let me mention some of the key objectives. Judicial appointments are extremely important and will endure long after I have left office. I have participated in the appointment of two outstanding jurists to the Supreme Court of Canada, Rosalie Abella and Louise Charron, which means that four of the justices of the Supreme Court are women. A second objective is the promotion of the Canadian Charter. A third concerns the relationship between security and individual rights, and we are engaged in the development of a principled response to terrorism. We see terrorism as an assault on the security of a democratic society and on the fundamental rights of the members of that society. The laws governing counterterrorism are in pursuit of the protection of society, but they must comport with the rule of law if they are not to undermine the very principles we seek to uphold. The use of torture must be condemned, and no group can be singled out for discriminatory treatment in the application of such laws. A fourth objective concerns the protection of the most vulnerable among us, and a fifth involves combatting racism and discrimination of all kinds.
Editor: What about the future? At some point you will be handing over to your successor. At that point, what do you hope to have accomplished as Minister of Justice and Attorney General?
Cotler: I would hope that we will be recalled for our role in the development of the finest judiciary available to our country, one reflecting our diversity and our commitment to legal excellence. And for our work on behalf of children and the most vulnerable people in our society. The work that we have done to improve the life condition of the First Nations is also something of great importance to me, and I hope we will be remembered for it. And, of course, I would like to have made a positive contribution to international peace and security and to the protection of human rights in the international arena.

 CANADA (96%); ISRAEL (92%);  SOUTH AFRICA (79%); MIDDLE EAST (78%); 







  



April 1, 2005 Friday  




 Fitter, Well-Rested Clinton Receives Humanitarian Award

 
Former president Bill Clinton made a low-key return to the public stage last night following his latest surgery, appearing in Northern Virginia to accept an award recognizing his work to promote AIDS treatment and prevention in the developing world. 
 The 42nd president looked fit and well-rested  --  in contrast to his drawn and fatigued appearance at some events before his March 10 surgery  --  and made no mention of his  health problems during an hour-long appearance. 
 Instead, he said it was "unconscionable" how little wealthy countries are doing to prevent a public health catastrophe in Africa and other  regions with rampant HIV. 
 Clinton's  medical episode, however, clearly colored the evening's mood.  He received whoops and cheers from the tuxedoed physicians and scientists who greeted him at the annual awards banquet for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. To minimize his activity, he arrived at the end of the dinner, and staff members warned event organizers and guests that he had to leave quickly (though Clinton, in keeping with his usual practice, lingered to shake hands and have photographs taken).  
  Clinton has made the fight against HIV  abroad one of the centerpiece issues of his ex-presidency, and his foundation has negotiated lower drug prices and helped craft prevention and treatment programs in numerous countries. He said he hopes that by 2008, about 2 million people will be covered by his foundation's  programs.  
 Such efforts earned him  the group's annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Award for Humanitarian Contributions. 
 He used his award to pivot into a broader lecture about the  nation's role in the world. After he and President Bush's father, former president George H.W. Bush, traveled to Southeast Asia last month to help promote tsunami relief, Clinton said a poll in Indonesia showed support for the United States rising from 36  to 60 percent virtually overnight in the world's largest Muslim country, while support for terrorist leader Osama bin Laden dropped from 58  to 28 percent. 
 He said the tsunami relief and AIDS campaigns underscore his message to the United States and other  countries: "If you live in an interdependent world where you cannot kill, jail or occupy all your enemies, you had better spend some of that money to make a world with more friends and fewer enemies." 
 Clinton's latest surgery, to remove fluid around his left lung as well as scar tissue, was a follow-up to heart bypass surgery he had in September after doctors found massive artery blockage. His first return from the recovery bed, last October, was a far more rousing event  --  a huge Philadelphia rally for 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry. 
 There were a handful of unspoken ironies at last night's gathering. The event hailing his ex-presidency took place at the Pentagon City hotel that played a cameo role in the controversy that for a time threatened to end his presidency prematurely.  It was at this same Ritz-Carlton in 1998 where prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr's investigators first confronted Monica S. Lewinsky in a sting operation, pressing her to admit her affair with Clinton and cooperate in an investigation. 
 Also last night, Clinton spoke glowingly about former president Jimmy Carter, a man with whom he has long had a complicated relationship  --  respect alternating with resentment about controversies from Clinton's presidency and Arkansas governorship before that. 
 Last night, Clinton said Carter has had the most admirable ex-presidency of any modern White House occupant, and noted that when he was 29 he ran Carter's presidential campaign in Arkansas in 1976  --  winning 65 percent. 
 "That was back before white  southerners knew that God was a conservative Republican," he joked. 

  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); AFRICA (79%);  ASIA (79%)






   


March 31, 2005, Thursday, 



 Tragic challenge of child soldiers

 
"The rebels told me to join them, but I said no. Then they killed my younger brother. I changed my mind."
It was with this matter-of-fact description to a Radio Netherlands reporter in 2000 that a 7-year-old boy in Liberia encapsulated the world's largest, but least understood, case of child abuse.
 
When we think of war, we typically imagine a world of men and women in uniform fighting for their nation. Children rarely, if ever, come to mind. But the face of war has changed during the past decade.
Children as young as 5 years old make up 10% of the world's combatants. More than 300,000 underage soldiers serve in conflicts around the globe, from Afghanistan to Sudan, according to United Nations' reports.
With U.S. forces so widely deployed since Sept. 11, it is not just an issue of tragedy, but a challenge that our soldiers increasingly wrestle with. Indeed, the first U.S. soldier killed from hostile fire in Afghanistan was shot by a 14-year-old sniper. More recently, according to various news reports, U.S. forces have had to confront this problem in Iraq; incidents range from child snipers to a 15-year-old who tossed a grenade into a truck, blowing off the leg of a U.S. Army trooper. More than 100 young Iraqis have been captured fighting against U.S. forces, including boys as young as 12 in the urban warfare in Fallujah and Najaf last year.
Young terrorists
Groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have pulled children into the terrorism game. More than 30 suicide bombings since 2000, according to Time magazine, have been carried out by children, and multiple juvenile al-Qaeda terrorists have been detained at the U.S. military prison on Guantanamo Bay in the special "Camp Iguana" facility.
Thus, the problem of child soldiers is far bigger than we think and more relevant to Americans than generally understood. The international community needs to develop a system of punishment and deterrence against those leaders who use children in war (rather than the U.N.'s failed tactic of "naming and shaming" the shameless), as well as provide better preparation, equipment and training for our soldiers.
Aid vs. security
This shift in warfare also casts a new light on how the United States should think about children, about humanitarian aid -- including aid to such special at-risk groups as orphans and refugees -- and about these children's relationship to our security.
We often discuss aid to those in need as a moral issue, as in the case of the tsunami. But we also need to view aid through a lens of security, as a means to deal with the underlying causes of instability, radicalism and conflict. Even the AIDS pandemic and natural disasters bear closer scrutiny. That's because orphans are the prime at-risk group for recruitment into war.
Some countries where tens of thousands of children were orphaned by the tsunami are conflict zones well known for child recruitment: Aceh (an Indonesian island site of civil conflict between Christian and Muslim militias), Myanmar and Sri Lanka (home of the Tamil Tigers). And tsunami orphans are already being targeted for recruitment.
We need a wider array of programs to bolster rehabilitation and steer children away from violent groups, thus breaking the multigenerational cycle of violence that characterizes most war zones.
Our government's continuing failure to effectively respond to both short- and long-term calamities, such as mass disease and global poverty, should not simply be viewed as embarrassing or shameful, but as undermining to U.S. national security.
In a world of globalization, terrorism and now, child soldiers, developing an effective aid strategy is not just the moral thing to do. It is an investment in avoiding future generations of violence and thus more conflicts where U.S. soldiers will be facing off against kids.
***
 P.W. Singer is senior fellow and director of the Project on U.S. Policy Toward the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of Children At War.

 UNITED STATES (94%); LIBERIA (93%); AFGHANISTAN (92%); IRAQ (92%); SUDAN (79%); AFRICA (79%); CUBA (67%); 







 Tribune Review Publishing 
 


March 30, 2005 Wednesday



 Quake levels tiny Indonesian island

 
GUNUNG SITOLI, Indonesia -- His brown eyes puffy and bloodshot, Datot Mendra planned to spend the night lying next to his wife. 
Today he will bury her -- and his sister and two other relatives. 
"What will I tell my children?" the 55-year-old restaurant owner says. "I can't face it. My faith in Jesus is helping me through this."  
Mendra's wife was among some 20 bodies wrapped in white sheets, candles flickering at their heads, laid out on the street outside the Santa Maria church in this town on Indonesia's predominantly Roman Catholic island of Nias. 
More dead were arriving. Groups of four men approached, each holding the corner of a sheet with another body. 
Most of the deaths from Monday night's 8.7-magnitude earthquake in the Indian Ocean were on Nias, 75 miles south of the epicenter. By Tuesday night, the island's death toll stood at about 330, but government officials said it could climb as high as 2,000. 
An unidentified official from nearby Aceh province told Indonesia's Metro TV that about 100 people also died on the neighboring island of Simeulue. Both islands are just west of Indonesia's much larger island of Sumatra. 
Dave Jenkins, a New Zealand physician who runs the relief agency SurfAid International in western Sumatra, said he feared for about 10,000 people who live on the tiny island cluster of Banyak, close to the quake's epicenter. By last night, contact had not been made with the islands. 
While the scene outside the church was almost serene, elsewhere on this island of 600,000 people the atmosphere was anything but. Rescue workers working by candles and flashlight hunted through smoldering rubble for survivors in flattened buildings. Power was out, and electric cables lay tangled in the street. 
Little heavy machinery was available, so families frantically searching for loved ones used crow bars and their bare hands to lift heavy chunks of concrete. 
Smoke drifted out of piles of rubble and concrete homes where walls folded in on themselves, almost certainly crushing to death anybody caught inside. A steeple had fallen from a church. 
Although most of Indonesia is Muslim, Christianity persists in some areas -- a vestige of Dutch colonization. The Nias islanders, particularly the well-organized southern villages, initially put up strong resistance when the Dutch tried to take control. But the Dutch finally conquered the island in 1909, and then Nias slowly started to convert to Christianity. 
Monday's quake, which stuck an hour before midnight, toppled every building in the main street of Gunung Sitoli, a church-studded seaside town that is the island's largest. 
A soccer field in the center of town and close to the palm-fringed Indian Ocean beach was transformed into a triage center where a dozen seriously injured islanders, some of them unconscious, were lying on doors salvaged from wrecked homes. They waited, hoping that a relief agency helicopter would be able to airlift them to a hospital on Sumatra. 
"Four people here might not make it through the night!" yelled one of the few Western aid workers to arrive in the town yesterday. "Do you have space on a chopper?" 
Elsewhere, two boys sat next to their wounded mother, and a man stood next to his wife, holding the bag for her intravenous drip. 
People swarmed around U.N. helicopters as they landed to deliver relief supplies, but food and water were in short supply. 
Only about 17 people were taken off the island through yesterday, officials said. 
The epic Dec. 26 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami -- which killed more than 126,000 in Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra, and thousands more throughout the region -- left 340 dead and 10,000 homeless on Nias. 
But Monday's quake appeared to give this island its almost undivided attention. 
"It was stronger than the Dec. 26 quake," a survivor who identified himself as Ebenezer said yesterday. "In one minute, everything was destroyed. No one had a chance to run." 
From the air, it appeared that about 30 percent of the buildings in Gunung Sitoli were destroyed, and there was significant damage in the island's second biggest town, Teluk Dalam. Inland areas appeared to be largely unaffected. 
The temblor destroyed thousands of houses, shops and government buildings and sent thousands of residents fleeing to the hills in fear of killer waves. That fear of a second devastating tsunami extended to other countries around the Indian Ocean region; warnings were issued and sirens were sounded but authorities later withdrew the alerts. 
Relief efforts for Nias faced daunting obstacles, as the quake damaged Gunung Sitoli's airstrip and limited landings only to small planes. 
The International Organization for Migration said it was sending trucks loaded with water, milk and other food items and medical supplies to the Sumatran port town of Sibolga, where they will be ferried to Nias. 
There was little food or water available to survivors -- most of Gunung Sitoli's stores were smashed. 
Medical care also was a major problem. 
"The hospital is desperate. It had a tough night," said Peter Scott-Bowden of the World Food Program. "They are short of supplies." 
People whose homes survived the quake feared that one of the many strong aftershocks that rattled Nias island yesterday finally would topple the walls. 
As darkness fell on Gunung Sitoli, survivors huddled around candles in the streets. 
Deli Iname sat patiently next to her 9-year-old daughter. The girl's face was swollen and her legs draped in a bloody sarong. 
"She's so young," Iname said. "Why is her life in danger? She stood no chance." 

 INDONESIA (97%)






 Public Opinion (Chambersburg, PA)
  
Public Opinion

March 29, 2005 Tuesday



 Local student will vie for spot in geography bee

 
By JAIME NORTH
Staff writer
Shippensburg eighth-grader Phil Heberlig will be among 103 Pennsylvania students competing
Thursday for a spot in the National Geography Bee in Washington. D.C.
Heberlig will test his geographical knowledge in the state qualifier at Shippensburg University. If
he wins, he will advance to the May 24-25 national competition.
The state event is open to the public and will begin at
Continued from Page 3A
10:30 a.m. in the Cumberland Union Building. The top 10 scorers will compete at 1:30 p.m. in the 
final competition.
The participants, who are in fifth through eighth grades, advanced to the state qualifier from local
challenges.
The students are quizzed on their knowledge of global, physical and cultural attributes, and
current events.
All 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories will have similar contests in the coming
weeks. Those winners will come together for the national competition and a chance to win a
$25,000 college scholarship.
The winner of each state event receives $100 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C.
----------
Jaime North covers the borough and community affairs within Franklin County. He can be
reached at 262-4811.
PARTICIPANTS....
A total of 103 students in fifth through eighth grades from across the state will participate in the
2005 Geography Bee State Qualifier at Shippensburg University on April 1 in the Cumberland
Union Building.
Philip K. Heberlig, eighth-grader at Shippensburg, is the lone area participant.
The event, which begins at 10:30 a.m., is free and open to the public. The championship round
begins at 1:30 p.m. The winner will advance to the national competition on May 24-25 in
Washington D.C.
LOCAL GEOGRAPHY.......
Here are some sample questions from the National Geographic Bee, along with ideas about how
to look for clues within the questions that can help you figure out the right answers.
Which state has a climate suitable for growing citrus fruits - California or Maine?
You know that oranges and grapefruit are citrus fruits and that they grow in warm places.
Because California's climate is definitely warmer and sunnier than Maine's, you correctly answer
California.
Which country has the world's largest Muslim population - Indonesia or Mexico?
If you have studied maps showing world religions, you will know the answer immediately. If you
haven't, you might reason that Mexico was settled by the Spanish, followers of Christianity not
Islam. Either way, you correctly answer Indonesia.
Here are some sample questions a Franklin County geography bee might ask:
1. Franklin County was created in 1784 with Chambersburg as the county seat. When was
Chambersburg founded?
A 1786 B 1764 or C 1795
2. Pennsylvania is well known for its apple orchards and dairy farms. Franklin County is right at
the top of the list of the most productive counties for apples and milk. What rank is Franklin
County?
A No. 1 B No. 5 or C No. 2
3. As opposed to this winter, Franklin County traditionally receives more than 34 inches of snow
each year. Which month has the highest annual average of snow fall?
A January B December C March
4. Warren Township and Orrstown are the smallest municipalities in Franklin County in terms of
population. According to the 2000 census, which of those two are the smallest?
A Warren Township B Orrstown C they have the same population Answers: 1. B; 2. C; 3. A
(11.62 in.); 4. B (231)

 UNITED STATES (94%); INDONESIA (90%); 






  
  

  

March 28, 2005 Monday 



 RE-EXAMINING PRACTICE OF FAITH;
EMOTIONS RUN HIGH IN DEBATES ON GENDER ROLES, HOMOSEXUALITY, EXTREMISM
PROGRESSIVE MUSLIMS SPARK DIALOGUE ON ISLAM IN THE U.S.

 
Ahmed Nassef stood at the front of a Stanford University classroom packed with hundreds of Muslims who had come from all over the Bay Area to hear him speak.
"I begin with the greeting of peace," Nassef said. "Some of what we'll talk about tonight will be painful to hear."
He wanted to discuss issues he said Muslims in the United States have avoided but can no longer ignore as American society scrutinizes their community:
Why do only about 10 percent of U.S. Muslims regularly attend prayer at mosques? How long can the religion's leaders treat women as second-class citizens? When will Muslims respond forcefully to strains of extremism?
"It's difficult being a Muslim in America today," said the New York activist and native of Egypt, who has prominently advocated re-examining how the religion is practiced. "We need to deal with these issues openly." 
Many U.S. Muslims, especially those who have grown up in this country, are asking the same questions.
They are successful, professional women who chafe at having to pray in dark, secluded rooms at their local mosques while men enter through the front doors and worship in comfort.
They are professors at U.S. universities who object to attempts by religious leaders to enforce strict interpretations of Islam on others, labeling those who don't obey as fake Muslims.
They are African-American converts who see similarities between discrimination in the segregationist South and the cold treatment of blacks in some mosques run by immigrants.
"In my circles, this has been a long time in coming," said Oakland resident Moina Noor, director of the Bay Area group American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism.
"There are angry people out there who have had bad experiences at mosques or have had people judge them," the 34-year-old said. "People have been disengaged with Islam for a long time because they don't think it's for them.
"Now, finally, there's something going on where people think, 'Wow, this is something I can belong to.'"
American Islam rising
Such issues have grown in urgency as the nation's Muslim population has risen in recent years, largely through immigration, to between 3 million and 6 million people.
A 2001 study of U.S. mosques conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a nonprofit advocacy group, portrayed a fractured community.
It found that only 15 percent of prayer participants at mosques are women, and just 400,000 people -- or at most 13 percent of the U.S. Muslim population -- attended mosque services regularly.
"The existing organizations speak only for a small number of Muslims," Nassef said.
Muslim leaders such as Syed Kamal, board president of the Islamic Center of Livermore, say fewer women pray regularly at mosques because religious tradition does not require them to do so, as it does for men. In fact, he said women play a significant role at his mosque and make up half of its eight-person board of directors.
Mosque leaders do want to reach out to more local Muslims, he said, although several dozen men and a handful of women come daily for prayers. "We want to have more members, and we try to do that," he said. "But people might not be coming because they might be involved in maintaining their socio-economic lives. It has nothing to do with what we're doing."
Since 2003, Nassef has made waves with his popular Web site Muslim WakeUp by dealing frankly with hot topics such as sexuality among Muslims, misogyny and religious fundamentalism.
Last November, Nassef and others launched the Progressive Muslim Union of North America, a New York-based group demanding reform in mosques and other institutions. On March 18, the group helped organize a prayer in New York City led by a woman, Professor Amina Wadud, breaking with centuries of tradition that reserved such duties for men.
Reclaiming Islam?
Omid Safi, a Colgate University associate professor who edited a much-read book titled "Progressive Muslims," said he and others want to challenge attitudes and practices that result from interpretation and not religious dogma.
Among those are rules that prohibit women from leading prayers, separate men and women worshippers in mosques and denounce gays and lesbians as sinners, he said in an interview.
In the book's introduction, Safi writes Muslims must open debate, start talking to each other and try to bridge deep divisions in the religion.
"It may not be an exaggeration to state that unless we succeed in doing so, the humanity of Muslims will be fully reduced to correspond to the caricature of violent zealots painted by fanatics from both inside and outside the Muslim community," Safi writes.
Through all the turmoil, he writes, people are losing sight of what the religion actually teaches: a commitment to serving the less fortunate and an appreciation for the oneness of humanity and God.
By reclaiming the religion, progressive Muslims can also take it back from those who use it to justify suicide attacks and other violence, Safi said.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks helped accelerate what had already been a growing movement, he writes in his book.
He and his colleagues said they find common cause with those who oppose U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East but believe standing up to injustice doesn't mean mass violence.
"It's about transforming the religion so that it lives up to its highest standards," Safi said. "It's about saying you don't get to be a fuller human being at the expense of another."
Nassef, Safi and other progressives have stirred anger, even among U.S. Muslims who believe reform is due. Organizers of the March 18 woman-led prayer were forced to move the event to another site after receiving death threats. On Wednesday, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi mentioned the prayer at an Arab summit in Algeria, saying it violated Islam and would inspire terrorism.
Several East Bay Muslims interviewed for this story declined to be photographed, saying the topic was too incendiary and they didn't want to be linked too closely to the debate.
"This is a topic that generates a lot of emotion, and I don't feel comfortable putting my face on it," said Pleasant Hill resident Mehria Albert, a Muslim from Afghanistan.
Some said they were reluctant even identifying themselves as Muslims in a post-Sept. 11 atmosphere that they thought was hostile to the religion.
"It's a scary climate just to be a Muslim in this country," said recent convert Sylvia Chan.
Community divisions
Muslim critics, who include civil rights activists, traditionalist scholars and others, say progressives are dividing the community just when it needs to unify and defend itself. Hamid Algar, a UC Berkeley Islamic studies professor, said the group is using the religion to support a secular social agenda.
"There is a need for change and a need for more participation, but the so-called progressive Muslims are not in a place to lead," Algar said. "They are cultural Muslims but their commitment to Islam as a religion is another matter."
Some wonder whether outsiders are supporting the progressive Muslim movement hoping to weaken the community, said Samina Faheem, a Palo Alto-based activist who has spoken out against U.S. government treatment of U.S. Muslims.
"People are questioning their reasons," she said. "They wonder who's behind them."
The issues of gender roles in mosques and gays and lesbians divide many young Muslims, even those associated with the progressive Muslim movement. Several East Bay Muslims said gender segregation in mosques is a centuries-old tradition and should not be changed. They also said the religion explicitly condemns homosexuality.
"I don't think it's appropriate for a woman to lead prayers from the men's section to both men and women," said Amir Hussain, a Cal State Northridge religious studies professor who contributed an essay about pluralism to Safi's book. Safi himself argues for just such a role for women in mosques.
"There's a gender segregation that's implicit in the religion," Hussain said. "That's one of the passages where not everyone agrees. And that's OK."
Living the religion
Albert said she doesn't characterize herself as progressive or belonging to any other category.
"I'm just a Muslim woman who was born as a Muslim who is very open-minded about religion and other religions," she said. "I'm a Muslim who lives in a non-Islamic culture. So I go with the traditions of the culture."
After immigrating to the United States about 15 years ago, Albert married a non-Muslim American whom she met in a San Francisco bookstore. Her husband converted to Islam before they married, she said.
As dictated by her religion, she tries to pray regularly and avoids eating pork, but she said other rules of the religion such as whether women are allowed to lead prayers are fluid.
"If a woman is capable and in the position to lead, I have no problem with that," she said. "There is a difference between religion and culture, and sometimes, people mix up the two and stamp it as religion."
For Chan, a UC Berkeley graduate student in Asian-American and African-American studies who converted to the religion last June, its teachings, particularly about social justice, are a source of daily discovery. She thinks more about whether she is acting out of selfish motives and is more careful about what she says.
"You think about, 'What am I reading? What causes am I supporting? How am I spending my money?' It changes your relationship with the world. You're very cognizant of your actions all the time. You have to be sure you're OK with what you do. Because you have a responsibility not just to a deadline or work but a bigger responsibility to how you are in this world."
Fremont resident Nausheem Ali's daily life is a mix of her religion, which she inherited from her Pakistani family, and her busy professional life.
The American-born, 25-year-old real estate broker works 10 hours a day, reaping the rewards of the Silicon Valley's hot housing market.
Despite her hectic schedule, Ali prays five times a day. At business meals, she avoids alcohol and food off limits to Muslims such as meats not prepared according to Islamic custom.
When she attends prayers at mosques, usually on major holidays such as Eid, she worships in a women's section partitioned from the main prayer hall, often without a view of the imam, or mosque leader.
Gender separation in prayer spaces is tradition, she said, but many mosques also exclude women from their boards and committees.
"In the majority of mosques, decisions are made by groups with male majorities," Ali said. "There needs to be more dialogue between men and women. But I don't see it as just because no women are on a board, that means they have less power."
Perceived gender inequalities in mosques also bother Noor's husband, Farhan Memon, a law student at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Memon is also leader of American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism.
"When 90 percent of the space is occupied by men, and women are next to the bathroom, there are definitely issues," said Memon, who has worked as a journalist.
A self-described political progressive, Memon reflects both Bay Area liberal and Islamic perspectives. While supporting more rights for women in mosques, he is uncomfortable with them serving as prayer leaders.
He backs liberal causes such as affirmative action and opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Yet he sides with U.S. conservatives on matters he believes are dictated by Islamic tradition such as disapproving of gays and lesbians and championing states' rights to restrict access to abortions.
"By and large, I agree a lot with the left in American politics," he said. "But some people are masking secularism in Islamic garb. They're not trying to recapture religion as it was revealed."
A space of their own
In the early-1990s, a few dozen young Bay Area U.S. Muslims alienated from mosques and other institutions formed AMILA, a group where they could worship and socialize.
They met at one another's houses -- or, in some cases, dorm rooms -- and shared the joys and pains of being Muslim in the United States. Many were born in the country to immigrant parents.
"We wanted to articulate what it meant to be an American Muslim," said former Bay Area resident Shahed Amanullah, who joined the group a decade ago. "There were a lot of values we felt weren't being discussed in the mosques -- gender, involvement in the community."
Those topics are still being discussed at the group's monthly meetings, including the forum in February at Stanford University on progressive Muslims, which featured Nassef and other speakers.
The ideas brought up by Nassef's Web site and the book edited by Safi have reverberated throughout AMILA and the community at large, Noor said.
For so long, many young Muslims have felt shut out by institutions that discourage debate and instead preach unquestioned allegiance to traditions, she said. Now, finally, a debate is under way.
"All over the world, that book is being read in book groups. People are engaging with that book whether they agree with it or not, which is a healthy sign. Respectful debate is something our community really needs."
PERSONAL TAKES ON ISLAM
Moina Noor, an Oakland mother of two young children who leads the Bay Area group American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism:
"Islam teaches oneness. By understanding the oneness of God, you understand the oneness of creation and humanity. And we're here to do good whether it's for our children or our family situation."
Sylvia Chan, a UC Berkeley graduate student and recent convert:
"What struck me about Islam was this emphasis on justice and living in a way that doesn't harm the world. It's just in every page of the Quran."
Zaid Shakir, an African-American teacher at the traditionalist Zaytuna Institute in Hayward who has been a critic of progressive Muslims:
"The core of Islam is a submission to the word of God as conveyed by a succession of prophets, the last one being Muhammad. It's about a sincerity to God and service to mankind."
What is Islam?
There are an estimated 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide. No more than 20 percent of Muslims live in the Arabic-speaking world. The country with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia.
Muslims believe in one unique and incomparable God. They believe in the Day of Judgment and individual accountability for actions.
Muslims believe in a chain of prophets beginning with Adam and including Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, David, Solomon and Jesus. God's eternal message was reaffirmed and finalized by the prophet Muhammad: Peace be on them all.
One becomes a Muslim by saying, "There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God."
-- The Council on American-Islamic Relations Web site.
THE 'FIVE PILLARS' OF ISLAM
The declaration of faith: This consists of the two sentence declaration described in "What Is Islam?"
Prayer: Muslims perform five obligatory prayers each day. Islamic prayers are a direct link between the worshipper and God. Islam has no hierarchical authority or priesthood. A learned Muslim chosen by each congregation leads the prayers.
Zakat: One of the most important principles of Islam is that all things belong to God and that wealth is held in trust by human beings. Zakat, or charitable giving, "purifies" wealth by setting aside a portion for those in need. This payment is usually 2.5 percent of one's capital.
Fasting: Every year in the Islamic lunar month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from first light until sunset. The fast is another method of self-purification.
Pilgrimage: A pilgrimage to Mecca, or Hajj, is an obligation for those who are physically or financially able.
-- The Council on American-Islamic Relations Web site
Series Name: Religious Progressives Series

  EGYPT (79%); 




17


  



March 28, 2005 Monday  




 Jakarta Tenure Offers Glimpse of Wolfowitz; 
Indonesians Cite Stance on Rights, Reform

 
  At the height of President Suharto's autocratic rule, then-U.S. Ambassador Paul D. Wolfowitz publicly offered advice in 1989 that could have landed domestic critics in prison, pointedly telling the dictator that his record of rapid economic growth was not enough. 
  "If greater openness is a key to economic success, I believe there is increasingly a need for openness in the political sphere as well," Wolfowitz said in May 1989 farewell remarks at Jakarta's American Cultural Center as he prepared to leave Indonesia after three years as ambassador. 
 This single, unexpected sentence stunned some members of Suharto's inner circle. Wolfowitz's colleagues and friends, both Indonesian and American, said the statement was in line with the U.S. envoy's quiet pursuit of political and economic reforms in Indonesia, and they say he will bring those same values to the World Bank if approved as its new president. 
 But he has been criticized by Indonesian human rights activists for remaining silent for too long as Suharto was repressing dissent and enforcing harsh military rule in rebellious regions of the country. And many of his admirers in Indonesia have expressed dismay at his later evolution into a chief architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  
 Wolfowitz's decision to speak of "openness" substantially advanced the pursuit of democratic reform, said David Merrill, who ran the embassy's U.S. Agency for International Development program. "It was not a very revolutionary word," said Merrill, now a retired ambassador. But at the time, "It had a huge impact." 
 Even Suharto acknowledged in a 1991 interview with Time magazine that Wolfowitz's remarks had "intensified and aggravated" the debate over openness in the country. Faced with popular protests, Suharto resigned in 1998 after 32 years in power. 
  Abdurrahman Wahid, who became president in 1999, was so taken by Wolfowitz's 1989 speech that he asked to be introduced. Wahid, a leader of Indonesia's largest Muslim organization and staunch proponent of political pluralism, said in an interview Friday that they became friends and he remains proud of that relationship today despite differences over the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Wahid was impeached by his political rivals in 2001 but remains highly influential, especially among moderate Muslims. 
  Several Indonesian human rights advocates, however, say the speech attracted attention precisely because Wolfowitz had previously chosen not to publicly condemn widespread abuses by security forces, including torture and extrajudicial killings, and government restrictions on the media and free expression. 
  "This ambassador didn't speak out about human rights here. He was perceived by the public as being close to the Suharto government," said Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara, who headed Indonesia's legal aid foundation and now chairs the National Human Rights Commission. 
  Nusantara said Wolfowitz appeared to ignore abuses committed by Indonesian security forces, which were fighting separatist insurgencies in the provinces of Aceh and Papua. Nor did he raise public concerns about East Timor, which had been invaded by the Indonesian military a decade earlier. Wolfowitz also remained silent about the mounting corruption within Suharto's family and inner circle, Nusantara asserted.  
  "It's the duty of the ambassador from the United States to expose these concerns. He didn't say anything," he said. 
  Wolfowitz never visited Nusantara's offices, he said, though his organization had taken the lead in fighting for the release of political prisoners. 
  Human rights activists said, however, that the ambassador was close to Gen. Benny Moerdani, the country's hard-line military chief and defense minister in the late 1980s. One day after the famous speech, the Jakarta Post published a front-page photograph of Wolfowitz welcoming Moerdani at a farewell reception in the ambassador's residence.  
  Former diplomats who served with Wolfowitz in Jakarta explained that his charge was to carry out U.S. policy of supporting Indonesia, a Cold War ally and vast emerging market for U.S. products. But they stress he was also a quiet partisan for democratic reform, befriending Indonesia's struggling press, youth groups and intellectuals, while inviting political dissidents for embassy visits. 
  Wolfowitz was a highly visible emissary. He taught himself to speak and read the Indonesian language. He was not only a fixture on the Jakarta social circuit but also tramped through its villages and hiked its volcanoes. He won third prize in a cooking contest sponsored by the country's leading women's magazine, Femina, appearing in its glossy pages in an apron and explaining his secret for Madame Mao's chicken. 
  Long before the U.S. administration tried to improve its standing with the Muslim world, Wolfowitz made this a personal priority, his friends said. They said he sought to build relations and provide grants to Muslim groups, which served as a counterweight to Suharto's government. 
  When he was a criticized for being Jewish by a leading Indonesian Muslim figure, Lukman Harun, the ambassador paid him a visit during an open house. Obliged by tradition to honor his guest, Harun welcomed Wolfowitz and later became a trusted friend, according to Bambang Harymurti, editor of Tempo magazine. 
  Equally prominent was Wolfowitz's wife at the time, Clare, who was widely admired for speaking the Javanese language and mastering its traditional Serimpi dance. 
  Because Wolfowitz and his wife cut such popular figures, many Indonesian friends were surprised years later to learn that as U.S. deputy defense secretary he was the intellectual force behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq, roundly condemned in the world's largest Muslim country. 
  "I was a bit shocked when I realized he was a hawk in the Cabinet," said Emil Salim, the population and environment minister under Suharto. "I cannot visualize this because I knew him as a gentle fellow." 
 During Wolfowitz's tenure, AID officials helped draft a law that would have significantly weakened Suharto's position by freeing the central bank from his control and establishing it as an independent institution. These aid officials also proposed reforms for decentralizing government programs and revamping the finance ministry, which Suharto manipulated for the benefit of his own family. In each case, the initiatives were beaten back by Suharto's government though ultimately adopted after he was forced from power by mass demonstrations in 1998, according to former U.S. officials. 
 Former officials involved in running the AID program in the late 1980s said Wolfowitz took a keen personal interest in development, including health care, agriculture and private sector expansion. 
  Corruption within Suharto's inner circle was a particular concern. Wolfowitz canceled food assistance to the Indonesian government out of concern that Suharto's family, which had an ownership interest in the country's only flour mill, was indirectly benefiting, U.S. officials said. 
  The ambassador also endorsed an initiative by the embassy's political officers to complete a classified analysis for the State Department arguing that graft by the Suharto family had "exceeded the norms of Indonesian corruption," said Timothy Carney, former U.S. political counselor at the embassy. 
  And one day before he publicly took Suharto to task on political openness, Wolfowitz criticized the government for graft in a farewell speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Jakarta. "The cost of the high-cost economy remains too high," he said, using a euphemism for corruption. "For the private sector to flourish, special privilege must give way to equal opportunity and equal risk for all." 
  As ambassador, he also encouraged the AID program to extend assistance beyond the government to private organizations. 
  Yet Peter Gajewski, the program's senior economist, said the embassy continued to deal primarily with Suharto's administration and not support opposition groups. That sat well with Suharto insiders, such as Johannes Sumarlin, the government's chief planning minister and Wolfowitz's weekly tennis partner. 
  "I did not see Paul trying to really force or exercise pressure on Suharto to change his way to run the country politically. At that time, it was most acceptable to us," Sumarlin said. "Me, as a Suharto man, we liked to maintain our stability in running the country politically and economically." 

 INDONESIA (98%); UNITED STATES (95%); IRAQ (92%)







   


March 27, 2005 Sunday  




 The Rebirth of Bali

 
STUMBLING down Legian Street on Bali on a humid Tuesday night, Tim Picken had a buddy on one arm and a beer on the other. He poked his head into a T-shirt shop, shared a joke about the cheap prices and flirted with the passers-by. Then, before he ducked into another bar along this neon-and-booze strip in Kuta, Mr. Picken stopped laughing for a few moments, just long enough to pay his respects. 
 No wider than a tennis court and no longer than a bowling alley, the site, at the headwaters of the bustling street, was littered with weeds and easy to miss.
  There were no flowers, no official tributes. There was just a wooden sign, in Bahasa Bali, warning visitors not to trespass. As if anyone would dance on a grave.  
 ''It was mostly Australians my age who died,'' said Mr. Picken, 29, a real estate agent visiting from Melbourne, as he glanced at the unkempt plot of land. As he leaned in, the bubbly hook of Outkast's ''Hey Ya!'' echoed down the narrow street. ''My parents told me to avoid crowded bars, but you can't stop living your life.''
 ''Besides,'' he said, continuing on his bar crawl, ''it's probably not going to happen in the same place again.''
 More than two years after terrorist bombs pierced the touristy heart of Bali along its southern coast -- killing 202 people and prompting headlines proclaiming ''Paradise Lost'' -- a carefree spirit has finally returned to this tropical jewel, famous for its emerald landscapes, Hindu aura and perennial spring break vibe. So, too, have the crowds. 
 In an unmistakable sign that Bali is recovering, nearly 1.5 million people visited the island in 2004, a 47 percent jump from the year before. According to Bali tourism officials, some 40,000 Americans traveled halfway around the globe to experience the island's slow-cooked charms, a 40 percent gain from 2003. 
 Signs of Bali's upswing are everywhere, from the surfer-mobbed breaks along Kuta Beach on the southwestern coast, to the traffic tie-ups leaving Ngurah Rai International Airport. Hotels that were nearly mothballed are now booked solid.
 ''We had a 75 percent occupancy rate last summer,'' Monty Brown, the manager for Aman Resort's three properties in the island, said in a recent interview. ''The year before, it was 25 percent.'' 
 Not only is Bali rebounding but it is also re-emerging with a high-end gloss that belies its reputation as a backpacker's nirvana. Luxury hotels with lotus-shaped pools and teak-lined restaurants are going up while old ones are renovating their way to more stars. Fancy restaurants, first-class spas and hip nightclubs have all cropped up in the last year, adding new spice to a scene that, not long ago, bordered on stale. 
 ''It was a banner year for Bali,'' said David Wilson, the general manager at the Ritz-Carlton, in Jimbaran, while conducting a tour of the hotel's 38 new luxury villas, nearly all of which had been booked for the New Year holidays. He said he expected 2005 to be even better. 
 ''There was never a wait-and-see period,'' he added. ''We were always confident that Bali would bounce back.'' 
 On a balmy Friday night in early January, the crooked sidewalks of Kuta glistened after a light shower. Shopkeepers tidied up their sarong displays. Bar owners dimmed the lights. As midnight approached, a steady stream of partygoers in their 20's and 30's emerged from their hotel rooms with expectant looks on their faces, ready to hit the next hot spot. 
 At Fuel, a five-month-old restaurant that opened next door to the bomb site, the crowd was as glossy as a magazine ad. Women in strappy sandals sipped cosmopolitans. Men in tight shirts primped in front of the mirror. Not long ago, the space was abandoned by a store that had sold bootleg D.V.D.'s and pooka shells. Now it's a happening spot with minimalist decor and swirling psychedelic lights. 
 ''It's a great location,'' said an owner, Gusky Suarsana, trying his best to sound apologetic. ''The area is going upscale.'' 
 Patrons were laughing and dancing, seemingly oblivious to the tragic landmark next door. Perhaps enough time had past. Or perhaps they were lost in holiday merriment.
 But vestiges of terrorism are unavoidable, looming over the tropical oasis like a stalled monsoon. At the Four Seasons Resort in Jimbaran, guests are now greeted at the gatehouse with AK-47 rifles and undercarriage checks. At the McDonald's on Kuta Beach, night watchmen keep close tabs at all hours, even when the crowd thins to a drunken few. And during the Christmas and New Year rush, the police were out in full force, rummaging through trash cans, delivery trucks and fanny packs. Australia had issued yet another terrorist warning, as had Britain, New Zealand and the United States. 
 The attacks occurred just after 11 p.m. on Oct. 12, 2002, a busy Saturday night. A bomb linked to Al Qaeda ripped through Paddy's Bar, a popular nightclub on Legian Street, in the bopping tourist district of Kuta. The location was no accident. It was as if the blast tore through the Ramblas in Barcelona or Times Square in New York. 
 Half a minute later, a more powerful car bomb exploded across the street, creating a three-foot-deep crater outside the Sari Club and trapping hundreds in a disco inferno. Many of the dead -- including 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians, 26 Britons and 7 Americans -- had been fleeing the first blast. The Balinese call it their ground zero. 
 Tourism, the economic soul of Bali, sank like a stone. Waves of storefronts went dark, hotel employees were laid off en masse, and airlines scaled back flights to Bali before abandoning the destination altogether. ''The whole of Bali emptied out,'' recalled Jamal Hussain, the general manager of the Hard Rock Hotel Bali, one of the many Western icons that remain on high alert. 
 If that weren't enough, SARS arrived the next year, devastating tourism throughout Asia. Then terrorism struck again, this time in the Indonesia capital of Jakarta. A bomb-laden S.U.V. rocked a Marriott hotel in the central business district. Then last September, a car bomb exploded at the nearby Australian Embassy, killing 11. 
 Both attacks have been linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, the same Al Qaeda offshoot that is suspected as being responsible for the Bali blasts. 
 Yet, despite all these potentially crippling blows, Bali climbed back. A sprawling, 313-room Conrad hotel opened last year in the southern peninsula of Nusa Dua. COMO Hotel and Resorts opened up a boutique hotel, Uma Ubud, in the jungles of the Tjampuhan Valley. Accor Hotels opened the Sofitel Seminyak Bali last November, and plans to open another hotel in May. 
 ''It's a signal that companies are still optimistic about investing in Bali,'' said Robert Kelsall, chairman of the Bali Hotels Association, which represents the island's major chains. 
 And then there is the latest resort from Bulgari, the Italian jeweler, perched on an exquisite limestone cliff at Bali's southernmost tip. Although the hotel is not expected to open until the end of the year, fashionistas are already chattering about what the second outpost of this boutique hotelier (the other is in Milan) will look like when it is done. 
 Bali even has a new airline, Air Paradise International, which recently inaugurated service to a fifth city in Australia, to go with thrice-weekly flights to Osaka, Japan, and Seoul.
 Ask tourists why they returned and two answers usually emerge. 
 ''This is one of the most beautiful places I've been to,'' said Cherie Sogsti, 33, a travel blogger from Garden Grove, Calif., as she toured the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, a woodsy reserve in central Bali teeming with wild macaques. ''It seems almost mystical and magical.'' 
 The breathtaking topography still captivates tourists the way it did in the 1930's, when Westerners first promoted Bali as a vacationer's paradise. The former Dutch territory was a colonial playground for the Netherlands Indies, which extended from Indonesia to Malaysia. 
 Tucked below the equator on the Indian Ocean, the high temperature hovers around 85 degrees year round, and cools gradually as you move inland. Strolling along Kuta Beach on a recent evening, as the last whiskers of sunlight scorched the dusky sky, the air felt sultry and pacific, hugging the ground like an earthy blanket. 
 The island is ringed by velvety beaches and marbled cliffs. Dewy jungles and black volcanic peaks form its center. Terraced rice patties, the color of fresh lime, are etched into the countryside like giant amphitheaters. The air is expansive, the vistas ageless.
 Visitors also speak wistfully about Bali's idiosyncratic culture. Unlike the rest of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, most Balinese practice a form of Hinduism that blends elements of Buddhism and animism. They believe that gods are everywhere. And, in a way, they are. 
 Sculptures depicting mythical battles loom over traffic circles like the Arc de Triomphe. Thousands of temples dot the island, their split gateways forming a kind of Escher-like portal into a cosmic world. Every morning, millions of boat-shaped banana leaves, stuffed with rice, fruits and flowers, are left on sidewalks like little gift baskets to the gods. 
 A leisurely drive through the winding backcountry reveals a simple life steeped in atavistic rituals. Men bathe together in the crystalline rivers, soaking and relaxing in Bali's original spa. Women in floor-length skirts dry tapioca on the roadside, stirring the granules under the baking sun. Slaughtered chickens hang off the back of mopeds. Banyan trees sway. And every few hours, the ethereal tones of gamelan music echo across the lush hills, signaling the start of another temple ceremony. 
 This reverence for Hindu customs may explain why decades of mass tourism has done little to dilute the island's charm. 
 ''Everyone smiles all the time,'' said Melinda Gavala, 28, a frequent visitor from Greece, as she watched the sun set on Seminyak Beach, an upscale area just north of Kuta. ''Even when they're overcharging you, their smile is 100 percent authentic.'' 
 But Bali's resilience is also a function of modern day P.R. As one of the world's best-known beach resorts, Bali never faded from tourists' imagination after the bombings. In fact, the Bali tourism board did little more than offer a few junkets for travel writers and tour operators, which most resort destinations do anyway. ( does not accept free trips.)
 ''The island succeeds in spite of itself,'' said Jack Daniels, president of Bali Discovery Tours, which runs a tourism news Web site. ''Bali has tremendous brand equity. Even through the crisis, travel magazines kept naming Bali among the top island destinations.''
 But contrary to post-bombing predictions by tour operators, ''terrorist attacks have a very short-term consequence on tourism,'' said Rok Klancnik, a spokesman for the World Tourism Organization, a United Nations agency based in Madrid. And it seems to be getting shorter. 
 ''It took Luxor, Egypt, five long years to recover from its terrorist attacks,'' Mr. Klancnik added, referring to the 1997 massacre of 58 foreigners by Islamic militants in an ancient temple. New York City saw tourism levels rebound two years after the 2001 attacks, and Madrid's were back to normal within months of the 2004 train bombing. 
 ''It will probably take Bali just another year to fully recover,'' Mr. Klancnik said. 
 But scars will remain, appearing like unwelcome party guests. Bomb-sniffing dogs, stone-faced guards and airport-style metal detectors are all part of the new normal. (The State Department continues to warn Americans ''of the continued potential for terrorist attacks against Americans, U.S. or other Western interests in Indonesia.'') And the economic slump of the previous two years has lent an air of desperation to the aggressive touting. 
 On sunny afternoons, a crush of peddlers turn stretches of Kuta Beach into a seaside flea market. In quieter spots, sunbathers are accosted by an almost comical parade of hawkers selling sunglasses, box kites, tattoos, beer, jewelry and full-body massages -- sometimes all of them in just half an hour. Street begging got so out of hand that the police had to institute a crackdown. 
 The makeup of tourists has changed as well. Although Bali welcomed visitors from 177 countries last year, the tourism surge came primarily from Australia and Asian countries, especially Japan. 
 ''We haven't recovered the Western European or North American market,'' said Mr. Daniels of Bali Discovery Tours. ''It takes four Japanese tourists to equal one German in terms of total number of days and money spent.'' 
 While Kuta and other tourist meccas are bustling, remote regions are struggling. In upcountry Ubud, the island's cultural hub, art galleries have closed and a shadow puppet show was eerily empty on a Wednesday night in January. 
 Farther afield, in the eastern resort town of Candi Dasa, no one was shopping for roadside wood carvings on a clear afternoon. ''We haven't seen any tourists,'' said Hans Peter Keller, an architect from Switzerland, who was lounging by an empty hotel pool. 
 But even in the busier places, many of the tourists relish the relative tranquillity. Bob Walker, 34, a firefighter from England, was drinking alone at Fuel, the new hot spot on Legian Street. It was his first visit to the island and already he was hooked. 
 ''If you want to get drunk, there's no shortage of bars,'' he said. ''If you like girls, there's plenty of them. And if you like surfing, nothing beats Bali.'' 
 Someone had just told him about a secluded surfing spot on Bali's west coast. ''I'm going to extend my trip for another month,'' he said. ''I feel safe here.''

A PARADISE REBOUNDS FROM A HELLISH TIME
 The State Department has an official Travel Warning about ''the ongoing terrorist threat for Indonesia.'' It urges American visitors to register with the consular agent in Bali, at (62-361) 233-605. More information is online at travel.state.gov/travel.

GETTING THERE
 There are no direct flights between Bali and the United States. Singapore Airlines, (800) 742-3333, www.singaporeair.com, has daily connections via Singapore from New York City, Newark, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Round-trip coach fares from Kennedy Airport (with a layover in Frankfurt) are around $1,200. Flights from Newark start at $1,550.
 Cathay Pacific, (800) 233-2742, www.cathaypacific.com, flies to Bali via Hong Kong from New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Web fares for mid-April start at $923 from Los Angeles and $1,150 from J.F.K. 
 Other airlines flying from New York to Bali include Korean Air (through Seoul), (800) 438-5000, www.koreanair.com; and Japan Airlines (via Tokyo or Osaka), (800) 525-3663, www.japanair.com.

WHERE TO STAY
 Lodging choices range from $5 budget hostels with bunk beds and no air-conditioning to over-the-top suites fit for a sheik, starting at $3,000. For $100 to $150 a night, many places offer spas, courtyards and meandering pools. The Bali Hotels Associations, which represents the island's larger chains, has online links to its members at www.balihotelsassociation.com. Here is a sampling of choices on the island:
 Amanusa, Nusa Dua (62-361) 772-333, amanresorts.com. A minimalist temple to Balinese architecture, it rents 33 villas perched on a hillside overlooking the Indian Ocean. A private path leads to a secluded beach. Suites are $650 for a garden view, and $1,300 for one with a private pool.
 Cendana Resort and Spa, Monkey Forest Road, Ubud, (62-361) 973-243, www.cendanaresort-spa.com. Close to art galleries and artisanal villages, the hotel is a homey base to explore Bali's culture. Doubles start at $70 for a room with air-conditioning.
 Hotel Padma, Padma 1, Legian, (62-361) 752-111, www.hotelpadma.com. Just north of Kuta, the 405-room hotel features spacious rooms, a swim-up bar and several restaurants. Popular with young couples and wedding parties. Web rates start at $110 for a standard room. 
 The Oberoi Bali, Seminyak, (62-361) 730-361, www.oberoihotels.com. Right on the beach, the hotel offers a surprisingly tranquil setting not farfrom the bustle of Kuta. The 75 thatched lanais and villas start at $255, but Internet rates can be less.
 Villa Sasoon, Jalan Puri Bagus, Candi Dasa, (62-363) 41511, www.villasasoon.com. The four two-bedroom pavilions offer a modern spin on traditional Balinese homes, with pebbled courtyards, open living rooms and outdoor showers. Rates are $250, including breakfast.

ONLINE GUIDES
 The Internet is rife with unreliable Bali guides, but a good starting point is Bali Discovery Tours, www.balidiscovery.com, which offers a hotel search function, travel tips and news, and last-minute specials. Another trustworthy, if less in-depth source is the Bali Tourism Board, www.bali-tourismboard.com.   DENNY LEE


 INDONESIA (92%);  AUSTRALIA (79%)







  



March 22, 2005 Tuesday  




 WORLD IN BRIEF

 
MOSCOW  --  Widespread kidnappings of civilians in the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya, most of them allegedly committed by government forces, constitute crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said Monday in a report that also condemned the European Union for not taking action on the problem. 
 In France, Chechnya's Moscow-backed president, Alu Alkhanov, acknowledged human rights abuses in Chechnya but said that "the situation has been improving" and that reports of widespread kidnappings were exaggerated. He also ruled out negotiations with Chechen separatists on independence, autonomy or finding a peaceful solution to the conflict. 
 The human rights group's report said thousands of people have disappeared in Chechnya since 1999, the start of the latest conflict between Russian forces and separatist rebels. The report documented several dozen new cases of disappearances that it said had occurred mostly within recent months.  
 "Witnesses now tell us that the atmosphere of utter arbitrariness and intimidation is 'worse than a war,' " said Rachel Denber of the group's Europe and Central Asia division.  
 The middle east 
*  AMMAN, Jordan  --  King Abdullah ordered the return of Jordan's top diplomat in Iraq, just a day after the two nations withdrew their envoys in a dispute over the infiltration of insurgents across the border, the official Petra news agency said. 
 The king ordered the envoy's return to Baghdad "to keep the good relations between the two brotherly countries," the agency reported. 
  Iraq and Jordan engaged in a tit-for-tat withdrawal of envoys Sunday over Iraqi claims that Jordan was failing to stop would-be insurgents from slipping across the border. 
 ASIA 
*  JAKARTA, Indonesia  --  Indonesia plans to formally outlaw Jemaah Islamiah, a radical group linked to al Qaeda, in a move that will make it easier for authorities to arrest and prosecute militants in the world's most populous Muslim nation, a security official said. 
  Ansyaad Mbai, a senior counterterrorism official, said he was convinced that the government would act against the group, which is blamed for a host of attacks and plots throughout Southeast Asia, including the 2002 Bali nightclub attacks. 
 Banning the organization, which the United Nations lists as a terrorist group, would please the United States and other foreign governments. But the move could raise opposition from Muslim groups and political parties that fear it may herald a broader crackdown on Islamic activists. 
 Europe 
*  PARIS  --  Reports of racist and anti-Semitic violence in France nearly doubled in 2004, hitting the highest level in a decade and showing no sign of slowing, according to a study submitted to Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. 
  Jews and Muslims were the main victims of 1,565 recorded threats and violent attacks in 2004, up from 833 a year earlier, according to the National Consultative Commission of Human Rights annual report.  
 Anti-Semitic acts rose to 970, compared with 601 the year before, the report said. Most attackers were from an "Arab-Muslim background," the newspaper Liberation reported. Threats and attacks against Muslims more than doubled to 595 last year, up from 232, with the majority committed by supporters of the far right, the report said. 
*  TALLINN, Estonia  --  Estonia's prime minister announced his resignation and dissolved his government after lawmakers said they had no confidence in his justice minister because of a controversial anti-corruption plan. 
 Prime Minister Juhan Parts said the government coalition could no longer effectively lead the ex-Soviet Baltic country of 1.4 million people. The unexpected move came after legislators criticized the justice minister's proposal to set up a system of quotas for the number of corruption cases regional prosecutors would have to meet annually. 
*  LONDON  --  The BBC will shed 2,050 more jobs in a second wave of downsizing, the corporation announced. 
  The cuts include 420 employees in the news division, 66 in sports, 150 in drama, entertainment and children's programs, 735 in regional operations, 58 in new media and 424 in educational programs, Director General Mark Thompson told the staff. 
  The broadcaster previously announced the elimination of 1,730 jobs in administrative services. The combined cuts amount to 19 percent of the BBC workforce and will lead to annual savings of $682 million by 2008, $35 million more than a target set in December. 
   --  From News Services 

 JORDAN (94%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (94%); EUROPE (94%); FRANCE (93%); IRAQ (93%); ASIA (93%);   MIDDLE EAST (79%); CENTRAL ASIA (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);  SOUTHERN EUROPE (79%)







 



March 20, 2005 Sunday  
 



 THE REAL WORLD: MTV GETS THE GLOBAL GROOVE How do you say 'Hey Ya!' in Swahili? MTV remakes the map with a planetary dose of pop culture

 
MTV claims that one day its international channels will influence American pop culture. But we can't quite imagine Jay-Z offering up a daily call to prayer or Jessica Simpson hosting her own cooking show.
That, however, is the equivalent of what the globe's young viewers are seeing as MTV works its way into every inhabitable crevice of the planet. Last month, the network conquered yet another continent, adding Africa's MTV base to its 100-channel strong empire of cool. 
To get a sense of just how far MTV's reach has grown, check out the map and fast facts below. In times of crisis, President Bush sends the Army to represent America, but it's MTV that's consistently plugging our cultural and commercial pulse into the world's collective heart.
MTV base (Africa)
Launch: Feb. 22, 2005
Reaches: 1.3 million households in 48 countries
Native star: South African chanteuse Lebo Mathosa
Weird fact: Nigerian rapper 2face shared the stage with American rhymer Xzibit
during the channel's opening-day concert.
On the Web: No site yet
MTV Australia
Launch: March 20, 1997
Reaches: 1 million households
Native star: Slinky singer Kylie Minogue
Weird fact: Newly trim Anna Nicole Smith flashed her breasts at the Aussies' 2005 Video Music Awards. Then she jumped on Silverchair front man Daniel Johns.
On the Web: mtv.com.au
MTV Brazil
Launch: Oct. 20, 1990
Reaches: 18 million households
Native star: Crossover sensation Shakira
Weird fact: Plus-size host Joao Gordo (Fat Joe) presents bizarre human stunts in "Gordo Freak Show."
On the Web:www.mtv.com.br
MTV Canada
Launch: Oct. 18, 2001
Reaches: 600,000
households
Native star: Punk-pop
outfit Sum 41
Weird fact: On his last day at MTV, host Bradley Joseph Leggatt was jailed after smashing a beer bottle into a man's face during his going-away party.
On the Web: www.mtvcanada.com
MTV China
Launch: April 21, 1995
Reaches: 10 million
households in southern
China (Guangdong province) and Hong Kong
Native star: Taiwanese R&B crooner Jay Zhou
Weird fact: Hong Kong
music fans protested when MTV replaced its "edgy" MTV Mandarin feed with
the more mainstream MTV China.
On the Web: www.mtvchinese.com
MTV India
Launch: Oct. 28, 1996
Reaches: 23 million
households in India and the Middle East
Native star: Pop-rock duo Strings
Weird fact: Veejay Cyrus Broacha's "MTV Bakra"
is India's answer to
ubiqui-hipster Ashton
Kutcher's "Punk'd."
On the Web: www.mtvindia.com
MTV UK/Ireland
Launch: July 1, 1997
Reaches: 11 million
households
Native star: British rapper the Streets (Mike Skinner)
Weird fact: The U.K. take on "Jackass" is "Dirty
Sanchez," a slang term for a raunchy (and probably apocryphal) sexual deed.
MTV Korea
Launch: July 1, 2001
Reaches: 7 million
households
Native star: Hunky male singer Rain
Weird fact: Brash young singer Junja hosts an off-the-wall cooking show, "MTV Hey Day." Korean celebs stop by her
hellish kitchen to share recipes, rumors and jokes.
On the Web: www.mtvkorea.co.kr
MTV SouthEast Asia
Launch: May 5, 1995
Reaches: 900,000 households in Brunei, Macau, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and Vietnam
Native star: Filipino rockers Rivermaya
Weird fact: For Muslim music fans in Indonesia, the channel issues an adhan, the daily call to prayer.
On the Web: www.mtvasia.com
MTV Latin America
Launch: Oct. 1, 1993
Reaches: 13 million households in 20 countries
Native star: Mexican alt-rockers Cafe Tacuba
Weird fact: Paris Hilton's hacked cell phone harbored a photo of the topless heiress smooching veejay Eglantina Zingg.
On the Web: www.mtvla.com

 CHINA (94%); INDIA (93%); AFRICA (91%); AUSTRALIA (91%); HONG KONG (91%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); TAIWAN (79%); NIGERIA (79%); CANADA (79%); ASIA (79%); THAILAND (71%); UNITED KINGDOM (50%)







  



March 19, 2005 Saturday  




 Rice Puts Japan At Center of New U.S. Vision of Asia; 
China Challenged in Major Speech

 
Condoleezza Rice, on her first foray into Asia as secretary of state, outlined on Saturday a new U.S. vision of Japan's increasing importance as a global power and challenged China to open its political system and work harder to "embrace some form of genuinely representative government." 
  In a speech to about 500 professors and students at Sophia University here, Rice offered an expansive view of Japan's role in the world  --  including unambiguous support for its campaign to win a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council  --  that suggested the administration viewed the longtime U.S. ally as a counterbalance to the rising regional influence of China.  
  Rice said the United States welcomed "the rise of a confident, peaceful and prosperous China," but she warned that China must be "willing to match its growing capabilities to its international responsibilities," referencing in particular its economic dealings with Sudan and Burma, both repressive regimes.  
  Administration officials have privately  --  and occasionally publicly  --  challenged the Chinese to reform their  political system. But Rice's address was an effort to place a warning that China's leaders should adapt their society and political system within the broader strategic framework of U.S. economic, political and security policy in Asia. Rice, who was to travel to Seoul later Saturday and then to Beijing on Sunday, repeatedly recalled President Bush's campaign for worldwide democracy, saying that "instead of closed societies or economies, instead of spheres of influence, we stand for an open world." 
  Rice, who flew here Friday from Pakistan as part of week-long tour of Asia, offered noticeably softer language on North Korea, which has refused to return to six-nation talks on ending its nuclear programs because of what it calls the administration's "hostile policy." 
  Rice said the United States would not "be silent about the plight of the North Korean people, about the nature of the North Korean regime." But she said that a U.S. offer to settle the nuclear dispute was open to negotiation  --  and that North Korea should grab the opportunity now. 
  At the six-party talks, "the North Korean government can find the respect it desires and acquire the assistance it needs, if it is willing to make a strategic choice for peace," Rice said. But she said North Korea must return to the talks immediately, suggesting that administration patience with North Korea was running out.  
  Rice challenged China to put more leverage on its  neighbor. "China has a particularly important opportunity and responsibility here," she said, adding that she would address the North Korean issue when she traveled to Beijing. 
  "Ultimately, a society's material well-being cannot be separated from its political virtue," Rice said, noting that democracy has emerged in Buddhist Thailand, Muslim Indonesia and the Catholic Philippines. "China must eventually embrace some form of genuinely representative government if it is to reap the benefits and meet the challenges of a globalizing world," she said. China's leaders need to "look around them in Asia and see that freedom works. They will see that democracy works."  
  Answering questions from the audience, Rice said that the U.S. alliance with Japan  --  as well as with South Korea and India  --  was "not against China" but was designed to influence Chinese behavior. "Knowing that China has the potential for good or bad . . . it is our responsibility to try and push and prod and persuade China to a more positive course," she said. 
  Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is one of President Bush's closest allies, and Rice's speech comes as Japan has claimed an increasingly assertive role on the world stage. Recently, the United States and Japan joined in a statement characterizing Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, as among its security concerns. Japan and South Korea are also involved in a bitter dispute over a cluster of uninhabited islands in a rich fishing area.  
  Rice cited Japan as a model for "political and economic progress in all of East Asia" and lauded it as a partner in the administration's global war on terror and push for democracy in the Middle East. "Japanese leadership in advancing freedom is good for the Pacific community, and good for the world," she said. 
  Rice proposed a global development partnership in which the two big aid donors would "regularly and systematically" coordinate aid objectives and goals. And although the United States has supported Japan's interest in a permanent Security Council seat, U.S. officials said this is the first time a secretary of state has embraced it as part of a comprehensive policy statement. 
  Addressing one raw spot in U.S.-Japanese relations, Rice demanded that Japan end the ban on U.S. beef that has blocked about $1.7 billion in annual exports. The ban was imposed  in December 2003 because of a case of mad cow disease in the United States. The two governments have agreed to loosen the ban to exclude cows 20 months or older, but a Japanese panel has taken months to review the decision. 
  "American meat is safe," Rice said. "There is a global standard on the science involved, and we must not let exceptionalism put at risk our ability to invest and trade our way to even greater shared prosperity." 

 JAPAN (95%); KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF (95%); ASIA (95%); CHINA (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); MYANMAR (79%); SUDAN (79%); THAILAND (79%); KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (79%); PAKISTAN (79%)







 


March 15, 2005 Tuesday



 Hughes' new assignment: Improve U.S. image abroad

 
WASHINGTON -- Austinite Karen Hughes, a longtime confidante to President Bush, said Monday she would apply "a little diplomatic varnish" to her outspoken demeanor as she adapts her political skills to burnishing the U.S. image abroad. 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, another member of Bush's inner circle, announced Hughes' nomination to be undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, saying Hughes would focus on improving America's image across the Muslim world and attracting a new generation of foreign students to U.S. schools. 
Hughes, a former Dallas TV reporter who served as communications director for Bush when he was Texas governor and for more than a year into his presidency, moved back to Austin nearly three years ago, saying she wanted more time with her husband and teenage son.  
But Hughes continued to advise Bush on a frequent, if informal, basis. 
It will be her job to turn the tide of anti-Americanism that has swept through much of the Arab world as a result of U.S. foreign policy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 
She's the third woman to take on the job since the attacks, following former Madison Avenue advertising executive Charlotte Beers and former U.S. diplomat Margaret Tutwiler, who quit last year after less than a year. 
Hughes, despite her lack of formal diplomatic experience, could do better at the job than either of her predecessors. 
"They didn't have the president's direct ear," said former U.S. Ambassador to NATO David Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. 
"Karen Hughes has been influential on the policy side," Abshire said. "She's not just a PR person." 
Hughes' appointment, Bush said, signals a new priority in public diplomacy. 
"Karen Hughes has been one of my most trusted and closest advisers," Bush said in a statement. "Her return to public service in this important position signifies my personal commitment to the international diplomacy that is needed in these historic times." 
In his first term, Bush created, with close involvement by Hughes, the Office of Global Communications to counter what the administration perceived as an anti-American bias in many Arab and Muslim news outlets, particularly the proliferation of satellite television networks. 
The office made few inroads, however, and recent polls showed anti-American sentiment at nearly 80 percent across much of the Muslim world. The trend crested last year, following news of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but has moderated since the provision of nearly $1 billion in U.S. aid to the victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami that ravaged parts of Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation. 
The daughter of a career Army officer, Hughes was born in Paris and lived in Canada and Panama when she was young.  Hughes has made three trips to postwar Afghanistan, where she pressed for women's rights and the education of girls. 
"We have much to learn about becoming better citizens of the world," Hughes said. "We must do a better job of teaching our children to learn about different languages and cultures and faiths." 

    CANADA (79%)







   


March 13, 2005 Sunday  




 A World of Ways To Say 'Islamic Law'

 
IRAQ'S new government will have a fateful question to address when it begins meeting later this month. What role will Islam have in the constitution? The answer could shape how well the country holds together.
 The Shiite religious parties that won big in the January elections have called for strict Islamic laws to govern marriage, divorce and inheritance. Secular Sunni Arabs and Kurds oppose those efforts. And the Bush administration has made it clear that its goal is not an  Iraq. 
 But the choices may not be that stark, if experience in the broad Islamic world is any guide. Islamic law -- Shariah -- is a widely used label. But in a surprisingly dynamic process, many systems have emerged under it that try to strike a middle ground between Islamists, who want to stone adulterers to death, and secularists, who want a pure separation of law and religion. 
 At one end of this spectrum is Saudi Arabia, where only Muslims can worship. At the other is Turkey, where the law decrees secularism, and Islamist parties have to worry that the army will step in to enforce it. In between, most other nations have found ways to straddle the demands of Islamists and secularists. In fact, most of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims live in countries whose constitutions do not declare Islam the state religion. Indonesia, with more than 250 million Muslims, is the most prominent example.
 One way to defuse the issue was demonstrated when Afghanistan adopted a new constitution last year. Islamic hard-liners demanded strong religious wording, notably a declaration that ''no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam.'' American officials and Muslim moderates, including President Hamid Karzai, agreed, acknowledging that it would be politically impossible to adopt a purely secular constitution because Islam is central to the culture. 
 But Mr. Karzai's government has made virtually no effort to enforce the wording. And language was also included to guarantee the rights of religious minorities. 
 After it was adopted, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan (and now the administration's choice to be the ambassador to Iraq), called the document ''one of the most enlightened constitutions in the Islamic world.'' 
 But some skeptics say American officials made an enormous mistake when they allowed the strongly religious language, because future Afghan governments could revive the practices of the Taliban, like the stoning to death of adulterers. 
 Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at Freedom House, a human rights group, praised Afghan leaders for not allowing a strict form of Islam. But he added: ''What is actually in the constitution worries me. It can open the door to a very repressive state.''
 In Iraq, too, the argument for Islam's cultural influence is strong, and experts expect to see a reference to Islam's influence in the new constitution. The wording, however, is important to Iraqi Kurds, who are more secular than the Shiites and jealously guard their autonomy. Last week Shiite and Kurdish leaders were pursuing a compromise that would declare Islam a source of Iraq's law, but not the only source. 
 Mr. Marshall said declaring Islam the principal inspiration for Iraq's laws, as the Shiites might prefer, could be dangerous. ''Islam undefined,'' he said, would then be ''the constitution behind the constitution.'' 
 Other experts argue that this fear is an over-reaction. In many Muslim lands, they say, a declaration of Islam's pre-eminence amounts to a declaration of national identity. If Americans push for their preferences, in this view, a nationalist backlash might strengthen the link to Islam. 
 ''It's very much an identity factor in most Muslim countries,'' said John Esposito, an Islamic studies professor at Georgetown. ''The issue is that it has to be defined.''
 A world of definitions are available.
 Saudi Arabia and Iran aspire to be purely Islamic. Criminal laws specify ancient punishments, like stoning for adultery and chopping off a hand for theft. The Saudi constitution does not even declare itself a constitution, but rather a ''basic law.'' It declares the Koran and Sunna, Islam's holy texts, the constitution. 
 In other countries, the system is mixed. Many apply Islamic punishments only to Muslims. Others apply Islamic law only in matters like marriage, divorce and inheritance. Indonesia recognizes five religions but allows Shariah as a local option.
 Pakistan's constitution declares the nation an ''Islamic Republic,'' pronounces Islam the state religion and lets a federal Shariah court invalidate any law it deems ''repugnant to the injunctions of Islam.'' Men can marry four wives. A woman's testimony in court carries half the weight of a man's. A woman must produce four male witnesses to prove she was raped. And in rural areas, hundreds die each year in ''honor killings,'' in which relatives murder a young woman who has married without her parents' permission. The law lets the victim's parents pardon the perpetrator. 
 But Islamic law is also unevenly enforced, and much of Pakistan remains open in many ways. In the cities, educated upper-caste women hold high posts in government and business, and rarely wear head scarves. The government simply fails to carry out many rulings of the federal Shariah court. 
 Indonesia takes yet another approach. The constitution provides ''all persons the right to worship according to his or her own religion or belief.'' But in 2003 the government allowed localities to begin enforcing a form of Shariah in some areas, like the religiously conservative Aceh province, which has a long-running separatist insurgency. Muslims who drink alcohol there can be given 40 lashes. In the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, the police have detained women for lectures on how to dress when they were deemed to be wearing un-Islamic attire.
 Turkey has a constitution and laws that are strictly secular. But the steady emergence of Islamist parties and organizations there is leading more and more young people to adopt Islamic mores, like shunning alcohol and wearing head scarves. 
 In all these countries, one rule seems to apply: In practice, local politics and attitudes can trump what is written in a constitution. This could prove important in Iraq. 
 Noah Feldman, a law professor at New York University, expects fierce debate in Iraq's constitution-writing assembly over Shiite demands that men be allowed to have up to four wives, and that laws guaranteeing alimony and child support for women be repealed. But he predicted that Shiite leaders will compromise with Iraq's other groups in the end, to hold the country together. 
 Even after a constitution is adopted, years of court rulings to interpret it will follow, and this, too, can add flexibility. 
 Frank Vogel, a law professor at Harvard, argues that if Iraqis can peacefully debate the new constitution and keep their nerve, American leaders should do the same. 
 ''If the mere mention of Shariah or Islam is enough to send us running for the bunkers, it's nonsense,'' he said. ''There is no need for alarm when Islam is mentioned in the constitution context.''

 Safiya Yakubu Hussaini Tunga-Tudu, a 35-year-old mother of five, was sentenced to death in Sokoto on charges of adultery. The case provoked international outrage; she was acquitted in 2002.

2002 -- Dozens were sentenced to have their hands amputated for theft or armed robbery and to flogging for fornication, consumption of alcohol and other crimes.
  Amina Lawal, 35, was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, after bearing a child outside marriage, which was sufficient evidence for her to be convicted under new Shariah penal laws in Katsina state. She appealed, and won in 2003.

2003 -- Jibrin Babaji was sentenced to death by stoning by a Shariah court after being convicted of sodomy involving three minors.

Saudi Arabia

Flogging is mandatory for sexual offenses and other crimes, and can be used as an alternative or addition to other punishments. Sentences can range from dozens to thousands of lashes.

Amputation of the hand or foot is imposed for theft and burglary; highway robbery is punished by cross amputation.

HOW IT WORKS -- Amputations are imposed after what Amnesty International calls ''grossly unfair trials.'' Floggings may be given by police immediately after catching offenders; they are often public.

RECENT CASES

1981-1999 Amnesty International reports at least 90 cases of amputations. An Egyptian convicted of robbery was sentenced to 4,000 lashes in 1990, reportedly administered 50 lashes at a time every two weeks.

2000 -- There were 34 reported cases of amputations, including seven cross amputations. Two teachers, arrested following demonstrations, were reported to have been sentenced to 1,500 lashes each to be carried out in front of their families, students and other teachers.

2001 -- Hundreds of teenagers were flogged where alleged offenses had taken place, some in a shopping mall. A military officer was given 20 lashes for using a mobile phone while on a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight. Three men were sentenced to 1,500 lashes each, in addition to 15 years' imprisonment on drug charges. Four others tried with them were sentenced to death and executed.

2002 -- Scores of teenage boys were reported flogged during the year. A woman was sentenced to 65 lashes and six months' imprisonment for committing adultery with her sister's husband, even though she reportedly claimed that he had raped her. The man was sentenced to 4,700 lashes and six years' imprisonment. At least seven people, all foreign nationals, had their right hands amputated.

MODERATE STATES

Indonesia

This culturally diverse archipelago, 88 percent Muslim, guarantees freedom of religion and recognizes five religions. It also allows some localities to carry out Shariah.

HOW IT WORKS -- The first Shariah court was established in Aceh province, applicable only to Muslims. Women there were lectured on inappropriate dress and briefly detained. In other places, civil servants have been required to wear Islamic clothing on Fridays and attend noon prayers. Other areas forbade alcohol, but the ban applied only to Muslims and was not strictly enforced. Some political parties have advocated Shariah nationwide; they remain in the minority.

Jordan

A constitutional monarchy ruled by King Abdullah II bin Hussein, it incorporates Shariah law into many aspects of private life.

HOW IT WORKS -- Shariah applies to Muslim marriage and divorce; Christians have separate courts for these but are subject to Islamic law for inheritances. Non-Shariah judiciaries consider the testimony of of men and women equal, but Islamic courts mostly hold that the testimony of two women is equal to one man.

According to the State Department, violence against women is common. ''Honor crimes'' assaults against women intended to kill, made by relatives to avenge perceived immodest behavior or sexual misconduct may be treated leniently under the criminal code.

SECULAR STATE

Turkey

The constitution protects freedom of religion. The government oversees the countrys 75,000 mosques and other religious facilities.

HOW IT WORKS -- The military, judiciary and other branches of government discriminate against those they consider proponents of Islamic fundamentalism and Shariah. Observant Muslims in the military are reported to be expelled as threats to secularism; civil servants suspected of Islamist activities are not promoted or are fired. Bans on Islamic head scarves at universities and among civil servants are enforced.

(Sources by Amnesty International, U.S. State Department)

 UNITED STATES (94%);  AFGHANISTAN (92%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); TURKEY (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%)







 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. 
Palm Beach Post (Florida)

March 10, 2005 Thursday  




 PRESIDENTS BUCK UP, TEE OFF FOR TSUNAMI AID

 
The group of wealthy executives and CEOs knew spending the day with former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush would be memorable.
And then fellow ex-President Gerald Ford phoned.
"Hi Jerry," Bush said, taking Clinton's cellphone.
The moment took place during a charity event at the Medalist Golf Club on Wednesday that, despite a consistent, daylong rain, left many donors feeling as if they got their money's worth. The event, which attracted 54 golfers, cost $30,000 a head. 
"It was a moment in history," Adam Falkoff said of the phone call.
Falkoff, a Washington lobbyist and one of the event's participants, was near the ex-presidents when Ford called. He figured it was to wish Clinton good luck with his operation, scheduled for today.
Clinton will undergo a procedure this morning to remove scar tissue in his chest that developed after quadruple-bypass surgery in September.
The most recent ex-president joked Wednesday that, unlike his first attempt at playing the Medalist, this time he would be going to the hospital after he played golf. The last time he tried it, in 1997, he slipped and injured his knee while visiting professional golfer Greg Norman's estate on nearby Jupiter Island hours before tee time.
"I've stepped off that step about three times now, so I'm three for four," said Clinton, who stayed with Norman again Tuesday night. "I may go over and step off of it a few more times before I leave just to get my percentage up."
Bush, whose late parents once lived on Jupiter Island, said Wednesday was the first time he returned to the area since 2001, when Norman hosted a fund-raising event for Bush's son, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
"That was when (Jeb) was up for reelection of this state and that touched me and (wife) Barbara very much," Bush said. Bush said he made Norman agree to a "no-laughing rule" when they were on the course Wednesday.
Norman organized Wednesday's event to aid victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami that hit Asia and Africa. The event, known as "Three Friends: One Goal," raised $1.8 million, some from donors who did not play Wednesday.
"This country is the most philanthropic country I've ever seen in the world," Norman said. "From the private sector, it is just phenomenal."
U.S. citizens and corporations have donated more than $1.1 billion for tsunami relief, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. The U.S. government has pledged about $950 million.
Clinton said the donations have earned the United States goodwill in Indonesia. He said a State Department survey he received Tuesday showed Osama bin Laden's popularity had fallen from 58 percent to 23 percent in the country since the tsunami.
"There is now a plurality in Indonesia that believes America should lead the war on terror, the first Muslim country to believe that," Clinton said. "When they were asked why, everyone cited because of the way America responded with tsunami relief. They know we had no ulterior motives. They know all these contributions came on a totally human level."
The event's proceeds will go to two charities with close ties to the presidents: the Stamford, Conn.-based AmeriCares, for which former first lady Barbara Bush is an advisory board chairwoman, and UNICEF, which teamed with the William J. Clinton Foundation to rebuild areas the tsunami hit.
"I give these guys an awful lot of credit, not just for coming out in the rain, but for being here at all," AmeriCares Chief Financial Officer Peter Farnsworth said of the former presidents. He was among those scheduled to golf Wednesday.
Others included Patrick Moynihan, a relative of the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan; Thaddeus Shelly III, a senior managing director for Bessemer Trust Co.; Palm Beach financier Nelson Peltz; Coral Gables attorney Jack Thompson; Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Malley; Hobe Sound businessman Robert Binder; Georgia realty CEO Joe Jillson; Outback Steakhouse CEO Chris Sullivan; Budweiser distributor Fred Dana; and Norman's brother-in-law Richard Andrassy.
Before teeing off, Norman and the ex-presidents fielded questions from the press in a firelighted study.
While other players sipped mimosas and bloody Marys, it was strictly water for Clinton while playing the course, Medalist bartender Patrick Keegan said. Bush opted for Diet Coke and water.
There was some discussion around noon about playing just one hole and handing out the tournament prizes, which included two customized, high-end golf carts. All the participants received gift bags that included $350 sunglasses, a cashmere sweater and a MacGregor golf club.
When it became apparent the rain was not going to let up, one player suggested scratching the golf and playing a round of Texas Hold 'Em poker for $400 a person.
So at about 1 p.m., the former presidents, Norman and about half of the 54 golfers scattered across the course and played about 15 holes. On the driving range, Clinton and Bush took practice swings less than 100 yards from U.S. 1.
Some players joked that Clinton and Bush seemed to be the most determined to play through the storm.
Clinton said he was worried about "some people wussing out" because of the rain.
"The presidents playing through the rain was pretty impressive to me," Moynihan said after the event. "Those guys were troupers."
Clinton downplayed today's operation, saying it is "not a dangerous procedure" and is "no big deal."
Clinton is expected to remain in the hospital for three to 10 days after the operation.
"I've had a very unusual life. If I get struck by lightning on the golf course today, I'd wind up ahead of 99.999 percent of the people who ever lived did. So I'm just grateful for every day."
Staff researchers Melanie Mena, Lelia Boyd Arnheim and Angelica Cortez contributed to this story.
mike_bender@pbpost.com
rachel_harris@pbpost.com
Golfer goodies
Some of what donors received in return for donating $30,000:
- Photo with the two ex-presidents
- $350 Maui Jim sunglasses
- Cashmere sweater
- MacGregor golf club
- Golf balls
- Polo shirts
- Hand towels stamped with event emblem
PRIZES INCLUDED:
-Two new, customized Cub Cadet golf carts, awarded as closest-to-pin prizes on holes 5 and 16.
- Silver platter commemorating event, for winning foursome.
Who paid to play
List of those who paid to play, plus a photo gallery of Wednesday's event.
PalmBeachPost.com

 UNITED STATES (94%); AFRICA (79%);  ASIA (79%)







   


March 9, 2005 Wednesday  




 Strain of Polio From West Africa Stirs Fears in Ethiopia, U.N. Says

 
The resurgent wave of polio making its way across Africa has reached Ethiopia, which is now trying to raise $15 million to stop it, World Health Organization officials said yesterday.
 Ethiopia is one of Africa's most populous countries, with 68 million people, so the danger there is particularly great, the officials said. It had been polio-free since 2002. 
  ''This just blows our planning to helter-skelter,'' said Dr. David L. Heymann, the W.H.O. director general's representative for polio eradication. ''Every time a new country comes on line, we have to blow our budget. It's very frustrating.''
 Genetic testing shows that the virus found there originated in northern Nigeria and appeared in Sudan last year. Polio, which in early 2003 was limited to just three African countries -- Nigeria, Niger and Egypt, has since been found in 11 others, though it is not spreading in all of them. 
 Thought to be on the verge of eradication, the virus recovered in 2004 after officials of three northern Nigerian states stopped vaccinations because of rumors that the vaccine had become contaminated with the AIDS virus, or with pork products or hormones that would render Muslim women infertile.
 After assurances from Muslim doctors and clerics and the purchase of new vaccine from Indonesia, immunizations resumed in those states in October. But by that time Nigerian strains had spread from Guinea on the Atlantic coast to Sudan on the Red Sea. Late last year, two cases were found in Saudi Arabia, just before the peak of the annual pilgrimage that brings two million Muslims to Mecca from all over the world.
 In Ethiopia, two children -- both in Tigre, a state that borders Sudan -- have been paralyzed. Because only about one infected person in 200 shows symptoms, the virus must be much more widespread, experts said.
 Ethiopia's health minister, Dr. Tadesse Kebede, who was in Geneva yesterday to discuss the crisis, told W.H.O. officials that he had been running extra polio campaigns in Tigre because he feared that the virus would reach that area.
 One of the victims, a 2-year-old boy, had previously had four doses of oral polio vaccine; the other, a 1-year-old girl, had received two doses. 
 ''In tropical countries, this is common -- it's not like in our country, where three doses gives solid immunity,'' said Dr. Heymann, who is American. ''If the child has diarrhea, it can just wash the vaccine virus out of the system. And there are other competing viruses that can hook on to the same receptors.''
 In some cases, it can take as many as 10 doses to fully immunize a child.                                  

 AFRICA (97%); ETHIOPIA (97%); NIGERIA (94%); SUDAN (93%); WESTERN AFRICA (92%);  SAUDI ARABIA (79%); GUINEA (79%); EGYPT (79%); NIGER (79%); INDONESIA (79%)






  


March 7, 2005 Monday



 
oWomen's activists in Kuwait hope Cabinet will give them political rights
@BY1:By Diana Elias @BY2:Associated Press @KUWAIT CITY Women activists hope lawmakers will speed up efforts to give them the vote in this conservative Muslim country that was, until recent years, the Gulf's region's sole democracy, saving the exclusion of women from political life.
Prime Minister Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah opened the debate last month with a rare column in the Al-Watan daily newspaper, claiming that it was "high time women get this right and practice it" because they were just as educated as other women in Arab and Muslim countries.
State-owned Kuwait Television then took up the cause, broadcasting footage of women demonstrating against Iraq's 1990 occupation of Kuwait, accompanied by excerpts of Sheik Sabah praising their steadfastness when the war was over.
"Today, the government is showing more seriousness and good will," said Rola Dashti, a U.S.-educated economist at the forefront of the fight for the vote. "It is clear from Sheik Sabah's moves and the national campaign for public awareness." 
Dashti has planned a sit-in today across the street from the all-male Parliament, just hours before it deliberates a proposal by 10 legislators to ask the constitutional court to rule on the 1962 election law restricting political rights to men.
A Cabinet request to speed up the vote on a bill it introduced last year amending that law also is on the agenda.
It will not be the first time the issue has come to a vote for Kuwaiti women.
In 1999, Parliament defeated a decree by the emir to grant women their rights because it was issued when the house was not sitting. Soon afterward, fundamentalist Sunni Muslims and tribal lawmakers defeated a women's rights bill proposed by liberals by a narrow 32-30 margin.
Activists then accused the Cabinet of failing to act, claiming it could have lobbied for more votes if it wanted to.
Political-science teacher Shamlan al-Issa wrote in Sunday's Al-Siyassah daily that the government has to prove its seriousness about women's rights by pressuring tribal lawmakers to vote for the amendment.
Making exceptions for their constituents has to stop, he said.
Fundamentalist lawmaker Daifallah Bou Ramia said he regretted the Cabinet's "adoption" of women's suffrage. He is leading a counter-campaign under the motto "Women Have No Political Rights."
"No matter how strong public campaigns are, people will always stick to their Islamic principles," he told The Associated Press.
He insists there are no political rights for women under Sharia, or Islamic law, and that women cannot assume public posts.
But Kuwait's Islamist political Ummah Party broke ranks with other Islamist groups last month by announcing its support for women's political rights. Ummah, whose name means nation, said it based its decision on religious edicts by modern clerics.
In other Muslim democratic nations, such as Indonesia and Iran, women vote and run for public office.
In Kuwait, women are in the diplomatic corps. They make up about half of the national work force and 63 percent of Kuwaitis with university degrees.
Unlike women in neighboring Saudi Arabia, women in Kuwait can drive and travel abroad without the consent of a male relative.
"Unfortunately, ... authorities need international pressures to move," the deputy speaker of Parliament, Mishari al-Anjari, told a talk show on Kuwait Television. "We have to watch in which direction the world is going," referring to Washington's push for democratizing the Middle East.
Kuwait has been one of the strongest U.S. allies since a U.S.-led international coalition evicted Iraqi forces in the 1991 Gulf War.
"Cheer up, daughters of Kuwait," wrote activist Fatima al-Abdali in Sunday's Al-Qabas daily. "The time for justice has come after four decades of democracy and 14 years since liberation."

 KUWAIT (95%);  




18


  



March 7, 2005 Monday  




 Unveiling Islam: Author Challenges Orthodox Precepts; 
Aging Egyptian Says Religion Allows 'Freedom of Thought and Evolution'

 
The Islamic state? A contradiction in terms. 
 Jihad? Far too much emphasis these days on military action. 
 A requirement that women wear a veil? A quaint leftover from pre-Muslim times that is not mandated by Islam. 
 These and other observations by Gamal Banna, an 84-year-old Egyptian author, have created a stir in Egypt recently. They are indicative of the ferment within Islam at large, and of the increasingly passionate discussion of political and religious issues in Egypt, the Middle East's most populous country.  
  Controversy surrounds Banna's books because they challenge some Islamic orthodoxy and the roots of Muslim teaching. His work is also a curiosity because of his family connections. He is the younger brother of Hassan Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the prototype of radical Islamic groups throughout the Middle East. The Brotherhood is associated with rigorously pious practices, with an intense role for Islam in politics and with violence.  
 Criticism of Gamal Banna reached a peak last fall when Egypt's main guardian of Islamic orthodoxy, the Islamic Research Council of Al-Azhar University, recommended a ban on one of his books. The council's critique centered in part on the accusation that Banna was an unqualified amateur who exploited his brother's notoriety. 
 "Let them say what they will, but reply to what I am saying or writing," Banna said in an interview. "Islam allows for freedom of thought and evolution. Reform requires an open mind." 
 In the West -- where general attention to Islam among non-Muslims seldom extends beyond the threat of terrorism and the pronouncements of Osama bin Laden and his followers -- it is common to hear that Islam has no new ideas and has been unable to adapt to the modern world. Yet for decades, Islamic scholars have challenged the notion that Islam is opposed to everything Western and that only radical and violent solutions can bring change to Egypt, the Middle East and Islam itself. Today, Banna says, the perception of a cultural war between the West and Muslims has brought life to the promoters of new Islamic thinking. 
 "We are living in a world where the gun is battling ideas. Change is the greatest priority," he said. 
 Various articles on new ideas in Islam have been published recently  in the Egyptian press. In one, Yusuf Qaradawi, regarded as one of Islam's most influential scholars, contested the notion that Islam and Judaism are inherently at odds. Another advised Islamic activists in Egypt to tolerate criticism. Al-Ahram, the government-run newspaper, used quotations from a book written by another prominent Islamic scholar, Mohammed Ghazaly, to urge young Muslims to study science, thereby keeping up with modern life.  
 The book by Banna that spurred the Islamic Research Council to action is called "The Responsibility for the Failure of the Islamic State." The council declared that it diverged from "the consensus of religious scholars." The police brought it to the attention of the state-run Al-Azhar University after a complaint from a reader who objected to passages that claim Muslim women in non-Muslim societies can wear hats to fulfill requirements that they cover their heads. 
 The Islamic Research Council blacklisted the book because it said the author justified "temporary marriages" for Muslim expatriates in non-Islamic countries. The practice, which involves a temporary marriage contract and permits a couple to have sex without breaking Islamic law, is allowed in the Shiite branch of Islam but not the Sunni branch to which Banna belongs.  
 In another book, "The Veil," Banna argued that head coverings were simply a continuation of tribal traditions that existed before the birth of Islam 1,400 years ago and were not mandated by the Koran.  
 Banna's reference to Koranic verses underscores the foundation of his approach to Islamic reform. He believes that much of the commentary attributed to the prophet Muhammad, which became the basis for Islamic teaching, known collectively as the Sunnah, was invented and even falsified in the earliest centuries of Islam by self-styled jurists. The jurists served the caliphs who ruled in the Middle East and were interested in maintaining the status quo. These teachings stray from the Koran, Banna asserts.  
 One such teaching ordered death for apostates. "It was done at the service of the imperial state. The teachings are products of their time," Banna said  amid the dust and clutter of his library in a musty building in central Cairo. The 16,000 books in his library, most of them in Arabic, are neatly labeled with white tags.  
 "We can now create our own rules, based on the Koran," Banna said. "Some rules have no reason to survive as history evolves. This is an old story in all religions." 
  Armed with his notion of a dynamic Islam, he assaults some of the most widely promoted current fashions. He speaks in a curiously lighthearted tone, considering the seriousness of the criticism he is facing.  
 The notion of an Islamic state, Banna contends with a laugh, contradicts the foundation of Islam as a community of believers. The use of old Islamic teaching to justify the rule of kings and dictators has made Muslims submissive as well as exclusionary toward women, he added.  
 The recent focus on jihad as a justification for violent means of change also departs from the emphasis in the Koran on jihad as a moral struggle, Banna asserts. In that vein, bin Laden is using the concept "to give a religious covering to a political struggle." 
 Banna's critics are especially rankled by his notion that some of the post-Koranic attributions of statements to the prophet Muhammad are invalid.  
 "Banna's culture and education do not qualify him to understand the Koran and the Sunnah in a scientific way," said Abdul-Moti Bayoumi, a member of the Islamic Research Council. "He is not an Islamic thinker. Islamic scholars have long distinguished what is true and false in the Sunnah. I had memorized the Koran by the time I was 9 years old." 
 Despite the criticism, Banna's 30 books have caught the eye of observers around the world. A self-styled liberal Islamic Web site in Indonesia noted that Banna battles the idea  that Islam is "political and power-oriented." Some rivals cite his recent meeting in Cairo with former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright as evidence that his ideas are more attractive to Westerners than to Egyptians. 
 "He makes Westerners feel good," said Fahmy Howeidy, a commentator for Al-Ahram. 
 Banna acknowledges that, formally, he is not an Islamic scholar. "Unfortunately, I did not memorize the Koran," he said. "But I have read, and am serious about what I do. The point of freedom is not to let important subjects be monopolized by the few." 
 Banna is 13 years younger than his brother and spent much of his early adulthood in labor union activity, not Islamic studies. His first book, published in 1945, was on social welfare. President Gamal Abdel Nasser banned his 1952 book "Rationalization of Renaissance" because it labeled Nasser's takeover of Egypt as a coup. 
 Banna eventually drifted into state-controlled labor union activity and was a professor at a labor institute.  
 He insisted that despite efforts to contrast him with Hassan, his brother's thinking would have evolved over time. "He wrote 50 years ago. He would agree with me now, if he had lived," he said. Hassan Banna, who had founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, was killed by Egyptian secret police in 1949 in retaliation for the Brotherhood's assassination of Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmi Nuqrashi. 
 Gamal Banna says he is unafraid of the hot political climate within Islam and threats that his ideas and critiques of the violent extremes might attract. "Remember, to be a martyr is good," he said with a smile. "Anyway, I am so old, death is not far off." 

 EGYPT (99%); MIDDLE EAST (93%)







   


March 6, 2005 Sunday  




 And Now, the Other News

 

AL-JAZEERA
The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is
Challenging the West.
By Hugh Miles.
438 pp. Grove Press. $24.
  In one sense the story of Al Jazeera began in 1995, when Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani overthrew his father and became the emir of Qatar, a tiny Persian Gulf state that sits on one trillion cubic feet of natural gas. As Hugh Miles puts it in ''Al-Jazeera,'' his fascinating account of the world's most notorious television station, the new emir wanted Qatar to be like Switzerland, ''rich, neutral and secure.'' A television channel was part of the plan.
 The emir was helped by the failure of another experiment: in 1994 the BBC had agreed with a Saudi-financed station to supply a news service in Arabic; the partnership collapsed in 1996 over Saudi objections to the content. It left 250 BBC-trained journalists and auxiliary staff members out of a job; 120 of the newly unemployed signed on with the emir of Qatar and Al Jazeera was born.
 Today Al Jazeera is the bete noire of the Bush administration. Back then, it was a beacon of light in an Arab media world that was dark indeed. The station's bold reporting and provocative talk shows outraged repressive governments across the region. The State Department Human Rights Report on Qatar in 2000 commented favorably on Al Jazeera's willingness to carry criticism of Qatar's own government. 
 There was a long list of offended powers: Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority; the Jordanian government, which closed the Amman bureau and recalled its ambassador from Doha; the Algerian, the Moroccan, the Kuwaiti and the Israeli governments, all separately offended. The Saudi government to this day operates a crippling advertising ban against the station; a Saudi sheik started the independent, Dubai-based satellite news channel Al Arabiya in 2003 as an alternative. Al Jazeera shocked the Arab world by putting Israelis on the air, something no Arab station had done before. In Egypt, a Jazeera correspondent was denounced as an agent of Mossad and of British interests, and by 2002 Al Jazeera had had bureaus closed in six countries and had accumulated 400 official letters of complaint. In short, Al Jazeera was a welcome force in a region where governments were accustomed to think of their press as little more than dictating machines for government propaganda. Even today, of the hundreds of channels the average Arab citizen with a $100 satellite setup can tune in to, most are official government outlets.
 The story of the troubled relationship between Al Jazeera and the Bush administration makes up much of Hugh Miles's narrative. Miles is a young, Arabic-speaking British journalist, the son of a diplomat, who has spent much of his life in the Middle East. His account is both detailed and compelling, though his undisguised sympathy for Al Jazeera will doubtless annoy some readers. According to Miles, the tensions with the United States began with the war in Afghanistan when Al Jazeera, with its bureau in Kabul and its cultivated contacts with bin Laden, was well placed to monopolize coverage and to receive the exclusive bin Laden tapes. 
 Back in the United States, Condoleezza Rice was asking American networks to censor the Qaeda material they bought from Al Jazeera on the grounds that bin Laden's utterances might contain hidden messages. (Why any Qaeda operative wouldn't read the full text on the Internet or watch Al Jazeera was not clear.) The networks complied. But when Colin Powell asked the emir of Qatar to influence Al Jazeera to tone down its reporting, the emir declined. ''Parliamentary life requires you have free and credible media,'' he said, ''and that is what we are trying to do.'' The exchange played poorly for the United States in a region often criticized for its democratic failings.
 As well as putting bin Laden on the air, Al Jazeera reported from the receiving end of the Afghan war: the civilian casualties, the houses and lives destroyed. Finally, as the Northern Alliance forces advanced, the Jazeera offices in Kabul were obliterated by an American 500-pound bomb. After initial denials, a Pentagon spokesman admitted that Al Jazeera had been targeted as an alleged locus of Qaeda activity. General Tommy Franks said that a bin Laden deputy, Muhammad Atef, was among the casualties in the attack. (He was killed again a few weeks later, in a completely separate incident.)
 When the war in Iraq came, Al Jazeera was again well placed: its widely distributed correspondents all spoke Arabic and the station adopted a stance of skepticism toward all sides. It is a position that is unacceptable only if you assume that one side in a war has a monopoly on truth. Miles, who spent several weeks during the invasion of Iraq watching Al Jazeera on behalf of Sky News, argues that Al Jazeera favored neither side. ''Like most Arabs,'' he writes, ''it opposed Saddam's regime and opposed the invasion.''
 Washington has spent millions of dollars on Madison Avenue-style public diplomacy in the Middle East, selling the United States as though, as one former American ambassador put it, ''we were a brand of toothpaste.'' It has been a failure. The problem, Miles argues cogently, is not one of public relations but of policy. Rami Khouri, executive editor of The Daily Star of Beirut, agrees. Promoting American values, he observed, might merely highlight the gap between those values and the nation's policy in the Middle East.
 Shutting the station down will do nothing to change this. Today Al Jazeera commands an audience of some 40 million and, Miles argues, has ''reversed the flow of information, so that now, for the first time in hundreds of years, it passes from east to west.'' If in some Arab countries Al Jazeera is now seen as an American device for sowing dissent, it is still the biggest game in the Arab hearts-and-minds business and with a projected English language station, will extend its reach into non-Arabic-speaking Muslim countries like Pakistan and Indonesia. Washington, meanwhile, has so stepped up pressure on its ally Qatar that the Qatari government is said to be accelerating plans to put Al Jazeera, which runs at a loss, on the market. The station says it keeps its door open to views and news from all quarters. The democratic response would be to go through that door and join in the argument.


 QATAR (95%); SAUDI ARABIA (94%);  ISRAEL (92%); GULF STATES (92%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); JORDAN (79%);  MIDDLE EAST (79%); UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (79%); EGYPT (79%);  KUWAIT (79%)







 



March 4, 2005 Friday  
 



 FURY OVER BALI WRIST SLAP

 
FAMILY MEMBERS of seven Americans killed in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing were outraged yesterday that a Muslim cleric convicted in the "evil conspiracy" got just 2 1/2 years in jail
"It's highly unfair that people are able to do something like that and not have to pay for it," said Karen Webster, 69, of Pittsfield, Ill., who lost her son, Steven, 41.
The light sentence from an Indonesian court means firebrand Muslim leader Abu Bakar Bashir could be out of prison by October 2006 because of time already served. 
"They can turn around and do it again," Webster told the Daily News.
The cleric was convicted of giving his blessing for the terror attack that killed 202 people from 21 countries.
But the court said there was no evidence Bashir, 66, the reputed leader of the Al Qaeda-linked militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, actually participated.
The court also cleared him of a more serious charge of plotting a 2003 suicide bombing of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people.
George Milligan, 63, of Orlando, who lost his 23-year-old son, Joe, was perplexed by the sentence.
"Either somebody is guilty or innocent. And if they are guilty, only 2 1/2 years is a travesty," he said.
"Anyone who I would think of as being guilty should be punished. I'm not sure that's a punishment."
Bashir faced a maximum penalty of death if convicted of the Marriott bombing, but legal experts said prosecutors were undermined by flimsy evidence and reluctant witnesses.
During the five-month trial, only one witness directly testified that Bashir was the head of Jemaah Islamiyah.
"Nothing they do will bring my son back," said Webster, who described her son as a loving husband and father of two. "It's a very unfortunate decision I think they've made."
Officials from the U.S. and Australia, which lost 88 citizens in the attack, also criticized yesterday's sentence.
The five other Americans killed in the blast were Karri Casner, 23, of Flower Mound, Tex.; Megan Heffernan, 28, of Eagle River, Alaska; Robert McCormick, 30, of Port Canaveral, Fla.; Deborah Snodgrass, 33, of Phoenix, and Jake Young, 34, of Midland, Tex.pshin@nydailynews.com

 UNITED STATES (94%);  AUSTRALIA (75%)







  



March 4, 2005 Friday  




 Indonesian Cleric Again Acquitted on Key Charges; 
Bali Conspiracy Yields 30-Month Term

 
 The acquittal Thursday of the radical cleric Abubakar Baasyir on the most serious terrorism charges against him represented the second major setback for officials seeking his conviction as the alleged spiritual leader of an underground organization linked to al Qaeda. 
 An Indonesian court sentenced Baasyir, 66, to 21/2 years in prison for conspiracy in connection with the 2002 bombings of two Bali nightclubs.  
 But the five-judge panel ruled that prosecutors had failed to prove that the white-bearded preacher ordered the Bali attacks, which killed 202 people, or had been involved in the bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta a year later, which left 12 people dead.   
  "Neither the defense witnesses nor the prosecutors' witnesses said the defendant has planned or provoked other people to commit the bombings," said Judge Mahmud Rochimi, reading the verdict.  
 The judges noted that Baasyir was in jail at the time of the Marriott attack, awaiting an earlier trial in which the court rejected allegations that Baasyir was the head of Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant Muslim organization.  
 U.S. officials said they respected the independence of the Indonesian judicial system and noted that the case was still subject to appeal. 
 "Nonetheless . . . we are disappointed with the results of this trial," said Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman. "During the trial, the prosecutors presented substantial evidence, which we found convincing, of Baasyir's involvement in terrorism." 
 In convicting Baasyir on the lesser charge, the judges said he had approved plans to attack the nightclubs in the heart of Bali's entertainment strip. The judges cited a 2002 meeting in the Javanese city of Solo at which two activists, later convicted of involvement in the bombings, allegedly asked Baasyir for his opinion before the attack and he responded that they should do what they thought best. 
   Baasyir could have faced the death penalty if convicted on the most serious counts. But acknowledging the weakness of their case, prosecutors in recent weeks had asked for only an eight-year sentence. 
  Baasyir, who will be credited with jail time served since his arrest, is now due to be released by the end of next year. Still, he and his supporters responded bitterly to the ruling. 
  "I refuse this sentence," he told the judges. "It's unjust and an act of repression. With God's permission, I will appeal." 
  The case has taken on a special significance. After international intelligence agencies named Baasyir as the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah three years ago, the United States and other nations singled him out, demanding his arrest and vigorous prosecution. But because of his respected position in Indonesian society as an Islamic preacher and educator, many prominent Muslims have rallied to his defense, including some otherwise considered politically moderate. 
  Baasyir has tapped into widespread distrust of U.S. motives by repeatedly blaming his prosecution on pressure from Washington. Before entering the courtroom, he again told reporters that the United States was behind the trial. 
  "People who do not see the role of America, their hearts are dead," he said. 
  During the proceedings, hundreds of young supporters staged rallies outside the  auditorium of the Agriculture Ministry, where the trial was held because of the anticipated crowds and the need for heightened security. 
 Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington and special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report. 

 INDONESIA (96%); UNITED STATES (93%)







   


March 3, 2005 Thursday  




 A Force for Good

 
AS the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln returned home to San Diego this week from its relief mission in Indonesia, the main lesson of the United States military's remarkable tsunami relief effort has yet to be acknowledged: that the global war on terrorism, rather than distracting the military from performing humanitarian deeds, has made it far more effective at them. This is worth bearing in mind, especially now that President Bush's request for $82 billion in emergency military spending has re-opened the argument over Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's longstanding plan for remaking the armed forces as a leaner, more flexible military machine. 
  The fact is, the Navy of the 1990's could not have responded nearly as quickly and efficiently to the tsunami as did the post-9/11 one. This is largely because of structural changes made to fight the war on terrorism. 
  A decade ago, our carrier battle groups mainly did planned, six-month-long ''pulse'' deployments. Since 9/11, the Navy has put increasing emphasis on emergency ''surge'' deployments, in which carriers, cruisers and destroyers have to be ready to go anywhere, anytime, to deal with a security threat. The new strategy explains why, in late December, the Abraham Lincoln strike force was able to so quickly leave Hong Kong for Indonesia at a best speed of 27 knots.  
 In recent years the Navy has also instituted what it calls sea-swaps, in which crews are rotated in the middle of a deployment, without the battle group having to return to port. This allows the ships to remain on call in unstable areas of the globe while giving the initial crews a rest. 
 For example, the Benfold, a guided missile destroyer on which I have been embedded for four weeks -- and which played a substantial role in tsunami relief -- is now being maintained by a crew from another destroyer, the Higgins, as part of a sea-swap. Although the Benfold had intended to go to the Korean Peninsula before the tsunami hit, its navigators had sailing charts of Indonesia on hand because, as they explained to me, the war on terrorism necessitates a flexible, expeditionary mentality.
 Sept. 11 has also encouraged America's blue water (oceanic) Navy to become more of a green water, street-fighting force, adept at littoral operations, whether that means infiltrating coastal terrorist hideouts or providing onshore assistance to disaster victims. While fighting terrorism has sharpened the Navy's skill at disaster relief, the humanitarian work in the Indian Ocean, it is now clear, has provided a major victory in both the war on terrorism and the more low-key effort of managing China's re-emergence as a great power. Not only did the Abraham Lincoln strike group show Muslim Indonesians that America is their friend, it also proved how helpful our sailors can be compared to the Chinese Navy, which floundered in its relief efforts. Clearly, by doing good, we have done well.
 What holds true for the Navy also applies to the Marines, our seaborne land-fighting force. When the tsunami hit in December, the Third Marine Expeditionary Force, based on Okinawa, had just finished providing disaster assistance in the typhoon-wracked Philippines. Nonetheless, these marines quickly set off for Indonesia, bringing food, forklifts and desalinization equipment ashore with the same spirited aggressiveness that their fellow grunts have been demonstrating with assault rifles in Iraq.
 There is no contradiction in this. Indeed, dealing with typhoons, tsunamis and guerrilla insurgencies all at the same time has brought the marines back to their roots as unconventional warriors. The ''Small Wars Manual,'' the sacred text of the corps, is the product of the lessons learned in amphibious landings in the Caribbean, Central America and the Far East in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its focus is describing all the ways you can dominate the enemy with -- but preferably without -- firing a shot.
 The official Marine motto may be ''Semper fidelis,'' but the unofficial one is ''Semper Gumby'': ''always flexible.'' The marine fighting in Falluja is interchangeable with the marine providing help in Sumatra. For the logistics of humanitarian assistance are similar to the logistics of war: both demand fast infiltration and the movement of equipment and supplies to a zone of activity.
 For example, in humanitarian emergencies, often the greatest need is for fresh potable water, which nuclear-powered aircraft carriers can produce by reprocessing hundreds of thousands of gallons of seawater. Of course, the idea that our carriers will roam the world exclusively handling emergencies is naive. That is not why they were built. But our more aggressive carrier strike groups are more likely to be in the vicinity of humanitarian disasters when they happen.
 Not surprisingly, our troops put great store in being Good Samaritans. During the tsunami effort, I could see that this was particularly true of the helicopter pilots; because of their ability to land in tight spaces, they had a rare opportunity to outshine the fighter pilots of the carrier group. Yet their esprit de corps as units ultimately derives from shedding blood in the defense of American interests. Without such battles as Midway, the Philippine Sea, and Leyte Gulf, the Navy would not have the sense of mission that it does; just as the Marine Corps would not be the asset that it has been -- both in Iraq and Indonesia -- without the memories of Guadalcanal, Okinawa and Hue.
 Liberal democratic societies have commonly been defended by conservative military establishments, whose members often lack the sensitivities and social graces of the elites whom they protect. As much as the military wants to help the downtrodden, it is not the Peace Corps. To wit, I have spent many months embedded with marines in Iraq, the Horn of Africa and West Africa, watching them fight, rebuild schools, operate medical clinics and mentor soldiers of fledgling democracies. I've learned that marines swear all the time out of habit, and love to be in on a fight, or otherwise they would not have joined the Marine Corps. 
 Yet those same swearing marines are capable of a self-discipline and humanitarian compassion -- drawn, often, from an absolute belief in the Almighty -- that would stun the average civilian. In Iraq, there was nothing more natural for marines (and soldiers, too) than to go from close-quarters urban combat to providing food and medicine, and back again. 
 A prime example of this outlook is Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, who was reprimanded last month for saying at a conference in San Diego that he finds it ''fun'' to kill people like the Taliban. Yet I stood next to General Mattis at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- several weeks before the abuse scandal broke -- as he spoke in the same roughhewn manner, this time warning Marine grunts against even the appearance of mistreating prisoners. I have also seen him at Camp Pendleton in California pleading at length with his troops to try to bond with the Iraqi people -- to always look them in the eye -- as a way of winning their respect. 
 Of course, this does not excuse his remarks on killing. But it does demonstrate why General Mattis has for a long time been particularly revered by young grunts: whatever he does -- saving lives, taking them -- is done to the nth degree.
 America has not had a true citizen army for decades. Instead, it has an expeditionary military of professional warriors, drawn mainly from the working classes, who enjoy the soldiering life for its own sake. For them, combat and humanitarian relief are easily interchangeable, and efforts to reshape the military for the war on terrorism are vital to both functions. The troops are comfortable with their dual role; it is our job to supply them with what they need to do it best.


 UNITED STATES (94%);  NORTHERN ASIA (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); CHINA (79%); HONG KONG (79%); ASIA (79%)






   

 

March 2, 2005 Wednesday 



 Ancient rite or a wrong?;
Genital cutting of girls becomes an issue in Georgia, nationwide

 
In downtown Atlanta recently, a mother brushed away tears while her daughter begged an immigration judge not to send her back to Kenya. The young woman's uncles had vowed to cut her genitals in an ancient rite, both women said.
Less than a mile away, another mother begged Georgia legislators to outlaw what is known as female genital mutilation. Please spare children from being maimed as her young daughter had been, she asked.
And around a dining room table in Midtown, a critically acclaimed filmmaker from Somalia recently listened as four women and an 8-year-old girl read the script for her next film. It's her own story of the life-changing day when, at age 13, her sexual organs were cut off and sewn shut. 
"I'm still healing," says Soraya Mire, 43. "It's not like I'm done."
From Atlanta courtrooms to the Georgia Capitol, female genital cutting represents a wave of issues Georgians face as the state becomes home to a growing number of immigrants. The sensitive subject engenders cultural and religious debates involving female sexuality and the most intimate details about a woman's body.
It's an issue that Georgia officials, more used to debating school funding or road projects, don't especially want to talk about. But it is one they likely will hear more of.  No one knows how many sexually mutilated women and girls live in Atlanta and the United States. It is a hidden, private matter, often called "female circumcision," although in some forms it is more akin to castration.
Worldwide, an estimated 2 million girls a year have their genitals cut, ranging from removal of the skin around the clitoris --- the female organ corresponding to the penis --- to the total cutting away of the clitoris and vaginal lips and the stitching together of the external genitalia in a procedure called infibulation.
Most of the affected girls are from Africa, where the practice remains widespread in 28 countries. But it is also found in some Middle Eastern countries, such as Israel, and in some Muslim groups in Indonesia, Pakistan and India.
Various sects of Christians, Jews and Muslims have at times embraced the custom. Today, some Muslim religious leaders continue to support the practice, saying it honors Muslim women. Others condemn it, arguing that it has no religious foundation.
"It's not the religion telling them to do this, it's custom," says Imam Plemon El-Amin, leader of one of Atlanta's largest mosques. "I see nothing within the Quran or within the practices of Prophet Muhammad whatsoever that supports female circumcision."
Importing the practice
Despite growing international opposition, immigrants are bringing the entrenched custom to Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States. In this country alone, an estimated 168,000 girls and women have undergone the procedure or are still at risk, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number is growing as the number of immigrants from practicing countries grows.
"Yes, it is in the community," says Laila Mohamed, who until last month was a caseworker for Refugee Family Services in Clarkston, where she worked with women from Somalia, Ethiopia and other African countries. "Most of the women still are believing in this tradition."
The millennium-old practice has been performed for a variety of reasons: to stem female sexual desire, preserve virginity or rid the body of the clitoris, believed by some to be an unhealthy organ. The cutting remains a prerequisite for marriage in many cultures.
Mohamed, who grew up in Sudan, where infibulation is common, was herself cut. Today she considers female genital mutilation a form of domestic violence and is among those who want it outlawed in Georgia.
"It's emotional abuse, sexual abuse, child abuse," she says. "They are killing their sexual senses so the girl will stay virgin until married. Why God give us this thing? We're born with it because this gives us sense. When we try to stop that in the women, that means we are killing the women."
Despite urging women to abandon the custom, Mohamed says, many plan to take their daughters back to their homelands to have the procedure done.
Typically girls are 4 to 12 years old when they are cut, often by laypeople, largely women, who frequently use unsterilized instruments and no anesthesia. The painful procedure can cause infection, bleeding and even death. Long-term physical and psychological effects can include complications in childbirth, chronic pelvic pain, scar tissue and retention of urine and menstrual blood.
In Atlanta, obstetricians and gynecologists are often the first to see the debilitating effects.
"Some patients will complain about difficulty in having intercourse," says Dr. Gulzar Kassam, who practices at Emory Crawford Long Hospital and DeKalb Medical Center, where she estimates that half her Somali and Ethiopian patients have been cut. "You see a range of deformities that can occur. Some are minor. Then there are the severe forms where almost everything has been excised and so scarred. The opening is so small."
For nearly 20 years, Dr. M. Dawud Jeffries of Southside OB-GYN Associates in Atlanta has been helping a growing number of young married Somali and West and North African women by cutting open their scarred vaginal tissue so they can engage in sex without pain.
"When I first started practicing in 1986, there were very few people with knowledge about this," Jeffries says. Even now, many doctors aren't sure what to do with a woman who has been mutilated --- a term that some find offensive but is scientifically accurate when used to describe the removal of healthy tissue for no medical benefit.
Word has spread in immigrant communities that Jeffries can help with complications. But one woman recently asked if he would also "circumcise" her daughter.
"I don't know where she got her information," he says. "I said that's not something I do."
Even pediatricians have seen the effects. "I have had patients who have had it done already --- older children," says Dr. Lynette Wilson-Phillips of the Decatur Pediatric Group in Clarkston, where a large number of African immigrants live. But no one has asked her to perform it, she says.
"Immigrant communities in the U.S. are quite savvy about people's attitudes about the practice," says Kathryn Yount, assistant professor of global health at Emory University. "It's possible they've been successful in driving the practice underground."
Asking for asylum
Worldwide attention to the dangerous health consequences has led some countries to ban the practice, including Ghana and Senegal. But attitudes remain fixed, and many women continue to support the custom for themselves, their daughters and their granddaughters.
The fear of immigrants importing the practice has led a number of Western countries to make it illegal, including the United States, which outlawed it in 1996. But critics say this country hasn't done enough to protect immigrant women and girls. The U.S. Justice Department has yet to approve 4-year-old proposed regulations that would spell out when to grant asylum to women trying to escape gender-related violence, including mutilation.
"There's a mix throughout the country in deciding these cases," says Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of Law. "There has been a lack of clarity."
No one in the federal government tracks how many asylum requests are based on a woman's fear of being genitally mutilated. But Musalo's center has done its best to keep tabs on them, and in six years, there have been at least 372 requests involving female genital cutting. The center, however, knows only of cases that lawyers have brought to its attention.
After the mother and daughter from Kenya testified recently in Atlanta, the daughter's attorney advised her to withdraw her request for asylum and agree to voluntary departure. The women's testimony had conflicted, and the lawyer was afraid she would be deported for fraud.
The mother later said she had been nervous before the U.S. judge and didn't know what she was saying. But she was clear about one thing: If her daughter returned to Kenya, she would be genitally mutilated by her uncles, who want to marry her off to members of the Mungiki sect and collect her dowry.
"What I know is we cannot go home," the mother said.
The daughter was granted voluntary departure, but she and her mother don't know what to do now.
Georgia law sought
As cases bubble up around the country, a growing number of states are enacting laws to impress upon immigrants that, at least here, the practice will be treated as a crime. So far, 16 states have passed such laws. Georgia is not among them. But that seems poised to change.
A bill before the state Senate would make any form of female genital mutilation a crime punishable by five to 20 years in prison. A similar measure was derailed last year when then-Rep. Bill Heath (R-Bremen) attached an amendment to also outlaw voluntary piercing of female genitalia for cosmetic reasons --- a practice Heath called not "appropriate."
This year, to avoid similar opposition, Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D-Decatur) has rewritten the measure, House Bill 10, to apply only to children under 18. In Georgia and around the world, female genital mutilation is increasingly framed as a children's rights issue.
"This crime is an unusual crime, but it is happening in Georgia," Oliver recently told a committee of legislators. The House unanimously passed her bill three weeks ago.
Throughout the process, Fortunate Adem, whose family emigrated from South Africa when she was 6, has been at Oliver's side. "I'm concerned that the U.S. allows immigrants and refugees to come into the country knowing they're going to bring their culture with them," says Adem, 32. "What makes the government think they're going to leave their culture behind?"
In August 2003, a DeKalb County Superior Court judge ruled that there was a preponderance of evidence Adem's then-husband, Khalid Adem, had mutilated their 2-year-old daughter, Amirah, in keeping with the tradition of his native Ethiopia. At the request of domestic violence advocates, Oliver represented Fortunate Adem in the custody hearing.
Adem testified that when she once warned her husband against cutting their child, he had hinted it was too late. A pediatrician later confirmed that the child's clitoris had been cut.
The court found in the civil action that it was more likely the father had done the cutting than the mother and awarded full custody to her. In his order, the judge wrote that, while there was no record of mutilation being practiced in South Africa, expert witnesses had testified that "up to 90 percent of Ethiopian women are so victimized" --- Khalid Adem's mother and aunt among them.
'Ultimate child abuse'
Last March, in one of the first such cases in the country, Gwinnett County brought criminal charges of aggravated battery and cruelty to children against Khalid Adem. Gwinnett District Attorney Danny Porter says he intends to prosecute him on those charges, but he would prefer to have a law that specifically makes the practice a crime.
"Clearly, a black-and-white statute that says we don't care what you do in your country, it's illegal here, would make it easier," Porter says.
Adem, who is out on bond, denies that he cut his daughter, and he voluntarily took and passed a lie detector test to that effect. "Our defense is not that it's a cultural thing," says his lawyer, W. Mark Hill. "It's simply that he didn't do it."
Fortunate Adem is impatient to see her former husband prosecuted. "The point is you have a child here whose genitals have been mutilated," she says. "Somebody's responsible." It angers her that some would defend the maiming of girls' genitalia as a cultural practice better left alone.
"Her whole life has been changed," the mother says. "She is going to be traumatized psychologically. Parts of her body have been taken away from her without her consent. They need to look at this child the same way they would if she had been raped."
Her daughter's experience has given her a new mission: to persuade immigrants to put an end to the centuries-old practice. "Sometimes it takes a tragedy to become passionate about a cause," she says.
Others share her passion. In 1994, "Fire Eyes," Soraya Mire's documentary about female genital mutilation, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
After a desperate call for help from Fortunate Adem, the filmmaker flew here from her home in Los Angeles. She has since moved to Atlanta and is working on a film based on her own heart-rending experience of being infibulated when she was 13.
Mire understands the struggle ahead for Adem's little girl. At 43, Mire still suffers from the physical and psychological trauma.
But she is further along in her journey, and she has channeled her pain into her life's work of eradicating the genital cutting of girls.
"It is the ultimate child abuse, because you're taking a child's integrity, her humanity, her womanhood," Mire says. "My whole mission in life is to help a child in pain. I just want a child to go to sleep safe at night."
COUNTRIES THAT PRACTICE FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION
Estimated percentage of girls and women who undergo genital mutilation in Africa.
SENEGAL........20%
SIERRA LEONE...80-90%
LIBERIA........50-60%
GHANA..........15-30%
NIGERIA........50%
CAMEROON.......20%
EGYPT..........97%
ETHIOPIA.......90%
KENYA..........50%
SOMALIA........98%
UGANDA..........5%
ERITREA........90%
TANZANIA.......10%
SUDAN..........89%*
*Northern Sudanese women
100-140 million: Number of women and girls who have undergone genital mutilation.
2 million: Number at risk each year.
Map of Africa is color-coded to indicate countries with immigrants in Georgia.
Sources: World Health Organization, Amnesty International
/ ELIZABETH LANDT / Staff
NATIVE AFRICANS LIVING IN GEORGIA
(Year 2000)
...............Number of
Country.......immigrants
Africa*.........6,856
Algeria...........101
Cameroon........1,106
Egypt...........1,652
Eritrea.........1,240
Ethiopia........5,521
Ghana...........3,017
Kenya...........2,406
Liberia.........2,291
Morocco...........825
Nigeria.........9,852
Senegal...........533
Sierra Leone....1,190
Somalia.........3,668
South Africa....2,686
Sudan.............324
Tanzania..........458
Uganda............232
Zimbabwe..........669
* No specific African country given
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, staff research
/ ELIZABETH LANDT / Staff

 UNITED STATES (94%); AFRICA (93%); SOMALIA (93%); KENYA (90%); SUDAN (90%); AUSTRALIA (79%); CANADA (79%); EGYPT (79%); ERITREA (79%); ETHIOPIA (79%);  INDIA (79%); EUROPE (79%); ISRAEL (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); NORTH AMERICA (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); 






    
  


February 28, 2005, Monday



 INDONESIA FACES RADICAL ISLAM

  MIDDLE EAST (90%); EGYPT (90%); ASIA (89%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); CENTRAL ASIA (70%); EUROPE (70%); 







   


February 27, 2005 Sunday  




 U.S. to Resume Training Of Some in Indonesia Military

 
The United States, eager to build up its alliances in Southeast Asia, has decided to resume training members of the Indonesian armed forces suspended since 1992, the State Department announced Saturday. 
 ''Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has determined that Indonesia has satisfied legislative conditions for restarting its full International Military Education and Training program,'' the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said in a statement. 
 Indonesia's participation in the program has been essentially on hold since 1992, when the Indonesian military began a crackdown against pro-independence protesters in East Timor.  
 The sanctions were further tightened in 1999, after the Indonesian Army was accused of killing about 1,500 people in East Timor in an unsuccessful bid to prevent the territory from gaining independence.
 The ban was effectively written into law by Congress in 2002, when lawmakers charged that generals in Jakarta were blocking an investigation into the killing of two school teachers in Papua Province. 
 But Indonesian officials have since taken steps to improve cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and brought murder and illegal firearms charges against Anthonius Wamang, a member of a Papuan separatist group, American officials say. 
 Moreover, the administration of President George W. Bush has repeatedly emphasized the importance of broadening post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism cooperation with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. 
 Mr. Boucher said Ms. Rice had concluded that the Indonesians were determined to continue their cooperation with the F.B.I. in the case of the slain Americans ''and thus have fulfilled the requirements articulated in the legislation to allow for resumption'' of the training program.
 ''The department expects that Indonesia's resumption of full international military education and training will strengthen its ongoing democratic progress and advance cooperation in other areas of mutual concern,'' the spokesman said.
 There was no immediate word on where Indonesian military personnel will be trained and what kind of courses will be offered to them. 
 But the decision caps a quiet lobbying campaign by top Pentagon officials led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who has openly advocated the view that Congressional restrictions on military-to-military contacts with countries like Indonesia and Pakistan were hurting American interests more than helping them. 
 Mr. Wolfowitz has cited the case of newly elected Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whom he described as ''a democratic reformer'' and one of the last military officers trained in the United States.                                                                     

  INDONESIA (95%); TIMOR-LESTE (92%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); ASIA (92%); PAKISTAN (79%)







 
 


February 23, 2005 Wednesday



 Making Asia's Culture America's Business

 
Asia contains more than half the human race and a hefty chunk of the world's real estate. But only lately is America's view of Asia turning from apathy to fascination. There is now the feeling of a resurgent power that isn't yet, but soon will be, a major influence across the globe.
For those interested in learning about it - particularly New York's business community - the Asia Society is certainly a good place to start. "There's no other institution quite like us," Vishakha Desai, the Society's new president, told . She describes it as a multi-disciplinary educational institution dedicated to strengthening relationships between Asia and the United States through arts and culture, programs on business and social issues, programs for educators and children, and also through conferences and discussions, often involving corporate and political leaders 
Ms. Desai was born in India and took a B.A. in political science in Bombay and a Ph.D. in art history at the University of Michigan. After a stint at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, she joined the Asia Society in 1990 and, serving in several capacities, came to know it top to bottom. She also brought to
it a very useful combination of disciplines and an Asian perspective that had been singularly lacking until her arrival.
When the Society was founded by John D. Rockefeller III nearly 50 years ago, learning about Asia was interesting, but rather eccentric. "Today, knowing about Asia is a necessity more than at any other time," said Ms. Desai. "I feel that we have to be, as Colin Powell said when he spoke here, indispensable for anyone who wants to know about Asia, because we really can bring those two worlds together. And it's very important that America learns more about that part of the world, because if we don't we could be in a situation where there could be conflict."
To promote understanding of Asia among the younger generation in the U.S., the Society is working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to open a series of public schools with an emphasis of international education.
The Society wants to be seen as more than a New York institution with outposts in the U.S. and Asia. "We really must work hard to cultivate an image of being a global institution that just happens to have its headquarters in New York," said Ms. Desai.
As such, the Society is in no mean position to promote a better understanding of Islam in Asia. Most Americans don't know that the majority of Muslims live in Asia, not in the Arab world, said Ms. Desai. In Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, Islam has long been fused with multi-ethnic societies and remains rather adaptive in spite of the fact that television and the Internet now introduce more radical ideas.
Ms. Desai travels a great deal, meeting with business leaders, government representatives and nongovernmental organizations, with representatives of the artistic community, and also with the Society's international council members. In December, she visited seven Asian countries in just over two weeks, and left Indonesia on December 22, just four days before the tsunami struck.
"There are so many distinguished New Yorkers who live right in this neighborhood," she said, "and still haven't thought that Asia is going to be an important part of their lives. I would just love them to feel that, if they want to learn more about Asia, this is a place they can come to. It is not just a leisure activity; I think that it is crucial for the next generation."
New Yorkers tend to see their city as the world's omphalos. To broaden their horizons, they only have to make it to Park Avenue and 70th Street.

 ASIA (97%); UNITED STATES (95%); MALAYSIA (79%); INDIA (79%); 






    
  


February 22, 2005, Tuesday



 LOST IN TRANSLATION: HOW BUSH INTERPRETER GOT THROUGH SECURITY

 INDONESIA (95%); UNITED STATES (74%); 




19


 The Florida Times-Union 
Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville)

February 21, 2005 Monday  




 Graham outlines tsunami aid effort; 
Evangelical talks to Pastors' Conference

 
Christian evangelicals have been given an open door to profess their faith in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami of December and will do so with aid to children, Franklin Graham told a Jacksonville audience Sunday at First Baptist Church's 19th annual Pastors' Conference.
Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and president of Samaritan's Purse international ministry, asked the congregation to collect shoe boxes of gifts to distribute to children in areas including the most religiously conservative Muslim corners of Indonesia.
"We're going to plant the flag of Jesus Christ right in the middle of it," he said, adding that governments of the region have invited the organization to give aid. 
Graham was the main speaker at the five-day conference that was to include the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority political action group in 1979. Sunday, First Baptist's the Rev. Jerry Vines announced Falwell has been hospitalized with flulike symptoms and will not speak at the conference today. He said Falwell was expected to remain in the hospital for a couple of days.
In his 50-minute address, Franklin Graham said he hopes congregations, including First Baptist's, will generate 500,000 shoe box-sized packages to take to the areas where they can be given to children.
He said the most devastated areas were centers of Muslim and Buddhist faith that have been closed to evangelicals.
Graham said criticism might follow the effort but would be unjustified.
"We're not taking advantage of a child," he said. "We're giving a gift."
Proselytizing by evangelical groups in the aftermath of the disaster has been considered an affront or worse by some. Muslim militants have made menacing threats if Christian groups do more than simply provide aid.
Graham said Christians have been closed out of some of the worst-hit areas in the past.
"Because of the tsunami, we are able to go," he said.
He said he did not know "what God's judgment is" regarding the regions affected by the disaster.
"When that tsunami hit Sri Lanka, it took out churches; it killed Christians; it killed Muslims," he said.
He said he wanted this shoe box campaign, an extension of an annual Christmas project of Samaritan's Purse, to culminate the week before and after Easter.
"We decided every box we collected, we wanted the person to pray for the child who received the box," he said. "Everybody has an opportunity to tell a child about Jesus Christ."
The conference is open to the public this evening and Tuesday evening, when it concludes. Other sessions are for registered participants only. The conference is meant to encourage and refresh pastors and others engaged in ministry.
dana.treen@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4091

 






   


February 21, 2005, Monday, 



 Terrorists' use of Internet spreads

 
SAN FRANCISCO -- Cyberfraud, ranging from credit card theft to money laundering, is the latest wrinkle in terrorists' use of the Internet.
It's "the new cash cow" for terrorists to finance operations, says John Pironti, a security consultant at tech consultant Unisys. Online scams are harder to trace because they are relayed through a sophisticated network of individuals and Web sites worldwide, he says. And many schemes originate from abroad, where cyberlaws don't exist or law enforcement is lax.
 
In dozens of incidents the past few months, groups linked to terrorism have stolen credit card numbers over the Internet, laundered money and hijacked Web sites, security experts say.
The recent surge in activity has given counterterrorism specialists, already concerned with threats to physical structures, another worry. Like their colleagues in the FBI, Secret Service, the Treasury Department and elsewhere, they must bone up on Internet technology to match wits with the criminals.
For several years, groups including al-Qaeda have used cyberspace for communications, recruiting and propaganda. Now they've branched into other areas. Credit card numbers are often swiped through hacking attacks and phishing, fraudulent e-mails that trick consumers into surrendering personal information.
There are indications terrorists may next steal trade secrets from U.S. companies as their computer skills improve and they begin to work with organized crime in Eastern Europe. The stolen documents could then be sold to rogue foreign businesses or held for ransom, security experts say.
Terrorism.org
A few months ago, Imam Samudra, convicted of masterminding the bombing that killed 202 in Bali, Indonesia, in 2002, wrote a jailhouse manifesto on the funding of terrorism through cyberfraud.
A chapter in his obscure autobiography -- titled "Hacking, Why Not?" -- directs fellow Muslim radicals to Indonesian-language Web sites and chat rooms for instructions on online credit card fraud and money laundering. "Any man-made product contains weakness because man himself is a weak creature," Samudra writes. "So it is with the Americans, who boast they are a strong nation."
Evidence collected from Samudra's laptop showed he tried to finance the bombing through cyberfraud, law-enforcement officials say.
In October, a suspected Palestinian supporter of Middle Eastern terrorist groups posted several credit card numbers online and instructions for stealing databases of other active credit card numbers from the Web sites of U.S. businesses.
Internet use by terrorists mirrors that of criminals. While some security experts fear a cyberstrike could disrupt power supplies to millions of homes, disrupt air traffic control systems and shut down water supplies, most agree terror groups are more likely to exploit the Internet for financial gain and to spread propaganda. The number of terrorist-related Web sites has rocketed to 4,350 from a dozen in 1997.
Terrorist organizations have graduated to the Internet to steal because it reaches more potential victims and is harder to trace, says Evan Kohlmann, an international terrorism consultant who runs the Web site Globalterroralert.com.
Previously, militants used more conventional ways for funding, Kohlmann says. The Roubaix gang in France robbed armored cars to help fund terrorist activities in the mid-1990s. And the group behind the abortive millennium attack on the Los Angeles airport robbed supermarkets in Canada and engaged in traditional credit card fraud, he says.
"It is a paradox: Those movements who criticize Western technology and modernity are using the West's most advanced communication technology, the Internet, to spread their message," Gabriel Weimann, a professor in Israel who follows cyberterrorism, said in an e-mail.
But the U.S. government should not dismiss the possibility of a large-scale electronic attack by terrorists against the nation's computer systems, says Richard Clarke, the former White House head of counterterrorism. He made the comments at the RSA security conference in San Francisco last week.
Digital cat and mouse
Federal investigators are locked in an escalating game of digital cat-and-mouse with cyberterrorists. "The FBI understands that some terrorist organizations, like criminals, could exploit the Internet to further their goals," FBI spokeswoman Megan Baroska says. FBI policy prohibits it from discussing ongoing investigations, she says.
The departments of Justice, State, Treasury and Homeland Security and intelligence agencies have identified a broad range of potential Internet vulnerabilities and are constantly developing policies. They compare the fight against terrorist financing to the war against money-laundering drug traffickers.
"As Internet technologies become more advanced, so do those who use them for illicit and illegal activities," says Dexter Ingram, director of information-security policy for the Business Software Alliance and a former analyst for the House Committee on Homeland Security's cybersecurity subcommittee. "Security must remain a continuous process. It's a never-ending cycle."
Still, the feds' ranks are in flux. Robert Liscouski, assistant director of the Department of Homeland Security, resigned in January after the Bush administration nominated a federal judge to head the department.
In October, Amit Yoran, director of the department's cybersecurity division, resigned amid criticism from the tech community that he lacked clout.
Clarke has called for the appointment of a cybersecurity czar in the White House to coordinate actions between the FBI, CIA and other government agencies.
"After 9/11, the emphasis has clearly been on physical infrastructure rather than cybersecurity," says Paul Kurtz, executive director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a non-profit trade group of software and hardware companies. "That's understandable. But cyberspace is where the bad guys are going."

  INDONESIA (90%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); EUROPE (69%); EASTERN EUROPE (54%); 







  



February 18, 2005 Friday  




 WASHINGTON IN BRIEF

 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that she is moving to reinstate U.S. military training assistance for Indonesia, an important step toward restoring full military ties. 
  Formal military relations were cut with the world's biggest Muslim nation more than a decade ago because of alleged human rights violations by Indonesian forces, although there has been some low-level training cooperation. 
  The Bush administration tried to revive close ties with Indonesia's military in its first term, but the effort faltered after two U.S. schoolteachers were slain in the province of Papua in 2002. Investigations by police and nongovernmental organizations pointed to Indonesian military involvement in the deaths.  
 Congress made any resumption of U.S. military training -- called the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program -- for Indonesian officers dependent on certification by the secretary of state that Jakarta was helping the FBI investigate the killings. 
 California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to Washington to ask fellow Republicans for more money for his state -- even as he pushed a congressional redistricting plan that could threaten some of their jobs. 
  He claimed progress on federal funds for transportation and health care after meeting with House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif). 
  As for how to sell skeptical Republicans on his plan to redraw congressional and state legislative districts, Schwarzenegger offered an optimistic solution: "Magic." 
  The governor wants a panel of retired judges to redraw California's political map next year. That job is currently done by state lawmakers. Some Republicans fear that redrawing districts in Democrat-leaning California could cost the party seats in Congress. 
An experimental ballistic missile interceptor did not launch during a test of the new Missile Defense System on Monday because of a problem with the retracting arms that hold it up in the silo, said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 
  Myers told members of Congress in an appropriations hearing that a tiny switch controlling the arms had not closed, signaling that they had not come clear of the missile.  
 Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, said an investigation into the failed launch is going forward in case the arm issue was not the fundamental cause. 
  The failed test was the second since December for the national missile defense program. It has generated new criticism that the experimental missile defense bases at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., are incapable of protecting the country from an attack. 
 The Senate voted to protect people who are reluctant to have genetic testing for breast cancer or heart disease because of fears the results might cost them their jobs or health insurance. 
  Senators voted 98 to 0 for legislation prohibiting employers from using genetic information in hiring and firing decisions, and barring insurers from using such information to deny coverage or raise premiums. 
  Since the breakthrough of the mapping of the human genome about four years ago, "the American people have been vulnerable to this type of discrimination and . . . the risk of discrimination has inhibited the full use of this vast, still-untapped reservoir of knowledge," said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), principal sponsor of the legislation. 
  The bill faces an uncertain future in the House, where business groups that oppose it hold more sway. 
  --  From News Services 

  INDONESIA (95%)






   


February 14, 2005, Monday, 



 Help leading to self-help is IMC's goal

 
SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- After growing up in the Midwest and working in a sales job not far from home, Nancy Aossey eagerly packed everything she owned into a Honda Civic and headed west when a position opened in California.
"I felt there was a huge world out there, and I didn't want to die before seeing it," she says.
Nearly two decades later, Aossey has not only seen half of that world, she's helped bring emergency medical care and training to its neediest inhabitants.
Afghans stranded without doctors by the Soviet war.
 
Angolans isolated from medical care by civil strife.
Somalians struggling with violence and famine.
And, most recently, Indonesians devastated by the December tsunami.
All have been beneficiaries of the International Medical Corps (IMC), the non-profit Aossey shepherded from three-employee start-up to $100-million-plus relief organization with a staff of roughly 8,000 working around the globe.
Sitting in her third-floor office above Santa Monica Boulevard, the CEO sums up the self-help maxim fundamental to her organization's success.
"Our focus isn't just: 'How can we help you?' It's: 'Do you want to learn skills that can help your community?' "
It's a credo, and career mission, that Aossey discovered through an accident of timing.
The 46-year-old granddaughter of Lebanese immigrants grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she says her father, a milkman, and mother, a secretary, instilled their four children with a love of country, state and community.
She earned an MBA in 1984 at the University of Northern Iowa, then went to work selling phone networks to small businesses for AT&T Information Systems.
Aossey moved to Fresno in 1985 when a parallel AT&T job opened there. She sought out volunteer work in her new community, a tradition ingrained since her childhood days as a Camp Fire Girl. The search led her to acquaintances who had given their time and expertise to the IMC.
Talent search
Unbeknownst to her at the time, the then-tiny organization had reached a critical start-up stage. Robert Simon, an emergency room professor and physician at UCLA Medical Center, had founded the non-profit in 1984 after learning that only a few hundred doctors were available for millions of Afghans packed in refugee camps during the war with the Soviet Union.
He took a leave of absence, raised about $80,000 by selling his Malibu home and set up clinics along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
No other relief agencies were there, because the Soviets had ordered them out. Simon, working with volunteer doctors and nurses, provided medical training to refugees who would later return home "to train and take care of others."
Simon, who now chairs the emergency department at Cook County Hospital and Rush Medical Center in Chicago, soon realized the fledgling non-profit needed a full-time executive. His plan was "to keep things operating the way they were."
But Aossey, the barely traveled leader the International Medical Corps hired in 1986 based on what Simon calls "her passion for our mission," had an entrepreneurial vision.
"At that time," explains Aossey, "you had relief organizations that would provide disaster relief in a country, and then leave. Other organizations did long-term training programs in fairly stable countries. And nobody was doing anything in-between."
A non-profit market niche was born.
Funding a goal
Intrigued by the new group's mission, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) approved a training grant that Aossey says totaled less than $500,000. A second grant, about $700,000 to fund a year's worth of medical training supplies, won approval months later.
As Aossey tells it, these were the first drops from a federal and international funding pipeline that started flowing after the organization proved "we were actually doing what we said we could do."
"The medical work and training was pretty straightforward. But the logistics were very difficult. We reached places in Afghanistan nobody had been able to reach before," says Aossey.
"It was like an Indiana Jones movie. You felt like you were going back centuries in time and helping a proud people who had lost everything."
In a few years, the Afghan training program ran smoothly. And that could have been that. But Aossey, consulting with Simon and other board members, had expansion ideas. What if the organization pursued its mission in other war-torn and medically underserved parts of the world?
In the summer of 1990, Aossey joined a USAID delegation aboard a small plane that made a late-night landing on a hidden runway in Angola. Blindfolded, the group members were led to an underground bunker. At the bottom of the stairs was Jonas Savimbi, the rebel leader battling to overthrow the Angolan government.
"He stood there with a big smile, welcoming you as if it was the most normal thing in the world," says Aossey.
She helped broker an agreement that enabled the IMC to provide vaccination training and supplies to Angolans who would, in turn, train others. The delegation cut a similar deal with government leaders.
Aossey launched a program that for a time, featured students from the rebel and government factions receiving medical training side by side.
The mission expands
In the ensuing years, her organization hopscotched from one war or danger zone to another, training, aiding and hiring local community members, even in a virtually lawless land such as Somalia.
"We were there way before the U.S. media arrived," says Aossey. "We created an environment were we could put local doctors and nurses back to work."
She also oversaw an expansion of the organization's self-help mission into areas beyond health care.
In Burundi, for instance, the IMC paid small cash grants that enabled women's groups to establish gardens and market local handicrafts. Similarly, the organization set up microcredit programs, including one that helped Eritrean refugees re-establish farms and small retail businesses.
In 2000, the IMC created medical training and mental health assistance programs in Indonesia, helping thousands displaced from their homes by bloody fighting to establish an independent Muslim state in Aceh province, again, a propitious accident of timing.
"We had about 100 people in Indonesia before the tsunami hit," says Aossey. "We were able to get people up to the worst-hit areas within a couple of days. We immediately dispatched people from other countries, too."
The world started noticing. The IMC made most of the well-publicized lists of charities aiding tsunami-ravaged Asia. Anyone who checked the organization's background before writing a check learned that it had gotten good marks from GuideStar and Charity Navigator, companies that evaluate the performance and spending of non-profits.
"Our ratings show it's very efficient," says Sandra Miniutti, a spokeswoman for Charity Navigator.
Attention and contributions followed. Aossey, a board member and former chairwoman of InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S.-based relief organizations, last month took part in a White House briefing with President Bush on tsunami aid efforts.
More than $12 million in cash and donated supplies flowed to the IMC after the disaster. The increased contributions boosted the organization's annual budget -- made up of roughly 47% from government agencies and 53% from corporations, foundations and individuals -- above the $100 million mark.
New funding aim
Much of that money, like the bulk of the organization's funding over the years, has been earmarked for specific relief work, which has given Aossey a new goal.
She's working to increase contributions available for any emergency, because, "We don't have a crystal ball to help us predict the environments we're going to be needed in at any given time."
At the same time, she's embarked on an effort to raise the ratio of private-sector donations by raising the IMC's public profile. There was limited time for personal outreach to corporate executives during the years when she spent much of her time abroad overseeing clinics and field work.
"When people know us, they want to support our work. But we're not yet a household name. People don't always know us," Aossey says.
That's starting to change, as she ramps up corporate presentations and speaking appearances. The Coca-Cola Foundation sent her a letter pledging $250,000 within days after the tsunami. Foundation officials picked the IMC after learning it was one of the few relief groups already "on the ground, doing the work," said company spokesman Mart Martin.
"It was a total surprise. We didn't expect it," says Aossey, between fielding phone calls from an aide to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and planning for a Boston speech to New England business leaders.
Not unlike her entrepreneurial career.
"I found what I'd been searching for," she says, "and I didn't even know I'd been searching for it."
TEXT OF BIO BOX BEGINS HERE
About Nancy Aossey
Age: 46
Title: President and CEO, International Medical Corps.
Career: Sales, AT&T Information Systems.
Organizations: National member of Council on Foreign Relations; board member of InterAction, a coalition of major U.S. relief groups.
Personal: Engaged to C. William Sundblad, a former IMC employee, and current consultant for the organization, she met on the job.
Hobbies: Jogging.
Most inspirational book read: The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw.
Education: Bachelor's degree, University of Northern Iowa, 1982; MBA, University of Northern Iowa, 1984.
Philosophy: Take personal pride in whatever you spend time on.

 UNITED STATES (94%); AFGHANISTAN (93%); KOSOVO (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); ALBANIA (77%); LEBANON (77%); MACEDONIA, THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF (77%); 







  



February 12, 2005 Saturday  




 No Retreating on Indonesia

 
  The Feb. 8 editorial "Next Step With Indonesia" appears to argue that because  Indonesia  let U.S. soldiers help  clean up after the tsunami, the United States should drop its requirement that the Indonesian military cooperate with the FBI's investigation of the August 2002 murder of two Americans and one Indonesian. 
 Perhaps The Post's argument is based on a mistaken understanding of U.S. law.  
Contrary to the assertion that "most" military training "has been suspended," the Indonesian military is participating in the types of U.S. training activities and exercises that the Pentagon wants it  to receive, through the Counterterrorism Fellowship Program, the Expanded International Military Education and Training Program, and the Theater Security Cooperation Program. Its  inability to participate in the one training program covered by our law is symbolic. But symbols are important in Indonesia, especially when justice is involved, and human rights and justice are values that our nation strives to uphold and promote at home and abroad, as President Bush declared in his inaugural address. 
 Indonesia is a proud Muslim democracy facing immense challenges. We should work with reformist President Bambang Yudhoyono and Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono. But it is in the interests of both our countries that the rule of law is respected, and that the Indonesian military  officers responsible for heinous crimes be prosecuted and punished.  
  -- Patrick Leahy 
Washington 
The writer is a Democratic senator from Vermont.  

 INDONESIA (96%); UNITED STATES (95%)







   


February 11, 2005 Friday  




 Mecca Pilgrims May Be Spreading Polio, Experts Say

 
A case of polio reached Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Islam's holy city, just before two million Muslims made the annual pilgrimage there last month, and World Health Organization officials now say the disease could spread to other countries, carried by returning pilgrims.
 In crowded nations with spotty vaccination coverage like Bangladesh and Indonesia, ''there could be substantial consequences,'' Dr. Bruce Aylward, coordinator of the health organization's Global Polio Eradication Initiative, said in an interview from Geneva.
 ''This is a crucial point,'' he added. ''We're staring at the whites of the eyes of this thing.'' 
 A spokesman at the Saudi Embassy in Washington said his country had feared the arrival of polio this year and started vaccinating 800,000 people in September, hoping to head it off before the height of the hajj, or pilgrimage, in late January.
 Saudi Arabia had been polio-free since 1995, but two cases were found late last year. The first was in Jidda, the port city 40 miles from Mecca where most pilgrims disembark. The patient was a Sudanese girl who became paralyzed on Nov. 6, just after arriving. 
 The second, more worrisome, case was confirmed just yesterday: that of a 5-year-old Nigerian boy who developed paralysis on Dec. 15. What made it troubling, Dr. Aylward said, was that his family had lived for several years in an illegal encampment on the outskirts of Mecca, so he must have caught a strain circulating in Saudi Arabia. 
 Spotting new outbreaks in far-flung countries will still take weeks, experts said. Paralysis affects only about 1 in 200 carriers of the virus, symptoms can take up to 35 days to emerge, pilgrims traveling by bus or boat can take weeks to get home, and epidemiological reporting in poor countries is often slipshod.
 ''You want to be well into March before you breathe a sigh of relief,'' Dr. Aylward said.
 The virus lives in the intestine and spreads through fecal-oral contact, so anything from changing a diaper to sharing a food dish or swimming in contaminated water can transmit it. Polio vaccination was not required for pilgrims, and even if it had been required, thousands arrive illegally, and many legal visitors carry forged immunization records, said the Saudi Embassy spokesman, Nail al-Jubeir.
 ''We have to trust the health services of the countries they come from,'' he said. ''We can't give everyone blood tests.''
 Vaccinations were required for meningococcal meningitis and, in some cases, yellow fever.
 Polio has been spreading from northern Nigeria since 2003, when vaccination campaigns there halted for months after Muslim imams and local politicians spread rumors that the vaccine could make women sterile or transmit AIDS, or was made with pork products. 
 Most cases from that outbreak have been in the largely Muslim Sahel, the band of arid land south of the Sahara stretching from Mali to Ethiopia. The remaining pockets elsewhere are also mostly in Muslim areas -- Pakistan, northern India, Afghanistan and Egypt.
 Each case of paralysis implies that many more virus carriers are nearby. Most victims suffer symptoms no more serious than those of flu, but even people with no symptoms can spread the virus.
 In 1988, when polio was endemic in 125 countries, the annual assembly of the health ministers of all nations in Geneva declared their intent to eradicate it by 2000. That target was missed, but $3 billion in vaccination campaigns drove the disease back until it existed in only six countries by the end of 2003.
 It took until last summer for world health officials and senior clerics from other countries to persuade Nigerian Muslims to accept a vaccine made in Indonesia. 
 By that time, paralysis cases were appearing as far west as Mali and as far south as Botswana. ''In most of them, we were able to surround it and stop it from transmitting locally,'' said Dr. David L. Heymann, the W.H.O. director general's representative for polio eradication. 
 The most persistent spread was to the east. Sudan, which had been free of polio for three years, found a case from Chad in May 2004, and by late January it had 112. 
 Some Sudanese officials blamed refugees fleeing fighting in southern Sudan, but Dr. Aylward said that made no sense because cases were exploding in Port Sudan, the jumping-off point for Mecca.
 Another urgent worry of his, he said, is that the hundreds of truckers from landlocked Ethiopia who use Port Sudan will carry polio back home, where immunization rates have fallen.
 Mr. Jubeir said the thousands of doctors Saudi Arabia hires in hajj season to screen pilgrims could not detect asymptomatic cases. Also, he said, the border police have caught as many as 52,000 people a month sneaking in, mostly from Africa, through Yemen. ''It's a nightmare,'' he said. 
 During the hajj, vast crowds pressed tightly together circle the Grand Mosque and stone the pillars of Satan. Thousands live in government tent cities, but many camp illegally in the mountains around Mecca with little sanitation. ''Before terrorism, our biggest concern was disease,'' Mr. Jubeir said.


 SAUDI ARABIA (94%); NIGERIA (93%);  SUDAN (79%); AFRICA (79%)




1 of 120 DOCUMENTS


   


February 10, 2005 Thursday  




 U.S. Nearly Triples Tsunami Aid Pledge, to $950 Million

 
President Bush on Wednesday increased the United States tsunami relief pledge to $950 million, nearly tripling America's contribution.
 The additional $600 million would put the United States, which was criticized initially as reacting slowly to the disaster, ahead of Australia, which has pledged $750 million, and Germany, which has pledged $680 million, among the top donors. 
 The administration will include the new aid in the $81 billion supplemental bill that it is expected to submit to Congress next week to cover the costs of fighting in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
 Since the tsunami disaster seven weeks ago, nearly $6 billion in aid has been pledged from public and private sources, according to the United Nations. The United States' pledge is now the largest for a single disaster in the country's history, according to Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. 
 Already the United States has spent $101 million on aid and another $101 million for the American military's role in the relief effort.
 In his announcement, the president praised the United States military and the Agency for International Development for their life-saving efforts in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and the other countries. And he said the money would ensure the success was not squandered.
 ''We will use these resources to provide assistance and to work with the affected nations on rebuilding vital infrastructure that re-energizes economies and strengthens societies,'' Mr. Bush said in a statement.
 The new spending request includes millions to replenish money already used for the relief efforts, easing some lawmakers' concerns that the administration would deplete funds originally intended to help other desperate nations.
 More than half of the $600 million in the request will be spent on construction projects like roads, schools and water distribution systems, a reflection of the changing nature of the work from emergency relief efforts to longer-term rehabilitation.
 Explaining the size of the increase at a press briefing, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, said, ''Having achieved an enormous humanitarian success we have a very large stake in making sure that this success does not go to waste.'' 
 Indonesia and Sri Lanka will be the major recipients of the new aid, as India and Thailand have said they do not need other governments' aid.
 In his announcement, the president also singled out his father and former President Bill Clinton for their efforts as his representatives in raising private donations; Americans have given $700 million to charities for the relief effort.
 The Congressional reaction to the president's announcement increasing government aid was favorable. 
 Representative Jim Kolbe, Republican from Arizona and chairman of the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, which oversees this assistance, said that the request reflected the United States' ''dedication to humanitarian efforts around the world.''
 But Congress could alter how the money is spent. In addition to construction projects, the administration earmarked $35 million for a tsunami and typhoon early warning system; $62 million to provide technical help to governments for planning reconstruction and following good-governance practices; and $168 million to help victims return to their communities by offering money for new housing, education, food and employment. 
 Knowing of concerns among lawmakers about potential waste and corruption, Mr. Natsios said that all of the money Congress appropriated would be well spent with ''very high levels of accountability.''
 Mr. Wolfowitz emphasized the geopolitical importance of helping Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population. The tsunami aid is already said to have improved the image of the United States, which had plummeted in Indonesia especially after the start of the war in Iraq.
 ''It has had quite an impact that we were there and able to help and ready to help,'' Mr. Wolfowitz said.


 UNITED STATES (96%);  THAILAND (93%);  GERMANY (88%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);  ASIA (79%)







  



February 10, 2005 Thursday  




 White House to Seek $950 Million for Tsunami Aid

 
The Bush administration will seek $950 million in federal aid for the areas affected by the Asian tsunami, nearly tripling a previous commitment of $350 million that was announced when the administration was under fire for what critics called a sluggish response to the crisis. 
U.S. citizens have provided $800 million in private donations since the disaster struck on Dec. 26, officials said. The new supplemental budget request, which appears to have bipartisan support in Congress, stemmed from detailed assessments of the long-term reconstruction and rehabilitation needs for the 12 countries affected by the tsunami, which killed more than 280,000 people and displaced 750,000.  
The commitment, which U.S. officials said was the most generous humanitarian pledge in U.S. history, would put the United States at the top of the list of donors to the disaster. Australia has pledged $810 million, followed by $660 million from Germany, $624 million from the European Union and $540 million from Japan. 
 "We will use those resources to provide assistance and to work with the affected nations on rebuilding vital infrastructure, re-emerging economies and to strengthen their societies," said Alan P. Larson, undersecretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs. 
More than a third of the money -- $339 million -- will be devoted to constructing roads, schools, water-distribution systems and other projects. The tsunami was caused by an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra's Aceh region, and officials said many bridges and roads through Aceh were destroyed even before the waves wiped out coastal areas. 
An additional $168 million will be aimed at helping victims get back to ordinary life, such as providing funds for food and housing. The administration also budgeted $35 million for tsunami warning systems. 
 Some of the new aid may help fund debt relief for some of the affected countries, officials said, as well as reimburse the Defense Department for the use of 26 ships, 43 fixed-wing aircraft and 16,000 military personnel in the early days of the crisis, officials said. At a White House briefing, Larson said the specifics still needed to be worked out and the allocation of the $950 million would be adjusted depending on the decisions on debt relief. 
A three-month moratorium on debt payments by affected countries -- who owe more than $270 billion -- was announced by major creditor nations after the disaster struck. 
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told reporters the U.S. military delivered about 10 million pounds of food and 400,000 gallons of water during the rescue operations, and military hospital ships treated almost 2,500 injured. 
 Wolfowitz, a former ambassador to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, said the relief effort was linked to the administration's long-term goal of promoting democracy in the Muslim world. "This challenge comes to a country that stands to be in the forefront of that movement," he said. "Above and beyond the humanitarian considerations, which would be compelling enough, we have an enormous interest in seeing this succeed." 
The announcement came a week before a high-level delegation, headed by former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, goes to the region at the White House's request. 
The State Department estimated this week that 33 Americans were killed or presumed dead in the tsunami, in either Thailand or Sri Lanka.  

 UNITED STATES (95%); INDONESIA (92%); EUROPE (79%); AUSTRALIA (79%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (56%); GERMANY (56%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


February 9, 2005 Wednesday



 Good reasons for U.S. aid to Indonesia

 
   The U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln steamed away from the waters off Indonesia last week, ending a chapter in America's aid mission to that tsunami-battered country. Most of the 15,000 U.S. servicemen who originally took part in the relief mission, flying hundreds of helicopter missions to deliver food, water and other aid to the victims, have been withdrawn, but about 5,000 remain on ships in the area.
Why should Americans, and the West in general, continue to care about Indonesia, that mystical, faraway, far-flung tropical island nation strung across 3,000 miles between the Pacific and Indian oceans?
Well, first off, because it is right. At the epicenter of the earthquake which sent a giant tsunami dealing death and destruction across Asia, Indonesia was the hardest hit and has the greatest need for humanitarian aid. Few people observing can remain unmoved by the toll that has taken at least 110,000 lives there, leaving families decimated and homeless, and tens of thousands of children orphaned. 
It is a country of talented, hardy people, usually managing a smile in the face of adversity threaded through their history. Colonized by the Dutch, occupied by the Japanese in World War II, Indonesia has been overtaken by one disaster after another since it gained independence in 1945. Its first president, Sukarno, although initially hailed as a national hero, engineered a confrontation with Britain, flirted with the communists, squandered the country's resources and failed dismally to uplift the Indonesian masses from poverty. He was finally deposed after an ugly, communist-inspired coup attempt which wiped out the Indonesian army's top leaders. A surviving general, Suharto, rallied the army and eliminated the plotters in a bloody purge that killed tens of thousands. He succeeded to the presidency but proved a disappointingly corrupt leader who did little to rescue his people from their economic hardship.
Today, the seeds of democracy are flourishing. In their first direct presidential election, Indonesians last year installed Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former general who has spent substantial time in the United States. While Indonesia practices a much more moderate form of Islam than the extremism followed in some Middle Eastern countries, radical Islamist elements are at work and have carried out a number of terrorist attacks.
Thus the question is whether Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, but non-Arabic, can be a successful counter to the extremism of al-Qaida and other jihadists.
Beyond their natural humanitarian instincts, there are well-founded political reasons for American taxpayers to support continuing the aid effort to a country which may play a significant role in the war against terrorism. Humanitarian aid without strings in the wake of the tsunami is perhaps the best kind of public diplomacy -- doing good deeds and letting people make of it what they will.
Indonesians have in fact reacted warmly to the U.S. effort. Said welfare minister Alwi Shihab as the Abraham Lincoln departed: "It is with deep appreciation that I say to all of you, thank you for a great job, well done." But President Yudhoyono's government has also been sensitive to a foreign military presence on its soil, particularly in Aceh province where the Indonesian military has been waging a long campaign against separatist rebels, the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). The United States has responded intelligently, saying "It's their country," and that the government has "every right to decide" how long U.S. troops are needed. Post-tsunami attempts to end the confrontation between the GAM and the Indonesian government have so far failed. The situation may have been complicated by the movement of some Islamic extremist elements into the stricken province.
The United States wants good relations with Indonesia, where it hopes democracy will thrive and terrorism will be kept at bay. Because of charges that the Indonesian military had been guilty of human rights abuses in East Timor, the United States in 1999 severed an arrangement which had brought Indonesian military officers to the United States for training. President Yudhoyono is himself a graduate of that program, having had six educational stints in the U.S., five of them military. The Bush administration would like to rebuild those ties.
If that is to be done it must be within a framework recognizing the strong mood of nationalism in Indonesia on the one hand, and skepticism on the part of some members of the U.S. Congress on the other. Both sides, of course, have an overriding interest in Indonesia's continuing ability to resist the radicalization of its brand of Islam. John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He is a former editor of the , which syndicates this column. In 1967, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Indonesia. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com

  INDONESIA (96%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); ASIA (79%)







  



February 8, 2005 Tuesday  




 Next Step With Indonesia

 
  AS THE AIRCRAFT carrier USS Abraham Lincoln departed Indonesia last week, the massive aid operation mounted by the U.S. military after December's tsunami appeared to have paid off, both in saving lives and in bolstering U.S. relations with the world's largest Muslim country. The vital role played by the planes and helicopters, Navy ships and 15,000 troops dispatched by the Pentagon to the wrecked shores of the province of Aceh won recognition in a country where anti-American feeling has been running high. "The U.S. military . . . has been the backbone of the logistical operations providing assistance to all afflicted after the disaster," said Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono.   
The positive feeling has given new life to an old question: Should the United States restore full military relations with Indonesia? Mr. Juwono  has appealed for closer cooperation; senior Bush administration officials sympathize. Quite apart from the needs created by the disaster, a review by the administration and Congress is overdue. Most U.S. military training for Indonesia, as well as arms sales, has been suspended since 1992 because of the Indonesian military's record of human rights violations. Congress imposed restrictions on lifting the ban in 1999 and 2003. 
The congressional limits came at a time when the Indonesian army was unrestrained by weak civilian rulers and stood accused of serious human rights crimes in the breakaway province of East Timor. Since then the army has waged another ruthless campaign against a separatist movement in Aceh; until the tsunami, the province was ruled under martial law. Yet as Indonesian democracy has grown stronger, so has civilian control over the military. Direct presidential elections last year brought to power a former general trained in the United States, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who appears committed to reform. His defense minister, Mr. Juwono, acknowledges the human rights abuses of the past; he says his mission is "to try and reconfigure the Indonesian defense force, particularly the army, so that it will be more accountable to democracy [and] more accountable to parliament." To do that, he says, he'd like to send many more of his officers to the United States for training. 
This sounds like a reasonable request. Meeting it would require the administration and Congress to resolve previous demands that Indonesia take measures against military officers guilty of human rights crimes and cooperate in the investigation of the 2002 killing of two Americans. While the United States has no interest in supporting an army that violates human rights with impunity, it's counterproductive to refuse to cooperate with democratic leaders who are trying to carry out reforms. In Aceh, the tsunami led to a truce between the army and local insurgents, and Mr. Yudhoyono's government has reopened peace talks in Europe with representatives of the rebels. As Indonesia pursues such initiatives, Congress should remove restrictions on training.  

 UNITED STATES (98%); INDONESIA (96%); TIMOR-LESTE (79%); EUROPE (79%)







 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


February 7, 2005 Monday



 Caption only: Prayers for tsunami victims

 
Indonesian Muslims pray for tsunami victims at Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Sunday. Indonesia reported on Sunday that 1,634 more bodies have been found in Aceh province, which was hit hard by the tsunami. The country's confirmed death toll has risen to 113,913 from the Dec. 26 disaster.

 INDONESIA (96%)







   


February 7, 2005 Monday  




 U.S. Takes Steps to Mend Ties With Indonesian Military

 
After a 13-year break, the Bush administration is acting to mend relations with the Indonesian military, the largest in Southeast Asia and a potentially crucial player in its campaign against terrorism.
 Washington is seizing on an opportunity that came with the tsunami, when Indonesia accepted the help of the United States military in distributing aid and had daily contacts with the Americans. Congress, concerned about Indonesia's human rights record, curbed military ties in 1992 and cut them back further five years ago after the army was involved in the killings of hundreds of civilians in East Timor, a province that has since gained independence. 
 Now, administration officials said, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has moved to strengthen American training of Indonesian officers considerably. Such training allows up-and-coming officers to learn modern warfare methods, the American system of civilian control over the military, accountability and rights issues. Armies in Asia that receive the training, known as the International Military Education and Training Program, include Thailand, Malaysia, India and Pakistan.  
 In late January, Washington dispatched $1 million worth of spare parts for Indonesia's aging fleet of military transport planes. For the moment, the administration was not planning to push for the removal of the ban on the sale of weapons to Indonesia, although that could come later, a Pentagon official said.
 The Bush administration tried once before to draw closer to Indonesia's military, but the effort failed in 2002 when two American schoolteachers were killed in Papua Province, and, American officials say, the Indonesian Army blocked American investigators. 
 Ms. Rice now plans to certify to Congress that Indonesia is cooperating sufficiently in investigating the Americans' deaths, a step that would remove a major stumbling block to ties, according to an aide to Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. The aide, Tim Rieser, said Ms. Rice told the senator of her decision in a telephone conversation this week. Mr. Leahy is the Congressional architect of the break in relations dating to 1992.
 Mr. Leahy and others in Congress assert that the Indonesians first need to ''fully cooperate'' with an F.B.I. investigation into the American deaths, and in other cases of rights abuse, before full training of Indonesian soldiers in the United States can resume. Congressional approval is necessary for a resumption of the military training. 
 American military officials who have been hankering since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to gain access to the army, a dominant though still largely unreformed force, and the tsunami has presented the opportunity. The Bush administration views Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation, as a moderate and increasingly democratic Muslim state.
 At the height of the cold war, when Indonesia was under the authoritarian rule of General Suharto, it was viewed by American administrations as a bulwark against Communism in Asia. Over nearly three decades, American training and equipment poured into Indonesia, though its military became increasingly abusive and corrupt.
 The Indonesian Army itself, where some factions are viewed by American officials to be sympathetic to Indonesia's Islamic extremist groups, has kept a determined distance from America. But in an interview, the civilian minister of defense, Juwono Sudarsono, who is close to the recently elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said he planned to go to Washington in March to make the case for what he called ''re-engagement.''
 President Yudhoyono, a former general and one of the last Indonesian officers to receive training at a United States staff college, is seen as the first Indonesian leader with a military background to be sympathetic to reform of the military, a proud and profoundly nationalist institution that is itself skittish about restoring ties.
 Mr. Juwono, who must take that attitude into account, said he intended to make a ''calibrated'' case to Washington that would emphasize the need for a stable Indonesia having a military with ''accountability and legitimacy.''
 He said Indonesia would not beg on its knees. Indeed, he said, the Chinese had invited Indonesia for strategic talks last November in Beijing, the first gesture of its kind between the nations. The Chinese, he said, offered to sell Indonesia fighter jets at concessionary rates. ''They emphasized there would be no conditionality,'' Mr. Juwono said. 
 Asked what Indonesia's response was, he said: ''We said it depends on the strategic partnership. If it's junior partnership for Indonesia, no way.'' 
 Mr. Juwono, who was educated at the London School of Economics, said that even after the widely heralded democratic presidential election here last year, the military ''retains the real levers of power.''
 ''From the political point of view, the military remains the fulcrum of Indonesia,'' he said. 
 To upgrade the military, Mr. Juwono said officers needed more training in management, budget and human rights issues at American military staff colleges. American officials also argue that training in the United States can create a more professional and disciplined force. 
 But Mr. Leahy said in a speech this week on the floor of the Senate that the United States needed to keep its leverage on the Indonesian military until it accounted for past actions. ''Although senior Indonesian military officers have repeatedly vowed to support reform, they have done next to nothing to hold their members accountable for these heinous crimes,'' he said. ''Instead, the Indonesian military has consistently obstructed justice.''
 After the two teachers' deaths in 2002, American officials said, the army blocked an F.B.I. investigation for 18 months. The Indonesian police concluded in a report soon after the killings that elements in the Indonesian military were responsible for the deaths. 
 A suspect, Antonius Wamang, who is suspected of having ties to the Indonesian Army, was finally indicted by the United States last June. He remains at large, although Mr. Juwono said he believed that the Indonesian military police knew his whereabouts.
 In Aceh, the Indonesian Army, which has been fighting a separatist rebellion for 30 years, has been on full display since the tsunami. Now it is common to see soldiers standing by, fully armed, as strong men among the refugees fight over boxes of food.
 Soldiers at the military hangar at the Banda Aceh airport, where large quantities of aid are temporarily stored, severely beat an anticorruption activist, leaving his face swollen, and an eye badly bruised. The military said afterward that the activist, Farid Faqih, whose beaten visage was all over television and the newspapers, had taken aid belonging to the wife of the top military commander, Gen. Sutarto Endriartono. An army captain was arrested in the case after President Yudhoyono said the violence was unacceptable.
 Of the incident, Mr. Juwono, the defense minister, said: ''It leaves me defending the indefensible. My argument is that as long as you have an undertrained, underfed military you will get these cases.'' 
 The army's uppermost concern appears to be to keep a stranglehold on the armed fighters of the Free Aceh Movement, most of whom have been pushed in the past two years out of the urban areas of Aceh and into the more remote hills. But the army is also running refugee camps.
 At Seunoddon, about 150 miles east of Banda Aceh, soldiers run three camps with varying degrees of intimidation.
 At one of the camps, a village leader, Hassan Sulaiman, showed a letter he had written to the local authorities saying the villagers did not want to be moved to barracks, where many are fearful that they will be controlled by the army, but rather wanted help in rebuilding their homes.
 The day after he made the letter public, Mr. Hassan said the camp's leader, Cpl. Zulikifri, kicked him in the groin. The confrontation came during the distribution of household goods donated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mr. Hassan said.
 ''The pain of the kicking was nothing compared to the pain to my dignity,'' he said later.
 To help ensure that the rebels do not gain ground on the decimated west coast of the province, the army chief, Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu, who rarely speaks with foreign journalists, said in an interview that he planned to rebuild the 200-mile coastal road from Banda Aceh to Meulaboh that was swept away by the tsunami.
 The project, which Western engineers estimated could take two years, would be completed in two months with 5,000 soldiers working ''night and day,'' the general said. In addition to reaching out to the people devastated by the tsunami, the army is trying to keep the guerrillas from setting up a stronghold if the area remained cut off. 
 General Ryamizard, who has strong nationalist beliefs, has boasted of rising to the top of the military without training overseas, and is among those in whom American officials say they have sensed hostility to American overtures. 
 Asked about restoring ties, he said: ''America is the one that cut relations. Why are we blamed?''
 That impulse in the army to steer clear of the United States has mounted in the past decade, in part out of a sense of resentment that Washington took away what it gave during much of the cold war. For the past four years, for example, the Indonesian Air Force failed to take advantage of a slight easing on the weapons ban, said Robert Gelbhard, a former American ambassador to Indonesia.
 But two shipments of American parts are now being fitted onto C-130 planes that the Indonesians bought from the United States more than 20 years ago.
 Another American contribution to tsunami recovery arrived this week off the coast of Aceh -- the Mercy, a 1,000-bed United States Navy hospital ship. American officials said they were thinking of sending teams of the Navy's public health doctors and nurses into villages on Aceh's west coast, provided that the Indonesian military agrees.


  INDONESIA (97%); ASIA (94%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); TIMOR-LESTE (79%); INDIA (79%); THAILAND (79%); PAKISTAN (79%)






  
  


February 7, 2005 Monday 

 PHOTOS
PRAYERS, RECOVERY WORK CONTINUE

  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (59%); 






  
Enterprise Record (Chico, California)

February 6, 2005 Sunday



 Death unites us: Former Chicoan reports on tsunami

 
http://media.mnginteractive.com
EDITOR'S NOTE: Bill Dalton is a former Chico resident, founder of Moon Publications and the author of the travel guide, "Indonesia Handbook." He moved to Indonesia full time in 1998, where we tracked him down and solicited his observations about the tragedy that has changed his adopted country.
BALI, Indonesia When news of the tsunamis first broke, I was idly watching an Indonesian news program while sipping morning tea.
The newscaster was reporting what I thought at the time was a curious geologic phenomenon giant waves in northern Sumatra had carried out to sea "100 or 200" people. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are routine throughout the Indonesian archipelago, one of the most volatile geophysical regions on earth. 
The reports were scant that first day. By mid-morning, casualties were also being reported from Thailand. In the beginning there was more coverage of Phuket than of Indonesia because southern Thailand was so much more plugged into the mass tourism grid. But when I woke the next morning, Dec. 27, many thousands more had been killed not only in Thailand and northern Sumatra but also in Sri Lanka, India, Maldives and even Somalia in East Africa.
Each day thereafter it seemed another 10,000 people had died and the number kept growing. I felt a sense of intense wonder at all the suffering. I began tuning in to Asian-based CNN and BBC, which by then were broadcasting nonstop coverage of an unprecedented, almost unfathomable disaster that was unfolding across the whole of South Asia.
A few days later I beheld the bizarre spectacle of U.S. Navy helicopter pilots and Australian medics carrying stretchers with Indonesian soldiers. This was extraordinary because years ago, during the upheavals in East Timor, the United States had broken off formal military ties with Indonesia on account of the country's deplorable human rights record.
Also coming to light was that America, "the Great Satan," was giving substantially more aid than Islamic nations. In comparison to the paltry sums offered by the Gulf countries, their treasuries bursting with oil-boom revenues, the biggest U.S. military disaster relief mission in history was in full throttle with more than $350 million pledged.
In spite of all the aid, the immediate effect of the tsunamis on our lives was a sharp spike in the price of everyday necessities cooking oil, rice, petroleum, liquefied natural gas, kerosene to help the government offset the mammoth recovery and reconstruction efforts for half a million of its citizens that had survived.
All over Bali, New Year's celebrations and concerts were canceled. Our 5-year-old daughter Aysah brought home a letter from school asking for donations. My wife Mita, who is pregnant, stopped watching the stark images on Indonesian TV which doesn't hold much back. The pictures of stiffened, bloated corpses of children made her sick.
I'm an American expatriate and ex-Chico resident living in the mountains of West Bali. As I had done after the Bali bomb in 2002, I started sending out "I'm OK" e-mails and short cell phone messages to friends and family to spare them worry. This was necessary because Americans' knowledge of Asian geography is appalling. When I tell people in the States that I live in Indonesia, I often get, "Is that close to Bali?"
Bali, which is one of Indonesia's 17,000 islands, is actually 1,700 miles west of the remote stricken area of Aceh Province and we didn't feel a ripple. For the same reason that people in Bangor, Maine don't board up their houses if there's a race riot in Los Angeles, our sense of security wasn't affected.
If anything is going to get us, it will be a volcano, not a tsunami. Behind our house is an unbroken line of looming gunung api ["fire mountains"] and the sun rises each morning over Bali's largest and most active volcano, Mount Agung the "navel of the world." With 29 volcanoes, every year there are two or three major eruptions somewhere along Indonesia's "ring of fire."
My whole professional life has been spent writing about Indonesia. For many years I lived in Chico, where I helped bring up two daughters and founded a travel book publishing company. I've written three guidebooks to the country and for seven years I led soft adventure tours all over the archipelago.
I had stumbled upon this vast string of islands in my hippie vagabond days in the early 1970s. Indonesia was simply the next country on my journey around the world, so I spent six months traveling through it. So enamored was I of the place that on my first visit in 1973, I overstayed my tourist visa and got kicked out.
Several months later, while working as a gardener for the Public Works Department in Cairns, northern Australia, I founded Moon Publications in a youth hostel with the publication of five stapled sheets of travel notes to the country. All 400 copies sold out in three days at the Nimbin Aquarius Festival, Australia's version of Woodstock.
I knew I was on to something. That first modest mimeographed gypsy publication eventually grew into a publishing organization with 65 titles distributed in more than 30 countries. For a while, we even gave Lonely Planet a run for their money. But by the end of the 1990s, I had sold out all my shares in the company.
One day I turned around and realized that I had been living in Chico for almost 20 years. I figured that was enough time to live in any one place on the planet, so in 1998 I accepted a job as managing editor for Island Life, a travel magazine that was just starting up in Jakarta.
I arrived just in time for the street demonstrations that toppled the Suharto government. I remember looking down from the 15th story of a hotel at thousands of burning and looting rioters surging through the streets like a molten river of lava. Now based in Bali, I make a living writing travel, lifestyle and book review columns for local and national newspapers and magazines.
The last time I visited Chico was in 2003 to say goodbye to my beautiful daughter Sri, who had been killed by a hit-and-run driver in San Francisco two days after her graduation. This is why the preposterously high death toll in Sumatra and the indiscriminate and haphazard manner of death had a special poignancy for me. Death is a subject to which I've given much thought over the past several years.
The stoic Indonesians are used to heavy body blows, although not of this magnitude and ferocity. If you take into account the horrendous political bloodlettings of the 1960s, the more recent SARS and bird flu epidemics, and the terrorist bombs set off by Islamic zealots killing hundreds in Jakarta and Bali, many Indonesians believe they are "accident prone."
The ethnic group that occupies the hardest-hit regions of northern Sumatra, the Acehnese, look upon the tsunamis as a severe punishment for the unjust, as a message from God. Throughout the 1990s, a brutal separatist struggle raged here with atrocities, rapes and disappearances carried out by both the rebels and the Indonesian military.
The army could have spared themselves the trouble of trying to dominate these people. The Acehnese, who practice the most orthodox form of Islam in Indonesia, have been fighting outsiders since colonial times. In the first Dutch expedition against them in 1873, they drove the whole invasion force into the sea. The region was so unruly that Dutch soldiers had to be stationed in the province right up until the eve of World War II.
Now there is no more Aceh problem because there is no more Aceh. The general population, the GAM separatist rebels, as well as thousands of Indonesian soldiers and their families, were killed, the slate wiped clean. The Koran teaches "not one leaf falls from a tree without the permission of God."
I realize the abyss between our two worlds when I see how those tens of thousands of Indonesians died, more than 229,000 so far and the number still climbing. Row upon row of faceless grotesque blackened corpses, most not ever even found by their families, buried in mass unmarked graves, almost uncountable. They were Asian deaths.
Though my daughter died unseen, unheard and alone, with the only witness the driver who killed her, Chico accorded her the most loving of farewells. For Sri there was a whole church full of weeping people whose only thoughts were on her and her family. I guess if you have to die, Sri got as good a send-off as you can get. It was an American death.
Looking at the rubble-strewn cities, the ravaged land, the torn lives and all the anguish the tsunamis have caused all over the Indian Ocean, I felt a sudden kinship that made it easier for me to understand why my 22-year-old daughter was taken from me. It's a costly and terrible wisdom, but somehow I could more easily accept her death. I have lots of company. I'm not singled out. Although Sri was a girl of breathtaking promise, God cut her the best deal He could.
Most people don't realize that death is always so close, so random, so unexpected. Life is as fragile as a flickering candle. Five hundred billion people have lived and died on this earth. A death means nothing and everything at the same time. Whether it be from a killer wave scourging the coasts of South Asia or a dark speeding car on San Francisco's 19th Avenue, death is the great common experience of us all.
Bill Dalton can be reached at pakbill2003@yahoo.com.

 INDONESIA (99%); UNITED STATES (94%); THAILAND (93%); GULF STATES (91%); SRI LANKA (79%); SOMALIA (79%); TIMOR-LESTE (79%); INDIA (79%); MALDIVES (79%); AFRICA (79%); EASTERN AFRICA (79%); AUSTRALIA (79%); ASIA (79%); SOUTHERN ASIA (71%); 







 Dayton Newspapers, Inc. 
Dayton Daily News (Ohio)

February 5, 2005 Saturday



 Evangelism angers Hindi tsunami victims; 
Most Christian charities say relief has no strings

 
CHENNAI, INDIA - As his 747 carrying tsunami relief supplies, doctors and volunteers from his charity arrived in southern India last month, evangelical Christian and Indian-born Dr. K.A. Paul announced, "Those who have survived the tsunami only did so because of the Great Lord Jesus Christ."
At least one local TV reporter turned off his camera and walked away.
Four days later, at a hospital in Sri Lanka where American doctors had just finished examining a sick child, another evangelical Christian who had flown in with Paul bent down on his knees to ask the sick child's mother to pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The child and her mother were not Christians, and barely understood the man's English, but they prayed along anyway. 
All across India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, anecdotal reports have surfaced of hard-line Christian evangelical groups using the tsunami to spread the word of Jesus. And all across the region, religious leaders have condemned the practice.
"They are like vultures, swooping in to take advantage of the injured," Swami R. Mutthiah, a Hindu priest working in South India in relief efforts said of evangelists who use the tsunami to proselytize. "These people, they make it appear that the aid is easier to get if you convert."
In Indonesia, a Muslim cleric who heads an influential group of clerics known as the council of Ulemas warned Christian aid groups to be careful about mixing aid with evangelism.
"This is a reminder: Do not do this in this kind of situation," said Diem Syamsuddin, according to comments reported by local newspapers and the Associated Press. "The Muslim community will not remain quiet."
Syamsuddin was responding to an aid group's attempts to take 300 Muslim orphans and raise them in a Christian children's home. The charity had planned to move the orphans from the Aceh province in Indonesia to a location near Djakarta.
Most Christian charities - including the largest, Catholic Relief Services - say that they do not attempt conversions, or mix aid with religion. Aid from other agencies, such as the UN and the International Red Cross, is given without any mention of religion, although the groups take the recipients' religion into consideration to keep the aid culturally nonoffensive - like sending vegetarian food supplies to India, and pork-free food supplies to Indonesia.
In India, most of the survivors of the tsunami are Hindus, and they believe in a polytheistic system of Gods. For centuries, they have co-existed peacefully with a vibrant but minority Christian population in South India that traces its lineage back to the French, Portugese, Dutch and British influence on the country. While most Indians accept the Christian minority as an integral part of the country - Christmas, for instance, is a national holiday - they frown upon the idea of conversions.
Attempts at converting Indians have brought a negative, and even violent, response in this part of the world. In 1999, Australian missionary Graham Steines and his sons were killed in India by an angry mob that accused them of attempting to convert Hindus (Indians also frowned upon the killing of Steines - his widow received the Padma Bhushan this week, India's highest civilian honor). Last week, when American televangelist Benny Hinn held a "Festival of Blessings" in Bangalore, opposition parties held up proceedings in the state's General Assembly for two days, protesting the government's complicity in an event aimed to convert.
Most of the reports of proselytising are scattered and, for the most part, consist of small-aid groups sent by churches in the United States that say their aim is to aid, not to convert. But some of their Web sites are transparently evangelical.
"We'll trust that God will turn the hearts of people in this situation, make it softer, so that they will believe and accept the Gospel as well as the truth of the word of God." the Rev. James Kanaganayagam says on a Web site for Back to the Bible, an American group that is attempting to raise nearly $500,000 to send to Sri Lanka.
Paul makes no apologies for his Christian message. In a lengthy profile in the Houston Chronicle last week, Paul said he considers saving the souls of people a calling from God.
"God called us to be peacemakers," he said. "Blessed are the peacemakers, not peace-wanters, not peace-lovers." 
But Paul's arrival in India brought immediate controversy. On Jan. 7, the day after his plane landed in Chennai, the Indian Express carried a scathing column mocking him for bragging about his airplane and using the tsunami as an opportunity to proselytize. Paul had on several occasions reminded journalists and visitors that "other than George W. Bush, I am the only man in the world to have his own 747."
"Poor Jesus Christ. He never boasted and he only had a mule for transport," said TJS George, the writer who wrote the column in the Express, a national newspaper. "With airborne pretenders as friends, Jesus Christ needs no enemies."
That same day, Paul was a few hours south of Chennai, leading a large crowd in prayer for the victims of the tsunami. The crowd had gathered, officials there said in interviews, because they had been told that aid would be distributed.
Leo Aguilar, the evangelical who led the sick child's mother in prayer at the hospital in Sri Lanka, said the tsunami is an opportunity to preach the Bible.
"It's part of the prophecies, that the great floods will come, and they will herald the return of Christ," he said. "This is a wakeup call to all these American churches."

 INDIA (98%);  SRI LANKA (93%); NETHERLANDS (67%)







 Lincoln Journal Star,
 


February 5, 2005 Saturday  




 Songs of healing, songs of prayer

 
New hymns aim to bring hope to world ravaged by tsunami
In the aftermath of the world's deadliest natural disaster, complexities abound.      How will we help care for the injured and orphaned? Assist in burying the dead? Bring food and healing and hope to survivors in the 12 countries touching the Indian Ocean, where nearly 200,000 people have died and millions have lost so much?
Beyond the call for prayer, donations and manpower, some United Methodists say they have been moved to bring an offering of song to those who are suffering as a result of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami. 
It seems so simple, the concept that a hymn could create healing when wounds are deep and raw. Yet Dean McIntyre, director of music resources for the United Methodist Board of Discipleship, says the musical scores arriving at his office bring a wonderful opportunity for expression to those who will hear and sing them, as well as healing to their authors.
"Hymns help us to pray when we cannot pray for ourselves," McIntyre says. "That the creative process can be put to use to allow them some personal healing and insight... it transcends the personal experience and becomes explicable to us all."
McIntyre and David L. Bone, executive director of the Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts, say they also received many original hymns after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America.
"With more persons writing hymns these days and the ability of the Internet to disseminate them widely, we will see this happen more when human events demand new expressions of our grief, pain or joy," Bone says.
The expression of grief and healing through hymn writing is steeped in history. Horatio Spafford wrote the popular hymn "It Is Well With My Soul" after learning his four daughters had drowned during an ocean voyage from England to Europe.
The Rev. Gareth Hill, 48, is a full-time minister for the Cornwall Methodist District in Great Britain. He penned his hymn, "When Innocence Is Fractured," days after the tsunami hit.
Hill says music was the link between his past and future, when he worked as a journalist before entering the ministry several years go. During his vocational transition, he wrote songs and hymns to express thoughts and give them structure. Even now, he says, hymn writing helps him work through his own questions and fears.
"As well as being only too aware of the horror that the tsunami confronted us with, I wanted to say something positive for Christians... to make some kind of declaration that the waves couldn't sweep away faith," Hill says.
The last line of Hill's four-stanza hymn, sung to the familiar Aurelia tune ("The Church's One Foundation"), reads: "In Christ our souls take refuge, though not to hide from truth; We face each anguished question with faith, if not with proof. We hear his wistful question, 'And will you leave me, too?' Though all the world should crumble, we hope, O Christ, in you."
Says McIntyre: "That line makes me want to sit for an hour and contemplate. It is a fine example of truly beautiful hymn writing."
Another British Methodist minister, the Rev. Andrew Pratt of Manchester, has written four hymns since the tsunami. He writes hymns to help keep his emotions in check after a tragedy. It's a practice he began after losing his 22-year-old son in an accident five years ago.
"Whenever something of this sort occurs, I plumb the depths of pain again as I empathize with people," says Pratt, who was moved to write by images on television news broadcasts.
A trained marine biologist, Pratt says he understands something of the science involved in this disaster. Still, he has no answers to the suffering, as he writes in "In Every Face We See the Pain": "Then give us strength to rise again, enlivened by your hope, and for the present show your love and give us grace to cope."
Like Pratt, Dianne Empringham was affected by television reports showing tsunami victims and survivors caught in murky water. Though she had never written a hymn, she was moved to write "We Cry Out to You" in hopes she could bring healing to fellow members of St. Paul United Methodist Church in Conroe, Texas.
"I was touched so deeply that it was easier for me to write this," Empringham says. "If somehow I could help people deal with their pain, to know that even in a time of disaster we can still cry out, then that will be the measure of how good this hymn is."
Dave Liles is another first-time hymn writer. As choir director of First United Methodist Church in Mansfield, Ohio, he says he is more comfortable leading hymns.
But when he read over the Rev. Randy Day's prayer from Jan. 2, a prayer that matched Liles' own questioning of the large-scale loss of life, he was inspired to put down his baton and pick up a pen. Day is top staff executive of the denomination's Board of Global Ministries.
"The song asks, 'How can we trust?'" Liles says. "The question is, as resolved at the end of the hymn: 'How can we not trust?'
"I would hope that this hymn might be something that could help in any kind of a tragedy, be it the loss of a loved one or something along the lines of the magnitude of the tsunami," he says. "To take a prayer and give it music speaks to every part of the human heart."
Tamie Ross is a freelance journalist based in Dallas.
TSUNAMI HYMN USED AT LOCAL CHURCH
On a Sunday in mid-January, the worship service at Lincoln's First-Plymouth Congregational Church included a hymn by British pastor Andrew Pratt that was inspired by the Asian tsunami.
"We understand tectonic plates that move beneath our feet," the hymn begins. "We understand powerful waves make rivers in the street. But when we try to centre God, our sense is incomplete."
The hymn goes on to grapple with the difficulty of finding God in the tragedy of a natural disaster.
"We struggle with the facts that contradict belief - until we find a greater truth, we never find relief," the hymn says. It concludes: "We may not understand God's ways until eternity. But love is stronger than belief and faith can help us see."
The Rev. Otis Young, senior pastor at First-Plymouth, called it a "great hymn" that contains a message of hope. "People loved it," he said.

 ENGLAND (79%);   UNITED KINGDOM (72%)




11 of 120 DOCUMENTS

   

 

February 3, 2005 Thursday 



 Community of Faith: Tsunami volunteers have plan to stay safe

 
Over the next few weeks, First Baptist Church of Woodstock is dispatching two work teams with as many as 38 volunteers to help with cleanup from the devastating tsunamis that hit south Asia in late December.
The relief workers will be among the first foreigners visiting the Banda Aceh region of Sumatra, since that province has limited access to outsiders over the past 10 years.
Team members are eager to share the goals of their mission, but not their identities. The secrecy is designed to protect the volunteers while they're in the volatile Muslim territory. 
Al McMillan, regional missions director for First Baptist, said Indonesia and Malaysia have the world's highest concentration of Muslims. And the Banda Aceh region has long been a site of violence, as resident Muslims have fought for secession from Indonesia because of their beliefs that the rest of the country follows too liberal a version of the Muslim faith.
"When the Holy Spirit opens up an opportunity that we can share the gospel, that's where we want to be, ready to do that at the drop of a hat, but keeping in mind we know that we're in an area that's very hostile," McMillan said. "You could be putting yourself in jeopardy for losing your life."
Measures are taken to make the trip as safe as possible. Volunteers will have access to a satellite phone. Signs of unrest in the region are monitored by trip coordinators at the church and immediately reported to the volunteers.
"We have a company available to us that downloads, at the split second it happens, information that's going on regarding insurgent activity," McMillan said. "If that occurs, they e-mail it directly to us, and we e-mail to our team leaders."
Travel insurance on each volunteer makes it possible for anyone who becomes ill to leave the country immediately and return home.
In addition to these precautions, each relief worker has at least 10 prayer partners praying for his or her safety and success, which amounts to what McMillan calls "a lot of knee time."
The First Baptist members will complete work already started by teams from Germantown Baptist Church in Memphis. The goal is to build seven model homes for residents of the village of Ladang, where 1,300 were left homeless.
Relief teams from First Baptist regularly travel around the world to help in disaster areas.

  SOUTHERN ASIA (92%); ASIA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%);  






   

 

February 3, 2005 Thursday 



 Community of Faith: Tsunami teams eye safety;
Volunteers from church see the risks and rewards

 
Over the next few weeks, First Baptist Church of Woodstock is dispatching two work teams with as many as 38 volunteers to help with cleanup after the devastating tsunami hit South Asia in late December.
The relief workers will be among the first foreigners visiting the Banda Aceh region of Sumatra, since that province has limited access to outsiders over the past 10 years.
Team members are eager to share the goals of their mission, but not their identities. The secrecy is designed to protect the volunteers while they're in the volatile Muslim territory.
Al McMillan, regional missions director for First Baptist, said Indonesia and Malaysia have the world's highest concentration of Muslims. And the Banda Aceh region has long been a site of violence, as resident Muslims have fought for secession from Indonesia because of their beliefs that the rest of the country follows too liberal a version of the Muslim faith. 
"When the Holy Spirit opens up an opportunity that we can share the gospel, that's where we want to be, ready to do that at the drop of a hat, but keeping in mind we know that we're in an area that's very hostile," said McMillan. "You could be putting yourself in jeopardy for losing your life."
Measures are taken to make the trip as safe as possible. Volunteers will have access to a satellite phone while in Indonesia. Signs of unrest in the region are monitored by trip coordinators at the church and immediately reported to the volunteers in the field.
"We have a company available to us that downloads, at the split second it happens, information that's going on regarding insurgent activity," said McMillan. "If that occurs, they e-mail it directly to us, and we e-mail to our team leaders."
Travel insurance that's taken out on each volunteer makes it possible for anyone who becomes ill to leave the country immediately and return home.
In addition to these precautions, each relief worker has at least 10 prayer partners praying for his or her safety and success, which amounts to what McMillan calls "a lot of knee time."
"We always ask and pray for the hedge of protection and that God would blind the eyes of the evil ones that would do them harm but at the same time open their hearts," said McMillan. "We want to come alongside some people we don't know but we care for because God has asked us to care for them. We've got some precious servants here at this church."
The First Baptist members will complete work already started by teams from Germantown Baptist Church in Memphis. The goal is to build seven model homes for residents of the village of Ladang, where 1,300 were left homeless, 25 died and seven are missing.
Villagers will be taught the construction skills so they can copy the model homes as they rebuild their village and their lives. The structures are very simple, McMillan said, built on platforms about 2 feet off the ground. The workers will bring a collection of small tools that they'll leave for the villagers to keep. Building supplies will be furnished by the International Mission Board.
The teams will be faced with 18-hour workdays in 90-degree temperatures and 100 percent humidity. Ladang is near the equator, gets 12 hours of daylight and has two seasons: "wet and wetter," according to Neil Brown, the church's missions and evangelism pastor.
"Our strategy is to construct a model home that the locals can duplicate after we're gone," according to Brown. "There will be needs for months and maybe years after we're gone. We hope to be able to plant seeds that indigenous personnel will be able to water, but long-term plans will have to be done by the locals."
Brown said First Baptist already has sent between $6,000 and $7,000 to the village for construction of a field kitchen designed to feed the residents and the workers. And McMillan said a shower was recently built in the village, which is good news for the Georgia volunteers. Previous relief teams have had to wait until they left the region to find a chance to take a shower or bath.
Relief teams from First Baptist regularly travel around the world to help in disaster areas. In 1999, a series of three teams totaling 56 volunteers traveled to Turkey after an earthquake that measured 7.8 on the Richter scale killed more than 12,000 residents. Last year, three teams of 59 volunteers went to Florida to help hurricane victims.
The needs in Indonesia and hurricane-riddled Florida have created an awareness for a different kind of relief training that includes water purification procedures. The Georgia Baptist Convention will hold a training session May 13-14 at Acworth's Wildwood Baptist Church.
"We have a number of folks who are interested, and we are enhancing our capability to react to future disasters," said Brown. "We're trying to proactively get better prepared for the future."
BOOKS
"The Five Love Languages," by Gary Chapman
I was prepared not to like this book. At first glance it struck me as too simplistic, beginning with the book's title. After reading it, however, I have changed my mind. It is simple but not simplistic. It is a helpful tool for anyone wishing to improve the communication in his or her marriage. I plan to recommend this book to every couple I counsel.
--- The Rev. Greg Deloach of Marietta First Baptist
CD
"Collide" by Skillet (Ardent Records)
Skillet, a Christian band distributing music through Ardent Records, now has a mainstream deal with Lava Records. Its latest release, "Collide," will be reissued this spring to the general market on Lava with one song added. Skillet will be in concert at 7 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Rock of Cleveland in Cleveland, Ga. The show also will feature Seventh Day Slumber and Kids in the Way. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. 706-348-7625.
WORSHIP NOTES: MUST Ministries set for general meeting
The Cobb group will hold the first general meeting of the new year at 9:30 a.m. Friday at MUST Ministries, 55 Elizabeth Church Road in Marietta. Joan Lucas, member of Holy Family Catholic Church and the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women, will talk about "human trafficking." Members should bring paper goods that will be given to MUST. Call Ayliffe Bogle at 770-973-5138.
Auction raises funds
Martini Madness II will begin at 8 p.m. Saturday, with proceeds from the silent auction benefiting Congregation Etz Chaim's preschool. Tickets are $18 per couple or $9 per person in advance or $22 per couple and $11 per person at the door. The preschool is in Marietta at 1190 Indian Hills Parkway. 770-973-0137.
'DaVinci Code' talks
A Wednesday night series at Mount Paran North Church of God, meeting at 7 p.m. weekly through Feb. 16, will address the questions posed by the fictional book "The DaVinci Code." The church is in Marietta at 1700 Allgood Road. 770-578-9081. www.mtparan.com
Performances planned
Northwest Unitarian Universalist church will present performers Betty Bolander, Thomas Vinton, Ray Naylor and Ethan Daniel Davidson at 8 p.m. Saturday. $5 donation requested. Refreshments available. Amateur musicians invited to perform. Call 770-454-7391 to reserve a time slot. The church is in Sandy Springs at 1025 Mount Vernon Highway.
Chick-fil-A founder
First United Methodist Church of Marietta invites the community to an evening with Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A, set for 6:30 p.m. Monday in the Family Life Hall. Child care provided with reservations. The $7 tickets can be purchased in the church office. No tickets sold at the door. 770-429-7800.
Preschool registration
Due West United Methodist preschool, 3956 Due West Road in Marietta, is holding registration Feb. 12, open to church families beginning at 8 a.m. and the community at 8:30 a.m. The preschool has classes for children ages 4 months through 5 years, held two to five days a week. The children's and youth ministries of the church are sponsoring "Effective Strategies of Discipline," a seminar set for 5:30-9 p.m. Feb. 10 in the family life center. Speaker will be Brenda Fitzgerald. Cost is $10 per person, $15 per couple if registered by Sunday, $5 more at the door.  Nursery available for children through grade 5 with reservations. 770-590-0982.
Weeklong mission
St. Catherine of Siena Roman Catholic Church will present the mission "God Has a Plan," set for Feb. 13-17, by the Rev. David Wilton of the Fathers of Mercy. The first session meets at 7 p.m. Feb. 13, with nightly meetings at 7 p.m. Feb. 14-17. Weekday talks will be preached during the mass and end at 8:15 p.m. The church is in Kennesaw at 1618 Ben King Road. 770-428-7139.
candihan@bellsouth.net

 





   

 

February 3, 2005 Thursday 



 COMMUNITY OF FAITH: Reaching out amid the unrest;
Teams ready to aid tsunami victims keep safety in mind

 
Over the next few weeks, First Baptist Church of Woodstock is dispatching two work teams with as many as 38 volunteers to help with cleanup after the devastating tsunami hit south Asia in late December.
The relief workers will be among the first foreigners visiting the Banda Aceh region of Sumatra, since that province has limited access to outsiders over the past 10 years.
Team members are eager to share the goals of their mission, but not their identities. The secrecy is designed to protect the volunteers while they're in the volatile Muslim territory. 
Al McMillan, regional missions director for First Baptist, said Indonesia and Malaysia have the world's highest concentration of Muslims. And the Banda Aceh region has long been a site of violence, as resident Muslims have fought for secession from Indonesia because of their beliefs that the rest of the country follows too liberal a version of the Muslim faith.
"When the Holy Spirit opens up an opportunity that we can share the gospel, that's where we want to be, ready to do that at the drop of a hat, but keeping in mind we know that we're in an area that's very hostile," said McMillan. "You could be putting yourself in jeopardy for losing your life."
Measures are taken to make the trip as safe as possible. Volunteers will have access to a satellite phone while in Indonesia. Signs of unrest in the region are monitored by trip coordinators at the church and immediately reported to the volunteers in the field.
"We have a company available to us that downloads, at the split second it happens, information that's going on regarding insurgent activity," said McMillan. "If that occurs, they e-mail it directly to us, and we e-mail to our team leaders."
Travel insurance that's taken out on each volunteer makes it possible for anyone who becomes ill to leave the country immediately and return home.
In addition to these precautions, each relief worker has at least 10 prayer partners praying for his or her safety and success, which amounts to what McMillan calls "a lot of knee time."
"We always ask and pray for the hedge of protection and that God would blind the eyes of the evil ones that would do them harm but at the same time open their hearts," said McMillan. "We want to come alongside some people we don't know but we care for because God has asked us to care for them. We've got some precious servants here at this church."
The First Baptist members will complete work already started by teams from Germantown Baptist Church in Memphis. The goal is to build seven model homes for residents of the village of Ladang, where 1,300 were left homeless, 25 died and seven are missing.
Villagers will be taught the construction skills so they can copy the model homes as they rebuild their village and their lives. The structures are very simple, McMillan said, built on platforms about 2 feet off the ground. The workers will bring a collection of small tools that they'll leave for the villagers to keep. Building supplies will be furnished by the International Mission Board.
The teams will be faced with 18-hour workdays in 90-degree temperatures and 100 percent humidity. Ladang is near the equator, gets 12 hours of daylight and has two seasons: "wet and wetter," according to Neil Brown, the church's missions and evangelism pastor.
"Our strategy is to construct a model home that the locals can duplicate after we're gone," according to Brown. "There will be needs for months and maybe years after we're gone. We hope to be able to plant seeds that indigenous personnel will be able to water, but long-term plans will have to be done by the locals."
Brown said First Baptist already has sent between $6,000 and $7,000 to the village for construction of a field kitchen designed to feed the residents and the workers. And McMillan said a shower was recently built in the village, which is good news for the Georgia volunteers. Previous relief teams have had to wait until they left the region to find a chance to take a shower or bath.
Relief teams from First Baptist regularly travel around the world to help in disaster areas. In 1999, a series of three teams totaling 56 volunteers traveled to Turkey after an earthquake that measured 7.8 on the Richter scale killed more than 12,000 residents. Last year, three teams of 59 volunteers went to Florida to help hurricane victims.
The needs in Indonesia and hurricane-riddled Florida have created an awareness for a different kind of relief training that includes water purification procedures. The Georgia Baptist Convention will hold a training session May 13-14 at Acworth's Wildwood Baptist Church.
"We have a number of folks who are interested, and we are enhancing our capability to react to future disasters," said Brown. "We're trying to proactively get better prepared for the future."
candihan@bellsouth.net

 INDONESIA (95%); SOUTHERN ASIA (92%); ASIA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%);  





   

 

February 1, 2005 Tuesday 



 Election mostly praised;
International critics say Iraq's future still rocky

 
Jerusalem --- European opponents of the U.S. war in Iraq hailed Sunday's election as a positive development in the country's rehabilitation. But reaction in the Arab world and Asia was mixed as concerns remain over the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and the low turnout of Sunni Muslims in the polling.
French President Jacques Chirac called the vote a success in a telephone conversation Monday with President Bush. Relations between the two countries have been strained over U.S. policy in the region. 
"These elections mark an important step in the political reconstruction of Iraq. The strategy of terrorist groups has partly failed," Chirac told Bush, Chirac's office said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, another outspoken critic of U.S. policy in Iraq, called the elections "a step in the right direction," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
In the Arab world, news media generally celebrated the Iraqi vote, sometimes in heroic tones. Saudi Arabia's Arab News daily proclaimed in a headline: "Iraqis Brave Bombs to Vote."
"Today we pay tribute to the people of Iraq. Despite the most difficult circumstances, they turned out in their millions in the hope that they might take control of their own future," wrote the Gulf News, a daily newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.
The world's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, said it was heartened by the apparently high turnout among Iraqis. Indonesia's foreign ministry said the Iraqi people showed "commendable determination."
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the vote could prompt the alliance to increase its training efforts of Iraqi security forces.
One of France's largest newspapers inserted a characteristic knock against the U.S. policy in Iraq into an otherwise complimentary editorial on the vote.
"Even though the polls may not have been totally free and fair, nor the reported turnout figures entirely reliable, this does not make the elections any less of a striking victory of 'the kamikaze of democracy' over the 'kamikaze of terror,"' said left-leaning Liberation, asserting that America is bringing democracy to the Middle East at gunpoint.
While complimentary of Iraqis, the Arab media also tempered its enthusiasm and predicted a bleak short-term picture for Iraq.
Some Arab newspapers questioned the purpose of elections since the U.S. military authority in Iraq will remain the true power in the country for an undetermined amount of time.
"The Iraqi election experience [has] confirmed that foreign intervention in the internal affairs and occupation of other countries are not compatible with any form of reform, even if concealed behind high-sounding slogans," said an editorial in Egypt's al Jumhuriyah newspaper.
An exception to the region's cautious optimism about the vote was Jordan's King Abdullah II, a close American ally. Speaking to CNN on Monday, he said that Iraqi elections were an unequivocal step forward in the process of democratizing the Middle East.
"I think what we saw yesterday in Iraq is a positive thing," King Abdullah said. "People are waking up, [Arab] leaders understand that they have to push reform forward, and I don't think there is any looking back."
Jordan, Iraq's neighbor to the northwest, allowed U.S. troops to be based from the country during the initial invasion of Iraq. For its strong support of the American military policy, Jordan has seen its U.S. aid boosted since the Iraqi war began.
Other Iraqi neighbors were not so upbeat.
News media in Turkey, another strong U.S. ally that borders Iraq to the north, focused on possible instability in the region as a possible aftermath of the vote. The daily Aksam paper said that the apparent disenfranchisement of the Iraqi Sunni population could weaken the new Iraqi government, while the vote's empowering of Iraqi Kurds could mean trouble for the whole region. Turkey has for decades fought a Kurdish independence movement based along its border with Iraq.
"Elections in Iraq ended by giving birth to big problems. In the coming 10 years, the Middle East may be dragged into a process of a regional civil war," Aksam said in an editorial.

 UNITED STATES (98%); IRAQ (96%); FRANCE (93%); INDONESIA (92%);  ASIA (92%); EGYPT (79%); UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (79%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); JORDAN (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); IRAN (77%); 





February 1, 2005 Tuesday



 Should disasters undermine our faith? Yes

 
Nov. 1, 1755, was, one might say, a Sept. 11 for the Western tradition of confident optimism and faith in the ultimate goodness of God. That was the day when three massive earthquakes and a tsunami destroyed much of Lisbon, Portugal. It might have been the most destructive natural event in Europe since the Black Plague of the 14th century, killing more than 30,000 persons in a few hours. 
The timing was grimly ironic: November 1 was All Saints' Day, and when the first quake hit about 9:30 a.m., many victims were in churches and cathedrals. The shock at the sudden devastation of one of Europe's wealthiest cities resonated throughout the continent, and, as has happened in the aftermath of the recent South Asian tsunami, it caused many to question their beliefs -- and led others to defend conventional religion.  
Among the first to react was the French philosopher Voltaire, who within a month had completed his "Poem on the Disaster at Lisbon." 
As Thomas Kendrick notes in "The Lisbon Earthquake," the favored philosophy of the age, derived from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, was a form of optimism summarized in the French phrase tout est bien (all is well). Kendrick says, "most men . . . were comfortably sure that the world was a good place in which everything that happened was on a long view likely to be 'for the best.' " 
But the horrifying and heart-rending reports from Lisbon seemed to make a mockery of that facile, naive concept. 
Voltaire, both in the poem and four years later in the famous novel "Candide," ridiculed the idea that a perfectly good God could permit -- or perhaps even cause -- misery on such a colossal scale. He was especially critical of the notion, then taken seriously by many people, that this must necessarily be "the best of all possible worlds" because, if it were possible to create a better world, then God, being morally perfect, omnipotent and benevolent, would have done so. 
At the least, the indiscriminate and merciless destruction resulting from the Lisbon and South Asian disasters must be awkward for those who believe that "God is love." 
In Voltaire's day, the geological forces that drive our planet's enormous crustal plates were completely unknown. Even today, when a simple explanation is available for the South Asian tsunami, a Washington Post story reprinted in the American-Statesman under the title "Acts of God?" (Jan. 8) and a New York Times story (Jan. 12) quote survivors who give biased or embarrassingly superstitious answers to the question, "Why did this happen?" A Buddhist blames Christians, a farmer blames fishermen, a Muslim blames sinful fellow Muslims -- reactions that say more about the speaker than the event. 
Although insurance companies get themselves off a costly hook with the phrase "acts of God," we are -- or should be -- well enough informed to recognize that meteorological and geological catastrophes have purely physical causes and do not constitute interventions or punishments from an inexplicable anthropomorphic divinity. 
But there was a more general, but less justifiable, theme featured in many stories following the tragedy: Keep the faith. For example, former President George H.W. Bush was on TV, earnestly saying that his religious convictions had never been shaken by disasters and that believers should not be dismayed by these potentially troubling occurrences. 
Similarly, William Safire's column ("After tragedy, it's OK to ask, 'Where was God?'," Jan. 11), citing the biblical Job, assures us, "Questioning God's inscrutable ways . . . need not undermine faith." 
Indeed, as Reeve Brenner shows in "Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors," even the almost indescribable horrors of the concentration and extermination camps did not cause a universal loss of faith among survivors. 
But if the random deaths of 160,000 people -- or the deliberate murders of 6 million -- are not enough to induce disbelief, just what would it take? 
The rather self-serving claim that one should "keep on believing" in the existence and presumed goodness of God -- in spite of evidence that might seem to be a clear refutation -- is one reason why the late Oxford philosopher Richard Robinson said in his remarkable 1964 book, "An Atheist's Values," that, far from being a virtue, "faith is a great vice, an example of obstinately refusing to listen to reason." 
Depressingly, 250 years after Lisbon, many people cannot bring themselves to draw the unwelcome but obvious inference: either God does not exist -- or he does not care. 
Dee is a visiting scholar in the Classics department at the University of Texas. 

 PORTUGAL (92%); EUROPE (90%); ASIA (90%);  






  


February 1, 2005 Tuesday



 European war critics praise election's success

 
World leaders, including French President Jacques Chirac and other leading opponents of the war in Iraq, heaped praise on Iraqi voters Monday for their strong turnout in landmark elections, saying terrorists were the losers.
Chirac called President Bush to say he was satisfied and to reiterate a French offer to train Iraqi security forces and civil servants.
The European Union also said it was prepared to send more aid to bolster Iraq's move to democracy.
"These elections mark an important step in the political reconstruction of Iraq. The strategy of terrorist groups has partly failed," Chirac told Bush, the French leader's spokesman said. 
Praise from world capitals was tempered by concerns about the low turnout among Iraq's once-powerful Sunni Muslim minority and appeals to Iraqi authorities not to exclude any peaceful ethnic, religious or political groups as they draft a constitution.
It could take up to 10 days for final results to be known, but Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, were expected to dominate the new government.
There also was pressure for a pullout by U.S.-led troops amid warnings that difficulties ahead made that unlikely to happen soon.
In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the U.S. mission was to "put Iraq on a path to democracy and in position to defend themselves. And then our troops can return home with honor."
Bush plans to visit Europe next month, and the fact that Sunday's election for a National Assembly and provincial legislatures was not the disaster some skeptics predicted could help improve trans-Atlantic ties.
"We must work together in our common interest, wherever we stood on the question of whether it was right to go to war," said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, whose country, like France and Russia, opposed the U.S.-led invasion but supports efforts to rebuild Iraq.
In Brussels, Belgium, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told The Associated Press that Iraq's move toward democracy would generate more aid for the country. The 25-nation bloc wants to help draft Iraq's new constitution and train its judiciary and security forces, he said.
But EU ministers also were concerned that the low turnout by Sunni Arabs could alienate them further, leading to deeper divisions between them and other ethnic groups.
"That is the only problem of a good day," Solana said.
Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld said the solution was to offer Sunnis positions in the new government.
"If I were in the place of the Iraqi authorities, I would offer Sunnis a large representation in the executive, bearing in mind that an internal rift is a threat to Iraq," Rotfeld said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, backtracking from a harsh warning in December that elections could not be fair under U.S.-led occupation, said the vote was "undoubtedly a step toward democratization."
"The very fact of it is an important event, maybe a historic event, for the Iraqi people," Putin said.
Russia "will do its utmost to help the settlement in Iraq and around it," he pledged.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has faced strong criticism for standing with Bush on Iraq, was said by his spokesman to be very encouraged by the turnout. Blair also spoke with Bush on Monday.
Despite violence that killed at least 44 people, including nine suicide bombers, Iraq's electoral commission said it believed that turnout among the estimated 14 million eligible Iraqi voters appeared higher than the 57 percent, or roughly 8 million, predicted before Sunday's poll.
Official turnout figures were not yet available.
Britain's foreign minister Jack Straw told the House of Commons the election was "a real blow" to Iraqi insurgents' "disgusting campaign of violence and intimidation."
"These elections were a moving demonstration that democracy and freedom are universal values, to which people everywhere aspire," Straw said.
Britain has contributed the second-largest military force to the coalition. Blair opponents have called for a timetable for withdrawing those 9,000 servicemembers a demand rejected as unhelpful by Iraq's ambassador to Britain, Salah al-Shaikhly.
"Coalition forces are not a luxury. They will leave the moment we can control our own security in Iraq. They are not there just for the sake of it," the ambassador said.
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch U.S. ally on Iraq, said he hoped the elections would help spread democracy in the Arab world, "where there is authoritarian rule, where the situation of women is not one of liberty or dignity, where there are still many steps to make to emerge from the Middle Ages."
Jordan's King Abdullah II said the election "will set a good tone for the Middle East. I'm very optimistic."
But Abdullah, a Sunni Arab who previously accused Shiite-dominated Iran of trying to influence the elections, also said Sunni participation appeared "a lot lower than any of us hoped."
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, said it was encouraged by Sunday's turnout, and Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said he hoped results would be "credible enough to enable the government to draft a new constitution."

 IRAQ (98%); FRANCE (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); EUROPE (93%); BELGIUM (92%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (92%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (92%); GERMANY (79%); POLAND (79%); 




1


  



February 1, 2005 Tuesday  




 Overstating Mr. Bush's Role

 
  In his Jan. 21 op-ed, "Tomorrow's Threat," Charles Krauthammer gave  President Bush credit for "good news," but Mr. Bush had nothing to do with the "orange" and "rose" revolutions in  Ukraine and Georgia, nor was he responsible for the Palestinian elections.  
He certainly had nothing to do with the elections in "two critical Muslim states -- Indonesia and Malaysia."  
 If Mr. Krauthammer has information  about the  ultimate success or failure of the recent elections in Iraq, in the face of the  slaughter  that continues to escalate daily, perhaps he should share that with the rest of us. As to Afghanistan, we'll see. 
To his credit, Mr. Krauthammer includes the voluminous bad news. But as to the past four years under an arrogant and hubris-ridden Bush administration, I'm afraid all we have had is bad news. 
ANTHONY A. GOODMAN 
Bozeman,  Mont. 

 MALAYSIA (92%); UKRAINE (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%);  IRAQ (79%)




1


   


January 31, 2005 Monday  




 

Philadelphia Concert Hall Needs Work, Study Says
 Verizon Hall, the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, is in need of major reconstruction to overcome acoustical problems, according to a report by the hall's original sound designer. The hall, opened in 2001 as part of the $265 million Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, has a ''low level of remembrance,'' and a ''relatively low level of impact of the orchestral sound,'' the design firm Artec said in its study,  reported yesterday. The report said ''enormous technical difficulties (and cost)'' would be involved in repairing the flaws. The newspaper also reported that the Philadelphia Orchestra is in talks with a small Finnish label, Ondine, to distribute a series of albums that the orchestra would record itself during live performances. EMI dropped the orchestra from its last major recording contract in 1996, amid widespread retrenchment in the classical music industry.

A Beethoven Premiere
 A fragment of an unknown piano concerto by Beethoven will have its premiere in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, this week. The eight-minute adagio was written in 1789, when Beethoven was 19, and has been reconstructed by musicologists from the composer's notes, which were discovered in the British Museum, according to press reports. The first performance is tomorrow at the De Doelen concert hall, with the pianist Ronald Brautigam, above, and the Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra. In 2003 that orchestra accomplished another Beethoven feat, with the first performances in 160 years of a movement from a lost oboe concerto.

Pop CD's in Release
 Except for one blockbuster album, the Game's ''Documentary,'' January has been, as usual, a slow month for new music. February looks a little more exciting, with new albums by Brian McKnight, 3 Doors Down, Tori Amos, Kings of Leon, Krayzie Bone and Iron and Wine. Tomorrow's new releases include the Chicago hip-hop crew Do or Die's CD/DVD package ''D*O*D'' (Atlantic), produced by Kanye West, Scott Storch and others; the country singer Nanci Griffith's ''Hearts in Mind'' (Universal), with guest spots by Jimmy Buffett and Keith Carradine; Joe Cocker's ''Heart and Soul'' (Universal), with Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck; the Cowboy Junkies' ''Open Road'' (Rounder); the Italian-born jazz singer Chiara Civello's American debut, ''Last Quarter Moon'' (Verve); and two releases by Seal: the new album ''Acoustic'' and a double-disc collection, ''Best: 1991-2004'' (both released by Warner Brothers).

Arctic Mandela
 Nelson Mandela, below, will attend an AIDS benefit concert in Tromsoe, Norway, in June, The Associated Press has reported. The city, which is more than 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, announced late last week that Mr. Mandela, 86, would attend the concert, a benefit for his charity 46664, named for his prisoner number during the decades he was jailed in South Africa. No program has been set for the concert. Mr. Mandela shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with the South African president, F.W. de Klerk, for their efforts to end apartheid.

Honoring a Celtic Fiddler
 An impressive lineup of Celtic musicians will pay tribute this week to Johnny Cunningham, the Scottish-born Celtic fiddler who died in December 2003. His brother Phil Cunningham, an accordionist, will join the singer Susan McKeown, the fiddler Kevin Burke, the multi-instrumentalist Seamus Eagan and the guitarist Aidan Brennan in a five-city tour beginning in Sellersville, Pa., on Thursday and arriving at Town Hall in Manhattan on Saturday. Johnny Cunningham had been a central figure in Celtic music for more than 30 years, in the group Silly Wizard, on his own and with Ms. McKeown, Mr. Burke and others.

Footnotes
 The Grammy Awards ceremony on Feb. 13 will include a tribute to Ray Charles with Bonnie Raitt and Billy Preston, the Recording Academy announced. Trey Anastasio and Mike Gordon, both formerly of Phish, will perform, separately, at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee in June. Mr. Anastasio will play with his new band and Mr. Gordon will join the Benevento/Russo Duo. Other additions to Bonnaroo's lineup include the German electronic group Mouse on Mars and the Appalachian string group Old Crow Medicine Show. Yusuf Islam, left, formerly known as Cat Stevens, will be the host of a benefit concert for tsunami relief today in Jakarta, Indonesia. The concert is to raise money for Aceh Province, the severely damaged Indonesian region, and is to feature local musicians. Mr. Islam is to perform a song, ''Indian Ocean,'' written for the occasion. ''Disco: A Decade of Saturday Nights,'' an exhibition exploring the history and cultural impact of the music that produced ''The Hustle'' and John Travolta in a tight white suit, will open tomorrow at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Created by the Experience Music Project in Seattle and first presented there, it will be on view at the library through May 14. Admission is free.


 UNITED STATES (94%); NETHERLANDS (87%); ARCTIC (50%)




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January 31, 2005, Monday, 



 Movies set in Memphis grab top awards at festival

 
PARK CITY, Utah -- Hustle & Flow was the big winner of the Sundance Film Festival.
Written and directed by Craig Brewer and starring Terrence Howard, the movie won the American Dramatic Audience Award for most popular film Saturday.
And its producer, John Singleton, got the deal of the festival, with $9 million from Paramount Pictures for the film and another $7 million to develop two more films.
 
Set in Memphis, the story of a pimp who decides to become a hip-hop star has echoes of Eminem's 8 Mile.
Other films that won awards at the festival that ended Sunday:
 * The story of a Memphis music producer's restless Russian trophy wife, Forty Shades of Blue by director Ira Sachs, took the American Dramatic Grand Jury Prize.
 * Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, about the path to war in Iraq, won the grand jury prize for documentaries.
 * Murderball, a documentary about paralympic rugby, which is played by young men tooling around in Mad Max-style wheelchairs on basketball courts outfitted with goalposts, won the documentary Audience Award. The film is co-directed by Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro and was brought to Sundance by ThinkFilm, which has made a name for itself with theatrically popular documentaries, such as Spellbound.
This year, for the first time, Sundance awarded foreign films:
 * The world dramatic jury prize went to Zeze Gamboa's The Hero, about postwar Angola.
 * The world documentary jury prize went to Leonard Retel Helmrich's Shape of the Moon, a look at Christians and Muslims in Indonesia.
 * The World Cinema Documentary Audience Award went to Canadian director Peter Raymont's Shake Hands With the Devil, about United Nations general Romeo Dallaire, who led the unsuccessful 1994 mission in Rwanda.
 * The World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award went to director Susanne Bier's Brothers, about two grown brothers with a bad case of sibling rivalry.
Best actress went to Amy Adams in Junebug, about coping with a new family in the new South, and best actor went to Lou Pucci, who plays a savvy 17-year-old trying to separate from his parents (Vincent D'Onofrio and Tilda Swinton) and make it into New York University in Mike Mills' Thumbsucker.

 UNITED STATES (94%); RWANDA (79%);  INDONESIA (67%); 







  
 
The Tampa Tribune (Florida)

January 30, 2005 Sunday  




 Embrace The World's Double Standard

 
BY MARK C. ANDERSON
When the United States initially pledged $35 million to the relief efforts in Southeast Asia, this response was deemed to be "stingy."
Yet the Europe Union, a federation of 25 nations and 450 million people, could scrounge up only $30 million. And the oil-rich nations of the Middle East neglected the largest Muslim population in the world in Indonesia. Even among those few countries that at first pledged more money than the United States, none has matched America's contribution of personnel and equipment on the ground. 
Why should the United States tolerate this double standard? Why not save our tax dollars for the less fortunate at home and ignore the world's hypocrisy?
The answer is simple: America has been given something special that should not be hidden or hoarded. Whether one believes the United States came as a result of divine Providence or the careful design of men who learned from the mistakes of other nations, it stands as the greatest large-scale experiment in democracy.
We should welcome this double standard as a compliment -- an affirmation even -- of the way we handle ourselves.
America has been blessed with tremendous resources, a generous soul, boundless opportunity, a fighting spirit and open arms. This irresistible combination draws both admiration and scorn, sometimes from the same corner of the world.
As it is written in the Gospel of Luke: To whom much is given, much is required. Rather than shying away from this double standard or being offended by it, let us embrace it and show the rest of the world it can continue to turn to America in times of need.
Mark C. Anderson is a Fort Myers attorney with Fowler White Boggs Banker.
Copyright © 2005, The Tampa Tribune and may not be republished without permission. E-mail library@tampatrib.com

 UNITED STATES (95%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); ASIA (92%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (91%); INDONESIA (90%)




21 of 120 DOCUMENTS


 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


January 29, 2005 Saturday  




 IN THE SPOTLIGHT

 
Swank says training led to foot infection
NEW YORK - While training for the boxing drama Million Dollar Baby, Hilary Swank was nearly TKO'd - by a foot infection.
Ms. Swank, nominated for a best actress Oscar for her performance in the Clint Eastwood-directed film, says a blister on her foot nearly led to her downfall. 
After popping the blister, Ms. Swank continued her rigorous workouts. But soon she was in intense pain and knew something was wrong.
"I couldn't believe the pain," the 30-year-old actress says in an interview to air Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes newsmagazine. "It was unbelievable, and I looked down, there were streaks going to my foot."
Ms. Swank says she was diagnosed with a bacterial infection but never told Mr. Eastwood, also her co-star in the movie, because it wouldn't have been in character.
* One of the contestants on the new season of American Idol was in jail when his bizarre performance aired Tuesday night. Leroy Wells bounced onstage while talking about sandblasting paint for a living at a shipyard near his home near Mobile, Ala. The audition for the Fox television talent competition was taped last summer in New Orleans. Mr. Wells, 22, of Grand Bay, was arrested Jan. 5 on charges of assault and firing a weapon.
* Prince Karim Aga Khan IV received the fifth Vincent Scully Prize in recognition of his decades of work to re-energize design in the Islamic world and to preserve historic sites. The Vincent Scully Prize, named for an architect professor at Yale University, was established in 1999 to recognize exemplary practice scholarship or criticism in architecture, historic preservation and urban design.
* The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens will headline a fund-raising concert in Indonesia for victims of the Asian tsunami. Yusuf Islam will have top billing at Monday's concert in Jakarta, which will raise money for victims from Indonesia's Aceh province, according to his Web site.
- Edited from wire reports

 INDONESIA (90%); 




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January 29, 2005 Saturday



 NEWSMAKERS

 
Stone puts her mouth where the money is to fight malaria  
Actress Sharon Stone hijacked the staid World Economic Forum on Friday, interrupting a panel on poverty in Davos, Switzerland, with a spur-of-the-moment fund-raiser that within minutes brought in more than $1 million to fight malaria in Africa. 
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was moderating a session on anti-poverty efforts when Stone stood to address a panel that included Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the presidents of Brazil and Tanzania. 
The surprised senator yielded to the movie star, who pledged $10,000 to Tanzanian President Benjamin William Mbaka's anti-malaria efforts.  
Roughly three dozen people stood to be counted and have their pledges written down. After a few minutes, Frist announced that more than $1 million had been pledged. 
Actors Richard Gere and Angelina Jolie looked on as Stone said she'd route the money through a charity that Gates funded. 
Gates and his foundation have donated billions to global health, including the search for vaccines that would prevent malaria and AIDS. 
A grand ole benefit 
A benefit concert by country, gospel and contemporary Christian artists to help victims of the Asian and African tsunamis raised more than $50,000. 
Christian pop star Michael W. Smith and country singer Kathy Mattea were hosts of Wednesday's event -- "An Evening for Restoration: Music City Comes Together for Tsunami Relief" -- at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. 
Performers included Steven Curtis Chapman, Marty Roe of Diamond Rio, CeCe Winans, Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Steve Cropper, the Oak Ridge Boys, Kirk Whalum, tobyMac, Crystal Gayle, MercyMe, Lee Greenwood, Raul Malo,  
A song for the orphans 
The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens will headline a fund-raising concert in Indonesia for victims of the tsunamis. 
Yusuf Islam will have top billing at Monday's concert in Jakarta that will raise money for victims in Indonesia's Aceh province. 
Islam has composed a new song, "Indian Ocean," that will be released in February to raise money for children orphaned by the Dec. 26 disaster. 
"Like everyone else, I was so shaken by the enormity of this human tragedy, and the song just came without effort," the 56-year-old singer said. 
* 
'We never intended (SpongeBob SquarePants characters) to be gay. I consider them to be almost asexual. We're just trying to be funny.' 
Stephen Hillenburg 
Creator of the Nickelodeon hit show, setting the record straight about his cartoon, which has been accused of advocating a homosexual agenda 
* 
A crown for Aga Khan 
Billionaire globe-trotting owner of 600 racehorses. Forty-ninth hereditary imam who traces his lineage directly from the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Paparazzi target. Now there's a new dimension to Prince Karim Aga Khan IV's celebrity: winner this week of the fifth Vincent Scully Prize for his decades of work to re-energize design in the Islamic world and preserve historic sites. The award, set up in 1999, recognizes exemplary practice, scholarship or criticism in architecture, historic preservation and urban design. 
Drummer wanted 
Nickelback is down a drummer following the departure of Ryan Vikedal. 
"At this time, no replacement for Vikedal has been named and the band wishes Ryan all the best in his future endeavors," said a statement recently released by EMI, Nickelback's record label. 
Nickelback is nominated for a Grammy Award in the best hard rock performance category for "Feelin' Way Too Damn Good" from the album "The Long Road." 
The band, based in Vancouver, rose to acclaim with songs such as "How You Remind Me" and "Too Bad." 
Today's birthdays 
Author Germaine Greer is 66. Actor Tom Selleck is 60. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey is 51. Olympic diver Greg Louganis is 45. 
Newsmakers compiled by Monica Cardenas 

 UNITED STATES (94%);  AFRICA (93%); SWITZERLAND (92%); TANZANIA, UNITED REPUBLIC OF (92%)




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 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


January 29, 2005 Saturday



 Islam, other singers to raise tsunami funds

 
   The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens will headline a fund-raising concert in Indonesia for victims of the Asian tsunami. 
Yusuf Islam will have top billing at Monday's concert in Jakarta, which will raise money for victims from Indonesia's Aceh province, according to his Web site.
Islam has composed a new song, "Indian Ocean," and recently recorded it with musicians including A.R. Rahman, Magne Furuholmen and Neil Primrose. The song will be released in February to raise money for children orphaned by the Dec. 26 disaster.

 




2


 The Durham Herald Co. 


January 29, 2005 Saturday  




 FACES IN THE NEWS

 
Swank, blister go 10 rounds
NEW YORK -- While training for the boxing drama "Million Dollar Baby," Hilary Swank was nearly TKO'd -- by a foot infection.
Swank, nominated for a best-actress Oscar for her performance in the Clint Eastwood-directed film, says a blister on her foot nearly took her out. 
After popping the blister, Swank continued her rigorous workouts. But soon she was in intense pain.
"It was unbelievable and I looked down, there were streaks going to my foot," the 30-year-old actress says in an interview to air Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes" newsmagazine.
"So, I went to the doctor's that second and he looked at me and he said, "This is really serious. If you would have waited two more hours, you would have been in the hospital for three weeks -- and if it gets to your heart, that's it."'
Swank says she was diagnosed with a bacterial infection but never told Eastwood, also her co-star in the movie, because it wouldn't have been in character.
'Idol' contestant lands in jail
MOBILE, Ala. -- One of the contestants on the new season of "American Idol" was in jail when his bizarre performance aired Tuesday night. 
Leroy Wells' audition for the Fox television talent competition was taped last summer in New Orleans. He bounced onstage while talking about sandblasting paint for a living at a shipyard.
A stunned Simon Cowell called the performance "ridiculous."
Wells, 22, of Grand Bay, was arrested Jan. 5 on charges of assault and firing a weapon. Jail records show he's also awaiting trial on drug charges and has pleaded guilty to marijuana possession in 2004 and disorderly conduct in June 2003.
Nickelback loses drummer 
VANCOUVER, British Columbia-- The Grammy Award-nominated hard-rock band Nickelback is down a drummer following the departure of Ryan Vikedal.
"At this time, no replacement for Vikedal has been named and the band wishes Ryan all the best in his future endeavors," said a statement recently released by EMI, Nickelback's record label.
Concert raises $50K for relief
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A benefit concert by country, gospel and contemporary Christian artists to help victims of the Asian tsunami raised more than $50,000.
Performers at Wednesday's concert at Belmont University included Steven Curtis Chapman, Marty Roe of Diamond Rio, CeCe Winans, Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Steve Cropper, the Oak Ridge Boys, Kirk Whalum, tobyMac, Crystal Gayle, MercyMe, Lee Greenwood, The Whites, Raul Malo, The Crabb Family, Dr. Bobby Jones, Michael Martin Murphey, the Nashville Chamber Orchestra and several Grand Ole Opry stars.
Ex-Cat Stevens to headline concert
LONDON -- The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens will headline a fund-raising concert in Indonesia for victims of the Asian tsunami.
Yusuf Islam will have top billing at Monday's concert in Jakarta that will raise money for victims from Indonesia's Aceh province, according to his Web site.
He cautioned: "It's not a return to Cat Stevens, I see it more as a natural response to express my concern as a Muslim and as an artist; I believe both can exist side by side particularly when the cause is right."

 UNITED STATES (91%); CANADA (53%)




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January 29, 2005 Saturday



 Tsunami brought out America's true nature

 
WHAT seems truly noteworthy about the U.S. response to the tsunami disaster [especially as viewed here from the U.S. West Coast] is the dramatic duration of the caring.
Even as the TV media have begun to lose interest [predictably], the general interest here seems not to be waning at all. One must assume that it was the colossal magnitude of the tragedy and the merciless vulnerability of millions of people to Mother Nature at her absolute worst that touched American hearts so completely.
from the University of Washington in Seattle to the University of California at San Diego -- students organizing on behalf of the victims remains at fever pitch. 
Even Hollywood's sincerity about tsunami aid seems -- well -- sincere! And, if you know Tinseltown, you know this is a most unusual turn of events indeed.
At a recent celebrity gala in Los Angeles thrown by Qantas, Penfolds, the Australian government and others to celebrate the Australian-West Coast-L.A. connection, honoree Nicole Kidman devoted her time at the awards podium to plea passionately for disaster relief. I do not know what Kidman is like in her private life, but her public manner is utterly bubbly and winning.
"Once again the forces of nature demonstrate that national differences are irrelevant," spoke Kidman to a packed crowd at the Century Plaza Hotel Ballroom.
A few days later the talented actress herself boarded a plane for Indonesia, knowing that celebrities attract television cameras, and TV attracts interest, which in turn attracts donations: "If I can help, it is my duty to help," said Kidman.
Even Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, not normally the warmest of avuncular U.S. figures, was found to be traipsing around nearly leveled Sri Lanka, saying the right things and seeming very sincere.
He also toured scenes of devastation in Indonesia and Thailand. Alas, Wolfowitz decided then to break the news that the Bush administration is eager to close out the involvement of the U.S. military in the disaster areas.
This is a bad call for several reasons.
One is that so much work remains to be done that every single extra pair of hands can save lives and put nearly ruined ones back on track.
The second reason is that in this Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist region of the world, it is far, far better for the American military to be seen saving and helping lives than the opposite. The soldiers that need to be brought home are the tired, overstretched and dangerously threatened ones in Iraq, not in Indonesia.
In Indonesia, especially, the very presence of the humanitarian face of U.S. soldiers could speak volumes to their counterparts in the TNI [the initials for Indonesia's military], whose image is not exactly that of a humanitarian-prone or rules-driven force.
Indonesia was thrown together almost as a hopscotch afterthought when the Dutch abandoned their colonies there. Indonesia, now home to more Muslims than any other country, is a fledgling democracy that cannot hope to hold together without a solid but responsible military infrastructure. But a mainly repressive military will only trigger a revolutionary, decentralizing spiral. The U.S. military has a role to play there, especially by example.
The United States, therefore, has reasons to be proud, though not smug. "We've changed the picture," a happy officer in the U.S. Pacific Command near Pearl Harbor, Hawaii told me.
He's right: Every passing day that Muslims and others in the region see the American good guys and gals in action shovels welcome dirt on the sordid picture of Abu Ghraib. The kind of image America wants to project in the world was demonstrated prominently in U.S newspapers in a photo showing a U.S. military doctor bearing an injured Indonesian child in his arms.
The America of today is a culture driven by media images. And so this kind of image is good not only for America's image abroad but for Americans' image of themselves at home. Our self-image has been severely rattled by the mess in Iraq, the torture of prisoners, and "smart bombs" gone awry into civilian buildings.
Thus, the work of the sailors, airmen and women, and foot soldiers of the U.S. Pacific Command [which has no role in Iraq] deserves nothing less than a standing ovation. The rapidity with which so many in our military volunteered for this duty and the gusto with which they have been doing the job speaks to the best that is in us.
It is sad that it took a millennial tragedy to bring our true nature out in the open. The U.S. military doctor is our true nature --not the ugly American.
-- Tom Plate is a UCLA professor, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, and founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network.

 UNITED STATES (98%);  AUSTRALIA (92%); THAILAND (79%); IRAQ (74%); 




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January 29, 2005 Saturday  



 R&B QUEEN READY TO UNLEASH NEW FASHION LINE ON WORLD

 
Having conquered the music charts, Beyonce is set to try her hand at being a couturier. The pop and R&B superstar has announced she has partnered with Tarrant Apparel Group to release a series of ready-to-wear fashions under the label the House of Dereon, which is named after her grandmother, former seamstress Agnes Dereon.
The fashions will be in stores sometime this fall. Their look? "A mix of vintage things with contemporary things," Beyonce articulates. 
A PRINCELY PRIZE: Prince Karim Aga Khan IV received the fifth Vincent Scully Prize in recognition of his decades of work to re-energize design in the Islamic world and to preserve historic sites. The Vincent Scully Prize, named for an architect professor at Yale University, was established in 1999 to recognize exemplary practice, scholarship or criticism in architecture, historic preservation and urban design.
The Aga Khan is the 49th hereditary imam, a spiritual leader of 20 million Ismaili Muslims in Asia and Africa, who traces his lineage directly from the Prophet Muhammad. The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has educated a generation of architects, teachers, planners and researchers, most from the Islamic world, since 1979. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, given every three years, is credited with generating a rebirth of Islamic architecture in a skyscraper age.
BENEFITS OF MUSIC: The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens will headline a fundraising concert in Indonesia for victims of the Asian tsunami. Yusuf Islam will have top billing at Monday's concert in Jakarta -- where charitable donations don't land you on a government watch list -- that will raise money for victims from Indonesia's Aceh province, according to his Web site.
Islam has composed a new song, "Indian Ocean," and recently recorded it with musicians including A.R. Rahman, Magne Furuholmen and Neil Primrose. The song will be released in February to raise money for children orphaned by the Dec. 26 disaster.
"Like everyone else, I was so shaken by the enormity of this human tragedy, and the song just came without effort," the 56-year-old singer said in the statement.
BIRTHDAY GOODIES: Portia de Rossi has given her new lady love, Ellen DeGeneres, a Tiffany wedding band as a sign of her everlasting devotion, reports the New York Post. Last month, the "Arrested Development" star split with her longtime lover, Francesca Gregorini, to move in with DeGeneres.
And as a surprise for DeGeneres' 47th birthday on Wednesday, De Rossi, 31, gave her a beautiful platinum band from the famed Fifth Avenue jeweler and bought a matching band for herself. De Rossi has been having laser treatments to remove an "F.G." tattoo -- for Gregorini's initials -- from her ring finger.

   ASIA (75%); AFRICA (70%); 




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January 28, 2005 Friday  




 Indonesia Offering 'Olive Branch' to Rebels

 
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono offered separatist rebels in the tsunami-devastated province of Aceh an amnesty and greater autonomy in exchange for a cease-fire on the eve of new peace talks in Helsinki. 
 "We are coming with an olive branch," said Andi Mallarangeng, a presidential spokesman. "Let's move forward to rebuilding Aceh within the framework of the Republic of Indonesia."  
 The government's offer stopped short of granting Aceh full independence, long the principal goal of the rebel Free Aceh Movement, known as GAM. Previous talks failed in May 2003. 
"They are willing to meet each other," said Martti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland and a veteran mediator, the Reuters news agency reported from Helsinki. The talks could begin Friday.  
 Analysts in Indonesia said both sides could benefit by being seen as willing to talk, especially while international attention is focused on Aceh following the Dec. 26 tsunami, which killed about 100,000 in the province at the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island. 
 "Since there's nothing left practically to fight about -- Aceh is completely devastated -- what are they fighting for?" said Wiryono Sastrohandojo, a retired Indonesian diplomat and the government's former chief negotiator in the peace talks. "So maybe, at least for the time being, they'd like to concentrate on rebuilding the place. That's the challenge, really." 
 The Indonesian government delegation is led by the chief security minister, Widodo Adi Sutjipto, accompanied by Justice Minister Hamid Awaluddin and Information Minister Sofyan Djalil. 
 The GAM team includes Malik Mahmud and Zaini Abdullah, leaders of an exile government that has been based in Stockholm since the 1970s. The conflict began in 1976, with the rebels' goal being independence from Indonesia. Since martial law was imposed in May 2003 and then softened to a state of civil emergency a year later, more than 2,000 alleged rebels have been killed, according to the military. 
The day after the tsunami, GAM announced a unilateral cease-fire and government officials said they would cease offensive operations. But since then, the military has sent thousands more troops to Aceh and has continued to attack and kill rebels. On Sunday, a military spokesman said that 208 rebels had been killed since the tsunami. 
 Military commanders insist that there is no "offensive operation" underway against GAM and that any attacks are defensive, aimed at rebels who are disrupting the relief effort. The rebels say the military is trying to provoke them into reacting, but that they are under orders not to respond. 
Resentment of the military and police is strong among Aceh residents because of the long-running military operation and the martial-law restrictions and subsequent civil emergency, said Otto Syamsuddin Ishak, an Acehnese sociologist and program director for Imparsial, a Jakarta-based human rights group. 
The Indonesian parliament granted Aceh special autonomy in 2001, with greater powers of self-rule and a larger share of its own revenue. The move was aimed at quelling desires for independence. But the law was never implemented properly, and many Acehnese say they still feel exploited by Jakarta. 
M. Syafii Anwar, executive director of the International Center for Islam and Pluralism, who recently returned from Aceh, said he had found that "on the one hand, people still want to be part of Indonesia." On the other, he said, "they strongly criticized the Indonesian government for not being sensitive to Aceh's development needs. They think that Jakarta is corrupt. They feel the Jakarta elite look down on the Acehnese." 
Special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report. 

 INDONESIA (96%); FINLAND (94%)




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January 27, 2005 Thursday



 Students buzz in geography Bee

 
Students at several Irvine schools participated in the recent National Geographic Bee, including Culverdale Elementary and Plaza Vista, both in Westpark.
In participating schools, classroom bees are given first and the winners progress to a schoolwide bee.  
Winners of the school competitions have the opportunity of taking the Geo Bee test administered by the National Geographic and the National Geographic Association. The test is evaluated to decide which students progress to the state round of the contest. State qualifiers compete in an oral competition in late March or early April.
This is the 17th year of the National Geographic contest for students in fourth through eighth grades. All state winners are eligible to compete in the national championship and its first place prize of a $25,000 college scholarship. Scholarships of $15,000 and $10,000 will also be awarded. The national competition will be May 24 and 25 in Washington, D.C.
Sample questions
1. Which state has the climate for growing citrus fruits, California or Maine? Answer: California.
2. Which country has the world's largest Muslim population, Indonesia or Mexico? Answer: Indonesia.
3. The North Atlantic Current brings warm waters from the tropics to the west coast of which continent? Answer: Europe.
4. What is the term for a part of an ocean or sea that cuts far into bordering landmass and may contain one or more bays? Answer: Gulf.
5. The port of Rotterdam is built on a delta of which major European river? Answer: Rhine River.
6. Which Canadian province produces more than half of the country's manufactured goods? Answer? Ontario.
7. To visit the ruins of Persepolis, an ancient ceremonial capital of Persia, you would have to travel to which present-day country? Answer: Iran.
Source: www.nationalgeographic.com/geographybee

  INDONESIA (90%); NETHERLANDS (79%); EUROPE (79%); IRAN,  (79%); CANADA (68%)




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January 26, 2005 Wednesday  




 THE OPEN FORUM - Letters to the editor

 
TO REACH
OPINION EDITORS
Phone: 303-820-1331
Fax: 303-820-1502
E-mail: openforum@
denverpost.com (only straight text, not attachments)
Mail: The Open Forum, , 1560 Broadway, Denver, 80202 or PO Box 1709, Denver, 80201
Letters guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 200 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy. 
---------------------------------------- Hold 'em up: Is your poker game legal?
Re: "Poker craze deals blows to gaming regulators," Jan. 21 news story.
Although it is well down the list of important controversies in today's world, poker deserves a little time and discussion due to its enormous popularity and social prominence. When I read stories such as this, I'm left shaking my head. Is everyone I know breaking the law? If so, for God's sake, why? I can see little difference between a local poker tournament and a bowling league, both of which are driven by competition, require a "buy in," and award cash prizes. What about bingo? Surely all those old ladies and temperate fun-seekers can't be classified as criminals. And is the purpose of outlawing certain games really designed to "protect" us from losing our money, or to protect the government-sanctioned games of lottery, stock market, bond market, et al? Apparently the powers that be aren't bothered if we lose our money in their "sanctioned events."
Walt Long, Littleton
----------------------------------------
George W. Bush's second inauguration
Re: "Coloradans go to fete Bush, 'our system,"' Jan. 20 Scene story.
Nothing speaks more clearly to the morally confused Republican mind-set than the comments of Ali Hasan (oximoronically described as "a registered Democrat and major Republican fundraiser"): "There is a lot of genocide involving Muslims around the world," he says. "The one politician who is going to help is Bush; the best thing we can do for Muslims is support Bush."
Hmmm. To date, Bush's track record involves invading two Muslim countries (resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Muslim civilians), arresting and indefinitely detaining without trial hundreds of Muslims, and passively condoning the brutal authoritarian tactics of several Muslim dictatorships (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan). Genocide is too specific a word to apply here, but Hasan needs to seriously re-evaluate who is doing what to whom in the name of freedom.
John Wilkens, Boulder
...
In his inaugural address, President Bush said, "By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well - a fire in the minds of men." I wonder if he was aware that "Fire in the Minds of Men" is the title of James Billington's classic study (1980) on the origins of Communism and the other totalitarian ideologies of the blood-soaked 20th century. Probably not, but quite a fitting coincidence.
Gus Molinari, Aurora
...
Re: "Bush trumpets the cause of freedom," Jan. 21 editorial.
I don't believe I have ever been so disappointed in a newspaper editorial than I was when I read the next-to-last paragraph in this commentary. You say that President Bush disappointed those who sought a speech of national unity by striking a religious chord.
How pious is The Post to proclaim that this is disappointing? Just how would The Post call for national unity - perhaps a Michael Moore feel-good documentary? Please enlighten us as to what is wrong with calling for national unity by striking a religious chord.
Gary Koldyke, Highlands Ranch
---------------------------------------- Denver's need for additional jail space
Re: "Denver jail still crowded despite drop in bookings," Jan. 21 news story.
Why build just one new jail? Why not build two or three? As resources continue to diminish for the children of our community who are being abused, neglected and abandoned and for our underprivileged families, why not pour our money into building more jails to house these children when they grow up?
That is what we are saying to these children as a society. We don't care enough to help you learn to make good choices that will lead to a successful future for you and your family. We would rather build new jails to warehouse you after we have failed you.
Until we hire more social workers, implement more early intervention services, and provide more family preservation programs in our community, no amount of jail space will be sufficient to deal with the consequences.
Janet L. Van Meter, Denver
----------------------------------------
Post's right-wing duck
Re: Jan. 19 Mallard Fillmore cartoon
According to Mallard Fillmore, "the 'world community' divides its time between demanding our money and telling us to stay out of its business." Just like teenagers.
They've got some nerve! Right, Mallard? Like those Asian banks and investors that claim we owe them trillions of dollars.
Oh! But that's right. We do!
How about demanding that we mind our own business? That's rather cheeky, isn't it? As if the U.S. had a history of meddling in other countries' affairs.
Of course, there was that CIA- supported coup in Iran (1953). And the one in Guatemala (1954). And in Indonesia (1965). And Chile (1973). Not to mention armed interventions in Panama, Haiti, Columbia, Serbia ...
In fact, it looks as though the rest of the world may have very good reason to make both of those demands. Once again, cartoonist Bruce Tinsley's duck has dipped into right-wing mythology in order to say something disparaging - this time about foreigners. And teenagers. Like most of what passes for humor among conservatives, it's neither accurate nor funny - just nasty.
A.J. Hill, Nederland
...
Re: Jan. 21 Mallard Fillmore cartoon
I believe in free speech, listening to both sides of any issue, and abhor censorship. I also love to read the comics - political or not. While I rarely agree with the obviously conservative leanings of Bruce Tinsley's Mallard Fillmore strip, the writing is clever and your publication balances the strip's viewpoint with other, more liberal cartoons on the editorial pages.
But I object to Tinsley's Jan. 21 strip. The strip's "joke" took a tasteless jab at China's entry into the automotive market. To make a joke of political prisoners in a country known and cited for its numerous human-rights violations is extremely offensive. Victims of violent, oppressive regimes and governments should never be the focus of poor humor, especially within a country that claims to set an example for democracy across the globe.
Shame on Tinsley and shame on  for running this strip. This type of humor should not be (and I suspect is not) accepted by either side of the political spectrum.
Jennifer Lee, Gunnison
---------------------------------------- Administration of the CSAP tests
Re: "CSAP penalties often vary," Jan. 18 news story.
Those of us who created the Colorado Student Assessment Program test knew that permitting testing to be controlled by school districts, principals and teachers would create many negatives. However, the politics of those groups won with the legislature.
CSAP tests should be administered by people with no connection to the schools. Volunteers or other state employees should be enlisted and trained to administer the tests. Boards, teachers and other school officials should never see the test items or the tests. Teachers could not just teach to the test. School district staff could not "cheat" to improve their students' scores.
The CSAP was designed as a once-a-year snapshot of statewide student learning on a comparable test or scale. Teachers were to focus on teaching to the standards, not the test, and especially not the test items. No other country permits such corruption in their process.
Ed Lyell, Alamosa
The writer is a former member of the Colorado State Board of Education.

 UNITED STATES (90%)




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Vallejo Times-Herald 

January 26, 2005 Wednesday



 Two awful tragedies: The Tsunami and Iraq

 
http://media.mnginteractive.com
It may have taken an earthquake, a tsunami and a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, but George W. Bush finally changed his mind. In so doing, the president helped Americans show the generosity, compassion and know-how for which we've long been admired around the world.
"I'd much rather be doing this than fighting a war," a helicopter pilot, Lt. Cmdr. William Whitsitt, told The Associated Press while flying victims from demolished Indonesian villages out to the USS Abraham Lincoln for medical treatment. 
Too bad there's so little evidence that Bush has the capacity to learn from the experience, because in Iraq, it's his nearly pathological inability to admit error that keeps American soldiers trapped in a nightmare entirely of the administration's devising. Unless he develops the moral courage to change a disastrously misconceived policy, that nightmare can only continue, isolating the United States from its allies and sowing hatred that breeds terrorists like dragon's teeth.
At first, it appeared that the administration would handle the Asian tragedy as it handles everything else: With minimum regard and maximum political spin. Bush's initial response appeared cheap and grudging. Vacationing at his Texas dude ranch, the president emerged to express halting condolences only after his silence had evoked worldwide consternation.
Bush's initial pledge of $15 million in disaster relief came to roughly a third of what he intended to spend celebrating his own inauguration. Some puppy in the White House even made a sneering reference to Bill Clinton's feeling everybody's pain. Jump-started by an inaccurate Washington Times headline claiming, "U.N. official slams U.S. as stingy' over aid" - Norwegian-born Jan Egeland, undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, had spoken of wealthy nations generally, not the United States - GOP robo-pundits launched an ideological assault upon the international organization. In short, it looked like business as usual in Republican Washington.
To be perfectly fair, however, most of this happened before the extent of the disaster in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India became widely apparent. Partly because it happened at Christmas, when Western media organizations were operating with skeleton staffs, partly because the half-dozen corporations that now own the national news media no longer think it cost-effective to maintain foreign bureaus, it took several days for the press to emerge from "Supermodel Nearly Swept Away by Tsunami" mode to convey the extent of the devastation.
When that happened, the White House upped its aid offer to $35 million, then to $350 million. Evidently, somebody - most likely Secretary of State Colin Powell - informed Bush that Indonesia is the most populous Islamic nation in the world and that the stricken separatist province of Aceh has the highest proportion of Muslims in the country [not to mention plentiful oil and natural gas].
Along with their humanitarian mission, U.S. aircraft carriers and helicopters have more potential to enhance the Muslim world's opinion of the United States, thus building resistance to terrorist extremism, than all the "shock and awe" campaigns the Pentagon could muster.
Because, yes, we see the victims of nature's wrath as fellow human beings exactly like ourselves, precisely as al-Qaida propaganda assures them that we do not. Bush's magnanimous gesture of asking former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton to lead a campaign for private donations, perhaps the first genuinely non-partisan action of his presidency, served to underscore the point: We Americans, all of us, do feel their pain. A reported $163 million in private donations to international aid organizations spoke eloquently.
More's the pity, then, to see the madness in Iraq continue unabated.
"There is only one traffic law in Ramadi these days: When Americans approach, Iraqis scatter," reads an account in the Economist. "Every vehicle, that is, except one beat-up old taxi. Its elderly driver, flapping his outstretched hands, seems, amazingly, to be trying to turn the convoy back. Gun turrets swivel and lock on to him, as a hefty marine sergeant leaps into the road, levels an assault rifle at his turbaned head, and screams: Back this bitch up, [bleeper]!'
"The old man should have read the bilingual notices that American soldiers tack to their rear bumpers in Iraq: Keep 50m or deadly force will be applied.' In Ramadi, the capital of central Anbar province, where 17 suicide-bombs struck American forces. ... the marines are jumpy. Sometimes, they say, they fire on vehicles encroaching with[in] 30 metres, sometimes they fire at 20 metres."
The Economist account quotes a "bullish lieutenant" as saying, "If anyone gets too close to us, we [bleeping] waste them. It's kind of a shame, because it means we've killed a lot of innocent people. ... It gets to the point where you can't wait to see guys with guns, so you start shooting everybody."
Before his impending retirement, maybe Colin Powell should try this simple argument on Bush: Regardless of good intentions, to the besieged Iraqis we Americans are becoming the tsunami.
- Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist.

 UNITED STATES (95%);  IRAQ (93%); INDIA (79%); THAILAND (79%); 




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January 25, 2005 Tuesday  




 THE OPEN FORUM - Letters to the editor

 
Religion and current events
With the Stock Show finished and "Merry Christmas" finally off the City and County Building, let's reflect on current events and imagine why some might object to government endorsement of this religious message.
Picture yourself an Indonesian Muslim whose family, home and livelihood were swept away in the tsunami. Aid workers come from the U.S. and distribute relief supplies. In your moment of greatest weakness and doubt, they disparage your beliefs and say the only way to ensure eternal happiness is by accepting Jesus. 
Imagine being a Jewish woman faced with a wanted pregnancy doomed from conception by a lethal genetic abnormality. You have an abortion only to find out that the fetal remains were passed to a Catholic church and buried under a statue of Jesus and a plaque reading, "My beautiful baby, I'm sorry." You might not be sorry, but relieved, to not bear a malformed child and watch it die. You would likely find the religious ceremony objectionable.
Christian "true believers" are certain that faith in Jesus offers the only path to happiness, regardless of one's deeds. Others follow a different mythology or none at all. Imagine how we feel about our government supporting this chorus of hubris.
Max Ernst, Arvada
----------------------------------------
Reactions to photo of orphaned Iraqi girl
Re: "Photo of Iraqi girl whose parents were killed," Jan. 21 Open Forum.
How can letter-writer Warren M. Hern of Boulder dare to write about the photo of the blood-splattered girl in Iraq? He states that the U.S. is a "monster of blind cruelty, an agent of destruction, and symbol of despair." He also asks "how many more of our troops" must be "maimed and killed" before the citizens of this country "wake up and demand it stop"?
Excuse me, but isn't this coming from someone who "maims and kills" every day for a living? The director of an abortion clinic?
How many fetuses must be killed before Dr. Hern "wakes up" and stops the murder of these innocents? Why don't we show pictures of blood-splattered fetuses so Dr. Hern can once again congratulate  on publishing an unforgettable photograph? Of course, Hern doesn't think of these as fetuses - he describes them as "surgical tissue from abortions," according to a recent news story ("Clinic assails parish fetus burial," Jan. 21). I guess that's why it's OK for him to kill the innocent daily.
Judy Collins, Denver
...
 is to be commended for its Jan. 19 front-page photo of the Iraqi child whose parents were killed by U.S. soldiers. Photographs do not "spin" the truth; they simply show what is happening. Letter-writer Dell Skluzak, though, doesn't want to think it so. He wrote to say that The Post was somehow playing into the hands of terrorists by running the photo. Wrong. That little girl really did have her parents ripped apart by guns that really were paid for by our taxes. The blood of that little girl's parents is on all our hands, but especially those who fear seeing photographs of what is really happening.
So, kudos to The Post for running the photo, and I would suggest that it is not  that is being deceived, but those who believe the Bush administration's spin of why we're in Iraq, and refuse to look at the truth for fear of being wrong.
The time to leave Iraq is today, and the time to make reparations to the Iraqi people is tomorrow.
David Hatch, Westminster
...
In a fit of hyperbole, letter-writer Dell Skluzak accuses The Post of terrorism (or at least giving comfort to the enemy) for printing a picture of a blood-soaked Iraqi girl screaming for her parents who have just been killed at a U.S. checkpoint. Well, the media bias is obvious, isn't it? Of course, when television news runs a memorial, naming the U.S. troops killed in combat, that's bias, too! Pictures of torture (sorry, "abuse") at Abu Ghraib? Media bias!
All the media seem to do these days is send up reports about "car bomb" this and "kidnap" that. Well, where I come from, we have a different name for this kind of "media bias" - it's called reporting the news.
In a country where reporting the news begets accusations of bias and terrorism, it's hard to get at another difficult concept: the truth. Good luck, Denver Post. You'll need it.
Chris Baer, Denver
...
I reacted with horror and sorrow at your picture of the blood-spattered, now-orphaned girl at the Iraqi checkpoint. Even more horrific was the reaction of one of your most clueless letter-writers, who suggested that "these people \ intentionally did this to create sympathy for their terrorist causes." I would like to point out that there is a sadder, deeper and far more logical dimension to this whole affair, expressed by a seasoned Marine who related his experiences in Iraq to Mother Jones magazine:
"To stop cars, the Marines would raise their hands. If the drivers kept going, \ says, 'we would just light 'em up. I didn't find out until later on, after talking to an Iraqi, that when you put your hand up in the air, it means "Hello."' He estimates that his men killed 30 civilians in one 48-hour period."
If there is one iota of truth in this statement, that we are slaughtering civilians and destroying families because of a simple cultural misunderstanding - as is often the case in any war - it is unconscionable. But this is the appalling cultural ignorance of the United States at work - in war as well as foreign policy. It is time that Americans educate themselves before the rest of the world does it for us, the hard way.
Lili Francklyn, Boulder
----------------------------------------
Columbus Day protests
Re: "Leaders of parade protest acquitted," Jan. 21 news story.
I applaud the decision by a jury of Denver citizens to acquit human-rights activists of all charges related to their protest of the Columbus Day parade of last October. These human-rights activists were stopping "ethnic intimidation," which the state of Colorado outlaws. They were opposing the celebration of genocide, a crime which the United States tried German leaders for after World War II.
I am outraged that the city of Denver continues to protect the extremist minority of the Italian- American community that wishes to glorify a man responsible for the deaths of millions and the start of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Acquittal in this trial was a victory for human dignity and human rights. I hope that the city of Denver will make the responsible decision and dismiss charges against the 200 other human- rights activists.
Noah Schabacker, Boulder
----------------------------------------
Pope and gay marriage
Re: "Pope gives priority to opposing same-sex marriage," Jan. 11 news story.
It saddened me to read that Pope John Paul II has identified lobbying against gay marriage as the top priority for the Catholic Church in 2005. War, abortion, stem-cell research, barbarous terrorism, natural disasters (acts of God?) and the "suffering" in Darfur, Sudan, were mentioned as also-rans but apparently didn't pose the threat to the Catholic Church that gay marriage must.
Historically, mankind has used religion as a way to connect with his own spiritual nature and with God, in whose image he was supposedly created. For a religion to identify love and commitment between two individuals as a primary evil trivializes religion, man and his God.
Don McKnight, Northglenn
----------------------------------------
Colorado gun laws
Re: "Bill alters gun-show rules," Jan. 21 news story.
When the Colorado legislature opened its 2005 session, much was made of the leadership's commitment to a productive session, civility and avoidance of issues characterized as "God, guns and gays."
A week later, the legislature is considering reopening the gun- show loophole closed by 70 percent of voters following an unprecedented bipartisan effort.
Hmmm. Will they be avoiding God issues next or will it be gays?
Barbara Laing, Denver

 IRAQ (90%); UNITED STATES (90%)




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January 23, 2005 Sunday  




 Taboos are broken as Israel comes to aid of Muslim victims

 
Jerusalem - An El Al 747 lands for the first time in a Muslim country that does not recognize the state of Israel.
Bearded ultra-orthodox Jews scour Buddhist temples, trying to identify disaster victims.
The International Committee of the Red Cross calls on Israel's emergency service to join its relief work for the first time, even though it has denied membership to the organization. 
These are some of the incongruous scenes amid the disaster triggered by the tsunami in South Asia.
Israeli expertise, honed by grim experience with terror attacks, is enough in demand that taboos are being broken.
The recent El Al flight carrying 60 tons of aid to Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation, followed similar flights to Sri Lanka and Thailand.
Israeli search, rescue, welfare and medical teams work throughout the affected area. They have proved their effectiveness in events such as the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa and a deadly earthquake in Turkey in 1999.
Help from the Jewish state has not always been welcome. Iran rejected Israeli assistance when a devastating earthquake struck there in 2003.
After the tsunami, Sri Lanka appeared to balk at Israel's plan to send military personnel as part of a rescue team. Officials denied religion or politics were the issue, and Israel is helping in other ways.
Years of frustration ended when the International Committee of the Red Cross asked Israel's Magen David Adom emergency service to lend its senior tracing officer for five weeks to help find people. It is the first time an Israeli has been selected as an international delegate to the ICRC.
"Magen David ... is proud and honored to share a close cooperation and friendship with the worldwide organization to which it aspires to belong," said director Avi Zohar.
Southeast Asia is popular with Israeli vacationers, but few Israelis died in the tsunami.
Still, private companies have sent kitchens, face masks, water purification tablets and more. Charities have collected food, medicine and clothing. The national carrier El Al has flown the equipment for free, evacuating the injured on return flights.
After identifying the remains of victims killed in the suicide bombings of the last four years, Israeli DNA experts are among the world's most experienced.
A joint team of the Israeli police and ZAKA - a Hebrew acronym for "Disaster Victim Identification" - accustomed to collecting body parts after suicide bombings, has set up an international DNA database to help identify tsunami victims.
"It will take months to match dental records, fingerprints and DNA samples," said ZAKA director Yehuda Meshi-Zahav.
The ultra-orthodox volunteers of ZAKA were dubbed "the team that sleeps with the dead" because of the time they spent in morgues set up in Buddhist pagodas in Thailand.
Freelance journalist Matthew Kalman is based in Jerusalem.

 ISRAEL (96%); SRI LANKA (92%); THAILAND (92%); ASIA (90%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); AFRICA (79%); IRAN,  (79%); TURKEY (79%);  SOUTHERN ASIA (72%)




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January 23, 2005 Sunday  




 AFTERSHOCKS TSUNAMI SURVIVORS TURN TO FAITH Questions about life ... and so many deaths Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus try to make sense of tragedy

 
Banda Aceh, Indonesia - H. Ibrahim Hasan stops in midsentence of his oration Friday morning to thousands of Muslims in the largest mosque here and begins to sob.
He was speaking about his once-beautiful seaside town that is now in ruins, destroyed by a massive earthquake that crumpled buildings and propelled a tsunami that killed tens of thousands of people.
Men, women and children have flocked to the Mesjid Raya Baiturrahman mosque to celebrate Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice. On this important holiday, businesses close and families gather to mark the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
But this sunny Friday, Eid al-Adha feels more like a memorial service for a city in mourning. 
In a mosque, shoeless men in their best clothes and women in white ankle-length mukenas with matching headscarves sit separately in perfect rows, facing west to Mecca.
Hasan chokes back his sorrow and continues his sermon.
"The tsunami," he says, "was a warning from Allah."
Spirituality has long been woven into the thread of life of the countries hit by the tsunami. It is seen in the magnificent domed mosques of northern Sumatra, the colorful Buddhist temples of Thailand and India's Hindu temples, laden with sculptures.
In these regions, the faithful turn to religion to explain the devastation of Dec. 26.
They receive varying answers to the grand questions of life and, in this case, so much death.
Spirits of the dead
Boonsom Kongyont starts the engine of his black town car, turning off the radio as his passengers climb in. He'd been sitting in the shade of the temple, reading a book. It's where he spends his time now, he says.
He doesn't want to drive his cab to Patong Beach, because few tourists vacation there anymore. And there are all of those ghosts - spirits of people who died in the tsunami and can't find their way to heaven and to the next life.
This time, he agrees, with a sigh. On the dash of his car is a small, plastic smiling Buddha that he says keeps away evil spirits.
"I feel very upset that people died so easy," he says in broken English as his car creeps over the hills of Phuket. "They just come on Earth and work, work, work. They want to have a good life. Then they die.
"Buddha says I have to move on. But it's difficult for a normal person like me to practice not feeling sad. That's why I am always in the temple."
Kongyont, 55, was a Buddhist monk for five years in his early 20s. But since the tsunami, he clings tighter than ever to the religion.
He has friends and family who died. Now, he tries to avoid the devastated area altogether.
"On the beach, I see the broken buildings, and it makes me not feel good, so I go back to the temple to read," he says.
He pages through the texts of Buddhist philosophy, which tell him: "This world is an illusion. Don't be sad. Nothing belongs to you in this world. Even your body. It's an illusion. People are temporary. Your spirit is inside. Forget what happened in the past. The present is now. Do good things, and you will survive."
Buddhists in southern Thailand install spirit houses outside their homes and businesses. The colorful miniature homes for the spirits look like tiny temples on pillars. Every morning, the homeowners give offerings of sodas, incense, glowing candles and food.
Many Buddhists are convinced the beaches where the waves struck are filled with lost spirits. There is talk of ghosts in the hospitals or spirits of dead tourists hailing cabs, startling taxi drivers when they arrive at the airport with no passengers.
Buddhist monks have been gathering at the beaches and in destroyed hotels, performing chanting ceremonies to contact spirits and help them find their way out of this world. At a recent ceremony at a Phuket soccer stadium, paper lanterns were lit and floated into the sky to help guide the spirits.
There's also a belief in karma, that what you do in life, good or bad, will come back to you. At a recent ceremony celebrating Buddha's birthday, young men who follow Chinese Buddhism cut their tongues with swords and knives and bled over their shirtless chests as a way to release their bad karma.
Some believe the tsunami was caused by bad karma caused by humans who destroyed the environment.
"The Earth and the world don't have balance anymore," says Kongyont.
He has seen the tourist area where he works grow from being a small town to a booming resort.
"A long time ago, people don't build on the beaches, but now, people are greedy. They build hotels; they cut down trees. The human beings hurt the nature by building more and more. Finally, nature came and took everything away."
Kongyont stops the car at a beachside temple, where the abbot sits barefoot and cross-legged on the temple's floor in front of an array of golden Buddha figures on a table.
The temple received only minor damage, but nearby buildings were destroyed.
"It's the punishment of nature," says the abbot, Phra Mhasung Ahingsko. "If there are many people who are selfish, thinking about only themselves, then the nature will punish."
The path to happiness, the abbot tells Kongyont, is to know that everything is transient.
"You're born, stay for a temporary time and then you die," he says. "Donate something. Have a good heart. Talk positive. The Buddha teaches that if you're sad, you cannot make anything better. You're better off calming down. Don't think about the past. Start the present now."
Test of faith
In Chennai, India, Raman Bhagavathar, who conducts religious discourses at Lakshmi Narayan Temple, says that people accept the tragedy as a sign of God's disapproval of their behavior and a test of their faith.
"The tsunami is an indication that people are going astray from the path of dharma (righteousness)," he says. "Such disasters are taking place because people are not practicing their religion, and God is showing his power and prodding people to have faith in him."
At the Kamakshi Temple in Kalpakkam, south of Chennai, temple trustee Veer Narayanan noted that while the town suffered major damage to life and property, the shrines to Hindu gods withstood the tsunami.
He added that the waves stopped short of the entrance to one of the temples and the water split on either side of the building housing the Hindu god Narayana.
"It is a miracle!" he exclaimed.
For some Hindus, the tragedy was a manifestation of karma.
"God is angry," says Deva Rajan, 25, a fisherman who lost his two children "because people are dishonest and immoral, and we got this punishment."
He blamed the people of his village, Ayodhya Kuppam, including himself, for indulging in wrongdoing.
A similar sense of God's power informed the words of Sethu, 25, a fisherman in Adyar.
"It was a warning that bigger disasters are awaiting. We must have more faith in God," he says.
Not everyone assigned responsibility to a vindictive divinity.
Murthi Sivachriar, 60, a Hindu priest from Chennai with the Bala Kailas Ganapathi Temple, says people are thankful to God that the earthquake took place under the sea and not in southern India. Otherwise, "millions would have perished, and unimaginable rupees worth of property would have been destroyed."
"To that extent," he says, "God was kind."
Rama Ravi, 45, who owns a religious-book shop in Nanga Nallur, tried to relate the fury of nature to the fallibility of humankind.
"Humans are showing disrespect to nature by unnecessary felling of trees and pollution, but nature punishes by showing her power," she says. "It is best for people to remain humble toward nature."
Still others saw the disaster as a sign that the world will end soon. Rukmini Krishnamurthi, 84, of Chennai says the tsunami is an indication that the "end of Kali Yuga (age of destruction) is nearing."
According to the Hindu scriptures, humans must endure a series of setbacks, obstacles, suffering and natural disasters for 1,000 years. Renewal follows.
Challenge from Allah
M. Jamil Hassan sits with his family on the foundation of what was once his house. His son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren sit behind him on a piece of concrete that used to be a retaining wall.
Red and white Indonesian flags flap from sticks next to other destroyed homes. They mark where corpses haven't been collected.
Hassan and most of his family weren't at their oceanside home when the tsunami hit. But eight members of his extended family who lived next to him are missing, including his grandson. Most other neighbors also are gone, presumed dead.
Hassan, a mechanic, picks through piles of wood and concrete next to his home, looking for steel he can sell or wood he can reuse.
"This is all Allah," he says, waving his hand around. "This was the destiny of God. I must accept it. Maybe Allah is upset at the people. Too many people sinned."
That is the consensus in Aceh, the Indonesian province that has long been called the "serambi Mecca," or the Front Porch of Mecca, with more than 2,300 mosques and 6,400 Menasahs, Muslim holy houses.
H. Syukri Daud, an imam at the Mesjid Raya Baiturrahman mosque in the middle of the city of Banda Aceh, thinks he knows the answer: The tsunami was a three-step challenge from Allah.
It was a test to see if Allah's followers would reject God in a time of crisis, a warning not to turn away from God, and a punishment for sin.
Daud says people are beginning to understand. The five daily prayer sessions at mosques throughout Aceh are heavily attended, he says. Muslims cannot discount the fact that even in most damaged areas, sturdy mosques stand, he says.
"People should not forget God," he says through an interpreter. "People are realizing their religion now. They are praying and really doing kind things. We have to be stronger because this is God's warning. God never forgets."
Freelance writer Renuka Naj, who is from Chennai, India, contributed to this report.
Jeremy Meyer can be reached at jpmeyer@denverpost.com. -------------------------------------- The religions at a glance
ISLAM
Central prophet: Muhammad
Sacred texts: Koran and Hadith
Place of worship: Mosque
Title of local leader: Imam
Main beliefs: The oneness of God; Allah, who is lord of the universe; Muhammad is the final messenger of God, sent to confirm the authentic teachings of previous prophets. Jesus is highly respected as the second to last prophet before Muhammad.
HINDUISM
Founder: Unknown - dates to prehistoric times in India
Sacred text: There are many sacred writings, including the Vedas, the Puranas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata (including the Bhagavad Gita) and the Manu Smriti.
Place of worship: Temple
Title of local leader: Priest
Main beliefs: Worship of multiple gods and goddesses (main ones are Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva); reincarnation and karma - the soul never dies, and every action influences reincarnation, which continues until spiritual perfection is reached. The spirit then enters a new level of existence, moksha. Caste system defines social classes.
BUDDHISM
Founder: Siddhartha Gautama, "the enlightened one"
Sacred text: The Tripitika
Place of worship: Temple
Title of local leader: Monk
Main beliefs: "The Three Jewels": Buddha, his teachings called "dharma," and sangha, the religious community he founded; existence is a continual cycle of death and rebirth; each person's current position is determined by behavior in previous lives.
Sources: 2004 World Book; Beliefnet.com
Monnie Nilsson|

  INDIA (79%); THAILAND (79%)




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 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


January 23, 2005 Sunday



 Russia and China -- an ominous duo

 
   WASHINGTON -- Where are we? At this midpoint of the Bush administration, engaged as we are in conflict throughout the world, are we winning?
The great democratic crusade undertaken by this administration is going far better than most observers will admit. That's the good news. The bad news is a development more troubling than most observers recognize: signs of the emergence, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet empire, of an anti-American bloc anchored by Great Powers. 
First, the good news. The great project of the Bush administration -- the strengthening and spread of democracy -- is enjoying considerable success. Most recently we witnessed the triumph of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which followed the Rose Revolution in Georgia, bringing historic breaks from authoritarianism in two key former Soviet republics.
Less publicized were elections in two critical Muslim states -- Indonesia and Malaysia -- in which Islamic parties were decisively defeated.
Elsewhere in the Islamic world, we saw (though many downplayed) the Afghan miracle -- free and successful elections in perhaps the world's least hospitable soil for democracy. That was followed by Palestinian elections and the beginning of political reform. Even more encouraging was a public statement issued just weeks earlier by more than 500 Palestinian intellectuals demanding democracy, the rule of law, transparency and an end to Arafat-style dictatorial rule.
And now, elections in Iraq, which are obviously problematic, but also very promising. Not only will they establish a precedent for free elections and constitutionalism. They will also effectively transfer power to the heretofore disenfranchised majority of Iraqis -- Shiites and Kurds -- who will then have a real stake in helping the United States defend the new Iraqi order against the Baathist insurgency.
Moreover, the election process and the vicious terrorism unleashed against every element of it have exposed the insurgency as not the nationalist resistance that sympathizers in the West pretend it to be but as the desperate opposition by dead-enders to both Iraqi democracy and majority rule.
Now, for the bad news. I am not talking here about the obvious, the continued survival of al-Qaida, although it has clearly been diminished over the last three and a half years.
I'm talking about the other, more subtle challenge to Pax Americana: the first stirrings of what might become an anti-American coalition involving at least two Great Powers. The most remarkable fact about the post-Cold War era is that for the first decade and a half no such opposition emerged.
Historically that is almost unheard of. Hegemonic powers, such as Napoleonic France and imperial and Nazi Germany, tend almost inevitably to spur the creation of a coalition of Great Powers to oppose and contain them.
That may be beginning again. The quiescence with which Russia accepted the Soviet collapse may have run its course. Russia's helplessness at the loss of Ukraine followed a long string of humiliating losses: first the external Third World empire, then the outer East European empire, then the inner empire of 14 Soviet republics.
Add to this NATO's attack on Serbia, Russia's traditional Balkan ally, and the expansion of NATO into the Baltic states. Putin's Russia, already moving decisively back to traditional Czarist authoritarianism, then suffers political defeat in Ukraine, which it considers its natural patrimony. This only compounds and embitters the feeling of alienation from the West in general, and from the United States in particular.
It is no accident that Russia then begins hinting at making common cause with China. This is potentially ominous because of China's rising power and its status as the leading have-not nation on the planet, the Germany of the 21st century.
In December, during the week of the rerun Ukrainian election that finally brought the pro-Western Viktor Yuschenko to power, Russia made two significant moves toward China. First was the announcement of intensified economic cooperation in developing Russia's vast energy resources. More ominous was the Russian defense minister's Dec. 27 announcement of, "for the first time in history," large joint military exercises on Chinese territory.
China in turn is developing relationships with such virulently anti-American rogue states as Iran. Add such various self-styled anti-imperialist flotsam as Syria, North Korea, Cuba and (Chavez's) Venezuela, and you have the beginnings of a significant "anti-hegemonic" bloc -- aimed at us.
This is not a new Cold War. The United States will still remain the vastly predominant world power. But it is a challenge that history has waiting for us on the day the War on Terror is won, and perhaps even before. There is no rest for the weary. Charles Krauthammer's e-mail address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com. Washington Post Writers Group

  RUSSIAN FEDERATION (94%);  CHINA (90%); MALAYSIA (79%); UKRAINE (79%); GEORGIA (79%); GERMANY (79%)




3


 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


January 23, 2005 Sunday



 Today's Sundance highlights

 
  For tickets or more complete listings, go to www.sundance.org.
PARK CITY
8:30 a.m., Holiday II: "Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire" is a Canadian documentary about the guilt-plagued career-military man who led an undersupported United Nations team in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.
10 a.m., Holiday IV: "New York Doll," a documentary-competition film by Brigham Young University graduate Greg Whiteley profiling former New York Dolls musician and LDS Church convert Arthur "Killer" Kane.
11:30 a.m., Library Center: "Dear Wendy" has a teenage pacifist in a blue-collar mining town finding a gun and forming a secret club; Jamie Bell and Bill Pullman star.
Noon, Egyptian: "On a Clear Day" has a depressed older man deciding to swim the English Channel; Peter Mullen, Brenda Blethyn and Billy Boyd ("The Lord of the Rings") star.
11:30 a.m., Racquet Club: "How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer," a dramatic-competition film, has three generations of single Mexican-American women finding romance in the heat of an Arizona summer; Elizabeth Pena, America Ferrera and Steven Bauer star.
2:30 p.m., Library Center: "Game 6" is a comedy with Michael Keaton as a New York playwright at war with a powerful critic (Robert Downey Jr.); Griffin Dunne, Bebe Neuwirth and Catherine O'Hara co-star.
2:30 p.m., Prospector: "Why We Fight," a documentary-competition film, suggests that since the 1950s, life in the United States has been dependent on war.
2:30 p.m., Racquet Club: "Police Beat," a dramatic-competition film, is a gentle look at disorientation through the eyes of a Muslim West African immigrant who becomes a policeman in Seattle and falls for a white woman who doesn't believe in monogamy.
3 p.m., Eccles: "Kung Fu Hustle," a Chinese martial-arts comedy by the maker of "Shaolin Soccer," is about a wannabe gangster in 1940s Canton.
4 p.m., Holiday IV: "Shape of the Moon," from the Netherlands, is a documentary follow-up to "The Eye of the Day," again looking at Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world.
5:30 p.m., Racquet Club: "Thumbsucker," a dramatic-competition film, a comedy about a high-schooler who tries to stop sucking his thumb; Tilda Swinton, Vincent D'Onofrio, Keanu Reeves, Kelli Garner, Benjamin Bratt and Vince Vaugh star.
6 p.m., Eccles: "The Ballad of Jack and Rose" stars Daniel Day-Lewis as an idealist who has raised his 16-year-old daughter in an isolated commune; with Catherine Keener and Beau Bridges, and written and directed by Day-Lewis' wife Rebecca Miller.
7 p.m., Holiday IV: "The Liberace of Baghdad" is a British documentary about the title character, offbeat, classically trained pianist Samir Peter.
9 p.m., Egyptian: "Cr--nicas," a dramatic film from Ecuador, stars John Leguizamo as a TV journalist covering the police investigation of a serial rapist/murderer who stalks young children.
9:30 p.m., Eccles: "The Jacket" features Adrien Brody as a Gulf War veteran with amnesia who is accused of murder; Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason-Leigh and Kelly Lynch co-star.
11:30 p.m., Holiday II: "Shakespeare Behind Bars," a documentary-competition film about imprisoned convicts casting themselves in "The Tempest."
Midnight, Holiday III: "Green Chair" has a 32-year-old divorcee romancing a 19-year-old college student in Korea, where he is considered a minor until age 20.
Panel Discussion, 3 p.m., Egyptian: "Imaginary Worlds: Animation and Computer-Generated Reality," moderated by Leonard Maltin
Filmmaker Lodge, 11 a.m.: "The World Is Watching" (documentaries)
Filmmaker Lodge, 2 p.m.: "Meet the Foreign Press"
Music Cafe: Dresden Dolls, 2:30 p.m.; Nellie McKay, 3:10 p.m.; Peter Cincotti, 3:50 p.m.; Michael McDonald, 4:30 p.m.
Music Night Cafe: alaska!, 8:30 p.m.; Gary Louris, Raz Mesinia and Pete Fitzpatrick, 9:15 p.m.; Calexico, 11:15 p.m.
SALT LAKE CITY
Noon, Broadway: "The Talent Given to Us" has writer/director Andrew Wagner using his family as actors for the story of a domestic road trip.
Noon, Trolley Square: "Lila Says" offers a romantic triangle and forbidden love among youths in an Arab neighborhood.
3 p.m., Broadway: "Reel Paradise," a documentary, follows independent-film maven John Pierson as he and his wife share movies with natives in a remote area of Fiji.
3 p.m., Trolley Square: "Tony Takitani," a Japanese film, adapts a short story about a lonely illustrator who marries a woman who goes on shopping binges.
4:30 and 7:30 p.m., Trolley Square: "The Matador," with Pierce Brosnan as a lonely hit man in Mexico City; Greg Kinnear and Hope Davis co-star.
4:30 p.m., Broadway: "The Protocols of Zion," a documentary about anti-Semitism.
6:45 p.m., Broadway: "Lonesome Jim," a dramatic-competition film, directed by character actor Steve Buscemi, has a young man (Casey Affleck) on the heels of failure, returning from New York to his Midwest home, only to be reminded of why he left; with Liv Tyler, Mary Kaye Place, Seymour Cassel.
6:45 p.m., Trolley Square: "Pretty Persuasion," a dramatic-competition film, is a social satire with a teenage girl in an exclusive private school in Beverly Hills as its primary character; Evan Rachel Wood, James Woods, Jane Krakowski and Selma Blair star.
9:45 p.m., Trolley Square: "On a Clear Day" has a depressed older man deciding to swim the English Channel; Peter Mullen, Brenda Blethyn and Billy Boyd ("The Lord of the Rings") star.
SUNDANCE RESORT
1 p.m., Sundance Village: "Kekexili: Mountain Patrol" looks at antelope being slaughtered by poachers in western China, as a Beijing journalist tries to track down the story.
4 p.m., Sundance Village: "Ellie Parker," a dramatic-competition film, stars Naomi Watts as a Los Angeles actress trying to find herself; Chevy Chase co-stars.
7 and 10 p.m., Sundance Village: "Upside of Anger" is a romantic comedy with Kevin Costner as a suburbanite who tries to romance his neighbor, an abandoned mother (Joan Allen) of four headstrong daughters (Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood, Keri Russell, Alicia Witt).
OGDEN
6:30 p.m., Peery's Egyptian: "Happy Endings," the opening-night film, a dark comedy; Lisa Kudrow, Laura Dern and Maggie Gyllenhaal star.
9:30 p.m., Peery's Egyptian: "Loggerheads," a dramatic-competition film that intertwines three Mother's Day stories, with Bonnie Hunt, Tess Harper, Chris Sarandon and Michael Learned.

 UNITED STATES (93%); RWANDA (92%); ENGLAND (79%); NETHERLANDS (79%); 




3


 The New Mexican 


January 23, 2005 Sunday



 WEEK IN REVIEW; 
JANUARY 16 - JANUARY 22

 
Crime
Teens' gun play turns fatal in Las Vegas -- A 13-year-old boy was shot in the head Friday in Las Vegas, N.M., after he and a group of friends began playing with a gun and drinking alcohol, police said.
The boy later died at an Albuquerque hospital. Now, a 13-year-old girl who allegedly fired the fatal shot is charged with involuntary manslaughter and is being held at a regional jail, said Tim Gallegos, Las Vegas police chief. Tuesday, A-1
Woman's autopsy cites head trauma, caffeine -- The long-awaited autopsy report on 40-year-old Ruth Ann Smith was finally released Friday, but it doesn't contain enough information for prosecutors to decide whether to charge her son with homicide, a prosecutor said Monday. 
Meanwhile, Assistant District Attorney Heidi Pircher also said she is considering filing a motion to close a Wednesday hearing to the public on a separate rape charge against Eric Smith, 17, because it could undermine the state's rape-shield law. Tuesday, A-1
State police officer resigns -- A narcotics agent for the New Mexico State Police has resigned in the wake of serious and "egregious" drug-dealing allegations by the FBI, a state Department of Public Safety spokesman said Wednesday.
The 35-year-old agent, who has not been arrested or charged with a crime, resigned late last week, department spokesman Peter Olson said. He said he did not know the type of narcotics the man was accused of dealing or any specifics about the case because it was investigated by the FBI. Thursday, A-1
Woman arrested after shooting at man -- A woman accused of firing gunshots at a man was arrested after a three-hour standoff with authorities Wednesday afternoon, according to Santa Fe police.
After surrendering with her arms raised, Tracy Kope, 40, was arrested outside her boyfriend's Rancho Siringo Drive home on suspicion of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and tampering with evidence. Thursday, A-1
General
SFHS graduate works the front lines --
Before he joined the military, Staff Sgt. Jason Weiss, a 1990 graduate of Santa Fe High School, worked at a hospital in south-central Los Angeles. It was good preparation for the job he has now as a medic in the 455th Expeditionary Operations Group of the U.S. Air Force stationed in Afghanistan. Sunday, Jan. 16, B-1
Beyond the violence -- Not satisfied to view the clash in the Mideast through a media lens, New Mexicans visit a Palestinian refugee camp to explore the conflict firsthand. Sunday, Jan. 16, B-1
Critical link -- Sometime in the future, hikers and bikers might be able to travel from the village of Agua Fría all the way to the Plaza along the Santa Fe River without trespassing on private property.
A collaboration of governmental and nonprofit organizations is seeking to make this a seamless and scenic journey by buying property along the river or negotiating conservation easements with landowners, many of whom also own portions of the riverbed.
Last week they took another step toward their goal. The Trust for Public Land, El Camino Real River Connection and Santa Fe County's Open Space and Trails Program completed the purchase of 8.89 acres of the Community Farm. The land straddles the river just east of the San Ysidro Crossing. Monday, A-1
Navajo Nation considers gay-marriage ban -- The debate over same-sex marriage is coming to the Navajo Nation.
Tribal Council delegate Larry Anderson Sr. has proposed legislation that would restrict a recognized union to a relationship between a man and woman. Tuesday, A-1
Karen Walker first to declare for mayor -- Karen Walker, a real-estate broker who has been active in historic preservation and other civic affairs, Monday became the first candidate to publicly declare plans to run for mayor of Santa Fe in 2006.
Tuesday, B-1
LANL changes worry retirees -- After spending Sunday and Monday with key Washington players, some of the best-paid workers in Northern New Mexico devised a game plan to preserve their retirement benefits in case a new contractor takes over Los Alamos National Laboratory. Tuesday, B-1
Advocacy group asks for RAP resignations -- Two advocacy groups have formed since Santa Fe's only inpatient addiction-treatment facility lost its state funding and shut its doors to new patients.
The groups share two things in common: They want to preserve the Recovery From Addictions Program for alcoholics and addicts who desperately need the services. And they have separated themselves from the administration and board of directors for the program commonly known as RAP. Wednesday, B-1
Buried treasure on display -- State archaeologists opened their doors Wednesday night to the public and gave them a glimpse of New Mexico's history, spanning far beyond Spanish colonization to the earliest days of humankind in the Western Hemisphere.
The second-floor hallways of La Villa Rivera Building, where the Office of Archaeological Studies is housed, were filled with people listening attentively to state archaeologists discuss the history of New Mexico as told through artifacts left by generations long dead.
Thursday, A-1
County looks to relocate court -- Santa Fe's District Court will have a new home that judges have been asking for, but whether the courthouse will be downtown or somewhere else in the city is still unknown.
Following a Santa Fe County Commission decision Wednesday, county staff will prepare a request for proposals from property owners who have suitable sites for the courthouse. Thursday, A-1
San Juan declines slotlike bingo -- San Juan Pueblo agreed Thursday not to install a new type of electronic bingo device at its casino north of Española.
The games look and play somewhat like slot machines but are not subject to revenue-sharing agreements with the state of New Mexico.
A statement issued by Gov. Bill Richardson's office quoted recently elected San Juan Gov. Joe Garcia as saying the tribe had agreed "in the spirit of good faith" to Richardson's request last year that San Juan not install such devices. Friday, A-1
Caja del Rio trucks anger neighbors -- Neighbors around the Caja del Rio Landfill are complaining about trucks hauling dirt from the landfill to Las Campanas. Friday, B-1
Mulch market -- The market for compost has recently blossomed in Northern New Mexico. The supply of organic material made from waste wood and manure is great here, but until now the demand was not so high.
The balance is changing, however, because the state Transportation Department is encouraging highway contractors to use compost in road projects. Friday, B-1
Nanos: Lab stand-down will end by Jan. 31 -- In less than two weeks, it should "look like a normal day" at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
That's what lab Director Pete Nanos told employees Wednesday. Friday, B-3
Video explains San Ildefonso Pueblo --
San Ildefonso Pueblo and the New Mexico Tourism Department have produced a video to educate tourists about the community. The pueblo wants people to know they are welcome on the tribe's land, but there are rules they must follow. Saturday, B-1
Legislature
A full plate -- From tax cuts to cockfighting; from pre-kindergarten programs to capital punishment; from domestic violence to "freedom to eat enchiladas," the 47th New Mexico state Legislature will tackle an enormous array of issues during the next two months. Sunday, Jan. 16, A-1
Military perks plan might fizzle --
Though Gov. Bill Richardson's proposed package of benefits for military members -- outlined Tuesday in his State of the State address -- has won bipartisan support and has attracted national attention, the new state Senate majority leader said some of the proposals might violate the state's constitution.
Sen. Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, told reporters that Richardson's call to buy $250,000 of life insurance for National Guard members and to exempt 50 percent of military retirement pay from taxes could violate the "anti-donation" clause of the constitution. That's the section that prohibits the state from donating assets to private individuals. Wednesday, A-1
Governor's budget squeezes schools-- Gov. Bill Richardson is banking on millions of dollars in cost savings in public schools, colleges, courts and government agencies to help balance his proposed state budget.
The Democratic governor's
$4.6 billion budget for next year is built on a host of assumptions, including that public schools can absorb costs and find savings potentially exceeding $30 million next year.
Some in the Legislature view the governor's budgetary tactics as little more than "smoke and mirrors." Wednesday, A-8
House speaker aims to delay election reforms -- Though Gov. Bill Richardson on Tuesday called for "immediate action" on his proposals to reform the election process in New Mexico, House Speaker Ben Lujá n, D-Nambé, said the Legislature should take its time. Wednesday, A-8
Lawmakers warned of a possible budget shortfall -- New Mexico could face a possible budgetary squeeze in 2007 because growth in government spending is outstripping likely revenue increases, lawmakers were cautioned Wednesday. Thursday, A-8
Bill would help residents buy, repair homes -- Lower- and middle-income New Mexicans would have an easier time getting loans to build new homes or rehabilitate existing dwellings under a bill introduced Wednesday.
Senate Bill 115, sponsored by Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, D-Santa Fe, would establish a New Mexico Housing Trust, administered by the state Mortgage Finance Authority.
Thursday, A-4
Fight resumes over handling of retiree health-care budget -- Republican legislators are pushing to reinstate money that Gov. Bill Richardson cut last year from the state Retiree Health Care Authority's operating budget.
Rep. Dan Foley, R-Roswell, introduced a bill (HB 117) on Wednesday to appropriate $615,500 to the authority for the remainder of this fiscal year. Richardson last year vetoed $1.2 million of the authority's budget. Thursday, A-4
Campaign puts DWI legislation in spotlight -- New Mexico needs tougher laws to combat drunken driving, first lady Barbara Richardson told high-school students at the state Capitol Thursday. Friday, A-7
GOP gets some Democrat support for voter-ID plan -- Republicans have lined up support from several Senate Democrats and cooperation from Gov. Bill Richardson in their perennial push for a law that would require voters to show identification at polling places. Friday, A-7
Bosson seeks more judges, staff for courts -- The court system needs more judges, staff and an expanded budget to do its part in the fight against drunken driving, the chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court told lawmakers Thursday. Friday, A-7
Bill would enforce ATV safety -- Young people in New Mexico who ride all-terrain vehicles would be required to get training and wear helmets and other protective gear under legislation endorsed by Gov. Bill Richardson. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque and Rep. Bobby Gonzales, D-Taos, would require adult supervision of ATV drivers under the age of 13. Saturday, A-1
Religion
Muslims mark end of a journey --
At midday Thursday, Abdur Rahim Lutz smoothed out a small prayer rug on his living-room floor in Abiquiú. Behind him, his friends and family knelt on their emerald- and ruby-colored carpets. And around the world, from Indonesia to Africa, hundreds of millions of Muslims joined Lutz and his guests in one of five daily prayers in celebration of Eid al Adha -- the Feast of the Sacrifice. Saturday, A-1
Water
City ends Estancia water bid, for now --
A majority of the Santa Fe City Council voted Wednesday to postpone indefinitely purchasing water from the Estancia Basin, a proposed deal that has prompted sharp reactions during the past month.
Thursday, A-1
Features
Will work to snowboard -- Nearly 60 students from South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand are working at Angel Fire Ski Resort this winter through international student-exchange programs. Sunday, Jan. 16, E-1
Slip into the vortex -- For a relatively quick escape from Santa Fe, head to Sedona, Ariz. While it offers plenty of New Agey, crystal-vortex nonsense, its mountain-biking trails and red-rock beauty are legendary. Sunday, Jan. 16, G-1
One man's cicada is another man's cuisine -- Steve Fadden won't force students to eat bugs in his Anthropology of Food class at Santa Fe Community College; he will teach students that some cultures' pests are the main courses of other cultures' favorite meals. The class also covers food rituals across cultures and over time. Wednesday, C-1
Slip-sliding away -- Time to grab an inner tube and play like a kid.
Thursday, C-1
Face value -- Two shows opening today at the Museum of Fine Arts offer different perspectives of how New Mexican artists have depicted their own and other people's faces during the past 100 years.
Friday, Pasatiempo

 UNITED STATES (94%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%)




3


 The New Mexican 


January 23, 2005 Sunday 




 SANTA FE MAN WINS 1 MILLION FREQUENT- FLIER MILES

 
Actor turned 'cowboy' declared to be 'Ultimate Road Warrior'
Archie Lew is the Road Warrior, just not in the sense that Mel Gibson's famous character Mad Max was the Road Warrior. Lew has never escorted a convoy of fuel tankers across the wastelands of a post-apocalyptic Australia. Nor has he ever fought endless hordes of leather-bound thugs climbing along an
18-wheeler.
No, Lew's fight is different. His war is internal, its effects extending into the workplace and into one's homelife. He believes our enemies are within us, and they can be overcome. 
Lew, 55 and proud of it, owns his own business, Mohala. Through his work he travels the world to train organizations to tap the potential that lays fallow in their employees. His travels earned him the title Road Warrior from American Airlines as part of a national contest in which he described his most memorable trip. Along with the title of Ultimate Road Warrior, Lew won 1 million frequent-flier miles and 2 million guest points at Hilton Hotels.
His tale about a business trip to the rainforests of Indonesia is featured in the Jan. 1 issue of American Airlines magazine, American Way.
He describes a moment in the rainforest when a flash storm suddenly came and went, leaving behind a moment of silence that his American team and Indonesian Muslim clients shared.
"We realized we were witnessing a confluence of events that was by no means earth shattering, but hugely meaningful," he wrote. "In that hushed moment of 20 seconds, we realized that no matter our creed or belief, no matter our race, wealth or differences, we are all in this place together."
During 2004, Lew estimated, he traveled some 150,000 miles, visiting mundane and exotic destinations, of which Indonesia was one.
But there's no place like New Mexico for Lew. The home he and his wife built together, he said with a big grin, is the place he plans to "stay until he rots." He has a deep appreciation for the state's natural beauty and hopes his property might be made into a park when he dies.
Lew is a cowboy; or rather he has a cowboy's heart.
He enjoys working with his mustangs and with his wife keeps five dogs and a tortoise named Francis. He likes his coffee made the cowboy way, in a tin pot using coarse coffee grounds. His smile is infectious and his handshake is as hearty as his laugh.
Lew was not always a cowboy, but he's played one on TV. A classically-trained Shakespearan actor, Lew hails from England. While Shakespearean acting comes with a certain amount of prestige, it doesn't always translate into a big salary. To make ends meet in the 1970s, Lew took television roles including one on the science-fiction cult-classic Blake's 7 and commercials.
His life changed when in 1978 he won the role of the Toffo Man, the public face for Toffo, a toffee candy. Lew described the Toffo Man as a sort of handsome playboy who was chased by women in the streets. A change was being made, and the young stud was being changed to a cowboy.
"The English are absolutely in love with cowboys and Indians," he said
Typically, cowboy shoots, Lew said, were done in southern Spain, but in this case there was another option.
"I was told we could go to this place called Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I said, 'Where the heck is that?'"
Once it was explained that New Mexico was actually in the United States and that all the resources needed to produce the commercial were readily available, Lew was excited. "Hell, let's go there, 'cause I never been to America before."
So Lew was off to New Mexico, with a band of Englishman all gussied up as cowboys.
Alexis Higginbotham was helping cater the set for an acquaintance who owned El Farol. A coin toss between Oregon and New Mexico had brought her to Santa Fe from the San Francisco Bay area.
She was pouring coffee when the two set eyes on each other.
"She did the old thing where she just kept pouring, pouring, pouring," Lew said.
"The gypsies call it 'the lightning bolt," said Higginbotham.
Lew had only one week to spend in Santa Fe, a girlfriend back home and the prospects of a lasting relationship seemed dim. Two days before leaving for England, Higginbotham drove up in an old El Camino and asked to give him a ride back to town.
"And that's it," Lew said. "I went back to England and came back a week later. We spent some time together and realized we spend the rest of our lives together."
The couple moved to England for about two years, while Lew continued his acting career. But England, he said, was making her miserable. Grey skies and cold damp weather didn't fit well with a woman whose ancestors were from Hawaii and whose heart was in New Mexico.
"We're just sitting in our flat and thinking 'This sucks,' " Higginbotham said. " 'Let's go. Let's go back.' " Lew said.
Eventually, Lew began his business, Mohala, a Hawaiian word with several meanings, including thank you, and blossoming.
Higginbotham runs the company office from their home and sometimes accompanies Lew on his trips.
"But only to the good places," Higginbotham said.
Lew advises people to strike healthy balances in their work and home lives. He speaks emphatically about people not allowing themselves to become complacent and to always reach for the best in yourself, and to be wary of those organizations that seek to dominate from the top down. Instead he tells people to try and build relationships within organizations in which people encourage, rather than discourage one another.
Lew and Higginbotham are passionate about their home, which has been featured in Su Casa magazine as an example of both stylish design and environmental friendliness. The house, just like its owners, has a distinctive personality blending Southwest design with island motifs, including a door with a blue wave on it and flower leys strewn about the property.
"We want to share the house" Higginbotham said. "We have people call to see it all the time."
It's their refuge, and one day he hopes it will be a park where others can enjoy it.
"We're just borrowing the land for now," Lew said.
Lew's occupation puts him in a position where he is constantly giving advice to others. Not only in matters of business and management, but also in matters of relationships and believing in yourself.
But, he maintains he is no guru. He is guilty of doing the things at times he advises others not to do and makes mistakes like anyone else. His wife agrees.
"There are still times I want to put a pillow over his face," she laughs.

CORRECTION-DATE: January 25, 2005

 CORRECTION:
The last name of Archie Tew, who won 1 million frequent- flier miles from American Airlines, was misspelled in a story on Page B-1 of Sunday's edition.

 UNITED STATES (94%); INDONESIA (91%); AUSTRALIA (90%); ENGLAND (50%)




3


  



January 23, 2005 Sunday  




 The Good Life, Washed Away; 
Family Well Off Before Tsunami Celebrates Holiday on Charity

 
 Edy parked his motorbike and pressed into the crowd beside the local mosque Saturday afternoon, clutching a white coupon in his right hand. He squeezed under a blue awning where tsunami refugees and other indigent survivors were claiming plastic bags with donated chunks of meat to celebrate one of Islam's most important holidays. 
 "Not here, over there," one volunteer told Edy, 21, a skinny college student with a knitted Muslim skullcap on his closely cropped head and the shadow of his first mustache on his upper lip. 
 He turned away, still holding the coupon that entitled his family to a handout of recently butchered meat for the festival meal. It was a ticket to the comfortable lifestyle they took for granted before the Dec. 26 tsunami obliterated their village on Aceh's battered west coast, robbing them of their riches and landing them on the dole.  
 "Wrong place," another volunteer said. "This isn't for the meat at this mosque." 
 Edy scowled, staring down at the coupon, and buzzed off on his motorbike.  
No holiday in the Muslim province of Aceh is as anticipated as the three-day festival of Eid al-Adha, which began Friday. For generations, Edy's family marked the occasion by purchasing a water buffalo for ritual slaughter and sharing the meat with 100 poor families in their village, in the town of Lamno on the west coast, said Edy's mother, Cut Manyak. 
 The buffalo could cost $800. But the family ran a small shop from the front of their wood-plank home, selling staples such as sugar and salt, as well as gasoline and spare tires. By the standards of Meunasah Rayeuk village, they were affluent. 
 The tsunami, triggered by a massive earthquake off the coast, razed their home to its foundation and wiped out any sign of their shop. Manyak's two younger sisters died, as did a majority of the 850 people in the village. 
 "I lost everything," said Manyak, 60, a plump, matronly woman with reddened eyes behind thick glasses. Wrapped in a long, white veil, she rested her wrinkled hands in her lap, rubbing her fingers together anxiously. Faded orange polish was visible on several nails. 
 She and her husband had been visiting their married daughter, Siti Maryam, 28, in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, when the tsunami struck. Half the city was devastated, but Maryam's home was spared. So were all seven of Manyak's children. For a while she thought that her youngest, Aris, 13, a shy boy with lively, chestnut eyes, had perished, but he appeared at the front door two weeks after the tsunami. He had survived by fleeing to the hills and climbing a palm tree. 
 "I cried so hard when I saw him," Manyak said. "I couldn't say anything. I just prayed to God. I kissed him and held him tight and never wanted to release him again." 
 Now, Manyak, her elderly husband and most of their children have crammed into the modest clapboard dwelling occupied by Maryam's family. 
 "I have no money. I have nothing with me. We're refugees now," Manyak said shortly before she dispatched Edy to the mosque. "I don't know whether we'll be having meat this year." 
 Maryam interjected, "Maybe this year, because the rich people lost everything, there won't be anyone to slaughter a cow and give the meat to the poor. Now, the rich and the poor are equal." 
 Other parts of Indonesia have long favored the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which comes at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. But in Aceh, it is Eid al-Adha -- which according to Muslims marks God's decision to stay Abraham's hand as he prepared to sacrifice his son Ishmael and instead order the slaughter of a ram -- that has become the more prominent. 
 For as long as Manyak can remember, her family would take a buffalo to the slope of a sacred mountain outside Lamno. On the summit is the grave of Potue Meureuhom, a cleric who introduced Islam to western Aceh five centuries ago and helped establish the first Muslim kingdom in the region. 
 Pilgrims from as far away as Banda Aceh would throng the mountain on Eid al-Adha, climbing 99 stone steps to pray beside the white tomb, bathe themselves with holy water from a jug and ask for the cleric's blessings. Manyak's family would slaughter the buffalo at a wooden beachfront shelter at the base of the mountain and feed the first 100 indigent visitors. 
 The tsunami destroyed the shelter, Manyak said, and killed the tomb's caretaker, whose family had long been the repository of local history. The wall of water also destroyed the gravestones of Manyak's ancestors. 
 "We'll no longer be able to distinguish which are our grandfathers' graves," she said, her face falling. "We won't visit them anymore." 
 But Manyak said she was determined to pray to the deceased. "God has given me a second chance to be close to them," she added. "When I pray here, it's as if I was still there like in the past, in front of the graves in the middle of the cemetery." 
 Manyak closed her eyes and stretched out her arms, palms facing upward. She started to pray. Her family watched in silence for several minutes. Her white-haired husband, Hasyim Hamzah, 68, grinned. 
 When Manyak finished and opened her eyes, her daughter Maryam was the first to speak. 
 "We've tidied up the house for Eid al-Adha like always, but we have no spirit to celebrate," she said, a rust-colored scarf draped loosely over her pony tail, warm brown eyes above heavy bags. "We've lost too much family, and our older sister is still away in Lamno." 
 Unaccustomed to hunting for festival fare, the family could only hope that Edy would obtain the promised meat.  
The young man drove back and forth empty-handed on Friday afternoon and once more on Saturday before he finally saw that a crowd had gathered at the storefront headquarters of a Muslim political party. 
 Black, blue and white plastic bags of butchered meat were piled against the storefront in a haze of flies. Edy joined the rear of the pack, clasping the coupon in his right hand. 
 After 20 minutes, a volunteer emerged from the store and called out, "One by one." 
 About 125 people swelled forward, coupons in outstretched hands. Edy squeezed to the front and swapped his for more than a pound of beef in a tied black bag. "Thank you," he mumbled wearily. He hopped back on the motorbike, clutching the bag in his left hand all the way home. 
 His mother was waiting and led him straight to the kitchen to begin cooking the holiday repast. 
 Nightfall softened the memory of loss. Manyak and her daughters spread a pink lace cloth on the carpet and laid out the feast, village-style, on the floor. A dozen plates and glasses glistened under the lone fluorescent light. One by one, they brought out the bowls of rice, spicy fish, salty duck eggs, chicken eggs with red chili peppers, curry, cassava leaves, salad and beef and potatoes in soy sauce. 
 There wasn't enough room for all 20 relatives who had gathered. So the adults ate first, scooping up the meal with their bare right hands. 
 Suddenly, they looked up. 
 "Did you feel that?" Maryam asked. She pointed to a fish tank. The water was swooshing back and forth. "A tremor."  
 The family paused for an instant. Then they sank their fingers back into the luxury of rice and cooked meat. 

 INDONESIA (92%)




3


 Paddock Publications, Inc. 
Chicago Daily Herald

January 22, 2005 Saturday  
Lake Edition



 
Questionable choices in Woodland district
In December, the Woodland District 50 superintendent made the decision that Christmas carols were unsafe because they would distract the bus drivers. It took the threat of a lawsuit to change his mind.
If the man had spent any time on a school bus, he would have realized how sophomoric that sounded. 
By the way, the drivers were never told by the district that they were allowing the playing of the radio and Christmas music. I believe this was the same person who felt it was safe to drive Jan. 6 in the worst snow of the season. I don't know what he is paid for the decisions that were made, but I would consider a change in the administration before I issued him another paycheck.
Marjorie Nicoline
Gurnee
Teachers don't know what real stress is
I read various news articles regarding our stressed-out teachers in the Grayslake District 46 elementary schools. After spending four years on the Grayslake school board some years ago, I was not surprised to hear the same complaints and whimpering as before. It is difficult to sympathize with their stress when you consider that teachers get almost three months of summer vacation, spring break, two weeks at Christmas, all the holidays, plus teacher conference days at basically an annual wage.
In addition, they have great benefits with medical and dental coverage, pensions and that great security blanket called tenure that keeps the incompetent from being replaced. All things considered, they spend less than eight hours a day with the children. Is this what you call stress?
When I think of stress, I think of the airline workers losing their jobs and pensions. I also think of the majority of workers who work 50 weeks a year, eight to 10 hours a day with two weeks' vacation. They should be stressed.
If you really want to know what stress is, run for the school board and have to face crucial financial decisions while listening to the constant whining of the teachers. That's stress.
Right now, the teachers are gearing up for contract negotiations by trying to convince the taxpayers of their alleged plight. Well, I am not going to vote for a referendum question that is going to increase my taxes by $536 just to provide the teachers with another big contract. I think the board has done a commendable job in eliminating surplus positions and cutting costs. I would hate to see the board cave in to the teachers and reverse the good work it has done.
If more stressed-out teachers leave, we can hire young, enthusiastic graduates from college to teach our children.
With the latest state scores in education, we are still on the road to nowhere. With our current staff, improvement is not going to come from increased salaries. With the yoke of tenure, we are stuck with both excellent and poor teachers, and any wholesale improvement will not come unless we can replace incompetent staff.
Obviously, our teachers are burned out and just moving on to retirement.
It's a sad state, but there it is.
Roy B. Olson
Grayslake
Celebrities show heart with donations
It is interesting to note that the Hollywood celebrities, who are hated by the right-wing religious conservative types, have contributed millions of dollars and organized fund-raising events for the Southeast Asia disaster relief. Michael Schumaker, the German Formula One race-car driver, pledged $10 million.
It was gratifying to hear that the self-proclaimed "compassionate conservative" President Bush was able to scrape up $10,000 of his own money for the tsunami relief fund, even if it took some prodding.
Frank Fredericks
Lake Villa
Tsunami disaster redefines hypocrisy
In the midst of the tsunami tragedy comes a new definition of hypocrisy. The same European nations that have called for an economic boycott on Israel (an attempt to financially cripple that nation) now call Israel to task for not donating enough money to assist the relief effort. The fact is that Israel was in the forefront with medical and engineering assistance along with relief workers, who were then rejected for having ties to the Israeli military (though no such rejections were made for aid brought in by the American military).
And pray tell, where was Saudi Arabia on the list of donor nations? Not in the top 10 according to The Wall Street Journal ("After the flood," Jan. 3). Odd, considering that Indonesia is 88 percent Muslim. But I forgot, Indonesia does not share the same radical Wahhabi brand of Islam practiced by the Saudis.
Larry Schneider
Buffalo Grove




40 of 120 DOCUMENTS


   


January 22, 2005 Saturday  




 Mix of Quake Aid and Preaching Stirs Concern

 
A dozen Americans walked into a relief camp here, showering bereft parents and traumatized children with gifts, attention and affection. They also quietly offered camp residents something else: Jesus. 
 The Americans, who all come from one church in Texas, have staged plays detailing the life of Jesus and had children draw pictures of him, camp residents said. They have told parents who lost children that they should still believe in God, and held group prayers where they tried to heal a partly paralyzed man and a deaf 12year-old girl.
 The attempts at proselytizing are angering local Christian leaders, who worry that they could provoke a violent backlash against Christians in Sri Lanka, a predominantly Buddhist country that is already a religious tinderbox.  
 Last year, Buddhist hard-liners attacked the offices of the World Vision Christian aid group and vandalized or threatened churches and pastors 75 times. They accuse Christians of using money and social programs to cajole and coerce conversions. 
 Most American groups, including those affiliated with religious organizations, strictly avoid mixing aid and missionary work. But scattered reports of proselytizing in Sri Lanka; Indonesia, which is predominantly Muslim; and India, with large Hindu and Muslim populations, are arousing concerns that the good will spread by the American relief efforts may be undermined by resentment.
 The Rev. Sarangika Fernando, a local Methodist minister, witnessed one of the prayer sessions in Sri Lanka and accused the Americans of acting unethically with traumatized people. ''They said, 'In the name of Jesus, she must be cured!''' he said. ''As a priest, I was really upset.''
 The Americans in Sri Lanka belong to the Antioch Community Church, an evangelical church based in Waco, Tex. Two members of the church were arrested, and accused of proselytizing, by the Taliban in Afghanistan in August 2001. When the United States invaded the country several months later, pro-American Northern Alliance forces freed the women, who church officials say did speak with Afghans about their personal ''relationship with Jesus.'' 
 The Antioch Community Church is one of a growing number of evangelical groups that believe in mixing aidgiving with discussing religion, an approach that older, more established Christian aid groups like Catholic Relief Services call unethical. 
 In Sri Lanka, alarmed local Christian leaders say proselytizing at such a sensitive time could reverse the grass-roots interfaith cooperation that has emerged since the tsunami and endanger Christians, who make up 7 percent of the population. The country also has sizable Hindu and Muslim minorities.
 The Rev. Duleep Fernando, a Methodist minister based in Colombo, the capital, brought the Americans to the camp here. Mr. Fernando said they had described themselves as humanitarian aid workers. He and other Sri Lankan Christian leaders say raising religion with traumatized refugees is unethical.
 ''We have told them this is not right, but now we don't have any control over them,'' said Mr. Fernando, who called the group's Web site postings ''unnecessarily explosive.'' 
 ''This is a dangerous situation,'' he said.
 In Indonesia last week, reports that a missionary group named WorldHelp planned to raise 300 Muslim tsunami orphans in a Christian children's home in Jakarta brought an outcry from Muslims. The group later said it had never had custody of the children. 
 Sri Lankan refugees, camp administrators and church officials said the Americans here had identified themselves only as a humanitarian aid group. In an interview here on Wednesday, Pat Murphy, 49, a leader of the team, said the group was a nongovernmental organization, and not a church group. ''It's an NGO,'' Mr. Murphy said. ''Just your plain vanilla NGO that does aid work.''
 But the church's Web site says the Americans are one of four teams -- for a total of 75 people -- dispatched to Sri Lanka and Indonesia who have persuaded dozens of people to ''come to Christ.'' 
 When the group's postings were read to Mr. Murphy, he confirmed that the Americans were from the Antioch Community Church, but said the group would never use relief goods and gifts to entice or pressure people into becoming Christians. He denied that the team, which sent about half its 24 members to work in the eastern town of Kalmunai, was trying to convert people. The church has 2,000 members.
 ''We simply provide people with information,'' he said, ''and they do with that what they like.''
 A Jan. 18 posting from the team in Indonesia says the country's devastated Aceh Province is ''ripe for Jesus!!'' 
 ''What an opportunity,'' it adds. ''It has been closed for five years, and the missionaries in Indonesia consider it the most militant and difficult place for ministry. The door is wide open and the people are hungry.''
 The Rev. Jimmy Seibert, the senior pastor of the Waco church, said in a telephone interview that the church would evaluate whether the group's members should identify themselves as aid workers. But he said the church believes missionary work and aid work ''is one thing, not two separate things.'' 
 ''My hope is that as a follower of Jesus they would bring who they are into the workplace,'' he said, ''whether they are in a workplace in America or a workplace in Sri Lanka.''
 Older Christian aid groups like Catholic Relief Services, Lutheran World Relief and others with religious affiliations say they do not proselytize, abiding by Red Cross guidelines that humanitarian aid not be used to further political or religious purposes. Ken Hackett, president of Catholic Relief Services, said that in the last 20 years there had been an increase of smaller Christian evangelical groups providing relief aid in the wake of disaster.
 ''I think there are new groups that are driven by missionary zeal,'' Mr. Hackett said. In the last several weeks, Mr. Hackett said, his group has received anecdotal reports of proselytizing in countries devastated by the tsunami. 
 ''From our partners in India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia we've heard that there have been instances when American and other Christian groups have been proselytizing and casting aspersions on the faith of people there,'' he said. ''Some of these groups raise questions about other faiths, saying that people would be better off if they converted to Christianity immediately.''
 Several American evangelical aid groups have arrived in Sri Lanka, but no reports of proselytizing by those groups have emerged, according to Sri Lankan church officials. The Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, visited Sri Lanka this week to encourage the workers of his evangelical aid organization, Samaritan's Purse, who plan to work in Sri Lanka for the next five years. 
 Other American evangelical aid groups, including Gospel for Asia and World Relief, are active on the country's devastated east coast, according to Sri Lankan and American aid workers.
 Members of Mr. Graham's group said they did not engage in proselytizing, but said if local Christians wanted to build a church they would help them. Officials from World Relief, the aid wing of the National Association of Evangelicals, have said in interviews that they try to first build trust with local people and then look for opportunities for conversions, in some cases years later.
 More evangelical groups are apparently on their way. A message posted on the Web site of the Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell says the school he founded, Liberty University, is preparing to send a team to Sri Lanka, India and other countries battered by the tsunami.
 ''Distribution of food and medical supplies along with the dissemination of thousands of Gospel tracts in the language of the people will keep the L.U. team very busy,'' the Web site says. ''Mission trips to the Asian region by many L.U. students will follow in the months, and perhaps years, to come.'' 
 Ron Godwin, president of Jerry Falwell Ministries, confirmed that the Liberty Foundation was organizing a shipment of rice, medication and Scriptural excerpts, but said the primary goal of the effort was relief, not proselytizing. ''Everything we do is in the name of Christ,'' he said. ''But we try to be sensitive in areas where it may be politically sensitive, and we have no litmus test for those we give rice to.'' 
 According to the Waco church group's Web site, its teams in Sri Lanka and Indonesia are performing ''children's ministry,'' seeing ''many people saved'' and continuing to ''minister to families and children through prayer and evangelism.'' 
 According to its Web site, the congregation uses small groups called ''cell churches'' to attract new members. The reports from Indonesia and Sri Lanka refer to ''cells'' and ''lifegroups'' in both countries. 
 Residents of the camp here reported no healings as a result of the group's prayers. But they said they appreciated the aid and activities for children that the group provided and did not want to see them end. 
 Organizers in a nearby camp have declared the Americans missionaries and barred them from entering. Camp organizers here said they believed that the group was trying to convert people, but did not want to further upset the tsunami victims by cutting off the aid.
 W.L.P. Wilson, 38, a disabled fisherman with a sixth-grade education, said he allowed the Americans to pray three times for the healing of his paralyzed lower leg because he was desperate to provide for his wife and three children again. Mr. Wilson, a Buddhist, said that he believed that the Americans were trying to convert him to Christianity but that he was in ''a helpless situation now'' and needed aid.
 ''They told me to always think about God and about Jesus and you will be healed,'' he said. ''Whenever I ask for help they always mention God, but they do not give any money for treatment.''


 SRI LANKA (99%);  AFGHANISTAN (92%); INDONESIA (92%); INDIA (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)




41 of 120 DOCUMENTS


 The New Mexican 


January 22, 2005 Saturday



 MUSLIMS MARK END OF A JOURNEY

 
While the pilgrimage to Mecca draws millions of the faithful, most of the world's Muslims celebrate like those in Northern New Mexico
At midday Thursday, Abdur Rahim Lutz smoothed out a small prayer rug on his living-room floor in Abiquiú. Behind him, his friends and family knelt on their emerald- and ruby-colored carpets. And around the world, from Indonesia to Africa, hundreds of millions of Muslims joined Lutz and his guests in one of five daily prayers in celebration of Eid al Adha -- the Feast of the Sacrifice. 
Lutz's lyrical Arabic chanting lulled listeners into their own prayers. Incense smoke floated around the room, children played at the feet of the devoted, and women prepared tiny glasses of amber tea to offer guests.
"It's relaxing. We drink tea, eat great food and give little gifts of calligraphy, candy or cards," said Lutz's wife, Rahmah Lutz, as she arranged a silver platter with glasses cradled in ceramic dishes. "We've been celebrating Eid here for 20 years."
Eid al Adha is the most important holiday in the Muslim lunar calendar, representing the end of the Hajj -- or pilgrimage to Mecca -- in Saudi Arabia. People who have made Hajj, a commitment Muslims make at least once in their lifetime, use the day as remembrance of their experience.
Eid is usually a three-day celebration that involves sacrificing a sheep or goat and sharing it with friends and the poor. The sacrifice is made in remembrance of Ibraham's near-sacrifice of his son.
According to the Quran, the religious text of Islam, Ibraham was about to sacrifice his son Ishmael when a voice from heaven stopped him and allowed him to sacrifice a ram instead. Both the Jewish and Christian scriptures contain the same story, but the son was Isaac.
About 50 people joined the celebration tucked away in the red hills of Abiquiú this year.
Many are children and grandchildren of the founding members of the Muslim community in Abiquiú -- a community once 50-families strong that built their large, traditional North African adobe mosque in 1981. The majority of the founding members were converts from Judaism or Christianity. Many families have moved away since the 1980s, but about seven have stayed and are bringing up the next generation of Northern New Mexico's Muslims.
The close-knit community celebrated this year with people from Santa Fe, Albuquerque and La Mesilla, as well as more distant places including Morocco and Bosnia.
"This is a very connected group. I can feel the energy," said Azeddine Belghiti, who lives in Santa Fe but is originally from Casablanca, Morocco. "In Morocco, everyone celebrates Eid. There they take it for granted because everyone is doing it. I feel Eid is more powerful here because there are fewer people celebrating."
Belghiti, dressed in a double-breasted, pin-striped suit and a ribbon-trimmed fedora, said he has never celebrated Eid in Abiquiú, and was charmed by the friendliness of the New Mexicans who invited him to their homes and to share in their sacrifice of eight sheep and goats.
After the morning prayer and drumming and singing in the carpet-layered yurt used for ceremonies, the families visited each other's homes, scattered around the small, white neighborhood mosque. Most of the women went to their homes to set out food for guests. A few of the men prepared the sheep and goats for the sacrifice by turning the animals to face Mecca before cutting their throats.
Omar Cashmere, who lives just up the dirt road from the Lutz, said every Muslim is required to sacrifice on Eid al Ahda, but people can also send money to other Muslim families who cannot afford to buy their own sacrificial animal.
He said he and Abdur Rahim sent money to Indonesia through the Islam Supreme Council, so families who were affected by the tsunami could perform their sacrifice.
"Usually the money for a sacrifice would go to Bosnia, Kosovo or Afghanistan. But Indonesia is a Muslim country, and it took such a big loss," Cashmere said.
After the sacrifice, one-third of the meat is given to friends, one-third to the poor and the last third is kept by the family. In the evening, after another session of prayer, barefoot children played and ate lamb shish-kebab while women with their heads wrapped in colorful scarves talked, and singers and drummers prepared to end the evening in song.
"A lot more people were here when we were kids. We would be excited about getting new clothes, candy and seeing our friends," said Samia van Hattum, 27, of Santa Fe. Van Hattum is one of the second generation of Abiquiú Muslims -- many of whom already have children of their own.
"Now we're all having kids. We are a lot more relaxed at Eid. It is a time to see family, get together and catch up," van Hattum said, lounging on her parent's back porch. "We've known each other since we were born, and no matter where we live, this will always be our home."
(Sidebar)
More on Islam
For more information on Islam or the Arab world, contact Rahmah Lutz at www.awaironline.org. Arab World and Islamic Resources is a nonprofit organization that provides free workshops on Islam and the Arab culture to schools and community groups. They also provide educational materials including children's books and information on Islamic art.

 INDONESIA (92%); UNITED STATES (90%); MOROCCO (90%); AFRICA (88%); NORTHERN AFRICA (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (58%)




4

 Star News  


January 22, 2005, Saturday



 Locals head to Asia for 'mission of trust in God'

 
 
When the Dec. 26 tsunami hit Southeast Asia, Fayetteville resident Jay Currin and Hampstead resident Tom Spencer said, "Send us."
The men are volunteers for the N.C. Baptist Men Disaster Relief ministry and are part of a team of four people who left for Indonesia Friday to help with disaster relief. (They're bringing a water purifier.) Mike Greene of Raleigh and Harry Arnett of Lillington also are part of the team that will work in Indonesia until Feb. 11. 
Part of the N.C. Baptist State Convention, N.C. Baptist Men is just one of many religious-based relief agencies helping tsunami victims in the 11 affected countries.
Mr. Spencer calls it "a mission of trust in God" because the men won't know exactly where they will be or who they'll be working with until they get to Indonesia.
Still, "we both felt a call to go. It's a need to do something, so we volunteered," he said, as he met Mr. Currin for the first time Monday in downtown Wilmington.
"We have to get to know each other because we're going to become really close over there," Mr. Currin said, laughing.
The two men have seen devastation before. Mr. Spencer was part of the Baptist Men's relief efforts in New York after the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Currin helped rebuild homes in Kosovo after fighting ended there.
"But I've never been to a place where 100,000 people were killed in one event," Mr. Currin said. Death tolls in Indonesia alone are estimated at 110,000 to 166,000. Worldwide death totals may reach 221,000. .
N.C. Baptist Men Disaster Relief ministry sends relief teams worldwide to help people caught in natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes and tornadoes. Teams often rebuild homes, clean up damaged areas and provide emergency child care.
Though the N.C. Baptist Men are part of a religious organization, relief teams are not supposed to proselytize, especially in Indonesia, where the population is 90 percent Muslim, said Gaylon Moss, Baptist Men disaster relief director.
The men must make sure they don't spread the word of God, even subtly, so clothing with Christian or American insignia is prohibited, though they can take a Bible for personal use. They can only carry one bag, including all their camping gear, clothing, food and supplies.
"We realize we're going to a different culture, and it's out of respect to that culture that we don't proselytize," he said. "We want to go to show God's love to hurting people."
Mr. Moss said his agency hadn't had problems with the Indonesian government allowing aid workers into the country. N.C. Baptist Men currently has five teams, a total of 40 people, throughout the region.
Mr. Spencer's team's arrival date had to coincide with the arrival of the water treatment system from the Charleston-based Water Missions International, a Christian engineering nonprofit. Once they arrive, the team must find a water source and stay with the purifier 24 hours a day.
"It's a lot easier to accept the death than the plight of the living," Mr. Currin added. "They've got to have hope for tomorrow. And they can't have that without clean water."
Amanda Greene: 343-2365
amanda.greenestarnewsonline.com
HELPING THE VICTIMS
Several church organizations are reaching out to tsunami victims.
N.C. BAPTIST MEN is teaming up with Samaritan's Purse to provide temporary housing and supplies to tsunami victims. Each Emergency Response Shelter Kit has a blue tarp, cooking pots, utensils, a gas stove and lantern. Samaritan's Purse sent a large shipment to Indonesia on Monday. A cargo jet carried a helicopter and a light utility plane to fly relief workers and aid to parts of the country.
UNITED METHODIST COMMITTEE ON RELIEF, the disaster relief arm of the Methodist Church, has response teams throughout the affected regions. In North Carolina, the only volunteers from the Methodist Conference going to help tsunami victims are the Rev. David Haley and his wife from Littleton United Methodist Church in Warren County, near Roanoke Rapids. They left for Sri Lanka on Friday to assist a sister church there.
ST. MARY CATHOLIC CHURCH will host the Schola Cantorum of the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina in a fund-raising choral concert for tsunami victims at 7 p.m. Sunday at the church, 412 Ann. St. All donations from the concert will go to Catholic Relief Services to support that agency's relief efforts in Southeast Asia.
WINTER PARK BAPTIST CHURCH in Wilmington has two church members providing relief in India. For photos and a Web log, visit www.winterparkbaptist.org.

 ASIA (95%);  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); UNITED STATES (90%); KOSOVO (79%); 




4


  


January 21, 2005 Friday  




 Muslim sleeper cell silliness

 
Regarding "Inaugural doomsday?" (Opinion, Jan. 18): Is Cal Thomas trying to make us hate each other? If so, why? Based on a TV series, he's concluding that Muslims in any neighborhood or community may be sleeper cells. I strongly disagree.
I'm a Muslim-American. Let me tell you who the Muslims are around you. The hard working doctor who comes to the emergency room when you're having a heart attack is a Muslim. The respiratory therapist in the hospital who teaches you how to take care of your asthma so you can breath easier is a Muslim. The business owner who employs hundreds of Oklahomans and brings millions of dollars to our economy is a Muslim. The convenience store clerk who opens the store early in the morning so you can get gasoline and coffee is a Muslim. The beautiful, dark-headed kid with big brown eyes who plays with your kid at the school playground is a Muslim. 
They all go to their mosques to pray together, just as they've done for years. But none of them are sleeper cells. They're just hardworking, productive citizens of this great state. Marjan Seirafi-Pour Norman
Ill-informed criticism
Who gave Richard Lineberry (Your Views, Jan. 13) the right to tell another religion what it believes? I don't have to ask what religion he ascribes to because in my 24 years in Oklahoma, I have many times been the recipient of just such arrogant pronouncements telling me what I believe -- completely erroneous of course. Without exception those persons belonged to the same religion.
If you want to take the measure of a religion, observe how it shapes the lives of those who follow it. I have had the privilege of knowing two devoted followers of the Islamic faith and can state unequivocally that they live their lives in a manner to shame most Christians. Their adherence to their faith, their good works to all in need, Christian and Muslim, and their general good character make all the statement I need to know about Muslim beliefs.
Since 9/11, it has become acceptable to bash Islamic faiths. If a religion were to be judged on the actions of a few, then Christianity would have been consigned to the dust bin centuries ago. Let the Christians see to cleaning their own house before they undertake to clean someone else's. Anita Torres Bethany
Help ourselves first
"Aid workers warned on proselytizing" (news story, Jan. 15) told of the secretary general of the Indonesian Council of Ulemas (religious scholars) warning of Muslim backlash if foreign relief workers brought Christian proselytizing to Sumatra. Are Muslims so weak in their faith that their powerful, often autocratic, leaders fear the teachings of Christ? It's time for America to withdraw its aid until the Muslim clerics muzzle themselves.
We have enough poverty and natural disasters to attend to at home. Our donations should be spent here first and elsewhere second. It's time for America to right its ills at home before caring for the ills of the world. William Veitch Yukon
Other areas suffering
It's wonderful to see the response Americans have made to the tragedy resulting from the tsunami. It's unfortunate that it took such an historic event to get us involved in support of the rest of this small world. The suffering in Sudan has gone unnoticed by most Americans. Between early 2003 and late 2004, the Sudanese government and government-backed Arab militias destroyed hundreds of African villages, killed and raped thousands of their inhabitants, and displaced more than 1.5 million others. By December 2004, more than 70,000 people had died directly or indirectly as a result of the government's military campaign. Hundreds of thousands more were at risk of death from starvation and disease, and security conditions throughout the countryside were still deteriorating. Let's all pay attention and support efforts throughout the world. Ray Gonzales Edmond
Improper setting
I read "Celebrants urged to help children achieve dream" (news story, Jan. 17), honoring Dr. Martin Luther King's work on civil rights. I certainly appreciate the work King did. My concern regards where his memory is being honored. For awhile I've noticed King being remembered from the pulpit of various churches, from Oklahoma City to Atlanta, and many other places across the nation. This particular event took place at the St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. When we gather in the worship assembly, are we not there to worship God and praise Him? It's not appropriate to honor King or anyone else in place of our Lord. The article didn't mention whether this event took place after worship, but it appeared to take place instead of worship to God. Even though King was a minister, his memory and legacy should be remembered outside the worship service. Kelly R. Haywood Edmond
Share the blame
In "Positive 'entry strategy'" (Monday Morning Quarterbacks, Jan. 17), David Ignatius made the negative and biased statement, "By increasing U.S. aid for tsunami victims twentyfold over what the administration had first pledged, (President) Bush seemed to be acknowledging that he blew it, initially." It's about time for the so-called news reporters (or newsmakers) who initially reported 10,000 to 15,000 casualties to admit some of the blame for the slow response of governments and relief organizations to the magnitude of the disaster. Bush increased the amount of U.S. aid, twentyfold, as the magnitude of the disaster became known. Regarding the U.N. official's "stingy" comment, maybe Kofi Annan's son Kojo will contribute some of the money he skimmed from the U.N./Iraqi "oil for food" program. Malcolm Osmer Tuskahoma

  INDONESIA (50%)




4


  



January 21, 2005 Friday  




 Tomorrow's Threat

 
  Where are we? At this midpoint of the Bush administration, engaged as we are in conflict throughout the world, are we winning? 
 The great democratic crusade undertaken by this administration is going far better than most observers will admit. That's the good news. The bad news is a development more troubling than most observers recognize: signs of the emergence, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet empire, of an anti-American bloc anchored by Great Powers.  
 First, the good news. The great project of the Bush administration -- the strengthening and spread of democracy -- is enjoying considerable success. Most recently we witnessed the triumph of the "orange revolution"  in Ukraine, which followed the "rose revolution" in Georgia, bringing historic breaks from authoritarianism in two key former Soviet republics. Less publicized were elections in two critical Muslim states -- Indonesia and Malaysia -- in which Islamic parties were decisively defeated. 
 Elsewhere in the Islamic world, we saw (though many played down) the Afghan miracle: free and successful elections  on perhaps the world's least hospitable soil for democracy. That was followed by Palestinian elections and the beginning of political reform. Even more encouraging was a public statement issued just weeks earlier by more than 500 Palestinian intellectuals demanding democracy, the rule of law, transparency and an end to Arafat-style dictatorial rule. 
 And now, elections in Iraq, which are obviously problematic but also very promising. Not only will they establish a precedent for free elections and constitutionalism, but they will also effectively transfer power to the heretofore disenfranchised majority of Iraqis -- Shiites and Kurds -- who will then have a real stake in helping the United States defend the new Iraqi order against the Baathist insurgency. 
 Moreover, the election process and the vicious terrorism unleashed against every element of it have exposed the insurgency as not the nationalist resistance that sympathizers in the West pretend it to be but as the desperate opposition by dead-enders to both Iraqi democracy and majority rule. 
 Now for the bad news. I am not talking here about the obvious, the continued survival of al Qaeda, though it has clearly been diminished over the past 31/2  years. 
 I'm talking about the other, more subtle challenge to Pax Americana: the first stirrings of what might become an anti-American coalition involving at least two Great Powers. The most remarkable fact about the post-Cold War era is that for the first decade and a half no such opposition emerged. Historically that is almost unheard of. Hegemonic powers, such as Napoleonic France and imperial and Nazi Germany, tend almost inevitably to spur the creation of a coalition of Great Powers to oppose and contain them. 
 That may be beginning again. The quiescence with which Russia accepted the Soviet collapse may have run its course. Russia's helplessness at the loss of Ukraine followed a long string of humiliating losses: first the external Third World empire, then the outer Eastern European empire, then the inner empire of 14 Soviet republics. 
Add to this NATO's attack on Serbia, Russia's traditional Balkan ally, and the expansion of NATO into the Baltic states. Vladimir Putin's Russia, already moving decisively back to traditional czarist authoritarianism, then  suffered political defeat in Ukraine, which it considered its natural patrimony. This only compounds and embitters the feeling of alienation from the West in general and from the United States in particular. 
 It is no accident that Russia  has begun hinting at making common cause with China. This is potentially ominous because of China's rising power and its status as the leading have-not nation on the planet, the Germany of the 21st century. In December, during the week of the rerun Ukrainian election that finally brought the pro-Western Viktor  Yushchenko to power, Russia made two significant moves toward China. First was the announcement of intensified economic cooperation in developing Russia's vast energy resources. More ominous was the Russian defense minister's Dec. 27 announcement of, "for the first time in history," large joint military exercises on Chinese territory. 
 China in turn is developing relationships with such virulently anti-American rogue states as Iran. Add such various self-styled, anti-imperialist flotsam as Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, and you have the beginnings of a significant "anti-hegemonic" bloc -- aimed at us. 
 This is not a new Cold War. The United States will still remain the vastly predominant world power. But it is a challenge that history has waiting for us on the day the war on terrorism is won, and perhaps even before. There is no rest for the weary.  
letters@charleskrauthammer.com 

 UNITED STATES (95%);  RUSSIAN FEDERATION (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); UKRAINE (79%); GERMANY (79%); GEORGIA (77%)




4


 Bangor Daily News 
Bangor Daily News (Maine)

January 19, 2005 Wednesday  
All Editions



 Marines left defenseless

 
I recently caught a blurb on CNN stating that we are not allowing our Marines to go ashore to render aid to the tsunami victims unless they are unarmed. 
If memory serves me right, we did the same sort of thing in the early 1980s and managed to get 250 young Marines killed in Beirut. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country with a large radical movement in it. How long do you think it will take the radicals to kill our kids because they are being left defenseless?
I sincerely hope the people who ordered this action are sterile so they can't reproduce any more idiots. Will the stupidity never end?
Thomas A. Bonner
Alexander

 LEBANON (92%); INDONESIA (91%)




4


 
 


January 19, 2005 Wednesday



 Of Earthquakes & Optimism

 
It takes a hard heart to be an optimist. To hold or to proclaim that, as the philosopher Leibniz put it, "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds" requires a callousness of almost heroic proportions. Though such a philosophic optimism would find few defenders nowadays, we still insulate ourselves secretly with comfy presumptions. But a catastrophe of the magnitude of the recent tsunami threatens to lay bare an appalling senselessness in the very nature of things.
When such horrors occur, we are left without spiritual or intellectual defenses. The aftershocks of the massive earthquake and tidal wave continue to resound over great distances; yesterday, for instance, I learned that one of my own Indonesian students had lost his wife and two small children to the inundation of Aceh, and others whom I know are still waiting, without hope, for news of parents and missing relatives. 
I don't know what form of comfort is being offered from pulpits these days. For the sincere believer, of course, such a disaster raises agonizing questions about the mercy and justice of God. I hope we are far from the days when the learned archbishop of Dublin, William King, in 1702, could declare that "earthquakes, storms, thunder, deluges and inundations ... are sometimes sent by a just and gracious God for the punishment of mankind," but I'm not so sure. People have always looked for the solace of an explanation, however monstrous its implications.
Even the archbishop's optimism might have been shaken, however, by a disaster that befell 53 years later. This was the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 - 250 years ago this November. Like the "Christmas tsunami," the earthquake occurred in conjunction with a religious holiday - All
Saints Day, when the churches were packed - and to the sheer horror of the event was added the savage irony of the divine timing.
The Lisbon earthquake, estimated at 8.9 on the Richter Scale, struck Lisbon at 9:40 a.m. In the words of one witness, the very earth seemed to move "like a horse shaking itself." Those who weren't crushed in the churches were killed as they fled the successive aftershocks or in the great fires that burned everywhere out of control. Those who sought refuge in the harbor, away from the toppling buildings, were drowned by tidal waves. The total force of the quake extended over an area of a million square miles; the thousand lakes of Finland shook like cups of water, and in Morocco to the south, the royal cities of Fez and Meknes were devastated, while Casablanca had to be abandoned.
The Lisbon earthquake shattered cities and it also shattered assumptions. In a letter written a few months later, Voltaire would exclaim that "the best of all possible worlds is horribly ridiculous," and he would add, as though exhorting himself, "one must see everything with stoic eyes. But how, when one suffers and witnesses suffering?" Voltaire was so affected by the disaster that within two months of its occurrence he had written his celebrated "Poem on the Disaster of Lisbon."
In the poem Voltaire attacked optimism in general and the English poet Alexander Pope in particular. Pope, after all, in his "Essay on Man" had been obtusely confident enough to write:
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou
canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever Is, Is Right.
Voltaire considered this passage "nothing but an insult to the sufferings of our life" and his indignation spurred him to pen not only the poem but, three years later, "Candide," with its unsparing ridicule of Leibniz, grotesquely caricatured as the absurd Dr. Pangloss. In the poem, Voltaire avails himself of the classic weapon of the anti-optimist by opposing every grand blithe rationale with a stinging particular. The ferocity of his outrage is palpable from the opening lines:
Those savants erred who claim, "All's for the best." Approach and view this carnage, broken stone, Rags, rubble, chips of shattered wood and bone, Women and children pinioned under beams, Crushed under stones, piled under severed limbs; These hundred thousands whom the earth devours, Cut down to bleed away their final hours.
This translation is by the great American poet Anthony Hecht, who died on October 20 of the year just past. It appears in his 1977 collection "Millions of Strange Shadows," now available in "Collected Earlier Poems" (Alfred A. Knopf, 275 pages, $16.). I don't think it's unfair to say that Voltaire wasn't an especially distinguished poet - the poem on the Lisbon earthquake is perhaps the exception - but Hecht's extraordinary translation confers a retrospective greatness on his verse. Hecht himself grappled with horrors in his own poetry; the anguish of certain poems, such as "More Light! More Light!" which deals with an especially cruel instance of Nazi atrocity, is intensified by the sheer formal perfection of the stanzas.
The Lisbon earthquake ravaged European optimism irrecoverably. Voltaire was not alone in his fierce disenchantment. Both David Hume and Immanuel Kant reversed themselves in its wake, with Kant renouncing his youthful optimism for an attitude of "pious skepticism," in which he took his only comfort from the Book of Job: "I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. Once I have spoken, but I will not answer."
My Indonesian students, devout Muslims all, take what comfort they can from the devastation of their lives and families in the tsunami by invoking the inscrutable will of God. This is, I think, neither optimism nor fatalism on their parts but an attempt to find some ultimate meaning, however undiscoverable, in an overwhelming evil. This wouldn't comfort most of us; the implications of such solace are terrifying. But for too many of them it's all they have left.

  MOROCCO (70%)




4


 The Deseret News Publishing Co. 


January 18, 2005 Tuesday



 Best goal would be for Muslims not to care about U.S.

 
   In the wake of U.S. aid to help Muslim and other victims of the recent tsunami, Colin Powell suggested that maybe, now that the Muslim world had seen "American generosity" and "American values in action," it wouldn't be so hostile to America.
Don't hold your breath waiting for a thank-you card. If the fact that American soldiers have risked their lives to save the Muslims of Bosnia, the Muslims of Kuwait, the Muslims of Somalia, the Muslims of Afghanistan and the Muslims of Iraq has earned Americans only the false accusation of being "anti-Muslim," trust me, U.S. troops passing out bottled water and Pop-Tarts in Indonesia are not going to erase that lie.
It is not an exaggeration to say that, if you throw in the Oslo peace process, U.S. foreign policy for the past 15 years has been dominated by an effort to save Muslims -- not from tsunamis but from tyrannies, mostly their own theocratic or autocratic regimes. 
It clearly has not made much of an impression. So you will pardon me if I say that I don't care whether the state media in Saudi Arabia -- whose government gave far less to the Muslim tsunami victims ($30 million) than the amount spent by King Fahd's entourage on his past two vacations in Marbella (reportedly $100 million) -- say nice things about us.
I believe the tensions between us and the Muslim world stem primarily from the conditions under which many Muslims live, not what we do. I believe free people, living under freely elected governments, with a free press and with economies and education systems that enable their young people to achieve their full potential, don't spend a lot of time thinking about whom to hate, whom to blame, and whom to lash out at. Free countries don't have leaders who use their media and state-owned "intellectuals" to deflect all of their people's anger away from them and onto America.
Ah, you say, but the Europeans live in free-market democracies and they have become very anti-American. Yes, some of them. But for Europeans, anti-Americanism is a hobby. For too many in the Muslim world it has become a career.
I am sure that young Taiwanese, young Koreans, young Japanese, young Poles and young Indians have their views on America, but they are not an obsession. They want our jobs, not our lives. They live in societies that empower their young people to realize their full potential and to express any opinion -- pro-American, anti-American or neutral.
So I don't want young Muslims to like us. I want them to like and respect themselves, their own countries and their own governments. I want them to have the same luxury to ignore America as young Taiwanese have -- because they are too busy focusing on improving their own lives and governance, running for office, studying anything they want or finding good jobs in their own countries.
The Bush team is certainly not fostering all this when it mismanages a war it launched to liberate the people of Iraq. Its performance has been pathetic, and I understand anyone on the right or the left who wants to wash his hands of the whole thing. Speaking personally, though, I am still hoping that these Iraqi elections come off -- out of respect for the Iraqis who have been ready to risk their lives for a chance to vote, out of contempt for the insurgents who want to prevent that and out of a deep conviction that something very important is at stake.
No, these elections won't change Iraq or the region overnight, and Thomas Jefferson is not on the ballot. But they will at least kick off what the Iraq expert Yitzhak Nakash calls "a real, Iraqi political process run by and for Iraqis."
That Iraqi political process "has to begin now to enable the U.S. to get out sooner rather than later," added Nakash, a Brandeis professor and currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. "The U.S. must go ahead with the elections in Iraq, accept the likelihood that Shiites and Kurds will do well, and leave the door open to Sunnis to join as partners in writing the Iraqi constitution. We want a system there that answers to the aspirations of Iraqis, not Americans. That is the key to a legitimate Iraqi government."
Before the war, I said of Iraq, "We break it; we own it." Today, my motto is, "If they own it, they'll fix it." America's standing in the Muslim world will improve not when we get a better message, but when they have more control. People with the responsibility and opportunity to run their own lives focus on their own lives -- not on us. More of that would be a very good thing. New York Times News Service

 UNITED STATES (98%);  AFGHANISTAN (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%);   KUWAIT (79%)




4



 


January 17, 2005 Monday  




 Proselytizing during relief efforts divides Christian groups Some say disasters such as the tsunami offer a time to answer questions; others want to focus on their acts.

 
In the tsunami disaster zones of South Asia, help is on the way in the form of food rations, clothing, clean linens and words from James Dobson and the Bible about why God lets bad things happen.
The heavy presence of Christian relief groups in a region where other beliefs dominate and pockets of religious tension exist poses challenges to interfaith relations and underscores the wide range of philosophies faith-based agencies take to religion and humanitarian work.
Some U.S. groups - including the relief arms of the Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran and Methodist churches - follow a Red Cross code of conduct against furthering a particular religious or political viewpoint. Generally, these groups believe their works, rather than their words, sufficiently show how faith moves them.
Many evangelical Christian groups, which put a stronger emphasis on winning new converts, believe relief can be packaged with religion as long as immediate needs are addressed first. After all, they say, this is when people are asking life's deepest questions. 
That logic motivated Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family to include excerpts from a book written by Dobson, founder of the influential media ministry, in 300,000 survival packets bound for the region.
The convergence of these opposing philosophies could lead to conflict, some relief workers say. The agencies that shun evangelization say those that follow other rules risk undermining everyone's work with locals and government officials.
It remains to be seen whether U.S. Christian relief groups will inflame religious tensions or enhance the image of Americans abroad. The Bush administration has expressed hope that U.S. tsunami relief efforts will improve relationships, especially with Muslims.
Early next month, the Rev. Drew Stephens of Riverside Baptist Church in Denver plans to lead a six-person medical team to Banda Aceh, the epicenter of the disaster in heavily Islamic Indonesia.
Though the Indonesian constitution recognizes five religions, including Christianity, the nation has been rife with violent religious skirmishes in recent years, including church bombings and fighting between Muslims and Christians.
Stephens is following the destruction to Aceh province, the only part of the country authorized to implement Islamic law. Reports have surfaced of radical Muslim groups handing out Korans with sugar and rice.
On Friday, a senior Islamic leader preaching at the province's main mosque warned foreign relief workers of a serious backlash from Muslims if they bring Christian proselytizing.
A veteran missionary, Stephens emphasizes that he puts no conditions on helping people. If the chance arises, he said, he will share what he believes is the great hope of Christianity.
"We need to be able to build a bridge to the people and their culture before there should be an expectation they want to hear what we want to share," Stephens said.
For many evangelicals, working in natural-disaster areas is an opportunity to fulfill what they interpret as "the Great Commission," Jesus' call in the Gospel of Matthew to make his message known in all corners of the world. There's disagreement, though, about drawing boundaries when calm times give way to chaos and suffering.
"It's been controversial over the years, people asking which is more important - feeding people and caring for their educational and spiritual needs, or proselytizing and bringing people to the faith," said Rick Mitchell, a vice president with Mission of Mercy, a Colorado Springs group staging tsunami relief in Sri Lanka, where it runs child-development programs. "Scripture says to me and to this organization that you can't separate the two."
While Focus on the Family is not a relief group, the ministry is seeking to raise $1 million for survival staple kits to be distributed by partner agencies and churches, said Glenn Williams, vice president of international and cultural ministry. The goal is to meet immediate needs, not evangelize, Williams said.
Even so, excerpts from Dobson's "When God Doesn't Make Sense" will be bundled with the food, water and medicine.
"You have a lot of people who have serious questions at the moment, feeling a tremendous sense of loss and asking, 'Where was God in this?"' Williams said.
The very mission of the Colorado Springs-based International Bible Society is to publish and distribute Scripture. So when the tsunami struck, the group prepared the distribution of 100,000 texts, including a book translated into Thai, "When Your Whole World Changes."
"We believe the Bible or Scripture booklets present relevant answers to problems people are facing," said Judy Billings, an IBS spokeswoman. "With the disaster, people are open to God's word. They're in a crisis."
Not all evangelical Christian groups share that view.
The child-sponsorship group Compassion International, also based in Colorado Springs, is providing emergency relief in India and Indonesia. Though the organization does not camouflage its Christian identity, neither will it be passing out religious literature, said David Dahlin, chief operating officer and senior vice president.
"People could wonder whether you have ulterior motives, that it's not a genuine compassionate response," Dahlin said. "Or they might feel as, if they are a strong adherent to a different faith, they might be reluctant to take aid. We don't want that."
Like evangelicals, Mormons have a strong missionary zeal. But the church does not send missionaries to disaster areas.
The church's relief arm works with other groups, often crossing faith lines, said Harold Brown, head of welfare and humanitarian services for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS church collaborated with Islamic Relief Services to pack 70 tons of food, soap, body bags and other supplies onto an Indonesia-bound MD-11 cargo plane.
"We don't use humanitarian work as some sort of cover so we can preach the Gospel," Brown said. "We have 60,000 missionaries out in the world preaching the Gospel. We don't want to be seen as not having a clear and pure motive of helping people in need."
A similar philosophy guides Catholic Relief Services, which instructs its workers not to proselytize or convey a specific Catholic message, said the Rev. Bill Headley, counselor to the president of the agency.
"In the long run, (proselytizing) could be defeating because you're linking basic needs up with a much more thoughtful and prayerful process," Headley said. "Once basic needs are satisfied, you might find people may not stay with you as a Catholic or Christian."
The Rev. Fred and Polly Ingold, retired Methodist missionaries living in Estes Park, worked from 1969 to 1993 in Indonesia. Their goal, they said, was to forge good relationships and do what needed to be done, including developing clean-water pumps for villages that relied on river water.
When a project was finished, the Rev. Ingold spoke at a dedication ceremony. This is not Methodist water, he would say, but God's water, for all to share.
Kathryn Wolford, president of Lutheran World Relief, said organizations that strongly push a religious message risk undermining all relief groups' standing abroad, especially when diverse faiths and cultures collide.
"It can create conflict and resistance because in that kind of situation people don't necessarily distinguish one (relief) group from another," she said.
So far, few conflicts have come to light. A Virginia-based evangelical Christian charity, WorldHelp, dropped plans last week to adopt Muslim tsunami orphans into a Christian children's home after the Indonesian government protested.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations characterized the incident as confirmation that some evangelical groups hope to exploit the tragedy.
Staff writer Eric Gorski can be reached at 303-820-1698 or egorski@denverpost.com.

   ASIA (92%)




4

  


January 17, 2005



 Pinning the Blame For Nature's Wrath

 
 Inthe ill-wind-that-blows-no-good department, special consideration should begiven to the American politicians photo-opping their way through thecatastrophic sadness of Southeast Asia.
 Duerecognition ought to be given to the ghoulish discussions on TV about how thedeath and misery of so many presents the United States with a chance to beatback Islam and hike its numbers in the Indonesian popularity polls. Theraise-and-see-you poker game being played by the major powers as they try tooutbid each other in emergency-aid announcements has been accepted as genuinealtruism by people who ignore the old saw that, in world politics, there is nosuch thing as charitable interest, only national interest.
 However,the help offered by individuals around the world (religious missionaries withhidden agendas always excepted) has been as broad and often heroic as it hasbeen touchingly genuine. Just when an extraterrestrial might have given up andgone back to its home planet in disgust, Homosapiens surprises. But while the news media have featured stories abouthelping hands and amazing survivals, they have steered clear of the touchyquestion of finding meaning in the occurrence of the terrible tsunami. Big,public communication webs may avoid the subject, but others are trying toaddress the troubling questions. If people are to go on, to recover andrebuild, the need to find an explanation for what has been done to them isurgent. 
 Failingthat, God begins to look like a terrorist, a wanton taker of life. Thus blind,feeling with our hands against whatever is out there in the blackness, we lookfor meaning.
 God,or Allah, may have been sending a message via the earthquake under the sea -- orso reports . Thepaper reported that "highly influential Islamic clerics have explained thegiant wave that devastated this overwhelmingly Muslim region as a warning tothe faithful that they must more strictly observe their religion, including aban on Muslims killing Muslims."
 TheMuslims-killing-Muslims remark refers to the bloody insurgency in Aceh, whichhas been going on for years. The controversy between the locals and the centralgovernment in Jakarta has nothing to do with religion and everything to do withmoney, but even dazed and traumatized people have reason enough to forget oldquarrels and put a religious gloss on what has happened: "We have to make a lotof changes in our lives, and this is God's way of letting us know," said HettyMeutia Dewy in the same Post article.The agriculture student at Bogor University and member of the IslamicAssociation of Students said, "The imams have said it was a warning. They saidGod loves the Aceh people, but the tsunami was a warning to be better people."
 Whyjust the Aceh people? Have they misbehaved more than the New York people or theSardinian people?
 Thereare parallel Christian interpretations of the event, although connecting itwith God can bring up uncomfortable questions which true believers may beunprepared to discuss. Creationists and others who teach that man and thecosmos are too complicated to have originated by chance may be happy to letchance or Mother Nature take the rap for the death and misery inflicted onSoutheast Asia.
 ThoughtfulChristians who are able to attain a certain emotional honesty do take up theconnection between the Divinity and such murderous events as earthquakes. "Howcan you believe in a God who would let this happen? That question isunderstandably very much around at the moment," says the Rt. Rev. Tim Stevens,the Anglican bishop of Leicester. For example, he said, "if God is in control,he must be a monster if He allows disaster on a massive scale to hitdefenseless and vulnerable people, including children. Or if He is not incontrol and unable to save us from earthquake and flood, what is the point ofbelief and prayer?" Every thoughtful person who has ever read the Book of Jobhas had the same doubts and qualms.
 Thebishop cannot answer his question. He writes: "There are no easy or glibanswers to be found. In a way, the only dignified response to such desperategrief is silence. Attempting to explain to those who have lost everything iscrass and insulting." For seers, prophesiers and preachers doing hermeneuticson the disaster, he has a warning: "Those who claim to be able to know orexplain too much of God's power or control are dangerous, like those who havemade the dreadful suggestion that this event is a sign of God's wrath for somesinful acts."
 ForBishop Stevens, the continued faith of millions, their prayers and theirunstinting efforts to help the helpless in their desperate hour, is sufficient.For others, it is not.
 Forothers, the debate about theodicy is far from settled. The word means"justifying the acts of God to human beings in light of the existence of evil,pain and death." The word was first used in 1710 in a philosophical work by themathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a practicing Lutheran. How can a Godof perfect goodness permit events of perfect awfulness? Leibniz's solution isdescribed in an article by J.J. O'Connor and E.F. Robertson: "Leibniz claimsthat the universe had to be imperfect, otherwise it would not be distinct fromGod. He then claims that the universe is the best possible without beingperfect. Leibniz is aware that this argument looks unlikely -- surely a universein which nobody is killed by floods is better than the present one, but stillnot perfect. His argument here is that the elimination of natural disasters,for example, would involve such changes to the laws of science that the worldwould be worse."
 Ofcourse, there is the two-god solution to the problem, which posits one good God(Jesus and/or Jehovah) and one bad god. The two-god solution was condemned as aheresy by the year 300 C.E. ("of the Common Era," the term which diversitypolitics asks us to use instead of the old "A.D."). This hypothesis is ascomplicated and unpersuasive as Leibniz's, but for many people it is betterthan nothing, which is the agnostic view of such terrible events. Thecosmography of the godless depicts a soulless universe that squashes its ownliving creations with unconscious disregard of any and all things but the lawsof its own physics. That human beings suffer and live life spans shorter thanthat of the fruit fly when compared to the age of the universe means nothing tothe Great Nothingness -- but what of a God who does see, feel and know, and whotreats His living creations with such wanton cruelty?
 Sinceno one has come up with an answer that is satisfactory to most of us, we mightas well carry on denying that God is responsible for the hurricanes,earthquakes, typhoons and other acts of God and shift the blame over on toMother Nature, the bitch.
 Giventhat God will be God and do His or Her God Things whatever we say or do orbelieve or pray, we might focus on our own human behavior. It is a fact that,by the general reckoning, more people have been murdered in the past few yearsin the Congo (three million) than are thought to have been killed by thetsunami. Likewise on the totals killed in the conflicts involving Iraq and Iranthe past 25 years. If you want, you can go around the globe making othersimilar, baleful comparisons.
 Toforestall death by tsunami, they say much can be done with early warningsystems. As for death by gunfire and machete, well ...

 UNITED STATES (94%);  




50 of 120 DOCUMENTS


 Tribune Review Publishing 
 


January 17, 2005 Monday



 Islam vs. democracy

 
If Bill Tammeus is right that Islam and democracy are compatible ("Islam & democracy," Jan. 2), why did Muhammad Khalid Masud never admonish the religious Muslim schools in Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and other countries for using the Quran to teach intolerance to other religions, considering women as second-class citizens, rejection of all Western ideas and preaching death to infidels? 
All are very undemocratic concepts.  
The Muslim academicians Tammeus quotes were, and are, silent in the face of abuses, committed in the name of the Quran, that mock democracy. To blame oppressive regimes for the lack of democracy is a smoke screen. The governments in question could not oppress and survive without the support of the Muslim clergy. 
If scholars in Jakarta really believe that the Quran does not slow the movements for democratic reform, they should make themselves heard in their countries and the West. Let Masud go public in the news services to clarify the Quran-democracy compatibility. 
I will judge Muslims by their actions and their academicians by their public pronouncements. 
John Fitzgerald 
Gibsonia 

  PAKISTAN (92%); SAUDI ARABIA (88%)




51 of 120 DOCUMENTS

   


January 17, 2005, Monday, 



 For Krueng Raya, this may be the end

 
KRUENG RAYA, Indonesia -- When the earth started shaking about 8:30 on the morning of Dec. 26, Sudirman, 18, was fishing with friends about 500 yards offshore.
Hasballah Daud, 52, Krueng Raya's richest businessman, was tending the till at his hardware store. Oil worker Sudin, 46, was watching a tanker pump fuel into storage tanks at the state-run oil company's terminal here. And 700 Indonesian soldiers, just finishing a tough tour of duty fighting rebels here in the defiant region of Aceh, were lined up at the local port awaiting the ship that would take them home.
 
About 15 minutes after the earthquake quieted, the water suddenly rolled back 100 yards, exposing the sea bed, grounding the tanker in the sand and astonishing townspeople who had never seen anything like it.
Then the waters darkened and started moving back toward Krueng Raya, rising to a height of 15 feet. "We thought it was the end of the world," says Sudirman, who like many Indonesians uses one name.
It may have been the end of this 400-year-old community of more than 6,000.
The tsunami that killed at least 162,000 people in 11 countries washed through Krueng Raya's mosque and drowned the local imam; leveled homes, crumpling their corrugated metal roofs like foil; uprooted 2-million-gallon oil storage tanks and pushed them like white hockey pucks hundreds of feet across town; carried away fishing boats; wiped out at least a third of the town's population; and left most survivors too shaken to think seriously about the future.
Krueng Raya is a collection of eight villages, including three fishing communities stuck side-by-side 20 miles east of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. Krueng Raya has survived four centuries of turbulent Indonesian history: the Dutch invasion, the brutal Japanese occupation, bloody fighting between devout Muslim townspeople and atheist communist rebels in the early 1960s, a long-running separatist rebellion, an incompetent and corrupt government, financial booms and busts.
But whether it will rise from the destruction of the earthquake and tsunami Dec. 26 remains unclear.
"The villagers are traumatized," says Sgt. Paradede, 32, one of 130 Indonesian soldiers dispatched to Krueng Raya to oversee reconstruction of the village. "We told them it's unlikely the tsunami will come back. Maybe in 100 years. They don't believe us."
The soldiers are burying the town's dead in a mass grave in a lush valley behind the junior high school. One thousand bodies are lying there. Local residents say they believe at least another 1,000 are buried beneath the rubble or were washed out to sea. No one around here knows how many Indonesian soldiers perished at the port.
Krueng Raya is a wasteland. Forlorn townspeople have spray-painted the Indonesian word musibah ("disaster") on some of the few surviving buildings.
For now, the people of Krueng Raya are driven by the need to find shelter. They scavenge the wreckage of their old homes, looking for usable planks of wood, unbent sheets of metal, plastic sheets -- anything they can use to build makeshift shacks.
A temporary town, surviving largely on donations of food, clean water, clothing and medicine, is rising on the hills overlooking what used to be downtown Krueng Raya and the sea.
The water changed everything with breathtaking speed:
 * To Sudirman, sitting with five friends 500 yards offshore on a fishing platform called a palong, the tsunami itself was just a ripple. But he watched with horror as it swept into his hometown. When the waters subsided, he rode a small motorboat back to shore. Sudirman, for one, is eager to return to the sea. But he's lost his nets and other equipment.
 * Sudin was working at the Pertamina oil terminal when he saw the water draw back and dump the tanker into the sand, killing its captain. When the waves roared toward town, he jumped into a Daihatsu sport-utility vehicle and drove up the hillside, water lapping at the tires.
After the waves retreated, he made his way back down on foot, wading through waste-deep water to shut down the terminal's pumps and prevent an oil spill. He's helping clean up the mess. The waves scattered 4,000 large drums of motor oil. The government is paying townspeople $3.40 for each drum they retrieve. More than 3,500 are missing.
 * Hasballah was running his hardware store, perhaps 200 yards from the sea. It was a busy Sunday morning; hundreds of townspeople were out shopping in the market. He heard people screaming and running. He, his wife and two of his daughters survived by climbing up some metal shelves and holding on desperately. Three weeks later, they still have scars where the shelving sliced into their arms. They were briefly submerged in water but were still breathing when the waters receded. A third daughter, Heriani, 21, tried to outrun the waves. She is among the town's many dead. So is Hasballah's mother.
Once the wealthiest man in town, Hasballah lives with his wife and two surviving daughters in a 7 ?-by-9-foot plywood shack they built with the help of relatives. Only the family cat, Udin, who miraculously survived, looks comfortable in the new place, curled up on a salvaged plastic chair, where it is getting some sun.
Hasballah, who started from scratch two decades ago selling water tanks, is in deep trouble financially. His businesses -- a grocery, a hardware store, a taxi service and a fishing company -- are closed indefinitely. He has no savings or insurance, and he owes the bank $6,000, which is a fortune to him now.
Though his future is uncertain, Hasballah says he believes others with more traditional occupations -- especially fishermen -- will return. "People will go back eventually," he says. "This is the only way they know to earn money."
 * Marwan, 38, is too traumatized to think about living near the sea again. He lost his father, his brother and his 6-year-old son in the tsunami.
The handyman is building a wooden shack for his wife and two surviving children on the highest bluff above Krueng Raya. As he laid the foundation Saturday, he said, "I am not scared with a house built up here."

 INDONESIA (95%); UNITED STATES (94%); ASIA (79%); 




5


 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


January 16, 2005 Sunday  




 THE WORLD

 
Saudi government readies hajj security
MINA, SAUDI ARABIA - The Interior Ministry has mobilized more than 50,000 forces to prepare for the annual hajj pilgrimage, officials said Saturday, but they warned that terrorists may still be able to attack.
The forces will safeguard Saudi's holiest Islamic sites for an estimated 2 million Muslims who are expected to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, a once-in-a-lifetime duty of all able-bodied Muslims who can afford it to cleanse the soul and wipe away sin. 
Meanwhile, pilgrims streaming into Islam's holy city for the hajj prayed for the more than 157,000 people killed in last month's tsunami and earthquake that devastated southern Asia, asking God to give survivors the courage to cope.
The tragedy weighed heavy as the spiritual journey geared up. Indonesia - the world's most populous Muslim nation with 220 million people - was hit hardest by the natural disaster, but 200,000 Indonesians, the country's quota, still were expected in Mecca.
Security was high throughout Mecca, where Saudi officials also try to prevent stampedes or other accidents.
Kashmir violence injures 16
SRINAGAR, INDIA - Suspected militants hurled grenades and detonated a homemade bomb in a spate of attacks Saturday in the divided territory of Kashmir, killing a civilian and wounding 16 other people, police said.
Two militants made their way into a heavily guarded stadium complex housing the passport office in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian-controlled state of Jammu-Kashmir, and hurled a hand grenade, police said. One police officer was wounded.
The 15-year insurgency in India's only Muslim-majority state has claimed more than 66,000 lives.
Elderly Russians stage protest
MOSCOW - A thousand retired people tried to block the road to a Moscow airport Saturday as 10,000 others jammed the avenues in President Vladimir Putin's hometown of St. Petersburg to voice their anger over a law that stripped them of some key welfare benefits. It was the largest show of discontent since the Kremlin leader took power nearly five years ago.
"Putin's policy is that of a genocide," said Mikhail Kononov, an elderly protester. "The government is waiting for all of us to die."
In other news
THE GRANDSON OF Nelson Mandela heeded the former president's call for more openness about the AIDS epidemic Saturday, revealing that his mother had died from the virus that also killed his father. Mandla Mandela revealed the cause of his mother's death in a speech to mourners at the funeral in Qunu, South Africa, for his father, Makgatho Mandela.
AT LEAST PRAGUE'S overcharging taxi drivers don't discriminate. Just ask the mayor. Pavel Bem, the mayor of the Czech Republic's capital, promised Friday to intensify crackdowns on the city's greedy cabbies after getting his own tourist experience: a two-mile ride and a bill for $34. He got into the cab while wearing dark glasses, a fake goatee and a mustache and posing as a tourist.
IF DON QUIXOTE were to ride around La Mancha, Spain, in modern times, he'd probably be tilting at power pylons rather than at windmills. But as the world celebrates the 400th anniversary of the publication of Miguel de Cervantes' legendary novel today, there are still a dozen or so windmills left to excite the day-trippers who come in search of the Quixote experience.
- Edited from wire reports by Hollie Virgin

 SAUDI ARABIA (96%); ASIA (93%); INDIA (93%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (92%); INDONESIA (92%); CZECH REPUBLIC (79%)




5


 Paddock Publications, Inc. 
Chicago Daily Herald

January 16, 2005 Sunday  
Cook Edition



 
Do not privatize Social Security
I cannot let slip by without comment Brent Jessee's comments that Social Security is in need of repair (Fence Post, Jan. 1). I missed the Richard Cohen column to which Jessee referred, so I cannot argue whether he was on the mark or not. Reading most of his columns, he is a pretty good judge of things. 
Jessee, however, cannot see through the spin. To say, "Without changes, by 2042 the Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted," the key words here are "without changes."
Well, what kind, good or bad? Good for whom and detrimental to whom? Any broker would be for privatization because he or she stands to make a windfall. What is wrong with privatization is that, just like with the tax cuts, a relatively small percentage of the population would benefit to the detriment of the majority. After all, democracy is supposed to be a government by majority; therefore, any program should be changed only with the good of the majority in mind.
My experience with brokers has been that they will push only investments earning them the most commission. Also, the high fees Wall Streeters charge would eat up any interest or gain a stock made in a year. Be realistic: No company will pay you 6 percent or more just to be nice to you, so you would be ahead.
The higher the return, the riskier the investment. Why would you want to put your retirement money in a risky hedge fund? The Social Security program does not need to be privatized; all it needs is an infusion now and then. What is morally wrong here is that they want to abolish it under the guise of saving it. If they can bail out big companies, they also can put a tax infusion into the Social Security trust fund when needed. Instead, they want to get their hands on the money to use for other things.
Brent Jessee should do his financial projections to age 65; if he doesn't need Social Security, good for him. Make a New Year's resolution: Let everybody in on how you can time the market and prevent crashes. We all would love to know.
Lisa Knudsen
Arlington Heights
Tsunami disaster redefines hypocrisy
In the midst of the tsunami tragedy comes a new definition of hypocrisy. The same European nations that have called for an economic boycott on Israel (an attempt to financially cripple that nation) now call Israel to task for not donating enough money to assist the relief effort. The fact is that Israel was in the forefront with medical and engineering assistance along with relief workers, who were then rejected for having ties to the Israeli military (though no such rejections were made for aid brought in by the American military).
And pray tell, where was Saudi Arabia on the list of donor nations? Not in the top 10 according to The Wall Street Journal ("After the flood," Jan. 3). Odd, considering that Indonesia is 88 percent Muslim. But I forgot, Indonesia does not share the same radical Wahhabi brand of Islam practiced by the Saudis.
Larry Schneider
Buffalo Grove
Fitzgerald's honesty in politics is rare
Peter Fitzgerald is honest to a fault. He spoke the truth in a time when politicians do not. Perhaps the best way to consider his political legacy is to consider some of his contemporaries.
Mayor Richard Daley wants an airport expansion that will cost three times the original projection with a modest 13 percent increase in capacity. Sen. Richard Durbin wants to rubber-stamp the plan.
Judy Baar Topinka and the Illinois Republicans abandoned Peter Fitzgerald, gave us Alan Keyes and then abandoned him. George Ryan is swept up in a federal licenses-for-bribes investigation.
Give me Peter Fitzgerald.
William G. Schmidle
Addison

 ISRAEL (93%);  SAUDI ARABIA (79%); EUROPE (79%)




5


 Paddock Publications, Inc. 
Chicago Daily Herald

January 16, 2005 Sunday  
All Editions



 The Trip to Mecca A pilgrimage in tragic times

 
As they wait in the airport check-in line, the travelers flip through their guide books for last-minute instruction.
Except for Rana Irfan.
The Naperville woman stands next to her suitcase with a serene smile. There's no anxiety, no fear of what lies ahead. 
This is her third pilgrimage to Mecca, an often life-altering journey known as the hajj.
The suburban mother knows exactly what she'll find in the holy city. And she knows exactly what she'll ask for when she gets there.
"I will pray for peace and solidarity," she said. "I'll have a more humanitarian cause."
Irfan will join 10,000 other Americans this week in Saudi Arabia for the hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage. The journey, which all able-bodied Muslims who can afford it are expected to complete once in their lifetime, takes place this year amid escalating Middle East tensions and in the wake of southeast Asia's deadly tsunamis.
World events will weigh heavily upon suburban pilgrims as they unite with more than 2 million other Muslims in prayer and spiritual reflection. It would be impossible to ignore the international troubles and tragedies, they say, because so many of their fellow Muslims have been affected.
For example, Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, bore the brunt of the tsunamis' wrath. The country's death toll has reached 110,000 and officials warn it could double before they are done counting.
"Of course, we'll be praying for them," Sadia Amjad of Oak Brook said. "We could never forget what happened there."
Amjad and her husband, Mohammed, had spent years thinking about making the hajj. The timing, however, never seemed right.
For reasons the couple cannot explain, something deep inside both of them said this was the year to go.
"It seemed like a call from Allah," Sadia said. "It's just a feeling we have."
Once they decided to go, the couple began taking religious classes at the Islamic Foundation in Villa Park. They made a concerted effort to mentally and physically prepare themselves for the trek, during which they'll walk about 12 miles in the hot desert and invite an intense spiritual renewal.
In recent years, the journey has proved fatal for some pilgrims. A human stampede in 1990 killed 1,426 people. Seven years later, fire swept through the pilgrims' tent city, killing 340 people and injuring 1,500.
The Amjads clutched their hajj guidebooks as they waited to board their flight last week at O'Hare International Airport. As they bid farewell to their four children, they were confident of their decision.
"We are prepared," Mohammed said. "This is our time."
The arduous journey, in which the throng moves and prays en masse, retraces the steps of central figures in the Islamic faith, including Mohammed, Abraham, Ishmael and Hagar.
In each leg of the journey, pilgrims seek to strengthen their relationship with God and reject evil. The trek leaves most Muslims with a sense of purification and repentance.
"It's a very significant event in a Muslim's life," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "When you complete hajj, your slate is wiped clean."
One of the most meaningful aspects is tawaf, which everyone must do. The ritual includes circling the Ka'aba, a shrine at the center of the Grand Mosque, seven times.
The religious structure is believed to have been built by the prophet Abraham and his son Ishmael. Considered the world's first sanctuary dedicated to the devotion of one god, the shrine is a symbol of Muslim unity because all prayers are oriented in its direction.
As she performs the rite, Irfan prays it brings her closer to Jews and Christians, too. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are Abrahamic religions because they're rooted in the prophet.
Though the three religions have branched off in different directions, Irfan intends to use the hajj as a reminder of their commonality.
In doing so, she hopes it will make world peace and religious tolerance more attainable.
"The branches are different," she said, "But our roots bear all the same fruit. I'm going to focus on this."

 SAUDI ARABIA (91%);  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);  MIDDLE EAST (72%); ASIA (71%)




5

  
  

  

JANUARY 16, 2005 Sunday 



 History shows disasters can put our faith in hot seat

 
The suffering and destruction caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami raises theological questions of epic dimensions. Was God reminding the world of his power, or abandoning innocents to the ravages of nature? Or, instead, was he found in the rubble, in the generosity of healing and the willingness to go on?
The utter scope of this disaster guarantees that these questions will be refracted through the lenses of many faiths and traditions. No major religious group was spared, and so no one answer will suffice. 
But this much we do know: Natural disasters leave an intense individual desire for order and explanation, and pose a challenge to existing political or religious regimes that has often led to upheaval and revolution.
"A lot of great natural disasters do have a knock-on effect," says Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. "They can create a strong sense that these are signs of the end of times. And if government fails to respond, they create a desire for alternatives."
The giant waves that left more than 150,000 dead in 12 nations could lead to an upsurge in religiosity and evangelism, as happened after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
The disaster could lead to the birth of a new enlightenment and skepticism, akin to that triggered by the massive earthquake and tsunami that leveled Lisbon on a Catholic holiday in 1755 and caused many to question the goodness and even the very existence of God.
It could hasten political and social change, as the cyclone that tore into what was then East Pakistan did in 1970, when the negligent response of the Pakistani government fueled the nationalism that led to the creation of Bangladesh.
The difficulty in predicting which of these paths will be followed in the aftermath of the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami arises from the multitude of religions represented by the victims. Most Eastern religions view undeserved suffering as a result of a cosmic law of moral cause and effect, which can be expressed over many centuries and many lifetimes. Bad things can happen to good people as a result of karma from a past life, and misfortune is not necessarily caused by a contemporary sin or injustice.
The monotheism of Western religions puts more focus on whether there is a message from God in the rumbling of the earth and the swelling of the sea - even in the deaths of innocents. The San Francisco earthquake, so eerily like the eruptions foreseen in the Book of Revelation, led to a rise in small, sectarian movements throughout the region and, of more significance, to the rise of Pentecostalism.
Only days before the earthquake, so the story goes, at a service in an abandoned warehouse on Azusa Street in Los Angeles, a prophecy came forth that great destruction would soon visit the land. After the earth shook in much of Northern California, the enthusiastic worshippers speaking in tongues on Azusa Street drew press attention and ever larger crowds. The religious revival spread into what is known as Pentecostalism, the fastest-growing branch of Christianity in the world.
The fear of chaos - or awe at God's power - that drew the curious and the faithful to that makeshift church may have a similar effect on survivors in the devoutly Muslim area of Aceh, Indonesia's devastated province, where highly influential Islamic clerics say the tsunami was a warning to Muslims to observe their religion more strictly.
But history also tells of a more skeptical reaction. On the morning of All Saints Day, Nov. 1, 1755, in the Catholic country of Portugal, an earthquake ripped apart the center of Lisbon, then one of Europe's most beautiful cities. As survivors rushed to the port's docks and boats for safety, an enormous tsunami engulfed the harbor and the downtown. In areas that managed to escape the waters, holy candles lit for the holiday in churches and chapels sparked fires that burned for days - "so bright that I could easily see to read by it," wrote one eyewitness.
Palaces, libraries, public buildings, private residences, every important church - none was spared, as 85 percent of Lisbon's buildings were destroyed, along with one-third of the population and many a belief in the wisdom and goodness of God.
"What crime, what error did these children/ Crushed and bloody on their mothers' breasts, commit?" Voltaire asked in his famous poem about the disaster. "But how conceive a God supremely good,/ Who heaps his favors on the sons he loves,/ Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?"
Will the same be asked of God's role in the contemporary tsunami, in which women and children - less able to race against the powerful waves - suffered disproportionately? Hard-hit areas along the Indonesian coast have become villages of widowers, as wives and youngsters were swept to sea.
Was this God's will? As Leon Wieseltier wrote recently in the New Republic: "In the aftermath of such a disaster, religious people have more mental work to do than irreligious people, because they are the ones who teach the benevolent government of the world. . . . I do not see how a theistic view of the world cannot be embarrassed, or damaged, by such an event."
It may be that such theological questions are luxuries reserved for those of us who do not have to face the disaster in person, who are not consumed with the overwhelming tasks of survival and reconstruction. But they are questions that cannot be ignored.
Nine months after the island of Krakatoa was blasted into oblivion by a volcano in 1883, schoolchildren 4,000 miles away in Zanzibar came upon a mass of pumice stone stranded on the beach. Embedded into the rock were dozens of human skeletons, the ghastly remains of a cataclysmic eruption that had already slipped from memory. It was as if the disaster had returned, to remind beholders again that there is no escaping the need to reckon with God's work - or nature's. 
What kind of universe do we live in? How do we make sense of the apparently senseless? And what do we do next?
These are questions we should ask every day of our lives, but often don't. It is the earthquake, tsunami, disaster that brings these questions right to our doorstep, cresting overhead, about to break.
Contact columnist Jane Eisner at 215-854-4530 or jeisner@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/janeeisner.

  PAKISTAN (79%); 




5


 The New Mexican 


January 16, 2005 Sunday



 COMMENTARY: DOMINO THEORY WON'T WORK FOR MIDEAST DEMOCRACY, EITHER

 
For those of us in the Vietnam generation, the domino theory meant creeping communism. If South Vietnam fell to the communists, so the story went, the rest of Southeast Asia would soon follow. True, Cambodia and Laos succumbed to the Khmer Rouge and the Pathet Lao during the same fateful spring of 1975 when South Vietnam caved to a communist North Vietnamese ground assault and the remaining Americans were helicoptered to safetyfrom the roof of the then-U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
In the end, however, the domino theory of a communist takeover of Southeast Asia was a bust. As experienced Southeast Asian specialists had prophesized, communism's Asian spread ended on the French Indochinese side of the Thai border. 
Today, the United States has again raised the specter of new dominos, but today's domino theory means something different. The Bush administration says that this domino theory will work for us, not against us as in Southeast Asia more than 30 years ago. This administration's domino theory is one of spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Its first domino is Iraq. Once Iraq becomes democratic -- so say the administration's neoconservatives, who took over the making of our foreign policy after Sept. 11, 2001-- the people in the rest of the Middle East will see the light, rise up and overthrow their despots. These revolutionaries will establish democratic governments, make peace with Israel on Israel's terms, sell us cheap oil, and all will be right with the world.
The success of today's domino theory of democracy in the Middle East is, in my view, as much of a canard as was the inevitability of communist expansionism throughout Southeast Asia. Why?
With only a very few exceptions, democracy comes from within. It often takes many tries over decades, sometimes centuries, for countries and peoples to get it right. Democracy pussyfoots in -- warily, cautiously and in stages.
We forget that many of Europe's most sophisticated democracies today were politically unstable or even authoritarian less than 40 years ago. Some alternated between free-for-all anarchic libertarianism and repressive military, monarchical or communist dictatorships.
Generalissimo Francisco Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist until he died in 1975. France was on the brink of dictatorship in 1958 until Gen. Charles de Gaulle restored order, ushered in the Fifth French Republic and thwarted a coup by French army officers stationed in Algeria. The haughty de Gaulle gave France its first-ever functioning constitution on which the country's stable, prosperous democracy still rests.
Army colonels ruled Greece from 1967-1974 after staging a coup that tossed out feuding politicians and a politically meddling royal family. When real democracy finally arrived in Spain, France and Greece, it came through Spanish, French and Greek popular demand. When national elections were held, they were run by the Spanish, the French and the Greeks themselves -- not by outsiders who had invaded less than two years before.
Spanish, French and Greek elections were not held according to artificial timetables designed to suit the needs of any occupying power. Their candidates were not dragooned into running. Their societies did not consist of feuding tribes and clashing clans divided by religious antagonisms that dated back to the 7th century -- when the first great schism divided Sunnis and Shiites, and still separates the Muslim world, especially Iraq.
Too few of us realize that there are already several democracies in the Middle East as well as elsewhere in the Muslim world -- not to mention other countries that have themselves, at least, begun to institute democratic reforms.
Turkey, one of the world's most populated and important Muslim Middle Eastern nations, has been a democracy since the mid-1980s. Jordan's king has instituted a number of partial democratic reforms. So have several of the tiny Gulf States. Then there are the heavily Muslim, but non-Middle Eastern, countries of Bangladesh in South Asia and Indonesia in Southeast Asia that choose leaders democratically.
Democracy means sharing political power. It means holding free and fair elections on a regular timetable in which two or more political parties compete for the reins of power; it means the protection of the rights of the minority; it means shared values and a concurrence with the idea of "fair play," or agreed-upon rules of the game. It means the rule of law as opposed to the rule by law. It means a free media and the rights of an individual to express dissent without being thrown in jail, tortured, executed, exiled or otherwise harassed. Sometimes, it includes a social safety net, so that the poorest are guaranteed a minimum standard of living.
Our own presidential-election irregularities -- both in 2000 and 2004 -- show us that even U.S. democracy is far from perfect, and the administration's treatment of political prisoners in Guantá namo is in violation of everything U.S. children are taught to believe about their rights as citizens.
Then there are also some Western "experts" who declare that democracy is only for wealthy countries characterized by prosperous middle classes. Wrong.
India -- soon to become the world's most populated nation -- and neighbor Bangladesh fail these economic wealth standards. But both are democracies -- and India has been democratic since its birth after World War II. The Philippines, too, although economically poor, is also democratic. Yet nearby Singapore, one of the world's richest countries, has an authoritarian government. And oil-rich, despotic Saudi Arabia is controlled by an unholy alliance of the Saud family and the ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi sect that infects the world with vitriolic militant Islam.
On Jan. 30, in the midst of violent insurgency and under heavy American pressure, elections are scheduled for Iraq, the first in the Bush administration's democratic domino experiment. Don't hold your breath. Democracy ushered in at gunpoint is not notably successful. And don't expect other Middle Eastern dominos to topple to democracy either, at least over the next few years. Real democracy doesn't happen that way.
Patricia Kushlis, a former Foreign Service officer, lives in Santa Fe and Albuquerque and teaches part time at The University of New Mexico.

 VIET NAM (95%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (95%); FRANCE (94%); MIDDLE EAST (94%); UNITED STATES (94%); ASIA (94%); ISRAEL (92%); SPAIN (92%); LAO PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC (92%); IRAQ (92%); CAMBODIA (92%); GREECE (85%); VIETNAM (79%); ALGERIA (79%); EUROPE (79%)




5


 


January 16, 2005 Sunday  
FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION



 After the flood

 
NEWS: Indonesia last week set a deadline for foreign troops to leave, and wants foreign aid workers to be escorted by Indonesian troops.
ANALYSIS: The government appears to want especially to reassert control in the Aceh region, which has a history of resistance and claims to greater autonomy. Regardless, the United States could burnish its image by supporting volunteers there.
I lived in Aceh for five years, and as of today know of 60 neighbors and acquaintances lost to last month's tsunami. Hundreds of thousands of Acehnese who survived the waters lost their families, homes and livelihoods. The survivors are mobilizing to rebuild orphanages, schools and mosques. 
Indonesians share with Americans a preference for working in private, voluntary associations. In Indonesia most of these associations are based on Islamic principles of charity and mutual aid -- not surprisingly, given that Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world.
Many of the Islamic associations active in Aceh are supported by U.S. government programs or by such established bodies as the Asia Foundation, and we should be prepared to aid their efforts. Our own government's effective military response, greatly appreciated by Indonesians, could be the basis for a new partnership between the people of our two countries.
At the same time as Muslim groups are flocking to Aceh to help, however, the Indonesian military is working to regain control over relief and reconstruction operations, which means limiting the effectiveness of private workers. On Wednesday, the Indonesian vice president asked all foreign troops to leave the country by March 26. The government also required all foreign workers to be accompanied by Indonesian troops if they distributed aid to villages.
Before the tsunami, foreign observers had been banned from the province lest they report on military actions against civilians; if they are banned again, Aceh would once again be incommunicado.
Of course, the Indonesian government has the right to organize relief efforts in its own country, but the recent past suggests that officials may have other things on their minds. Until the tsunami struck, the Indonesian army had been fighting the small Free Aceh Movement, known popularly as GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka), and in the course of that campaign had tortured and killed many civilians. The U.S. government had suspended military aid to Indonesia over human rights abuses. Even now, the army is devoting much of its energy to pursuing the few remaining rebels, whose existence provides a handy, if feeble, excuse for a return to army control.
The Indonesian government has tried to justify its actions by suggesting that the rebels are radical Muslims with links to al-Qaeda, and some U.S. journalists have unfortunately bought this line, speaking of a "fundamentalist" Islamic rebellion. This claim seriously distorts the picture.
The rebellion in Aceh has little to do with religion and everything to do with resistance against exploitation and military repression. The Acehnese are proud of their resistance to outsiders: They never completely succumbed to the Dutch and after World War II they contributed large amounts of arms and soldiers to the fledgling Indonesian Republic. They expected Aceh to be given recognition as a separate province, but after independence the country's new leaders took control of its economy, politics and army. Provincial leaders rebelled in 1953, and ended their fighting nine years later only after Jakarta had accorded the province special status, with control over religion and education.
But Jakarta never made good on that promise, and when vast reserves of natural gas were discovered in the 1970s, the government took nearly all the revenue, leaving the Acehnese as very poor people producing fantastically large amounts of wealth for an increasingly corrupt urban elite. Armed reaction came in 1976, when GAM was formed. Although GAM's declared goal was the creation of an independent state, it gained support mainly because it voiced popular resentments.
At first the Indonesian army suppressed the revolt, but it responded with massive force to a new GAM offensive in 1989, setting in motion a sad cycle of violence and repression. By 1990, 12,000 soldiers operated in Aceh, engaging in "shock therapy" against villagers to scare them away from siding with the rebels. The army interrogated, tortured and killed thousands of unarmed civilians in the villages. In May 2003 President Megawati Soekarnoputri declared martial law and sent an additional 40,000 military and police to Aceh. When martial law officially expired one year later, the military commander ordered all foreign observers out of the province and continued to effectively exercise rule.
Given this state of affairs, it would have been surprising, though gratifying, if at the moment of the tsunami's impact the army had suddenly adopted a humanitarian mission. The president, Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono, a general and former security chief with authority over Aceh, could have instantly mobilized the small planes that Indonesia uses to connect its many islands to give damage reports and deliver supplies. Instead, it was foreign planes and volunteers from throughout Indonesia and the rest of the world who began work, with the army eventually joining in.
Volunteer groups now face the enormous challenges of repairing the human and societal damage. The reformist Muslim organization Muhammadiyahhas prepared hundreds of orphanages to take in survivors, and the largest Indonesian Islamic association, the Nahdlatul Ulama, is creating places in boarding schools. The only functioning bank in town is the Islamic bank, where the United Nations now keeps its account.
The United States can best help the peaceful rebuilding of Aceh by supporting these volunteer efforts, recognizing that they draw strength from their religious convictions, and insisting that Aceh remain open to international inspection. Will these U.S. efforts improve its image? Yes, if we continue to work with the people of Indonesia, and object to those who would torture or kill them.
Current anti-American sentiment in Indonesia is high, but it is rage over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, not anger at the American people. We earned high marks for quick work in bringing aid to Aceh; now we have the opportunity to show that we can work with the people of Aceh, on their own terms, to help rebuild their lives.
= = = =
John R. Bowen is Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and studies Islam in Asia and Europe.

 INDONESIA (96%); UNITED STATES (94%); ASIA (79%)




5

  and New England Newspaper Group Inc.  
Brattleboro Reformer (Vermont)

January 15, 2005 Saturday



 Honoring Abraham: The Muslim Festival of Eed al Adha

 
The history...
This week most of the Muslim world announced that the annual festival of Eed al Adha, honoring Abraham would be celebrated Friday, Jan. 21.
This is a moveable feast day and is observed as one of the holiest days in the Muslim calendar at the end of the pilgrimage, the Hujj when 2 million Muslims journey to Saudi Arabia and complete several rites which Abraham, Hagar and Ismael also performed at various times. The focal point of the pilgrimage is the Kaaba, a temple which Abraham and Ismael built to worship The God, Eloh, Ilahi, Allah who spoke to Abraham and blessed all his progeny from both Sarah and Hagar who are equally revered by Muslims as are Isaac and Ismael. 
Muslim tradition states that the religious tradition which commenced with Abraham, was clarified by Jesus was confirmed and finalized by messages through Muhammad who is known as the Messenger and is the last in the line of Abraham. Muslims were the first of the three traditions to assert that Jews, Christians and Muslims are all people of "The Book," referring to the divine revelations which are common to the three faiths. While there is a special relationship between Jews, Christians and Muslims, God assert that prophets and messengers have been sent to many diverse nations through the ages and Muslims, for example consider the Buddha a prophet as well as St.John the Baptist because he foretold the coming of Christ the Messiah.
Muslims ritually bless the family and followers of Abraham many times during their daily prayers but the Pilgrimage, culminating in the Feast is a specific honor in remembrance of the patriarch he was the first of us to obey the Will of an Unseen God with his entire heart and soul. Muslims believe that Abraham was the first Muslim since the term implies peaceful acceptance of the Divine Will. Abraham also has a special status, along with Moses and Jesus because God spoke directly to them. Later, when he sacrificed a ram as an offering to the Universal God, so do many Muslims in remembrance, and share the meat in strict proportion, a third for themselves, a third for family and neighbors and a third for the poor who would not otherwise eat meat all year. The old Aramaic term for sacrifice, qurbani has come from Judaism into Islam and into every language spoken in the Muslim world. In common parlance many Muslims will not use the Arabic term Adha, the sacrificial offering, but call the event Qurbani Eed.
When Muslims go on the Hujj pilgrimage it is the equivalent of many nations traveling across many thousands of miles. The Indonesians have traditionally been the largest group, followed by Pakistanis, Bangla Deshis and Indians. Some 20 years ago, China relented on its anti-religious political stance and permitted its Muslim minorities [ numbering over 40 million] to begin sending pilgrims to Saudi Arabia. I saw them journeying across the great Karakoram mountain passes, traveling over a thousand miles of mountain and desert roads before they reached the airports of Pakistan and flew to Mecca. Many other peoples travel by sea from the coastal African countries. Others travel from Baluchastan, Iran, Afghanistan and Saharan Africa by road. There are people who still travel by camel caravan part or all of the way, and then by train or air or sea. Over ten thousand Muslims will travel from the United States for the pilgrimage. Except for the Vatican, Muslims will journey to Arabia from almost every country of the globe, and many will die there, a wish fulfillment of most, because the Hujj is the last of the duties a Muslim performs in his or her life, after living a full life and meeting all the obligations of society, family or citizenship.
When the day of Eed dawns all Muslims begin the day with an early prayer. It is a strange and quiet morning. All males and many young female children go to prayers in a selected mosque while the mothers and grown daughters pray at home and prepare for the day. In cities and streets which bustle with noise and excitement every day of the week, not a soul is to be seen while the prayers are held. As a child I often used to wonder at the absence of any crime during the hour or so when an entire country and society is at worship. The mosques are always too small to accommodate the worshipers : in Indonesia, Pakistan India or Bangla Desh over 60 or 70 million Muslims will be praying in any one of the countries at that particular time, and the faithful spread their clean mats in grassy knolls or desert sands to join in worship all around the mosques. As a child I, myself prayed in the Mogul Imperial Mosque in Lahore along with 150,000 people who had overflowed into the adjoining square and acres of a grassy park which once was the flood plain of the ancient River Ravi. There is an indescribable sense of peace and belonging when the tens of thousands of worshipers bow in unison before the Universal God of Abraham. In a book on Seventeenth Century Ottoman Turkey and the prayer, a European observer was impressed by the sight of thousands of worshipers dressed in their finest, sitting quietly and patiently for the Imam to begin the prayer.
-- Javed Chaudhri, Muslim Lay Member
Brattleboro Area Clergy
The interfaith service...
The Brattleboro Area Clergy, devoted to interfaith cooperation ands harmony recognize the common Abrahamic heritage we all share, and have supported a Day of Abraham when the three faiths will share prayer in an interfaith service at the Universalist Unitarian Church in Brattleboro on Sunday, Jan. 23. The service will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. and there will be a sharing of the feast afterwards.
Prayers will be read by Rabbi James Levinson, the Rev. Babro Hansson, Marlboro College Professor of Religions Amer Latif, Yasmeen Chaudhri, the Rev. Lise Sparrow, the Rev. Shayna Appel, Marie Proctor and others. The service and the shared feast are open to the public. Children are welcome. Those planning to attend are asked to e-mail the names and number of people to abrahamicpeoples@yahoo.comor call [802] 257-2845.

 SAUDI ARABIA (92%); PAKISTAN (79%);  




5


 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. 
Palm Beach Post (Florida)

January 15, 2005 Saturday  




 AID TO TSUNAMI VICTIMS IS IN AMERICA'S INTEREST

 
As the aid trickles in to the survivors of the tsunamis, perhaps the greatest catastrophe the world has known (157,000 deaths and counting), we should reassess our response and the consequences for the victims and ourselves of the rescue and rebuilding efforts.
President Bush's initial offer of aid was $15 million.  
That was half of the cost of the upcoming inaugural festivities, and a drop in the ocean compared with the billions being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan monthly. It was no surprise that it was quickly revised to $35 million and presently stands at $350 million. That, however, remains stingy. Most people could see that our offer was less than tepid, and we were criticized widely for this. Spain alone had offered much more aid than our initial offerings. Whether this gets the attention of most Americans is not clear, as Americans are known to vastly overestimate the amount they think is spent on foreign aid.
An important facet of this human calamity that also may have escaped us is the public relations opportunity this represents. Indonesia has taken the brunt of this catastrophe and is the world's most populous Muslim nation. This region may be the next hotbed of radical Muslim activity, as the nightclub bomb that killed dozens of tourists in Malaysia showed. What greater opportunity to show the Muslim world a different face of America than it has been seeing through Al-Jazeera for the past couple of years?
EDUARDO PENA
Palm Beach Gardens

 UNITED STATES (94%); MALAYSIA (79%);   SPAIN (77%); AFGHANISTAN (56%)




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January 15, 2005 Saturday  




 Christian Group Never Had Custody of Orphans; 
WorldHelp Partner in Indonesia Says No Steps Were Taken to Obtain 300 Children

 
 The Virginia-based missionary group WorldHelp, which announced this week that it planned to place 300 Muslim "tsunami orphans" from the battered Indonesian province of Aceh in a Christian children's home, never had possession of any of the children, according to an Indonesian clergyman identified by the organization as its local partner. 
Henry Lantang, a Protestant minister in eastern Indonesia, said the group had not taken any steps to gain custody of the children. He said that shortly after the Dec. 26 disaster, he had read on a popular Indonesian news Web site, detik.com, that 300 children were waiting at the airport in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, for transport to the national capital, Jakarta. Lantang said he e-mailed that information to a friend in Virginia.  
"I only quoted that in my e-mail. I did not say we already had hold of the 300 children," Lantang said in a telephone interview from his home in Manado on Sulawesi island. 
 The friend gave the information to WorldHelp, which contacted Lantang, he said. During the following days, Lantang said he corresponded with Eric Vess, a WorldHelp official, sending him about five e-mails concerning the situation in Aceh. Vess did not return telephone calls placed to his office Friday. 
"I never mentioned we had already took hold of the 300 in any of my e-mails. I was pretty clear in my e-mails that we didn't do anything," Lantang recalled. He added that he did not know the identities of any of the children or their whereabouts. 
Last weekend, WorldHelp launched an urgent fundraising appeal among evangelical Christians in the United States. "The Aceh people strongly and even violently oppose other religions. They are unreached with the gospel," the group said on its Web site. "If we can place [the Muslim orphans] in a Christian children's home, their faith in Christ could become the foothold to reach the Aceh people." 
The Rev. Vernon Brewer, president of WorldHelp, which is based in Forest, Va., told  on Tuesday that his group had raised $70,000 and hoped to collect $350,000 more. He said the children had already been airlifted to Jakarta with the permission of the Indonesian government, which he said had been "explicitly" told that the children would be raised in a Christian environment. 
After The Post published an article Thursday about WorldHelp's fundraising effort and quoted an Indonesian official saying no permission to move the children had been granted, Brewer told news agencies that his group had abandoned its plan. 
In an e-mail to supporters Thursday, Brewer said the children had never been moved. He said WorldHelp had changed its Web site and halted its fundraising appeal after learning Wednesday that Indonesian authorities would not allow the children to be placed in a non-Muslim orphanage. 
 Brewer's e-mail said WorldHelp thought it had the Indonesian government's approval because of a report from the group's primary partners in the country, whom he identified as Lantang, the minister, and his son Roy. Brewer blamed the program's suspension on a backlash in Aceh, which, like the rest of the country, is predominantly Muslim.  
But Lantang said the plan had never been that far along and that Indonesian officials had never been contacted for permission.  
 Lantang said he and his son had initially envisioned moving several dozen orphans from Aceh to Jakarta but learned that the government had restricted the movement of children from the province soon after the tsunami. The restriction was largely to prevent human traffickers from taking advantage of the situation and selling the children or forcing them into prostitution. Lantang said his son, now in Aceh, decided to focus his efforts on providing relief assistance to survivors. 
 "Our plan after the disaster in Aceh was for our organization to take some children into our orphan home. . . . We're not going that route anymore," Lantang said. 
 Lantang said he was unsure whether WorldHelp's claims were the result of a misunderstanding. A graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, Lantang, 59, runs a Bible school in Manado and said he ministers in a nearby camp to Christian refugees from domestic Indonesian conflicts in central Sulawesi and the Moluccas islands. His son Roy, 27, is a U.S. citizen and graduated from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, he said.  
WorldHelp now is seeking other Indonesian orphans to be placed in a Christian home and will make every effort to ensure that the $70,000 it has raised is used for the purposes that donors intended, Brewer said in his e-mail to supporters.  
 Though WorldHelp retracted its earlier announcement that it was moving the Acehnese children to a Christian orphanage, the proposal sparked a furor in Indonesia. The widely circulating Republika newspaper published a story about the group's plan on the front page of its Friday editions under the headline: "U.S. missionary brought 300 Acehnese children." 
 That article was cited by an imam leading Friday prayers at a large downtown mosque in Jakarta. During agitated remarks about the Aceh relief effort, he said Muslims had to be vigilant because Christians and Jews would never be satisfied until they had converted them all. 
 Staff writer Alan Cooperman in Washington and special correspondent Noor Huda Ismail contributed to this report. 

 INDONESIA (98%); UNITED STATES (91%)




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JANUARY 14, 2005 Friday CITY-D-EAST EDITION



 Orphanage plan is called off

 
An evangelical Christian charity has dropped plans to settle Muslim children orphaned by the Asian tsunami in a Christian-run orphanage in Jakarta, Indonesia, after the Indonesian government blocked the move, the group said yesterday.
World Help of Forest, Va., had raised $70,000 to place Muslim children from the province of Aceh in the orphanage near Jakarta. But the group's president, the Rev. Vernon Brewer, said it suspended fund-raising after Indonesia said Muslim children could not be raised in a non-Muslim home.
The plan drew criticism from Muslim groups, which said it would take advantage of people in a position of need. Many religious charities prohibit mixing relief efforts with proselytizing.
Indonesia had already announced a ban on foreign adoptions of orphaned children.

  




6


  



January 14, 2005 Friday  




 Indonesian Islamic Party Reaps Rewards of Goodwill; 
Extensive Relief Work in Aceh Wins Sympathy -- and Votes

 
An Islamic cleric and political organizer, Azmi Fajri Usman, pulled up at a camp of about 200 tsunami survivors stranded in a city park. 
 "Asalaam alaikum!" Peace be with you, he said, hopping off his motorbike and approaching a few of the survivors as the sun neared its zenith Wednesday. "Is there anyone here who's organized the place?" 
 "There's no organizer here," harrumphed a man wearing a black T-shirt and a surgical mask to filter the stench of decomposing bodies. "We have nothing here. There's not a single pack of noodles."  
Usman, a volunteer coordinator from the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party, was still encountering people who needed aid nearly three weeks after a Dec. 26 undersea earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed nearly 160,000 people in 11 countries, 110,000 of them in Indonesia.  
 "This place is just neglected," said Usman, 26, a thickset man who waddled about with boundless energy. "They see all the relief trucks passing by and all they can do is watch." 
 Humanitarian work is a prime component of the Prosperous Justice Party program, which also provided relief during floods and landslides in Jakarta and after an earthquake last year in Papua province in eastern Indonesia. Although members do not campaign overtly as they deliver aid and insist their relief work is not political, they know they are winning sympathy and often votes. 
The symbolism is potent and practical: Indonesians helping Indonesians, Muslims helping Muslims. Here in Aceh, the hardest-hit province, a majority of residents are Muslim and provincial officials are implementing sharia, or Islamic law. 
The party has filled a perceptible void here and in other parts of the country. The civilian government does not have an equivalent program and says it intends to manage voluntary organizations rather than implementing relief operations. 
 The Prosperous Justice Party, known as PKS, began as the obscure Justice Party in 1998 with students and urban intellectuals as its base. It has since grown to include 3 million members and recently won city council elections in Jakarta and Banda Aceh. Some party members dream of securing the presidency in 2009 and making Indonesia more of an Islamic state. 
 The party, whose members are ubiquitous in tan vests emblazoned with the party logo of two crescent moons and a stalk of rice, has fielded the largest group among a total of about 8,000 civilian relief volunteers -- 800 to 1,000 party members are on the ground at all times. They were among the first volunteers, having set up a crisis command center on Dec. 27. On Dec. 28, they began distributing food, water, medicine and blankets. 
They can be seen passing out clothes and boxes of food, cleaning hospitals and schools and gathering together orphans to be sheltered at Islamic boarding schools. 
 "Our motto is 'Clean and Concerned,' " said the party's president, Tifatul Sembiring. "Relief work is one way we show our concern." 
 Part politician, part social worker, Usman, who was recently elected to the Banda Aceh council, is among about 2,000 party volunteers from across Indonesia who have traveled to the archipelago's far northwest corner to help survivors of the disaster. 
At the cultural center pavilion in the city center, a young boy in a red Batman shirt ran to Usman and embraced him. Usman, a native Acehnese, once had a radio talk show on Islam and was known as the "funky cleric" for his hip lessons geared toward teenagers. He recognized the child as one of his pupils in a Koranic study class. 
 One woman said she had to beg Indonesian soldiers for a package of instant noodles. One man said he needed a tent. Another man pointed to his 10-year-old son and said the boy had survived 10 hours in the water after the tsunami and needed medical attention. His wife and 17-year-old son were dead, he added. 
 Usman radioed for help. Within 10 minutes, a black Mitsubishi truck flying the PKS flag arrived. In it were party members bolstered by volunteers from another Islamic civic group, al-Islam, who said they had joined forces to be more effective. Al-Islam had trucks -- the Mitsubishi was theirs -- but not enough volunteers. So they offered their services to the party because they believe the PKS is not corrupt, according to Inen Ardi, an al-Islam coordinator. 
 Soon, the volunteers were unloading cartons of eggs, sacks of rice and  separately labeled bags of clothing for men, women and children. 
 "The most important thing is to be flexible," Usman told Ardi, who had concerns about how he would help 200 people so quickly. "Don't be uptight about rules." 
 "Yeah, but then we need more people," Ardi said. 
 "Okay, I'll send more people," Usman said, pulling his radio out of his pocket. 
 Usman and the party strive to portray a moderate image. Though party leaders would like to see sharia adopted, they do not push it in political campaigns, preferring to prepare the cultural ground first. But on posters, and in casual conversation, they reveal suspicion of Christian activists. 
 One flier posted on school walls around town warns Acehnese not to hand orphans to "infidels," that is, "Christians and missionaries," who would take the children away and convert them. 
 "The problem is the infidels who are trying to proselytize," Usman said. "We would want to see Christian missionaries leave. We want humanitarian aid workers who are sincere." 
 Religious charities who stick to aid work are welcome, Usman said. "What makes Acehnese angry is when religious interests get involved."  
 Usman, who married a medical school student three months ago, said he joined the Prosperous Justice Party because he saw it as "devoted not only to God but also to people." He said its members were religious and intelligent. The Acehnese are being tested by God, Usman said. They have suffered long, first under Dutch colonial dominion and more recently because of the military-rebel conflict. Now, the natural disaster. 
 "The tsunami is a test from God to bring them back to Islamic teaching," he said, adding that a return to Islamic precepts could help erase deep problems in the province. 
 Usman said if the Prosperous Justice Party fed the people and gave them good schools, "then there will be no such thing as a separatist movement" in Aceh. 
 "Inshallah," he said, God willing. After a few moments, he excused himself to pray.  
Special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report. 

 INDONESIA (96%)




6


  



January 14, 2005 Friday  




 Foreign Adoption Resisted; 
Affected Countries Have Strict Rules

 
The calls keep pouring in, some from people who never thought about adoption before, some from prospective parents who now want to consider a child from overseas, all from families eager to take in an orphan from a tsunami-ravaged land. 
The response from many adoption agencies and lawyers in the Washington region has been: thanks, but no. 
An estimated 1.5 million children were affected by the Dec. 26 tsunami -- many of whom lost one or both parents -- but the United Nations and governments of the South Asian countries say the strong interest in adoption from overseas could be premature and, ultimately, harmful.  
"There'll be nothing like getting a kid over here and then finding out later that there's a parent," said Carl Jenkins, a Rockville lawyer who specializes in international adoption cases. "In this kind of chaotic situation, you don't have the necessary documentation to meet the requirements." 
There has been at least one case of child trafficking in Indonesia, confirmed by UNICEF. And a Virginia-based missionary group came under criticism this week for its plan to move 300 "tsunami orphans" from the Muslim province of Banda Aceh to a Christian home in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital. 
The Indonesian government, which has imposed restrictions on the movement of children, said it did not know about the missionary group's efforts. Soon after the tsunami, Indonesian officials said they would not allow children younger than 16 to leave Aceh unless they are with their parents or registered with authorities. 
Many South Asian countries have strict rules regarding adoption by overseas parents, and several local agencies said they do not have a history of working in the places affected by the tsunami. 
At Adoptions Together, an agency with offices in Silver Spring and Baltimore, workers say they are telling callers to consider orphans from other countries. 
Sandy Rappeport, the agency's director of international adoptions, said that in the tsunami-affected countries, many relatives probably would want to raise any orphaned children. Some may have lost their own children in the disaster, which claimed more than 150,000 lives. 
"There's very strong extended-family ethic in the culture. Aunts and uncles and relatives would certainly take the children and raise them and love them," Rappeport said. 
 "We would never want to interfere with that." 
 In India and Thailand, adoptions are often done locally, and overseas couples are preferred only if they are of Thai or Indian heritage. The Malaysian government does not allow non-Muslims to adopt Muslim children. Indonesia requires prospective parents to be residents of that country for a minimum of two years.  
The Joint Council on International Children's Services, based in Alexandria, states on its Web site that although people interested in adopting from the region may be well-intentioned, "it is rarely possible or advisable, at least in the short term."  
The group, which oversees international adoption organizations, said it could take months before the governments in those countries can determine whether a child is truly an orphan. 
Many families were separated and may be at different refugee camps.  
Adoptions also require a vast amount of paperwork from the governments of countries involved, and many records have simply been washed out to sea.  
Also, with many children suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, an international adoption so soon would not be in their best interest, the council said. 

  ASIA (92%); SOUTHERN ASIA (91%);  MALAYSIA (79%); INDIA (79%); THAILAND (79%)




6


  



January 14, 2005 Friday  




 Tsunami Orphans Won't Be Sent to Christian Home

 
The Virginia-based missionary group WorldHelp has dropped its plans to place 300 Muslim "tsunami orphans" in a Christian children's home, the group's president, the Rev. Vernon Brewer, told news agencies yesterday. 
 The children were still in the Muslim province of Aceh and had not been airlifted to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, according to an e-mail under Brewer's name circulating yesterday among his supporters. 
 In an interview Tuesday for an article published in yesterday's Washington Post, Brewer said that the children already had been airlifted to Jakarta and that the Indonesian government had given permission for them to be placed in a Christian children's home. Brewer did not return calls from The Post yesterday to his home, office and cell phone to address the discrepancy.  
In the e-mail, as well as in statements given to Reuters and Agence France-Presse, Brewer said WorldHelp had raised $70,000 to place 50 of the children in a Christian orphanage but had halted its efforts when it learned on Wednesday that the Indonesian government would not allow it. 
"Once we became aware that the government had refused to let these children be placed in a Christian home, we immediately stopped all fundraising efforts for the remaining 250 Indonesian orphaned children and appeals were removed from our website," the e-mail said. 
The group's plan to raise children from Muslim families in a Christian home struck a  nerve in Indonesia, which had regulations in place even before the tsunami requiring orphans to be raised by people of their own religion. This rule was adopted in large part to ensure that Muslim children were not converted. 
 In response to fears that Acehnese tsunami orphans would be trafficked, the Indonesian Department of Social Affairs adopted a further prohibition on people taking children out of the province. Officials said the only exemptions were for relatives. 
Despite these restrictions, radical Muslim activists in Indonesia have warned against the operations of some Christian relief groups, arguing that their ultimate motive is to convert the Acehnese away from Islam, which has long been a part of the province's cultural identity. Though most Indonesians do not share the radicals' extreme agenda, these concerns have resonated among many in the country, who remain suspicious of foreigners and particularly Westerners. 
 In Brewer's e-mail yesterday, which was forwarded to The Post by a WorldHelp supporter, he said WorldHelp thought it had the Indonesian government's permission for its plans because of a report from the charity's Christian partners in Indonesia, Henry and Roy Lantang.  
On Jan. 3, he said, the Lantangs sent WorldHelp, based in Forest, Va., near Lynchburg, a message saying they had "just received news that approximately 300 children under the age of 12 who had become orphans are at the airport in Banda Aceh and Medan waiting to be transported to Jakarta." The Lantangs added that the "rescuers of these children" had issued an open invitation to "any organization or family willing to adopt or take care of" the children. 
"It was our understanding that this was done with the permission of the Indonesian government," Brewer's e-mail said. But because of "a huge backlash from the Islamic community in Aceh, the government of Indonesia is now refusing to allow the orphaned children to be placed in any non-Muslim homes," the e-mail said. 
Reuters and AFP quoted Brewer as saying WorldHelp learned of the Indonesian government's refusal Wednesday, the day the fundraising appeal was taken off the group's Web site, and the day before The Post's article was published about the group's plans. 
Before WorldHelp changed its Web site, it contained an appeal for funds that described the Aceh people as "strict Sunni Muslims" who "have been very instrumental in spreading Islam throughout Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia." Normally, it said, "Banda Aceh is closed to foreigners and closed to the gospel. But, because of this catastrophe, our partners there are earning the right to be heard and providing entrance for the gospel." The fundraising appeal went on to say that WorldHelp was working with Christian partners in Indonesia who want to "plant Christian principles as early as possible" in the 300 Muslim children. 
"These children are homeless, destitute, traumatized, orphaned, with nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. If we can place them in a Christian children's home, their faith in Christ could become the foothold to reach the Aceh people," it said. 
In the message yesterday, Brewer said he makes "no apologies for the fact that World Help is a Christian organization." He said the organization is seeking other orphaned children in need of a home and is making every effort to ensure that all funds raised for tsunami children are used as designated. 
"We're really not trying to proselytize," Brewer said in an interview with Reuters. "It's no different than what Mother Teresa did by taking Hindu orphan children and placing them in a Roman Catholic children's home in Calcutta, and she won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing that." 
Correspondent Alan Sipress contributed to this report from Jakarta. 

 INDONESIA (96%); 




6

   

 

January 13, 2005 Thursday 



 Indonesia sets deadline for U.S. to leave

 
Washington --- The aircraft carrier spearheading U.S. tsunami relief efforts pulled out of Indonesian waters Wednesday, shrinking the American military footprint as the ravaged Southeast Asian nation reasserted control over its territory.
The White House sought clarification of a statement by the Indonesian government that U.S. military forces must be out of the region by the end of March.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration hopes the Indonesian government "will continue to show the strong support that they have to those international relief efforts that are under way." 
Just a week ago, a stunned world watched televised footage of U.S. helicopter pilots plucking grateful survivors from the devastated Indonesian island of Sumatra and dropping off food and medicine for desperate victims unreachable by road.
In recent days, however, political considerations have taken precedence, with the government of Indonesia --- the world's most populous Muslim nation --- getting antsy about perceptions of a mounting U.S. military presence.
In response, 2,000 U.S. Marines diverted from duty in Iraq are bunking on amphibious carriers in the Indian Ocean instead of billeting in a planned camp on Sumatra.
The giant nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, steamed out of Indonesian waters after the country denied permission for fighter pilots based on the ship to conduct training missions over Indonesian airspace.
Indonesian authorities further warned U.S. military and relief workers about possible travel restrictions in the hard-hit Sumatran province of Aceh, where the government has long battled separatist guerillas.
Global relief efforts continued, meanwhile, to address the Dec. 26 tsunami, which killed at least 150,000 people across the Indian Ocean --- two-thirds of them in Indonesia --- and left 5 million others homeless.
In Washington, World Bank President James Wolfensohn said the $900 million U.N. emergency relief effort is just the beginning of the global response. It will take "weeks or months," he said, for the world to get a handle on long-term reconstruction costs that private analysts have said could top $15 billion.
A key issue for the World Bank, Wolfensohn said, is how to harness the massive reconstruction.
"We need programs that will really deal with the issue of not replicating slums, but dealing with the question of poverty," Wolfenson said.
Separately, the United States and 18 other wealthy nations agreed Wednesday in Paris to allow tsunami-ravaged countries to defer debt payments for up to a year.
The five countries hardest hit by the disaster --- Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and the Maldives --- together pay $23.1 billion each year in public debt to Paris Club nations and other creditors.
--- The Associated Press contributed to this article.

 INDONESIA (99%);  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); THAILAND (92%); ASIA (92%); MALDIVES (79%); FRANCE (79%); INDIA (79%);  




6

   

 

January 13, 2005 Thursday 



 Indonesia sets deadline for U.S. to leave

 
Washington --- The aircraft carrier spearheading U.S. tsunami relief efforts pulled out of Indonesian waters Wednesday, shrinking the American military footprint as the ravaged Southeast Asian nation reasserted control over its territory.
The White House sought clarification of a statement by the Indonesian government that U.S. military forces must be out of the region by the end of March.
Meanwhile, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported that an official document posted in Banda Aceh, on the hard-hit island of Sumatra, said nearly 210,000 people in Indonesia were dead or missing from the Dec. 26 tsunamis, a toll far higher than officials have reported publicly. 
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration hopes the Indonesian government "will continue to show the strong support" for international relief efforts.
Just a week ago, a stunned world watched TV footage of U.S. helicopters plucking grateful survivors from the devastation on Sumatra and dropping food and medicine for desperate victims.
In recent days, however, the government of Indonesia --- the world's most populous Muslim nation --- has gotten antsy about perceptions of a mounting U.S. military presence.
In response, 2,000 U.S. Marines diverted from duty in Iraq are bunking on amphibious carriers in the Indian Ocean instead of in a planned camp on Sumatra.
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln steamed out of Indonesian waters after the country denied permission for pilots based on the ship to conduct required training over Indonesian airspace.
Indonesian authorities today announced foreign aid workers in Aceh province, where the government has long battled separatist guerillas, must have military escorts, raising new concerns about aid bottlenecks.
Global relief efforts continued, meanwhile, to address the plight of 5 million people across the region left homeless by the tsunami.
In Washington, World Bank President James Wolfensohn said the $900 million U.N. emergency relief effort is just the beginning. It will take "weeks or months," he said, for the world to get a handle on long-term reconstruction costs that private analysts have said could top $15 billion.
A key issue for the World Bank, Wolfensohn said, is how to harness the massive reconstruction.
"We need programs that will really deal with the issue of not replicating slums, but dealing with the question of poverty," Wolfenson said.
Separately, the United States and 18 other wealthy nations agreed Wednesday in Paris to allow tsunami-ravaged countries to defer debt payments for up to a year. The five countries hardest hit by the disaster --- Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and the Maldives --- together pay $23.1 billion a year in public debt to Paris Club donor nations and other creditors.
--- The Associated Press contributed to this article.

 INDONESIA (99%);  SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); ASIA (92%); MALDIVES (79%); FRANCE (79%); INDIA (79%); THAILAND (79%);  




6


 


January 13, 2005 Thursday



 Indonesia: Foreign troops out soon; 
Nation gives militaries March deadline; 
U.S. carrier leaves area

 
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. aircraft carrier spearheading U.S. tsunami relief efforts pulled out of Indonesian waters Wednesday as part of a broader shrinking of the American military footprint, as Indonesia sought to reassert control over its devastated Aceh province. 
The White House sought clarification of a statement by the Indonesian government that U.S. and other foreign troops must be out of the region by the end of March. 
"A three-month period is enough; even sooner the better," Indonesia's vice president, Jusuf Kalla, said Tuesday. 
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Bush administration hopes the Indonesian government "will continue to show the strong support that they have to those international relief efforts that are under way."  
Just a week ago, a stunned world watched footage of U.S. helicopter pilots plucking grateful survivors from the devastated Indonesian island of Sumatra and dropping off food and medicine to desperate victims unreachable by road. 
In recent days, however, the government of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has gotten nervous about perceptions of a rising U.S. military presence. 
In response, about 2,000 U.S. Marines diverted from duty in Iraq to aid the relief effort are having to return to ships in the Indian Ocean to sleep instead of billeting in a planned camp on Sumatra. 
The Marines also won't be able to carry weapons while ashore. 
The aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, has steamed out of Indonesian waters after the country denied permission for fighter pilots based on the ship to conduct training missions in Indonesian airspace. 
The missions have nothing to do with the relief effort. Carrier pilots are required to train on long deployments at sea to maintain combat readiness. To do so, the carrier was forced to withdraw and fly the missions in international airspace. 
Indonesian authorities further warned U.S. military and relief workers about possible travel restrictions in Aceh province, where the government has long battled separatist guerillas. 
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that no such restrictions have been issued, but diplomats are discussing the issue in Jakarta. 
"We're in touch with the Indonesian government seeking more information about their policy towards access to various parts of Aceh," Boucher said. "But to date, there's been no such restriction." 
Global relief efforts continued, meanwhile, to address the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed more than 153,500 people across the Indian Ocean, two-thirds of them in Indonesia, and left another 5 million homeless. 
Statistics compiled by Indonesia's Disaster Management Task Force for Aceh hinted at a potentially far higher toll, listing 131,479 Indonesians as still missing. 
The United States and 18 other wealthy nations offered Wednesday in Paris to allow tsunami-ravaged countries to defer debt payments for up to a year while they get back on their feet. 
The five countries hardest hit by the disaster -- Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and the Maldives -- together pay out $23.1 billion each year in public debt to the 19 nations known as the Paris Club and other creditors. 
Meanwhile, police in Sri Lanka have arrested a 63-year-old Sri Lankan man on charges of trying to sell his two young granddaughters after their home was destroyed and their mother killed by the tsunami. 
The United Nations and international aid agencies have expressed concerns that child traffickers might try to exploit the chaos in countries hit hardest by the tsunami. 
A.H. Somadasa's lawyer, Sumith Dhammika de Silva, insisted that his client was innocent, saying there was no evidence Somadasa tried to sell the girls. 
The two girls, ages 7 and 9, were released into the custody of their father. 
bdeans@coxnews.com 
Additional material from The Associated Press and Knight Ridder News Service. 

 INDONESIA (99%); UNITED STATES (98%); IRAQ (79%)




6


 



January 13, 2005 Thursday  
 



 9.0 ON UNGRATEFUL SCALE Thanks for the help, but now get out, Indonesian veep tells U.S. soldiers

 
INGRATES!
The Indonesian government yesterday showed its appreciation to U.S. soldiers who have been risking their lives helping tsunami victims by ordering them to get out of the country by the end of March.
"Three months are enough," Vice President Jusuf Kalla told the official Antara news agency. "In fact, the sooner [they leave] the better." 
Kalla's government also forced the Abraham Lincoln, from which Navy pilots have flown dozens of food supply missions to the hard-hit Aceh Province, to steam out of Indonesian waters because they refused to let U.S. pilots fly training missions in their air space.
The Indonesians also refused to let the Marines coming ashore rebuild roads, establish a base camp or carry arms.
Lynn Pascoe, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, reacted to Kalla's ingratitude by declaring that American troops will help as long as they were needed and "not a minute later."
But in Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan demanded "further clarification from Indonesia about what this means."
"We hope that the government of Indonesia and the military in Indonesia will continue the strong support they have provided to the international relief efforts so far," he said.
Although most Indonesians have expressed thanks for U.S. help, nationalist politicians in the world's most populous Muslim country have been grumbling about "American interlopers."
Indonesia's new president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is a former general in a country that has been under martial law for much of its recent history.
Always wary of America, Indonesia reluctantly allowed U.S. soldiers in when it became clear it could not deal with the aftermath of the Dec. 26 tsunami on its own.
Yudhoyono's government also moved to reassert control over wave-walloped Aceh by ordering aid workers and journalists to declare their travel plans - or face expulsion.
"It is important to note that the government would be placed in a very difficult position if any foreigner who came to Aceh to assist in the aid effort was harmed through the acts of irresponsible parties," the government said in a statement.
The Indonesian government was referring to the rebels who have largely stayed out of the way as the international rescue missions have been mounted.
csiemaszko@nydailynews.com

 INDONESIA (98%); UNITED STATES (94%); ASIA (79%)




6


 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. 
Palm Beach Post (Florida)

January 13, 2005 Thursday  




 'MODERATE MUSLIMS' TOO TIMID TOWARD TERRORISTS IN THEIR MIDST

 
In his excellent analysis of the modern Middle East suicide bomber ("War against suicidists a cultural one," Dec. 27), Jim Hoagland quotes the 9/11 commission report in noting that "the United States faces a clear threat from 'Islamist' (not Islamic) terrorism . . . " He points out that the report carefully avoids blaming "one of the world's great religions for atrocities committed by a few of its adherents" and concludes that hope can come only from efforts by "moderate Muslims" to change their societies.
With all due respect, I think a large opinion survey would show that a majority of Americans fail to differentiate between "Islamist" and "Islamic" terror. We have witnessed now four decades of horrific violence by groups and individuals swearing allegiance to Allah, who insist they are following the precepts of the Quran. We have seen the hijacking and destruction of airliners (TWA, PanAm) and cruise ships (Achille Lauro); murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics; the hostage crisis in Iran; slaughter of passengers in airline terminals (Rome); kidnappings and years-long detentions of diplomats, teachers and priests; wanton killing of hundreds of sleeping U.S. soldiers in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia; and the previous attack on the World Trade Center - all this culminating in 9/11 and today's horrors in Iraq, all committed in the name of Allah. 
Where are the voices of these "moderate Muslims"? Where are the protests in American mosques against the perversion of the teachings of the Quran? Why is mindless violence an acceptable tactic even in Muslim countries outside the Middle East, such as Indonesia and Pakistan? Why are Arab satellite television stations permitted, even encouraged, to spread their messages of hate by governments that look the other way?
Until and unless there are concerted efforts worldwide by devout followers of Islam to reclaim their heritage and condemn the terrorists, I believe most Americans never will understand, let alone appreciate, the teachings of "one of the world's great religions."
DONALD HOWARD
Jupiter

 UNITED STATES (94%); MIDDLE EAST (93%); ISRAEL (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); LEBANON (79%);  IRAN,  (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%)




70 of 120 DOCUMENTS

  


January 13, 2005 Thursday, 



 When disaster strikes, 'he has to go';
George Friou of Portland will direct a team providing short and long-term health care recommendations.

 
A Portland resident who got a job offer recently to help restore health care for thousands of tsunami survivors in Indonesia said he didn't have to think long about whether to accept.
Had he been inclined not to pick up and leave for the epicenter of one of the world's most devastating natural disasters, George Friou could have cited any number of reasons.
He hadn't finished unpacking since moving into a new house on Capisic Street on Christmas Day. Taking the job would mean his wife would have to look out for the couple's three children by herself for three months. 
And it wasn't as if he needed an adrenaline rush; just a few weeks ago he was in Ukraine to deliver a speech on AIDS and found himself in the midst of mass demonstrations about election fraud.
But Friou, who met his wife, Dianna, in a refugee camp on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border where they were doing public health work, said there was no soul-searching when the call came from the International Rescue Committee last week.
"There was no indecision on our part," he said.
His wife, a health consultant who worked in public health for Portland, agreed: "Of course he has to go," she said. "Everybody is saying, 'God, I wish I could do something to help.' He's got the training and the skills. You can't say no to something like that."
Friou will leave Friday for Banda Aceh, Indonesia, a provincial capital on the northern tip of Sumatra, which was among the regions hardest hit when an earthquake triggered the tsunami on Dec. 26.
Of the approximately 152,000 people killed, nearly two-thirds of them were Indonesians. The wave left 5 million Indonesians homeless in a matter of hours, and the full extent of the death and damage is still being uncovered.
Friou, 48, will direct a team of nine health officials who will survey regions swamped by the tsunami and recommend both immediate measures to save lives and longer-term steps for rebuilding the health-care infrastructure.
Friou has witnessed many public health problems since deciding to go into the field more than 20 years ago, while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the central African nation of Gabon.
In the late 1980s and early '90s, he spent four years running refugee camps in Pakistan for Afghanis who had fled their country after the Soviets pulled out. A few months ago he stepped down as director of The AIDS Project in Portland, a post he held for seven years, and began working as a public health consultant.
Unlike with many public health crises, Friou said there is no lack of funds for disaster relief. Worldwide, pledges to the relief effort have surpassed $4 billion. Locally, the Southern Maine Chapter of the American Red Cross has collected $200,000 in donations and is still receiving between $20,000 and $30,000 per day, said Josh Barnes-Livermore, with the Red Cross in Portland.
Based on his work in Pakistan, he realizes it will be critical to speak with local people and pay attention to cultural requirements in deciding how to conduct relief efforts.
Working among a Muslim population in Pakistan, for instance, he quickly learned that a male doctor could not give a female patient a shot or take her photograph.
Friou said he wasn't sure if the same rules apply among the Muslims in Indonesia.
"The only way to learn is by talking to people directly," he said. "If I don't do that, I won't get anything done."
Friou said the relief effort in Indonesia will be measured in years rather than months, and he may return for another stint after this one.
The couple said they are also discussing the possibility of Dianna doing a similar assignment in Indonesia after George returns.
Staff Writer Seth Harkness can be contacted at 282-8225 or at:
sharkness@pressherald.com

 INDONESIA (95%); AFGHANISTAN (92%); PAKISTAN (92%); UNITED STATES (90%); GABON (79%); CENTRAL AFRICA (79%); UKRAINE (76%); 




71 of 120 DOCUMENTS


  



January 13, 2005 Thursday  




 Indonesia Sets Limits On Foreign Relief Role; 
U.S. Moves Out Carrier; 
Marines Adjust Plans

 
 A U.S. aircraft carrier steamed out of Indonesian territorial waters Wednesday and American commanders scaled back plans to base Marines on land in Indonesia after officials announced that foreign troops must leave restive Aceh province by the end of March. 
Vice President Jusuf Kalla announced the troop withdrawal deadline a day after cabinet ministers set a March 26 deadline for assuming control of tsunami relief efforts from international humanitarian groups and foreign military forces. 
 "Three months are enough. The sooner, the better," Kalla told the official Antara news agency. "In the future, there will be no need for the foreign military presence."  
U.S. officials and international relief organizations said that the new Indonesian policies and travel restrictions have so far not affected their operations and that they continue to have good relations with the government. 
Until late last year, Indonesia had limited the access of foreign groups and journalists to Aceh, prompting complaints from some foreign governments that Jakarta was seeking to cover up human rights abuses by the military as it waged an offensive against separatist rebels that began in May 2003. In the hours immediately after the earthquake and tsunami on Dec. 26, Indonesia dropped the restrictions, allowing a major influx of humanitarian aid. 
Billions of dollars of international aid  have been committed to tsunami relief for the 12 affected countries, where more than 153,000 people were killed, according to the latest official tally. Most of the 106,000 Indonesian deaths were in Aceh, the closest area to the center of the quake, on the northern tip of Sumatra island. 
 The United States and at least nine other countries have dispatched their armed forces to provide emergency assistance. Helicopters flying off the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln have ferried food and water to remote communities along the devastated west coast, where U.S. Marines have started supporting relief activities in the city of Meulaboh and the town of Calang. 
The Lincoln moved out of Indonesian territorial waters Wednesday because the Jakarta government declined to allow its airspace to be used for regular training missions by U.S. fighter jets that are based on the vessel. U.S. military officials said this development had not interfered with relief missions by the carrier's helicopters because they could refuel aboard other U.S. Navy vessels in the area. 
In Washington, U.S. officials said they had a good relationship with their Indonesian counterparts in the aid effort. 
"The United States and Indonesia have worked very closely together to try to get relief to the people who need it," said State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher. "We'll continue to follow up on these reports that there might be some restriction, but at this point there are not any restrictions on our military assistance, on U.S. aid workers or on our international partners." 
But Indonesian sensitivity over the presence of foreign forces prompted the Marines to scale back plans to land hundreds of troops on Aceh's west coast to help rebuild roads, clear rubble and restore infrastructure. 
 After long discussions with the Indonesian government, the U.S. military called off plans to base the Marines on land. Instead, smaller numbers of Marines are going ashore by day to help with relief and returning to their vessels off the coast in the evening. The Marines' primary task is now ferrying humanitarian workers and food from the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard. 
At the Pentagon, a senior military official said that there had been no official restrictions placed on the Lincoln and that Marines had been allowed to operate normally and carry weapons while in Indonesian territory. The Lincoln's movements, the official said, were coordinated to facilitate relief efforts. "We're there to help Indonesians, we're in Thailand to help the Thai, we're in Sri Lanka to help the people there," the senior official said. "How long they want us there is a sovereign decision. If they want us to go, we'll go." 
Indonesian leaders across the political spectrum have expressed gratitude for the foreign help, but there has been a mounting chorus of concern from both secular and Muslim political parties in recent days about the prospect of meddling in Indonesian affairs. 
 "Indonesian nationalism contains a certain layer of xenophobia. We're always afraid people from outside are coming here to destroy us," said Salim Said, an Indonesian political and security analyst in Jakarta. He attributed such suspicions to Indonesia's long and difficult experience under Dutch colonial rule. 
Government officials said Tuesday that foreigners in Aceh must register with the Indonesian military if they travel outside two of the province's largest cities. The Indonesian military chief, Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, told reporters that the measure was necessary to help protect foreigners from attack by separatist rebels fighting for an independent homeland in Aceh. 
 The United Nations said in a written statement Wednesday that the new registration regulations "fell under standard security procedures and could also be helpful for coordination efforts." U.N. officials added that none of the foreign relief workers attending a daily coordination meeting reported that movements had been restricted. 
 Laura Conrad, a spokeswoman for Save the Children in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, said the requirement would force her group to be more organized in planning its relief activities. But she said: "We operate in conflict areas all over the world, and it's perfectly normal to notify the authorities where we're going. It's fairly standard for us." 
 Under the requirement, foreigners could face expulsion from Indonesia if they fail to register with the government before traveling outside the cities. In a written statement, the Indonesian government said it would be "placed in a very difficult position if a foreigner who came to Aceh to assist in the aid effort was harmed through the acts of irresponsible parties." 
 Indonesian military officials have accused the Free Aceh Movement of plotting to attack humanitarian workers, but spokesmen for the rebel group have pledged that the insurgents will not harm foreigners. 
 The impact of the regulation will likely depend on how the Indonesian government chooses to enforce it. While Indonesian military officers said they might require that foreigners have army escorts for travel outside the two cities, some civilian officials have not insisted on this requirement. Relief officials from the United Nations and private agencies have said the independence of their efforts could be jeopardized if they are forced to travel with military escorts. 
In another development, the Paris Club of 19 creditor nations said it intended to allow a debt repayment moratorium for tsunami-devastated countries. 
While three of the debtor countries -- Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Seychelles -- want the relief, Thailand does not because it could hurt its credit rating, French Finance Minister Herve Gaymard said, according to the Associated Press. 
Nakashima reported from Banda Aceh. Staff writers Josh White and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report. 

 INDONESIA (99%); UNITED STATES (97%)




7


  



January 13, 2005 Thursday  




 Group Says It Relocated 300 Orphans; 
Va. Missionaries Talk of Raising Muslim Tsunami Victims in Christian Home

 
A Virginia-based missionary group said this week that it has airlifted 300 "tsunami orphans" from the Muslim province of Banda Aceh to Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, where it plans to raise them in a Christian children's home. 
The missionary group, WorldHelp, is one of dozens of Christian, Muslim and Jewish charities providing humanitarian relief to victims of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami  that devastated countries around the Indian Ocean, taking more than 150,000 lives. 
 Most of the religious charities do not attach any conditions to their aid, and many of the larger ones -- such as WorldVision, Catholic Relief Services and Church World Service -- have  policies against proselytizing. But a few of the smaller groups have been raising  money among evangelical Christians by presenting the tsunami emergency effort as a rare opportunity to make converts in hard-to-reach areas.  
"Normally, Banda Aceh is closed to foreigners and closed to the gospel. But, because of this catastrophe, our partners there are earning the right to be heard and providing entrance for the gospel," WorldHelp said in an appeal for funds on its Web site this week. 
 The appeal said WorldHelp was working with native-born Christians in Indonesia who want to "plant Christian principles as early as possible" in the 300 Muslim children, all  younger than 12, who lost their parents in the tsunami. 
"These children are homeless, destitute, traumatized, orphaned, with nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. If we can place them in a Christian children's home, their faith in Christ could become the foothold to reach the Aceh people," it said. 
The Web site was changed, and the appeal was removed yesterday after  called to inquire about it. The Rev. Vernon Brewer, president of WorldHelp in Forest, Va., said in a telephone interview the  organization had collected about $70,000 in donations and was seeking to raise another  $350,000 to build the  orphanage. 
Brewer said the Indonesian government gave permission for the orphans to be flown to Jakarta last week and was aware that they would be raised as Christians. 
 ["We have no knowledge of this," Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said today in Jakarta. "If confirmed, this would constitute a serious violation of the standing ban by the Indonesian government on the adoption of Acehnese children affected by the tsunami disaster and appropriate steps would be taken accordingly." He added that he did not believe any Indonesian official would have approved the transfer of the children.] "These are children who are unclaimed or unwanted. We are not trying to rip them apart from any existing family members and change their culture and change their customs,"  Brewer said. "These children are going to be raised in a Christian environment. That's no guarantee they will choose to be Christians." 
Brewer, a Baptist minister, was the first person to graduate from the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., in 1971. He served as a vice president of the Christian university before founding WorldHelp in 1991. It has since grown to 100 full-time employees in the United States and helps to support indigenous Christian missionaries in about 50 countries, he said. 
Brewer said WorldHelp is an independent organization but has a friendly, informal relationship with nearby Liberty University, which held a fundraiser at a basketball game Monday night to benefit WorldHelp's tsunami relief projects.  
 "I think Vernon [Brewer] has got the right approach," Falwell said yesterday. "If Christian ministries can earn the right to be heard -- you don't preach the gospel to a hungry man, you feed him, then if he wants to hear something you've got to say, that's nice, but it's not required." 
WorldHelp's primary partners in Indonesia, Brewer said, are Henry and Roy Lanting, a father-son team who run an orphanage and school near Jakarta. Roy Lanting is also a graduate of Liberty University, Brewer said. Efforts to reach the Lantings by telephone and e-mail yesterday were unsuccessful. 
"First and foremost, our intention is not to evangelize but to show the love of Jesus Christ through our acts of compassion," Brewer said. "We are not using this open window of disaster to move in and set up a beachhead for evangelism. That's not the spirit of what we're trying to accomplish. . . ." The Rev. Arthur B. Keys Jr., president of Arlington-based International Relief and Development, a non-religious aid group that has a U.S. government contract to rebuild the water and sanitation system in Banda Aceh, said he feared overt evangelizing could produce a backlash. "I think there's a danger that all international groups could be tarnished by this," said Keys, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. "I think we have to go out of our way to assure people that we're there to help, period." 
One  missionary support group, Advancing Native Missions based in Charlottesville, said it has raised more than $100,000 to pay for distribution of food, water and cooking utensils in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and South India.  
Its workers often hand out Bibles or other religious tracts along with emergency supplies because disaster victims naturally question the existence of God, spokesman Oliver Asher said. 
"It's easy to be an atheist when you have no crisis in your life. But have a 50-foot tidal wave sweep your family and village away, it makes you ponder the big questions in life," he said. 
 Operation Mobilization USA, based in Tyrone, Ga., has raised about $60,000 to address "both the physical and the spiritual needs" of tsunami victims, according to its vice president for resource development, Douglas R. Barclay. 
He said Operation Mobilization, founded in 1957, supports about 3,700 missionaries in 110 countries and moved quickly to provide water, food and medical supplies after the tsunami  hit. "In these situations, we're not going to go out and blatantly preach to them, we're just going to demonstrate God's love by addressing their physical needs and sharing our beliefs one on one," he said. 
One of the largest and best-known evangelical Christian relief groups is Samaritan's Purse of Boone, N.C., which is headed by the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham. It sparked international controversy by openly mixing evangelization with its relief work after Hurricane Mitch in Central America in 1998 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq last year. But it has made great efforts to be "sensitive to local concerns" in areas hit by the tsunami, Franklin Graham said. 
Correspondent Alan Sipress in Jakarta contributed to this report. 

 INDONESIA (95%); 




7


   


January 12, 2005 Wednesday  




 Faith Divides the Survivors And It Unites Them, Too

 
Next door to four houses flattened by the tsunami, three rooms of Poorima Jayaratne's home still stood intact. She had a ready explanation for that anomaly, and her entire family's survival: she was a Buddhist, and her neighbors were not.
 ''Most of the people who lost relatives were Muslim,'' said Ms. Jayaratne, 30, adding for good measure that two Christians were also missing. As proof, she pointed to the poster of Lord Buddha that still clung to the standing portion of her house.
  The earthquake and tsunami that killed at least 150,000 people reached from Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim majority nation, to India, the world's largest Hindu one. It hit Thailand's Buddhist majority and Muslim minority, and this tiny island country, which is mostly Buddhist but has sizable Hindu, Muslim and Christian populations. 
 Across nations and religions there has been a search for explanations of not only why the tsunami came but why it killed some and not others -- and a vibrant, sometimes virulent cottage industry is supplying them. 
 Some discern a lesson that humanity should unite, citing the bodies of people of all religions tumbling together into mass graves, while others see affirmations of the rightness of their own path. Amid sympathy, there is judgment; beneath public compassion, a private moralizing. 
 The tsunami may also deepen religious and ethnic divisions, perhaps dangerously. In Sri Lanka in recent years, dozens of churches have been attacked by militant Buddhists. It is the Christians, some Buddhists say, who are to blame for the tsunami.
 Din Syamsuddin, a cleric and deputy chief of Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesia's largest Muslim organizations, said the people of the Aceh region near the epicenter had calmly accepted the tragedy as a sign of God's disapproval and a divine examination to test their faith. 
 Natural disasters are an indication that man has strayed from the path of God, he said: ''We believe it is an examination, and we face it with passion and submission.''
 Because a physical tragedy is only a test, Acehnese Muslims believe, the real punishment may come later, he said. According to Islamic doctrine, only after critical self-evaluation and positive deeds can people begin to repair their relationship with God. 
 Rebuilding after the tsunami really means ''returning to the center of life, which is God,'' Mr. Syamsuddin said.
 In mostly Hindu India, some see a divine reaction to a society whose changing economy is feeding corruption and greed. Muthuvel, 55, a fisherman in Nagappattinam whose wife is missing, said, ''Fishermen are becoming greedy and jealous of other richer colleagues.'' 
 Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a guru in India who has built a huge following among the country's growing and stressed middle class, said: ''If you forget nature, this is the way nature reminds you. Crime and stress punish nature.'' 
 Here in Sri Lanka, four religions -- Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity -- coexist. Their followers' explanations often exhibit a commonness of belief, reflecting the primal reasons the religions evolve and the ways they have influenced one another over time.
 Most of the population follows the Theravada school of Buddhism, in which understanding dukkha, or suffering, is a central concept, as is accepting the inability to control it. The Venerable Battapola Nanda, a priest near Galle whose temple has become a relief camp, said the tsunami reinforced a central Buddhist tenet: ''If you think something will happen, it never will,'' he said. ''If you think it never will happen, it will.''
 A similar sense of the limits of man and the greatness of God informed the words of Nasir Mohammad, a Muslim textile shop owner in Hambantota. It is not for humans to explain why so many children died, but to accept it, he said. ''God makes the world,'' he said. ''He can give, he can take. Sometimes he gives more. Sometimes he takes.'' 
 Always, there is a search for signs, as in the conviction of Rose Jayasuriya, 59, that her older sister Patricia, 74, still missing, died blessed because she had just taken communion when the sea invaded their church. Sri Lankan Buddhists believe that rebirth follows death, and that sin and good deeds determine one's future in this life and the next. Many Buddhists said they suspected that those who had lost children had done something wrong in a previous life.
 M. Vilmot, 49, a baker whose 14 family members survived, was sure that those who had lost loved ones were being punished for some sin.
 ''We earn money the correct way,'' he said. ''That's why it didn't happen to us.'' His bakery, perhaps 30 feet from the sea, was damaged but not destroyed. He said he followed the five Theravada Buddhist precepts of not lying, stealing, drinking, philandering or killing animals, while others only gave money to temples and then misbehaved. 
 G.H. Bandusile, 44, a fisherman's wife in Koggala, was certain that punishment was being meted out to the survivors, not the dead. ''The good people are gone,'' said Ms. Bandusile, who lost her mother. ''The bad people must stay and suffer.'' 
 On a back road in the village of Nagurasa in the Galle district, T.G. David, a Buddhist farmer and strict vegetarian whose beard gave him the look of a prophet, said the fishermen devastated by the tsunami had paid the price for their work.
 ''Fishermen are taking life,'' said Mr. David, who is 72. ''Farmers have no problems.'' 
 Sri Lankans of all religions tried to link the ferocity of nature to the fallibility of man. At the Sri Kathiresan Temple in Galle, a Hindu temple, A.P. Sethuraman, the trustee, blamed activities like drinking and drug use by foreigners in particular. 
 ''Many bad things happen along the seaside,'' he said. It was a lesson sent by Lord Shiva, he said: ''You must live the right way.''
 His proof was the local shrine to Vishnu and Kanda, two Hindu gods. It survived where the buildings all around it did not. Ramzy Mohammad, 32, a Muslim businessman, said many Sri Lankan Muslims believed God was angry about dissension in families, growing drug use and rape.
 ''He got angry and washed up the water,'' said Mr. Mohammad, who lost 11 family members.
 The Rev. Charles Hewawasam, a Roman Catholic priest who lost a nun and 18 members of his congregation in Matara, Sri Lanka, saw the tsunami as a reaction to ethnic and religious tensions.
 ''Nature is saying: 'You may have your powers, your fighting. I can destroy within a second the whole thing,''' he said. The dead, he added, ''have sacrificed their lives for us to teach a lesson: be together, treat one another as human beings.''
 But for some the kind of divisions he cited seem to have only been deepened by the disaster. 
 At the Buddhist temple in Kalatura, Sri Lanka, Nimal Ranjit Perera blamed an apocryphal Christian who had made a cake in the shape of Lord Buddha and then cut it with a knife. Indonesia, he added as an aside, was struck because Indonesians had been manufacturing and wearing underwear with the image of Lord Buddha.
 At the same temple, Thenahandy Asha, 26, blamed carnivorous Christians who had ''killed many animals'' on Christmas, the day before the tsunami. ''God was angry,'' she said, so on the next day poya, or full moon day, holy in Buddhism, he delivered his punishment. Samantha Silva, 24, agreed: God was angry that so many people had eaten meat, and consumed alcohol, on Christmas.
 But he could not explain why so many Buddhists had died, or so many children -- his own girl and boy, ages 5 and 2, among them.
 His brain was too upset to puzzle that out, he said. All he could do was leave flowers and light lamps at the temple, and pray that his children's next lives would be good ones.


 SRI LANKA (93%); INDIA (93%); INDONESIA (92%); THAILAND (79%)




7


 The Durham Herald Co. 


January 11, 2005 Tuesday  




 A new chance for peace

 
Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban once said that the Palestinians under Yasser Arafat "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Arafat's death created a new opportunity by removing a major obstacle to peace -- Arafat himself. Today, the world is hoping that his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, will be a man who seizes opportunities instead of missing them.
Abbas was elected by a large margin on Sunday in the first voting held in the Palestinian Authority territories since 1996, when Arafat was elected to what was supposed to be a four-year term. But another election was never held; Arafat said the reason was the Israeli occupation. Israeli soldiers still patrol the streets, but most foreign observers described the vote as free and fair anyway. 
Abbas captured about 62 percent, far outdistancing his closest challenger, Mustafa Barghouti, who had about 20 percent. A large turnout would have given Abbas, who has said he opposes terrorist attacks against Israel, a mandate to seek peace. The size of the turnout is still in question, but Abbas should proceed as though he had a huge mandate.
Under Arafat, life for Palestinians has been grim. The terrorist attacks against Israel have only caused more pain and suffering for Palestinians, who live in poverty with their movements restricted and under constant threat of violence. Arafat did little to help his people.
The vote for Abbas may be part of a hopeful trend. In other nations, voters are repudiating terror and violence. In balloting in India, voters rejected the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which was fomenting anti-Muslim violence. In Indonesia, with its 121 million Muslims, voters elected a secular candidate who has opposed the radical Jemaah Islamiyah. And in Iran, many observers believe that if a free election was held, the ayatollahs would be ousted.
Extremists believe they will find paradise in the next world, but in the here and now, they don't govern very well. When allowed to vote, citizens will usually vote for their self-interest, which translates into security and prosperity, not the poverty and constant bloodshed extremists bring. May Abbas bring his people peace, which is what they elected him to do.

 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (94%); ISRAEL (94%); INDIA (79%); IRAN,  (79%); 




7

  
   


January 10, 2005 Monday



 Fear Factor

 
Iraq: We haven't heard much lately about Afghanistan, a country that was said to be sliding toward factionalism and anarchy. Democracy and free elections bring stability and hope. That's what al-Qaida is afraid of. 
Afghanistan was once the home address of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, sheltered by the Taliban in a regime more fit for the Middle Ages. Defeating the Taliban was a no-brainer, but bringing democracy to the land of tribes and warlords was not given much chance.
Now free elections have been held, and democracy and freedom are taking root -- so much so that last month the Pakistan Daily Times reported Taliban fighters had contacted U.S. forces seeking amnesty in exchange for laying down their arms.
In Iraq, violence has escalated as its scheduled Jan. 30 elections draw near. And once again, the prophets of doom are predicting Election Day chaos: a low turnout by a fearful electorate, and a lack of Sunni participation that will de-legitimize any result.
The insurgents have specifically targeted authority figures such as Iraqi national guardsmen and police. Last Tuesday, Ali al-Haidari, the governor of Baghdad province, was gunned down. They've done their best to spread fear in Iraq and doubt in America.
It is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden, however, who are full of fear and doubt. This was shown in bin Laden's Dec. 27 tape. Under no circumstances, he said, should Muslims take part in these elections. Anyone who votes in Iraq he branded an "infidel."
The Ansar al-Sunnah army, which has claimed responsibility for the homicide bombing in Mosul, and two other terrorist groups issued a remarkable statement in which they said:
"Democracy is a Greek word meaning rule of the people, which means that people will do as they see fit. This concept is considered apostasy and defies the will of God -- Muslim's doctrine."
People doing what they see fit is the terrorist's and the Islamofascist's greatest fear. This is why Ansar al-Sunnah threatened "anyone who accepts to take part in this dirty farce will not be safe."
The terror will get worse as the insurgents try to influence our elections and prevent theirs. Some ask how Iraq can have free elections amid such chaos and violence, when even the Iraqi prime minister acknowledges that in only 15 of 18 provinces is it now safe enough to do so. But in the middle of a civil war we re-elected Abraham Lincoln, who was also accused of mismanaging a war, and with 11 Southern states not participating.
Conditions in Iraq are no worse than they were in El Salvador on March 28, 1982. On that date, in the middle of a civil war that took 75,000 lives, and with rebels in control of a third of the country, Salvadorans marched to the polls, even as schools to be used as polling places were being blown up. Free elections can suck the oxygen out of an insurgency, and the Iraqi terrorists know this.
The terrorist's main weapon is the car bomb. Ours is the ballot box. Islam and democracy can flourish, side by side, as we have seen in Turkey, Indonesia and now Afghanistan. When people "do as they see fit," they never see fit to be oppressed. They choose ballots over bullets. As in the Ukraine, they will see fit to be free.

 AFGHANISTAN (94%);  EL SALVADOR (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); 




7


   


January 10, 2005 Monday  




 NEWS SUMMARY

 

INTERNATIONAL   A3-9

Abbas Declares Victory In Palestinian Elections
Mahmoud Abbas, who opposes continuing violence against Israel, declared victory in the election for a new president of the Palestinian Authority after two surveys of voters leaving the polls showed him winning by a large margin. The strong margin should help give Mr. Abbas a mandate for change and to try to put an end to terrorism.   A1

President Bush welcomed the victory of Mr. Abbas as administration officials prepared to increase the tempo of involvement in the Middle East and cautioned that Israel and the Palestinians needed to take concrete steps to capitalize on the election.   A7

The voting was largely trouble-free in the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, too, voting took place without major difficulties, as the people chose a new leader, a rare event in the Arab world.   A7

When Will the U.S. Leave Iraq?
Conversation has started on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon, and some days even in the White House about when and how American forces might begin to disengage in Iraq.   A1

Two Iraqi policemen and three Iraqi civilians were killed south of Baghdad during a gunfight for which an Iraqi spokesman initially blamed American troops. Seven Ukrainian soldiers and one Kazakh soldier were killed when a bomb accidentally detonated near Suwayra, 50 miles southeast of Baghdad. Eleven other soldiers were also wounded.   A6

Expanding Tsunami Relief
Mercy Corps, an aid group based in Portland, Ore., is expanding its relief work. The group is recruiting local laborers who will help clear the disaster zones. Despite the grueling and gruesome labor, the recruited men seemed to be relieved to have something constructive to do, and to have a way to earn money.   A1

Tarnished by its handling of the oil-for-food program in Iraq as it begins another multibillion-dollar program of tsunami relief, the United Nations is taking measures to ensure public accountability of how the money is spent.   A8

Members of Lasker Mujahedeen, a paramilitary group that has fought Christians in Indonesia and has had links to Al Qaeda, are among hundreds of Indonesian Islamic extremists who have come to Aceh in the name of helping their fellow Muslims.   A9

Peace Treaty in Area of Sudan
The Islamic government of Sudan signed a peace agreement with a Christian rebel group in the south. The agreement is fraught with potential complications but it could help bring development to one of the world's most destitute regions. The celebration was tempered by the fact that the war continues in other areas of Sudan.   A3

Gale-Force Winds in Europe
Eleven people were killed and at least four were missing after gale-force winds battered northern Europe, causing flooding and transport chaos and leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity.   A4

NATIONAL   A12-17

DNA Donations Requested To Solve a Grisly Murder
Police officers in Truro, Mass., are trying to get DNA from all 790 or so men in town -- or as many as will agree -- in an unusual last-ditch move for clues to the three-year-old unsolved murder of Christa Worthington, who was stabbed to death in the town's most grisly mystery.   A1

Differences on Social Security
White House officials plan to describe Social Security as a system in ''crisis'' whose promises to younger workers are a ''fiction,'' in the first phase of a strategy to build support for overhauling the program. Opponents say Mr. Bush is exaggerating the problems.   A14

Weather-Related Deaths in U.S.
Relentless, pounding rain produced landslides, flooding and chaos on California highways. Wicked weather was blamed for several deaths during the weekend, from Southern California to Pennsylvania.   A12

Railroad Crew Questioned
Investigators seeking the cause of a train crash that released clouds of chlorine gas and killed nine people said they were looking into whether a train crew was distracted or fatigued when it was time to reset a railroad switch. Investigators said the crew had called their dispatcher seven hours earlier to report that they had completed their work. That call meant that the switch should have been re-positioned. The switch showed no sign of tampering.   A13

Sheriff Firings Upstage Victory
Clayton County, Ga., opened the year with its first black-majority government, including the county commission and sheriff. But the celebratory moment has been all but eclipsed by the uproar over the new sheriff's firing of 27 employees. The county commission's chief of staff, Clark Talmage Stevens, a former adviser to presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, called it ''a blatant mass political firing.''   A12

Democrats Pick Midterm Chief
Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois was named as the new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The appointment means Mr. Emanuel will direct the Democrats' effort to recapture the House in the 2006 midterm elections.   A14

SPORTSMONDAY   D1-8

Mets to Sign Carlos Beltran
Carlos Beltran and the Mets agreed in principle to a seven-year, $119 million contract. The deal is contingent on Beltran's passing a physical and on the two sides completing the financial structure of the contract, a major league official who was briefed on the negotiations said.   A1

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-5

'Wicked' Witch, Injured, Still Takes Her Final Bow
Idina Menzel, the Tony Award-winning actress and departing star of ''Wicked,'' the Broadway blockbuster based on ''The Wizard of Oz,'' took the stage for a five-minute final standing ovation just 24 hours after she fractured a rib in an onstage accident.   B1

Investigation of Arts Center
The Saratoga Performing Arts Center said it had received a subpoena from the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, relating to questions about its spending practices.   B5

Vaccine Shortage Tests City
New York City, which dealt with a shortage of flu vaccine last fall by scrounging for doses, now faces a flu season that is just beginning. How it handled the crisis offers lessons in how it might respond to a larger health emergency.   B1

Ex-Con Arrested Again
Jesse Nettles, a homeless man who served more than a decade in prison after two violent attacks in 1974, was arrested in connection with another string of violence: the stabbing of a man in Times Square and two employees at a restaurant in Pennsylvania Station, the police said.   B1

Behind Rowland's Plea
Lawyers involved in the case of John G. Rowland, the former Connecticut governor, say that last month's plea agreement shrewdly positioned him to appeal for leniency at his sentencing on March 11 and halted a criminal investigation.   B5

Neediest Cases   B4

ARTS   E1-12

Paris Museums Branching Out
The Louvre and the Georges Pomidou Center are both preparing to open branches outside of Paris, following a growing trend.   E1

TV Anchors Scramble for Glory
Television networks and their star anchormen are in fierce competition for ratings and glory in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster, which struck at a moment of transition for network news organizations.   E1

OBITUARIES   B7

Anthony Williamson
A scholar in human geography who developed innovative techniques to help indigenous Canadians press land claims , he was 69.   B7

BUSINESS DAY   C1-10

Papers for Nonsubscribers
Across the country each week, more than 1.6 million people who are not on newspaper subscriber rolls are being delivered a copy -- but they are still being classified as paying customers.   C1

Cheaper Seats at Big Board
A seat on the New York Stock Exchange was sold last week for only $1 million, the lowest price since 1995. The dropping price is a sign of serious challenges being made to the world's largest equity exchange, an institution owned by its 1,366 seat holders.   C1

Trying to Revive Mercedes
Deteriorating profits and mounting quality problems have made Mercedes a metaphor for Germany's struggle to maintain its place in the global economy -- and creating a challenge for its new chief, Eckhard Cordes.   C1

Business Digest   C1

EDITORIAL   A18-19

Editorials: For the record on Social Security; housecleaning at the U.N.; going by the rules.

Columns: William Safire and Bob Herbert.

Autos   D8
Bridge   E9
Crossword   E9
Metro Diary   B2
TV Listings   E11
Weather   B8


 PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (95%); IRAQ (95%); ISRAEL (94%); UNITED STATES (93%); SUDAN (93%);  INDONESIA (92%); UKRAINE (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); NORTHERN EUROPE (72%)




7


   


January 10, 2005 Monday  




 Islamic Militants Volunteer To Aid Muslims in Indonesia

 
Black-jacketed volunteers from one of Indonesia's most militant Muslim groups scraped away the clammy mud that clung to the walls and floors of a badly damaged house here on Sunday. They moved the once handsome dining room chairs outside to dry.
 In a few days, they said, the owner of the house, Azman Ismail, an imam at Banda Aceh's central mosque, would be able to move back in.
 The men, members of Lasker Mujahedeen, a paramilitary group that has fought Christians elsewhere in Indonesia and has had links to Al Qaeda, are among hundreds of Indonesian Islamic militants who have come to Aceh in the name of helping their fellow Muslims, they say, to offer a dose of Islamic teachings to the already devout Acehnese, and to recruit members.
 The groups, including Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia and Islamic Defenders Front, arrived in the disaster area on Indonesian military transport planes, and on a commercial flight organized by the Indonesian vice president, Jusuf Kalla. The military distributed the protective gloves, rubber boots and the masks they needed to dig bodies out of the rubble, the volunteers said. 
 In the buzz of activity at the airport, and in the ruins of the city, the militants have not tried to hide their identity.
 Some are camping at the military airport here near where American helicopters land to load relief supplies and distribute them to remote coastal areas.
 ''Islamic law enforcement,'' is written in English on a sign at the huddle of small igloo tents where some of the Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia volunteers sleep among the much larger tents of the contingents of foreign military, though not the Americans, who have come to help.
 The Americans return at night to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, which is off the coast.
 For the moment, the militants say they are willing to tolerate the work of the Americans, whom they usually denounce as infidels and imperialistic occupiers of Muslim nations.
 ''As long as the American soldiers' involvement is for humanitarian reasons, they are welcome,'' said Imam Salman al-Farisi, the leader of the 80 volunteers of Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia here. Majelis Mujahedeen is an umbrella organization of militant groups founded by Abu Bakar Bashir, who is on trial, charged with organizing the terror attack in Bali in October 2002. Mr. Bashir is the leader of the terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, which is blamed in the Bali bombings and the attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2003. 
 But the imam added a caveat. ''If there are intelligence people among the American soldiers, I believe Allah will smash the United States.''
 A senior American official involved in Washington's relief effort said the United States had stopped short of protesting to the Indonesian government about the presence of the groups. But the official said he discussed the matter with the Indonesians in meetings last week. ''This is something the Indonesian government has to watch very carefully,'' the official said.
 The overt presence of the outside Muslim groups has, however, prompted some of the city's small Christian population to flee, said the Rev. Ferdinando, who leads the congregation at the Most Sacred Heart Catholic Church here. All but 15 of his 400 church members, most of them shopkeepers and of Chinese origin, were staying in Medan, the major city to the south, where they felt safer, he said.
 ''There is a fear by the Christians of the Muslims because in the past the Christians suffered,'' he said. ''There is a fear that that suffering will happen again.''
 The militants are not the only Muslim groups that rushed to Aceh with volunteers and a modicum of aid in the days immediately after the tsunami struck.
 As well, Indonesia's second-largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah, which has tens of millions of members, and the up-and-coming fundamentalist political party, the Justice Party for Prosperity, have been dominant in filling the void left by the collapsed government in Aceh, which has been racked a more than 25 years of civil conflict. The eagerness of the Muslim volunteers, though often thinly supplied and equipped, has stood in sharp contrast to the absence of government workers and to the lethargy of some Indonesian soldiers.
 ''The motto of the provincial government is: 'We serve not to serve,''' said Nasir Jamil, the leader of the Justice Party in Aceh and a member of the Indonesian Parliament, as he talked in a frantically busy aid post. ''They don't do anything.''
 Justice Party members were out on the streets of the provincial capital just hours after the roaring waters of the tsunami finally quieted, Mr. Nasir said. Immediately, he and his colleagues started to pull bodies from the rubble and line them up for collection, he said.
 On the second day, with telephone communication with the outside world still cut, the party, together with some university students, opened its first aid station. ''We had a little bit of medicine but we had to dilute it so enough of it would go around,'' Mr. Nasir said.
 Since then, the Justice Party, he said, has flown in 1,000 volunteers from around Indonesia.
 The party now has 16 aid posts around the city and its outskirts where victims can find food and advice, Mr. Nasir said. The party has established seven water points, and plans 20 more. One of the most obvious efforts of the militants has been to concentrate on the most odious chore, unearthing bodies from the debris. On Saturday, a young squad from the Islamic Defenders Front, a militant group from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta that uses violence to enforce Islamic law against drinking, gambling and prostitution, was still recovering bodies in the middle-class neighborhood of Ajun.
 ''People are coming back to their houses to clean up,'' said Syarif, 36, an Islamic Defender Front member, as he walked the debris-filled streets. ''They're interested in their cars, but they ask us to take care of the bodies.''
 The Defenders group won high praise from the Aceh police after it found the body of one of the province's most senior police officers, Sayyed Husaini. 
 The speedy arrival of the Islamic Defenders was ensured by Mr. Kalla, the vice president, who arranged a civilian charter for the group's members and allocated seats on Indonesian Air Force flights for them, said Hilmy Bakar Almascati, the leader of the group's contingent here. As well, he said he had spoken personally to the head of the Indonesian Army, Rymizard Ryacudu, who provided tents for the group. 
 Besides helping clean up the devastated city, Mr. Hilmy said he was planning to increase the Defenders' membership. Aceh is one of the most devout areas in Indonesia and Islamic law, or Shariah, is formally on the books, though not seriously practiced. Mr. Hilmy said it was a perfect place for recruitment.
 ''We are training people to be members of Islamic Defenders,'' he said. ''I think Aceh is welcoming to that idea.''



 
 

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


Shots Fired at Aid Base
 BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, Jan. 9 (Reuters) -- Indonesia sought to reassure Western aid workers after a gunfire incident on Sunday in the major aid base of Banda Aceh. 
 ''The security operation conducted by Indonesia's military and police will protect, secure the humanitarian efforts,'' President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Sunday.
 Indonesia's military increased security in Banda Aceh amid confusion over who had fired the shots. Some officials blamed separatist rebels, others blamed a disturbed government soldier. No one was hurt.
 The incident took place outside a deputy police chief's house and near the main United Nations aid office in the capital of Aceh Province on the island of Sumatra where almost all of Indonesia's 104,000 deaths from the tsunami occurred.
 Indonesia's chief social welfare minister, Alwi Shihab, said the government was investigating. The military had ordered a high alert because of possible infiltration by people wary of foreigners, he said.

HOW TO HELP

Disaster Aid
An expanded list of agencies is online at nytimes.com/world. The Times does not certify charities' fund allocations or administrative costs.

CARE
151 Ellis Street
Atlanta, Ga. 30303
800-521-CARE
www.care.org

AMERICAN RED CROSS
International Response Fund
P.O. Box 37243
Washington, D.C. 20013
800-HELP NOW
www.RedCross.org

CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES
Tsunami Emergency
P.O. Box 17090
Baltimore, Md. 21203-7090
800-736-3467
www.CatholicRelief.org

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION
OF RED CROSS/RED CRESCENT
www.ifrc.org

MERCY CORPS
Dept. W
P.O. Box 2669
Portland, Ore. 97208
800-852-2100
www.mercycorps.org

OXFAM AMERICA
Donor Services Department
26 West Street
Boston, Mass. 12111-1206
800-77-OXFAM
www.oxfamAmerica.org

SAVE THE CHILDREN
Asia Earthquake/Tidal Wave Relief Fund
54 Wilton Road
Westport, Conn. 06880
800-728-3843
www.SaveTheChildren.org

U.N. HIGH COMMISSIONER
FOR REFUGEES
1 U.N. Plaza, Room 2610
New York, N.Y. 10017
www.unhcr.ch

U.S. FUND FOR UNICEF
Attn: Tsunami Relief
333 E. 38th Street
New York, N.Y. 10016
800-4-UNICEF
www.unicefusa.org

WORLD FOOD PROGRAM
2 U.N. Plaza, DC2-2500
New York, N.Y.10017
www.wfp.org


  INDONESIA (96%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)




7

  


January 10, 2005



 A Wave Of Grief Comes Crashing On New York City

 
The devastation in South Asia defies description, but it cannot lead us to the fatal lethargy of despair. The scope of the loss may be incomprehensible, but surely we understand the essential facts: Many tens of thousands are dead; millions are suffering and at risk of disease and starvation. That knowledge must inspire not morose reflection, but immediate action. Countless lives depend on us to do our share, and more, for the millions who grieve and suffer.
New Yorkers have a special obligation to the tsunami's victims. 
Just over three years ago, the world rallied around us when we were subjected to an unprecedented terrorist attack by the enemies of civilization. People from all over the globe put aside their differences and disagreements to come to our assistance. In our darkest hour, we welcomed the light of humanity's embrace.
Nothing any of us can do will ease the burden of grief in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and the other devastated countries. Homes can be replaced with our financial help. Injuries can be healed with our expertise. But sorrow is beyond our power. We realized that in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, as we mourned 3,000 of our relatives, friends and neighbors.
Still, there is much we can do and ought to do. Dozens of agencies have made it easy to donate money. And as citizens of the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation, and as residents of that nation's wealthiest and most powerful city, we have a special obligation to make sure that Washington lives up to its pledge of massive assistance. While the Bush administration was slow to recognize the magnitude of the horror, its promise of $350 million in aid and its deployment of soldiers and sailors to the relief effort is admirable. But it is up to us to make sure that the White House lives up to its promise and to demand more if more is required.
The United States in general, and the Bush administration in particular, have not made many friends abroad in recent years, particularly in the Muslim world. Now, however, the nation and the administration have an opportunity to show the world, including those who despise us, that we hear the cries of the suffering. Perhaps it will be noted that the United States is rushing to the assistance of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, where the death toll approaches 100,000. Perhaps those in the Islamic world who believe we wish to crush them will note that U.S. helicopters are delivering food and water to the starving and thirsty, that former U.S. Presidents are leading the private relief efforts. And maybe they will reflect on the knowledge that the pious Muslims who run the cash machine known as Saudi Arabia have pledged the criminally small sum of $10 million.
Will a generous, indeed heroic, American response to this apocalyptic devastation win us friends where now we have only enemies? Will it be harder now for Osama bin Laden and his ilk to insist that America and the West bring only bloodshed and pillage to the Muslim world?
Let us hope so. But we cannot make these kinds of arguments, because we act not out of self-interest but selflessness, not with an eye on geopolitics or public relations, but with hearts filled with grief and compassion. As we continue to reach out to parents who have lost their children, to children who have lost their parents, to poor people who have lost what little they had, we should remember the words of John F. Kennedy, spoken on a cold Inauguration Day in 1961.
"To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required -- not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right," Kennedy said. "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
Because it is right. That is why our C-130 cargo planes are bringing food and other emergency aid, and why a U.S. aircraft-carrier battle group steamed from Hong Kong to the Indian Ocean. They have been deployed not for the sake of conquest, but in the cause of humanity. Not because we wish to be seen handing out food, not because the Saudis won't do it, not because we want to win chits, but because it is right.
It is right because we see in the faces of survivors a terror and need that speak to us as human beings. It doesn't matter that the victims are half a world away, that they call God by a different name, that they may never know, really, who helped them and who did not. What matters is that they are fed and clothed and housed as quickly as possible, and that they take some comfort in knowing that they do not mourn alone.

 UNITED STATES (96%); INDONESIA (92%); ASIA (88%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); INDIA (79%); SOUTHERN ASIA (73%); 




7

    
  


January 10, 2005, Monday



 THE YEAR OF LIVING DIPLOMATICALLY

 INDONESIA (96%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (93%); ASIA (90%); SAUDI ARABIA (86%); 




80 of 120 DOCUMENTS

   

 

January 9, 2005 



 LETTERS

 
Disaster aid: Responses to "Do we give enough?" Page One, Jan. 2
Ignoring facts only way to condemn U.S. as stingy
Giving by this country includes not only taxpayer funds from the government but also donations by individuals to private charities. That's where we differ from many nations, whose only significant giving is by government. In 2003, Americans gave a startling $200 billion to private charities. Of that, $34 billion went overseas.
American giving includes the billions of military expenditures overseas that preserve freedom and enable lesser countries to develop industry and trade. It also includes our commitment to free trade, which has allowed nations such as China, India, Thailand and Mexico to build their economies, many times at the expense of jobs here at home. 
Those who call America stingy are either uninformed or pursuing an agenda. Many of them envy our success but are the first to call on us when the going gets tough.
EDWARD A. WATKINS, Lilburn
Those who criticize U.S. fail to consider big picture
Do the groups that gather statistics on how much a nation gives include the extra expense in our defense budget because most other nations count on us to bail them out?
Do they include the heavy investment in research and development because of our military and space programs, which have given the world such devices as transistors, integrated circuits and microprocessors? The rest of the world, especially China, takes these devices and then undercuts our labor and outsells us on the international market.
Look at how much China gave for the current crisis in its own back yard, and then look at what others, including the United States, have given. Perhaps the critics need to look at the full picture.
RUSSELL STANTON, Smyrna
Practical use of funds
What constitutes enough money to give for foreign aid?
Wouldn't it be a great gesture for President Bush to have a less imposing, less costly inauguration and spend three-fourths of the more than $40 million it's expected to cost on aid for the tsunami survivors?
If athletes who are paid millions to play games would give 5 percent of their annual incomes for things such as medical supplies and rebuilding in the countries devastated by the tsunami or the sickness and starvation in Sudan, perhaps this money would be better spent.
MIMI GOULD, Atlanta
European Union as group gave more than U.S.
I found it in bad taste to compare what country gave what to help people stricken by tragedy around the world, but let's at least be accurate.
Your reporting placed the United States in second place, behind Japan. As the U.S. media always do, you skipped the European community.
Most Americans think that the European Union is just a plan; it is a reality. When I added the contributions of just the nine top EU countries plus the EU Commission, I came to a total of $422 million --- way ahead of the United States. And there are more than nine members, of course, in the EU.
The EU and the United States are comparable in size, population and standard of living. It's only fair to compare them as is. We will not report donations by individual states.
MARIE ANDRADE, Pine Lake
Voluntary contributors want to bypass corrupt U.N.
Dan Chapman's article was comical. Americans are the most generous voluntary givers on the globe.
I am sure that the total giving for the tsunami disaster alone will be in the billions through private donations. Very few of us (voluntary contributors) want money going to a corrupt organization like the United Nations. Most of us want to know where it is going and the administrative costs involved.
Of course, U.N. official Jan Egeland, who called America stingy, comes from a socialist country (Norway). I guess that he, like most liberals, feels entitled to take and spend someone else's money.
ROBERTA CROMLISH, Stone Mountain
Immediate help is critical
America is not as generous as . . . you've got to be kidding! What do you think those helicopters and the USS Abraham Lincoln have been doing?
In times of crisis, it is not the amount of money that is pledged, but providing an immediate helping hand when the need is the most urgent.
Also, compare American aid and pledges to those made by Muslim nations. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world.
RAYMOND SUH, Norcross
Only so many slices of pie
I'm tired of the same people who complain about the deficit saying we should give more.
Where were other nations when we shouldered the cleanup after Sept. 11? Where were they after several hurricanes devastated Florida? We took care of our own, and now there is less to go around. So what?
Those who complain about the deficit and say we do not give enough are hypocritical. You can't have it both ways.
JOHN MARTINEZ, Newnan
Get aboard effort to cut global poverty in half
Thanks to Dan Chapman for the article on the controversy surrounding levels of U.S. aid to poor people in developing countries.
Jimmy Carter said it best --- helping the world's poor people improve their lives is not only the right thing to do, but it also is in our long-term self-interest. In an interconnected, interdependent world, we are all affected by the instability, insecurity and lost productivity that result from more than 20 percent of the world's population living on less than $1 a day.
A recent survey indicated that 86 percent of Americans believe the United States should put forward "a new effort to work together with other countries to help the poorest people in the world overcome AIDS and extreme poverty."
But for our leaders to act, they must hear from us. That's why CARE and 10 other prominent humanitarian organizations launched a campaign (www.theonecampaign.org) to galvanize public support for U.S. aid aimed at reducing extreme poverty by half by 2015.
DAVID RAY
Ray, of Decatur, is director of constituency building for CARE.
Values: Responses to Cynthia Tucker's column "Now on Fox! Immoral values," @issue, Jan. 2
To protect speech, typical garbage apparently OK
Where has Cynthia Tucker been for the past 30 years? Hollywood and the big three networks have been putting out garbage far longer than Fox ever will.
I guess that would be a freedom of speech issue. And we wouldn't want to stifle anybody's freedom of speech, unless it would be someone with a different opinion from Tucker's.
As for reality TV, you can blame that on MTV.
JOEL EDGE, Soperton
Jesus' teachings take commitment
Christians who voted for "values" may not realize that Fox News ad revenue (which is on viewership ratings) is plowed back into Rupert Murdoch's many other lascivious outlets.
As a churchgoing, born-again Christian, I pray that my brothers and sisters will read again what Jesus taught. Throwing thousands of Americans into poverty, using the fraud of "faith-based" solutions as a cover, while sending more tax windfalls to the rich is "unbiblical."
So is indiscriminately killing Iraqi people with Fox-described "precision" bombs while making war-based corporations richer. Either we follow the teachings of Christ or we don't.
Elevating politicians above criticism is political idolatry, as is changing a theology based on the love of one's fellow man into a theocracy dedicated to war and materialism. That is the direction that Fox leads.
CLAUDE CRIDER, Alpharetta
Organizations aim to restore decency
Cynthia Tucker says, "None of the nationally known spokesmen for so-called family values --- men such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family or Ken Connor of the Family Research Council --- have called for a boycott of 'Desperate Housewives.' "
She needs to read the Dec. 20 issue of Advertising Age, which says the American Family Association, headed by Donald Wildmon, "convinced Lowe's and Tyson to pull their advertising from ABC's hottest new property, 'Desperate Housewives.' " Family Research Council President Tony Perkins (Ken Connor left FRC well over a year ago) has been a tireless spokesperson against exploitative TV shows.
Why is Tucker taking potshots at people and organizations who would like nothing better than to see decency restored to the public airwaves?
CHARLES D. EDEN, Atlanta
Reality shows, news separate
Cynthia Tucker vents her spleen on "Fox television" reality shows past and present and attempts to link "Fox's on-camera personalities," including Bill O'Reilly and their "conservative politics," with the low morality of such shows as "Who's Your Daddy?" and "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?"
Does she really not understand that "Fox television" and the Fox News network are totally different operations, and that neither O'Reilly nor any other conservative on-camera personalities appear on "Fox television" and have about as much connection to Fox's reality shows as Tucker does?
EDWIN HALL, Norcross
Exurbia: Responses to "Outer suburbs lie squarely in Bush country," Page One, Jan. 2
Facts reveal folly of Bush's policies
The three exurbanites quoted early in the article are either blind or do not wish to face unpleasant facts.
If you reduce income tax or remove money from payroll tax, federal revenues will decrease, resulting in lower federal grants to states and local governments or a shortfall in the Social Security funding. The net result is lower state revenues and increases in sales tax, property tax, tuition fees, license fees, etc., at the local level. If this is what they want, they are welcome.
Our debts and deficits have gone beyond sky high. President Bush is spending borrowed money as though there is no tomorrow. Several states brag that they do not have state income tax. But do you know how high their sales tax is? This is not fuzzy math; it is real life.
RAMAKRISHN RAMAN, Tucker
Republicans can't cast blame elsewhere
I would say to those Bush supporters: If you don't like the idea of gay marriage, don't marry a gay person; if you want prayer in schools, send your kids to one of the many private schools in the area that offer school prayer; stop trying to impose your idea of moral values on the rest of us; and stop trying to destroy the Constitution by pushing your perverse, bigoted views.
Also, the White House has been controlled by Republicans for four years, and Congress has been for 10 years now (except for a couple of years in the Senate). Spending has increased under President Bush and the Republicans now control every branch of the federal government, so your Democrat-tax-and-spend rhetoric will not work anymore. You now have no one to blame but yourselves
MARK BUSCH, Atlanta
Proponents of values will fade amid storms
The article implies that the Democrats have a problem with the Bush-supporting exurbanites. After all, these people have "faith in God, personal responsibility and self-reliance."
Well, when disaster --- the lot of humankind --- hits them, we may see their faith in God challenged by dead-soldier sons and fathers, their self-reliance weakened by economic dislocation and their personal responsibility undermined by newfound poverty or illness. Under similar conditions, Americans elected Franklin Roosevelt, a liberal Northeastern patrician who spoke in the accents of Groton and Harvard, not Peoria and NASCAR.
The Democrats just need to wait until Bush and the Republicans mess up sufficiently to be voted back in power, despite God, self-reliance and personal responsibility.
NORMAN RAVITCH, Savannah
Tort reform: Responses to "Malpractice: Jury awards fight renewed," Metro, Jan. 2
Trust wisdom of juries
Tom Gose, chief propagandist for Georgia's physician insurer, Medical Association of Georgia, provoked me to get the facts. So I went to his company's Web site and found that from 1993 to 2002, only 1.45 percent of 64,272 total potential claims were paid. And the avalanche of $1 million verdicts? There were just 15 in 2002. I wonder how many Georgia doctors made $1 million in 2002.
In fact, the average payment to a malpractice victim is $457,000. Who gets all the money? Among the big beneficiaries are corporate defense lawyers. They charge by the hour, get paid win or lose, and work on the top floors of ornate downtown office buildings. How to do you think they pay their rent?
Maybe the Georgia Legislature should trust the collective wisdom of the 12 people in the jury box. Juries convict dangerous criminals --- and, sometimes, sentence them to death --- every day. Gose isn't complaining about that.
MARC GARBER
Garber, of Marietta, is an attorney.
Award cap devalues many
As a medical malpractice victim who was left a quadriplegic by an OB-GYN, I take issue with the mentality that opposing tort reform is about money.
As stated in the article, "medical malpractice victims will be denied just compensation." There is no just compensation for what medical malpractice victims endure. However, pro-cap supporters fail to mention that with such a cap on damages, our politicians are not only saying that stay-at-home moms, such as myself, children, retirees and anyone besides the elite have a minuscule value. They also are taking away our right to our day in court. With a cap, people like me would never be able to even file a case in order to have a jury of our peers decide it.
Physicians indeed need relief from skyrocketing insurance rates. However, as proved in all states with a cap on awards, caps do nothing to alleviate the doctors' burdens, and only take away the rights of citizens. They give a free hand to hospitals and physicians to deny life and limb with no recourse of being held accountable by their victims.
SHERRY KELLER, Conyers

  EUROPE (93%); CHINA (93%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (91%); INDIA (79%); THAILAND (79%); JAPAN (79%); SUDAN (79%); 




81 of 120 DOCUMENTS



 


January 9, 2005 Sunday  




 Muslims called to give but wary of what they fund

 
It wasn't a lot of money. But Iqbal Chaudhry knew he needed to treat the offering with the utmost care, not only because charity is a pillar of his people's faith but also because the wrong decision might result in a knock on the door from the FBI.
The president of the Islamic Society of Colorado Springs was in charge of deciding who should get $1,500 the mosque raised in a special collection for victims of the tsunami in South Asia.
Chaudhry's research led him to Islamic Relief USA, a disaster-response charity that won high marks from a watchdog group and - just as important - is not listed by the U.S. government as a suspected conduit to terrorists. 
The tsunami disaster has generated a massive outpouring of money and aid from around the world. At the same time, the U.S. government's increased scrutiny of Muslim charities after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has made American Muslims more cautious about their checks and cash. That change has become apparent as Muslim donors and groups in Colorado and nationwide respond to a tragedy that dealt the harshest blow to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
"Helping the poor is central, it's mandatory, especially under the circumstances," said Liyakat Takim, a University of Denver religious studies professor who teaches about Islam. "On the other hand, Muslims have to be careful because they don't want to jeopardize their positions or get into trouble with Homeland Security. Muslims are far more careful as to where and who they give their funds to now."
Religious basis for giving
Charity is one of Islam's five pillars, or requirements. The Koran, the Muslim holy book, tells Muslims to give 2.5 percent of their income for zakat, or alms-giving.
Following Sept. 11, President Bush signed an executive order allowing the government to shut down and freeze assets of organizations linked to funding terrorism. As a result, four Islamic charities in the United States have been raided or shut down by the government, and millions of dollars have been frozen.
None of the raids has led to terrorism-related criminal convictions. One high-profile case will head to court this month when three members of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation go on trial on charges of funneling cash to a relative who is a high-ranking official with the militant group Hamas.
While U.S. Muslim organizations have condemned using charitable donations to fund terrorism, some are concerned the government went too far to punish groups without a finding of wrongdoing. The independent 9/11 commission echoed those concerns in its report last year.
"At this point, the Muslim community in America has kind of thrown up its hands and said, 'We have no idea what the government is going to do next,"' said Ingrid Mattson, a professor of Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary. "There is a cynicism building that is rather unhealthy. But that's not stopping people from giving."
The U.S. government has worked with Muslim groups in identifying how to prevent terrorists from preying on donors' goodwill - with mixed results.
The U.S. Treasury Department developed voluntary "best practices" guidelines for safeguarding against fraud and abuse and is trying to facilitate a new Council for Islamic Charities to encourage self-regulation. The government declined Muslim and Arab-American groups' requests to develop a list of "safe" charities, saying it wasn't the government's role.
"We are on the same side of the fence with the donor community, including the Arab-
American and Muslim community," said Molly Millerwise, a Treasury Department spokeswoman. "We believe we have the same goal in mind - to make sure charitable dollars go to people in the region who've seen their schools, their homes and their lives uprooted."
She said the department believes the current system is working.
Ripples from the crackdown on Muslim charities reached the Colorado Muslim Society, the largest mosque in the Rocky Mountain West, said Mohamed Jodeh, a lay leader at the southeast Denver mosque. He estimated that giving to the mosque dropped 25 percent to 30 percent since 2001, which he blames in part on the government's actions.
The scope of the tsunami disaster, however, seems to have transcended those worries.
Jodeh said two mosques, the Colorado Muslim Society and Denver Islamic Society, have raised more than $20,000 for tsunami relief in the past two weeks. Those communities and other members of the Colorado Muslim Council, an umbrella organization, are working to pool that money and cash raised elsewhere but have yet to decide exactly where the donations will go.
In deciding how to channel donations, the group navigated another sensitive question - whether to target their relief to Muslims. Jodeh said the decision was to send the relief with no such string attached.
"It's a fund for all the victims, regardless of race, religion, anything," Jodeh said. "We have a saying of the prophet - 'All people are children of God.' We have to live up to that."
Avoiding problems
Many national Muslim groups are urging donations to Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and UNICEF, so concerns about Muslim charities may not translate to diminished tsunami giving, said Dilsher Nawaz, a member of Denver-based Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism, which also is organizing a tsunami fundraising drive.
"People are a bit cautious, but most people look at established, old charities we presume are bona fide," Nawaz said.
Some Muslim charities, meantime, are redoubling their transparency efforts. One is the organization the Colorado Springs mosque singled out: Islamic Relief USA, part of an international Muslim charitable network undertaking a $10 million tsunami fundraising effort.
The agency conducted a self- audit after Sept. 11, posts its financial records on the Web and advertises its four-star ranking from Charity Navigator, a group that ranks charities' efficiency, said Arif Shaikh, a spokesman for the Burbank, Calif.-based nonprofit.
"For a community that's already pretty scared in terms of the government cracking down, this is a way of instilling some confidence," Shaikh said.
Chaudhry, of the Colorado Springs mosque, heard about Islamic Relief on CNN. The mosque checked to make sure the group wasn't on a government website listing charities with suspected terrorism links.
This is the new reality of safeguarding one of Islam's most sacred traditions, Chaudhry said.
"That's what we should do," he said. "We don't want to support the wrong organization. For most people who give money, it's a religious obligation. That money should really go to poor people, not support any political agenda."
Staff writer Eric Gorski can be reached at 303-820-1698 or egorski@denverpost.com.

 UNITED STATES (95%);  ASIA (79%); SOUTHERN ASIA (57%)




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January 9, 2005 Sunday  




 More Religion, but Not the Old-Time Kind

 
ALMOST anywhere you look around the world, with the glaring exception of Western Europe, religion is now a rising force. Former Communist countries are humming with mosque builders, Christian missionaries and freelance spiritual entrepreneurs of every possible persuasion. In China, underground ''house churches'' are proliferating so quickly that neither the authorities nor Christian leaders can keep reliable count. In much of South and Central America, exuberant Pentecostal churches, where worshipers catch the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues, continue to spread, challenging the Roman Catholic tradition. And in the United States, religious conservatives, triumphant over their role in the re-election of President Bush, are increasingly asserting their power in politics, the media and culture. 
 The tsunami in Asia could spur religious revival as well, as victims and onlookers turn to mosques, temples and churches both to help them fathom the catastrophe and to provide humanitarian assistance. 
 What does all this rising religiosity add up to? It is easy to assume that a more religious world means a more fractious world, where violent conflict is fueled by violent fundamentalist movements.  
 But some religion experts say that while it is clear that religiosity is on the rise, it is not at all clear that fundamentalism is. Indeed, there may be a rising backlash against violent fundamentalism of any faith. 
 The world's fastest growing religion is not any type of fundamentalism, but the Pentecostal wing of Christianity. While Christian fundamentalists are focused on doctrine and the inerrancy of Scripture, , what is most important for Pentecostals is what they call ''spirit-filled'' worship, including speaking in tongues and miracle healing. Brazil, where American missionaries planted Pentecostalism in the early 20th century, now has a congregation with its owns TV station, soccer team and political party. 
 Most scholars of Christianity believe that the world's largest church is a Pentecostal one -- the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, which was founded in 1958 by a converted Buddhist who held a prayer meeting in a tent he set up in a slum. More than 250,000 people show up for worship on a typical Sunday. 
 ''If I were to buy stock in global Christianity, I would buy it in Pentecostalism,'' said Martin E. Marty, professor emeritus of the history of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a coauthor of a study of fundamentalist movements. ''I would not buy it in fundamentalism.''
 After the American presidential election in November, some liberal commentators warned that the nation was on the verge of a takeover by Christian ''fundamentalists.''
 But in the United States today, most of the Protestants who make up what some call the Christian right are not fundamentalists, who are more prone to create separatist enclaves, but evangelicals, who engage the culture and share their faith. Professor Marty defines fundamentalism as essentially a backlash against secularism and modernity. 
 For example, at the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, in Greenville, S.C., students are not allowed to listen to contemporary music of any kind, even Christian rock or rap. But at Wheaton College in Illinois, a leading evangelical school, contemporary Christian music is regular fare for many students. 
 Christian fundamentalism emerged in the United States in the 1920's, but was already in decline by the 1960's. By then, it had been superceded by evangelicalism, with its Billy Graham-style revival meetings, radio stations and seminaries. 
 The word ''fundamentalist'' itself has fallen out of favor among conservative Christians in the United States, not least because it has come to be associated with extremism and violence overseas. 
 Fundamentalism in non-Christian faiths became a phenomenon in the rest of the world in the 1970's with ''the failure and the bankruptcy of secular, nationalistic liberal creeds around the world,'' said Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. Among the ''creeds cracking up'' were nationalism, Marxism, socialism, pan-Arabism and pan-Africanism.
 ''From the 1970's on, you get the growth of not just more conservative religion, but religion with a political bent,'' said Professor Jenkins, the author of ''The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.''
 Now, the future of fundamentalism is murky, with several contradictory trends at work simultaneously. 
 There is little doubt that one fundamentalism can feed another, spurring recruitment and escalating into a sort of religious arms race. In Nigeria's central Plateau State, Muslim and Christian gangs have razed one another's villages in the last few years, leaving tens of thousands of dead and displaced. In rioting in India in 2002, more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed by Hindus in Gujarat state -- retaliation for a Muslim attack a day earlier on a train full of Hindus, which killed 59. 
 Husain Haqqani, a Pakistani political commentator and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said that insurgents in Falluja, Iraq, recruited fighters with the false rumor that Christian crusaders with the Rev. Franklin Graham's aid organization, Samaritan's Purse, were on the way over to convert Muslims. (Mr. Graham is known throughout the Muslim world for his statement that Islam is a ''very evil and wicked religion.'') Fundamentalism does not necessarily lead to intolerance, said Professor Jenkins of Pennsylvania State. ''People with very convinced, traditional views can get along together for a very long time,'' he said. ''But sometimes we get into cycles where they can't, and we seem to be in one of those cycles right now.''
 Analysts are also seeing signs of a backlash as religious believers grow disenchanted with movements that have produced little but bloodshed, economic stagnation and social repression. 
 In last year's elections in India, voters repudiated the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist group whose cadres had helped stir up violence in some Indian states against Muslims and others. 
 And in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, mainstream Islamic groups in September helped elect as president a secular general who had been relatively outspoken about the threat posed by the radical group Jemaah Islamiyah, which is responsible for several acts of terrorism, including the bombing in Bali in 2002. 
 Fundamentalist movements also stumble because they plan for the overthrow, but not for the governing. Half the Muslim world is illiterate, Mr. Haqqani said, but the Taliban didn't make a dent in improving literacy when it ruled in Afghanistan. If Iran had a free and fair plebiscite today, Professor Marty said, ''the ayatollahs would be dumped.'' 
 For reasons like this, said R. Scott Appleby, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame and director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, ''it would be misleading to say fundamentalism is on the rise now.'' He added: ''I would say we're just more aware of it because these people are better organized, more mobile and more vocal than ever before.''
 In 2003, Professor Appleby and two other scholars, Gabriel A. Almond and Emmanuel Sivan, published ''Strong Religion,'' a book based on research done with Professor Marty for the Fundamentalism Project. The book's subtitle was the ''The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World.'' 
 NOW, Mr. Appleby said, ''There is some evidence, some literature that says fundamentalism is on the decline, that it has peaked or is peaking precisely because it has a tendency toward violence and intolerance, and those ultimately don't work. They lead to bloodshed, loss of life, and no recognizable economic upturn, and there is an exhaustion with it.''
 That is not to say that he does not foresee more bitter, sometimes violent religious clashes. By their very nature, fundamentalists endure because they are motivated by transcendant ideas like salvation or, in some places, martyrdom. Mr. Appleby said he did not expect to see growth, but a persistence of ''deadly pockets of would-be revolutionaries who are empowered to a greater degree than ever by a little technological savvy and organizational ability.''
 The American government is poorly prepared to make the necessary distinctions between what is merely religious fervor and what is potentially dangerous fundamentalism, said Thomas F. Farr, who left his post as director of the office of international religious freedom in the State Department about a year ago.
 ''Most of my foreign service friends would rather have root canal than talk to a Muslim imam about religion,'' said Mr. Farr, who now works with the Institute for Global Engagement, a Washington-based group working on international religious freedom. 
 What they need to ask, he said, is: ''Do these religions have within them exclusivist tendencies in an absolutist sense, or can they be open to other human beings outside their circle? These are inevitably theological questions.''


 UNITED STATES (94%);  BRAZIL (93%); KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (92%);    NIGERIA (92%); WESTERN EUROPE (90%); CENTRAL AMERICA (88%); ASIA (79%); NORTH & SOUTH AMERICAS (58%)




8


   


January 9, 2005 Sunday  




 Hearts, Minds and Flood Relief

 
THE best thing to happen to the image of the United States in the Muslim world last week may have been the stupidity of one lost water buffalo.
 After the cow closed the airport in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, by fatally colliding with the landing gear of an aid plane, helicopters from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln swooped in to save the day, delivering tons of food to victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami. 
 And, as noted by the British Broadcasting Corporation (better known and better trusted than most American news media), the pilots even disregarded a government demand that they stop rescuing injured villagers because the city hospital was full. Instead, they brought dozens back to a field station hastily set up by Navy doctors. 
 News photographers were allowed to capture it all, of course, and the pictures flashed around the world.
 As he toured the devastated region last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged after some prodding that he also hoped the American aid effort would help rebuild a relationship with the Islamic world that has crumbled into desert dust and gunpowder. 
 ''We'd be doing it regardless of religion,'' Mr. Powell said. ''But I think it does give the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action.''
 It won't hurt, said a half-dozen experts on Islamic politics in the United States, Egypt, Turkey and Lebanon, but it probably won't help, either. As any reader of Middle Eastern tales knows, beach debris can be dangerous: the genie in the bottle may grant your wish -- or take out years of pent-up fury on you.
 Also, the recent history of American humanitarian efforts in Muslim societies is not a happy one.
 A mission to feed war-torn Somalia disintegrated into the infamous ''Black Hawk Down'' shootout, bodies dragged in the streets and a quick departure. 
 The slaughter of Muslim Bosnians and Muslim Kosovars by Orthodox Serbs in the former Yugoslavia was halted by American bombing. But the world never saw the operation as a rescue of Muslims, because the conflict was so intra-European, albeit along fault lines created by the former Ottoman Empire.
 The invasion of Afghanistan was seen as a hunt for Osama bin Laden, with development money and a dash of democracy added because the Taliban had to be toppled. 
 More important, all the experts said that anti-Americanism in Muslim countries is rooted in real anger over real policies: America's unwavering support for Israel, the war in Iraq, torture at Abu Ghraib and support for corrupt but pro-American regimes.
 ''To think that aid would make people overlook all the other reasons to criticize the U.S. -- it's naive, it's racist, it's almost insulting,'' said Rami G. Khouri, editor of The Star in Beirut. ''We admire the U.S. for a lot of things, including its generosity. But even if it doubles its aid, we're still going to criticize it for its policies.''
 At the same time, said Abdel Moneim Said, director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, ''sophisticated people, people with influence, can distinguish between the U.S., whose image is humanistic, and the policies of the Bush administration.'' 
 Parenthetically, it should be noted that, with the exception of Indonesia, the hardest-hit areas are not Muslim. Sri Lanka's separatist Tamils are mostly Hindus and its ruling Sinhalese mostly Buddhists. India's southeast coast is largely Hindu, with many Christians. Most Thais are Buddhist, and in that country, about half of the tsunami's victims were foreigners. The wave virtually missed the heavily Muslim shorelines of Bangladesh and Malaysia.
 Still, the world is watching, and while the United States would have hurt its image by doing little, it may not gain much by doing a lot. 
 ''People are used to seeing the U.S. insignia on bags of rice during famines,'' said Michael A. Sells, an expert on Islam at Haverford College. Initially scorned as stingy for offering only $15 million, the United States raised its ante several times, eventually reaching $350 million, plus whatever the Pentagon spends. International meetings began to sound like a pledge banquet with a pass-around microphone. 
 But conspicuously absent in the bidding wars were the oil-rich Arab states and Islamic charities, and Egyptian and Turkish papers chided their governments for doing so little -- in Turkey's case, for even failing to observe the three minutes of silence for the victims that Europe held, according to Ilter Turan, a professor of political science at Istanbul's Biligi University. 
 The Gulf States should pledge $3 billion, Mr. Khouri insisted. ''Asian workers built those countries,'' he said. 
 At the same time, leadership in heroic humanitarian missions carries risks. American personnel in Aceh could find themselves in yet another land full of explosive, mission-damaging surprises.
 Aceh separatists seeking an Islamic state fought Jakarta during the decades when Indonesia was a staunch American ally in the cold war. The 40,000 government troops controlling the province have been accused by Human Rights Watch of torture, kidnappings and secret executions. Now those troops are working in the relief effort, so the American military must work with them -- and conceivably, with the guerrillas they were just hunting.
 Nor is fundamentalism limited to Aceh. The Islamic Defenders Front, a Jakarta group running its own small aid efforts, was quoted by Al Jazeera as saying that it expected female American sailors to wear concealing black robes. That was ignored, and one would append ''of course,'' except that until 2002, American military women in Saudi Arabia were required to wear black robes and head scarves when off base.
 Late reports from Banda Aceh said that relief efforts there were fraying because overlapping European charities and United Nations agencies lacked a clear command structure, and had rejected the one offered by the U.S. Navy to avoid appearing to be instruments of an American military operation.
 To add another highly touchy subject: Aceh is a center of human trafficking to Southeast Asia's sweatshops and child brothels, and there have already been reports of children kidnapped from refugee camps.
 AND, in a disturbing echo of the Sept. 11 canard that thousands of Jews were warned to stay away from the World Trade Center, rumors have circulated that the tsunami was set off by an American or Israeli nuclear test. The supposed proof was the warning of the coming wave received by the American military base on Diego Garcia.
 There is one Muslim country that will surely not be moved by images of American beneficence. In Iraq, where electricity for televisions is intermittent and the war is still the front-page news, there was little evidence that people were paying attention to tsunami relief. 
 In Falluja, Iraqis returning to their ruined homes were given one bottle of water and one emergency food pack per person, and a set of yellow flowered sheets for each family. To children, the Marines gave lollipops.


 UNITED STATES (98%);  IRAQ (93%); ISRAEL (92%); SERBIA (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA (79%); KOSOVO (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); LEBANON (79%); EGYPT (79%); TURKEY (79%)




8


  


January 9, 2005 Sunday  




 Americans are most generous

 
The United Nations and the world are always complaining about the United States either doing too much or not doing enough. America can't win in the eyes of the world. They say America is too involved in Iraqi sovereignty and the affairs of the Middle East, particularly in helping Israel. Then they complain that America hasn't sacrificed enough soldiers in Iraq to make Iraq safer. Gripe, gripe, gripe!
American taxpayers are the most generous people on earth. American taxpayers send their sons and daughters around the world to fight for freedom. They send relief money around the world when disasters strike, and they send missionaries and relief workers to help disadvantaged nations around the globe. When will the American taxpayer say enough is enough? Probably never. The American taxpayer also is the most tenacious citizen who gladly supports our government to do what's right, whether the U.N. or the world appreciate it or not. God bless America. Terry Hubbard Oklahoma City 
Everyone chip in
With the tsunami relief pledges totaling $2 billion and President Bush's pledge currently at $350 million, it's rather amazing just how many seem to want to complain because Bush hasn't pledged more. Historically, the United States has supplied at or about 40 percent of all aid given around the world. Isn't it time the rest of the world started picking up their own fair share of the tab? I have no problem with helping those in need, but no matter how much we give they always want more and complain about us giving "so little." Isn't helping those in need the moral duty of all? Gerald Eichler Duncan
All pitching in
I don't know if God will judge us as a nation for all the innocent lives destroyed in war, and with all the weapons, mines and bombs we have sold to dictators and evil regimes all over the world. But I do hope He judges us as a nation for our willingness to help those most in need after the disaster in Indonesia -- a nation full of Christians, Jews, atheists, Muslims and everything in between. I have never been more proud to be an American. Robert Brian Mulhall
Borrowing trouble
It isn't wise for the United States to borrow money to send for disaster aid. We need to restrict our elected officials to spending only the money that's in hand. Jim Martin Newcastle
Children come first
It's alarming that Arkansas Judge Timothy Fox and the American Civil Liberties Union chose to protect gay rights instead of defenseless children. State child welfare agencies are held accountable for the actions of foster parents. They strive to place children in the safest environment possible and applicants should be held to the strictest requirements. We must demand that judges and the ACLU always protect the children first, or next they'll be protecting the rights of pedophiles. Betty Johnson Moore
Shaky indeed
Regarding "Shaky start; Hiring casts doubt on commissioner" (Our Views, Dec. 30): I have felt that way even since before the bribery allegations against Brent Rinehart. I think he was a "good 'ole boy" on the city council, and I think he still is, especially with developers. We don't need to go back to good 'ole boy politics. I thought we were making progress here. Heck, the guy can't even run a profitable business, not to mention his IRS problems. Richard McKinney Oklahoma City

  IRAQ (95%); MIDDLE EAST (92%); ISRAEL (92%); INDONESIA (79%)




8


  
 
The Tampa Tribune (Florida)

January 9, 2005 Sunday  




 Tsunami's Reach

 
Deaths: At least 1
Free elections in 2002 saw a move away from one-party rule. Although a hub for trade and finance in East Africa, Kenya is hampered by corruption and beset by drought.
Population: 32 million
Per Capita Income: $390 
Religions: Christianity (majority), indigenous beliefs, Islam
Government: republic
Industry: consumer goods, agricultural products processing, petroleum refining
Exports: tea, horticultural products, coffee
SOMALIA
Deaths: at least 290
Since 1991, civil unrest and factional fighting have beset the country and undermined economic development.
Population: 8.3 million
Per Capita Income: $108
Religion: Islam
Government: parliamentary
Industry: sugar refining, textiles
Exports: livestock, bananas
INDIA
Deaths: At least 10,000
A broad-based economy, from agriculture and crafts to modern industries, has brought strong economic growth since 1990. A sovereignty dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir, overpopulation and poverty are key concerns.
Population: 1.06 billion
Per Capita Income: $530
Religions: Hinduism (majority), Islam, Christian, Sikh
Government: federal republic
Industry: textiles, chemicals, food processing
Exports: gemstones, engineering goods, clothing
BANGLADESH
Deaths: At least 2
Monsoon rains bring major flooding each year to this impoverished nation. Two-thirds of the workers are in agriculture. The United States is the dominant export partner.
Population: 141 million
Per Capita Income: $400
Religions: Islam (majority), Hinduism
Government: parliamentary democracy
Industry: cotton textiles, jute, garments
Exports: jute, garments, seafood
MYANMAR
Deaths: At least 90
Overseas assistance virtually ceased after the ruling junta refused to give up power after elections in 1990. Poverty is abject despite exceptional national resources. Major trade partners are Thailand, China and Singapore.
Population: 42.7 million
Per Capita Income: $1,233
Religions: Buddhism (majority), Christianity, Islam, animism
Government: military regime
Industry: agricultural processing, apparel, wood and wood products
Exports: garments, gas, wood products
MALAYSIA
Deaths: at least 65
The economy surged during the technology boom but suffered a downturn during the late 1990s. It has rebounded in recent years.
Population: 23.5 million
Per Capita Income: $3,780
Religion: Islam (majority), Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism
Government: constitutional monarchy
Industry: electronics, rubber processing, logging
Exports: electrical goods, timber, palm oil, rubber
TANZANIA
Deaths: at least 10
Tanzania, whose economy is based on agriculture, is one of the world's poorest countries. Last year the European Commission approved a $19 million humanitarian aid package and the International Monetary Fund approved a $4.2 million loan to help reduce poverty.
Population: 36.6 million
Per Capita Income: $290
Religion: Islam (majority), indigenous beliefs, Christianity
Government: republic
Industry: agricultural processing, diamond and gold mining, oil refining
Exports: cashews, coffee, minerals
SEYCHELLES
Deaths: 0
Gained independence from Great Britain in 1976. Tourism drives the island nation's economy.
Population: 80,832
Per Capita Income: $7,480
Religion: Christianity
Government: republic
Industry: tourism, coconut and vanilla processing
Exports: fish
MALDIVES
Deaths: at least 80
Tourism is the largest industry, accounting for 90 percent of tax revenue. After unrest in August, the island nation's president pledged to create a more representative government.
Population: 339,330
Per Capita Income: $2,300
Religion: Islam
Government: republic
Industry: tourism, fish processing, shipping
Exports: fish, garments
SRI LANKA
Deaths: At least 30,680
Decades of ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil separatists ended with a cease-fire in 2002. Many Sri Lankans work abroad, sending back $1 billion a year. The United States is the major export partner.
Population: 19.9 million
Per Capita Income: $930
Religions: Buddhism (majority), Hinduism, Christianity, Islam
Government: republic
Industry: electronics, information technology, rubber processing
Exports: tea, textiles, rubber, gems
THAILAND
Deaths: At least 5,290
The Muslim-majority southern provinces are embroiled in an insurgency that began in January 2004.
Population: 65.9 million
Per Capita Income: $2,190
Religion: Buddhism (majority), Islam, Christianity, Hinduism
Government: constitutional monarchy
Industry: tourism, textiles, tin
Exports: electrical equipment, computers, textiles
INDONESIA
Deaths: At least 104,050
Terrorism, separatist movements,corruption and unequal distribution of resources give Indonesia a poor climate for foreign investment. Japan is its dominant trading partner.
Population: 238.4 million
Per Capita Income: $810
Religions: Islam (majority), Christianity, Buddhism
Government: republic
Industry: petroleum and natural gas, textiles, apparel
Exports: consumer electronics, petroleum, wood
Tribune research by JODY HABAYEB, BUDDY JAUDON and MICHAEL MESSANO;
Sources: CIA World Factbook 2004, The World Bank Data & Statistics, 2003, International Institute for Strategic Studies
Copyright © 2005, The Tampa Tribune and may not be republished without permission. E-mail library@tampatrib.com

 SOMALIA (93%); TANZANIA, UNITED REPUBLIC OF (93%); KENYA (93%); MALAYSIA (92%); SEYCHELLES (92%);  AFRICA (92%); THAILAND (92%); EASTERN AFRICA (92%);  ASIA (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%); CHINA (79%); MALDIVES (79%); EUROPE (79%); SINGAPORE (79%);  PAKISTAN (79%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (51%)




8


  



January 9, 2005 Sunday  




 Aftershocks From Asia

 
 The catastrophic wall of water that swept away so many lives late last month in South Asia provided another of those unexpected tests for news organizations. Once again, The Post's experienced staff of foreign correspondents rose to the occasion. Reporters in Indonesia and India were on the scene quickly. Others from bureaus in China and Europe joined in, as well as reporters from the Washington staff. Within days, The Post had 10 reporters (but no photographers, something that was left to the wire services) spread throughout the devastated areas. 
Adding a personal and chilling sense of what it felt like on the first day of the calamity was an account by Washington-based reporter Michael Dobbs, who was vacationing with his family in Sri Lanka and was in the water when the tsunami struck. Dobbs, a veteran foreign correspondent, went on to report the destruction and huge loss of life elsewhere on the island.  
Ironically, it was another piece by Dobbs -- this one on the front of Style on Jan. 3 -- that produced the only critical note from readers. This piece, like the first one, was personal and focused on the family, especially a brother who owns an island in Sri Lanka, as well as on other  guests who had joined their group on the island and, oddly, some cheese that had been brought from England. The story was candid and provided another slice of reaction. But it "reeked of privilege," as one reader put it, and drew several complaints as being "embarrassing" and alien to the catastrophe at hand, and reflecting a "lack of judgment" by the paper. 
Yet a front-page story from Washington, by John F. Harris and Robin Wright, drew the most criticism. The Dec. 29 story reported that the Bush administration more than doubled its financial aid to victims of the tsunami "amid complaints that the vacationing President Bush has been insensitive to a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions." 
The story  went on to say that "domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise. Skeptics said the initial aid sums -- as well as Bush's decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy -- showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia." It added that there had been repeated inquiries from reporters about his public absence. On Dec. 30 Bush made his first public statement about the tsunami after  it hit  on Dec. 26. 
The Post story provoked scores of e-mails and phone calls, almost all of them critical. Readers accused The Post of using the tragedy to bash the president, and many said they wanted to know "who are all these skeptics doing the complaining besides Harris and Wright?" as one put it. 
My view is that this story did have flaws in the way it was presented. 
 On the other hand, I think the paper did the right thing in reporting this story and putting it on Page One. Almost from the start it was clear that an extraordinary natural disaster had struck several countries in Asia. The population in the hardest-hit country, Indonesia, is overwhelmingly Muslim. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, countries and leaders around the world voiced support and sympathy for the United States. But for the first three days of this tragedy there was no visible sign -- beyond  a written statement issued by the White House -- of the American president, something that people around the world look for in a crisis. And there was only a small initial pledge of U.S. government aid. Since then, U.S. aid of all types has vastly expanded. But first impressions are important and the messages they convey, even if unintended, can linger.  
 None of this means that the president was not horrified by the disaster or that he didn't intend to do a lot more and say more publicly as the situation unfolded. But at a time when many people think that the media are too timid, The Post was the first paper among those I look at regularly that gave  prominent attention to this story, which was timely, factual and observable. 
 The problem with the story is that it did not back up the claim that "domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise." There was only one substantial on-the-record quotation in the story, from the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie H. Gelb, that carefully summed up the major components of the situation. 
At the same time, Post editors, once again, routinely allowed an anonymous White House official to take a dig in the same story at former president Bill Clinton, who had spoken up before Bush about the disaster. The unnamed official said Bush "didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' " This provoked other reader complaints. 
This was a legitimate story by alert reporters that was made unnecessarily vulnerable to criticism because the language conveyed a political tone to some readers yet was not sufficiently supported by content. That not only diminishes the impact of what is being brought to the attention of readers but also poses risks for news organizations in today's superheated political environment.  
Michael Getler can be reached by phone at 202-334-7582 or by e-mail at ombudsman@washpost.com. 

 UNITED STATES (94%); SRI LANKA (93%); INDIA (93%);  ASIA (93%);   THAILAND (79%); SOUTHERN ASIA (73%); ENGLAND (57%)




8


   


January 8, 2005 Saturday  




 Brothers in Alms

 
AROUND the Islamic world it is common currency that Muslims are perpetual victims of Western and Zionist conspiracies. The bill of particulars includes the handling of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Israel's inequitable treatment of the Palestinians, and the deaths of thousands of civilians in Iraq -- as a result first of United Nations sanctions after the Persian Gulf war, and more recently of the American occupation. The most articulate spokesman of such views is, of course, Osama bin Laden. 
 Yet when Muslims are suffering, it is usually the West, and often the United States, that takes the lead in helping. For instance, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Washington mounted its largest covert aid program since Vietnam to help the Afghan resistance; when Somalis were starving in the early 1990's, President George H.W. Bush sent 25,000 American troops to help relief efforts; when Serbs were massacring Bosnian Muslims in the mid-1990's President Bill Clinton (belatedly) directed the United States Air Force to bomb Serbian positions, which led to the Dayton accords. 
  More recently, it was the United States that overthrew the tyrannical government of the Taliban, a regime recognized only by three Muslim countries: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. Other than Turkey, no Muslim nation has sent troops to Afghanistan to help stabilize the poorest country in the Islamic world (a few Muslim states, including Jordan, offered token deployments but were turned down).
 Now the same pattern -- action by Western countries and inertia from Muslim states -- can be seen in the efforts to provide relief for those hardest hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami. While 100,000 of the victims are from Aceh, the most Islamic of Indonesia's provinces, Muslim countries are contributing a relative pittance. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is contributing the most: a paltry $30 million, about the same as what Netherlands is giving and less than one-tenth of the United States contribution. And no Arab governments participated in the conference in Jakarta on Thursday where major donors and aid organizations conferred over reconstruction efforts.
 This anemic effort on the part of the richest countries is emblematic of a wider political problem in the Islamic world. For all of the invocations by Muslim leaders of the ummah, or the global community of believers, they typically do little to help their fellow Muslims in times of crisis. 
 Arab leaders and their toothless talking shops like the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference are excellent at denouncing problems in Palestine and Iraq, but most stood silent as a million died in the war between Iraq and Iran during the 1980's. When President Hafez al-Assad of Syria massacred some 20,000 people after an Islamist uprising in the city of Hama in 1982, there were no expressions of outrage from the Islamic Conference. Egypt routinely tortures political prisoners, untroubled by fears that other Arab leaders will seriously condemn such actions. 
 Perhaps the generosity of Western countries will spur Islamic states to recognize that invocations of religious Muslim solidarity will do little to feed the millions of Muslims who remain acutely vulnerable to disease and starvation in the aftermath of this enormous natural catastrophe. 
 There have been a few positive signs in recent days. Spurred by criticism, Saudi state-run television organized a telethon this week that raised private pledges of more than $75 million, and the Islamic Development Bank has pledged $500 million.
 Much remains to be done, however. The Persian Gulf countries that are reaping a bonanza from record oil prices should send a meaningful percentage of those windfall profits to their fellow Muslims devastated by the tsunami, rather than lining the pockets of their ruling families. After all, zakat, the giving of charity, is one of the five pillars of Islam.


 UNITED STATES (98%); AFGHANISTAN (94%);   ISRAEL (92%); SAUDI ARABIA (92%); INDONESIA (92%); GULF STATES (92%); CUBA (90%); JORDAN (79%); BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA (79%); SOMALIA (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); NETHERLANDS (79%); SERBIA (79%); UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (79%); IRAN,  (79%); TURKEY (79%); PAKISTAN (79%); ASIA (79%); SYRIA (79%)




8


  


January 8, 2005 Saturday  




 Why?; 
Spiritual relevance of tragedy varies among world's faiths

 
While Oklahoma's faith community rushed to deliver aid in the wake of deadly tsunamis on the other side of the world, there were no easy answers to offer those asking why the monumental disaster happened.
There are scientific explanations of what occurred, but the spiritual relevance of the tragedy depends upon whom you talk to. However, many faith leaders agree on one thing: Grief over the catastrophe blurs the lines of denomination and faith.
The tragedy, they say, underscores the importance of global unity.
"If you can look past the rising death toll and the devastation to buildings and the environment, you can see people looking beyond ethnic lines, political differences, religious differences to help people who are hurting," said the Rev. Patrick McAndrew, pastor of Unity Church of Oklahoma City. 
"This is God working, moving people closer together."
Marty Grubbs, pastor of Crossings Community Church, said, "We know that in this world there will be sickness, evil, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, droughts. But we know we can turn to Him for peace, patience, strength in those times."
Meanwhile, most of the victims of the disaster follow faith traditions unfamiliar to most Americans: Hindus in India, Muslims in Indonesia and Buddhists in Sri Lanka.
Buddhists have no trouble reconciling worldly tragedy with a loving god, because they don't believe in a god.
"It is not by any particular god" that such tragedies occur, said Dr. Bhante Gunaratana, a Sri Lankan monk who is the president of the Bhavana Society and abbot of its monastery in West Virginia. "A compassionate god would never do anything like this."
Buddhists believe the universe operates on a strict system of karma, moral justice that spans generations. Bad things that happen to a person in this life are the result of bad things the person did in this life -- or in myriad earlier lives. That means there are never "innocent victims."
"What goes around comes around," said the Rev. Prem Suksawat, the Thai-born religious leader for the Dhamma Cetiya Buddhist Vihara in Boston.
Hindus would mostly agree with that sentiment. Like Buddhism, Hinduism accepts the idea of karma that passes from one lifetime to another. But Hinduism, the faith followed by most people in India, also includes a belief in a loving god who affects peoples' lives.
Unlike most Western faiths, Hinduism has no universally recognized authorities, texts or doctrines. Rituals and practice change from region to region.
But Hindus generally agree that there is one all-powerful god who manifests in many forms, male and female. And that god can sometimes send messages through natural events.
A recent deepa puja, similar to a candlelight vigil, attended by more than 100 devotees recently in Dallas, included a prayer for the dead to that single, highest god: "The light symbolizes the divine power of God, the brightest and most sacred of all. Similarly, the light that emanates from the departed souls is also powerful and sacred. We pray that these two lights merge, symbolizing the unification of the immortal soul of God."
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Rev. Jerry Falwell suggested that God was sending a message about American immorality by allowing the attack. Some Hindu leaders are searching for similar meanings in the tsunami tragedy, said Chandrashekar Narayanan, a priest at the DFW Hindu Temple.
"There is a lot of sin that is going on," said Narayanan, who was born in Tamil Nadu, the Indian state hardest hit by the killer waves.
But while Falwell focused on current events as an explanation for his God's wrath, Hindus consider a much longer time frame. Maybe modern leaders are sinning. But maybe hundreds or even thousands of years of bad karma finally added up to a catastrophic tragedy.
"Whenever the cosmic order of life is disrupted, these events can happen," said Dr. Pemmaraju N. Rao, past chairman of the Hindu Temple of San Antonio, Texas. He grew up in Andhra Pradesh, a southeastern Indian state also hit by tsunamis.
Meanwhile, Indonesia has more Muslims than any other country in the world, almost 210 million. The Indonesian island of Sumatra was closest to the center of the earthquake. Residents of Aceh, the quake-wracked northern part, follow a particularly orthodox Muslim practice.
Muslim explanations for tragedy share elements of Jewish and Christian belief. That's not surprising, because Islam shares roots with those faiths. Somewhat altered versions of Jesus, Mary, Moses, Abraham and other figures familiar to Jews and Christians are found in the Quran.
Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam teaches that God is the ruler of the world and has a plan that is expressed even in tragedy, said Imam Yusuf Kavakci of the Dallas Central Mosque in Richardson.
"We believe that everything is in the taqdir -- destiny -- predetermined by Allah, the creator," he said.
The Quran teaches that God tests people through events on Earth, he said. Tragedies can also be a signal from Allah. And innocents who suffer in this life will be rewarded the day of judgment with a better position in heaven, he said.
"In a worldly sense, this is bad, but from a point of view of eternal life, it is for their benefit," Kavakci said.
Question leads to 'mystery'
What is God's role in natural disasters such as the tsunami? Several Oklahoma clergy leaders said the answer to this question is not easily found -- but that is to be expected.
"The experience of tragedy in the world has been a mystery to people of all ages," said the Rev. Edward Weisenburger, pastor of Our Lady's Cathedral and vicar general of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.
"The Christian response to tragedy and suffering is prayer and good works. God has given us the ability to bring love and healing into situations of pain and hurt. In this way, we hope to be instruments of God's love and presence, making God visible in the very midst of tragedy and suffering."
Grubbs, at Crossings, said he has heard some people question whether the tsunami is a punishment from God or why God allowed it to happen.
God, he said, has always made it clear that "we live in a fragile and temporary world.
"He does not intervene in bad events. He set this world in motion telling us it would be filled with human sin and imperfection, trials and difficulty. He has promised to help us get through whatever difficulty comes our way. The ultimate relief comes when we exit this fragile and temporary world for the perfect world we long for -- heaven."
The Rev. Jeff Hamilton, associate minister at First Christian Church of Oklahoma City and president of the Interfaith Alliance of Oklahoma, said the assumption that natural disasters are punishment for "sin" has long been touted by people of various religious views and traditions.
The sin and disaster connection has been applied in the Bible's story in Genesis of Noah's Ark and the flood, but it is challenged by the story of Job and Jesus' observations.
Job was righteous, not a sinner, yet he faced great tribulation, Hamilton said. In the New Testament, Jesus said that God causes His rain to fall on the just and the unjust. "Thus, I rule out the punishment for sin thesis" regarding the tsunami, Hamilton said.
"This is not a simple matter," he said. "Since my faith tradition affirms a God who created a good universe, then God indirectly caused tsunami. Yet the whole system of the universe involves shifts and changes that maintain the balance for life.
"This is the best of all possible worlds, as it is said. If we happen to be in the wake of a tornado or a tsunami, we may experience loss of life. But my faith leads me to affirm that God is not indifferent to the suffering. God is in it with us."

 INDIA (93%);  SRI LANKA (92%); 




8


 The New Mexican 


January 8, 2005 Saturday



 UNDERSTANDING YOUR WORLD: U.S. TAKES LEAD IN ORGANIZING LARGEST-EVER AID EFFORT

 
Last week in this column, I took the Bush administration to task for being slow off the mark in reacting to the Indian Ocean tsunami. President Bush seemed, not for the first time, to be a day late and a dollar short. This week, he more than made up for his initial shortfall, and the United States is admirably taking the lead in providing, distributing and coordinating the world's biggest multilateral aid effort. We can be proud.
We are not yet the biggest official aid donor, but that might not be as important as seeing the U.S. Navy helping out in a major way in Indonesia, as well as a personal, hands-on tour by Secretary of State Colin Powell and the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. 
At this point, Australia, with 19 million people, heads the donor list with more than $818 million in emergency aid. Germany is next with $680 million, followed by the European Union with
$529 million, Japan with $500 million and the United States with $350 million.
About 12,600 U.S. military personnel, mostly aboard ships, are involved in relief efforts in Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Dozens of helicopters have been ferrying food, clean water and other supplies to the most stricken areas. These are the things we do especially well, and we are doing them in a big way along the inundated rim of the Indian Ocean. It should go a long way to lessening the sometimes virulent anti-Americanism in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. It's hard to fight goodwill when it's backed up by hands-on medical care, food and clean water. It's the kind of thing al-Qaida can't do.
Others are involved, as well. Australia, just next door to the afflicted area, has sent 350 soldiers to Indonesia, as well as helicopters and four giant C-130 Hercules aircraft. A military field hospital has been set up in Aceh province on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, perhaps the worst affected area in the tsunami region. China's 2.5 million-strong People's Liberation Army, the world's biggest, is also involved in relief operations. The Indian military, the world's fourth biggest with 1.3 million men and women under arms, has some 16,000 personnel involved in relief operations not only in India, one of the stricken countries, but also in Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia.
The point to note here -- and it's an important one -- is that these relief efforts are multinational, bringing together countries that have long records of mutual suspicion, antagonism and noncooperation. China and India have fought undeclared war along India's northern boundary. Japan and China have the coolest of relations, since China has never forgiven Japan for its militarism in the 1930s that laid waste to so much of China and left a death toll in the millions. India and Pakistan have gone to war three times since independence in 1947. Sri Lanka has been wracked with a horrendous civil war between its Tamil and Sinhalese peoples. Mynamar, once known as Burma, is saddled with a government of military thugs, while in Indonesia, Aceh province has been plagued with a bloody separatist movement.
Nevertheless, in the wake of one of recorded history's greatest natural disasters, the region so far has put aside its often bloody encounters to cooperate in acts of mutual survival. Shared disaster means shared interests. How long this shared recognition of mutual interests will last is difficult, if not impossible, to know. In this case, everybody can blame Mother Nature and not each other.
This moment of shared perception, based upon the shared reality of disaster, might not last. But perceptions in foreign relations, as in politics, lie at the core of reality. The enormity of what has happened in the Indian Ocean, home to more than 1 billion people, might be enough to alter perceptions about what have been seen as unbridgeable ethnic and religious differences. A shared common humanity, forged in the horror of natural disaster, might yet be seen as the tie that binds, permitting at least some progress toward the resolution of long-entrenched conflicts.
In other words, in the wake of the earthquake that brought on the tsunami, it just might be that the possibility of a tectonic shift of another kind has opened up. That might be too much to hope for, but there are signs in other parts of the world as well that people are tired of conflict.
Tomorrow, the Palestinians go to the polls to elect a successor to Yasser Arafat. The indications are that the moderate Mahmoud Abbas will win handily. He says the armed intifada has brought only misery for the Palestinians. He is right, of course, despite the Palestinians' justifiable rage about their plight. There are signs that many, perhaps most, Palestinians, agree with him. Extremist Palestinians and Israelis, of course, will do their best to thwart any agreement. They cannot be ignored, because their voices are too important. But perhaps their time is drawing to a close. We can only hope so; the world will be a safer and better place without them.
In fact, the world is at a fascinating and perhaps pivotal point in modern history. China is on the brink of becoming what it was for almost 2,000 years -- the world's leading economic power. From that change, enormous consequences will flow. Historically, China has always looked inward. Will its rising status change its historic perspective? There is much to talk about in the coming year.
William M. Stewart, a former Foreign Service officer and correspondent for Time magazine, lives in Tesuque.

 UNITED STATES (96%); INDONESIA (95%); CHINA (94%); INDIA (93%); JAPAN (93%); SRI LANKA (92%); AUSTRALIA (92%); MALDIVES (79%); THAILAND (79%); EUROPE (79%); GERMANY (71%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (56%)




90 of 120 DOCUMENTS


  



January 8, 2005 Saturday  




 Divining a Reason for Devastation; 
Followers of Various Faiths Differ on Natural, Supernatural Explanations for Tsunami

 
Catastrophes often leave religious leaders fumbling  for explanations. But there has been no shortage of reasons given for the South Asian tsunami that killed more than 147,000 people, many of them children.  
In Banda Aceh, Indonesia, the hardest-hit area in the world's most populous Muslim country, imams blamed the Dec. 26 tsunami on lay Muslims who were shirking their daily prayers and following a materialistic lifestyle. Others said Allah was angry that Muslims were killing Muslims in ongoing civil strife.  
In Israel, Sephardic chief rabbi Shlomo Amar, one of the country's top religious leaders, called the disaster "an expression of God's wrath with the world. The world is being punished for wrongdoing -- be it people's needless hatred of each other, lack of charity, moral turpitude."  
In Sri Lanka, which recorded the most fatalities after Indonesia, Buddhist survivors told the story of a tsunami that flooded the island kingdom 2,200 years ago when a king killed a Buddhist monk in a fit of anger. They wondered which political leader angered the sea gods this time.  
On the Internet, self-appointed prophets said the reason was God's anger at the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries hit by the tsunami, or His displeasure at the number of abortions worldwide. Some said the large-scale tragedy was a sure sign that the world will end soon.  
Other commentators were less ready to assign responsibility to an irate divinity, instead pointing to the vicissitudes of nature.  
"I personally don't attach any theological significance to this -- I listen to what the scientists say," Greek Orthodox theologian Costas Kyriakides in Cyprus told Reuters. "God is always the fall guy. We incriminate Him completely unjustly." 
Such a position begs the question of whether a creator-god exerts control in the world. But for many people, the "nature did it" response provides a legitimate explanation for the disaster and the widespread death it has caused, according to scholars and theologians.  
Hindus, for example, generally reject the idea of a vindictive god bringing destruction to the world, said Ariel Glucklich, an associate professor of theology at Georgetown University and a specialist in Hinduism. Krishna and other major gods who participate in human history are "always unfailingly on the side of good," he said. 
But in Hinduism as in Buddhism, a powerful force is said to be at work: karma, the belief that a person's fate is related to actions in previous lives and current existence, Glucklich said. Karma is a "non-divine mechanism," meaning there is no god keeping track in a Book of Life and doling out punishment. In general, people are responsible for what happens to them. 
 For example, a tsunami victim whose bicycle broke down, leaving him stranded on the beach, might be at fault because he failed to maintain his bicycle properly -- perhaps as a result of drinking too much. But karma is also interactional, meaning that children who died in the tsunami might have died because of actions of their parents, Glucklich said.  
Buddhists also look to the natural order when dealing with tragedy, said Bhante K. Uparatana, a native of Sri Lanka and chief monk and founder of the International Buddhist Center in Silver Spring.  
Despite experiencing great sadness for family and friends lost in the tsunami, Sri Lankan Buddhist immigrants in the Washington area have not come to him with the question "Why?" Instead, Uparatana said, they accept the Buddhist teaching that everything is impermanent and they look for ways to improve their lives by eradicating bad karma.  
Any natural disaster, whether a tsunami or the four hurricanes that hit Florida last year, offers a chance to learn something, he said. "We have to be more generous, more compassionate and show more lovingkindness to one another and respect each other. " 
Disasters show how quickly death can come, "that it can happen to me, my family, my friend, my enemy," Uparatana said.  
Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is more likely than Hinduism or Buddhism to view the tsunami as an act of God, a reminder of human weakness "that puts an end to the illusion of human omnipotence," said Sulayman S. Nyang, a Muslim and a professor of African studies at Howard University who has written and lectured extensively on the Islamic faith. But the devastating natural event probably will stimulate increased theological investigation into the relationship between humanity and the environment, he said. 
 The "religion of the environment" includes such questions as whether the Earth, through God's action or its own force, lashes out because people are poor stewards of forests, animals and natural resources, Nyang said. He said it also addresses the interrelationships of nations and cultures, and how war and other violent acts can affect the balance of nature. 
"God uses nature to remind humans not only about humanity, but sinfulness as well," he said. "When humans bleed, nature bleeds, too. And when nature lashes out, it's more destructive." 
Rabbi Michael Lerner, founding editor of Tikkun, a magazine devoted to "the healing and transformation of the planet," presented a similar theme this week in an online newsletter. 
Part of his answer to the question "How could God have allowed this to happen?" includes a point of view that "deserves some continuing attention -- the answer from karma or universal justice," he writes.  
Referring to the earthquake that caused the tsunami, he goes on to say, "The tectonic moves of the earth are part of a totally integrated moral system that has been in place since the earth began to evolve. That moral system, described by the Bible, tells us that the physical world will be unable to function in a peaceful and gentle way until the moral/spiritual dimension manifest in the behavior of God's creatures coheres with God's will: that is, is filled with justice, peace, generosity and kindness." 
For Mohammed Abu-Nimer, director of American University's Peacebuilding & Development Institute, the important question is not whether God caused the tsunami but whether people of different faiths and politics will work together in response to the crisis and use that goodwill to keep from "going back to the default mode" of pre-disaster conflicts.  
Thus far, the word from Sri Lanka is good, Abu-Nimer said. He has contacts from a five-year period -- 1995 to 2000 -- when he traveled back and forth to Sri Lanka to lead workshops on conflict resolution. Participants included members of various communities in the war-torn nation: Tamil rebels opposing the Sri Lankan government and the Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Christians often at odds with one another.  
 One of his colleagues in Galle, in the south of Sri Lanka, sent an e-mail saying that "new bridges across community are being built," said Abu-Nimer, who before the tsunami hit was scheduled to conduct interfaith workshops in Sri Lanka. He hopes the workshops will proceed as planned in March. 
Nyang said the tsunami presents an unprecedented opportunity for the United States to increase its "moral currency" while sending financial assistance.  
The tsunami region is populated by members of the world's major faiths -- Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity -- and U.S. moral leadership "can be effectively utilized to give a more beautiful image of America not only to Muslims but to all religious groups," Nyang said. He calls the opportunity "America's Indian Ocean moment." 

  ASIA (92%); SRI LANKA (79%); ISRAEL (79%); CYPRUS (79%)




91 of 120 DOCUMENTS


  



January 8, 2005 Saturday  




 Powell Pledges Long-Term Aid; 
Confirmed Death Toll From Tsunami Rises to 147,000

 
  -- The Bush administration is committed to long-term assistance in the tsunami disaster zone and is prepared to boost its $350 million contribution if more help is needed, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said here Friday on the last stop of a tour of battered countries. 
Only about $50 million of the U.S. pledge has been spent, Powell said. "There is still a line of credit out there for us to use," he told reporters after visiting the island nation of Sri Lanka, where more than 30,000 people died.  
 The known death toll in the region surged again Friday, reaching 147,000 after Indonesian authorities reported the discovery of more than 7,000 bodies, mostly in the town of Meulaboh, the Associated Press reported. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan viewed the ravaged western coast of Sumatra island by helicopter. "I have never seen such utter destruction, mile after mile," he told reporters afterward. "You wonder, where are the people?"  
Donor countries and international organizations have promised more than $4 billion to help people recover from the Dec. 26 tsunami, which struck 12 countries in the Indian Ocean region. 
 Private donations continue to mount as well. A telethon in Saudi Arabia raised $67.4 million in 11 hours, the Associated Press reported. People began filing into a stadium and television studio Thursday in the capital, Riyadh, to place cash and even gold jewelry into glass boxes in the 12-hour telethon, which stretched into the early hours of Friday morning. State television broadcast it live.  
 A woman in black robes carrying a child took off her gold bracelets and dropped them into a donation box. A primary school student, who refused to give his name, gave his daily allowance of $1.30. King Fahd donated $5.3 million, and Crown Prince Abdullah donated $1.3 million. 
The telethon followed criticism that oil-rich Persian Gulf states had not responded adequately to the crisis, which severely damaged fellow Muslim nation Indonesia.  
 On Wednesday, the Saudi government tripled its tsunami relief pledge to $30 million. The United Arab Emirates has pledged $20 million, while Kuwait and Qatar have each donated $10 million. 
 Syria, a country without oil riches, sent a plane loaded with 40 tons of food, medicine, drinking water and blankets to Indonesia on Thursday. 
 In London, finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrial nations announced Friday that debt repayments by countries hit by the tsunami should be suspended. At a meeting Wednesday, the G-7 governments will ask the Paris Club, an international group of creditor governments, to embrace the idea. 
Powell this week has visited the badly damaged tourist area on Phuket island in Thailand and the isolated Aceh region in Indonesia, a nation where more than 100,000 people lost their lives. He also attended an emergency summit in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. 
 On Friday, he took a 90-mile flight on a Sri Lankan air force helicopter to the southern coastal city of Galle, where more than 4,000 people were killed. During an eight-minute tour of a relief distribution center, he was approached by a volunteer who handed him a sheet of paper with a lengthy poem about the tsunami, written in longhand in red ink. Powell paused to read the poem for half a minute. "I will show this to President Bush," he said, before putting it in his pocket. 
 Then Powell went on a high-speed, 10-minute motorcade tour along the coastal road in Galle to see the massive destruction along the water. Many concrete buildings along both sides of the road were damaged or destroyed, boats had been tossed like toys and the scent of rotting debris was heavy. 
 In Sri Lanka, the United States is distributing $4 million in relief supplies and has committed $10 million for jobs programs to get people back to work through reconstruction projects, Powell said. He announced that the United States would also provide $10 million toward temporary housing for people who are now largely living under plastic sheeting. 
 The Sri Lankan government said nearly 640,000 people had been displaced and more than 110,000 homes damaged or destroyed. 
 U.S. Marines have begun arriving in Sri Lanka, and Powell said their numbers would grow in coming days as engineering teams and medical personnel come ashore. He said he did not know how long they would stay, but Marines who will be rebuilding roads said they had been told their mission would last 90 days. 
 After his trip to Galle, Powell returned to Colombo to meet with President Chandrika Kumaratunga. Powell then flew to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, where this weekend he is scheduled to meet with officials and witness the signing of a peace accord between the Sudanese government and southern rebels.  

 INDONESIA (95%); UNITED STATES (94%); SRI LANKA (92%); SAUDI ARABIA (92%); QATAR (79%); THAILAND (79%); UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (79%); GULF STATES (79%); KUWAIT (79%); SYRIA (79%)




9


 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation 


January 7, 2005 Friday  




 HOW DOES GOD FIGURE INTO ASIA DISASTER?

 
PORTSTEWART, Northern Ireland - Throughout the United Kingdom, following the Christmas tsunami that killed at least 150,000 people and changed the lives of their surviving relatives forever, some are asking how a "loving" God, if He exists, could allow such a catastrophe to happen. Another question is, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
The questions are mostly rhetorical, since by asking them, the questioners don't actually expect, or even desire, an answer. They are asked in an accusatory way, as if the questions themselves indict, try and convict as fools those who believe in God. 
One counterquestion should be: Why do good things happen to bad people? The Scriptures say, "Only God is good." All humanity is diagnosed as "sinful" and "not righteous." Our desires are "only evil all the time." Look it up.
What about a "good God" allowing bad things? Death is the destination of all living organisms. Some die sooner than others. Shouldn't a "good God" provide a way to escape the grave? He has, but that requires faith, which critics and skeptics lack.
Here's another question for those who ask the other questions: If catastrophe proves there is no God, does charity prove He exists? Individuals in Britain have contributed millions of pounds to the tsunami survivors, more than their government. Most of the world's charities helping in the effort are Christian and American.
INDONESIA IS the world's largest Muslim nation, yet Muslim nations, including the fabulously wealthy Saudi regime, have given chump change compared to those countries with majority Christian populations. Don't expect Christians, or Americans, to gain points with those who believe America is the "Great Satan."
Human tragedy is bad enough, but listening to some theologians trying to explain it is doubly irritating. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, wrote a Jan. 2 column for The Sunday Telegraph about the tsunami disaster. The front-page headline about the column proclaimed, "Archbishop of Canterbury admits: This makes me doubt the existence of God."
The headline writer misrepresented the archbishop's view, but so convoluted was Dr. Williams' statement about the disaster - as noted by an editorial the next day - it is understandable how the writer of the headline reached his conclusion. Theologians should offer hope and truth. The pagans serve up enough doubt.
RATHER THAN attempt to bring mankind up to God's level, many skeptics try to bring God down to man's level, remaking Him in a human image and thus encouraging the false view that God is someone who is supposed to make us happy and prosperous. If we are unhappy and not rich (or not rich enough), we will deny He exists. Prosperity and good health provide their own motives for unbelief, as C.S. Lewis and numerous other thinkers have eloquently written.
When Dr. Williams says prayer provides no "magical solutions" and most of the stock Christian answers to human suffering do not "go very far in helping us, one week on, with the intolerable grief and devastation in front of us," where would he suggest we turn, if not to God?
As with most liberal clerics who question God, more than trust Him, Dr. Williams offers nothing from Scripture for comfort and explanation. It was the same when Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in that Paris car crash. Clergymen were interviewed, but none offered more than empty platitudes. What good are the clergy if this is the best they can do? Why are they drawing salaries paid by parishioners who might properly expect, even demand, more?
LET ME, A nontheologian, offer some help to the skeptics. In Job, Chapter 1, Job suffers a catastrophe when God allows Satan to take away his children and worldly goods to test his faith. Job makes two statements that ought to be remembered and repeated in times like these.
The first is, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised." Job also says in response to his skeptical and nagging wife, "Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?"
If you prefer a secular source, consider Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address. Seeking to understand the Civil War catastrophe, Lincoln concluded, "The Almighty has His own purposes."
Those are answers - and questions - that resonate far better than the pap coming from the skeptics and certain theologians who have their degrees, but seem to know less about God and His nature than what causes an undersea earthquake.
Tribune Media Services

 UNITED STATES (93%); ASIA (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (90%); NORTHERN IRELAND (89%); 




9

  
Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA)

January 7, 2005 Friday



 Backtalk

 
THINK ABOUT IT: What is happening to Tyngsboro? If the pay as you throw program isn't bad enough what are they thinking by not having house-to-house leaf pick-up? How are the elderly going to get their bags to the drop-off site?
Tyngsboro
WON'T DONATE: I will not give one dime to the tsunami victims. I vividly remember Muslims in Indonesia dancing in the streets after the World Trade Center tragedy. 
Billerica
WORK HARDER: In tough fiscal times, when employees at private companies don't get a raise they take on more responsibility to get noticed; further their education to get promoted; or fix up their resume to start looking elsewhere. They don't have taxpayers to hold hostage and can't cry to an arbitrator.
North Chelmsford
CALL FOR BACK-UP: I still believe the Lowell police officer should never have entered that house without back-up. The 19-year-old would have been no threat to an overwhelming number of police officers.
No town given
LOTTERY PAYOUT: Massachusetts should allow a lump sum payout on all its lottery games. The state gets its cut right off the top. Someone in later years can't collect the entire amount for himself or his family. Change the rules.
Billerica
DISHEARTENING DISCOVERY: I recently came in for elective surgery and I was appalled to find out the hospital had no bed for me and I had to stay down in the operating room. We should be given a chance to cancel our surgery if there is no room for us.
Chelmsford
BILL HIKE: Thank you, Comcast. My cable bill went up $2.68.
No town given
BLAME DRIVERS: Finally some common sense. I could not agree more with the caller who said not to blame accidents on the weather but on how people drive in that weather.
Lowell
TOO-HIGH TAXES: I think the tax rate in Lowell is outrageous. They are killing us. Everything is going up. We help every other country, but we can't take care of the American people.
Lowell
HIRING PRACTICES: I would like to comment on hiring Tyngsboro's firefighters: If Tyngsboro were to hire anyone but their buddies, it wouldn't be the good old town of Tyngsboro. That is why we don't have any money.
Tyngsboro
SERVICE WANTED: Why didn't the Billerica Water Department work all night to fix the water main break in Pinehurst that was reported at 8 p.m. the night before? Crews didn't show up until the next morning. You raised our water bills, but you don't provide adequate service.
Billerica

 INDONESIA (92%);  




9


   


January 7, 2005 Friday  




 NEWS SUMMARY

 

INTERNATIONAL   A3-14

General Being Sent to Iraq To Review U.S. Strategy
The Pentagon is sending a highly regarded retired four-star general to Iraq to conduct an unusual ''open-ended'' review of the military's entire Iraq policy, including troop levels, training programs for Iraqi security forces and the strategy for fighting the insurgency.   A1

Significant areas of Iraq are still not secure enough for citizens to vote, the commander of American ground forces there said. The acknowledgement came on a day when seven American soldiers were killed. The Iraqi government announced it was extending emergency rule in most areas of the country for 30 more days.   A1

Paul A. Volcker says his investigation into the scandal-tainted oil-for-food program will clarify the roles of Secretary General Kofi Annan and the program's former director, Benon V. Sevan, but will not produce any ''smoking gun.''   A3

U.N. Focus on Relief Effort
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan gently prodded world leaders on how to coordinate the vast tsunami relief effort to follow through on their aid pledges, which now total more than $3 billion. Health officials are warning the death toll could still rise, unless a constant stream of assistance is maintained where poor sanitation and a lack of medical care and disease remain a threat.   A12

The United States military's huge relief effort for tsunami victims is producing something of a political upheaval in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country: America is being praised, even by some of its harshest critics, while Arab countries are being questioned.   A12

The tsunami also hit the eastern United States, though only the tide gauges noticed. The tsunami was so powerful that it swept around the world, with its last residual waves perceptibly jostling tide gauges from Russia's remote northeastern Pacific waters to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the Atlantic.   A14

Congress passed legislation to allow taxpayers additional time to make cash donations to relief organizations addressing the disaster and claim a tax deduction for 2004.   A12

SCIENCE/HEALTH

A Genetic Link to AIDS
A new study by researchers in Texas has found a strong link between a gene that codes part of the immune system and susceptibility to the virus that causes AIDS.   A17

Mandela's Son Dies of AIDS
Nelson Mandela, who has devoted much of his life after leaving South Africa's presidency to a campaign against AIDS, said his son had died of the disease. Mr. Mandela said he was disclosing the cause of his death to focus more public attention on AIDS, which is still a taboo topic among many South Africans.   A3

NATIONAL   A16-20

Nominee Says He Opposes Torture of Terror Suspects
Alberto R. Gonzales, nominated by President Bush to be attorney general, denounced the use of torture against terrorism suspects and promised to abide by international law, even as he came under attack from lawmakers over the government's treatment of prisoners.   A1

Tenet Cited for 9/11 Failures
An internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that officials who served at the highest levels of the agency, should be held accountable for failing to allocate adequate resources to combat terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks, current and former intelligence officials say.   A1

Arrest in 1964 Murders
The most infamous unresolved case from America's civil rights struggle -- the 1964 abduction and killing of three voter-registration volunteers in Mississippi -- was reopened with the arrest of Edgar Ray Killen, a longtime leader of the Ku Klux Klan, the authorities announced.   A1

Retrial in Drowning Case
Andrea Yates, a Texas woman convicted of drowning her five children in a bathtub, was granted a new trial by an appeals court in Houston.   A16

Drug Campaign Called Unlawful
The investigative arm of Congress said that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and distributing TV news segments about the harmful effects of drug use among young people.   A16

Vote Challenged, Then Ratified
Congress officially ratified President Bush's election victory, but not before Democrats challenged the electoral votes from Ohio.   A19

Senator Oppose Bush Plan
Senator Max Baucus of Montana, a Democrat whose support was essential to the enactment of President Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and his Medicare legislation in 2003, said he would oppose the president's Social Security plan this year.   A19

Charges Dismissed in Spy Case
A judge dismissed all charges against a Chinese-American woman accused of using a sexual relationship with an F.B.I. agent to secure national military documents.   A20

NEW YORK/REGION   B1-7

Assembly Wants Members To Be Present for Votes
The New York State Assembly is adopting new rules requiring lawmakers to actually be present in the Capitol when they want to vote on bills. The change alters the current rule that once lawmakers sign in for the day, they are counted as voting ''yes'' on all bills unless they signal otherwise.   B1

Tuition Stability at SUNY
The chancellor of the State University of New York proposed sweeping changes in the way the university sets its tuition, guaranteeing that each class of entering students would not face tuition increases for four years, beginning next fall.   B1

School Accountants Faulted
A new state audit concludes that the accounting firm chosen by the Roslyn, N.Y., school district as its fiscal watchdog was hired without competitive bidding and failed to catch rampant multimillion-dollar corruption -- even after a whistle-blower's tip on thefts of $223,000.   B1

Neediest Cases   B6

WEEKEND   E1-38;E39-46

ESCAPES   F1-10

SPORTSFRIDAY   D1-7

Yankees and Johnson Have Deal
The Yankees and Randy Johnson agreed to a two-year, $32 million contract that will run through the 2007 season. With the new contract in place, Johnson agreed to waive his no-trade clause. The only step remaining to completing the trade of Johnson from Arizona to the Bronx is for him to pass his physical on Monday.   D6

OBITUARIES   A21

Guy Davenport
An author, painter, teacher and scholar whose work ranged from critical essays to translations to poetry, but was most admired for short stories in the modernist tradition of Pound and Joyce, he was 77.   A21

BUSINESS DAY   C1-12

A New Course for Delta
Delta started a price war this week by capping fares and simplifying prices, becoming the first big airline to join forces with low-fare players like Southwest and AirTran. Despite the furor that Delta's action caused, analysts and industry executives said the move was inevitable.   C1

Modest Gain in Holiday Sales
America's merchants hustled for sales this holiday season, marking down a substantial part of their inventories right before Christmas to bring in enough last-minute and post-holiday buyers for a decent, 3.1 percent gain over the previous year.   C1

Saving Pension Insurance
Officials in the Bush administration are close to unveiling a rescue plan for the federal pension-insurance program -- one they hope will be strong enough to save the agency from a costly S.&L.-style bailout, but not so strong that it kills the pension system.   C1

New Head for Paramount
Viacom Inc. named Brad Grey, one of the most prominent talent managers in Hollywood, to be chairman and chief executive of Paramount, its troubled studio.   C2

Business Digest   C1

EDITORIAL   A22-23

Editorials: Mr. Gonzales speaks; the election's last gasp; Nelson Mandela loses a son; Helene Cooper on softly going where Yasir Arafat feared to tread.

Columns: Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman.

Crossword   E29
TV Listings   E37
Public Lives   B2
Weather   D8


 IRAQ (96%); UNITED STATES (94%); SOUTH AFRICA (92%); RUSSIAN FEDERATION (79%);  CANADA (79%)




9


   


January 7, 2005 Friday  




 Once-Critical Indonesians Are Grateful to U.S. for Aid

 
The United States military's huge relief effort for tsunami victims in South Asia is producing something of a political upheaval here, in the world's most populous Muslim country: America is being praised, even by some of its harshest critics, while Arab countries are being questioned.
 ''I am getting messages from friends saying, 'Why have the Muslim countries been so slow and stingy?''' said Goenawan Mohamad, one of the country's leading intellectuals. 
  Washington's campaign against terrorism, its staunch support of Israel and its occupation of Iraq have been widely interpreted by Indonesians as a war on Islam, and the Bush administration's various efforts to influence public opinion have failed to counter that impression. The American military came in for particular criticism in the Muslim world, after the shocking and continuing revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.  
 All of that contributed to a sharp decline in America's image here in the years after Sept. 11, 2001, when Indonesians generally expressed solidarity with the United States. Before the tsunami struck, only some 15 percent of Indonesians had a favorable view of the United States, down from around 65 percent a few years ago.
 Now, though, Indonesians are comparing the small amounts that have been offered by Arab countries with the hundreds of millions offered by the United States, Australia, Europe, Japan and China, said Mr. Mohamad, who like most Indonesians opposed the American invasion of Iraq. 
 A few days ago Koran Tempo, one of the country's major daily newspapers, published a reader's letter asking various radical Islamic organizations here why they were not helping in Aceh. ''Don't only work through violence,'' the writer said. ''Use your money to help, not just to buy equipment to hurt people.''
 The best news for Washington, though, may be no news: the absence of criticism among radical Islamic groups, even of the presence of American soldiers on Indonesian soil. A few weeks ago the mere suggestion of such a thing would have provoked demonstrations. 
 ''That's a surprise, really,'' Dino Djalal, a spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said about the silence of the radicals.
 American soldiers delivering aid have been featured on the front pages of newspapers and on television, in praise not condemnation. But the American honeymoon may prove short, and some cautionary notes were sounded Thursday.
 The American troops have shown themselves to be ''very sweet and humane,'' wrote Irfan Junaidi, a columnist in Republika, an Islamic newspaper. ''There's nothing wrong with that,'' he continued, but then asked whether this picture of American humanitarianism bore any relation to American foreign policy, especially in Iraq.
 For the moment, Indonesia's international image has gained from the attention brought in the aftermath of the destruction. Since the terrorist attack on Bali nightclubs in October 2002, the United States, Australia and other countries have issued travel advisories warning their citizens about terrorist dangers here. The warnings have hurt the country economically, keeping tourists away in great numbers.
 Just three weeks ago, Australia issued one of the most alarming travel warnings, saying it had specific intelligence that terrorists were planning attacks over the Christmas period. It urged its citizens here to leave, and Qantas took the warning so seriously that its airline crews stopped spending the night in Jakarta hotels. 
 The Australian warning specifically mentioned the Hilton Hotel as a place of a possible attack.
 Yet on Thursday, all of the world leaders who have arrived here for the relief effort -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Prime Ministers John Howard of Australia, Wen Jiabao of China and Junichiro Koizumi of Japan; Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain; Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations; the president of the World Bank, James D. Wolfensohn; and a score of aides, ambassadors and senior officials -- were gathered in a conference center here in the shadows of the Hilton.
 Indonesians are not basically anti-American, Mr. Mohamad said. Indeed, while the Islamic extremists can be loud and violent, they account for only a tiny minority, and most Indonesians practice a moderate strain of Islam.
 But whether the good feelings generated by America's relief effort will be enough to overcome the resentment built up over the last several years is a good question, Mr. Mohamad said. ''The criticism will remain, but the sting will be less,'' he suggested. 
 It has helped that President Bush brought out his father and former President Bill Clinton to raise money for the relief effort, Mr. Mohamad said. ''It deflects attention from Bush Jr., who is not the most popular person in the world.''
 Rachmat Witolear, a longtime force in one of the country's largest political parties, Golkar, and the current environment minister, agreed that the relief assistance would improve America's standing here. But how much will depend on how President Bush acts, he said.
 ''It's a good initiative,'' Mr. Witolear said. ''But still he has to be careful because the prevailing view of him being arrogant is still there.''
 The views about the United States assistance are not all positive. Some Indonesians are still smarting over the fact that the Bush administration was slow to respond and at first offered only $15 million. It was only after being criticized by the United Nations, and after other countries had come forth with large pledges, that the United States increased its aid to $350 million, said Nasrul Haq, chairman of the student body at Padjajaran University in Bandung. 
 ''It looks like they are concerned about their ego, that the United States as a superpower doesn't want anyone to beat them,'' he said in a telephone interview.
 Still, as Mr. Mohamad said, on the whole the feeling is good. ''I hope it will last,'' he added.


  INDONESIA (95%); SEYCHELLES (94%); MALDIVES (94%); IRAQ (93%); ASIA (93%);   JAPAN (79%); ISRAEL (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); AUSTRALIA (79%); SOUTHERN ASIA (73%)




9


 
 


January 7, 2005 Friday



 Will Tsunami Aid Reach Terrorists?

 
As billions of dollars are being marshaled by governments and private charities for victims of the tsunami in Asia, concern is spreading that some of that money could be diverted to terrorist organizations.
The concern stems from the fact that the tsunami struck in nations where Muslim extremists are increasingly active. Indeed, there are numerous reports that Al Qaeda-connected charities have already set up shop on the ravaged Indonesian island of Sumatra.
No one wants to warn against sending aid, which is desperately needed for legitimate humanitarian relief, but a number of senior officials in government and finance are telling  that it is urgent that the federal government and private institutions put safeguards in place to make sure the aid money is not diverted to terrorism. 
"I do think it's a real issue," the New York City police commissioner, Ray Kelly, told the Sun yesterday. "People should be generous but also cautious in making sure their contributions are going to be going where they want them to go."
In Congress, staffers preparing legislation to appropriate the American contribution to the tsunami victims are already eyeing further safeguards to make sure Al Qaeda-affiliated organizations do not get a slice of the $350 million President Bush has earmarked for the flood and earthquake relief operations in southern Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. One of the issues that came up this week at the donors conference in Jakarta regarding the more than $3 billion for the victims was which institutions would be the recipients of aid for the on-the-ground relief effort being coordinated by the United Nations.
The author of "Militant Islam in South East Asia," Zachary Abuza, told the Sun yesterday, "They were meeting in Indonesia to decide how the money should be spent and who is best to spend it. The terrorist connections of some charities are a concern to most policy-makers," he said. "The Americans should not give money to these groups but also try to work with known and respected charities on the ground. A lot of the international NGOs, because of the Indonesian campaign in Aceh, do not have their networks set up yet. The American money should go to those charities that are respected rather than to these Indonesian groups with dodgy histories."
Already the Indonesian Mujahadin Council of Indonesia, a group founded by Abu Bakar Bashir, the leader of the terrorist organization responsible for the 2002 Bali resort bombings, has fanned out in the Aceh province offering what they are calling as "spiritual relief." Mr. Bashir, who now resides in an Indonesian prison, was the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, which is listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department for its role in terror attacks throughout Indonesia, including the Bali bombing.
Another group that has rushed to Aceh in the wake of the December 26 disaster is Laskar Mujahadin, an Indonesia-based terror group that is alleged to also have ties to Al Qaeda and is generally regarded as the paramilitary arm of Jemaah Islamiyah. According to the Associated Press, the group has already set up camp on the island of Sumatra, collecting corpses, distributing food, and spreading Islamic teachings. The AP quoted one American official in Aceh as saying they were aware of the threat but were not worried for now because of the presence of the Indonesian military. Foreign Minister Downer of Australia told the wire, "We monitored this but we have no evidence of it being a problem." Nonetheless, the AP reported that a large international charity has already issued orders not to ride in American helicopters, fearing they may be targets.
The Saudi charity, the Medical Emergency Relief Committee, has also solicited donations in the Middle East for the crisis in the Pacific, according to Mr. Abuza. "I was under the impression that the Saudis would shut these charities down," Mr. Abuza, who is a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said of the charity, which he said was one of the chief conduits of cash and supplies for the Laskar Mujahadin. Mr. Abuza said that the Saudi-based charity had produced videos in recent years imploring Indonesians to jihad.
Another charity of concern in the wake of the disaster is the commission of youth against violence, or Kompac. According to Mr. Abuza, Kompac was, between 1996 and 2001, one of the main charities in Indonesia that distributed money and material from the Saudi based al-Haramain foundation, a group closed on June 2 last year by Saudi Arabia for its ties to Al Qaeda.
An assistant professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Chris Jasparro, said he did not think the Islamic organizations mounting relief efforts today would be much of a match for the immediate relief efforts of America or the United Nations. But he cautioned, "These groups tend to be patient and persistent and think in the long term. What happens when this fades from the headlines? Will they stick around and gain credibility? It will take years to rebuild these places."

 INDONESIA (99%); UNITED STATES (94%); ASIA (93%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); THAILAND (79%)




9


 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. 
Palm Beach Post (Florida)

January 7, 2005 Friday  




 INVEST IN DISASTER RELIEF

 
What do Sandra Bullock and the St. Lucie County School District have in common? When responding to the incomprehensible devastation in Asia, they knew their roles.
The star of Speed and Miss Congeniality quickly gave $1 million to the American Red Cross, just as she did after the 9/11 attacks. The fact that, at a reported $15 million per picture, she could afford it doesn't make the gesture less noble. Also this week, Schools Superintendent Michael Lannon called for a 10-day campaign to raise $40,000, which would be $1 for every student, teacher and staff member in a district facing $40 million in damage from Frances and Jeanne. As much as the students and teachers could use the money, Mr. Lannon correctly noted that blue tarps aren't much compared with the destruction halfway around world. 
Then there's the United States, where fortunately the people seemed more compassionate out of the gate than the government did. President Bush took three days to issue a statement on the tsunamis, supposedly waiting for damage evaluations that CNN was providing every hour. Then came the country's embarrassing opening bid of $15 million in aid, later raised to $35 million and then to $350 million. Former President Clinton, who with President Bush I will raise private donations at the request of President Bush II, defended the administration's response. Others have noted that the United States pays roughly one-fifth of the cost to run the United Nations, which will help to coordinate the massive relief and reconstruction effort.
In fact, when it comes to helping the tsunami-battered countries, the U.S. government at this point is a comparative cheapskate. Rather than measure aid on a per-capita basis, a more revealing way to gauge commitment is to base the donation on the size of a nation's economy. Our $350 million is 0.003 percent of gross domestic product. Japan not only is giving more money, $500 million, but the contribution rate is four times higher. France and Britain are giving twice as generously. So is Canada. For those who like to measure by population, Norway, with a population 60 times smaller than the U.S., is giving $180 million, more than half as much money.
Embarrassment also has begun to hit the oil-rich Persian Gulf states, which had been criticized for holding back when so many victims were Muslims. Saudi Arabia's contribution has gone from $10 million to $30 million. But Kuwait is still at $10 million, even though the country has a $10 billion budget surplus and more than half of its residents are immigrant workers from the area where the tsunamis hit.
For the U.S. and other developed nations, the best advice comes from Secretary of State Colin Powell. He called the destruction a security issue. Instability can breed terrorism, and already one Muslim extremist group is trying to gain a foothold in the ravaged section of Indonesia. One month's worth of Iraq money - about $4 billion - would do much in Asia.

 UNITED STATES (96%); ASIA (93%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); UNITED KINGDOM (79%); KUWAIT (79%); GULF STATES (75%); FRANCE (72%)




9

  
  


January 7, 2005 Friday 



 ASIAN ADOPTIONS PUT ON HOLD
HARDEST-HIT COUNTRIES STRICTLY REGULATE FOREIGN PLACEMENTS

 
Katherine and Barry Hart were ready to welcome a second adopted child from Guatemala to their suburban Atlanta home when they saw a greater need in the faces of the tsunami orphans on their TV screen.
"My heart just breaks with those pictures. I called my social worker this morning and said, 'Hold on, I don't if know if we want to do Guatemala anymore. Let's try Thailand,' " said Katherine Hart, who adopted her 2-year-old daughter, Jayden, last winter. 
"I would love to be able to take in even more than one of those children," she said.
But when Hart jumped online, she quickly learned, like thousands of other disappointed couples, that her dream would be next to impossible -- at least for the time being.
The State Department has ruled out, for now, the adoption of children from the stricken countries, which themselves are clamping down -- partly out of fear of sex trafficking and child slavery. Several Western European countries are following a similar policy.
Government and adoption officials say that because of the chaos in the disaster areas, it is going to take some time to identify which children are orphans. Also, they say the preferred practice in a crisis is to place orphans with relatives in their homeland.
"A child whose family has been ripped away by a wave, probably the last thing they need to do is be rushed away to some foreign country," said Cory Barron, spokesman for the St. Louis-based adoption agency Children's Hope International. "We have to think of the child first."
The State Department and international adoption agencies caution that many parentless children may be claimed by aunts and uncles, grandparents, even distant cousins in cultures built on strong family bonds. The rest will probably be adopted by families in their native countries or watched over by protective neighbors and friends.
Also, the countries worst affected by the tsunami -- India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand -- have strict laws governing foreign adoptions.
Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim country, does not authorize foreign adoption by non-Muslims and rarely allows nonrelatives to adopt, according to the State Department. Indonesia rarely grants adoptions to non-Muslim parents. Both nations require prospective parents to live in country for at least two years before adopting.
The State Department said this week it will not allow the adoption of tsunami orphans for "many months" and will do so "only if and when these countries decide to make these orphans available for international adoption."
Even before the tsunami, couples had to wade through a complex, bureaucratic process designed to limit the number of adoptions.
Just four Sri Lankan orphans went to U.S. families in 2003, while 72 Thai children were adopted, according to the State Department. India, the country with the most liberal policy, sent 472 children. By comparison, China, the No. 1 country for U.S. foreign adoptions, sent 6,859 children.
Sri Lanka and Thailand have long had tough qualifications for foreign adoptions to thwart sex trafficking and child slavery.
After the tsunami, Indonesia prohibited the removal of children under 16 from its hardest-hit areas after reports of kidnapping for the sex trade.
For the Harts, the difficulty of adopting is hard to swallow.
"I just don't understand why it has to take so long when they know that there's a child who is orphaned," Katherine Hart said. "I know these kids are going to have some trauma to go through, but these kids need to be loved now."

  THAILAND (93%);   WESTERN EUROPE (79%); MALAYSIA (79%); 




9


  



January 7, 2005 Friday  




 Humbled by Tragedy, Heartened by Response

 
 On Christmas day, the Indonesian ambassador, Soemadi D.M. Brotodiningrat, celebrated with 200 Indonesian Christians. Then he headed to the residence of Singapore's ambassador, arriving for dinner a little late. 
About the same time, a powerful tsunami was ravaging parts of his country, swallowing whole villages and sweeping thousands of people into the belly of the sea. It was nearly 8 p.m. in Washington, already Sunday morning off the western coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, near the epicenter of the earthquake that triggered the giant waves.   
"I always thought that Noah's Ark was a story for children," he said in an interview Wednesday. "Now I am going to go back and reread it." 
The career diplomat, who has also served in Tokyo, New York, Brussels and Geneva, thought he had seen it all. "This is different from wars and terrorism, which are the acts of men. After 40 years in the foreign service, I am reminded there is a force much larger and more powerful than me and everybody else," said Brotodiningrat, 63. "At least for me, it is humbling." 
 For the first few days after the tsunami, callers deluged the embassy with questions and concerns. The ambassador was awake virtually nonstop as he tried to keep abreast of the swelling death toll, which as of Thursday had passed 94,000 in his country. Finally, he said, he managed to fall asleep, "more out of exhaustion than any calm state of mind." 
But the extent of the devastation had not yet hit home. 
Now, "we are really overwhelmed," he said. "We are facing difficulty in penetrating the terrain for relief work. The western shore of Aceh, which is rather isolated, even under normal circumstances, is less developed than the eastern coast." 
 Global pledges for assisting the relief effort total about $4 billion, with the United States offering $350 million. 
Brotodiningrat was grateful that he had the opportunity to express gratitude on behalf of his country to three successive U.S. presidents -- President Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. All three came to his chancellery at 2020 Massachusetts Ave. NW on Monday to sign books of condolences. Three books lay open in front of cascading arrangements of white lilies and tulips, placed on a large wood table in the high-ceilinged foyer. 
 "We were most heartened by the gesture of small children who gave away their favorite toys," Brotodiningrat said. Frilly dolls, Matchbox cars and Barneys have been placed outside among wilting bouquets and candles, now extinguished by the rain. 
 The ambassador's staff was not untouched by the tragedy. A young intern, here for a three-month stint, was finally able to reach his mother by telephone, but learned that 15 members of his family, including two uncles and their families, were missing. 
The ambassador said he was coordinating offers of assistance and logistics with Marc Grossman, the State Department's undersecretary for political affairs. U.S. helicopters have delivered food and water to remote villages in Aceh province, the hardest-hit part of Sumatra. "Usually we have been able to cope by ourselves," he said. "Not this time."  
 The U.S.-Indonesia Society, which helps raise awareness here about Indonesia, is trying to organize nongovernmental groups so that they can share updates on progress in the relief effort, he added. The U.S. Agency for International Development has already delivered small generators and water purification systems. 
 The government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was sworn in last year as the country's first directly elected president, was on the verge of preparing a five-year plan for Indonesia, the ambassador said. Yudhoyono had promised to take dramatic steps to curb corruption and unemployment, but "now there is bound to be an adjustment of policies and priorities," the ambassador said. 
"The main challenge now will be dealing with the devastation and reconstruction; fueling investment to revamp the infrastructure may have to wait." 
 Brotodiningrat, a Muslim, said he believed God was compassionate and merciful, even if the unleashing of the tsunami was a sign of divine anger and wrath, as a clergyman has suggested. The ambassador said the disaster could bring the people of Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, closer to their faith. 
He said the next phase represented "both an opportunity and a challenge" for the new government. 
 "It now finds itself at a crossroads. If it performs well in dealing with this disaster . . . it will help resolve and overcome a lot of tension that existed" in the country, he said. "If the government does not perform well, there may be a backlash." 

 INDONESIA (95%); UNITED STATES (94%); SINGAPORE (92%); JAPAN (79%)




100 of 120 DOCUMENTS

   

 

January 6, 2005 Thursday 



 READERS WRITE

 
Gas tax: Responses to "Try an alternate route," Editorial, Jan. 5
Plan makes perfect sense
Rarely do I agree with , but you are right in calling for raising the gasoline tax in Georgia.
In the past year, we have seen wild fluctuations in gas prices, apparently with little effect on the economy. What would another 5 cents or so a gallon do, especially when the cost of gasoline is falling? A nickel per gallon would yield hundreds of millions of dollars for highway improvements. And the gasoline tax could be increased incrementally, such as for every 6- to 7-cent drop in gas prices, a 1-cent increase in tax could be implemented. This would also help stabilize the price of gasoline and may lead to conservation. 
This should be the first priority of the new legislative session.
MICHAEL MILLER, Marietta
Solution should be easy, painless
Despite being a lifelong Republican always against new or more taxes, I agree that another nickel gas tax is preferable to privatizing our roads.
For the 22 years I have resided in Georgia, it has amazed me that the tax is so low.
Maybe the fearful legislators could pass an automatic tax to kick in when the average price dips to a certain level. With the gas price fluctuations as they are, this should be easy and painless, and then, thereafter, not noticed. At today's price, 5 cents is a small percentage.
JOSEPH BROWER, Chamblee
Clayton sheriff
Let boss be free to run the show
I support Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill's naming employees he has confidence in to run the department ("Judge voids Clayton firings," Page One, Jan. 5).
It is not important whether the command structure is black or white; what matters is who can better serve the department. Hill was elected sheriff, so let him do his job (and I am white).
RON ROBINSON, Ellenwood
Responses to Cynthia Tucker's column "Fire sheriffs. (Snipers not necessary)," @issue, Jan. 5
Power games are nothing new
I agree with Cynthia Tucker that most sheriff's offices should be abolished --- I just disagree with her timing.
Why is it that when African-Americans begin to play the same political power games that their predecessors played, it becomes a problem?
In Georgia, all workers are employed at the will of employers who can dismiss them with cause without recourse. As Clayton County sheriff, Victor Hill has the right to surround himself with employees whom he feels will help him better carry out his mission. It's unfortunate that people have been in positions for more than 20 years and did not take into account that a "new sheriff" was in town and things were going to change. I wish Hill good luck in his tenure.
DARRYL SINGLETON, Union City
Actions of a few have hurt many
We can only hope that the public will recognize and respond to the Clayton County situation in the manner Cynthia Tucker suggested.
I have been employed by the county for more than 20 years. The recent actions of a few have affected our department as well as the residents of our county. The treatment my brothers and sisters at the Sheriff's Department were forced to endure must be described as outrageous.
Clayton County residents deserve better representation.
KEN STEWART
Stewart, of McDonough, is a captain in the Clayton County Police Department.
Saudis not doing enough for tsunami victims
Now that the first President Bush has been appointed to help lead the relief effort for the Asian tsunami victims, he should appeal to his close friends and business associates within the Saudi royal family to increase their kingdom's contributions.
After being criticized for its original pledge of $10 million to aid its Muslim brethren in Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere, the Saudi government increased its commitment to $30 million. That is less than 10 percent of what America will contribute.
Given Saudi Arabia's vast wealth vs. the limited resources of a United States at war, the Saudi Arabian government's pledge should rightly be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
KEVIN FOLEY, Atlanta
A wily . . . AJC?
Here in Birmingham, Scott Stantis is the editorial cartoonist for the biggest daily newspaper, so imagine my surprise when his comic strip, "Prickly City," got a splashy introductory announcement in  ("One small step for coyotes," Page One, Jan. 3).
Question: If "Doonesbury" and "The Boondocks" are banished from the AJC's main comics page for being overtly political (and liberal), why will "Prickly City" --- the "conservative comic strip about a liberal coyote" --- be on the page with all the other strips?
Liberal media, indeed.
DOUG GILLETT, Birmingham
Shame on Fox TV for affronting viewers
That the Fox TV affiliate in Atlanta chose to air the disgusting "Who's Your Daddy?" Monday night and WSB-TV chose not to air the excellent "Saving Private Ryan" on Veteran's Day speaks volumes about the priorities of local television programmers.
WSB-TV was afraid that (gasp!) the FCC would not tolerate foul language in an excellent film. The Fox affiliate in Atlanta, meanwhile, doesn't care that adoptive parents all over the state were subjected to one of the worst displays of bad taste and sheer insensitivity ever displayed on commercial television.
As the brother of an adoptive mother, I can assure you that she and her husband --- along with the rest of our family --- were repelled by the show's premise (an adopted daughter tries to guess which of eight men is her birth father, for cash). After hundreds of people protested this show, Fox aired it anyway. Shameful.
ALBERT SANCHEZ MORENO, East Point

 UNITED STATES (94%); 




101 of 120 DOCUMENTS


 Paddock Publications, Inc. 
Chicago Daily Herald

January 6, 2005 Thursday  
DuPage Edition



 Islamic council dinner to help tsunami victims

 
As millions of followers of the Islamic faith prepare to make their once-in-a-lifetime journeys to Mecca, hundreds of suburban Muslims are demonstrating one tenet the pilgrimage aims to strengthen: caring for others.
The Lombard-based Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago is holding a fund-raiser Saturday to benefit tsunami relief efforts in Asia. The dinner, jointly sponsored by Islamic Relief Worldwide, will be at 7:15 p.m. at the Islamic Foundation in Villa Park. 
It is timely that Muslims are being reminded to help the rest of humanity as they prepare to embark on their hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for five to seven days of rituals and prayer beginning Jan. 15, said Kareem Irfan, chairman of the council.
"It goes back to the fundamentals of the faith," he said. "When you go out and see suffering, you are obligated to alleviate it."
The tsunami, triggered by a powerful earthquake, ravaged 3,000 miles of Asian and African coastlines, killed nearly 150,000 and left millions homeless.
Irfan and other suburban Muslims stressed they're not acting merely because one of the countries hardest hit, Indonesia, has a Muslim population of more than 238 million.
"We're not the fundamentalists," said Hisham Hussain, a college student from Barrington. "We're human. We're just like you. We're uniting just like the rest of the world. Everyone comes together."
Asma Khan, project coordinator for the council, noted the money being forwarded to Islamic Relief Worldwide will be disbursed regardless of victims' religion, nationality or race.
"It will go wherever it's needed," she said. "It's a humanitarian cause."
The council also has set up a fund to which people can donate online or through the mail. The group also encourages members to donate directly to Islamic World Relief, Islamic Circle of North America or the International American Red Cross and Red Crescent.
"This is not a Muslim issue," Irfan said. "We're not out there to just help the Muslims who may have suffered. We're doing this because thousands and thousands have been killed and they are brothers and sisters in humanity. We want people to get involved because there is human suffering."
The tsunami relief effort is not the first the council and its members have been involved in to help others.
The council also raised money for relief efforts after an earthquake in Iran and tornadoes in central Illinois and has provided ongoing aid for war-ravaged Sudan.
"This is not just a one-time effort," said Farhan Younus, a council spokesman.
Registration for Saturday's dinner begins at 6:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 for adults and $10 for students. For details, call the council office at (630) 629-7490.
"The need is so great over such a widespread area," Younus said, "that every bit that everyone can do is so important."

 UNITED STATES (93%); ASIA (92%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); SUDAN (79%); IRAN,  (79%);  NORTH AMERICA (79%)




10

   

 

January 5, 2005 Wednesday 



 THE VENT

 
I had a life once, but then I got a computer and a modem.
Bush's cheerleading training is evident with our tsunami relief effort.
Earth: The insane asylum for the universe. 
We watch football to salute capitalism. Homeless people can either get off their butts and get a job or eat the leftovers in my garbage. I love America!
Ambushed deer? What chance of avoiding ambush do the chickens or cows you eat have?
Putting a conservative comic strip in the AJC is like placing a grain of salt in the pepper shaker.
The good ole days seem better because of my photogenic memory.
None of the tough guy deer hunters I know ever volunteered for the military.
In church, I can say I was never married because the Catholic Church annulled it and doesn't recognize it. So there!
Saudi Arabia is too busy cranking out terrorists to help their fellow Muslims in Indonesia.
To the good people of Appalachians, chicken is more than a food, it's a roommate.
The howls of racism would be heard far and wide if Sheriff Victor Hill was white and the fired officers were black.
People who say they hunt for the sport should take a stick and go into a cave after a bear. Now that's hunting for sport!
Does having a Vent published count on college applications?
You know you are getting old when "getting lucky" means you find your car in the parking lot.
You know you are from Alabama when you've been married three times and still have the same in-laws.
I'm even stupider. I thought bipolar was a switch-hitting bear.
I've been married now for seven months. How much longer must I wait before my husband remembers to turn his clothes right side out before throwing them in the hamper?
I'm 14, parents are divorced, Dad pays child support every month, Mom has only good things to say about him, Dad still loves Mom, Dad picks me up from school every day, and I'm normal and well-adjusted. Life is great. Just thought I'd perk up your day since y'all are a bunch of grouches!
One week out of the year Al Franken can act like he supports the troops, but the troops know that the other 51 weeks he is stabbing them in the back and undermining their efforts.
Those saying conservative radio talk show hosts avoided military service in Vietnam conveniently forget Bill Clinton did the same thing.
Why do water bottles have nutrition facts but beer bottles do not?
Let's hear you call it "cowardly ambushing" after a deer runs in front in your car because of overpopulation.
As a gay American, I expect the IRS to start charging me a lot less tax than straight Americans. I cannot legally marry who I want, serve in the military or get the same tax breaks as heterosexuals. I don't want special rights, I want the same rights.
Need to Vent? Call 404-222-8338; e-vent: vent@ajc.com

 UNITED STATES (94%);  VIET NAM (78%); SAUDI ARABIA (56%); 




10


 Madison Newspapers, Inc. 


January 5, 2005 Wednesday  




 WHEN THINGS GO HAYWIRE, MAYBE IT'S BEST TO REBOOT

 
Last Sunday a friend in my spiritual community brought up the metaphor of restart buttons.
He noted that today when something goes wrong with a machine, we don't think first of whacking it to jolt loose the stuck mechanical part. Nor do we imagine that we can peer inside the machine to understand its workings; usually we didn't design and can't understand its fundamental operating system.
Today we accept that a machine sometimes just has to be rebooted. 
When I think I can't take another argument between my children, have reminded my kids about homework, chores or thank-you notes for the fifth time, or scrambled to get a decent shirt washed for one more school concert, I can sit quietly, breathe deeply and meditate. It's a pretty good restart.
When I'm feeling professionally exhausted, avoiding writing grant reports or tired of reading volumes for too many meetings, I can schedule a wonderful, relaxing vacation for the family and recalibrate.
When my husband and I are aggravated with each other or just not clicking, one of us can ask for time to listen, talk quietly, make apologies if needed, and clarify misunderstandings. Magically, suddenly our relationship blossoms anew.
Exercise, journaling, discussion groups, therapy and healing work ... the list of personal restart options is long.
Restart buttons are needed globally also.
As 2004 came to a close, our globe included few countries that were spared the prospect of growing violence. Insecure places included areas in Colombia afflicted with the "drug" war, the war zones in Iraq and Sudan, bastions of conflict in Sri Lanka, land contested by Palestinians and Israelis and in countless other parts of the world.
Starting with the hard-wired human urge to define a group by who is excluded, fueled by tremendous disparities between the world's haves and have-nots, and aggravated by deep and growing suspicious bred by religious intolerance, 2004 left our globe at war with itself.
The catastrophe of the tsunami offers the world a tragic restart button.
When leaders of nations face internal strife, one of their timeless remedies is to find an outside enemy that unites those factions. It becomes apparent that the horrors forced on them by the tsunami and the huge challenges of reconstructing their country are giving the Tamil Tigers and government of Sri Lanka a huge, unifying force. Perhaps throughout Indonesia and other factious countries affected by the tsunami, the blameless nature of this assault can bring fighting people together.
The tsunami offers the United States a crucial restart option.
Given the sectarian nature of much of the world's violence, U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have made it easy for Muslim fundamentalists to characterize our policy goals as anti-Muslim, and the ranks of Muslim fundamentalists prepared to fight for their religion have swelled.
Our nation has an opportunity to demonstrate deep kinship with the Muslims of Indonesia and elsewhere by offering generous assistance.
If we are sincere in our generosity, it will not be misunderstood.
If we offer insincere or meager help or see restructuring needs as business opportunities, we will miss a crucial opportunity for peace making and healing.
There are other places for restart buttons to be used, the contentious partisanship of the new Congress for one, and the United Nations for another. The United Nations' credibility as a leader for peace and justice was tarnished this past year by scandals and misunderstandings.
Efforts this past month by United Nations supporters to push for rigorous change and restructuring within its upper tier and active diplomacy toward the Bush administration offer hope for a renewed leadership role for this crucial peacekeeper.
* The wisest leaders of our age will recognize that, when a system seems out of control and no longer responds to the normal instructions we offer, it's time to consider how to sidestep the fight and reboot.

 SRI LANKA (92%);  IRAQ (92%); AFGHANISTAN (79%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED (79%); ISRAEL (79%); COLOMBIA (79%);  ASIA (79%)




10


 



January 5, 2005 Wednesday  
RACING 



 U.S. GOODWILL MAY HELP REP, POWELL SAYS

 
THE MASSIVE U.S. aid effort to help victims of the Asian tsunamis might help ease anti-American sentiment and win allies in the war on terror, Secretary of State Powell said yesterday.
"I hope that as a result of our efforts, as a result of our helicopter pilots being seen by the citizens of Indonesia helping them, that value system of ours will be reinforced," Powell said after arriving in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.
He and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush hailed the lifesaving efforts of Navy pilots ferrying emergency supplies to starving survivors on wave-shattered Sumatra island. 
The day-after-Christmas tsunami disaster killed at least 100,000 people in Indonesia, about two-thirds of the dreadful toll of 150,000 across the Indian Ocean region.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country with 236 million people, is a U.S. ally. But distrust of America runs strong, and the war in Iraq is widely unpopular.
"We'd be doing it regardless of religion, but I think it does give the Muslim world and the rest of the world . . . an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action," Powell said.
Powell and Bush also toured the disaster zone in Phuket island, Thailand, flying over flattened villages and meeting with scientists working to identify victims.
Authorities in Thailand and Sri Lanka told him they are making good progress getting aid to hungry and homeless victims.
But Powell is expecting to see a grimmer picture when he flies over shattered stretches of Aceh province in Indonesia, where towns were leveled and villages were wiped off the map.
Aid workers cleared a major bottleneck when they dragged a cargo plane off the only runway at the airfield in the capital of Banda Aceh. The plane, which hit a water buffalo, blocked the critical strip for 18 hours.
In Thailand, the government fired a top government scientist who failed to sound an alert about the impending tsunami danger after a massive earthquake was detected on the Indian Ocean seabed.
"If he warned, the death toll would definitely have been minimized," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said.
Amid the disaster, one of the most amazing survival stories yet surfaced.
A Malaysian freighter found Rizal Sapura, 23, clinging to a branch as he floated a full 100 miles off the Sumatra coast, where he was swept away by the tsunamis more than a week earlier.
dgoldiner@nydailynews.com

 INDONESIA (96%); UNITED STATES (94%); THAILAND (94%); MALAYSIA (79%);  ASIA (79%)




10


   


January 5, 2005 Wednesday  




 Pledges Grow, Hurdles Loom In Relief Effort

 
Fresh infusions of aid on Tuesday gave yet more push to the global relief effort for Asia as it confronted monsoon rains, logistical breakdowns and the urgent need for everything from earthmoving equipment to trucks in the struggle to reach the survivors in the most remote areas. 
 Jan Egeland, the United Nations' emergency coordinator, acknowledged the many obstacles but called the global response ''phenomenal.'' He spoke on a day when expectations rose that pledges could far exceed $2 billion before a meeting here on Thursday of donor nations that will discuss how to coordinate the aid. 
  With television broadcasts showing American servicemen delivering aid to victims of the last week's tsunami, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell candidly acknowledged the hope that the United States' military help and its $350 million contribution might improve America's image in the Islamic world. Indonesia, home of two-thirds of the estimated 150,000 people who have died, is the world's most populous Muslim country.  
 ''We'd be doing it regardless of religion,'' Mr. Powell said here on the second day of his tour through the region with Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. ''But I think it does give the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action.'' 
 ''America is not an anti-Islam, anti-Muslim nation,'' Mr. Powell added in his remarks to reporters alongside the Indonesian foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda. ''America is a diverse society where we respect all religions. And I hope that as a result of our efforts, as a result of our helicopter pilots being seen by the citizens of Indonesia helping them, that value system of ours will be reinforced.'' 
 For his part, Mr. Wirajuda, a Harvard Law School graduate, went out of his way to praise the performance of the American military in the aid effort. ''We particularly appreciate the crucial role that the United States armed forces play in providing helicopters for relief assistance for victims and survivors at the remote and isolated areas,'' he said.
 The American forces sent so far, which include a crew of nearly 6,000 on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, proved essential in launching rescue helicopters on Tuesday after a cargo plane reportedly struck a water buffalo at the airport in Banda Aceh, at the chaotic center of Indonesia's hardest-hit area on the island of Sumatra. 
 The accident closed the runway for much of the day and exposed the vulnerable logistics of what relief and military officials have called the largest aid operation ever. 
 ''We are making extraordinary progress in reaching the majority of people affected in the majority of the areas,'' said Mr. Egeland, the United Nations coordinator. ''We are also experiencing extraordinary obstacles in many, many areas.''
 Reuters, citing a government source, reported that Germany was expected to increase its aid contribution to $680 million, from $27 million, which would make the country the biggest single contributor to relief funds. Chancellor Gerhard Schroder promised to announce ''a significant sum'' on Wednesday, the news agency reported.
 Even as contributions mounted, the United Nations office overseeing relief from Geneva appealed for generators, water purification equipment, some 250 trucks and cargo planes able to land on short runways, which it said only the United States and Britain could provide, according to Reuters. 
 With each day, the relief efforts amounted to a race against time for perhaps tens of thousands among the estimated 400,000 people left injured or without shelter since the earthquake erupted on Dec. 26 and sent wave after wave crashing into Sumatra's western shore. 
 The World Health Organization warned that pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and many infections, including gangrenous wounds left untended in the tropical heat, were taking an increasing toll in Aceh, Sumatra's most afflicted province. The region around the coastal town of Meulaboh, still inaccessible except by air, remained a particular concern.
 ''The casualty rates in Meulaboh defy imagination,'' Aitor Lacomba, the Indonesia director of the International Rescue Committee, an aid group, told Reuters. ''Tens of thousands need immediate assistance there.'' 
 Rescue workers were reportedly preparing to use small boats and motorbikes in the hunt for more survivors and to deliver assistance, as helicopters shuttled workers from the international aid group Doctors Without Borders into isolated areas. They reported casualty rates of 70 to 80 percent in some places. 
 ''The people who survive have done that under very difficult circumstances, often surviving on coconuts alone,'' an official of the group, Erwin Vantland, told BBC World TV. ''The picture becomes grimmer and grimmer the more we learn.''
 The full scale of the devastation came into sharper focus in other regions as well. Indian officials raised the number of those believed missing on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to more than 6,000. They also came under increasing pressure from international aid groups to allow outside relief workers to tend to more than 21,000 people now sheltered in camps on the islands, which have been closed to protect endangered aboriginal tribes. 
 In Sri Lanka, health officials warned that relentless seasonal rains were slowing the delivery of aid and threatening to spread water-borne disease. 
 Mr. Powell said Myanmar, also known as Burma, the region's most politically isolated nation, did not appear to have suffered severely, according to satellite photographs of the closed country's coastline. Another government official said visitors from the Red Cross and other organizations had confirmed that impression.
 The Myanmar authorities and aid agencies had announced fewer than 100 deaths, but other authorities believed that the actual toll might be far higher.
 For the United States, the aid effort that is focused on Indonesia unfolds at a time when America's standing among Muslims is at an all-time low. 
 Since the 9/11 attacks, the State Department has begun a number of public diplomacy campaigns aimed at improving the image of America and emphasizing that it is not hostile to Islam. But with the war in Iraq filling television screens worldwide with images of American soldiers battling in a Muslim land, those messages have often been muted. 
 In Indonesia, which has also suffered terror attacks from extremists in recent years, Mr. Powell said America supported democracy and economic progress globally in part because such change ''dries up those pools of dissatisfaction which might give rise to terrorist activity.''
 Earlier in the day, Mr. Powell, accompanied by Governor Bush, President Bush's brother, toured the ruined Thai resort island of Phuket and offered United States technical assistance in helping Thailand to create a regional warning system to protect against future disasters.
 Standing in the sweltering heat near a wall covered with pictures of the missing, Mr. Powell suggested that the problem of supplying survivors in Thailand was well in hand and that the greatest need here might be for help with the gruesome task of identifying bodies.
 ''The difficult challenge that I see here this afternoon that I will go back and see what more we can do has to do with identification of remains,'' he said, after meeting with a United States military forensic team that usually handles the remains of American service members missing in action.
 Thailand's foreign minister, Surakiart Sathirathai, said his government had recorded 5,187 dead, slightly more than half of them foreigners, mostly tourists vacationing at beach resorts. Some 362 bodies have not been identified, including some so badly decomposed that it was impossible to tell whether they were Thai or European, Mr. Surakiart said. An additional 3,810 people are missing. 
 Still, Mr. Powell said the problems of Thailand were modest compared with those of Indonesia, particularly in Aceh Province, which he and Governor Bush are scheduled to visit Wednesday.
 In addition to Mr. Powell, the donors' meeting on Thursday is expected to be attended by Secretary General Kofi Annan, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, whose nation has committed $500 million dollars. Before the meeting, pressure was building among European nations to declare, at a minimum, a moratorium on debt payments from the stricken countries.
 At Bangkok International Airport, Mr. Powell and Mr. Bush got a glimpse of the mountains of donated supplies already arriving in Thailand as they toured storage hangars. Cartons of noodles and bundles of plastic water bottles were stacked on the tarmac next to a drearier sight: piles of empty wooden coffins.
 Outside in the sun were a heap of local donations, including clothing, blankets and quilts.
 Andrew Natsios, the administrator of United States Agency for International Development, shook his head at the chaotic scene.
 ''It all seems so familiar,'' he said. ''People are very generous, but there are distribution problems.'' Still, he added, ''this is better than what I've seen in a lot of places.''


  INDONESIA (96%); ASIA (94%); MYANMAR (93%); THAILAND (93%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (92%); MALAYSIA (79%); SOMALIA (79%); MALDIVES (79%); TANZANIA, UNITED REPUBLIC OF (79%); KENYA (79%)




10

    
  


January 5, 2005, Wednesday



 AID EFFORT IN INDONESIA COULD LIFT US IMAGE IN EYES OF MUSLIMS

   IRAQ (92%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%); 




10


  



January 5, 2005 Wednesday  




 A Clear Line Between Life and Death

 
From the skies above Aceh's devastated western coastline, no sign of civilization remains except for the barren concrete foundations of houses sheared clean and wooden debris scattered like multicolored confetti. 
 But several miles inland, some isolated settlements were spared by the tsunami that devastated the tip of Sumatra island Dec. 26, killing more than 94,000 people in Indonesia alone. Villagers walk along the main roads toward the spots where U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopters have been dropping emergency supplies of food and water for the past three days. 
 The line between life and death was evident Tuesday looking down at the countryside from one of the Seahawks. As far as the wall of briny water had advanced, rice fields of the once verdant western coast were transformed into a broad swath of brown sludge. But inches beyond the reach of the wave, the paddies glistened emerald green.  
The Seahawks, based on the  USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which is stationed off Sumatra, are running at least 30 relief missions a day to towns and villages on the west coast. 
The flights are part of a U.S. military operation throughout the region affected by the earthquake and resulting tsunami. The effort involves about 13,000 personnel, 21 ships, 46 helicopters and 29 other aircraft. 
 "I think we are bringing more military assets into the region," said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who arrived in Jakarta late Tuesday for a trip to Aceh on Wednesday. "I think there is large quantities of food on the way, fresh water on the way, medical supplies on the way."  
Powell, accompanied by President Bush's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, stressed humanitarian needs in the region while on a tour of the tsunami-stricken countries. Powell and Bush spent part of Tuesday in Phuket, Thailand, viewing the damage left by the tsunami and inspecting relief efforts.  
In Indonesia, Powell expressed the hope that U.S. aid could begin to reverse the rise of anti-Americanism in the region by demonstrating that "America is not an anti-Islamic, anti-Muslim nation." 
 Indonesia is the world's largest Islamic nation; about  88 percent of  its 238 million people are Muslim. U.N. officials have warned that tens of thousands of people in northern Sumatra have not yet received help following the earthquake and tsunami. More than 139,000 people were killed in the catastrophe, and millions have been left homeless in at least 12 countries, according to relief officials. 
 Powell said scenes of U.S. helicopter pilots delivering aid, coupled with a demonstration of "American generosity" through a range of other humanitarian activities, would reduce the ability of radical groups to recruit terrorists.  
 "It dries up those pools of dissatisfaction which might give rise to terrorist activities," Powell said after meeting with senior Indonesian officials in Jakarta, the capital. He slept Tuesday at the JW Marriott hotel, which was bombed by Muslim extremists in August 2003, killing 12 people.  
 Powell was scheduled to attend an international donors meeting in Jakarta on Thursday. More than $2 billion has been pledged to the recovery effort, including $350 million from the United States, not including the military operation. 
Rain and flooding in some areas were hampering international relief efforts on Tuesday, but there has been "extraordinary progress" said Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator.  
Egeland said he had asked the Bush administration to provide a C-17 transport plane that would ferry bulldozers to be used to expand the runway at Banda Aceh.  
 The airport in the provincial capital, a hub for relief aid, was blocked for hours when a Boeing 737 cargo plane carrying supplies hit a water buffalo on the runway.  
Aceh's west coast was closest to the gargantuan earthquake that triggered the tsunami, and much of the region is cut off because of decimated roads and washed-out bridges. 
 On one Navy helicopter mission over the west coast, a young man walking on a road through the paddies paused at the sound of the approaching Seahawk and stared up. Then he waved. 
Petty Officer Jason Dexter, 24, of Coronado, Calif., clad in an olive flight suit and white helmet, stuck his gloved hand through the open door of helicopter and waved back.  
 The Seahawk descended with a roar into Lamno, a town of simple wood homes with rusty corrugated metal roofs located about 25 miles over cloud-tipped mountains from Banda Aceh. Most of the structures were still standing. 
 The helicopter set down in a grassy soccer field beside a long, clapboard Islamic school. Several hundred children dashed to the edge of the field, despite a light rain, and pressed forward. Indonesian soldiers in camouflage uniforms and gray-shirted police officers held them back. 
 "All these kids are orphans," said Dexter, whose helicopter had made a delivery of bottled water and instant noodles to Lamno earlier in the day. "Notice there are no parents around." He said he suspected many of the adults had been fishermen or had worked closer to the beach. "The wave came in and the parents are gone," he said.  
 During the earlier aid drop in Lamno and another that morning in the city of Calang, villagers had swarmed the helicopter, desperate for relief and a ride out, Dexter said. He and his companion, Air Crewman Chris Walding, 26, of Corrigan, Tex., had dumped the boxes as fast they could. 
 "We have to close the windows or they'll climb through them," Dexter said. "They'll come right in. They'll climb on the helicopter." 
 For the afternoon delivery to Lamno, however, the Seahawk crew found a location closer to the middle of town where Indonesian security forces were already deployed. 
 The children jumped and waved, arms outstretched. But they kept their distance as Dexter and Walding tossed about 2,000 pounds of boxes out of the chopper in less than five minutes. 
 "The situation here is safe now, and we have enough to eat," said Mukhlis, a grungy 14-year-old in a soiled orange shirt trying to get closer to the helicopter for a look. "But we don't have enough to drink," he added, rubbing his throat. 
 One of the few adults, Jafar, 34, said he believed 10,000 people had died in the area around Lamno. Since the relief deliveries had begun, he said, the residents had received enough to eat. 
 A middle-aged woman dressed in an orange blouse and floral sarong, clutching a few belongings tied up in a cloth, approached a reporter and asked to be taken to Banda Aceh. But the crew was already emptying the helicopter of most of its load and preparing to depart, bound for a refueling stop aboard the Lincoln. 
 Dexter took a camera from his bag and snapped a photograph of the waving children as the Seahawk lifted off the grass. 
 Within moments, he spied a pair of men headed down a road. Dexter said he had witnessed thousands just like them in two days of flying the west coast. 
 "All day we see people walking," he said over the roar of the propellers. "I think they're trying to get to our aid stations." 
 Though another stop had not been planned, the aircraft descended quickly toward an abandoned beach close to the men walking, back below the line of destruction.  
 Along the waterline ran what had been a long line of trees. Each tree was sliced off about five feet up in a macabre harvest. Amputated stumps were silhouetted against a light blue sea. 
 The helicopter crew had set aside three boxes of bottled water in case they spotted more isolated refugees. Dexter hopped out of the Seahawk and placed the boxes on the sand, hoping the people he had seen moments earlier would reach the supplies. 
 As the helicopter ascended, Dexter spotted them. He motioned through the open door that they should continue to the road and the boxes. 
 Then the Seahawk headed out over the tropical sea, over softly capped waves and scattered chunks of wooden debris. 
Kessler reported from Jakarta. Correspondent Ellen Nakashima in Jakarta and staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations also contributed to this report. 

 INDONESIA (98%); UNITED STATES (95%); THAILAND (79%)




10


  



January 5, 2005 Wednesday  




 In Angry Waves, the Devout See an Angry God

 
Aceh's highly influential Islamic clerics have explained the giant wave that devastated this overwhelmingly Muslim region as a warning to the faithful that they must more strictly observe their religion, including a ban on Muslims killing Muslims. 
The infusion of religious meaning into the tragedy, in a province already known as Indonesia's most fervently Muslim area, suggested the consequences of the Dec. 26 tsunami could extend well beyond the death toll. The sweeping destruction has torn apart the infrastructure on the northern part of Sumatra island. 
The idea that the killing on both sides of a years-old conflict between secessionist rebels and Indonesia's military helped bring divine wrath could affect the way Aceh's 4.7 million residents view the central government in Jakarta. At the same time, the devout people of this region, who seem to have embraced their clerics' views, could demand even tighter strictures in Aceh, which is already governed by Islamic law, or sharia.  
The extent of Islamic influence across Aceh has been on display from the moment the wave swept in from the Indian Ocean and flattened an uncounted number of towns, villages and neighborhoods. Down almost every road, beside almost every street, mosques immediately took in refugees, setting up tents and organizing food distribution before the provincial government or international aid agencies got relief operations up and running. 
Azhari Banta Ali, a provincial official, said village and neighborhood imams across Aceh province have traditionally acted in tandem with local administrators in matters affecting their followers. The Islamic clerics here have little sense of hierarchy, he added, meaning the imam of each mosque wields strong moral authority within his own area. 
 "Wherever you go in Aceh, you will see the village leader and the imam working together," Banta Ali said. "One is the religious leader, the other is the government leader at the lowest level of the administration." 
 In this atmosphere, the swift care provided around mosques and the interpretation handed down in sermons and individual counseling by local imams seemed likely to be decisive for years to come in how the people of Aceh understand the tragedy that has befallen them. 
 "God is angry with Aceh people, because most of them do not do what is written in the Koran and the Hadith," the collected sayings and actions of the prophet Muhammad, explained Cut Bukhaini, 35, an imam. "I hope this will lead all Muslims in Aceh to do what is in the Koran and its teachings. If we do so, God will be merciful and compassionate." 
 Bukhaini, surrounded by refugees camping on the grounds of his Baitush Shakhir Mosque in Banda Aceh's Ulee Kareng district, said people here were guilty of forgetting their obligation to pray five times a day and of concentrating too much on earning money rather than living according to their religion. Moreover, he explained, they offended the Almighty by entering into a conflict in which "Muslims killed Muslims" in contravention of Koranic strictures. 
 The provincial rebellion, by a group known as the Free Aceh Movement, began as an effort to split the region from Jakarta's rule. Although the movement has Islamic overtones, its goals are primarily separatist, and the conflict has never revolved around religion. 
 The soldiers dispatched here to put it down are Muslims, as are the rebels, and the central government has always voiced pride in Indonesia's role as the world's most populous Muslim nation. In that light, Bukhaini said, the conflict was unlawful under Islam, with guilt shared by both sides and the people of Aceh paying a terrible price. 
In last Friday's sermon and in statements since then, imams have said the disaster should be a lesson to Muslims to more closely observe Islamic laws, including those governing consumption of alcohol and relations between the sexes, according to Aceh residents who attended weekly services in their mosques. 
 Unlike most of Indonesia, this province enforces sharia, including a ban on public sales of liquor. But the atmosphere has never been as austere nor the enforcement as complete as in other sharia jurisdictions such as Saudi Arabia. 
 "I think people were making love before marriage, doing bad things, forgetting to pray to God," said Jack Solong, 25, a waiter and dishwasher at a popular Banda Aceh coffee shop. "God punished us. I believe that." 
 The cafe owner, Haji Nawawi, 45, who pulls down his shutters three times a day for prayers, agreed. He suggested that the disaster could persuade people to intensify their observance of the faith that, except for some Chinese Buddhists and central Sumatran Christians, nearly all of them share. 
"Before the tsunami, all the people were full of bad conduct," he said. "Boys were sitting close to the girls. There was corruption in the government. This was God's punishment." 
 A number of people interviewed Tuesday in Banda Aceh shared Nawawi's convictions. 
 "We have to make a lot of changes in our lives, and this is God's way of letting us know," said Hetty Meutia Dewy, an agriculture student at Bogor University and a member of the Islamic Association of Students. "The imams have said it was a warning. They said God loves the Aceh people, but the tsunami was a warning to be better people. 
 Neva Zarlinda, an 18-year-old high school student camped beside Baitush Shakhir Mosque, said she also viewed the disaster as a warning from God and, as a result, planned to be more observant.  
"I hope that I will pray more now, because I have done a lot of wrong things," she said, hanging around the government-provided tent where she, her mother, her father and her five siblings have taken up residence. "I seldom prayed. God willing, I will pray more." 
 Despite her resolution, Zarlinda did not bother with the head scarf worn by many Aceh women. 
 The Islamic Defender Front, a militant group that flew volunteers in from Jakarta to help in the relief effort, said its members were the first to clear bodies and debris from the gleaming white Baiturhahman Mosque, the main symbol of Islam in Aceh, which rises from a broad esplanade in Banda Aceh's city center. 
 "The mosques are central for Muslims," said Mohammed Maksouni, 36, a leader of the group, explaining why refugees instinctively flowed into mosques after they fled the wave. "And also, the houses were destroyed but the mosques were left standing." 
 Ansufri Sabow, 34, another member and college lecturer on mathematics and Islamic studies, said the tsunami could "cleanse the sins of the people" as well as caution them. 
 "God has warned us," he said. "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up." 
 The Islamic Defender Front has made a name for itself in Jakarta by trashing bars during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. Although it has no known links to Indonesia's underground Islamic terrorist movement, the group has criticized U.S. and other Western influence in the country.  
 Sabow specified, however, that he welcomed the U.S. Navy helicopters working out of Banda Aceh to deliver food and relief supplies to isolated refugees. "If they come here to give food, give aid, no problem," he said. "Aid, not AIDS." 

 INDONESIA (95%)




10


   


January 4, 2005 Tuesday  




 Gulf Arabs Wonder: Are They Being Stingy With Aid?

 
The newspaper Al Qabas in Kuwait set off a debate spreading throughout the country and beyond on Monday by suggesting that Kuwait deserves its reputation for being cheap and oblivious to people who go there to work as servants, given the relatively low level of aid it has donated to the tsunami victims at a time when the state treasury is bursting with an oil bonanza. 
 Noting that the bulk of the nannies, drivers, menial laborers and other servants who keep most households running in the emirate come from Southeast Asia -- imported workers easily outnumber the native population -- some Kuwaitis agree that the country and its Persian Gulf neighbors need to be doing much more. 
 But the campaign to shut down Islamic charities accused of financing terrorism has left many people confused about where to turn when they do want to donate money. And a few extremist Friday Prayer leaders and other religious commentators fueled the uncertainty by suggesting that the tsunami destruction was the wrath of God. 
 Gauging the extent of private donations for the region proved difficult because nobody seems to be collecting the information.  
 Many donations are channeled through the government-backed Red Crescent societies, but senior officials either did not return phone calls or said they were too busy to make a tally. There were random charitable acts around the region. 
 In an echo of the debate about skinflints that occurred in the United States over the government's level of aid, though, a front-page editorial in Al Qabas on Sunday said gulf Arabs had an obligation to dig deeper in their pockets for the people of Southeast Asia because of the longstanding ties between the two regions. 
 ''We have to give them more; we are rich,'' Waleed al-Nusif, the editor in chief of Al Qabas, said in a telephone interview. ''The price of oil doubled, so we have no excuse.''
 After the paper's editorial appeared, the Kuwaiti cabinet raised its announced donation on Sunday to $10 million, from $2 million, having previously doubled it. 
 Kuwait is expected to run a budget surplus this year of roughly $10 billion, and Mr. Nusif noted that the government had just distributed an estimated $700 million to the Kuwaiti people themselves, the public share of the unanticipated revenue.
 He said Kuwait should give a minimum of $100 million, not least because many of the country's 1.29 million foreigners of a total population of 2.25 million come from the devastated regions. 
 ''They built Kuwait, and they raised our children,'' said Mr. Nusif, noting that before successive oil booms, India and other countries opened their doors to Kuwaitis, who were then relatively poor. The paper also advised Kuwaitis to check with their housemaids to see if they wanted to phone home in case family members were dead or missing. 
 It was not the kind of reminder necessary for an older generation of Kuwaitis, Mr. Nusif said. ''Our fathers were more generous than we are,'' he said. ''They had suffered more.'' 
 The editorial became the hot topic in diwaniyas, the nightly salons where men gather to chew over the issues of the day. 
 ''We should show more sympathy, especially since we have a budget surplus and these are our neighbors in Southeast Asia,'' said Saad al-Ajmi, a former Kuwaiti minister of information. He believes more private donations will be coming.
 The Qabas editorial did not cite Kuwait alone in seeking to fatten donations. It said all the Arab gulf countries benefiting from huge oil revenues should give more. 
 Qatar and Saudi Arabia have each pledged $10 million, while Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, raised his country's cash contribution tenfold, to $20 million, on Monday night. 
 Most pledges from the gulf Arab nations were made in the first hours after the earthquake, and as the scale becomes apparent, more money will be pledged, officials said. 
 The Islamic Development Bank in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, said it would distribute $10 million in emergency aid to Indonesia, the Maldives, Somalia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. The Thai Embassy in Kuwait said some people were dropping by to give money, with one business phoning to say it wanted to bring $14,000.
 The Kuwaiti Embassy in Jakarta announced that it was chartering a ship to deliver aid to devastated Aceh Province in Indonesia.
 In Riyadh, the Saudi capital, Dr. Saleh al-Tuwaijri, vice president of the Saudi Red Crescent Society, said the government's $10 million donation would go directly to sister organizations in the affected countries. 
 He said that per capita giving in the gulf was generally high, but that ordinary citizens faced obstacles to making donations because so many private charities had been closed under American pressure on suspicion of helping finance terrorism. No replacement mechanism has been established, which makes public fund-raising difficult, he said.
 In Kuwait, some charities drew fire by advertising that they were collecting money for Muslim victims. Indonesia, the hardest-hit country, is the most populous Muslim nation. 
 ''I don't know why only Muslims, when disasters do not differentiate between religions in choosing their victims,'' Muhammad Mousaed al-Saleh, a columnist, wrote in Al Qabas. The daily paper published a religious ruling, saying donating to non-Muslims is permissible. 
 The view that wanton behavior provoked the quake was the subject of Friday sermons in Saudi Arabia and of other religious commentaries. 
 ''Asia's earthquake, which hit the beaches of prostitution, tourism, immorality and nudity,'' one commentator said on an Islamist Web site, ''is a sign that God is warning mankind from persisting in injustice and immorality before he destroys the ground beneath them.''
 Walid Tabtabai, a member of the Kuwaiti Parliament, said the earthquake was a message. 
 ''We believe that what occurs in terms of disasters and afflictions is a test for believers and punishment for the unjust,'' he wrote in a column in the newspaper Al Watan.

HOW TO HELP
Aid Agencies Helping Disaster Victims
An expanded list is online at nytimes.com/international. The Times does not certify charities' fund allocations or administrative costs. Guidance is online at www.guidestar.org.

ACTION AGAINST HUNGER
247 West 37th Street, Suite 1201
New York, N.Y. 10018
212-967-7800 x108
www.ActionAgainstHunger.org

AMERICARES
88 Hamilton Avenue
Stamford, Conn. 06902
800-486-4357
www.americares.org

CARE
151 Ellis Street
Atlanta, Ga. 30303
800-521-CARE
www.care.org

AMERICAN RED CROSS
International Response Fund
P.O. Box 37243
Washington, D.C. 20013
800-HELP NOW
www.RedCross.org

CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES
Tsunami Emergency
P.O. Box 17090
Baltimore, Md. 21203-7090
800-736-3467
www.CatholicRelief.org

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS
P.O. Box 1856
Merrifield, Va. 22116-8056
888-392-0392
www.DoctorsWithoutBorders.org

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION
OF RED CROSS/RED CRESCENT
www.ifrc.org

GLOBAL FUND FOR CHILDREN
1101 14th Street NW
Suite 910
Washington, D.C. 20005
202-331-9003
www.globalfundforchildren.org

INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS
Earthquake/Tsunami Relief
1919 Santa Monica Boulevard, Suite 300
Santa Monica, Calif. 90404
800-481-4462
www.IMCworldwide.org

INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE
P.O. Box 5058
Hagerstown, Md. 21741-9874
877-REFUGEE or 733-8433
www.theIRC.org

ISLAMIC RELIEF USA
S.E. Asia Earthquake Emergency
P.O. Box 6098
Burbank, Calif. 91510
888-479-4968
www.irw.org/asiaquake
LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF
www.lwr.org

OXFAM AMERICA
Donor Services Department
26 West Street
Boston, Mass. 12111-1206
800-77-OXFAM
www.OxfamAmerica.org

SAVE THE CHILDREN
Asia Earthquake/
Tidal Wave Relief Fund
54 Wilton Road
Westport, Conn. 06880
800-728-3843
www.SaveTheChildren.org

UNICEF
General Emergency Fund
333 E. 38th Street
New York, N.Y. 10016
800-4-UNICEF
www.unicefusa.org

WORLD FOOD PROGRAM
2 U.N. Plaza, DC2-2500
New York, N.Y.10017
www.wfp.org


 KUWAIT (97%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (94%); ASIA (94%);  MYANMAR (79%); MALAYSIA (79%); QATAR (79%); SAUDI ARABIA (79%); CHINA (79%); MALDIVES (79%); TANZANIA, UNITED REPUBLIC OF (79%); KENYA (79%); UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (79%); THAILAND (79%); DENMARK (79%);  GULF STATES (79%); EGYPT (79%); NORDIC COUNTRIES (59%)




1


   


January 4, 2005 Tuesday  




 POWELL TOURING STRICKEN REGION TO SHOW SUPPORT

 
The international relief effort kicked into gear on Monday, eight days after the tsunami disaster hit, as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell arrived here with Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida on a journey intended to assure the devastated region of American support.
 ''The president wanted both of us to come out here to demonstrate U.S. commitment to the nations of the region and to make an assessment as well, to see what else we might need to do,'' Mr. Powell said during the 19-hour flight from Washington. 
 President Bush also underscored that commitment on Monday by selecting his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead fund-raising efforts for disaster relief and by visiting the Washington embassies of Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. [Page A9.]  
 Mr. Bush's announcement and the four-day trip through the region aimed to quash any lingering criticism of the administration's initial response, which critics said threatened to bungle an opportunity to win favor in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, and in nearly a dozen other stricken nations. Relief officials said the toll was now 150,000 dead and climbing. 
 Mr. Powell said that while 15 Americans have been confirmed dead as of Monday, another 4,000 to 5,000 remain officially unaccounted for since their relatives have called State Department hotlines to report that they were in the region and had not been heard from. 
 But he and other officials cautioned that there was not a one-to-one correlation between queries and individuals, and Mr. Powell suggested that most were probably fine, adding that diplomats were continuing to check with families. ''Now, they may make contact with their family, but the family doesn't notify us right away,'' he said. ''But we can't ignore the very distinct possibility that there are Americans within this number who have lost their lives.'' He declined to speculate on how many may have died.
 Mr. Powell also defended the United States pledges for relief, which increased over the course of last week from $15 million to $350 million, as a natural ''scaling up'' of aid as the scope of the calamity became clear. 
 Even as more and more of some $2 billion in international aid was manifest in the bottles of water, food, and rescue sorties in stricken regions, it became increasing clear that much help was arriving too late for thousands -- possibly tens of thousands -- injured and stranded for more than a week without care. 
 Doctors and relief officials said that many of those arriving for medical treatment, particularly on the all-but-obliterated western coast of the Indonesia island of Sumatra, were in precarious condition after in some cases spending days without food, water or attention to broken bones and lacerations. Wounds were infected, and amputations were common along with psychological trauma and cases of pneumonia. 
 ''The death toll will grow exponentially on the western coast of Sumatra,'' said Jan Egeland, the United Nations relief coordinator. ''We may be talking about tens of thousands.''
 As the effects of the catastrophe were felt for a second week, surprising stories of survival from isolated regions competed with the steady dawning in nations as distant as Brazil and Sweden that as many as 11,000 tourists and other foreign visitors would not return home.
 One 23-year-old Sumatra resident, Melawati, was scooped from the sea by a fishing trawler on Friday after surviving for five days on the fruit and bark of the floating palm tree she used as a raft. She arrived for medical treatment only on Monday on the northwestern Malaysian island of Penang, The Associated Press reported, after crying throughout the three days since her rescue. 
 United States Navy helicopters also rescued about 60 villagers along the western coast of Sumatra on Monday and ferried them to medical stations for care. Many, including children, the elderly and two pregnant women, were too weak to speak, The A.P. reported, noting that doctors said at least 25 of them were in critical condition.
 ''In my 17 years of service, I have never seen such devastation,'' Senior Chief Jesse Cash, who had also served in Somalia and Liberia, told The A.P. ''And I hope that I'll never see such again in my life.'' 
 Elsewhere, health officials in Sri Lanka said that so far there had been no major disease outbreaks in the crowded camps where many of the 800,000 people displaced in the disaster have been living since their homes were leveled. 
 Roy Wadia, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said that while cases of diarrhea had been reported in some camps, the numbers were not high. But with heavy monsoon rains now soaking the north and east, health agencies remained concerned about the possibility of cholera and the spread malaria and dengue fever through mosquitoes.
 For Mr. Powell, 67, the trip to Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka will be one of his last tours -- perhaps the very last -- as secretary of state before his successor, Condoleezza Rice, the current national security adviser, is confirmed.
 For Jeb Bush, 51, who is a possible contender for the presidency in 2008 or later, the trip is a first major turn on the international stage. The governor, who oversaw Florida's response to four hurricanes in August and September, suggested that his presence on the trip, as not only an American official but also as the president's brother, would send a powerful message of sympathy.
 ''I think family matters in a lot of places, just as it does in the United States,'' the governor said. He recalled in 1988 being asked by his father, then the president-elect, to travel to Armenia after an earthquake there cost more than 25,000 lives. 
 ''We went, and it made a big difference that a family member would go -- this was on Christmas Eve -- go to a far-off place,'' Mr. Bush said. 
 Mr. Powell, Mr. Bush, Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, and other officials are scheduled to tour the ruined resort island of Phuket, Thailand, on Tuesday before moving on to the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. 
 If the logistics can be worked out, on Wednesday they will visit Aceh province on the island of Sumatra, which suffered the greatest loss of life. They will also attend a meeting of donor countries on Thursday in Jakarta and stop in Sri Lanka on Friday, Mr. Powell said.
 The officials said they had seriously considered whether their trip might actually do more harm than good by diverting personnel and clogging crowded airfields. But Mr. Powell said the travel had been carefully planned with host governments to minimize any interference.
 Mr. Powell said the American contribution may pay off in better relations with some countries, but that was not its motivation.
 ''We're not doing this because we're seeking political advantage or just because we're trying to make ourselves look better with the Muslims,'' he said. ''We're doing this because these are human beings in need -- in desperate need -- and the United States has always been a generous, compassionate country and a generous, compassionate people.''
 As of Monday, 430,000 pounds of food supplies and equipment had been delivered to the logistics hub set up in Thailand, said Capt. Rodger Welch, with the Pacific Command operations directorate. From there, 76,800 meals have been delivered to Indonesia and 32,000 more to the Maldives, he said. 
 About 12,600 American military personnel are now involved in the effort, he said, as well as 20 American naval vessels and about 80 American military aircraft.


 UNITED STATES (96%); INDONESIA (95%); THAILAND (93%); INDIA (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%); ASIA (79%)




111 of 120 DOCUMENTS

   


January 4, 2005, Tuesday, 



 U.S. displays generosity, faces commitment test

 
After a slow start in the days after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, the United States is responding with $350 million in aid, more than 20 times the amount President Bush promised in the initial hours after the tragedy. Former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, meanwhile, came together Monday to appeal for private donations.
This should silence critics who said the world's wealthiest nation was being stingy. Indeed, so much aid is arriving from the United States and other countries that it is overwhelming local officials in some areas.
 
But the effectiveness of the U.S. response is still very much an open question. While the natural inclination is to focus on what is done in the first days after a tragedy, the more telling measure is what happens months and even years from now. The news media will soon move on. But hundreds of thousands of grief-stricken people will lack homes and livelihoods for some time.
The United States has much at stake here. An abiding commitment to help can save lives -- and do much to restore an image tarnished in many regions of the globe.
The devastated region, particularly hardest-hit Indonesia, is of great strategic importance to the spread of democracy. The most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia has advanced industries and secular governments. Yet it is also a haven for terrorists. An Indonesia that not only recovers from the disaster but also thrives economically would be a significant victory against radical Islam.
Achieving this kind of success will not be easy. Aid workers are already running into the problems likely to plague them for some time: bad infrastructure, overstretched local governments, poor coordination, excess bureaucracy, rampant poverty and, in some cases, factional rivalries.
Much more than money will be needed to overcome those problems, but by any measure, the U.S. is not stingy.
The government spends $16 billion a year on foreign aid. That's about half what is spent by the Department of Homeland Security, and it is just one part of the picture. Unlike citizens of other countries, Americans make massive private donations to international causes. In 2003, those donations were double government spending. The American Red Cross alone reported pledges of $44 million in just five days for tsunami relief.
In tragedy, there is opportunity. The U.S. is widely viewed as more interested in showing its military prowess than its compassion. An aggressive and sustained response to this tragedy would help put that notion to rest.

   




1


  



January 4, 2005 Tuesday  




 More Water Bottles, Fewer Bullets

 
  The picture on the front page of Monday's New York Times captured the essence of America's challenge in 2005: It showed the crew of a U.S. Navy helicopter handing out bottled water for poor villagers in a Muslim region of Indonesia that was devastated by the tsunami. 
 That image of American power solving problems, multiplied a thousand times over by similar acts of generosity, is the best antidote for our country's global difficulties. We talk often these days about an "exit strategy" from Iraq. But the truth is that we need a better "entry strategy" into the lives and welfare of people around the globe. The way out of our current predicament, paradoxically, is to become more connected with the world, not less.  
 I hope President Bush realizes how much it matters that the world sees the American military handing out water bottles rather than firing M-16s. By increasing U.S. aid for tsunami victims twentyfold over what the administration had first pledged, Bush seemed to be acknowledging that, initially, he blew it. The United States may not have been "stingy," as a United Nations official charged, but the administration missed an opportunity to show the nation's generosity. 
 America's commitment needs to be dramatic, and intimate -- powerful enough to cut through thousands of hours of negative programming on al-Jazeera. Personally, I'm glad the president sent his brother Jeb to visit the stricken areas, and not because of his experience dealing with hurricanes as governor of Florida. I'm glad because in any culture, sending a member of your family is a personal way of saying that you care. 
 Americans think of themselves as an idealistic and generous people. So it's hard for us to understand that in recent years, much of the rest of the world has begun to form a different impression. Polls show that the United States is increasingly unpopular around the world -- regarded as arrogant, militaristic and selfish. The terrorist Osama bin Laden has gotten higher favorability ratings in some Muslim countries than President Bush. We may think those poll findings are unfair -- outrageous, even -- but that indignation doesn't do us any good. The task for America's leaders is to turn those perceptions around. 
 An unpopular America has to seize every opportunity it can -- to "walk the walk" about our values, instead of just talking the talk. It's a moral duty, but it's also a national security requirement. President Kennedy realized that America could best counter communist-led insurgencies in the Third World by making a dramatic commitment to improving the welfare of those in poverty. John F. Kennedy's decision to create the Peace Corps was in some ways a showy bit of public diplomacy, but its core of idealism and commitment survives to this day. 
 A similar mingling of moral purpose and pragmatic interests motivated the American missionaries who transformed the Arab world in the 19th century. They created American universities in Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul and other cities that, in turn, created a bedrock of goodwill that supported American power in that part of the world. I sometimes think the only thing that kept America going in the Arab world during the past 50 years was that nearly every influential Arab family -- Baathist bomb thrower or Bedouin oil sheik -- had a personal link to the American University of Beirut. 
 That's why the images of the U.S. military dispensing humanitarian aid are so important. They show a reassuring American face. A friend sent me an e-mail this week with a Dec. 29 dispatch from the Pentagon's Armed Forces Press Service, detailing the quick response by the U.S. Pacific Command to the Dec. 26 tsunami. An aircraft carrier task force was immediately diverted from Hong Kong to the Gulf of Thailand, and a Marine expeditionary force in Guam for a port visit began steaming toward the Bay of Bengal. This is the sort of thing America is good at: organizing the logistics to help people when trouble strikes. The more of it we do, the better and safer we'll be in the long run. 
 So here is a resolution for the New Year: Let's try to act as if every week brought a humanitarian crisis to the world's poor. The scale of the past week's devastation is stunning, but so is the slow, grinding toll of everyday disease and malnutrition. Let's give back to the world more of America's idealism, and less of its bombs and bullets. Let's try to live as if America's future security depends on our ability to connect with what we too often dismiss as "the rest of the world." Because, in fact, it does. 
davidignatius@washpost.com 

 UNITED STATES (98%); INDONESIA (92%); IRAQ (79%)




11


  



January 4, 2005 Tuesday  




 Haphazard Charity

 
  PRESIDENT BUSH stepped up his response to the tsunami yesterday, announcing that flags would be flown at half-staff in memory of the victims, and enlisting his two immediate predecessors to campaign for private donations to disaster relief groups. After a tragedy that has killed an estimated 150,000 people and left as many as 5 million homeless, this response is welcome, as is the outpouring of international generosity that has generated $2 billion of promised contributions in just over one week. But it's hard to avoid marveling at the haphazard pattern of global empathy. Around the world, disasters that cut short hundreds of thousands of lives unfold constantly -- malaria kills 1 million people a year, AIDS kills about 3 million and the current genocide in Darfur has claimed perhaps 300,000 lives so far. Moreover, the tsunami is not the sort of disaster for which outside help is most crucial.  
Outsiders' assistance can deliver two things: resources, primarily money but also tents, medicines, helicopters and so on, and technical experts. The tsunami-afflicted countries are fairly well-endowed with both of these. India has already announced that it has the money and know-how to repair the damage it has suffered, and it has also extended help to its neighbors in Sri Lanka. Thailand is a middle-income country with a gross domestic product per person of $2,000, making it twice as rich as Honduras and five times richer than Kenya. Sri Lanka and Indonesia are somewhat poorer, but still far from the bottom of the development rankings. Both countries will continue to experience strong economic growth, because tourism and fishing, the two industries disrupted by the tsunami, represent a small share of output. However terrible the human destruction, this is not like the currency crisis of 1997-98, which left high flyers such as Indonesia with economies that shrunk by more than a tenth in the space of a year. The affected nations will have plenty of their own resources for reconstruction. 
It's also likely that the expertise needed to put broken communities back together will be primarily local. Unlike extremely poor countries, which often lack administrators who can conceive or implement policy, the countries of South Asia have been doing a pretty good job of managing their own development. The biggest reconstruction challenge, in the Indonesian province of Aceh, may be an exception. The tsunami destroyed the structure of the local government by killing many of its employees, and a separatist conflict in the province makes intervention by the central government and army more complicated. Even there, however, the new structures that fill this administrative vacuum are more likely to come from Indonesian authorities than from foreign aid agencies who parachute into the region. The locals know the region and the language; outsiders often do not. 
None of which is to say that the world's response to the tsunami has been excessive. Aid agencies have experience in coping with disasters, and this can complement the local knowledge of disaster-struck countries. Foreign logistical support, such as that being delivered by U.S. Seahawk helicopters in northern Sumatra, can widen crucial bottlenecks in a relief effort. In the medium and long term, the expertise amassed inside agencies such as the World Bank on disaster preparedness should be part of reconstruction planning. The United States has a chance to improve its relations with a key Muslim nation by acting aggressively to help Indonesia. But this extraordinary outpouring of generosity ought to prompt a reexamination of the rich world's relationship with far-off misery. If donors can find $2 billion in the space of one week, why does total government assistance to fight continuing development disasters run at just $60 billion or so per year? Now that we know the world's pockets are this deep, couldn't they be opened more frequently? 

  SRI LANKA (92%); SUDAN (79%); SOUTHERN ASIA (79%); KENYA (79%); THAILAND (79%); ASIA (79%)




11

   

 

January 2, 2005 



 DEADLY TSUNAMIS: Onslaught of the deep;
The world may take years to recover from a catastrophic rampage by the Indian Ocean.

 
The Tamil people know the power of the sea.
As children, they are taught the ancient myth of two tremendous deluges, hundreds of years apart, that sank their first homeland, a legendary continent southeast of the Indian Peninsula.
The second flood sank the continent forever, the story goes. Everyone was killed, except for a lone prince, who swam to the east coast of present-day India.
With a few salvaged books in his hand, he rebuilt Tamil civilization once again. 
Last Sunday, with the sky clear blue and the early morning deceptively serene, the monstrous sea hit again.
In Nagappattinam, India, a Tamil city of about 90,000, Vijay Kumar and his 3-year-old son were swept up by the first tsunami that plowed through the coastal community's downtown.
The panicked father fiercely embraced his son as the wave hurled the two of them up to the height of a two-story building.
The wave bashed them against snapped trees, chunks of concrete and other debris as they tried to keep their heads above water. Then the wave receded as quickly as it had snatched them, and something wooden, a tree or a piece of a smashed boat, hit Kumar hard in the back.
The force of the blow threw open the father's arms. The water pulled the boy away and down into a roiling torrent. All his father could do was watch the terrified face of his son as the boy disappeared.
"What else is there left in life? I have lost my son," he said as he wept days later outside the ruins of his home. "My God, what did we do wrong to lose him?"
Kumar's heart-wrenching story was one of millions of tragedies that have gathered to form one enormous natural catastrophe, one of the worst to hit our planet in modern times.
Even as Kumar spoke, volunteers nearby collected corpses in the street for identification and burial.
Within a few blocks of the port, the workers found several dead women clutching the corpses of small children.
As of this weekend, the official death toll stood at 140,000 --- equal to one-third of the population of Atlanta.
Three thousand Americans who were known to be in the area have not been found. The final death tally will be much higher --- and we may never know exactly how many were lost.
The monster tsunamis, which reached as high as 33 feet and traveled in some instances up to 500 mph, obliterated towns, roads and boats, cutting off whole regions from the rest of the world.
Hundreds of thousands more people have been injured. Millions were left homeless. U.N. officials believe at least 5 million people need immediate help.
Across 11 nations, the tsunamis laid waste to bustling cities, five-star resorts, low-lying island villages and remote military outposts.
Young lovers, craggy fishermen, guerrilla fighters, hotel workers, tanned European tourists and tens of thousands of children were drowned or crushed to death within the span of six or seven hours.
"The sea was full of bodies," said Sukardi Kasdi of Surang, Indonesia, who sailed a small boat to look for lost family.
As the sea retreated, it left its victims behind: misshapen, bloated corpses under rubble, in the streets, in sewers, even up in trees.
Death was so widespread in Sri Lanka that the government waived rules requiring an autopsy before burial.
In Muslim villages in the east of the mostly Buddhist island, some survivors, lacking shovels, used giant iron forks used for communal cooking and their hands to scrape out graves for several dozen victims, half of them children.
In Thailand, they stacked the dead in Buddhist temples. In India, unidentified bodies were burned en masse on the beach.
The Earth shuddered
The disaster's geographic reach is sweeping. The epicenter of the big earthquake was off the west coast of Indonesia's island of Sumatra and in India's Andaman Islands. People were killed as far away as the east coast of Africa, about 2,500 miles away.
That's the equivalent of a disaster hitting the Coca-Cola sign at Five Points and killing people in Vancouver, British Columbia, a few hours later.
The natural forces at work were, on one level, as simple as Archimedes climbing into a bathtub or a child tossing a pebble into a pond: Water was displaced, and the resulting energy was sent out in waves to dissipate.
Vectors, distance, volume --- it could all be graphed on a professor's chalkboard. Every action has a reaction. Two plates of the Earth's surface, which overlap near the Andaman Islands and Sumatra, shoved into each other. One was pushing violently upward. The Earth's molten core, which is in constant movement, has shifted the plates of the Earth's surface numerous times in the life of our planet.
These shoves have created continents, islands and mountains. And they have killed with earthquakes and resulting tsunamis.
Last Sunday's big earthquake, along a fault line 740 miles long, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, moved the plates only slightly, perhaps 50 feet. It was the energy equivalent, however, of an atomic explosion on the ocean floor --- a 9.0 on the Richter scale.
The quake sent diluvial monster waves --- as tall as buildings and the length of whole countries --- surging outward on a collision course with coastlines from Thailand to Tanzania, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka.
The tectonic thrust raised the ocean floor and literally reshaped the globe, pushing the island nation of Sri Lanka slightly.
The Maldives, a nation of 1,192 coral islands southwest of India, reported that at least 42 of them had been destroyed.
One scientist asserted the quake big altered the planet's rotation.
The lives of millions --- from shanty poor eking out lives as fishermen to wedding guests to jet-setting European vacationers --- also were forever altered. Economies were shattered.
In Nagappattinam, fishing families saw their boats --- from 130-foot trawlers to row boats --- smashed like matchsticks.
Resorts were destroyed from Thailand to the Maldives. Hundreds of tourists in Thailand and Sri Lanka were killed. In the days that followed, dazed survivors --- often without belongings or passports --- lined up at airports to leave the country. Many were without relatives or lovers with whom they had arrived.
"I saw many kids perish. I saw parents trying to hold them, but it was impossible," said Karl Kalteka of Germany, who lost his girlfriend in the torrent. "It was hell."
One of the worst single incidents occurred near the village of Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka.
A wave hurled a passenger train, the Queen of the Sea, off its rails and into coconut groves, fields and flimsy huts. At least 800 people died.
Two days later, workers were still pulling bodies from the wreckage of the train cars, some of which ended up half a mile from the tracks.
Unclaimed bodies were buried in a mass grave, with Buddhist monks performing traditional funeral rites. They chanted and poured water on the graves to symbolize the giving of merits of the living to the dead.
Venerable Baddegama Samitha, a Buddhist monk who presided over the ritual, said he realized some of the dead were of other faiths.
"This was the only thing we could do," he said. "It was a desperate solution. The bodies were rotting. We gave them a decent burial."
Amid the fetid ruination, miracles did occur.
In Malaysia, a 20-day-old baby was found alive on a floating mattress and was reunited with her family. Men reported outrunning the waves.
Swept away
Divers reported being swept great distances by the waves, unharmed. A Sri Lankan fisherman was saved after floating for three days at sea. News reports claimed an Australian surfer in Sri Lanka, identified only as Tim, successfully rode one of the waves inland. A Swedish toddler was found safe. A Taiwanese girl was found in a tree. But even fortunes were caked in loss: The mothers of both children still were missing.
Amid the corpses strewn across the region, tens of thousands of dead fish were hurled onto beaches, into homes and into forests.
People reported that some children were killed trying to collect the dead fish in between tidal waves.
Only land animals seemed to have sensed disaster coming and fled in time. Forest rangers in Sri Lanka reported elephants and other wildlife all moved inland and were unharmed. Madeline Jantos, a woman living in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, hundreds of miles from the quake's epicenter, reported to the BBC that her three dogs started barking furiously Sunday morning and would not stop until she walked out of her house.
The devastation stopped --- at least briefly --- one civil war. In Indonesia's Aceh province, rebels called a cease-fire to get relief to the needy.
Indonesian police and military let the Aceh rebels come out of the forest to look for relatives.
"They're looking for members of their families, just like many of our police members are looking for theirs," said Lt. Col. Ali Tarunajaya, an Aceh police chief. "We're all crying together."
In Sri Lanka, however, where Tamil guerrillas control large portions of territory in the northern part of the island, the government and the rebels refused to cooperate, despite widespread death and destruction.
The floods caused serious problems for the Tamil rebels, moving land mines from their known positions and destroying some rebel camps.
Looting was reported in some countries, and the bodies of dead tourists were sometimes targeted. On the streets of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital of Aceh, fights broke out over packets of noodles dropped from military vehicles.
On India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, refugees reported they had only coconuts to eat and fresh drinking water had been polluted by debris and saltwater.
"There's not a single hut which is standing. Everything is gone. Most of the people have gone up to the hills and are afraid to come down," said Mohammed Yusef, 60, a fisherman on the islands.
On the Indonesian island of Pulau Weh, Briton Al Howard said the devastation was "of biblical proportions."
"Everything was flattened," he said. "It was like a nuclear bomb had hit the place. I've seen bodies before but nothing like this. We lost count."
The nations ringing the world's third-largest ocean are widely diverse. Their languages range from Kiswahili to Tamil to Malay. Their religions range from Hinduism to Buddhism to Islam to Christianity. Since last Sunday, they have been bound irrevocably by the common denominator of calamitous loss.
Legend comes to life
The tale of the tremendous deluge, told in numerous cultures from the story of the Tamil prince to the story of Noah's Ark, had become reality.
Standing among the dead and the rubble in Banda Aceh last week was Emi, 42. She had returned to the neighborhood Tuesday to see if her 9-year-old son, Joanda, was among the bodies. The boy had slipped from his father's hand as they took shelter from the flood in a treetop.
Haggard, with unkempt jet-black hair, Emi, who like many Indonesians uses one name, recounted how she and her family had dashed from their home in fright Sunday morning when the earthquake rocked the province, followed quickly by the onslaught of the dark sea.
As the water poured across one of the main streets, many tried to outrun it. But the wall of water came too fast.
Her husband, son and two grandchildren clambered into the family's jeep. Emi caught a ride from someone on a motorcycle.
The beachfront was more than a mile away, but it took the ocean no time to flatten buildings for blocks in every direction and whisk vehicles off the pavement. Wooden fishing boats up to 75 feet long were heaved ashore, landing on houses and against storefronts. Emi's two grandchildren were drowned.
"The water kept rolling us, rolling us," Emi continued, tugging anxiously on her brown and white sarong. "I ended up on a rooftop hanging on. My husband ended up in a tree."
From the branches, he clung desperately to the hand of their son. But the boy slipped away, dropping into the churning waters, vanishing.
"So I keep searching and searching," she said. "How can I know the reasons for it? It is the power of God."
As she retold the story, the neighborhood was eerily still. In front of Emi was a broad lake where her block once stood, with islands of blasted brick walls and household furniture.
--- Compiled from news reports by AJC reporter Don Melvin in Sri Lanka, The Associated Press, , , The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Reuters, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, the British Broadcasting Corp. and the Indian Express.

 INDIA (95%); MALAYSIA (79%);   THAILAND (79%); 




11


   


January 2, 2005 Sunday  




 Aid Summit Talks in Jakarta: U.S. Is Facing a Choice and an Opportunity

 
The announcement by Asian leaders that they will hold a summit meeting in Jakarta on Thursday to coordinate aid for victims of the tsunami presents the Bush administration with the first of many choices about whether to seize on a disaster to change the nature of how President Bush approaches Asia in his second term.
 Until now, the region has fit into Mr. Bush's grand strategy primarily as a second front in his battle against terrorism, and as a place where future conflicts -- with North Korea, between China and Taiwan or India and Pakistan -- must be defused. But beyond that, his agenda has been modest, at best. 
 Now, as the United States joins the rush to deliver aid to the region, some officials inside the administration and many outside experts say Mr. Bush has a chance, particularly in Indonesia, to advance the cause he talked about so often in the presidential campaign: supporting the spread of democracy.
 ''No one could have seen this coming,'' John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of history at Yale, said Saturday. ''But it represents an opportunity to try to move beyond the frustration of Iraq and pre-emption and his tensions with the Islamic world. It is an example of an area where the U.S., with its financial resources and its logistical capability, can work in a cause that no one can argue with.''
 But it is also an area where symbolism and real action on the ground will merge in a blur of imagery that could define how America is viewed in the world's most populous region and one of its most volatile. 
 In Indonesia in particular, anti-Americanism has increased. Fairly or unfairly, the negative view of Washington's intentions toward the Islamic world worsened with the Iraq invasion, as Mr. Bush learned during his one visit to Indonesia -- a three-hour stop in Bali in 2003. 
 So now, every decision he makes will be examined for what it reveals of American intentions and generosity and for what it says about how American power will be exercised.
 On Saturday, as the president relaxed on the last day of his weeklong vacation at his Texas ranch, officials said they were doubtful that he would join the prime ministers of Japan and Australia and other leaders at the meeting in Jakarta. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Mr. Bush's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, are already scheduled to be in the region, and a summit meeting in Jakarta, the site of a series of bombings attributed to groups with Al Qaeda sympathies, poses a host of security concerns. 
 ''I don't think the president will decide that he has to attend personally to make his own commitment to aiding the victims clear,'' a senior administration official said.
 There seems to be little doubt now that the administration, after spending the week grasping the magnitude of the disaster, is committed to providing considerable relief aid.
 On Friday, days after disputing a senior United Nations official's charge that long-term Western aid efforts had been ''stingy,'' Mr. Bush ordered that American aid to the disaster area be increased to $350 million from $35 million. 
 In a symbolic move, he also ordered American flags lowered to half staff from Monday through Friday. 
 In his weekly radio address, delivered Saturday morning, Mr. Bush suggested that more was on the way. 
 ''Together, we are leading an international coalition to help with immediate humanitarian relief, rehabilitation and long-term construction efforts,'' he said. ''India, Japan and Australia have already pledged to help us coordinate these relief efforts, and I'm confident many more nations will join this core group in short order.''
 Less certain is whether and how he will use the opportunity to repair some of the damage done in the last three years.
 Both Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain have said in recent days that the recovery will take years, and that the lead must be taken by the United Nations -- with the support of countries that have the naval and airlift capacity to help. But other American officials, past and current, have noted that the world's attention span is short, and that one of the lessons of Rwanda and Bosnia is that attention quickly moves on to the next urgent problem.
 ''This will be a test of the administration's ability to take a different tone in the next four years,'' said Mr. Gaddis, who just published an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine titled ''Grand Strategy in the Second Term'' that calls for significant course corrections by Mr. Bush and his aides. 
 That is particularly the case in Asia. Mr. Bush's main diplomatic effort there so far has been in organizing Japan, South Korea, China and Russia to press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. He has periodically intervened to cool passions between China and Taiwan. But those have largely been efforts at preserving the status quo, avoiding the eruption of new crises while Iraq is still aflame. 
 Robert L. Barry, an ambassador to Indonesia under President Bill Clinton, said Saturday in an interview that so far there has been little engagement with places like Indonesia -- even if it has become, since the fall of President Suharto six years ago, an example of a rising, if uneasy, Muslim democracy.
 ''It's on the edge,'' Mr. Barry said from his home in New Hampshire. ''The popularity of the U.S. is at an all time low in Indonesia, and now there is a hell of a problem in Sumatra, as frustration mounts about getting supplies in.''
 ''It's a huge opportunity for the president,'' he said, referring to the chance to change America's image in the region. ''So far the response has been a bit slow, but the chance is there to make a big difference.''                                  

 




11


   


January 2, 2005 Sunday 
  




 How Nature Changes History

 
WHAT follows in the wake of a tsunami? The death of a nation? Secessionist warfare or, conversely, the unexpected drift of warring parties toward a peace table? A surge in Islamic fundamentalism? 
 If the past is any guide, the response to the shock of Dec. 26 will loom larger in history than the wave itself. Disasters rip away social moorings as harshly as they tear children from their mothers' hands, and while faceless nature may be to blame for the first blow, governments may reap the political whirlwind that follows it. 
 In this case, the wave that rose out of the Andaman Sea broke over some remarkably fragile societies: 
 Indonesia's Aceh province had been under virtual martial law, largely closed to the outside world as 40,000 troops hunted separatists. 
 Sri Lanka was cut in two by civil war, and new killings had raised fears that a two-year cease-fire was collapsing.
 In Thailand, fighting between the government and Muslim rebels not far from its beach resorts claimed at least 500 lives last year. 
 And the Maldives, a nation of 1,190 coral islands averaging three feet above sea level, already feared the slow rise in the surrounding waters caused by global warming.
 Disasters have often deflected the course of history. Three whole civilizations that met watery dooms occurred to Dr. Brian M. Fagan, an archaeologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
 The least-studied of these cataclysms took place in 5500 B.C., when the Mediterranean, rising as the last Ice Age melted, burst through the hills surrounding a brackish lake to the northeast, and created the Black Sea. Seawater probably poured for weeks through what is now the Bosporus, covering human settlements ringing the lake.
 In about 1600 B.C., roughly three centuries before the Trojan War, the Santorini volcano, 200 times as powerful as the Mount St. Helens explosion, sent waves hundreds of feet high across the Mediterranean, devastating Crete, capital of the Minoan empire, its fleet and its coastal cities. Fatally weakened, the empire was later conquered by the Mycenaeans of the Greek mainland, who established the model for Western culture. (For example, Minoan doors had no locks, while Mycenaeans built citadels.)
 And in the sixth century A.D., the Moche civilization, based in desert valleys in coastal Peru, may have been fatally weakened by a combination of earthquakes and El Nino storms that washed away hundreds of miles of irrigation canals from the Andes. A tsunami may also have flung their washed-away hillsides back ashore, forming dunes that blew over the valley farmland.
 Sudden and shocking as they are, earthquakes, volcanoes and tidal waves are not the biggest forces in human history. Tiny microbes are more powerful. Plague undermined the medieval social order by killing a third of Europe in the 14th century, and the New World fell to the poxes and sniffles of conquistadors and Puritans, not to their muskets. Then there are political assassinations: a Serbian bullet precipitated World War I.
 But winds and waves, even from average storms, can topple empires if timed perfectly -- usually catching a navy at sea or an army on the march. As Bryn Barnard, the author of ''Dangerous Planet: Natural Disasters That Changed History'' (Random House), noted, typhoons in 1274 and 1281 (later dubbed the ''kamikaze'' or divine wind) saved Japan by sinking Mongol amphibious assault fleets. In 1360, an English army was marching on Reims to crown Edward III the king of France when hail the size of pigeons' eggs stormed down, killing men and horses and taking the fight out of the superstitious Edward. Invasions of Russia by Napoleon and Hitler bogged down in harsh winters.
 The Dec. 26 tsunami will probably not end a civilization. But it did worsen the prospects for a nation's existence. The Maldives, dependent on tourism, lost habitable islands and a quarter of its 95 resorts, and suffered damage equal to double its gross domestic product. The government's spokesman admitted that its future was in peril. (In 2001, Tuvalu, a nation of nine coral atolls, agreed with New Zealand that all 11,000 Tuvalans would resettle there.) 
 Several areas hit by the tsunami, particularly Aceh, contain some ''very dangerous and unpredictable social cocktails,'' said Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, a San Francisco-area research group. 
 The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, he said, helped the cause of Muslim fundamentalists among the Indonesian nationalists already assassinating Dutch colonial planters and fighting their marines. That war was fought hardest in Aceh, on the north end of Sumatra, which practices a militant Islam linked to the Arabian peninsula, rather than the gentler mix of animism, Hinduism and Islam of Java, the island where Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, is situated.
 ''There was a sense that the old gods had failed them,'' said Mr. Saffo, who said he expected the new devastation to become ''a wacko magnet of enormous proportions with new cults founded'' in what is already an isolated rural area.
 The Indonesian government's response ''has to be swift, effective and free of corruption or it will be a gift to the fundamentalists,'' he said. The American war on terror, Mr. Saffo argued, might fare better by outspending Islamic charities in Indonesia than by ''pouring money into the sand'' in Iraq.
 Dr. Diane E. Davis, a professor of political sociology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also foresaw change in Aceh, though she spoke in terms more political than religious. The 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which she studied, hastened the end of 71 years of autocratic rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party. 
 In relief efforts run by the Mexican military and police, aid packages were brazenly stolen, and police officers were assigned to rescue sewing machines from a collapsed garment factory while bodies lay in its rubble. Instead of rebuilding merchant blocks in downtown Mexico City, the government tried to clear them for modern buildings. 
 The Indonesian soldiers now running relief in Aceh ''could be the same ones that had just been murdering people,'' she said. ''Imagine what that means on a face-to-face level.''
 By contrast, in war-exhausted Sri Lanka, citizens may see a contest. The government and the Tamil Tigers each control a stretch of devastated coast: which will do a better job? 
 With the right amount of goodwill, though, disasters can be a unifying force, said Dr. Michael H. Glantz, an expert on early warning systems at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
 Perhaps the greatest success for a disaster, he pointed out, was spawned by two earthquakes that took place just three weeks apart in 1999. When one near Izmit, Turkey, killed 17,000 people, the first country to send aid teams was Turkey's ancient enemy, Greece. When Greece in turn had a quake, Turkey reciprocated. 
 Admittedly, some diplomatic groundwork had already been laid, but Greece's foreign minister said later that the tragedies sent both nations a simple message: ''We are all human.'' The warmer relations eventually led to talks over Cyprus and an end to Greek opposition to Turkey joining the European Union. 
 ''Maybe there's a way to get the rebels and government in Sri Lanka to say 'We're in this together,''' said Dr. Glantz. Then he hesitated. ''But it doesn't really work like that.''


CORRECTION-DATE: January 9, 2005

 CORRECTION:
An article last Sunday about natural disasters that have changed history misstated an agreement between New Zealand and the island nation of Tuvalu, which is threatened by rising sea levels. Although New Zealand admits some Tuvalan settlers each year, it has not agreed to accept the entire population.


 INDONESIA (95%); MALDIVES (92%); THAILAND (92%); MEDITERRANEAN (92%); INDIA (79%); SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA (79%);  EUROPE (79%); ASIA (79%); PERU (79%)




11


  



January 2, 2005 Sunday  




 Help for Indonesia

 
 AS THE FULL horror of last week's earthquake and tsunami in southern Asia slowly becomes known, Indonesia is emerging as the center of one of the biggest natural disasters in history -- and as a focal point for concern about long-term social, economic and political aftershocks. Two-thirds of the death toll, which by the weekend had risen to more than 120,000, has been recorded in and around the island of  Sumatra, and  particularly within the poor, isolated and war-torn province of Aceh. With one sizable town  just 60 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake, Aceh suffered an extraordinary double blow: first a shock wave  about 200 times as powerful as the Los Angeles earthquake of 1994; then a tsunami that  sent waves from the seashore to the foot of mountains more than a mile inland. The town of Meulaboh, once  home to 120,000 people, may have lost a third of its population last Sunday morning. Lagoons stand where once there were thousands of homes. At least half a million people have been displaced, and disease and famine still threaten those who survive.  
Beyond the immediate humanitarian emergency, the disaster will pose a critical challenge to stability in the world's largest predominately Muslim country, a fledgling democracy that was just beginning to find its feet when the earthquake struck. With a population of 238 million spread over 17,000 islands, Indonesia has been the site of some of the greatest threats and most hopeful developments in the war on terrorism. Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda have carried out three major bombings in the  past two years, and they pose an ongoing threat. But the country is also a center for moderate Islamic thinking, and  three democratic elections were successfully staged there last year. The last, in September, handed the presidency to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a moderate former general who hopes to consolidate secular civilian rule and prove that democracy can bring Indonesia the booming economic growth it experienced under dictatorship in the 1980s and '90s.  
U.S. relations with Indonesia are friendly but uneasy: As elsewhere in the Muslim world, President Bush is deeply unpopular. The administration consequently has not only an urgent interest in supporting a democratic government in its moment of crisis but also an opportunity to earn desperately needed goodwill by responding aggressively and generously. Regrettably, Mr. Bush got off to a slow start, failing to speak publicly about the disaster for three days and initially committing less government aid than American citizens and businesses have volunteered. By the end of the week a policy more equal to the challenge was emerging: Mr. Bush multiplied the U.S. aid pledge by  10, dispatched two naval battle groups to the Indian Ocean and delegated Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as well as his brother  Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to travel to the region beginning today. The U.S. delegation has a lot of ground to cover: Thailand, Sri Lanka and India, among other affected nations, are also important American friends. But as it fashions a post-disaster policy, the administration should ensure that the United States is second to none in providing short- and long-term relief to Indonesia. From this terrible tragedy, some good -- in the form of deeper American support for a struggling Islamic country -- can still come.  

 INDONESIA (95%); UNITED STATES (93%); ASIA (92%)




11


  


January 1, 2005 Saturday  




 The Saudi Syndrome

 
The next time you consider the purchase of a family car that matches satisfying heft with infinitesimal mileage per gallon, you might want to think about where some of that gas money will ultimately be going. Part of the price of every extra gallon helps, albeit indirectly, to finance mosques and religious schools all over the world that spread a fanatical variant of Islam that sees legitimacy in terrorist attacks. This financing, amounting to billions of dollars a year, comes from the government and private charities of Saudi Arabia, a country that is now taking in roughly $80 billion a year from oil exports. 
 Saudi Arabia is the source of only 15 percent of America's imported oil. But since oil is an interchangeable commodity in world markets, every barrel America imports, even if it comes from Venezuela, Nigeria or Mexico, helps push up the prices received by Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter. America now imports well over half of the oil it consumes, and more than half of United States consumption is in the form of motor vehicle fuels. Thanks to America's gas guzzlers, China's booming factories and other thirsty consuming nations, this has been an extremely profitable year for oil exporting countries. Overall global demand is at record levels, and OPEC's production recently reached its highest since 1979. Even with the latest slippage in oil prices, Saudi Arabia's low production costs allow it to reap a hefty markup on every barrel sold.
  The Saudi government, itself under assault from Al Qaeda, is not in the business of directly financing terrorism, and since 9/11 it has responded to American pressure to control the flow of charitable funds to active terrorist groups. But what it still pays for, and what the religious charities its citizens are obliged to contribute to pay for, is a worldwide network of mosques, schools and Islamic centers that proselytize the belligerent and intolerant Wahhabi variant of Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia. As a result of this oil-financed largess, the teachings of more tolerant and humane Muslim leaders are losing ground in countries like Indonesia and Pakistan. Wahhabi mosques that glorify armed jihad have also made alarming gains among the Muslim populations of Europe and the United States. 
 For years, Saudi Arabian oil money bankrolled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and provided financial support to Pakistan's government. It was Saudi aid that allowed Pakistan to defy international sanctions imposed over its nuclear bomb testing. Without Saudi money there is some question whether chronically impoverished Pakistan could have ever afforded to develop nuclear weapons and the crucial bomb-related technologies that its scientists passed on to Iran, Libya, North Korea and perhaps other countries as well. 
 There is no sinister Saudi conspiracy at work here. This is just what anyone should expect to happen when mind-boggling sums of oil money flow into an absolute monarchy that bases its legitimacy on puritanical militant Islam and offers no pretense of political accountability or transparent accounting. The more copiously that oil money flows, the less pressure a divided Saudi royal family feels to undertake the kind of difficult political and economic reforms that might conceivably break the nexus between oil and terror. 
 The Saudi syndrome is not the only reason Americans need to get much more serious about energy conservation. But it is a powerfully compelling one.              








  
  


January 1, 2005 Saturday  



 U.S. TSUNAMI AID TO INCREASE TENFOLD;
$350 MILLION PLEDGED
DELIVERING SUPPLIES A CHALLENGE

 
The United States boosted its commitment of aid tenfold Friday as relief workers from around the world confronted daunting problems getting supplies to areas devastated by this week's earthquake and tsunami. Desperate residents from Indonesia to Sri Lanka lashed out at what they saw as a sluggish response to their pleas for help.
From his ranch in Crawford, Texas, President Bush said the United States would provide $350 million in aid for victims of the disaster, well above its initial pledge of $35 million. The move comes as the U.S. government has rapidly increased its aid package in the five days since a massive underwater earthquake spawned tsunamis that devastated nations from Thailand across the Indian Ocean to eastern Africa. 
"Our contributions will continue to be revised as the full effects of this terrible tragedy become clearer," Bush said in a statement. France has promised $57 million, Britain $95 million and Sweden $75.5 million.
By Friday, the death toll from the disaster remained in the range of 123,000, with little change in official counts since Thursday. In an even more grave assessment, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland estimated the number of dead was approaching 150,000. "The vast majority of those are in Indonesia," he said Friday, adding that the final death toll would probably never be known.
Death toll
But Indonesian officials particularly were worried that the number of dead on the ravaged island of Sumatra would climb further. The total there might eventually top 100,000. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said his country hasn't been hit so hard since the famed volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883.
Given the estimated 5,000 foreign tourists still unaccounted for, and the fact that many islands in the Indian Ocean and areas of Indonesia have yet to be subject to a complete count, the death toll is certain to rise.
A spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies late Friday put the death tolls at 80,000 in Indonesia, 28,000 in Sri Lanka, 10,000 in India, 4,500 in Thailand, and several hundred scattered among a handful of other countries.
President Bush said "the need for financial and other assistance will steadily increase in the days and weeks ahead."
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are set to travel to the region to more fully develop the U.S. response, which already includes military ships, planes and rescue teams.
It's clear from reports on the ground, and from major relief organizations, that more needs to be done to coordinate relief supplies and their delivery.
The United Nations World Food Program, for example, said there is a critical need for more airplanes and helicopters, given the vast number of islands and coastal areas to serve and the hundreds of miles that separate them.
"This is going to really stretch all aid organizations to the limits," said spokesman Trevor Rowe. "It's a huge geographic challenge, and the more you spend on fuel and transportation, the less you have for food."
The food program has lined up four cargo planes from Australia that are flying into the flattened villages of Indonesia's Aceh province, and another that is shuttling supplies to the islands of Maldives, one of the countries slammed by the tsunami.
But the organization needs many more planes to adequately do its job -- different size planes to handle different cargo loads and to land at airportswith runways of varying length. With some areas inaccessible by airplane, helicopters are also desperately needed.
Health concerns
Supplies might not reach some areas for two or three more days. The World Health Organization, which estimates that 3 million to 5 million people no longer have access to the basic necessities of life, said its priorities are to ensure that clean water is in adequate supply to reduce the risk of diarrhea and other intestinal tract diseases; and to get people out of crowded, unsanitary shelters that can foster the spread of respiratory infections such as pneumonia.
The WHO is also worried about a rapid spread of malaria, since flooding and stagnant water can create conditions favorable for the mosquitoes that carry it.
As governments and non-profit aid groups scrambled to deliver aid, residents in the affected areas of Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka clamored for help.
In Banda Aceh, on the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, bodies have been laid along the sidewalks downtown, and the smell of decomposing flesh hangs in the air. Power is still out in most neighborhoods, and lines for gas go on forever.
Although food, water and medicine have been slow in coming, late Friday afternoon one cargo plane was seen unloading relief supplies at the airport, and another was seen leaving.
In Madampa, Sri Lanka, the relief efforts were going only slightly better. Residents remain hungry and thirsty. But at times when supply vehicles arrive, desperate residents swarm around, and relief workers get frightened and drive away, trying to avoid a melee.
In some areas, relief vehicles belonging to private individuals or companies simply toss packets as they drive along, avoiding huge crowds. The fittest refugees captured most of the food packets, while the weak had to rely on the beneficence of the quick.
"People are panicking," explained S.H. Bandusiri, a stonemason who lives here. "When the food comes, they think it's not enough for their families."
Many coastal residents still reside in their once-flooded homes but have no water or electricity.
The Sri Lanka government, struggling with short-term problems, has yet to decide whether the hundreds of thousands of seaside residents displaced by the devastating walls of water can rebuild on the same sites. If President Chandrika Kumaratunga has her way, they won't be able to live within a half-mile of the sea ever again. That means the victims will have to live in temporary camps for many months while new land is found and housing built.
Difficult road ahead
In the hard-hit south Indian city of Nagapattinam, relief trucks distributed food and clothing, and a few people returned to their homes.
But most people who ventured to their former homes simply milled about, daunted by the task of rebuilding and lacking the materials to do so.
One woman, who lost her son and daughter, wailed out in grief to passersby near the city's dock.
"I don't want money, I just want my children back," she said. "Kill me. I don't want to live in this world."

















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GLOBAL WAVE OF AID NEEDED;BIG DOSE OF AMERICAN GENEROSITY COULD HELP COUNTER NEGATIVE IMAGE ABROAD San Jose Mercury News (California) December 28, 2004 Tuesday MORNING  

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At Indonesian Embassy, Tears And Roses; A Long-Planned Celebration Turns Into a Day to Grieve  December 28, 2004 Tuesday 

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Pope prays for peace on Earth; Asks that attempts to end conflict in Iraq, Africa and Holy Land prevail The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) December 26, 2004 Sunday 

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U.S. should pay more attention to Asia Pittsburgh Tribune Review December 26, 2004 Sunday 

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Elections to test Mideast democracy campaign; Several nations face challenges as 2005 begins Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA) December 26, 2004 Sunday 

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Crackdown by Premier Strains Thailand's Friendship With U.S.  December 25, 2004 Saturday 

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A wide world of Arabic speakers St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) December 13, 2004 Monday 

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Muslim Scholars Increasingly Debate Unholy War The New York Times December 10, 2004 Friday 

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Interpreter Says No To Secrecy; Indonesian Specialist Resigns to Protest Nondisclosure Rule  December 9, 2004 Thursday 

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Habitat founder honored tonight;Fuller hailed as a uniter  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution December 8, 2004 Wednesday 

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U.S. Free-Trade Deals Include Few Muslim Countries  December 3, 2004 Friday 

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An Exotic Tale Formed of Clay And Imagination  December 2, 2004 Thursday 

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Films About Islam Win Festival's Top Awards The New York Times November 30, 2004 Tuesday 

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Caption only: Muslims protest war Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) November 29, 2004 Monday 

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U.N. Tackles Issue of Imbalance of Power The New York Times November 28, 2004 Sunday 

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In Nigeria, Talking Up Two Drops of Vaccine; Polio Eradication Efforts Get Back on Track After Hostility to Treatment Reignited Disease  November 25, 2004 Thursday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  November 25, 2004 Thursday 

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26 Charged in Va. In Document Fraud; 4 Businesses Raided Over Fake IDs  November 23, 2004 Tuesday 

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A War of Ideas  November 21, 2004 Sunday 

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) November 18, 2004 Thursday 

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MUSLIMS GATHER IN A DAY OF JOY AND THANKS  The Orange County Register (California) November 15, 2004 Monday 

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Palestinians say goodbye Pittsburgh Tribune Review November 13, 2004 Saturday 

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Yasser Arafat 1929-2004 Pittsburgh Tribune Review November 13, 2004 Saturday 

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U.S. Must Act As the Power It Is in Asia The New York Sun November 11, 2004 Thursday 

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U.S. Must Act As the Power It Is in Asia The New York Sun November 11, 2004 Thursday 

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Europe casts wary eye on Islam; Dutch murder spurs debate as Muslim ranks swell The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) November 7, 2004 Sunday 

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Thai King Urges Premier to Be More Lenient in the Muslim South The New York Times November 2, 2004 Tuesday 

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OUR OPINION: Senate's third could be a first  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 31, 2004 Sunday 

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COMMENTARY: WE NEED A WAR ON TERROR THAT FOCUSES ON THE TERRORISTS The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico) October 31, 2004 Sunday 

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Indonesia Brings New Case Against Cleric Tied to Terror The New York Times October 29, 2004 Friday 

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Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 29, 2004 Friday 1 MINNESOTA EDITION 

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Thai leader defends security forces over 78 detainee deaths Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) October 28, 2004 Thursday 

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Letters to the Editor Star News (Wilmington NC) October 27, 2004, Wednesday 

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IN BRIEF  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 23, 2004 Saturday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) October 21, 2004 Thursday 

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) October 21, 2004 Thursday Five Star Lift Edition 

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AROUND THE REGION Star News (Wilmington NC) October 21, 2004, Thursday 

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PHOTORAMADAN PRAYER Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 17, 2004 Sunday ST. PAUL EDITION 

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Indonesian Cleric Faces New Charges  October 16, 2004 Saturday 

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Fears of violence rise as Ramadan celebrated  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 15, 2004 Friday 

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INCREASE UNDERSTANDING OF MUSLIM HOLY MONTH The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) October 15, 2004 Friday 

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Cleansing Before The Fasting The New York Times October 15, 2004 Friday 

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Paradise rebounds USA TODAY October 15, 2004, Friday, 

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How to pursue democracy is basis of election Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) October 13, 2004 Wednesday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 9, 2004 Saturday 

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THE WORLD  The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) October 9, 2004 Saturday 

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News in brief  October 9, 2004 Saturday 

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NATION & WORLD BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 9, 2004 Saturday ST. PAUL EDITION 

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NATION / WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) October 9, 2004 Saturday Five Star Lift Edition 

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Indonesia could set example for Arab lands Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) October 6, 2004 Wednesday 

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Vote for Mom? Candidate Says She's Just the Ticket  October 5, 2004 Tuesday 

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MILITANTS FORM SPLINTER GROUP IN SOUTHEAST ASIA WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS October 4, 2004, Monday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) October 3, 2004 Sunday 

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U.S., Iraqi Forces Control Samarra; Sporadic Fighting Continues After Major Offensive North of Baghdad  October 3, 2004 Sunday 

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Yudhoyono Has Mandate For Change The New York Sun September 30, 2004 Thursday 

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Kerry Is Widely Favored Abroad; Hostility Toward Bush Revealed in Surveys and Interviews  September 29, 2004 Wednesday 

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International news briefs The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) September 23, 2004 Thursday 

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SPOTLIGHT ON INDONESIA  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution September 22, 2004 Wednesday 

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A Cautious Reformer as Indonesia's Next President; Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono The New York Times September 22, 2004 Wednesday 

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The New York Times September 22, 2004 Wednesday 

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Indonesian Plans to Act Swiftly on Graft Cases; President-Elect to Battle Corruption, Advisers Say  September 22, 2004 Wednesday 

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Arabs debate why so many terrorists are Muslims; Scholars argue such discussion is necessary for faith The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) September 21, 2004 Tuesday 

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Ex-General Appears to Win By Big Margin in Indonesia The New York Times September 21, 2004 Tuesday Correction Appended 

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INDONESIANS CHOOSE NEW LEADERGENERAL REPORTEDLY BEATS MEGAWATI Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) September 21, 2004 Tuesday ST. PAUL EDITION 

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) September 21, 2004 Tuesday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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President Heads For Defeat in Indonesia Vote; Retired General Projected to Win Big  September 21, 2004 Tuesday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) September 20, 2004 Monday 

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Indonesians Making Final Choice for President The New York Times September 20, 2004 Monday 

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A Broader Agenda For Indonesia  September 20, 2004 Monday 

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Indonesia Set to Pick President in Runoff; Incumbent Megawati Trails in Opinion Polls as Voter Discontent Is Widespread  September 20, 2004 Monday 

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ELECTION The New York Times September 19, 2004 Sunday 

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INDONESIA TO ELECT 1ST PRESIDENT Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) September 19, 2004 Sunday ST. PAUL EDITION 

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WESTERNERS TREAD SOFTLY IN INDONESIA;TERROR AIMED AT AMERICANS AND AUSTRALIANS FEARED AS NATION PREPARES TO SELECT PRESIDENT San Jose Mercury News (California) September 19, 2004 Sunday MORNING  

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INDONESIANS TO DIRECTLY ELECT PRESIDENT FOR FIRST TIME MONDAY San Jose Mercury News (California) September 19, 2004 Sunday MORNING  

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The First Draft of Freedom The New York Times September 16, 2004 Thursday 

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HOW RUSSIA'S CHECHEN QUAGMIRE BECAME FRONT FOR RADICAL ISLAM WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS September 16, 2004, Thursday 

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Aim of terrorists' suicide bombings is political Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) September 15, 2004 Wednesday 

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Islam's links to terror attacks have local believers concerned The Denver Post September 12, 2004 Sunday 

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<50>Jakarta picking up the pieces<P> Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) September 11, 2004 Saturday 

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3 Fugitive Muslim Militants Suspected in Jakarta Attack; Police Memo Had Warned of a Possible Terrorist Bombing  September 11, 2004 Saturday 

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Muslim militants explode car bomb outside embassy; Group: Australia get out of Iraq, have your citizens leave Indonesia The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) September 10, 2004 Friday 

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Car Bomb in Jakarta Kills 9 At Australian Embassy The New York Times September 10, 2004 Friday 

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AUSTRALIA'S FORTITUDE  The New York Post September 10, 2004 Friday 

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Foreigners favor Kerry over Bush in 35-nation polling   The Philadelphia Inquirer SEPTEMBER 9, 2004 Thursday CITY-D EDITION 

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NATION & WORLD BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) September 9, 2004 Thursday CITY EDITION 

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) September 9, 2004 Thursday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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Massacre in Russia shows terror's scope;No one, including moderate Muslims, is safe from the threat that radicals pose. Portland Press Herald (Maine) September 8, 2004 Wednesday, FINAL Edition 

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U.S. warns about possible attacks in Indonesia   The Philadelphia Inquirer SEPTEMBER 5, 2004 Sunday BULLDOG EDITION 

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) September 5, 2004 Sunday Five Star Lift Edition 

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Moving on with 'Hope not Hate' Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) September 4, 2004 Saturday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) September 3, 2004 Friday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer AUGUST 25, 2004 Wednesday CITY-D EDITION 

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2 More Nations Report Polio Cases; A Dozen African Countries Have Had Resurgence of Disease  August 25, 2004 Wednesday 

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<P> Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) August 24, 2004 Tuesday 

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9/11 Commission's Report Promises Unending War New York Observer August 9, 2004 

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Winning War on Terror Requires Turning On the World to America The Forward August 6, 2004 

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What Would Machiavelli Do? The New York Times August 2, 2004 Monday 

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Persecution of Christians is growing - in Sweden and Canada;You may be surprised to hear that quoting the Bible can get you in trouble with the law in both places. Portland Press Herald (Maine) August 2, 2004 Monday, FINAL Edition 

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Hostage Spared as Deadline Passes; Firm to Talk to Iraqi Mediator; Kidnappings Cause Unrest in Asia  July 31, 2004 Saturday 

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Powell Welcomes Saudi Proposal For Muslim Troops  July 30, 2004 Friday 

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Muslim religion and democracy can coexist Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) July 28, 2004 Wednesday 

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BOY 'DIVORCES' DAD AFTER MOM'S MURDER Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) July 27, 2004 Tuesday CITY EDITION 

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Pluralism tour makes a S.L. stop Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) July 24, 2004 Saturday 

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Feud May Tear a Sultanate Asunder; Father's Unusual Choices Leave 2 Indonesian Princes Claiming a Kingdom in Decline  July 12, 2004 Monday 

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Indonesia's Democratic Growing Pains The New York Sun July 8, 2004 Thursday 

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World Briefly Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA) July 8, 2004 Thursday 

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Opposing Parties Meet in Indonesia; Front-Runner in Presidential Election Attempts to Gather Support for Runoff  July 8, 2004 Thursday 

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Megawati Projected to Make Runoff In Indonesia; President Would Face Ex-Aide, Top Vote-Getter Yudhoyono  July 7, 2004 Wednesday 

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Former General Wins Most Votes in Indonesia Election The New York Times July 6, 2004 Tuesday 

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Elections in Indonesia The New York Sun July 6, 2004 Tuesday 

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THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE YOUNG RECRUITS As a nation at war celebrates its independence, eager New Yorkers join Marine fighting machine Daily News (New York) July 4, 2004 Sunday 

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Security, Jobs Hover Over Indonesian Vote; In First Direct Presidential Election, Religion Appears to Play Minor Role  July 4, 2004 Sunday 

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In Utah, Two Faiths and One Prayer The New York Times July 1, 2004 Thursday Correction Appended 

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Polio Warning Issued for Travel to Nigeria  July 1, 2004 Thursday Correction Appended 

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Indonesia Polls Favor Former General; As Presidential Vote Nears, Front-Runner Woos Public With Songs, Security  June 28, 2004 Monday Correction Appended 

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UNDERSTANDING YOUR WORLD: U.S., SAUDIS HAVE LONG HISTORY The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico) June 26, 2004 Saturday 

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Is West headed for same fate as Roman Empire? Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) June 24, 2004 Thursday 

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Polio Eradication Faces Setback in Africa  June 23, 2004 Wednesday 

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Insurgency boils up in Thailand USA TODAY June 21, 2004, Monday, 

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Saying Farewell to an Indonesia She Knew Too Well The New York Times June 19, 2004 Saturday 

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TERRORISTS TARGET THE MESSENGERS Daily News (New York) June 9, 2004 Wednesday 

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For Muslims, Courtship Enabled by the Internet  June 6, 2004 Sunday 

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Strategic oil route vulnerable; Terrorists might hit Malacca Straits in Southeast Asia, some experts fear The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) June 4, 2004 Friday 

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Indonesian Cleric's Media Empire; Millions Watch Imam's Broadcast Sermons, Buy His Line of Products  June 2, 2004 Wednesday 

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Indonesia Threatens to Expel Critic of Security  May 29, 2004 Saturday 

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World / National Briefly Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA) May 25, 2004 Tuesday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer MAY 23, 2004 Sunday CITY-D EDITION 

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'Ayat Jamiliah' author reading at Auntie's Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA) May 23, 2004 Sunday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  May 23, 2004 Sunday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer MAY 19, 2004 Wednesday CITY-D EDITION 

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Muslim CEOs of U.S. firms fight terrorism, 'stop evil' USA TODAY May 19, 2004, Wednesday, 

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Nigerian province rejoins polio vaccination effort  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution May 18, 2004 Tuesday 

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War and Abuse Do Little Harm To U.S. Brands The New York Times May 9, 2004 Sunday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer MAY 7, 2004 Friday CITY-D EDITION 

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War between Muslims threatens us all Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) May 6, 2004 Thursday 

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For Technology, No Small World After All The New York Times May 6, 2004 Thursday Correction Appended 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer MAY 2, 2004 Sunday CITY-D EDITION 

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Bridging the gap between Muslims and the West Austin American-Statesman (Texas) May 1, 2004 Saturday 

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Indonesia Touts Evidence Against Cleric; Report Said to Link Him to Al Qaeda Prompts New Arrest on Departure From Prison  May 1, 2004 Saturday 

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WESTERN NATIONS VOW TO FIGHT HATE CRIMES Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) April 30, 2004 Friday CITY EDITION 

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WORLD WATCH -- ASIA/PACIFIC: INDONESIA TO RE-ARREST MUSLIM CLERIC BAASYIR WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS April 30, 2004, Friday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer APRIL 28, 2004 Wednesday CITY-D EDITION 

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SHARON VOWS TOUGH STANCE AFTER PULLOUT Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) April 28, 2004 Wednesday CITY EDITION 

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Violence between faiths escalates in Indonesia Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) April 27, 2004 Tuesday 

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Investor's Business Daily April 27, 2004 Tuesday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer APRIL 27, 2004 Tuesday CITY-D EDITION 

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24 DEAD AS CLASHES CONTINUE ON MOLUCCAS San Jose Mercury News (California) April 27, 2004 Tuesday MORNING  

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) April 26, 2004 Monday 

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International news briefs The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) April 26, 2004 Monday 

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The Lemelson Foundation, named for a prolific inventor, aims to reward inventions that help poor countries develop. The New York Times April 26, 2004 Monday 

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FOREIGN DESK The New York Sun April 26, 2004 Monday 

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Foreign student applications drop ; Colleges watching national trend The Oklahoman April 26, 2004 Monday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer APRIL 26, 2004 Monday CITY-D EDITION 

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NATION & WORLD BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) April 26, 2004 Monday CITY EDITION 

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MUSLIMS, CHRISTIANS CLASH;10 PEOPLE SLAIN San Jose Mercury News (California) April 26, 2004 Monday MORNING  

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) April 26, 2004 Monday Five Star Edition 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  April 26, 2004 Monday 

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World +5;+6 U.S. convoy ambushed in southern Afghanistan The York Dispatch (York, PA) April 26, 2004 Monday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) April 24, 2004 Saturday 

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Holdout Threatens Global Polio Eradication Effort; Suspicious of Vaccine, Nigerian State Refuses to Join Countrywide Immunization of Children  April 24, 2004 Saturday 

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U.S. Pressure to Hold Militant Sets Off Outcry in Indonesia The New York Times April 20, 2004 Tuesday 

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Will Indonesia reject Islamic extremism? Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) April 15, 2004 Thursday 

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REFUGEE DECISION HAS BIGGER PICTUREU.S. RESETTLEMENT OF HMONG MAY BRING BENEFITS AS WELL AS REPAY PAST DEBT Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) April 12, 2004 Monday CITY EDITION 

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U.S. Warns the Philippines on Terror Groups The New York Times April 11, 2004 Sunday 

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A stable Pakistan could change Middle East Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) April 8, 2004 Thursday 

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Ex-hostage details Islamic terror training; Filipinos witnessed Indonesian militants teach bomb-making, other skills at camp The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) April 7, 2004 Wednesday 

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Ex-hostage saw terror training Indonesian militants taught sniper skills, bomb-making to rebels;Indonesian militants taught sniper skills, bomb-making to rebels San Gabriel Valley Tribune (San Gabriel Valley, CA) April 6, 2004 Tuesday 

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NEWS SUMMARY The New York Times April 5, 2004 Monday 

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Indonesians Vote, With the Economy, Not Islam, in Spotlight The New York Times April 5, 2004 Monday 

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NATION & WORLD BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) April 5, 2004 Monday CITY EDITION 

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VOTE IS LIKELY TO MIRROR ECONOMIC DISCONTENT San Jose Mercury News (California) April 5, 2004 Monday MORNING  

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In Indonesia, Political Rallies Mean a Payday  April 3, 2004 Saturday 

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A musical movement Pasadena Star-News (Pasadena, CA) April 1, 2004 Thursday 

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The Sick Man of the World  March 28, 2004 Sunday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  March 27, 2004 Saturday 

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Hamas leader Yassin was obstacle to peace USA TODAY March 26, 2004, Friday, 

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400 foreign students gather in halls of state government The Oklahoman March 25, 2004 Thursday 

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IN INDONESIA, AIDS EDUCATION CLASHES WITH ISLAM WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS March 25, 2004, Thursday 

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Court setbacks mount in terrorism trials; U.S. refuses to let witnesses testify; cooperation poor The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) March 22, 2004 Monday 

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New Premier Of Malaysia Gets Mandate All His Own The New York Times March 22, 2004 Monday 

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SENATE CANDIDATE EMBODIES DIVERSITYCHICAGO DEMOCRAT TAKES POLITICS BEYOND RACE Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) March 21, 2004 Sunday EARLY EDITION 

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Iraqi reform must be Arabs' own initiative Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) March 18, 2004 Thursday 

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Killing Iraq With Kindness The New York Times March 17, 2004 Wednesday 

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A Leaner, Meaner Jihad The New York Times March 16, 2004 Tuesday 

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Pirates of the modern day San Mateo County Times (San Mateo, CA) March 16, 2004 Tuesday 

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Al-Qaeda may be showing a new face USA TODAY March 16, 2004, Tuesday, 

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'It's Fun Going to School'; Twin Sisters Help Educate 1,600 Kids In Indonesia  March 15, 2004 Monday 

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MIGHTY QUINN Daily News (New York) March 14, 2004 Sunday 

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INSIDE The New York Times March 10, 2004 Wednesday 

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Cleric's Sentence Is Reduced by Indonesian Court The New York Times March 10, 2004 Wednesday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer MARCH 10, 2004 Wednesday CITY-D EDITION 

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Indonesian Court Cuts Term of Terror Suspect  March 10, 2004 Wednesday 

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BAY AREA GROUP REIGNITES GAMELAN;ENSEMBLE'S IMPACT HAS BEEN FELT IN U.S., ON BALI San Jose Mercury News (California) March 5, 2004 Friday MORNING  

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) March 1, 2004 Monday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer FEBRUARY 27, 2004 Friday CITY-D EDITION 

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Speaker clarifies Muslim positions; Decisions lecture shows similarity in religions Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA) February 27, 2004 Friday 

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CIA chief: Al-Qaeda inspiring 'next wave';"Dozens of such groups" have grown up around the world, he warned.   The Philadelphia Inquirer FEBRUARY 25, 2004 Wednesday CITY-D EDITION 

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DANGER WON'T END WITH AL-QAIDATENET SAYS NEW GROUPS OPERATE INDEPENDENTLY Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) February 25, 2004 Wednesday CITY EDITION 

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SOMBER VIEWS ON NATIONAL SECURITY San Jose Mercury News (California) February 25, 2004 Wednesday MORNING  

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Special Diets Are an Adventure in Packing The New York Times February 17, 2004 Tuesday 

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No one dares guess why al-Qaida hasn't hit again Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) February 15, 2004 Sunday 

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Indonesian Court Overturns Politician's Corruption Conviction The New York Times February 13, 2004 Friday 

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The Other Shoe  February 13, 2004 Friday 

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EAT: MYSTERIES OF BALI;NEW BUT LIKE AN OLD FRIEND, EXOTIC BUT NOT FANCY, IT'S A PLACE OF INDONESIA INTRIGUE.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution February 12, 2004 Thursday 

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A fight over religious symbols: French target Muslims  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution February 10, 2004 Tuesday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer FEBRUARY 10, 2004 Tuesday CITY-D EDITION 

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INTERVIEW Woman's plea to fellow Muslims: Reform Islam The Denver Post February 8, 2004 Sunday 

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NATION & WORLD BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) February 7, 2004 Saturday MINNESOTA EDITION 

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Report Cites Emergence of New Islamic Militia in Indonesia   The New York Times February 4, 2004 Wednesday 

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ARTS BRIEFING   The New York Times February 2, 2004 Monday 

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Muslims, Jews seek understanding Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) January 31, 2004 Saturday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer JANUARY 30, 2004 Friday CITY-D EDITION 

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Indonesia's Partway Democracy  January 19, 2004 Monday 

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Indonesian Artists Test New Freedoms; Filmmakers, Writers Breaking Taboos as Post-Suharto Era Takes Hold  January 11, 2004 Sunday 

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NATION & WORLD BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) January 9, 2004 Friday CITY EDITION 

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NATION & WORLD BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) January 9, 2004 Friday MINNESOTA EDITION 

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Years of Living Dangerously; A reporter investigates the newest threat to Southeast Asia's democracies.  January 4, 2004 Sunday 

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BOOKS: How the ultimate dictionary came to be  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution December 28, 2003 Sunday 

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Terror fears mar Indonesia's Christmas season; U.S. Embassy is warning Americans about 'high' risk Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA) December 22, 2003 Monday 

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CHILDREN'S BOOKS   The New York Times December 21, 2003 Sunday 

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'WE GOT HIM': INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY: Many embrace opportunity for healing;Leading critics of U.S. policy offer praise  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution December 15, 2003 Monday 

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WAR IN IRAQ ADVANCES TO A NEW FRONT: BOOKSHELVES St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) December 14, 2003 Sunday Five Star Lift Edition 

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THE SATURDAY PROFILE; An Indonesian Voice in the Antiterror Wilderness  The New York Times December 13, 2003 Saturday 

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A REGION INFLAMED: ALLIES; Indonesian Criticizes U.S. Over the War in Iraq  The New York Times December 9, 2003 Tuesday 

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Indonesian Foreign Minister Calls U.S. Policy in Iraq 'Utter Failure'  December 9, 2003 Tuesday 

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I Went to Indonesia, And Ran Into a Mountain of Trouble  December 7, 2003 Sunday 

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CLERIC AVOIDS TREASON CONVICTION Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) December 2, 2003 Tuesday CITY EDITION 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  December 2, 2003 Tuesday 

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CAMPAIGN CONFIDENTIAL The Forward November 28, 2003 

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Debating Polygamy's Resurgence; Indonesians Divided Over Meaning of Koran  November 28, 2003 Friday 

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OSAMA AIDE GETS 4 YRS.  Ex-bodyguard dishes on Al Qaeda Daily News (New York) November 27, 2003, Thursday 

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Debate rages within Islam over faith  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution November 26, 2003 Wednesday 

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TABLE FOR FIVE? CHICKEN MAGNATE PUTS POLYGAMY ON MENU WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS November 24, 2003, Monday 

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A Dissident Asks: Can Bush Turn Words Into Action?  November 23, 2003 Sunday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  November 22, 2003 Saturday 

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A REGION INFLAMED: ISTANBUL; Blasts Hit 2 British Sites in Turkey as Bush Visits Blair  The New York Times November 21, 2003 Friday 

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Bush's Democracy Is Fit for Kings New York Observer November 17, 2003 

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Al Qaeda Affiliate Training Indonesians On Philippine Island; Persistence Startles Officials in Manila  November 17, 2003 Monday 

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Everybody Hates Somebody Somewhere   The New York Times November 16, 2003 Sunday 

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Bush Policy or Bush Philosophy . . .  November 16, 2003 Sunday 

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BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Understanding Indonesia, By Its Leaders and Its Gossip  The New York Times November 15, 2003 Saturday 

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Back to Bali; Tourists Return After a Tough Year  November 9, 2003 Sunday 

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Bush's 'Age Of Liberty' Investor's Business Daily November 7, 2003 Friday 

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MILITARY OPERATIONS WILL EXPAND IN ACEH PROVINCE San Jose Mercury News (California) November 7, 2003 Friday MORNING  

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'The Advance of Freedom Leads to Peace'  November 7, 2003 Friday 

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Critics Mobilize and London Police Brace for Bush's Visit   The New York Times November 6, 2003 Thursday 

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A War of Choice, and One Who Chose It  November 2, 2003 Sunday 

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W DUCKS REAL NATURE OF THE WAR U.S. IS IN Daily News (New York) October 29, 2003, Wednesday 

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THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ; Bush on Guerrilla Strikes: 'Desperate Attacks on Innocent Civilians Will Not Intimidate Us'  The New York Times October 29, 2003 Wednesday 

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Observing Ramadan   The New York Times October 27, 2003 Monday 

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Page Two: Oct. 19-25; MEANWHILE, IN ASIA  The New York Times October 26, 2003 Sunday 

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Don't Tread on Us; Radical Islam Gains a Seductive New Voice  The New York Times October 26, 2003 Sunday 

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Wolfowitz's Hotel Is Attacked in Baghdad   The New York Times October 26, 2003 Sunday 

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A HIDDEN VOICE OF ISLAM;AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSLIMS SHOW HOW DIFFERING FAITHS CAN PEACEFULLY CO-EXIST HERE San Jose Mercury News (California) October 25, 2003 Saturday MORNING  

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In Asia, Hoping Domestic Themes Also Travel Well  October 25, 2003 Saturday 

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OUR OPINIONS: Anti-Muslim remarks fuel fire  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 23, 2003 Thursday 

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W MOVES TO SOOTHE MUSLIMS Daily News (New York) October 23, 2003, Thursday 

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Bush praises Australia for supporting war in Iraq Marin Independent Journal (Marin, CA) October 23, 2003 Thursday 

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Greeted Coolly, Bush Urges Indonesia to Bolster Democracy   The New York Times October 23, 2003 Thursday 

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Bush Says He Disagrees With General's Remarks on Religion   The New York Times October 23, 2003 Thursday 

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Bush hears Muslims' criticism in Indonesia;Support for Israel and the Iraq war led clerics' concerns.In Australia, he was heckled and cheered.   The Philadelphia Inquirer OCTOBER 23, 2003 Thursday CITY-D EDITION 

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INTERNATIONAL BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 23, 2003 Thursday CITY EDITION 

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Bush: Pressure Is Building on N. Korea; After Indonesia Stopover, President Engages Reporters En Route to Australia  October 23, 2003 Thursday 

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BACKGROUNDER: Bush's stop symbolizes stakes in war on terror;Indonesia a key ally in struggle  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 22, 2003 Wednesday 

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BUSH SUPPORTS MODERATE MUSLIMSSECURITY HEIGHTENED FOR BRIEF BALI VISIT Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 22, 2003 Wednesday MINNESOTA EDITION 

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Bush Arrives in Bali To Send a Message; Stopover in Indonesia Is Intended to Defy Terrorists and Court Muslims, Officials Say  October 22, 2003 Wednesday 

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Malaysia Talk Attacking Jews Draws Bush Ire   The New York Times October 21, 2003 Tuesday Correction Appended 

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BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS BLIND TO THE CONCERNS OF SOUTHEAST ASIA Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 21, 2003 Tuesday CITY EDITION 

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Rumsfeld's Crusader  October 21, 2003 Tuesday 

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U.S. Policy Censured in Indonesia; Muslim Leaders To Caution Bush  October 21, 2003 Tuesday 

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Anti-U.S. attitude perilous, Pachios says Portland Press Herald (Maine) October 20, 2003 Monday, Final Edition 

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Stressing U.S. Right to Attack Foes, Bush Leaves for Asia   The New York Times October 17, 2003 Friday 

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White House Memo; Fast Lane for President: 6 Nations, 6 Days, Safely  The New York Times October 15, 2003 Wednesday 

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Bush to Meet Moderate Muslim Leaders  October 15, 2003 Wednesday 

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(PHOTO ONLY) ANNIVERSARY OF BOMBINGS IN BALI St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) October 13, 2003 Monday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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Terrorism fight tops Bush agenda in Asia  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 12, 2003 Sunday 

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THEATER; In Bali, All the Post-9/11 World's a Stage  The New York Times October 12, 2003 Sunday 

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The World: Leave No Madrasa Ahead; Enlisting Aid to Education In the War on Terror  The New York Times October 12, 2003 Sunday 

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His ears are still ringing; `It's been hell,' a Newport man says of the year since he survived the Bali bombing that killed his surfing buddy. The Orange County Register (California) October 12, 2003 Sunday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  October 12, 2003 Sunday 

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The Real Face of Indonesian Islam   The New York Times October 11, 2003 Saturday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  October 9, 2003 Thursday 

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Sensitizing Police Toward Muslims; Justice Department Initiative Helps Counter Stereotypes  October 6, 2003 Monday 

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POPE'S 'LAST DAYS' NEAR, CARDINAL SAYS Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 3, 2003 Friday CITY EDITION 

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Changes in U.S. Diplomacy Sought; Efforts to Influence Islamic World Inadequate, Panel Says  October 2, 2003 Thursday 

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U.S. Asks Muslims Why It Is Unloved. Indonesians Reply.   The New York Times September 27, 2003 Saturday 

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NEWS SUMMARY   The New York Times September 27, 2003 Saturday 

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The Failed State of the Palestinians The Forward September 26, 2003 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer SEPTEMBER 25, 2003 Thursday CITY-D EDITION 

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Countries unconvinced by Bush's U.N. speech Marin Independent Journal (Marin, CA) September 24, 2003 Wednesday 

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THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: REACTION; Bush's Remarks Draw Skepticism  The New York Times September 24, 2003 Wednesday 

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Plans for prosperity die amid fighting in Mideast USA TODAY September 24, 2003, Wednesday, 

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TEARFUL BALI TERRORIST GETS LIFE TERMHE TESTIFIED AGAINST FELLOW BOMBING DEFENDANTS Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) September 19, 2003 Friday CITY EDITION 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  September 19, 2003 Friday 

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Q&A  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution September 18, 2003 Thursday 

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Remorseful bomber spared firing squad Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) September 18, 2003 Thursday 

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PLANE SCARED - TERRORISTS DON'T STAND A CHANCE AGAINST TOUGH SUPERMODELS The New York Post September 18, 2003, Thursday 

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Indonesia Vows to Pursue Economic Plan   The New York Times September 17, 2003 Wednesday 

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Indonesia's Clerics Push for Restraint; Powerful Scholars From Two Huge Groups Counteract Militants' Zeal  September 17, 2003 Wednesday 

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Report lists 'public diplomacy' failures USA TODAY September 16, 2003, Tuesday, 

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India's Muslim Time Bomb   The New York Times September 15, 2003 Monday 

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Indonesia Sentences Defiant Islamic Militant to Death for the Bali Nightclub Bombing   The New York Times September 11, 2003 Thursday 

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TWO YEARS LATER: WORLD OPINION; Foreign Views Of U.S. Darken After Sept. 11  The New York Times September 11, 2003 Thursday Correction Appended 

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VICTORY IN IRAQ DOESN'T MEAN END OF TERRORISM Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) September 11, 2003 Thursday CITY EDITION 

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Some in administration uneasy over Bush speech   The Philadelphia Inquirer SEPTEMBER 9, 2003 Tuesday CITY-D EDITION 

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RAISING A STINK ABOUT THE EPA Daily News (New York) September 4, 2003, Thursday 

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Indonesian Art to Admire and to Wear   The New York Times September 3, 2003 Wednesday 

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Once Mild, Islam Looks Harsher In Indonesia   The New York Times September 3, 2003 Wednesday 

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Islamic Cleric Gets Mixed Verdict In Indonesian Trial for Terrorism   The New York Times September 3, 2003 Wednesday 

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Indonesian Cleric Guilty Of Treason; Rejecting Main Charges, Court Sets 4-Year Sentence  September 3, 2003 Wednesday 

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TEACHING INTOLERANCE: INDONESIAN SCHOOL HAS CHILLING ROSTER OF TERRORIST ALUMNI WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS September 2, 2003, Tuesday 

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MUST-SEE MUSLIM TV?;CABLE STATION WOULD BE NATION'S FIRST    August 30, 2003 Saturday  

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The Deadly Shape of Things to Come  August 20, 2003 Wednesday 

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Jakarta Faithful Gather to Pray For Their Lives   The New York Times August 19, 2003 Tuesday 

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Southeast Asia's New Corps of Suicide Bombers  August 16, 2003 Saturday 

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Chechnya Shows Signs of 'Palestinization' The Forward August 15, 2003 

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U.S. holds suspected key figure in al-Qaeda;The Indonesian is accused of masterminding the Balibombings that killed 200. Bush announced the arrest.   The Philadelphia Inquirer AUGUST 15, 2003 Friday CITY-D EDITION 

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SUSPECTED BALI BOMB MASTERMIND IS SEIZEDBUSH CALLS ARREST 'DEVASTATING BLOW' TO AL-QAIDA Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) August 15, 2003 Friday CITY EDITION 

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Indonesian Art With Attitude; Engaging the Community and Upsetting the Establishment  The New York Times August 14, 2003 Thursday 

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Militant Islamic Congress Is Sparsely Attended in Indonesia   The New York Times August 11, 2003 Monday Correction Appended 

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When You Assume, You Get Bad News New York Observer August 11, 2003 

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) August 11, 2003 Monday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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THE BATTLE FOR INDONESIA WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS August 11, 2003, Monday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  August 11, 2003 Monday 

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INDONESIA BECOMING DEADLY TERRORIST BASTIONAL-QAIDA INFLUENCE IS SURPRISING STRONG Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) August 10, 2003 Sunday CITY EDITION 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  August 10, 2003 Sunday 

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Terror web wider than imagined;Indonesian bombings unearth links between Islamic groups across region York Sunday News (York, PA) August 10, 2003 Sunday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: TERRORISM; Indonesia Identifies Hotel Bomber  The New York Times August 9, 2003 Saturday 

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AFTER THE WAR: INDONESIA; Court Decides To Sentence Bali Bomber To Death  The New York Times August 8, 2003 Friday 

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Militant Convicted In Bali Bombings  August 8, 2003 Friday 

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IBD'S TOP 10 Investor's Business Daily August 7, 2003 Thursday 

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U.S. links Marriottbombing to terror group Marin Independent Journal (Marin, CA) August 7, 2003 Thursday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE ATTACK; Group Linked to Al Qaeda Seen Behind Jakarta Blast  The New York Times August 7, 2003 Thursday 

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Terror in Indonesia  August 7, 2003 Thursday 

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Jakarta Police Were Warned of an Attack  August 7, 2003 Thursday 

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Bombing at hotel in Indonesia kills 14;148 injured in blast outside Marriott Marin Independent Journal (Marin, CA) August 6, 2003 Wednesday 

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The Jakarta Bombing   The New York Times August 6, 2003 Wednesday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE ATTACK; INDONESIA BOMBING KILLS AT LEAST 10 IN MIDDAY ATTACK  The New York Times August 6, 2003 Wednesday 

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HOTEL HORROR BLAST - 14 KILLED BY INDONESIA BOMB LINKED TO QAEDA The New York Post August 6, 2003, Wednesday 

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Failed Manila Mutiny Leaves U.S. Ties Secure   The New York Times July 29, 2003 Tuesday 

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Immigrants Fear Deportation After Registration; Number of Mideast, Muslim Men Expelled Rises Sharply  July 28, 2003 Monday 

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Surabaya Journal; For These Transvestites, Still More Role Changes  The New York Times July 24, 2003 Thursday 

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MS INUL'S 'DRILL' SHAKES THINGS UP IN MUSLIM INDONESIA WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS July 21, 2003, Monday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer JULY 15, 2003 Tuesday CITY-D EDITION 

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SPRINGER FILES FOR SENATE RACE Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) July 15, 2003 Tuesday CITY EDITION 

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SPRINGER FILES FOR SENATE RACE Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) July 15, 2003 Tuesday MINNESOTA EDITION 

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) July 15, 2003 Tuesday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  July 15, 2003 Tuesday 

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NATION & WORLD BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) July 13, 2003 Sunday MINNESOTA EDITION 

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9 ACCUSED OF PLOTTING TO BOMB CHURCHES, MALLS San Jose Mercury News (California) July 13, 2003 Sunday MORNING  

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) July 13, 2003 Sunday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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World in Brief  July 12, 2003 Saturday 

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A Delicate Balance   The New York Times July 6, 2003 Sunday 

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Saudis Quietly Promote Strict Islam in Indonesia   The New York Times July 5, 2003 Saturday 

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INSIDE   The New York Times July 5, 2003 Saturday 

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) July 2, 2003 Wednesday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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COUNTERSTRIKE: HOW POLICE TURNED BALI BLAST INTO WIN IN WAR ON TERRORISM WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS July 2, 2003, Wednesday 

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Victims of Asian Wars Lack Protection, Hope; Civil Strife Creates Internal Refugees  July 2, 2003 Wednesday 

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Police Arrest Most-Wanted in Bali Bombing The New York Sun July 1, 2003 Tuesday 

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DEATH CALL FOR BALI 'SMILING BOMBER' The New York Post July 1, 2003, Tuesday 

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Suspected organizer of Bali blast arrested;Most- wanted fugitive held after robbery Pasadena Star-News (Pasadena, CA) June 30, 2003 Monday 

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Indonesian Army's Upper Hand; Military Reasserts Broad Influence, Diplomats Say  June 26, 2003 Thursday 

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Investors Clamor for Stake in Biggest Indonesian Bank   The New York Times June 24, 2003 Tuesday 

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A Nightmare, and a Mystery, in the Jungle; Ambush of School Outing Left 3 Dead, 8 Wounded And Suspicion of Involvement by Indonesian Army  June 22, 2003 Sunday 

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A filmmaker's journey;When his legendary mentor died just as work on a PBS series about African-American spirituality was beginning, Dante James found his own faith tested.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution June 21, 2003 Saturday 

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They Don't Like Us. Worse, They Don't Trust Us  June 15, 2003 Sunday 

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Indonesia Wants to Acquit General in Human Rights Case   The New York Times June 8, 2003 Sunday 

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Ubud Journal; Bomb That Killed 202 Goes On Destroying Lives  The New York Times June 6, 2003 Friday 

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'Krakatoa' erupts in fascinating detail USA TODAY June 5, 2003, Thursday, 

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U.S. AT BOTTOM OF WORLD IN NEW POLL Daily News (New York) June 4, 2003, Wednesday 

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AFTER THE WAR: OPINION; World's View of U.S. Sours After Iraq War, Poll Finds  The New York Times June 4, 2003 Wednesday 

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Muslim Clerics In a Twist Over 'Dangdut' Dancer  May 31, 2003 Saturday 

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NATION & WORLD BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) May 29, 2003 Thursday CITY EDITION 

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Militants Say Network Is Led by Cleric; Two Suspects in Bali Bombings Testify Against Baasyir at His Treason Trial  May 29, 2003 Thursday 

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Indonesia Attacks Separatists After Tokyo Peace Talks Fail   The New York Times May 19, 2003 Monday 

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Indonesia Frees 5 Delegates and Opens Talks With Separatists   The New York Times May 18, 2003 Sunday 

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World; In Brief  May 18, 2003 Sunday 

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For a Change, Asia's Woes Are BypassingIndonesia   The New York Times May 16, 2003 Friday 

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The Real Problem The New York Sun May 16, 2003 Friday 

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TRIAL OF FIRST BALI BOMBINGS SUSPECT BEGINS'SMILING TERRORIST' ACCUSED IN KILLINGS OF 202 Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) May 13, 2003 Tuesday CITY EDITION 

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World; In Brief  May 13, 2003 Tuesday 

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AFTEREFFECTS: ASIAN FRONT; First Trial Begins in Bombing on Bali That Shocked Indonesia  The New York Times May 12, 2003 Monday 

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BALI BOMB SUSPECT ON TRIAL The New York Post May 12, 2003, Monday 

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Bush plans push for Arab freedom;In an address today, the President was to outline a strategyof economic and political change throughout the Middle East.   The Philadelphia Inquirer MAY 9, 2003 Friday CITY-D EDITION 

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BUSH TODAY TO OUTLINE BROAD PLANS FOR TRADE, DEMOCRACY IN ARAB WORLD San Jose Mercury News (California) May 9, 2003 Friday MORNING FINAL STREET EDITION 

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Far from the pain Pasadena Star-News (Pasadena, CA) May 6, 2003 Tuesday 

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Who Wants to Be a Martyr?   The New York Times May 5, 2003 Monday 

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Persecution in Indonesia;Photos show Christians' plight  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution April 29, 2003 Tuesday 

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BOOKS OF THE TIMES; A Voyage to Krakatoa, by Way of Everywhere  The New York Times April 25, 2003 Friday 

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EAST BAY ROUNDUP   West County Times April 25, 2003 Friday  

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Jakarta Puts Cleric on Trial for Treason The New York Sun April 24, 2003 Thursday 

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Cleric Rejects Charges As Jakarta Trial Starts; Bombing and Assassination Plots Alleged  April 24, 2003 Thursday 

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LOOKING FORWARD St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) April 23, 2003 Wednesday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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WORLD WATCH -- ASIA/PACIFIC: INDONESIAN CLERIC FACES TRIAL IN TERRORISM CASE WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS April 23, 2003, Wednesday 

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The Island That Went Straight Up   The New York Times April 20, 2003 Sunday 

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A NATION AT WAR: THE ASIAN ARENA; Radical Cleric Is Charged With Treason In Indonesia  The New York Times April 15, 2003 Tuesday 

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NATION & WORLD BRIEFING Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) April 15, 2003 Tuesday CITY EDITION 

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The Fire This Time; To Some Scholars, Iraq's Just Part of Something Bigger  April 13, 2003 Sunday Correction Appended 

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A NATION AT WAR: SOUTHEAST ASIA; In Far East of Many Muslims, Press Is Anti-U.S. but Hardly Pro-Jihad  The New York Times April 11, 2003 Friday 

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A NATION AT WAR: THE TV WATCH; Ubiquitous Messenger Drives Home U.S. Policy  The New York Times April 7, 2003 Monday 

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Krakatoa fueled tides of death, upheaval The Denver Post April 6, 2003 Sunday 

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War Boosts the Shipment of Aid, Not Fighters, to Iraq  April 6, 2003 Sunday 

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POPE URGES UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS San Jose Mercury News (California) April 5, 2003 Saturday MORNING  

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A NATION AT WAR: MISSIONARIES; Groups Critical of Islam Are Now Waiting to Take Aid to Iraq  The New York Times April 4, 2003 Friday 

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THE ECONOMICS OF WAR: ASIA: Exports, investment at risk if conflict long;Currency flow, possible unrest are also issues  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution April 2, 2003 Wednesday 

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A NATION AT WAR; Indonesians Protest the War  The New York Times March 31, 2003 Monday 

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IRAQ Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) March 31, 2003 Monday 

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WORLD WATCH -- ASIA/PACIFIC: MODERATE MUSLIMS DIRECT INDONESIAN PROTEST WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS March 31, 2003, Monday 

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Media reports paint different pictures of war; Fast: Some coverage is highly critical of America, and a bit is supportive Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA) March 30, 2003 Sunday 

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Operation Security: Staying Safe Abroad  March 30, 2003 Sunday 

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Pope Warns That War Could Bring 'Religious Catastrophe'  March 30, 2003 Sunday 

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WAR IN THE GULF: WORLD: ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATIONS: Muslim world erupts in protest;Iraqi war likened to Israel's Palestinian occupation  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution March 29, 2003 Saturday 

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Inquiry Shows Indonesian's Ties to Al Qaeda  March 29, 2003 Saturday 

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Illness, war hurting Vietnam tourism;OFFICIALS CONFIDENT TRAVEL WILL REBOUND;international travel San Jose Mercury News (California) March 28, 2003 Friday MO1 EDITION 

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ILLNESS, WAR HURTING VIETNAM TOURISM;THE MYSTERIOUS FLULIKE AILMENT GRIPPING ASIA, PAIRED WITH THE WAR IN IRAQ, IS HAVING AN IMPACT: HOTELS ARE LOSING BOOKINGS, GROUP TOURS ARE CANCELING AND AIRLINES ARE FLYING FEWER PASSENGERS.OFFICIALS CONFIDENT TRAVEL WILL REBOUND San Jose Mercury News (California) March 28, 2003 Friday MORNING  

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Rick Nichols / With fries like these, who needs enemies?   Philadelphia Inquirer March 27, 2003 Thursday ADVANCE EDITION 

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With fries like these, who needs enemies?;Switching from 'french' to 'freedom' won't solve the problems with fries   The Philadelphia Inquirer MARCH 27, 2003 Thursday ADVANCE EDITION 

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Local Muslims Turn Attention To Civil Rights; Registration for Immigrants Becomes Particular Concern  March 27, 2003 Thursday 

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Winds of war whip Mip attendance  Daily Variety March 26, 2003, Wednesday 

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TELEVISION REVIEW; How a Nightmare Began and Might Continue  The New York Times March 25, 2003 Tuesday 

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A NATION AT WAR: DEMONSTRATIONS; Thousands Denounce War and the United States in Cities Around the World  The New York Times March 23, 2003 Sunday 

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Worldwide demonstrations smaller but more violent;POLICE KILL PROTESTER IN SUDAN; STREETS CLOSED IN CENTRAL LONDON San Jose Mercury News (California) March 23, 2003 Sunday MO1 EDITION 

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War News Filtered Through Nations' Politics; Reporting Is Extensive, but Nature of Coverage Largely Depends on Stance of Governments  March 23, 2003 Sunday 

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Democracy Be Careful What You Wish For  March 23, 2003 Sunday Correction Appended 

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WAR IN THE GULF: PROTESTS: WORLD: Anti-U.S. feeling erupts in violent clashes  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution March 22, 2003 Saturday 

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A NATION AT WAR: INTERNATIONAL REACTION; Crowds Protest Iraq War In Cities Around World  The New York Times March 22, 2003 Saturday 

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Bush Sees 'Progress' In War Reports; President's Aides Urge Iraq Forces to Surrender  March 22, 2003 Saturday 

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FIRMS ARE QUIET ON SECURITY AT OVERSEAS SITES    March 21, 2003 Friday  

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PROTESTS BREAK OUT AT HOME AND ABROAD Daily News (New York) March 21, 2003, Friday 

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A NATION AT WAR: WORLD REACTION; Wave of Protests, From Europe to New York  The New York Times March 21, 2003 Friday 

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Violence marks protests outside U.S. embassies   The Philadelphia Inquirer MARCH 21, 2003 Friday CITY-D EDITION 

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OPPOSED TO WAR St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) March 21, 2003 Friday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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ANTI-WAR PROTESTS RING GLOBE Daily News (New York) March 20, 2003, Thursday 

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WORLD WAR OF WORDS: REACTIONS OF GLOBAL LEADERS MIXED The New York Post March 20, 2003, Thursday 

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S. KOREA GOES ON ALERT; THAILAND EXPELS IRAQIS St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) March 20, 2003 Thursday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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MILITARY LEADERS; THESE MEN WILL DIRECT THE TROOPS AND BE KEY PLAYERS IN A U.S.- LED WAR ON IRAQ St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) March 20, 2003 Thursday Five Star Late Lift Edition 

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Muslim Institutions Focus on Legal Matters; Immigrant Issues Become Common Topic  March 20, 2003 Thursday 

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Suddenly, a Seller's Market for Arabic Studies   The New York Times March 19, 2003 Wednesday 

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Opponents of War Decry U.S. Stance; Many Nations Assail End of Diplomacy  March 19, 2003 Wednesday 

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On the Road And On Camera With Tom Friedman  March 17, 2003 Monday 

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U.N. Absurdity  March 13, 2003 Thursday 

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Indonesia Is Urged to Intervene in Company Loan Debacle   The New York Times March 12, 2003 Wednesday 

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Maumere Journal; On an Indonesian Island, a Reverence for Tolerance  The New York Times March 11, 2003 Tuesday 

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Pakistani Islamists Rally for Iraq The New York Sun March 10, 2003 Monday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer MARCH 10, 2003 Monday CITY-D EDITION 

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PAKISTAN PROTESTS U.S. WAR FOOTING;MASSIVE DEMONSTRATION HIGHLIGHTS MOUNTING PRESSURE ON MUSHARRAF San Jose Mercury News (California) March 10, 2003 Monday MORNING  

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Farm Worker Held in Bombings At Two Universities in Beijing   The New York Times March 9, 2003 Sunday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer MARCH 9, 2003 Sunday CITY-D EDITION 

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See INDONESIA;INDONESIA: ANGER IS ON THE RISE AMONG MUSLIMS San Jose Mercury News (California) March 6, 2003 Thursday MO1 EDITION 

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INDONESIA: ANGER IS ON THE RISE AMONG MUSLIMS San Jose Mercury News (California) March 6, 2003 Thursday MORNING  

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Borobudur Journal; Buddhist Monument and Mall: Will Twain Meet?  The New York Times February 27, 2003 Thursday 

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BACKGROUNDER: TURKEY: Turkey expected to end stalemate with U.S. today  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution February 21, 2003 Friday 

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Brits, Americans mull new Iraq resolution;The attempt to secure additional support for attacking Iraq will likely occur next week San Mateo County Times (San Mateo, CA) February 21, 2003 Friday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: OUT IN THE WORLD -- Indonesia; Close Personal Ties, But New Wariness  The New York Times February 19, 2003 Wednesday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: OUT IN THE WORLD; Americans Abroad Cope With Anger at U.S.  The New York Times February 19, 2003 Wednesday 

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Indonesian refugees at a crossroads;After fleeing their country, they must register here or risk deportation.   Philadelphia Inquirer February 18, 2003 Tuesday CITY-D EDITION 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: JAKARTA; U.S. Praises Indonesia For Its Fight On Terrorism  The New York Times February 17, 2003 Monday 

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U.S. overtures toward Indonesian public founder  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution February 16, 2003 Sunday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: AMERICAN MUSLIMS; Pilgrims Find Changes on Both Ends of Journey  The New York Times February 16, 2003 Sunday 

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Democracy in the Arab world San Jose Mercury News (California) February 16, 2003 Sunday MO1 EDITION 

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Maverick Cleric Is a Hit on Arab TV; Al-Jazeera Star Mixes Tough Talk With Calls for Tolerance  February 14, 2003 Friday 

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World; In Brief  February 10, 2003 Monday 

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Satellite TV Tries to Bridge a Culture Gap   The New York Times February 9, 2003 Sunday 

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Key Allies Not Won Over by Powell  February 7, 2003 Friday 

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PAKISTANIS FEAR INS REGISTRATION RULE CALLED A CATCH-22 Daily News (New York) February 6, 2003, Thursday 

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Indonesia Arrests 2 Militants Suspected in Terror Plots  February 4, 2003 Tuesday 

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Lindh moved to Victorville federal prison;AROUND THE NATION  (California) January 31, 2003 Friday 

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U.S. Links Indonesian Troops to Deaths of 2 Americans   The New York Times January 30, 2003 Thursday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: JAKARTA; 2 Top Muslims In Indonesia Rebuke U.S. On Iraq Policy  The New York Times January 29, 2003 Wednesday 

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Explanation of INS rules adds to fears   Philadelphia Inquirer January 27, 2003 Monday CITY-D EDITION 

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Terrorists Find Easy Passage Into Thailand; Experts Say Lax Border Controls Are Opportunity for Al Qaeda, Regional Militants  January 27, 2003 Monday 

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Indonesian Educators Ponder Lessons After U.S. Visit   The New York Times January 24, 2003 Friday 

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INDONESIAN POLICE SEEK TRAIL FOR MUSLIM CLERIC WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS January 22, 2003, Wednesday 

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Corrections   The New York Times January 21, 2003 Tuesday 

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BALI SUSPECT: BLASTS PAID FOR BY AL QAEDA Daily News (New York) January 20, 2003, Monday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: IMMIGRATION; U.S. Plan to Monitor Muslims Meets With Widespread Protest  The New York Times January 18, 2003 Saturday Correction Appended 

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Beliefs; On the agenda in Davos: rebuilding trust in institutions, religion not least among them.  The New York Times January 18, 2003 Saturday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT; U.S. Expands List of Nations Whose Visitors Must Register  The New York Times January 17, 2003 Friday 

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Indonesian Province Enjoying First Signs of Peace   The New York Times January 15, 2003 Wednesday 

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Indonesians Begin to See Conspiracy as Homegrown  January 14, 2003 Tuesday 

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Bishop steps back San Mateo County Times (San Mateo, CA) January 12, 2003 Sunday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: JAKARTA; Indonesia Opposes Use of Military Power to Topple Iraqi Leader  The New York Times January 9, 2003 Thursday 

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Indonesia's Radical Arabs Raise Suspicions of Moderate Countrymen  January 9, 2003 Thursday 

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Call It by Any Other Name, It Still Adds Up to a Crusade  January 5, 2003 Sunday 

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INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS; Making Near Beer Acceptable in Near East  The New York Times January 4, 2003 Saturday 

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Killings in Yemen challenge Muslims to be for war or peace USA TODAY January 3, 2003, Friday, 

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A Quiet Voice Echoes Among Islamic Radicals; As Exiled Indonesian Cleric Pushed Cause, His Followers Embraced Message of Jihad  January 3, 2003 Friday 

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HUGE BOMB CACHE SEIZED Daily News (New York) December 26, 2002, Thursday 

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Lands of the Free  December 25, 2002 Wednesday 

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Terrorists target local Christians USA TODAY December 23, 2002, Monday, 

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U.S. Fears Islamic Militancy Could Emerge in Cambodia   The New York Times December 22, 2002 Sunday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: ALLIES; Australia Comes to Terms With a New Sense of Vulnerability  The New York Times December 16, 2002 Monday 

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I'm Back in Bali: Islam Persists -- So Get Used to It New York Observer December 16, 2002 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE ALLIES; Australia Is Noncommittal On Scope of Any Role in Iraq  The New York Times December 14, 2002 Saturday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: SEABORNE TRADE; Warnings From Al Qaeda Stir Fear That Terrorists May Attack Oil Tankers  The New York Times December 12, 2002 Thursday Correction Appended 

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Megawati in the Middle; Indonesian Leader Struggles to Strike Balance Between Efforts Against Terrorism, Placating Moderate Muslims  December 12, 2002 Thursday 

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) December 10, 2002 Tuesday Five Star Lift Edition 

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Violence and Islam  December 6, 2002 Friday 

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Bush Revisits Mosque to Praise Islam  December 6, 2002 Friday 

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U.S. image declines worldwide, poll finds  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution December 5, 2002 Thursday 

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World Survey Says Negative Views of U.S. Are Rising   The New York Times December 5, 2002 Thursday 

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AFTER MILITANCY, A NEW THREAT? WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS December 5, 2002, Thursday 

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Suspected Organizer Of Bali Attack Jailed  December 5, 2002 Thursday 

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TERROR IN AFRICA: TOURISM; It's Business Almost as Usual at Mombasa's Beach Resorts  The New York Times December 3, 2002 Tuesday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: ASIA-PACIFIC; Startling His Neighbors, Australian Leader Favors First Strikes  The New York Times December 2, 2002 Monday 

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NEWS SUMMARY   The New York Times December 1, 2002 Sunday 

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Turn East From Mecca; Islam's Future Will Be Decided on Its Frontiers  December 1, 2002 Sunday 

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Voices Who Speak for (and Against) Us  December 1, 2002 Sunday 

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Conservatives Dispute Bush Portrayal of Islam as Peaceful; Critics, Include Some Policy Advisers, Call Stance Political  November 30, 2002 Saturday 

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Al-Qaida setting sights on Asia Pasadena Star-News (Pasadena, CA) November 29, 2002 Friday 

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Battered country tangles with terror USA TODAY November 29, 2002, Friday, 

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Defusing The Holy Bomb   The New York Times November 27, 2002 Wednesday 

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Malaysia Arrests 4 Men Suspected of Suicide Plot  November 27, 2002 Wednesday 

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Man's terrorist claim diverts plane's flight Pasadena Star-News (Pasadena, CA) November 22, 2002 Friday 

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Investor's Business Daily November 19, 2002 Tuesday 

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AUSSIE HELD IN ANTI-ISRAEL BOMB PLOT The New York Post November 19, 2002, Tuesday 

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Islamic schism tears Malaysia;Fundamentalist Muslim party gains ground  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution November 17, 2002 Sunday 

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PRAYERS IN A PARADISE LOST Daily News (New York) November 17, 2002, Sunday 

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Bridging the Transatlantic Gap  November 17, 2002 Sunday 

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Is There an Audience for Public Diplomacy?   The New York Times November 16, 2002 Saturday 

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Trying to Become Whole on Bali Rubble; Mourners Gather at Site of Bombings for Traditional Healing Ceremony  November 16, 2002 Saturday 

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Indonesian Leaders Stage Show of Unity Against Terrorism  November 15, 2002 Friday 

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CRISIS DEVELOPMENTS  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution November 14, 2002 Thursday 

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New Suspects Named in Bali Bombings; Indonesian Police Probe Family Ties  November 14, 2002 Thursday 

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OSAMA'S NEW TERROR TAPE Experts say voice is likely Bin Laden Daily News (New York) November 13, 2002, Wednesday 

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New Arrest Made in Bali Blasts; Friend of Chief Suspect May Have Stored Explosives for Him  November 12, 2002 Tuesday 

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Our Role in Indonesia   The New York Times November 11, 2002 Monday 

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SEVEN DAYS The Last Word On Last Week Daily News (New York) November 10, 2002, Sunday 

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November 3-9: INTERNATIONAL; ARREST IN BALI  The New York Times November 10, 2002 Sunday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: INDONESIA; Suspect Tells Police That Target of Bali Bombing Was Americans, Not Australians  The New York Times November 9, 2002 Saturday 

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Jailed Indonesian Suspect Details Links to Bombings; Man Said to Describe Bali Attacks as 'Revenge' on U.S.  November 9, 2002 Saturday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: INDONESIA; Suspect Admits He Planted Bomb in Bali Attack, Police Say  The New York Times November 8, 2002 Friday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: SOUTHEAST ASIA; Qaeda Meeting in Thailand Reportedly Plotted Attacks on Tourists  The New York Times November 8, 2002 Friday 

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First Suspect Arrested In Bali Bombing Case  November 8, 2002 Friday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: CONSPIRACY TALES; Indonesians Say They Suspect C.I.A. in Bali Blast  The New York Times November 7, 2002 Thursday 

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Wavering in the war on terrorism? Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) November 3, 2002 Sunday 

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Islam: The oneness of God  November 2, 2002 Saturday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: INDONESIA; 3 Sought in Bali Bombings; Investigation 'Going Well'  The New York Times November 2, 2002 Saturday 

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AL QAEDA IS THRIVING ON OUR FORGETFULNESS Daily News (New York) November 1, 2002, Friday 

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Radio Free Islam Investor's Business Daily November 1, 2002 Friday 

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Muslim-as-Apple-Pie Videos Are Greeted With Skepticism   The New York Times October 30, 2002 Wednesday 

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NEWS SUMMARY   The New York Times October 30, 2002 Wednesday 

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Even if USA won't say it, terrorists want religious war USA TODAY October 30, 2002, Wednesday, 

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Investor's Business Daily October 29, 2002 Tuesday 

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INDONESIA'S ARREST OF MUSLIM CLERIC RISKS A BACKLASH WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS October 29, 2002, Tuesday 

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WORLD; In Brief  October 29, 2002 Tuesday 

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THE OPEN FORUM The Denver Post October 27, 2002 Sunday 

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U.S. and 2 of Its Allies Warn North Korea on Atomic Arms   The New York Times October 27, 2002 Sunday 

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SNIPER SHOOTINGS: Islam connection shakes Muslims;Metro adherents say killers tar their image  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 26, 2002 Saturday 

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The Clinton Paper Chase  October 25, 2002 Friday 

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Wary Companies Are Staying in the Muslim World   The New York Times October 24, 2002 Thursday 

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Group to Be Added to Terror List; Jemaah Islamiah Tied to Al Qaeda, Suspected in Bali Blast  October 23, 2002 Wednesday 

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For Indonesia Leader, Small Talk Edges Tough Talk   The New York Times October 22, 2002 Tuesday 

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2 Muslim groups seek antiterror laws in Indonesia;In a nation where moderate and liberal Islamics are in the majority, the largest groups pressed for action.   The Philadelphia Inquirer October 22, 2002 Tuesday CITY-D EDITION 

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Factions struggle in Indonesia;MILITANTS' ACTIONS DROWNING OUT MAJORITY OF MODERATE MUSLIMS San Jose Mercury News (California) October 22, 2002 Tuesday 

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MALAYSIAN TRADE OFFICIAL PEGS AL-QAIDA AS "DEVIANT" St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) October 22, 2002 Tuesday Five Star Lift Edition 

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Top Muslim Groups Urge Crackdown In Indonesia  October 22, 2002 Tuesday 

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We Need A Political Strategy  October 22, 2002 Tuesday 

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Bali bomb made of ammonium nitrate Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) October 21, 2002 Monday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: IN MOURNING; Bombing Victims Remembered Across Australia  The New York Times October 21, 2002 Monday 

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Urgent Work Awaits: Are We Really Prepared? New York Observer October 21, 2002 

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INDONESIAN ARREST OF MUSLIM CLERIC RAISES CRITICISM WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS October 21, 2002, Monday 

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Indonesian cleric linked to Bali blast The Evening Sun (Hanover, PA) October 20, 2002 Sunday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: BOMBING'S AFTERMATH; Indonesia Suggests a Cleric Had No Part in the Attack in Bali  The New York Times October 20, 2002 Sunday 

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NEWS SUMMARY   The New York Times October 20, 2002 Sunday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: TERROR'S TOLL; As Bodies Start Coming Home, Australians Criticize Leaders  The New York Times October 20, 2002 Sunday Correction Appended 

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The World: Defining Al Qaeda; 'They're Coming After Us.' But Who Are They Now?  The New York Times October 20, 2002 Sunday 

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Bali bombing reminds us why war on terror must be won Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 20, 2002 Sunday 

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Indonesia Arrests Cleric In Deadly Church Attacks; Officials Suspect Baasyir Knew of Bali Plot  October 20, 2002 Sunday 

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So Long, Fellow Travelers  October 20, 2002 Sunday 

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KEY BALI BOMBING SUSPECT DUCKS ARREST WITH SICK CALL Daily News (New York) October 19, 2002, Saturday 

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Wanted for Questioning, Indonesian Cleric Falls Ill   The New York Times October 19, 2002 Saturday 

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NEWS SUMMARY   The New York Times October 19, 2002 Saturday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE BALI INVESTIGATION; Indonesian Suspect Agrees to Questioning, Then Collapses  The New York Times October 19, 2002 Saturday 

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Thomas Oliver's @ WITS' END  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 18, 2002 Friday 

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Terror's calling card left in Bali Marin Independent Journal (Marin, CA) October 18, 2002 Friday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: BALI; Nightclub Blasts Leave Carefree Crowd Less So  The New York Times October 18, 2002 Friday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: JAKARTA; Indonesia Orders Muslim Cleric to Undergo Questioning  The New York Times October 18, 2002 Friday 

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Trudy Rubin: Keep focus in antiterror war   The Philadelphia Inquirer October 18, 2002 Friday CITY-D-EAST EDITION 

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Bali blast prompts Australia to raise support for war on terror USA TODAY October 18, 2002, Friday, 

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Bali blast prompts Australia to raise support for war on terror USA TODAY October 18, 2002, Friday, 

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BELIEF AND BALI'S BOMBING WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS October 18, 2002, Friday 

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CRISIS DEVELOPMENTS  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 17, 2002 Thursday 

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Pressure mounts on Indonesia to fight terror;Foreign minister says government will issue an emergency decree that would provide legal tools to combat extremists  (California) October 17, 2002 Thursday 

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Will A Fledgling Democracy Survive Terror In Indonesia? Investor's Business Daily October 17, 2002 Thursday 

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No immunity from terror Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA) October 17, 2002 Thursday 

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TERROR ECHOES WORLDWIDE; The Bali connection Morning Star (Wilmington, NC) October 17, 2002, Thursday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: JAKARTA; Indonesia Links Muslim Group With Terrorism  The New York Times October 17, 2002 Thursday 

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Indonesia promises terrorism crackdown;Under pressure after the Bali bombings, Jakarta was preparing to issue a decree broadening officials' powers.   The Philadelphia Inquirer October 17, 2002 Thursday CITY-D-EAST EDITION 

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Blast spurs Indonesia to confront terrorists Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 17, 2002 Thursday 

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Blast spurs Indonesia to confront terrorists Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 17, 2002 Thursday 

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Indonesia to crack down;JAKARTA PREPARING EMERGENCY DECREE TO FIGHT EXTREMISTS San Jose Mercury News (California) October 17, 2002 Thursday MO1 EDITION 

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IBD'S TOP 10 Investor's Business Daily October 16, 2002 Wednesday 

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Bali bombing shows reach of terrorism  October 16, 2002 Wednesday 

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Terror's Aftermath in Indonesia   The New York Times October 16, 2002 Wednesday 

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TERROR IN BALI: THE MOURNING; At the Scene, Tears Shed For the Dead And Bali, Too  The New York Times October 16, 2002 Wednesday 

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TERROR IN BALI: WARNING TO JAKARTA; U.S. SAYS IT TOLD INDONESIA OF PLOT BY TERROR GROUP  The New York Times October 16, 2002 Wednesday 

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Messages From the Bali Bombing   The New York Times October 16, 2002 Wednesday 

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PROBERS FIND AL QAEDA LINK AS THEY CLOSE IN ON FIENDS The New York Post October 16, 2002, Wednesday 

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Traces of Explosives Found in Wreckage  October 16, 2002 Wednesday 

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Among Bali's Hindus, Rumblings of Revenge; Attack in Longtime Enclave Fuels Suspicion, Resentment of Island's Muslim Minority  October 16, 2002 Wednesday 

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Bush: 'It's al-Qaida';As president blames group for recent attacks, alleged bin Laden statement praises 'holy war.'  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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PREACHER, PAL FANS OF OSAMA Daily News (New York) October 15, 2002, Tuesday 

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W blames Al Qaeda Americans flee Indonesia as bomb death toll may hit 400 Daily News (New York) October 15, 2002, Tuesday 

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IBD'S TOP 10 Investor's Business Daily October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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Still Living Dangerously   The New York Times October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE WHITE HOUSE; BUSH TIES BOMBING AT BALI NIGHTCLUB TO QAEDA NETWORK  The New York Times October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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Terror's Calling Card in Bali   The New York Times October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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NEWS SUMMARY   The New York Times October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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TARGET: AMERICA'S FRIENDS The New York Post October 15, 2002, Tuesday 

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INDONESIANS: IT WAS AL QAEDA The New York Post October 15, 2002, Tuesday 

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Al-Qaeda is blamed in Bali club bombing   The Philadelphia Inquirer October 15, 2002 Tuesday CITY-D EDITION 

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Bombing of Bali clubs shows target is the West;Extremists prove again that the war on terror is worldwide. Portland Press Herald (Maine) October 15, 2002 Tuesday, FINAL Edition 

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Terror in Bali creates reluctant ONT travelers San Bernardino Sun (California) October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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Official Links Bali Bombing To Al Qaeda; Indonesian Says Group Worked Through Locals  October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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Bush Stresses Anti-Terror Resolve; Attack in Bali Shows That U.S. 'Must Pursue the Enemy,' President Says  October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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Means of Influence  October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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U.S.: Indonesia must target terror;Pressure grows in wake of Bali nightclub bomb The York Dispatch (York, PA) October 15, 2002 Tuesday 

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INDONESIA HORROR RAISES FRESH FEARS 2 Americans die in terror strikes Daily News (New York) October 14, 2002, Monday 

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Blasts spark al-Qaida fears; Affiliated group also suspected in Indonesia attacks The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) October 14, 2002 Monday 

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Bali attack shocks travel industry as tourists cancel trips Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) October 14, 2002 Monday 

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Two Americans confirmed dead in Bali bombing Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) October 14, 2002 Monday 

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TERROR IN BALI: THE CONSEQUENSES; Bombing in Bali Seen as Opening New Front in Fight on Terror  The New York Times October 14, 2002 Monday 

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OSAMA EYED IN BALI BLASTS - TOLL SOARS, BUSH RIPS COWARDS' The New York Post October 14, 2002, Monday 

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Southeast Asia ripens as target Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 14, 2002 Monday 

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Attack comes amid signs of terrorists regrouping USA TODAY October 14, 2002, Monday, 

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Attack comes amid signs of terrorists regrouping USA TODAY October 14, 2002, Monday, 

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Death Toll in Bali Attack Rises to 188; Most Victims Were Foreigners; Terror Network Suspected  October 14, 2002 Monday 

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The Bali Bombing  October 14, 2002 Monday 

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Bali Bombing May Represent New Wave Of Al Qaeda Strikes  October 14, 2002 Monday 

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BALI CAR BOMB KILLS 170  Qaeda link seen in carnage Daily News (New York) October 13, 2002, Sunday 

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CARNAGE IN BALI Possible Qaeda bomb kills 110 Daily News (New York) October 13, 2002, Sunday 

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Bali blast kills 58 Qaeda tie seen in club bombing Daily News (New York) October 13, 2002, Sunday 

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Bombing at Resort in Indonesia Kills 150 and Hurts Scores More   The New York Times October 13, 2002 Sunday 

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Bombing Kills At Least 180 in Indonesian Club; Site Popular With Foreigners; 2nd Blast Hits Near U.S. Office  October 13, 2002 Sunday 

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U.S. Warns Indonesia Over Investigation of Blast  October 11, 2002 Friday 

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N.Y. POLS LEAN TO BUSH 10 in House support attack against Iraq Daily News (New York) October 6, 2002, Sunday 

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Searching For Buried Treasure; Minister's Dig Unearths Only Questions  October 6, 2002 Sunday 

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Jakarta's New Tack Against Terror; Indonesian Security Forces 'Beginning to Take Ownership'  September 30, 2002 Monday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: SOUTHEAST ASIA; Indonesians Distrust Report By C.I.A. on Qaeda Suspect  The New York Times September 24, 2002 Tuesday 

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Tighter U.S. Policy Leaves Foreign Students in Limbo; Visas Delayed by Months for Thousands of Men From 26 Countries With Large Muslim Populations  September 24, 2002 Tuesday 

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1 KILLED IN CAR BLAST NEAR EMBASSY BLDG. Daily News (New York) September 23, 2002, Monday 

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An Inspiration for Muslim Fighters; Cleric Implicated in Anti-U.S. Plots Says His Guidance Is Religious, Not Military  September 23, 2002 Monday 

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The Sunshine Warrior   The New York Times September 22, 2002 Sunday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: INDONESIA; U.S. Embassy in Jakarta Reports a 'Credible Threat' in an Area of Islamic Militancy  The New York Times September 21, 2002 Saturday 

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WORLD; In Brief  September 21, 2002 Saturday 

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WAR DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) September 20, 2002 Friday Five Star Lift Edition 

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ANTITERROR WAR PRESSURES INDONESIA WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS September 20, 2002, Friday 

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Militant Alliance in Asia Is Said to Seek Regional Islamic State  September 20, 2002 Friday 

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Arrests Provide Indonesia With New Al Qaeda Leads; Probe Could Bring Politically Sensitive Moves Against Militants  September 19, 2002 Thursday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: DETAINEES; Singapore Announces Arrests of 21 Men Linked to Planned Attacks on U.S. Targets  The New York Times September 17, 2002 Tuesday 

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Singapore Announces Arrest of 21 Militants; Majority of Suspects Allegedly Involved in Foiled Plot to Bomb Western Embassies  September 17, 2002 Tuesday 

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Southeast Asia deemed fertile ground for terror;Poverty, religious strife, authoritarian regimes and a legacy of Western colonialism serve to incite extremists  (California) September 15, 2002 Sunday 

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War on terrorism fuels resentment of U.S. in region  (California) September 15, 2002 Sunday 

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Terror's new front? Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) September 15, 2002 Sunday 

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BRIDGE; Still on the Road to Bali, But 9/11 Postponed the Trip  The New York Times September 14, 2002 Saturday 

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U.S. is warned about asia San Jose Mercury News (California) September 14, 2002 Saturday MO1 EDITION 

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Southeast Asia incubator for Islamist terror;POVERTY, ECONOMIC TENSIONS HELP NOURISH RISING MILITANCY San Jose Mercury News (California) September 13, 2002 Friday MO1 EDITION 

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Detainee Called Key Al Qaeda Figure in Southeast Asia  September 12, 2002 Thursday 

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THREATS AND RESPONSES: EMBASSIES; PLAN TO ATTACK EMBASSIES CITED  The New York Times September 11, 2002 Wednesday 

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ANNIVERSARY TERROR ALERT ; THREATS SEND NATION INTO 'CODE ORANGE' YEAR AFTER ATTACKS The New York Post September 11, 2002, Wednesday 

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White House Raises Terrorism Alert; Live Missiles Moved To Launch Sites Around Washington  September 11, 2002 Wednesday 

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U.S. Shuts Embassy In Indonesia After Threat of Attack  September 10, 2002 Tuesday 

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23 are killed as typhoon hits China AROUND THE WORLD  (California) September 9, 2002 Monday 

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Still No Moral Outrage From Islamic 'Moderates' New York Observer September 9, 2002 

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Experts disagree on impact of widening U.S. military ties   The Philadelphia Inquirer September 9, 2002 Monday CITY-D EDITION 

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Al-Qaeda fragmented, smaller, but still deadly USA TODAY September 9, 2002, Monday, 

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REMEMBER 9/11: U.S. FOREIGN POLICY: Collapse of twin towers realigned the whole world  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution September 8, 2002 Sunday 

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MUSLIMS VS. MODERNITY ; HOW MURDERERS LAID CLAIM TO A GREAT WORLD RELIGION The New York Post September 8, 2002, Sunday 

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After Taliban, Afghans seek natural Islam  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution August 25, 2002 Sunday 

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Refueling in Style in Bali   The New York Times August 25, 2002 Sunday 

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THE TALK OF ...; Indonesia: A Plan Bono Would Envy  The New York Times August 25, 2002 Sunday 

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Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) August 23, 2002 Friday 

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Jakarta Journal; A TV Preacher to Satisfy the Taste for Islam Lite  The New York Times August 23, 2002 Friday 

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Muslim democracy Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA) August 20, 2002 Tuesday 

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Losing Our Best Allies in the War on Terror   The New York Times August 20, 2002 Tuesday 

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The Mideast threat that's hard to define;Wahabism's extremist teachings are causing a great rift in the Islamic world.  (California) August 18, 2002 Sunday 

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For Some Indonesians, Echoes of 'Coolie' Nation   The New York Times August 18, 2002 Sunday 

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Indonesia Acquits 6 in Rights Case, Upsetting the U.S.   The New York Times August 16, 2002 Friday 

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AP Photos NY453-457 Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) August 15, 2002 Thursday 

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WAR DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) August 14, 2002 Wednesday Three Star Edition 

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The Answer to Hate-America TV  August 14, 2002 Wednesday 

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Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) August 12, 2002 Monday 

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Jakarta Rejects Muslim Law And Alters Presidential Voting   The New York Times August 12, 2002 Monday 

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Indonesian Preacher Is Behind Radical Network, Report Says   The New York Times August 11, 2002 Sunday 

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The Mideast Threat That's Hard to Define  August 11, 2002 Sunday 

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Visiting Indonesia, U.S. Envoy Seeks to End Rebel Conflict   The New York Times August 9, 2002 Friday 

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WORLD; In Brief  August 9, 2002 Friday 

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U.S. Backs Oil Giant On Lawsuit In Indonesia   The New York Times August 8, 2002 Thursday 

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THEY WAR ON CHILDREN, AND CALL IT HOLY The New York Post August 7, 2002, Wednesday 

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U.S. to Resume Aid to Train Indonesia's Military Forces   The New York Times August 3, 2002 Saturday 

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Powell Says U.S. to Resume Training Indonesia's Forces; Terrorism Fears Overtake Concerns About Army Abuses  August 3, 2002 Saturday 

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Indonesia is weak link in terror war The Evening Sun (Hanover, PA) August 2, 2002 Friday 

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Powell Says U.S. Can Balance Human Rights, War on Terror  August 2, 2002 Friday 

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Powell Treading a Thin Line In Rallying Antiterror Support   The New York Times July 31, 2002 Wednesday 

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Powell and N. Korean Hold Informal Meeting  July 31, 2002 Wednesday Correction Appended 

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Talks on Kashmir Urged by Powell   The New York Times July 28, 2002 Sunday 

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To Keep The Peace, Study Peace   The New York Times July 27, 2002 Saturday 

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Powell flies far for antiterror coalition;In India, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere, the secretary of state may come up against conflicting goals.   The Philadelphia Inquirer July 27, 2002 Saturday CITY-D EDITION 

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Powell set to make hard choices in Asia;TRIP TO TEST SECRETARY'S DIPLOMACY ON KASHMIR CONFLICT, N. KOREA San Jose Mercury News (California) July 27, 2002 Saturday MO1 EDITION 

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Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) July 26, 2002 Friday 

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WORLD  Investor's Business Daily July 26, 2002, Friday 

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Powell to urge steps to defuse Kashmir crisis USA TODAY July 26, 2002, Friday, 

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WORLD; In Brief  July 26, 2002 Friday 

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Indonesia and Terrorism   The New York Times July 22, 2002 Monday 

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Indonesia's Unreformed Military   The New York Times July 17, 2002 Wednesday 

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Indonesia's Guerrilla War Puts Exxon Under Siege   The New York Times July 14, 2002 Sunday 

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The Death of bin Ladenism   The New York Times July 11, 2002 Thursday 

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Much of Mideast still friendly to Americans San Jose Mercury News (California) July 7, 2002 Sunday MO1 EDITION 

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:LETTERS El Paso Times (El Paso, TX) July 6, 2002 Saturday 

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Some Indonesians Say U.S. Aid Could Promote Army Reforms   The New York Times July 5, 2002 Friday 

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REP. EMERSON SUGGESTS STRONG LINK BETWEEN HUNGER, TERRORISM; FEEDING CHILDREN ABROAD IS GOOD FOR U.S. FARMERS, NATIONAL SECURITY, SHE SAYS St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) July 5, 2002 Friday Five Star Lift Edition 

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NEWS SUMMARY   The New York Times June 29, 2002 Saturday 

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WHITE HOUSE SEEKS TO RESUME AIDING INDONESIA'S ARMY   The New York Times June 29, 2002 Saturday 

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Pr. William Teaches Tolerance; Arab, Civil Liberties Issues Top Multicultural Institute Talks  June 27, 2002 Thursday 

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Malaysia Confirms Transfer of Power in 2003; A Smooth Transition From Mahathir Era Could Ease Fears in Jittery Region  June 26, 2002 Wednesday 

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U.S. Tries to Win Over Angry Indonesian Muslims   The New York Times June 22, 2002 Saturday 

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Iran and The War Of Ideas   The New York Times June 19, 2002 Wednesday 

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A Long War Slices Deep In Indonesia   The New York Times June 17, 2002 Monday 

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Freeport-McMoRan mining company has banner year New Orleans CityBusiness (New Orleans, LA) June 17, 2002 Monday 

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Jakarta Journal; Boy Kisses Girl: That's Sweet, and Sensational!  The New York Times June 11, 2002 Tuesday 

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Puppets for the People; Indonesian Art Form Gleefully Breaches Time and Cultures  June 8, 2002 Saturday 

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Pentagon Official Seeks Support for Moderate Muslim Nations   The New York Times June 2, 2002 Sunday 

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Pentagon Official Warns Asians to Guard Against Terror   The New York Times June 1, 2002 Saturday 

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Romance, in Cosmo's World, Is Translated in Many Ways   The New York Times May 26, 2002 Sunday 

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U.S. wants Indonesia ties;BUSH SEEKS TO RENEW MILITARY CONTACT CUT IN '99 San Jose Mercury News (California) May 14, 2002 Tuesday MO1 EDITION 

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Concerned by Indonesia's Voice of Caution; U.S., Asian Diplomats Say Vice President Preventing More Forceful War on Terror  May 14, 2002 Tuesday 

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The World: Indonesia's Military; Will It Help to Help This Army?  The New York Times May 12, 2002 Sunday 

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Global Village Idiocy   The New York Times May 12, 2002 Sunday 

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Indonesia's Example   The New York Times May 10, 2002 Friday 

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DEADLY TOLERANCE The New York Post May 10, 2002, Friday 

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Indonesian Arrested in Manila Had Ties to Al Qaeda; Capture of Muslim Militia Leader Reveals Radical Groups' Links in Southeast Asia, Investigators Say  May 9, 2002 Thursday 

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The War on What?   The New York Times May 8, 2002 Wednesday 

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Indonesia: Old Temples, Few Tourists   The New York Times May 7, 2002 Tuesday 

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Indonesia Arrests Leader Of Militants In Islam Group   The New York Times May 7, 2002 Tuesday 

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NEWS SUMMARY   The New York Times May 7, 2002 Tuesday 

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Listening To the Future?   The New York Times May 5, 2002 Sunday 

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Author examines growth of Pentacostalism in Third World countries Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA) May 4, 2002 Saturday 

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Indonesian-Style Taliban Fights for Islamic Law; Radical Groups Challenge Secular Traditions  May 4, 2002 Saturday 

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AHMADABAD, India [AP] Mohandas Gandhi's wooden spinning wheel still stands among the simple throw pillows where he once sat cross-legged, threading cotton, receiving world leaders and promoting his vision of a unified, secular India. Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) May 3, 2002 Friday 

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A JIHAD ELSEWHERE WALL STREET JOURNAL May 3, 2002, Friday 

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Indonesian Official Urges U.S. to Resume Military Assistance   The New York Times May 2, 2002 Thursday 

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With Indonesia Politics Up for Grabs, Islam's Role Grows   The New York Times April 30, 2002 Tuesday 

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U.S., Pakistani forces seek terrorist disciples San Gabriel Valley Tribune (San Gabriel Valley, CA) April 29, 2002 Monday 

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WORLD; In Brief  April 28, 2002 Sunday 

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Chicken Big  April 24, 2002 Wednesday 

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Sacramento state students arrested in terrorism ring;Malaysian police say they aided Sept. 11 attack San Mateo County Times (San Mateo, CA) April 21, 2002 Sunday 

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CHEVRONTEXACO STILL DRILLING FOR GROWTH;NOW A "SUPERMAJOR," THE SAN RAMON-BOUND OIL GIANT IS STRUGGLING TO SATISFY SHAREHOLDERS' PROFIT THIRST  (California) April 14, 2002 Sunday  

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The New Fronts St. Petersburg Times (Florida) April 14, 2002, Sunday, 0 South Pinellas Edition 

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It's Mideast policy that's unpopular;Poll finds support for U.S. culture  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution April 12, 2002 Friday, 

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MIDEAST TURMOIL: WORLD REACTION; As Israel Lags In Pulling Out, Critics at U.N. Turn Up Heat  The New York Times April 10, 2002 Wednesday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN ARENA; Trade Envoy Urges Bolder Moves by Indonesia Against Terror, and Vows U.S. Backing  The New York Times April 8, 2002 Monday 

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Rallies in Arab Countries Denounce Israel  April 8, 2002 Monday 

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U.S. Envoy Campaigns For Trade Pacts On Asian Trip   The New York Times April 7, 2002 Sunday 

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The World; The Helping Hand Gets Limp Shakes  The New York Times April 7, 2002 Sunday 

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Indonesia General Denies Responsibility for East Timor Killings   The New York Times April 5, 2002 Friday 

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PUBLIC ANGER THREATENS COALITION, OFFICIALS FEAR St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) April 5, 2002 Friday Five Star Lift Edition 

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In Southeast Asia, a Wary Optimism   The New York Times April 4, 2002 Thursday 

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World Briefing Asia: Indonesia: Bombing In Christian Area   The New York Times April 4, 2002 Thursday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: THE OUTLOOK; Pakistan's Bold Alliance: U.S. Ties Holding Firm  The New York Times April 1, 2002 Monday 

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LETTERS, FAXES & E-MAIL The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL) April 1, 2002 Monday 

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Corrections   The New York Times March 31, 2002 Sunday 

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The True Arab Leaders   The New York Times March 29, 2002 Friday 

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Indonesia a 'Big Disappointment' in Terror War; Neighbors, U.S. Say Jakarta Has Failed to Arrest Key Suspects  March 24, 2002 Sunday 

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The Poll That Didn't Add Up; Spin on Data Blurs Findings From Gallup's Muslim Survey  March 23, 2002 Saturday 

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WORLD; In Brief  March 23, 2002 Saturday 

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NEWS SUMMARY   The New York Times March 22, 2002 Friday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: TERRORISM; U.S. Rules Out Training Indonesia Army, but Will Aid Its Antiterror Police  The New York Times March 22, 2002 Friday 

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Facing Indonesia  March 22, 2002 Friday 

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Pentagon wants to send troops to Indonesia USA TODAY March 20, 2002, Wednesday, 

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THE SATURDAY PROFILE; An Islamic Scholar's Lifelong Lesson: Tolerance  The New York Times March 16, 2002 Saturday 

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WORLD; In Brief  March 15, 2002 Friday 

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Disinformation? U.S. Viewpoints Need Promotion In Islamic World  Investor's Business Daily March 12, 2002, Tuesday 

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U.S. Behind Secret Transfer of Terror Suspects  March 11, 2002 Monday 

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The Threat of Jaffar   The New York Times March 10, 2002 Sunday Correction Appended 

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As war widens, new perils;President Bush aims to root out terrorist networks everywhere. Officials don't know when, where or how the struggle will end.   The Philadelphia Inquirer March 10, 2002 Sunday 

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DISTURBING RESULTS Berkeley Voice (California) March 8, 2002 Friday  

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TIMOR VEXES U.S. AIM TO ENGAGE JAKARTA IN TERROR WAR WALL STREET JOURNAL March 5, 2002, Tuesday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: THE MILITARY; U.S. Broadens Terror Fight, Readying Troops for Yemen  The New York Times March 2, 2002 Saturday 

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$ 5-million reward offered in Pearl case St. Petersburg Times (Florida) February 28, 2002, Thursday, 0 South Pinellas Edition 

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1 Country, 2 Futures   The New York Times February 27, 2002 Wednesday 

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In poll, Islamic world says Arabs not involved in 9/11 USA TODAY February 27, 2002, Wednesday, 

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Kuwaitis share distrust toward USA, poll indicates USA TODAY February 27, 2002, Wednesday, 

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On the trail of terrorists The Denver Post February 24, 2002 Sunday 

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National Briefing South: Florida: Judge Lets Princess Fly Home   The New York Times February 23, 2002 Saturday 

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WORLD; In Brief  February 20, 2002 Wednesday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN ARENA; Finding a Tepid Ally in the War on Terror, U.S. Presses Indonesia to Arrest 2 Clerics  The New York Times February 18, 2002 Monday 

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INDONESIA COOL TO MILITANT ISLAM;COUNTRY, DESPITE SOME ZEALOTS, EMBRACES RELIGIOUS MODERATION San Jose Mercury News (California) February 17, 2002 Sunday MORNING  

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer February 13, 2002 Wednesday CITY-D EDITION 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  February 13, 2002 Wednesday 

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: MISINFORMATION ABOUT MUSLIMS St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) February 12, 2002 Tuesday Five Star Lift Edition 

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WORLD WATCH -- ASIA/PACIFIC: BRIEFLY WALL STREET JOURNAL February 11, 2002, Monday 

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FUTURE FLASHPOINTS: ASIA: Tense climate makes for unstable future  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution February 10, 2002 Sunday, 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN ARENA; How Qaeda Linked Up With Malaysian Groups  The New York Times February 7, 2002 Thursday 

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Clerics Groomed Students for Terrorism; Malaysian Police Say Indonesians Quietly Recruited for Al Qaeda-Linked Group  February 7, 2002 Thursday 

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RELIGIOUS WAR TEARS INDONESIANS APART San Jose Mercury News (California) February 4, 2002 Monday MORNING  

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RELIGIOUS WAR TEARS INDONESIANS APART San Jose Mercury News (California) February 4, 2002 Monday MORNING  

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A NATION CHALLENGED: MILITANTS' NETWORK; Indonesian Cleric Is Suspected of Being a Terrorist Leader  The New York Times February 3, 2002 Sunday Correction Appended 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN MILITANTS; School in Indonesia Urges 'Personal Jihad' In Steps of bin Laden  The New York Times February 3, 2002 Sunday 

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Militant group linked to attacks St. Petersburg Times (Florida) February 03, 2002, Sunday, 0 South Pinellas Edition 

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Al Qaeda's Southeast Asian Reach; Group Operating in 4 Nations Believed Tied to Sept. 11 Hijackers  February 3, 2002 Sunday 

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We Will Do The Fighting  February 3, 2002 Sunday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: THE INVESTIGATION; Suspect Calls Malaysia a Staging Area for Terror Attacks  The New York Times January 31, 2002 Thursday 

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WAR ON TERRORISM: CRISIS AT A GLANCE;Latest developments at home and abroad  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 29, 2002 Tuesday, 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: A FIGHTER'S TALE; Bin Laden Stirs Struggle on Meaning of Jihad  The New York Times January 27, 2002 Sunday 

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The Asian Front  January 27, 2002 Sunday 

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CRISIS AT A GLANCE;Latest developments at home and abroad  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 25, 2002 Friday, 

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CRISIS AT A GLANCE;Latest developments at home and abroad  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 25, 2002 Friday, 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN ARENA; Indonesian in Terror Inquiry Lauds bin Laden  The New York Times January 25, 2002 Friday 

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U.S. robe policy sits poorly with Saudis St. Petersburg Times (Florida) January 25, 2002, Friday, 0 South Pinellas Edition 

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Indonesian Troops Kill Leader of a Province's Separatist Group   The New York Times January 24, 2002 Thursday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: PACIFIC BATTLEFRONT; Opposition to U.S. Forces Is Fading in the Philippines  The New York Times January 24, 2002 Thursday 

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Indonesia: 'Unity in Diversity'  January 24, 2002 Thursday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIAN TERROR; Qaeda Moving Into Indonesia, Officials Fear  The New York Times January 23, 2002 Wednesday 

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NEWS SUMMARY   The New York Times January 23, 2002 Wednesday 

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INDONESIAN POLICE PREPARE TO CALL MUSLIM CLERIC IN FOR QUESTIONING WALL STREET JOURNAL January 22, 2002, Tuesday 

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The Widows' Battalion   The New York Times January 20, 2002 Sunday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: ADVISERS; U.S. Mission Lifts Filipino Hopes for Peace  The New York Times January 20, 2002 Sunday 

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AL-QAIDA LACKING KINDRED SPIRITS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA;ISLAMISTS STICK TO LOCAL AIMS San Jose Mercury News (California) January 19, 2002 Saturday MORNING  

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THE WAR IN THE PHILIPPINES The New York Post January 17, 2002, Thursday 

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BEWARE THE JIHAD IN SOUTHEAST ASIA WALL STREET JOURNAL January 17, 2002, Thursday 

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Jihad in Indonesia   The New York Times January 12, 2002 Saturday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: HUNTING TERRORISTS; Suspects in Singapore Are Linked to Al Qaeda and Plans for Anti-U.S. Attacks  The New York Times January 12, 2002 Saturday 

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Al Qaeda Feared To Be Lurking In Indonesia  January 11, 2002 Friday 

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Jihad Seethes, and Grows, on Indonesian Island   The New York Times January 10, 2002 Thursday 

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Turkey, Well Along Road to Secularism, Fears Detour to Islamism   The New York Times January 8, 2002 Tuesday Correction Appended 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: STRATEGY; U.S. SEES BATTLES IN LAWLESS AREAS AFTER AFGHAN WAR  The New York Times January 8, 2002 Tuesday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: TERRORIST SUSPECTS; 15 Held in Singapore Said to Have Al Qaeda Ties  The New York Times January 8, 2002 Tuesday 

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War disrupts terrorists far beyond Afghanistan St. Petersburg Times (Florida) January 08, 2002, Tuesday, 0 South Pinellas Edition 

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MOSQUE AND STATE: TWO MODELS OF ISLAM VIE FOR SHOT AT CURING INDONESIA'S MANY ILLS WALL STREET JOURNAL January 8, 2002, Tuesday 

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A NATION CHALLENGED: ASIA; Singapore Accuses Islamists of Bomb Plan  The New York Times January 7, 2002 Monday 

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EDITORIAL A step back from the brink The Denver Post January 3, 2002 Thursday 

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THE DISMAL DOLLAR; FOREIGN COUNTRIES LOSE FAITH IN OUR CURRENCY Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) December 29, 2006 Friday 

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Travesty Of Justice Investor's Business Daily December 26, 2006 Tuesday 

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In Brief  December 23, 2006 Saturday 

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2006: The year of perpetual outrage Lowell Sun (Massachusetts) December 22, 2006 Friday 

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For Congress: Telling Sunni From Shiite The New York Times December 17, 2006 Sunday Correction Appended 

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Bush Ends Trip at Careful Stop in Indonesia The New York Times November 21, 2006 Tuesday 

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Bush Tries to Defuse Indonesian Anger Over Iraq The New York Times November 21, 2006 Tuesday 

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BUSH IN SOUTHEAST ASIA; THE TRIP'S LAST LEG; Indonesian leader urges global effort to help Iraq Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) November 21, 2006 Tuesday 

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Bush back in USA after 5-day Asian excursion; Says Indonesian protests are positive signs of democracy USA TODAY November 21, 2006 Tuesday 

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At summit, criticism of North Korea Austin American-Statesman (Texas) November 20, 2006 Monday 

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Bush draws mass protest in Indonesia Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) November 20, 2006, Monday 

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BUSH TO FACE CHILLY INDONESIA WELCOME; ON A MISSION TO QUELL ANTI-AMERICAN SENTIMENT Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) November 20, 2006 Monday 

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BUSH IN SOUTHEAST ASIA; APEC SUMMIT WINDS DOWN; President faces tough critics in Indonesia Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) November 20, 2006 Monday 

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Casino crusade DeathsToday in historyBirthdaysNever againnews in briefDeaths Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas) November 20, 2006 Monday 

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INDONESIA'S PROMISE WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS November 20, 2006 Monday 

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Thanks for Leaving!  November 20, 2006 Monday 

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Pacific Rim Statement On N. Korea Falls Short Of What Bush Sought  November 20, 2006 Monday 

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The Bismarck Tribune November 19, 2006 Sunday 

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DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) November 19, 2006 Sunday 

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Visit to Mark Closer Ties With Jakarta; Military Cooperation Grows as U.S. Concerns on Rights Issues Recede  November 19, 2006 Sunday 

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WORLD Investor's Business Daily November 16, 2006 Thursday 

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ROAD TRIP; PRESIDENT BUSH TAKES HIS CASE TO WORLD LEADERS Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) November 16, 2006 Thursday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  November 16, 2006 Thursday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) November 14, 2006 Tuesday 

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Trip to Asia will test Bush's global stature Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) November 14, 2006 Tuesday 

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Southeast Asia Trip to Test Bush's Stature; Election Results May Hinder International Trade and North Korea Talks, Analysts Say  November 14, 2006 Tuesday 

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U.S. Court of Appeals 6th Circuit Case Summaries: November 13, 2006 Michigan Lawyers Weekly November 13, 2006 

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As Vietnam trip nears, Bush rejects Iraq link; 2 wars more different than alike, he says USA TODAY November 13, 2006 Monday 

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SPOTLIGHT ON: INDONESIA The Atlanta Journal-Constitution November 12, 2006 Sunday 

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Religious persecution San Gabriel Valley Tribune (California) November 12, 2006 Sunday 

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In the World The Philadelphia Inquirer November 4, 2006 Saturday 

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IRAN TEST FIRES MORE MISSILES Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) November 4, 2006 Saturday 

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Clifford Geertz; Altered Foundation of Anthropology  November 2, 2006 Thursday 

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Trading Recipes on the Rim of the South China Sea The New York Times November 1, 2006 Wednesday 

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MacNeil Named Host Of Documentary Project The New York Times November 1, 2006 Wednesday 

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Clifford Geertz, Cultural Anthropologist, Is Dead at 80 The New York Times November 1, 2006 Wednesday Correction Appended 

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Infantile campaign quibbling The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK) October 29, 2006 Sunday 

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Veils as a Matter of Choice  October 28, 2006 Saturday 

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Foreign policy expert on Islamic world to speak; Dr. Vali Nasr will highlight conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims Monterey County Herald (California) October 26, 2006 Thursday 

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For Some Muslims In Indonesia, An End to Fasting The New York Times October 24, 2006 Tuesday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  October 19, 2006 Thursday 

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The Weight of the World on Israel The New York Sun October 18, 2006 Wednesday Correction Appended 

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In the World The Philadelphia Inquirer October 13, 2006 Friday 

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Company stages artistic response to conflict  (California) October 12, 2006 Thursday 

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Faiths must interact, Muslim says Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) October 11, 2006 Wednesday 

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Muslim community opens doors Inside Bay Area (California) October 11, 2006 Wednesday 

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State of the unionDeathsToday in historyBirthdaysTogether again? Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas) October 10, 2006 Tuesday 

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Wyoming Tribune-Eagle (Cheyenne) October 10, 2006 Tuesday 

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Web brief exclusives The York Dispatch (Pennsylvania) October 10, 2006 Tuesday 

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After Tsunami, Intentions To Build but No Road Yet The New York Times October 9, 2006 Monday 

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Rock Star Rattles Radical Islam; Popular Indonesian Singer Woos Youths With Songs of Peace and Romance  October 7, 2006 Saturday 

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Muslim rocker: Bonds trump bombs The former fundamentalist tells a U.S. defense forum that military force alone won't change hearts or deter terrorists. The Denver Post October 4, 2006 Wednesday 

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World jihad and beyond; OTHER VIEWS Monterey County Herald (California) October 4, 2006 Wednesday 

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Islamism, not Islam, is the real foe Pittsburgh Tribune Review October 3, 2006 Tuesday 

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War on terror needs a new direction; NIE contains a valuable but neglected piece of advice. Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) October 2, 2006 Monday 

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The Verse of the Sword The New York Sun September 27, 2006 Wednesday 

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Pope calls for dialogue with Muslims; Pontiff meets with 20 ambassadors of Islamic populations USA TODAY September 26, 2006 Tuesday 

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CONVERSIONS ARE CURIOUSLY HUSHED The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) September 25, 2006 Monday 

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THE WORLD  The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) September 24, 2006 Sunday 

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Executions were law, official says The Bismarck Tribune September 24, 2006 Sunday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) September 24, 2006 Sunday 

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Indian court ends ban on colas The Bismarck Tribune September 23, 2006 Saturday 

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Indian court ends ban on colas The Bismarck Tribune September 23, 2006 Saturday 

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Pope's message lost amid fury The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK) September 23, 2006 Saturday 

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In the World The Philadelphia Inquirer September 23, 2006 Saturday 

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U.S. DEATHS IN WAR MATCH 9; 11 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) September 23, 2006 Saturday 

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Keep an eye on Indonesia The Salt Lake Tribune September 23, 2006 Saturday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  September 23, 2006 Saturday 

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THE WORLD The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) September 22, 2006 Friday 

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Generosity, not war, is the answer Chapel Hill Herald (Durham, NC) September 22, 2006 Friday 

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Nation & world Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia) September 22, 2006, Friday 

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Briefing: U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan will stay steady St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) September 22, 2006 Friday 

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Coup Leaders Restrict Politi ...  September 22, 2006 Friday 

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THE WORLD The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) September 21, 2006 Thursday 

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EDITORIAL Pope's sensible effort for calm The Denver Post September 21, 2006 Thursday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) September 21, 2006 Thursday 

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DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) September 21, 2006 Thursday 

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The greatest Nebraskan you may never have heard of  September 20, 2006 Wednesday 

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The pope on God & the Prophet Pittsburgh Tribune Review September 20, 2006 Wednesday 

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Critics say pope failed test of diplomatic skills; Comment on Islam may hurt interfaith relations St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) September 20, 2006 Wednesday 

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Pope's words continue to inflame The Bismarck Tribune September 19, 2006 Tuesday 

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-QAEDA'S PAPAL PREYERS DECLARE AN UNHOLY WAR (S) -'WORLD CONQUER' QAEDA MAKES PONTIFF'S CASE (LCF)  The New York Post September 19, 2006 Tuesday 

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Briefly... NATION/WORLD Philadelphia Daily News September 19, 2006 Tuesday 

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IRAQ BOMBS KILL 40 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) September 19, 2006 Tuesday 

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Willie Nelson citedDeathsToday in historyBirthdaysCase to grand jury Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas) September 19, 2006 Tuesday 

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One Last Thing | 'Conversions' curiously hushed; When two kidnapped journalists were forced to embrace Islam, many should have protested. The Philadelphia Inquirer September 17, 2006 Sunday 

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Some Muslim Leaders Want Pope to Apologize for Remarks The New York Times September 16, 2006 Saturday 

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Editorial: Remembering The Hill September 12, 2006 Tuesday 

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Where's the outrage?; A united world must resolutely condemn terror USA TODAY September 12, 2006 Tuesday 

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What caused the attacks on 9/11? Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) September 10, 2006 Sunday 

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Al Qaeda Is a Shadow of Its Former Self The New York Sun September 8, 2006 Friday 

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Experts fail to explain the 'why' of terrorism The Philadelphia Inquirer September 8, 2006 Friday 

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Five years later, no attacks but focus blurs, unity fades USA TODAY September 8, 2006 Friday 

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Monitors Ready, Israel Will Ease Grip on Lebanon The New York Times September 7, 2006 Thursday 

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Terrorists Promise More Attacks Like 9/11 The New York Sun September 6, 2006 Wednesday 

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U.N. Expects to Mediate Talks on Captured Israelis The New York Times September 5, 2006 Tuesday 

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First Large Foreign Unit Arrives for Lebanon-Israel Buffer Zone  The New York Times September 4, 2006 Monday 

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Italian Troops Land In Southern Lebanon  September 3, 2006 Sunday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  September 3, 2006 Sunday 

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Indonesia to Send Soldiers For U.N.'s Force in Lebanon The New York Times September 2, 2006 Saturday 

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ISRAEL TALKS SWAP WITH HAMAS - ABDUCTED SOLDIER EXCHANGE EYED  The New York Post September 2, 2006 Saturday 

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The West Needs To Fight Islamofascists With Big Ideas The New York Sun September 1, 2006 Friday 

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As Lebanon's Troops Deploy, Hezbollah Stays Put in South; Across the Region, Militia and Army Operate in Parallel  September 1, 2006 Friday 

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Arab Press Says Jews Perpetrated 9/11 Attacks The New York Sun August 30, 2006 Wednesday 

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INDONESIA NEARS DEAL TO DEPLOY FORCES TO LEBANON WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS August 30, 2006 Wednesday 

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Chicago Daily Herald August 27, 2006 Sunday 

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Question Celebrity; Explore the World of Fame  August 27, 2006 Sunday 

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EUROPE PLEDGES A LARGER FORCE INSIDE LEBANON  The New York Times August 26, 2006 Saturday 

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Europe Offering Bulk of U.N. Force; Big Hurdles Remain For Lebanon Mission  August 26, 2006 Saturday 

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France Offers Many More Troops for Lebanon The New York Times August 25, 2006 Friday 

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GET HELP TO LEBANON Palm Beach Post (Florida) August 24, 2006 Thursday 

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IBD'S TOP 10 Investor's Business Daily August 23, 2006 Wednesday 

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Pastor views Indonesia's strength, work ethic The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK) August 23, 2006 Wednesday 

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Bush implores nations to send peacekeepers to Lebanon  (California) August 22, 2006 Tuesday 

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War against terrorism is everyone's job The Evening Sun (Hanover, Pennsylvania) August 22, 2006 Tuesday 

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Rome Agrees To Lead U.N. Force The New York Sun August 22, 2006 Tuesday 

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Profiles in terror Pittsburgh Tribune Review August 22, 2006 Tuesday 

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SHAKY CEASE-FIRE; THE WORLD MUST ACT TO KEEP THE PEACE IN LEBANON Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) August 22, 2006 Tuesday 

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How to counter terrorists who also pass out cash USA TODAY August 22, 2006 Tuesday 

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Indonesian Filmmaker's Personal Take on Polygamy The New York Times August 21, 2006 Monday 

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OLMERT'S NEW TRUCE HURDLE  The New York Post August 21, 2006 Monday 

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Israel warns about U.N. force; Objection puts pressure on peacekeeping plan St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) August 21, 2006 Monday 

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Plans for Lebanon Force Faulted; Israel Objects to Use of Troops From Several Muslim Countries  August 21, 2006 Monday 

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Muslim man hopes to educate about faith The Atlanta Journal-Constitution August 20, 2006 Sunday 

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Villagers Cheer as Lebanese Army Marches Into the South The New York Times August 19, 2006 Saturday 

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UN to the rescue in Lebanon? Christian Science Monitor August 18, 2006, Friday 

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Reveal secret that is ZeroOne festival San Jose Mercury News (California) August 18, 2006 Friday 

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Is Hamas Ready To Deal? The New York Times August 17, 2006 Thursday 

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THE ESSENTIAL U.N.; FOCUS CENTERS ON NEXT SECRETARY-GENERAL Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) August 16, 2006 Wednesday 

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Winning the War The New York Sun August 15, 2006 Tuesday 

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THIS MUSLIM ROCKER PREACHES TOLERANCE TO A STRONG DRUMBEAT WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS August 15, 2006 Tuesday 

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Investor's Business Daily August 14, 2006 Monday 

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Does Calling It Jihad Make It So? The New York Times August 13, 2006 Sunday 

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UNDERSTANDING YOUR WORLD: ECHOES OF ISLAM'S CONTENTIOUS INFANCY RESONATE TODAY The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico) August 13, 2006 Sunday 

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Lieberman, Cheney and the war in Iraq; The White House recognizes a vote of no confidence. Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) August 13, 2006 Sunday 

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In the World The Philadelphia Inquirer August 12, 2006 Saturday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  August 12, 2006 Saturday 

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THE WORLD The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) August 11, 2006 Friday 

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U.S. needs a political revolution  (California) August 11, 2006 Friday 

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Indonesia to Execute 3 for Roles in Riots That Killed Hundreds  The New York Times August 11, 2006 Friday 

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Struggling with the Islamic paradox San Gabriel Valley Tribune (California) August 9, 2006 Wednesday 

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Livening Up Today's Lesson, Courtesy of Uncle Sam The New York Times August 7, 2006 Monday 

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ISLAM IN ASIA; PART TWO OF TWO; An election where stakes seem higher; Bangladesh, which achieved independence from Pakistan in 1971, sits at the eastern edge of India on the Bay of Bengal. Its population of 147 million is about 85 percent Muslim, which makes it the world's third-largest Muslim-majority nation. After 20 years under military rulers, it restored democracy in 1991 and will hold its fourth parliamentary election in January 2007. Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) August 7, 2006 Monday 

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ISLAM IN ASIA; Hearing the moderate voices of Islam; Muslims, too, are offended by the extremists. Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) August 6, 2006 Sunday 

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ISLAM IN ASIA; A friend at arm's length; Indonesia, an archipelago that sprawls from the Indian Ocean almost to Australia, is the world's largest Muslim-majority nation and, since the authoritarian leader Suharto stepped down in 1998, the world's third-largest democracy. The ambivalence of its people toward the U.S.-directed war on terror should be weighed in the context of a long struggle of moderate clerics and politicians against radical Islamists. Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) August 6, 2006 Sunday 

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ISLAM IN ASIA; the street Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) August 6, 2006 Sunday 

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Muslims Warn of Surge in Terrorism  The New York Times August 4, 2006 Friday 

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Indonesian Province Embraces Islamic Law, and Canings The New York Times August 1, 2006 Tuesday 

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Restaurant at Canterbury takes new dining direction;Hotel hires food veteran Emerson to lead expansion Indianapolis Business Journal July 31, 2006 

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Iran Hangs in Suspense as War Offers New Strength, and Sudden Weakness The New York Times July 30, 2006 Sunday 

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As Parents Mourn in Thai Hotel, Muslims Recruit Outside The Forward July 28, 2006 

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Is Israel a mistake? The Hill July 25, 2006 Tuesday 

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ATTACK THEATRE FINDS INDONESIA RECEPTIVE Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) July 25, 2006 Tuesday 

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Indonesians ask if calamities are a divine rebuke Christian Science Monitor July 24, 2006, Monday 

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The Week That Was In World War III Investor's Business Daily July 24, 2006 Monday 

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Playboy Indonesia: Modest Flesh Meets Muslim Faith  The New York Times July 24, 2006 Monday 

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1,700 RALLY AT 2 SITES IN SOLIDARITY WITH ISRAEL Palm Beach Post (Florida) July 24, 2006 Monday 

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Let us launch our mission for peace The Philadelphia Inquirer July 24, 2006 Monday 

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Ban of blogs stirs outrage from India to Silicon Valley San Jose Mercury News (California) July 20, 2006 Thursday 

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ISLAM HAS VIOLENT ANTI-CHRISTIAN HISTORY The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) July 18, 2006 Tuesday 

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An American Foreign Policy That Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With The New York Times July 16, 2006 Sunday 

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A Beautiful Friendship?; In search of the truth about the Israel lobby's influence on Washington  July 16, 2006 Sunday Correction Appended 

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N.Y.C., India Are Joined In the War The New York Sun July 12, 2006 Wednesday 

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American Muslims heeding call to volunteer Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) July 8, 2006, Saturday 

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Out on a Limb- Outfest Film Festival The Hollywood Reporter July 6, 2006 Thursday 

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INDONESIA PULLS OUT OF FED CUP Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) July 5, 2006 Wednesday 

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The highlights The York Dispatch (Pennsylvania) July 5, 2006 Wednesday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) June 30, 2006 Friday 

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NEWSDESK The Forward June 30, 2006 

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BIN LADEN TAPE ON ZARQAWI Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) June 30, 2006 Friday 

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Spread of Islamic Law in Indonesia Takes Toll on Women The New York Times June 27, 2006 Tuesday 

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Survey of World's Muslims Yields Dismaying Results The New York Sun June 27, 2006 Tuesday 

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How to end beheadings in Iraq Christian Science Monitor June 26, 2006, Monday 

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Madeleine Albright, John Danforth, and Andrew Kohut Christian Science Monitor June 23, 2006, Friday 

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Poll Finds Discord Between the Muslim and Western Worlds The New York Times June 23, 2006 Friday 

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CULTURE CLASH Westerners see Muslims as: Intolerant and violent. Muslims see Westerners as: Greedy and selfish. Survey of people in 15 nations shows deteriorating relations. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) June 23, 2006 Friday 

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Survey: Suspicion separates Westerners, Muslims; Poll of several countries finds 'complete misperceptions' USA TODAY June 23, 2006 Friday 

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Survey Details 'Deep' Divide Between Muslims, Westerners  June 23, 2006 Friday 

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Full appeals court will hear S.J. refugee's asylum case San Jose Mercury News (California) June 20, 2006 Tuesday 

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Finding Kinship in Muslim Senegal The Forward June 16, 2006 

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Investor's Business Daily June 16, 2006 Friday 

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The Pacific's Osama Investor's Business Daily June 15, 2006 Thursday 

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Freed Cleric Is Hailed by Students, but Support Could Be Waning The New York Times June 15, 2006 Thursday 

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HAMAS BIG A $20 MIL SMUGGLER  The New York Post June 15, 2006 Thursday 

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Nation &world Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia) June 14, 2006, Wednesday 

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Yourviews Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia) June 14, 2006, Wednesday 

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Once free, Indonesian cleric could 'revitalize' radicals Christian Science Monitor June 14, 2006, Wednesday 

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World dispatches The York Dispatch (Pennsylvania) June 14, 2006 Wednesday 

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Comeuppance for Rummy Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) June 12, 2006 Monday 

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A Walk Across Afghanistan The New York Times June 11, 2006 Sunday 

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The New York Times June 8, 2006 Thursday 

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LETTERS Austin American-Statesman (Texas) June 7, 2006 Wednesday 

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US military personnel do more good than harm Christian Science Monitor June 7, 2006, Wednesday 

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Relief efforts build positive image for U.S. Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) June 7, 2006 Wednesday 

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KAZAKHSTAN TRIP VITAL, WEXLER SAYS Palm Beach Post (Florida) June 7, 2006 Wednesday 

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Asia news in brief San Jose Mercury News (California) June 7, 2006 Wednesday 

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Briefing: Indonesian peer lectures Rumsfeld on U.S. role St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) June 7, 2006 Wednesday 

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Lawmakers travel globe as special interests pick up the tab The Atlanta Journal-Constitution June 6, 2006 Tuesday 

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Thousands of lawmakers' trips found to be free; Study reveals much of overseas travel privately funded St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) June 6, 2006 Tuesday 

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Lawmaker trips pricey, free, and most are legal; Staff hop aboard too. Tab hits $50 million in five years St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) June 6, 2006 Tuesday 

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Militant Islam, without blinders The Orange County Register (California) June 4, 2006 Sunday 

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In brief Wilkes Barre Times Leader (Pennsylvania) June 3, 2006 Saturday 

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East Timor; Violence in the streets Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) May 31, 2006, Wednesday 

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Building on faith; Muslims will worship, grow in new mosques The Atlanta Journal-Constitution May 24, 2006 Wednesday 

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In the World The Philadelphia Inquirer May 22, 2006 Monday 

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U.S., toadies careless about allies Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) May 19, 2006, Friday 

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Briefing: Hoffa search intensifies St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) May 19, 2006 Friday 

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How the world sees us Lowell Sun (Massachusetts) May 16, 2006 Tuesday 

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How the world sees America The Capital (Annapolis, MD) May 15, 2006 Monday 

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The Bismarck Tribune May 14, 2006 Sunday 

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IRAN LOON IN DUBIOUS 'TALK' OFFER  The New York Post May 14, 2006 Sunday 

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In the World The Philadelphia Inquirer May 14, 2006 Sunday 

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Presidents encourage Tulane grads to thrive Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas) May 14, 2006 Sunday 

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Aceh lawmakers may expand Islamic law Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) May 13, 2006 Saturday 

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ROCK-A-TOLLAH - IRAN NUT'S HATE TALK WOWS 'EM IN INDONESIA  The New York Post May 12, 2006 Friday 

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In the World The Philadelphia Inquirer May 12, 2006 Friday 

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Iranian leader pledges talks St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) May 12, 2006 Friday 

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Iranian leader pledges talks St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) May 12, 2006 Friday 

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Iranian leader pledges talks St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) May 12, 2006 Friday 

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In brief Wilkes Barre Times Leader (Pennsylvania) May 12, 2006 Friday 

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RELIGION DIGEST  (California) May 11, 2006 Thursday 

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Bush Says Iran Leader's Letter Fails to Address Nuclear Issue The New York Times May 11, 2006 Thursday 

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Additional `Letters to the Editor' San Jose Mercury News (California) May 11, 2006 Thursday 

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Indonesia Offers to Mediate Talks With Iran  May 11, 2006 Thursday 

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The Caliphate: One nation, under Allah, with 1.5 billion Muslims Christian Science Monitor May 10, 2006, Wednesday 

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Young Adults Don't Think World Knowledge Is Vital Education Week May 10, 2006 

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A last plea for clemency for a young, deaf immigrant The Philadelphia Inquirer May 9, 2006 Tuesday 

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The danger in Israel's success; With more Jews there than anyplace else, it is a convenient target for Hitler's successors. The Philadelphia Inquirer May 8, 2006 Monday 

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Three Myths About Islam The New York Sun May 3, 2006 Wednesday 

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Ministering To the Upwardly Mobile Muslim The New York Times April 30, 2006 Sunday 

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Photos show spirituality from around the world  April 29, 2006 Saturday 

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BRIEFLY The Atlanta Journal-Constitution April 28, 2006 Friday 

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Duke accuser claimed rape in '96 Philadelphia Daily News April 28, 2006 Friday 

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TOP NEWS St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) April 28, 2006 Friday 

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Prospect Throws Bat At Ump, Is Suspended  April 28, 2006 Friday 

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The highlights The York Dispatch (Pennsylvania) April 28, 2006 Friday 

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New Plans Foresee Fighting Terrorism Beyond War Zones; Pentagon to Rely on Special Operations  April 23, 2006 Sunday 

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Building bridges to Islam's world; Visiting Indonesian scholar seeks to dispel myths TELEGRAM & GAZETTE (Massachusetts) April 21, 2006 Friday 

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A Non-Swinging Playboy Sets Off a Frenzy in Indonesia The New York Times April 17, 2006 Monday 

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On Movies | Embodying Bettie - and her paradoxes The Philadelphia Inquirer April 16, 2006 Sunday 

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Long Trip by Sea and Into a Political Maze for Papuans Seeking Independence The New York Times April 15, 2006 Saturday 

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The New York Times April 14, 2006 Friday 

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The New York Times April 13, 2006 Thursday 

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For Clinton, a Chance to Evoke Better Days  April 13, 2006 Thursday 

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Investor's Business Daily April 10, 2006 Monday 

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Muslims and Christians must engage in dialogue Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) April 9, 2006 Sunday 

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Common ground; Muslim teen at home with Jewish family in Brewer Bangor Daily News (Maine) April 8, 2006 Saturday 

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APOSTASY AND THE QUALITY OF MERCY; BELIEFS The Ledger (Lakeland, FL) April 08, 2006 Saturday 

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MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUND ON ISLAM The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) April 7, 2006 Friday 

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JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Rahma ...  March 28, 2006 Tuesday 

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Inside Indonesia  March 28, 2006 Tuesday 

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Persecution calls for outcry; Muslims mum on Afghan case The Atlanta Journal-Constitution March 27, 2006 Monday 

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Where is Muslim outrage in reaction to radical violence? Wilkes Barre Times Leader (Pennsylvania) March 26, 2006 Sunday 

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Young Americans, Doing Good The New York Times March 24, 2006 Friday 

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Letters Christian Science Monitor March 23, 2006, Thursday 

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Clues To Reading Bush's Mind The New York Sun March 21, 2006 Tuesday 

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ROAD BOMB KILLS POLICE Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) March 20, 2006 Monday 

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Letters | Letters The Philadelphia Inquirer March 19, 2006 Sunday 

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Southeast Asia, Too, Is on Map of Islamic Art  The New York Times March 16, 2006 Thursday 

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THE WORLD The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) March 15, 2006 Wednesday 

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Rice, in Indonesia, Supports Renewed Military Assistance The New York Times March 15, 2006 Wednesday 

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In the World The Philadelphia Inquirer March 15, 2006 Wednesday 

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DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) March 15, 2006 Wednesday 

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Rice Praises Indonesia As Model of 'Tolerance'; Some Misunderstand U.S., She Says  March 15, 2006 Wednesday 

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Couple's aid work rewarding; Pair spent 7 months; in region of Indonesia devastated by tsunami Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia) March 14, 2006, Tuesday 

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Al Jazeera aims to go global - in English Christian Science Monitor March 14, 2006, Tuesday 

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China's Role Emerges as Major Issue for Southeast Asia The New York Times March 14, 2006 Tuesday 

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Gas prices up 11 cents nationally The Bismarck Tribune March 13, 2006 Monday 

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Bush Welcomes IndiaInto the Anglosphere New York Observer March 13, 2006 

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In brief Wilkes Barre Times Leader (Pennsylvania) March 13, 2006 Monday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) March 11, 2006 Saturday 

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Bush Sets America Right on India The New York Sun March 9, 2006 Thursday 

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Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing; Poll Numbers in U.S. Higher Than in 2001  March 9, 2006 Thursday Correction Appended 

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Nation & world Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia) March 6, 2006, Monday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) March 6, 2006 Monday 

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Kerry urges: â€˜End the empire of oilâ€[TM];Says itâ€[TM]s the only way to win the war on terror The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA) March 6, 2006 Monday 

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Asia news in brief San Jose Mercury News (California) March 6, 2006 Monday 

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Democrats see Obama as face of 'reform and change'; Junior senator poised to step into national spotlight USA TODAY March 6, 2006 Monday 

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Gulf grows between Muslims and West; Disparate events add to anger, claims of bias against Islam The Atlanta Journal-Constitution March 5, 2006 Sunday 

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War on terror needs more humanitarian efforts Christian Science Monitor March 2, 2006, Thursday 

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The Indian Example Investor's Business Daily March 1, 2006 Wednesday 

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US tsunami aid still reaps goodwill Christian Science Monitor February 28, 2006, Tuesday 

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An Assertive India Girds For Negotiations With Bush The New York Times February 28, 2006 Tuesday 

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Wheels of justice turning slowly for '02 Indonesian ambush victims The Pueblo Chieftain (Colorado) February 27, 2006 Monday 

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Anatomy of conflict The Times Leader February 25, 2006 Saturday 

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DAUGHTER OF ISLAM WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS February 25, 2006, Saturday 

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Anatomy of conflict; Islamic cultural split lecture topic Wilkes Barre Times Leader (Pennsylvania) February 25, 2006 Saturday 

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Christians Turn on Muslims In Nigeria; More Than 30 Die  February 23, 2006 Thursday 

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New Brooks' movie seems worthy to see - [02/21] Vallejo Times Herald (California) February 21, 2006 Tuesday 

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Brooks' movie seems worthy to see Vallejo Times Herald (California) February 21, 2006 Tuesday 

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THE WORLD The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) February 20, 2006 Monday 

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The Bismarck Tribune February 20, 2006 Monday 

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English skills are as vital as science, math  (California) February 20, 2006 Monday 

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Violent Muslim protests erupt in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey Monterey County Herald (California) February 20, 2006 Monday 

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Muslims distance selves from rioting; VIOLENCE CONDEMNED IN OPEN FORUM San Jose Mercury News (California) February 20, 2006 Monday 

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In brief Wilkes Barre Times Leader (Pennsylvania) February 20, 2006 Monday 

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Within Islam's Embrace, a Voice for Malaysia's Women The New York Times February 19, 2006 Sunday 

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A cartoon contest with Iran as loser The Philadelphia Inquirer February 19, 2006 Sunday 

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Y. panel explores Muslim uproar Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) February 16, 2006 Thursday 

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Anatomy of the Cartoon Protest Movement; Opposing Certainties Widen Gap Between West and Muslim World  February 16, 2006 Thursday 

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The Islam Gap The New York Times February 15, 2006 Wednesday 

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How the Cartoon Protests Harm Muslims The New York Sun February 14, 2006 Tuesday 

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One of USA's exports: Love, American style; More couples overseas buck arranged-marriage trend USA TODAY February 14, 2006 Tuesday 

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Cartoon crisis frames Europe's conflict within; Underlying tensions across the continent, over Muslim immigration and fear of terrorism, help feed the furor over papers' publication USA TODAY February 14, 2006 Tuesday 

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Dear Catholics: Where is your outrage? Where is your shame? Chicago Daily Herald February 13, 2006 Monday 

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Africa's Polio Efforts Aiding Bird Flu Fight  February 13, 2006 Monday 

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Bush at war: lightning strike to endless muddle Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) February 12, 2006, Sunday 

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WARY DANISH DIPLOS ON RUN; FLEEING RIOTOUS MUSLIMS  The New York Post February 12, 2006 Sunday 

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Muslims' Fury Rages Unabated Over Cartoons; Demonstrators in 13 Countries Ignore Leaders' Appeals, Newspaper's Apology  February 11, 2006 Saturday 

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Letters Austin American-Statesman (Texas) February 10, 2006 Friday 

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Iran, Syria Said To Be Stoking Riots; Dictators Seek To Blunt Push Of U.S., Europe The Forward February 10, 2006 

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Depictions of the Prophet nothing new around world  February 10, 2006 Friday 

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OFFICIAL RESIGNS PUBLIC TV POST  The New York Times February 10, 2006 Friday 

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What Muhammad means to Muslims San Jose Mercury News (California) February 10, 2006 Friday 

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EDITORIAL End violence over cartoons The Denver Post February 9, 2006 Thursday 

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Opportunists Make Use of Cartoon Protests; Individuals, Groups and Governments Vent Anger Over Issues Unrelated to Defense of Islam  February 9, 2006 Thursday 

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E-Mail, Blogs, Text Messages Propel Anger Over Images; In Hours, Rumors in Denmark Galvanize Opinion Elsewhere  February 9, 2006 Thursday 

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MODERATE MUSLIMS MUST BATTLE EXTREMISM The Daily News of Los Angeles February 8, 2006 Wednesday 

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Protests Spread in Afghanistan; At Least 3 Killed During Clash in North Over Depictions of Muhammad  February 8, 2006 Wednesday 

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The Uses of Cartoons  February 8, 2006 Wednesday 

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Saudi Teacher Counsels Calm to Angry Students  February 8, 2006 Wednesday 

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The Hollywood Reporter February 7, 2006 Tuesday 

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Buy Danish The New York Sun February 7, 2006 Tuesday 

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Cartoon Protests Stoke Anti-American Mood; Three Killed Outside U.S. Base in Bagram  February 7, 2006 Tuesday 

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Lloyd's Targets Islamic Market;Creechurch syndicate sees fast growth in untapped regions National Underwriter,Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition February 6, 2006 

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Area Muslims React With Tempered Anger; Some Say Depiction Overstepped Liberties  February 5, 2006 Sunday Correction Appended 

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The issue wasn't comic last w ...  February 5, 2006 Sunday 

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FREEDOM UNDER ATTACK - AGAIN; THIS TIME, ITS THE FREEDOM TO SAY SOMETHING RADICAL MUSLIMS MIGHT DISAGREE WITH The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) February 4, 2006 Saturday 

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GOING ATOMIC OVER A COMIC - LOONY GOONS IN UN-PROPHET-ABLE RIOT & HATE SPREE  The New York Post February 4, 2006 Saturday 

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Hi! My Name's Paul. I'll Be Your U.S. Diplomat Today. The New York Times February 3, 2006 Friday 

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Temperatures Rise Over Cartoons Mocking Muhammad The New York Times February 3, 2006 Friday 

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MUSLIM WORLD JUST HYSTERICAL OVER CARTOON  The New York Post February 3, 2006 Friday 

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Tension Rises Over Cartoons of Muhammad; Publication Widens In Europe as Protests Grow in Islamic World  February 3, 2006 Friday 

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Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas) February 1, 2006 Wednesday 

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Joining the real world; Rise of Hamas not a victory for radical Islam Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) January 30, 2006, Monday 

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Body Found in Indonesian Consulate The New York Times January 30, 2006 Monday Correction Appended 

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In Brief  January 28, 2006 Saturday Correction Appended 

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Al-Qaida losing support in Arab-Muslim world Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) January 27, 2006 Friday 

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A BURNED-OUT ACT; OSAMA AND HIS PAL STRUT BEFORE THE WORLD AS YESTERDAY'S MEN Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) January 26, 2006 Thursday 

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Osama at the Kit Kat Club The New York Times January 25, 2006 Wednesday 

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) January 25, 2006 Wednesday 

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HATE, FROM THE ASHES OF GROUND ZERO; Marc Levin's 'Protocols of Zion' confronts people who believe in a Jewish conspiracy behind the Sept. 11 attacks Austin American-Statesman (Texas) January 20, 2006 Friday 

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Albert Brooks, fighting fear with funny The Philadelphia Inquirer January 18, 2006 Wednesday 

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Indonesia's stature rises Christian Science Monitor January 17, 2006, Tuesday 

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Dhul-Hijjah is the 'Season of Sacrifice' for Muslims The Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois) January 15, 2006 Sunday 

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Reunified Islam: Unlikely but Not Entirely Radical; Restoration of Caliphate, Attacked by Bush, Resonates With Mainstream Muslims  January 14, 2006 Saturday 

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TSUNAMI TURNED ENEMIES TO FRIENDS; BELIEFS The Ledger (Lakeland, FL) January 07, 2006 Saturday 

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Pondering The Ways And Whys Of Islam: Speaker compares Muslim, Christian extremists Monterey County Herald (California) January 5, 2006, Thursday 

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Pondering the ways and whys of Islam; Speaker compares Muslim, Christian extremists Monterey County Herald (California) January 5, 2006 Thursday 

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SPOTLIGHT ON AUSTRALIA The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 4, 2006 Wednesday 

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Gail Shister | Nervous to be replacing Peter Jennings? But of course The Philadelphia Inquirer January 4, 2006 Wednesday 

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Subway strike snarls London celebration Monterey County Herald (California) January 1, 2006 Sunday 

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FREEDOM ON THE MARCH  The New York Post January 1, 2006 Sunday 

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Diverse celebrations  December 31, 2005 Saturday 

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DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) December 31, 2005 Saturday 

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RIGHT ISLAM VS. WRONG ISLAM WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS December 30, 2005, Friday 

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Indonesia frowns on ways of the West The Atlanta Journal-Constitution December 28, 2005 Wednesday 

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Below a Mountain of Wealth, a River of Waste The New York Times December 27, 2005 Tuesday 

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Tsunami, one year later: America's most generous gift LANCASTER NEW ERA (LANCASTER, PA.) December 26, 2005, Monday 

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A Wave of Memories; After a Year, People in Nations Hit by the Indian Ocean Tsunami Struggle to Move On, but Thoughts of Those They Lost Intrude  December 26, 2005 Monday 

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WEIRD BUT TRUE  The New York Post December 25, 2005 Sunday 

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PAKISTAN San Jose Mercury News (California) December 25, 2005 Sunday 

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Expatriates long for Christmases past Austin American-Statesman (Texas) December 24, 2005 Saturday 

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LAWYER BACKS SADDAM'S CLAIM Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) December 24, 2005 Saturday 

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Muslims guard Jakarta's Christians Christian Science Monitor December 23, 2005, Friday 

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Readers' voice; Call 357-4451 or e-mail readersvoice@wvgazette.com Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) December 19, 2005, Monday 

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Extremism a challenge for Muslims The Philadelphia Inquirer December 19, 2005 Monday 

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Terror Suspect's Ordeal in U.S. Custody The New York Times December 18, 2005 Sunday 

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Post-Tsunami Aid Fails to Reach Universities in Banda Aceh The Chronicle of Higher Education December 16, 2005 Friday 

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ASIAN PERSPECTIVE; Every season is a season for giving The Orange County Register (California) December 16, 2005 Friday 

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Christmas Battle Of Global Import Erupts in Capital The New York Sun December 14, 2005 Wednesday 

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BC-Australia-Racial Unrest, 1st Ld-Writethru,1002 Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) December 12, 2005 Monday 

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In tsunami relief camps, kids sing their hearts out Christian Science Monitor December 9, 2005, Friday 

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Reporters on the Job Christian Science Monitor December 9, 2005, Friday 

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Indonesians' Hopes for Rebuilding Recede The Chronicle of Philanthropy December 8, 2005 Thursday 

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Rumsfeld sees global threat if U.S. quits Iraq too soon Monterey County Herald (California) December 6, 2005 Tuesday 

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Rumsfeld warns of Islamic superstate; Talk of 'caliphate' reminds some of Cold War 'domino' image St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) December 6, 2005 Tuesday 

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Rumsfeld: Early exit may spur superstate; Official warns Iraq would become Islamic giant that would endanger rest of world. Wilkes Barre Times Leader (Pennsylvania) December 6, 2005 Tuesday 

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Tsunami survivors rebuild lives by remarrying USA TODAY December 5, 2005, Monday, 

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Breakfast of DeLay Champions  December 5, 2005 Monday 

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Letters  December 4, 2005 Sunday 

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Muslims Come to Israel's Defense at Asian Parley The Forward December 2, 2005 

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Sharing Their Hopes With a Muslim Pioneer  November 29, 2005 Tuesday 

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Christian pair attacked in Indonesian province Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) November 26, 2005 Saturday 

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U.S. RESUMING MILITARY TIES Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) November 24, 2005 Thursday 

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Military Ties to Indonesia Resume Too Soon for Some  November 23, 2005 Wednesday 

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A Muslim responds to 'five questions'; Assumptions about Muslims are off the mark Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) November 20, 2005, Sunday 

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Foreign Network at Front of CIA's Terror Fight; Joint Facilities in Two Dozen Countries Account for Bulk of Agency's Post-9/11 Successes  November 18, 2005 Friday 

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PUBLIC FORUM The Daily News of Los Angeles November 17, 2005 Thursday 

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A SOCIETY'S COLLECTIVE SUICIDE; SUNNI ARABS NEED TO ASK WHY THE BOMBERS HAVE TO KILL ANYONE Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) November 17, 2005 Thursday 

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Misplaced Pessimism Toward Pakistan The Forward November 11, 2005 

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Escape spotlights troubled US detention efforts Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA) November 7, 2005, Monday 

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Earthquake relief offers chance to change minds WORLD OPINION Wilkes Barre Times Leader (Pennsylvania) November 7, 2005 Monday 

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Breaking Fast The Tampa Tribune (Florida) November 4, 2005 Friday 

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HOLOCAUST DAY OK'D  The New York Post November 2, 2005 Wednesday 

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CLEANING UP: AFTER THE TSUNAMI, AN ACEH SURPRISE: GOOD GOVERNMENT WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS November 2, 2005, Wednesday 

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No U.S. troops in these trouble spots... Brattleboro Reformer (Vermont) November 1, 2005 Tuesday 

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Security Tight After Beheading of 3 Indonesian Girls  October 31, 2005 Monday 

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Masked Men Decapitate 3 Schoolgirls In Indonesia The New York Times October 30, 2005 Sunday 

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U.S. CUTS FORCES ON OKINAWA Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) October 30, 2005 Sunday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  October 30, 2005 Sunday 

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Blind faith can lead world to destruction Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas) October 29, 2005 Saturday 

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For postquake Pakistanis, a greater need Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA) October 28, 2005, Friday 

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Rerun Our Cold War Cultural Diplomacy  The New York Times October 27, 2005 Thursday 

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Israeli exit from Gaza brings political rewards;Some Muslim countries accepting overtures Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) October 23, 2005 Sunday 

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Indonesian Students Skeptical About U.S. Policy, but Not America The New York Times October 22, 2005 Saturday 

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Political jolt: Muslim Pakistan accepts Israeli quake aid   Philadelphia Inquirer October 22, 2005 Saturday CITY-D EDITION 

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Hughes Misreports Iraqi History; Envoy Vastly Overstates Fact in Justifying War to Indonesian Students  October 22, 2005 Saturday 

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'Why Do They Hate Us?' The New York Sun October 20, 2005 Thursday 

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Pakistan takes Israel's aid, in possible thaw San Jose Mercury News (California) October 20, 2005 Thursday MO1 EDITION 

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Chicago Daily Herald October 17, 2005 Monday 

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BOOKS: Geological tale puts notion of terra firma on shaky ground The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 16, 2005 Sunday 

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Donors focus on quake relief;SOUTH ASIAN, MUSLIM AGENCIES FAVORED San Jose Mercury News (California) October 14, 2005 Friday MO1 EDITION 

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Plate tectonics reveal earth's precarious state Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) October 13, 2005 Thursday 

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No More Vietnams Investor's Business Daily October 13, 2005 Thursday 

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Earthquake Aid for Pakistan Might Help U.S. Image  October 13, 2005 Thursday 

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"The Great Challenge Of Our New Century' Investor's Business Daily October 12, 2005 Wednesday 

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President Bush Declares War On Radical Islam The New York Sun October 11, 2005 Tuesday 

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Earth's quaky design Pittsburgh Tribune Review October 11, 2005 Tuesday 

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READERS WRITE  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 10, 2005 Monday 

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Chicago Daily Herald October 10, 2005 Monday 

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Defining The Enemy Investor's Business Daily October 10, 2005 Monday 

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BUSH STOPS PUSSYFOOTING IN STRONGEST RHETORIC YET, PRESIDENT SPELLS OUT JUST WHO AMERICA'S ENEMIES ARE The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) October 8, 2005 Saturday 

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Chaplain's new book is a kids' flight of fancy Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville) October 8, 2005 Saturday 

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Bush rallies faith in war;President hails foiled terror plots, reaffirms Iraq's link to 9/11, amid growing political and public unease.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 7, 2005 Friday 

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As Bali shows, terrorists are losing ground Austin American-Statesman (Texas) October 7, 2005 Friday 

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Chicago Daily Herald October 7, 2005 Friday 

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W SEES ISLAMIC 'EMPIRE'. So U.S. can't quit Iraq Daily News (New York) October 7, 2005 Friday 

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BC-Indonesia-Bali Bombings, 3rd Ld-Writethru,0982 Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) October 7, 2005 Friday 

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NAMING THE ENEMY - THE PRESIDENT'S WAR SPEECH  The New York Post October 7, 2005 Friday 

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BUSH SPELLS IT OUT: WHY 'TOTAL VICTORY' IS CRUCIAL  The New York Post October 7, 2005 Friday 

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DUBYA DEFINES THE WAR  The New York Post October 7, 2005 Friday 

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In Indonesia, Songs Against Terrorism  October 7, 2005 Friday 

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Caption only: Muslims offer prayers on eve of holy month Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) October 5, 2005 Wednesday 

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In Indonesia, Democracy Isn't Enough The New York Times October 5, 2005 Wednesday 

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TERROR IN BALI, AGAIN  The New York Post October 5, 2005 Wednesday 

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This Bali Bombing Seen as Having Less Economic Effect  The New York Times October 4, 2005 Tuesday 

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REVIEW & OUTLOOK: BALI, AGAIN WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS October 3, 2005, Monday 

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Police Say Attacks in Bali Were Suicide Bombings; Amateur Video Recorded One Suspect; Death Toll Is Put at 22  October 3, 2005 Monday 

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Series of blasts hit tourist spots in Bali    (California) October 2, 2005 Sunday 

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Bombings rock Bali again; at least 25 killed, 100 hurt   Philadelphia Inquirer October 2, 2005 Sunday CITY-D EDITION 

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Terrorists strike Bali again; three blasts kill at least 25;SUICIDE BOMBERS POSSIBLE IN WORST ATTACK SINCE 2002 San Jose Mercury News (California) October 2, 2005 Sunday MO1 EDITION 

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25 Killed In Three Blasts In Bali; Bombings Recall Massive '02 Attack  October 2, 2005 Sunday 

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Topic: Joseph Smith Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) October 1, 2005 Saturday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) September 30, 2005 Friday 

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Taking Stock of the Forever War The New York Times September 25, 2005 Sunday 

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Israel Basks in New Warmth As Muslim States Hail Gaza Pullout; But Jerusalem Is Torn Over Demands for New Steps The Forward September 23, 2005 

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What They're Waiting For The Forward September 23, 2005 

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News in Brief   Philadelphia Inquirer September 23, 2005 Friday CITY-D EDITION 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  September 23, 2005 Friday 

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Investor's Business Daily September 19, 2005 Monday 

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MCC gets grant to offer Islam-culture coursework Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA) September 18, 2005 Sunday 

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SHARON THE UN-LIKELY HERO Daily News (New York) September 16, 2005 Friday 

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THE IMPOSSIBLE JOB OF KAREN HUGHES The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) September 14, 2005 Wednesday 

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Webster U. honors Indonesian president St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) September 13, 2005 Tuesday 

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1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Case Summaries: September 12, 2005 Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly September 12, 2005 

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Indonesias v.p. asking militants to stop attacks Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) September 10, 2005 Saturday 

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Briefs The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) September 10, 2005 Saturday 

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Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas) September 10, 2005 Saturday 

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Place blame later San Gabriel Valley Tribune (San Gabriel Valley, CA) September 9, 2005 Friday 

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Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) September 7, 2005 Wednesday 

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'Historic' Meeting for Israel and Pakistan  The New York Times September 2, 2005 Friday Correction Appended 

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Nurcholish Madjid, 66; Advocate of Moderate Islam  The New York Times September 1, 2005 Thursday 

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) August 31, 2005 Wednesday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  August 31, 2005 Wednesday 

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NATION/WORLD DEATHS Austin American-Statesman (Texas) August 30, 2005 Tuesday 

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Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) August 30, 2005 Tuesday 

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Obituaries   Philadelphia Inquirer August 30, 2005 Tuesday CITY-D EDITION 

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In Indonesia, Rumors Imperil Anti-Polio Bid; 24 Million Children Set to Be Immunized Tuesday  August 27, 2005 Saturday 

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New gloryfor Old Glory Author calls for a new global strategy of exporting our own revolutions St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) August 21, 2005 Sunday 

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Bombings Force Bangladesh Envoy Home  August 19, 2005 Friday 

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Dyer takes easy way out by blaming U.S. Dayton Daily News (Ohio) August 17, 2005 Wednesday 

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SAFAA IBRAHIM San Jose Mercury News (California) August 14, 2005 Sunday MO1 EDITION 

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SPREADING NEWS OF ISLAM'S PEACE San Jose Mercury News (California) August 14, 2005 Sunday MO1 EDITION 

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The Irascible Prophet: V. S. Naipaul at Home The New York Times August 7, 2005 Sunday 

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Pollution Trial of Mining Company to Begin in Indonesia The New York Times August 5, 2005 Friday 

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Persecuted Muslim sect finds home in Norcross  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution August 3, 2005 Wednesday 

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Are the Ahmadis Muslim?;Sect members say yes; others in Islam say no  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution August 3, 2005 Wednesday 

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Squandered Decade The New York Sun August 2, 2005 Tuesday 

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Muslim groups not satisfied with apology from Tancredo The Denver Post July 31, 2005 Sunday 

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People of all faiths pray for end to terrorism Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) July 30, 2005 Saturday 

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BEACH SHORTS Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville) July 30, 2005 Saturday 

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Religion Briefs Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA) July 30, 2005 Saturday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) July 26, 2005 Tuesday 

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Editors Tackle Taboos With Girlish Glee The New York Times July 25, 2005 Monday 

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Female circumcision has defenders, more critics  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution July 24, 2005 Sunday 

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Asian news in brief San Jose Mercury News (California) July 24, 2005 Sunday MO1 EDITION 

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If Muslim countries reject terror, the tide may turn;A poll on global attitudes finds violent tactics are losing favor while democracy is gaining. Portland Press Herald (Maine) July 18, 2005 Monday, FINAL Edition 

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Blowing Up in the West The New York Times July 17, 2005 Sunday 

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Muslim Approval of Terrorism Declines, a Global Poll Finds The New York Times July 15, 2005 Friday 

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Muslim support of terror wanes USA TODAY July 15, 2005, Friday, 

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Support for Bin Laden, Violence Down Among Muslims, Poll Says  July 15, 2005 Friday 

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THAILAND'S REBUILDING EFFORT OFFERS LESSONS  The New York Post July 14, 2005 Thursday 

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Indonesia charges Newmont, mine boss BAY DUMPING ALLEGED The indictment naming the Denver firm and mine manager Richard Ness was expected. A trial may start in a few weeks. The Denver Post July 12, 2005 Tuesday 

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Al Qaeda's Smart Bombs The New York Times July 9, 2005 Saturday 

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Public Broadcasting and Political Balance: A New Twist The New York Times June 29, 2005 Wednesday 

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Schooled For Jihad; They Turned to Terrorism. I Wanted to Know Why.  June 26, 2005 Sunday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) June 25, 2005 Saturday 

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Briefs The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) June 25, 2005 Saturday Correction Appended 

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U.S. is still unpopular in much of the world, poll says Especially in Europe, anti-Americanism is called "entrenched" St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) June 24, 2005 Friday 

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Muslim world isn't big with U.S. students USA TODAY June 20, 2005, Monday, 

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The Problem Of Saudi Slavery The New York Sun June 16, 2005 Thursday 

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THE POLIO EPIDEMIC: Dreaded disease has new life  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution June 12, 2005 Sunday 

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Distant Islands The New York Sun June 9, 2005 Thursday 

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THE SUNNIS vs. THE SHIITES: The Muslim divide;Shiites' control of Iraq worries majority Sunni Muslim world  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution June 5, 2005 Sunday 

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Terror on trial Pittsburgh Tribune Review June 5, 2005 Sunday 

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Drug Case Renews Rancor in Pacific; Australians in Uproar After Indonesia Gives Beauty School Student 20-Year Sentence  June 4, 2005 Saturday 

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BC-News Advisory,0677 Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) May 31, 2005 Tuesday 

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Indonesia: Bombings similar to Bali blasts;Attacks Saturday killed 22. Leaders suspect links to an al-Qaeda ally.   The Philadelphia Inquirer MAY 30, 2005 Monday CITY-D EDITION 

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Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) May 29, 2005 Sunday 

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Bombings in Indonesia Raise Fears of New Religious Strife The New York Times May 29, 2005 Sunday 

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Twin explosions kill 19 in central Indonesia Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) May 28, 2005 Saturday 

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NEWS SUMMARY The New York Times May 28, 2005 Saturday 

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19 KILLED IN INDONESIA MARKET BOMBINGS  The New York Post May 28, 2005 Saturday 

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News in Brief   The Philadelphia Inquirer MAY 28, 2005 Saturday CITY-D EDITION 

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Quran mistreatment sparks protests San Gabriel Valley Tribune (San Gabriel Valley, CA) May 28, 2005 Saturday 

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Muslims Rally Over Koran Report; Alleged Desecration Leads to Protests In Several Countries  May 28, 2005 Saturday 

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Congress Mulls Conditions for Aid to P.A. The Forward May 27, 2005 

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WORLD DIGEST St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) May 27, 2005 Friday 

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Bush's gravitational sling The Denver Post May 24, 2005 Tuesday 

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World datelines Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) May 23, 2005 Monday 

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Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) May 23, 2005 Monday 

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Islam Can Vote, if We Let It The New York Times May 21, 2005 Saturday 

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Civics Lesson; Phila. Students Press Cause of Student's Family Education Week May 18, 2005 

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Koran Allegation May Long Resonate; Anger Over Reported Desecration Persists Despite Retraction  May 18, 2005 Wednesday 

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'Kingdom' comes to rule o'seas B.O.  Daily Variety May 16, 2005, Monday 

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PROBE VOWED IN KORAN FLAP Daily News (New York) May 14, 2005 Saturday 

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Muslims' Anti-American Protests Spread From Afghanistan The New York Times May 14, 2005 Saturday 

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U.N. to Immunize Millions Across Africa Against Polio  May 14, 2005 Saturday 

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REALISM UNDERPINS WOLFOWITZ'S CAREER The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) May 12, 2005 Thursday 

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Wolfowitz's new job closes circle on remarkable career San Gabriel Valley Tribune (San Gabriel Valley, CA) May 12, 2005 Thursday 

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Rotary's Big Boots The New York Times May 11, 2005 Wednesday 

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'They Came Here to Die'; Insurgents Hiding Under House in Western Iraq Prove Fierce in Hours-Long Fight With Marines  May 11, 2005 Wednesday 

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A Blow to Anti-Polio Campaign; Virus's Return to Indonesia Makes Year-End Goal Unlikely  May 10, 2005 Tuesday 

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Indonesia vows not to squander Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) May 9, 2005 Monday 

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REBELS BLAMED IN DEATHS OF 11 IN MYANMAR    May 8, 2005 Sunday  

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3 NEW CASES FOUND IN POLIO OUTBREAK San Jose Mercury News (California) May 6, 2005 Friday MORNING  

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World Briefing  Asia: Indonesia: Second Case Of Polio Confirmed The New York Times May 5, 2005 Thursday 

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Chaminade graduate wins Luce scholarship Sam Bazzi of Chesterfield will study in Asia, focusing on economic policy and ways to alleviate poverty. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) May 5, 2005 Thursday 

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African Strain of Polio Found To Have Spread to Indonesia The New York Times May 3, 2005 Tuesday 

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Case of Polio Is Confirmed In Indonesia  May 3, 2005 Tuesday 

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Muslims are hopeful despite new pope's past writings St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) May 1, 2005 Sunday 

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U.S. Seeks Improved SE Asia Ties; Zoellick Trip Is Aimed at Building Economic, Political Links  April 30, 2005 Saturday 

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Our Limited Study of Islam  April 20, 2005 Wednesday 

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Islam presents key challenge for pope, scholars say Pittsburgh Tribune Review April 17, 2005 Sunday 

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Pope acts as global conscience Over the centuries, pontiffs have used their power to effect change in the church and in the world. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) April 17, 2005 Sunday 

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Southeast Asia should be second front in terrorism war, Bond says St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) April 16, 2005 Saturday 

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No wedded bliss;Indonesia women seek rights  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution April 10, 2005 Sunday 

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Helping others help themselves The Oklahoman April 10, 2005 Sunday 

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Women's roles in Indonesia changing; Activists challenging traditional notions of marriage, Islam Austin American-Statesman (Texas) April 9, 2005 Saturday 

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John Paul's Visits to the Middle East The New York Sun April 6, 2005 Wednesday 

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In Many Lands and Tongues, Remembering Pope as Minister of Peace The New York Times April 4, 2005 Monday 

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Muslims feel loss of a peacemaker   The Philadelphia Inquirer APRIL 4, 2005 Monday CITY-D EDITION 

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MOURNING CROSSES BORDERS AND FAITHSPONTIFF GARNERS PRAISE FROM ALL CORNERS OF THE WORLD Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) April 4, 2005 Monday ST. PAUL EDITION 

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Quake Forges Friendships That Transcend Religion  April 3, 2005 Sunday 

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Global Flock Braces for the Loss of Its Shepherd The New York Times April 2, 2005 Saturday 

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Canada;The Canadian Justice Agenda: A Beacon At Home And Abroad The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel April, 2005 

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Fitter, Well-Rested Clinton Receives Humanitarian Award  April 1, 2005 Friday 

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Tragic challenge of child soldiers USA TODAY March 31, 2005, Thursday, 

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Quake levels tiny Indonesian island Pittsburgh Tribune Review March 30, 2005 Wednesday 

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Local student will vie for spot in geography bee Public Opinion March 29, 2005 Tuesday 

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RE-EXAMINING PRACTICE OF FAITH;EMOTIONS RUN HIGH IN DEBATES ON GENDER ROLES, HOMOSEXUALITY, EXTREMISMPROGRESSIVE MUSLIMS SPARK DIALOGUE ON ISLAM IN THE U.S.    March 28, 2005 Monday  

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Jakarta Tenure Offers Glimpse of Wolfowitz; Indonesians Cite Stance on Rights, Reform  March 28, 2005 Monday 

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The Rebirth of Bali The New York Times March 27, 2005 Sunday 

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WORLD IN BRIEF  March 22, 2005 Tuesday 

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THE REAL WORLD: MTV GETS THE GLOBAL GROOVE How do you say 'Hey Ya!' in Swahili? MTV remakes the map with a planetary dose of pop culture Daily News (New York) March 20, 2005 Sunday 

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Rice Puts Japan At Center of New U.S. Vision of Asia; China Challenged in Major Speech  March 19, 2005 Saturday 

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Hughes' new assignment: Improve U.S. image abroad Austin American-Statesman (Texas) March 15, 2005 Tuesday 

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A World of Ways To Say 'Islamic Law' The New York Times March 13, 2005 Sunday 

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PRESIDENTS BUCK UP, TEE OFF FOR TSUNAMI AID Palm Beach Post (Florida) March 10, 2005 Thursday 

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Strain of Polio From West Africa Stirs Fears in Ethiopia, U.N. Says The New York Times March 9, 2005 Wednesday 

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Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) March 7, 2005 Monday 

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Unveiling Islam: Author Challenges Orthodox Precepts; Aging Egyptian Says Religion Allows 'Freedom of Thought and Evolution'  March 7, 2005 Monday 

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And Now, the Other News The New York Times March 6, 2005 Sunday 

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FURY OVER BALI WRIST SLAP Daily News (New York) March 4, 2005 Friday 

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Indonesian Cleric Again Acquitted on Key Charges; Bali Conspiracy Yields 30-Month Term  March 4, 2005 Friday 

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A Force for Good The New York Times March 3, 2005 Thursday 

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Ancient rite or a wrong?;Genital cutting of girls becomes an issue in Georgia, nationwide  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution March 2, 2005 Wednesday 

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INDONESIA FACES RADICAL ISLAM WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS February 28, 2005, Monday 

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U.S. to Resume Training Of Some in Indonesia Military The New York Times February 27, 2005 Sunday 

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Making Asia's Culture America's Business The New York Sun February 23, 2005 Wednesday 

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LOST IN TRANSLATION: HOW BUSH INTERPRETER GOT THROUGH SECURITY WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS February 22, 2005, Tuesday 

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Graham outlines tsunami aid effort; Evangelical talks to Pastors' Conference Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville) February 21, 2005 Monday 

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Terrorists' use of Internet spreads USA TODAY February 21, 2005, Monday, 

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WASHINGTON IN BRIEF  February 18, 2005 Friday 

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Help leading to self-help is IMC's goal USA TODAY February 14, 2005, Monday, 

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No Retreating on Indonesia  February 12, 2005 Saturday 

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Mecca Pilgrims May Be Spreading Polio, Experts Say The New York Times February 11, 2005 Friday 

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U.S. Nearly Triples Tsunami Aid Pledge, to $950 Million The New York Times February 10, 2005 Thursday 

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White House to Seek $950 Million for Tsunami Aid  February 10, 2005 Thursday 

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Good reasons for U.S. aid to Indonesia Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) February 9, 2005 Wednesday 

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Next Step With Indonesia  February 8, 2005 Tuesday 

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Caption only: Prayers for tsunami victims Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) February 7, 2005 Monday 

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U.S. Takes Steps to Mend Ties With Indonesian Military The New York Times February 7, 2005 Monday 

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PHOTOSPRAYERS, RECOVERY WORK CONTINUE Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) February 7, 2005 Monday ST. PAUL EDITION 

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Death unites us: Former Chicoan reports on tsunami Enterprise Record (Chico, California) February 6, 2005 Sunday 

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Evangelism angers Hindi tsunami victims; Most Christian charities say relief has no strings Dayton Daily News (Ohio) February 5, 2005 Saturday 

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Songs of healing, songs of prayer  February 5, 2005 Saturday 

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Community of Faith: Tsunami volunteers have plan to stay safe  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution February 3, 2005 Thursday 

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Community of Faith: Tsunami teams eye safety;Volunteers from church see the risks and rewards  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution February 3, 2005 Thursday 

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COMMUNITY OF FAITH: Reaching out amid the unrest;Teams ready to aid tsunami victims keep safety in mind  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution February 3, 2005 Thursday 

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Election mostly praised;International critics say Iraq's future still rocky  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution February 1, 2005 Tuesday 

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Should disasters undermine our faith? Yes Austin American-Statesman (Texas) February 1, 2005 Tuesday 

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European war critics praise election's success Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) February 1, 2005 Tuesday 

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Overstating Mr. Bush's Role  February 1, 2005 Tuesday 

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The New York Times January 31, 2005 Monday 

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Movies set in Memphis grab top awards at festival USA TODAY January 31, 2005, Monday, 

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Embrace The World's Double Standard The Tampa Tribune (Florida) January 30, 2005 Sunday 

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IN THE SPOTLIGHT The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) January 29, 2005 Saturday 

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NEWSMAKERS Austin American-Statesman (Texas) January 29, 2005 Saturday 

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Islam, other singers to raise tsunami funds Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) January 29, 2005 Saturday 

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FACES IN THE NEWS The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) January 29, 2005 Saturday 

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Tsunami brought out America's true nature San Gabriel Valley Tribune (San Gabriel Valley, CA) January 29, 2005 Saturday 

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R&B QUEEN READY TO UNLEASH NEW FASHION LINE ON WORLD San Jose Mercury News (California) January 29, 2005 Saturday MORNING  

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Indonesia Offering 'Olive Branch' to Rebels  January 28, 2005 Friday 

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Students buzz in geography Bee The Orange County Register (California) January 27, 2005 Thursday 

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THE OPEN FORUM - Letters to the editor The Denver Post January 26, 2005 Wednesday 

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Two awful tragedies: The Tsunami and Iraq Vallejo Times-Herald (California) January 26, 2005 Wednesday 

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THE OPEN FORUM - Letters to the editor The Denver Post January 25, 2005 Tuesday 

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Taboos are broken as Israel comes to aid of Muslim victims The Denver Post January 23, 2005 Sunday 

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AFTERSHOCKS TSUNAMI SURVIVORS TURN TO FAITH Questions about life ... and so many deaths Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus try to make sense of tragedy The Denver Post January 23, 2005 Sunday 

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Russia and China -- an ominous duo Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) January 23, 2005 Sunday 

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Today's Sundance highlights Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) January 23, 2005 Sunday 

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WEEK IN REVIEW; JANUARY 16 - JANUARY 22 The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico) January 23, 2005 Sunday 

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SANTA FE MAN WINS 1 MILLION FREQUENT- FLIER MILES The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico) January 23, 2005 Sunday Correction Appended 

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The Good Life, Washed Away; Family Well Off Before Tsunami Celebrates Holiday on Charity  January 23, 2005 Sunday 

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Chicago Daily Herald January 22, 2005 Saturday 

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Mix of Quake Aid and Preaching Stirs Concern The New York Times January 22, 2005 Saturday 

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MUSLIMS MARK END OF A JOURNEY The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico) January 22, 2005 Saturday 

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Locals head to Asia for 'mission of trust in God' Star News (Wilmington NC) January 22, 2005, Saturday 

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Muslim sleeper cell silliness The Oklahoman January 21, 2005 Friday 

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Tomorrow's Threat  January 21, 2005 Friday 

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Marines left defenseless Bangor Daily News (Maine) January 19, 2005 Wednesday 

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Of Earthquakes & Optimism The New York Sun January 19, 2005 Wednesday 

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Best goal would be for Muslims not to care about U.S. Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) January 18, 2005 Tuesday 

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Proselytizing during relief efforts divides Christian groups Some say disasters such as the tsunami offer a time to answer questions; others want to focus on their acts. The Denver Post January 17, 2005 Monday 

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Pinning the Blame For Nature's Wrath New York Observer January 17, 2005 

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Islam vs. democracy Pittsburgh Tribune Review January 17, 2005 Monday 

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For Krueng Raya, this may be the end USA TODAY January 17, 2005, Monday, 

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THE WORLD The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) January 16, 2005 Sunday 

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Chicago Daily Herald January 16, 2005 Sunday 

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The Trip to Mecca A pilgrimage in tragic times Chicago Daily Herald January 16, 2005 Sunday 

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History shows disasters can put our faith in hot seat   The Philadelphia Inquirer JANUARY 16, 2005 Sunday CITY-D EDITION 

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COMMENTARY: DOMINO THEORY WON'T WORK FOR MIDEAST DEMOCRACY, EITHER The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico) January 16, 2005 Sunday 

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After the flood St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) January 16, 2005 Sunday 

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Honoring Abraham: The Muslim Festival of Eed al Adha Brattleboro Reformer (Vermont) January 15, 2005 Saturday 

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AID TO TSUNAMI VICTIMS IS IN AMERICA'S INTEREST Palm Beach Post (Florida) January 15, 2005 Saturday 

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Christian Group Never Had Custody of Orphans; WorldHelp Partner in Indonesia Says No Steps Were Taken to Obtain 300 Children  January 15, 2005 Saturday 

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Orphanage plan is called off   The Philadelphia Inquirer JANUARY 14, 2005 Friday CITY-D-EAST EDITION 

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Indonesian Islamic Party Reaps Rewards of Goodwill; Extensive Relief Work in Aceh Wins Sympathy -- and Votes  January 14, 2005 Friday 

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Foreign Adoption Resisted; Affected Countries Have Strict Rules  January 14, 2005 Friday 

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Tsunami Orphans Won't Be Sent to Christian Home  January 14, 2005 Friday 

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Indonesia sets deadline for U.S. to leave  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 13, 2005 Thursday 

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Indonesia sets deadline for U.S. to leave  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 13, 2005 Thursday 

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Indonesia: Foreign troops out soon; Nation gives militaries March deadline; U.S. carrier leaves area Austin American-Statesman (Texas) January 13, 2005 Thursday 

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9.0 ON UNGRATEFUL SCALE Thanks for the help, but now get out, Indonesian veep tells U.S. soldiers Daily News (New York) January 13, 2005 Thursday 

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'MODERATE MUSLIMS' TOO TIMID TOWARD TERRORISTS IN THEIR MIDST Palm Beach Post (Florida) January 13, 2005 Thursday 

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When disaster strikes, 'he has to go';George Friou of Portland will direct a team providing short and long-term health care recommendations. Portland Press Herald (Maine) January 13, 2005 Thursday, Final Edition 

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Indonesia Sets Limits On Foreign Relief Role; U.S. Moves Out Carrier; Marines Adjust Plans  January 13, 2005 Thursday 

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Group Says It Relocated 300 Orphans; Va. Missionaries Talk of Raising Muslim Tsunami Victims in Christian Home  January 13, 2005 Thursday 

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Faith Divides the Survivors And It Unites Them, Too The New York Times January 12, 2005 Wednesday 

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A new chance for peace The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) January 11, 2005 Tuesday 

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Fear Factor Investor's Business Daily January 10, 2005 Monday 

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NEWS SUMMARY The New York Times January 10, 2005 Monday 

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Islamic Militants Volunteer To Aid Muslims in Indonesia The New York Times January 10, 2005 Monday 

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A Wave Of Grief Comes Crashing On New York City New York Observer January 10, 2005 

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THE YEAR OF LIVING DIPLOMATICALLY WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS January 10, 2005, Monday 

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LETTERS  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 9, 2005 Sunday 

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Muslims called to give but wary of what they fund The Denver Post January 9, 2005 Sunday 

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More Religion, but Not the Old-Time Kind The New York Times January 9, 2005 Sunday 

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Hearts, Minds and Flood Relief The New York Times January 9, 2005 Sunday 

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Americans are most generous The Oklahoman January 9, 2005 Sunday 

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Tsunami's Reach The Tampa Tribune (Florida) January 9, 2005 Sunday 

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Aftershocks From Asia  January 9, 2005 Sunday 

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Brothers in Alms The New York Times January 8, 2005 Saturday 

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Why?; Spiritual relevance of tragedy varies among world's faiths The Oklahoman January 8, 2005 Saturday 

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UNDERSTANDING YOUR WORLD: U.S. TAKES LEAD IN ORGANIZING LARGEST-EVER AID EFFORT The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico) January 8, 2005 Saturday 

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Divining a Reason for Devastation; Followers of Various Faiths Differ on Natural, Supernatural Explanations for Tsunami  January 8, 2005 Saturday 

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Powell Pledges Long-Term Aid; Confirmed Death Toll From Tsunami Rises to 147,000  January 8, 2005 Saturday 

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HOW DOES GOD FIGURE INTO ASIA DISASTER? The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) January 7, 2005 Friday 

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Backtalk Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA) January 7, 2005 Friday 

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NEWS SUMMARY The New York Times January 7, 2005 Friday 

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Once-Critical Indonesians Are Grateful to U.S. for Aid The New York Times January 7, 2005 Friday 

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Will Tsunami Aid Reach Terrorists? The New York Sun January 7, 2005 Friday 

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INVEST IN DISASTER RELIEF Palm Beach Post (Florida) January 7, 2005 Friday 

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ASIAN ADOPTIONS PUT ON HOLDHARDEST-HIT COUNTRIES STRICTLY REGULATE FOREIGN PLACEMENTS Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) January 7, 2005 Friday ST. PAUL EDITION 

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Humbled by Tragedy, Heartened by Response  January 7, 2005 Friday 

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READERS WRITE  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 6, 2005 Thursday 

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Islamic council dinner to help tsunami victims Chicago Daily Herald January 6, 2005 Thursday 

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THE VENT  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 5, 2005 Wednesday 

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WHEN THINGS GO HAYWIRE, MAYBE IT'S BEST TO REBOOT The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin) January 5, 2005 Wednesday 

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U.S. GOODWILL MAY HELP REP, POWELL SAYS Daily News (New York) January 5, 2005 Wednesday 

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Pledges Grow, Hurdles Loom In Relief Effort The New York Times January 5, 2005 Wednesday 

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AID EFFORT IN INDONESIA COULD LIFT US IMAGE IN EYES OF MUSLIMS WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS January 5, 2005, Wednesday 

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A Clear Line Between Life and Death  January 5, 2005 Wednesday 

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In Angry Waves, the Devout See an Angry God  January 5, 2005 Wednesday 

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Gulf Arabs Wonder: Are They Being Stingy With Aid? The New York Times January 4, 2005 Tuesday 

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POWELL TOURING STRICKEN REGION TO SHOW SUPPORT The New York Times January 4, 2005 Tuesday 

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U.S. displays generosity, faces commitment test USA TODAY January 4, 2005, Tuesday, 

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More Water Bottles, Fewer Bullets  January 4, 2005 Tuesday 

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Haphazard Charity  January 4, 2005 Tuesday 

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DEADLY TSUNAMIS: Onslaught of the deep;The world may take years to recover from a catastrophic rampage by the Indian Ocean.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution January 2, 2005 Sunday 

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Aid Summit Talks in Jakarta: U.S. Is Facing a Choice and an Opportunity The New York Times January 2, 2005 Sunday 

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How Nature Changes History The New York Times January 2, 2005 Sunday Correction Appended 

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Help for Indonesia  January 2, 2005 Sunday 

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The Saudi Syndrome The New York Times January 1, 2005 Saturday 

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